Dogwood Girl Promotes Population Control

I was talking with a friend the other day, and he mentioned that he kept up with what I was doing by reading my blog. He also said that my posts were making him question whether or not he wanted children. I am not sure how serious he was about this, but I would hate to be responsible for a decision of this magnitude.

My God, does my life sound that bad? I hope not. Sure, i like to bitch about every little bit of spilt milk or vomit, but let me state for a fact that i adore my children, my husband, and my life. I have never been as happy as I am now in my 30s, all settled down. My life is better for having Todd, Rollie, and Matilda in it. Much, much better.

And It Begins

Rollie says, "Mama watch. Get mark. Get set. GO!" and drives his trucks in a circle through the living room, into the hall, around the kitchen, through the dining room, and back into the living room. "Again," he says.

I am busy doing other things and mutter "uh-huh," without really looking at what he is doing. He will not be denied. He runs past me, pushing the truck, looking me fiercely in the eye, growling, "SEEEE ITTT!"

It appears we are in the "Look Ma, no hands!" portion of the parenting experience. I am thinking this one lasts about, oh, 25 more years or so. . . .

Just Like Old Times

After sixteen months without it, menstruation is everything I remembered it could be, and more.

We are Superhero

You may have noticed that I've been listening to The Go! Team lately. I don't think it is the best album I have ever heard, but it is definitely fun. It sounds to me like a cross between "Hollaback Girl," the theme from The Six Million Dollar Man, Cibo Matto, and the Battle of the Planets theme. When I am listening to it, we are superhero, we are G-Force: I am Princess. Rollie is Mark. Tiller is Keyop. Home is our control center, 7-Zark-7, and the Odyssey is our fiery Phoenix. Okay, if Todd wants to play, he can be Mark, and Rollie will be Jason. . . .

Rollie loves to hear the part that counts off "One, Two, Three. One, Two, Three, Four." I look in the rear view window, and he is trying to count it on his fingers, which is funny, because he has only mastered holding up one finger so far. Which, when you think about it, is really all you need.

My Time in the Big House

I spent the weekend with my roommates from college. Dana's family has a farm outside of Asheville, and we end up meeting there once or twice a year for a weekend. I drove up on Friday and arrived about 2 o'clock. Honey and Laura came from Charlotte, and Dana was coming from Winston-Salem; their drives were much shorter than mine, but i still beat them, even with my 4.5 hour drive.

On the way up, it snowed as i was coming through Asheville. That was nice. I arrived and read until the girls got there. (Dana's step-father, Randy, and her mom, Leah, were already there, so they let me in.) The farm consists of two houses - the main, or "big" house, and a guesthouse/office, or the "little house." We usually sleep and hang out in the little house, which has two bedrooms, a full bath, and a kitchen, in addition to the office area and a large main room, complete with pool table, computer, and television. Randy and Leah love to cook, so they often make meals for us, which we eat in the big house. Our constant companion while there is Burns, the family's golden retriever.

On Saturday, we started drinking long before we ate dinner (a delectable smorgasbord of leftovers) and stayed up until about Midnight. I thought i was planning ahead when I decided to take it easy on Friday night, so as to not have a hangover for our spa day Saturday, and so as to be able to blow it out Saturday night. Alas, Honey and Laura did the opposite. I felt pretty good Saturday morning, although I woke up at 7 am out of habit, but that allowed me to have a cup of coffee sitting alone on the patio and overlooking the fields with Burns. We drove up to Blowing Rock for the spa, and had the pleasure of a spring snow day. It snowed the whole time we were there, while we ate our spa lunch, had our scrubs and massages, and as we had margaritas and mexican food in town. It was still snowing as we started back down to the farm.

Saturday, we ate so much at the mexican place, and Randy had planned a dinner replete with a special garlic mail-ordered from God Knows Where, that we had to actually fake hunger when we got back to the Farm, which was unfortunate, because the meal was excellent. Randy's mother joined us for dinner. "Nana" is 93 years old and still a pistol. She and i chatted about being Georgia crackers. (That's Nana in the picture with us girls. From the left: Laura, Dana, Nana, me, and Honey. Nana is from Statesboro, in Bulloch County, and she says "shrimp" exactly like my Grandma did.) Even after Nana left, Saturday evening was pretty laid back - we had drinks after dinner, sat in front of the fire, and talked for hours.

I just love these girls so much - it is fun to see them and my time with them is never long enough. Luckily, though, the whole weekend was for Honey, who is getting married in two weeks, so I will see them all again in Boca Raton!

I'm Bad, I'm bad, Shamon.

Is it bad that I was disappointed that my website isn't more evil?

Mother, Iconoclast

This is how sad my life is. . .

I was unloading the dishwasher for the second time yesterday, and I started putting away Rollie's sippy cups in their designated drawer. Most of his cups are made by Gerber. They have interchangeable lids, meaning you can put the lid from any Gerber cup on any other Gerber cup and it will fit. This is excellent, because you regularly lose these cups. As I was mindlessly screwing lids onto cups, I looked down and realized i was putting an orange lid on a pink cup, and I thought to myself: "What an unconventional color combination!"

Happy Birthday

To our favorite fishin' buddy.

I love you, Daddy!

Weekend in Auburn

Todd, my rapidly vanishing husband (left) and I took the kids to Auburn for the weekend. His parents live outside of Auburn in the metropolis known as Dadeville. We got in late friday night, and then Saturday afternoon, we left the kids with Grandma, Papaw, and MeeMaw (their great-grandmother), and headed into Auburn for A NIGHT TO OURSELVES! First, we went and bought coffees downtown, then walked around, looking leisurely, as opposed to the drive-by window shopping done with kids in tow, at Auburn University crap clothing, and even browsed a local jewelry store owned and operated by a friend of the family. Todd said I could have anything i wanted out of the orange and blue jewelry section. I am not kidding; in Auburn, you can buy a ring made out of a silver tiger's head with a diamond in its' mouth. No thank you, dear.

After that, we dropped by to see friends, and then checked into the fabulous Best Western Auburn. We bought a six-pack and whiled the afternoon away watching War Games, Spike's Amazing Videos, and Cops (only because the episode was filmed in Atlanta - we do have some standards.) After that, we got dressed and headed out to Auburn's finest (and most over-priced) restaurant, Hamilton's. I had crab cakes and a salad, Todd had stuffed mushrooms and the chicken caesar. Everything was good, but the crab cakes were possibly the best we have ever had. Thick, not too greasy, and mostly crab, rather than breading.

We ate leisurely, then went to a local bar to meet our friends Iain and Noelle (left) before heading to a party. We were easily the oldest people there. Todd and I played three really bad games of pool.We went over to the party and again, we were easily the oldest people there, but it was very fun to hang out at someone's house and drink beer with strangers.















The couple who had the party, Sam and Kelly (above), also have a kid - Luke, 18 mos. He had been shipped off to Grandma's in Montgomery for the evening.

We had lots of fun, hanging out with Iain and Noelle, Iain's brother Matt, another friend, Shannon (who had ditched his kids this evening, too), and Ned and Vanessa, who had dropped their daughter, Scarlett, off with Ned's mom, who also lives in Auburn. Such a small town, so many temporarily-orphaned children! Todd and I stayed out until almost 3 am (4 am Atlanta time!) and our favorite designated driver, Ned, took us home.

We woke about 9 am, showered, packed, took a cab to get the car we left at Sam and Kelly's, and then ate Waffle House with the college hangover crowd. Then, we drove around and looked at houses, went by the city cemetery, and then drove back out to the lake to take a nap before the kids and Grandma and Papaw returned from church.

Either my camera was dirty, or i was drunk. Here are some more pics:



Iain and todd, hanging on the porch. When Todd wears this shirt, I am Hot Lips and he is Hawkeye.









Shannon and me talking breast pumps and breast reductions, and generally, just anything involving breasts.









Vanessa and Ned, our favorite designated driver. If he ever decides to become a drunk like the rest of us, we are in serious trouble. Payback is hell!









How does Todd mix this with beer and not have a hangover? Amazing constitution!













Here's a picture of me in Auburn's Pine Hill cemetery, where my Grandma's grandma is buried.










And this is a picture of the spot in the same cemetery where Todd and his friends used to smoke pot in high school. Funny coincidence, no?




All good things must come to an end, however. We arrived back in Atlanta about five, proceeded to cook dinner, put it on the table, and Rollie refused to eat. Veteran moms of Rollie know this is not a good sign. Sure enough, he skipped dinner and then went up for his bath and began vomiting within the hour. This continued till about midnight last night, but he seems to feel better this morning. Here's hoping that lunch stays where it's supposed to!

It Was Only Beer, I Swear!!!

I recently spent four days at the beach with my sister and a couple of girlfriends. This was the first time I had been away from Matilda for more than a night, and it was quite an adjustment. Okay, who am i kidding? It was fucking wonderful.

There is a weird feeling that you get after having kids for a few months, where you start to feel them as an appendage to your body. I read somewhere that having a child is like having your heart walk around outside of your body, unprotected. Truer words were never written. To see them injured makes you feel physically uncomfortable. When you have children, any time you are not with them, there is a constant feeling of having lost your purse or keys or sunglasses. You pat at your pockets, and on top of your head where your sunglasses might be propped, and then you suddenly realize that what you are missing is your children, who are safely at home, tucked in bed by Daddy, or Aunt Lisa, or Grandma or Papaw.

The flip side to this constant feeling of absence, is that when you experience fun or relaxing things after having kids, you really experience them. Children make your life more full, and they make the moments that you are not with them almost hypersensual. You are so used to being attuned to what they are doing at every moment - Are they near the fire? Are they near water? Don't walk out of the bathroom while they are in the tub. Is that ice cream spilling on the couch? Is he messing with the dog? Don't let the toddler step on the infant on the playmat. Don't let the toddler chase the dog, who might then step on the baby on the floor. . . blahblahblah, ad nauseum.

Sure, margaritas tasted damn good before, but now? Drinking your first margarita of the day, lingered over with friends, with the possibility of having one or two more, with no responsibility for getting up with children the next morning? That is something that can only be truly appreciated by the parents of the world. A leisurely walk on the beach, no handholding or leg clinging? Pure bliss. You decide you must run to the liquor store for more tequila? An absolutely exhilarating thing to realize you can grab your keys, flip flops, wallet, and ID and that is ALL YOU NEED. No diaper bags, pacis, diapers, extra change of clothes, sippy cups, cheerios. . . .

My recent trip to the beach included two periods of time when I was entirely alone on the beach. For one afternoon, there were other sunbathers there, but i had an umbrella, a cooler, a sheet, and an IPod to myself. I laid on my tummy in the sun, watching the waves crash to The Shin's "New Slang," The Stone Roses "Waterfall," and The Cure's "Plainsong," and drinking cold beer out of a "Different Day, Same Hangover" coozie. The seagulls on the sand next to me seemed fluffier than I'd ever seen. I had the urge to touch everything. (Beer only, i swear!!!) My toes wiggled in the cool sand as if they could ground me. The wind in my hair was a caress from the hand of God, and I felt like i was floating. Everything was just . . . more than i remembered it ever being before.

It was a beautiful, memorable thing. It was one of the best moments of my life. I love Rollie and Matilda. I love being with them, and cannot imagine not being able to return to them. But children make everything in your life sweeter, even the times when you are without them. Especially the times when you are without them.

My New Favorite Word

uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:
Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive shopper she has always been.
-- Angela Huth, "All you need is love," Daily Telegraph, April 24, 1998

Flagler seems to have been an uxorious, domestic man, who liked the comfort and companionship of a wife at his side.
-- Michael Browning, "Whitehall at 100," Palm Beach Post, February 22, 2002

Fuller is as uxorious a poet as they come: hiatuses in the couple's mutual understanding are overcome with such rapidity as to be hardly worth mentioning in the first place ("How easy, this ability / To lose whatever we possess / By ceasing to believe that we / Deserve such brilliant success").
-- David Wheatley, "Round and round we go," The Guardian, October 5, 2002


Uxorious is from Latin uxorius, from uxor, wife.

Thanks to Dictionary.com for the definition.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

I finished reading Ecology of a Cracker Childhood a couple of weeks ago, but it is one of those reads that really sticks with you, that you keep referencing in your daily life, that seeps into your thoughts and makes you see things in a different light than you would have before reading it. It really took me that long to digest it. I knew immediately, even while reading it, that it was one of the best books I have ever read. But it becomes even more so when it sticks with you for weeks after reading it.

I can't say that this would universally be a book that people would find as amazing as I did. I told Todd that I felt like it was right up my alley. Almost as if it had been written just for me. Or at least for other readers who have an interest in the history and ecology of southeastern Georgia, or the environment at large, or plants and animals, or in families that in print seem completely dysfunctional, but in real life seem like, well, my family. And that truly are like my family in that the area this author writes about is where much of my family has lived for over 200 years.

This book put into words so many things that I think and yearn for daily. The beauty of the southern (and more specifically in this book, the longleaf) pine tree. I can't drive past any of the new McMansion developments without thinking about how the developers simply cleared the property of every pine tree, leaving only the hardwoods as sentinels to look over what remains. I think that people who have not grown up here do not appreciate the beauty of the pine tree; they find it sparse and ugly.

I know what it is to be innocent and fearless, to climb those trees and have the brown bark skin my knees and ankles. I know the sound my sneakers make as they slide down the trunk. I know what it feels like to feel a pine cone whip past me, skimming face, or arm, in a pine cone war. I remember the smell of the pine needles when they are green, and still in a tassel like a broom, and I know the stickiness of the pine sap. To me, it is the landscape of my childhood play, and the landscape of my heart. I yearn to be carefree, without the boundaries of time and schedule and responsibility, and to sit in the pines, and just . . . touch them.

Janisse Ray, the author, describes the very longing to be more at one with the world around her that I feel every day. There is a sense of nature-starved longing that I feel whenever I get out of the city, driving through the more rural areas of the Southeast, or at the Lake, or hiking or camping, or lying on the beach with my feet in the sand. Like her, I almost feel that i have been robbed of some sort of southern inheritance, something that was yanked out of my life prematurely and unnaturally by computer companies, and transfers, and suburban developments, and strip malls, and clear-cutting. I am not oblivious to the irony that without having been removed to the city, I would never have read this book, or been to college, or have the worldview that i have, the one that allows me to know what I have lost.

This is a book about Place, and how it figures in the shaping of us as Southerners. It speaks with a resigned sense of loss about family history and inheritance, about the story of who our people were, about where they came from, and where they settled, about the people and the landscape and how the two came together to make us who we are today: The modern day Southerner, a cousin once or twice removed from those whose feet were so deeply entrenched in their place.

I am a part of these people - A girl longing to belong to something that is part of her, but which is lost to her forever.

Why is it?

That when Rollie has diarrhea, the dog decides to start vomiting all over the house?

The Littlest Literalist

Rollie is learning to brush his teeth. This involves his new tooth brush, and his starter toothpaste, which is more of a clear gel, than a paste. His particular toothpaste is "Little Bear" style. For those of you not in the know, Little Bear is a PBS cartoon character. So now, Rollie refers to toothpaste as "bear." Funny how kids are literalists that way. A perfect example of this literalism: Rollie was brushing tonight. He pulls his stool over to the sink, climbs up on it, naked after his bath. He holds the toothbrush while i put the "bear" on the brush for him. He begins to brush under my supervision.

"Rollie, brush your top teeth. That's right. Round and round. Okay, now do your bottom."

Rollie proceeds to take his toothbrush and brush his scrotum with it. That's right, to Rollie, his bottom is the general area "down there," and when I said "brush your bottom," that's where he went.

We are experiencing technical difficulties. . . .

Selling this damn house is really impacting my blogging time. How am i supposed to blog eloquently, when I am unable to be in my house during daylight hours? Sure, i could stay here for a while, but the longer we are here, the longer Rollie is leaving his footprint on the house, a big, huge, Abominable Snowman of a footprint: Thirty minutes of Rollie playing in the den takes about an hour to clean up before leaving.

Damn kids - Once again, they ruin everything.

Dispatches from Destin, or GERD Gone Wild!

Signs we're not as young as we used to be: Each of the four of us has a "Golden Girls" familiar - I'm obviously Dorothy, Lisa is Blanche, Robin is Rose, and Vanessa is a cross between Rose and Blanche. It is kind of frightening. Okay, to be honest, I probably have a little Sophia in me, too. A Bluehair told me I was being "a good Mom" to Lisa. Two different college students called us, "m'am." (Those little pricks.) Our dinner table conversations are monopolized by discussions of lactation, menstruation, hemmorhoids, and gastroesophageal relux disease (known to common sufferers as GERD, as in "this fried shit is going to make my GERD go wild.")




Zen moments of the day: Robin and I jumping fearlessly in the freezing water to the amazement of hundreds of people on the beach, from five to eighty-five. Watching the really old guy in his flippers and bitchin' cap swim farther out in the ocean than anyone I had ever seen. You go, grandpa! Sitting on the beach, warm sun on the skin, breeze blowing gently, watching the waves and the gulls while listening to "New Slang" and "Plainsong."



p.s. Yes, Robin and Vanessa and Lisa, I love you very, very , very, very, very . . . much.

Dispatches from Destin; Girls Gone Mild!

I am currently on my yearly vacation with my sister and two girlfriends, or what my brother-in-law terms Girls Gone Mild. An apt title, as we just don't party like we used to. That being said, I woke up this morning with a raging hangover (didn't I learn about 20 years ago NOT TO MIX?!!) and there may be a tequila shortage in Okaloosa County by this weekend.


We arrived yesterday and by sunset, we were walking on the beach, sipping margaritas. We ate dinner in, hit the wine, and watched the Oscars. (You know it does not bode well for your head in the morning when you get up and ask if Reese won Best Actress and Robin looks at you with eyebrows raised and tells you that you saw Reese win the Oscar.) I took it like a trooper this morning, though, and after a delightful pedicure, I came home and we started drinking margaritas again. I felt better almost immediately.

What's really nice: Friends who, when you confess to having done something really embarrassing while drunk, say, "That's not that bad. Forget about it. Don't even worry about it," even when you have done nothing but worry about it up to that point.

Grudge Fucks, and The One Person I Would Do On the Homeroom Table

Dooce, my blogheroine, recently mentioned the old "top five" discussion in one of her posts. If you are into much more excellent writing and wit, suit yourself: You can see it here. I know this whole top five thing is old hat, but my high school friends and I were doing top fives long before anyone had read Nick Horsby. We just never bothered to write about it. Until 1993. . .

When I was in college, I took French (oh so useful) and my friend Jason was in my class. I believe our TA's name was Chris Carlysle, but I could be wrong. Jason, possessed of freakish, near-photographic, but completely trivial memory, will probably know. We were studying for a test at my apartment. We had those index cards and were making flash cards for study use. This, of course, turned into beer-drinking, flash-carding "top five lists," and revealing the lists to one another, a la some gameshow. You could cure famine in Africa with the amount of tears of laughter shed during the evening. During the course of the evening, we made lists of everything we could think of, including top five movie stars, top five musicians, top five current real life people, top five people you would have done in High School, and my personal favorite, top five Grudge Fucks. Hilarity ensued. If only those precious cards had survived. Actually, knowing Jason as the collector he is, he probably pocketed them while I was in the bathroom and has them archived in perpetuity inside acid free paper sleeves and hermetically sealed baggies. I wish I could remember them now, but there are just fragments: Jason really liked Madchen Amick and Janine Turner. Alicia Bruner had the best tits in high school. I probably had Chris Cornell or Billy Corgan on my musician's list. Totally untold tenth grade crush? Dan Petritz in Romeo and Juliet class. I totally would have done John Sabol on the table in homeroom, with Michelle Retzke, Scott Carter, and Mrs. Graham looking on. Even more so if he was talking The Pretenders.

Top five grudge fucks? No way I'm divulging those! They still stand!!

The next day, we both showed up for the exam, hung over and unprepared. Jason got a B. I pulled an A. Which, of course, makes up for him making an A+ on the same fucking Biology report for the Atlanta Zoo field trip that we worked (and got lost) on together and on which I only made an A. (Obvious evidence that Mr. Moeller liked young boys, despite my stellar performance on the volleyball court.)

Anyway, I'm bored and never really blogged my top five, so what the hell! In no uncertain order:

1. Christian Bale
2. Johnny Knoxville
3. Heath Ledger
4. John Cusack*
   
5. Brad Pitt**

Honorable mention: Zack Rogue

*First appeared on Annie's top five after Better Off Dead. Despite many changes and shakeups in the top five (including the Young Guns debacle), John has always remained in the top five.
**May also qualify as a Grudge Fuck.
*** If you need to use the hyperlinks for the first five names above, you need to get a fucking life.

Fellow blogger friends: Tag! Let's see yours. . . .

Thrills

There exists a sick thrill in firing up the vacuum cleaner amidst screaming children, frantic cats, and growling, snapping dogs, all scrambling for high ground.

Grand Wizardess

Has anyone else noticed that the hooded baby towels make little ones remotely resemble hooded klansmen? You'd think they could come up with a little less pointy hooded part. Something a bit more rounded, with perhaps some ric-a-rac or lace around the seams. Having my little girl look like the Grand Wizard of the KKK is not exactly the look this progressive southern woman is going for when she dresses her daughter.

Yeah, I know. Not exactly groundbreaking thought here. Sue me.

Beach countdown: T minus 3 days and counting.

I May Have Blogged Too Soon

Looks like lunch didn't stay around for as long as I had hoped.

[sigh]

Reflections on Sickness, or She's Alive!

Bet those of you who know Lisa and me at all thought i was going to say, "cha," but no, I am alive today. For those of you who were not religious Beavis and Butthead fans, my sister and I co-opted their taunting of poor Daria ("Diarrhea, Cha, Cha, Cha! Diarrhea, Cha, Cha, Cha!") into our own term for diarrhea. As in, "Are you feeling better? Do you still have the cha chas?" I mean, really, doesn't it sound much cuter to have cha chas coming out of your butt than to have diarrhea coming out of it? Believe me. Much cuter.

Other thoughts:

• If there was any doubt about how sick i have been, just take a look at my blog. I didn't update it for three days straight. (The power of retroactive posts, baby!)
• I lost TEN POUNDS. I have been trying to lose ten pounds (and a lot more!) ever since having those infernal babies. Who knew all i needed to do was expose myself to a little Rotavirus and Voila! I'm a waif!
• I haven't had coke of coffee for THREE MORNINGS IN A ROW. No people, I'm not kidding. Todd checked. I still have a pulse.

Next hurdle? Get Matilda home from Aunt Lisa's (where she has been sent as our house is quarantined) and hope she doesn't get sick before i leave for the MOTHERFUCKING BEACH, BABY on Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed.

T minus four days and counting.