clickmom

seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

Well, grandma is moved. Not completely unpacked, but moved.

She was very lucid today and knew what was going on and accepted it all with a positive attitude. I know that token of good cheer could change in an instant but I am grateful to have had it today. The move took twice as long as I thought it would, cost twice as much as the estimate (which I thought was suspiciously low anyway) and left me twice as much as depleted as I thought I could ever be at the end of this day. I just keep looking forward to my babes lunch on Friday, sweet Friday. I am too tired to write, and hoping I can remain awake for the whole length of Josh's imminent bath. I wonder of 8:30 is too early for me to go to bed too.

I am still trying to formulate a P.S.A. poem on toilet squatting in my head. Now you have something to look forward to!!

kid gazer

Tomorrow is moving day for grandma. I am relieved it's finally here. Originally, I was going to go to her apartment today, do more sifting and a bit of packing, and then return tomorrow morning when the movers were there to pick her up. Little sister pointed out to me that it might be easier on both grandma, who might be upset by the movers in her apartment, and me who has to drive round trip in the morning traffic, to bring grandma home with me today and let her spend the night at my house. Once my brain function returned, I realized little sister was so obviously right, and now grandma is here for the evening.

Grandma just loves being around the kids and will happily spend great chunks of time just watching the kids. She watches them watch television, talk to each other, eat their meals, or even nap in the car. Some of her super ability to watch likely stems from her inability to hear, and therefore understand what is going on, but still she watches on with a contented grin on her face, just fascinated and satisfied simply by the sight of the faces of the kids.

At one point this evening grandma settled in on the couch next to (or possibly even a wee bit on top of) Evan who had just opened the lap top. Grandma sat there, in Evan's personal space, gazing upon Evan as if she was memorizing his cute little button nose, his fuzzy upper lip or his soulful saucer eyes. Evan, noticing grandma's interest in what he thought was the unfamiliar technology on his lap and being completely sweet and hospitable said "Look GG (that's what the kids call her for Great Grandma) see this button here, it's called Safari, only not the real kind of safari where you see wild animals, it's a website that takes you to other websites, and this website I'm going to NOW is called Addictinggames.com, it's a place where people put these things (turns to face GG and outstretches arms to orchestrate his explanation through interpretive dance) okay, you see, you have a person, and you move the person or make them fight other people or do other things with the keyboard. Here, I'll show you. (three short clicks later) Look see, this guy is on a bike, and I have to steer him over these obstacles to the end of the level and then I do it again......" and so on. Grandma just sat there nodding, and making these little "aha" noises like she does when she can't hear or understand you. Evan talked on and on and never once did grandma, even for a second, ever take her eyes off of Evan's beautiful face.

snow! snow! snow!

It's snowing out right now, and according the internet weather site I check out religiously, we might be in for as much as 8 inches! This thrills me. It does not thrill my friends and relations though. I don't understand not being thrilled at the prospect of snow. I hear snow and I am ready to do what ever it takes to get that snow. I'll wear my pajamas inside out and I'll sleep with a spoon under my pillow. I want a snow day. What could be better than a snow day? I mean, a snow day is a little tiny unexpected vacation!

If my phone rings at 6AM and my kids class mother tells me that school is cancelled then I am so happy I am pumping my fists around in the air, and probably I'll be so happy and excited that I can't even fall back to sleep, so I'll put on the tv news and watch for our district in the school closings box on the bottom of the screen and when I see it I'll kick my legs up and down and laugh out loud. Eventually I'll go down stairs and make an extra yummy breakfast which the kids and I will eat in the den with a fire blazing and the tv on while we are still in our pajamas. I'll say "Let's stay in our pajamas all day long!" and they'll be so happy. And I'll be so happy. Then we'll waste lots of time guiltlessly watching bad tv and maybe playing a board game, or putting together some of Josh's monstrously huge and complicated birthday Star Wars Lego gifts. Then I'll make more food and we'll eat again! Then we'll all waste more time goofing around on the internet, playing video games, watching more tv and maybe I'll make them listen to the original cast album of Dream Girls, and I'll imagine I can sing like Jennifer Holiday and they'll be nice and tell me I can sing like Jennifer. If they are that good to me I'll pay them actual cash to shovel the walkway in front and clear a path to my truck in the back, and maybe if the snow is good snow it will be our only chance to make a snow man this winter, so we'll decide to throw our snow pants over our pajamas and start rolling giant snow balls. And we can make a snow guy, and name him, and put a carrot in his mouth and some old hat on his head, and most importantly, take photos with him. And then we can watch Judge shows on tv and feel superior to the both the defendants and the plaintiffs because OMG people, we would never humiliate ourselves like that on tv, and don't they know how ridiculous they are? Then I'll make more food, and we'll have a cozy dinner and take baths, get clean pajamas, and go to sleep so happy because we had a snow day and we just love snow days.

How can you not want a snow day?

backdated birthday post written mostly on my actual birthday

There were times I didn't think I was going to make it through the week. Josh woke up on Tuesday, his birthday (which I have yet mention) with pink eye. Evan came home from school on Wednesday with some kind of high running fever virus. Josh went back to school on Thursday, but Evan's fever was spiking at 104 by Thursday afternoon. I went into nurse (or panic, choose your pick) mode, and dragged out my old homeopathy books. Found a fevered description that matched Evan exactly, administered the remedy and with in an hour and a half the fever started dropping. It broke about 5 hours after the first dose. Homeopathy can be an amazing thing.

Today is my birthday. Yay for me.

If you had said "birthday" to me a few days ago, I would have burst into tears. That's a half lie. As late as yesterday I would have burst into tears if you had said "birthday" or maybe even something inflammatory like "hello" or "good morning" would have sent me right over the edge too.

It was all the grandma related stress. I don't do stress gracefully.

Yesterday, being Friday, was a babes lunch day. It is not only my birthday but Wildmom's birthday too, or maybe because I sent out a desperate/suicidal sounding email in the beginning of the week pleading for a good turn out of witnesses for my seemingly impending nervous breakdown, the babes took me and Wildmom out to a special birthday lunch at a very nice restaurant. I was touched. I was also the last to show up since I am perpetually late since becoming a mother 14 years ago, they seated me at the head of the table, and I could barely open my mouth the whole time. In my head I was thinking " help " but I couldn't say it, I just sat there mostly listening and occasionally chiming in but feeling totally disingenuous and disconnected from the words that were coming out of my own mouth and everything else that was going on around me too. There was another table of women, very loud women, and they were so loud and distracting I felt they were practically shouting at us. I couldn't think. I just wanted someone to instinctively know what I was feeling. Then it was suddenly time for me to leave, I stood up to go and 1/2 blurted 1/2 cried something out about how hard it is to deal with the whole grandma thing, which was completely out of the blue for my babes, and not really simpatico with the light and airy chatty conversation that happened for the whole lunch. Then every one was looking at me and no one really knew what to say and I just left and bawled in my car.

I picked up Matt from school, dropped him home to look after Evan, who was still home on sick leave, and had been left alone for almost two hours while I lunched. I had to then (and this part of the day was pure pleasure) go to Josh's school to read the kids a story in honor of Josh's birthday, which had already passed during the first day of the pink eye odyssey. I had tearily confided my mental instability to Josh's teacher (great lady) so she handled me with kid gloves. It felt good to be treated delicately. She brought me a choice of three books. I had to admit that I couldn't read Stellaluna with out crying, so I passed on that one, I didn't have the emotional energy to say Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip-peri pembo, so I passed on that one, and I chose, what seemed to be the perfect title for me on that very day : Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Reading the book, actually kind of helped. After all misery does love company, right?

The day continued to turn around for me when I got home, Pal called, saying since he had made it down the beanstalk with the Giant's other candlestick and that since today was my birthday he and his hilarious boyfriend thought maybe they would come over for lunch if I was free. Perfect! I said come on over and I asked the husband to make reservations for us to have a nice lunch. Then my awesome friend (and ex-next door neighbor from Brooklyn, so I'll just call her Brooklyn) called up, she knows Pal, and said "Hey, why don't you and your family join us for lunch?" and she said YES. Things started looking good.

Then, as if being surrounded by my favorite people wasn't going to be enough, yesterday evening, while on the phone (for the frigging fifth time that day) discussing grandma with my mother (who I still believed to be heavy hearted over all the grandma plans) my mother said "This is a good thing. This is the right thing to do. I am glad you took the bull by the horns." And WHOOSH some of that weight that has been gradually suffocating me for the past two weeks just floated right off my chest.

Then my birthday arrives today and I don't feel as shitty as I did all week, and for that I am grateful. I sneak out of bed and out the door at 6:30 to go to a pin class with Bubbles. I feel a little bad that Bubbles doesn't seem to remember that it is my birthday when we chat before class. Then class begins and all she does during the pin class is "Break Away! Increase your cadence! Double time! Sprint!" and I don't do those speedy things, instead I keep turning up my resistance, so that I get the exhausting work out I want to get, and I decide that I am going to have to go with a different instructor for the Saturday spinning, but that is a good thing since I should go to the class that gives me what I want. And making that decision feels good. When class is over Bubbles hands me a little gift bag and says "Happy Birthday!" and I am so happy to have a little pink gift bag with pink tissue paper poking out of the top that I am pretty sure I was grinning all the way downstairs.

I come home, make the kids some breakfast, shower and change. I drag the now well Evan and Josh to the barber. Josh gets the cute little boy bowl haircut that none of my kids have ever had, but I always wanted them to have, and he looks so adorable I want to eat him. Evan gets an undetectable trim with a bad shape, he is satisfied because you can't tell it was cut, and he was opposed to the cut in the first place, I just ignore it, for the sake of keeping the peace, and run off to the chiro. Chiro says my previously sprained wrist is almost right on, my back is way too tight (duh! Hello, I am the Queen of Stress) and sends us on our way.

I pick up the rest of the family, head over to lunch, and have a very nice, pleasant, relaxing lunch with my family and friends. The food was yummy, the restaurant was bright and cheery, and we laughed a lot. It was perfect. Pal and the boyfriend came back to the house, we chatted and laughed for hours, they went home and my family ended up going back out for dinner. Mmmmm, sushi. It was nice to be alone in the second restaurant focusing on just them. Every one was well behaved and happy, two of the three kids won on the scratch lottery tickets we got them and all was good.

We came home, popped in a DVD of The Departed, and watched a good movie. Except for having a hard time telling Leonardo DiCaprio apart from Matt Damon for the first half, the movie was great. It did leave me with one big unanswered question, which I won't ask in case you are about to see it, but if you think you have it figured out let me know and maybe you can tell me. Then I even managed to fall asleep despite the movie induced adrenalin rush. It was a good day.

Photos later.

size matters

My friend Pal work(ed) at a very swanky furniture distributer. Once, a few months ago, I was at a different furniture store when I happened to see they had the catalog of Pal's company on display. I looked through it and found a pair of candle sticks I kind of liked. Since it is unusual for me to feel any enthusiasm for any sort of home decorations, I figured I would follow up on it. I called Pal up at work and asked how much they cost. Then I sprayed electrolyte water out of my nose. I told Pal, that I had assumed the candle sticks were made out of glass, and not diamond. He said they were some sort of fancy schmancy hand blown something or other. And that there were actually people who happily pay through the nose for a pair of candle sticks. Pal said that sometimes things are discontinued and he can get them at a real bargain. I told Pal that if the candle sticks should ever fall into his briefcase, he was welcomed at my house for dinner that night. Pal said he would keep his eyes open for me. Wouldn't you know it, Pal's company announced that they are going out of business. Pal called me the minute he heard and asked me if I wanted to get the candle sticks at 80% off. They were still pretty damned pricey, but my birthday was around the corner, and I did like so very love that little 3 inch high photographed version of them I saw in the catalog, so I said YES. And Pal ordered me up a pair.

The first candlestick arrived. When I saw the package I wondered if perhaps I had accidentally ordered a small coffin. I approached the box, slit open the taping, then I dug through layers upon layers of thick blue foam and found a gargantuan, 2 foot tall, 30 pound nuclear radiation green glass candle holder. That's a TWO FOOT TALL green nuclear radiation candle holder. It makes me feel petite, a challenging feat. Knowing the other massive chunk of glass candle holder holder is on it's way I laughed at myself, and now I can't wait to find the perfect spot up in Utopia for them.

hey, howya doin

Haven't blogged for days.
Want to, but just can't summon it.
Nothing seems like a story.

I'm angry and frustrated about the grandma nonsense
and I have a house full of less than healthy kids.

Pink eye.
Fevers.
Nausea.

Wish I could be alone.
Wish I could breathe.

I have four partially written posts.
Not good enough.
Can't find the funny.
Or download photos off my point and shoot.
Stress, stress, stress.

I'm just sitting around waiting for this to lift.

It isn't
lifting.

But I have to say,
I knew they would never kill off Meredith.
Hopefully she'll have more of a personality
now that she has been dead
and found out she wasn't ordinary
and got to come back.

project clean out

As planned little sis and I went to grandma's today to initiate Project Clean Out.

You know how people who lived through things like The Depression tend to be affected for the rest of their lives? Well, grandma told me when I was little and she still had her memory that grandpa had a great job during the depression and that they hardly suffered at all. However, after lugging trash bag after trash bag to the trash chute today, I can tell you that grandma was clearly affected by some other life events from her life time. For example, she was surely traumatized while carting groceries in cloth or paper bags for the first 65 years of her life. In 1977 plastic grocery bags were introduced and apparently in 1977 grandma began carefully folding and saving plastic grocery bags, plastic shopping bags, plastic anything bag like. We tossed about 2 tons of plastic bags.

I think I might also need to apologize to someone for a big chunk of deforestation. It seems grandma is a bit of a paper saver too. She had pads with letterheads from Harvard (?!?), Grandpa's company from the 1950's, and even an off colored 70's sex joke (Grandma!!) . There were legal pads in yellow, legal pads in white, tracing paper pads, drawing pads, there were 5X7 pads, 4X6 pads, wholesale warehouse sized packages of brown crumbling note paper, spiral pads, note card pads, tissue paper (OMG, it was everywhere!) and more. It's a good thing (and some kind of a miracle) there was never a fire in her apartment because the place would have gone up like a duraflame factory.

I think grandma was also deeply affected by living through the tragic golf ball famine of the early 80's, the stolen hospital gown shortage of the 90's (why?) and the nylon stocking shortage of 1952 (remember the ones that require garter belts?)

It was interesting to hear what grandma had to say about all the work little sis and I put in at her place today. The scum-cle called me to say that grandma had reported to him that we had "cleaned her out", he implied that we were stealing all her priceless treasures (did I mention the hospital blankets she seems to have sticky fingers for too?) and my mother called to say that grandma told her that little sister and I "cleaned up her whole apartment and made it nice for her." That grandma might be losing her memory, but she is still a sly one. I am not sure I trust her anymore.

funk

Still in a funk over the whole grandma situation. The scum-cle had a damaging/not supportive of her upcoming move conversation with her, though grandma claims not remember it. Sometimes I wonder if she is playing me. My mother is getting all stressed out from 2,000 miles away, (helpful!)and when she stresses she gets breathless when she talks. It makes me want to, at the very minimum, slap her out of it. She doesn't get it that no one is expecting her to get off her self centered rear and help. She doesn't realize that I am a grown up who can orchestrate a move with out the help of my incredibly useless in every situation mommy. And if you think you might be detecting some anger, BINGO! I am annoyed too. I wish the scum-cle and my mother would both just take a long trip and let me handle things.

Tomorrow I am meeting little sis at grandma's house and we are going to attempt to purge grandma of some of the less than necessary clutter she has amassed over the years. I personally look forward to recycling the three heavy hangers of carefully folded brown and crumbling tissue paper that grandma has managed to collect. Everything else will need to be sorted and checked. Once we establish the ground rules I am certain we can get rid of most of her antique shoes collection. I'm thinking if the shoe cracks in half from 30 years in a hot closet then we get to toss it. Same thing goes for anything with elastic in it, or old hand bags with deteriorating linings. I am keeping old photos and the clothes that she still likes to wear. Anything older than me that hasn't been worn since before we went a man to the moon is gonna go.

In the midst of all this pressure I dashed out to pick up the takeout I ordered for dinner tonight. As I was driving down a hill towards a spot where I always think I'd like to walk through some trees and set up a camera every evening for the twilight sky show, I saw (through the trees of course) an amazing sunset unfolding. There was just the tiniest sliver of a crescent moon sparkling and twinkling low on the horizon in a still rich blue sky while directly below the thinnest strip of distant horizon was a rich slice of orange and pink glow. It was so beautiful I shivered. I know that one day when my kids are gone and my life slow downs I am going to find a spot set up my camera every night and photograph the end of the day.

feeling saner every day

Yesterday (on my anniversary, very uplifting, NOT) I took grandma to the assisted living for her to see the place, her future apartment and get checked out by the nurse. Some days are beter, memory wise, for grandma and yesterday was not one of them. Watching the nurse trying to chat with grandma broke my heart. Grandma didn't know the answers to most of the nurses questions, and I had to chime in over and over again with the correct information. I felt guilty making grandma look bad, but she didn't know where she lived or that 12 years ago she had had cataract surgery. She didn't remember that 20 minutes before the interview we had seen her new apartment. The nurse needed to ask many questions. The boys were all with me, and we all, grandma and the nurse included, sat around a big table, the boys quietly observing.

At one point, towards the end of the interview, the nurse asked grandma if she liked being around other people or prefered to be alone. Grandma looked down, thought for a second and finally started "I guess I'm not really good with other people, so I guess I do prefer to be alone. The only people that ever mattered to me are my family and every one I want to be with is right here at this table." To that response I could only say "How honest."

The day left me emotionally drained, I see how frightened and scared grandma is about moving, how difficult it could be for her to become oriented to a new place, and how she will likely look for reasons to hate the new place. On the way out she turned to Matt and said "You know, the problem with this place is there are too many goyem." I guess she can forget everything else but that. How sad.

The bad feelings from yesterday have been hanging on me all day today. I couldn't shake them. Okay, well maybe I did have a brief moment of gratitude tonight when I checked in with my favorite blogs. At least grandma has all her hair.

multiple choice

Button fly jeans are for:

a. straight guys
b. gay guys
c. guys with nimble fingers
d. guys who fear the pube zip
e. the husband
f. all of the above