Call Me Carol

After two and a half days in the house and at least one more ahead of me, I had to take a breather late Sunday afternoon.  I took Liam to the doctor then administered a round of Advil to keep his fever in check; then I told Bill I had to get out for a while.  I said I was going shopping – because I didn't know what else a mother does spur of the moment on a Sunday afternoon when she proclaims, “Enough!  You shall all survive without me for a couple hours!”  (I had showered that morning, so exercise was out of the question.) I went to the new Container Store, taking with me measurements of our three new bathroom drawers.  Their contents were chaos.  In the bathroom storage aisle, I perused the robust inventory for just the right stackable trays.  Voices of a man and a woman in front of me were getting louder.  “You want to talk about all your shit now?  You think I’ve got a lot!” decried a husband, too loudly, to his wife who was walking away from him.  Couples together over five years do not belong in an organizing store together.

As I tried to add tray widths together that would get close to the overall drawer width, a sweet lady picked up a piece of plastic with 24 holes in it.  “Oh, this would be nice on my vanity.”  I ignored her.  I was trying to add 8 + 8 + 3 1/2  – was that more than 19 ¼?  Or, maybe 6 + 9 +….  “Hmmm, do you think round ones would fit in the square holes?”  Well, you probably know that  saying as well as I do.  “I really don’t know.”  We were talking about lipstick.  She had a pretty shade of red on her lips.  “I wish I had one with me to test it out.”  Oh dear...  I felt that Carol Burnett glowering eye twitch and lip pucker setting in as I again loss track of my addition.

And my lip pucker was void of color.  And my purse was void of Elizabeth Arden, Clinique, and Estee Lauder tubes of color – round or square.  My dear, I don’t even have my Avon Care Deeply lip balm on me.  I gave it to my son as I left the house.  His lips are so dry from fever -- he thought the dead skin flaps were little wings sprouting on his lips.

Despite my annoyance at not being able to concentrate on simple addition while half-participating in this conversation, I stood up a little straighter.  This woman was asking my opinion about a lipstick tray.  I had succeeded.  The shower, blow-dry, and simple make-up application made me look more like a woman shopping and less like a tired Mom.  For a couple hours.

Until I went home and flopped down onto the couch.  Too tired to glower, twitch, or pucker.

Two ear tugs to Moms.

Sitting and Watching

Day 1 - Friday, Jan. 25th Ribbons of pink sunrise surround our house this morning.  Horizontal pinks line the sky and grow in intensity before giving way to the full glare of the morning sun.

That’s the background view out the window as I sit on the couch watching Liam.  At sunrise, he woke up screaming with a fever and a headache.  When I explained he had a bug, Liam wondered if it was a hot bug that landed on the top of his head.  When I explained he had a fever, Liam decided it was because he I had too many dreams in his head.

After giving him a dose of Tylenol, I sit and watch Liam.  Feeling his hot head.  Moving covers on and off.  Looking for any sign of a febrile seizure.  Realistic or not, that’s where my mind goes when fever comes into our house.

Will had a febrile seizure 6 years and 11 months ago when he was two, but I didn’t know that until we got to the hospital by ambulance.  I was at the kitchen counter, chatting away with my back to him.  When all was quiet behind me, I turned to see him slumped over in his chair.  I dialed 911.  I took him out of his chair and watched his lips turn blue.  His body was limp and I couldn’t feel his breath.  The quiet words “This is it?  I’ve lost him?” laced through my numb mind.

Then, I heard a firm voice say aloud, “No!  This is not going to happen!”  I did the Heimlich maneuver thinking perhaps he had choked on a grape.  I gave him a couple puffs mouth-to-mouth to make him breathe.  By that time, a police officer was at my door.  I opened the door from the floor where I was crouched holding Will, waiting to give him to somebody who could do more than I.  My neighbor arrived and arranged to get Bill from work to the hospital to meet me.  The ambulance arrived.  The paramedics were so calm, saying that he was responsive and coming around.  I didn’t see it.  I wanted them to whisk him out of my arms and make him better.

I sat in the front seat of the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  My body pulled taut, emotional armor.  My mind pleading with God.  I heard the paramedics calm again, saying he was still coming around.  I don’t remember much between that ride and the point where Will from the hospital bed hugged me and asked for the “fuzzy” oxygen monitor to be taken out from between his toes.  My body, emotions, and mind went limp.  Over the hump.  On our way to normal.

With a rotating 3-hour pattern of Tylenol then Advil, Will was fine a few days later.  However, I sat looking at the shadow of his blue lips for days.  Then the phone rang a week later and the voice of our adoption social worker was on the other end.  Linda... Will has a little brother, and Korea is willing to waive the age restriction for parents if you and Bill will raise the boys together.  My sobbing must have been confusing to her.

The call brought me out of a funk and left me with a feeling of ubiquitous webbing between Will’s seizure and bringing home his little brother Liam.  Had we passed a universal test?  Were there underpinnings of a gracious hand at work?

Day 4 – Monday, Jan. 28th

Blue gray sky puts a drab coating over the morning, sitting day 4 with Liam – still fighting a fever with alternating Tylenol and Advil every three hours.  Liam asks if I’m writing a story.

Yes.

Is it a mystery?

I smile, Yes.

The Color of Dirt

Between style and practicality, I am undoubtedly on the more practical side.  While coordinating a painting project at school a couple years ago, I answered the paint store question of “what color do you want?” with the phrase “the color of dirt.”  Not what is most soothing or most energizing, no my preference then was the color that will show dirt the least on the bathroom door. Planning our new kitchen is the closest I’ve ever been to choosing style over practicality.  And what I’ve learned is that Malcolm floor dirt is a shade of tan.  Indeed, the new wood floor which I specifically wanted stained dark walnut shows every piece of Malcolm kitchen dirt.  Consequently, it gets swept more often.

However, I lucked out on the countertop – one of the most painful, permanent decisions I made during the renovation process.  I couldn’t wrap my mind around what material or color.  I’m not a shiny, buffed granite kind of gal, but I needed something hearty that wouldn’t absorb liquids or require constant upkeep.  I found a piece of polished granite, took a picture of it, emailed the picture to Bill in China, got approval from China, ordered the granite, and ordered the shine to be removed.  It was honed to a dull, earthy finish and sealed for life.

Men built like Greek gods installed the 300 pound slabs, and the crumb angels sang.  It is the absolute color of Malcolm countertop dirt.  Take a look… see if you can find the dried pasta sauce, brown sugar, bread & potato chip crumbs, coffee and hot cocoa stains, and grape stems.  Normally, these remnants aren’t here all the time; I just stylized the granite a bit for this shot.  Really it’s ALL there.  Practicality and style harmonizing above the dark walnut floor.

4 Squares, 4 Squares, Flush

At 5:30 this morning, I wake up thinking about one thing I didn’t get done yesterday.  And that thought leads to one small question: Will “4 Squares, 4 Squares, Flush” fit on a small notecard?  Mom allowed three squares, so four at double-ply seems more than sufficient.  My boys should be so lucky. Mom doesn’t remember ever setting TP limits, and she laughed at my recall of that being a factual statement.  However, at last night’s meeting, nearly all of the women in my book club had the same experience growing up.  Our moms set clear limits as to how much toilet paper could be used.

Our brand new Kohler toilet can’t keep up with the current demand.  The plunger method only partially worked before Christmas.  Last week, well, I just wasn’t going there again.  Instead, I decided to talk to the toilet.  Even seeing 50 – 100 squares in floating blobs, I felt power supreme.  Me and my new toilet of less than 6 months.  Pushing that handle would have to work.  My final words before dialing Roto Rooter Saturday night: “No, no, no!  Don’t do that!”  And… it listened.  Peaking at near overflow.  I locked the door, pulled it shut, and scheduled an evening Roto Rooter appointment.

“Yeah, I see your problem.  Worst toilet on the market.  And it looks like you’re probably using Charmin too.  You need to get an American Standard and one-ply toilet paper.”

And, now, you need to unclog my toilet with your fancy auger.  $198 and 5 seconds later, my toilet worked like new.

Even if my 3x5 notecards don’t work, and I need to buy 5x8 notecards to make signs for the bathroom, they are cheaper than a new toilet to replace my new toilet.

Plus, if I don’t do this, how will my sons know how to set TP limits with their children?

And, with this new “4 Squares, 4 Squares, Flush” guideline, the necessity of hand-washing may be solidified.

Also, we can have a brief discussion of resource allocation; after all, $198 would buy a very big LEGOS set.  And that opportunity has gone.  Right down the toilet.

Yes, this potty talk is pure opportunity.

The Blizzard of December 2012

January 9th.  A blank page.  A half hour until posting time.  All in my head will take a few pages and more than a half hour to move from swirling stories and pictures to black letters formatted into words, sentences, paragraphs... a story. So, I start with swirling snow: The Blizzard of December 2012.

The Malcolms landed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on December 19th around 4:30 and the blizzard hit at 4:32 as we deplaned and rented a car.  It wasn’t a few snowflakes and then wind.  It was a wall of blizzard: blowing and snowing.  It shut parts of major interstates for nearly 24 hours and some gravel roads even longer.  This one was nearly a 48-hour weather event.

In the middle of the big blow, my wisp Will wanted to go out with his big cousin to a friend’s and build a snow fort.  They needed to walk a few blocks to a dead-end street where the plows pushed the snow into high mounds, after all that was the best fort building site.

It sounds silly, but I felt a tug that Obama referenced in Newtown: Our children are our hearts we send out into the world.  We were in a blizzard in Iowa.  Was I crazy?  Crazy for keeping him in?  Crazy for sending him out?  Out won… What an opportunity for a 9-year-old!   Bill and I gave the OK for Will to build forts in the middle of the blizzard under the wing of his cousin.   While my heart was frozen with the 40-mile-an-hour gusts of flying snow, Will’s heart was merrily pumping as he built with the big boys in the Blizzard of December 2012.  In the following days, the boys sledded, hiked drifts, built more forts, ate pounds of snow, and threw snowballs.   I think, like so many Iowans, we will remember the name of that blizzard.  And that bit of independence that came with it.

(Then there were the Blizzards of 2015!  Here is 50 Inches of Snow in Pictures.)

Happy Holi-daze!

Tis the season for decking the halls!

My snowmen are so darn cute framed in the little window by the fireplace…

But so darn naughty from the outside.

Pulling into the driveway yesterday morning, I gasped and momentarily wondered how a big white bum got pressed up against that little window…

Blue moon, harvest moon... and now the snowman moon.

Happy Holidaze!