why we're here

A friend of mine wrote this little entry on trials today and I found it to be absolutely lovely, check it out here.

hypermiling

This is Tymon's truck. It is a 1999 Toyota Tacoma. It has about 30,000 miles on it. It gets 17 miles to the gallon. The last time we bought gas for this truck was May 23. Awesome, right? How did we accomplish such a feat you ask? Ty has been biking to work. It' s only three miles from our house. That was part of the reason we were looking in this neighborhood,because we wanted him to be able to bike when weather permitted. We lived here almost a year before he ever rode his bike. We never got around to getting it tuned up and the roads were not so great for biking. When gas prices got close to $4 a gallon Ty decided it was time to give it a try. It gas been so good for him. He gets a little exercise every day, a little sunshine, it's a stress reliever and I think he likes how the other guys at work think he's crazy to do it. Today it's raining cats. The gas tank is empty so he drove to work and stopped at the gas station on the way. I know he didn't want to do it- he's been putting it off for days. Who knows, maybe this tank will last until Halloween. Is it wrong to be a little grateful for a gas hike that finally motivated us to do what we should have been doing all along?

torpedoed

Yesterday we took the boys swimming. Lately Tommy and his little friends have been really into these little toy torpedoes that you zoom through the water and then have to dive to retrieve from the bottom. As we walked out to the car Tommy had one in each hand. As Ty helped him with his seat belt he noticed that he was only holding one. "Where is your torpedo?"he asked. Tommy replies, "Right here." And then reaches into his swim trunks and pulls out the missing toy. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

lost

Dear Aunt Cassi,

Do you remember the little toy train I left at your house in May, the train my Mommy got for $5 at the train museum, the train I haven't mentioned in two months? I really need it now. I have frantically searched all my belongings and was very worried until Mommy reminded me that it was at your house. If you could mail it too me very soon, I would be oh so grateful. I am lost without it.

Yours truly,

Tommy

social climber

Today I lost my baby. Only for a minute. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes as Johnny crawled around the first floor. Both set of stairs are responsibly gated at the top. It's impossible to gate my main staircase at the bottom due to the shape of my banister. This worked just fine until today. All of the sudden I heard the upstairs gate close. Tommy was upstairs, supposedly sleeping. Obviously he was out of bed. I ran up to check on him but he was fast asleep. I went downstairs and it was suspiciously quiet. I couldn't find the baby anywhere on the first floor. I called for him thinking he was underneath something. Nope. He poked his head out of his bedroom, grinning (his bedroom is UPSTAIRS). He had climbed all nineteen stairs and then closed the open gate behind him. I have spent the rest of my day plucking the baby from various stairs, because, of course he can only go up. He has already fallen down several stairs before I could grab him. I foresee the next few weeks being a little tricky. Super.

slimed

Johnny is a wonderful, smiley baby. He hardly ever cries. Lately we have been dealing with recurrent ear infections and he is so pleasant about it that by the time I can tell that he is sick they are terrible. I have only one complaint about this lovely child- he is constantly covered in goo. Along with the ear infections comes a nose that runs like a faucet. And you know how all the baby books say that the spit-up goes away at about six months? Johnny has not read these books and still produces large amounts of the stuff every day. Now that he eats table food it comes in bright colors and with chunks. He is also really attracted to anything yucky, any liquid that gets spilled must be cleaned up at hyper speed because he is crawling towards it as fast as his little limbs can carry him. If he gets there before you, he will be covered in the stuff in mere seconds. The attached photo is evidence. He got a hold of the plate Tommy was using to finger paint. I saw him go for it and was running towards him before he even touched it. This is what he accomplished in the 2 seconds it took me to get across the room. He will even play in his own spit-up. EEEWWW! I had these really cute bibs made to help with the spit-up. They lasted about a month. He simply refuses to spit- up only on the bib. He gets his whole outfit, whether or not he is wearing a bib. After a while I gave up on them- it was just more laundry. I have resorted to letting him be naked whenever socially acceptable. I am tired of my beautiful baby always smelling of vomit, I am tired of always smelling of vomit. I want to clean my carpets and not have to pull out the Spot Bot for at least two weeks. I want to put an adorable outfit on John and have it not end up covered in yuck by the time I strap him in the car seat to go wherever it is we are headed. He actually spit-up in one of my favorite purses last week. Gross. I will be sad for lots of the baby things that go away all too quickly, I will not be sad when this goes away.

anniversary

The last few weeks I have been feeling very productive. I have done all sorts of large projects around the house. I have done lots of work in the baby's room, repainted furniture, framed photos, chosen and hung art and mirrors, and lots of other little details around the house. Today I was repainting my deacons' bench. On order to do so I needed to empty it out. I received the bench as a gift from my grandmother when I graduated from college and since then it has been home to memorabilia from that time. I haven't gone through it very often. As I piled my counter with yearbooks and officer sweaters from Dixie College I came across a diary I wrote over the two years I spent there. I am not great at diaries. I start keeping them all the time and eventually stop. Let's face it- this blog is probably the closest I will ever get. I had no memory of writing this one. Apparently I kept it relatively regularly for most of those two years. As I flipped through I found the story of meeting and falling in love with my husband. I wrote about first meeting him all the way through our engagement. I was very young and naive. I was a goofball but it was heartwarming and wonderful to read about that heady time and about all our hopes and dreams. Our life together has been much more than either of us would have ever guessed. I can't imagine life without him. He is my partner and companion in all things. His is the only opinion that I value as much as my own. He is my best friend and lover. He supports me in anything I want to do and never questions my ability to accomplish anything I set out to do. He has complete faith and trust in me and I in him. He is a wonderful father and strives to always put our family first. At twenty I had no idea how the decision I was making would shape the rest of my life. Today, we have been married for eleven years. I remember our wedding day as a fuzzy sort of dream. It's interesting that my whole life before my wedding it was a dream, a day that you thought about like a fairy tale and how afterwards it retreated to the same sort of a place in my memory. It was only one day. It was the day that brought me to today. To a house full of my beloved boys, and the beloved man who takes the journey with me. And holds my hand along the way.

hippie

"Mom, you need to wash my hair every day or else it will turn green." Mom says, " That's silly, who has green hair?" Reply? "The stinky hippies, we don't want to be a stinky hippie."

off to the races

Today my pathology report came back. All clear. Woo-hoo! In celebration of being healthy I have decided to run the Wichita Marathon in October. It's relatively soon and I will have to train hard. That's why I am writing to tell all of you about my plan. They say that if you write a goal down you are more likely to accomplish it. They also say telling your friends increases your chances of success. This way I am killing two birds with one stone. So, I need all of you to insist that I be tough and not slack off. I am really excited and really nervous but I think if I can get this first one out of the way then the next won't be so intimidating. Right now my legs are quivering just thinking about it.

frivolous

So after reading all my entries I have realized that I write about shoes more than most. Just for fun I have started a blog devoted entirely to shoes. We will have themes each week, a shoe every day and the extra special shoe of the week, as well as history, commentary and analysis. I know that this is completely and utterly frivolous but it makes me smile so I hope you will all check it out.

http://shoeshines.blogspot.com/

out, damn spot!

Today, I am lopsided. I know that most women are slightly but lopsided but this is not slight. It's kind of silly, one regular boob and one porno boob. Yesterday I had surgery to remove my lump. It was low-key and outpatient. Everyone was super nice. Today I am very sore. I have what I consider to be a giant incision and last night I spent some quality time vomiting from my pain meds. But I feel better, a lot better. It's out of my body and the doc says that once she actually saw the lump she was much less concerned. It didn't look like anything to worry about. They will still biopsy, just to be sure, but I already feel better. I feel icky and achy and sore but all better, nonetheless. Apparently I am more resilient than I thought. More optimistic. Who knew surgery could be so cathartic?

strong

This morning I went running. When I dressed for the day I wore unnecessarily fancy shoes. On the way to my appointment I listened to my favorite girl rock and sang along at the top of my voice. These are all things that make me feel strong. None of them made the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach go away. My doctor came in and said that they were pretty sure the lump was benign, that it was a sort of scar tissue that occasionally forms a lump and that, just to be safe, she would recommend we remove it. I had planned on this, I wanted it. I want that thing out of my body, benign or not. But all this relatively good news didn't make the sick feeling go away. I called Ty to let him know and the prospect of this minor, outpatient surgery had his voice cracking on the phone. I thought when they told me that everything was fine I would go back to feeling fine, too. I still feel frail and vulnerable. I want to go back to that place where I was sure that bad things only happened to other people. I am safe for today and immeasurably grateful for that fact, but I miss my illusions. Nobody is safe for ever and life doesn't usually last as long as we wish it would and we all have so much to lose. How do we grab on to what we have? How do I not miss out on what ever time I have whether it be a day or fifty years. How do I make sure that I don't miss anything? How do I get back to feeling strong?

gratitude

Thanks for all the kind words. It's remarkable how everything is a little less scary in the light of day. I feel a little sheepish about my dramatics but I am so grateful for the rock solid support I receive from our little community. Everything will be fine because I have people to keep my head above water when I feel like it's a little too deep. Thank you.

vanity

Today was Tommy's first day at Zoo day camp. We, of course, were running late. As we pulled out of the neighborhood I noticed that I had forgotten to put gel in Tommy's hair and stupidly commented on it. "But Mom, if you don't put spikes in my hair I will be sad!" I had to stop at a Walgreens on the way and purchase gel. I just couldn't take him to his first day of camp feeling 'sad'.

obsessed

I wasn't going to write this post today. I was going to wait until Wednesday, but I can't stop thinking about it. Two weeks ago I found a lump in my breast. I had one eight years ago as well. That one turned out to be a harmless fibroid and eventually went away all by itself. When I went to the doctor and eventually a surgeon to have that one tested I didn't really worry about it too much. It never occurred to me at the time that it could be anything really scary. After all, I was twenty-three years old and seemingly, invincible. This time should be even less scary having been through the process before. It's terrifying. Maybe I'm more dramatic than I used to be, maybe I let my imagination get carried away a little more due to high levels of exposure to small children, or maybe this time it's that I finally recognized my own fragility. Logically I understand that most likely this lump is the same kind of fibroid I had last time and therefore, nothing. I know that the chances of a woman of my age and health history gettin a cancer diagnosis are terribly unlikely. I know that my breast surgeon told me while performing my biopsy that she really didn't see anything she was worried about but that we needed to be sure. I sat in the exam room knowing that in that same room young, healthy women had received really awful news. Why shouldn't it be me? I take really good care of myself, I eat well, I exercise, I take vitamins and all those things make me feel like I have control over my health. None of those things make any difference in that office. I love my husband, my boys, my family, my friends, my body, my life. So much to lose. I have another appointment this Wednesday and I know my doctor will tell me it was nothing to worry about. She may even remove the lump just to be safe, but that's a minor office procedure nowadays. I know that this will be blip in the span of my life. I know that everything will be fine. I hope.

if it talks like a cowboy...

We do not live in "the south". We live in Kansas. Kansas is sort of south-ish. People are really nice and weddings are a big deal, but cotillions and mint juleps are few and far between. For the most part, people here do not have much of an accent unless they are from a small town on the Oklahoma border or the like. Even the Oklahoma accent is relatively understated. Neither my husband or I have a distinct accent. I know this because I had some relatively exhaustive accent training earlier in my life. Tommy has started adding syllables. Yeah is yay-uh. (Of course I'd prefer yes, but he's only three) and anything with that same sound has the same extra syllable. Where did this come from?! He does not know anyone who speaks like that. He sounds like a good old boy from East Texas or something. I don't want to make a big deal out of it because then he will realize that it's funny and he will never stop so for the time being I just repeat whatever he said, correctly. In the meantime maybe I should buy him a ten-gallon hat because he sounds like he should be wearing one.