Tiller girl
Me: “Um, Tiller, what happened to the skirt you were wearing?” She was wearing a pair of jeans.
Tiller: “I didn’t want to wear it anymore.”
Me [wary of possible hazmat incident]: “Why not?”
Tiller [matter of factly]: “Because I was going to be a koala bear and my legs would get hurt.”
Oh, of course!
I can’t believe we’ve been married for eight years. The time has just flown by. It really goes warp speed once you have children, too. For our anniversary, we went to visit our friend Tom in Chicago. He lives with his girlfriend Tara (she is awesome!) and it was great to hang out with them. It was also great to spend a couple of days with no kids, just me and Todd on an adventure together.
Todd is my favorite person to travel with – he is easygoing, calm, and organized. He usually plans ahead, figuring out the main sites he wants to see, but is always up for detours and unscheduled adventures. He also always makes sure that I find my way to where i need to go. He gets the tipsy Dogwood Girl in the cab, and he holds the fearful Dogwood Girl’s hand when the plane does funky stuff.
He is my best friend. He is my partner in life. He is a wonderful Dad, patient and fun, and he also kicks ass at Jeopardy and trivia.
Did I mention that he is awesome? Did I mention that I would love him even if he didn’t take me on cool trips and buy me the digital camera that I have wanted for years now?
Because I would. I would totally still love him.
But the return on this weekend and my awesome gift will be pretty damn good. That’s all I’m sayin’ about that.
Took lots of photos of Chicago trip and I’ll post about it later.
Todd. I love you.
I think that this was supposed to make my kids look awesomely creative and fun. It made them look boring.
Ask your child(ren) these questions and enter their answers…Quite amusing!
Tiller (3)
1. What is something Mom always says to you?
I don’t know.
2. What makes Mom happy?
Being nice.
3. What makes Mom sad?
I don’t remember.
4. How does your Mom make you laugh?
Tickling me.
5. What was your Mom like as a child?
I don’t know.
6. How old is your Mom?
I don’t know some of the answers.
7. How tall is your Mom?
I don’t know.
8. What is her favorite thing to do?
I don’t know.
9. What does your Mom do when you’re not around?
WAtch tv.
10. If your Mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
I don’t know.
11. What is your Mom really good at?
She’s good at games.
12. What is your Mom not very good at?
I don’t know.
13. What does your Mom do for a job?
Help
14.What is your Mom’s favorite food?
I don’t know.
15.What makes you proud of your Mom?
I don’t know.
16. If your Mom were a TV character, who would she be?
I don’t think i know.
17. What do you and your Mom do together?
Go somewhere together.
18. How are you and your Mom the same?
I don’t know. Do you know.
19. How are you and your Mom different?
Because sometimes you don’t wear the same shirts.
20. How do you know your Mom loves you?
Hugging.
21. What does your Mom like most about you?
I don’t know.
22. Where is your Mom’s favorite place to go?
Chick-fil-a.
Ask your child(ren) these questions and enter their answers…Quite amusing!
Rollie (5)
1. What is something mom always says to you?
I love you.
2. What makes mom happy?
Being nice.
3. What makes Mom sad?
Being Bad
4. How does your Mom make you laugh?
Being funny.
5. What was your Mom like as a child?
A kid.
6. How old is your Mom?
36
7. How tall is your Mom?
36 inches
8. What is her favorite thing to do?
WAtching birds.
9. What does your Mom do when you’re not around?
sleep with daddy in his bed.
10. If your Mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
I don’t know what that means.
11. What is your Mom really good at?
Playing Tetris.
12. What is your Mom not very good at?
Playing scrabble.
13. What does your Mom do for a job?
Work on the roof.
14.What is your Mom’s favorite food?
spinach
15.What makes you proud of your Mom?
I love you.
16. If your Mom were a TV character, who would she be?
I don;t know.
17. What do you and your Mom do together?
Pick up me from school.
18. How are you and your Mom the same?
Because we look the same.
19. How are you and your Mom different?
Because we look different.
20. How do you know your Mom loves you?
Because I’m your son.
21. What does your Mom like most about you?
Cause I’m nice.
22. Where is your Mom’s favorite place to go?
Enzo’s
Not keeping up well, am i? Well, we went to Blue Ridge (Morganton, actually) and had a lovely week at the cabin. While Todd and I unpacked, the kids and the dog ran around willy nilly on top of the mountain. The cabin is at the end of a road on a mountain, with only a few cabins around, so the kids could have free rein, and we didn’t have to worry about people or cars. They found sticks and climbed logs, and threw rocks, picked dandelions, and looked at bugs. They laid on a picnic table and watched the clouds. They yelled.
Todd and I held down the fort, watching them from above on the porch, looking out over the blue ridge mountains, sipping drinks, and playing Scrabble. (A draw for the whole weekend.)
That night, after dinner and putting on PJs, we had a clear night, so we pulled out the telescope and showed Tiller the moon. Rollie was not so impressed, but Tiller sat on Todd’s knee and said, “I see the moon, Mama. I see the moon.” Then she would raise her eye from the telescope and look up at the moon with her naked eye, as if trying to figure it all out.
The next morning, Tiller and I continued the nature lessons with some birdwatching. Here she is with the Audubon bird guide. I love it when she picks up my big books and acts like she is reading them. (She is currently “reading” Anathem along with me.)
The next day, we drove and found a park for a picnic and playing on the Toccoa River.
Then we drove into McCaysville/Copper Hill for ice cream,
model train watching,
and state line straddling.
Rollie and I met this guy, but he scared Tills.
When we got back to the cabin, we sat on the porch and rocked out to some tunes while having a snack. The following is a video of, I think, the kids explaining what will happen if their Uncle Mark gets into the Easter baskets. It makes little sense, but is funny, and also a good example of what every night at our dinner table is like. Note the manner in which the kids try to get their stories out so fast that they have to stop and gulp air every once in a while. Sometimes their stories sound like hyperventilation. Also note that by “story” i do not mean to imply that there is any plot.
That night, we roasted marshmallows. I like to make sure that each kid gets their fill of carcinogenic-covered marshmallow every few months.
Friday, it rained ALL DAY LONG. I didn’t know the real meaning of Cabin Fever until that day. Todd and I started drinking Mimosas about ten and proceeded to lounge around in PJs all day long, reading and laying all over the couch with the kids while Rollie played XBox until his brain started melting out of his ears. Just a little.
See what Quint is doing? That is pretty much all he did the whole time, except sometimes the location was a sunny spot on the porch, or my bed, or occasionally he would go outside and attempt to pee on every tree in North Georgia.
That night we had some slightly scary storms, wherein I looked out the window and trees were trying to be horizontal rather than vertical, and then i called my mom and sister every ten minutes to see if we were under a Tornado Warning.
Okay, there is more to this trip, but i have to go to the bathroom, and i think it will make a good second post for tonight or tomorrow. Like you’re still reading or something. . . .
To see my little girl on a soccer field. . .
So, Dad and i were ready to take the boat out at the lake on Saturday. It was afternoon. He was in the boat and I was standing on the dock, trying to coax Lisa’s Jack Russell Terrier, Emily, off the boat. That’s when I felt and heard it. It was like a sonic boom, along with the sensation that something had just hit the dock, shaking it under my feet, causing me to grasp the railing to right myself. At first, I thought: Sonic Boom. No. Large tree floating down river and hitting the dock. No. Explosion at the power plant. No. Earthquake? Naw!
Totally strange. It was an earthquake.
I am still trying to figure out how I became the one hiding the Easter eggs, when I feel like i haven’t finished finding all of mine.
Recently, on Friday nights, we go out and get mexican or pizza with the kids and then come home and have movie night. This is kind of Todd’s thing, and he and the kids pick out the movie and he cuddles up with them. Meanwhile, I pour myself a drink, and I sit and write or read or fuck around on Facebook. This also means that when the pick isn’t that great, i can blame Todd for its failure. Like, oh, say, tonight.
We had a discussion at the dinner table the other night about what movie we would watch on Friday. Tiller voted Bolt. Rollie voted Wall-E.
“Hmmm,” I said. “I think i would like to watch Wall-E too. Todd, what would you like to watch?”
Todd knew by the tone of my voice that he wanted to watch Bolt, so as to create a tie, and a teaching experience. We would teach them how to share through the joys of a family movie night tie-breaker.
“I would like to watch Bolt,” Todd said. Cause he knows what’s good for him.
Rollie and Tiller both sputtered. It is inconceivable to a 3 or 5 year old that things might not swing their way.
“Seems we have a problem,” I said. “We do not have a majority here. What are we going to do?”
We all looked at each other around the table. Rollie was obviously mulling something over.
“I know,” he said.
“What?” said Tiller.
“Well, Daddy and Tiller can watch Bolt, and me and Mama can watch Wall-E. We get the upstairs tv!”
Todd and I looked at each other, knowing we had been outsmarted by a five-year-old. Not exactly what we had in mind.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Todd. “I’ll go by the library tomorrow and get us a new movie.”
He did.
So, tonight, he got ready to go out for his Friday night outing, I poured a Bloody Mary, and the kids and i piled up on the couch, lights turned off, movie cued up, the setting sun illuminating our west-facing room. The dog and the cat were our bookends on the couch.
We had been talking all day about Daddy’s pick: The Corpse Bride.
It is PG. We debated if we thought it was okay for them to watch. They saw The Nightmare Before Christmas and loved it. Rollie saw Coraline in the theater, in 3D no less, and loved it. We figured this would be a piece of cake. Tiller fell asleep about halfway through and Todd took her up to bed. Then he left and Rollie and I finished the movie, his head nestled on my chest to my left, Quint curled up in a donut to my right, and Scully sitting in a curl next to Rollie. One big happy family.
For those of you who haven’t seen The Corpse Bride, it is great. A brief synopsis: Gawky, geeky Johnny Depp-looking guy of modest means, Victor, is set up to marry the well-to-do in name, not so well-off monetarily bride, Victoria. They fall in love. The wedding turns into a disaster and ends up not happening. Victor accidentally marries a corpse instead. Corpse loves Victor. He grows to care for her, but still loves Victoria. Stuff happens. Skeletons do a catchy musical number. To make marriage the real deal, Victor must die. Meanwhile, Victoria must wed bad guy who actually made the corpse bride a corpse in the first place. In the end, Victor and his true love Victoria end up together and the corpse bride is set free and the bad guy gets his comeuppance. So, suffice to say that there are three weddings, and a whole lotta dead folks.
During the third wedding, Rollie says to me: “I don’t like weddings.”
Me: “Why not?”
Rollie: “They’re boring.”
I laugh.
Me: “Yeah, actually, sometimes they are boring. You know what, though? If your daddy and I never got married, you wouldn’t even be here now, right? So, that’s a good thing.”
Rollie thinks this over, then says, “I went to a wedding. It was boring.”
I think to myself, no way you remember the last wedding you went to, which was Aunt Lisa’s. You were three.
I say, “When did you go to a wedding?”
Somehow, I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Grandma and Papaw Johnson had a wedding.”
“What?” I say.
“They had that girl that used to sleep in the chair all the time.”
My mind was racing to figure this out, hoping he wasn’t talking about what I thought he was talking about.
He was looking at me, waiting to see if I knew what he was talking about.
When Todd’s grandmother was alive, and living with my in-laws, she spent a lot of time sleeping in a chair in her room.
“Honey, do you mean Meemaw?”
Rollie said, “Yes, we went to the wedding and she was dead.”
FUCK.
I took a deep breath.
“Sweetie, that wasn’t a wedding. That was Meemaw’s funeral. A wedding is when two people who love each other promise to be together forever. Like Mama and Daddy. A funeral is when people get together to celebrate the life of a person who has gone to heaven. Like Meemaw.”
Rollie: “Oh.” He seemed to accept this all and go back to watching the movie. I, on the other hand, will need therapy after showing my son a movie that totally blurred the lines between the living and the dead in such a believable way.
We sat on the couch quietly watching the movie, him getting the dazed look kids get when they are tired, me thinking quietly to myself that the movie seems so benign and sweet, but I can see where all the living and the dead people hanging out together could be confusing to someone so little. At the end, Victor and Victoria stand together on the church steps, watching as the Corpse Bride disintegrates into a beautiful cloud of. . . well, I won’t give the full imagery, in case you haven’t seen the movie. (See the movie!) But the particles of her being float apart and up into the moon.
“Where is she going?” Rollie says to me.
“She’s going to heaven, Honey. She found love and acceptance, and that freed her soul to go to heaven.”
Rollie mulls over this and then says, “Is Meemaw in the moon?”
“Yes, honey, i think that if the moon is heaven, then she might be in the moon.”
“I like the moon.”
“Me, too, sweetie.”
Tiller shows off a dandelion.
Tills climbing the figs.
When I was a little girl, I used to go visit my Grandma Smith in the summers. She lived in an apartment complex in Chattanooga, Tenn. Mom grew up in Chattanooga. Mom would pack me and my sister up in the red Caprice Classic station wagon and we would go spend a few days with Grandma. This was the most fun ever for my sister and I, as everyone knows that Chattanooga is the epicenter for kitschy tourist traps found on those pamphlets in motel lobbys, Howard Johnsons, and rest areas.
We would go to Rock City, ride the incline, and get candy from the candy shop at the top of the incline. See, we had the hookup, because Grandma’s best friend worked at the candy shop. Fudge and rock candy. Ahhhh. In the afternoons, we would swim at the apartment pool, while mom or Grandma and Aunt Dot watched us. Grandma and Aunt Dot did their laundry in the laundry room in a room right off the pool area while we swam. This is also, I assume, where they kept the liquor. Now, i don’t want to question my mother’s parenting, but she would let grandma watch us swim. I never ONCE saw Grandma swim in the pool. I assume she could swim, but have my doubts as to whether she could retrieve either me or my sister from the bottom of the pool if necessary, especially without putting down her drink or getting her cigarettes wet.
My favorite thing to do, though, (other than go to the castle, which was a toy store near Grandma’s, with a castle facade and an awesome board that counted down the days until Christmas, and where I would buy a Breyer horse every time we visited) was go to Lake Winnepesauka.
Lake Winnie is awesome, even though they have a really shitty website. It is an old school amusement park, and has been open since 1925 and is still run by the grandchildren of the original owners. It is pretty much a family tradition now, as my grandparents, my mom, and me and Lisa all grew up going to Lake Winnie. I have not taken the kids there yet, but can’t wait to do so.
It has a pretty famous old wooden roller coaster, the Cannonball. It has my faves the Himilaya and the Tilt-A-Whirl. It has Leelee’s fave, The Scrambler. A boat chute. An awesome merry-go-round (that was originally at Lakewood fairgrounds in Atlanta). A great haunted house fun house, skeeball, all set around a lake (that I believe used to be a swimming pool before my time) filled with the biggest damn carp ever. Paddleboats. It is very old-school, and family-oriented. I heart Lake Winnie. I cannot wait to take the next generation there. I think Dash needs a couple years and he will be ready to party with us, too.
So, all of this is to say that we took the kids to one of those temporary carnivals at a nearby mall. OH. MY. GOD. Most fun i have had in years. It was pretty awesome to see so many of my neighbors there, and kids from Rollie and Tiller’s schools. Met my sister, BIL, and nephew, Dash there, too. Dash was unimpressed by the rides, but did like the lights and the music from the Himalaya.
Dash finds carnies fascinating.
Tiller fearlessly rides the Ferris Wheel with Aunt Lisa.
Rollie rode the big slide thing with one of the twins from down the street (Sydney, I believe).
Rollie and Syd Slide
Tiller was too scared to ride it, so she went with the teacups. A classic choice. She rode with the twins, Leah and Sydney, and loved it. When their cup went by the carny, he would reach down and give them a huge spin, eliciting screams and laughter, along with a slight chance of whiplash. I have seldom been happier in my life than standing by my friends Lauren and Scott at near sunset, watching our little girls smile the widest smiles and scream the screams that only happy little girls can emit, all the while holding my nephew, who was mesmerized by the lights and sounds.
Tiller rides the teacups with the big girls.
Money’s tight, so Todd and I picked a couple rides we wanted particularly to ride, and left the rest to the kids. When I say the kids, I really mean me, because I would have pitched the biggest fit ever if I couldn’t ride both the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Himalaya. Rollie was very brave and rode the Tilt-A-Whirl with me. I have to admit that I choked up a bit getting up there, navigating the metal platform to pick out a car with my son in hand. He was so brave! We climbed in, and all i could think of was what it was like to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl with my mom at Lake Winnie. I think I remember Lisa going one time, but now it makes her sick. (Or so she says.) There is something so cozy about leaning back with your arm around your kid and then when the ride starts, screaming your guts out and hoping he won’t puke on you. We actually rode with another kid, a little girl who had never ridden it before, about Rollie’s age, who was going to ride alone. (Her wussy mom was over there to the side with my wussy sister.) I sat in the middle and put an arm around each kid and we just laughed when we were going slow, catching our breath, and screamed when we went fast. I had forgotten that when you are little, it actually looks like you are going to run into the other cars whirling around, but Rollie and the little girl kept saying, “We almost ran into that one!” And that thing spins a lot harder than I remembered. I am sure it had nothing to do with the fact that i weigh sixty pounds more than last time I rode it. Nothing at all to do with that.
Lisa and I saved the best for last: The Himalaya. Lisa decided she would be scared and nervous to ride it. Just like the old days! I sat on the outside, so I wouldn’t crush her. We had a discussion about how the one at Lake Winnie must be bigger. Mom and Lisa and I used to all ride together. No way that we would all have fit into this new one. Again, had nothing to do with the fact that we were under ten last time we rode it. Nothing at all to do with that. Mark took pictures of us nervously waiting for it to start. Tiller and Rollie looked on with Daddy from the side, and danced to the music. Again, I felt a wave of emotion, hearing the loud music blaring and the siren going off when they hit top speed. You know how I love Kid Rock! They still play all the hits (Hey Ya!, Hot in Heerrre! Lisa, Todd? What else did they play?), but i am pretty sure they would make more money off us old fogies if they would play some Def Leppard, Van Halen, etc. I am pretty sure that the best job ever goes to the carny who gets to play DJ on the Himalaya. I mean, that, that is a job. Every time we went around, I waved at the kids, which is easy to do when your hands are in the air the whole time. Lisa had the bar in a death grip, all the while laughing maniacally. We screamed, and laughed our asses off, and discussed how we should just leave the kids and run away with the carnies.
Back on the Himalaya
Can’t believe I haven’t updated in a week. Poor neglected blog.