Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Because even the promise of sparkly-things-to-come has the power to distract me, I give you a small selection of random thoughts:

I’ve always loved the Fourth. There are sparkly fireworks and heart-rousing music that I get to fake-conduct with my dictator stick conductor’s baton. I love to watch the Boston Pops perform on tv, but these past few years I’ve had to forgo that tradition. Ah, the sad realities of having a social life. This year, in fact, I had to choose between two parties! Oh the horrors! So tonight I will be at my IO’s house, making sure it doesn’t burn down from all of the illegal fireworks his neighbors insist on blowing up (last year, we all had to run for cover as one shot into our chairs). We’re grilling  all-American Fourth of July burgers. I baked a homemade cherry pie (and a chocolate cream pie, just in case). There will loud music and the company of friends. It should be a wicked good time…as long as no one gets called in to work.

***

I have been a baking fool this weekend. I made a homemade cherry pie yesterday (which included pitting two pounds of cherries. Oy.), a chocolate cream pie, two dozen chocolate cupcakes, and Bee’s birthday cake this morning. In fact, I even decorated the cake already. It took me thirty minutes. Seriously. I outlined the bunny with dark chocolate store-bought icing, and then I filled it in with homemade cocoa icing so the insides would be a softer brown. Then I outlined the bunny again and added details. Thirty minutes. No crises. Now I’m wondering what’s going to go wrong and when because this isn’t how cakes go at my house. I just have to add blue m&m’s for the eyes and pink m&m’s for the ears and nose tomorrow and he’s done. If only the party were as simple…

***

Strangely, I mowed the back yard yesterday and ended up with some sort of rash afterwards. I don’t know if it’s the high pollen count or if it was a reaction to the sun, or maybe it was just a reaction to the few cherries I ate. The rash was comprised of fine, red, raised bumps – what my mom used to call prickly heat rash. Whatever it was, it itched like crazy. I took some Benadryl and it knocked me out. I can still see it today, but it hasn’t started itching yet. Odd, right?

***

Alrighty folks…I’m outta here. Kind of a lame blog entry, I know. I will try to lead a much more interesting life today and tomorrow. Have a happy holiday and BE CAREFUL!

Peek not through keyholes…

…for though the doors are not locked (and are, in fact, wide open), these rooms are mine.

Wait, huh?

There’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time, but I thought it would be lovely to use it for my first blogiversary (which is in just a few days, if you can believe it). The post being, of course, why do I blog?

I officially started blogging almost one year ago, but I began writing for a blog long before that. I’ve always written in one format or another: diaries, that poetry phase in high school, essays, articles, journal entries. Then I stumbled upon Mir’s Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda and somehow reading through the archives of her blog, about how she managed to climb through the rubble of her divorce gave me the courage to make it through my own. I think that’s the first time I really thought about joining the crazy world of blogging.

I was scared to try. So many other bloggers were already out there and they were all seemingly light-years ahead of me in the talent department. Why bother trying? And if I could somehow manage to find my voice again and make it be heard (no matter how small the venue), how did I know that I could keep it up? How would I ever find something interesting enough to write about day in and day out? And then if I could do that, what if no one read it? Sure, sure – I heard all the Field of Dreams arguments, both from friends and in my heart. Build it and they will come. But supposing they did and I just dropped the blog like one of my other passing phases – what then? What would that do to my already shaky self-image? I couldn’t hold a marriage together, what if I couldn’t even hold a silly blog together?

Lots of questions. Too many questions, even for me. So I turned to my tried and true method of resolving them: I wrote. I wrote fake blog entries to myself for three months. If I could keep it up for three months, I told myself, and I still wanted to do it, I could start a blog. (You’d think I was buy a puppy, for crying out loud.) I did it. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. It was easy when I didn’t have an audience; when I didn’t have a deadline. I wrote in the mornings before work and in the slow times in between, and sometimes (rarely) at night when I needed a minute to myself.

I wrote for me.

And by god, it helped.

I rediscovered how therapeutic writing was. I mean, I had always known it on the top of my mind, but I had forgotten it down deep where all the overthinking and hurt was globbing up everything else. Starting a blog and adding an audience played in a little with my overwhelming (and somewhat unhealthy) need for validation, but really, it was to give myself a place to continue my free therapy and work through so many issues while simultaneously keeping a few close friends and family members up to date with what was going on with me and my girls. I could talk about my life, our life, and underneath the surface I could skate up to whatever was bothering me and air that into the sunshine so I could understand it. Crazy as it sounds, I write semi-publicly so that I can understand myself. It’s for me and no one else.

These are my rooms, my living space. I reside here. I’ve met many friends through blogging and I cherish them and the opportunity. But blogging always has been and will continue to be about working out my own issues. It’s an incredible personal struggle that I’ve decided to put on semi-public display. I’m incredibly proud of myself for sticking with it, for being brave enough to throw it out there, and for learning as much from it as I have. It’s been one more continuous step on this journey to figuring out who the hell I am. Anyone who has stumbled upon them has stumbled across the keyhole into my own therapist’s office, my own Katieverse (or, as Se’Lah calls it, a Necessary Room). Go ahead and peek through the keyhole – hell, come right on in. Hopefully what you see here is reminiscent of what you’re looking for in your own little rooms. But if not, remember – you came looking for me. I don’t mean to be rude, I don’t mean to push anyone away. I’m just trying to tie together what has happened in my life to what actually is, and figure out how the hell to steer all that towards what I want to be.

That is why I blog. I couldn’t get there from where I was, but I’m trying now.

Quote of the day.

I was chatting with my sister on gmail while the girls were happily playing with Bee’s new train and playing house. (Multi-taskers – and at such a young age!) Gracie opened the door to the front room and introduced me to her imaginary friend.

Gracie: Mommy, this is Michael Jackson. My brother.
Me: <spitting all over the monitor as I lost. it.>

Love picks up where it left off.

My vacation, by pure surreptitious luck, ended up as a sort of throwback vacation for me. I was once again in the drivers’ seat instead of sitting idly by while someone else drove me around. Our rental car came with free satellite radio and consequently our week was soundtracked by “90’s on 9,” featuring many songs my sister and I enjoyed the first time around as teenagers hanging out in my room. We ate Niko’s, visited childhood haunts, toured my alma mater, and hung out with family. We even made a day trip up to Weirs Beach, where we used to vacation as kids.

There were many things I didn’t get to do. Because of the rain, I didn’t get to go on any photo shoots around the city. I didn’t tell half my friends I was in town and, sadly, I didn’t get to visit all of the friends I did plan on visiting (forgive me, Se’lah?). We didn’t tour Fenway or catch a game or dip our toes in the Atlantic. There were many “didn’ts” and “should haves” but there was one thing I did do that fit very nicely into my “throwback” theme. I went for coffee with a very old friend whom I hadn’t seen since high school.

That description seems so small when you consider who Julie was. She was my oldest, dearest and bestest friend for over 15 years. She was at our house more often than not; she called my mom “Mom” and was yelled at by my dad just the same as the rest of us. She went on family vacations and was with me when my high school sweetheart finally kissed me for the first time. She was my sister for so many years and then, for some reason or another, we drifted away at the end of high school.

Looking back, I don’t quite remember how it happened. She was practically working full time by the end of high school, and I had my boyfriend, and we both had other sets of friends we had started hanging out with. Then I moved to college that was simultaneously four exits up the highway and half a lifetime away. We just drifted, I guess. Sadly, that was that.

Then, about a year ago, I found her sister on Facebook while I was undercover with my sister’s sign-in. I emailed Em, gave her my email (and my real identity) and told her I’d love to get back in touch with Julie. We did indeed get back in touch, and my parents told me when they ran in to her at her store, and when she heard I was coming home we decided to meet for coffee.

Let me just tell you right here – I was nervous. What if I didn’t recognize her? What if she had changed? What if she hadn’t changed (but in an oh-my-god do you know you’re an adult now!? sort of way)?

I shouldn’t have worried. We met for over two hours and chattered away a mile a minute the entire time – just like we always used to. It was like we had picked up our conversation just where we had left it the summer after our senior year. Even better, after so much talking, we discovered that despite all of the growing and realizations we’ve both gone through the past few years, we’ve somehow had similar epiphanies despite different journeys. We’re both happy with our lives and with who we are. I am so happy to have rediscovered such a wonderful friendship. Really, it was like coming home.

(And she thought I was kidding when I said I would write a post about how awesome she is. The Katie-Craziness might make sense to her because she grew up with it and watched it take root over the years, but clearly she has forgotten how sneaky and hilarious and wildly honest I am!)

Rekindling our friendship was one of the best parts of my vacation. It felt like another stop of this wild journey of rediscovering myself. Happy Love Thursday, everyone! May you find something today you’ve been looking for, whether or not you realize how much you’ve missed it.

The birthday that wasn’t.

So. Yesterday started off well. I was feeling pretty good about having made a Target run for last minute presents, wrapped the presents, baked and decorated cupcakes (for us and Bee’s class), chatted with the neighbor for an hour, showered, blogged, wrapped a belated Father’s Day gift, put the kids to bed and finished a book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for my ramp up to the 6th movie hitting the theaters next month). I was on fire. I could do anything! I even successfully delivered a tray of cupcakes to school without knocking any of them over.

And then school called after lunch and said to please come pick up Bee because a giant vomitous mass of feverish goo.

Um. Yeah. So birthday cupcakes? Cancelled. (We sang, but she refused to eat them. Either she’s sick for real, or else the Apocalypse is near.) She did have a fever of 102.6 when I picked her up, but she managed to perk up at the thought of presents. So at least I got some pictures. Of course, once she ran through that, she was too pooped out to talk to anyone. Maybe we’ll have Birthday 2.0 on Thursday night. We can have McDonald’s like we’d planned and maybe go crazy and actually eat some cupcakes and do our annual birthday picture. We can work our way up to playing with her presents, too. I know – I’m wild and crazy when it comes to birthdays.

Poor kid. Good thing she still insists that her “birt-day is comin’ up!” because yesterday certainly deserves a do-over.

The Likes and Dislikes of Bee at 3-years-old.

I started a tradition with Gracie’s birthday; I had meant her birthday letter to mark her likes and dislikes, accomplishments and quirks, but found myself gushing instead about how my life rose and set with her. Funnily enough, the same thing happened with Bee. It’s so darn tough when you love your children so much. So here you go: my Bee Baby’s 10 most favoritest things ever, and 10 things she never, not ever wants to ever hear of again.

Ten Things Bee Loves:

1. Hopping. It’s her dearest love right now. The kid will hop anywhere and everywhere. Seriously. It is physically, mortally impossible for her to walk sedately anywhere at all. I think she’s half bunny rabbit.
2. Singing. Particularly, she loves singing “I’m smushing up a baby bumble-beeeeeee…” and Wheels on the Bus and Five Little Ducks. She sings along with some of the grown-up songs on the radio, but Bee is happily still a kid at heart.
3. Chocolate. We are all food lovers and appreciators of fine chocolate at my house, but Bee really lurrrrves her some chocolate. To her, it’s the deity of all things food – the way it’s meant to be.
4. Waking up early. This one hurts me deep in my heart. Bee used to be my baby (erm…toddler) who would go to bed at 6:30 p.m. and sleep until 9:00 a.m. if I let her. Her wake-up time sloooowly crept backward until 8:30, then 8 a.m. Then 7 a.m., and now she’s springing awake at 6 a.m. The kid would be up even earlier if I let her. For the love of sleep, child, GO BACK TO BED! You will thank me when you’re a teenager.
5. Cheese. She would trade me for cheese. She would trade years off her life for cheese. She would learn to read and write just so she could write a book about how much she loves cheese. True story.
6. Babies and purses and all things girly. This is funny to me because you are not a girly-girl. You are mischievous and a tomboy and dirt and mayhem. But you will play for hours with your baby dolls, holding them on your hip and “shhh-ing” them as you rock back and forth, or feeding them pretend food. You find a purse and fill it with jewels, phones, blocks, or really whatever is handy and then cart them around. (Heaven help the person who tries to get between you and your purse.) Entire afternoons you’ll spend with all of these facets of your version of playing house. Even better, you usually include your sister in your pretend-play and I love to watch the two of you weave magically mundane stories around your pretend families.
7. Turning my hair gray. You jump up and down on the couch and can’t figure out how I know you’re doing it when I’m in the next room. (The springs squeak, silly.) You pull your bed out from the wall and jump from your bed to your sister’s when you’re supposed to be going to sleep – and don’t even have the grace to look guilty when I catch you! You fall down constantly, dangle perilously from chairs, and whack your head quite often again any hard surface nearby (usually the coffee table). I don’t know who you’re going to kill first – you or me from sheer fright!
8. Whining. Please, oh please let this be a short-lived phase. For the past few months, you’ve refused to use your words to tell me what’s wrong. You whine. Or cry. Or both, while moaning my name. I’m partly to blame, I know. I enable you by guessing what’s wrong. Then nothing will fix it but a long hug, a kiss, and a some soothing words from Mommy. But this stops now, you hear? I am not running off to college to fix your boo-boos.
9. Band-aids. You will invent boo-boos just to get a band-aid. I have had to use the words, “You’re not bleeding; you don’t get a band-aid,” in an attempt to reason with you. I just love the added bonus of giving you a goal to work up to.
10. Being silly. Silly narrowly beat out mischievous as Bee’s Top Quality. Bee will tell you she is “Gwacie” not Bee, or that your dirty clothes go “on da cei-wing fan” when I ask if they belong on the floor. I love the glint she gets in her eyes when she know she is asking for trouble. God, I love this happy-go-lucky kid.
    

Ten Things Bee Hates, Hates, Hates with the Passion of 1,000 Fiery Suns:

1. Being told no. I should amend that – sometimes she does fine. But if she really isn’t in the mood, she ain’t kidding. She will enact her go-go-gadget spaghetti legs and collapse to floor, crying and whining faster than you can even blink. Really, she should rethink that strategy because then I can’t give in.
2. Hot dogs. I don’t know what it is about it, because Bee used to live on hot dogs and their predecessor, Vienna Sausages. Now she won’t even take a bite. She will tell you she likes them, though, just to lick off the ketchup (and ask for more).
3. Waking up 15 minutes earlier than she normally would have (you know – at the crack of dawn) to go to school. “Seep! Seeeeeep, Mommy!” she begs. Dahling, I’d love to let you sleep in – Lord knows I loathe getting up early to go to work – but this is just how life is. So just SLEEP IN ON THE WEEKENDS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Ahem.
   
4. Spiders or bugs. This is a weird one. Sometimes she is fascinated with them, like the grasshopper on the floor at Gate C-42 in Baltimore that kept the girls busy for 20 minutes straight. (God bless you, tiny grasshopper, wherever you now are.) But if a bug flies too closely to her, or heaven forbid a spider is spotted and she isn’t in a random spider-whacking mood, her shrieks will split your eardrums and the terror on her face is unmistakable.
5. Going to bed. I’ve gone on and on throughout the blog about the girls’ Up-And-Down Bedtime Brigade. Bee is clearly the captain of that team. She wails – loudly – from her bed for sometimes up to an hour. She gets up again and again. She tells me a “spy-door” is in there near the window. (”No, I put all the bugs outside.” “Out-side?” “Yes. What do we tell the bugs?” “Go AWAY! Leave me ‘lone!” “Or? “Or I ‘moosh you dead!”) She’s really shaken when we have to do the Bug Banishing Incantation. That one is a real fear. But I have my suspicions this bedtime thing is a ploy to manipulate mommy.
6. Being left out. Bee is furious that she isn’t going to kindergarten in the fall. She insists she can read like her sister. And that she knows her letters. The problem is…
7. She hates any attempts to help or teach her something. She thinks she already knows how to write the letter “B” or spell her name or any manner of things. Except wiping her butt. That she still insists on Mommy helping her with.
8. Watching TV. She loves her some “See-er-ella” (who used to be called the much cuter “Rella-ella.” You’ve probably correctly translated that back to Cinderella, her one true Disney love). It’s the only television show or movie Bee will sit still for. Maybe I can get her to sit still for Sesame Street or music (the girls love them some of Simon and Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park), but Bee is fickle if it’s anyone other than See-er-ella.
9. Getting out of the tub first. Good lord, the fights I go through over something like who has to get out of the tub first. I have to make up wacky rules like whoever washes their hair first (also a fight) get to stay in longer, or whoever misbehaved at dinner has to get out first. And really, it’s like a bonus of 30 seconds! The only other fight I listen to more often is who gets to be line leader.
10. When I call her my baby. Oooh, she gets ugly. And defiant. It’s like I called her a Yankees-lover or a Cheesehead or something.”No I NOT!” she’ll yell, eyes blazing. But that’s okay. Pretty soon she and her sister will be fighting over which one of them gets to be my baby and who I love more.

So there you have it. A few insights into my baby big girl Bee at three-years-old. Look out world – she is going to set you on fire when she gets a little older!

Quote of the day.

Me: Bee, what do you think you’re getting for your birthday?
Bee: Ummm…a puppy!
Me: You think you’re getting a puppy?! No, it’s not a puppy.
Gracie: When? When can we get a puppy, Mom?
Bee: I want a bear. A big bear. A polar bear!!! I want a polar bear!
Me: …

To my sweet bouncy Bee, on her third birthday.

Dear Bee,

Today you are three years old. You are ecstatic and seem incredulous that yes, indeed, you get an entire day for your very own. Ever since the beginning of June when I informed you that your birthday was approaching, you have happily declared, “My birt-day is comin’ up!!” I wish I could capture your beautiful toddlerese, especially the squeeky upswing with which you finish your announcement each and every time. Truly, it’s the most adorable thing in my whole entire world. I may or may not have asked you whose birthday was next just to see your eyes light up and see you dance with excitement.

I hope, I hope, I hope you aren’t so desperately happy because you can’t believe you get to have your own birthday. Sometimes I worry that you feel overshadowed by your big sister. You shadow Gracie’s every move and repeat every word she says. I try not to, but I find myself constantly comparing the two of you in my mind. Not because your sister is a standard I expect you to live up to, but because I love and worry about you so much, Bee. Is your vocabulary where it should be? Should your speech be clearer? Am I giving you enough one-on-one time? Are you too quiet; should you be talking more? So don’t ever wonder: I love you like crazy-cakes, sweet pea. You bring laughter and happiness and oh the surprises into my life every day. Especially the surprises! Your sister is wonderful, but – to me at least – fairly predictable. With you, Sunshine, I never know what will greet me. You are just as likely to squint your eyes and give me a super shiny smile, dazzling me with your cuter-than-cute teeny, tiny toddler teeth as you are to declare, “I a monstore! Rowr! Rowr!” Or perhaps collapse in a puddle of wah on the floor and sob/whine, “Mommy!” until I ask what is wrong. I might sigh at times, but I can’t tell you how much I love the unpredictability you into bring to my life. My world would be quieter, boring, and much too orderly without you.

Because I do love your (ahem) differences. You are stubborn. You are the child who will look me straight in the eyes and tell me to throw the toys away when I lose my cool and threaten to do just that if you don’t pick them up. If I tell you I will only put you to bed three times, you insist on getting up five times. You work that lower lip and pout and ask for all manner of things just because you know you have your older sister (if not your loving, devoted momma) wrapped around your pinky finger. There are many days when I tell you, “It’s a good thing I love you!”

And I do. I love your little quirks, like the way you insist on jumping everywhere. While we were on vacation you and your sister were frequently playing in the other rooms of Grandma’s house with other people and every so often you two would come back to find me just to make sure I was still around. Gracie would run up to me and try to tackle me. You were always only a step behind her and even though I would prepare myself for your crashing hug, you would always take this little hoppity bounce at the end and say, “Hi, Mom!” Then you would bounce away. Literally. You will bounce across a room just for the sheer joy of it. It’s no wonder you asked for a bunny rabbit cake for your birthday because these days, I swear you are half-bunny.

The other hilarious trick you have right now started because of another habit of yours: repeating things over and over and over. I noticed you were pointing to things one day with your middle finger; I told you not to use that finger because that was a bad word. “That a bad fing-gor?” you asked? “Yes, that’s a bad word,” I answered. Now you will randomly come up to me several times a day and flip me off, asking, “That a bad fing-gor?” in your toddlerese. A hundred times we have repeated this conversation in the past two weeks. When we were on vacation, we walked out of Dinand Library on the campus of my alma mater. Right in front of the library is a sculpture of the hand of Christ. “Mommy, there’s a GIANT HAND right there!” Gracie yelled. And because the view from where we were was of the back of the hand, and the fingers were rather splayed, you finished right on cue: “And there’s a BAD FING-GOR!” Oh, how we all cracked up.

Yes, sweet little bouncy Bee – you are my heart, my sweet little baby girl, my shrieking court jester. You keep my on my toes and fill my life with love until my cup runneth over. Happy Birthday, Bee-baby. I hope you have entirely too much fun tomorrow and all the joy you bring to our family is brought back to you a million times over.

Averting my eyes.

I will not panic when I look at my inbox… I will not panic when I look at my inbox… I will not panic when I look at my inbox…

The In-Between: Is it just me?

Or does everyone else feel just a bit…off…when they return from vacation? I’ve been back for 24 hours and I’m finally starting to feel like if I haven’t gotten my groove back yet, it’s beyond my grasp by only thiiiiis much.

Still. It’s been disconcerting. Saturday night when Crisanna picked us up at the airport, I forgot we had already gone through the tollbooth. Then I kept making wrong turns. I almost drove to daycare. Granted, I was operating on very little sleep and I was busy catching up but I still felt like I was operating through a sea of mud in a strange city.

Even the house had that familiarly unfamiliar feel to it though I’d been gone for only a week. I found myself pacing through it before I could feel at home enough to go to sleep, as if I had just arrived here for vacation and the idea of feeling comfortable enough to sleep was laughable. When I woke during the night (only once, at 3 a.m.) I was freezing, but when Bee first woke up at quarter-to-six, I thought the air conditioner had quit. I could barely feel the air moving, the unit sounded like it was churning laboriously out in the living room, and the return wasn’t whooshing in the back hall like it usually does. Had the 100+ degree temps we’d experienced the entire week we were gone killed the a/c…or had I just forgotten what central air sounded like?

Later yesterday morning, when I was driving to the grocery store I had that same feeling. I felt off track; like the first few days after I had arrived home and I was driving around a city achingly familiar and yet strangely surreal because I hadn’t seen it in so long.

Even blogging – something I had relished when I had the time to write while I was back home – was hard to pick up again. Oh, sure, my two-sentence, I’m-here-but-I’m-not post was easy as pie, but I tried writing one of several posts I’ve already thought out and nothing happened. I couldn’t do it. It was there, but not. Just like me.

Is it me, or this in-between unsettling for you guys, too?