Nostalgia in advance

 

So we're getting ready to do some painting around here. 

It should come as no surprise that "getting ready" has a very sketchy meaning for the husband and me.  We "get ready" for household projects by daydreaming about what we want, and then going out for a cup of coffee, and then maybe a month or two later wondering how much it will cost, and then cracking open another bottle of wine, and then stumbling across a paint sample or two, and then going away on a business trip . . . .

 

The girl in charge figured us out a long time ago, and thus is the only member of the family whose room has been painted to her specifications.  And it was a lot of work for both her and me -- work that involved geometry, y'all.

This summer I plan to paint my bedroom, the sunny girl's new(ish) bedroom, and the little roomlet she used to sleep in when she was not yet a 5'10 ballerina.  The roomlet will become an place for me to stash my work-related stuff (part-time faculty have no office privileges where I work).  Right now I keep all my crap in the back of my car.   I'm excited to make a little office for myself, and as usual I have all kinds of unrealistic expectations about how fabulously perfect it will be.  But at the same time, I will be sad to see the sunny girl's little roomlet go.  It means saying good-bye to some of her "little girl"-ness -- and: the room is so stinkin' cute!

 

The four-year-old sunny girl's roomlet was decorated for her by Grandma Carol, right after we moved into our house in 2001.  Grandma Carol has a great eye for what a little girl will like, and she and Grandpa have the motivational oomph to actually get a project done instead of just dreaming about it.  So the sunny girl's little room was a tiny ballerina's dream come true!

Check it out:  the flowers all over the walls were created by first using a big rubber stamp and some craft paint (that's the lavender colored basic flower).  Then Grandma went back over each flower several times freestyle, adding the pink detail, the white outline, and the swirly yellow center.  The random blue swirlies were "to give it a little color pop."  Just as I was oohing and ahhing about how cute the room was, Grandma got out her glue gun and attached flat pink glass marbles to the centers of all the flowers.  I mean . . . .  And you see how she instructed Grandpa to paint the walls flat pink, and then add a stripe of glossy pink of the same shade, right?  Grandma Carol created a lovely little room for my sunny girl that could be out of a magazine.

The kicker for the four-year-old, though, was the chandelier.

All character, no plot: garden

 

These are leftover herbs from last year's garden pots.  Theme = resilient.

 

The sage is out of control.

The lemony-smelling something that I can't name but love to smell has taken over its pot, but the rosemary has found a way to lean way over to the side so it can get some sunshine.

We have wild strawberries everywhere.

It looks like I planted a pot of little pansies that are now thriving, but really I bought a pot and plunked it in this larger ceramic pot, thinking I would transplant it later.  That never happened, so the pansies just soldiered on without me.

This pot also came from the grocery store (just like the pansies).  I plunked it down beside my mailbox three years ago, because I thought it was festive:  it had daisies, and something red that died almost immediately, and a cabbage-looking something that was green and purple and that lasted through the first season.  The daisies do this every spring, and then burst into bloom at the end of the summer.

And I don't do a thing. 

Heavyhanded metaphor

So I've been neglecting my garden, which isn't surprising to anyone who knows me.  My poor hydrangeas were left to fend for themselves over the winter, and here the hydrangea metaphor or symbol or meaningful image or whatever you want to call it can be understood to stand in for any old thing you can think of:  my blog; my marriage; my laundry; my health; my friendships; my stack of books to be read; my kids -- and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

Some heavy-duty shit has gone down around these parts in the past months, but I won't babble on about it again because there's a long list, and I've talked about some of it before and I don't want to bore you, and some of it is not just my own shit and would be an invasion of another person's privacy, and some of it is just that I am a pain in my own ass sometimes and need to shake off my winter blahs so I can blossom again -- just like my hydrangeas.

And see how I did that?  Brought it right back around again like a boss!  Who said my English major was useless?

Snapshot: then and now

So some of you may remember that I mentioned once a long time ago that we had a hole in our carport ceiling from when the tall boy fell through it.  Here's how it happened:

The young tall boy (he was twelve) was fetching camping gear from the carport attic, in preparation for a Boy Scout adventure, when he stepped in the wrong place.  He crashed through the drywall ceiling of the carport, bounced off the top of the minivan, and landed flat on his back on the cement floor, right next to the trash dumpster.  Inside the house, the husband and I heard the crash, and seriously -- one of us said to the other, "Huh.  I wonder what that noise was."  Then we both picked up our coffee mugs and went back to whatever we were reading. 

And people, I swear that's exactly what happened.  When you think I'm exaggerating, or making something up for comic effect -- that is when I am telling the precise truth.  The stuff I make up cannot hold a candle to the shit that really happens to me.

Well -- after a spit take as we both realized that our beloved child was in the carport attic -- and the noise had come from the carport attic! -- we put down our coffee and strolled outside to see what all the racket was about.

Actually, I did make that part up.  Once we realized that the noise and our boy were probably connected, we did bolt out the door pretty quickly.  We're morons, but caring morons.

There was the tall boy, splayed like Wile E. Coyote after he chased the Roadrunner off a cliff.  The husband said, "Can you move, buddy?"  And the tall boy said, "Uh, no . . . ."

Insert all your own worst nightmares here.  They will be an accurate representation of the thoughts that ran through my head in slow motion.

While I was imagining my new life as the parent of a paralyzed child, and looking around for a discreet place to throw up, the husband responded to the horizontal tall boy:  "Listen.  Is it that you can't move, or that you're afraid to move?"  And the tall boy shot his father a pitying look.  "Dad.  I just got the First Aid merit badge.  You're not supposed to move a back injury."  And the world bounced back into place.

After determining that our boy could in fact move his fingers and toes, his arms and his legs, the husband got him up off the ground and dusted him off.  "What do you say we head on over to the hospital and see if you're brain-damaged?"

The tall boy laughed dismissively.  "No way, Dad!  We're going camping!"

And that was the end of that.

* * *

Well, so the hole in the carport ceiling was huge, and needed repairing in the worst way.  But somehow we never quite got around to it.  I have joked that we are lazy, and it is true -- but we're not that lazy.  In the ten years since the hole appeared, we have painted almost every room in our home, replaced flooring, renovated our kitchen, built a lovely fireplace mantel, gutted, designed, and restored one whole floor of our house, replaced a deck, and put up a split rail fence.  Some of these chores were accomplished by hiring professionals, but many of them were done by us, our own lazy selves.

And yet the hole in the carport ceiling lingered.  Why?  What was the weird dysfunctional thing going on that would not allow us to get rid of this unsightly and dangerous and embarrassing open wound?

I have no answer.

But it's gone now!  Our long national regional local pathetic nightmare is over!

And somebody needs to slap me, because I did actually say out loud to the husband, "You know, if we wait just a little longer, we can have a tenth anniversary party for the hole . . . "

Doesn't matter why

So last weekend the fabulous neighbors knocked on the door and instructed us to report for the first cul-de-sac gathering of the season.  Of course we obeyed.  The fire pit was deployed, and everyone brought "a little something" to share.  This was the most last-minute and impromptu of gatherings -- no one (not even Saskia -- Lake Ridge's own Martha Stewart) "made" anything, but we all brought a tasty store-bought something.  The fabulous neighbor gave us all an approving high-five:  "Good job, ladies -- way to keep it casual!"

And then the very next night, we met again at our church:  Trivia Night!  It was another fabulous reason to hang with our besties:  some tasty food (this time we did pull out our "dish to share" cookbooks), a fundraiser for a worthy cause, and a fierce competitive adrenaline rush (fed by $2.00 beer and wine). 

And I will just pause a moment to say that as a table we were pretty freaking smart: nitrogen as a cause of the bends; the crocus-to-saffron transition; memorization of Bible verses; a confident mastery of '90s sitcom and music trivia -- we rocked it, y'all.  We came in second, and immediately had t-shirts made:  "JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR, TABLE NINE!"

But the point I want to make here is this:  I don't care about the reason for the gathering.  I just love these people!  How lucky am I?

A poem for a sunny spring day!

Ha!  I always knew I was hot stuff!

Cranky . . . .

Image via Cranky Birds -- a fabulous blog!

 Here is a sampling of comments that I have actually made -- in writing -- in the past few days . . .

1.  Across a spreadsheet that our Girl Scout Council requires of the over-worked cookie mommy volunteers:

This is s stupid form -- and is a duplication of effort. Troops have already provided this information through eBudde; why does this council require this ridiculously awkward form in addition?  This is why volunteers flee as fast as they can from working with Girl Scouts.  You do it to yourselves!

I thought this tirade was a better idea than asking someone to help me learn how to fill out an Excel spreadsheet.

2.  On the feedback page of yet another purveyor of beautiful clothing that my two teenaged girl urchins yearn for:

Dear Free People -- I would be more inclined to purchase your lovely dresses for my lovely daughters if these dresses actually covered their asses.  Regards -- Liz

I have sent this note a few times, to various merchants.  By the way, props to ModCloth, who brought back the "Longer Lengths" section of their online catalog (I must not be the only person who complained).  But Free People -- what the heck?  The name they gave the dress pictured above is "Lolita Syndrome."  I'm not even kidding.

3.  This is actually a groveling email I sent after I was -- let's just say a little testy with the nice pharmacist at CVS:

Dear Kathy -- I wanted to apologize again for losing my temper this morning while trying to find out where the hell my mother-in-law's chemotherapy prescription was.  I also deeply appreciate your help in getting the cost of the drug reduced from $8,100 for a 30 day supply to only $1,200 -- even after I implied that you didn't care whether my mother-in-law lived or died.  I know you do care whether my mother-in-law lives or dies.  I was overwrought.  Regards -- Liz

4.  Here's my text to my beloved tall boy, when he asked whether I could come fetch him from his college campus in the city for the long Easter weekend or he should wait outside in the rain for the commuter bus that might or might not show up and sit with a bunch of people who might or might not have the flu, and get home well after dinner time after walking that last six blocks in the aforementioned rain:

Bus.