Oy! Motherhood.

jesus of the canned corn?

i was running around the grocery store, spreading gossip on the cell phone, when i found myself near the canned corn. and this is what was hanging in front of it:

i'm guessing a leftover from easter? there were at least a dozen more. apparently not a big seller.

also, i have something on the back of my neck that is rapidly increasing in size. i think it's a pimple, like one of those gigantic industrial subcutaneous things, but J says he thinks it's a boil. i'm thinking that it might be something like what i saw on TLC a few nights ago on a show titled Removed. this woman went to costa rica, got bitten by a mosquito, and about six weeks later a giant maggot was pulled out of her head.

i've never been to costa rica, but i do now own a jesus nightlight.

hey, for $1.99 who could pass it up?

good memories for deb

of course there are the usual--the wedding day, the births of my children, etc., but one of my favorite memories ever is of one morning when J brought the boy downstairs to show him how much it had snowed overnight. J said, "look, we had a blizzard!" and the boy, probably 2 1/2 at the time, said, "daddy, that no lizard, that alligator!"

***

i love looking out the back window and seeing the boy's "playground" as he calls it, because even though it was a huge pain in the ass to put up (we built everything from scratch) i remember that being a really great summer. it was soooo hot (okay, not houston hot, but hot for here) and the ground was like cement. i had to dig this humangous pit with only one shovel and i was hot and dirty and sweaty, but it felt so good to be out there moving my body and feeling strong. i was probably in the best shape of my life that summer.

***

i have great memories from culinary school--laughing about things most people wouldn't think were all that funny just because they're more contextual than universal, but one that sort of takes the cake is of the time we were in garde manger kitchen, which is a *cold* kitchen. most of the food prep is cold, but occasionally someone had to use the stove for something minor, like boiling some water. our group had become notorious because we'd been infiltrated by a group of nitwits who confounded the chefs regularly. on the day in question one of the nitwits left a plastic bottle of oil on the flat top. it got hot, the bottle melted, and the oil caught fire, causing the chef to jump up ON the flat top with his rubber soled shoes, which melted upon impact and sent him hurtling backwards onto the floor. no one was seriously hurt. the school didn't burn down, and fortunately for us the fire system didn't even kick in. we were, however, forever more known as the group who set the cold kitchen on fire.

***

finally, i love thinking about how J and i were before kids. how we'd go out in our rowboat to catch fish on the reservoir and end up sunburned and tired, but totally fish-less. or how we'd just jump in the car and drive to nowhere in particular for hours and hours, unconcerned with the minutae of life. how it didn't matter whether we had any money because all we needed was each other. we could fit everything we owned between us in the back of his truck. and ahh, the days of lolling around in bed until well after noon.

so many good things to remember. i could write down good memories for days and days and not be done. thanks, deb, for that assignment.

a very fun site

here's something else for your amusement! you upload a picture of your face and the face recognition software tells you which celebrities you look like. i'm satisfied with all my celebrity sorta lookalikes:

geena davis
candice bergen
bridget fonda
norah jones

i can live with those.

now, if i only had their money. wah.

fancy

okay, so somebody used the word "fancy" in my comments a little bit ago and i can't hear or read that word without remembering a story a friend once told me. now i'm going to hijack it for your entertainment because i love you, my internet peeps.

a friend of mine knew a woman who went to stay with some friends in france or some other even more foreign country. at some point during the trip she found herself in need of a gynecological exam. um, i'm guessing she'd pretty much moved in with her friends, but i'm thinking that's neither here nor there--the point is, she had to have a visit with the cooter doctor. in preparation for her visit she rummaged around through her friend's medicine cabinet and came out with what she thought was feminine deodorant spray. she couldn't be sure because it was labeled, naturally, in french or some other, more foreign language, but she threw caution to the wind and sprayed liberally and confidently. and off she trit-trotted to see the doc.

feeling quite pleased with her feminine freshness she ponied right on up into those stirrups.

the doctor pushed back the sheet and peered quizzically between her legs. in a thick, foreign (perhaps french) accent he said, "hmmm....fancy!" my friend's friend was a bit taken aback, but was in no position to argue. the doctor performed the exam as usual and left the room. before she got dressed she decided to take a look. what she saw was, indeed, quite fancy. you see, that spray she found in the cabinet?

glitter spray.

opening a school

must be a lot like opening any other kind of business, but with *much* more paperwork. piles and piles of paperwork. i opened a chocolate business once, and although there were lots of little things to consider they were mostly about aesthetics. when you're dealing with kids you have to jump through all kinds of hoops. and so, that's the primary reason i've been m.i.a.--lots of hoop jumping. and today i checked my statcounter with one eye closed, afraid to see all the big fat zeros and lo! you're all still checking up on me! you! deserve! a! post!

so, the boy started at his current school three years ago. it was a new school--just 3 years old--and it had taken up residence in a church about ten minutes from our house. i liked the teacher, but more importantly, the boy *loved* her. the second time he met her he ran into her arms as though he'd known her his whole life. that was it. i was sold. although i had been in a montessori preschool myself the whole montessori thing was pretty secondary to me at that point. i was just thrilled that he loved the place and seemed to understand, intuitively, how to exist in the space of that classroom.

the short version of the story is that the school has never experienced healthy growth. all years teachers have been getting paid late or were given bad checks. the money eventually always shows up, but the main teacherhas finally lost her desire to make the school work.

we put our heads together, gathered up that pile of credit cards (seriously, they're like rabbits!) that's been collecting dust off in the corner of my office and set about setting up a school.

most days i am able to skim through my favorite blogs, but the evening hours are filled with work and sometimes even meetings because my new business partner is still teaching at the original school and has three teenagers who must be shuttled from one activity to another well into the darkness of night. between that and my own children's nighttime/bedtime routine, it's usually 8pm before we get a chance to rendezvous.

virtually any night you might find me sitting in the big comfy chair with my laptop, head thrown back, the victim of a sneak sleep attack.

in fact, i feel one coming on now, so for now this is it. i promise, i will be back to write more soon. i refuse to let so much time go by again!

oh, and the boy won a poetry contest. there were over 600 entrants or something. the poem is less like a poem and more like a sentence, but it's cute and i love it. maybe it's an accidental haiku!

i'm alive!

i'm just opening a school with a friend and it's taking up all my time! more about this later. i miss all my bloggy friends :)

the obesity crisis

epidemic? crisis? who cares what it's called. all i know is that no matter how you look at it, things are really getting bad for kids on the fatfront. what the hell is going on? now companies are making "husky" car seats for overweight children. i'm surprised no one thought of it sooner, frankly. and TLC has a new show about transforming the out of control eating habits of children in 13 families. you know, when a crisis becomes a television series it's onto something.

a lot of people pooh pooh all this crisis/epidemic stuff, but obesity in children *is* increasing rapidly. it *is* causing kids all manner of health problems, including type ii diabetes and high blood pressure, both of which have, until now, been most commonly found in older adults. it *is* contagious in the sense that it's being unwittingly passed from person to person at an alarming rate.

kids aren't born knowing how to eat properly. we have to give them the tools to make the right choices. so many parents have no idea what good childhood nutrition is that their kids don't stand a chance. it's really no surprise considering the fact that the vast majority of us were raised on convenience and processed foods. cooking is a dying art and this obesity crisis scares me more than anything Time magazine might put on the cover.

15 miles

i did it! i walked fifteen miles all alone. i have a sunburned face and very sore thighs, but i did it, and when i felt like i could barely walk another step i thought of deb and walked a little faster. if deb can get up and make herself walk every day i can walk those fifteen miles. i was tired when i finished, but felt great about having reached my goal--especially alone. it's a lot harder to walk for 4+ hours when there's no one to talk to. i did take some music, but stupidly forgot to charge the battery in my mp3 player, so it only worked about half the time. that turned out to be fine, though, because i liked having the silence too. the weather was unbelievable here yesterday. i think it nearly hit 70 and the sky was absolutely crystal clear. the water was calm and families emerged for picnics on the beach.

as soon as i got home i gathered everyone up and took them to our favorite beach. the boy flew a kite for about 5 minutes and then dug a deep hole and sat in it. the girl ran, picked up shells, and yelled at unsuspecting seagulls. J sat on the beach and tried to look happy in spite of his scrotal pain. i was very very sore from the walk, but loved being out there. it was the first really great day of the season and i've got sand going all the way up the stairs to prove it.

once again i'm reminded how much i love living here and how lucky we are to be residents of a place that most people only get to visit.

(remind me i said that when i start complaining that it's become impossible to make left turns in oh, about a month or so!)

i know, it's paranoia

and i've said it before, but i really think the other people who live in this house are trying to kill me. next thing you know i'll be running around wearing a tinfoil hat or something.

i'm glad to be taking a 15 mile walk (breast cancer walk training) alone tomorrow. i think i need the silence, all four hours of it.

the kids are up to their usual antics, which is plenty annoying, but now i also have to listen to J's highly detailed scrotum updates. and the constipation and the swelling and "my god, i think they used a scythe to make the cut, it goes all the way across!" the day after the surgery he kept telling me that it was "ugly, reaaaaaaaaallly ugly," and that i wasn't allowed to see it. and the next day everything turned purple. "everything?" i asked. "everything," he said. "the doctor said that would happen." "oh," said i. today he said, "it's swollen to the size of a softball!" "well, shouldn't you call the doctor? i mean, a softball?!" "no, he said this would happen." "he said it would swell to the size of a softball?" "well, no, but he said it would be swollen." "okaaaaaaaay. but softballs are huge. that seems too big. i think you should call the doctor." "no, it will be fine. i think the stitches have stretched out. i guess from the swelling. you know he said the pain and swelling will last a long time--up to six weeks."

good god, really? by the end of this i will definitely be wearing a tinfoil hat. and maybe even tinfoil underpants too.