A Brief Inventory

I won't say that it necessarily indicates a lack of housekeeping skills on my part, but here's an inventory of what's on my living room coffee table this morning.

• 14 magazines


• A pile of loose notebook paper


• A spiral bound notebook


• A popsicle stick


• a plastic zipper bag filled with colored pencils


• Assorted loose colored pencils


• An electric pencil sharpener


• A hand pencil sharpener


• A glass egg roughly the size of a quail egg


• two remote controls


• A Nintendo DSi


• a blue "gertie"inflated ball


• two pairs of reading glasses, one of which has only one leg


• two strings of mardi gras beads


• A Weight Watchers cookbook


• A folded cloth napkin. Possibly clean. Or not.


• A Webelos Scouts neckerchief


• A bottle of hand lotion


• A bendy straw


• A deck of cards


• Three "Gogos" stickers


• A tin collectors box full of "Gogos"


• Three envelopes of mystery mail


• A plastic box containing almost exactly 10 pounds of marbles


• nail clippers


• A stack of coasters (these, ironically, are at the farthest possible distance from anywhere a person might reasonably be expected to set down a drink)


• A blue paper notice alerting me that the city will be turning off my water from 10 to 2 today for water line repairs


• Two packets of vegetable seeds (corn and okra)


• Instruction booklet for the Cox television system installed several months ago


• A laminated card with a passcode on it to some math website for Grayson


• A manga comic book


• Two paperbacks: one children's, one adults


• A letter from Grayson to his friend in Houston, unposted


• A box of "pop-its" snappers


• An opened package of "pop-its" snappers, leaking sawdust


• A rock


• The plastic cover to a Capri Sun straw


• Two CD cases for audio books: One adult, one children


• A 4 x 4 sample of knitting


• A Blasters album (vinyl) in its sleeve (thanks Michael!)


• A cd with collected songs by James McMurtry (thanks Konrad!)


• A Calvin and Hobbes book


• A large picture book of archaeological findings


• A Yu-gi-Oh card


• A Boomerang gift card (cool!)


• a torn piece of the back cover of a pocket folder, stuck to the table surface with some sticky substance


• My netbook (until I picked it up to post this)


• Three candles in class containers (These actually belong here)


• One candle, still in wrapping (this does not)


• A wooden box filled with glass beads


• A Swiss army knife


• scattered pencil shavings


• A glass holiday coaster that is meant to hold a photograph but doesn't have one in it


• A half-full box of colored pencils


• An emory board for foot calluses (in my defense, I was not using it to sand down my feet in the living room, I was using it to shorten my acrylic nails so I could use my hands again)

That's it. It's possible that some excavation could reveal further treasures, but that's all for now.

You can draw your own conclusions.

Spring Springs

I spent a lot of Spring Break feeling less than springy. The weather was iffy most of the time, and yet I still suffered from the sore throat and nasal issues associated with the spring allergy season. I'm pretty sure that all the red cedar in Oklahoma pollinated that week.

I was also a little blue because I didn't have my kiddo with me much. From Friday through Wednesday he was with my folks at Lake Texoma, and from Thursday through Sunday he was with his dad. It's funny how I can transition from "oh boy! Time all to myself!" to "I want my boy back!" so quickly. I did get an overnight at the lake on Tuesday night, however, and the weather was cooperating pretty well.

The big news for G about the lake is driving the golf cart. I have to admit, it's a pretty fun little thing to drive around. But this time, for the first time, Grayson was able to really and truly drive all on his own. Nobody needed to remind him about keeping his speed steady or not slamming on the brakes or oversteering. My dad said it was like all the lessons and coaching came together and clicked, and he was driving like a champ. I was so proud of him, and it was clear he was proud of himself.

I keep saying it, but it keeps being true... my boy is growing up. I'm not sure how to feel about this. Of course I want him to grow up and mature and be an independent, responsible person, but who will sit in my lap when he's grown up? My lap likes that.
It makes me understand how it is that otherwise perfectly normal adult humans go absolutely goofy over their grandchildren.

Finally, by Sunday I was over my cold and/or allergy bout enough to get outside. The weather, after dithering a bit during the first part of the week, seemed to decide to settle on spring after all, and Sunday was gorgeous. I went out to "just look" at the plants in the nursery and came home with the back of my car full of flowers, veggies and herb plants, ready to go into the garden.

I know I'm running a risk, planting this early, but I just couldn't help myself. After days indoors, and a really nasty winter, I needed some DIRT. So I spent the afternoon digging and weeding, raking and planting, happy as a toad in the garden. Now almost all my veggies (with the exception of the squash) are in, and I'm watching the nighttime temperatures carefully each day to see if I need to run outside and snuggle any tomatoes to keep them warm through the night. I'll do what I have to do. I need gardening!

Strangely, my gardening bug coincided over the break with a sudden and irresistible need to get Girlie, so I went out and got a new set of acrylic nails put on. I realize that this is the height of folly at this time of year, because fake nails and gardening just do not go together. But I did it, I just needed a little pretty in my life. So now I'm out in the garden in my gloves, trying to turn over a new section of brutal Oklahoma clay full of die-hard bermuda grass runners... without peeling off a fingernail. Noone ever said pretty was smart, sadly. So far so good, however. I've managed not to rip my nails off, and the garden did get turned and planted.

I wish I had a picture of my own Big Mama I could post here. I'll have to look for one and scan it in. Every time I plant my garden I think of her. She kept an enormous garden in the yard of her house when I was growing up, and she worked it all herself until she was well into her 90s. I can see her in my mind's eye, in the pocketed pinafore apron and sunbonnet that my mom made for her every year, leaning on her hoe handle and picking off tomato worms or turning over a bed of potatoes or filling a basket with okra pods. I wish she could see me now. I wish she could tell me what to do about the vine borers that get my squash every year, and how to get my onions to grow like hers did: fat and sweet and delicious. I feel close to her when I have my hands in the dirt, and I miss her, then, too.

I laugh and tell Bob that I'm the person to know when the grid goes down, because I'll still be able to grow us food. It's not really true, though. I'm one of those bumbling urban gardeners who produces the $65 tomato every year: putting way more money and sweat into the garden than I probably receive in actual produce. I lose my squash plants to vine borers by the end of June and my tomatoes to spider mites or flower-end-rot by July. By the end of the season I've pretty much given up on about all but my peppers and mint, and am just hoping for better results next year. Most of my successes are accidental: like the crop of cucumbers I put in -- in JULY -- two years ago that took off and scrambled over my whole front flower bed, shooting out so many footlong cukes that I took to giving them to everyone I knew. Or the grape tomato a few years ago that shaded out or strangled everything around it, but showered me with sweet, delicious thumb-sized tomatoes all summer long. Last year I had an explosion of lettuce, next to a crop of radishes that were all tops and no bottoms.

We'll see what surprises I get this year.

In Which I Am Roundly Rejected by a Weiner Dog

As I was one of the ones staying in Norman during Spring Break, I gladly agreed to be the pet-watcher both for Bob's cat Jpeg and for Michael's weinee-dog, Daisy. It's an easy gig: just show up once a day, check the food and water supplies, and provide a little human companionship.

Well, it was easy for Jpeg, at least. But Jpeg knows me. Iarrive, he comes running, I let him in, let him out, top up the food and water bowls, a rub on the noggin and I'm out. Daisy, not so much.

Daisy, the sweet little weiner dog, morphs into Devil Dog from Hell.


She. does. not. like. me.

She dislikes me so much that she actually ran up into the windowsill by the front door and pooped. That's how much she doesn't like me. That's a lot of dislike. She dislikes me so much that just two days into it I got relieved of my pet-sitting duties after Michael heard her growling over the phone when he called to see how we were getting on together.

Who would think a tiny little weiner dog could pack so much rejection?

Changes on the wind

Yesterday, after my wander in the Dark Wood of the Soul on Friday night, I decided that part of Taking My Life in Hand should involve making more of an effort about how I look. I do this periodically, I call it Being Pretty. I'm not very good at it. But I don't want to turn into the Crazy Dog Lady, so I do what I can to step up the effort.

I went out and got new acrylic nails. I don't know why to me this is the Icon for being Well Tended. But it's just something that speaks to me of the Woman who Cares How She Looks. They're pretty, I must say, if completely unnatural looking. My fingertips still hurt from all the grinding and sanding, but they'll get back to normal in a day or two, and eventually I'll get the hang of using my hands again. See, the fake nails are thick, and you can't pick up things like coins, credit cards or slips of paper from a flat surface with them. They're also filed so smooth that scratching with them is a singularly unsatisfying activity. But these are the drawbacks. The upside is that they are pretty, and hopefully will make my middle-aged hands look a little less like those of a farmer. I have big hands, not very dainty, and getting knuckly and lined as I get older.

Aging is a bitch.

I hit the gym yesterday, as well, determined to make good on all those times I swore I was going to lose ten pounds.

Dressing is hard, too, when I'm trying to be Pretty. I have no real taste, I think. I would be happy in an oversized T-shirt, jeans and sneakers every day. I don't like to dress up and I don't like to dress too girly, so I'm at an immediate disadvantage. For pointers, I go out in public and I look around me to see what the Pretty Girls are wearing.

Well, here's the first problem. The real Pretty Girls are all 20 years younger than I am. So what they're wearing is probably the opposite of appropriate for me. Oh, it's probably what my ex husband is looking for. And no doubt it's what his current girlfriend is wearing. He used to tell me how awful my taste was. He hated certain colors that I gravitate toward, and once (shortly before we were divorced, not surprisingly) actually went through my closet and made piles: the things that I could definitely keep, the things that were negotiable, and the things that simply had to go. Needless to say, some of my favorite things were things that had to go. And the things that could stay were all pretty much things he had chosen, and/or were short and tight.

It's uncharitable to talk about him that way here. But it's a true story. The other truth is that I'm upset because of this new girl in Gray's life. Every time there's someone new he gets.... weird... secretive, strange. And then I find out about the new girl in some way, and she's always at least ten years younger than me... sometimes closer to 20. It makes me feel old, fat and ugly. This whole Pretty thing is partly because of her. And because even Bob told me last week that I "just don't give a shit" about how I look. I don't think he meant it meanly... but it just echoed what Gray used to say over and over. He once told me to "just try not to look like shit." I'm torn between making the extra effort to Be Pretty and just telling them all... the whole masculine gender.... to go to hell and embracing my inner Dog Lady.

So to keep her at bay, for now, at least... I have new nails, and gave myself a pedicure. And I am going to the gym. And yesterday I bought a pretty new shirt. I stopped short of buying one of the frilly ones everyone is wearing. But it does have flowers all over it.

Aging is, as I said, a bitch.

The Crazy Dog Lady Within

Lately I've been dissatisfied with Life. Maybe it' the spring(ish) weather... maybe it's something else. But I've been looking around lately and thinking "this is it? Really?"

It seems as though I'm always saying I'm going to do things that never get done. Write that book, buy that house... lose ten pounds. Train my dogs not to greet visitors so exuberantly that they are knocked over onto the front porch.

The other thing I keep saying I'm going to do that I never do is Take My Life in Hand... like I'm probably about to do now.

I worry that I've become Inert. That this period of relative peace and quiet following the turmoil of Divorce has become my way of life. That I have officially decided to settle for Good Enough. And what's wrong with that?

I'm afraid I'm just one step away from being that lady who lives alone with her dogs. That sad lady. Her house is a mess and she no longer makes any effort about how she looks because nobody sees her anymore. She gave up on Being Someone and now she just Is.

Of course, I can't let this happen to me, right? I have to take life by the throat and wring from it every last prescious drop. I have to LIVE.

Or maybe, like Dory says in Finding Nemo.... maybe all I really need to do is "just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.... what do we do? We swim, swim, swim."

Or maybe, if I'm going to be the Dog Lady, I should just set my sights on being the Best Damned Dog Lady I can. The world's doggiest Dog Lady. I'll wear funny hats and talk to myself, maybe.

No. No. I don't have an answer. I do think I'm restless for a reason, however. I do think maybe I've Settled, a bit... allowed myself to take the easy road, let things just happen, not make any choices. I like to think I'd Make the Bold Choice if I had a bold choice to make. I don't see any such laid before me. I see mild choices. Quiet choices. But I'm not blazing any new trails.

Last night, I found myself wandering the outskirts of Despair, and thought I'd better catch a cab out of there, so I sent text message SOSes to my friend Jin, who has a much firmer grip on the the throat of Life than I do... and to my friend Michael, who's a good listener and always takes my side.

Jin's message said "you got a minute to talk me down off the tower with my uzi?"

Michael's just said "where you?"

Within minutes, both lifelines were being hauled in. Jin called, laughing that even though her new phone didn't yet have my name associated with my number, she knew instantly who the message was from... me being her only friend with a penchant for clock towers and high powered automatic weapons.

Michael responded with the name of the pub where he was having a cold one before heading home to pack for his Spring Break family trip to Arkansas.

So I poured my heart out to Jin while driving with my dog in my lap to the pub. And Jin told me I was fine just the way I am, and Michael listened intently and took my side. And so, though I was a bit doggy (Kobi had to wait in the car, where she met lots of new friends as they came out of the pub), I was not alone. And there are people in the world who still think I'm funny and likeable and generally worthwhile, even when sometimes I don't.

And maybe that's what Living really is... just keeping in touch with those spider-threads of connection that hold you in time and space -- that keep you from drifting off in the world into sad, lonely dogginess. And maybe that's good enough, and I don't have to do Exciting Things or go on Adventures.

At least I hope so.

On Behaving Badly

G-rex was in trouble at school this week. I'm sure he'd be mortified if he knew I posted that here... but there it is. He was distracted, unfocused and ... downright rude.

I was utterly astonished.

I know no kid is a saint. Lord knows I wasn't. But it is so unlike Grayson to be any kind of discipline problem at all that I was completely bamboozled. And, naturally, like any good mom I assume that it's my fault.

Truly, one of the pitfalls of single parenting an only child is a blurring of the line between Adult and Kid. Most of the time Grayson and I live a pretty symbiotic lifestyle. There's not a lot of structure, and because I know him so well, maybe I let him say or do things that get him in trouble outside in the Real World where the line is harder.

This first manifested itself in troubles over language. Not that Grayson was using foul language. He doesn't (hasn't) pushed it that far. But he was watching these online videos featuring a comedian who used pretty bad language. Even when I was married, we didn't really try to protect G from curse words too much, we just made it abundantly clear that there were words he was not to use. We've really never had any problem with it.

I told him that there were circumstances in which cursing was appropriate, and when those circumstances arose, I expected him to curse accurately and with feeling. So, when he stubs his toe, for example, or loses all the data on his video game, he asks me "can I say a bad word?" and when I've granted permission, he utters a lusty "Shit!"

It makes me so proud.

But apparently he told one of his classmates about the aforementioned videos and the classmate got into trouble for looking them up. Whoops. He of course told his folks that Grayson told him about them, and now said classmate is not allowed to come over to my house.

This, too, is my fault.

But I digress. The problem of the rudeness is a new one, and though I think our peculiar relationship may have something to do with it, I don't think it's really the root cause. I don't know what it is. Maybe my boy is just reaching pre-adolescence and beginning to question authority?

Whatever the cause, I came down on him like a ton of bricks for it. I sat him down and read him the riot act and told him he would apologize to his teachers and straighten up and fly right. So far it seems to have made an improvement. Time will tell if it sticks.

It's hard to believe that my sweet little boy, who still likes to climb into my lap and hold my hand, will soon be a sullen, grumpy adolescent. I hope we both get through it okay. It scares the bejeezus out of me. I am a haphazard mom under the best of circumstances, I fear. And if things got tough, I'm not sure what I would do. I have no system in place for maintaining discipline because frankly, I've never had to. I tell Grayson if he needs to do something and he does it. If he whines I say "uh huh. Too bad. Do it." and he does it. I haven't experienced any kind of back-talk since he was three. If I scold him, he crumbles into tears and climbs into my lap to apologize. He spoils me rotten. If he certainly turns into the Bad Seed I'll be completely and utterly at a loss.

Not, as I said, that my child is an angel. He's just sensitive and eager to please for the most part. He also, however, doesn't get much asked of him. His chores are minimal, and I don't put a lot of heavy expectations on him. Maybe I should. But I don't.

The world is full of things you should do with or for your kids. Eat dinner together (does a meal on our laps in front of the television count?), limit TV time (is it okay if it's on but nobody's really watching it?); practice saving, spending and donating to charity (most weeks I forget even to give him his allowance, and he doesn't even notice); get involved with sports (gag) or some community activity (I'm sure we'll get around to that.... someday); be the adult (remember that thing about Grayson asking me if I wanted him to send me to my room?).

The one thing I can say I've been an unequivocal success at is loving him without condition. In that, at least, I've never faltered. Nor ever will. I comfort myself with that. one. thing.