Cobwebs and Hope

The day after Thanksgiving, I shoveled my way into the old horse-barn to plug up some of the more gaping holes before winter set in. It is November, so despite the snowbanks and bitter cold, our Vermont minds cannot verbalize that winter has already set in, because that would spark a particular kind of depression and despair that we can’t afford to begin before December, when it is O.K. to embrace winter.

As I walked through the hoarder’s paradise ( depending on how you define paradise) my whole life and the imagined lives of a hundred and fifty years of former occupants flashed before me.

Let me explain:
I was looking for just the right piece of wood to nail in front of a small broken (or long disintegrated) window. It always takes a while to find the right piece since I was not about to go looking for a saw. As I spied various planks and stepped over buckets and tarps and tires and tools and pieces of iron to examine them, the realization came to me that each piece of wood had its own part in my childhood. I recognized almost every one, clearly or otherwise. At least two were leaves from tables and there were a couple of parts of dresser drawers. Handling each of them brought a fuzzy memory of to which table  or dresser it belonged and where it had once stood in my house. In some cases I had to stand there for a moment to recollect the details. A drawer handle sparked a childhood memory of riffling through my mother’s dresser when she wasn’t home.

As I continued to the potting shed, I stepped over old biscuit tins and discovered a black garbage bag that appeared to be full of them. I remembered cups of tea and tins of Danish cookies brought by various relatives from or via Montreal. I looked up to see horse harnesses used by ghosts of the past. There were milk cans that some faceless young boy had helped his father load onto wagons in another century. I shouldn’t have said faceless, as we have an old picture of that very boy with a horse and hay rake in front of our house. Upstairs I had seen a butter churn over which a girl had surely slaved. It stood next to an ancient sea chest handed down by some Captain relative and brought over the ocean by my dad in 1962. Perhaps the ghosts of a cabin boy and a farm girl are hugging in the hay loft after the sun goes down. Minus the hay.

I stepped through doors and up ladders and through cobwebs and  over old record players and canning jars and skill saws and lawn mowers - all covered with a sheen of oil and chicken dust and splattered bird poop. My eyes set upon a square piece of something resembling wood with separating layers, and with some effort I recognized it as one of the blue chairs that had stood around several kitchen tables over the years. Those were the chairs that would collapse every once in a while if we were not diligent in keeping the legs screwed in. I saw the wooden pet carrier which we had used to trap raccoons. My old potty chair, complete with a plastic seat-strap  instantly brought my mother’s shrill British voice back to me, telling people “Gillian was potty trained at a year, you know...”. Something in the story about my grandmother being involved makes me want to move on to some other memory. I was standing in the potting shed where my mother and I used to sneak cigarettes. We would talk for hours if it wasn’t winter, in which case we would huddle for a few minutes. It is sad how long talks and cigarettes and lung cancer all get mashed together in the mind.

I happened on some oven racks in the corner. I took a quick inventory of all the stoves we had owned over the years. How many stoves does a family own in a life-time? If they are all previously owned, which they were, that would be about four, maybe five. I remember another November and how when I had a friend over, my mother would dream up pleasant little jobs for us, like scrubbing those oven racks. She handed us a pan of soapy water and Brillo pads and pointed to a place across the road where we were expected to squat down and scrub for the next hour. She acted like it would be the most pleasant activity in the world, since we had a friend to help us. I’m convinced now that she asked because my friend Jessie was too polite to say no. We dutifully took the racks and, with frozen fingers, pretended that we were waif servants and that my mother was the mean owner-lady of the estate where we had so unfortunately been placed after the tragic death of our parents. I hate to say it, but there were times when my mother played the part well. But not on the days when she was pouring us hot cups of tea and feeding us butter tarts and telling us stories of her own childhood in North Wales. Later that long ago afternoon, after scrubbing the oven racks,   we lit the wood stove in the dingy shed that over the the next year would become our kitchen, and pretended that these were the maid’s quarters. It was perfect, as it had a loft upstairs where we would pretend to sleep. That day, besides the time we got stuck on top of the barn roof and subsequently got in trouble, and some of the times we almost killed our little brother and ourselves with improvised see saws and flying machines, or rattling down the hill in flexible flyer sleds and wagons, was one of my best memories. I suppose a trip to Disney would have topped it, had one existed.

...Back to my task at hand. I finally found a piece of particle board that was the perfect size to nail in the window, but by then I had put the hammer down somewhere in the rubble. It took me ten minutes to find it atop an old lawn tractor which had been in use until last summer. In the end I was able to jam an old piece from a broken stall up against the wood to hold it in on a windy day and didn’t need the hammer. I finished the job and went inside to see about filling the wood box.  On my way, I recollected that my daughter had said as a teenager: "this place is held together by cobwebs and hope."

All those pieces of junk reminded me that my childhood was rich, if not somewhat isolated. Those dusty relics reminded me that we grew up with, first of all, Love. With just enough struggle to make us resilient, toil and drudgery to give us a good work ethic, freedom and adventure to make us enjoy life, poverty to make us appreciative and creative, chaos to teach us how to ride a storm, weirdness to give us character or make us characters, and laughter to last a lifetime.

How to Install a Towel Rack in the Bathroom When You Have ADHD:

Buy the towel rack and place it on the stairs so that you will not forget to install it in the coming weeks. Avoid breaking your neck by using care when stepping over it for approximately five weeks. On the day when you plan to re-vamp and organize every drawer in your house, decide that this must be the day and the hour on which the towel rack is to be installed. Examine the wall under the window which is to be the site of installation. Decide that the current dusty curtains are too long and would be instantly torn down when a child tries to shove the towel AND the curtains into the rack. Remove the curtains and toss them unceremoniously aside to be picked up in a few weeks. Rummage through the drawers and totes of fabric in the basement that you have collected that used to belong to every deceased seamstress in the county whose relatives have sold her cache at yard sales and Church bazaars over over the past twenty years. Pick out THE slipperiest, most difficult, least iron-able fabric with which to work. Not to mention the ugliest. Set up the ironing board and examine the iron. Find the son who told you last week that he had unintentionally ruined your iron by ironing something melty and ascertain that he had in fact cleaned the iron as you had asked. Gasp in surprise at this revelation. Make a pot of coffee. Shove the laundry aside to carve out a place to sit on the couch and clean off the coffee table so you can place the sewing machine on a flat surface. Spend twice as long as you would have spent if you had picked cotton fabric, and make some passable yet unattractive curtains. Realize that you are 2 1/2 hours past lunch and make some lunch. Put off installing the towel rack until after lunch. Make ridiculous facebook post, search for the stud-finder and other necessary tools and then install towel rack per instructions. Walk past the sewing machine for a month or so or until you finally get a chance to put it away.
Addendum * skip the part about instructions because you don't read instructions.

What Has Happened to This Family???

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS FAMILY???

Last evening I spent quite a few minutes talking to a friend whom I have not seen in ages, commiserating about our  daughters. I explained that they can definitely be cold and prickly, especially with their mothers and that I have been regarded in the same manner as one would regard a dirty Kleenex for about six years and I have just gotten used to it and have learned to  take it in stride.  I take pride in the fact that when my daughter  marches up the stairs and into her room to complain to her friend about how flaky I am, I say “I'm so glad I am able to give her the freedom and privacy to do so.”

Then, TODAY, as I was already basking in an increasingly rare moment when not one, but two sons were  in our bed - the same bed, at the same time -and they might have even been touching, albeit accidentally and not in a way that leaves bruises, my daughter sauntered into the room and draped herself on the bed. With US! Her PARENTS - and her BROTHERS! And after said brothers had hopped away and gotten on with the business of whatever brand of mischief was on the menu for the day, she stayed. For half an hour and talked to us. And listened. To her PARENTS of all people. In a normal and pleasant tone of voice no less. It was wonderful. She didn't even yell at me when I suggested that when she goes away to college she might want to consider toning down her man-hating verbalizations, since not all men are total bleeping lunatics (to put it lightly), her father being a case in point (of a non-lunatic in case that was unclear).

Anyway, I arrived home from shopping to discover that my daughter had asked me to friend her on facebook. In case you didn't get that, the word is FRIEND. F-R-I-E-N-D. As in someone you do not hate. Or at least someone you acknowledge in a friendly manner occasionally at minimum. The problem is, even though as a parent I have always read and heard that we are supposed to friend our kids so we can lurk in the shadows and lecture them about their posts, I have always maintained that the very last people on earth I want trolling my facebook are my kids. My facebook is one long, rambling, TMI session and the TMI is mostly about my kids so I have historically kept them and anyone who might be associated with them decidedly on my stranger list at the very least. I hated to disappoint her, but I informed her at dinner that I would have to think before I could consider friending her. She informed me that it was too late and that I already had. Accidentally. Crap. Now I'll have to un-friend her in order to make this post. And that might arouse some suspicion, but there is no avoiding it. This is a little too much topsy-turvy for someone my age in the space of a day. (Update: I took a break from writing and discovered that she has already begun to comment on my posts. I'll have to give her some time to troll and when the novelty wears off I'll un friend her, put up this post and then friend her again in a couple of days after the post is buried under a few days of my usual drivel. I'll say it was an accident. She'll believe me because she “knows” that I'm totally incompetent.

As a last resort, I could start posting things like “I pooped today” (which is about the only thing I haven't posted yet) and that'll get me unfriended in a heartbeat.

And it doesn't stop there...The other kids are acting weird also.   When I sat down to write this, I had to tune out the third instrument I have heard being practiced today. The third. That means that not one, not two, but all three kids have practiced their instruments today. The instruments that they never play. Ever. At least in earshot of their mother. And Johnny. The one whom his older sister describes as feral, whom I have described as the most demanding and least appreciative of my three children (he has lots of wonderful qualities too), who asks for Nike merchandise repeatedly despite how his siblings lunge at him like junk yard dogs across the dinner table, veritably spitting about sweatshops and hyper-capitalism, said “thank you” after I bought him some clothes today. It had become imperative that I buy him some pants that reached below his calves and shoes that were not full of holes.  When I took in his appearance,  I wished I had thought to stop by Church Street on the way to the store and  parked him on a corner with a tin cup with which to collect some alms. I could have paid cash and avoided using the credit card for the new clothes. Anyway, I digress. On the way home, Johnny said: “thank you, Mom, for buying me some new clothes...and I think I'll try to help around the house more often.” Of course I did not let on that I'm no dummy  and that someone can't help around the house if they are never around the house. Johnny sometimes sleeps in his bed at night and spends the rest of the time at the neighbors on either side of us; an arrangement which eliminates almost all possible opportunities to help at home.  However,  I appreciate the offer.   The thought does count. Quite a lot, actually.

...And...the topper is... that when I got home with the groceries both boys put all the food away after only one martyrish request.

And the sad part is... I had an unusually large number of social obligations this week which caused me to have to be out drinking with my friends last night and the night before. Until 12:30. Um, and Wednesday til 10. As I said, an unusually obligation-heavy week. I can either hit myself over the head in self punishment or lecture myself with guilty phrases, or say “hey, it works for me!” But first I have to spend some time wrapping my head around all this change.

Johnny just whined “ETHAN HIT MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!” Whew. Back to normal.

Nope. Ten minutes have passed and Johnny is out of the shower and asking me to clean his ears and kiss him goodnight and it is only 8:23. Now THAT'S weird.

Shopping Notes

I am sure that nobody really cares what thoughts go through my head whilst I am shopping, and in fact it is probably the epitome of narcissism to even post them, but on the other hand, perhaps you share them and can relate.

Produce Isle: This is where I get to be the mother I always wanted to be - in my mind. I fill the top of the cart with all manner of green. Broccoli, spinach, peppers, beans. I am going to, after seven years of planning, finally make tabouli salad. I have until the parsley I just bought rots to make good on my plan. I know from experience that I have up to three weeks if I'm lucky. I have all kinds of fantasies about making wonderful healthy meals for my family since I have Monday off this week (which is now half over). It is not going to be like those other times, where eventually I slop all the slime from the bottom of the crisper box into the compost and soak the crisper in bleach. This time I'm going to finally embody the pinnacle of perfect motherhood and cook. I am as sure of it as the father who says "I know I haven't called you in a year and a half but I promise that when I get back in-state I'll take you to Disney". Or Russ will cook us great meals like he always does provided he is not working til 1 am.

I progress to the deli. This is where I decide while my ham is being sliced that I am going to get Johnny to quit his pepperoni habit. Next week. Everyone knows that pepperoni is just a gateway drug and can lead to all manner of worse addictions, but heck, he has made himself a pepperoni wrap with cheese five days a week for the whole school year, so another week isn't really going to make a difference. Plus it might make for better relations if he tapers off rather than going cold turkey. And I don't think he likes turkey anyway. So putting off the "you're eating turkey instead of pepperoni" battle makes a lot of sense. It is good parenting to mentally prepare for these kinds of interventions.

On to the meat section. It is at the bottom of all the rest of the aisles and I dread getting near it. I can pretend I don't see it the first couple of times I pass into another aisle, but eventually I have no choice but to face it. DINNER! It's not about how to cook, but what to cook, as my mother always said. But as I peer at the cuts of meat and packages of chicken and wonder what the heck I'm going to do with it once I get home, I try and make myself feel better with the happy fact that at least I don't have to go out and kill it. In fact, that is what I mention to the gentleman next to me who is an acquaintance and has just muttered a polite hello. He says: "what"? And I say: "I said that at least I don't have to go out and kill it, skin it, drag it in, cook it, and all that. You know what I mean?" He laughs weakly and suddenly gets very interested in the turkey burger a few yards away.

Now that I have called Russ three times to ask how to pick out meat to cut up for stew and what else should we make on the nights when we are not buying burgers at the swim meet, I can move on to more important things.

The bread Isle is easy. Back when I was younger I had this idea that I would read labels and try and find bread without high-fructose corn syrup, which, in this country, is harder than you might think. I got around the issue by spotting a very healthy-looking mom with a very healthy looking child in the bread section. I know how to pick-em, because sure enough, she started reading labels while her kid sat patiently in the cart. Must be the lack of sugar that keeps him so calm. Since my toddler was too jumpy for me to even consider stopping to read anything, I just muddled about near the rolls and semi-stalked the woman until she put a loaf of bread in her cart and then I ran over and grabbed a loaf from the same place. That bread is no longer available, but now I have different criteria. If my kids will eat it and it says “natural”, “12 grain” and is even moderately brown I buy it and move on. Plus I never have glasses with me for reading nor the time to wait around for unsuspecting health-conscious mothers to happen on the scene. And they make me feel old and fat by comparison so I'd just as soon skip it.

As I approach the diaper aisle, I muse at how things have changed over the years with respect to the diaper aisle. In my early 20's I looked down it and said: “thank goodness I don't have to go down the diaper aisle yet”. In my late twenties it looked slightly more inviting. In my thirties it was where I spent the majority of my shopping hours, perusing and evaluating what goods to buy for my little treasures. In my 40's I smugly glance and say, “thank goodness I'm done with THAT aisle, with a little wistfulness that I can't deny. Now, approaching 50, there is a tiny thread of dread as I peer down the aisle and the thought occurs to me that I might have to revisit that aisle again in not so many years. The big packages of Depens leer at me, bigger than life as I say to myself “thank goodness I don't have to go down the diaper aisle again. YET.”

I pass rather uneventfully through the frozen section, peering over the pile in the basket every so often to wonder how much it is all going to cost. If it is time to buy chicken “strips” (not the same as chicken nuggets, mind you, because the package says “white meat” and the shape is oblong and not nugget-shaped and it costs $7.95), then I grab it and stuff it as deep as possible in the cart and cover it with vegetables. That way I can tell myself as well as the rest of the shoppers at Hannaford that I am a good mother because I buy good food. If it is baseball season and my cart has too many convenience foods and too few vegetables with which to cover them up, then I casually mention to people I know that it is baseball season and that isn't it terrible that we have to feed our kids (all beef and nitrate-free and make sure to mention that part) hot dogs and rush off to the games. Not that they are in any different predicament than I and in fact I am not peering into their carts so why should I think that they are peering into mine, but that is beside the point.

I would live to hear your shopping thoughts.

Another Concert

Another concert...Two for two in two days.

Russ and I moved mountains. I mean mountains (he moved, I stood by mostly helpless) to put a healthy dinner of chicken breast, quinoa and two vegetables on the table before we rushed off to the BFA concert. As I was rushing out the door to pick up my "baked good" from Food City for the bake sale, the boys asked if they could make chocolate chip cookies while we were gone (oh the irony-couldn't they have made them an hour ago for the bake sale?). First I said "no", then "yes", then "no, okay, yes - do whatever you want as long as you clean the kitchen." I rushed out leaving Russ to bring my dad.

At the concert, by the time I decided where and with whom I was going to sit, I was trotting down the aisle after lights out and had to climb over my dad to take my seat. It took me a while to calm down and sink into the auditorium chair and absorb the music. Shortly, my phone rang and said "HOME' on the screen. I couldn't answer it of course and since I had disturbed everyone in order to sit down I couldn't get back up, emergency or no. So I listened to the BFA band and thought of every possible catastrophe that could have befallen my boys: They blew up the oven or burned the house down. The guy I heard about who is purported to be a fake vacuum salesman and who pushes the person who answers the door into the house and robs them or worse came by and the boys answered the door. Ethan finally killed Johnny or vise versa. I had visions of my gray (years ago they were white) carpets covered in the blood of my babes (it is hard to even write that). I finally decided to text a neighbor, which was difficult because after yesterday's concert, Russ told me about Frank's speech before the show telling what he was going to do to people who were caught texting during the performance. I was late so I didn't get the memo. So when I didn't hear in nanoseconds from the first neighbor, I texted another, and then another to ask them to call the boys and ascertain that they had not been blown up or bludgeoned. As people have lives and perhaps might be busy or not have their phone on, I was tapping my fingers and wondering why I wasn't getting an IMMEDIATE response. Finally one person said she would call. I waited. It didn't occur to me that she might be attending her kid's baseball game and witnessing a great play by her son and not sitting at her kitchen table waiting for me to call with a myriad of emergencies. So at the intermission I jumped over my dad and went to call the boys.

"Hi, Johnny, are you okay?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, why didn't you leave a VOICEMAIL???"
"Because I never leave voicemails."
"Well, what did you call me for in the middle of a concert?"
"We were just wondering if we could have some ovaltine."
"OVALTINE? You called me at a concert to ask if you could have some OVALTINE?
"Yeah. So can we?"
"I thought you were going to make cookies."
"We already made the cookies. Can we have one?"
"I don't care if you raid the LIQUOR CABINET - just don't call me at a concert to ask me first, leaving me with terrible visions of your violent demise..." (NO I did NOT say that, for the record. Should I type that twice just in case you are skimming and call the authorities or decide that you will never ever send your kid over here?)
"Do you know how many people I called to check on you?"
"Yeah. they called us. So can we have a cookie and some Ovaltine?"
"Yes. I gotta go. And the kitchen had better be clean when we get home."

On the way back to the concert I stopped to talk to the French teacher who was working late, and I of course in an attempt not to be rude, I was ignoring all of Russ' texts imploring me to tell him if his boys were alive and well and not at the Emergency room or worse. "Are they okay? Shall I go home??? Hello, HELLO???"
By this time it was past lights out again and I had to make the walk of shame (sound familiar? I make a lot of those) - okay, I just have to jump in here and, pardon the enormous digression - I always have Russ read these posts just in case I'm really screwing up and he pointed out that "the walk of shame" is, well, what you probably think it is. He looked it up in the urban dictionary so I'll just let you find out for yourself (by clinking the link I mean, not by going out and experiencing it - although, hey, don't let me stop you if that is what you really want) - make sure you read the long definition as it is quite funny - I had to convince Russ that I did not write it myself- and after you surf the interned for 20 minutes make sure you can pick up the rest of the sentence that I just so rudely chopped up with all this stuff about walks of shame - and the most important thing is that I clarify that with this new clarification, I have made a very small number of these and not lots - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=walk+of+shame (back to the story here)... and climb back over my dad to enjoy the concert - as much as anyone can who is sitting behind a guy who is holding his ipad in front of one's face so it is not in front of his own.

True Confessions of an Aging Modern Parent

Confessions of an aging modern mom (Alternative title: “A woman has needs”)

I work til 6:20 and am supposed to catch Johnny's baseball game that began at 6 and then go to Ethan's concert, leaving my dad home with a frozen pot pie after the rest of the family has had hot dogs for dinner again. I make a point of mentioning to my dad that it is not the best choice but they are at least nitrate free.

I arrive at the game about ten minutes before I should be at the concert, but since my kid is in the Senior Band I figure that, although it is terribly bad form to show up late, I will have to so I can take in a few minutes of my other son's game while the junior band is playing their numbers. The real reason for stopping in at the game is so I can get some dinner. I am starving. To death, practically. I drank protein shakes all day and am shaking from lack of real nourishment. I march up to the snack bar and purchase a nitrate-laden hot dog and a bag of popcorn. There is no real beer (sadly) so I get the next best thing – a root beer. I sit on some bleachers, take a much-needed breath and sink my teeth into my hot dog, with a bit of aluminum foil for good measure. Ahhh. Finally time to relax and watch a game. My pocket vibrates and I see that Russ is texting me that the orchestra, of which my son is a member, is on first. When I was young, we played ONE instrument, but life was so much simpler in those days. I gobble my hot dog and grab my unopened popcorn and rootbeer (thank goodness the can is still sealed) and rush to the car. Mr. Mehaffie's mantra is that if you are on time you are late, so I arrive at 7pm on the dot and catch the second half of the first number.

I know that no one does this stuff on purpose to shame latecomers, but the door to the gym squeaks extremely loudly and I am glad that I had not waited until between numbers to open it. I see a music stand holding a stack of programs, which I need so that I will know when to run out again, but the stand is in view of all of the onlookers, so I have a short walk of shame to collect it. Late. Another parent squeaks through the door and I show him my program. He gives me a very appreciative look and says a very kind “thank you” and takes it. Not only do I have to again do the walk of shame, even later, to get another program but I also don't want him to feel badly that he has taken my program. I finally pay attention to the music and am delighted to discover that I have a nice clear view of my son. Until I see the high water pants, the ratty sneakers and the outgrown shirt that I thought I had buried in Johnny's drawer so that Ethan doesn't remember he owns it and takes it back or tries to beat up his brother for taking his shirt. And I don't know how he can read music from under that mop of hair he has been asking me to cut or get cut for months. I a, so consumed with his attire that I forget to obsess about the fact that he never ever practices his violin.

Ok, the Orchestra has finished. Time to sneak out before the next band starts and get back to the game. Again, I know that it is terribly bad manners to leave after your kid's performance, but manners or no manners, I just have to get back to my dinner. My stomach is turning inside out. The car reeks deliciously of popcorn but I abstain until I get to the game. I find a place on a little grassy incline, take a bite of popcorn (not worth the wait or the calories) and a sip of my root beer and decide I need some salt. I see the guy whom I almost blew up with the grill on the day of my stint as a snack bar walk by away from the ball field, so I figure it is safe to approach the snack bar. I sprinkle a ton of salt on my popcorn, citing low blood pressure as my license to do so to a woman who couldn't care less and go back to settle back on my little hill for a bit of peace and popcorn. I discover that my root beer has been perched, and, subsequently overturned on the hill and so without any admonishments to myself or angst of any kind, I march to the snack bar to purchase another one. I need something to cut the grease of the popcorn and that is that. On the way back I see someone I know walking by with cupcakes. “Cupcakes!” I scream to myself. “Someone has time, not only to show up at their kid's game, but to show up with cupcakes!” I try to imagine having the time, wherewithal or desire to even think of making cupcakes. I mention this good-naturedly to the woman with the cupcakes who I know is as busy as I am, and she mentions that she doesn't have time either but she got up at 5 am to make them. I digress, as usual. Anyway, this time I sit on some nice flat bleachers and eat and drank. I am only about a third of my way through the bag of popcorn and just barely over the threshold of nausea (which usually takes at least 2/3 of the bag) when I get a text that the Senior Band is starting. I dutifully jump up and rush to the car. The wrong one of course, as I seem to have this propensity to just rush to and open any car that has a color that remotely resembles that of my own, but after whipping it open, letting out a kind of yelp and closing it again, I look around and see that no one is the wiser, so I get into my own car and drive away, narrowly missing my friend's mother who is crossing in front of me (sorry Heather, “narrowly” was a bit of an exaggeration).

I am locked out of the school but a woman sees me on her way out and holds the door open for me. She also accidentally slams it with a sound that rivals a gunshot. However, when the people near the door hear it between music pieces, they look back and see me through the window of the inner door standing there, innocently. I wait for the music to start and sneak in as unobtrusively as possible given the squeaky door. I breathe and watch the rest of the concert in an utter state of relaxation. And indigestion. I see my boy playing music and muse that he is correct, there are a lot of hot girls in the flute section. Not that I am seeing them that way myself, but through the eyes of a 7th grader. And I thought Ethan chose the flute to save me buying one as I have my old one lying around.

When I get back to the car, the kids devour the remnants of my sad little dinner, but I do not care. I have not seen them all day (except from a distance with an air of perceived and projected judgment) and embrace them. Or at least I try.

Going to Church

How I manage to show up at church once in a while, in ten steps or less...1. Become informed that my presence is required at my daughter's confirmation. 2. Decide that I should probably wear something half way decent since the usual attire I wear to drop my kid off at the back door of the church doubles as my pajamas (TMI? sorry). 3. Open the closet. Actually I can skip this step as the folding doors of the closet are wedged open and have been for about ten years by various junk mashed up against them in such a way that renders them permanently open. How convenient. On to step 4. With much effort, extract the most recently bought old lady dress with a vintage of circa 2007, which is not really that old for me. I am usually 20 years behind the times, or even more since I only recently stopped wearing what I call Laura Ingalls Wilder dresses. I only stopped wearing them because they no longer fit. (No wonder the Mennonites used to give me that "eye" when I went anywhere near them.) Anyway, I digress. 5. While trying to wrestle said dress out of the closet, I silently chant: "I hope it fits, I hope it fits, cause God knows what I'm going to wear if it doesn't (the thing is, He does)." 6. Put it on and smile because it does indeed cover my body, even though I had to do a bit of wriggling to get into it (and NO there is no video) and be glad it comes with a loose shirt to go on top. 7. Try and zip it up but realize that the front just doesn't fit right and realize that I have put it on backwards. 8. Go downstairs and ask husband to help get the dress off. Ignore the look of glee and eyebrows raising on his forehead and hope that he doesn't have to get the fire department to help (that actually might make a really interesting video). 9. Thank goodness for a really "with it" husband who saves me from putting the dress on inside out. 10. Smooth out the wrinkles, get a flashlight to search for some decent shoes in the basement and rush out the door... Voila! All in ten steps. Notice I did not say "easy".