Impossible Cuteness

Posted in Children, Humor, Motherhood, Random by

There are many days when my two-year-old is impossible. I mean, she is two. And she is tiny and feisty and stubborn and smart and really, really good at getting her own way. She can be exhausting.

But then there are days when she is just impossibly cute. So cute that I want to squish her up into a little blond meatball and gobble her up. (Hey, I was raised with an Italian grandma and a Polish grandma in my life. We love our babies through food imagery.) Today was one of those days.

She was mad at me (surprise!), so she sat down on a kitchen chair and said, “Well, I jus’ gonna sit hewe and be fwustwated! Hmph!

Hmph!

Hmph!

And since today is Wednesday, and my friend Julie at These Walls has introduced me to the Moxie Wife’s Five Favorites series, and this little turkey kielbasa really is pretty cute, I will add a few more of my favorite photos. I will call this series the Silly Time Spectacular! 

I was supposed to be the "easy" one.

I was supposed to be the calm one.

We can’t leave out the classic naked spaghetti picture.

I'm naked. I'm eating spaghetti. Life is good.

I’m naked. I’m eating spaghetti. Life is good.

And then there’s the one where she puts together an outfit.

Caption THIS!

Caption THIS!

And the one where she tries to take all of her clothes off but they get stuck around her little heiny.

Meatballs, amiright?!

Meatballs, amiright?!

And now I am signing off. I have some meatballs to make!

fivefavorites

We Are All They Need

Posted in Children, Holidays, Loss, memories, Motherhood, Women by

Today is Janurary 6, my mother’s day. It became “my” mother’s day 23 years ago when my own mother, after a nearly eight-year battle, lost her life to breast cancer and when I became aware of how vitally important a mother’s presence is in the lives of her children.

For many years, whenever January 6th arrived, I thought about my own losses. A first, I missed her with every nerve; I felt flayed and exposed to a host of things that were beyond my understanding. Gradually, my piercing grief was replaced by a longing that was no less intense, because it contained the realization that with each passing year I was separated even further from her.

But now that I have children of my own, when January 6th rolls around I find myself thinking less about my own losses and more about what my mother lost when she died.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful.

Parenthood is a future-thinking endeavor. When we first breathe in the newness of our just-born child, we look forward, far forward, to decades of moments with that brand-new baby. Yes, we marvel at their smallness, their freshness, their perfection. We revel in the tiny yet immense gift we have been given. But we also envision what that baby will be like as a child, and as a teenager, and as an adult. We see them on birthdays, on holidays, at graduations and weddings. We see their children.

We plan to be with them until they are grown, and to experience life with them after they have reached their potential as adults. We don’t plan for our relationship with them to end when they are children.

When my mom died, she didn’t just lose her own life. She lost her life with her children. For her, my life and my brother’s life, intertwined as they were with her own, ended when we were eleven and six.

I can’t even imagine how painful it must have been for her, when she finally accepted that the end was near, to know that she was about to lose her future with us. That she would miss all of the moments of our lives, big and small, for the rest of our lives. That she would never know us as adults, or meet the people who would become important to us as we matured. That she would never, ever, hold a grandchild in her arms.

As her daughter, and as the mother of my own children, it breaks my heart to know that this face…

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…and this face

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…are wholly unknown to her.

When she knew that she was dying, she also had to know that she was letting go of a million moments with her children. That the past was all she would ever have with us. She must have experienced the kind of pain that pray I never have to face.

***

This is not going to turn into one of those “enjoy every moment with your child because you never know how many you have” posts. I could go there, but I’m not a hypocrite. I would wager large sums of money that, when my children are grown and gone, I absolutely will not be longing to re-experience the prickly-hot feeling of panic spiked with shame that comes over you when your five-year-old is publicly behaving like a spoiled toddler, while your toddler is running in circles like an untrained dog smelling distinctly of eau de poo. There are many moments that I won’t miss.

I’m not even saying that we moms (and dads!) should be doing anything differently. If anything, I am saying we should all do less, or at least that we should worry less about what we should be doing. Because if I have learned one thing after 23 years of being without my mother, I can tell you that what I missed, what I craved, was her. Her presence. The knowledge that the world contained her.

I didn’t need any extras. I didn’t need perfection. I would have preferred to have had her healthy, but to have had her at all was a blessing and, as I have learned, a luxury. To have had her, just as she was, was enough.

And if just having her was enough, then it follows that just having us, their parents, is enough for our own children. The fact that we are in their lives, that we are actively loving them, is enough. Our flaws and imperfections and mistakes do nothing to lessen the impact of our mere presence. Isn’t that a freeing thought?

What I am saying is that the sum of moments that we have with our children is probably the best thing that we, or they, will ever have. And that if we are able to look forward to a future of these moments, when we and they are all present together in this world, then we are damned lucky.

A Christmas Post

Posted in Children, Holidays, Loss, traditions, Uncategorized by

This is going to be an unusual post for me: deeply personal, painful, and unedited.

Around this time of year, talking heads on television have a lot to say about what Christmas is, what Christmas should be, and what Christmas is not. Many of them are angry — no, outraged — over how others celebrate their holiday.

Christmas should be about CHRIST, these angry faces argue. Which means that in our words, and in our decorations, and in everything we do outwardly, we should be focusing fully on CHRISTmas. They make definitive assertions about Santa and Jesus and behind everything is an attitude of scathing contempt for people who celebrate Christ’s birth differently from them.

In the midst of this anger are people like me: people for whom Christmas is a season of anxiety, excitement, and bittersweet memories.

I have a hard time at Christmas. It has always been my favorite holiday. I have so many treasured memories of the season. And now that I have children of my own, there is even more joy to savor and celebrate. I look forward to it every year.

I also dread it every year. Because Christmas is also the season when my mother, and later my uncle, died of cancer. So along with the memories of happy Christmases past, I have the memory of myself, 11 years old, praying fervently, desperately, that my mom would be out of the hospital to celebrate Christmas with us.

I have the memory of myself a few days later, on Christmas day, in bed with my mother, who had just been released from the hospital, not because she was healthy, but because there was nothing left to do. She was in hospice care.

I have the memory of myself giving her a $5 vial of drugstore perfume, because an 11-year-old has no idea of what impending death really, truly means.

I have the memory of the last time I spoke to my her, the day after that Christmas, but I have no memory of what she said. I remember her coma, her suffering, and her death, which happened on a Sunday, January 6, just after my family returned from the Mass celebrating the Epiphany. My prayers had been answered; she was with us for Christmas, through to its very end. But my grief was nevertheless unfathomable.

It has been 23 years since that last Christmas with my mother and the grief is still there. It has changed and matured and is no longer as incapacitating as it once was. But it lingers, and at times it hits me like a punch in the stomach. I still hide in bathrooms to cry.

So you can imagine how, with all these mixed emotions coursing through my mind, I’m a little on edge at Christmas. Just a little… jumpy, if not actually constantly on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

You can also imagine my feelings when, upon tuning into the Daily Show for some much-needed laughter, I see people who, in the spirit of keeping Christ in Christmas are genuinely, thoroughly infuriated at the idea of a holiday tree in a public square or a tongue-in-cheek Festivus pole near a nativity scene.

Really? You are asking me, as an expression of my true faith in Christ, to be angry about decorations? You want me to be annoyed when people wish me Happy Holidays, and to limit my own greetings to an emphatic Merry Christmas? You want me to call legislators about how they refer to the decorated trees in their cities and you want me to complain when retailers don’t feature life-sized nativity scenes in their Christmas displays? And you want me to do these things because THAT is how we keep Christ in Christmas?

No, thank you. Christmas is hard enough for me. It’s hard enough for many, many other people for whom the holidays are a time that reminds them of their own losses, their failures, their regrets. I’m not going to get angry about how other people celebrate (or don’t celebrate) the birth of a Savior. And I’m not going to get angry at the anger.

Here’s what I am going to do, to keep Christ in Christmas: I am going to ask everyone who reads this to walk away from the anger and the criticism and the so-called culture war over what our Christian faith truly means.  I am going to ask you to remember all of us who are broken or hurting or empty this Christmas. But above all, I am going to breathe through my feelings of joy, anticipation, regret, and pain and I am going to remember that a Child was born and that he was the Prince of Peace.

She was pretty damn special.

She was pretty damn special.

When I Grow Up

Posted in Holidays, old age, Uncategorized by

When I grow up and I get my own room, by which I mean when my kids finally stick my old, sick, complaining self into the nursing home, this tree will live in it forever. I will decorate it only with fairy lights and unicorns and sparkly ribbons, and it will make me happy.

I made this picture extra large so you can fully appreciate this magnificent tree's awesomeness.

I made this picture extra large so you can fully appreciate this magnificent tree’s awesomeness.

This isn’t just some wild fancy of mine — it’s actually a brilliant plan that is at least as important as ensuring that I will be able to pay for the nursing home while I am there.

In my childhood, just one look at a rainbow Christmas tree covered with unicorns would have been like achieving Nirvana. All my fires of desire would have been extinguished. And if old age is really just a return to a childlike state, as so many people say it is, then what could make me happier than living out the rest of my days basking in the fairy-lit glow of my childhood’s grandest dream?

My rainbow and unicorn tree will also make interactions with the nursing home staff more pleasant. For them, at least. Because the fanciful cheerfulness of a tree like this one will undoubtedly make it slightly more bearable for them to change my adult diapers while listening to me expound on the status of my prolapsed uterus. And yes, I know, there are actually people who do not love unicorns and rainbows. To them, I will seem like a strange old bat who is just barely on the flip side of crazy and they will tread lightly around me out of the simple fear that they will push me over that edge.

I will always have visitors, too, because let’s face it: who wouldn’t want to come see the dotty old lady who lives year round with a unicorn-festooned Christmas tree? I would probably even get written up in the local newspaper, which would elevate me to the pinnacle of successful senior-citizenhood: The status of one who can tote a laminated newspaper article about herself, with its accompanying photograph, everywhere she goes. And if I am able to assume this most coveted of roles, I will be sure to bring my treasure, in its manila envelope, to every single appointment with my myriad of doctors, feigning forgetfulness when I show it to them time and time again.

I think I may have put to rest all of my worries about old age. I mean, who needs wills, or financial advisors, or nerve pills, or diabetic support socks when there are novelty Christmas trees and nursing home fame.

***

Note: All senior citizen stereotypes are based on my dear, quirky, and greatly missed grandmothers.

When It Snows Below the Mason Dixon Line

Posted in Children, Random, Uncategorized by

My plans for this week were simple: 1. To clean. 2. To wrap Christmas presents. I find that if I keep my goals pathetically easy, I can be an incredibly efficient person. It’s amazing how that works.

But it turns out that Mother Nature has had other plans for me. She brought us Marylanders an unseasonably early set of snowstorms, which have cancelled school for two days.

Yesterday, it was wet and icy, so we had a full day stuck inside. It’s all a blur to me; the only part of the day that I really remember was my trip to my doctor’s office where I learned that I still have strep throat, despite having undergone a full course of antibiotics two weeks ago.

Today, after my new antibiotic regimen has kicked in with unusual force, I am a little more aware of my surroundings. Which is good, because a second snow day with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old who are both crushed that they couldn’t go to school requires a LOT of energy.

By 9:30, I was questioning my life choices. It’s now 4:42 pm, and this is the run down of how my day has gone:

Rooms cleaned: 0
Rooms made even messier: Every single one.
Gifts wrapped: 0
Time outs: 12. At least.
Labor-intensive Christmas crafts: 4.
Craft-related meltdowns: 4.
Sibling fights: I stopped counting.
Tears: Seriously, who can count that high?
Shattered glasses: 1.
TV shows: Um, 8?
Princess movies: 1.
Snowmen: 1.
Walks through the wintery woods: 1.
Rocks thrown in the stream: lots.
Faceplants into the stream: 1.
Children carried home crying: 1.
Wet, muddy children: 2.
Soaked items of clothing: 10.
Epic meltdowns related to the usage of stickers: 1.
Cups of cocoa thrown on the floor: 1.
Number of times a kid told me she was sooo happy: 4.
Worth it? Yes.
The number of prayers I will say tonight begging God that schools be open tomorrow: I’m going to start now and never stop.

It’s been a long day. Luckily, the roads are cleared enough for my husband to go out for pizza. Which he will be doing. Even if he has to walk. Seriously, I mean it.

There were also some precious moments, and I was fortunate to be able to catch many of them on camera for all the world (or the 5-ish people who read this blog) to see.

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Elves on Shelves from Hell

Posted in Children, Holidays, memories, traditions by

It’s that time of year again. You know what I mean. The time when the Internets make parents of young children feel like it is our sacred duty to make every single second of the four weeks that precede Christmas Magical, with a capital M and a Disney-esque flourish.

We have the old standbys to get through, the breakfasts with Santa, the viewings of holiday movie classics, the parties, the socials, the cookie baking, the awkward gift swaps. And then we have the Pinterest traditions, which technically aren’t traditions, but the Martha Stewart perfection that we see all over social media makes us think that they are, or at least that they SHOULD be. And if we aren’t doing these things, we are, at best, Christmastime failures, and at worst we are irrevocably harming our children and, instead of college funds, we should be starting therapy funds. Which we probably should be doing anyway, because if we can’t get Christmas right, then we most likely aren’t getting anything else right, either. At least, that’s what Pinterest is telling me.

Chief among these non-traditional traditions is the Elf on the Shelf. You know who I mean. That blue-eyed imp who gets up to all kinds of yuletide shenanigans, while watching and reporting on our children.

We joined the Elfin fray two years ago, inspired by the ever more creative Elf exploits that my Facebook friends were posting. There were prayerful Elves in Nativity scenes, adventurous Elves in airplanes, silly Elves hanging from fans, addict Elves mainlining sugar, and naughty Elves doing naughty things with Barbie dolls.

I knew that getting an Elf meant committing myself to him and his nightly activities for a full month, every year, for as many years as I had kids who believed in Santa. I knew the costs, but I had to take the risk. It was for the children, after all.

The first year was a moderate success. My younger daughter was still an infant, but my older daughter was three, and, although she didn’t fully get the Elf concept, she enjoyed looking for him every morning. We named him Santa, and he was mostly tame.

Our second year was more exciting. Our girls were four and 18 months old, and the little one had a blast following her big sister around as she searched for Santa. He joined us on a trip to Disney World, which was quite the event, and he started to get more creative in his hiding places.

And now we are into our third year. Santa has been with us for a full week now, and, oh, what a week it has been. My older daughter is now five, and if there is a child who has been drawn deeper into the Elfin lore than she has, I would like to meet him.

She LOVES the Elf. She regularly offers to tell me “nonfiction” stories, as she calls them (because they relate true events, she says), about Santa the Elf, his family, his history, his adventures, and his aspirations. When I ask her how she thinks Santa has gotten into his various hiding places, she acts out every move she thinks he made, hopping gleefully around the house. The Elf on the Shelf was made for children like her.

And then there is the little one. Now two, she seemed to be as excited as her sister when Santa made his first appearance. But then, things changed.

On Monday, she told me that Santa the Elf was “scawy.” On Monday night, she woke up screaming and told me the Elf was watching her. On Tuesday, she refused to be in the same room as the Elf and by Wednesday, she had become so fearful in our house (but only in our house) that I had to take her to the local mall before she would let me put her down without crying.

Her fearfulness and clinginess continued until I became convinced that this was no longer about the Elf, that she probably had some sort of cancer and that OMIGOD, she needed to see the doctor and/or be taken to the ER. And yes, I tend to overreact, but seriously, this kid was acting WEIRD. I had never, ever seen her behave the way she has been behaving the last few days.

So this morning, I took her to the pediatrician. He checked her out. It’s not cancer. It’s not even a cold. Apparently, it’s just a fearful age. In my doctor’s words, she probably experienced a traumatic nightmare, possibly involving the g-ddam Elf, and that her daytime fearfulness is a perfectly natural effect of an extremely upsetting dream.

And no, he said, it really isn’t odd that this fearfulness has lasted a full week. In fact, he would be more surprised if it ended in just two days, as I thought it should have done. Actually, it would be more likely for it to last a full month. That’s just how things go with kids in this developmental phase.

So let’s hear it for Pinterest, and Facebook, and the everloving Elf on the everloving shelf.

Hi! I'm just your friendly scout Elf, here to make Christmas extra Christmasy!

Hi! I’m just your friendly scout Elf, here to make Christmas extra Christmasy!

There’s nothing scary about ME!

Yep, just a friendly Elf. Here to make Christmas fun. Oh, and I'm going to watch you. All day. You know, just so I can tell good ol' Father Christmas how you're doing.

Yep, just a friendly Elf. Here to make Christmas fun. Oh, and I’m going to watch you. You know, just so I can tell good ol’ Father Christmas how you’re doing.

Yep, I’m just watching you. All day. All night, too. Juuust watching.

Did I say Father Christmas? Whoopsie! I meant BIG BROTHER Christmas.

Did I say Father Christmas? Whoopsie! I meant BIG BROTHER Christmas.

You better close those bedroom doors, Christmas lovers, because I will stab you in your sleep.

Nice Things, and Why We Can’t Have Them

Posted in Children, Humor, memories by

Sunday was the first night of Advent, and I decided that THIS year, our family was going to light our Advent candle and say our Advent candle prayer every. single. night.

This laudable resolution was challenged from the get go. First, I only had white candles. The proper purple and pink candles were nowhere to be found. But that didn’t matter; what was important was that we would light those candles and say our prayer together, as a family.

So I set our white candles up in the lovely Celtic-knot advent wreath I inherited from my grandmother. They didn’t fit in the holders, and I didn’t have time to rig them up with paper towels, so they leaned awkwardly in four different directions. Still, no matter. It was dinner time and we were doing this Advent thing, candles be damned. I mean darned.

All four of us gathered at the table. The lights were low; the single candle was lit. It was a solemn scene, which lasted approximately 15 seconds. Then, my two year old, Norah, started singing Happy Birthday and blew the candle out.

But I was determined not to let my plans be derailed by a toddler. I moved the wreath out of her reach, re-lit the candle, and said the first line of our prayer:

“O God, as light comes from this candle…”

While my five-year-old, Michele, sweetly repeated after me, Norah shot out her Go- Go-Gadget arms and yanked the wreath toward her. She blew out the candle, grabbed the two candles closest to her, and started drumming.

Teeth clenched, I removed the priceless heirloom to the top of the fridge and confiscated the candles. But still, I persevered. With or without candles, we were DOING. THIS. THING.

I moved onto the second line of the prayer.

“May the blessing — ”

“MOMMY! No!” Now it was Michele’s turn. “You can’t say the next line. My FLOWER didn’t get a chance to say the FIRST line.”

And so, in a tiny, screechy voice, the sparkly flower that had fallen off of a Christmas decoration said her part of the prayer. We moved through the next two lines, slowly, as each was repeated three times, but steadily. Norah was quiet. Too quiet.

As the little flower was squeaking out her repetition of the fourth and final line, Norah could contain herself no longer.

“PooPooPeePee! Butt! Snot! Boogers!” She shouted out her entire potty vocabulary. My husband started man-giggling, laughing harder and louder the more he tried to contain it. Michele didn’t even try to hold back her laughter, and, playing to her audience, Norah repeated her repertoire, adding in animal sounds and random words.

“Moo! Baa! Hair! Nose! Shirt! BUTT!”

I know when I am defeated. But I finished my prayer anyway. Because even though we can’t have nice things, I can still pretend.

+++

O God, as light comes from this candle,
May the blessing of Jesus Christ come to us,
Warming our hearts and brightening our way.
May Christ our Savior bring life into the darkness of this world,
And to us, as we wait for his coming.

 

Trotting Turkeys

Posted in Children, Humor, running, Uncategorized by

This is *not* what I looked like

Last week, I volunteered at my daughter’s elementary school turkey trot. All of the 400-plus students in her school participated, from Kindergarten to fifth grade. The fourth and fifth grades were expected to run a full mile, which meant they had to make four long laps around the baseball fields behind their school. Third grade ran three laps, second and first grades ran two, and the kindergarteners only had to run one.  The girls ran first, and then the boys.

I was stationed way out at the third corner of the makeshift track. My job was to motivate the students and to keep them from cheating by cutting across the baseball field backstop.

I was away from the main action, with the starting line not even within shouting distance. I wasn’t recording time or congratulating the kids as they passed the finish line. But even though I wasn’t in the thick of things, I was in the perfect position to observe. And as an observer, I noticed some interesting things.

First of all, 9- and 10-year-olds excel at making it absolutely clear when they do NOT want to do something. They thrive in situations that give them the power to do this passive-aggressively, and they (silently) rejoice when the planets align and they can passive-aggressively display their supreme disinterest while also managing to exert some level of control over the adults in their lives. And in an elementary school turkey trot, boy, do those planets align.

I called these kids the “walkers with attitude.” These were the kids who Were. Not. Running. It was enough that they condescended to stroll, slowly, and in groups. But run? Oh, no. Oh no, no, no.

Let me tell you, it is painful to stand in the corner of a field on a cold fall morning and watch a group of kids amble at a snail’s pace over a 1 mile course. Painful. After almost 20 minutes, when the slowest of the slow were still only on their second lap, I’d had enough. I started to run. I ran up to them as they approached me, and I made them run with me for about a 100 yard stretch. Then I would run up to the next group, and escort them. This strategy was actually more effective than you might expect, and I even got some smiles from kids as they approached me saying to their friends, “ok, we HAVE to run here.”

Still, there were a few who weren’t having it. And oh, the looks they gave me. I don’t envy our teachers.

Then there were the runners. These kids were impressive.  Where the other kids started off sprinting, they paced themselves. They ran consistently and intelligently and showed a level of discipline that I, who have always loved to run, didn’t understand until I was in high school. The most memorable of these students was a 5th grade girl who could teach much older, and much more experienced, runners a few things. She was so good that, out of all 6 grades, she was the only girl who had ALL the boys in her class cheering for her.

Which brings us to the helpers. The girls. The girls who danced and cheered for the boys who were running. The girls who slowed down so their friend with asthma didn’t have to walk alone. The girls who turned around when they were finished to walk with their friend with Down Syndrome, who needed someone to hold her hand.

These were the girls who brought out my feminist ambivalence. The girls who made me WANT to shout “You don’t HAVE to do this! That’s why I am
here! Run your own race! You can be fast and powerful! RUN!” But who, instead, made me feel proud and hopeful in the knowledge that the helpers of the future, the people who will keep our world together, are growing up to be exactly what we need the most.

If the walkers and the runners and the helpers are the groups who stood out the most to me, there were two individual students who I will remember above all: the smeller of roses and the cheetah.

The smeller of roses was a kindergartener who came in dead last. (Just after my own daughter, the talker, who took advantage of the situation to hold her teacher’s hand and chat. But that’s another story.) This little girl started off walking, and walked the whole way. She was totally unmoved by peer pressure. Unlike the older kids, she wasn’t walking to prove anything. She was walking because it was a nice afternoon and there were things to look at. Things like the pale pink bead she found and showed me after the race. While the other kids were taking advantage of some post-race playground time, this little girl was proudly telling me about the beautiful treasure she had found during her walk around the field.

And then there was my cheetah. My fourth-grade friend who came up to my post walking, with “attitude” written all over his face. But as he came closer, I noticed that despite the stony expression on his face, he was crying.

I asked him if I could run with him, but his response was a hard NO. No, he would not run. He hated the turkey trot. He always came in last. I tried telling him that of course he would come in last if he didn’t at least try to run. He wasn’t having it. The tears continued to stream down his face.

His anger and frustration and tears continued to his very last lap, when finally another mother and I walked with him, to encourage him to run at least the last 100 yards of the race. We tried to get him talking, to get him to focus on something positive rather than the negative feelings he was experiencing at that moment.  After a few minutes of denying interest in any topic whatsoever, he finally broke down. “I like The Wild Kratts. And I like cheetahs. When I run, I want to feel like a cheetah. But I don’t. I don’t feel like a cheetah. I’m too slow. So I don’t  run. I can’t run.”

So the other mom and I each took one of his hands, and instead of running like cheetahs, we ran like turkeys. And all three of us crossed the finish line running.

Baby, I’m Back

Posted in Uncategorized by

I have been away for the last couple of weeks, but I have a really good reason: My husband and I decided to get new carpet in our basement.

Wait, you mean getting new carpet in one room on one level of one house isn’t really all that time consuming? I suppose it isn’t, unless you are me. In which case, getting new carpet in the basement really means getting new carpet throughout the entire house, closets included, painting three rooms, and getting new furniture. Because I am unable to do anything in moderation.

In all fairness, it was a logical sequence of events. Replacing the basement carpet became a necessity when we realized that the stains I had begun to think of as poltergeist footprints because no amount of carpet spray or steam cleaning could remove them  were actually from mold.

Our one-room basement is where our kids play, and since most of their play involves rolling around on the floor, we thought it probably wasn’t the best thing for their health if they were rubbing their faces in a moldy carpet. So it had to go.

This is where things started to snowball. Our old carpets were a lovely shade of ivory. When the single gentleman with one indoor cat who previously owned our house sold it to us, they were pristine. They were beautiful.

However, the seven years of our ownership have not treated those carpets well. We live in the woods. We have two small, messy children. We have a dog who likes to eat grass and then come inside and vomit it up. I have burned hundreds of thousands of calories over the years scrubbing and steam-cleaning all of the inevitable stains, but the dirt was decisively winning the battle.

So if we were replacing the moldy basement carpets, it only stood to reason for us to replace the stained main floor carpets. And if we replaced those, we had to replace the carpet on our stairs to match, because, come on, how tacky would it be to have the stairs in a different color carpet? And if we replaced the carpet on our stairs, we had to replace the carpets on the top floor as well.

And since we would be getting new carpets, what better time to repair all the damage to our walls from the installation and abuse of baby gates? And since our old reclining sofa and loveseat had left black marks on our carpet, we had to replace those as well, right?

And so on, until I had devoted myself to the cause of re-carpeting, repainting, and refurnishing significant portions of our home.  With a two year old. While also working on two freelance projects. WITH A TWO-YEAR-OLD. After which, I planned a Halloween party with 10 kids 5 and under. I never said I was bright.

By the end of the installation, on a Tuesday evening at approximately 5:20, our house looked like this:

Quoth the husband, without irony: "Yeah, it shouldn't take long at all to get the house back in order."

Quoth the husband, without irony: “Yeah, it shouldn’t take long at all to get the house back in order.”

And this:

Family Room

And yes, the furniture that was supposed to arrive between 2-6 pm, but which has not arrived as of 5:18, will be coming in boxes and without slipcovers a la Ikea. Totally wasn’t a problem…

And this:

Micheles Room

Why yes, that is the dismantled bed of our five-year-old. Why would it be a problem that it still wasn’t put together by her bedtime?

But now everything is back to normal. And having accomplished this massive project mostly on my own, I feel pretty good about myself. In fact, I think I now understand why so many men enjoy home improvement projects so much: It makes you feel powerful and skillful and gives you a sense of having snagged a corner of the American dream.

Now I’m going to go sit on the couch and watch some pay-per-view wrestling with a beer in one hand and the other stuck in the top of my pants. Just kidding. I’m going to eat some chocolate and read a nice cozy mystery. And then maybe I will lay down on my brand new, brown, stain-hiding carpet, and pretend I’m at the beach.

It Got Done By Me

Posted in running by

Or, Stories From Before the Finish Line

My last post was my pre-race post, and now I’m returning from the other side of the finish line. I took on the Baltimore Half Marathon, and I won.

At least, that’s what I told my daughter who, when she saw my medal, said, “Mommy!!! You got a prize! Did you WIN?” So I said, “Well, sort of. Aren’t you proud of me for running so far? I ran a really, really long time, but I could do it because I worked super hard.” And then she said, “Well…I’m proud of you if you won, mommy.”

So of course, I said, “Heck yeah I won!” Finishing the race is winning the race, at least in my book.

This is how my race day went:

5:00 am – 10:04: OH MY GOD CAN WE JUST GET THIS THING STARTED ALREADY?!

10:05: CRAP, it’s actually starting!

10:06: I think I need to go to the bathroom.

Mile 2: I’m passing people! This is awesome! People are being passed by me! I am so FAST. If I were a Pony, I’d be Rainbow Dash. What I mean is, I basically have wings on my back.

Mile 3: I’m really concerned about this whole bathroom thing. What if I really have to go? What if I pee myself? What if I get trampled trying to cross to the side of the course where the porta-potties are?

Mile 4: Ha! Look at that sign! It says, “Smile if you peed a little!” That’s so funny! Wait — I was smiling but that doesn’t mean anything. IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!

Mile 4.5: I love Baltimore so much! Yeah, we may be running through streets I’d be kind of scared to walk through during the daytime, but where else does the homeless population come out to cheer on their city’s runners? You guys ROOOCK!

Mile 5: Oh, a hill. This isn’t so bad. I don’t know what people were talking about when they said there were some bad hills in this course.

Miles 5.5 – 7: OH GOD IN HEAVEN WHY? WHY DID YOU CREATE HILLS? IT’S BECAUSE YOU HATE ME, ISN’T IT? Admit it, the earth isn’t one continuous flat surface because YOU HATE ME!

Mile 7: Ok, that wasn’t so bad.

Mile 8: We’ve been running on a flat course for awhile now. It’s kind of boring. I like a little elevational variety in my runs. Variety is a good thing.

Mile 9: Seriously brain, did you just say you like “elevational variety.” I HATE you.

Mile 10: Am I still running? I think I may have just fallen asleep. Maybe I was in the zone? Can I go back? Things are starting to hurt.

Mile 11: I thought it was all supposed to be downhill after mile 7. This is NOT downhill.

Mile 11.5: Just keep running, just keep running, just keep running…

Mile 12: Oh look! A woman is handing out water! Or is it Gatorade? I don’t know what it is but I should definitely drink it… Wait a second, is this beer? It is! It’s Natty Boh! I love Baltimore. Oh wait… it’s BEER. I can’t drink beer. I have celiac disease…

Mile 12.5: If my intestines explode before the finish line because I just drank a cup of liquid gluten I am going to HURT somebody.

Mile 13: Where’s the finish like? Why can’t I see the finish line? Why are people WALKING this close to the end? Seriously people, I’m not stopping if I knock you down.

Mile 13.1: I DID IT. I ACTUALLY DID IT! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WONDERFUL! I LOVE LIFE! I LOVE HILLS! I LOVE EVERYTHING! Now give me some water and my medal before I collapse.

Me and my medal

Like my glowing green goddess shirt? I do!