The Business Of Summer

When the husband calls me on his lunch break, and asks what we've been doing that day, I usually answer, "Oh, nothing. Just hanging around the house." But, oh, we've been busy. Busy taking care of all that needs doing in these hot summer months, busy letting the kids just be kids and run wild, busy having long and lazy mornings on the couch with our blankies and loveys and sippies of juice, busy enjoying the long days and packing all that we can into the daylight hours. There are sprinklers to run through, popsicles to eat, cookouts with family to attend, and lightning bugs to catch. Having a to-do list with the many, many things of summer on it does not leave me much time for this here blog, but I'll take it. I'll take every single bit of it.

How To Win Friends And Influence People, Housewife Edition.

Moving away from Nashville has affected me the most, I believe. The husband is from this town, so even if he doesn't "technically" have friends here yet, he is always running into this classmate from high school or that childhood friend. Ella did have to say goodbye to her friends, but come on, she is four years old. She asked about them a lot the first couple of weeks, not so much last week, and each passing day brings fewer questions about when we can go see her friends. But I, on the other hand, had an amazing network of friends in my hometown. Friends who were stay-at-home-moms like me, friends to go grab a coffee with, friends to sit next to while we watched the newest vampire/werewolf saga on the big screen (shut UP. I KNOW.) There was never a shortage of people to call when the kids and I felt like getting out of the house and I needed some grown-up conversation while the kids ran around the park. So this? This lonely day-to-day existence with virtually NO adult interaction of any kind? This is brand new to me. And it is starting to suck. I can literally feel myself going crazy every day, bit by bit, which is kind of understandable seeing as the only conversations I am having are centered around Barbies and answering questions such as "Is that God singing on the radio?". So last week I made a real, conscious effort to put myself out there and meet people. Here is my story.

Day 1: Woke up and showered, giving myself ample time to actually "get ready", which is the exact opposite of my daily ponytail-and-tshirt-and-shorts-and-no-makeup routine. If I wanted people to like me, I reasoned, then I had better not stink or scare them off with my frightening, makeup-free face. Dressed the kids in their cutest play clothes, same reasoning applying here: No one wants their kids to play with Those Kids, the ones who are wearing a too small Elmo tshirt that shows their bellies and look as if they possibly have lice. We looked like a damned JCrew catalogue picture, and I felt like I was heading out for a job interview. At the park, Ella immediately ran over and began playing with a little girl about her age, and I noticed that her mother had a little boy just a bit older than Charlie. Oh my God, I thought. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. She is going to love me and we are going to be best mommy friends forevermore. I trekked across the playground and set down our things about six feet from Friend Candidate #1. I did not even get the chance to open my mouth before Ella and her new friend trotted over to say hello. Except Ella apparently had other things on her mind. "Hey, guess what?", I heard her telling her new friend. "My mommy has on the most beautiful green polka dot bra today. And guess what ELSE?!?! It has a cute bow RIGHT IN BETWEEN HER BOOBIES!" I laughed nervously, waiting to see what the other mom's reaction would be to this revelation. Apparently it was to haul ass out of there. "Come on kids, it's time to go! Mommy needs to get us home so we can fix lunch." And that was that. We were left at the park alone. "Wait!" I wanted to yell. "Wait! You would probably really like me if I didn't have my kids with me!". Making a good first impression on the Moms of Clarksville: FAIL.

Day 2: Banking on the fact that Friend Candidate #1 was probably not going to chance running into us again at the same park, the kids and I headed back the next day. The kids may have whined something about not wanting to play outside, that it was too hot, and I may have said something to the effect of "We will go to the park and YOU WILL LIKE IT, dammit. Mommy needs some friends." We lasted longer this time, I even struck up a conversation with another mom there with a daughter that was Ella's age. Things were going swimmingly: she had two kids, lived near us, our kids were zoned for the same school district, blah blah blah. When she got up to go check on her younger kid, I noticed Ella coming closer with the girl by her side. "Oh, sweet Jesus, please do not let her say anything to ruin this for me," I silently pleaded. No such luck. Apparently while we had been in the car on the way to the park, a song had come on the radio that she took a particular liking to. I hadn't even noticed it was on, which is all to say that NO, I do NOT let my four year old listen to songs about smoking weed. I could hear her from twenty feet away: "Who says I can't get stoned, call up a girl that I used to know...". She had memorized almost all the lyrics, just from hearing it once, God help me. Before the other mother could come back and discover her preschooler hanging around with That Kid who is singing about smoking a joint and arranging a one night stand, I yanked up both kids and trotted to the car. Friendship Making: FAIL.

Day 3: I believe I mentioned it in the last post I wrote, but we have been kicked in the ass all week by a vicious head cold. Fevers, aches, chills, snot, and coughing was abundant here for about four days. I do not feel like I need to tell you what this meant for my appearance. Suffice it to say that my bathrobe aged ten years in one week. I didn't realize that this day was going to be a day in which I would make a first impression on someone, or I may have actually tried to run a comb through my hair (that hadn't been washed in, oh, three days) or scrape the boogers off my tshirt (courtesy of Ella, who believes I am a walking snot rag). But around 4pm, when I was just approaching the height of my sexiness for the week, there it was: a knock on the door. Oh, Lordy, who could it be? I thought. Turns out it was our next door neighbors that we had yet to meet. A lovely family, one that was standing there looking at me and my disheveled, snot-covered children in what I can only assume was horror. They were dressed to go to church. Ella had on a princess nightgown that has seen better days, and Charlie had on a too big tshirt with watercolor paint stains on the front. And a diaper. After they introduced themselves and made small talk for all of thirty seconds, they thrust a houseplant through my doorway and made their way home. Probably to take a shower or bathe in hand sanitizer. Meeting the neighbors and not making them want to put their house up for sale: FAIL.

I give up. If anyone knows of any nice, normal moms here that want someone to host a playgroup, have them call me. That is if they don't mind the fact that I wear polka-dotted bras, my four year old sometimes sings about firing up a joint, and I may have snot on me at any given point in the day. And if they do mind? Then I probably wouldn't want to be friends with them anyway.

The Last Few Weeks...

...we have:

~ Settled in nicely to our new house, and are still loving just as much as the day we moved in. Aside from the stack of framed pictures waiting to be hung, we are unpacked and this is starting to feel like home to all of us. We have met our neighbors (more on that later), and they seem nice. They have a daughter who babysat the kids who lived here before we did, which: SCORE.

~ Visited the nearest park a handful of times. My first impression of this park was....just okay. The playground equipment is on top of a field of gravel instead of the more traditional wood chips or rubber flooring, which is kind of weird to me. The rocks get stuck in your sandals and make it incredibly hard to walk...watching Charlie try to trek across the playground is hysterical, something akin to him trying to walk through a field of marshmallow fluff. Oh and also too? This park is ruled by a nasty little dictator, who does not discriminate when choosing his victims. He will attack swiftly and viciously, and his attack method goes something like this: KEEP STINGING, A thousand times if necessary. I have no clue what this little creature actually is (another mom at the park said maybe a carpenter bee, I'm leaning more towards demon-possessed henchman of the devil), but Charlie has been hit twice by it and we have witnessed two other children being attacked. Seriously, this thing will swarm at you with the intensity of a thousand suns and NOT STOP. For no reason, it flies right at your head. So yeah. We're not going to that park anymore.

~ We have been felled, FELLED I say!, by a nasty cold. Fevers, snot-noses, aches and chills are rampant here right now. Add to that the fact that I feel like I have stomach cancer*, and you can just imagine the fun being had in our house this week.

~ Charlie has apparently discovered that he has the capability to speak the English language, and is taking full advantage of his new found love of words. He has also discovered that if he cocks his head to one side, holds his hand out, and says, "Peeeeeeese?", he will probably get what he wants. Research results still pending, but this may have something to do in the dramatic rise in temper tantrums here.



* Not really stomach cancer. Probably an ulcer or something. But. Still painful, ouch.

Of Wagon Wheels And Armenian Store Clerks.

Let me just begin by saying that though I was born and raised in Nashville, I am far from a "city slicker". I enjoyed living in the suburbs of the city, while still being right smack dab in the middle of everything I could ever need. I was not out at clubs and bars and hailing taxis to go grocery shopping, and I was not at art gallery openings and doing other fabulous things you think of when you think of city living. But we still lived in the city, a five minute drive to be right downtown in the middle of everything. Every restaurant you could ever want, right there. I can parallel park, I can navigate one-way streets and ten story parking garages, I grew up on the streets of the city. That makes it sound like I was a homeless teenage prostitute, but it's true. Instead of hanging out at the Sonic drive-in or the nearest corn field, we went club-hopping after football games in high school, fake id in hand. All of this to say...yeah. I live in the country now. And it's been an interesting two weeks. Here are just a few things that are making my head spin, and also a few that are making me surprisingly happy that we are living across the street from a wheat field (I think it's wheat. I know it's not corn, but that's about all I can tell you about the field. So lets just call it a Not Corn Field. Sorghum? Is sorghum grown in Tennessee? What is sorghum? It sounds countryish.).

~On our road, a house is not complete without the perfect finishing touch...half-visible wagon wheels adorning either side of the driveway, right at the very end where everyone can see them. They flank the driveway like two guard rails, halfway buried underground. This look may work on a charming cottage that is fabulously "country-chic", and might lend just a touch of irony to the whole decorative scheme, but when you live in an ACTUAL FARMHOUSE WITH CHICKENS IN THE FRONT YARD, it says (to me, at least), "Hey, Elmer, that there wagon wheel fell off the wagon last month and done got sunk in the mud out there by the road. Wull, I reckon I'd just leave it, then." I do not understand buried wagon wheels as lawn ornaments.

~A few people have looked at me in wonder when I told them where we live, and then followed it up with something like, "Yeah, it's going to take me a little while to get used to living in the country." As if to say "Girl, you do NOT live in the country. I'll SHOW you country." Well, guess what, People Who Are Accustomed To Living In A House With Goats In The Backyard? If you see a tractor driving four miles an hour down your street every morning, or a large farm-equipment-like machine hauling seventy bales of hay greets you every morning with the sunrise, or you can hear a rooster crow somewhere in a one mile radius from your house,or you LIVE ACROSS THE STREET from a massive Not-Corn/sorghum field, then yes, you live in the country.

~It is a little bit odd to me that in this town (CITY! CITY, it is a city, oh GOD I have been corrected so many times), the general consensus from it's more normal (read: people who have teeth) residents seems to be this: They want to be taken seriously, they don't want to be known ONLY as a small farming community, they are proud of their city's modern development in the last couple of decades and want to be known more as a smallish city rather than a largeish farm town. I get it! I get it, Clarksville, I really do. But for God's sake, if you want to be a CITY, then get more than one of the major chain stores and/or really important things that people use every day. Like, oh, LIBRARIES. There is one library. There is one YMCA. There is but one Target and one Chik-fil-a. The latest population info suggests that as of two years ago this town had a population of more than 120,000. All cramming themselves into one library, one YMCA...you get the idea.

~Dear Creepy Armenian Gas Station Attendant: You do not fit into my idyllic picture of country living that I see all around me on a daily basis. When I enter the corner store that is situated directly across from both horses galloping in a field and a gorgeous 100-year-old barn in all its authentic, rustic-y glory, the last thing I expect to find is a middle aged wind-breaker wearing man with Jheri curl dripping on the counter tops. Stop it. You should either be a sixty year old pleasantly plump grandmother wearing an apron, or a really old farmer guy wearing overalls and a John Deere cap and calling me Darlin'. You should not be wearing gold rings on every finger and staring at my boobs like you've never seen a woman under the age of eighty. Stop it.

~But, oh! It is beautiful out here, y'all. I kind of get the best of both worlds here in this house. Out the front windows I get to watch the sun rise over the Not Corn/sorghum field, while listening to birds sing and roosters crow. It is peaceful and serene and from the rocking-chair front porch, there is not another house or building anywhere in sight. From the back porch we see our neighbors' houses and can sit and watch golfers golfing all day long, the soundtrack is one of lawnmowers and golf clubs pinging sharply against golf balls. On the front porch I feel like I should be sipping a mint julep or iced tea and my name should be Mabel. On the back porch my name is Bitsy and I am wearing palm tree patterned Bermuda shorts while drinking a bloody mary at 9am. I like this about our house, that it's a little bipolar.

~I love that my kids will grow up with a strong sense of family history here. We live either ON or across from (I can't remember) land that was once owned by the husband's family, years and years and years ago. Every country road we drive down holds a story from the husband's childhood or a house still occupied by a great uncle or third cousin. I swear to GOD that the first night we lived here, these actual words came out of the husband's mouth: "I remember when I was a kid and we used to walk across that field to *Uncle Johnny's watering hole....". For real, y'all, a watering hole.


*Not sure his name was actually Johnny. I can't remember what the husband said. It may have been any one of the following names suitable for a really old farmer: Herbert, Lewis, Billy, Willy, or Hank.

Moved.

We're moved. Completely, totally, every single box unpacked moved. I have had my inaugural trip to just about every store I frequent, learning my way around new roads and adjusting to the twenty-plus minutes it now takes me to get places from our house. Twenty minutes to get to the nearest/ONLY Target may not sound like much to some people, but I had grown accustomed to hopping in my car and driving the half mile down the road to the Target/Starbucks/Whatever else you could EVER possibly need. So, that's new to me. But other than that we are doing oh so well, and (dare I say it) kind of loving living out here in the "country". It is so quiet, and our house is perfect for us, and there is an abundance of farm animals surrounding us for the kids to see. I've already started eyeing a matching set of rocking chairs for the huge front porch, so I would say that my transformation from city girl to countryfied is well underway. Up next: cowboy boots.

Okay, not really cowboy boots. Never, ever, ever cowboy boots.

Happy Little Things

Little, minuscule things making me oh-so-happy this week include:

Afternoons that are ninety degrees in the shade, when all that will do is having a seat on the porch with a big drippy piece of watermelon. And, if you're Charlie, having you're crotch snaps undone, apparently.





Summer showers that stay just long enough to cool us down, make some puddles to jump in, and a drizzle to dance under.



A brand-spanking-new box of crayons, in all their crayon-smelling glory.



Moments in which my kids actually GET ALONG. They are brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-them moments, but they are there occasionally nonetheless.



The Great Hair Debacle of 2010. Ella decided to brush up on her hair layering technique, and Charlie was the lucky first customer. After having a tiny stroke, I laughed, because what else can you really do when you walk into the room and your four year old is holding a pair of red scissors, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, and your toddler looks like someone took a damn weed whacker to his head? So yes, despite the fact that my one year old will be sporting a buzz cut by the end of the week, this made me happy because after the reprimanding and the "we don't cut ANYone's hair, ever" talk, we all laughed. And laughed some more.

The Root Of The Evil.

Hi, my name is Abby, and I am a coffee addict. No, seriously. FOR REAL. I love coffee in much the same way that someone addicted to hardcore drugs "loves" their drug of choice. Which is to say, it goes beyond just "love" into "Need", with a capital N. For me there has never been a moment in which I have thought, "Gee, a cup of coffee sure would be nice." What I am thinking is, "For the love of all that is good and holy, I need coffee now, NOWNOWNOWNOW, or I will cease to exist. I will stop breathing if I do not have coffee this instant. I will possibly pick up that dining room chair and smash it into the wall if I do not have caffeine NOW." And I am not picky about what I drink, there is no coffee snobbery here. I shop at the local ghetto supermarket, where everything is off-brand, and my coffee canister simply says "COFFEE" on it. It is to coffee what White Rain is to shampoo. Hell, it's actually even lower on the ladder than that because I'm not entirely sure my coffee even has a brand name. It's just "COFFEE". I set up my coffee pot while I am making dinner, carefully filling it up with water as high as I can get away with filling it up. Right to the 12 cup mark, if not a smidge more. I lovingly place the filter in it's proper place and measure out the ground coffee with my special coffee measuring spoon, maybe whispering sweet nothings to it as I do this. In the morning I stumble out of bed and down the hallway to the kitchen, not even pausing to wipe the sleep from my eyes or to pee first. It is as if I only have two settings before the hour of 10am: 1. Find coffee. 2. Drink coffee, quickly. Repeat about seven times.

But recently I have made a startling discovery: My Need for coffee is not an isolated condition. Oh, no, it's not. It is fueled by what I like to call the Freedom Itch. This itch has come to define my evenings, and begins around 7:30pm when I place Charlie in his crib and shut the door. "One down, one to go," I tell myself. "What will I do with my free time tonight? Watch a movie? Finish folding the eight loads of laundry sitting downstairs? Maybe organize the drawers in the kitchen? Hmmm." Phase two starts when I tuck Ella into her bed, turn off the light, and shut her door. I almost always get that tingly feeling that you get when you wake up and realize you have something REALLY fun planned for the day. "WHAT should I DO with all of this free time tonight?!?!" my brain screams. "God, there is just SO MUCH time to do anything I want to do! I'm gonna watch three movies! Fold laundry! Bake muffins for tomorrow's breakfast! Give myself a proper pedicure! Read a whole book! Catch up on that scarf I'm knitting! Wait, I don't knit! But I COULD! I can do anything I want to do, because I have SO MUCH FREE TIME TONIGHT!". All of this is going through my head while excitedly pacing the floor with a little skip in my step, looking for something to do. I am now officially drunk on the endless possibilities that come with kid-free time. Cut to two hours later: I have successfully folded half a load of laundry, watched about ten minutes of a single tv show, and gotten about 1/3 of the way through my fancy pedicure, left with bare toenails that haven't even been clipped. It is, after all, only a couple of hours that I have on my hands in the evenings. But at the onset of the Freedom Itch, it feels like so much more, like I could do 749 things between the hours of 8 and 11. The next phase in this process is called So Help Me God, I WILL Enjoy Every Minute of Peaceful Quiet. This causes one to force their eyelids to stay open well past a reasonable bed time, all in the name of not wasting a moment of this adults-only evening. Eyes half open, I usually stumble to bed around 11 or 11:30, crash hard into my bed, and wake up in a puddle of drool to the alarm blaring in my ear at 5:15am. This is the phase called the Freedom Hangover. I took the freedom too far, stayed up too late while simultaneously not really doing anything except wasting time imagining how I was going to spend said time. Not unlike the occasions when you have one too many drinks the night before and waking up foggy-headed and kicking yourself for not having any self control. This is where my Need comes in. I need my coffee to help me force my eyes open, I need my coffee to help me remember how to even turn on a lamp or know what year it is. Or to remember my name. So I spend the entire hour before the kids wake up coming back to life myself, and there is not really any time to get anything done in that hour because I am not even functioning on a human level at this point. Lather, rinse, repeat. Spend all day caring for my babies, doing housework, and making meals. Refuel my Need around 3pm just to make it to dinner time, at which point I feel that familiar giddiness coming on. Just two more hours until bedtime! I'm gonna organize my cookbook and also catch up on an entire season of that tv show! At the same time! While also finishing that pedicure from last night! Kids in bed, I head downstairs and get exactly one thing done by the time it is 10pm, make myself stay up to suck every drop of peace and freedom out of this night, and crash at midnight.

Now if you'll excuse me, it is 9am and I have only had four cups of coffee. I need to go start working on number five.