bflynn

Melancholy October

It’s a dark, windy, rainy mid-October day. I’m listening to a Pandora station that seems to be taken entirely from my own iPod library. But still, it’s good. It’s just a little, well, sad. All the songs of love, loss, home, journeying, hope, despair — with strong overtones of a capella.

In addition to writing a complex query and laying out (yet another) pdf report, I’m thinking about what to do with a long weekend. It looks like the weather has a chance at brisk and glorious. Here’s what I’m thinking about for a glorious Saturday…

We’ll rise earlyish. I’ll let Grey finally finish the Avatar episode he’s started 3 times this week, and I play with Thane in his room. Thane loves, loves his bedroom in a way Grey never has. He’ll bop the Weebles down the slide, crawl between stacks of books, and then imperious hobble over to me, a Weeble-princess in one hand “Horn to Toes and In Between” in the other and announce “Boo! Boo!” We’ll eventually pile our sons into the car, carefully loaded with snacks and entertainments and drive North through the Merrimack River valley. Grey will be confused, wondering if we’re going to daycare on a Saturday.

We’ll pass through the lands of concrete onto smaller and smaller roads, through impossibly picturesque New England towns with white steeples and lots of acrimonious town politics, until we get to the Shaker Museum. Grey will get up close and personal with a livestock. We’ll stand in a room built by hands dedicated to equality and pacifism. No one lives there now. Perhaps there will be a hayride. I’ll feel torn between permitting my youngest to explore his world and forbidding him to explore cow-patties. I’ll buy a token of my memory of this period of unworldiness and optimism.

Last time I was there, my mother bought me a pin that was also a vase. It could hold a pansy — called heartsease — in water on your chest. It was stolen from me in a burglary we experienced on September 11, 2009.

Unless fortune truly smiles at us, we’ll have to leave when one or more boys hits too-tired. We’ll put them in the car, hoping for a nap. The child who desperately needs to sleep will not. We’ll drive to our next destination. 5 minutes before we arrive, the child will fall asleep and silence will descend on the car for the first time all day. We’ll drive in circles around our destination, afraid to stop until just a little more sleep has been obtained.

We’ll go to Moose Brook State park. The boys will play on the playground, swing in the swings. We’ll play with the great stomp-rocket Grey got for his birthday. As the shadows loom long, we’ll get a campsite and build a campfire. I imagine sitting around the fire, watching embers fly up to the stars, singing songs together and telling stories. I imagine putting our sticky, sweet, sleepy children into the car and silently returning to our daily lives back in the suburbs, flying down thick freeways in time to be at church the next morning.

Thus I imagine. I have enough experience to know that it’ll be nothing like this. It will be better. It will be worse. There will be a moment most sublime. There will be several that will be quite banal. I give it 50/50 odds that Grey throws up at least once.

On a melancholy autumn day, I think about these days and moments. This is my sons’ childhood — their one and only. It’s desperately brief. You get one shot at being a child, and one shot at giving the people you created their childhood. Will Grey remember this trip on a melancholy autumn, some day 30 years from now? Will these journeys be the touchstone for him? When the smells of October waft through his office window, which of these memories will pop unbidden to his mind? Which cobalt sky will define perfection in cobalt skies for my sons? Will he remember the laughter? The hot dogs? The feeling that the world is a bigger place than he realized?

There’s a Simon and Garfunkel song (“And the Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall”) that says “I don’t know what is real, I can’t touch what I feel.” I sometimes think about how few of the things I touch are real. When is the last time you ran your hands across the bark of a tree? Do you remember how silky soft the inner petals of a dandylion are? I sometimes fear that so much our world is created, constructed and extruded that my sons will never touch what is real, to know it when they feel it. I suppose that’s a funny thing to fear. But my roots still reach down to the water table of the wild. I drank great draughts in my youth. I can only hope to help my sons know that it is there if they choose to reach for it.

‘Fessing Up

So, I have a confession to make. This is not my first blog. No, my first blog was started in 2003 on one of those other sites (waves her hand indistinctly). It wasn’t very formal. It wasn’t really the sort of writing you want people to find on Google. I never informed my parents or other family members about it. I did, however, make a ton of fantastic “online” friends and give way more updates about how hungry/tired/bored I was than was really required.

But gradually, I found I wanted to have a more public voice. As my writing increasingly turns to be about my children, I wanted to share with my larger family. And I’m getting smarter in my old age. I hope I’m smart enough to not write anything that would embarrass me now or later. So I went public and didn’t let on that it was “in media res”.

But… there were a few actual decent posts in the old blog. All my first pregnancy is documented there. The two miscarriages. Big thoughts. Perhaps one in twenty posts is something I’d like to hold on to.

So gradually I’m pulling in the best and most pertinent of my old writing here. If you go all the way back into my archives, you’ll see a number from 2003. I suspect that the stickiness of the writing — my desire to persist it — will increase as I began to find my voice.

I’m actually rather amazed at just how YOUNG and PERKY the posts from that first year really are!

So here you go. If you’re bored (and I can’t really imagine any other reason) feel free to go back and check out the archives as I fill in the years between 2003 and 2008.

I got nothin’

OK, all day I’ve been waiting. I knew that at some point inspiration would strike and I would write a post: a brilliant post, an insightful post, a post that makes you sigh in sympathy and bookmark my blog.

And here it is, 5:11. Inspiration has not struck. (I have, however, written a nifty pdf report, so I’ll just take comfort in my clever application of style sheets.) 5:12. No inspiration yet.

Well, I’ve been saving this for a rainy day. And between sun-breaks, it’s been bucketing here. So here you go, my no-fail feel better video. I challenge you to watch this without grinning:

I have my Bachelor’s in Parenting

To me, life is set up in four year increments. High school is four years. College is (theoretically, at least) four years. I’ve made a vow to take an official, nice family portrait every four years, to watch the changes in our family march across the wall. The first portrait was our wedding. In the second, a younger, thinner, more-rested Adam and I smile back. The third portrait included Grey holding a toy car and a baby-lump of a Thane.

Well, Grey has just completed his first four-year interval of being an external person. Today, he is four years old. FOUR YEARS. I find it extraordinarily hard to believe.

Grey’s been acting four years old for a few months now. I have wonderful news for you, oh parents of three year olds. (Or, heaven forfend, two year olds!) It gets better. It gets lots better. Imagine this: you are lying in bed asleep. You hear a drawer slam. Shortly thereafter, a door slams open. A quick pad-pad-pad of feet, and a young boy, naked except for his Spiderman Undies, crawls into bed beside you. He took off his own pullup, threw it away, and put on the undies himself. “It’s morning, mama! See? The sun is up. It’s a beautiful day!” He is, of course, right. You tell him to go put on his clothes and brush his teeth. Then (this is the remarkable part) he goes and SELECTS HIS OWN CLOTHING, PUTS IT ON, AND THEN GOES TO BRUSH HIS TEETH! He returns to tell you that his teeth are all sparkly now, see? Now, granted, not every outfit he picks “matches” or “is appropriate for the weather” but it IS all on the correct direction. This fine young man heads downstairs and picks out his morning DVD. He can get it to start and put it in, but lacks the ability to turn on the tv… so far. He eats his grits and drinks his milk. When it’s time to go, he turns off the tv himself. He walks out to the car, holds the door for me, opens his car door, gets into the car and buckles his own seat belt. Then, politely and using the word please, he asks for his DS.

We’re getting to a point where it’s hard to enumerate everything he CAN do. He can entertain himself. He will play quietly (if messily) in his room for up to two hours instead of napping. He is self-directed getting to the bathroom for all body functions (including, sadly, vomit). He can assemble a 50 piece puzzle. He can listen to and follow instructions. He cleans up automatically.

The other day I was in Thane’s room, putting him to bed, and Grey was bopping around. As I started to read to Thane, Grey cried out “Wait!” in obvious distress. Then Grey, without being asked, proceeded to pick up all the toys and books in Thane’s room and put them away, so he could join in story time. It took me that long to get my jaw off the floor. He picks up his own room before he goes to bed.

Grey knows how to act in case of a fire alarm. Periodically, in my culinary life, I have been known to set one or two of them off. The other day I did so, and while I was contemplating the state of my oven-floor, he calmly got up, opened the door, opened the screen door and exited to wait on the front lawn. But yet, Grey doesn’t wander. I have yet to have him leave the house when it wasn’t ok to.

Grey can tell you his nickname, his full name, his street address, his state, and his parent’s full names. He knows what to do when he’s lost in the woods. He can also tell you the full cast of Avatar.

Grey can read, kind of. If he knows a book, he uses first letters to guess what all the words are. He’ll investigate pictures for clues as to what the book says. He can read ‘from scratch’ maybe 20 or 30 words, and will sometimes surprise me. “Open” and “Stop” have both been pulled from sign with no context. He can read and write his own full name. Sadly, he read on his Gameboy, in Tetris where he’s happily been “building towers” for years the words “You Lose” and was distraught. His name is increasingly legible even if you don’t know what it is. He recently signed his own thank you cards and put the return address labels on by himself.

Grey loves to be where people are. About the only time he’ll be in another room is when he’s watching tv or is in his room for quiet time. He draws and colors at the kitchen table, puts puzzles together, adores going on walks, plays with his brother (sometimes nicely, sometimes not), helps make desserts, carries his dishes to the counter, builds block towers, and talks with the typical preschooler torrent. Well, not quite. We’ve actually never hit the “why” stage that I expected. He doesn’t usually daisy-chain questions. He seems to be a bit more literal minded. He often wants to know what’s made up and what’s real. (Question for you: would you say aliens are made up?)

He’ll make up a word and tell you it means something in Spanish. Usually what it means is “chocolate milk”.

Grey is episodically enamored with his stuffed animals. For Easter he got a cheap white rabbit. This rabbit has accompanied him often since then. He’s named “Robby” and he’s a baby. Grey uses a gentle voice and takes care of his small, increasingly bedraggled charge. Many things are babies. Grey is often a baby, but never a baby human. Sometimes he’s a baby kitty cat (pink, please). Recently he’s been a baby ghost or a baby zombie.

Since his grandfather died, Grey has been very concerned with mortality. He will often seriously inform you that Papa Flynn is dead. He worries that Robby is going to die because Robby is old. (I know I just said Robby was a baby – one does not expect consistency from a just-four-year-old imagination!) He doesn’t understand what dead means — in his pretend, people often get fixed from being dead and come back. Jesus and the resurrection do not help me lay his questions to rest on this point. Grey is very upset when he hears “dead” or “killed” on the radio. You should’ve heard me explain to him when the thing that got “killed” was the public option in the healthcare debate. Oof!

My eldest is not perfect, of course. He has this obnoxious tendency to pout when he doesn’t get his way. I remind myself that pouting is far superior to hitting or pitching a fit, but still he’s been known to stomp off and hide under the table 4 – 6 times in a one-hour playdate with a friend. He’s also latched onto this annoying way of asking for things. He’ll fake sniff and then say (in a woebegone voice) “I’m sad.” Then he’ll wait for you to ask why. If you don’t ask, he’ll say, “Do you know why I’m so sad?” Then regardless of your response, you get to the meat of it. “I’m sad because I don’t have a lollipop.” We’re working on this. He does still, rarely, pitch grand mal fits. Like all children, they’re more likely when he’s tired and hungry. But once he goes down the road of hitting/pinching/kicking, he doesn’t desist unless stopped with authority. Like, in-your-bedroom-for-the-next-fifteen-minutes or more. He’s VERY persistent.

Grey is a loving, affectionate, kind, funny, silly, fearless young man. I can only hope that he has as much fun being my kid as I have being his mom.

When in doubt, post pictures

Last night, for the first night in what seems like forever, I had the blessed combination of some free time and some energy. I climbed the stairs to my attic fastness and plugged in my camera.

Holy Handgrenades Batman! 650 pictures! (In my defense, only about 6 – 7 weeks worth!)

It was the effort of an evening to cull the harvest down to the best fruits. The best fruits seem to involve quite a lot of Grey making weird faces and Thane reading. But here they are, for your viewing pleasure!

http://picasaweb.google.com/fairoriana/September2009#

60 seconds in the life

Setting: My domicile
Cast: Grey, Thane, my mother-in-law, Sasha (my brother’s friend)
Scene: I’m on the phone on a conference call discussing Flex best practices using the Mate framework with several colleagues in a conference room. Most of them have thick Indian accents. The speaker phone in the conference room isn’t good at a distance. My cell phone reception seems poor. My cell phone is beeping at me to let me know the battery is winding down.

Thane (in bedroom): Screams bloody murder instead of takes naps. Implies that small kobolds with skewers are hungrily gathering around his crib and that any moment the assault will begin.
Mother-in-law: Needs to print the boarding pass for her departure tomorrow and just finished painting a layer of magnetic paint. Is a saint, but periodically needs to “eat” and “use the restroom”. Is upstairs and does not hear all the tumult.
Sasha: Just dropped by to pick up some of my brother’s things. Is driving the tiniest car known to mankind. Is expected to pick up a ginormous tv, my brother’s DVDs and bedding. All my brother’s things are in indistinct, unlabeled black bags in the middle of the attic.
Grey: Is wearing pullups (and only pullups) on a very cold day. He is potty trained. I do not ask why he is wearing pullups. He has a marker stripe over his belly button. After trailing Sasha around for a bit, he brings a book to me, looking concerned about the cover.

This is the cover:

Lovecraft is not really for the preschool set

Me: Trying to track arguments for naming conventions of the variables in the EventMap while reassuring Grey that the cover art is make believe, directing Sasha to the appropriate black plastic bags, ignoring Thane’s screams, and doing it all silently so as to not imply to my colleagues that my attention is anything less than rapt on the discussion at hand.

Thane: The kobolds are starting to make ladders out of Weebles and board books. Also, I may or may not be fingerpainting with poop. You won’t know unless you check!
Grey: Mommy, I’m hungry and I want to play outside. Can I show Sasha this book?
Coworkers: “So what do you think about using injectors to inject the model into the view, and then inject the variables into the model? Will that compile in the correct order?”
Sasha: (Is carrying heavy and bulky things down the stairs while patiently dodging a nearly-four-year-old and two cats.)
Brenda’s Phone: Goes dead.

Thane at 11 months

So we come to the last of the monthly updates. Next month will be the 1 year update, and after that I think quarterly will be sufficient to keep you apprised in the latest Thaneisms.

I'm ignoring you! (But look at those curls!)

Thane has been much, much slower to walk than I expected. It’s funny when you discover what is and is not controlled by personality with babies. The walking is totally a personality thing. Grey was desperate to walk! He SO wanted to be a big boy. Thane is much happier being Thane, and being who he is. Walking is a bit riskier than crawling, crawling is perfectly adequate for what he wants. So he crawls instead of walks — when he remembers to. He will take even 5 or 6 steps when he forgets that he isn’t walking. Of course, climbing is a whole different story. He shows no fear climbing over obstacles, with inevitable head-bonking as a consequence.

11 months is a harder stage. Thane has started interfering with Grey’s toys. It is inevitable for a small child to desire the toy a larger child is playing with (and, in fairness, vice versa). Thane is indomitable when he decides he wants something, and no amount of distraction, removal, substitution, etc. will prevent him from pursuing his goal. These goals have a tendency to be: opening the cupboard under the kitchen sink (verboten) and playing with Grey’s toys (problematic).

This is also the nadir for feeding the child. Thane has begun asserting his desire to control the spoon. Ah! Fateful day! This would be more welcome if he didn’t use the spoon to comb his curly locks, and if any bowl or dish placed in front of him did not become a projectile weapon. I remember this stage with dread. This is the “plan on mopping the kitchen twice a day” stage. And Thane eats a wide range of foods, but he’s PICKY about which one he wants. You can think he’s hungry, give him a piece of bread (for example) only to have it thrown repeatedly. You might think, “Ah, not hungry.” But no! He wants cheese! Or pears! No no no! Not yucky raspberries. PEARS WOMAN.

While I’m elucidating the downsides, Thane is also Extremely Squirmy. He writhes in your arms. He has the strength of a leviathan in the body of an otter attempting to recreate a Pollock in yogurt on the kitchen walls. He does this unlovely thing, especially in the evenings and especially with me, where he’ll cry to be picked up and when picked up he’ll squirm unhappily (pulling hair and poking faces the while) and when you put him down he’ll weep bitter tears at your betrayal of him. I still can’t figure out what he does want when he does this, other than bedtime.

Thus for the downs. Now the ups.

I have never met a baby who liked books better than Thane does. Reading to him will pull him out of a full-boil tantrum. He will happily engage himself for like 20 minutes flipping through the rapidly proliferating bookpiles. He turns the books rightside up and pages the correct way through the books — page by page. He’ll sometimes turn back to recheck a page, before moving on to the next book. I have an entire bin of books for him in the living room. He LOVES them. Books are his joy and his delight. They are also one of his first three words. I don’t get a clear, comprehensible “mama”, but “book” is coming out loud and proud. He actually did a chin up, supporting his entire weight in his arms, in an attempt to crawl to the top of a shelf where his book were stored.

Thane has developed these heartbreaking golden curls. He never, ever looks NEAT, but I don’t think I can bear to part with those golden locks for some significant time yet.

Squirm aside, Thane is much more of a snuggler. When he is tired, he’ll curl up on my chest, suck his thumb and lay his head against me. I cannot describe for you how wondrous it is to have your child happily ensconced on your chest — even if it’s just for 30 seconds before he’s ready to go again.

I think I better make peace with my chin

When he is unhappy, it’s a near 100% solution to put Thane in the stroller and go on an adventure. His patience for being carted around in a stroller or baby backpack is stunning. He likes, I think, variety and change.

We have this Weebalot castle (we’ve had a ton of fun bringing out Grey’s old toys from this age) in Thane’s room. He ADORES it. To my surprise, he’s figured out how to play with it to make the Weebles fall down the curving slide. He’ll send them down over and over again. Grey always liked to make the music play, but Thane likes the slide best. I also got out the Busy Ball Popper ATTENTION PEOPLE WONDERING WHAT TO GET A BABY FOR ITS FIRST BIRTHDAY. This is the bestest toy EVER. Both boys are having a (ahem) ball chasing down the balls and playing the songs and figuring out what else they can stick down the popper. I only wish that you could buy spare balls, half of ours inevitably having gone walkabout in the last three years.

Thane is LOVING peek-a-boo. I take a blanket and place it over his head. I ponder, “Where’s Thane? Where did Thane go?” Thane pulls the blanket off his head. “There’s Thane! Hi Thane!” Thane will then lean his head down trying to pull it under the blanket. It’s terribly funny. He can, of course, keep this up for longer than the adult attention span, always delighted to be found at last!

My youngest’s sense of humor is developing. He and I were chatting this morning at breakfast. “Dada” he said. I pointed to myself, “I’m mama! Can you say ‘mama’?” He got, I swear, this mischievous look in his eye and a snaggle-toothed grin and deliberately said, “Dada”. Kid’s got timing — I ‘ll give him that!

Thane is a fantastic sleeper. He’s always gone to bed easily. And by easily I mean you read him three books, kiss his curly little head, put him in his crib, say a quick prayer, cover him over with his blanket and leave the room. Done. Not a whimper. He will only wake up if he’s constipated (we still are struggling to manage the perfect dose of apple juice to be regular but not over-regular) or if he’s hungry. He usually sleeps through the night now.

Thane and I are still clinging to one last feeding. Every night I wonder if it’s the last, but so far it continues. He wakes up or I wake him up right before I go to bed, and nine-tenths asleep he nurses and I hold him. I’m not sure how much milk he’s actually getting. Some, I know. Perhaps a little immune boost, but mostly a chance for me to hold and savor my baby as he quickly departs babyhood for the land of boyhood.

Abuela says we need to buy size four diapers — that he’s getting too big for size three. She’s right of course. But oh!

When Thane was a baby, I got a hundred fantastic pictures of him, and few of the blur-his-brother. Now, I cannot take a good picture of Thane. He moves fast. His nose is always snotty. He always has some food set aside for later behind his ear. He’s snaggle-toothed and drooling. He doesn’t smile on command. And anytime he sees me take out the camera, he comes at a baby-run to investigate and oversee the proceedings. So you’ll have to make do.

Walking to take custody of the camera - a blur as usual

Still sick

I’m still sick. I am really bad at being sick. I have this vision of sickness that involves the couch, a remote, a good book and about two days of senescence. I think the last time I actually fulfilled this version of sick is when I got the flu while I was pregnant with Grey. I watched the entire first six seasons of Red Dwarf on DVD in a fevered-haze (the best way, in my opinion). But my only two nods to the snot-beast currently taking residence in my chest are that I slept through church Sunday (and by slept through I mean that I got up half an hour before the madding crowd returned home), and I skipped yoga.

It’s hard enough for me to be interesting at the best of times. But being interesting while I’m sick? Yeah. Right.

But my husband demanded that I share one of this weekend’s anecdotes, and lacking more compelling material, I shall oblige him.

Grey has a number of toys that play songs. Nearly every keyboard-type electronic device he owns has a setting where it plays songs. Please note: every one of them plays “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. He will sometimes quiz me on the songs and demand I sing them. Where DID my back-brain learn all the words to all these songs? He would like you to know that “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine” is very sad. How did she get lost, mama? Didn’t she have a whistle?

Anyway, “In the Hall of the Mountain King” came up in rotation, and he asked me to sing it. I know some words, “Goblins racing down the street, they will get, much to eat, when it’s time for trick-or-treat on Halloween”. They didn’t quite match with the longer version, so I expanded on the hungry goblins theme. Grey pretended to be scared – delightedly so. After our fourth or fifth time of me being a hungry goblin, he and I both became goblins and went upstairs looking for daddy-sized prey. Having found some, we gnawed on various available arms and legs.

My husband said, “Wow, this is just like the worst of my zombie dreams.” (An interesting insight to his psyche, doncha think?)

I, being sick and muzzy-mouthed, replied that we were zoblins. My husband and I laughed in delight. What a great word! Zoblins!

Mental Fog

I’m not feeling very well. I didn’t end up succumbing to the strep throat my husband had. At least not yet. My sons have produced volumes of mucous. Meanwhile I and my epic immune system sailed through. I haven’t actually succumbed – yet – but I can tell I’m teetering.

I woke up last night sometime in the dark hours, my throat on aflame and my cough hacking. I didn’t figure I’d be making it to work today. I gazed bleary into the bathroom mirror and took some ibuprofen. Somehow, though, when morning came I just felt sodden again. I cuddled my young son and then talked myself into facing another day. I don’t really know how to take a sick day anymore. It’s been years since I’ve taken a sick day and just laid on the couch watching bad tv and eating soup from a can.

One of the things I hate about being kind of sick (and let me just make clear – I’m very grateful that I’m not ACTUALLY sick) is the sort of fog it creates. My neck hurts. My eyes don’t want to focus. My chest seems heavier, as though I’m breathing something heavier that Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide. Perhaps Mucosium instead. The screen swims a bit as I type. My rarely razor-sharp focus takes on even blunter, more-distractable edges. I have trouble focusing. There’s this odd combination of not being entirely sure where my time is going and having the day stretch out interminably. Decisions are hard to come by.

Then when I get home, I don’t have the energy to be nearly as present as I desire to be. I’m a little foggy answering my children. I don’t really listen to what they’re telling me – a cardinal sin in my parenting lexicon. I have trouble listening to the ideas my mother-in-law overflows with, and considering their implications.

I don’t really know what I want except I suspect it involves sloth. Lots of sloth. Computer games and books and baseball on tv. Of course, that’s not what this weekend holds. I have some sloth scheduled for tonight, but tomorrow morning starts with a 9:30 personnel meeting, an 11:30 funeral to play taps, a dentist appointment for Grey and aikido for Grey. Thane is at this tough tough stage where he fusses and cries because he wants to be big and isn’t. He wants to talk and can’t. He wants to walk and is afraid. Childhood is productive frustration – sometimes more than others.

I want to be so many things: a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter-in-law, a good citizen, a good friend, a good cook, a good church member (never mind the much harder good Christian), a good employee, a good, well, me. I have trouble enough balancing all this when I’m at the top of my game. Through the fog of mild sickness I can see the goal posts, but I don’t feel like I stand a hope in the world of reaching them. I don’t even think I can try for a field goal from this distance.

Guess I better punt, do my best, and wait for my white cells to clobber the offense. Goooooo team!

In which I become prime

I’m 31 today. 30 was almost like still being in your 20s. 31 you have to admit that no. You’re in your 30s. If I were a professional gymnast, I’d be far past my best days. If I were a baseball player, I’d be in my prime. I’m old enough to be in Congress (and I was by my last birthday), but still too young to be President. And, unlike our current incumbent, I actually WAS born in Africa.

All I can say is that if my 30s pass as quickly as my 20s did, I’d better start writing that post now. I mean, my 20s lasted for roughly as long as two classes of Geometry my sophomore year of high school.

While I’m sitting here at work being 31 instead of 30, my mother-in-law is repainting my kitchen. And mud room. And bathroom. And possibly hallway if she gets ambitious. I think the five gallon drum of paint was a mistake — she sees it as a challenge.

I’m having a good day at work, getting to do some fun stuff that’s out of the ordinary for me.

My husband sent me flowers.

I’m wearing a swooshy pretty skirt that cannot survive close proximity to children, but that’s ok because I’m at work! Drinking coffee and being all important! My coworkers managed to surprise me with the cake, even though we’ve had “surprise” birthdays every birthday for seven years now!

So, all in all, a good day to be 31.