News from here

Friends, all two of you that are still reading, I am really sorry for the lack of posting. I think about calling you all the time...I just haven't had the time to pick up the phone. I have just been busy, what can I say? This gainful employment business (as limited as it may be) coupled with holiday preparations have kind of been lapping up every last minute of my already limited free time. I feel it's necessary to say something, so I'm just going to share some K Family updates.

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The other day, I was baking some Christmas cookies. Phook was phooking around in the kitchen, doing inventory control on my tote box full of assorted flavors of baking chips and candy coatings and mayhem, and I pulled a cookie sheet out of the oven. She looked over and said, "Those look really good Mommy." (Or, rather, "Dose wook weewy good Mommy.") For those of you with children who were rocking simple sentences at 18 months, this is not noteworthy. For those of us with kids who have taken their sweet time getting on the verbal bandwagon, (me), this is possibly the most beautiful and sophisticated thing you could ever imagine your child saying. Furthermore, this is the sort of thing that makes living a lifestyle of the utterly domestic all worth it. My kid complimented my cookie. The universe therefore provided me with a much-needed hug.

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We got a snowblower. We have been homeowners for 5 1/2 years, but we never needed one until now. Our kind elderly neighborlady, with whom we have a shared driveway, has a brother who always came and plowed us out with a bobcat. Granted, he ripped up my garden boxes, upended and cracked my kid's sandbox, and ruined the grass for 18 inches on either side of the sidewalk every year, but beggars can't be choosers. The guy has come every snowfall for years and dug us out, which is a major bonus. Unfortunately, our neighbor has been in poor health for a good long while, and the time has come for her to move in with her daughter. Hence, the era of free snow removal has come to a close. So we rocked out craigslist and what have you and eventually ended up going with a very, very used model from a semi-local small engine place. (These things are expensive.) I swear to you that Big K has been on a bit of a high since we got it. When we were driving to pick the thing up, he told me the story of how when he was a legitimately impoverished youngster, he spent every snow day shoveling out his driveway with his brothers. At the time, he thought that only extremely rich people had snowblowers. So having "made it" to the point where he could afford a snowblower, however rusty, was a seriously big moment for him. It was really rather touching to hear him say this. And now he is calling it his "rich man's machine." As in, "I'm going to go outside and use my rich man's machine." I love it.

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I am the strongest woman in the known universe who is not competitively training for a major athletic endeavor. Here's the thing. Five-month-old babies are typically not very skilled at self-care. Or locomotion. So as the mother of such a young child, you find yourself moving the kid about pretty much constantly throughout the day. There is also the standard hijinx of lifting the child in the air above one's head for the purposes of blowing on belly, jostling the creature as a stream of drool snakes out of their mouth down toward your own face, etc. The thing is, my 5-monther weighs as much as your 1-year-old...you know, the one that can walk and fetch his own shoes? I am certain he has crested 20 pounds, which means I am doing several hundred reps of 20 pounds per day...not to mention that I have a 30+ pound 2-year-old who requires a fair amount of lifting herself. Sometimes I carry them at the same time. Up stairs. If I were not encircled with an exoskeleton of chub, well, you'd be scared of me.

I submit the following. The other day, we were finishing up the winterizing of our yard (just in the nick of time, I might add). We have one of those giant yard swings with a metal frame and a canopy over the top, and we were going to move it about 30 feet across our yard. We've moved this thing 9,000 times since we got it, and it never fails to be a bitch. I lift one side, Big K the other. In years past, whenever we have moved this thing, I have been able to carry it about 18 inches before I need a rest. The sucker is seriously heavy. This year, we hauled it the entire 30 feet without a rest. Oh, and Phook was lying on the swing while we did it. It felt like I was maybe carrying a large basket full of laundry. I have the biceps of a farmhand. I'm wondering if I should try to get involved in doing some hustling on the arm wrestling circuit.

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I am excited for Christmas. Unlike recent years past, when I've been having some kind of boiling rage/melancholy/shitteousness pulsing through my veins this time of year, I am actually pretty jazzed for the affair. We did all our decorating the day after Thanksgiving, complete with my now-standard second tree, a.k.a. the "food tree." When I put up my tree(s) and light some candles and turn off all the other lights in the house and there is this warm white-light glow and I see the stockings hanging there with my kids' names on them, well, it's sort of like someone dumped a giant bucket of "How lucky are you?" over my head. The trees go up, and the kids are in bed, and I stand in this one particular spot in my dining room from where I can see both trees, and I look at all my fairly lovely furniture and precious things I have amassed over the years, and I want to beat myself mercilessly for ever uttering time-worn phrases about my "poverty" when I am clearly standing in the middle of what the majority of the residents of this planet would consider a palace. That reminder is my Christmas spirit.

I think that perhaps my intense love affair with Snuffy has a lot to do with my overall joyous and festive demeanor. And Big K seems to be coming out of a long, difficult, and primarily work-induced dark period, which makes everything so much nicer for everyone. And Phook is excited this year. She likes the trees, especially the food one. She likes naming all the various produce items on the tree, and searching for the avocado and what have you. (Because everyone should have an avocado ornament, really.) She is aware that someone named Santa will be showing up with presents. We were reading this (excellent) book called Bear Stays Up for Christmas, and there is a page with Santa on it. I told her Santa would be coming with presents for her, and she indicated that he'd be coming in her bedroom window. And then I was worried I'd give her some weird boogeyman fears if I said some dude would come in her window, so I just tried to act casual about the whole business of how these presents would arrive. But she is still indicating Santa is coming through the window, and seems comfortable with that idea. She has been especially tired the last several days, and I'm kind of wondering if she is lying there at night waiting for him...

Anyhow, I am excited. I'm not particularly stressed. I'm baking at a steady rate, and Phook is down with that:


There were some serious shenanigans regarding my father showing up and offering my kid unauthorized suckers in the middle of my highly orchestrated Christmas card photo shoot, so there will be no photo of the children together on this year's card. I had purchased matching Christmas sleepers and laid out this festive background on which to take the photo, but it all just kind of exploded. So I ended up getting a cute picture of each of them individually, and then I spent the better part of a day searching online for a card format that had spots for 2 equally sized photos that didn't cost an arm and a leg...but all's well that ends well. (And if you're having a similar dilemma, I'll save you the time and provide you with this link to the place I ended up going with. Oh, and if you use coupon code 16118 you'll get free shipping on orders over $35. Don't ever say I don't love you.)

So, anyhow, Christmas is coming, and this year that is a good thing.

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On a related note, I saw possibly the strongest evidence to date that Phook is a genius, or at least has some sort of aptitude beyond the norm. I normally shy away from claims about her intelligence even when she obviously displays it, because I don't want to be one of those clown parents bragging about their gifted kid as I can see the kid licking the carpet or something out of the corner of my eye. I'm more inclined to jokingly call my kids paste eaters and then let people come to their own conclusions. But something occurred the other day that actually kind of freaked me out. Snuffy was napping, and Phook and I were wrapping presents, which is to say that I was attempting to wrap presents with nothing resembling efficiency while she was taping herself to things and destroying several yards of wrapping paper for sport. As I'd finish a gift, I'd hand it to her to put on the pile. And I guess I'd casually say, "This is for Grandpa" or "This is for Auntie Hode" or "This is for Baby C*****" or "This is for Uncle Rocky" or whatever, but it was wholly absentminded of me and I was by no means making a point of telling her who each gift was for. And then I noticed she was saying the names of all of our aforementioned loved ones, plus others of course. And then I noticed she was accurately identifying packages by their intended recipient. Okay, I use no more than 3 different kinds of wrapping paper, and the majority of these things were in square boxes. And she was telling me who these gifts were for (out of a pile with at least 30 packages in it) with like 80% accuracy. I was actually getting kind of queasy because it so weirded me out. I was like, "Dude, what all are you storing up in that brain of yours?" The disparity between what a child knows and what they can say is rather profound at a certain point in a young life, but once language starts to catch up, revealing the secrets of their mind to you...well, shit, look out. I'm still kind of weirded out by it. When Big K came home from work hours later, I hauled her upstairs to repeat the show for him, and she did not disappoint. I don't know man, I don't know.

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Phook, in general, has taken to sharing with Snuffle Pig. Lately I have found that this extends to her snacks. I cannot tell you how often I have come upon The Pig and found him adorned with a snack of late. Well, one day I saw brown stuff smashed all over his shirt, and after initially thinking he was leaking something terrible, I realized that Phook had shared a Nilla wafer and Snuffy had done his best to get a taste. (Sorry, Big K...I forgot to tell you about that incident...and now you're getting a newsflash via my blog. Oops.) The day before yesterday, she peeled herself a clementine and then headed out into the living room with a bowl full of the little sections. She had to pass Snuffy in the doorway on her way out of the kitchen, and when I looked up at him I saw this:


Dude, I love that she just stealthily leaves him a snack on his chest. Okay, okay, it's not ideal from a choking hazard perspective, but it's still really cute. And I'm clearly not an expert at child safety these days anyhow.

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I'm shedding. I know there is standard post-pregnancy hair loss, but fuck. I experienced a bit of hair loss post-Phook, but this is off the chain. I have to clean out the shower drain daily, and I get a gerbil out of there. Then I comb my hair and pull a handful off the comb. Then I put my anti-frizz gel stuff in my hair and come away with hands full of hair. Then I pick hair out of my food. Then I pull hair out of the dish rag. Then I vacuum the furniture every other day. Then I go through a lint roller weekly. I know this is "normal" but it doesn't feel that way. I'm seriously wondering when it will stop and what will be left. I'm also yearning to chop it off. It is mid-back, possibly longer I guess. It would probably be to the back of my knees if it weren't curly. The desire to go for a chop is profound. I essentially have not had different hair since I got a chin-length bob my freshman year of college, which was in 1997. There are 2 things holding me back. 1) Fear of regret and 2) Any reduction in ease-of-use. I can't have hair that requires more time than zero minutes. Okay, fine, two minutes, once you count combing, gel application, and wadding it up in a ponytail holder. But I can't go to three. So I feel like I'm locked in. But then again, what is the point of having all this wondrous hair if I'm just turning it into a big rambunctious bun or a big braid or ponytail every day? I don't know. I spend more and more time pondering this every day, and I have a good friend who is having a similar debate with herself in anticipation of her 40th birthday, so that's got me thinking too. So I'm shedding, I'm antsy with my remaining hair, and I should probably mention that I have an appointment to have something done with the whole mess on Sunday. Should I chop or trim, friends?

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Okay, so that was a lot. Perhaps I should have been blogging more. Here's hoping your December has got you feeling fine...