things i want that i don't need

this is much more than wanting clean bathrooms - i want a live in cook, nanny, cleaner, and foot rubber. is that too much to ask?

i don't know. i have fantasies about driving an old, two-toned ford truck. with a bench seat. and something fun hanging from the rearview. my brother made me swear never to buy one for the sake of our fragile environment and my husband made me swear never to buy one for the sake of our fragile budget. but a girl can dream, right?

i know, i know! i have two kids, two cats, and a fish that won't die. why do i need a pug? but LOOK at it?! it needs me! it needs love! it would be so sweet and snorty and i would name him romeo and scratch his little belly...

eavesdropping...

...on The Girls in the shower. i missed the offending comment, but meg immediately burst into tears.

(meg) "that hurt my feelings!"

(kyra) "i'm sorry. really. i was joking."

(meg) (crying) "it's not a joking matter!"

(kyra) "well, i said i'm sorry. do you forgive me?"

(meg) "NO."

(kyra) "well i said i'm sorry. you have to forgive me."

(meg) (emphatically) "fine. i forgive you. but i don't want to."

ah, the sweet sounds of reconciliation. :)

sailing, sailing over the bounding main!

ahoy! i have decided that in a former life i was probably a sailor... not necessarily a pirate, tho i can't really rule that out. :) in this life, i went sailing for the first time yesterday! not boating, but sailing...on a sloop with masts & jibs & booms & nothing but the flutter of the sail to soothe your soul. ahhhh.... i got to "captain" the boat a couple of times, cricking my neck sharply to see the direction of the wind and keep the sails in line with it - only over correcting once (causing the rails to ride the lake...eep!). i was a good captain, all in all! sailboats are glorious things. if only my favorite (only) cap hadn't blown away, the whole day would have been flawless.

and curtis noted something fascinating... on our way home, we sailed directly into the wind... think about that for a second - we used the power of the wind which was blowing straight at us to sail forward into said wind. i have no idea who that works! so cool...

not as smart as they look

i came home from a busy morning to find this on my deck.

totally stone cold dead, jim. and i took a picture of it. i couldn't bring myself to get any closer with the camera, or even with the zoom. i didn't even look through the view finder - i couldn't bring myself to. it was too... creepy. and yet, i couldn't not take the picture. many of you know this is the 2nd time in 4 years this has happened to us... and some of you thought i was lying about the first time. well, guess what. i wasn't lying. squirrels can't swim, and are apparently stupid enough to jump in the pool.

the kicker is that i called curtis home to dispose of the poor thing before the girls got home from school - and he said that rigor mortis was so set that when he lifted it out of the pool with his pitchfork, the tail stood straight out. eeeewwwwwww!

but he buried it respectfully - aside from having to use the shovel to break the squirrels tail to get it to fold into the hole he had dug - because God made squirrels, too. even the stupid ones.

apologies

so, a couple of weeks ago meg came home complaining that there was a boy in her class who continuously bugged & bothered her. nothing serious, not bullying, just being a general pest. so i told her that sometimes little boys bug girls they like. she grinned and seem to take it rather well.

yesterday, she came home in a bucket of tears. the same boy had been pestering her at recess, and when she wouldn't respond how he wanted, he growled at her, "i hate you!". for all her own bluster, meg has a sensitive little heart, and was so sad! so she came home and we sort of talked it over, and she decided to write him a note.

it was a very nice, sincere apology. she said that his words hurt her feelings, and she was sorry that she hadn't just told him that they were playing princesses. it was very conciliatory... right up til the P.S. which said, in very careful & swoopy cursive, "you may already know this, but boys are mean to the girls they LOVE!"

sadness

sitting cozy on my couch last night, kids safely in their beds and all being right with the world, i was tucked in to watch a couple season finales i've been looking forward to, when the phone rang. i let it go, since it was a number i didn't recognize, and checked the message. it was my 8yr old's teacher, calling to tell us that the mom of one of my daughter's friends had died over the weekend. suddenly life telescopes. 8 year olds should not have to go to their mom's funerals. i told meg this morning - called her into my bed to talk. she took the news solemnly, but had moved on by the time breakfast was over. this is one of her first brushes with death - she remembers her greatgrandma passing away, but she was very small, and gramma sarah was very old. i wonder what today will be like for her? what her teacher will tell the class? what her friends will say? i told her that her little friend would need lots of love when she came back to school, and meg is a good "lover"... but what a loss. i prayed for their family, the dad and two little girls. i hope they have people around them to love them, too.

love the people you need to love today. it may be the only day you have to do it.

weekend reading

oooo! my brother vincent just linked me to the most interesting blog - uglyoverload.blogspot.com - not for the faint of heart! ranging from the food you could sample if you went to china for the olympics to a coconut crab that can live up to 60 years and crush a coconut with it's pincers! fascinating stuff, but not for those of you that are easily creeped out! enjoy!

also, for a quick laugh, failblog.org - it's sort an america's funniest home videos in photo essay - i laughed hard!

have a great weekend!

adventures of field trip mom

So. I was field trip mom today – something about which I have mixed feelings. I love that it makes meg feel special, but on the other hand, I have to be field trip mom. so I rode into the museum with another mom, who I will describe for you, for the sake of the story. She is a single mom of 38, dressed like she’s 23…without the figure to pull it off. she called me “dude” the whole time, and her car smelled like smoke. Within about 10 minutes of the museum she says to me, “dude, seriously, I gotta take a piss.” I’m thinking, well, we’re almost at the museum. Then we had to drive around the block 2 or 3 times to find a parking spot, and she repeats herself. We find a spot 3 blocks from the museum and we’re walking past beautiful old houses that have been converted into lawyers offices, etc, when she suddenly says, “dude, I’m gonna go pee over there” and she crosses the street toward one such house. Walks past the house and into the parking lot. She peed in the bushes at the back of the parking lot. While I waited, stunned, across the street. In downtown Raleigh. The nice part, not the skeevy part where lots of people are peeing in the parking lots. Then proceeded to cross the street back to me, cheerfully chatting away while we walked the remaining block to the museum. I have no frame of reference for this. None whatsoever!

suggestions

i'm tapped out, guys. may i recommend from the column on your left: 'looky daddy' for both the highs & lows of parenthood, josh's blog for drought updates and hilarious graphs, or jackson pollock for endlessly fascinating time wasting.

or let your surfing change the world. go to world vision and sponsor a kid who needs you, or buy shoes from tom's and automatically give shoes to someone who doesn't have any. or go to freerice.com and answer vocabulary questions for rice bowls for developing nations - really, it's free.

rainy mondays

i don't have anything profound to say about mothers, or being a mother. i wish i did - something to move you to laugh or cry, or call your mom... but i don't. so i borrow this from de caussade, knowing that it applies to the relentlessness of motherhood, but also to the relentlessness of whatever your day holds for you. "the events of every moment are stamped with the will of God... there is nothing trivial about our passing moments, as they enclose the whole kingdom of holiness and the food on which angels' feed."

but i do hope you called your mom. :)

it's cool and rainy in the carolina's today - lovely, really. i hope wherever you are today you find a bit of contentment unexpectedly.

maybe it's a bowling alley!

i won not one, but THREE major awards last night! i don't think i stopped laughing for most of the night, which is a reward in itself....a big karaoke party (i've never karaoked before, if you can believe it!) i won the "i am special" ribbon, the "spirit award" ribbon, and.... da da dahh! female vocalist of the night award! hooray! while i suspect this is a dubious honor, based on what i know of how karaoke is generally judged, but it was people's choice, so the fans love me! :) my humble thanks....

*warning* this post contains strong language & opinions

"australian dad says, 'i was addicted to incest'.". plug your ears if you must, but to this i cry BULLSHIT. how conveinient in our society that anything we want can, in the blink of an eye, become an "addiction". we merrily throw our self-control, morality, conscience and impluse control out the window in favor of self-indulgence and "me me me" ... and if anyone calls us on it, we're "addicted". to shoes, reality tv, starbucks, fashion, tech toys, email, the internet, sleep, cars, whatever. being "addicted" removes any personal responisibility at all - we become "victims" rather than people who made choices. i am not talking here about genuine addiction - i am talking about the things we claim addictions that are just our own craven darkness that we want to absolve ourselves of responsibility for. so to this man, who is sorry he got caught and looking for a way to become a victim instead of a perpetrator, i say bullshit. you are not a victim. you deserve everything the book could possibly throw at you, and then some.

the pond that goes "brwaaahhhk"

the opposite is also true.

don't bother with "beowulf" - we turned it off. well, i think curtis would have watched it through for the animation (he is a tech geek), but it was graphically violent, boring (who knew the two could go hand in hand?), vaguely cheesy, and not much better "motion caption animation" than the regular "computer animation" in shrek. and you know what? the fact that it's "literature" doesn't help it all. frankly, just cause it's an old manuscript doesn't mean it's actual literature, (keep an eye out for snarky comments from vincent .... ), it just means it's old. it may very well be interesting because of that, but c'mon. it was not even worth the 30 minutes of my life i wasted watching it. if it's on your "wanna see it" list, i heartily suggest you cross it off.

in brighter news, it's going to be a gorgeous day & the girls are off early, so sarah and i are taking them to duke gardens to hang out. i'll try to remember my camera to take pictures of all the baby birds, turtles, flowers and other glories of nature! every now and then a day is perfect - i hope this is one of them.

product placement

gather round, children. i have wisdom to impart... or at least, some random recommendations for you!

in the catagory of movies, i've seen three fantastic films lately!

1. eastern promises - this movie definitely earns it's "R" rating, but the story is tight, the acting is fantastic and the ending is ... well, go rent it! it was 4 stars for sure!
2. gone baby gone - this movie got really good critical reviews, so i was prepared to hate it. "nuanced" generally means "boring" and "deft story telling" usually means "pointless". this movie was neither! curtis and i were both glued to our seats - it was gripping & well told & surprising & left us gaping at each other, asking "what would you do?" 5 stars. totally.
3. born into brothels - this is a stunning documentary of the children of india who are born to prostitutes in the red light districts. a photographer who went to document the lives of the women fell in love with the children, and began to teach them photography - and much of the story is told through their own photos of life in the brothels. this manages to tell the truth of their story without leaving the viewer despairing... definitely worth it.

also, i have to recommend clorox 'green works' household cleansers. they are amazing! i don't think i've ever used a product that actually worked as well as it said it would, never mind a "green" product! i am switching over as my bottles run out, and have 3 of them already - they are great! you go, clorox! save the world and clean your bathroom, all at the same time!

learning all over again... again.

“… then I realized my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside. I was so foolish and ignorant – I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. Yet still I belong to you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, leading me … whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health my fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.” - david

it's the "yet still" that is so profound. that "yet still", despite it all i belong to him. that "yet still" he loves me. that "yet still" i am a daughter. "yet still...he is mine forever."

mark says....

"smile - it's friday!"

he has a point. not a great one, but a point none the less.

so here's to a change in the weather - both literally & metaphorically.