The Sick Locker

Sick, and yet still cute. Only kids can manage this. This was after a fever broke during nap.

"Man plans. God laughs." ---Yiddish Proverb

Touché , Jewish folk...touché. 

I did indeed have large plans for blogging and life-ing but we got a visit from our old foe, RSV, and we have been shut inside the sick locker ever since. 

I hate the sick locker. We use the word "hate" a lot in our culture...you know, we hate Ke$ha, we hate idiots that write condescending articles about moms with iPhones, we hate the word "moist"...or maybe only I say I hate those things? However, I actually really do HATE being in isolation with sick kids. 

And I am not talking about a runny nose and a slight cough. That's what I like to refer to as "winter" and since it lasts an ungodly amount of time here you just learn to buy the industrial size of Boogie Wipes and move on with life as usual. 

I just told him that Puxatawney Phil was a false prophet and that winter would last sixteen more weeks.

 I might have mentioned a time or ten that winter decided to stick around.  This is from my friend Catherine's FB profile, and it's too good not to share.

Even the natives have dropped their usual scoffing at the soft "cake eaters" in moderate climes and are now restlessly eyeing the forecast

 An extension of winter means an extension of "winter illness" season. So two weeks ago, Addie went to bed perfectly happy and then woke up at midnight choking and unable to breathe properly due to a nasty attack of croup. An ER visit for an emergency nebulizer and some steroids fixed her right up, but she was quite unwell for several days after that with persistent fevers and a nasty cough and a general malaise which she explained as "Mom, I'm getting really slow."

Asking to go to bed at 7 PM one night.

 During a follow up visit to family practice, they mentioned that her croup might have been caused by RSV, which actually relieved me. Because you know, Graydon already had that as an infant so I thought he'd sail right past it.

Stupidly, I forgot that Addie also already had RSV, which is why Graydon got it as a three week old.

As soon as Addie started to recover, G man went down and he did not fare so well. Addie is robust. She gets sick very rarely and when she does get sick, she doesn't stay down for long. I'm not going to get into the whole saga, because he's fine now, but it took us a few doctor's visits and worried nights and a set of chest x rays and some antibiotics and a home inhaler to get over it.  And that's the short version.

We  had the humidifiers on blast in the kids rooms.

Frankly, it really sucked. It's hard to see your kids suffering, even when you have confidence that all will be well in the end. But when your kids are that ill, you can't see anyone, you can't go anywhere, and you can't really DO anything to take their minds off of how bad they feel.  There were a great many sleepless nights especially when Graydon was sick. I slept upright with Graydon on the couch for several nights with the humidifier beside us and I had a lot of uneasy dreams about being on a lifeboat in the ocean. All of which makes sense when you consider that I usually woke up to find water beaded up on the couch and our blankets. 

Poor little G man was not feeling so super at this point.

Long story short, it was tiring and scary at times, but I think we are now healthy and caught up on sleep. We have been released from the isolation of the sick locker and it's amazing. Just being able to run errands during the day feels like a privilege. And you know what? It IS a privilege. Too often I forget that for a lot of people, the sick locker has to become a way of life.

Resting together

So I am newly grateful for health and wellness and energy and rest. 

And, as an added bonus, the weather has been really nice the past few days. Granted, it is supposed to be quite chilly again for the forecastable future, but we do have flowers springing up in our yard.

Spring is about to break out of the sick locker too, and not a moment too soon. I think everyone is ready to welcome a new season.  

Well. We're Back.

Fair warning: I'm going to complain here first. And then I'll move on. It's called "venting" and I heard about it on Oprah. I think that means it's healthy.


1) It snowed here last week. It didn't stick, but STILL.

2) HIGHS are in the 30s this week.

3) It's April. Just a reminder. I'm talking to you, GOD.

4) We are all afflicted by winter icks: nasty colds, some sort of allergies, something that involves streaming noses and bad tempers.

5) The snow still piled up on the ground is nasty sludgy gray. To match the sky. And there are a lot of things wrong in those sentences.


We're back. In winter. (Sidenote: I realize Hell is traditionally thought of as hot, but I'm going with cold. My Hell is cold.)

I am yo-yoing between elation and despair at being back. And while despair has temporarily taken over the driver's seat, there is some elation present sometimes. Just not when I look at Weatherspark and see that the high Thursday is 35. The good news is that it will be nearly 60 today. And also pouring down rain.

OK, moving on.

So yes, it is lovely to be back in our house. I forgot a lot of things very quickly. How the light looks streaming across our kitchen table. How nice it is to have a fully stocked kitchen. How cold the toilet seat is on my rear end.

It is honestly kind of surreal coming back here. We left, for a decent period of time, and now we're back to the exact same life, but as slightly different people who happen to be more freckled tanner and more fit and more relaxed than we were when we left.  It's a good feeling, mostly, but a little disconcerting at times. I sort of understand how the Pevensie kids felt after they came back through the Wardrobe in the The Lion, the Witch, and (the aforementioned) the Wardrobe. Kind of like ..."Hey people, there is this amazing place where husbands are home for dinner, and your nose hairs don't freeze when you walk outside, and the trees talk not far from here."

Our Internet has been down canceled by my hubs before we left in a fit of pique and then forgotten about until we returned and it has taken some time to get that sorted out. And I cannot ...truly cannot...blog on my Kindle or the Ipad. I say way too much for hunt and peck. That way lies insanity and carpal tunnel.

But we are now back online and mostly unpacked and mostly done with rapturous greetings of old friends and now mostly ready to start blogging again. My readers ..the tens of you....mostly composed of grandparents and sisters...have been clamoring for more. And my last post boldly proclaimed my intention to write twice a week. Just in time for me to pack up and ship out and live in transit and yeah, that wasn't all that well timed.

But here we are. We're back, for better or worse, for colder or warmer, and for the next year and three months. Time to layer up, sack up, and do this thing right. 

Goodbye, Jacksonville

I wasn't really anticipating getting IN the water, but they had other plans.

 I wish I had the time and wit to write a really profound post on our time in Jacksonville, but I seem to be short on both at the moment. There's packing, and crazy kids (chaos does that), and a dog with a "hot spot" aka a leg oozing matter, and just generally trying to close up shop here. And no matter how early I start, it will inevitably devolve into semi-frantic stuffing odds and ends into one last box.

Therefore, suffice it to say that I'm sad to be leaving. Everything about this place speaks to my heart in a way that's hard for me to articulate. I love the slightly-more-water-than-land ness of this place, and the warmth (oh my lawd, the WARMTH), and incredible, vivid, lush abundance of life here.

There are big things weighing me down right now, like no more watching my littles cavort in the waves (whether or not they are supposed to get wet) and ponder the immensity of the ocean. I will miss this more than I can say.




And probably no more runs with Mel and Cora and that's sad as heck to me. We finished our Couch to 5K program, and while I appreciate the ability to plod/run a few miles now, I appreciate getting to know Melissa better even more. She is such a generous and bright spirit and such a good friend. And while we are moving to same town, it won't be the same, because there's work and moving away and oh poop, everything changes, and that's great, but sometimes change is sad and great all at once.

And there are some little things grieving me too. No more "diamonds on the soles of our shoes" or feet.




And no more immense trees shawled in Spanish moss.

This tree is what I look at while I'm at the gas station. I love it, don't ask me why.

Before I start sobbing, I'm going to change tactics and stop posting pictures of my favorite things. OK, topic change starting right about...NOW! (For you, Des and Jordan). 

The good news is that moving back to Rochester will certainly hold some good things for us. Like watching Graydon and Addie continue to grow as people and as friends.

And seeing our other friends again, and our house, and having a yard for our dogs, and, oh lots of things. All the good "it's our place" things. 

As sad as I am to be going, I'm so glad that we had this time here in Jacksonville to stretch out and just enjoy life for a few months. We made new friends, explored new places, and fell just a little bit more in love with our family and our country.

Thanks for the memories, Jax.

Is This Possible?

I only have four posts written in 2013. FOUR. That means I'm averaging about one a month. Golly goodness (yes I just wrote those words and you would too if you had a three year old that had recently chosen G.D.I. as her favorite angry phrase), I wish I blogged more. THERE ARE PRECIOUS THINGS GOING UNRECORDED. That essentially means they didn't happen. Or something like that.

I've got Addie's three year post in the works. And also Graydon's one year post. They are only three months overdue. I figure I've got a whole year, so it's cool.

OK, I guess I can't throw out a gem like Addie swearing and not explain it. You are all thinking it's Tim's fault because he is a notorious swear-er and I am so tempted to let you think that, but it's actually my fault. It was a long day, and there was sickness, and rain (the nerve!), and headaches, and endless tears, and a first attempt a dinner which burned b/c of the chaos, and then during the second attempt a dog who shall remain  nameless (Indy) barfed on the floor and out came a despairing swear phrase which obviously really resonated with Ads.

And now she repeats it every time she gets mad. "Addie, go to time out, we do not hit Brother" and here it comes, a muttered and perfectly inflected "God dash it". Except the uncensored version.

Be ye not so stupid as to swear in front of your parrot child. I cannot wait to send her to her Christian preschool in April with this action.

Anyway, I didn't come to this post intending to confess one of my parenting failures, though really, it's always good for the soul and the ego to relate one's cringe inducing moments.

I came here to set myself up for future guilt and failure by announcing my intention to blog twice a week. It's a modest goal but one I feel sure will I will fall short of at times. However, for the same reason that I run with a partner (thank you, Melissa, you cannot move to CA or my future rotund figure is on your conscience), I figure a public commitment might help me move from theory to action.

We shall see, I suppose. If I don't sound incredibly hopeful...well, I actually am quite hopeful. It's a way of talking down expectations in order to minimize my possible humiliation. Like the way I sandbag UNC's chances before a big game, but then spend the game howling at the refs and imploring the heavens and performing arcane good luck rituals to influence the outcome of the game.

I'd love to write more, but I've got to unearth my lucky underoos and orient my living room in the proper gametime feng shui. It's ACC tourney time and UNC plays tonight.

You think I'm joking.

My Best Friends

I have been so happy. Not news, I know. But for the past two weekends, my best friends visited me, with their families, which was even better than having them all to myself.

I have a few people that I apply the "best friend" label to, but most of them have other titles as well. Husband. Sisters. That kind of thing. And then there are a few people that are "just" friends, but they're the kind of friends that I will text at 7 AM or midnight to discuss important things like "How brilliant is Steel Magnolias?" and "Why do children prefer sitting in large amounts of feces to a simple 60 second job on the potty?" and they don't curse my name. To my knowledge, anyway. And of course they are the first people to hear my good news and my bad news and my it's-only-news-to-me news.

I haven't lived in the same state as Leslie since college. We lived together for three out of four years there and people used to think we were twin sisters (despite not looking that much alike) because we were always together.

No kids looking at the camera. Par for the course. Aren't they so darn cute though?

While we kindasortabutnotreally look alike, we aren't that much alike in terms of our personalities. True to form, Leslie blogged about this trip about two days after it happened. And when I talked to her about it, we both laughed because we agreed that my blog would be three times later and three times longer. This is why she always did the bills in college. And I think it's why we are still such good friends. There is no danger of me living in an echo chamber with Leslie around. She will always have a point of view and be willing to share it with me, and I value that immensely.

I had to include the Graydon photobomb.

Together we have five children under five, so predictably we spent most of our time regulating the spawntourage.  It WOULD have to be the one really icky weekend of the year, so we made a very brief beach visit and then did indoor things like bowling and a museum trip. And we tried to hunt down doughnuts, which was surprisingly difficult and hilarious. We ended up with cupcakes and we were delighted OK with that.

Sand. It's so fascinating.

Sam and Rocky were BFFs. It was the cutest thing ever. When Sam left, he cried a few tears over leaving Rocky. And Rocky pooped in G's room. That's love.

They enjoyed bowling a lot. Thank heavens for those ramps. 

And for no broken toes or fingers.

I wish I had a video of how excited Graydon was about this endeavor. This was a rare still and quiet moment. It makes sense because bowling involved balls, knocking things over, and loud noises. If we could have involved breasts somehow it would have been his favorite activity of all time.

Checking out an aquarium at the Museum of Science and History

Always teachin'

This isn't really focused, but I love the dreamy underwater quality.

See? Teaching.

Graydon was fascinated by everything.

See what I mean?

Love this. All the babies looking at Daisy May, the possum.

Why is G so excited? Because he's discovered an enormous map. No DNA tests required here, folks.

If the days were all about Mamahood, the nights were all about hashing out the problems of the world and the church. We stayed up way too late, drinking wine, debating, and reminiscing on the past decade. Remember how I said we aren't that similar in personality? It always makes me for some friendly banter and thought provoking chats. But we agree more than we disagree and that is always a lot of fun to rediscover and reaffirm. And every time she leaves, I always think, "That.was.awesome."

Tim actually made an interesting comment about our visit. He said it was fun to watch us together and that a few things that I said made him raise his eyebrows. And I immediately worried that I was rude or something, and he said it wasn't that I was rude, just that I was totally myself with Leslie...more so than I usually am with most people. He said it was like watching us (me and him) talk. And I think that sounds about right, because we all used to joke that Leslie was the female version of Tim. Don't even get me started on how annoying it was to play Apples to Apples with those two in college. Frickin' "rain" is NOT more inspiring than "Beethoven". Common meteorological phenomenon vs. "Ode to Joy"...anyway.

I appreciate so very much the efforts that Leslie always makes to stay involved in my life. She calls, she texts, and most importantly, she works hard. When I come home, she makes time for me. And she visits, no matter how far away I've moved and no matter how many children she has to tote along for the journey. That's so important and frankly, kind of rare.

Which is why it's awesome that I have TWO friends that were willing to trek down here with their families. 

Sidenote: This was actually supposed to be a reunion weekend with all of my girlfriends from college, but a big storm in the Midwest derailed some travel plans and then we had to scramble to reorganize for the end of March. Fortunately (for me) the Barrs had already paid for the hotel so they drove down anyway. Thank you, credit card gods. 

I actually don't remember meeting Ashley because we were too young. She has just always been there, kind of like she is a sibling born before I had developed long term memory. That makes me so happy, by the way. Apparently, we met in the back of a pickup truck at a softball game at roughly 9 months and 3 months of age. That sounds about right for Thomasville, so I believe it.

Like Leslie, Ashley always stays in touch for the big and the small things. One of my favorite texts of all time came from her, when she said "I kid you not, the cops are directing traffic at the new Bojangles that just opened." I need to know these things.

And here's Ashley's Apples to Apples antecodote. "Helen Keller" and "lucky" were her most famous picks. I think everyone at the long table in Mazie's Roost burst out laughing because why in the hay is a girl born blind, deaf, and dumb lucky? And then we all felt slightly ashamed because Ashley explained she thought she was lucky to find a great teacher who helped her unlock the world and her potential. This should tell you Ash is way nicer than me.  And also that she is exactly the kind of person who should be in the schools (and she is!).

This makes me happy beyond words.

Addie and Ben (Ash's son) took to each other right away. Even though Addie persisted in calling him "Baby Ben", he didn't seem to mind. There was a lot of shrieking and running in circles and only a few pitched battles over who was going to snuggle with cupcake blanket.

We went to the zoo and the beach and had great weather both days (sorry, Leslie). It was almost too hot, but that was not a problem for me. I like my weather to err on the side of hotness.

Hi.

There were cool animals at the zoo and you could actually get quite close to some of them, but the water fountain was the biggest hit.

Goldfish, perhaps also hungrily eyeing small children

Hungrily eyeing small children

Everyone is attempting to climb in here

We had a great time chasing babies at the beach (I forgot my camera) and watching the Tar Heels game together. Aaron is a big time fan too, so Tim and I enjoyed that a lot. I'm not sure how Ashley felt about it, but 1) she is used to it and 2) she was drinking wine so I think it was OK for her. This weekend's quest for Greek food somehow ended up with us a club bar restaurant with good food, but extremely loud music and extremely animated dancing and partying. Lots of older ladies in leopard prints on the tables. Our kids were fascinated. So were we. 

All of the activities were fun, and I'm glad we did them, but my favorite thing about both weekends was just getting to watch my kids with their kids. We are so blessed to have great friends in Rochester and I'm used to watching my babies play with friends. But there is something so special about watching friendships in the second generation being formed. It's precious and a totally unique experience. After all, this is not family or work, where you pretty much have to interact for the sake of a greater entity, regardless of your personal feelings. It's something that happens organically, because both friends want that relationship. And we want our kids to know each other too. And so bit by bit, year by year, more layers are added to our relationships.

That is both "lucky" and "inspiring", I think.

Serendipity

People here just call it the GTM, for obvious reasons. Imagine if I'd titled my blog post after the reserve...people would think one of my kids had gotten hold of the keyboard.

 I found my stretching place last Sunday. I know, it sounds like a yoga mat or a fence where you'd throw your leg up over your head and oh so casually work out your kinks before running a few miles. Provided that one can do one of those over your head leg stretches. And also provided that one can breeze through a few miles. Obviously I can do both. Kind of. Just not very well. Ahem.

Anyway, it's not that kind of stretch. When I'm happy...no,wait... more than  happy. Chips and salsa make me happy and that magic happens every day week in my house.  When I'm truly, completely, incandescently alive with the good things in life...love, hope, peace, joy, gratitude...I am wont to say that "My soul just stretched out its kinks". And sometimes if I'm very fortunate, I find a place where soul stretching is really easy.

And I found one here through some glorious combination of luck and alertness, which is what we normally call "serendipity". 

Here's how it happened. I was having a bad weekend (yes, sometimes life's problems have the nerve to follow you around) and I asked Tim if we could go for a drive. That's how we fell in love, Tim and I...we would drive around the glorious North Carolina countryside together with a bag of curly fries and a homemade CD of our favorite songs and talk, or sing (very quietly, in my case), or just be together in silence. This is back when gas was barely over a dollar a gallon, Napster was still legal, and unicorns and dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. Ah, the good old days.

Where was I? Yes, bad weekend, emergency measures needed...so we went for a drive. And first we drove through Ponte Vedra Beach, which is where the big mansions on the beach are, and that was nice. I enjoy viewing excess as much as any red blooded American female.

This is from a different day, but this is your typical beachfront cottage in Ponte Vedra Beach. You know, just your basic.

And then we accidentally happened upon the aforementioned nature preserve and my mind was blown and I might have said with great seriousness that we needed to come back here or I would shrivel up into a heap of bitter tears and mournful howls. So we went back, camera and cute children in tow.

And as always happens when you find your place, a place where your soul is going to kick back, relax, and drink some wine, you know it instantly, and it's like flipping a light switch. One minute you're in a dark place for myriad reasons and then all of sudden, it's light and you can see everything really clearly. And you are sipping spiritual pinot noir (Far Niente or Silver Oak, if you want some specifics).

Taking the boardwalk over the dunes to the beach

I started to feel like this was going to be good.

And it was good. Great, in fact.

 No houses, no parking lots, no people, just wind and waves and sand and us. The wind was whipping against us furiously, and the surf was wild and it was enough to make the most mired down soul feel like running and jumping and spinning in dizzy circles. Addie, never a mired down soul to begin with, was overjoyed. She found a feather.

 

Graydon found ...a beach. His greatest joy in life is walking right along the edge of the high water mark and just...walking. As far and as fast as he can go. I think he's still thrilled that he can go whichever direction he chooses whenever he wants.

 

 It's impossible to say for sure, but I think they liked it too.

 Bruce Springsteen once sang, "The poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be". And I think he was referring to the times when words aren't enough for all the worst reasons...danger, futility, sterility...but there are also times when the poets are silent for the best reasons...reverence, immensity, and awe.

Fortunately for my blog, I am no poet, though I did find a place where I can stand back and let it all be. And fortunately for my soul, I'll go back as much as I can before we leave.

Pelicans at sunset