Happy Easter

Last night was the Bub's school fundraiser, which means the Hub and I had to drink at least $150 worth of free wine just to break even. That didn't happen, but we tried... and at least got a date night out of the deal. In a move five years in the making, I finally accepted my new, post-baby bra size and broke down and purchased a D cup... which if you've ever been squeezing into a bra not adequately sized and then miraculously switched to one that does, the new found support can be positively uplifting. That coupled with a probably-too-low-cut dress garnered many comments from my fellow preschool mothers in the form of "bringing the girls out" and what not. The Hub insisted the doorman wolf-whistled under his breath as we were both entering and leaving the party, but I suspect he just said that to make me feel good. Which it did.

In a reciprocating move, I spent all night complementing the other moms I know never get to dress up either on how great they all looked. Everyone seemed happy and giddy and glad to be away from children for one night. The Bub's music teacher was there and she commented that she'd never seen me without a bandanna on my head. (Sad, but true.) It was a sweet evening as the Hub and I held hands and bid on silent auction items we knew we couldn't afford but were confident some wealthy parent would outbid us on. Leave it to five glasses of wines from "around the world" to make you think buying a giant, wooden sculpture of the school mascot is a good idea.

But every Cinderella must face her pumpkin eventually, and for the 80th day in a row, the Bub woke us up early this morning begging for the Easter tree to come down from the attic. For some insane reason, the Hub and I obliged. Bleary-eyed, the Hub headed up to the attic while the Bub climbed behind barking orders. Once down and unpacked, it was clear that the Easter tree I'd coveted and watched and waited for three years to go on sale had been de-barked by an industrious mouse. Small tragedy for sure, but a tragedy none-the-less.

While I sent the Hub to the grocery for poison (NO MERCY), somehow the tree got decorated without looking too terrible. Eventually, the Hub returned with poison in tow (DIE VERMIN DIE), and then set off down the road again to visit his father who is still convalescing in assisted nursing, leaving the Bub and I to begin the day properly. The Bub was coloring and listening to Harry Potter #7 on audio for the second time. I was sending e-mails and perusing my blog roll. After a while the Bub tromped into my office and saw this post and insisted we stop everything we were doing and make birds like that RIGHT NOW! Birds turned into making ornaments for the Easter tree. Which turned into face painting (one Harry Potter lightning scar for the boy), which turned into watering the garden, which turned into bird watching out the window. All before noon. Peace, quiet and heaven.

It's mornings like this that make me think I'm doing something right. Like I can make my little corner of the world bright and sunshiny and wonderful despite bandannas and sabotaging rodents. Or maybe it was just the added support. Good bras have been known to give women a bloated sense of self esteem.

Mud, Sweat and Underwear

Planted seeds in the garden. Felt the earth beneath my fingernails. The bright smell of soil and mud. Sat in the sun for a while. Watered the flower bed. Soaked the Bub and his BFF with the hose. Watched horrified as the Bub's BFF ran two houses down and flashed the little girls that live there. Another day in the life.

Springing and Birding

Have you noticed that Google is kinda like the ultimate Magic Eight Ball? You ask it "When is the first day of spring?" and instead of answering "Reply Hazy" or "Concentrate and Ask Again", it actually tells you the answer. Sometimes it can even predict the future, as in the case of the online edition of the Farmer's Almanac. The ages old prediction formula informed me that today is the expected last frost in San Antonio so I should go right ahead and plant those flower seeds I've been hording like a squirrel all winter.

The sun is shining. There are a pair of Crested Caracaras (aka Mexican Eagles) roosting down in the Alamo Heights basin. The soil is soft and wonderful from all the rain we've been having. It's the perfect time to pull some weeds and break out the top soil. I've been lax in tending the garden at the house in town the last couple of years. Except for a few herbs and some zinnias, our beds have been barren. This year, I'm throwing all sorts of stuff at the wall to see what sticks and going seeds instead of investing in expensive flats that have a tendency to die two weeks after you put them in the ground. Fingers crossed for a mess of blooms to bring a mess of hummingbirds to make up for the fact that we don't really feed the birds around these parts.

When we were living full-time at the farm, we went through a period of having five bird feeders full all the time. There were titmice and jays and cardinals and finches and robins everywhere, but soon, the fallen bird seed attracted the forest rats (the Hub found a nest of the bastards in the attic right above where we sleep... after we heard them squeaking all night) and then the rats attracted the rattlers (remember how our dog Sugar got bit the night before the Bub was born?) So, no more feeders at the farm. At the house in town, we have to fight off crackles that travel in huge black clouds and can finish off a bird feeder in two minutes or less and leave small piles of poo behind all over the hood of your car. So instead, we opt for a thistle feeder. The holes are too small for the crackles to get at, but only attract finches and chickadees. Much to the Bub's chagrin, we were the only unfortunate family I know who didn't get to see a painted bunting last time they flew into town. This spring, if I can at least get the butterflies and hummers on board, I think the Bub will be happy.

So, I am officially announcing the start of spring (even though the Magic Google Browser tells me we still have 18 days to go). The Bub is at this very moment banging away on some electronic keyboard somewhere in the neighborhood completely unaware of the fact that in a mere thirty minutes he'll be helping mommy disembowel dandelions and mangle milkweed. Chance that he'll last longer than five minutes before whining to go inside? "Outlook not so good".

If today was your last day...

How is it that the sun can change everything? I've noticed a sadness lately among my friends. A quiet unwillingness to play date or do lunch. The isolation that comes with having to stay inside with young children day in and day out through the winter months. The depression that builds from be forced to patronize indoor play places with their obnoxious fluorescent overheads and grubby cootie-soaked surfaces. But I'm officially declaring an end to Texas Shut-in Housewife Month. I know Texans have no right to complain about the cold, but when you're used to either lovely or scalding weather... weeks of 40 degree temperatures mixed with rain, rain and more rain begins to bleed your soul. (All you snow region folks at least have the wardrobe and something fun to do outside while you freeze your ass off. Cold doesn't feel as cold when you have a snowball in your hand.)

But fear not. After a day that included 15 minutes of weepy, wet snow (BUT SNOW ALL THE SAME), the sun came out. The brisk weather remains, but with the sun's rays here to battle it properly, the afternoons have been lovely, and as long as you don't linger in the shade too long, the days are totally playground-friendly. I feel suddenly alive again as spring comes into view and the seasonal break is just around the corner. My son is going to turn five in a few months, and I'll say (because I haven't mentioned it in a while) that he fricking blows my mind. I don't know if it's that he's actually gotten more astounding (is there a scale for that?), or if I've just gotten better at parenting, but he's a real bonafide person, learning to act as a member of the human race should. I'm so proud of him for waking up every morning with enthusiasm in his voice and a sparkle of mischief in his eye. For the giggles that spill out of him almost constantly all day long. For the questions and the wonder and the love.

Last night the Bub's BBF was over, and the two started a war with some little girls who live a few houses down. They would disappear down the street and return only for costume changes, handing us passing dispatches from the front as new hats were tried on and swords were jammed in belt loops. That first fire of interest in 'what's going on over there' was a true joy to witness.

This morning the Bub and I were driving to meet friends before school, and for some reason I was listening to a radio station that would play a band like Nickleback. Now, 99% of the time, my radio is on NPR, and when it's not, I'm usually on the classic rock station or at the very least the one that plays hits from the 80s. But yeah, so without making anymore excuses (I'm sure Nickleback is a perfectly lovely band).... a Nickleback song comes on... and the Bub goes from talking up a storm to listening intently in the back seat, then he asks...

What does that mean, 'if today was your last day'?

He might as well have said, "Oh yes, master of doom and gloom, tell me the meaning of life and is there a point to anything?" But he didn't ask that, and I restrained myself. I looked out at the sun shining down on us, driving down the road to meet a friend (A FRIEND!) for coffee. I thought about how lucky I am to know a sweet smelling little boy who wants to be close to me all the time and I realized he has his whole life ahead of him and I smiled the biggest smile ever in the whole history of the world. And I answered...

It means that you should spend everyday uplifting the people around you and doing the things you love.

Everyday is a tomorrow, right?

Emotional Bandwidth

Last night, the Hub used the term "emotional bandwidth" while I was talking about a friend having a problem she needed help with, as in "I don't think you have the emotional bandwidth to take on another friend's problems." And it's true. But ya know, I'm probably gonna do it anyways.

A friend of a friend just got her "life coach"... um... degree... (can you get a degree in that?)... and was looking for probono clients to practice on, and I volunteered figuring, hey, free is way less than therapy, right? So where was I at 1:30 yesterday when I was supposed to be calling her for my first over-the-phone session? Why, I was talking to another person about yet another person's problem, and totally spaced the call, of course. I can only imagine what the life coach was thinking as she sat by the phone wasting her time on me... yea, congrats graduate... welcome to a life of NOTHING being about you.

It seems all the people I know are either sick or dying or dead or almost dead or suing someone or thinking about divorce or getting a divorce or hating their job or wanting their job to be better or building a house or thinking about not building a house or feeling depressed or hating themselves. All the people I DON'T know are getting killed in earthquakes and yelling at Obama and are poor and angry and fed up and flying planes into office buildings and getting plastic surgery because you can never have boobs or wallets big enough to drown out the rest of the world. Sometimes I feel like one of those floaties attached to a sunken crab pot. Fighting desperately, bobbing to get to the surface, but always getting pulled back under. And that's my own fault. I carry alot of weight around, willingly, in an attempt to please and help everyone all the time. I was raised by a woman who gives more leverage to the problems of others than to her own. I am my mother's daughter. Always taking on too much, unasked. Probably hoping the uplift I feel from helping others will keep me from feeling so crummy.

It drives the Hub to tears when night after night I pass out at 8:30, as soon as I've put the boy down to sleep, out of the sheer exhaustion of it all. I don't even have the time and emotional bandwidth to take on a life coach whose job probably entails helping people create emotional bandwidth for themselves. Funny how that works.

Despite this give-me-a-break housewife/stay-at-home mommy rant... I really do feel all sunny inside. Like I'm ready for the Bub's kindergarten year, ready to take on the world, but the world that's gone on without me for the last five years of child rearing is increasingly more and more screwed up. Like my sunny demeanor is getting rained on every time I step out the door. Life is short. This is it. Michael Jackson slides by with a get-out-of-jail-free card because why? He lifted people up... all the while dragging himself down? Becoming more and more freakish and damaged and bizarre? There is no guilt involved. Just passive acceptance that our time is running out... so what are you going to do? Try and uplift those around you? Sure. End up a 90-pound child molesting weirdo so insulated from the world that you can't relate? Heavens no! But MJ is totally beside the point. (We watched This Is It last night, or at least, a good half of it before we turned it off thus the SUPER lame metaphor.)

I'm discovering that the point is that there is no point... except this one. You take the hands of the two (three, four, five) closest, dearest people to you, and you don't let go. No matter what happens. Even when things get ugly or boring or painful or sad or excruciating or expensive or mean or terrible or unbearable. Even when they turn their backs to you and run. YOU NEVER LET GO. Because people are awesome, no matter how screwed up they are!

Happy Valentine's Day

It has taken us two weeks but all 23 Valentines for the Bub's classmates and teachers are finished. By doing two or three a day, the bub never got bored or frustrated. He set up a little Valentine station on the dining room table that stayed there, and whenever he felt like getting to work, he would just sit down on his own and begin. I'd read a post on Soule Mama once were she said she sets up a different craft station on her dining room table everyday and just leaves it there so her kids can sit down and work whenever they feel like it.

I've begun doing a truncated version wherein I leave a blank pad and a basket of oil pastels on every table in the house, and the result has been a boy who constantly creates wherever he goes in the house. He basically just draws all day. While eating breakfast, while listening to Harry Potter, while playing with his stuffed birds. Yes, he is still Harry crazy, and against my better judgment, he's currently in the middle of listening to book six on audio... I warned him that a main character dies, and he's sort of made a game out of trying to figure out who it is... Making it fun is his way of dealing with it, I suppose, but I know he is going to be upset when it happens. He's named dozens of people who he thinks are gonna get it... he's even figured out that Malfoy is the one who is supposed to do it, but he has not mentioned Dumbledore once as a possibility. I doubt it will occur to him at all as he is sort of the strength in all the books. We'll see.

If you look closely, you'll notice Harry on the Valentine in the lower left corner complete with a lightning bolt on his head, Hedwig on his shoulder. Today is the Bub's holiday party at school, and Sunday, he's taking his favorite teacher out for pizza. I'm sure we'll visit Paw Paw in the skilled nursing center. We'll probably make dinner at home to save money on a baby sitter. Nothing super special, just a night to drink some wine, watch a movie in bed and be happy we have someone to love.

Just Only Jack

Here's what I've been working on... Enjoy!