That Which Makes Me Smile

~Coming home from work to see that my work buddy has shoveled out and salted my parking space for me.

~The Cactus writes haiku.

~Seventeen pound dogs that slip and slide on the back patio. (Actually, this makes me laugh out loud.)

~Hot Chocolate.

~A friend you can call, who reassures your sense of reason, when the entire world seems to have gone stark raving mad.

~This.

~Being safe and cozy inside when you can hear ice pelting the window outside.

~The New York Times crossword.

~Little girls who are overjoyed to escape school early and big boys who are able to take a nap before his 5th straight night of work.

~Stripey scarves.

~The defrost function on Lucy (as I am entirely too short to scrape the accumulated ice from the center of the windshield).

~The promise of Spring.

Things I Learned This Weekend - The Bubbles & Co. Edition

A) I took a bath for the first time in 3 or 4 years last night. Turns out, they're making bathtubs smaller these days.

(Or maybe I'm bigger....)

(Edit: Actually, I just thought about it and I'm NOT bigger - American bathtubs are waaaaaaaay smaller than Japanese tubs. You can have a party in a Japanese tub! Go ahead, let your mind wander... I'll wait.)

2) If you concentrate really hard, you can finish a book, even while in the midst of a divorce. I spent most of the weekend in my super-clean, super-quiet, super-cozy house, reading with Mackenzie and actually finished my first book since last fall.

C) Only during an evening with great friends (Bubbles and the Big Sexy) will you end up sitting on the kitchen floor talking and drinking wine while waiting for dinner to finish cooking.

D) I'm not too old to fall in love again. This baby girl demanded (and received) my heart this weekend:


...While sitting on the kitchen floor, she hugged me spontaneously and without bribe - her head down on my shoulder, her chubby baby-hand patting my back. And she did it more than once. My uterus still feels the pangs.

Double D) Turns out Mackenzie likes babies after all. And this baby adored her. Behold....



(PS - Her hair is weird because it was Wacky Hair Day at school.)

E) Even if you spend 8 hours talking non-stop with a sister-girlfriend on Friday, you can still carry on a 90 minute conversation on the phone on Sunday (while she drinks wine with a twist-cap and I hide from my kids in the basement).

Weekend At Brandi's

The weekend started out a bit sad. I was surprised by a sneak-attack of some emotions I wasn't expecting to have and the delivery of some legal documents from the county clerk. I was sad and lonely and frustrated; remorseful, guilty, embarrassed, and after work on Friday, I came home and crawled into bed and slept for 2 hours before I had to pull myself together to go get Mackenzie from school. We ended up putting on our jammies at 5:30 and losing ourselves in some movies all night long, munching on popcorn and candy.

Saturday was slow. Reading the paper, cleaning a bit, talking on the phone with friends and family, then we went to Jeff and Singing-Lisa's for dinner. But not before taking a much overdue Saturday Self-Portrait (which is better in small format because what is actually in focus in this photo is the bookcase behind me...duh)(on the bright side, the 'soft-focus' hides my wrinkles!):


And as we don't care too much about the Superbowl (I know - I'm an embarrassment to Indiana) we went to the mall today so D could spend his Christmas and Birthday money that's been burning a hole in his pocket and I needed to snag a couple of work-suitable, on-sale items as my closet is full of stay-at-home-mom jeans, t's and sweatshirts - all super-comfy but unfortunately, very inappropriate for the workplace.

And to prove to everyone that Mac and I are going to be fine:

(To get the full effect, you should hum Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" while viewing this photo.)

Divorce in Pictures

Question: What do you cook for the last dinner before you are divorced?
Answer: Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas...

...And if you marry me, and then we procceed to argue for most of the next 16 years, I will probably ask you for a divorce, but I will send you off with Oatmeal Raisin Cookies for the airplane:

Making fun of Me (otherwise known as "bonding" around here):

Last minute warning that someday I'm going to teach her about masturbation. ...Really? This is Last Minute Info?:

The making of the cookies:

Baking wouldn't be nearly as fun without a little "Rent":

Even the kitchen can't contain her when singing Broadway show tunes:

Full Belly:

Lunch for D tomorrow at school. I wrote on these containers and then was so tickled with myself that I went to get my camera and while I was focusing on the food, he snuck up behind me and busted me So Bad. We laughed ourselves silly while considering him pulling these out in the cafeteria later:

For Annie. Proof I am ok - The first thing I cleaned was the pantry (Hello, OCD - Welcome Back!):

The Lowdown

Things are be-boppin' along here (how do you spell be-boppin'?).

We have Good Days and Bad, mostly Good lately. Truthfully, I think we're all Bad Dayed out and simply exhausted. Getting divorced will make you skinny and wear your ass out; it will make you lose sleep and make that nervous-shortness-of-breath-issue you had last fall reappear. Ironically though, I haven't had a migraine in almost 6 weeks. My walk-in closet is twice as big, and now I have full-custody of the Big Dresser (for the past 16 years, I've gotten the Small Dresser on the grounds that my clothes are smaller - and perhaps the fact that I had less...).

Last weekend, I escaped the house alone (I KNOW! without Mac - who woulda thunk?) and spent it with Scientist-Lisa and Dr. Tim, talking, eating, drinking margaritas and martinis, playing Whack-a-Mole and Pokemon with Emma, marveling at the young lady that Kirsten has become, and petting Steve the Cat. It was an amazing retreat and I am so grateful for having such special friends. But I didn't take a single photo. You'll have to deal.

Speaking of photos, here are the updated photos of Dillon's face:


Marshmallow Fluff mask.


Scabby.


...and he's fine.


And... I cleaned out this bookcase in preparation for putting the house on the market. You didn't see it before, but it was double booked and stuffed tight. (Ha - get it? 'Double-booked.') Five boxes of books came out of here:


After T is gone later this week, the house will undergo a cleaning/organizing like you've never seen before. I'm a little excited about that. His clutter was in no small part a major factor in our insurmountable issues.

*Also, please notice the new email for Cartwheels At Midnight. Cartwheels@mac.com is now defunct as we had to separate out our .Mac account this week. (There's a lot of separating shared crap involved in divorce. I'm so glad my lazy ass didn't realize this earlier...)

The Times, They Are A'Changin'

Well.

It seems that the time has come for me to let you all know what's been going on. There are some things that you can't decide if they should be published on the internet for all to see, or if you should just let word-of-mouth take over. But then I realized that if I was counting on word-of-mouth, then Brenda in Portland and Sarah in England probably wouldn't hear, and Emily would wonder why I never showed up in Southern California. And then it occured to me that some of my future posts wouldn't make much sense if I didn't include this post as a new chapter in Cartwheels At Midnight:

So.

Tater and I are divorcing and and going our separate ways, him to San Diego and the kids and I to Indiana. I'll stay here in the house until Dillon graduates in June and Mac finishes her 6th grade year, then we'll move in with my parents (AGAIN), who are undeniably the Best and Most Patient Parents Ever, until I can get a job and get back on my feet. D will start college there with the intention to transfer to an art school the following year, and Mac will head to Middle School and be my #1 Roomie.

I don't really have anything else to say about this - it is what it is, and is for the best.

*****
(7:39pm - I just re-read this and it looks a little sad (I was going for straight-forward). I want you to know that it is mutual and amicable - we are actually getting along better than we have in years. There is no fighting and there are no lawyers. We are using an arbitrator and have reached a settlement. Please don't worry about me - this is a road we've been traveling down for many years and it's the right thing to do.)

On The Mend

He's better today - the burns aren't quite so weepy and his skin cells aren't dying at an alarming rate anymore. We can't remember the name of the cream they gave him in the ER (silver-something), so we're calling it Magic Cream around here. He smears it all over his face until it looks like he lost to a jar of marshmallow fluff, and it works like.... yup, you guessed it - MAGIC!

He's still in a lot of pain, but will go to school tomorrow anyway, after taking the maximum dose of Tylenol. Yay!

Thanks for all the well-wishes, positivity and prayers. Hugs all around!

Sad, Sad Boy

He feels not so great. At the hospital they had to debride the burns, which made me just a little queasy to watch. Besides cleaning the wounds, there wasn't much they could do, but gave him some Tylenol-3 and cream to keep on the burns. My task is to 'keep an eye' on him. They wanted to see him back in 2-3 days and then made an appointment for next Tuesday morning (I don't know either.). Until it starts to heal, they won't know if it will scar, and keeping the burns clean so they don't get infected is key. So if you're the prayin' kind, send an anti-bacterial prayer our way...

The Boys Are At the ER

Update 11am Wednesday- These photos don't do it justice. His arm is blistered now - his neck just looks sunburnt. His hair, eyelashes and eyebrows are all singed - thank God for his glasses. We have an appointment at 1:30 this afternoon at the hospital. I'll let you know how it went after. Thanks for the prayers and well-wishes.

Dillon came home from work an hour ago with a flash-burn on his face. He was standing over an engine when a cleaning chemical ignited and burned his face with 2nd degree burns. The on-call physician sent us to the ER.

Any positivity you can offer right now would be welcome.

Hiatus

Hi Everyone.

I've missed Dillon's 18th birthday (Dec 30) but have the post written, I'll scan & add the photos soon - but I have some stuff going down here. I'll be back as soon as I can to fill you all in.

Thank you for still being here.

xoxoxoxoP

Reading List 2007

• True Betrayals ~Nora Roberts
• While I Was Gone ~Sue Miller
• Children of the Flames: Dr. Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz ~Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel
• Sarah's Window ~Janice Graham
• The Stones of Mourning Creek ~Diane Les Becquets
• Back When We Were Grown Ups ~Anne Tyler
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius ~Dave Eggers
  
• Gods and Generals ~Jeff Shaara
  
• Corelli's Mandolin ~Louis de Bernieres
• Water for Elephants ~Sara Gruen
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ~J. K. Rowling
• Cranberry Queen ~Kathleen DeMarco
• The Dive From Clausen's Pier ~Ann Packer

(And a few others that are hopelessly lost in a year I'd like to forget...)

I'm OK!

When my niece, Isabella, was a toddler and used to fall down all the time, she would jump right up, and yell as loud as she could, "I'm OK!"

And it cracked us up. Every single time.

I've been sick as a dog* since last Wednesday, but I'll be back tomorrow. I felt better today but had to spend it catching up with all the errands and jobs that I've been putting off all week long while lying on the sofa. So now I'm exhausted.

*Which I don't understand, because I have a dog and he never ever has a sore throat and stuffed-up sinuses.

On Breaking the Rules

When she got in the car, she looked at me with despair and said, "I got a 'Think Sheet' today." I didn't know what a "Think Sheet" was, but the horror in her eyes led me to believe that it wasn't a Good Thing.

"What happened?"

"I was Bad."

And so the story goes: She didn't feel good at lunch so she didn't want anything to eat. But she did have some gum in her pocket, so she chewed on that but spit it out before returning to class. Where the real trouble began was that she shared it with her friends, Trouble & Sporty, neither of whom spit hers out before returning to class and then got busted faster than you can say, "Bad idea." While up collecting their "Think Sheets" from Ms. K, one of them told on Mac who then was awarded her very own "Think Sheet" to facilitate the pondering of the error of her ways. She was upset that she got in trouble, but more upset that one of her friends snitched on her before she had the chance to fess up herself.

So, in my true Alternative Parenting Style, I took a deep breath, pursed my lips, looked at her, and said, "Well, if the rule is that there is no gum in school, then you shouldn't take gum to school. But as far as this little infraction goes... I don't really care."

And she got a little teary and looked at me with relief in her eyes, and I continued, "It's not like you were stealing. Or vandalizing the school. Or cheating. None of those things are ok. But chewing gum? It's not a big deal."

"But what if the teacher wants to talk with you about it?"

"Well, I doubt she will, but if she does, I'll tell her that I understand you broke a rule, but I just really don't care."

And she started to laugh. And she was ok until about 30 minutes later:

"Mom, remember that time in 4th grade when we got in trouble for talking during class?"

"Yes."

"Well, they said then, that if we ever got in trouble again, it would go on our Permanent Record."

And my mouth dropped open, and I paused a moment to let the enormity of the situation sink in before I asked, "Mackenzie. Do you know what that means?"

And her eyes got wide with fear, "No. What?"

"Absolutely nothing. Your teacher totally made that up." And we both started cracking up. And she felt better. She filled out her "Think Sheet," turned it in the next day, and life as we know it has continued on, even though Mac had gum at lunch.

Brandi's Gift Guide

You know how hard it is to buy the man in your life a present? You should get him this.

Christmas Flamingos

Really, bottom line, I haven't had much to say. I've had a lot on my mind, making the Blogging thing seem a little banal (which, let's face it, it is). But I have saved up a few tidbits to share with everyone in Internetland:

A) I have a weird v-configuration between my bottom teeth which allows for the teeniest, tiniest tastebud on the tip of my tongue to get caught between them. Then I pull. It hurts like a MoFo. Then it's all swollen, making it that much more likely to happen again. And again. And again. It's starting to make me cranky.

2) This is the paper tag that came off Mac's skein of green eyelash yarn:



I do not understand how ANYONE at that company could fail to realize that their yarn-holder-togetherer looks like an erect penis.

C) I finally broke down and gave Dog a bath on Saturday. He was about 3 weeks past odiferous.

Dog before bath:

"You can't see me..."

Dog after bath:



D) Our Christmas tree is up in the living room, but this is what makes me terrifically happy:



And lastly) This one counts as a twofer. It's my "Self-Portrait Saturday," combined with a photo of the super-soft scarf that I knitted myself: