Surrender, Dorothy

The Old Gray Mare Doesn't Do Tunnels So Well Anymore

So last weekend we took the little angel to one of those places with two stories of tunnels.  I've always believed if you've got an only child, then you're going to have to play with him or her.  So I agreed to enter the tunnels with her, again, as I always do.

Even though it sort of hurts.

I watched my daughter scoot through the tunnels by stretching her arms out, then pulling her knees along together as one unit.  She moved really fast this way, much faster than my all-fours cat thing. So I tried to emulate her.

And I wondered if her knees were made of some other substance than bones and ligaments and oh-so-delicate skin.  Because mine felt like they were being slammed into a hamster tunnel repeatedly.  Also, my wrists hurt.

But I soldiered on.  O captain, my captain, and all of that. 

We got to the little rope area up at the top, where at our last visit we had played Mommy Spider and Baby Spider. I taught her to grab the bar and hook her feet in the ropes and swing upside down.  I was modeling proper form on our third visit to the Spider House when I lost my grip and dropped about six inches onto the mat. I felt a searing pain through my left hip.

I lay there on the mat thinking good God, I've broken my ass.  Here, at the top of the tunnel.  How the hell are sixty-five preschoolers going to get me down?

I started picturing the surly teen running the kiddie rides clamboring up after me. Perhaps they would have to lift me down with a crane.  Perhaps my ass would have to go in a cast, just in time for the holiday season.

And that's when I discovered, yet again, that pride and vanity are stronger than pain. Forcing myself up, I smiled weakly.  "And that," I instructed my daughter, "is NOT how you do the dismount."

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Read a review of blog-to-book Wife in the North at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

Happy Thanksgiving! Back on Monday.

Self-Discovery Through Furniture

I have always been a delayed gratification sort of a girl.  I took a strange satisfaction from denial, and it played out through an eating disorder, a closet of ill-fitting clothes, glasses that weren't quite the right prescription and a car with a blinker that had to be picked up off the floor and reattached every time I turned right.

When I went to graduate school to study writing, I frequently told people it was just something I was doing for myself. I didn't think I would ever be able to make a career out of writing and editing. I stuffed my books in boxes, along with my poetry. My husband said someday, someday, we will have room for all of those books.

When I met my husband, I knew he was what I needed. Kind, strong, funny, attractive, focused on family and friends. He was also good with tools, which comes in handy in life. I always felt he could handle any household crisis. When we first got married, anything unexpected would dissolve me in tears. Since weathering some of the strangest household and financial crises ever, I've gotten a little better at it. I've gotten a little more open to having things now as opposed to twenty years from now. I'm starting to realize twenty years from now, life will be more than half over. Something could happen to one of us. Maybe it's okay to live a little now.

We decided when we moved into Chateau Travolta to make the dining room a library. Wallpaper stripped and repainted, it sat empty with urine-stained, cigarette-burned carpeting (it was a bank foreclosure) for over a year.  A few months ago, we installed hardwood floor ourselves and happened across a half-price leather chair online. We assumed it would sit like that for another year or so until we could find bookcases.  All of the estimates for custom bookcases were coming in at thousands of dollars. We couldn't find anything premade that looked right. It seemed pretty hopeless.

Then yesterday, as we were at Costco shopping for enough food to feed 19 people for two or three days, we saw them.  The 200-pound, 84-inch, solid wood cherry bookcases. In Costco.  And I WANTED THEM.  Usually, I'm the one who puts the kabosh on purchases.  It doesn't make any sense to get them now, when I'm going to be cutting back to a four-day week and a four-day salary in January. But there were only six, and we needed three in order to create a wall of books.  And they were THERE, calling. Beloved looked at me and saw the desperation in my eyes. And smiled.

We went home. We talked about it. We measured. We looked up reviews online.  We got the leftover ends of the wood floor for color comparison. We took the little angel to the tunnel place because she'd been sorely neglected all day Saturday while we ruthlessly cleaned Chateau Travolta.

Then we drove back to Costco and put 600 pounds of hardwood bookcases in the back of the old Explorer and very slowly drove them home. 

It made no sense.

Except that my husband is building me a library. And I am letting him.

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Writing about children's dentistry today on BlogHer.

Large Female Is Still Busy. Meow.

Hello, everyone.  Bella the Cat here.  Large Female is still busy.  She claimed she needed just one more minute, just one more minute, for so long last night that I finally took a shit on the kitchen floor by my food dish to get her to feed me.  I was fed within six minutes. I don't really recommend this method unless you are adorable and covered in long, silky fur, as I've noticed it has the tendancy to bring out the worst in caregivers.

Large Female thinks I am dumb. She is soooo mistaken.  I still love her, though, because she pets me and cuddles me and lets me sit in the middle of the Barbie game even when it makes Small Female howl with frustration.

Ha.

I like living in Chateau Travolta.  It's much better than that cell I spent time in at Wayside Waifs after my old family gave me up because SOMEONE had allergies.  Chateau Travolta has a lovely staircase that I like to sprawl across, especially when Large Female is going down with a basket of laundry.

Anyway, I feel sorry for all those cats losing their houses.  I keep hearing all this business on the radio about the economy, and I started worrying a little bit, but Large Female assures me that I'm a pretty kitty, and that's really probably more important. Right?

OHMYGODTHEREISAFLYCAUGHTBEHINDTHEFIREPLACESCREEN.