Christmas Eve 2010

Julia's Song

Julia has been asking if we could record her singing some time. We finally did and she insisted that we post it.

"Will this get like, a million hits?" she asked.

Guest Post #2

Greg here. The one thing I regret about giving up blogging is adding to the archive of events in our daughters’ lives. Deb and I keep these memories safe and we do a good job of reminding one another about events in the past – but old blog posts were good for some of the details that fall away. For example, reading about the exact height, color and smell of Allie’s projectile vomiting (years after the fact) made it seem almost charming.

I wonder if I’ll feel the same way about Julia locking herself in her bedroom on Wednesday.

Wednesday night Debbie has class so the girls were in bed by the time she got home. When Deb went upstairs to kiss them goodnight she couldn’t open Julia’s door. I heard the commotion and joined in. Deb and I stood outside Julia’s door asking her to let us in.

No response.

The silence from the other side of the door started a small wave of panic inside me. For me, fear means yelling. I began yelling at Julia to open the door. Finally, after pounding and yelling we could hear Julia whimpering. The yelling and the whimpering went on for a very long time until I gave up on the coat hanger I was using to pick the lock and just unscrewed the entire knob assembly. The knobs fell away and I popped open the door ready to scoop up Julia and fling her out the window. Frightened, angry and probably frothing at the mouth I grabbed Julia’s arm and demanded an explanation. All I got was crying.

The entrance to Julia’s bedroom no longer has a door.

On Thursday after plenty of interrogation Julia said she locked her door because she was mad at Allie. I’m pretty sure she made up the explanation just get me to shut up. I tried to tell her how she could earn back her door but she kept smirking at me and looking out the window so I gave up. It was obvious this was a much bigger deal for me than it was for her.

Last night was the first night Julia slept without a closed door since she was old enough to tell us she wanted her door closed. I suspect this change has disrupted her circadian rhythm or something because around midnight Allie woke me to tell me that Julia was downstairs in the living room. I went to retrieve her and found her on the couch with her head buried in the cushion and her butt in the air. I didn’t carry her upstairs. I made her sleepwalk back to her bed.

So far both girls have made attempts to look for Julia’s door. So far I’ve caught them looking in the garage, under their beds and in various parts of the basement. They still haven’t found it and seemed a little baffled that something so large could remain in the house undetected. I hinted to Julia that I gave her door away. She started to cry so I reassured her it’s somewhere in the house . . . as far as she knows.

UPDATE: This evening I had to take the door knob off our bedroom door because someone had locked it and closed it on an empty room. Deb just went to Home Depot to buy a nail gun.

Gert

Hi. Greg here. Deb said I could re-post one or two things here because my blog is hard to get to these days.

Thanks, Deb.

Here you go, Uncle Butch:

I was sitting in my Grandma's living room Saturday holding a tattered, eighty-six year old photograph. The photo was held together with a piece of tape and shoved into a simple, clear plastic frame. It showed a man and a woman with a baby between them. Someone had taken a ballpoint pen and written, Daddy on the man's chest, Gertie on the baby's gown and Mother beneath the woman's face.

Grandma told me, "Dad had just got a new overcoat and wanted to wear it for the picture." There really wasn't a need to explain why Charles (Daddy) was wearing his coat in the photo. It didn't look unusual to me. I have a feeling Grandma has heard this bit of trivia told to just about everyone who has seen this photo over the years. I'm sure Grandma offered the explanation to me out of habit. After all, she is the baby in photo so I wouldn't expect her to have any memory of what happened that day, eighty six years ago.

The picture is evidence that my Grandma was a beautiful baby back in 1918. It's no surprise that Charles and Amanda (Mother) chose to bring her home from the orphanage. Although, I'm told, it was Charles who immediately fell in love with Violet. Violet was Grandma's name before she was adopted. Charles and Amanda decided to call her Gertrude. I looked at my Grandma when she told me this and in my head I said, "Hello, Violet."

Surprisingly it fit. Grandma named for a beautiful flower seemed just as appropriate as Gertrude (I looked it up and it means spear of strength). And, as far as I am concerned, Grandma is really the only name she'll ever need. But I would never presume to argue this point with Charles, Amanda and everyone else who knows and loves Gertrude. So my first, Hello, Violet, will be my last.

Charles was a laborer for the Wabash Railroad and Amanda was a school teacher. Grandma tells me Charles spent most of his time washing the big train engines that would roll into the rail yard. I looked at his face in the pictures. I was somehow disappointed by his lack of resemblance to anyone in our family. An odd thought that seems petty and ungrateful. How could I be disappointed that a man who chose to love and care for my mother's mother didn't have eyes shaped like mine?

Amanda looked young, vital and sturdy in the picture. I had a difficult time reconciling this with the image my mom has implanted in my head of Amanda as an older, stern woman who lost a leg to diabetes. Grandma talked about the day Amanda died. I kept looking down at Amanda as Grandma told me about the day she lost her mother. My brain was swirling together an overwhelming sense of mortality with images of everyone I care about and I kind of wanted Grandma to shut up.

She did.

I could see it was far more difficult for Grandma to talk about that day than it was for me to hear about it. But I was grateful she spoke about it with me. It's what I couldn't stop thinking about at 2:40 a.m. on Easter Sunday. That and the eighty-six year old picture of a train washer in his new overcoat with his beautiful wife and his new baby girl.

In a class by myself

I am. In a class by myself. The summer class I'm taking toward my MBA pertains to the legal and regulatory environment of business, and I guess almost every other student of this college decided that was just too heavy of a topic for summer. Because only one other student registered for this class, and he isn't local, so he's not attending the classroom sessions; he's only participating online.

Last week, the instructor and I met to review the syllabus and so he could set the tone of the class. We were the only two people there. This week, he started lecturing and he lectured only to me. I'm being privately tutored.

Now I had some small upper-level classes when I got my undergrad degree from this college over 20 years ago, but this is new.

Needless to say, I'm making sure I do my preparatory reading for class!

Flashing

Greg raised the blind in our bathroom this weekend. It's almost never open because the bathroom window is quite large. Awhile later, I went in to take a shower. I took a look; the trees have grown up so much that as long as I didn't get close to the window, and as long as I stayed away from one angle, no one was going to see me if I didn't close it while I showered. The only possible angle where someone would see me is if our neighbors were right out at their property line, and based on the look of their "garden" back there, that wasn't going to happen.

So I took my shower, dried off behind the shower curtain, and pulled the curtain open. And even without my glasses, I could see, our neighbor was back along the property line, facing in my direction, mowing his grass.

I ducked.

Sleeping with the crickets

On Saturday night, Greg slept outside in a tent in our backyard. We've lived in our house for 11 years now and the blue spruce trees we planted along our back property line (to block the view out our living room windows of our neighbor's parked boat and camper) are big now. Really big. They were seven feet tall when we planted them and I bet they're well over 20 feet now. When you put a tent in that same area, it's now pretty secluded. They could pretend they were adventurers out in the wild jungle, I suppose.

There are several traditions associated with backyard camping. First is that Mom is a wimp and she does not camp with you (sorry, girls--think of it as kids-Daddy bonding time). Second is that there must be licorice. Third is that your bedtime is well after dark, and that you take a walk around the neighborhood once it gets dark with a flashlight.

This year, Greg told me that the three of them went to the park across the street and checked out the playground equipment, which is out of sight of our house and actually a bit of a walk away across a field (we're closer to the soccer field side). Greg said there were two kids there, one perhaps 19 and one who was short enough and slim enough to be much younger than 19. And he said they were both completely plastered.

I guess you never know what surprises you'll find in a city park after dark. We live in a small city, about 12,500 people, and we know that drinking is a big hobby for high schoolers (and I'm sure, younger kids too). I don't know if our girls noticed or if Greg said anything to our kids. I don't know what I would say.

Maybe a plea. Please, don't someday break your mother's heart by drinking until drunk and then hanging out in a city park in the dark. And don't drive.

I want my kids to have more nights when they think sleeping in a backyard tent is cool, especially with their daddy. Their childhoods are going by so fast.

May flowers

I feel like I need to post something so you all know I'm not dead. Well, I'm not and we're not, we're just busy. You know how that goes, your life takes a detour (in a good way) and you just don't have the time you used to have. Greg is giving a giant HAH! at that last statement and he's not even the slightest bit amused.

Regardless, we're all fine. Julia is sleepwalking a bit. That's an interesting new development. Still no thumb sucking though, so I don't mind the tradeoff. Her future orthodontist probably wishes she'd keep it up but she really seems to have kicked the habit without too much trouble.

Allie has been stressing over learning the 50 state capitals. I told her frankly that her daddy and I never had to learn the state capitals and couldn't probably name half of them--especially the ones that aren't in the biggest cities in the state. I mean seriously, who knew the capital of Nevada is Carson City. Carson City? It's pretty funny listening to Allie try to pronounce Baton Rouge though. Between that and Des Moines--- Hey, it doesn't take much to get a laugh in our household.

The title of this post reminds me of my wonderful grandma Martha, god rest her soul. She and my grandpa retired on a wooded five-acre lot and one of her greatest pleasures of spring was picking what we called May flowers every May. Delicate and pretty. I miss her. It makes me sad that my girls never knew her or my grandpa Elmer. Now there's a couple for you--Elmer and Martha. Aren't old names great?

And so life goes on.

Growing up

As Greg mentioned in his post, Allie started learning about puberty in health class today. When she came home from school, Julia went outside to play and Allie and I talked through all of her questions for about 45 minutes. These discussions have been going on for awhile now, but now of course, she wanted more details on certain things.

Actually, I didn't answer ALL of her questions. She said, Mom, I understand that the sperm and the egg together make a baby but I don't know how they get together. I said, Allie, that's sex. She said, drawing out the word in realization, OOOOOHHHH.

I told her we'll talk about sex eventually, but that right now, we'll just concentrate on puberty. One conversation at a time, please.

We caved

We did. We bought the girls a hamster.

It wasn't much of an expenditure. We already had everything except fresh bedding and hamster food. And the hamster. The girls named her Ruby (my suggestion) after an intense 20 minutes or so of name-considering.

We can't remember when our last hamster, Fuzzy Sara, died but Allie doesn't remember her at all, so it must have been before she turned 5. One morning, I was in the bathroom with Allie and Greg came to tell me that Fuzzy Sara was dead. I remember I asked if he was sure and he said, Oh, yeah.

So now Ruby has taken up residence in the cage. She has all the hamster necessities, including her own penthouse (that she's presently too little to climb up the tube into). She's a Russian dwarf hamster and Allie and Julia are in love.

So are the cats.

They somehow tipped the cage off Allie's bookshelf and the whole thing shattered last night. It seems like the hamster somehow escaped harm despite being under some debris when we ran up the stairs. Greg made a late night trip to Wal-Mart for supplies and now the cage is bungie-corded in place to the bookshelf.



Every time we checked last evening, the cats were sitting on the floor beneath the bookshelf or at the end of Allie's bed. Watching. Always watching. We've brought more excitement into their lives in the last 18 hours than in the whole three years we've had them.

Happiness all around.

Familius vomitus

Julia had something on Friday night that made her vomit repeatedly. She started eating again late on Saturday, a little.

Last night, Greg made a wonderful new dinner that mostly just he and I ate. The girls ate peanut butter.

Julia went to bed as normal and slept through the night. Allie started vomiting at 9:30 and vomited throughout the entire night, sometimes in sessions only 10 minutes apart. Greg started vomiting at 9:32 and he's still nauseous too. They're both home today.

And I'm OK. Though when I eat something, I'm always thinking whether I want to see that food again. If I can just stay healthy until after my class tonight - - -

Just mildly flipping out, right?

I have my first midterm exam on Monday. It's on microeconomics. I'm really, really disliking this class. My dislike doesn't have that much to do with the instructor, who is fine in person as a lecturer but who has a rather extreme tendency to flip flop on course requirements (you have to do two case studies/no wait, just one; you can write a paper instead/oh, no, you can't/oh, yes, you can; the midterm will be closed book and open note/I mean closed book and closed note/(and after strenuous protests from the class that that wasn't school policy) OK, open book and open note).

It's the subject matter. The instructor made a comment last week that our textbook is more theoretical and model based than others he's seen (oh, joy) and what that means is that there's a whole heck of a lot of algebra and formulas and graphing and much less plain English discussing why economics is important for a manager to understand.

I actually have a minor in economics from my undergrad career, but I wonder now if economic theory was easier to understand 20-some years ago, cause this subject is a bear for me to understand. I am anticipating significant freaking out in the next few days, until I get the exam (which our instructor is scheduling for three hours) over with.

Weirdos

I took our cats to the vet this week. They hadn't been in almost three years, since they were just kittens. Rabies the cat and Simon the cat both needed their rabies shots. They're both fine and healthy and not overweight (well, Rabies isn't and Simon just barely isn't).

We used to have two other cats who knew what it meant when we got out the cat carriers to go to the vet and who put up dramatic fights. There's nothing like the fun of being almost late for the vet appointment, being on your knees bent over and sweating, and poking your broom under the bed because your cat escaped there. This is how those confrontations went:

First, I would carefully and quietly close every bedroom door so the cat didn't figure out what was going on (you think I jest about this; I am not joking). Then close the bathroom doors (they try to hide behind the toilet). Close the laundry room door (Pig the cat once tried desperately to get behind the dryer). And for god's sake, close the door to the basement. Way too many hiding places down there.

Then get out the car carrier. While the cat is frantically running up the stairs, only to be confronted by closed bedroom doors, unscrew all of the fasteners on the cat carrier and remove the top section. Carefully place the cover to the side and make sure the door to the carrier is mostly in place.

Now, wearing something you don't care about because stress is going to cause the cat to shed all over you, catch the cat. Yes, this may involve chasing and undignified running. Shit, she got behind the couch. Stomp on the floor and hope she runs for another hiding place.

Catch the cat. Hold her tightly. Listen to growling from your usually loving cat. Kneel down and bend over, placing the cat inside the cat carrier. Watch out for the back claws. Using your entire torso, hold the cat down in the bed of the carrier. If the cat gets one leg up to the side, unhook the claws and put the leg inside the carrier. Now carefully hold the cat with one arm and reach for the top of the carrier.

Somehow maneuver so that you let go of the cat and slam the cover in place without the cat getting out. Grab that door, the cat's been known to push it out and escape. Hold the cover down, the cat's been known to throw his entire body against the closed but unfastened lid in an attempt to get out. Quickly screw enough fasteners so the lid stays closed.

Rest. Listen to the cat swear at you in cat language (deep, mean-sounding growls). Now you're ready to go to the vet.

This week, I closed a few bedroom doors in preparation for the vet visit but not all of them because one of the cats was in Allie's room. I closed the basement door. Then I got out the cat carriers. I opened the door to one carrier to replace the newspaper lining it. Rabies the cat walked in to the cat carrier and sat down. So I closed the door. I opened the door to the other cat carrier. Simon the cat walked in and sat down. So I closed the door.

I'd started the process 20 minutes before our appointment because I anticipated the chasing and the sweating and the poking and the wrestling and the eventual victory of brute strength. None of that occurred.

These are some weird freaking cats. It's unnatural.

Allie's 10!

We had Allie's 10th birthday party on her birthday, Saturday, this year. We were very happy that Greg's parents, my parents, and my sisters (and Jeff too) were able to come and visit. We didn't play any dice, just some Wii, but I hope they all had a good time. That evening, since all the parents were staying in hotels, we took the kids to one to go swimming at the indoor pool.

Julia was very excited. She told me about four times that she'd gotten her swimsuit and she kept reminding me to get towels. I put that all in the bag and then she came toward me with the last thing she thought we needed before going to the pool--our big bottle of sunscreen.

Umm, that's OK, honey.

School daze

I'm coming to the end of my second week of grad school classes and things are going fine. OK. Not bad.

Actually, it's been a little overwhelming. I don't know exactly what my expectations were, considering that it's been over 20 years since I attended college, that was undergrad anyway, and now two of my classes are online only.

But I thought about what it was like when I was an on-campus undergrad and frankly, it was a lot easier than what I'm doing right now. Back then, I might go to class for an hour or so, then eat lunch, work my on-campus job for a couple of hours, then go to another class for an hour or so and that would be the school day.

I was usually pretty much up on my assignments, so if I didn't feel like doing any further work that evening, I didn't. I'd hang out at the campus center, visit friends, watch TV, see my boyfriend. Frankly, it was pretty peachy only being responsible for myself. I'm sure that's why people were always telling me that I'd someday look back and those would be the best days of my life.

Despite having a work-study job and feeling pressure to keep my grades up so I could keep my scholarship, the fact was that being a student was pretty easy.

Now, not so much. Lots of other things going on in my life--lots of good things that make my life a full and rich one. So I'm not complaining at all. I'm just--adjusting.

Short movie review

Unlike the movie itself, I'm going to hereby offer my short opinion on "Avatar," which my family saw today (I'm in a hurry since I have to do my homework yet tonight):

Very, very cool. Go see it.

Cat post

What's nice about your cat wanting to snuggle into your bed, under the covers:

It's warm; it feels nice against your legs; it demonstrates his trust; if it wakes you at all, it's just momentary


What's not nice about your cat wanting to snuggle into your bed, under the covers:

When he decides that there's something under there that needs to be attacked, so he repeatedly pounces with all the strength of his front paws, while you're trying to sleep

To the store

Going to the grocery store during a mid-level winter storm is an interesting experience. This week, we were projected to get about six inches of snow one day. We only had about two inches on the ground when school started, so the girls got on the bus as normal and off they went. And Greg went off to tackle his usually-40-minute commute on slippery, snow-covered roads.

And later I headed off to the grocery store. The storm had been predicted well in advance, so I suspect that the store had been very busy the day before--all those people stocking up on milk and bread in case the whole world shut down for a week or two. But on this day, the parking lot was almost deserted. I parked and headed in, slogging through about (by this time) four inches of snow in my winter boots.

The store only had two checkouts open. The produce section was deserted (and they had no celery available--weird). The bakery had one other patron. The meat section was empty. It was quite odd. I felt like I'd wandered to the grocery store late, late at night. There was no competition for pork shoulder or ham slices. The shelves in the dairy section were fully stocked. And I when I'd finished my list, I checked out really rapidly.

Then it was time to head outside. Pushing an almost fun grocery cart partially uphill through 4 1/2 inches of snow was not too easy. And in really cold weather, the hydraulics on my hatchback don't hold it up, so it wasn't too fun getting the groceries in the car.

On the plus side, I didn't have to keep a hand on the cart to keep it from rolling away on the slope--it wasn't going anywhere. I didn't worry about the popsicles melting (though that's rarely a concern in Wisconsin in the winter). And I didn't have to back up the car when I left because the lot was so empty I could pull forward.

Just a bit surreal.

Rite of passage

OK, after driving for 28 years, I've finally completed my rite of passage to be on the road in Wisconsin.

I hit a deer. Or to be more accurate, a deer ran into me.

I was on my way home from new student orientation the other night. The highway I was traveling is one we drive on all the time, and it's pretty normal to see a dead deer on the side of the road at least every month or so. So I know several places where it pays to be extra cautious. Unfortunately, the road is mostly two lanes and pretty heavily traveled, so you can only briefly use your brights to illuminate the patches of woods and fields that line the road.

So I'm driving along, concentrating on the fact that the road narrows from four lanes to two, and thinking about my book purchases, when I see a movement on the left side of where my headlights penetrate and realize it's a doe. Seriously, all I had time to do was gasp. I didn't have time for any other physical movement, not braking or swerving or anything.

She was running, but she must have paused because she didn't hit the front of my car. I heard a thunk on the rear driver-side of my car and that was it. I kept going, because it didn't sound like too much of a contact, but she definitely hit me. Then I braked, but I didn't see any other deer (there were almost certainly other deer around too), so I drove home to see what I could see on the car.

The light in our garage isn't the best in that corner, but I didn't see any damage. Yesterday, I took another look before the car got covered with the snow that was falling and I didn't see any damage at all, nor hair or anything else.

I've seen deer in fields and on the side of the road and crossing the road in front and behind me more times than I can count over the years, but I must say--boy, did I luck out.

Money, money

Well, I'm a grad school student. That sounds weird.

Things have changed more than a little since I was last in school, 22 years ago (I wonder why). The latest big thing is that the cost of textbooks has just gone through the roof. I had to buy three textbooks for my three classes. The cheapest one is $130. The second cheapest one is $134. And the most expensive one is $180. Of course, that's without shipping.

When I last bought textbooks, I walked over to the Campus Center and picked up my books in person and I think my total was about $200 for four classes. In four years on campus, the most expensive book I remember buying was a complete collection of Shakespeare, almost two inches thick with very delicate paper, and it was $80.

May I just say--sheesh.