Half of the Sky

The UPS man dropped a package at my door late last week. Apparently, my online complaint--IN JANUARY!-- to the Stacy's Pita Chips people (after they failed to deliver my complimentary party pack along with the 100,000-plus Stacy's in the U.S) did not go unnoticed. It took them long enough. After sampling from the varities they sent, suffice it to say that their "Simply Naked" flavor of pitas is simply divine, but they're also so fattening that if you eat more than seven of them you grow a third ass cheek on your body. The two I have make quite enough trouble for me as it is, so I'm having to ration them. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Friday was a dreadful day for me and by that evening I was on a hormonal roller coaster that left me emotionally soggy and exhausted. Saturday morning dawned dark and snowy. And isn't that the kind of weather we expect on the day before Easter in Texas right before you put on your pretty pink dress and shiny new shoes?  Fortunately, none of it stuck but it made yard work cold and miserable. Today started out sunny and we gamely braved the crowds at church before returning and having an anti-Easter Easter at our house.

And when I say "anti-", I'm really just saying that we're doing something that we've never done before which is stay at home with just the five of us, though I did get to see my parents for a brief few moments. It felt empowering NOT to do the same thing I've been doing every Easter of my life, but it also felt very strange. We read the paper and did yardwork. Plants were potted and a couple of us took naps while the Easter dinner meat marinated. I set aside my current book, The Great Failure by Buddhist practitioner Natalie Goldberg and--instead-- spent the afternoon reading "B is for Burglar"  by Sue Grafton. It was just the five of us...or...five of us until Number Two Son set off with some fellow players from his high school baseball team to watch the Texas Rangers lose to the Boston Red Sox in the frigid air. It had been suggested that they might paint their chests with some cryptic message and then remove their shirts because the game was on ESPN and they were sure that this ploy would grab the attention of the camera operators, but I guess some higher intelligence prevailed because they did not do it after all. Or maybe they just didn't have enough chests to spell out L-O-S-E-R-S for the home team. I'm merely guessing, of course.

There are no cute videos of anyone hunting eggs (we don't do that anymore), but I do fix up a basket of movies or video games and candy and then I leave clues on 3x5 cards that they're required to follow until they find the basket itself. Yes...there are movies of this process...as well as the two times that Number Two Son "pantsed" his little brother while the camera was rolling. Good times.

News That Really Isn't News Because It Probably Won't Happen Anyway

All around the blog world new things are happening to everyone.  Milestones are being reached and what good is a milestone if you can't blog about it? I mean, if I had something exciting happening to me (rather than  only to people who share our house) I know I'd mine it for all the posts it was worth. Unfortunately, there are several truths I've made peace with and I thought I'd let you know about them here and now...just in case you were waiting for such breaking news from Half House. To wit:

1) We're never moving. Ever. This house is where we will stay. We might add on to it again and we'll probably re-landscape or refinish another room of hardwoods or paint, but we don't dream of another place significantly smaller or larger than this one. Forty years from now we might have to move from this house to...you know..."the HOME", but we'll be very old then we'll be okay with it. Aside from a premature death due to being smothered in my sleep with a pillow because I nagged one too many times about hygiene or homework, don't expect us to leave anytime soon. So...no new pictures of the new house because...there isn't going to be one.

2) I'm not having any more babies. You can take that to the bank. That factory is locked and boarded up. Abandoned. Defunct. Out of business. And you all remember what we did to render Mr. Half less of a danger to the world, no? Besides...I'm sure my eggs are just sad little shadows of their formerly robust selves. So no new babies equals no cute pictures that will attract thousands of new friends and readers who seek only to comment on pictures of the adorable new shoes I bought him/her posted about (who am I kidding? of course it would be another boy...and besides...a girl would just ruin the system I have anyway). A baby would be so cuuuute....but...no. I have to be strong about this one. And if I have reason to post anything about grandchildren before any of my sons turns 30 (Dear God, you did not hear me say this and I was  SO not hinting that I wanted one) you will no doubt find me alone and drunk in a gutter. If you see me, please bring me a toothbrush. I do have some pride after all.

3) I might get a new car...but shoot me if I start taking pictures of it because that would mean that I had nothing human or animal that was special enough to write about and that would be sad and (*yawn*) a-l-s-o ve-ry bor---zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Huh? Sorry. I must have dozed off for a moment.

4) Vacations? What vacations? We I never take family vacations. Not since Spring of 2001. Because I am not a Boy Scout and cannot sail to the Bahamas with them and therefore am resigned to many weeks of single living without the benefits of really being single...assuming I could still ever remember what those benefits were in the first place. We are taking the kids back to New York this summer and I might actually post something about that, but eventually I would start obsessing about how much I LOVE NEW YORK (like nobody even knows this about me) and then I would come to resent the reality that I will never, EVER live in a funky walk-up in the  East Village where my ass is skinny and I wear yoga pants and clogs to work and chopsticks in my hair and get paid ridiculous amounts of money to write a column in the....huh?....sorry, I was channeling Carrie Bradford. And if it's not going to happen...then blogging about it would just be a pathetic reminder.

5) A new career? Sure, I might get a new career. In fact, I'd LOVE a new career thank you very much, but with my luck it would be one that made me sign some strange clause where I had to abandon my blog or agree not ever to write about work on the blog. And wouldn't you know, that's when my desk would be parked next to the desk of a co-worker who has a subscription to the Weekly World News because she thinks it's all true about Angelina's bid to bring back a baby from Mars and starts crafting tinfoil hats for the office to...you know...keep the aliens from reading our thoughts. And my head would explode from all of the NOT BLOGGING ABOUT it.

6) Death. I would blog about that, but so far I've been incredibly lucky in that everyone in my family of origin is still living. I'd like it to stay that way, too. But if something should happen, and one day it will because it happens to all of us, I PROMISE that you will never catch me doing what Keith Richards did with his father's ashes because Suh-weet Baby Jesus, there are just some things that even a daughter will not do to prove she loves her father.

And now? I must go slaughter a hog to get that image out of my head....or maybe I'll just have a glass of wine instead.

Naptime

At its best, staying home with babies and toddlers was a delight for me.  It was often a slow-paced endeavor where I could lose track of time by watching my kid's intense concentration as he chased an errant Cheerio around his highchair tray with a chubby thumb and forefinger. It was the transparent expressions of amazement or horror on the face of a baby as you spooned their first taste of applesauce...or peas...into their open mouths. A walk through the park took forever, but it was never boring because everything from a flower to a rusty nail is a wonder to a little kid.

At its worst, it was like being under house arrest. There were plenty of mind-numbing tasks that needed someone's attention and I'm almost positive that nothing in my university degree plan prepared me for the low-water mark of combing through someone's diaper for the penny he swallowed or cleaning up the can of Crisco shortening that someone so thoughtfully massaged into the living room carpet.

But even the worst sins of the day could be forgiven if naptime went according to plan. After two back-to-back viewings of "Dumbo" or "Old Yeller", an hour in the back yard, the reading of half a dozen books and a lunch of macaroni & cheese, half a banana and some milk, I would clean the food shrapnel from their hands and faces, change their diapers and put them down for a nap. I learned the art of setting up a box fan in the hallway outside their room to create "white noise" so that the creaky wooden floors of our house didn't wake anyone up in an untimely manner.

And then...it was quiet.

I did not want the doorbell to ring and rarely did I encourage visitors. Even adults with whom I could share a conversation that included the use of three and four-syllable words. I just needed a few hours so that the rattling in my head could stop. Some days, I baked bread and other days I read. Often, I used that time to outline a draft for the book reviews I wrote for the paper. There were days that called for an afternoon of vegging in front of Turner Classic Movies or working on an art project and others that required that I lapse into a coma with the baby monitor right next to my face...so that I could catch up on lost sleep. I remember afternoons padding round the silent house and stopping in the nursery doorway to hear them breathing...faces flushed and bodies limp. I felt the house breathe right along with them.

An afternoon that granted me two-and-a-half hours of peace was a great day, indeed. Three hours was a miracle and it meant I would be less likely to develop multiple-personality disorder by 7 p.m. when the moaning of the damned began it was time to repeat the eating/bathing/reading litany over again...only this time it was with very tired and cranky children.

Our house is quiet during the day, but now it's because they're at school. It's been many years since I had anyone young enough (or willing) to take a nap, yet I find myself occasionally standing in the doorway of their rooms and taking in the silence. And there are days that I find myself only a little suprised that their beds aren't occupied by a tiny body who is resting up before rising once again and holding out his arms for me to pull him back into my world.

I miss that.