"You ____ kids! I can't have anything nice!"

When I was a teenager, our family moved into a monster.  It had been built as a house but modified into a real estate office.  It seems like we counted 11 "bedrooms," 1 1/2 baths, both in the basement.  It had a parking lot instead of a driveway, and what would have been the garage was some sort of conference room.  The kitchen was a veritable closet, a room barely big enough to hold a microwave, sink and a fridge, with a few cheaply made cupboards.  And the realty that used it ran into some major legal trouble, and they trashed the place before abandoning it.  It had sat that way for a few years, with water pipes broken in 5 (if I remember right) places.  Mold grew about three feet high on all the basement walls, and in at least one room, mushrooms had sprouted out of the carpet.

Dad was excited about the possibilities.  Mom... braced herself to live in a construction zone.

One of the first things that had to be done was opening the kitchen.  Walls were torn down, those cheap cupboards carefully spared, because there wasn't money to do the job "right" just yet.  When the room was safe, we stacked those cupboards on the floor to hold most of the dishes.  Mom cut a "door" into the side of a couple of moving boxes to create more cupboards.  A new sink was installed in the old countertop, hanging out over the side.  A new cooktop stood on 2x4 legs.

And thus it stayed for... what was it?  About 2 1/2 years?  One year, a family we knew had a house fire and their insurance replaced their appliances.  Their old electric range still worked, and they gave it to us, just a day or two before Thanksgiving.  For the first time in ages we had an oven!  It was the best Thanksgiving ever.

But this isn't a story of gratitude.  Sorry.  It really should be.  But it isn't.

I was probably a junior, maybe a senior, in high school, certainly old enough to know better.  One day, we kids were being silly and irresponsible.  There was a rule about not running in the house.  We all knew that rule.  We were all busy breaking it.  We ran in a circle, all of us (Clint may not have been there; I'm not sure if he was off at college or a senior.)  The circle probably involved someone being teased, because generally someone was being teased.  But we all thundered around and around that stack of cupboards, that precarious stack of old cupboards, that "make do" storage space.

Can you predict what happened?  We apparently had never considered it.

One of the cupboards on top couldn't take it any more, and dove to the linoleum, with a CRASH!

We stopped.  We started to clean up what we had done.  We all felt awful.

It is really a bit of a miracle that only one thing had broken.  We kids were all relieved that that was all of the damage our misbehaving had caused.

But Mom...  Mom had heard the crash and come running.  There I stood with the pieces of the broken casserole dish in my hands.  "Sorry," we all stammered.  "We didn't mean..."

Mom's face had gone from worry -- "Was anyone hurt?" -- to pain so quickly I couldn't believe it.  "You d@#*ed kids," she said.  "I can't have anything nice."

We'd never heard Mom swear before.  There was stunned silence, and then...

We kids all burst out laughing.

Mom ran from the room sobbing, and we all were laughing.  We didn't mean to.  We already felt terrible, and this made it infinitely worse!  But... Mom SWORE.  Our Mom.  That all enduring, all forgiving, all amazing lady.  First we broke the casserole dish, and then we broke Mom.


I am really, really good at holding onto guilt, and this guilt... this is one of the worst ones in my tortured soul.  I, KIM BENNION, LAUGHED WHEN MY MOTHER WAS DISTRAUGHT.  She had already endured so much, and we broke something precious to her.  What kind of oldest daughter am I?


This week, my daughter got hold of a skein of yarn I was saving and cut it into bits.  Oh, was I mad!  She didn't ask, and she knows she isn't supposed to cut up things.  Well, she's been told, anyway.  Especially things that aren't hers.  And as I seethed at the unfairness of it all -- she has too many toys as it is, does she have to ruin my stuff? -- I took to Facebook to whine.  In the big scheme of things, it was just a skein of yarn.  It wasn't irreplaceable.  I didn't NEED it.  It was really pretty dumb to get upset.

Another day, and she has MY stuffed Mickey Mouse down off the shelf AGAIN.  Not only has she been playing with him, but she has wrapped a hair elastic around him to hold a washcloth like a cape.  That's not the best thing for his stuffing.  And then she left him on the floor.  In a heap of other things.  And she'd been eating potato chips... oily, nasty chips.  MAN...  She has her own Mickey, even, WHY does she have to mess with my special things?

And this morning...  I suppose it is my own fault for leaving my markers down where she could reach them.  I always put them away so carefully, arranging them as best I can by shade, and never let the kids use them.  I have other markers they are allowed to use.  Though... I let her use these one day a few months ago.  And she lost one.  I found the lid of the missing marker after a couple of weeks, but have never found the marker.  So this set became one that the kids can use, technically, but I usually keep them up, and I didn't put them away.  And this morning I noticed they are spilled all over the floor.  After a few minutes, when I looked back, I noticed that there was a lid off.  I breathed deeply a few times, and told her that it is important to put the lids back on markers so they don't dry out.  And then I noticed that there are about ten lids scattered around the room without the marker attached.

"MAN!" I complained.  "I can't have ANYTHING nice!"  Katie put her hands over her face.  And as my full-sulking kicked into gear AGAIN, the echo of my complaint called up another voice from my memory, and my sulk ended instantly.  I was whining about some dumb markers?  Markers I've actually already replaced?  I have exactly ZERO room to complain.

(I honestly didn't swear.  But, in the spirit of full disclosure, Katie probably wouldn't have laughed, because it wouldn't have been an aberration like my own mother's explosion.)

When I posted my whining about the yarn on Facebook, a dear friend replied that she thinks there must be a reward in heaven for moms who don't exact revenge when our treasures are destroyed by the children.  "Cheesecake in heaven," she suggested.


Mom, I hope your cheesecake in heaven is the biggest of all.

Yep, You're Too Old To Wear That

     A few weeks ago, as I perused my Facebook news feed, a link came up to a fashion article.  Now, I am not the fashionable sort.  I don't have much of an interest in fashion.  I don't like to shop for clothing, and rarely buy myself new clothes.  Still, I'd recently decided to stop wearing things that I didn't like, and this article promised to help me not to wear things inappropriate for my age.  I ignored it the first time or two that it popped up, and then my curiosity got the best of me, and I clicked on it.

     The first thing the author said was to get rid of "message T-shirts."  Well, it so happens that the top I threw away a couple of weeks ago was a T-shirt with a message on it.   Still, it wasn't the message that caused me to throw it away.  I threw it away because the fabric wasn't holding up well.  Since the first wash, it had sagged more and more, turning a shirt with an "okay" shape into a frumpy, saggy, disaster.  Every time I wore it, I felt like a frumpy, saggy, disaster.  Well, I don't need clothes that call me names like that.  So I threw it away.

     So, the article.  I read the whole thing.  There were some things she said with which I agreed, but I found myself shaking my head about most of it.  So what if I had jeans with rhinestones or Mickey Mouse on them?  (Where can I get some of those?)  Who cares what type of bag I carry?  And the thing about giving up "loud accessories" like nail glitter...

     This spring, a young lady invited me to a Jamberry nail wraps party on Facebook.  I told her that I was too old to wear cute things like that, and she responded that no one was too old.  During that time, I went to a school event for one of my children.  A lady sitting in front of me was wearing some fun nail wraps.  A little gray-haired lady, definitely older than I was, was wearing CUTE nail decor, and realized that I liked them on her.  It stood to reason, then, that it wouldn't be ridiculous for me to wear cute nails, at least not because of my age.  I bought wraps, including two colors of glittery ones, and guess what -- I don't care if someone thinks they aren't age appropriate.

     So it has been a few weeks since I read the article, and it turned out that it was written almost a year ago, so I was already behind the times when I saw it.  But I decided that the author was wrong.  What I'm too old to wear isn't dictated by anyone but me.

I am too old to wear things that make me feel bad about myself.
I am too old to wear things that don't make me smile.
I am too old to wear things that are uncomfortable.
I am too old to wear things that bore me.

     I recently rediscovered the joys of wearing makeup.  There was a long time that I stopped bothering with it, and maybe it was partly the "you're too old" mentality.  I knew that no matter what I did, no one was going to confuse me with a younger woman any more.  I told myself it was a waste of time to apply it, and a waste of money to buy it.  I told myself I was too old to be able to make myself look pretty.  I'm still not sure what made me buy new makeup, but then I had spent the money -- my husband's hard-earned dollars -- so I told myself I'd better use it.

     The first time I put it on, I told myself I was silly and looked ridiculous.  I told myself that, but I wasn't listening very closely because I didn't look ridiculous.  I put it on every morning for a few days.  One day, I had to take something to my son at the high school.  Before getting out of the van, I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, and before I knew what was happening, I said, "Pretty."  I actually said it, about myself, out loud.  And I couldn't argue with myself.  I liked what I was seeing.

I am too old to waste time despising my appearance.
And I am too young to let myself waste away.

It turns out I'm too old to let anyone else tell me what to wear.

Perfectionism Steals My Delight

I've decided that I'm not going to play with this one, to clean it up and make it clever and pretty and smart.  I'm going to post it like it is.  I'm not going to hunt for photos that would illustrate it, or even (gasp!) proof-read it.  I'm not going to save it as a draft and come back to it later.  I'm thumbing my nose at my perfectionism here, and I'm not going to placate it by trying to make this post perfect.

A gentleman at McDonald's this afternoon set his grandchildren to playing in the PlayPlace, and then got out his sketchbook and colored pencils, and a gorgeous photograph of the bird he was drawing.  He had the outline drawn in, and had just begun to fill it with color.  I commented that it was beautiful, and he smiled and said, "Ah, you like elephants, then?"  We both had a good laugh about it.

I sat back down to watch Katie, and thought about all the colored pencils and sketchbooks I had at home, not to mention other art supplies, stored in various "out-of-the-way" places in the house and all but unused.  I thought about how desperately I'd wished I could paint this weekend, as we drove under some fascinatingly cloudy skies, and how, when we got home, I hadn't even gotten my supplies out because I knew I couldn't do the scenes justice.

I told the man that, watching him, I'd begun to realize how much I rob myself of delight because of the fear that I would "waste" my supplies creating something less than perfect.  Since the only art lessons I've ever had were in the form of a beginning calligraphy class in college, I know that what I make will be lacking.  He told me, "You have to see the perfection in the growth.  I keep all of my old things, and I look back and see how much my skills have improved, and it is very satisfying."  He told me that he only recently started using color, and that it is an all new learning process.

As a person with a creative heart, my thoughts constantly turn to things I could make.  Since he was using colored pencils, I will start there: I have colored pencils I bought specifically for scrapbooking, which I never do; I have colored pencils for art, which I never create.  I have "watercolor pencils" I received for Christmas one year, something I was (and am) excited to play with, but I don't think I've ever done much more than open the box and look at them.  I have the biggest box I could find of Crayola erasable pencils, because with them I could make mistakes and correct them, and they are the most used of all my colored pencils... but if I've had to sharpen them more than twice, I would be surprised.  After all, with all the mistakes I make, I would waste ERASERS.
I have several boxes of crayons.  I won't tell you how many are squirrelled away in my closet, where the kids can't get them, and waste the factory-molded tips.  Thinking of those crayons today made me ashamed.  There are other boxes that I have shared with the kids, and even with those I want to cry when one gets stepped on, or even crammed into the box wrong.  Don't press so hard; see how pretty a light stroke of color can look?  There is something in my psyche that is devastated by having to peel a wrapper back.  My son offered to sharpen one of Katie's crayons -- I cannot move on without admitting that I think of them as "my crayons I share with Katie" -- but I can't bear the thought of shaving away --wasting -- some of the wax.  A few friends have posted pictures recently of a Crayola crayon standing on end, burning, with a caption that says that a crayon will burn for 30 minutes.  I would have to be pretty desperate to burn a crayon.  Then again, I rarely burn my candles, too.  I decided about 8 years ago to treat myself to a big "jar" candle in a scent I love; I'll probably never light the wick.  It just sits on my nightstand, and if I keep it dusted, I can smell it sometimes when I lie down.

Thinking about all of these art supplies (the list goes on pretty extensively) made me think of some of the other arts and crafts things I'm afraid to waste on my mistakes.  I crochet, and have a small collection of yarns.  I don't buy yarn without a specific project in mind (if I had unlimited resources, and unlimited storage, this would probably change) and so my "stash" is mostly remnants from past projects.  Even so, I have a fear of wasting those remnants.  I've been known to destroy a bit of yarn by crocheting something and pulling it out and crocheting it again until the fibers separate and pull apart.  Even then, I don't want to cut it and throw it away.

I bought beads for Katie when her occupational therapist said that stringing them would be a good exercise for her.  She has never stayed interested in stringing beads long enough to make a full bracelet.  Before she ever finishes, she will start scattering the beads, and before long I'm gathering them from the four corners of the house, sliding them off the string, and putting them all away again.  I wonder, if I tied off the string, whether she would enjoy it enough to try for longer the next time.
I have beads of my own, tiny beads that spill from a dish to the table to the floor as fluidly as spilled milk.  I've spent hours gathering them from the kitchen table and floor when trying to make something...  And I've usually finished by putting them all away again instead of keeping my creations.

Fabric, too, is a crafting supply I'm afraid to waste.  I don't know how to sew.  I've made a few things, small things, unimportant things, and I delight in the creation of them.  I'm fascinated how stitches on the "wrong side" become hidden seams, and how the shaped pieces of cloth can become a three-dimensional marvel.  I love puzzling out how to create something I imagine.  When the boys were little, I made curtains for their bedroom without a pattern, and I was SO proud of how they turned out.  I made them each a book bag for preschool, and even figured out how to hide the seams on both the outside and the inside.  When Katie started Early Intervention School, I got out the fabric I bought for a basic sewing class at church and made her a backpack.  It turned out rather skewampus, and the Velcro closure didn't hold very well, but it was cute anyway.  I think I have a seamstress-compatible brain, just without any training.  I want to learn; I want to teach myself, but I hate wasting fabric figuring it all out.

I realized today that my perfectionism tells me that the raw materials are worth much more than my creativity.  And I listen to my perfectionism.

My perfectionism tells me that my blog would be worth more if I wouldn't fill it with ramblings like this one.  I shouldn't put such disorganized, pouty thoughts out into the world where just anyone can stumble upon them.  Who, having read this, would want to read anything else I write?  You're shooting yourself in the foot, Kim, if you want readers.

In March and April, I was really excited to get out the sewing machine and SEW.  I had fabric I'd purchased for a couple of creative ideas, and I was itching to start, but I told myself I couldn't touch it until the taxes were done.  You would think that, knowing I had something like that to look forward to, I would jump right in and do the taxes.  But I didn't.  Perfectionism told me that figuring them out would be hard (and it was) and that I might not be able to do it (I could, and did.)  When they were done, did I get out the sewing machine and reward myself?  NO.  Because there is also all the paper clutter in the kitchen that I need to go through.  And in the family room.  And I need to go through the clothes Katie has outgrown.  And... and... and...

Perfectionism tells me that I haven't done enough of the hard things to warrant spending time on me.  I haven't earned it.  I don't deserve it.

Perfectionism tells me I COULD actually be happy if I would just get ALL my failings fixed first.  Perfectionism tells me I'm capable of so much better than I am doing, and therefore I am wasting my potential.  Perfectionism reminds me that "Good enough never is," and then sighs and says "I suppose you are good enough."  (Thankfully, It doesn't then lean in and explain the "joke," but I see Its patronizing smile.)  Perfectionism asks me, "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you find time to do it over?" and I respond, too often, by giving up all together.

I've known for a long time that my perfectionism doesn't do me many favors (a few good grades back in the day, including an A in that calligraphy class,) but I don't think I'd realized until today just how deeply it dips into my personal delight.

I want my delight back.

Spaghetti on the Ceiling

I don't remember why the story came up yesterday.  I'd taken my son, Richard, to McDonald's for lunch, and we were laughing about a few different things, and I found myself again telling him the story of the Spaghetti on the Ceiling.  And I thought, I really should write this one on my blog.  So here I go.

My parents would, every now and then, assign all five of their children to work together on something, unsupervised.  I sometimes wonder if they realized how much more goofing off we did that way than when we worked alone, or only two at a time.  I remember group dish-washing tasks during which we all wore sudsy caps, dishwater streaming through our hair and rolling down under the collars of our shirts, for example.  (I also remembering telling my siblings I would pay them to just go away and let me do the job alone; I got in trouble for that.)

One weekend when my older brother, Clint, was home from college, we five were assigned to prepare dinner -- spaghetti.  We got the ground beef browned and poured in the sauce, and had the spaghetti boiling.  We probably had a salad.  Todd helped David and Michelle set out the plates, cups, and flatware along the bar on the kitchen island, where the family usually ate.

I pulled up a strand of spaghetti and tasted it to see whether it was done.  Clint watched me, then said, grinning, "You know how Dad says you can tell if spaghetti is done, don't you?"

Oh, yes.  We all knew.  We also knew how Mom protested whenever Dad mentioned it.  And how she would yell if we actually tried it.

If she knew, that is.

"You throw some against the fridge, and if it sticks, it's ready," we all whispered in unison.  Clint took the fork and pulled up a strand of spaghetti, letting it drip and cool for a moment before walking across the linoleum floor to the refrigerator.  Splat!

We all fought to stifle our giggles.  The spaghetti had passed the fridge test.  Clint pulled the spaghetti off the fridge and ate it, rubbing away the mark with his shirt sleeve.  I put the colander in the sink and poured in the contents of the pot, draining off the boiling water.  Then I picked up another long strand.  "Well," I said.  "THAT piece was done.  I wonder if this one would stick to the oven door?"

The oven test agreed with the refrigerator test.  But could we really be SURE without further testing?

Spaghetti stuck to the toaster.  The sliding glass door.  The cupboard doors.  The barstool legs.  I'm not sure how quiet our giggles were by this point, as each of us thought of a new and better place to test spaghetti.

"I wonder," I said, looking up, and with my four siblings looking on, and standing on the living room side of the bar, I flung one last strand of spaghetti straight up -- and it stuck.  But before I could climb up onto a bar stool to get it down...

"Is dinner done yet?" Mom called, coming into the room.

"Oh, yes.  We're just getting it on the table," we said.  Mom called Dad and we all sat down to eat, each of us kids stealing glances at the spaghetti clinging to the ceiling.

Now, I said that there were five of us kids, but we had another sibling who joined us about then.  Kibbles was our kitten, rescued from the laundry room window well during a bad rainstorm.  He was mostly black, with some bits of white.  Dad called him Mom's "little black son," just to drive her crazy.  (I'd suggested we name him Cougar because (a) Clint was a BYU Cougar when Kibbles arrived, and (b) he was a crazy attack-kitten that would tackle anything that moved -- which I associated with football.  He was Cougar for a very short time before David said his name was Kibbles, because he was "Kibbles 'n' Bits" dog food.)

Kibbles had an eye for movement, and it wasn't long before that strand of spaghetti began begging for his attention.  One bend in the middle released its hold on the ceiling, one loop drooping.  We five exchanged looks.  Kibbles parked himself below the spaghetti and stared up, watching it.

Another loop dropped.  Kibbles jumped up onto the arm of the couch, and then onto the back to get closer to it.  I began to hope that when it dropped, Kibbles would simply snatch it up and devour it, and our little activity would remain a secret.

One end swung down, dangling a good four inches below the ceiling, and Kibbles started begging it to come down the rest of the way.  MRROOOOOOW!  MRRRROWWW!

Quick as lightning, David jumped off his stool and grabbed Kibbles, petting him forcefully and trying to push his head down.  "NICE KITTY!" he crooned desperately, as Kibbles fought to keep his predator's eye on the prey.

"What is wrong with that cat?"  Mom asked, turning around,  "What's he looking --  TODD BENNION!!"

I'm ashamed to say that it took me years to admit to Mom that I was the one who threw that strand of spaghetti.  I let her and Dad yell at my little brother about something that I did.  Not that any of us were totally innocent in this escapade -- and we all did get into some trouble.  But Todd got into plenty of trouble on his own without taking my punishments.  (I've also apologized for this several times, but still feel guilty for it.)


So I told the story again, to Richard and we laughed about it.  "And that," I said, "is why we don't have a cat; you can't trust one to keep a secret."

Richard looked stricken, "It's not because you're allergic?!" he said.

Sometimes Growing Up Hurts

Today was a rough day for Katie and me.

One of the "special needs" issues that Katie deals with is congenital hypothyroidism.  Somehow, inexplicably, Katie was born without a thyroid gland.  Because of this, since she was only about a week old, she has had to take thyroid hormones to keep her functioning.  And because of this, she has had to have bloodwork done periodically, to make sure that these hormones are balanced.

Today was a bloodwork day.

When Katie has to have blood drawn, we always go to the Nationwide Children's Hospital "Close to Home" center in Hilliard.  When Katie was released from the hospital that first time, after we figured out what was going on and got her started on the medicine, we went there, and the phlebotomist there, Kristy, was so compassionate and so skilled, that she is the reason we keep coming back.  One day we had to do a draw at the hospital downtown, and the service was exactly opposite what I was used to receiving from Kristy.  I won't go there any more, even though I'm sure the fellow who traumatized me is probably long gone.

Each time we went to Kristy, she would warn me that one day, Katie wouldn't be happy to see her and would fight us.

Today was that day.

Don't get me wrong; Katie didn't put up a big fight.  But when I pulled up in front of their door and went to unstrap her car seat, she started begging me to go home instead.  We went inside, and instead of rushing to the play area or the book area, the way she used to, she stood by my side, whimpering.  When we went to the lab, she froze at the door.  I got her on my lap, but she was squirming, and my lap wasn't big enough to compensate.  I got up to let her sit in the chair all by herself, and she began to plead again to go.

She sat, a little big girl in the big chair, sobbing, while I knelt in front of her, holding her little hand and telling her I understood.  "No, Mommy, no!" she said.

Kristy called Kris in from the x-ray lab to help us, and the three of us helped Katie through the horrible routine.  She did just fine, of course; Kristy always "gets it" on the first stick.  (This, despite the fact that Katie inherited my incredible "disappearing" veins.)  She got a pretty Band-Aid with butterflies and ladybugs, and afterward we went to Target and got her a cheese pretzel.

Hopefully her hormones will still be on-target enough this time that we don't have to repeat the labs any time soon.

A Precious Memory

September 12, 2012: I don't remember any more what day I started writing this, and I don't know why I never went back and finished it...

This evening, I turned on my Facebook account and skimmed through the news feed. There was a post from Melissa, my little Katie's former teacher in the Easter Seals Early Intervention School, telling about some children in her class who demonstrated new skills today. Her post instantly took me back in time, a little over two years. The tears began to flow anew, and now I can't get that beautiful day out of my mind. Often when that happens, I'll post some little bit of it on Facebook and it is enough. But today, I think I'll journey a little deeper into my memories and try to share it here.

Katie is a special little girl. I remember as a child liking to be told I was special, and then, when I got older, it took on a less appealing meaning, connected to "special education." I remember a friend in high school who drew a cartoon of two women. One wore a t-shirt that said, "I'm special." The other (more attractively drawn) wore one that said, "I'd rather be dead than special." I laughed then. Well, my Katie is special. To me, she is the most beautiful, amazing girl in the world, and I'm so honored to be her mom. (She interrupts me now, "Mommy! A mingamail!" She has a snaggy fingernail; I "fix" it for her. "Thank you!" she says, running off.)

Well, I don't want to go into all the challenges she has faced, or faces. Suffice it to say that when she was quite small, and showing more and more delays, I finally accepted that I needed more help. Ohio's "Help Me Grow" program referred us to Early Intervention schools, giving me a choice of locations. I chose Easter Seals because of their location, which is less than 2 miles from our house. I figured they were close enough that I could drive her; I could not bear the thought of carrying her out to the bus and handing her over to the bus driver. We were lucky; they had an opening right away. It was only a couple of months before the end of the school year. I would drive Katie to the school, we would hang out together in the lobby until the teachers came out to get the children. Ms. Pam had the youngest class, and she and her assistant brought out wagons every day to gather the non-walkers and all the backpacks. I would cheerfully say goodbye and wave as they pulled her down the hall. For the first couple of weeks, I walked out to the car and cried my eyes out for a few minutes, and then drove home.

You see, even now, it is unbelievably hard for me to accept that I was not the best teacher for my daughter. That I am not the best teacher.

At the end of that school year, Katie had made some progress. By no means was she "catching up," but she was learning some new skills. I used her progress as a way to beat myself up regularly. I told myself that if she had those teachers earlier, maybe she wouldn't even be delayed now. Maybe it wasn't that she was delayed at all, just that I wasn't enriching her enough. (I'm not known for having a lot of self-esteem.)

We had to take the summer off, and then Katie went back for her "second" year. She had new classmates, a new teacher, Ms. Melissa.  She loved it. After a while, I was able to drop her off and go without crying, but I was always so happy to see her after school. Best of all, she was always happy to see me. It was definitely the best part of the day, when I would come in and see her face light up.

Dropping her off and picking her up every day, I got to know some of the other children and moms. One day in early December, I had gotten there a few minutes early to pick up Katie after school. Brian's grandmother was there to pick him up, too. What a little cutie he was, riding in the wagon to and from Ms. Pam's class! But this particular day, when the electronic doors opened, there stood Brian, grinning from ear to ear. He was strapped into a little walker, and with the help of the physical therapist, he came through that doorway laughing. His grandmother laughed and cried, and standing behind her, so did I. It was a beautiful thing to witness. At the same time, I was painfully jealous.

Being Katie's mom is simultaneously the most fabulous thing I've ever done, and the most gut-wrenching. Seeing smaller children reach milestones beyond her capabilities, I will catch myself staring.  I don't remember what is "normal" development any more, so these babies toddling around at church seem terribly precocious!  I look around at the faces of the mothers and they don't seem amazed, so I try to just smile, but I keep staring.  I think Katie might have been sitting up alone by that size, but I'm not sure.

The next day, when I came to pick up Katie, I was a minute to two late.  As I walked up to the door, I saw one of the other teachers running back into the building from the bus, and heard her call, "Here she comes, Katie!"  Since the buses were still there, I knew I wasn't overly late, but I walked a little faster, worried that Katie might be upset.

I think everyone from the Easter Seals staff had come out that day to watch.  There was Katie, strapped into a walker, hands on the grips, laughing and smiling.  She walked two or three steps toward me, and the walker turned to the right; she wasn't quite strong enough to keep it going straight yet.  Someone pointed her toward me again and she took a few more steps.  It was all I could do to not rush to her and scoop her up, walker and all!  The delight and pride on her face as she walked to me, to her mommy, was so perfectly beautiful.  I cheered and sobbed, and cheered again, and sobbed again.

The next day, I had my oldest son with me, and Richard had the presence of mind to suggest I pull out my cell phone and record some video.  Unfortunately, I didn't know how to override the phone's default timer, so I have very little of the actual walking recorded.  However, I am very thankful that my phone has a camera.

(Apparently the video is saved on our other computer, and not this one, so I'll link this to my FB account for now and download the real thing later.)

Katie Walking at Easter Seals

September 11th

September 11th, 2001.  Eleven years ago, today.  It is hard to believe that eleven years of sunrises and sunsets, breathing and eating and drinking and sleeping, eleven years of actual every-day living has actually followed that day.  It was a day that felt like the end of the world.

I don't remember what I was doing that day.  Everybody says they remember what they were doing when the first plane hit the World Trade Center; I don't.  It was just a day for me, and for my two boys.  They were still so little.  Can that be true?  R was only 3-and-3/4 years old, and B was only 1-and-a-half.  Yes, they were little.  I was doing something.  Maybe I was making them breakfast.  Maybe I was cleaning it up.  Did we eat that day?  We must have.  I don't remember.

My phone rang.

Most people that I know found out about the disaster through television.  They were watching this, or that, and the news broke in that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.  They were watching the reports, looking at that awful gash in the side of the building, when another plane crossed the screen and smashed into the other tower.  They spent the day watching horrible images -- images that only became the thing of nightmares after 9/11, because they were too unbelievable to have been imagined beforehand.

I answered my phone.

It was my friend, Diane.  She was one of those people watching television, and when the first plane hit she thought of me, because she knew we didn't have television reception at our house.  She had called to let me know what was on the news.  She didn't sound terribly upset at first.  We didn't really know enough yet to be upset.  We talked about what a terrible accident it must have been, wondered how big the plane was, if there were any passengers aboard.  We assumed it was a really inexperienced pilot, or that something had malfunctioned in the plane.  How sad, we said.  We hoped there were few injuries in the building.

And then, suddenly, Diane's tone changed.  She was agitated, almost gasping for air.  "Another plane!" she said.  "I just watched another plane hit the other tower!"

My mind reeled.  "It wasn't an accident," I said.

"It wasn't an accident," she agreed.  "And it wasn't a little plane.  It was a passenger jet."

I didn't know what to say.  She didn't either.  She told me goodbye; she was going to call her husband.  I don't remember if I called mine; if I did, he wasn't at his desk.  I hung up the phone and turned on the radio.

It was a difficult day.  I had to limit myself to only a few minutes of radio at a time.  The boys are too little to deal with this, I thought.  They don't need to hear it all day, even if I do.  I remember praying a lot, praying for the victims, for their families, for the rescue workers.  I tried to smile and have a normal family day with the boys.  We watched a video, read books, played with blocks and cars together.  I heard about a plane striking the Pentagon.  I worried what would be next.  I think I was listening to the radio when the first tower fell.  I think I was listening when the second fell.  I heard there was a crash in Pennsylvania.

I was alone in a fragile bubble, waiting for the next horror to drop from the sky and smash into our little house, probably to take my precious sons and leave me entirely broken.  I read with the children and my voice seemed to echo inside my head, while other sounds seemed distant and muffled.  I kept going to the front window and looking out into the empty cul-de-sac, wondering if my neighbors were watching what was happening.

I didn't know what it all meant.  Someone had done this, planned this, carried it out.  Someone hated the America I love, so much that they hated "generic" Americans enough to blindly kill them.  They hated me.  Not me specifically, but if they were told they could push a button and kill a mother of two in Indiana, they would do it.  I'd known there were terrorists in the world, but I'd never known the terror of being one of the little metal targets in the carnival shooting booth.  The wheel turns and here comes that mother duck followed by one, two little ducklings.  Sh-ping!  Sh-ping!  If I quack, will my ducklings answer back?  I'm afraid to find out.

I remember as a child hearing that my grandfather had died.  I remember feeling guilty for getting hungry and thirsty, even for using the bathroom, when he never would again.  I told myself it was silly to feel guilty, but it is an emotion that still comes back with other losses.  I felt guilty that night for going to bed, knowing there were people buried in the rubble -- maybe some of them alive! -- and I wasn't doing anything to help them.  I felt guilty for kissing my husband when he came home that day, and the next, and the next...

I didn't feel guilty for being an American, by the way, and for loving my country.  For that, I have never felt guilty, or ashamed.

I just felt guilty for going on living my everyday life when for so many... it was over.  People who had lives as simply American as mine were dead, simply because they lived their American lives in a different place than I did.



I just took a long, deep breath.  And another.  And another.  It has been eleven years.  My boys don't remember that day at all, and in my more rational moments that makes sense...  But memory isn't totally rational, and I keep thinking that they will grow into the memory, like somehow aging now makes them older when it happened, or like the American collective will teach them to remember events they did not experience.

Several of my friends blogged about their 9/11 memories today, and I thought I'd come back here to my neglected blog and read what I've said about it before.  Imagine my surprise to discover I'd written nothing about it here.

Well, now I have.

Motorcycle Envy

I was driving home Saturday evening after a lovely visit with family in West Virginia, and following a motorcycle. The woman riding on the back of the bike was in a black tank top, and her skin was bronzed by the sun. My first thought was that if it was me, I would be sunburned beyond recognition; I have fair skin that burns very quickly. I turned to Jim and shared that thought, and he laughed, and we both returned to our own thoughts. Yeah, I told myself. Motorcycles are not for me.

The bike was ahead of me for some time. I thought about how uncomfortable it would be to ride on a seat like that for a long time. I thought about how it would be, riding on the back, and shifting my position to ease my constant back pain, thus throwing the bike off balance and causing a painful, perhaps deadly accident. Yeah, motorcycles are not for me.

I thought about the time when I was about 12 and wanted to learn to ride one. One of my cousins spent an hour trying to teach me the basics, but I was so terrified that I never managed to actually go anywhere. Yeah, motorcycles are not for me.

That thought took me ahead a decade plus, to a summer when we went to a family reunion in Wyoming. My Uncle John had brought his family's four-wheelers, and again I got the urge to try to ride despite my abject terror. I talked myself out of it a number of times, but finally, I found myself sitting on one of the four-wheelers, the engine making my legs vibrate at nearly the same frequency as my fluttering heart. I moved the machine slowly, jerkily; I couldn't relax enough to do anything else. Talking to myself to steady my nerves, I said, "We'll do one little loop, then get off calmly, say thank you, and then just breathe for a while." But just as I was coming around the front of the yard, my mother jumped on the back, shouting "Wahoo! Let's go!" Every muscle in my body froze solid, and I screamed, "NO!! Get OFF!!" There was a light pole about fifteen feet away, directly in front of me. Directly. In. Front. Of. Me. I could not turn the handlebars. I could not release the gas. I was totally helpless. SMACK. I jumped off the four- wheeler, bawling like a baby, and ran into the house. I wasn't going fast enough to do any damage, but I knew then and there, four-wheelers (and motorcycles) are seriously not for me.

More years passed. My Seester, Michelle, bought a motorcycle. It was a nice bike. But I thought she was crazy. She was talking about doing these big cross-country rides, where you have only so many days to make it a certain distance... She was so excited about her bike. Me, well, I could appreciate the beauty of the bike, but no, no, thank you. Motorcycles are really not for me.

Michelle went with me somewhere -- in a car -- one day after she'd had the bike for awhile. We were driving south on I-80, a little north of Salt Lake, as I recall. There was someone on a motorcycle in front of us. Another biker passed on the other side of the freeway, going the other way. My sister sighed. "What?" I asked.

"One of the things I love about riding my bike," she said. She pointed out that when bikers meet on the road, each driver drops his or her left hand off the handlebar, sticking it out slightly at about the hip, like a cool motorcyclist "low five" without touching. I'd never noticed it, but after that, I watched the guy on the bike ahead of us. It was true. It was like they were a secret club, and suddenly I was feeling desperately left out. Motorcycles are not... are not...

Flash forward to 2011, to my "van-without-air-conditioning," on the road to Columbus. There is that universal biker salute again, and I sigh. Mini-van drivers don't have any such thing. Remember the Suzuki Samurai commercials, where they did the "beep-beep, HI!" thing? They were trying to make themselves out to be "cool like that." We used to laugh about that, but I wonder if it worked. (I wonder if anyone out there still HAS a Suzuki Samurai?)

No, motorcycles aren't for me. Sigh.

While the Cat's Away...

Shame on me, seriously.

I know Jim won't be thrilled when he returns from China to find that I have, once again, bought a back yard wading pool. How many have there been in the 14 summers since we had our first child? And he has hated every one. For a simple, $15 purchase, I wouldn't bug Jim on his business trip, now would I? So, of course, it will be a lovely surprise for him when he gets home.

And, of course, it is the biggest wading pool I've ever bought. I think. There was that one inflatable one I bought, the one that stayed too cold for wading until it was so full of mosquito maggots I couldn't bear to let the kids into it. This one may be bigger than that one. Of course, this time, it is going to be different. It will get warm enough, quickly enough that we will have a blast with it. We will get $60 of fun out of it, and Jim will say it was a wonderful investment in childhood. Yep.

So I'm a Chicken at Heart

At one point last year, a friend on Facebook (do I have any other kind?) posted that she was looking for blogs to follow, and asked if anyone had one she hadn't found yet. I replied with something like, "Yes, I do, but you'll never find it!!" And then I sat there, with the arrow poised over the "reply" button...

...

...

... and I deleted the reply. After all, if someone KNEW I had one and wanted to find it, would it be challenging to find it? I didn't know. Did I want someone to read it? Well, yes, and yet...

Last week, after writing a new post that had been weighing on my mind for some time, I took the plunge and posted a link to this blog on my FB page. Then I worried. What if no one bothered to read it? What if someone did? What if they didn't like it? What if they made fun of me? What if??

And this time, I left it. And suddenly, my blog says that I have three followers. Wow! One seems to be following it privately, so I don't know who it is, but three (3) is three times as many as I had last year.

Now, do I dare ever write anything else?

Mom, Why Do You Hate Boosts?

My eldest son, R, asked me this week, "Mom, why do you hate boosts?" I was playing a game on Facebook, Zuma Blitz, which I let my younger son, B, play on my account frequently. When B plays, he turns on the maximum number of "boosts" -- special powers that boost his ability to win. When I play, I turn them all off. Yep, I hate boosts.

The fact is, for almost a month I have been trying to write a blog entry about this very topic. Why do I hate boosts? Well, first of all, let's call them what they are: cheats. They are little, socially accepted cheats, to help you get around the rules in order to score higher in computer games. It used to be that such things were straight-out called "cheat codes," but I guess they have softened that name to make it sound less dishonest. But you know, I miss the days when people simply played games by the rules. I think of my grandfather, during World War II on his battleship, playing checkers. He placed second in the ship-wide competition. He didn't use any boosts. There was no, "I'll spend 5,000 checkers-points for the ability to move directly ahead," or such. Can you imagine?

My boys have tried unsuccessfully to convince me to buy them some device that plugs into the Nintendo DS. They gave up asking, so I have forgotten what it is called. Apparently this device carries cheat codes for a number of DS games. They borrowed one from a friend at one time, and B delightedly told me about how his character in one game had now obtained unlimited lives, and could jump higher, and could swim. I listened to him boast, but I asked, "Where is the fun in that?" He looked at me like I was crazy, and went to tell his brother about it.

Isn't most of the fun in a game found in legitimately beating the challenge? Where is the challenge, if your character no longer is bound by the rules?

One of my former favorite Facebook games, Bejeweled Blitz, started off as a great challenge. Two of my friends were fantastic at it, and every week I fought hard to try to match their scores. I could never stay at the top of the leaderboard for long, though, as one or both would inevitably outdo my score.

Then they released a new "beta" version, in which each round allowed you to win "coins," which could be redeemed to purchase... BOOSTS. Start the round with a 2x score multiplier! Add a few seconds to the game! If you wanted, you could spend actual money and buy more coins. I played the new game for a day or two. Once, when I didn't have enough coins to purchase any boosts, I was playing the old way, with just my own skills, and I beat my high score. I was so excited, and when I posted my score, I wrote that I "hadn't even used any boosts" and suddenly I had an epiphany. My high score, for which I had "worked" so hard, looked the same as any other score from outside. I looked at my friends' high scores, and wondered how many boosts they were using, and which ones. And right then I realized that a boost was a "clean" name for a cheat.

I sent a message to the developers, complaining that boosts ruined the fun of the game. I saw on their wall several comments from other players with the same complaint. But soon the old clean version of the game disappeared, replaced by the new one. I refused to use the boosts, letting the useless "coins" accumulate. Sometimes I would see the high scores others had, and would succumb to the unspoken peer pressure for a few games, but it always made me feel sick.

Last week, I broke the 3,000,000 coin mark. I haven't played anywhere near as regularly as I once did, or I'd probably have double that. But I decided that I'd finally had enough. Just for the fun of it, I decided to spend all those useless coins and leave the game in a blaze of glory. Sure enough, I got the high score for my team last week. But it was such an empty victory. It has taken me a lot of wasted time to drop the balance below 2,000,000. And frankly, I don't care enough to keep trying.

My awareness of cheats has increased because of it. Yesterday, I caught part of a reality TV show where three teams of bakers were trying to make the best decorated cake. As the teams worked, they pulled the team leaders aside for two events. The first event -- which I missed, actually -- seemed to involve making a cake that looked like a poster. The second was a taste test, from their special cake. Now, if the competition is about making a fantastic cake, I could see the point of the second "minor" event; a gorgeous cake that tastes awful isn't worth the sugar rush. The first event, however, seemed kind of forced. ANYWAY, the point was that the winners of these two events got to pick a team to penalize in the main competition -- by taking away 30 minutes of work time from that team. The same team won both events, and the leader chose to penalize the same team both times. Now I don't know how much time they had in all, but to lose a full hour of competition time? How can that count as anything other than a cheat? Now by this time, I was pretty "into" the program, rooting with all my heart for the team that had been so unfairly hindered -- and that team won, by the way. But I am so disgusted by the way the competition was dirtied that I will not watch it again.

If you want the "minor" events included, that is just fine with me. The taste test, in particular, should be part of the final score of the cake, absolutely! But to give any team an unfair advantage, or disadvantage, based on the whims of a winner... No. How does that get everyone to do their best? How does it encourage good sportsmanship?

Suppose that my team had lost the competition, perhaps by a narrow margin. (I believe they may have won by a narrow margin; it is hard to say.) What would they walk away saying? "If they hadn't stolen an hour's labor from us, we would have had them." "We were robbed!" (Yes, they were.) There might have been cordial congratulations, but "unfair" would have been seething under their smiles.

A friend of mine asked on Facebook about another reality show tonight; "Who was eliminated?" Another friend responded that the person eliminated was "saved" by the judges, so would be going on in the competition after all. The judges on this show didn't used to have the power to "save" a favorite, to essentially say, "The rules won't apply this time." They do now.

Why do we settle for this in our society today? Have we become so competitive -- no, that isn't fair to the term "competition." Have we become so determined to win at all costs that we've given up on honesty and fairness? Why is it so acceptable to bend the rules here, and break them there? Why do we put up with it in our computer and video games and on reality shows, and then act so shocked when people expect to get away with cheating in other areas?

I believe in being honest. THAT is why I hate boosts.

She Could Have Been Me; the Driver

A couple of weeks ago, I was returning home from a late trip to the grocery store, and I hit a cat.

One moment I was passing under the green light, listening to K's tantrum in her car seat. There was a sudden flash of tan reflecting in my right headlight, and two thumps. I didn't know what I hit. I pulled over to the side of the road, and the cars that were behind me passed. Sillouetted against the headlights was a small lump in the road.

Poor thing, I thought. I didn't know what to do. One doesn't call 9-1-1 over an animal, I knew. I couldn't just leave K alone, but I couldn't just leave this animal either. I picked up my cell phone and tried to call my husband. Maybe he would know what I should do. He didn't answer. Mom once had a cat; I tried her number. No answer.

And then, the poor thing raised its head.

Another driver pulled over, and went to the cat. I jumped out of the van, hurrying over. "I hit it," I cried. "What is it?"

He came toward me. "It's a cat," he said. "I laid it over there on the ground." (Yes, getting it out of the road made sense.) This man, Tom, and I spent a couple of hours trying to take care of this poor cat. Eventually, he took it with him, to take to the Humane Society the next day (because I am allergic to cats, and he has one,) and then remembered that OSU has a veterinary school. He called the next morning and told me that he took the cat there, and they said they would take care of it.

But you see, this isn't about the cat. It started with the cat, but it isn't about that.

I am still a bit of a wreck about the cat. I cried when one of the neighborhood cats ran from my porch one morning. It wasn't even similar; this cat had no tail, and totally different coloring. But I hit a cat, and will never know whether it survived the night.

It happened so fast, and I couldn't help but think of the way my daughter tried to run away from me in the parking lot that evening, not wanting to go home. I thought of my sister's little boy, three months older than K, who darted out of the house so fast that his father had to run full speed after him to keep him out of the street. What if, instead of a cat, I'd hit a toddler with an escape fetish? How would I live with myself?

The next day, I drove past the school where a crossing guard gave her life to save a child last year. I sobbed at the memory of that story. I know the child was badly injured but survived thanks to her sacrifice. I wonder how he is doing now?

How did the driver go on, with the guilt of knowing he had taken an innocent life? How would I?

A few more days flashed by. I was hurrying home to meet the first bus, which brings my 12-year-old R home from school. The road I drove is one I use frequently. There is an overpass over railroad tracks, then the road goes under the freeway, with a fairly sharp left turn just past the bridge. The road is marked 50 MPH. On the stretch on the other side of the turn, I rarely drive 50. There are several businesses, a smattering of homes, and railroad tracks, all of which seem to require more attention than I can give at that speed.

This particular day, as I round the bend, I am surprised to find a school bus there, lights flashing. I've noticed the homes in this area, but never thought about them holding school age children. I shudder, thinking how glad I am that our family doesn't live on such a busy, fast road. I wish this bit of road was marked a little slower, to help protect those families.

I drove this stretch of road twice, that other night, with the cat. The cat that could have been a child.

More days flash by. K has a morning appointment, and I am rushing to get her there. I turn onto the stretch of road, and go over the tracks, only to see emergency lights up ahead. A little closer, and I see that the road is blocked. I use a driveway to turn around, wondering what happened. The mental image of the school bus flashes in my mind. NO, I tell it. I won't accept that concept.

I don't know whether more days flash by, but it seems like the next morning, ten-year-old C is hit by a car, and killed, on that stretch of road. He was waiting for the bus, crossed the road to chase geese, we are told, and then turned around to cross back to home. The woman who drove the SUV wasn't charged legally. She wasn't breaking the law; she simply didn't have the chance to stop.

She could have been me.

She Could Have Been Me; the Mother

This afternoon, my ten-year-old son and I went to a mortuary together. One of his classmates was hit by a car last week and died, and we went to show support for his family, and for B to say goodbye.

The loss of this young child has been deeply painful to me. I don't believe I ever met him, but I've taken his death in a deeply personal way. I don't begin to suppose that my assumed pain has come anywhere near the real agony suffered by his family. This is one time, however, that I wish my vivid imagination would focus on a fantasy with less realism.

From the moment B came home with the note from his principal, the day of the accident, I have had sobbing bouts of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I. C was ten, like my son; waiting for the bus, like my son does. They sat at the same table in their fifth grade class. The family recently moved here; admittedly, it has been three and a half years for us, but we, too, are transplants. Their home is not far from mine; I pass it several times each week.

C had a mother, someone who adored him, and dreamed for him. Someone like me.

One afternoon I hurried home to meet the buses of my children. The stretch of road I drove has an overpass over railroad tracks, then goes under a freeway overpass, and takes a fairly sharp turn just on the other side. The speed limit is 50. I've always had a hard time maintaining that speed after the turn, as the businesses, smattering of houses, and train tracks on the other side seem to beg for a little more attention. This day, I came around the corner to find a school bus stopped, lights flashing. I was surprised. I knew there were homes here, but it never occurred to me that there were school age children living in those homes. I shuddered, thinking how glad I was that I didn't have children catching a bus here.

I was hurrying somewhere the following morning, and found the road blocked with emergency vehicles. As I used a driveway to turn around, I thought again about the school bus. No, the thought was too horrible to complete. I had the radio on, and nothing had been said on the news about an accident, so this must be something else. Maybe someone just took the curve too fast. (I never found out what happened.)

Then last Tuesday afternoon. My precious B came home from school, gave me the letter from his principal, and went quietly to do his homework. I felt the air sucked out of the room. Blinking back tears, I asked him if he knew C. "He was in my class," he said. "He sat at my table." I asked him if he was okay. He shrugged, his mouth twitched. He "mmMMmm"ed the way he always does, instead of articulating "I don't know." He went back to his homework.

I thought of B running to his bus stop every morning. He crosses our street, then turns and crosses another. He makes a token look for traffic, but certainly not the careful "look both ways" I tried to instill in him as a toddler. He runs, though it is only seven minutes before his scheduled bus time. Our road is one of the main thoroughfares in the neighborhood, and people rushing to work often drive a little faster than the posted 25 MPH as they pass my house. In my mind I see him darting out in front of someone fiddling with their radio, or positioning their coffee cup, or... or...

It could have been me, the mother dabbing tears from her eyes with the ear of a teddy bear, her left hand resting on the still head of her son's body. "I'm sorry, " she whispered to him, " I know you never like to see me cry." It could have been B lying there, his body doll-like, bruises showing behind thick mortician's makeup. His mother showed us his school picture, "What he really looked like," she said, smiling through her agony. Tears flooded from my eyes; I could not hold them back. She could have been me.

I was the lucky one, watching as my son used his best handwriting to sign the guest book, and then ducked out into the sunshined immortality of his youth again. I got to hold his hand as we crossed the street together, and help him excitedly gather a pinecone and berries for his seed collection for school. Eventually the pain of this moment will fade for me, and I will go back to nagging and scolding my 10 year old. Will she imagine, then, what it is like to be me?

One Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean

Something small and brown caught my eye as I sat on my couch one day this week. My first thought was SPIDER! Then BEETLE. Then... Is that a jelly bean?

It was a jelly bean, medium brown with darker brown spots. I thought as I picked it up, If I didn't know better, I'd think it was a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean. I knew better, because we hadn't had them in the house since... well, it was not long after we moved here, 3 years ago, and why would it have suddenly appeared on the couch after so long? Impossible.

I rolled it over in my hand, and there it was, not totally readable but easily interpretable as that little "Bertie Botts" logo.

So, what flavor is it? I mean, I've tried some of those odd flavors that weren't all that bad. Black pepper, as I recall, was actually quite delectable. But other flavors were disgustingly accurate, such as ear wax. Vomit was utterly nauseating, if that isn't redundant to say.

It has been three days now, and no one is interested in tasting it to see what dangerous concoction it is that suddenly appeared on my couch. I'm pretty sure it is dirt. Wanna try it and find out?

Sorry, Chicken Little, We Should Have Listened

I bottle up my political views most of the time, but every now and then they start screaming to get out. Here comes one, now.

Chicken Little sacrificed himself in an effort to get the word out, warning his neighbors of serious danger. His sincerity won over a few of his neighbors, who joined him in the valiant march to alert his governmental officials. Depending on the version you read, he is either devoured by a predator who pretends to take his side, or he reaches the ear of the government officials, who decide that they know better than Chicken Little -- he is, after all, only a common flightless bird. Either way, the reporters who tell the story paint Chicken Little and his followers as idiots.

Prior to the signing of this STINKING healthcare law, there were common men (and women) screaming all over the country that it was a disaster waiting to happen. But the Democrats sang, "Oh, no, sillies! The sky isn't going to fall; we're going to have a nationwide apple orchard, and everyone will have their fill!" And the liberals and the media rang their little Pavlovian bells, pointing fingers and saying, "Look at silly Chicken Little!" Some who wavered on whether to go along with it were promised extra trees in their districts in return for their support.

Now, here we are a couple weeks in, and it seems like every day another little piece of sky hits someone on the head. The media keeps trying to tell us it doesn't portend anything serious -- you don't want to be so naive as to follow Chicken Little, do you? -- but people are noticing that when the government says, "It was just an apple!" there aren't always any apple trees around.

And you know, it won't be long before people start to realize that the wonderful nationwide apple orchard is planted with only crabapples. (I think Congress may be starting to realize it themselves, now that it looks like they've managed to unwittingly eliminate their own Unlimited Apple Pie for Life program.)

I just pray we get this sucker repealed and quickly.

Another 10 Minute Writing attempt

The screen door banged shut when I came in from the back yard. I don't know why I was out there, perhaps to look at the magnolia tree. I noticed today that the top buds were looking purplish, instead of the fuzzy green of the earliest spring. It is exciting to think that the new growing season is upon us. There are tulips in the front yard again, and the very first blooms have already disappeared. In fact, they disappeared rather quickly, and without fading, so I wonder whether someone admired them a little much and removed them when I wasn't looking. That wouldn't be hard to do, as I rarely even look out the front of the house. The windows on that side are all covered by sheers, and whenever I touch them I think of my mother telling me not to touch the sheers, as they will get dirty and they are a pain to wash. It is too hard to see anything through them, and so I look out into the back yard instead, which currently is in the early spring flood stage. At least so far this year, we've not had ducks swimming in the flooded yard. The first year we were here, I looked out back and there were two or three of them swimming on the lawn. We really need to unplug that drain Jim says is back there.

I love to see the flowers but I don't do much for them. I have noticed that there is new growth on my rose bushes, and I am excited to see what they will do this year. Last spring I trimmed them back before they started to come to life, and this year I didn't; it will be interesting to see if they do better or worse than last year. The fact is, I am a garden numbskull. I don't know what the flowers need or don't need, and I don't really make the effort to find out. I don't even know what I have. I mean, there are some tulips out there, and last year I thought I had a few... stalled out, can't think what they are... buttercups? I think that is the name. Yeah, I'm going with it. No buttercups popped up this year, or at least they haven't bloomed yet. Which is odd, I think, because don't the buttercups usually open up first?

My first little flower looked like a lovely short purple tulip, and soon a second bud opened near the first. There was a tiny little yellow flower a couple of feet away from the purple flower, and all three are now gone. It is odd that they just vanished. There are still leaves from the purple one so maybe it will grow back next year. I didn't plant any of these things, so they are all bonus flowers to me. I didn't earn any of them.

The magnolia tree is definitely the crown of the yard. I love it when it blooms. Katie's bedroom has the only upstairs window that looks out over the back yard, so I call it her magnolia tree. It has the loveliest purple and lavender blooms, and the groundhogs like to eat any of them that grow low enough for them to reach. The tree is so pretty when the blooms are out, and then the leaves come on before all the flowers are gone, and it is even prettier. It seems that it blooms again in the fall, which I find particularly nice.

Write a little every day...

I think every well-known author who has ever given an interview directed toward wannabe writers, like me, has advised, "You need to write a little bit every day." The difference between a dream of being a writer, and a goal to become one, is probably that very thing. I am still a dreamer.

There is a commercial for AARP right now with a bunch of "older" people talking about things they want to do "when I grow up." I have rolled my eyes at this commercial a number of times, thinking that waiting until they are "grown up" to start working toward these dreams is such a bad idea. And then I remember that last year, my birthyear fit in the "if you were born between __ and __, you qualify for such and such senior life insurance..." And I too am still dreaming, not taking serious action toward making my dream come true.

For that matter, my daughter seems to be making more progress toward it than I am. She writes a little every time she gets her hands on a writing utensil: a little on her brothers' homework, on her own books, on her clothing and skin, on the walls, the fireplace, the furniture... Perhaps my little girl will be published before I am!

Twelve Sentence Story

I shiver, high stepping around the little leaf-filled puddles on the driveway as I hurry to the curb. The mailbox is full of yesterday's delivery: junk mail, junk mail, bill, junk mail, bill... I shudder and dash back to the house, wishing I'd brought my jacket despite the short jog. I'm not ready for cold, soggy fall weather yet.
I drop the mail on the kitchen table, and a little voice in my head says, "You should just deal with it now, instead of leaving it for later." I hesitate for a moment out of respect to my conscience, but walk away, kicking my shoes off toward a corner heap.
With the boys off to school, and the baby still asleep, the house is quiet, dark, and cluttered. I should take advantage of this time to clean, pay bills, shower... But somehow I've gotten out of the habit of caring about these things. I've gotten out of the habit of caring about anything, if truth be told.
I stand in the filthy front room and listen to the cold October rain, the sploosh of cars hurrying to places I probably should be going, too. Oh, well.

Say what?

Mr. Harvey in high school used to give us an assignment to write and write and not stop for ten minutes straight without worrying about spelling or punctuation or grammar or anything at all I could never do it well because the constraints of language overwhelmed my desire to obey, and so now I will attempt it while typing, hoping that perhaps I will manage to ignore that automatic backspace and just type type type... I will still punctuate some. I have to. I tried there at the beginning but I could not do it without simply running on, which makes me uncomfortable. If you are reading this, and see a word which I manage to leave spelled wrong, please know that it was very difficult for me to leave it. I have left a couple but can't get more than a word or two past it before I simply MUST go back and correct it.
It is officially the wee hours of the morning, and rather than sleep I sit at the computer, typing and typing and not even for any great purpose, only typing words without meaning. One floor above, my daughter sleeps in a chair because she is not feeling well and I need to be able to hear her when she wakes and cries. Poor darling baby girl. She is so sweet and so innocent, and her nose and one eye are so full of gunk. She felt a little feverish today, too. It is so hard to send your little one to "school" with other babies during cold and flu season.
She cries out now, and I wonder if I should rush to her side or let her drift off to sleep again. If I go to her, she will wake more fully, I am sure... And yet... I go.

The urge to write

Suddenly feeling the urge to write, to compose, to put words together visibly and leave them where perhaps someone will happen upon them... And so, I find myself on my blog, no real thought to convey, but longing to speak and maybe even be heard.

And now that I am here, I am longing more to sleep. I was up until 3:30a.m. last night, allergies or the beginnings of a cold causing my nose to run like a faucet. I can't remember the last time I got a good 8 hours of consecutive sleep.

So, longing to write and be read, to sleep, and knowing that I need to get a ton of housework done instead, I shall close. I have managed only to daydream of dreams; authorship, rest, and cleanliness approaching godliness. An unsatisfying, vain imagining. Ah, well. Another day perhaps.