Some of my Skillz.

I missed my twentieth high school reunion this summer. I was driving. In a car. To International Falls, MN. And I was sad. Because we had some good times in high school. Dave, and Denny, and Doug, and Eric, and Bobby, and Boozie. Twenty years is a long time ago but I remember a few things I learned back then.

I remember in 9th grade I learned how to make an omelet. It's one of the most important things I learned how to do in high school. I mean seriously, it's the one thing besides typing that I use almost every day. And speaking of typing it definitely is the single most useful thing I learned. We had an old school typing teacher back then and she would walk up and down the rows, her nylons swish swish swishing, and her beady eyes looking condescendingly over your type writer to make sure you weren't looking at the keys. I've never ever regretted learning to type so quickly.

I also had to learn how to sew. I made a lined canvas tote bag that I gave to my grandmother Mary. She used it to keep her crosswords in. After she died I got it back and now I use it to hold my knitting needles. I also acquired her old Singer sewing machine. I used it to make these Halloween costumes a few years ago:


Arg!



I mean seriously, how professional is that?


Okay, so I haven't tried to sew anything nearly as sophisticated as this since.




But my skillz came in handy.

I remember calculus and AP History with Juice and Mr. Hutter's English class. And I definitely remember German class with Frau Crocker. Well, I don't use any of the crap I learned in those classes anymore- I mean, I don't remember any of that crap. But the thing that I learned in high school that I use every day, many hours (sometimes) a day, is how to drive a vehicle.

Now, being that we live where we live it takes us a good half hour to get anywhere good. Half hour to work, half hour to hockey, half hour to dinner out in Burlington, half hour to friends, half hour to life off the mountain. So, I'm in my car A LOT. And I like my car. And I don't mind driving.

I learned to drive a VW Rabbit. And I've been a good driver in my life as a driver. One small speeding ticket RIGHT after I got my license, but it was a total speed trap and it wasn't my fault. But in college my teammates and I drove my little Honda Civic to Steamboat, CO and New Orleans for spring break. NO issues. I drove across the country with Paul Bunyan. NO issues. I drove all over Philly for three years. NO issues. And then. And then I got this car:



It's my beautiful silver tank of a mini van. I had no qualms about getting and/or driving a mini van. It's a wonderful wonderful thing- the mini van is. It's a total swagger wagon. And you could never understand this until you drive one, so don't knock it. Well, not too long after we bought the swagger wagon in 2005 I came around this corner a little too hard and hit the mail boxes at the bottom of our hill.






This scratch was the result.




Not too long after that I dented my bumper fairly significantly by backing into this:



which I've done more than once.



I've shut the garage door on my opened back gate. I've backed into the Tundra, denting that detrimentally.




In June, Paul parked the car right between the yellow power lines to the left and the wooden posts on the right so essentially what happened when I pulled out of the spot was his fault.



Because who parks in a spot like that? I mean how was I supposed to see the posts on my right? Seriously.




In our little town it's common courtesy to pull to the side and stop to let the person approaching this bridge first go across on his/her own. There are no signs saying you must do this. It's just common knowledge. You WAIT for the other person to cross the bridge before going. So that is exactly what I did. I pulled over to the right (very close to the guard rail) and waited....just like I'm supposed to do.




It wasn't until I pulled away that I realized I was a little too close to the guard rail.

I've stopped getting upset over all this. I mean, it's a car. And I'm not hitting anyone else's car. Which, you know, we should all be thankful for. I probably should revisit some of the rules of backing up that I learned in high school. You know, like, looking behind you and around you. Who knows, this all may be a factor of me being IN my car more than I ever have in my life. It may be the factor that I'm usually late for wherever I'm going and that I probably should just slow down. It may be that it's hard driving such a big vehicle and that when I don't need the mini van anymore, I'll be back to my good old ways. Oh wait, I did back that VW rabbit into my mom's jetta in the driveway. It's been so long, I forgot that story too.


Well, here's how I look at it: by the time Claire gets the van we won't worry if she beats the shit out of it. She just better not back into my brand new Golf TDI.

Twindom

Hellooooo. Are you still there??? I know. I totally wowed you with my mattress story and now you're all like, 'Where has she been? We can not wait for another life altering lesson from the Hussy'. Well, I've been wading through the murky mire with these twins:


Scarlet


And Magnolia.

And so besides doing dishes, laundry, diapers, and bottles over there I've been smelling the dead leaves. And because all of those things are filling up my days, I haven't been able to think about you. Well, I've been thinking about you, about how I've abandoned you, but then the dishes, laundry, vacuuming and homework nazi is needed around here when I'm not smelling the dead leaves or doing dishes, laundry, diapers, and bottles over there. Now you're understanding... right?

Well, here has been my train of thought lately, which is just as unimportant as my mattress story and quite frankly if you leave me for good after this, I would completely understand.


The boys are trying to decide if they want to try wrestling this winter. Now, if you know anything about anything you know that IOWA is known for its wrestling program. I didn't know diddly squat about wrestling until I went to Iowa and then when the wrestlers, carrying each other on their backs, passed us on the stairs in the basketball stadium while we ran up them two by two to get into shape I sorta started to see the picture. But I became a huge fan, needless to say, and rooted for these twins during my four years there:



The Brand brothers. They dominated the sport at Iowa. Won multiple National Championships. Set crazy school records. Were the toughest athletes I've ever known.

Now this is a crazy commitment for my boys, every Tuesday and Thursday evenings for the months of January and February. I'm willing to sacrifice. Because just imagine!!


The boys are also contemplating hockey again this year. I'm a bit late with the registration thing and although everyone and their mother thinks I'm a crazy fool for starting them on this road, I just can't help myself. Especially, especially, after I watched these guys last year during the Stanley Cup.



But seriously, imagine!


Last Tuesday I went to see Brandi Carlile in concert. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. It was her first time playing solo without her boys. And, still, all she could talk about were these twins:


The Hanseroth twins. And so when I got home and you tubed them, I was in awe. And all of the sudden the inner Santa in me said absolutely NO to the I-pod wish lists and a Definite YES to brand new guitars and lessons for the twins this Christmas.

But what's great about all this is that I get to dream. I get to dream. Because I'm good at that.


They might be good together, they might be fine apart, BUT (BUT!) they may be great together.





Just maybe.

One Tiny Tale and One Small Request

Bee hesitantly walked out onto the front porch this morning. Something did not seem right. She slowly approached the white stuff on the first step. Bent down to smell it. Stuck her tongue out to taste it. And instinctively tucked her butt and flew off the porch into an excited rampage of butt tucking. I don't know what it is about snow that does that to living things. I wonder if the birds wake up in their nests and flit around in a flurry of excitement on the morning of the first snow of the season. Like my children did this morning. Where are my gloves? Where are my snowpants? Where are my snowboots? I grumble- still in the crawl space.



It took a little more coaxing for Paul Bunyan to make his way out to the bath this morning.



Of course, he is approaching 40.




This mattress is meant for the dump. But I'd like to tell you a little story about it. Because it sits so forlornly this morning in the wet goop. Because I know you're dying to hear about this mattress. And I know you're also ready for a short story that has little to no significance.




This mattress was purchased by my Pop Pop, my father's father, in the year....well, I don't know.




Here is a picture of my Pop Pop holding my fat butt. My grandmother, who I never really knew because she died of lung cancer when I was in first grade, sits next to him. It looks like we're celebrating my fat brother's third birthday. He got himself a new view finder. And by the way, my parents still use that table as their kitchen table. And I'm pretty sure my dad, who you can barely see, still wears that plaid shirt.


Well, anyway to go back to the saga about the mattress...it sat on a box spring that was custom made for this bed:



When my grandfather died in or around the year 2000, and I won't specifically specify whether or not he did or did not die on this mattress, Paul Bunyan and I lived in this house:

in a neighborhood right outside of the great city of Philadelphia. This house looked just like the one next to it, which looked just like the one across the street from it, which looked just like the one next to that one.

The heirloom bed was in our guest bedroom- the bedroom upstairs on the right. It's a double bed and so no one really slept in it because most of the very few guests who came to visit us stayed in our other guest room, which had a queen bed in it. Makes sense right?

The bed and mattress came with us to Richmond when we moved there in 2002. It sat there, too, in a second guest room. The only significant thing that happened to this bed and mattress while we lived in our dream house is that Sydney decided that she was going to curl up and die under it when she went into her second pancreatic attack on New Year's Eve 2003. Obviously she didn't die, but I was certain it was going to happen that night, like I've been certain the five or six times it's happened since.

In May of 2004 when we downsized and moved into our current Japanese pagoda the bed got shoved into the crawl space and the mattress and box spring got stowed vertically against the wall in the basement.

In October of 2007 I went ahead and drove over to the Crown Point bridge to meet a woman who was GIVING AWAY FREE KITTENS. I know, who does that, right? So I gots me two. Because they were free. And because my house was infested with mice. AND I HATE MICE.


awww. Sweet sweet kittens. Quarantined to the basement. Those rascals decided to make the very top of the mattress, which sat vertically against the wall, their sleeping spot. So the mattress, theoretically, became their gigantic scratching post because as they climbed to the top those very same claws that I needed to murder the mice that co-inhabited our house shredded the shit out of the mattress.

It was apparent that I wouldn't be using a) the mattress again, or b) the bed again. So I sold the heirloom antique bed that my Pop Pop may or may not have died in to an antique dealer in Massachusetts who specializes in wooden sleigh beds. It was a beautiful bed. Not practical. But beautiful.

I think we may have gotten $400 for it. Maybe $425.

Well, a few years ago, maybe 3, possibly 4, we hosted the first friends Thanksgiving. We've had them ever since (Mud and I switch off every other year) because sometimes a friends Thanksgivings is better than a family Thanksgiving. Just sayin'. Well, that first year we hosted I was trying to picture our Japanese pagoda swarming with children, who now at this point outnumbered adults. We needed a space for them to play, away from us. I asked Paul Bunyan to make us some monkey bars, to hang playground equipment from the rafters and to fasten the $50 punching bag I procured from Craigslist to the ceiling. We built a picket fence around the furnace, added a couch from my parent's house, and hooked up the t.v. we bought at Walmart when we first moved into an apartment together in Frisco, CO in the fall of 1997. I painted a hopscotch court on the cement floor and called it good.

And then Mud said, "hey, I'm gonna sue your ass if my kid falls off the monkey bars and cracks his skull open on the cement floor." And then I said, "hey, no problem. I'll just put this nasty mattress on the floor and they can fall on it, jump on it, or do whatever they want on it." And then Mud said, "fine, whateva."

So way back in the summer of 2011 I got myself a puppy. She's a good little dog. But she pees in the house every now and again as puppies are want to do. But so does my geriatric dog so we're just all living in one big Japanese pagoda of piss. Well, Bee decided that that great safety mattress was a perfect place to pee and poop. And well, frankly, it isn't. So it's going to the dump. Sad as it is, the custom made box spring is going too.

I don't like throwing things out.

And this whole saga has had me thinking about the mattress that I die on. Now, because Paul Bunyan's father taught us that we should buy nice shoes and mattresses (because you spend half your life on your feet and half your life on your back) we've done just that. We've gone through 2 mattress so far (none that have been just right). But now that we have the real (and not an impostor) Tempurpedic I know we'll have this one for the next 20 years. And so maybe we'll have one more and it'll be that one that I'll probably die on, unless (of course) I die in a car, plane, train, or tractor. But here is a request to my children, or grandchildren, if you are the ones to inherit my king size mattress and heirloom Pompanoosuc Mills bed: I hope the bed serves you well but at the end of the mattress' life please don't let a dog piss all over it. Here are a few options for things I'd love for you to do with it: a) cut it up and make 6 cozy dog beds. Have someone (or better yet you) sew covers for them and donate them to a shelter who has homeless dogs who could use them. b) cut the foam up into tiny pieces and donate them to the nearest foam pit- most likely your nearest gymnastics gym, or possibly a ski jumping training facility. c) make wooden living room furniture and cut the mattress up to use as cushions for the couch and/or arm chairs. d) make some sort of art out of it. e) be creative and come up with some way to use it as a butt cushion for young kids who are learning how to ice skate. f) find a way to turn it into fuel for your car (of course, you'll probably all have electric solar powered cars). or g) come up with your own creative idea.

Just don't send it to a landfill.

Please.

Thank you.

The New Cavernous Ravine

The trees are turning on their vacant signs. Things are falling to the ground all around me. My children's teeth included. We're talking in lisps here so we can understand each other- that or the boys sign to me. A quick decisive cutting with the fingers to imply that they would like me to cut their apples up because they can't bite into them. It's all new. Last year they were doing this at soccer:



This year:



We're making great strides.



In completely other news I am now her:


It's been hard for me to get my head around this new title. I've never transitioned into the nanny role for a doula family before. I think I like it but mostly I'm just missing being home. Missing being with Bee. Missing being with me. But mostly, mostly missing being with Paul.

Because when you peel back the banana peel it looks a little something like this:

Monday I'm there and Monday he's here and Monday night he's going to go there starting tomorrow and Tuesdays I'm there and he's sometimes here but every other Tuesday he's here. Wednesday I'm there and he's here but Wednesday night I go here. Thursdays I'm there and then he goes here. Fridays I go here in the morning and he's here except every other Friday when he's here. He's here every other Saturday and Sunday too, but I'm here every other Sunday night when he's here.

So it's every other Tuesday evening, every other Friday afternoon , and every other Saturday and Sunday we get to look at each other. That's it. And when you break it down like that it seems less than it already seems. Like a cookie split into quarters when one cookie wasn't nearly enough to begin with. And that cookie was a perfectly warm ooey gooey chocolate chip, right out of the oven. Definitely not something you want to nibble.

And our relationship has become a dialogue in notes scribbled on scrap paper left on the counter. "Going here then, picking this up there, don't forget to get that there." I mumble something when he rolls into bed at 2 about please checking on chickens. I knew I would forget to write it on paper in the scramble we call getting everyone out the door in the morning.

And at lunch dates every other Friday, between bites and reconfiguring orthodontic appointments and hip hop classes, we talk about how we might work together in the woods someday, or breed hairy pigs, or possibly grow potatoes to distill into vodka. How can we see each other's faces more than a handful of hours every week? How can we be more than notes scribbled on paper? More than "I miss you" at 2 a.m.?

Not too many couples can work together day to day. And I'm not sure we could. But I know this. I know that when he goes that way and I go this way the ravine in the middle seems really cavernous. And I also know that it's only when we work side by side that I feel like there is no ravine. And that even if perchance it feels like there is one, it's really easy to cross because Paul Bunyan has built this really cool zip-line from one side to the other.

I miss you Paul.



I know we'll meet again,
Babe

Mostly Because I'm in Love with Him....

Yeah, because also I'm in LOVE with Him:

A Wedding in a Roundabout Way.

This is Hole. She was number 14. Our sweeper. At Iowa. She played with her heart. And it was big. Now she is head coach...as in, the one in charge. For the Dartmouth Field Hockey team. She's been doing it for 12 years. Yes, I know. I haven't done anything for twelve straight years- except breath. And even that I sometimes suck at.

I saw her yesterday. Her team lost to the University of Vermont with 54 seconds left. I saw her pacing, not wanting to watch that last corner shot. I saw her down on one knee for ten minutes after the game talking to her team, debriefing. I saw her being someone....to them.

As I was walking out with Auggie, who luckily still holds my hand (even at school) I said, "I used to be one of them. I was good. I was better, actually." He smiled up at me...like I was joking.

And that's what it's been for me lately. "I used to be this." "I used to do this." "I was once that." I've lived in these phrases like a batch of old t-shirts. They say: division 1 athlete, teacher, scholar. And every time I say it I think to myself, "what is wrong with who you are today that you have to rely on telling everyone who you were then?"

******


Steve and Kate got married. Hitched. Tied the Knot. The Mothership is in disbelief that a) Dirty got married and b) that he married a woman as good as Kate. Dirty is vastly under-appreciated. What I love most about weddings, besides the free food and drinks, is that sometimes (to strangers) I get to pretend that I am someone I'm not.

When I was up to my ears in baby shit (seriously, washing it from their tiny bums, spraying it off cloth diapers into the toilet, and every other day washing dirty diapers in the washing machine with boiling hot water that I had to add to the mix) I always wanted to tell people (if they EVER asked me what I did for a living) that I was in the shit business. And then I pictured myself walking away and letting them come up with their own conclusions as to what my "shit business" entailed.

I've pictured myself lying about being a writer (one that got paid), a fiber artist (one that got paid), a forester (I own, okay well, lease-to-own a friggin' forest), a homesteader (like one that doesn't ever ever go to the grocery store), and a wall-tent bed and breakfast owner (someday). I've never lied about being any of these things, mostly because I don't think anyone has ever asked but even if they did, I'm sure I said "stay-at-home" mom. blah.





Well, these hoodlums, 5 of the 9 Mothership members, stood up next to Steve. Steve's brother is on the far left.




And these fine Harvard graduates stood up next to Kate.




And well, she's the gorgeous bride. And he's the Dirt.




And she's changing the world. And he's changing hers.



And he's on the stock exchange. And she's a dermatologist resident.



And I don't know who she is or what she does, but he's a super hero.




And she's a wedding planner in Manhattan. And besides being a grump, he's a 5th grade teacher.


And seriously, I don't know what he is. But he married someone who is someone.





And so did I.

At the reception, Paul Bunyan and I were talking to a couple from Vermont about their lives. He works (from what I could gather) out of the home and she, when we asked, didn't say anything. She couldn't come up with anything. Not even stay-at-home Mom, which she is. But how fun- seriously- could she have had if she said surgeon, gardener, garbage collector for that matter? How fun would it have been to have seen our faces? We gave her the perfect opportunity but I guess she didn't see the fun in lying, or more likely the need.

*****

My newest doula family is neat. How is that for trite? They're neat people. They do neat stuff. They have neat stuff. They wear neat stuff. C'mon you know what I mean. Well, their three year old was going to a super hero birthday party yesterday. So Mom gets out the bag of fabric in the basement and pulls out the good ol' sewing machine. She whips up this cool aqua cape with a yellow lightning bolt on the back. It was sweet. Zealand decides he is the kind of super hero that shoots lightning down to start fires to scare the villains away. She then decides to make the birthday boy a cape for his present. It was red with a big C on the back- "C" for Charlie. It was neat- seriously. Then she decides to make a cape for herself and for her husband and for the twin girls- they're all going to be super heroes for Halloween. Seriously.

*****



This was the last Mothership wedding. It's all over Rover. I'm sure they'll be some more weddings in our future- just not as crazy as they get when the Mothership gets together. And that's a good thing because Paul Bunyan and I could barely get out of bed Monday morning from all that dancing. On the way down to Newport on Thursday I finished knitting myself an alpaca capelet (as it's called) to go with this dress I designed. I'm not cool enough to sew, but the dress was a lot of fun- mostly because I made sure it had POCKETS! I'm excited to wear it again sometime, especially with my super hero cape. And now that I have the idea, I'm excited to see the expression on the person's face who asks me what I do for a living and I say, "I'm a super hero. I fly down and save the mother's who are about to go crazy from sleep deprivation and over exhaustion from having to feed the human beings they pushed out their vaginas or had ripped from their bellies." And then I fly away with my arms pointed to the sky, sparks coming out of the bottom of my dress, toes pointed to the ground. Mmm hhhmmm. That's right.

Remembering Summer...I think it's gone.

If only you have 3 minutes and 24 seconds with nothing else to do: