Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Princess of Quite A Lot.....

One of the greatest blessings of my life has been having a daughter.

When Susan (my sister, the one who doesn't read this blog) got married and began her family I wished for her a daughter as fine as mine to share her life with.

Up on her high horse during her whole pregnancy Susan refused to allow us to learn the sex of her baby in advance... even going so far as threatening the labor/delivery nurse who acted as the ultrasound tech (our good friend Cat did the peeking)... not to tell.

Totally no fun...

When Susan went into labor, fourteen years ago today, it happened to be on the same day as my 20yr high school reunion.

I'd been reluctant to send in the RSVP and the loot for the reunion festivities just knowing something would happen.. something like Daddio flatly refusing to go or Susan going into labor.

You should have seen Daddio dance when I gave him the news that late summer morning that I was headed to the hospital to offer moral support to my sister.

"I will kiss the ground that kid walks on FOR-EVER" Daddio exclaimed "if IT gets me out of going to that stupid reunion".

Susan gave birth about an hour after she got to the hospital, the daughter I had wished for her was finally here and perfect in every single way.

Sometime Susan and I joke that God gave us the wrong daughters.

As Princess of Quite A Lot has grown our sameness has too...

Never more apparent than when the four of us (Susan and I and our daughters) watched a poignant Living Nativity scene played out on stage... as Sue and Goo(gie) wiped tears from their misty eyes the Princess and I took bets on who would crap on stage first... the lamb or the camel...(it was hard to keep ourselves contained).

My young prodigy is quirky (in a good way), she's friendly and fun.

She bakes like a grown up and has been known to eat 4 full sized Reese Peanut Butter Cups in one sitting.

She is getting more beautiful as each day passes (and that is not just on the outside..even though on the outside the boobie fairy has been very very good to her)...

The kid can write too... I've been delighted countless times over the past so many years when Princess has handed me a fancy notebook, an index card, hand writings on a thick paper towel that holds her thoughts and stories and her take on things that not only impress, but truly entertain.

She lives for fart jokes... (a chip off the old auntie block)

And to torture her baby brother... (what else are they good for...??)

Princess of Quite A Lot is crafty... (not only in getting dad to empty his pockets and hand the moolah over to her)

She also makes wallets from colored duct tape and whimsical looking wall decorations from painted cardboard paper towel insides... I have one hanging on my wall now, it looks like metal flowers.

Today also marks the day that Lady Diana Spencer died (the official date for her death is August 31st although Detroit time had it being the 30th) fourteen years ago today.

Princess' Grandfather (my dad) said upon hearing news of Susan's daughter's birth... "One Princess has been taken away and another has just arrived."

She is royally loved in our family and the world is a much nicer place with her in it.. (you should feel her foot massages...)


I can't wait to grow up with her... (not...tee-hee, cause grown ups are really rather boring and they usually never ever bust a gut over poop jokes...so I guess I'll just say I can't wait to make more bets with her about who will poop first... you game Princess?)

In case you're reading (which unlike your stuck up mother, you do)....

I love you loads and bunches Day-non-ney, Princess of Quite A Lot.... Happy 14th Birthday darling, I hope it is as wonderful as you are.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxox

Monday, August 29, 2011

Two...


Yesterday my great niece turned 2 years old.

And so did this blog.


(photo stolen borrowed from .
americanepali.wordpress dot com)

I never do anything for more than 2 years (cept stay married and mother me sum ungrateful nuttin but leave the nest chil-der-ins)...

I'm quite proud of this accomplishment.

Also that two whole years have passed and not once have I had to write to Blogger to retrieve my password

And in two years I've haven't given up on being a Blog of Note...(the six per day emails I send them haven't gotten any attention just yet... but I'm not giving up)

Two year old's are unpredictable.

And a gas.

Their attention spans are ....

yeah.

Two year old's are outrageous, throw tantrums, gibberish-ly speak their minds...

can't wait.

Thanks so much for visiting (and Bookmarking / Favorite-ing) this two year old blog... I hope it lives to a ripe old age and when it dies I hope it dies an old blog in a warm book.

PS...this really is a no gift occasion..  however, if you insist.

Friday, August 26, 2011

frogs and snails and puppy dog tails....


I've been trying to send my darling dear future elementary teacher son Bear an email every day.... I really miss him since he's blown me off for college.

I try to keep my messages upbeat and positive ... like this one, 

Dear Bear, 
 
It has been almost one (ONE FREAKIN) whole week since I've sniffed your neck, seen your pretty face in person, been asked "what we eatin"... I'm not likin this very much... just sayin.

Love, Mom
:-*

We video chat for a few minutes daily... it's okay, but it's hard to sniff his neck via a computer screen and he gives me the stink eye when I pucker up in an attempt to give him a virtual kiss on da yips.

If I'm to be honest I have to report that he looks well fed and like he's really lovin all this independence.

I'm surprised that I've not heard one single tiny smidgen of homesickness in his voice (damn it...)  even when I beg him, plead with him, order him to abandon this wild crazy dream of becoming educated and just come home... he simply laughs.

I've not resorted to offering him cold hard cash to come back to me... but the school year is young.

In other (non) related Son news...

My darling dear Sweet Prince Buttercup called yesterday and asked a loaded question...

"Ma, you'll NEVER guess what I just did....?"

Let me guess...

totaled your car...?"

chopped off a limb....??

received a citation for pubic urination...???


(he does NOT do that kind of thing, but the black cloud that likes to trail him where ever he leads may make it look like he did in fact do something like that and of course his rotten luck would have an officer standing behind his backward facing azz which would be dressed in saggin dungarees which could mistakenly make it appear as if he emptying out a half empty bottle of Mountain Dew was pissin in public...  just a scenario folks... but seriously, that kind of crap happens to him all the time... yo)

"WHAT DID YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOO..?." I cautiously questioned my dare-devilish Dennis the Menace like firstborn child.

"I'm going to be in the paper" he said.

Then continued "I shot a hole- in- one from 200 yards today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

"The paper huh? That must be good...???"  replied I (his number one fan who knows jack about golf)

(Later I Google'd odds of making a hole in one from 200 yards...

A Golf Digest study provided many great nuggets of information,
even breaking the odds down by quality of play:
  • Tour player making an ace: 3,000 to 1

  • Low-handicapper making an ace: 5,000 to 1

  • Average player making an ace: 12,000 to 1
Some other highlights from Scheid's calculations:
  • Average player acing a 200-yard hole: 150,000 to 1... )


HOLY CRAP...

In addition to being breathtakingly handsome and loving to the core my Sweet P is slated to be a local golf celebrity.


In a bit more (non) related Son (in law) news....

My darling dear son (in law to be) Trouble started his teaching career yesterday. He was very prepared and looked dashingly handsome and "I mean business" in his new teacher duds.... plus he is entertaining us with cute (and a couple of hair raising) tales of life as an enthusiastic new private school music educator
.

His plan is to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony.. ( I have no doubt that he will do just that) :-)

I'm proud of you, sons....

And in other (non) related news..

Something is wrong with my fair daughter Googie,.... lately I've been hearing her mumbling and grumbling under her breath.. something about being chopped liver.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Transitional labor (the hardest part of the whole damn job)....

I took Bear to school on Saturday and left him there (along with my heart).

I simply can't wrap my mind around the fact that I won't be tripping over him anymore.

Or feeding him or mothering him on a daily basis.

This past week I cried every single day....

And felt a fear like I've never felt before.... ( I totally realize that I need to get a grip and put this into perspective, my kid is just going off to college...seriously, he's not marrying Lindsay Lohan and moving to Sri Lanka)

Daddio, Googie, Trouble and I helped Bear pack up his childhood and together we moved him to the wild wild west(ern) town of Kalamazoo Michigan.

"Think of it as a vacation" I say to myself in an attempt to trick my simple mind into accepting his leaving.

Bear and I, his bed frame, and his acoustic guitar rode west in his small truck (oh yes he is taking his wheels to college, I'm quite confident he won't be driving around campus drunk and trying to pick up chicks...  I hid his keys in the bottom of the cleaning bucket just as a bit of added insurance;-), the ride gave me a chance to reiterate every single thing I ever tried to teach him (that poor kid tee-hee)

Since he's been gone we've talked on the phone a couple of times.... he sent me a picture of the first dinner he ever prepared in his own apartment... it looked damn good, and I was proud.

"Thanks ma" he said after I gave him instructions on how to make diced fried potatoes "consider this call the first of many as I learn to cook".

This has been rough..

Sending your child out into the big bad world is one of the hardest things a mother can do... but no one ever said that the proverbial end to all the years of hard work and devotion and dedication was going to be easy... or that freely giving/encouraging wings was going to do anything other than grayer our hair and make our hearts ache (a really really really big wrenching gaping wounded hole kind of ache)....

However, a failure to launch situation where the kid stays with us forever certainly isn't one we'd want...right?

Not a question I care to answer right this minute.

I'm missing my baby too much.

Before I let you go... one last thing,

Bear left me something on my pillow....


Do please visit (or re-visit) this post to understand.

As always, thanks for listening.

xoxo

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Just another manic Monday....

I've never liked Mondays much... possibly because they usually go something like this...

"Ground Hog Day...aaaa-gain (sigh) today (sigh)"..
.. Daddio muttered as he slipped his arm into his trusty light blue (very worn) button up shirt getting prepared to go off to the mill.

He sighed a minute later as he struggled to get his second leg into his pants.

A pair of slightly worn stone colored Docker khakis, one of three pairs that he owns and considers his "uniform".

As usual I watched (and snickered a bit) as I prepared his bagged lunch.

Packing the same old same old..cause you know what? That is what he likes...

The next morning, with that Ground Hog Day comment still on my mind I figured I'd be a good wife and switch things up... (confuse the cat, tee-hee)

I decided some egg salad sounded different (new and exciting..woo-hoo) and so I made a big bowl and packed the yummy stuff into one of those new sandwich pitas... I even washed a couple of lettuce leaves and put them in there to jazz it up...( I was on an anti-ground hog's day roll here)

Proud of myself (yeah, it doesn't take much) that this day he would be eating something not so Ground Hog Day-ish...

"Hey" Daddio said later when he came home from the coal mine "thanks for that egg salad soupy soup you sent me today.. it dripped down my arm and made my cuffs wet and I smelled like hard boiled eggs all day long"..

"Great, my plan worked..." I answered back.

A couple of days later I tried the pita again.. (they don't last forever you know and I hate to waste food)... this time I decided to not put the (fresh, new) egg salad into the pita, instead I put it into a small Tupperware container w/lid, then I put the lettuce wrapped in a paper towel (to better hold in the wet, yo) in a baggie and I packed a stark naked pita...

oh, and a fork and knife too... a do it yer self kinda lunch.

The next morning found me ironing Daddio's worn black button up shirt... while he hopped around the kitchen trying to catch the leg of his stone colored Docker khakis...


"Ummm... you aren't going to make me make my own sandwich again today, are you?" he asked.


"I tried to put that egg salad soup into the dried folded thingy which tore apart as I tried to stuff it in.

Don't send that anymore, okay?



I just want a sandwich with a piece of bologna and some mustard, but not too much mustard, and some chips, and an apple and a bag of grapes..., you know, the usual".

I could do this job blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back...

and that right there my friends is the beauty of Ground Hogs Day with a man who likes what he likes but who apparently doesn't know that he likes what he likes, and only what he likes and don't you dare try to change things up...

Seriously, why complicate things....

Happy Toooooo-s-day to ya all.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Riding on Sunday....

Sunday afternoon found my children (plus a future child-in-law) and I tooling about town in our sedan, our destination a big boy birthday party about 45 minutes from home.

As we covered miles of pavement it appeared all eyes were on my feet...

and our conversation gathered around my driving skills (or lack of).

"Not only am I getting car sick from her driving I can literally see her foot pumping the brake pedal" my darling Googie complained...

"Just how often do you think she is getting her brakes replaced?" her brother piped in.

Trouble smirked in the back seat and smartly kept his opinion(s) to himself.

"Braking should be a smooth transition" the college graduate informed.

Her soon to be college educated sibling piped in again...." you can't just come up on cars like that and slam on your brakes"....

"Yeah, she slams em on and we end up stopping back too far and then she has to step on the gas to bring us closer.."

"It's a well known fact that women have really crappy depth perception"...

"Watch her, watch how far back she stops".

Hooooo-kay you rotten little bastards see if I take you anywhere else again.

And no, in case you were thinking of asking...there certainly was no ice cream stop on the way home.


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Suddenly, just like.....


THAT, it's over.

My mothering of teen children (grown in my womb) will come to an end toooo-night.

At 3:33 am my baby, the Koby family caboose.... will turn the big 2-0

These days I can hardly look at that boy and not tear up.

I'm counting the days until he leaves for college... trying to hold them back.

I'm pulling so hard that my arms hurt, but not as much as my heart.

This is the way it's supposed to be, right?

You pray hard and love harder and work like a dog for years and years and years...

Years that go by in minutes, or so it seems.

2 becomes 10 becomes 20... just... like... that..... they go on and grow up and move out and get their own lives.

In what feels like an instant your days of mothering young children is o-v-e-r.

I'm already tired of the mothering of grown-up rules I shouldn't break.

The boundaries I shouldn't cross.

Keeping my nose in my own business sucks way worse than I ever thought it would.

Next Wednesday Bear (my former baby) and I are going together to see his Kalamazoo apartment...

The motherless place where he plans to hang his hat for the next year or forever.

Who will care for him when he gets sick?


Who will grease his palm with a few bucks when he's broke?

Cut his hair?


Make him cupcakes?


Frick this shit...

I feel a tantrum on its way.

Maybe I'll sit on the sidewalk outside that damn apartment and make him drag me inside...

I don't want (you) to go (there) Bear and dammit you can't make me (like the fact that you're going away).

I don't care if the neighbors (or your new roommates) are watching.

Remember I said this day would come?

The day we would switch places.

All kidding aside... I will miss this very very very special teenage boy.


This quote from the movie Annie about sums this whole sit-chi-ation up...

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

xoxoxo, thank you for listening.

And because he promised to read this blog tonight when he gets home, a message for my baby boy...

Happy Birthday darling Bear, I'll meet you in your dreams @ 3:33 tonight. 

xooxoxoxoxoxoxo

Monday, August 1, 2011

Too pooped to ponder....

Yesterday was a most unusual day.

Daddio and I used all of our daylight hours flopping around the house.

From the couch, to the bed, to the living room floor.

"What can we do?" Daddio asked at least 100 times.

"What can we do?" I answered 101 times.

"How bout .....?"

"Nah, too hot."

"How bout...?"

"Too hot for that too..."

"What about...?"

"Maybe...?"

It has been hot people... too hot to do just about anything but lay around and complain about how hot it is.

Is it my imagination or does it get hotter than it used to get...?

Or is it just a condition of aging...?

Temperature extremes too much for the old folks...?

We were a bit hard on ourselves yesterday, poor Daddio and me.

Mad that we wasted the day.

At one point we decided to make a move from the couch to venture out into the elements and onto our backyard deck.

Sitting ducks in the dreadful heat we both sweated like fat men on a jog.

We toughed it out for as long as we could stand wiping the salty drippings off our foreheads and until Daddio and I were forced back into the house a result of my screaming (Janet Leigh/Psycho shower style) and running for my life when a huge  blue-ish black colored flying monster (later identified by Google as a Great Black Wasp) became obsessed with the chair I was sitting on.

( I can't embarrass him or myself like that..yo)

Later still bored outta our gourds we decided to venture outside once more.

I kept watch for the flying monster and the dive-bomb attack I was anticipating.

And we both lamented our totally wasted summer day.

Then I saw this.....

(Click on me if I'm too dark to see)

another summer slacker.

Hmmm, the squirrel days of summer, I kind of like that.