Weekend Lovers

In an effort to get myself off CNN and the storm coverage this morning while the boys slept in, I took a short, dew-soaked walk with Sugar and Spanky. With all the rain Texas has had this summer, it is so lush and green out, the farm is gorgeous in the way it usually reserves for spring. Frolicking with my other two boys reminded me of the time not so long ago when those pups were all I cared about. Now, as the artist formerly know as Prince once noted, they are just my "weekend lovers."

Before the bub came, Sugar slept in bed with us and was the prince of the palace. That dog and I had a cosmic connection that reached beyond years and species. Acquiring Spanky was meant as my gift to him so he wouldn't be lonely during the day while I was gone. And man, hasn't that turned out to be true. At the vet, Sugar freaks out when they take Spanky out of the room and he can't see him. He scratches at the door and whines, poking his nose to the half inch crack at the bottom hoping to catch a whiff of his friend. (That was like me at the hospital when the nurses took the bub away twice for four hour stints, and I had to go down to the nursery and freak out and cry and wag my finger menacingly to get him sprung from the can.)

Honestly, their week in town must suck. Locked in the backyard, with minimal amounts of love and attention. By the time the weekend rolls around, those two are jumping all over themselves just waiting for us to open the gate and get them in the car. Sweet freedom to run and play and be loved. Someday soon, the bub will get big. Already I can see him focusing more of his attention in their direction. Since he is going to be an only child out here on the weekends, his partners in crime will become more and more important for him, and that makes me happy for Sugar and Spanky. They are primed and ready to start having alot of fun.

I love being at the farm.

While the bub and I were in Virginia, the hub picked up a 2 million watt candle power spotlight on the sale table at the local hardware store. And it is awesome.

You see, way back when before the bub came along and the hub and I were living in a tent out at the farm, jobless and utterly happy and alive, our nightly ritual was to go spotlighting for animals. At the time, I was so psyched to be out of New York City and having real interactions with wildlife that I actually had a little spiral notebook and kept track of all the animals I saw on the farm plus the when and where. As you may or may not know, when you use a spotlight, it is really easy to find animals in the woods at night because their eyes light up. It is almost like being able to see in the dark. (Thus why it is illegal to hunt with one because hunters have an unfair advantage.) The flashlight we used at the time was really cheap and broke eventually, and since the bub arrived, we usually just do the dusk drive looking for deer.

So last weekend when we let the bub stay up past his bedtime to go spotlighting with us, we were rewarded with a jackrabbit, a cottontail, two raccoons, a medley of deer, a coyote and the hawk. The hawk was the coolest as he was perched on a fence post and he actually let us get about ten feet away from him. When he took off, we were able to follow him through the air until he landed on another post 30 feet away.

Last night was not as fruitful ~ a handful of opossums, coons and some deer, but we did run into a mother deer and her fawn which was adorable. We were able to cruise beside them for about five minutes, before I got worried that we'd scare them and they'd get separated so we drove off.

When the hub/bub finally woke up this morning, we headed over to the neighbor's house for our ritual Sunday morning breakfast. We were running a little late, and we have to be out of Mary Ann's house by nine as she likes to tune into this radio show called Reflections which is a series of interviews conducted by the New Braunfels, Texas Museum, and catalogs the stories of many of the old-time Germans and such that live in the Texas Hill Country. (Awesome show... if you are in the area on Sunday mornings at 9 am, check it out.) About the time breakfast was wrapping up, we got a call from the hub's cousin saying he'd found a baby raccoon that had fallen into his feeder and become trapped.

As you may or may not know, to keep the taxes low on our farm property, we have a wildlife exemption, and in order to keep that status we have to do things like an annual deer census. Tonight is the night, so the bub's brother and his cousin were coming out to fill their deer feeders and get things set for the buck and doe counting that will commence come sun down. Anywho, the question from the hub's cousin was... did we want to bring a net and become part of the rescue? Duh. So we loaded up the camera and the bub and the dogs and the bub's butterfly net and headed into the woods. Upon climbing up the ladder and seeing the little bugger sitting there, the bub aptly dubbed him "Stucky" the raccoon... get it? The raccoon? He's stuck.

So yea, the great adventure of the morning consisted of the bub riding in the cousin's bikini Jeep and watching him extract cute, little Stucky from his prison, and then getting to see not-so-Stucky leap to freedom. I can't even begin to tell you how important the bub getting this kind of interaction is to me. I love the fact that he is going to be able to grow up on some land where he can run free and do whatever he wants and get close to the animals (and even rescue a few) and the trees and the earth. I try not to take one second of our weekends out here for granted. That said...



GO LITTLE STUCKY GO....

Egad and Egast

WOW.



I almost don't even know how to respond, except the months leading up to November should be interesting to say the least. I am gonna steer clear of saying anything too controversial because A) I'm just not smart enough to take any hits should I write something stupid and B) this is a mommy blog, and even though I do use a few cuss words here and there, I try to keep it fair and balanced. Worst comes to worst, at least there will be one minority with an office in the White House come the new year, so change will arrive regardless of whether policies stay the same. However, I personally won't be dupped into voting for a person just cause she has boobs. No matter how down with the sisters I am.

That said, I have one huge complaint about the DNC. Boy did the music blow. Awful covers and using Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” to close. What the hell was that all about? I realize that the Obama camp, Howard Dean and his buddies were trying to appeal to a broader audience, but come on, gag me. (Side note: When the hub was but a wee lad, he and his long-haired, hippie/redneck buddies used to refer to the famous Brooks & Dunn ditty, "Boot Scootin Boogie", as "Poop Chute Boogie". Needless to say, that was back in his carefree, youthful, unPC days.)

Other than the hideous and completely uninspiring tunes, I thought Obama did a fine job of wrapping it up and getting his message out to the masses, that is if anyone who needed convincing was even watching. I can't imagine that many people who aren't already gonna vote for him were tuning in. I have to admit, I usually do tune in to the RNC, but get so disgusted about halfway through that I have to shut it off. I think it happened in '04 about the time good old Rudy took the stage and started his 9/11 spiel. Yuck.

GOBAMA GO!

Birds Everywhere

You guys all know that the bub is wild about animals, but I don't know that I've mentioned that this animal love has narrowed a bit. The child still loves and knows all animals, but for the last six months or so he has become obsessed more specifically with birds. For example? Well, we are driving in the car and The Diane Rehm Show comes on NPR, which today just happened to be an interview with Lee Allen Peterson, son of bird freak, author and naturalist Roger Tory Peterson and Donald Kroodsman who created a series of bird sounds books. The interview lasted 51 minutes and he listened in full and then asked me to play it again, from the beginning. When I told him I couldn't make it start over, he started crying.

This is a scan from the bub's new favorite book.. Birds Everywhere, a large Whitman World Library book from 1963. He'll sit for hours looking at this book and bother me to no end wanting to know the names of the (very few at this point) birds he doesn't already know.

Me thinks we really might have a mini ornithologist on our hands... A singing, dancing, bird man who can build his own house and charm the ladies, of course.

The Wiz

Ok. Nobody freak out. For a few days, I'd been promising the bub that he could watch a movie, so yesterday afternoon when I wandered over to the movie drawer, a DVD cover I hadn't noticed in a while caught my eye. "Hmmm, The Wizard of Oz..." I thought to myself. "No, I couldn't possibly... or could I?"

Hell, if the bub's friends tout favorite movies like Jurassic Park and Star Wars, then surely a little Wicked Witch of the West and some flying monkeys wouldn't hurt him. Man, oh, man was I right. He freaking loved it. He danced. He sang. He laughed. He wished he could have a little dog like Toto.

When the hub returned home last night, this is how the bub described what he had seen, totally unprompted by me.

ME: Bub, tell daddy what movie we watched today.

HUB: What movie did you watch?

BUB: It was a movie about a girl who had a dream that she was blown into another country. And there was a scare crow and a crazy man and a man dressed up like a lion. All she really wanted to do was get home though. There were some flying monkeys but they couldn't talk.

ME: What part made you sad at the end.

BUB: ~blank stare~

ME: Was it when she had to leave her friends?

BUB: No, her friends were there at the end... I saw them. I was just sad because she couldn't get home.

Dude, you know, I was probably 18 before I figured out the three farm hands were really the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion. Or that Dorothy dreamed the whole thing. The bub is already talking about screening it for his friends. That's my boy. See, it is my evil plan to raise a human with all the great, fun, attractive, and sensitive traits of the gay man while still wanting to oggle women's boobs and produce grandbabies. Think Hugh Jackman with a degree in Architecture. How awesome would that be?

happy happy joy joy

Maybe it is the popsicle I just scarfed. Maybe it is the bright shiny sun. Maybe it is just NOT my time of the month. Whatever the cause, I woke up this morning feeling oddly... happy.

Which is awesome, because I was, like, totally bummed for a week there. Let's take a moment to recap all the good in my life.

THE HUB
Since returning to Texas from Virginia, I was experiencing a weird sense of not belonging. I felt strangely out of touch with my friends. I felt like I didn't have anything to talk about except bummer stuff. I felt like nobody liked my son anymore. I felt like I just wanted to lie in bed all day and watch The Family Guy (Which for me is really, really, really hitting rock bottom.) So last night in bed when the hub was pushing me to talk.... I just started spewing. Tears. Anger. Snot. You name it. Since all this began, I haven't really had a good cry, much less a full blown freak out, which apparently I needed.

Let me back track for a second. The hub and I have a stereotypical man/woman relationship. Though he is more sensitive than your average beer-chugging, football-watching, porno-downloading manchild, he was still born on Mars while I inhabit a nice little midcentury bungalow on Venus. We get along because, hey, men and women get along. He is the Sears to my Roebuck... the yin to my yang... the salt to my peppa... But still, I like to talk and talk and talk and work things out and talk and usually while I am talking and talking, the hub wants to solve the problem and somehow ~ no matter what the subject ~ he feels responsible for the woe. This usually means that when I am in spilling mode, he is in defensive mode, which just makes me feel worse... situation escalates and fights ensue. You get the scenario. We've all seen it played out in relationships a million times.

Well, since I've been home and been feeling particularly crappy, the hub has handled pretty much all of my upsetting situations exactly the way I always envisioned and hoped he would. I bitch... he gives me a caring hug and listens, offering up options that are helpful without being intrusive. He has made me feel loved and sexy and special, in the midst of my mind's eye telling me I am none of those things. It is as if the estrogen fairy came down and gave him the ability to, as they say, "talk to the animals."

So yea, I had the best cry. A loud, weeping, wailing, tremendous cry that shook the cobwebs of sorrow out of my brain and brought me back to reality. And the hub listened... held my hand... and was pretty near perfect during the whole ordeal.

THE BUB
Our first play date after arriving home last week was with the bub's girlfriend who lives down the street. And it didn't go well at all. Let's just say there was some mild fighting... a few punches were thrown... no one wanted to play together... and it ended in the bub telling me "I don't like ~blank~ anymore. I just wanna play with boys." Which would be perfectly fine except that 99.9% of the friends I have that we play date with have girls. And this little girl in particular, I happen to be rather fond of spending time with her mom. She's funny. She's nice. We have a lot in common. And she is the most conveniently located play date we have. To have them bounced out of the TOP THREE BUDDIES category would really suck.

So, I was really sweating this week whether this new dislike would stick and I would be stuck trolling the neighborhood looking for new BFFs for the bub to play with. Today when the mom called to see if she could drop the girl off while she ran to class with her youngest, I jumped at the chance to reaffirm the love. And happily, the boy was a doll. They played together. They snuggled. They painted. They shared. They sang. They danced. They were in love again. It was a miracle.

AND ME
I've been fretting over my dead MacBook, not really knowing what to do about it. Before I could get it fixed, I needed to find a friend who was willing to house my info on their laptop for a while, and that was proving to be a pain in the ass. All my Mac-loving friends work for the advertising agency I used to work at, and they are all in the middle of a gigantic sales pitch and wouldn't be free to help until Wednesday. Plus, it is a huge pain in the ass that Apple couldn't just handle it themselves. The Mac "genius" stood in the store and showed me how to move the info. So why the hell couldn't they move the info, fix my computer, and then move it back when they were done. I was sweating it and bitching to the hub when he suggested I call MacTLC... a computer-fixing outfit that sponsors our local NPR station, so needless to say, we are constantly hearing their name.

I called them and then drove the computer over there... and get this, for $100 LESS than the Apple store was gonna charge me, they are going to install a hard-drive TWICE the size of the one I have now and restore all my files. I won't know what the final result is until tomorrow when I go pick it up, but damn... it sure looks good from this vantage point. If I get all that these guys are promising for the price they are promising and I don't lose my info, I will quite literally make out with the guy right then and there. Or at least lick his car clean.

So life is good. My mom's life might be on the brink of inevitable financial ruin. But she's not gonna die, at least not anytime soon. Until the day when the house of cards begins to fall, I'm just gonna love her, try not to judge too much, and keep the blinders on and the Musak in my brain jamming when I need to. Till tomorrow kids!

small magazine

Hey gang... be sure and visit my write up in small magazine this month supporting my other blog (which by the way is filled with only happiness and sunshine and bubble gum balls and lolly pops and cherry trees in the spring.)

At least no one murdered my bros...

My posts have been so negative of late, so today I was hoping to do some up-thinking and infuse my life with positive energy. But alas... Downer duty seems to be my lot in life for the time being. I promise someday soon to get back to my usual uplifting banter, but for now, please humor me in bitching about petty nothings to fog out the stuff that is really bothering me.

1) My Macbook is dead. After only a year and a half. In order to bring it back to life in some bizarre "Pet Cemetery" fashion... instead of digging a hole for it in an ancient Indian burial ground and then watching it kill me and all my loved ones... I spent my entire Sunday morning with a Mac "genius" while the bub OD'd on the Green Eggs and Ham computer game only to be informed that I'll be shelling out $300 to have a new motherboard installed ... only after driving all over town to try and convince one of my other friends with a Mac to allow me to store my info on their hard drive for a few weeks. The worst part is, the story I just sold to the paper was 3/4 of the way finished on the damn thing. If I can't extract it off there, I am basically screwed. ACK!

2) The pool is closed for two days. Some kid crapped in the water, so instead of being able to bask in the luxury of a relatively kid-free pool for the final week of service and get my pool visits down to about $50, we'll be home, enjoying our kiddie pool. See, when you shell out a disgusting amount of dough for a summer membership at the neighborhood pool and then get to use it for about a week before going away for the summer... the per visit costs can get pretty expensive.

3) Everyone at the local Central Market grocery store thinks I'm a lunatic and that the bub is the worst spoiled brat in the hood. I made the mistake of taking the bub with me to the eye doctor this morning, making him late for his nap and for lunch. So instead of getting him home afterwards to a good book and a peanut butter sandwich, I thought the right thing to do would be to take him to the market cafe for spaghetti and a fruit cup. WRONG. Because I accidentally flipped the page on his Richard Scarry book, he freaked and started screaming and crying. Chaos ensued. A half hour later, we were back home, both still crying and whimpering like babies. I am really trying to cut the boy some slack as I know he's had a worse few months than I have, but dude, he hit the eye doctor!

Now for the upswing. Mom saw the heart doc today, and he gave her the two thumbs up. Thank goodness she is OK. She opted electively for the catheter, but that won't happen until next month. Whew.... now, just watching the convention on PBS, feeling a thousand miles away from my small problems... and man oh man, that Ken Burns is good. Gotta love Ted Kennedy... I can't imagine going through all that stuff and still living to help so many people. Good on him.

Tune in tomorrow when your heroine will discuss the new word of the day: B-O-U-N-D-A-R-I-E-S.

Riddle Me This

If you were reading the time signature on this blog as it is happening, it would read 4 a.m., but that doesn't include the two hours I was awake beforehand. Around 2 a.m. the bub awoke crying and insisted on climbing into bed with us. Of late, with all that is going on, if I wake up prematurely, there is no hope of getting back to sleep because my brain is up and running.

Three nights of in a row of sharing a bottle of wine with friends has not helped me to solve the puzzle (box reads: Mom and Granna... Living Together in a 200-Year-Old House That is Falling Down Around Them... When They Can Barely Take Care of Themselves... When Mom Is On the Brink of Financial and Emotional Ruin... A Puzzle In 9 Trillion Parts... Assembly Required... Gun Included In Case You Just Want To Blow Your Brains Out Instead Of Even Trying) that keeps constructing itself in my head. I see all the pieces and visualize what it might look if they were all together. I keep moving them around... trying different shapes here and there, but none of them seem to want to fit into each other.

So the story now is, that my grandmother is having some mysterious back pains again and is refusing to eat. Something she did countless times while I was there... including two trips to the doctor and one trip to the emergency room. My mother's best friend from high school has been staying with her for a few days, and they both agreed two days ago that perhaps granna was on the way out... something too that I thought several times while I was there. The doctor put her on some pain medication that seemed to be doing the trick. But by refusing to eat, it causes her to get a stomach ache from the pain medication, so she won't even take that. Mom said she threatened her with bringing an IV in the house, so hopefully that will get her up and eating. When I last spoke to mom on Wednesday, I told her to call the doctor ASAP and see what he has to say about all of it. Four hours later, I called back and she still had not called the doctor. Why? Who knows. At that point, I had to let go. I have no idea what went down yesterday as I couldn't deal with it.

I love my mom and my grandmother to an insane extent, but I just couldn't do it anymore. I needed a break. Everything my mom does is completely the opposite of what I would do and it infuriates me. I spent two months trying to solve all her problems ~ offering up multiple, workable scenarios for each situation, but I feel like it has all fallen on deaf ears. I really doesn't matter what I say, or how many times I freak out or beg or cry or scream.... nothing ever gets solved, and in fact, it just continues to get worse and worse.

I'm sure come sunrise, I will be back on the phone again, trying to right what's wrong in mom's world... but for yesterday, I had to tune it out for my own sanity. My mom's situation is so complicated and frustrating and all-consuming for me that it is hard to shake, and I am experiencing something akin to real depression over all of it. I'm really trying to keep it together, but really all I wanna do is not think about it and forget.

Sooooo.... on my day off from fretting... The boy had a blast on two play dates with two of his favorite girlfriends... we swam in two pools... in one pool in the rain... we painted countless pictures... we listened to The Sound of Music over and over again... we shopped at Target... we made pizza... I basked in all that is good and right and wonderful about being a stay-at-home mom.. I pitched a story to the paper and got it booked... and at the end of the day, I left the bub with my father-in-law's girlfriend... stuffed a bottle of wine and a ziplock bag of fresh popcorn in my purse, and took the hub out on a surprise date to see Tropic Thunder.

I know I must seem like the most selfish person in the universe, but, really? How the hell am I gonna convince the most stubborn person in the entire world that she needs to sell her home, liquidate nearly everything she owns, scale down her life, talk to a financial advisor, move closer to one of her kids... and then once she actually says yes (ha!), help her make it happen without losing my freaking mind!?!

Insert Expletive Here

Maybe the weight of the last few months is starting to settle in or maybe I'm just bipolar, but today I'm feeling a wee bit down. After a trip to the library and the zoo this morning, I was looking forward to the bub's nap time. I'm trying to savor these moments as they are circling the drain. With his preschool time falling at 12:30 to 3:30, I fear our precious napping days are over. That said, I was hoping to get a ton done today with my new upwardly mobile attitude in hand, but alas. As Dr. Seuss would say, I am attempting to "unthunk my glunk", but it is proving to be more difficult than I imagined.

Let me just say here loud and clear, I am a worrier. I used to try and present myself as laid back... easy... unstressed, but that is total bullshit. I obsess about little problems and blow them up into giant unsolvable riddles that have to be mastered and analyzed and put under a microscope and stripped down and built up again. What the hell is up with that?

Right now, it is almost as if I am living parallel lives. There is my nice, wonderful, semi-carefree life here... and then there is my mom's life, that I am having a hard time shaking. I see her situation as one that is precarious at best. A seesaw balanced in the middle just waiting for some big fat kid to sit on it and put the whole playground in the mud.

In the past, I've attempted to strap on blinders... out of sight out of mind... struggling to not let the weight of it all get me down, but now, that is close to impossible. I just want to reach out and tell my mom that I can solve all her problems if she will just listen to me, but I know that plea with fall on deaf ears. My life isn't hers and the decisions about it therefore are hers to make. I can't say much, as I believe that my mom has started reading my blog, and even with as little as I've said I'll probably still get the angry phone call.

Let's just say, we love the people we love, and we want what's best for them, even if they can't see it for themselves. Frustrating, no?

That said, we just got word today about the trial of the jackass who murdered my mom's best friend, and the bastard is going to plead not guilty. This outta be good.

(This picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I thought that posting a picture of the bub as a wee sprout would help me feel better. AWWWWWWWW.)

Pre-Preschool

The bub's new teachers came over this afternoon for a home visit, and it couldn't have gone better. The boy talked nonstop for 45 minutes, bouncing around from one "here let me show you this" to the next. It was great, and I got the feeling these ladies are hardcore when it comes to early childhood development. But that might just be wishful thinking. Then again, they did take the time to come to our house and meet the bub on his own turf which is saying a lot. Only time will tell... two weeks to go!

Right before the teachers showed up, the bub and I took a short drive through the neighborhood over to the coffee shop, and it felt weird to be falling back into the routine. Including Mexico, it has been months since we've been running errands and feeling normal, and I am liking it.

Being with my mom and granna for so long, it made me reassess my own life, and boy, do I have some changes to make. Most importantly, I have to simplify everything. In my daily life, that will be easy because it is pretty uncomplicated as it is. The process is more of a tightening up. Getting rid of the life lint that clutters my day (brain) and keeps me from getting to the things I really need/want to do. I need to stop cramming my days with things that don't matter, so I can have more room to concentrate on the good stuff.

Second, I really need to get healthy. Ever since the bub arrived, I've been putting myself and my health second. I know my mom did the same thing after she had us, and I don't want to find myself in the same boat she's in 30 years from now. So for now, eat healthier, actually get to the gym to swim in the morning and work on getting the anxiety out of my life. Though I am totally not psyched to be getting back in the swimming pool ~ because thanks to Michael Phelps and the Olympics, ten bucks says the pool is gonna be packed with wannabes... it might take weeks for the poseurs to beat it. Dang.

That said, I do have some general updates. The bub now has a turtle. A one-year-old slider to be exact. My mom, as most of you know, does wildlife rescue and had found this reptile abandoned and taken it in. During our stay, the bub became pretty attached to the little bugger, and one day announced to my mom that "Turtley" would be returning to Texas with us. At the time I thought it was cute, and assumed, sure we can take the turtle back with us... not realizing that turtles can live upwards of 25 years and that the bigger they get, the bigger the tank they need.

Needless to say, eight states later plus a ten gallon tank, a basking light, a floating basking island, a filter, two jugs of water fixer so the bub doesn't get salmonella, and a jug of freeze dried baby shrimps... the bub's zoo continues to grow and remains in flux. Now we have Speedy, the black mouse with the the big white spots... Turtley the wonder turtle, who apparently will be with us until the bub graduates from college, gets married and has kids of his own... and four new guppies ~ Spotty, Reddy, Lemur and Swimmer ~ all aptly named by the bub.

After only three years, the bub's body count continues to rise. Though new critters come along, the ones we've loved and lost will never be forgotten... May they live forever in our hearts.

~ RIP ~

Gus Gus - gray mouse
Gus Gus 2 - gray mouse
Curly - goldfish
Larry - goldfish
Moe - goldfish
Bub Junior - hamster

Sh*t Happens

Yo... am home safe and sound and loving life pretty hard right now. Night falls on a happy me, and for all the upset the bub has caused me over the last month, he's been an angel for the last three days. I have to believe the worst is behind us. You know, with all the support I've been getting, I know that no matter what happens in life, I'll be able to deal with it. I waste far too much time worrying about what is to come and lamenting about what has come before. It is totally a soul suck, and my life shines way too bright to be letting the small (or gigantic) stuff get me down.

As for the burning questions.

1) No, I did not house train my mom's dogs. Their urine is her cross to bear. (Sorry, Mom!)

2) I have to assume no one is making the omelets and that pretty soon Lean Cuisine will be doing the catering at my mom's digs.

3) Yes, my high school boyfriend did spend the night with me one night while I was in Virginia, but except for some mildly excessive drinking and obnoxious storytelling... it was all relatively PG. I mean, come on, the boy's turned Republican for god's sake. Even I have my limits. The hub knows I would NEVER french a conservative, no matter how hot they were in 10th grade.

All this said, tomorrow is another glorious day, and I feel pretty primed to take on whatever life throws at me now. You know, this is it. This is all we have. These little lives that we've made for ourselves that could literally end at any second. Hence forth, I shall be taking my life queues from the boy. He lives every moment like he means it. Like hearing "Casey Jones" come on his Best of Disney LP is the greatest flipping thing that ever happened. Like a popsicle made of grapefruit juice is better than the stars or the heavens or anything. That the moon is indeed "his friend the moon" and every moment of life is spectacular and full and kind.

In part, I've created this world for my son. So why should it be so difficult to keep a little bit of it for myself?

It's about time my friends. It's about time.

Greetings from Myrtle Beach

Free at last. We've built a sand castle. Taken a ride on the Ferris wheel. Eaten corn dogs on the board walk. Shit, I almost had my hair wrapped and got a henna tattoo emblazoned across my ass, but, then I thought better of it. If I do that, what's to stop me from walking around in a Dixie flag bikini sucking down giant margaritas from a neon green cup that's shaped like an alien's head? Or getting a airbrushed t-shirt that reads "Summer '08... Drunk and Lovin' it!" Or buying a giant hermit crab with SpongeBob's face hand painted on the shell?

That said, we are still having a blast. I'll fill you in on all the gory details of my exit from Virginia in the coming days and all your questions will be answered. Did Scribbler ever house train her mom's two dogs? Will mom and granna be OK without Scribbler to take care of them? Who will make the veggie omelets? Did Scribbler really spend the night with her high school boyfriend without the hub so much as batting an eye? Stay tuned next week, when you'll hear our heroine say...

"Honestly officer, I wouldn't have had that 5th glass of wine if I'd known it was only 10 in the morning."

The Light

Tomorrow morning the bub and I load up in the car and drive a hour south to pick up the hub at the airport. Come Thursday lunchtime, we will be on the road back home. I am 50 parts anxiety ridden to be leaving and 50 parts psyched out of mind. I am so happy to be going home, and at the same time I am sad to be leaving it.

Forever in the history books of the hub/bub and me, this will go down as the "lost summer." The summer our pool membership went unused. The summer we missed all the key birthday parties. The summer that the bub drifted slowly away from his friends. The summer that I walked to the brink of madness and somehow managed to sneak in 5 hours of sleep at night. The summer that my mom's roof finally got fixed. The summer that I got to snuggle my granna like a child. The summer the bub got lost in the cornfield. The summer his g mee mee taught him how to call the peacocks from the porch. The summer the bub pretended (nonstop) that he was a duck. The summer the bub pretended that the hair that collects in the drain of the tub is in fact a mermaid. The summer of a thousand potty chairs and 20 cases of Ensure. The summer a tornado knocked the 60 foot tall maple tree down in the front yard. The summer I made a veggie omelet every morning for 31 days straight. The summer my mother's blood sugar rose to 800, and then three weeks later crashed to 30 causing her to nearly slip away. The summer I hated my mother more than I ever have in my life. The summer I loved her more than I ever thought possible.

The summer my mother came back from the dead. A friend asked her what almost dying was like.... "Did you see the light?"

Mom described lying in bed, moments away from slipping into a diabetic coma, and the room started to glow. At first, mom thought it was a weird reflection coming in the window. Then she realized it was her body that was actually glowing. She was radiating light and felt warm and safe and happy.

My mom replied, "It's not that you see the light, it's that you ARE the light."

Thank goodness she didn't go gentle... That said. There's no place like home... there's no place like home... there's no place... (How many times do i have to click again?)

DVD killed the video star....

Because of the storm that brought hundreds of dollars worth of men with chainsaws to my mom's front lawn, this part of Virginia has experienced a few days of utter bliss. Cool. Breezy. Sunny. These are the dreams summers are made of. This shot is of the bub's new found passion, The Chasing of Evinrude. Watching The Rescuers the other night, the little guy fell in love with the trusty dragonfly hero... aptly named after the famous outboard motor company... the sort of which motored my childhood Boston Whaler. Now, all he wants to do is go outside and chase Evinrudes (found peacock feathers in hand). All day. All the time. Super cute.

And speaking of old Disney movies, I have discovered a new passion. VHS. The bub has been tapping into my sister's old cassette collection. Said collection is in the hundreds ~ literally ~ as she's a female Quentin Tarantino (before he was famous) who spent years behind the cash register of the local video store and amassed an impressive collection of tapes that are now worth nothing. Well, not exactly nothing.

See, that same video store is still stocked to the gills with dusty old VHS tapes that are on sale for a mere $3 a piece. As I browsed the shelves of that store this afternoon ~ picking up a copy of Road Runner classics and My Neighbor Totoro (that my friend Lost in Texas first turned me onto) ~ I realized I've been mistakenly investing in $20 DVDs that will someday soon become dinosaurs in their own right... when in fact, I could have been buying up VHS tapes at a fraction of the cost for the bub's viewing pleasure.

This whole trip, I've found awesome, amazing movies here and there at thrift shops and antique malls for just 25 cents or a bundle for $5. All these great movies that I would have never thought to purchase on DVD because of the price. (I haven't found My Neighbor Totoro for under $25.) So with one phone call to the hub, I've located our old VHS machine that I will set up in my office for those days when I just have to get some work done and the bub would love nothing better than to watch Water Babies (quite possibly the most awesome Disney Silly Symphony ever made!)

Even the rewinding of tapes isn't as annoying as I remember. I'd forgotten the fun of watching a scene in fast forward or rewind. (!fire on tail's my, Sassafras) Classic times, my friends. So now, I return home with not just the load of vintage books I've collected during my time here in the third circle of hell, but also a stack of VHS tapes that thought they'd never again know the joy of a child's laugh. Enjoy.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And a million other ugly blondes think, "He cheated on his wife, and it wasn't with me?" (Who does that bitch think she is, Linda Trip?) Insert sound of my heart breaking here.

I don't fault the guy for having the affair, but what was written online in the Guardian today is true:

"The reason this is more than a personal matter for the Edwardses and Ms Hunter, of course, is that had Edwards won the nomination, the revelation of this secret at a critical point in the campaign could easily have destroyed the chances of a Democratic victory."

That, I can never forgive. Shame on you John.

On second thought, the dude's a swine for cheating on his wife..... AND WHILE HE WAS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT FOR GOD'S SAKE. What, is he retarded? Or just a moron? A complete and total f-ing idiot? Did we learn nothing from Bill Clinton's dick? It's a sad sad sad day for people like me who gave a shit.

I still love Obama, but this is exactly why a woman should be in the White House. We have a better chance of being trusted to keep it in our pants!

Gone, maple, gone

Sorry I've been away, but I've been trying to squeak in more quality time with the family before we leave.

Last night, there was a crazy lightning storm. The electricity went out, and the giant maple in the front yard came down. Thankfully not on the house. When the yard guy comes today to start tearing into that bitch with the chainsaw, there is no way that he is not gonna get full body poison ivy. That tree was covered in the stuff, the root vine was as big as my arm... probably a 50 year old plant that spread all the way to the top of the tree with a single leaf the size of my outspread hand.

Even though the tree came down and (sadly) water poured into a roof that is 30 seconds away from being fixed, it sure was pretty. There was so much wind and rain that it looked like a snow storm. The bub was jacked, to say the least. I was settling him down to sleep when it started, but as soon as the lightning flashed, he was up and at 'um. He has become such a great helper (and sharer!), leading the way down the stairs with the flashlight (Don't trip Gee Mee Mee. Keep your feet in the light.), and being all big boy, man of the house. I think after a month and a half, the hub is gonna freak when he sees and hears him.

I swear, it is not just that I can have full conversations with the bub, but we can have existential discussions about the nature of the world and concepts like birth and death. Our new game is "Tell Me About The Night I Was Born"... where the bub asks me and I tell him the story, and he usually climbs under my dress to reenact the actual birth... he even makes this hilarious popping sound when he finally pops out. I know it sounds weird, but it is totally adorable.

Caregiver

The last few days have been really hard with the bub. As experienced in Mexico, he has become more and more defiant and bored and this behavior manifests itself in really negative ways. Being fussy and clingy and all that jazz, driven stir crazy by being locked in this house doing nothing but hanging out with us and gorging himself on old Disney movies. I know all this has been hard on the bub, and my patience level has been way, way shortened with all the responsibilities that come with taking care of the house, the animals, and my mom and granna. I've been snapping on him quickly, getting enraged when he acts up. Tonight at dinner, he was an absolute terror, and I flipped on him in front of everyone. My granna started reprimanding me, and of course, I started to cry and quickly shuffled her back to her room. I had a little talk with the bub to try and smooth things over and decided that sticking to his bedtime was gonna be a must for this last week.

With everything going on, his routines have fallen by the wayside and he doesn't get to sleep til 10:30 some nights (usually not getting down for his nap until 6.) So tonight, I made it happen. I bedded him down with my childhood Madame Alexander doll, and he was snoozing by 8:15. And then something amazing happened. I got in bed with my mom and we talked and laughed and had probably the best time since I've been here. I followed that up with a trip to granna's room just to make sure she got to sleep OK, and she told me that she was just getting ready to holler for me. She'd been sitting in there worried about making me cry and just wanted to tell me she was sorry. Then I got in bed with her and wrapped her up in my arms and just cried and cried.

You see, my dad left us when I was five years old, and we all moved in with my grandmother ~ my mom, me and my two sisters ~ and that is where we stayed until I was 15. I grew up under my grandmother's roof. Pretty much everything we ever had was because of her and my grandfather.

Tonight, I realized that I've spent the last month taking care of my mom and granna, but not caring for them.

I've been so busy with laundry and feeding and changing potty seats and sweeping and changing linens and giving baths and feeling resentful and frustrated and filling out paperwork... that I haven't taken the moments out of the day to really love them, when in the end, that is what they really need more than anything.

I stayed with granna in bed for the better part of an hour. She thanked me for coming here to take care of them and said she never dreamed she'd get this kind of time with me again and how thankful she was. Then she said... "Joy, joy." Something she's always said to me my whole life since I was a little girl. But this time, she followed it up with, "That's what you are to me, my little joy, joy."

My grandmother has helped take care of me my entire life. It has taken me 94 years to be able to pay her back. How can I make up in 8 days what I've spent the last two months wasting?

These are precious moments indeed.

Crazy

Eight days and counting until the white knight swoops in to take us home. All I have to say is it stinks big time to spend this much time away from the hub. Was out with my elementary school BFF last night and wept more than once talking about him. As much as my summer has been complicated, frustrating and exhausting, I know the hub's has been empty and lonely without us.... and likewise. Was looking through my mom's little photo album from the bub's birth, and I came across this picture of the hub and me, taken in 2002, back when the bub wasn't even a concept. Back when we could enjoy cigars and Tecates on the Mexican border without fear of setting a bad example. It's weird, but even though my sister took this picture, I don't think I've ever seen it before. I'm of course wearing my signature bandanna and the hub is sporting his buzz cut/facial hair combo. AWESOME! I miss him like crazy.

Bookends

Lordy, lordy. Hotter than inside the devil's belly button. Here in my makeshift office down the hall from my mom's room, I can literally feel the sweat as it drips down my back. The morning consisted of cleaning for my afternoon guest, taking a ride out to Southern States to get a belt for my mom's jumbo push weed whacker, and hitting the redneck playground to slide a few slides and once again watch the bub buck on the bucking duck.

Things that would never happen back in my hood in San Antonio.

1) You would never be engaged with a parent on the playground while they stand there, pushing their toddler on the big swing and smoking a squack. Would never happen. ("How old is he? Three? Shoot, he talks real good.")

2) You would never enquire in a thrift shop about the Fisher Price Little People Barn circa 1969 (still in the box for christ's sake!) you saw sitting in the back room and ask when they were gonna put it out only to have the help bark, "I ain't getting ready to put that dang thing out til nafter I eat. And it looks old, so it ain't gonna be cheap neither!" Insert hillbilly scowl here.

3) You would never have to wait five days to get in a weed whacker belt that is probably on the shelf at no less than five stores within one mile of my house back in Texas. ("We don't have it in stock. I'll have to call up to Richmond un' see if they got it in the warehouse, 'wise is might take a week un' get it from Tallahassee.")

I know, I know. San Antonio might not be the most cosmo city on the planet, but at least our parents don't drink malt liquor at the zoo, our second hand store workers are all gentrified, blue, haired old ladies volunteering for a noble cause, and we have more than one hardware store that doesn't take 25 minutes to drive to.

That said, my BFF from first grade on is rolling in at about 4 o'clock... a case of red wine in her trunk and a smile on her face. Old friends, sitting on bar stools like book ends. How terribly strange to be pushing 40. (Hey, as lame as Paul Simon is now, I was raised on him and the Garf-man, so deal with it!)

Happy 11 days and counting down!