Let's play catch-up...

Folks, I left you on a sad note last I wrote and I do apologize. But as I'm sure you are aware, life just isn't all sunshine, roses, and unicorns. But wouldn't that be great if it were? I mean really, that would rock. My unicorn would be pure white with a pink tail and mane, and of course would have a garland of baby pink roses wrapped around her neck. Oh, and I of course would ride her with no saddle or bridle, she would simply read the subtle movements of my super long, very slim thighs. Oh, no wait, she would read my mind. That's better huh? Our minds would be linked together in some kind of other worldly, Rainbow Brite, virginal kind of way. But hey, like I said, no unicorns. And sometimes we get rain and poopy diapers instead of sunshine and roses. I'm just not perpetually happy all the time but I sure as heck do wish I were.

Just what in the world have we been up to anyway? Well, a whole lot of the same stuff we're always up to. I know, I know, you were expecting exotic travel, stories of hobknobbing with glamorous celebrities, and the spending of copious amounts of money on children's clothing weren't you. Okay, well, I have been up to a little bit of the latter, to my husband's irritation, but the kids sure are lookin' sharp this winter ;). So anyway, I'm just going to post some pics of things we've done lately and sort of leave it at that. Lame, I know. But I promise I'll dazzle you with some super witty and intelligent post at some point in the near future...

We went to Aspen Grove in the mountains where we played a lot of volleyball with the whole extended family, Princess nearly lost a hand to a hungry bear, and Young Man picked his nose and did sweet Kung Fu moves...a lot...


Oh and of course I ran around looking like Bigfoot in my enormous pink sweat shirt and absolutely no make-up, but was still lookin' cute just because of the cute vibes that ooze off of Princess onto whoever happens to be near her...

We've done a lot of playing...


We trick or treated and nearly died of body wide shock from all the sugar we ingested...

Princess suffered the dreaded stomach virus (and the rest of us too!)...

And the kids have become better friends nearly every.single.day.

So that's a little photo fun for ya! I hope you enjoyed it :).

P.S. The husband does exist, I promise! Unfortunately there just happened to be no pictures of him in the computer files I was accessing for this post. I was simply too lazy to go looking around for one with him in it.

Oh wait...here's one. He's holding Princess and her best buddy, cousin E :).

Grief

I've been thinking about suicide. Not about committing it (I promise!) but about suicide in general. Not so long ago one of the people most dear to me in the world committed suicide. He was my brother, my friend, my listener, my family...my Eric. I got a call from my Mom at 7 am and I knew before I even answered the phone that it was going to be terrible news. I'm not a morning person, my Mom knows this, she would never call that early except to deliver a devastating blow. I answered the phone and Mom was crying. Crap. "Oh yeah, this is going to be bad", I thought for a split second before she said, "Eric is dead. He's dead, he killed himself last night". The floor dropped out from under me in an instant. Eric? "Eric who?", I irrationally thought to myself. It was my moment of denial, my precious split second where my mind wouldn't even accept that my brother had killed himself. It was someone else, some other Eric, and not one that I even knew. "He shot himself", was the only other thing my Mom said because shortly thereafter I hung up, and shaking hard turned to Joe and told him the news before I couldn't even speak anymore. I spent the entire day in some state of crying. Either just finishing up a round of tears, just starting one, or right in the middle with my head pounding and my nose flowing. I spent the next day exactly the same way. And I couldn't stop the terrible images in my head. For some reason my imagination would not stop torturing me by playing the whole scenario over and over in my mind.

Terrible questions occurred to me, questions I would never ask and I was sure that I did NOT want to know. "Did it hurt? Was it instant? Was he crying? Was he at peace with his decision?" Awful things that I'll never know and I'm sure I'm better off for it. That day Eric removed himself from my world, from our world. And it was violent, tragic, and just plain unacceptable. What do you do when one of the people you love most in the world actually puts a gun to his chest and pulls the trigger? I'll tell you, you spend countless days, weeks, then months feeling just fine one minute and then having it come and bite you in the arse while you're driving to the grocery store. I have arrived at many destinations in tears because of a song on the radio, on my iPod, something I've seen that jogs the sleeping monster in my head back into awareness, and I must sit in my car until I feel calm again. It's a sad existence. I was pushed into a very dark place that day my Mom gave me the news, and I have so far been unable to fully come back from it.

I went home to Texas for his funeral last February. And the whole experience felt like it was happening to someone else. I felt sort of detached from everything. At his viewing I couldn't bear to look at him or touch him. I spent the entire 2 or 3 hours standing as far from his coffin as I could and averting my eyes when I was forced to stand near him. I hate to cry in front of other people and I knew that if I saw more of him than an accidental glance afforded, that I would break down into a sobbing mess. I haven't been back to Texas since. And that is unusual. I generally visit several times per year. I'm going back for the first time since Eric died this December, and I'm absolutely dreading it. I'm mad at Texas for even continuing to exist without Eric there too. I'm afraid everything will look and feel different being there and knowing that he's not breathing the same star-spangled air as I am. Only 1/3 of Eric is still even in Texas. He was cremated and his biological mother took 1/3 back to Virginia, while his wife planned to scatter 1/3 of him in the ocean, and my Mom, Eric's beloved adopted Mom, took the other 1/3 to hold for safe keeping. Just until Eric's wife decides what to do with the rest.

There were so many things I loved about Eric. And I loved him so much, so many of us did. My senior year I had a guy ask me to prom and I said "yes". I got a dress, made an appointment to have my hair and makeup done professionally, and got myself all excited. Just a couple of days before the prom my date had bad news. He couldn't go anymore, but he was really sorry. I guess he had gotten himself into some kind of trouble and his parents wouldn't allow him to go anymore. I was so upset, as you can probably imagine. My Mom told Eric what had happened, and guess what he did. He rented a tuxedo the day of the prom and he took me himself. No one knew he was my brother because he was quite a bit older and never went to my highschool, and we looked nothing alike because we weren't biologically related. So everyone thought I brought a really cool, older guy to the prom. That's just the kind of guy he was.

I'm sorry to be a downer, but it's on my mind. Eric left behind a sweet wife and a wonderful son. He left behind my other brother, who was his best friend in the world. And he left me behind, something I haven't quite forgiven him for. Why do people do things like this, you ask? I think you might as well ask what the purpose of life is, for all the clarity you'll get in answer. When you boil everything down and stop asking questions that really have no answers, you're left with a hole. A big, gaping hole that is filled with nothing but the substanceless feelings of remorse, sorrow, and how much you miss him.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a bucket of ice cream...

Sa-Wimming!

So lately I've worried a lot about the safety of my kids around water. I mean, Princess is only 2 and no one expects her to swim yet and Young Man wouldn't even willingly stick his face in the water. If we tried to get him to he reacted as if we were asking him to lower his face into a vat of acid. I decided that just wouldn't do, nope, not at all, and I arranged for them to have swim lessons. And by swim lessons I'm talking about private, boot-camp tough love style, one on one, pay through the nose and argue with husband about it, lessons. I found a fantastic gal who with her daughters provides private lessons in 20 minute increments from her own pool in her own back yard. She's all certified and stuff too! So husband and I mortgaged our house and embarked upon an adventure with the kiddos of them learning how to at least not drown (I'm just kidding about our house, the lessons aren't THAT expensive :)...but trust me, this gal's a good deal and lessons with her and her girls are worth every.single.penny. You will get results!). At first, the kids didn't find it very adventurous at all....they found it to be more like torture, maybe something along the lines of water boarding. But here we are a month later of nearly every single day lessons, and they are both swimming (yes, even Princess!). Young Man will be able to join the swim team next week he has progressed so much with learning not only survival, but his strokes as well.

Now the goal with Princess (for me anyway) was never really learning to actually swim, but to survive if she were to fall into a pool or a body of water unnoticed somewhere. It happens you know, and even to responsible, vigilante parents. And those little toddlers tend to sink like stones cause they don't even know to not breathe when they are underwater and they panic and suck in tons of water. Princess learned to flip to her back and float from any underwater position. She was made to dive and jump off the side and taught to hold her breath, allow her body to float to the surface, and flip on her back to rest and breathe. Then she was taught to kick to the side of the pool, flip over, and grab the side to be pulled out or crawl out on her own. She has mastered these skills. Lately she's started to learn to swim by "pancaking" or rolling to her back to rest and breathe and then back to her front to swim a couple of feet, before rolling back to her back to rest and breathe...and rinse and repeat and eventually she will make it to the stairs or the side of the pool. It's such a neat thing to watch your child learn life skills such as surviving in the water. And while she's not ready for water skiing, I feel confident that should I ever turn my back for a second and she slips or falls into water, she will be able to keep herself from drowning long enough to be noticed and saved (and I sincerely hope that we never get to find out just how great her newly learned survival skills are). Heck, by next summer, I think she'll be swimming just like any older kid.

Young Man is of course a pro already :)











I know Princess looks unhappy in this last picture, but these were taken nearly 2 weeks ago, when "swimming" was known only as "torture" to her. She has since come to love her swimming lessons and her instructor. In fact, just today while being buckled into her seat to leave for swimming lessons, she said: "I be brave, put my face in the water and reach the wall"....and so she did.

What the hayfever?!

It just so happens that it's getting to be my most favorite time of year again. I can smell the change all around me, feel it in the crisp night air, and I swear I can almost taste it. The changing of the seasons is absolutely palpable to me and I always find it very exciting. I'm a four season kind of gal and I think that's because I get bored easily and don't like things to just stay the same. I find I am pretty fickle with my four seasonal friends and tend to get "sick" of them each after they've been visiting for awhile. In short, I'm always ready to move on and never willing to stay stuck in one season. However, the season I would tolerate sticking around longer than it's allotted 3 months, if I had to, is Fall.

Oh my gosh, I just can't even put into words how much I love the color changing leaves that eventually give up their tenuous hold on the tree and fall gracefully to the ground for pissed off parents to rake up and gleeful children to make messes of their piles. And seriously, the excitement of Fall is just the best thing ever to me. When I was a kid, I was always SO excited to start a new school year. I couldn't wait to get to Walmart or Target with my Mom and buy all kinds of new school supplies. I eagerly anticipated charming my new teachers and relished the thought of being on the honor roll every single quarter. Yeah, I was a dork. And no, that hasn't really changed at all. Adulthood seems only to have made me more awkward. But I digress, we're talking about Fall here and not awkward adults.

I still absolutely LOVE Halloween and Thanksgiving. I stopped dressing up a long time ago, but I love to live through my childrens' excitement on that most hallowed of evenings, the night of trick-or-treating. The boy is really getting to the age that he just appreciates Halloween so much, and last year was the first time he looked forward to it. Two months beforehand he had decided what he was going to be, much like this year. And two months beforehand, he began to get excited over the massive quantities of candy he knew would be dumped into his bag, much like this year as well. And I'm a traditionalist. I believe in the door to door panhandling for candy by children everywhere one night a year. None of that ridiculous"trunk-or-treat", hey let's make the fat kids fatter by not even requiring them to walk 0.04 miles for their bag full of candy, business. I worked for my Halloween loot as a kid. I'm pretty sure my group of friends and I canvassed 10 miles worth of neighborhoods before we called it quits as porch lights everywhere began to be dimmed and shut off for the night. Of course, in my day (like I'm so old) :), there weren't razor blades, poison, and condoms shoved into my bag and would be pedophiles were not nearly so brave as they are now about snatching up potential victims. I'm sure that has detracted from the trick-or-treating experience quite a bit. But that's another post as well.

I could also go on and on about Thanksgiving, but I'll keep it short and just say that I love the food and the family togetherness. I'm pretty sure we've discussed before that I'm a food-driven person. It's pretty much a miracle that I don't weigh 500 pounds. And I really just picked that number out of the air because I'm pretty sure I don't have any readers that might just happen to weigh that much. I think it's still pretty rare to weigh 500 pounds despite the obesity epidemic that has overtaken our nation. BUT again, I digress, that's another post.

And finally, about that title. Because I'm sure by now you are thinking, "why the heck is the title about hayfever?". Well, I'll tell ya. I have the absolute worst allergies in the late summer to early fall time period. I mean for real. I overnight become this throat scratching (which makes a horrid noise by the way-husband loves it), ear wiggling (helps with the throat issue), snotty-nosed, stuffed up, miserable person. For the last 3 years in a row I have shown up on my doctor's doorstep with a sinus infection and double ear infections all at the same time. And each year he gives me a steroid shot and an admonishment to come to him "before it gets so bad" the next year. Well guess what? I haven't gone yet and I'm just about ready for that annual steroid shot and round of antibiotics. But I comfort myself by watching the leaves change, smelling the wonderful aromas of approaching fall (when my nose isn't too stuffed up), and knowing that nothing is ever in stasis. For all things, there is a time and a season. The allergies are not going to last forever :).

P.S. Can I just say, I find it hilarious that someone arrived on my blog by doing a google search for "what is dog spit used for". Ah, now that gave me a smile :)!