Let's wrap this mother up.

So here it is. Thirty consecutive days of posting. {31 technically, because I am nothing if not an over-acheiving asshole.} After three years of this I’m still amazed that I actually stuck it out when many nights all I really wanted to do was collapse in a fit of wine, dill havarti and bad TV. {I guess I still ended up doing that, it was just pushed back an hour or two. What?! I needed my reeeward.}

I normally like to check in with other NaBloPoMoers as the month progresses but between the entryway project, and, well, mostly the entryway project, I wasn’t able to cheer on my fellow bloggers. But I am super glad that I had my good friend Jen L in this with me, to catch up with every day, just like I have had the previous two years of all this posting baloney. She’s a pretty awesome lady and she can write about things without plastering them in “shit” and “fuck” and “ass”, which are words that are so engrained in my writing that it’s a wonder I can even understand things that are written without them.

After this fall being so rough, I couldn’t face the Internet. I couldn’t laugh at myself and let’s face it- this blog is 90% me laughing at my own brand of dumb. I needed to snap out of it but NaBloPoMo seemed a pretty tall order for someone who had maybe posted 5 times in the last three months. I did NOT want to do it. But, as these things go, I’m so glad I did. I gave myself permission to just do what I could and most of the time that resulted in a somewhat coherent stringing together of nouns, adverbs and adjectives with a smattering of swear words and if I’m being honest more commas and brackets than could ever be deemed realistically necessary.

And now I’m off to get ready for December. On the other side of the cup of coffee sitting in front of me lies the creation of an advent activity calender, producing Keaton’s photo DVD, the completion of 57 loads of laundry, the stripping of beds and the decontamination of everything Rowan has ever touched as she has conveniently developed croup four days before her brother’s birthday, which I’d get upset about but her yappity barking seal cough is so pathetic that I feel nothing but pity for the poor thing.  The good news is that with all this crap to do and without an imaginary force making me do it, we’ll all get a nice break from me.

So once again, thank you, Internet, for sticking by me and my obnoxious links. I can honestly say I may have given up on blogging for a good long while had it not been for NaBloPoMo and the kick in the pants it gave me that I needed to get back to writing, which after this little family, is truly where my heart is.

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I'm not feeling very clever today…

I’m fighting off a scratchy throated sickness that has sapped all my energy and that I am NOT allowed to be fully hit with until after Keaton’s birthday on Sunday {DO YOU HEAR ME, UNIVERSE?}, so in the interest of taking a nap instead of boring/irritating the Internet with my stance on sensitive political/social topics, I will just be posting this video, which says it better {and without the use of my extensive swearword vocabulary!} than I ever could.

Come on, World. Quit being a giant asshat. It’s time. {Had to get one in.}

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This is a story about a plan.

When I was younger, high-schoolish, I wanted three children, all of them boys. Their names were going to be Tristan, Julian and Aidan, they were going to be fathered by Brad Pitt and we were all going to be incredibly good looking and ridiculously happy, The End. Spoiler alert! That did not happen. Which I’m {mostly} okay with. Brad’s loss, etc. etc.

In college I didn’t really want children {or think about them much}… until all of a sudden, I did. After holding my tiny newborn niece when I was 22, experiencing my first small bout of Baby Fever, we got three cats and a dog to fill my need to mother small snuggly things but after those things just peed and threw up hair everywhere instead of love me back, I defaulted back to my Three Boys plan, thinking it was as good as any, and trust me, after my jaunt through adolescenthood, a girl with my DNA running through her would not be doing the world any favors.

One night five months into our marriage, after a few glasses of wine, I convinced Bill now was as good a time as any *WINKWINK* to start a family. Things had changed since my dad died, life seemed so much shorter. So much more precious. That five year plan we’d automatically recite to well-wishers when they asked the newlyweds when we planned on starting a family, seemed suddenly, way too long for me. Still, the morning after the wine had worn off and we had come to our senses, we gave each other a GOD I HOPE THAT DIDN’T WORK look and decided we better wait awhile to have a baby. We were making pennies, just starting out our careers and barely had a handle on how exactly to be a grown-up.

Naturally, I was thoroughly knocked up.

While I was pregnant with Rowan, even after I found out she was a god-forsaken female child, I was 98% sure I would NEVER be putting my body through that again. Like ever. Then she came and not only did I want 15 more babies almost immediately after, I wanted them all to be girls because she was the sweetest, most perfect thing I had ever seen in my entire life. {For the record, Bill was still okay with just the one, decidedly against 15, but was open to one or two more of the buggers.}  He talked me into waiting at least a year before trying for our second, which seemed to take forever. I was so excited to add to our family, specifically to give Rowan a little sister. I got pregnant almost immediately and was weary but overjoyed when I did not get sick at around five weeks like I had with Rowan. That relief turned to paranoia when weeks six, seven and eight passed with not one pregnancy symptom but everyone assured me it was fine.

But it wasn’t. At around eleven weeks, after not finding a heartbeat, I was granted an ultrasound and the doctor unceremoniously told me that the pregnancy was “not viable”. Naturally I was upset and asked if he could tell what went wrong. He coldly told me that the embryo most-likely never developed past six weeks, I would probably miscarry naturally {without need of a D&C} within a week or two and we could try again in two months if we so desired. He did not say he was sorry. He did not acknowledge that going from 11 weeks pregnant to nothing in a thirty-second span was incredibly difficult. Internet, if I had had pants on I would have stood up and punched him in his cold, unfeeling face parts, but alas, I had no pants and he left the room before I could form much of a coherent thought. Two days later it was over and I was devastated.

After two months we began trying again, and again I got pregnant almost immediately. Only this time I was not overjoyed, I was scared. And resigned to feeling that this would be the same as the last. And it was. Only mercifully it happened much sooner. By seven weeks it was over and though I was prepared for this scenario, I was again devastated. I didn’t know if I had it in me to go through another miscarriage in such quick succession. I quit taking prenatal vitamins, added caffeine and booze back into my diet and even started smoking again on occasion, which I rationalized because I had been doing all those things when I got pregnant with Rowan and Bill barely had to look at me for that one to stick. These were not smart choices but I was in a fairly dark place all around, unhappy with my job, completely perplexed and confused by my inability to stay pregnant, not to mention the fact that my previously even-tempered, smiley little baby had turned into the world’s fiestiest toddler.

So obviously, when we quit trying in earnest, I got pregnant once again and while I was barely hopeful, it did feel different from the start. Then, at five weeks, two days {the exact same time frame it took with Rowan} the puking commenced. And I cried tears of absolute joy and tears of Jesus Christ Not This Shit Again. Then came the news that he was not a sister for Rowan as sisters don’t go full frontal at the tender gestational age of twelve weeks with a penis hanging out for all the world to see. Then he came, a real live baby, one that I had waited and hoped for, for what felt like forever at that point.

You already know how awesome Keaton’s first year of life was so I won’t go into details but this was why we came up with A Plan for number three because OF COURSE my dumb ass wanted to go through all this again. Bill did not really want three kids but as Chief Familial Officer of our family, he deferred to my wishes. This was a very Serious and Binding Plan that had the following parameters, 1. We wait until both kids are in full-time school so we are better equipped to deal with my sickness and/or a screamy baby from hell, 2. we needed to move to a place with more livable space and 3. we needed time to get over the very serious state of PTSD that Keaton’s infancy left us in.

So we were looking at late 2013 to 2014 which we felt was a doable time frame to accomplish the parameters of The Plan. And things went along just fine for over three  years when BAM… it happened. You all remember my goal list, right? The one I devotedly checked in on with you month after month after month until I just sort of…stopped? Surprisingly it wasn’t {just} because I got lazy or bored…no really! In truth I came down with a terrible sickness called Baby Motherfucking Fever and I had it bad. As I sat down to check in on those goals every month, many of them seemed off. Insignificant. But I couldn’t quite figure out why. They just didn’t seem all that important anymore. In my defense even I didn’t understand what was going on. I had been assaulted by adorable babies on other blogs, in real life and every time I opened facebook without feeling ANY need to produce one of my own but then all of a sudden it was all I thought about.

I knew Bill wouldn’t be on board so I kept quiet for a number of months but it was seriously eating away at me. I thought about why now was actually the perfect time for our family to grow and finally decided to approach Bill about it, which I did with an arsenal of lists, a rehearsed {but heartfelt!} speech and everything short of a dramatic enactment and a powerpoint presentation, {which I honestly briefly considered}. {Because I am lame.} I was so nervous to tell him, afraid he’d only see our small house, the cost of another kid, my getting sick and a screamy infant. Of course I completely underestimated him. It’s true he did see those things, but he also saw how much I wanted this, how the timing was pretty good as far as his job was concerned, how with a little rearranging we could find space for another little Gunter and how much love a baby can bring to a house. He was on board.

So it began. Last June I had my IUD removed, but before I did I researched possible ways to help prevent both early miscarriage and hyperemesis. In both cases there was no definitive answer, but since western medicine won’t help you until you’re already afflicted with disease, or pregnancy in this case, I decided to try the eastern route. I saw a herbalist/acupunturist who gave me tons of advice about getting my body ready for pregnancy. She told me that my miscarriages were either caused by chromosomal abnormalities, in which case there was nothing anyone could do or hormonal abnormalities, in which case acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine routes could be highly effective at helping me sustain and be healthy during pregnancy. I drank the kool-aid, so to speak, and began acupuncture treatments, a number of western and eastern supplements and started eating a very healthy diet. I was active during the day and sleeping a healthy 8-9 hours at night. I quit drinking anything but water and blueberry juice, besides a measly 4-6 oz cup of coffee in the morning that I sometimes just skipped in favor of a fertility boosting tea. I was determined to be the valedictorian of getting pregnant this time around, so sure that if I did everything right, everything would work out.

I have no idea why I thought this. If my previous two sustained pregnancies had taught me anything it was that I needed to smoke, drink, eat like shit and sit around all day, but I thought THIS TIME. THIS TIME. It’s going to be perfect. I’M going to be perfect and the universe will have no choice but to reward me with a perfect little baby. I was so, so sure.

And it worked. By mid-September I was ecstatic when the test was positive, the due date being at the tail end of May. It was the late spring baby we so, so wanted, giving me enough time to bounce back before Snoreface’s late July wedding, and giving us a whole glorious summer full of tiny baby in tiny onesies. I was determined to be optimistic, a state I’m not at my most natural in. But after all, it had been almost five years exactly since my miscarriages. They were a weird fluke! A blip. I was taking such good care of myself.

And then, because of course there is always an And Then when your dealing with optimistic idiots, I started cramping at five weeks, and within twenty four hours they had me doubled over in pain. This went on for 4 days, but I had no other symptoms of miscarriage and every site I looked into said cramping is incredibly common at this stage because your uterus is being assaulted by its new tenant, who is trying to make room for its future limbs and/or stereo system. I tried to relax but the cramping didn’t feel normal. So I did the only thing I could do at that point which was wait. And drive myself batty by consulting Dr. Google twice an hour. My clinic won’t see you until you are eight weeks along so I had no choice. Two weeks went by and nothing else happened. No more cramping but also no pregnancy symptoms which in my case meant, no sickness. After I passed the fateful five weeks, two day mark and I wasn’t puking I knew it was over, but hope, that stupid bitch, was always niggling in. Always telling me that maybe this time it was just different. I had worked so hard for it to be different.

It wasn’t. When I finally hit the 7.5 week mark I called the doctor’s office and they brought me in for a blood draw to check my hormone levels. At seven weeks pregnant your hCG level should be between 7, 650 – 229,000 mIU/ml. Mine was at 5.8. Anything below 5.0 is considered not at all in the slightest bit pregnant and since I knew my conception date, I knew what a number that low meant. They couldn’t get me in to confirm with an ultrasound for over a week which I scheduled, but because my body has a terrific sense of timing {and a very dark sense of humor} I started spotting later that afternoon. Only this time the miscarriage took weeks and was intensely painful, something I hadn’t experienced with my previous two. For whatever reason my body did not like going through this for a third time, and ho boy, it let me know it. It was a pretty shitty time, to put it mildly, compounded by the fact that my computer was exploding with pregnancy announcements every time I opened it. Did everyone wait to get pregnant or have their baby just to rub it in my face? I was 99.76 percent sure this was the case for awhile there. {I am of course super happy you’re pregnant, Internet. And I love your baby pictures. It was just hard there for a time, to learn that ALL OF YOU, EVERY SINGLE ONE were with child all at the same time, which was what it felt like.}

I struggle sharing this part of me. For one, I have two beautiful, very healthy children and that’s nothing to shake a stick at. For two, there are so many worse ways to lose a pregnancy, to lose a child. I sort of feel like I’m not really allowed to be sad about this, which I know, STUPID- as I would tell anyone going through early miscarriage that they’re allowed to feel whatever they want. But there it is. It’s an intensely personal experience that I wasn’t ready to share. But sometimes putting yourself out there, if not for more than the thought that You are not alone in this suckiness. I am not alone in this suckiness, and it’s hard and that’s OK.

All this to say… We made a plan. A plan that hasn’t worked out so well, but one I’m not willing to give up on just yet. This has been an incredibly messy few months, an incredibly messy, sad experience that, trust me, has made me question continuing on. But we are still here, still grateful for all that we have and still willing to keep trying. We humans can be pretty dumb like that sometimes. So Operation Gunterling is still on and while I don’t plan on going into explicit details on our journey, I will keep you updated and hopefully {there she is again, that whore} I will get to share some good news with you one day.

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I'm not going to lie…

Being surprised by a cross-dressing three year old completely makes my day...

The joys of having a fashion forward older sister. Rowan's going to be seriously disgruntled if he outgrows letting her dress him.

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November Walk

This post is going to be light on letters and words and such since I idiotically injured my left pinky. I don’t even have a cool story, I barely pinched it in the door at my mom’s this morning and it just swelled up insanely large, is now a dark purplish black and I’m pretty sure, perilously close to falling right off. Anyway I’m TIRED as we’ve had a busy day getting the carpets cleaned and finishing up the odds and ends from the entryway redecorating, including installing a cat door on the laundry room door to cut down on litter tracking {and Luna’s ingestion of cat poop} which the cats {namely Monkey} did NOT thank us for. We are now doing a delicate dance of  “oh look at this delicious feast on the other side of this flappy door! Some might even call it a FANCY Feast!” and “please don’t get mad and pee on my pillow”. Only time will tell if our efforts will be rewarded with piss-free bedding.

So in the interest of keeping things simple, here are a few of my favorite shots from Thursday, which at nearly 60 degrees, ended up being one of the warmest Thanksgivings on record. {I’m even too lazy for captions because on the other side of this post is a glass of wine and a double feature of the last two Harry Potter movies. Happy Saturday!

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Graduation

From gold...

......

To green!

Way to go, Keaton Sir!

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Giving thanks.

I know I joke a lot about my family but really? This thanksgiving I’m thankful I have a family to joke about. From my wonderful husband who on my whim re-does our whole downstairs and doesn’t even divorce me for it, to my sweet little gunterlings, to my strong, passionate sisters, to the DCFI, to my nieces and nephews, to my mom who cooked a humongous, fabulous meal for all of us crazy birds. We are big and we can be a bit messy but we are a family and we are love.

After a whole, long day of that though…I’m mostly thankful for this…

Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

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Bestest Shit Evah: What I'm watching now edition.

So the last time I did this I didn’t have very broad horizons in the TV department, but since Lost ended {and then ended again, and again, and again after our subsequent series re-watchings} we have found a way to, not replace, but move on, branch out and give some other shows a chance. And since you care a super ton {RIGHT}, here’s what we’re watching and why…

Modern Family: Because everyone is watching Modern Family. This is a show I actively ignored during its first season because I was under the impression that the almighty sitcom died with Friends. One night just before the second season started Bill and I were bored and we heard Modern Family was more akin to The Office than a traditional sitcom so we watched the first few episodes on Hulu. It wasn’t love at first watch, as Phil completely skeeved me out, but I hung in there and after the writers thankfully figured out that his character was better served as lovable doofus vs. a creepy pervert I started to absolutely love the show. Yes it runs on a formula, yes the characters are mostly one-dimensional but how can you watch THIS and not laugh your ass off. Best Character: Gloria. And Cam, DUH. But in real life I completely give my heart to Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

How I Met Your Mother: This is a traditional sitcom, and again, I resisted it for years. I thought the premise sounded like a cheap gimmick and a Friends rip-off so I never even considered watching it. And Doogie? Really? Until that is, I vowed to devote myself to loving everything Neil Patrick Harris touches. After Dr. Horrible I told Bill we didn’t have a choice, that we HAD to give HIMYM a chance and thank god because the show turned out to be awe…wait for it…SOME. I have to admit the last two seasons haven’t done it for me like the first three did, but I’m excited to see where the show ends up for next year’s final season. Best Character: Barney Stinson.

Big Bang Theory: We started watching this one two years ago when we started watching HIMYM, for some reason the two just go hand in hand for us. It’s definitely not my favorite show, the cast can sometimes be as grating as they are endearing but I don’t think you’ve really lived until you’ve been exposed to Sheldon Cooper. Best Character: Um. Sheldon Cooper, but especially his relationship with Penny.

New Girl: I did NOT want to watch this one. At all. Fox started assaulting us with promos at the beginning of last summer and it looked…really stupid. But for some reason *cough*crush on Zooey Deshanel*cough* Bill made us watch the first three episodes and I have to admit. It’s actually pretty funny. I don’t know if it will last but if they keep going the way they are, we’ll keep watching. Best Character: Schmidt.

Glee: This one I have watched from the beginning, which obviously is because I’m a giant sucker for anything resembling a musical. One thing that has been made clear on countless pop-culture sites is that people get really worked up if it has a bad episode or two. I just can’t get that mad at this show. It’s not going for realism, people. Teenagers with full bands break into song 4-6 times an episode and half the “teenagers” are actually closer to my age. I guess I’ve always taken the series at face value, which for me is a fun show that’s flawed but has a good heart. And as long as the music’s good I don’t get too pissed off about storylines or the musical themes they chose. Best Character: This is a tough one, I can’t pick just one as this show truly thrives as an ensemble. My top picks are Burt Hummel, Kurt, Sue and Britney. I also have a major soft spot for Blaine, but dude needs to lay off the short pants and bow ties.

Fringe: This has done a pretty good job of filling the void for Weird Shit that Lost left, though it’s much more akin to X-Files. It took me a few episodes to get into it but I’m so glad I did because last season was so so so good. The relationship between Pacey, uh, I mean Peter and his sweet but disturbed father is one of my favorite parts of this or any show and the alternate reality storyline was a real shocker. This season, its 4th, my affection has definitely cooled as I think the writers are sort of confused about which direction they should go. If they screw it up, I’m invested enough where it would piss me off but probably not enough to quit watching it. Best character: Walter.

Dexter: What’s not to love about a sociopathic serial killer that rids the world of bad guys? NOTHING. The show has taken a few turns over the years that haven’t been my favorite {that Jimmy Smits season? What WAS that?}, but overall this is one of the darkest, most fun shows of ever. Best Character: DEBRA FUCKING MORGAN IS MY HERO.

True Blood: This show is way too campy, sexual and over the top to take seriously but damn if I don’t look forward to every new season. I can’t even write a good synopsis because almost everything about it is so ridiculous but I can’t quit you, Sookie Stackhouse. Best Character: This is another one that’s too close to call. Lafeyette wins for best dialogue and awesomeness, Eric Northman for….drooooooooool, and Eric Stackhouse for best lovable idiot.

Walking Dead: This is definitely a guilty pleasure series as it’s not terribly clever or well written, but I’ve mostly enjoyed watching it. Though that might change after last week’s episode that should have been titled, Stupid Women and Why They Can’t Do Anything Without a Good Man. This show is hereby on notice, but I’ll probably hang in there though the rest of this season.

Shows that I watch but have ridiculously long hiatuses that make me stabby: Mad Men {I’m very close to placing this in the Shows I’m Over category. I don’t think it’s gods gift to television like many people but I do think it’s a pretty smart show and with Christina Hendricks’ knockers, how can you really go wrong. Also Pete Campbell is so unintentionally hilarious that I’ll probably keep watching.}  Game of Thrones {which had a WICKED first season but I already forgot most of it and season two doesn’t start until April. Maybe I’ll cozy up with the books this winter to help fill in the gigantic gaps.}

Shows that haven’t sucked me in yet but that I haven’t written off: Grimm {I like the dark premise but none of the characters or storylines have pulled me in}, Once Upon a Time { I actually have only watched the first episode but I couldn’t concentrate over the loud sighing and constant state of eye roll that Bill was in. I’m willing to give it another try without him around. } Up All Night {I don’t know. I like Will Arnett. I like Christina Applegate. I like Maya Rudolph. I’m just not sure I like them all together on that show.}

Shows that I’m excited for: Awake. Malfoy’s dad is extremely appealing when he’s not being Malfoy’s dad. This starts mid-season.

Shows I’m over: The Office, 30 Rock. I think they’re both great shows and I adore their casts (Tina Fey is my non-potty-mouthed hero) but for whatever reason I’ve dropped them from regular viewing. I should probably add Grey’s Anatomy and Desparate Housewives to this list but I haven’t watched them in so long, they barely register on my showdar.

And wow. I need to get a life. That is a ridiculous amount of television. I should state that we don’t watch any of these in real time {save Fringe if we’re home and childless on a Friday}, instead we save them up and watch them in our spare time on the weekends.

Oh! I almost forgot this last category:

Shows that are better than Lost: Not a one of them. But you already knew that didn’t you , Internet.

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Let this be a cautionary tale about friending your child's preschool teacher on Facebook…

Last night was Keaton’s preschool conference, and really… I was a little worried. Not because I was nervous about Keaton, but because the previous week? I might have called his preschool teacher “a fucking asshole”.

To his face.

I know. I KNOW. But first you need to hear me out because I’m pretty sure he totally deserved it.

At drop-off time Mr. Jamie came to collect Keaton from our car and after pulling Keaton out and guiding him to the stairs of the school he turned back and said, “Hey I’ve been meaning to ask you about something. Keaton’s been acting out a little lately and I’m not quite sure what it’s all about…” he gave a confused, uncomfortable look and continued, “He keeps running around trying to take the other kids’ heads off? And pretending to steal their rings or something? Do you know what that’s about?”

About halfway though his sentence it clicked. Oh my God. Lord of the Rings. I can’t fucking believe it. All I could get out was, “WHAT?”

“Yeah, he keeps grabbing kids’ heads, pretending to take them off and pulling their fingers to get the rings off and the noise he makes? Man, I don’t even know what that is. It’s really loud.”

At this time my eyes have popped right clear out of my head and my heart is pounding in my chest and with the soundtrack of screeching orcs playing over my thoughts I’m thinking jesus christ how could we have been so stupid? Letting a three year old watch those movies? I’ve single-handedly turned him into a complete menace and that’s it. I’ve ruined him. Now I have to throw him out and start over because there’s no way to make him unsee those films and FUCK I am the worst parent ever. Floundering, I say weakly, “I will sit him down and have a long talk about this, OK?” And then I start to pray they don’t kick him out of school for having idiotic parents.

Mr Jamie nods and starts to turn away, but when he turns back he’s smiling and says, “I’m totally messing with you. I read your blog.”

And that was it. In a complete state of shock at being so completely HAD, I smiled with relief but before I even realized the words were out of my mouth I had said “Oh my god I HATE YOU, you fucking asshole.”

And he smiled, shut the door and I watched him giggle to himself as he walked Keaton inside.

So you see? Total asshole. I’m glad you see it my way, Internet.

In the end everyone had a nice long laugh at my gullibility {which I might point out, doesn’t happen super often, so way to go Mr. Jamie} and no harm was done by my foul language so the conference ended up going very smoothly.

What can I say about Mister Sir?! He is doing pretty great in every respect. He consistently meets the standards for social/emotional, language, math, arts and creative development. He has great fine motor skills and amazing gross motor skills. He catches on quick and has a good attention span. He’s good at communicating his needs and feelings to other kids and the teachers. His teachers like him and he gets along well with all his classmates.

I just really don’t worry too much about this kid. Sure he sucks at using a scissors and he can’t yet write letters beyond O, T and K but I just can’t seem to get myself too worked up about it. Maybe it’s that he’s had a year of preschool already, making the biggest issues of this age-group like sharing and socialization obsolete, because he’s an old-pro by now. More likely it’s that he’s my second kid and after having a challenging first-born to practice on, I know that at the end of the day? It will be okay. So what if I ask him what number I’m pointing to and he responds with a confident “The number H!” He’ll figure it out eventually.

It’s funny because the list of issues I went into the conference with were all things he is doing just great on for his age group…the trouble here being that Rowan was a very cognitive and artistic toddler so she set the bar a little high for us in these respects. Every kid has their own strengths and weaknesses and in my kids’ case, many are in completely different areas. We never really had to sit down and teach numbers, shapes and letters to Rowan, she just picked them up very quickly from the books and world around her. She also gravitated to coloring and drawing very early on, whereas Keaton needs assistance learning his numbers, shapes and letters and is just figuring out how to draw things. On the flip side Rowan needed a lot more help with controlling her emotions and dealing with transitions and Keaton has never had issues there- he is a very easy-going, good-humored little fella. Both kids have great attention spans, imaginations and communicating skills so we really lucked out there {and I’m sure there are a number of things they both suck at but I’m gonna go ahead and gloss over that one}.

All-in-all it’s a relief and a nice little boost to sit down and hear that your kid is doing just fine. As a stay at home parent, I unintentionally turn these conferences into a Performance Review of sorts, not for the school but for me, as I see it as my job to help shape my kiddos into functioning little humans in our society. It certainly helps that I love the schools and the teachers that both my kids have this year which I learned {the hard way} is so VERY important to your child’s success {and your sanity}.

What a great start to the year. Way to go, Budders.

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The Theatre

I’d like to say my love for the theater is inborn. And, who knows… maybe that’s true. But even so, I came to its exposure from a source I don’t often, or enjoy, talking about because the person who is most likely responsible for that love is someone for whom I have very complicated feelings for, and no, it’s not an old boyfriend who jilted me, that would be extremely preferable to the actual situation.

It was my paternal grandmother. And she was…ummm…let’s be delicate…not a good person.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in my life, and that I am still struggling to grasp, is that life is not black and white. People are not solely good or evil. Choices are complicated and messy and therefore the reflection of who we are becomes complicated and messy. Our intentions may be good, our truth may seem whole and wise, but paths twist and wind and things that were never meant to become who we are, are somehow part of us, tattooed onto us seemingly without asking permission. Add the personal filters of the countless individuals that interact with us on a daily basis and wow, the definition of who and what we are can be so vastly different from what we even think ourselves. And there it is, so is life.

But as a habitual idealist and a cynical realist, {I swear these qualities are in my very nature, but also helped along by my nurture} my not immediately labeling someone “bad” or “good” is a real challenge. I have to constantly remind myself that repetitive bad choices, while undesirable, don’t make a person entirely bad.  And those that I admire and put up on pedestals are not the saints or angels I have made them out to be in my mind. We all stumble. We all fall.  Some of us get our asses right back up again and others take longer. Writing these things down, they seem pretty elementary, cliché. Nevertheless. I still haven’t figured out yet that the guy who cut me off and then slammed on his brakes isn’t  the reincarnation of Hitler himself, out there just being an asshole for asshole’s sake.

All this to say, I recognize that my grandmother was not wholly evil but if we’re on the color scale between black and white, I think it’s safe to say that she altered between a murky grey to about as charcoal as you can get during varying periods of her life. In her defense she suffered from severe alcoholism at points and I’m not sure what {or if there was ever an official diagnosis} but there was definitely some form{s} of mental illness. She was enabled by many people who loved and/or tried to love her and this contributed to her reign of terror over her household and family. Needless to say, she made some terrible choices in her life and my dad did not grow up in a stable, loving home and for that I am sad. For him and for the trickle effect that had on my family as a whole.

My dad was strong though. And had a sense of humor surpassed only by his remarkable sense of responsibility to those he loved. And though I know he struggled with his upbringing he was a firm believer in the fact that no matter how bad it was, no matter how bad she was, at some point you have to stop blaming your parents and take responsibility for the life you were given. He was a remarkable man, a good father and do you see the pedestal I have him up on? Yeah, I know, I just told you, I’m a work in progress. Yes, he made many mistakes over the years but his true self, his character, the stuff he was made of…shines through all that.

The theater, which I seriously do love with my whole heart, was introduced to me by this woman I find myself so despising. For the greater majority of my life, my parents cut ties with my grandmother and even after a reconciliation of sorts was hammered out, my contact with her was so limited that I barely have any memories of her after I turned eleven years old, {and the ones I do have that fall after that aren’t of the fond variety}. But before that, in an ebbing and flowing period of relative calm, I had a great relationship with both her and my grandfather {who was a favorite of mine, but was also the chief enabler of so many of her bad choices, something an 8-year-old is blissfully unaware of}.

As for the flip side of a woman who could be so ugly, so horrendous? Was a woman who was extremely intelligent, quick-witted, charming and savvy. She loved culture and gourmet cooking and exploring different religions and philosophies. She was very into meditation and yoga, long, LONG before they came the official New Hipster Religion. She loved her grandchildren, though sometimes her judgment was so far off I have to wonder if she ever knew what loving unselfishly outside of herself, really was. It’s hard to say. I only knew one facet of her along with the things that I gleaned from the hushed tones of grown-ups in other rooms.

I think I’ve made it clear she wasn’t your typical grandma and that was true in the positive sense as well. She didn’t take us aside and give us crocheting or needlepoint lessons…she gave us meditation lessons. She took us to the Renaissance Festival and bought us bona-fide medieval veiled princess hats. We didn’t watch old cartoons at her house over a bowl of buttery, gooey popcorn, but instead ate air-popped corn seasoned only with sea salt while curled up to watch The God’s Must Be Crazy and The Bells of St. Mary’s countless times. At Christmas she would take Snoreface and I to a truly fancy, white linen, completely-unsuitable-for-children restaurant before visiting the elaborate holiday display complete with an audience with Santa himself at the huge downtown Minneapolis Dayton’s. I can shut my eyes and see us all seated at that restaurant, beside a warm, glowing fireplace, wondering where the hell the kids’ menu was yes, but still loving every minute.

And the plays, oh the plays. Season tickets to the Children’s Theater Company including performances of Cinderella, Bartholomew Cubbins, Streganona, and so many more. The kids’ plays were one thing but it was the yearly trip to the Guthrie at Christmas time to see their annual production of A Christmas Carol that was it for me, and then later when she took me to A Midsummer’s Night Dream there, well, it was all over. I was hooked. And while my own brief stint as a performer culminated in the role of the Nana in The Velveteen Rabbit at my school play in Fifth grade, I never lost the love and respect for the theater as I aged into a know-it-all teenager and again into the “asshole years” {a phrase my father coined for the ages of roughly 17 through 22 when your children believe they are invincible and also that they have life all figured out and those old folks {particularly of the parental variety) have nothing of value to add to their extreme awesomeness}.

I went on to see many shows at the Ordway, Orpheum, The Jungle Theater, Park Square Theater and Theater in the Round. I loved it all. From The Belle of Amherst, a modest one woman Emily Dickinson play, to the sullen Shakespearean works of Hamlet and Macbeth, to the enormous productions of Miss Saigon, Les Mis, Rent, Into the Woods and Wicked. The rush of emotion I feel as the theater lights dim and the stage lights shine up is the very same every single time. This is true love and it is beautiful.

The introduction and exposure of theater to my world was something so lovely, so wonderful, done by someone…not so lovely. Not so wonderful. Sometimes I think I should hate all that the woman stood for even though I know it’s such a stupid thought, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, etc. etc., but there it is. I see…she was not all bad. Somewhere in there I know this is true. There was good in her, a love for something that shined out of her and into me and that is something. I know there are those that must have loved her. Those that I know that have forgiven the things she had done to hurt so many in her life, but I, for better or worse, am not one of them. Not yet.

My father did forgive her. And I don’t count this against his judgment but as a testament to who he was.  Of all the things she’s done I think the hardest one for me to reconcile is that she, this grey, grey woman, lived to ninety-seven years, because although the rest of her body was a mess, her heart was ridiculously healthy and refused to quit beating, while my dad’s heart, so good, gave out after just 59 years. I guess when you don’t use it to love more than yourself, it has a lot more time to just tick away {yes I know that is patently untrue, immature and mean but sometimes I have to just let it out somewhere}.  I do pity her though, and recognize that my perception of forgiveness as a tool to enable those that are consistently dickheads has a few holes in it. I’m working on it, but for now, forgiveness might be a ways off and that’s okay.

This isn’t a story about forgiveness anyhow. It’s about reconciling that some of the good in my life came from her. And that doesn’t mean it has to be tainted by negative. It doesn’t mean I should feel guilt over loving something that she succeeded in cultivating in me. It doesn’t mean that I can’t take that love and pass it on to the next generation…

Because that's just what I plan to do.

 

PS~ At six, Rowan’s an old pro, having seen Cinderella and Annie already but this was Keaton’s very first play and we’re so happy at how great he did and how much he enjoyed it. Rowan loved “all of it”, “the mean, wicked witch” was Keaton’s favorite part, and I can honestly say my favorite part was watching them.

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