Pinterest Is Doing Valentine's Day All Wrong

This morning while writing out my weekly grocery list, I had to log onto Pinterest to get some inspiration for a Valentine’s Day breakfast for the kids. To some of you, that single sentence may make me seem to be some kind of Type-A-homemaker-Pinteresty Wannabe mom. If you do think that, then you should know that you would only be HALF right. Since going back to work, I’ve had zero time to be a homemaker, much less a type-A one. But I will fess up to being a Pinterest-wannabe. I love the rabbit hole that is Pinterest, even though most of the cute stuff I attempt from there never works out.

Exhibit A: My son's firetruck cake from his second birthday. We refer to it as "the little engine that couldn't"

So yes, I am a Pinterest wannabe, and I won’t apologize for it, no matter how much I want to be like all you chill moms who don’t care about Pinterest and throw awesome, laid back birthday parties that are always fun and cool even though you just wing it. (How the hell do you do that? I kind of hate you.) 

But anyway, none of that has anything to do with what I’m supposed to write about. I’m supposed to write about my epiphany that came from logging on to Pinterest and typing “Valentine’s Day” into the search engine. As I looked at all the graphics with captions like “Surprise Your Sweetie With 76 of the Greatest Valentine’s Day Date Ideas” or “Valentine’s Smores Popcorn”, or “25 DIY Emoji Valentines”, I realized that the Pinterest Valentines Day shouldn’t be geared towards couples. Guys honestly don’t care about half the stuff on there. Ladies, if you are using Pinterest to celebrate Valentine’s Day, then you should know that your efforts will be much more appreciated by your female friends. 

For example, see this super cute Vday manicure? Would your husband/boyfriend/significant other care about this? Because, I can tell you right now how much Mr. C cares about whether or not I have hearts on my nails: he cares nada, zip, zero. If I came home with a cute manicure and waggled my fingers in front of his face, he’d nod and say something dismissive, like “Nice!”. Perhaps he may ask me how much it cost. But that’d be it.  My friends on the other hand, would notice it right off the bat and they would make a point of telling me how CUTE it was. Then they would ask me where I go to get my nails done and we’d have a discussion analyzing the pros and cons of all the nail salons in the valley. In the end, I would feel good about my Valentine’s Day manicure.  

Or this one, for example. A candy arrangement with signs stating your love for him. Ladies, this would make most men uncomfortable. They don't know what to do with this much card stock. But, if we made something like this for one of our friends or colleagues? We'd win the title of BFF forever. 

(Provided that you change the wording on the signs so that they dont' claim undying love, because there is a creep factor there).

Now, this one your man may be on board with. I know I may actually do this one.

But see here? This. Your guy may appreciate the beer, but the flower things on top? That would just be weird for him. The first thing he would do would be to take those paper petals off. Compare that scenario to this one: You make it for a friend. You take it to her house and present it to her. She squeals, you squeal, and you would be tagged with that shit  on Instagram within the hour.

I'm just happy that Pinterest wasn't around when I was dating. As it was, this holiday as an unmarried single always felt like some kind of contest. The years I didn't have a boyfriend, it felt like I was losing the game, and the years that I did, I had such silly expectations for my significant other. So, if you are reading this and you dated me when I was in my early to mid-twenties, my sincere apologies. I was kind of nuts. And to any single girls who may be reading this, honey, your man does not want a poster board with candy bars glued onto it that say things like "Your my Sweet-Tart" or "I won't let you slip through my Butterfingers". Send that stuff to your girl friends. They'll eat it up, but your man doesn't really care. If he acts like he does, then congratulations! That means he's probably really into you. 

As for me, my Vday will consist of baking the kids some chocolate raspberry muffins for breakfast, giving them cards, and then us all working in our yard together. At night, Mr. C and I will feed the kids some pizza and send them off to the other side the house to watch a movie while we enjoy a surf and turf dinner, followed by a backyard fire in our old wheelbarrow. We call it our "white trash fire pit" and you won't find anything like it on Pinterest, but it's good enough for me. 

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Purposefully Untitled

I have mixed feelings about the annual 9/11 tributes. 

This morning Matt’s alarm went off and Toby Keith’s "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" played. We’ll put a boot in their ass, it’s the American Way, those were the first words in my ears this morning, and I was reminded that it is September 11th. As I do every year, (as I’m sure most Americans do every year on this date) I thought back to my morning fourteen years ago.

Then, I was living at my parent’s house while escrow closed on my condo. I had finished my shower and was heading down the hallway clad in a bathrobe and towel on my head, when my mother burst through the front door with a worried expression on her face. “Turn on the tv.” she said.  She saw the first plane hit the tower while working out at the gym. So we turned on the tv and watched all the coverage until I had to leave it behind for work. I was teaching Kindergarten, so I spent that day being cheery and pretending like nothing was wrong. It was a weird sort of blessing to be teaching Kindergarten that day. 

Four days later, I was still latched onto the television, watching the tributes, hearing the stories. And then…..I’ll never forget. I was in my room, sitting on the floor three feet from the television and crying when my mom walked in and said, “Turn it off, Tacy. It didn’t happen to you.”

What the hell did she mean, it didn’t happen to me? It happened to every American, didn’t it? But if I was being completely honest with myself, I knew she was right. I knew no one who had died. I lived three thousand miles away, had never set foot in the state of New York, had never seen the Statue of Liberty close up or the World Trade Center. I had purposefully been seeking out the sadness and grief. I wanted to tap into that collective mourning and outrage that the news media fed us by watching the stories of survival, listening to the sadness of the people who lost their friends and family. I wanted to make their stories my story, so that I could feel more connected to this tragedy. It was morbid, and in the weeks that followed, I saw that I wasn’t the only one doing it. I bet that you were probably doing it too. You just didn’t happen to be living with a therapist who could call you out on your melancholic behavior. 

As the months rolled on and our nation’s patriotism reached a fever pitch, as songs were written like the one I heard this morning, my mom’s words kept ringing in my ears. I know, I know, the intention is to commemorate and memorialize. That’s important, I think.  It’s also necessary. But I believe there’s a fine line between memorializing the sacrifice and loss of others and turning a tragedy into something somewhat pretty for ourselves. 

When Saddam Hussein was killed, it was announced at a music festival out here. The crowd lost their minds cheering, and I thought about what a weird reaction that was. I mean, when a murderer is sentenced for his/her crimes, you never see the family members jubilant about it.  They are somber. They are quiet. They know the punishment doesn’t do a thing to fix their loss. Perhaps they feel a quiet gladness or relief, but I have never seen an example of a family who is jubilant.  What does it say about our understanding of this situation if we are so joyful at the death of this person, who, yes, is gladly dead, but whose evil still goes on and on affecting the lives of families and friends who lost loved ones fourteen years ago today? 

Our country really knows so little about war and terror on our own soil.  9/11 was just a taste of that. I don’t see Syrian refuges memorializing their losses with songs written in the spirit of revenge or pictures of lost skylines. At least not for a long, long time. When we remember today the lives lost fourteen years ago, please remember it in the spirit of respect it deserves.   It’s not about posting cool pictures with flags or “I <3 New York” stickers on your wall.  It’s not a cute Facebook game. Watch the documentaries if you must, feel all the feels.  Remember those lost with the kind of respect you would want others to show you, had you lost a family member. And then move on with your life, because, you know

…it didn’t happen to you. 

Reunited And It Feels Good to at Least One of Us

You guys. I am writing this in complete silence.  All I can hear is the air conditioner running. Once and a while a random dog barks outside, but that’s it. I’m breathing it in. 

The kids are back in school. 

Yes, I know just a mere three months ago I was lamenting the fact that we were still in school, a slave to the schedule.  Let’s talk about that for a moment.

I feel like the schedule is a lover that I push away because it smothers. It’s all up in my business, telling me what to do, where to go, when to be there.  I resent it and yearn for freedom from it’s suffocating embrace, but then... when it’s gone….. I begin to miss it.  Sometime over the course of summer, amidst the kids chorus of “I’m bored.” and “What do we have to eat?”, I realize that the schedule wasn’t so bad. Sure, it’s a little bossy, but it does give me direction. Security. Purpose. 

I always take the schedule back with open arms.  That’s just the kind of dysfunctional relationship we have. 

I hope you all had peaceful, organized mornings. We did not, but I am not taking the blame for this one.  I did all I could do in my power to make it a smooth morning. Lunches were packed, I had the kids pick out their first day outfits yesterday, I even made them lay out their underwear and socks, just to be safe. I did not, however, make them lay out their shoes because, you know, I thought shoes are just things that you put on your feet before you walk out the door. Did you know that they are actually more than that? Apparently, shoes have the power to dictate your WHOLE attitude towards the world and everything in it.  They do. Listen.

It was the old shoes,not the new ones we bought a few weeks ago, but the old shoes that were needed for today, and only one of the coveted pair was sitting by the front door. Where was this other old shoe with all the magical powers to make this school year a great one? We did not know.  We looked until I finally said that we could not waste any more time looking, to put on the new shoes. “Noooooooo!”, the child wails. The new ones are too big! The new ones had laces and laces are devil spawn! The new ones will ruin the whole day! 

I paused and had a flashback moment to three weeks ago in the shoe store, when this child claimed to love these shoes, begged us, in fact, to buy them. I considered stating this fact out loud and then desisted, recognizing that to do so would only take the argument down dark avenues in which the child would try to tell me how I misheard everything and the shoes were never really wanted in the first place.  Instead I announce that in five minutes we would get in the car, and this child could be there with two new shoes on it’s feet, or one old shoe, but the decision needed to be made quickly.

The child then screeched “Will you help me…. for once????” and I laughed boldly right into the face of my offspring, thinking “Honey, you think I don’t know how you’re playing this game? You go talk to Grandma because mommy here invented morning drama and if you’re trying to win, I suggest you find yourself another opponent. I will own you at this. You will crash. You will burn. And you. will. LOSE your will to play. Bring it.” 

So long story shorter, there was gnashing of teeth and stomping of feet, but I held my ground and got in the car by the established five minute deadline. But it didn’t stop there, no. Said child went on, grumpily stating that it wished it was a flamingo so that it only had one leg so it could wear it’s one old shoe.  Then it wished that everyone could be a flamingo, so that it wouldn’t be the only one-legged flamingo at school.Then the other child argued that flamingoes really have two legs, and the angry child yelled that that wasn’t the point.  That’s about the time when I wished I had an Enya CD in the car, because trying to go to your mental happy space is difficult with the Looney Tunes song running on track in your head, but I made it work.  

When we got to school, I took a picture of both kids smiling to commemorate the first day of school, and that’s the one I put on Facebook- the happy one.  Earlier though, in the five minute time frame between the front door and the car, was when I took the original picture. This was the one I sent to Matt, because he knows how anxiety can make this child of mine-the one who insists that wearing the old shoes is the only way to ensure a good year-feel like life is harder than it really is.

I was careful not to name any names, so you’re going to have to really study this photograph to figure out which one of the kids I’m talking about here.   

Poor J.  In case you’re wondering, he was fine by the time we walked in the gates. I’m sure he’ll have a good day, despite not having the “right” shoes on his feet.  I, however, still feel a bit wound up, though that could be due to the three cups of coffee I’ve had.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great day and that your kids come home happy with their teachers.  Personally, I’ll be spending the day making it up to the schedule. He’s a bit bitter, but I know it’s just a matter of time before we’re comfortable with each other again. 

A 1980's Parent

I wrote on Facebook earlier this week that I felt that, at heart, I’m a 1980’s type of parent. I wrote  a little bit of context around it, but mostly I thought that people probably wouldn’t even understand what I meant and that it’d be ignored. Then, it got more responses on it than I thought I would, and I said to myself, “Hey, Tacy. Maybe more people really get you than you think.”  That cozy thought lasted all of 30 seconds before I remembered that you can never really tell how people may interpret certain things. For all I know, my friends think that I have a secret desire to wear stirrup pants and use copious amounts of Aqua Net. Who knows, really?

So, to set the record straight, that’s not what I meant. Also, I am fully aware that stirrup pants are not a thing that would look good on my body, and while I’m not sure what to make of this dry, kinky hair that’s growing out of my forty-year old head, I do know that Aqua Net is not something it would survive.  

I just want you to know that I know that. 

I suppose I should start with what prompted me to write that I felt like an 80’s parent yesterday, but the truth is, this feeling that I am parenting in the wrong era is something that I’m been feeling for a long time now. So, I think I want to take the long way around to it. Sit tight.  

Growing up, my parents had a pretty laid back approach to granting us independence.  I started walking to and from school around fourth grade. My sisters, who were even younger, were always with me, and as we walked, we gathered more and more friends until finally, upon reaching school, we were a huge mob of children descending up on the playground. No cell phones, of course, to let my mom know that we had safely arrived. She took it for granted every day that we did. The same assumption applied to when I walked everywhere in my middle school years; to my friend’s homes, to the library, or to the neighborhood market which was up a block and across a very busy, uncontrolled intersection.  

Actually, that last one I used to do much earlier- maybe eight or nine and usually with a younger sister in tow. My mom would send us up with a few dollars to fetch a last-minute ingredient for dinner and we’d stand at the curb for long stretches, waiting for a lull in the flow of traffic so we could scurry across four lanes.  Sometimes we misjudged how fast cars were traveling and would find ourselves dodging traffic in the middle of the street. Most of the time though, the cars stopped for us and we would carry on our way, oblivious to danger the way kids are.

People love to say that you can’t do that anymore, you can’t send your kids out on their own, that it’s not safe….but I don’t know if that’s true.  Certainly maybe today the world online is scarier for kids, but outside, out there in the real world? I’m not convinced that it’s more dangerous than it was in the 80’s. My sister and I were talking about this a few days ago.  We got approached many times by creepers. My friends did too. We were always just lucky enough, just smart enough, to never have anything bad happen. Only once, did an incidence occur that frightened me so badly I ran home crying. (My dad, who was home when I arrived, put a bat in his truck after I told him what happened and tried to find the guy. Thank God he didn’t.)

Most of the time, we never told our parents about these occurrences. We weren’t trying to be sneaky- sometimes it honestly didn’t cross our minds. If we remembered, then maybe we told them and then they would tell us we handled the situation the right way, and off we’d go the next day, walking alone to our friend’s house again. 

I honestly felt that being harassed was par for the course where I grew up (a half mile from North Hollywood). I remember even feeling bad if I went somewhere and didn’t hear at least one wolf whistle from a passing car- but that was when I was living at the height of my teenage mindset. Stupidity personifies in the form of a teenager’s brain. This is truth.

I have a friend who tells stories of her reckless 80’s youth and laughs as she asks, “Where were all the parents in the 80’s?” While it’s true that reading this through the lens of a modern day parent makes parents from thirty years ago seem grossly negligent (I’m sure my parents are probably cringing as they read this), they weren’t. They were great parents who were no different than a lot of other parents from that era. My friends walked places. My friends went without seat belts. My friends sat alone at home or in a car for lengthy periods of time. All the parents back then were just operating in whatever the culture deemed acceptable- and what the culture deemed acceptable behavior by parents was much more flexible then than it is today. 

Today, I feel smothered by it. I’m bothered by the way parents police each other and judge each other. It affects the decisions I make for my kids, makes me feel that I can’t give my own children any more independence than other kids have, because if I did, that would make me a bad parent.

When PG was 7, I took her to a new dentist. They called her back and the assistant asked if I wanted to join her. I said, “No, I think she’ll be okay.” Then for the next half hour I watched as every parent in there went back with their kid and I felt guilty. I thought, “Shoot. Maybe I should have gone back with her.” So now I do. I go back with the kids and I sit there, the same way I sit in the front waiting room, just now, I’m two feet away from them. 

I stay at birthday parties because that’s what parents do nowadays. I don’t understand it, but I do it because it’s expected. Last year, one of my kids was invited to a five hour birthday party and the parents had to stay. What in the world, parents? Has the world gone insane? Are other parents happy to spend their weekends sitting in plastic folding chairs, balancing a styrofoam cake plate on their knees with a fake smile plastered on their faces? Remember when you were a kid and going to a birthday party meant that your parent left you there for the next few hours? Why don’t we do that anymore? 

I listened to someone say how terrible it is that parents don’t walk their child into our school when using the back entrance.  The back entrance, you should know, is all of 200 feet long. It’s a wide sidewalk that leads from the back parking lot, along the perimeter of the school’s fence, and there’s a crossing guard stationed 75 feet into the kids’s “journey”. I almost lost my eyeballs to the back of my skull from rolling them so hard. 

Last year, I left the kids in the car with the air on, doors locked from the inside, while I ran up to the ATM, 15 feet away.  As I waited in line at the ATM, a guy stood next to my car and called out to me that what I was doing was illegal.  I was irritated, with right to be, because actually CA law states that children can be left unattended in a vehicle at age 6, (but truthfully, I didn’t know that until I went home and looked it up in a huff). I’m sure that guy felt that he was being a responsible citizen, but I felt slighted at getting to use my own judgement about my kid’s safety. It felt terrible, being judged that way. And scary.

I’m not saying that I want my kids to go walking everywhere and run into bad guys the way I did. Of course I don’t. In fact, I think if my parents knew how many times my sisters and I were approached by gross men, they probably wouldn’t have let us go out on our own. But like I said, I rarely told them. I had enough confidence, mixed with luck, and took care of it myself. At the very least, I developed a strong instinct for stranger danger. 

Nowadays, I feel like my kids have no freedom. I wonder how they are even going to learn how to deal with the world themselves, when I am always right there, by their side, helping them, all in the name of What If. Parents nowadays hate What If, but What if has always been there, for all parents, throughout time. I think our parents, and the ones before them, dealt better with the fact that there is always a possibility of something bad happening, but that most of the time, they knew, everything was okay. There’s been a shift with our generation where people are no longer wanting to believe that it’ll all be okay- it’s better, we think, to err on the side of safety all the time, and we should never drop the ball. We don’t trust the world, we don’t trust our kids in the world, and we don’t trust each other. 

I don’t know how people live with this constant fear.  It’s not that I don’t worry about my kid’s safety. I do. I have horrible, paralyzing thoughts about all the What Ifs. Sometimes the What Ifs are valid reasons to worry. Often, however, they don’t stack up against the benefits of giving my kids some experiences in independence. And feeling that way makes me feel like an anomaly in today’s parenting culture, but I can’t do it. Uber protectiveness is not for me.    

Last week, PG had to be at sixth grade orientation at eight in the morning. This was bad news for us since we had come home from Legoland a mere nine hours before. I got her up to dress and let the little ones sleep in until the last minute, when I piled them into the car in their jammies to drive her to school. In the parking lot, I saw that not one car was ahead of us in the drop-off line. Every single parent was walking their child in. Immediately the guilt hit me.  I turned to her.

“Sorry. I didn’t know parents were going to be walking their kids in. Will you be ok?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll just do what everyone else does.”

I nodded. “Okay. Call me if something comes up. See you at 1.”

Then I left and wrote my dumb little Facebook status about feeling like an 80’s parent for dropping her off curbside. 

When I picked her up, I asked how it went going in by herself. She said, “Fine. It was confusing at first. I followed these people into the MPR but then someone tapped me and said I needed a name tag, so I had to go back. I figured it out though.”

So, she did have problems, just like I was worried about. Then she figured them out.  Without me. All by herself.  

There’s something to this 80’s parenting guys.

Edition: I'm Melting

Well. It's officially the time of year to get out of the desert, and wouldn't you know, school has gone and started for Mr. C, so we're stuck here.  I'm real happy about that, and if you're reading this from anywhere in our 117 degree valley, I'm sure you real glad to be stuck here too.

Dear LORD it's hot.  We've all been stuck inside because going anywhere in the car means that you boil your skin for a good ten minutes before the AC kicks in. It's true that summer here in the Coachella Valley is similar to having a snowed-in winter. We are all getting a bit of cabin fever to prove it:

•  Yesterday, it was 3 pm before I made PG finally go and brush her hair.  
• I can no longer tell the difference between the kids' pajamas and their real clothes- they started going to bed and waking up in the same thing, and now their loungewear blurs right in with their play clothes.  
• We have watched so many movies. So many.  I shudder to think about what our cable bill will be this month. Whoever the CEO of Time Warner Cable is, I'm sure he's enjoying his amazing beach getaway in the Maldives, footed by us and our contributions to On Demand.

And the evening new with it's stupid commercial teases about the weather. "A cool down is on the way! See it here, at 11." Such an announcement gets me excited. A glimmer of hope floats, just there, out of my reach, and I think... I can get it! Yes, there is hope! There's a cool down coming! Hallelujah! Tears of joy slide down my sweaty face, mixing with the perspiration there..... and then I find out that "cool down" means we're going from a scorching 115 to a mere blistering 110.  What the hell, News Channel 3? Now I want to harm you. I really do.

I've gone delusional.  Tonight, as I type this, there is a pot of red beans and rice simmering on the stove.  I also made cornbread. Comfort food. Winter food, because I need to at least imagine that what lurks outside in the atmosphere is not hot, steamy air that feels like you're standing in front of a jet plane's engine, no.  No, let's say that it's a cool, crisp cold front that snaps at my skin when I step outside and requires me to wear a flannel and... boots.  Beloved boots! How I love wearing a good pair of boots with jeans and a flowing cardigan.

Alas.  The reality is that around here, December is the first month we can really get away with wearing jeans and boots..... long past the days of pumpkins and orange leaves. We never get orange leaves, anyway.  Out here in the desert, we mostly pretend Fall. We burn pumpkin-scented candles while the air conditioners push cooling air through the vents in our homes. We make apple pie and try to ignore the fact that the a la mode is melting faster than it should into a creamy pool at the base of the plate.  Sometimes, we even put on the boots and sweaters while it's still in the 90's. We just sweat through it all and go on pretending...la,la,la. Happy Fall everyone!

It's a miserable thing, this heat. It messes with your mind. It clamps down on you and worms its way into your perspective. Before you know it, ninety five degrees starts feeling like "good weather" to you, and all your friends who live in normal places think that you're weird.

But what can you do about it?   It's like this song I used to sing at camp when I was a kid: you can't go under it, you can't go over it, you can't go around it, you gotta go through it. 

So through it we shall go.

But don't ask me to be happy about it.

Paying Attention to the Middle

J turned 9 last week, in case you missed it on my social media.  I’m sorry. I realized a while ago that Matt and I are those people who post too many pictures of their vacation and their kids. I’ve cut back a bit, but I’m not going to stop all the way because a) I figure if people don’t want to see it, they can always block it b) we’re not as bad as a lot of my FB friends, which I feel gives me permission to continue status quo. 

Back to J….My parents sent over an envelope of some older pictures they found.  In it, was this picture. 

Excuse the quality of the picture of the picture. My hair makes up for it.

I spent a lot of time looking at it.  For one, my hair looks really good (that’s the short-lived glory of post pregnancy hair). But the other reason that I gazed at this picture for so long is that I do not remember J at this age- at all.  He’s two in this picture, but when looking at it, I feel an odd kind of detachment; Oh, that must be Jake when he was two, and I wait for memories to accompany the thought, but none come. I took the picture to 9, who’s visiting home for a few weeks, and he says he doesn’t remember J looking like this either.  I showed the girls, which included my niece who was over to play, and they all said “ That’s J?” They couldn’t believe it.  Even Roo said “When did J look like this?” And I answered, “When you were three months old, baby. Don’t worry if you can’t remember.”

Me and Roo the same day the other pic was taken. (Really just posting this pic so you can have another look at how awesome my hair was.)

Nobody in this household remembers this phantom child. My poor J. Thinking back to that time period, 9’s mom was still with him, so he spent half his time with her, which means that for half of the time in our house, it was the three littles.  PG was a grown-up preschooler, Roo was a brand new baby, and there was J, stuck in the middle.

I never gave much thought to supposed “middle child syndrome” (I always thought it was something my little sister made up to get attention. Ha!), but I suppose there’s merit to it.  I remember PG as a toddler, because she was my only child at the time.  I remember Roo as a toddler, because she was my last baby.  But J’s toddlerhood was sandwiched between a very colicky infancy and the birth of a new sister, with the time in between being very short. I can’t remember so much as his favorite toy. Is that why my boy forever switches off between two basic moods, “happy” and “pissed off”? Is he aware that early in life he was mostly overshadowed by his big sister’s accomplishments and his little sister’s role as baby of the family?

The thing is, while you may be thinking how awfully sad this is, I don't beat myself up about it. I mean... I do feel guilt, but I don’t give it much leeway because any family who has three kids in four years is just doing the best it can through the insanity. And it is insanity.  I’m glad it is over. I’m a much better mom to older children than I am to younger ones.(Some moms can handle the overwhelming avalanche of needs that multiple small children have without  feeling like Mommy Dearest most days. I am not one of them. I do better now because my house no longer feels like a funny farm.)
  
It’s just that it went by and I forgot-we all forgot- to pay much attention to the kid in the middle, the one who wasn’t learning to read or needing bottles. I didn’t know then, to take the time and tell myself to remember conversations with him, or books we read, or times he made us laugh.  That stuff all happened, but it’s not in my long-term. I have to sit at the computer and dig through picture files to find the memories. 

He looks happy though, right? He doesn’t look too neglected? 

I wish I could remember.   

Now that he’s older- they’re all older, of course, but especially now him- I am much better about paying attention. I’m taking mental pictures- him grinning at me from under his baseball cap with sweat dripping down the sides of his face, after hours playing his favorite game in the hot sun.  Or, he and his sisters playing Legos together in their pajamas, his skinny legs wrapped in his red and green striped elf pajamas that he begged us for last Christmas. And him again, catching my eye, making sure that I’m watching when he cannonballs into our pool. 

And this time, I am. 

I’m paying attention.

Greatest Show on Earth

We’ve been back from vacation a exactly a week. And in that week, I’ve done lots of laundry.  So much laundry. Mountains of laundry. I weep from the amounts of laundry I have done. 

But do you care? No. Nor should you.  My laundry is my business, and I shouldn’t use this space to complain about it so much. So I will move on. 

But it really was a medal-worthy amount of laundry.

Ahem. 

Last post, I told you that I would write about the skies in Utah.  We were there to look at geological things (snort-snort, nerdy), but the skies are what captivated me.  They were beautiful and LARGE and filled with clouds of multiple shades that stretched themselves across the entire horizon.  I made a few enemies on Facebook when I commented that I didn’t understand why Montana was considered The Big Sky State. I mean, I’ve been to Montana, and though it was it was a while ago-like, when I was 10- I don’t remember their skies being all that great. As a ten year old, I’m sure, that I was, you know, an expert on the subject. 

(Do I need to clarify that that was sarcasm? I hope not.)

But getting back to the Utah skies, there was one night when the sky put on a fantastic show for us.  Truly... that’s exactly what it was- Mother Nature treating us to some jaw-dropping beauty.  It was the first time that I felt (and I’m going to go ahead and turn on the corn full blast here)…lucky that nature shared something so spectacular with me. 

It started around 8 o’clock. PG and I were doing dishes and we noticed that the light was strange….. so we walked out to the front of our campsite to look up and see what was going on in the sky.  We noticed a storm brewing over the bluffs.

It kept getting darker,

and darker.

Meanwhile, to my right, the sunset was making all the rocks glow red.

Then, all of a sudden, this vertical prism appeared.

And the light kept changing....

and changing. 

The rainbow disappeared and was replaced by rolls of thunder. 

Then the cloud burst, and you could see the rain fall off in the distance.

(I love that little piece of gold cloud on the left side.) 

It rained for a while with thunder and lightening. Matt, PG and I were all out on the road, taking pictures.  We competed for shots of lightening bolts. I missed it here.

And here.

But I got it here!

Here's one of Matt's shots. He hasn't edited it yet, but he let me use it anyway. I like how you can see the bolt of lightening travel all the way down through the clouds.  

Beautiful. Also, weird that we were standing 3 feet apart, yet our pictures look so different.

I had a friend who once, long ago, told me that she didn't understand why photography was considered an art when all you have to do is look through a camera and push a button.  I think the above examples clearly show the difference between someone who's just looking through a lens and pushing a button and one who knows about aperture, light, settings, lenses, and composition. 

Don't be a dummy. It's art, although I'd have to say that the best artist out there the night of that storm was the one who put on that beautiful display for us. 

It was something I'll never forget.