A hard day

Oh, friends. Some days are just so hard. 

I awoke before 5 this morning, nudged from a deep, assisted sleep by a wet little nose pecking hungrily into my hand. It was Nutmeg, settling in a good deal earlier than usual for our morning snuggle. He curled atop my chest, tucked his head under my chin and his body in the crook of my arm, and started purring like a smooth, strong v6. 

Often, our bed snuggles are times I treasure- quiet and sweet and warm. But it was hard for me to get to sleep last night and I needed more than my loving feline allowed.

Finally, I creaked downstairs to feed him and on my way back up heard Oliver talking some gibberish. I couldn't tell if it was a nightmare or just the early signs of wakefulness, but I peeked in and found him staring straight at me. It was 5:30, and I knew last night's sleep was gone with the wind.

We laid in Ol's cozy little bed for nearly an hour, arms wrapped around one another, whispering and not.

"What are you thinking about, Mama?"

"Oh, I am thinking about the house Daddy and I saw yesterday."

A simple answer for my little boy. What I was really thinking was about how hard it is to house-hunt in the ludicrously expensive/over-priced DC market. Thinking about how much I love our current home and how long it took us to find it. Thinking how on top of one another we feel as the boys grow but do not stop running. Thinking about how sad I'd be to leave this place but also how exciting it would be to do just that. Thinking about how lucky I feel that we can consider doing so.

My stomach churned, gurgling and talking to us.

"Are you hungry, Mama? I am!"

I wasn't. Just nervous. Tired. Scared to admit how very much I was thinking about that house we saw yesterday. How I hope that it will become our new home.

"Let's go make cinnamon toast, ok, Ol?"
"Oh yay, my favorite."

As we descended the stairs, I thought about how my mom would soon wake. And how Dad would drive her to the surgery center for an operation to repair the arthritic growth that has eroded the tendon between her thumb and hand. They have to take another tendon from in her arm and pleat it in her thumb joint. She's been in such pain, but this surgery is supposed to be horrifically painful too. She is fine now, but I was worried. And I'm sorry she's been hurting and will continue to for several months.

I spent the morning thinking about Mom and the house. I tidied and did laundry. I couldn't eat a thing, which is wholly unlike me.

I thought it'd do me good to get out. So I went to the post office to mail a return package and then to the market. I'd been inside for all of four minutes, just enough to grab a bunch of beets and some raspberries, when the manager grasped his walkie-talkie and ordered every customer and employee to evacuate immediately. 

"Leave everything where it is, carts, food, everything and please exit the building immediately. Employees, go to the CVS parking lot next door."

Turns out the market had received a bomb threat. People, please. What is this world coming to? I'm not usually shaken by things like this, and it was well-managed, but seriously. 

To school and then back home where my oldest threw such a tantrum that I just lost it. Lost it. My shoulders shook and the tears came. They needed to, but their moment of entry surprised me, pouring forth before filter or will or "should" could step in. 

It happens sometimes, these breaks. The fissures just can't withstand the pressures pushing against them. Was the bomb threat the proverbial straw? The missed sleep? Worry? The argument? A tornado of emotions about a possible move?

Today was a bit of all those things, I suspect. Bits of dust and particulate matter spinning and spinning, accelerating and bam.

Fishy Friday

This has been a lovely week, y'all! I've worked hard and also rested, cooked a lot and well, read and written daily, put together a photo book from the holiday, and nearly finished my thank you notes.  

Do you write thank you notes? In my humble opinion, you most definitely should. It is not an art or formality that should be lost! 

Today, just before 1:30pm, I was talking to a a friend when my call waiting showed the school nurse on the other line.  From the moment Oliver sighed forlornly this morning and asked if I'd noticed how much his nose was running, I suspected he would later make his way to he nurse and ask to come home. 

Both the nurse and I are on to my boys. In her words, "they really go to great lengths to spend time with you." Um, #truth. So, she does not call unless the kids feel truly lousy, as Mr. O did by 1:30. 

Fortunately, he is the easiest, sweetest sick child on earth, and so I scurried to get him. "Bug, we have to go to the market, but it won't take long. Ok?" 

"Ok, mama." 

We made our way through produce and dairy, and ended up at the fish counter. Tina was working, and while she bagged my shrimp (gorgeous ones fresh from Alabama!), Ol studied the fish. 

"Mama, is that a sardine?"

"It sure is, Bug. How'd you know?" 

"I just know what they look like, so I thought that might be one. Will you get me two shrimp and one sardine? I like shrimp, and I like to try new things, and I would like to try a sardine."

I'm doing a rapid calculus in my head: aren't sardines awfully oily? And is that the best choice for a kid with a crappy cold? But isn't it great that he wants to try it?!

"Sure, Bug!" And Tina chimes in with, "Do you want me to remove its head and guts?" 

Ol replies, "Mama, can I cut his head off at home, and study his eyes and dissect him? And then you can cook him for me?" 

Tina and I glance at each other, and I say sure and she tells him to pick the best one, and we walk to the checkout line, Ol holding his packaged sardine proudly in hand.

He hands it to the woman at the register and tells her the plan. She appears excited and puts his sardine in a little bag, just for him. The she asks, "Would you like some plastic gloves too?"

Ol beams beatifically and accepts three. 

Once home, he dons his apron, and I set him up at the plastic-placemat-covered table with a cutting board, sharp knife, bowl of water and the sardine.

He is extremely excited. With great care, he slices into the "neck" area, and says, "This sardine has thick skin. Look mama, blood."

The blood doesn't bother me, but damn that sardine is pungent, and the more he cuts, the more oozes out and the fragrance intensifies. 

He retrieves the eyes, spine, ribs and a fin. He studies the skull and says, "I don't think this sardine had a very big brain." 

Probably not. 

He soaks the bones and fin and shiny skin in the water and uses an old toothbrush to scrub the spine. He is so delicate, and I don't help him once. Not a single time. 

"Mama, can I keep his head? And also the bones and skin? But I don't think we should cook this sardine. Next time I'll get one just to try." 

We carefully slide his keepsakes into a ziploc and tuck it away in the freezer. And I smiled on my little bug, who never asks for the spotlight or much at all really, and I thought, "My how you're growing, and how lucky am I!"

A taste of teen

"Um, Mrs. Grossi, Dr. Perez says he can fill the cavity on the upper right, but the tooth on the upper left is in such bad shape, he would rather pull than fill it. Is that OK?" asked the lovely dental hygienist about Jack's teeth yesterday afternoon. 

"Of course," I responded through slightly gritted teeth, "but please don't tell Jack more than he needs to know because he tends to freak out about possible blood loss."

"Okay, we will give him laughing gas first."

Great. Add it to my tab.

Tom and I have learned that we passed outrageously shitty dental anatomy and weak dental bacteria on to Jack (and likely Ol) and that T has also gifted our children with his family's micro-mouth trait. Long story short, Jack's mouth is the perfect storm for dental decay and excessive cash outflow. What we've spent on fillings (is it eight now? nine?), laughing gas and early orthodontia is not an amount I like to consider, not least because half that money is packed into baby teeth that will fall out in the coming years. 

But since we aren't sharks, I don't joke around with dental care, and the fifteen minute appointment I'd promised Jack ("just X-rays, honey") stretched into a long hour. J was a real champ about the pulling and filling, numb face and consternation over his lazy flossing habit.

Until he wasn't, and I dare say Teen Jack roared into our home like a time traveling apparition. 

It began with enormous eye rolls and mean trash talk toward Oliver who was diligently working on his Spotlight Student poster (things that are important to him include cinnamon toast and Garfield but not his family, apparently) and snowballed over the next two hours into a giant ball of red-faced tears, slammed doors, a thrown wallet ("WHAT? THERE IS NO WALMART IN DC? WHY? I NEED A BRICK OF MAGNESIUM!"), and outrage over "the stupid, baby sentences we have to write with hyphenated words that SHOULDN'T EVEN BE HYPHENATED and this week's GODDAMNED GRAMMAR RULE."

I admit that I dissolved into a puddle of hysterical tears over that last bit because even though I love grammar, J's use of goddamned flowed in marvelously smooth fashion, I happen to agree that goodbye does not require a hyphen, and I never imagined I'd see my fourth grade son apoplectic over using roly-poly and some form of there/their/they're in one simple sentence.

Don't you see a roly-poly over there?

But I digress. 

He spent a full ninety minutes crying, cleaning the rotten tooth Dr. Perez had pulled, rolling on his floor, and circling his math packet and language homework like a wary beast trying to psyche itself up to attack.

I suggested he consider that if instead of these inefficient uses of time he buckled down and accepted that while his homework might suck, it still has to get done and the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. He looked at me like I was speaking Swahili while pulling worms from my ears.

I attempted to remind him that he's going to have homework for the next, oh, twelve to thirteen years so might want to reframe his thoughts on how to approach the assignments he finds repellent or mind-numbingly dull. He said he instead planned to talk to his teachers about cancelling "stupid assignments." Which is hilarious to consider because neither -the conversation or the cancelling- will ever happen.

He then screamed that at the end of this year, he planned to burn every bit of homework that had made him mad. I said, "Great idea. We can certainly do that."

Finally, I took the hard line and said, "Jack, stop it, man. Get ahold of yourself. Take a deep breath RIGHT NOW." It was like the face-slap people in movies use to bring a panicky person back to reality. 

He was too exhausted to resist, fortunately, and then the babysitter arrived, amazing grace, and I left for date night with T, and this morning Just Jack was back although he reminded me that the Tooth Fairy didn't come.

The TF used all her money yesterday, champ. Maybe tonight!