A Week of Rain

Kacey had a birthday a couple of weeks ago. When asked what she wanted for her gift, she said shoes. She’d had her eye on a particular pair for quite a while. We had to order them online to get the exact style she was looking for. When they were delivered to our front door a few days later, she squealed in delight.

The weather has been full of rain. The new shoes sit in their box on Kacey’s bedroom floor, not yet worn. She says that she has wanted these shoes for so long that she refuses to take a chance on getting them wet and ruining them. She’s sprayed them three times with waterproofer. Still, she’s taking no chances until things start to dry out.

All week long, the skies have been gray. The sun comes out here and there, but mostly its dull skies, thick clouds and rain. The wind blows endlessly, tree branches swaying side to side, back and forth. Pink crab apple tree blossoms past their prime  float away in the wind, dropping like snow onto the pavement. When I open the patio door to let Lucy out in the mornings, the wooden deck and backyard grass are still soaked from the nighttime rains.

Today there was bright sunshine streaming down from a sky that felt heavy. The wind refused to die down. After noon, weather reports warned of heavy storms in nearby areas.  I worried about Lucy at home all alone. Poor dog  is afraid of thunder! But by the time I got home from work, the sun was still shining, the wind was still blowing, and the heavy stoneware vase on the front step was laying on its side, shattered. I salvaged the decorative branches that had filled it and tucked them away in the garage. I scooped up the landscaping rocks that had added weight to the vase and tossed them back into the front garden, then picked up all the broken pieces and dumped them in the trash barrel.

Kacey came home from work as I was wandering the back yard with Lucy, tossing her ball, patting her head, and asking her why she keeps sneaking into the tomato garden. (She offered no reasonable explanation.) I joined Kacey up on the deck and we watched big puffs of clouds clump together and sail across the sky, moved along by the persistent wind. I asked, “Tacos for dinner?” She said, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

I chopped onions and tomato at the kitchen counter while the ground beef defrosted in the microwave. Kacey sat at the table and chatted with me while I got the fixings ready. The kitchen radio was tuned in to the Country station and we sang along. Baby you’re a song… You make me wanna roll my windows down … and cruise…  We got a little loud and too late, remembered we had slid the patio door open to let in some fresh air. I wondered if the neighbors had heard us from where they sat out on their deck. They probably think we’re weird. Oh well.

I heard about Kacey’s work adventures while I fried the meat at the stove. Lucy scratched the screen door to go out and then remembering she missed her people, scratched it again to come in. Kacey absently reached for the door and accommodated Lucy each time. Darn dog is wearing holes in that screen.

I was putting the taco seasoning into the ground beef when there came a frantic plea from the dog to be let back in. Kacey slid the door open once more and said, “Hey, it’s raining out!” But the sun was still shining brilliantly. Lucy doesn’t like to be rained on, but Kace and I stepped outside to marvel at the sunshower that was happening in our neighborhood. It was a quick, little shower and by the time we sat down to our taco dinner, the sky had turned threatening.

The heavy rain came then, splattering off the canvas canopy on the deck and forcing us to crank shut the living room windows. Lucy warily watched the drops pelting off the deck. The rain was keeping her away from her playground and she wasn’t happy. It was over though, by the time we cleaned up dinner. There were still some interesting looking clouds up in the sky, but the worst of it was over. I realized then how green all the yards are. The grass is lush, the trees are full. And there was a hint of a rainbow to the east.

The weekend is here. There’s more rain in the forecast for Saturday, but Sunday holds the promise of sunshine. Finally, maybe, a nice day to enjoy being outside and celebrating spring! And maybe Kacey can finally wear her new shoes!

While the boys are gone fishin’

I bowled last night, really badly. I would mentally go over all of the mechanics of throwing my ball, position my feet in my spot, stay low, roll the ball forward while following through, hit my mark… Everything should have been perfect, right? Or at least respectable, right?

But it was far from perfect. I can’t tell you how many times I watched my ball head for the pocket, just where I wanted it, and then it would suddenly hook in the opposite direction. Instead of hitting the head pin and taking down the rest of the pins, I was hitting the ten pin. Or worse, landing the ball in the gutter. At one point, I stood there after throwing my ball, just looking down the lane and thinking, “How in the heck did I even make the ball do that?”

Almost to the end of our first game, I threw up my hands in defeat, looked at my teammate, Preacher Dave as if it was his fault and said, “I give up. I hate this game!” Dave said, “No you don’t. And lemme see your ball.”

He inspected it quickly while I pouted and in an exasperated voice, informed me, “Your fingertips are coming loose.” (Fingertips are rubber inserts that fit inside the finger holes.) I was aware of their looseness, but had simply been pushing them back down in the holes for several weeks with no ill effects. But last night, they began inching up over the edge of the finger holes, enough that my ball went sailing in the other direction when it rolled over them. I got the guy in the pro shop to glue them back in after game one. He brought it back to me in time for game two, told me I should be good for the night, but to come in early next week to get new ones put in. I then threw two strikes right off the bat! Too bad I didn’t realize this before I threw my first game in the trash! BUT… as always, I had fun. And that’s all that matters. (Translation: We lost.)

Meanwhile, Mark and the boys have gone off on a man vacation. They’re spending a few days fishing on Lake of the Woods, way up north where I suspect it’s still cold. I suspect that because Brad sent pictures and in them, it looks cold!  But it seems apparent that there is some male bonding going on as evidenced by the good humor being displayed by the subjects in the photos.

Brad says: “Dad’s fish… Excuse me… Dad’s sorry excuse for a fish.”

Brad says: “Jake’s fish. Look, I got him to smile and show his teeth!”

Jake is smiling! With his teeth and all! I know he’s having fun if he’s smiling with his teeth.

Kacey and I didn’t get to go on a vacation this week. We’re consoling ourselves by eating pancakes for dinner, watching girl shows on Netflix and we’ll probably throw in a little retail therapy for good measure. Maybe I should buy a new bowling ball.

Memorial Day Weekend

While many take advantage of the three-day break to go off and celebrate the unofficial start of summer, my time is being spent at home. Mark is on the night shift this weekend, otherwise we might have gone up north to his parents’ cabin at the lake. But the weather hasn’t been very cooperative as far as outdoor activities go. It’s been overcast, chilly, and raining off and on. If we were at the lake, I’d want to be outside, sitting on the dock dipping my toes or tossing out a line in the hopes of catching a fish. With this kind of weather, I’d have been cooped up inside the cabin anyway. I could have read books to my heart’s content or watched a string of movies, but I know in the back of my mind I would have been thinking of all the more productive things I could have been doing instead.

I took the absence of any kind of weekend celebration as an opportunity to catch up on things around the house. And I needed to. The natural order of the household has shifted lately. This seems to be due to the combination of Jake having a new job, Kacey returning home from school for the summer, and visits from Brad and Heather (plus dog) several weekends in a row. All of these things make me very happy, but the state of the house has suffered as a result. I start to get a little crazy when the house is a wreck and I can’t relax until things are at least somewhat back in control.

So I’ve been cleaning, tackling a mountain of laundry, putting stray belongings back in their places. The week’s grocery shopping is done. I did some cooking and delivered meals to my parents and to Mark’s. We’ve had family dinners at home all weekend long. (I love it when Connor joins us for dinner. Last night he ate three of the steaks I grilled and couldn’t stop telling me how good my twice-baked potatoes were.) I’ve enjoyed the comings and goings of all of my kids. Maybe except for the time when Lucy woke me from a sound sleep while barking excitedly at the sound of someone tiptoeing in the door after an evening out with friends. I guess I should be grateful for her guard-dog skills.

Kacey, Connor, Mark and I watched a movie together - Pitch Perfect, about a group of college girls who compete as an a capella singing group. The movie provided an abundance of juvenile humor, including a couple of scenes involving vomit that I could have done without. But it made me laugh and the musical scenes were energetic and fun. And it didn’t hurt that the movie gave a shout-out to the John Hughes feel-good movies that I used to love so much. Still do, actually.

The sun has been scarce this weekend, but the rain hasn’t been much so far. (Today could be a different story.) Many of the neighbors have been out working on their yards. The grass is green and newly planted gardens are beginning to offer some much-needed variety of color. Lucy has been learning how to walk with Mark outside of the fenced back yard and around to the front. He’s cautiously teaching her to obey her fenceless borders and she’s learning, little by little.  He keeps a close eye on her as she’s figuring out how this works. There are a lot of dogs in this neighborhood and she so badly wants to go play with them all! But even in the back yard, Lucy can enjoy canine company. Her new friend Gracie loves to run and chase along the fence with Lucy until they are both worn out. Sometimes they just sit quietly together and I have to wonder what’s going through their minds.

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Today there’s a crock-pot chili in the works for dinner. I might give the interior of my car a good cleaning. Or I might just allow myself a lazy day. Life is good.

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And to all of this country’s veterans – thank you for your service!

Really and Truly All Grown Up

The days seem to be running together lately and nothing goes as expected. We were going to take a trip up north to the in-laws’ cabin last weekend. Brad and Heather were going to drive over from North Dakota and meet us there. But a few days before the weekend, Mark’s mom suffered some chest pains. She turned out to be okay. Spent a few days in the hospital and in the end, had her gallbladder removed. I don’t  know what was ever decided about the chest pains other than they were not indicative of a heart attack. We stayed home for the weekend to do our part helping take care of the ailing parents.

Brad and Heather came here instead. Brad thought we could all go looking for a new truck for him. (Just looking, he said.) He’s been thinking “new truck” for a while now, especially since the vehicle he’s been driving is now 14 years old. He’s a college graduate with a “real” job, living on his own like a “real” adult. I guess that means he can decide to buy a new truck if he wants, even though the mom in me still wants to mother him and insist that he scale back his ambitions a bit. Play it a little safer. Maybe look for something a few years old, something more economical than a truck. But he’s not a kid anymore. He is a real adult and he’d gone over his budget and figured things out. He could manage buying new if the right deal came along.

Saturday morning, he said, “Everyone get dressed! Let’s go look at trucks.”

I thought I might tag along and look at cars to replace the nine year-old one that I’m driving and that Kacey would like to inherit some time before she forgets how to drive. But it was raining. Hard. We’re talking black skies and rain coming down in sheets. I couldn’t see me enjoying getting all soggy and soaked wandering the car lots. I said I would stay home and keep the dogs company.

“This is gonna pass over anytime now,” Brad said. But it really didn’t look like it was going to clear up. I said, no, I was staying. Mark took off with Brad and Heather to go just looking.

And it did rain for hours. And they were gone for hours. By the time they came home, the sun was beaming. So was Brad.

He found one!

“Just looking” had turned into a deal he couldn’t pass up. Word has it his hands were shaking when he signed the paperwork, but when the last signature was made, he was the proud owner of a new truck payment and he couldn’t have been happier. Proof of his real-adulthood.

Nervous as I was about my son taking on his first major financial responsibility, I was proud and I told him so. When I was his age, I was pregnant with my second child. My car was a used car and I wasn’t sure when I’d ever be in a position for a brand new one. (Turns out that my first brand new car came along only nine years ago.) He’s enjoying his life as he goes along, not rushing headlong into it like I did. He got some important stuff taken care of, like getting an education, which allowed him to find a decent job as soon as he graduated. He’s enjoying his relative freedom before the responsibilities of a family take precedence. So good for him! He should enjoy the feeling of being a proud new truck owner.

Seems like just yesterday he was asking me to read Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel to him, AGAIN and the idea of him driving a motor vehicle was in the vast in distant future. It’s true what they say. Time really does fly. Although, how I can still only be twenty-nine is beyond me. Just lucky I guess!

Happy Mothers Day – 2013

It’s hard to believe that my “babies” are all grown up now. The boys are taller than me and Kacey is nearly as tall. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that they were so little and cuddly. Now they’re living on their own, working full-time jobs and going to college.

Brad, Jake and Kacey when they were little bundles of joy – and other things.

We celebrated Mother’s Day last weekend when they were all home for a few days. Having them all under one roof was a wonderful enough gift. But the kids couldn’t let the holiday pass without presents. They know me well and honored me with a new dog!

Cute, isn’t he? He’s pretty low maintenance compared to Lucy Pie. He doesn’t bark at all, doesn’t eat much and doesn’t shed all over the furniture! He stands guard on the front step at all times just waiting to welcome visitors. He soaks up the sun and glows brightly at night when the sun has gone down.

My  gift also included a lovely, hanging solar sun which I placed out in the “tiki lounge” on the deck. I’m looking forward to warm summer nights, relaxing on the deck and basking in the light of my special sun!

I can’t imagine a life in which I wasn’t a mom now . We’ve had our ups and downs throughout the years, but the highs far outweigh the lows. I look at my sons and daughter and see bits of their dad or pieces of me in their personalities and I am proud. I see all the ways they’ve tackled life’s challenges better than we did and I am even more proud. Each of them is special in their own unique way and they have taught me about love that is deeper and more profound than anything I have ever known.

And if it weren’t for the example of my own wonderful mother, I wouldn’t have had half a clue about how to be a mom to my own children.

Me, Mom and Cori

Happy Mother’s Day to all women – moms, grandmas, aunties or otherwise – who are so important in the life of a child. The world is a better place because of you!

My Boy is Happy

And that is an incredible feeling.  Even Kacey and Connor remarked on  the change in Jake.

For years, I just assumed that he was just the kid who fell into that place in the family; the one who is habitually sullen and introverted. I’ve always felt that I understood him. I was that kid. He never was much of a talker. Never was all that affectionate. I’ve worried about him through all of his school years and ever since he graduated high school. He seemed to be going through the motions of life, doing what he was supposed to do but getting little fulfillment from it all. When I’d confide my worries, friends or family would assure me that he’d find his way. I figured he would, but constantly worried about when. 

Suddenly, he’s a different person and I can only assume it’s the new job.

Jake seems to have found a good fit in his new job. He talks to us about the work and the guys with whom he works. He speaks about the details of  the job and I find myself impressed with the way he projects the intelligence he possesses. Maybe he just never found a good way to express it before. A fluke summer job that just happened to land in his lap has brought about all this positive change. He has been given the opportunity to work with his hands. He spends time on construction sites and he’s learning a valuable skill. He gets to live in the daytime world again and sleep at night. It’s like he’s waking up inside!

It’s a lot of little things lately that make me realize how much he’s suddenly discovering and accepting himself. He talks with me. Actual conversations have taken the place of the grunts and shortest answers possible. He laughs. He smiles. He volunteered to accompany to my parents’ house the other night when I was asked to come hook up the new Direct TV receiver to the new television. It promised to be a challenging endeavor, not just because I don’t have Direct TV and am not familiar with the equipment, but because my dad was sure to have lots of opinions. And he did. And he wanted to express all of them to me while I was trying to listen to the directions of a customer service rep on the phone. Jake helped me in any way he could. And when he couldn’t, he sat upstairs with his Nanna and talked her ear off. She loves that.

It’s the way he diffused my anger the other day as I was ranting about something. It was one of those times that I just wanted to vent. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Mom! You’re so angry! I think someone needs a hug!”

My son was using humor to help me deal with my emotions! He never would have invested the time or energy before. Now he was wrapping me up in the tightest bear hug you can imagine and refusing to let go until I was laughing!

Kacey came home from school yesterday for the summer. Family dinner was in order. Jake said, “Mom, I think I should grill the brats. It’s time I learned how to be a grill-master.”

And he did. Mark, Connor, Kacey and I relaxed on the deck in the warm late afternoon sun while Jake manned the grill and chatted with us.

Who is this kid? I feel like a weight has been lifted. I can’t imagine what it feels like for him.

I worried a little bit that it took a job to bring him such confidence and happiness. But I’ve realized it’s not a bad thing. I personally place a lot of my own worth in what I do for a living and doing it well. He’s had a taste of what it feels like to put himself out there and succeed. He’s opened himself up a little bit. He believes in himself more than he ever has before. The world lies ahead of him and I can see now that the prospect is much less intimidating to him than ever before. My son is maturing and finding himself and that makes my heart just overflow with pride!

Colleague

My coworker, MC is leaving. In the year and a half we’ve worked together, I’ve learned enough about him to know that he doesn’t stay with any one employer for very long. He tends to be the person who is hired for a very specific purpose, usually doing very difficult work for which few possess just the right skill set to manage. Once the job is accomplished, it’s time for him to move on. And now is that time.

MC dug right in as soon as he was hired. He brought in his own ergonomic chair to accommodate his sometimes bad back. He learned the business in record time and soon was the subject matter expert on what seemed like almost everything. He surrounded his work space with white boards which were eternally filled with colorful writing. He was constantly jotting down thoughts, problems and formulas.

I’ll be sad to see MC go. He made an impact on me. He’s genius smart (though he’ll deny it if you say so to his face.) During the time we’ve worked together, I’ve learned so much from him. I’ve learned things that I thought were completely out of my grasp. MC is a data guy. And while working with him, I realized that I had an interest in “data stuff” too. He quickly became the team lead in our department and often allowed me to explore areas that piqued my interest. He was patient enough to show me the ins and outs of various subjects until I could competently and confidently assist him with some of the aspects of his “data guy” responsibilities. Now that he’s leaving, it looks like I’ll get to take a more active role with some of this stuff. I have him to thank for that.

More importantly than what MC helped me learn, is the fact that he helped me realize I am still learning. Not long ago, I would have limited myself in my goals, because of what I have done to this point in life and maybe more so because of what I have not done by this point in my life. By allowing me to do things that stretched beyond my perceived self-limits, MC showed me that it’s never too late and you’re never too old. I learned some things about myself through my connection with MC. I love a puzzle and the process of solving it. Tell me something is impossible to figure out or not worth the effort and I want nothing more than to prove you wrong.

MC is driven and he sees the big picture in any situation. It is a pleasure to work with someone who is passionate about their work even though sometimes that passion can feel very frustrating. Very few people make such a positive and powerful impact as they come and go in the lives of others. MC does. I had to tell him so. I wanted him to know that he lit a fire under me and my coworkers. No matter what he felt he did or didn’t accomplish, he most definitely accomplished good things while he was with the company. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.

He was a little speechless over my thanks, and we laughed about the fact that speechlessness is a rare thing for MC. He’s not an emotional guy. He’s matter-of-fact. But I told him I was old enough and had learned by now that sometimes it’s important to tell people  thank you and acknowledge when they’ve done something generous. He is moving on. It is unlikely I will see much of MC again. I wanted him to know that I am grateful to him for helping me see things in myself that I didn’t know were there.

At lunchtime today, I went outside with some coworkers. We made a couple of laps around the pond to stretch our legs and enjoy the sun. Break time was over too soon.

I returned to my desk and jumped on a call with a client. I was feeling overwhelmed today and as soon as my call was over, I dove into another task, but not before I realized something didn’t feel quite right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first and asked a few people if they had seen anyone at my desk while I was away. No one seemed to know anything. I was stumped… and a little bit annoyed, until I had an inkling.

I got up from my desk and walked over to MC’s desk. He had gone home for the day when I poked my head in his doorway and my suspicions were confirmed. There at MC’s desk was my company-issued chair. I walked back to my desk and it all made sense. My annoyance faded away. MC had given me his own chair as a parting gift!