Hopalong Cassidy Joe

by Cathy

In the course of one week, my husband had the stomach flu, celebrated his birthday (while he had said flu) and nearly broke his ankle playing basketball.

Late on a Monday night, the back door creaks opens and in hops Joe with the help of two guys he plays basketball with (while I sat lounging in my robe and turban-like towel wrapped around my head, fresh out of the shower). He fell into an armchair, his face distorted with pain. I looked down at his right ankle. From mid-shin down, bulging out from the bandage below it, was a lump the size of a half grapefruit. His foot honestly looked like some kind of Elephant Man deformity. He was wincing in pain and trying to adjust the ghetto bag of ice the guys threw together at the gym: doubled up fruit market bags filled with ice that was now melting and leaking through at a rapid pace.

After a brief rundown of the accident and the tossing around of remedies to help him (apparently this has happened to one of these guys three times) they left. With the closing of the door, Joe's macho guard dropped like a dead weight. He let out a long, screaming moan, which he was obviously stifling since he fell. His ankle looked bright red and I swear it was pulsating. I set him up with a chair and pillows to elevate his foot, refilled the ice into a clean freezer-sized Ziploc bag and let him try to calm down. When the ice had numbed it over, we weighed the options of when to go to the ER and decided to wait until the morning.

A quick visit to the ER the next morning rendered his ankle surprisingly NOT BROKEN but he had a badly pulled outer ligament (high ankle sprain). The doc gave him crutches to get around and ordered him to rest, ice and elevate. He had to lay low and couldn't drive or even play basketball again until he got an okay from the doctor.

This sounded like a prison sentence to Joe, who is a MAN and has gargantuan PRIDE and is fiercely independent and generally doesn't do well when he is sick. His days consist of constant sitting and shifting and elevating and he complains frequently that his ass is constantly hurting and numbing up from all that sitting. The first day it was extremely painful for him to take his foot down from elevating it. I was busy working and going to parent/teacher conferences that day and couldn't get his pain meds filled until 8pm. "I NEED DRUGS!" was how I was greeted when I finally got home that night.

Getting used to the crutches is a whole other ballgame, as he fumbles with the awkwardness of getting it right and turning corners. The first day, while I was at work, he decided to hop around the kitchen on his left foot instead of using the crutches, when his left foot suddenly gave out and he fell, pretty much on his swollen, bruised, wrapped up, jacked up foot. Apparently he let out such a scream that it freaked out Ari and she began crying while Bella was trying to help him up. What a scenario.

I ran a bath for him that night and trying to figure out how to lower him in while still elevating his foot and not getting it wet. That alone was a mission of SWAT team proportions. You see, his foot needs to be not only elevated but iced cold pretty much the whole day, so inserting it into the scalding bath water that Joe prefers to bathe in would probably cause his clubfoot to explode, so it had to remain out - at least for that night.

It's been almost two weeks now and he's gotten the whole hopping/elevating/icing/stairs/crutches/bath routine down pat.  In the meantime, he's getting more frustrated at being cooped up and I've had to stifle numerous one-liners and other comedic references to his situation for two reasons: 1) his annoyance with my unwarranted comedic relief would feed his frustration, and 2) KARMA. I don't want that bitch coming back to hound me down.

Buuuuuuttttt.....the girls and I just can't resist. I've bit my tongue many times but as we hear him rickety-racketing his way down the hallway with the crutches or being greeted by his giant, rainbow colored foot elevated on pillows stacked up to the ceiling every time we enter a room, we can't stop ourselves. The remarks, which tumble out upon inception, have been too varied and too numerous to count - peg leg, clubfoot, old man Joe, Crutchety Kyle, Hopalong Cassidy, Hoppy Papi, My Left Foot, Shrek Foot...

All we're doing is trying to make this bearable for everyone, most of all Joe, right? Laughter is the best medicine, isn't it? I just hope that Karma, that bitch, is laughing right along with us on this one instead of taking notes.


Side note to readers: I would have posted a picture of his foot, but seriously, it's so ugly and so gross and so ugly...I will spare you.

Side note to Karma: The fact that I didn't post any nasty pictures of his foot, chalks up some good, non-Karma points in my favor, no?

Gracias a la Vida

by Patti


Gracias a la vida, que me a dado tanto.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much

One of my favorite songs of all time is sung by the incomparable Mercedes Sosa (may she rest in peace), the Argentina folk singer with a voice like buttah and a delivery that will shoot straight through your heart and up into your brain and down into your feet and back out through your eyes in the form of tears. The song is called "Gracias a la Vida" (Thank You to Life), and if you are so inclined, you can hear the whole thing right here:



It's days like yesterday, the day of my birthday, that this song really hits home for me. I woke up feeling.... blah. A little freaked out at being closer to old for real this time, and a little farther away from youth and its dewy glow and world of promise. This getting old stuff, it ain't for the weak.

There are people like my mom who tell me I'm wasting the precious prime of my life worrying about getting older, or my dear, gorgeous girlfriends who tell me I'm way too obsessed with age, but who are nearly a decade behind me and don't yet get that jittery feeling that comes with the recognition that OHMYGOD it's happening, I'm getting old. But let me tell you, when the truth hits, it's a scary feeling, it truly is.

Even though I felt pouty about GETTING OLD (are you over me yet?), I spent my birthday doing things I wanted to do, like going to the gym and a little shopping, and then spent the evening with my husband, my daughter, my in-laws, and my mom, eating a fun dinner together, polishing off a bottle of Prosecco, and gorging on dessert. I had fun, but there was a hole where my father used to be. It's not the first birthday I've had without him, but somehow, the older I get, the sharper the realization of his death is.

And it was feeling this hole that made me realize it's time for me to cut this crap out. After all, my father? Doesn't get any more birthdays. I'm still here, and, God willing, I still get to wake up and, even though the subtle sagging of my face may send me into the narcissistic doldrums, I still get to decide what to do with my day and how to feel about it. I also get to log onto Facebook and find 100 birthday greetings from friends and family, old and new, near and far; I still get to receive beautiful texts and voicemails, all remembering me on the very day that had me foolishly pitying myself; I still get to eat pizza and drink a bottle of champagne and eat birthday cake; I still get to look around the table and see people that I love, all love me right back; I still get to live.

And in doing so, I have the opportunity every day to say gracias a la vida, que me a dado tanto. Because it's true: Life has given me so much. And for that, I'm thankful.

The Early Bird Catches the Worm

by Patti

For the past two weeks, I have been waking at 5:45 am.

If you know me at all, you know that a 5:45 wake-up time is considered against the law in my own personal Book of Laws, and that the ONLY reason to wake up at 5:45 am is a) to nurse a baby; b) to run from the house screaming because it’s on fire; c) to go the emergency room because you or somebody you love might be dying; d) to catch a flight to somewhere way better than where you currently are.

That’s it. No other reason.  And believe me, in my opinion, some of those reasons are questionable. That’s how anti-getting-up-before-8 AM I am.

So, why am I violating my own personal laws? Because I have to.  I am getting up early for work because my hours have changed.

As the first day of my early rise approached, I actually felt kind of panicky: Would I be able to do it? Would I fall back to sleep? Would I feel sick with exhaustion all day? Would I resent the others in my house who got to sleep another 2 hours while I silently and tiredly blinked my way into the day?  Would I have to set 9 alarm clocks to ensure that I actually wake up?

But the first day happened and surprisingly it wasn’t so bad. Not at all, even. It was kind of nice to hit the road before so many others.  I felt like I was let in on a little secret about seizing the day: SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN WHEN YOU GET OUT OF BED. Who knew? I felt like the other  drivers on the road and I were part of a brotherhood, of sorts; we all kind of nodded at one another at red lights and stop signs, “You, too?” they seemed to ask. “Yes,” I responded with my (bleary) eyes.  We all knew that it had still been dark outside when we got out of bed, and that, despite the darkness, it was still not a bad idea to get out of that bed anyway, because it gave the day ample opportunity to let amazing things happen.

Those of you who have always torn out of bed at 5 AM are probably reading this and thinking me nuts. Well, let me say this: I am nuts, so you’re right there.  You may also be thinking, “DUH.” Because, yeah, DUH, when you get up earlier and do earlier, results happen earlier. It’s common math. But you have to truly know me to know that for me to be okay with this nonsense is, indeed, a miracle.

I’ll admit, I’m tired. My body is still fighting this lifestyle. After all, I grew up in the totally opposite direction, I married a man who also grew up in the totally opposite direction, and I have continued to live my life in the totally opposite direction. It feels slightly inauthentic for me to be breathing in the dawn air when I have, my entire life, breathed in the midnight moon instead. Then again, when it’s 9 AM and you have already ticked 15 things of your “to-do” list, it’s a whole new kind of exhilaration – one that makes waking up before the sun kind of worth it.

We’ll see; I’m still very new at this whole thing, and I may very well just be in the honeymoon stage with the Crack-of-Dawn.  Maybe soon the Crack-of-Dawn will start getting on my nerves – that Crack of Dawn with its not-quite bright sky and its silent birds and its frosty grass.

Or, maybe not.

Either way, life is pretty dynamic, isn’t it?

Clean Weep

by Cathy

My kids are on spring break this week. Since we're not traveling anywhere, I decided to take this time to focus on where we live: our house. Although virtually every closet needs to be overhauled and organized, my main focus, with the girls at home this week, was going to be their room, which by the way, is the master bedroom of our two-bedroom condo. They have so much more stuff than Joe and I so it made perfect sense that three years ago, we trade bedrooms and give them the master with the attached bathroom while Joe and I downgraded to the smaller bedroom. The sacrifices we make for our kids, eh?

The only problem with having more space - and I know this would be the case if we move to a bigger house - is that you automatically accumulate more stuff. You say to yourself, 'I'll just keep this. We have the space. I'll just put it right here.' Luckily, we don't have that scenario playing out where we live because we are four people living in a two bedroom, two bath condo with one storage room allotted to us. So whatever doesn't fit in any of those spaces? Gets tossed or donated. We are forced to weed out crap and stuff we no longer have a use for and I'm perfectly okay with that, otherwise, our stuff would swallow us up whole.

As the days approached for Operation Pink Declutter, I was counting the days, the hours, the minutes. I was about to crawl out of my skin with anticipation for the big cleanup every single time I walked into that Disaster of a Master, stepping on paper, markers, erasers, American Girl dolls, clothes, trinkets, purses, princess wands, books, balls, stuffed animals, blankets, rubber bracelets, scarves, chalk, hats, Barbies, Lego pieces, miniscule Lalaloopsy decor that pokes holes in the bottom of your feet... I couldn't take it one minute longer.

Finally, the big day arrived! Actually, we ended up dividing up the room into sections and conquering it as such:
Day 1 - bookshelves and drawer cleanout
Day 2 - under the beds, cabinets and closet floor (containing games, bins and toys)
Day 3 - closet upper shelves and hanging clothes
Day 4 - Toy chest

Yes, it takes FOUR days to clean up the crap in that room. Day one was a battle in itself while I had to ask the hard questions:

"Can you try this on to see if it still fits?"
"Do you still want this?"
"Will you EVER wear this?"

Whereupon I got one of the following responses:

"Uuuhhhhhhgggggg...I'm too tired."
"I don't like that."
"NO! Don't donate that!! I love it!" (item they haven't touched in years)
"That's mine! Not hers! That goes in my drawer!"
"Why are you taking this to storage??"

Operation Pink Declutter is halfway done at this point with barely any help from my kids. I forget that my five-year old's attention span is that of a fruit fly and my ten-year old gets easily distracted when said fruit fly buzzes continuously around her, tempting her, tackling her, tickling her, asking her to come get her out from her pop-up tent trappings - basically anything to get her attention while I'm on my hands and knees mancaving. As you may have guessed, there was A LOT going on.

Once they did what they could to help, I let the girls go off and play and I quietly tackled what remained  for the day. (This way, I could throw away what they don't know will ever go missing and get rid of the garbage bag before they find it and start snooping around to see what was tossed. I learned that lesson the hard way.)

When I was clearing out Ari's little preschool pants and tops (the same ones that Bella wore), I suddenly and surprisingly was overcome with emotion. I was saddened at the memories these little clothes brought back for me ('Aw, I have a picture of Bella playing school in this top' or 'Aw, this is what Ari was wearing when she...) And what's more? These clothes will never be worn by my kids EVER. AGAIN. That that phase in their little lives is over. That they are all "growed up," like Ari says. I wept as I lovingly folded these little clothes up and carefully placed them in my "KEEP" pile.

No sooner had I composed myself from that unexpected scenario...it happened again. This time, my husband was laying on one of the girls' beds in the room and we were chatting about various things, when I opened up a purple Dora backpack and found that Ari had stuffed it to the hilt with her plastic Disney tea set, which should be stored in the Mrs. Potts tea container.

"Wow, I never realized how much stuff they had," commented my husband.

"Yeah, and the sad thing will be, that one day, Ari won't ask us to play tea set with her anymore." I don't know where this response came from (well, actually I do, and I surprised even myself by blurting it out) but I could feel my tears working their way back up to my eyes. "She asks us now and we do the best we can but half the time we blow her off because we are too busy doing God knows what while our kids are busy growing up." My eyes starting brimming over at this point. Joe tried to soften this large blow of a realization.

"Yeah, but she still plays with her tea set," he said comfortingly.

"Yeah but one day she won't. One day, she'll stop asking if we want to have a tea party with her because she will outgrow that phase and get bored with it and she'll be too old to want to do that, just like Bella, who never plays tea party with her now."

There was a long pause and all that could be heard was the plastic clanking of the tea set pieces going into Mrs. Potts.

"I know, it's all going so fast," was all he said.

Towards the end of the day and long after I had my mini meltdowns, I was picking up the remains of the cleanup off their floor when Ari, who had earlier found her newly put together tea set, came skipping in, jangling Mrs. Potts about.

"Mommy? Can you play tea party with me?"

As if God had felt my motherly pain from earlier, he sent my little angel in to truly help soften that blow and give me another chance to make things up; those were the best-sounding words I could ever hear right at that moment. "OF COURSE I CAN!!"

"Yay!" she squealed as she was rambling on about how she'll go set it up on the blanket sprawled on the living room floor. I literally dropped everything and followed her, passing our bedroom door where my husband was laying. "See? How ironic," he said half smiling.

"I know, riiiiight?" I yelled back happily as I crossed my legs and sat on the teddy bear blanket. "I still have a lot to do but I'm not doing it. I'm playing tea set with her. That's all I'm going to do now."

"I'll join you," said Joe.

Trading Places

by Patti


My husband makes a mean oatmeal. How do I know this? Because S tells me so. "Papi puts bananas in it! And he doesn't use the microwave! He makes it in a pot and stirs it for a long time!"

After nearly 8 years of getting my kid ready for school and dropping her off, I have turned my esteemed position of "get her ready-er" over to M. Let's face it, the kid is 11 years old now; she can do everything a kid needs to do to get ready on her own now. She gets up on her own, she dresses herself, she grooms herself, she makes her own breakfast (even fries her own eggs), she packs her own lunch and snack. Yet, being an only child, she has always liked the companionship in the morning, and I have always provided it.

Recently, there have been some changes at work and I am now working full-time. Part of it was necessity, as M's hands are on their last legs. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.) He has been grooming the heads of Chicago for the past 15 years, and before that, he was grooming the heads of Oregon, and before that, the heads of Argentina. In short: all that grooming has left his hands, arms, shoulders, legs, done-for. And if he has any hope of keeping them useful, he needs to cut it out for a while. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.) Since the opportunity to work full-time and, as a result, have full benefits presented itself conveniently at the same time my husband was falling apart, and the opportunity was something kind of cool, it was an absolute no-freakin'-brainer to grab it.

So I did.

Soon, M is going to reduce his hours at work, and I have already ramped up mine. And the roles we have known so comfortably for the past bajillion years are now going to be reversed. He is now getting her off to school, and as soon as his reduced hours kick in, he will also see her after school for a bit, and once I get home, he will go to work. And during all of her summers and Spring Breaks and holidays, it will be him that takes her to the pool, or to the museum, or to the park.

I thought I might be sad, or even a little jealous, but when I think about it, I'm not. I realize how lucky I am that I got to stay home exclusively with S all through her baby and little kidhood. And even after she started school, I got to try all different kinds of jobs, projects, ideas.... all because I always had a back-up: M. He was working responsibly and steadily and making sure we had health insurance, he was bringing home the fatty bacon, he was cutting hair that never stops growing - all so that I didn't have to take S to a babysitter and sob in my car on the way to work.

And now, I guess it's his turn. His body needs a break, his mind needs a break, and maybe he needs the opportunity to try on a few ideas - just as I had the chance to do. And in the meantime, he will get to spend a lot more time with our daughter. And she with him.

We're a little more than a week into this new "thing", and I asked S if she misses me in the morning. "Papi makes me lunch. AND he makes me breakfast. He made me oatmeal again!"

Guess not. And I couldn't be happier.

Of Errands and Men

by Cathy

Moms tackle a lot and most of it via multitasking or at the very least, getting tasks done in rapid succession. We're juggling work, cleaning, cooking, laundry, school drop off/pick up, activities, playdates, doctor's appointments, homework, school projects just to name a few. Of course, I don't want to undervalue the role that some dads play in all of this - kudos to the ones that do and shame on the ones that don't - you are both in this together and your wife didn't have those kids by herself. (But that's a soapbox for which I will get on for another blog post.)

For the purposes of this post (and what I'm getting at here), is that sometimes these dads, whether they are actively pitching in or not, are forced to at some point, step into unknown territory when it comes to handling some of the tasks that moms usually handle. Such as? Birthday parties and the gift purchase that goes along with it.

Before I left to go on my Mexican work vacay, I reminded Joe that he had to take the kids to a birthday party for one of Ari's kindergarten friends on a Saturday night. Yes, you heard right...a kids party on a Saturday night.  (The family is Polish and they did this thing up Euro/Latin style, i.e. totally right up our alley. It was held at the Park Ridge community center swimming pool and the grandfather of the birthday girl, who owns a Polish restaurant, catered the event with enough delicious food and varieties thereof to feed the whole country of Poland. Bottom line, this was our type of party.)

My family and friends were more than willing to fill me in on the deets of preparing for the party when I got back from my trip. My husband, apparently with a plan in hand, decided to stop in at Target with Ari on the Saturday of the party while Bella was in her ballet class. His intention was purposeful and planned: pick up a gift card and head out the door. But the poor guy, not versed in Target visits with the girls, was taken on a joyride by Ari. She worked her way around the store to the toy aisle where she bombarded him with "OOOH how cute!" and "Can i get this?" Finally she found THE ONE toy she was sure her friend would love. After many unsuccessful, time consuming attempts on my husband's behalf to steer her towards the gift cards, he decided to go with it and subsequently, thought it would be a sweet gesture since the gift came from Ari herself.

So they bought it and left with just enough time to pick up Bella from her lesson. Car screeching to a halt outside the ballet studio, gift tumbling around the backseat, he picked up Bella on time and headed home to wrap the gift and prepare the swimming bag for the party.

After hauling up the Christmas wrapping paper bin from storage, they determined that they couldn't wrap the gift in a candy cane motif or reindeer games wrapping paper, so they dug around and found the only neutral paper that had accidentally made its way into that bin:

My 10-year old's idea of Granny Wrapping Paper

So Bella took charge of wrapping the gift (she prides herself on wrapping gifts and does a professional looking job, thanks to the technique I passed on to her from my many years in retail), but not before interrogating her father on the choice of gift.

"Papi, you do realize that this gift is for 3-36 month olds, right?!?"

"What?" exclaimed my husband, as he stared down the box containing the big clunky, plastic teapot and cups staring him in the face. "Really? I didn't even notice that!"

"Yeah, it says it right on here. See?" she pointed and tapped on the box.

"Oh well. That's what Ari wanted and she wouldn't leave without it. She was crying over getting it."
Bella gave her usual rolling of the eyes and started wrapping that gift in the paper above, which she ultimately summed up as follows:

"We were the only ones there that wrapped a gift meant for a three-month old in 80-year old wrapping paper for a six-year old."

Live and learn and make it your own, I say.

Once at the party, they swam, ate like kings and had a swimmingly good time. No one noticed the oddness of our gift - and if they did, they kept mum about it - just like the other school parents that were visibly horrified at how late this kids birthday party was and seemed at the ready to call the party police about it all. They dutifully left at a reasonable hour.

My husband on the other hand? He got home at 10:30pm with sufficiently satisfied. well-fed, tired kids in tow, and another parental task successfully behind him. Good job, babe.

Non-Weekend

by Patti

week·end/ˈwēkˌend/

Noun:

The period from Friday evening through Sunday evening, esp. regarded as a time for leisure

Long ago, at some point in this life, I had weekends. They consisted of leisurely strolls through book stores, and coffee, and shopping, and sometimes, sometimes? JUST NAPPING AND THAT IS ALL,WHY? IS THERE SOMEPLACE I NEED TO BE? "What are you doing this weekend?" would be the big question at work. "Oh, going to a couple of parties, brunch on Sunday, you know... stuff."

Along the way and somewhere deep into motherhood, my weekends vanished. As the work week comes to  a close now, I know I won't be sleeping in the next day just because it's Saturday. And that is because Saturday will consist of ballet class, harried errands that can't get done during the week because we're too busy with work and school, probably a birthday party or two, and some serious shuffling in-between. Sundays will most definitely include laundry and cleaning and weekend homework and groceries, and maybe, possibly if we're lucky, dinner with friends AND THEIR KIDS. And then, suddenly and just like that, it's Monday again and the whole Groundhog Day of Life begins again. Again. Again. Again. Again.

It's funny - if I find myself driving through the city on a Saturday afternoon, I see the joggers, I see the girls in jeans and oversize sunglasses with shopping bags in one hand and Starbucks in the other, I see the people walking their dogs in a way that I can tell they aren't really going anywhere; they're just walking. And then I remember that I just came from a dance studio stuffed with ten other moms that were also experiencing the same non-weekend I was - the one that found them hurriedly shuttling their kids from activity to activity to activity, the minutes of the weekend ticking away toward Monday.

I wonder how many weekends my parents gave away to us, and then I remember that our weekends were spent climbing trees, playing football in open fields with friends, riding bikes that were thrown carelessly onto each other's lawns as we ran from house to house... We didn't have "lessons", "playdates", "activities"... we just burned daylight from Saturday through Sunday, and my parents were allowed to do the same. We didn't need entertaining and we didn't expect to be entertained. We just... were.

Now, every. single. day is scheduled to within an inch of its life, and those long-ago weekends that often provided such reprieve and separation are now just an extension of every single day. To be fair, it seems that even kids - the very ones we have given our weekends to - are wishing for weekends that they never knew. Just the other day S said, to me, "Mom, I don't feel like doing anything at all. Can we not have any plans?" Without even knowing, she expressed the very thing I was feeling -- can we not have any plans. Can we?

This weekend just passed, and, it being Easter weekend and most things being cancelled or closed, and us being kind of heathen-like in our non-attendance of Easter-related things, did just that -- we had no plans. It will be quite some time before that happens again, before a Saturday calls for sleeping in and coffee in a coffee shop, and a Sunday calls for pancakes, pajamas, naps and a movie -- as all of the upcoming weekends are kind of jam-packed with "stuff".  Because of that, I have decided to stop waiting for the weekend to have a weekend. Instead, I will snatch pieces of time whenever I can and turn moments into that "time for leisure".  It's Tuesday, but it feels like Saturday! Let's rent a movie! Pancakes? Are not just for Sundays! It's Wednesday night - time for breakfast!

Hey! It's Monday. What are you doing tonight?

Full House

by Patti


I live in a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, charming little house. To give you an idea of just how charming, when I was in real estate, those in the industry knew that the word "charming" in any description  meant that the house? Was Ti. Ny. So yes, our house ain't no mansion, but it suits our little family of three just fine.

Fortunately, we have a finished basement, and a family room in addition to a living room, so even though our house is small, the layout makes it seem deceptively big. Until you throw in three grandparents and 11 screaming 11-year olds. Then, suddenly, that charming yet deceptively large little house becomes a clown house, with people spilling out of every nook and cranny while wacky circus music bleats its beats right into your head.

This past weekend was S's birthday party. In true Aries style, it's not enough for her to have a little gathering around a small, candle-lit cake. No, the kid has to have every human she has ever known admire her as she blows out her candles, and if they can all spend the night afterwards to further extend the festivities, the better. I figured, eh, it's her 11th- the big "tween" birthday - so let's let her have her night of horrors fun! This party was planned weeks ago, long before I knew my in-laws would be popping in for a surprise visit from Argentina, so imagine my freak-outedness when they appeared and I had to figure out where the hell to put them. Normally, they sleep in the basement when they come, but this time around, the basement would be teeming with tweens. M suggested we give up our room to them, give the basement to the tweens, and we would sleep in Sofia's loft bed. Her bed is one of those Ikea numbers, where the bottom part is really a fort with a mattress on the ground, and the top part, while suitable for a 50-something pound 10-year old, is a rickety Fear Factor experiment for anybody over 95 lbs. But we knew it'd be for one night only, because as soon as those tweens were gone, S would be back to her bed, and we'd be in the basement for the duration of M's parents' visit.

SO. This was the plan.

The party commenced, and while I ran around like a freak on fire, and M slung pizzas into and out of the oven, and my mom snapped pics, and my in-laws stepped over and around various bodies that were sprawled out all over the place making scrapbooks, the girls had an absolute ball. As luck would have it, it turns out that half of the invited guests had to be somewhere early the next morning, so only five girls ended up spending the night. WHICH WAS JUST FINE BY ME. As soon as the scrapbooking part of the party was over, and the going-home girls went home, the rest of them were relegated to the basement, where they sang karaoke, played board games, danced, and drowned in prepubescent hormones.

The house groaned all night with the weight of people, but it also danced with the laughter of girls experiencing that first delicious taste of freedom -- the kind that makes you feel that the world is yours and everything in it holds possibility. As I wandered around upstairs in the wee hours from couch to bed to couch to bed to, at last and for good, couch, I smiled through my exhaustion. The laughter floated up from the basement through the floor, and I remembered that feeling so sharply - those nights of giggles and late-night games that consisted of sticking the hand of the first girl to fall asleep into a bowl of warm water to make her pee in her sleep, and ghost stories, and whispered gossip about the red-headed, freckled-faced Gary that suddenly got cute, and it was all completely worth it, the sacrificed space and sleep.

My house was full, oh, so full. My heart, more so.

Stomach Bugging

by Cathy

As is probably expected from a trip to Mexico, I came down with some sort of a stomach bug/flu/virus the night I returned from Cabo. Was it Montezuma's Revenge? Was it the water? Was it the stomach flu circulating on the plane? Who knows. All I know is that this mutha was turnin' my stomach out.

Before I went to sleep that night, I felt a little queasy and attributed the symptoms to some 'bad sausage' I ate for dinner, a meal my husband lovingly had prepared for my welcome home. I fell asleep and was awoken at 3 a.m. to some major stomach pains. I got up to use the bathroom and...nothing. I could hear my intestines partying it up - gurgling, twisting and churning the night away - but I could not relieve myself. It was the strangest feeling. I dragged myself back to bed and desperately tried to sleep off the pains. By the next morning, I had a fever and felt like my body was run over by a Mack truck.

My husband continued tackling the daily routine, something he had by now become an expert at: lunches, school and activity shuffling, dishwashing, cooking and everything in between as I quietly napped most of the day and got up to munch on some saltine crackers and wait out this 24-hour bug.

Two days later, ON MY HUSBAND'S BIRTHDAY, he caught the same mutha. He awoke okay enough that day, donned some dressier clothes and set out to renew his drivers license. By the time he came to pick me up from work, kids in the back seat picked up from school, he was shivering so bad he was tearing up.

"Let me drive'" I suggested.
"No. It helps distract me. I'll just drive home," he said in his usual stubborn way.

What ensued after we got home, could only be referred to as a tragic comedy.

He took his shoes off and slid under the comforter in bed fully clothed, teeth chattering, body convulsing with shakes.
"Can you throw some of those wool covers over me? I'm freezing!"
I covered him up to his chin. Five minutes later...
"Can you wrap my feet in that other wool blanket? Just my feet? Yeah...there you go. Thanks."
"Anything else?"
"Can you prop up these pillows for me? I'm not comfortable laying all the way down."
"Aren't you going to try and sleep?"
"No, I can't sleep. Can you prop them up higher?"
Propping takes place.
"No, that's too high. Can you bring them lower?"
Propping takes place. Apparently, said propping wasn't quite right for the Goldilocks of Pillows.
"Can you just...I don't want to be all the way down but not too high." [Insert more propping here.] "OK, that's good."
 "Do you want me to sit here with you?"
"Yeah, for a little if you don't mind."
"Sure."
Pause.
"You know that I still have that life insurance policy in place should anything happen, right?"
"Babe, you have the stomach flu."
"Yeah, I know, I'm just sayin'."
Pause. [Insert silent chuckle from me here.]
"Do you want me to get you some water? You should drink liquids if you have a fever so you don't get dehydrated."
"Yeah, sure....Wait! Can I get a straw with that so I don't spill it?"
"Sure, babe."
"OH and can you get me the Vicks?"
"The Vicks Vapor Rub? For what? You're not congested."
"But I need the fumes. They'll help distract me"
Okaaaaaay. No Vicks was found after a house-wide search; probably swallowed up in the giant pink mess of the girls' bedroom.
"Should I put a hot water bottle near my feet? They're like blocks of ice they're so cold!" he said after whining about not finding the said Vicks.
"Why don't you try to get some sleep?"
"I can't."
"OK, I'm going into the kitchen to cook some dinner. Will you be okay?"
"Yeah. But first can you change me?"
"CHANGE YOU?"
"Yeah, can you help me change out of my clothes and put on my pajamas?"
Okay, this was it.
"Dude, I had this for two whole days and all I did was nap and pad around quietly in my robe. You didn't hear a peep from me. You're a total BABY!"
"OK, never mind, I'LL just do it."

So after laying in bed for some time, getting up to change in to his PJs on his own (evident from the groaning and painful moaning I heard all the way in the kitchen) and getting up to use the toilet frequently, (evident from the scream that would be emitted from the bathroom every time he sat on the cold toilet seat) he announced that he was "STARVING." But before he gobbled up some soup, he asked me for some Aleve because his head was pounding.
"How many, one or two?"
"Ten," he replied.

Some more time passed during which any one of the following comments could be randomly heard:

"I'm so cold!"
"I'm so hot!"
"Do you think I need a cold compress on my head?"
"Where's that thermometer??!" (Again, also lost in the cluttery pinkness of the girls' room.)
"I need to take some Nyquil or something to knock me out." (I explained to him that when I had this, this BUG knocked me out and I took three naps in one day. Why couldn't HE sleep?)

"Can you rub the back of my neck? Where's that rubbing oil? No, not the rubbing alcohol, the massage oil!"

"OH MY GOD, your hands are FREEZING!! Rub nice! Rub them together first, Japanese style so they can warm up!" (After a minute of Mr. Myagi-ing, I told him this wasn't gonna work and he should just rub his own shoulders.)

I left him there and went to take care of Ari, who by now, was in the tub and yelling for me to wash her hair, while helping Bella with her math homework, cook dinner, wash the ceiling-stacked dishes in the sink and the million little things that need tending to around the house, then put off the begging from Ari to play tea party with her and review Bella's homework once again.

Finally, towards the end of the night, I went into the bedroom and saw that Joe was sitting up in bed watching television. It must've been a rough few hours for him because his hair looked like an unstyled, jacked up version of Pauly D.'s hairdo - stiff, sticking straight up but in a curly, longer, messed up mess.

Pauly D's infamous hairdo

"You didn't sleep at all?" I asked.
"No. I couldn't."
"I was completely knocked out by this thing. How are you feeling?"
"My whole body aches." Pause. "Can you please rub me down now?" he added, quietly. "Just rub my calves. They're killing me."

I proceeded to knead his calves, then conveniently, this turned into rubbing his lower back, his upper back, his shoulders, the back of his neck, all while attempting to watch television over the moans, groans, ooohs, aaahs that got higher pitched by the minute. It may have sounded like a fun time to someone listening in, but quite plainly put, it wasn't.

Upon finishing the rubdown, he magically!  instantly! felt better. "My God, what did you DO? It felt like you were rubbing the fever and aches right out of my body! I feel so much better now!" He started chirping away like baby bird that just found his voice. His newfound Chatty Cathy phase led me to believe that I had done my job in helping him get better, and go from baby to man once more. And given that I did get some really good laughs from his miserable ordeal, which made the process of helping him more bearable, I didn't mind taking care of my "baby daddy." That's what we do.

And speaking of babies...

Thought I'd add this, you know, so you can get another view of Pauly D's, um...hair

Zipping to the Extreme

by Cathy

As you may have read in my last post, I was off in Cabo last week on a "business" trip. In the midst of what turned out to be more leisure than business, checking in first at this hotel for two days:

Sheraton Hacienda del Mar Golf & Spa Resort, Los Cabos

 Then at this hotel for the final two days:

The Westin Resort & Spa, Los Cabos

 I did something EXTREME.

Of all the words I can think of to describe me, "extreme" is definitely not one of them. In fact, my middle name should be  "middle-of-the-road" or "medium" or "moderation" or "non-extremist". I don't do anything in extremes - I like being right smack dab in the middle. That's where I feel comfortable; that's who I am.

However, my whole Cabo trip was about stepping outside of my comfort zones - traveling alone; being comfortable alone; exploring new places; meeting new people; trying new things - alone. So wouldn't it be fitting that I did something I would not normally be prone to doing within my comfort zones? Yes, it would. So, I did. And what did I choose to do? Zip Lining. Yes, I willingly signed up for the Costa Azul Xtreme Canopy Tour. (Notice, the word Xtreme.)

The funny thing is that I didn't even realize this was an Xtreme sport until I got there and the instructors rigged us up in our harnesses, secured the clips that would support my weight as I dangled hundreds of feet in the air above cacti, burning desert rock and slithering rattlesnakes -  and ran through the drill. That's when I went into full-on panic mode. You see, since I landed in Cabo, where I was trying so hard to take in the beautiful scenery and revel in the ocean air, the looming zip lining activity kept nagging at my vacation state of mind, not allowing me to truly relax. I was so stressed about how I would handle it, I surveyed everyone in my path about it: the guys sitting next to me on the plane, our tour guide, our host, all 12 of the other folks on our tour, the hotel bar waiter, the unassuming couple from Minnesota baking next to me on the pool deck, swimmers wading past me in the pool...

I took diligent note of all the feedback (all of it reassuring and positive and FUN!) and wrestled back and forth between zip lining or just sticking with good old kayaking (I had done it in the past, albeit it was on a river, not the Pacific Ocean) and it seemed "moderate" enough. After conducting my thorough, unscientific focus group,  I decided to just stick with it. This trip was all about pushing my boundaries after all. 'Just buck up and do it, Cathy, dammit.'

On the morning of, I was surprisingly calm. The decision was made and I was at ease with accepting it. Once we got there, I applied my 30th coat of 50 SPF. (I started applying this the minute I woke up that morning because the thought of being up high in the Mexican hills with the Mexican sun beating on my pasty Chicago ass for three hours straight terrified me. In fact, I almost wore a long sleeve and long pants - a tunic and scapular shy of becoming Cathy, the flying, zip lining nun.) I'm sorry, I've gotten some crazy ass looking sunburns in Mexico - painful, ridiculous looking sunburns that could pass for geographical maps and airport runways. Thus, the fear. Not. Good. So I slathered to the point where I could slip right off that zip line. Also, not. good.

What seemed to calm my nerves somewhat is when I spotted grandmas, grandpas and two children (a nine-year old and an 11-year old) in the crowd. Yes, I did ask them their ages. Okay, if they can do this, I can do this. I took the pulley by the horns, stepped onto the platform on the mountainside, crossed my ankles, lifted my knees to my chest, leaned back in my harness and let the guide push me off the edge into the wide open air. I shut my eyes and screamed like a baby...for about 10 seconds.

This was taken by our tour's "Paparazzi" guy. That' me being Xtreme!

Then I realized that the speed was not as zippy as I thought it would be, so I opened my eyes and and took it all in. I thought about what the instructor said: "This is the closest you'll ever get to flying." I saw the Sea of Cortez off in the distance and the turkey vultures (no joke) tauntingly hovering overhead, waiting for me to plunge to my thorny death on that cacti and do what they do best. But seriously, by the end of that first zip line, I was hooked. Literally and figuratively speaking. I wanted more. I wanted higher. I wanted longer. I wanted faster. There were eight zip lines in total and I took in the sensation and exhilaration to the fullest.

All was great until our instructors said there would be a rappelling portion of the tour. Rapelling? Where you dangle off a platform on a rope that you, yourself are controlling and releasing to drop you - or shoot you - down 150 feet onto the ground below all while bouncing yourself off of a jagged rock wall lest you cut up your knees, a la SWAT team style? Too much to think about but since I was on a high from zip lining, I thought, 'What the heck.' But when I saw those go before me and how they were shaking, and pushed off that ledge and saw one lady come back with a rope burn on her hip, my 'What the heck' turned into 'What the hell??'

I was the first one to unclip myself from that wire holding me on that platform, turn on my heel and say, "I'm out. I did what I came to do. This is a vacation. I don't need the stress." Unbeknownst to me, there were twenty others from our group sitting this one out. And wouldn't you know I started a trend. Three more walked off that platform, one by one, after me, while an over-confident dude checked them off, "Another one bites the dust."

Well, that was my point. I didn't want to literally bite that dust waiting for me at the bottom of that cliff. Too much of this activity was left to my physical abilities and sporty know-how, and I was in no position to be fully left in charge during this Xtreme sport.

Overall, I can view this experience as "I chickened out on rappelling" or "I went beyond my comfort zone to the point where I was so proud of myself and felt content at trying something so out of my league."

In my eyes, I chose to fly.