thursday 13: week 18

thirteen awesome things about having two kids in grade school edition

1) coffee & a chocolate croissant with a friend at 8:15 AM

2) running around the track with the bad mothers club (plus sometimes amanda and heather and wine)

3) morning sex that does not require bribery of children with candy and/or tv

4) packing school lunches (seriously, i love this)

5) multi-grade gossip around the playground

6) getting in and out of the bank in 3 minutes flat because no one is begging for suckers

7) driving with the music AS LOUD AS I WANT without anyone complaining that their ears hurt

8) ironing without interruption

9) my kids can READ and WRITE ya'll!

10) coming home exhausted and satisfied with having gotten so much done in a day

11) hoarders, intervention, no reservations

12) collating and stapling things with the electric stapler

13) missing the kids makes me appreciate them a tiny bit more

seriously, hide your cheating husbands, whiny children and jiggly butts because i will DEVOUR them

so yeah, things are going well. is it the new anti-depressant (after 10 years on celexa, i'm on prozac)? is it the new exercise routine (3.5 miles around the track three times a week plus hip thrusts)? is it the fact that the kids are in school from 8 until 2 every day (omg, omg, omg, they're BOTH there!)? is it that i have no extraneous obligations for the foreseeable future? is it that i am regularly hanging out with friends and family? and tomorrow, when i am not BEAT tired, i will answer all these questions and more. and post some cute first day of school photos.

will someone do me a favor?

mom and i found my wedding dress today. no, i'm not engaged (yet). yes, i bought it. yes, it cost $35. yes, it requires pie. and eclectic chairs. and canning jars with mismatched silverware. and a FASCINATOR. and vintage stockings with vintage garters. and my trademark red lipstick. and a live band with a fiddle. basically, I want this wedding.

so someone tell danny to shit or get off the pot and that my favorite romantic song is stevie wonder's i believe. and it's in one of my favorite movies too.

the dice was loaded from the start

i grow up with a sister not my own. amanda is the unsubtractable piece of myself that has always been there, an appendage, relevant. easy. necessary. emily becomes my sister in circumstance; unpoken common experience transferable only through osmosis. maybe they make me lazy in girlfriendship - certainly it's easier to wield power with a boy or maybe there's no reason to struggle with a girl, or amazing girls like these in any case.

in any case, it takes me almost 25 more years to meet girlfriends and i must let my guard down because before -what changed?- i would have judged them both. too loose. too religious. too comfortable in her own skin. too uncomfortable in her own skin. threatening. we've apparently walked miles and miles and miles around this track because i wake up in the middle of my family reunion less abrasive (still navel-gazing).

the conversation begins with circumcision and inevitably strays to abortion. we're polite, tearful. i give credit to colleen for teaching me two things i might never have learned without her: how to reach into a womb not my own and how to stretch-fight fair. because its less about the fight and more about the common ground we can find here. let her walk forward as the shining banner of Catholicism (and all Christianity for that manner, morality, intelligence and compartmentalized-beautiful womanhood). let me be be a rusty signpost for atheism.

i'm sorry you had to make that decision. i'm sorry you regret it. i love you. i respect you. i'm illogical. i'm crazy. i'm prone to drawing fuzzy-ambiguous lines. i've changed. don't pigeonhole me. i love you. i'm sorry.

Now with more Puget Sound

blogging at you from the great pacific north west.... Specifically the fold out sofa belonging to my 94 year old grandmother, via iPad, via unsecured network in this retirement community. This is how dedicated I am to you.

I always have great feelings of competency and belongingness when we land in Seattle - specifically when it's just me and the kids and a backpacking backpack using public transit to get to donuts at pike... Heading into port townsend leaves me both sunny-nostalgic and heavy with the cloak of that girl I am with this part of my family: more abrasive (I know!) than California me. Taking lots of moody pictures but not sure how to get them here to there.

Escaped with my cousin Bo to safe way this evening. Mini toiletries, threats of cigarettes, and the world's slowest "express" lane. Washington drivers!