That last post was so whiny. I don’t have much to say right now, but at least I’ll attempt to say something nice!! (Grocery shopping continues to be a huge pain around here, though...)

Big news around here is that we’re making J’s transition into the “big-girl” room this weekend. I’m painting tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be able to pull it all together and get a bed and have the whole thing done with. I began to realize that if we didn’t manage to pull it off this weekend it likely won’t happen this summer. How’s that for depressing? Anyway, I’ve done my best to prepare her for the change. She’s not one to manage big changes very well, particularly if she perceives that she’s being prodded along in making the change. She’ll be picking out her own bedding (and I realize that she may well try to choose dinosaurs or dump trucks or neon-pink princess warriors...), and I’ve chosen a painting scheme to truly turn the nursery into her very own space.

And about that...I’m a little sad, honestly, although I’m ready to say goodbye to the green walls and Noah’s ark. It’s just a little hard to swallow that I painted that room for A six (!!!) years ago, and now we will not be needing a nursery ever again. I was just saying that I love the kids at their current ages. It really is wonderful to see them growing up. I just wish they could do that without, you know, growing up.

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This summer I have realized how absolutely much I love making lunch for my kids. When I used to be here by myself, I wouldn’t give lunch a thought, and oftentimes would go without. But I find it simply lovely that children need that break and mid-day nourishment. I love sitting down to lunch with them, and I love the challenge of putting together colorful lunches of foods they enjoy. Oddly enough, I find myself thinking more about a balanced meal at lunch time more so than at dinner. That’s not to say that they don’t eat their fair share of PB&J. But I like that it’s PB&J made by me, in the way that I know they like it, and balanced with some other, more nutritious things alongside. It’s one of the most satisfying things I do all summer.

To the Lady Who Bagged my Stuff at WalMart:

All right, dumbass. Strawberries are fragile. They do NOT belong UNDERNEATH 8 ears of corn. Yes, I realize that the strawberries were not of the freshest variety, but they were the best that your store can seem to stock. So I paid my ridiculous per-pound price and took them because I need them for a recipe.

I hate your plastic bags. They do not stand up and keep my items contained in the back of the car. I really, really hate your plastic bags when you over-stuff them so that when I go to unload my groceries from the back of the car, the bags split open and my not-so-fresh strawberries go spilling all over the street in front of my house.

Bread is even more fragile than strawberries, and I have particular people in my household who do not wish to eat the bread that was squished nearly flat because you put it in the same bag as my apples. Seriously. What were you thinking?

I hate shopping at your store. I hate it that I come to your store to purchase mega-packs of diapers and baby wipes and cosmetics and bathroom “stuff” because your store sells it cheaper than the other grocery store here in town. I hate it that I don’t have it in me to drag my children into and out of two different stores every single time I need to do the weekly grocery shopping. So it is likely that I will continue to patronize your institutionally gray aisles even though I feel a moral quandary every time I do so. Because at some point I may decide that the convenience you offer in the ability to purchase facial cleanser, storage totes, and cottage cheese all in one stop really isn’t worth the complete and total frustration I feel every time you uncaringly mismatch my purchases into your worthless little plastic bags.

Would you please go through your produce section there at your store and rid it of everything that has clearly passed its prime? From what I saw today, you could remove all of the napa cabbage, most of the apples, several heads of cauliflower, and a few crates of nectarines. For those of us who try to feed our families well and would like to take advantage of the abundance of summer produce, it’s highly irritating to have to pick through piles of brown, smushy fruits and vegetables to find the least tainted in the bunch for which to pay way too much.

It’s too frustrating to go on. I’ll stop here and kindly ask that the next time...you allow me to bag my own stuff. Because strawberries covered with street grime aren’t very tasty, and squished bread makes the most unattractive toast.

The 5- hour, 9-hour trip

I just returned from a bachelorette party for my dear friend. It was held at her home, which is about 5 hours from where I live. There were so many things about this weekend that made me realize my age, like that I’ve been married nearly 9 years, I have two children, I’ve known my girlfriend - the bride - for fourteen years (because that’s when we started college, impossibly!), that I’ve had a driver’s license for (OMG) sixteen years (exactly half of my life), and that I can no longer stay out past midnight and be coherent, fun, and awake.

We had such a great time. It was so much fun to be in the company of the friends of my friend. They’re women that I almost felt that I knew through the stories that have been told by my friend to me, and they all commented that they felt the same way. In a sense it was as if old kindred souls were meeting for the first time to celebrate the one thing we have in common - our friend who will be marrying in a few weeks. There were women there from every facet and phase of her life - childhood, school, college, graduate school, working. It was strangely empowering and truly beautiful to be a part of this group.

Tonight I am tired from the drive home - a five-hour trip that took just over nine hours - and from the late night last night. I will go and rest in anticipation of the week ahead (doctor visits, storyhours, laundry, cleaning, playgroup).

We’re full-on into week 2 of summer break. Week 2, and I have but 7 left before I go back to work for the school year. Something about that seems ridiculously unfair.

Last year I was so apprehensive about being home with the kids. J was so young and not so much into playing on her own or with her brother (that came about over the winter). A was independent, but not as much as he is now, what with his reading, computer games, bike-riding, and ability to operate the DVR (let me digress here for a moment. D purchased the DVR over the winter. I imagine that his original intent was to be able to record the old movies he loves to watch, or to save old sitcoms... and it did come in rather handy with Dancing with the Stars and American Idol... Well. I flipped through our saved list today. At 84% capacity full, there is not a single program for grown-ups saved. It’s all Big Comfy Couch, Grossology, Popular Mechanics for Kids (yes, we breed them geeky around here), and a couple kids’ movies.).

Anyway.

Today was really the first day we didn’t have a whole lot planned. I had a quick appointment in the early afternoon, but knew it wouldn’t take long. So we took off to the movies this afternoon (J’s first time). It was fun, if not so relaxing. I realized that it’s nice to just have the time to be patient with their whims and to give a little more than I feel I can when I’m working all day long. I even notice things about them that I hadn’t really paid all that much attention to...like J’s chubby little upper arms that call to mind her baby days even as her body grows taller and more lean, and A’s sprinkling of freckles right across the bridge of his nose and under his eyes, precisely where my freckles would come out each summer when I was his age. It’s not that I let these little things completely pass me by, but something about the long days of summer and the stretch of hours that we spend together each day brings a heightened awareness of their kid-ness.

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J was on the phone with my mother the other night. Completely out of the blue and unprovoked, she yelled “DOG FART!!” into the phone. Mom asked her to repeat what she had just said (as I’m peeing my pants), and she gets her little sing-songy voice on and said, “A is a fart-dog. A is a fart-dog...” After we hung up, I turned to D and asked him why kids do things like that...you know, pick some offensive word to use only on the phone with a grandparent... And J piped up as if to answer my question, “ ’Cause! Mimi is a grand-fart!”

She is so going to get suspended from preschool.

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A’s favorite pastime these days is taking the dog out for short runs around our backyard. In the event that the dog has to #2, A stops in his tracks and crouches down to get an eye-to-rear view of the action. It’s pretty funny.

Last night he came tearing into the kitchen to tell me that “There’s something interesting about Annie’s poop. Uh...it has corn in it.”

This is a child who seemingly doesn’t notice when a whole flipping container of Legos is strewn across his bedroom floor, but now he’s keenly interested in and aware of our canine’s bowel habits.

We celebrated Father’s Day around here today. It was fun...D got his long-awaited new GPS (ugh...so incredibly geeky. But useful!) and I was afforded the opportunity to take a THREE-HOUR nap this afternoon!! It was 10-ways fabulous. I made a good dinner, complete with homemade strawberry pie, and then we made use of the new GPS on a ride out in the country. I love summer.

This Father’s Day I’m feeling an acute sense of loss. Since D’s dad died in February, we had no grandfathers to honor and celebrate today. This is the 12th Father’s Day that I spent remembering my own dad rather than celebrating with him in person, so I suppose that sense of loss has grown more dull over the years. I still miss him, perhaps even more so now that I have children of my own who will never know him, but I grieve more quietly now, and I try to make my every memory a positive one. When the kids and I went to the store and picked out our cards for D, I was nearly overcome in the checkout line with the urge to weep. I realized that we were buying one less card this year. And one less card means two grandfathers that my children will never really know. It seems a little unfair, if you ask me. It’s one thing that D and I are living without our dads now, but we were fortunate to have them into our adulthoods, and each was able to see their youngest child either achieve their success or get well on her way to it. I wish that they could see our children into their adult lives. As much joy as I take in dreaming about the future of my children and where their lives will take them...how much good they will do in the world...how much joy they will bring to D and me... I know it pales in comparison to the joy their grandfathers would feel.

So today we celebrate D... and remember our own fathers... and enjoy the things they would enjoy if they were here to celebrate with us. The strawberry pie, the long country drive, and the children who make them fathers and grandfathers in the first place.

The Joys of Small Town Life

Our little town’s annual festival is happening this weekend. A is over the moon and every.other.sentence. out of his mouth is about going (!) downtown (!) and riding(!) rides(!). (This is where I would normally berate those parents who would actually let their children ride on portable fair-carnival rides, but that’s another of those words from my pre-parenting days that I swallowed long ago...)

The whole festival (truly) is centered around music, so there is a main stage set up right in the center of town. We usually end up there at the end of our riding extravaganza. Tonight as we were sitting there trying really hard not to listen to A ask for the umpteen-millionth time if he could just pleeeeeeeeeeeeease get a candy apple, our mailman stopped to talk to friends of ours sitting a few yards away from where we were. D told A to run over and tell Mr. Tony, our mailman, that “his head looked OK.” (Without breaking HIPPAA regulations, it appears he had a big lapse in memory not long ago. D sent him for some tests, and all appears to be well.).

So A went over and relayed the prognostic message and went on to ask if Mr. Tony would buy him a candy apple. Mr. Tony not only bought A a candy apple, but he got him some sort of crazy balloon animal hat thing, and he got a bag of cotton candy for J. I chuckled to myself, thinking that only in this charmed little small town life would I ever consider allowing my son to walk away with an adult to whom he is not related and never think twice about his safety.

However, I’m still trying to think of some sort of proper repayment for the mailman, since our kids bounced all the way home on their sugar rush...

What is it with big sunglasses? I’m just wondering. Because right about now, I think they’re the world’s most ridiculous fashion trend.

I mean fine, if you want to look all Nicole Richie, go ahead.

Just pay no attention when I snicker at you.

Ten Years

It really kind of freaks me out to realize I’ve been out of college for ten years. Because, seriously, how did that happen?

I have my 10-year college reunion this weekend, and I.CAN’T.WAIT. My girlfriends and I have been emailing and planning and anticipating for several weeks now, and I know when the time comes the weekend is going to fly by.

Here are a few statistics for what has happened to my 4 closest girlfriends and me since we left college:

4 husbands, one fiance
7 kids, one on the way
4 master’s degrees
at least 7 moves that I can think of, one overseas
somewhere around 11 jobs

That probably about covers it.

Pizza is on its way to our house. I just mowed the grass. 2 more days of school. Life is pretty darn awesome.

5 More Days

I officially have but one work week left before summer. It’s a good thing...the kids (at school, not my own so much) are a little stir crazy and out of control. It doesn’t help that the last day in one of my districts was supposed to be last Friday, and in the other district it was supposed to be today. Right about now the fact that I had pretty much the whole month of February off doesn’t really make me feel better about still working.

My preschoolers don’t really seem to “get” the end of the school year like older students and the other teachers do. I guess time is just different to them. But every year at this time (even before I worked in the schools), I have a little bit of that end-of-the-year giddiness that I always used to get at the end of each school year.

Not so much now. I’m really looking forward to the summer with my kids, when the main goals we will attempt to accomplish revolve around getting J potty-trained and out of her crib, and teaching A to tie his shoes. I also have a couple quilts to make, and the entire summer will wind down with our vacation to MI. But getting through this last week is going to be no small feat. I have meetings scheduled every.single.day, a new student added on, and the prospect of cleaning up and leaving files in one district to which I won’t be returning next year.

It’s not giddy time around here. Frankly, I’m a little stressed out.

Overheard

A was talking to his grandmother tonight on the phone. They’re making plans for next weekend, when A & J will be staying with her so that D & I can attend my college reunion.

A: It’ll be so fun to bring our dog.
D: A, you can’t take the dog.
A: Mimi, Dad says we can’t bring the dog. But we can bring J!