clickmom

trio

Actual email I received from Kitten:

This morning, my friend and pilates instructor, told me that the client before me said that she is really trying to make an effort to curtail her spending because of the fiscal crisis.

This week, instead of purchasing Prada shoes, she bought Cole Han.

(You see why I don't fit in here, in Stepford, don't you? I buy my size 12 shoe/boats on Zappos and I still can't believe that shoes cost more than 50 bucks.)

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I swear this is true:

me: Matt, I don't think you should eat those honey cashews, the devil got a hold of them and stuck her nose in the jar to eat some.

Matt: (Looks at honey cashews in his hand.) They are good..... (Looks at me. Looks at hand full of nuts. Shrugs. Proceeds to eat a previously possibly devil dog slobbered upon and then dried sugar coasted cashew.)

me: You're willing to eat devil spit?

Matt: They are that good.

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How to piss off three bus drivers at the same time:

Went on that class trip with Josh today. Could not figure out why the damned bus I was following (class dad had to ride the bus to fill in for a no-show) kept changing lanes so much. It was a challenge to stay right on his tail, but I did not let him out of my site, because Josh was on that bus and I was not about to get lost.

Turns out they wanted me to follow the last bus in the chain and not the the first bus and he was purposefully trying to shake me. Oooops!

escort

I am going on a school trip with Josh tomorrow. I elected not to go on the coach bus since the institutional disinfectant they use often makes me nauseous. A class dad also opted not to go on the bus. He called me about car pooling and he offered to drive us both to the trip destination. I didn't know what to say, for I was truly fearful of how this man could possibly drive. I mean, does this man also get pulled over for suspected drunk driving when he is stone cold sober (like someone I am required to share a bed with)? I'm not married to this class dad guy, I don't have to risk my life for him (like someone I am required to share a bed with). I squirmed and squirmed and finally asked him if he is a safe driver. He said he is a safe driver. But that wasn't good enough for me, because someone I am required to share a bed with thinks he is a safe driver just because he hasn't killed anyone (yet).

Then I took a deep breath and asked the class dad if he uses his turn signals. He said he does. I asked the class dad if he stays in his own lane while highway driving, he said that not only did he stay in his own lane, but that he also obeyed speed limit laws. (That was going to be my next question!) And then he said we should leave school earlier than the kids to stop for coffee and I was like, go man go! Does this guy know how to treat a girl or what? In the end I thanked him for offering to drive and agreed to go with him in his car.

But I still wasn't 100% comfortable with the idea, so when I was picking Josh up from an all class birthday party today I attempted to discreetly ask a couple of other moms if they knew this dude and his disposition due to my love of my current life combined with my incredibly rational fear of driving with potential speed demons and road ragers. To help lighten the moment I was relaying my questioning of the class dad to the two other class moms. That was when the class dad's wife (who I did not realize was the wife of the dad) arrived to pick their kid up and she totally overheard everything I was saying. She turned to me and announced her wife hood to the individual under suspicion and assured me that he was a very safe driver, safer than she considers herself to be, in fact. And I can not be sure but I think I may have been standing there with a blank deer in the head lights look and my mouth hanging open. The wife got kind of apologetic about butting into our conversation. And then she reassured me about being with a very capable driver again. I'm not sure but I don't think I was able to speak, and then the wife of the class dad kind of slunk away, looking back over her shoulder and wrapping herself protectively with her sweater.

Now you know that for sure the wife went home and warned her husband and now the guy has such a nice impression of me, and I haven't even met him yet! Go me! Surely by now all the men in the neighborhood will be driving by my house and offering me a ride just to see me turn white from fear and run into the forest or something. I am cool.

unfriended with apologies

Do you ever read one of my posts and think to yourself..."geez, that could have been written better than it was."? Yeah, me too. There are two reasons for less than stellar posts. One reason is late night posting. Pretty much if I post after 9PM I am posting while semi conscious. The second reason is because too many damned people are reading here and I feel like I have to censor myself. Okay, I do have to censor myself and I don't like that. It's hard to write about my second or third topic choice.

And speaking of censoring, I joined face book because lil sis was reconnecting with all of these people from her past and I wanted to take a look for some of my old friends too. My SIL and BIL immediately friended me and then I realized I have internet friends up there and if S or BIL go to the internet friends websites and click on my comment, then BAM I am found out. Sheeeet.

So I am sorry if I had to unfriend you. I hope you understand and I hope it wasn't too late. Also, I might not be commenting on your site soon. Just in case.

And if you happen to my SIL or BIL reading here .... I don't even know what to say.

Which has been a problem for me lately, not here, but saying things to other people. I have found myself saying "I don't know what to say." over and over again. The reason I am at a loss for words,well, I guess partly it's me, I'm still spinning in my own little grief whirlwind over here and partly it's me just feeling let down.

I did see a good friend that I never get to see at Whole Foods today. We did not meet on purpose, but we did sit down and have lunch together. During our chat this good friend asked me if I was more sad over grandma than over mom. And I admitted that I am, and I my good friend understood, and it was really quite a relief for someone to assume it like it was 100% understandable and then accept it as completely normal.

butt stripey

Matt just did this 24 hour film race competition. I was so totally happy that he was doing it and so completely over the top into it that I wanted to do it with him. But Matt didn't want his film to be a family affair, so he hooked up with a camp friend who really knows how to edit and did it with him. I did give Matt some advice before it started though, and when it was all through he thanked me for my advice and said he would be willing to work on the next one with me. Oh joy oh joy! There is another race right before Thanksgiving and I think I want to do that one! I'd have a blast. I am hopING Matt puts his movie on youtube and I'll absolutely link to it if he does.

In the mean time, I got a letter from the hospice with a list of normal responses to grief. How come the one symptom I never ever have is loss of appetite? Nauseous? Eat something and push it through! In pain? Eat something! It'll make me feel better! Sad? Eat! Happy? Eat! Confused? Eat!

One symptom of grief is preoccupation with the lost loved one. Excuse me while I whistle to myself and try to look all innocent over here.

Yeah, hello? Spying on me lately?

Speaking of dead loved ones, I can't believe what the world is like for all the jewelry wearers out there! There is flattery and camaraderie and even some envy! Ofcourse for people like me, this all goes along with all the itchy neck and the constant threat of strangulation by seatbelt entanglement. But we women sacrifice for beauty right? No pain no gain?

I can't tell you how many people (all women, mind you) have said the nicest things to me or about me! One of the mom's in Josh's class said "She has the nicest jewelry" about me (I don't think she saw the asian lady and four ghoulish men bead heads necklace) and I overheard her! Even one of my religious school kids reached up today and fondled one of my longer beaded numbers and said she thought it was pretty.

One of the questions I still find myself fielding about my new short kicky looking hair is "What did your husband say?" The husband said "It's okay. It'll grow." I hear the love in that statement, don't you?

At the posh gym the other day I saw that they are having a weight loss contest. It's going to be an 8 week challenge based on percentage of body fat or something. I went straight up to the front desk and demanded "If I sign up for this are you going to tell the whole club what I weigh?" and they told me NO and that they were going to only post our success in percentages and not our actual weight. I said "Sign me up!" It starts on the 14th. Does anyone out there even know how much serious damage I can do in 10 days? I am totally not kidding, see my second paragraph!

Josh slipped on the stairs and has a back and blue stripe across his two butt cheeks where he hit the stair edge. Well, he is my son and the apple most definitely can not fall far from the tree if it is tripping all the way there. I feel bad that I am not more upset, he's just so damned cute, limping around and all butt stripey and everything. I kind of want to bite him. (again refer to paragraph two).

aced

me: Matt? What is that on your toe?

Matt: Oh that .... ahhh, it's ink. I played tic tac toe on my toe! (smirk)

me: gulp (insert nervous tick here)With who?

Matt: I played by myself.

Evan brought home some tests to be signed. These are some words he used and spelled correctly: etiquette, positively, interact, and ventures. These are some words that Evan spelled incorrectly (with interpretations) nomadar (no matter), choas (chaos) and rular (ruler). Go figure.

Last night I went to that photographers meeting. The photographers gathered and only some brought work to share. We all signed a sheet to indicate if we had brought work in and then two by two we put our work on display and the other members would take a close up view and then sit down to critique the work. I listened without commenting to the first couple of critiques so that I could size up the people there and before long I could tell which was the guy who has a lot to say but doesn't know much, which was the guy who is a mover and shaker and going somewhere, and who was the guy who is old school and stuck in his ways, and a few other characters too.

I was loving every second of disecting a photo, my mind was in overdrive, and as the photographers revolved and put up piece after piece I became more and more alive.

When my turn to display work came around I went up to the front, put up 5 landscapes that I had taken this summer, and told the audience that I was thick skinned and that they need not hold back with their opinions. For a few seconds no one said a thing and I just stood up there awkwardly, smiling and looking around hoping for a hand in the air or a gesture or anything at all... and then the guy that I had pegged as the mover shaker spoke up from all the way in the back corner and he said "Cool ... Cool" while nodding his head in approval and then everyone agreed that they loved my photos and that my photos were painterly and the photographers said pretty much only nice things and nothing negative and I was happy and very excited that my stuff was well liked.

I never really know how other people will react to my stuff because it's all so personal to me. Especially since 3 of the 5 landscapes were utopian and the other 2 were shot with my point and shoot (gasp!) from the car while crossing the Tappanzee Bridge (husband was driving!) The other photographers even thought the graininess of the point and shoot added to the ambience of the photo. I'm telling you, I was totally having a Sally Field moment. They loved me! THEY REALLY LOVED ME!

I was so excited I couldn't stop talking or even settle down and go to sleep last night. It was great.

shawl

Right off the bat.... Happy New Year Jewish readers!

We went to services today. There were separate services for the under 13 crowd, so in the adult service it was just the husband, Matt, and me. During services the men (and some women in our egalitarian congregation) wear a prayer shawl called a tallit. Once I had lost all focus I kind of looked around the room and then I looked at ad thought about Matt's tallit.

Before Matt's Bar Mitvah when we were visiting my folks in Florida my mom told me that she wanted to give each of my kids their own (very special symbol) tallit. She wanted to start a tradition. The boys don't wear them until their Bar Mitzvah. My mom and dad and me and the kids went to a judaica store near them in Florida and Matt and my mom and dad picked out Matt's tallit. When Matt wore it for his Bar Mitzvah in Israel it was very special.

And I started thinking that now my Dad might remember that tradition that he and mom had tried to start what seems like a million years ago, but was only about 2, or maybe not. And I thought that maybe I should remind dad and suggest to my dad that he go with Evan and Josh sooner rather than later if wants to continue this tradition, but I don't want to tell dad that I walk around with this lump of fear in my throat that his time is about to come to, and before I knew it I was sitting there bawling my eyes out during services and wondering if dad was going to hold on until Evan's Bar Mitzvah, which is still over a year away. Luckily, because I left my normally kleenex stocked purse in the car I was seated next to the mother of one of the kids in my class and she passed me a little travel packet of kleenex, which I was desperately in need of and infinitely grateful for.

Now we are home, I can't shake this awful sad feeling but I am going to make my very excellent brisket recipe just liked I planned, even though it isn't grandma's recipe like that woman at the posh club tells everyone it is, and we'll have apples and honey too and hopefully there will an excess of sweetness in this coming year.

wake

You are not going to believe what I did today. I went to a wake.

That is three deaths in just over three months. I really didn't want to go, and I knew that since I did not know the family of this lovely sweet older woman that I have worked with for the past five years, the family would not wonder why I had not shown up. But I reminded myself that this was something we do for the other people and not for ourselves, and that I, as a grieving daughter myself, should go and say the kind of things that I appreciated most to the grieving daughters of the lovely sweet older lady that I used to work with.

I got to the funeral and met my editor outside. She had already been inside but she turned right around and went back in with me. I looked at the many photos of the lovely old lady at her own wedding, at the weddings of her children and with each of her very many grandchildren. Then I regarded the lovely old lady lying there with a color lipstick she never would have chosen in real life. Then I asked my editor which were her daughters and my editor pointed one out to me. I took a few minutes to gather myself, this wasn't about me, and I approached her daughter. I told the daughter I had worked with her mother and then I told her what a light her mother had been in the office, how I would always wonder out loud to the kids if she would be there when I was trying to entice them into stopping by. Because my kids enjoyed her very much too. How seeing the lovely sweet lady behind her computer uplifted the whole visit. The lovely sweet old lady had a candy jar. She was always very generous with the kids. Most of the time we stopped by the drug store to offer her a bag of candy to keep the jar stocked with.

I must have said the right thing because the daughter grabbed my arm and dragged me to meet her sisters. I shared my feelings with the sisters. They all wept, and they hugged me hard. And I told them how special their mother was.

scalped again

Back in 2004, before we met, I grew my hair out real long and donated it to these people. My hair dresser was so impressed that I went and did that selfless hair donating deed that she brings it up every single time I go in for a trim. (All two or three times a year!) I guess grown ups don't do the donate hair thing that often.

Anyway, I was letting my hair get long and I was thinking about doing the donation thing again last year. But I made the mistake of telling grandma about it (before she got sick) and grandma was so worried that I was going to chop all my hair off that she would actually remember that from visit to visit and check to make sure all of my hair was still there every time we saw each other. SO I didn't cut my hair. Because I was humoring grandma. But then last spring it started to get to me so I went in and had about 3 inches cut off and grandma didn't notice a thing. And I felt like I was off the hook, but I still wasn't going to do anything drastic.

Then lil sis came across mom's old digital camera that had never been downloaded in over 3 years so little sis downloaded it onto her computer. She sent me about 20 (or maybe it was 3) emails telling me how much she liked my hair at that particular length. So when I went into the salon this morning, what I had in mind was getting a similar cut because I am nothing if mot a people pleaser, even if by people I mean specifically lil sis.

Here I am getting all excited to go and get my hair cut. My hair had started to do this incredibly annoying thing which was to wrap around my neck and become a virtual hair scarf. The hair scarf made me feel kind of hot and kind of suffocated I was happy to think of it being gone.

Here I am with that lil sis pleasing hair length back in 4/06 when we went to Israel for Matt's Bar Mitzvah. I am holding my local paper up in front of the Dome of The Rock because every summer the paper runs vacation photos of people holding up the paper in the different places they visit and I figured no one else was likely to go to Israel. I considered that photo and decided that this was the length and cut I was going to ask for.

When I sat down with my long long locks in the stylist's chair she asked me if I was donating again and I said that I could probably do that with my long hair but that I did not want to cut my hair that short and that is when the stylist told me there is another place that I could donate to that would take an 8 inch ponytail instead of a 10 inch one. So, being the girl who swore I was going to learn how to say NO but was totally lying about that, I said OKAY and I let her hack off my hair. Also, you should know that the very first thing mom did after deciding that she was going to pursue treatment for her rare and fatal cancer was buy a wig. She was more afraid of being bald than anything else. That totally impacted my decision. Here it is:
I could make several 8 inch jokes, right about now, but I don't want the google hits.

And now here for your viewing pleasure, is the newly scalped (hey, it's hair and it grows!) laughing at something Evan was doing off camera, me!

why Evan's friends won't be coming over any time soon

Evan: I had my whole lunch table cracking up so hard today that some of them couldn't continue eating. They had tears rolling down their faces.

me: Wow, what did you say?

Evan: Well, the thing is that so and so was sitting next to me and he thought I was so funny that he slapped me on the back and when he did that I fake punched him in the arm like I always do and a teacher saw.

me: Oh no, did they give you a detention?

Evan: No, they asked me what happened and then they questioned so and so and they realized that it was all fine.

me: So what was it that you were saying?

Evan: Oh, that's not the point.

me: Ummm, Evan, I'm not going to give up, what did you say that was so funny?

Evan: I was telling them about that time when we were driving and you were sick and had to get out of the car and you pooped right next to the car and it was green and (more graphic poop description that you do not want to read) they thought it was hilarious.

i wuv my silly little poltergeist

Okay, a quick "grandma is haunting me" (in a totally good way) recap for those of you who may have missed it. Once I came back from utopia the tv in my bedroom went on twice while I was sleeping alone in my room (because the air conditioning was broke and the husband fled to cooler temps downstairs) and then again a third time when the husband had returned to our repaired colled attic sleeping space. And the husband still didn't believe it was grandma, even though he saw it with his own two extremely near sighted eyes! Then one night, in the middle of the night as usual, there was a beeping kind of sound and it was coming from the tv too.

When we spent the night in utopia Saturday night, I thought to myself that if the utopian bedroom television should happen to turn on and glow dark purple (that is what happens to the home tv) then there would be no doubt in my mind that it was grandma and surely anyone (as in any doubters) else would also be swayed by that kind of phenomena. Guess what happened! Yes! I rolled over in the middle of my utopian sleep fog and the tv was all aglow!

My theory is that grandma is coming back as some kind of energy field.

Yesterday evening I broke the news of the utopian tv to the husband who still (because he is not a spiritual person) refuses to believe. I was in the kitchen at the time and he was sitting in the family room area watching tv. Just as the husband declared his doubt of what is so obviously true the picture on the screen went black but the sound stayed on. And when I saw the husband fussing with the remote I went over to assist him and we couldn't even get the tv to go off, even when I pressed the power button on the tv itself. Ahem.

Then, with no tv to watch, the husband gets into his luxury automobile with Evan to run to the store and the old fashioned (it has hands instead of an electronic read out) clock on his dashboard goes crazy and the hands start spinning around and around. Ahem.

As I was saying, some people might not want to believe my haunting is true, but me, I want to believe and it makes me feel good thinking that grandma is near me and playing with me and no one gets hurt no matter what I believe, so I feel quite certain that what I want to believe is true and if you don't, well I have a hammer I can hit you over the head with.