Word To The Ys

SUNDAY:

After two weekends of seeing his parents dress “handsome” to attend weddings, Ollie breaks out the finery for Sunday morning church.

This picture is sort of a game of “one of these things is not like the others”, but we could all be the oddball out for different reasons.

MONDAY and TUESDAY:

No pictorial evidence, but these days were pretty normal.  Max, Ollie, Joe attend school; I work; Seth plays like a rockstar.  Which generally entails dumping out the contents of the entire toy shelf in a giant chaotic heap on the floor and ripping up books, just like any respectable rockstar would.

WEDNESDAY:

I am so crabby and tired on Wednesday.  I’ve been having some health-related things that have been knocking me out (nothing serious at all, and I’m hopeful that it will be corrected soon.)  When Max gets home from school we all go out into the lovely afternoon and I take pictures of the boys, to remind me of why I do this crazy-hard job in the first place.

It works.

Ollie has his last swimming class; he has transformed from hell in water to floppy little imp in water over the course of 8 weeks.  Still not even close to swimming, but definite progress has been made.  We all eat ice cream after attending his last lesson in celebration of his work.

THURSDAY:

Can you say…all-school MUSICAL?!?

Joe attends the daytime performance due to class that evening and misses out on the magic of the evening show.  Maxwell is…a revelation.  A revelation in what happens when small children are in many scenes as “human wallpaper”.  In other words: he is not aware of himself as part of the scene.  In other words: he does a bunch of hilarious stuff to make me and all the other loved ones in attendance laugh until tears roll down our cheeks. 

Nose flicking: check.  Underwear adjustment: check. 

And best of all: unconscious mouthing and mimicking of leads’ songs and/or lines: check.  He gestures like a pro, I tell ya.  Or at least like his Boompa. 

FRIDAY:

Our friend was ordained on Thursday night while we were at the musical/in class, but she has a party Friday and we happily go.  Happily without the kids.  Who are happily at home with Uncle Mark and Angie…well, all are happy except Ollie, who has been throwing up all day and is already asleep by the time Mark and Angie arrive.

The party is fun.  Loud, but fun.  We don’t stay long because Mark and Angie await us for post-bedtime chat and games.  We play a ridiculous game on the Wii (Wario Smooth Moves).  The most entertaining bit is when, after Angie and I make several unsuccessful attempts at it, Mark and Joe insist on trying this tandem jumping mini-game, thinking it’s really easy and why are Courtney and Angie so bad at it?  Guess. what.  Not so easy!  I do believe Mark would have stayed until 3:00 AM in an attempt to “beat” it, but we kick them out around midnight and collapse into bed.

SATURDAY:

Joe takes on the jungle-like yard.  It takes four + hours, but I think he wins.  We have a pile of compost to show for it.  But enough work!  In Joe’s family, we do our birthday celebrations in quarterly chunks.  Saturday is the Summer Birthdays party.  We sit in ridiculous traffic but eventually arrive at the “Country Cousins” house with three very excited children.  Did you know that, according to them, the word “cousins” is to be followed by a thousand exclamation points?  Here we visit, play, eat, and get really silly.  And dirty.

I am very remiss this day in that I do not take into account the grown-boy antics of Joe and his own brothers; I do not bring Joe’s swim trunks for the giant homemade slip’n'slide.  I am rewarded for this oversight by Joe sliding all over it anyway in his regular shorts.  Our camera battery dies before I can get any pictures of him with Ollie playing forever on the big ‘ol injury maker, but here are some other action shots of the cousins:

I will refrain from posting any photos of the man-children on here, because it is better for everyone involved.  I am happy that boys will be boys forever, though; it is some small comfort to this mother of three boys.  Until I think of all the potential hospital bills.  But at least MAN-children have to pay their own bills!

We take our leave from the COUSINS! and travel home.  It takes so long, but it is worth it.  We all pass out unconscious upon our return.

SUNDAY:

It is finally August.  We gives thanks for a fun but hectic and very stressful month and give even more thanks that we have seen it through to the other side.  Next up: Maxwell on vacation for a whole month!  Driving me bonkers!  Joe taking his finals!  Driving me bonkers!  Ollie finishing up preschool!  Driving me bonkers!  Seth and his temper!  Driving me bonkers!  But it’s just normal-bonkers instead of asylum-bonkers.  Relief.

Posted in Joe, Max, Mostly Me, Ollie, Seth | 8 Comments »

Joe’s at Fish Camp.  Huzzah!  I mean seriously, the lead-up to yesterday’s shoving-off was almost comical in its busyness.  And now that he’s safely among those great young people, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief.  Don’t get me wrong…I miss him…but it’s a relief to get a lot of other things back to “normal”.  Health is returning, and sleep is equalizing.  After taking Joe to my folks’ for his ride out to camp with my dad, we four went to church and then came home, where I turned naptime into a cleaning frenzy.  I am ashamed at how much needed to be done (and still does!) but as I said, having all the sick kids and camp prep left no time for cleaning for weeks and weeks.  It’s a miracle the dishes got washed during that time.  But things are definitely looking better around here today, and I’m trying to embrace the bee in my bonnet and see just how clean I can make things.  Before Joe comes home and dumps all the camp stuff all over the place.

I promised myself that I would watch a movie every night this week for the project.  It almost didn’t happen last night, as Maxwell was missing his Papa so much he just couldn’t go to sleep.  Poor guy.  He’s such a Papa’s boy.  I mean, I don’t even know any of the answers to his multitude of D & D questions.  I think he only keeps me around for the food, frankly.  But I finally convinced him that Papa was well and so were we, even while apart, and exhaustion took over.  I settled into a movie called TiMER. 

This is a movie I stuck in our streaming Netflix queue because it looked quirky, and it was delightful.  The basic premise is this: in an alternate reality (the future? Didn’t seem like it…) there is a device that many people have implanted on their wrists which tells them the number of days, hours, and minutes until they will meet their one true love.  It essentially goes to zeros at midnight of the day you will meet your “One”, and then when you make eye contact with that person both your TiMERs will make noise.  The main character, Oona (can I just interrupt to say how much I love that name?  Because I do!) has a TiMER, but it’s just flashing dashes because her “One” has not yet been implanted with a device.  For the time being, this orthodontist shares an apartment with her spunky step-sister and best friend, Steph, whose own timer is set to go off in 15 years.  The gals have very different philosophies about their plight.  Oona dates TiMER-less men carefully for a little while before taking them to the center to be implanted and see if they are her “One”.  Obviously, this has not worked for her.  Steph has a series of one-nighters while biding her 15 years.  Oona thinks of this as cheating in a way, and doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to spend time with anyone who’s not “The One”.

Oona meets Mikey, who’s a market checkout guy 8 years her junior.  Oy.  He’s got a TiMER set to go off in 4 months, but for some reason Oona starts a thing with him.  They are a weird couple: orthodontist and checkout-guy/drummer in a band.  She’s markedly more adult than he.  But he shows her how to have fun and be spontaneous.  Steph thinks Oona is crazy for having a prolonged relationship with a guy that will inevitably end in heartache, as his TiMER continues counting down to his inevitable encounter with his soul mate. 

I won’t give any more of the plot away, for those of you who want to take a gander at this charming little indie movie.  But I will say that this movie got me thinking.  A LOT.  The basic underlying premise of the TiMER is that people never again will have to deal with heartbreak if they have one of these implanted.  It will protect them from making “bad” choices when it comes to love.  Oona’s 14-year-old brother has an implant on his birthday, as the law allows, and meets his soulmate within the week.  So here’s a 14-year-old boy with no prior experience who now has the knowledge that a stranger is his “One”.  He doesn’t have to date other girls.  He only has to interact (uncomfortably, at that) with the very sweet girl who is his match.  What would that be like?  If such a device existed, would you be willing to have one implanted?

What would we all miss if this was a reality?  It is a well-known fact that I wear my heart completely on my sleeve.  And I’m melodramatic.  And a hopeless romantic.  Doesn’t that sound like a great recipe for heartache?  Believe me when I say: it is.  I have had my heart busted right up so many times I’m loathe to admit it.  It makes me sound so boy-crazy to talk about it.  But I find so much beauty in people and love very easily.  Would I have traded all my heartaches for this device?  If I did believe in “The One” (which, though I’m so happily married it’s ridiculous, I don’t) it stands to reason that my TiMER might have gone off in my 8th grade physics or Spanish class (I don’t recall which one came earlier in the day) when I locked eyes with Joe for the first time that day. 

We would never have had our own tumultuous journey because we would both be absolutely assured of the “rightness” of our union.  I would never have had all my gay ex-boyfriends.  I would never have had a wonderful though brief relationship with the German exchange student with whom I spent many a night discussing the validity of this very premise of “The One” (a relationship which, as this is me we’re talking about here, ended awkwardly because I was a moron about relationships).  I would have been spared all my angsty nights of tear-dampened pillows and horrible poetry authorship (or worse still: songwriting!)

But would you want to miss all that?  Would you choose to miss out on the all-too-educational pain?  I’m afraid to think of how little I might know about myself now if I hadn’t lived through what I did.  So my answer is no.  I wonder what your answer might be?

Posted in Joe, Mostly Me, The Movie Project | 5 Comments »