the jedi & the geisha

Konichiwa. And may the Force be with you.

More Wordless Wednesday gems here.

ready...set...

I was in the mother of all afternoon slumps today at 3:15. Okay, I exaggerate - perhaps it was just the aunt of all slumps. Regardless, I drove home with a budding headache that only worsened as I punched from station to station on the radio, searching for just the right thing although I didn't know what that really was. Smart NPR news from the world? No, blah and frankly, too smart for me at this time of day. Amusing anecdotes from local witty DJs? Not for long, too loud and jovial. Best slow dance song from 1984? Too depressing. Pussycat Dolls? No thanks, embarrassing and also depressing. Classic rock? CURSE YOU, JETHRO TULL! Grrrrr. Nothing was right, and resorting to my own hand-picked CDs seemed like admitting defeat; surely it was better to let the throbbing build in my brain.

Arriving at home, however, I was greeted by the sweetly comical sight of my children - backpacks still on - stalking a squirrel in our yard. Their seriousness was genuine; they didn't even look up when I pulled into the driveway. As I got out of the car, I heard them engrossed in whispered reconnaissance with each other. I could not direct that kind of sibling camaraderie if my life depended on it. Joyousness.

But still I was dragging a bit. The pounding in my head was reduced to more of a poking, but it was still an annoyance (as anyone who's suffered the MomMomMomMom finger-jabbing into the very marrow of her shoulder knows). Checked the mail, cut a few cubes of Gouda, snuck a Tootsie Roll for good measure, and turned on Ellen. Feeling better. Did the bad-but-feels-right thing by reading my favorite blogs while watching TV and snacking.

I am now ready to change out of my teacher clothes and into my comfortable housework-doing mom clothes. Ready to do a power sweep of the kitchen, living room, and laundry area. Any minute now. Maybe one more Tootsie Roll is in order.

i can't stop myself

This is what I've given birth to:





I can't decide which is worse - Corey Feldman, boy band members, or George Bernard Shaw. As long as the personalities don't transfer, we're good. Although my boy could use a dose of Dalai Lama calm occasionally, and Paige would love to get her hands on Amisha Patel's wardrobe...

and my husband is pretty, too

Shaq. That is funnier than me resembling Michelle Pfeiffer.

My grade school girlfriends would be totally excited that I married Hutch, though.

150 things you may or may not care about

This just in - go to my A-Lister blog for more. (I'm not dead yet; I'm feeling better).

optimist

My cold has created not only the requisite stuffed nose and scratchy throat, but also these remarkable new sore eye socket & swollen ear feelings; the leftover Chinese food from dinner has engulfed the entire kitchen counter area, except where dirty dishes abound; the movie I picked to watch with my best friend & our husbands (Music & Lyrics) was roundly disliked by the best friend even though it has the required happy ending; I am profoundly tired and should sleep for at least 12 hours, yet ought to be up and ready for a 9 am meeting with Friends of the Library tomorrow.

HOWEVER, if I sit up very straight, I can breathe through my nose and if I don't talk or swallow my throat feels okay. The eyes & ears are manageable when I distract myself with the other symptoms. The Chinese food was delicious and my amazing, fantastic, Mark Wahlberg-lookalike husband (love you, babe!) is cleaning every surface as I type. I personally loved the movie even though, as my mysteriously irritated best friend kept pointing out, Drew & Hugh are 15 years apart; my Fountains of Wayne wrote a bunch of songs for the soundtrack and "Radiation Vibe" was playing in the background of one scene (I'm not obsessed, don't judge). I mention that my friend's reaction is mysterious because her annoyance with this happy sappy lovey-dovey story confuses me, considering her words after seeing The Hours with me were "Don't ever make me watch a movie like that again." Music & Lyrics is the polar opposite of The Hours. How do I win this game?

I digress. More bright side: We drank good wine then pilfered the secret stash of Halloween candy; I am momentarily going directly to bed, possibly without taking the two minutes to brush my teeth so I can down some Nyquil, and I might skip the Friends meeting (though I will remain quite friendly with our library nonetheless, I promise) to sleep until lunchtime.

You know what they say: Always look on the bright side of life...

to sleep, perchance to...just sleep, that's all i want

While my diehard PTA board weathers the storm of, well, actual weather along with the craziness that is our Picture Day company, I stay home with my sick child. Go to my list blog to read what I hope to do in the few hours I have before heading to teach. And then, I'm out the door as soon as my last student hits the sidewalk so I can come home to nap.

Happy Thursday - the weekend is almost here! There will be more sleeping...

falling

Happy Wordless Wednesday

are we all this dense, or is it just me?

I watched my daughter walk away from me this afternoon, down the block toward her friend's house. She just turned seven last spring and we have let her go around the neighborhood alone (with a walkie-talkie), but today I wanted to be with her most of the way. Partly because she was sobbing as she left our house - she couldn't find the little virtual pet store neo-something doodad that her friend wanted to "link" with, and there was no time to do a full-on sweep of the room because the friend could play for ONLY HALF AN HOUR, Mahh-hahh-hom! It seemed to me letting a small, bawling young girl shuffle a quarter of a mile by herself was begging for some creep to offer his version of sympathy, and it may have been reasonable grounds for various neighbors to call CPS about the mean (bad) mom sending her poor child away to suffer alone.

Walking alongside, biting my tongue against such unhelpful comments as "If you kept your room picked up like I tell you every week..." and "Maybe it's time to stop spending your money on ridiculous crap that gets lost or broken" forced me to take a glimpse of the world through seven-year-old eyes for a few minutes. I just do not remember actual moments when the world was so small - when not being able to find something to share with a friend truly overwhelmed me enough that I would cry. For five entire minutes. Frankly, I wish I could because it would be a great relief. To have the biggest problem in my life be a lost toy - wow.

I like to think I can empathize with my students when there is relationship drama. I can call up the times I spent weeping in the bathroom during a dance because a particular song was just too hard to bear since the boy I loved didn't love me back. (Open Arms, anyone? Pretty sure I spent most of 1982 in tears). But at the same time, I'm a little mocking of those times. I'm not really remembering the anguish my young self felt - can we do that? Today I really started wondering, because I do love my daughter so much and want to be sympathetic, yet it was hard to get there.

I stopped at the top of the road and let my daughter walk on; her friend was outside her house waving and jumping. Paige turned to look at me half a dozen times as she walked, and I waved each time. She had stopped crying by then, having moved on to a sort of grumpy/sad resolve. I watched her and I thought of how tall she's getting, how she is so at ease with her quirky sense of fashion, how much she loved losing her front tooth this week, how I do not recall any of these things about my own seven-year-old self. I get general flashes of how I behaved, who I cared about and who I didn't, clothes I liked wearing and hairstyles I hated, but I can't pull up any trains of thought or genuine emotion. Are we supposed to be able to do that? Would it be any help at all, or would it just make us feel so old? It seems to me it would be quite helpful, to let the lens narrow a bit in our busy, big world.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.