The Complete Picture

Leah started preschool this year. We recently had our first parent-teacher conference and as the teacher was telling me about the things that Leah enjoys doing, I interrupted and asked, “Leah who?” The kid she was talking about was almost certainly not my kid.

I’ve had the feeling since Mike died that there was a big part of him that I never really knew. I recently met with another woman who was widowed at a young age 5 years ago and after her husband’s death, she compiled letters and stories from all the different people in his life so that her young children would know their dad. I love the idea of this, as if it fills in the blanks of what people might have seen of him that I did not.

I participated in less than half of Mike’s life. It wasn’t until after he’d died that I ever got to see his baby pictures, that I sat and talked with his friends from high school, that I got to know the close friends he’d developed on long commutes on the VRE and at work—people with whom he spent far more time during the week than he did with Leah and me.

I saw him interact with his family from time to time and with our daughter, but who was he when I wasn’t around? I have spoken with several people who have asked the question, “Did he talk about me much? What did he say about this situation?” Sometimes I can tell them, sometimes I can’t. A message on Facebook said recently, “I’d like to have heard more about our impact on Mike.” I couldn’t respond. I don’t know.

I remember him as a lovable goofball, intensely devoted to me and Leah, only slightly less devoted to the Patriots and ketchup, intensely patriotic, and I never knew anyone who loved their life more. He had a lousy singing voice but it never stopped him from singing loud and proud, he had a wonderfully strong New England accent that I always loved listening to and caused a few funny misunderstandings, he liked to write cheesy poetry, he had a memory like a steel trap and could tell you just about anything about anyone he’d ever met, down to the date and time, he liked to play practical jokes, he hated vegetables, and he had a heart of solid gold.

That’s not the person they knew at the office. It’s not the person they knew in high school. It’s not the person Leah knew, or Mike’s sisters knew, or his friends knew.

I am now collecting stories about Mike from everyone who’s willing to participate, but I feel sad that it’s all just vignettes and pieces of that beautiful human being, who was so much more than a story and who took it all with him in the end.

An Evening With the Beats

So in March, I took Leah up to DC for her birthday to see the Fresh Beat Band in concert.  We got the tickets from StubHub or something like that and we had a lot of fun—the concert was great.  When we heard they were coming to Richmond, Mike and I decided to pay for the whole family to get the backstage party package and for us all to go together.  We “liked” them on Facebook and got the pre-sale code, and as soon as the tickets went on sale, got tickets and passes.  The concert was last night, and I was lucky to have a number of friends who were going to the concert.  My friends Heather and Steve had a pair of passes and tickets for their daughter, so I gave Mike’s ticket to Steve and he joined me and Leah, and Leah’s little friend Kailee, her sister, and her parents were just two rows behind us.  I had mistakenly bought the wrong tickets and sold those to another friend, Heather M., so that she and her daughter could go to the concert as well, so there was a nice homey atmosphere about the thing.

We arrived early, planning to have dinner with Heather and Steve, and it gave us the chance to get a FREE parking spot on the street.  Leah decided there was NO WAY we were sitting in the car waiting for them, so we texted them and walked over to the theater.  After dodging the street vendors selling T-shirts, we got in line and waited, which didn’t thrill Leah a whole lot, but the time passed pretty quickly, Heather and Steve and Abby arrived, and we got our party passes and went in.  Somehow, I managed to score tickets dead center stage in the very first row.  I couldn’t get over how great these seats were.  Steve and I chatted and Leah ate popcorn and played with some glow sticks I had the good idea to remember to bring, thus saving myself $10 on a flashlight that she was destined to lose. (As you can see, Leah was way more interested in her party pass than in taking pictures!  Thank you, Abby for looking up :-D)

The concert itself was divided into two parts.  It was wonderful.  Very lively and upbeat.  The first half was great, lots of dancing, we knew the songs, good bits of humor.  At one point, “Marina” came over to us and put her hand down to Leah, and Leah gave her a high 5.  I thought we were living the dream then.  Little did I know!

During intermission, Steve appropriated his wee one Abby from Heather, saying he felt better having a kid with him in the front row.  As the show got under way, Abby was cutting the rug.  It was hilarious and adorable.  She was dancing her patoot off!  Leah and I had swapped seats, and Leah was just sitting in the chair, watching the show.  I did notice a few times that “Shout” had put the eye on her a little bit and seemed to be watching, and all of a sudden, he jumped off the stage right in front of us, scooped Leah up, sat in her chair with her on his lap, and continued singing to her. It lasted just a little bit, but I thought, “My kid, my awesome kid really hit the jackpot and she so deserves this moment.”  I was trying throughout much of the concert not to just start crying.  I wore Mike’s wedding ring around my neck and I could just about hear him singing along and I missed him so much.  At that moment, when Leah was in Shout’s lap, I wanted to lose it completely.  Apparently a lady behind us videotaped it and caught up with me afterwards and has offered to send me the video, so I hope she does so I can see it!

The concert continued and in all honesty, I think Leah’s favorite part was when they shot off the confetti cannons.  As we were making our way out, she was scooping up as much confetti as she could get her little hands on and shoving it in my purse. 

We got down to the hall where they were having the afterparty, showed off our fancy orange wristbands, and gained entry.  There were craft tables set up, although the coloring pages and stars were long gone before Leah got the chance to do much, but there were lots of tunnels, balloons and inflatable instruments and she invented her own game of golf and had a blast.  I was a bit disappointed in that there were lots of signs up that said NO AUTOGRAPHS—we had brought Leah’s CD liner to have autographed and they gave us a poster at the door, but I guess it takes too long.  Boo!

Soon our group letter for pictures with the band was called and we got in line with Heather and Steve.  The people ahead of us hugged the band—the parents did, and Heather asked me if I was going to do that.  I said, “I’m going to tell them our sad story and see what happens.”  We both kind of chuckled over that.

But I got to thinking about it, and I thought, “What would Mike do?  He would go up there and start talking to them like he’d known them forever.” And I decided to.  Leah was wearing her birthday shirt and when it was our turn, Shout yelled, “Leah, come here!” and the whole band said, “Hey, Leah!”  She toddled over obligingly, a bit nervous, but that generally makes her only more adorable and “Kiki” asked if it was her birthday.  I said, “No, we are here tonight, I want to tell you guys, we were supposed to be here with my husband, Leah’s dad, but he passed away a couple of months ago and these passes were the last thing he was able to buy for Leah.”  The smiles kind of fell off their faces, and they started hugging Leah, and I decided to continue.

“Every Saturday morning, my husband watched Leah so I could sleep in and their ritual consisted of watching your show.  Mike was blind and he was going deaf, but he knew all your music and I would hear them singing and laughing every Saturday morning.  I just want to tell you guys that I love you and thank you.  Her memories of her dad right now are of the four of you.”

 The four of them were literally speechless, and frankly, I couldn’t have said much more because I was getting a bit emotional.  Shout jumped up, tears in his eyes, and threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug.  Then Twist did the same, and while he was hugging me (and let me tell you, that guy can give you a bear hug and a half!), he told me some personal information about himself that was so moving, I just couldn’t get over it.  Then both girls gave me a hug, and Shout snuggled Leah just a bit more before we got a picture of the four of them with her.

I thanked them again and told them to keep up the good work, they wished us well, yelled “Good bye, Leah!” and we walked off.  I found Heather and Steve and I was talking with them and walking away when the event manager ran up to me and said, “Ma’am!  The band wants you to have this!” and handed us an autographed picture.

So Leah got her autographs after all!!!  What a sweet thing to do!  Then the manager said, “The band would like to know if they can have your contact information?” So I said “Sure thing” and he handed me a pen and paper and I wrote down our information.  I was hoping I’d be brave enough to actually go through with talking to them, so I had tucked a couple of newspaper articles about Mike in my purse, and I pulled them out and asked the manager if he would kindly give them to the band.  He said he would be happy to.  And that was that!

Leah appropriated an orange balloon to take home and then we left.  I’m not sure who they have working VDOT in Richmond, because we were leaving and there was an electronic sign up that said, “Roadwork, Left Lane Open” but what it SHOULD have said was “Two Left Lanes Blocked” so it took us a while to come home, but I didn’t mind.  I was floating on air.

What an awesome group of people.  What, if anything will come of leaving our contact info, I don’t know.  But it was a magical night and so special for Leah.  She has so much going on in her life right now and is doing her job of getting me out of bed in the morning admirably, and I am so glad we were able to go, and laugh, and have fun.  Anything else is the icing on the cake.

Fresh Beat fans for life!

Well… That Just Happened

Much as I hate the stupid little clichés that seem to pop up on a regular basis, “That just happened” is pretty appropriate any more… 

So it’s just over two months since I’ve been widowed…  I still can’t believe I’m a widow.  It is absolutely nothing like I expected.  There is a part of my brain that can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that Mike is gone and he isn’t coming back.  I cry on and off, I engage in magical thinking on and off (apparently adopting the cat wasn’t enough to piss him off and make him come back to yell at me), I think of him near constantly, and the small things are becoming the big things. 

I’ve met a lot of people in the past 2 months.  I have a ton of phone calls to return when I get around to it.  Friends have been so kind, but I don’t feel like really talking to anyone.  I’ve been truly touched by all the cards and letters I’ve received, the emails, the donations to Leah’s future.  I won’t have to cook Leah and myself dinner until sometime in October courtesy of my MOPS group, and much of the time I don’t have to worry about lunch either.  People have babysat, cleaned my house, made and returned calls for me, done yardwork, put me in touch with counselors and support groups, driven me around town, and made emergency runs with donuts and chocolate.  It’s been extraordinary, the support I have.

The bills are piling up.  I’m trying to figure out what to do about the mortgages and the house.  I haven’t paid the mortgages in 2 months and have applied for a modification.  I will not come out of this situation with a lot of money.  I will have to discipline myself to stick to a firm budget. 

But for the first time in forever, I don’t really care and I’m not really worried.  After all, the worst has happened.  My beautiful, smart, kind, funny, wonderful husband is gone.  We fulfilled our marriage vows “till death do us part”, and now he has died and we are parted.

I miss all the little things.  I miss hearing his watch click shut at 4am when he’s deciding to get out of bed and go to work.  At least once a day, something happens and I immediately think, “I gotta tell Mike about this!”.  I miss “Attagirl, Susan” when I accomplish something big or small.  I miss his hugs, he hugged like he owned you, like if he let go, you’d float away and vanish.  I miss changing his hearing aid wax catchers.  I miss a bottle of ketchup on the table all the time.  I miss sleeping in on Saturday mornings and waking up to giggles from Mike and Leah both.  I miss hearing him yell at the Patriots and the Red Sox, and singing at the top of his lungs.  I miss my morning emails, and the news articles that I never bothered to read.  I miss making him take and return phone calls.  I miss sitting at the train station and meeting his friends when he got home at night.  I miss cutting his hair.  I miss snuggling in bed and getting him to turn over.  I miss him coming down with a variety of exotic ailments.  I miss his same 5 stories over and over again.  I miss dreaming about our future.  I miss evenings in his office and how he’d say, “you’re not bothering me, I love being in here together.”  I miss “karaoke” nights.  I miss his laugh.  I miss his funny faces and his chewed up finger nails.  I miss his voice and his smell.  I miss being loved like he loved me.

I would do just about anything, anything at all to bring him home, to make this different.  The last 2 months are a blur, and it seems so unfair to still be here, to still be living when I have so little to offer the world and he had so much. 

Please don’t avoid me.  I need to hear about how you miss him too.  I want to hear your stories and what kind of a person you remember him to be.  Say his name.  Risk making me cry.  Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who remembers and misses him because everyone is so darned worried about upsetting me.  I’m already upset.  Talking about him and his love for all of us and the silly things he did helps me.  Invite us out.  Sometimes we’ll come, sometimes we won’t.  I love keeping Leah busy and keeping the pressure off me a little bit.  But some days I just want to hibernate and hide. 

Please don’t pity us.  What has happened is awful.  What’s to become of us, I do not know.  But Leah and I were so lucky to have had Mike and we are so lucky to have each other.  Offer your condolences, your sympathy, but not your pity.  We are going to be ok. 

Please ask how I am.  I will continue to answer “I’m OK” unless you seem to want to hear more and then I will give you the full on answer about good days and bad days and surviving.  Please ask how Leah is.  She is OK too.  But we love knowing that people are thinking of us both.

Please be patient with me.  I don’t feel like writing letters, talking on the phone much…  Most everything has lost its meaning.  The prior joy I took in Facebook and email is gone.  I’ve never been a phone person in the best of circumstances.  But leave messages, call, email, write a note and send it.  I do keep a list and someday I’ll return everyone’s good wishes.  Understand that one day I may feel like going out and doing a bunch of things and then I may not want to leave my house for 3 weeks.  I’m doing the best I can to make sense of thoughts and feelings I don’t even understand myself.

Please don’t take it personally when I don’t want to go to your church, talk to your counselor, try your drug regimen, eat your macrobiotic diet, or start doing your yoga routine.  I have a crappy relationship with God right now, I’m not ready for counseling, I’m not good at taking pills, I can barely reheat food much less try a whole new cooking lifestyle, and I’m lucky I can touch my hips, much less bend over backwards and touch my toes to my nose.  I’m appreciative of all your suggestions, but I have to go about this my own way and in my own time.  Keep your dietician’s number handy though, and I might use it in the future.

Thank you.

For now, I will keep on keeping on, for our daughter and for him.  My life has to mean something more now.  It’s only fair to him.

Ready for a Break

This past two months has been tiring with all the business going on with my arm, but the past several weeks have been a nightmare of activity!!! 

Tonight, I am sitting in the basement coloring in price tags so they’re the correct color for the upcoming consignment sale at which I plan to sell of a bunch of baby clothes that either got dumped here in May or else were Leah’s.  So I spent last night sorting clothes and today Cindy came over and we re-sorted and tagged most of it.  Since she’s left, I’ve gotten all but the 0-3 month clothes tagged and bagged.  Which means as soon as I think I’m done, I’ll find stuff I missed.

This week we had a lot of appointments.  Penny had 2 events at school plus a meeting with her AFS liaison, and I had 3 medical appointments for my arm.  After my last orthopedist appointment on Thursday, I noticed Leah had developed some sort of rash around her mouth and wound up taking her to the doctor.  Fortunately, she is fine and has nothing more than a bad cold.  Unfortunately, she has shared the cold with her big sister, so now both girls are miserable and stuck in bed.  Happily, on my own health front, I have completed physical therapy successfully (and made a new friend in the process!) and have been discharged from the orthopedist.  I am allowed to lift up to 30 pounds and drive again (little did they know!).  The risk of re-dislocating my elbow is slim to none.  It would have to be another gross act of stupidity on my part.  So that’s a huge relief to know, although I am not terribly graceful so it’s possible I could do something else idiotic at any moment!

All this week, The Chief has been taking a class up at Quantico.  He has had to go in early, which means he has had to take the train, which means I’ve had to get up early to drive over there.  I thought today would be the last day, but unfortunately for me, his regular driver will be on a much-deserved vacation until Wednesday, so Tuesday, which is Penny’s first day of school and Leah’s first day of school (I’ve signed her up for Toddlin’ Time, a local music and exercise Mommy N Me program here in town), I also have to squeeze in a ride to and from the train station.

Housekeeping, needless to say, has fallen by the wayside.  I managed to get the rabbit cleaned out this week and I cleaned out the fridge.  Other than that: nothing.  Which means I have a lot of catching up I need to do. 

Recently, a link to The Introvert's Corner appeared on a new friend’s Facebook page.  I read over a lot of it, and really related to the idea that my energy comes from internally, meaning I need time to myself to recharge my batteries and be the best me I can be.  Keeping up with my family has not afforded me much opportunity to do so!  I admit, I am loving every minute of having Penny here, and I do think I’m going to feel a little bit (ok, a lot bit) lost come Tuesday when she boards the big yellow school bus and heads off to school.  But I am looking forward to getting Leah back on a schedule that allows me to have an hour or two each day to myself.  I am exhausted.

It’s funny, but all this has turned my thoughts towards family and expansion.  I have 3 friends right now who are pregnant and expecting early next year.  2 of them already have young children at home, and 2 of their children are not much older than Leah is.  And I’ll be honest, there is nothing in this world that could entice me right now to take on a newborn.  I think, “My God, you must be crazy!”  Leah is at a stage right now where she does not give a damn about toys or TV.  There are 3 things in the world that make her happy:  running through the house in her shoes, playing with buckets of water on the back porch, and taking walks around the neighborhood.  Period.  The idea that I could go back to getting up every 2 hours with a newborn and then have to chase around an extremely active toddler all day appeals to me not one bit.

Not to mention the fact that The Chief has been busily applying for jobs in the DC area and informed me that if he gets one, I’ll have to take him to the train every morning.  Thus did I immediately think of Steve Martin in the movie Parenthood when he utters the phrase, “My whole life is have to”.

My neighbor Lisa and I were walking today with the kids and talking about how everyone is asking about the long weekend and who’s doing what, and how every day and every weekend is the exact same to us, and what would we even dream of doing with a 3 day weekend.  I would check into a hotel on a beach, someplace warm and sunny.  In the morning, I’d get up and have my nice continental breakfast, go change into a swimsuit and shorts, grab a book, sit by the water and pretend to read while I actually slept for about 3 hours, during which time someone else would clean up my living space.  Then I’d get up and have a nice lunch somewhere nearby that I didn’t have to drive to, head back to my newly clean room and fall asleep for another 4 or 5 hours, get up, walk somewhere else for dinner, head down to the beach, call a friend or family member, and then go up and sleep some more.  I would probably feel incredibly guilty the entire time, but I’d do it.

Anyway, I think all this fatigue and chasing and food in my hair and the actual work of parenting, which you don’t really believe in until your baby is here, has helped assuage some of my ongoing feelings of grief over our infertility.  Or at least I no longer think “WHYYYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!” when I hear someone else is expecting.  I think, “Sucker!” :-D  But I would not trade either my toddler or my teen for all the tea in China.  I love them both dearly.

So now I am going back up to the living room to finish sorting and tagging and then will hit the hay.  Tomorrow is another weigh in and the farmers market and then I might just put The Chief in charge while I take a long nap.  Have I always had this history of biting off more than I can chew, but managing to get it done anyway?  Don’t answer that! :-D

Stuff and Failure!

It has been a long couple of months... A lot of things have changed, both good and bad, and I am getting used to a lot of things being different and interesting and challenging and sometimes hard.

For instance, every single day with Leah is something new. There are days she wakes up and I think, "Who the heck are you!?" We are right on the verge of walking, I feel it in my bones. We've been going to the play park at the mall and I see her studying the other kids and really working for it. She's climbing steps now--she only goes up one or two, but man, that scares me! I can't turn my back on her for a second and she's up the basement steps. We put up the gate about a month ago, but if I forget to close it when I run up to get a drink or find the phone, bam! I come back and she is sitting there a step or two up, grinning ear to ear, considering making the rest of the journey.

Her little health scare with the heart murmur affected me more deeply than I care to admit. From the moment the nurse said something about it until we met with the cardiologist today, I have lived in a new kind of worry that I didn't know existed. Oh sure, since becoming a mom, there is the kind of generalized worry that I think most of us feel about our kids, but this was concrete "is my baby going to be OK?" worry. I pressed my ear to her chest about a thousand times this week, listening to her heart beat and praying. When Dr. Allen said, "This is the most minor heart murmur, I really had to concentrate to even hear it, don't worry and you don't need to come back", I could feel my shoulders dropping and the tears filling my eyes. I held it together until I got in the car and called my mom. Then I barely got out the words, "She's fine" before completely losing it (while hurtling down I-95 at 70 with a big truck behind me. Oh and it was raining.)

Today has not been a great day. She did not sleep well at all last night--she was up at 1:30, 3:30, and 6:30, which meant so was I. I've been going on the assumption that she is trying to pop out some molars, but then I remembered it's been 9 days since she had some vaccinations, and they said we could see the effects of those vaccinations 7-10 days out, so now I'm wondering if perhaps the crankiness is due to that more than teeth. It took us almost 2 hours to get her to sleep tonight. I have to say, when she grinned up at me when I held her and rocked her, I didn't mind so much. I just hope she sleeps tonight. I remember thinking last night, "How the heck did I do this a year ago!?" but she would sleep during the day, and so could I. Now she's a ball of fire. I swear, I was hanging out at the play park this afternoon like a zombie. I came home and slept for the better part of 2 hours. So of course, now it's midnight, and I can't sleep again! AUGH! I'm trying to decide if I should take Leah to the doctor or even call them tomorrow, but then with the teething, there's nothing they can do about it and if it's a reaction to the shots, we just have to wait it out...

The house is a bit of a shambles, but I am attempting to get back to it. When I think how utterly clean it was just a couple months ago, I'm a bit embarrassed I fell off the wagon. The Easter dinner followed by Leah's birthday party were two big events that just kind of swung things square into disasterland--tons of people helping out, putting things where I still haven't found them, everything getting moved, dirt and grass tromped in and out, food tucked into the back of the fridge. Leah is such a clotheshorse, I haven't done her laundry in over a month and she still has tons of outfits. I haven't done towels. The pile for the yard sale grows every larger.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of having my yard sale on Saturday, May 1, weather permitting. If anyone would like to join me to make it a "multi family yard sale", please feel free. I would be happy to go elsewhere, except that I am thinking of selling some furniture, and I have no means of transporting it to anywhere other than my own yard. I have 3 folding tables, plus my dining room table, plus our spare dining table. You may need to bring your own tables and definitely some chairs... I'll provide coffee and donuts. :-) Let me know if you want to sell some stuff! Our neighborhood is usually pretty good for yard sales.

Anyway, my control journal is back out for FLYLady again, and I did two huge loads of laundry, lots of dishes, and have gathered up tons of trash today. I have a bunch of bags of "stuff" in the back of our car to drop off to my sister this weekend when I see her and then I'll be able to fill the car with garbage and haul it to the dump (yeah, like I'll have time for that this weekend too!). Still, I'm happy with how things are shaping up already, and just have a few areas of touch up before really getting into my routine again. I think it got so clean that I started thinking, "Oh, I can skip that this week, it's already plenty clean!" and that is the first pitfall on your way to disaster. Michael and I are presently debating the laundry issue. We've been using those new Purex sheets you may have seen advertised on TV. I thought they'd be a blind guy's best friend when doing the laundry, but a) they are kind of pricey and b) he doesn't like them (says the clothes don't smell fresh enough and he's not sure they're getting clean). Consequently today I went grocery shopping and picked up laundry soap, but I got the liquid, not the powder. He prefers the powder since it's easier to measure, but it's also $4 more expensive for 20 fewer loads. So now we are trying to come up with a system for him to use the liquid without making a huge mess all over the place. I don't know what we're going to do. We are thinking of trying a turkey baster that he could use to suck up the detergent and shoot it into the compartment for the washer. There's already hemming and hawing about whether that'll work or not, but it's the best idea we've had thus far.

We officially closed the door on the exchange student idea, unfortunately. My friend who is a coordinator is totally stressed out this year by the job and didn't seem able to follow through on the steps required to finish our application and get Caroline here, so we decided to ease her stress load and forgo the whole thing. We emailed the school and let them know of our decision, and hopefully now Caroline will be able to find a family quickly and enjoy her year.

This weekend is a biggie--I have choir rehearsal on Saturday morning and then my friend Kris is coming down from Springfield to have lunch. Saturday evening we have a 50th birthday party to attend in Burke. Sunday is the big concert, and I have to be at the concert site at 3:30 in the afternoon. This is going to make for a long day for Leah and Michael, so I decided to take Leah to rehearsal with me on Saturday to give him a little bit of a break. I don't know how that's going to work, but I do know I need the rehearsal time. If it doesn't pan out, I will simply have to leave rehearsal, but hopefully it'll be fine.

The exterior of the house is complete in terms of paint and shutters. I need to get a picture of the new shutters, but I am really happy with the end result. Hopefully our doors will get here soon and we'll be in business with this year's renovations. I have decided to take up mowing the lawn myself, since the kids out back are not interested in doing it. I need to take our mower in to get a new blade and then it should be operational. It'll be interesting trying to start it, I haven't started it up in a couple of years, so we'll see if it still runs. Otherwise, I'll go get a cheap mower, but there's a repair shop right around the corner that I'm going to take it to for the blade, since we've been through several without finding the right one. Then I will take a stab at mowing. I've never mowed before, but I have to say, I'm kind of looking forward to it.

The big thing from this week was the tire debacle. I don't know. As I blogged before, dealing with car issues is my biggest stressor, and this whole situation is exactly the reason why. When the tires first crapped out in December 2008, I did a ton of research on the web and calling around to various stores to try and find the blasted size this car required. Finally, the only place we could get them was at Firestone, and the guy at the Firestone dealer informed me that there were no high mileage tires in this size, the best I could get was a 30,000 mile tire. They cost me over $700. Ok, fine, I didn't figure I'd be doing 30,000 miles worth of driving in a year and half, but whoo boy, was I wrong! The majority of it was while my dad was sick last summer and we were going back and forth to Vermont every day and to Star Lake, and just getting to and from Plattsburgh. Then there were the weekly trips to Baltimore before Leah was born, all the driving to and from Maryland during the court proceedings, doctors appointments, etc and our appointments in Richmond. To say nothing of trips up north while I was still working, book club meetings, travels around town, leisure travel, etc. It's just been nutty. So of course, three of the four tires failed inspection, and one was on the verge of it. And the guy at the garage says to me that he can stick a high mileage tire on the car, made by a company other than Firestone, for the same price as the Firestone tires, and depending on how long we have the car, we may never need to buy another set of tires. So I ask you: Did I get screwed by Firestone? Or am I getting screwed by the inspection guy? I lean towards getting screwed by Firestone only because I have been going to this particular garage for inspections, etc for a long time and I do trust them there. But it REALLY pisses me off that one way or another, someone is not telling me the truth about tires and my car. We are also pissed about the sheer price of the things--$800 is more than we paid for the Myrtle Beach condo, and it more or less was a good hunk of our nest egg for the coming year that we had set aside out of our tax return. I do believe that we will be fine and dandy, honestly what's left to possibly break?, but it'd still be nice to have that money in the bank, just in case. Anyway, all that being said, it only adds to my stress level to get two radically different opinions about the tires, pay the same price for two radically different tires, and know that somewhere, someway, somehow, I was screwed by a mechanic. This only makes it that much worse the next time I have to have something done--the stress ratchets up again.

As for other aspects of life... Everyone keeps inquiring about the Weight Watchers stuff. I have more or less fallen off the wagon. I keep thinking about it, but by mid-day I'm done. I just don't care. I want the results without the work (haha, don't we all!?). There are so many pitfalls and temptations out there and there is a big part of me that is tired of resisting. As more and more people are more and more successful, I feel like more and more of a failure, which is making it harder and harder to even feel like trying. I am thrilled for other people's success, but it makes my own inability to commit that much harder to come to terms with. I know I can "just" get right back up on the horse and get going, but I am getting more and more depressed about the whole thing. I keep seeing May in the mirror--I joined in May of 2008, and I think that maybe I should recommit myself this May. I don't know. I keep making these arbitrary deadlines and they keep passing and I keep not doing anything. I just need to get my butt down to a meeting and get going. I just don't feel like it. I guess I need to have myself a good cry about the whole thing and then forgive myself, let the past go, and get started. It just sucks is all. I feel like a big fat failure and that is not the place from whence you can really start over. You need to feel some sense of "YES I CAN!" before you do. And I know I can, I just don't feel it.

There are a lot of things fallen by the wayside at the moment. 80 Plates, I don't know if I'll ever finish it. I get depressed just looking at the blog. I can't think of any other countries I'm dying to do and all the research I have done into it has been good, but it's a lot of work, and I am short on time. There are only so many pieces of the Susan pie to go around. And I suppose that is something I am struggling with a bit. What do I want to devote myself to? I sat down and made a list the other day of all the things I feel passionately about that I would like to do something about. For instance, every time I drive to the mall, I feel very badly about the homeless people out on Rte 3 begging for money, and I would love to do something about it. But what exactly? Michael did some research into volunteer opportunities for me to work with the homeless population here, but then I have to consider that this would require additional time away from my family, which puts the burden of childcare on him. And while Leah is finally starting to warm up to him, it is far from a smooth road at the moment, so it requires being willing to go out and just hope for the best while I'm gone, which robs me of some of the enjoyment I get from doing things. I would also love to be an AFS volunteer, a literacy volunteer, volunteer at the library, considering a part time job when Barnes and Noble opens here in town, considering launching some sort of business on my own about which I have several ideas. I want to go ten thousand different directions, and I can't. For my own sanity, I just can't.

Anyway, Leah's already been up once during the writing of this post, so I'd better roll on into bed before she gets up again. A little sleep is better than none. Thanks for listening to my whining if you've made it this far!!!!

Stuff!

Well, my husband must really love me, is all I can say. This week, I'm out 4 nights. Sunday I had choir practice, Monday I had book club, tonight I am going to see the Harlem Globetrotters with the Heplers, and tomorrow I am going up to see my friend Debbie from DBVI for dinner. He has been so, so patient and taken such good care of Leah while I've been sowing my wild oats. Although, I will say, we had a little incident on Sunday that I thought was pretty hilarious.

I came home from choir practice, and he says to me, "Susan, Leah threw up on her shirt." I said, "Oh really? What did you do?" "I washed it off with a washcloth, but then it was wet, so I just took it off her and put her to bed. I covered her up nice." "Yeah, but what is she wearing? Did you put PJ's on her?" "No, I don't know how, I just put her to bed and covered her up." I went upstairs, and sure enough, there was Leah, sound asleep wearing nothing but her pants and socks. I turned the heat up a bit just in case it got cool, and let it go. But I thought it was hilarious and so new-dadish!

My in-laws stopped in for a quick overnight on Monday on their way home from Florida. It sounded as if Florida was a bit of a bust for them this year--much cooler temperatures than usual. Still, I'm sure they had their usual good time, and it was real nice to see them an extra visit, even if I was gone for most of it. Book club was a lot of fun, although it was awfully strange without Judy there for the first time in 5 1/2 years. I have heard through the grapevine that this may be a permanent state of affairs, so perhaps it'll be something I have to get used to, but I haven't heard anything about that as yet. We were hosted by Maggie at her house, and it was her book that we discussed, but unfortunately she got a call right as we kicked off and had to leave because her daughter had a little fall. It was great that she trusted all of us to be in her home without her, and fortunately she got good news about little Natalie--no broken bones! We did clean up after ourselves and got a nice note from her yesterday, so it reminded me again of what a family the club has become. Everyone really is there for you when you need them.

Yesterday I was feeling a little blue, so I texted Cindy and Wendy to see if they wanted to have lunch with me (Manda, do you text? If so, I need your number!). Cindy replied that I could come on over to her place, so we made plans to have lunch at Chick-Fil-A and then I would go to her house for a Cricut tutorial. Just as we left Chick-Fil-A, my phone buzzed and it was Wendy! She said she was free for lunch tomorrow (which is now today) and did I want to meet her at 12:30 at Chick-Fil-A. Hahaha Good thing they like us in there!!! So we are dining at CFA this afternoon. They have a wonderful greeter/drink refiller/hostess in there named Deborah and as we were leaving, I said to her, "See you next time!" Little did I know next time is 24 hours later!

Last night we had dinner with the Heplers at Chilis. I had to get my Globetrotters ticket from them and will meet them up north in Stafford today. The game is at North Stafford High, and since I have been to Stafford High for basket bingo and Colonial Forge for choir practice, I think I'll have covered the local high schools now and should know where all of them are.

LOST last night was amazing--not quite as good an episode as last week, but awfully good nonetheless. We really are getting down to the end, only 10 episodes to go, and they really are starting to make sense of the whole thing, even though there are still many unanswered questions. I am enjoying the hell out of it, and will be sad when it is over, but at least I have my DVD's and I can go back through and re-watch the entire thing from start to finish to see what I've missed and what makes sense now in light of later episodes, etc. I haven't kept up with Project Runway as much this season. I think last season was such a bitter disappointment, and this season I just don't seem to care. Isn't that awful? I was such a fan. And this season has been so much better than last season, I feel kind of guilty for not watching! I read the Project Rungay blogs to see who wins and loses, and maybe I'll catch up eventually, but just haven't felt like it lately. I also haven't felt like staying up to watch Hoarders, but at least I've been catching up with that on A&E's site.

For anyone who has asked, no, we still have not heard anything about our exchange student. We are just waiting to hear if the school will accept her. We were hoping to hear by the end of January, but then with all the snows in early February, we still haven't heard anything and here it is March! We would love to get in touch with her and start getting to know her a bit better, but I guess we just have to be patient and let things take their course.

In the meantime, we've decided to do some flipflopping of our house if we are able to. We are going to move the home office downstairs into the basement and make Mike's office upstairs into the extra bedroom. This makes sense for a number of reasons: 1. Caroline will have a closet! 2. When the baby wakes up at 6:00am and wants to play, I can take her downstairs and not have to worry about waking up a slumbering teen! 3. The guestroom is a bit larger than the upstairs room, so I could put up a desk for my new scrapbooking hobby! 4. Mike can go use the computers and radios as much as he wants at any time of the day or night without having to use his headphones or worrying about disturbing anyone. 5. At night when we are all doing our own thing, we will still be on the same floor and easily accessible to one another without having to holler up and down the stairs. 6. Our upstairs floors are really creaky and it won't keep anyone up any more if they are trying to sleep in the spare room if someone's moving upstairs and creaking around.

The two questions that will hold this operation up are: 1. can we get that room wired for ETHERNET and 2. can we get his radio antennas wired into that room. He's got a buddy from the ham club coming over to have a look, and then we'll ask our friend about the computer wiring. He could go back to using wireless, but I've been informed he does not want to do that.

Once we find out if it's possible to do this, I'll have to go on a marathon painting binge, since I'm sure Michael doesn't want a pink striped office. It was a lot of work and I enjoyed it and loved the stripes, but I think something a little more subdued will probably be better for a man cave with a wife-corner. I will probably also repaint the office, but maybe not. The color does match all the bedding we already have, so I may just leave it for now and if Caroline doesn't like it, she can help me repaint it. If anyone wants to help paint or move furniture, we'll pay in pizza, beer, or whatever else floats your boat!

We are excited that Mike and Lesley's niece is moving to DC this summer, so even though it's not Mike and Lesley, it's the next best thing :-) She is coming to stay at the Cookie Jar this April and I'm going to take her apartment hunting while she's here so she can get off to a good start when she makes the move in June. She is a great gal and of course we hope this will be an even bigger incentive for Mike and Lesley to move on up here too!!! :-) Damn the housing market is all! But I know they cannnot resist Leah's siren song, so I have a funny feeling they'll come on up sometime sooner rather than later, as Lesley said :-) Jennifer and I have been swapping emails back and forth to figure out a game plan, and we have just over a month to figure out what we want to do, so I know it will be great. I'm of course going to steer her towards living on the Virginia side of things, because we know how those Maryland types are. Haha!

As for Weight Watchers, well, it seems like I get going and then I get off track. I really did great my first week back, down 4.2 pounds, and then BANG! The snow storm hit and we sat around and ate brownies and cake and did puzzles and read books and stuff. Then the storm was over, and we went to Greensboro and enjoyed ourselves. Then we got back and I just couldn't face it the first week, and that week turned into two, turned into 3. I know it is something I need to do, I have made concrete goals for myself and I want the results, I just have to get into a mindset of where it's going to happen. I remember where it all went terribly wrong--we were up in Plattsburgh when my dad first had the attack and we went to the store, and I thought, "F*** this, I'm getting some Doritos." It's all been downhill from there. I know I can, and I know I will, it's just a matter of when! :-)

As for FlyLady, everything is just great! I do a quick clean every day, and my in-laws were SO impressed when they walked in Monday. They were like, "you have done a lot of work around here!" Between that and Michael's "It's a whole new Susan!" campaign, I guess I was a real slob before :-) But I'm happy with how things look and how easy it is to maintain. If I could just get Leah to pick up her toys...

I guess that's about all the news that's fit to print from Fredericksburg. I am very nearly ready to break out my Cricut and get scrapping, just need to go get some pictures printed off at Walmart and then I'm going to town. I'm so excited. I'll post some pictures of what I create. I got a couple of extra cartridges at Joann's yesterday since they are 50% off right now, so I can use different fonts, etc. on the book. Cindy gave me a great tutorial yesterday, so I'm feeling pretty confident I'll be ready to scrap in no time!

Hope everyone else is doing just dandy :-) Drop me a line, update your own blog, let me know what's going on!

Hilarious Email from My Husband

So today I received this email in my mailbox, and it really cracked me up.

Honey what was in that bag on the hutch.. Was it some kind of meat? It was round and it felt like meat.

Because, yes, I randomly go around leaving bags of meat on the furniture.

10 Years!

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the General's and my first date. We met at 10:00AM in Newport RI at the Tennis Hall of Fame. While we lived in New England, we would take the day every February 5th and recreate our first date--walking the Cliffwalk in February is COLD, but it was unseasonably warm in 1999 and with a sweater and warm coats, we enjoyed ourselves in the sun.

It's absolutely freezing this morning in Virginia, but we're feeling warm and snug in our house. We've both taken the day to spend together, but aren't sure what we can do to celebrate. Ten years is an achievement. He's put up with me for a very, very long time. I don't know why, but I'm grateful.

I don't think either of us could have imagined the twists and turns life would throw at us over the past ten years. This time 10 years ago, I was living at home in New York, substitute teaching at my old school, planning my move to Arkansas. In the ten years that followed, we've lived in 6 different homes in 2 different states (two of which we owned), I've had 5 different jobs and he's had 3 different jobs, we're on our third car, we took our first real vacation and many trips to the beach besides, we met our best friends, and now we've got a little one on the way.

We used to play a game, "Where will we be in five years?" We've stopped even trying to guess. It's an adventure. Can't wait to see where it leads.

Mixmaster Mike's Latest Rap

My husband states, "I just sat down and came up with this in 2 minutes after dinner."

Y’all are a bunch of liars and crooks,
And Dat’s the word from DJCookie Cooks
We got Bush, Cheney, and Condi Rice
Who f**ked da nation not once but twice
We went to Iraq, instead of Af Ghanistan
And forgot about all of our bridges and dams
We tortured people, we dropped da bombs
And managed to hose our stocks and bonds
But there was a boy from Chicago all along the way
Who set up to prove that any day, he could
Step up to da plate and make everybody listen
And throw these boyz a big ass wippin’
So long little Dickie and Georgie, go back to the bible
Because Obama is in charge, and that is final
The people have spoken all ovah da land
From Maine to Oregon and even in Japan
You screwed the country, you paid your buddies
And now you don’t get to preach to any body
Put your head in the toilet, and enjoy the dirty looks
And dat’s the word from Lady DJ Cookie Cooks

My Husband's Such a White Boy

So we have started downloading music from Amazon.com--it's the same price as iTunes and they are MP3's, which we LOVE, and there are no restrictions once you buy them.

So, Michael's been sending me lists of songs that he wants to download. And this morning, we set to downloading a bunch of old school hip hop and rap songs that he just loves the living hell out of. For what reasons, I cannot fathom, but to each his own.

So he wanted to download one Sir Mix-A-Lot song and emailed me the title:

My Possie's on Broadway

Yup, that's how he spelled 'posse'. It's so cute, I could eat it for lunch. Awww. :-)

Christmas and Other Matters

I haven't been feeling all that Christmasy this year, for reasons most of you can imagine. But we've been working hard this weekend at getting a bit more into the spirit. I spent Friday afternoon shopping like crazy and with just one or two little exceptions, I got it done. I got tons of great bargains off Amazon.com--I probably slashed the bills in half for what I thought I'd pay for certain items and I know the recipients will be pleased with what they get. I also know my brother-in-law will love what my dad is getting, as when I told Lucas about it, he started writhing with joy and anticipation. So at least I've hit on one winner for sure.

Do you have tough people to shop for? I sure do! MY MOTHER! (I know you're reading this, Mom, and I want you to know you are the toughest person on my list this year!) Ask my mom what she wants for Christmas. Go ahead. I dare you. Dimes to donuts, she'll tell you, "stamps". She will also tell you this for her birthday, Mother's Day, Flag Day, and Easter. Stamps don't cut it with me. The laugh's on her, however. I came up with a few little things and yesterday had a stroke of absolute genius, so fortunately I know what she's getting now, and it's brilliant.

My husband is also a challenge. I was going to get him a nice surprise of satellite radio this year. I went to Best Buy to find out about getting it. Why is it that those little geeks at Best Buy treat women shopping alone like gum on their shoe? I hate that! This little twerp was so condescending about what I'd need and spent all of 15 seconds with me before turning to the guy behind me and talking his ear off with a completely different tone of voice and body language and everything. This is the second bad experience I've had at Best Buy in the past couple months. So I'm not going in there unless I know what I need and I don't need to ask questions about it. Jerks. So now I'm stumped on a gift for the Mister. I know one thing he wants, but I need to find him a surprise too!

Yesterday, we spent the day at our friends Paul and Kris's home in Springfield. Each year, their church puts on a big shindig. It's a lovely concert for Christmas with a huge choir and orchestra, the pastor says a few words, and there are a few dramatic interpretations (although they save that largely for Easter). I don't know why, but whenever I go to big productions like that I get all weepy, and yesterday was no exception. I handled it, you know, but frankly it's getting embarrassing. I'm becoming one of those weepy women.

Afterwards we went back to their house for a big lasagna dinner. Paul is a fantastic cook, and we really enjoyed ourselves being loved up on by the dogs and cats, meeting their nephew and his wife, as well as catching up with a friend of theirs that we see at every Christmas and Easter show. Driving home, we both agreed that now it feels like the holidays. The show really kicked it off for us both.

Then we returned home to our cold, dark little house. We didn't do Christmas lights this year. I'm a bit sad about it, but a) my sister is the one who always goes up on the ladder, and she's in no fit state to do so this year, and b) I'm not so sure I want to pay the electric bill for it this year. We don't have up a tree yet, and that's going to have to wait till next weekend. Pretty much all that's up are the two nativity sets. One was my grandfather's and one is one that my dad gave me a few years ago.

I got a defective advent calendar this year! There was no little box for 12 or 13, and one of the boxes didn't have a number on it! Freakin' German paper engineering!

Today will be grocery shopping and enjoying the last few days of peace and quiet before the storm arrives. Everyone is arriving on the weekend and next Monday. Tuesday I have 2 medical appointments--the doctor in the morning and the dentist in the afternoon, but I've commanded my dad to take me to the dentist as I'm having both sides of my mouth done, because I just want to get it over and done with. However, I don't especially like going, the General is getting his crown replaced, and I just don't want to have to drive. I'm going to let Mom cook for everyone :-) Or something. (Surprise, Mom!)

This week at work will be pretty laid back. I have very few appointments to handle as most people don't want to see you this week. My busy day will be on Friday--I actually have 3 people pencilled in. And I have 2 on Wednesday. Tuesday and Thursday I'm still trying to work people in so I don't have to go to Fairfax. I have one a piece then. Monday is our big office party and staff meeting day. Apparently we're going out to eat, Kris informed me, and I have to ready myself for the gift exchange. I drew a hard pick this year, so I'm going with the infamous baked goods gift. I also have to make Kris some scones today--she won my baked goods auction item for the Combined Virginia Campaign at work.

And we have to go to the dump and the grocery store. So today will be quite busy. Fortunately there are some very good football games on today, so I can enjoy the sounds of the General hollering his head off while I bake up goodies for other people to eat. They warn us in Weight Watchers about "food pushers"--people who are constantly trying to get you to eat a little of this and a bite of that, or a bunch of something else. I have become the ultimate food pusher. I don't want to give up baking, but I'm not eating much of that stuff any more, so I send it work with Michael, I let him eat it, I take it to my office or to book club. Anything to have it out of the house. I still have about a dozen scones left (should have given out more at book club!), so they're becoming part of my gift for the gift swap. Hope she likes 'em!

Michael is loving the new job and I am loving the new him! He has so much more energy from getting an extra hour and a half of sleep that I fear I may not be able to keep up with him a whole lot longer. He rolls out of bed ready to take on the world, and comes home with a grin on his face. He keeps saying, "I made a good decision, Susan." And I believe he has. I think he likes the Marines way of doing things. You say, "Joe, I want a cup of coffee" and two seconds later, you have a cup of coffee. There's no taking it to the committee, discussing for days the various coffee additives, and what you might have meant. There's just coffee. That certainly appeals to his no-nonsense side.

As for me, we have two exciting new retail businesses opening here soon and I am strongly considering trying to get myself hired at either one. We are getting a Barnes & Noble here, and I'd love to work there doing something other than stocking and selling. I'll have to check their job listings to see if maybe they need an event planner or something like that. The other is Wegman's, which is opening in June. I really would like to open a decent bakery here in town, and I really don't know the first thing about it. So I thought if I could get myself hired on at the Wegman's bakery, which is a real bakery, not a fakery like the grocery store, then I could learn tons about what goes into it and would probably wind up forgetting all about the dreams of working there. I asked the General, "Would you still love me if I quit my good job and went to work at a grocery store?" and he said, "I'd still love you even if you were just bagging groceries at the grocery store." Awww. What a guy.

So that's the news from here. I hear him in the shower, so I'm going to get myself dressed and ready to roll for the day's tasks. Hope everyone's having a fun weekend!

My Giggle For the Day

This morning, bright and early at 7:30, the General had an appointment with the podiatrist to have his final check up on the ingrown toenail he had removed.

We were the first appointment of the day, but the doctor was a tad late and the General was feeling his oats by the time the guy arrived. Fortunately, the doctor is kind of a ham himself, so it didn't really matter when the doctor arrived apologizing for his tardiness and The General said, "It's about time! The Marine Corps is waiting for me!" But he said it with a laugh, and no harm done. (Though I think this job may have gone to his head just a bit.)

Anyway, he and the doctor were talking and they were discussing that in ten years, the General might expect that he'd have to have his toenail done again, because...

Are you ready for this?

...The General's feet are showing SIGNS OF AGING!

My husband is getting to be an old man!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The doctor said the only cure for it was to quit having birthdays.

Oh man, The General showing signs of aging is just cracking me up!

What a way to start a Friday. I'm going to go buy his Christmas present today so he will be cheered up.

December 5

December 5, as most of you probably know, will always have special significance in the Kosior household. It was the day our comfy little lives drastically changed when in 2002, a mere 8 months after our wedding, Michael was canned from the place we not-so-affectionately call Shititas. For more of the gory details, you can read last year's entry--I tend to repeat myself a lot. :-)

This year, the date takes on added significance, as today is Michael's last day at his current agency and on Monday he starts his new job with the Marines. The first thing we both thought of when he got his start date was, "Oh man, your last day is December 5th!"

Yesterday his friends and colleagues held a good-bye luncheon for him at Uno's in Alexandria. And it was an altogether different kind of send off. No taxi cab home and a cold shoulder from there on out. This time was a group of his friends and colleagues gathering to celebrate his successes and wish him well.

The General had asked me to videotape the proceedings, which I did. It was a challenge to keep the camera rolling, as after a while, I was actually crying, I was so moved. Most especially moving was Michael's friend Joe. Joe is totally deaf, but after he moved to a cube near Michael's, the two struck up a friendship by Joe typing into Michael's computer, JAWS reading out the text and Michael typing back, so Joe could read it. So yesterday, Joe got up to say a few words and he said, "One thing I like most about Mike is that he is great at making lemonade. What I mean by that is that whenever I would have a really bad day, and life was handing me a pile of lemons, I would go and see Mike and he would make everything better and then everything turned into lemonade."

I was also impressed to learn from one of the big higher ups that before Michael started on a project, the fail rate was 99% and after he started working on the project, the fail rate dropped to 12%, which is incredible.

Another friend got up and said, "You all may not know this, but Mike is a closet hip hop fan. He will out of the blue send me an email with a bunch of old school lyrics and that really makes my day."

And his direct supervisor said that she has kept every one of his emails and will be enjoying them for a long time to come.

There was a movie out some time ago that had Cuba Gooding Jr. in it as a mentally retarded man who became a manager of the school football team. His aunt or mother or somebody stepped in to the situation and sat down with the coach and said, "I don't want my boy to become the team mascot."

I really identified with that statement. I never wanted Michael to be "The Official Blind Guy of the Federal Government". This is a common fear among spouses and parents of people with disabilities. After yesterday, however, my fears were totally assuaged. Those folks all love my husband for all he is and has done and respect him for the work and expertise he contributed to the agency, and that really warmed my heart.

As a going away present, they got him an official Patriots jersey with a #1 on it and the back was personalized as "The Chief". Now, c'mon people, you know he's eating that up with two spoons. He put it right on at the table. I turned to his buddy Ken and said, "You know he's not taking that off, right?" Ken said, "He's going to sleep with it on." I said, "Sleep? He's going to shower with it on!"



[Note: when I had him pose so I could take a picture of the back of the shirt, I said, "Honey, show me your muscles" and that was the pose he struck. You can add that as item #87 of the things I love about my husband--when he strikes a pose.]

Ken is a fellow New Englander and he and Michael are always going at each other, all in good fun of course. One of the more hilarious moments came when Ken said, "Hey, Mike! I hope you're driving home today! Your wife is here drinking beers and I'm sitting on her lap." And Michael said, "Yeah, right, if she were that drunk, she'd be calling me 'unreliable'!" (referring of course to how unpleasant I get when I drink.)



It was just such a wonderful experience. I had such a nice time and I know he will remember it forever. And we have the videotape for anything we forget.

What's a party without some honeys?

Ok, We're Going to Make You All Sick

But the General just sent me his list of 86 things he loves about me. I was going to bump my list to 100 this morning, because after we spent the day together, he did about a million more things I totally love, and then last night when I finally came back to bed at 2am after one dandy of a crying jag, he sat up with me, crying too, and we had such a good talk that I didn't even care it was 2AM. But now I kind of like that 86 is a magical number. So I'm leaving my list alone. And this is his 86 things he loves about me. (Excuse me while I blush)

Why I love my darling wife

1. She found me on the Internet after a terrible relationship, and when I hugged her for the first time I knew that she was the one.
2. She knows just what to do and when to do it.
3. She throws her clothes on the floor, and when hearing that I'll be doing the laundry, puts them in the hampers.
4. On the weekends in the afternoon, I know that I can always find her in our bed sleeping nice and I cuddle with her.
5. She is a wonderful cook.
6. She is my best friend and lifelong companion.
7. At the end of a difficult day, she always makes things better and after about 10 minutes, I am a new man.
8. I love her wonderful scent.
9. I love the fact that her skin is so soft.
10. I love that she is a great writer and likes to read her works to me.
11. She is genuine, reliable, and responsible.
12. She will watch a football game with me and get excited about it.
13. She puts up with my constant need to do better and better at work, including moving to the DC area.
14. I love that she is taking care of herself both physically and mentally, and not letting anybody push her around.
15. She is a strong woman, and is good with doing things around the house.
16. She writes good letters to places where we get bad service.
17. She has a wonderful singing voice and I love to come home to it around the holidays.
18. I love that she reads to me, and we have shared so many experiences doing that.
19. I love that when during the winter when I lift the covers up, she says in her sleepy voice, "don't let the cold air in."
20. She makes me coffee whenever I ask her to and fixes it JUST RIGHT.
21. She lets me play in my office with my radios and computers.
22. She puts up with my fussy and mundane eating habits.
23. She is a great rehab teacher who cares about her clients.
24. She calls me a "hot dog" when I send straight-forward and detailed e-mails.
25. She is very technical, if I show her how to do something on the computer, she always remembers for the next time.
26. I love that she leaves stuff in the cupholders in our car, sometimes for weeks.
27. She chose me, even with all of the problems that I have, when it would have been easy to pick somebody else.
28. She got pissed when I lost my job at Digitas.
29. She knows how I am feeling without me even saying a word.
30. I love it when she puts on her robe and gets all nice and warm.
31. I love it when she stays in her nightgown all day.
32. I love it when she gets FIRED UP about DUBYAH.
33. She has broadened my horizons and opened my world to so many different things and experiences.
34. I love the fact that it takes her a while to get going in the morning, and she gets upset if somebody tries to change the routine.
35. She makes the holidays so special with all the decorations and good food in the house.
36. Whenever I ask her, she will get up early and take me to the van pool or the train
37. I love that her family has brought me so much joy and happiness.
38. I love that she can't believe when I don't know who actors and actresses are.
39. I love it when sometimes a few hours after she gets up, she takes a little snooze.
40. I love that she is so gentle and caring with kids, and know that she will be a great mother.
41. I love it when I do the laundry, all of her clothes are inside out.
42. I love it when she takes me on trips to places that we've never been.
43. I love it when she gets bent out of shape during the summer when I tan.
44. I love that she has the softness and kindness of her mother, and the hard work and determination of her father.
45. She has stuck with me during very difficult times, like losing my job and the uncertainty with my hearing back in 2001.
46. I love the fact that she tries to keep track of all of my friends and usually does a good job at remembering who is who.
47. She knows how important it is for me to serve my country, and that I take the badge and its responsibilities very seriously.
48. I love that she gets excited on Thursday nights to hear Jack KB4XF on the ham radio net.
49. I love that she knows how important my coworkers are to me, and always makes them brownies.
50. I love that she is a tough lady who will do whatever is required to get something done, and doesn't whine about it.
51. She plans gatherings very well and makes sure that people always have a good time.
52. I love that her kind heart warms up my life and our home to everyone who visits.
53. I love that she got me to eat Chinese food after many years, and now I like to go to the Chinese buffet, even if all I get is chicken.
54. I love that she is very organized and makes lots of lists, so nothing is forgotten.
55. I love that she has brought her friend Joe into our lives, who I love like a brother.
56. I love it when she gives me a nice smooth, clean, shave.
57. I love that she has fun playing her Wii, and sings while she's playing.
58. I love that she called me a "god damn stubborn Polack" one night, which of course she was right.
59. I love that she jokes around with me as much as I do with her.
60. I love that she lets me call her all kinds of nicknames.
61. I love that she has taught me that my way isn't the "only" way, and gotten me to think about others more.
62. I love that back in 1999 when we were in the truck heading back to Syracuse, after I said "you're my girl", she said "I will always be your girl."
63. I love it when she buys me candy bars as a surprise.
64. I love that she is very talented in many areas.
65. I love it when she tries new recipes and they are so good.
66. I love that she took me to New York twice and we went all over the place.
67. I love that when she gets up, she gets out of bed and doesn't put the covers back, just leaves them the way they were.
68. I love that she has made me a better person.
69. I love that she lets me hug Judith and rub her feet.
70. I love when we sit down to dinner on the weekends, she just hands me the vitamin, because she knows that I only take them during the week.
71. I love that she now has breakfast with me, even though she isn't a big breakfast person.
72. She puts up with my singing and whistling, even early in the morning.
73. I love that she wears her clothes until they fall apart.
74. I love that she is very creative and artsy.
75. I love it when she gets excited about the Red Sox.
76. I love walking on the beach and going in the ocean with her, and hugging her underwater.
77. I love it when she answers the phone in a really happy voice.
78. I love that she let's me do stuff with the best father-in-law that anybody could ever ask for.
79. I love it when she always makes me pick where we go out for dinner.
80. I love that I can talk to her about anything that I am feeling and she will always be honest with me.
81. I love it that she thinks my friend Ken is THE BOMB.
82. I love that she always believes in me no matter what.
83. I love that she calls the GPS "Jane."
84. I love to play "do you know this song" with her when driving and listening to the radio.
85. I love that she doesn't take 2 hours to take a shower and get ready, 20 minutes and that's it.
86. I love that she has and will continue to thoroughly enrich my life.

Why I Love My Husband

I woke up this morning and rolled out of bed--I couldn't sleep. I gazed on that sleeping man next to me, and I started feeling all mushy and sentimental like. And I started mentally ticking off all the things about him that I love. So I thought I'd post it here, just so I could show my love for him. He deserves it for putting up with me.

Yeah, I'm feelin' all mushy and sentimental today. It's a nice feeling.

1. I love that when he is in bed and it's too hot for him under the covers but he knows that I like to snuggle up to him and get nice and toasty warm that he just barely sneaks out of the blankets so that his back is exposed and keeps him nice and cool, while I still get to snuggle into him and keep nice and warm.

2. I love the way he tells me that he doesn't think it's funny when he makes me yell "SIR, YES, SIR!" in response to a question he's posed, but then when I say it, he laughs like hell.

3. I love the noise he makes when he puts in his hearing aids.

4. I love that when he gets dressed in the morning, before he buttons and zips his pants, he tucks in the pockets and makes sure they're just so.

5. I love his smile.

6. I love that when we discuss bad habits, he says, "I know, it's gross" and then he laughs like hell.

7. I love when he says, "That's it!" and smacks something to make a point. As in, "We're going to Papa Gino's and that's it!" and then he smacks his hand and we go to Papa Gino's.

8. I love when he attempts to demonstrate how big or small something is. If it's big, he throws his arms wide. If it's little, he pats his hands together very gently. Oh my God, do I love this.

9. I love that he threatens to make stew out of TomTom and then I get TomTom and put him in The General's arms and he buries his face in TomTom's fur and says, "Oh my God, he smells so good." I'll be stew before that rabbit is.

10. I love the Google face.

11. I love that he gags when touching pumpkin guts. I don't know why, but it cracks me up.

12. I love that he does the laundry.

13. I love that he comes home and does everything in order: lunchbag near the microwave, cane by the front door, upstairs where the wallet goes in the caddy on the bureau, keys in another section, badges get all wrapped up, and then it's time for a trip to the bathroom. Without fail, this happens every single work day.

14. I love that when he gets dressed in a button down shirt, he buttons every button, then smooths them all down nice, making sure they're in a perfect line, then puts on his pants, and rechecks the buttons to make sure they didn't go anywhere and they're in line with the zipper on his pants.

15. I love the "Susan is a bigfoot" song that he sings in the shower.

16. I love that if he doesn't like something I've made for dinner and I ask him if he wants more, he diplomatically replies, "I think I'll just have a snack later."

17. I love that my driving doesn't bother him in the least.

18. I love that he lets me be the boss when I want to be, and lets me think I'm the boss at all other times.

19. I love that he will come streaking down the stairs from the radio tower yelling, "I got the Canary Islands" only to return a few minutes later to say, "I think I already had the Canary Islands."

20. I love that he never lets me quit, even if I am begging to give up. Quit is not in his vocabulary.

21. I love that he believes in such big dreams for himself and he truly believes that his own success is inevitable. He makes me believe it too.

22. I love that he meets every person convinced that they're going to love him/us. Where I think everyone I meet is trying to figure out why they shouldn't like me, he's convinced that everyone on the planet thinks we're awesome. What a great attitude!

23. I love our 7:30AM Monday phone calls. They make Mondays more tolerable.

24. I love that he does his 25 on the treadmill, gets off dripping with sweat, hurls himself on the couch and yells, "That must have been a mile!"

25. I love that he cleans the bathrooms.

26. I love that he thinks my parents are the cats' meow and he loves having coffee with my mom and pizza with my dad.

27. I love that he calls all his female friends his 'honeys' and refers to them as "My Honey Debbie" or "My Honey Elizabeth" as in "How's My Honey Lesley today?"

28. I love that he is convinced I have written a major bestseller.

29. I love that he screams and yells when the football game is on, and then he comes downstairs grumbling, "Susan, they played like little kids."

30. I love that he waited up for me last night.

31. I love that he tucks me in in the mornings before he goes to work.

32. I love that he supports my participation in the book club and knows how much it means to me.

33. I love the compliments he gives me when he really, really, really loves something I've made or done. I can live off those for a year.

34. I love when he gets excited and does the excited hand thing.

35. I love when I point out the excited hand thing and he says, "Jesus, I must look like a dumbass" and then vows never to do it again, only to do it again next time he gets excited.

36. I don't know why, but I love the hell out of it when he calls me "Cheap Cherepon".

37. I love that when I tell him, "Oh, that cologne smells so good", the next day he about takes a bath in it for my benefit.

38. I love that if I drop something in the toilet, he will fish it out and then yell, "There!"

39. I love that when I want to do something and he's not too sure he wants me to do it, he says, "Suuuuuuuuuusan, I dunno about this!" and then lets me do it anyway. (ie buying a ticket to go meet Christopher Plummer next week)

40. I love that he let me pick out our baby names.

41. I love that with all his heart he wishes I could have a cat even though his allergies prevent it.

42. I love his tolerance for pain, like when he rips off his toenail and sticks his foot under boiling hot water to wash it off and then dumps rubbing alcohol on it for good measure and announces it's never felt better. Meanwhile, I'm about ready to faint.

43. I love that he loves to read with me.

44. I love the silly little emails he sends me about 50 times a day--usually one or two words or a sentence, but they always make me laugh.

45. I love what he writes on cards when he has flowers or strawberries delivered to me.

46. I love that he is not going to let a Valentine's Day go by without me getting chocolate covered strawberries.

47. I love that all I have to do is tap his arm three times when I get into bed and he rolls over and lets me do the holding.

48. I love that if he doesn't want me to do the holding and he doesn't want to do the rolling, he says, "I just got comfortable, I'm not doing it!" in his sleepy voice.

49. I love that if there is nothing else to do, he will sit upstairs, cranking his music and singing to beat the band.

50. I love that durning NaNo, he will yell, "one thousand words!" and I will actually go downstairs and write 1000 words.

51. I love when something goes wrong and he yells, "Oh for cryin' out loud".

52. I love his little New England accent.

53. I love when he gets all full of himself and sends out a hot dog email reading something to the effect of, "Excellence in defense of the nation".

54. I love the "Appreciate your 100% cooperation and support" emails in response to me saying, "Yes, I will go to the drug store and get you some more band aids."

55. I love his love of ketchup and tomato sauce, but not tomatoes.

56. I love when he tries to be diplomatic about something. Like the other night, I made a big pot of homemade spaghetti sauce and I suggested we have some on our pizza the other night and he said, "Oh, it was good, hon, but don't we have some Ragu? I mean, your sauce is really good, but I don't know if it will work on pizza." That just cracked me up.

57. I love that he's not hot on ice cream here at home, but he loves eating ice cream at Friendly's, DQ, Maggie Moos, or Carls.

58. I love his love of french fries and mashed potatoes and occasionally baked potatoes, but never potato salad.

59. I love that if I ask, he'll bring me a big glass of ice water, even though he and I both know I won't drink more than a sip of it.

60. I love that if I drink something the wrong way and start choking, he yells, "Jesus, wrong pipe!" and starts laughing if I'm coughing more than 2 minutes, but he tries to hide the fact that he's laughing because he doesn't want me to feel bad.

61. I love that every time I have a bad day at work, he tells me, "Susan, just go in there and quit. We'll make it happen."

62. I love when I am reading a book to him that has a real sad ending and I'm bawling my eyes out just trying to get through each word and he is sitting there laughing, but again, trying not to show it.

63. I love that every Friday night, he places his bet on how he thinks I've done that week for Weight Watchers, and then he waits for me to get home on Saturday and says, "How'd ya do?" the minute I walk in the door.

64. I love when he feels his spot at the table and says, "Jesus, I've made a mess!"

65. I love that we have similar views on religion and politics.

66. I love that he doesn't agree with me 100% of the time, and isn't afraid to say so.

67. I love hearing his watch click shut after he's checked the time.

68. I love that he likes to get everything done right now (!) while I'm such a procrastinator.

69. I love going to concerts with him and singing and dancing with him all night long.

70. I love that he's not afraid to show his emotions.

71. He makes the world a better place for me to live.

72. He's never too busy to take my calls.

73. He will do whatever is in his power to make me feel better if I'm having a bad day.

74. We never go past a Godiva Chocolates without at least getting a little something :-)

75. For some reason, I love the fact that he loves Swedish fish. I don't know why, but I just think it's adorable.

76. I love when he goes grocery shopping with me and he just follows along behind the cart as happy as a clam.

77. I love when we're in the grocery store and he whispers, "I wanna get Susan some flowers."

78. I love his nicknames for everyone, like "Little Anne" and "The Chief".

79. I love when I tell him to smile for a picture and he makes that horrible growling, teeth-baring smile. It cracks me up. And then he whines, "I can't smile on command!" So I say, "Cookies!" and he starts smiling like a champ.

80. I love that we come up with a vacation plan in general like "Let's go to Las Vegas" and then he lets my OCD take over and plan the whole thing down to the millisecond and he follows along happily, proclaiming it to be the best vacation we ever took.

81. I love that he loves the beach as much as I do.

82. I love that he doesn't necessarily want to stay in DC forever either and we can dream of a retirement elsewhere.

83. I love his optimism that I have as good a memory as he does.

84. I love that he reads these blogs and regurgitates them back to me.

85. I love that he thanks my friends for being my friends. Because I really am that hopeless that gratitude must be shown!

86. I love that when I mentioned to him today that I was going to make up this list, he said, "It's about time you posted something about me" and then he gets pissed off when I do post something about him. That just cracks me up double.

Well, ok, I could go on and on, and maybe I'll do some more later :-) But basically, marriage is made up of all the little things that add up to more and more years with Mr. Right. And all these little things and more add up to almost ten years now. Hard to believe, but I can hardly wait to see where the next ten take us.

Good News in Fredericksburg!

The General and I are getting our lives back!!!

It is official, so I'm going to share the good news without too many details.

The General has been busy applying for new jobs in the area. As much as he has loved his current job and the people he works with, the long days are really hard. Additionally, there are times where getting up at 5AM to get him to the van pool or to help take care of his toe or just because he's up at that hour can grate on the nerves of even the most patient spouse who doesn't have to get up till 7AM.

But it is official as of this morning. The General was selected and has been hired to being working at a new job at Quantico on December 8th. His round trip commute to and from work will now be less than his one way commute at his current job. That the job comes with a small raise is a nice bonus, but frankly, we are ultimately thrilled about a future we can envision where as a family we sit down to breakfast together, where God forbid there is an emergency (like me breaking my leg again) it doesn't take an act of Congress for him to get home, and where if his carpools don't come through, I can drive him to work ON MY WAY TO WORK, or stop and have lunch with him if I'm in the area, or a hundred other wonderful things. The end is in sight to his 4AM wake up calls, his $200+ per month vanpool payments, his 2 and 3 hour commute times each way in bad traffic.

Even more beautiful is the fact that these people wanted him based solely on his merits as a candidate. They did not know about his disabilities until after the selection was made. His work speaks for itself. No special hiring authorities this time. His reputation made it happen.

I am so, so, so proud of him and thrilled that our lives are going to be immeasurably better in so many ways for this opportunity. In the immortal words of George Peppard, "Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?"

I Take Umbrage With That, Sir

Mr. Talmadge Gleck, you have created a monster.

Prior to meeting you, the words "Fountain Dew" were never a part of our vernacular.

It's official.

Fountain Dews are a part of our way of life now.

And if the WaWa is not obliging, we bring home a couple cans of Dew and pour them into a plastic cup.

It makes them taste better, apparently.

Thank you.