Thoreau had the right idea

We took our big annual family trip to the beach a few weeks ago.  It was the usual craziness that comes with 10 or so people who love each other but aren't used to being around each other, all sharing a house.  And it was also fun and relaxing and fully of beach-y vacation-y activites.

Like playing with the kids on the beach.

And taking them in the water.

And reading on the porch.

And searching for crabs among the rocks.

And, of course, surfing.

Watching the children play on the sand and in the water was eye-opening.  They were so full of joy, running and jumping and swimming for hours and hours -- fully enjoying their youthful energy and health.  At one point I looked over at Zeke and he was just rolling in the sand, like a fillet being breaded, and he couldn't have been happier.

It caused J and me to start talking about how we want to live our lives.

For J, it's an easy choice.  He grew up by the beach and loves it like no other place.  It feeds his soul.  Colorado is beautiful and there are plenty of things to do for people that love physical activity in the outdoors, but there's a part of him that wilts a little bit every day that he wakes up so far away from the ocean.

I can be happy pretty much anywhere, as long as I have something to read and people around me that I love.  And, an internet connection, of course.

So if it means so much to the people that I love, I'd be happy to live near the beach again.  After all, there were plenty of things about Hawaii that I disliked, but being by the water and enjoying the surf was certainly not one of them.

And we like the New England setting - good weather with four seasons, nice people, access to sports and universities and good schools.  And family close by.  It would be awesome for the kids to grow up near the cousins, whom they adore.

The question is, how to accomplish it.

When I look over my blog posts of the last couple of years, the theme that emerges is that of busyness and exhaustion.  Of not having enough time.  Time alone, time with J, time with the kids, time unencumbered by obligations.  It makes me weary and exacerbates my depression.  I'm good at handling it, but I wish I didn't have to.

So that's where my Beachbody business comes in.

It started off as a lark.  I had been doing this company's workouts and using its products for so long that I signed up to be a coach largely for the discount, and maybe to make some beer money in recommending it to my friends, since I was recommending it to my friends anyway.

Then I figured I could use it as a vacation/rainy day fund.

Then I realized that I'm actually pretty good at the coaching part, and getting better at the networking/business part.  And if I work and apply myself, I can use it to get my time back.

I don't care about being rich or having fancy things.  I just want time. I want to feel like I'm living deliberately and thoughtfully, as opposed to just careening from obligation to obligation and then collapsing in an exhausted heap at the end of every day.  And if I continue to apply myself and work, to connect with people and help them get the bodies and the lives they want, I can create a life for myself and my family by the beach.  A life of health and activity and family and helping people.

So we've put together a plan, and we're implementing it, and we're going to get there.

Chaos theory

My theory about chaos is that it appears to be the default state for my life.  Things have been absolute insanity for the past month.

I went to Vegas for my big annual coach's convention for Beachbody.  It was really incredible - I got to meet tons of cool people, worked out with all the celebrity trainers (including a 5000 person workout outside on the Strip), went to some fancy parties, and attended a number of business training seminars, plus presentations on new product lines and inspirational stories about people who lost 200+ pounds doing P90X or coaches who were bankrupt 2 years ago and are now making 6 figures helping people get fit.

But it was certainly not a relaxing 4 days.  I was up most days by 5 or 5:30 to exercise, then going all day with the various seminars, then the parties and events.  Plus I was staying in a room with 4 other women, but the room only had 2 queen beds.  Memories of spring breaks gone by...

So I was kind of tired by the end of it, and eager to get home and hang with the kids and have some down time.

Except that when J picked me up at the airport Sunday morning, he had broken out in terrible hives.  Like, giant red welts that were itchy and burning.  It took two days and two doctor's visits for us to finally determine that the culprit was a new laundry detergent we had bought, but by then the damage was done.  So I spent the next 5 days washing everything in the house with hypoallergenic laundry detergent while trying to keep J comfortable and entertain the kids.

Here's a little slice of what that was like.

One afternoon after work and school, we decided to go to the movies to see Brave with the kids.  It was hot, so we thought it would be nice so see a fun movie and cool off, especially since the heat exacerbated J's hives.

All was well until we got to a scary part of the movie and Zeke crawled into J's lap.  Problem was, he was wearing clothes that had been washed in the bad detergent, and the contact between Zeke's clothes and J's arms caused the hives to flare up horribly.  The end of the movie coincided with J's skin being unbearably itchy and burning, so we left.  On the way out, Zeke bumped into something and got a bloody nose.  And did I mention that the elevator from the movie theater (on level 3) to the parking deck is perhaps the slowest elevator in the history of the world?

So we're standing there, waiting for the elevator to make its molassas-like ascent to us, J clawing his skin off, Zeke with blood pouring out of his face, Josie crying, and me wishing I could be back in Vegas sharing a tiny hotel room with 5 women.

Eventually, things calmed down.  We got the laundry all decontaminated.  J's skin got better.  We got a handle on the mice that like to invade our kitchen at night (our house is 116 years old and has gaps and holes in the wall all over the place - I have seriously found half-moon shaped mouse holes that look like something you would see in an old cartoon) - I've been going to town with the foam gap filler and shutting those fuckers out.

But the chaos is getting ready to start up again.  I'm leading a team of Beachbody coaches in a business competition that runs during July and August. And I'm participating in a business bootcamp for my coaching business that started today and runs for a month.  And I've got multiple fitness challenges that I'm moderating.  And we're going to the beach on Friday ("4 more sleeps, Mama!!").

Like I said, it's my default state.  But I'm happy with it.  It staves off the boredom.

I will leave you with a hilarious exchange between Zeke and Josie.  They were arguing over her new pink kickball.  Zeke wanted to play with it, Josie didn't feel like sharing.  My feeling on sharing is, I'm not going to make anyone do it.  I tell the kids, you can't make someone share with you.  What you can do is be a good friend and treat them nicely and be really fun to play with, and then people will want to share with you.  And if you're not sharing your toys with your friends, they're not going to want to be friends with you.  So work on your game.  (The first time I told Zeke this, he promptly stopped yelling at Josie and said, "Josie, I love you.")

Zeke:  Josie, you're not nice.  You're the meanest girl in the WHOLE WORLD!  AND YOU'RE NOT THE CUTEST, EITHER!!

Josie:  Oh, yes I am the cutest!  YES I AM!!

The girl knows her own currency, I'll give her that.

Sammy 2.0

Lately Zeke is all obsessed with death and dying.

For the past month or so, he has asked me every day, more than once on many days, when I'm going to die.  Or when he is going to die.  Or when Josie is going to die.  Or when Mater or some other character in a story he knows is going to die.

I've taken different approaches to the question.  I've told him that no one really knows when they're going to die, but that everyone in our family is healthy, we take good care of ourselves, we wear our seatbelts and eat good food and exercise, so we should all be alive for a long, long time.

I've told him that people in our family live to be really old.

"Zekey, did you know I had a great-grandfather -- Mimi's grandpa -- that lived to be 102?  And Mimi's daddy lived to be 93."

"102?"

"Yeah, that's a really big number, isn't it?"

"Yeah!"

"And how old are you?"

"I'm four."

"Right!  So you probably have at least another 90 years to live!  That's a really long time!"

I've tried to suss out the root of the question.

"Zeke, are you afraid that Daddy and I are going to die and leave you alone?"

"Yes."

"Well, honey, Daddy and I plan on being around for a long time, and we'll make sure that there's someone to take care of you."

He looked skeptical.

It's a weird topic to broach, for a number of reasons.  I'm not terribly religious, plus Jews don't believe in heaven or hell in any event, so I'm not going to feed him a bunch of stuff like that, especially since I don't believe in.  And he hasn't asked what happens after you die, so I haven't really had to go there.  Mostly I've tried to reassure him that we do all we can to live healthy lives, but that we shouldn't worry about what we can't control, and that all we can do is take care of ourselves and work hard and have adventures and be kind to each other.

He's such a little thinker.  So sensitive and analytical and smart and emotional.

He loves babies, and when he is upset at school and needs to get away from the craziness of his class, he goes to the baby class and hangs out with the babies and helps the teachers out.  "I'm really sweet to them, Mama."

He's a TOTAL mama's boy.  He's constantly snuggling me, looking to me for validation, telling me he loves me 50 times a day.

He loves learning and applying and demonstrating his knowledge.  When we read books together, he tells me the words he recognizes and counts things and explains the things he knows about.

He's very attuned to other people's emotions.

He is my brother Sam all over again.  (And he could do a lot worse.)

I see trees of green, red roses too

For the past 5 years, we have lived in extraordinarily beautiful places.  Hawaii's natural beauty is so abundant, no matter where you are on the island, that it's almost beyond belief, sometimes.  Colorado is similar.  It's a different kind of beauty - not as lush and sensual, but rather starker and grander and more dramatic - but in-your-face beautiful just the same.

And sometimes I take it for granted.  It's easy to get bogged down in the minutae of paying bills and getting the kids to school and keeping track of everything going on in our lives, and to forget that if I pick up my head and look west, I am faced with some of the most magnificent mountain vistas in the world.

But when the weather is good, if we can't be surfing the North Shore, there isn't much that beats summer in the Rockies.  Within a 100 mile radius of where we live, there are thousands of places to hike and bike and swim and camp.  And now that the kids are old enough to enjoy it, we've decided to really take advantage of what Colorado has to offer this summer.  We're planning camping trips (both by tent and RV) and hiking trips for almost every weekend.

We started yesterday.  There is amazing hiking in the hills behind Boulder, which is 30 minutes from where we live.  J is going to do a 14er at the end of July, and is doing a bunch of hiking to prepare.  Saturday he went out and did a strenuous hike with a friend of his, and came home with a map of different hikes in the area, of all different levels of difficulty.  The kids love being outside, so we decided to go up on Sunday to do a relatively short (a little over a mile) hike with easy terrain, which loops off a larger trail near its summit.

As we drove up into the hills to our trailhead, the kids marveled at the vistas.

Zeke: Mama, it's really beautiful up here.  Me and Josie are psyched!

Josie: Look how high we are! It's really really beautiful! 

The hike itself was gorgeous.  We looked at crickets and pine cones and butterflies and lizards and wildflowers and cacti. 

We climbed rocks. 

We enjoyed the sunshine and the fresh mountain air.

And then we went home, happily tired and already looking forward to the next outing.

Sleepy girl.

Zeke stripped down to his skivvies to cool off. 



Milestones

The bathroom is done!

The guys finished the heavy-duty work (laying the tile, moving and reinstalling the toilet, installing the vanity) last week.  That left the weekend for J and me to finish the rest -- painting the underside of the tub, painting the walls and building and installing the tall cupboard -- and then clean up and admire our handiwork.  The results are beautiful.  It looks exactly like I wanted it to.

BEFORE:

Ew.  Dingy and ugly.

Double ew.  I fucking hate that burgundy color.

Who doesn't line the sink up with the mirror?  Morons, that's who.

Oy.  Words fail me.

Disgusting industrial carpet GLUED TO THE FLOOR. 

Who goes to pick out tile and bathroom accoutrement and comes home with this??  Morons with no taste, that's who.

AFTER:

Ahhh.

Pretty and bright.  I adore that tile.

Hey!  Look at that!  I can stand in front of the sink and see myself in the mirror!!

So clean-looking.

Love.

I finished the Ultimate Reset!

I survived 21 days of super-clean eating (it was vegan the last two weeks), plus taking supplements to boost my oxygen levels, get my system to its natural alkaline state, get rid of toxins, and promote the growth of healthy flora in my digestive system.  There were definitely days when it was very difficult to stick with the program, not because I didn't enjoy the food I was eating (it was DELICIOUS), but because occasionally I grew tired of the regimen and I just wanted a bagel.  But I stuck with it, and my results were awesome.  In addition to losing 9 pounds, 2 inches off my hips and 1 inch off my waist in 21 days, I have more energy, my digestion is better (more regular, very little gas, etc.), my sleep is deeper and more restful, and overall I feel healthier and leaner.  And I learned how to prepare simple, incredibly nutritious, flavorful and satisfying meals using ingredients and seasonings I had never cooked with much (who knew jicama was so good? or tempeh? or roasted beets?). 

Going forward, I plan on continuing to use many of the recipes from the meal plan, though I will not eat a fully vegan diet.  I enjoy my eggs and greek yogurt, and I rarely eat meat anyway, so having it occasionally (in combination with lots of fruits, veggies and whole grains) is fine.  I will continue to take the oxygen, alkalinity and metabolism-boosting supplements, because I felt they were highly beneficial.  And I will do a full 3 week reset 2 or 3 times a year.  It was so worth it, y'all.  If you're interested in trying it or have questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

Zeke ditched the training wheels!

When my dad was visiting last month, he bought Zeke his first big-boy bike.  Zeke had been using a balance bike without pedals and had gotten great at it, so he was unquestionably ready for a real bike.

But at the bike store, all of the kids bikes come with training wheels attached, and Zeke went with my dad to pick out the bike.  As soon as he tried riding it around the store, he was hooked.  I was dismayed, because he didn't need the training wheels, and I told him so.

"Honey, you know how to balance without the training wheels!  You did it on your Skuut all the time.  Let's take off the training wheels."

"NOOOOOOOO!"

I didn't want to make the bike a point of contention, and I knew that he would get rid of the training wheels eventually, so J and I didn't push the issue (much).

Then this past weekend, we met up with Zeke's friend Connor at the park.  Zeke took his bike with the training wheels.  Connor came on his bike that doesn't have training wheels.  After a few minutes of riding around and seeing how Connor could really zip around corners, Zeke asked, "Connor, can I try your bike?"

Victory.

So I took Zeke out into the middle of the field, where there is grass that would provide a soft landing, held the back of the seat as he started to pedal, and then let go.  His muscle memory kicked in and he took off, balancing perfectly.  I think his big, wide grin might have been visible from space (as was mine, I'm sure).

As soon as we got home, we took the training wheels off of Zeke's bike.

Don't give us none of your aggravation, we've had it with your discipline

I'm not normally a confrontational person.  I don't shy away from it, but I don't actively seek it out.  I pride myself on being reasonable and practical and on handling things like a grown-up.

So today was a bit unusual, in that I got into it with three different people.

One of them a 5-year-old.

There's this kid in Zeke's class named Kyler or some such stupid name.  And I'm not even changing the name for purposes of protecting his anonymity in case someone who knows him reads this, because I don't give a shit.  The kid's an asshole.  His mother might as well get him a shirt that says, "Future Rapist" on it.

Numerous parents have told me about how this kid, who is enormous and looks to be at least 6 (and could pass for 7), bullies and harasses their children.  One of Zeke's little friends was so intimidated by the way he would block her path and get in her space that her parents did role-playing exercises with her to show her how to handle him.

He does similar things to Zeke, and it drives me insane.

The first time I witnessed it was a couple of weeks ago.  I was dropping Zeke off in his classroom and Kyler comes up to him and starts saying, "hey, buddy, hey buddy, hey buddy" over and over again, right in Zeke's face.  Zeke asked him to get away from him and not do that, but Kyler persisted.  I said, nicely, "Kyler, he asked you to leave him alone.  Please let him have his space."  But he ignored me.

Zeke's teacher can't stand him.  She yelled at him, "Kyler!  Why do you have to bother him like that every day when you know he doesn't like it??"

I sat with Zeke and tried to tell him that he needed to ignore it and that dealing with people who are annoying is part of life, but he was still upset when I left.

When I dropped the kids off this morning, Zeke and I turned the corner to go into his room.  Kyler and this other kid, Evan, were there.  When they saw Zeke, Kyler sneered, "we're not going to be buddies with Zeke today.  We don't want to play with him."

I whipped my head around and fixed him with an angry stare.  "What did you just say?"

"We're not going to play with Zeke today."

"Good," I snapped.  "He doesn't want to play with you anyway.  He only likes playing with kids who are nice.  He doesn't play with mean, nasty kids like you."

I had had it with him being a dick to my son.

Then today after work, I was sitting on a bench at the bus stop, reading a book.  This lady sat down on the bench next to me and immediately started some ridiculous diatribe about how immigrants and foreigners are bleeding this country dry and there are laws on the books that give foreigners $30,000 in cash, tax-free, while good hard-working Americans pay taxes and get fleeced by these freeloaders and blah blah blah.

For a while I tried to ignore it and just focus on my book, but when she got to the part about tax-free money for immigrants, I just couldn't hold it in anymore.

"That is absolutely not true.  Nobody gives immigrants wads of cash when they come to this country."

"Oh, it's true, it's true.  It's been on the books since Vietnam."

"You are spreading falsehoods.  There is no law like that.  Fercrissakes, I'm married to an immigrant - I can promise you that no one is throwing wads of government cash at us!"

She kept insisting it was true, and finally I yelled, "I'VE HAD IT.  I can't stand listening to your bullshit anymore!"  And I got up and walked away and waited for my bus where I couldn't hear her anymore.

The kicker was dealing with the douchebag next-door neighbor.

We are in the middle of redoing our horrible upstairs bathroom (and it's going to look so pretty when it's done, you guys).  So we don't have a working shower or bathtub.  When I got home from work, J was out back with the kids in the hot tub (which was lukewarm) in an effort to get the kids somewhat clean after school.  When he was done, he left the hot tub cover folded up and leaning partly up against the fence that we share with Douchebag.  The fence that he's never bothered to finish (and we've offered to pay to finish it, but he ignores us), so there's essentially nothing dividing our two yards.

Later on, we looked outside and noticed that the cover had been tossed over onto our grass.

When J went outside to replace the cover, Douchebag was out there and muttered something at J.  J quietly said, "fuck you."  At that point, the kids had started to follow J outside.  Then Douchebag started ranting and raving and swearing at J, and the kids were freaked out.

I was done.  I shuffled the kids inside and then went back out.

"HEY!!  WATCH YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, YOU JERK!  MY KIDS ARE HERE.   JUST SHUT YOUR GODDAMNED MOUTH!"

I know.  The irony isn't lost on me, either.  The whole neighborhood could probably hear me.

"Oh yeah?  Well do you know what J said to me when he came out here?  He said 'fuck you'."  Tattling on J like I'm his mother or something.  What an idiot.

"I don't give a shit!  And you deserved it, after the way you've treated us since we moved in here.  NOW TURN AROUND AND GET BACK IN YOUR HOUSE AND LEAVE US ALONE!  NOW!!!"

He yelled some more, but by then I had gone back inside and was trying to calm the children.  And myself.

I don't know.  I guess it was one of those days.  Which I never have, but who knows.

What I'm saying is, if you have a bone to pick with me, now is probably not the time.

Detoxing

I'm doing a three week cleanse/detox program that I started this past Wednesday (perhaps especially apropos in light of the Great Lollipop Fiasco of 2012 (TM my friend Nicole)).  It's kind of all-consuming in the early stages - I'm spending tons of time cooking and planning and getting more organized about food and meal plans than I normally am.  You can read about it on my fitness blog.

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Last week I was having a lot of achy muscle pain in my upper back, between my shoulder blades, and in my hips.  Achy achy achy.  Even when I would lie down in bed, it hurt.  I tried stretching, I took advil, but nothing seemed to be helping.

A, uh, friend of mine has had a bunch of surgeries, illnesses and injuries over the years for which he was prescribed pain meds, but he often doesn't take them.  So I asked my friend last Thursday night if he had any leftover pain medication that I could take for my back.

"No, but I've got a lollipop you can have."

A medicinal lollipop, if you catch my drift.

"Meh.  Nah, I'll just deal."

As the evening went on, however, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

"So that lollipop thing.  Will it help me?"

"I don't know.  It'll help you sleep and probably make you forget the pain."

"OK, what the hell."

Now, let us step back to examine the sheer idiocy of this move.

I am barely a drinker (most of the time, if I have a beer or a glass of wine, I don't finish it) and I am definitely not a pot smoker or a user of any other drugs.  So my body is not at all accustomed to stuff that could make me loopy.  I've smoked pot a few times in my life, but I never really enjoyed it - rather than make me mellow, it just made me exhausted and often queasy.  Whatever it is that kills nausea in cancer patients so they can get some food down, it has the opposite effect on me.  Plus, I have no doubt that whatever I had a few puffs of over the years did not approach the strength or purity of what my friend gets at the dispensary, particularly the strength and purity of stuff designed to be ingested rather than smoked.

But there I was, blithely consuming this lollipop, which, as I have now learned from the University of Google, was strong even by the standards of regular THC consumers.  I ate it, then I went to bed.

I really do question my own sanity sometimes.

I went to sleep and felt fine for a while.  Then I half-woke up and just felt kind of buzzy.  Not unpleasant.  Then the buzziness got stronger, and my head and my limbs felt inordinately heavy, like I was lying in molassas, and I started to feel queasy. 

By 5 in the morning, I managed to lurch to the bathroom to puke up whatever I had in my stomach.  I lay on the bathroom floor for a while because it was too much effort to get up.  After 20 minutes, I got up and went downstairs to try to drink some water.  I wasn't able to hold it down, and then went to lie down on the couch because the stairs were too daunting.

J came downstairs to get ready for work at around 5:30.  He was surprised to see me up, and also a bit alarmed by the fact that I was grey in the face and had broken out into a cold sweat. 

"Duuuude,"  I moaned.

"What's going on?"

"That lollipop killed me.  I am so unbelievably fucked up and sick."

"Really?"

"I'm OK if I lie here with my eyes closed, but when I open my eyes, I want to throw up.  Sitting up is unthinkable."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

He continued puttering about getting ready, and then started walking toward the door.

"NOOO!  You can't leave me!"  I wailed.

"What are you talking about?  I have to go to work."

"I cannot take care of the children in this condition.  I can't drive them to school.  If I showed up like this with them at school, the teachers would have me arrested.  Please."

He sort of huffed around for a few minutes, but texted his boss and got the OK to come in late.  He got the kids up and fed and dressed.

Poor Zeke was horrified by my condition.

"Mama!  What's wrong?  Are you sick?  Why are you throwing up?"  His eyes were wide and he kept coming over to rub my face. 

"I'm OK, honey.  I've got a bad tummy-ache, but I'll get better, don't worry.  Daddy's going to take you to school today.  Be a good boy and I'll see you later."

Luckily, that Friday was a flex day for me, so I didn't have to go to work.  I lay back down on the couch when J took the kids to school.

Then the window guy showed up.  He, too, was horrified by my condition, but I waved him off when he suggested that he could come back to install the windows on a day when I was feeling better.  So I dozed all day, with intermittent bouts of vomiting, while our new windows were installed.

It was 2 in the afternoon before I could sit up without puking.  It was Sunday afternoon before all traces of the queasiness left my stomach.  Seriously - I'm that much of a light-weight.

J called me Friday afternoon to check on me.

"Hey, baby.  How ya doing?"

"I'll live.  Not feeling great, but I'm not throwing up any more, so there's that."

"Hey!  Guess what?"

"What?"

"High Times magazine called.  They want to put you on the cover and nominate you for Stoner of the Year."

"Hmph."

No way, man.  I'm scared straight for sure.

Send love and light

I received an email today from the grandmother of one of my sorority sisters, who lives in Boulder (the sorority sister, not the grandma).  The email told me that my friend's almost 16-year-old daughter is in Boulder Hospital after suffering a bad mountain bike crash yesterday.  She is expected to make a full recovery, but she will have a rough row to hoe as she deals with a concussion, a broken back, and facial and jaw injuries.*

Upon receiving the email, I was horrified and shocked, both for my friend and also for her daughter, whom I absolutely adore.  She is the coolest, smartest kid - I've told her multiple times that if her parents ever get sick of her, she can come live with me. 

And of course, I had flashbacks to Emma, and how I heard about her accident.

We live in a cruel world.  This obviously isn't news, but I feel like the personal reminders are coming fast and furious.  Last month, a coworker's brother dropped dead of a stroke, totally out of the blue.  He was 40.  Another coworker's 20 year old son died this past weekend.  My high school friend and the brother of a family friend died last week.  It's fucking relentless.

But, of course, life is for the living.  We live it as well as we can for as long as we can.  And my friend's daughter is alive, and will recover, and go on to do great things.  I know it.

___________________________________________
*I'm not divulging their names out of respect for their privacy, but many readers of this blog know her, so if you want information, including an address to send a card or a casserole, email me.

On lacrosse, training wheels, mortality and home renovations

It's been a very hectic time, one of those periods when I constantly feel like my head is spinning and I can't keep up with everything that's going on.

MIL left, but then the following weekend, my dad came to visit.  On Friday night, we took the kids to see Virginia play lacrosse, which was fun (especially since they won).  Zeke and Josie had no idea what was going on, but they dug all the clapping and cheering and the fact that we basically let them have popcorn and Skittles for dinner, and they jumped around hooting and hollering "Goooo Virginia!!!"  and had a blast.

The next morning, my dad got Zeke his first big-boy bike.  We knew he was ready for it because he's been riding a balance bike and knows how to stay up.  Except that in the store, the kids' bikes all have training wheels on them, and once Zeke got a little taste of that, he was hooked.  We are trying to work with him to prepare for taking the training wheels off, because he absolutely doesn't need them, plus when he has them, he's not particularly safe to ride with.  He doesn't pay attention because he doesn't have to - there's no risk of falling.  He and I were riding our bikes home from the ice cream store down the street, and he's stopping suddenly to look at dandelions and randomly slowing down and speeding up and remarking "hey!  It's the number 10 bus!  That's the one you ride, right, Mama?"

I almost crashed into him about 5 times.

I know we could just take the training wheels off the bike when he's not around and spring it on him, but he'll seriously lose his shit and I would prefer to have him ready for it.  So we'll see.

In any event, we spent the entire weekend riding bikes, and it was incredibly fun.

In the meantime, the week before, all kinds of other stuff was going on as well.  Last Thursday, I achieved the next rank up in my Beachbody business (I'm a diamond now, sparkly bling!!), which is pretty sweet.  More money, more perqs from the company, more opportunities to grow the business further.

But then Friday, I learned that an old high school friend of mine died (he had been a quadriplegic since junior year, and I think his body just gave out), and that the brother of a close family friend had lost his 3-year bout with brain cancer.  So sad.

And this week, we're gearing up for some big home renovations.  We're getting some new windows put on the house (right now, only 2 windows in our 116-year-old dwelling open), and that's happening this Friday.  About a week or so after that, we're having our upstairs bathroom redone.

Let me tell you about our upstairs bathroom.  It is the poster child for the shitty, cheap renovations that the previous owners did.  I can't even decide what the worst thing about it is.  Perhaps the fact that they painted over the gorgeous trim (and the outside of the clawfoot tub) with paint that resembled dried blood?  There are few colors in the world I despise more than that dark burgundy.

Or perhaps it's that they glued disgusting industrial grade carpet to the floor?  In a bathroom???

Or maybe it's that they took old beadboard wainscotting and covered it up with cheap ugly tiles, which don't line up properly and have huge gaps behind the toilet because whoever installed it was was either drunk or on crack?

No, what really takes the cake is that they put in a cheap vanity, surrounded it with vile gold-colored plastic soap holders and the like, AND COULDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO LINE THE SINK UP WITH THE BUILT-IN MIRROR.  So when you brush your teeth or wash your face or something, you have to lean over to the left to see yourself.  (Plus there's that HEINOUS light fixture - ugh.)

Honestly, any one of these things would be awful on its own, but in combination, I swear this room could win a prize for worst renovation EVER.

We are ripping out the disgusting carpet and replacing it with black and white mosaic tile.  We're getting rid of the crappy-ass wall tile and putting the beadboard wainscoting back, and painting the top of the wall some bright, pretty color (haven't decided yet).  We're moving the toilet over so we can get a nice vanity that lines up with the sink.  We're repainting the trim and door white, and having the clawfoot tub restored and re-enameled in white.  The bathroom will be worthy of the house again.

So that's me in a nutshell.

A child's intuition

It's hard to even celebrate her departure because he is all sad about her leaving.  For reasons that escape me (sort of), he really likes having her around and had a great time while she was here.  Which meant that I was a total powder keg because I couldn't even really talk about how miserable I was.  Let's just say I've got a lot of pent up tension.  I see some hard workouts in my future.

But I was able to do a silent, mini-happy dance last night as I was lying in bed with Zeke, chatting with him to help him calm down and go to sleep.  We were talking about the fact that my dad is coming to visit this weekend, and Zeke is so excited to see him.

"How many sleeps til Papa comes?"

"If you don't count tonight, four.  So we need to hurry up and get to sleep so that when we wake up, we'll only have four sleeps left."

"I can't wait.  It's going to be awesome."

"You know, Ma is leaving tomorrow."

"I know."

"Does that makes you sad?"

"No."

"How come?"

"I don't like her."

"You don't??  Why not?  She loves you and is very nice to you."*

"She always says stupid stuff to me."

Ahhhh... my son.

_______________________________________________
* Regardless of my personal feelings, I'm not so much of an asshole that I'll turn my kids against their grandmother.

The Rant, and Why

She's leaving in three days, so I really should be very Zen about the whole thing at this point.  But I'm finding myself increasingly agitated these days about MIL.

I started noticing that though my children liked having her around at first, lately they've been avoiding her.  I think it's because she projects no strength or authority or anything that would make people want to listen to her.  One of them will ask for a cup of milk, and instead of just getting it for them (if she's up - I certainly don't expect her to wait on them), she'll ask in a simpering voice, "would you like Ma to get it for you?"  And something in them bristles, and they'll say, "no, I want Mama to get it." 

It's annoying, and something that, if they said it to me, I'd say, "here's your cup of milk.  You can drink it or not, but you don't get to choose who pours it." 

But she just says, "oh, all right," and doesn't push the issue and allows herself to look like a doormat.

And they tend to ignore her when she's talking, because she's always fucking talking.  About nothing.  Just a silly, running commentary that most of the time requires no response, so they just tune it out.

I know I should be furious at their rudeness toward a grandparent, and I do say things like, "Ma asked you a question, you need to answer her."  But inside, I get it and it fuels my own ire.

Because that weakness, that lack of gumption, that unwillingness to ever make waves, that utter uselessness as a person, was what resulted in my husband being horribly beaten and abused as a young child by her monster of an alcoholic husband (his stepfather), and she didn't do a fucking thing about it.  Didn't stop it.  Didn't leave.  Didn't get the kids out of the house to go live with someone else. 

Didn't call the cops or kill the motherfucker, which what I would have done.  Particularly since having children of my own, I can say with complete confidence that if anyone I was with abused either of my kids, that person would be either in jail or dead. 

But MIL just let it go on for YEARS.  It only ended when J's older brother got big enough to stand up for himself and put the asshole's head through a wall.  But J was younger, and smaller, and totally terrified of getting in trouble if he said or did anything.

This has had, predictably, permanent effects on him, and on our marriage.  I am now attempting to pick up the pieces that she let fall, because she didn't do the one thing that is every mother's primary responsibility towards her children -- protect them until they are able to protect themselves.

And for that, I hate her.

High Hopes

I was having a sleepless night recently and finally got so bored that I picked up my iPad and went online.  There was an email from Babycenter.com - I set up an account with them when I was pregnant with Zeke to track my progress, and used them again with Josie, and so now they still send me emails about developmental milestones and things like that.  This email was promoting their child height predictor, a tool that takes your toddler's height and weight at a certain age and tells you the height your child will likely reach by age 18, factoring in the height of the parents as well.

Josie has been on a massive year-long growth spurt.  We record the kids' heights on a door frame in our bedroom from time to time, and for whatever reason, got into the habit of doing it at least every Christmas Eve.  When we measured Josie this past December, we discovered that she had grown a full 6 inches in a year.  She hasn't gained much weight - she might be 26 pounds soaking wet - but she just keeps getting longer and longer.  When I put her stats into the height predictor, it told me that there was a 90% likelihood that she would be 5'7", or within an inch of that either way.

I have been both happy for her (having been 5'2" since I was about 11 1/2, I would love to have at least a few extra inches) but also baffled about where this apparent tallness is coming from.  I am short, my mother is short, and J's mother is short, so I couldn't figure out.

But then I look at her, and take in her feistiness and determination, and I realize who she takes after.  I may have another Ruth on my hands.

Which is great, especially for her.  Ruth could be difficult, but she was also a force to be reckoned with, and her intelligence, determination and unwavering high standards led her to much success in life.  And Ruth was beautiful and elegant (and stood about 5'8").  So Josie could do a lot worse.

But of course, it's a little early to be counting chickens. 

When I was a baby, my pediatrician, Dr. Irv (he was a close friend of my grandparents, so I knew him as "Dr. Irv" rather than by his last name) looked at my hands, which are big for someone my size, and predicted that I would be 5'7".

Yeah... not so much.

Perspective

I'm having my daily morning snuggle with Josie.  She's drinking some milk and is leaning into me while we watch Yo Gabba Gabba.  I've got my arm around her, holding her close. 

She looks at my shirt, which is black with white elongated dots:

She takes a long, beautiful finger (she totally has my Grandma Ruth's elegant hands) and traces the dots.

"What are those, Mama?"

"They're dots."

"No, they're not."

"They're not?"

"No.  They not dots."

"What are they?"

She thinks for a moment.

"They carrots."*

"Hmm.  I see."

She nods, and then turns back to her milk cup and her show.

Okay, then.

______________________________________
*Pronounced "cawwots" for full cuteness effect.

Minutiae, and a realization

A number of people have asked me, "so how's it going with MIL?"  They always ask the question as if they're bracing themselves for something in response, like an explosion or a temper tantrum.

But, I vowed not to be an asshole.  A vow I'm (mostly) sticking to.  And in all honesty, things are fine.

All I can really say is that she is as she ever was.  Somebody I have difficulty understanding on just about every level - why she acts the way she does, why she says the things she does, why she talks about the things she does - but somebody who is essentially harmless.

The hardest part is dealing with the incessant questions about things that it would not occur to me to care about -- like where everyone has their morning tea.  Or detailed descriptions of what she had for morning tea, or what the children had when they stayed with her for a couple of hours while I was out running errands.

My mom was traveling in the Caribbean for work, and called me from the Miami airport when she was back in the country.  We talked about her trip, its successes and difficulties, politics, what workout programs we were doing, funny stories about the kids, the usual.

When I got off the phone, MIL said, "how's your mum?"

"Oh, she's good.  Stuck in the Miami airport for a couple of extra hours because they missed an earlier connecting flight, but her trip went well.  She's fine."

"Stuck in the airport?  Is she going to have her tea in the airport?"

"Uhhhh... I assume that if she's hungry, she'll find something to eat.  We didn't discuss it."

Because who gives a shit???

I finally had to tell MIL  that I don't care what anybody eats.  I said it nicely and in relation to a funny story (because I have vowed not to be an asshole), but I had to say something before my head exploded.

I know that some people do.  I dated a guy about 15 years ago who was always obsessing over what he was going to order at a restaurant that he wouldn't be going to for days.  His family was like this, too.  Every Sunday we all met for brunch at this diner in Atlanta, and every Saturday they would have extensive questions and discussions about what they were going to have.  At a diner.  Where they all ordered the same thing every time, anyway -- some form of eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee. 

But I really don't give a shit.  I'm not a big foodie.  I like cooking, but I'm not particularly interested in eating, and I don't think about food when I'm not hungry.  My children are fed at school, and the school is certified and properly licensed, and I generally peruse the menu schedule that is sent out every month, but beyond that, I don't really care.  They eat at school, they appear energetic and nobody shows signs of malnourishment, they're growing properly, so I assume everything is fine.  One less thing, you know?

I was complaining to my friend Andrea about the level of discourse in my house and how precipitously it has dropped since MIL arrived.  Much discussion about morning tea and the weather and all that, and not much else.  Quite honestly, I would rather not talk than talk about that stuff. 

She very gently pointed out that the household I grew up in was not normal in that regard.  "You are now discovering what it's like for the rest of us," she said.  "Not everyone grew up with witty, well-read diplomats for parents, with the discussion swirling around about foreign policy and cultural stuff."

"Hmmm, I guess I never thought of it that way," I said.

"Yeah.  You should hear the conversations I have with my dad.  This is what it's like for most people.  You just have no idea.  You were spoiled."

One more thing to blame on my parents?

Thursday Tidbits

The MIL chronicles are about to begin anew.  Long-time readers of this blog may remember when MIL and Pa came to visit us in Hawaii four years ago. 

MIL is arriving on Friday for another month-long visit.  Zeke hasn't seen her in four years, and Josie has never met her, so it will be nice for them to get to know their other grandmother.  And for J to spend time with his mother.

A month is a long time.  We do not have a big house (though we did create a guest room/office by moving Josie and Zeke into the same room, which they enjoy).  But at least I won't have a 92-year-old man sleeping on an air-mattress in my hallway this time, because Pa isn't coming for this trip (and I am not knocking Pa - he is a lovely man and I would welcome him). 

I have vowed not to be an asshole about this.  Everything will be fine.

-----------------------------

Josie's pink frilly dress phase appears to have been short-lived.  My mother and I spent a frenzied week loading up her closet with cute little dresses and skirts, which she happily wore until last week.  This week she has insisted upon wearing pants to school. 

I can't win.

-----------------------------

Yesterday after school J took the kids to Monkey Bizness.  While jumping around and playing, apparently some kid pushed and/or kicked Zeke in an effort to get him off of some piece of equipment.  Zeke went over to J, who told him that he hadn't seen what happened, but that Zeke would have to work it out with the kid.

Zeke went over to the kid, who was a lot bigger than Zeke, and shoved him hard on the shoulder, knocking him down onto his butt.  The kid left him alone for the rest of the night.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

----------------------------

Another good month for my Beachbody business.  This month I gave myself a 60% raise over what I made in February, and am now covering one of the kids' daycare payments.  If you want in on this deal, let me know - it's incredibly fun and rewarding, not to mention lucrative.

Speaking of, I've got another challenge group starting April 16.  Celebrate getting your taxes filed by getting in shape for summer with a 60 day challenge.  In recent challenges, I've had people do so well that they not only lost tons of weight and felt great, but got off of thyroid and diabetes medication.  Pretty powerful stuff.

--------------------------

Tomorrow is a flex day.  I was going to go skiing (even though we've had such a shitty winter, snow-wise, that conditions are not good at all), but told J that I would stay home with him and get the house immaculate for his mother's arrival if I could go on Saturday morning instead.  Deal.

Happy Thursday, all!

Snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails

My experience as the parent of young children is that much of it is an exercise in perseverance - trying to endure the difficulties of a particular time, waiting for things to get better.  And I don't mean this in a bad way - I love my children to pieces and I enjoy my time with them.  But the early years, especially with two of them, are stressful and exhausting (not to mention expensive). 

I don't find the experience of caring for newborns to be particularly rewarding, so when they're tiny little blobs, and their existence is made up of naps and feedings and diaper changes, you're waiting for them to get a little bit older and start smiling and cooing and sitting up. 

Then you're waiting for them to crawl. 

Then you're alarmed by the fact that they can crawl, because this means that they can get into your shit and you can't just stick them on a blanket on the floor, leave the room, and expect them to be in the same place when you come back 3 minutes later. 

But, life is about progress, so then it's the walking.  Which is exciting, but with walking comes constant vigilance and covering of electrical outlets and worrying about stairs and open doors and skinned knees. 

Or you're waiting for them to learn how to talk.  Or to use the potty.  Or to stop whining all the time.

And then they turn 4.  Or more accurately, 4 1/2, which, as far as I can tell based upon my own experience, as well as the input of my friends who have children, is the Greatest Age Ever.

Seriously, if I could bottle the essence of what Zeke is like right now, it would be a powerful inducement for people without kids to abandon efforts at birth control and hop on the procreation train.  Because he is so unbelievably awesome right now I can hardly believe it.

It came on kind of suddenly.  In October, he was going through this emotion stage during which his behavior at school was occasionally so severe that it prompted his teacher (who I really like and who I do not think is an alarmist quack) to suggest that he might require an evaluation to determine if he might be eligible for special education.  As a special education lawyer, I know enough about disabilities that I didn't think there was any basis for that level of concern, but still.  Not a fun thing to hear about your kid.

Then, all of a sudden, maybe around December or early January, everything changed.  His daily reports from school were not, "oh, he had an OK day," or "the day was mostly fine," but rather, "he had an amazingly awesomely perfect day."  "Great day."  "Wonderful day - played nicely, got a lollipop from the teacher for being a great helper, was sweet to the new kid in class." 

Since that change, whenever it was a few months ago, Zeke has not had a single day at school where the report wasn't glowing.

It's been the same at home.  Not that he hasn't had his moments here and there -- he's still a little kid after all -- but overwhelmingly, he has been sweet and affectionate and funny and hilarious.  Bedtimes have been less stressful.  He is incredibly kind and helpful with Josie, who is 2 1/2 and going through her own drama.

Like this morning, Josie was fussing about what to wear.*  She kept going back and forth between this dress and that dress and that t-shirt.  Then she was fussing because she wanted her baby.  Then she couldn't find her cup of milk.  Then she wanted to wear her dinosaur shoes, then she didn't want to wear them.  Basically, she was being a massive pain in the ass and making us all late for school and work.

Zeke could see that I was getting annoyed and that Josie was starting to cry.  So he stepped in to save the day.  "Hey, Josie, want to brick it?"  He held out his fist so they could share a terrorist fist jab.  She blinked through her tears at him for a minute, and then held up her little fist and bumped it with his.  He gave her a smile and she started to giggle, and they did it again a few more times and all was right with the world.

Later at school, she was standing in her classroom door, crying because she felt we hadn't given each other sufficient cheek kisses before I left her room to go say goodbye to Zeke (we have a very European ritual, with the cheek kisses on each side).  Zeke's class was in the hallway, lining up to wash their hands before breakfast.  He saw Josie crying, and went over to her, put his arm around her neck, and pulled her head to his shoulder.  She put her arm around him and gave him a hug, and he kissed her cheek before going back with his classroom.  "It's OK, Josie.  I'll come visit you later."

I about plotzed.

I have the kids' school pictures up on my Facebook profile, and I was online chatting with a friend about how resoundingly my NCAA bracket sucks, when I clicked on the picture of Zeke.  He's got the biggest freaking shit-eating grin on his face, like his head is about to explode from happiness.  And it made my heart skip a beat, because that picture?  That picture is exactly what is so wonderful about Zeke.  It totally sums up every part of his 4-1/2-year-old awesomeness.  His enthusiasm for life, his sweetness, his cheeky rascally nature (every other word out of his mouth is still "toot" or "poop" or "fart"), the goodness of his soul.  And that's the part that's so important to me, that gives me so much naches -- that he is genuinely a kind person.

I want to stop the movement of time and keep him at this age.  Like Superman did in the movie, when he made the earth turn backwards to save Lois Lane from dying in the ditch that her car fell into.  (And speaking of, we re-watched that movie recently because it's on streaming Netflix. I had fond memories of it, but it is a seriously cheesy piece of shit -- it was very disappointing.  But I digress.) 

With Zeke, I don't have that feeling that I'm so used to having, of "Jesus, can we just get through the Terrible Twos?" or "is he ever going to be toilet trained?" or "does he have an emotional disability?"  I want him to stay the way he is, for at least a little while, because he's so, so great right now.

But of course, he could get even better, so I guess I should welcome the passage of time.

In any event, he's a keeper.**



___________________
* The "pink dresses only" dealio lasted about a week and a half (long enough for her grandmother and me to load up her closet with frilly dresses), and now it's hit or miss. Two days ago, it was a pink dress. Yesterday, it was a pair of leggings and a t-shirt with a dinosaur on it. Today, it was another pink dress, and a pink shrug because she was chilly.

** And so is his sister.  She just has the disadvantage of going through the Terrible Twos when Zeke is at the Greatest Age Ever, so she's suffering by comparison.  But she's still an adorable, funny little monkey and I love her like crazy.

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Josie has probably worn a dress 2 or 3 times in her entire life.  I think dresses on little babies that aren't even sitting up or are still crawling are kind of silly, because the end result is this big wad of fabric up around the baby's armpits and either skinned knees or ripped tights from crawling.  So she never wore them as a baby.

Then at some point last year, I had a pair of cute winter tights that someone had given her, so I was getting her ready for school and put her in a little jumper and some tights.  She was so incensed she practically ripped my face off, and immediately started pulling off the tights and tugging at the dress like I had tried to put her in a straitjacket.

I figured, great, that's one less item of clothing that I have to worry about buying.  Plus she's such a tough little monkey, having her wear jeans and leggings and t-shirts kind of fit the tom-boyish vision I have of her in my head. 

My mother, however, was deeply dismayed.  There are few things she enjoys more than buying cute clothes for her grandchildren, and the "no dresses" dealio severely limited her efforts.

Anyhoo, Josie's standard uniform is a pair of jeans (skinny or straight leg) or leggings, with a short sleeve t-shirt over a long-sleeve t-shirt, and a pair of sneakers.  That's what I put her in this morning.

Then as I was puttering around drinking my morning smoothie and getting Zeke ready for school, I noticed that Jo had taken one of her little toddler-bed-sized fitted sheets and was draping it around herself. 

"I'm a girl, Mama!"

"You are a girl.  And is that your pretty dress?"

"Yes, I wear a dress!"

"Well, you look very nice.  That's a beautiful dress."

She twirled and pranced around.

When it was time to go, I took the sheet from her and started to fold it up to put it back in the laundry basket.

Josie lost her shit.  She cried and cried and cried.

"I want my dress! I want to be a girl!"

A light bulb went on over my head.  I kneeled down and gave her a hug and a kiss.

"Honey, do you want to wear a dress to school?"

"Yeeeesss..."  she sobbed on my shoulder.

"OK, then.  Let's go find you a dress!"

Luckily, I had a couple hanging in her closet that were the right size (I'm assuming they were gifts that people had sent or hand-me-downs from friends, because God knows I didn't buy them).  She was wearing a pair of dusty pink skinny jeans and a light pink long-sleeved t-shirt, so I found a cute little pink dress with butterflies on it and put it on over what she was wearing.


She's still recovering from the trauma at this point and wiping away tears, but the beginnings of a smile are starting to show.  Plus the light in the hallway is bad and she rarely stands still long enough to snap a picture that isn't blurry, so this was the best I could do.

The transformation in her appearance and her demeanor was immediate.  Suddenly she just looked so pretty to me (not that I don't think she's gorgeous, but she looked girly-pretty), and she was so, so happy.  She kept twirling and checking herself out in the mirror and grinning from ear to ear, saying, "I'm wearing a dress!"

"Well, let's get you to school so you can show all your friends your pretty dress!"

When I told Jessica, her teacher, about it, she said that Josie has been playing a lot of dress-up lately, and saying that "she wants to be a girl" and wear a dress.  So I guess that's where we're headed.

Which is fine with me.  Maybe she'll even let me do something with her hair.

And of course, my mother is thrilled.

I'm actually not too dismayed by this limitation in their career prospects

My kids are lovely, sweet and relatively well-behaved.  But bedtime remains a struggle.  Josie will go to sleep at a reasonable hour, about 8:30 or so, but getting Zeke to bed is not an easy task. 

I think much of the problem is that his circadian rhythms naturally skew late, just as mine do (and my dad's, for that matter).  I vividly remember being a little kid and wondering why I should go to bed at 8 or 8:30 when I wasn't remotely tired then.  Luckily, my parents were pretty lenient about it, and let me stay up as long as I was chilling out and reading or listening to music in my room.  My dad tells me that he used to stay up reading until midnight as a young child, and never understood the point of being forced to go to bed before he was ready.  So I think Zeke comes by it honestly.

And it's even worse when he's excited about something. 

This past weekend my parents came to visit.  And the kids adore Mimi and Papa.  They've been talking about and anticipating it for weeks. 

Their visit did not disappoint.

On Friday night, they both had a sleepover with my folks at their hotel.  My parents both fell asleep before Zeke and Josie did, but luckily no significant damage was done.  When they woke up, they found the doors covered with stickers, but in the grand scheme of things, no big deal.

The four of them also hung out Saturday morning while J and I had a ski day together.  Super fun, plus I don't even remember the last time J and I had a day on  the mountain together.  The rest of the day we hung out, they went to the bookstore, went for walks, played, bounced on the beds.  And still, Zeke and Josie didn't go to bed before 9.  When they did, they passed out like they had been on a bender, but it was still an effort to convince them that they actually needed to sleep and that Mimi and Papa would still be here when they woke up.

Sunday we went to Jump Street, a local indoor trampoline park.  The kids bounced nonstop for an hour and a half.  Josie napped when we got home, but Zeke couldn't bring himself to lie down and potentially miss something.  That night we had good friends over for dinner, and the children ran around and played chase and stayed up as long as they could, because Mimi and Papa would be leaving early the next morning.

Yesterday I was home with the kids for President's Day.  We went to the indoor pool and swam for 2 hours.  At home, we played and bounced on the beds and played monster tag and built trains.  They still went to bed late.

The nice thing is, they sleep later than most kids do.  Our friends who have young kids all complain that their kids are always up and rousting them out of bed by 6 in the morning. 

That doesn't happen in our house.

The children had another day off today (teacher inservice day), so J stayed home with them and I went to work.  We were hanging out in the kitchen, drinking coffee and chatting, at about 7:30 this morning.  Both kids were still sound asleep.

"Well, we know that our kids will never have jobs working in a coffee shop," J observed.

"Why not?"  I asked.

"Because they open at 5:00 a.m."

Go shawty, it's your birthday, we gonna party like it's .... well, your ordinary Wednesday night, actually.

Zeke and I were talking last night as I lay with him at bedtime.  I said, "you know what?  Only three more sleeps until Mimi and Papa come!"

"Only three?  That's so cool!" he said.

"And you know what else?  You know what day tomorrow is?"

"What?"

"It's my birthday."

"It's your birthday?"

"Uh-huh."

Suddenly he sat up.  "What day is it tomorrow?  Is it a school day tomorrow?"

"It's Wednesday.  It's a school day."

"But I don't want to go to school!  I want to go to your birthday!"

He was very upset.

Because to him, all birthdays involve big outings to museums or trampoline parks and parties with cake and ice cream and goodie bags.  And he didn't want to miss out.

"Honey, you're not going to miss anything.  I have to go to work and you have to go to school, so maybe we can do something after school.  Would you like to bake a cake with me?  We can have birthday cake and blow out candles."

"Can I eat the cake?"

"Sure."

"OK."

So I'm 42 today.  And I'm not having a big party with trampolines and balloons or anything, but I'm having a lovely day nonetheless.  I have received over 80 emails and/or Facebook messages wishing me a happy birthday.  My friend and co-worker took me out to lunch.  Zeke and Josie and I will make cake tonight.

And I'm doing the little things that I love and routinely do on my birthday.  I'm wearing a snazzy amethyst cocktail ring that belonged to my Grandma Ruth - it's my birthstone and it makes me feel closer to her.

My mom and I had our annual telephone conversation in which she told me about the day I was born.  My dad and I talked about it as well, and he told me how much he loves me and how he's been over the moon for me since the day I was born.  My children were sweet and relatively compliant this morning, and J called to wish me a happy birthday and, as an added bonus, told me about how he pulled a woman from her truck this morning after she lost control and it flipped on the highway and landed upside down.  She was miraculously unharmed, but understandably freaking out and couldn't take off her seat belt or get out of the upside-down truck, so he crawled in, got her out, and carried her to his van and waited with her until the rescue vehicles came.  My husband, the hero.

And life feels very, very good.  Work (my 9-5 job) is going great.  My Beachbody business is going great and is so much more fun and rewarding than I ever would have thought possible - tomorrow I will advance in rank in the company and I'm making more money every month.  My kids are healthy and happy.  J and I are healthy and happy.  Both physically and emotionally, I feel kind of awesome (and loving the juicing, by the way!).

Life always has its crests and troughs.  Right now feels like a crest. 

Even without a big birthday party.

Thursday Tidbits

• We got a juicer.  

Over the weekend, J and I were chilling out on the couch and started watching Sick, Fat and Nearly Dead, a documentary about Joe, an Australian guy who goes on a 60-day juice fast when he finally reaches a breaking point with his shitty health - he was 300 pounds, exhausted, and had some sort of auto-immune skin disease that caused him to break out in itchy rashes all the time.  He films himself doing the fast as he travels across the U.S. talking to people about health and healthy eating, and by the end of the fast, he's lost a shit-ton of weight (something like 90 pounds), feels amazing, and has been taken off all the prednisone he was on for his disease because he's no longer having flare-ups.  Along the way, he meets Phil, a truck-driver who weighs 420 pounds and is a cheeseburger away from a heart-attack, and Phil is inspired and decides to follow Joe's lead and starts his own juice fast and healthy living plan (all of this is under the supervision of a doctor).  By the end of the movie, he's lost almost 180 pounds and his life is transformed.

I eat this stuff up.  My fitness business is all about getting people to just *start* living healthier, and take it a day at a time.  So I was truly verklempt watching Phil's transformation, and J and I were so inspired by the whole thing (plus, we're totally lemmings) that I had gone onto Amazon.com and ordered a juicer before the movie was even over.  Neither of us needs to go on a 60 day juice fast, but we're going to work homemade fruit and veggie juices into our diets, and do 3-5 day juice fasts on a regular basis, maybe once a month or so.  We signed up for a CSA delivery that starts on Monday, and I'm off to the grocery store with a list that includes kale, beets, ginger root, celery, apples, and all kinds of other stuff that we'll be juicing.

And yes, I know I'm a geek. 

• Josie has hit the Terrible Twos. 

Zeke never really went through the Terrible Twos.  His were more the Terrible Threes.  So when Josie suddenly went from being a sweet, agreeable little monkey to a whiny, bossy asshole, we were a bit taken aback. 

In her defense, she's not an asshole all the time.  Just a lot of the time.  Fussing, bitching, throwing things, crying over nothing.  But, it'll pass.  Zeke, conversely, went from being a moody asshole to an absolute delight (except for the constant poop and fart talk, but I'll deal).  I guess it's the universe's way of balancing things out.

• Zeke is headed to big-boy school (sort of).

I submitted Zeke's application for pre-kindergarten a couple of weeks ago (he'll be 5 this year, but because his birthday is after the October 1 cut-off, he'll start kindergarten when he's nearly 6).  I look at him and he's not a baby or even a toddler.  He's a kid. 

I don't understand how this happened.

• The light at the end of the tunnel.

The move from Hawaii put us in a HUGE financial hole.  Huge.  I had to cash out a 401(K), then I fucked up the taxes on it so we were slammed with a $10K tax bill 2 years ago.  Our tenants in our Hawaii house then abandoned their lease early, so we had to stop paying the mortgage 14 months ago.  We're trying to get rid of the house in a short sale, but we've been under contract twice and twice the buyers have walked away for various and sundry reasons.  I'm hopeful that third time will be the charm (and that we'll manage to close before the HOA forecloses as they've been threatening to do).  Plus we've had (and still have) about $2K a month in daycare expenses, J had hernia surgery then lost his job, one of our cars kept breaking down, our pipes froze last winter, the A/C broke in the summer, etcetera etcetera.

But.  The huge weight I've felt in my chest is starting to lighten.  Last year's tax refund paid off the previous year's deficit, and this year's we actually get to keep!  And we're selling one of the cars.  And my Beachbody business is starting to earn me some real money (not enough to quit my job - yet - but enough that it can make a difference in our lives and our financial stability)*.  So we'll be able to pay off two loans altogether, and start paying down another debt, and maybe actually start to save a little bit. 

It's so nice to have a little bit of relief after feeling for over 3 years that we were drowning.

• Vegas, baby.

I'm going to Vegas in June for Beachbody's big annual coach's convention.  The money I'm making from the business allows me to afford the trip.  I will be rooming with my friend Ferreh, who is hilarious.  If she and I lived in the same city, we would get in a lot of trouble together.  And I've never been to Vegas. 

Can. Not. Wait.

I've got a flex day tomorrow, so I will be hitting the slopes on my new skis.  Have a good weekend, all!

*Seriously - if you're unemployed, underemployed, looking for a side gig to provide some extra cash flow, email me.  Not only is there money to be made, but it is so much fun to help people get healthy.