Moonspun Spins

Folks, if you see something strange, ignore it. Looking into some things here

I have a work friend, whom I like very much, who sends me lots of funny e-mails, you know those forwarded ones. I nearly always get a laugh out of them. Today’s was no different.

But today, I felt compelled to share it with you. I think I may ask Lil m some of the questions…

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Why God made moms – Answers given by 2nd grade children:

Why did God make mothers?
1. She’s the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born..

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men’s bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We’re related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people’s mom like me.

What kind of a little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mom eats a lot
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that mom didn’t have her thinking cap on.

Who’s the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn’t want to be boss, but she has to because dad’s such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What’s the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home and dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power ’cause that’s who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friends.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don’t do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she’s already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I’d diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I’d get rid of that.
2. I’d make my mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.

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My thoughts:

a) I for sure have a dollup, not a dab of mean in me. But I must have inherited that from my own mothers, so it’s her fault, right?

b) I LIKE the eyes on the back of my head and I intend to keep them, thank you!

c) I am  happy that as of now, even after alimony, RP makes at least $800 a year.

d) I’ll keep my mom magic…I don’t know where I got it, but it has its moments.

Happy Monday!

Right, so um, it seems when I have to actually WORK at work (the nerve of them asking me to do things they pay me to do!), I seem to have much less time to read blogs and write on my own. Ok, and to be more honest, I feel kind of edgy and cranky (ask RP, he’ll confirm this) and while I have had many many profound thoughts and really have no lack of subject material, I don’t have the gumption or desire or oomph to sit and tell you about it. Sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me as I am sure its temporary.

So in order to distract you from what may be some pretty raw emotions, thoughts, fears or possible rants, it’s time for a picture….

Yep, a distraction.

This is a picture from our trip to Santa’s Village. They had a 3-d movie about this elf called Tinkerdoodle. It was ok, the best part really being the 3-d part.  This is the girls with the ‘real’ Tinkerdoodle who came out on stage before and after…is it me, or is he a little freaky? Like his nose is a bit too red? Lil RP#2 wasn’t quite sure what to think of him…but she smiled for the camera anyway. Sort of….

She lay on her own mat to the right of me, her face peaceful. My beloved lil moonspun joining me and others in a yoga class. I expected her to be super flexible—she’s an active 9 year old. I expected her to behave—she did. I expected her to enjoy herself—she sure did, especially after the instructor told her she looked like a great “yogini” and next week she should be in the front row.

I expected the yoga class would make my still healing achilles heel feel good and stretched—it did. I expected that it would remind me of ways I am not flexible—that, too. And in a bonus, I was actually more in shape than the last time I participated in a class. All good.

What I did not expect was to feel my age. I am 42. This sounds, well up until recently, much older than I feel (and some would argue look). It’s just a number that honestly I don’t care much about. I accept the fact that I go to bed earlier and can’t sleep in. I accept the fact that those wrinkles appearing on my hands are not because it is cold. And while it was hard to hear Diane Sawyer last night on the news talk about the 25th anniversary of “We are the World” and the class of 1985 and realize “Hey! That’s me, I graduated from high school in 1985!” I can embrace my age.

But when my knees seemed to really feel the floor through the yoga mat and my wrists weren’t so excited about holding me up and complained. And when I laid down and felt lumpy and sore. And when I couldn’t get into a good child’s pose because of my boobs (ok well that has nothing to do with age…just big boobs) or my shoulders cracked louder and my neck complained a bit…well those made me feel all 42 years of my life in the yoga class.

And on the one hand I wasn’t so happy. I don’t know if it is the time of year or the weather or my age, but lately I feel tired and lumpy and achy. To the point, where I am concerned enough to have made a doctor’s appointment. Because I want to be sure, because there are clubs that I don’t necessarily want to join and if there are oddities in my body, I’d rather have a doctor tell me I was being silly than finding out something too late. I know too many people lately who suddenly have found something devastating happen to them or a loved one.

And heck, if it’s just normal aches and pains, I want to make sure to progress with them so in 50 years I am still here regaling you with them…

What age are you feeling?

So I don’t know for sure how it started, maybe the night before when we got dressed for the women’s hockey game and I let lil moonspun braid my hair. She did fine, she is a great braider, actually. Every once in a while I put my hair in two braids and the last two weekends when we have gone to hockey games it seems like a great way to contain it and still look cute under my hat.

Anyway, it was Saturday morning and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop. Lil m was seriously impatient waiting for her friend T to come over for a long awaited lego playdate. She was kind of fussing around me and somehow asked me if she could clean my studs—by which I mean my earrings people, not RP or the cabana boys that had yet to show up at that point. I have two piercings in each ear and the second hole has a pair of garnet studs in them. I don’t take them out, but I do clean them when necessary. I told lil m if she really wanted to do the job of taking them out and cleaning them and my ears, she could and instructed her to get cotton balls and alcohol from the bathroom.  I figures she could futz with my earlobes and I could still type.

We are working hard with lil m on improving her ability and awareness to take care of things, her own and helping out. If she is able to do this FFO and I have agreed she can get her ears pierced on her 10th birthday in July. So I imagine the fascination with my own earrings is part of it.

She did fine and as instructed with the studs. (Still no cabana boys!)

And then she looked more closely at my left ear where there is a third hole. I have not worn an earring in it for, oh I’d say 15 years and the last time I poked at it over the summer I was pretty sure the back had closed up and was fine with that. The next thing I know, lil m is dipping a paperclip in the alcohol and coming at me with it.

WTF?

(This is the moment I refer to in the beginning)

Me: What are you doing???…..

Lil m: Hold still, mama, it will be all right.

Me: ……With a paperclip?

Lil m: (looking confused) What? I put alcohol on it! It is sanitized.

Me: What are you doing to do with it?!

Lil m: (giving me the obvious look) Poke the hole back in your ear!

Me: NO YOU ARE NOT! NOT with a paperclip! That’s gross and it’s too big.

Lil m: Oh. What should I use then?

Me: (sighing as I realize there is no fighting this) An earring…one of my earrings from upstairs.

Lil m: OK!

And she bounds up the stairs to our room to get an earring.

A couple minutes later, she has excitedly and successfully poked through my third hole. It didn’t hurt at first, but as it’s not been used in a while, it was sore. I had to talk her out of me having a dangly in it and said it needed a stud. Several trips up and down the stairs (all the while me blissfully getting some homework done) resulted in her finding, goodness knows where, a lone stud with a celtic design on it. I think it was FFO’s actually. But it’s all we could find.

Lil m was still so excited this morning about it she sat me down in the bathroom to clean it again. And reminded me that after tomorrow she won’t be here for the week, I’ll have to remember on my own!

The episode did prompt several conversations about what it was like to get your ears pierced and how important it was to take care of them. that were valuable. But I’ll tell you my friends, the sight of my 9 year old coming after me with a sterilized paper clip was a sight I’ll not soon forget!

I am playing hooky (with GB’s permission) from work today because I wanted to keep treading water and not drowning in my academic work. So I am home having a pretty productive day thus far. But I had to pop up and say hello!

If you have not gone to the website for Very Demotivational Posters, you must! Add it to your reader, I promise you will be highly amused and appalled several times a day. Like yesterday I sent this one to RP and told him I was glad that THIS was NOT what he looked like. For comparison, here is a post from last summer with a pic of my ‘buff’ hubby playing volleyball.

Anyway, so I was taking a break before delving into working on my final project on the Civil War and I saw today’s picture. And laughed aloud, sent it to GB and realized it reminded me to two things.

First, the picture, please check it out now…it will only take a second and what I say afterwards will make sense if you see it….

Go here now.

Great. So when I was in high school and college, there was a $1 movie theatre that we went to, because well, movies were $1! And it was called the “Flick” Ok…so given the picture can  you imagine what my cousin JB and I called the theatre. Yep you guessed it! The “Fuck” theatre. And when I think about it now I sit here giggling to myself  thinking of us making plans. JB: “Are we going to see blah blah movie?” Me: “Sure! Where is it playing?” JB: “The Fuck” Me: “Great! Are you coming home first or should I meet you at the Fuck?” (JB worked across the street at a grocery store). JB: “Meet me at the Fuck”

Let’s say you knew someone whose first name was Lisa. Imagine said name on a gold necklace worn around her neck. Yea, that baby looked like it said “USA”. Now think about how self-conscious you are in junior high school. How long do you think said girl wore the “USA” necklace? Right, not so long…

Happy Friday!

I don’t have them tonight…I feel tired…and there is much to do. Good stuff and fun and huge amounts of academic work. So, maybe my picture will be worth the 1000 words I don’t have tonight.

This lil moonspun right after she opened a Christmas gift from my parents, the doll she really really really wanted…

I’ve spent alot of time on Facebook and via e-mail (I just wrote e-male…isn’t that funny? I bet one could get alot of jokes out of that if one was feeling creative) spreading around a great line that lil moonspun said last night. So why not share it via my corner of the www?

I went to dinner last night at Applebee’s with FFO and lil moonspun. [Side note: FFO being invited was kind of spontaneous and it turned out fine. Even though they had just come from her having an ultrasound and finding out she is having a boy, she knew not to talk about it too much and not once during dinner did I want to scream. And I love  Applebee's and went last night because RP was out and he hates it.]

So….lil m is doing a madlib type thing and she asks me to read a word for  her. “Adverb” I say and go to explain what it is.

“Mama!” She says rolling her eyes at me. “I KNOW what an adverb is.”

Oh.

I laugh and look at FFO and say “Well it’s good to know she is learning things at school anyway.”

Later as we are driving home, the best part comes.

“Mama? how come adjectives aren’t called adnouns if they describe nouns?”

“That’s a good question,” is all I could say.

I don’t think about it everyday, as I am sure he doesn’t either. But sometimes I’ll get a glimpse of the 10 inch scar that graces the side of his left thigh. And I’ll think idly “what if he hadn’t survived?”

You see, while I have mentioned it a time or two in relation to our work with the Relay for Life committee on campus, my handsome and loving husband is a cancer survivor. Of twenty years.

When he was 21 the summer before he was a senior in college, he came back from a semester living abroad in Africa and went to a doctor because his left leg was sore. That’s when they found the large tumor that was attacking the muscle in  his leg. That’s when he was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. That’s when he went into surgery not knowing whether or not he’d wake up and have that leg or not. That’s when, after the surgery and recovery he ran even harder than ever before and two months after “earning” that foot long scar he ran in his first marathon. And hasn’t looked  back since.

RP in some ways is not your typical cancer survivor because, by his own admission, he was young and felt invincible and since the surgery took care of most of it, he went about his business. It took him years to process the magnitude of what he had gone through as well as to be comfortable talking to people about it.

Not long after I’d met RP, I was chatting with him online and was telling him about going to my first boobsquishing mammogram which was just routine. “Are you ok?” the words flashed across my screen and with them I could feel his palpable concern. After I assured him I was fine, he told me about being a cancer survivor. A couple months later he showed me the pile of his medical records from the diagnosis and surgery that he’d kept and never showed anyone else.

I’ll never forget the first Relay for Life that we participated in with the girls before the lrps had moved back to Kentucky. I have never been to one and it was a great experience. The first lap of every Relay is a survivor lap. RP had donned his purple survivor shirt and I stood with the girls on the edge of the track near our tent. I watched him come around the corner with the other survivors and was completely overwhelmed with emotion and got choked up. I mean very choked up.

Since then I’ve seen him speak at several Relay for Life events as the students ask him to be a guest speaker. As is his personality, he is warm, genuine and inspiring. And I always get choked up watching him walk that first lap, because that first time floods back to me. And there continue to be those odd moments when I wonder “what if he hadn’t survived?” My world would be so different now and I’d not even know why. But that’s not what was meant to be. He was meant to run 40+ marathons and ultra-marathons and hundreds of small races on a leg he almost lost. He was meant to become a professor and an inspiration to students. He was meant to be a great dad and step-dad. He was meant to be the one person whom can imitate me and make me belly laugh when he does it. He was meant to be the person who is my hero. He was meant to love me.

Yesterday at the hockey game RP and I volunteered with the Relay for Life committee and RP wore his purple survivor shirt. We walked around selling 50/50 tickets, RP being the front man because of his outgoing personality.  We had fun and did well. But it was the subtle parts that really got me. The older woman who told RP confidentially that she’d been in remission for 6 months, the man who said he was a fellow survivor, the co-worker who told us about her husband who was in NJ helping his brother whose wife was just diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer. It was the spoken and unspoken thread that cancer is a disease that touches all of us that strucke me this time.

And later as we watched the game and yelled loudly for the team (who kickass…they are still undefeated) I thought again how grateful I am that RP is a survivor. And I watched the statistic scroll across the message board that one American dies of cancer every single minute I felt stunned. I am so glad that my husband is a statistic on the positive side, because so many aren’t.

After the game we went out to a local pizza places (despite our small town we do have several restaurant choices!) and ate awesome calzones. We talked about a range of topics including history and my final project (yes we are geeks) and when we came home it had been a very good day.

A very good day indeed with my husband, my survivor.

(This is a picture of us back in November at the 1/2 marathon in York that my cousin, EightofNine ran. RP had just run a 50 mile race before and this was before the 5k walk that I did with JB and her kids and my aunt and cousins.)

It’s Saturday morning as I type this. I feel that odd weekend way where you are both tired and rested at the same time. We slept in until 7, which is like noon for most people. And yet it’s 10 am now and after breakfast of a yummy chocolate chip pancake made by my hubby I spent an hour or so in my online classroom waxing all kinds of smart about air power and the second world war. (I know you are jealous, but try to contain yourself) Now I have a weekend stretched before with me ample time to get my butt caught up on reading for next week and a bibliography due next week for my final project. My class will be done in a month…yikes, there is much to do before then!

It’s somewhere in the single digits here, but the sun is out and so that’s just fine. Outside our front windows, the snow pack from the roof has been slowly sliding off during the week and these huge icicles are hanging from it. The sun is hitting the ice and it looks all sparkly and pretty, especially since I am warm and toast inside.

This afternoon RP and I are headed to campus to a hockey game. The Relay for Life committee is going to be at the game giving out prizes and raising awareness and we said we’d help. Plus the hockey team is currently undefeated and games are always great.

I want to clarify my middle of the night post regarding mentioning Lil moonspun going to therapy. Her seeing a therapist has been nothing to do with the comment made by Wren. This was in process before that. FFO has been looking for one and apparently they are both hard to find for kids at all, let alone at good times. Despite my misgivings, I was outvoted by FFO, the teacher and another woman at the school who is a liason for kids trying to find them in the area. Apparently they all think it’s worth lil m’s while to miss 1 1/2 hours of school every other Wednesday, so who was I to argue. I didn’t feel passionate about it, but just not great. And as, FFO admitted yesterday, lil m might not like her and so if that  happens, she will hand over the reigns to someone else to help.

I do know that for me it’s a bit of a control thing. Lil moonspun has the Vermont state medicaid insurance which is great for kids. This is because FFO has defrauded the stated is listed as her parent. The state has no way I guess for me to be categorized as lil m’s parent for these purposes because FFO and I were never (thank goodness) Civil unioned or legally attached. When I went to apply for foodstamps after FFO and I had broken up I put lil m on my form and said half time and the woman told me that FFO had not only already claimed her and was getting the benefits, that there was no way in their system for half-custody. Wtf?   But now since, FFO is in charge of lil m’s insurance (although we could cover her if need be) she has to make the calls and blah blah blah. That’s the part that scares me since she isn’t super organized. But thus far there have not been any big issues.

Lil moonspun, as you all know, does have a bit of a unique and complicated life and would like to talk to someone. Which is fine. It is interesting for me because FFO keeps telling me that lil m is obviously going through something because she is emotional and can’t sleep at her house and cries. Lil m has not recently acted like that here. Although she does sleep walk occasionally (and last week at a most inopportune time) she goes to bed without issue, sleeps through the night and goes through her days just fine. I talk to her about stuff, she talks back and while I know she has mixed feelings about the baby FFO is having, she doesn’t act with me the way that FFO describes. It makes a mama wonder.

In other news, I ran for a 1/2 hour last night on our indoor track. It was the first time I’d run since, well, November I guess. I purposefully asked RP to run with me, because as I told him, I am least likely to back out of a running date with him as opposed to other people. It’s a matter of pride. I was a bit nervous, but it felt fine and today I feel a good sore in my quads, but nothing crippling. Now I just have to do it again and again….ok, can’t think too much about THAT….

I sat down with my calendar and wrote in all the dates for my classes until the end of the year. Ok, the end of my master’s program. Uh, people, we all know  how time flies by. Well when I end the seminar I am in now I’ll be half done and by Thanksgiving I will be ALL done. Which means that between now and then amidst lots of reading and writing and analyzing, I will also be picking a topic and researching and writing a 50 page paper on it. Now I KNOW that I can do it, but it’s alot to think about sometimes.

While I go ponder my life and its choices, I’ll leave you with two pictures. One of the Big ass icicles and one of my hubby who just left for a 13 mile run and who will probably knock down said icicles when he comes back. Happy weekend!