Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Yes, It Happened Exactly Like This....

On Monday, K texted me to say, “I plan to work late at home after dinner.” And I was like, “Urghh!” (except I didn’t text that back, I just said “ok” which is what I always say when I don’t like something)
Several things happen when, “late working at home after dinner” occurs including the following:
1. Said work not beginning until after 10 p.m. due to various and sundry distractions
2. Me, lying down for a nice snoozearama knowing that I will be interrupted at say, oh, 1 or 2 a.m. by loose change thrown on the nightstand and Uncle Loud Shoes.
Uncle Loud Shoes tromps upstairs, bada-bing, bada-boom, stepping on every squeaky tread, sometimes twice for emphasis. Trompy, tromp, tromp, up the stairs, “oh, oopsie, I forgot something downstairs,” tromp de tromp, tromp, back down again. Now, squeaky stair tread, squeaky stair tread, trompy, tromp, tromp, right back up again. “Hmmm, I should probably go into all the kids rooms and make sure everyone is ok.” Tramp, tramp, tramp, stompy, stomp, stomp. Open door loudly, close door loudly- times 3. “Ok, all is well on this floor,” so back down again stompy, stomp stomp.
“Now into my bedroom” tromp, tromp, tromp “so I can open the closet door sixty-five times. Oh, that was awesome! Now, to the bathroom, to drop something heavy, like say, the hairdryer,” bang, “ then I'll sit on the bed to take my socks off. Hey, what about a few more closet door open and shut combinations just for kicks?" squeak, squawk "Extra awesome!”
"Now a little cover fluffing,” fluffy de dee, fluffy de da, “and I’m settling in for a long siesta.”
“Hmmm, I wonder why fire and brimstone are shooting out of my dear wifey’s eyes? Oh, well, she probably just has PMS.” nighty nite, sqeaky mcsqueaky, bedie, squeak squeak
Now you see why I dislike “late working at home nights.” Laters

Monday, March 29, 2010

Wish I Was There.

Coming home is like a trip to a spa and bed and breakfast combined. My mom's home is love. She tinkers constantly and makes everything beautiful. I can only feel envious and hope that one day her talent for arranging and beautifying will somehow rub off on me.
If you are in the neighborhood, let her know. Her room rates are cheap and she always makes bacon and fried eggs for breakfast. Laters.



























Friday, March 26, 2010

I'm A Baller, Yo!

I hate it when I don’t know what to wear. I have been invited to a party where the instructions are, “wear your favorite team’s jersey.” For me that would be a great big, “whaaa?” I have no favorite team. I have no jerseys. None. At all. How can I be an American, how can I be a human, how can I exist without a favorite team? I have sincerely felt like a big loser all day.

I did attend a hockey game last week where I ate an awesome hotdog, but having a good dog really isn’t the same thing as being a fan is it? I have tried, believe me, to be all sporty and stuff. I have joined softball teams, tried volleyball, played beach football, but instead of getting awesome playing time, I am mostly asked politely not to ever, ever come back. And even after 16 years of marriage and too many football games to count, I still don’t understand the rules, the downs and the penalty declining. (I, personally, would always decline a penalty) K can’t believe that I am that dumb, but just ask him about D-Gate.

Oh, I am in such a quandary. If only shopping were an organized sport. Laters.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Wall

I can't remember if I have posted this one before, I am almost certain that I have, but as I just finished writing an article on the "Stone Walls" of New England, this poem has constantly been in the back of my head. Anyway, this is certainly a poem that deserves a re-read. Since I have been working on this piece, I see stone walls everywhere I go. It's maddening. Laters

The Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall,


That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across 

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it 

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 

That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Monday, March 22, 2010

So, Tell Me About Your Childhood....

I knew it all along. All these years, it hovered in the back of my mind, a sneaking suspicion that I couldn’t elude, but concrete confirmation came to me last week on March 17th, 2010 as I bustled around; reminding my children to wear green, lest they get pinched- my mother had no respect for holidays other than the ones she liked, Christmas, Valentines, Thanksgiving and Easter.

On other celebratory days, we were thrown to the wind.  Mom never reminded me to wear green. My story is a sad one, I mean really, how many St. Patrick’s Day pinchings can a poor, bespectacled girl endure, while frantically shrieking, “You can’t pinch me, my eyes are green, look my eyes are green?”
That tired old mantra never worked and I was pinched mercilessly. She never bought me leprechaun socks or July 4th hair bows. Sure, we had fireworks, but do they really say, “I’m patriotic!” as well as an outfit fashioned from the United States flag? I think not. We never made homemade Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria boats to float in the tub in honor of Columbus Day. President’s Day slipped by with nary a construction paper top hat to mark the occasion, and I’m sure that this lack of proper celebration has had some large influence on my lack of creative abilities. Now, other than cautioning my children to wear green, I am quite unsure about how to properly celebrate these lower holidays, and thus we propagate the non-celebration standard to a new generation.
I suppose that I will just have to content myself with remembering her spectacular Easter baskets, extravagant Christmases, the loaded Thanksgiving table and elaborate Valentines Dinners, holding those memories dear, while letting go of the negative. Who needs a paper top hat anyway? Laters.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Deep Thoughts 3.756

Sometimes I feel that I am receiving so much divine guidance that I can hardly comprehend it all. On those days the sun shines a little brighter, I approach tasks with confidence; I make firm and wise decisions. I am kind to my family and take joy in the smallest things. (My clothes also fit looser, but that could just be wishful thinking)

I really, really love those days. But some days, I get nothing. No inspiration, no motivation, and I feel a like a useless lump in general. I know that divine spark is missing and I feel like I can’t operate without it.
After some serious consideration, I have come to a couple of conclusions, the first being that I wish God would speak steadily and constantly to me instead of giving me huge insights in spaced intervals. Does that make sense? I want to know all the time, and waiting for the days of inspiration is hard for me. On the other hand, one thing I have realized about God is that he generally operates in ways that seem crazy to me.
The second option, is that God does speak constantly and steadily to me, but I just choose not to notice. I have also realized that the second that I stop caring about people, or looking for positive ways to interact with my friends and community, that is often the second that I feel lost and alone. If I were tracking it, I would say that PMS and my inability to hear God’s voice often coincide on the same week, but that is neither here nor there as long as I have a bag of Lays.
I have known people who wouldn’t be taught, who always thought that their way was the only way, people who have refused the counsel of both friends and experts; people who have no room to grow in life, because they are too important in their own minds. I have learned that if I am not growing, learning, wrong, challenged, discontent, inspired, or searching; I might as well be dead. Life is over if you are not learning. My prayer for the week has been that I would be aware and present in my life. That I would learn from my mistakes and always be a willing student, graciously valuing lessons learned and looking for ways to apply those lessons to future endeavors.
Remember, this is a prayer not an accomplishment. I am still learning. Laters.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Don't Push My Buttons, Ok?

Let me tell you about the panhandler who often lurks outside my office. She is short, plump and posses a tidy, grey Dorothy Hamill bob. She crosses the street frequently between my office building and the Starbucks on the other side. ( perhaps the answer to the age-old question about the chicken crossing the road. The answer is obviously,“to get a Starbucks") I also see her at the library where she always tries to buy her library books. She throws wads of cash at the librarians, but they have lots of patience with her, returning her money and wishing her pleasant day. When we meet in the street, she asks me for a dollar, never more, never less. As I have seen her library money and her constant intake of Starbucks, I always politely decline to contribute.

But honestly, more annoying to me than the panhandling is her abuse of the cross-walk button. Most mornings as I am walking toward my office from the train, she is headed the opposite way, straight for her morning coffee. While she waits for the light to change, she pushes the cross-walk button continuously, at a steady, rapid-fire pace, for the length of the entire light. It is not a short light either. This series of staccato beeps literally drives me crazy, but she never deviates from the pattern. When the light turns, she gives the button a final “just for good measure push” before she crosses.
Looking for the moral lesson, I realize that I am guilty of the same thing. Pushing the button over and over, expecting the light to change before it is time. I’m probably reaching a little here, but I am in a waiting phase right now and I need that reminder. The light will change, it always does, and my button pushing will not speed up the process. So, I’ll be here if you need me, at the light……………waiting. Laters.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Louse-y

Friday, March 5th in the year of our Lord 2010 shall henceforth be called "the day head lice came to the Mullins home" and shall never, ever be mentioned again. This epidemic came to us courtesy of the second grade class at Marvin elementary and we of course, thank them kindly.
I try to be a mom who is never grossed out by things like dirty laundry, vomit or poo and the like. But the tiny crawling bugs defeated my cast-iron-will and left me thinking, ewww, just ewww!
The unlucky owner of the louse and his buddies was my darling girl, Sher, who had a very important party to attend at school and a new red shirt to wear. You have probably never heard the levels of weeping and
wailing that were done when I told her she couldn't go to school. I experienced so much mommy guilt over her sorrow, that we did the fastest de-louse on record and sent her on to school, an hour late with a scrubbed raw head and strict instructions not to mention it to ANYONE at school lest she get sent home early and miss the party anyway. And the combing, oh Lordy, don't even get me started on the combing.
Waist length hair and nit combing should not exist in the same sentence or galaxy even for that matter. Her return home from school at 3:00 began another round of decontamination and we all slept in shower caps with oiled heads (this was from the home remedy for lice site I googled) just to be on the safe side. My washer chugged along for 24 hours straight keeping up with the rugs, sheets, and blankets that all had to be sanitized. All is well now, but lice, in my opinion, are horrible. Laters.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

I'm Great, How About You?

Since I saw you last a few exciting things have happened.

I had a spectacularly gigantic fight with the hubby, fumed, then made-up. The make-up was spectacular too, but that is none of you business. I only mention it to show how exciting my life is.
I listened to my eldest son speak wisely and poised to a group of adults while my heart hammered and beat so proudly in my chest that I thought it just might fly away.
My sticky fingers managed to mistype www.hotmail.com at work. If I haven’t yet introduced you to my work monitor, please allow me to; the screen is roughly the size of a football field. This typo pulled up a man in an “oh so tiny” blue thong in full living color. This was especially awesome as the office was full of board members and co-workers. I would count that as one of my most horrified moments.
I have managed to stick to a strict budget for over 30 days. A first for me and something I plan to repeat. I have found that shoe shopping is actually more fun when I budget it in and don’t have the guilt of overspending. (Ok, that is all a huge lie, I love to shoe shop completely unchecked, but I do feel very responsible)
And last but not least, today, I was the lucky recipient of a free Starbucks latte. Laters.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Flannel

I lie in bed, wrapped in flannel sheets and the green blanket I bought in Mexico when I was pregnant with my oldest.
The dog lies on the rug, half on the corner of my discarded flannel bathrobe.
We are both asleep, sort of.
I am sick and the dog is snoring; we produce a cacophony of snores and snorts.
I snore because I am sick; coughing and blowing and snoring slightly out of the left side as I breathe in.
The dog snores, because she is plump and bears the smashed in nose of her breed. She cannot help it. She always snores. I do not. At least to my awareness.
We pass the time in genial companionship, not bothering one another while lost in the music of a lazy Sunday. Laters.