What it Looks Like

So all week, I've been super tired in the morning when I get up and drag the kids, kicking and sometimes screaming, out of bed to get Sean to school by 8. He's done with that now for three weeks, which will be tough ones.

This morning, when I could have slept in myself, I'm not so tired. I guess it's because I can leave the kids in bed & do things on my own without them on top of me for a little while. This is a rare break for a mom of young kiddos. Often, they want to be on my lap while I type (difficult to do when you have kids as wiggly as mine.) Or they just want me to be sitting there, watching Thomas the Train with them, or outside playing in the yard with them. I do that most of the time, too, with very brief minutes stolen away to check FB (it keeps me feeling connected to an adult world.)

But Andrew works pretty damn hard nowadays (and here in a minute is where the title will come in.) He gets up most mornings at about 5:30, 6:00 and heads to work, where he is all day until at least 4. Then he works sporadically (his phone tends to go off every five minutes) on our various rental property issues. Especially right now with two of them vacant & needing tenants.

Earlier, I'm sitting at the computer with a cup of latte he very nicely made me, checking my FB while he finishes his morning routine. He's leaving and I'm asking him what his schedule will be like. I can tell he plans a pretty busy day as he contemplates his lunch, and when he might make it home.

I think of what it looks like I'll be doing today, all day. Sitting here, mucking around on the computer. Easy easy. But what dads don't see are the countless moments of chasing after a kid. Andrew's a GOOD one, helps out a ton, even does it himself now & then. And it's not like I'm Martha Stewart. Sometimes, when he comes home, the house is a bit of a wreck. But he doesn't see how much worse it COULD have been had I not caught the kid in the fridge after the eggs, or spilling green kool aid all over the house, or whatever interventions in 4 year old universe I will have to make today.

It looks easy, being me, from his waking up early, running all day perspective. I get a little more sleep, I get to sit here for a little while on the computer checking up on my friends. I can imagine how it seems. But I've also been the one at a workplace all day, too, and I know how different that is, what that feels like for a grown up, and how some days I really, really would trade with him. Let him stay home and be "dad" and me go to work all day.

Moms are never off work. Maybe when they're fourteen I'll have some time off. Maybe then I'll get an employee of the month plaque and my picture on a wall somewhere and a cool parking place. :) Something to look forward to, I'll bet. But I'll also bet some other suckup employee will sneak in there and get the plaque instead of me because that always happens to me.

waiting for rain

I can hear light rumbles just off in the distance, like a marching band's drum section warming up, each one practicing a different bit. The breeze from the outdoor fan is actually cool and the air feels expectant: hushed, somehow, until the katydids buzz loudly in the nearby tree canopy and the rainbow umbrella holds very still until an errant gust flips its edges, warning of what is to come.

For the moment, I am alone as the kids have disappeared into the house & I know I have to go catch them or find a mess to clean up. But I look up and see about a hundred different shades of green and the sky hit that immanent grey rain place as the breeze begins to rise. The hissing of the leaves in the wind replaces the katydids that have now gone silent and the cat licks his fur, alert and interested, just up from a nap.

Florida Bound

When I was a kid, I lived in the panhandle area of Florida (and by kid I mean teenager). Every year around Spring Break the tourists would start piling in. Yes, we got some folks in the winter, called Snowbirds-- folks for whom our winter was a balmy tropical paradise. But the real trade started around late March.

We made fun of the tourists. They would wear black knee socks with sandals. They would get horrible horrible sunburns on their faces and backs, with a little strip of white on their nose where they put some zinc. They drove crazy, because they didn't know where they were, and always wanted to turn left where they weren't supposed to turn left.

They brought jobs, and money, though. And we did appreciate that, although sometimes we weren't sure of the trade off. As a local, we hardly ever went to the beach in the summer. It just wasn't something you did-- you were working.

Well, where I live now is prime territory for what was called the Redneck Riviera. People within a day's drive-- La, MS, AL, Ark, tend to use the panhandle as their stomping grounds. It's a beautiful place-- I think better than any other beach I've seen. (And no, I haven't been to the real Riviera. I think that might be the one place that could actually compare.)

We are headed to FL this weekend. It's not exactly a vacation, although it will be one a little bit for us. We WILL go to the beach, and we're going on this pirate boat ride. Very touristy. My fifteen year old self would possibly be horrified. Mostly we're getting together with family to celebrate the life of my 101 year old grandmother who died a few months ago. This is the first time the whole family has been able to get together since then, and we're having a picnic & visiting. I'll see nieces & nephews and the kiddos' cousins that I haven't seen yet, new babies and all.

I'm looking forward to everything but that long drive. I miss beachfront. I would like to live someplace closer to water (real water... not the gator-ridden culverts around here). One day, when Andrew is retired (not too long really) from the military and I get to finally pick where we live, I hope to find something close to beach. Then, my kids can grow up mocking the sunburnt tourists & being mortified if her dad wears black socks (which when we were in Hawaii he tried to do.... let me say I made him take the socks off.)

Redneck I may not be, but I AM headed to the Riviera of my youth.

Morning Mornings

Summer is kind of great this year. Okay, so I haven't had a minute to myself in weeks. Usually (this is ever since the days became child-laden) I take the kiddos to daycare & work on things. My website for one, which is sadly languishing in a 3/4 published state right now. I am not nearly as frazzled as I would think I would be, though.

But this year, with Sean in the public school system, I am subject to the whims of Caddo parrish. So he's out this week coming up because of some kind of testing they're holding at his campus. That means I am not going to have a second of non-kid time. So I'm keeping the girlchild, Maia, home too. She cried in her sleep about "not wanting to go to school" last night. (She also yelled at her brother for taking her sucker. The girl is a night talker like me.)

So it isn't so much about being fair as it is about just really enjoying being with the kiddos. It's kind of ridiculous because I'm paying for daycare anyway, but at least it's only for one kid nowadays (Sean & public school are paid for by your tax dollars & mine.)

So what are we gonna do today? I know daddy would vote for us to fold the massive baskets of laundry upstairs. I ought to try to squeeze some website publishing in. But probably, I'll just play in the pool with the kiddos.

Summer Starts Yesterday, I Think

I guess. It was the first sunburn of the year... I usually try NOT to get a sunburn, but it was between my shoulders and the spray on sunscreen did not catch it. So now I have that ouchy burn there.

We went to the air show on base. It was not too crowded, but I will never understand why so many places have their airshows in the crazy heat of summer. There were two months here in LA where it was sunny & mostly nice when it would have been kind of cool outside but perfect weather to hang out look at planes do tricks & stand on an acre of concrete. But yesterday was not it. We ended up at home, watching one pass of the Blue Angels over our pool as they rounded for some acrobatics over the crowd & had to swing wide. Much better than being in the heat where there are 5.00 chicken sandwiches you'd pay 99 cents for at Sam's, frozen, and 5.00 frozen lemon ice things you can get for about 1% of that anywhere.

Here's my take on the "festivals" (and by these I include airshows) issue. Once upon a time, it was really neat. You couldn't GET these kinds of things on a daily basis. Dr. Pepper, for example, apparently debuted at a World's Fair, many years ago. Hamburgers, too. People marveled over these unique items, met their friends, mingled.

Nowadays, they charge ridiculous amounts for items you literally can go to Sam's or Costco and buy for pennies. In the South, they're most commonly held in the summer months when it's 99 degrees outside, muggy, hot, sunny. You're getting crispy skin, increasing your skin cancer risk, crabby because you have to use port-o-potties & stand in long lines while an old guy tells you to "pretend you're a Pacific island that was just taken over by the enemy forces, and watch a mock dogfight to take it back". Yeah. At least if it were a Pacific island I could watch this dogfight from the cool of the water nearby instead of roasting like a chicken on a spit.

At these events, my hubby's work usually rents one of those kid jumpy things. This one was not well inflated, listed to one side, and was filled with big kids who wanted to oppress the littler ones. I warned one kid three times and then used the "BIG VOICE" (inhereted from my DI mom) to tell him to get out and get over to his mom. I had to be the "mean mom" because he was climbing on top of the damn thing about to break his fool neck.

So that was fun./sarcasm I was just glad to get home, swim in my pool & drink a mojito beer thing. People wonder why I'm a bit on the hermit-ish side. This would be it.

7 days without blogging makes one week

Hah! So I can use that lame church slogan here. Score!?

This last week has been funny. I am finishing up a semester, have been trying to catch up on work at home, and am very disconnected from my work-life. It's partly like this every year at this time. The school year is mostly over-- all that's left is final exams, and I have two to give & grade. So one doesn't really see students, or other faculty for that matter. It's kind of like the "Academic Rapture"--those of us "Left Behind" marvel at how quiet it is with students mostly gone. :) But it's kind of been a weird semester, for some reason. All the action seems to have happened a long time ago. I don't know if it's because of the "Read-in"-- which meant a lot of flurry of activity back in Jan & Feb and then a bit of a letdown afterwards or just the nature of this particular year. Beats the heck out of me.

I just know I am really, really happy to be looking at several months of being completely on my own schedule. And then, Fall will be very light teaching. So, movin' on movin' up movin' movin'.

Summer's Coming

I spent today doing a few important things. I cleared out the gardens-- I kind of have two of them. One is back on the back fence and usually has sunny flowers & my cool green buddha meditation statue. The other is on the far right fence and has herbs and weeds in it, usually. Sometimes more weeds than herbs (and not that kind of weed, thank you.) The rosemary I planted last year has totally taken over one corner & it looks pretty & is fragrant so in spite of my earlier plan to let the bed go back to just grass I planted marjoram, basil & greek oregano in there today. There is a neighbor guy that's been selling herbs in his front yard during the week & I want to stop there and get some mint from him. I love mint.

Then I cleared the back bed out and scattered two cans of those "wildflower mixes" you can buy. Hot colors & cold colors all mixed together. I've tried those mixes before & had them totally not work so I hope this time it does. I want a wild bed full of wildflowers this year. The cultivated ones from the past just haven't done as much for me.

I also cleared out the someday-a-koi pond. Sean has a bad habit of dropping handfulls of mud (and rocks & other junk)in there so it's never been actually established yet as a real ecosystem. Andrew wanted to pull it up and level it-- the handymen didn't quite get the level right. And he got frustrated and quit just before naptime so it's not done yet.

But establishing the summer flower/herb beds feels really good. It feels like summer's really & truly on its way. And I really and truly need it.

A Homegirl Paints

We have this new property we bought to rent out. It's in a good part of the sometimes a little rundown in need of fixing up historic part of town, but it's a really nice little house. It has hardwood floors & crown molding, built in cabinets, 3 br 2 ba, a nice yard and garden. But the woman who lived there before was very sick and the place was trashed. It needs serious cleaning and probably has been 20 years since it's been painted.

So that's what I'm doing today and yesterday. Yesterday I got paint in my lovely curly hair so today I've got a dew rag on it. Add that to my oversize white t-shirt & very baggy green-khaki pants & I look like "a homegirl."

:) The handyman who is helping today when he first came in and I was listenin' to rap & looked like this was a little shocked and said "I never thought I'd see you like this." I said, what, "you didn't know I grew up on this side of the tracks?" I guess he just thinks of me at "the college professor" and doesn't realize I'm a girl from a trailer park in South La "cross the river." How things change.

Now I'm checkin' the credit on a possible tenant. It's kind of cool how fast one can do this. In fact, it's probably ready already. Back to the old paintfest.

Succumbing to the Masses

So, today, I popped in to Wally world and came out with the Tinkerbell shoes my daughter has been bugging me to buy her for the last two weeks. She would ask for them with the self-assurance that they were out there (in spite of me not finding them anywhere I had looked) as though she knew I just wasn't APPLYING myself, dammit. :) So ridiculously happy about that purchase, I also fell into a trap zone that I usually do not let myself fall into. What everybody is doing. Yes, here is my guilty lemming following: I bought one of the Stephanie Meyer teen vampire books--Twilight. I've been reading it; it's not too bad. I guess they're doing a movie on this, and I can see why girls (especially) are digging on it. I would have loved it when I was seventeen. A lot.

It's funny, too, (to me) that it takes place in an area that I lived for about four years (the Seattle area).

Anyways. I got stuff to do. But I wanted to blog that I am fine, babies are well again, I am mostly cured (still a little ick but not bad at all). The speech went fine last weekend (I know I haven't really blogged much about it. I don't really have much to say other than it went well.) I'm supposed to be sorting through the dozens of huge containers of baby toys and getting rid of stuff they don't play with. I don't wanna, though. I wish I could afford to pay someone to clean my house for me all the time. Dammit, why am I not a Hilton sister? :)

This book, the teen vamp thing, it qualifies as work. Really. Cause I might have to work it into my dissertation turned into first book. I need a new chapter, and something really current and really really popular would work very well. Anyways.

Maybe a nap. I love summer, but it is going too fast.

Vacay Over Sort Of

Well, this morning I was able to sleep in with the girl baby. Maia is a hard sleeper; Sean was up at 7 ish and dragged Daddy out with him. Then we all got in the pool for a while. In fact, Sean is still there now. So in a way, our vacation is still on for today. This is why, in spite of having been home since Thursday, I haven't blogged. I just don't feel like I'm really "home" at this point. I do have lots of lovely pictures, though. I'll load them to that feed thingy in a sec. But two for feature, one of Maia & one of Sean on the beach. They LOVED the beach, as I knew they would.

We didn't get to see as much of friends and family as we would have liked. Things are always harder once you're there-- Sean would not have ANY of staying at my mom's house and he was less than agreeable about a few of the other places we went, too. He is such a quiet boy that when he does choose to yelp, it's all the more unsettling and difficult to deal with. But we did have a wonderful time, for the most part. I'll try to provide a specific narrative later. But now, for some cute pictures.

I just love the moment of stillness on Maia's face in the first one. That little scar above her eye just adds character, I think. (It was a bathtub injury and is taking forever to disappear.... I hope it does).

And then there's Sean in action. You can see on his face that he is simply In Love. I myself love the beach in Florida. It's warm water, and green blue color, and the sand so white.... it's not as pretty in the same way as it was before the last few rough hurricanes, but it will be again one day after some time. For example-- I don't remember there ever being vines of morning glories all over the dunes back in the day but there were. Pretty white morning glories til about 1. Then they drooped in the heat. I meant to get a picture but we were always in transit when I saw them.

But now, the family calls again. More to come.....

Pleef!

Let me tell you that water sealing a huge kids' fort on a Monday afternoon is sucky. And sticky, too. In case you were wondering.

My eyelids are kinda sticking to my eyebrow area/ridge on account of trying to paint the "ceiling" area above my head. I'm gonna have to figure out a better way to do that.

And dammit, it's like, 90 degrees out there!! These kids owe me. Big time. :)

But in the meantime, a couple pictures of Saturday. We went downtown to the Farmer's Market by the Festival Square and they have this lovely public fountain thingy.

Florida Bound: T-minus 10 days!

For the weekend before the fourth of July, we are headed to my old homestate Florida. We had kicked around options of a vacation that way previously, since many of my family members, who haven't seen the babies in ages, still live there.

We found a way to combine business and pleasure, as Andrew will do a day of training nearby. So his work will pay for the gas, which is awesome with gas at 4 bucks a gallon and an 8 hour drive. I just pre-reserved a room for part of the stay at a lodging which is right on the beach there. It's not confirmed yet, because it's part of his military system privledges on base, but I am very happy that we've gotten that far. (He stayed on hold on the phone for like 20 minutes and then was disconnected while I researched the options.) It's also not quite on THIS beach. It will be a little different looking where we are, but pretty nice, nevertheless.

Oh, the babies will love it so much. We will get to see family, and the babies will play with cousins in the sand. I'll see my mom & 100 (101 this year) year old Grandmother. And, officially, we are now participating in the Redneck Riviera Quest. Usually, people from our area of the country use that part of Florida as their major vacay destination. I used to, as a teen, mock this sort of thing, and now I'm doing it. Hah!

















Here, though, is a picture of what we will be going towards. This is what I currently have as my desktop on my computer. I'll post real pix when we get there.

I totally can't wait. Last time I was really there for any beach time was when I went to my neice's high school graduation and got stuck there because my space a flight on Delta-ish was overbooked for several days. My sister & I rented one of those beach chairs with the umbrella (maybe not those exact ones, but close) and had a waitress bringing us Bushwackers all afternoon and a cute little lifeguard beach boy moving the umbrella to keep us shaded. Sigh. It was fab. It will be different this time, but still awesome.

Jah Heat

The closest I've ever been to Jamaica.*

Summer 1991, a beach bar in Florida. Dark weekend night, bodies pressed close together on the sand dance floor, bare feet buried deep for stability, braced slightly spread. Cool wet sand just under the sugary still warm white top sand. Dancing to a middle-aged white-guy cover band, who can flip from Jimmy Buffet to Bob Marley in one song. Drinking iced-down but toxic liquor--the bartender says "All the light alcohol mixed, with a splash of cranberry or coke" from a mason jar left to sweat on the graying picnic tables parked to one side of the dancing.

People are moving slow, that lazy sexual beat of Marley's tunes, bodies keeping just far enough away for public decency. Sweat trickles down the backs of knees, makes a cool spot down the leg, and the light from the bar catches glistening spots here, there-- a cheek, a thigh.

For me, there is a kind of peaceful strangeness, ironic clash, in dancing, getting a bit drunk on dancing and alcohol, to Marley's lyrics: "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds"-- "Exodus: movement of Jah people! Oh, yeah! Movement of Jah people! Send us another brother Moses!" Lyrics about Revolution, about Holy Retribution. About Jah, the great Messianic God of the Rastafarians. And yet, here we are, a mostly white, young crowd, some dancing in bikini tops with cut off shorts. Most have spent the day suntanning, some are making out on the dance floor. They are on vacation, and they are sin personified. And we don't really blame them.

Most people have no idea what the songs say. If you asked them, told them, they would be surprised that this party music, those pot smoking Rastas, were anything other than what they seem-- peaceful zoned out hippies. Would God mind our revelry, see it as pagan ignorance? I like to think not. He made wine at the wedding, hung out with the whores and thieves. He knew that often the sinners are the ones who most understand redemption.

It is a bliss of a sort... this wet heat, the wind blowing salty and slightly musty, tasting of seaweed and fish, off the slow waves of the gulf, the gulf which here luminesces emerald blue in the day against the snowy white, white beaches. We forget anything else but here. Now.

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*Inspired by this morning's CD selection in the car, and a wandering mind remembering those days.

Pledging

I had all these big dreams about what was going to be accomplished this summer. Write that novel that's floating around in my head, write a few articles for publications so I am a good academic, clean the house better, exercise & lose 20 pounds. Propose a book based on Women Writers.

So far, I've done a few things-- updated the Women Writers page, gotten a new poetry editor, gotten a bunch of apps for the fiction editor that need to be looked at. That was a big project, but overall, I feel like summer is slipping through my fingers and all I'm doing is a big fat nothing. Yes, I've written and submitted a few poems. But I have so many things that I just don't get done during the semester when I am teaching. Mostly, I need to learn to budget the small hours of the day that I have to be creative rather than being mom. I have from approx. 8-approx 3:30. Yes, during that time I still have to be mom, a lot. I have to grocery shop, pick up the mess a bit, etc.

But I'll admit, I am a bit lazy, too. I feel like I'm still decompressing from the years of being stressed and anxious about writing the dissertation and finally being done with that. I couldn't do it last year because we were so busy with Andrew's father's cancer & death. And last summer was filled with that traveling, and then the mourning. And still, all the daily mundane domestic tasks.

So anyway. I'm whining about it a little bit as a way to attempt to motivate myself, put it on public record that I need to start writing something every day. A little bit of the novel, a poem, the articles. Something so that I don't come to August and say "well, that was too fast and I did read a few good books but otherwise...."

So feel free to hold me to that.

Sick Day

I have a sick baby boy today. Well, actually, he was sick last night; he ran a fever of 102ish all afternoon and then last night. This morning, he's a little clingy/sweet but doesn't have a fever. I myself have a bit of a headache, so it's probable that whatever he has mommy has too in either a milder or its earlier form. So I kept both kids home from school/daycare. We didn't wake up 'til almost 9:00 (daddy left very early for work so we slept in).

So far, both kiddos have been pretty energetic, though. We went outside, weeded the garden, and now they're eating popsicles and watching Flushed Away. OOps. Well, I guess I need to go cause Sean just walked up and I can smell the fruits of his recent efforts. Mommy business calls.