The Cure For What Ails You

As you know, I have a slight tendency toward the blues. The bad thing about this is that, of course, sometimes I'm inexplicably sad. There is an upside, however. The upside is that I have come to recognize that feeling blue is not necessarily related to actually having any reason to be blue, and so I have learned various ways of counteracting it. There's no sure antidote, sometimes one thing works while another does not. Sometimes, frankly, nothing works. But here are a few things that work pretty well.

1) Puppies or kitties. This is almost a guarantee. I'm not convinced a lap full of puppies wouldn't cure just about anything.

2) Cooking something you love to eat, or baking something really evil and comforting like chocolate chip cookies.

3) Sharing what you've cooked. Sometimes I take cookies to my 90-year-old neighbor

4) Getting outside, particularly in this weather, particularly with the dogs, or with Grayson, or both.

This Sunday, Grayson being absent, I took both big dogs to the Norman dog park. I didn't take them at the same time, because sometimes when they are excited they can pull my arms off, or take me sneaker-skiing, neither of which is any fun. So I took them one at a time.

First Flower.

Then Roxy.

Both dogs had a wonderful time. Flower in particular was as happy as I've ever seen her. All those other dogs to meet! All those new smells! All those people to pet her and make much of her! She enjoyed the park quite a bit, but then I took her over to the nearby pond, and things really got good.

She splashed in the water! She rolled on the grass! She ran and slid, shoulder down, on the grass down the hill. She ran with the other dogs. She gulped so much water out of the pond that she threw up. She sat, wet, drippy and smelly, in my lap, threw her head back, tongue lolling, and smiled at me. She smiled at everyone. She was so happy that I think her happiness was infectious. It certainly lightened my heart, and some of the other dog owners there commented on what a happy dog she was.

At last I loaded her up, – dog smell and dirty paws and all – back into my car, and took her home to trade her out for Roxy.

Roxy takes play much more seriously. She was quite anxious about being in the park at first. Tail tucked, she skulked around the edges, avoiding other dogs, and sticking close to me. I was a bit afraid she wouldn't come out of her shell -- until she found a tennis ball. Then it was Game On. I threw the ball until my arm was tired. Then we crossed to the pond and I threw the tennis ball into the water until I figured enough was enough and I took her back to the park to return the tennis ball.

I was sure Rox would be too tired to keep playing, but an obliging fellow back in the park who had one of those ball-throwers-on-a-stick starting really slinging them for her, and she went after them as hard as ever: hell-bent-for-leather. Finally, fearful that she would have a heart attack and drop dead, I thanked the man with the ball-slinger and took Roxy home, too.

Both dogs slept most of the afternoon. And I felt happy.

Good Enough

I am amazed at how long it takes to heal from Divorce. That capitalization was accidental, but I think I'll go ahead and leave it. It suits.

I'll think I'm All Better Now, and then one day I'm Not. I'm in the shower wondering where my life went and getting weepy over something said four years ago that has now become ironic. Like how, at the height of The Big Fight with G's mother, I shot back at her, in all confidence "G LOVES me!" Only, maybe he didn't, I just didn't know it yet.

Not being loved is the worst. It makes me wonder how long I went unloved and didn't realize it. Maybe there's something fundamentally unlovable about me.

Lately I'm plagued with this idea that I was just Not Good Enough. I'm not a very girly girl. I'm no good at fashion or decorating or making bows. I despise scrapbooking, can't bear Sex in the City, and have no particular fascination with shoes. I can't arrange throw pillows, either. And I'm not much of a cook. But I guess all that is what was important to G... all the stuff I'm not, and not any of the stuff I am. When we split up, he couldn't think of a single thing he admired about me.

This is only partly self pity. Partly, behind and below the self pity, and maybe bubbling beneath, about to burst through, is this rage. Really? Not good enough? It makes me want to bite through steel bars. Because of course I am good enough. I'm more than good enough. I'm funny and irreverent. I can cuss like a sailor and quote shakespeare in the same breath. I love animals and I'm not afraid of snakes. I pay for my own drinks. I laugh at myself if I fall down, and I fall down fairly regularly. I can be showered, coifed, made up and dressed in under 20 minutes. Ican grow a plot of vegetables and make my own pesto. I vastly prefer action films to chick-flicks. And throw pillows are an annoyance. I'm not a woman like all the other women. But I'm good enough. More than good enough.

An Earthquake... or so I'm told

This is a short post.

There was an earthquake in Norman yesterday.

I missed it.

It was a 5.1 earthquake, centered just east of Norman, and it happened at 9:06 a.m. Apparently it was strong enough to be felt as far north as Stillwater, and all across Oklahoma City. Folks here at the office said it really shook the museum (which is a big building). And Grayson said he felt it shaking his chair in the gymnasium at school.

I was driving to work, and so I completely failed to register any movement of the earth. I'm so BUMMED. A real earthquake in Oklahoma - of all places - and I missed it. I was in my car for less than ten minutes. And THAT ten minutes was when we get an earthquake. I was gyped.

Authorities tell us that the temblor was caused, not by movement of tectonic plates, but possibly by deep hidden fault lines OR - most probably, as a by-product of oil or gas drilling.

Heck. Maybe I'll feel the next one... in another 40 years or so.

School Stuff

Lately we've been struggling with difficulties at school. Grayson has a teacher who is, I'll go ahead and say it, a bit of a hard-ass. This is a woman who has rules for her rules, and doles out punishments on a formula. Enter X you always get Y. And Grayson's not integrating all that smoothly into the New World Order. There's just no wiggle room.

Unfortunately, Grayson is all about wiggle room.

So, he is feeling the pinch. The whole household is. Primarily all the drama is caused by his consistent failure to put the number 6 on the upper right hand corner of his papers before he turns them in. Not only does he lose five points from every paper on which he fails to do this, he also as to sit out recess. He has had, consequently, only one recess this week.

I'll go ahead and say this, too, while I'm at it...I totally don't agree with this system of punishment. It's completely counter-productive. I think if you make a kid sit out recess, what you get is a restless, resentful and distracted kid, not a kid who has learned any kind of lesson. Not my kid, anyway. But I don't make the rules, and me thinking they're stupid doesn't change a thing for Grayson. So I'm doing what I can to try to nudge him into compliance. I remind him every morning to put his number on his page. I ask him every afternoon if he got recess. I've taken his TV privileges away. But I don't think piling on more punishments is going to produce any better results. So I will have to come up with something else. I just don't know what. What can I do to make him remember? I can't be there, whispering in his ear. I just have to hope it gets better on its own. He has no recess today because he put his number on the wrong page on work he turned in yesterday. Sheesh. Today, I hope, is the last day of no recess. We've had two difficult weeks. I hope next week will begin a new era.

Today is Book Report Day. Grayson was up late last night, finishing his first-ever "book report:" actually a shoebox diorama accompanied by a five-sentence synopsis of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. I was worried that it would be torture getting him to work on this, and it has been a challenge to get him to do some of the preliminary work. He was convinced, of course, that he could complete the whole project in a single night, and resisted when I made him starting drawing the figures for the diorama on Tuesday night. But last night went well. Fortified by milk and cookies, he plowed right into the project and kept at it, not even fighting me on the writing bit at the end.

Grayson hates writing. He'll be the first to tell you so. But turns out he just hates the mechanics of writing. He's actually a bit of a dab hand with a sentence. A chip of the old Mom Block, perhaps. I was worried that the synopsis would be an ordeal, but here's what he came up with:

"Harry has had a mysterious life, but the day he turns eleven, everything changes. He realizes he is a wizard and goes to a school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He meets two friends named Ron and Hermione but once they find the sorceror's stone it leads them on a great adventure. Together they accomplish any obstacle that comes their way, including He Who Must Not Be Named. But then Harry has to say goodbye to his new found friends, but he will see them next year."

Myself, I think the kid may have a career in writing book jacket blurbs.

On Lying Down with Dogs

The weather is cooling off, and that means that I lie down with dogs. Three dogs, in fact. Usually they are arrayed thus:

Flower takes up residence at the foot of the bed near the window, and barely moves. She knows where she can sleep and incur the least disruption from moving feet, moving dogs or incoming kid.

Kobi roots her way under the covers and descends all the way down, often curling up around knee level off to one side. This works fine unless G crawls into bed with me, in which case she sometimes gets squashed a bit.

Roxy find the absolutely most inconvenient and uncomfortable place for her to possibly lie down and then spends most of the night alternately scratching herself bald or chewing on her bone. Usually she lies down right where I want to put my legs. Sometimes, however, if I get up in the middle of the night, she moves to my pillow, where she sticks like a limpet until I either smack her butt or harry her off the bed, whereupon she immediately bounces right back up and reinstalls herself wherever I most want to put my feet.

Roxy really would like to sleep with Grayson, but she just can't bring herself to stay there after lights out. She can't stand it that I'm still up and moving around, so she always comes in to see what I'm up to. Getting Grayson to bed, however, is an exercise is outfoxing the Rox. We go into Grayson's room and Roxy leaps onto the bed and curls up on the covers. I snap my fingers and she jumps down. Then she jumps back up as G is getting under the covers and she lays on them so he can't pull them up. I snap and down she goes. Grayson pulls the covers up. Roxy leaps onto the bed, steps over him, leans down to investigate his face, and then plops down at his side.

I say good night and turn out the light.

If Roxy doesn't jump down right away to follow me out of the room, within minutes the scratching begins. Or the chewing. Or both. Soon I hear Grayson struggling to get Roxy off the bed. Finally, I will call her and she will assume her post at my feet. I choose this martyrdom rather than sacrifice Grayson's sleep.

Sometimes she lies very still and quiet and black on the floor of my bedroom in the dark, waiting for me to trip over her on my way to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. That's always fun. And sometimes she comes and prickles my face with her whiskers at 2 a.m. wanting to go outside herself.

Ah dogs.