Easter 2010

I want to write something long and meaningful and filled with thoughtful details. But I'm not going to. I'm anemic and sleepy and coasting on mini cadbury eggs.

Let us just say that it was a wonderful weekend. Let us also say that I pulled off a crown roast dinner in 4 inch heels. It isn't true, but it could have been.

I'll fluff this with pictures and then go pass out under my basket.

Firstly, we went to a wedding. You know how people go to weddings and become transported by the magic and romance of new beginnings? Well, that didn't happen to me. Gavin enjoyed seeing his tae kwon do teacher in a dress, though.



"Wow, that's a nice dress. What did your dress look like at your wedding, mom?" "A tent." It did. Indulged in a bit of self pity about my pointless marriage, until I saw the tragic cake.



Cheered up further when Mike came back with the "uck" part for us. Dodged the bouquet, which went whizzing past my head and smacked the tree behind me. Pretended to get my heels pegged in the mud while a little girl dove for it. Which was easy to do, because they were.

The pavillion was on the edge of a sea cliff, which made for a very exciting afternoon for all the mothers in attendance.



After eating the handsome groom's hand-killed venison and pushing the car out of the mud, we headed home, grabbed the boiled eggs, and trooped over to our friends' house to dye eggs with the kids.

No picture, because we laid out the eggs, turned to find decorating implements, and turned back to discover all 12 eggs dyed pink. The end.

For the second year in a row, Gavin wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny and asked him to write a note in return. And for the second year in a row, the Easter Bunny ate the note. Leif screamed at us for being too chipper at an ungodly hour of the morning, then found his basket among the pots and pans.



He looks happy, but I got a BACON CHOCOLATE BAR.

The day was lovely. There was cooking, and feasting, and sword fighting, and card playing.

Also fake oven-checking for auto-timer, since nobody would take a picture of me.



And two men with booze.



We got into the hobo wine someone made in their bathtub and delivered to us in a used bottle covered in plastic wrap. It tasted like Drunk.

It was as good a holiday as we could have wished for, having to spend it away from family. Next year perhaps I'll be back to juggling appetizers with my mom in her tiny kitchen.

sloshen

But I can still type! Easter is a happy time. We talked to my mom on ichat, cleaned the house, then went to the beach. With the crappy old camera that puts blurs in the middle of everything. I am too cool for swim wear. Hana Bay. The glowy-white figures in the foreground are the boy-people. Leif just gave up trying to stay clean and ate the sand. Chops on the grill. The rainy season is over, and the sun is pouring in. Am not going to send any drinky emails.

itemized

• Fell out of the car again. Considering cleats. 

• Was almost killed by a pit bull: rounded blind curve and veered out of path of careening truck; slavering dog whizzing perilously past my window. If I were to be killed by an animal, being bludgeoned by one would probably be the way to go. Unless it were a hamster, or other very small animal which would require either a cannon blast or hours of effort to finish the job. 

• Got another book project*. 

 • Patron in scanty shorts rested his testicles on my desk.

 • Bought a new pack of red pencils online. Spent almost an hour agonizing over what to add to get free shipping (6 dollars - NEED TO SPEND 6 DOLLARS), stamping out the joy of purchasing precious effing carmine pencils. 

• Ate half a tub of fat free whipped topping. Yes, I know it is made of hemorrhoid cream. 

• Couldn't finish sewing tart dress because there are no zippers on the island. Probably because the governor laid off the zipper inspectors. 

• Swore at governor on television because she is laying off 1,800 more people instead of raising taxes a bit because "it wouldn't be good for businesses". But cutting our pay, furloughing every state agency, closing schools, and laying off thousands of people is JUST GREAT. Now I am going to go close my head in the fridge because I just ranted about politics. 

*  Task: figure out how to wedge prehistoric beasts into a board book format. I'm thinking... 

  

 Still working on concepts.

The House of Sick

Meningitis.

Was told by mom's doctor to watch her and get her to the hospital if anything changes because "she could die." Was not happy with this. Even though her doctor is tiny and cute and I wanted to knock her over and steal her fancy shoes.

Changed ice packs, picked up prescriptions, administered pills, refilled water bottles, and found myself with hours of quiet time to knit on the couch or lay in bed alone late into the night reading. Felt like the old me. Put on a baggy old tee shirt and took off my jeans to complete the effect.

Boob turned into a potato. Breast pump insisted it was doing its best.

The man arranged to fly in on Saturday. I experienced a confused mix of excitement and disappointment. Filled my arms with kissing boys and put jeans back on.

Cleaned the bathrooms, sneaking four garbage bags out behind the house. Said "it had a hole in it!" every time she asked about missing soap slivers/old toothbrushes/that hairspray in the rusted can that we can't use because we're allergic.

Mom started to feel better, as indicated by the fact that I went upstairs and found her disassembling her air cleaner instead of resting. Secured her recovery with a load of Thai food from the restaurant with the old lady who predicted I'd go into labor when I sent my mom for saté sticks.

Went to Target. The man became stressed by city traffic, tried to run 4 people off the road.

While cleaning the kitchen, discovered a cupboard of miscellaneous liquor that was still good. Also a cursed 7 year-old bottle of cheap champagne from our wedding. And a pack of pre-cooked bacon I bought during the divorce, disturbingly normal-looking.

Got a cold. Leif showed his sympathy by sneezing snot down my shirt. Then made Cute Face (exaggerated blinking with tongue between teeth). Forgiven.

I asked him to do it for the camera, and this is what happened:

I threatened to take them to the Sears portrait studio for a babies-rolling-pointlessly-in-flowers photo shoot. Preview of how that would go:

Tomorrow we fly home. My mother is expending all of her new energy in the cheesecake section of Costco. I know she'll be safe now.

Was all of this the sign I was waiting for that it is time to make the move back? Perhaps.

Hits and knits

This month the furlough gods decided to throw us out on Fridays instead of Wednesdays, just to keep the public confused. This means that I can now watch the boy get his teeth knocked out in his Tae Kwon Do classes.

Due to financial woes, the classes are being held in the local homeschool:

To help the kids get back into the studio, a fundraiser is in the works. A poker tournament. I believe the last time I played poker, it degraded into a penny-throwing match. I will not be doing that thing.

Before class, the man had a good snog with Oprah the dog. Afterwards, Oprah ran away to roll in a maggoty corpse. She spent the rest of the morning under the yurt on her rope of shame.

Gavin tried to kick his buddy's face in.

I hid behind the bookcase.

Not pictured: the hour spent chasing the kids through the rain after class and hiding under a tarp while they howled, "I'm the Water God, follow me!" from the top of the play structure. Finally came in, sopping and grumpy, to drag the man out of the poker-organization meeting.

Came home to learn that my mother has been too sick to eat since Wednesday. Talked to her, knitting out my worries on the boy's sweater. Finished it while my mother was in Emergency yesterday afternoon. She's back at home, two IV bags fuller, but still unable to eat or stand. My auntie is being a good sister and dumping Gatorade into her, despite the whining from her husband on the phone, having been forced to watch his own children.

So today I am upset about my mother's mortality, and waiting to see if I need to fly over and beat the doctors into fixing her. But at least the Durrow sweater is done.

And it's really kind of fantastic. The boy kind of likes it, too, despite the fact that I cut off the loose ends, which he had been using as dangly lures to drag the cats around by.

mad morning

It is my late day at work, which means it is the man's turn to wrangle the children together for school. Leif gets to ride along so I have a chance to shower without a hail of tiny fists on the door. The infink charged around with his head down and arms back like a speed skater, wailing "datdatdatdatdat!" and stopping to shoot at Gavin with both fists. Gavin went into death throes with his toothbrush jutting from his mouth. The cat had knocked over the food bucket and was spread out in it on her belly, scootching forward on her cat toes and snarking down nuggets. Despite all this, somehow, miraculously, everyone was be-shoed and be-backpacked with ten minutes to spare. So the man stood there watching the kids play "punch you in the balls" until it was time to go - then decided to sit down and fill out a 3-page permission form. "What's 'an effective form of discipline' for Gavin?" he asked, pen poised. I looked at the boy, rolling on the floor clutching his rooster bits while Leif stomped and clapped in delight. "Logical consequences."

Home again

Have returned to the homestead, which, in a week, was littered with lizard and centipede corpses and smug cats. The spiders attempted full-fledged overthrow. Had to shake them out of the pans to cook dinner, and spent ten minutes chasing them out of the bathtub before turning on the water. Wily beasties. At 7:30pm, Leif took me by the finger and led me to bed, where I last remember wondering in a detached manner whether it sounded like I was falling asleep between lyrics of our bedtime song. Woke at midnight to a dark house, still in my jeans and cardigan. Someone had put pajamas on the pillow next to me. D'aww. Considering I normally wake up if I hear one of the cats stretch, this is Big News for me.

*edited to add: I have been informed by the man-person that I was comatose and unresponsive to nudges, crooning, proding, and using my own arm to slap my face. That's nice, isn't it? I could have been dead, and he didn't even ask.

Forgot to mention

Least favorite moment of trip: Continental Airlines has nifty little maps of the country with a little airplane flying across it on a dotted line, so you can see where you are. I like that. I did not like waking up to turbulence, opening my eyes to check the screen for assurance, and seeing an inflight arcade game.



AUUUGHH! We're going to die!! Why would they ANIMATE that?!

Mutual humiliation

last day in New York.

We climbed into the minivan for a drive down to breakfast. My head was bobbling like a water balloon full of hurt on my jetlagged body. Caffeine was still an hour's drive away. And lo! there was a half-full bottle of Coke Zero, abandoned in the driver's cup holder from two days before. It was probably Sue's, but she didn't need it as badly as I did. I cracked it open (still fizzy!) and took a bolstering slug, then put it back. Aaah, better. Except, no. The man-person ratted me out. "She didn't know who's it was, she just drinks it anyway!" Sue didn't laugh as hard as he did. Because he had just told her I was basically eating her garbage. Add to this - about 7 years ago, I had a gap in my back teeth that had been left over from getting my braces off, and it was the bane of my meat-eating existance. I was like a dragon with splintered knight's limbs always getting stuck in my back teeth. One time, at the lake, I used the corner of a photograph as a flossing device. That picture - which was MINE - happened to be of Rob and Stacy. Mike decided it would be soooo funny to tell Rob and Stacy about how I had picked pork out of my teeth with their heads. They did not laugh, either. Yesterday at the airport, I told him that if he ever humiliated me to his family again, I would let him know with a secret signal. "I'll tell them the tartar sauce story." He shrugged. "I'll tell them the magical vomit fairy story." He looked slightly worried, but not enough. "I'll just start making shit up." He said, "I promise I'll try not to humiliate you anymore." "Thank you."

New York: the final recall

End of Day 6

I laid on the couch for who-knows-how-many hours (5) while the children waved their wrists at the wii fish on the television. The tropical stomach-inverting flu we brought over was toppling the family like... two big toppling things. [note: am writing at 3am while Leif dances in adorable jetlagged manner around my mother’s livingroom] Kammie built a quarantine fort of pillows around herself. Alexia, being 3 years old and unimpressed by personal space, tore up the pillow fort and then crawled onto me where I was napping to brush my hair up into pigtails and cause an involuntary surge of baby-girl-child-want. When Sal and Jeanie finally arrived, I jumped up, did a happy dance, and waved the baby at them for inspection. Leif arched his eyebrow at Sal and rolled his eyes away disdainfully. Sal clapped his hands in delight, "He's judging me!"


Yes he was. Nice first impression, kid.

Lorenz couldn't make it for the sleepover, because he was sawing the legs off his new Pier 1 couch to get it into his apartment after the mover left it wedged in his door. He missed the imported homebrew and several hours of trash-talking in front of men's Olympic figure skating.

Day 7 - the City

Rolled Sal out of the guest room and went back down to Hillburn to steal the minivan. Sal and I wrestled an infant car seat base and finally had to concede defeat, then Mike reached over our shoulders and unclipped it anticlimactically. Jerk. Into the city! We stopped at a horrifyingly priced parking garage and left the vehicle with some dodgy men in puffy coats who claimed they would park it for us, then hiked through a warren of Soho streets to visit the famed Purl. It was alarmingly eency weency, and the spotted hipster who worked there was stumped when I asked him for sock-weight black yarn, but my eyes went wide and dilated with fiber lust and I spent an embarrassing amount of money anyway.



Lorenz finally made an appearance, and we played tourist. We saw a pillow in a tree.




There was a trip to Anthropologie, where I spun in enchanted-meadow manner through the racks, tried on a stack of dresses I couldn't afford, and still managed to feel fat in a size 4. Bought a tea cup with a scrolly "H" on it, which didn't require me to fit my bottom into it.

Hiked to lunch at a half-underground Thai restaurant with waterfalls for the bathroom sink and table-side flambé for $8 a plate. Gavin ate an entire basket of steamed dumplings, my rice came shaped like a pyramid, and we were all stunned by our sophistocosity.






We made good on a promise of unbridled materialism for the kids, and drove to Time Square to visit the mega-horror Toys R Us. Most terrifying hour of the entire trip. Mascots can tell that I hate them, and invariably stagger past the kids with outstretched arms to envelop me in stiff polyester hugs, breathing facelessly through the fabric on me. Probably because I look sturdy, and they really need something to brace against. After fleeing the giant orange giraffe, we found ourselves at the feet of a life-sized animatronic T-Rex. I know it was a robot. I know it would not break free and eat us. But holy FUCK nothing makes all your "I'm a tasty rabbit" alarms sound like a life-sized animatronic T-Rex. I ran away into Candy Land while the boys stood staring up at it like a bunch of niblets.



Eventually, Gavin was coerced by the manly folk to buy a useless hovering helicopter, and Leif didn't care wtf we bought him because he only wanted to break whatever Gavin got anyway.

Kisses, hugs, promises of future lakeside summer card games, and we were gone again. Would we could have stayed another week just with the friend-types. Oh well.


The flight back

Packed. Repacked. Tossed sweaters and coats into reject piles. Had momentary panic over tight pants until Mike waved his wrists at me from his shrunken shirt. Mysterious effects of dry air? Visited the aloof brother one last time, admired his handiwork in rebuilding an entire house, stole diapers for the infink, and waved goodbye. I got eye contact this time! Drove to Newark, stopped at Dunkin Donuts for last taste of East Coast. Further kisses and hugs, secret whispers between cousins, tears between mother and son, spurring heels from infink, who had had enough of this nonsense. Cruised through 10 hours of sky, curving steeply around the earth against the inexorable roll, peering out at Saskatoon and the mountains of Washington, chasing the setting sun with sleeping children on our laps. We peeled ourselves of clothes in the humid air, the curls returning to frizzy hair and wrinkles smoothing from our weathered faces like time-lapse cream commercials. Home!

It was a fine little vacation. Can now return to normal short-like posts about falling into toilets and chasing hobos. Pictures to come retroactively.

New York update #2

Day 5

Stuffed kids into grandma's convertible and accidentally drove partway to Binghamton when we took a wrong exit while fishing for Blistex. Became very excited when we turned around at the Scranton exit. Made terrible Office jokes for ten minutes. Took the kids for pizza at That Pizza Place Next to the Giant Rock That Mike's Dad Took Us To That One Time. This time, minus the lengthy history of the rock, which, as it turns out, was not an ancient sacrificial stone or a boulder dropped by giants in the days of fey; it was too big to dig out, so they made a fence around it. The end. The pizza is good, though.

Went on a quest to find Trader Joe's. Cousin Kammy clucked her tongue dubiously, "It's a grocery store?" then gasped herself into a giddy head rush as we tap-danced from aisle to aisle. I made sad faces in front of the pound-plus chocolate bars, having sworn off cocoa products for Lent. Am a lousy former-Catholic-schoolgirl, though, as it took me an hour to realize why everyone had dirt on their foreheads.

Brought brie and fancy crackers to the Great Aunties' house, and I read an interesting article about Michelin stars in the New Yorker while the kids tried to sword fight with the walkers, eat all the Pepperidge Farms cookies, and find the remote for the 1970s tv. I love visiting the Aunties, they are wily old over-educated spinsters and the very first sort of feminists. Plus, they have a bidet.

Ditched the larger child at Aunt Sue's, and stuffed Leif back into the car for a kosher sushi dinner in Airmont with the Bosses. (The man-person has worked for a local company these past 7 years, only meeting them in person periodically to eat all their food.) Snow billowed in as we gathered the child to ride home at bedtime, and after the two boys were asleep in their seats, we played with the high beams and pretended we were flying at warp speed through the snow, flattening ourselves to our seats and howling AAUUUGHHH! Some time around 10pm, discovered ourselves locked out of the house and phoning grandma from the porch to beg for shelter from the cold. She came down with a lot of makeup on, in a bathrobe instead of her Mickey jimjams. Oh no.

Day 6 - today again

Breakfast at IHOP with great-grandma Mac. Too sweet to be a spitfire, but too fun to be an old fuddy, she and Gavin enjoyed a bit of time twisting straws into dinosaurs and robots while Mike tackled a stack of pancakes, Leif spit out his french toast and stuffed his mouth with packets of sugar and crayons, and I slugged down hazelnut latte until my head was spinning.



We stopped at the fabric store to indulge my yearning for affordable quilting flannel, dropped off great-grandma, and are back at Sue's to let the kids scream at each other over goldfish crackers while Mike delivers homebrew to his bosses. Kammy is hiding upstairs with a bit of the stomach flu we kindly brought over. Tonight the rabble arrives from the city for a grown-up sleepover: booze! gossips! shenanegans! And tomorrow: the city! Exciting.