Late Great Planet 8

Happy birthday, Joshua. It seems fitting that I'm writing this post the day after your birthday. But this is not the time to talk about the day-late, dollar-short parenting afforded so often to middle children, and besides, I don't think you'd mind. You had a good day. Any day that involves a trip to Target is a good one in your book, right? You picked out a new bike from us and spent your adorably wadded birthday cash on a Transformer you don't have to actually transform and a Tomogachi. My little consumer.



It's hard for me to believe you are eight years old. For some reason, eight seems so much bigger than seven. Come August, you'll be in third grade. That was a tough year for me, and each time one of you approaches it, I worry a little. Your brother got through it without a hitch, but you are much more like me. Third grade was the year my rebellious streak first reared its head, but I did have an insane teacher, so maybe you'll do better. There's a lot ahead of you this year: a new school where your big brother has never been heard of, for one. I'm excited that you'll have the chance to blaze your own path, but also a little apprehensive. I know you'll do fine. Mostly I know that.



I try to make myself stay in the moment with the four of you, but it's hard sometimes not to look ahead and wonder what the future will be like. I imagine you will be a lot of fun. You will be in a band and have an endless string of pretty girlfriends that I will try not to worry too much about. Hopefully you'll hold true to the maxim that boys always love their mothers and help keep me sane when your sister is just one year behind you, rolling her eyes and hating me as teenage girls are required to do.

Anyway, that's a ways off. Right now, I just want you to enjoy being eight. Ride your bike, look for frogs with your idolized big brother, get excited over the prospect of a day at the pool. Just be your sunny, springy little self. Happy birthday, Joshua. I love you so much.

And the livin's easy

Clearly I cannot be counted on to post regular updates about my fabulous summertime existence. We went to Florida, which I couldn't talk about before or during because BD has this pesky thing about not wanting to tell the whole internet we'll be leaving our stuff unattended for ten days. But we did! We drove aaaalllll the way down to Naples. Which is far. Florida is long! We drove eight hours to BD's grandparents' place near Greensboro, Georgia, and then got up the next morning and drove another ten to Naples. In case you have never driven eighteen hours in a minivan with four kids and one adult who will not let you drive, let me tell you, it's a lot of time to spend in a car with those people! It wasn't all bad, though. I got through a good bit of Midnight's Children, which may go on record as the longest I have ever taken to read a book, and I napped some. The rest of the time I refrained from throwing myself under the wheels of passing trucks to get away from the shrieking. Three year old children are the worst idea ever!

So, Naples was fabulous. Since this is the first summer in ten years that BD has not been chained to a small business, it was also the first time he could take enough time off for all of us to drive down that far and still spend enough time there to make it worth while. It was great to be able to let the kids spend time with their paternal Nonna (we do not say the G word) in her own home for the first time ever. They had a great time getting reacquainted with her, and not just because she has a Wii and a wide-screen TV and a pool a block from her house, either. We alternated beach days and pool days, since the beach was a 30 minute drive and we are all a little spoiled from two summers in a row of renting houses directly on the beach for vacations. Walking two blocks from a public beach to paid parking in the ungodly equatorial heat is as close as any of us has come in a while to a sticky, lung-collapsing personal vision of hell. For about ten minutes, then it was all cool again.

On the way home, we were lucky enough to have the use of a townhouse in Panama City Beach for two nights. Thanks Robin! SAM decided on the spur of the moment to drive down and meet us for a mini-vacation of her own. Having two nights really helped break up what ended up being about a twenty hour drive home. We spent Sunday on the sugar-white Gulf beach in front of Schooner's, where I used to work, and where we had an awesome beachside Father's Day lunch. The water at PCB was a refreshing 20 degrees (according to me) cooler than it was in South Florida, which was nice, and also slightly rougher, which the kids enjoyed immensely on their boogie boards.

All in all, it was a great trip. But I'm still glad to be out of the car.

You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky

Fifteen years ago today, I stood in Fisher Gardens and promised to love, honor, and cherish the only man for me. I was 21 years old, a college graduate of two whole weeks, and absolutely certain that I was doing the smartest thing I'd ever done, or ever would.









I guess I was pretty smart, to be so young, but I had no idea how beautiful life with you was going to be. Happy anniversary BD. I love you more than I can say.

Laziest Post Evah

What have I been doing during all this aggressive not blogging, you ask? Why, this of course. And also this. Otherwise known as, throwing a Memorial Day cookout and throwing a summer-birthdays/end-of-school party for my kids and their friends. We have at least a few of our own pictures still locked up in the Nikon D40. I think.

So Genevieve is officially 3 now, and Joshua will turn 8 on July 1. And we're all out of school for summer, and all these things have been properly commemorated and celebrated with the blowing up and filling of inflatable pools and slip-n-slides and semi-charred foods and two flavors of cupcakes. Phew!

Wednesday was my last day of work for the school year. I have to move my classroom after three years in a brand spankin' new room of which I was the first and only occupant, so there was a lot of packing those last two days. Also a lot of bitching about a certain superintendent who shall remain unnamed because he made us do a full day of in-service the very last day. But whatever. I'm out!

If you need me, I'll be in the inflatable pool tanning my hide. Coming soon...15th anniversary post.

I don't know those people!

Why is my Flickr widget showing photos from a blog in China no matter how many times I reset it?

I've temporarily removed the Flickr widget until I can figure out how to make it work. One of my techier friends should help me. Consider that a hint.

John and Kate Plus Hate

For the record, I normally have a profound lack of interest in anything having to do with either celebrities or reality television (two categories that should probably be mutually exclusive but somehow are not), but I am finding myself sucked into the John and Kate drama. Why is that?

We watched the first couple of seasons, not religiously or in order, but here and there because reruns would be on at night while I was getting Genevieve to sleep in our bed. SAM and I used to tease BD about having a little thing for Kate, at least until he saw the belly surgery episode. We would shake our heads and say "Poor John" when Kate would treat him like her ninth child, and wish for a van like theirs so our crew of nine could someday travel in one vehicle. But then we lost interest, because really, it was never that interesting in the first place.

I've seen whole websites transformed by swarms of loyal J&K fans coming to duke it out with J&K haters on the basis of one editorial. There's a thread of comments over thirteen thousand posts long on a parenting site I frequent. It's nuts! And truly, I would never dedicate that much emotional energy to loving or hating people I don't even know. But I have to admit, I'm not sorry to see Kate getting her comeuppance.

Maybe it's that I find it harmfully dishonest to present such a shiny-happy false facade to the world, in which one woman pretends to (almost) singlehandedly keep her eight children clean, clothed, and fed an all-organic diet in an immaculate house with a perfectly-organized laundry room while maintaining individualized relationships with each child and having a hot date with the hubby on a regular basis. Girl, please. Who are you fooling, and why would you want to?

Here's something I've learned: if you make yourself look too much better than everyone else, they will take the very earliest opportunity to crucify your uppity butt. But if you make people feel like they are not doing so badly after all, they might just love you. Maybe if Kate hadn't been so busy allegedly elbowing people out of her way on the path to fame and fortune, someone would have told her that.

Open letter to Toilet Hoverers

Dear T-H-ers of the world:

The way this works is that if your butt is actually on the toilet seat, you are not able to pee all over it. In other words, the only one making the seat too nasty to sit on is you, the one who thinks you are too good to sit on it. Please stop doing that.

Yours truly,
Sweet Sassy Molassy