Fall

And I don't just mean the season. I feel a bit like Alice down the rabbit hole lately. Chasing reality.

J.T. has come home with some interesting homework assignments lately. One of which was to write massive numbers (58,784,232,085) in expanded form using exponents. I had to google it. It took forever and frankly I'm not sure I understand it yet. I may never understand the purpose of it. The ridiculous demands of our current school curriculum are driving me crazy. Normally I'm not a one of those who worries excessively about the future, but if all we are focusing on dumb things that have no real life application, will we be surprised when the ability to think outside the box and be creative wanes?

I've just realized that this is J.T.'s last year of elementary school. My oldest child will be in middle school next year. He's still very much a "kid" to me. He looks like a kid, has a pile of lego and action figures under his bed and has to be reminded to brush his teeth, but the tween years loom. He needs deodorant now (and yes I have to remind him about that too). For now, he's on the fence about Santa, but has figured out the tooth fairy. He WANTS to believe in the jolly guy from the North Pole, is clinging to it, but has grave doubts. His confidence is growing. Last night, he won 3rd place in the Halloween costume contest at the park with his take on Scarecrow from the Batman movies. He and Rob, who gets all the credit for costume design, were thrilled.

Abby was less than thrilled. "You said this was just for fun," she said, lady bug arms crossed and one black ladybug foot tapping impatiently. If HER confidence grows anymore, we're in trouble. As J.T. put it: "I'm thinking about making a comic strip about our family. Abby, the unstoppable force, meets the immovable object, Dad watching football."

Dear Bob

(the not such a) wonder dog,

Night time is for sleeping. Even for not quite one year old dogs. The cows are well, uncowed, by your barking and howling and carrying on. A cow's gotta "mooooooooooooooooooooo", you know? So if you could SHUT IT DOWN with the 12 a.m. racketfest, I would appreciate it very much.

Also, the flowerpot is not your enemy. There is no agenda there. It just wants to sit on the porch and be pretty. A simple vessel for containing something floral in nature. Okay? It doesn't want to fight you! If you knock it into the wall, it will come out fighting. You WILL get tangled up in it, despite the fact that this would seem to defy the laws of physics. So can we call a truce with the flowerpot already? Please?

Last, but not least, no more inviting your friends over while we're away. No breaking into the trash can and scattering leftover party goods about the place. You're already grounded for the rest of the year, so if you expect Santa to leave even the tiniest treat for you at Christmas, you really need to tell the beagle to stay home. You lie down with dogs.... well. I think you know where I'm going with this.

P.S. Sidewalk chalk is not for eating. I like rainbows as much as the next person, but I don't want one on the grass.

Love,
Mom (the person who is in charge of feeding you)

Changed

Something awful happens. One of those terrible, life altering losses that are supposed to happen to other people. The phone call that fractures everything. The numb gives way to crushing grief that turns into perpetual sadness that eases into mostly something bearable. Something makes it okay to wake up. Okay to smile, or laugh, or feel a bit normal. Even if "it"never quite goes away. There are still days when you have to choose to put one foot in front of the other, to take a breath and another and another. Days like tomorrow.

I heard someone say that "closure" is a television word. Something that doesn't exist. Losing someone you love isn't something from which you recover. It is something you learn to live with.... in an altered, strange world that looks, smells, and keeps on spinning, just like before. It is you who is different, not the world.

Six years of missing. Of wishing I had made more phone calls, had more conversations, been less judgmental, enjoyed the moment more. I wish that I could say that living through it had made me into a better person. Someone who appreciates what is important, truly important in this life, but I don't know that it is true. The cause did not engender some kind of beautiful effect. No metamorphosis into a higher level of being.

Mostly, I'm grateful to have known him. Grateful that when the bottom fell out, the closeness of our family kept us from falling headlong into the pit. Grateful that my parents gave us a childhood filled with love and togetherness and things that can't be traded for something out of a wallet. I'm still me, no better than before, but different all the same.

The Girl

got her ears pierced today, an early birthday present for the big 7 candle event that happens later in the month. She picked purple starter earrings and didn't cry at all. Much better than I did at the ripe old age of 35 when I got mine done last summer. She's such a girly girl! It disconcerts me most of the time. I'm more of a mix than she is. Keeping her out of the makeup, heels and gaudy jewelry is becoming a full time job. I have to do a face check every morning to make sure she didn't sneak into my makeup and slap on some lipstick while I was fixing breakfast.

Now that school is back in session, her dance lessons have resumed. Tonight, she insisted on having a Dance Off, boys vs. girls. Of course the boys bailed. Total scaredy cats!! I have to say neither of them have any sense of rhythm. So it was a wise move. The challenge then shifted to Mom vs. Abby. I pulled out all the stops. Vogue, Electric Slide, a really weak Running Man, and some mixed martial arts moves. Stomper Girl would have been (not) proud! I knew the thing was rigged anyway. Rob told me he was voting for Abby BEFORE the music even started. Cheaters.

I think we know who the REAL winner was. C'mon. ELECTRIC SLIDE.

Abby disagreed. She said: "Here Mom. Do you need this napkin.... to wipe off your FAILURE.

She was 92!

When someone has lived a long and (mostly) happy life, a funeral becomes not a time of grief, but an opportunity to share wonderful memories and to reflect on how lucky you are to have that person in your life. Our family enjoyed looking through old black and white photos of Grandma Hall as a baby, a young girl, a jodphur-wearing teenager with a piebald horse, a grinning newlywed tucked under the arm of a lanky man in a fedora and a double-breasted suit. He was grinning too! A young mother gazing at her baby with adoring eyes, oblivious to the camera. A proud grandmother surrounded by a motley crew of disheveled kids. A time to be grateful, to feel lucky and blessed to have her.

Grandmother died on August 6th after a life well-lived. Old enough to be born into a family whose chief means of transportation was horse and wagon. Old enough to remember when cotton and corn were picked by hand and loaded into the wagon, which was pulled by the horse, to the gin or grist mill. Old enough to have played in a yard that was filled with flowers instead of grass. Old enough to have used a wood burning stove.... even as a newlywed! Old enough to have lived through The Great Depression (her father lost the farm), to watch a husband leave to fight in World War II and to get confused about "swim, swam, swum" because they changed the rule after she finished school.

Old enough to call jeans "dungarees" and the refrigerator the "ice box". Old enough to remember phone operators and doctors who made house calls, and to have made enough chocolate chip cookies, cheese straws, chewy cake, pimento and cheese, apple salad, banana pudding, fried cornbread, and apple tarts to feed a small army of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Old enough to call earrings "ear bobs" and to say things like: "Pretty is as pretty does" and "sit up straight, like a lady".

She loved and was loved and had a pretty marvelous life. There were no grand trips or thrilling adventures. Much of her happiness came in helping others. She and my grandfather would take widows out for Sunday Drives. She sent meals by our house weekly when my mother went back to work and sent her famous deviled eggs to church suppers.

To me she was this elegant blonde who managed to look beautiful with minimal effort. Who never went anywhere without her nails done, her clothes pressed neatly, her hair done up and a pair of earbobs on. She would show me how to do things like paint my nails (a long swipe down first one side, then the other, then a smooth stroke down the middle to finish the first coat), pluck my brows (ouch!) and to sit with my legs tucked to the side. As my cousin Lisa said, I think I'm letting my grandmothers down on the elegance, stately score. I'm usually a mussed, unorganized mess. Despite detailed lessons at her knee, I still can't paint my own fingernails worth a doodle or sew a button on a shirt. But she loved us anyway. Even if those lessons must have seemed like the epitome of futility at times.

She was easy to love.

Running Faster

... but can't catch the carrot. Too many balls in the air, irons in the fire, cooks in the kitchen, etc.

It has been so long.

I really haven't had two coherent thoughts to string together, much less enough for an entire post. I've been avoiding the blog because I know I'm so far behind on catching up with what is happening in everyone else's lives and maybe I really didn't want to think about how much I've been missing out on in the blogiverse. You, dear readers, know that you will end up with a potluck kind of post I'm sure. So here we go!

It's hot. My brain seems as sluggish as the muggy, humid weather. Blergh. Even the pool isn't refreshing. The water is more like bath water than anything cool and relaxing. We took the kids to Magnolia Springs State Park last week and they declared it "the hottest day ever." We did the picnic thing (of course there were ants), took a short nature walk and packed it in. The stop for ice cream on the way home salvaged the day I think.

The last month has been a whirlwind. We've been away for a trip, the kids have been off with each set of grandparents, we squeezed in a date night and a viewing of Harry Potter (loved it!).

My car has decided to crank only intermittently. All repair attempts thus far have failed. Two weeks of working fine, then it won't crank. Then it cranks for two weeks, then it won't. New battery and alternator, new crank relay (?).... and of course when the mechanic tries, it works just fine. We'd really like to get another good year or so out of it before trading it in on a new one. Stupid car.

Rob's mother lost her keys and swore up and down that Rob had them. He didn't. You all know how organized he is... no way would he be unable to find them if he had them. We looked high and low and under and over and around and then did it all again. No keys. She was still convinced he had them. He didn't. I did. He found them in my purse when he went to get my cell phone out to charge it. Oops. In my defense, that thing is HUGE (think Hermione's bag) and has about a billion compartments. I think she may have given them to me before they left for the airport and in the thousands of events that took place betwixt and between I completely forgot it. Did I say "oops" already?

Abby, who has never met anything that was childproof, managed to open the safety cap on the vitamins and took four. While I was lecturing on pill safety, her brother threw in his own little cautionary tale: "Abby, Elvis DIED from taking too much medicine!!" He even had his hands up in the air and his eyebrows in outrage position. It was so much more effective than anything I could have said. Even if she doesn't know who Elvis is.

Free Me

Currently listening to Joss Stone's Free Me. Serious crush on this song.

Hair down, summer dress, bare feet, dancing in the den, eyes closed, glass of wine in hand.

Playing it loud.