Month: October 2012

Will-Da-Beast

Today The Boy Child has completed another spin around the sun and turns twenty two.

How did that happen?

He was the child that wore me out.  He climbed on the back of the recliner, stood on the very top of its back and tried to rock back and forth.  He would climb onto the kitchen table and swing the chandelier back and forth.  He would pull a chair up to the electric stove and turn all the knobs on until one day he burnt every one of his fingertips.  He’d wake us up in the morning by standing in his crib and banging it back and forth against the wall.  He helped himself into a neighbor’s house while they were playing outside, all the while we were frantically looking for him.  If a storm produced enough water in the gutters he’d be out all afternoon with a boat.  His kindergarten teacher was sure he had ADD.  Reading was a complete mystery to him and so we’d spend most nights working on homework and flashcards.

Then he calmed down.

Don’t ask me how.  He just did.

Last year, he and I were talking about an acquaintance who was rolling her eyes at the career path her kid was choosing.  Mark my words, the mom said, she’s going to hate it. 

“You know what, Mom,” Will said later.  “There was never anything I ever said I wanted to be that you didn’t think I would be good at.”

Well……….despite your best efforts to break me, I always believed you were born with an imagination destined to take you wherever you wanted to go.  

Happy birthday my wild child.

Two Things

While I was at work today, my friend, Carla, left a message.  I miss you.  I’ve been thinking about you.  Give me a call.

Sigh.

Carla was the first mom friend I made when we moved to Maryland.  She and Jim were fellow transplanted Midwesterners who lived a few doors down from us.  While we were moving in her mom kept an eye on the activity and later that day met Mark at the dumpster.  Do you have a baby, she asked.  Yes, six weeks old, he said.  My daughter lives there.  Her baby is three weeks old and tomorrow her and your wife need to meet each other.

The Big Daddy went along with Betty’s plan and that is how a twenty five year friendship began.

Since those years we have never lived near each other and long stretches of time go by when we don’t talk, but when we do it is just like the old days when we’d meet each other on the sidewalk with crying babies.

She had seen the photos from Maggie and Nate’s wedding and wanted to know the deets.  I filled her in about that lovely day and then we talked about everything from yoga to kids to us both turning into retail girls.

Whenever anyone asks me about the wedding and if I was emotional, I tell them about two things.  One was when everyone had come up the aisle and we were waiting for the bride.  I stuck my head out of the pew and looked at the back of the church and saw Mark and Maggie.

Oh Lordy, will you look at those two?   She’s so happy.  He’s so proud.

The other time I wanted to cry was when my hairdresser came to the house.  Nearly ten years of her taming my wild curls, hearing about my decorating projects, my dog, the garden, the kitchen I want to gut, my husband………..my husband!  There she was with all of her magic, and I still can’t talk about how much it meant to me to have her here that day without getting choked up.

With all that Carla and I talked about I never got around to that part but I didn’t need to.  If anybody would know about a full heart spilling over it would be the friend who was there from the start.

Hangry

The other day I was helping a woman buy a skirt.  “This,” she said pointing to her stomach, “this is making me crazy.”  I hear ya oh menopausal sister.  It’s that.  It’s the chin.  The flag waving upper arms.  The butt.

It’s. Everything.

Today in the mail I got a catalog called Blair.  I believe it was supposed to be sent to my mother.  It had comfy shoes, pumpkin sweaters and there were plenty of models that looked like this………….

I also got Anthropologie.

The same model was on every page looking like this………………..

The Anthro model looks hangry………..as if she’d rip the head off the photographer who asked her to turn her chin one more time. 

The Blair models are rocking their mom jeans and they know that if they go out for lunch they have no worries for you do not put Spanx on under a mom jean.

You put on seconds.

The Queen Mum Goes To The Eye Doctor

The Queen Mum has some eye issues of late.  My sister, who is the Go To Girl For All Things Mom (and who everyone in the family will owe until eternity) took mom to the eye doctor.

She said it was like being in the middle of an AARP meeting.

Mom had just come from one of her concerts and was looking pretty sharp.  Of all the empty seats in the waiting room, some guy came and sat right next to Mom and started chatting shmoozing her up.   Ann kept on eye on him as he seemed very interested in our Queen Mum.  After a few minutes his phone rang and he said to Mom, “Excuse me.  I’ve got to get this.  You know when you’re a sex kitten like me……..”

A sex kitten?

Mom got called in to see the doctor in the nick of time.  A few more minutes in that waiting room and the grandkids might have ended up calling Mr. Kitten……………Boompa.

Rocking a fake tattoo for my nephew’s wedding.