clickmom

my baby is leaving me

Matt and I flew to hipster college today.  Right now we are in a hotel.  He can't sleep because he is so excited (and just a wee bit nervous)   I can't sleep because tomorrow I have to take my baby to college. And also because yahoo had a story about hotel bed bugs on the home page yesterday.   Where the hell did the last 18 years go?  Can I tell stories about Matt as a toddler now?

When Matt was a baby people used to look down on him in the baby carrier and exclaim "He glows!"  Being his mother, I naturally thought he was superior in every way to all of the other babies and didn't really stop to think about the whole glowing thing until I heard it over and over and over again.  One day an older woman said he glowed and asked if I was nursing.  I said I was and she said she knew it by his glow.  But I knew other nursing babies that didn't glow like Matt.  Then one day when Matt was about 3 I walked into a room and saw a mom holding her infant who glowed too.  So I said "Your baby glows, I bet you are nursing." and this mom said she was nursing, but I knew that it was more than that.

If I don't keep my mind on things othe than Matt leaving me for Hipster U. I cry.

The first time baby Matt ever totally cracked up was one day when we wee walking our best dog ever Oscar in Prospect Park.  Oscar loved this one brand of squeaky toy that looked like vegetables.  I threw the tomato ball and as Oscar trotted back to me with the squeaky tomato in his mouth he was squeaking it and Matt thought the squeaking was Oscar laughing so he cracked up too.  I stood there frozen to the spot all alone with my hysterical laughing baby facing outward strapped to my chest marveling at the strangeness of the moment.

There is a two day orientation for Matt. He'll sleep at Hipster U. tomorrow night, I'll sleep at the hotel, but I'll get to see him again Wednesday before I leave.

Speaking of Oscar, he was quite a role model for baby Matt.  Did I ever mention that for a while baby Matt used to crawl around and carry his toys in his mouth too?  I have photo evidence.

I can't believe I have to fly home alone.  That is going to be the worst flight ever.  I can't even drink because I'll have to stumble off of the plane and drive back to new town.  To get here, to the middle of flat lands, we had to board a plane by walking onto the tarmac and climbing up a step ladder onto the plane.  Dear god.  That last fact could be titled:  How to give me a heart attack.

The night that Matt started to walk was a night that my dad came over for dinner.  I thought "Wow, Matt sure is showing off for my dad." and I didn't realize until the next morning that he had actually been walking around our tiny living room.  I thought he was just being a more bold couch surfer. 

It sure is flat here in the midwest.  It's seriously peculiarly flat.  Tonight when the sun went down I could do a 360 and see every edge of sky all on the same level.  How bizarre.  I bet you can't buy a ten speed bike here.  (And yes, I know I just dated myself)

The first time I felt like baby Matt was verbally communicating with me was one day when I was feeding him some dinner.  Matt said KEYS and I wasn't putting two and two together, because I thought he was babbling about something food related.  Matt kept saying keys because clearly I wasn't getting it and then finally he gestured towards my keys and I realized he was telling me my keys were on the kitchen table.  I cried then too.  It was meaningful.

The power (thanks, Irene) is still out in utopia.  A couple of my neighbors went and showered at my place today because we have a generator.  I wish I was there.  Roughing it.  With all of my kids together.  Like the natural order of things says we should be.

Matt hated the stroller and could barely tolerate it until the day he learned to walk.  Once he moved through space on his own he was fine with it.   I carried him in some sort of device for the first 14 months of his life and used the stroller mostly as a shopping cart.  I think I should get some kind of medal for that.

I think I feel bed bugs on me.  Evan says imaginng bug bites is the first sign of insanity.

 

goodbye Irene

As of 6 PM tonight 77 %   of new town was without power.  But not us!  Hell yeah!  Some kind angel was smiling down on us today.  We sat inside marveling at the pounding driving rains and insane winds all day with the tv on alternating between Lost season 2 episodes and the news.  It was kind of lovely.  I like hanging with my boys.  We did lose power for an hour and a half, it was just in time for us to have a lovely candle light dinner and spend some time reading by flashlight.  Matt gave up at 9 o'clock and went to bed, and then the power came back on.  

Poor Matt is so worried about planes flying out tomorrow.  Yes, it is time.  It is time I have to take him to Hipster U.  My baby is all grown up and ever so ready to spread his wings and fly.  I must admit that he does an excellent job of trying to contain his excitement.  If I wasn't a raging hormonal super stressed super sensitive split personality freak of nature I might not realize the child has been literally counting the seconds until boarding the plane to Hipster U. since the moment he walked down the jet way on the day he returned from his summer Romanian adventure.

I try not to take it personally.  I tell myself he is not running away from me, but running to his future awesome life.  Hipster U. doesn't realize how lucky they are to be getting him.   I'm jealous of his college.

Tomorrow, weather and the powers of the universe permitting, Matt and I will board a plane and we will be flying to Hipster U.  Should we wake up and discover that our flight is cancelled, or the airports are still closed or something, we will gas up my truck and hit the (hopefully cleared of debris) highways.  The 9 hour drive to Hipster U. together would be nice, but the 9 hour drive home alone crying so hard I have to pull over would be terrible.  And after all that car time my back would hate me for at least a week.  The morning will hold the answer!  

knockless

Back a million years ago when Matt was about three and my Brooklyn friends started to dribble out of Brooklyn and head for the suburbs I listened with rapt attention to all of their stories of the weirdness of daily driving and the joy of having your own backyard play set and the excitingness of being able to plant things in the ground instead of in window boxes.  My one friend Regula (real name) moved to a more down to earth NJ town about 6 months before we took the leap to stepford.  Regula would call me every few days and describe which of her neighbors had come to visit and what they had brought as a welcome to the neighborhood gift.  Regula received baked goods, wine, plants and the best was a card file of places to shop or eat with driving directions! (it was the pre-GPS world)  The outpouring of neighborly love got me all excited.  I was psyched to experience it myself.

Then we moved to stepford where for 2 weeks I held my breath every time I saw someone walking down the street.  Not a single neighbor even knocked on my door, let alone came bearing gifts.  So at the end of two weeks, I slid 3 month old Evan into the baby carrier and began knocking on their doors.  Honestly, it turned out there was no one worth knowing.  One neighbor was so embarrassed by her lack of neighborly manners that she did knock back on my door the next day with a plate of chocolate chip cookies in hand.  Which was nice until she suspiciously eye balled just turned 4 year old Matt and infant Evan and wondered out loud of they would scale the 6 foot fence to her back yard pool and swim in it.  I told her they wouldn't.  She wasn't ever going to be my friend.  It didn't really matter.  She was pretty old and her husband was even older.   They didn't have any interest in me either.

It's day 4 here in new town.  No knocks yet.  The husband from directly cross the street did drive by while we were getting the mail, and he pulled over, so I did get to meet him through his car window, but honestly, I saw his wife having a bad parenting moment in the driveway with their 9 year old son when I was walking bear bait the other day, so I'm feeling a bit gun shy about them.  She doesn't seem like my type.  I hate to judge so fast, but it really was A BAD PARENTING MOMENT.

Other than my neighbors not flocking to my door to welcome us with open arms, the rest of the town seems nice enough.  As a matter of fact most people I've come into contact with seem down right friendly.  Time will tell.

P.S.  My reaction to the lack of welcome in my stepford neighborhood was to become a one woman greeting machine.  For the first ten years I lived there I greeted every single new neighbor with a gift and smile.  Most will tell you I was the only one who did.  I was hoping for something different here.  I guess I'll have to start it again.  Maybe I'll make a neighborhood cocktail hour.  Cocktails gets people friendly.

home sweet alien home

I wonder how long it is going to take before I no longer feel like I am waking up in a strange hotel room every morning.   It's been three nights in new town and I still like an intruder in the new house.  I think getting some kind of floor covering will help.  Back in stepford we had wall to wall carpet in the bedroom (we cheaped out on the hardwood at the end of our renovation)  I think putting my feet down on something fuzzy when getting out of bed would make this place feel homier.

But, thinking about Pippa's comment on my last post makes me want to describe the relationship I think I am going to end up having with this house.  I think we will be like polite office mates, respecting each other but not quite considering each other friends.  I still look at many aspects of this house and hear the voice in my head screaming "WHY??"  I'd like to slap some sense into the dude (Oh YES,  it had to be a man!!) who drew up the designs.  My frantic unpacking has evolved into a sluggish dread of unpacking.  It is not a challenge it is pure chore.

We sent all of our rugs out to be cleaned and they came back a couple of days ago.  As the rug delivery men unrolled our rugs, I found myself smiling and happy because I still like them as much as I did the day I dragged them home from the store.  I'd like to always feel that way about stuff I bother whipping out the credit card for.  I have to be more careful from now on.  Even if what I am looking at is a terrific steal.  It won't be worth it if eventually I look at it and think YUCK.  So I am hesitating about filling this place with more stuff.  We left behind a lot of storage in the form of down sizing, loss of built ins and a couple of book cases the annoying home buyers finagled out of us.  I'd like to avoid filling this house to the brim with even more furniture, but then  I will have no place to stash our stuff.  With our family still holding at 4 permanent full time residents there is a significant need for stuff storage.

I am considering only purchasing inexpensive used furniture from the sad little "antiques" shops around utopia.  Utopia, as much as love it, is a poor town on a downward sprial, so the stuff you can pick there is cheap.  It would be a more eclectic look for us, but I think if I wait for the right pieces to come along it could be a good thing.  Good meaning inexpensive and also useful but not anything to get attached to.

Now I recognize I just completely contradicted myself in the previous two paragraphs.  You should know that the "steals" I referred to back there two paragraphs ago were not furniture, they were the incredible shirt collection I have managed to amass in the last 2 years while cruising through discount stores for retail therapy on my way home from talk therapy once a week.  It's embarrassing.  I have a lot of shirts.

sad

Spent the first night in the new town house last night.  Pretty much I kept busy unpacking while the rest of the family relaxed.   I'm swallowing a lot of hostility right now.

I'm also fighting a deep overwhelming sadness.  I am on the verge of tears every minute I am in the house.  I'm keeping busy with unpacking just so I don't burst out crying.  I still don't like this house, it feels like someone else's house and I still HATE the kitchen.  I hate the kitchen so much that I can barely spend time in it.  It goes beyond the bloody poop colored walls.  It's such a ridiculously stupid poor design.   Can I tell you again that the kitchen sink is IN A DOORWAY?  

still here

OOOOh.  Wow, I've been a negligent blogger lately. Sorry about that. This time around it's not a bad thing.  I've been very happily hanging out with the kids the past couple of weeks.  We started watching LOST and now we are hooked.  Well, I think Josh is the east hooked but Evan and I are most definitely under the LOST spell.  We are about 27 episodes in, just a few into season two,  and every time each episode is over Evan screams NOOOOOOO and then fantasizes about going a LOST bender during which he does nothing but watch LOST and have food delivered to the couch.  We are so American! 

I did manage to read a few books this summer.  I didn't read anything new, only stuff that has been lying around the house for a couple of summers unread.  I read Racing In The Rain.  It took me a bit to overcome the silliness of the book being narrated  by the dog, but once I let go of who the narrator was the book turned out to be a nice summer read.  On the light side but sad.  I also read The Help because I've had that book on my kindle since a friend recommended it to me 2 years ago.  If you have to choose between the book and the movie definitely choose to read the book.  Movies can never be long enough to cover everything and in this situation I felt there were unfortunate holes in the movie because of that.  Also, the book talks a lot about what colors things are and the movie changed that, which for me at least, was infinitely frustrating.  Maybe it is because I am a visual person, but dammit, the car was supposed to be white, not blue, her dress was supposed to be green, not yellow and their uniforms were white, not gray! Grrr.   And there were other discrepancies that were almost too much for an anal kid like me to handle.

bear bait update

The vet said that bear bait's xray looked good (no joint inflammation) and that while she tested negative for lyme, if she had a recent exposure it might not show up yet. The plan was to send a still sedated bear bait, who may have some how merely managed to get herself a soft tissue injury, home with some heavy duty anti inflammatory pills that may cause either vomiting or diarrhea, in which case I should discontinue them.  FUN!  I couldn't wait to find out what bear bait's side effects would be!!   I need to keep the vet posted.  

They wanted me to keep bear bait quiet for the next week.  They said "Only let her out on leash to bathroom and then right back in the house."  BWAH HA HA HA.   I was like, "Have you noticed her breed?"   Unless they were wiling to administer daily sedative injections that just wasn't going to happen.  Also, might I point out how totally like her adoptive mother bear bait is?  Soft tissue injuries?  Those are among my many specialties.

When I picked up bear bait (tick bait) from the vet she wasn't just a bit sedated she was completely snockered.  We got home, I lifted all 74 pounds of her out of the truck and watched her stumble/limp into the house where she could not even sit in her usual english lady of a certain age proper legs crossed manner but instead sprawled out spread eagle on the nice cool wood floor.  She didn't follow me around like she usually does.  She wasn't under foot when I was in the kitchen.  It was odd.

I gave her the anti inflammatory in the evening, figuring the night time is the best time to be pain free, and it only took about 30 minutes before bear bait who we had coaxed into the television room with us began farting.  Holy mother of anti inflammatory.  Not a good thing.

She was limping much less today, so we did go for an approved swim (or she swam after me in the kayak)  but then she started to limp again late this afternoon right as the meds wore off.  I don't know what to do about our daily 4 mile walks along the lake. I feel like I am betraying her of I take off without her.  Maybe tomorrow I'll go alone and walk in the opposite direction.  Then it won't count.

Oh no!

Yesterday we spent the day in new town so my utopian neighbor stopped in to let bear bait pee and give her the mid day meal.  She called me on the phone and asked me how long bear bait had been limping for.  Huh?  Bear bait and I had taken our daily 4 mile trek along the lake yesterday morning.  I didn't see her limp. I was embarrassed that I may have hurt her on our long walks and I was concerned that she had been limping and that I had been so distracted that I hadn't noticed.  When we came home late yesterday afternoon bear wasn't limping, she was lame!  She couldn't walk on her right front foot at all.

And that is why bear bait and my left knee  ended up at the vet's office this morning.

 

The vet said that limping along with an elevated fever (yup, bear bait had a fever) was an indication of lyme disease.  CAPITAL F!!!  They are keeping bear bait for the morning.  First they had to sedate her and then they are going to xray the leg just in case and get a blood sample to send off to the lab.  Chances are bear bait will be on some heavy duty antibiotics by the end of the day and I am going to have a new danger to fixate on other than bears and bob cats.

I admit that I shed half a tear thinking that bear bait might be sick, but I wasn't broken up enough to not volunteer to stay long enough for the tranquilizer they gave her to work because I wanted to laugh at her stumbling down the hall.  The vet told me to leave.  She said that bear bait would calm down faster without an audience.  Damn.

Welcome back baby!

When I said I was going to pick Matt up from the airport today most people imagined me going to get the big lovable sweet 18 year old giant who was once described as a "scary teddy bear" by a young fan at his sleep away camp.  I on the other hand stood there behind a thick plate glass wall staring down the endless hallway between the international baggage carousel and american soil thinking more along these lines.

My baby is home and I couldn't be more thrilled about it.

Also, since I had to make the 132 mile trip both ways tonight I guaranteed my driving alertness with a large coffee in each direction.  That would be one large coffee on the way down at 6:30 and another one around 11 for the return trip to utopia.  The question to be answered now is "Will I ever get to sleep?"   Oh yeah, the other question is "If I get to sleep how many times am I going to have to get up and pee?"

placebo effect accepted here

Tonight I went the Litchfield Jazz festival with a utopian friend.  I put on one of either mom's or grandma's necklaces for the event.  The necklace was very heavy on my throat, and in the car on my down I was thinking about how poorly I've been eating and how I am bingeing in such an obvious attempt to soothe my agitated nerves.  When did I become such an anxious person?  Seriously, if I was my own friend I'd be telling myself to take a lude all of the time.  Anyway I was thinking how I should convince myself that the weight of such a necklace,  (and I ended up with a variety of mom's "chunkier" stuff since lil sis is petite and much of mom's chunky faux jewelry swallowed lil sis's lil-ness up) is calming and soothing and keeps me grounded.  I was telling myself to focus on the weight on my neck.  Feel the weight on my neck. bla bla bla.  (Like that's gonna work when someone whips out temptation!)

Lo and behold my friend and I duck into the safety of a jewelry booth to escape some rain and what is this chick selling?  She is selling something called "spirit locks" and this is what she had to say about them  (lifted directly off of her web site):

"The spirit lock is a talisman or amulet for healing from northern Thailand. The tribe that makes them is called the Hmong. They believe that your soul is made up of many spirits and if one of your spirits wanders away that is how you get sick. The spirit lock locks all your spirits into your soul to keep you healthy." 

You can see them here.  Guess who got herself a brand shiny new spirit lock tonight?