Anniversaries are so special...Don't you think?

And today was a special anniversary for sure. It has been one month since I asked Dh to help assemble my treadmill. Ah...time certainly does fly when you're having fun (or staring at a half-open box of treadmill guts day after freaking day). When I asked him to help (one month ago today), he said "we'll do it wednesday." I could hardly get to sleep on Tuesday night. Why, it's Treadmill Eve! All joy is fleeting tho, because Treadmill Day came and he announced that "he needed to take it slowly because it was pretty complicated." Right. Gotcha. Okey Dokey. Well, I had no idea just exactly how slowly he'd be taking it. Apparently he was modeling his schedule after the guys who built Stonehenge. Days to weeks...weeks to month...*sigh*

So this morning I, me, myself AND moi put the damned thing together in like 90 minutes. NINETY MINUTES. I mean from laying out the guts to striding that first mile. Yeah. 90 minutes. Tops. I am complicated and should be taken slowly. The treadmill, on the other hand, was not. See, I do so know the difference.
I love him, I do. But sometimes he's just another guy hanging around here with a cowlick and a penis (all of them have the same cowlick, penis, not so much.)

And how does all this affect my disposition?

Well, now, that's complicated.

The Truth about Bourbon

It's time to come clean about a topic that has surfaced on several occasions here in Lahlahland. Yes, I'm talking about the brownest of the brown, the mellowest of the mmmmmmmmmms, the sweet mama-hold-my-hand-while-I-drink-it-neat bourbon. While I do enjoy it upon occasion (yes, Bobby, I do recall that magical mid-summer night during which we were granted the super bourbon-drinking powers but not the waaay more useful-- trust me, super hangover-survival skills), I feel rather silly because while I may cry for it at the end of a post, it's a bit of a conceit. All that bourbon would cloud up my standard bitchiness, I really think it would. Bourbon-based bitchiness is a whole 'nother stop on the toll road to Hell. (Yes Bobby. I know Bobby. Enough Bobby. ) My bourbon-induced tallulah bankhead/auntie mame/dixie carter (early seasons of Designing Women--you know, before she got so preachy) is precious because it is so very rare. I don't have any real sources for that last statement, I'm just assuming that it's precious and best if rare.

I'm too old for all that stuff. There's no respite after a hard night on the Bonbourbon. More likely there's a four year old sitting on your head arranging his stuffed animals so that they're all just looking at your old hungover mommy self with no small bit of marble-eyed disdain. I have had this happen. Not an urban myth.

I'm glad we got that all cleared up, aren't you?

Hard Times in the Land of Lah

Since there may just be someone who has crossed the borders into LahLahland, whether intentionally or not, it would seem to be simple good manners for me to explain my recent absence.
Things are tough here. Not adjusting at ALL to Dh's work schedule--it's messing w/my sleep and my already tenuous grasp on sanity, and not necessarily in that order either. It's like my whole life is suddenly on one of those slanty walk things you might see at a fair. Nothings really changed, but it's all just really slanted , so then everything has changed. Profoundly. Deep, no? Or it's like wearing someone else's glasses. I don't want to explain that one b/c I'll just mess it up, but surely you've tried on someone's glasses simply for the hilarity of it, right? Well, it's like that. Only w/o the hilarity.

It would seem (acc. to those clever internet quizzes and years of experience with the disease) that the combined crap soup of schedule/kid/dh/home stress and the crazy mother/father counselling nightmare, I have twirled myself right on down into a depressive episode. Now, I will be modest and not call it a major episode, if only because that sounds like something I'd have to plan and I just don't have it in me right now to plan anything beyond hot dogs for dinner tonight. And that's iffy right there.
This is not a new seat on the bus for me. BTDT. But if you will recall, my doc retired. Poof. Gone. Aloha. Sooo I have to try to work it out via other routes. Routes not familiar with my dysthymic terrain. Routes that don't have my records. Routes that don't know that I'm far enough down the hole to not even remember to take the red-flag- on-my-chart meds b/c they're sched. II and altho I have always respected the drug and its properties, good and bad, you know how docs get all itchy and blinky about stuff like that. Yeah. Not overmedicating. Not bothering to overmedicate. If you knew me in the 80s I will give you a moment to re-gather yourself and process that "not overmedicating" thing. There. All better? Maybe I'm just not remembering. Does it matter which?
Kids are fine, but they'd like bedtime stories instead of being hustled off like cattle. My mother is preparing for intensive electroshock therapy (see me not holding my breath for this one). Dh loves what he does and can't figure why oh why oh why I must always um...piss on his party (sorry Jenny). He thinks I should go back to work. He thinks that's a good idea. I think it's a good one, all right. I asked him who, in the event that I should go back to work, would do my job here? Oh...you know, the housework, the yardwork, the maintenance, laundry, blah blah blah. The man looked at me like I'd grown a third eye (I wonder if that would come in handy...). He really so doesn't have any idea. And don't say, "well, stop doing all that stuff and just you see...he'll get the picture mighty quick" because he won't. Nope, not a bit. He will not even know that a picture is coming around, much less get ahold of it. And I will gain only a larger variety of sticky, smelly and quite possibly congealed household situations. Also, he has conveniently forgotten that teachers work a lot. And some teachers really need to stay at school to get stuff done. Some teachers are not whizzes at the planning thing in the first place, and also don't have fax/printer/copier thingies at home. Some teachers are kinda bad about forgetting stuff and so must stay in one place so as to keep aformentioned stuff handy. And some teachers are still at work at six in the evening. All of this I have lived and he has forgotten.

So you see how it is, here in the land of Lah. Maybe it's hurricane season in these parts, I don't know. I just know that I'm feeling just a bit taut and weepy and more than just a bit exhausted. And I don't care. And that's not how Mama rolls, my friends. Not how Mama gets it done. So I need to be thinking and praying and spending time in the late-year sunlight. Oh, and Bourbon. I do need some Bourbon.

Thanks a LOT Ladaaaays...

There's this kid who's been showing up around here just about every damn day since oh...I'll say the middle of October almost 8 years ago. So we feed him and make small talk and all that sort of thing, you know, and I'll venture to say we've come to a rather comfortable conviviality between us. He stays over at night and keeps a toothbrush and some extra clothes around, so you see how it is.
Well. I don't know where this kid went, but he is gone like $2 gasoline. Got this other kid now who really could be the other kid's brother, honest to God, but this kid is different from the old kid. Really different.

Now, I'm not one to make waves (hush now), so I figured we'd all go along with the new kid for a bit and see how it all pans out. So far so good. They wear the same size and go to the same school and all that, but this new kid, he came with hair gel. Hair gel that he bought with his own money (so you KNOW he's not my kid if he's picking up the tab). Some dollar store vat of blue goo with Sport on the label.
Don't nobody panic. They can smell fear.
So tonight this hair gel-carrying kid decides he wants to take a bath and relax. RELAX.
WTF? be cool, mommy, be realll cool.
Kid comes out of the bathroom after what I must assume was a relaxing spa-esque event and every last bit of his general hair area is sealed, plastered, decoupaged in blue sport goo. I mean his hair is blue, that's how much blue goo there is. I know. How much blue goo is left? How much could be left? Rest well, dear friends, it's a big vat.
He likes it. He says his hair smells "fresh." And it's "shiny". (Oh ho, yes baby, it is de-fi-nitely shiny) Tells me he "wants to get a head start on good hair for tomorrow." Oh sweet mercy. I mean, really. I frankly will be shocked if he's able to get that head of pre-gelled good hair off his pillow by the time that sport stuff dries.
And I am waiting on that Bourbon, Lord. (Isn't that part of a Psalm? Me and God, we joke, it's cool)
I do like this new kid. He's pretty funny and any man who brings his own toiletries is a-okay in my book, but I do miss the old kid. Lord, I had to set a simple box trap just to check his shirt buttons, but we had a good long run, me and him.
Now, I don't foresee that trouble with this new kid. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking we're looking at a whole 'nother kind trouble with sport goo kid.

Yup.

The Wheels on the Bus...

Put That Little Red-Headed Fellow on his Little Yellow Bus for the first time this week so he can go to his Special School. Now, I am sure mothers face more terrifying situations every day, but I am also absolutely sure that most of those mothers are naturally way braver about all that stuff they need to be brave about. Most mothers would not whine about an all morning stomach ache and then, after waiving gaily (maniacally, even) at the taillights of that baby bus with my baby on it (and only four other students and two accredited adults going to the one place and, after all, they get there just fine every other day, but this time they took my LRHF), most mothers would not hurl themselves into some SUDDENLY VERY IMPORTANT TRELLIS CONSTRUCTION and OTHER ABSOLUTELY THIS MINUTE NECESSARY GARDEN STUFF just to hide the weepies. Now, I'll grant you, I got a LOT of trellises built, but there comes a point when you have to ask yourself how many is too many?Dh didn't stop me until I was darn near finished a sort of limpy-looking pergola. It's for the best, really, that thing would never have survived any actual plants with leaves and stuff. .
Oh, my baby. My sweet LRHF. On that little bus in his little public school uniform. Going into the city (it's not Manhattan, folks...believe me). Word School, we call it. So he can get his words, we tell his brothers. It's pretty much the truth, too, so it makes sense to them too. And the Fuzzy Headed Fellow is boiling jealous over the bus thing. He thinks he could use some of that there Word School, too. I lean more toward boarding school for him (insert the weak laughter of a half-joking late-day mother here).

It was a very long day for the not-brave mommies. A long looking-out-the-window day. To be fair, tho, we must remember that I am not what you might call a "let's keep busy and get our jobs done" kind of mommy in the first place, so don't get all concerned over that.

He made it okay, just fine even, my Beautiful Boy on His Bus. Arrived home to cheering crowds who certainly would have hoisted him upon their shoulders had the driveway hill not been such an a trip up the Andes in the first place. Instead, Mommy got to carry all 46 lbs of LRHF all the way up that s.o.b. hill. I don't care. There was triumph and there was joy. I thought for a second that there was ticker tape, but turns out that his bookbag was open and stuff was flying out in the breeze.

You can bet, though, you can be absodamnlutely sure, that for all time, in my mommy heart and in his LRH heart, we had us some fine tickertape coming down on us that September day.

He goes back tomorrow.
*sigh*

"The Ladaaays Like It When You're Handsome..."

These words, a direct and unedited quote from Big Red Headed Boy, as he stands in my bathroom, just one month shy of his 8th year, with a big boy hand full of runny mousse (my good mousse at that) all ready to splat it upon his big red head. Have Mercy. Have Mercy on me right this very minute Lord, because I am just about falling out of myself over this. He used my blowdryer last week. Now, my children, none excepted, have a perfect genetic hybrid of my hair and dh's hair. So it's rather um....equine-tail-like. Brushy. Coarse. Thick. Same cowlick in all three, right smack over the left eye. I can say with all the certainty of the Resurrection that none of my babies will ever sport those obnoxiously long "bama bangs" because that hair in that cowlick spot will never ever go along with the necessary gravity. As a matter of fact, all three boys get taller as their hair gets longer. LRHF, LFHF and BRHB. It grows up, like zoysia grass. Daddy's hair does just the same, faster if he's been drinking a bit.

Oh, but this morning. My boy telling me all about combing his hair (brush cut, mind you, maybe 1/3 inch long. Maybe) while he smears mousse in it. That was some mighty sharp red hair that left our house bound for second grade on this fine morning.

Be kind to my boy, Dear Ladies. You don't want to be on my bad side.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm

Remember how the lawnmower was held together by drapery hardware? Remember how awful it was? I shudder at the recollection as well, but my neighbor came over and prounounced T.O.D. on ol' Red this past Sunday. Nothing to be done. R.I.P. in Briggs&Stratton heaven, Good Friend. You were loved and will be missed. I saved up my own lil pin money and bought that ol' Red long time ago. Just this past Mother's Day, I learned how to take the blades off and sharpen them with my orbital sander. I know, the gift that keeps on giving.
But it was time to let go. I know. She was ready.

Fortunately, I managed to weave through all the stages of grief in time to go buy a new damned mower. Not easy and not without psychological consequence, but I needed it. Our neighborhood needed it. It's bad enough that we decorate for Halloween with a certain earthy abandon that can only mean we're witches (b/c either you are a Baptist or you are a Witch and I believe in Transubstantiation and some other uppity unliteral stuff and am therefore not a Baptist), but the unlovely lawn, well, that was call for a thrashing of some sort, I'm sure.

Got out all my tools. wrenches, pliers, gator grip thingies, ready to roll. Put that "replacement" lawnmower (that will never be part of this family, you can take that to the bank) together and just get the job done without sentiment or affection. I don't need a lawnmover to fulfill a need, you know? But have mercy, you know they come almost completely together now? That last one, well, I practically needed to soder parts of it before I could use it. Almost anticlimactic.

She's a sweet push, I'll tell you what. Yessir. In and out and around the gardens and up and down the hill in front...she did the job. All the neighbors were waving at me (always genteel in my overalls and bandanna) and it was nice.

Let me be perfectly clear here: It was not Red. Never could be Red. But it was okay. Nice, even. I may come to love again.

I don't know.