sueeeus

It’s a good morning when you have two hours to get ready.  Oh, the things that can be done in two hours!  Let’s see.  A haircut, a shower.  Get dressed.  Eat some Cheerios while waiting for the oatmeal to cool down.  Eat the oatmeal.  Play.  Take some pictures to show and tell today’s outfit.  Upload the pics, pack the lunch bags, load the car, and hit the road…   …and all is well and it’s all smiles until the part where he gets four shots, two in each thigh.  Oh, the tears.  Oh, the betrayal.  Luckily, a 15-month old doesn’t have a very long term memory, and the smiles returned in, oh, about 45 seconds.

Today’s outfit is a onesie style white turtleneck, stretched to its limit on this long torsoed model.  He wears Genuine Kids overalls (from Target, most likely).  White socks, again from Target.  Light up shoes with The Incredibles caricatures.  Diaper, size 4, Kirkland (Costco) brand.  (Was show and tell supposed to be my outfit   Any outfit   Today’s outfit )  His is so much cuter and more interesting.  Mine is just blue jeans, also from Target, a navy blue mock turtleneck boxy cut tunic with 1/2 length sleeves from the Avenue clearance rack ($5), cotton socks and black Redback slip-on boots.

Caught red handed.  Here he is this morning, post-haircut, pre-shots, playing with his favorite thing. 

It’s a picture of his cousins.  Aren’t they gorgeous   He loves to play with this picture, for some reason.  This, and the Tiffany lamp.

Doubleknot tagged me with a meme.  It’s so exciting!  Pick me!  Pick me!  This is the Six Weird Things meme.  It’s somewhat like the 5 idiosyncrasies meme, but I’m sure I can come up with plenty of material.  Here goes…

1. When I think I need something, I embark on a Quest.  It’s not a matter of just buying a coffee maker, for example.  One has to consider so many things in order to find the perfect one.  As a result, I may end up with several versions of an item before I am satisfied.  For instance, I have six coffee makers at this moment, and I have recently gotten rid of at least three.  One is commercial for those big family gatherings where it’s important to keep the coffee flowing, fast and strong.  One is a French press, for camping or when the power goes out.  One is a 2-cup drip version with a thermal carafe, which I’ve settled with as my every day version (but if I ever find the perfect one, it’s history!).  One is a Senseo pod version, which I have a love hate relationship with.  The jury is still out on that one.  One is a generic 2-cup drip version that I haven’t remembered to donate yet.  One is a 12-cup generic drip version for when we have coffee drinking company and the 2-cup version just won’t do.  All of these, and I still don’t have the perfect one.  The quest is still on.  (There have been similar quests, mainly for kitchen and wardrobe items.)
2. I snore like a sailor.  Not intending any disrespect to sailors.  Two of my brothers were sailors.  It’s just a phrase.  And, not that snoring is so weird, but as a result, I have death breath in the morning, and to accompany that, a throat full of disgusting phlegm that I cough up and hack, every morning, like a withered old smoker.  It’s just gross.  I call it weird because I don’t know other women who hack like that.  Like I said, it’s just gross.  (I am actually scheduled to see a sleep specialist and an allergist regarding this.  It’s part of the mid-life maintenance flurry I’ve imposed upon myself.)
3. I can’t stand to have a ragged or torn fingernail.  It drives me nuts, to the point where I’d rather rip it off than leave it be.  Consequently, I nearly always carry nail clippers with me.
4. I sometimes think I’m on the verge of understanding foreign languages.  I hear someone speak and feel like I’m a click away from comprehension, as though I could concentrate just a bit harder and I’d get it.  Like tuning in to a radio station.  But I never actually get that far.  Still, in the back of my mind, I feel the comprehension lurking.  I feel it.  Yes, that is definitely weird.
5. I am super confident in my work life, and the polar opposite in my social life. 
6. I like odd numbers.  I don’t know why.  I just do.  If I’m bouncing a ball, I like to bounce it five times, or one, or three, but never two.  If I’m shuffling cards, I shuffle three or five times.   I used to think I wanted five kids, or three, but never two or four.  Now I have one, and I’m on the verge of being too old for more, but I’d like more, but doubt I could possibly have two more, so I may end up with two.  Only two!  What will I do !

While I like to be tagged, I’m not comfortable tagging.  Another sort of weird thing, but not so weird because I’ve come across several bloggers who like to be tagged but not to tag.  So this meme will have to be a self-tagging meme.  I’d love to know if anyone self-tags from here though.

I love this passionate phase in a young boy’s life.  He is fifteen months old and bursting with energy.  There are tantrums when he can’t understand why his mother won’t allow him to do, oh, dangerous things.  All he knows is that he’s not getting what he wants, so he must express his displeasure.  It’s so very dramatic.  I love it.  (To an extent.  I’m a very patient person, but I have my limits.)

There’s not as much snuggling and cuddling going on these days.  There are so many places to go, things to see.  So this is what I see of my little adventurer, most of the time.

Sometimes he takes my slippers and shoes hostage.  I find them all over the house.

My sweet little man still takes my breath away.  Literally.  I love that he has so many smiles in him.  Even after he bashes his head into my face so hard that I see stars and fear that I may lose my front teeth long before their time.  Especially when the teeth remain loose the next day, and the gums are sore and the head aches.  Even more amazing, is how it didn’t faze him a bit.  Not a peep, other than confusion as to why his mother was behaving so strangely, sobbing, reeling in pain, and all.  Not a peep, not a scratch.  How can he not be bruised or hurt with an impact of such magnitude   It escapes me. 

In addition to the bashed in face, I have a serious case of bedhead today.  Just like my beautiful Boo.  It’s so much cuter on him, though.  My beautiful Boo in blue.  He’s groggy this morning too, just like his mama.

This morning on my way to work I noticed some high school kids walking to school and had to do a double take because my brain had a little difficulty processing what I saw.   There were two of them, and they were wearing something knee-length and colorful.  I recognized the colorful knee-length togs were those nylon or polyester sports shorts that basketball players wear.  My mind jumped to the assumption that these two figures were boys.  However, I realized they were girls, at about the same time that I realized they were wearing sport shorts.  The synapses were sparking, trying to make sense of this fashion choice.  Aware that gauchos or culottes have made an unfortunate reappearance on the fashion scene, my mind tried to match the knee length colorful garb to gauchos when I recognized the forms to be girls.  But recognizing those bright colors to be sport shorts at nearly the same instant that I processed the gender as female caught me off guard.  Add to that the detail that these brightly colored sport shorts, worn by girls, were also worn over jeans.  Over jeans.  My mind was therefore forced to recall another unfortunate fashion trend of decades past in which the sporty cool athletic types (or couch potato counterpart wannabees) would wear their jogging shorts over their sweatpants.  At a loss to explain this fashion choice, I recalled that it was so it for girls to wear their boyfriend’s letterman’s jacket in days of yore.  Maybe these girls were aligned with varsity ball players, and this is the twenty first century way of parading said status.  I hope.  Because, come on!  Bright yellow baggy knee length polyester shorts over blue jeans

Last night I dreamt of graduation.  It seemed that everyone at my university had to go to the administration office to receive a packet of graduation materials.  It was absolutely necessary in order to graduate.  I went to the office and there was a very long line of students, all waiting.  There was one small table with only a couple of people seated behind it, answering questions and handing out the materials.  Students had to show their badge to the administrator, and the administrator would then look up their name in their flip card file.  I asked someone in line who I recognized from my classes if this was the only line and he said yes, and that we needed our badge, so if we didn’t have it, we’d have to go get it and get back in line, at the end of the line.  There were hundreds of people in line, so I was glad we spoke, as I didn’t have a badge.  I went to my department and inquired about the badge.  In the dream, the professor was Hugh Laurie.  He sent me to a booth where I had a photo taken, and printed on a badge.  With my new badge in hand, I went back to the line.  I was a bit dismayed that I’d have a long wait, but happily found that the line had dwindled to almost nothing during the time it took me to obtain my badge.  I finally got to speak to the woman behind the desk, and she looked at my badge and said she was sorry, but she couldn’t give me the papers I needed, because people with that kind of badge didn’t get to graduate now.  What kind of badge, I asked.  She showed me the upper left corner of my badge where there was a miniature image of the badge, a badge within a badge.  I hadn’t thought anything of it, but it turned out that it was a special mark, given to a selection of students, mainly engineering students.  I was upset and stormed off to find my professor (Hugh Laurie) to learn why I wasn’t allowed to graduate.  But I have good grades, I told him.  I’m an honor student, I told him.  Yes, he knew that.  He wouldn’t say directly why I couldn’t graduate.  He was very mysterious about it.  I gathered that there was some special assignment that the top engineering students had to do, so we weren’t going to graduate (yet).  It was all very vague, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I had to simply accept the fact and wait.  Wait to learn what was next, what was required of me.  . . . and then I woke up, with a headache, realized it’s Monday morning, I have to go to work, I haven’t prepared breakfast and lunch for my munchkin to take to daycare, and, and, and. . .

I actually did have a professor in college who was Hugh Laurie-like.  At least, he was lean and lanky with blue blue eyes, tousled hair, and a dry wit.

Yum.  Oh, did I say that out loud

I think it was (Amanda) Soule Mama who started a corners of my home theme.  I like the idea, and the phrase.  I think it’s a flickr group, but I haven’t joined.  I get chastised enough for the amount of time I spend blogging.  Which heralds in the far too easy to assume tidings of guilt.  I was raised Catholic, after all.  Actually, I was pondering guilt in general, and thinking of writing something in the Sunday Confessions theme, while sitting in a chair that I recently placed in the corner of what used to be the dining room, gazing at the photos on the far wall, and that led me to want to talk about the corners of my home.  It’s all related.  I find rearranging furniture and rooms to be quite cathartic.  I’ve been participating in the office pool weight loss challenge and have only lost 5 pounds.  My doctor suggested that I exercise at least 45 minutes, 5 days a week, and don’t eat anything after 5:30 p.m.  I don’t even get home before 5:30, so this is not the easiest thing for me.  My coworker, who is charting the group’s progress, also pointed out that his trend analysis shows that I won’t meet my goal.  Nice of him, wasn’t it   My life and lifestyle being what it is, I don’t want to give up watching TV.  To compromise, the treadmill is now center stage in the dining room, along with my reading chair.  From the treadmill I have an excellent view of the television.  From the chair, I have a view of my photo wall.  (It’s not hard to see which ones are within reach of a certain very busy and curious one-year-old.)  Which brings me to the corners of my home.  Like I said, all related (in a very convoluted way).

In my home there is a wall of photos. Photos of family and friends.  Photos that bring back memories of life experiences.  I see Pea Soup in bloom with number one.  She is radiant.  I see my brother, the young sailor with hopes and dreams of family and fatherhood, of happily ever after.  A young man who lost hope.  I see brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents.  Children.  I see myself in times of love before love went sour.  Only three of the photos are new (Mr. Gadget’s kids, and my Boo, not visible in this image).  The others span about forty years, between 1956 and 1996.  I see a high school photo of my mother, a young beauty with hopes and dreams, so different from the woman I grew up with.  I see a brother as an infant, an innocent babe with a sparkle in his eyes.  Before life changed him.  Changed us all, with its ripples. My heart cries for the people in these pictures, wishing none of them had ever suffered any pain.  Wishing they could all have kept the sparkle, the twinkle, the effervescence of youth, of hope, of life, of love.  Wishing all their best dreams had come true.  “Life is pain, Princess.”  That’s what the Dread Pirate Roberts said to Buttercup.  He’s right, and it’s not all bad.  Pain brings with it lessons.  Lessons that open us up to the possibility of bigger and better things.  Had my own path not been what it was, with all its bumps, bends, turns, and sorrows, I wouldn’t have my precious Boo.  I can’t even imagine a life without him, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about the road that I have walked, if it meant I couldn’t have my Boo.  But my heart still cries for the sorrows of the people I love.  I wish that I could wish their sorrows away.  I wish that I could rain love down on them.

…or in my case, keeps the doctor employed. 

Of all the allergies to have, I get the one where I can’t eat fresh fruits and vegetables.  It’s an adult onset thing.  I’ve had pollen allergies for most of my life, and somewhere in my thirties I developed some food allergies.  The reaction is most intense with a few certain foods, but is present in many many foods.  It’s very annoying.  I’ve googled it before, trying to find out what the problem is, but didn’t find anything definitive.  At first I thought it might be pesticides, so I tried organics.  It wasn’t pesticides.  I found that apples, cherries, and hazelnuts cause the most severe reaction.  But I love apples!  I proceeded to torture myself by trying different varieties of apples and learned that some bothered me less than others.  Or so it seemed.  I could eat Braeburns for a while.  And then not.  I discovered Cameo recently, and had three successfully, with no reaction.  Last night I tried one, and ended up with blisters on my lips and tongue and swelling and itching in my throat/pharynx.  Very.Annoying.  I haven’t had such a severe reaction since I tried to eat cherries a few years ago.  The list of offending foods is long.  Apples, cherries, hazelnuts, celery, lettuce, carrots, peaches, pears, nectarines, apricots, plums.  Some of these things I eat anyway, because how am I supposed to live without salad   I’m not so heartbroken about the fruits because they’re sugar rich and I need to be careful about diabetes.  I have now discovered there is a name for this syndrome.  Yes, I have a syndrome.  OAS.  Oral Allergy Syndrome.  My self diagnosis is that I have birch and alder pollen allergies with cross reactivity OAS.  At least now I know.

I wish I could eat apples, though.

Young child with dreams
Dream, ev’ry dream on your own
When children play
Seems like you end up alone
…
Shilo, when I was young
I used to call your name
When no one else would come
Shilo, you always came
And we’d play

The lyrics aren’t the best match, but this song and these words entered my mind when I heard the news.  Someone I love passed away yesterday.  He was my father figure during my teenage years, when I so desperately wanted to matter to my own father.  I found a father figure in my friend’s dad.  He stood in for me when there was a father daughter banquet at school.  He always liked me, just because.  He would tease me and make me laugh.  He would ask me how I was doing.  He was proud of me, even though I wasn’t his kid.  I had the privilege of knowing him for the best of who he was, and it didn’t matter to me that he walked a rough road with his other children, before he came into my life.  My friend, his daughter, was the youngest of six, and the only girl.  She was his baby, and I was her friend.  I could do no wrong.  I looked up to him and admired him for being a man of men.  I respected him and I think that meant something to him.  Perhaps it helped smooth some of his regrets for rough roads of the past, troubles and trials with his own children.  I don’t know.  I just know that I loved him as a dad, and he loved me as a daughter.  I will always remember him and hold him dear, and I think he knows that.  Knew that.

He made me a wind catcher, many years ago.  Twenty five years ago, or more.  It’s been set aside for years and I’ve been meaning to hang it up.  This weekend I finally did.  Sunday.  The day before he died.  I was thinking of him, remembering him, loving him.  Thinking of how he made this with his own hands, for me, for all his children.

Buzz Sawyer.  My Shilo.

Three years ago I took the plunge into uncharted waters and said I do to Mr. Gadget.  I had assumed that I would marry young and be a stay-at-home-wife-and-mom-extraordinaire.  However.  My twenties drifted into my thirties.  The thirties marched relentlessly on.  Relationships crashed and burned waxed and waned.  Ours is not a magical tale of love and romance.  There is love.  There is romance.  Occasionally.  It’s not the stuff of country songs.  It’s not what I’d dreamed it would be.  Thank God!  Left to my own devices, I might have been a Stepford wife.  We are very different, the Cool Cat and I.  We have good times.  We have difficult times.  Communication is one of our biggest struggles, but when we laugh, oh how we laugh.  We are good together.  I like being a couple.  I like sharing a home, sharing a life.  I love sharing a child.

I found this Van Gogh painting with a dark haired buxom woman and a reddish blonde bearded man.  It was us.  Perfect for our wedding invitation.  We sort of eloped.  Decided to just go for it and do it.  Take the plunge.  The beauty of it is that my closest friends and family made it, even though it was short notice, and even though it was miles away.

When I returned to work, I sent this picture to my coworkers to announce what I’d done.  They all thought it was a joke.  An elaborate April Fool’s prank.  It was for real though.  (Sure wish that was my bejeweled showgirl figure.)

Happy Anniversary to my Gadget Man.

I’ve been feeling stressed out lately.  Like that’s anything new.  But this is a bit more so than the usual level of stressed outedness.  I’m seeing a tax accountant for the first time in my life, and the appointment is Sunday.  In order to prepare for this, I’ve spent hours and hours trying to capture expenditures, itemize deductions, find old receipts, figure out the basis for some property that I sold, and with that the slew of emotions that swirl to the surface when that whole chapter in my life gets revisited.  It’s a chapter that I don’t like to revisit, what with the ex, the lies, the deceit, the violations, the traumas, the shattered hopes and dreams.  There is that.  And there is the -deleted whinge on more financial matters-.  And another -deleted whinge on another financial matter-.  It’s our wedding anniversary tomorrow.  Not that that is stressful, but it’s one more thing in the current window.  He wanted to go visit his mother in the morning, two hours away, and we have a dinner reservation in the evening, and any time we go visit her, we never get back at any kind of a reasonable hour, no matter how hard we try.  I told him “No!  Absolutely no!”  This particular dinner is on a train, and there is no leeway for being late.  Also this weekend is daylight savings time.  Normally no big deal, but if I forget, then the appointment with the tax accountant will be impacted, and that would not be good for me at all, as it would add to everything else that I’ve already blown way out of proportion.  Then.  Monday.  Two doctor appointments.  One for the gp regarding a lump in one side of my throat, and no other symptoms.  What causes asymmetrical lumps   It’s been nearly three weeks and it’s getting better, or else I’m getting used to it.  The other appointment is with the ob-gyn.  That’s always fun.  This one will be even more so.  But I won’t go into detail.  Suffice it to say that I’m fairly certain there will be more than a little discomfort involved.  Oh yes.  I nearly forgot.  I am also resigned to the mortification that accompanies the process of standing on that damned scale at the doctor’s office, to which I will be subjected twice in close succession. I guess that’s about it.  My weekend forecast.