It Is SUCH A Monday

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?

Stragglers

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?

Loser

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.

One Week Into Lent And I've Blown It

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.

Unpiercing

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!

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

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!

Jackpot

I LOVE playing the lottery. I know, I know - tax on the poor, the evils of gambling, the curse of sudden wealth syndrome, yada, yada, yada. Still. I love to play. It feels like play. I'm a lucky person in general and it's fun - so why not. It's exciting to pick numbers and dream about what I would do if we won. I don't HAVE to play. I don't buy a ticket every week, but I probably buy one a month. I certainly don't use the lottery as my retirement planning tool or spend money I don't have. I do, however, enjoy it as a big, wild, "what if". If I had to justify it, I could point out that I spend significantly less on the lottery than the average American spends at Starbucks. A chai latte gives me a tummy ache but a lottery ticket gives me a license to dream. This flimsy piece of paper may not be an exotic guilty pleasure, but it's mine and I'm savoring it. For a few more hours anyway. Until I make myself go to the Powerball website. Between now and then, I'll just hang out here with Schrodinger's cat and dream a little dream.

What about you? Lottery - love it or hate it?
Peace.

High Tapioca Tide

Can't blog today. Too pissed off with my ex. I tried venting but I had to erase the whole thing. Some days it helps to put it all out there and some days it makes me unbearably sad and angry to have his absurdity all laid out.

Maybe after we do our ten set run today (eeek!), my brain will be able to focus on something blogworthy.

Peace.

**Or maybe not. School nurse just called - Mayhem is sick. On a Monday morning. After a weekend with dad. Again. Why doesn't the man believe me that junk food makes Mayhem ill?? How can Mr. Tapioca not understand?? I realize that if he's here, they have to eat "out" - but here in the land of organic everything it is NOT HARD to get good, whole foods even "out". Grrrrr.

**Updated to add: Havoc made it through school but was too sick to walk home and called the mom taxi. Same thing - upset stomach and no fever. Now I'm praying it was just an overdose of junk food and a lack of sleep. I do NOT want to be dealing with an actual stomach virus. :( Need I mention that on top of worrying about how my babies feel - I do not want to be dealing with the lack of health insurance issue?! Good mojo, people - send us some good mojo please!

On Parties And Parenting

We had a fantastic housewarming party last Saturday. Our dear friends C is for Coffee, Salsa Man and their two kids made the drive out. Bet's mom and Karl (a troll boy) also came for the weekend (uh, separately - in case that wasn't apparent. It would be terribly odd to think of them showing up together. Karl is 6 ft 8?9?11?! - a red headed, former rugby-playing giant of a (bisexual) man and Louise is a 5'2" smart yet scrappy, gum chewing grandma also known as Ya-Ya.) Anyway, I forget how many people we'd invited to the party, but I think about 75 showed up. Food, friends, crazy loud conversation (especially from the corner of our kitchen now known as Mojito Bend) all warmed the house. Havoc had chosen to make a special appetizer for the party. He'd listed out all the ingredients the week before, made most of it the night before, and had it perfectly displayed at the head of the food table the day of. I wish I could show you a picture of his scrumptious cheddar cheese, white wine, pecan encrusted cheese ball - but I didn't take a picture of it before the party. And it was gone before I knew it. I did have C is for Coffee take a picture of the plate - scraped bare with a few forlorn crackers abandoned and adrift. Havoc was pretty darn proud of that empty plate! I personally loved that our closest friends helped us hang shelves and art work mere hours before the party. Their touch, their mark, their laughter - it's still here even though they had to leave. I think that's what a house warming is all about. (That, and Dude, if you ever need some mums, have a housewarming party! Seriously, we have more mums now than we know what to do with and they're gorgeous!)

The rest of this week has been by turns fabulous and irritating. Parenting teens is more of an emotional roller coaster than I thought possible. I thought the infant stage (with the new mom hormones, the lack of sleep, and the baby changing every day) would be the most volatile. I mean, I knew teenagers themselves were volatile and challenging but I guess I expected the process of parenting them to be an unremitting struggle - a constant slogging. It's not. It is up and down and all over the place. We've got good grades and smiling faces. We've got a bit of slyness, a nudging of the boundaries, and a wholesale trample of the rules followed by, "Wuh? What did I do?" We've got restriction and recrimination. We've got hilarity at family dinner and full participation in family movie night. We've got treat wheedling and homework frustration. We've got a first break up for the second child to date. He's ok. Not quite broken hearted. Maybe a bit confused. Apparently it was a mutual break up for no reason. Sometimes that's the way it happens. We've got a kid scratching the word "Justis" into his arm. (Clearly, we've got spelling issues too.) Decoration by Sharpie is one thing, decoration by sharp object a whole other thing. We've got a call in to the therapist. ("Oh hey, Dr. Smith - you missed something here!") We've got hugs and tears, beautiful school pictures and kids who are even more beautiful in real life. We've got memories of our own teen struggles overlapping our understanding of what our kids are thinking, doing, and saying. In short, I think we've got the usual quota of joy and terror. I could use a little less terror, but hey!
Peace.
And speaking of peace!! How about that kick ass committee in Stockholm awarding Al Gore (and the global warming group) the Nobel Peace Prize for all of their work?!! I think it is awesome and far sighted and much deserved. We have the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". We're watching it on Family Fun Night next week.
More Peace.

Conversation About Conversation

It's been an interesting week for conversation here in Lilyville. What do I say? What don't I say? How do I say what I mean? What are the kids saying? What do they mean by it? After more unpleasantness whereby my ex told me that the letter from his attorney threatening to try to take my parenting rights away was a "compromise" - I decided I needed to tell my kids that there was more going on than whether they wanted to live here or there. I've thought about every single word I've said. I strive to make sure I give as much accurate information to the kids as possible with as little emotional stress as possible. It's hard work - especially knowing how little Mr. Tapioca Head thinks before he speaks (or sends me email.) After talking to my lawyer (who sounds just like Terri Gross from Fresh Air!), I decided that my response to the threats is to follow the protocol in our divorce documents. I'm going to try to go to mediation over this issue even though I'm fairly sure it will be as useless as it was for the previous issues. I'm going to ask for more conversation.

As much as I don't think mediation has a snowball's chance in h-e-double hockey sticks of succeeding in this case, I have come to realize that deep down I have a surprising amount of faith in words as a means to resolve problems. Aside from the fact that our document REQUIRES the attempt, I want to try one last time to talk through our parenting disagreements. The talking turns out to be important to me. I lie awake thinking of what was said, what needs to be said. I find comfort in the idea that the mediation process is out there (and required as a first step) in this "battle" over what's best for my children. I pay very close attention to what my guys are saying and what they're not. I've been re-reading emails and processing what's said there. I've thought about why I choose certain words and what the emotional connotation is of the words that are being hurled at me. The more I've thought about the words, the communication process - the more centered and hopeful I've felt. I see (hear, think about) words differently than I have before. It's a bit like when you take an art class and the teacher shows you how to look at the world in terms of light and shadow, line and hue - instead of the way you're used to seeing things. On some days I've thought about one word over and over until it begins to sound bizarre and mean nothing. Other days I've turned over phrases and instructions, interested to see how sometimes clarity arrives out of the blue. I don't know that it will amount to anything concrete - but I have to be fully me as I wade through this crap. Being fully me means being aware and intentional and committed to the communication process for as long as possible.

And it's not just the legal stuff that's got me thinking about language and communication. It is exciting to live in a new place. It is amazing to me how much the "cultural dialect" changes just moving one state over! My kids seem to be dealing with the newness remarkably well. They're finding friends - many of whom are newcomers too. With the university so close, there is always a large and diverse transient aspect to the community. In my kids' schools, one fifth of the students are "new kids" which definitely takes the stigma away. My kids have new friends from Russia, San Francisco, Birmingham (the one in Alabama AND the one in England), and Boston. In addition to new friends from new places, the kids are navigating new schools - each with its own lingo. The primary wing, the kiss and go circle, the cafe, the Seven Aces - all of these are new and important labels my kids had to decipher on the fly.

I'm not as good at deciphering as they are. I had lunch with Havoc yesterday. Havoc's new buddies Tommy and Ben were pointing out the kids in the class and telling me everyone's names. Ben was born here and Tommy, though a transplant, moved from New England a whole year ago and is quite the expert now. Tommy is diligently passing his hard won knowledge on to Havoc, and by extension to me. He took it on himself to make sure I learned about everyone in Ms. A's third grade class. The row we were sitting on had an Erin (from England - been here a week), a Sophie, a Brandon (from LA), a Zin yu (from here), a Noemi, and a Zoe. It was hard to hear over the din so Tommy had to repeat some of the names a couple of times for me. One name in particular was hard for me to understand - Themeena? He said it again and again - finally getting out of his seat and coming around the table (which is against the rules) to say clearly right into my ear, "She's THE MEAN ONE - Havoc needs to stay away from her. She thumps people." I couldn't help but laugh. (And of course I told Havoc that if that girl ever thought about thumping him, he was to talk to a teacher immediately.) I never did learn her real name.

To add yet another current to the communication stream - this week we've gone from zero to four foreign languages being studied in our household. Chaos is taking German, the Princessa Latin, Mayhem and Havoc both French, and Bug (who is coming back on Saturday to live with us permanently!) is studying Japanese with Linus. Havoc came home yesterday and announced, "La fenetre!" as he pointed to a window. And "la poubelle" as he threw his snack wrapper in the trash can. Chaos can count (to 9) and say (most of) the alphabet in German. We are quite the melting pot family. We're cross contaminating each other with all of our separate new experiences. I love it. I love that it's deepening and enlivening our family tongue.

I think all families develop a pidgin to some extent. Families have nicknames, inside jokes, and funny references to family events that might be hard for outsiders to follow or understand. The patter changes with the ebb and flow of shared experiences. Our family patois is rich and has roots in Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi books, and unusual board games. Recently we have all watched (over and over) the stand up comedian Eddie Izzard's show "Dress To Kill". (He's an actor in films like Mystery Men and Ocean's 13 - but it's his stand up that we love.) He is bilingual and did an encore of his show in French. In the show itself he has several bits about studying languages. His comedy seems to magically fit our family's ethos right now. (Although it's not really a family values kind of gig. It's definitely pushing things to have Havoc watch it - just so you know. I semi-justify it to myself by talking to him about the inappropriate bits. I also console myself with the fact that no matter what I did, his big brothers would quote it to him - so I may as well not leave him out.) If you had been at our supper table last night you would have heard an amazing array of out-of-context Eddie Izzard punchlines like "Of which there are five'', "Were you surprised? I was surprised!", "The City - uhhuhh", "Cake or Death?" and "Love all this!" We were in stitches. You probably would have smiled and nodded and looked for the closest way out.

The laughter helped. Everyone had a line to throw in and everyone laughed. Laughing together helped open everyone up to talk about their days. It helped us feel closer to each other. It just helped everything. I wanted to bottle a bit of it to save for a rainy day. While laughter can't be bottled, it occurs to me that one of the great thing about words is that they can be shared, remembered, saved, and used to evoke past good times. I think the next time one of my kids is gloomy, I'll offer them "Cake or Death?" (I think sharing a real smile is worth possibly having to explain myself to the family court judge!)
Peace.

Beginnings

Blogging has gotten harder because I don't want to spend my time whining and wailing about my ex - but it's very much on the surface for me. I work so hard not to let any of it out in front of the kids. Then I sit down to blog and that's what spills out onto the page. Thank heavens for the delete key! The trouble is I spend an hour typing and deleting and end up with a scant paragraph that is pathetic - mostly explaining why I don't have a real post!

I thought I'd figure out a good system over the weekend - but as you can see - nada.
I thought this morning - with the first day of school to tell you about and Bug having to leave and Mayhem having his 13th birthday and all - that there'd be plenty of Tapioca free post fodder. But everything, everything here is slimed.

What I do have free and clear is thanks. Thank you for the helpful comments and support. I can't tell you how much it's helped. I can feel it all sinking in and beginning to be processed.
Perhaps by this afternoon I'll have gotten my filters in place enough to post a real post. I have an interview for a part time job today - that should be blogworthy!
Peace.

Zombie Proofing The House

In today's installment of "My Kids Are Weird" I'm going to tell you my boys' first reaction to their new home which was, "We'd never survive a zombie attack in this house. There are way too many doors and windows!!" They then spent the next 10 minutes scouting out appropriate shelter/hiding spots in case the zombies converged even before we managed to get the moving trucks unloaded. I had no idea my kids were so worried about zombies.

Of course, it has been made clear to me in the past few days (while being trapped in the car with the boys for hours and hours and hours) that I have zero understanding of how their brains work. Even 8 year old Havoc thinks bizarre thoughts that I would never, ever just happen to think. As Havoc floated dreamily in the hotel pool the other afternoon he said, "You know what would really suck? Drowning in your own blood." Uh, yeah. Ok. And ick!

I'd worry more except they are all in great moods. I keep checking in with them, making sure they know we're not to busy to talk. I've cut each one of them out of the herd a couple of times to see if the good mood is a mob mentality kind of phenomenon - but it doesn't seem to be. They all have healthy appetites and have been kinder with each other than normal. They are having fun puttering in their rooms, arranging miniatures and computer parts. Bug and Chaos do want to paint their room black. Mayhem and Havoc want the airplane decals off their walls. Joey and Thaxton want to stay. The biggest thing on their wants and needs list? All of them want me to hurry up and find a different place for the old table. Currently it's blocking their only access to the best zombie proof closet.
Boys!
Peace.

Landing

Goodbye old house! This is the crew we traveled with (minus my mom, second from the right - next to Chaos in the back row - she and VBGF's mom were there to see us off.) Who's Who - (L-->R) Thaxton*, Bug, Joey*, Mayhem, Uncle Richard, Marmie (my mom), Chaos - then SH, Wasabi, Havoc above him, Me, VBGF. Is now a good time to say that I'm tired of using initials? Names are so much easier. Will it confuse you terribly to switch to Linus and Bet instead of SH and VBGF? I'll write a new thing for the sidebar soon, really my poor blog is long overdue for it, but it will have to wait. First I must deforest the cardboard jungle that is currently growing in my new home. See?
Bikes. In the library. Hmmmm. Not a good long-term plan I think. Upside down couch. Difficult to sit upon. Must. Rethink. Library.

Cook? Can you even see the fridge? Not sure we'll be making home-cooked meals anytime soon. Yet, I can't believe we brought even more cardboard into the house by ordering pizza!

Here we are! Homeowners! Bet, Linus, and Lilymane (me). Do you see our one key? One. key. For a family of eight - in a house that has FOUR doors. (I will not say bad things about the previous owners. I will not say bad things about the previous owners. I will not ...)
This is a bumper sticker we saw in the parking lot of the closing attorney's office. I had already decided I liked these people when I saw "Coexist" on one car, something funny and anti-Bush on another, and two HRC stickers, but when Linus saw the one above, he said he was never living anywhere else. (And if you don't understand it, it's ok - it's a Dungeons and Dragons (or general d20 RPG) reference.)

I suppose I'd best get up and dig into some of those boxes!
Peace.

*Thaxton and Joey are both only children who have been friends with my kids for years (five years? four?) They are part of the junior troll boy contingent who game(d) at the house every Wednesday night. When we moved I told both of their mothers that I wanted visitation rights. They are such good sports! They agreed to let their boys move with us for the first week. We have to send them back on Sunday but it has been such an incredible help to have them with us. Aside from the fact that they have hauled more than their fair share of stuff in and out of U-haul trucks, they are helping my boys set up their rooms, explore the new neighborhood, and adjust without losing their friends. They are more precious than gold to me.

It's The Little Things That Get You

Despite the fact that I have been fixing to move for well nigh three months now, it's a whole different thing to actually BE MOVING. There is a part of me that just hasn't caught up. (This is the exact same part of me that opened the skinny middle desk drawer into my pregnant tummy twelve times a day while I was carrying Chaos. It didn't matter that 99.999% of my brain was obsessed with being pregnant, having a baby, thinking about the baby, etc. That .001% was not only not obsessed with my pregnancy but it actively refused to make any allowances whatsoever.)

Yesterday morning VBGF and I went to the convenience store next to the hotel to buy some Dramamine for Havoc. (Havoc, bless his heart, had puked the minute he got out of the car the night before.) The chewable Dramamine comes in small, one dose packets. I picked one up and then said to VBGF, "I know he only needs the one dose for today since we'll only be in the car for a couple of hours, but do you think I should get another one to have on hand for the drive back?" She gave me a funny look and said, "Drive back? This is a move." RIGHT. Move. Not vacation. Not a visit. A permanent move. To another state.

The slow fraction of my brain hates being caught out. For a moment all was shaky and a little teary. Then there was some mental wagon circling and some internal cluckings of "There, there" and "It'll be alright." The rest of me got back in the driver's seat. I think we're all onboard now - slow bits and all. I'm hoping we're even all buckled up, because this next part is a doozie. Closing. In an hour. With crazy* people involved. Cross those fingers!!
Peace.

*I know, I know. Pot, kettle and all that. But really, these folks (<-- our sellers) are a piece of work. I would avoid all of Chicago if I were you because that's where they live now! Travel to the Windy City at your own risk.

Mid Point

Greetings from East Asheville! We're a traveling circus - we have four adults, six mostly teenage boys, a dog, two U-Haul trucks (one of them towing my 12 year old Rodeo), and two VW's all trekking east on I-40. Our closing took about 10 minutes (and most of that was chat!) Our realtor gave us a huge canvas bag stuffed with goodies. She laughed and said she tried to put some healthy stuff in there. Her ratio? 40 lbs of junk topped with a two peanut butter crackers and a token bag of trail mix. I think we'd gone about thirty miles before all of the cookies, the M&M's, the jelly beans, and one of the peanut butter crackers were gone. The trail mix and the vitamin fortified water bottles were all that was left. Yep - Lindy the listing agent rocks the house!! Smartest gal on the planet! What else can I say about someone who sells my house in two days and then gives me the perfect present to appease a car full of teenage stomachs??

Poor Robbie the Realtor on the other side. She is working probably four times as hard for not nearly so much joy. We will all breathe a huge sigh of relief when we get through the closing on the new house. The people selling us our new house are ... crazy. Like ape shit crazy. From the first week of weird negotiations with them where they ended up not even being able to accept their own offered price, we've known they weren't right. The house is perfect for us or we would have walked away at about the third obstacle. I no longer buy the excuse that they are young, don't know what they're doing, and have stressful jobs in Chicago. Normal people, even young, inexperienced ones with stressful jobs in Chicago can figure this stuff out. I would add that they have their own realtor to help them through the process but I don't know if she's speaking to them anymore.

We knew they wouldn't do any repairs. They have no money. Integrity seems to be in short supply with them too. Emotions, however, they have in spades. They have bitched and whined about how we're taking advantage of them by buying their house at the list price. We have received more than one letter accusing us of "taking advantage of a marketing strategy" by purchasing the home they've been trying to sell for months and months (with several agents and more than one agency). Ok fine. They are crazy, but we can work with crazy for a limited time. Let's just get through this!

We say to them - we hear you, no repairs, but please provide us with the building permits for the work you had done as the inspection shows that there are some code violations which we will need to address. They refused. Not only did they refuse but their response was a "how dare you ask for such a thing" type of letter. They blathered on about how they'd had licensed professionals do the work - NOT day laborers (a strange defense since we'd not even thought of that - we just wanted the papers to cover our butts about the permits). According to our sellers, they'd paid good money (here we were treated to yet another digression about how we had NO IDEA what kind of deal we were getting on the house) and the work was done flawlessly (despite our evil inspector's malicious observations to the contrary). They will not be providing documentation of any description - not even the name of the (supposedly licensed) contractor who did the (provably not flawless) work.

Sometimes I really don't understand how people work. Do they expect us to believe what they say even when it makes no sense? Do they have friends who listen sympathetically to their woes and say, "There, there. Your buyers are just whacked. It will all be over soon"? That's all neither here nor there. We have in writing what we need legally to cover ourselves. Our inspector gave us detailed instructions on what needs to be done to make everything right. We're ready to close and be done with these jokers.

Then on Friday our realtor lets us know that there's a teeny, tiny little problem that affects them, not us, and as far as she knows we are still set to close on Wednesday morning. This infitesimally small issue turns out to be nothing other than a LIEN against the house, a dispute with the neighbors, and a pending court case. Poor Robbie had to tell us (yet again) that she's never had anything like this happen in her 20+ years in real estate. It's the third never-before-seen thing these people have achieved. I think it is a remarkable act of faith that we launched ourselves out on this journey with so little assurance of a successful end. Granted, we hadn't many options considering our homelessness as of 8:30 a.m. yesterday. Might as well launch and hope for the best, eh? Of course it wouldn't hurt if all of you out there, my lovely internet friends, would hope for the best for us too! Maybe that will tip the cosmic scales and the universe will allow Wednesday to proceed without a hitch. A girl can dream, can't she?
Peace.

We Needed That Extra Dash Of Stress

One week from today we will be in transit - halfway between homes. There is so much to do that I get the screaming heebie jeebies if I think about it too long. I want to navigate this transition as smoothly as possible for my kids. We are having fun with many aspects of it all, but there are distinctly hard parts to it. On top of that there has been additional emotional drama. One example is that the Ninja Princessa was forbidden to open a myspace account - clearly, expressly, and with lots of explanations as to why. In ongoing revelations coming from her mother's home in Colorado, we have been finding out that not only did she try to sneak in getting permission to open one there with her mother's blessing, but after her mom presented a united front with SH and said no - the Princessa did it anyway. Only now it turns out that she didn't just do it - that she opened her account in April and lied about it directly on several occasions. Not only that but upon reading email that has been sent to her - there is at least one troll that has sent her pornographic email. I suppose she gets credit for deleting that email - but it is disturbing that when she was faced with evidence of exactly what we'd told her we did not want her exposed to - that she covered that up and proceeded with her own agenda. It is not surprising in the sense that it is completely normal for kids her age and in her situation to push these boundaries, to try to sneak this type of thing past, and to learn about the consequences of lying. Just because it's normal does not make it easy. Adolescents experiment with a vast array of risky behavior. As parents, we expect it. We prepare as much as we can - forearming our kids with information and empowering them to make the best choices. We keep ourselves informed and on alert to detect what we can - knowing we'll miss something, knowing there are dangers that we can't even imagine, knowing that in some ways it's a total crapshoot. Somewhere out there - there is a kid who has done things a thousand times worse than anything our kid will ever think about and that kid (against ridiculous odds) is fine - maybe even stronger for having walked that particular road. Somewhere out there is also a kid who did nothing - or did something very minorly risky and that kid is dead or traumatized for life. Parenting is about staying open to information without becoming paralyzed by frightful possibilities. Somehow we frantically try to shepherd our kids through the Scylla and Charybdis of adolescence.

And for some of us - we are trying to do that while being attacked, evaluated, judged, and found lacking in our parental abilities. I am having some fun with my mom and my ex - can you tell?

Peace.

A Month Of Sundays

Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads out there! Here at Lilymania, we are going to play catch up while the man of the house snoozes. (He and Bug - his first born and also the only child at home this weekend- stayed up until the wee sma's playing PS3, so it may be quite some time before they awaken.) The plan was to make the Dad Of The House a lovely breakfast - until we realized we'd packed up the kitchen and the oven won't be fixed until Wednesday! Plan B: IHOP.

News:
Who knew that selling the house would be the EASY part??
Turns out that buying a house is an adventure in crazymaking. We have been looking at houses, online and in person, since April. We have seen dozens of houses. We have learned a LOT about each other - and about our realtor. We found a house that would work. We went to see it three times. Sweet Hubby left with the kids to get back home. I stayed with VBGF to help close up her classroom and get her grades in. Robbie the Realtor said she had two more houses for us to see. The plan was that unless either of these two houses trumped it, we'd put an offer on the one we'd seen three times. Wouldn't you know that both houses trumped it? There was a clear top choice though. This house - oh man! We loved it. LOVED it. Naturally, the list price was 30K above our upper limit. Here is where the fun came in.

We spent the better part of the week (=Tuesday morning through Friday afternoon) "negotiating". The first step was to offer 20K less than list price. They countered by going down 2K and wanting both triple the earnest money we offered and triple the cost of repairs contingency. That was weird. They wanted a LOT of our money and they wanted us locked into the contract even if there were repairs of ten grand. Danger Will Robinson! The house was built in '56. We said back - meet you half way on the price but that's ALL the earnest money we've got and we'll up the cost of repair contingency a little bit (NOT to ten grand!) Mind you - these people are in Chicago, Sweet Hubby is back in TN, and the realtors, VBGF, and I are all in NC. Getting answers and signatures and initials is not the smoothest of processes. We went back and forth and back and forth - and finally arrived at a verbal deal. Yay! Minor celebration ensued. Robbie the Realtor told us we couldn't really celebrate until it was all signed. We waited for the signatures. Signatures were not forthcoming. Major sadness and anger ensued. Turns out the young couple could not "afford" to sell their house at the price they verbally agreed to. Note - they were already getting a discounted commission rate. Their realtor said she was in shock and this had never happened to her and she was so sorry - but she could only relay what her clients said. We thought about it. We all decided that this was the right house for us. We raised our offer up to their original counter offer. They still couldn't afford it. Our realtor was irked and said that the sellers were not acting in good faith during the whole of this process. Their realtor agreed! What to do? Walk away? Make an offer on one of the two other houses that would work (just barely) for our family? We decided that we'd make one final effort and offer the list price. [There were other weird contingencies this couple tried to throw in, but all of those details are too tiresome to go into. At one point it truly seemed like the sellers were not hip with the whole concept of what selling entails (i.e. releasing ownership of the house for an agreed upon price).] At long last, however, all documents were signed and faxed (we made them sign first before we wasted time faxing again) and celebration recommenced. (Robbie the Realtor told us we could celebrate 75% - that there was still the home inspection to get through.)

More of the story -
We saw that the house had been listed in April for 90K more than the list price for which we bought it. Somewhere near the end of all the negotiating, our realtor turns up the fact that before that it was listed for 75K more with a different realty company. I guess we should feel like we got a deal, but really? I think they were smoking crack if they thought they'd get their original list price. Yes they did updates (oh, wait until you see the pictures in a minute!) - but the house is still 50 years old and has very little curb appeal (according to R the R.) We did get a deal because we got a house we love, that suits us all, that is close (walking distance on sidewalks!) to the schools and public library and community center, AND that we could afford (even if it's a bit of a stretch!) Keep your fingers crossed for us until July 18th!!

Here are a few of the previously promised pictures!
First, Mayhem and the Princessa as they tested for their black belts. This picture was taken at the beginning - about a half an hour into the three and a half hour test. They are both still so nervous they look like they're about to hurl. The posters on the walls behind them are lists and lists of the techniques they are being tested on.

I have fantastic movies of their freestyle sparring match and grappling match. They are not usually paired in class because they are siblings so it was surprising to have them fight each other during the belt test. The sensei was both amused and impressed. The Princessa didn't slow down one bit when Mayhem sent her earrings flying and Mayhem didn't let up even when the Princessa snagged and ripped out the ties on his gi (you can see them dangling in the pictures.) This is a picture of their final test element: to hold their belts straight armed, out in frontof them (not below their chins or above their foreheads) for 3 full (and very long) minutes.
Here is their first formal bowing out as black belts. Yay!!!!


Next - Chaos is 15! We celebrate with decorated birthday cookies instead of cakes and everyone gets to pick their own theme. Chaos likes skulls.

He also likes the two new holes in his head. One of his closest friends (Nate) got Chaos a scholarship to go to camp. Nate is super excited that Chaos gets to go. Me? Not so much. It's a Baptist summer camp - away for a week. I talked to the youth minister and explained that my son was Catholic and I did NOT want to send him if he was going to be told that his baptism didn't count or that he wasn't a real Christian. The nice youth minister said that didn't happen. ("Since when?!!!" was my sister's response to that.) We'll see. I've explained to Chaos that by choosing to go, he has accepted responsibility to modify his behavior, dress, and attitude to fit within the boundaries of a much more conservative group. He says he still wants to go. I think it will be good for him to follow through on a choice like that, but I'm also a little worried about it. (Can you tell?)

And finally - I have to show off my new kitchen (squeals with delight!) Look at the skylight! Do you see the coolie, cool purple, lavender, and lilac glass mosaic above the range? Have you ever seen an island that big? It's either 9 or 10 feet long!
This is the other end of the kitchen. The black is chalkboard. Painted right onto the wall. Ok - it's weird and not really well done - but it's the only thing I don't just love, love, love about the kitchen. Havoc, however, thinks it's perfect! He can't wait to write out his menus.
Give you one guess as to what he now wants to be when he grows up!
Peace (and keep those fingers crossed for us, please!)

One For The Money, Two For The Show

I have half a dozen half-written posts languishing. I've discovered that the surest way to show my house is to sit down to blog! We've had six showings in four days and we had an offer which is now a contract from the second one. YAY!!! The home inspection is Friday afternoon - and with a 30-year old house that part is a bit worrying! However, I am keeping the faith and I know that it will be smooth sailing. It has to be because, quite honestly, I can't handle many more showings.

We have all worked like fiends getting the house ready and keeping it that way - but oi! I charged Chaos to clean the fans - and he did a lovely job - but he left grimy handprints on the ceiling. I had to show Mayhem that it was, indeed, possible to vacuum the carpets without gouging the baseboards. We pressure washed the house only to have the kids water the baby grass and spray dirt and water up onto the clean windows. Wasabi "helped" by brushing his furry butt against new paint and then sitting on the leather couch. I really thought I'd scream. Actually I did scream a little. I was completely exasperated and explained (in an overly loud voice) several things, including (but not limited to) the pointlessness of creating even more work for ourselves, the financial reality that our house being in better shape meant it selling for better money which in turn meant being able to buy a better house in NC - and importantly that spending money on stupid stuff here (e.g. new green paint to cover up the sparkly red "I love you" mark left by window clings that had been adhered to the wall not the window) meant lowering the budget for fun stuff there (e.g. food, clothing, shelter). Mayhem turned to the Princessa and in a funny, mock sad, little voice said, "See what you did? You made the good Mama go away." The other kids held their breath and waited to see whether my head would start whipping around and around on my neck or whether I'd laugh. I laughed. I hugged them each and sent them off to work - and immediately had to call them back for remedial walking down the hall lessons. Who knew that there were five children in the world who could not for love or money walk down the (need I mention newly painted?) hallway without bumping into the walls with some part of their pointy, grungy little bodies?!!!

Once I'd gotten the kids on board I thought things would fall into place. And they did. Light bulbs fell out of sockets into hard to reach places. Wooden slats in the library unglued themselves and fell to the floor. Clearly, somewhere along the way I have managed to piss off a household god (or three). The lamp we'd moved from the library to Bug and Chaos' room ignited and spewed toxic fumes. Unky Dunky (who was babysitting while SH and I were out to dinner with my father) had the boys put it outside and then they all went back to their video games. In the middle of baking a casserole one night, the oven went "Phht" and died. The stove top still works but the oven won't heat. Is this an old oven? Why no, it is not. (The library lamp was ancient in appliance years and perhaps had an excuse for self immolation even if the timing was uncanny - but the oven was only old enough not to be under warranty!!!) To add insult to injury, for a year and a half we had a spare oven in the garage (along with a spare washer and dryer and at one point a semi-dead refrigerator). Our garage - a half way house for appliances. We looked around a few months ago and said to ourselves, "This is silly. The new appliances in the house are fine. We don't need these other ones even if they aren't all that old and they all work. Sure, it would be great to have another washer and dryer available, but there's not room for a second set to be hooked up. It's wasteful to have these perfectly good appliances sitting here benefitting no one. Let's give them all away!" And we did. We gave them to a needy family through a friend's church.

I don't regret that. I do regret having to spend hundreds of dollars either fixing this oven or buying another one. Grrr. I had no idea that selling a house was so expensive! For the first showing, I got a call at about 5 pm asking if the house could be shown between 6:15 and 7:15. As I hadn't started cooking supper, I took the kids out to eat. $75. The next day the house was shown from 1 to 2. I took the kids to the bookstore. $75. The next day we got three calls in the space of 15 minutes scheduling showings for the next two days. I told the kids we could not spend $75 a pop on these showings. They agreed. The next showing we went into town and bought the boys running shoes - which had been in the budget for a couple of weeks even though we hadn't had time to get there . Three pairs of running shoes ($311.85) and ice cream at Maggie Moo's ($19.61) totals $331.46 which (as Mayhem pointed out) is waaaaaaay more than $75.

Here's today's mantra: Contract. Done deal. Closing on July 16th. No need for any more showings! No more spending money! (We'll stick to all that just as soon as we get back from our trip to Wal-Mart to replace bathing suits we had but can't find ANYWHERE!)
Peace.

Redemption

I had all but stopped reading Joshilyn Jackson's blog but clicked on it for some reason today. Faster Than Kudzu often has 3 question interviews. Perhaps that's why I stopped reading? I had no interest in today's author or book. I'm crabby and was just looking for a bit of chat when my eye snagged on the word "redemption". I love that word. Even when I hate Christianity and the South and Bible thumpers and spittle flingers - I love redemption. Joni Rodgers says of her characters, "Each of the sisters dies and rises again in a different way, learning that redemption is tragedy cross-pollinated by grace." Redemption is tragedy cross-pollinated by grace. What a FABULOUS thing to say, to learn, to read. Redemption is tragedy cross-pollinated by grace. Redemption as some strange and wonderful spirit flower. Grace buzzing around. I so needed to have that in my head tonight. Not that there's tragedy here - just grumpy folks, stressed out with upheaval and change. Still, redemption! The ultimate pick-me-up.
Peace.

Kids Out, Carpet In, House On, Mayhem Down

The kids are out of school (last week already!) The carpet is in the house (finally yesterday!) The house is on the market (tomorrow really.) Mayhem is down and out, sick as a dog - a feverish dog (right this very minute.) It's been a crazy week. Here's what you missed because I wasn't able to blog. (There are pictures. They are on the camera, which is in a box, which is in a stack, which may be in the garage or even in storage - but which I'm hoping is in the back of the car. I'll post 'em when my head stops spinning enough to locate the camera.)

Brag Time:
Chaos won a presidential achievement in education award.
Mayhem won tenth in the regional math contest and received a library award (a plaque - not just a paper certificate he wants everyone to know.)
The Ninja Princessa received an award at school honoring her state literacy contest win.
Havoc placed first in math and second in science in the gifted program's contests.

Mayhem and The Princessa both received their black belts in karate after THREE AND A HALF HOURS of testing. They had two five minute water breaks but the rest of the time they were marching up and down the floor demonstrating their striking techniques, grappling, doing reversals and take downs (there were some twenty of each!), freestyle sparring, shouting out creeds and last of all holding their belts straight arm out in front of them - not above their heads and not below their chins - for three minutes. It doesn't sound as hard as it is. Had their hands dropped even the slightest bit he would have plucked that black belt out of their hands and tied their provisional belts back on them. It was so nerve wracking to watch them get that far and then watch their arms shake, sweat pouring down their faces. I don't know that I breathed for those last three minutes. Their instructor put on a good show, but she was, if anything, more nervous than us parents. Her sensei was doing the testing and he kept telling the kids how he had had to test and re-test to get his black belt. It took him seven years. I was so relieved and proud of them when they got their belts on their first test. They were proud of themselves - but worn out!

Other Random News:
The house! We (ALL of us - kids, SH, me, VBGF - the whole village!) have painted and weeded and packed and sorted and scrubbed and buffed and dusted and vacuumed and cleaned and fixed and replaced every freaking thing in this house. This sucker better sell IMMEDIATELY!

Did I mention Bug (my stepson) is here? Yay! We get him for three months.

Chaos? Did I tell you what Chaos' birthday present was? Is? He wanted another piercing. (His dad did the first one for him by piercing his earlobe in February.) He had to wait until after school was out but then VBGF and I (and Unky Dunky) took him to the world's cutest piercer and got him an industrial. He agreed to hold off on any more piercings until he's 18. He's very pleased with it. I think it looks great. I also think that it's plenty. If he wants to do any other bod mod for the next couple of years, he's going to have to hit the gym and lift weights or something else innocuous.

Plans:
We are moving no later than mid July. Even if the house hasn't sold (oh, please God - I want the house to sell quickly), we are moving and getting the kids registered for school. From '86 to '92, I lived in Florida, California, Texas, Maryland, and DC. Then from '92 to now (FIFTEEN YEARS!) I've been here. It is more exciting than I thought it would be now that the process has truly begun. I can't wait to be in a new place - a place I've never lived. I can't wait to drive around and explore. I look forward to training rides and runs through the new neighborhood. I wonder about the new people we'll meet.

Whine:
I want to go now!

Peace.