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Sunday, June 26, 2005

sigh

T is still gone. He'll probably come home tomorrow night at his regular time. We hope. He was supposed to have a four-day weekend (well, Thursday he had to go to the lab, so he took it off, but whatever) and ended up getting called on Friday evening to go in early Saturday. So the last any of us saw him was Friday night, because no, I did NOT manage to stay up till 3:30 and make him pancakes. I've done it before in situations like this but I just couldn't this time; I was nodding off sitting up, and finally headed to bed around 12:30 or 1:00 in a sleepy haze of guilt.

I have a papercut (from a paper plate. What kind of person gets papercuts from a paper plate? Oh yeah, me. Nevermind) right in that web of skin between my finger and thumb on my left hand. A papercut has always been right up there with a hangnail as favorites for sarcastic excuses for getting out of work, as if they're these negligible little nothings. Well, I did do some work today, but I am here to tell you that papercuts and hangnails hurt. They really do. Whine.

Also, VBS starts tomorrow (that's Vacation Bible School, which lasts a week and takes all morning, for those of you who are either child-free or not from the Evangelical Christian planet). I did not sign up to help this year, but odds are I'll be helping anyway, since I have nothing else to do during the four-hour duration of the event. I'm certainly not driving home (15 miles) and back (15 miles again) when I don't have to and gas is still at European-style prices. The night before something like this I always dread it, and try to figure out ways to wiggle out of it, but the fact is that the kids are really looking forward to it. Well, C is. I think LT could probably do without VBS just fine and never miss it, but C is a little social animal who loves her fun and games. And once I'm actually there I'm always glad we went.

However. I have been a good girl this weekend and actually stuck to my diet, overall. I hate that word -- it's right up there with "blog" -- but it sounds even lamer to say something else, like "healthy eating plan" or what have you. So diet it is. For those of you who joined us late, I lost 30 pounds in the fall/winter of 2003/2004. Which is great, except that I wanted to lose 45 pounds, but I just sort of stopped at 30, way back over a year ago, last spring, and in the last few months I've actually gained five pounds back, and that is just purely unacceptable. So this past weekend has been that really fun time at the beginning of a new way of eating when you're basically starving all the time, especially in the afternoons and evenings, when I feel like I could eat a Mack truck if someone would deep-fry it and serve it with ranch sauce for dipping. If I hang in there for a week it'll get better, I know this, but augh. Oh, wait, that was a happy thing. Yay.

And I've been catching up on laundry. And the house is clean. I figure the least I can do for a man who leaves the house at 4:00 to go work two or three nineteen-hour days to feed our family when he thought he'd be at home relaxing (well, working. On projects. But... whatever. It's relaxing to HIM) is to have the house comfortable for him when he walks in. Now watch, tomorrow it'll get totally destroyed just in time for him to come in the door.

And I watched "The Phantom of the Opera" again tonight. My new favorite part this time was the Don Juan scene where the Phantom has just offed the male lead guy and taken his place on the stage and he's singing and Christine and Raoul and Madame Giry and Mssrs. Firmin and André have all just figured that out and the tension is just palpable and augh must NOT put it in again must NOT must go to BED.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

favorite things

C likes to come with my on my evening exercise/photography walks. T and LT do not -- T used to enjoy walking but doesn't anymore, and LT has always been able to find something better to do than to walk without a destination in mind. So frequently this is some good "alone time" with my daughter, time when I can hold her hand and we can converse and it can really smack me over the head how much she's growing up, time when I can get to know her even better, as an individual with her own thoughts and ideas, and not just as my daughter, time when there's no competition for each other's attention. (note: I sometimes have this kind of time with LT also, generally after everyone else is in bed, as both he and I tend more toward night-owlism than the other two people in our family.)

Anyway. Last night as we were walking we started a conversation about our favorite sounds, and our favorite smells, taking turns. Here are some of the things we came up with
(sounds)

• I like the sound of a shovel going into soft dirt.
  
• C likes the sound of a bird singing.
  
• I like the sound of a car driving by on a wet road.
  
• C likes the sound of windshield wipers on a really rainy window.
  
• I like the sound of a quiet room where people are reading.
  
• C likes the sound of horses' feet running.
  
• I like the sound of paper or silk rustling.
  
• C likes the sound of feet crunching in gravel.
  
• I like the sound of a dog's tags jingling when it runs.
  
• C likes the smell of the back of my neck when it's clean (borrowed from Stuart Little. Yeesh, I hope she's never smelled it when it's not clean...).
  
• I like the smell of gasoline. (C: "me too. And I like the smell of diesel too." I: "me too.")
  
• C likes the smell of roses.
  
• I like the smell of fresh laundry as I'm hanging it on the clothesline.
  
• C likes the smell of horses.
  
• I like the smell of cooking coming out from other people's houses.
  
• C likes the smell of water.
  
• I like the smell of the sun on a field of dry grass.
  
• C likes the smell of her Dragon Fruit shampoo-mixed-with-conditioner.
  
• I like the smell of tarweed and peach brush, but only because it reminds me of when I was growing up.
  
• C likes the smell of the air at Grandma and Grandpa's.
  
• I like the smell when rain just starts to fall on the very hot, dry ground.
  
• C likes the smell of lawns with sprinklers on them.
  

And so on. We kept going back and forth for probably twenty minutes; I can't even remember half of what we said, but it was a really pleasant conversation.

So what do YOU like?

Thursday, June 16, 2005

bliss

We got back at 2:00 from a really long hard walk in town, and the kids settled down in the living room with books (yay for the summer reading program, one of my all-time favorite summer memories, and something that I was excited about sharing with my kids before I even HAD kids). Except for the sound my typing is making right now, we've heard nothing but turning pages for the past half-hour.

I totally love my life today. Just had to share, especially after the slipping earlier in the week. :)

Monday, June 13, 2005

this woman's work

After a much longer labor than it took for either of his brothers to arrive, my sister-in-law ushered her newest blessing into the world yesterday morning. Here he is being examined and admired by his brothers and cousins.

I was thinking yesterday about all that we go through for our children. We as mothers carry them around inside our bodies; we care for ourselves so as to care for them; we go through enormously painful processes to bring them outside into the world; we feed them; we nurture them. We give up huge, huge chunks of our time and our freedom to them. They become a part of who we are. Now, this is not an unpleasant sacrifice, for me, anyway; I have always relished my role as a mother. But what I was thinking about yesterday was the way our children have no clue AT ALL how much our lives are altered by them, how much work and pain we put ourselves through for their sake. Maybe as they gain maturity they'll understand that better. Maybe it won't be until they have children of their own, and do it all themselves (or watch their wives do it). Then they'll be able to empathize a bit.

Certainly, it wasn't happening yet yesterday, when I suggested that the kids and I hang around at the park rather than waiting in the car while T ran some car-project-related errands, and C said that she'd much rather I ran the errands while T took them to the park. Not much maternal appreciation there, no sirree.

Monday, May 09, 2005

mother's day etc.

Well, I'm going to join the ranks of Christian women bloggers who are explaining why they're not blogging as often anymore. My reasons aren't as cool as theirs -- especially Molly; I mean, who can top having a baby as a reason to stay away from the computer? But I do have a little list of reasons. I have a crochet project I'm working on really hard; I am trying to get through Mansfield Park; we're getting to the end of the school year and I'm getting that "you slacker, your children are going to hate you when they're adults because you basically took off the entire months of March and April from any kind of regular sit-down school every year and that meant that they reached the age of 18 barely able to multiply single-digit numbers and now they live in the ghetto and scrounge in trash cans for a living THANKS A WHOLE LOT MOM" kind of panic. I KNOW it's not true, I mean, heck, if I stopped right now they could probably get jobs with, I dunno, the postal service or something. And most importantly, they're growing and blossoming and reading and writing (sometimes even legibly, but don't count on it) and being creative and they're very bright and everything. It's just this kind of opposite-of-spring-fever thing I get every year, don't mind me.

Also, it has been raining again, so I haven't been taking a whole lot of pictures to post, or going for walks. And the biggest reason is that I have a tendency to spend way too much time sitting here in front of this machine, and I need to work on curtailing that to a conscionable level. Don't expect me to disappear (especially because my resolve on this sort of thing is notoriously weak), but don't expect a post every day either, I guess. Which, hey, who's been expecting that lately anyway.

quick Mother's Day summation: I spent the day at home, except for a brief excursion to the library's used book sale, because LT woke up in the wee small hours on Sunday, throwing up. It ended up being a one-off, but we couldn't know that in time to go to church or the family gathering afterward. Plus I was up at 3 a.m., washing sheets and blankets and cuddling my nine-year-old (!!), and that is not conducive to getting up bright and early. It ended up being a pretty nice day, all things considered. We didn't play a family board game like I wanted to (the boys' round of the Star Wars trading card game thing or whatever it's called took longer than they thought it would), but I didn't have to wash dishes or cook, and I DID have ice cream and cookies. Definitely a day for the positive column. :)

Saturday, May 07, 2005

ssshhh...

...be very quiet.

Right now there are people in my kitchen washing my dishes. And I am not sick or otherwise incapacitated.

yippee!

Also, the kids simply could not wait until tomorrow to give me the following (ooh! a list!):

• a new iced tea jug, because mine cracked
  
• two new pie/pizza spatulas, because both of mine were broken (not by me) in the space of about a week, a month or two ago
  
• chip clips with magnets, so they can always be stuck to the side of the fridge, because when I want a chip clip I can never find one, even though I am falling over them when I don't want them
  
  (do they know me or what?)
  
  
• two bookmarks, because I collect bookmarks
  AND
  
• A $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
  

Apparently this list represents a large percentage of their recycling haul from earlier this week. I am absolutely convinced that I have the world's most amazing children. And of course I'm not biased at all.

Happy Mothers' Day to all my friends who are moms... and to those who aren't yet too. (((hugs)))

Thursday, May 05, 2005

this ought to say "Hallmark" on the back

Last night at Bible study, one of the women approached me and said that as a gift for me after The Event I Swore I Would Not Mention Again, she was going to come over and clean my house for me (she cleans houses for a living). What I wanted to say was "oh, like h*** am I ever going to let a casual friend anywhere NEAR the dirty parts of my house." However, when someone offers you a gift, you're supposed to smile politely and say 'thank you', and then only write the above sentence in your online journal (I think that's what Emily Post says about it), so that's what I did. Am doing. She's coming over at 2:30 today. And my mom is coming over from 1:00 to 2:00 to help me clean in advance of the arrival of the cleaning lady. Now there's one particular cliché I never thought I'd be living out.

Seriously, there are some household things I'm not supposed to be doing yet -- floors, and scrubbing the bathtub -- which really do need to be done pretty badly. But there is a megaton of STUFF that needs to get put away first, and that's what Mom's going to help me with. What a mom. She gives birth to me, lavishes me with love and affection and creative ideas for fun for my entire childhood, puts up with my regrettable attitude during my teenaged years, offers herself on the altar of free babysitting as soon as I provide her with a grandchild, and then, to top it off, comes over on her lunch break to help me clean my house even though I'm thirty years old and really, if I haven't got the discipline to clean my own house, that ought to be my own problem. Wow. This is the stuff of shiny embossed pastel fancy-script $4.50 Mother's Day cards if ever I saw it.

Now you'll have to excuse me; I'd love to write a nice thoughtful post about the parallels between "cleaning for the cleaning lady" and our Christian walk, but I'd better get to work; my mom will be here in three hours and this place is A MESS.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

that was then...

and this is now...

Happy ninth birthday to the first person to ever make me a mother. *snif*

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Thank you

thank you for all your nice thoughts and prayers about my surgery. I'm home, about to take a nap, but I wanted to post about how wonderful my family is. I came home to a huge WELCOME HOME MOMMY banner across the front of the porch (pictures later), a sparkling clean house, with THE LIVING ROOM REARRANGED (have I mentioned how much I love rearranging furniture?) so as to allow me access to books, light, pens, paper, the computer, the remotes and a view of the TV (meaning as soon as I wake up from my nap I'm starting a Jane Austen marathon), all from my recliner. Everyone is being so nice to me. I am in some pain, not as bad as after the c-sections I don't think. Thursday was awful, Friday was bearable, and today is fantastic by comparison with the other two, although I still have that feeling like I will never again feel normal. Will be glad to prove that wrong SOON. :)

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

the best-laid plans...

Well, here's a list of things I meant to do before I went into the hospital:

1. Get fully caught up on laundry.
   
2. Make the house spotless.
   
3. Find a picture of the kids together to take with me. (one of the few evils of digital photos is that they're seriously less portable, unless you print them, which we can't since our printer hates us.)
   
4. Make a new journal template.

5. Write at least one journal post that wasn't full of whining, so that newcomers to my blog wouldn't run screaming the other way at the first sentence written by a person who gives Cousin Gladys in The Blue Castle a run for her money in the whining department. (Read This Now. This Means You.)
   
6. Go to the library and get some light-but-not-hilarious (because I know from experience that laughing after abdominal surgery is a huge no-no) books to take with me in addition to the stack I've already got going.
   
7. Wash my bathrobe. (this takes a load almost by itself. It's huge and blue and terrycloth.)
   

Now ask me how many of these things I got done. Go ahead, ask.

Maybe the BIG FAT ZERO you just heard has to do with the fact that I spent Monday in Yosemite, Tuesday in the valley doing pre-op stuff, and today working my hiney off (ha! I wish) helping to fell about 20 trees, and pulling brush, and stacking logs. T's dad (the realtor) had a client who wanted some property brushed and cleared a bit before he would agree to buy it, so T's dad hired us to do it. Today was the only day that my dad, T, and I could all work on it. LT and C helped also. I AM SO SORE OH MY GOSH SO SORE AND I CAN'T TAKE ADVIL. At least I'll have morphine tomorrow. That should knock out some muscle soreness pretty effectively, wouldn't you think?

Anyway. Ahem. This was supposed to be a NON-whiny post, wasn't it. Whoops.

motherhood Archives | Page 3 of 7

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