Why am I never sick? Most people would think this is great, but it's really a curse. I'm cursed to take care of sick people. I'm cursed to never have homemade soups and hot tea. I'm cursed to never be able to lay all snug in cozy blankies on the couch with a never ending stream of tasteless reality shows on tv.
I did catch an 8 hour bug from the boys last year. But, it wasn't severe enough to put me out of commission for the entire day. Come on, flu. That's all you got?
Sinus infections...psssssh. That's not a couchable illness. Nobody looks at you with a blown out sinus filled face and says, "You'd better go home and let somebody take care of you".
I once had kidney stones. That was pretty bad. I had an extremely high fever and wasn't able to straighten myself from the intense pain. I was delirious on the couch under a mound of coats and whatever else I was able to reach, croacking out for water and sinking back into fever induced sleep.
......
I want that back.
I want to lay on the couch for an entire day while Chris does everything. I want him to make me food, bring me food and clean up my food. I want to be the remote holder and watch every episode of Sister Wives. I want him to have to tend to 3 boys who have bottomless bellies, always wanting a snack or something to drink. I want him to do bath time and bed time and bed time and bed time and bed time and bed time (for my vampire children who don't sleep).
If anybody has any good communicable diseases, send me a vile of your spit!
Join me on my journey into Happy Mayhem!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Attack of the vacuum
Devin goes back to the Doctor's office to talk about medications this Thursday. I'm a basketcase of anxiousness and hopefulness. I wish people were more open about their children being on medication. Hearing about other's experiences is always helpful. I've got less than a handful of mom's in the same boat as me so we're flying mostly blind and with the help of google.
In happier thoughts...Christmas is coming! Flights are booked and family will be flying and driving in from all over the country. We went out Thanksgiving weekend and cut our tree down.
In happier thoughts...Christmas is coming! Flights are booked and family will be flying and driving in from all over the country. We went out Thanksgiving weekend and cut our tree down.
Yesterday I was attempting to use the vacuum hose attachment to suck up fallen pine needles from the tree skirt when the hose sucked up the tree skirt. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. You would just pull the skirt from the hose. But, you have never met MY vacuum. It's the vacuum from hell. I can't tell you how many times that sadistic sucker has found ways to maim me, blind me and regularly reek havoc on my phalanges. It's a heavy beast that is the only vacuum that has been able to hold it's own in a house of never ending dust producing projects, spills of random candies and lego toys. Chris and I have been together for almost 8 years and we have owned 4 vacuums in that time. The first three lasting all around one year before hacking out it's final fur ball and retiring to the local dump.
Not this one.
It dishes out as much abuse as I can dish. It's an eye for eye, toe for toe....or as in yesterday's case a hose for nose.
As I was precariously twisted around the branches of sappy knives trying to suck up dead pine needles, the tree skirt sucked up into the hose.
This caused a chain of reactions of the Griswald proportion.
1. Hose sucks up tree skirt.
2. Hose gets jammed with tree skirt and can no longer suck.
3. Hose that was stretched to the max recoils up on it's own suction.
4. Recoiling hose yanks vacuum across the room.
5. I turn to see vacuum roaring at me.
6. Vacuum slams into me (I think I heard it laughing too)
7. Vacuum slams me off what little balance I had.
8. Both me and vacuum fall to our sappy death.
Had anybody else been in the room with me, I probably would have been able to find more humor in it all. Instead, I was left pelting ornaments and lights back onto the bottom portion of the tree by calling the vacuum every unholy name I could think of.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
ADHD. Over diagnosed or under estimated?
I'm sure it's apparent from reading posts that Devin is not your typical go with the flow child. Unfortunately for him, he's my clone but to the extreme. I'm ridiculously forgetful, I have a hard time doing things that don't particularly interst me and there are times when I feel like my brain wants my body to go ten million times faster than it can. As an adult I've learned how to function (if that's what you call it) and cope with these things. For example: If I have a deadline that I have to meet I will put on headphones and listen to an interesting documentary and have an endless supply of munchies.
Devin was different since the day he was born. While most babies like to sleep the days away, Devin would stay up for hours. He started tracking objects and people with his eyes almost immediately. And the kid didn't like to be still. No, no, no, no, he did not. I would get charlie horses in the arches of my feet from bouncing around all day long. When he learned to crawl he would put his head down and speed towards his destination and at 9 months he skipped toddling around and went straight to running.
Through preschool, he struggled to keep up at the same learning rate of his peers and struggled with self control. Long story short...we found that he had severe hearing loss during preschool caused by otitis media. He underwent surgery to have tubes put in.
I now had "something to blame" for his extreme outburst behaviors and his lack of ability to keep up. His hearing loss had been around a 70% loss. He had missed out on alot and was frustrated with being an environment that he wasn't able to understand or thrive in. His preschool modified everything for him to be sure that he always was aware of what was going on and was expected of him.
Enter Kindergarten. His behaviors were still extreme. I spoke with the principal and teacher enough that year to think that I was the student again. I was at a loss. His teacher obviously did not like him AT ALL. And, he was having hearing issues again. We had to go back for another set of tubes. We struggled through the year with barely getting by grades. I was never so happy for summer as I was that year.
First grade. His teacher was wonderful. But, he still gave her a hard time...not as bad as Kindergarten but still a hard time. Towards the end of the year it was more time with the principal. Referrals for anger problems and attention problems. Suggestions of diagnosis that made my head spin out of control and left me feeling like I had ruined my child's academic career as well as any future visions of a productive life.
After two days of crying and pulling the woahs-are-us deal, I pulled my head out of me bum and got moving. We saw a counselor...went to endless meetings and was promptly referred to medication with no supportive services. While I'm not comfortable with medicine I'm not ruling out that it may help him. However, I know from experience that it isn't a wonder drug. You can't pop a pill in his mouth and expect his whole personality will change. He is who he is and he's unfortunately already learned some non-productive ways of doing things at school. I have since found a new counselor and we are in the process of getting a formal diagnosis and will then be requesting an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for Devin.
I'm not thrilled about it. When you have a baby, you envision them doing normal things in a perfect world. What is the definition of perfect? What is the definition of normal? I think my crazy guy is pretty great. And I'm going to do everything in my power to help the rest of the world see the greatness within him too!
Truly, I was way over dramatic about it. I've always said that I love Devin with a fierceness that is different than my other two children. Maybe it's because I see so much of my former awkward self in him, maybe it's because I see the looks people give him, maybe it's because of the conversations I've heard or maybe it's simply because he needs it. He needs someone to remind him that he's not alone and even when he loses faith in himself, I never will.
Devin was different since the day he was born. While most babies like to sleep the days away, Devin would stay up for hours. He started tracking objects and people with his eyes almost immediately. And the kid didn't like to be still. No, no, no, no, he did not. I would get charlie horses in the arches of my feet from bouncing around all day long. When he learned to crawl he would put his head down and speed towards his destination and at 9 months he skipped toddling around and went straight to running.
Through preschool, he struggled to keep up at the same learning rate of his peers and struggled with self control. Long story short...we found that he had severe hearing loss during preschool caused by otitis media. He underwent surgery to have tubes put in.
I now had "something to blame" for his extreme outburst behaviors and his lack of ability to keep up. His hearing loss had been around a 70% loss. He had missed out on alot and was frustrated with being an environment that he wasn't able to understand or thrive in. His preschool modified everything for him to be sure that he always was aware of what was going on and was expected of him.
Enter Kindergarten. His behaviors were still extreme. I spoke with the principal and teacher enough that year to think that I was the student again. I was at a loss. His teacher obviously did not like him AT ALL. And, he was having hearing issues again. We had to go back for another set of tubes. We struggled through the year with barely getting by grades. I was never so happy for summer as I was that year.
First grade. His teacher was wonderful. But, he still gave her a hard time...not as bad as Kindergarten but still a hard time. Towards the end of the year it was more time with the principal. Referrals for anger problems and attention problems. Suggestions of diagnosis that made my head spin out of control and left me feeling like I had ruined my child's academic career as well as any future visions of a productive life.
After two days of crying and pulling the woahs-are-us deal, I pulled my head out of me bum and got moving. We saw a counselor...went to endless meetings and was promptly referred to medication with no supportive services. While I'm not comfortable with medicine I'm not ruling out that it may help him. However, I know from experience that it isn't a wonder drug. You can't pop a pill in his mouth and expect his whole personality will change. He is who he is and he's unfortunately already learned some non-productive ways of doing things at school. I have since found a new counselor and we are in the process of getting a formal diagnosis and will then be requesting an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for Devin.
I'm not thrilled about it. When you have a baby, you envision them doing normal things in a perfect world. What is the definition of perfect? What is the definition of normal? I think my crazy guy is pretty great. And I'm going to do everything in my power to help the rest of the world see the greatness within him too!
Truly, I was way over dramatic about it. I've always said that I love Devin with a fierceness that is different than my other two children. Maybe it's because I see so much of my former awkward self in him, maybe it's because I see the looks people give him, maybe it's because of the conversations I've heard or maybe it's simply because he needs it. He needs someone to remind him that he's not alone and even when he loses faith in himself, I never will.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Who doesn't love an old poop story?
Here's an old one that I found and couldn't resist posting. Why? Because it is about one of my all time favorite subjects.... POOOOOO
Ah. The joys of being stuck in times of old with a septic tank and little boys who love to flush things.
Here in the northeast, we finally had a break in the cold weather and the temps hit the 50′s! Great for cold spirits…bad for all the snow that melted into our backyard, which is where the septic tank beds are.
For those of you who are not familiar with the septic tank. The definition according to google is..septic tank n. A sewage-disposal tank in which a continuous flow of waste material is decomposed by anaerobic. Or in layman’s terms…all our excrement flows into a 1,000 gallon tank located underneath the trampoline in the backyard where it supposedly breaks itself down allowing for more excrement to be packed in. This makes for a good read during supper….
While anaerobics (I have no idea what this means, but makes me envision turds in neon leotards) are going on, the tank does need to be emptied. The rule is generally, for two people in a household you get it done every 5 years. For 5 people, every two years. Well, we have six people and frequent out of town visitors throughout the year…..and it hadn’t been done in 4 years. Is the post title starting to give you a visual yet?
On Saturday, my dad texted Chris' phone to let him know that a sewer smell was coming from his pipes and said it was probably time to get the tanks sucked out. No problem. By Sunday, the smell emanating from the bathroom showed itself. The toilet had backed up and there was raw sewage floating around, stankin’ up the place. Not a problem, right? Sewage goes in the toilet, so aside from the smell it wasn’t too bad. We went into crisis mode utilizing the water at a bare minimum.
Sunday night brought another snow storm that lasted into Monday and had all of us praying that it didn’t keep the ‘sucker guy’ away. We lucked out and he showed up first thing in the morning after I had left Chris and the boys home to ‘take care of duty’. About halfway through my work day I receive an email from Chris that read, “need to rent snack for train”. What?!?!?!?! I’m at work and him and the boys are going on a train ride! Ok, it was a frantic text full of typos that after calling him translated into, ‘It’s not the tank causing the back up and we need to rent a commercial length pipe snake to correct/unclog the drains.’
After the ‘sucker guy’ had left, Chris started the dishwasher, clothes washer and flushed all the toilets that were full of almost 24 hours worth of (gag). He went to check out my dad’s bathroom when he realized that sometimes the Shit really does hit the fan. Little did we know that little boys can flush things that create a clog. All of the water in the house, including the toilets, was shooting out of my dad’s toilet and shower like a shit spewing volcano.
I’ll stop the story there. Needless to say, I left work to come home and help clean the mess and help him snake the pipes. Love…it’s all about standing side by side with rubber gloves on picking up mushy poop and trying to figure out what it's in it.
Ah. The joys of being stuck in times of old with a septic tank and little boys who love to flush things.
Here in the northeast, we finally had a break in the cold weather and the temps hit the 50′s! Great for cold spirits…bad for all the snow that melted into our backyard, which is where the septic tank beds are.
For those of you who are not familiar with the septic tank. The definition according to google is..septic tank n. A sewage-disposal tank in which a continuous flow of waste material is decomposed by anaerobic. Or in layman’s terms…all our excrement flows into a 1,000 gallon tank located underneath the trampoline in the backyard where it supposedly breaks itself down allowing for more excrement to be packed in. This makes for a good read during supper….
While anaerobics (I have no idea what this means, but makes me envision turds in neon leotards) are going on, the tank does need to be emptied. The rule is generally, for two people in a household you get it done every 5 years. For 5 people, every two years. Well, we have six people and frequent out of town visitors throughout the year…..and it hadn’t been done in 4 years. Is the post title starting to give you a visual yet?
On Saturday, my dad texted Chris' phone to let him know that a sewer smell was coming from his pipes and said it was probably time to get the tanks sucked out. No problem. By Sunday, the smell emanating from the bathroom showed itself. The toilet had backed up and there was raw sewage floating around, stankin’ up the place. Not a problem, right? Sewage goes in the toilet, so aside from the smell it wasn’t too bad. We went into crisis mode utilizing the water at a bare minimum.
Sunday night brought another snow storm that lasted into Monday and had all of us praying that it didn’t keep the ‘sucker guy’ away. We lucked out and he showed up first thing in the morning after I had left Chris and the boys home to ‘take care of duty’. About halfway through my work day I receive an email from Chris that read, “need to rent snack for train”. What?!?!?!?! I’m at work and him and the boys are going on a train ride! Ok, it was a frantic text full of typos that after calling him translated into, ‘It’s not the tank causing the back up and we need to rent a commercial length pipe snake to correct/unclog the drains.’
After the ‘sucker guy’ had left, Chris started the dishwasher, clothes washer and flushed all the toilets that were full of almost 24 hours worth of (gag). He went to check out my dad’s bathroom when he realized that sometimes the Shit really does hit the fan. Little did we know that little boys can flush things that create a clog. All of the water in the house, including the toilets, was shooting out of my dad’s toilet and shower like a shit spewing volcano.
I’ll stop the story there. Needless to say, I left work to come home and help clean the mess and help him snake the pipes. Love…it’s all about standing side by side with rubber gloves on picking up mushy poop and trying to figure out what it's in it.
My Not Me Pig Roast
Nevermind the man behind the curtain. Or the random jibberish from the previous post below. The conveniences of handy blogging are also convenient for my youngest. I downloaded the blogger app on my ipod touch to stay up on the bloggy world. I guess he wants to make his presence known also. I thought about deleting it but it makes me giggle, so it stays.
While browsing over past blog posts I came across my My Not Me Friday post and decided that the annual family pig roast shall be narrated likewise.
I assure that I did NOT run up to people snapping obnoxious photos of myself with them. I have way more class than that. Speaking of class, Peyton did NOT stand behind me and break wind as I was talking to family friends. I did NOT fail to hold in my laughter and then try to claim the broken wind as my own! Who would do such thing. NOT me!
As the sun went down so did the supply of smirnoff that Chris brought. All 6 of them. After I did NOT crack open my fifth blueberry lemonade I plopped myself down to NOT watch a competitive game of cornhole. I did NOT pull off an oompa loompa cartwheel attempting to stand up. I did NOT try to pretend like I had done that oompa loompa cartwheel on purpose. If I had, I think I would have fooled them.
I did NOT decide that I needed to play cornhole with Chris, Tommy and theonly other drunk people at the party. Tommy did NOT tell me that I was only mildly offensive the next day but that it was alright since my sentences were NOT half missing, jumbled and slurred. Chris did NOT try to nail me like a carnival game with cornhole bags for cheating and I did NOT call my conservative aunt Achmed.
And finally, Chris did NOT have to take me home early so that I wouldn't make a fool of my NOT thirsty self.
While browsing over past blog posts I came across my My Not Me Friday post and decided that the annual family pig roast shall be narrated likewise.
No pigs were harmed in the making of this pig roast. Except for this one. We ate him.
This past weekend was NOT our family's annual pig roast.
I did NOT call Chris and have him bring me blueberry lemonade smirnoff on his way over. I did NOT decide to open one to drink before eating. I did NOT decide to keep on drinking since I had already started.
My aunt does NOT have a giant hammock-like swing hanging high in the branches for the kids to swing on. I did NOT get nailed by said giant hammock swing while pushing kids causing me and my blueberry lemonade to launch and skid across the yard. My shoulder does NOT still feel like it might fall off from NOT grabbing onto the swing and NOT letting it jerk me off the ground so that I could NOT swing kids higher.
This is NOT my grandma. You should NOT feel sorry for her!
As the sun went down so did the supply of smirnoff that Chris brought. All 6 of them. After I did NOT crack open my fifth blueberry lemonade I plopped myself down to NOT watch a competitive game of cornhole. I did NOT pull off an oompa loompa cartwheel attempting to stand up. I did NOT try to pretend like I had done that oompa loompa cartwheel on purpose. If I had, I think I would have fooled them.
I did NOT decide that I needed to play cornhole with Chris, Tommy and theonly other drunk people at the party. Tommy did NOT tell me that I was only mildly offensive the next day but that it was alright since my sentences were NOT half missing, jumbled and slurred. Chris did NOT try to nail me like a carnival game with cornhole bags for cheating and I did NOT call my conservative aunt Achmed.
And finally, Chris did NOT have to take me home early so that I wouldn't make a fool of my NOT thirsty self.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Nuby starts school
Another school year has begun and with the new wave, my second child has been sucked out to the sea of school never to return to the days of all play. Sad, but exciting. He was in his glory on the first day of school getting to wear his new Lightning McQueen book bag that comes complete with a plastic hood attached to the top. He jumped on the bus and didn't even look back. The school does all of their "testing" on the first day and then decides which classrooms they will be placed in. We got the call at the end of the week to let us know that he was going to be placed into the same classroom that Devin had in Kindergarten. If you all remember...Devin's first year of school was awful.
By the end of the second week in his classroom, he was in full crazed mode about not wanting to go to school. He was crying and refusing to get on the bus. He couldn't fall asleep at night. And the principal even had to chase him in circles around me and then drag him into the school, all while he was screaming at me to help him. It was awful. I cried the whole way to work and I'm sure he cried for quite a while too.
When his attitude towards school continued to get worse instead of better my aunt and I went up to the school to request a room/teacher change. The principal was happy to oblige in light of all of the issues we had with Devin. Christopher's outlook on school changed over night. Literally. Overnight. After his first day in his new class he no longer cried. He went to bed fine. He still says it's boring but he's not afraid. He told me that his new teacher "is a lot a bit nicer". And that makes me sleep better at night too.
By the end of the second week in his classroom, he was in full crazed mode about not wanting to go to school. He was crying and refusing to get on the bus. He couldn't fall asleep at night. And the principal even had to chase him in circles around me and then drag him into the school, all while he was screaming at me to help him. It was awful. I cried the whole way to work and I'm sure he cried for quite a while too.
When his attitude towards school continued to get worse instead of better my aunt and I went up to the school to request a room/teacher change. The principal was happy to oblige in light of all of the issues we had with Devin. Christopher's outlook on school changed over night. Literally. Overnight. After his first day in his new class he no longer cried. He went to bed fine. He still says it's boring but he's not afraid. He told me that his new teacher "is a lot a bit nicer". And that makes me sleep better at night too.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The sweet smell of manure
My dad was and still is one of the hardest working men I know, although Chris runs a close second (he is ALWAYS doing something). He worked long third shift hours at a local auto plant and would leave the plant for his second job; exercising and taking care of horses at Olin's horse farm before coming home to eat, sleep and prepare to do it all over again.
Since he was always working, sleeping, eating or preparing for one of these...our time with him growing up was limited and like any children we silently followed him with eagle eyes to see what/where he was doing and going and to try to figure out how we could tag along. The few and far between weekend trips where he would wake me up as the sun was just starting to rise is still one of my fondest childhood memories. He'd wake me up with his usual to the point gruffness usually giving a time limit to when 'the train was leaving'. We'd silently walk to his old two door faded brown blazer, with the bumper sticker saying "I build GM, I drive GM" and pull out of the driveway with the worn shocks groaning and squeaking with every bump and sway. I don't recall any specific conversations, but I am sure that I chattered on about anything that would pop into my head and I'm sure that my dad answered with his usual head nods and nose snuffs praying that I would just shut up for once.
It wasn't a long drive to the farm and when we arrived we would pull down the once gravel but mostly dirt driveway to park by the horse barn on the back of the property. You could hear the sound of the horses neighing and pawing at the ground with their hooves anticipating the arrival of food, attention and the chance to escape from their stalls. I'd kick and push my door open, hop out and wait for Dad to gather his riding helmet, goggles and other supplies before wandering off.
The farm was freedom. There weren't many rules. Don't walk behind the horses. Don't overfeed the horses. And most importantly, don't get in dad's way. He would get to work feedind and watering all the horses. Rotating them out of their stalls and into the pasture to roam, onto the exercise tether, riding them around the track or taking them down to the lake for swimming.
While he did all this I would rotate to stay out of his way. There were umpteen cats and a dog to play with and a lean-to with piles of sawdust that were bigger than all of the horses put together. Bales of hay could be stacked and unstacked to make tunnels, forts, make-believe horses and steps to heaven and bath tubs that were plugged up and full of the water. A swing was fastened to one side of the merry-go-round so as the horses exercised in their circle you could ride along with them. Fields with grass as tall as myself were available for running and making 'paths'and there was enough dirt to sufficiently cover my entire body before leaving. Sometimes Olin's granddaughter was there with her dad and I would have someone to play with. We would sneak into Olin's house, filled with antiques and pretend that the cubby holes were space ships.
I can still remember the smells of the farm. The horses. The hay. The feed. The fields. (The poop) The dust. I can hear my dad's voice talking to the horses. The signature, "Aay" that would come from the bottom of his throat if a horse wasn't doing as it should. Which was also the same "Aay" that my both my grandma and grandpa used on us grandkids. And is now the same, "Aay" that I catch myself using on my boys.
At the age of 11 or 12 I learned to drive in Olin's field. While dad and Olin's son were hogbrushing the field, my stepmom gathered old horse blankets to puff me up enough to see over the dashboard of the old blazer. I climbed in, arranged myself and after alot of engine revving, hopping and giggling I finally got the hang of manuevering the clutch and gas pedals to make the truck go. I learned to hold the truck steady on a hill without using the brakes. I learned to shift without giving myself whiplash. I learned to dodge holes in the field. It was one of those unforgettable I-am-the-stuff proud moments.
Times change and as the years went on, Dad no longer needed to work at Olin's farm.
Today, Olin's farm no longer has horses. I'm not even sure if Olin is still alive. I vaguely think I remember my dad talking about his failing health years ago. I don't see horses anymore when I drive by the farm. Instead I see an old advertising sign with mismatched letters pointing to the open field and speaking of approaching community garage sales. The gravel driveway is an overgrown memory with only the missing curb on the road as evidence that it once existed.
It's funny how life changes but also repeats. I see my boys with the same eagerness to follow Chris around and help except instead of horses, it's fixing things. Yesterday, Nuby and Devin were having a discussion about how old they needed to be to go with Daddy to the Rental Corral (they determined it was 5, so Peyton couldn't go). Their favorite place to go is Home Depot. They watch him from across the yard waiting to be called to assist with the same eagle eyes that I remember having myself. I wonder if when they grow up, they'll be whisked back to their childhood and be wrapped in the warmth of happy nostalgia.
Since he was always working, sleeping, eating or preparing for one of these...our time with him growing up was limited and like any children we silently followed him with eagle eyes to see what/where he was doing and going and to try to figure out how we could tag along. The few and far between weekend trips where he would wake me up as the sun was just starting to rise is still one of my fondest childhood memories. He'd wake me up with his usual to the point gruffness usually giving a time limit to when 'the train was leaving'. We'd silently walk to his old two door faded brown blazer, with the bumper sticker saying "I build GM, I drive GM" and pull out of the driveway with the worn shocks groaning and squeaking with every bump and sway. I don't recall any specific conversations, but I am sure that I chattered on about anything that would pop into my head and I'm sure that my dad answered with his usual head nods and nose snuffs praying that I would just shut up for once.
It wasn't a long drive to the farm and when we arrived we would pull down the once gravel but mostly dirt driveway to park by the horse barn on the back of the property. You could hear the sound of the horses neighing and pawing at the ground with their hooves anticipating the arrival of food, attention and the chance to escape from their stalls. I'd kick and push my door open, hop out and wait for Dad to gather his riding helmet, goggles and other supplies before wandering off.
The farm was freedom. There weren't many rules. Don't walk behind the horses. Don't overfeed the horses. And most importantly, don't get in dad's way. He would get to work feedind and watering all the horses. Rotating them out of their stalls and into the pasture to roam, onto the exercise tether, riding them around the track or taking them down to the lake for swimming.
While he did all this I would rotate to stay out of his way. There were umpteen cats and a dog to play with and a lean-to with piles of sawdust that were bigger than all of the horses put together. Bales of hay could be stacked and unstacked to make tunnels, forts, make-believe horses and steps to heaven and bath tubs that were plugged up and full of the water. A swing was fastened to one side of the merry-go-round so as the horses exercised in their circle you could ride along with them. Fields with grass as tall as myself were available for running and making 'paths'and there was enough dirt to sufficiently cover my entire body before leaving. Sometimes Olin's granddaughter was there with her dad and I would have someone to play with. We would sneak into Olin's house, filled with antiques and pretend that the cubby holes were space ships.
I can still remember the smells of the farm. The horses. The hay. The feed. The fields. (The poop) The dust. I can hear my dad's voice talking to the horses. The signature, "Aay" that would come from the bottom of his throat if a horse wasn't doing as it should. Which was also the same "Aay" that my both my grandma and grandpa used on us grandkids. And is now the same, "Aay" that I catch myself using on my boys.
At the age of 11 or 12 I learned to drive in Olin's field. While dad and Olin's son were hogbrushing the field, my stepmom gathered old horse blankets to puff me up enough to see over the dashboard of the old blazer. I climbed in, arranged myself and after alot of engine revving, hopping and giggling I finally got the hang of manuevering the clutch and gas pedals to make the truck go. I learned to hold the truck steady on a hill without using the brakes. I learned to shift without giving myself whiplash. I learned to dodge holes in the field. It was one of those unforgettable I-am-the-stuff proud moments.
Times change and as the years went on, Dad no longer needed to work at Olin's farm.
Today, Olin's farm no longer has horses. I'm not even sure if Olin is still alive. I vaguely think I remember my dad talking about his failing health years ago. I don't see horses anymore when I drive by the farm. Instead I see an old advertising sign with mismatched letters pointing to the open field and speaking of approaching community garage sales. The gravel driveway is an overgrown memory with only the missing curb on the road as evidence that it once existed.
It's funny how life changes but also repeats. I see my boys with the same eagerness to follow Chris around and help except instead of horses, it's fixing things. Yesterday, Nuby and Devin were having a discussion about how old they needed to be to go with Daddy to the Rental Corral (they determined it was 5, so Peyton couldn't go). Their favorite place to go is Home Depot. They watch him from across the yard waiting to be called to assist with the same eagle eyes that I remember having myself. I wonder if when they grow up, they'll be whisked back to their childhood and be wrapped in the warmth of happy nostalgia.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Happy New Year.
To update everyone and leave off where my last post ended.
The feud is over. It came to a head the week after Christmas when more people got involved. And, like I'm always compelled to do, I stuck up for the underdog...which just so happened to be the very friend who had decided that I had ruined her life.
In the end, she came over and we were able to talk about each and every snarky, nasty blow that we spat back and forth at each other. Sometimes the truth hurts, but I suppose it needs to be heard every now and then to keep us in check. The important thing is that we both apologized for wrongs that had been done and accepted that things will never be perfect, but will always be workable....unless she snarks out some of the things like she did last time. Then, I may be liable for chopping her face off! I kid, I kid.
My neighbors and best friends finally (after years of everyone waiting) got divorced. It's been an adjustment for all of us. She moved about 10 minutes away and he is still there. The kids go back and forth each week. There's no way to explain it, other than wierd. Wierd for me to not have her there. Wierd for the kids to not have their friends. Wierd to go over to a completely different house. Not necessarily bad...but wierd.
Other than that, I don't really have anything eventful to report. I do believe in the short near future, I will be changing blog addresses and attempting to blog all of my whole life stories/events that were significant to me or just stick out as funny. My life is usually anything but boring and I don't want to forget anything. But, would like to spell it all out a bit more anonymously. Leave me a comment if you wish to follow in the future and I will send you the new URL when it's out. I also think I'll be leaving blogspot. The layout issues are driving me crazy.
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