her able hands

I’m a cranky, reactive, mess of a mother the past few days. I keep thinking in a very loud, screeching voice, that I just want a day off from my children. That raising a teenager and a toddler at the same time is the same as having two full-time jobs. One as an event planner, and one as a gopher. My brain feels like it’s going to explode with the pressure of having to say everything to the teenager twenty times before it sinks in, and then he does what he’s asked as half-assed as he can get away with. He won’t get out of bed until noon, and stays up all night. The toddler talks incessently, and climbs me like a mountain if I sit down to try to write, or heaven forbid, think an uninterrupted thought. Right at this moment, the one thing I want but cannot have is an afternoon alone.

To sit and bang my forehead into the wall to see how fast the house falls down.

Technorati Tags: cranky, mother, teenager, toddler, event planner, gopher

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I’m enjoying (defiantly, in spite of the chilly rain, and in spite of my recent insomnia) an afternoon glass of thick iced coffee, sweetened with organic cane sugar, and enough half and half to make it creamy but dark. I’m hoping it will remind the universe that it’s supposed to be sunny and warm out there, instead of all this endless rain, endless rain. And more rain. And oh, look! Here comes another band of rain!

We haven’t got it nearly as bad as New England, but it’s grey, breezy, and the fifth day of a steady drizzle interspersed with heavy rain (but not torrential.) The weather coupled with my moon time (oh, perimenopause, how I am not quite ready for thee!) has turned me into a zombie. Thus the afternoon coffee. Mmmm coffee. Thank Maude for coffee.

Hey! I wanted to tell you about the Punch Buggy! Tyler and I have had a vicious game of Punch Buggy going on between us for about six years now. It’s funny how some days I’m totally ON and I don’t miss a beat. I’m the one driving, so I’m already mostly alert, and I can see the ones in front of us as well as behind. My favorite is the black buggy because it rhymes, “Punch buggy black, can’t do nothin’ back!” We have to say the “can’t do nothing’ back” part, or the other person can deliver a rebuttal punch. Sometimes we both see the car at the same time, and then we rush to be the first one to get all the words out.

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Technorati Tags: perimenopause, coffee, Punch Buggy

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Late, as usual.

Yesterday was a very mellow, quiet day. Slow rumbling thunderstorms moving through, soft rain all day. Same again today. We spent the evening at Cheril & Greg’s for a long, leisurly dinner and conversation, with an incredible strawberry pie and homemade vanilla ice cream to finish us off. I love having friends who are as into food as I am. Who like to sit around the table for long talks, and slow eating. It’s one of my favorite parts of life on earth.

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A few people thought I turned 40 yesterday because I said in the last post, “Thus begins my 40th year.”

But we aren’t born an age, so I just meant that I turned 39, and am starting the first day of year 40, which will culminate next May 10 in a giant birthday celebration when I turn 40. I had a big party for my 30th with cupcakes from the Cupcake Cafe in NYC, so will need to find a culinary equivalent for the cakeage.

Yesterday was a fine day, most of it spent schlepping Tyler to the orthodontist, then to the inlaws so he could work off some of the time he owes them for buying him an anvil. I got sucked into raking out beds, trimming an evil Barberry Bush (useless shrubbery! thanks for the 39 birthday puncture wounds!) and yanking out miles of Honeysuckle vines. Then Ty had to go to the library to return books and pick out sources for his Redemption Paper.

Chris told me to break the moratorium on extra spending for the night so I could buy a Dairy Queen cake, and he brought home beer. After a sweaty day in the sun and humidity, that beer tasted like Birthday Heaven. And the second one got me so deliciously sleepy that I went to bed and went so deep, I feel like a new woman.

Thank you all, you bunch of sweethearts, for all of your kind birthday wishes. You made the day extra special for me.

We got some +/- news yesterday about the house. The title search is complete so we can close at any time. The seller’s realtor said she was eager to do this sooner than the contract said, but she agreed to the terms of the contract anyway, but now apparently she wants to stick to the contract, so we won’t be moving for another 6 weeks. We did ask her to move up the date of the close by a few days so we can keep the interest rate we are locked in with until June 8. So we’ll close on the 5th, and she stays in the house for 24 more days. I’ll need to talk with her about getting over there the day after the close with a rototiller, manure, and my seed box. Time’s a wastin’!

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I’d like a rebate. Or something.

I had the worst case of insomnia last night. After sleeping from 10 to 1 am, I jerked awake and stayed that way until well after Chris left the house at 5 am. At one point I stared at the ceiling while the bed shook because the cat was giving herself an extended tongue bath, and the room filled with her wet/dry smacking sounds, and I worked hard to resist the urge to throw her out the open window, through the screen. It took every ounce of energy, and as wired as I was, that was a lot of energy.

I probably should have gotten up and packed CDs or made myself a birthday cake, but I didn’t want to keep anybody else awake. Instead, I ruminated on the way my life suddenly seems to be in fifth gear again, on how I need to be rested enough to go from zero to ninety in ten seconds, on how impossible that will be if I am unable to sleep. I thought about how this family is going through some major changes, and how I need to be the glue that keeps it all together, but how I don’t feel sticky enough in the right way. Night sweat sticky, yes. Glue sticky, not so much.

I said to myself, “Thus begins my fortieth year.” I said it out loud, hoping that Chris would hear me and make sympathetic cooing noises at me from across the great divide where Lila had her head jammed into his armpit, while I shoved her feet away from my ass crack every four minutes.

Chris is not a cooing kind of guy. He’s more of a grunting, “I’m awake over here too, and I have to get up in a few minutes to move giant bars of steel around and turn them into useful things for big machines, so quit your complaining,” kind of guy. He’s more of a “Well, I know how to tire you out baby, let’s move this to the other room,” kind of guy.

Unfortunately last night I was an “If you touch any spot on my itchy skin, or think for one minute that I will be able to rise up out of the miasma that is my headache, or be able to ride the waves out of the stormy, churning sea that is my growly, sore tummy courtesy of the garlicky sweet potato and black bean burritos we ate for dinner, well, no. I won’t. So quit thinking about it,” kind of bitchy, older than my age, useless fart of a woman.

Happy Birthday to me!

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