Thursday Thirteen

Three reasons for this:

1. My husband told me it was about time I updated my blog.
2. I haven't done a Thursday Thirteen in a coon's age. (However old a coon is.)
3. I was wallowing in self-pity for a chunk of today so I kind of needed to choose to change my outlook. And so...

Thirteen Things That Were Just What I Needed Today

1. The warm sun on my legs as I drove home from work. I'm one of those odd people who will climb into a very warm car and not open the windows for at least 15 minutes so that I can be deliciously warm for awhile. It's so unusual for me to be warm I don't want to squander it.
2. This song. Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
3. Got my nails painted again today. This has become a wee bit of a tradition with a couple of girls at work. Sneaking out at lunch to treat ourselves to a manicure. (It will be a short-lived tradition due to my personality both with luxury and finances.) 
4. I nearly canceled the manicure. I was feeling so low I just didn't see myself wanting to chat with a stranger for an hour. But, I was blessed with an esthetician who basically chatted my ear off. I could ask her a question or two and she would go pretty much nonstop. Just what I needed.
5. An email from an old friend that made me chuckle. In the nearly 20 years I've known her I think there have probably been only a few conversations or emails where she hasn't made me laugh. It's nice having a friend like that.
6. Another friend who gets tears in her eyes pretty much any time I start to cry. It's nice having a friend like that too.
7. This song.  Without the bad, the good disappears / Take my burden away from me
   and bury it before it buries me.
8. Picking up Jack from daycare to see him laying face down on the sidewalk with his buddy. When I asked them what they were doing: "Mom! We're lying on the concrete! It's so much fun!"
9. Doing dishes while Jueun and Jack colored and Abby did homework behind me. The noises of life. Of home.
10. This for supper. Holy Hannah Banana it was SO GOOD. I mean, I should have known with words like "butter" and "whipping cream" and "parmesan cheese" and "fresh basil". Wow. I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
11. A daughter who runs upstairs to change when company shows up because what she was wearing "wasn't appropriate".
12. A short walk after supper to discover a large patch of flowers in someone's front yard. Oh spring, welcome back. I missed you.
13. Driving home with my kids and playing a song loud enough that I could feel it in my seat; singing the chorus at the top of our lungs.

the times they are a-changin

My grandmother made this memory/matching game. I have vivid memories of playing with her. She always lost and as a child I wasn't sure if she did it on purpose or if indeed my memory was better than hers.

I've played it many, many times in my life. More than I can count. I've taken a bit of pride in my memory. Just this past summer Abby and Mom and I would play it over and over again when Mom got too tired to do much besides play games. I won game after game after game. I remember saying to Mom that this was just a brief moment in time: A time when my memory is better than both my child's and my mother's.

We have the memory game now. We're playing it in various groupings of our little family. Just moments ago Jack tied my score. And yes, I WAS trying. (I'm not really one of those parents who "lets" her kids win.)

He's 4.5. I was not ready for that moment to come THIS soon.

Last night the boy announced to me that he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. A stop manager. Do you know what a stop manager is? Me neither. But I was curious... Turns out it's one of these:

But, alas, now he needs a whistle and a marching band. (his words) And, thankfully, he'll always let ME go, he'll never stop me. Ah the love.



patiently waiting

I remember years ago our family was babysitting the neighbour children. At first they were fine but then the point came when they got lonesome and so they sat by the picture window in the living room looking out, waiting for their parents. We could distract them for a moment or two but eventually they would make their way back to that window, staring out, willing them to come back to get them.

That's how I've been feeling these past few days. I can momentarily be distracted but mostly I'm just dreadfully lonesome. Maybe if I stare out the window long enough she'll (they'll) come back to pick me up.

he and she

He wants desperately to press the giant red button that is the emergency button for the whirlpool. Bribery and threats have to be involved to stop him.

She is worried that if he DOES press the giant red button we will be taken away to jail.

Thus it is, raising he and she.

2012 - year in review

All because of one of my favorite friends I get very introspective this time of year. The looking ahead. The wondering what the year will bring. The looking back over the year that was.

On January 30th they declared my mom cancer-free.
Towards the end of August they told her it was back.
On November 23rd she was gone.
Forever.

Certainly not my favorite year. I'm hoping 2013 is a better year.

Floating

A stranger’s laughter fills my childhood home.

The school where I fell in love with learning has been buried under the ground.

My childhood church has been moved and there remains an empty lot.

The fields where I wandered and the soil where I first learned to plant are completely unfamiliar to my children.

They will likely never experience the delight of climbing into a pigpen and nestling down with weanlings under a heatlamp.

One day someone told me that there’d been an accident and those eyebrows and that tender smirk got wrenched from my life forever.

One day I watched her walk towards the gates of heaven and that laughter and that beautiful voice will never grace my ears again.

I feel broken – never to be whole again.

Like an orb in space. Disconnected.

Lost from home.

Floating.

conversation

I'm working on the slide show for her funeral, choosing songs.

Abby: Mom, are you playing that one at the funeral?
ccap: Yes, Abby.
Abby: Are you going to cry?
ccap: Abby, I'm going to cry from now until the day I die.
Abby: Why?
ccap: Because my mom is gone.

I took this at her bird feeder shortly after she got to the gates.