Never take love for granted.

Monday feels like it was about a year ago. Okay, so we have good news and not so good news. The good news is that Mom II is getting much better care at the Stroke Center where she’s been transferred. These doctors obviously are the best in their field and we are really, really grateful that things worked out and Mom II was able to scoot her little self over there. After a quick angiogram checked out (don’tcha love the way I made that sound like she was walking to the corner for a cuppa coffee?) (sorry, I use humor to diffuse stressful situations), Mom II was wheeled down for neurosurgery to stop the bleeding in her brain. The Head of Neurosurgery was going to perform the operation and instead of being all, “Oh, she could lose her right brain,” like the last place, we were told that there was a 92%-95% chance that Mom II could pull through with a meaningful recovery. That was good. So, so good.

Even better? She was awake the night before the surgery and, while she was weak on her left side, was able to hold everyone’s hand and tell them she loved them. I’m sure that was a very emotional moment for everyone. I’ve been staying away because I’m sure my presence would cause lots of unnecessary drama, but I am so happy for the Ex’s family that they were able to talk to Mom II before the surgery. Besides, I’m sure I would have cracked jokes at all the wrong times and been asked to leave. But really? That night was great news.

The bad news? Mom had another stroke. She needs to have another surgery. Minimal stay in intensive care is now the entire month of October – and that’s if the complications stop falling out of the sky. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Moms are not supposed to be mortal. For one thing, it scares the crap out of us the children. For another, it’s messing up the curve for when we have to grow up and be the mommies. I am not on that level. I don’t have a cape or super-powers or legendary status. So. Mom II, if you could pretty please just CUT IT OUT and get better already, pleaseandthankyou, because I really cannot keep having breakdowns here there and everywhere. Ahem.

Pretty morose for a Love Thursday post, huh?

But you know what? That’s what Love Thursday is for. It’s for loving the little things, like the cooler temps in the morning and how good your coffee tastes when you sit down at work, and the big things like when your daughters yell across two rooms and a hallway at daycare, “I LOVE YOU, MOM!” Life is short and you gotta stop, take everything in, and love it all. And hugging those around you a little bit closer probably wouldn’t hurt, either. These crazy rides are so damn short, after all.  Happy Love Thursday, everyone.

Quick update.

It’s odd how sometimes you sleep so deeply and you wake up and all of a sudden, something that happened the day before will just hit you. This morning I was brushing my teeth, ho hum, when it hit me: Mom.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an update for you. The Ex and A. texted me throughout the day yesterday with updates. They decided to hold off on the surgery for now because of the extremely high risk and relatively poor prognosis. I tell ya, one of the things that will sober you up in a hurry is getting a text from your Ex who, let’s say, has been a bit reserved in the best of times (and it hasn’t been the best of times in awhile), imploring you to please ask everyone you know to see if anyone has a contact at a nearby hospital because it’s Mom’s only hope. (No one from said hospital was returning the Ex’s calls.) And can you believe I found someone who knew someone who found two doctors who promised to take his call? That made me feel a little bit better. Like I was doing something.

Last I heard, Mom II was being prepped for transfer to that hospital. That’s the best news we have right now. The bad news is that if someone is going to try to operate, the window for any meaningful recovery closes today. So. If I could be so bold as to ask to intrude on your prayers and happy thoughts list for one more day, I know Mom II could really use them. I know all of your kind words and support yesterday helped me through a tough day; I can only imagine how much they helped Mom. It goes without saying, but you guys are really the bestest.

She is going to be so mad at herself.

I need to take a time-out and ask for everyone’s happy thoughts and prayers. My Ex-mother-in-law, my mom-away-from-mom, had a stroke yesterday morning and was bleeding into her brain. She went to the hospital with complaints of a splitting headache, chills, a fever, and nausea. I thought that would mean it was the “good” kind of stroke, but she spent the day unconscious according to texts from my Ex. They were planning on transferring her just before rush hour last night to another hospital with better quality care. Then they decided that she was too unstable and it would be better to try to relieve pressure on her brain and watch her overnight. The neurosurgeon thought she was possibly looking at a seven-hour surgery this morning, and then…who knows.

Mom II (another affectionate nickname I’ve given her over the years) is quite simply the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. Even though I was the outsider who divorced her baby, her youngest son, she told me that I will always be her daughter and she always tells me she loves me. I see her and Doug every Sunday morning when they pick up the girls for church. They girls look forward to it so very much; it’s lovely to see how close they are with their grandma and papa.

As hard as it is to imagine not having that to look forward to, the Ex is getting married in three weeks. I can’t imagine how difficult for him and A. to know that his mom might not be at their wedding. What’s easier? The long goodbye I’m going through with my mom, or maybe losing your mom in the space of a day?

I’m sure Mom II will pull through. She might be sweet, but lord is she stubborn! If she can pull through by sheer will, you bet she will. And she will be so mad that she caused such a fuss. And that they’re making her “rest” in her hospital bed. And that she can’t run around full tilt (and then some) getting ready for the wedding.

Still, if you have some happy thoughts and prayers you could spare us, they would be very much, by me, appreciated.

The wrong one is catching on.

Remember my great! new! fantastic! idea to get my girls (and one in particular) to start listening so I could stop yelling? Wait a minute – I think it was so I could stop yelling and they would start listening. In any matter, remember the Two Jars to Rule Them All theory? It debuted at Casa de Katie this weekend.

I pre-briefed the girls last week so they would know what was coming. (And also because when I get a great idea, I have to share it.) So Saturday we set out in the pouring rain to run our errands, including stopping at a craft store to get a few small canning jars and some colored marbles. Bee and Gracie were very excited. Of course, they are always the little optimists. “I promise I’ll pick up next time!” “I’ll never do that again, Mom, I promise!” “I can’t believe I did that!” etc., etc. So of course they didn’t see how this House Points system could backfire on them; they were already dreaming of what they would choose when they cashed in a quickly filled jar of marbles.

Yeah, Saturday ended with empty jars. I tried really, really hard to help them fill their jars. Really, I did. My plan was that I would reward just about anything with a marble to help them catch marble-fever. They put their shoes on by themselves? A marble for you! You cleared your place without me having to remind you? Marble! But then Saturday afternoon exploded all over my house and no one wanted to clean. The third time I had to tell Bee to stop playing and pick up the same toy? She lost a marble. When Gracie lied to me even after I caught her? She lost a marble, too. One thing led to another and by dinner time, no one had any marbles. Thankfully, Mike called and invited us out for a quick dinner. On one hand, I was afraid to think of what that would mean. Bee was crying and Gracie was sitting in time-out when he called. But going out would guarantee that I couldn’t kill my beloved children for at least two whole hours, so I accepted. Aside from Gracie spilling her soda all over herself, the girls were awesome. So they did earn a marble apiece after all.

Thank god I have a short memory. Or maybe I’m just so foggy and caffeine deprived in the mornings that I really, really want to do anything to keep the kids happy and sitting in front of the television while I wake up. Ahem. Either way, I rewarded Gracie and Bee with a marble for skipping the Up-and-Down Bedtime Brigade routing the night before and one for remembering to stay in bed until 7:00 a.m. without asking me. They kinda liked that I guess. Wait – let me amend that. ONE of them caught on. Gracie spent all of Sunday asking if x, y, or z would earn her a marble. She put away all of her and Bee’s laundry. She folded pajamas and picked up their room. She vacuumed with the dustbuster. She took out the recycling. She played with her sister (at Bee’s request) instead of helping me make cupcakes. That girl was on it. Total success.

Bee? The girl-child for whom I thought up this whole crazy scheme? Yeah, she still needed constant supervision to pick up her toys. She maybe was physically walked into the front room and closed in there a few times because she refused to pick up. She might have even asked me to throw her toys away. Then, after I allowed Gracie to watch a movie on her bed with the portable DVD player for picking up her half of the mess, Bee suddenly saw the light. She became a cleaning machine. She enjoyed getting the marbles, but it was still just a matter of her wanting to clean up that did the trick.

Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning my plan. It might just take a while to take ahold of their wee little minds. But I really hope Bee’s future spouse enjoys cleaning.

Love plays along.

Yesterday, Kath over at soeurs du jour wrote about sitting there and looking pretty. Actually, she was playing along with a challenge she found from a friend’s site. I was sure I had a pic that would capture the challenge: Just Sit There And Look Pretty. (After all, it’s what I do all day, every day. Snort.) Here’s what I found:

Just sitting there, looking pretty.

I snapped this while we were at Old Sturbridge Village, on vacation. I love so many things about this picture.

I love how all-over lovely it looks.

I love that you can’t tell what a mood Bee was in at that particular moment. She and her sister had a great time and they were both very well-behaved that trip, but right when we wheeled into that particular garden, Bee decided she Didn’t Want To Listen!

I love that no one can tell that from looking at it.

I love that Bee played along and sat there nicely and let me stage the picture anyway, just because she loves me. And I love that both girls got taken in by the pretty lake below and eventually enjoyed it for what it was instead of just to make me happy. Just sitting there, looking pretty is what soothed them, I think.

And I love that all I knew this week was that I wanted to write about the girls, but nothing really stood out for me. Nothing seemed like a “Love Thursday” moment. But I got to play along anyway, to really stop for a minute and soak in what it must mean for a cranky 4-year-old who was pitching a fit to stop, sit on the bench, and pose even though she did not want to. She must love her momma an awful lot.

Just sit there and look pretty! It’s good advice, I think. And many and many a day, just what everyone needs! Happy Love Thursday, everyone. If you don’t know what advice I’m going to give you today, you need this more than you think: just sit there and look pretty! (And feel pretty, too!)

Give me your tired, your poor, your book recommendations…

Okay. That’s not quite how the poem inscribed on the base of Lady Liberty goes, but it should. I mean, she is standing there with a giant book tablet in her arms. Our official door-greeter is a bookworm; how kickass!

I’ve been on a reading kick lately. I devoured nine books in July and trickled down to just three in August. (It was pretty stressful and I was a wee bit busy vacationing and dealing with family drama.) But now I’m back in the swing of things…only to realize I’ve read most of the books on my To Read list. So I need you to tell me which three books you think I must read this year.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m rather picky. Oh, I still want to hear what I should read! I’ll try just about anything. The problem is, is a book doesn’t grab me within the first 50 pages, I’m outta there. So it has to have a good voice. For instance, I tried Iodine by Haven Kimmel, something I added to my To Read list after reading a review. The novel was well-received and Kimmel is a New York Times best-selling author. The storyline sounded incredibly interesting. Here’s the bit from Goodreads:

Brilliant, unconventional college senior Trace Pennington has eked out an impoverished, solitary, but highly functional existence in the years since she ran away from her abusive home. But when Trace finds love with a much older man, her life is upended and she’s forced to face herself and her past. After recovering a horrific, long-suppressed memory, she discovers that much of her present-day life is a carefully constructed delusion. With equal parts genius and psychosis, Trace copes with the fallout from a brutal, bizarre childhood in a heart-stopping story that explores both the terror and wonder of mental illness.

How does that not sound like a fascinating read?! So I grabbed it from the library and set about reading. I gave up a chapter in because the voice? It wasn’t doing anything for me. I didn’t care about the plot twists that were promised because I couldn’t make myself care about the character. Usually I’ll hang in there for something that juicy, but I couldn’t even force myself. So for me, voice is the most important quality in a book. If it ain’t got it, it ain’t got me.

But the book’s gotta have story, too. True, every once in awhile I’ll need to read something that gives my mind a break. An Agatha Christie. Maybe a Michael Crichton or a John Grisham or – especially – a Stephen King. (Stephen Kings are my literary equivalent of comfort food. Mmmm….) It’s not quite mindless reading, but almost. I can’t do mindless anything any more, but especially not mindless romances. I can’t do fluffy chick lit. I can do smart chick lit. Sophie Kinsella? Too fluffy. Elizabeth Graver’s Awake? I made myself finish it last month. Heather Gundenkauf’s The Weight of Silence was a little better; she read like a (weaker) John Grisham. But still not that taxing. Smart chick lit for me is kinda like that joke about porn – I know it when I see it.

That kind of reading-on-cruise-control is okay from time to time, but usually I need the story to be engaging. Interactive. I spent a lot of time, energy, and lord knows a lot of money, learning to critically engage myself with a text. Now I want to use those skills. I want American Beauty, not Dude, Where’s My Car? The best example I’ve read recently would be Arthur Phillips’s The Song is You. It was original. The characters were real. It didn’t seem plotted or contrived or read like boiler-plate fiction. I didn’t know where the story was going. I analyzed the characters and enjoyed figuring out why they did what they did. The story made me think. Definitely something I would recommend to others; in fact, I’ll probably buy another copy and send it out to my college professor. I wondered quite often as I was reading what he would think of the book.

So: my books gotta have voice and they gotta have story. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll read fiction or non-fiction (right now I’m reading one fiction book – Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked, which is pretty good – and one non-fiction book – Stephanie Klein’s Moose: Memoirs of Fat Camp). I’ll read adult fiction or Young Adult (several people have recommended the Hunger Games trilogy). It can be recently published or from the way-back machine. I don’t do Science Fiction/Fantasy, but that’s pretty much the only genre I categorically stay away from (although some exceptions will be made if it’s children’s lit).

God, why do I feel like I just wrote a personal’s ad? Quick, someone send me a book recommendation before I start buying ice cream by the pints and a slew of cats.

Profiting from a good run.

I had one of those days yesterday. It started rather bizarrely – I went to the doctor’s office for a scheduled maintenance-type appointment and while they were taking the routine vitals, my nurse asked me if I usually have high blood pressure. Uh…no. I usually have low blood pressure. 101/67 is average for me and I’ve been turned away from donating blood before because it was too low. I get it checked fairly frequently, too, so it’s not like I’m going off just an annual read. I have my annual physical, my twice-yearly visit to my pulmonologist and allergy specialist, I usually get sick a few times a year with chest colds, my yearly girly exam, and then there are all those visits for my kidney stones. Oh, and I give blood every 6-8 weeks. My blood pressure has never been high. Not once. Until today when my doctor’s office almost detained me because my blood pressure was fifty points higher than usual. In fact, I never even heard what my diastolic was because I yelled out loud when I heard how high my systolic was. My doctor took my blood pressure himself before I left and it had come down twenty points. He said that if I felt funny to go to my family practice and that I needed to check my blood pressure a few times a week at Walgreens or someplace like that and then call in my readings at the end of a month – or sooner. I’ll do it because he’s concerned, but really – I’ve never had a problem with my blood pressure and I really think it’s just because of those stoopid Jets. But okay.

Then I went to the PlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed and ran around like a chicken with my head cut off and did a few unbloggable things (it being ThePlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed and all) and generally felt like I was getting nothing done. Finally I decided what I needed was a good run. Having made that decision, I was able to feel at least a little less frantic.

When I came home, I changed, threw some margarita chicken in the oven (boneless chicken breasts soaking in a half-inch of lime juice and covered with a little bit of salt bacon bits, baked at 375° for 1:15)(no margaritas don’t have bacon, but bacon makes everything better), and took off for my run. I felt good. I wasn’t worried about my stupid wonky blood pressure. I was worried about researching ADHD (long story), I wasn’t thinking about kidney stones or anyone getting married or anything really. I just listened to good music and ran. I bumped it up to a mile and a quarter tonight and I made it much farther tonight before that stitch in my side made me slow down a little. I’m determined to run the 10k at the Cowtown this year.

Not only did I start feeling GoodCrazy by the end of my run, but I found a lucky penny facing heads up while I was running. During my next loop I found another lucky penny in the same place – but this time it was heads down. “Bad” luck, those are. Meh, I thought. It all balances out, just like the universe. (I get all philosophical when I run.) My last lap, when I was just walking to finish out the second mile, I found a quarter. And that sucker was face up.

Neener, neener, Universe. I’m feeling much better.

Of all teams.

Yes, I’m making you suffer through another football post. Actually, it’s not even a real post, so you can just shoosh. I was at a massive football party thrown in my honor, so this is just a quick hit on my picks of the day. I didn’t do much better than my poor 9-7 showing last week. I am supposed to be the football maven. I have a reputation to uphold; a legend to build!

So who did I like this week? Like everyone else in the world, I picked the Cheeseheads over Buffalo, even though the Pack’s o-line was playing like swiss Cheeseheads last week. (Heh. You knew that joke was coming, didn’t you?) I lost Minnesota over the Fish at home. I would have gone with the Fish if they were home, but they just snuck past the Bills of all teams last week. KC to rout the Browns. (Remind me to rant to you about KC’s coordinators when I have a few more minutes, mkay?) They just barely won, but I’ll take it. I thought the Cowgirls would squeak past da Bears at home. No, I don’t want to think about traffic on that side of town today. Especially with a loss like that. One of my tough calls, I went with Atlanta over the Cards and it paid off. I like Matt Ryan, he’s from Boston. I missed with Carolina over TB. If you can’t beat TB at home, Carolina, I worry about your season. Philly over Detroit, because Vick was playing and Stafford wasn’t. Man, what a game that was! I worried until the bitter end. Cincy over the Ravens. I just couldn’t see the Ravens win two big games in a row when they played – I thought – some shaky ball last Monday night. I, nervously, chose Pittsburgh over the Titans because I had to pick someone and I was afraid of the daggers Michelle would throw my way. Also? Vince Young is…well, Vince Young. Seattle over Denver because last week Seattle look so vintage and Denver looked ugly. Stupid NFL. I lost that one. Houston made me sweat it out with their win over Washington. My guy’s an Eagles fan, so if McNabb had won twice in two weeks, things would have been rather cranky around here until McNabb returned to his inconsistent ways. I lost that game that we won’t talk about. And handily won the Chargers over Jacksonville.

Tonight is the Manning Bowl (I’m pre-blogging as I have a bit of a scheduled-maintenance doctor’s appointment in the morning) and there’s no way I’m staying away for all of it. I went with Indy over the Giants because curse or no curse, there’s no way Peyton lets his Colts fall to 0-2. For our Monday night game, I went with – surprise, surprise – New Orleans. So. I’m 10-4. But it doesn’t really matter because of that one game that we’re not talking about. Le sigh.

If it weren’t for you, I’d be playing Space Invaders.

By the time my doctor’s appointment with Dr. MIT rolled around, I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with my small planet kidney stone. It had hurt enough last week that I booked an appointment and trekked all the way across the city to beg shamelessly for pain killers and an X-ray. I didn’t even care (okay, I cared – but not much) that it would cost about $2,000 to blast that rock to smithereens. I just wanted the pain to stop. Given my history, Dr. MIT wrote me a ‘scrip, booked me an X-ray and told me to come back this week to discuss options.

Last Friday, I showed up for my X-ray in plenty of pain. If I sat still, I was fine. It was when I stood up that the pain shot from my upper left hip up and down my back. By the end of the day or if I was on my feet a lot (or after a run), my back always hurt. And at night, for some strange reason, was when it was the worst. The point is that I was still experiencing all of these symptoms Friday when I went for my glamor shots.

By Friday night and Saturday? The pain was gone. Occasionally I’d have minor pain during the night, but it wasn’t a 9 out of 10 any more. I started thinking it was all in my head and now that I had all of the pretty, pretty pain pills (that I mostly refused to take), my mind was at ease and banished the phantom pains. So I thought there was a good chance that Dr. MIT was going to tell me I was crazy when I walked into his office on Wednesday afternoon. I might have even been nervous. Did I want him to tell me I would have to pay $2,000 to play space invaders and blast that planet away? Or that it was all in my head and it would be free a measly $30 for that fine assessment. Was it possible that there was a secret option C? Could the contrast dye for the X-ray have floated the stone to a neutral position? I knew I couldn’t have passed the stone without knowing – BELIEVE ME – but maybe it was off in its own little solar system somewhere singing a little happy song no one else could hear.

I finally sucked up some courage and sat down in the office to hear the results…which were the best they could be under the circumstances. The good news is that I’m not crazy. (Well, not for this reason, anyways.) I do have a kidney stone. Luckily, it’s only 3mm, and stones less than 4mm can sometimes pass on their own. Stones the size of mine have an 85% chance of passing on their own, but it can take time and can still be painful. The bad news is that it could take months and I still might have to have surgery if the stone grows, causes serious pain, or if it moves into the tube (like last time) and gets stuck. He thinks that’s what happened last time since my previous stone was a whopping 10mm and the pain grew to epic proportions while I waited for five months and visited several different doctors trying to get a diagnosis.

So. The game plan is to wait. I’m going to keep drowning myself in wine beer water and lemon juice, rock out to some Modest Mouse, and see if I can’t convince that small asteroid to float on. But it was uncanny the way the pain seemed to stop all at once – I swear it was because everyone was wishing it away for me. So, talk amongst yourselves and I’ll split the bill about a thousand ways between you. In fact, you can deal with my health insurance directly. You’ll love them. Really. OR, you can stick around and listen to me whine and try to encourage my small asteroid to leave over the course of the next few months and when you get tired of that, you can tell me it’s time to go get that sucker blasted out of me.  One week down; three more months to go before we check on him again.

Childhood lesson #3,492: Mom’s love can sometimes be devious.

I’ve done a lot of whining complaining venting philosophizing this week about the pitfalls of parenting. Coping with the age-old dilemmas of whining and laziness sometimes exhibited by our darling children – it’s never easy. At our best, it can elicit sighs and prayers that we’ll make it through this stage. At our worst, we lose our tempers, yell and revoke privileges, and even bang our head against the wall. And that’s before we start dosing ourselves with liberal amounts of wine. (It helps. Really.)

I’ve tried being patient and correcting my children’s behavior time and time again, but that only works on my (and their) good days. I’ve tried time-outs. I’ve tried revoking privileges (desserts, bed time, TV time) and that has been fairly effective when the girls aren’t being outrageously stubborn. I’ve tried standing in the room and directing Bee’s every move – “Put away the baby doll. Now put the sock in the hamper.” – and ignoring her whining and crying, but that isn’t really an effective use of my time and hasn’t taught her to clean up when I’m not around playing Air Traffic Controller. I’ve cancelled errands and put off dinner and bedtime and everything else that was scheduled until the toys were picked up, but that just prolongs the agony for all involved. I’ve set a timer and piled any toys remaining into trash bags – to be redeemed by extra chores or acts of kindness and once I even threw the bag of toys away. All of these methods work on Gracie, the child who will clean with very little prompting. None of them work on Bee, the child who needs to learn to take care of her things and our living space. Bee? That child will look me in the eyes and, calmly as can be, tell me to throw the toys away. No lessons learned there. But there is a little bit of mama’s sanity circling the drain. So. Yeah.

From that lovely, barren wasteland of desperation, there was really no place to go but up. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.  I dreamed and I schemed, and I schemed and I dreamed. I came up with a better solution. You know – because I am super and sneaky and formerly obsessed with SuperNanny. I came up with Two Jars to Rule Them All. (Otherwise known as my alternate blog title, but I thought it was a little lacking in the Love Thursday department. Meh, details.) I am going to buy two glass jars and a bucket of marbles or colored stones or some such colorful object that can be added to the jars. For every chore that is completed without constant reminders on my part or whining on theirs, the girls will earn a marble. Acts of kindness will be rewarded with a marble. Using good manners, getting a “green” mark at school, and other general good behavior – all rewarded with a marble. Whining, tormenting their sister, having to be reminded more than once, lying, etc., will all result in losing a marble. Egregious acts could even result in losing more than one marble, if I’m so inclined. Whenever the girls fill their jars, they get to redeem their marbles for a reward. I haven’t quite worked out what the reward will be, but I’m leaning towards letting the girls choose. It could be an extra half-hour past bedtime, a new book, an extra-special dessert, skipping a chore, a package of silly bandz – the possibilities are endless.

What I particularly love about the jars is that I will have so many opportunities to “catch” the girls being good and rewarding them for good behavior – something that is crucial in teaching them to make more good choices. If the girls know they could be rewarded for making good choices, they’ll try to create more opportunities to “get caught,” so to speak. Having marbles in a jar in a prominent place in the house will visibly remind the girls of their behavior so they can see how they’re doing. Young children have a hard time remembering what’s not right in front of them.

And you know what? Sometimes so do parents. Mom might even get a jar to help her remember. If I raise my voice, I lose a marble. (Not that I’m not losing my marbles on a regular basis, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) If I calmly and expertly handle a tricky situation like a SuperMom, I get to add a marble. I probably won’t earn my reward as quickly as Bee and Gracie will, but I like the idea that they see grown-ups are accountable for their actions, too, and this isn’t just a measure to punish the children into submission.

Quite the opposite – cleaning the house and learning how to comport oneself is a difficult, but important, life lesson. It’s one I should have addressed before now, but love steps in no matter when an issue is raised. Love addresses problems both easy and difficult. And love isn’t afraid to be sneaky and devious in its solutions. That kind of love is what makes us SuperMoms. We just need to find some capes to make it official.  Happy Love Thursday, everyone!