All By Myself

Today the Husband said a funny thing happened.
He thinks I accidentally called him from my cell phone,
because when he answered all he heard was me
having a conversation with somebody about Canada.

I must have sat on my cell phone weirdly,
but it was just me in the car alone,
practicing my Australian accent.

"So you were talking to yourself about Canada, with an Australian accent?"

"Yes," I said.

It's really disappointing to have to explain yourself like this all the time.

*

First Day 2010

The Teenager (Senior)


Middle Child (Freshman)


Twin Girl (6th grade)


Twin Boy (6th Grade)


Every "first day" since Kindergarten, we have walked them to school.
It gave us time to talk and calm the jitters,
time to see them to the door with one last hug.


This year they all went off without us.
They are really growing up.

*

Best Kids Ever

This weekend I had an incredibly busy schedule,
and the Husband was working.

It was also the weekend of the first game for Twin Girl.
She cheers her heart out, and a parent always attends,
sitting through two long hours of rec league football,
stale nachos and lukewarm coffee,
because we love her.

I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that we'd both miss her first game.
The children would be alone all day, and I just matter-of-factly went over
the schedule with her -
what time she would hop on her bike,
to remember to take her water,
to lay out her uniform the night before,
and to not talk to strangers of course.

She's eleven years old, and the school is only a mile away,
an easy bike ride, and I wasn't worried
but I did have a twinge of guilt about missing the game.

Anyway, later that afternoon I called from out of town
to check on them and got a breathless Middle Child on the phone.

"Twin Boy and I just got back from the game," she said.

I was surprised, "You went to her game?"

"Well, yeah, we wanted her to have somebody in the stands. It was so cold
though, so we walked back home after half-time. The Teenager is still there."

I said, "Where did you get the money to get in?"

"Oh yeah," she said, "I took my own money because I was going to buy us all snacks,
but then when I got up there I remembered we had to pay to get in."

"So no snacks?" I said, "and you used your own money?"

"Yeah," she said, "that's alright."

Later I talked with the Teenager, because Saturday was cold,
and I couldn't imagine him voluntarily giving up his warm spot on the couch
to go sit for two hours on the hard bleachers,
with no other teenagers in sight,
only a bunch of little kids bumping into each other on the football field.

I said, "Did Daddy tell you you had to go?"

He said, "No, I just thought someone should go with her. I sent the other kids home after half-time. It was really long."

I sat there with tears in my eyes, holding the phone.
He rode his bike up with her a half hour before the game, stayed with her the whole time
and then rode her home afterwards.

My kids,
little Boxcar Children for a day,
supporting their sister and taking care of her when we couldn't.

They love each other.

It makes me so happy.

*

Lap of Lux

I am sleeping at my parents' house tonight.
Busy, busy weekend, with performance last night,
memorial service this morning, wedding rehearsal this afternoon
and a wedding tomorrow.

My parents are "local" to the events so here I am and I must say
it is always good to be home.

When I got here, my parents weren't back yet
but I found a tupperware of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies on the counter.
I ate four.

My mom made my supper, but I wouldn't let her cook me up something fresh.
I said I wanted the mysterious thing in the pyrex dish in the fridge.
All I knew is that it was a leftover of my mom's cooking.
It had chicken and cheese and stuff in it.
mmmmmmm

She grudgingly warmed it up for me
but kept asking what else I wanted to go with it.
What did I want to drink?
Do I want chips?
(heck, YEAH!)
"Let me get you dessert!"

Was my life really like this when I was a child?
If so, when did I lose my mind, grow up and leave this luxurious place?

Later I plan on getting stung by a bee.

*

I Knew This Day Would Come

I was trying to post every day for 30 days,
but if there's one thing I know about myself it's that if I ever say
"every" when it comes to a resolution,
you can be sure I will break it as soon as possible.

I'm not an "every" kind of person.

I'm not even an "every other" kind of person.

I'm more like a
random-when-the-spirit-moves-me-resolutions-are-made-to-be-broken
sort of person.

And last night my band played a song that I wrote.
And I'm really excited about it.

And I think that if I were the kind of person who could post every single
day for a month without missing, ever,
or if I were the kind of person who always turned her library books in on time,
or the kind of person who didn't forget appointments
or rush around being late to everything,
then maybe I wouldn't be the kind of person who could write a song.

That's completely not true, the song would probably be way more awesome -

but it's the kind of thing I tell myself when,
as happened just two minutes ago,
I leave the sprinkler on overnight

and realize it only while gazing out at the yard the next day,
spying it sprinkling there to and fro, to and fro,
steadfast and sure,
beneath the drizzly gray skies of a morning rainstorm.

*

Can I Live At Grandma's?

She got stung by a bee at Grandma's house.

It was her worse fear, next to tornadoes.

I know Grandma and Grandpa felt bad,
as if maybe they could have prevented it.
But they couldn't, it was just bound to happen sometime.

And I'm pretty sure they did everything they could
to treat the injury.

For example:

They googled bee stings,
they put ice on it,
they put an onion on it,
they put meat tenderizer on it,
they gave her a baking soda bath,
they gave her Benadryl,
they gave her ice cream,
they helped her limp downstairs to the big screen tv,
they gave her a pillow and a blanket,
they checked on her in the night to be sure she was still breathing,
and then her cousins down the street
gave her crutches.

They gave her money even though her job was interrupted by the bee,
and called it "worker's compensation".

But she is home now,
and she is no longer on disability.

She had to clean the bathroom for no money at all.

I am an ogre.

*

Big Barn Jazz

Last Sunday a band I'm in played at the Big Barn Jazz series,
which is basically a bunch of couches in the basement of this big barn
where people come and play jazz once a month,
and other people pay ten bucks to come hear it.

It was fun because the singer who we opened for, Sunny Wilkinson,
had a huge crowd.

She was really super nice,
the piano player (her husband) was so good,
and their cool bass player called me, "girl,"
which made me feel very hip.

That's me the third from the left in the pink shirt,
along with my band, iZwicky.
Sunny is tall and blond and her husband/pianist
is right next to her.

At the last minute iZwicky asked me to talk,
so I did most of the talking between songs
and introduced our band.

I pretended I was somebody who does stuff like that
all the time. :-)

*

Carbon

Twin Girl is working very hard, doing odd jobs for anyone who will take her,
trying to save up enough money for an iPod Touch.

So I told her that she could straighten the bookshelf and I would pay her.

I told her that my two shelves were already done, so to leave them be.
I told her that all she really needed to do was to look through the books for any
that we might want to get rid of, and put them in a pile for me to check over.
I told her to straighten up the rest.

Now this is the girl who is so much like me.

Instead of taking 15 minutes to do a quick straighten,
she pulled every single book off of every single shelf,
including my shelves,
and put them in a huge pile in the center of the room and then left
and forgot about the whole thing.

Later she put them all back on the shelves,
this time in alphabetical order,
not by author but by book title.

We have Magic Treehouse books mixed in with
Annie Dillard and Mark Twain.

It took her hours.

But she was pleased and I paid her,
sighing,
acknowledging the genetic footprint I have left behind.

*

Weird and Happy

Today at Walmart the grocery cart guy was standing near my car,
grinning and basking in the sun and he said,

"I'll take your cart for you!"

I said, "hey thanks!"

Then he said, in his thick Mexican accent,

"Glory Hallelujah, Jesus Christ, dju are wonderful!!"

haha. It was such a weird and nice thing to say.

I don't know if he was talking to me or to Jesus!

Either way he seemed really happy.

Stuff like that can make my day. :-)

*

Space Laundry

Well now I am officially a geek because I watched a
video of Ken Bowersox doing his laundry in space.

And I thought it was cool.

Where do astronauts get water?

What's it like to sleep on a space station?

How do you take a shower and use the restroom in space?

These are questions that plague me and keep me up nights.

I found the answers here.

Brushing off my ham radio license to listen in on the astronauts conversations.

I realize that this is either

a) creepy
b) geeky
or
c) super cool

*

Cool Space

Just saw the International Space Station pass over.

We stared with mouths open and quiet oohs and ahhs for a minute
and then,
as if we all had the idea at the same,
we jumped up and down waving and hollering.

Silly. :-)

If you want to see it in your area, look here.

Lansing friends, don't miss it tomorrow night at 8:50pm!!

*

Song

It's my ya-ya nickname.

I got my name because I'm always making up songs.

Mostly little things like lullabyes and half-thought out melodies.

For the past two days though I've been finishing up a real song,
and it's been hard and life has been a blur.

I feel like when my children talk with me I am so far away,
and my brain won't stop,
and the pressure to finish moves me past mealtimes and bedtimes and people times.

I have been with pencil and paper
and looping machine and bass and keyboard
for two days now without much of a break,
and I feel numb.

The thing is, I am past the point of thinking it is very good.
Now I am just to the point of getting it done.

For someone like me, who chases butterflies
but doesn't like to catch them,

who begins books and projects and resolutions and to-do lists and new adventures
but abandons them when the first wind of change turns my head,

it is a task of elephantine proportions.

*

The Good With The Bad

Today I was inspired by my cousin to get off my duff and write,
just write.

No matter if I'm brilliant or boring, I gotta get out of this funk.

To see how she puts it, look here.

And what I have to say today is that Mockingjay was released,
and I was ignorant about it,
but Twin Boy let me know.

So we set off for Tuesday Books at 3,
and he sat down with a bunch of kids who were strangers to him
and talked excitedly about the first two books,
and frosted cookies and did a trivia challenge,
and shot water guns at targets that dripped colored marker down the side of the building.

And he and I split the cost of the book,
because he only had half.

He never has any money because
he always buys ice cream.
One for himself, and one for whatever lucky soul is with him.

And the other thing that happened today
is that I had a fit when I found all of my best books
piled in the middle of the front room,
bent and folded up where someone had tossed them.

Only I didn't know that a teenager friend was playing video games at our house,
and I didn't see him slip out until his car was pulling away.

I would have left too.
sigh.

So every day brings a little pride in myself for doing good
and a little shame at myself for doing bad.

I hope it evens out.

If not, there's always ice cream.


*

Back To Glue Sticks

I miss rubber cement.

I miss cardboard pencil boxes.

I don't miss covering my textbooks using old grocery bags.

I miss back-to-school shopping.

All four children begin school September 7th at the same building.

There will only be one drop-off point, which is good for me because I can tend to forget about the second one and drive right past the elementary school amid cheers from the back seat.

Two sixth graders, a high school freshman and a high school senior,
all housed in the same building in our little town.

And they don't need much, not like yester-years.

We have all of the rulers you could ever hope to own,
thin markers are starting to become childish,
and the 10 cent notebooks that we stocked up on last season
will last us well into the 22nd century.

Nobody needs a pencil box anymore,
and now they have sturdy backpacks that will take them through college,
without any "character" designs to date them.
School lunches are bought, not carried,
so I walk right past the new cool fabric lunch totes
and recyclable water bottles.

But I still love to look at all of the school supplies at the store.
They're still fresh and new looking, and not messed up and
scattered around from frantic last-minute shoppers.

It makes me feel like I want something to organize.
I think I need some sort of polka dot index card holder
and of course a fresh pack of cards to fill it with.
I'm pretty sure that I need a Trapper Keeper,
filled with folders and tabs and things that can be labeled.

I want to pick out five shiny folders
with pictures of kittens and puppies and maybe
Zach Efron on the front.
I want to draw a mustache on him and
sharp pointy teeth from the kitten's mouth,
blood dripping down,
and horns on the puppies head and a text bubble
saying, "Feed me!" coming out of his mouth.

But instead, yesterday I bought a little plastic thing
with two drawers and a compartment for three dollars,
and I put it in my music room and filled it with
a bunch of small items that have been cluttering the place up
and now I feel better.

*

New Tactic

Now when the Teenager says something obnoxious,
I repeat it back to him immediately
except in my Fozzie Bear voice at top volume.

He may or may not stop
but this has definitely become
a win-win situation for me.

*

Reminder

I've been wearing my MoMA tshirt around the house today
and when I looked in the mirror just now it said plain as day:

"A MoM"

:-)

*

Insult to Injury

I was trying to look on the bright side,
noticing that the poison ivy dots on my elbow have formed themselves
into a perfect smiley face,

but then I got a mosquito bite right in the middle of the rash
and it seems that my natural optimism has finally run its course.

*

Rolaids

So tonight the Twins, Middle Child and I drove into the city
to see a musical production at the community college where my cousin teaches.

We sat together in the outdoor ampitheater
and ate all of my cousin's chocolate chip cookies,
accidentally making loud noises with our water bottles,
laughing at the funny parts and
clapping with the songs.

Twin girl had a stomach ache so she laid on her back on a blanket
and braided a piece of string that she found hanging underneath
Middle Child's lawn chair.
Twin boy sat behind us in his chair, coming alive when the cookies were passed,
and kicking his sister's chair by accident with his too big flip flops
every few minutes until she hissed at him to stop.

After it was over, we said goodbye to our cousins
and the twins wanted to go sit by the koi pond, so we did,
lugging our chairs over there.

Middle child groaned but I said,

"What else do we have to do? Where else do we have to be?"
It was near 10pm, but so warm they said it felt like Florida.
We weren't tired.

I sat in my chair on the koi pond deck and they dangled their bare feet in the water
for the koi to nibble, but none came that close.
Then we picked up our things and trudged back to the car,
taking our time as the campus emptied and darkened.

I was almost out of gas, so I got off the highway right away
at a lonely Sunoco to fill up.
Twin girl opened the back door and the sounds of conflict leaked out.
All three were rummaging around the front and back seat of the car.

"What did you lose?" I said, pressing Yes for a receipt.

A shoe.
She lost her shoe.
Just one.

"How did you just notice that now?" I asked, but right away I knew
it was one of those questions that was sort of moot.
Either she had walked to the car unevenly with only one shoe on,
or had gone barefoot, but either way, one shoe was still back there.

"We'll just go back and find it," I said.

Back on to the highway, then to the interstate,
around the stadium, through the detour we went.
"Maybe it's by the koi pond," she said.
"Maybe we'll have to wrestle it away from one of the koi fish!" I said.
"Maybe we should look for a koi that is shoe-shaped," said Twin Boy.

The campus was dark, but some office lights were still on,
and a security guard walked past us as we scoured the grounds
for a green shoe.
None at the entrance, or in the ampitheater,
none in the grass beyond,
but then Middle Child started to run.

There in the middle of the sidewalk by the pond,
under a little campus streetlight was the shoe
and they grabbed it up,
laughing at its prominence there in the middle of the walkway,
where so many people would have had to step over
or around it to get by that night.

In the car again, Twin Girl talked with our cousin on the phone
to tell her the story of the shoe
and to tell her thank you for the cookies,
and thank you for the Rolaids that made her stomach feel so much better.

She got off the phone and we all tried to stop her, saying,
"You forgot to say thank you for the Rolaids!"

She said, "I was going to, but I forgot what they were called,
and I almost said, 'Thanks for the Rolodex,' but I knew that was wrong."

So we laughed even harder,
and we were glad that she had lost one shoe,
because it was so weird,
and we were glad we had to go back there,
because we didn't really have anything else to do,
or anywhere else to be,
and it was warm
and we weren't tired.

*

An Old Post I Forgot To Post

The Teenager was SO not into it tonight when the twins wanted to play Charades
and escaped to his room.

A little bit later he emerged and we threatened him with all sorts of stuff
in order to get him to play.

Then we said he could leave if he just performed ONE Charade,
so he stood up and had us guessing and yelling for a full three minutes
before I realized he was just doing random things.

I started to get mad, but then I had to laugh.
The other kids were having such a good time yelling out guesses
and he just kept accumulating props, racing around the room
earnestly motioning to them with each one.

You really had to be there.
The yelling, the laughter,
his whole obstinate charade of Not Participating,
resulting in the weirdest pantomime ever.

He had a dog sweater on his head,
a red mixing bowl on top of that, an Ov Glove on one hand, a spatula in the other,
high-stepping across the living room just to thrill and confuse his younger siblings.

Thrills and happy confusion abounded.

It's a pretty good way to spend a Friday night.

*

Summer

Yesterday twin boy wanted to do something just with me,
so we walked a mile to the tennis courts,
carrying two tennis balls, two rackets and walking two dogs.

He never played before, but was sure he could do it.
And with signature style, he showed
that he could, indeed, volley a tennis ball back and forth over the net.

Wanda surprised us by
sitting at the net and returning balls to the server.
Sometimes we hit it off the courts into the grass
just to see her tear after it happily.

Buddy, the dachshund, sat looking away from us,
long back end twisted lazily on the concrete,
uninterested and uninspired by Wanda's energy.

One time we hit the ball into the bushes and Wanda
went in after it and we followed,
lured by the sight of wild blackberries ripening
on a thorny vine.

We abandoned the game without another thought,
dropping our rackets to pick and eat,
circling the bushes until we were out of sight of Buddy,
who howled at our absence.

Returning to him we cupped hands under the drinking fountain
to give both dogs a drink,
the lazy one and the working one,
and then headed home sweaty, mosquito-bitten
and berry-stained

just like you should be
in the summer.

*