Sunday, April 22, 2012

Sweet Sam and Finals

Sammie in the hosptial

Poor Sammie. On Easter evening she had a terrible accident and sliced her knee open. She slid into a measly plastic sprinkler head with jeans on. The damage was amazing. It was a huge, awful gash that required surgery and a three-day hospital stay. She is still in a brace and can't bend her knee. The cut was 12-inches across. Some of the skin below the cut isn't getting blood and is in danger of dying, in which case she would have to have plastic surgery. It's kind of a sad way to end her senior year. But she is a trooper--resilient, positive and so good-natured. I love her so much. In the meantime she has three AP tests to study for, and so being less active suits her lifestyle in a way.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. Finals are over. I survived. I really did. And a lot of good came from it. This past semester was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I read and wrote, read and wrote for three and a half months. That's about all I did. My brain feels like it's made ample room for all this extra information, that it's being absorbed and filed away. Retrieval of this knowledge at a later date is a distinct possibility. I'm banking on it, anyway.


Just when I have some time to smell the roses my tulips are dying--already. And my lilacs are in full bloom, several weeks early. They usually don't come out until Mother's Day. Time is marching on. Sammie graduates the end of May and school is almost out for everyone else.

Tonight we ate dinner on the patio. It was sort of an idyllic Sunday afternoon. Darren barbecued, Theo chewed on his bones and chased birds, wagging his tail as fast as a hummingbird's wings. We played "Say Anything" and had homemade peanut butter cookies for dessert.


Thursday, April 5, 2012

Two days without a microwave

 A few days ago, in the middle of defrosting some turkey, our microwave gave up the ghost. It didn't screech, or whine or peter out slowly or make any other distress sounds. It just stopped. It had died. It was only four years old.

Such a young microwave. Was it defective or is that just how long microwaves last "these days?" The guy at RC Willey said, "I don't care how nice or expensive a microwave it, they are all just garbage and won't last for more than four years." He had obviously been selling microwaves forever, and wasn't in commission mode at all. He could say whatever he wanted. It was sort of refreshing to know the truth about something, but irritating to think that we would just have to buy another one in four more years. Of course we bought one. How can you NOT have one?

We didn't get it until yesterday. So there were two days of maddening chaos in the kitchen. The kids kept asking how they were supposed to eat without a microwave. Put a pan on the stove, pour the stuff in and turn on the stove, I told them. They were perplexed. They are the microwave generation. The stove is for cooking dinner stuff, not for warming up stuff, they said. When they tried this they scored the bottom of the pan, leaving them to "soak."  Putting something to "soak" means you will not ever clean it. Your mother will because she is SICK of looking at it and she needs it because the microwave is broken!

"How am I supposed to put a corn dog in a pan on the stove?" Nathan asked. He had a point. Maybe we really shouldn't be eating corn dogs, I thought, but instead told him that he should find something else to eat. I started my usual bulleted list of all the things to eat when kids say there's nothing to eat. Like always, I started out with the most nutritious, but then gradually moved into foods that will definitely keep me a member in good standing at the Slacker Mom club.

  • cereal
  • bananas
  • apples
  • pretzels
  • yogurt
  • cheese sticks
  • leftovers from last night (no, that would require a pan to warm it up)
  • grapes
  • cheez nips
  • oreos
  • vanilla ice cream
  • double chocolate fudge ice cream (it's the end of the semester, OK?)
So last night having my microwave popcorn again was a real treat after not having it for a couple of days. And the new microwave is cool. It has a nob to turn instead of buttons to push.

But who cares really? It's gonna be dead in 2016.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Hot Mess

This is THE week of the semester. It is the week when everything comes together or falls apart. For 13 weeks, things have been falling into place, but I still worry that they could fall out of place so easily.

Hanging by a thread. It is amazing that I think of my school work in so tenuous of terms. My confidence is something that has to be hefted up from its hiding spot every day and put in plain view. And even then it likes to slink down to the place it is most comfortable. Kind of like when you walk out into the light after having been in a dark room and it feels better just to turn back.

Oh, that *%$#^ research paper that has been tormenting me for two months! Adrie spent three hours with me last night getting it into the right format. She laughed, "I seriously hope you never have to do something like this again." That was after she told me my paper was "a hot mess."

I agree, that paper was the "hot mess" of the semester. If it receives any sort of a decent grade, it will be because of Darren and his red pen and my professor's patience when I couldn't get the question right, then got the question right and then changed the question altogether. Poor guys.

Adrie's so sweet. She's the one who brought me the application to this program last spring and said, "Mom, you can do this."

Every day I remember that when I'm busy dredging up the confidence that has lain idle for way too long.