But I know i am, because I think the Dads on Gossip Girl and Friday Night Lights are the hotties on the shows.
This is not a good sign.
Yes, I know GG is crap; Don’t knock Friday Night Lights, though – It’s one of the best shows on television.
I Don’t Feel That Old . . . .
May 30th, 2008Old Photo Day
May 29th, 2008
In case you haven’t noticed, I heart old photos. This is one that I found in my mom’s family photos. Based on the photos it was found with, I’m pretty sure it is a picture of one or more of the Stevens family. Frankly, it really bums me out that I don’t know who it is, because I love their faces and the fact that they aren’t all posed like people usually are in pictures from this era. I love the casual look of the subjects, like they’re just out loping the roads on a Saturday afternoon. I love that the young kid (boy? girl?) is in the driver’s seat. I love that the woman in the middle is obviously the matriarch of the family, lording over the others with her beads and her hat. I like that dark-haired woman in the back, looking out of the corner of her eye, and looking like the wicked witch of the west. I wonder what kind of car it is. Mostly, I wonder if one of them is my Grandma Vivian’s mother, who grew up near Sanford, NC, and died when grandma was just a teenager in Slidell, LA. And I wonder who the rest of them are, and if they were as fun as my Grandma and Aunt Dot.
Most of all, I wish Grandma was sitting here next to me, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, to look over my shoulder, tell me who they all are, and then tell me a gut-busting story about one of them.
Summertime Rolls
May 28th, 2008I think of that song every year about this time. It makes me think of the beach and graduating high school and looking forward to college and working at the pool for the summer. It makes me think of the rope swing on the hooch, and Dairy Queen. It is a song, for me, about possibility.
So, more and more, when this time of year comes around, I think back at how I felt so hopeful back then, and I remind myself that there is power in feeling that anticipation, and in taking on new tasks and hobbies and work and travel.
Which is good, because I am going to be working again, at least part-time, and I have to remind myself that while my dreams of wearing the kids out at the pool every day or dropping everything at a moment’s notice to head to The Lake might not come to fruition, change is always good, and I always learn and grow from it. Meeting new people and learning new jobs is always a booster to my self-esteem, my mindset, and yeah, to the bank account.
And the pool stays open til 9, so I think I can get in some swims, no matter how much I am working.
Summertime Rolls. . . .
Fast Friends
May 24th, 2008
My sister is pregnant and is in the ‘get the baby out” stage, or maybe it is the “I think i changed my mind. I don’t really want to have this baby” stage. Either way, i was thinking that after bombarding her labor stories, which can be kind of scary, I would write about a good/fond memory of labor/childbirth/the aftermath.
With Rollie, my best memories are:
When I first had him, they had the specialists to come in and suction him, since he was not breathing well, and then they let me hold him for a second before taking him to the transitional nursery. I had him for maybe ten seconds, not enough to even take it all in, but my mom was in the room by that point, and she got to see me hold him for the first time. And I got to see her face when I told her that he was named for her father and brother. Now that I have kids, that means more to me than I thought; I can only imagine that looking down at one of my kids and seeing them holding their newborn will really do a number on me, and even if Mom is not around anymore, that memory will be pretty special, and really she will be there, because I will undoubtedly think of her standing down looking at me, her first baby, holding my first baby.
The day I brought him home from the hospital was humid and rainy, but when we pulled into the drive, I got out, and carried Rollie in his carrier onto the porch. my mom came out and while Todd unloaded some stuff, Mom and i stood on the porch with the baby, and we looked up, and the rain had stopped, the sun poked through, and we saw the biggest, most beautiful rainbow ever.
Introducing Rollie to Quint (the dog). I sat on the bottom stair and had Rollie in my arms and we let Quint in and he bounded over to see me, and nuzzled Rollie gently, smelling him. And then Rollie let out a big cooing/crying sound and Quint jumped straight up in the air like a cat, and ran and hid behind the couch.
The first time Lisa changed Rollie’s diaper, he peed in her face. That image never gets old.
Tiller:
Having a great labor experience and her coming into the world almost on the dot of midnight, and being healthy, and getting to hold her and have Todd there, and they didn’t take her away from me and it was just wonderful.
McDonald’s, rather than crappy hospital food, after her birth. It was one of the best meals i have ever eaten. The second time around, i knew that I could get takeout menus from the nurses station, and I knew to send baby to the nursery while i ate and not freak out about it, and pretty much the whole hospital experience was like a vacay.
Rollie came to the hospital to meet Tiller and he was totally unimpressed with her – all he wanted was my milkshake, so he climbed up in the hospital bed with me, and we shared my milkshake and watched cartoons, and I was so relieved, because I realized that my heart really did have enough room for two.
We had Tiller on a Saturday, but had gone into the hospital on a friday afternoon, and so the first day she was in the world, we sat around in the room and had football to watch all day! It was awesome, and i loved watching Todd, his dad, Rollie, and Tiller sitting in my hospital room and watching football together. I loved watching UGA beat the vols that afternoon, with Tiller in my arms asleep.
My Dad falling asleep in the room, with Tiller in his arms.
A Fave
May 24th, 2008
I love this picture. That’s me, on the left, not Tiller! Pop is holding me, then Aunt Lessie, and Grandma on the end. Oh, and mess o’ fish.
Aunt Lessie always dressed up, even for fishing. You shoulda seen her getup when she went to the pool with me in Roswell, and went off the diving board. She was in her 70s! Wearing an old-school swimcap with plastic flowers on it. Grandma? She liked to rock the cat’s eye glasses.
Last of the Palmersistericans
May 23rd, 2008So, after seeing Indy, I stayed up late and watched all of Last of the Mohicans, because it’s one of those movies that I could watch over and over again. But one thing always kinda bothers me: Cora’s father kicks the bucket in the a.m. when Magua tears his heart out. Nathaniel tells her behind the waterfall. Then, later that afternoon, Alice steps off the cliff to follow Nathaniel’s smoking. hot. brother.
So, then, Nathaniel and daddy Indian guy (Bummpo? Can’t remember his name. Chingkachook?) go to kill off the bad Huron guys, including evil (easily identified by his pock-marked face, just like that bad guy in Grease the movie) Magua. When they finally dispose of them all, they stand on the rock overlooking the valley and they say all this nice spiritual shit, and then Cora and Natty hug and make googly eyes, and you know what?
If I had seen Leelee go over that cliff after the hot Indian guy, I woulda been scrambling down that rock to see what happened to her, instead of making out with DDLewis.
But that’s just me.
Also? I haven’t looked it up on IMDB, but you know that scenery ain’t NY. That’s North Carolina, peeps. They just don’t look the same. (Now I have to go see if I am right or not.)
Mama’s Little Jackass
May 21st, 2008I was washing something in the sink night before last as I readied dinner. I looked out the window over the sink, which overlooks our front yard, to see my 4 year-old son, astride the white trash car, barreling across the street. As it ran up the curve of the driveway opposite us, then onto the grass, Rollie was catapulted off the car, up into the air a good 3 feet above the car’s roof, coming down right on his ass, which was quite a drop considering the neighbor’s yard slopes from the top of their drive.
I ran out the door, knocking Tiller over as I came out into the garage, to see him stand up, bawling his eyes out, and scared shitless. That made two of us. I yelled at him to stay where he was, as I didn’t want him to run out in the street, and I was still running down the drive at this point. This was pointless, as four-year-olds who are frightened and want their mama are not deterred by things like having their skulls bashed in by oncoming traffic. No matter how I shrieked hysterically at him to stay where he was, he was coming towards me as fast as he could go, and there was no stopping him. He made it across without any problem and into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably, and doing the death grip cling to my neck that terrified kids do.
I am pretty sure I was yelling at him that he wasn’t allowed to go into the street and what the hell was he doing in the street? He was crying that Tiller had pushed him into the street (“I was pushed!”) and at that point Tiller rushed by me screaming, “my car! My car!” and she darted down the driveway towards the road, not looking either way for traffic, and me yelling my deepest, booming Mama’s-gonna-tear-up-your-behind-if-you-run-in-that-street voice, again, to no avail. I had to sprint, with Rollie still in my arms, his legs wrapped behind me so tight i could barely take a breath, and managed to snag her arm at the very end of the drive, at which point i realized, Rollie was not bleeding, swelling, broken, or bruised, and was simply really, really frightened. He was put down, still clinging to my neck as I pried his arms away, and gave her a swat on the behind.
Then both children were dragged up the drive by their arms, both fighting me and screaming their personal grief, “Tiller pushed me! Tiller Pushed me!!!!” and “My caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr!!!!” and me still hysterically yelling at them: “Why were you in the street!!? You could have killed your brother, tiller. I don’t give a good Goddamn about that car! Y’all are never seeing that car again! You were supposed to be in the backyard with your father! Where is your Father??!” as Todd finally came around from the back, hearing the hollering match, and the screams and probably the absolute “she’s completely lost it” tone in my voice, which i admit I must have had.
Todd retrieved the car from the neighbor’s yard, and promptly put it in the back of the van. It will be finding a new home, pronto.
Tiller was sent to her room (Todd handled that one, because i was ready to put the shaken baby syndrome on her) and I took Rollie in and sat on the couch with him, checking him for injuries, and just generally hugging his guts out and getting the ful story. It seems Rollie and Tiller were supposed to be watching Daddy put bug spray in the yard, and standing by the gate until he finished. What really happened is that Rollie and Tiller started playing in the garage, and Rollie straddled the white trash car (which is what kids who are too big for the white trash car do when they outgrow it). This means that he was sitting on the roof of it, his legs dangling down to about the doors, but unable to touch the ground. Rollie evidently asked Tiller to push him around the garage and somehow she ended up pushing him into the driveway, which has a slope to it. White Trash Car picked up speed, with Rollie pulling a complete Johnny Knoxville on top of it, and went straight down the hill, across the street (which was where I picked up the visual), and into the neighbor’s yard, where he was launched like he was fired out of a cannon.
All I could think about when the initial adrenaline wore off, and when I started shaking, holding my baby on my lap, and crying my eyes out, was that:
a) The little fucker coulda been nailed by a car as he shot across the street and b) The little shithead wasn’t wearing a helmet and he’s lucky he hit the grass instead of shooting headfirst into the neighbor’s driveway, or one of their cars and becoming a vegetable for life.
I am one lucky mom, and the whole thing was such a fluke, pretty much not something you could prevent, or prepare for, or imagine happening. And it just reminds me that all this other crap is just that: Bullshit. We live these tenuous lives and every moment is one second before or after that car comes barreling down the street and takes the important things away. We’re all just one little jackass moment away from losing it all, no matter where we live, how beautiful we are, how great our jobs are, or whether we listen to cool music or american idol. The Jackass Moments in life do not differentiate.
Tucker Day
May 19th, 2008
So, it has been over a week since we attended the Tucker Day parade. Todd ran the 5k, and I took the kids to the pancake breakfast benefiting the Tucker High school. (We ate in the cafeteria, which was strange.)
Afterwards, we walked over to Main St. to view the parade. The thing that I loved most about the parade was how small-town it seemed; It reminded me so much of the Alpharetta parade i used to attend (and even participated in as a kid), back when Alpharetta was country and southern, down to the tractors in the parade.
Now, the funny thing about the tractors is that when they started coming towards us, I laughed out loud at the joy in seeing them. So old-school! So reminded me of childhood! But Todd? He was watching the parade in a different location with friends of ours, one of whom is Dutch. He didn’t get the tractor thing at all. And how can you possibly explain to outsiders why they are riding tractors in the parade? It’s just how it is done.
And above, my favorite pictures of my cousins and sister, sitting on Main Street in Alpharetta, c. 1978, drinking cokes on the hood of mom’s wagon, waiting for me to appear in this bitching ensemble:
Little Grad
May 18th, 2008So, Rollie graduated from Pre-k. Yeah, it’s four-year-olds, but i was pretty damn proud. And he’s pretty damn cute. 
Yeah, check him out!