We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto.

Letting the Days Go By, Let the Water Hold Me Down

Another school year down. The boys' school district finished last Friday. Today at noon my school dismissed, my first year of teaching as a Real Teacher in the books. I really do feel a little like Pinocchio: A Real Teacher, like someone waved a magic wand over my head. A month ago I felt like there was no end in sight, and yet here we are. What an adventure we’ve had.

This year I started a new job, took on an extended volunteer job within Scouting that could have been at least a part-time, 20-hour per week job, and added an extra teenager to our already busy life. Why not? What could go wrong?

Here’s why not, roared back my aging body. My immune system apparently took it as a dare. YOU WANNA SEE WHAT HAPPENS? LET’S GO, DUMB GIRL. Let’s crank up the chronic pain, a couple of funky autoimmune disorders, rekindle those migraines AND migraine associated vertigo, which will keep you barely functioning sometimes for weeks at a time. HOW BOUT DA?

So yeah. I maybe overdid it this year. But I regret nothing, let’s make that clear.

Ten months ago I noticed a brief line in a school district newsletter about foreign exchange students, and suggested to my family, hey, that might be cool, why don’t we look into it? A week later we met a darling Korean teenager at the airport at 1:30 in the morning, fresh off a flight from Seoul. He was goofy and excited and quiet, all at the same time. He spoke a formal, classroom style of English, but he spoke it pretty well. He didn’t understand American sarcasm, memes, or my dad’s terrible jokes. He didn’t really speak unless someone spoke to him, initially. But he listened quite a bit. He always seemed to be off to the side, listening, watching, quietly taking it all in. I soon learned that when he needed something he would come find me in the kitchen and kind of hover nearby, until I asked, “is everything ok? Do you need anything?” He would say “well, actually…” And then we would drive to Target to retrieve whatever thing he needed for school or soccer or personal care.

He could sleep anywhere, at any time, but especially in the car. At first I chalked it up to the time change and jet-lag, daily soccer practice workouts and a full day of school in his second language. If we drove somewhere longer than five minutes away, he'd be asleep like a baby. It became something of a joke. Oh look, he’s asleep again, on the way to a restaurant for dinner out. So cute.

I made a conscious effort to slow down my speech and avoided using slang and contractions. I asked specific questions every day when I picked him up after soccer practice, good questions that did not allow yes or no answers, to force him to talk to me. I told him about my day after he told me about his, until eventually he began to ask about my day, unprompted. I corrected his grammar or word choice, and explained why. (My inner English major loved that part.)

Sometimes I let the car fill up with an awkward silence, just to see what would happen. My theory stands, as I found with my own kids, that teenagers love to talk when riding in the car, when adults can listen but not make eye contact while driving. He didn’t have a lot of social skills at first, and he kept to himself in his room quite a bit those first few months. My own boys are introverts, they prefer their video games and laptops to group engagement, so it was fine.  But we got into a rhythm as a family of five. I cooked a lot of rice in the fall, so he always had something comfortable available in the fridge. But honestly, he was the least picky eater in my house, he ate everything I put in front of him. We sat down to dinner together as a family this past year more than we have in several years, at least until spring came and everybody’s sports/activities/music/clubs schedule exploded again.

After the holidays and we went back to school in January, we hit a rough patch. My Mom attention-span got stretched a little thin. My bizarro, unexplainable, chronic pain (fibromyalgia) issues kicked in and I’m not gonna lie, it was likely stress related. I forgot things, or I got them wrong - the who what when why where part of our lives. My family isn’t used to me screwing that up so it was tough on everybody, especially me, so smug in my Supermom ego. Teenagers don’t forgive and forget easily. My kitchen became a constant scene of loud, dramatic, passive aggressive rhetorical questions: Why are there no forks? Who drank the last of the orange juice? Who ate my Poptarts? Why are there twelve pairs of shoes in the doorway? Who moved my backpack? I was supposed to take the first shower! (Hint, it wasn’t always the teenagers, sometimes it came from the adults.) Sometimes it felt like I was drowning in a sea of cranky, testosterone fueled drama, like an old episode of Real World: The Suburbs. We all got tired of each other at about the same time. I tried to tell myself maybe it was okay because all three boys were either alone in their rooms with the door shut, or arguing constantly, like bickering siblings.

This is normal, according to the exchange agency coordinator. Happens to many host families - the shine wears off. March and April screamed by, and suddenly it was almost time for end of year band concerts, dance club concerts, finals and graduation. Suddenly it became clear to all of us that our little experiment was about to end. The kids began to tolerate each other better, seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. And our student friend became more and more sad, each day of May that went by, anticipating the end of this experience and life as a member of our family.

Back in August, on his first full weekend in Kansas, we went to a Royals baseball game, in part because my son's marching band was performing the National Anthem. Bookending his time here with live sports games, on his last evening in town before flying home to Korea we went to a SportingKC soccer game. We sat in the front row behind the corner kick flag, and had a blast. We took selfies with kitty noses and whiskers drawn in, and I commented “look how cute we are! I like that, it makes my face look less fat.” Actually, it's a feature, he replied. American sarcasm, achievement unlocked.

It was an amazing year. It wasn't perfect. Sometimes it was hard. I was often reminded why my husband and I had deliberately chosen to only have two kids. But seeing someone experience the life we take for granted was humbling, and I am grateful for it. I'm glad my children had a chance to see a different point of view. He played competitive soccer, read Hamlet (in his second language, can you imagine? The metaphors alone are barely understandable in English!) He went to prom, and patiently defended his beloved country to American teenagers who don’t understand the difference between North and South Korea.

 

Last August, I greeted an adorably awkward, foreign teenager at the airport, and brought him into my nest as one of my own.

Last Thursday morning I put a young man back on a plane to Seoul. And onward we go.

Go West, Young Man.

We had a lovely Christmas season this year, although I spent less time on setting the scene, as it were, than I usually do. I was super sick over our Thanksgiving trip to Alabama, a nasty cold that eventually sidelined everyone except my youngest son. FYI, flying on multiple connections with vertigo-inducing fluid in your ear is not fun. So when we returned home I went to bed instead of dragging out the Christmas decorations. I did manage to get the 9 foot tall tree set up by myself a week later, thanks to the steroids prescribed to kill the vertigo, while everyone else was focused on football. But it stood bare in the foyer for almost two more weeks before I convinced the kids to string some lights around it and on Christmas eve, the exchange student hung some ornaments. I had fully intended to go all out this year, wanting to show our friend what Christmas in America is like. I completely failed at that. But I did manage to get everything wrapped and everyone seemed happy with their gifts.

Speaking of gifts, I had warned him, you will get lots of gifts from my family, do not feel like you should reciprocate. You are part of our family, this is how it is. He was deeply burdened by the situation, however, and though I understood his feelings I couldn't stop the Christmas train. I told him to let it go. He laughed, and relaxed and let my family fawn over him on Christmas day. 

The day after, we rose early and loaded the truck and drove to Colorado for the week. Everyone skied or snowboarded, except me, I was just along for the ride. I have enough issues just walking in a straight line without my head spinning these days, I didn't need to put myself into the extra physicality of skiing. I could just imagine myself halfway up the lift when the pressure of high altitude kicked on the vertigo light switch - how the F would I get back down the mountain then? Yeah, No thanks. Instead I went for groceries and cooked and hung out in our darling 1960s mountain cottage and sometimes held court at a table in the restaurant at the bottom of the lift. Snow covered teenagers would occasionally swoop in, grab a bunch of food and water, rest for a minute, then head back out to beat the mountain. 

The kids loved it. All three of them. My two boys had only ever actually skied here in Kansas City area, at what is really a glorified hill. They'd never experienced skiing in high altitude on a real mountain. The exchange student had skied a few times before. Athletically he's pretty strong, he had no difficulty adapting and conquering the mountain. My kids didn't have the same confidence going in, so they all ended up coming down the mountain separately most of the week. It took them all a few days to find their sweet spot, but on the last day they stayed together and had a blast. 

The weather was great. It was sunny and 30s-40s during the day, but when that sun goes behind the mountain it gets chilly, fast. We watched movies and played board games in our snug little cabin. We even saw a moose! 

We returned home on New Years Eve, stayed awake long enough to watch the ball drop in NYC an hour early, and called it good.

Welcome to 2017. May the odds be ever in your favor. 

 

 

 

Riding in Cars With Boys

I spend a lot of time in my car, driving teenagers to school, to sports, to Boy Scouts, and back home from all of these things. Riding in the car has always been a great place to get my kids to talk to me. It is reasonably safe, emotionally, because I can't spend time analyzing their face as they talk, I'm watching the road. Eye contact is scary. So it has always been the place where my kids drop big bombs of information. And I consider myself lucky on that front. So I don't mind all the driving. 

The extra teenager is warming up to this process, too. He's letting his guard down. He told me on the way home from his soccer game the other day that he likes knowing that I come to the game to watch him play, it makes him more comfortable. It was very sweet and vulnerable, and so earnest. So he's showing some emotional depth. He's also using cuss words. 

Well, okay he didn't really know what he was saying. Monday morning we got in the car to drop him off at the high school, which is on my way to work. On Mondays it is just the two of us, because my oldest has band practice before school, and my husband manages the middle school route. My friend got into the passenger seat and said to me, "Can I put this shit in here?" He was holding some papers that were in the seat and gesturing toward the glove box. (Why is that even the name of it? Nevermind.) 

Unsure if I heard him correctly, I asked him go repeat his question. Nope, I heard correctly. 

"Do you know what that means, the word 'shit'?" 

"It means papers."

"Well, no. Not really. It means poop." 

"Poop?" 

"Yep. People sometimes use it to refer to stuff, like papers. But it is technically a bad word, a curse word. Not that I care if you say it, but you should not say it at school or to a teacher."

"Oh. Okay. So can I put this shit in there?"

"Yes. Yes you can." 

I mean, he's 17, Not nine. He can say what he wants. He probably heard it from me in the first place. 

 

 

Reservoir Dogs.

A couple weeks ago I was delivering Drew to a boy scout campout, early on Saturday morning. I got lost, despite having a GPS in the car, because the other scout dads with which I had chatted that morning before we all took off in our own cars said "Oh, just go to La Cygne. It's not that big. Then turn right at State Line, or something? Its right there.

I should have known, right then, that I was in trouble. Also, the lat/long listed on the website for this location was wrong, and had too many digits. Again, a sign I should have heeded. But no, I am adventurous mom! So I just took off driving for La Cygne and figured I'd find it.

Yeah. Not so much.

After finally getting a hold of a dad with a clue and an internal GPS chip in his phone who could text me the lat/long of his exact location for the love of God, We started down the right highway. For the record, the place we were looking for isn't actually in La Cygne, Kansas, or anywhere really near it. It's actually in Missouri. That would have been helpful.

 

As I turned off of highway 69 onto 52 toward Amoret, I saw traffic stopped up ahead, and what looked like a black calf running down the middle of the road. No kidding, I thought it was a baby cow. As I got closer I realized it was a dog. A very big one. Being who I am, and if you've ever read my Facebook profile you already know this part, I pulled over.

 

Drew sighed and said, "you're going to put that dog in the truck with us, aren't you, mom?"

"Yup. Get the extra collar out from under the seat."

I stepped out of my truck, clapped my hands together and said, "Come here, baby." He galloped up to me and put his face in my hands and tried to walk between my legs. He was trying to get into my lap, while I was standing.

He was hungry and muddy and cold, it had been raining lightly for a while and was cold the night before. But his toenails were trimmed and his coat was glossy, this was a well cared for dog. I didn't really know what I was going to do with him, but I wasn't going to leave him running along that highway looking for someone to take him in. I opened the hatch of my truck, tapped the floor with my hand, and he jumped in without any more encouragement.

We went on to drop off Drew at the scout campout. Boy Scouts apparently love a good dog rescue story. Somebody pulled a pan of leftover scrambled eggs out of the trash, and the dog ate it all in about a minute. And then he laid down at my feet, and rested. The boys named him Scout.

Here's the thing. As I pulled over on the side of the highway it hit me. This is why I was lost - I was supposed to find this dog. If I had been on the right route and not wasted an hour finding my way, I would have missed him.

God speaks to me in tiny epiphanies. I haven't heard much from him lately, what with leaving my job at the church and the drama that went down as part of that (which I will not be discussing here, but trust me, there was drama.) When my grandmother died and we went to Springfield for her funeral and visited with family, I heard nothing. But for some reason that Saturday on the side of a country highway, I got the message, loud and clear.

I brought him back to Kansas City with me, unsure if I was doing him any favors. I've talked to some vets down in that area and a local rescue organization in Louisburg. He had no collar, and wasn't microchipped. People, listen to me. MICROCHIP YOUR PETS. It's easy, it's relatively cheap (we paid $45 for Max when he was a puppy, and they did it while he was under anesthesia to be fixed so he didn't even know.) Some rescue groups even do it for free.

Speaking of Max, when I introduced him to my new friend, they sniffed each other for a few minutes and then settled down together under the kitchen table, at my feet. Uh, yeah, I'd say he's comfy with other dogs.

We've been calling him Bear, because he's as big as a black bear. Remember, when I first saw him I thought it was a calf running down the road. He is not a petite animal. He's kind of an oaf. But a sweet, very loving one. But he needs a home. He's being fostered for the time being by my brother, but they've discovered he needs a much bigger house and probably is used to running on some land. He needs more space. He needs somebody who likes big dogs, and who knows how to handle them. He needs somebody who wants and 80 lb. lapdog, but can let him run outside. He's not very graceful around breakable things (the tail, it wags hard enough to knock the remote off the coffee table.) With kids, he pretty much just rolls over so they can climb on top of him and rub his tummy. If this dog were to hurt someone, it would be out of a total lack of awareness of size and strength.

I was supposed to save this guy for a reason. I just don't know what it is yet.

 

What a long, strange trip it's been.

 Well, it's August now. I feel like I went straight from June to August, since July was spent driving across the country and relaxing at the beach. We got home late last week, and promptly threw an epic backyard party for our friends who were staying in our house, visiting from New Zealand. Now they are gone, too, and I spent the day washing sheets and towels and re-making beds and trying to avoid going outside, as it's 108 degrees. Record-breaking heat, the news says, and I don't doubt it, since it feels like you're standing under a hair dryer.

As much as I loved being at the beach, it's not always roses in a city the size of San Diego. I forget sometimes how insulated we are in the suburbs of the Midwest. Last week, as I was walking out of the nail salon admiring my freshly painted toes and sipping on the last of my Chai Tea Latte, I passed a homeless man eating from old California Pizza Kitchen boxes that he had pulled out of the trash right in front of the restaurant. The box and the pizza was crawling with ants, he was eating it anyway. He didn't seem to notice. My heart broke.

Perspective can be a bitch, sometimes. But I have it.

I am glad vacation is over, and happy to be home, despite the heat. It's been a good summer. I am refreshed enough, I have drank plenty of wine with old friends, I have done as much yoga as I could fit into my schedule (and that my stupid bum knees and shoulder will allow.) Since my return I have spent some quality time hanging out with my grandma, in what appears to be her last summer with us. I both wish for that and loathe the thought of it, drifting between not wanting to see her go and not wanting her to suffer.

I do wish that I were there again in San Diego, for BlogHer. I originally tried to make it work, when San Diego was announced as the city hosting the conference, to fanagle my vacation so that I would just stay for the conference. But in the end I couldn't justify the extra week, and I wouldn't have gotten to see my lovely friends from New Zealand. Another time.

Besides, now that I'm home and the house is quiet, I'm realizing that school starts a mere two weeks from today. I need to get organized. I need to start planning out my classroom and my lesson plans, I need to make sure the boys have shoes that fit and clothes that aren't torn or stained. And I need to make other plans, too, and here is where the other shoe drops.

My husband recently started a new job, back in California. North this time, in Silicon Valley. Right now, he is commuting, flyying out on Monday mornings and returning late Friday nights. We don't know yet if we are going to move out there or not, for now we are just playing it cool, making sure that the opportunity is what we think we signed up for, seeing how it goes. But it's likely that sometime in 2012, we will move back to California. The bottom line is that I'm functioning as a single mom with a full time job right now, or at least, when school starts in two weeks. I've never had this kind of day to day, hour to hour inflexibility in a job before. Thank God for my mother, who has become just as familiar with the Orthodontist's office as I am.

I'm excited and ready for the adventure, but I am also apprehensive and disappointed, now that I have this new teaching job I've wanted for so long. I worry about the boys, they are getting to an age where it's harder to start over and make new friends. They are just as excited and also apprehensive as I am, so far. But they miss daddy. We need to be a family.

So that's our big news. It's going to be an interesting year.

 

The dogs are alright. *

I'm not terribly good at taking pictures. I've not actually owned a camera of my own since my parents bought me a cheap little Kodak in the 80's. But now that I have a camera in my phone, I take pictures all the time. They are mostly for me to remember a moment, or document something, and share with friends and family on Facebook or via text or some other such nonsense. My point is, I take a lot of shitty pictures, and I really don't care, because they're for me.

Like this one. Max is loving have a BFF. They are tired at the end of each day, and so glad to see each other in the morning. Sometimes they play fight, jumping and attacking and chasing, but in this moment, they were just laying next to each other in the shade. He will miss his buddy when we get home, I presume. The two labs have each other, Max will go back to having just his people to entertain him. It should be interesting to see what happens.

I take pictures of my dog all the time, but they rarely come out very well. It's hard to take a photo of a black dog with black eyes when you don't know what you're doing. This one I managed to mess around with in iPhoto to clarify his features a little bit. Blonde dogs are much easier to photograph.

We are coming upon our last weekend here at the beach. I feel pretty good that we've done everything we wanted to do, seen everyone we needed to see, except of course the people whose home we are staying in while they travel in Europe. I think it's been weird for Drew to sleep in his buddy's bed every night but not actually spend more than a few hours with him on this trip.

Next Wednesday we take this show back on the road, two adults, two kids and a giant poodle in the family truckster. I'm kind of ready to go home again. I love this town, I love the beach, I love the lifestyle. But we have things to do. My grandmother is not doing well, I miss her. I need to see her before I miss her forever. We need to start getting ready for school and soccer and work and other post-vacation necessities. But it's been lovely, truly lovely to chill out here at the beach, where shoes are optional and the wine is plenty, the dogs are welcome on the patio, and the temperature hasn't reached 76 degrees the entire time. That...doesn't suck.

My life is good. I am thankful.

 

* Grammar Girl comments on the use of "alright" . I choose to use it anyway. Hey, at least I'm informed.

 

Hope for Hackleburg.

Yesterday afternoon, we left Kansas City bound for Alabama. A trip both to visit my husband's family, and to drop off the books we collected as part of the Books for Alabama book drive. Before I forget, many thanks to Cagey for running a book drive of her own to support us, and Rita and Kate and 435 South Magazine and the UPS Store and all the others who brought us books and helped spread the word via Facebook or their own blogs. We were blown away by the response to our little idea to help.

My dining room has for weeks been the main depository of all that we've collected, and my children have enjoyed having their own little library of new and interested books to raid during the process. But yesterday morning, after much packing and repacking and jostling, we managed to get it all into the back of my Explorer.

before packing: many boxes of books.

Mad Jenga car packing skillz, I haz them.

And so we set out to deliver our goods, and to get a closer look at the damage in Hackleburg. We spent the night in Memphis, and this morning we met a first grade teacher from Hackleburg in a parking lot of a Hardees, and transfered the books to her husband's pickup. And then we followed her down the road into Hackleburg. As we got closer to the town, you could see the trees along the side of the road, bent over, in perfect little rows. The most bizarre thing.

And then we began to notice, wow, those are empty lots, where houses used to be. A driveway, a concrete foundation, and nothing else. No debris, no trees. Just gone.

new electric poles, next to the stumps of the broken ones.

 
What's left of the Napa Auto Parts store.

And then. We arrived at the school. As we pulled in behind Suzanne the teacher and her husband in their truck, I lost my breath. And then I teared up.

As I snapped this picture, Suzanne whispered from behind me, "those are my daughter's handprints."

 

I can't even explain, and pictures do not adequately show, the total amount of devastation in this little town. It is amazing to me that more lives were not lost. It is completely amazing to me that there were no children in this school, they called school earlier in the day because of the potential these storms showed on the radar. They would not have survived. There is no way.

Drew, Will, Suzanne the teacher, and me in front of the football field.

There are strange juxtopositions. The first thing they dealt with at the school campus was the football field, because the high school seniors wanted to have their graduation at their own school, instead of in some other town, at some other school. I can't blame them, when you're 18 years old, you want normalcy, in whatever way you can get it. (Prom had already taken place, so there were no problems there.) So they cleaned up and sodded the field first thing. Suzanne told me it wasn't until she was at graduation, sitting in the stands, watching these young adults she had taught so many years earlier walk across the stage in their pristine caps and gowns against the backdrop of their broken school, that she cried for the first time. Until then, she'd been in crisis mode, salvaging what she could, helping where she could, not really looking deep into the cracks and broken glass.

She pointed out to us that before the tornado, you couldn't see the schools from the main road, because there was a neighborhood there. Not a house or two, but an entire neighborhood. You couldn't see the water tower from the school parking lot where we were standing, because of the houses and the trees blocking the view.

Here's the other thing that's got the people of Hackleburg worried: The status of Wrangler plant in town that employed hundreds of people from this and other nearby towns, and that may choose not to rebuild.

This is what's left of the Wranger plant: a pile of twisted metal and insulation.

 

I have lived in the Midwest most of my life. I've taken cover many times when the sirens have gone off. I've never lived through something like this. I've never before seen this kind of devastation up close.

But these people are strong. They are busy. They are hopeful. And they are recovering.

 

Drew commented this afternoon about how once the tornado devastation in Joplin happened, everybody stopped talking about Alabama. And I know Joplin was so much worse, so many more dead and injured, so many more families displaced, and so much more to do. It's hard to imagine. Seeing this up close helps you start to imagine. And we told him, the major news networks stopped talking about it, but the local people didn't forget. And we didn't forget. Our little book drive will go a long way toward helping them re-establish a little normalcy for these kids, books they can check out, read, and learn. Temporary trailers and buildings started arriving today, and the bulldozers come in next week to start leveling out the broken brick structures. School will start on schedule, mid-August. 

There's hope in Hackleburg. It's a new day.

 Here's what you can do to help. Reach out to Wrangler on email, on Facebook, where ever you find them, and urge them to rebuild in Hackleburg. This town cannot survive if they have no jobs.

 

 

Oh, hai. I can haz summer now.

School has been out since June 1st, but my summer officially started today. Last week was Cub Scout Daycamp week, where I volunteered for the entire week in the 95 degree heat, trudging around covered in sunscreen and bug spray. My job, for the record, was running the Tot Lot, otherwise known as the holding pen for younger siblings and pre-teen girls. Pre-teen girls, it turns out, are pretty darn helpful with three and four year old boys, at least the one I got. And three and four year old boys are just so damn excited to be trudging along the swamp just like big brother the cub scout, they will follow you like rats to a Pied Piper. It was fun, it was hot, it was a little stressful, and I'm glad it's over, for another year.

This morning at 9 am, I put my oldest son on a chartered bus to H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation, along with 150 of his best scout friends. Much like kindergarten, it was a first for many parents, including me, but my kid couldn't have cared less if I was there or not. He was busy, doing busy boy scout things, like making faces out the window, God mom, just leave already. Sure enough, dude.

Stairsteps: A live demonstration of the percentile growth chart (3-95%) of nearly 11 year old boys. 

I am certain the child will not change underwear for 10 days, with the possible exception of Visitor's Day next Sunday, when I force him to give me the clothes he has on and put on new ones. As I told another mom today, I do not care how gross he is upon his return. I care only that he returns with his glasses and his retainer.

So. Now that's done, and I'm finally free to enjoy my summer. I have only one kid to worry about, a dog to walk, 18 loads of laundry, and the nastiest hardwood kitchen floor this side of a bar at Last Call. Time to get to work. Oh wait, is that the new Entertainment Weekly magazine in my mailbox? Niiiice.

 

Baby you can drive my car.

So yeah, I got a  new car. A Ford Explorer. A couple of interesting things about this.

I really liked my minivan, for a long time. I had driven small SUVs for years, mostly Chevy Blazers, until one day I pulled my back out lifting the baby carrier into the back seat when my youngest was an infant.

So we got a minivan. And for eight years of kids and dogs and driving cross country a few times, it was the perfect car. 

But after it hit 100,000 miles and things started to slowly go wrong, I knew it was time to do something else. My kids are bigger and more capable, everyone gets into the car of their own accord and buckles up. Occasionally, however, I still need to carry 6-7 people, and so I needed something with a third row.

I had never in my life looked at Fords. Everyone in my family drove GM cars, mostly Oldsmobiles and Chevys. My husband's family used to own GM dealerships in the south. Ford was never on the radar. Until we found out that my husband's company has a discount deal with Ford. Money talks, my friends.

I like this car. It drives like a truck, not a car, but that's okay, I did that for years and didn't mind it. My favorite car I ever owned was a Jeep Wrangler, for crying out loud, I don't mind being bounced around. I loved that Jeep - but people frown and cluck at you when you put carseats and babies in a convertible. Anyway,  despite the truck feel, the Explorer is very comfy. And the timing was perfect - literally two days after we drove it off the lot, Kansas City got hit with 13 inches of snow. I'd forgotten how much I missed having a four wheel drive vehicle.

So that's really all that's news around here. I got a new ride. Today the high will be 51 degrees, the ice is melted off the driveway, and the kids are playing outside. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the winter tunnel, and I'm so glad.  I'm moving away from my Food Network obsession, the baking and cooking and warming, and back into HGTV. I'm ready for projects. That's a sure sign of Spring in my world.

 

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Well now, we've just arrived back at Mayhem Central from a little jaunt down to Alabama to visit some of my husband's family. The boys and I flew back this afternoon, but daddy left early this morning, headed back to Australia.

The heady exoticism of traveling to Australia all the damn time has worn off, in case you're wondering.

Anyway, since we're on the topic of travel, back in June, while visiting San Diego (for which the slightly more accessible heady exoticism does not ever wear off,) I trekked down into the shopping district of Solana Beach with a friend for an afternoon. There are several stores there that I love, Solo being one, but my favorite is The Leaping Lotus. Much like a flea market, it is all different booths, anything you can imagine being handmade, imported, designed, whatever, is for sale in this store. It's a great place for little hostess gifts or birthday presents that don't cost an arm and a leg, but don't appear cheap, either.

So I came across this magnet, about four inches square, and it says, in a typewriter font, "Do one thing every day that scares you." It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

I bought it to give to a friend of mine, who was getting married for the second time. I bought it for her because she has been very brave, and also very scared, and she keeps going, and things always get better. I want to be like that. So it reminded me of her.

But I forgot to give it to her. And I came across it the other day, when cleaning out my suitcase from the remains of the last trip so that we could fly down to Alabama, and I found it there. (I am terrible about emptying suitcases. I've been known to step over or pull things out as needed for WEEKS. It's ridiculous.)

And I decided, you know what, that's actually some advice I need for myself. Because I have a tendency to bolt when the going gets tough. In my job, in how I deal with friends, children, my husband. I have a high fight or flight response, and I really only fight when I am backed against a wall. But I need to fight more. I need to stay, and work things out sometimes. I talk big, but when I get overwhelmed and get my feelings hurt, I run.

Thankfully, this has never really come up in my marriage. Generally, my husband and I are on the same wavelength. He is Southern, and so his flight response is even higher than mine, because you just don't talk about tough things when you're Southern. Every person in his family is a Master in the art of "Look away and pretend to be doing something extremely important if someone raises their voice." But together, if we come across a situation where it's time to bolt, my husband and I are almost always on the same page, and if not we neutralize and stabilize the other pretty well.

I got a little off track, (what a shock, I can hear you mumbling.) My point is, This is my new mantra. Do one thing every day that scares you. Today, I flew in an airplane. I'm not terrified of flying, I've done tons of it in my life, but I still don't like it. I often find myself bracing and holding my breath when landing, no matter how gently the pilot sets it on the ground. It scares me. But it doesn't keep me from doing it when I need to. I refuse to let fear lead me, in any direction.