The two stooges

There's the bruising on my toe.  Said toe is elevating as I type. It's really tired from that photo shoot we just did

Tonight, we took the kids up to get ready for bed and they had some sort of strange collision in the hallway.   I limped quickly out of the way to avoid their rambunctiousness and saw the whole thing happen from Coen's bed.  They banged into each other and suddenly Coen grabbed his foot, hopping up and down on the other one, saying "Oh my foot! Oh my foot!"  Meanwhile, Lucy was on the ground spasmodically moving her limbs around yelling "Everything hurts! Everything hurts!"
 I couldn't tell if they were actually injured until they both started laughing and then reenacted the whole scene for their own amusement. 
After Tad said it was time for hugs goodnight, Lucy tackled Coen to the ground in her nightly tackle and when they lay sprawled out on the floor, Coen said "Lucy, what was the funniest thing about that?  Like, I thought the funniest thing was when I was hopping up and down and you were saying 'everything hurts'." 
"Same fing." Lucy said, in her one-syllable, two-word, rather flippant answer.  They reenacted it one more time until Tad escorted our goofball daughter to her room, and I cuddled up with Coen to read, my broken-toed foot propped up on a stool, a little away from the bed to avoid any sudden moves my son might make whilst listening to me read.

Toe-tally ridiculous.

Tad and I promised Coen a sleepover party this summer and tonight is it.  We took Coen and Lucy, the two boys sleeping over, plus four extra  (our neighbors and a friend of Coen and Lucy's who stayed for dinner) to the park to play.  When we came back here, I rolled out pizza dough so all the kids could make their own personal pizza.  On my way to the kitchen, I slipped in something wet and fell, very oddly, down on the ground.  Not oddly that I fell-I fall all the time-but I fell in a very odd and sprawling way.  My big toe on my left foot hurt something fierce.  It hurt so bad, that I thought I was going to throw up.  This was strange to me because I have a very high pain threshold.  I birthed both my kids drug free.  I can usually shake off the odd finger/toe jam, cut or bruise.  But wow, this hurt.  After the nausea passed, I felt like I was going to pass out.
After I got myself onto the couch, with ice on my toe, I started calling emergency rooms and urgent care centers to see what wait times were like.  The way my foot looked, coupled with the pain, tripled with the fact that my Youth Leadership Summit starts tomorrow at work and I will be spending the next five days with twenty-seven high school students with varying disabilities, made me think I better go get this looked at tonight.
I did and after an x-ray determined that I had fractured my big toe, I went home.  I have a boot and my big toe is taped to the next one.  Tad's at Walgreen's getting me drugs.  I said no initially but the doctor peer pressured me into taking the prescription.  I guess I'll be having some nice, trippy dreams tonight.  And learning how to delegate tomorrow at work.
Though the highest point of the night, I have to say was this: I pulled into the garage from urgent care and three sweet boys all wearing fairy wings (for some reason) were waiting for me outside and helped me walk into the house.  And for now, I'm watching a movie with those winged boys and eating popcorn.  And wishing I could call in injured to work tomorrow. 

Here are the sleepover boys watching a movie.  There's my foot with my broken toe.

Here's Coen walking me to the house, Caleb holding the door open and Mason was inside getting my prop up chair ready.

Museums, Mummification and Memories

This is a picture of Harald and I at a museum in Baltimore in 2009.  We had this picture taken because we noticed that he and I are just barely taller than the aboriginal humans in the time of 5000-3000 b.c. 

Three years later, Harald is gone from the Earth.  And I was at the Field Museum with Lucy and my mother in law and sister in law.  We all wanted to see the mummy exhibit.  As we walked around looking at all the dioramas and mummified bodies and Egyptian burial trinkets, Lucy started asking about Harald.

"What if Harald died here?"  "Did Harald's body get buried in a box like this one?" "What did Harald look like when he died?" "Did Harald's brother have to take him somewhere when he died?"

I answered her questions as my mother-in-law looked back at me sympathetically.   It was actually kind of sweet. I told Lucy that Harald's body was turned into ashes and that someday I would go with his family and we would sprinkle his ashes around the house he built in the forest and he would become part of the Earth again. 

Once we got outside, I saw that I had a voice mail and checked it. Strangely enough, it was Harald's sister.  She was letting me know that his obituary was posted. 

At the Amtrak station, Lucy hung onto my hands and said, "Mommy? What do people's skin feel like when they die?"
"It feels mostly the same." I said. "Just not as warm."
"And it feels really weird?" Lucy said, "Because they don't have bones anymore?"
"Well...they still have bones...  But it does feel a little weird, because they don't have life anymore."

I looked up and saw that the woman behind us in line was smiling. "I was wondering how you were going to answer that." She said, "Good job."

Then Lucy swung back and forth on her heels, her hands still in mine. "My body is making my bones move right now! How do my bones do that?!!"

And we all laughed.

I still miss Harald. And strangely enough, it's nice talking about him, even hypothetically, as a mummy, in a museum.

You can read his obituary.  here.

Me time, you time, we all scream for alone time.

Yesterday, my friend Kevin posted a link to This Wall Street Journal article about space in relationships.

I was very drawn to the article for two reasons.  One because it was rather affirming, as I think Tad and I do a pretty good job of giving each other space to grow as separate individuals.  Tad needs a lot more alone time than I do and he's learned how to ask for it in a way that doesn't feel hurtful or upsetting to me, as I am a person who needs a lot of togetherness time.  He takes an annual trip to a cabin to write by himself whereas I take an annual trip to see friends.  At night when I'm gone, he reads or writes or whatever, by himself, where I tend to call someone to come over and chat with me.  (See you tonight, Jen!)
The second reason was that I was feeling a bit disconnected from Tad and I didn't really realize it until I read the article.  He's just finished his first year back to teaching and the Montessori program.  He's decompressing, celebrating, and a little inside himself right now.  The article helped me think about exactly what it was that was troubling me and I realized that I work so hard at giving him SPACE, that I felt like I couldn't tell him that I needed CONNECTION. 
We were talking about the article, loosely.  Then we turned to watch the next pitch in the Brewer game on TV.  The Brewers gave up their third home run in a row.
Tad said, "Oh, that pitcher is crying baseball sized tears.  With red stitching and everything." 
And this made me laugh, and I said, "I just pictured this actually happening and it was really gross!  That's why I know we're a good match." 
Tad sat back, "Well I don't have any doubts that we're a good match.  Do you?"
And I said, "No." Then I burst into tears.
We walked into the kitchen to make tea and I explained finally that I felt like I wasn't getting anything from him and that I felt disconnected and as we were talking we had to laugh as we noticed that Tad had prepared tea for himself and not for me. 
"Augh! See? That's where my brain is. I didn't even make you tea!"
In a very odd way, this made me feel entirely better.

But here's the other thing about that article.  There were a lot of comments after it, you'll notice. One of the comments was from a single mom.  She was saying this:

• Kristen in Dallas Wrote:
   
  This is a load. I mean, if you can get some extra "me time" in without offending your spouse, good for you. But all the people out there complaining about lack of personal time, or citing it as a reason for divorce need to get a freaking grip. Know how much "me time" a single parent gets --- about 15 minutes, in the car, between day care and work - better make it count. I live for the 2 minutes when I get to pump gas, just standing their with my thoughts and a big metal door between me an the kid. If you are married, you may not have a ton of personal time, but I bet you have some... and you can get it when you really need it. So suck it up, and stop complaining. The only thing you "need" to really make a marriage work is one single-parent friend. Whenever you start feeling sorry for yourself, call her up and she will b-slap you back in to reality, and threaten to make a move on your hubby if you're stupid enough to leave him. Life isn't fair, sure, but it gets a heck of a lot worse than "My husband gets more free time than I do."

And while, sure, when it comes down to it...she's right about how it is worlds harder being a single parent who gets no choice about self-time...BUT I gotta say, I feel like THIS is exactly what is wrong with human kind and needs to be fixed.  Instead of just reading an article and thinking, wow, look at those people trying to improve their lives, she had to say, hey, you don't have it as bad as I have it!  The key to fixing a marriage is to talk to a single friend?  I don't think so.  Single parenthood and Coupled parenthood are apples and oranges.  Once again, I have to ask, Why can't we just be happy for each other's growth and happiness?

Trickle Down Parent-omics

Last night, Lucy was tucked in her bed and Coen was having his reading time.  I was downstairs looking over my options for Netflix viewing and I heard their little voices.  I stood at the steps and heard them talking.  It's summer, and I'm not worried about who's in bed when; I heard no arguing; so I just let it go.
Later on, when I brought laundry up to Coen's room to put away, I sat on his bed and said, "I heard you and Lucy talking."
"Yeah", Coen said, "I told her that she could come in my room anytime she wants to call you or Daddy and that she's even free to wake me if I'm sleeping."
"Wow. That's really nice of you."
"She said she was thinking about something she didn't want to think about and I asked her what and she said 'fires' and I told her that she didn't need to worry because we have working smoke detectors. And then I told her she should think about going to the beach tomorrow instead or what she would like for her birthday."
"Coen, you are a really kind and patient big brother."
Coen smiled. "I took her back to her room and tucked her in after that."

After a phone conversation with a friend and making a mix CD, I went back up to tell Coen it was time for light's out and to tuck him in.  I noticed Lucy's door open a crack.
"Did Lucy come in again?" I asked.
"No." Coen said. "She called me again.  So I told her I would check on her every five minutes. I went in once and she was awake, twice and she was awake, three times and she was asleep."

I lay with Coen for a few minutes and scratched his back.  "Mommy?" he said, as I went down the steps, "Will you check on me in five minutes?"

Sometimes you feel like it...sometimes you don't.

 Tad and I are extremely different creatures.  As are Coen and Lucy.  Last night, Tad was doing some work on the computer and I was making some cookies for my youth group this afternoon.  And I realized what I needed.  So I made some tea, and told Tad to finish what he was doing and come talk to me. 
So he closed out his file.  I poured us some tea. And we went into the living room, turned Beck on the ipod and talked for three hours straight. 

In our conversation, we talked about everything, including our children and how different they are.  He said that on the way home from summer program, Coen was cautiously feeling Tad out for whether they could run through the sprinkler before dinner or not. 

Then, Lucy said. "Well, since Mommy set up the sprinkler yesterday.  Daddy, YOU can set up the sprinkler today."  She wasn't asking if they could, she was telling Tad that they were GOING to and that he could set up the sprikler!  Tad likes it when people tell him what to do.  I like it when people have a discussion about what we might do.  But we are learning to do the opposite of what we like for each other.

And Tad said that he thought, 'thank you for giving me a child that is more like me.' Because Coen is just like me, his mom.  Tad said he wanted to pull over the car, get Lucy out of her car seat and hold her up into the air, Lion King style.

Tad and I are that different in other respects too.  Where he needs time alone to recharge and come back to himself, I need time with other people to bounce my energy off and come back to myself.  Introvert-Extrovert. 

Before bed, Tad said, "Thank you for that.  I appreciate that you make us do this once in a while."

"Well." I said. "It's what we both need, but I know that I need...Just like alone time is what we both need but you know you need."

Tad smiled. "Perfectly said." he said.

Busted

This is me at age 17. And my sister, 14 on the right

It is twenty years to the month since I was busted for stealing cigarettes.
I was seventeen and going through some things.  I was angry.  I was confused.  I was trying to rebel.  I lived in a small town where the teenagers would sit on the Valley Bank sign and make smart aleck remarks to passersby until the police would come and tell us we were loitering.  Anyway, one afternoon, just after school had let out for the summer, my sister, our friend Becky, and I were across the street at our friend Brenda's house.  We thought we'd make some ice cream sundaes. The girls thought it would be really nice to have cigarettes after the sundaes.
"No problem." I said, "I'll get some for you."  And I walked with Becky down the street to Rehn's Red Owl to buy a can of whipped cream and steal a pack of Marlboro menthol lights.   The cigarettes, back then-as you might remember-were on an end cap totally accessible to public shoppers.  I had gone in time and time again to swipe a pack for my sister or a friend, no problem.  I was confident. Overconfident perhaps.  I stopped on my way to pick up a penny, heads up, from the sidewalk.  We went into Red Owl and I, per usual, walked past the cigarette rack and grabbed a pack, deftly shoving it up my sleeve. I suppose I could have left right then.  But I got cocky. I thought it would be fun to steal the whipped cream too.

But as I walked around the store, slowly becoming nervous, a pack of cigarettes up my sleeve and a can of Reddi-whip up the other, I noticed that one of the clerks was following me around.
"Did you steal a pack of cigarettes?" He asked me.
"Me? No!" I said.
"I saw you take them."
"I put them back."
"Show me."
My heart was pounding.  I tried to slight of hand him into believing that they were on the shelf the whole time...the pasta shelf, where I'd popped the pack out of my sleeve.  The can of whipped cream did not come out so easily.
"Come with me." He said.
Becky ran all the way back to Brenda's house to report what had happened.

I rode in the back of a police car, fighting back tears, terrified.

They put me in a holding cell.  I sat in a chair with wheels on it, and looked at the walls.  People had written all over them.  In big, dark black marker was written:
NICK MOEN WAS HERE.
Nick was one of the most bad ass of the bad asses at our school.  My terror was only mildly dulled by the company I realized I was in.

The police officer, Officer Ramirez, who was a really nice guy, came to get me.  He was the officer who would shoo us away from our loitering posts with a joke or a light-hearted comment.  He'd called my mom.

My mom, funny enough, was on the Police and Fire Commission.

I was led to a board room, where my parents and another officer sat.

"That's a pretty nasty habit for you to be stealing to support it." The other officer said.
Tears spilled out of my eyes and I put my head down on the table. "I don't even smoke!"

I could tell my parents were trying not to laugh.

I felt terrible.  On the ride home, I cried and cried.  I kept trying to figure out why I'd been stealing but couldn't come up with anything other than I was bad.  "I'm sorry." I said to my mom.  "I know you are!" She said.  "You're punishing yourself far worse than I could."  Nonetheless I was grounded for two weeks.  I had to go to a class and do community service.  In the end, I stopped stealing and my sister stopped smoking.  I never told who the cigarettes were for.  Well, not then anyway.

Are you reading this, mom?

Maybe someday this can be a cautionary tale for my children.  About how heads-up pennies are actually bad luck. JUST KIDDING!