Seven Days...

Last Sunday,November 10th, a little after 2:18 a.m., the Husbandly One breathed his last breath and was gone.  Just like that.

I was trying to give him a dose of medication to clear his airways, and had just asked him to open his mouth a little wider so I could get the oral syringe in.  His eyes flicked toward me, his lips moved and he whispered... something... and then he was gone.  I had stared at him, then stood up and said, "Oh," in shock.

Our friend, K, who was there helping me with the night watch, stood up and leaned over him to look, then looked at me, her eyes wide with shock, and she said, "Oh," the same exact way I had.

The next thing I knew, I was wrapped tightly in her arms, and I was roaring with grief as my knees threatened to buckle, because the worst thing ever had just happened to me, and I was trying not to leave with him.

Most of that night is a blur.  I remember staring at his face earlier in the night, thinking death was coming soon as I noticed how his skin was molding to his skull.  I remember staring at his face after the hospice folks had cleaned him up and dressed him, touching his face and crying at how small he was, how thin, how... cold.  I remember sitting on the couch in the dining room, holding E's dear, dear face in my hands as she told me she loved me.  I said, "I know you do, because you came here without your teeth."

I remember how kind the hospice people were, and the policeman who came in with extremely neatly threaded eyebrows.  I remember my sister holding me so tight and telling me how sorry she was, and my other sister on the phone, telling me how much she loved me.  I remember the guy from the funeral home, who sounded like Barry White.  And I remember looking out the back door at this extremely beautiful sunrise and being startled that so much time had already passed.

And now, it's been seven days.  Seven days since my husband died.  Seven days since I last looked into his face, wishing I could relieve his suffering, and knowing there was nothing I could do except respect his wishes.  He'd been unresponsive since Thursday morning.  His last clearly spoken words to me were, "I can't breathe."

And because he was in hospice care, and had a Do Not Resuscitate order, I called Hospice and not 911.  They helped me calm him down and get him breathing almost normally, but he was practically comatose after that.  If you asked him to blink to answer yes/no questions, he'd do it.  He'd smile, or smirk, or waggle his eyebrows, and he would hold your hand, squeeze it, and tug on it.

We held his hand around the clock.  Seriously.  We took it in shifts, there was always someone there to hold his hand when I needed to sleep, or to eat, go to the bathroom, go outside and cry... someone held his hand continuously.  If you didn't, he'd look for a hand, reaching out and trying to find one.

So we held his hand.

It's been seven days since I held his hand.  Seven days since I ran my fingers through his hair and talked to him.  Seven days since I lost the one person who got me and loved me anyway.  Seven days since I told him I loved him and he squeezed my hand back to say, "I love you, too."

Seven days of pretending to be a functional competent adult.  Seven nights of sleeping alone in my full-sized bed that suddenly seems way too big.  Seven days of pushing down panic and staying calm so my kids stay calm.  Seven days of not going through the stacks of mail and papers on my desk to find out what OTHER bills didn't get paid.

Seven days of missing my best friend, the person I tell everything first, seven days of wanting to tell THO something, or ask him something, or just wanting to see him, just because.

Seven days of missing his Facebook Messenger icon being constantly up on my phone, because we sent jokes, memes, or photos we'd just taken of something interesting to each other.

Seven days.  And I will never, ever be the same again.

Fuck.  Cancer.

It's Worst at Night...

Nighttime is the worst.  There are nights when I just can't sleep. 

I worry.  I worry a lot. 

I worry about my kids.  Granted, my oldest is an adult, and will soon be graduating with her BFA, possibly by next fall, and my youngest will be 18 in a month.  But I still worry. 

I worry about our finances.  I worry that we'll lose our insurance.  I worry that the Husbandly One will get worse, or he'll give up.  There are times, when he's asleep, that I will lay there and cry, dreading the inevitable.  I still have no clue how to deal with that.  He's 54.  I thought we'd be in our 80's or 90's before that became an issue.

But, unless some radical new miracle treatment comes along... I can't even think about it, even though I do.

I wonder, sometimes, if this ridiculous lingering illness I can't seem to shake off is really just extended broken heart syndrome.

During the day, we go along as always, trying to come up with enough energy between the two of us to get basic chores done.  Clean the kitchen, do the laundry, vacuum the house, hack back the bamboo that's trying to take over the back and front yards because the people who owned the house before us were idiots who really though they could keep the bamboo confined to one tiny spot in the yard.  We run errands, feed the cats, putter among the plants, watch the ducks, talk to the kids, you know, all the things you do during the course of the day.  And it's so much easier to push back the fear and anguish, the worry... I can focus on other things and do stuff.

But at night?  So much harder.  The house gets quiet.  I'm tired.  I lay down, turn out the light, wrap my arm around him and think, "He's thinner today." And then it starts.

It's so hard.  I lay there, my eyes burn, my face stretches as I force myself to breathe normally, fighting back tears as I think desperately, Please, please, don't take him away from me.  Don't take my husband, the love of my life, my best friend... don't take him away from me...

Sometimes, he just... knows, and he'll turn over, asking me if I'm okay. 

"I'm fine," I lie.  "Just... hurting a little, that's all."

No need to tell him that it's not my joints hurting.  Then we'd both be awake for the rest of the night.

Sometimes, I'm able to calm myself down and finally relax into sleep.

But some nights... some nights, I can't.  Some nights, I have to get up and go sit in the living room, or out on the back porch if the weather is nice.  Somewhere I can sit and cry my heart out, because... while I know the chemo is working NOW... I know that one day, hopefully years from now, but one day, he'll be done.  He'll have had enough, he'll be tired, and he'll say, "Enough."

Quality of life over quantity.

I can't even think about that right now.  It's really selfish of me, I know.  But I can't even bear to think about it.  The selfish, immature part of me wants to scream out, "DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!!"

The selfless mature part of me is yelling it, too.

I just... can't even think of sleeping in that bed without him in it.  I can't think of being in that room without him.  In this house.  This life.

On the 16th, we'll have been married for 28 years.  I'm hoping for 28 more, but you know what?  I'll take every damn second I can get.

Tonight is one of those sleepless, full of worry, terror, and grief nights.  My focus for the last two years has been so narrow, just... getting through, day by day. 

Seriously, I am barely coping with any of this.  And I hate that about myself.

Day by day.

Now, if I can just get through tonight...

Life Comes At You FAST...

I haven't posted in a while.  2016 was... not a good year for us. The Husbandly One's job took a really... stressful turn,  to the point where it started affecting his health.  By July, I knew something was wrong.  Convincing him to go to the doctor, though, was another thing.  I also started suggesting a job change, because I was convinced this job was going to kill him.  He was so angry, and he'd come home all tied up in knots, unable to eat, and he started losing weight.  Lots of weight.

Labor Day, we took a family trip to Rockport that we almost didn't go on, because the Impossible Son caught a stomach virus earlier in the week that sort of... stopped up the plumbing, if you get my drift. He got better, and the trip proceeded as planned.  However, right after we got there, it was quickly apparent THO had caught the virus and was miserable.  I suggested we go home, but he was determined to have a good time and not wasted the money he'd spent getting the hotel room, he was stressed out and he wanted some beach, dammit!

Yeah, it was a pretty miserable vacation for all of us, but most especially for THO.

By mid September, his boss just... did that one thing too far.  Normally, the metals company he worked for gave the employees two weeks off at Christmas, because that's a slow season for them. However, an announcement was made that they would only have Christmas Eve/Christmas Day off, and New Year's Eve/New Year's Day off.  Okay, well, as THO said, that was kind of disappointing, but standard for most retail businesses.  To cap it off, though, his boss also announced that, starting in the new year, they would be expected to work Saturdays.  And even some Sundays.  In other words, six to seven days a week.  Mandatory.

WTF?

That was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, and the Husbandly One tendered his resignation right then and there.  

I was so happy, because the week previous, he'd been in so much physical pain that I was terrified he was dying.  And I saw he was losing even more weight.

After he quit, though, he started feeling a lot better.  Which sort of supported my suspicion that stress had a lot to do with his issues.  We had fun, went exploring, paid the house and cars off, hung out with the kids.  It was a good time.  He looked at it as a sabbatical.  "Think I'll just take this time to fix what needs to be fixed around the house and yard, take little day trips, putter around, and relax.  Maybe we'll go all out decorating for Halloween and Christmas," he said with a grin.  "Then come January, I'll look for a more local job.  No more hour and a half daily commutes to Lakeway!"

Yep, I was totally cool with that.

This lasted until mid October.  He started losing even more weight.  He started having pain again.  Lower abdominal pain and anal pain.  We thought, irritable bowel?  I started trying to convince him to go to the doctor, but we weren't insured at the time.  The insurance he would have gotten through his company was extremely expensive... and absolutely useless.  And what we found through the Affordable Care Act in 2015 was... not great.  He was reluctant to go see our gastroenterologist, because I think he knew, he knew something was terribly wrong.

Finally, though, in November, it got to be too much.  He was in so much pain, he couldn't handle it and got... angry.  I put up with it, knowing from long experience that the more I insisted he go to the doctor, the more he'd resist.  I just had to wait him out on this.  Until I couldn't put up with it and exploded, pretty much letting him have it, because I was just so done with all the shilly-shallying.

He exploded right back, and after much tears and noise, he finally admitted maybe he should see the doctor.

No, I didn't do a victory dance.  I just called the damn doctor and set the appointment.

His weight loss was accelerating and terrifying me.  He was also suffering from restless leg syndrome, to the point where he was practically kicking me out of bed, and so uncomfortable that we couldn't sleep together.  I blew up an air mattress and set it up in our bedroom so we could at least be in the same room.  And we both, as a result, got more and more depressed and unhappy.  He started saying things like, "I know I'm not going to survive this.  I'm going to die," and "I have to make sure you and the kids are taken care of, I won't impoverish us by draining our money just so I can get treatment that isn't gonna work," and other cheerful pronouncements of that ilk.

Me?  I completely fell apart.  Literally and figuratively.  I spent hours walking around and bursting into tears at the drop of a hat.  He'd make a pronouncement of doom, I'd start weeping (I am not proud of this, by the way) because the utter thought of losing this man that I love so much was terrifying.  We expected to grow old together.  I knew one of us would go first, but I thought we'd be in our eighties, not our fifties.  I couldn't face the thought of a future without the Husbandly One, and ... I really, really didn't handle it well.

Throughout this, my oldest child, the Impertinent Daughter, was a rock.  She held us together, she made sure we all ate, she cooked dinners, did laundry, washed dishes, made sure her brother did his chores and his homework... and I'm sure wept herself to sleep every night.  

The Impossible Son, already having difficulties in school because of the stress the Husbandly One's condition since summer was causing, started failing his classes, but remained outwardly calm and cautiously optimistic.

So, we got in to see our gastro, Dr. K, who did a brief exam and listened to THO's symptoms (supplemented by me) and suspected ulcerative colitis.  He put THO on a low residue diet and scheduled him for a colonoscopy just before Thanksgiving.

Let me tell you something, keeping THO on that low residue diet took the resources of myself, the Impertinent Daughter and the Impossible Son.  But we did it, despite the whining and complaining.

He lost more weight.  And then... the day of the colonoscopy came.

We did the full prep.  It was supposed to clean him out.  

It didn't.

When we got to the hospital, THO was still having to run to the bathroom.  And when the procedure started... well, they had to go get a pediatric probe, because they... couldn't get in.  And when they did, Dr. K was very concerned.  

They took biopsies.

The Husbandly One had a stricture at the top of his rectum.  Two days later, we found out it was a tumor.  And a CT scan later, we found out it had metastasized to his liver.

The Husbandly One had cancer.

Part of me was... devastated.  The other half of me was relieved because this?  This I know how to deal with.  The unknown?  I can't handle. 

 Then it became an issue of trying to find an oncologist who would treat him.  Without insurance.

I convinced THO, however, to give the Affordable Care Act exchange, otherwise known as Obamacare, another try.    The oncologist Dr. K. had recommended us to rejected us, because of lack of insurance, and said they would refer us to Shivers Cancer Center in Austin, but wanted us to be aware that they would put us on a waiting list and would give priority to Travis County residents.

We don't live in Travis County.  We live in Caldwell County, just south of Travis.  There's not a lot of options for us in Caldwell County, and we also found out we could spend six months or more waiting just to be seen at Shivers.

The Husbandly One decided we should physically drive to the oncologist's office in San Marcos and talk to them, to be a physical presence and show we are real people, not just an abstract test result. He also explained to them that he fully planned to go on the exchange and look for a health plan, and asked plainly what A.C. A plans they accepted.  

Next thing we know, we've got an appointment to see the oncologist on January 3rd, and a list of plans to choose from, and something concrete to do.

Never underestimate the power of a face to face conversation.  No confrontation, just let them see who you are, and talk to them.

Things moved rather quickly after that.

His bloodwork showed he was extremely anemic, and his weight had gotten dangerously low.  In April, he'd weighed 150 lbs.  By December, he weighed 128 lbs.

Like I said, terrifying.

The first thing the oncologist wanted to do was give THO an iron infusion, to build up his hemoglobin and help him gain weight for treatment.  The second was to send him to a surgeon to have a port put in his chest, so that treatment could be administered intravenously through the port, rather than through his arm.  The plan was to do the infusion BEFORE the port was installed, but the moment the surgeon saw him, he wanted to do it ASAP.  

In the meantime, the Husbandly One was experiencing pain moving through his abdomen, which truly puzzled us, because he was experiencing near constant diarrhea (which wasn't helping on the weight issue at all).  He had the surgery for the port.  And afterwards, I was helping clean him up before getting dressed to leave, and as I wiped his bottom, he jolted and nearly hit the ceiling.  

We blamed it on tumor sensitivity.

Three days later, he's sitting in the bathtub, screaming in pain.  Literally.  Once again, I was done.  I picked up my phone, called the oncology center's on-call doctor, who said loud enough for THO to hear, "Go.  To.  The.  Emergency.  Room.  Now."

So we did.  The Impertinent Daughter drove and we got to Seton Hays in record time.  We checked in, he barely had time to sit down when we were called to the triage nurse, who took one look at his inability to sit or stand (he sort of hunched over the back of a chair) and had him in a wheelchair going to one of the treatment bays lickety split.  They tried to draw blood, realized he was dehydrated, and next thing we know, he's got two bags of saline hanging over him.  They whisk him off to do a CT scan, the ER doc stops me to tell me he doesn't have a mass in his abdomen, but he is concerned about the way the pain is moving and the fact that the Dilaudid they'd given him wasn't working to help his pain at all.

The Dilaudid was NOT working.  At.  All.

It turned out, however, that the Husbandly One was an over-achiever.  He had an anal abcess AND a kidney stone!!

One surgery for the abcess and three days of being in the hospital to pass the stone later, the Husbandly One's pain was practically gone and his hemoglobin levels were much better.

Things started to level out after that.  He still has pain, but Tylenol and Tramadol seem to work pretty well.  He's had three treatments so far, and the cancer markers in his blood have gone from 1800 to 370.  He hasn't gained any weight... but he hasn't lost any, either.  And now that he has a goal to focus on, things are easier.

I have hope that things will continue to improve.  

Almost, But Not Quite...

The day is coming, probably sooner than I would like, when my mother won’t know who I am.  

I’m braced for it.  I have promised myself that I won’t fall apart... at least, not in front of her.  I’ll wait until I’m out in the parking lot, and then I’ll probably cry until I’m calm again.

We stopped by the nursing home she’s in this evening on our way home to Central Texas, and when I greeted her, she sat up with a smile, happy to have visitors.  Even though at first, she had no idea who we were, just that we were family.

We all said hello, and I sat down next to her and took her hand after helping her get her glasses on, and I could see her staring at my face, trying to get some sense of recognition.  So I said, “Do you know who I am?”

She smiled and said, “Yes, I do.  You’re Carol... no, wait... you’re Jo.”

A lot of people who haven’t see us for a few years usually mistake me for my middle sister.  A few might mistake me for my oldest sister.  Carol and I share a lot of personality traits, and facial expressions, but she’s fair, blonde, and green-eyed, and I’m olive, auburn, and brown-eyed.  So it’s not that far out of the way that Mom would guess I’m Carol first.

Except she’s my mom, and in her normal state of mind, she’d never make that sort of mistake.

In her normal state of mind.

I hugged her and said, “Yes, I’m Jo!” and proceeded to chat with her, and have the kids sit with her and visit, but I could see that she had no real idea who I was.  Just... that I was family.  That I was one of her daughters.  But... she didn’t know me.

It wasn’t until we were leaving, and I had hugged her and said, “I love you, Mom.”

She said, “I love you, too.”  Then something seemed to spark in her mind and she stared at me intently.  “I love you,” she said as I stepped back to the curtain divider.  “I love you... like... a bush.. and ... and a.. pickle.  A peck.”

I felt tears sting my eyes, and I sang, “A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.”

She joined in.  “A hug around the neck, and a barrel in the heap.  A barrel in the heap and I’m talking in my sleep about you, about you...”

“Jo,” she said with a huge smile and recognition in her eyes.  “There you are.  There’s my baby.  That’s my girl, my little Jo.  My tomboy.”

I fought back tears and kept singing.  “I love you, a bushel and a peck, you bet your pretty neck I do.  Toodle oodle oodle, toodle oodle oodle, toodle oodle doodley doo!”

I hugged her again, and she whispered, “You’re my baby, and I’ll never forget my baby.”

“I know, Mom,” I whispered back.  “I love you.”

I left, and I had tears running down my face, but I held it together all the way home, until now.  

That day is coming, when even singing what my daughter used to call affectionately “The Grandma Song,” won’t fire off the right neurons in Mom’s mind.  I’m going to hate that day.  But... I think I’ll get through it.

It's a Southern Thing, Yo...

There are times when I am confronted by the differences between my husband's family and mine.

Most of the time, we tick along quite nicely.  After all, we'll have been married for 25 years this month, so obviously, things are working and we get along.  The Husbandly One and I are really good friends and most excellent partners in crime, and there are times when I'm honestly surprised to realize we haven't known each other all our lives.

What a horror for our parents if we had!!  No, seriously, we would have made the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter books look like rank amateurs!!  I am fairly certain that between the two of us, we would have figured out how to legitimately order a flame-thrower  and have it delivered to one of our homes by the time we were ten.  I'm just not sure which of us would have been the instigator and which would have been the gleeful follower, because I'm pretty sure it would have been an even draw.

Still, there are times when something happens and the huge differences in our families and the way we were brought up are unavoidable and stun us both.

Like the time lightning struck our house when we were living out in the boonies and knocked our phone out.  This was back in the mid-nineties, before cellphones were ubiquitous.  We were living way out in the country in Central Texas and my family was back in Houston, and his in Texarkana.  I kept asking THO to call my family from work to let them know we were okay and what had happened, and he would reply that he wasn't allowed to make long distance calls from work not related to his job, and that my folks would be fine and not worry. In retrospect, I should have written a letter, but it would have taken at least four days to get to my folks, and remember, back at that time, if you didn't have a phone, you didn't have internet because DIAL-UP.

I worried, because at that time, I spoke to my mother on the phone at least every other day.  I was a young mother with no close neighbors, alone in a house with a toddler, a large dog, and three cats.  The phone was my lifeline to sanity and grownups.

We also didn't expect for it to take almost two fucking weeks for Southwestern Bell, our telephone company at the time, to come out and take a look at our phone.  And that is another story for another time.  So, what was the huge difference between our families?

I am the youngest of three daughters in a Southern family.  In a Southern family, you may grow up, you may move away, but you always call your mom or your dad, and you will always be their kid.  They will let you go, but they will never stop worrying about you.  And if you don't check in with them on a regular basis, whether it's once a day, once a week, or once a month, they will come check on you.

So, one week after the phone went out, at 1 o'clock in the morning, we were awakened by someone banging on the front door of our house while someone shouted my and my husband's name, demanding we answer.

Our dog went nuts, and later, we realized he was barking with joy, not aggression, and our daughter was terrified.  The Husbandly One went to the door and opened it to find my dad and my nephew-in-law standing outside, my dad staring at us with a half-terrified expression, half fury.  One tearful phone call (with my nephew-in-law's dying cell phone, no less) with my mom later, we got the story from my dad.  After two days of not hearing from me, Mom started getting nervous and tried calling me.  Of course, our phone being dead, she couldn't get through, and an automated message gave them an error message.  Mom waited for us to call, and waited, and waited, and soon, she became convinced that something terrible had happened to us.  Unable to bear it any longer, she finally got Dad agitated enough to decide to drive all the way out where we lived to check on us, and take along NIL for support.

They were afraid they were either going to find us dead, or gone.

Dramatic, but not unexpected, considering my mom's vivid imagination, and I couldn't blame her one bit.

THO explained about lightning having struck our house and showed them the blown up tree next to the house, and our dead phone (we ended up having to replace both the phone and the answering machine), and my dad frowned at him and said, "Why didn't you call us from work?"

THO said, "We're not allowed to make non-work related long distance phone calls."

My dad frowned and said, "You could have explained that your phone was out, and you have family who would be worried about your well-being that you needed to contact.  Or you could have gone to any payphone and made a collect call to us, we would have accepted it.  Or you could have made that collect call from work."

As my dad explained all the ways my husband could have made an effort to contact my family and let them know we were okay, up to and including calling my nephew who was going to UT at the time and having him pass on the message, I was trying not to smirk because my dad was confirming all the arguments I had been making over the previous week about contacting my parents ASAP.

"What was that all about?" THO asked after my dad and nephew had gone.

"I'm a daughter," I said, and nodded at our toddler.  "One day, when she's grown up and off doing her own thing, you will completely understand why my dad had that panicked tone in his voice when he was banging on the door."

And yeah, he gets it now.

This past week, though, the difference has reared its head in a completely different way, though it is again, family related.

Last Monday, THO got a call that his mother was in the ICU of a San Antonio hospital, sent there for a blood pressure reading that was through the roof and blood oxygen levels that were almost impossibly low.  We drove out to check on her right after THO got home, and she was in terrible shape.

It's been a rough week for all of us, but most especially Ma, as the doctors struggled to get her blood pressure down to more acceptable levels, to get her sodium levels up, and to get her lungs clear enough to breathe so her blood oxygen levels would rise from the forties up to a more acceptable 98%.  It's still not quite there, but I'm thinking 90% is pretty damn good.

What has blown my mind in all of this is... there has been no diagnosis.  Nobody knows any details, (and this includes Mike's brother who has the medical power of attorney) of what the doctors think is going on, or what could possibly be wrong, or even of what tests they are doing.  Nothing beyond the medications to bring her blood pressure down, something to calm her down, something to help her sleep, and breathing treatments twice a day to open her lungs up so she can breathe.

This absolutely floors me.

I am tempted to sic my sisters on this, because seriously, if this had been my mother?  All three of us would know every single detail, from who exactly the doctors were, to what they were thinking and the results of every single test they had run, and what tests they were thinking of doing in the future.  We would have gone through Ma's apartment to find out every detail of what she'd been eating, how much she'd been eating if at all, what medications and supplements she'd been taking, and how much candy or sweet things she'd been eating, just in case.  We'd be taking shifts staying with her at the hospital so we could be on hand when a doctor showed up to check on her, to ask questions, and find out what was on the agenda for the day.  We'd know her nurses, what they had planned, what she was allowed to eat outside what was being served in her meals so we could tempt her with something that might encourage her to eat.  We'd have a notebook where we'd be keeping track of her blood pressure readings to coincide with what the nurses were getting, and we'd also put our heads together to remember what meds she could take, which ones she'd had reactions to, and which ones we knew she could tolerate and what she couldn't.  Because we're Southern and that's what we do.

How do I know this?  Because that's what we're doing with our own mother, who broke her hip a few weeks ago, spent time in a rehab hospital, and is now in a nursing home, because she has Alzheimer's and my eldest sister was killing herself trying to be her live in caretaker.

I simply cannot comprehend not wanting to find out this information.  I can't understand having my mother in the hospital and not wanting to know what is going on, where are the doctor's going with this, what... it's driving my husband crazy that his siblings are just being so... complacent  about this, because apparently, my Southernness has infected him.  It's stressing him considerably, because he wants to know and they can tell him nothing.  I've held my peace about this all damn week, because I didn't want to make it worse, but last night, I think he was kind of relieved when I finally blew up about it.  At least he knew he wasn't alone in feeling that way any more.

For all that my husband was raised in Texas, his parents (and his older siblings) are from Connecticut and New York, and they still have that mentality, I guess. It's just... one of those differences that makes me throw up my hands and want to rip off their arms and beat them over the heads with it.  I just... don't get it.  I really, really don't.

Because there's no way to really prepare...

I somehow never envisioned this day.

Well, I did, but far off in some misty, distant future, nebulous and untouchable in the land of Someday.  Because in my mind's eye, last week, my daughter was two and lurching around the living room with a very large dog and three attendant cats, chocolate smeared around her mouth from the chocolate chip cookie she was hanging onto with fierce determination as she headed for her goal; the front door.

Three days ago, she was pushing her baby brother in a giant Tonka truck across the kitchen floor while he squealed with glee, making "Vroom! Vroom!" noises while the Triplicats scattered out of the way.

Two days ago, she was waving impatiently at me to leave as I hovered outside her first grade classroom, her brother in a backpack on my back, hoping she was going to be okay, and that she would make friends.

Yesterday, she was playing in her first soccer game, stunning us both as she displayed a determination and ferocity that has gotten her through every hurdle that has been placed in her way.  I still remember having to hold onto the Husbandly One when a kid who seemed like a veritable giant loomed over her and looked like he was going to plonk a massive fist on top of her head and crush her as he stole the ball from her.  She looked up at him, sniffed derisively, then plowed him over as she took the ball back, and passed it to one of the forwards, who immediately took it and made a goal.  She then turned to face the boy and flounced past him to show how beneath her contempt he was and ignored him for the rest of the game.

It was very demoralizing for him.

Last night, I hugged my seventeen year old daughter for the last time, and this morning, I hugged my eighteen year old daughter for the first time.

The night the Impertinent Daughter was born was one of the most... ridiculous and yet wonderful nights of my life.  My water broke three fourths of the way through an episode of the X-Files, an episode I still to this day have never seen through to the end, and then we were rushing to the hospital, feeling woefully unprepared.  I mean, we decided on her name on the way to the hospital!!  Seriously!!

I had a C-section, because she was a breech baby, and I remember when I heard that first cry thinking, "Oh, my God... what have I done?  What have I done??  I can't be a mother!!  I'm too immature!! I'm not stable enough!  I'm gonna fuck her up, and she'll be lying on a couch by the time she's 25, spilling her guts to a therapist about her whacko mom and how she totally fucked her up and... and... I CAN'T DO THIS!!"

Meanwhile, they were cleaning her up, and the Husbandly One was looking at her and cutting the cord and all that, and then they laid her in my arms, wrapped up like a little burrito.  I looked into her tired little scrunched up face, her centuries old eyes looking up into mine, and felt my breath catch.  She wriggled a tiny hand free of the burrito wrap, then reached up to touch my face, stroking my chin, and suddenly, I was calm.

I could do this.

We could do this.  We would grow and learn together, and we could totally do this.

And now, here we are, eighteen years later.  She's got a driver's license.  She'll be graduating from high school in a few weeks.  And there's a part of me that's screaming, "No, no, I can't do this!  I can't let go of my little girl, my baby, my firstborn, I can't let her go out into the wild, crazy world, because she's not ready!  I'M not ready!!"

Today, she hugged me, and touched my face, and I thought, "Maybe... maybe I can do this."

Nah, not really, but you know... I'll give it a really good try.

Happy Birthday, Impertinent Daughter.  You have given the roller coaster of my life some really wild twists and turns, some of them utterly terrifying, but I hung on and I've enjoyed the ride.  And I can't wait to see where it'll take us next!!

That moment when you realize you helped raise the next generation of the village...

It all started because the Impossible Son said, "One of my friends is pansexual."

I blinked, because this was a definite non-sequiter not related to the conversation we were having, but I'm well used to this sort of thing because... that's just the way my kids' brains work.  And I admit it, I'm kind of that way, too.  So, I said, "Really?  What makes you say that?"

"Well..." he hedged.

"Do you know what it means?" I asked while keeping my eyes on the road, because I had just picked him up from school and wanted to not, you know, run off the road into a ditch.

"Yeah," he said, "it means you'll basically have sex with anything that stands still long enough."

Wow, I thought, and knew I had to nip that one in the bud.  "Nope, not even close," I said firmly.

"But... that's what my friends said it meant," he protested.

"Yeah, well, they don't know what it means, either," I said dryly.  "Being pansexual means you're attracted to a person, not their gender.  Gender doesn't matter to you, it's the person themselves that attracts you."

"Oh," he said thoughtfully, then he frowned at me.  "Then... why didn't my friends know that?"

I shrugged.  "Because a lot of folks don't even bother to learn what those things mean."

"I thought that was being heterosexual..."

"No," I said, wondering how the hell he'd gotten so mixed up about this, "being heterosexual means being attracted to someone of the opposite sex.  And," I said before he could ask, "being homosexual means being attracted to someone of the same sex as you.   And being bisexual means being attracted to either sex."

We kept chatting until we got home, and I think I cleared it up for him, but wow...

I shouldn't be too surprised, though, that he's mixed up.  Last year, the 6th grade assistant principal told my son he needed to keep some friction burns he had on his hands covered with bandaging, not because it was hygienic, or would keep them clean, but... because he could pick up AIDS from the surfaces of the desks in the classrooms and the tables in the cafeteria.

*watches the collective jaw drop*

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too.

So, going by that shining example, along with the fact that what passes for sex education in the schools in our small town is of the abstinence variety, it's no big surprise that my son's friends have no clue whatsoever what any of those terms mean.

No.  Really.

There is a disturbingly high rate of teen pregnancy in our little town.  My son is in 7th grade.  There's already a girl in his class that is expecting.  A girl at the Impertinent Daughter's high school went into labor on the first day of school.

I have news for all those parents who keep saying that they don't want comprehensive sex education taught in the schools because it might give their kids ideas and make them want to have sex.  Your kids have gone way past having ideas and they're already doing it.  Not knowing anything about it hasn't stopped them.  They're doing it, and they're getting pregnant, and getting STDs because you're too stupid to give them the tools they need to prevent it.  You're preventing them from knowing enough about it to make an informed decision, and you know what?  It's been proven that kids who take comprehensive sex education classes tend to delay having sex longer than kids who don't.

Anyhow, moving on, later in the evening, I was discussing this with the Husbandly One and the Impertinent Daughter, and she said, "You know, Mom, I'm not surprised at all, because my friends used to pop out with stuff like that all the time.  I'd come ask you about it and you would explain it to me and then I'd go back to school and explain it to my friends.  I mean, I knew they were wrong, but sometimes, I didn't know why, or I didn't know how to explain it.  So I'd go to you, you'd explain it, and then I'd go and explain it to them!"

That sort of boggled me and I laughed and said, "Wow, kiddo, you make it sound like I'm responsible for providing all your friends with sex education."

The Impertinent Daughter snorted as she headed to her room and said, "Duh, Mom, haven't you noticed?  None of my friends are pregnant!!"

Holy cow, she's right.  None of her little circle of female friends are pregnant, and none of the girlfriends of her male friends are pregnant.

That... is pretty stunning.  And you know, all I have done is say things like, "It's easier to prevent a baby than to raise one," and "don't depend on the girl to provide contraception unless you're prepared to be a father," and, "if he doesn't love you enough to wear a condom, then he doesn't love you and he's not worth your time," and "No is a complete sentence all on its own.  No.  Period.  End of story,"and "You have a perfect right to refuse to engage in sex if you're not ready, but it doesn't hurt to develop a good left hook, too."

It's not that hard.  You start when they're old enough to start asking questions.  You tailor it to their age, but you answer their questions.  You don't tell them the stork brings babies or that you go shopping at the hospital.  You tell them it takes two people to make a baby, and the process that goes into it.  You tell them about the changes it makes to a woman's body, and what it takes to grow one, and how it comes out.  And... you tell them what it takes to raise a baby.  Money, time, and patience.  A stable job, a good home, a willingness to love, nurture, teach, lose many, many, many nights of sleep, to sometimes go hungry so your child can eat, to forgo new shoes so your kid can have new shoes, or a band instrument, or piano lessons, or whatever they need.

You talk to them about relationships and what it takes to build them.  What it takes to build a good solid friendship with their buddies, then apply that to a relationship with a girl/boyfriend, a spouse, a lover... you talk about what it takes to learn to live with a completely different person than they're used to living with, sharing books, records, a car, a house, money, or a dog, and you talk about how it all changes when you bring a child into it.

You talk to them about responsibility and respect, for themselves, for others, and you talk to them about how to treat other people.  How to recognize when someone genuinely cares and when they just want to get into someone's pants.  You teach them how to put a condom on themselves, or on someone else.  You teach them about other forms of birth control and how to talk about it with another person.  You teach them about drinking responsibly, about knowing the people they're with and making sure they have a designated sober person in their group.  That they have a signal to let their friends know when they're leaving a party/bar/social scene willingly and when they're in trouble.  That they should have someone they check in with regularly when they go on dates, so that if they miss a check-in, their friend will know something is wrong and will react appropriately.

Doesn't everyone do this?  If not, they should.

Growing, Growing, Too Much Growing!

I cannot keep up with my son's rate of growth.

He's twelve years old, and already looks like a teenager, all arms, legs, and lankiness.  Yesterday morning, while getting ready for school, he came to me and said, "Mom, I'm out of socks."

"Look in your drawer," I said while finishing up lunches, "I know there were four pair in there two days ago."

"There are no socks in my drawer, Mom, I looked!" he insisted.

Grumbling to myself, I went to check and sure enough, lots of underwear, no socks.  So, I headed for my bedroom and the Sock Basket.

In case you're wondering, the Sock Basket is a small laundry basket where we toss all the socks with missing partners.  Sometimes, the missing socks turn up buried in the furniture, hidden under the bookcases or, even more surprisingly, on the shelves of the bookcases.  I have found socks where you expect, jammed into shoes or hidden under beds or the kitchen table.  And I have found socks where you don't expect, like... in a box of music CDs, or on top of the XBox.  And I've found them where you shouldn't expect to, like... between the pages of a book?  Really???  Stuffed into one of the drawers of the china cabinet?   Seriously, guys?? What possible reason would any of you have for stuffing your dirty smelly socks in there???

It's moments like those that I realize my children are strange, strange people.  But I love them anyway.

So, I went to the sock basket, figuring I could at least give the Impossible Son a mis-matched pair of socks, which seems to be all the rage among the teenagers of our small town anyway.  No, really.  They buy pairs of wildly colored or striped or spotted or patterned socks and deliberately mix them up, and wear the resulting mis-matched pairs.  I was dubious at first because, hey, grownup here, raised by parents who kept all our clothes strictly matched and handed down ironclad rules of dressing: 

1.  "No plaids and stripes shall be worn at the same time!!"

2.  "White shoes shall not be worn before Memorial Day nor after Labor Day, unless you are in the Navy and serving in Florida or the Tropics, and you, Young Lady, are not in the Navy!"

3.  "Sandals will not be worn before May, nor after September, I don't care if it's December 25th and it's 90 degrees F and we live in Texas.  It's just Not Done."

4.  "All socks shall be matched and be the same color, and they shall be a color the same as or complimentary to the outfit you are wearing.  And if no matching socks are clean, you shall wear sandals, unless it's before May or after September, in which case, you are Out Of Luck."

However, I got over it, and have seen the mismatched sock thing as a good way to empty out the Sock Basket.  So getting into the spirit of it, I found a mismatched pair for the Impossible Son and handed them over.

Ten seconds later, "Mom... they're too small."

"What do you mean?  We just got you those socks."  

I looked down.  Now, these are what my kids call "footie" socks.  They're the short little socks that barely show over the top of your sneakers, and my son is particularly fond of them.  The sock should come up over the top of his foot and up the back of his heel.  But it doesn't.  It doesn't come up over his heel.  It's too short.

Jaw dropping, I grab another pair of large socks and hand them over.  These are supposed to come up to the ankle.  Except... they don't come up over his heel, either.  So... I grabbed a pair of the Husbandly One's socks, a mismatched pair as well, and they fit.  Kind of.

"How does Papa stand these?" the Impossible Son asks conversationally as he tilts his feet side to side, peering at them dubiously.

"He loves them," I said, putting the other socks back in the basket.  "He says they're very comfortable."

"They're kind of tight around the top," and I look down and sure enough, I see red lines pressing into his skin where the socks end.

I stare at him.  "Honey," I said slowly, "I can't give you any of my socks, because my feet are much smaller than yours.  And I can't give you any of your sister's socks, because her feet are smaller than mine!"

"I know," he said miserably.  "I'll... just wear these."

I had just bought my son socks.  And he had outgrown them in less than two weeks. 

*pauses to hyperventilate*

You know, I thought I was prepared for this.  I thought, because I've already been through the teenaged thing with the Impertinent Daughter, that I at least had an idea of what to expect.  And it sank in.

This... is going to be totally different.  Teenaged boys have a completely different growth rate than girls.  I knew this intellectually, of course.  But I was basically being slapped upside the head with it.  

When the Impertinent Daughter started her growth spurts, she outgrew a brand new pair of shoes in less than an hour.  They had fit just fine in the store, had plenty of wiggle room, and were comfortable.  We put the shoes back in the box, took them to the cash register, bought them, and went home.  She took the shoes out of the box, put them on, took three steps and cried out, "They're too tight!!"

Understand, she's still wearing the same socks she'd worn to try the shoes on.

I knelt in front of her, just like I had in the store, and felt her feet in the shoes, and it felt like her feet were about to burst out of them.  Literally.  I made her take them off and put her old shoes back on.  

She couldn't get them on.

I thought maybe her feet had swollen for... whatever reason feet swell, so I said, "Hey, run around barefoot for now, we'll try them again in the morning."

She couldn't get them on in the morning.

When we went back to the store, her feet had grown a whole size bigger!

So... I thought, when it came to the Impossible Son, hey, I can handle it!

Riiiiiiight.

He's grown nearly four and a half inches since last May.  Which doesn't sound like much, until I tell you that three of them were just in the last two and a half weeks!!  And his hands are now officially bigger than mine, which I know isn't saying much because I have small hands.  His feet are huge right now (think Sora from Kingdom Hearts), and I know that means he's going to grow again, to fit those big feet.

He's going to be taller than me.

I knew that.  I expect that, but it was always in the distant future, when he would be sixteen, seventeen... not now.  Not... like... by next summer, when he'll be thirteen.

Holy Mackinoly... he's going to be thirteen.

*hyperventilates*

He's my youngest child, and all of a sudden, time's passage is rushing by me as I watch his jaw lengthen, his chin lose it's pointy-ness, his face taking on a more adult aspect, and my baby is receding further and further into the past.  I no longer see the cheerful toddler, or the bouncy kid with the big grin, I see the adult that is to come, and whoa!

Then he catches a toad and brings it to show me. And goes flying awkwardly after it when it hops out of his hands.

Yep.  The kid is still there.  And I can still smoke his butt at Smash Brothers.

Hey, it's the little things...

The Clothesline Blues

You know, I have a totally new appreciation for now much work my mom did for twenty three years when it came to laundry. You see, my mom didn't have a clothes dryer until 1971. Up until that time, she hung our clothes to dry on a clothesline. All of them. This includes sheets, blankets, and bedspreads, too.

Let me tell you something, that's hard work.

The reason I have this new appreciation is because our clothes dryer is on the fritz. Well, actually, the dryer runs just fine, it just doesn't heat. So the clothes take forever to dry. I suspect an issue with the igniter or something (it's a gas dryer). Therefore, I've started hanging our clothes out on a clothesline in the backyard. And it takes all day.

It's hot and dry in Central Texas, which is a good thing for drying clothes, but not so good when it comes to having to be out in it. But I have remembered little things my mom used to do, like... turning all the pants and shorts inside out so the pockets get dry. Then I remembered that I should basically turn everything inside out to reduce fading from the sun.

I remember dancing through the sheets when I was a kid, loving the way the cool fabric felt against my hot skin, and Mom fussing at me about getting sweat, or dirt on her clean sheets.

I completely understand why she wasn't happy when I got dirt on the sheets. Because it meant she had to do it all again.

I also remember her snapping the clothes sharply as she removed them from the line, to get lint and pollen off, before folding them and putting them in the basket. My son said, "Why don't you just dump them in the basket and fold them inside?"

"Because I don't want to drag them inside, and then fold them and then put them away. I'd rather fold it now, so it doesn't have a chance to get more wrinkled before I put them away," I said.

"What's wrong with them being wrinkled?" he asked with a frown.

"If they're wrinkled," I said, turning to look at him, "then I have to iron them. And believe me, I do not want to iron the clothes. Not if I don't have to."

"What do you mean, iron them?" he asked. "Why don't you just throw them in the dryer to get the wrinkles out?"

*insert hysterical laughter HERE*

Mom would do laundry one day, washing, and hanging stuff out to dry, folding it and bringing it back in. Then the next day... she'd iron everything Shirts, dresses, Dad's boxer shorts and handkerchiefs, his undershirts, her dresses, shirts, and pants, my sisters' clothes, my clothes... AND... all the bed sheets and pillow cases, as well as any curtains she might have washed.

EVERYTHING got ironed.

And yes, she taught me to iron, too. And you know what? I hate it, every bit as much as she did. And I really, really, really don't want to do it now. My family can sleep on wrinkled sheets, I really don't care. I'm not embarrassed about wrinkled sheets, and I'm also not worried about germs in the bedclothes, so... I see no need to iron them.

My mom, though... she ironed. She folded and put away. She hung clothes. She baked from scratch. She sewed all my sisters' and my clothes. And you know, I had no clue. I had no clue how much work she was doing. I knew she worked and worked hard. But I had no appreciation for it, for what she did, and how much drudgery was involved.

Because it is. It's drudgery. It's never-ending, because no matter how much of it you do, it is never done. As soon as you finish up one load of clothing, there's more waiting to be done. People like to talk so nostalgically about how happy the fifties were, and how women knew their place and were so happy doing it and wouldn't it be great to go back to the fifties??

HELL, NO!!

I do not find satisfaction in housework. I don't feel complete because I just did three loads of laundry and put it all away for people who don't seem to appreciate it and end up throwing most of it, still clean, mind you, on the floor. I don't find joy in washing dishes, nor do I hum with satisfaction as I dust the shelves, or sweep the floor. I don't enjoy endless, repetitive tasks. I don't know very many people who do, male or female. So no, I don't think the fifties were so great, and I bet if you ask a lot of the women who had spent the forties working as Rosie the Riveter if they enjoyed giving that up and spending their time doing grunt work at home, being good little homemakers and baby raisers, you'd probably hear a lukewarm, "I did the best I could with what I had."

I should know. I've asked. There's a reason feminism went big in the early sixties.

And I have to tell you, if that dryer doesn't get fixed soon, my "Feminine Mystique" will be a mystery to my family no longer, and I will be declaring my independence and maybe even burning my bra in the backyard. By the clothesline.

Because, seriously, this BITES!!!

Because random is the word of the day...

I was watching my kids the other day, walking out the back gate on their way to a pick-up game of soccer out by the high school and the Husbandly One said, "Wow, the Impossible Son is almost as tall as the Impertinent Daughter."

And wow, he was right. The Impossible Son is definitely catching up to his sister. It's a surprise, because he's always been so small, so tiny compared to the other kids in his class. Watching him play soccer all these years has had us alternately elated and terrified. Elated because he's really good, he's extremely fast, and his small size is a definite advantage when it comes to maneuvering on the field. Terrified because his small size means he gets knocked around, and especially lately, the other players seem like giants next to him. Especially when he's in the goal box.

He's growing like a weed. All of a sudden, his arms and legs are too long, and his hands and feet are too big. He's outgrowing clothes and shoes at the drop of a hat. He's eating everything in the house and groceries run out way too fast. And even though my husband and I are both small (he's 5'6" and I'm 5'3"), I'm wondering if the tall genes in my mom's family are activating, and Mr. Impossible is going to be taller than both of us?

I remember when my nephew suddenly started shooting up in height, and the day he realized that he was taller than me. It was Thanksgiving and we were in the kitchen. He was handing me a fork when he suddenly froze and grabbed my hand, staring at it. "Aunt Jo," he said, his eyes wide. "Your hands are so... tiny!!" Then he stared at me in shock and said, "You're tiny!!"

I laughed and said, "What brought all this on?"

And he said, "You've always seemed so... big to me! I mean... you're... Aunt Jo!!"

I have sudden visions of my son going through the same thing. I wonder if he'll have that same moment of staring at me and realizing he's taller than me and have his whole reality shift because of it. I'm waiting for my own shock when he's tall enough that we're able to stand eye to eye.

I"m still reeling from being able to do that with my daughter.

Part of me isn't ready for any of this. Somewhere in my mind, both of my kids are still small, still hanging on to the leg of my jeans with a determined little fist, still chirping away in their little voices and asking questions that I still have answers for. Then I look at them now and see... that they aren't so small any more.

They still chatter away, and they still ask me questions. Some of them I have answers for, and some of them, we have to go look it up. I'm just glad the dialog is still open, to tell you the truth.

As I watched them walking out the gate together, though, I found myself glad that they're growing together, and as they get older, they still find things they can do together. That through all the squabbling and fussing, they're still friends. I just hope that when he's taller than her, he doesn't forget she's still in range of his stomach!

Because sometimes, you never know what they're going to say next...

So, we're having a late birthday party for the Impertinent Daughter. The twelve and under crowd is mostly in the living room playing on the XBox, the teenagers are in the dining room playing Scattergories Categories, and the adults are on the back porch, sitting around a table, drinking beer, chatting, and enjoying the evening.

Suddenly, Super-Goalie comes charging outside and says, "How do you spell intercourse? Is it with an I or an E?"

We all blink, and then one of the dads leans forward and says, in a deep, sonorous voice, "R-U-B-B-E-R!!"

*dies laughing*

I love my friends!!

The State of Me...

Okay, so... let's see... I went to see an orthopedic specialist two weeks ago about my knee. Verdict, yes, I banged it up good and proper, I also have osteo-arthritis in my right knee (not unexpected, considering the way I've injured it in the past), and... at some point will need intervention. I'm too young and active for knee replacement, he could do surgery to clean out all the crunch stuff in there, but it would come back eventually (also true), or there's an injection he could give me after the inflammation and irritation calms down in my knee called "Synvisc One" that would basically replace the fluid that lubricates and cushions the joints in my knee. He's had good results with that one, and it turns out that the mom of one of Mr. Impossible's team mates has had it and said, "OMG, Auntie... get it. It's wonderful. I can move, I can walk, and it doesn't hurt!!"

You know... I was doing pretty well there for a long time. I mean, I was able to run and play with my kids, and while stairs were tricky at times, mostly, things with Rice Crispy Knee were good. Until now.

So for the time being, Dr. S. gave me a steroid injection in Rice Crispy Knee to calm down the inflammation and help with the pain, and advised me to stay off of it as much as possible, no stairs, no bending it, no kneeling, no lifting, etc., and to use a crutch when I needed to walk around.

Okay, cool, I can do that, and I promise, I've been very, very good. Very good. Except, I haven't told my mom about it because... really, she would freak for no good reason, and right now, I just can't see the point of upsetting her. Really. Besides, I really, really don't want to hear the "Marching Band Ruined Your Health, And So Did Drum Corps, If You'd Only Stayed In Swimming And If You'd Only Gone to Bellaire High School, You'd Be So Much Better Off" lecture again. I got a five year break from that one, but now that her memory isn't so dependable, she doesn't remember us settling that one so... it's being recycled. Yay.

Last week, the Impertinent Daughter turned... sixteen.

*incipient freak-out*

Have I mentioned how awesome my daughter is? May the 4th is her birthday, it's Star Wars Day, and "The Avengers" came out in the theaters. TRIPLE BONUS!!! So... we took her to San Marcos for dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant, where the Impossible Son got this in his fortune cookie...

If you can't read it, it says, "About time I got out of that cookie!"

After that, we went to the theater where I'd pre-ordered tickets and got in line. And hey, I just have to say, I really like this "ordering movie tickets online" thing, because the show was sold out!! It was awesome!! Yes, yes, I know, welcome to the 21st century, Jo.

I learned a valuable lesson that day, too. The Impertinent Daughter is absolutely NEVER allowed to ever, ever, EVER drink Mountain Dew again. As far as she's concerned, it's a controlled substance. OMG... one of her friends gave her a can for her birthday, and she was feeling tired when she got home from school. She wanted to stay awake for the movie, she said, so she decided to drink the Mountain Dew with her snack. This is around 4:30 p.m.

Holy Mackinoly, y'all, that child was wired for sound!! I mean, seriously, she talked nonstop (except when she was eating, and even then it was a close thing) from 4:35 until 1 a.m.!!!! EVEN DURING THE MOVIE.

I would shush her so I could hear the dialogue, and I'll say this for her, unless her enthusiasm got away from her, she mostly kept her voice really soft and quiet, which had irritations of it's own, because I couldn't hear her well enough to understand her!! And she tried valiently to be quiet in the car on the way home after, but... chatter chatter chatter!!! At least it mostly made sense!!

"The Avengers" was ... awesome by the way!!! Just... oh, yeah, gonna go see that again just so we can catch what we missed the first time!!!

The Impossible Son had a soccer game Saturday, and didn't play like himself at all. By Saturday evening, he had a fever of 103 F (39.4 C). That was fun. Turned out to be a virus that's blasting its way through town. The Impertinent Daughter fell victim to it Sunday night, but her temperature didn't get as high as the Impossible One's did, thank goodness. Mr. Impossible missed Monday, and Miss Priss should be back at school tomorrow.

After her doctor's appointment tomorrow, I shall retire to the couch with pillows to prop up Rice Crispy Knee with an ice pack and not do one damn thing until the kids get home from school!!!

The one about my mom...

You know, there comes a point in your life when you realize your parents are not immortal. Something happens, a heart attack, an accident, something that makes you realize your parents aren't bulletproof and that they are not always going to just be there. That there is going to come a point in your life that one or both of them will be gone and you'll never hear that voice again, or see those eyes watching you with amusement and love...

I faced that moment a long, long time ago.

When my dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer twelve years ago, it was scary, but I somehow knew he would survive it and live past the six month diagnosis he was given. And he did. He lived eight years longer than the doctors expected.

But I also knew when the end was coming, when he was having to go back again and again to have his esophagus dilated so he could swallow. And when they said the cancer was back, I knew he wasn't going to beat it this time.

I accepted it.

Then Hurricane Ike hit Texas and knocked out power to most of Houston, where they lived, and greatly accelerated the process. He was gone by November.

So, my mom, being a survivor, managed another year in the house she and my father had lived in for sixty some odd years, before frailty and fear made it impossible for her to live by herself. My oldest sister bought a house, and now she and Mom live together. And over the last few years, Mom has gotten thinner, has gotten smaller, and has gotten a little more vague.

My mother... is not immortal. She is very human. I accept that. And it seems over the last weeks, I've been getting more and more reminders of that fact.

She has Alzheimer's.

She has mild emphysema.

And this week, she had a mini-stroke.

She's back to her normal self now. Well, as normal as she gets these days, that is. And it's not easy, watching and hearing about it from a distance. I want to be there, but... I need to be here more. I need to be with my kids. They need me to be here with them, because to them, I'm still the Invincible Mom.

Over the last year, I've had this growing sense of Mom drifting farther and farther away from me, like I'm standing on shore, and she's standing on a boat. There will come a point where we won't be able to touch fingertips any more, and I dread that day. I dread the day when my own Invincible Mom drifts beyond my reach, when her stories and family history are gone.

I know it's coming. It may not be soon, but it's coming. I don't have to like it... but I do have to accept it.

And that's the hardest part of all.

"It was just my imagination, running away with me...."

So, after the Impossible Son's soccer practice, it was decided to head to our favorite local Tex-Mex restaurant, Mr. Taco. We were in the mood for fajitas, or at least the Husbandly One, the Impertinent Daughter, and I were. We have discovered that Mr. Taco's "fajitas for two" plate feeds the three of us nicely. The Impossible Son had his usual chicken strips, no gravy.

We forgot that Thursdays are live mariachi band night.

Did I mention there are all hard surfaces at Mr. Taco, with nothing to absorb sound?

o_O

Anyhow, yeah, it was loud, but the food was worth it! Once we'd eaten ourselves to a lull, the Impertinent One begged a pen off me, grabbed a clean napkin, and immediately began to sketch the mariachi band members, then took it to them before fleeing back to our table.

They passed it around among themselves, looking at it intently, then marched over to our table and serenaded her with "Just My Imagination," and a Spanish/English version of "I Just Called To Say I Love You."

Her smile was incandescent, and she giggled almost the entire time, hiding her face every once in a while, but mostly beaming at them with delight. I rubbed her back from time to time when it looked like she was getting overwhelmed, but mostly? She absolutely loved it!

I think she was also chuffed that two of the mariachi singers actually fought over who would get to sing to her! And if you've never seen a violinist and a trumpet player arguing over who is gonna sing to the pretty girl, then you have no idea what you missed!

I think she's just beginning to have an inkling of the doors her art can open for her. This is going to be an interesting journey to watch!

LIFE. It Happens.

Can I just... step off the roller coaster for a few minutes? Kinda feeling dizzy... just a bit.

Let's see, we're having to replace the central air/central heating unit in our house because (1) it has reached the age where there are no spare parts available any longer and (2) even if there were spare parts available, it wouldn't be safe to fix.

*sigh*

Yeah, that was fun. The guy who came to repair it works for the company who installed it in the first place some twenty years ago, and after first telling me what needed fixing and how much it would cost, then telling me the parts that needed fixing needed to be replaced, then telling me they don't make those parts any more, I got to deal with the blustering, Good Ol' Boy owner of said company. Mr. Good Ol' Boy took one look at me and decided that I was the type that could be easily manipulated into what he wanted me to do, and proceeded to try to intimidate me into agreeing with him that his company should be the ones to do the work.

Y'all know that went over like a lead balloon, right?

Funny how Mr. Blow Hard and his tech went all through the closet where the CA/CH unit is housed, with Mr. Blow Hard taking measurements and loudly telling his tech that they'd have to rip out the wall, and probably part of the floor to put in a new coil, and he would recommend a contractor to rebuild the wall after they were done replacing the unit, blah, blah, blah, and it never occurred to him that I was texting the Husbandly One basically a blow by blow account of what was going on while I sat quietly at the kitchen table with the laptop. Mostly, Mr. Blow Hard shouted out a series of arcane numbers that I'm guessing were supposed to be measurements of some kind, or maybe it was just supposed to impress me with how technical he was...

When he finally "presented" me with his "findings," I said politely, "Well, I'll discuss this with my husband, and we'll let you know what we decide."

He frowned, then smiled indulgently and looked at his tech, nodding as he said, "Oh, right. You'll discuss this with your husband." He snickered. "You mean, you'll ask him what to do and then do what he tells you."

Yeah, that pretty much made me see red, but I just raised an eyebrow and said, "No, I mean I'll discuss it with my husband. We're partners. Neither one of us makes big money decisions on our own. We talk it out, go over the pros and cons, and go from there. Sometimes he has the final say, sometimes I have the final say, but either way, it gets discussed, we do research, and decide how big a hit our budget can take, because it affects both of us. So when I say we'll discuss it and let you know, that's precisely what I mean. You have a problem with that?"

"Well, if you go with us, you won't have to pay the service fee for this visit," Mr. Blow Hard said, still trying to work the intimidation factor. "But if you go with someone else, I'll have to send you a bill for $85."

"That's fine," I said with a sweet smile. "We'll let you know."

"You should decide soon, because we might be booked up," he said as he headed for the door.

"We'll take that chance," I said firmly. "Bye now."

Yeah, that was fun.

We called a couple of companies, but decided on one recommended to us by the Tall Blonde. What settled it was (1) he got back to us and (2) he didn't just look at the main unit. He also went up into the attic to check the ducts and connections, and went under the house to check the coil and the drains. He was very patient with my questions, and also cleared up a mystery that's been driving us crazy for some time now.

Every time the A/C or the heat came on, I'd smell this... faint burning odor that made the back of my throat burn, and would sometimes set my asthma off. We had the unit checked several times because of this, but there was never anything we could find to explain it.

Then Mr. A/C guy takes a look at the duct work and peers up at the top of our unit and goes, "Huh."

Yeah, that's not a good sound, either.

Seems that when Mr. Blow Hard's company installed the unit, they used a type of duct work that has since been banned in our country because it's... well, basically a piece of crap. And when all the new ductwork was installed, they left this original duct work in place where the unit connects to it all. Basically, what happens to the crap duct is that it dries out and starts cracking, then dry rots and gets blown about in the system. That's what I've been smelling every time the unit comes on.

Mr. A/C said, "What I don't understand is why they left it there. Because even if the new duct wouldn't fit, there's a way to work around it and adapt it, so... why leave the old stuff? It's not safe!"

Well, judging by the crap unit Mr. Blow Hard wanted us to buy, I'd say it was done to cut corners. After all, how many homeowners actually look up into their attic to see what they've got up there? And how many of those that do would know what to look for or what they're even looking at?

We're fortunate that the weather has been mild, though the first three or four nights after we lost our heat were tough, because it got down in the thirties. Thank goodness for lots of blankets!! This house holds on to the cold like you wouldn't believe, and I've had to open the windows during the day just so I can feel my fingers!!

The Impertinent Daughter's team survived a three day soccer tournament over last weekend, and so did we! Again, in San Marcos at the fields where the Impossible Son and I froze our katooshies off. And, yes, it was cold, but not as cold as last year! Friday night, they were in first place, but by Saturday afternoon, because of the bizarre point system the folks who were running the tournament were using, the JV found themselves playing for third.

I'm still not sure where we placed, because every person I've asked have said something different. Personally, I think they placed pi.

Hey, it makes about as much sense as that point system!!

And the Impossible Son has started soccer practice for the rec league this week, which is going to be frustrating, I can tell already. Why? Because once again, there weren't enough coaches for the record FIVE U12 teams that were formed this season, so they basically started grabbing any warm body. And one of the warm bodies is the woman who is coaching my son's team.

I have nothing against her. She's a good person, I've known her since the Impertinent Daughter started playing soccer, and now her daughter and mine are playing JV for the high school. It's cool. However... she's never coached soccer before in her life and has no idea where to start. The good news is, she knows this, and has enlisted the help of several girls on the high school team, as well as any parents who have any sort of know how, or is willing to help out. This can work, I've seen it work before.

I've also seen it go to hell in a handbasket.

So... I'm hoping and keeping my fingers crossed that things will go well. However, the Husbandly One and I have decided this will be Mr. Impossible's last season playing here. If he plays rec league next fall, it will be in San Marcos.

And that is the State of Jo so far. Woo.

Stupid elves...

... at least they didn't wait until we'd gone to sleep to wake us up all over again.

Still, do you have any idea how terrifying it is to be bent over, digging in a drawer to look for those gift bags from last Christmas because nobody can remember where the stockings are, and feel a hard, knobby, bony finger poke you in the side while a voice that sounds like a chain smoking six year old says, "Santa's running late, we got hung up in Poughkeepsie, and then there was a block party going on in Tulsa with search lights... Santa's way behind schedule, and you've got balls to blow up, here's the pump!"

I thought my heart was going to jump out of my mouth!!

I think the only reason that elf isn't dead, dead, dead is because (1) no gifts for the kids EVER, and (2) the Husbandly One wouldn't let me clock him with the lamp. He really likes that lamp. THO, that is.

So... yeah, it's 2:21 a.m., and we're done putting out the presents under the little artificial tree THO and I had the first year we were married. Yes, we still have it, and it looks so cute and completely dwarfed by presents! And I'm sure in the morning, I'll feel more charitable toward the elves, but right now? Not so much.

It was easier when the kids were smaller. Santa did the bulk of the present lay-out, and we just filled out the corners with the presents we'd gotten them. But since the kids have gotten older, it seems Santa is more and more pressed for time.

I'm beginning to wonder, though.

Anyhow, Happy Holidays to all my friends! Hopefully, you're getting more sleep than I am!!

"It was a Butler... in Pain... in a Trunk... in Cement..."

I'm fresh from a game of In A Pickle, and oh, boy, my sides ache from laughing!!

The Husbandly One and I love playing games of In A Pickle with the kids, because not only do we get into hilariously silly word strings, but... our kids learn to think on their feet, they learn to use their skills of persuasion and argument, and they learn to think creatively while justifying their choices.

It's a win-win, because while THO and I are demonstrating the skills we want our kids to learn, we're also getting a glimpse into the way they think. And, disturbingly enough, they're getting a glimpse into how we think!

So, while we started with a cheeseburger eating moose in a bedroom, the Impossible Son added that it was all in fear, and he had to justify that all of that would fit in a fear, and we had a lively (and somewhat hysterical) discussion about irrational fears, and THO wasn't quite convinced that fear of a cheeseburger eating moose was the same as the fear of being watched by a duck. However, the Impertinent Daughter chimed in that she was sure there were many Americans who were afraid of having a moose in their bedroom, and that she, herself, would be very disturbed by a moose in her bedroom, and if it were eating cheeseburgers, that would definitely cause mental scarring for life.

I had pretty much laid my head down on the table at this point, in helpless tears of laughter.

So, once Mr. Impossible, with the help of his sister, had won his case, I decided that all of this was in the mind of a girl, and I got the pickle.

We've had a great deal of fun with this game, probably more than we're supposed to, because with our geeky brains, we probably get a whole hell of a lot more mileage out of the words than most people would. Come on, seriously, how many people would look at the words, "Venus Fly Trap," in their hand and think, "OMG, I know just how to use this!!" and go on a word string that has a Reflection of a Venus Fly Trap in a Mirror on a Submarine in a Parade? Or starts cackling with glee when they see, "Nun," and end up with Ants in a Nun in a Marriage (we didn't say she was a good nun) in a Warehouse in Paris?

Whenever someone goes a little too weird or too far, the rest of us make that game show buzzer noise, "EEEHHHHHH!!!" and "No, no, no, sorry, can't have a blimp in a cat, even if the cat is as big as a house, or a toilet in an elephant, because even if an elephant is bigger than a toilet, how would it get in there? An elephant is big, but has a small mouth!"

I won't even go into the arguments to justify how a toilet can get into an elephant!!

Of course, as the game goes on, we all get more desperate to not lose a turn, and it just gets crazier and wilder until we're all laughing so hard that we can't breathe, and I just ... can't help but find it so awesome that we can all do this, that we all get to do this together. To be as nerdy and silly and just plain goofy and... life is good.

Yeah. Life is good.

Hee!

The Impossible Son just came running into the room with a large Nerf gun in his hands. "This is a hold up," he shouted.

I blinked at him.

"Now... hold something up!!" he said, aiming his Nerf gun at me.

I grabbed my cup and held it aloft, my eyes wide.

"Okay, you're safe," he said, and departed.

Life in my house = never a dull moment!

Sick Days...

It's not often that we're all sick as a family together. And so far, this bug has hit only three of us, meaning myself, the Impertinent Daughter, and the Impossible Son. So, we're all feverish and headachy and stuffy together.

And we've all kept ourselves occupied, to a point. I made popcorn, and we watched Spiderman 2 together, though originally, we were going to watch the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie but the DVD is lost somewhere in the depths of the Impossible Son's room and... none of us have the energy to go digging for it.

We're all sort of out of it, but the kids would have occasional bursts of energy, and this is what happened during one of them. The Impossible Son loaded his Nerf gun...

...took aim, and...

Pow!

Pow!

Pow!

He is most fortunate that (1)she loves him very much and (2)she didn't have the energy to get revenge!

Fortunately, that burst of energy quickly wore off, and now, they are doing this...

and this...

Ahhhh, thank you Nintendo and Shonen Jump magazine!!

Notice, also, that the Impossible Son is being supervised by Calcifer. Way to go, Cal, keep the chaos under control!

*wanders off to take more Motrin*