Assumptions and Rituals

I have learned that the "very brown college girl" at my tanning store does not lead the simple carefree college life I imagined for her.

When I arrived this morning for my spray-on tan, she appeared at the front desk with a pink-cheeked toddler wrapped in a blanket. Her little boy. He was sick and couldn't go to daycare, so she was taking care of him while she tried to find someone to cover for her at work. He was adorable, all soft and big-eyed, with those creases at the wrist that only toddlers have. I just wanted to gather him up and snuggle him. He had eyes just like his mother's.

It just goes to show how far off base our assumptions about people can be. Here I figured she was a goofy college girl, and she's a working mom.

Another thing I've been thinking about this morning is the rituals and habits that make up our daily lives. I've been noticing several in our family routines lately.

Dogs and kids in particular like rituals. Bedtime is a ritual for Grayson. From the call for jammies to "books in bed," (often the same ones over and over) then toothbrushing and footdragging until he comes leaping up onto our bed and calls "TAXI!" Then Gray comes in and carries him, generally upside down and backwards, into his room for bed. Then there is a drink of water, a vitamin, kisses and hugs and generally some horsing around involving Gray laying on him and pretending to sleep. Then Gray leaves and turns out the light and I lay down with Grayson for a minute to snuggle and tell him how wonderful he is and how much we love him before saying goodnight. Sometimes we lay there together and talk and give each other the giggles. For some reason at bedtime everything seems funny to us. Those are the best nights.

In the morning, usually in the wee hours, Grayson crawls into our bed with us. When the alarm goes off I pat the boys and tell them it's time to start being awake, and gradually, while I'm making coffee and letting the dogs out, Grayson will snuggle over to Gray's side of the bed. This is when the waking-up rituals begin. These consist first of Grayson snuggling close to Gray, then Gray throws an arm over him and hugs him, which gradually changes into some form of annoyance. Either he rolls over onto Grayson to squish him, or he starts tickling him, or something, to make him start to giggle and squirm. Usually I hear shrieking of laughter within about 5 minutes, and sometimes Gray pulls Grayson's socks off and throws them down the stairs, or yanks his pajama bottoms down, or wrestles him off the bed onto the floor... with Grayson squealing with delight the whole time. Generally I end up putting a stop to all the shenanigans by bringing Grayson his clothes and requesting that he get dressed. Whereupon my loving family refers to me as "the fun sponge" or "the fun vampire."

It's not surprising that he's generally a few minutes late for school, with all of this going on.

The dogs have rituals, too. When I'm going down the stairs in the morning to let them out, Kobi charges ahead, but Flower comes down the stairs at my left side. About five or six steps down the stairs, she stops and looks up at me, waiting for me to pet her face and neck. I give her some love and we start down again. Usually she stops one more time before we reach the landing to receive her love. Then she switches around to my right side and follows me into the kitchen to go out the back door.

When Gray comes to bed, Kobi eagerly waits for him to start pulling up the covers. Then she climbs up onto them and "surfs" the blankets as he pulls them up, ending on his chest where she can lick his chin and get her ears scratched before bed.

Little rituals that give our lives a predictable shape and texture.

First shoe-wetting of spring

I took the last two days of Spring Break off to spend with Grayson. He spent the early part of the week with his Big Mama and Papa, being spoiled rotten. So I figured they needed some recovery time and it might be good for Grayson to spend some time in an environment with rules before he has to go back to school next week.

We meant to go to the zoo on Thursday, but weren't able to round up any of his friends to go along, so we opted instead for an afternoon at Martin Nature Park, a wildlife preserve up on the north side of the city.

Grayson loves to go there, and so do I. They have three nature trails, a wild prairie dog town, a pond full of all kinds of turtles, and a stream full of ginormous carp. We always take a bag of dog food to feed the turtles and the fish. And once we saw a six or eight foot snake swimming down the stream.

There's one point where the stream makes a hairpin turn through some sandstone and has created a perfect wading and splashing point, where the water rushes over the stones and into a pool. Grayson always wades here, and in the summer gets completely soaked, playing in the water.

However, the water this early in the season is COLD, and though he took his shoes and socks off, he didn't get much more into the water than his big toe before he had them back on. That didn't keep him from wading on the rocks and getting his shoes completely soaked, but I guess it made him feel like his feet weren't getting as cold, if he kept his shoes on.

The shoes, by the way, were less than an hour old. I'd just bought them at Target. Every spring I buy a cheap pair for him to wear through the summer and essentially trash. He definitely got a head start on that at the creek.

Later I heard that there were something like a million people at the zoo on Thursday, so I'm really glad we didn't go.

Yesterday he spent most of the day with his friend Sam from down the street. Sam is nine, but they still really have a good time together. At first, Grayson worshipped Sam, but I've noticed that since Christmas, the friendship is a little less one-sided. It's good to see that Grayson can lose his infatuation with an older kid, and still be his friend.

Sam is a bright and good-looking boy, a little small for his age, and his mom tells me he has some sensory and behavioral problems that stem from a case of lead poisoning when he was a baby. You woudn't know it to meet him, until you spend a little time with him and begin to realize he has trouble dealing with frustration and anger. Grayson takes it all in stride, however, doesn't get his feelings hurt if Sam snaps at him or changes mood suddenly. And Sam seems to have a real affection for Grayson, if a little condescending. It's got to be good to be the older kid. I'm glad that Sam doesn't take too much advantage of it.

Grayson is generous to a fault. He gives his toys away all the time, even ones he just got. I'm not so open handed with his stuff, though, and several times have intervened when Grayson is giving his toys away. His friends know that if they ask for a toy, Grayson will probably give it to them, and I am always watching out for him so he doesn't get taken advantage of. Probably I don't need to... it's Grayson's stuff after all. But it bugs me to see kids working him to get things off of him just because he has a generous nature and very little attachment to things. Thursday night my friend Jin was here with her boys and they were all playing with some new toys Grayson got just that day. Levi asked if he could "borrow" one of them (that's code for "have") and I said no, those were new and Grayson wasn't going to loan them out just yet. Levi got grumpy with me and said "I was asking Grayson." And then was trying really hard to get Grayson alone so he could make his request again.

I would never have given my toys away when I was a kid. Most kids I know wouldn't. But it never phases Grayson to give his stuff away. It's possible that it's because he has more stuff than any single child needs, which is certainly true. But also he has never had much of an attachment to things. If a toy was broken, he would put it in the trash, even if the damage was minor. He might shed a tear over a favorite stuffed animal that got chewed up by the dogs, but he never wanted to save it, and was soon over its loss.

Now when I was a kid, I was completely the opposite, I had a passionate attachment to things, particularly stuffed animals. They were like real people to me. If a dog had chewed one of them up, we probably would have had to have a full funeral. I still have a bag of them from when I was a kid: those that I was closest to. I have no idea what to do with them. I still can't let them go.

This is Pooh bear. I've had him for as long as I can remember. He sits on top of the VCR in our bedroom.

When I got a new stuffed animal, I would go through them all very carefully, looking for one that was slightly damaged or imperfect. I always wanted to give a loving home to the one that nobody else would want. Consequently, most of my favorite toys were a little wonky in some way. I'm sure this says something about my character or my psychological condition, but I don't know what it is. I always adopt stray dogs, too.

The price of beauty

Grayson was up and ready to go at 7 a.m. today, knowing that it is the last day of school before Spring Break and he is leaving with his Big Mama and Papa for the lake right after school. This will be his longest stay there without us: Three nights. In the past he has been ready to come home after two, so we're all hoping he will not start missing us on Sunday and have to come back.

Gray and I are looking forward to some serious laziness.

Now that the sun is out and my skin has to see the light of day again, I decided to take the plunge and sign up for Mystic Tan. I'm way too sun-shy to do real tanning, but I am about the same color as a fish's belly right now, and rub-on tanner is a pain. So I signed up and went and had myself sprayed this morning. I'm definitely darker. We'll see if my husband notices.

I've been on a campaign to try to be more girly. I'm not naturally a girly-girl, so I'm a bit out of my depth, here. But I figure as I get older I should probably start putting more effort into not looking like I fell out of bed into my clothes. I'm also trying to get into better shape.

So I had my nails done last week, and I spend some time in the morning actually putting my makeup on in front of a stationary mirror (not in the rear-view mirror of my car as I drive to work, as I have done it hitherto), and now I'm tan...er. And (here's the point of all this), I bought a pair of high-heeled sandals to wear with jeans.

I've never been one for wearing heels with jeans. My heels are all of the lady-like, sensible wear-to-work variety. Not a stilletto in the bunch. And I never wear them if I don't have to. Certainly not with jeans. But I see everyone and their fat aunt doing it these days so I finally crumbled to peer pressure and bought a suitable pair. Now, I know how to walk in heels, I've been doing it every weekday for more than 20 years. But walking in high-heeled slides is a different game, and I feel self-conscious about wearing jeans with heels because I know, if no-one else does, that I'm totally faking it.

So I'm at the tanning place this morning, in my heels, and the very brown college girl behind the counter takes me back to see the tanning booth and give me the low-down, and as we're walking out of the booth, I turn my heel wrong and WHOOOMP! I'm on the floor. My purse spills and my phone, my checkbook, a handful of beads from a broken necklace, and a Happy Meal toy go skittering across the floor.

Very cool.

Hell, after that performance I had to buy a membership, just to save face. The college girl was very kind – worried over me, asked if I was okay, handed me my Happy Meal toy and said "well, I can tell you're a mom."

I took off my heels and tiptoed gingerly to the front desk to pay.

Do other women fall down in heels? Do they have Happy Meal toys in their chic little designer bags? Do they have spilled coffee in their car consoles and a back seat full of receipts and crumbs and plastic bags and soup cans carried home from work to recycle? Do they have to tear off pencil erasers to use in place of the earring backs they lose? Why is it so hard just to keep it all together? Much less make it look like you know what you're doing and did it deliberately. I feel like I always look like an accident, either about to happen or the terrible aftermath.

It's also expensive to look girly. Between the nails, the tan and the gym membership, I'm up to nearly $100 a month just for maintenance. I haven't broken into the pedicure market yet. I'm just not up to it. Besides, I'm way too ticklish.

But, maybe it will become a habit and by the time I'm 50 I'll be used to working a little harder at it. Course by then I probably won't give a damn. I hope so, anyway.

Tics

Saturday was Grayson's half-birthday. He's now seven and a half. This is a big deal when you're seven and a half. We measured and weighed him as we always do in March. He has grown an inch and gained a pound. He gets taller and taller. And skinnier and skinnier. His little arms are like twigs, and his shoulder blades feel like bird wings under the skin. I try not to worry about him. He's perfectly healthy and has a decent appetite, he's just using all his resources to grow.

There are a few odd habits he has acquired lately, and I guess they may be related to his growth. First is it was the finger thumping. He holds his fingers out stiff and straight and thumps them against his chest: it's like snapping, a little. He puts, for instance, the pointer finger just slightly over the middle finger and strains them against each other to make the pointer snap down against his chest. Likewise with the middle finger over the ring finger. He does it with both hands, unconsciously, while he's watching tv or reading his books.

Then he started snapping his elbows. He sort of flings his arms out, slightly hyperextending the elbows to make the joints crack. It sets my teeth on edge.

Then there's the weirdest of them all: the shoulder quiver. He will hunch up his shoulders, tip back his head and give a little grimacing quiver, like a frisson. It looks like he's just had a mild electric shock. This one freaks me out because he looks totally autistic when he does it. Like there's something really off kilter.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked finally, in alarm, a few nights ago.
"I don't know, I just (quiver) sometimes need to (quiver) do this (quiver)"
"stop it. "
(quiver)

He hasn't done that in a couple of days. I'm hoping he's over it. It just looks too creepy.

I think it all has to do with his growth and the electrical impulses going on inside him when all his nerves and muscles and bones are getting longer and longer. There have got to be occasional nerve misfires when the network is growing so quickly. I hope so, anyway. It looks very tourettes-y... I half expect him to start shouting curse words randomly.

He complains regularly of his legs hurting. Usually right over his knee at the end of the thigh where the growth plate is. Making new bones, I suppose. I remember the ache in my own legs when I was a kid. It's a lot of work to grow.

He's going to spend the weekend at the lake with my folks. They're all very excited. My mom keeps calling to check on his favorite foods or to remind me to send extra shoes and videos. Grayson asks me every morning, first thing, what day it is and then counts forward the days until he gets to go. On Tuesday he asked if I had packed his bag yet. I told him I thought we could risk waiting until Thursday to get that done.

Gray and I will lounge around and drink coffee and watch grown-up movies all weekend. Sleep til all of eight o'clock.

This weekend I will put in my sugar snaps and my onions. Got to have your peas in by St. Patty's day. This means I have a certain amount of raking and clean-up to do, since the beds are still under about a foot of leaves.

I noticed green fuzz on several of the trees in the neighborhood yesterday as I was leaving for work. Those bushes with the orange blooms: I can't remember their names... they're blooming out all over town now, too. And forsythia, of course. There are buds on a couple of my daffodils, and I'm surprised at how many of the tulips came back up from last year. Usually I just get a few spindly ones the second year around. Or the squirrels eat them.

Spring spring spring.

This weekend while Gray was working on repairing the trim on the roof, we opened the bedroom window to what we call "the kitty play-yard." Our bedroom window looks out over the flat roof of the sunroom. When the weather is nice, we open the window and let the cats go out there and explore around outside. Up on the roof they have nowhere to go: there's no route to the ground, and no way for them to get up onto any other roof, so they can be outside while still remaining safely contained away from the six-lane cat flattener of Classen Boulevard.

They love it out there. They spend all day sitting half in and half out of the window, watching the world go by. They prowl around the perimeter of the roof, meowing down at anyone who goes by, and watching the birds intently. This year I'm going to get a planter box and put some rye grass in it out there for them. It's as close as they get to the great outdoors.

The World As We Know It

Windpower.
Every day this week I have seen huge flat-bed trucks hauling the blades for these giant wind turbines north on I-35. Always three, one right after the other, heading for the new windfarms.

This photo was taken at the one at Weatherford on I-40. There are two things we have plenty of here in Oklahoma: land and wind. A match made in heaven.

It's impressive to see them as they drive by: they're enormous! Just a single blade is as long as a tractor-trailer. It might be a little weird to live near a wind farm. At night the aircraft lights on their tops all blink in unison, like some sort of UFO signaling station.

Tonight is Book Club night. The ladies of the club affectionately refer to it as "Wine Club," if that makes the true nature of the event any clearer in your mind. The book of the night is The Cure for Death By Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. It was good, if not particularly plot-heavy. Much more character driven. But I could still recommend it as a good read. This is not, unfortunately, true of all our book club reads. The last one, frankly, stank. Eat, Pray, Love (Vomit). I hear there are now whole web sites dedicated to actively despising this book. A perfect example of chic lit at its worst. Whiny, weepy self-obsessed blah blah blah.

I'm currently reading Apocalypse 2012, by Lawrence E. Joseph. I have a fascination for End of the World scenarios. I am a complete sucker for those "Mega Death" documentaries on the Discovery channel: SuperVolcano! Mega Flood! Tsuper Tsunami! I love to learn about all the ways we could cease to be. Apocalypse 2012 lines up all the theories, scientific and otherwise, about why 2012 will be a life-changing, if not life-ending year for the Earth. End of the Mayan calendar, Crazed Sunspots, Magnetic Pole Reversal, Supervolcano at Yellowstone (one of my personal favorites), and of course, the ever-popular meteor impact. I love this stuff.

Spring?

There are promising and not-so promising signs of impending spring.
Saturday was 70 degrees. Gorgeous weather. I spent a big part of the day weasling up the ground under the live oak in the front yard and planting grass seed. I planted a bunch of johnny jump-up seeds, and a dozen hosta roots in the shady area in the back yard.

There's a bit less of that this year, what with the demise of the bradford pear in the ice storm. Too bad, that, but I'm not really all that big a fan of bradford pears, and now at least I have less shade to deal with.

Anyway, I had to shovel mounds of oak leaves out of the way to plant the hostas, and there were tons of ginormous earth worms in the soil underneath them. BIG fat worms that wriggled like snakes when you picked them up. I called Grayson out to see and hold them. I'm proud that he is not afraid of worms. A lot of kids are. I guess I was when I was a kid. But I taught Grayson from when he was a baby to love earth worms. So I dug holes and planted hostas and handed all the big worms to Grayson. He likes to get several of them and hold them at once and feel their strong squirming in the palm of his hand. I like them, too. They are so alive, so powerful and determined, and you can't even tell heads from tails until they make a break for it and start powering their way back into the earth. No matter how hard or packed or just impenetrable the soil is, they always find a way back in.

Sunday threatened rain all day, but it held off until the evening, when it hit like a freight train. Wind and rain and lightning striking straight down all around. The tornado sirens went off while Grayson was in the bath, and we had a moment there when we thought it might be coming our way, but it went south of us, and didn't turn into a real tornado until later.

So we know it's spring. Tornados. Rain. And worms. I saw the first blossoms budding out on forsythia branches around town this weekend, and just today I saw a couple of flowering trees bursting out in bloom. My neighbors' daffodils bloomed this weekend. Mine never bloom until much later because I'm on the south side of the street and my yard is always in the shade. Their south-facing plants are always way ahead of mine in the spring.

This morning, though... snow. Lots of it. Big white flakes coming down hard by 8:00 and it snowed for a good part of the morning. Nothing stuck, of course, because the ground was too warmed up. It was pretty, though. March snow. Always the prettiest, especially if it sticks around.

It's cold tonight,and windy as hell again, too. I'm ready for spring, but I know March always has to hit us a few more sucker punches before it gives over. I just hope we don't have another dreadful wet summer like we did last year. It was so depressing to wake up day after day in June to rain, rain, rain. I'm an Oklahoma girl, born and bred. I expect 100 degree days in June. I am accustomed to drought and fire warnings by July. You can't just pour that much water on me in summer and not expect damage. It hurt my soul, all that rain in summer. This year I hope it is better. Hot. Dry. The way summer is supposed to be.