Friday, July 28, 2006

~It's All About His Recovery~

Martin finally went to the doctor today. Excuse me, the chiropractor, because he can't lift his arm over his head. So he got some adjustments and some tweaking and he has another appointment next Friday. In the meantime, Martin claims the doctor has suggested that if his wife would just massage it every evening and put heat pads on it, and place little butterfly kisses along his neck and shoulder--he will be healed. I know the butterfly kisses part is a scam, but I am down for being scammed.

We were supposed to have left for Colorado this morning at 3:30 am. But we did not. At this very moment, the door bell is ringing, that little ball of hair is yapping her face off, kids are herding to the door and my daughter is squealing. Because she is a girl, and girls squeal. My nephew is standing behind me trying to catch a grasshopper in the window sill and Dan is screaming, "Jake? Have you seen my gameboy?"

My clock was set to have dropped all of these children off by now--had I had my way, we would be kissing my Uncle Roy and Aunt Carol, hugging my SIL and putting the boys in the back of Mag's car. If I would have had my way, by 6:00 this evening, Martin and I would be laying by some water somewhere.

But nooo. I never get my way. I feel like a petulant child, I want to stomp my feet and throw myself on the floor and cry. It is apparent that I bragged to hard about being happy a few weeks ago. I should know better by now. I posted a picture of my happy self and I tempted fate, and now I have to suffer the consequences. My particular punishment seems to be that I will not be allowed to make a plan.

So I am not making any plans.

Instead, I am packing costumes.

Martin will be home at some point this evening, and when he arrives I will suggest he take a bath while I drop off our children with the lovely Diane. (She has luminous eyes.) When he gets into the bathtub he will see that I have hung the freshly hand-washed red negligee, and I have draped it over the rod so that it looks like there is a girl inside.

When I get back home I will slip into my traveling clothes:

The white tank top, and the canvas pants that are a bit on the baggy side--just enough so that they slide down my hips enough that the lime green thong can peek out when I bend over. I will probably have the car all fueled up, so we can just get into the car, and while in the car? I will reach for a lot of things, and I will make vague references to how great it would be for his shoulder to set in a hot tub for awhile, and then I will reach for something else.

Eventually we will arrive at Roy's house, and we will make the boy swap, and then we will be driving back to Idaho.

The two of us. Alone. In a car. For hours and hours and hours.

I will probably suggest that I just paid the credit card bill, and I will vaguely recall that there are some motels in Denver Colorado. I might remember about the motels when I leaning over in the car in my day two traveling outfit: the green capri pants with the hole by the pocket. The hole through which black panties can be seen.

Nah, I don't have any plans. But I do have some costumes ready, just in case.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

~Tearing Down My Memories~

I drove past The House last week.

It's the house that haunts my dreams, it is always in a different state of disarray, but the giant upstairs filled with rooms is consistent. There is always a cubby that has a hole that opens into a vast cavernous attic filled with cloth draped furniture and chests. In each of my dreams, when I am showing someone the cubby that opens into the attic I say: "This is where we go to hide from the Nazi's."

Which just goes to show that I was profoundly affected by Anne Frank's diary when I read it at the age of twelve.

The house is The House that I have compared to visiting the old lady in the trees with my best friend. It's the house where I mixed my dreams and hid from my brother.

I have been dreaming of this house for years. Each time my plan for my life frays in the least bit: each time I realize that I am rowing but despite my effort the river is still taking me where it wants me to go; I dream of the house.

Sometimes in the dream, the house looks pretty good on the outside but the inside has been gutted and is ready for a remodel. Sometimes we move into the house and I am aware that it is woefully inadequate--the fact that the holes in the floor boards are big enough to swallow a child trouble me. Sometimes I pack my family up and we walk directly past all of the shambles that was the actual house and we move directly into the Nazi attic. Once inside the Nazi attic we discover there is a garden that needs watering and that all of the beds are actually brand new; which is most fortunate as the house was abandoned fifty or more years ago.

I drove past the house to see what it looked like now;it's been a few years since I visited her. From the road she looks like this:

















She's gone.

She was there last year--she was slumping more. No remnants of paint remained. The chimney had fallen. All of the windows were gone. The dormers were sliding like the eyebrows of an elderly lady at her husbands funeral. Her foundation had crumpled enough that her left side was dissolving into the earth.

But she was still there.

And now?

From the road? There isn't a hint that she ever existed.

Now that my reality knows that she is gone: where will my subconscious find a new Nazi attic?

~Somewhere Between Forty and Forty Three Hours~

We are taking my nephews to Colorado Saturday morning between the hours of 3:30 am and 5:30 am. I am giving three hours of lee way on this trip, but not much more. There have been some great moments while the boys where here--Justin is a cleaning machine and it is going to be hard to let him go. Dan cracks me up steady with his conversational capabilities: "You think YOU got problems, try being a fifteen year old boy, going through puberty, and you ain't got no girl or arm pit hair." But as a whole, I am sick to death of kids. As such, I am in charge of this trip, and we WILL be following a schedule for departure.

No offense, parents of the above mentioned boys--I am even more fed up with my own children. I love all five of them, but let's face it--five is a lot. Any person who claims that they love having four or more kids around at all times is either a damned liar or in denial. Some of the things that bother me the worst about the whole herd of people clustered around me is that I can't go to the kitchen and get myself a bowl of yogurt without two or more people lining up for yogurt of their own. I know it is just good manners to fix food for everyone when you are fixing food--but I really want to have a couple days when I don't have to worry about fixing something for someone else first.

Another thing that bothers me about the moist people livin' all up under my nose is that they smell bad. Again, parents of above mentioned children? Even though yours do have all the puberty hormones flowing; mine smell worse. I have a boy who has chronic gas and it pleases him so much that he stores it til it gets nice and fragrant, then he let's 'er fly. He is trying for the moist chattery sound of his tiny cheeks slapping together, and he loves it when he gives up a little pfft pfft pfft backfire action. The only thing that smells worse then my boy is my daughter, who insists corn nuts are her favorite snack. But I know that she only likes corn nuts because corn nut breath gives me the dry heaves. All of these smells have been present for every one of the eighty some odd hours that we have been in the vehicle with these children--and I doubt there is an air freshner in the world that will be able to get rid of the scent of children who are disappointed that they didn't get to see the five legged cow.

Originally, taking the boys back was going to be a trip to MO with all of the children, but I took charge of these plans and asked the boys mama to meet me in Colorado. She agreed because, let's face it--she knows how hard her boys work around the house and she wants them back. I mentioned to my dearly beloved friend Diane that we were driving to Colorado with 800 children, and she offered to take my kids for the weekend.

Did you catch that? Diane offered to watch my kids for the weekend. I am so lucky lucky lucky to know her, And I have never even purchased her a birthday present.

In two days, we are dropping off the boys and then--I get Martin all to myself. We won't be going through Kansas, so no five legged cow. But! I have read that there are 200 sets of gonads on ice in Fort Collins Colorado. (Dave Berry is my source, apparently they are on ice for testing purposes.) And even though we can't actually see the nuts, driving past them will be note worthy.

I am truly looking forward to unloading all of these children for a couple days--just long enough so that when I come home I can get back into the mode where I see my children as pleasing little humans living in my house, and not just as rotten smell packing, hungry mouthed hordes. (And again, I am referring to my own children. Jake's farts are so much worse then either of my nephew's have been able to achieve on this vacation.)

Thursday, July 20, 2006

~Second Honeymoon~

Before he took me into the city, we went shopping to buy city clothes. He bought a hunter green raw silk shirt with long sleeves, and I got a pair of black leather boots with pointy toes, high heels and silver studs.

It was St Patrick's Day, and I was home from the boys ranch for a few days. I didn't get home from the ranch in time to see the parade; we arrived later in the evening and we got a room in the round hotel across from the St Louis Arch. We had an awesome view, and we put a bottle of expensive champagne on my credit card. He put on tan slacks, the raw silk shirt and brown loafers. With tassels. I had the boots, and presumably I had on other clothes, but I don't recall the shape.

I recall walking down the cobble stone street holding his hand and allowing the city to stab itself into my vein. We rode the metro and walked along the Pier. We looked at the gambling boats on the Mississippi river, and we stood beneath the arch and I made him kiss me. We pushed our way into bars packed with shiny city people that smelled of expensive perfume and gleamed as if they were made of plate glass and steel. I stood next to ladies in business suits with smooth sleek hair pulled back in scrunchies (This was the early 90's) and we drank green beer and twirled on dance floors. My eyes that were fresh from the country feasted on the lights, my skin that was used to fresh air beaded with city perspiration, My mouth looked at the way it formed vowels and my heart beat with the thrum of the hundreds of bands celebrating St Pat.

We called a night to our evening when we were out of cash, and so we walked the many blocks back to our motel. My mighty duck feet were protesting inside the pointy city boots--that weren't so city afteral--so I took them off and the thick athletic socks that I wore beneath them. I tossed the socks into a dumpster, and held the boots over my shoulder the way I had once slung my ice skates. Cobble stone sidewalks aren't conducive to bare feet, and soon I was putting my boots back on. After I had my feet placed inside, we stopped at a cross walk. Martin stood behind me, put his head between my legs and lifted me onto his shoulders. I protested! I asked him to put me down, and then I just rode the city streets on the shoulders of my man. People spoke after us: "Alright man, take that back to a hotel and tap that ass!" and "When you are done carrying her, will you come back for me?"

He set me down at the door of the hotel, and we went inside, finished our expensive bottle of champagne and and and...I ended up calling my boss at the boys camp to report, "My car has broken down, and I will not be in today."

The next St Pat's after that we got married.

Next weekend we are taking the boys back to MO. Martin has suggested that we leave my kids with my sister and we make the whole trip in four days. Two of those days would be kid free. When he suggested this most masterful of plans I thought of how nice it would be to have two whole days alone with my beloved.

"We could have a second honeymoon. On the way home we will be kid free, and we can stop to see the World's Biggest prairie Dog and the five legged cow!" I declared.
"We could drop the boys off, and then spend the night in St Louis. There might be something going on." He suggested.

He is pretty smart to evoke the memory of St Louis inside of me--but I am still adamant about seeing the farm animal menagerie.

Which just goes to show, you can take a country girl to the city in high heeled boots, but eventually you are going to have to carry her to the five legged cow.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

~Tap Tap. Is This Thing On?~

So we had the vacation, Martin crashed a motorcycle, I stepped in human feces in a rest area in Kansas, Jake got bit on the face by a bug and his left eye swelled closed and I had a chigger in the crack of my ass.

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

I am now at home with my family and my two nephews. Dan is fifteen and has Aspergers Syndrome. Justin is twelve and is autistic. The best thing about these two (syndromes? Diseases? Handicaps? Disabilities?) is that both boys talk. A lot. They talk to themselves, they talk to me, they talk to my kids, they talk to each other and sometimes, they talk to inanimate objects.

Dan has an amazing encyclopedia of facts and he says things like, "Well, you see Aunt Deb, the chupa-cobra has hollow bones, and that is why he can leap on the backs of goats."

Justin talks to himself, and it appears that he is simply telling himself what to do. For example, I just walked through the kitchen and he said, "Oh, I'll just do it myself." and he began to clean the kitchen. He is concerned about germs, so he wipes the counters extremely well.

My children are rather enjoying their stay with their cousins. I believe Kaitlyn is most impressed that she can get out of doing any kitchen labor--if she just leaves it long enough to drive Justin mad.

When Jacob gets assigned a chore, such as: pick weeds from the flower bed, he suggests that Justin would like to do it with him, and once Justin begins working, Jake wanders away.

Ike is primarily enchanted with Dan because Dan came with a bag of gameboy's (I think he has five) and a pocket full of game cassettes. Dan is very good about sharing, and he allows Ike to play the games. While the two boys play games Dan talks to Ike, "Well you know Ikeman, crypto zoologist have discovered that Big Foot isn't a vegetarian."

The only concern that I had before driving off with the boys was the pooping situation. His parents told me that he needed to be reminded to poop, because he doesn't have the sensation of needing to. When we took off, I wondered how it would feel to a twelve year old to have his Aunt Debbie say, "Do you need to go stinky?"

I handled the problem by thinking like some of the twelve year old boys that I have known. When we hit the first rest area I said, "Hey guys, let's all drop a duke here, because we won't be stopping again for awhile."

Say 'drop a duke' really fast for about five minutes, and you will discover that it has a lovely cadence. Justin has discovered the music in those words, and he says them often. Which reminds him to get the job done.

I am getting a little tired of "Dropaduke" so I started mixing it up today with, "Float a log." As in, "hey guys, whoever floated the log in the bathroom needs to remember to flush."

I am going to mix it up further with, "Lay a rail" and "make a deposit" and "take a dump". I am sure as the days roll on, I will remember more of the things the twelve year old boys used to say.

The biggest trauma that we have experienced happened while I was in the bathtub. I had left Justin as "Charles in Charge" which means, "Don't go outside. Make sure Ike stays inside. Answer the phone. Don't answer the door." I gave them access to the computer, and calgoned my cares away.

When I came to check on the boys, they were all looking at naked anime characters. I said, "Jacob Michael!" and my son turned so red he was almost purple. I told him I was so ashamed and disappointed, and he began to cry: "Please mom, don't cry! Spank me or ground me forever or lock me in my room but puh lease!! Just don't cry!"

Justin disappeared.

He was MIA for approximately fifteen minutes--just long enough that I was about to call the 'ol to tell him I lost our nephew. Jake found him in the utility room.

SO, I made the boys cry for looking at naked! anime!

They got the naked anime from a pop-up at the site where they had gone to race cars. They didn't search for naked anime, naked anime was handed to them with a pop-up. By those great guys at Avante. Thanks guys.

All things considered (By the way, a HUGE Danism) Having the boys here is much better than I thought it would be--they have taken over almost all of my household chores. I would be a damned liar if I didn't say it: "I am enjoying the free labor that is staying at my house."

Check this out: Dan does his own laundry. And Towels.