Blast from the Past

The little twinkles and I had lunch with Grammie Imelda (so named for her summer footwear fetish) today. She asked us to stop at my elementary school, pick something up, and drop it off at her office. No problem, except I must write an entry some time on how completely inappropriate the term "stay-at-home-mom" is. I digress.

The school has been expanded. But it's largely unchanged. The lobby is still the same. Same bad fluorescent overhead lights and icky gray linoleum. They still leave the gym doors open, and the kids still jump rope with those beaded ropes that make that ugly smack-smack-smack sound on the floor. Only the scale of everything had changed. It was no longer intimidating and frightening. It no longer held any power.

School, all twelve years until I graduated and found refuge in college, was a slow, repetitive kind of pain. Somehow standing there with my children relegated that experience to the person I used to be.

Cigarettes

In a black and far off corner of my mind
There's a box of something I can't quite define
It houses circus freaks, temptation and the Fayette County Fair
And it reeks of love gone sour, suspicion and big hair...

So that corner of my mind isn't quite so far off these days. Someone who's had such a damn easy life really has no business dwelling in darkness, huh?

I am so not getting a minivan

I survived the beach vacation without increasing my risk of melanoma. The same cannot be said for Daddy Star. How many years with me before Daddy Star learns to apply sunscreen?

The Starlets enjoyed themselves, as long as we weren't in the car. I enjoyed myself as long as we weren't in the car. Hell is a road trip with the Star family.

Vacation aged me in a way that marriage, a mortgage, and two hairy childbirths did not. I was the one keeping the precious twinkle up out of the current. I was the one reassuring him he wouldn't fall from the ferris wheel. This time the packing and planning and navigating and bathing and feeding somehow transformed the playing dress-up mommy clothes into a second skin.

We're off to see the Wizard

or through the looking glass. Or whatever line will lead to some really bizarre happenings.

Yes, it's annual family vacation time. I have managed to birth a child who loves the beach, oh what irony. If I survive, I'll be back with some really interesting pics.

On the upside, there will be two non-alcohol drinking adults in attendance, so I can always drown my inevitable sunburn in wine coolers.

It's Good for the Soul

Confession time.

I am not a cat person.

I don't dislike cats, but I just don't see the attraction. A moody creature I have to feed and water and clean up after? Have you met Boy Star yet?

So does this disqualify me from the cool kid club?

Bolton. Ugh.

I find it difficult to be witty and articulate on this topic.

Surely Commander Cuckoo Bananas will reap what he sows. If there is any good in the universe it will happen publicly, and I will live to see it.