Aren’t we GORGEOUS?!

At the Jr High open house, they had paper mache globes that the kids made in Art class, hung all about in the hallways.. I wish I had my camera, they were so cute and all so different and unique… One was squashed and smashed in, it looked like the kid put his fist through it, but then he painted it just the same, and it was… tragic, and at the same time, adorable…sigh…

Oh, it’s a theme around here recently, globes …  I spent all last week teaching parallels and meridians, latitudes and longitudes… in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades… I was really on a roll by the end of the week, I was perfecting my basketball-finger spin with a 24″ diameter globe… just kidding, I would never spin such a beautiful piece of equipment, especially since I’ve been shopping for globes recently, and am far, far, far too well acquainted with the actual monetary VALUE of that 24″ diameter globe… Mamma pajama! Globes be expensive, ya’ll… Don’t take globes fer granted…

A couple years ago, I sorta had a tiny “globe fetish” going on… the fetish was tiny, not the globes… I started collecting old globes at yard sales… until I had 3 or 4 rolling around in my house, I even had one hanging from a string in the dining room for a while… Eventually I got tired of kicking them around, re-taping them together at the Equator, explaining to my kids why there’s no longer a place called Czechoslovakia… which always led to depressing explanations of the unexplainable…… ethnic cleansing… war… occupation…sigh… old globes can be DEPRESSING, ya’ll!!  Eventually my little collection of out-dated globes found their way back to the Goodwill, or out to the garbage can…

Also, speaking of places that don’t exist any more… my favorite word, I think, in all the English language, should anyone ever enquire, is “Abyssinia”, which used to what are now the countries called “Ethiopia” and “Eritria”…  I prefer Abyssinia… If I had another child, I would name it Abyssinia, and never shorten it to Abby. NEVER.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Abby…

I just love Abyssinia.

I also love “Artemissia.” If I had twins, I would name them Artemissia and Abyssinia. Well, that’s not going to happen…. I will have to get some more Boston Terrier puppies… I can’t let two such beautiful names go to waste… is what I’m thinking…

I have Artemisia growing out back in a giant galvanized tub, it’s the softest, most lovely plant, some days I go outside and I stick my FACE directly into the plant, so I can feel it against my skin… and then I open my eyes in there and pretend I’m a teeny tiny person in a giant, soft, fluffy forest…

The reason I’m shopping for globes recently is this: a while back I bought a black Replogle globe at the Salvation Army for $8. At the time I thought I was that was a bit much to pay for a globe… I thought The Army was rippin’ me off….  little did I know what a bargain that was! It’s actually a really beautiful globe, with dual-axis-meridian mounting, which is crucial, CRUCIAL I TELL YOU, because if you don’t have dual-axis-meridian mounting you are not living! You are not gonna be looking at Antarctica very well either! Dual axis is the bomb!

So we’ve had this globe about a year now, we keep it in the dining room, it’s got pointy little mountains, (that’s called “physiographic relief,” ask for it by name…) and the  beautiful black oceans…. Plus the stand itself is a a heavy, embossed metal, it’s super fancy and I just never noticed before how beautiful it actually is… or how totally and completely WORTH the $8 I paid for it… until I started shopping for globes…

The reason I’m shopping for globes recently is this: So Zack and Franki use the globe a lot, and it’s cool, because it’s actually an Up-to-Date globe, Eritria is Eritria, the Czechs have their own Republic and the Slovaks have their own… Slovakia, or Land Of Slovaks… Slovakians… whatever… I hope everyone’s happy with what they got… even the Uzbekistanianites… So the kids use the Bargain Globe a LOT, expecially Zack, Zack has become some sort of a Social Studies SUPER GEEK, he started with the 50 States, and now he’s memorizing all the capitols of the world, PLUS the State capitols, PLUS the presidents, and did I mention his preoccupation with all things DELAWARE, he’s really into Delaware…

Well, all of this globe usage was bound to lead to problems…

One day last week, there was one heck of a ruckus in my house, between my children. Franki and Zack were fighting over the globe. I knoooooow, what a couple of nerds, right?! They were actually scuffling and snatching at and grabbing and struggling back and forth for that globe! I had to break it up! It was the funniest fight ever! I had to confiscate the friggin’ GLOBE! I felt ridiculous putting the globe on top of the refrigerator, to which all Objects of Dispute are relegated… 

That’s when I realized what I had to do for the boy’s November birthday… his own globe. I went for the larger size,  16: diameter, mostly because my own eye-sight is going, the boy is always calling me over to look at something on the globe, and durnd if I can read those tiny cities! Also, I wanted a floor globe for him, because for whatever reason, he is super impressed by floor globes… Dual-axis meridian mounting, and physiological relief mapping, these were prerequisites, of course… It’s also got topographic shading! Can you imagine, all this in ONE globe? : 

It arrives today sometime, I just ordered it yesterday from Amazon! It ships from somewhere near Harrisburg… must be our destiny!!! Okay, so I’m a little excitable about globes…

You know how many times she’s called me out to the yard to look at some THING she pulled off of someTHING else, and then picked it apart, yea verily, she dissected it with her thumbnails is what she did! It could be hard as a hickory nut, and she’d have it in pieces, and neatly laid out before her… just like you spread the poor frog out in Biology 101, with pins and tiny little white flags…

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Sometimes it’s some sort of POD… which, takes a certain amount of bravery, doesn’t it, to plunge your thumbnails down into the gooshy innards of some unknown pod of unknown… contents… ewwwwww… but she does it! She does it in the name of Science!!!

and her unquenchable thirst for learning, exploration, and adventure!

One day a couple years ago, she showed up on my doorstep, clutching a repulsive little medicine jar of… preserved, ugly little red bugs, with squiggly black legs and … oh, just not cute. You know, a Ladybug is red with little black legs, but it has the sense to be sorta round and… polka-dotty. These bugs grew themselves until they were long and creepy, like they just didn’t know when to stop…

So Mom’s sloshing this jar all up in my face, I think she poured rubbing alcohol on ‘em, in the name of Science, and I’m all, MOM! Ick! Not cute bugs! Not cute at alllll!!!!  And she’s all, well, these are the bugs that your dad and I found on the milkweed plants in our rock garden (I love how she includes Dad, as if it deflects half of the GOOFINESS if Dad is involved… or maybe she thinks Dad carries more “street cred” with me… maybe she’s right…)

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These were the bugs. See what I mean? VEry uncool. But crucial to one of Mom’s “investigations”. This particular investigation centered around  Mom’s milkweed crop (she grows it for the Monarchs, but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph…), which was coming down with some sort of CRUD, like a slimy black crud, a creeping NOTHING, like the one in The Neverending Story, you know, they NOTHING

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y688upqmRXo

BOOOOO Swamp of Sadness!!!

SHINY!

Because the driver seat in the Silver Flush (my mini-van) has about 45 different directional type buttons, you can buzz yourself up, you can buzz yourself down, you can in it, out it, right it, left it, diagonally SCOOCH it, bring it around the bend, and my personal favorite, the Lopptee-Loooo…

It takes me a conservative 18 minutes to get my seat right where I want it. I work those buttons like a pro, MMMMMEEEP, MRRRRP, ZZZZCCCHHHH, until I find it, IT, the Sweet Spot,   where my lower back feels supported, I can reach the pedals, and hey, what the heck, I might even be able to see over the DASH as an added bonus…. ahhhh the Sweet Spot…

And then you know what happens, here comes my husband, GALOOMP, GALOOMP, taking my car down the hill for the Sunday paper… Here he goes MMMMP,MRRRRRRRRP,KABLMMMMMP!  And there goes the Sweet Spot. grrrrr…

Memory seat… I covet thee…

Hey, you guys don’t know, I recently trained to be a CPS, onaccounta everyone else I know has a 3-letter acronym to follow their name, and I will  not be denied, is why…

Well, that was one of the reasons.,..

What’s a CPS? It stands for Certified Peer Specialist, and the nicey-nice definition is this:

“Peer support is a system of giving and receiving help founded on key principles of respect, shared responsibility, and mutual agreement of what is helpful. Peer support is not based on psychiatric models and diagnostic criteria. It is about understanding another’s situation empathically through the shared experience of emotional and psychological pain. When people find affiliation with others whom they feel are “like” them, they feel a connection. This connection, or affiliation, is a deep, holistic understanding based on mutual experience where people are able to “be” with each other without the constraints of traditional (expert/patient) relationships.” ~Shery Mead

What that translates into, basically, is: “I’m mental, you’re mental, can we talk?!  That’s the working definition.

So I ventured into the beautiful Laurel Highlands for two weeks of training, ya’ll it was GRUELLING, they made us sit in CRUEL CHAIRS

 for 8 hours a day, and eat rich deserts, such as cheesecake and chocolate mouse with oreo crumbles. Coffee was on tap 24/7, which means I pretty much wired myself STUPID the entire time. 

But I learned so much in those 10 very looooong days… Sigh… I really did. I want to take some things away from that experience…

Anita. One of the trainers. I ended up with a giant Girl Crush on Anita. The funny way her shoulders shake when she laughs. Which is often.  I kept thinking, she looks like something straight out of Jim Henson’s workshop. A cute little muppet of a person. The way she hunches down into herself and peers up and over the eyeglasses perched on her nose when she’s listening. The way she has an answer, not matter how meandering and long-winded and oh-help-me, LOST the person on the other end was posing the “question”, it doesn’t matter, Anita seems to take some thread of what they were saying, and come up with a response that just… well it’s probably total bullshit, but it SOUNDS good!  She is an amazing, insightful, diplomatic, and brilliant person, and I wish I could just listen to her stories and watch her speak, oh, I don’t know, maybe once or twice a week… every week…

I told you! GIGANTICAL girl crush!

One thing she said that I wanted to take away was this: she said this work gets IN YOu and ON YOU. She said you start speaking the language, and you start… wearing it…

That’s what I want.

Sigh.

I would also like a job now. As a CPS. Too bad I don’t live in Philly, is all I can say about that. Pittsburgh!!! You got some catching up to do!!! Get with the PA Initiative!!! You know, I’m always bragging about how progressive and how GREEN and how wonderfully LIVEABLE Pittsburgh is, right? Pittsburgh? But Philly is shaming us in this instance! HEll, ALTOONA is shaming us!

Meanwhile, I still have my sub certificate. Back to school for me too. Boo.

Flowere Childe and bf  have moved into the rental, officially! It’s not a perfect situation, because for very very complicated, excrutiating, heart-breaking reasons, it caused a huge rift with Beane…  BUT!!! BUT!!! I am going to focus on the positive, and hope, HOPE, PRAY, and light those candles and blow those bubbles, my friends, because I am not giving up! On either of my daughters. I’m just not. I’m not going anywhere.  Time, right? Time heals… stuff. This is a good place to insert a quote about resentments:

Life is too short to hold a grudge, also too long.  ~Robert Brault

The positive is that she’s right there.  2 miles up the street. The kids can see her too, she stops up the house sometimes, or Franki and Zack visit her little house… I dropped Franki off at the tattoo shop the other day, to hang out with her. Zack plays video games with her BF, and they talk about Star Wars Legos and other nerdy stuff… She has 4 cats in that little house too, which, I’m not wild about that, but they are nice cats and the kids have each picked out a favorite. .. it’s just… well… it’s not perfect, but it’s really nice to see her, and to see her keeping her head above water, going to work, and apprenticing and doing what she needs to do… I’m grateful that she and I were able to ride it out… that terrible break… the pain… I couldn’t have done it if she weren’t sometimes the first to extend a hand…or an apology…  She taught me a few things, that kid…

Now I’m all schmoopey.. boo…

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Time for some Poppy!

This is Pops on vacation, we took her into Waldemeer Park in Erie, but it was a scorcher, and her being black and all, we didn’t want her becoming one with the hot pavement… (have I rationalized the stroller enough?)

The corollary to this is: While I’m waiting for the thing, my Life’s Calling, my Special Purpose, (it may even be a Special Porpoise, my life’s work could involve dolphins in some way… sorry, I saw the word, purpose, and it just happened…), while I’m patiently waiting for God to speak to me, I would do well to live in the moment, this moment, it is what it is… This is Life, right this minute, you know, while I got my hand in the dishpan, scrubbin’ the lasagna outta the glass dish, I gotta enjoy that part too, because that there is Life, I got bits of tomato floating over my hand, and a thin layer of orangish grease threatening to coat my nice white plastic dish pan and I wish I could be outside sitting on my deck with my book and a soft pillow and a breeze, but  here I am in this orange grease, and Franki and Zack in the background, sitting on the livingroom floor, actually playing a game together, laughing and negotiating and cajoling and fighting and whining and laughing again… these games on the floor are getting more and more rare, between the two, Franki is growing up, at 15…. in the past 3 or 4 months, she has started doing her hair in a lovely, demure little side -swept pony tail, she looks so very… Audrey… just kinda romantic and sweet… and she puts on an eensy bit of powdery pastel eye-shadow, blues and purples, and a dash of mascara, just a swipe, so that you can’t even tell she has on mascara, except her eyes are popping and sparkling and you just can’t put your finger on it… tiny stars dangle from her ears, the stars are her favorites, mine too….  sometimes I catch a glimpse of her from across the room, or across the yard, and I think, who’s that? I think it’s an adult, or at least a large teenager person, and then I realize, well, it IS a large teenager person, it’s FRANKI. Sigh…

She has a boyfriend now too, that’s a new development, among others. This boy is Russian. He was born in Russia and has a Russian accent, he moved here when he was three, and you’d think he would’ve become more Americanized, as far as speech at least, but I think his mom has a pretty thick accent still.. But the boy is so quiet. I have picked him up about 4 times, to take them to watch ballgames or movies together… I have asked him, oh, I’d say 8 questions, that’s all I could come up with, 2 questions per encounter… Except I think I asked him if he had a dog TWICE, accidentally, because I remember him saying, “yeah, a German Shephard” twice, because I remember thinking, “I don’t care much for German Shepards” twice… But every question I ask him is met with a single sentence answer, and then that’s it. I can’t figure out how to get a paragraph out of the boy. He put the “painful” in “painfully shy”.  I feel actual PAIN for him when he has to get in my car and answer that stupid DOG QUESTION again.

The boy is very handsome. No, make that very VERY handsome. He is blond, nice thick blonde hair and nice teeth. No idea what color eyes, because we don’t make eye contact. We’re both embarrassed about the damn dog question.  He brings Franki a rose in a plastic conical-type sleeve, bought from the BP Station within walking distance of his house. Actually, the boy has to walk about 12 suburban blocks to get that rose. Suburban blocks are bigger than city blocks and wayyyyyy smaller than country blocks. I lived in the country growing up, the STICKS, when I rode my bike “around the block” you know, I was gone for HOURS. But the boy walks to get the rose. Not once, but twice he has given her a rose.  She puts them in an old cobalt glass medicine bottle I gave her, and keeps them in her room until they dry out. I taught her to throw away the dried up rose and keep the beautiful little scrap of ribbon that came with it. I’m teaching her this because I watched Flower Childe dry all her bouquets and roses for YEARS, the flaky, musty old mess of dried roses… some people like that sorta thing… My Franki will love shiny little bits of ribbon instead….

A couple weeks ago Franki was cleaning her room, and she brought out her collection of HotWheels cars, she had them in a white plastic dishpan, about 3/4′s full of gleaming, colorful little cars. HotWheels are amazing, if you think about it, so small, so perfect, so shiny, and wheels that turn, and some have little doors that open and if you could just get tiny enough you could climb in that little silver interior and drive… all the way across the living room… so she presented her dishpan 3/4′s full of HotWheels to Zack, hey, you want these, I’m done with them.   Zack said NO! You keep them! Later I found him sobbing in his room. Franki doesn’t want her HotWheels. She doesn’t want her Pokemon. She doesn’t want her skateboard guys… he sobbed and he sobbed, hot scaulding little boy tears like acid on his flesh he scrubbed them from his face as fast as they appeared and he shrank from my touch when I tried to smooth his hair or rub his back, his skin was burning and his shirt sweaty from his pain and I cried too,  remembering… the feeling of abandonment and urgency when Aunt Sis refused to play Barbie Dolls with me because she was too busy mooning over stupid BILLY YOUNG with his stupid long lumbering legs and his geeky goddurn glasses and his nasty black hair and lean arms sticking out of his stupid generic baseball style T-SHIRT…

I spend a lot of my time now, sitting on the floor with Zack, listening and feigning interest in the 154 Pokemon he has to list and show me individually on his Gameboy DS, or the 200 Pokemon cards he has MADE BY HAND, as he lists each and every power they have, and which one evolves into which one else… I am a poor substitute for his sister, I know, but I’m all he has…

Franki got a babysitting job too this summer, 2 or 3 days a week, which takes her away for HOURS, all day sometimes… Oh how the boys suffers… Plus she’ll have 3 weeks of Band Camp too, and that’s all day… sigh… I’m gonna witness a LOT of Pokemon evolutions…

The pool was sucking my will to live this year. I think that’s why I’m in a good mood today, I think the pool has finally turned the corner. Into Blue. Out of the Green and into the Blue. sounds like a Neil Young song.  The problem is, I shot my mouth off about how I’m using Bleach, Baking Soda, and Borax to run my pool, that’s it and that is all and the Stupid Pool Store can SUCK IT, they are not going to get MY MONEY this year, they are not going to “analyze” my water and “prescribe” for me about $800 worth of BULLSPIT! By GOD.  And then I let my husband and son take the cover off the pool, without my supervision, and those geniuses dumped the entire winter’s worth of leaves and other assorted tree detritus DIRECTLY INTO my starter water… How’s a gal supposed to battle THAT with stuff I find under my kitchen damn sink?! Also, it didn’t help when he started up the pump and the pump said “HMMMMMM” instead of “WHGGGOOOOOOOOORRRSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH”. Very bad when pump says “HMMMMMM”. As I waited for the new pump to arrive, the water, my beautiful starter water… went swampy, swampy green, with dead mosquitos and japanese beetles floating in the middle, and fluffy white THINGS from the trees floated down down down and landed on the murky green surface. If two round alligator nostrils followed by two round alligator eyeballs had popped up out of that water, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Eyelash? What’s the experssion?

I keep buying window treatments. I have 9 windows in my house. And 7 in the Elm St Annex. That’s 16 windows. Every single one of the windows I own has a window treatment on it, or it doesn’t, like my kitchen, I like that one to be blank and let in the light, but my point is, I got plenty of window treatments already in use. And yet, I keep buying them. Whether they are 50cents at a yardsale, or $6.00 at Salvation Army, it doesn’t matter, I keep buying em up. Last week I spent $16.00 at the Army, and about $7.00 at the yardsales, just on window treatments alone! Oh the lovely sheers… in all the colors of the rainbow… and patterns, do you know I found polka dot sheers last week, do you know polka dots is now my signature color.. and oh the glorious glorious valences! I got valences for every season! Every mood? Feeling somber? I got somber daggone valences, hey, look right here, black damask floral, ROSES EVEN, with 5 inch braided dingle dangle trim…. Feeling celebratory? Hey, I gotcha covered, I got electric green swirlled sheers from IKEA, happy happy happy!!! Feeling romantic? Floor length purple velvet will wrap you right up  in luxury and love…

The problem is, people don’t sell good curtain rods any more. My curtain rods are weak. They bow in the middle from the weight of a pair of SHEERS. And they don’t make room for layering. People used to sell quadruple curtain rods, with room for 3  layers of various sheers and drapery panels and other assorted innards, and then top it off with a fancy scalloped valence, WHOOOOboy, they sure knew how to do up a window back in the olden days! Nowadays, it’s all about “natural light” and “simplicity” and “clean lines.” Pffft.  I went through my Asian period. It was bleak and bare and pale green and light purple and I am glad it is over. I think I’m in my Victorian gaudy glass bauble period. I think I’m a little bit Steampunk. I want brass clocks and compasses and hourglasses and kaleidoscopes and all manner of magical sparkling old and mysterious wonder-filled whirring things scattered about my life…. I want to wake up and hear chink plink scutter fltttt whrrrrrrrr, I want to hear things working, stirring, chiming, turning over, clicking, clacking, ringing, shifting, ticking…

I now have two enormous rubbermaid bins full of window treatments, and 4 sizeable drawers full in the extra dresser down in the gameroom. If some good curtain rods should happen to come my way, I am READY.

Flower Childe and her man-friend may be renting the Elm St Annex. Which brings a relief the size of Texas, but also, a trepidation the size of… Wyoming or some state slightly smaller than but real close to Texas. It’s so friggin’ complicated, that little house and my two oldest daughters and men who date sisters and sisters who are so mad and so hurt with each other and so raw and a mother who can’t find her place in this mess, a mother whose every move is supporting one and spurning another and vice versa the next day, who only wants them to come together because they are missing out  on their best support their best friend… even times spent with  my own sister, times spent laughing until we are on the floor.. those times are tinged with regret for my daughters, that they have lost sight of each other… and my oldest daughter who has lost sight of herself, her very self… and the times I want to be happy for Flower Childe and grateful for how she’s keeping herself, and keeping in touch, staying connected, but that’s always tinged with pain for my Beane, and how she’s so disconnected and awash in… that which is not HER…. the opportunities Flower Childe has, and the resources… and the ones that were taken away from Beane, or that she just won’t reach and grab what IS available, she won’t try, she won’t strive. Failure to strive, failure to thrive…I want her to wake up and reach out, dig out, pull out, grab and grasp and yearn and strive…

oh where or where did my good mood go…

Oh. Here it is! Poppy! Poppy is my clown, my court jester, my own personal litte polkadot, she’s a white spot on a black background and hey, you wanna see something funny, how about the way her whole back half, the entire back half of the dog wiggles, she launches 4 inches off the ground all four paws at the same time are OFF THE GROUND while simultaneously the back half wiggles back and forth, when she sees me, when she hasn’t seen for for a good hour or so, if I run out to get milk and bread and popsicles and window treatments, when I walk back into the house I am treated to this amazing display of joy, this arial ballet, as it were… her ears pinned back like only a Boston can do, till she looks bald and like some sort of bug-eyed FREAK, it makes her eyes bug out, I think the same muscles that pull her ears back also pull the skin back from her eyeballs and her tongue lolls out and her mouth cracks in a crazy bug-eyed bald-headed ass-wiggling GRIN. And I just laugh. Because I know the kids get this same greeting when they come home from school and she’s been on lock-down in the kitchen all day… And my husband gets it when he comes home sometimes off of some weird shift at work and the house is empty and Poppy’s in the kitchen, waiting, waiting for her people… 

Poppy is an amazing invention.

I’m obsessed with this website now too:   http://newdressaday.wordpress.com/  Because of this website I have recently acquired a stack of monstrous muu muus and various and sundry other fashion disasters, a pile the size of Texas or at least Wyoming, strewn lavishly over the back of my couch, next to the equally huge pile of window treatments … sewing projects, waiting, waiting, ever waiting and growing, growing, growing, waiting for the magic, the magic to occur, in which I trundle down down down into the gameroom and dig up my magical sewing machine whrrrrrrrr and get to stitchin… sigh… it’s all just waiting there for me…

and the sun comes out in full force and shines down upon my decidedly BLUER less SWAMPLIKE pool today… this aqua blue font dedicated to MY SWIMMING POOL!!! LOVE!!!!

Hi, my name is Momonroof, and this video is a gift to you:

It’s all good though, we are moving along, everyone putting one foot in front of the other… Progress, progress, slooooowww and steady… sigh… it’s good…

Mother’s Day was approaching, whoooooboy was I a little grump, watching and worrying and wondering what it was gonna be like… ya’ll, I am having to adjust to some major changes around here, good Lord, it happened so fast, the way my girls shook out their wings and took flight…. they forgot I was standing so close behind them and FWAPPED me in the FACE with those damn wings!!! I took quite  a beating!

So we were trying to make plans to go to the lake, and it was shaping up to be cold, wet, and dreary… sigh… I just couldn’t get into the cottage thing… plus I couldnt’ figure how to get all my kids with me and still be with my own mom… So I did what I always do, I internalized until I damn near exploded…

And then we got up on Sunday, and the girls both came over and we piled into the van, all of us, for the first time in a long time, and headed to the lake. And we did stuff like this:

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Flower Childe and Miss O, HA! That is soooooo so O! She is a pip!

and some of this:

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That’s Beane, lookin’ beautiful, and hoggin the baby again… sigh… my Beane… sometimes I just pray, God, help me say the right words, govern my tongue…. what are the right words… I bumble around her, bumble stumble oops… get nervous, I talk too fast, I have too much to say, too much information, I don’t want to overwhelm, but know that I always am overwhelming,  I drop stuff, I forget stuff, I never look her in the eyes any more, she is strange to me, she feels like… she’s not mine., like I lost the connection, like she doesn’t want anything from me, like she doesnt’ trust me and I don’t trust her… and both of us with good reason… when she hugs me it feels like obligation and dismissal, okay, you may go now, is what her hug says, thanks, but go now… and I do, I go, I slink away, feeling… just… dismissed… like okay I have served my purpose.. or not, I have failed, just go, you may go…

That part could stand some improvin’…

She mostly just slept the entire time at the lake. It’s okay, there’s always an excuse, she had a tooth ache,  whatever, her meds, whatever, just so she doesnt’ have to talk to anyone, I guess. .. I should be grateful she was there. I am, but it’s just so… hard.

She and Flowerchilde don’t speak. There is a wall between them, each with her own part in building it… It’s a pretty thick wall. I know, because I have to sit on top of it and dangle one leg over each side. VERY uncomfortable. I’m like some kind of Humpty Dumbass, ha ha, that pleases me, not so much LIVING it, but envisioning myself as a teetering egg person in short pants and bow tie… pleases me…

And my children, they did so many beautiful things for me, Beane brought me a gorgeous,  sparkling teal necklace and earrings set, it was so perfect, and SO me, I wore it 3 times already!  I wore it on Mother’s Day, as I already had on a teal sweater, how did she know? Franki went with me to pick out flowers the day before, so she and Zack got me yellow merigolds and purple petunias, and the most gloriously thick ROSEMARY, I want to just plant a whole bed of rosemary and roll in it each morning… sigh… rosemary…

Zack made me a pink card with graphics in computer class. Flower Childe stayed up all night working on a water color sugar skull, she knows I love Dia de los Muertes stuff…

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It has rhinestones!!!  Sigh… I am rich… Plus she brought me a box of bonbons from Anderson’s, and two chocolate lollipops, a triceratops, and a cupcake!  Here’ s my loot:

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Strawberry Whoppers!  chocolate cupcake!  Le sigh…

and then Franki tried to slay me with a poem:

Wonderful

When I think of “Wonderful”, I think of you

Because I deeply appreciate the fun in which you create

And although we go through our troubles and woe,

You make us feel like “shining happy people, whhooooaaaa…”  (this is in reference to R.E.M. song)

Because you bring me up, by being as funny as our pup

So when I think of “wonderful”, I think of you

And I thank god for having a wonderful mother

And I thank  you for being a wonderful mother.”

You see what they do?!!!! They are trying to kill me! How can I have this much love… and this much pain… and this much joy and tears and laughter and struggle and immense pride… it’s all too much sometimes, my heart has been through so much…Life… lately…

I also am uploading 172 pictures from my camera right now, which tells you I haven’t been doing much of THAT lately either! What?! I knowwwww!!! It’s CRAZY!  I’m a little bit going through the motions I think… the holidays go by, the birthdays, the occasions… I’m doing it all, I’m doing good, but there are things that I just can’t.. figure out. I can’t fix my daughter’s life. I can’t reach her. And that makes me not want to… update… or talk… or move… But I do, I keep moving, because I have other daughters… and a son and a husband and friends and sisters and a mother and a father and other people who are there, and continue to be there…

Meanwhile, I pray and I move and I concentrate my efforts and I keep doors open, no matter what. It’s like singing, sometimes you just gotta sing, NMW, no matter what…

Easter was… Easter. A bunch of silly adults looking for baskets…

That’s my brother finding his lovely shiny purply easter basket. He’s 40 years old.

Sisinlaw is 41 and still looking for basket… har…

Beane and nephew in church. Was grateful she made it to church at least. She begged off the dinner, but we’ll take what we can get at this point…

Miss O. and Flower Childe, perfecting their winks… oh myyyyy…that’s attraaactive…

Franki’s 15th birthday party last night, Labyrinth/David Bowie themed… and she invited BOYSSSSS too!!! Oh help us!!!

The party was a huge hit, they asked to stay late, till 11:30 p.m., at which time I was already passed out, and trusting husband to stay awake long enough to keep eye on all the assorted hijinks…

You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What power? The power of voodoo. Who do? You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe. HA! I can totally hang with the teenagers!

For the record, next time I throw a teenager party, decorations and theme are NOT necessary. NOT AT ALL. They would’ve been happy with a cooler of Yoo Hoo’s and a couple pizzas and a cd player…  Me, I spend DAYS, no, WEEKS beforehand, looking up Labyrinth references, and watching Labyrinth clips and planning ways to construct labyrinths in my house and in my yard, and puzzles and mind-warping riddles and I think I spent $50 at the craft store on WHITE FEATHER BOAS… har!!! What the hell is wrong with me? When will I learn? They did not play ONE of my carefully crafted  games! Not a one! I made a mack daddy labyrinth of yarn all over the back porch and pergola, and even hid the BABE at the end of each yarn ball, and do you know, they, not a ONE of em, would try to unwind the yarn and unlock the labyrinth to find the BABE, not one!!! Observe the merriment:

Well, at least it slowed down the in and out  traffic at the back door thing…  They ended up pretending it was laser beams and trying to get thru without touching… or something…

Franki told me it was the best party of her entire life… and she told me she thinks something funny is happening to her… She thinks she may sorta like a boy… a boy named “Ducky”, which is oh so very 16 Candles/Pretty in Pink, isn’t it?  Just so happens he’s a kinda quiet boy, a thinker even… and he plays guitar, and they sorta held hands at the Church Bash Nite event thing they went to, Charlotte and Josh were holdin’ hands, so Duckie says, hey, I’m lonely, will you hold MY hand, and so she did and she says to me, Mum, is that okay?

Yes daughter, that’s okay…

sigh.

And then today we celebrated the fact that the party went well and the pressure was behind us, and if you don’t think it’s pressure to throw your daughter’s first boy/girl party… lemme tellya, it is excruciating!! So many things could go wrong! Awry even!! And for it to turn out so spectactular for her… le sigh… it just… it’s so..

whew…

so we went to the park and we took the dogs, plural, and we took Mary’s son, Garrett, who we have decided needs some “man time” with my husband and son… Garrett is just so… he’s this huge personality, he’s bigger’n life.. observe:

Garrett is a trip.

We hiked for two hours, until Poppy needed… special consideration:

And a piggy back ride. Also, my husband, apparently, needs a BELT.

Life is pretty good right now, there’s the promise of spring coming… you know, but with that comes THE MUD… we gotta get through the Muddy Season to get to the good stuff… It’s really bad when you have a pasture and horses and dogs… and husbands with giant clunking workboots… and you’ve never really had a Shoe Law in yer house before, so it ain’t no use startin’ it now… sigh…

I met Mary at a dark, smokey, dirty ol’ bowling alley lounge to give her a Big Bag O’ Birthday Joy And Sparkly Stuff, onaccounta the only other place in town was a Subway, and they roll up their sidewalks and their coffee pot at 8 pm! So we were the only coffee drinkers in that place, because they had to make a fresh pot, and I gotta, say, that was the best cuppa coffee I’ve had in a long time… I just kinda kicked back and looked around.. at everyone drinkin’ and carousin’ on a Thursday night… it looked like they were having fun… and I thought to myself, well, lookie there, so are YOU, girl!  I was sitting there with my Certifiable Mary, and we were going through the bag and hooting and laughing and the world’s tiniest little birthday cake (I stopped to find her a cupcake at the grocery store, but they had teeny tiny little rectangle cakes that almost made me HOWL with birthday joy!!! Teeny! Tiny! With cake inside!!!!)  So I’m just sayin, if I needed to find out that I could walk into a place like that, with all the craziness and the beer flowin’ and NOT be triggered…. well… I guess I can check that one off the list. This time last year I was detoxing and OTHER ASSORTED HORRORS TOO PAINFUL to revisit…

This year, I am looking forward… FORWARD, to new adventures… sigh… I can sigh, but it’s not a depressed kinda sigh, it’s more of a … well… I’m taking inventory, you tend to do that when the big markers roll around… and February is a huge one for me. Fuggin’ February is behind me now, and ol’ Muddy March is moving right along… What shall I call April this year? Astounding? Amazing? Auspicious? Adventurous April! That’s it! Look now further!

I’m embrarrassed to write what I’m really thinking… because it will seem to me like I’m bragging, or something along those lines… I don’t mean it that way,  but I just feel like I should document… changes… and growth… and stuff… Just skip this, this is for me, completely self-serving: I feel like a positive influence now. There. I said it. Instead of an instrument of the devil, har, HARRRRR, no, seriously, I think the devil was working thru me… Just fer instance, Mary is going through a divorce right now, and it aiin’t pretty, it’s one of those ones where the dad is poisoning the kids against the mom and the mom cares too much about the kids’ DELICATE PSYCHES to RETURN FIRE, you know, one of those one-sided UGLINESS campaigns… and what does she do, she latches onto me at this particular time… And I could’ve been a really destructive friend to her, I could’ve been all about the partyin’ and the bonding over the booze and the wild times… because that was me, I was always the one who thought to bring booze into any and every situation… And that would’ve been such great amunition for Mary’s husband to use against her, you see?! You see?!  Instead, her son is going to go back to Dear Old Dad and have to report that we were sittin’ in a bar, snortin’ coffee and laughing  and taking ThelmaNLouise pictures and singing to a teeny tiny birthday cake!  Let that ol’ devil make somethin’ outta THAT!

It’s like that pebble inna pond, and I’m to the part where we get to watch the ripples reach farther and farther… It’s not just Mary…  it’s Ang too, my daughter’s friend… she’s been texting me for a couple months… and it’s like… I’m able to mother her a little and at the same time… she’s “daughtering” me… it’s hard to explain, but it’s just a good feeling, that she’s chosen me to talk to… because it’s right at the time when my own daughters aren’t able to see much value in what I have to say, it’s okay, it’s natural that they separate right now… but it’s painful… har… but here’s Ang, keeping in touch and just keeping some kind of fire lit inside me, that lets me know…  I’m still needed, someone still thinks I’m sorta… cool… Yesterday she texted me that she was going with her boyfriend to the museum of natural history, and I told her to keep her eyes and ears open, because there are great metaphors and messages echoing in there, especially in the Great Hall O’ Collossal Jurassic Sea Creatures  (I get really philosophical in there, I think it’s got something to do with primal fear, and friggin’ 9 inch TEETH) , but you know, I texted something like THAT to her, and not only did she not laugh at me,  but I really think she’s going to remember me saying that to her, and she’s going to get something more out of the museum today because of it. I really think that. Ripple…

Here’s where I remind myself, don’t over-do. Dont’ smother poor Ang with all your residual mothering urges… That’s why we have Poppy, remember?

har

Meanwhile, Franki proceeds, with the inevitable… She’s been growing like some kind of wild thing lately, an inch last month. Sometimes I catch her out of the corner of my eye and I don’t know who it is, she’s almost as tall as me now, and she’s got long brown hair, and I have one of those weird moments where I don’t know if I’m me, or I’m looking at me, didja ever do that, I’ve done that in my car, I have a silver minivan, like BILLIONS of other peoples, and sometimes I’ll see another minivan exactly like mine, and I’ll think for a minute, HEY, that’s MY car, but then I think, no wait, I’m DRIVING my car… and I have to work backwards in my brain to realize that I am ME and I am in MY car…  does that happen to you? Is it just me? I dont’ know. I worry sometimes…

So Franki’s been asking to wear makeup.. and she’s been fixing her hair… and putting together “outfits”… She’s so funny though, she’s laughing and she gets this wry little worried expression on her face, and she says, “MOM! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MEEEEEEEE???!!!” So we laugh about it and we talk about it and I have to tell her 5billion times that it’s okay and it’s natural, and she says, but I didn’t used to be GIRLY at alllllllll!!!! Why am I getting to be so GIRLYYYYYY!!!!!! We’re having a lot of fun with it, I painted her nails purple last night, she was going to a Social at the school… She had a checklist made, of what she was going to wear, and what earrings, what color eye-shadow… seriously, ON PAPER, a checklist! She was asking me what I thought about a side-ponytail, and I was all… well, I was imagining something like what Deb wears in Napoleon Dynamite:

so I was all… hmmmm… I’m not sure hon…. so she goes back in the bathroom and pulls her hair down and to the side of the nape of her neck, she had a sweet, sorta “spanish flamenco” thing going… it looked so pretty!!! And I didn’t get a picture,. dangit, onaccounta Charlotte’s mom came to pick them up and it got noisy and confusing… But I’m sure we’re gonna see more of the side ponytail around here, so I’ll get another chance for a picture, onaccounta she got billions and billions of compliments on it at the dance…

okay, so today is baseball tryouts for the boy, and after that, the weekend is MINE!! All mine!!!! I gotta make it a good one…

Am feeling so great at work too lately, they are really, I don’t know, reaching out to me, I guess.. they’re so nice in the building I usually work, even after the Big Tourettes Incident of Ought-Ten… har…  Yesterday I picked up my substitute report sheet in the office, and was walking out to go to my classroom, and the secretary, Rose, she runs out and drags me back inside and makes me take a Friday donut! I never take a Friday donut, because they are for staff… and I’m shy… but I LOOOOVE donuts,  for donuts are made of sugar and magic, and there was a JELLY FRIGGIN DONUT sitting there, singing its siren song to me… So, you know, I’m part of the donut crew now… yep… those donuts are for me too! SaaWEET!!!  I love a good donut metaphor…

Here’s my little home away from home in FLA:

It was so neat and tidy and all mine! You know, when you live with 5 other people, plus 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 horses, a frog, and 2 fish, you REALLY ALOT APPRECIATE coming home on occasion to a tiny little space you can call your own, even if it’s only for a few days…  sigh… Oh how I loved getting “home” and putting away my clothes, and my shoes and putting on my little jammies and my slippers… I felt like Mr. Rogers! With his sweater and his tennies!

I was about a mile from a shopping center,  and a Wendy’s… so I would walk or ride the bike down, there was even a thrift shop in the plaze! Not a great one, but still… And a Tuesday Morning store, which, I don’t know if you have them, but they’re like an upscale BigLots, on crack, or something… It’s a fun store… and lucky for me, as I didn’t do so well with my packing… Zen packing again, meaning, I didn’t sweat over what I was gonna take, I didn’t make endless lists, and do up all the laundry in the house and pack DAYS beforehand… Instead, I packed at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of my 8:30 a.m. flight!  How’d that work out for ya, is what Dr. Phil would say… Well,  I forgot PAJAMAS, as mentioned. And I packed 2 shirts for 5 days as mentioned. And I forgot shampoo, hair conditioner, and DEODORANT. Which, I remembered the shampoo n conditioner at the airport, so I was all proud of myself, I found a Rite Aid at the gate, and bought some travel sized bottles. Except I didn’t read them too closely and bought myself some shampoo and some… SHAMPOO! Both were shampoo! So I had fried, ratty, unmanageable, downright demented and BERSERK hair for 5 days! Onaccounta I kept forgetting to pick up conditioner at the little plaze too… But I did get jammies, leopard print, HAR! , totally out of character, but what the heck, when in Rome…

More about the lack of deodorant later…

My workshop was sooo fun, ya’ll, Laughter Yoga is the most… it’s just fun and beneficial, with endless applications, and I am… well… it’s… GARSH!!! And GOOO-OOOO-LLY!! As Gomer Pile would say… You know, a couple weeks ago, I ended up watching some old Gomer Piles on the utoobz, and I’ll tellya, that show still stands! It’s funny and it’s so darn cute, you gotta watch the one where Gomer stands up to a bully:

Make sure you watch the part where he asks the bully to step outside, around 2:30-3:30…

My ”fren” Mary just texted me, apparently her son told her  that MY SON won an award yesterday at school… I had to drag him in here and say, “Why I gotta hear from Mary Powls you got an award, boy?!” And it’s not just any award, it’s a Show Your Viking Colors award, for “Caring, Organized, Leadership, On Time, On Task, Responsibility, and Safety”!  Mamma pajama!! Am proud!  

Had a lovely burrowing owl adventure in Florida, with my new little mini-fren, Brigitte, who is from Germany, and is just a little tiny POCKET FRIEND, she came up to my chin, and her hands, I would just stare for hours and hours at her tiny little child-hands!!! She was so cute! and she had a car, so she offered to drive me across the causeway to Cape Coral, in search of burrowing owls… I was planning on riding the bike across to find them, I had a little map of where their nesting sites were (Zack’s class was reading “Holes”, so I was trying to get him some extra credit pictures of the actual little owls. I honestly, honestly did not think I would actually find them… but I was half-heartedly hoping…). Thank goodness she offered to take me around, because it would’ve been nearly 25 miles roundtrip on the bike! After 6  hours of Laughter Yoga practice… um… I would’ve been a mess!

Oh, we had a wonderful time, trying to find those tiny tiny owls! We ended up in a mangrove park, walking out on a loooong pier, through the stinking rotting vegetation (nature is beautiful, but stinky!),  ending at a slow moving river, where we saw flying fish, crashing up out of the water and practically landing on our FEET! It was an awesome display! And then walking back through the mangroves, where a group of white herons decided to launch themselves across our paths, practically across our FACES, they were so close! And Brigitte and I just looked at each other and LAUGHED!!! It was like… wow. THAT happened. HAR!  It was magic!

This is  the pier/deck through the mangroves:

Stinky!

Here’s Brigitte:

Tiny!

She brought a bag of cookies, and we munched down, and then she shared with a beautiful family who wandered out… See that coffee cup? That there is a MEDIUM coffee down in Fort Myers! It’s bigger’n Brigitte!  and I drank that mofo! Har!

And then the fish flew, and the herons brushed our faces, and as if that weren’t magical enough, we found a bonified Florida YARD SALE on the way to the owls!

It was so bad, ya’ll! I couldnt find even a trinket to save my life!

But we were in for some real magic, because two blocks away from this nasty yard sale, we found this:

Laughter Yoga On the Beach, Fort Myers, FL  I’m there, 2nd from the left! In BLACK! Lookin’ like some kind o’ friggin GUIDO! Why’d I wear black?! To the land of pastel and sequins?!

Also, ZEN PACKING?! For the record? Never again! I booked this trip a MONTH ago, and waited until the morning of my 8:30 a.m. flight to pack! I packed 2 shirts for 5 days! 2! 2 shirts! And NO PAJAMAS!!! And this guido don’t sleep in the nudies! Did I mention the 2 WHOLE SHIRTS?! I am mystified. and horrified. And not a single daggone beach dress! Do you know how many BRAND NEW beach dresses I have in my closet, bought on seasonal clearance and hanging there, patiently waiting for this summer… 4! 4 brand new dresses, back home, in Pennsylvania. In my closet. JEEEbus! So frustrating!  Also, not a single earring. Not even my drop pearls…my “go-to” earrings.. boo…

This is Susan. I want to be Susan when I grow up. LUV her.

My kingdom for $795! I want this sooooo bad for Zack! He doesn’t even know he wants one! But trust me, he does! Holy shiver shits! And this is a replica! It’s a bargain, because check out the real deal:

My goodness. $1,995. What kind of arbitrary ding-dong price is THAT. How do you put a price on something like that? I am… really… here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand rich people. Rich people can afford to buy this, and yet, how many rich people do you know who own a genuine circa 1940′s Japanese dive helmet? I would think every single one, right? yeah… NO.

Cutest beach house EVER. Others need not apply. Contest closed. Mamma pajama, that is some CUTE! luvluvluvluvluvluvluvluvluvluvluv…

Me in the library-on-the-beach bathroom, after 2 large coffees… I was RUNNING for the library, because a nice gift-shop lady told me they had “lovely” bathrooms there!  For the record, it was… pretty nice… the library too, was beautiful. I stayed long enough to look at a huge seashell collection… I still haven’t figgered out all the optical focal point ramifications of taking your own picture in the mirror, do you look at your own eyeballs, or do you look into the camera in the mirror, or the camera in your hand, or what? I don’t get it. Also, I need a haircut.

Dar, do you realize how fast a coconut is traveling from  THAT height, by the time it hits you in the head? You do the math…

This is the view out my window:  

Oh yes they DID make heartshaped pretzels with cinnamon and sugar and love in every stitch!

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And then they had to get a picture with the biggest icicle in the world, and they actually cooperated and tried to look like they half-way like each other… they tried at least…

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And then they made us a MAMMA JAMMA  MACK DADDY valentine, from the bottom of their little hearts!

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And then they opened their valentines.

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I don’t know if you can read it, but that cookie says “My BOO”, which is friggin’ hilarious, which made him laugh and then he looked like the goober you see in the picture. My boo. That there is my boo. har!

Plus more valentiney joy:

My funny Valentine:

Heard from both errant daughters, both received packages OF LOVE from mother, and wished same back. It’s all good. Keep the faith. Keep swimming, Dory…

I am happy. and blessed. and rockin’ the LOVE today. I have one more care package to deliver, this one to Mary and her boys. She’s having a rough day, from the gist of her texts, so I’m looking forward to bringing some heart-shaped LUV to her today, and giving to her for once, she’s given me so much lately…  What a world… what a world…

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