Improbable Things

It's only Tuesday

I try to think of things that rise above the fray - but this week has just been so much freakin' fun!

If you just came for the car story, scroll down.

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Yesterday. Monday. It started with a mundane case of the Monday's, where no one got enough sleep and we were all cranky and the coffee wasn't serving up magic. Feeling all bad about ourselves, annoyed that the baby smeared baby-goo on my dress pants, and that I don't have house-elves to do the dishes before I wake up.

Slow, like molasses through a straw, I get everyone in coats, lunches packed, socks and shoes on the right feet even, hats, do we need mittens?, snacks for the baby, is that my cell phone ringing?, where is it? In the closet in my coat... ok... Oh dear, it's the nanny. She's feeling ill. Thankfully not canceling the day, just showing up 45 minutes late.

We screech to a halt. I pause to remind myself to be kind about this hiccup, since the poor lady is sick and is still coming in. Then I sort the logistics to try and still get to work on time... which I realize will be impossible. I'll drop WeeE at school first, then go back to the nanny, then to work... and I'll hope to only be 45 minutes late myself. Maybe. Crap!

We kill 30 minutes then drag back into jackets, hats, mittens, backpacks, flowers for school.... when I hear the land-line ring. We do the phone search again: where did WeeC take the phone? Behind the end table? Why is WeeE's school calling? Oh dear, school is closed today because the brand new boiler won't fire and the school is a crisp 40 degrees F. 

We screech to a second halt. WTF do you do?  We are literally walking out the door. I have no anger for the school; this is just the way the cookie crumbled. Do I cancel my day at work? My "new" job, the one I am incredibly grateful for. I'll already be a half hour late. I call Bill but realize there is nothing he can do. He's not in a position to cancel classes for the day, plus with the storms, Monday's classes are very behind. Balancing all things, it makes the most sense for me to be the one late, for me to be the one taking my daughter to the office.

And that is what I do.

So I pack up a third time. This time I pack up WeeE's laptop (with the butterfly on it) and her headphones and some more snack, colored pencils, sticker book, stuffed animal for a nap. I drop WeeC off with the sick sneezing nanny, who should have taken the day off but I'm grateful she didn't, which I suspect makes me a bad person. I take WeeE to the office and set her up at a spare desk with computer videos, games, and snack. When time comes, I arrange coats in front of my desk and she takes a short nap. I try to carve a normal day out and wonder, am I balancing this? Or is this a failure of balance? Do I need to make changes, to have more contingency plans, more places to stick my kids when things go wrong? Does my boss care? 

and I wrap up the day by driving the nanny home (she deserved a break) and getting the kids (Old) McDonald's for dinner. I crawl into bed at 8:30 pm, exhausted.

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Tuesday! No sleep for the weary, or at least not enough. One kid up, then two kids uo, then one dog had a freaky anxiety attack and whimpered for a half hour, than the other dog woke the kid who crawled into bed with us, so I had to put the dog in his box.... then morning. Rise and shine, campers! Pretend you are rested, drink the coffee and get a move on.

As mornings go, it was smooth. We ran a bit late, so Bill opted to drop WeeE at school. They crawl into the car... and I notice they are not driving off. Hmmm.... still not driving off. I begin to sorry, suspect something amiss. Bill returns with the news: Our (one and only) car was broken into and in addition to the "normal" riffling of our coins and whatnot, they actually tried to steal it. It's not the first break-in, but it is the first attempt to STEAL the car. From the looks, they beat the ignition with a screwdriver and got into the casing... Ok, here's what maybe funny. If the car had started, Bill would have probably driven the kid to school and told me when he got home. But he can't start the car... so we screech to another halt and have to sort out how to get everything done without a car. 

First school: We get a neighbor to take WeeE to school.

Then the cops: No sign of forced entry, so it's possible I left it unlocked. Still wrong to break in! Since we smeared all the evidence before we realized the break-in, there is little reason to call in the crime unit.

Then insurance: our coverage doesn't include this. Might call homeowners.

Then car shops and dealers: One says it's an anti-theft device that was tripped and I need to tow to a dealer. Another points out that we don't have fancy fobs, so there is no anti-theft device. Walking us through, we get the car started and running! We come to suspect that the car was successfully started by the thieves... but maybe then they realized it was a MANUAL? That they can't drive it!? That's my theory, though I'm not sure i can prove it.

Tomorrow I'll take it to the shop. I'm grateful it drives, the logistics are back to normal for a few hours...

and I'd like the rest of the week to just chill out!

Do basements deserve a birthday treat?

About a year ago, give or take, we finished finishing the basement. We'd started finishing our hole in the ground right after Christmas and it took about two months to complete. And we use "finished" loosely when describing anything around here. We still haven't painted behind the toilet or primed the wall board in the laundry room. 

Some days I could wax poetic about having a finished basement. It's such a wonderfully functional and comfortable space. It's the basementy basement, a true multipurpose room. We have a full office with significant book storage and enough room to put in a double mattress for guests. Bill can close the door to work or to retreat from the hordes. The main space is a tv nook, craft room, and home gym with linen storage, craft storage, a deep freeze and space to hang 2-ish loads of laundry to dry. The laundry room also has storage of all the holiday boxes and three years' of kids clothes saved for WeeC. Oh, and a vintage fondue pot. And the 2nd full bathroom was really a revolution in family relations around here. All that in about 500 sq feet.

A year ago, it was just inspiration. Sloping concrete floor, old windows, wires and pipes everywhere. Today, it's maybe the most useful space in the house. I doubt we will ever see the cost of it in the resale of our home, but truly, it was worth every penny. 

So, Happy Birthday, Basement! No, I didn't get you anything.

Still stuck in the snow

8:30 pm and the house is already asleep.

I can hear the dripping of water from the icicles outside.

Three roast beasts later and we are still snowed in. Well, mostly snowed in. The market a block away was open through the whole blizzard but getting to it took us a while. We didn't lose power or phone or internet. The boiler didn't break, thankfully. So really, it's not been bad for us. Bill went to get more milk (since we have a milk-guzzling toddler) and came back with a load of carrots and yogurt, both of which we had in vast quantities already. I roasted the third beast (pork this time), made a Caesar salad, and found a savory Roman-style carrot recipe to try. In the process, we learned that tinned anchovies do actually expire. Who knew?

The snow is really too deep for our kids. WeeE and I ventured out on an adventure into the Fort at 8 am. Dauntless, intrepid explorer - with a smattering of "mom, this is BORING" followed by, "Mom, it's so beautiful!" I'm not one to enjoy long stints in the wet and cold, so we've spent a lot of time playing indoors. WeeE has been playing dress up and doing tap dance shows, which were cute until the clatter of tap shoes on hardwood started to make me nuts. WeeC has been riding her car around... and vaulting over the top with a skid and bounce that left her with a huge shiner on her forehead. She's now sporting a spongebob band-aid but isn't slowing down.

I found it morbidly hilarious when WeeC spent the better part of five minutes trying to stuff her babydoll into the play oven. I really wish I'd caught that with the camera.

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Next morning: For a while last night, it looked like Bill would be heading in to work this morning. DC gov claimed to be opening on time, the university was not closed and DC schools were going to try a 2 hours delay.

Which was delusional. Even in DC, which I agree is getting our streets plowed and cleaned and put together faster than the burbs, we are not ready for people to start back to work. The sidewalks are not cleared at all, which is crucial in a pedestrian city. It's ironic, perhaps, that the jurisdiction that relies most heavily on pedestrian access is the first in the region to get the roads clear. That's nice, but without sidewalks, Metro and Metrobus, we are just as stuck as Fairfax is without the residential streets plowed. Yes, people can walk in the streets, but as motor traffic picks up, that options becomes decidedly less safe. Plows are putting snow on the sidewalks, bus stops, and intersections, meaning that often the cleaner streets mean more barriers for walkers. As the streets get better, the cars begin to take dominance again and our walking conditions worsen, until enough snow melts to balance things out again. 

Thinking in this vein, it makes me wonder when it'll be safe for DC school kids to walk to school again. We go from being ahead of the game in the short term (with better cleared streets) to falling behind (no safe options for pedestrians) for the long haul.  A mix of apathy and incompetence, spiced with inability, cripples the city for days after a snow event. Suffice to say, DC schools opted to close after all when it became clear that the streets were unsafe to walk in, sidewalks were not cleared and Metro still can't run its full lines.

I don't have a solution except to get out and shovel more. I guess I should get on that.

snowy wilderness

via www.flickr.com

It looks like the middle of nowhere... a special nowhere that is also close to Metro and a great lil market that never closed during the blizzard.

WeeE Sitting Pretty

via www.flickr.com

Note to self - go clear the fire hydrant later today. It's the slightly taller pile to the left

Early but not still

It's 6:40 am and already Bill has been out shoveling for about an hour. He is diligently knocking the snow from our hedge because we really don't want to lose it and have to see our neighbor's crappy yard after this season. Even with his efforts, the nearly 10' tall hedge of Euonymous is bowing to the ground. The 70+ year old Yew that dominates our front looks crushed under the snow. The young plum tree has snow drifting up to its lowest branches

Bill tried to go back to bed but WeeC is up and adamant that things happen. She's not sure what should be happening, but she wants it now. Too bad she's too little to shovel, though I have it on good authority that she will not be willing to shovel by the time she is competent. WeeE is now up - wanting food, snacks, waffles, bacon, pear, banana, EVERYTHING. She's an eating machine. WeeC won't be put down without screaming.

Now it is 7 am, the coffee is ready, and so starts the weekend of being housebound with the Wees.

Snow and Games

via www.flickr.com

Seems there is more snow on the way. And some game or something. Kidding - even I can't escape the excitement about the Superbowl this year. And I've thoroughly enjoyed the glee over at the Capital Weather Gang in following the probabilities until they converge at SNOMG!!! In a world full of all kinds of people who take their interests to the geek level, whatever that interest, I know too few true weather geeks.

Rounding up our scores on recent online polls:

• SuperBowl: We are rooting for the Saints.
• Snowstorm: We are calling it Snowpocalyse II: the Electric Boogaloo (and yes, we actually have Breakin' 2 on DVD because my husband is like that.)
• Brookland Grocery Debate # Umpteenth: I'd choose a Wegmans over a Trader Joes on RI. Trader Joes would fit better over near Catholic.

I don't expect any quiet during this storm. Kids change everything, in case you haven't heard, and being snowed in with two toddlers is entirely the opposite of being snowed in with your sweetie and a pile of good books. It's more wonderful because of the wonder and joy, pure and sweet, that kids have for playing in the snow. Its less wonderful for the sheer inexhaustible wet and cranky that can follow.

In 2002, Bill and I were delightfully snowed in over Valentine's Day. It was a good storm, a solid three-days of being snowed in, I recall watching a lot of Sifl & Ollie (Pirate cripplers - does Ollie sound kinda like Glenn Beck?) and napping. Now I can't even guarantee quiet in the early morning hours. 50/50 chance one or the other of the girls will be up between 5 and 6 am. Still, once in a while, I get a peaceful morning - such as on Monday when we got 8" of surprise fairy dusting snow. The photos are just snapshots but they store a small moment of peace, quiet, stillness. Thank you winter, for occasionally giving us stillness.

Snow Day 2010

More snow. They predicted a dusting and we got 8 inches. Usually we get the reverse around here.

Sophia still loves the snow, even as she approaches 90 in dog years. She will frolic if you toss a shovel of snow at her. Joy!

It's hard to take snapshots of sledding. The hill looks flat, but look up there, that Bigfoot-looking outline is Bill and that is how far the girls came down together. Just them, yes, a thee year old holding a one year old. It's a long slow hill and a perfect bunny slope.

This is WeeE coming down from about twice as far up... she was FLYING... or so she thought. If she were really going all that fast, I would not have gotten the picture.

The cuties. We walked around the neighborhood with the sled and the biggest obstacle was ironically where neighbors had shoveled. I had to dig in the clothing bins to outfit WeeC. She grew into and out of her recent coat in about 5 weeks. I thought those boots were too big... but they are just right. The coat she is wearing is the same one her sister had on just last winter when she was two and a half. I thought the first daughter was ginormous, but it seems, judging by the clothes, like WeeC is even less of a wee.

I see this picture and I think I should either get sunglasses or stop being a worrywart. Bill on the other hand looks just as handsome as when we met. BTW, that is a Ghostbuster T-shirt peeking out under his scarf. Yep, we are dorks.

Churn

Life has a lot of churn sometimes. Agitation.  Call it Sturm und Drang if you are feeling dramatic.  Call it logistics if you just want to be practical about it.

Whatever you call it, it's been the focus of life recently. Nothing really stands out in the mess of things happening, but I think we are doing things, getting things done. We haven't been buried in dishes and laundry yet - and I'm prouder of that accomplishment than seems rational. We have a reasonable expectation of enough sleep to cope, even with two kids who'd rather jump on our heads at 6 am than play quietly in their rooms.

Going to work again hasn't meant adding another hat to my rack of obligations. It meant a doubling of the number of hats, until really the metaphor falls apart under its own weight. In addition to the mom hats and the volunteer/neighborhood hats, I now have all the different hats at work: accountant, editor, trouble-shooter, IT Tech, website designer, project manager, Jack-of-all-Trades. 

We already had to switch WeeC's care situation, which meant new routes and new drop-off and pick-up schedules. Bill's school schedule changed, so now I'm not riding Metro but driving. No two weeks are the same. No two days are the same.

I'm still having a honeymoon with the job. I can walk. To get sushi! I can eat a meal in peace. After 3.5 years of hauling kids everywhere I went, just the fact that I can sometimes walk, unencumbered, is enough to make me smile. Yeah - I'm the dork smiling for no reason on lunch break.

On the days that I'm at home, we play hard. Tunnels, forts, cooking together. On nice days, we stop at the playground on the way home from school. WeeC loves the swings of course and her big sis likes to climb the most dangerous parts of the jungle gym. I'm looking forward to the weather getting better and WeeC getting more mobile, so we can get out and play more.

It's ridiculous how much I appreciate these little things right now. I get to work AND still spend time at the playground. I hope I don't start to take it for granted too soon. Right now, I'm holding on tight through the churn.

Step aside, WeeC is One

Last year today was a ride, literally a "trip", like none I'd ever had. Having a baby is both so mundane and transcendent. Earthy and spiritual. We were each of us born, a daily fact of life. Yet each birth has as part of it an ineffable truth - the start of a new person - that is simply bigger than anything we know in daily life.

A year later, I recall WeeC's birth gently, tentatively. It's not a memory I'm comfortable reliving. It's not like that delicious first kiss or the long gaze you held on your wedding day. Some memories you wish you could recreate, practically wallow in them, they feel so good. WeeC's birth didn't get that.

Instead, I spent hours before the birth being frustrated and uncomfortable, treated like a pregnant slab of meat by the surgery prep nurses, and finally panicking through the epidural. Panic. I can admit that now. I'm not keen on needles (few of us are) and I'm doubly less happy when a terse nurse comes up briskly and tries to matter-of-fact stab me in the spinal cord without a by-your-leave. You too, my friend, will jump out of your skin. Two nurses grabbed my arms to hold me forcibly still, telling me to just relax. "Just." After a third failed attempt, I finally got them all to back off and let me breathe to relax. They were in a hurry though, so I didn't get much respite. Finally the needle was in.

And it failed to "take." A vague way of saying I didn't have pain killer. Anyone else out there have a c-section without pain killers? 

With that I retreat from the memory. I spelled a bit more of the story out last year. 

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A year buzzes by.

 

No one gets enough sleep,

 

But we make it through.

And WeeC gets bigger, mobile, eats better, starts solids,

 

blossoms into a person, unfolding who she is, leaving the baby behind for the toddler,

   

until we find this little lady greeting us this morning.

She climbs the stool and tries to fill her own water bottle. She coos to herself in the morning. She walks and walks and walks and walks and.... She's dealt with starting daycare like a champ. She's figured out straws and wants to feed herself, adamantly. She'll slap away things she does not like and is emphatic about what she wants. Fearless and creative, I've called her The Menace more than once. Still, what do I expect when she has her sister to model all the funnest (and unsafe) behaviors. Inside this little person is a woman who knows her own mind and isn't terribly concerned with your opinion. Real leadership potential here. Everyone step aside, WeeC is One.