I swear, they're competing to see who can grow up the fastest.

I had the privilege of spending several minutes this morning snuggling with the baby. I don't get to do that very often; she's such a wiggly little thing that while she loves to give and receive hugs, she's off again in just a few seconds. Unless I'm walking around holding her, of course. Then she's content to be held until my arms fall off.

She sat on Mommy's lap for a good 10 minutes, though, chewing thoughtfully on an apple. Then she made a lunge for the computer keyboard and that was that.

I tried to make the most of it. I'm so aware of how fast she's growing. Her face shape has changed in this last month. It used to be round, with big soft cheeks that you couldn't help but kiss. She's still got irresistably kissable cheeks, but they're definitely not as round as before. She's looking like a little girl, not a baby, and when I look at her I can see the woman she'll be someday.

She's gotten very good at running, at a point now where I have to hustle a little to catch her. Soon she'll be as fast as her big sister and I'll have to start using persuasion to get her to come to me instead of just grabbing her for a diaper change.

But. Her skin is still unbelievably soft and she's just the right size to cuddle up against Mommy. Her hair is silky smooth and every so often in the midst of her jabbering I'll hear a cooing sound that takes me back to this time last year. Her long bones are still all shorter than the length of my hand and when she walks she moves her entire body from side to side in the most endearing waddle. I love to watch her walking. I'm going to miss the waddle when she finally figures out how to move her legs without her torso helping out.

She watches me blow my nose (I have a cold right now) and will grab a tissue herself in imitation. Then she firmly bites a piece off. She still has a ways to go on figuring that out.

Her hair is still way too short to even think about cutting it, though. And that's a good thing.

Deep, Cleansing Breaths

After well over a year of working hard to avoid it, I had to give in and take the preschooler to get her hair cut.

It was a painful experience. I thought I was ready for this, and if all had gone well I might have been okay. I wanted to tie her hair into a ponytail and cut it off. It took almost a year before she got any hair, but when it finally came in it was the beautiful curling golden stuff, soft as down. I wanted to save those first curls.

The stylist never gave me a chance, though. She just started cutting and tossing the cut bits on the floor. I wound up scavenging on the floor as she was cutting, in order to retrieve some of what she cut.

I was heartbroken. Gone was the one little section that always curled into a ringlet, gone were the lightest bits on the very tips. My baby was gone and I didn't have anything left of her.

The haircut is beautiful on her. Shoulder-length with a little bit of a bang in front. She looks so pretty. But she is all little girl now and I get weepy whenever I think of it.

I was crying on the way home, and the preschooler got very concerned about me.

"Are you sad, Mommy?"

I tried to explain, but of course she didn't understand. She fell back on some advice I've given her in the past when she was especially upset.

"Take a deep breath, Mommy, take a deep breath."

Yes, dear. Mommy is trying to remember to do just that.

Kind of a recipe: Stuffing Bread

I made this last night and it was so good that it's almost all gone already. I was thinking it would be good for sandwiches, but it's so delicious that everyone just keeps eating slices of it. I'll have to make another loaf today!

You can find various recipes for this around the internet. All I did was make my normal bread recipe, with the addition of a generous amount of sage, celery seed, and half an onion, minced. I'm not sure about amount exact amounts. I just put things in until it smelled "right." (A trick I learned many years ago from an older woman with many years of cooking experience. She always said to use your nose when selecting what spices and how much. After all, most of taste is smell, right? So if it smells yummy, it should taste yummy. I've found that works pretty well, most of the time.)

I think I used about a tablespoon of sage and a teaspoon of celery seed, for one loaf. I used fresh onion, instead of dried onion, because I didn't have any dried onion, whereas I had half an onion wrapped up in the fridge that I needed to use. But I think the fresh onion is what really made it work. Just make sure you cut it up into pretty small pieces, unless you want chunks of onion.

Books and my misspent childhood summers

I want something good to read. I need to go to the library. The local library system is not exactly impressive, but there's just no way I can afford to satisfy my fiction cravings without a library, so there's no helping it. If only they at least had a parking lot.

One wonderful, glorious summer when I was 11 I would walk to the library almost every day. We had a branch library a few blocks from our house, in a little shopping area. I could check out as many books as I could carry, so I'd spend hours in there, reading, and then check out a big pile of books to take home with me. I'd be back as soon as I finished the books. One day I managed to read 6 books which was very exciting, because it meant I could go back the next day and get more!

Not surprisingly, that was the summer Mom and Dad started nagging at me to stop reading so much.

That branch library was pretty good. They had what I think was a complete set of the Oz books (didn't know there were dozens of them, didja? But not all by Baum.) I met the Moomins that summer, too. One of my favorite books was The Men from P.I.G. and R.O.B.O.T. by Harry Harrison. (A wonderfully funny book.) (That was the first time I ran into him. Years later, when I was a teenager, I picked up a copy of The Stainless Steel Rat, another wonderful book. I didn't realize it was the same guy, though, since I didn't notice author names too much in grade school.)

The girls love going to the library, and love being read to. I just need to find a way to help them understand the importance of being quiet. Our old library was pretty casual about children and noise, but this place is utterly uptight and straitlaced. I haven't been in a library this quiet since I was a little girl in the big downtown library with Mommy, back when libraries were still expected to be tomblike.

A couple of good books we've checked out for them lately that I can recommend:

When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry... (It's a Caldecott book. Of course it's wonderful!) A good way for the preschooler to explore ways of handling anger, I think. She certainly is enjoying it, that's for sure.

Am I Beautiful? I like this because it talks about how the people who love you see you as beautiful.

We need to go find some more, though, hopefully today. I'd like something to tide us all over the long weekend. The husband is going to be working, so we won't be celebrating until later in the week.

Look, wishing isn't going to make it go away, OK?

So my little sister is dating this guy and it's getting kind of serious. She's not too sure how she feels, but from what she was telling me about him, it's obvious that he has got it bad for her.

This is an example of the sort of thing he's been doing: They're in a southwestern state, and this is her first winter out of Idaho. She mentioned to him that she missed snow, so he blew off an important meeting to drive her two hours to a place where there was snow.

Oh, yeah. He is so in love.

There's just one slight problem. This guy doesn't believe in psychology or psychotropic medication.

This is my bipolar sister. She was diagnosed in high school when she went through a depressive episode that culminated in a suicide attempt. She's currently on a medication which works for her. No more suicidal lows, which she figures is worth losing the energetic highs. In other words, she likes her meds and fully intends to stay on them.

He knows she's bipolar. They've talked about it and about their differing views of mental illness. So far, there's precious little common ground.

I'm proud of her for the way she's handling it. She says the relationship is really great except for this, but she's not letting that cloud her judgment.

Now, here's where I get on a soapbox, so stop reading now if you aren't interested.

I made it clear before in here that I don't necessarily trust our medical system to accurately diagnose and treat mental illness. I have to say though, that I have a real problem with the idea that good thoughts, or strong character, or just trying really hard, is all you need to heal depression or bipolar disorder or any other mental illness.

Prescription drugs aren't the whole answer, but neither is throwing them away. Until we have further research to give us better answers than we have now, we're going to have to take each case individually because there simply aren't any blanket solutions. Refusing to acknowledge the complexity of the situation just creates a bigger problem down the road.

For her, for our family, this is a core element in any permanent relationships we form. This doesn't just effect our generation. There's no question what's going on in our family is heritable. We need to safeguard our children by educating ourselves and doing all we can to manage what is happening. Our spouses have to understand and accept that. Anything else just isn't going to work.

Good luck, little sister.

One thing at a time, please.

A caveat before you start reading this essay. I don't care if you work or stay home. I think that is one of the most personal decisions anyone can make and it's none of my business what you decide. I'm sure you've made the best decision for you and your family. This is just what I have decided and a little bit of what was behind it.

Why do we let the outside world convince that "having it all" means "having it all right now?" Over at Dotmoms, Emily wrote about how she is finding the return to work harder than she expected. "How does one have it all?" she asks. "The career, the family, the well-run household?"

The average life expectancy for American women is nearly 80 years. That's a long time. Granted, a lot longer seeming at 20 than at 60, but still, time to get a lot of things done.

Why then do we feel we have to cram everything that matters to us into one tiny slice of that life?

I'm a stay at home mom. That's a decision that I made a long time ago. Partly I do it because I honestly think it's the best thing for my children and my marriage. I have to admit though, I have a selfish motive. I do it because I think it's the best thing for me.

Do you ever go to buffet-style restaurants? I like the variety you find there. It's fun to sample lots of different dishes. I don't, however, like the pressure that I feel to overeat. There's so much there, and it all looks delicious. It's so easy to wind up with an overfull plate. I'll start off enthusiastically enough, but I almost always end up feeling bloated and unhappy with myself. I feel guilty letting food go to waste, because I took it and then couldn't eat it. (My mother calls that having eyes too big for your stomach.) I wind up forcing it all down, then wishing I'd left room for one of those yummy-looking desserts. Well, I'll tell myself, just a couple of bites won't hurt.

I didn't want my life to be like that. I didn't want to wind up having so much going on that I had no time to enjoy any of it. I wanted to concentrate on one or two experiences, wring every drop out of them, and then go on to the next.

This time at home with my children isn't going to last very long. A few years is all. At the most, if I stay home until they've both graduated from high school, 20 years. Out of a possible total of 80. Out of an adult total of 60. Less than half of my life spent on growing up and helping other people grow up, leaving me more than half to do whatever I want. Not bad.

Of course, take away the decade and a half I spent as an adult before they came along and that leaves me with ... Well, awfully darn close to retirement age before I'm back out in the work force. It's a good thing I've never seen a birthday as a reason to stop working on something I love. I fully intend to take full advantage of the quarter century remaining.

Yes, I'm fully aware the possibility is there that I'll be too sick to work when that time comes, or that I might even die long before then. That's okay. I'm fine with that. I figure that if I found out tomorrow I only had six months to live, I'd want to spend my time doing what was most important to me. That philosophy doesn't change just because I don't know exactly how much time I have left. My first priority is my family. I want to do this first. I'll fit the rest in later. Don't worry about that. I'll contrive to avoid rotting my brain in a nursing home somewhere.

Have it all? You betcha. I'm gonna have it all. Just not all today.

Knitting up my oh, so raveled sleeve.

The door latch clicked open and the preschooler came running into the bedroom.

"Mommy, Mommy! I saw stars!"

I tried to tell her to go back to bed, but what came out wasn't decipherable.

"One star ..." She paused, to turn down one finger I was sure. I couldn't tell, because it was pitch black. "Two stars! I saw two stars, Mommy!"

"Sweetie, it's not time to get up. It's still dark, angel. You should go back to bed."

There was a momentary disappointed silence. "But, Mommy, I hungry."

There was obviously no hope. Once hunger enters the equation there's no stopping the process. I rolled out of bed and staggered over to my robe.

"OK, sweetie, OK. Just give me a minute. Mommy's got to wake up. This is very early."

"The sun's not up?"

"Yes. When it's dark out, it's time to sleep."

"But I awake, Mommy!" She started to cry.

"S'OK, S'OK, S'OK." Oh, please, no. Not the whining. Not this early. "We're both awake. We're going to stay that way. Unfortunately."

What time was it, anyway? I managed to make my eyes focus on the clock.

5:30 a.m.

As I shepherded my daughter into the hall, the baby started crying. I waited, but she didn't settle back to sleep.

"Did you wake up your sister?"

"Yes?"

So by 6 a.m., there we all were. The toddler was crying because Dora wasn't on, the baby kept trying to climb the entertainment center, and I, well, I was looking at a very long day.

Which it was.

But now it's over, and bed is going to feel very good.

Brain Dust

Our garbage collector has started pulling our garbage can up to the house for us every week. It's thoughtful, it's kind, and it's starting to feel just a little creepy. They don't do this for anyone else, so why us? I'd love to be able to credit my svelte figure and luscious locks, but I'd have to find them first. Maybe they just appreciate how neatly I tie up the bags?

Why is it my daughters can't leave folded laundry alone? I can't fold a load of clothes while they're in the room anymore because the baby will immediately run over and start pulling the stacks of folded clothes over and waving the clothing around. The preschooler, on the other hand, won't disturb me while I'm folding, but if I leave anything unattended she'll climb in the middle of it and arrange it around her in a nest. Or throw it on the floor. It all depends. I'm not sure on what.

Speaking of the baby, she's been learning how to undress herself. I'd be happy at her progress, except the purpose of getting her clothes off is really all about getting access to her diaper so she can take that off, too. Twice now she's woken up an hour after bedtime, crying, naked and cold, on a wet sheet. (Though I think big sister might have provided some help in getting the sleeper off.) Daytimes are even worse, because the clothes are easier to remove. I've taken to dressing her in onesies all the time, with limited success. She can still open the tabs, even if she can't get the diaper all the way off. It's all been enough to make me consider using duct tape to keep the blasted thing on. My sister tells me though that then you have to use a blowtorch to get the diaper off. I'm thinking about it.

I caught the girls in the kitchen the other day, eating margarine. Someone had left the open tub on the kitchen table. The baby was sitting on the table, hand buried up to her wrist in the greasy yellow stuff. The preschooler had scooped out a handful, which she quickly shoved in her mouth when I came around the corner. I was told that, if you give them healthy choices, small children will automatically choose to eat what their bodies need. Does this mean my children need to start low-carbing?

Woohoo!

I finally had a chance to go check what was happening at Blogging for Books. I got an honorable mention! Yippee!

I can't wait for next month's contest. I'll try again and see if I can't make it into the finalists.

Sleepin' Single

The husband has had to work nights again this last month, so on the days he's worked he's slept all day, gotten up in time to shower and leave, then get home the next morning just in time to go to bed. The schedule they have him on right now has him doing a full week's work in just three days. You'd think he'd get four days off then, but no. He never gets more than three days off, sometimes just two.

It's hard enough when he's working days, but especially hard when he's working nights, because even on his days off we don't see him. He can't get his sleeping pattern confused, so we only see him for a few hours in the evening.

Last night was another night at work for him. I was watching a movie on the laptop in the bedroom after the kids had all gone to bed. It was getting late, but I just didn't feel like going to sleep yet, so I started playing the extras on the DVD, deleted scenes, director's commentary, all that stuff.

Even with all that, I was feeling bored, so I opened a solitaire program and started to play. I thought about turning the DVD off, but it seemed like a good idea, for some reason, to listen to the commentary while I played. After all, who needs to see what's happening, if all you're seeing is some guy talking, right?

When the commentary ended I looked for something else to play, but there wasn't anything. I'd played all the extras. So, I played the commentary again, while I went back to playing solitaire and not really listening.

Some part of my mind pointed out that this was not typical of me, and why was I doing this? And another, deeper, part answered, "I'm lonely."

I kept playing that DVD for the voices. For the sound of people. The illusion of companionship.

It was very hard to make myself turn off those voices and go to sleep in an empty bed.

I wonder how long things are going to be hard like this. I wonder how long I can endure. Right now I feel like I'm just barely on this side of being able to bear it. They keep putting off the date when he'll start his new job. Oh, please, let it come through this time. I need him here. I can't do this alone.

To our veterans and soldiers, "Thank you."

Several years ago I volunteered at my local Veteran's Administration nursing home. It was quite an experience. Some of the residents didn't like to visit with the volunteers, but some were very friendly and really enjoyed having us come in to chat.

Most of the guys I got to know were veterans of WWII. One gentleman in particular took a paternal interest in me. He used to lecture me about my boyfriend (the husband, now,) and tell me stories about his service in the war.

Now, I was raised in a family where there was an undercurrent of looking down on military service. Although it was never explicitly stated, the attitude was there that soldiers were brutish, violent, uneducated types, abusers who ran their families like military units. After I took the ASVAB in high school (hey, you got out of class if you took it) I got a package from a military recruiter that included a reproduction of the classic "Uncle Sam wants you!" poster. I wasn't interested, but my brother asked for it, much to our father's consternation. "If he puts that up on the wall, he'll wind up joining the military!" Dad said. "It's a brainwashing technique." I teased my brother about that later, when he joined the National Guard.

My father still isn't sure how he wound up with a son in the National Guard, a son-in-law in the Reserves, and another son-in-law who did 20 years of active duty. (I'm not too sure myself how this turned out. I'm quite sure none of us were rebelling. It just ... happened. My sister and I laugh about it sometimes when we're on the phone together.)

Talking with this veteran dramatically changed my view of military service. He manned a fifty caliber gun, a job that got a lot of ment killed, he told me. He told me about men he'd known, hardships they'd endured. He'd been through a lot in the war.

As I listened, I kept thinking of a phrase from a song I learned when I was a little girl. "Between their loved homes and the war's desolation."

I'd never before understood those words. This man and others like him, had literally gone out and placed their bodies as a physical barrier between their families and evil. A physical barrier! Laying their lives on the line, suffering, dying, to protect their families. The life I enjoyed so much was a direct result of the sacrifices these men had made.

There are just so many times in life when words are inadequate. That realization was like light exploding into a dark room. I was so shaken, so moved, that I could barely keep from crying in front of him. In fact, it was years before I could talk about that moment without my voice shaking and starting to lose my composure. Nothing I could ever say or do could begin to express the gratitude I feel toward our soldiers for all they risk for our sakes.

I'm proud of my brother and brother-in-law. I'll be relieved when they're home safely, but I respect their decision to serve, and I am grateful to them.

My sister has two blue stars in her window. I'd put them up on my blog if I could figure out how. For now, just imagine them.

Learning to Fly

After reading Kira's phonics entry yesterday, I couldn't help remembering my first experience in learning to read.

I was so excited to learn how to read. My mother would read to us sometimes, but never enough to satisfy my hunger for stories. I knew that when I started school I would learn how to read for myself, and then I wouldn't have to wait anymore for Mom. I could read the books to myself! That was such an exciting thought. I was going to read anything I wanted to! (And I did too. Once I learned how to read my parents spent the next twelve years trying to convince me to do something else once in a while. I got so many lectures about the virtue of a well-rounded personality!)

Anyway, getting back to the subject ...

Soon after starting first grade, our teacher (who seemed tremendously old, but who I already loved with all of my 6 year old heart) called us over into a corner of the room where there was a blackboard. We sat down on the carpeted floor, our legs crossed, and listened while she talked about reading.

She wrote the word SING on the blackboard and sounded it out for us. "Sssss, ing," she said. We repeated it.

Then she wrote ING after the first word, so that it read SINGING. She underlined the second ING. "These are the same letters and they make the same sounds," she told us. "Sing, ing. Singing."

And it made sense! Things started falling into place and I was suddenly so excited I could hardly sit still. I could read! I could read a word!

Then our teacher started talking about spelling, using letters to make words. "Do you any of you know how to spell a word?" she asked.

I did! I knew a word I could spell! I threw my hand into the air, waving it frantically. I wasn't supposed to jump up to get her attention and I wasn't supposed to say anything until she called my name, but I came as close to standing up as I could and waved my arm so hard it's amazing I didn't fall over.

"Yes, Jennifer. What word can you spell?"

I pulled my hand back down and sat up very straight, feeling enormously proud of myself.

"N. O. spells 'No!'"

I was confusedwhen my teacher started laughing. What had I done?

"Do you hear that a lot, Jennifer?" she asked, still grinning.

I sighed and nodded my head. "Yes," I told her, feeling a little uncomfortable admitting that to my much-adored teacher.

She brought herself under control again. "Well, that's very good, Jennifer. That's exactly how you spell no. Does anyone else know how to spell a word?"

I don't remember much after that, but that exchange is still very clear in my mind. I told my mother about it years later, when I was old enough to understand the joke. She laughed, but in a sheepish way. After all, she was the one I learned that phrase from!

Blogging for Books

Just when I thought my life couldn't get any crazier, the hard drive crashed.

The last few months had been rough. The whole thing started in late spring, when I came home from a meeting one night, opened the door and almost passed out from the heat that billowed out at me. My husband was asleep on the couch, oblivious or unconscious, I couldn't tell.

I hastened to the thermostat, anxious to turn the air conditioning on in the hopes of reviving him, only to find myself confronted with a mystery. According the little lights blinking at me the air conditioner was already on!

Strange. I checked the vent to make sure it was actually putting out cold air. It wasn't. In fact, it was blasting out hot air as fast as it could. And of course, the hotter the house got (the mid-eighties when I walked in) the harder our confused heat pump worked at heating the house even further.

It was just the beginning. Fate, not content with leaving this Idaho ice maiden to struggle with a southern summer without the benefit of air conditioning, next decided to let me find out how fast the grass can grow there when it isn't being cut! In the middle of mowing the lawn one fine sunny day, the mower gave up the ghost and died.

It was beyond resuscitation - like the one-hoss shay, it was evidently so well made that no one part broke before another. It disintegrated into an assemblage of dust and parts, impossible to repair. (Need I mention that the event filled my husband with glee? He immediately announced that he didn't think it was a good idea to buy another one - we should just hire the kid next door to mow the lawn. The only problem was that the kid next door showed up twice and then disappeared forever.)

A few weeks later we turned on the TV to find that we were looking at the outside world through thick black vertical bars. It was unnervingly like looking through a jail cell door. All the important bits kept disappearing behind a bar just when things were getting interesting. ("And the murderer is -!" followed by a close-up of the murderer's face - which happened to be behind a black spot. TV just isn't the same without a picture.)

Fourth to go was the car. There was my poor husband, peacefully driving along the freeway after a long day, when there was a thump, a jerk and a suddenly quiet car, coasting along at 65 mph. We had it towed back home, to a mechanic that had been recommended to us. He took one look at the engine, sucked in a whistling breath (you know, the one that says the world has ended and you get to pay for it?) and pronounced our sentence. ("That engine has had it! You'll have to get a new one. It'll take a couple of weeks ...")

Well, everything else we could live without, but the car was kind of an essential. Fortunately, it waited to break until after we'd picked up my stepson from the airport for his summer visitation. As much as we'd love to have kept him, though, we did need to get him back on the plane eventually. So, I scraped around and found out we were just barely able to put together enough cash to get a used replacement engine.

Surely, I thought, this is the worst of it. What else, after all, is left to break?

Just so you know, that's called "tempting Fate." Only a few days later, I started the computer and was confronted with the error code of death.

Since I made my living online, a computer was as essential to our family's financial health as was the car. We felt around in the couch, emptied our change jar, and decided we didn't really need to eat anymore. My husband got a ride from a very kind friend, and we bought a new drive (with even more memory than the old one, so it was a blessing in disguise I decided.)

At that point, however, things started looking up. Money that was owed to my husband finally landed in our mailbox. With cries of glee we celebrated our good fortune and danced in pleasure at our financial freedom. Visions of loaded grocery store shopping carts and working air conditioners danced in our heads.

Alas, the light was only a train in the tunnel. If we wanted to go shopping a car would be incredibly useful, we agreed. Unfortunately, we were still without one ...

I've never met a mechanic with so many excuses! They'd already been closed for a week, due to the Fourth of July. When we called him again to find out when we would be able to reclaim our car he let us know that they'd ordered the wrong engine. We'd have to wait another week for the right engine to come in and then another week to install it, pushing the return of our car to at least five weeks after the day it broke down.

Oh well. All was not lost. Our friends were being very patient about giving us rides, and most of my husband's co-workers drove past us on their way to work, so he wasn't imposing on them too much. And I had a working computer again! (Hey, let's get our priorities straight here. What's life without internet access, after all?)

I spent a full day downloading two weeks of undelivered e-mail and responding to the increasingly agitated queries of customers and worried friends. The next day, our second day with a working computer, I planned to spend updating my website.

I turned on the computer and searched for some paperwork as I waited for it to load. The computer had gotten as far as searching for the A: drive when it froze. I rebooted, and tried again. Again, the big freeze greeted me.

That was it. I broke. The straw that broke the camel's back had officially landed! My husband very sweetly put up with a soggy shoulder as he tried to comfort me.

We wound up having to take the computer to an actual computer doctor this time. The problem was simply beyond my husband's diagnostic skills. The PC Docs kept it for a week, and then returned it, saying they weren't sure what was wrong but we might want to have the processor checked as it seemed to have a problem.

Errrm ... excuse me?

We went to another store, one where they were able to confirm that it was indeed the processor. We bought a new one and installed it ourselves. The computer booted up immediately - without the A: drive. After further diagnostics, it was determined that the new processor was bad. We returned it and installed a third processor. This time all went well.

A week later we got the car back - with a dead battery and wonky carburetor. If we accelerated too quickly it would start trying to shake itself to death. The mechanic insisted they tried to get that fixed, but that he had somebody actually quit over it. We were just going to have to live with it, because they weren't going to work on it anymore.

We eventually managed to get almost everything else either replaced or working again (although it was several years before my husband consented to get a new lawn mower.) About the car, I decided that if I just closed my eyes and hid my head under a pillow it wouldn't do one darn thing to keep the carburetor from dying for good and all. If we fixed the dratted thing, however, something else would just break, so I ignored it anyway and simply concentrated on perfecting my new carburetor-pampering driving style.

That summer left its mark on me. I've developed a decided tendency to cross my fingers and toes whenever I turn on an appliance, loud noises leave me crouched on the floor, whimpering, and I don't take calls anymore from my husband when he's out of town. Life before was so carefree, so innocent. Now, I know the darker side of life and I'll never be the same again.

First Day of School

The preschooler went to preschool for the first time this morning. She's been begging for weeks to go to school, like big brother goes to school. Every time we see a bus she tells me it's for her, to take her to school. Every time I ask her to do something she says to me, brows lifted in excited query, "And then we go school?"

I've been holding over her head that she had to be completely potty trained before she could go to school. I'm still a little nervous about it; she's had a couple of accidents when she got so involved in playing that she didn't realize her bladder was full. But it's only for a couple of hours. She's learned enough to be fine.

We got everything ready last night, and when she woke up this morning got her dressed. We still had a couple of hours before we had to be there, but she couldn't wait. Then she asked every five minutes if it was time to go yet. I finally distracted her by turning on Dragon Tales.

When we finally got there she jumped out of the car as soon as I unbuckled her. She noticed a playset (with a slide, even!) in the yard and ran for as I was getting the baby out. I tried to stop her, but she was up the steps and ready to slide before I could get there.

Well, it was raining, which made that plastic yellow slide as slick as black ice on a dark night. She went flying down faster than I've seen any child slide. When she hit the bottom she literally flew up into the air, legs still stiff in front of her. She hit the muddy patch at the foot of the slide with a thump and a gasp. The wails were immediate.

"My bottom hurts!"

So her first few minutes at school were spent getting her cleaned up and calmed down. She was fine by the time I left, though, playing happily and not caring one little bit that Mommy was saying good-bye. I'm probably going to have to pull her out of there kicking and screaming when the time comes to go home.

Election Day

I can remember when I was a kid going to school on election day. There was always a part of the school that was off limits that day, where, if you peeked, you could see the red, white and blue curtains on the voting booths.

It always seemed so mysterious and desirable to me. I couldn't wait to be old enough to vote and find out what was behind those curtains. Boy, was I disappointed to find out it was only a cheap, plastic shelf!

The first election I voted in we had a Senator in our state who had been convicted of financial fraud. He lost re-election by (I think) 57 votes. One of those was mine. It was a great lesson in the importance of every vote.

Last year I voted early, because I didn't want to gamble the baby was going to time her birth to allow me to conveniently vote. I had to take the toddler with me down to the election board offices where she bounced off all the walls as I tried to maneuver my 8 month squirming tummy under the plastic shelf.

I'm staying up late tonight, watching the election returns. I won't say who I voted for, but I will say this: It worries me, all these reports about the two parties poised to take this to the courtroom. I hope the candidates will let this go. Whatever anyone hopes to accomplish in 4 years in the White House isn't worth tearing this country apart in a post-election court battle. I honestly think that would be terribly dangerous for us as a country. One of our great strengths has always been our ability to make elections work, peacefully, without violence, accepting the results even if you're upset. Bringing the lawyers in will undermine that and we might never recover. I know that sounds melodramatic, but I feel so strongly that it would be utterly irresponsible of either side to go to litigation. I'd rather see my guy lose than see that happen.

The doorbell rang every 30 seconds.

Evidently we're on the list of Must Visit subdivisions for trick or treating. I guess because the houses are so close together? We're fairly densely packed in here.

Whatever the reason, the reality was all too real. They were practically dropping kids off by the busful. We had friends come over for dinner and they couldn't hardly find a place to park because there were so many cars lining the street. And this was at 5:30. The trick or treating didn't officially start in our neighborhood until 6 p.m.

I took the preschooler out a little before 6. This is the first year she has really grasped what this was all about. We were walking along and all of a sudden it hit her. They were giving her candy! Every house around her was handing out candy and all she had to do was say, "Trick or treat!" She made this little, "Ah!" sound and took off running as fast as she could to the next house.

Of course she fell. Splat, right on her face, pumpkin and flashlight rolling in two different directions. There was much crying. The next house had seen the fall, however, and gave her extra candy in sympathy, which cleared up the tears pretty quickly. Distraction, it's a wonderful thing.

The flashlight, however, was much better than the candy as far as she was concerned. In fact I wound up holding the pumpkin most of the time because she was having too much fun with Mommy's flashlight. She was quick to learn to say, "Trick or treat," not so quick to remember to say, "Thank you," which she is usually very good about. I think she was hypnotized by the magic and wonder of it all. Candy! Candy! Candy!

(Picture a dazed and amazed little one here, staring wide-eyed at all the houses full of candy.)

It was all so exciting that she didn't need candy to have her bouncing off the walls. She did that very well on her own. The few pieces of candy she was allowed to have was like throwing cooking oil on a gasoline fire. It made a difference, but not much.

It was fun. And I'm glad it's only once a year.