How sweet

This morning I tugged on Gavin's sneakers for him and then picked up my sandals, noticing a subtle tooled leather design in the soles. Fancy. "I want to go back and buy more like these," I said to Mike as I stood and tucked my feet into them. "I think I'm getting to be a bit of a shoe whore." Gavin nodded sagely. "Yeah, that's ok, mom. I'm starting to be a bit of toy whore."

Wrung out

I had fanciful notions of an adventurous weekend alone with the kiddo, but quickly discovered that I had all the endurance and enthusiasm of a wet sock. The trip to the grocery store was harrowing, though Gavin and I chatted pleasantly about food after I had hefted him up into the cart's seat. "Do you like to eat beans, mom?" "No way, I throw out the beans and eat the can." "Do you like to eat meat, mom?" "Oh, no, I only eat the styrofoam and give the rest to the cat." "Do you like to eat..." and so on, as I plodded up and down the aisles with my list propped against his chest. He helped me haul bags into the apartment, grunting under his burden of cereal while I cursed my way across the lawn with the rest. I put on the corned beef to simmer and we spent the rest of the day in a state of lethargy and waste - though to my credit, I did all the laundry, ran the dish washer, and finished both the wee garments I had been knitting. While I puttered domestically, Gavin managed to reassemble all his lego space ships by studiously examining the instructions, which he had hitherto been too manly to bother with. "Aw, chickenwing," he cursed quietly.

At 7pm we brushed up, read a book, and I sang Gavin a bedtime song. He rolled over, brows knit. "Why was the man killing everything and there was blood on the ground?" Since when does he listen to what I'm singing? I explained that the cruel lord shot the bird, who turned into a beautiful woman who pleaded with him to stop killing, but he didn't listen and locked her in a tower and she flew away one day and he realized the error of his ways and that was supposed to make little boys fall asleep! "Ohhh," he said, put an arm over me, and promptly conked out. Nice kid, that.

I spent the next part of the evening rummaging through Mike's computer for signs of waywardness, satisfied myself that he was maintaining his electronic sobriety, and then called my bedridden mother to check on her recovery. Mike followed up with a report from the casino, assuring me that he had not yet lost all his money or his virtue. I had a bedtime banana and a glass of milk to ward off the Restless Whatnots Syndrome my limbs have developed, and tucked the blankets firmly down around my arms to prevent further night saluting. This did not work.

And so it is Monday again, and Saint Patrick's Day to boot. The corned beef has been prematurely consumed, but the kiddo and I dressed festively and wondered what else was the point of the holiday. Nothing, that is what, but it harkens in Easter, and that is good enough for us. I am resuming my vigil by the phone, awaiting details on our impending move, and hope is high this week.

Marching on

The wait for the official date of our return home is maddening.

Mike rode off on his motorcycle to test his new willpower on a weekend in Vegas with a dozen-odd visiting friends from Hawaii, and I packed Gavin up to do the weekly shopping. He carefully wrote out our list of goods in varying shades of crayon before solemnly snapping on his mickey mouse ears and declaring that he was ready. At Target, we sat and tried on shoes for a bit, Gavin pattering back and forth up the empty aisle to test out sneakers. He settled on his first pair of lace-up, non-character bedazzled, non-blinky shoes in a tasteful black and white racer stripe design. Recently his taste in clothing has also shifted from cartoon tee shirts to button-up shirts with skull and guitar graphics. "Ooh, mom, you look like a supermodel in those shoes," he grinned. I pulled off one of the glossy sling-backs and put on a pump to model in comparison. "The shiny one," he said promptly. I thanked him and plopped them in the cart. "That's a good choice," I said to him, "because the kids will like how shiny they are and they're low enough that I won't kill myself falling over in them when I get too fat." Someone snorked behind me, and I turned to see a woman with three children chuckle with an understanding nod at my belly.

I had planned to spend the day luxuriating in retail bliss, but within the hour I was leaning heavily against the cart in desperate need of a huge bottle of water and a nap, my stomach squeezing in painless contractions and my knees quivering mutinously. Gavin poked through the Star Wars Legos intently, focused on spending every cent of the $10 his father had handed him earlier that morning. I chucked a box of K'nex in for good measure. On the way home, Gavin hummed along to Feist. "I like her voice, it's pretty. It sounds like your voice, mom. You have a soft voice, too." I wondered at this. Someone at the order meeting on Thursday had said something similar after my stirring fingerplay recital of Oh, Hurry Gather Daffodils, and on Wednesday another person had called my dramatization of Five Little Ducks a "lovely serenade" [for reference, the chorus goes, "Mama duck said QUACK QUACK QUACK QUAAAACK"]. I know that I have a serviceably unremarkable singing voice that is completely unchanged from every other time I have belted out children's storytime songs for the past year, so this points to some shmoopy addling effect of spring, I suspect. I'll happily take the praise anyway.

Gavin assembled his legos and k'nex on the livingroom floor while I put in laundry and made mac and cheese for lunch, feeling squarely middle-American. We tucked into bed for a nap, read Squids will be Squids, and Gavin curled up into my chest, hooking an arm around my neck in an affectionate attempt to thwart my inevitable escape. I looked over his hair at my belly, which suddenly quivered and bucked as the baby let off a hearty kick. I could see the small bulges where it pressed its feet intermittently. Grinning, I kissed Gavin's sleeping head, tucked his limp arm beside him, and slipped out of the room.

My mother is recovering from surgery, and I wish I were home to help her. I sent her the gift of e-shopping to aid in her bedrest, and Gavin inquired after her wheelchair experience over the phone. We'll be back in a month or two, and everything will be back on track.

It's a long, slow weekend, but the sun is out again, and the despair of the past year seems to have been left in the fog like an amorphous black nightmare. This summer will mark 2 years since everything cracked and went to flame - and the very week of that grim anniversary will welcome the birth of this baby. The irony does not escape me.

zappy toes

In our office, I pulled up my pant cuffs to model my new shoes for Marc, who raised his eyebrows politely. We had ended up skidding into the overpriced orthopedic shoe store just as the mall was closing, and I grabbed a wedge sandal off the display rack while the Payless next door rolled down their security gate. I do not wear wedges or espadrilles or whatever one classifies the solid chunks of hoof with straps on top, but these elicited an "oo-er" of comfort from me as I slid my feet into their cushiony leather embrace, so I ended up at the register 30 seconds later with my hands over my eyes as $70 was deducted from my check card. Apparently the only way for me to buy quality shoes is to be thrust, desperate, into the arms of a Clarks salesman at closing time. I explained that hitherto, the only pair of shoes I had found tempting had been the gladiator sandals, which Mike had seemed disinclined to lace up for me every day after I could no longer bend over. "Yes," said Marc sympathetically, "You'd have to pull the laces straight, and wear them on suspenders."

In other news, the cats have been shot and chipped in preparation for their fast-track Hawaii quarantine in the coming months. Reportedly, the vets banded together, put Maura in a "taco", manhandled her in a fit of claws and yowling into the back room, ran out to ask for her carrier, and then strolled back a moment later with a flip comment about not needing it anymore. Thereafter Maura was suspiciously saucer-eyed and spent the rest of the evening draped across the couch in deep, lip-twitching sleep. No sedative was listed on the invoice, but we don't think it was the taco that did it.

*grunt* girly!

The weather crept up into the high 70s yesterday, and in giddy celebration I pulled on my new gauzy white skirt and crawled into the hallway closet to find last summer’s sandals. The strap on my favorite pair had broken, leaving only a pair of open-toed heels. I tucked them onto my feet and leaned back to look at them. Mike tilted his head. “You still have nice legs, you know.” I pulled the skirt up over my knees and looked at them. They’re not ham hocks yet, anyway. Feeling refreshingly girly after a winter expanding under frowzy layers, I planted the shoes on the floor, scrabbled at the tiles, and heaved myself up with a vair fetching grunt. I couldn’t see the shoes when I looked down, but they stabbed into my heels and I immediately kicked them off and slipped on flip flops. It is a sad fact that I must once again embark on the annual Hunt For Shoes What Don’t Suck. This year I want low heels, but not flats. Strappy, but not floss-like. Wide support, but not clunky. This sounds reasonable, yes? No.