Kinda Like a Hippie

We haz a ded cat.

We iz vera sad.

It's been a rough week here at the hippie house. Our auxilliary cat (as opposed to our other cat known as the real pet), the one who just decided to move in after scoping out the place, came to a sad end on Thursday. When we drove up Thursday afternoon we were met with Mr. Fluffers lying dead in the road. I freaked (understatement allowed so as not to appear too bizarre). Hippiekid took it much better than I did. Damn, I loved that cat. After much crying and pacing and frantic behavior on my part it was decided that we would drive the fluffy yellow body of one of the coolest cats in the world the 70 miles to be buried at The Boyfriend's house. Ain't no way nobody's diggin no hole on this rocky fossil mound we live on anyway...even assuming I had the emotional fortitude. This whole death and grief thing really kicks my butt (especially when it is sudden, I did better when The Boyfriend's dad died since he had been sick a while). I think my body goes into some sort of memory mode and just starts reacting to grief like it did when Will died.

The Boyfriend, being the good man he is, already had the hole dug when we arrived. Mr. Fluffer had a burial by headlights. However, the hole there was too shallow for my liking even though it had been dug with much effort through about an inch of topsoil and lots of rocks. I sobbed and cursed the rocky soil some more. It went something like this, "I just, baaaahhahahahasnifffhooohooo, want to be able to, wahhhhhhuhhuhhuh, bury my damn cat. Why can't I just have, ooohhooooohooooo, somewhere where I can dig a damn hole? Bwaaah, sniffcoughsnort, huhuhuhuhu at least in Oklahoma, sobsniff,  you can bury your pets! Ohohohsobsobsobsnifflesnortcry."

I hope you are in a happy place Fluffer. We miss you here.

 

 

If this post made you sad, I'm sorry. In honor of Fluffer, try this link to cheer yourself up http://icanhascheezburger.com .

Since my immune system has left the country...

I'll point out how lucky you are that you can neither see nor hear me. Because really there is only so much coughing you can listen to before sympathy exits and annoyance sets in. And the slimey, slippery oozing of body fluids that causes me to have to stuff a tissue in whichever nostril is on the downhill slope while sleeping is not all that fun to hear about either.

This is the 3rd time this school year that I have contracted some cold or flu virus that loves me more than anyone else and refuses to part from my cells, sweat and snot ridden though they are. I worked only 2 of the 5 days this week. Oh, yeah, I am way past the allotted number of sick days and well into the "days we deduct from your check at your daily rate of pay, which is somehow so much more than what you actually make in a day, but trust us it all works out over the course of your contract", so every day I miss makes me just a little more stressed out.

As I lie in bed thinking deep thoughts (and coughing up chunks of lung) all sorts of ideas for meaningful posts go through my head. Unfortunately none of them stick around long enough to become any sort of coherent essay.

So, you get this.

1. A plea to please give me some great defining edict from one of the candidates that will make me feel like lining up behind someone and staying there. Oh how I long for a candidate that I could support unfailingly and unflinchingly. Because right now I am flinching a lot.I keep thinking of things I want to write in a post, but when I start thinking about it all too much the flinching and twitching makes it hard to type. 

2. An anecdote from the Hippiekid: "Polar bears lost their tails in battle. They used to have one, but then it got chopped off in a battle and now it is a tradition for polar bears to only have a little stub there." He actually told me that a couple of months ago, but I just found where I wrote it down. I have no idea where it came from. At the time we were sitting on the sofa and not talking about polar bears. Sometimes the factoids just appear out of the blue.

3.A note about our pottery... apparently it was just too smokin' awesome! We were there on a Saturday and the next Tuesday part of Artisan's Alley burned. We were a little concerned that our creations had been "fired" prematurely, but the pottery shop was not affected. Hopefully we will get in next week and paint.

4. A picture of a boy and his dog. Taken today during one of the brief times I was up walking around.

  They are moving an old burn barrel into "the hideout" that Hippiekid has created among the cedar and oak trees on the back part of our property. (No he won't be burning anything. He has other plans for it, along with the two old toasters and other bits of metal and wood. I think they're decorative.)  I am standing just inside and you can see the back of the "No Tresspassing" sign he will rewire between the trees when he leaves for the day. It's good to be 10.

Well, that was fun.

Last Saturday Hippiekid and I finished up our Christmas gift giving.

There's a back story. While out lost in the city one day (back during the piano search) we came across a place called Artisan's Alley. I had been there years before. We stopped to shop and have lunch. In the center of a bunch of shops is a cool little pottery shop. They give lessons to walk ins. We didn't do it that day, but we decided that would be our gift to his BFF and BFF's mom, who is also my friend.

The lesson was an hour and a half and we all made 6 or 7 pieces. Now we wait for them to dry and be fired then we go back and paint them. After they are fired again we will get to bring them home. So, more fun to come. I also want to go back to take the sculpture class.

My only complaint is that the water we had to keep sticking our hands in was very cold!

Over-indulgence?

Yes, as evidenced by the last post, my 10 year old son did get a laptop computer for Christmas. Doesn't seem a very hippiemom kind of gift does it? Seems he should be opening yards of hemp cord and wooden beads along with a macrame instruction book, or at least some recycled tie dyed bed sheets. You know, I've never been very good at fitting into any one box. (I have found this generally confuses and often irritates people who don't know me well. My friends seems to accept it.)  I'm not really sure if I am raising a super consumer future yuppie type or Mr. Greenearth. I just know that despite my moral sensibilities and best intentions I can't seem to stop the flow of stuff the kid accumulates (oh okay, it goes for me too).

So Hippiekid got a laptop. In my defense (or actually, The Boyfriend's defense, since he is the one that bought it) it is a refurbished one that was on special, was a really good buy and not as expensive as you might think. Plus we really are getting tired of sharing our computers with him! Now if that was his only gift it would still be a nice Christmas. Of course it was not his only gift! Sillies! He also got a digital camera, a webkinz, books, a couple of toys, a new computer game, a stocking full of stuff, several gift cards from relatives, and a piano from his grandmother (among a few other things). The next week on our out of state visit he received new dirt bike boots, pants and gloves, some new clothes and  a few more toys.

I tell myself, and I told him, that this was an exceptional year. There will usually not be this many big ticket items. Although, in the past, he has received a computer for his room and a dirt bike (different years). I start out with good intentions, but then things just get out of hand. I seriously need to do my Christmas shopping the week before Christmas, because the longer I have the more I buy. Sometimes you just get such good buys! Thank you, Maggie, for your post, so I don't feel alone.

I swear when I was pregnant with Will I said to myself that I was not going to buy a lot of stuff. That he didn't need all that much. Of course Will's dad and I had a lot less expendable cash than I have now in my life with The Boyfriend (staying in the same job for the last 14 years rather than constantly moving around helps too). But, really I believed that, or at least I think I did at the time. I bought used clothes and toys. I tried to use moderation in everything. Then Will died and Hippiekid entered the picture and it was a whole new world. I just couldn't stop myself or anyone around us from over indulging him. I suppose there is a part of me that thinks, "Well, there really should be two of them, I'd be spending at least this much anyway, and having to find room for the trappings of two boys." Justification, it's a wonderful thing.

The best part of the whole thing though, is that he is always happy and appreciative. He has never once asked for any of the big ticket items he has received. The dirt bike year all he wanted was a red guitar. The year he got a PSP he asked for some specific Hot Wheel cars. This year his only request was a batting helmet for baseball season. Oh yeah, he got that too!

Maybe he will be better at keeping the consumerism at bay with his own kids.

Luckily, grandmas don't have to worry about shaping lives with their gift giving habits!

It's alive!

Wow, it's really been a month since I posted last? And, oops, I left that silly, sickly post up all that time. I wasn't that ill. Okay, I was pretty sick and I missed 5 days of work- I can't remember ever missing five days of work for one illness before. I got the flu really badly a few years ago, but luckily it encompassed a weekend. I got really lucky one year and got sick over Christmas break!

So, I recovered. It put me really behind at work at a horribly busy time of the year. Now, here we are, a month later, I have lived through Christmas, a ski trip and the journey to my mother's house (which is lacking internet access-- which is only one of the things that contributes to my insanity when I am there). I have to start back to work bright and early tomorrow morning. I am ready neither mentally nor in the area of teacher preparedness. I can wing it. It's my library visit day tomorrow. I got lucky.

I'll be back soon with new drivel for the new year.

Here's a picture of Hippiekid and The Boyfriend on Christmas morning, opening the Hippiekid's last present- a laptop computer.

Here is the Hippiekid surrounded by presents and the accompanying discards. God, I love being his mom.

Suspicious Minds (not original I know, but I'm tired and ill - cough, cough)

I have been tagged by my good friend Nina to participate in a suspiciously different meme. She got tagged by Drowning Pisces, which was interesting to me because I am also a pisces. You know, the zodiac is just not getting the respect and play it used to. I mentioned something about a sign, or my sign, or something, to the kids I teach and most of them had no idea what I was talking about. Well, that is often the case, but this one surprised me.

I am supposed to write a list of things that make me suspicious. On a day to day basis in real life I am not a suspicious person, or even a suspicious acting one. I pretty much just go along taking everyone at their word and everything at face value. Mostly I won't think to be suspicious until way later (sometimes too late, but mostly it works out okay for me). Like right now I just realized I recently did something that some people I know would think odd (read not wise- only because I don't want to call myself stupid- yet).  I found a piano to buy on craigslist. It is located in a city relatively near my small town. Last Saturday (while in the very beginning stages of my current illness) I drove with my son in to check it out. I thought nothing of following the pleasant young man down the siedwalk, into his apartment and into his bedroom to see the piano. Seriously. I never thought of anything other than seeing the piano. And this evening I drug my drugged and coughing body out of bed and back into town to give him $300. I will pick  up the piano on Saturday. The only reason I think to mention this is because on a bulletin board I post to one of the members today mentioned that she doesn't like craigslist. She doesn't like the thought of people coming to her home. Ooops. I've invited people from other countries that I barely know to come stay with me.

With that background I will be able to show you how truely dichotomous I am.

On to the meme.

I am suspicious of people who are nice to everyone all the time. Do they really like everyone that much? Do they like me or are they just being nice because they are nice to everyone?

I am suspicious of 7th graders talking quietly and then asking to go to the bathroom.

I am suspicious of parents who believe everything their kids tell them about how they got their grade and then e-mail me with strange accusations.

Letters to the editor when they are in the paper in our town make me suspicious. But you would have to live here to understand that. Did that guy who wrote in last week think we were too stupid to figure out that he was married to the woman he was writing about, just because they have different last names?

Like Nina, I am suspicious of the first item on the shelf and will reach behind it to get the next, most of the time. This is especially true with milk.

There is something deeply suspicious about any credit card company that would want to give me credit and spends money sending me offers.

I am suspicious of anyone on any plane with a really short haircut sitting next to me looking suspiciously like Timothy McVeigh. I just found this out about myself last summer when we were at the gate waiting for the sniffing German Shepherd to be brought on board.

I am suspicious of people who pray loudly on street corners or even people who pray too loudly or too long and want to pray for me using phrases like "Please lift my friend up on wings of Eagles, Lord."

I sometimes become suspicious of my online friends if the board becomes very active on a day when I am not able to log on. Are they extra talkative since I am not there? Are they using the opportunity to rejoice that I am not in the way? Maybe they avoid the board when they see I am there?

And, ya know, that whole NCLB thing and WHOEVER thought that up makes me very suspicious!

I'll try to think of someone to tag and get back on that. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't.

Change is good

I don't really do change. I mean I don't choose it usually. Some change is just forced on me and I am okay about adjusting.  I guess.

Like, there is nothing I can do about the fact that the Hippiekid grows and changes every day. While that sometimes makes me melancholy with worry about abandonment issues, generally I am so entertained by the new versions of his personality that I am okay with it.

You may have noticed that although I have had this blog up and running for over a year (yep, failed to acknowledge my own blogiversary) I have never changed the template. Mostly I didn't think about it, which is kind of weird if you knew the number of blogs I read and the various designs and site changes that go on regularly. Lately I have thought of it, but never got to it.

Now, due the great luck of contracting one of the multiple viruses I come into contact with regularly, I have been home in bed all week. Whatever I have reared back it's viscious little head and laughed at the antibiotics I have been assaulting it with. So here I sit with my laptop as bed partner and a catalog of clicks at my disposal.

I think I like it. For those of you like me, who never rearrange the furniture or change the positions of the knickknacks, I apologize for any discomfort this may cause you.

Now I must go brace myself for the fact that we are bringing a piano into my small house this weekend, which will force me to move furniture around and perhaps even artwork. Oh the things we do for our kids.

Double Digits Dude!

Hippiekid is 10 today. We had the party and the whole shebang (yeah, I grew up in Oklahoma where we say things like that, try to live with it). Once again, his friends brought gifts to donate to the animal shelter. It is his birthday tradition I guess. I think this is the 5th year for it. I intend to just drive by and throw them out the window this year. We have enough pets of our own now (both aquired from this animal shelter).

I have a birhday tradition of my own, for his birthday. Since I was not the one actually birthing him 10 years ago I always think of his birthmother on this day and the days leading up to it. My feelings for her are so numerous and so intense and often confusing and conflicting. I love the son we have both created more than I could ever explain. He is so totally and completely my own perfect son, and yet he was hers first. It is a weird feeling. I have grown a son in my body and I have lost him to death, so I know first hand the feelings, both physical and emotional, involved. My tradition is that every year on his birthday I post a poem to his birthmother. I have posted to bulletin boards and other places in cyberland. Last year my blog was still pretty new and I posted it here for the first time. (I did not write it and I don't know who did. A friend sent it to me years ago.) Here it is again.

A BIRTHDAY

It's my child's birthday

He just went dashing by

His eyes are sparkling with the excitement meant only for today.

Presents, kisses, hugs, cake, ice cream

It all seems so natural.

It's a day of looking back and looking forward.

It's my child's birthday

But there is something different happening inside me.

This should be a day of complete joy

A day for Thanksgiving

But in the midst of all this excitement

I pause, because my thoughts are about someone else for a time.

It's my child's birthday

I have no memories of his life growing inside me

and fighting to be released.

Another someone was there

Another someone suffered for my joy.

It's my child's birthday

But someone, somewhere, is feeling emptiness inside.

I'm sure she is wondering

Who he looks like

If he is big or small.

Wondering if he laughs much.

It's my child's birthday

And in the midst of this blessed day that was given to me

I have a prayer...

Oh God, that I may never forget

that someone suffered so much to give life to my child.

That someone loved my child so very much

that she gave him the right to live.

May I never forget for a moment

and especially now, today, to offer a prayer of thanks

for that someone

and that you, dear God, will always be there for that someone to help her

through the hurts she will have

when she stops to think that today is "my child's birthday."

Thank you, whoever and wherever you are.

How many do I get?

By my calculations (Hey quit laughing. I can do basic math, which gives me the right to use the word calculations.) he has slept in my bed approximately 2,790 nights. He has been there almost every night since we first walked out of the baby home in Moldova in June 1999. Oh, in reality there are a lot of nights when he is not sleeping with me. When we are at The Boyfriend's house he sleeps in his room there (cable TV there ya know). There are nights when he is at a friend's house or visiting his Grammy, or at camp, or a variety of things. So I took off a few weeks worth for each year to do my calculating. It is not like he can't sleep alone or has any kind of sleep issues. It is just what we have always done. I believe in it. I believe in the great bonding it helped create when he first came into my life. I believe that baby and young things need to be with their mothers, as much as possible and especially at night. My other son, Will, slept with me from the time he came home from the hospital, and I regret that in the month before his first birthday I was putting him in his crib to sleep some nights. He never made it to his first birthday and I lost the opportunity for more.

So, haha! I made up for it with this one! Who knew? Who knew he would be almost 10 years old and still like to fall asleep in my bed? Who knew how much fun it would be to see him first thing every morning and feel his warm little boy body against my back? I had no idea how great it would be to hear my son's voice first thing in the morning telling me the first thought he has for the day. I had no idea the great conversations we would have at the end of the day and the silly games we would play as we lay there in the dark at the end of the day saying good-night. Now I have the wonderful memories.

I remember someone saying to me once, "It's going to be really hard to break him of that habit." I replied with "Who's gonna try to break him of it? He'll get tired of it long before I will."  And that still holds true. I often look at him and wonder... how much longer? How many more nights do I get before he decides no more, before something in his internal clock says he needs his space? 10? 100? 1000?

It will not be enough for me.

After the After

So, I stole 45 minutes from grading papers tonight and created a little woolen tree.

I have to say it is cuter in real life, and pinker. I will do a couple of things differently on my next one. I still have papers to grade and dishes in the sink, but I'm feelin' kinda Christmasy anyway!