Thanks Giving

I've just come back from a funeral for a man who helped R and I and some other great people make a great thing happen this summer. He agreed to rent us a house for the purpose of setting up an Oxford House residence, which we managed to open in June. Perhaps it doesn't sound like a big thing, but to the men whose lives this has touched, it is a very huge thing.

Tonight, R, myself, the state coordinator of the OH and the group of men that live in the house (whom we are glad to call friends) all went to pay our respects to the wife and young daughters that are missing him tonight.

And as I sit here, I am reminded, yet again, how easy it is to let something slide, to not take the opportunity to tell those in your life just how much you love them, whenever you can, because you just never know when it may be the last time. So I'm going to close down my computer and curl up next to this beautiful man with whom I am so blessed to share a life and I'm going to be thankful.

Again.

Welcome to the World of Public Education

So I realize that a lot of blogs must surely have been written about the first day of school - all the Mom Bloggers out there waxing poetic on that momentous day, shedding tears as their little ones trudge off to school to start their individual journeys in the Pursuit of Knowledge. Not me.

You notice I was nowhere near a keyboard?

For those of you who know me, you are already making the connection. For those of you who don't, here's a brief synopsis:

I homeschooled for 12 years.

Enough said?

As the big day approached, the atmosphere in the house became more and more somber. The realization had set in that THIS time Mom wasn't bluffing. She really meant it. She was done.

This was the year to test those little wings. Even if I hadn't just moved out on my own (well, as on my own as one can be with 3 kids in the backseat), in the process of a divorce and looking for a stable job, I had vowed that last year was the LAST year for homeschooling if they didn't start cooperating. Needless to say, they didn't really take me seriously.

Now, there were elements that I loved about homeschooling. I believe in it wholeheartedly, as each child can learn at their own pace, in their own way. I've never felt that the one-size-fits-all approach to education was the best way for a child to learn. That said, I was at home, day in, day out, alone with my kids while their dad worked in another state 5 days a week, without cease. Weekends simply meant that I was with my kids... with someone else. And my kids (well, really I'm speaking about the older two... K was usually around somewhere doing K things) just didn't think that organized education in any form or fashion was for them. For the most part, we were life learners, with the occasional structured sit-down time thrown in for good measure to make me feel like I actually was doing a good job.

Really, it was the 6-hour long sibling wrestling matches cum screaming, raging arguments on a daily basis that did me in. I think if I had had other kids, or maybe even just one kid, it would have been an extremely successful venture. Many people questioned my laissez-faire approach to education, even though I saw their little minds grow in ways that I don't think mine was ever given a chance to in early childhood. When I was a child, school interfered with my own lofty pursuits of authordom and, really, interfered with my reading time. Consequently, I wanted to give my kids the opportunity to pursue their passions with freedom, because there really is learning in all things. It happens everywhere, at any time, driven by our innate curiosity about how the world works. Unfortunately, the only real passion they ever seemed to show was the zeal they brought to their wrestling matches. The wild, non-stop banshee screaming in a house with no walls finally just beat me down. Ideals be damned, my sanity was hanging in the balance. Besides, I knew it would take a whole village to teach K. This was not something I was equipped to do alone.

And so, August 24th, 2009, I got up uber-early to make my children their favorite breakfast, dressed my children (or one of them, anyway) and herded them out the door for their momentous First Day Photo Shoot, all the while giggling to myself. This was IT! The first day of the rest of their lives. At school. Apart. No fights, no wrestling matches, no paying a babysitter (not that I've ever really done that, but still... free, supervised childcare. OH MY.).

I have to admit, it was all I could do not to peel out of the parking lot that day. The taste of new life was fresh on my tongue and I was ready for it. That first day was a good one, for all of us. I went to a job interview in my free time and subsequently was hired. The kids came home aglow with the excitement of their new adventure. It lasted for a couple of days and then K realized that it was just too much for his poor little boy self to handle. All those quirks, all of those delays, all of those things that make my sweet, Special K so unique and special were just too much in a structured school setting and anxiety kicked into high gear.

For weeks life was more than he or I could handle. I’m just thankful that I’ve managed to raise two very resourceful other children because in those weeks after school began, they had to do a lot of solo flights as I took a crash course in crisis management. K began bolting from the car, running around the school with a fresh-from-bed Mom with long, wild hair, pjs and sneakers chasing him after him, doors thrown open, car abandoned. I quickly learned to actually dress before heading off to school each morning. I’m not sure how many people have witnessed my bright green fuzzy “lounge” pants with cute little pictures all over them, but I’m sure far more than I would care to know about. I have to admit, the early morning cardio was exhausting.

We reached critical mass about a month into school, during which time I was in daily contact with the fine folks in the Special Education Dept. trying desperately to reach a workable solution for K until all of our testing was complete for him. He was miserable, I was miserable. It was a dark time that I won’t go into in great depth. Suffice it to say that medication has its place when you are dealing with Quality of Life issues. My little K was suffering and my heart was breaking in all the wrong places. Mom Kisses just didn’t quite do it anymore.

So here we are, a few months in now, and we are about to get K’s IEP started, finally (for those of you fortunately unversed in Special Education Lingo, that is Individualized Education Program). This Friday, in fact. And things are starting to get better. I have to admit, he’s had a lot of people advocating for him. And even then, it is still a battle to get him what he needs. My heart has ached more than a few times for those kids who have no advocates. I have friends who fell through the cracks and it breaks my heart for the children they were.

And the other two? Report cards just came out. And what I’m hearing from their teachers is that they are extremely bright, making the transition from homeschooling to public ed with grace. E-dog, who struggled the first month with the (apparently derogatory) label of “tomboy” as she barreled through all the boys on the playground in football has not only NOT caved to those petty little girls, she’s managed to recruit most of them to the playing field with her, taking on the boys with gusto. Her teacher told me the other day with a smile on her face that she just sits back at recess with the other teachers and they watch my fearless daughter take down boy after boy. Apparently they’ve all learned that you don’t want to mess with Elke.

As for the O-Man… once his initial disgust with the mandatory khakis and polos wore off (and he realized that EVERYONE looks like a nerd, not just him), he’s learned to work the uniform to his advantage with the chicklets. He’s surrounded by pubescent pre/teen girls – what ISN’T to love about Middle School? Besides, they have a library that he’s systematically plowing his way through, plundering the historical fiction section to feed his love of historical war. Girls and war... I hardly need to parent anymore.

The biggest compliment, though? Elke’s teacher said to me the other day, “There are some areas she is working on and once she gets them she’ll fly. But what she has that most of the other kids don’t have is a good foundation of life skills and experiences. She’s quite an amazing girl.” I guess I didn’t do so badly after all.

Wrestling team practice starts tomorrow. I have a feeling that my snaggle-toothed Princess will be an unstoppable force in her sport of choice. I feel sort of sorry for those other kids, though, really.

Chapter Two, Paragraph 3

So it has been awhile. I feel like I did when I sat my journal down and didn't pick it up again for a very long time. When I finally opened the pages, it felt odd, no longer like my closest confidant. I felt that I had strayed, that I had committed the ultimate betrayal, and to come crawling back now was just plain hypocritical. To this day, I have not found my muse again in the pages of a journal, and it saddens me. I have a beautiful one, bound in a soft, printed leather, that sits on my bedside table, waiting for that day that I am brave enough to lay those first words.

This, these blog entries, are the closest thing I have to journaling and they are, by necessity, edited for public consumption. One doesn't lay one's soul open for the world to consume with their breakfast coffee (or tea, or protein shake, or energy drink) at their leisure. No matter how much we think we may be opening ourselves, in the back of our minds there is that check and balance that is our neighbor, our co-worker, or our kids. Perhaps even our mate. (Certainly that big, hairy, creepy stalker guy that cruises past the house at 3 a.m. throwing rocks at the window. Especially him.) When I journal, everything superfluous is stripped away until what is left is pure me, laid on the page in a sometimes brutal manner, in a way that I have shared with very few people in my life. It is nothing more, or less, than a reflection of my soul - without thought or concern for what people may think of me. And for some reason, I don't want the world to know me that well. If you know me that well, it means you worked for it.

I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the pages and pages of filled journals that sit in a container in my garage. My entire childhood is in that box. My coming of age is in that box, in fact, and we all know just how awkward and turbulent that time is, especially if you happened to go through it as a girl. It worries me, what will happen with my journals if something happens to me. Even 18 years after I last laid ink to paper, I cannot imagine someone reading them. They are funny, naive, sad, incredibly melodramatic, and more than a little embarrassing. Way more. So... what to do with them?

I'm not even sure where that little muse came from. I opened this screen firmly planted in the middle of chapter 2, paragraph 3, with every intention of catching up on the first two paragraphs and here I am waxing philosophical on journal writing. But then I started thinking about how much I've missed writing these past few months, which somehow springboarded into my love of journal writing and, well, here we are.

And in the midst of it all, I've survived a praying-mantis nostril invader, a Vulcan mind meld and a good old-fashioned choke-hold without managing to dump my computer off my lap. Yes, I'm a multi-tasker, but that is another blog entirely...

I'm sorry, the praying-mantis nostril invader still has me a little rattled. It is not a small feat, surviving such a method of torture when it is delivered by 240 pounds of (mostly) pure muscle. In fact, I'd probably jump up and do a little Rocky survivor dance if it weren't for the fact that I'm not sure I have enough energy to even raise my head up from this pillow where it is propped as I type. Thank goodness for good typing instructors. I can stare at the ceiling and be secure in knowing that at least 96% of what I'm typing will be without error.

It has taken me a few months to get here (here meaning this blog here, not this pillow staring at the ceiling here), but I made it. And what a little journey it has been. I do fully intend to get to paragraphs 1 and 2, but I had to start somewhere, didn't I?

Suffice it to say that I am alive, have managed to keep all living creatures in my charge alive (a miracle unto itself), and that somehow, amazingly, we are all muddling through with mostly smiles on our faces. That isn't so bad, I don't think. After all, it is only the beginning of the chapter.

And chapter one ends...

One doesn't realize, when one is situated comfortably in the middle of one's life, just how much creatures of habit we become, and how much accumulation the years bring. As I sit here surrounded by boxes and not even sure where to begin, I'm faced head on by that accumulation. And as I close this chapter, and move from the life I've known since I was 19 years old, into something that is still so blurry around the edges - I have an overwhelming desire to be free of that accumulation and to start fresh and bare, and create something new.

In the words of one of my favorite musicians:

"So bust out of this old cocoon
and dry your wings off
butterfly;
go ahead and fly."
- Dave Matthews

Time to try these wings out.

The Death (and Re-birth) of Hope

I found myself in an emotional state tonight, so what better way to get me outside of myself than by delving deep into someone else's sordid inner life by way of a little random blog reading? Perhaps I would find someone who could take me out of my own issues for a little while, or at the very least, allow me to laugh at their miseries for a bit while thanking my lucky stars I don't have *their* problems.

One of my first selections was a parenting blog that caught my eye with a title along the lines of "Calm, Centered Parenting" or some such thing. In hindsight, I am shocked at the cynicism I displayed in choosing that blog for I surely thought that it would be a tongue-in-cheek blog written by someone at least half as crazy as myself, bemoaning the challenges of a profession that can, on days, cause one to dream of small, cloistered rooms with rows of torture devices whose sole purposes are to enforce a Cease and Desist order amongst rival sibling factions. Replete with gags and shackles. I mean, really, how can anyone use the words 'calm' and 'centered' in the same sentence as parenting?

But when I clicked on it, to my initial dismay I discovered that it was exactly what it purported to be. It was calm, verging on sedate, and infused with an inner groundedness that made one realize that HERE was a woman who had really done some inner soul searching. Her prose was calm, cathartic, and ultimately peaceful. She spoke of her day, of herself, of the passing of time. Nowhere did she mention her child/ren. Other than a quote from La Leche League, there was no evidence at all that she was, indeed, a parent. That inner cynic (that I was unaware lived so ardently inside my head until now) quickly concluded that she was either 1.) a poser, 2.) a psychotic woman who clearly had figured out the art of maintaining inner calm whilst honing her bondage skills on her poor little vixens or 3.) still pregnant with her first.

Now, the fact that this calm, peaceful blog dismayed me most likely speaks volumes about the condition of my psyche (not to mention my parenting) to those reading this (let's hope none of you hold psych degrees). I went into that blog a smartass, a warrior from the front lines who stands knee-deep in the thick of it and can't see anything other than the trees from where she is right now. But as I read, I began to remember the hopefulness with which I started this whole crazy venture. I remembered the time when I put 360% into it - when I read book after book about child development and all of it's derivatives (inlcuding an entire library on parenting atypical children) in an effort to be the best parent I could be. When I threw so much of myself into it that when I finally let my head surface I found that I had completely lost me in the process. And with that realization, and the subsequent struggle to dig her out of the mire and dust her off, I somehow brushed away a lot of that hopefulness and was left with a bit of a fatalistic, survivalistic attitude.

And I'm not sure I like that. Some days it is hard to see that it can be anything other than the way it is, but I think I need to find that hopefulness again: the hope that my kids can and WILL make it to adulthood without any major charges filed against them in a court of law; that they can and WILL be productive members of society rather than living with me until they are 30; and that they will be beautiful little souls in the process.

Somehow, in spite of their mom, they will prevail. Or maybe because of her. Who can really say for sure?

A Little Reminder

As I was lying in bed the other night I decided to give myself an impromptu feel-up in the form of a breast self-exam. Arm over head, I palpated what little breast tissue is left after nursing 3 offlings for more years than I care to admit in any public venue. First right side, fingers walking back and forth, circling, pushing, rolling over skin and rather well-developed pectoral muscles (if I do say so myself) while I absently watched the TV channels flip in the darkened room as R orchestrated his own bedtime lullaby, conducting the remote with as much skill as any seasoned conductor. Left arm up, I continued my quest for nothing. And as life always goes, you wait for nothing, inevitably you'll get something. I stopped. Put my arm down. Felt around. Back up, and again, expecting it to be some weird muscular development. Two times, three, up and down and still the same little lump, the same soft rolling under the surface.

"Give me your hand," I said into the dark where R's face changed color and shape with the rolling channels as the blue glow shifted across his skin. He complied, as he's been taught to do (ummm... yeah... just roll with me on this one). I placed his hand over the general vicinity of my heart and pressed his fingertips into my skin.

A second or two passed as he moved his fingers in a circular motion, saying nothing. "Do you feel it?" I whispered, and for the first time in the course of our relationship, I really, really hoped he would tell me no.

"The lump? Yes."

I uttered my favorite curse word, lingering on the vowel sound, stretching it out and ending it softly this time, the ending consonants barely clicking in my throat. Funny how in one situation the hard ending consonants resonate with a satisfying, anger-swelling gutteral crescendo and in another the emphasis can be repositioned, redefining it as something else entirely... a plea to the Gods, perhaps.

And then I lay there silently, as thought after thought ran willy nilly through my head: It can't be cancer - no one in my family has had any kind of cancer, let alone breast cancer. (Can you say "Denial?") But I banned hydrogenated oils back when it was still considered a left-wing hippie nutso thing to do. (I always seem to be ahead of the times with fashion, too...) But I nursed my young for almost as many years as I have fingers, which according to current breastfeeding statistics, reduces my breast cancer rate by about 60%. And seriously, who gets breast cancer without any appreciable breast tissue to speak of? (I mean, come on, I might be a full A-cup if I lay down... on my left side... and make sure they don't slip off into my arm pits...)

Exhausting the litany of ironies that surely prevent me, by default, from this most egregious of womanly fates, my brain jumped immediately from my breasts to the next logical thing. The children who are responsible for their current status as third-world entities on my body; no longer considered developed nations in their own right, these little bad babies have certainly suffered a severe downturn over the years. No pun intended. (Okay, well maybe just a little.)

And laying there, I had a minor epiphany. I may not be a terrific Mom. I know my kids have heard more than their fair share of robust, often colorful language, and often at decibel levels that will probably cost them a bit of their hearing down the road. I know that I do not always respond in the best, most loving way possible (as my bloody-mouthed, snaggle toothed Princess would probably attest to wholeheartedly). I know that I have probably spent in excess of 60% of my parenting days beating myself up for not handling something better than I did. But I've been there, full-on, ever present, battling, dueling, apologizing and embracing. We've had entire conversations a la Inspector Clouseau that would make Peter Sellers proud. We've earnestly sung "Joe's weenie" to the tune of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" on the way to the grocery store. We've turned our eyelids inside out at the dinner table to both impress and repulse (and often exacerbate) those around us. I may not always be good at my job, but I'm always there. Always.

And if something happened to me, most everyone would be okay. I don't minimize the loss, but there are always other friends, other lovers, other spouses even. But no matter how hard we try, nothing can ever replace a mother. Who else can suggest a nice rousing game of "Houdini" with the duct tape when boredom and misbehavior are at an all time high? Who else can tuck you in with a sweet whisper, "If you get out of bed again, I'll chop your legs off. I love you!" and you know that they are only half joking? Who else can appreciate just how hard it really was for you to make it to adulthood and not wind up locked away in a little cell for a very long time?

Sure, my kids may wind up on a therapist's chaise lounge someday because of me, but I want to BE there to let the therapist know that, no, I really didn't actually intend to use a hacksaw to remove their limbs and they damn well knew I was joking. And that that time I threatened to leave them in the wilderness with a compass, a canteen of water and the direction "South" as a homeschooling survival skills class was obviously just a bluff. And no, I never intended to actually stab anyone with a fork. It just so happened that I was, on occasion, grasping one maniacally during provocation - it could happen to anyone with a hearty appetite and a temper.

Really, I just want to be sure that they actually make it to that therapist's couch someday. And not because I WASN'T around to drive them to it. I may not ever win the Best-Mom-in-the-World award, but I at least want to cross the finish line, fork in hand, doing my best Cousteau impression. I may be an underachiever, but at least I'm an underachiever with flair.

Burning Down the House

The other day, as I sat in speech therapy with my vivacious, rambunctious, fuller-than-life child (don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about) while he alternately struggled valiantly to meet the challenge of a new phonological sound head on or stubbornly refused to say anything at all, K's therapist placed what must have been the 20th picture so far in front of him during one of his particularly long mute streaks and asked him to say the word.

I saw it before he did and I think I must have groaned out loud from my little chair in the corner of the room because both of their heads snapped towards me before focusing in on the picture again. He looked at it for just a moment and the internal struggle that ensued could be read on his face as easily as if it were typed in large print edition - to keep the tight-lipped silence or capitulate before the OCD Gods -before his sweet, innocent-as-they-come little boy voice piped up clearly in a perfect rendition of the word: "Match."

Just typing that word makes me cringe and run to double check that our stash of the handy little tools are safely under lock and key - the tools that, in the wrong hands, can quickly become a gateway to hell. Or at least what hell might look like in the middle of the woods on a dry winter day. Trust me. I know about that of which I speak.

I think it started with firefighters. Watching "There Goes a Firetruck" with the ever popular Dave and Becky over and over again until the script could have been recited word for word if my most special of K's had been able to make his brain organize them correctly. Or perhaps it was the old family pastime of brush burning, piling the limbs of trees long felled for firewood or the electric line high into massive pyres (sans corpses) to be doused and burned all over the farm until all that remained was a smouldering pile of ash - a budding pyromaniac's delight. I certainly know that the wood-burning stove, our only source of heat in the house, did not help matters. I should have been wary the moment he started jockeying for ringside position as fires were meticulously laid and tended, his sharp, obsessive-compulsive little eyes missing nothing.

It seemed a manageable obsession - unlike some of his previous flings. Put the matches up on the highest shelf in the highest cabinet in a hard-to-open tin - a place that challenges even me and my trusty step stool. Viola'. Obsession managed.

Uh huh.

Lesson #294. Please refer to my previous accounting of his ability to channel his inner spiderman, if you have not yet already. What can I say? I'm a bit slow sometimes.

I should have been on high alert the moment he started bringing twigs into the middle of our house and piling them carefully. But in my ever-optimistic, homeschooler sort of way, I simply paused and was impressed by his skill and mastery of brushpile construction at such a young age. I was proud, even, of the life skills he was learning. I basked in my Mom Moment and continued on with my chores, leaving him as contentedly busy as a beaver weaving his dam.

I don't remember where I was in the house when I heard the scratch. That unmistakeable sound of match running slowly down the side of the box, immediately followed by a muttering. I was back to the middle of the house in a flash... I can perform cardio when I absolutely HAVE to. There was my youngest, crouched in the floor, box of matches in hand, hunched over his little brush pile. "Wite it?" he said as he looked up at me expectantly, clearly believing wholeheartedly that I would assist in his burning of the twigs and producing a wrath like no other when I failed to comply.

After that, the match stash was moved to another, highly covert, location. Strike Anywhere matches were permanently banned from the premises, as a precaution. Temporarily thwarted, all was quiet on the pyro front.*

*Please note the use of the word "temporarily."

My little fire marshal's obsession continued to flourish. He talked only of becoming a "firefighter cooker" - his two obsessions meeting and melding into one very plausible job opportunity down the road - being the firefighter responsible for cooking in the station. I have to say, I was impressed. I put all fire extinguishers on the topmost shelves in the laundry room to prevent him from lugging them around as makeshift oxygen tanks strapped to his back and said small prayers that any house fires would start in that general vicinity. He was rarely without his rubber (fireman) boots, fireman hat and makeshift goggles. Sometimes he'd throw his plastic fireman coat on, but the broken buckles seemed to frustrate him and cause more angst than delight. He began to get very hands on with the woodstove chores. He would eagerly trot in with small pieces of firewood, bargaining labor for a chance to shove one in the stove. It never worked, but he never gave up hope. He was always by my side as I re-filled the stove and if he wasn't, as soon as he heard the door to it open he would mysteriously appear and just as mysteriously disappear after the door closed, his dream of firemaster once again thwarted. He patiently waited.

I was upstairs putting away laundry one winter day a couple of years ago when I heard the stove pipe which runs up the middle of our house crackling and popping - a telltale sign the stove is WAY too hot. Now, our house is open to the center, with a loft running around 3/4's of it. I looked over the railing to see what in the world might be causing the stove to have gone amok and immediately spied my then 4-year-old son standing back from the open stove door, half a log sticking out, vents wide open and the stove roaring like I've never seen it before. I ran down the stairs and luckily was able to push the flaming log all the way into the stove, slammed the door shut and completely shut it down until the stove pipe turned from cherry red back to its original stovepipe black. I lashed the freestanding gate (originally placed to prevent children from accidentally tumbling onto an 800+ degree stove) to the railings enclosing the other two sides of the stove and hoped that he wouldn't learn to untie ropes anytime soon.

I think that bout with the flaming log sort of scared him, because while his passion for all things firefighter remained at a high, his zealousness to actually implement his knowlege of the profession seemed to have dropped off somewhat. The stove was now contained in a maximum security enclosure. The matches were now under lock and key in my filing cabinet. We seemed to have come to a stalemate.

Until late this past Fall, as I sat in my office, back to the window whilst the kids meandered lazily in and out of the house, enjoying the dwindling days of warmth that Fall in Kentucky often brings us at her leisure. I was working over something when Oren walked into my office in front of my desk to talk about something. As he's talking, he looks out the window behind me, stops dead mid-sentence and yells, "The woods are on fire! THE WOODS ARE ON FIRE!!!!" And in the next breath,"Kellen!"

I turn behind me and there, in their late autumnal glory, are my woods. Burning. (Have I mentioned that we are surrounded by over 200 acres of forest?) Kellen's coup de grace. We ran out the laundry room door (past the fire extinguishers long forgotten, I might add) which happened to be the nearest exit to my office and the closest entrance to Dante's Inferno. Oren immediately went into high-gear, grabbing a large stick and pushing dirt around the fire, creating a fire break (yes, we've had a forest fire before... though that one wasn't of our doing) and then smothering the fire with dirt and buckets of water we have for the dogs. Within minutes, my eleven-year-old WonderBoy had the situation single-handedly under control whilst K and I stood dumbly, looking at each other. He, with the fear of a deer caught in headlights, not knowing whether to make a break for it or stand his ground, but knowing that either way he was completely screwed; and I, with thoughts of "what if" competing with the homicidal urges rushing through my adrenaline-drenched blood.

I didn't kill him that day, and I'm very proud of my self-control in that regard. In hindsight, I realize that I am very lucky that he chose to burn the woods in line of sight of my window, that Oren walked into my office at that particular moment, and that he only had one box of matches. However, I'm not so lucky that he learned how to pick my filing cabinet lock. I'm beginning to think that I just need a vault. Or a cage.

Oh God, my leg!

You ever have those moments of unspeakable stupidity? You know, those moments when you are glad there was no one there to witness them, or you try your best to convince yourself that no one did just because everyone was too polite to say anything? I had one of those tonight as I sat down to take off my shoes, getting ready for bed. Now, usually when I sit there is some measure of crunching as my sad, sad little knees strain to maintain the balance between upright and… well… not upright. But tonight, when I sat, there was the most horrendous cellophane crackling sound that I have ever heard issue forth from my lower body region. I looked down at my thighs, half expecting to see something protruding from my legs.

Nope. Nothing. I touched them. No pain.

I picked up my left leg - the one the sound seemed to come from - thinking I must have heard wrong or it was some horrendous fluke to be unrepeated in future testing. As my thigh lifted up off the seat, it crackled like no tomorrow. I grabbed at the muscle, thinking that maybe the 630 pounds on the seated leg press really WAS a little too much after all; here, finally, was my penance for my overly-competitive nature. No pain. Just a knotted muscle. Oh God, what have I done?

Straightened my knee out, just the normal crunch of bone grinding against the place my healthy cartilege should be. Let it drop. Raised the thigh off the chair again and the noise was horrendous. Up and down I repeated it, each time with the same horrible, horrible crunching noise. I watched it in horror, waiting for something to show itself on my leg, or for the pain to finally kick in. Surely I would lose it. I clutched at my abdominal region, my innards in turmoil (not enough protein after that last workout, I guess), and my hand closed around a lump in my left jacket pocket. Immediately the horrible cellophane crunch issued forth. It took me a couple of seconds before I realized what it was. THERE was that cellophane-wrapped protein bar I had completely forgotten about.

Yeah, I know. Really though, it COULD have been the leg.

An Alligator Ate My Boyfriend

Okay, not really. But as R embarked on his very first game of golf with my father in what would prove to be quite the ball-losing expedition, and as I warned him not to reach into the ponds in search of them (something you just don't do in Florida if you like your limbs), I have to admit that for just a moment (I SWEAR it was a very, very brief, short-lived moment) I thought to myself, "Gee, wouldn't that make a nifty blog title?" But of course, I then very quickly realized that:

1. I would be without what is surely the only other man in the world brave enough to be around not only me, but my 3 very loved demon spawn as well,

2. I'd have to tell his mother that an alligator ate him while he was looking for his balls,

and 3. well, I have to admit I'm rather fond of him.

And while the second one sort of makes me snicker because, as I've been told repeatedly on occasion, I have a juvenile sense of humor, I do realize that it would be fundamentally wrong of me to sacrifice my love for the amusement of others.

I did mention that I'm rather fond of him, didn't I?

I'm Heading to Florida!

Oh yes, I'm heading to Florida, where my Mama awaits in all her forgetful glory. And the kids are. staying. home. One week and no kids, whatever will I do? (Really, whatever will I NOT do? Kids really put a damper on life sometimes, you know? I guess I should be thankful for them - they've surely kept me from crashing and burning a fiery death somehow. But at the same time, they've driven me one step closer to insanity, so I can't really say which is better.)

What should be interesting is that I'm taking the boyfriend, R, with me. To meet the family. For the first time. It's been well over a year, I'm thinking it is time. Because The Fam lives 12 hours away, I haven't seen them since May of last year and they didn't know I was seeing someone other than my husband at the time (and yes, the husband knew). After almost 19 years of seeing my family with the same man in tow (yes, that would be the wonderful father of my children), this is going to be a Weird Thing. I haven't taken a guy home to meet the family since I was 19 years old and it didn't really go over so well that time. I'm hoping that this time it works out a little better or I may be sending updates from a make-shift shelter on the beach. I wonder if there is wireless...

To top it off, not only is this the first time R gets to be scrutinized by my family, but it is the first time he has ever flown. AND we are flying back on Friday the 13th. I hope we have better success than the travelers in NY did this past Friday the 13th. And I wondered why the tickets were so cheap.

All of these firsts... it is bound to be an interesting trip. Wish me luck!