Group Hugs and Barely Controlled Chaos

Today is a bittersweet day as it was my last day to read to the preschoolers before they are out of school. We read Green Eggs and Ham, Five Little Monkeys, and (my mom will be so proud) Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

The kids were literally all over the place. (I had one trying to climb in my lap, one little boy poking a little girl in the leg with his index finger, and one girl trying to show me--repeatedly--her new Disney Princess watch. It was pretty much chaos. Nothing controlled about it, but it was also wonderful to get the expected giant group hug and the chanted "Thank you, miss!"

It's going to be a loooong summer, I'm afraid.

A Belated Mother's Day Homage

I needed a blank notecard a few weeks ago. I don't remember exactly why but there was some occasion that necessitated a blank space to write a quick "thank you" or a "hope you are well". So off I went to the shelf of random useful stuff. In addition to a small sewing kit and a silver plated ice bucket (Hey, you never know when you might have a champagne chilling emergency!), it contains a box of random cards. I have Hallmark cards I've bought without a specific use just because they made me laugh. I have a whole slew of animal-themed cards. (You know, one of those packs of twenty-five cards that have a few birthday cards with pictures of zoo animals, a few get well soons with a picture of a particularly mournful turtle and ones with blank insides. They are exceedingly cheesy, but have saved my bacon on more than one occasion when I hadn't planned well enough in advance for a birthday.) While rummaging in the deep, dark recesses of the box, I pulled out a ziplock baggie with a few cards of the 3x5 variety. Inside the bag was a note from my maternal grandmother--just a simple greeting in her distinctive handwriting--telling me that she found these cards with drawings of cats on them and decided to send them to me. (I am a great lover of cats, whether of the live or decorative variety, which anyone who knows me well can attest.) It was almost as if I'd stumbled upon a tiny little time machine--a way back to an era when my grandma was alive and well and sending me little gifts for no reason at all. You see, my grandma passed away in April of 2003 from a recurrance of breast cancer. I miss her dearly still.

Oh sure, I don't think about her every day, but certain items or events will bring her back to me with a startling clarity--a certain phrase of music, the scent of the perfume Shalimar, a piece of her jewelry, or even handwriting that resembles hers. It's then that I miss her with an almost physical pain, this petite dynamo, this fierce proponent of her (intelligent and multi-talented) children and grandchildren, this volunteer deluxe. I had a brief moment, sitting with the the note in my hand and the plastic sack full of cat cards in my lap, where I wondered if it really was a message from her. If she had somehow sent me on a course toward it, knowing that I'd find a welcoming presence there. I don't claim to know the intricacies of the universe, but I do know that the whole thing left me in a warm, sweet, blissful state, so I guess it doesn't matter one way or another exactly how I arrived there.

I was reminded of this serendipity on Mother's Day. This is a day, of course, where we think about and honor our mothers and grandmothers, but it is also a day that brings with it some pretty heavy baggage for an infertile person. It is one of those days when it is glaringly obvious that you don't have a descendent to call your own. That someday, when your own mother is gone (God forbid), there won't be a reason to celebrate at all and no one to celebrate you. The whole event has a tendency to take on a none too maudlin aspect so it was good this year to spend time with each of our mothers as well as to remember all four of our grandmothers, who have passed on before us. And I was able to think of the children in our lives (niece, nephews, and those children of friends who call us "aunt" and "uncle") and while I may not be related to them by blood, I am fairly sure that I am (and will continue to be) a positive, welcome influence in their lives. I can only hope that someday, in the far, far future, that one of them might find a distantly written note of mine and think of me fondly and wish I were still around.

R.I.P. Pete

Sorry for the blog blackout the last week or so. I didn't really have much to say at the end of last week and then had a busy weekend making the rounds of our mothers' houses to celebrate Mother's Day. Monday and Tuesday brought the workload slam and then on Wednesday we had some tragedy with one of our dogs and yesterday I was pretty much out of commission mentally. (I am still planning on doing a much belated Mother's Day post but it will have to be at a later date. Stay tuned.)

I won't go into any of the gory details but we came home on Wednesday after work to one of our neighbors waiting in our driveway. She explained that Pete had been injured and that another neighbor had taken him to the vet. We were, as you might imagine, stunned and went inside to listen to the messages from the police (who had been called out to our house because of Pete) and the vet's office. (The one from the vet's office really irritated the bejeezus out of me because it was basically, call us back asap so we can start emergency treatment. Hello! This is the home number on a Wednesday, WE'RE AT WORK AND WON'T BE HOME UNTIL AFTER 6.) By the time we got home, the vet's office was closed. We tried the emergency pager number but couldn't get anyone to call us back (don't EVEN get me started on this) so we spent the evening and much of a sleepless night with images of our neighbor's description of the situation bouncing around in our heads, bumping up against the worry about the possibilities about the reality of the situation. We had a discussion about what our next step should be and decided that based on our understanding of the severity of his injuries, we would probably have to make the call to have him euthanized. When I say "we" I really mean TLS, because he truly is The Doer of Dirty Deeds around our house. I think I'm fairly good to have around in a crisis, but when the actual crisis is past (as it was from the very first minute we arrived), I am a blubbering wreck. I went off to work yesterday morning leaving TLS as the official decision maker. (Thank God that he had to make the phone call to the vet and not me, because as I said earlier: me=blubbering wreck.) Needless to say, euthanization was the right, but difficult, call. Afterward, TLS brought him home and buried him under the huge sycamore tree in our front yard next to our first cat, Boo. He has his own stone marker and is hopefully enjoying his time racing over the rainbow bridge and barking at motorcyclists to his heart's content.

Rest in peace, Pete. We will miss you.

Bats in the Belfry? No, Birds in the Fireplace.

When we bought our house we inherited an Earth Stove, which is basically a self-contained fireplace insert. It has a front door with yellow glass panels and is kinda cool since you can have a fire and not worry about sparks flying out and burning the whole house down. The other thing that we inherited (and have been too inertia-bound to ever do anything about) was barn swallows nesting in the chimney. Everytime winter rolls around we tell each other that we "really need to get a chimney sweep to come out to clean everything out and then install a chimney cap" and every year it doesn't happen somehow and every spring through summer we get to hear multiple new crops of baby barn swallows cheep and scrabble around in there. The first few times I heard the scrabbling noise, I thought for sure that one of them had fallen down into the fireplace but TLS assured me that with the damper closed that was impossible. This continued to be the case until last night. (And it is still impossible with the damper closed, but just guess which position the damper lever was in when all this happened.)

TLS was at his indoor soccer game and wouldn't be home until almost midnight. (Why is it that all the crazy things happen when he isn't around? Don't answer. That was a rhetorical question, really.) I was sitting there catching up on all the shows recorded on the DVR when I heard some noises emanating from the fireplace that didn't sound quite right. I finally got up and looked through the tinted glass and saw a barn swallow staring back at me. The poor thing kept fluttering around in there and flinging itself against the glass. I suppose since the only source of light was coming through there. The cat was going bananas pawing at the front and I was completely stymied. I briefly considered getting a pillow case and trying to open the door and catch him in it, but because of the width of the door, I figured it was much more likely that he'd escape into the house and then I'd really have a problem on my hands, since our ceilings are ten feet and there's no way to shut the living room off from much of the rest of the house. My plan of attack was turn off all the living room lights, go into the bedroom and wait for the cavalry to arrive.

I managed to be awake when TLS got home and told him about the errant bird. He said there wasn't much use at this point in doing anything about it in the dead of night and that it would wait until morning. Morning broke with the bird still stuck in there. (Couldn't have been easy with him magically flying back up the chimney, oh no.) TLS opened the door and tried to grab him with a towel, but birdie decided to try an escape but only managed to fly into the front window. He stunned himself momentarily, but TLS was able to keep the cat from pouncing on it, picked him up, took him outside and released him. Everyone will be happy to know that said bird flew away under his own power and is hopefully living it up flying around the neighborhood. Now, where's the number for that chimney sweep?

Nerd, Nerd, Trend-Setter

On the nerd front...

I spent ten hours over five days watching the documentary, Carrier, on PBS last week. In case you weren't nurturing your inner nerd and managed to miss them, you can watch full episodes online using the link above. Quick summary: A documentary crew spent six months on deployment with the U.S.S. Nimitz filming every aspect of their experiences and opinions. It was fascinating (I thought). Even though TLS declared that he didn't have time in his schedule for that kind of commitment, he did drop in for several of the episodes. I think his favorite was the one when the pilots had to try and land on the pitching deck of the carrier in the midst of a huge storm in the Indian Ocean. Check it out.


And in more news of my nerditude...

What did TLS and I spend last Sunday afternoon doing? You know us--two wild, crazy hipsters. I'm sure you might guess partying like rock stars, but you'd be wrong. We were ... wait for it ... berry picking. (I know everyone wants to hang with us now; I'm currently taking names for the waiting list.) There is a long fence row across the street from our house that has a ton of wild blackberry vines. We managed to pick seven cups of berries--enough for the blackberry cobbler I made last night. Deelish!


I labelled this one as Trend-Setter for lack of a better word. You be the judge.

Just about the time I pulled into the parking garage today, the rain started coming down in buckets. It was a deluge of biblical proportions, if you will. I took the stairs up to the exit door so I could walk the two blocks (with two street crossings) to my office building. As I got to the vestibule at the top of the stairwell, I came across about eight guys standing around with umbrellas in their hands. I paused and was about to ask why everyone was just milling around aimlessly, when someone opened the door to reveal the torrents of rain. I knew from looking at the radar before I left home (yet another NERD ALERT!) that it wouldn't be ending anytime soon, so I wondered why all these big, strapping guys were afraid of a little water. It wasn't as if they were all green and gnarly like the Wicked Witch of the West and would be mellllltinng when the rain hit them. I waited about 30 seconds and then clutching my umbrella like a baton, I strode past them saying, "No time like the present!" I wanted to fling a "You big weenies!" on the end but decided better of it. Of course, the bottom of my pants (up to about knee level) was damp until about 2 o'clock this afternoon, but I felt I held the moral high-ground.