blogger has failed me-

I just wanted to apologize for the lapse in posts. I wrote a lovely post, it was hysterical, about the lost opportunities of motherhood, but alas- BLOGGER deemed it unworthy and only posted about 2% of what I'd written. So i had to delete it, but since i generally take a long time to write out a post I couldn't re-write it, and even then, it wasn't funny when I tried. So. Sorry about that. I will try again another day...

To Camp

I'm packing tonight to send my oldest child off for a week in the woods.  A week.  Without me.  Without H, or any other family member.  2 hours away.

She's not a homesick kid, so I'm not worried about that.  Maybe I should be worried about that, but I don't have time to worry about that on top of worrying about lyme disease, west nile virus, drowning, her getting lost in the Dismal Swamp or falling into a ravine while riding a horse when the horse rears and flips over (something I've actually SEEN at this very same camp in the early 90's, amazingly the rider and horse both walked away from the accident - BUT STILL!!!).

And then I think, this is one week of camp.  99.9% of kids who go to camp come back with great stories, leadership experience, a new level of confidence, independence and some bug bites.  I just need to chill OUT.  Whew.  Breathe.

A Big Fat RedNeck Wedding

Remember that Billy Idol song, white wedding?  Well, the wedding I went to the other night was not a white wedding.  It was a red one.  Well, the bride WORE white, I mean, I can't say it was truly a red wedding....  except....

You all know that I like to change peoples names for my blog.  I'm g, my kids are C,G,B,... the teacher, Mrs Flower, etc.  As we sat in the, uh, pew?  aka, folding chair at the redneck wedding and I was pondering my blog, I thought, "And I'll probably get the use my favorite red neck name, "Randy" for one of the guests!"  Only, guess the real names of the people who sat at our table with us?  You'll never guess.  I'll give you a hint.  One of the names is my FAVORITE redneck name, and one of the other names was made popular by a Bob Newhart show, "Hi, this is my brother.... and my other brother...."  

Yes, the fellow guests at our table were:  Darnelle, Randy, Debbie, and Darrel.  Seriously.  You can't MAKE this stuff up.

Other notables of the evening include the woman wearing khaki colored cargo capri pants, flip flops and her VERY nicest Harley Davidson T-shirt(also beige colored), and a few folks wearing cowboy boots and their nicest jeans.  I mean, it WAS an evening wedding.

is it really today?

I can't for the life of me figure out where the school year went.  On one hand, it was the looooongest year for G, since we didn't really love Mrs. Flower.  On the other hand it was a short year for Colleen since we loved her teacher, Mrs. North.  I blog-named her Mrs. North, in honor of Glenda (or Galinda) the good witch.  Here we are, it's day 180, and the kids are home from school for the summer.  I can do math, but I don't really want to calculate how many days of summer break there really are...  I will tell you that by August 20th I'm usually in the boat of "summer break is too long!" and "when does the school year start?"

Probably it was 5 months ago we punished C for lying by taking all her toys out of her room.  She kept being on the verge of getting them back, when we'd catch her in another lie.  So today, she came home with honor roll and I asked her, if she could "do one thing to celebrate having such a good report card, what would it be?"  She asked for all her toys back, and I agreed to it.

Gregory's report card was "ok", but frankly since H and I both wanted to tell Mrs Flower to F'off for the past 4 weeks or so, when he showed his OK report card we just celebrated like it was great and asked him what he wanted to do...  Tomorrow we're going to a theme park.  Which is also fine.

C is upstairs playing in her room with all her new toys.  B is upstairs napping.  G is upstairs, doing something?  Who cares!  The house is quiet for probably the last time this summer vacation.  Seriously, it's 10 weeks of bickering, arguing, "he said/she said", "don't wake B!", "hey, does anyone want to go to the pool?", TV watching on rainy days, craft making, summer camp attending, and traveling up and down the eastern sea board.  Should be fun.  And tiring.

Motherhood rites of passage #187 & #188

#187 Sick Kid on a Trip...

You're not really a mother until you've gone somewhere on a trip with a child, and had that child get sick in the middle of the night.  That itself is an experience.  "Do I call the Pediatrician on call?"  "Even if I call the Ped on call, what is she going to do for me, here, 30 minutes from the nearest pharmacy and 45 minutes away from the nearest hospital."  "And even if she were to call in a prescription, the nearest 24 hour pharmacy is an hour from here."  "I'm an hour from help."  "Crap".  "I'm tired."  "It's 3 am.  Whew, we've made it almost through the night."  "Ok.  It's 3:03.  It's only been 3 minutes?"  "Crap."  "I'm tired."  "IS she ever going to stop coughing?"  "Please God, if you're hearing this right now, just help her stop coughing so I can get to sleep."  (Yea, because seriously, at 3:30 in the morning, when you've had an hour or less of sleep, that's what it's about.)  

It's especially fun if you're camping in a cabin with 24 other people, which brings me to rite of passage #188, Camping with the Scouts....  which is where we were when Colleen suddenly went from "a kid with a cough" to "A KID WITH A COUGH".  So, the good news is that I have a wicked good pediatrician who prescribed some steroids so we could finish out our day at camp (I waited until 8am to call).  The bad news is, it's walking pneumonia.  We've called her summer camp and pushed her back to another week so she can chill out, rest, heal her lungs, etc and so forth.  In the meantime, here's a quick re-cap of "camping with the scouts"....

We ate s'mores (well, they ran out of graham crackers, so I ended up eating plain raw marshmallows, but the kids made Hershey/melted marshmallow sandwiches...), went swimming (the kids went swimming), did crafts (while I was at the pharmacy), climbed a 40 ft rock wall (I actually did that one, and well I might add), did archery (and it turns out I'm pretty good at this too), took a barn tour (saw Sparky), rode on a trail ride and went canoeing (Colleen and I also rocked out this activity).... and then, we packed up and came home.  I know, we missed the camp fire and breakfast, but we still had fun and Colleen got to cough in the privacy of her own home and i had another night of prayerful wakefulness.  Did I mention that I'm so tired I can't move?  

ANYhoo- here are some photos from the weekend!

The "mood to write" is like hunger.  Either you're hungry, or you're not.  You can force yourself to eat, but the food won't taste as good, and it probably won't satisfy you.  

Writing is that way for me.  I have some good ideas floating around in here, but without the hunger to express them, they feel like a waste.  Wasted ideas, like wasted time, are hard to recover once they're gone.  They're difficult to re-think with the same energy, and even then it's hard to know if they're as good.

Currently I have 3 projects going.  One is brilliant, clearly my best idea, but it's emotionally draining to work on, so I really have to be in the right place to noodle with it.  I'm so not there this week.  It's not a trashy smut novel, but instead a book about a woman, a mom, who is lost and looking for passion in her life.  It's not about infidelity, crime, or drugs, so it's probably not interesting enough to publish, but it's real, and funny, and depressing all at the same time.

One is pretty pat, but it's easy to work on, and that's probably why I'm not inspired by it.  Its a dark story that is hard to write about when it's so pretty and sunny outside.  Surely I can't write about a frozen city under a mask of night when the cardinals and finches are flitting about the bird feeder outside the window.

The last project that I'm working on is just aged.  I've fooled around with it for 4 years.  Four years.  I have the whole outline, the entire idea is formed from opening page until the last chapter, but i can't seem to get it out.  There is a plot hang-up that I need to work out *it could use a villain, but other than that, it's a perfectly sound, logical, interesting, sexy story.  It has the most amazing alpha male character ever, who, ironically, looks and acts a lot like SDD with expressive eyes, a sharp wit, thick dark hair and yes, a trim waist and long legs.  Probably one of the reasons I enjoy SDD so much is that I wrote the character before I met him.  But, as much as I want to be done with the story so I can put it away and move on to my next rejection letter, I can't seem to write it.

I'm beginning to think that the rejection letters are the problem.  Like a diet pill for authors, the repeated rejections suppress my need for words.  Except here of course, where I ramble in circles on what seems to be a daily basis.

an old song

Every day in my house is a new verse to an old song that people have been singing aloud since the mid 1940's, and one that mother's have been able to imagine since Abel and Cain created sibling rivalry.  The song, a peppy duet that is performed as a trio in my house, is "Anything You Can Do I can Do Better".

And no, it's not the oldest and middle child who are doing this, it's B fighting her way violently into the conversation or activity between the oldest screaming, "me do it!".  She then jumps into the game, whatever it is, and of course, disrupts everything.  G, being a boy, is happy to take her exuberance and use it to his advantage, making the game just one more level up.  C is just aware enough of the advantage to "playing with her sister for the sake of Mommy's sanity" that she'll play girly things with her, even in the midst of the chaos.

In many ways this type of sibling rivalry is not all bad.  For example, it is very motivating for B when she's attempting to learn a new task, like potty training or eating with a utensil.  At the same time, it's great for G because he gets the opportunity to learn from his older sibling and step into a leadership role as he's teaching his younger sister.  C has the advantage of always assuming the role as the example, and the disadvantage of always hearing me say, "C, set a good example for your sister/brother".

Todays game was get in the sun beam that bathes our Family-room with light and Dance with Your Own Shadow.  C was tapping to some imagined song, and G was behind her, their little, and not so little, shadow feet were actually executing perfect shuffle steps and flaps when B joined them- by running though the game and tagging G with both hands on his belly.  That's when the game became, Touch Dance with Your Shadow.  And then, because he's a boy, it became Tackle Dance with Your Shadow which meant that the shadow was actually a mangled pile of limbs, tangled and wriggling, before finally becoming so rough that the ref (me) had to step in and remind everyone that "This is NOT an indoor game".

Aw- Man.  I'm so boring.  I never thought I'd be a boring mom.  That's probably a song for another day.