Mayhem

Have you ever tried to drive and listen to Matchbox 20 while your kids sing at the top of their lungs to Miley Cyrus in the backseat, blissfully unaware that there are other people in the vehicle? It goes a little something like this:

“It’s three a.m., I must be…CAN ALMOST SEE IT, THIS DREAM I’M DREAMING…says the rain’s gonna wash away, I believe…YOU’LL NEVER REACH IT…”

It’s odd, to say the least. And mildly annoying, and hysterical, all at the same time. Autumn and Lawson have recently taken to wearing headphones and popping their kiddie bop cds into the DVD player every blinking time we get in the car, and then singing along as loudly as they’re able to whatever asinine song is playing. I’m torn between ripping the DVD player out of the car and stifling my own shrieks of laughter.

But I do neither of these. I smile, and add to the cacophony by turning the volume up on Q99 (best of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today!) and belting it out along with ‘em. My personal favorite combination so far is “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt and Hilary Duff’s “Wake Up.”

“You’re beautiful…you’re beautiful…ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, COULD BE NEW YORK, MAYBE…cause I’ll never be with you…yeah, she caught my eye…WAKE UP, WAKE UP…”

Who knows. Maybe one day we’ll accidentally discover a really cool mash up.

The Dread Swine Flu

This pretty much says it all.

Picture me armed with a can of Lysol in one hand, a Clorox wipe in the other, swiping the swine flu germs as quickly as they land as my husband hacks and hocks and blows and sneezes and makes all sorts of other obnoxious nasty sounds. I don’t know exactly what it is about a man…or about my man, in particular…my seven year old son has no problem with sneezing into his sleeve or a tissue, but Duane seems to take great pleasure with sneezing to the four corners of whatever room he happens to be in. “Can’t you…?” I start to nag. “I’m just too weak…” he responds, without taking his eyes off of whatever Outdoor Channel show he happens to be watching at the time.

He’s also too weak to lift the toilet seat right now.  It’s very disturbing.

So, while I’m not typically a germaphobe, I am literally walking around with a can of Lysol in one hand and a Clorox wipe in the other. I am not risking bare hand contact with anything, because this junk is gross, and I’ll let Duane suffer manfully for the family. He’s working on day 4, and although thus far I have managed to keep the rest of us inured against it, it’s kind of a pain in the butt. (I’m sure you can tell that I am a real Florence Nightingale kind of wife.) The kids are staying over at Duane’s parents’ house, which kind of stinks, since we had only seen them for a day in between our San Antonio trip and Duane getting sick, and the couch is my new bed.

That’s okay, though. I’ll take a week of the couch over a week of the swine flu.

Birthdays

Lawson recently had a birthday, and I’ve been struggling a little with what, precisely, to say about it–other than “Lawson had a birthday.”

I could tell you that my children’s birthdays, for some reason, tend to put me in a funk. I love planning their parties, and celebrating them, and being happy and excited with them…but I guess when it’s all said and done…they’re another year older. Another year away from being my babies. I’ll just stay away from that, though, because Law-man is fun, and I don’t want to be a funk when I talk about his birthday.

Law on his first birthday.

He gets so excited about things like this; it doesn’t matter whose birthday it is, really, as long as someone is having a birthday. He’d been asking for months when his seventh birthday was, and finally the day arrived. I woke him up, and he blinked up at me sleepily.

“Good morning,” I said softly. “Time to get up.”

“It’s my birthday.” He replied accusingly. “You need to tell me happy birthday.” I laughed. Usually it takes him a little while to wake up, but apparently not this morning.

I’d planned to make cupcakes for his class and bring him Chick-Fil-A for a special surprise lunch treat, and spent the morning making them.

Lawson's"best bud" Corbin. For the first month of school Law called him "you know...his mom and you play volleyball...we have a lot in common..."

 

I didn’t plan a full-out birthday party, much to Lawson’s dismay. Instead, he had this “class” party and another, smaller family party at Ruby Tuesdays later that night, with chocolate cake and ice cream and plenty of loved ones gathered around. In part it was because our lives are so frenzied right now with all of the athletic practices and hours of homework that there just isn’t time to squeeze in one more thing, it seems; in part it was because everyone’s pockets are so pinched with the economy that I don’t like to ask people to buy gifts for a child to has everything and more that he needs. And, too…he simply doesn’t need a party every year.

He had a full out party last year. He asked for a “camping” party, and that’s what he got–tents in the basement, camping lanterns, a big fire for roasting hotdogs and smores, cupcakes, baked beans, chips, and other goodies…The kids painted “treasure boxes” in which they created camping themed shadow boxes, smashed a pinata…did all sorts of stuff. It was the kind of party you want to have every year.

So, anyway–now that I’m recovered from the angst of it, Happy Birthday to Lawson.

A Ringside History of Us

Dick and Dave on my morning radio show were reminiscing about class rings this morning (Dave’s daughter had just received hers), and it took me back. I still have my ring with its crystalline blue stone that matched my eyes and silver band. I turned up my nose at my birth stone, the garnet. It resembled blood too much for my delicate sensibilities, or some such nonsense. The sides of my ring were etched with a volleyball with my jersey number in its center (16), the school colors (blue and white), and a scroll to represent writing.

I loved my ring.

A couple of years later, I met my husband-to-be and acquired his class ring as well. His was gold, with a black onyx. I’m thinking he didn’t care too much for his birthstone, either. He had a baseball with his jersey number (also 16–can you say Fate?) inscribed on one side, and a Cavalier, his high school’s mascot, etched on the other.

I loved his ring.

I wore it around my neck on a gold chain that he bought for just a few months into our relationship. He graduated it up to a “promise ring” a few months after that. I guess a guy figures it’s pretty serious when a girl lets him put doe pee on her and sit her in the woods next to a wet tree stump for a spell.

There was little fanfare with the promise ring. Just our regular Friday night trip to the mall to see a movie or something, and “oh, you want some jewelry or something?”

“Do I want some jewelry or something?” Guys, don’t ever ask a woman if she wants some jewelry or something. I mean, seriously. Is that a trick question? “What kind of jewelry?”

“Well, I just figured we might get married one day, and I’m not going to buy an engagement ring or anything yet, but I figured I might buy something. So you want something?” My husband is the Romance King.

So I picked out a little something something.

A year or so later, Duane had still not officially popped the question. His father sort of popped the question for him. We’d been dating a little over a year, and it was just a general assumption that we were going to get married. We talked about in general future terms. “One day.” “Some day.” That sort of thing. I was just starting my sophomore year of college, though, and neither of us was really in any rush. So we’re sitting there eating dinner or some such mundane thing…I don’t really remember…and his dad looks at us, and says, “So, when are yall going get married? Are yall going to get married anytime soon? Cause if you are, I’ve got this house just sitting over there in the field, and I’m getting ready to get those deadbeat tenants out of it, and I can have it ready for you by August.”

Well. With an offer like that…

We just sort of looked at each other nervously, not quite sure what to say. Dan went on. “Not that I’m rushing you or anything.”

“Well, yeah, we’ve been thinking about it a lot lately,” Duane told him. “We’ll let you know what we decide.”

It was a few days later that we went to the mall again, picked out another little something something, and then went on to the Wal-Mart to buy fishing lures. Duane refused to let me wear my ring until he formally proposed, which kind of irritated me. I wanted my ring. Either my irritation irritated him or he got nervous about the whole thing, because when we got in the Wally World parking lot, he said, “Here, catch!” and tossed a teddy bear my way. The ring was tied around the teddy bear’s neck.

I was so overwhelmed at the romance of the moment I dropped the bear to the asphalt and had to take a moment to overcome my clumsiness before retrieving it and placing my ring on my left hand.

And then…we lived happily ever after.

Clean Houses and Good Kids

My house was clean today for the first time in a looong time. Usually it’s clean in spurts–the den today, the kitchen tomorrow, the bedrooms a few days later–but nothing all at once. That just expends way too much energy, you know? And I’m easily distracted. I’ll pick up a pair of socks from the den, take them to the dirty clothes basket, start doing laundry, and before you know it, I’ve completely forgotten that I started off cleaning the den. So it might not get cleaned until sometime in the distant future.

But I was motivated enough by the impetus of an impending Bible study this evening to actually get everything clean All At Once. So it would be perfectly understandable for me to feel just a tiny little sense of letdown when the call came that the study was cancelled. Out of seventeen women, only three of us were not sick or caring for sick children or spouses. That’s October in Virginia for you–eighty degrees one day, fifty-five the next, with forty-degree nights in between. “Sick” weather.

But you know…it was odd. That sense of letdown never came. I fired off a text message laughing at fate to a friend I’d shared coffee with earlier when I should have been running frantically around attending to last minute details, then went to pick the kids up from school. As originally planned, we spent the afternoon at home putting extra effort into homework and eating soft ‘n chewy chocolate chips. We had an easy dinner of scrambled eggs and fried bologna, and I deviously tricked my children into paying some extra attention to their bedrooms by telling them the first one to have a spick and span room would be the first one to get a new paint job. It was peaceful, and I could actually relax, because I was surrounded by a clean, cozy, home that was redolent of apple cider candles and Pledge.

I should probably do this more often, when people aren’t supposed to visit.

The kids and I took a little jaunt up into the field, too, to taunt the calves (they’re pretty cute right now–they like to race beside the car as if they’re wild mustangs instead of the least graceful animal on the planet). I snapped a few pictures of Autumn and Lawson in our barn, even though the light was starting to fade. I love how much my kids love each other, even when they act like they despise each other. It’s in every grin, every mischievous sideways look, every careless touch. They’re wonderful, and I am blessed.

One of my favorites--Lawson getting his britches caught on the barbed wire fence.

 

The Fever

This is dedicated to all of those hunting widows out there…I hope you had a great opening day of bow season.

 

There’s a phenomenon that takes over a vast number of the male species roundabout the mid to end of September. It’s the “gearing up for hunting season” phenomenon, or, as I life to refer to it more simply, the Fever.

 

I actually have two males of the species in the grips of the Fever to contend with. Lawson got his first taste of it last weekend, when there was an “open season” of sorts for kids. He got an eight-point buck all by himself, and has not let his father live it down yet that he did so when he was seven years-old, while Duane didn’t manage to kill his first buck until he was eleven. Na-na-na-na-boo-boo.

 

The Fever has clear and unmistakable symptoms, among them a suspicious increase of Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops packages delivered by UPS—so many that the friendly UPS man actually looks upon you with concern, asking, “so your husband’s a bowhunter, huh? How ‘bout we just send these back?” It’s further marked by a dining room table littered by various hunting apparatuses that must be moved nightly to another segment of the home—carefully, as not to disturb a fragile rest or sight that has been painstakingly positioned in just the right spot. Finally, the male temperament, usually so easygoing and peaceable, undergoes a significant and volatile alteration when in the grip of the Fever.

 

Take for instance the following example. Duane usually loves for me to cook supper. He adores it, in fact. He would grovel on the floor in abject humility…okay, I exaggerate. I don’t often have a great deal of time to cook these days, since Autumn’s tumbling and Lawson’s soccer schedules don’t let me get home until after seven p.m., most nights. But one night last week, I decided the heck with it…I’m cooking.

 

I planned everything carefully…the schedule permitted me to run Autumn to practice, run back home, prepare everything, get Law ready for soccer, have Duane take him to soccer, and then grant me just enough time to toss everything in the oven while I ran back out to pick Autumn up from practice, then run back home and have everything plated by the time Duane returned with Law from soccer. It was split-second perfect timing. I was pretty proud of myself for coordinating it, since I’m not exactly a domestic diva.

 

But that Fever took hold of my husband. He actually wanted me to skip cooking supper so he could Shoot His Bow. So it would be Perfect for Saturday.

 

We had pork chops, sweet potatoes, and butterbeans for supper that night, in case you were wondering.

The Farting Incident

blup.

 

blup.

 

Autumn, behind me, burst into restrained giggles and slapped her hand over her mouth. Lawson, in front of me, cocked one camo-clad cheek to the side, did a little shimmy, and let it rip again.

 

bluuuuupp.

 

“Lawson!” I exclaimed. “Stop!”

 

The forty-ish couple studying paint samples beside him pretended not to hear, but the tell-tale pause in their conversation gave them away. Ahead of all of us, Duane was steadily shaking his head as if to say, “I’m not with them.”

 

“What?” Lawson turned back to me with a grin. “I had to pass gas. Grand-daddy always says not to hold it, or it’ll make your belly hurt.”

 

To punctuate his explanation, he blupped again. It’s really hard to be irritated with a blupping child. A blipping child with a dimple is even harder.

 

“Stop it, son,” Duane said. The other couple had given up and were laughing freely now, stifling their sniggers in the paint chips.

 

“You don’t fart in public,” I instructed.

 

“But if you absolutely have to,” Duane added as we walked on, “you do it silently, without making a big production out of it.”

 

“And then you make sure to walk away really quickly, so nobody knows it was you stinking up the place.”

 

These are the important life lessons, people.

CuckooCuckoo

I had a cuckoo dream last night. It looped continuously through my dreaming cycles. I’d get some relief from it during my deep sleep cycles, then come right back to it during my REM periods. I remember waking and peering groggily at the clock around 6 a.m. (no mean feat for my near-sighted self) then letting my head drop heavily back onto the pillow, thinking “not time to get up…dangit.”

 

“They” say confession is good for the soul, so I’ll preface this odd tale by stating a few pertinent facts:

 

A) We live near the Peaks of Otter

 

B) Friday I discovered a couple of fraudulent internet charges on my checking account that I’m still working to discover the source of and get cleared up. I have to get a new debit card and who knows what else. Until it’s cleared up, I have frozen my checking account. Obviously (you think?) it’s weighing on my mind.

 

C) I think I might have ADHD. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.)

 

D) I teach teenagers.

 

E) I have a perpetual craving for vanilla chai lattes.

 

I think that’s everything pertinent, so here goes:

 

My Twilight Zone

 

Duane and I were escorting some weird teenage Goth chick that I have no recollection of knowing up to the Peaks of Otter. Once there, we entered a lodge-restaurant-store type building (also that I have no recollection of ever seeing). There’s this long counter, and people serving vanilla chai lattes and other coffee drinks, food, and market-type foods. We have no interest in hiking or anything. We’re just there for food purchases. I don’t even have my camera with me.

 

There are chalkboard menus over the counter, and a bored looking girl behind the counter waiting to take our order. It’s fairly early in the day—around 9:30 or so—but that really wouldn’t matter. I just want a vanilla chai latte. The girl with us, though, wants a full lunch meal. Now, the menus are very clear. You can get a cheap-o style lunch for a $1.10, or a big meal for $8.95. At 9:30 in the morning, I really feel like she ought to go the cheap route if she’s going to get lunch. Just my opinion.

 

Duane, never long on patience, gets frustrated, hands me a twenty. “This is for both of you,” he tells me, speaking very slowly, as if he’s talking to Autumn. “It has to last all day. You don’t have access to your account right now, you know, so don’t waste it! Make it last!” I turn back to Surly Goth Girl. We still can’t agree on what she’s going to eat.

 

I really want my vanilla chai latte. I turn back to Duane, who’s disappearing out the door. I look at the bored counter girl, the other patrons waiting. “But I have ADD!” I yell. “Don’t leave me alone with this chick!”

 

It’s at that moment that I wake up, or loop into deep sleep, over and over. Strange, huh? I’ve also dreamed about Duane jumping up and down to make the cake fall and snakes in the bed. I’ve actually made Duane get out of the bed for that one, while I slept blissfully on.

 

Anyway…I’m back. I’ve been a little overwhelmed the last couple of weeks, and blogging has felt like more of a “do I have to?” than a “man, I can’t wait.” Thus…I just haven’t. I have a whole litany of Lawsonisms, though, that I’ll be springing on you over the next week. So gird yourselves. The laughing might hurt you. I’ll probably start with the farting incident.

 

Until next time.

Crazy Little Thing Called Life

I’ve been a bad blogger, but I have a pretty good excuse. It’s called Life, and it’s very probably the reason for my marathon craving for Life cereal recently. I’ve singlehandedly gone through no fewer than four boxes in the last few weeks. That stuff is tasty sprinkled with a little sugar.

 

My manic days begin with me stumbling out of the bed in the morning and getting the kids dressed and fed and off to school.

 

Okay—I cannot tell a lie. I urge the kids to get themselves dressed and fed, and I remind them to brush their teeth. Same dif. Very June Cleaver-ish.

 

Then it’s time for the time suck. That’s the computer, in case you were confused. With my computer I email the teachers of my homebound student and print their lessons and handouts, make notes for my student, and somehow manage to email twenty-seven other people before ten-thirty a.m. I am not kidding. I counted. I think it has something to do with volunteering to organize the fall festival for our church, but I could be mistaken. It could also have something to do with volunteering to organize the snack rotation for Lawson’s soccer team.

 

I’m not really sure what I was thinking. I think it’s one of those classic cases where the brain is not actually engaged when the lips are moving—which happens a fair amount with me. I wasn’t pestered or begged or even really asked…I just volunteered. And then I volunteered again, at Lawson’s soccer practice tonight. (The soccer practice, coincidentally, that Duane and I have to move heaven and earth to get to, since Autumn’s tumbling is from 4-6:30, Lawson’s practice is 6-7:00, and Duane’s meeting at church is at 7 p.m. And while it isn’t AA, that kind of schedule is enough to give anyone a drinking problem.)  No one else had volunteered (imagine that) to help out with team pictures or the end of the season party. So open mouth, insert helpful volunteer foot. This isn’t even an “I can’t say ‘no’” kind of problem. This is a “you’re a moron” kind of problem.

 

But I’m not complaining. I am actually reveling in my moronic-ness. My moronic, freakish, volunteerishness. I actually like being so busy I can’t draw a deep breath. I can’t explain it, because it defies logical explanation. My mom remarked on the phenomenon when I was in high school and filling every waking hour with some activity: volleyball, Forensics, Ace, lit mag, newspaper, work…she would have been worried about me if she couldn’t see clearly that I was thriving. It’s the same now.  

 

My name is Lori. And I am a Volunteer.

Gleeful

I can still remember my first viewing of Grease. I sat in the back of a hatch-back station wagon on the back of a worn, soft quilt. I was supposed to be sleeping, but my three-year-old attention was captivated by the music. It was 1978, a small drive-in theater somewhere near our home in Crewe, VA. I loved every minute of it.

 

I’ve since watched Grease as many, if not more, times as I’ve seen such classics as the Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. It never fails to move me.

 

There aren’t many moments like that—moments that stick in your three-old memory just clear as yesterday. I was just watching the pilot of Glee, though, and I think I may have just had a moment.

 

The show was pretty good the whole way through—witty, with a subtle, snarky sense of humor that you can easily miss if you don’t possess intelligence. The moment that defined it as a show to watch, though, was the glee club’s rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”

 

Maybe it’s just because I like Journey that much. Sing me some Journey and I’ll…well, maybe I shouldn’t fully commit myself. I’ll just plead the fifth, instead. Suffice to say, it’s one of my all-time favorite groups.

 

Maybe it’s simply because I am a bit of geek with a little weakness for musicals, in all of their hokey, corny glory. I mean, nobody just spontaneously bursts into song as they go about their business (except perhaps when they’re cleaning the kitchen floor, or in the car…), but wouldn’t the world be a fun place if they did?

 

Whatever the reason, that single three or four minute clip drew me in and made me want to stay a while. If the glee club continues to sing the songs of Journey, I expect it’ll probably be a pretty good season for the show.

*You can view a snippet of the song by clicking on the video link in my Vodpod line-up, below right.