So, this morning I'm walking from the car to go into the building where I work. (Oddly, I do that almost every day) There's a big old-fashioned wooden door that is the particular entrance that I use. It's always locked, and I do have a key. But THIS morning, I walked up to the door, all the time clicking the electronic clicker thingy that opens my car door. I wasn't even thinking about it, just expected it to open the door for me in much the same way you expect the door at the grocery store to open as you step on the black mat in front of it. You know if that door didn't open, you'd walk right into the thing and break your nose.

Well, I would anyway.

I know this because of The Time I Walked into a Door Carrying a Basketful of Laundry. It was at this apartment complex where I lived with one of my many ex-girlfriends. We'll call this one She-Ra (she was, and is, very strong). I was carrying a basketful of laundry to the laundry room, which was in the building adjacent to the one we lived in. There was a foyer I had to pass through with a wooden door with decorative moulding. The doorknob had been broken for months -- you didn't have to turn it, just push on the door and go out. Unbeknownst to me, they'd finally gotten around to fixing the doorknob. So I go trucking through the foyer with my laundry out in front of me and try to open the door by pushing it with the laundry basket. The fact that the door failed to open in no way slowed my forward motion. I kept right on going. The basket crumpled. My bottom lip met the decorative moulding and split open. To add insult to injury (a recurrent theme in my life), I was sporting a very painful cold sore on my bottom lip already. Actually, that might be more like adding injury to insult. Or injury to injury. Whatever. It hurt. She-Ra was inappropriately amused.

I have also been known to walk right through a screen door. We lived in Canada for a while when I was a kid and had a sliding screen door out onto our patio, When it was dark outside, you couldn't really see the screen. The first time, I merely walked into it, stretched it, bounced back, felt stupid, opened the door and went out. The second time, I walked through the thing. When I walk, I go like I'm going somewhere. I have a lot of momentum. I walked into the door, stretched it, briefly registered that there was some resistance, and kept right on walking. Tore the screen right out of the frame. This all happened in just a fraction of a second. I got this really cute little abrasion on my nose with the pattern of the screen door.

The good news is that before I banged my face into the door into my building this morning, I realized that the clicker wasn't going to work. No insult, no injury.

This time.

On a completely different subject, I've been asked a couple of times where the link to Jadyn's blog went. I lost it when I got rid of that picture of myself that never would display. I'll put it back as soon as I figure out how.

My Life Against the Wall

Boom

boom

boom

beating

my blood against my veins
my feet against the ground
my fists against the wall

my body against your body

my life against the wall

beating
old as death

ceaseless.

a womb enclosed me
and I beat my head against it
until I emerged
bloody
gasping
into a box
surrounded by a wall -
covered by a stone.

I beat my life against the wall.

And my heart wants blood
or love
or both
and your body against mine
beating in a rhythm as old as death
while my feet beat the ground
and the wall doesn’t move

My bones break
but the wall doesn’t crumble

My heart breaks
and the wall doesn’t move

I beat my life against the wall
in a rhythm as old as death

knowing
somehow

that in the wall is a door…

and somewhere…

there is a key.

Aug. 2 I've reached what I believe is going to be the end of the Effexor Experiment. I took it faithfully for a month with no effect whatsoever on my mood (unless the increase in irritability can be ascribed to effexor), so I'm quitting. No more effexor. I took my last one last Thursday or Friday and so far have been in a better mood overall since I quit. That might be coincidence, I realize....but nevertheless. Turns out I was on a baby dose anyway, but I was just uncomfortable enough with the idea of anti-depressants in general that I'm not really into the idea of trying a higher dose or a different med.

On the other hand, next time I'm really in the pits I'll probably do a 180 and change my mind entirely and beg for prozac.

Actually, speaking of prozac...Kallie's reaction to prozac is what made me think maybe the effexor was responsible for making me so irritable and angry for the last few weeks. She always got like that on prozac. I realize effexor is a different drug...but can you really predict how an individual is going to react to a particular medicine? When I was in my twenties I had some real troubles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and my doc put me on this medicine called Axid. I had a horrible, twisting, painful stomach ache the entire time I was on it. I called the doc and said I thought the medicine was making matters worse and she was very aggravated with me and told me it couldn't POSSIBLY be causing the symptoms I was having, but if I was so convinced, I should stop taking it. I did and the pain went away immediately, never to return. So...I'm just sayin'. Drugs don't always have the intended effect.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of The Time I Smoked Pot. Now that was weird. I was expecting to get all mellow and giggle a lot, but instead I spent an hour or two with absolutely no short term memory. It was like that movie 'Memento', except that instead of forgetting everything every five minutes, I was forgetting everything every 10 or 15 seconds. I'd be in the middle of a sentence and realize that I couldn't remember what the first part of the sentence had been...so I'd stop talking and just shake my head. It was a bizarre experience and not one I intend to repeat.

Ok...it's Monday morning and I am babbling....

Assumptions will get you in trouble. You know the cliche...I don't even have to write it here.

I went to a family reunion weekend before last which was occasioned by the sixtieth birthday of my father's youngest sister. I had a great time reconnecting with people I grew up with but hadn't seen in a long time. One of them was my cousin Freddie (not her real name) who reminded me of a tale I hadn't thought of in years.

When we were kids, Freddie lived next door to me in an apartment over a pool hall that my family owned. I was a year older than her (still am), and we hung out quite a bit -- walked to school together and such. We were probably eight and seven at the time.

So this one day, we were walking home from school and one of us spotted a broken oar lying under a bush on the way out of the school yard. It was made of wood, and what was left of it was the business end -- the part with the paddle. It looked, in fact, an awful lot like the wooden paddles they used at school for beating the Bad Kids (something I never experienced as I was a Good Kid). It was it's simularity to the school's paddles that prompted me to say the following: "Hey, if you can catch me before we get home, I'll let you hit me with that!"

This is where I made the fatal assumption that I could run faster than Freddie.

So I took off running and Freddie picked up the oar and came running behind me. I was immediately alarmed that she seemed to be moving a lot faster than I thought she could. I made it the block and a half to my apartment with her hot on my heels, but still behind me...until I reached the stairs that led to my door. That's when I learned that not only was Freddie faster than me, but she was freakishly strong. She swung that oar like she meant it. I didn't actually climb the rest of the stairs as much as I was propelled up them by the repeated whacks to my rear end. By the time I reached the top, I was screaming and begging her to stop.

I feel that it's only fair to Freddie to add that the spanking my father gave her at that point was largely undeserved. Firstly, as she kept telling him, "..she told me to!" (his reply to that was something having to do with whether she'd jump off a bridge if I said to), and secondly, I was mean to her on a regular basis. I liked her just fine, but I was older and thought I was smarter (and faster) and so I got my way a lot. I'm sure I deserved to have my ass whipped.

With an oar.

A lot.

I couldn't sit down for a week.

Thanks Freddie.

Alright then. Enough angst -- on to Weird Boy Stories.

I'd been considering writing on several other topics (as I mentioned in a previous post), but then my nephew, Marshall (not his real name) did something the other day which was both appalling and amusing (depending on your sense of humor). Marshall's misadventure got me thinking on the topic of how odd boys really are. I'm sure it's caused by cooties.

First, about Marshall, Gwen's second-born...he's fifteen and has always been a bit of an odd boy among odd boys. By which I mean that 'oddness' itself takes on new meaning when you're talking about Marhsall. When he was a little kid, we always used to say that he seemed to be in his own world most of the time, and it certainly seemed to be a strange little world. For example, Marshall would get "noony". What being "noony" meant was that he would run around saying "noony, noony, noony" and running into you with his forehead. Repeatedly.

Eventually we had to buy a tranquilizer gun.

There was also the time when he pooped in the floor of Nate's bedroom. He was four-ish...recently and unreliably potty-trained - still at that stage where the after-potty clean-up requires adult participation. I was babysitting him and he'd gone to the bathroom and been gone a long time. I went to check on him and found him in there standing in the vicinity of the toilet...

On a totally different subject, I once found my dog standing in the shower. It wasn't on, he was just standing there behind the curtain, looking mournful. But back to the nephew.

Anyway, he was just standing there in his underwear and when I asked what he was doing, he told me he'd pooped. Well, I didn't see any poop. There wasn't any TP or anything in the toilet either. I checked his underwear to see if he'd gone into my bathroom to poop in his underwear (which would not have surprised me), and didn't find anything there either, except some very minor evidence that the pooping had actually occurred. Somehow I doubted the kid had done the deed, cleaned himself up, and flushed without any help from me. As I'd mentioned, he was new to the whole process.

I asked him, "Ok, Marshall...where's the poop?"

His response: "I don't know."

So now I was on a poop hunt.

After I'd assured myself that it wasn't in the bathroom, I went into Nate's room, and there it was. I stood in the doorway and hoped that the irregularly shaped 'thing' in the middle of Nate's floor was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure. I was holding out some hope still that angels or fairies had spirited away the runaway poop and I wouldn't have to deal with it. No such luck.

But Marshall's all grown now and as far as I know, his potty training issues are far behind him. That doesn't keep him out of trouble though.

Just the other day, he was on a bus, heading off to church camp. He and another kid got the bright idea to make a little sign that said 'Help Us' and hold it up for passing motorists to see.

After the THIRD call to 911, the police pulled the bus over to see who was kidnapping a busload of kids to sell into white slavery.

Marshall narrowly avoided being booked for Inciting Panic.

Marshall's brother Jackson (not his real name either), Gwen's third child, is almost as strange. He's eight now (I think -- it's hard to tell because he's recently taken up lying about his age). This kid will talk your arms off if you let him. That's not strange, but what is strange is that he went all the way through kindergarten without speaking a word. Not one. Not to his teacher, not to his fellow kindergarteners, not to the lunch lady, not nobody. His teacher called Gwen to ask if he COULD speak, and that was the first she'd heard of it. I assume when she asked him how school was going, he probably gave her the typical 'boy' response: 'fine', neglecting to mention the whole 'I'm pretending to be a mime' thing. He would do his work and all that, just never spoke. Fortunately, by first grade, he was over the silent thing. Or unfortunately - depends on your point of view.

I also recently heard that Jackson was keeping a dead bird hidden in his room. He didn't kill it or anything, just found it dead and brought it home. He was heart-broken when his mother made him get rid of it. See...boys think things like that are INTERESTING.

Cooties.

Nate himself still exhibits what I think of 'boy weirdness' from time to time, even though he's reached the ripe old age of seventeen. He still loves to lurk outside the bathroom door waiting to scare the bejesus out of whoever comes out the door. For more examples of his 'boy weirdness', please refer to my earlier posts.

PB is also gearing up to join the ranks of the Weird. He gave himself a haircut the other day with a 'shave your legs' razor. He was in the bathroom, on the toilet at the time. I guess he got bored. He is also at that 'adult participation in the clean-up' phase when it comes to potty training. When he called for Jadyn to come assist, it actually took her a moment to notice the patches of hair gone from his head...one in the front, one on the side...As she was spotting the razor on the floor, and the sprinkling of hair on his shoulders, he looked up at her and, pointing to the back of his head, matter-of-factly asked, "Am I bleeding?" No panic, he just wanted to know. And he was. He'd taken a little chunk of skin with the hair from the back of his head.

Fortunately she was able to shape up his hair and make him beautiful again. She could fix that, but there doesn't seem to be a cure for just being a boy. You just have to ride it out.

I took an Effexor this morning.

I've been mulling over the advice I've been given by people I know and by people I don't know (that would be all of you 'anonymous' people....and hey, would it hurt ya to sign a comment? Do you have any idea how much I need closure?), and I've decided to go ahead and try the pills. This comment was particularly helpful: "Do what you love to do. Feel every moment as a precious thing. Tap into the love and joy around you and in you. Laugh. Resolve to let go of the fear that grips you, or at least loosen its suffocating hold. Leap before you look. That's how you can resolve to be happy. While you learn how to do all that, pills can help. You can always stop taking them if they don't."

I've read through that a bunch of times. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Doing what you love to do...that's important. Joy is important. Now...the leaping before you look part....well, I have lots of stories about the times I leapt without looking and the results were generally not pretty. But the idea of leaping before you look is dear to my soul. I'm just afraid to do it much anymore. I think that part of me just expresses itself in increments with tiny little laspses in my impulse control.

Perhaps I should just try bungee jumping as a religious experience. The ultimate leap.

Nah. That's too cliche.

Maybe pole vaulting would be better. Yeah...how many 40 year old first time pole vaulters do you know? That's what I thought. Although I do wonder if I came running up to the thing (the goal post, the bar...whatever you call it), and I pushed down with that big stick and started to jump....is it possible that my weight could actually snap the stick in two? That would be embarrassing. It would probably require therapy to get over it. And then I'd be right back where I started again.

Leaping without looking is how I ended up out of the south and back in Ohio (and coincidentally, it's how I ended up in the south in the first place). I'm not saying it's an entirely bad thing being here...I wouldn't have met Jadyn if I'd stayed in Georgia; but it was definitely a huge leap without much forethought. I just knew that I needed SOMETHING to change. Anything at all. But when I got back here, I just felt so shell-shocked. I walked around in a fog for weeks wondering, 'omigod, what did I do?' until I finally got used to the idea that I was here.

I had managed to forget while I was in Georgia what my family is like. And let me interject that I love my sisters and my mother...but I'd forgotten what it can be like to be around them. I'd forgotten how much drama they move about in and how easy it is to get caught up in it. I'd forgotten how abrasive their speech to one another is. I came here and felt like my skin was going to be burned off my body by all the caustic remarks. I'd come here in the first place to have their support, but I didn't realize how tender I'd gotten in the years apart from them. I wasn't used to being spoken to that way anymore. It hurt until I toughened up again and learned to dish it out as well as take it.

It's funny...Jadyn says she could tell early on that I loved her because I was tender with her. I didn't talk to her like I talked to my sisters. I don't know if she ever understood that talking to them the way that I do was self-defense.

You know how I said a few posts back that I was attracted to 'tough yet vulnerable'? I think that's what my family is like in a way. Abrasive as hell on the outside, but I think they're all fragile on the inside. They've all been hurt. The worst thing you can do to someone in my family who is upset or sad is to try to be kind to them. You have to call them 'bitch' and try not to hug them or be too nice. Being nice opens the gate for tears to come, and we all hate that. We like that vulnerable stuff to stay inside where it belongs.

But here lately, my inside is all hanging out on the outside.

And that's why I took the effexor.

Odds and Ends:

It seems like 9 times out of 10 when I visit my little fish bowl, I can't see my picture -- just a little placeholder where it ought to be. So what I'm wondering is can anyone else see it? And if not, you should be able to see it if you click on the website link on my profile. It's the portrait in the upper right hand corner of the page. One of these days I'm going to get one of those cool websites where you can click for a high res image of my paintings and really see them well, but for now...well, I'm still kind of a rookie.

And...I'm wondering how many times I'll have to post before that little line on my profile that gives my average weekly posts will read 1 instead of 0. I guess that's what happens when you go an entire year without posting.

Also...still haven't started the Effexor, although I've given it more serious thought these past few days. I think PMS has arrived though, so I'm going to try to wait that out and see if time cures me. I'm still mulling the comment someone posted on here regarding chemicals not being able to change my soul. It does seem like there is, or should be, some fundamental part of ME that is and always will be ME...but what about cases like that guy who got a spike through his head and his entire personality changed afterwards? (Read all about it --> http://www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE/) You can't deny that your wiring and your chemicals play a big part in who you are.

Sigh. It's probably just that I don't like to take pills. I don't even like to take an aspirin. I'll walk around all day with a headache until someone makes me take an aspirin, but I always feel so much better after I've had one. And I'm taking two pills for my blood pressure right now already. I hate to add something else to the mix.

I also hate feeling crappy.

Do you think it's possible to just resolve to be happy?

Alright then. I never meant to have one of those chatting about my life kind of blogs...I wanted to tell stories, so even though I probably won't stop pondering about my day to day stuff...here are the stories I'm incubating: The Thanksgiving We Checked Mom Into the Nuthouse, and How Jadyn Became Known as The Virgin and Made Her Karoake Debut All in The Same Night, and The Time PB Gave Himself A Haircut, and The Time Jadyn's Sister Got a Speeding Ticket. Just haven't decided which thing to do first. Suggestions are welcome. Which isn't to say I won't totally disregard them.

So...guess what's in my dresser drawer? The middle one, in the top row.

Give up?

Effexor.

http://www.effexorxr.com/ <-- if you're interested.

It's an anti-depressant. I can start taking it anytime I want.

My family doctor was kind enough to give me a month's worth of samples of the stuff to begin with. First, I put off picking them up for nearly two weeks, and now I've got them tucked into a drawer. On account of I'm still a little nervous about taking them.

And I feel SO much better now already. I've had a really good couple of weeks - moodwise.

But I have met me. I know what I'm like. And I know what these last couple of years have been like. I'm not really up for another slide into the Pit of Despair.

So...do I wait to feel crappy again before I start taking them? Or just take them now to ward off any impending crappiness? And if they work...how do I know it's not just my natural tendency to bounce back?

And what if I become a pod person? What if the highs and lows get smoothed out (suddenly I want to break into my rendition of 'Desperado') and what's left is some good natured thing that's just PRETENDING to be me?

Am I more than the sum of the chemicals swimming about in my brain and body? I hope so because I'm probably going to start taking the damn things.

Soon.

I just haven't decided when.

And then there was The Time the Horse Fell On Me.

Please notice that the title of this story is very explicit in stating that the horse fell ON me, I did not at any time, fall OFF the horse. I just want to be very clear about that right up front. It's an important distinction. Me falling OFF the horse, would be somewhat embarassing, but a horse falling ON me...well that sucked, but it wasn't embarassing.

Here's what happened: First, I think I was born wanting a horse of my own. I had a little plastic toy horse called "Marvo the Mustang" when I was four or five that was pretty cool, but even at that tender age, I knew I wanted the real thing. Every Christmas, I would offer up passionate prayers to God or Santa for a horse of my own, preferrably white. I regularly begged my father for a horse. I made long lists of chores that I would perform with no complaint if only he'd buy me a horse. I made charts and graphs and slide presentations all about why it would be good for me to have a horse. For example, I'd get up at five in the morning EVERY day and feed and brush the horse, and THEN I would clean the ENTIRE house, and THEN I would be so nice to both my sisters (even Gwen), and THEN I would RIDE the horse and this would be exercise, which would cause me to LOSE WEIGHT! My father was very interested in me losing weight, so I thought this would be a clincher, but alas...it wasn't to be. I settled for drawing thousands of pictures of horses, reading every book in the library that had anything to do with horses (Marguerite Henry was my favorite author), and papering my entire bedroom with pictures of horses cut out of magazines.

So I got to be about 34 without ever having a horse of my own. I rode other people's horses as much as possible and actually became a pretty good rider.

And then Kallie bought me a horse.

Oh...bliss! Heaven! Joy! At last, at last!

He was beautiful. His name was Bullwinkle, which I quickly changed to Beau, thinking that Bullwinkle was a dumb name for such a beautiful animal. He was gloriously handsome...chestnut with a flaxen colored mane and tail, and a white stripe on his nose. He was a Tennessee Walker, probably 16 or 17 hands, and probably weighed around 1000 - 1200 lbs. (I mention this because it becomes important later). He was a fairly well-behaved animal, but could be stubborn. The one big downside to Beau was that he was afraid of cars. Didn't want to go anywhere near one. Maybe he'd been forced to sit in a backseat on a long trip with his siblings when he was a foal. I'm not sure what the source of his fear was, but it was extreme, and he had no interest in overcoming it.

I, on the other hand, was very interested in having Beau overcome his fear. We lived on a dirt road in very rural Georgia. People rode their horses up and down the road all the time, and I wanted to ride Beau out there too. I'd had him for about a month and was tired of riding round and round the pasture. Heck, I wanted to show him off. He was gorgeous, and I'm sure I looked gorgeous riding him.

So, on a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon, I took him for a ride on the dirt road.

First, a bit about the dirt roads: there are these deep ditches along the sides of the roads that serve as a place for rain to run off so as not to entirely wash away the road during the frequent summer rains. Periodically, the county would come out and 'pull the ditches' to keep them nice and deep - deep being approximately 2 to 3 feet. As luck would have it, the ditches had very recently been pulled on this Sunday afternoon.

Things were going really well to start. Beau and I had gone about a quarter mile before someone came by on a 4-wheeler. He started to spook, but there was a driveway nearby, and I trotted up into someone's yard until the 4-wheeler got past. I was feeling pretty good about that solution and pretty confident about our ability to safely avoid trouble. And that's when Kallie came to check on me.

In her car.

I trotted Beau back up another driveway when she went by initially, and when she parked off to the side of the road a bit, I rode out of the driveway and got close enough to yell and ask what she was doing, and to be told that she'd come to check on me. Since she was parked there on the side of the road, it seemed like a good idea to try to get Beau used to cars by walking him past a parked one. (As opposed to letting a moving one come zooming past him just in time for him to throw me onto it's hood). So Kallie got into her car and I pointed Beau towards the car and gave him a little kick.

He went about three steps and then turned back around in the opposite direction.

I turned him back toward the car.

He turned back the other way.

We repeated this several times.

Finally, I gave him a little smack on the neck with the reins and tried to turn him back around. (You really can't let a horse think he's the boss of you.) Instead of turning back around, he started to walk backwards. Towards the ditch. Nothing I did got him moving frontwards again, so I tried talking to him, calmly..."Hey, dumbass...if you don't stop backing up, we're both going to wind up in the ditch!". This was absolutely true, but utterly failed to convince Beau to stop backing up.

And then I felt his back legs drop into the ditch and remember very clearly thinking, "Oh shit...this is going to be bad." This was also absolutely true.

As much as Beau hated cars, he evidently felt even worse about ditches, because at that point, he reared up onto his hind legs. (This is the point at which I did NOT fall off). I was hanging in there just fine, and then came this moment when I realized that he had reared so far up, that he was going to go right on over backwards. That was one of those crystalline moments that seemed to last forever, and I had time to think, "Oh shit...this is going to hurt." This was also absolutely true.

And over we went. I hit the ground at the same time Beau hit the ground. He landed with most of his weight on my left leg and while it hurt, I was miraculously unbroken. So far.

As it turns out, horses don't much like lying on the ground with their feet in the air. It freaks them out. So he started trying to get up by heaving his body up and then flopping back down on me. It was during one of those first flops that I felt my wrist break. After a couple of more flops, I started to be genuinely afraid that I was going to get broken to death in that ditch. I looked for Kallie and saw her getting out of her car, and started to say things to her which seemed to make a lot of sense at the time, like, "Help!" and "Get him off of me!"

Unfortunately Kallie couldn't really help me. The horse was on his back flailing with all four legs. If she'd gotten closer, he would have kicked her brains out, so she did the only thing she could. She screamed at the horse, "GET OFF HER!" And amazingly, he did. He gave a last mighty heave and got his legs under him (his right rear hoove landed squared on my inner left thigh -- the bruise wrapped entirely around my leg) and stood up.

What followed was a harrowing ride to the hospital, surgery on my arm, and months to recuperate. I still have a limited range of motion in my right wrist, but I consider myself lucky nonetheless. It could have been worse.

We sold Beau a year later after Kallie got into a similarly serious horse wreck on a different horse. I haven't been on a horse since the accident (mine, not hers), but I think about it a lot. I dream about it. And one day, I'll do it.

You know...I was just thinking this morning that there's something about seeing my girlfriend in a skirt that suddenly turns me into a construction worker. I looked over this morning while we were driving in to work together and noticed that her skirt had ridden up a little bit, showing off a very nice expanse of soft brown thigh, and the next thing I knew, I had a beer belly, a hard....hat (c'mon...what'd you think I was gonna say?), and a throat full of catcalls. I very discreetly kept my mouth shut though and just allowed my mind to wander where the rest of me couldn't. There were, after all, children in the car.

It's funny because I used to really have a thing for butch girls. I liked the gender ambiguity...masculine and feminine blended in suprising ways. And I was a real sucker for that whole 'tough yet vulnerable' thing. I probably still am on some level.

But my girl....not 'tough yet vulnerable', not 'young and troubled' (another of my former weaknesses)....she's intelligent and competent and warm and smells good. If there's some gender ambiguity going on, it's that she's tough and strong in ways that are sometimes thought to be traditionally male, but physically...so female. So what I'm sayin' is....viva la femme and all that...

I've added a picture of myself. It's over there, on the side. That's not Harry Potter (as some have surmised), it's me. And if you view my profile, you'll find a link to my little yahoo website where I have more of my paintings posted.

I got tired of looking at my yellow blog, so now I have this greenish one. I think it looks a little watery (which would be in keeping with the fishbowl theme). Sort of. Ok...maybe foresty.

What? Don't fish grow on trees?

So, I met with Judith yesterday for the first time. Her office sucked (too bright, absolutely nothing on the walls, no personal belongings...no sharp objects), but she seemed nice enough. She is from Israel and has a thick accent. She has dark rimmed glasses and a sympathetic face. First I tried to cram a synopsis of the past two years into my fifty minute session...then I realized that wasn't going to be adequate, so I went back seven years, then finally gave up and condensed my entire life into fifty minutes of disjointed speech.

She nodded alot, but the sympathetic face was nice.

She thinks I could use some drugs and some talking.

Ok...show of hands...who is surprised?

In other news, Nate graduated last weekend. (YAY!) And now he's acquired not one, but TWO jobs. He'll be a busy guy this summer, and maybe he'll save a few bucks.

In other, other news, Jadyn just got a great job offer for a position that promises to be both challenging and lucrative. We are both excited for her.

In other, other, other news, PB learned to swim last night, but seems to be completely unconcerned with getting a job and helping to contribute to the general welfare of our household. Little bum.

Marsha Drucker. Marcy O'Neal. Laura Sage. Carol Dewald. Margie Mortimer. Judith Feinman.

I'm trying to choose a therapist today. These are the names provided to me by my insurance company, and that's basically all I have to go by...just the names. I do know they're all female because that's what I requested, but that's all the information I started with.

Sooo...Marsha is out. Her name is too much like the fabled Marsha Hoppy, Christian Counselor, who didn't want me to be a 'deek'. Is this fair to Marsha Drucker? Not at all. But them's the breaks.

Marcy O'Neal is promising because my therapist in Savannah was Peggy O'Cain. See...another 'O' name, and this time a positive association. So I called Ms. O'Neal's office and asked the receptionist if Ms. O'Neal was going to be comfortable treating a big ol' deek, and the stammering that ensued directly resulted in my hanging up as soon as she put me on hold.

Ok. On down the list to Laura Sage. Now, that's a wise sounding name. Sure to be full of 'sage' advice. I got her answering machine though and something in her voice rubbed me the wrong way. I don't even know what. So scratch the Sage.

Carol Dewald works at a geriatric facility. They don't see anyone under fifty. I'm barely out of my twenties. ahem.

Margie Mortimer? Are they kidding? That's a cartoon name.

This leaves us with Judith Feinman. She works for 'University Mental Health blah blah'. That's good. University Hospital is where I had my baby. I trust them. And Judith is a nice sturdy name. She'll probably have met and worked with plenty of deeks. I'm waiting for her office to call me back and give me an appointment.

Why therapy? Good question. Here's why: Because I am very regularly being overwhelmed by my emotions. Every rainshower becomes a tornado. Disappointments feel like major heartbreak. Irritation feels like grinding rage. Unfortunately, happiness doesn't necessarily translate to orgasmic euphoria...but wouldn't that be nice? Distracting, but nice.

So something has to be done. This is not good for me, not good for my relationship with Jayden, not good for my relationship with Nate (can you imagine what mother guilt turns into under these circumstances?), and not good for my performance at work.

I am not suicidal. I don't think I have that kind of personality, or whatever...but sometimes I feel like I just want to die. And I don't say that out loud because it sounds like drama queen talk. So...for anyone who thinks I'm a drama queen anyway...evidence that it isn't as bad as it could be.

So what I'm thinking is that life is too short to spend so much of it unhappy -- especially when it's me making me that way. For whatever reason. And maybe it's a chemical thing. I think for the first time that I might be ready to try an anti-depressant. Generally, I think we as a society are over-medicated, and I hate to take medicines...but...you know...something's gotta be done. Maybe it's time to bite the bullet. It's just scary because I've known a couple of people who have had a really hard time getting off of them. And if the meds take away the stunning lows, will I lose the dazzling highs as well? And if chemicals are regulating my emotions...will I still be me? Will I really be happier, or just sort of levelled out?

I want to still be me. Just happier. Easier to live with. More 'with it'.

My intention at this point is to start writing here more regularly. And I'll let you know how the therapy works out.

So, a lot of things have changed since I last posted. For one thing, I'm no longer in Georgia. I moved back to Ohio to be closer to my family. And after that, my son moved back to Georgia...basically defeating the entire purpose of my move. Nate's finishing up his senior year in a little high school in Georgia where he's loved and accepted and likely to stay out of trouble. It ain't easy...but I think it's the best thing for him and I'm trying to cope. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I've acquired a new job and a new girlfriend, both of which are wonderful. The job is running the printing department for a production company. It's a lot of hard work, a lot of stress, and a lot of responsibility. I couldn't be happier. The girlfriend...wow...let's call her Jadyn. She's amazing. Beautiful, loving, smart as hell....speaks Japanese, plays the violin, writes awesome poetry...and for some reason think's I'm pretty cool. What more could I ask for? We've been living together since May, and again, I couldn't be happier.

Jadyn has a four year old son, whom we'll call Peanut Butter (PB for short). There are adjustments to be made, obviously, since I'm not used to living with a four year old anymore. Basically, I'm adjusting to living with PB while I'm adjusting to living without Nate. Life is interesting that way. But PB is very charming and active and just as smart as his mommy (relatively speaking, since he's four), and he's always doing and saying things that I think I need to add to my blog. So expect to see more of him here.

But in the meantime, I want to write about one of my early dates with Jadyn. It was actually the first time I'd ever been to her apartment. First, some background info - Jadyn has MS. She was diagnosed a year or two ago. She has some numbness and weakness here and there, but no great degree of disability, but to prevent excacerbations, or at least slow down their frequency, she gives herself a shot every evening of this medicine called copaxone. More acurately, she used to give herself the shot. Now I give them to her.

Back to the story. This was, as I said, the first time I'd been to Jadyn's apartment -- probably our third or fourth date. We'd been to dinner and the movies a couple of times and discovered that we could talk to one another for hours and hours. Things were going well and I was liking her and wanting to get to know her better. I'd invited her to go to a friend's house with me and came to pick her up. When I got there, she was just preparing to do her shot and asked if I'd do it for her since it was an awkward spot (on the back of her right arm).

I said no.

She said please.

I said no.

She said please.

And so forth. The outcome was probably always inevitable, since as I said, I liked this girl. I agreed to give her the shot, but I was very nervous about the whole process. She promised me that nothing could be simpler, since she had this device which automatically delivered the shot. The needle fits into it, there's a spring or something in there, I guess, and all you have to do is line it up where you want it and push a button, basically. No room for error.

I've heard it said that whenever someone makes something idiot-proof, someone else always makes a better idiot.

So...still nervous as hell, I put the device against her arm while she explained what to do. You press down on the end of the device, and when it's down, you push the button. So she said, "Push the button...." and I did. And then I pulled it out of her arm as she was saying, "...and wait ten seconds."

Er...what? Why? And then I realized that the medicine was squirting out of the end of the needle, all over her carpet. So, in a panic, I tried to hand it to her, which did prevent the medicine from getting on her carpet, because now it was squirting pretty much directly into her face. Horror-stricken, as she flailed her hands in front of her face trying to block the stream of medicine, I did manage to finally direct the stream onto the kitchen table, where it finally dribbled to a stop.

What I really wanted to do at that point was just leave and never come back. Or sink into the floor and never come back. Or just become invisible and never come back. I was mortified. I apologized copiously and blushed profusely. Jadyn, on the other hand, was her gracious self. She wiped her face and told me over and over not to worry about it. And then she somehow managed to talk me into trying again. I am pleased to say that things went much more smoothly the next time around. And she wasn't hearing any of that talk about me never coming back.

And the rest is history.

When my son...I think I'll call him Nate, was about seven, bees had it in for him. On his seventh birthday, a bee stung him right in the face at his birthday party. Then a few months later, I took him fishing at a pay lake and a bee caused him to completely lose his dignity. Except that it wasn't really a bee. It was a fly. He only thought it was a bee. But technically since he thought it was a bee, and since he feared them due to the birthday party incident, you could say that bees were at fault for the loss of dignity also.

A pay lake is one of those places where the trailer park crowd is likely to hang out. I hadn't realized that until I actually went to one. I just wanted my son to have the experience of catching a fish and wasn't sure where to take him. A pay lake, which is just what it sounds like...you pay a certain amount of money and you get to fish all day, seemed like a good idea because I assumed it would be well stocked with fish. There may have been a lot of fish there, but there were also a lot of rednecks there, and a lot of trash, and very little in the way of grass.

I think it's generally true that where you have a lot of rednecks, you're likely to find port-a-pottys.

So Nate's in this port-a-potty doing whatever it is he went in there for, and I'm waiting for him outside (on account of I'm his mom and didn't want any rednecks to kidnap him and sell him into white slavery on his way back to where we were fishing). Then BOOM, the door to the port-a-potty flies open, and out comes Nate, butt-first, shrieking, with his pants around his ankles. Every head turned. Of course he bit the dust immediately because it's really difficult to move fast backwards when your pants are around your ankles. I know this because I've tried it.

It was when I was helping him cover his...dignity...that he explained about the bee. Which turned out to be a fly. A little one.

Once, a couple years ago, I went to Massachusetts to visit a friend of mine. She had this big hairy golden retriever mix named Sammy. This is one of the few names I won't be changing, because it just suited him very well. He was the sweetest dog ever. I have a dog of my own that I love very much, but he's kind of a grumpy old man. Grumpy old dog. Sammy was just sweet.

While I was visiting, I slept in a downstairs bedroom, and my host warned me that Sammy might try to get in bed with me, but that if he did, I could just shoo him away. As dogs go, Sammy didn't smell particularly bad, and it was kind of cold, so I really didn't mind anyway. So, about the time I was going to nod off, sure enough...here came Sammy and parked beside the bed. He sat there for a minute, then put one paw on the bed. He looked at me for a second, and I was sure he was asking me, 'is this ok with you?' I think I patted him on the head or something, and in a few minutes, he put his other front paw on the bed. And waited again. 'Is this alright?' I didn't protest, so next he pulled his torso onto the bed and waited again. I was amazed at how polite he was being. Most dogs would've just leapt right up on the bed. He was inching himself on in pieces. Probably took five minutes or so for him to get his entire self onto the bed. He finally gave me a look that seemed to say, 'well, if you're sure it's alright with you....' and hauled his back legs onto the bed and snuggled up with me. For a dog, he was quite a gentleman.

It's kind of funny too, because I was needing a friend right about then. For reasons which I'm not gonna go into right here and now, that visit with that particular friend was a little difficult for me. I was feeling pretty lonely. I don't know if dogs just know these things, or if it's coincidence, or if any dog is pretty much always going to want to climb into a big soft bed and cuddle up...but whatever it was, I appreciated it. And I got a good laugh out of his approach...like he was asking permission every step of the way.

Sammy died this week. I'm really sad about that -- partly because he was such a good, sweet dog, and partly because I know my friend loved him very much and she's going to miss him.

I did not fall off the planet. I've been reading a lot about gravity and I have it on very good authority that falling off the planet would be, in fact, impossible. I've just been procrastinating. I've historically been a poor correspondent, and this is, after all, sort of like a long letter to myself and anyone else who might wander in. I had to stop in and post this story though. I thought about this the other day for the first time in a long time and wanted to share it.

About four years ago, when I was living with Kallie and her rotten children, and not long after I'd started my current job, Nate had to bring a batch of cookies to school. He was in sixth grade. I am not the most Betty-Crockerish of moms, so Kallie was kind enough to bake the cookies. I had the important task of putting them on a plate, covering them with tin foil and remembering to give them to Nate when he left to catch the bus in the morning.

Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.

As the bus was pulling away, I realized that the cookies were still sitting on the counter. I was seized with a sharp pang of mother guilt. I'd failed my son. He was going to school with no cookies. No...I resolved...not MY son. I was almost ready to go to work anyway, so I threw my shoes on, grabbed my "purse", picked up the plate of cookies and ran to my car, determined to catch the bus before it got more than a few stops away.

I need to take a moment here to explain about the "purse" because it will become important to the story later. I do not carry a purse. I have never carried a purse. When I was a kid, my mom was always telling me I needed to start carrying one because she was afraid that when I was grown, I wouldn't be used to carrying one and I'd lose it or just walk off and leave it. She needn't have worried since I still don't want to have anything to do with a purse. I carry a wallet in my back pocket and that's pretty much all I need. My reluctance to join the ranks of the "pursed" should have been my mother's first clue that I was a budding lesbian. However...Kallie had given me a fanny pack as a gift. It seemed sufficiently un-purselike to her and she thought it would be helpful for me to haul things around in. Which it was. And I did use it, although I was always a little uncomfortable with it. I never quite made peace with the fanny pack. I couldn't help thinking of it as a "purse". Not a purse, but a "purse". I'm sure you can see the difference. On with the story.

I took a shortcut to a place where I knew the bus stopped and waited there for it to arrive, which it did shortly. I leapt from the car with the cookies, ran over to the bus, and handed the cookies through the window to the driver, instructing her to give them to my son. The whole exchange went smoothly, and I was on the road towards work in just a few minutes. I drive almost an hour to get to work every day, and I spent the drive feeling very proud of myself for taking such good care of my boy. It would not have been unlike me to not remember about the cookies until mid-afternoon when it was too late. I have very good intentions, but sometimes my mind is like a sieve.

When I got to work, I parked the car and happened to glance over to the passenger seat...and there sat the plate of cookies.

The sun glinted off the tinfoil.

I had a moment of utter confusion. I very clearly remembered getting out of my car and taking those cookies over to the bus and giving them to the driver...so how could they be in the car still? And very slowly...I began to wonder...what...exactly...did I hand to the bus driver? And equally slowly it dawned on me what was missing. The "purse" was gone. It should have been in the passenger seat. When I realized finally that I had given my purse to the bus driver to give to Nate, I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I knew I was going to have to drive all the way back out to the school at that point, so went into the building to explain that I was going to be very late that morning.

I was laughing so hard I could barely explain myself, and my co-workers weren't faring much better. My son had called home from school to ask Kallie why I'd given him my "purse" and she in turn had called work hoping to catch me and couldn't resist telling my co-workers what had happened. Evidently the poor kid didn't realize I meant to be giving him cookies. He thought there must be some reason I was giving him the purse. He found it so confusing and upsetting that he cried. Of course that didn't stop him from taking all the cash out of the purse before he gave it back to me (we had a little exchange in the hallway at school -- he gave me the "purse" and I handed off the cookies).

All of which goes to show that my mother was right. I can't be trusted with a purse, and I haven't carried one since.

Then there was the Time I Got Caught In Quicksand While Trying To Escape From A Spider.

I was 24, Nate was around 2, it was a summer day and we were visiting the farm that my family owned in Indiana. (The same one I lived on when I was a kid). The farm is about 600 acres. There's a cabin and a small house on the front few acres that face the main highway. Deeper into the property there's a creek (which is a small river, really, or a really big stream), and across the creek are lots of woods and some cultivated areas as well as the remains of the house we'd lived in. When I visit the farm, I always like to go down to the creek and have a look around to see how it's changed course since I was last there. To me, it's the heart of the farm and I feel a strong connection to that place.

My father was living in the cabin on the farm at this particular time, and several of my aunts and uncles were visiting as well. They were all sitting outside the cabin on the porch and were probably either cooking or eating. In my family, that's just what we do. I decided to take Nate for a little walk down to the creek. To get there, you had to walk about half a mile, between a big cornfield on one side and a fenced pasture on the other, then there was a little wooded area right before you got down to the creek. At the wooded area, the path forked -- go left to the 'crossing' or right to the 'swimming hole'. Usually, I go to the crossing. I'm not sure how they did it -- probably involved tractors -- but my dad and my uncles kept the crossing shallow enough to drive across (hence it's name). Maybe they were dumping gravel in. I don't know. On this day, instead of heading to the crossing, I decided to walk down to the swimming hole.

To get to there, I followed the path until I came to a steep drop off, which was about three feet high. Or low. Depending on whether you were on the top or the bottom of it, I guess. Anyway, this bank was covered in tall grass and although it was steepish, Nate and I were able to climb down without much difficulty. At the bottom of the bank, there's an area about fifteen feet wide of sand and rocks, then the creek. The creek had changed course quite a bit since the last time I'd been there. I didn't really recognize which part exactly had been our old swimming hole. Immediately on the other side of the creek was another steep bank, this one about five feet tall and covered in mud.

Nate and I passed a pleasant ten or fifteen minutes looking for flat rocks and skipping them across the creek. (Well, I was skipping them and Nate was flinging them in and giggling joyfully). This might sound hokey, but it really does something good for my soul to be down there. It's beautiful. It's isolated -- I was far enough away from the cabin that I couldn't hear my rowdy relatives at all. All you can hear is the wind in the trees and the sound of the water running and various insects buzzing. Beyond the mud bank on the other side of the creek is another big cornfield, and I could see the tassels on the corn, and huge hills and trees behind that. It smells good there too.

After soaking up the experience for a bit, I decided we should walk down to the crossing and see how that was looking. I took Nate's hand and started to climb back up the grassy bank where we'd come down. I was only a step or two up the bank when I saw the biggest spider I'd ever seen sitting on a weed right directly in the middle of the path where I was climbing up. It's butt was as big as a large grape. A very large grape. I'm an arachneaphobiac from way back and I knew as soon as I saw it that 600 acres was not big enough for me and that spider. Any thought of me climbing up that bank at that point was totally out of the question. The bank to either side of the spider was not climbable. There were bushes and various other obstacles that made it impassable. The only alternative I could come up with was to go across the creek, walk down to the crossing from that side, and then wade back across and go back to the cabin.

I looked at the mud bank. It was steep, but I didn't think I'd have any trouble climbing it. In fact, I thought it might be fun in a G.I. Joe sort of way. I looked at the creek itself. At it's narrowest point, it was about four feet across; a little too wide to leap across with a two year old in my arms. I thought about wading down the creek to the crossing...I could see sand bars that I could walk on that stretched out a long way in that direction. I actually went a long way in that direction until I came to a place where there were no more sand bars and I wasn't sure how deep the water was. I knew from swimming in the creek all my life that in certain places it was very deep. I also was aware that the sand bars weren't safe because there were patches of quicksand. Of course that was something I'd heard and never actually believed -- still, I was very careful.

Eventually I found myself back where I started. My only choices were to cross the creek where it was only four feet across or to climb up the grassy bank and hope I didn't run into the spider. I didn't even really consider the second option. I was mostly thinking, 'it's only about four feet wide, it can't possibly be that deep right here.' The problem was that I couldn't actually see the bottom.

So I picked up Nate and took a step into the water. It wasn't quite up to my knee. I took another step. And another. And then I sank to my knees in quicksand, which meant the water was up past my waist at that point. It was all I could do for the next few seconds to just avoid panicking. I could barely move my legs, but I slogged forward a bit and managed to sink to my thighs. I was holding Nate above the water and trying not to scare him while I stood there and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn't move forwards or backwards. I was afraid that I was going to be sucked down and die a horrible death. We were only a couple of feet away from the muddy bank at that point and I gave some serious thought to flinging Nate to the other side, but I was afraid that he'd slide down the bank and end up drowning. I stood there long enough, panicking and trying to figure out how to avoid taking Nate with me, that I slowly realized that I wasn't sinking anymore. I'm sure I was in quicksand, but I think there must have been something more solid under it. Once I realized that I probably wasn't going to be sucked down to my death, I calmed down and started leaning forwards and slowly managed to work my way the last foot or two to the mud bank, climbed up with no trouble, and ended up safe, wet and sandy on the other side. I walked down to the crossing, waded across, and headed back up to join my family.

I have rarely felt so foolish in my life as I did after that. To avoid a creature that was smaller than my little finger, I waded into dangerous waters with my two year old in my arms. Because the spider might possibly have touched me. I wasn't even afraid of it biting me. And I'm not allergic. I just felt like I would rather die than have it touch me. I stopped feeling that way at about the same moment I thought I actually might possibly die in a patch of quicksand.

I think there's probably something profound to be gotten out of this regarding irrational fears and the unknown, but I'm just not feeling philosphical enough to write it. For now I'm just thinking that if I see another big ass spider, I might give some thought to chasing it away before I go charging into the deep waters.

Being a bridesmaid is an exercise in strange tortures for me. For one thing, there's 'wedding hair.' I vastly prefer my regular hair, which is extremely low maintenance. Two minutes with a blow dryer in the morning and I'm done. Sometimes not even that. Wedding hair, on the other hand, is something that is done to you by a hairdresser. It involves various gels and sprays and bobby pins. You end up with this hard crusty shell on top of your head which basically moves as a unit or not at all. And it inevitably involves long curly things down by your face. I'm sure there's an official term for this which most women know, but I am not in on the secrets of this particular sisterhood. Suffice it to say, I am un-fond of wedding hair.

And then there's 'wedding face.' I am also not a wearer of makeup. I don't own any cosmetics. Well...that's not strictly true. I think I have a tube of lipstick in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn since 1987. (I used to wear it when I was in college. I was making a statement. Someone asked me what the statement was and I said 'the statement is that I'm wearing bright red lipstick.' Duh.) But I haven't worn it in years so that doesn't even count. But if you're a bridesmaid, you MUST wear it. You don't want to be homely in the photos after all. When my sister got married, not wanting to trust to my own severely underdeveloped skills at applying makeup, I presented myself at the Lancome counter at the mall to get a 'MAKE-OVER.' Oh sure, there's something to be said for having an attractive woman leaning all over you, touching your face and telling you you're pretty...but really, it's not worth it. I won't say that I looked just like Tammy Faye Baker, but I will say that I looked like a relative of hers. Besides which, I don't really know how to wear make-up anymore. It may not sound like there's any skill involved in this, but there is. You have to remember not to rub your eyes. Or blow your nose. Or scratch any part of your face which might itch. And your face will itch when there are six pounds of make-up on it and you are not used to that. Trust me.

And then there are high heels. I don't think I'm as ungainly in high heels as your average linebacker...actually, I'm probably more ungainly. Some of those guys are pretty graceful. But not only do I wobble a bit in high heels, but I feel a lot of stress about the possibility of actually falling off them. And stress leads to sweating. And guess what sweating does to your make-up. See above.

But the worst bit for me, at my sister's wedding in particular, was the dress - the wearing of which involved purchasing complicated underwear - mysterious items which would lift and support and yet not leave a hint of a line under your clothing. I had to take a guide with me to help me navigate the strange terrain in the lingerie department. Even buying the dress itself was traumatic. It was a long, sleeveless, dark green velvet number. Any drag queen would have been proud of it. It was shimmery. I, in fact, would have admired it on any drag queen. Unfortunately, when I went to purchase this dress (300 smackeroos, thanks a bunch), there was only one left in the correct color and style. And it was almost my size -- by which I mean that I was a little bigger than the dress. The helpful saleswoman helped me lever and stuff all my various parts into the dress and between the two of us, we did manage to get it zipped. I felt like a sausage in a tight casing. I came out of the dressing room to have a look in the mirrors and asked Nate what he thought. He was about eight at the time. He was thoughtful for a moment. "It's nice, but it looks like all the fat in your body has been squeezed into your arms."

So. The wedding went well. The happy couple is divorced now. Serves them right for forcing me to be a bridesmaid. I mean, what did I ever do to my sister to deserve that??

Nate's a smart kid. Not a smooth criminal by any stretch, but a smart kid. When he was somewhere between two and three (somewhere around the time of the hopping vibrator incident), he escaped from the apartment in the very early morning. I say 'very early' meaning 'sometime before noonish'.

We lived in a third floor apartment that looked down onto the playground. Nate was always wanting to go there -- any kid wants to go to a playground, you know. There was a big slide and swings and teeter totters, but there was also a lot of broken glass out there. It just wasn't a really nice place and I wouldn't take him there very often.

So this particular morning I was sleeping in. My bedroom door was just a foot or two from Nate's bedroom door and we slept with both doors open so I could hear him when he got up. Usually. This time he was unusually quiet. I don't know how long he was up before I started coming around to realize he was in my doorway saying, "Don't get up, I'm just changing my socks." 'Okay,' I thought. I turned over. I shut my eyes again. I realized I felt a cold breeze in my bedroom. That didn't make any sense unless the front door was open -- it was February, after all. And then I really heard what he'd said. "Don't get up...I'm just changing my socks." Huh? What the heck was he changing his socks for? And why didn't he want me to get up? For crying out loud...usually he couldn't wait to get me out of bed. I was just sitting up when I saw him go running past my door wearing nothing but a diaper and a pair of socks. By that time I was fully awake and I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late. I went into the living room at a full run just in time to see him disappearing out the door.

Granted, I was an adult and he was a little kid, but he had an advantage over me in the speed department. I, being in a huge great hurry, had left my glasses laying beside my bed and could barely see. I ran out of the house in a loose gown - no shoes, no bra, and no glasses. And a ferocious case of bed head. By the time I got down the stairs, all I could see of Nate was just a little bit of tannish skin and a bright white dot of diaper bouncing along through the parking lot. It was a big parking lot and I was terrified he was going to get run over. I chased him probably about 150 yards, weaving through parked cars, before I caught up with him.

All that happened so fast that I didn't really figure out until I was on the way back to the apartment with Nate tucked firmly under my arm why exactly he was changing his socks. He'd gone out to the playground before I woke up wearing just his diaper and socks and the cold, damp ground got his socks all muddy. He was coming in for a fresh pair. It was the middle of February, probably 34 degrees outside. He didn't bother to find a shirt or pants, but he wanted to have clean dry socks for playing outside. Like I said, he's a smart kid.

I had to leave the couch pushed in front of the living room door at night for the next two weeks or so because Nate kept waking before me and trying to get out again. There's no coming between a boy and the playground sometimes.