Happy Halloween!! No pictures of the kids in their costumes yet, but here's one of Spots frolicking in the pumpkins.
(By the way, has there ever been a more gloriously unnecessary feature than Snapfish's Red Eye Before/After button? Nothing funnier than clicking it and watching your loved one's eyes intermittently glow red. It's more like a Before/After the Exorcism button.)
It's been just about a year since we became guinea pig owners (I KNOW. I can't believe we've kept them alive this long either.) and we debated long and hard on how to best celebrate. We finally came up with the perfect solution. Usually, the bedding in their cage is a mixture of aspen and paper litter. We toss handfuls of Timothy hay in there every day as it is key for their little digestive process. In general, the cage looks like this. To mark this special occasion, we decided to fill their entire cage with Timothy hay. It would sort of be like you filling your entire bedroom waist deep in peanut M&Ms.
Here's Spots in the hay.
Such a camera whore, that one. We'll have to add that to her list of nicknames. (Which include: Spotty, Potty, Spotster, Spaz, Spazzy, Spottykins, Spotarama, Pottykins, Spotty Pig, and The Pig Who Does The Spot Trot.)
They loved the hay. They climbed all around, then burrowed into it. Eventually they even made a little tunnel. Here's Spots, cleverly camouflaged.
Is that cute or what? Here's her little Spotster Bum sticking out of the hay.
And check out how good Emma (aka Emmers, Emma-coo, Emma-cootiepie, Emmykins, Hem-Hem, Fatty-coo, Fatty Pig, Fatty Fat Fat, Tiny Bison, Sweet-Tooth Pig, Chubby Pig, Chocolate Bar) looks! Not tilty at all!
Thursday night we went to our school's Halloween Carnival. Juliana won a round of the Cake Walk which meant that she got to choose from a selection of store-bought cakes. (For health reasons we aren't allowed to bring in homemade baked goods to the school.) She chose for her prize a small 4-inch cake frosted in the brightest of green and decorated to look like Frankenstein. She was so proud that she cradled that cake in her arms all around the carnival for the next hour. I didn't have my camera with me that night, so I made sure to take pictures of her eating it the next day. Her friend Shannon had spent the night so we all dug in for a mid-morning snack. (You can see David pouting in the background as he hadn't finished cleaning the guinea pig cage.)
As she'd been so cute carrying it around the night before, I tried to re-create that missed photo opportunity by having her hold it with the uncut side facing out. Cleverly, I neglected to ensure that the dome was attached tightly to the cake plate.
But no worries here! We just turned the upside down dome into a bowl and ate it like that!
Much face-scrubbing and tooth-brushing followed.
For lunch that day, we'd been invited to a birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese type place. Juliana ate three slices of pizza, drank two glasses of root beer and had a piece of birthday cake. After lunch she told me that she felt cold, but quickly decided to go on a little ride called The Frog Jumper. After that she just wanted to sit on my lap for awhile. She perked up and ventured into the play structure, but soon came flying out asking me to take her to the bathroom. She went up the stairs like a shot and by the time I followed her into the bathroom, she was already in a stall. I called in to see how she was doing and she burst into sobs saying, "I think I have diarrhea and it's.....it's.....it's.....GREEN!"
In retrospect, I learned that perhaps filling my child full of crap then letting her ride anything with "Jumper" in the name isn't the best idea. (And yes, I am QUITE aware that it all could've come out the other end and been a lot worse.)
Even more importantly I learned that despite spending a number of hours in her digestive tract, that green frosting didn't lose even the slightest bit of intensity. God knows you can't get that same sort of craftsmanship from something home-made.
If you listen to any sort of mainstream radio, you've probably heard
the Rihanna song Umbrella. I don't mind Rihanna (they play a lot of
her songs on Radio Disney--which reminds me--nobody Named That Tune on
my birthday post!) but Umbrella was always just a big whatever to me.
Here's a link to it.
Then one of our local radio stations started playing an acoustic
version of it by Marie Digby that showed up on her Myspace page and
then Youtube. (Yes, I know it was a little controversial because
people thought she was an unknown and she turned out to be an unknown
with a recording contract.)
Here's a link to her video. I can't even tell you how much I love this version of the song.
Last week, every meteorologist in the state put
the fear of God into us by forecasting a horrendous wind and rain storm
for Thursday. All day long people talked about nothing but the impending storm.
We took in our patio umbrella and I made sure to have batteries for the
flashlights. The forecasters kept pushing back the start time of the
storm. Juliana's coach (aka Ritu) canceled soccer practice in
anticipation of nasty conditions. What we finally ended up getting was
a big fat lot of nothing. It rained, sure, and it was a bit breezy,
but really there was nothing to write home about. I mention this
because our forecasters have reached a new level of misinformation this
fall and I've pretty much given up on believing the weather. (For the record, the newspaper on Saturday forecasted "Spotty Showers".)
Saturday
morning my alarm went off at 6:30 and I woke to the
sound of torrential rainfall. David had an early game and
Ritu was working all weekend so Juliana and I were on soccer duty. We loaded into the van around 7:45. I found myself pulling my glasses
out of my purse. Those would be the glasses I use for night driving.
The rain was still falling hard and the temperature read 44 degrees.
Puddles of water covered the highway and traffic moved slowly. The
game was at a field we hadn't traveled to before and I busied myself
with finding the way. I warned David that Juliana and I might stay in
the van and watch from there, but it turned out the parking lot was
down the hill from the actual field, so that idea had to be discarded.
The team warms up for 45 minutes before the game starts. The rain was
coming down even harder, so I sent David up the hill to the field armed
with his backpack and an umbrella. Juliana and I stayed in the van for
20 minutes or so, but the rain started to ease and I needed a bathroom,
so we set out to walk around a bit. Juliana enjoyed watching the
rainwater course down the sidewalk like a river. She pranced around with
her umbrella and informed me that Winnie the Pooh can turn an umbrella
upside down and sail in it like a boat.
Now, we are no strangers to rain. Soccer games are not canceled for
anything other than lightning. David has been playing since he was 4
years old. I've been standing out in the rain since he was four years
old. There is a Rain Hierarchy for parent spectators. Basic Rain
means you wear your jacket that has a hood. People around here don't
bother much with umbrellas because there is no sense in tying up one
hand with umbrella-holding 8 months out of the year. A decent rain
jacket with a hood is a must. On days with Heavy Rain, you wear your
jacket with a hood and you don't bother setting up your foldable
chair. Sitting in that sort of rain will just make you wetter than
standing in it. On days with Nasty Rain, you add in the umbrella
because the wind is going to blow the rain in your face despite your
hood. This seemed to qualify as Nasty Rain so I didn't bother with my
chair and Juliana and I were both armed with umbrellas. The one saving
grace of this game was that the soccer field was made of artificial turf. If
nothing else, it wouldn't be muddy. The game started. The rain
continued. The wind picked up. Our spectators huddled together and
cheered on the boys. A few of the moms came around looking to see who
had towels or blankets in their cars to help with keeping the boys on
the bench dry. I had one of each that I happily donated to the cause.
Beneath our team's portable canopy, the boys sat close together with a
blanket over their laps and another one draped across their shoulders.
Juliana was still having fun at this point. She abandoned her umbrella
and turned her face to the sky. We marveled at one of the boys whose
usual mop of curls was completely straight from the saturation. We
laughed at a lost squirrel who, clearly confused, ran across the turf
field in the middle of the game. As the rain started to dampen my
spirits (HA, see what I did there?), I mused out loud about the
positive attributes of basketball. Namely the fact that it's played
indoors. Andnever one to suffer silently, I whined "Why did we move
to Oregon?" Another mom try to soothe things by pointing out how
beautiful it is here. I remarked that her cup was always half full.
Mine was half full, too. Of RAINWATER.
Midway through the first half, the wind and rain picked up again. My
umbrella blew inside out and a nice dad from the other team helped me
to fix it. Juliana was getting cold and crabby and I hugged her to
keep her warm. She started asking to go to the van, but the parking
lot was too far from the field for me to leave her there alone. I
guess I could've gone with her, but I wanted to watch the game. Plus,
it didn't seem right that David should be out there while I lounged in
the heated van. At halftime, she and I went to the van for a break and
she requested the chair to sit in. I had an extra sweatshirt in the
van, so I set her up in the chair, under a tree, with the sweatshirt
like a blanket and her umbrella over her.
The rain continued to come down in buckets. My pants were soaked from
the knee down and, in a handy physics lesson, they flattened against
my legs creating a perfect gutter system for delivering water into my
shoes. The canopy protecting the players kept threatening to blow
over. With each gust of wind, water that had collected on the canopy
top drained off in gushes. I noticed that David was standing awfully
close to the kid he was guarding. I'm not sure if it was to block the
wind or steal some of his body heat. With about five minutes left, the
other team broke the scoreless tie with a goal. The soccer was starting to look awfully ineffective
as the boys got colder and stiffer. Our coach had the moms who were
helping under the canopy start packing up all the boys' backpacks and
she sent another parent to tell us to start warming up our cars. I
took Juliana down to the van to at least be out of the wind and rain
while I headed back up to retrieve David, his backpack, my blanket,
towel, and umbrella. The boys came off the field shivering and with teeth
chattering. A few of them, bless their hearts, were crying.
I hustled David down the hill and into the van. I covered him and
Juliana with the blanket. I cranked the heat up to high and got the
hell out of there. By this time Juliana was sobbing because she was so
cold and wet. It was 10:30 when we got home and I saw that there was a
message on my voice mail. I prayed that it was a phone call telling me
Juliana's game was canceled. Instead it was my mom saying, "If those
children are out playing soccer in this weather, I am going to call
Protective Services." I sent Juliana up to put on dry clothes and
helped peel David out of his uniform and shin guards. He was still
shivering and starting to get teary eyed. I had him get in the shower
and told him he could stay there as long as he wanted. He started the
water but kept standing there adjusting it saying it felt too hot even
when he had it turned to cold. I realized he was checking it with his
frozen hands. I helped him turn the heat back up and told him to check
it with a different part of his body.
Juliana and I got into dry clothes and climbed into my bed. I returned
my mom's phone call and called Ritu at work to let him know there was a
good chance we'd be blowing off Juliana's game. Seeing as he's the
coach, he sounded dubious that I would be setting this poor example for
the rest of the team. I kept explaining how it had been at David's
game but he'd been inside at work and couldn't appreciate the misery of
it.
By this time 30 minutes had gone by and David was still in the shower.
He finally came out and I knew he was feeling better when he remarked
"I think your teeth chatter when you're cold because your body is
trying to make a spark come out of your mouth to set you on fire and
warm you up."
Now it was after 11:00.. Juliana had to be at her game at noon. I
called my friend who was coaching in Ritu's absence and told him we wouldn't be there. The weather was clearing up at this point, but no
way was I dragging everybody back out. Ritu called
back around noon and sounded a little disappointed that we weren't at the
game. I had zero guilt over it, but I really wanted him to understand
how bad it had been. We finished our conversation, then I immediately
called him back. "Maybe this will help you understand", I said. "On
the way home from the game, David told me that if it was like this for
his game tomorrow, he would rather go to Sunday School."
So.
Tuesday was my birthday. I love love LOVE my birthday. My friend Elizabeth
describes it perfectly when she says birthdays
always feel like special, sparkly days. I think everyone should love my birthday as much as I do. To that end, I helpfully use my birthday in my
email address for Maximum Rememberability. Starting in July I frequently announce, "It's almost my birthday!" People smile at me as the warm summer breeze wafts over us. "Really? When?" "October 16th." The smiles tend to turn to blank stares.
Usually Ritu will keep his schedule pretty light on my
birthday so that we can go out to lunch or dinner or something but the
federal government decided to schedule a large-scale disaster drill
here ON MY BIRTHDAY. The nerve. So he was gone by 6:30 AM. As it was
a Tuesday, I got David up early to catch the bus that
takes him to his viola class. (I asked him if there was anything
special he wanted to say to me and he responded with, "You're old?" I can't imagine where the child gets that snark.)
Juliana woke up early and came down before David had even left. She
sang Happy Birthday numerous times and presented me with a collection of
her old bracelets and a tube of purple lipstick. So far so good!
At 7:30 AM the phone rang. It was my mother. An unusual time for
her to call, but hey, it was her favorite child's birthday! Instead of
birthday greetings, she told me she was having vertigo. She
described lying in bed, coughing, and suddenly feeling
like a chicken on a rotisserie spinning 360 degrees. Seeing as she had plans to fly to California to take care of my sister's children for a few days, this was especially bad timing. Her flight didn't leave until late afternoon so
I suggested she take some anti-vertigo medicine, get back in bed and
give it a chance to work. I told her I'd call my sister to put her on
alert and I'd call back in a bit to check on her.
Juliana and I continued to get ready for school. At 8:10 the
phone rang again. It was my neighbor. Only when I answered the phone,
it wasn't my neighbor. It was David. "Mom, the bus never showed up."
Viola class starts at 7:45. My clever child had stood out there for
nearly 45 minutes. I told him to come home and I promptly called the
bus company. They told me a train had delayed the buses that morning.
I explained that it wasn't late, it never came at all. The nice woman said
"Oh." David came home and I suggested he spend some of his extra time
looking for his watch.
At 8:30 the phone rang again. I was gathering laundry
together and I yelled for one of the kids to answer the phone. They
stood around reading off the Caller I.D. as I yelled JUST ANSWER IT!
Needless to say, between the two of them (each standing by a different
handset) they were unable to answer the phone before it went to voice
mail. This is a personal pet peeve. They know that if they don't know
who it is or aren't sure, they can just hustle the unanswered phone to
me. Instead they feel the need to engage in some sort of existential
reflection over what it means to answer the phone. My frustration
level hit red and, in my proudest parenting moment of 2007, I announced
to my children that they were Phone-Answering Retards. <sigh> That one is not going to look good on my permanent record.
I retrieved that phone message and then gave my mom a quick
call to check on her. She said that just reaching over to answer the
phone made her have a wave of vertigo and her voice sounded thick with
nausea. Not good.
I finally got the kids off to school and went on my morning
walk to help stamp some of the frustration out of my soul. Two friends
were planning to take me to lunch and another friend had baked me a
cake and a group of us were going to have cake and coffee after lunch.
I called my mom after my walk, but there was no answer. I left her a
message saying I was going to shower and please call me back as soon as
she could. The phone rang during my shower, but it wasn't her. I
decided to call my sister to see if she'd heard from Mom. I dialed and
instead of hearing it ring, I heard the sound of dialing. It was my
sister calling me at the exact same time to say that she'd been calling Mom
but there was no answer. She decided to try one more time, then
called me back to say there was still no answer. I told her I'd head
over to Mom's apartment and see what was going on.
I consciously chose comfy clothes because I figured there was a good
chance I'd be spending the rest of the day playing nursemaid either at
her house or, God forbid, the hospital. I grabbed a sweatshirt and
hopped in the van. I called my friend to tell her I would have to bail
on our lunch plans. I drove quickly but carefully. I thought back to
all the times we went through this with my grandmother. A number of
phone calls would go unanswered and the grandchildren would draw straws
to see whose turn it was to go check for dead bodies. She was always
found alive and well but without her hearing aids or with the opera
turned up full blast.
The closer I got, the more my mind started to let in ugly thoughts.
Vertigo....nausea....ok, could be she's just too dizzy to deal with the
phone. A block later I contemplated the possibility of finding her
crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the steps. Another stretch of
driving brought with it the possibility of aspirated vomit. Now I was
getting scared AND pissed. How dare she die on MY birthday! What kind
of legacy was that?
I pulled into her complex and parked. On the way to her front door, I noticed something. Her. car. was. gone. I stood in the rain
and whipped out my phone. She answered her cell. I calmly asked where
she was. She replied that she'd felt a bit better so she'd gone to work.
I--how shall we put it?--flipped. I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?? I
came to your house to scoop your dead body off the floor because the
last time I talked to you, you were too sick to deal with answering the
phone. Nobody has been able to reach you for the past hour.
Did it occur to you to call and tell somebody you were feeling better
and would be leaving the house?" I continued in this vein for awhile because
also? Driving with vertigo? Not a good idea. She apologized
profusely. I offered to come pick her
up, but she protested that she was fine and promised to call me
when she got home.
(For those of you keeping count at home, this was the third phone call
I'd had with her. Still no acknowledgment of my birthday. And me, her favorite child!)
I called my friend to put lunch BACK ON. I drove home to change out of
my sweats and make myself presentable. My mom called to say she'd made
it home. I praised her responsible communication and told her I was
heading out to lunch but that she could reach me on my cell all
afternoon. Horror filled her voice as it dawned on her. "Oh my God.
Happy Birthday! I am the worst mother ever!" I gently suggested that
maybe, just MAYBE, her vertigo was God's punishment for forgetting my
birthday. I like to be helpful that way.
The bad news is that she's still sick and had to cancel the entire trip
to California. The good news is that the glass of Pinot Gris I had at
lunch was delicious.
Today I was determined to find that damn camera charger so that I could document this miserable room. I grabbed the trash can and recycling bin and tore through the mess like a crazy person. In about 15 minutes the place looked a lot less like a hazardous waste dump and, as I was replacing some Scotch tape in a drawer, I found the camera charger tucked away nice as could be. So now the camera is charged but the mess is no longer worthy of documenting. I'm sure there's a lesson there somewhere.
But because I promised, here are some pictures. First we have the last bit of wallpaper above the windows.
Next is the tangle of wires that I trip over daily:
Here is our lovely and fashionable card table desk. We sold our old desk at a yard sale in May thinking that would hasten the process of getting a new one. Did I mention that was in May?
Aaaaaand the last bit of wallpaper around the bookshelves. That's all there is left to do and it's still not done. Seriously, what is wrong with me? (Please note that is a rhetorical question.)
Yes, I am fully aware of my lack of blogging. My main reason is that the office, where the computer is, looks like a portal to hell. The wall paper which I started removing in August still isn't completely off and the room has become a trash despository for the rest of the house. I hate even coming into this room and it doesn't help that most times as I walk to the computer, I trip over the tangle of wires and knock the DSL out of commission. I thought I would take a few pictures to illustrate the horror but when I picked up the camera, the battery was dead and for the life of me, I can't find the charger in this roomful of misery.
So all you get is my completely un-illustrated whining. Along with my sincerest apologies. If it's any consolation, I've written about a half dozen posts in my head....
Here's hoping for a big rush of motivation to finish the wallpaper removal as I think that will serve as a catalyst for the rest of the room. Either that or a big can of accelerant and a butane torch.
Last week we had our first parent-teacher conferences of the new school
year. Juliana's teacher raved about her, which surprised exactly no
one. She is the type of child who is a perfect match for public
school: smart, enthusiastic, a hard worker, and fun to have around. She
is excelling in every area, despite her small tendency towards math
anxiety. Her glowing conferences are remarkably different from our
experiences with David at this age. While his teachers always commented on how much they enjoyed having
him in class, we were treated to a list of things with which he
struggled. Like his abysmal handwriting. (Which he gets directly from
me. Sorry, kid!) And the fact that he couldn't do timed math tests.
For the first four years of school, David was distinctly in the middle
of the pack for everything. It wasn't until 4th grade that he came
into his own. That was when his high scores and class performance led
his teacher to recommend him for the gifted program, which he
successfully tested into (into which he successfully tested?). He had a strong academic year and became a
class leader. The icing on the cake came last May when he scored a
spot on the competitive soccer squad. His teacher for the past two
years was a lovely older woman with extensive teaching experience. She was a great mixture of
strictness and warmth which helped David rise to the expectations she
had for him.
Cut to this year. His teacher is a young woman, newly
married, with a baby at home. She coaches volleyball at the high
school and is as enthusiastic as the day is long. She clearly enjoys
the 5th and 6th graders and she is funny and encouraging and David
adores her. Our conference started with her telling us that "David is
an absolute joy." I am not exaggerating when I say that EVERY teacher
he has ever had has used those exact words to describe him. She talked
about how he is smart and confident and participates in class. She observed that he really seems to be keeping on top of his work and
managing his responsibilities. I was thrilled to hear all this, no
doubt. But nothing compared to the warmth I felt in my soul when she
remarked on his great sense of humor and his ability to understand
sarcasm. She said sometimes she'll throw a comment out there and only
to be met with dead silence from the class.....
....and then she'll hear David
giggling in the corner.
I was at Target today looking for Halloween decorations for my yard when I noticed that nearly every item I picked up had the following warning on the back:
Prop 65 Warning: This product contains lead, a
chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth
defects, and other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.
Uh, yeah. Happy Halloween! The best I could figure was that it applied to decorations with electrical wiring coated for outdoor use. But, see, once I'm given a warning like that I either develop OCD and have to wrap myself in Saran Wrap before I can touch it OR I have the opposite inclination and find myself strangely compelled to floss with the lead-caked cord. (Possibly these are two ends of the same spectrum.) Needless to say, in the interest of safety, I didn't buy anything.
********** I hate when I
google to see if Spots and Emma can safely have a certain type of fresh
vegetable and instead of getting a list of Guinea Pig Approved Foods, I
get something like this or this.
********** Overheard today at Target:
Manager
(talking to female employee): Now do you understand that before you
can clean the bathroom you have to make sure ALL the men are out first?
********** Hey, my cousin is in a music video!! He's the shirtless guy at the bar.
