My Subconscious Drinks Riunite and Watches Daytime TV

During that writers' conference I attended in April, there was one session advertised in the brochure as an opportunity to mine one's subconscious mind for writing material using relaxation techniques and guided imagery.

That's code for "hypnosis" if I ever saw it, so naturally I signed myself right up. If there's anything I love more than looking up an old boyfriend on Facebook to see if he's bald yet, its New Age religion.

Now, in the past I've had no success getting in touch with my spiritual self. I was the person at your high school retreat who kept one eye half open and peered surreptitiously at her peers during quiet prayer. I've tried meditation, and found it nearly impossible to shut off the running commentary in my head. But I am desperate to try, and darned if I was going to miss an opportunity to mine the old spiritual quadrant, and for writing material, to boot.

The presenter, Suzette Martinez Standring, began the session by speaking very eloquently for some time about the writing process, about the kind of writing that resonates most with readers, and the importance of evoking all five senses in one's work. I took copious notes, and before I knew it, it was time to go under.

The process was familiar, one I'd tried to follow countless times before when awake with insomnia or in the throes of an airborne panic attack.

The room was darkened, and we were encouraged to breathe slowly and deeply.

To still our minds.

To get centered.

To tune in to faraway sounds.

And to relax each part of our bodies in turn.

Next, we were to imagine a cord of light extending from the bottoms of our feet down to the center of the earth. We were invited to visualize ourselves at the top of a staircase. We would take three steps down. With each step, we would journey deeper and deeper into ourselves so that when we finally reached the bottom, we would be "in trance."

I was skeptical, but earnest. When I got to the bottom of my visual staircase, I was supposed to enter a place of great beauty and serenity. It could be anything I wanted it to be, as long as I felt at peace there, and comfortable.

I didn't see much. So, I pictured myself lying face down on a patch of lush green grass in a forest clearing. I have always enjoyed lying face down in grass because - and you didn't read it here - it is just like hugging the earth. Zero degrees of separation! To me that is very profound.

Anyway, I'm lying face down on the grass and trying to conjure up the feeling of sunlight on my back. It seems as though a babbling brook should be there, so I install one, and spotty sunlight beaming through the trees, as well.

The problem is, I know I'm not really in a forest. I know I'm still in the Torch Lounge at the University of Dayton. My hyper vigilant brain has failed me again, but I keep on visualizing the heck out of that forest clearing because I am going to get hypnotized if it's the last thing I do.

After a few more minutes of this, we are told to let a memory come to us, anything at all.

I get nothing.

After a little while, though, I see a red ball with a faux weave pattern, the multi-purpose kind every kid whose ever gone to school in America knows well. And that ball brings me back to Mr. Finneyfrock's gym class on President's Physical Fitness Test Day, like this:

I am ten years old. It’s President's Physical Fitness test day at school and I am hanging from the playground chin-up bar in a test of endurance. My size 2 feet, encased in white Keds with rainbow stripe friendship pins beaded through the laces, dangle several feet above the loamy ground. The mustachioed Mr. Finneyfrock, in soccer cleats, shorts, and yellow jersey, is standing next to me with his timer. It is warm out, and a soft breeze is blowing. I’ve been up on the bar for almost four minutes now and am barely showing signs of fatigue. My classmates stand in a semi-circle around me, cheering for me and my freakish strength.

I continue to hang there, wondering how much longer I should stay. My arms are not very tired. In fact, I like the slight burn, the sense that by the strength of my thin, tanned, arms alone, peppered with the golden threads of hair I detest, I am being held aloft. When I finally lower myself down, I am an elementary school hero. "IT'S A GODDAMNED RECORD!" Mr. Finneyfrock bellows.

Granted, this was not an unfamiliar, buried memory, but it was unbidden and true. Thing was, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to mean. I thought about it in the context of my current situation and the soul searching I've been doing to find my calling in life, about how I hoped that calling would include writing in some form of another. (Ironically, being at a writer's conference was unearthing all the self-doubts that have always plagued me in this regard.) I decided it meant that I was strong, stronger than my outward appearance belies. And then I didn't think about it again.

But last weekend I was sitting on my couch, staring at the wall and picking my cuticles. The kids were asleep upstairs, and my husband was down in the wine cellar, updating his inventory. I was considering making myself a cup of bedtime tea and taking a stab at some prophetic dreams, when suddenly it hit me.

Hang in there.

I'm supposed to just hang in there, it's as plain as the nose on my face, as obvious as the chin-up bar in my waking dream.

And . . . as cliché as a Hallmark card. Apparently, my subconscious mind has been drinking Riunite and watching Lifetime TV.

(But something is going to happen.)

I know it.

Perspective

We had decided to meet at a restaurant - one of their favorites. Having arrived before they did, I stood by the front window and waited.

From there I watched as my husband pulled into the parking lot, stepped out into the snizzle, and gently unbuckled my son from his car seat.

I observed my daughter climb slowly - so very, very slowly - out through her side of the Jeep, dropping something on the pavement as she did. It went unnoticed, except by me. Under normal circumstances, I would have been impatient. I might have snapped at her to hurry up. But I today I had the luxury of standing dry and removed to see her enact the careful ritual that drives me batty every single day. And suddenly it dawned on me. She doesn't want to fall. The ground is far away.

I saw him take them both, my little daughter and my little son, softly by the hands and guide them through the parking lot towards the restaurant's front door.

I took tender note of my daughter's black Mary Janes, her brown pants, her green shirt, her red headband and the wisps of baby fine flyaways poking out here and there. I remembered the text message I had received from my husband as I sat in a conference session two hundred miles away the day before. "Which way do you part V-meister's hair? On the side or down the middle?" I had pictured then my husband standing with her in front of the bathroom mirror and tenderly, awkwardly, brushing her hair.

As they approached, I saw my children's guileless faces, one looking this way, the other that, and taking in the world around them - a flat, gray parking lot - as though it had infinite possibilities on offer. They hadn't yet noticed me and I wasn't sure if they knew that I was waiting within, just fifty feet and still a world away.

And after having been away for a mere handful of days, watching through that window I saw them, my husband and my children, for the exquisite, the ethereal, the good, the trusting souls they are.

And I was glad, so glad, to be home.

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

I attended the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop in Dayton, Ohio this past weekend. I have much to tell you about this experience, but I'm still sorting through my impressions, so it will have to wait for another day.

Fridays with Lorrie

In my violin teacher's living room this morning, I was fumbling through a rhythm exercise I had executed perfectly just hours before in the the privacy of my own home.

"I just want you to know" I said, "That I sound so much better when I'm practicing by myself and doing it ass backwards. But then I come over here and by the time you've corrected my hand position and bow hold and reminded me to relax my neck, everything just goes to pot!" I said. By way of a joke.

My teacher considered this, but did not let it roll. "I will always be correcting you," she said. "That is my job. You can't come in here, no matter how hard you've been practicing, and expect to play perfectly. It's not like one day you'll show up and I'll say, 'That's it! You're done! On to the symphony with you! There is always room for improvement, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't point that out."

I was dying to interject that No! that's not it at all! I just wanted to tell you that I only suck when I'm with you! (Even though in my heart of hearts, you know I'm always sort of hoping that one day she'll say, "You know . . . you have REAL TALENT.")

But she continued: "Being so hard on yourself is no way to live. When you expect perfection of yourself, it spills over into your relationships with others. You expect them to be perfect, too. And no one wants that."

She had imparted this wisdom with no hint of malice or judgment, but still my jaw dropped to the floor. Was my violin teacher lecturing me about personal relationships? The last time anyone besides my mother had offered up unsolicited advice was in 1997, when my friend V counseled me to quit the job I hated or stop bitching about it, already.

And then my teacher brought up my old nemesis, the adorable eight-year-old violin student.

"I think I've mentioned him to you before" she said. "He can barely get through one measure without me adjusting something, but do you know what he does? He just laughs, shrugs, gives me the cutest little impish look, and keeps on going! He is totally unfazed! And SO JOYFUL! I wish we could all be more like him!" she said, sunbeams shooting out of her ears and reflecting off her dangly silver zen earrings.

And I was like, "Is he also writing you a weekly check for $25 directly out of his allowance?" but I kept that thought to myself. Because what she said had really struck a chord with me. Especially that little part about perfectionists demanding that others be perfect, too.

I thought about my kids. And my husband. And everyone else who had let me down at any point in my life for coming up short in the Department of Excellence and Precision.

Had she been at our breakfast table today when I was yelling at J-Dog and V-meister for smearing Nutella all over their white school shirts first thing in the morning? Was she a fly on the wall when I was having an aneurysm because of the way the P-Dawg loaded the dishwasher? Was she there when I fired that one tech writer who did sloppy work? Or when I told my study abroad housemate in France that no one could understand him because his accent was so bad?

My violin teacher has seen right through me, and I think she's on to something. While I have to say that being neurotic has served me well in life in many ways, I don't know that I would want to live with me, or have me for a mother.

So. I went in for a violin lesson today, but left with a sparkly nugget of zen wisdom.

And I think I'll keep it.

Nine

9-9-00


"And you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."


-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I Don't See Dead People, But I Wish I Would

I subscribe to a daily writing prompt, but I never do it. Putting that much thought into what I'm going to say, rather than just writing about my supermarket trials and tribulations, causes nervous beads of sweat pop out all over my brow. Today's prompt, however, was to write about what I'd like to dream tonight, and I didn't have to think much about this one at all - I want to dream my grandmother. But I don't just want to dream about her, I . . . want her to visit.

There have been many reminders of the transiency of souls lately, in real life and on the Internet. Consequently, as I always do at times like these, I've been ruminating about the sweet hereafter. I like to think that I don't need hard, empirical evidence of an afterlife, but I often find myself seeking out hints. I've been devouring books - about people who've had experiences that help them believe, and about NDEs (Near Death Experiences), during which individuals claim to have physically died and gone, if only for a moment, to another place which confirmed (for them) that there is something more.

I think it's fascinating. And while I'm inclined to believe that some of these experiences are drug induced or fabrications, I think that many are authentic. And I get a little jealous. Because I've been waiting for a dead person to visit me for years. (Just kidding! But not really.) When I've really looked, I have picked up on signs that help me believe. There are things that have happened surrounding the deaths of my grandparents and uncle which, if I detailed them here for you, would seem inconsequential, but have proven mystical for me. Alas, I can't say that I've ever glimpsed anything truly otherwordly, and I just want a little peek beyond the Veil.

Have you ever felt the presence of a loved one who has died in a dream? Have you had any experiences that have given you good goosebumps? I'd like to hear about them.

Mission

It was on the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated that I took the pregnancy test.

We had decided just a few weeks before that the time was as ripe as it ever would be for babymaking and I, with a green light from my psyche, the P-Dawg, and the ob/gyn, made it my personal mission to beat the estimated odds of conceiving in “six months to one year.”

P-Dawg’s input and DNA would be required, naturally, for implementation, but I took greedy ownership of the planning and strategy phases with the same singularity of purpose I had once dedicated to making the Dean’s List, getting the scholarship, scoring the interview, landing the job.

To this end, babymaking books were purchased and studied religiously. Google searches employing phrases like, “How to get pregnant super fast” were performed, and morning temperatures were charted. I was tuned into my body’s every twitch and secretion in the way that only a woman meticulously planning conception can be.

One afternoon just days after our first scheduled attempt, I was driving home from work when I noticed how uncomfortable the tug of the seat belt across my chest had become. My ta-tas, as it happened, were sore in a whole new way, and they heralded a light bulb moment the likes of which I hadn't experienced to date.

I began groping myself right there in the driver's seat of my blue Saturn sedan, cautiously at first, then with no holds barred. Does it hurt when I press here? Yes! What about here? Yes! If I mash them together? By, God, it does! And if I press myself full tilt into the steering wheel? I just might be pregnant.

It was too early to take a test, yet impossible, from that point on, to ignore the goings on: continued soreness, strange, cramplike twitches in the nether regions, and a sharp, stabbing pain that woke me up in the middle of one night to be followed by unmistakably rosier than usual cheeks the very next morning.

I endured the requisite number of days before an early pregnancy test could be taken. On the morning of that day, with the P-Dawg still on his overnight call shift at the hospital, I planned a deliberate trip to the drugstore. As I prepared to leave, the cable channels were playing and replaying the same few clips of space shuttle Columbia breaking up in blue skies over Texas.

And in the car on the way to the pharmacy, listening to a DJ announce news of the tragedy with thinly veiled excitement, before the pregnancy test had even been purchased or peed on, I knew with certainty that a catastrophic space mission would always be entwined in my memory with the day I learned that my first baby would come to be.

The test, of course, was positive: my dear little V-meister in her earliest iteration, as evidenced by a blurry pink line. Yet I was surprised at how closely my initial joy was followed by a pang of fear and the very first inkling of the buzzing, baseline anxiety that comes part and parcel with the act of bringing a child into this world.

And I've been living with the uneasy knowledge that ecstasy and despair are never more than a heartbeat away, one from the other, ever since that day when my fervent hope was confirmed as inky smoke trails, obvious evidence of human frailty and ultimate demise, arched across a Texas sky.

L'Esprit de Noel*

You know what? Today I am feeling hopeful rather than overwhelmed about the holidays. If I don't get around to baking cookies or sending the "Rama Recorder" commemorative year-end edition out to family and friends by the 25th, well then so be it.

Alejna's post earlier this week made me re-evaluate my priorities and I also decided that it would be OK for the V-meister to occasionally be a tad late for school - possibly even with pigtails askew - in exchange for a pleasant and cheerful morning mother.

Also in the spirit of Christmas, I was the most benevolent motorist on the road today. There was a lady going fifteen miles per hour in front of me and yapping away on her cell phone, but I was all "Peace Out, Sistah!" before I revved up the engine and cut her off. And I'm not even going to tell you how many people I let in front of me on the lane merge. My good cheer was totally out of control.

What I do regret is introducing the J-Dog and V-Meister to the Chipmunks Christmas Song. Never underestimate the appeal of grown men singing under the influence of helium to a pre-school audience. Now I have to listen to those freaking chipmunks on an endless loop every time I get in the car. It's either that or endure the odious whining, and that IS enough to make me rear-end the dope smokin' dude going ten miles per hour.

And speaking of rodents, when the P-Dawg read my post about man-on-mole combat, he confided that what he'd really wanted to order was a "Mole Gassing System." Whereby you connect a hose from the exhaust pipe of your car to your target mole hole and exterminate the critter by means of noxious fumes. This is in direct opposition to L'Esprit de Noel.

To recap, then:

Things That Are in the Spirit of Christmas:

• Taming your inner morning beeotch
  
• Allowing your pre-schooler's dawdling to result in her being late for a school that she's not even legally required to attend
• Allowing your pre-schooler to leave the house with misaligned pigtails
• Letting motorists who are driving with their heads up their a$$es merge in front of you like it's going out of style
• Baking cookies only if you damn well please

Things That Are NOT in the Spirit of Christmas:

• Gassing the mole colony in your front yard
  

*If a French title doesn't add a certain je ne sais quoi to an otherwise humdrum post, then I don't know what does.

Obamarama*

Even though the P-Dawg and I went to sleep way past midnight, I sprung out of bed like a toddler on Christmas morning today.

Watching the celebrations on TV, it struck me that America may have been clinically depressed for the past eight years, but didn't realize just how bad it was until we went and filled our 'script for some Barack Obama, already.

(And Canada whispered, "Thank God she finally got help.")

I zipped around town with a goofy grin and a spring in my step all day.

Considered calling my old frenemy, France, and being all, "Check out my new PRESIDENT, b1tch!" (Je rigole, cherie! Kisses!)

The J-dog toddled about clutching his "O" fridge magnet and periodically shouting "Obama, mama!"

The V-meister, completely unbidden, decorated the wall of her bedroom thusly:


And when the J-dog and I were out playing in the fierce autumn leaves this afternoon, the world, for the moment, looked technicolor bright.

*How could I resist?

I'm Just a Kid

Today is my birthday and I have writer's block.  I feel that I should have something marginally important to say, but I don't.

There's only this: thirty-five is not nearly as old as I once thought it would be. But you knew that already.

When the P-Dawg got into medical school, I remember counting forward through all the years that would be "wasted" with school and residency before, as I then saw it, our lives could begin.

By my calculations, we would both be thirty-three when all was said and done - there would be no choice but to go straight from our apartment into the old folks' home.  Yet here I am, squarely in my thirties and you wouldn't even know it, save for the trick knee.

Okay, and the metabolism.  Plus that frumpy mom aura that keeps following me around, compelling me to put squares of toilet paper down before sitting on a public commode and say things like "Do you think I put those barrettes in your hair for my health???"

(Which I did say, just the other day, in fact, and I'll tell you something: it felt right.  Although it appeared to have zero impact on the V-meister, who simply continued dragging her recently washed mane back and forth through a plate full of spaghetti.)  

For most of my life to date, I've been waiting.  But now that I'm at that place that was always just a speck on the horizon, I can't help but notice that I've covered some pretty quality ground. Every event or accomplishment upon which I place real value - my marriage, the birth of my children, my decision to write in this space regularly, regardless of how clumsy my words feel - has transpired during a period of time that I once dismissed as limbo.

Every year on my birthday, my mom calls in the morning.  Usually she and my dad will get on the horn and sing "Happy Birthday" as soon as I pick up.  No matter how many times they do it, I can't help but stand there holding my coffee mug and grinning like a fool at the image of the two of them huddled around the rotary phone, singing at the top of their lungs.  It makes me feel as though I'm ten and just woke up to a Strawberry Shortcake bike with a glitter infused banana seat and sparkly handlebar streamers.

And here I am, thirty-five.

Giving Peace a Chance

There are two kinds of people: those who lay on their car horn at every opportunity, and those who don't (but wish they had.)

I've always been a honker.

When stopped at a red light behind another motorist, I like to keep one hand poised just above the horn so I could bring it home the moment the signal changes.

If you cut me off as I'm driving, I will honk for a full minute, swear profusely, and follow you home.

If I think you are about to cut me off, I'll pump the horn with purpose until I'm right alongside of you, and then I will secretly flip you off by pretending to scratch an itch on the side of my face using my middle finger.

And, if you try to make a dangerously close left turn in front of me, I may just plow right into you.

While honking.

Yesterday, I was waiting to make a right turn onto a main road from a side street with no traffic light. The coast was clear to turn on several occasions, but I was trying to angle directly into the left turn lane, which was backed up. No one was letting me in, so I continued to patiently sit with my right turn signal on and wait for traffic to start moving.

It's like I said: I use my horn with discretion.

There happened to be a gentleman in the vehicle behind me who also wanted to turn right, and he was starting to get a bee in his bonnet over my inaction.

He went to town on his car horn.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!! BEEEP! BEEP! BEEP! MEEP! BEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I motioned for him to go around me, but he'd already worked himself up into quite a frenzy, honking with one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other.

At one point, he even threw both arms up in the air as if to say, "OMG, I GIVE UP, YOU CRAZY MINIVAN DRIVING B1TCH!!!"

However.

I ignored my very first instinct and chose not to engage him in a honking war. I knew in my heart of hearts that no one ever emerges victorious in a honking war.

Neither did I exit the Ramamobile to get all up in his grill with a piece of my mind, as I was itching to do.

And I did not flip him off or call him a hoary toad, as per Lithuanian tradition.

Instead, I composed myself and, while beaming angelically through my rear-view mirror, I held up two fingers in the universal sign of peace.

It felt positively awesome.

So gratifying, in fact, was this tranquil gesture, that when prompted by another barrage of furious beeps, I performed it again.

While the gentleman behind me was busy having an aneurysm, a space opened up in the turn lane and I calmly proceeded through.

It pays to give peace a chance.

Mrs. Dalloway Redux

Standing in line at the local tea shop (where the signage boasts "Tea is Now Fashionable"), I recognized behind me the voice of Dr. C., a former college professor of mine.

When I was a cloud hopping undergraduate English major, she was my number one teacher crush. I couldn't even utter a word aloud in her classroom without first rehearsing my thoughts in their earnest and hopeful entirety countless times inside my head. Any complements received for my occasional and tentative opinions would leave me blushing scarlet, and her comments in the margins of my essays were obsessed over with the same fervor I might have dedicated to a love note.

My roommates and I (black turtleneck wearing English majors all) had looked to her as a shining example of a woman who had it all, striking what seemed to us the perfect balance between sparkling academic career and enviable family life.

At the time we were her students, her children were about the same age as mine are now. She lived in a red brick house on a tree-lined street in a neighborhood that managed to be both bohemian and bourgeois. We imagined Dr. C and her handsome attorney husband drinking whiskey-laced tea and reciting T.S. Eliot to each other nightly before collapsing into passionate, intellectual embraces.

Oh, to be as smart, as witty, as lucky as Dr. C.

She was now casually conversing with a companion and completely unaware of the smitten former student standing a few inches away, prickles of nervous perspiration stinging my armpits.

I ached to turn around, to re-introduce myself, to show her, despite myself, pictures of my kids. I was curious to know if she still remembered me or my friends thirteen years and hundreds of students later.

But I paid for my overpriced tea and walked out.

I guess I'm not all cartwheels and karate chops when faced with the embodiment of my former hopes and dreams.

Striking up conversation would have begged the inevitable question, "What are you up to now?", and I knew I couldn't craft a reply that wouldn't belie a certain measure of shame at having opted out of academia and the creative life.

A certain measure of shame, let's face it, that I'm not gainfully employed in any way at all.

I would have doubtless stammered out my usual line about having done the corporate grind before quitting to raise a family, making sure to mention the part-time freelance work I haven't taken on in months, lest she make the mistaken assumption that I am only raising kids.

God help me, I might have even mentioned my blog.

And that, I think, is what's nagging me now. Knowing in my heart of hearts that mother work is worthy, I wish I didn't feel the need to be apologetic still.

My haste to explain to anyone who'll listen that this current life station is but temporary is a case in point. I'm torn between proudly owning this identity, even if it turns out to be the apex and culmination of my life's work, and dismissing it as a mere interval en route to other dreams.

Part of me believes, though many have fallen away, that some former aspirations are still within my reach. Another part feels, in the quiet moments of transcendent domesticity Dr. C. once alluded to during a discussion of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, that here and now I am my Self.

But I would never tell you that if we were talking face to face.

And it occurs to me now that, of all people, Dr. C. might be the last to expect a fumbled apology for the current tangent of my life, and not just because she had a lot less vested in me as her student than I did in her as my mentor.

I have vague memories of her rushing in late to our classroom, with just seconds to spare before the unspoken "fifteen minutes and we're out" rule was to take effect. Had she been held up by a sick child, an unscheduled daycare pick-up, the need to take a moment to cry behind closed office doors? Who knows what she went through for the sake of presenting that exalted image my friends and I greedily swallowed whole.

I wish I could say that I will begin answering the million dollar question without the slightest tinge of guilt. There may come a time when I don't need to - whether because I'm gainfully employed, or because I will have reached a point in life and personal evolution that it will no longer matter.

But even as I entertain thoughts of all that my future may still hold, I am slipping towards acceptance of the notion that my masterpieces need not be words on paper, but rather flesh and blood, and that my great opus won't be bound and published, but lived out day-to-day.

Saturday Mornings Ain't What They Used to Be

The little J-dog has been waking up at 6:00 AM.

As soon as he finds himself conscious, he lets out a little cry of indignation, then quickly sets about the work of kicking the bejeebus out of the wall next to his crib.

He goes through his repertoire:

"Mama"
"Da-DEE!"
"No"
"Mine"
"Ball"
"Obama '08"*

Meanwhile, in our bedroom, the P-Dawg and I feign sleep. Who will be first to give themselves away?

The J-dog throws Doggy, Monkey, and Blankie out of his crib.

"Buh-bye buh-bye buh-bye!"

Then starts crying, 'cause, frick! Toys are gone!

He kicks on his low-on-batteries-since 2005 Fisher-Price Aquarium.

Twinkle, twinkle little whaaa-wha-wha-wha-wha-whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

After a few laps around the crib, he's ready to call in the troops.

MAMA!!!!! Da-DEEEEEEEEEE!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

In our bedroom, the power play continues. When it sounds as though the J-dog has taken up a sledgehammer and is mere inches away from bashing a hole clear through the wall, I say:

"J-Dog's calling you."

P-Dawg: "He said "Mama."

Me: "He said Da-DEE."

(Crickets)

Me: "I would go get him, but my eyes are glued shut. "

P-Dawg: "Ooof! My back is killing me."

Then the sound of the V-meister scrabbling at the doorknob before bustin' out of her bedroom in S.W.A.T. team fashion.

Little footsteps padding into the bathroom.

The sound of tinkling.

The sound of silence.

The sound of a roll of TP being unraveled in its entirety.

Then, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa! I POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPED!!!!"

And we're up.

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

Saturday mornings ain't what they used to be.

But they're not half bad, either.

One day, when the decades have passed like a bullet train, I will surely yearn for cartoons and coffee on the couch among a jumble of limbs in assorted sizes, cozily intertwined.

And as the P-Dawg and I absently do the crossword over a breakfast of Sanka, oatmeal and prunes, the jangle of our stirring spoons will ring too loudly in a half-empty house.

We'll likely still rise early, unable to to linger in a lazy morning haze.

Because we'll know, as we suspect already, that time is not ours to waste.


*While the J-Dog is impressed with Barack Obama, he is as of yet an undecided and wholly ineligible voter.

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

But, wait! I have bling to pass on.

The lovely and ubiquitous MamaGeek (the blogger formerly known as Works for Mom) thrilled me to pieces with the "Daily Dose Award," which I've since learned is like saying "Your blog is a drug I cannot live without."



(I like to think of my blog as a Sudafed. Small, pretty, sugar-coated, it can clear your sinuses and give you a wacky little buzz, but is relatively harmless when dosing instructions are properly followed.)

And so without further ado, I would like to pass the Daily Dose award on to Slouching Mom, who has it all - a healthy dose of introspection laced with a bit 'o humor, all wrapped up in gorgeous prose.

The next piece of bling, the Sassy Mama Blog Award, is from Jennifer at Faking It. I recently discovered Jennifer's blog and am really enjoying her beautifully articulated and often humorous insights into motherhood and life in general.



I would like to pass the Sass Award on to Amy at Milkbreath and Margaritas. Just look at her profile pic - "sass" is her middle name.

Slouching Mom recently gave me this:



I KNOW!!!

I am asked to pass it on to ten bloggers, and they are:

Melanie at BeanPaste
Jennifer at Faking It
Beck at Frog and Toad Are Still Friends
Jen at Get In the Car!
Loralee at Loralee's Looney Tunes
KC at Where's My Cape?
Melissa at Domestic Irritation (who hasn't posted since November, but I'm still hoping she'll return because her blog is, indeed, excellent.)
Painted Maypole
Ruth at Ruthless In the Suburbs

and

The Shotgun Investor

Rose Tinted Ramblings

I've been known to gripe and groan in this space about the trials and tribulations of life with small children.

I'm (mostly) all talk.

The V-meister, the J-dog, and their father are the best thing that's ever happened to me.

At this moment, I have everything I've ever truly wanted in life.

When you have small children, people whose own kids are grown and out of the house often gaze fondly upon your babies, replacing their faces with fuzzy, haloed memories of their own.

They admonish you to cherish this crazy, hectic, joyous, innocent, and fleeting time.

I always smile and say I'm trying.

This week alone, I was reminded by three strangers on three separate occasions to treasure it while it lasts.

Was it the V-meister and J-dog's guileless delight as the clerk at the European import store rang up the tiny chocolates they had picked out themselves that compelled her to warn me of time's swift and sure passage?

Or the way the J-dog looked at me with a proud sense of accomplishment after pressing the correct elevator button that prompted our fellow department store shopper to impart the same advice?

Was it the way the V-meister called after her dawdling little brother as we left, then returned to take him by the hand?

Maybe it was just their bare and honest joy.

Despite all attempts to freeze them in time, I know these years will soon recede behind the gauzy veil of memory.

I don't want to be the woman shaking a graying head wistfully at the young frazzled mother wrangling her tots through the supermarket line.

But one day, I will be.

Is it ever really possible to live fully in the moment and yet capture for posterity the true essence of these most poignant frames of life?

I want to push aside the grouchy, tired, and ever-anticipating part of myself, the better to recognize what is lovely and winsome about this time that one day soon will be a long time past.

I need to remember this.

Well, Hello Deer

Kids and I were lunching on some leftover pizza and freeze-dried corn yesterday when I looked out the kitchen window and saw this:



Uh, yeah.

You should have seen the camera-hunting frenzy that ensued. Because that deer had "blog" written all over it, you know what I mean? So after locating my camera in here:


Really? Where do you keep yours?. . . I ran outside and started clicking away all paparazzi style. It was like that deer was Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt and I was freakin' Just Jared.

My forest friend paused for a moment in the midst of chewing an apple he had actually plucked from our very own apple tree, and he and I locked eyes. And do you know what that deer telepathically communicated to me?

I'm having lunch. Is there something I can help you with?

Boy, did I feel like a heel!

But that didn't stop me from taking just a few more shots before scurrying back to the house in time to stop Jonas from launching himself out of his high chair, seat belt and all.

Another thing I learned during this zen moment was that my camera has an extremely handy little "record" feature whereby a person can actually take live footage! Which I did, but I'll spare you the Blair Witch Project cinematography for now.

Here's another picture, just to prove to you that Bambi was in my back yard and also to illustrate the unfortunate way in which our throwaway lifestyle is encroaching on mother nature's right to thrive: