Lilymania

Fun Snacks

2012-01-13T13:45:00.000-05:00

We often have a bowl of hard boiled eggs sitting in the fridge. Good protein, not too expensive, easy to grab on the go, sturdy enough to get taken for lunch. (We used to keep them in a separate and visibly labeled "HARD BOILED EGGS" container but after one too many sleepy heads mixed them up - either trying to scramble the one or toss the other into a lunch sack - we switched to the bowl method.) And that has worked for a long time. Didn't think it could get much better in fact. Until the other day when I looked in the fridge and saw this:

Ha ha ha! TOTALLY CRACKED ME UP. The one on the right has the caption "I'm an AIGGGG!!"

Clearly someone (whose name rhymes with Dinja Confessa) was having way too much fun with the snack food. A theory confirmed yesterday when I reached into the fruit bowl:

Ah! Doodle-meister has struck again.

Hope everyone is having a good start to 2012. Peace!

Fast Forward

2011-11-02T16:30:00.000-04:00

So...perhaps a bit of an update is in order.

Here's my crew as they look today (or really, three weeks ago but whatever.) Top Right and going counter-clockwise (or widdershins as some of us like to say): Chaos, Mayhem, Havoc, Bug, and the Ninja Princessa. It was amazing and wonderful and unusual to have them all home at the same time in October.

A bazillion and twelve things have happened in the what, 27 months or so, since I last posted and it was scanty fare before that. But here is where we are and I'll try to back fill later -

Chaos - age 19 as of this summer. Still sassy (as you can probably tell from the picture). Graduated from high school last spring (after some pretty serious drama which may or may not be the subject of a future post.) He is living with my mother - after getting "kicked out" of his father's house (hey - another long story!) I wanted (very much!) for him to come back home and live with us - but he wants to stay working where he is and be around the friends he has there. He is working technically part time but about 40 hours a week at a fast food place. He is an amazingly hard worker and is getting paid next-to-nothing. He talks about going to college in the spring or summer or someday. He is still passionate about history - especially World War II - and says he thinks he wants to end up being a history teacher. Whatever he chooses is fine with me. He's a great guy and we (he and I) had a rocky summer (during which he refused to talk to me, answer my texts, or acknowledge my existence) so it was fantastic that he came home with the younger boys for Fall Break. (He had to take a week off of work to do so - which is a big deal and not something he does. It meant a hell of a lot to me.) He's brilliant and wacky and opinionated and empathic and ... very much himself.

Mayhem - age 17 as of this summer. A junior, handsome and suave, completely into lacrosse (goalie) and all around congenial guy. Very interested in fashion. He is a seriously sharp dressed man - and will have to get a job at Buckle very soon to support his shopping habit. Still ADD as hell and struggling in school - but smart and enthusiastic. He is one of those guys at the football games - bare chested painted up - cheering his team on. He is kind of dating (I think) - a girl here. They talked and texted after he left this summer and went out a couple of times when he was back for Fall Break. He is so easy to be around. He's in the throes of deciding which colleges he's interested in. He is working on his art portfolio for Governor's School. Now if only he can pass Latin this semester...

Havoc - turns 13 this month! - with Tallulah and Wasabi (4 and 6 respectively). Havoc is in the 7th grade. OMG - we have no more in elementary school. And only one in middle school! The last one to hit the teens. It is crazee to think of. Anyway...Havoc is wicked smart (and on the gifted track still - in spite of my continuing reservations about it). He struggles with ADD and repelling paper like Mayhem, but for some reason he is able to maintain and get enough assignments in to have great grades. He's a lacrosse goalie too. It has been wonderful to see him so active and physically conditioning. He is still in love with the idea of becoming a chef. And he's gotten into drama. He had the male lead (Daddy Warbucks) in the school musical (Annie) this Spring. He dropped band. I think he never got over the fact that they didn't let him play tuba. (They gave their one tuba slot to a girl in his class. I think it is ... weird enough that he wanted to play tuba but I truly can't imagine a girl wanting to play tuba. That's probably sexist. I don't know. Of course, if she wants to I'm all about her having the chance to. But really? Why does ANYONE want to play the tuba!) Havoc jumped from instrument to instrument last year and finally said he didn't have any interest this year.

Bug - turns 21 this month! He is putting himself through community college - getting a double associates in two things IT related. He was working at Staples but has just gotten a much higher paying and far more interesting (to him) job as a programmer of some description. (I'm sorry but like car information - IT details do NOT stick in my brain. I think they are cool and understand them at the time in context - but cannot for the life of me recall them specifically enough to pass on to anyone else. Go ahead - ask me what Linus does for a living! It is something involving one or more of the following: data architect, systems, policy, design, chief, technology something or other. So Bug is a chip off the ol' silicon block.) He is way more social than ever before and has become interested in fashion. Or at least in crafting his own style. So he and Mayhem spend a lot of time together shopping for clothes.

Which brings us to the Ninja Princessa - age 16. I love this series of pictures because it is soooooo her! I was being silly and zoomed in for a close up and out for a full body pic and then when I zoomed in again, she made this little sound like "mweep". I cracked up when I saw the camera. She's a junior and in the social justice track at school. She's president of the QSA (=Queer-Straight Alliance) at her school and on the board of Inside Out (the regional LGBTQIA youth organization). It's interesting. She has been a very involved member since her Freshman year. She didn't date anyone for a long time. When she first joined we asked if she was interested in girls. (Not a surprising question.) She said she thought girls were too much drama but then she went on to say she wasn't particularly interested in boys either. "I have four brothers after all. I KNOW what boys are like for real." Ha! She said she's passionate about people getting to make their own choices; she supports her friends of all varieties. She did end up dating a very nice boy who'd been a friend for years. But they recently broke up. :( She is still a vegetarian and an activist for animal rights (though she is smart and informed and not like the animal rights activists I detest.)

In short - my kids are just completely AWESOME. I have no idea how I got so freaking lucky. I hope to write an update about the rest of us (me, Linus, and Bet and Tallulah and Wasabi - who should have their own post I think). Sooner than 2 years at any rate! But don't hold your breath. :D Peace!

My, How Time Flies

2009-06-09T11:25:00.006-04:00

Chaos is fixing to be 17 next week. There are days when it is practically impossible to believe that many years have passed since I held his wee baby self in my arms for the first time. Other days I wonder how he's not 30 yet. Ahhhh, motherhood.

Recently Chaos has become somewhat health conscious. He's eating fewer pop-tarts and more grilled chicken salad. He has for a while wanted to start lifting weights, but has not at all wanted to join a gym. The obvious solution? A home gym! Yes, yes. Soooo easy to figure out for a teenager with limited bedroom space and parents in two different states 500 miles apart. Nonetheless! I absolutely love lifting weights and think the overall well-being benefits of lifting far outweigh the hassles. So look what Chaos got for an early birthday present*:

(Some assembly required.)

I had a little help.

And I mean a very little help.

Apparently, it is important to nap on exercise equipment as you're putting it together. 16 and 11/12ths being such an exhausting age and all. What do you think? Is what the fitness books mean by stretching first?

We did finally get it completely assembled. (After a mere two days.) That was four days ago. It took until yesterday for any iron to be pumped. But I totally understand this. After all, apples don't fall far from the trees now, do they? Chaos comes by his "fixing to get ready to get started" tendencies honestly. None of that jumping right in for us - nosiree! Well...actually I'm getting better at it. Turns out, the more you do, the more you can do, and the more new things don't need so much preparation. I'm trying to start passing that on. It's been fun helping Chaos with the workout endeavor. I've really enjoyed the whole process of figuring out what he needs, what workouts he's willing to learn to do, what he wants out of it, what he thinks is "lame", etc. I'm looking forward to spotting for him today and maybe lifting a little myself. But I'm not so much looking forward to disassembling that sucker for the drive back to TN at the end of the summer!! Oh - and have you noted that this monster is in my LIVING ROOM?? You know I love my son when I let that happen, even if it is just for a couple of months. I think it's going to live in the garage at his dad's but I don't have to worry about that part of things. On the plus side, weights are quieter overall than drum sets. See - I am such a glass-half-full kinda mom!

And since no post would be complete without the gratuitious cute dog picture, I'll leave you with this cute shot of Wasabi peering into my room through the "wall" made out of bookshelves:

Peace.

*PS - How awesome is this?? I don't think Chaos would read it (even with the high Z factor) but if he met a girl who was carrying this around in her backpack? Yeah - I think I'd be saying hello to my future daughter-in-law at that point. Maybe I should get a copy to throw in his Rehearsal Dinner Box?

A Week Of Transformation

2009-05-22T10:25:00.004-04:00

My sister (who was born on my grandmother's birthday and is currently pregnant with my second nephew!) turned 39 on Friday, May 15th. A lot has happened since my (one and only) sister's birthday: I've transitioned out of grief, marked the healthy loss of 19 pounds, been zapped by the lightning strike of finding my next, right career, joined a women's running group that benefits local trails and a village in Tanzania, put one writing project to its final rest, and launched a brand new writing project into the stratosphere. In the midst of all of that I have celebrated my daughter - the Ninja Princessa's 14th birthday, celebrated my mother's birthday, and had numerous, numerous validations that I'm on the right path for my life.

The grief has (obviously) been a long time in passing and I am not pretending like there are not going to be after pangs. However, I've been working persistently and kindly through it and feel confident about leaning forward once again. Though processing grief is not the ONLY thing I've been doing lo, these many months of not blogging. For all of 2009 (thus far), I have been doing things like training for my triathlon, staying connected with my kiddos both near and far, focusing on nutrition (and becoming a vegetarian - eeek!), writing in lots of other venues, and discerning what my next steps are going to be. All that slow, steady plodding came together in a conflagration of energy, resources, and forward progress last week. It all clicked. I am miles into my next ventures and my spirit is joyful again.

I feel myself impatient to get to my projects this morning - which is very different from not blogging because I am worried I'll just dump stress, anger, frustration, and ick onto the page. I will say before I dash off to my studio that I met Meinrad Craighead last night at the premiere of the documentary about her. It was a phenomenal, affirming and challenging experience. My fiber art and my prayer life will never be the same again. She is an artist who has been exploring and expressing the Divine Feminine for half a century. She was a cloistered Benedictine nun for 14 years and even 30 years after leaving the abbey, lives a contemplative, solitary life. She is fearless and gritty - many of her images disturbing, entrancingly dark, and rending. She is also peaceful and present and genuinely humble. She offers you the feral wisdom of her connection to the Great Mother - in a way that gives you an access of your very own. In closing the presentation Meinrad told a story of the Pueblo people. (Sidenote - she lives in Albuquerque, NM and to travel to NC for this was a BIG deal for her.) She told the story of the Salt Mother - who nourished and protected her people (maybe with the Corn Father??) As peoples are wont to do with their dieties, the Salt Mother's children began to fall away from her, forgetting to honor her, turning away from her. As a result, She fell away from them and turned away too. And the people sickened and no longer thrived as a people. The people realized their error and began pleading, asking the Salt Mother what they had to do to return to her. She told them to start every morning by placing a small amount of salt in their mouths, taking it in to honor her and to align themselves with her restorative, healing, preservative power. She told them to absorb some of her very godstuff intentionally, each and every day in order to live as they should - in harmony and peace with the Mother. Meinrad ... I want to say charged, instructed, or commanded us to do the same - but she used no coercive or authoritative language. She merely offered the story with such powerfully resonant invitation that it strikes me as beyond foolish not to accept. Accepting, however, was not without its internal backtalk. My new nutrition plan is very, very low salt as it's all fruits and vegetables (mostly raw) and almost no processed food. My first thought was "Salt? On purpose?! I can't do that!" I shushed the sass in my head by reminding myself I do make small exceptions for training food (e.g. Gu on long runs and electrolyte replacement drinks). I decided to make another "exception" and incorporate the Salt Mother into my daily, intentional living practice.

One final Meinrad note. I was standing in the group surrounding Meinrad as the evening was winding to a close. (The friend I went with wanted a chance to speak with her as they've known each other in the past.) We were in a cluster and the woman in front of me was telling Meinrad how much she needed Meinrad's example and inspiration. The woman said several somethings about how she wanted to be as brave and courageous as Meinrad in her own artwork. Meinrad tried to deflect some of this saying she'd only done what she was called to, she affirmed the fearful artist's own ability to do the same, and finally when the woman wasn't hearing her, Meinrad said forcefully, "No. It is for you. Take this! I give you permission to [and here she bared her teeth and growled] be FIERCE in your pursuit. Go." Her energy and her growl encompassed us all. She took the woman's hands in hers and while pulling them together, pushed her gently away. Then Meinrad looked directly at me. It's possible she swept the whole circle with that gaze but I wouldn't know because I was RINGING with the force of those words and her attention. Words said to another, but meant for me too, all the same. She and the Divine Mother gave me permission - a directive - to be FIERCE in my pursuit. Fierce has always meant scary to me - but fear can't get a hold of this inside me. It's too big, too right, too deep for fear. Meinrad Craighead's example gives me an incredible reassurance that my fierceness in this world will be entirely reflective of my own, personal and unique connection with godstuff. I am so grateful to have had the chance to meet Wisdom in this way.

And now, my studio beckons! Peace.

Someday I'll Blog Again

2009-02-24T11:41:00.003-05:00

Someday when I can write past the grief, I will return to actual blogging. You know - blogging like I used to where I rambled on and on about what my wacky kids were doing, what antics the dogs have been up to, and what I think about the world, art, and random shit? But until then it looks like my filler mechanism is stuck on slapping up images that amuse me. And not so surprisingly the following pictures crack me the hell up.

Things That Make A Parent Go "Hmmm?"

2009-02-12T09:10:00.004-05:00

This morning I noticed that our 13-year old Ninja Princessa's facebook relationship status was updated. She went from being "single" to "married". Intriguing, no? We didn't even get to trot out the Rehearsal Dinner Box! She is so grounded.

I asked Bug what was on his "to do" list today and he said, "I have to remember to sell my camel and buy a lizard." Alright then. Makes my day look downright boring.

I did find out that both the camel and lizard are virtual. Still waiting to hear back about the 13 year old's husband. Peace.

**Edited to add - the virtual husband turned out to be a girl. She and the Ninja Princessa are friends who are on opposite "teams" at school and thus feel like star-crossed lovers (of the platonic variety?). Romi (short for "Romeo" AKA the Princessa) posted a comment after her "married" status went back to single. She said something along the lines of "Oh well. That didn't work. We decided that was enough for bi relationships for now." Hmmm. Not sure what to make of that. They're still fine friends - so I'm assuming that the cross team part was fine but the lifetime commitment was not? And - on a totally different but tangential topic? She and I had a great talk about Planned Parenthood - at her instigation. One of the things she said in that conversation was - "Not for any religious reason, but just for me - I'm planning to wait until I'm married to have sex." It's probably not universal - but the teenage girls I know are waaaay more comfortable with, informed about, and more willing to follow their own path in terms of sex/romantic customs than my friends and I were. I'm all for fewer hang-ups.**

They're Everywhere

2009-01-28T14:26:00.003-05:00

Unky Dunky sent me the following news clip with the question, "Do we know if Chaos has been in Texas recently?"

Bwah ha ha ha ha! That would so very much crack me up if I saw that traffic sign. I think it would be the high point of Chaos' life thus far, were he to see a sign like that while driving down the road. I still loathe Texas, but this report made me loathe it just a teeny bit less. Peace.

From One Holiday To The Next

2008-12-05T11:29:00.004-05:00

We had a fantastic and busy Thanksgiving. A little drama going into the weekend (broken doggie, broken car that can't get from TN to NC) but much fun was had when we finally got everyone in one place. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the holiday:

The ten of us in the "immediate" family.

The extended family of choice.

And then just the kids. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of kids like ours? They wiggle and squirm, look in random directions, crack a joke or turn to laugh at the one who did, and some of them make jazz hands (cute of the 4 year old) or text (not so cute of the 16 year old!) That's the Ninja Princessa there on the left, then Chaos (texting), Bug (eyes open in a picture which is a MIRACLE), then another almost-son Justin, with Mayhem in the hat, Havoc in the button down, and finally C is for Coffee & Salsa Man's two kiddos in front. I miss them all so much! (Well - except for Bug who's in the other room and the Princessa who is a half a mile away at school. Them I can squeeze any time I need to.)

The big December news is that Bet and I have signed up for a half ironman triathlon. We plan to swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, and then run 13.1 miles - all in less than 9 hours. Not until November - but I'm still freaking out about it a bit. Excited. Nervous. Excited.

Peace to everyone!

Frankendoggie

2008-11-24T09:43:00.003-05:00

Our fluffy dog tried to run face first through a floor to ceiling window. Our windows are apparently original to our house - built in 1955 - which means he did not charge into safety glass. Poor, sliced up puppy! He has stitches on his face and both paws. He has to put up with being a conehead for a few weeks but eventually he'll be just fine. He'll even have a cool Harry Potter scar to show off to all his dog buddies.

In Which Translation Occurs (Sort Of)

2008-11-19T10:18:00.003-05:00

Lilymania needs an update. Bad. I thought I'd go out and find a cool new template to celebrate three years here in the blogosphere. (Three years!) Of course I managed to find the perfect template - on a technical blogging page that's all in SPANISH. (I have always wanted to learn Spanish, but so far all I've managed to get is a little Russian, some French, and a smattering of Italian and Latin. The last two help a teeny bit with the Spanish but not nearly enough to translate a page about widgets and templates!) Then I noticed a handy dandy translator button off in the margin. (You see where this is going, right?) Who is in charge of this stuff?!! Here is a sample of what I got:

I think ofreceros free, as always, several designs of pagination so that you prune to unload them and to install them without problems… You have a little patience.
One forgot to me. . . You can see a sample working in the main page of my blog, right under the entrances or posts, you puncture Here.

Errr, yeah. That was helpful. (Not.) I particularly like the pruning to unload and the instruction to "puncture here". You have a little patience indeed! Well, I'm out of patience, friends. For the nonce, Lilymania remains the same. Oh - and Bet and I are off to Philly tomorrow to see Madonna in concert. Chances are I won't be blogging until we get back. (Shall I say "so much for NaBlo" once more? :P ) Peace.

In Which I Fail But Refuse To Worry Much

2008-11-17T20:41:00.002-05:00

Ok - NaBlo is a flat out bust for me. I don't think I've hit the every other day mark, much less the every day mark. Bug turned 18 - EIGHTEEN - on Friday. Saturday I spent quilting - having borrowed a machine from a friend. Saturday night Ninja Princessa and I went to see High School Musical 3. Sunday I embellished a quilt journal page while I watched football. It was a FABULOUS day in football land. Yay for my Titans! Undefeated! Bet's Dolphins won; our Colts won and even though the Redskins lost to the Cowboys last night - I'm still coasting on some serious pigskin induced happiness. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow (of the birthday party and quilting - not so much of the football.) :D Peace.

You Know Your Daughter Loves You When...

2008-11-14T07:33:00.002-05:00

The other night the Ninja Princessa had a dream that I died. Sure, some smarty pants psychologist could make a case for the Princessa working out her anger at her evil step-mother by killing her off in a dream but I choose to see it as proof positive that I am well and truly loved. I offer my evidence thusly:

Point 1 - Apparently my funeral was a huge success. Fabulous people (including none other than Lorelai and Rory Gilmore) came to say how sorry they were and to offer the Princessa their deepest sympathies. (Now you may not be the Gilmore Girls fanatic that we are so you may not realize what a testament that is to my beloved state - but take my word for it. When the hippest, most articulate and beautiful mother-daughter duo attends your funeral, it's a good sign.)

Point 2 - After my funeral, our whole family moved into the house of my dreams (the Twykham House in Stars Hollow) and the Princessa was sad that I was, you know, dead and couldn't enjoy it so she had my grave moved to the back yard. Yep - they took my dead, mouldering self with them!!

Point 3 - (And this is the kicker.) Not long after the move, I rose from the grave and shuffled back into their lives - ZOMBIFIED!! Me. A zombie! How utterly cool is that?! (You do have to get past the relentless, brain eating, putridness of the zombie archetype and move on to the "wow, my children think about zombies more than they think about anything else in the whole wide world" aspect to see this as a sign of love and devotion, but I am there.) Remembered, resurrected (reanimated, whatever) - I am SO loved. The undead step-mom. There is no higher pinnacle of my children's esteem to which I aspire. Just saying.

Frustrations In Fabric

2008-11-13T10:08:00.007-05:00

I took my pile o'charm squares (that I showed a couple of posts ago) and sorted the browns and neutrals into a "coffee and cream" theme. What else would you do for a friend you call C is for Coffee? But it was too blah. I needed something to pop it out. Something I had a lot of. (Turns out that not as many people participated in the brown and neutral months of the swap. Without another color C is for Coffee's lap quilt wasn't going to cover her lap!) I thought about what our coffee dates are about - how we celebrate our families and life triumphs together, how we dream, how we chase the blues away by being friends and talking. As I was thinking my hands were sorting out the aqua and blue squares. Hmmm. Ok. That looks kind of cool! Then I started making nine patches. I love nine patches the way I love log cabin squares and flying geese. They are the epitome of the traditional quilt look in my mind, but you can do so many interesting things with them.

Here is a fantastic quilt blog I found where I got the idea for what to do with my nine patches (i.e. how to slice them and reassemble them). She does a MUCH better job of the step by step documentation. I got so excited about cutting my squares up that I forgot to take pictures.
<---Here is the layout I used. It's sort of random but it's also symmetrical. So far so good! (Well except that several of the charm squares I most wanted to use were 5 3/4 " instead of 6". A couple were bizarrely cut on the bias instead of square on the weave. I guess whoever was cutting lined her ruler up with the print and not the actual fabric? That is the problem with a charm square swap. Not everyone is on the same page. One of the ancient ladies in my guild swap cut all of her charm squares with scissors and templates. Forty squares every month. It probably took her the whole month to do it! She doesn't trust rotary cutters. We all have our own quirks, don't we. I try to be compassionate about it. Those squares I wanted to use so badly? I think I'll make a coaster out of one of them to give with the quilt.)
This is what the top looks like all assembled and hanging on my makeshift (<---ha ha ha - the first time I typed that I left out the 'f'!) design wall. (Please ignore the half built glass wall - it's a work in progress too.) I bought a very soft (plush even) backing fabric (totally forgetting that it wouldn't be quite so snuggly when it was quilted - er, still working on that.) I got the whole thing layered and sandwiched. (<-- Which I do with a Dritz basting gun because safety pins are too laborious to put in and obnoxious to take out in the middle of machine quilting; I gouge myself when I try to use straight pins the way Ruth McDowell does; and hand basting is NEVER going to make sense to me.)

I made a few muslin squares to work out my coffee mugs and cup designs on. I limbered up my fingers on those and threw in some bonus practice stippling. I laid out my pictures, made my chalk marks. Perfect. Everything was set. I was ready to machine quilt! I love machine quilting. Rather, I did. This morning it has been a mess of broken threads, tangled bobbin stitches, and deformed shapes that don't even qualify for my beloved "folk art" label. I am so frustrated I want to scream. It is probably something to do with my bobbin tension, but I'm sick of trying to figure it out and too scared to muck about with it too much for fear of ruining all the adjustments. I am out of patience for the ratio of three minutes of stitching to 8 minutes of detangling and rethreading. I'm tired of switching thread colors based on which one works best in the machine instead of which one works best with the design. Grrrrr. I'm taking a coffee break to try to get in better space. Do you think they make a "Zen Patience" flavor creamer?

Thank You Veterans!

2008-11-11T20:29:00.004-05:00

I am grateful for anyone who has ever served our country. But I'm also whiny because the Princessa and I were counting on our Netflixed disk arriving today - which it did not because there is no mail service. Instead I went fabric shopping. I have five - count them - FIVE quilt projects I'm in the middle of. Er, well to be honest, one is at the middle stage the other four are at the "Oooh this fabric is pretty and fun" stage. One is getting sandwiched and chalked tomorrow. <--That is assuming I can lift my arms tomorrow. Bet, Linus, and I are doing this crazy thing called the 100 Push Ups Challenge and I did 46 of those suckers today. Ouchie kabowchie. However sore, floppy, noodle arms or not - this quilt is the one that has to be completely done, washed, dried, and wrapped up with a pretty bow next week for one of my dearest pals C is for Coffee. Send me some good quilty vibes! Peace.

It Is SUCH A Monday

2008-11-10T08:12:00.003-05:00

I have a whole list of things I must do today - important things - boring things. I don't want to do any of them. I am incredibly hungry. We have plenty of food in the house - boring food. I don't want to eat any of it. What I want is to ignore the world, read my book, and eat sushi for breakfast. Sigh. If anyone needs me I'll be at either the pharmacy, dry cleaner's or the bank. A Monday can only last so long, right?

In Case You Were Wondering

2008-11-09T08:27:00.003-05:00

If you hear someone in Lilyville say something very, very weird, you can almost always blame it on Mr. Izzard. Hence my saying "Cheese blat, cheese blat...LARGE hair net!" to my family recently.

Charming Day

2008-11-07T08:00:00.004-05:00

I have a quilt to make for my dear friend (C is for Coffee) whose birthday is right after Thanksgiving. I've wanted to do one for her for years and this is the year. She and her family are driving 500 miles (and bringing three of our children with her) for the holiday. I want to do something extra special for her. The parameters are that I have two weeks and must not buy any new fabric. Hmmmmm. Here's where the pile o'charm squares comes in!

Also on today's slate - a haircut. First time since June! Exciting stuff. Still, a post's a post, right? Peace.

Daily, Meaning What Exactly?

2008-11-06T07:40:00.004-05:00

Well dang! Totally rocky start. Every day was supposed to be every day? I've double blown it - starting late AND skipping. But it's either go on imperfectly or quit, right? Year Two - and still flawed. Maybe third time's the charm for me and NaBlo. Still, rather than quit, here's some catch up:

Rock the Vote: Election Day was long - about a 22 hour day for me. I worked at the precinct and LOVED every minute of it. We had an unbelievable 73% turnout. (That is roughly twice our usual turnout for a general election.) After our polls closed and we got our precinct reported and squared away, it was off to a returns party. I have said it elsewhere but I'll say a bit of it here. I am energized and hopeful and so grateful for the outcome in my state's and our country's presidential elections. I also completely understand that there are those who feel otherwise. I was a blue girl in a deeply red state for far too long not to empathize with the fearful and disappointed looks on some of the faces around me. I will do what I can (little though that feels like) not to fuel any rancor from partisan divides. I hope that showing this cute picture of the Ninja Princessa and her friend Ki in their Election Night gear will fall on the side of the line that is "tasteful celebrating" not "gloating". (Although since Ki kept referring to her temporary tattoo as a "tramp stamp", I'm not sure the word tasteful applies.)

Remember, remember the fifth of November: Yesterday I spent the day trying to catch up on sleep and household chores. We had a family movie night watching, what else but V for Vendetta.

On the slate for today: I'm still playing catch up! I had meant this post to be quick and do something fun with my profile but five interruptions later I'm thinking my plans were overly ambitious. There's always tomorrow though, eh? Peace.

PS - Hello to my NaBlo friends from last year! Good to be back and can't wait to get a chance to visit everyone!

November First Already?

2008-11-03T15:39:00.004-05:00

I ~~had~~ still have plans - big plans for NaBlo this year - like maybe updating my blog, making new friends, filling in some significant blanks! I know, I know - I'm two days late but I was in Appalachia where there was zero connectivity (or cell phone service or fast food - not that I missed the fast food.) I'm just going to blog for a whole month starting today. I'm not in it for the prizes anyway. But... I'm on my way to help set up our precinct for Election Day and tomorrow I'll be there for 14+ hours. Sigh. Why is NaBloPoMo in November? Oh, wait. It's not. It's all year long now, isn't it. Dang - no excuses. How about this - missed start, a drive by blogging on day two - I'll be a less-than-perfect NaBlo person in all my glory. Peace!

First Day Of School

2008-08-25T09:27:00.002-04:00

I can't wait to post the back to school pics! The kids slipped right back into the routine. They're all going back to the same schools as last year which start at the same time and it was all just...smooth! They were happy/nervous/excited but not high strung. Which is amazing considering that there is so much stress here I think my head might explode. The Princessa has been home for two weeks; the boys only five days. Not much time to readjust simply to being back home* much less to get ready for a new school year. And the trial - the custody trial - is this week. Thursday. Back in Tennessee. I found out three weeks ago the date had been set back in April but no one had remembered to tell me. I found out waaaay too late to protest that it was about the most disruptive week possible. I can't blog any more about that because I will spew and I won't stop for hours. Mr. Tapioca is ludicrous in a tragic, horrifying, stunningly stupid way.

I have just erased three paragraphs sketching out his most recent irrational behavior with a few of his unbelievable hypocrisies thrown in. I told you. Spew happens. Lucky for you, somewhere along the way God invented the delete key!

I've missed blogging here and maybe after Thursday I can be back. You know, on a more or less normal blogging schedule. I am hopeful (see me hoping, hoping, hoping!!!) it will be safe to write without being swamped by Tapioca nastiness every time I open my computer. Thursday. Please think of us and send good mojo out into the world for my sweet (and somewhat wacky) family to stay together. Until then I'll leave you with a classic overheard conversation (shouted back and forth from the kitchen and upstairs) between Chaos (now 16) and Mayhem (now 14):
C: Hey, is the oven on for a reason?
M: No!
M: I mean, yes! Yes it is!
C: (after a long pause in which Chaos waited for details which were not forthcoming, Chaos shouted back - somewhat frustrated) Who's cooking what? Why's it's on?
M: I don't know!
At that point, we (in the library) were laughing too hard to understand Chaos' muttered comments about Mayhem (which is probably a good thing.)
Peace.

*After being gone for nine weeks, they weren't back home for a half an hour before I heard their cheerful voices arguing about exploding intestines and disintegrating spleens. Oh how I missed them!!!

Where Do I Go Now

2008-07-09T09:42:00.007-04:00

Hmmmm, May 27th to July 9th is a long time. A lot has happened. Here's some of it:

We enjoyed hanging out all together while we could as school wound down.

The Ninja Princessa turned 13 and started taking martial arts again. (Tae Kwon Do this time, not karate but I'm not changing her name because it just wouldn't have the same ring. )

She got a silver bracelet from her brothers that says, "A sister is a forever friend." (They picked it out!) She almost cried which made them go all boy and start hitting each other to relieve the tension. (They did not put up with hugs.)

I got a hair cut. Woo hoo!

Chaos turned 16 and had a Cthulu tentacle "cake" only someone stole one of the tentacles before I could even take a picture. Boys! I'm sure I should have posted about this earlier too because I won't do it justice here, but Chaos has this new routine that he does about being oppressed because he's a "Ginger". It's a hilarious play on a combination of the red-headed step child being left out and Black Power rhetoric. (NOT to make light of real civil rights struggles. He more or less walks that line carefully.) I'll ask him to take out the trash and he starts in on how it's always the Ginger has to do the unwanted tasks (even though the chores rotate by week and it's his week on the schedule). He's got a couple of red-headed friends at school too that he calls his Brothers In Red. We've made jokes about him being the Ginga Ninja etc, etc. At one of our hilarity infused family dinners, Chaos interrupted a story the Princessa was telling and she interrupted right back saying something like, "Can it Ginger Snap!" We lost it. Hence the "Ginger Snap" on the cake.

Chaos tried to steal my Israeli Paratrooper canvas satchel so I got him one of his own with a skull on it.

Bet went to an oceanography institute for a week and built an underwater ROV (which I will have to get pictures of because it is very cool. She's going to do some great things with her students involving the topics she studied. She's trying to write a grant to get some sextants for her classroom. How cool is that?

We took pictures of the dogs' noses:
Tallulah -

Wasabi -

And Linus had a birthday. Bet and I decided to make it a "theme" birthday. We woke him up with the Secret Agent Man theme song and sent him on "missions" all day long (mostly to get his own birthday presents and to eat). He got clues and maps and had special agent assisting him.

Bet and I were Agent Smith and Agent Smith. We were bad ass. And we got to boss Linus around. It was all kinds of fun. Everyone had to wear X4/GM12 Eco-transponders (i.e. nametages). Agent-In-Training "The Bug" had a cool beetle on his and Agent "Slim Dunk" had a crazy cartoon WWF Wrestler. The evening ended with a party of 12 Special Agents converging on a little Indian restaurant around the corner for dinner. Good times!

There has also been some complete crappiness - mostly involving Mr. Tapioca. The court stuff is ridiculous and the tactics his red neck lawyer employs are stupid. (I hope Mr. Tapioca isn't paying that guy very much. I have yet to receive a document from him that has fewer than five spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes. Seriously, the last thing I got was a list of questions that weren't even numbered correctly! That doesn't even go into the insanity of the content. I have had such a hard time resisting the urge to post that document here!!!) I think one of the reasons I haven't blogged is because I haven't wanted to spew about it all.

Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc are all with him for the summer. I get to go visit and have the boys every other weekend. The Princessa is gone for 6 weeks (which used to seem long but is 3 full weeks less than the boys are gone!) Bug is an only child with us for the first time ever. It's a very different dynamic. Bug is still in school - and kicking ass. He's gotten nothing but A's so far! (Chaos finished his semester with straight A's too! The Princessa and Mayhem? Lucky to simply finish the year - especially Mayhem whose attention span was strained to the breaking point with weeks left to tough out! Havoc breezed through but doesn't get letter grades the way the middle and high schoolers do.) Bet is home for the summer and Linus is working from home. It is a summer completely different from any other.

The good news is the triathlon training is going well. We're on track for the San Francisco half marathon in a few weeks. (Our long run this weekend is an 8 miler!) We've already done a "mock tri" the same distance as the olympic distance we're signed up for in September (swim a mile, bike 26 miles, run a 10K) and we did it in less than the cut off time for the course. Since our main goal is to finish, it was a huge confidence booster!

I'm not sure what direction Lilymania is headed. There are some challenges to mommy blogging. It's hard to find the time to blog in the moment when we are in the midst of family activities and it's even harder to blog about my kids when they are all gone for the summer. I've found on my few attempts this summer that those posts come out pretty whiny! And there are only so many cute dog posts I can write. I don't plan on abandoning ship but I'm relatively content to drift aimlessly for a while. Maybe I'll play around with the format and layout and that will spark something - but until then... PEACE!

Weird News Day

2008-05-27T09:20:00.002-04:00

You know - there is just some weird shit in the news:
- I do not know (nor do I wish to know!!) how one goes about having sex with a car - or a helicopter for that matter. It also occurs to me to wonder how one would break up with a car. Walk away? Sell it to someone? (Eeeewwwww - can you imagine how gross it would be to realize you'd bought a car from that guy?!!!!!!!!!!)

- Not being a hockey fan, I had never heard of octopi tossing until last week. Although my good buddy Unky Dunky (who is a Predators fan and loathes Detroit) says that in Nashville, sometimes Preds fans respond by tossing catfish on the ice to counteract the Red Wing octopus mojo. Hel-lo! Throwing fishy creatures at each other is bizarre fan behavior. (And the guy in the article, trying to be delicate in talking about the goo on the ice? Cracks me up. 'Cause hockey fans are known for their tender sensibilities and can't handle a full on explanation of why exactly their cephalopod twirling must stop?)

Crazy crap aside - I keep reading the news because sometimes I come across stuff like this that makes my day:
Team Hoyt is incredible. Inclusion is almost as big a deal to me as peace. I should probably have saved this for Father's Day, but it's too wonderful not to pass on.

Peace.

Love This

2008-05-16T08:35:00.000-04:00

This was on the car in front of me the other day:

Sportsmanship

2008-05-14T14:07:00.001-04:00

If this doesn't make you want to run out and sign your kids up for a team sport, then nothing will. (Grab a hankee before you click!) Peace.

A Whole Bunch Of Chaos

2008-05-12T13:04:00.004-04:00

I have mentioned how challenging it can be to take a "good" picture of my almost 16-year old son, Chaos, right? He thinks it's HILARIOUS to pose normally and then make a face right as the camera snaps. He's talented that boy. So here he is practicing some of his favorite looks.

Here he is going for either Rob Zombie or a serial killer.

He's laughing because he just stuck his face RIGHT into the lens and said, "Fisheye!"

Then he got mad because I erased a picture. I said, "Your mouth was open and your eyes were almost closed. That one was terrible!" He said, "That was my stoner look. I thought it was funny. You should have kept it." I said, "Your stoner look?! I don't want you to have a stoner look! Ever! How do you know what stoners look like anyway?" He rolled his eyes at me and said, "I go to high school, mom. Sheesh." Then he said I could take one more picture and he would be good. The one below is what he considers good.

I finally caught him in the middle of an important PS3 mission where he was too busy to pull a Calvin on me. I love these two pictures, because this is what he really looks like (even if he'd rather you thought he looked scary like the first picture.)

Peace.

Photo Mania

2008-05-11T21:07:00.004-04:00

Mayhem - did I tell you he's back on restriction? Yeah, FOUR D's on a progress report will do that to you. Good thing he's cute, eh?

Bug wanted to dye his hair black. It's a little blue and kind of elfin, but I think those are pluses in his book. He got A+'s in both of his classes! Yay! We like adult high school!

Wasabi says, "Where are mah eyes?"

Tallulah says, "Treats please!"

Kira says, "But I'm not even yours!"

The Ninja Princessa says, "Yay! I'm off restriction! I can play video games for the first time since February!"

Action shot of Havoc. And a close up of the dimple.

Linus on the porch with a look of "Quoi?"

Bet from faaaaaar away. Obviously I hadn't figured out the zoom yet.

Chaos being Calvin (will post more in this series tomorrow because they are pretty funny) and also him snuggling with Tallulah on my bed.

The kids brought me tortellini in bed (b/c I don't like breakfast foods). They were cute and silly and I love them to bits!!

Guess what I got for Mother's Day?? (And if you didn't guess cute pink camera then dude, what's wrong with you?) Peace.

One Grateful Mom

2008-05-09T13:19:00.002-04:00

It is hard for me to come up with words intense enough to express my gratitude for my family. I treasure my own mother and I adore my five children. Even on the toughest days, I don't lose sight of how blessed I am to have them all. (If I ever do sound like I've forgotten to count my blessings - feel free to kick me in the shins. Hard.)

This week I have inadvertently stumbled upon the blogs of two separate families whose stories, while wrenching and tragic, are being told with honesty and grace. I cannot imagine the trust it takes in the world to open yourself so wide in grief. I am humbled by their willingness to stay connected. This weekend (and pretty much from now on) my heartfelt prayers will go out to the families of Susan and Liz. Peace.

I've Never Been Called For Jury Duty But...

2008-05-08T08:37:00.003-04:00

Guess who spent 15 hours in a room without windows telling people where to put their ballots on Tuesday? Honestly, it was a fantastic experience. I was totally jazzed about being part of the voting process. (I single handedly saved at least one ballot from total obscurity. "Ma'am that's a trash can. If you want your vote counted you have to feed your ballot into that machine right over there. Yes. That one with the big sign. See the arrows? Yes. That one.") It was exciting to see folks I knew. More than a dozen people waved and called me by name as they came through. I could feel my tendrils unfurling as I let myself take root in this community. My fellow poll workers were an interesting mix: a rabbi, a blue-collar lesbian, a retired Coca-Cola Co. executive*, a 20 year-old college student studying to be an elementary school teacher, and a well-dressed woman in her fifties who seemed uptight at first but who turned out to be witty, organized, and quite kind. (Her two kids brought her coffee mid-morning. The two of them were tattooed, pierced, skinny in an 80's hair band kind of way, and when they walked in, she LIT UP. They gave her a big hug and she beamed for about 10 minutes after they left. It was pretty remarkable to see a complete stranger morph like that. I don't know if it was the coffee or the thoughtfulness of her kids (or the combo) but she was much more easy-going for the rest of the day.)

It was a long day. We were required to be there from the set up through the official poll closing/clean up procedures. We all brought our lunches and snacks and only left the room to go to the restroom. It was a busy day, as you'd expect given the democratic primary race thus far. I had expected clumps of voters, long lines at times and dull moments at others, but we were steady all day. The veteran poll workers assured me that we had an unusually high turnout, especially for a primary, and also that we'd worked out a good system to get folks through the process without big lines. Our precinct was very well run. I think the only people who had to wait at all were the 17 1/2 year olds (because we ran out of ballots for them!) or the few who had issues with their registration. The hundreds of others fairly sailed through. One woman even seemed miffed that she wouldn't have a chance to read her book while waiting! All in all, it was an incredible experience for me. And? I didn't know it when I signed up, but they pay you for it! I have no idea how much - probably not a lot - but maybe enough to take myself out to eat to make up for the lunch and dinner I missed. Peace.

*There's more! You find out all kinds of things about people when you sit and talk to them for 15 hours. This guy turns out to have played in the NFL!!! He played for the Chicago Bears in the early 60's. I was babbling excitedly to Linus about how this guy had played at Lambeau Field. Lambeau! I heard about the icy January game, the field like concrete, and how by the fourth quarter, everyone's pads were frozen solid. This guy described having to get in the showers fully dressed in order to thaw the gear enough to get it off. I recounted it all to Linus who smiled and nodded. Uh-huh. "Do you even know where Lambeau Field is?" I asked. "Texas?" he guessed. "TEXAS?!!!" Linus hugged me and said,"Maybe you should call your surrogate sports husband Duncan for this one, love." So I did. Duncan, at least, was properly impressed.

This same guy also mentioned (when I pulled out my Vanderbilt sweatshirt) that he was going to a family reunion in the Nashville area this summer. He said his nephew had 400 acres. "A farm?" I asked. "Well, kind of. It's over there...not in Brentwood. What's the area close by?" "Franklin?" I suggested dubiously. "Yes! Franklin." "Wow. Four hundred acres in Franklin? What is he, a country music star?" I joked. "Actually, yes," was the reply. "Anyone I've heard of?" "Maybe. You heard of Brad Paisley?" "Er, yeah. I have." But of course Linus hasn't. So I called Duncan again. There you have it - my very Amurican day, chock full of voting, football, and country music stars!

Shunnnn The Non Believer

2008-05-03T21:35:00.007-04:00

The phrase "It's a magical liopleurodon" cracks me up every, single, freaking time. Other things guaranteed to make me laugh without fail: MC Hammer's pants and Basil, Neville, and Yorick. I can hear the kids laughing in the other room as they watch This Is Spinal Tap (for the second time today.) We have been laughing together a lot recently - mashing together our own running gags from the comedy we've seen as a family. No doubt we are incomprehensible to outsiders but man, I love hanging out with our crew. Hope everyone's having a good weekend. Peace.

Did I Mention She Was Snoring Too?

2008-04-29T13:00:00.004-04:00

Tallulah Rockstar fell asleep with her beloved tennis ball IN HER MOUTH!

I had time to walk into the room, see her on the bed, get my camera out of the bag and take a few pictures before she woke up.

When she woke up, she gave me the evil eye.

Then she spit out the tennis ball and went back to sleep! Weird dog! (But note, she is still snuggling with her tennis ball!)

P.O.'D

2008-04-28T18:53:00.005-04:00

toothpastefordinner.com

I see this cartoonist has visited my post office! Peace y'all.

When Last We Blogged...

2008-04-23T09:13:00.003-04:00

I was having a hard time keeping up my end of the posting regularly idea and it seems like not much has changed on that front! So sorry. Yet life here has been great even if I haven't been blogging about it! First - gratuitous cute dog pictures:

Tallulah is a social sleeper. She is happiest if she can find a person or two over which to drape herself. She's given up sleeping on Wasabi. He won't put up with it. She tries to skooch up to him but he scoots away.
Snuggling with her tennis ball as a last resort.

This is as close as he'll usually let her get. Although immediately after this picture Wasabi sat on Tallulah (who was still sleepy). He was looking at us taking his picture and I think he thought he was going to get a treat and assumed the "Good Dog Sit" position. (To make it clear, we are not in the habit of rewarding him for perching on his sister!) I wish we'd been able to get it on film, though. It was funny.
"Wait, take that one again. I blinked."

I would post some pictures of the kids but they won't hold still. Chaos is busy with his Warhammer 40K armies, Bug is kicking butt at school and leading some Tribal Wars, Mayhem has a new girlfriend (this one is also smart and cute - the boy has GOOD taste!), the Princessa is planning her 13th birthday, and Havoc has been busy playing the lead in his class play (Aladdin), baking, and talking people into playing Alhambra dice with him.

Linus and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday! We met at our friend Mat-a-tat's birthday party (which is fun because Mat met his now-wife at that very same party). We needed to go back up to IKEA to get more shelves for the boyos - so Linus and I made a little getaway of it and stayed the night in Virginia. It's been a pretty long time since he and I have had time just the two of us. It was great - although I talked his ear off about training. We laughed and caught up with each other, being silly and not on a time schedule. It was such a relaxing time! We did see a sign along the way that I wish I'd been able to take a picture of. It said (in large blue letters) GREEK HOUSE FAMILY ITALIAN RESTAURANT. (Maybe there's a whole trend of Greek Italian restaurants because Bet and I ate Tiramisu for dessert at the Casa Grecque outside of Montreal for my birthday a couple of years ago.) Anyway, that was one of the things besides the sheer pleasure of hanging out together that made us laugh.

Bet and I have been training. We have a mini-triathlon this weekend and we've added a half-marathon to our schedule for August in preparation for the oly tri in September. I'm pretty on fire about being athletic. I've met some really kind and encouraging triathletes. I'm also still writing - every day in fact - but there never seems to be enough time to get all the way into it. Strangely for a "stay home" mom - I'm out and about A LOT.

That's the fly by. Peace!

Stragglers

2008-04-12T14:14:00.006-04:00

Thank you for the comments, emails. I haven't decided quite what I'll do but for now I think I'll keep posting more or less the way I have been. (Let's hope for the more because I've gotten pretty good at the less and it's not as much fun, now is it?)

I realized I was behind on promised pictures! As usual they are clickable if you want to see them larger. Here is Tallulah Rockstar - the crazy conehead - giving me a mournful look. (I particularly like the "You are my sunshine" pillow next to her that I didn't notice when i was taking the picture.) When Wasabi had to wear a cone it paralyzed him. If the edge of the cone touched anything - he FROZE. I would find him standing stock still and have to coax him to move again. Tallulah? The vet told us to try to keep her quiet for the first few days. I raised my eyebrow at him, we both looked at her, and he said, "Good luck with that." She proceeded to smash, crash, and bash her way through the next two weeks. The cone was in sorry, sorry shape by the time she FINALLY got to take it off.
In case you think that Chaos, being nearly 16, might have grown out of his Calvin phase...think again. Here is a picture of Chaos, Mayhem, Uncle Richard, Linus, Bug, The Ninja Princessa, and Havoc. We miss you Uncle Richard!!!

I guess the Calvin look is better than the I'm-practicing-for-my-mug-shot look:
The one where Chaos is sort of smiling? Mayhem is being silly (and Tallulah has snuck into the photo.) This is why God invented Photoshop I suppose.
And finally we come to fun and games with sharp objects. Linus would like you to think he was grievously wounded while defending my honor. In truth, he lost a fight with a box cutter while doing something involving servers at work. He managed to miss all tendons and major blood vessels - thankfully. I should have taken some pictures when it had all those blue stitches in it.
Then I could have framed it next to this picture and had a matched set. Bet sliced her leg open in two places while building our glass block wall this morning. Warning: do not step over razor sharp spikes of metal embedded in a half built wall.
I've told them both that in this circumstance three is not a charm. No stitches for Lilymane. No. No. No. So, how's your weekend going?

Inhibited

2008-04-11T09:38:00.003-04:00

I'm having a hard time deciding what to do about my blog. I love Lilymania. It has been such a great thing for me - an outlet, a connection, a quiet space, a catalyst for other writing, a conversation, a repository for motherhood moments, etc. The problem is that soon - and by soon I mean next year (bleck) - I'm going to be on trial. I feel like I already am on trial. The custody battle is simultaneously too immediate and excruciatingly slow. I love that my blog is "public" even though it is anonymous. I have met wonderful people I could never have hoped to meet if I'd kept my blog limited to readers I already knew! I have enjoyed the safety and authenticity that blogging in the open under a fun name affords me. I think, however, that both safety and anonymity will fly out the window as the legal crap accumulates. Maybe not - but the possibility is truthfully more likely a probability. It's like discovering that your creepy ex has the power to go back in time to eavesdrop on the frank conversation you had with some friends on a terrace at your favorite restaurant. Yes, you knew at the time that you were in "public" but you also were reasonably sure he wasn't anywhere around and you weren't pitching your voice to carry. NOT that I have anything to "hide" but the idea of him and his ridiculous lawyer crawling through my daily joys and worries with the express purpose of finding something to use against me to take my children away is disturbing. I have done nothing illegal or wrong or harmful to my children ever. I'm not a perfect person (by ANY stretch) but I am a damn good mom. I know I am. But it's like shaking when a cop is following you closely when you know you weren't speeding, your registration is up to date, and all your tail lights work. You just want the fucker to go away and bother someone else. The whole time you're thinking "What have I done? Why is he following me?! Back off pig." And every story of innocent people caught up in bullshit situations cascades into your brain.

It makes me rage - at him (for being such an invasive jerk) and at myself (for doubting myself). It makes it much harder to write anything, much less to write something meaningful. I'm trying to get past it. I think I want to write anyway. It is who I am. Writing is how I process and stay connected to people and information. I just want him out of my process! That's why we got divorced! In real life, if I knew he was lurking around, I'd tell him to buzz off (and if he wouldn't stop I could probably get some injunction or other to make him). But as far as I can tell there is no Blogland equivalent. Lurking to cause harm and misery is accepted by the courts and encouraged by attorneys. Niiiiice system we've got, eh?

So that's where I am. We'll see where I go. Peace, my friends. ( <--By "friends" I mean everyone on the planet except Mr. Tapioca Head and his attorney Mr. C. Ridiculous Bumpkin. Those two can go soak their heads in toilets as far as I'm concerned.)

Heartless

2008-04-08T11:03:00.002-04:00

Bush and Putin have a heart-to-heart? How? 0+0=0. Just saying.

Listful

2008-04-07T11:00:00.005-04:00

Biked for an hour then ran for 20 minutes yesterday. That's known as a "brick" in triathlon lingo. I think it's called a brick because that's what your legs feel like. Either that or it's short for B-ike, R-un, ICK! Bricks have sucked for me in the past but yesterday's was awesome. I biked on the trainer which is boring but makes the transition to running easier for me. If I've been riding through the world at 12-13 mph and then hop off to run about 5 mph, it's makes me feel even slower than I normally do running (which is saying something!!) Yesterday, my run was strong and fluid. I kicked ass on the finish. No legs of brick for me. So, yay for the first real week of training. Only twenty-three more to go.

I keep trying to tell y'all about mediation but it keeps coming out as unmitigated, toxic spew so we'll see if that post ever gets finished.

This afternoon Chaos starts driver's ed. He's ready for it. I am not. I should be. It's only because of convoluted state laws designed to prevent drop outs that Chaos couldn't start driving this past fall. Ready or not, I signed him up for the very first class I could. Ay yi yi. DRIVING.

Friday was a good day for Mayhem. No more restriction and he has a new girlfriend. (Good thing he got his cell phone back, eh?) Not so for the Ninja Princessa. While she is no longer "The Princess and the D" she is learning that three C's don't cut the mustard either. Poor Princessa. She started off being angry with her teachers for giving her such bad grades, managed to let that slide into being mad at us for enforcing the parameters that have long been set, to finally, finally admitting she was upset with herself. It took her a while to move from a whiny "but I'm trying really, really hard" to a more realistic understanding of how little she has been doing, even though that little bit is more than she was doing at first. If she'd turned in her homework every day, asked questions in class, and not gotten reprimanded for attitude and reading outside books during instruction - I would be ok with C's. But she has - so far - chosen not to do the work it takes and she's learning what happens. No fun all around. Being the bad guy is a drag. Do you know how much it SUCKS to have her still on restriction - especially now that she is all alone in misery? I don't like having to be the "mean" parents! I very much want her to get her act together so we can play a bit before she goes away for the whole summer. For starter's I'm dying to take her to see this movie!!!

I cheered the Lady Vols on to victory last night. What a nail biting finish - winning by one point in literally the last second!! Why, why, why do these things last until almost midnight? It would be much more civilized to play the games earlier in the evening. So I could get some sleep. Because I'm sure the NCAA is itching to switch their schedule around to accommodate my beauty rest needs. Oh well. That's what the Finals are all about, eh?

Sorry for yet another disjointed list-like post but I'm saving my limited ability to write coherent paragraphs for the fiction word count of the day. Love y'all! Mean it! Peace.

Stayin' Alive

2008-04-04T12:23:00.003-04:00

I am alive even though you couldn't tell it from my blog!!
Sorry my friends.
So. I have a post about mediation half way written. I have new furniture to post pictures of (having gotten home from Nashvegas only to turn around the next day and drive to IKEA in VIRGINIA to pick up, drive back, and put together 600 pounds of flat packed shelving.) I have ten pounds less of me than I did six weeks ago. I have bits and pieces of a new manuscript that I'm working on since I am having trouble making headway writing about Marcia. I have two middle schoolers who hope, hope, hope to be off of restriction this afternoon when report cards come out. And? I have a straight A high school student for the first time! Chaos got perfect A's on his report card. (Well A's in his five core classes and high B's in his two electives - PE and Computers.) Woo hoo!! The way we work grades is that we pay $7 an A, they pay us $7 per C, and we call it even with B's. For straight A's (in the five core classes)- they get the $35 plus a $15 bonus but we told them all that we'd double that $50 the first time for each of them. Chaos has come close - oh, so close many times but this is it. He finally got his $100! Bug will likely be the next one to earn his $100. He's got solid A's in his first two classes and only three weeks to go. (Since he takes his classes two at a time every eight weeks - his offer is a bonus when he gets five A's in a row.) That's the round up of what's been going on. (I wanted to blog but I couldn't figure out how to do it without spewing tapioca everywhere. Now that I've got a bit of buffer in terms of time and having the kids back home, I'll try to post about mediation sometime soon.)

I'm sad that my buddies Richard and Aimee had to cancel their plans to come visit us this week. Please send them some good mojo. Baby is fine, but Aimee is in quite a lot of pain and is having trouble with normal activities like walking and riding in cars! Our other Richard (aka Uncle Richard) is here this weekend. I'll have to post a picture of him with the kids. They were jumping like fleas all around him yesterday. Today when I came back from my swim I caught Tallulah curled up on top of him for her nap. I think there are going to be some serious objections to letting him leave the Dwelling crew.

This is the first official week of training. The others were "fixing to get ready to get started" pre-training weeks. This is the real deal. 23 and 1/2 weeks until the race! It helps to have a healthy outlet for crazy excess energy churned up by negative stuff. I can't tell you how much better of a mom, friend, and partner I am than I would otherwise be.

I know this is a pretty disjointed, list-like post but er, some post is better than no post?? Peace!

Driving My Life Away

2008-03-20T22:25:00.003-04:00

Hey, I'll be in the car with Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc all day on Good Friday. It's been a busy week on top of missing part of it due to the stupid migraine. I'm really looking forward to some long, drawn-out time with my guys! When I don't post, you can imagine me ~~torturing my children by making them talk to me~~ being a cool mom listening to their music for hours and hours. I'm not sure if I'll have any kind of connection before Tuesday, but please think of me! Monday morning Mr. Tapioca Head and I are going through (probably pointless yet expensive) court-ordered mediation. Happy Ostara/Easter to all. Peace.

Petraeus - The Non Voter

2008-03-20T07:45:00.004-04:00

I heard General Petraeus say yesterday that he hasn't voted since becoming a senior military official because he thinks at his level, leaders should strive to be apolitical. My response was, "What the FUCK?!" Which is so charming and ladylike. But I don't have elegant words for my dismay. Maybe because he's an old, white guy (i.e. a member of the group that's always had the ability to vote) that he can just walk away from such a basic American right/responsibility? I don't know. I can understand his reasoning about being apolitical to a point. I certainly don't think he should use his active military leadership status and influence as a platform to advance a political or partisan cause, but I think it's insane that this man doesn't vote.

It seems to me that he could exercise his franchise without unduly swaying anyone else. In fact, by publicly NOT voting - he's still swaying folks. He's promoting that same behavior among those wanting to emulate him. Don't you think there's a middle ground between being irresponsibly political in a position of authority and absenting oneself from the entire political process? Couldn't he vote without registering for one party or another? Couldn't he refuse to comment on his choices in the voting booth? Couldn't he cast his vote (and encourage others to cast theirs) while modeling the professional military ethic that no matter whom he votes for, he serves the duly elected authority? Does he not trust the privacy of voting booths? He made an issue of the fact that he hasn't voted since achieving a certain rank (major general? I can't remember) - but it made me wonder why that rank? Why not lower or higher - or hell - why don't we just encourage military folks not to vote at all? SHUDDER.

There is something about him NOT voting - as if he's above it all - above participating in the democracy that he's sworn to serve and protect that makes me feel sick to my stomach. I have to own that it's his choice to participate or not and I acknowledge that he'd likely vote for folks I'd rather not have in office, but still... I am bothered. Are you? Peace.

Understanding Chaos

2008-03-19T06:15:00.002-04:00

Chaos came galumphing into my room making a weird chewing motion with his lips. I asked him what he was doing. He responded by asking me to pluck his eyebrows. (You may have previously noticed a pattern of weirdness in conversations with Chaos. This one is clearly not an exception.) I asked him what that had to do with the er, interesting way he was walking. He explained he was an evil giraffe. Now would I fix his unibrow?

I'm really not sure how to wrap this moment up for storage in the Rehearsal Dinner Box, but I'm going to assume that anyone brave enough to be Chaos' future bride will understand his context. It's the rest of us that need a primer. Peace.

Migraine Hangover

2008-03-18T08:26:00.005-04:00

In the past seven years (since the divorce), I've gotten the migraines down to about two a year. Usually they're pretty explainable if I look at the contributing factors - storm fronts/barometric pressure, hormones, stress, caffeine or other food triggers, etc. Sometimes it takes only two of those factors to connect together just so and boom! January's migraine was pretty much a combination of every single identifiable factor - the perfect storm. Yesterday's migraine? Not one trigger that I know of! Weird, weird, and weird. Sunday night I had some of the symptoms - aura, heightened sense of smell, other vision issues - but no pain. No headache materialized. I'm ok with that! I had some breathing issues too and even some welts like hives. I thought I might be having an allergic reaction - but I hadn't eaten (or bathed with) anything new. Yesterday morning I was better but by last night I was down for the count. No fun! I don't know whether to be worried that my migraines are getting sneakier or relieved that I got this one out of the way BEFORE the proceedings with my ex next week. (<--We have mediation on Monday.) Maybe that's my two for the year? Anyway - sorry not to have more bloggy goodness this morning. Peace.

Breakfast Of Leprechauns

2008-03-17T09:52:00.004-04:00

Weird green things - not just for supper anymore! For fun, this is what we started the kids' day off with. They were a little skeptical, but it was food! Food is good. Chaos wore his kilt to school today. Normally he wears it on Friday's but he made an exception for the holiday of his people. (Most people play up their links to the green isle today, but Chaos, with that ginger hair - gets away with it better than some.) It probably won't surprise you at all to learn that not only does Linus NOT wear green today, but he specifically wears orange. That boy? He likes to stir up conversation (i.e. trouble). Luck o' the Irish to you!

Forget the Cuppa, Make It A Tubba

2008-03-16T20:30:00.009-04:00

Did you know they made caffeinated soap? The website says that the caffeine is absorbed through your skin - giving you that wake up buzz without the coffee breath. Uh yeah - about that...

I wondered before if Starbucks should get into the bath and beauty product business. I was totally joking but maybe I shouldn't have been! Peace.

New Pace

2008-03-14T08:47:00.002-04:00

With almost three weeks of training logged now - I can feel the new pace settling in. I'm more present with the kids in the morning and a little more wiped out with them at the end of the day. After school is still prime. I love being here when they get home. Writing has suffered some and benefitted some. The quilting has pretty much just stopped. I'll have time for quilting next winter - after the race. I feel stronger in body and in spirit - even in the face of the court crapola. (And on an update in that direction - we have mediation scheduled but not the depositions - which is FINE with me but weird! He pushed and pushed and pushed to schedule the depos BEFORE mediation - grrr - but when my attorney sent back a whole list of dates that would work we've gotten no response. Zero. For weeks. I don't get it. And he's still pulling his passive-aggressive stunts like calling the kids every night at five of six when he knows we sit down to supper at six. I've just moved supper time around (again) and tried not to think about him. Training helps.)

The kids have been a bit sick - not flu - but sinusy and queasy - this week. I maybe should have had them tough it out but with all the reports of how horribly sick people have been, I decided I'd rather they get a little behind in school rather than run their immune systems down and open themselves up to the last rounds of flu.

All in all - whether it's due to the pace of training, the downslope of the school year, the change in the light or weather, the diminished stress that comes of dealing with Mr. Tapioca Head less often, or some combination of all of that - we've got an even-keel, sweet rhythm going on here in Lilyville. It's not very exciting to write about, but it's wonderful to sink into and be a part of.
Peace my friends.

Snuggling With A Conehead

2008-03-13T13:06:00.002-04:00

Tallulah is in need of comfort. Her idea of comfort is to wedge herself firmly against me or Wasabi - or preferably both of us at the same time - thereby insuring maximum discomfort for all of us. It is amazing how beat up her plastic cone is already. She has whacked it into doors and beds; she has licked it and chewed on it; she has lodged it in every small space she can find; and she has used the edges of it to scratch her incision.

The instruction sheet says to keep her calm. For seven days. Tallulah. Calm. Uh, right. I asked the vet (who, sidenote, is HILARIOUS - he's the one who stretched out her wrinkly skin the first time we saw him and said, "Damn! You could fit a whole 'nother dog in there!") how on earth I was supposed to keep her from running around like a crazy thing and he said, "Good luck with that." "Drugs, man, give me drugs!" "For her?" he asked. "Yes, of course for her." I said. "Sorry I can't help you there," he said, winking at me. (You would have to see this guy and the faces he makes maybe to think he's as funny as I think he is.) He did actually give us a once a day pain reliever for her - which seems to have zero to no calming effect on her. This is going to be a LONG week.

Mojo For Mutts

2008-03-12T07:19:00.002-04:00

Tallulah Rockstar gets her lady parts surgically altered today so she cannot produce any baby rockstars. She's not allowed to eat this morning and she doesn't understand why. She's hopping around, whining at the door where the kibbles are kept, and throwing her bowl in the path of any creature with hands - all in hopes that someone will for the love of god remember to feed the starving redbone! If they gave out canine oscars for withering away - she'd win. Send her some love, ok? I'm trying not to be nervous for her, but I am.
Peace.

Zombies In Politics

2008-03-11T07:51:00.002-04:00

Chaos wants you to see this. Happy Tuesday all. I'm not up for much more this morning except to brag that I got out of bed with a headache (in the freaking dark - I f-ing HATE day light savings time being this early in the year!) at 5:15 am to go swim this morning. Two and a half weeks of training in the log! Yay!

Havoc's Heroes

2008-03-10T06:13:00.001-04:00

Don't mess with the chef! Spitting in your food is soooo old school. Threaten you with a wicked sharp knife? Pshaw. You give this chef any grief and he will blow you the hell up! I'm not sure Havoc would be in the running for Top Chef: Chicago but I bet he'd be the last cheftestant standing if they did a Top Chef: Extreme Action Edition! What is it about the y-chromosome that makes weapons=instant fun? Havoc likes to cook! He loves to invent and create in the kitchen! And yet - he still yearns to blow shit up with grenades. In the kitchen apparently. I don't think I will ever really understand boys. Even the cute ones, like Havoc.
Peace.

It's Not Easy Being A Bunny

2008-03-09T20:08:00.001-04:00

Worst Quilting Experience EVAH

2008-03-07T10:31:00.007-05:00

I was sure I'd have some quilty goodness to post this morning. Linus and Bet gave me a quilting class as a present MONTHS ago. They wanted to hook me into the quilting community - get my art sparks going and help me meet creative folks. The original class didn't fill up so it was postponed (twice) and finally held yesterday. I was so looking forward to it! Improvisational art quilting. What could be better?

Well, a root canal for starters.

The people who work in the shop are fantastic. The fabrics are lovely. I had every reason to expect a high caliber teacher! I had a reasonable expectation of meeting pleasant, creative, quilt-artists (or at least wannabes!) I got there early. I was directed to a tiny room with about four women in it - boxes, lunch, machines cluttering up the little bit of table space. I was clearly there for the class but no one said anything to me as I walked in. They weren't saying much to each other either. There was no room for me or my purse (which is all I'd brought in until I scoped out the room). I went to the ladies room and came back. I tried to walk around the table and find space. No one moved their stuff or said a word. WEIRD!

I went back to the store front and asked if I was in the right place. The nice sales woman walked me back in to the room, pointed out the back door I could use to bring in my machine and then uncovered room for me at one of the tables. When I got back in the class room she was back out front - sadly. I set up my area in silence. Two other women came in and started setting up. I said hello to them as they came in and I guess that sparked something because the woman who turned out to be the teacher handed around a sheet of labels that had our names written on them. More silence but this time with the teacher schlepping some of her stuff here and there and then a minute or two of her ironing some ratty-looking scraps. Inspiring. (Not.) She eventually noticed that class was supposed to have started ten minutes earlier. She said, "I am _____ but I won't go into a long introduction. Here is some of my work. This framed piece is my most recent - about two years old. Here is my first quilt. I made it after seeing this book." She held up a Quilt National book - the cover of which featured a quilt just like the one she had made. She proceeded to show us five more quilts that looked the same only with uglier colors. She showed us a few small pieces and advised us to frame our work - otherwise people would only be willing to pay $5 or $10 for a pot holder size piece. She had a slow, whining, slightly huffing way of speaking. She sounded bored and ended every phrase in a dribbling off kind of way. She sat down and sewed a few strips of her fabric together - without saying what she was doing or why. She gave us random advice about "ironing" - it doesn't matter which side the seam is pressed to, keep your ironing pad close by, etc. She told us to work in larger pieces, not to worry about bias, or shape, or color other than to start with ten fabrics that "go" together. She told us not to waste our effort on cheapo fabrics and not to bother washing, "ironing", or folding fabrics because they would all get messy when we worked anyway. She sewed a few more seams. Then she said, "Ok. I wanted you to see how I worked. Let's get started." Then she stood up and stared at us. No instruction. No goal. No start point. No hints about design, balance, visual texture, color selection - nothing.

My classmates and I looked at each other and then back at her. The other ladies began tentatively pulling out the fabrics they had brought. One woman said she wasn't sure about colors or prints. The teacher said to use batiks because they were printed on both sides and had lots of colors. The lady blinked and waited for more. Receiving nothing, she was brave and asked specifically about the fabrics she had planned to use but now wasn't sure about. The teacher made a few bizarrely disparaging remarks like, "Well that orange isn't what I would ever use - but it goes well with this shiny fabric you brought. I stay away from shiny fabrics because they look cheap, but I guess you could go for a playful, juvenile look if you wanted to. It's up to you. It's your quilt." The teacher took another one of the students out front to "help" her pick out a few fabrics. I decided I could live without her help.

I almost just packed up and left right then and there. I talked myself into staying. I started randomly pressing, cutting and sewing together blocks of the fabrics I had brought. Fun enough. I like to play. At the very least - I'm spending time quilting with other women. I thought, "Maybe it won't be a total loss if I meet one even half-way pleasant fellow quilter." The woman on my right was older, stern, silent - except for her incredibly loud and numerous farts (OMG!), and had the ugliest collection of fabrics I have ever in my life seen. O-K. I turned to my other side. Reading her name tag, I struck up the following conversation:
Me: So Sherry, are you from here originally?
Her: Yes.
Me (after a pause to see if she'd say anything else): Do you belong to one of the guilds?
Her: No. I'm not a joiner. I'm not a social person.

So pleasant. Over the course of the next two hours, the only other conversation occurred when two of the ladies got in a fight over which scissors belonged to whom. "These are badly nicked. I take care of mine so these must be yours." "No, I keep mine sharpened and those are dull." "Well, I've never put tape on mine so these can't be mine. See this sticky spot here?" And so on. The next closest thing to conversation was when the teacher informed us all that she hadn't been able to make any money as a quilt artist and now sold plexi-glass clocks and worked in metal. Nice.

Absurdly, I kept thinking that surely once we got a few pieces together the teacher would discuss composition or design elements or embellishment techniques or SOMETHING. She didn't. With about a half an hour to go in the class, one woman asked what we'd be doing next week and the teacher said, "The same thing we are now." I just couldn't stand it any more. I lied and said I had to leave early to go get my children from school. I can't imagine going back next week. I have never been in a class before where I didn't learn anything. I kept waiting, hoping, desperately trying to get some tiny thing from the experience to make it worth the effort of having lugged my machine to and from the car - forget the $75 class fee. But it did not happen. Not even close.

The only speck of enjoyment I got out of the experience was talking to my kids about it afterwards. Havoc laughed so hard he almost fell off of his chair when I described the icky ladies at my table. The kids gave me sweet hugs and told me to look on the bright side. Next week I could stay home in my own studio and if the dogs started farting, at least I could make them go outside! Ah, the bright side.
Peace.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night (Again)

2008-03-05T12:01:00.003-05:00

Taking it a little more seriously than perhaps North Carolina weather requires, we weren't comfortable having the kids sleep through the storm upstairs. Upstairs being where the wind and the trees were colliding violently and near where the roof that could get ripped off in a tornado was. Two kids slept in Linus' bed, two in the studio and one on the pallet beside me. The dogs enjoyed playing musical beds. They thought it exciting to have everyone up an hour after settling down. They were the only ones. We're all a bit tired and grumpy today.
The bright side? RAIN. We need rain. We like rain. And it's 65 degrees now. Makes it kinda hard to be tooooooo grumpy. (But we're trying.)
Peace.

left handed blogging

2008-03-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

i have a red-bone puppy adamantly curled up and snoring on my right arm. i have moved her several times but she immediately sneaks back up and plunks her head back down - pinning my arm to the bed. she's so insistent and it's been so long since anyone was this clingy - that i've decided to go with it. she's loud though. linus says to just pull on her tail to make her stop snoring, but i can't reach it. oh well. it's a good thing she's so cute.

A Phone Call From The 'Rents

2008-03-03T20:33:00.004-05:00

My father called me yesterday to say he'd seen the interview and that he thought I did a fine job. He used adjectives that coded in my head as positive even though I can't for the life of me remember them. Calm? Composed? I know he said I looked "great" and I have it in my mind that he may have said I sounded "articulate". I know for a fact that he said I did NOT sound nervous or inexperienced. He said I didn't ramble. He said I made clear points and came across as sincere. Ha! If he'd only seen the un-edited version he would not have said that.

My father was both genuine and sweet. The fact that he called to tell me what he thought - and the fact that what he thought was positive - all of that tripped me out. You see, I had all kinds of classic cross-parent/child issues with him when I was younger. Every bit of what you'd expect from a daddy's girl who was abandoned due to the divorce process when she was 14, in the mid-80's by her Dartmouth-educated, dashingly handsome & charming father. Did I mention I'm an oldest child? I have always - all my life - been desperate for his approval and attention. To a degree that shocked his socks off when we finally talked about it all - a decade or so ago. I think he had NO idea how much his say so meant to me. He spent his life trying (and feeling like he was failing) to be "good enough" for HIS father. It was a complete surprise to him to have passed that down without meaning to. To be perfectly fair, he is so different from his father that I can understand why it didn't occur to him that I would feel the same way about him as he felt about Grandaddy.

My dad and I have a great relationship (now) - and I genuinely love to be around him. I feel so much more comfortable with him than I used to. I don't analyze everything he says looking for the barb, the criticism while simultaneously trying to contort his words into praise. I'm a lot better at being myself and letting him be himself. It helped A LOT to learn more about anxiety patterns and how they manifest themselves in families. (You know that time I invited my father over for supper - when I scrubbed my house, spent a week planning the menu and the entire day cooking it, making sure to find interesting recipes for some of his favorite foods - only to have him show up and say he couldn't eat a bite because the ladies at work had brought in potluck and made him try everything and he was too full? Yeah - that wasn't about me - and it wasn't just that my dad was being a big fat jerk!! It wasn't a failure in communication. I didn't do anything wrong. It was anxiety - and now I know. I know what to look and listen for - how to diffuse and interpret it. And sometimes I know how to avoid it - and sometimes I'm good at acknowledging it and poking fun at it in just the right ways. As I said - things are sooooo much better between us.)

As good as things are - the reality is that my internal negative critic uses my father's voice. And it probably always will. It sucks. It's probably not fair to him or me. But there you have it. I heard myself on TV, mangling basic grammar and I instantly imagined my father upon hearing it, being embarrassed to admit knowing me, much less to having sired me. And then he called to say I'd done a fine job, that he was proud of me.

I'm glad I'd already made my peace with how I'd done in the interview. I'd already writhed, talked myself through it, whined some more, and then truly decided I'd done the best I could have done - given that moment, those circumstances - and that it was fine to have it be exactly what it was. I didn't consciously know it, but I needed to have done all that on my own without the warping affect my dad's approval or lack thereof can have on me. So... how wonderful just to be able to listen and honestly thank him for caring enough to call, and to be able to allow myself to savor his words. This growing up stuff? So worth it sometimes.
Peace.

Loser

2008-03-01T07:52:00.003-05:00

After fluctuating up and down the scale over the same three pounds for six months, this week I've lost four actual pounds. Starting from the lowest point of the previous six months. Which means that I am lighter today - by seven pounds - than I was in August. Which is a good thing.

I mean, I am in fact trying to lose weight. I have eaten extremely good foods this week - if not quite as much of them as I should have. I have exercised every day except Friday - which was a planned rest day. I haven't slept particularly well because of the court stuff, the tv stuff, etc - and it makes sense that being awake burns up more calories than being asleep does.

I put this out there because I have to be able to talk about it. Losing weight is fraught, absolutely fraught I tell you, with crazy-ass internal messages. I yearn to be slim and healthy yet when I start making measurable progress in that direction, I freak-the-fuck out. My head churns out worries like, "What if I keep losing at this rate? That's not healthy!" but then, "What if I don't lose another pound? What if after all this work, I stall here?" And, "What if I start gaining it back?!" Then deserve factor has to be regulated: I waffle between giving myself pep talks saying I deserve to be slim, healthy, and strong to having deflate my own entitlement bubble (I've been good - I am entitled to gorge on Capt D's and cake!)

Nice and steady, step by step. A little progress here, a little there - forward and sometimes a bit back or off target - it's all just right. Magic happens. So, stop freaking out already! (<---Addressed to my monkey mind, not yours. Unless you need to hear it, of course.)
Peace.

Afterthoughts

2008-02-29T07:38:00.007-05:00

Today is Linus' older sister's 12th birthday. Yep, a leap baby. I love how both logical and nonsensical it is to have leap year. I am all kinds of behind on my chores around the house, in getting ready for a weekend full of kid activities (b/c if you think the kids have forgotten about Sharpie tag - you are sadly mistaken), and in figuring out the bills/budget to be ready for March. Luckily for me March has been postponed a wee bit. Anyone else have a colorful weekend planned?
Peace.

PS - I keep wanting to write about how I came across as racist/elitist myself in the tv interview when what I was trying to point out were the layers of racism and what role they played in the investigation. It's hard to find an entry point into the conversation - even if it's mostly a conversation in my head. I am inclined to jump in justifying and clarifying what I meant but another part of me has to acknowledge that as a white, suburban, privileged girl, I am not likely to be incredibly perceptive of all the nuances of racism no matter how much I try or how "good" my intentions are. So. In the part that got on the air I said (seemingly out of the blue),

I just don't think that even then, things were like that. I think a black man in our neighborhood might have just as easily have been overlooked because he was clearly a handyman, a worker man. I don't think it would have been particularly noteworthy.

I don't know whether it's because they chopped it or because I didn't articulate it well in the first place, but I certainly didn't mean to come across in a "Let them eat cake" kind of way. Here is more of what I was trying to get to: Yes, it was a white neighborhood. Yes, it is true no one reported a black man in the area. But the police chain of "logic" that followed was disastrously flawed by racism. To them - that there was no report of an alarming black man meant there could have been no black man around at all and therefore their black suspect should not be scrutinized despite other indicators that he could very well be the perpetrator.

Do you see how insidious this way of thinking is? It seems obvious to me that it is as racist to exclude as it is to target a suspect based solely/predominantly on skin color, but it played out in twisty ways. There were any number of good, honest reasons a black man could have been been in an area where he couldn't, at the time, have lived. I believe my parents and neighbors would have (in the absence of suspicious behavior) given an unknown man the benefit of the doubt, no matter his skin tone. I don't believe - even given the level of segregation at the time - that black skin in and of itself would have triggered the fear and assumptions of criminality the police presumed. The kind of racism that was ascribed to the people in the area wasn't necessarily there, but nevertheless it became the basis for police action and non-action.

It seems probable now that over 30 years ago an unlikely, white boy was suspected and wrongly persecuted while a suspicious black man went unscrutinized again and again and again. It would ABSOLUTELY have been racist and terrible to have had it happen the other way around - which I'm sure it has time and again elsewhere, elsewhen. But I can only speak to the case I know.

I'd like to say, too, that I don't think this was a case of "reverse" racism - if such a term ever applies - even if in this instance, the one who benefitted was black and the one targeted, white. Racism is racism. It is prejudice+power. The white cops had the prejudice and the power and it distorted their investigation, blinded them to other possibilities, and robbed them of a needed clarity. I don't believe I am wrong, naive or alone in longing for a "colorblind" system of law and order.

The last piece of the interview juxtaposed two of my statements, that in conjunction made no sense. I am quoted as saying

The cynical part of me feels like they just picked somebody who was unprotected and they targeted him. … They really believed they knew who did it.

Here's the full ramble: one side of me believes that since the police had no suspects (that fit their filtered expectations), they targeted the most (socially, economically, and politically) vulnerable person they could find close by. And then they pushed and pushed trying to make that piece fit into the puzzle. My more compassionate side recognizes the tremendous limitations and pressures the police faced and I try to give them credit for believing they had the real criminal. Ambivalence doesn't come across well in a tiny sound clip. Lesson learned. One of many lessons I have learned in this process.

I don't know if the man in custody now, the one being scrutinized decades after he should have been, had anything to do with anything. It seems likely given the reports of his DNA at the crime scene, but I'll let a court of law decide that. His being white, black or green won't bring my friend back to life or allow a 40-something year old man to relive his teenage years, this time without everyone believing him to be a rapist/murderer. A clear conviction could be considered justice - but would even that have the power to bring peace with it? I have to hope that there could be peace found in solving the mystery of my childhood friend's disappearance. But I also have to believe that peace and redemption are possible no matter the revelations (or possible lack thereof) at this point. Thanks to all for the encouraging words and kind thoughts.

I should go back and make my PS the main post, but it'll have to stand as is. I'm getting on with my day now that I have all of that out of my head!
Peace, peace, peace.

Chaos And The Squid Of Provocation

2008-02-28T11:06:00.007-05:00

Last night, as we were trying to get supper* on the table, Chaos and Mayhem had a crazy loud dispute over the word - and I'm going to have to spell it the way it sounded when Chaos said it - provok-shun. Mayhem (correctly, but irritatingly in the way only little brothers know how to do) maintained that it was not a word. Chaos said impatiently, "Of course it's a word. Provoke, provok-shun. What else would it be? So there are these giant squids who attack without any provokshun..." Not to be distracted by the actual story Chaos was trying to tell, Mayhem steered the argument back to the word - and they ended up bringing the ruckus to Bet and me. Naturally we offered the word "provocation" which Chaos pronounced "illogical" on the spot. Be that as it may... Mayhem tried to gloat; Chaos tried (half-heartedly) to keep arguing but he really wanted to get back to the squid story; Bet and I tried not to laugh (or be grossed out). Chaos went on to describe the squid whose head/body was bigger than Mayhem, whose tentacles were longer than Bug, and who had teeth (in the suckers on its tentacles) "more sharper" than knives. Ay yi yi. More sharper? WHO is this child? Bet said, "Are you sure he's your kid?" (Thoughtful pause while I reminded myself that not only had I seen his red-headed little self emerge from my body lo, those many years ago - but I, Lilymane, had in fact said, "there was police cordons and heavy 70's cars parked on the side of the road..." on local television this very week.) "Yep. He's my kid." I love him to bits. Even if doesn't think so as he complains that no one ever listens to his stories, everyone always argues with him, and people are forever correcting him. And making him do chores. And sending him to his room without the least, little bit of provokshun.

Peace.

*Supper, by the way, was Shepherd's Pie - three variations (meat, vegetarian, chicken) and salad - NO SEAFOOD. Nothing to instigate a discussion of giant, razor-toothed squids rampaging for no reason. In case you wondered.

My Love Of Cob

2008-02-27T15:25:00.001-05:00

I LOVE cob. I am in awe of <---this. For more info on the artist Sarah Machtey (and some incredible pictures of the work in progress) of this cob stairwell - go here. Someday I want a cob house or writing studio or something!

I tried to post about my reaction to the second (and final - thank the gods!) part of the interview that aired last night, but I just couldn't face it. Hence your getting cob. And a quick word to say that we biked Monday, swam yesterday and ran today. Registration for the race is on Saturday. I hold it out in front of me when I can't cope with anything else. Peace.

Tummy Report: Writhing

2008-02-26T06:39:00.004-05:00

Note to self: NEVER, EVER, (for any reason under the sun) agree to be on television again. I haven't even seen the interview but reading the transcript and the online description of the interview? AGONY. I'd love to think they misquoted me (grammar mistakes, leaving key words out, etc) but chances are it's even worse in the live action version. The script says that what has haunted me the most (since I was supposed to be with her the day she was kidnapped) is that if I had been with her that day maybe something awful would have happened to me too - but that's not the part that haunts me!! Well it's a part of it - but the bigger part is if I hadn't been sick - if I had been able to be with her - would we have been too big of a target - would she be alive today - would my presence mean that she would have been safe? THAT'S the part that is haunting. And when the interviewer said the "stories" would be on two nights in a row - I thought that she meant my part was one of a couple of bits they were doing and I'd have to watch both nights to catch it. Turns out my part stretches over two nights. I'm on twice. Egad. I don't regret my impulse to tell the side of the story where the "victim" is still a little girl who never set out to be an icon or milestone. I just wish I'd been more articulate. Bleck. ANYWAY.
**Edited to add: ok, having now seen the the video, the subject/verb agreement (or lack thereof) was all mine (but I think I switched ideas mid sentence) and thankfully, the other two sentences which sounded so moronic in transcript actually make more sense with my pauses, facial expressions, and hand motions. Still. Never again.

On the B List of nauseating factors: I realize I am paying my attorney to play lawyer games. I just don't want her playing them with me. Today I have to finish up my portion of the "discovery" process. You know what I've discovered? I hate this.

On the brighter side of things (aka things that don't make my stomach hurt): Chaos gave me a big hug this morning and told me he loved me. Often I get that response when I buy Totino' pizza rolls or agree to let them do something silly (like have a special supper where we watch "Men In Tights" ) but this time there was no prompt. I gave him a big squeeze back and said, "Wow. I needed that." He said, "Yeah, I know." And we listened to Rob Zombie at max volume all the way to school.

Brighter thing 2: I was telling Chaos something about the weather forecast today and he asked, "What did you just say about devil monkeys?" Uh, nothing. I would have laughed it off except twice this weekend Bet misheard me say something about monkeys. Once she thought I said something about "adventure monkey" and then "monkey time" - which makes me wonder what on earth I'm saying that sounds like I am monkey obsessed! (I promise you I do not often willingly talk about monkeys. They gross me out - poo flinging, screechy, little beasts that they are.)

As much as I would like to blog more - I have to go gather, copy, and mail documents and then I have to wade through emails with attached Tapioca sludge (<--emails that made me ill the FIRST time I had to read them so I can't imagine today will be any better.) You know I'm dreading my day when the idea of doing laundry instead sounds like heaven! Peace to the people.

One Is Silver And The Other Gold

2008-02-21T10:12:00.007-05:00

Last night when Bet looked at the caller ID and answered the phone, "What up G Dog Homeslice Pickles?" I was pretty sure it was our buddy Rob calling. (Rob, the one we called to ask what a spleen looked like - that Rob.) The call turned out to be from his wife - but Bet would have answered the phone that way for any of the three of them (Rob, his wife, or their daughter) because as she put it, "They are all G Dog Homeslice Pickles to me."
These are the folks that let us ~~steal~~ share their Christmas Cookie Day tradition. These are the folks who came and ran the Country Music Half Marathon (in tutus) with us. These are the ones who offered more than a couch by letting Bet be the crazy aunt in the attic (or really in the spare room with the piano) for a school year when she was planning to move to TN to be with us and didn't want to get stuck in a lease. The G Dog Homeslice Pickles are friends, indeed.

Tonight Bet and I are driving to DC for a girls' weekend away with my Navy buddies. LT (the one who retired, broke her collarbone, and is still training for the triathlon with us) has come east and DC is the central gathering point. LT, Bren, Jen and I have been friends for 20+ years and have many inside jokes (<-- some of them in Russian, which marks us not only as spooks, but old spooks.) There will be some newer shipmates of LT's joining us. (One new friend works in the Capitol, hence the private tour tomorrow - sweet!) I can't wait to meet LT's new friends and have Bet meet my old ones. The bonus is that we also get to see a college pal of mine, meet his new wife, and give them congratulatory hugs for their baby-in-process.

Linus has to work the weekend but Unky Dunky (who is an uncle by choice, not by blood or marriage) is going to come hang out with the kids and play Warhammer. I'm missing our other two uncles of choice (Karl and Richard) - but we can hardly complain as they helped us move and warm our house. It's pretty cool to have this many uncles for my kids without having had to put up with (smelly) brothers all those years ago!

Not sure why I'm rambling about friends this morning. Friendship is just on my mind. Maybe it's because my best friend from high school turned 40 last week, but I don't have a way to get in touch with her. (The silly rabbit moved to Florida and left her comcast email behind. Hello! Yahoo, gmail? Work with me here people! Noelly - I can't find you!)

Maybe friendship is looming large in my mind because I'm totally proud of us for spending $97 and saving $90 at the grocery store last night. I'm bragging on us even though we're not yet in the same league as C is for Coffee and Salsa Man (who once spent $133 and saved $211) much less with Sandra and Grant - who once worked it so that they "bought" forty (40!) boxes of cereal and the store had to pay them a quarter a box. Minor leaguers that we are, we wouldn't have known how to shop like this without the coaching from our thrifty pals.

Maybe I'm thinking about friends because I've just finished making my morning blog rounds. I've been blogging long enough now to have old webfriends and new! While I've only recently met friends like Titan and Not, I've "known" DebR of Red Shoe Ramblings for two years now. (In computer years, that's somewhat akin to having known each other since kindergarten, right?) Also, I've been skulking around the ether long enough to have imaginary friends. Er, that doesn't sound right. They're real, it's the friendship that's all in my head. Erm, that doesn't sound much better does it? What I'm admitting here is that, while I can't think of anything intelligent to say in their comments, I ~~obsessively~~ harmlessly lurk around mimismartypants', Maxine Dangerous', and Miss Zoot's sites. (Well except for that one time I accosted Zoot in the airport!)

So here's to friends - far and wide, old and new, known and yet to be known. Hip hip hooray (x3)!! Peace.

Forget The Gold Star - Give Me A Sharpie

2008-02-21T09:47:00.003-05:00

Have I mentioned that my children are Sharpie-mad? Chaos would rather be caught without underwear on than be Sharpie-less. (I kid you not.) It's handy on a regular basis: they label (and often decorate) the freezer bags when we're processing groceries into the deep freeze, they whip Sharpies out when I've forgotten a pen, and where do you think I got the red and black ink for the zombie-fest? I do have to remind them that PERMANENT marker bleeding through onto the tabletops and counters is not a good idea. (A couple of scrubbing sessions with clorox and wood cleaner and the threat of a new table coming out of their pocket has almost solved that issue.) When we found a multi-pack of Sharpies for half price this week, we decided to take a page out of Bet's book of teacher tricks and dole them out as a reward. Last night we presented the first family Sharpie award to Mayhem who has managed to stay out of homework lunch, get his planner signed, AND take the trash and recycling to the curb three weeks running without complaining (justifiably!) that it should be someone else's turn already. He got to choose his favorite color from the pack. Each week (or whenever we remember to) we're going to award a Sharpie to the kid who shows the best attitude (or whatever we want to encourage that week.) I was all kinds of pleased with myself - until there was an impromptu game of "Sharpie Tag" in the kitchen last night. I'd have fussed more, but I'm pretty sure that Bet started it. I know she's the one who agitated to set up an organized game of it for next weekend. Clorox anyone?
Peace.

Sad But True

2008-02-19T12:08:00.002-05:00

Bumper sticker seen in Carrboro:

At least the war on the environment is going well.

Easy As Pi

2008-02-18T08:53:00.003-05:00

Havoc's first pie (which geek-chef that he is bears the declaration Easy as (Pi) on the top in sugared dough.) I wish you could smell the apple and cinnamon. Yummy!
Also had to share the gorgeous flowers Bet gave me for Valentine's day. Linus is finally home again. Of course there's data center drama so likely we won't get to see him this week. But we'll know he's close! Pie, my loves all being together, and glorious flowers - a few of the things making my rainy Monday morning bright. Hope you have a few of your own. Peace.

Dude, Where's My Spleen?

2008-02-15T07:45:00.005-05:00

As a treat for the older boys, Unky Dunky took them to the sneak preview of Romero's Diary of the Dead at the Carolina Theater last night. It was an anti-Valentine's Day Zombiefest. Perfect, eh? Those of us left at home (Havoc, The Ninja Princessa, Bet, and I) decided to have our own zombie fest by making cookies. Zombie cookies! Zombie-barnyard-animal-warrior cookies, even! (It was a sign from the universe when we found kits this week with cookie cutters in the shapes of cows, pigs and manatees!) The pictures should all be clickable for a closer up view: This is the Cow Army Headquarters. See the Zombie crawling through the minefield of cowpies? Havoc and Bet made the cut-in-half cow. Please note, Havoc also decorated the back fence with body parts.
The Manatees of Death were for Chaos - because only he could want to turn a gentle, sweet, lovable creature into a bombadier.
The pig cookies were pink! Pink dough. Ooey-gooey red/pink frosting guts. Pigs of doom! As much fun as the zombie farmyard army was, the coup de grace was the spleen cookie. Last night the guys went dressed in their best zombie attire (which if you didn't know - officially consists of zombie-themed shirts, boots, leather trench coats, and pants with clanking chains <- so we can hear them coming and outrun them?) Chaos has a shirt (that he loaned to Bug last night) that used to be a normal t-shirt: short sleeve, brown, nice heavy cotton. "Somehow" it got a horizontal rip in it and Chaos decided to add further Sharpie modification by writing the words "Give me back my spleen" above the rip. (I'm not sure from whence came the original spleen fascination, but spleen comments have been a running gag at our house for a while.) Bet (who was the only one patient enough in the first place roll and cut out batch after batch of deformed livestock cookies) finally said enough is enough - we're making one last, awful cookie. How about a spleen cookie? There was some debate about what a spleen actually looks like wherein the Princessa immediately suggested googling pictures of spleens and then almost as immediately turned green and said, "Wait! On second thought, don't!" You know it's probably the weirdest phone call our buddy Rob (the science teacher) has ever gotten, "Hey, what does a spleen look like?" After all of the suggestions were made, here is the final result: There was a brain cookie too - but everyone knows what brains look like and it got eaten before I got a good picture of it anyway. Hope your Valentine's Day was as filled with love and fun as ours. Peace.

One Week Into Lent And I've Blown It

2008-02-14T09:39:00.007-05:00

I tried to give up Tapioca for Lent, but he won't leave me alone! I thought that since he's waitng until Spring Break to see the boys and our mediation is set for Easter Monday that I could get through the Lenten season without struggling with him. I won't bore you with all the details (especially the ones involving insurance coverage) - but in addition to calling my house at 9 am two mornings in a row and hanging up (what, he thinks I don't have caller id??), he is (through his attorney) bugging me about scheduling a time to depose me. Again, so much for going into mediation with any honest effort at resolution. It's merely a logistical hurdle in the way of putting me on trial. BLECK.

Still - I'm working on ways not to be in the struggle. Bet says I need a mantra to turn to instead of spinning my energy up about him and his crazy-making ways. How very Lenten! In my most Episcopagan way, I've decided to turn spin into spin. It's too cold to run, but Vivian (my bike) is on the trainer and I can ride inside. I can take the adrenaline my body automatically produces to fight him - and I can use it for a better purpose. I can train on two levels at once. I already knew I can't complete this triathlon without connecting to my deepest strength and honoring the creative force I'm a part of. I'm just adding to that knowledge by turning turning Tapioca churn into muscle!

Looking at it that way, I haven't truly blown my Lenten discipline. I have struggled with my not struggling with his shit - but it's aligning my internal compass. I call that a saving grace.

Linus, on the other hand, is actively avoiding salvation this week. One of the things I love best about him is that sometimes he's so very Linus. He's in San Diego for a conference and to train his replacement with the old company. He likes his replacement and he likes the new president. The slimy sales guy that's with them? Not so much. At dinner (the company dinner!) the other night, the slimy sales guy turned to Linus and said, "Maybe the reason for this whole trip is not to save (Name of Previous Company), but to save YOU. Maybe God's ulterior motive is to give me a chance to witness to you so that you can accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior." At which point Linus responded, "Mr. Slimy Sales Guy - let me explain this concisely and clearly so we can get on with our supper. I reject Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Knowingly, willfully, and intentionally. Dessert anyone?" Linus is quite spiritual but not remotely Christian. I don't think Mr. Slimy Sales Guy knew what to do with him after that.

We're an odd mix, the three of us: me (pagan and liturgical both), Linus (fully recovered Catholic, now techno Taoist), Bet (with her M.Div and silent faith, who is fascinated by popular religion yet repulsed by church). Somehow we fit, though. Supporting each other - spirit, mind, and body. Which is enough of a ramble on religiosity for this pagan sex/hallmark holiday.
Peace.

Not Surprising (At All)

2008-02-13T07:45:00.001-05:00

Currently my dog (Wasabi) is curled up on Bet's bed and Bet's dog (Tallulah) is curled up on my bed. We took Tallulah to the vet and asked about her habit of balancing on three legs to pee with the other leg raised up at a weird angle. "That," he said, "is a girl dog trying to pee like a boy dog." Which is strange because our boy dog pees like a girl dog. We bought them matching toys in different sizes - the small rope and squeaky snake for the puppy, the big rope and big squeaky snake for the big dog. It took them about two seconds to snatch the one meant for the other dog. Doggies, doggies, quite contrary - that's what we have.

Who Comes Up With This Stuff?

2008-02-12T08:39:00.001-05:00

A Jesus Rubber Duck?

Cat butt air freshener? Or worse, gum?!!

Not only do I wonder who thought of these things, but who the hell buys it?? I think there are some seriously disturbed folks out there making big money off of weird shit. Just saying. Peace.

Somebody 'Splain Me

2008-02-11T09:11:00.001-05:00

I weighed myself just before I went to bed last night. I weighed myself when I got up (right after I peed and before I got in the shower) this morning. Somehow I gained three pounds while I was sleeping. How the hell does that work??

Our New Thing

2008-02-11T08:40:00.001-05:00

Thanks to our buddies C is for Coffee and Salsa Man - we are recession-proofing our pantry. (The nod also has to go to Grant and Sandra who tried unsuccessfully to infect us with the savings bug years ago!) I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned that we signed up for The Grocery Game last month. Our goal has been to save more than we spend. We did that once on a small run to the store where we saved $38 and paid $31. We're getting closer on the big, weekly shopping trips but we're not quite there yet. Still, looking at the receipt where we paid $153 and saved $110? Happiness making.

What are we doing with all that fabulous "extra" money? Err, paying the lawyers. Bleck.

It does feel a bit like no matter how much we save right now, we won't be able to get out of the hole. To counter that, I look at the pantry overflowing with food and I celebrate the abundance in our life. I am trying to get myself to the thrift store to donate the clothes we've been culling from the overflowing closets. I want to keep good things flowing to and and through our home. Getting kick ass bargains on food we eat anyway makes me feel powerful and responsible. Giving what we can no longer use to someone who needs it makes me feel connected and aware. Being intentional in one area gives me energy to stay open and intentional in other areas.

It's a little mysterious how using a $.75 (which doubles to $1.50) on a tube of toothpaste (which was 1/2 price already) can help me get to the post office (which if you know anything about me - you know I am, for all intents and purposes, permanently disabled in the postal department.) I cannot explain it. You'll have to take it on faith. (And maybe wait to believe it until you see the valentine I mailed you.) Peace!

Old MacDonald's Farm - Version 5.1z

2008-02-08T12:35:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure that washing dishes is good for my children. Sure, they're learning great lessons in terms of cleanliness and responsibility. It's the intellectual contamination that has me worried. KP spawns absolutely weird conversation here in Lilyville. Some while back I was called in to referee a debate about which animals are smarter - dogs or pigs. (That part is normal enough, I think. Most people don't really know - or don't want to know - that pigs are pretty darn smart. Wilbur and Lassie could go toe to toe (or hoof to paw) in an IQ test. But bacon is too yummy to have to eat with a side of guilt so we conveniently ignore the idea of smart pigs. To return to our muttons - or dogs and pigs...) After putting in my two cents, I went back to the library while they continued to argue loudly enough for me to hear. They debated which kind of smartness would make a better guard animal. How loyal are pigs? How trainable? How sneaky can they be? (Stealth pigs.) And how strong are they? Could they carry Uzi's?
Errrr, WHAT??
Their conversation veered off from there. They began equipping different barnyard animal armies with various weaponry. Pretty soon they had chickens with grenades, cows with semi-automatics, and pigs with plastique. Nice, eh? This is apparently a game they are designing. There is a forest version too. It has upgrades with foxes, squirrels, frogs, and manatees. At that point I did have to butt in and point out that manatees do NOT live in the forest. "That's why it's an upgrade," they explained. Ahhhh. For a low, low extra charge you too can get the Manatees of Death!
Lest you think my children are merely bloodthirsty wackos, I must tell you that the next part of the conversation is worse! Zombies! (Naturally. It seems like every single darn conversation my children have these days includes at least a token mention of zombies.) Overheard:
Mayhem: Dude, zombie goats! We gotta have zombie goats.
Chaos: Goats? Naah, how about zombie weasels?
Mayhem: Dude, have you seen a zombie goat?! They're AWESOME!
(In my head, I'm thinking, "Dude, have you seen one? Because maybe we need to go to the doctor or something if you have.)
Ninja Princessa (not to be outdone): What about vampire cats? That would be better.
All three boys (shouting): NO VAMPIRES! No, we hate vampires! Vampires suck!
Silence.
Gales of laughter. Finally Chaos gets a hold of himself enough to say, "Zombies only."
Mayhem: What about fish?
Chaos: Oh! Piranhas! Zombie piranhas!
Bug: How could you tell they were zombie fish as opposed to regular fish?
Mayhem: Dude, they'd try to eat your brain!
Bug: Piranhas already try to do that.
Chaos: Good point. No zombie fish.
Mayhem: I'm telling you. Zombie goats. They're awesome.

I have no idea what the eventual outcome was on which zombified animals got the nod. They had finished up their chores and carried the conversation upstairs. The kitchen was spic and span. I had absolutely nothing to complain about, except... zombie goats? It's just weird, man. I'm telling you. To make matters - well, not worse - just more public, this whole conversation happened on a night when Mayhem's best buddy, Justin, had stayed for supper after ultimate practice. When Jan came to get her son, she and I had such a nice talk. She's articulate and put together, but still down to earth. She has two sons (the youngest of whom is Mayhem's buddy). I think we could be friends - if she wasn't secretly put off by the zombie obsession my children are foisting off on those around them.

Jan: Thanks again for letting him stay. I thought his dad would be at practice or I never would have made a doctor's appointment.
Me: Oh, he was no trouble. Polite, fun, and he helped with the dishes even though I told him he didn't have to. We love having him.
Jan: That's great to hear. Wish he'd help me once in a while. (<- Said archly, eyebrows raised, looking down at her son.)
Justin: Well, I helped the kids. The kids do the dishes here.
Jan: Oh! Great tradition! Let's start that too.
Justin: Mom! It's no fun at our house. Here they have lots of kids and they talk about cool stuff.
Jan: We talk about cool stuff.
Justin: Mom, I mean really cool stuff. Like zombies. And manatee bombadiers.
Me: Zombies. Their favorite topic of conversation. I try not to worry about it. (I may have laughed in a nonchalant way at that point. Or perhaps it came out more as a worried chuckle.) Do your boys talk about zombies?
Jan: Not that I know of really.
Me: Ah. Hope it's ok with you.
Jan: You know, if it takes talk of the undead to get kids to cheerfully clean the kitchen, I'm all for it! You should write a book.

Don't you LOVE her? What should my book be called? Zombies Onboard? Parenting Teens The Undead Way? Peer Pressure: The Z Factor?

Peace.

Making The Rounds (Finally!)

2008-02-07T07:51:00.000-05:00

mimismartypants cracks me up!! I am always up for some Nora adventures and even non-Nora posts have gems like "I love gulags!"
Slowly, oh so slowly, am I catching up with everyone.
Peace.

My New Favorite Sticker

2008-02-07T07:29:00.000-05:00

Linus went to a geek convention and bought this old school gamer bumper sticker:

When I was your age, we had to roll our dice up hill both ways, in the snow.

We're geezer geeks!
Peace.

Tongue Tied

2008-02-06T10:37:00.000-05:00

Bet and I got to have lunch together yesterday. Since she is a school teacher this is highly unusual. It only happened because the "all day" training off campus turned out to be only "some of the day." Most times for lunch, Bet has to try to get a few bites in between answering math questions (on days she doesn't have lunch duty) and (on days she does) keeping the craziness of the seventh graders in the cafeteria to a minimum. Not only did we have a chance to spend some unexpected time together, but we found a fantastic sandwich place. All organic, natural, handmade yumminess. I had bacon, gruyere, and cremini mushrooms grilled on sourdough toast. We played our favorite game and talked. It felt sinful and decadent to have such fun in the middle of the day. And that was apparent because when I was trying to say something about avoiding the "lunch rush", what I said instead was "runch lush." It made us laugh. Instead of being part of the lunch rush, we were indeed part of the runch lush. Isn't "lush" a fantastic word? Lush - rich, abundant. (Not sure what to do with the nonsensical word "runch." It's fun to say and makes me laugh - even without a real meaning.) I treasure times like yesterday - stolen moments, thoroughly enjoyed. I'm looking forward to our next runch lush. Peace.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

2008-02-06T08:42:00.000-05:00

Havoc is suffering from a migraine that had him puking last night. He is susceptible to pressure fronts and food triggers and surely some other, less easily defined factors, like stress. Because he was sick and we were all off schedule, I was taken aback when my ex called this morning to reassure the boys that he was ok. He didn't want the kids seeing or hearing the news and worrying (which was a right decent thing of him, really). But since I hadn't seen or heard the news, I had no idea what he was talking about. Now I know. Now I'm praying - gratitude for knowing that my friends and family are safe and solace for those who are not as fortunate and who are suffering this morning.
Peace.

One Pathetic Old Jerkwad, Two Fantastic New Words

2008-01-31T10:58:00.000-05:00

If I were to give you the full Tapioca Report - you'd never read my blog again. My ex is nauseating. "He doesn't READ!" I say to Bet. ("He never does," she says back.) "He refuses to give me the insurance information," I gripe. ("So you let the lawyers handle that. That's why you pay them the big bucks," she reminds me.) "He doesn't make any sense!" I wail. ("He's not going to," she answers.) "He lies. LIES! And about stupid stuff - stuff that a two year old could check and catch him out on!!" (Bet: This is new? No.) "His actions and his words do NOT match up." (Bet: Again, this is new? No.) "I'm not missing something am I? This crap doesn't make sense does it? Is there something wrong with me that I don't understand this?!!" (Bet: The only thing wrong with you is that you keep expecting him to be rational. He's not going to be. It's not you. You've run this by me, Linus, C is for Coffee and Salsa Man, your mother, your attorneys and probably six other people. No one thinks he is making sense. No one. He's not going to. That is why they call it "crazymaking".) She is so patient! All of you are sooo patient. I have been trying to figure out why it shakes me so deeply when my ex is so blatantly off the deep end. I don't have a great answer except that if making logistical arrangements is this incredibly difficult and stupid with him then what hope is there ever of finding a healthy way to address complicated issues?! (Bet: None. There is no hope of that. You can't change him. You can't make him listen or pay attention or give you coherent answers to questions. You have to give up hoping his side of the equation will ever balance again. Sorry.) Sucks. She's right. I know she's right. But it still sucks.

ANYWAY - on a more fun note. I've been reading during the wee sma's when I can't sleep (see above) and I've found two new words! I love learning new words!! Sheri Tepper and CJ Cherryh - I thank you for introducing me to: horripilating and divagation. I have a decent enough vocabulary (I rock on free rice!) thanks to Orgel in high school (25 words a week, cumulative so that the second week we were responsible for fifty - up through the senior year monster 1,000 word exam.) It's fun to find words that didn't make that list, though. It's especially interesting to find them in context. My secret dweebiness is not so secret now, I suppose.

I hope to be able to get back into blogging every day and talking less about the bane of my existence. It could happen.
Peace.

In The Neighborhood

2008-01-29T08:54:00.000-05:00

The other day our little corner store was swarming with police vehicles. We had the kids all piled in the car and were stopped at the light so there was time for much discussion and theorizing about what might be going on. One police car had clearly driven hurriedly up over the curb directly from the street. The other six were deployed all around the tiny market building. There was a piece of machinery in the middle of the parking lot which turned out to be a car jack. The flashing lights were on but most of the police were standing around in fairly relaxed groups talking. One knot was talking to someone who seemed agitated. Attempted robbery? Drug bust? Surely it was a bit of an overkill response for a gas and go. You want to know what it was? (Bet stopped in later and asked.) The manager said that the repo man had come for the car rims of one of his employees and that the employee had "taken exception to it". My first thought was "Holy crap - what kind of rims are expensive enough to qualify for being repossessed??" My second thought was that the guy must have caused a serious ruckus if they sent SEVEN squad cars to quell him. I don't know if I'm capable of being scary enough that someone would call in the big guns. It's pretty awesome to think about causing that much of a stir on a quiet Saturday morning. It's like zero to sixty in under 4 seconds on the crazy meter. (Not that I want to be that scary ever. I'm all about living in a drama free zone. It's just interesting to me to contemplate the alien thinking that must happen to create such a wacko situation.)

Another oddity (this time of the passive variety) in my neighborhood. There is a large metal sculpture in one of the yards around here. The yard and the house are pretty ordinary - average size, a little unkempt, close to a main road. And there is this huge, (sort of rusty in places), skeletal Rhinoceros. Life size. Placid. Completely weird. His pieces and parts look like they were scavenged from many different machines. And there he grazes rustily. Among some weeds.

At the Bolin Creek trail down by the community center there is some new graffiti. Someone has spray painted an anti-war message on the sidewalk. It's about the size of an index card, yet totally readable. It is tucked up into the corner on a sidewalk square. Very tidy. Someone else (well - I don't know that for sure - possibly it's the same person) has stenciled some scattered, red scarabs across a retaining wall. There are more painted in a wandering path on the sidewalk and there is one lone beetle decorating a road sign nearby. They are stylized and quite large. Metal mammoths, legible graffiti, stenciled bugs: it's a trifle strange, my neighborhood.

Aren't you dying to come visit and get the tour? "Here is where that guy's rims were repo'd. Look over there? See that? It's yard art. That? That's Chapel Hill's idea of graffiti. And did you know - here you can buy WINE in the grocery store? Swear! Oh, and I have us booked for Aveda at eleven."
Peace.

2008-01-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

I have not managed to catch up yet - but here are a few things buzzing around:
1) Linus is traveling again. He called me from Nashville to say he was down safe. Then I turned on my computer and saw this news. He was on Southwest, but not on that flight or at that time. Still. For worry wart like me? Too close for comfort.
2) I will tell you all about the interview as soon as I can get my thoughts together about it.
3) Talking with Chaos (the fifteen year old red head in the goth kilt) is challenging. (Rewarding in many ways - but work.) A recent example:
(Our mail is often delivered with a rubber band around it. Chaos saw it and wanted the rubber band.)
Chaos: Oooh! Can I have that?! Please.
Me: Why? What are you going to do with it?
Chaos: You know I've never had scurvy.
Me (thinking WTF?)
Chaos: But I drink orange juice all the time.
Me (still thinking WTF?) : Errr, what does that have to do with anything??
Chaos: Mo-m. You gotta be pre-pared. All the time. Just in case. (Then he hugged me, snatched the rubber band out of my hand, and scampered up the stairs. Chains clanking.)
Me (calling up the stairwell): You are not allowed to shoot that at anyone! Do you hear me?
Chaos (distantly): Yes ma'am.

Later I found out the whole scurvy bit and being prepared came from a talk this guy gave at a school. (If you haven't read this book, you should. It's fascinating. Well-written, provocative, chilling and completely accessible. And I am not interested in zombies at all - except as far as they pertain to my teenage sons.) Talking to Chaos is only comprehensible if you spend time getting his context. It's hard to keep up with the music, the comedians, the you tube bits, and the books - but if you don't at least make a stab at it, he makes NO SENSE.

4) Whine, whine, whine. Only ONE more football game. I had a great time getting to watch the championship games with my dad even though neither game was close to the caliber of the week before. At first it didn't look like the Pats had bothered to show up for their game against Chargers. I was grateful when they started to actually play football in the second quarter. I was pretty bummed about the Packers losing to the Giants, but I also have to admit that my antipathy for the Giants is considerably less without Jeremy Shockey in the lineup. It sucks for Brett, no two ways about it. Eli, however, has to be pretty pleased to be going to the Superbowl the very next year after his brother. Still, without the Packers in it, I have zero decision about who to root for on Feb 3. Go Pats! I hope the '72 Dolphins are prepared to share their place in the record books!

Between the travel every which way and lingering viruses, school conferences and report cards, and the general cold and dark - this bear would really like to hibernate for a week. Instead my plan for this weekend is to get my shaggy headed children to the Aveda Institute, build a glass brick wall, finally visit my webfriends' blogs and finish the drafts in my "to be posted" file (dogs, tv interviews)! What are y'all up to?
Peace.

Deth Delayed 3 Days, School Only 2 Hours

2008-01-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

Today was a delayed school opening due to weather the media describes as a "wintry mix". Wintry mix of what you might ask. Wintry mix of HELL I'd be tempted to answer were it not so freaking cold. I am sincerely hoping that this morning's lovely blend of sleet, rain, ice, and wind is a one off event. I do NOT relish driving 500 miles (over the mountains) in it tomorrow. Oh no I do not.

The schools here have this great automated phone tree system. I get a call with a recorded message about upcoming events at the high school every Sunday night. The day the water main broke at the middle school, I got a call in the middle of the day explaining dismissal procedures etc. Last night we got a call (and an email) notifying us of the possibility of a delayed opening this morning. That message said that in the event, early morning connect ED message calls would begin around 6 a.m.. The house phone rang at 5:45 this morning. Ok, they jumped the gun by 15 minutes. My cell phone rang a few minutes later. Hmmm. Hadn't known they'd call the cell phones too, but ok. THEN the house phone rang again. It was my ex calling to tell me in his ridiculous, self-important way that the school had just called him and he wanted to pass on the information to me that school was delayed. "Did you get a call too?" he asked. "Yeah," I said with the word "Asshole!" unsaid but perceptible nonetheless. Does he REALLY think that he needed to call me? From another state and time zone? To tell me there is a weather (my weather) related school delay? For God's sakes, Bet is a TEACHER IN THIS DISTRICT!!! It is not like we would somehow not figure out whether or not school was open and at what time!

If Mr. Tapioca Head were an overly helpful sort in general, it might - just might - be plausible that he wanted to make sure we had it all under control. But seeing as he's an obstructionist pig, I know he just called to get under my skin. The man wouldn't confirm his mailing address for me yesterday (which resulted in me having to send an insurance receipt to him by way of the attorneys!) but he'll call me to tell me what the weather is like outside of my window?! Fucktard.

Having started off so well (what with sleet, tapioca, off schedule children with EXAMS today) you'd probably think it could only get better. Sadly, I have no guarantee of that. I have a dozen mostly important but impossible things to do today. One of them is figuring out what to wear for the tv interview on Monday. Since losing 20 lbs in four days is not an option, I decided to go with a new haircut (cute bob), new hair color (boring but shiny brown/black as opposed to the fun black/red/violet I got last time), and new nails (French manicure). Having spent all my money on that, I must now choose something I already own to wear. Advice???

Since I'm not going to get my chores done, I may as well get around to telling you how much fun I had with my children listening to their music. Dethklok is the new fave. You would not believe how much amusement has been generated by this band in our household. If you have Guitar Hero in your house, you may already be familiar with their stunningly uncomplicated piece "Thunderhorse" which literally has half of the lyrics in the title. If you do not have Guitar Hero and clicked the link you will see that Dethklok is a virtual death metal band created for a television show - a cartoon show. (Like the Monkees - only animated and err... somewhat darker.) The article says that the band is sometimes compared to Spinal Tap "though the overtly comedic aspects of the band are usually reserved for show episodes, while the music itself is relatively straightforward extreme metal." I beg to differ. The lyrics are freaking hilarious. There is a song about lost Vikings who left their map at home and are too macho to take one offered by a girl. There is a song called "Briefcase Full of Guts" and another called "Hatredcopter." Hatredcopter is our second favorite. The lead singer (or rather lead shouter) rails "I get to wear big black helmets I pilot the HATREDCOPTER" and then Pickles (<-scary name that) comes in with the chorus:
You will most likely die
From the hands of my arm
When I come and fly and
Take off your face
With the front
Of my HATREDCOPTER

(I play air guitar with that part and Havoc loses it every time. Chaos (whose CD this is) is not quite as amused - but he's a good sport and he should be after all the razzing he's given out about other people's music.) Our very first favorite on the Dethalbum is called "Birthday Dethday." It's a long song so I'll only give you a sampling of the finer parts:
(it starts out with a growly voice probably trying to sound menacing)
Many years ago today something grew
Inside of your mother...
That thing was you

YOU

YOU YOU YOU YOU

(later)

Happy Birthday
You're gonna die

(still later)

DIE DIE
DETHDAY
BIRTHDAY
DETHDAY
DIE DIE
DETHDAY
BIRTHDAY
DETHDAY

I have promised to sing this song to my sons every year on their birthday. Chaos made the comment that he would thankfully be home for only three more birthdays. I said, "Remember that scene in "City Slickers" where the mom calls her 40-something year old son every year at 5 a.m. on his birthday? That's me. Only I'm going to sing Dethday to you (YOU YOU YOU)." Mayhem made gurgly noises at that point and when I turned around to look (since we were in the car at the time and he was in the backseat) I saw that he was rolling from side to side, practically unable to breathe from laughing so hard at the thought of my calling him to croak into the phone "Happy Birthday, you're gonna die!" God, I love my kids. It's a good thing, I guess, because I have an eight hour drive with them. EIGHT hours of listening to shouting in German (Rammstein), shouting in Metal Dethspeak (Dethklok), electronic pig squeals (Mushroom Heads or Job For a Cowboy - one of them is known for their pig noises but I can't at this moment remember which - ask me on Monday), and crooning about nuclear holocaust (Greenday - Havoc's new CD). As my mother (who put up with The Dead Kennedys, Violent Femmes, and Depeche Mode from me) constantly reminds me, "Paybacks are hell."
Peace. (Not deth!!)

Silicone, It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

2008-01-14T16:54:00.000-05:00

Last week Bet got some of these. They are two shades of green (which becomes relevant in just a minute.) They're pretty cool. We've been making our own breakfast sandwiches at home with them. Mayhem asked what they were and how to clean them. I explained about poaching eggs and then he wanted to know what they were made of. I said, "Silicone." While I was telling him how to wash them out and where to put them away, he had his back to me. Then he spun around, holding the cups to his chest and said, "Is this what they make fake boobs out of? They're pretty weird." When I could stop laughing long enough, I said yes, silicone could be used to make breast implants but it wasn't quite the same as our egg poaching cups. "Good thing," he said. "Who would want to have green breasts?" The Princessa and Havoc were cracking up. The Princessa snorted and gave Mayhem a hard time about having a one track mind. (I think her having brothers is a pretty good inoculation against her wanting to date any time soon.) I had to reassure Havoc that women who got breast implants did NOT end up with green boobs. Ahhh, those teachable moments!
Peace.
PS - You may have noticed that I've postponed all those things I said I'd write about yesterday. My camera is currently languishing from lack of double A's and I'm just not in the mood for "deth" tonight as I'm worn out from talking to my children. Maybe tomorrow we can do deth over lunch.

Colts/Bolts

2008-01-13T17:15:00.000-05:00

Well crap!

Here A Post, There A Post

2008-01-13T12:08:00.001-05:00

Well I'm clearly not back in the posting routine. I've also been a little quiet because I haven't wanted to whine about Tapioca. It's left me with a bare few things to post.
Training? Going well in that it is going. Did I mention I'm not drinking soda or alcohol until after the race in September? It's a good move, but hard going sometimes.
Kids? They're awesome. Really great in fact. I love having a few weekends with them!
Football? Fantastic! The two games yesterday were some of the best football I've seen! (It helped that both the teams I was rooting for won! Sorry Uncouth Heathen.) The teams lay it on the line: hard hits, make or break improv on busted plays, and brilliant play calling. It's amazing to watch athletes totally screw up and have to come back from it. Ryan Grant turned the ball over TWICE in the first few minutes - and Seattle scored on his mistake both times, putting the Packers down 14 points. He came back from that and played exceptionally - scoring two touchdowns with over 200 yards rushing! I think about that kind of effort when I'm out running and I do something stupid (like trip over my shoelaces). Now if my Colts will just play well enough today to shut Shawne Merriman up. (I hate that he's a fellow Terp. His big mouth and foul attitude bug me. LT I like and I'm so sorry about Antonio Gates' injury - but Shawne Merriman needs to keep his big mouth closed.) And I'm sure you don't want to hear me whine about how icky it is to have to root for the Giants (whom I dislike) over the Cowboys (whom I despise) - but that's also part of the play off energy. Sometimes you get left with picking the lesser of two evils! Next topic!
Dogs? Oh my word, Tallulah Rockstar is almost as big as Wasabi!

Tomorrow I'll try to be interesting. I'll post pictures of the pups, tell about listening to my children's music with them (warning the word "deth" is involved), and possibly even get you to angst with me over an upcoming interview I have. Right now, though, it's time for football! Peace.

No Bail Money Necessary

2008-01-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! I know. I'm a week late. You know how we have all these traditions about starting the new year the way we want it to continue? We kiss our sweetie(s) at midnight and eat all kinds of "good luck" foods (like black eyed peas cooked with a dime?) etc. Weeeelllll - I sure hope my new year goes better than it started out. Here's the saga: I started 2008 bright and early (3 am Jan 1) puking my guts out. Sad, sad Lilymane. I almost never get really sick and I can't even think of a time where I've been the only one to get sick. If I do finally succumb to something, it's usually after everyone is better and back and school/work. This time I broke with tradition! I was the only one even remotely ill. (Thank heavens!) It is very much NOT FUN to be sick (vilely and horribly sick) when everyone else is home and having fun playing games together! (I mentioned the sad, sad Lilymane part, right?) I managed to get myself better just in time for Bet's birthday on Friday. Yay Bet! As part of her celebration, she and I went to the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh. Friday night we had a big party with 20 or so friends. In addition to celebrating Bet's time on this planet - we celebrated Linus' new job offer! Yay Linus! Then of course it was Wild Card Weekend. Yay NFL! (Although it was total suckitude as ALL FOUR of the teams I was cheering for managed to be eliminated. But it's the Playoffs. I love the energy. LOVE it! The football is intense. No one is holding back. The play calling is interesting - bold. You watch the players mature as athletes and sportsmen right before your eyes. There is nothing like the playoffs. Should I whine now that there are only seven games left - total?? No? Ok - I'll save it for later on in the week.) And if that weren't enough to keep me off line - we had Tapioca weirdness.

**I have to interrupt myself and say that I got a very funny voicemail from my new webfriend Jeff. He called to see if I was ok, if I'd fallen off the face of the earth and maybe needed help climbing back on, or if perhaps I'd been arrested for taking his advice and doing away with my ex. "If you need anything - like bail money - just give me a ring," he said. Don't I have the greatest friends? Now back to the story involving Tapioca, but not bail money (in case you were worried I was throwing in some foreshadowing.) **

Tapioca Report: My mother calls and says, "Have you talked to Mr. Tapioca Head recently? Do you know if he's....ok?" I told her I'd been out of commission but while I was on the phone with her I checked my cell and computer. No messages of any kind. Yay! I love not hearing from him. My mother on the other hand was now trying not to fret. I could hear her trying to figure out how to word what she was going to say. Maybe all mothers do this (egad, maybe I do it to my kids) but my mother has a certain way of pausing that lets me know to pay very close attention to what she says next. Sometimes she pauses because she has decided to leave some of the salient points out for various and sundry reasons (never good reasons as far as I'm concerned - so I listen for the gaps and grill her on them) and sometimes it's because she wants to make sure to say something disturbing in as calm a way as possible. What she said was that the police had been questioning Mr T's neighbors. (She has a customer whose daughter lives next door to my ex and was one of the ones questioned. Of course mom's customer had to rush right in and find out what was going on. My mother tries so very, very hard not to have the shop be Gossip Central but she is fighting a losing battle. Scientists should study the phenomenon. Small town rumorspeed is waaay faster than lightspeed.) So here's my poor mother trying to (on the fly) figure out how to make sure everything is ok by calling me without sounding like an alarmist or a gossip herself. At this point I need to reiterate that as much as I would wish (selfishly) for my ex to disappear - I would never in a million years want that for my boyos. Luckily (for my mother and my kids) at about this point in the conversation, Chaos got home and answered my casually posed question - yes they'd spoken to dad just last night. My mother actually said, "Phew." We still have no idea what it was all about, but at least the fucker is still around (pardon my French.) I guess Mr. Tapioca being missing is one plausible reason why the cops would be asking his neighbors about about "his comings and goings" and what kind of car he drives. In that scenario he would (probably) even be "innocent". Yeah, yeah. I know he hasn't been accused of anything (that I know of) (yet) and that even if he had been - innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and all that. Still. Can you think of any reason for those kinds of police questions that doesn't involve something...unpleasant?? I can't come up with anything. Of course I don't really know enough about how things work to come up with many ideas at all - unpleasant or otherwise. What I do know is (once again) my mother and I ended a conversation with her telling me she truly believes he suffered some kind of brain damage during that surgery (eight weeks before he left me) because he's just been so...weird ever since. Weird Tapioca - just what everyone needs to start the year, eh?

So recap:
Yay Bet! Yay Linus! Yay NFL (sort of)! Yay Friends! Yay having fun with my kids!
Boo intestinal disturbances and Mr. Tapioca!
The good far, far, far outweighs the bad. I think 2008 is going to be a fantastic year.
Peace!

Kids Back, Titans In, Everything Else Up And Down

2007-12-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

My boys are home and the Titans are in the Playoffs! Yay!!!!!

It's so hard to blog during the holidays. I have mixed feelings about everything and none of it seems like it would be particularly interesting to anyone but me. The ups have included a kick ass job interview for Linus (thank you, oh senders of good mojo), third anniversary with Bet (we don't count the first thirteen), and a re-commitment to the triathlon (please not to laugh at the girl who has not run for a month). The downs have included Mr. Tapioca telling Havoc there is no Santa (I hate him, I hate him, I hate him - errr - I hate Mr. Tapioca - not Santa. If I weren't so tired I'd have gone back and retyped to make the antecedent clear instead of explaining, but do you see it's almost midnight? Goes to show you how much I love my Titans that I'd stay up this late.) The inbetweens have included six novels in four days (gotta love avoidance behavior + Borders gift cards!!!) and dogs with new names: Sir Stinks-A-Lot and Princess Fart-So-Fresh. (They LOVE the homemade dog treats we made - bacon biscuits and "snickerpoodles" but man, it is NOT pleasant to have them sleep in the same room with us anymore!)

Shout out to LT - who broke her clavicle immediately after retiring! The surgery went well, the metal plates or rods (or spirals for all I know) are doing their job holding her arm on. I can't see a mere snapped bone holding her back for long - but send her healing mojo anyway, ok? (I mean, you were such the bomb diggety on the job interview mojo that you know I'm going to be hitting up from now on!)

I'm rejoicing and rejoicing and rejoicing that all my chickadees are home to roost! My Grandpa Jack used to have a line about how he couldn't sleep until he counted all the heads in their beds. When he counted and got to the right number, then he'd "hit the hayfeathers" himself and surrender to the "arms of Morpheus" and often as not wish us "bony snowshoes" on the way (which was his goofy way of saying buenas noches. He was an odd duck, my grandpa, but oh how I adored him!) And now I understand him that much better. Heads in the bed tally: 8 (of the human variety) and 2 (of the canine (and smelly) variety). Bony Snowshoes! And Peace.

PS - Havoc's FF team (the Gridiron Chefs) won their league (which is no surprise seeing as how he had Tom Brady and Randy Moss) but Bet and I won our league too (which was a huge shock)! I know you all were wondering how that all turned out. :D

Merry Merry

2007-12-25T12:41:00.000-05:00

Holiday Cheer to all!
Egg bake casserole, link sausages, sweet rolls and plain ones, fruit salad and mimosas - Christmas breakfast is all over except for the dishes. We've delivered our presents to the neighbors - bacon dog biscuits and "snickerpoodles" - nothing for the humans but our neighbors love us anyway. We've spoken to everyone except for the boys (Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc) - which is a big exception. I've left two messages. What else can I do? I'm trying not to get into a snit that I've gotten to talk to my nephew and my godson but not my own children. (See this - this is me not pitching a hissy fit. Look quickly because it may not last long.) The tree is sparkly and the dogs are chewing on their new toys. We're down to video games on the PS3 and naps on the couch. Overall, it's a sweet and cozy Christmas. I hope everyone else is tucked in celebrating with those they love most.
Peace.

Unpiercing

2007-12-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

I wonder. What would the opposite action of piercing be? Piercing is so decisive and immediate. It can be reclamation or destruction. Rite of passage or passing whim. Piercing is an act of invasion but also of willing acceptance. Vulnerability and toughness both come into play. It is intense. Whether it's disfiguring or decorative - it is intense.

Tattooing is completely different. It's more permanent for one thing. For another it takes longer in the moment but heals much more quickly afterwards. The intensity of acquiring a tattoo is drawn out, flattened. The experience of having a tattoo (once it's healed) is mostly visual.

Not that I mean to attach comparative value or to impose any hierarchy on body modification attempts. Whether you're into putting on or taking off weight, cinching your waist or wearing pointy shoes, painting your toenails or getting your eyeballs lasered, collecting ink or showing off metal spikes - to each his own, right? They are all valid attempts to change our bodies in certain ways for reasons that make sense to us (at the time).

I just wonder why I can't unpierce with the same satisfaction as I pierced. To change a tattoo - you have to get a cover-up tattoo or go have the ink painfully burned/sucked out of your skin. To take off weight you've put on or to put on weight you've taken off - you pretty much just reverse direction. But it's hard to unpierce. (In fact, my stupid spell check program keeps underlining it in red to inform me there is no such word, even.) Sure, you can take out the jewelry. You can wait for the hole to heal, but besides that not being what I mean by unpiercing is the fact that you can't count on that. Depending on how long you've been pierced (and where), it may or may not heal over. You might simply end up with an empty piercing. That is hardly the reversal of either process or result that I'm looking for. Maybe the issue is that I'm not seeking an about face. I knew going into the piercer's room that it was a permanent-ish line to cross.

No, I realize now as I write all this, what I'm looking for is a step as bold going out as I took going in. Piercing (for me) has an element of symbolic grief, a dash of decoration, a bit of intuitive fun and a liberal dose of "don't you fucking judge me" to it. Those are the ingredients that my piercings have in common - but they each have their own place on the spectrum too. I have a couple of piercings I'll never, ever even think about taking out. My earlobes - because I love earrings but also because not having pierced ears is really more of a statement than having them is in this day and age. My lip - because it signals my commitment to intentionality about what I say, what I eat (and about it staying down once it passes my lips), whom I kiss and also because unlike other piercings, it remains an intense experience after it's completely healed. The other piercings, though, cover the range from "Already took it out because what the HELL was I thinking when I got that pierced?!" to "Meh. Why bother taking it out? It's done, it's fine. It's no big deal." Somewhere in the middle of that range is "Hmmm. That was exactly what I needed to do at the time but not so much what works for me now. In fact, I need something completely different." It's that one in the middle (or rather two, since they're a matched set, if you get my drift) that I'm wondering about today. Where is the bold step? The next action that affirms the experience of the piercing but also affirms the validity of being done - done with the decoration and the sensitivity.

It is much the same way I didn't have a good ritual for the divorce. Yay - I wasn't married any more. This little (expensive) piece of paper said so. It even said that I'd been done being married ten days ago. The precise act of a judge saying (or stamping really) "I now pronounce your marriage sundered" had passed with no way for me to mark it in the moment. Discovering the embossed and official petition in the mail was anticlimactic. I could have thrown a party, but I didn't. (The rotting corpse of my marriage had sat around stinking up the place until I'd buried it long before the judge got around to engraving the tombstone. A memorial service after the fact might be just the thing for some folks but for me, it was too little too late.) Yet... tiny step by tiny step I began to feel whole in a new way. My ringless left hand stopped looking stripped and in need of covering up. Celebrating the daily achievements (like continuing to breathe in and out) helped. I may have even toasted my "single mother" status a time or two with a fabulous red wine - but on the whole, I had no definitive liturgy for "that was then and this is now". I leapt into that marriage much more decisively than I emerged from of it.

This is a much (much!) smaller curve in my life path - this impulse to unpierce. But it's got the same angle to the curve no matter the scale. I have no step, no act of demarcation to propel me utterly from "pierced to unpierced". The jewelry is out and sterilized. (Useless, but still pretty.) The sites are clean and healing even after four years of being pierced. (Bare, but still pretty - if I do say so myself.) Does this mean I am officially unpierced? This I wonder.

Maybe the answer is, I am if I want to be. The forest being easier to see when you're out of the trees and all that. Maybe the other answer is - who the hell cares, woman? No one* would know one way or the other if you didn't blab and blather all angsty to the internet about it. We all go around piercing and unpiercing ourselves (metaphorically) every day. You get to decide if you want it to be marked by the equivalent of the society pages or a few quiet words in front of the JOP** or somewhere in between. So, y'all (and especially St. Ann who was my confidante for the step in) - Guess what I got unpierced today?
Peace. And happy holidays!

*"No one" in this case meaning technically "only two people" who wouldn't have said a thing to anyone so the point is the same but I had to make a note of it because (on the off chance either of the two read this entry) I didn't want them to think I thought they were "no one's". Phew - cya'ing is torturous. And probably unnecessary. The word probably being the tricky part.

**Justice of the Peace. Isn't that the coolest job title ever? Sounds right up my alley - peace and justice all in one. Too bad, it's a mis-named side job usually performed by old, white men who spend their other days presiding over juvenile court and the like. Still, someday I'd like to meet a really cool JOP. If you know one, tell me!

Pre-Christmas Chaos

2007-12-20T17:09:00.001-05:00

Pistachios and peppermint, oranges and sugar cookies, exams and eggnog, wrapping paper and crackling fires - I am having a FANTASTIC time. I have pictures I want to post and ideas I want to share, but I only have 48 hours left with three of my sons in 2007. I'm going to go hang with them. I will leave you with two quick, Chaos-related tidbits:

Thing 1: Chaos is his very own person. He wore his brand new Christmas kilt to school today (with his converse shoes and his chains and a death metal t-shirt). He assured me he would ace his German exam because not only had he studied (a little), but he had been listening to Rammstein for an hour and a half. (We'll see how that plays out, shall we? At least he knew LAST WEEK what exams were on which days AND he had study guides days in advance. My longtime readers will appreciate what a huge switch that is. Previously, exam prep has been a tad slapdash.)

Thing 2: I was telling the family about a bumper sticker I saw that said:
If you were agoraphobic, you'd be home by now. (<--Which I thought was freaking hilarious, but then again, agoraphobia runs in my family.) Chaos laughed and then said, "But wait, why would you be home?" When I explained what agoraphobia was and how the name came from the Greek word for marketplace, he said, "Oh! I thought you said 'Al Gore-a-phobia' and I didn't understand why you'd be home unless it was to save energy." Bwahahaha.

Thing 3 (=Bonus Thing): At supper we were talking about the two house/apartment fires that have left two families in our school homeless the week before Christmas. We are grateful the people are ok because stuff can be replaced, but still. Replacing stuff - ALL your stuff - except the pajamas you were wearing when you crawled out the window - it's a daunting task. The kids were thinking of ways to help and what to give. Ideas were flying. Clothes, toys, toothpaste and deordorant, these folks need everything. Big and small, they've lost it.
Bet said, "We could give them the Steam-A-Wok we just won."
I said, "We could, except I gave it to Havoc."
Chaos said (with perfect timing) in an ah-ha tone, "We could give them Havoc!"
There was a pause and everyone burst out laughing. Havoc most of all (because he really does know his brothers won't give him away.)

But somehow I have to figure out how to let all three of them go away. I said it last year and I have to admit to not having evolved a bit in 12 months - I hate sharing my boys during the holidays. I am looking forward to getting them back at New Year's!
Peace.

It's Beginning To Smell A Lot Like Christmas

2007-12-17T07:40:00.000-05:00

This Saturday was Cookie Day at our house. Cookie Day is a tradition that we ~~stole from~~ share with some good friends. Everyone piles into one house and each person makes a few dozen of their favorite cookies. At the end, each person gets to take some of all the cookies that were made. It's cookie chaos, but gobs of fun. This year it was at our house. Our huge island was covered with cookbooks, flour, nuts and chocolates, extracts, rolling pins, and icing. We had three Kitchen Aid mixers mixing at once. Havoc was in the thick of things. There were a half dozen adults baking (including Bet's mom who came for the weekend). We also had a couple extra girls whose "help" consisted mostly of experimenting with leftover bits. Linus (after buying a Christmas tree and sending the boys to the attic for the decorations) pitched in here and there and everywhere. He loves to bake, but this time he was more of a troubleshooter. He helped Havoc change blades on the mixer; he pulled things out of ovens; he organized Qbert during the baking intermission, etc. I baked a little but then snuck away to put up most of the Christmas decorations by myself, unlike last year. It was ten hours of holiday cheer and socializing. By the end of the day I was happily exhausted and frankly, sick of talking to other people. I was very ready for a day of football.

And what a day of football it was! Sunday was well nigh perfect in Football land as far as I'm concerned. The Titans, the Colts, the Dolphins (and the Patriots for Havoc) all won. Icing on the cake? Dallas lost to the Eagles! (Sorry Jeff. Can you believe I have a friend who's a Cowboys fan?? Weird but true.)

I know some of my pals around the country are snowed in. I'm sending y'all some mojo for a day that's all hot chocolate and kids making snow angels and not like the day the weather channel is showing which is all cars buried in snow drifts and icy trees downing electric lines. Peace to the people!

In Which Lilymane Falls In Love

2007-12-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

Linus has been traveling this week. He went to Boston and then Detroit (by way of Chicago where his flight was canceled and his luggage took five hours longer than he did to get to Michigan) and now today he's on his way home from Detroit (by way of Dallas). Sounds like fun, no? Yeah, not to me either.

While he's been gone, I've fallen in love. With a hair salon. Crazy but true. Among my other loves, now I heart the Aveda Institute. I went in simply to buy Bet some Blue Malva shampoo. While I was paying, I noticed the huge room full of empty salon chairs/stations. The little guy at the desk (whose makeup was flawless) explained that Tuesdays through Saturdays they offered full salon services provided exclusively by supervised students. I must have looked as skeptical as I felt when he tried to get me to book an appointment. He launched into a fairly dramatic description of how wonderful and fab-u-lous it was, only all-natural products were used, they were the first to have an emphasis on the whole person, and that it was more than a haircut, it was an experience at Aveda. I tried to pay and scoot out the door, but the festive lout insisted on showing me the salon price list. Eeek! A haircut was half the price of the shampoo I'd just bought! He smirked and asked if mornings or afternoons were better for me. He promised me I'd love it.

I admit I had doubts and almost canceled. I thought about the only beauty school I'd ever seen before which was called something like Elite Beauty & Style Academy. Wedged between the Books A Million and the China Wok in a strip mall, there were always sad looking waifs in smocks tossing their cigarettes to go in and little old ladies with bad perms coming out. The store section of the Aveda Institute was a gazillion times cleaner and classier than that so how bad could the salon section be? I figured I didn't have much to lose. I hadn't had a haircut in nine months and I'm planning to shave my head after the triathlon anyway. If worse comes to worst, I could shave it now. That was my thinking.

I showed up at 9:25 for my 9:30 appointment. I was not the only one. In fact, I was one of about 38. I was totally unprepared for that many people. Yes, I'd seen all the empty chairs but I didn't think they'd each and every one be taken! It was a bit of a cattle call. You gave your name and signed a sheet of paper saying you knew they were students and then you lined up along the side wall and waited to have a stylist call your name. I stood flat against the wall marveling at how many people there were. I was a trifle bit intimidated about how hip the stylists appeared at first: lots of spiky hair gelled into interesting geometries, quite a few piercings and tattoos, all black outfits everywhere, and several gals with great boots. I watched a bit more and noticed that there were folks of all shapes and a few older students than at first glance. I saw that some of the stylists that I'd thought were sneering at first actually looked more nervous than anything else. Stylist after stylist came and called a name and took away the women along the wall one by one. More people kept coming in, though. I began to notice that some of the ones who'd just come in were starting to get called too. It felt like grade school, standing there waiting to be called, wondering what to do if I didn't get called, trying to decide how long I should wait before I said anything. Feeling uncertain about the process and overwhelmed by the noise, I'd just started to inch towards the door to escape when a girl with a lovely smile waded through the crowd calling my name. She was maybe all of nineteen but she radiated kindness. I answered and she took me back to her station, which turned out to be in a room I hadn't noticed off to the side. It was MUCH quieter. Her name was Megan. She offered me tea (organic peppermint and licorice). She talked with me about what I wanted done with my hair. She got her supervisor. She told her supervisor what I wanted, her supervisor checked it with me and then advised her on how to go about it. Then she walked me back to the even quieter shampoo room where I got to choose whether to sit or to lie down while having my hair washed. What a fantastic thing, to get to lie down while having your hair washed! I highly recommend it. Megan washed my hair (lather, rinse, repeat!) and gave me a mini-facial (toner, moisturizer, short massage, steamy towel). Then we went back to her station where she gave me a stress reducing treatment (a short neck and shoulder massage). Then she cut my hair (exactly the way I wanted it) and styled it (way better than I can do myself). All of this pampering for the low, low price of $19. And they don't let you tip the students. It was nineteen bucks total. I'm used to paying upwards of $60 for about a tenth of the attention. I mentioned I heart the Aveda Institute, didn't I? It was quite literally my favorite haircut ever. I'm thinking of going back every two weeks. Haircuts: cheaper and more fun than therapy! Be warned, if you ever come visit me, I will give you a whirlwind tour of UNC and Duke and a day long saunter through Aveda. Peace.

Three Near Postings And A Virus

2007-12-12T13:06:00.000-05:00

-I had started a post (that I may or may not finish and which I may or may not publish) about racism. (Hey, it might not be lighthearted, but it's better than bitching about my ex, eh?)

-Speaking of the Tapioca tide - thank you for your support and offers to stomp. It makes me wonder if I might not be quite as nice as I wish I were that those offers make me happy (even though I would never ever wish him actual harm.) On that note I started a post on the seasonal theme of naughty vs. nice. I won't finish it because mostly it ended up with me getting coal in my stocking this year. Maybe next year, I can get past wanting to smack the shit out of several key icky people.

-I will likely finish my post about Havoc wrestling again because it involves some complicated geography and interesting smells - but I can't do it today. I have Havoc home from school with a stomach thing. If you need me, I'll be fetching ginger ale and saltines to a wan little boy snuggled on the couch with Tallulah Rockstar. They're watching Harry Potter and trying not to puke.

-Hope your day has more finished posts and less vomit than mine! Peace.

I Need Some Cute Waders

2007-12-10T12:03:00.000-05:00

I wish they made these in my size, because then maybe I wouldn't mind wading through the tapioca muck as much. I found out from my ex (= Mr. Tapioca Head) that he will be changing jobs AGAIN in about a week. "He really hates to do this" to me, but that means the insurance will change too, come Jan 1. For those of you keeping score at home, that makes the third insurance plan SINCE JULY and either the 7th or 8th job change since the divorce 6 years ago. (Linus insists I've forgotten two jobs so that it's really the 9th or 10th change, but no matter how you look at it, that's not what I'd call a pattern of stability.) Mr. Tapioca head went on to name the company he'd be working for and said he was planning on being with this one for a long time. He told me that they have one of the lowest layoff rates in the country. I won't name the company, but you'd know it. And, like me, you would probably know their reputation of having a ridiculously high turnover due to burn out. Now, I've never worked for them. I hope what "everybody" says is totally wrong. I hope the rumors of the long hours, back biting, and political wrangling are all false. I am not going to waste my time ferreting out statistics to prove or disprove the word on the street. What I am going to do is wonder out loud (and to my attorney) how the hell this man thinks that taking a "high powered job" (<--his words to me as he was patting himself on the back for advancing from being a manager to being a manager of managers) is going to give him any time to be with his kids if he (God forbid!) should win custody. Bleck.

I'm not even going to tell you about the furious email he sent me because he heard that I'd said something about Mayhem being ADD. (I will however let you know that he said something bulled him over when I'm pretty sure he meant "bowled" him over. We were married almost twelve years and I had NO IDEA he was such a moron. Typos are one thing, but general dumb-assed-ness is another.)

He sent me an email this morning saying he was DONE with me. All communication (except about kid logistics) would be through our attorneys. Yay!!! I can stop dreading my email.

Then five minutes later he sent me an email which a) had nothing to do with the kids and b) included the sentiment that my email responses were "not welcomed" by him. Ahhh, I should have know. Business as usual then. I am so sick of him! Aren't you? My to do list for tomorrow says "Find something else to blog about!"

Peace.

From The Mixed Up Files Of Ms. Lily E. Maniac

2007-12-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

I have just spent an hour on the phone with a television news reporter (anchor) from my hometown. Last week when I posted about Havoc's turning nine, what that meant to me and how it was connected with the traumatic disappearance and murder of my childhood friend, I linked to a story about a new suspect they had in the case. There have been stories every few years for the last few decades - new evidence, new speculations on old information, and recently new techniques to apply to old evidence. This week the case was broken - or maybe it's still breaking. It hits me on so many levels that I haven't been able to break off bite size pieces to blog about. The first level is gratitude to have some closure and to take some comfort that this guy has been in jail for a majority of the intervening decades. I feel vindicated on behalf of our neighborhood and particularly on behalf of the young boys that were persecuted unjustly in the quest to solve Marcia's case. I have extremely mixed emotions with regards to the police and with regard to myself as a writer. I have been working (off and on in between all the family drama) with a writer (a crime blogger) on a book project about this very case. We've been working to tell the story from the center of the ripples on out. How this one little girl's life and disappearance affected the neighborhood, the city, the region. How it brought people together and blew things apart at the same. I have written so much about this personally in order to settle it enough that I could write professionally the story I feel needs to be written. It's unsettling in the very best way to have the whole project go sideways. So much of the challenge has been to write and ask about something that has remained a disturbing mystery. And now, there is an expectation that it will not be a mystery for very much longer.

I want to talk and I don't want to talk. I want to say more of what is swirling around in my head and heart. I also don't want to link back or say specific things that could be searched and have my ex find randomly my site. I feel wide open to the healing process that comes with the new revelations. I feel drawn to add my voice to tell the part of the story that is mine to tell. I feel protective of my children and my life. I want to make peace with all the many layers. I feel rambly and incoherent. The news anchor was fantastic: warm, personal, easy to talk to, and insightful. I look forward to speaking with her again. I feel relieved, grateful, trustful (which is soooo unexpected for me where the media is concerned), angry, ambivalent, and drained.

And I have yet to open the ominous letter from my attorney that has been sitting on my desk for two days. Bleck. It is too cold to run. I don't have a pool or gym membership. I don't have a way to work my physical being into a state that will help absorb and process such big chunks of emotional/intellectual turmoil. Contemplative silence is the only other tool I can think of for this much churn. I don't know how to manage it, but I need to sit today. I will sit today. My head might explode otherwise. We don't want that now, do we? So, dear web friends, I will be sitting when I normally visit and comment. I won't be thinking of you because I'll be trying not to think of anything (which is a tall order for my buzzing brain), but I will be back as soon as I can. Peace!

Scary Items At The Pharmacy

2007-12-06T16:19:00.000-05:00

Remind me never to wait for a prescription again. The pharmacist told me it would only be about five minutes. And it would have been, had the computer not frozen in the middle of processing one of the prescriptions. Natch. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the drug store is not like the grocery store. The stuff by the checkout counter isn't candy and People magazine - it's Luden's cough drops and diabetes pamphlets. It didn't take me long to be bored enough to wander further afield. There is some powerfully creepy stuff on sale at down at the Eckerd's.

Did you know they even made "at home" drug test kits?! I had no idea. There were several different kinds: for cocaine, marijuana, and one for meth. They were out of the meth one, which makes me worry a bit about my neighborhood. The boxes that were on the shelves were cheery and cheesy to the point I expected to see "As Seen On TV!" in a bubble on a side panel. What were the marketing people going for with that? It was mighty peppy. I was going to post a link so you could see for yourself, but I got distracted when I found this site. Holy cow! Test yourself for ten drugs at once? Dude, if you've got the possibility of having ten illegal substances in your body at once, you maybe have more to worry about than testing in the privacy and comfort of your own home. I would think that at that point it would be a choice between rehab or the morgue. Worse even than that site was this one. Please god, I do NOT want to need that site. Ever.

But back to what else I discovered in the store and not on the web. I thought I'd be safer if I got away from the drug tests and personal lubricants, so I browsed the diet and weight loss aisle. They were having a huge sale on some fat blocking pill. The front of the package said that for every 5 lbs. of normal paced weight loss, studies showed that folks on this supplement lost 2-3 additional pounds. Huh. I read the back wondering exactly how that worked. I still can't tell you how it worked because I got freaked out by the warning "this product may cause anal leakage and gas emission with oily residue." Er, no thank you.

I tried to concentrate on relatively normal things like fake logs that burned the creosote out of your chimney but it was hard. Right next to that display was a row of plastic Santas that blurted out holiday greetings when I got too close. I am not a fan of inanimate objects talking to me. My kids would laugh if they'd seen me jump and nearly smack the crap out of a boxed holiday decoration. I did find some laundry detergent on super sale but even 50% off is not enough compensation for having to reach past packages of vaginal yeast suppositories or adult diapers claiming to be twice as absorbent for extended outings. I recognize how lucky we are to have products to treat such ghastly discomforts, but egad! Who has the stomach to face all that? Not me.

I was terribly glad when the computer system came back up. Almost glad enough not to curse Mr. Tapioca Head when the clerk tells me (on December 6th) that the new insurance he's gotten for the boys has a $200 annual Rx deductible. Almost, but not quite.
Peace.

My New Favorite Bumper Sticker

2007-12-05T12:55:00.000-05:00

This one is for my mom - who despite her best intentions, is almost never on time. It says:

I'm always late. My ancestors arrived on the Juneflower.

What A Day Dad Had

2007-12-04T13:53:00.000-05:00

Linus story #1 -
Linus has a complicated job situation. The past year has seen flux, corporate takeover drama, RIF's, political wrangling complicated by cross cultural misunderstandings and being told by the company didn't need his services followed by "oops - we realized we can't run this technology you built without you". It is so hard for Linus because he's put his heart into this company. He believes in the product so much that he took a huge (30k!!) pay cut in order to work 60 hour weeks to help launch the company. (Do not ask me how we managed to eat that first year, I still can't believe we pulled it off.) He has tried to focus on his responsibilities in an ever-changing landscape of expectations and job titles. Linus is good at staying away from the emotions and politics of the situation as much as possible. Me? Not so much. Particularly the emotional part. I am bewildered and frustrated with his boss' waffling and ill considered policies that keep undermining Linus' work. I don't know how he can keep working in an environment with a boss who is actively trying to foul him up to protect her turf. He tells me not to get so riled up, it's business, and he'll just keep doing the best he can as long as he can.

Then he gets an email yesterday from his boss about the business trip they are taking together today. She said she had already booked herself a hotel room with a king size bed and a couch "settee" and (presumably in an effort to economize?) that they should stay in the same room. WHAT? and NO! (And even "Hell no!") What brand of crack do you think this woman is smoking? I wigged out. I know it can't be the come on it sounds like it could be. As in that's just not even a possibility. In some ways, it would make more sense and be easier to deal with if it were. I'm not some naive thing in denial about her man's wandering ways. It's just that this is so bizarre. I promise you that if he wanted to, Linus could stray and I wouldn't find out. He certainly wouldn't be dumb enough to be freaking out loudly in the other room to the point that I rush in and demand to know what's wrong. The second point being that if he were to stray, surely (heaven help us) he would have waaay better taste than to choose her. The third point being, if it is a come on, on her part, how stupid does she have to be to commit it to writing? And why hit on a guy she knows can barely tolerate her when she's 8,000 miles away? Which brings us right back to what on earth can she be thinking?

My mind ran around in circles. Is she trying to set him up for some crazy sexual harassment suit? He said that was incredibly unlikely. I am out of explanations. I realize that dealing with a non-US mindset makes some things hard to translate - but this woman is English. Not only that, but can anyone begin to believe that this is normal business practice anywhere? The words inappropriate, unprofessional, strange, and uncomfortable race through my brain. How did a woman with such horrible boundaries and an inability to follow rock bottom, basic business protocols get put in charge of anything? I mean, who needs to be told male employees should not being pressured by their female bosses to overnight in one room together to save the company money?! Linus is going to tell her that he most definitely requires separate hotel rooms. He said he will be polite but firmer this time and hope the issue ends there. This time?! I found out that - horrifyingly - it is not the first time she has made this suggestion. Linus thought he'd made it clear before - because, holy crap - who but a complete moron would have to be told not only once but TWICE how wrong this suggestion is?! When asked why he didn't tell me about the other time, he said it was only one of many stunningly odd suggestions/policies/ideas this woman brought up and not even the worst in his book. Mostly because he didn't have to go along with it they way he had to swallow his criticisms and go along with some of her other decisions. He said he'd be CRYSTAL clear in his response and consider obtaining legal advice if it happened again. I (intolerant of corporate games to begin with and waaaay past my ability to be polite/professional to a creepoid like her) would probably have written an email response back that would have gotten me fired. I guess it's a good thing Linus works for her and not me. (Although - hey, put some mojo out there for fantastic job offers to come flying in the door for him. I admire his commitment to the shareholders and to a product that saves lives, but enough is enough, don't you think?! It would not hurt my feelings for him to change jobs.)

Linus Story #2 -
Linus let his hair get a little long over the Thanksgiving holiday, when he wasn't traveling and meeting with clients. He went and got it cut yesterday, very short - very professional. (Side benefit being, he'd look great at those job interviews you're sending his way!) The kids were not so appreciative of his efforts. When he came home The Ninja Princessa yelped, "But you look so old now!" and Havoc asked (sincerely), "Why did you have them shave a circle on the back of your head?" Eeep. Poor Linus. He stuck his bottom lip out looking for sympathy. I wish I could have shown the sympathy I feel, but I was laughing too hard.

This man needs a break. He's promised to try to relax with a good book in his hotel room (alone!) tonight. I'm thinking we might bake him some chocolatey yumminess for when he gets home. Shhhh. Don't tell him.
Peace.

Why God Invented Uncles

2007-12-03T09:57:00.001-05:00

As a Christmas surprise, Unky Dunky took Chaos to an all-ages death rock, goth billy, metal something or other show at a local (and supposedly very hip ) venue. I immediately feel the need to explain that Chaos not only had done all of his regular homework, but had spent four hours at a friend's on Saturday working on a project that isn't due until after the holidays, AND that I'd made him take a nap before going to a late concert on a school night. (Can you tell how defensive I feel about every parenting decision I make? Gah. The court stuff is wearing me OUT!)

Chaos had a fantastic time. "It was pretty awesome," he said this morning in the car. He told me all about what I first thought were the Coughing Cats but turned out to be the Koffin Kats. There were also the Necrosomethingorothers and the Chop Tops (Pops? Cops? Hops? - I don't know.) It was great to hear all about it even if I didn't quite get all of the names. I love how much my fifteen year talks to me, though if he makes me crazy when he says things like, "There was this drummer who spun his drumstick around and hit the syllable over and over." Syllable? "You mean cymbal?" "Yeah, you know." (I do know, but why oh why doesn't he know? Why does he say things like this? He reads like a fiend and does exceptionally well on standardized tests but I can't help wondering if he has some bizarre language disease.)

Chaos then said, "I'm pissed about my bandana though." ?? He launched into details about how the new Koffin Kats bandana Duncan had gotten him was stiff. Chaos wanted it to look worn, not brand new, so he'd rinsed it and hung it to dry. This morning it was still too starched feeling so he rinsed it again and threw it in the dryer. I offered to wash it in the machine for him this morning. Silly mama. The point is to get to show it off at school today, of course. I got home from dropping him off and got a call from Duncan. I thanked him again for being a fantastic uncle. We are lucky to have such a wonderful village. What do people without hip uncles do? I am glad my kids get to do cool things in safe ways. Dunc said, "No problem. Loved it. By the way, how's his eye?" ?? "I was worried at first he wasn't having a good time because he was just standing there, but then he asked me if you had to be 18 to mosh. His face lit up and he jumped right in when I told him you didn't have to be. He got elbowed and we thought he might have a shiner. Is it bad?" Gack. Ok - so make that relatively safe ways. Chaos didn't have a black eye (that I saw). I'm sure he wished he did. I've thought about the scrapbook page I could make if I were that kind of mom: My Child's First Mosh Pit. I might do it anyway, because we haven't added anything to his Rehearsal Dinner Box in a while.
Peace.

The Birthday Parties You Remember

2007-12-02T12:37:00.001-05:00

Havoc and Linus spent the better part of Saturday afternoon getting the pizza fixings ready for the party: grocery shopping for fresh ingredients; measuring, mixing, and kneading the homemade dough, etc. It was a LOT of work. Havoc said, "If I bake bread a lot, I won't have to work out at a gym." I helped chop and display. I also helped by preheating the ovens just before the party got started. The boys were arriving - some of the parents stayed to chat and help (which was WONDERFUL, AMAZING, and PERFECT - sorry to scream at you but it was so much fun to have new adults to talk to!!) About 15 minutes after the first guest arrived and just before the last three showed up, Linus came into the kitchen and yelped, "Who turned on the oven?!! Oh no!" Guess where all that homemade pizza dough had been put to rise? We had 10 nine-year old boys, six other kids, four newly met parents, our favorite in-town Uncle, dozens of ramekins of individual pizza toppings - and a GIANT bowl of BAKED bread, but no pizza dough, no longer. All my fault! I thought I'd ruined Havoc's party. Havoc was a wee bit shocked when he saw singed towel and the huge bread creature on the counter. He gave me a look and a hug to say it was ok, but he couldn't hide that he was bummed. I really felt like crying. Good thing all those other adults were around. They got creative. "When life hands you unexpected bread bowls, make garlic butter!" they said. Havoc jumped right in on the new direction of things. He gave me another hug and said it would be all right and maybe even better this way. Spices. He LOVES to add spices to things. He and Unky Dunky started went out to cut fresh rosemary, one of the parents chopped garlic - and voila! An appetizer to feed the children while Bet ran to the store for pre-made dough. It was a good thing we thought of something to tide them over, because they were hungry and smelled yummier than little boys usually do (having tromped around the herb garden together) - and I was a tad bit concerned they would start gnawing on each other.

It ended up being a GREAT party. Wine for the adults, crazy pizzas and milkshakes for the kids and a little Ratatouille on in the background. Havoc's pals know him well and got him fantastic presents. He got this cookbook, and a stack of silicone, red, mini bundt cake forms, and bionicles and legos, and mancala, and a wooden dragon to build. What did I tell you? His friends have him pegged. I enjoyed meeting the other parents; I thought the boys were great - even the three who were on their third birthday party for the day by the time they got to us were sweet in their rambunctiousness. Now it's time for the Christmas decorations to come out. (We make sure neither to let Christmas take over Havoc's day nor to let it linger into Bet's in January.) It's sixty degrees here today which makes it a bit harder to get into the holiday spirit, but I am NOT complaining. I love it. I'm going to run in the sun while I still can and send good vibes to my pals in the Northeast who are wading through snow. Peace.

First Saturday In December

2007-12-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

And you know what that means!! Go Navy!!!

Yay Australia!

2007-12-01T07:55:00.000-05:00

I meant to post about this the other day and got too caught up in my own crapola. I am THRILLED for Australia. I wish I could pull Australia just a little bit closer and rub shoulders with her in the hope that whatever fever of sanity her electorate caught is contagious. Howard lost because he was seen as old and out of touch with the rest of the world. I do not discount the many positive things Howard has done during his long tenure, but it's like he missed the part where his people are concerned about the climate change and the war he's supported, and that cost him. The environment was a huge election issue and the younger generation voted vocally to support a prime minister who would ratify the Kyoto protocol. I am impressed by Australia's forward-thinking move. Gee, where can I get me some of that? Peace.

What Nine Means To Me

2007-11-30T23:49:00.000-05:00

My baby turned nine today. Nine. Is it a big deal to other parents? It took me a while today to remember exactly why nine jars me so - why my vision of my child flickers between baby and big kid. It took me a while because it's a gut thing, a sub-terranean thing - this business of what it means to be nine. The first nine year old I ever remember knowing was a strangely wise "big kid" - cool by virtue of her advanced years. In our small troop of neighborhood girls, she was just enough older that if she had pretended not to know us at school, we wouldn't have blamed her a bit. But she never did blow us off. She wasn't like that. She was both too kind and too popular to give in to the schoolyard caste system. She was unquestionably the girl boss in our neighborhood games - the one who came up with better poses for "Swinging Statues"; the one who told us Brownies the spooky Girl Scout campfire stories; the one who knew when to sass the boys back and when to make peace so they'd show us the bird eggs they'd found. I thought her very grown up. In fact, she was so grown up in my mind's eye, that it wasn't until I was in my twenties and saw her fourth grade school picture again after so many years that I realized what a baby she had been at the time. I wept. Big, fat, hot tears splashed onto the ducky fuzzed head of my newborn as I stared at her picture. In that, admittedly post-partum hazed moment, it struck me - literally STRUCK me - that she'd been a baby, someone's baby on the awful, February day she disappeared. I'd known her parents, so my brain must have realized at some point that she was someone's child, but it was my heart - my wide open, new mom heart - that broke all over again.
I had double vision: the confident, capable, compassionate big kid I remember overlaid by the image everyone else had always seen of a vulnerable, achingly innocent, and forever nine-year old girl. Nine. Never ten.

There are some images engraved in my mind that have not changed from that day. These photographs - dark and stark - match my memory exactly. They evoke the hot smells of cigarettes and coffee and the voices of the dozens of tired volunteer searchers - all carried on the cold wind. I can hear the ragged rustle of the bushes outside of my window as the German shepherds lunge through our hedges and comb our yard under the moonlight. I can feel the hexagonal pattern of the fabric on the back seat of our car - a pattern that I traced with my fingers over and over while we waited to be waved through the police cordon to get to our house. This is a view of my neighborhood in 1975:
Copeland Drive, in front of the home of Marcia Trimble, is crowded with police cars, Civil Defense vehicles and other cars as Middle Tennessee joins forces to search for the missing nine year-old. (Gerald Holly / The Tennessean) 2/28/1975

Tom McGinn, a Philadelphia dog trainer, unloads two of his German shepherds with the help of Metro Youth Guidance Officer Howard Bassham, while Sgt. Sherman Nickens, right, watch. (J.T. Phillips / The Tennessean) 3/4/1975

It's been helpful for me to dredge up these images, to write, to acknowledge the links. The formless dread I've been feeling is no longer so formless. I am facing a threat to my family - even if it is "only" a custody challenge and it resonates back in spiraling and layering ways with early trauma, fear, and the first loss I ever faced. A loss that I shared with my neighborhood, my city, and my era.

Now that I have connected some dots - it makes sense that the bare trees, the fading light, the cold wind, and the barking dogs have felt ominous. The pieces are settling. I am settling. My old grief is very much a part of where I come from. My fear of future grief and loss on any scale relating to my children is understandable. Strangely, connecting the two has melted the icy panic inside of me. Connecting the dots of experience enables me to connect to the healing and growth I've gained too. Someday maybe I'll detail how and why Marcia's faith impacted mine. Maybe someday I'll own up to exactly how much time I spent (and how much mayonaise and lemon juice I used) trying to get my hair to look just like hers. Tonight, though, I'm going to go sneak a peek at my sleeping big boy/little kid. Tonight I'm going to breathe deeply. I'm going to trust the process - not necessarily the court process or the police process or even the family process - but the bigger, wider, more cosmic process. Strangely I find that tonight, after all this, I can trust that it really will be ok. No matter what. Peace.

**Edited to add - here is the link for the first story breaking on this case. It is a pivotal story for me personally - and a huge story for Nashville then and now. Peace.

Awry

2007-11-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

I so wanted to have a kick ass post for the last day of NaBlo! Instead, pretty much all I can dish up is crap with a side order of stress. Weeellll - that's not completely accurate. Today is Havoc's birthday. That's fun. My "baby" is nine! I am working hard today to concentrate on him - his excitement, his sweetness, his enthusiasm. I want to be fully present to his nine-ness without the tinge of sadness that seeps from the past and the worry that casts shadows on the future. It's taking some work not to let my thoughts spiral back to the day Havoc was born. Towards the context that involved my ex. Towards the mixed up way things were when I was desperately trying to hope and pretend away my concerns. I can see myself that day: deliriously in love with my new baby, delighted with my sons who were now big brothers, joyful that my mother was so close and helpful, and lonely/sad/worried about Mr. Tapioca leaving us in the hospital because he was sick and needed to get enough rest to be able to go back to work. I want to shout to my then-self from this point in time and say, "Yes - you're right - those little red flags are not your imagining! Brace yourself! It'll be a little better for a little while and then it's going to suck glass shards! But you and your babies will be ok!"

But I can't shout back to myself. I also can't hear my future self shouting back to me today. I wish I could! I would love to hear that it's going to be rough going for a bit, but ultimately ok. I want that to be the message I would hear if I could. But what if the message is - "Hey - those looming depositions, the lying petitions, and the rest of the soulless court stuff? It is going to shred you and your family! Enjoy what peace drippings you can muster right now, because it's only going to get worse!" Gaaak. Fears, hopes, faith and rage. Nausea. I can't navigate that today. I can't make it go away - or be funny. (I wish I could make it funny! If Linsey can make a post that was both touching and hilarious about the love of her life being diagnosed with celiac disease - why can't I pull an iota of wry humor out of the absurdity that is this pending court case? NOT to trivialize what is so hurtful but to be able to enter into it fully enough to get past the paralyzing aspects. I want to hold up the ridiculous parts in affirmation of the entirety because being able to do so would mean my faith that it will be "ok" was solid. Can't do it today. Not by a long shot.)

No. Here's what I can do. Even if it's it's boring to write about. Today I can go to Havoc's classroom to see their international project presentations. I can admire his "German" chocolate brownies (even if I can't eat them because coconut give me hives.) I can pick up a few more birthday gifts from the Kitchenworks store for the budding chef. I can squeeze him and get us ready for tomorrow's houseful of nine year olds. I can scream and rage "Mr. Tapioca Head is a pathetic, empty liar no matter what happens in court!" in my head all the while smiling at and being pleasant to everyone. (<--I'm Southern like that.) Today I can be a flawed, angry, loving, and not-funny mom. Tomorrow I might could be something else. (<--That's the best cliffhanger I can manage. It translates to "Y'all come back, now. Ya hear?")
Peace.

In Which Mayhem Is A Weirdo (I Mean Boy-o)

2007-11-29T10:18:00.000-05:00

Last night the kids were maniacally jolly as they cleaned up after supper. They were ricocheting around the kitchen, scrubbing and pinging off of each other. It was NOT quiet but they were operating just under the reprimand threshold. They were silly and sarcastic with each other - all five of them dishing back what they were served - all the while loading dishes, wiping counters, and sweeping floors. The three adults (and the two dogs) retreated to the library which is connected to the kitchen by an open doorway as well as a window-like pass-thru above the sink. In short, we could hear everything but couldn't be seen. Often this is an ideal set up. Every once in a while, it means the adults miss a key element to a situation.

As the kids finished up their chores they trickled into the library one by one. Mayhem, being in charge of trash and recycling, was one of the last to finish. The normal rattling and rustling sounds I heard from the kitchen in no way prepared me for Mayhem's appearance. He walked through the library with trash bags in hand and his (abundant) hair sticking straight up off the top of his head. We are talking a 10-inch long, crazy, white boy 'fro. There was a moment of utter silence, then everybody gabbled at once. "What happened?" "What did you do?" "Your hair!"

Mayhem's face was bright red and his voice choked as he said something about needing to remember to be careful around wall sockets - but he could not maintain when he saw my panicked face. He burst out laughing. He hadn't gotten even partway electrocuted. He had made his bushy hair stand on end by rubbing a trash bag on his head*. Ha ha ha. Not only did he get laughs for looking ridiculous but he scored on mom. The kids think "getting" me like that is absolutely hilarious. Last night they thought it was so funny that it spurred them to reminisce about past successes in pushing the mama juuuuust far enough. They brought up the time Chaos gave Mayhem a swirlie. That memorable incident happened on a day they were being weird and push, push, pushing me. They weren't being "bad" or breaking any actual rules but they had hovered and interrupted, been rambunctious and loud. Some days using every mama tool in my kit just barely covers it, you know? The kids know to a scarily exact degree how hesitant I am to waste my mama credit on minor infractions. They know this, in large part, because they have repeatedly conducted experiments to find out precisely where the line is between pranks that will "only" earn them extra chores and behavior which will result in restriction (or worse). Bet couldn't believe the swirlie. She said to them, "I can't believe y'all did that! What if she hadn't laughed?!" and she made a mock serious "oooooh" face to indicate the trouble they would have been in. Chaos said, "We'd already had to do all our laundry, pick up our rooms, clean the kitchen ("And the bathroom," reminded the Princessa), and walk around the block!" ("Yeah, twice," added Mayhem.) "What else could she have made us do? It was a joke and we had nothing to lose!" Bet mouthed to me across the room, "What's he going to do? Sue you?" Spot on! That day I had played all of my (minor suit) cards and the kids had totally called my "bluff", winning the hand. Although the look on their faces last spring and the look on Mayhem's face last night, when for a split second they had to wonder, "Oh crap, what if this joke is too far?" tells me that we're still squarely in the midst of healthy limit testing and I still (for a few more short years) do hold the trump cards.
Peace.

*You may think - as did I - that rubbing a plastic bag on one's head is a strange and random thing to do (especially when one has been told all one's life by one's worry wart mom not to put plastic bags over one's head). I asked him why. Was he trying to make his hair stick up? Did he know that would happen? And why a garbage bag? His answer, "I had no idea what would happen. That's why I did it, mom. To find out. It's called an experiment." Ahhh. You know, even as a middle schooler, I did NOT look at things and wonder what would happen if I hit them with a hammer, put them in the microwave, or rubbed them on the top of my head. Linus says that's because I'm not a boy. You think?