No time to give the details. Fun was had by all, despite Rollie and me feeling a little under the weather.
Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!
Archive for the ‘todd’ Category
Halloween Recap 2010
Monday, November 1st, 2010Fantastic Friday
Friday, October 29th, 2010Get 5-year-old dressed as Dorothy Gale.
Take pics of kid in driveway, trying to elicit smiles by making husband do flying monkey impersonation. Check
Get to school barely on time. Check.
Try to complete work for job that actually pays; Get only about 1/4 done. Stress about it rest of day. Check.
Deal with fallout for calling neighbor a jackass. Check.
Pick daughter up from school. Check.
Take daughter to lunch. Leave before being seated due to bad manners. (Hers, not mine.) Check.
Drive wailing daughter home and make peanut butter sandwiches for us. Check.
Fold clothes, put over load of laundry, let dog out. Check.
Load Tiller in car, along with stuff for errands. Check.
Drop candy off at pinata house. Check.
Drive to school, hang banner and other stuff for Fantastic Friday. Drop off baked goods. Check.
Get Rollie from class, take him to library to take Lit Guild tests. Check.
Drive home. Make snack. Eat own snack. Read email. Check.
Break up fight between kids. Check.
Put kids in car, call husband to meet us and get cut off before making plans, pull out of driveway. Realize kid left shoes at house. Drive back to house. Turn off car, go back in. Check.
Meet husband in garage coming back out. Snap at husband unnecessarily to get into car because we are late. Check.
Get husband to drop off close to school so won’t miss volunteering timeslot. Check.
Man duck pond AND Go Fish because other volunteer doesn’t show up. Check.
Explain to high school kids who help out and finally get to sit for a minute. Check.
Explain to next shift. Check.
Stand with daughter watching people come out of Haunted house looking scared, and laughing at them. Check.
Watch as son comes out, not looking scared. Worry about his mental state. Check.
Eat BBQ with family, watch children eat too much cotton candy, get blue faces and hands. Check.
Do cakewalk, but fail to win anything. Check.
Reluctantly take tickets from friend with twin babies so she can get her kids out faster. Check.
Find way to burn tickets fastest (Bingo). Check.
Play Bingo with whole family, actually have fun. Check.
Watch husband win Bingo and get restaurant gift certificate. Check.
Play another round with big gambler son, win another gift certificate (manicure). Check!
Decide with son that final tickets should be used for big cakewalk win, just like last year. Son wins cakewalk! Check.
Drive home, find secret gift at doorstep. Check.
Eat cupcakes won at cakewalk with family. Check.
Feel sick. Check.
Clean kitchen. Check.
Put kids to bed. Check.
Open beer. Check.
Watch Red Dawn with husband until time to drink with neighbors. Check.
I’m outtie. Night night.
We Found It!
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010The proverbial Needle In a Haystack. The diamond in a very messy and large rough. My diamond. We found it.
I was picking veggies from the garden, and I came up to the carport and Todd and the kids were grinning like jackasses eating briars.
“Mama?” Todd said. “Remember when you said you would take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese if they found something for you?”
I knew right away what it was they had found, but I played dumb for effect. For the kiddos. I had promised them, in those first days after losing the diamond, when we were turning the house upside down, and going through the dirt in the vacuum cleaner, that if they found my diamond, I would take them to Chuck E. Cheese’s.
“Did you find something?”
They made me close my eyes and hold out my hand. I did. They told me i could open. I did.
There was my engagement ring, diamond still missing, in the palm of my hand.
Wait. What? Where’s my diamond?!
Rollie walked over and put a gem in my hand.
I looked at Todd. “Where did you find it?” I said, amazed at how small it looked in my hand.
He had been moving the new mattress his parents gave us into Rollie’s room to replace Rollie’s old mattress. He lifted the old mattress up and found a piece of paper and my diamond. It is so small, it is a miracle that he saw it. I remembered, then, that one of the places that I remembered my ring hanging up on things was in Rollie’s room when I changed his sheets. It must have come off then.
What are the odds of getting a new mattress a month after losing your diamond and then finding the diamond under the old mattress? Was it God? Maybe. I waver between thinking there are no coincidences and thinking that life is all a series of hits and misses without any rhyme or reason. This definitely made me swing back to the side of fate and destiny and higher power. At least for a moment; For a moment, things seemed clear and magical at the same time.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Todd said.
“Yeah, I think so.” Diamonds look different when they aren’t in the setting. In all honesty, it kind of looked fake.
“It kind of looks fake, though, doesn’t it?” Todd said.
“Yeah, kind of.”
But I set it in the prongs of my ring and it fit perfectly.
We went inside and the kids celebrated “their” find. I put my arms around my husband and hugged him and remembered how wonderful it is that he asked me to marry him. I have not ever, not once, ever regretted saying, “Yes.” It is the most important “Yes” i ever uttered. Then, we all ate dinner together.
And that’s how, after seven years of parental avoidance, yet another wall came down, another line crossed, and I finally had to break down and take the kids to Fuck E. Cheese’s.
SkeeBall is still fun. The pizza is still disgusting.
The Gulf
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010I watched my children play in the sand while a storm came in, never quite reached us, but left us a rainbow that spanned the trees and the beach and gulf, all the way to the horizon.
I listened as my children discussed whether the pot of gold was in the forest or in the deep blue sea, and where did the leprechaun live?
I walked the beach at sunset and found the largest shell i have ever found in my whole life.
I sat in my beach chair, and thought about how many times I had sat on the Gulf in my life and thought about how small it made me feel.
I petted my dog’s velvet ears on the screened porch while having drinks with my husband and listening to music.
I had coffee with my sister while our kids played trains and chatted happily with each other.
I poured tequila at nine a.m.
I watched as the kids ignored the big ocean for the small tide pools and then rolled around in the mud. I didn’t worry a bit about the sand and the dirt.
I chased my nephew on the sand, and I clutched my hat to my head as the wind tried to take it from me.
I held hands with my little girl and walked on the docks. We dangled our feet over the edge, watching as sailboats came in, and we waved at the people and the dogs on board. We saw a crab on a pylon and we laughed at him.
I waited for hurricane waves to carry me in, and I scraped my knees on a thousand shells, and the ocean turned me upside down like I was in a washing machine. And I liked it and I laughed a true laugh and my raw, bruised knees felt good. It still feels good. I hope it doesn’t go away.
I stepped barefoot up a hundred iron spiral steps. I heard them clang and I heard the wind whistle through them. I got my bearings. I yearned to climb even farther and see how it all works. I saw beauty in the way things used to be made, and I saw that they could last.
I promised myself that I would try to convince Todd to let me paint the porch ceiling blue.
I wondered what it would be like to live 250 yards from the sea, in a time with no electricity, no gas, no artificial light, no corner grocery. I wondered what it would be like to live there and batten down the hatches. I wished I could have seen it then.
I gazed on an American flag flapping sharply in the wind, and I thought how very lucky I am.
I watched my husband stand alone in the ocean, staring out to sea. I thought to myself that he is the most wonderful person I have ever met, and that is the way it should be.
I pointed out pelicans flying in a perfect vee to my nephew and he pointed to them, too, and then looked at me to make sure I saw.
I saw my children and their cousin laugh and splash in the ocean, and I saw them put an arm around him when a big wave came, and I knew for a moment that I was doing something right.
I sat and waited until the last moment for the storm, a great wall of dark gray, to come ashore, and I got soaked, and I didn’t care. I danced under the awning with my husband and my children while it rained. And then we went right back out for more.
I sat on the beach with only my husband and we talked and laughed and listened to music in the sun.
I napped in the afternoon and woke to the voices of my family.
I felt sunbrushed and ate too much pizza.
I sat steps from the bay, and I watched her people gather, and I listened to their sweet southern voices. I sat next to my son and waited for the sun to set over the water. I listened to the pop of roman candles from the beach behind me, and I watched red and white fireworks pop up in the distance over the cape. I waved my flag and I watched a parade of lighted ships. I wondered what it would be like next year.
I heard the gasps of children and the sighs of grandmothers. I thought of the night many years ago now that I sat with my grandma, Alzheimer’s really starting to get her, and we watched fireworks, and a tear rolled down her cheek, and she whispered, “They’re beautiful,” and “I’ve never seen fireworks before.” And I knew she had seen them before, and that she just couldn’t remember it, but I was happy that she was experiencing them like a child for the first time, and I was happy to be holding her hand.
I thought, too, of sitting with friends and my children in a field in Chamblee last year, and knowing my Grandfather was not long for the world, and being overwhelmed at the sight of the fleeting bursts in the sky, and being moved to tears.
I listened to my children describe the sight and tears brimmed at the edges of my eyes.
“That one’s like a flower blossoming,” and “That one’s like Saturn,” he said, and “they perfectly lightly up the sky!” she exclaimed.
I held my son’s body on my chest, and rested my cheek next to his, and put my arms around him over his chest, and smiled when he reached up to clasp my arms with his hands. I felt him there past the brink of child and onto boyhood. I felt his weight get heavier and more substantial in the way that children do when they are bone-tired from good play and sun. I watched as he fell asleep and began to snore in the car on the way home, fireworks still lighting the sky over the bay.
I saw my sister relaxed and happy waiting for us, and it made my heart happy. I walked with my husband down the boardwalk. I stood, skirt snapping around my legs, and watched more fireworks, up and down the beach, and heard the raucous shouts of those shooting them off carried over to us across the sand. I laid down on the wind worn wood and we looked up at a million stars, and we watched a satellite traverse the sky above us.
I pondered the wonders man had made, and too, the horrors he had wrought.
I thought of the sadness and fear and anger I sensed from the people who make this place their home. And I cursed those who threatened them, and I cursed us all for the way we live. I lamented the fact that we have taken it all for granted until it might be too late.
I thought of a lifetime’s memories there – fishing and nets and swimming and sandcastles. The exhilaration of being away from my parents for the first time. Falling in love. Running on the beach. Watching the sunrise with my future husband, and bonfires and sweat lodges and drunken wrestling with friends. My sweet puppy, now an old dog, romping in the sand. I thought of the first time I ever saw my children play in the surf together.
I left it there yesterday, still pristine, still untouched, and I questioned if I would ever see it this way again in my lifetime, this place that captured my heart and soul.
I wondered if my children would remember it at all.
I Didn’t Even Know I Wanted It Until It Was On My Finger
Thursday, July 1st, 2010I just spent an hour on hands and knees, scouring the floor for the diamond from my engagement ring. The big middle one, of course. Little side guys are still intact. I am pretty sure that I had it this morning, because i think i would have noticed the empty setting, or it would have caught on something.
I did laundry this morning and seem to recall feeling a pull on the ring. Noticed it missing not long after. Stood, gaping at my own finger, the missing diamond as shocking as if my whole finger had just been amputated.
Just unfolded, gently shook out, and refolded every piece of laundry I folded this morning. Had kids down on all fours searching for “shiny things.” Checked the soles of everyone’s shoes to make sure no one stepped on it and picked it up in their shoe.
Cried on the phone with my sister.
Called Todd to tell him. Got pretty choked up.
Basically, I am freaking out.
I am not vain. I don’t give a shit how many carats the thing is, how brilliant it is. I never even cared a whit about having a fucking shiny rock until Todd surprised me with one. But now it is one of my most prized possessions. I will never forget the night Todd gave it to me and asked me to spend my life with him, sweat pouring down his forehead, kneeling in front of me. I will never forget showing it to my Grandma Palmer, and her suddenly coming out of her Alzheimer’s fog, and with tears in her eyes, looking at me and gripping my hand hard in the way she always did, and whispering to me, “Cherish this.”
And now I have lost it, and I know it is stupid to feel bereft at the loss of a rock, but I am. I am heartbroken.
Single Parent Saturday
Monday, May 10th, 2010Todd went to Tybee with the boys for the weekend. No comment on Mother’s Day. He’s working off the misdemeanor.
Saturday, I had quite a time with the kiddos. T-ball game at 9:30 a.m. Lunch with Lisa and Dash afterwards. Went to buy a birthday gift for Rollie’s friend Emily. Left there. Came home to check on the neighbor’s since the alarm company called and their alarm was going off. Let dog out. Went back out to Tucker Day. That’s our annual small-town festival. The kids love it. I like it. Would be better with beer. (Isn’t everything?) Left there. Went home for an hour. Dropped Tiller off at neighbors’ for dinner and a playdate (thanks, Shanks!) and then took Rollie to HELL, a.k.a. Stevie B’s Pizza. You might be thinking, how can this be worse than Chuck E. Cheese’s? It doesn’t have alcohol. The mouse? He has beer.
Rollie had a blast, and I actually enjoyed talking to parents of kids in his class and getting to know them better.
Much fun had by all and boy did we sleep well that night.
Aw, HELLs Yeah!
Thursday, April 29th, 2010Just received this in an email from what I thought was my children’s deadbeat Dad, on the lam in NYC.
Subject: Uh Oh
Message: Whaaaaat’s This????
Pretty. Shiny.
I guess maybe he really was working. . . or else he was very. very. bad.
To the Best Boy a Girl Ever Met In a Bar
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010We met at the Fountainhead. Later, you told me you remembered me being blond! The Fountainhead isn’t there anymore. We met for drinks the next week at The Stein Club. Gone. That Indian place in Midtown where we met Katie and Judy for dinner? Gone. Three pets, three houses, two kids later, and we’re still together. You still snore just as loud as the first time I heard it. I am still the Goat Man. But we’re still together, eleven years later.
And I wouldn’t change one day of the last eleven years; They have been the best years of my life. You have made my life richer in hundreds of ways. You are my life partner, one half of our united parental front (it’s us against them!), my most trusted confidant, my favorite cruise director, my chosen partner-in-crime, my most loyal supporter, and the first person to tell me honestly when I am wrong. (That doesn’t happen often, of course.) You are my best friend.
You are my steadying hand, my staying hand, my pushing hand, my lifting hand. I hope that I give to you what you give to me. You make me better at everything I do. You have taught me about selflessness. I hope that everyone I love will someday feel this this with another person.
Happy Anniversary to the best boy a girl ever met in a bar.
And in honor of this day, I put a little set of photos of the two of us together on Flickr.
Love,
Annie
p.s. Thanks for letting me back it up and tuck my toes in when my butt and feet are cold.
Race Photos
Monday, April 26th, 2010
How cute are they?
Busy as Hell Bee
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010We have been spending a lot of time at the baseball fields this spring. Rollie has a game and two practices a week. And then there is tiller’s Tiny Tykes practice every Sunday. And Todd’s new job with BBDO. (Speaking of, have you seen Todd’s previous work? He has a site.)
So, what we have been doing:
Tiller rides her Razor at the park, with her buddy Drake, while Rollie plays t-ball.
This is Tills and Drake, playing on the bleachers. Remember playing on the bleachers? Much more fun than being a parent keeping kids OFF the bleachers.
This is Rollie, with Zachary (if you call him Zach, this kid will actually tell you that his name is not Zach, it’s Zachary.) His dad’s a lawyer, and I didn’t ask for permission to post his picture on the site, because I like to live life on the edge. Zachary got whacked in the eye with a bat last week, but he is okay. His dad, who did the accidentally whacking, is probably now in therapy. That’s Kevin in the middle. He is small, but a strong hitter and i love how his batting helmet kind of wears him. I am also looking forward to meeting his new twin sisters. We’ve been driving Kev to practice a lot while his mom was on bedrest. He’s a cook kid. (His dad is a chef.) He is also a cool kid.
We’ve been working on Rollie’s follow-through. We pitch to him in the backyard with the whiffle ball and bat and his follow through is fine, but when he hits off the tee, he seems to be concentrating so hard on hitting the ball off the tee that he is not following through. This one was pretty good, though.
Todd dressed up as Teen Wolf.
Iain was a ZZ Top guy.
And T was Rick James, Bitch.
Candy channeled Pat B.
Even Richard Simmons was there.
Can’t remember this guy’s name, but he whips it good.
Matt did the Spicolli thing.
At Shannon and Matt’s wedding shower.
We went to Hilton Head and frolicked in the very cold water.
Had an Easter egg hunt at the Salty Dog Cafe . . .
And I dragged the family to the cemetery in Savannah to visit Pop’s grave.
See how happy they look? That Tiller, one thing you can say about her, she sure does like to get dragged around to visit dead folks at cemeteries. Rollie? Oh, hissing under my breath that I will pop him if he doesn’t smile for the camera.
But it was a beautiful day for a visit to the Cemetery, and it seemed appropriate to visit on Easter. My grandmother, her brother and sister, and my great-grandparents are all buried there also.
Dash came to visit and we spent a ton of time in the yard. Tiller played ball.
Rollie ran around looking like a Cecil Jr. with no shirt and wrecking his toy in the backyard.
And finally, Rollie saw a bee and freaked out.
The bee did not sting him. No bees were harmed in the photographing of this boring post.