If there's something inside that you wanna say, say it out loud it'll be okay

Enough with the rain already! I am going crazy with all this stupid weather.

Not only is it just plain depressing, with the gray clouds and the darkness and the endless drizzle (and the glaven), it's a major pain in the ass when you're trying to sell your house. Every time someone wants to come for a showing, I run around in a panic cleaning up various detritus and vacuuming the rugs, and every time we come home, the "buyers" have tracked muddy leaves and assorted debris all over the place as they walked around. Which means I just have to clean up AGAIN the next day when someone else wants to come see it.

Not to mention that when it's pouring rain outside, the possibilities for where Nolan and I can go for an hour or so are limited. No playground, no walk to the store, no chance for him to run around and burn off some energy. We end up driving around aimlessly (oh so good for the environment and the pocketbook, what with the $3 a gallon gas) or going to the mall to walk around (also not so hot for the wallet - or for the self-esteem - I end up berating myself - "I've become one of those moms! Those moms who go to the mall! And just walk around! I have no imagination! Aigh!")

I guess I should be grateful that we're even getting people in to see the house. It's such a disruption, though - no wonder selling your house is such a stressful process. Random strangers coming into your home, different people every time, walking around and evaluating how you live, while you are sent out into the rain with your child like an unwelcome guest. It's even worse when the "buyers" show up earlier than their appointed time, something that has happened a couple of times.

On Friday the person was supposed to show up at 3, and of course I had to wake Nolan up from his nap so we could leave, so I waited until the last possible minute so he could sleep as much as possible. Then, when I finally did wake him up, he had a poopy diaper, which is a whole new emergency when you're showing your house - you have to not only change the diaper (trying not to get any poop on the changing pad cover so you don't have to change that before you go), you have to open the windows (in the fucking rain!) to make sure the smell dissipates, and take the dirty diaper out of the house with you in a plastic grocery bag so you can make sure the house doesn't reek of poopy diaper. So of course as we're walking out the front door, plastic poopy diaper bag in hand, the "buyer" and her real estate agent are walking up the driveway. Fifteen minutes early. And she's all "Ohhhhhh, we're so sorry, it looks like we woke you up!" to Nolan. And I want to go, "You did, you fucking wench! You made me wake up my sleeping child and run around like a madwoman to please you! You'd better fucking buy this house!" But of course I don't.

Because it's not her fault, really. When I am the "buyer," like in Princeton when we've gone to look at houses, I want the people to accommodate me and my wishes, and if they don't, well god help them. We were down there in April looking at places, and at one place we showed up (with our agent) in this exact situation - the woman answered the door and was like, "Oh. You're early." and our agent asked if we could look around anyway since we were there, and the woman said no. And I totally mentally crossed that house off our list - I was like, "Well I guess you don't really want to sell your house, lady!"

So I know we have to do everything we can. But it's still a giant pain in the ass.

And we've lowered the price by 20 grand! Cough, cough, choke. And we continue to put money into the place - we had a handyman come to paint the deck and power-wash the siding last week, and the house looks great, but it's like, "How much more do we have to do?" Why won't someone buy this house? Forget about being choosy - when we first started this process I was envisioning competing offers (as I'm sure many delusional sellers do) and how we would be able to pick the people we thought would love the house as much as we do. Ha!

Now I think I would be happy if Donald Trump wanted to buy it and knock the whole block down to build the Boston Trump Taj Mahal. No. Not really.

Which reminds me, did I ever tell y'all what happened with the Development Next Door? I didn't? Typical.

We won. We totally, completely won. Even though we didn't get the street rezoned (yet - I don't know what will happen after we leave) we were able to scare off the developers completely. Both the house right next door to us and the one all the way at the top of the street are being rehabbed instead of knocked down to build condos. Because we were able to get a city-wide moratorium on building in Residence B (our current zoning) so the city can re-evaluate how it applies the zoning laws, both sets of developers realized that they were just losing money sitting on these houses/pieces of land, so they're rehabbing and trying to sell.

Woo-hoo!

When KB's mom and I were outside working on the garden a couple of weeks ago, the people who live across the street from the place up at the top of the hill walked by and stopped to talk. They ended up thanking me for working so hard on fighting the developers - talk about gratifying. Now at least I know, even though we're leaving, we'll have had a positive impact on the neighborhood. Those houses will be in much better shape, and I think the street will benefit.

Yay!

Now if someone would just buy our place so they can enjoy the great neighborhood.

Oy.

Thanks for reading.

This was a Pizza Hut, now it's all covered with daisies

More garden porn!

All the daffodils have come and gone (am I supposed to be doing anything with the dead ones? Does anyone know? Like cutting off something? Or something?) as well as most of the regular hyacinths. The grape hyacinths bloomed a little later and so are still hanging around:


Lots more tulips have come up. I think that's normal; they're later-blooming than the crocuses and daffodils.


The tulip bulbs I planted were called "Queen of Night" and were supposed to be tall, with a very dark maroon/purple/black color. While I did get a few of those,


most of the flowers that have come up are completely different colors.


Very pretty, but not what I thought I was buying & planting. I guess that's what I get for buying bulbs at the Home Despot.

Then there are the tulips in the back - the ones I didn't plant, that the previous owner planted oh so many years ago and that just keep coming back like the perennials they are, in the vain hope that I will know what to do with them or how to take care of them.


Pretty nice, huh?

We've got some flowering bushes in front, too, that were here when we got here. Once again, I'm not exactly sure what they are, but I think they might be azaleas.



Then, of course, to counterbalance the beauty and symmetry of the flowers, we have to have a little evil weed*:
For there is no beauty without chaos, no light without dark, no Han Solo without Darth Vader.

Yup, it's Poison Ivy. It grows rampant in New England, apparently, and we've got it bad in our backyard. As you can see, it's all over The Rock, which is no good. Even if we're only here for another four weeks, there's no way I can keep Nolan from brushing up against it on one of our trips out into the backyard. I'm going to go get some Brush-B-Gone today and eradicate the sucker.

*No, not THAT evil weed. You think I'd have that growing in my back yard? Ha. Ha, ha. It is to laugh.

So I'm trying to view this all as practice for our REAL garden that will come later.

Thanks for reading.

I feel so good if I just say the word

Some words Nolan can say with the utmost clarity. The really important ones he's got down cold. "Mama," for example, or "milk." (And, strangely enough, "daffodil.") Others, sometimes he can say the vowel sounds but not the consonants, or he substitutes consonants he can say for the ones he can't manage yet.

Because I spend so much time with him, I am (usually) able to consult the Nolan-English/English-Nolan dictionary in my head and come up with a translation. There are times, however, when even I cannot figure out what the heck he's saying. (Even when I use context, like they taught us in 3rd grade!)

So I thought I'd give y'all a chance to play Nolan Interpreter:

A NOLAN VOCABULARY QUIZ:

For each word given in "Nolan," pick the correct English translation.

1. "Brulella"

A. Vanilla
B. Umbrella
C. Brunhilda
D. Banana

2. "Elfadent"

A. Elephant
B. Alphabet
C. Accident
D. Element

3. "Dit-dee"

A. Ditty
B. Itty-Bitty
C. Kitty
D. Pretty

4. "Hininder"

A. Highlander
B. Cylinder
C. Calendar
D. Hindenburg

5. "Lai-bop"

A. Lamb chop
B. Mmmmmmm-bop
C. Light bulb
D. Lollipop

6. "Wahmen"

A. Watermelon
B. Ramen
C. Women
D. Whoa, man

7. "Dental"

A. Dental
B. Central
C. Gentle
D. Gentile

8. "Epup"

A. Step up
B. Get up
C. Ketchup
D. Hiccup

9. "Pee"

A. Pee
B. Pretty
C. Please
D. Peek

10. Wow-uh

A. Wow, huh?
B. Flower
C. Water
D. Shower

Scroll down for answers.




















And while you're scrolling down, an anecdote:

















Last night, while I was putting Nolan to bed, he asked for his giant giraffe stuffed animal. (He says it "Gee-raf" ["G" like in "gulp," not "g" like in George] in case you're wondering.) It's almost as big as he is, and it's wearing a skirt, rain boots, and, inexplicably, a blue ribbon that says "1st" on its neck. We didn't buy it, it was a (very very nice, don't get me wrong) gift.

And it occurred to me that we've never given the giraffe a name. Some of his animals have names - Grover (obviously), Sigfried the German lion (Siggy for short), Wolfgang the wolf (Wolfy for short), and Comfy Cozy Cow. But many of them (and there are MANY) have no names and are referred to by their generic animal designator. "Bear," for instance, or "Froggy." So I thought maybe, since he seemed to be growing rather fond of the giraffe, it was time to give it a name.

"We've never named your giraffe, Nolan." I said. "Should we give her a name?"
















"Wanda." Nolan said.
















Just like that. "Wanda." Clear as a bell.















So the giraffe's name is Wanda, apparently.















ANSWER KEY:

1. - B
2. - A
3. - C
4. - B
5. - D
6. - A
7. - C
8. - C
9. - C
10. - Trick question. It could be B or C OR D, since he says the same thing for all of them.

SCORING:

1-3 Correct: Well, what can you do? You don't have kids.
4-6 Correct: Not bad for someone who doesn't spend every day with Nolan.
7-9 Correct: You are a parent. And a linguist. And you spent way too much time on this.
All 10 Correct: You are me. Or Nolan. Nolan, you're not on the computer, are you?

Thanks for reading.

You've been gone too long

Kelly (my stepsister) had her baby boy on Monday.

Nathan Dean was born on April 30th at 1:30 in the afternoon after - get this - 32 HOURS OF LABOR.

Witness the conehead:


I really can't think of anything I LIKE to do for 32 hours, much less to have to go through something as excruitating as childbirth for 32 hours. She did end up getting an epidural, which is only sensible. He weighed seven pounds 12 ounces at birth. (Which is remarkable, considering I think my stepsister weighs about 97 pounds soaking wet.)

Now they are back home, and the real fun begins!

I wish we lived closer so I could cook her a bunch of freezer meals like I do for the women in my mom's group who have had new babies.

Well, soon enough, I suppose.

Good luck to you, Kelly and Lewis and Nathan (and yes, Frank and Riley, too) and yay! Nolan has another cousin!

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: Argh. Thought I had the whole sideways-picture thang fixed. I guess not. Sorry, you'll just have to turn your head.

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today

I wonder why it is that I seem to be unable to enjoy things in the here and now. Whenever I'm having a good moment, or relishing a victory or the like, my brain immediately jumps to how sucky it's going to be when the moment is over.

To wit:

Yesterday I was able to go shopping* and go for a run at the YMCA by myself because my awesome mom-in-law is still here with us, and she can hang out with the Nolanmeister while I go do my thang. Almost the entire time I was browsing and then sweating and panting I was thinking "Enjoy it now, because she's leaving in three days and then your life will go back to the hellish mess that it normally is." Yeah! Thanks, brain!

*A pause here to sing the praises of the glory that is T.J. Maxx. Sometimes you gotta elbow the other bargain-seekers out of the way, but man, can you get some great deals. I bought a pair of capris, six tops (including one by BCBG Max Azria) and a pair of Aerosoles shoes for - wait for it - $142. How kick-ass is that?

Last night when I took Nolan out of the bath, he ran away before I could get the towel on him, which he thought was hilarious and thrilling until his wet feet slipped on the hardwood floor and he went down hard. He cried and I picked him up, wrapped him in the towel, and snuggled him. When we got upstairs he just wanted to keep snuggling for a little while, and while I inhaled the scent of his freshly-washed hair and the clean towel, all I could think about was how when he gets older he's not going to let me comfort him that way. He'll get all distant and independent and grown-up, and I won't get to snuggle with him any more. (This is making me weepy just writing about it.)

Sometimes I find myself trying to imprint that happy moment on my brain. I tell myself, "Remember this. This is the last time this will happen." Whatever it happens to be at the time. We went for a drive down to Hull yesterday while our real estate agent had another open house here, and walked out on a little peninsula where you can see straight across the bay to Boston. It was foggy and rainy yesterday, but you could see the city outline, and I thought to myself "Remember this. This is probably the last time you'll see this view in your life. What are the chances you'll ever come back to this exact spot once you move to Princeton? Engrave this in your brain, becuase you won't experience it again."

Why can't I just be in the moment? Why can't I just enjoy myself and smell my kid's hair and be happy? There are so many occasions when I wish I could click a switch to tell my brain "Thank you, that will be all for now," and shut the constant yammering commentary off.

I'm thinking back to when I was in labor and how when the pain got so intense my brain went all "Elvis has now left the building" and wishing I could do that on command. There must be some other way than blinding cervix-stretching pain, though.

And speaking of labor and cervix-stretching (nice blend Fozzie, thank you Fozzie!), my stepsister is in labor at this very moment. My dad called last night at 8 to say that her water had broken and she was 3 centimeters dilated. I hope things are moving along well for her - she was, last I heard, trying to go drug-free - and that her little baby boy will be here safely soon.

Sigh.

Thanks for reading.

Keep on with the force, don't stop, don't stop til you get enough

We're not dead!

Sorry if we worried everybody!

Nolan's fine. He's no longer sick and listless. He's having some teething issues and not sleeping very well, but otherwise he is his usual fabulous self.

We've just been busy. (The distinctive cry of the half-assed blogger: "But I've been really busy lately!")

We went down to Princeton the weekend of the 14th and 15th to look at places to live (and found one - more on that in a second) and then had to drive back up to Boston in the Great Nor'Easter of Ought Seven on Sunday. That, as they say, sucked big donkey dick. Seven hours of white-knuckle, rain-soaked, wind-blown driving interrupted only by a (rather pleasant, actually) lunch at Pizzeria Uno somewhere in Connecticut. We brought the portable DVD player in the car (Thanks, Kenton and Andrea!) and Nolan was fairly happy with Happy Feet (thanks, Grandma and Pappy!) but soon discovered he could kick the DVD player from his car seat and that put an end to that. Maybe he was just trying to keep his own feet happy. Robin Williams doing half the voices in one film is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

But we did make it home alive, and Nolan had a great time hanging out in Dirty Jers with Nana (and Nana had a great time hanging out with Nolan, but then, what else is new?) KB and I went around Princeton with our real estate agent and looked at rental houses. It was pretty slim pickins, but we found something that will work for us in the short term whilst we get settled and look for something to buy. (And try to sell this house, for the love of pete, which has NOT HAPPENED YET.) It's nothing fantabulous, but it's big enough for now and it's in a really great location - walking distance to the hospital for KB, walking distance to downtown/library/YMCA for Nolan and myself, and a playground at the end of the street. Yay! Plus, how sweet will it be the first time the faucet springs a leak or the dryer goes kerfloey, instead of trying to fix it myself (or make KB do it) I can just say, "Call the landlord!" I'll be trying to console myself with that while we hemorrhage money paying rent and a mortgage simultaneously. Damned housing market.

So anyway.

All is (mostly) well. KB's wonderful mom is here staying with us for a spell, and let me tell you, has my mood improved since she's been here (I am particularly blessed in the mother-in-law department, I must say); she never tires of reading "Mother Goose" to Nolan 38 times in a row, she helps with the cooking and the laundry, and she's fun to talk to besides. We (meaning she and I, not KB - he had to work the next day) had a few too many glasses of wine with dinner one night last week and were up until all hours telling embarrassing stories to each other. And she's knitting (another) sweater for Nolan! (The gauntlet has been thrown down, Dru.)

And now, Nolan with a giant bear:



Thanks for reading.

It's tough to walk in dignity with throw-up on your shoes

Poor Noney is sick.

I was supposed to have playgroup at my house this morning at nine-thirty, and as I was dashing around cleaning up the kitchen, making more coffee, picking up stray toys and wiping off the dining room table, I couldn't help but notice that it was almost eight o'clock and Nolan was still asleep. He normally gets up around 6:45 or 7, 7:15 if I'm really lucky.

So I kept my fingers crossed and hopped in the shower, and when I got out, he still wasn't up. So I stuck to my old adage "Never wake a sleeping baby" and threw in a load of laundry, got dressed and put out some muffins.

Nine-twenty rolls around and he's STILL asleep. Then I start to have those old fears from when he was a newborn that he's died in the night and oh, if only I'd gone and checked on him sooner, I could have saved him, what a terrible mother I am.

So I go up to his room. He's laying there in his crib, surrounded by stuffed animals, thumb firmly corked in mouth. Awake. But listless. He sees me and croaks, "Mommy," very heart-breakingly and puts his arms out for me to pick him up. I pick him up and immediately get a whiff of The Stench, that awful aroma that means he has probably had diarrhea in the night and been laying in it for hours. I feel awful. I quickly change him out of his soiled pj's and diaper and put on a clean dry diaper and comfy sweats. He protests and cries, but in that same listless manner that tells me he's really not feeling like himself. I check his temperature - low fever, nothing serious.

I take him downstairs and call the other playgroup moms to call them off - no point in their kids getting the plague, too. Nolan drinks the milk I offer him, but just wants to lay in my arms and snuggle.

It's weird, probably about 75% of me feels bad for him that he's not feeling well, and bummed for myself that I will be denied the adult company of the other moms - my little sanity break for the day; but the other 25% is like, "Woo-hoo! He's gonna be a piece of cake today!"

And it's true. No tantrums, no defiance. He just wants to sit and have me read him books. We watch an Elmo video and he eats some graham crackers and a banana; drinks some water.

Then I try to put him back to bed and he cries pitifully. Usually when I put him down for a nap if he cries a little I just leave him to it; he always settles down and goes to sleep after a short interval. But when he's sick like this I just don't have the heart for it. I pick him back up and sit in the rocking chair with him for a while.

That's pretty much how the rest of the day goes. More diarrhea; more half-hearted protests as I change his diaper. More water. More graham crackers. More Elmo. More laundry. I give him chicken soup for dinner at 4:30, a bath at 5:15, and have him back in bed by ten to six. I never even leave the house.

My poor baby guy. I hope he's better tomorrow.

Where they lie so long, beneath the seasons

Well, you wouldn't really know it from the freezing cold rain we're having, but spring is officially here.

Last fall, KB's mom was out here for a visit and she showed me how to plant bulbs (me being the non-gardenically inclined sort) and now the flowers are coming up!

I feel kind of bad for the crocuses - they're popping up all cheerful and perky and then getting smashed and trampled by the sleet/slush/hail crap we've been getting all week.


I love that they're even blooming at all, though. I feel all proud and boastful, like, "Look what I did!" even though all I did was dig the holes and put the food and bulbs in. It's fun, though, seeing my handiwork coming to fruition. Pretty magical, too, thinking that all those bulbs have just lain there dormant all winter and now somehow know to come sprouting up. I should be getting some tulips and daffodils and some other flower whose name I have forgotten, too. (Hyacinth? Can that be right?)

Ah, nature. All organic and biological and green and good.

Yay, flowers!

Can you see them, see right through them

It's the end of an era.

Sadly, I am down to my last beloved Pure Tints. Back when I was last bitching about the tendency of products I like to be discontinued, I bought ten of them from drugstore.com, but now I am (almost) bereft. There's like a centimeter left in the tube of this one, and then that's the end.

*sob*

For a while I tried rationing the Pure Tints out and not using them so much, hoping in vain to stretch them out, but I love them so; it was impossible.

I got all excited because I saw at the drugstore that Almay has a new line of lipcolors that look somewhat like the Pure Tints. But then I read the fine print - they're technically lipsticks and they cost friggin' $8.99 a piece. Tempting, but no. I can rationalize blowing four bucks on trying out a shade that I may or may not like, but nine dollars is above my waste of money threshold, methinks. Plus the whole point with the Pure Tints was that they were sheer and light and not too much of the "Hello! I'm wearing lipstick!" and more of the "My lips are naturally this smashing color, you silly!"

Alas.

Then I got my hopes up because I saw that Burt's Bees has come out with these , and I love their stuff. They even have a shade called "cocoa," which is what my old Pure Tints favorite was. And only four bucks! Huzzah! So I bought one post-haste and rushed home to try it out.

But I was deceived. The supposed "cocoa" looked more like PUCE. Ugh. Nothing like the color of the cap. Shiny, silvery lavender-y grossness. That went right in the trash. Now I don't know if I should even bother trying another shade of those. You know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm a fucking idiot.

So I ordered a couple of these from drugstore.com. (I swear I'm not plugging drugstore.com on purpose, they're just the only place I buy this kind of stuff from online, mostly becuase I'm too lazy to even look for or research another one.) I use a lot of other Neutrogena products for my face, and I generally like their stuff, so we'll see. Seven bucks each, though, oof. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

(Can I just say*, also, I hate when cosmetics companies [and clothing companies, and shoe companies, et cetera] make up stupid names for their colors that have absolutely no relationship to what the color actually looks like. I mean, "Clean?" What the fuck color is "Clean?" Wouldn't that be NO color at all? I understand that each company wants to distinguish its particular dark brown thing from every other dark brown product that's out there in the world vying for consumers' attention, but Jesus. Try to have your color name have some bearing on reality, please, product-makers of the world. Orange is a color. Forest green is a color. "Jazzy" is not a color. Even color names like "chestnut" and "daffodil" I can tolerate, because those are universally [pretty much] well-known objects that are all generally the same color, so we have a point of reference. Chestnut is probably a dark brown, daffodil probably a cheerful yellow, right? But then you get into things like "sky." Well, what kind of sky, exactly? I mean, I know it's most likely a pale blue, but who's to say it's not raining that day? And from there they just go spinning into a fairy land of "perky" and "stucco" and "fang." Just tell me what the hell colors those are supposed to be, please.)

(I also hate, while we're on the subject, when catalog titles don't just say something straightforward like "Spring 2007" or whatever. I got one the other day that said "Anticipating Summer 2007." I refuse to buy anything from a catalog that stupidly named, sheerly for the principle.)

*Of course I can say. It's my blog, for pete's sake. Why must I ask my own permission?

Where was I? Oh yes. No more Pure Tints. Boo.

Thanks for reading.

Where my love lies waiting silently for me

So our house has not sold yet.

Not that I'm freaking out, it's only been about six weeks, which really isn't bad, according to our agent. We still have lots of time left, so maybe we can start freaking out in...oh, say, early May.

In the meantime, we're trying to decide if it's worth it to try and look for/buy a house in Princeton or if we should rent a place for a little while to get the lay of the land. I think there are pros and cons to both approaches, and at the moment KB and I are on opposite sides of the fence on this one.

(As a side note which will probably turn into a longer tangent [if I know me, and I think I do, oh yes] it's very hard going for he and I right now, mostly because we almost never get to see each other. KB is in the midst of his preparation for the board exam in addition to working at his regular gig and moonlighting as much as he can for the extra dough, so he's pretty much not around. He leaves for work at 6:15 am and doesn't get back until 8:30. Which means he doesn't get to see Nolan at all, and Nolan doesn't get to see his Dada. Which also means I'm basically a single parent at the moment. Which sucks big donkey dick.

Plus we have no time for each other - when we talk, we end up just exchanging "important" information; I give him an update on Nolan's activities for the day, he tells me about any upcoming schedule things, and then we kind of look at each other and go, "Okay, I'm getting ready for bed." Don't even talk to me about our sex life, okay?

The only good thing is that we know this is for a limited time - once we get to Princeton and he starts his "real" job, he'll have much more regular (and shorter!) hours, better pay, and no board exam to study for when he does have time off. So we're getting through it by just telling ourselves that it won't last forever, and things will be a lot better in a very short while.

But that very short while is going to last another three months, so if y'all are just sitting around in the evening thinking "What's up with Athena?" please feel free to give me a call and offer some moral support, tales from the single life, humor, or...well, hell, I'll take anything to get me out of my head for a little bit. I would appreciate it greatly.

Thus endeth the abnormally long parenthetical.)

I think renting for a while is definitely a smart idea in a very logical sense - we can find out which neighborhoods we like, where the stuff we want to be close to is, et cetera - but I'm not very jazzed about having to move twice once we get there. I think I've mentioned numerous times before my aversion to starting over again with the neighborhoods and the stores and the friends and the glaven. I just want to get where we're going and STAY THERE.

But I also see the point that KB makes, which is that if we wait a year or two and save up even more for a good chunk of a down payment, we'll get a better rate on a mortgage and probably spend less money in the long run, and by then we'll have a better idea of what part of town we want to live in and all that.

It's just that we've been operating under the assumption that we'll be buying a house for the last few months, so we've been looking (albeit in a very preliminary way; mostly just searching online) for a little while, and I've kind of gotten into the mindset that we'll be buying a house. And looking forward to it. And fantasizing about it, in a real-estate porn kind of way. So it's hard for me to now turn around and go, "Never mind, we're going to rent for awhile," even if I can see the logic of it.

*sigh*

So that's what's on my mind right now.

Also, don't bother buying any strawberries that aren't organic. Regular store-bought strawberries now are just not worth it. It's kind of like porn star breasts - they look all luscious and juicy and you think they're going to be great, but then you get one in your mouth and you think, "Ew. Plastic and fake."

Thanks for reading.

Then you wouldn't have to say that you loved me

Some other Nolan-isms that are popular these days:

-"Noney." This is what Nolan calls himself when he refers to himself out loud, as he does frequently.* Sometimes we call him Noney as well - I was at a playground last week (on the one really nice day we had before the goddamn blizzard hit us) and there was a little boy with his grandmother, and I guess he calls her "Nonney," so he kept looking at me funny when I called out "Noney!" to Nolan. At first I thought his name might actually be Noney, and I was thinking, "Is that actually a real name someone might name their kid?" until I realized what was going on.

(I usually try to call myself "Mama" or "Mommy" when talking to/with him, and I try to call him "Nolan" (or "Noney") as much as possible. The whole I/You pronoun thing is apparently very confusing for little kids. Who wouldn't be confused? Try explaining it out loud to someone else - "When I say 'I,' I'm talking about me, and when I say 'you,' I'm talking about you. But when you say 'I,' you're talking about you, and when you say 'you,' you're talking about me." Yeah. Clear as a bell. It gets old, constantly saying, "Give that to Mama," or "Let's find Nolan's shoes," but I think it helps him a lot, clarity-wise.)

*When Nolan was a newborn and we told one woman his name, she told us this great story from when her son was young. He had a friend named Nolan, but he couldn't say the "l" sound very well, so whenever he talked about the friend, he called him "Nowun." This led to such Who's-On-First conversations as: "Who did you play with today?" "Nowun." "No one? But who's that little boy?" "That's Nowun!" and so on.

-"Gake o wick" This is what Nolan calls Jake, one of our cats. A long time ago when I worked at HBO, my boss would refer to someone she didn't get along with as a "jerkowitz," which I adopted into "Jakeowitz" for Jake. "Gake o wick" is Nolan's take on Jakeowitz.

-"A-lowa" Our other cat, Lola. For some words, Nolan can't just start with the consonant, he has to put a little schwa syllable in there at the beginning. It makes him sound like a small Italian tourist. When he's just woken up or gotten hurt and is crying for me, he always says, "A-mama! A-mama!" I'm still waiting for "Molto bene, that's a-nice a-donut."

-"Huggle" When I'm holding Nolan and comforting him, I usually call it a "snuggle." As in, "Ooh, that looked like it hurt. Do you need a snuggle?" The other night while I was getting him in his PJs, Nolan put his arms out to me and said, "Huggle." Which just killed me, it was so cute. He has a hard time with the "s" sound, it seems, so he usually substitutes an "h" instead. "Hock" instead of "sock," "uh-het" instead of "upset." This leads to some confusion occasionally - he'll say something like "hide uck," and I wonder if he's going to hide the truck or if the truck is on its side.

-"Nunnel" What Nolan calls a tunnel. (There are LOTS of tunnels at Gymboree, so he has plenty of opportunities to use this word.) Not sure why he substitutes the "n" for the "t," because he can say the "t" sound in other words.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a bad thing that I can understand him so well, because then he doesn't have to try harder to pronounce words correctly and make himself understood. He still says "Gah" for "star," even though I'm sure he could probably get quite a bit closer to the actual pronunciation if he wanted to. I think that's the case with "tunnel," too. I know what he means when he says it, and I'm usually around to translate for him, so he doesn't have to work at it.

I don't know. I guess I need some sort of "summing up" paragraph here, but I can't think of anything and I just wanted to list more of Nolan's phrases anyway. Thptpth.

Thanks for reading.

I can imagine the moment, breaking out through the silence

So, believe it or not, there was no family drama at my step-sister's wedding/shower doohickey last weekend. I was all geared up for the Big Fight or the Not-So-Subtle Snubbing or the Stupid Misunderstanding, or any of the other special little extravaganzas my family likes to trot out when we're all gathered together in a group. But either I wasn't a witness to it, or it didn't happen. Astonishing.

What I really want to blog about is Nolan's language skills - they're growing at an incredible rate. He talks ALL THE TIME. Every day it's a constant narration of what he's doing, how he's doing it, what he's thinking, what he wants, et cetera. God forbid I don't chime in or repeat whatever he's saying back to him, because then he just says it over and over and over and over again until my brain jumps out of my skull, smacks me in the face, and says, "ANSWER HIM WHY DON'T YOU?"

Hmmmm. It seems I'm a little cranky this evening. Must be PMS.

But anyway, it's actually very cool to hear how much he talks. He gets on these jags where he repeats the same sentence over and over, and for some reason the last word of the sentence is always shouted, like he's really relieved he made it to the end of the sentence.

Some examples (and their translations for those of you who don't speak Nolan):

A nigh dey haaa FUUNNNNNN! ("It's a nice day to have fun," which KB said to him when we were on our way to Castle Island a week ago. He repeated it over and over the whole car ride there.)

Fie ayuh pane go Nana HOOWWWWWWWW! ("Fly on the airplane to go to Nana's house," said repeatedly this past weekend.)

coupled with:

Fie ayuh pane go HOOMMMMMMME! ("Fly on the airplane to go home.")

Oh, noooo, a weeo aka-DENNNNN! ("Oh, no, it's a real accident," which my mom taught him this weekend. Apparently, my Grammy (my mom's mom) used to say that ("It was a real accident") whenever one of the grandkids did something wrong that was pretty obviously NOT an accident.)

Wa happy lie-uh FEYYYYYY? ("What happened to the lion's face?" - something I said to him when he was puzzling over a foam lion toy that a friend of his had bitten the face off of.)

Luck-uh guy pay NICKOWWWWW! ("I'm a lucky guy, I got to play with Snickers," who is my aunt and uncle's dog - a very sweet and excitable formerly abused Italian greyhound they adopted. Nolan was playing with her at the shower - she got out of the house once and ran like crazy around the yard (and, as you might imagine, this dog can run) and Nolan laughed hysterically watching her zoom around, which led to:

Nickow run a run a run oww FUNT! ("Snickers ran and ran and ran out front")

Boon fie away SKYYYYYYY! ("Balloon fly away into the sky" - he had a balloon at the shower that he let go of outside.)

It's interesting to me to see what phrases he latches onto out of all the different things I say to him every day. It's also really nice to be able to talk to him now, but it makes it even more frustrating for both of us when I can't understand what he's saying. I'm pretty much his best interpreter because I spend the most time with him and was there for the genesis of most of his words, but there are times when even I can't figure out what he's saying, and then the fuss really hits the fan.

But he's a lot of fun right now. I have to figure out a way to tape him and get it on here so you all can hear him.

Thanks for reading.

On the road again

Another trip to Dirty Jers.

This time just Nolan and I are going, and we're flying.

KB left at oh-dark-thirty this morning to catch his flight to Florida, where he is taking a Radiology Board Review course for four days. I was jealous for a little while (Florida? In March? While it's eight degrees here? Sign me up!) until I saw the schedule for his course - they have every minute of time accounted for from 7:30 am to 9pm. All their meals are being eaten in the hotel restaurant, and they have "mini-breaks" of ten minutes scheduled between each study session, I guess so they can pee. It sounds like he's not even going to leave the hotel, much less have a chance to enjoy the weather. (Although, to be honest, even that sounds heavenly to me - four days of using only my brain while someone else cooks for me, cleans my bedroom and bathroom, and schedules my entire day down to five-minute increments? I'll take it!)

Meanwhile, Nolan and I are flying to stay with my mom for four days so we can attend my stepsister's wedding/baby shower combo weekend thang. She's due in April, and I guess in the long tradition of white trash shotgun weddings everywhere, she and her boyfriend decided to make it official since everyone in the family was coming in for the shower anyway. So this should be interesting. I'm in charge of the games for the baby shower. Yee, I say, yee-ha. Bobbing for cotton balls, anyone?

And our house hasn't sold yet, so we have to leave it in super-clean shiny perfect happy condition when we leave in case our agent needs to show it while we're gone. It's not too hard to keep it clean since I did the big scrubbing a few weeks ago, but it's always like a scavenger hunt with Nolan's toys - he has about thirteen hundred little cars and people and dump trucks and motorcycles that he likes to stash in unlikely places around the house. Pretty much any horizontal surface is fair game for "racing" his Hot Wheels, so I find them everywhere - on the ledge of the bathtub, under the bed in the guest room, behind the grandfather clock, et cetera. In fact, I see one right now that I missed in last night's round up, under the little cart in the dining room. Sigh.

So I shall be off the grid for another little while here. I feel I've been neglecting my blog lately (and neglecting myself, truth be told) but then, I knew this was going to be a tough time, this few months before we move. We just have to keep plugging away.

Thanks for reading.

Last stop this town

Well, my grandfather died. That's why I've been MIA lately - he passed away Thursday morning, and the funeral was this past weekend.

KB, Nolan and I drove down Saturday and stayed with my mom. The viewing was on Sunday and the mass and interment were Monday. Then we drove back yesterday.

It wasn't unexpected, his death, given that I was posting about how sick he was almost a year ago, but then it wasn't exactly welcomed either. I'm glad that he's not suffering anymore, but then, he's not really anything anymore, is he? He's just not. He's not there. I think about how weird it is sometimes when I look at Nolan and wonder where he came from. I mean, I know WHERE he came from, I know it quite intimately, you could say, but I find it so astonishing that there didn't used to be this little person, and now all of a sudden there is. And that's the opposite of what happened to Pop. There used to be this person who was a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather and an accountant and a teacher and a WWII veteran and a diabetic and all these other things, and now he's not anymore. He's not anything. He's just not.

The mass, the viewing, my family...all that is just...whatever. It was what it was. We spent a lot of time in the car and a lot of time eating and a lot of time saying things like, "Hey, [fill in name here]! How are you? Gee, I guess I haven't seen you since...Grammy's funeral."

It wasn't as bad as Grammy's funeral in that we were prepared for this, we knew it was coming, we were as ready for it as you can ever be ready for the death of someone you love. But it was still awful.

I'm glad we went down, though.

I'll miss Pop.

Thanks for reading.

The years have been short but the days were long

Happy blog-iversary to me, happy blog-iversary to me, happy blog-iversary, dear Caroline, happy blog-iversary to me!

Yes, that's right, one year ago today was my first post here at thptpth.

Here's to many more!

Thanks for reading.

As though a thought stole you away

Whew.

The open house is done. Finally.

I'm sorry I've been incommuni-blog-o for the last two weeks. I've been cleaning like I've never cleaned before (picture frantic, Flashdance-style cleaning, if you will, minus the legwarmers). I think I can safely say the house is the cleanest and most organized it's ever been since we moved in.

What's more, I did a proper cleaning this time. Instead of just shoving things into any available nook and/or cranny, as is my usual M.O., I actually organized and threw things out and donated things and labled things and such. I think I cleaned Home Depot out of their entire stock of those Rubbermaid storage bin thingees, and I've used up two rolls of labelmaker tape in the last two weeks.

I've discovered the joy of Freecycle all over again, where you can post your unwanted stuff and get replies from people who actually need and will use it. In the past three days I've given away my old Atari 2600 (to a woman who teaches at a school for autistic boys), our old Powermac G4 (to a senior citizen's home) and Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard (to a church choir director).

It's funny how freeing it can be to give your stuff away - I always saved those things (or insisted that my mother save it, in the case of the Atari) because I was convinced that I would use it again someday. I tried to see if Nolan would play with the keyboard, but he was more interested in running over it with his cars than playing any music. And I just couldn't picture taking the time to hook up the Atari to the television and figuring out which controllers and which game cartridges still work. If I really wanted to play old video games, I could do so online easily.

I've been reading several different books on organization and getting rid of clutter, and it seems to me that the big secret is making sure you have a place for everything so you know where to put stuff. I would always put things down somewhere (the mail on the dining room table, the just-purchased groceries on the counter) because I didn't know where else to put them, and then that somehow became their place. I wouldn't take the time to think about where might be a better place to put them, frankly because I really didn't think about it at all. Now I realize that if everything has a designated home, all the thinking's been done already - just put the stuff back where it goes and you don't have to worry about it.

So that's what I've been doing the past two weeks - making a lot of little decisions about what to keep and where to put the stuff we keep and what's worth donating and what should be just plain thrown out. I was going to do a yard sale, but then I realized I would still have to store all that stuff somewhere until the weather got warm again, and we just needed to get the stuff OUT OF THE HOUSE. So we donated eight, count them, eight Hefty bags of clothing, shoes, and sheets/towels/blankets plus three large boxes of kitchen and housewares to Big Brothers Big Sisters, too.

Once all the decision-making was done, I spent this past weekend giving the house a top-to-bottom cleaning. I'm talking windows washed (inside and out), floors swept and mopped, tchotchkes dusted, wood polished, shower doors scrubbed, wall dings painted, shades vacuumed, everything. I had to restrain myself from Magic Eraser-ing the entire kitchen floor, simply because I didn't have the time to devote to it (although it would have looked spectacular, or as spectacular as our kitchen floor could possibly look.)

My hands and arms are sore from all the scrubbing. I'm having carpal-tunnel like symptoms in my right hand. I think I got a total of 12 hours of sleep over Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. I've ingested more coffee in the last three days than I did in probably the entire month beforehand.

So was it worth it?

Well, our real estate agent said 11 sets of people came to the open house, which is pretty darn good. And it's nice to have the house all clean and clutter-free; it seems like it's been a mental cleaning-up as well. I feel buoyant and light when I walk down the basement stairs in my socks and don't have to feel like I should go back up and get some shoes because the floor is all nasty.

And while I was feeling some regret that it took the pressure of strangers coming to see and evaluate the house to get me to finish all the little projects I've been meaning to get to for the last three years, I'm glad that we'll have a nicely finished place to live for the next five months.

I just hope it sells.

Thanks for reading.

I'm in love with a stripper

Okay, so I'm not normally the kind of person who proseletyzes about products, particularly cleaning products, and if you've ever lived with me (Eric) or visited my home, you know why.

I'm not a particularly clean person. Not that I'm disgusting or anything, I do the necessary minimum, but I've never been one to, you know, put the mini-blinds in the bath tub with some Clorox to get them their sparkling white-y whitest. (It took me a while to come up with an example of what a seriously clean person might do, so if that is a ridiculously lame and/or improbable example, well, there you go. I don't know what I'm talking about in this arena.)*

I'm also a terrible procrastinator, but that's an issue for another post.

Put these two tendencies together and you understand why I'm panicking at the thought of selling our house. We've signed with a real estate agent and she came over to our house two weeks ago to walk around with me and kind of point out the things we needed to clean up/organize/pack before the first open house. She originally wanted to have the first open house on the 28th (this past Sunday!) but as we walked around, she said, "Oh, you're not going to be ready by the 28th. Let's push it back to February 11th."

And thank god we did, because there is no way we would have been ready by then. KB has been doing his best to help out, picking up here and there when he comes home at night, but it's mostly up to me, and I am not good at this! All the little half-done projects that I've been meaning to get to (spackle that hole in the wall, put all those recipes back in the binder, go through my clothes to decide what to donate to Goodwill, vacuum the cat hair off of the roman shade above their perch) are now looming with the urgency that only comes when total strangers will be invading your house to decide if they like it or not. ACK!

So I've been stocking up on cleaning supplies and those Rubbermaid storage bins like mad, but the coolest thing I've found has got to be:

The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

This thing is truly astonishing.

Exhibit A: My 50+ year old some-kind-of-plastic-surface kitchen counter after being wiped down with a regular kitchen sponge and Simple Green, our cleaner of choice. Looks okay, right? Not blindingly clean, there's that stubborn cup ring that never comes out, but good enough for government work.


Exhibit B: Same counter. Can you tell where I've wiped with the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser?


Exhibit C: Now can you tell?


Exhibit D: Now I've cleaned the whole thing.


I said God DAMN!

I'm going to go back to the store and buy out their supply of these things. (The only drawback that I've found so far is that the pad tends to disintegrate pretty quickly, but it was only $2.50 for two of the things, so what the hey.)

Maybe, just maybe, with the help of my bald, earringed savior, we'll be ready for the open house in (less than) two weeks. ACK!

Thanks for reading.

*Ooh! I just thought of a better one! I'm not the kind of person who takes the burner cover thingees off of the stovetop and cleans around and under them to get all the gook that builds up in the crevices around them. That's what I should have said. I never do that!

And you know that you're the only one to say O.K.

So Nolan and I joined Gymboree.* There's one right nearby, in a shopping center next to a grocery store that I never go to (right by the Great and Evil Wally World).

I went to a first birthday party there for a mom-friend's kid in November. It was pretty awesome, as far as these things go. It's basically a big padded room (I knew I would end up in one of those eventually) with lots of modular climbing equipment - ramps, ladders, slides, tunnels, cushions - and lots of things to throw around in said environment - balls, scarves, hoops, inner tubes, bubbles, etc. It's toddler paradise.**

Now, when I went to this birthday party, I was like, "Hey, this place is pretty cool." but I wasn't actually considering joining a class. It's $200 for twelve weeks, for pete's sake. But recently, I've made a scientific observation of sorts concerning Nolan's behavior:

If Morning Nolan is given a chance to run around like a madman and burn off a lot of energy, Afternoon Nolan (a.k.a. Post-Nap Nolan) is a much happier, much mellower kid. He wants to read books and drink milk. If there is no morning Energy Dump, Afternoon Nolan morphs into Captain Crankypants, and the rest of the day is shot to hell - he wakes up crying from his nap and things go downhill from there.

So, given this (admittedly lacking in rigorous statistical support) observation, and given that the weather lately, unlike earlier in the winter, has been FRICKIN' COLD, limiting the possibilities for outdoor, playground-based Energy Dumps, we joined a Gymboree Class. The class itself is only once a week on Tuesday mornings, but the Extra Added Bonus is that they have open Play Gym every weekday afternoon for a couple hours, which means when Captain Crankypants makes his appearance, I can whisk him off to Gymbo the Clown's*** house and let him work his anger out in a healthy, mom-approved way. Two hundred bucks divided by twelve weeks divided by five weekdays per week is roughly $3.50 a day, and there have been some afternoons when I would have paid $3.50 a minute to have someone take him off my hands, so I think we're getting a bargain.

And now, the story at the heart of this rambling post.

We went to the aforementioned Open Play Gym last Friday. Not this past Friday, when KB had to stay home from work because I was permanently ensconced in the bathroom with effluvia coming from both ends, no. The Friday before the Great Plague of Ought Seven, this was. (Can you tell I'm writing this post at twelve-thirty in the morning? You can, can't you?)

When we got to the playroom, there were already a couple other toddlers and their moms/guardians hanging out, running around and hooting. Nolan and I took off our shoes (rules of the house) and joined in.

We quickly became acquainted with a young boy named Khrystian, mostly because he ran up to us the moment we came in the door and said, "Hi! What's your name?" before scampering off again. I know "Khrystian", and not "Christian," is his actual name, because he was wearing a name tag on his back (another rule of the house) and because his mom must have said his name about thirteen thousand times in the hour and a half we spent there.

Now, what I learned later but did not know at the time was that just prior to our arrival, Khrystian (Gah! How it galls me to even have to type that bastardized name!)'s mother had given her son and another toddler named Ethan some peanut M&M's. This in and of itself would not have been a problem (aside from the potential for a sugar-induced mania) if Khrystian's mother had bothered to ask Ethan's aunt (his guardian at the time) if it was okay. This she failed to do. And, as fate would have it, Ethan has a peanut allergy. Oh yes.

So shortly after our arrival, Ethan started to cough. And gag. And generally seem to be feeling not so hot. When the information that her nephew with the peanut allergy has eaten peanuts comes to light, Ethan's aunt is...strangely unconcerned. She seems more put out with Ethan for having the allergy than with Khrystian's mother for giving him the peanuts. She allows Ethan to continue playing. (!)

A few minutes pass. I quickly discover that Khrystian is a pain in the ass. Or, to be more accurate, Khrystian is a high-energy, seemingly intelligent kid who needs some close attention and firm discipline to really guide him, and Khrystian's mother is a lazy slag who would rather stand by the door and drink her Diet Coke than play with her son (or keep him from walking all over the other kids). He keeps taunting Nolan with his smuggled-in contraband toy car (am I the only one who reads the rules?) and intruding on every activity I try to engage Nolan in FAR AWAY FROM HIM so Nolan will stop crying for the friggin' car. I am losing my patience with this kid and his do-nothing mom. (She occasionally yells at him from the other side of the room things like, "Khrystian! Give that car to me right now or we're going home!" but she never actually follows through on these promises. This kid is going to be one hellacious teenager, I'm guessing.)

Suddenly, a cry of dismay goes up from the other side of the room - Ethan Of The Peanut Allergy has vomited. All over one of the slides. Yuck. Of course, all the toddlers have to check it out, and Ethan's aunt comes running over and proceeds to scold the kid for vomiting on the slide. Nice.

The Gymboree supervisor, an RN, comes over with the industrial size package of Clorox Wipes to clean up the mess. She hears that Ethan Of The Peanut Allergy has ingested peanuts and becomes alarmed. She asks the aunt if she has an Epi-Pen. Sure, says the aunt. It's at home. Great. The RN insists that Ethan's aunt take him to the doctor right away. The aunt says she will call the pediatrician as soon as they get home. The RN looks at her like, 'Are you friggin' nuts, lady?' but very politely says, "I am going to call an ambulance. I suggest you wait in the lobby with Ethan until they get here." And she walks out. I cheer her in my head.

Poor Ethan tries to get up and continue playing, and his aunt actually YELLS AT HIM for wanting to play! She grabs his arm, shakes him, and says, "You cannot play! You're sick!" and hustles him out to the lobby.

Another mom in the room and I make eye contact above our toddlers' heads with that little widening of the eyes that means, "What the fuck?"

The ambulance comes. Six, count them, six strapping EMTs (all hubba hubba men) come in to check Ethan out. He's breathing okay and seems pretty calm, but his face is bright red and he's coughing a lot. They take him into the ambulance with the aunt, whose main concern seems to be what a crimp this is putting in her day.

Nolan and I continue playing and trying to avoid Khrystian the Annoying until Play Gym ends (with no further incident) at 5pm.

I later learn from a mom-friend who works at Gymboree that Ethan was given an Epi-pen during the ride to the hospital and another one upon arrival, and that he's doing fine now. The aunt has been schooled in the necessity of always carrying an Epi-Pen with her while looking after Ethan, although she seems to believe that it means she can allow Ethan to eat peanuts if he wants to as long as she has the Epi-Pen.

And I thought I was a bad mother. Bah! I'm Mother of the Decade compared to Ethan's aunt and Khrystian's mom.

Thanks for reading.

*Actually, Nolan was not consulted. I joined the friggin' class and he goes where I go. I said "Nolan and I" because it sounds more diplomatic, as if I gave him a choice. Ha!

**Have you ever heard George Carlin's bit about how toddlers are basically like monkeys on acid? It is so painfully true. They careen about frantically, flapping their arms, pooping their pants, and screaming, and then their gaze is suddenly halted by some tiny random object that they focus on until they trip out and start running around again.

***No shit. This is really Gymboree's mascot. Every time the Majoring-in-Early-Childhood-Development-college-sophomore (I'm totally guessing here) who teaches the class mentions "Gymbo the Clown" I get visions of Courtney Love working the pole at Jumbo's Clown Room and I shudder. Not the best frame of mind for interacting with your toddler.

Once upon a looking for Donna time

So Nolan had his first haircut this weekend. I was sort of putting it off and putting it off because I kind of felt that I was not conforming to the mainstream by not cutting my little boy's hair. Like, "Screw you, gender stereotypes! I'm gonna let his hair be as long as I want!"

Although possibly it was just laziness and not wanting to deal with him screaming and fighting in a hair salon, too.

But the upshot is, I was looking at some Christmas pictures of him recently, and he looked like a raggedy white-trash scruffian whose momma didn't care enough to do what needed to be done with his hair. Plus he was waking up in the morning with mini-dreads in the back from going to bed with wet hair, and those were a pain in the ass to comb out, de-tangling spray or no.

So I asked some of my mom-friends, and they all said either take him to the barber shop your husband goes to (not an option for us, as KB is one of these guys who just break out the Wahl in the bathroom every few weeks) or go to a specialty kids' haircutting salon.

And thus, at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning, we found ourselves with a number of other hapless parents at the Snip-its Salon in Hingham, Massachusetts, trying to get the kid's hair cut in time to go home and watch the football games.






They were pretty good there - they have plenty of toys and things for the kids to play with (Nolan found a Thomas the Tank Engine quite enthralling)and there are lots of LSD-trip colors and video screens to bring on the grand mal seizures. We told them it was Nolan's very first haircut, so they saved a lock of hair for us and gave him a little certificate. He actually did surprisingly well - he stayed in the chair and didn't fuss too much for most of it. It was only at the very end when she tried to blow-dry some of the hair off of him that he freaked out - he did NOT like that at all. But then a sour apple Dum-Dum pop was procured, and all was well again.

My little baby's not a baby anymore! He's a boy! A boy with a haircut!

Thanks for reading.

Woke up this morning with the cold water

My dad's dog Jester died on Tuesday.

His "real" name (from the breeder) was Runlow's Majestic Jester. He was a big, friendly, goofy Chocolate Lab. He was fifteen years old, which is pretty damn old for a Lab, but it was sad news just the same. He had gotten quite debilitated in recent months, had a big lipoma on his ear and was slow getting up and lying down, but my dad said he still seemed to be enjoying life - he liked to eat, he liked whizzing in the grass, he still got excited about treats.

Then he developed a really bad sore on his side that started leaking serosanguinal fluid, so Dad and Ann took him to the vet. The vet was all, "Well, we can perform this surgery and then put him on a course of antiobiotics..." and they just said no. He was too old and had been through too much. So they had him put to sleep.

My dad called to tell me Tuesday night, and I could tell he was trying to keep it together and not cry, but he was obviously having a hard time and was trying to cut the conversation short. I wanted to tell him that it would be okay if he cried, that it wasn't the end of the world if he cried about his dog dying - he'd been my dad's companion for fifteen years and was a member of the family, so it's only natural.

But I didn't say that. I guess Dad was raised in that long-ago time when it was decreed that men must not cry, and he didn't want to show any weakness. So I said the usual things you say when a beloved pet dies - that he had a good life, that he was a good pet, you took great care of him, he loved you, all that stuff. Which was all true.


I'm glad we got to see him one more time - we visited at the end of September last year. Nolan was very fond of sucking his thumb while stroking Jester's soft silky ears.

They're going to have him cremated and bury his ashes under a tree out in the yard.

He was a good old dog.

Thanks for reading.

I'm going to the river, get me a tangled rocking chair

I was reminded last night (not for the first time, let us say) of the uselessness of my brain's tendency to retain random pointless bits of information.

It was late afternoon. KB had made a pot of tea* and I was trying to open a new carton of milk. Here in the Thptpth household we have two kinds of milk: Nolan's milk, which is whole milk, and KB's and my milk, which is 1%. Nolan goes through about a gallon a week, while KB and I put together only use our milk for coffee, the aforementioned tea and the occasional bowl of cereal, so I usually only buy the cardboard half-gallon carton of 1%.

So I was trying to open the new carton and couldn't quite get it. I had successfully peeled back the two sides of the spout and was trying to push them together to get the point of the spout to "pop" forward, but the sides were structurally unsound and just kept collapsing. Each successive attempt to push them in only created new fault lines in the cardboard, making it more and more impossible to achieve the desired goal.

After a few minutes of fumbling I began to contemplate switching to the other side of the carton and trying to open that one. I realized that for some reason the other side of the carton was being labeled in my mind the "illegal" side. And then a word popped into my head: "Lactomangulation." Which is not actually a word, but a sniglet. You remember them, yes? Rich Hall? Not Necessarily The News? "NNTN" was sort of like the proto-"Daily Show." Well, if you had HBO on all the time growing up in the 80s like I did, you would remember. And in my head, verbatim, I had the entire definition of "lactomangulation," which is: "Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side."

Why? Why would my brain decide that this particular bit of information is not only pertinent, but important enough to hold onto for the twenty years since that show went off the air?

(Here are a bunch of them if you'd care to read.)

And there are more that I remember that aren't even on that list!:

Banectomy - the surgical operation you perform to remove a bad spot from a banana.

Gazoonting - using your face to fold back the center of the newspaper because your hands are both occupied trying to turn the page.

Potentater - the prized largest french fry in a carton of fast-food fries.

Minutater - the smallest french fry in an carton of fast-food fries.

Jujuspection - holding your candy up to the light coming from the movie screen in order to determine what color/flavor it is before eating it.

Succubeebish - the gooey gel-like substance surrounding the actual food in a can of cat or dog food.

Cellostatic - the mysterious force that makes saran wrap stick to itself so thoroughly that it is impossible to use.

I'm just sitting here trying to remember more of them and they keep popping up. I ask you. What valuable information is missing from my brain so that these infernal non-words can continue their residence in my grey matter? What possible use could they be?

Sigh.

Thanks for reading.

*Do not snigger. Have you ever had a REAL pot of tea? Made with actual tea leaves instead of tea bags? The difference is astonishing. I used to laugh along knowingly with that Paul Reiser bit about how tea always SOUNDS good ("Hmmm, caramel apple cinnamon tea!") but when you drink it, it still tastes horrible, until I had actual brewed tea from leaves. It's kind of like always having had Sanka and being told it was "coffee" and then drinking real, freshly-ground-Peet's-Major-Dickason's-Blend coffee. Get yourself a tea pot and try it out, whydontcha?

I try so hard not to get upset

Well, now I'm in trouble.

KB and I were driving in the car with Nolan. I was behind the wheel. There was this cab right up on my rear bumper - apparently the driver felt my speed was not sufficient and wanted to express his displeasure by crawling up my tailpipe. So when the road finally widened to two lanes, he of course zoomed around us at high speed. Naturally, I shouted, "Asshole!" as he zipped by.

Not two seconds later, we hear a little voice from the back seat pipe up with, "Aaaaahoe."

Shit. He's such a little mynah bird these days.

KB gave me a look like, "Evil wench! Why dost thou corrupt my progeny so?" (Although, to be fair, what he actually said was, "That's not cool, Booby.")

Which was nothing compared to how I felt inside. Yeesh. What kind of a lousy mother cusses in front of her kid? This kind, apparently.

So I've resolved to try even harder. My new replacement word for tense car situations is going to be "Dude!"

I even managed to use it last night coming home from yoga, even though Nolan wasn't in the car with me. My light turned green and I started to go through the intersection, but then two college boys in an SUV decided their light wasn't red enough for them and went through it. I slammed on the brakes and yelled, "Duuuuuuuuuude!"

Hopefully it will take.

Thanks for reading.

Sooner or later, your legs give way you hit the ground

So it's official. Starting July 1st, we're going to be Princetonians.

KB got offers from Princton and Montclair, and after about a week of hard thinking and talking and hashing out the pros and cons of both places, we decided on Princeton. We were very lucky, because both of these places had all of the big requirements for us: Good public schools for Nolan, close to family, reasonably close (with public transportation) to a large city with lots of cultural offerings like museums and concerts, and a diverse makeup of the population. After that we figured everything was gravy. So we got to choose based on things like whether we'd be able to walk to a downtown area on a Saturday morning to pick up coffee and a bagel. Awesome.

The Princeton group seems like a good fit for KB, too. They've got a great relationship with the hospital and the doctors who refer their cases - as KB likes to put it, you're not just a "doc in a box," locked in your dark room staring at a computer screen all day. Plus all the people that we met there seem like totally normal, real, no-bullshit people. They have lives outside the office and are involved in the community big time. We both just got a really good feeling about everyone there - unlike another practice (one that did not end up offering him a job, btw) where one radiologist spent the entire dinner talking about her collection of 6 classic Mustangs and how many limited edition Star Wars nutcrackers (I shit you not) she had in her "media room." No thank you.

It's a big relief, just knowing where we're going to be - I feel like I can finally start making plans. Of course, now the hard work begins, too. Selling this house. Finding and buying a house in Princeton. Packing. Aieeeee! Plus Kaybles is going to be working his ass off (not that he's got much junk in the trunk to start with) the next six months studying for the oral board exam in June in addition to all his regular responsibilities at work and his moonlighting gigs. So it's going to be a tough six months or so coming up here. But I figure as long as you know it's for a limited time, you can do anything.

And I'm glad the uncertainty (or this particular brand of uncertainty, anyway) is past.

How about you all? Have a Happy New Year? Having any trouble remembering to write "2007" on your checks?

Thanks for reading.