You Want Me to Put WHAT in That Cup?

I pulled out of the driveway at 2am early this morning and pulled back in, 8 hours later, at 10:15am.  After two bags of IV fluids, a chest x-ray, blood work, a breathing treatment and an EKG, I was told,

“Everything came back normal except that flu test which popped up positive. Go home and lie on your butt until the end of the weekend. There’s not much else we can do.”   

My doctor also looked at me, at one point, and said,

“You don’t look like you’re about to turn forty.”

I guess I should feel flattered. Not so much. I’d take a lot less snot and fewer body aches NOT to have heard those charming words. <sigh> I am sick. Seriously mucho sicko!

I am also disappointed.  I don’t know what K-Man had planned for my birthday but it was a surprise something that included my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law/friend/first-cousin  (yes, she's all those things, it's seriously old-school weird South, I know) coming to my house all the way from Alabama to bring me one of her fabulous signature cakes. <sigh>  I was looking so forward to it. I’ve spent months looking forward to it.

Forty only comes around once and I’m going to be fighting off a virus right when I should be celebrating. We have to tell them. I can not let them run the risk of catching this dreaded and nasty flu. This is crappy. I have visions of not telling them, of just letting them show-up and I’ll attempt “Fun A-Girl,” while feeling like “Yucky A-Girl,” but that would be a lot like yelling out,


         “Surprise, it’s my birthday! And, for my birthday I’m giving you...the flu!!!”

Can’t do it. <sigh>  Looks like this blog (as well as my 40th) is gonna end with a whimper instead of a roar.

UGH!!!

Only a Matter of Time

It finally happened.

Last week, LITERALLY, I looked at my watch and couldn't see the numbers. I haven’t been able to see the date for some time but it wasn't enough to break me out of my denial.

“I do NOT have 40 year old eyes!” 

The words in the books that I've been reading have suddenly shrunk. I'm doing that yo-yo thing with papers that I need to read. Is it clearer here or there? I'm sorta like the old gal version of the "can you hear me now?" guy, only I can't see.  Recently, I was having a conversation with my hairdresser about gettin’ old and she commented,

“The eye thing is real. I woke up one morning and couldn't see to read anything and so I went to the eye doctor who examined me, leaned back and asked, 'So, when did you turn 40?”  

My hairdresser smiled and said,

“I told him, ‘My birthday was two weeks ago!”

When I was in kindergarten it was an election year and on voting day they held a fake election for our little class of 5 year olds. I didn't understand what we were doing at all so I copied the little girl  next to me who circled the name of “Ford,” on her paper. When the numbers were counted in my kindergarten class someone named, “Carter,” had won.

When I got home, my mom was sitting and, very uncharacteristically, watching the Tv, she asked me what had happened during my day.  The way I remember it, she didn’t even look up from her chair, I told her,“I voted for Ford but he didn't win.”  She said, sadly,
“Me too.”

“The Iran Crisis: An America Held Hostage.” 

I remember the yellow ribbons. I remember the newscasts on Tv . I remember the confusion in my little girl head. I remember the general great dislike for Carter as his presidency went on and I remember in high school my history teacher saying that she thought that Carter would be remembered much more positively than he was portrayed as president. Tonight, I’m watching a program on Georgia Public Broadcasting about Jimmy Carter and beginning to put the pieces together between what I remember and what history tells me as an adult. As a president he might have been shaky but, as a man:

In 2002, President Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work "to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development" through The Carter Center. Three sitting presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama, have received the prize; Carter is unique in receiving the award for his actions after leaving the presidency. He is, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of only two native Georgians to receive the Nobel. -Wikipedia, "Jimmy Carter"

40 - I’m starting to lose those things that defined me as “young” but I’m beginning to gain perspective. I've lived long enough to see how stuff plays out. Life isn't so much about “wait and see,” anymore as it is about “this is what I've seen” and that makes me more patient for “tomorrow.” I’ve realized that life happens in stages and that, even though there are times when I don’t understand, Time brings understanding.

And, that is a cool thing.

"Let's Go Krogering..."

Well, the months have passed and now we’re down to a matter of weeks and then days until THE GREAT BIRTHDAY will have arrived and I’ll be 40.  Like an annoying little gnat with impulse control issues, I’ve been buzzing in your ear twice a week for almost 6 months, now.

Big changes are headed my way.  (Aren’t they always?) I’ve been looking forward to “40” because it just seemed to scream, “New Adventure!” And, now that it’s here and I can see the changes right on the horizon…well, it’s a bit unnerving.

***

I’m out of cheese and I can’t be out of cheese, Wild Child could very well starve to death. (I swear, throw a block of cheese and a water bottle into a backpack and that kid could successfully trudge across the Sahara.)  So, I’m off to the grocery store. Joy.

Wild Child is happily playing “Garbage Man,” jumping on and off the front of my buggy as I careen through the aisles finding much more than cheese that I “need.”  I’m not at the grocery store long before I realize something that I’ve known for a while but keep myself in constant denial about: my grocery store is rearranging.

Okay, “rearranging” is a bit ambiguous and not nearly dramatic enough.

They are not rearranging as much as they are completely renovating the store. I should have known it was going to be BIG when, weeks ago, they began to redo THE FLOORS. Now? Complete aisles are GONE and others are facing the WRONG DIRECTION. The pharmacy is in a totally different part of the store. That delightful sign meets me every time the electric doors swish open in front of my face,

“Please visit our pharmacy in it’s new location…..”

I’m not really sure where that is, most days I have enough trouble timing my entrance through said electric doors with numerous small children in tow, much less walking and READING at the same time.

It’s been a bit of an inconvenience the past few weeks,

Don’t they know that I come here BECAUSE I already know where everything is?

Today, it finally got to me. Today I felt this sort of panicky almost claustrophobic feeling. I actually heard myself say out loud, about soup no less,

“I need it but I have NO IDEA where it is!”

It’s not just me.  Other shoppers pass me with stressed-out looks on their faces and make snarky, understated comments like, “Wow, a little chaotic this morning, huh?” Workers at the store look at me and assure me out of the blue, “Just a little longer and it’s going to be great!”  (Do I really look that distressed?)

The thing is that I know it probably will be great.

A few weeks after this is over, you’ll have figured out where everything is and you won’t even remember this. This is an inconvenience but it’s only a grocery store!  It’s only a little change.

Hahahahaha

There’s the real issue: change.
People do not like change.
Even when it may offer better things down the line.
And, I’m a people. I can see changes a’comin’ that make my rearranging grocery store look like a spring day and it’s just scary.

Rita Weems says,

The important thing to keep in mind is that with change comes the invitation to embark upon a journey, a pilgrimage, start a new chapter, confront some issues you need to address. Everything feels out of sorts in the beginning. And it is. But there’s something there for you if you don’t panic. Learning to ride out feeling bewildered and frightened and tapping into the opportunity to grow is vital to the health and wholeness of every woman, because no matter who you are, there is no escaping change. -pg 76, Showing Mary

A-Girl, you've done “change” before. 

Manage the panic and just do the next thing.

You know how to do this. 

Maybe, some day I’ll learn how to do it without all the nuclear melt down moments.

Stream of Consciousness About the Day

Valentine’s Day. It’s not been my favorite for a long time. Actually, it was never my favorite. It was always full of pain. I just wanted it over with so I could ignore it for another year. It was rife with "I'm special to somebody." And, I always felt like a big fat nobody to everybody.
No whining, just the truth.

Then, there’s the whole crazy of having little kids during any holiday. I went to two, count ‘em two, Valentine’s Day parties for my kids at their preschool this year.

Some stay-at-home moms could write how-to books for the dictators of small countries, I swear:

Power, Manipulation and Competition - an Easy Step-by-Step Process for Tyrants

Not any stay-at-home moms that I know, of course. But there are SOME, I’ve heard. :)  These V Day parties, with their over the top Valentine’s, weren’t much different.  Check out the comment of a dad who was standing close to me and watching, as a few of the moms drug out their "kids" Valentines,

“The kids are (oblivious) and the moms are competing. What? Next year some mom will bring Valentines with a mound of Swarovski Crystals on top?”  

Besides being really impressed that he actually KNEW what Swarovski Crystals were, I couldn't get over how astute his observation was. And, glad that somebody else saw it. There I stood, with Middle Child's little store-bought Valentines SANS big gigantic boxes of Sweet Hearts and chocolate and themed pencils (to go with the other 15 themed pencils that we have at home left over from Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas parties), Like they NEED any more candy? and had to fight NOT to hug Stranger Guy standing next to me. Yes! Thank you!  Obesity and consumerism -yep, we start ‘em young!

See that man, the one in the photo? He was my date for Valentine’s this year. Yeah, he’s been my date for everything that I’ve gone to for nearly 8 years, now. That man can drive me crazy faster than anyone I know. “Being married to you can be exhausting,”  I told him the day before Valentine’s Day. He looked at me, smiled a little and said, “Yeah, being married to you can be exhausting, too.” I wondered if he'd considered putting that on the card of my pink tulips that had arrived the day before.  Me? Exhausting? Hahahahahahahaha I'm not opinionated or stubborn or strong-willed! Not me!

Relationship is a two way street, you can't have a relationship if the other person/people won't do their job. It took me a long time to learn that I couldn't have a relationship with someone unless they wanted it as much as I did. Sometimes, relationships fall apart because the other person doesn't want it badly enough and that's not my fault. I tried to make it my fault for a long time but it's not.

This guy? He wants a relationship with me. He feels ownership over our kids and he takes care of them. He comes home every night and gets up to go to work every day. He’s got my back.

I sat across from him, over our steaming pot of fondue and realized that, for the first time in my life, I’m getting comfortable. There is a safety and a security that I’ve never known before, I can be me, the real me, and not worry that that's not good enough, somehow.

And, I don’t find this boring at all. Whoever said that marriage is boring either didn’t know what they were talking about or didn’t know “good marriage.” It’s not boring. On the contrary, it’s safe and that lets you be a little daring in the rest of your life. Knowing that there’s someone in your corner, someone who wants to be there, someone who works just as hard as you do on a routine basis to make it work?

That’s the sexiest damn thing I can think of.

I may even buy him a pack of Sweet Hearts and a themed pencil to show my love.

Nah!

Thursdays with Wild Child

Thursday is one of the days of the week when I have Wild Child home with me, alone. Middle Child goes to preschool from 9 till 1 and it’s just me and the “baby.”

I like these days.

He plays “different” when it’s just him. He also seeks out my attention a lot more.

Very few of these days go by when he doesn’t ask me to read to him. Reading to your children is one of those things that I just take for granted. Some of my earliest memories are of being read to and it’s often the only time when my kids will sit still. (In fact, most of the time they don’t make it all the way through a book without trying to bounce on my head, at least once.) I don’t really push reading. I suggest it sometimes but I think it needs to come from the child- I’m afraid that too much, “Sit still, while I read to you,” becomes “Books are Evil!” in the minds of some kids.   Most kids love to be read to (in fact, I read chapter books to Oldest Child way past the time when he could read them to himself and he requested that I read to him into his early teens) and I’m always surprised when those “read to your children” commercials come on Tv. People have to be told to do this? Well, yeah. Sometimes (often), I have to remind myself to slow down and enjoy it.

Anyway, so when Wild Child said, “Read caterpillar book,” I was not surprised and sorta excited. He picked out three books to read:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

He organized them very carefully on the coffee table and climbed up onto "the blue couch," next to me.

“I sit your lap.”
“Put de blanket on me.”

We got cozy.

And, I opened the first book. No matter how many times I’ve read these, no matter how old I get, it’s still like going on a journey.

We have a rhythm and a tradition to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in fact, some times he just asks me to only read certain pages.

He likes it when I count, "...he ate through 1,2,3 plums..."

I love it when he "reads" these pages to me, "...one swice of sawami..."

It always surprises me
when he remembers the whole thing.

Wild Child's still working out exactly what happens to the caterpillar in the end. He just can't grasp that he becomes the butterfly...and is that a good thing?

I opened The Snowy Day, thankful that we've had so many "snow days" this year and that Wild Child finally has a reference for this book. :)

The Snowy Day was one of my absolute favorites when I was a little girl. Right from when my mom would say,  "The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats," and then turn the page and read the dedication, it was like poetry all the way through.

The colors and the textures! Oh, I loved this book.
The first sneak peek into the mind of the little girl who'd grow up to love poetry and art - here it is!

I remember being fascinated by the snow. Snow was supposed to be white. But, here it's all sorts of colors!

Wild Child loves it when he picks up the stick and makes tracks and when the snow Plops! on his head.

I always thought what a sweet momma she was.
I wanted her to hug me.

I LOVED this pink tub
and to this day I can still feel the moist warm steam
that I was sure surrounded him.

Wild Child says, "Uh! It melted! Awwwww!"

I don't remember really liking Where the Wild Things Are, as a little girl. I'm not sure if that's 'cause I was a little girl and so nobody really read it to me, or I didn't "get" it or if, maybe, it scared me just a little but now when I open it I'm always bum-rushed with emotions.

I'm imagining my husband as he sat on his mother's lap when he was a little boy and she read him his very most favorite book. I'm remembering Oldest Child, sitting on my lap with erasers on all his little fingers, like claws and I'm giggling at Middle Child and Wild Child as they ROAR with the characters.

As soon as we close the book, Wild Child is up and off. "We make Wild Thing puzzle!" Um, okay. Hang on, I'm coming too!

Yeah, books. Boring black words on plain white pages...and so much more.

It's Not Wednesday Yet!

So, lately, I've been catching myself whining to myself about how old I’m getting, about how my years of being extremely active are fading fast, about how I am running out of time to do the things that I've wanted to do. <sniff sniff>

(That wrinkle between my eyes has become so deep, that I swear you could grow corn it. I’m not joking.  This summer, right around the end of August, fully formed popcorn will fly off my face. Wait and see. Which is really not that bad compared to that Turkey-Flap that I’ve now got goin’ on underneath my chin. I am aghast. I was looking at pictures of myself recently, staring at how loose my skin's getting, and all I could think was, That just ain’t right! )

But everywhere that I look, I'm seeing reports of people older than me who are doing amazing things.

(I‘ve read the entire Harry Potter series since Christmas, surely that counts for something, right? I mean the eye strain alone should earn me major kudos, not to mention the elbow ache that I’ve endured from holding those books up so that my nearly 40 year old eyes can actually see the words.)

I read about Laura Vikmanis, who at 42, is the NFL's oldest cheerleader.  In her late thirties she went to a game, saw the cheerleaders, and said to herself, I've always wanted to do that. So, at 39, she tried out for the Cincinnati Bengals' cheerleading squad, the Ben-Gals. She made it all the way to the finals but didn’t make the cut. So, what did she do? Did she tell herself, See? You ARE TOO OLD, Stupid! What were you thinking? Those girls are nearly 20 years younger than you are! and then drag herself and her Depends back home to hide? No. She hit the gym and tried out the next year. And, she made the team.

I learned that George Burns won an Academy Award for his performance in The Sunshine Boys when he was 80 and that Meryl Streep, at the age of 61, has dug herself into a new demanding role, this time becoming Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. She is fearless and brilliant and I can’t wait to see her in this movie.

At 81, Benjamin Franklin effected the compromise that led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

I recently watched, Michael Jackson’s This is It! and discovered that, at the age of  50, he was preparing to spend hours and hours a night singing and dancing. He’d scheduled 50 tours (more?)  in Europe, alone.

I never knew that Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel on 17 March 1969, right before her 71st birthday (and she was a woman!)

A very cool fact is that at 100, Grandma Moses was still painting (Grandma Moses did not even start painting until she was 75 and did not get her first exhibition until she was 80) and that Bill Shoemaker was 54 when became the oldest person to win the Kentucky Derby.

I giggled to read about a grandmother in Northhampton, England who very recently took on a gang of jewelry thieves on the street with her handbag (and won) and I even found an Arab horse, Elmer, who, at the age of 37, (depending on who you ask, about age 5 -15 is considered “prime” for a horse) is still competing in Competitive Trail Riding.

I found it fascinating that a Belgian man, Stefaan Engels, finished his goal this year of running 365 marathons in a year, THAT’S ONE A DAY FOR A YEAR -  read : he ran 9,569 miles in one year. He’s 49.

But that is not the one that gets me, the one that gets me is that the previous marathon record was held by a Japanese runner Akinori Kusuda, who, in 2009, ran 52 consecutive marathons at the age of 65. Sixty-five! SIXTY-FIVE!!!

Yeah, A-Girl, SHUT UP! It ain’t over till you lay yourself down and give up. 

Here’s to years of great adventures still waiting on me!

Mall Rat

I spent yesterday morning at the mall hunting for something to wear for Valentine’s Day.

I hate shopping.

My hubby has learned the hard way that I need notice to find something to wear. My closet is full of stuff that is appropriate for staying-at-home with children who are covered in "nasty," or for wearing to the barn to get, well, in general, nasty. But, if we just depend on my closet to upchuck something fabulous, at a moment’s notice, it will not end well.
It will turn out... nasty.

Bless his heart, he really has learned this the hard way. I made the STUPID mistake (I’ve made it several times, actually) of asking a man who wears white socks with his black sandals and VERY baggy blue shorts- I’m not kidding, Geek jokes aside, he really does this- what he thought of my thrown-together-straight out-of-the-nasty-closet-Valentine’s-outfit, one year. I gotta tell ya that hearing your spouse spout,

“That’s a lotta red,” 

is not conducive to a romantic night on the town. Hahahahaha

So, this year, he’s already told me,

“I got a sitter and we’re going to dinner 

which means that you have two weeks 

to find something to wear for Valentine’s Day. 

Don’t ask me for details, it’s a surprise. 

‘Business Causal,’ is all I’m telling you.”  

Then, he smiled.

You’ve got to love a man who has learned to dodge the land mine.

Which is why I was at the DREADED mall at 10:30am on a Wednesday. It was not going well. I HATE shopping, have I mentioned this already?  Where do I fit?  I don’t like the “old lady” clothes but the other options ain’t so great either - Juniors,  plunging down to there and cut up to here. That ain’t clothing, it’s a scarf that somebody forgot to put with their coat.

There is a store that I loved as an early twenty-something - even got a job there in college - but I’ve been walking past it for years because 

I’m just too old to shop there anymore.

Then, it happened. I don’t know if the caffeine from my coffee kicked in or if the “Mall-Drugs” (you know it’s true) that I’d been inhaling since I’d set foot in the door of the mall finally reached critical mass or if my Big Girl Panties bunched up into a wad large enough to cause me to remember that I actually had them on but suddenly I thought to myself,
      
       'Nearly 40' be damned, I can too wear that stuff if I like it!

and for the first time in years and years I made a bee-line for my old favorite.  And you know what? I found some stuff that I liked.

I might even go back today and try it on. ;p

Do You Understand Me?!

“I stur-stee!”
My cup is a little bit on the empty side.

“Sit with me!”
"Aristocrats" is so much better when you’re sitting next to me on the couch, Mom.

“Put my hands on me!”
I want to snuggle with you.

“Get the black stuff off!”
Please, remove the captions from the television. They are in the way of my viewing pleasure.

“Attack!”
Set my knights up so that I can knock them down, Dad!

“Meow! Meow! Meow! <puts tail in face> Meow! Meow! <bites hand> Meow! Meow! Meow!"
Stop messing with the computer, sit on the couch and pet me NOW!

“Babe, I don’t know.”
I do know, I’m feeling overwhelmed by your questions, give me a minute to process.

A-Girl is irritable and weepy and nothing pleases her.
I need a hug <whimper>.

Most times, knowing the “language” is half the battle.