It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Archive for April, 2009
I’m Not Painting Over the Graffiti
5April 28, 2009
It’s the little touches that make a house a home and I say the graffiti stays. After all, does your house have graffiti? No? How sad for you. I also think the weight bench is a nice touch and is in keeping with the style of the unfinished part of the basement.
I added some more pictures, if anyone is still interested in the snoozy story of our house. I’m still painting stuff. I don’t have pics of the girls’ rooms all put together and lovely yet because I haven’t done the dots and peace symbols yet. Soon!
Two of my cousins and my sister-in-law (the one who is always a bad influence on me at Easter) are coming to stay with us this weekend because we’re all running the Capital City Half Marathon together. I’m excited about that. My sister-in-law’s name is Tracy and my sister’s name is TracEy. Is that confusing to you? My kids call my sister “Aunt Tracey” and they call my sister-in-law “Different Aunt Tracey.” They don’t know how right they are. TracEy was going to come down for the race, too, but she is cursed with an ultra-talented daughter who is the lead in her high school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, which happens to open this weekend. My niece is kind of a big deal. I’m going to buy a copy of the dvd and everybody who visits me over the summer will have to watch it over and over.
One more thing, after I posted that picture of the Pacer with the chick standing next to it, somebody said something about all women in the 70s looking like that, so I want to give you a clearer picture of my mother during the late 70s/early 80s. This is exactly what she looked like, down to the roller skates:
She looked so much like Linda Ronstadt that I would stare at that album cover wondering how in the world they decided to put my mother on the cover. Was there a contest? Did they just see her at the roller rink and snap a picture? And why didn’t they just put this Linda Ronstadt person on the cover? I thought maybe it was because she was ugly and they didn’t want her on the cover. But then I thought about the albums in my dad’s collection with Garfunkel on the cover, and I decided ugliness must not be an issue. It was so perplexing, but I never asked anyone about it and it was years before I realized that my mom was not a famous album cover model. I’m quick like that.
Grief in the Age of the Digital Natives
6April 24, 2009
by Abby
in I have some daughters
Our hamster died several days ago. Maybe a month ago, but nobody paid any attention to the thing so we’re not really sure how long ago. I discovered Choji lifeless in his cage while I was doing laundry. Usually I can hear him burrowing around or biting on his cage, but I didn’t hear him at all. So I kicked the cage. When he didn’t peek up at me with his beady little rat eyes, I summoned Bryan because I do not play with dead animals. He had only days before extracted a dead possum from under our porch, so I knew he’d know what to do. He poked at Choji and reported, “He’s really stiff. And kind of deflated.” I gagged and ran away. We couldn’t tell the kids right away for a couple of reasons. 1. It was very near bedtime and I knew Maya would use it as an excuse to stay up forever and I couldn’t just say, “Yeah, I know you’re sad, but go to bed!” 2. I couldn’t say it with a straight face. I might have been a little bit happy.
So we waited a couple of hours while I rehearsed in the mirror and Bryan put Maya to bed. Then we told Lena and Liberty. Liberty said, “That’s ok, I was kind of sick of him anyway.” Lena cried a little bit and then, Digital Native that she is, said, “I’m going to make a slideshow of Choji and put a sad song on it and post it on my blog and my Facebook.” She’s very proud of it, so I’m posting it here, too. By the way, when she posted it on Facebook and received condolences, she responded, “Yeah I miss Choji, but doesn’t the song go good with the slideshow?” I can’t wait to see what she does with my funeral.
In the morning when we told Maya, rather, when we remembered to tell Maya, she cried a tiny bit. We had the funeral that night and she cried more. Choji’s death has made her more concerned about when our cat Kisa dies or when her friend’s pet dies, though. She wonders how they’ll bury a big old lab, she wonders if we’ll get another cat (yes), and all three girls want to get another hamster. ??? The answer is no. We will all just have to wallow in our grief over our one and only rodent. I will never miss seeing him put his butt up against the cage in order to pee or poop outside of his nest. That just ain’t right. I can deal with a lot of things, but an ugly, smelly rodent is not one of them.
Journey=Chuck Berry
11April 22, 2009
I hate to break this to everybody, but Journey is now an oldies band. It’s true. Maybe this isn’t a surprise to you, but it certainly is to me.
I had one of those holy-shit-I’m-as-old-as-my-parents-were-when I-thought-they-were-so-old and-now-I-realize-that-they-weren’t-so-old moments yesterday. Has that ever happened to you? Jarring.
*sigh* The girls and I were in the car yesterday and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” came on the radio. Of course I turned it up and started singing because that’s my favorite thing to do. Then I heard Lena singing with me and it made me think of driving around with my parents on Saturday nights listening to “Solid Gold Saturday Night” on the Pacer radio (If you’ve heard that radio show, I bet you can’t just read the words “Solid Gold Saturday Night.” You have to sing them, don’t you? It’s ok, I do too.) I used to sing along with my parents all the frickin’ time! Even when I didn’t know the words. But those songs were well and truly old, right? Songs from my youth can’t possibly be considered well and truly old by my children. I thought about that and then I googled it. And now I frickin’ hate the google. Always telling me stuff I don’t wanna know. Know-it-all douche.
I was 6 when “Don’t Stop Believin’” came out. My mom was 6 when one of my all-time favorite oldies came out:
=
So, by my math, Journey=Chuck Berry. Think about that! I’m just going to assume that my math is wrong and keep going ahead with the idea that my parents are old now and they’ve always been old, while I, on the other hand, have always been young and will continue to be young. Seriously, tell me there’s something special about songs from the 50s and their “oldies” quality. It’s not the same as when a child of today hears Journey. I mean, it’s not the same, is it? Is it?
Ten
9April 17, 2009
by Abby
in I have some daughters
I don’t have words, but I have pictures. We try so hard to treat Lena and Liberty as individuals, but when it comes to small things like writing in their birthday cards, it’s really difficult to not write exactly the same thing. They are so different from each other, and I know they’re not a unit, but there is no getting around the fact that they are both breathtaking. They are beautiful. They are amazing. They are goofy. They are spirited and wild and wonderful. And now, they are ten.
It’s April!
4April 15, 2009
April is just a month full of celebrating around here. Well, celebrating and saying things like, “Really? Is this how old we are? Do we have kids who are going to be 10 years old on Friday? And did we just celebrate our 13th anniversary on Monday? There must be something wrong with the maths.”
The maths are wrong, baby, cuz your hotness is rockin’!
Easter was lovely, except it needs to last much longer so my family can stay much longer and we can have, like, an 8-day feast instead of a weekend binge where we drink and eat too much and hurt ourselves. If we knew it would last longer, we could pace ourselves. I promise we would pace ourselves. My sister and I discovered that it doesn’t really matter what kind of wine a person drinks. If that person drinks too much of it, that person’s belly gets mad at them and punishes them. In other words, it’s not the quality, it’s the quantity. My sister-in-law is wise and she knew that already. She and my brother and brother-in-law, along with Bryan, were able to go to the Ohio Deli (as seen on Man vs Food!) and eat and eat on Saturday, while my sister and my mom and I stayed with the kids. Well, my mom stayed with the kids. Tracey and I just laid around and said, “Shhhh!” But now we know. Damn.
My Columbus friends were able to meet my family and that was lovely. I felt like I should be more nervous about it for some reason, but I wasn’t because Kristen, Dawn and Lynne are just Ohio versions of me, my sister and my sister-in-law. I don’t branch out much in my friendships. And the husbands? All of the husbands are beaten down by perfect matches for their loud and lovely wives, so we love all of them, too. Even my brother. I never found the bellybutton lint he hid here, but I have a feeling he hid it on my pillow. Just thinking about it gives me chills. Or, maybe he unscrewed the screen on the showerhead and put it in there so I shower in lint leavings every morning. Ew!
With that, I’ll leave you with another disturbing image. Everybody knows that My L1ttle Ponies love Easter. I just didn’t know how much they love it until I walked in the bathroom and found this little filly enjoying Maya’s Easter basket. In front of the mirror. Seriously, H@sbro, who designs your baskets*?
*I didn’t buy this basket. My mother-in-law bought it for Maya 2 or 3 years ago. I didn’t even notice what the little pony was doing until I saw her watching herself in the mirror with that look in her eye.
P.S. Don’t ask me what Maya’s basket was doing in the bathroom. Nobody wants to know.
