Harry Potter

I am a very fast reader. I always have been. In grade school the other kids refused to believe I was reading as fast as I appeared to be. They accused me of just turning the pages to make it look like I was reading fast.

Nope. I wasn't. Although I have noticed as I have gotten older, and busier, that how fast I read is heavily influenced by how much I've been reading. I guess it's like anything else: Practice makes perfect.

I finished the latest Harry Potter just before midnight last night. I'd been reading it almost nonstop since I plucked it from the mailbox aroung 1:30 that afternoon. I didn't mean to finish it so quickly. In fact, I really didn't want to finish it that quickly, and now I am rather sad, because it is all done and I'm quite sure I will have to wait two years for the last book. But it was so much fun to read that I really couldn't put it down. So here I am, forlorn.

I've been rereading Lord of the Rings, lately, and I've been amazed at how good it is. It's been so many years since I've read it that I'd forgotten how well Tolkien writes. On the other hand, I've leafed through many books that have tried to write in what they seem to believe is the "Tolkien style." They have uniformly been heavy, pompous, and impossible to read.

JK Rowling is no JRR Tolkien. Reading both authors' works so close together has impressed that upon me. She is, however, a very good writer, and while Harry Potter lacks a certain complexity (and why shouldn't it - it is written for kids, after all) she certainly knows how to tell a great story.

One of the things she does do well, in my opinion, is characterization. I am especially impressed at how she is able to portray adolescence. Reading books five and six, I could see Michael in her descriptions of her teen characters' behavior. In the descriptions of their feelings and thoughts, I could see myself at that age. I really think that's something. So often books with young protagonists treat their characters as miniature adults instead of real kids. Personally, I find it intimidating to try to recapture my memories of those ages well enough to create a believable, real, character. So, my hat's off to to Rowling.

And to those of you who might be Harry Potter fans, who are either in the midst of reading right now, or still waiting to get your hands on a copy of Half-Blood Prince, I say, "WOW! You won't believe what happens!"

I tortured Michael all afternoon who kept telling me to stop laughing, stop making horrified sounds, and stop gasping. He was very relieved to have me finally hand it over to him. I can't wait til he finishes it, so we can talk about it and speculate on Harry's next, and final, adventure.

A few memories for future reference.

Sometimes I just can't think of anything to say, some days there's so much happening that I wind up leaving out huge chunks of our lives as I try to keep entry lengths managable.

So, in honor of the fact that this is supposed to be a semi-journal for myself, as well as a blog to appease to my vanity (by getting myself readers!) here are some quick notes on recent big events in our lives. Feel free to skip this as being way too boring.

Gabrielle is growing so fast. She's finally getting teeth in the gaps in her little smile. For the longest time she had four front teeth, top and bottom, then a gap, and then molars. She finally has teeth growing into the gaps on the bottom, as of about three weeks ago, and teeth are starting to show through on the top as well. Yippee! I never really did quite get used to the way the molars looked with the gap. I kept seeing her smile and thinking she had something in her mouth. Well, duh, Jennifer, yes, she does. They're called teeth. Do try to keep that in mind for future reference.

She's also making amazing strides in learning to talk, although it takes some concentration and word solving skills to figure out what she's saying. Yesterday she kept asking me, "Sno-go? Sno-go?" I had to repeat it to myself several times before I realized she was asking me to snuggle. She loves to cuddle up with Mommy on Mommy's bed, the both of us wrapped up in a blanket, like when she was tiny and still nursing.

Gabrielle has also hit the Terrible Twos. Last Wednesday she threw a temper tantrum and she hasn't really stopped since. OK, that's a touch of hyperbole. She stops for a few seconds here and there to breathe. How long can one child scream before going hoarse? I think I might get to find out over this next year.

School supplies are on sale right now all over the place which has gladdened my heart (it's the writer in me coming out. "Look at all that blank paper and pencils to sharpen!) but greatly peeved Michael who is not interested in thinking about school preparations yet. Crayons have been 10 cents a pack at one local store. So have 70 page spiral notebooks, so I've been buying scads of both for the girls to use. I'm also thinking of buying a bunch of stuff and keeping it on hand for when the inevitable charitable drive for underprivileged schoolchildren starts up. There's always something along those lines every year.

Arielle has been increasingly lobbying to be allowed to play outside alone. She keeps telling me about friends of hers who are allowed to play by themselves. Sorry, little girl. You have a paranoid mommy, who is going to be a pest to you until you are on your own, and probably even then. Learn to live with it. It's better than the alternative.

She's started doing something that is becoming a bit of a problem, though. After we put her to bed, she will sneak out of her room and into the husband's and my room, where she will fall asleep curled up in our bedspread. The first time I walked in and saw her there I about had a heart attack. I'm not sure how to break her of this. I guess we'll just keep picking her up and taking her back to her bed when we find her, until she grows out of it. Maybe? Hopefully? Surely she'll grow out of this sometime, right? Before she starts kindergarten, at least?

I'm going out with a friend tonight to a Harry Potter party at the local bookstore. I've never been to one. I can't say I really care where I go, as long as I go somewhere. Whoohoo! Time out with a friend. That's almost as good as a date with the husband.

Now we wait.

Well, the husband had a second treatment for the pain he's been having. Years ago he hurt his back and now he's having problems with a nerve getting pinched. He had a treatment a month ago and it didn't work, so he went back this week to get another version of the treatment, this one a little riskier. Basically, they knocked him out, stuck a needle in his spine and gave the nerve a shot of steroids to reduce the inflammation. He had this done once before and it relieved the pain for pretty much a year. We're hoping this last shot works the same way. Otherwise he's going to have to have surgery. They'll slice him open and enlarge the area in his disk that the nerve goes through, as well as cutting back some calcium deposits that are pressing on the nerve.

I'm a little scared to have him go through surgery. Even the shot he just got had a certain risk of hurting the nerve and causing paralysis. The husband, however, is so tired of being in such pain all the time that he is more than ready to get cut up if it will stop the pain. He doesn't care about the risks anymore. He just wants to stop hurting.

It will take a couple of weeks before we have a firm grip on how successful this treatment was. I'll be holding my breath until then.

Update on the ring

I've given up. I can't find it anywhere. I don't know how it could have disappeared so thoroughly, but I'm not going to find it without a metal detector. Maybe not even then.

I am so sad. It's just a ring, but well, you know. It's not the ring, it's the sentiment attached to it. Everytime I looked at it I was reminded of when we got it, of the husband putting it on my hand when we got married, of how shiny and pretty it was at first and how it got scratched up so quickly. I was sad to see it get scratched, in those early days of marriage, but after a while I decided it was nicely symbolic of how we were managing to fit our lives together.

It was a cheap ring. We got our rings on sale, $60 for the set. 10K gold, bands on the narrow side. We were both of us very poor back then. I didn't even have an engagement ring at first, because we just couldn't swing it. The husband surprised me a week before our wedding with a $30 cubic zirconia ring from Walmart. I was thrilled. Even $30 was a big sacrifice for him at that time.

It's our private joke now. My engagement rings looks very expensive, actually. It makes me laugh that the wedding and engagement ring cost the same amount. I never wanted anything pricy. I'd feel too nervous with something that costs thousands of dollars on my hand. My sister has a friend who was given a family heirloom as an engagement ring. $14,000. Yeah, she lost it. It was insured, but still. Losing a family heirloom? Yeeks! I'm glad I don't have to feel guilty as well as sad about my ring.

Sometime in the next few weeks I'll get a babysitter for the girls and the husband and I will go over to Walmart. We'll pick another inexpensive ring, as much like the original as possible (which shouldn't be hard.) It won't be the ring, but it'll be good enough. After all, what's important is that I get to belong to him and he gets to belong to me, and I get to wear a ring letting the world know how much we mean to each other. I'll always remember my first ring, but I'll make new memories with my second ring and they'll be precious too.

To start with, I'll think of it as a recommitment to each other. Yeah, that works.

I oughta be a locksmith.

I was going to go shopping this afternoon. After all we need things like tortillas, yogurt, etc. etc. Note, however, the emphasis on the word "was".

As in, "Instead of going shopping this afternoon I spent two hours trying to get various locked doors open."

I was tired this afternoon. So tired that when I got a call from my sister, we weren't very long into our conversation before I slipped into a slight doze and started babbling to her. When she got done laughing we said good-bye and I decided to take a little nap on the couch, while Gabrielle took her nap and Arielle watched a movie.

What could go wrong?

I didn't sleep long, or very deeply. 15 minutes maybe. And then I woke up, got up, and headed for the bedroom to take care of some things. Except that the bedroom doorknob wouldn't turn.

Wait a minute. Arielle in living room. Gabrielle in crib.

Oh no.

Not again.

This time, even with the benefit of experience, I just couldn't get the darn thing open for the life of me. I wound up taking it apart, only to find out the part that held the door closed still wouldn't move! So I took the teen's bathroom doorknob apart and figured out how to make everything turn.

Hooray! All is correct and as it should be again!

Except for the master bathroom, which I then discovered was also locked. At which point, seeing the look on my face, Arielle burst into tears and ran into her bedroom.

So I took that one apart too.

Now everything is fixed.

But we're still not going shopping. Arielle, as punishment for her misjudgement, is going to have to go without yogurt for breakfast tomorrow morning.

She's almost as unhappy about that as I was about the locks.

Jekyll and Hyde

This is my entry for Blogging for Books #13. 1,992 words, just under the word limit. My regular readers will notice some of this has been excerpted from earlier entries.

I love my father. He is my protector. He is smarter and stronger and braver than any other daddy in the world and I worship him.

I remember being a little girl, playing with other kids in a lush back yard, surrounded by fir and pine. Looking back, I can see that I'm young enough that they don't really want to play with me, so they tell me that we're going to play house. I'm the baby. They have me lay down on a plastic webbed lounge chair, near the empty swingset that they're playing on. The swingset is one of those old metal ones, with the legs like two triangles at either end. There are supposed to be swings and a teeter totter on the set, but they've been removed.

The children clamber over the set, which hasn't been anchored into the ground, several of them perched on the top cross bar. As they move around the swingset moves with them, swaying from side to side, increasingly unsteady.

I'm watching them, content to be the baby, vaguely aware that I've been pawned off, but too young to be anything but pleased with whatever crumbs of interaction they'll give me. Suddenly, the set begins to sway even more, then to tip over. The children start to jump off, making the tip worse.

One of the children, the one who told me to play I was the baby, yells at me, "Run, baby, run!" I think it's part of the game, so I wave my arms and legs like a baby would, and make gurgling noises. I'm very proud of myself for playing so well, as I watch the swingset fall toward me.

The next thing I remember is sitting in the car with my parents. My father is upset, driving very fast and talking to my mother in an angry tone of voice, although I can tell he isn't angry with her. Mommy is holding something warm and wet to my head. I'm curious and want to see what it is, so I try to pull her hand down. She resists, telling me to leave it alone. Peeved, I wait until she's focused on my father again, forgetting to pay attention to me. I pull her hand down quickly, before she can react.

It's a washcloth, and there's blood on it, my blood. The sight panics me. I begin to fight and cry.

There's another blank spot there, then I'm in a room with strangers. I'm lying on my back, unable to move. There is a bright light shining directly over me, hurting my eyes. I'm terrified, fighting and screaming as hard as I can. I want my father. If he was only here everything would be OK.

And then, he is there. He comes to the head of the table I'm lying on, and cradles my head in his arms. I immediately relax. Daddy is here. I'm safe. Everything is all right.

I heard the story from my parent's point of view many years later. Yes, the set did hit me, splitting open my scalp. They drove me to the hospital, where it was determined I needed stitches. They were barred from the room where I was being treated, but could hear me screaming. Dad pushed his way into the room, telling the nurse who tried to stop him, "That's my daughter in there. Get out of my way." The doctor just smiled, and gestured to everyone to let Dad in. I was in a child's strait jacket. As soon as I saw Dad, though, I calmed down. They were able to stitch me up with no further trouble.

I knew, if Daddy was there, I was safe.

*****************************

I hate my father. He is the bogieman standing beside my bed in the middle of the night, screaming at me. He is a monster who terrifies me, destroying everything I love.

I remember being a little girl, huddled on our living room couch. There is a wide archway to my left. It leads to our kitchen, warm and yellow. Daddy is angry. My brother and I cling to each other in a corner of the couch, both too afraid to move. My parents are in the kitchen. Daddy is yelling at Mommy. He has his hand wrapped around her hair, and he is dragging her around the brightly painted kitchen. She's hunched over, both her hands clutching at her hair in a vain attempt to keep it from hurting so much. She's crying, pleading with him to stop hurting her.

Grandma gave me a pretty little salt and pepper shaker set a little while before. They're tiny pitchers, china, painted with roses and gold edging. I love them, because they came from Grandma and represent the cleanliness and peace of her house. I already know I want my house when I grow up to be nice and peaceful like Grandma's. Daddy picks them up, and hurls them at the wall. I sit on the sofa and cry silently, too afraid to make any noise.

Later I try to pick up the pieces, hoping I can glue them back together. I'm already familiar with the need to fix broken things. Mommy tries to help me. She gives me an envelope to put the pieces in. I place them in there, even though I know that the pieces are too small to put back together. The china shattered, and thin slivers are buried in the gaps between the floor and the baseboard, out of reach of even my tiny fingers. I pretend that I still think they can be fixed, though, and tell Mommy that it's OK.

*****************************

"There was a little girl and she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid."

My father is bipolar. He is intelligent, literate, cultured. He taught me to appreciate fine art and great music. He is a great outdoorsman, taking us on hikes and camping trips. I learned to love the beauty of the natural world from him.

He is also, during his frequent bad times, dangerous, erratic, moody and unpredictable. Through fear of him I learned to be hypervigilant, to let no-one behind me, to fear men.

All I ever really wanted was for the bad daddy to go away, and the good daddy to stay. I never could learn how to make that happen. I tried for years to make him love me, to be good enough to finally please him. In my mid-twenties I finally gave up and spent years mourning the relationship I'd never have with him.

And then I found out he was in the hospital for emergency open-heart surgery.

*****************************

My brother calls late one afternoon. Dad is in the hospital. He's been feeling sick to his stomach and dizzy while out walking. He finally went to a doctor about it. The initial tests were inconclusive, so they did more tests, also ambiguous. The doctor decided to refer Dad to the local hospital's heart center for a final decision. The doctors there did another test, looked at the results, and immediately admitted him. Now he's scheduled to have a sextuple bypass tomorrow.

I'm in shock. I don't know how I feel or what to think.

So many things are swirling through my head. I could lose my father. Probably not. This isn't exactly experimental surgery, they've been doing it for decades. It's still major surgery, though. Stuff happens; in spite of everything people still die sometimes.

I can call Dad tomorrow after his surgery.

Maybe I'll know what to say to him by then.

I've got good genetics. All of my grandparents were in their late 80's when they died. Dad's always sworn he was going to live to be 100. I never seriously considered he might not.

It's several hours before the shock starts to wear off. Late that evening I start crying, just a little; I sit at the computer, staring at somebody's blog, sniffling slightly while a trickle of tears runs down my cheeks.

Luckily, I'm married to a man who's very good at emotions. He invites me to sit beside him on the couch and snuggle a bit. I wind up sobbing onto his chest until he's soaked.

Some feeling is growing in my chest, welling up from where I'd buried it decades ago. Every tear gives it further strength and definition, until I can haul it into the light and identify it.

"I only ever wanted him to love me," I sob to my husband, and it's like iron bands around my heart breaking. I draw a breath and it's like walking out of an overly humid room into a dry and brisk spring day.

In the morning I get another call from my brother. Dad's surgery has been delayed another day. Things are looking good, though. His doctors consider him an excellent candidate.

Another day. My brother calls during dinner. Dad is out of surgery and in ICU, hopefully not for long. Everything went very well. He's good for at least another 20 years, the doctors say.

Over the last few years I've been consciously working on forgiving Dad. I don't want to say, "That's OK, it doesn't matter, everything's hunky-dory again!" I do, however, want to let go of the anger, see him as just a person and not the bogieman from my childhood. I want to be free of the fear, free of the hate.

Later that evening I call the number my brother gave me. I'm not afraid or stressed. I actually feel affection for my father as we talk, and when he starts complaining about the dangers involved in my youngest sister driving across the country to live with me I even laugh.

"I don't like this," he tells me, his voice more gruff than usual. "She's going to wind up dead in a ditch, raped, with her throat cut. That car of hers isn't up to the trip. It's going to break down halfway there and she's going to have to fly back home and she'll have to borrow money that she won't be able to pay back because she won't have a job."

Usually I'd be upset, angry that he has so little faith in the judgment of his children. When I decided to go back to college he told me I wasn't smart enough. The first year of my marriage he would ask me, every time he called, if my husband was beating me yet. He's done that to all of us, and it's hurt and angered every one of us. But right now, hearing his concerns, the illogic suddenly seems hilariously funny.

I laugh so long and hard I can almost hear him bristling in offense. "Dad," I tell him lovingly, "that is so you. You find the worst possible scenario and go right to worrying about that."

He gruffs at me, then goes back to discussing all the horrific dangers presented to a young and foolish girl traveling cross-country.

It's the first time I haven't seen this sort of thing as an attack on us, as just one more spoonful heaped on his pile of reasons stating why we're essentially unlovable.

It's one thing to know with my head that my father loves us, even if he's not capable of showing that in any normal way; it's another thing to convince my heart of that. Somehow, though, his illness has broken through my fear and that lonely child inside me has stopped feeling guilty.

I can finally see him as what he is; flawed, ill, but trying. Sorry for his past actions. Working to control his illness. My dad, without the burden of my expectations and pain. Human, like me.

I can forgive him. I can let go of the past.

I can love him again.

Welcome to the world of work.

Michael finally had his first day of work yesterday. Due to some misunderstandings and problems here and there it took him almost three weeks to pull his first shift. It was a doozy, too. 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. 10 hours.

Needless to say, he was dead on his feet when I picked him up. The only reason he was still awake, I figure, is because he was floating on who know how many gallons of free Mountain Dew. Caffeine and exhaustion have the effect of making him giddy, it seems, which was fortunate. It made it very easy to get information out of him. By the time he'd got up this morning he'd already shut back down, so it was good I questioned him while the opportunity was there.

He told me that he really doesn't want to have to do closing anymore. He was rather horrified to find out that he was expected to wash all the utensils, pans and dishes. He also had to take out the garbage, another unthinkable requirement!

I have to admit, when relaying this to the husband later on, I laughed so hard I started snorting.

He learned how to put toppings on, though, and how to wrap a taco, although he says he's not very good at that yet.

Today when I asked him how he was feeling he said that it was all worth it, because of the money. Evidently whenever he started to feel too tired he'd remind himself how much he was making per hour. (A useful technique - I remember one particularly boring and miserable job I had where I had figured out how much I was making per second and when things were really bad I'd count off the time by reciting, "Two tenths of a cent, four tenths of a cent, six tenths of a cent ...")

His next shift is after the weekend. Closing again. I praised him for what he was doing, let him know how proud I was of him, and promised him that after about a week of this he wouldn't be nearly so tired.

We've agreed to let him spend of all his first paycheck. He'll start saving with the second one. He's already planning how he's going to spend all that money. I'm bracing myself for the howls of anguish when he sees how much gets taken out by the government.

Oh beautiful for fireworks?

The husband is working tonight, which is just as well, as he has a slight touch of PTSD which makes fireworks a tad problematic for him. He doesn't scream, "INCOMING!" and dive for cover, but it does make him rather tense and he tends to twitch, just a little, every now and then. Since the meadow across the street is filled with groups of our neighbors, setting off what seems to be every bottle rocket and roman candle in the county, he might have found this evening a bit trying. (There's so much smoke over there, it looks like fog.)

I'm impressed that the girls haven't woken up. I guess my wear-them-out routine today worked well.

Kira wrote today about her favorite verse of America the Beautiful. For me, it's a couple of lines from the fourth verse of the Star Spangled Banner that I always think of at this time of the year. "Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!"

I've told the story before, so I won't repeat it here. Follow the link if you want to read it. I'll have to send a copy of it off to my brother. I want him to know how much I appreciate what he is doing.

The fireworks have finally ended. Peace reigns over the neighborhood. Thank goodness. They went on for almost two hours. That's a lot of fireworks! And way too many of them were aimed over our roof, which was making me nervous.

Oops. Never mind. There they go again.

Happy Independence Day!

I hope those Americans that read this blog are having a great holiday. And I hope the rest of you are just have a good day in general!

If I die, this is why.

Sometimes, when I think of death, it's as a thick soft comforter, the kind my grandmother used to make. There's an equally soft pillow there and the bed is made up with crisp, clean sheets, cool at first, but warming up as I pull the comforter up around my shoulders and turn a little a few times, so that the bedding is tucked up around my body in a cocoon. The pillow case has been washed so many times there's no stiffness left in it, and it's soft and comforting to my cheek as I tuck my hands up underneath the pillow, palms together like a child praying.

There are days when everything is like it used to be, before I got pregnant, before the depression struck me. I feel happy, able to think clearly, energetic and capable.

Then, there are days when I'm just so tired and all I want to do is lay my head down on that pillow and never have to wake up again. It's not a physical tiredness. I don't know how to describe it, really, but lately it's like all my senses are wrapped around cotton batting and it's uncomfortable to do anything. My eyes hurt, but in a numbed sort of way, that's worse than a sharper pain. My head hurts, vaguely. Even my emotions have gotten into the game. Everything feels far off and it's hard to focus. When I sleep it's hard, not as in a deep sleep, but a tense sleep, that leaves me with a headache when I wake up and my muscles stiff and hurting. Only it's hard to feel them hurting because it's so hard to feel anything at all.

Other days are just overwhelming. There's so much to try to handle and I can't get anything right. Everyone is upset with me and I'm dropping balls all over the place. I spend my waking hours hiding from everyone, paralyzed with fear of screwing up again. There's so much activity in my brain, so much anger with myself, with everyone else for expecting so much of me and abandoning me to cope alone. It's like little energy storms floating around my head. Sometimes one will center in on me, bringing all the others with it, and for a few minutes it's all completely unbearable and hopeless and I can't see any way out, except through death. It's the only escape I can see and I'm so desperate at those moments that it takes all my willpower to keep from taking that final step.

I have more good days than I did before I started the medication, but the bad days are so much worse and they outnumber the good days. I didn't have any good days before. It feels like the good days are decreasing, though, from where they were a month ago.

At the least, the medicine isn't working. At the worst, it might be making me feel worse. I have to go back to the doctor and I'm scared, because if I start another medication I have to wean off this one first, which will mean I'll have about four weeks that have the potential to be really bad.

I'm so tired of this. Sometimes I feel so desperate to feel good again that I'd do anything, take anything that would give me some energy and hope. I can see how this kind of thing can lead a person to become a drug addict or alcoholic.

I keep holding out for my girls' sake, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. More and more it seems like they'd be better off with the trauma of me leaving them than with me staying with them, like this. Remember, I know how bad it is to grow up with a crazy parent.

And I'm so tired and that pillow is so soft.

New Look!

What do you think? All this is thanks to Point of Focus.

I was trying to fix the problems my front page was having, but wound up accidentally making things so much worse that I really had no choice but to start over completely.

Sleep is a not atonnnnne true alkjnclvk ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

So this is three nights in a row now that Arielle has gotten up when she should be asleep. 4 a.m. the first morning, 5 a.m. yesterday, and last night 1:30 a.m. And it's taking me roughly an hour to get her back to sleep. Last night she pitched several crying fits, wanting to sleep with me.

Let me just point out that I am not into Attachment Parenting. Family beds? I don't think so. My sweet little daughter is going to have to quit this, really quickly, because Mommy is not about to let her keep this up.

In other news, Gabrielle somehow got hold of a bottle of food coloring last night. I'm not sure how. I had the box on top of the fridge! And yet, she walked in the living room clutching the tear drop shaped bottle in her little blue hands and gave me a big blue-lipped smile.

It's very strange to see your baby with Goth lips.

Naturally the camera batteries were dead. Oh, well, I shall be sure to keep that picture in my memory. Or I could just give her the food coloring bottle to suck on again. Hmmmm ...

The Importance of Being Me

There I sat, behind closed doors, trying to take care of some personal needs, while my youngest child stood outside, banging on the door and sobbing hysterically. I ignored her. There are times when you need your privacy. Besides, if she was trying to get the door open I knew she wasn't getting into trouble somewhere else.

Over the last couple of months she has taken to shadowing me around the house, following me from room to room like a miniature stalker. She is particularly adept at recognizing when I am headed in the direction of the bathroom. In desperation I've had to resort to waiting until her head is turned before taking off like an Olympic runner pursued by a pride of lions. Today I'd barely made it in ahead of her, closing the door even as her little hands touched the wood, palms flat as she pushed with all of her weight.

Unfortunately, the wailing attracted Arielle's attention. She left the television show she was watching in the living room and came to see what all the ruckus was about. Immediately discerning the problem, she decided to be the helpful big sister.

Gabrielle burst in as soon as the door was opened, running up to where I sat. "Mommy! Mommy!" Her grin was wide enough for three little girls. She patted herself on the chest with both hands. "Me!"

Yes indeed, little girl. You.

Shoot the wounded

I cannot believe I am up this early. It is 4:22 a.m. and Arielle is sitting beside me as I type this, happily popping bubble wrap, which may yet deprive me of what little is left of my all-too-fragile hold on sanity.

I have been up around half an hour.

Arielle woke up early this morning. Despite the fact that it was dark outside, which means that she needs to stay in bed, as I have explained to her before, she got up. When she couldn't find either of her parents in the living room she became very upset and started crying.

The husband was already up, getting ready for work. He heard her and brought her into our bedroom, to me.

Isn't he sweet?

Why yes, yes indeed, I do plan to return the favor, some dark night.

Of course, this was after I went to bed sometime after midnight, because I'd been waiting up for Michael to come home. Which is when I realized that we had made a fatal mistake and not specifically spelled out that we were expecting him to come home, instead of spending a second night at his friend's house.

We're going to have to specify that the restriction about spending more than one night away from home is the default position. Unless we state, in so many words, that he is allowed to spend two nights in a row away from home, he is to get his hide back here within 24 hours.

Lawyer, thy name is teenager.

Let's see. Gabrielle will wake up in about two hours. She won't go down for her nap until noon, although I can push that to 11:30. I can turn on the tv and doze while they watch Dragontales and the like. Arielle will be pretty tired later on. I might be able to her to take a nap at the same time Gabrielle does.

Or I could just grind up some of the husband's pain medication and slip into her juice box.

Yeah, yeah, drug the kid, that's the ticket.

Where do we go from here?

We went over to some friend's house for dinner last night. As we were leaving the wife casually uprooted one of the plants lining her walkway and gave it to me.

It's called a blackberry lily. Judging from the look of the their yard, it can be fairly invasive. At least, it has been with them. Hopefully it's also sturdy enough to handle being torn out of the ground as a preliminary to being replanted. Not that I think I'll have a hard time getting another from her if this one dies. It's a good thing I'm entirely doing container gardening, though!

This woman is something of a supergardener, the kind of person who has an asparagus patch, a grape arbor, blueberries, a quarter acre vegetable garden, strawberry plants that she has to keep beating back, cherry trees, plum trees, raspberries, you name it, she grows it and grows it well.

Needless to say, she's also into canning and preserving all the food she grows. Since also I'm into gardening (she has the kind of garden I dream about having someday,) canning and preserving you'd think it would be a cinch to make friends with her. Especially since I can tell she wants to be friends with me and both of us are making a real effort toward that.

And yet, we just can't make it happen. We just can't get anywhere beyond rather stilted conversations about those two main areas. It's pretty frustrating, since I still don't have all that many friends here. I'd love to get some more. I don't know why we can't connect. I've never experience anything like it before and I'm not sure what to do.

How is it that two people who want to be friends can't make it happen? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, I'm actually asking to be nagged.

Dana is going to bawl me out for saying this, but I've been postponing getting a mammogram.

Last time I went into the doctor he asked me when my last mammogram was.

"I haven't had one yet, actually," I told him. "You're supposed to get your first one at 40, right?"

He gave me this look and said, "No. 35."

"Oh!" When I thought about it though, I could see how that had slipped past everyone. After all, I've been either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or nursing, for several years now. None of them exactly times that are good for sending jolts of radiation through important parts of your body. Especially nursing. Radioactive milk for baby, yum.

So he gave me a referral to the local hospital to go in and get everything smashed. That was a month (or so) ago and I still haven't called to make the appointment.

I don't know why I haven't done it. I'm not scared of it or anything (although from everything I've ever heard I'm sure it won't be pleasant. But then, nothing important ever came easily, right?) It's not that I don't take cancer seriously. I've known several women who've had it and my own grandmother (my mother's mother no less) had to have a radical mastectomy when she was in her early sixties (of course, that was back when that was all they did, no lumpectomies or other such alternatives were available.)

I just keep forgetting. There's just so much else to do and scheduling is going to be difficult because I have to do it on a day when the husband is home (as I don't think having the two girls along would be a wise decision, although they would find it vastly educational, I'm sure!)

In other words, lousy reasons not to get this done. So nag me, people. Ask me if I've gotten it done yet. Remind me not to be dumb and to get on the stick. Ask me about it. If I get harassed enough I'll probably finally remember to pick up the phone.

You'll see this coming.

We are experiencing a minor crisis here at the moment.

Yesterday, as I was sitting down to blog, Arielle came up and wanted to sit in my lap. This is not an uncommon request for my two little ones to make. Frequently I wind up typing with my neck craned around some small person's head, unable to see the keyboard or my hands as my arms stretch around either side of that same small person's body.

So, there we were, Arielle leaning back against me, sucking on the first two fingers of her left hand, happy to be held by Mommy and vaguely interested in watching what Mommy was doing on the computer. It wasn't long, though, before her interest began to wane and she became interested in something else - specifically my wedding ring.

Arielle has had a thing about my rings ever since I made the mistake of buying Pat the Bunny when she was much younger. (I bought it online, thinking it was about a bunny named Pat. I was unpleasantly surprised to realize it was a feel-and-do kind of book. Since she was a little too young for that kind of book right then it wasn't long before it was pretty much destroyed.) One of the things the children in the book do is to try on their mother's wedding ring. Ever since then, Arielle has been obsessed with wearing my ring.

She begged to look at my rings and I told her she could, with the familiar caveat, "But, you have to stand by me, where I can see you and the ring, OK sweetie?"

Now Gabrielle has reached an stage lately, where she is much more aggressive about making sure she gets the attention she wants. In other words, she's taken to behaving badly and making huge messes whenever she thinks I'm not looking at her enough.

I'd given Arielle a handful of peanuts and raisins earlier and evidently hadn't put the peanuts back, because as her older sister was looking at the ring, Gabrielle walked into the living room with the half-full jar of peanuts and calmly dumped them all over the carpet.

Much consternation followed. I jumped up with a cry, Arielle decided she needed to reprimand Gabrielle, I reminded Arielle that it was my job to deal with Gabrielle, then reprimanded Gabrielle myself. I told Arielle to get the now empty jar and throw it in the garbage for me. I got out the vacuum and started to hoover up the mess. Gabrielle cried, because the vacuum scares her.

It was chaos.

When it finally all settled down I noticed Arielle standing by the entertainment center. Her shoulders were hunched together, her face tilted toward the ground. She was sucking on her fingers.

"What's wrong?" I asked, immediately suspicious. This body language was not a good sign. It bespoke guilty feelings and fear of punishment.

She was very brave, though, and answered me immediately. "Mommy, the ring is gone."

I'd so thoroughly forgotten about the ring that it took me a moment to remember. Then panic hit me. My ring!

It's still missing. We've torn the house apart and there are only two places left to look. The garbage and the vacuum bag.

Yuck.

I'm still gearing myself up to tear into those. Today's blogging entry is just a way of procrastinating. I do want my ring back, though, so if you pray, send one up for me to find my ring, OK? And to live through the ripened dirty diapers and flying dust.

Thanks!

Maybe I need to buy better vitamins

I caught Arielle eating baking soda today. Yes, as in sodium bicarbonate, bicarbonate of soda, Arm and Hammer, useful in cleaning, deodorizing and leavening. Nasty tasting stuff, as you will know if you have ever brushed your teeth with it or bitten into a soda biscuit that wasn't adequately mixed.

And she was eating it, dipping her finger in and then licking it off.

"What are you doing?" I asked her, aghast.

"It's yummy, Mommy," she told me.

Then she stuck her finger in again, sucking off the soda like another kid might eat sugar out of the bowl.

"Arielle, that's yucky stuff! Don't eat that!"

"It's yummy," she repeated, smiling at Mommy to reassure me that all was well as she ate some more.

"Stop that! You're creeping me out!"

I took the baking soda away and placed it high up, out of reach.

Garielle likes to eat rice wine vinegar. She was begging her dad for some the other night (Michael won't eat broccoli without rice wine vinegar on it) so he put some on her finger and let her suck it off.

"Yummi!" she exclaimed. (And yes, she says yummy with an 'I'. Don't ask me how I know. I just do.) Then she begged for more, which he gave her, and when he stopped giving her vinegar, she cried.

I have the weirdest kids.

Slings and arrows, here he comes!

Michael starts his first job this week.

We've been talking up his getting a job for quite a while now, but with not much response from him. Oh, he'll respond enthusiastically about the idea of the money he'll make and the things he could learn, but hand him the want ads and he'll thank you for them, then go back to his video games and eventually walk away leaving the paper lying on the floor, forgotten.

(Hmmm, think I could make that sentence any more run-on?)

He did go so far as to pick up a few applications from fast food places he went with his friends, but he never got as far as actually filling them out. As a matter of fact, he never got as far as actually getting them out of his friends' cars. He has empty applications littering half the teenagers' cars in this corner of our state.

Last week we took matters in hand. We informed him that I would be chauffering him around to fill out applications. All day would be fine; for however long it took him to get everywhere he wanted to apply we would be glad to help him out. Then we gave him lots of advice about how to dress, how to act, what to say and what information to have on hand.

He was shocked to find out that it was the best idea to fill out the application there. He was even more horrified to find out that we expected him to wear nice pants and a collared shirt. He also had to shower and shave, ultimate indignity!

He looked pretty good all cleaned up and I handed him a cheat sheet I'd typed up for him with such useful information as the names and addresses of his references and Social Security number.

He wound up only filling out two applications, because you see, when I dropped him off at the mall, only one store said they were hiring. I didn't have the heart to explain to him that you fill out applications for everyone, regardless, because someday soon they will be hiring. The other store was a fast food place he loves and they said they wanted him back for an interview in two days.

Yes, that's the job he got. I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I'm not sure it was good for him to go out and get a job so easily. Of course, I'm sure he'll have plenty of time to learn about how rough the job market can be and a little confidence out of the starting gate can be a good thing, right? Besides, now he won't be spending his entire summer rotting his brain on video games and destroying his body with junk food. OK, so he'll still be destroying his body with junk food (he told me he'd be happy if they just paid him in tacos) but at least part of the time he will be constructively engaged in learning about the grown-up world of high expectations and hard consequences.

He thinks we're mean? Wait until he ticks off his boss.

Books, books, books

Ok, so, Joshilyn blogged yesterday about someone who wants to be a writer, but never ever reads books. (He's afraid it'll screw up his "voice".)

I have never understood people who don't read. I can remember back in high school having a friend tell me that she'd never read a book and I didn't know whether or not to believe it. I was shocked and aghast at the mere idea that someone could be our age and never have read a book. How can you avoid that? Not even a short one? A small one? A picture book?

Nope. Never. Not even a picture book.

I can't quite wrap my mind around that. Not reading would be, to me, like not breathing. I read my first book in the first grade when I learned to read. It's been my favorite form of entertainment ever since.

The best summer I ever had as a kid was the year we lived within walking distance of the local branch of the public library. I was allowed to walk to the library almost every day. I'd walk out of the heat into that delicious air conditioning and draw in a deep breath of book-scented air. And then I'd settle in for some serious reading. Some days I'd just check out a pile of books (we were only allowed to check out six at a time) take them home, read them and return them the next day to check out another pile. Some days I'd just pile up books around me and stay as long as I dared reading everything from the Moomintrolls books to the dusty old encyclopedias. They had a complete set of the Oz books, the first chance I'd had to read books I'd only ever heard about before then. I finally found out who the Hungry Tiger was, and Ozma, Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead and many others.

It was a wonderful summer, one that left a mark on me that persists to this day.

I have no idea how many books I've read over the years, but I'll bet it's in the thousands. And there are so many more books out there that I haven't read, so many that I'll never get a chance to read. Which is rather comforting, because that means I'll never run out of reading material. Yippee!

I can't help wondering why someone would want to be a writer, if they don't like to read? I started wanting to be a writer when I was six, when I first realized that I couldn't find the books I wanted to read. So I decided I would write those books when I grew up (a few years later it occurred to me that I didn't have to wait - I could write them when I was still a kid!) and then I could read them and always have the kind of books I wanted to read. And I could share them with other kids who liked those kind of books, too! Yay!

But, if you don't read? Why would you want to write? It's hard work, with little payoff and lots of insecurity. It's no way to get rich, in fact, if you can even support yourself you're doing pretty well. So ... why? I don't get it.

What's the score? or Counting on my fingers: A tale of ten toes.

Wow! What a day we had yesterday. So much happened, good and bad both.

I'd ordered the husband's Father's Day present earlier this week. I got him a GPS, something he's wanted for years. They're expensive though and it's a huge amount for us to spend, especially this month, when things are tight. So, naturally I procrastinated getting it, looking desperately for somewhere to get it for less. No luck, so I finally bought it online, only to find out I'd waited too long and it wouldn't get here until next week.

No. I wasn't happy with myself. An IOU on Father's Day isn't nearly as much fun as giving him a really cool present.

But Hooray! What have we here? A UPS delivery! The GPS got here almost immediately. They couldn't have gotten here any faster if I'd arranged to have it beamed here, Star Trek style. One up for the Happy Day side.

Unfortunately I got another delivery, a juicer I'd gotten through a special group order with some people I know online. It's a $150 juicer that I got for $16. Super deal with just one slight drawback. Any problems are my problems. They assured us that each unit had been checked over and was in good working order though and everyone else has been happily reporting the fun they've been having as their juicers have arrived. So I was excited to see the box sitting on my porch when we got home after the park. Until I plugged it in and it wouldn't work.

Sigh. I was really looking forward to having a juicer, too.

One for the bad day side of the board.

The husband came home from work three hours early. He was in pain. Good to have his company early, bad that he was hurting so badly. He took some heavy duty medication and fell asleep on the bed until dinnertime.

One good, two bad.

Dinner went super well. I made a new recipe I'd gotten from Saving Dinner, something called Asian Coleslaw with Ginger Chicken. Yummy, yummy, yummy. The husband raved about it and even the girls liked it. Michael didn't care for it, but that just left more for the rest of us. The best part was when the husband told me it was even better than his mother's coleslaw! The entire time we've been married I've been hearing about his mother's coleslaw, how delicious it was when he was a boy, how she'd gotten the recipe from her mother, but then forgotten it after her sons had grown up and never been able to make it again. And this was even better? Well, I guess I know what's going on our permanent dinner roster.

Tied at three each.

The biggest event of the day was the park. I think I figured out what happened a couple of weeks ago when Arielle was so sad and wanted to go home early. There were two girls there that she kept trying to play with who were Queen Bees in training. Oh, it was heartbreaking to watch her standing there on the fringes of the group of kids, trying so hard to engage them, only to be ignored.

I couldn't think what to do to help her. (When we went home I ordered The Unwritten Rules of Friendship: Simple Strategies to Help Your Child Make Friends to avoid having that happen again!) While I was thinking, though, the situation changed dramatically. The larger group broke up, leaving Arielle and two little girls her age. It quickly became apparent they were the ringleaders of her exclusion.

She kept pleading with them to let her play and they would look at her and laugh. As she came closer to them they would squeal, "She's coming!" and run away. This kept being repeated until Arielle was in tears, at which point I lost my temper.

I called Arielle over to me and in a voice loud enough to be heard by the two little witches (who had followed her over and were lurking within earshot) told her not to play with those two girls anymore.

Arielle started sobbing louder, trying to tell me these were her friends and she had to apologize to them so they would play with her. I explained to her (still in the same carrying voice) that these girls were not her friends, that they were mean and that although they looked like big girls they were babies inside because big girls were kind and thoughtful and only very immature people were mean. I told her we'd find her some kids to play with that were big girls inside too and that she shouldn't have anything more to do with those mean girls. She was much better than them, because she knew how to be nice.

Well, nothing like forbidden fruit. They edged closer, very interested in playing with Arielle all of a sudden. Now, lest I sound like some social genius I'm not, let me point out I didn't anticipate that. I was just so furious that I really wanted those girls to know what I thought of them. Yeah, I know. Not terribly mature of me.

It worked out well, though. Arielle kept begging to play with them and they were peering out at us from behind a bench, so I put on a big show of reluctance and told her she could play with them, but if they were mean to her again she would have to stop playing with them. And off all three of them went.

For a few minutes at least. Then Arielle ran into another little girl, one who was not into manipulation through intimidation and they wound up playing quite happily the rest of the time we were at the park.

Later Arielle and I had a good talk about mean people and why they act that way. I think she got something out of it. I hope so. I'll keep working on it.

So that was good and bad, about equal again. At least I was able to figure out what was happening at the playground.

Final score? Tiring. All those ups and downs are wearing!

Recipe: Basic loaf of bread

In honor of Amie's getting a bread machine, I thought I'd share my bread recipe. I make this on my bread machine on the dough cycle. Then I punch it down, turn it out, and shape it into rolls, which my family prefers to the classic loaf shape. This makes a great, very sliceable loaf, in my opinion, though. It slices better, though, if you let it stand about 12 hours. 24 hours is even better.

Makes one loaf

3 C all-purpose flour
1 scant T yeast (or one package of yeast)
1 1/2 t salt (which equals 1/2 T salt, by the way)
1/3 C potato flakes
2 T sugar
4 t dough enhancer (powdered gluten) (opt.)
1 egg
2 T oil
1 C water

Put in bread machine on dough cycle. When done, punch down, shape and let it rise another 1/2 hour or so, then cook at 350 for about 1/2 hour.

Now, I have to confess I'm really bad about measuring. 1/3 C potato flakes? Yeah right. That's about how much I use, yeah, but trust me, I don't haul out my measuring cups. I actually just throw in a handful. Oil? I just kind of splash it in. It's actually probably a little more than 2 T.

I also like to play around with this a lot. Substitute a cup of rye flour or wheat flour for one cup of AP flour (if I make the loaf wheat I'll leave out the gluten.) Or throw in a handful of sunflower seeds. Sub a half cup of oatmeal for a half cup of flour. Up the sugar to a full quarter cup and sub some of the water with a second egg (just put the egg in the measuring cup and fill up with water to the 1 cup mark) and replace the oil with an equal amount (or a little more if I'm feeling generous) of butter, to make a nice rich dough for dinner rolls.

If I do this, I just keep an eye on the dough as it's mixing and starting to knead. If it seems a little too dry from the changes I made I drizzle water over it as it mixes until it looks and feels right. If it's a little too wet I'll sprinkle flour over it a little at a time until things improve. Or I'll add a spoonful of cornmeal or Cream of Wheat, instead of the flour.

Oh, and you might be wondering why all-purpose flour? Well, it's cheaper, that's why. The gluten doesn't cost much at my grocery store and all together it's much less than buying the bread flour. Considering I'm making at least 3 loaves a week and usually more like six or seven, that slight savings really adds up.

That's the only problem with using my bread machine. I've been thinking seriously about getting a really nice heavy duty mixer for myself so that I can make several loaves at a time. And no, I'm not going to start doing it by hand. I hate, loathe and despise kneading. I can never get it right. I'm all in favor of having a machine do the hard part for me, while I do the fun part of deciding what to make.

Alarums and Excursions

The husband was unusually tired last night so he went to bed early. Really early. As in 7:30.

Of course, counting on my fingers (Math skills? What math skills?) I realized that since he has to be up at 3:30 in the morning this month, to get to work on time, 7:30 is exactly when he needs to get to bed to get a full eight hours of sleep.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love him and appreciate all he does to support our family? I've told him. Many times. Trust me.

Anyway. Getting back on topic.

The point of all this is, he was tired. Exhausted. Couldn't keep his eyes open as he stumbled toward the bedroom kind of exhausted. Switching shifts is always hard on him.

Since Michael was spending the night at a friend's house, that meant the entire family evening routine was left up to me. Which was kind of nice. I don't mind having the house to myself one little bit. I finished watching the show that was on and then decided to take the dog outside for his evening constitutional. Although it's not so much a walk as it is him running around the yard frantically lifting his leg on every blade of grass to ensure the insects are aware this is HIS! ALL HIS! And he will bark fiercely at anyone who dares intrude!

He'd bite them, but he's too small. So he barks instead.

We spent about 20 minutes outside, then he tried to run into the street so I picked him up and brought him back in. The girls had been quiet when I went outside, asleep I thought, but I heard Gabrielle crying when I opened the door.

Okay, I thought. She's still awake and Arielle has fallen asleep. Gabrielle is bored and doesn't want to fall asleep so she's crying about it. But there was something subtly wrong with her tone and it kept bothering me, so after a few minutes I decided I'd better check on her.

Just when I decided that, the sound changed, becoming clearer. Their door had been opened. Obviously Arielle was still awake. Drat. This was going to be one of those difficult nights, I could tell. The past week had been full of them. I was feeling almost as tired as the husband with all the sleep I'd missed in dealing with nightmares and various other night wakings.

I went back to their room and sure enough, I saw Arielle through the crack in the door, which she'd opened a couple of inches. I started to tell her to get back to bed as I opened the door to go in, but I stopped before the words came out.

I couldn't get the door open.

I pushed harder and felt something on the other side move. Something very heavy. What the heck?

Arielle moved away from the door and through the larger opening I could finally get a glimpse of what was going on. Something large and white was blocking the door.

Oh no! The dresser!

I was suddenly frantic to get in and check on my children. How did they ever manage to knock the dresser over? And where was the husband?

It took a lot of effort, but I finally managed to push the dresser aside. The girls were both fine, although frightened. I'm still not sure how they managed to knock the dresser over, although I have a hunch it involved either climbing or kicking. The room is so small and their beds fill so much of it that we had to get rather creative in how things were arranged. Which is why the dresser was in a position to block the door when it fell and why it would have been possible for a small person to lie on her back and kick the back of the dresser until she knocked it over.

But Gabrielle can't talk well enough to tell me what happened and Arielle was too upset to talk about it last night and this morning doesn't seem to really remember very clearly. She keeps trying to tell me about a dream she had, instead. So I'll probably never know.

And the husband? I checked on him as I was taking the girls out into the living room to snuggle with Mommy and have warm milk to help them calm down. He was still fast asleep, snoring softly. Like I said, he was exhausted. Really exhausted.

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

He's lying to us again.

Not that he ever really stopped, I suppose. It's just that things seemed to be going so much better. I guess Michael just got better at lying.

In May he asked to be allowed to skip two days of school for Revenge of the Sith. The first day was for spending at his friend's house, watching the other five Star Wars movies in a nonstop marathon with several other boys. Then, the next day, they were all going to go to the morning premiere of the movie.

Considering he was basically flunking out of the entire school year we gave him a very quick response. "Sorry kid, but no way. If you were getting good grades, we'd be willing to consider it, but you're not even passing. So, no."

We just found out he went to the movie anyway. He unplugged the phone when he got home so that we wouldn't get the school's automated your-student-was-absent-today phone call.

Other lies have come out, now that we are re-evaluating his behavior of the last few weeks. And, while Michael doesn't know that we know about the lies, the husband did ask him point blank if he was being fully honest with us. He swore he hadn't lied to us in any way. The lie came so easily, the words slipping out of his mouth like oiled soap in wet hands, that I felt a little sick.

I know that to some of you this is going to be no big deal. You are dealing with problems that make this kid's behavior look like nothing. And yes, I am grateful that he isn't in worse trouble. We think. The thing is, with this kind of lying going on, what do we really know about what's happening in his life? He's too good at telling lies. Too practiced.

Which means he's had practice telling lots of lies? I hope not.

If everything is only as bad as it looks on the surface, we still have a problem. If we don't find a way to counter this behavior and snap him back into realizing what matters in his life, he could be headed for real trouble. We both feel we have to respond to this forcefully to make him see we are serious. If this still isn't serious, we need to make sure our reaction helps to keep him from making mistakes that will be more serious.

Two more years to graduation and college. If he can get in. If he doesn't have to completely repeat this last school year.

Sometimes I would just dearly love to smack him.

On the Prowl

My license plate is trying to pick up men.

Seriously. I swear. It really happened. I did nothing whatsoever to provoke attention, unless carrying extra weight, wearing clothes a sick child has wiped her nose on, and desperately needing a shower suddenly qualifies a woman for supermodel status.

I didn't think so.

There I was in the grocery store parking lot, hatchback open, loaded cart of groceries ready to be loaded, Arielle in my arms as I prepared to put her in her car seat, when this 60ish guy in an SUV pulled up and said, "So, you're single, huh?"

To which I responded, wittily, "Huh?"

"Your license plate. Single mom to one, right?"

I looked at the license plate. Sure enough, that's what it said. Wow. How weird.

"I never noticed," I told him.

"Oh. I thought it was one of those license plates that mean something, you know how people do that?"

"Yeah, but this one isn't." I waved my left hand at him. "I'm married."

"Hi!" Arielle waved to him. "We bought apple juice!"

"Hi!" He waved back to Arielle, then went back to his conversation with me. "Well, I thought you were single."

"Nope!" I started moving toward the front of the car, ready to put Arielle in her car seat.

"Oh. Okay." He pulled his head back in his car window and pulled away.

"Bye-bye!" Arielle vigorously waved her arm in the air. "Bye-bye!"

The funniest part is that's the car the husband drives to work every day. He wasn't happy to realize what the license plate can be interpreted to mean.

Bare feet, green grass, warm days - it's all good.

I picked up a swing set at a yard sale this weekend, a really nice one. Slide, swings, trapeze, and two kinds of swinging seats that are just perfect for Gabrielle (who really, really wants to use the big girl swing but has a disconcerting tendency to fall backwards when she tries it.) So we've spent most of the time since Saturday outside, playing hard. It's been great. They've never slept so well.

School is out, which means we've hardly seen Michael for days. He dashes in and out, calling every so often to let us know where he is and to ask permission to spend the night at a friend's house. He's supposed to get a job this summer, but so far hasn't done anything about it. As soon as I can catch him I'll load all three kids into the car and drive him around to various businesses to fill out applications. He'll thank me for it when he gets his first paycheck. After he's recovered from seeing all the deductions for taxes that is. Remember the shock of your first paycheck?

The husband's doctor appointment yesterday went well and they had space to get him in today for a shot that should take care of things for a while.

Cute thing Arielle said the other day, when we were going outside to play on the swings: "I like to touch the grass with my feet, Mommy!"

No-one will play with me.

We went back to the park yesterday, the first time since Gabrielle, my youngest, fell down and cut her head open. No, I wasn't paranoid about her hurting herself. Really. I wasn't.

Stop laughing.

It didn't go so well. Normally a visit to the park is the best thing the girls can imagine. It's always a very thrilling treat to be able to go and play. Yesterday, though, after only about 40 minutes, they both became very unhappy.

I think Gabrielle was tired, because her crying and whining had that fussy-because-I-don't-want-fall-asleep quality to it. Arielle, however, had her first experience with serious rejection.

It broke my heart when I realized what was happening. It took me a bit to figure it out. She sat down on the swings and just rocked back and forth, refusing my offer to push her. I hsould have realized then, but it wasn't until she went and sat on the end of the slide, sucking her fingers, that I realized something was wrong.

I pulled her over to a shady spot on the grass and sat her in my lap. "What's wrong, sweetie? You look so sad. Why are you sad?"

It turned out no-one would play with her. I don't know what happened, if it was a real or perceived rejection. It was very real to her, though, and her little heart was just breaking with sorrow.

I was able to help her find a playmate, but the fun had gone out of the whole day for my little sweetheart. She never did perk up and when I finally suggested we head for home she was more than happy to leave. That's the first time I've ever gotten her out of a park without screaming fits.

I'd feel better if I had some idea of how to help her in the future with this sort of problem. To a certain extent this is just part of life. We all need to learn how to deal with the inevitable reality that not everyone we want to be friends with wants to be friends with us. But it has scared me, because I was one of those kids who never had any friends and was the bottom of the pecking order at school. I want to protect my children from what I went through, but, obviously, I don't really grasp how to be an accepted part of the child social circle. I'll need to think it over. The husband never went through that sort of thing as a kid, so maybe he'll know what to do.

Preemptive Action

Looking through my stats, I am horrified at the search strings that have started turning up. The number of strings that make me cringe have increased exponentially it feels like, and that is really bothering me. I don't like the thought that someone like that is coming here and reading about my children.

I've always been careful on here to avoid certain words that I felt sure would attract attention. But now, words that I had considered completely innocent are showing up in some really sick phrases. To try to keep the blog going and cut down on the number of visitors of that type I'm going to be changing my names for the kids.

So, meet Michael, Arielle and Gabrielle, in order of age. Hopefully that will cut down on some of the problem.

Baby Games

The toddler has learned to say hello. Only, she can't pronounce "L" yet, so it comes out as a cheery little "hey-yo" instead.

Naturally, I think this is just the cutest thing I've ever heard, so I've spent the last couple of days saying to her, "Say hello!"

Yesterday she decided she'd had enough of this game.

"Say hello!" I told her.

"No!" she screamed, and threw a toy at me.

Ok. Time to back off.

Maybe I can bribe her with a cookie?

I don't want to have to remember.

I am finding Memorial Day a little more than I can handle this year. Every time I hear something about dead soldiers, dead heros, the "true meaning" of the holiday, it feels like sandpaper across my skin and I have to tune it out or start losing my composure.

Yesterday I made the mistake of starting to read Parade magazine's cover article about a soldier who saved his men by throwing himself on top of some sort of explosive device. I only got a couple of paragraphs into it before I could feel my throat closing up and my tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.

I wound up breaking down and crying later on that evening, much to the husband's frustration. He doesn't understand, really, how I feel. Having been in and around the military so many years he's been through so much worse than I've ever had to deal with, seeing friends killed in training accidents, being shot at, all sorts of things that make my fear for a brother who isn't even doing anything dangerous, probably seem pretty silly.

But I am scared. It's really hit the last few days, and the irony is that my brother isn't even out of the country right now. He's home for two weeks. My sister in law is having their first son and he's here for the birth (it's worked out well - she's late, so they're inducing her) and the baby's blessing.

The problem is, he's going back after that, and for some reason I'm more frightened for him than I've been all these previous months. I keep thinking about how, if he dies, I'll never be able to talk with him again.

I wish I could go out there and see him. I miss him so much.

I have to stop now, because I'm crying again.

Oh, please, please, let him come home safely.

But, why?

Around 12:30 yesterday afternoon, the preschooler officially entered the "Why?" stage.

I'd just put the toddler down for her nap and the preschooler and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle. She wanted to have a drink of milk and I told her she'd have to keep the cup away from the puzzle.

"Why?" she asked me.

"Because I don't want it to spill on the puzzle," I told her. "It would 'break' it."

"Why?"

"Because the milk would soak into the pieces and they'd get yucky."

"Why?"

"Um, well, because they're made of cardboard, which is paper, and paper soaks up liquid."

"Why?"

That was when I realized what was happening. Sure enough, every conversation I've had with her since then has been dominated by that word.

At the moment I'm finding it a little tiring, but amusing and it's reassuring to see her development moving right along. I can see that it's going to start getting less amusing at some time in the future, though. Oh, well. My mom put up with me, I can handle it, too.

How long do they stay in this stage, anyway?

A friend once told me, she cobbled an emergency diaper together from tape, a grocery bag, and restroom paper towels.

I needed diapers and cat food yesterday, so off I went to the store, girls in tow. We had a successful shopping trip. Caught some good sales, stopped by a local nursery and picked up some tomato plants, picked up a nice big pot at the dollar store to plant them in, and headed home before it was too late for naptime.

Except that I forgot to buy diapers and cat food.

I have one diaper left. The husband doesn't leave for work for at least another half hour. His car is parked behind my car in our one-car-garage driveway. The toddler needs to be changed. Then I will have no diapers left.

Hopefully we will not have any diaper emergencies in the next hour.

I really wish I'd remembered at least the diapers yesterday.

Whining, because I'm PMSing. What's your excuse? Pppbbllttt.

I'm having another period this week. Unbelievable. I don't cycle on my own for all those years we were trying to get pregnant, but let us decide our family is complete and all of a sudden I'm cycling? If I wasn't laughing, I'd kick the wall in.

Don't ever let anyone tell you God doesn't have a sense of humor.

Yes, I'm laughing.

Not only am I sleeping on a towel, it's been raining here for the last three days. Which means I have two little girls that are getting really tired of being cooped up. Please, oh please, let it be dry enough tomorrow to go to our playdate at the park, so I don't go stark raving mad and wind up sitting in the shower in my clothes, with the water running over my head, my fingers in my ears and singing, "La, la, la, la," while my children bang on the locked bathroom door!

Strawberries are finally coming into season around here. The first sunny day we get I'm heading out with the girls to gorge ourselves on fresh fruit. Just-picked, sun-warmed strawberries could make any day better.

Written between toddler temper tantrums

It's hard to blog when everyone's home. Not only is there much jostling and shoving for computer time, they all want me to do unreasonable things, like making breakfast and lunch.

The toddler's head is healing up beautifully. I thought she'd have a big ol' bruise on her forehead, but all she has is a couple of scabs. I haven't even needed to give her Tyenol.

The kid who might have had appendicitis who only had strep throat? Naturally (at least it seems natural to me!) we didn't go over for the playdate. Sunday I saw Strep Throat Kid's mom at church. She was upset with me for not coming over. "He's on penicillin!" she told me.

Ooookay. As I recall from when I was a kid, strep always involved several days of lying on the couch, feverish and throwing up. Glad to see he isn't going through that. Nevertheless, I will not be bringing my children over until I am sure Strep Throat Kid's younger siblings are not current strep incubators. I have no desire to go through that with my two, none whatsoever.

I finally had the courage to go through the girls' old clothes and decide what to give away and what to keep forever. I did pretty well. I only kept a few things and managed to put most of the clothes into two large garbage bags, to give to a neighbor who has a new baby girl, with only a couple of pangs.

We may not be moving. We've been thinking it over further and we're not sure that buying is the right move right now. We'd be in a better position to buy if we had more of a downpayment, so we're seriously considering waiting a year, while we save up. We're still talking it over, but I think we'll be staying here for the time being. Which gives me mixed feelings. I'm worried about the rising home prices around here and it would be nice to have our own place, where I could plant flowers and we could put up a fence so the dog could be outside without needing constant supervision. But, I wasn't looking forward to moving again so soon and I wasn't happy with the housing selection in our price range.

Why did I think life would be easier when I was an adult? Oh, that's right. I'd never paid my own utility bills.

... but everything's fine today.

We had our first emergency room visit yesterday.

We were supposed to have a playdate at the park, but as we were getting ready to go the other mom called and canceled. Her daughter was throwing up. So, off we went on our own to spend a couple of hours having a great deal of fun. The weather was perfect, cool without being cold. There were kids to play with, but not so many families there that all the equipment was overcrowded and the other kids were friendly and fun to play with.

It was a great day, until we were leaving. There's a stream that runs along one side of the parking lot and yesterday there were some ducks there. We stopped to watch the ducks along with another mom and her two sons. The kids started exploring along the water, the mom and I started talking and before I knew it, time was slipping away and so were the kids. The four of them had made their way almost to the street, so the other mom and I called them back.

They headed back without protest (always a nice thing) and I turned my attention back to my conversation with my (hopefully) new friend, who seemed very nice. I was still keeping an eye on the kids, though, which is how I saw the toddler step down from the edge of the blacktop to the rocky bank of the creek. Sadly, she's still not very good at all about stepping down without hanging on to something. In fact, she's never taken a step down without holding on to something. Sure enough, she took a nose dive, or rather a swan dive, right onto her head.

When she got up, sobbing, I was already there, holding her in my arms and trying to soothe her. There was a big fat trickle of blood running down the side of her face, though, and when I managed to get enough blood cleared away from her cut to examine it I could see it was narrow, but deep.

The other mom offered the comment that it looked like a cut her son had a few weeks before, which she'd taken him to the emergency room for, where they'd glued it. That sounded like a good idea to me, so off we went.

(I did call our doctor and they confirmed they didn't want us in there. Since it was her head they wanted the hospital to take care of it.)

In the end, all went well, although it took a while. A hospital worker gave both the girls little teddy bears made by a local church, and lollipops, too. We wound up missing naptime and lunch, though, so with the sugar the girls wound up first bouncing off the walls (while we were waiting in the exam room for the doctor) and then melting down into hysteria soon after we got home.

The doctor glued the cut, which turned out to be only one centimeter wide. No-one bothered to measure how deep it was. The toddler obviously wasn't concussed the way she was tearing around and fighting with her sister when the doctor came in, so they sent us off with just some instructions not to wash her hair until tomorrow (today now) and to bring her back if she started acting oddly or started throwing up.

It was no big deal, but the husband kept saying last night how impressed he was that I didn't panic. I was never anywhere near close to panic. (If I didn't know that head cuts always bleed like crazy I might have been a lot more scared, though! Wow, that was a lot of blood to see coming out of my sweet baby's head.) I was lot closer to wringing both their necks for screaming at each other as they fought over the wheeled stool that was in our area.

It's always nice to impress my sweetie, though.

Interesting side note: As we were leaving the hospital we saw today's playdate coming in. Their oldest boy was showing signs of appendicitis. I called last night to see how he was and learned it was "just" strep throat. So much for today's playdate.

As I pointed out to the husband, two days, two playdates, two sick kids. Sheesh, it's enough to make me start thinking of myself as a bad luck playdate!

Just call me Typhoid Mommy.

Alive. Here. Just not here.

I'm busy, I'm tired, I feel a little bit floaty and spacy. I keep meaning to blog and keep forgetting.

What I've done this week: Planted a container garden, canned 20 pints of carrots with a friend, arranged two! not one but two! playdates for the girls, and kept my house clean. Or at least reasonably clean. Cleaner than it's been in a couple of years, how about that?

Huge, huge, huge, huge progress from just a couple of months ago.

Friday the Thirteenth

Think I'll get some hits off that title?

I didn't even think about today being the 13th until I was looking through the yard sale ads and noticed the dates. (Around here yard sales are frequently held on Friday and Saturday.)

My father was born on a Friday the 13th. From what I understand that makes it his lucky day. I've always joked that it wasn't so lucky for the rest of the world.

Today was a pretty good day for me, too. I went to a yard sale around the corner, grandparent sorts moving out and selling everything they don't want to pack. They had a lot of old toys for sale, among them a Fisher-Price Music Box Record Player. I remember those from when I was a kid and when I saw it I had to grab it for my girls. I couldn't remember at first how to make it work. (I'm too used to batteries. Windup mechanism? What's that?) They've been having a ball with it.

There are only four of the records. The one with Clair de Lune and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star isn't there, which is a shame because Twinkle is the preschooler's favorite song and has been since she was first able to sing it. I nosed around online (looking to see if I could buy a single record) and found out that a Music Box in good shape with all the records goes for about $20. I paid 25 cents. I love yard sales. Of course, this is for my kids, not for collecting.

I also got an absolutely gorgeous blue blanket with the most incredible feel. It's soft and silky at the same time, almost velvety, but not quite, and an intense royal blue. I love it. The lady selling it told me it was a "Ralph L'Raawn." It took me a second to realize she meant a Ralph Lauren! We desperately needed something to serve as a bedspread and it looks so beautiful in our room.

I also went to the doctor and got a refill on my antidepressants. He's pleased with how well they're working for me. I look back on the last couple of years and I can't believe how low I got. Remembering it is like looking through a gray fog with blurry eyes. I am so relieved to be out of that. I don't ever want to be there again.

I'm slowing whipping the house back into shape. It's nice to walk in and see a clean floor. It's nice to have cleaning to do and not feel entirely overwhelmed and exhausted at the fact.

I played with the girls and we had lots of fun. The teen felt safe inviting a friend over this afternoon to our clean house. I came home from the doctor's office to see a visitor and didn't panic. My bed looks beautiful and my room is starting to look a little pulled together. I found out at the doctor's office that I've lost three pounds (and I'd just had a big lunch!)

It's been a very good day. Makes me wish every day was Friday the 13th.

A penny saved or a bird in the hand?

Feeling better is making it much harder to write, I've noticed. I'm so busy trying to catch up on life I'm having a hard time taking the time to site down and put words on paper. And then when I do sit down I can't really think of what to say. It's much easier to pour out your heart when you're feeling alone, underappreciated and very, very sorry for yourself!

I took the girls to the park today. It was fun until time to go. Then there was much screaming and pleading to stay. Even the toddler, who's always been fairly cheerful about time to go, lost it. I had to pick her up and carry her kicking and screaming to the car. Of course, they were both tired and hungry, but what do things like that matter when there are slides, swings, and merry-go-rounds to play with?

The teen had his birthday recently. The husband wanted to do something special for him, since the last year's been so rough, so we arranged a surprise party at a local pizza parlor. His friend picked him up from our house, supposedly to hang out, but drove him to the restaurant instead. I wasn't able to be there (we were giving him a little-sister-free night, too) but I understand he was plenty surprised. It was really fun doing that for him.

We're trying to decide what to do about a down payment on a house. Should we borrow the entire amount, or clean out our savings? I don't want to clean out our savings. It makes me nervous. I'm not sure we'll be able to replace that money. We're not good about saving money. There always seems to be some crisis or other that keeps us from putting anything aside. If we don't have this, we won't have anything to be a cushion in case of a major emergency. On the other hand, I'm not sure how it would effect our ability to get a loan if we don't have a down payment. We're still talking it over. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome!

Just a quick post.

I've been canning all day. Chicken was on sale and I've been planning on doing some beans, so I got a whole bunch of stuff done. Tomorrow I'll finish up the chicken and can up the chicken stock that's in the crockpot right now.

Mother's Day went well. I got Phantom of the Opera, which was very nice. The family got a DVD player, which was supposedly for me, too. But that was OK, because it's very nice to have one finally! I've been wanting one for quite awhile. We can't use it yet, though, because we need an adapter. Our TV is a bit too old for the DVD player to date without a chaperone present.

At church they gave all the women (current and future mothers, as they put it) tomato plants! Yes, tomato plants. I had a hard time stifling my giggles. The men who came up with the idea thought it would be such a nice practical thing to give everyone.

Men make me laugh.

Mother's Day is saved?

The mystery of the One Sweep broom has been resolved. It was not my Mother's Day present, although it was intended to be a present.

You see, last month the husband was working night shift. Which meant his days off were spent all alone while the rest of us slept. He passed the time playing on the computer and watching late night television. There are lots of infomercials on at that time of night, and, well, you see ...

The fact is, the husband is a marketer's ultimate fantasy. He can be sold to so easily. He's the worst kind of impulse shopper and to make it even worse, he's loyal once he's signed up.

He had Juno when we first met. Remember Juno? "Email was meant to be free!" Advertising was supposed to cover all the costs. There was always a banner ad on top of the screen when you were reading your email, and when you sent or downloaded your mail a nearly full-screen ad would be displayed.

The husband bought almost everything they advertised, I think. After we got married I kept running across packages that he'd never even opened. We had a big fight about it, eventually, and I got him to stop buying things, but it was quite a while before our finances recovered.

Over the years I've managed to teach him some of the fundamentals of smart shopping. He'll come home every so often now, excited and proud over some purchase on which he managed to avoid overpaying.

"Look at my new watch! It was only $10!"

I always try to encourage him. "Wow, what a great job! That's a really nice watch and what a great price, dear!"

So, yeah, he gave in to temptation. At least he didn't pay the $40 he almost got charged for buying two of them.

Oh, and my review of the One Sweep? Pppbbbllltttt. Worthless. Not worth two cents in my opinion, much less the $17 we paid for it.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Tag

Just as I was trying to figure out what to blog about today, Dana tagged me! What I have to do is choose five things from the list below and complete the sentence. Then I tag other people and they answer in their blogs.

Hmmmm, who shall I choose .... (evil laughter)

If I could be a scientist.
If I could be a farmer
If I could be a psychologist
If I could be a librarian
If I could be an inn-keeper
If I could be a professor
If I could be a writer
If I could be a llama-rider
If I could be a bonnie pirate
If I could be an astronaut
If I could be a world famous blogger
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world
If I could be married to any current famous political figure

If I could be a psychologist, I would do research on how our bodies and brains effect what is going on with our emotions and thinking. We don't know enough about how all that works, which makes it almost impossible to offer significant treatment options to people suffering from "mental" illness, which is all too often simply a symptom of a very physical problem. In fact, that's the plan, for someday, after the kids are grown up, go back to college, get my PhD and start researching!

If I could be married to any current famous political figure, I would be sure to destroy his political career in just a few hours. In spite of my best efforts, by the time I finished my first interview his career would be history! I am definitely not cut out to be a perfect political wife.

If I could be a librarian, I would spend all my time reading, and never go home. I would spend the hours after the library closed devouring books, and probably wind up falling asleep there. They'd fire me soon after they realized I hadn't showered in weeks ...

If I could be a llama-rider (are there really llama-riders? Or is that just a Jimmy Neutron thing?) I would live in Peru and spin their hair? wool? fur? into beautiful yarn that I would dye and weave into even lovelier clothing.

If I could be an astronaut, I would want to live on the space station forever.

Kira, Amie, and Barbara - your turn! Let me know if you don't want to, and I'll tag some other unsuspecting blogger.

Climbing on my soapbox a little bit.

Have you ever been interested in learning to can? Know how to can but want to learn more about food preservation? The University of Georgia is offering a free online class, a self-paced Canning Course from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It will cover:

• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

I'm taking it right now. If you sign up let me know and we can study together!

I love canning. there's just nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a row of jars full of food in beautiful colors and textures, that I canned. Not to mention all the money we save. There's an initial investment in jars and equipment, yes, but I everything gets amortized over the years I use it. Throw in the advantage of being able to buy meat and produce at it's cheapest yearly prices and store it without needing additional electricity, and you're talking some pretty substantial contributions to our family's solvency.

The stuff I can is healthier and tastier than what you can buy in the store, too. The husband says my strawberry jam is "good enough to eat with a spoon." (A nice thing to hear!) I don't have the preservatives and excess sugar and salt there is in that stuff. I can even make things you can't get in the stores, like Lemon-Blueberry Marmalade, which I'm going to try this year, or Dandelion Jelly, which I'm toying with trying.

Try it! You'll like it! Just try making some freezer jam to start off with. You'll be blown away by the flavor.

Rambling about food and a deep, dark secret.

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. The medicine I'm on has a rare side effect of insomnia. Guess who has insomnia? I'm going to try taking some melatonin tonight and see how well it works. I hope I don't have to change to another prescription. I just like this stuff so much. It's stabilized my appetite. I've been losing weight like crazy and instead of craving carbs all the time I actually have been looking at sugar and thinking, "Yuck." Can you believe it? I want to stay like this always!

There was a great sale at one of the local grocery stores today. I don't usually go there, because the last time I was there they weren't particularly clean, but the prices were so spectacular that I couldn't afford to not at least look.

They've improved. It was pretty clean. I can handle a lot in a store, but when we're talking my groceries, no. You'd better keep that store spotless if you want me to come back.

I'm watching Good Eats right now. We all love that show, here. I majored in Home Ec the first time I was in college, have I ever mentioned that? I actually have an Associate's degree in it. Which is kind of sad, because after my first year I realized I hated my classes. I liked learning needlearts, learning how to make patterns, what chemicals make food different colors (did you know cauliflower and potatoes are white because they contain cyanide?) and such-like stuff. I hated the classes on childcare, self-esteem, personal improvement, interior decorating - all the stuff that tended toward the fluffier/more subjective side.

There's a reason I majored in psychology, rather than counseling, when I went back to college, years later. I am much more of a hands-on scientist type than anything else.

Anyway, that's what I like about Good Eats. It's got lots of great information about the details of cooking. Not just how, but why. What's funny is that I got the husband and the teen hooked on it too. It's a must watch show here. We even tape it if we can't be home to watch it.

I never mention my Home Ec degree. Shh! Let's keep it our secret, OK?

Happy May Day!

The girls have been playing a tag-like game this morning. It involves lots of screaming and the preschooler chasing the toddler, who then runs to Mommy and throws her arms around my knees. I'm the "safe" zone I guess.

It's driving me nuts. Every few seconds I'm thrown off balance as the toddler catapults into me, always from behind, naturally. It makes it very hard to clean the kitchen.

Great news about the teen! He's a very good writer, not that you'd know it from his English grades, but still, very good. He's shown me some of his stuff and it's impressive. So, when I heard about a writing job I talked it over with the husband and then encouraged the teen to apply. And he got it! It's going to take a certain amount of initiative from him to do it; he's not going to have a boss standing over his shoulder, so it's his job to lose or keep, but if he'll follow through it's a great opportunity for him. Good for his self-image, too. He could use some successes in life, right now.

The main e-mail group I participate in is having their anniversary this month. Every year we have a big month-long celebration with secret friends and reminiscing, culminating in an all night party in the chatroom. I'm very excited about it. I love doing secret friends. I asked for two this year, and I'm really looking forward to it. With the medication I'm feeling so much better and so much more "awake" that it will be easy to take care of two SFs. I'm not wasting all that time staring into space anymore!