Word of the day: FESTOON

Hey kids,

You watch Hoarders with me occasionally. You know when they interview the hoarder and he or she says, "Well, I wouldn't really call myself a hoarder. A 'collector' maybe. Yeah, there are a couple rooms in the house that I've let get a bit out of control. But overall, I'm a clean person. I keep the house as clean as the next person." And as the person's talking, the camera cuts to shots of rat droppings on a doll's face, and bloated magazines busting out of a rotted box, and heavy, dusty cobwebs festooning the silverware and the long-dead houseplants.

So maybe we're not THAT bad (I mean, we're as clean as the next person, right?).

But the past couple of months, and in the right light, I could see that cobwebs were slowly taking over everything about a foot above eye-level. But I didn't do a damn thing about it. I guess I was waiting for "The Big Clean-Up" that would magically take place while I was sleeping or at work. The clean-up that would take care of the rest of the house's ills, as well as cobwebs. Even though every time I saw a dusty web flapping lazily in the breeze, my mind's eye flashed on rat droppings and moldering basements (both of which we don't have, btw).

Well, your Nana and Papa will be moving to town, like, TODAY, so this past weekend, we took matters into our own hands and cleaned the damn house.

It didn't take that long. I mean, it's a small house. One evening, after ya'll went to bed, was all it took to de-clutter all your toys AND the front room. I watched a Deadliest Catch marathon while I did it. The next day, a couple hours, TOPS, was all it took to clean the rest of the house. Your daddy did the bathroom and the kitchen and you guys and I did the bedrooms and the other bathroom. Maybe a total of five minutes with the vacuum and a brush is all it took to dispatch the cobwebs.

Jakob, somewhere along the line you became the world's best vacuumer. And that is not just lip service. You actually hit every square inch, and then to my surprise, and without me saying anything, you put on the tube attachment and ran around and did the baseboards. What the WHAT?!??

And THEN! You made out a checklist of a few other things that needed to be done. Which in itself does not surprise me; you live and die by your lists, like your momma. At the bottom of the list -- which included things like "MY ROOM: PUT AWAY 6 THINGS THAT DON'T BELONG" -- were two items:

• Show Dad
• Show Mom

So after you completed the items on your list and checked them off, you showed Dad and me. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT MOTHER BIRTHED YOU, cuz that kind of gumption certainly did NOT come from me.

Even Wavy got in on the fun by putting items where they rightfully belong. I'd hand you a fork from underneath the bed and you'd go and throw it in the sink. You helped me with the cobwebs by making sure the vacuum didn't fall over when I reached up high with the tube attachment.

I remarked to you afterwards, Jakob, that, "Aaaahhhh. Doesn't this feel nice? A clean house?" Then came the knife in the heart: "Yeah, mom! This is great! Why don't we do this every day?" I told you that maybe every day would get a bit tiresome, and you countered with, "Well every week then. Let's do it once a week." I agreed.

I did have to table a few items, for expediency's sake. There are a couple or three boxes of unsorted stuff to sort that were shoved into the backs of closets, the fridge still needs to be cleaned. The garage... well... that's a whole 'nother frightening story. But did I mention that your Nana and Papa will be here with a U-Haul truck TONIGHT? No? Well, some things can wait.

Oh what a horrible mother I am. Forcing you to live in filth and squalor. I'll understand, I guess, when I look out the window one of these days and see the half-dozen 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks lining up in front of the house, courtesy of the both of you and the A&E channel.

Please forgive me, and let's clear an hour or so off of next weekend's calendar to do it again. Love you.

Baking, stewing...

Hey kids,

Sitting here baking sugar cookies and watching salaciously voyeuristic shows on the Discovery Channel. First a show about women with a syndrome that causes them to be sexually aroused 24/7, for years on end. Now yet another show about hoarding. They should change the name of this channel to the Freak Channel.

I plan to embellish these perfectly round sugar cookies similarly to the cupcakes that I'm making for Wavy's birthday, and wrap them up as party favors for her classmates.

Ohmigosh. Now a commercial for the Ronco Pocket Fisherman. It looks virtually unchanged since the days that I had one as a grade-schooler in Panama. Mine was brown and white like this one:



I can't remember if it was an effective fishing device or not, but I am closing my eyes now, and perhaps am seeing one in your near future, Jakob.

...

Nana and Papa, after Papa retired from the Navy, have made careers out of managing things, mostly yacht clubs, living and working on-premises. They haven't done this for some time, but for a 20-year stretch there, they were quite good at it, and I lived a large portion of my formative years on or around boats.

There is a storage facility a few blocks away, maybe about a 10- or 15-minute walk from the house, where my parents store the RV when they are not here. It's maybe a couple of acres where people store RV's, boats, trailers, etc. The current managers live on-site in a cute little house with a yard and garage and an office. For the past few years, whenever my parents stop by to futz with the RV, or take it out for a few weeks, they remind the managers to never hesitate to give them a call if they plan on leaving the job and need someone to replace them.

Well, last Monday, that day finally came. The owners of the facility, rather than the managers, called my parents and said that the current caretakers would be leaving soon, and the vacancy needed to be filled. By December 1. The lady that Papa talked to said she'd like to see a resumé. So that's what I've been doing for the past couple of days, trying to distill my own father's illustrious career into an 8.5x11-inch typewritten page. Especially when more than 25 years worth of it is highly classified and he's not even allowed to tell anyone about it.

Ooops. Just burned a batch. Ah well.

But, I think I did a pretty good job, and I put together a nice cover letter and sent it all out in the post yesterday.

I don't know how these people wouldn't hire them on. I think it's going to be just a matter of days when we all get the news that they will be moving out here, and quickly. Still processing how I feel about this. I haven't lived anywhere near my parents for nearly 22 years.

I'll keep you posted. I should get back to paying more attention to my cookies. Love you both. Sleep tight.

Getting old sucks.... well.... ass. It sucks ass.

Hey kids,

I've never been one for regular doctor checkups. I just go in on an as-needed basis, and since I usually need attention for one thing or another pretty often, I've never made an appointment to get checked out on a "just cuz..." basis.

Well, my doctor wouldn't renew any of my prescriptions unless I came in to get a thorough work-up, which I did a few weeks ago. Fair enough. But one little checkup has spawned a multitude of other things that need attention:

• My first mammogram (the girls are officially pretty healthy)

• An intra-uterine ultrasound (just to get a little glimpse into why I've been having such heavy periods the past couple years, and yes, this is the ultrasound that requires lube and a condom)

• Lots of bloodwork

• An endometrial biopsy (because the ultrasound revealted a cyst in my ovary, which the ob/gyn seems to think is pretty harmless, and because the lining of my uterus is "thicker than normal")

I had the biopsy yesterday. Prior to the appointment, I had made the mistake of googling "endometrial biopsy." Women around the world all seemed to want to chime in on how dreadful it was. "Worse than childbirth!" cried one. "I had never experienced such exquisite pain in my life!" lamented another. Even the ob/gyn, a very nice young lady whom I'd not met before, told me that she hated to perform these on patients the first time she sees them, because they usually never want to see her again, and this is after kicking her in the face or boxing her ears with their inner thighs.

But, fortunately, I was one of the rare few that hardly felt a thing. Speculum, numbing shot in the cervix, into and past the cervix with something sharp and pointy, scrape-y scrape-y, wash it down, swab it with something to stop the bleeding. Done. It actually felt worse once I was home, because there was a bit of residual cramping and spotting. I took the entire day off from work in anticipation of much moaning and groaning and pain and blood, but in actuality, I felt good enough to stop off at Michael's and Borders on the way home. I felt not an ounce of guilt about not going to work yesterday. Especially since there was an emergency message on my phone when I got home, and I wound up working a couple hours anyway.

But I managed to buy a cupcake caddy for Wavy's little in-class birthday get-together next week. I'm hoping to make these over the weekend:



We'll see. But that is neither here nor there....

So anyway, yesterday's doctor visit. I thought it was going to be bad news about the cyst, but the doctor dismissed those fears almost immediately. She was more concerned about my heavy periods, and outlined six different tacks we could take to get them under control, each more outlandish than the last, with the final solution being a hysterectomy. She asked me to think about all the different things she discussed, and we could re-visit them after the biopsy, or I could even schedule another appointment in a week or so to talk about it. At the end of our visit, I finally just asked her, "So besides being a little anemic, and the fact that it's annoying and inconvenient, what is the downside of heavy periods?" She looked a little surprised, but answered, "Well, nothing really. You can just double up on your iron and there really isn't a downside. You absolutely do not have to do anything at all about your heavy periods."

All righty. I think I've made my choice then, Dr. H! Seriously bummed that wasn't on the top of her list of solutions, but the gracious person inside me wants to believe it was just an oversight.

Whoa. Having another little wave of cramps. 36 hours later! Ugh.

Jakob, on most nights that I get home before you guys are asleep, I'll lay with you a while in bed, and ask you to name off two things you did that day. So I guess the least I can do is tell you guys two things about yourselves in this blog post that is supposed to be at least a little bit about you, and not entirely about me.

Jakob:

1) Another tooth fell out this week. You look like a jack-o-lantern. We really haven't done the tooth fairy thing since they've started falling out, and you haven't pushed the issue, so maybe there really *isn't* a tooth fairy?

2) You're a teller and a writer of fabulous stories. Tonight you wrote me a storybook and left it for me on the welcome mat outside the front door. It was about a couple of girls, Lisa and Dana, who took a cross-country trip through Nevada and Utah and back again, admiring the forests and mountains, complete with elaborate drawings.

Wavy:

1) You've decided that you don't like baths anymore, so you take a shower with me every morning when I'm getting ready to go to work. Very efficient and cost-effective, and just a few more precious minutes that I get to spend with you each day.

2) You've recently graduated to buckling yourself into your carseat all by yourself. And pouring the milk on your cereal. And putting away the towels and washcloths straight out of the dryer. The folding part leaves a little bit to be desired, but otherwise, perfecto.



I took this photo of you the other day when we were at the sandwich shop. You were sitting outside, and I was sitting inside. I imagined the two of you someday as grown-ups, meeting up for lunch, just the two of you. Something I can never in a million years imagine your daddy and Aunt L doing. You love each other so much now, and I hope it will always be that way. I mean, that is the way that's supposed to work, isn't it? I have nothing to compare it to. If I had a brother or sister, I'm sure that's how I'd want it to be.

Enough. More soon. There are changes afoot. Good ones, I assure you. Love you both, sleep tight.

Where to start

Hey kids,

The last few months have been hectic. I'm trying to put a positive spin on it and not say they've been AWFULLY FUCKING MISERABLE. Mainly because I want you to grow up with some sense that work and working and being a member of the work force is not sheer hell and something to be avoided. But there you have it. I'm not happy.

What was presented to me as an opportunity for a pleasant sideways shift in the company has turned out to be the invitation to dwell on the lowest rung of hell. Suffice it to say that it's just lots and lots more work, and whereas I am used to working by myself and self-sufficiently for years now, I now have to work with a team, which has its good sides and bad. The hours are the worst of it. Most weekdays, I go in late morning-noonish, and am lucky to be home by 9. I also work Saturdays. Yes, if you do the math, that is six days a week, with more than a few days where you are both gone to school before I get up in the morning, and asleep when I get home at night.

That's really about all I can say about it, without going over the deep end and dissolving in a puddle. So I'll leave it at that. It's hard to complain to anybody, because so many of my friends are either unemployed or under-employed, or right there in the trenches with me. So poor me, suffering in silence, except those times late at night, on the road home, exhausted, when I sob uncontrollably.

A bright spot: I took the week off last week because I'm maxed out on my vacation hours and didn't want to start losing them. Not a lot of money to go anywhere, so I mostly just did what I've been meaning to do since you guys started school, which is attend your classes and see what the hell you two do all day. Plus you both had Halloween parties, so I helped out with those as well. The week went by much too quickly, and my to-do list for the week went largely ignored. But I got to spend oodles of time with you both and I think you began to remember who your momma is. Going back to work the next week was torture.



What did we do this weekend. Yesterday we went to what was billed in the paper as a "Day of the Dead Festival" at the Nevada State Museum. It was a nice excuse to re-visit the quaint museum, with its antique slot machine exhibit, the random collections of dolls, buttons, tea services and money-printing paraphernalia. But the festival itself took place in just a couple of different rooms, with storytelling and some kind of audio-visual presentation in one room and crafts in the other. Very little signage, which just SETS ME OFF, cuz as a designer, I think everything should have pretty signs and logos and graphical stories pasted on it. But I digress. We had a great time decorating sugar skulls, and piecing together little Day of the Dead dolls and making crepe-paper flowers. But where was the food? And the dancing? And people shouting YIP YIP YIP! The Channel 4 news crew drove up right as we were leaving the parking lot, and Jakob, media whore that you are, started crying because I didn't turn around and go back so that you could be on tv.

Today we saw the Megamind movie. Well, not before some total sturm und drang. Call it a teachable moment, call it tough love, call it "momma going batshit crazy on your asses." But Jakob, you were not listening to me as we pulled into the movie theater parking lot. In fact, you were NOT listening to me, and then laughing about not listening to me, and then teasing your sister. So I flipped a bitch and drove straight back out of the parking lot and back through town and then home, Wavy sobbing indignantly the entire time, and you making mad faces at me in the rearview mirror. First demanding that I turn around and go back, and then pleading and apologizing, then finally realizing that I was indeed not going to go back. We pulled into the driveway as I gave you an earful and made you feel terrible. Wavy was miserable, and for that, sweetie, I heartily apologize.

The only reason that we actually went back was because I myself really really wanted to see the movie, and because we were so early the first time that we pulled up to the theater that we actually had time for me to drive us all the way home to sit in the driveway for a bit, but still get us back to the movie on time. You both were perfectly behaved for the remainder of the day's errands and chores. Mostly.

So there ya have it. I couldn't possibly relate everything since the last time I blogged, but it's a start. Love you both, sleep tight.