"You'd think my dentist was really good looking,"

"considering how much time I spend there." I signed in late to work. The kids were tugging at their leashes, waiting for the afternoon bell to set them free for the summer.

My morning was spent in the dentist's chair. As she jammed in biting blocks, drills, bits of cardboard, and minty goop, I imagined all the things I would rather have in my mouth. It took hours. I lifted my book and read snippets from the corner of my eye while the violent dental assistant attacked me with her sucky nozzle.

I almost hit a lady in an SUV pulling out of 7-11. She appeared out of thin air, probably pulling on to the main road from the fast food joint across the street as the road cleared at the same moment as me. She honked and braked and screamed out her open window, then tailgated me for 2 miles squawking and gesturing and honking until the road divided and she could zoom up beside me to yell at me. I looked at her sideways from behind my stupidly oversized glasses and sipped my Big Gulp. She looked nice enough, except for the frenzied cursing. Reminded me of a squirrel I had once startled, who chased through the park.

I arrived at school and the kids swarmed me, hugging me and shoving yearbooks into my hands for signing. One of my library regulars said goodbye with real tears in her eyes, leaving forever to a new school. I told her she was wonderful and waved her off. Spent the afternoon shelving and singing along to Janis Joplin.

Mike is sick. He is stuck on the couch with a pile of rented movies. I put on a dish of bread pudding with caramel whiskey sauce to bake, enjoyed tight hugs and hard kisses from my baby, and am getting ready for dancing tonight. Tomorrow I get to spend time in my empty library after a morning workout. I am pretty happy these days.


Gavin and Chris at party on Sunday:

Me with a borrowed child:

Memorial Day Weekend

I have already crushed my new bug-eyed sunglasses. I wore them anyway while I watched the school talent show, scooting away from the sun in the shade of the building as I sat on the steps with the office staff. The kids sang, smashed, and tumbled through the morning. One of the boys came out with a can of kerosene and a lighter, pulled off his shirt, and lit a double-ended torch for a fire spinning routine. Fan-freakin-tastic. His mother hung to one side with a wet towel, but he did not light his shorts on fire. "A huuuuuge improvement from last year!" the teachers said as they clapped wildly.
 

I really like these kids. From the older girls who hijacked the sound system to play Black Sabbath and Nirvana to the little guys who ran up and sang the "Llama" song ("did you ever see a llama kiss a llama on the llama llama's llama tastes of llama llama llama DUCK!"). They're cool.

Party
Memorial Day Weekend was a lot of beach, shopping, ice cream, zoo, sunscreen, movies, popcorn, and barbecue. Yesterday I cheated and bought bbq chicken plate lunches at Sam's Club instead of digging out the propane tank. On Saturday, tourists laughed at me for pretending to drag an enormous imaginary fish across the beach for illustration reference. Gavin and I napped in the car in the parking garage at Ala Moana, lips stained from shave ice after petting all the goats at the keiki zoo. Mike and I watched mindless action flicks. Leggy Redhead surprised me in the bathroom of the Spaghetti Factory while I was helping Gavin use the toilet. What a weekend.
 

1 month 4 weeks until vacation.

Spirit week

End of the year in a school library means mountains of books getting dumped at the library. Sometimes not just books, but calculators, spellers, digital equipment, teaching materials, and other miscellaneous items. During our staff party, the principal had an aside with me and said he thought it would be good for me to work on my next book so the kids could see the process. So I took a break from the book pile after a few hours of endless shelving and gathered up the materials for my dummy book. Once I had figured out how to rig it together without staples, I sat with my twine-bound book and taped the text in on all the pages, then started filling it in with rough gestures and action lines. With my handy-dandy camera propped on my desk, I jumped and crouched and pretended to pull invisible nets until I had enough reference to work with loosely. It's coming along, I can feel it. This one has promise.

The family is going to the water park today to celebrate my cousin's 4th birthday, while I am sitting at my desk in my yoga pants. This is Spirit Week, and I had been scroogishly ignoring the dress-up themes until today - Sports Day - when I decided to take advantage of the excuse to wear my Starbuck shirt ("Are you at least going to wear your yoga jacket over it?" No, mom). I was sure I would show up and be the only person in sportswear, but I am just one of many fools on this fine Thursday morning.

I'd still rather be at the water park. 

In other news, I am no longer carrotwoman. (I may have to do that again, just for fun.)

"I'm gonna hit you on the head, ok?"

There's something about rolling in the grass on summer evenings. Gavin got tired of sitting in Volcano Joe's and ran outside onto the lawn. He lobbed an imaginary ball at my head and I fell over dramatically, clutching my eye. A moth distracted him, and he ran across the grass after it, laughing, while I propped myself on my elbows and enjoyed the scene. College boys crowded on the deck, smoking cloves and cigarettes in the lamp light while one of the open mic guys rehearsed the blues on a steel guitar. Inside the cafe, I could see Mike thrashing away at his guitar. Gavin rolled up next to me and told me to lay on his tummy. We stared up at the twilight sky and pointed at stars and helicopters until he started giggling and bobbed my head off onto the grass. Nice evening.

The newspaper has been running columns all week on fighting fraud and financial abuse against seniors. The articles have a little logo of an elderly silhouette with a cane, and the title "Falling Prey". Ha ha.

In other news 

I was initiated into the national honor society for librarians this Sunday. There was not even a secret handshake. Disappointing.

sleep!

Gavin finally settled down in bed when the family arrived home from dancing. Hearing them, he bolted up and ran into his grandma's room, where he discovered his new video was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he has inherited my mother's need to search obsessively for items until they are found. The two of them went up and down the stairs, poking their heads into our dark bedroom to ask if we had seen it every 3 minutes, jolting me out of sleep. Finally grannie couldn't stay awake any longer and sent him back to bed. Cozy under the blankets, we started to fall asleep, and then the cat leaped on us with all claws out and yowled in our ears. Mike threw him into the hall like a football (ok, he shooed him out and closed the door). Finally got to sleep.

The cats pulled me out of bed this morning and led me downstairs to feed them. I tied my hair up and stood in the kitchen listening to the rain outside. Xebo did a tap dance on the stove while I scooped out his food. His head has almost recovered from his last fight, he is itching to go outside again. Every time he feels better he sprints outside, straight onto the backs of whatever stray cat he can find. Then he spends the next week inside nursing his injuries and biting us for using pens around him. He hates pens.

I have nothing to say this morning, obviously, but I woke up half an hour early and I'll be damned if I do anything useful at 5am.

cold.

I finished entering my diet plan for the day and flipped off the computer. Put my shoes next to my purse. Went upstairs and kissed my sleeping family goodbye for the day. The remains of my self-made Mother's Day breakfast were still in the sink. The cinnamon buns I had baked were left all night on the stove. I threw them out.

The basics of Mother's Day still elude us -cook mom breakfast, clean up while she rests, make her a card - but the bigger picture is still there. Mike took me out to buy a new bikini, then let me roast on the beach while he played in the water with Gavin. I laid on my towel and wheezed, each breath a flaming outline of my lungs. You should not have to feel your lungs when you breathe. When we headed out to the steak house with my mom's sweetie, he stopped at his house and threw some packets of medicine at me. I have obediently consumed them, although I have no idea what they are. Dinner was great, my dietary resolve crumbled by crab-stuffed ahi in hollandaise sauce.

My voice was still gone this morning. 2 months, 2 weeks until vacation. My in-laws have only ever known me as that Pale Quiet Fat Girl. I've been working hard to get back to what I was before college and depression and pregnancy, and I wonder what they'll say. I dread it. It's like when you're too poor for new clothes and one day show up with a different pair of pants - everybody makes a big deal to tell you how great you look, which tells you exactly what they thought of you before.

I sat in the car and listened to the end of a song. I ran my fingers back and forth over the steering wheel to feel it and remind myself I'm alive. It's funny, spending so much of life trying to feel alive. Sometimes even the heartache of failing is enough to do the trick.

Stop, mom.

"Gavin, I love you. I love you so much."
"Mom, stop saying that all the time. I know."


There was a coffin sitting next to a hole for 2 days in the graveyard across the street. I was amazed. Why, we could just sneak in at night and tip the lid off and see who was in it! My mother insisted it must be empty, waiting for a funeral, but the next day I spotted workers pushing it into the hole and grabbing shovels. My goodness, we really could have gone and had a peek. How strange and mysterious. And if Mike leaves me out in the sun for two days without a funeral, I will haunt him mercilessly. He assured me he would not. He would give me a skylight so people could look in properly.

The shirts I ordered last month arrived today. Landline's revenge.



Finally Friday. That was the longest week ever. The family is collapsed around the room, drinking Killian's while the kids snarf down Krispy Kremes. I am having tea. I have my willpower back just in time for Mother's Day. The men plan to fatten us up at the steak house, but I plan to eat either salad or shrimp, because I am in control here. I have a firm hand for these controls, yes I do.

Bum

You learn something new every day. Who knew "fanny" was a dirty word in the Land of Fish and Chips? "I want to lay outside and tan my fanny," I told Mike, then laughed at my own hilarity.

I sat in the back of the car on the way to dancing, trying to read my book while my mother turned in her seat to ask me questions about faucets and Gavin fed me firetrucks while using my hair as reigns. He is going to make a terrible horse owner. I finally detached myself and made a run for it at the 7-11, heading up to Yuri's house for an evening of "packing".

We sat in the remains of Yuri's tiny apartment eating vegetarian chicken wings and fake riblets, discussing men, whether Stephen Colbert was as do-able as Jon Stewart, and watching the cooks on Top Chef get into fights over who turned down their ovens. I made off with a bag full of hangers, some interesting (unopened) girdle panties, an enormous jar of pesto, and a weird racist piggybank. When dancing was over, I walked back down to the 7-11 to meet the family. Gavin admired the piggybank, pointing at its little grinning teeth and declaring that it looked just like me. Lovely.

It has been a week, and we are fully night weaned. This means I can get up to stuff at night, if for some reason I was able to drag myself out of bed and think of something to do, which I think has actually never happened. But it could now. It also means I can go away for overnight trips. Not that I have any plans to; I can not afford the plane tickets to the ALA conference as I had hoped. Anyway, sleeping through the night is nice after almost 4 years.

In the dark early morning, Gavin twined his fingers in my hair and whispered, "Mom, don't go to work, stay home with me." Just about tore my heart out. 

Thursday. Only another work day before I can repeat my impersonation of a popcorn kernel on the beach. At least I can use both arms again. It is sad to lose my best excuse. "I can't [clean the littler box/wash dishes/get off the couch], I only have one arm."

Italian: the new Mexican

The Mexican restaurant was bursting capacity by 6:00pm when we arrived. Already-drunk college and military kids hooted on all sides. Gavin crouched against a wall warily. "Sorry, it's gonna be a 2-3 hour wait," said a very not-sorry hostess, who then turned and complained loudly to a bouncer that it wasn't even 7:00pm yet. A radio station had set up tables of jello shots behind an enormous yellow taped barricade that blocked an entire row of parking spaces. Presumably this was where the party would rage until 3am. We decided to leave the scene while still intact.

Mike met us as we were walking away, his hair mushed flat on the top by his helmet. I tried to fluff it and tuck the puffy bottom bits behind his ears, and he gave me an irritated glare. We walked to the Old Spaghetti Factory and went upstairs to the bar while waiting for our table. The bar was empty, with fancy dark wood furnishings, dim and golden with dangling stained glass and wrought iron chandeliers. We ordered three margaritas and Mike taught Gavin how to play Space Invaders on the retro table arcade. I've always wondered about bars with stairs in them, but I negotiated them well enough despite the heels, dangling toddler, and impractically large margarita glass. The Spaghetti Factory earns 4 stars for atmosphere, but the food seems to be reheated from Costco cans. I stirred my mandarin chicken salad in circles to make it look like I was eating a bit. The drink made me talkative.

mom: What's she saying?
Mike: She's talking in chat.
me: lol. lol @ me.

Sheesh. Afterwards we walked downstairs to look at colored noodles at the kitchen store. 

The cat jumped on my head when I was 15 minutes late waking up this morning (5:30am) and I am downstairs with a hot bowl of oatmeal, a cup of tea, and spare time to blog. Good start to a Saturday.

(night 3, no nursing)

Weaning

Night two with no nursing. Not used to sleeping the night uninterrupted, I am awake at 5am.

Two days ago, Gavin endured a horrific dental procedure. His front chompers were deteriorating - due in part to the nighttime milk. I had a small tantrum at the dentist's office last month and demanded they special order white caps for him instead of putting the steel teeth of poverty on my child. Apparently milk teeth are too small for porcelain, and the technology for enamel-coated children's caps has only just been invented. They were confused about why I cared whether Gavin could smile confidently for the next 3 years, but they agreed to use him as their guinea pig for the new product. My mother took him in for his 3-hour appointment while I was in class. "He looked a bit like Golem there for a while," she told me later, "and it took so long the pain killer wore off. He cried when he thought they were done and weren't, but he hung in there and didn't melt down." My poor baby. The teeth look good, at least, and he was more than happy to score two new toy trains because we felt so bad.

So somehow I thought this terrible day would be a good time to wean him. He lasted until 2 am before sobbing quietly against the wall, and then turning to me tentatively and asking between tears in a quiet heart-breaking voice cracking with utter despair, "I can't nurse anymore?" He rolled over and hugged me and sobbed into my chest. I relented, but reasoned, "Only once a night, ok?" He agreed with complete relief, snuggling down against me while I kissed his head.

And the little guy has been true to his word. He nurses once at bedtime, happy and snuggly, then rolls over and sleeps the entire night. I'm both relieved and sad. It won't be long now before our nursing days are completely over. He asked to sleep in his own bed at nap time yesterday. It makes my chest hurt.