someone I know…

• has gone to the gym…A GYM…five days this week…well, it will be five when I go tomorrow to make up for Tuesday night when i was gross because of bullet #4…I mean, when someone goes tomorrow.
• has paid attention to what she is eating…as in not a plate of fried taters and ham and not a big honkin’ bowl of turtle ice cream…while watching the biggest loser.
• has successfully removed not one but THREE VIRUSES (or hopes she did…thinks she did…Norton Antivirus SAYS she did) from the resident laptop.
• has a brand spanking new 50-gallon water heater that only two two days to install and produce hot water…someone was about to run down to the truckstop for a shower and shave.
• has ouchies on both heels from new shoes she bought to go to the GYM. note to someone i know: don’t wear new shoes to the GYM.  and last but certainly not least…
• feels better than she has in years.

and then, it was 2010

Happy New Year! <woot party horn confetti>

Ah yes, NYE 2009…the year I spent it in a coma/in the bathroom.  Oh yes, good times.

What I had turns out to have been some sort of horrible crazy wicked stomach virus that I was quite positive was food poisoning, since it struck me 15 minutes after I ate the chicken Rob got for dinner on Wednesday evening.  I can say quite honestly that I have never EVER been hit so hard by an illness in my life.  To say the least, there was no NYE partying for me this year…no cocktail weenies, no queso, no chips and dip, no company and no fireworks at midnight.  No, I rang in the new year alternately in a coma on the couch or in the bathroom.  Flip a coin, i was one place or the other.  It wasn’t until Kelly came dragging in from her NYE gathering looking like the same train that hit me had hit her that I realized it wasn’t the chicken and we were just dealing with a bubonic-type plague, which, in a family of this size that comes and goes so much during the holiday, spreads about as quickly.  So, I went into haz-mat mode and quarantined her in the front room, gave her enough 7-Up for a day or so, barricaded the door, sprayed the rest of the house with Lysol, and suggested the rest of the gang don surgical masks for the duration.  Casey really did and it made me laugh.

So, yeah, I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished this long New Year’s weekend, though, over the course of two days, I finally did get the halls undecked.  It only took two days because I had to keep stopping and resting…and watching Glee Season 1. Reagan got it for me for an after-Christmas gift and i love it!  I’ve never watched a “season” on DVD before, but I must say that is pretty much ruined me for regular TV.  Sorry about that regular TV.   New Year’s Day, Reagan came by for pork and ‘kraut (and blackeyed peas), which, I think it is safe to say, is one of our favorite family traditions, and we watched the whole season, start to finish…well, she had to leave, but then Casey came in and finished it with me.  While we were on disk 2, we started Kelly with disk 1 in the sick room, and then yesterday I re-watched the rest of it with Kelly.

The weird thing?

I really enjoyed it.

Not the sick part, but the rest part, and the Glee part I absolutely loved.

I think sometimes it takes being hit by a viral train like that to make us just stop and rest.  Because believe you me, lying on the couch wrapped in an blanket, sipping 7-Up and watching Glee for two days certainly wasn’t how I planned to spend my weekend.  ohhhhh no.  Here is what was on my proposed New Year’s Weekend To-Do List:

• undeck the halls (done, but done in stages)
• clean the office (really really wanted to start the new year off with a clear desk…which may still happen maybe today)
• laundry laundry laundry
• floors (rain and snow and wintry mix + 150 million Noble pine tree needles = one big mess)
• our bedroom (Rob’s clothes are multiplying or something…everywhere clothes)
• clean out the van

This is how bad I felt…I didn’t even feel bad about not doing anything but resting and sipping 7-Up and watching Glee.  Ordinarily I’d be pulling myself along by the edges of the furniture to get it done.  But not this time.  Besides, it’ll all still get done. because the one thing I have tried to tell myself is that it will all be there tomorrow.

DUH.

Like someone else is going to do the laundry.

a look forward

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent this last year looking inward, examining myself, trying to figure out the whys…running over and over in my head why my mother didn’t hogtie me and throw me in the closet…why I was stealing beers out of icechests at 14…why I felt like I needed to act 24 when I was 15…and it’s been intense.  I think one of the most pointy and important things I’ve realized in all of this introspection is that I could never remember having one beer.  Ever.  That was a big one.

But today we look to the future, to 20-10…and that’s what I’m calling it. 20-10. It rolls so much better than 2000 and 10 or 2010, don’t you think?  I’m not doing New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead, I’m working with something that has always proven successful for me:  a to-do list.  I make one every weekend, or at least on the ones where I need to get some stuff done anyway.  I have found the older I get, the more dependent I am on lists.  I have learned that if I want to not spend $150 on jeans and scented candles and cleaning products and Drumsticks (kind you eat not the kind you drum with) when all I needed to pick up was coffee creamer and eggs, then I go with a list.  Having things written on paper that i can mark off serves two purposes to me:

1.  It keeps me on task.

2.  It allows me to actually mark stuff off so I can say SEE I GOT SOMETHING ACCOMPLISHED. yay.

So, here it is…a work in progress, ChrisYub’s 20-10 To-Do List:

• Actively and purposefully, and prayerfully pursue a different career, and preferably one that edifies me in some way, and one that edifies others, one that utilizes my personality and doesn’t give me cramps in my brain.
• MOVE. Not houses,though that would be fantastic, too.  No, I have stopped looking at real estate, realizing I might take a sledge to this place in order to get the home improvement ball rolling, but I won’t be packing boxes to move across town.  I mean move physically.  More than just walking to the kitchen for coffee (and something sweet, then salty, then sweet, then a sandwich).   With the moving, I hope comes weight loss and eating healthier…more green, less noodles.  It’s not rocket science but it may as well be.  Also, the success of this one is directly tied to the success of the first one, thus making the first one even more important.
• Purge this house. I’m talking dropping off a big ol’ 30-yard dumpster in my drive way for 10 days and letting me just go crazy nuts cleaning out the garage and the sheds.  If I went out there and counted the bikes, I guarantee you I’d need two hands.  This is what I asked for for my birthday last year, for Christmas this year, and what I will ask for for my birthday this year.  I will keep asking for it until I finally get it for myself.
• Start with the home improvement already.  We’ve lived here 11 years.  The house is older than God.  We haven’t really done anything to it other than rip out the 40-year-old disgusting carpeting and paint.  We have not addressed the electrical issues or the plumbing issues or the leveling issues.  In retrospect, I would like some of the crack that our inspector had to have been smoking who passed the inspection on this place.  For real.  Anyway, I would like this completed before I fall through the bathroom floor and have to call 9-1-1.  This will be a big one. and by big, I mean expensive.
• Help people.  This one is interesting because several months ago, I started to feel God nudging…in my mind I just kept hearing ‘do more.’  I am not sure what it is I’m supposed to do.  Of late, I wonder if I am not supposed to be using my experience with quitting to help others, I don’t know, but I continue to listen intently.  Who knows.  I may be plowing up the corn before it’s over.

I will also be attending another college graduation this year.  My Longhorn will graduate from UT in May with her Bachelors Degree in Advertising.  I watch this video and get chills all over my body.  Plus, we’ll always be able to say that our daughter graduated with Colt McCoy.  So there’s that.

My oldest and her long-term BF turned fiance will be getting married on July 31.  We hope.  I say we hope because he is in the Marines and with that comes the fact that nothing is absolute.  It could be December.  But she has a ring and we’re going bridal gown shopping tomorrow, so it’s going to happen this year, it’s just a matter of when.  So there’s that.

After so much looking back, it is exciting to look forward…to plan.  After years of struggling with the darkness, now all I see is light at the end of the tunnel.

And it isn’t a train.

a look back

I have just spent the better part of an hour reading back over my pontifications of the last year.  I didn’t really write a lot in 2009, hardly at all really, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a lot going on.

In 2009 I continued to be alcohol- and tobacco-free (quitting November 29, 2008 ~ one year on Nov 29,2009 WOOT).  I attended two weddings and two funerals after boycotting both for over a decade.

My nest got emptier and I learned that sometimes your fourth child will turn 18 and go batsh*t crazy choose to do things differently than her older sisters and it will give you a lot of grey hairs and that perhaps if there is a lesson to learn it might be “don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” or maybe “stop being so smug about how good of a parent you are compared to the poor saps who have had some challenges in their parenting experiences,” and I have wanted to go over to Glen Rose and throw myself onto my dearly departed Mother’s grave and cry and gnash my teeth and apologize for all the nonsense I put her through and maybe film it and make said fourth child watch it so she could see how crazy she was making me.

In 2009, I began working in the church, in the nursery and in the children’s ministry, and it has been such a joy and in doing so I have made some fabulous new friends…who feel like old friends…who get me in trouble during play practice because they make me laugh and I love it.

When the 2009 holiday season rolled around and Thanksgiving was coming and Christmas pageant practice started at church, I remember feeling this panicky feeling.  My brain was screaming I’M NOT READYYYYYY.  I was worried about money and Christmas and how I was going to make it all work and I’d warned the older ones that we might just re-wrap the gifts from last years’ superfab Christmas and that would be it.

But on November 22, after we’d had our church Thanksgiving luncheon and basket auction, after I’d sat at a table with friends and laughed and watched a gym full of Methodists buy themed basket after themed basket (spa baskets and grilling baskets and doggie baskets and baskets full of chocolates and baskets full of coffees and baskets full of Mildred’s Pepper Jelly!), after I sat in the sanctuary while the alter guild and their crew of helpers dressed the sanctuary in her Christmas finery and the kids had their first Christmas pageant rehearsal and sang ‘Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel.’ something changed.

Somehow that cold, stony fear of of how I was going to make Christmas work just dissolved away and I decided right then that I was not only going to stop dreading Christmas coming, but I was going to run right up to it and grab it up and welcome it and kiss it right on the face.

And what a Christmas it turned out to be! SNOW! We had our first white Christmas since 1926!  Driving through the blizzard to go to Christmas Eve service and walking through the crazy wind and blowing snow was just magical.  Baking cookies while watching the snow fall outside the kitchen window was so much more fun than baking cookies with the windows open because it’s HOT and I’m SWEATING.  I don’t know how many times that day I would run to the back door and throw it open and yell SNOW IT’S SNOWING BIG FLAKES BLOWING SNOW LOOK! SNOW!!!

It was glorious.

The whole season has been glorious.

And for me, when I think about it, this has been the best year of my life, which is not to say that there hasn’t been sadness and tears because oh boy, has there ever been sadness and tears.  No, it hasn’t been the best year of my life because it’s been perfect, it’s been the best year of my life because I’ve LIVED it.

next up…a look forward

http://www.dccc.org/page/invite/beckTY

http://www.dccc.org/page/invite/beckTY

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Kelly Goes to College

I sent my first child off to college in August of 2003, the next in 2006, and the next in 2007.  Sending kids to college is old hat to this old mom.  However, sending this one was going to be harder.  She is the baby girl, the youngest girl in our family, and always the youngest in her class.  She will turn 18 next Tuesday, the day after she starts classes.  We were both expecting it to be horrible.  She said, “you’re going to have to peel me off you like you did when I went to kindergarten when you leave.”  “Um, Kelly,” I said, “I never had to peel you off me when you started kindergarten.”

And i didn’t have to peel her off yesterday either.

After we finally talked to the people in financial aid and the bursar’s office and financial aide and the bursars office and financial aide again, we were a little stressed out, but I managed not to pop an aneurysm, and much like in other areas of her life, Kelly was sort of like what? what is going on? why is this stressful? I am not stressed.  Also, thanks in no small part to her older sister who is a UMHB alum, she landed a SWEET work study gig in IT, or as they are calling it now InfoTech.  I am not sure she realizes how lucky she is in this regard, but when she realizes that that sweet gig will last her whole career at UMHB, she will.

Anyway, after a quick bite at Jalisco’s we were back on campus to get the girls back for their 4 o’clock meet and greet with their family groups.  UMHB does an amazing job of getting these kids hooked up with small groups and getting them involved.  While she did that, Casey and I went back to the room to try and make some sense out of it, which included putting the all important Twilight posters up. Since Casey has lived in that very house, she was moving desks and the refrigerator and the bunks around like tetris pieces until she was happy with the outcome.  By the time we were finished, there was floor, there was a place for her food, there was a set up desk, and it was good.

With our work done, there was nothing left to do than the inevitable. It was time to leave. Hugs and kisses all around and she walked us out, more hugs and kisses and we were off…Go Cru!  (she is holding up the “C” for Cru, which is short for “Crusaders,” which is their mascot). 

Nary a tear was shed in this whole process, short of the ones I shed on the way down there when those two hateful children told me the story of the The Giving Tree which rendered me practically useless for a few minutes. 

Also, how in the world have I raised five children and not read that book? Seriously?  The only thing I can think of is that I got wind it was as bad as I Love You Forever and just steered all the way clear of the evil thing.

When Casey and I were nearly home I said “Thank you for going with me to take Kelly to college today,” and she said

“Thank you for not making it painful.”

Which, as a mom, is sort of my job.

putting some beer on it

I have a friend whose ex-husband and his whole family are from somewhere in the high mountains of Virginia.  Oh, the stories he would tell of these “mountain people” who hoard canned goods and bury their dead in the sides of mountains and believe that Campho-Phenique cures everything from fever blisters to malignant melanoma.  If at any point in time you were at their house and say, you accidentally cut your finger off, well…they were going to put some Campho-Phenique on it.  It was their magic potion that made everything all better. 

Which is exactly what beer was to me for the better portion of the last decade or so. 

Happy?  Have a beer.

Anxious?  Have some beer.

Stressed out?  Have a keg of beer!!!

Beer was my Campho-Phenique.

I have purposely not really said much about the specifics of why the party stopped here at the Casa, as I didn’t really feel like it was my story to tell.  In my mind, it seemed that I was just the Best Supporting Actress at the party.  I rationalized a lot of things. I told myself that of course this was okay since in my previous life all that fun stuff was as tightly controlled as a high fashion model’s caloric intake.  I told myself if the fun was becoming a little problematic, and I first realized it was back in 2005…(or 2003 when we stopped wearing watches and started wearing flip flops all the time after our South Padre Island vacay and went on permanent vacay mode in the backyard), it was okay because hey, i wasn’t locking myself out of the house in the middle of the night or falling overboard like meg ryan in “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

We were just having fun.

And it was fun.

I’m not even going to lie.  It was fun and it was a very meaningful time of my life.  I think I will call it the Backyard Era since that is where we practically lived…and if it was summer, you could take away the practically and just say lived.

Some years ago, when Robert Downey Jr. was on Inside the Actor’s Studio, I heard him say something that struck something in me.  It was back when I first started paying attention to the fact that perhaps we were tiptoeing into very deep water.  He said:

“to say it got in the way would be to say that what i was expressing did not have validity for the suffering that i chose to put myself through. if it is all for nothing, then it is a tragedy and if you put it down and move on, then it is a way just to demonstrate that that is something that occurs and there is really really really nothing that anybody can’t survive as long as they survive.”

Reading that, I can’t really tell you what exactly it was about that that struck such a chord for me…perhaps that whole “as long as they can survive” part. 

Because here is what I knew.  Substance abuse, of one sort or the other, is prominent in our families.  Two of my uncles, one of whom became my father, were alcoholics big-time.  My dad/uncle died in his 50s and my uncle Ray is 70-something and has drank away his whole life and everything he owns in the world can fit in a few boxes.  The more I saw their faces in my mind, the less fun the party was for me…then a lot less fun…and then i was just like oh ferpetesake can we just stop this already?

And then Rob got sick and suddenly, in an instant, drinking was not an option anymore.  So I stopped too  (I also quit smoking which he has not yet, but my arms starts hurting if I start patting myself on the back too much about it) and our lives were instantly and profoundly transformed.

So, as it turns out, this was my story to tell…I mean, not saying out loud that I think I had a drinking problem didn’t change for a minute the fact that I did. 

Okay already. The point.

As I said last time, lately I’ve been feeling a little like a wet dish towel.  Out of the blue, I will cry.

Then I will stop.

I call it hitting emotional air pockets. 

I also laugh a lot. So, so much. I laugh a lot with my children. I relish in the times we are together and laughing. I hope that when they are old they will relish those memories, too, of us all around the dining room table…laughing. 

See, what has happened over these last nine months of my beer-free life is that I have learned to feel things again, and in this next year, I am going to experience taking my 17-year-old to start college, the college graduation of my beloved Longhorn, and the marriage of my oldest daughter and I am going to do it all without putting beer on it.

A friend of ours came by to bring some brisket last night (because that’s what we do in Texas…we comment on our neighbor’s facebook about how whatever he’s cooking sure smells good and BAM…knock knock knock…and you got yourself some brisket) and we got to talking, really for the first time since we put down the cans, and he just was looking at me all….like…not to be corny, but with wonder, which made me go all WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT DO I HAVE A BOOGER!?!?! 

But as it turns out, he was just noticing how happy I seemed, how smiley, how serene.

How nice is that to hear?

Specially since the next buncha months are going to be a lot about having a new freshman in college, lord help us all, and Reagan getting ready to jet off to New York City forever leaving me here in the Texas dirt, and wedding colors and bridesmade dresses and flowers and my firstborn walking down the aisle and leaving me here in the Texas dirt, and there are going to be plenty of times when I don’t necessarily feel happy or smiley or serene…

but the point is that I am going to feel.

understatement much?

Wow. It’s the 11th. Of August. How’d that happen? Gah. I have some catching up to do.

To put it simply, there is a lot going on in my life…if  by “a lot,” I mean so many big things…HUGE things…not like a new refrigerator or a new dog or a new job….those are all things I’ve talked about before.  Those things are easy to talk about.  Those things have preloaded adjectives like SHINY or SWEET or AWESOME and make for a quick blogpost:

GOT A NEW FRIG!  IT IS SHINY AND SWEET AND AWESOME. WOOT! <insert picture here>

The “a lot” going on now is the sort of “a lot” that makes me stand at the kitchen sink washing dishes and think a lot.  I also think a lot before I go to sleep at night…while I’m driving…while I’m at Walmart…while I clean house.  My brain has been like a refrigerator full of those word magnets and i am constantly manipulating in order to get what all is up in there out…and what always happens is that I get the first sentence and…the next thought pops in and I’m done.  It is exactly like someone has the remote control to my brain and is a channel flipper like Rob…they leave it on one thing just long enough for me to think of a sweet, poignant way to talk about how my baby girl is leaving for college and FLIP…we move on to NYC Prep…FLIP…get more coffee…FLIP…work.

It is very annoying.

That said, I better get on with it and catch y’all up…in bullets.

• I am going to be the mother of the bride.  My oldest daughter, The Teacher, and her long-time BF, who for a long time we referred to as Not the Boyfriend, are getting married next summer! 

He is a Marine and stationed in Japan, so a few weeks back she went over to visit and he proposed on the beach…in the rain <swoon>.  When she got back, she came over with all the Japanese schwag she brought us and we talked wedding for a long time and she passed right out on the big couch in the den.  I sat there across from her…this big girl all sprawled out, sleeping the sleep of someone who just lost 12 hours on a plane ride across the water, and just watched her sleep.  Like I used to do when she was a baby, leaning over the side of the crib, amazed at what a beautiful baby she was…awed over the fact that she was mine.  And I kept thinking where did that baby go?  Then I remembered this book I used to read to her called “Where Did the Baby Go?”  The next day I went tearing through stuff, trying to find it, but couldn’t. Somehow we kept a lot of lame-O kid books and sent THAT ONE to the book program at school. GRR.  So, I ordered a new one.  I will probably write something on an amazingly sappy card about how she will always be my baby and how when she reads it to her baby girl of the future, she should always remember how fast she is going to grow up and how she should treasure each moment with her.

 

hang on. I have to get some tissues.

See, that’s another thing.  I am soooooooooooo soggy lately.  Yesterday I was reading a wall-to-wall between my Longhorn and her childhood friend, Hunter, who is also going to be a Longhorn this year, and I GOT ALL TEARY for petesake.  I’ve taken to just walking around with a dish towel over my shoulder to wipe myself up after each emotional air pocket I hit or that Walmart commercial about the kid going to college…which leads me to bullet #2.

• Next Wednesday, I will be making that drive down 35W with my baby girl to drop her off at UMHB so she can start another chapter in the book of Kelly. 

She is 17 and acts 17 and sometimes will languish about, forgetting to feed herself or drink or move or blink, so I worry about things like if she will remember to eat.  Dane is younger than her, but she is definitely ‘the baby.’  She will be rooming with her BFF Joelle, and her oldest sister is a junior there, so I won’t worry quite as much, but it is definitely going to be weird just leaving her there…like really? am I just going to LEAVE HER THERE?  And I will probably write something on an amazingly sappy card about how proud I am of her and as is my tradition, I will choose a song lyric.  The one I have chosen for her is by John Mayer, Great Indoors…

so go unlock the door
and find what you are here for
leave the great indoors
 

And I will cry when I write it and have to wipe up with the wet dish towel I have on my shoulder.

• The Longhorn is back from New York and ready to start Senior year in Austin. 

I am so proud of that one.  She lived in New York all summer and will be going there to live after graduation, which makes me all like YAY YOU DID IT YOU ROCKED COLLEGE at the same time as I’m all like CRAP COLLEGE IS OVER AND YOU ARE GOING TO LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY WHICH IS FAR FAR AWAY FROM ME. 

Wipe. Wipe.

I am tempering the sadness of  her moving with the fact that I can go visit and stalk Robert Pattinson and on the way home stop over and see Casey and Lincoln wherever they are going to be stationed, which leads me to bullet #4.

• Immediately upon becoming a married woman, my oldest child will pack all her stuff and move.

Move far, far away to another state to be someone’s WIFE for petesake.  So, while I’m all like WOOHOO WEDDING PLANNING IS SO FUN LOOK AT THE PRETTY FLOWERS AND THE CAKE, OMG THE CAKE…I’m also realizing that she won’t be down the street anymore and I expect after the wedding it will be like after Christmas, when it is all over and you are standing in the middle of the room with all the boxes and paper and everyone has taken their toys to the other room…and it will be all over and she will be  GONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

West Virginia, that’s where.

• Rachel, my adorable, angelic, soon-to-be vegetarian stepdaughter, is heading to UMHB today. 

Her purple go-car is loaded to the hilt and she will hit the highway after she says bye to her daddy when he comes home for lunch.  There have been times over the years that I’ve almost resented the relationship those two have, but now I just think how lucky they are to have each other.  He loves me, but she is and will always be his little buddy.  She was when she was 2 and she will be when she is 30.  She “gets” him and he her.  She’s a sweetheart, that one.

• My baby boy, my youngest chiild, is about to be 11.  E-LEV-EN.  Please, someone, anyone, tell me how 11 years have gone by? 

He is going to be in 5th grade,  then in middle school, THEN IN HIGH SCHOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.  GAH.

Oh, but this boy. He is so funny and so bright and he really gets me.  I’d always heard about how different relationships are with mothers and sons, but I only just “get it” recently.  I am having fun watching this one unfold and for now, other than the fact that he has gotten so big allasudden, I don’t have to get the dish towel.

 

So, it occurred to me the other day that I didn’t have one single picture that wasn’t from christmas morning of all the kids together.  And it became very urgent for me to get one before they all scatter.  So, on what had to have been the hottest day of the year, we journeyed out to take one.  This one says it all.  WE’RE DONE. HEADING TO THE CAR. IT’S HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

and then we raced to Sonic.

I can’t imagine my life without this amazing bunch of people.  How I got this lucky, I’ll never know.

Where’s my towel

I’m Adopting…

the one on the right…at least for the summer…at least I am going to try to.

His name is Sam and he lives about four blocks that way and is pretty much the only kid around for Dane to play with.  He’s always been sort of a quiet one who bordered on shady to me…a little sheisty…and perhaps not the most ideal best bud for my kid.  But there is something about this boy that just won’t let me cross him off the buddy list, even after an incident at school last year when he could have gotten my kid in a heapin’ helpin’ load of trouble. 

Dane, of his own accord, distanced himself for a while, but all was forgiven and he wanted to play again, and I let him. 

On our Austin trip, where that picture was taken, I got to know Sam a little bit better, as I sat across from them on the bus ride down and was tickled by their incessant use of “DUDE!” whenever they addressed one another.  And to be clear, it was DUDE!, not just Dude.  More and more Samuel seemed to warm up to me, asking if he could call me “Mrs. Y” and flashing a quick, bright smile that went all the way to his velvety black eyes that look so much like my boy’s.  He’s built a lot like Dane, too, and from behind the only thing that really distinguishes the two is that Samuel is a little taller and his hair is longer and wavier.  At Luby’s, where we stopped for dinner, he sat with Dane and I and we got to know each other even better.  I learned that he hates strawberries, but loves just about every other fruit, and that he can put about four straws together and drink a Coke, and that I had this inexplicable desire to make him eyes smile.

So, yesterday, the boy and I went down and grabbed Samuel and I took them to SnoBiz for a snow cone.  Dane, of course, being the big fan of snow cones that taste like frozen adult beverages that he is, ordered Pina Colada, and Samuel blue coconut, which told me all over again that he was a good egg, since blue coconut is MY favorite, too.  We drove around a bit, the boys happily slurping their cones and DUDE! ing.

As we drove by the courthouse, Samuel said matter of factly, “I’ve been in there.  My dad sued my mom and I had to go in there.”

Nice, I whispered to myself, shaking my head and quickly talking about how it was such an old building and I bet it was so pretty since they remodeled it, blargy blargy blargy, because, duh, I can’t stand even thinking about that scenario…but the deep quiet in his black eyes started to make a little more sense to me just then. 

And he started unfolding. 

His mother, it seems, lives in a neighboring town with his brother and sister.  He lives here with his dad and (stepmom?) and an older cousin.  His mom bought him a four-wheeler, which is awesome, and she is from Puerto Rico and used to work at that nursing home.  His aunt’s last name is Zoolu, he wants to live in Manhatten when he grows up because it seems “so cool,”  he got the Most Improved Wildcat award at the end of school awards ceremony, and he dyed his pitch black hair blue the last day of school to celebrate. 

And I became positive that I wanted this boy to be that kid who is always around, flopped over this sofa or that, playing video games and eating our food.  He dyed his hair blue, ferpetesake

Anyway.

I’m going to take those two to the pool on Saturday and I’m going to find a shady spot to sit and read Twilight and sweat…and watch the dudes play while I soak up the sounds and smells of summer…Texas country music blaring from the sound system and chlorine…and I will smile.  I don’t have too many years left where I can do that without looking creepy, so I want to enjoy it while I can.

oh, and when we got home yesterday, Dane was positively beaming and proclaimed, while throwing his arms around me, I was the best mom ever.

Funny how something so simple as a snow cone run with a buddy can do that…  

Score.

I Never.

You know those memes that go around that have you check off all the things you’ve done in your life?  You know the ones where you check what you’ve done and copy and paste it and send it to your friends…you know, the ones who have also done crazy and fun and exciting things?

Well, they sort of depress me. 

Not because I am not happy with my life, because I am, but because they remind me how little craziness there has been in my life. 

I am the one at the county fair not riding the Zipper.  I’m also the one not parasailing, scuba diving, hang gliding, zip lining, bungee jumping, and jumping out of airplanes.

And it isn’t because I don’t think all those things would be absolutely crazy fun to do, because I do.

It’s because I can’t.

There is this button inside me.  My own internal shutoff switch that activates itself whenever I get within sight of a roller coaster.  I can go to Six Flags and have every single honest intention of actually riding a roller coaster, but when I actually get there.  The shutoff switch overrides my brain and game off.

I can’t help it.  And for the most part, none of those things actually even come up anymore anyway. 

But there is another thing I’ve never done that doesn’t involve being in the air, under the sea, spinning upside down, or jumping off of things.

I’ve never gotten a tattoo.  Not because I have anything against them or the people who do get them, though I don’t really get why it is that so many people who get one feel driven to get 40, but because I’ve always said that in order for something to be inked INTO my body, that something better have some relevance, some meaning, or usefulness even….like “Remember to _________ ” tattooed on my hand.

So far, I’ve made it to age 45 and nothing has met the criteria. 

I do, however, play the game with myself where I ponder what I’d get if I ever were to get one…a watch…some nice white anklets…the words “bite me” somewhere…so this morning I was piddling around, doing my morning trolling of the internet, and I found this site with Chinese symbols. 

And there it was.  My tattoo. 

an means peace, quiet, tranquility and calm.

It means: When there are no wars or disasters, everything in the land is safe and calm.

 

 

 

 I love peace.  I love tranquility.  I love quiet and calm

I’d get it….only…

Somewhere only I could see it.  It could remind me to be peaceful, tranquil, quiet and calm…and to hope for a land that is safe and calm.

Yep, I’d totally get that.

or get Casey to draw one on me with a Sharpie.