clickmom

Sh*t. August is over.

I'm still kind of ignoring what is right around the corner.  There is hardly a pencil with an intact eraser to be found in either of my houses.  Back to School clothes?  Pshaw!  It's still shorts weather!  (And will be until mid-December is you ask Evan)  Besides, I think my kids all get their growth spurts in October.

I'm starting to plan for the fall.  I gotta get this gall bladder issue looked at.  Every night I go to bed with THE FEAR despite the addictive strength and quantity of pain killer the good doc prescribed for me for just in case.   When should I start up again with the trainer?  The new new undead therapist?  DO I need to see him still? Well, I'm still fat.....   The EMDR  therapist?!?   Should I see her instead?  My framer/gallery guy?  He hasn't called me, which I assume to mean he hasn't sold anything.  Dang.  I decided I am going to make Josh into a swimmer.  I want him to have a sport and if I don't push him to do something that is an actual sport his sport will end up being something you do on an x-box.

I'm thinking of being more restrictive with the kids than I have been over the summer with anything screen related.  Evan came home from camp and has been texting his camp friends ALL DAY LONG since.  Luckily we had an unlimited plan for that already instated.  I'm trying to figure out a strategy that satisfies my hatred of the evil brain killing screen that the kids won't find so crushing that they they need to rebel against it.  Suggestions welcome.  I'm pretty sure that what I am thinking of using to get the kids away from the screens isn't going to work.  It involves bricks and hammers.  On the screens, not on the kids!  Jeez, people, you should you know me better than that! 

I'm just sad

I'm all sad these days because I am painfully aware that summer is rapidly coming to an end.   Every now and then a patch of prematurely red leaves catches my eye.  The lake has cooled down.  The mornings are arriving later and the days are ending earlier. 

While I know there are people who welcome the return to routine and reclaimed free time thanks that autumn and a new school brings with it  I relish the ease and simplicity of no schedules or worries and hanging out on my own private island.  I like being the first one awake in the morning and greeting my kids one by one as they emerge from their own beds all sleepy and stress free because it's summer.  I love Josh's extra freckles and playfulness, Evan's athletic prowess on the water, and Matt all relaxed and sharing his thoughts and creativity with me.  I like being able to serve dinner at 9 o'clock at night, when the sky just loses it's light and not worry about rushing anyone off to bed as soon as we finish.  I like being barefoot in the grass, stealing a nap in the hammock, spotting the eagle over the lake,  walking down a river with my camera, having a drink with my friends on someone's porch, and blazing bon fires.

Now I have to say goodbye to all these things and say hello to things I like too, but just not as much.  I have to say hello to sweaters, and my fleece lined boots, to frozen cheeks and snowmen, and crossing my fingers for a snow day, flipping a switch and getting an effortless fire in my gas fireplace.  I get more time to myself, and I'll be back at the posh club, I can return to my photo class and print up the photos I took this summer, I can shop for healthy foods with ease.  It's all good, but not better than this.

Summer 2010 was a great summer.

I'm just sad.

sunrise sunset

The last time I saw the sun it was Saturday.  It was also on Saturday that I decided I wasn't going to let another dawn escape me this season without photographing it.  (Those 4:15 dawns of July were out of the question)   Every day I've been waking up at 5:30.  Most days since last Saturday I didn't go outside at dawn because of the pouring rain, but today since we were only covered by a giant upside down bowl of thick clouds and occasional mist, and not the downpours of the last few days I ventured out at dawn.  I was standing on the dock, feeling the mist on my cheeks, listening to the rough water (wind people, it goes nice with the mist) lapping against the shore and thinking how I can never look at my own photos without re-experiencing the moment I took shot, which makes me not at all objective about my own work, when some geese flew right by honking their way through the air and then a fish jumped clear out of the water two feet in front of me, and I realized that each time I drag myself out of my nice warm bed in the dark so I can see the dawn that "seeing" the dawn is so much richer than just the seeing.  It is hearing, feeling, smelling, and touching too.  

Now if only the dawn would cooperate and put on a good show for me! 

moving on up

After yesterday's traffic disaster I decided to crash in stepford for the night and make my way back to utopia in the wee hours of the morning after sunrise but before rush hour.   I listened to three separate traffic reports to assure myself that the 8 mile back up that was on the other side of my 11 mile back up last night has been resolved over night.  Since no one was mentioning that highway at all, I crossed my fingers and put the car in drive.  I did feel my heart racing (Post Traffic Traumatic Stress Syndrome) until I got past the point of yesterday's accident, and in the end I sailed right up to utopia in record time with only a desperate bathroom break to slow me down.  (damned bladder busting Venti iced coffee)

Today I investigated a town that I might consider moving the family to next spring after Matt graduates high school.  You see, the husband has been working at a job a whopping 60 miles from stepford for the past year, and since the job looks like it is here to stay, and the husband is about ready to keel over due to all the mileage on his vehicle and butt (not really, he sleeps there sometimes), we figured we'd move the family operation somewhere within a reasonable commuting distance from where the family money maker is employed.  Seems fair doesn't it?   

The biggest down side to this potential move is my dread at listening to the husband's snoring day and night (couch snoozes), so I keep telling him that according to some story I heard on the today show, some house builder's organization estimates that by 2010 60% of new homes will have two master bedrooms because sleeping your (snoring, restless leg syndrome, gets up to pee) spouse is NOT RESTFUL and having two master bedrooms will only increase a house value (and a wive's happy disposition) so whatever house we find it there has to be money left over for a second master bedroom addition and the truth is, I'd sleep in the unfinished basement if it meant no snorers (shakers, pee-ers)  in the bed with me. That is how disturbed I am by the symphony of sound and movement that emanates from my beloved on the now rare occasion that we are in the same state and bed on any given night.

Back me up on this, okay internet?

Luckily, my utopian friend joined me on this neighborhood scouting venture, and she was awesome.  My friend just asked anyone all about the town.  She was as skilled as the best reporter out there!  I just stood and listened.  I would have never been able to sum up the courage to get people to talk the way my friend did.  I am jealous of her ability and grateful that she was so enthusiastic and helpful to me.  

My new neighborhood is going to be an artsy fartsy neighborhood instead of what ever stepford is and I am getting pretty psyched about it!  I'm also getting more and more nervous about it because I've put down some serious roots in stepford the last 13 years, and simply leaving the great people of my life all behind is unthinkable.  The truth is that I'm not the best long distance friend.  So I have concerns in that department.

11 miles

Of stop and roll traffic. I had to primal scream to salvage what is left of my sanity.

But then it's Not as bad as it could have been when you get to see the wreck.

Also! Best moment of the torturous 5 hour drive? Some yahoo speeds by me at light speed. I see the cop lights come on and then I pass the dude who is pulled over on the right shoulder just as the cop moseys over from his vehicle to the speed demon's. Yes!!!

Baby bird back in the nest

And there is a good chance I'll be stopping for a loofah om my way home. In my head these feet can only be described as one thing. CAMP FEET. Yuck. Thecrest of him is just as tasty and delicious as ever He had a great time this summer. Whew.

Matt's Home!

It's about as wonderful as seeing a double rainbow.

ashamed

I write this with my head hanging low and my tail between my legs.  I feel shame.

I decided Josh on a gluten and dairy free diet this summer because I suspected that the two foods bothered him more than I realized.  Because he is a kid I stocked up on all sorts of "safe" stuff for him to eat, figuring I'd like to have lots of choices available for him for when I don't have the things that he actually wants to eat.  One extraordinarily expensive food I stocked up on was gluten free pretzels, which I think are not half bad.  Josh, however, won't touch them. 

When I first got to utopia I was so something (happy, relieved, disjointed, missing my kids, having a bad utopian association because this is where I was after mom died, when grandma died, and planned to spend just one more summer with my dad except he died) that I didn't get hardly any sleep the first week, but I kept on running because running was the one form of exercise I did all winter that I was holding onto.

I think it started with being so tired, when I started mindlessly shoveling those damned gluten free pretzels down my mouth, (tempting the gods big time because they do have corn in them and corn can give me a migraine after a couple of days exposure) and one thing led to another, and before long the dairy free chocolate was back in my routine, and also ice pops and gf/cf baked goods, like fake bread and crackers.  The thing is that what ever it is that I have got, extends past gluten to all highly refined flours.  They all give me some form of symptoms, gluten is just the most severe.  

Before long I was walking around all day in a think fog, feeling like I moving through quick sand.

I did that 7.2 mile run because I had gotten that idea in my head and it stuck, but then I did one more typical run after it and since then NOTHING.  I continued to gobble up those gluten free pretzels until I felt like every bit of my daily energy was going towards being upright.  Even talking felt like more than I had to give.  

I started to wonder where it began.  Did I start bingeing because I didn't feel well or did I binge first and not feel well as a result of the binge?  The one image that kept popping into my head was the gluten free pretzels.  It all started the day I grabbed a handful of those.  I had been eating them every single day, in increasing amounts, since.  I knew what I had to do.  I had to go cold turkey.  

I ended up fending off a migraine detoxing from the pretzels (and any other kind of flour too)   and within two days felt the fog and heaviness lifting.  I've been fake food free for about a week now and I am feeling back to normal physically, but emotionally, I am in a bad place, trying to be kind to myself yet, pretty damned pissed at me for turning off my common sense and numbing my way through the bulk of the summer.  

My next mission is resuming exercise.  I can swim and run and I even have all the tools for weight lifting up in utopia.  I am going to spend the next two weeks getting back on the horse.  I'll be so embarrassed to make my appointments with the trainer and have him see this downward spiral.  hat wouldn't stop me, cause I pay him for this, it's not like he is training me out of the goodness of his heart and I owe him anything but still, I worked so hard to get to a better place and then I just gave it up without a fight.

I was afraid to weigh myself when I got back to stepford, but finally hopped on the scale. I was kind of relieved to see only a 4 pound gain for the summer.  I'm sure my muscle weight went down, and that 4 pounds, really means more than 4 pounds of fat, but given my eating ad weight history the damage could have been much much worse.  I can rebound from 4 pounds, easily.

Yesterday I went to the new gym and swam laps for 45 minutes.  I haven't been preparing for that 3 mile swim I promised the sentry I'd do with her at the end of this month, but I'm pretty sure that if I keep on eating right I won't have any problem with the distance.  I have two weeks left to be ready but I'd do it tomorrow if she said she wanted to get it done right away.

Sneaked a peek

Matt was in a play at camp. I drove all the way down there to see him perform. Then I drove all the way home. It was worth it. I know I'm the mom but damn! I have one talented kid. He is amazing.

I get pick him up for real (and drive all the way back again) on Friday.

me and the sky

I almost did a 7+ mile walk today but it started to rain right around the last mile so I called the husband to come and get me because I had my camera and I was (freaking out!) nervous that MY CAMERA was going to get wet.  There were several times during the walk that I was convinced I was being stalked by a bear on one side of the road and a cougar on the other, (but to be honest, chances are the noises I heard were squirrels running along branches causing acorns to drop) and I wasn't sure what to do since I hadn't purchased any bear mace or jingle bells to frighten the ravenous animals away with.  Instead I had an awesome chat with the dog henceforth known as "bear bait"  the devil figuring that chit chat might be enough of a warning noise, and also I shook the hook part of the devil's leash around just in case the deterrent was more effective in the jingle mode, figuring a little jingle was better than no jingle at all.

Evan got fitted for his football helmut and shoulder pads today.  Evan was very very proud when he emerged from the equipment storage hut with his new pads and announced that he required XL shoulder pads to protect his manly broad shoulders.  The coach was pretty psyched to see Evan's broad shouldered self in there too.  I hope this means EVan gets to play a lot.  That would be so nice.  For him!  It would give me more time to sharpen my ability to will away the heart attack I am likely to have while I watch the other 8th grade boys all pile on top of the kid that I wore in and on my body for nearly two years, and breast fed until he cold say "No, thanks Mom, I'd prefer the filet mignon tonight."  Sure, go ahead pimply strangers, pounce on him.  I kid!  How the hell I am going to make it through football season people!?!?!  How am I going to remain seated while my sweet baby eskimo haired big brown eyed Evan is out there being vulnerable and targeted?  I wish he was the kicker.  Even the sky cried all evening.  We are all sad.