So I was rushing between seminars today, feeling  on the surface sort of elated, but also mostly exhausted, overwhelmed, inadequate, and anxious, and I thought to myself, that is a strange cocktail of emotion to add up to elation. Wherein lies the alchemy?
      I realized that this Master's program, while challenging and delightful in many ways, is only part of it, that the real amazement comes out of the wider context of having my kids call me every day, having my husband be the glue to hold everything together while I am gone, and knowing that, when I get back in a week, they will have missed me like crazy but they will be fine.

independence

I listened to my iPod today. I never, ever listen to my iPod. Having things in my ears means I cannot hear when my children are trying to kill each other or the housepets.

Being in a different state also means I cannot hear them, so I might as well listen to my iPod.

Amber Alert

      The phone rings, and it is Michelle, who lives maybe half a mile up the road from us. She is calling because a basset hound is trotting along her street and she wonders if it is our basset hound. I stick my head out the door, and there is Daisy, so I assure her that my hound is accounted for, and that I cannot think of anything that could induce Daisy to climb the huge hill between her house and ours. After hanging up with Michelle, I call Karen across the tracks, who has a much younger basset who is far more likely to be out wandering. Karen checks on Sadie, who is unexpectedly right where she should be. Then I call Elmo, which is a long shot because his basset is even older and less mobile than Daisy, and sure enough Bo is stationed firmly on the recliner (legend has it that Bo leaves the recliner only for biological necessity, and to wake his owners up early so they will turn up the heat).  I never did find out whose basset was at large, but I really enjoyed the small-town basset-check.

wee mishaps

 
Sooo...

     This morning I awoke to Explorer Kitty snuggled up on my bed beside me, looking adorable (Alec got a kitten for his birthday)(said kitten, over the course of two weeks, has gone from adorable, fuzzy, helpless newborn to ankle-biting savage with dilated pupils and teenage attitude). Upon seeing me stir, she stood up, peed all over the down comforter, hopped down, and went on with her day.

     We are in the very nascent stages of a kitchen remodel (okay, really a facelift...just covering up the turquoise linoleum countertops and the linoleum parquet floors and the fifty-year-old wallpaper with somewhat spiffier materials), and the guys were coming in to scrape and patch and paint today, which meant that, after the necessary laundry was done, the boys and I were more or less evicted from the house for most of the day. So we ran errands, we went to the library, we splashed in the river, we ran more errands, and at last we needed a bathroom break. We are terribly fond of all crowding into a single stall during public restroom forays, and we are not discouraged if the handicapped stall is not available; we see no problem with cramming all four of us into a regular stall that is hardly big enough for one adult to turn around inside. It was during such cramming, when at least two of us were actively peeing and one more was preparing to do so, that a lapse in attention occurred at a crucial moment, resulting in an unfortunate ricochet. Mind you, reader, at this point we are not even in our hometown. We are nearly ten miles from our clean laundry, and now several of us are either crying or giggling because so-and-so peed on so-and-so, who does not think it is funny and no longer wishes to wear his shorts. So I get us all packed back into the minivan, some without shorts and some showing at least a little remorse.  For the short-term solution, we go back to the river and soak our shorts, and that seems to distract from the immediate crisis.

    I am choosing to focus on the fact that tomorrow is another day, and I'm not going to think too hard about what kind of a message the universe may or may not be trying to send.

Ayanda

So I don't mean to be ungrateful, but after an excessively, painfully, agonizingly long wait, we finally got some pictures of the new niece, and it totally made everything worse. Now it's not some imaginary, hypothetical niece I don't get to hold, it's that one right there, the adorable squishy one in the monkey hat.
Damn.

in a nutshell

Mom: "What do you think we should name our new kitten?"

Alec: "Adventure Scout!"

Owen: "Mittens!"

Isaac: "Buttcrack!"


This was like some kind of unintended snapshot personality test.

lock up your veggies

Mom: "Alec, do you know who pulled all the green tomatoes off the plants?"

Alec: "..."

Mom: "Alec."

Alec: "Um, yeah, but I didn't see his face. But he was wearing all black. And a mask. He was definitely a bad guy."

I have been victimized by the green tomato ninja.