Chasing Forever

Three boys are playing in our backyard, careening wildly back and forth through a garden sprinkler, cooling themselves on a hot summer day.

Brandon: "Hey, JayLEENA!" Because pretty much the worst diss you can lay on an almost 9 year-old boy is to call him a girl.

Jalen: "Whut up, BranDEE?" Because my son, he is skilled in the ways of right-back-at'cha.

Xavier trots by. Brandon and Jalen look at each other, racking their tiny brains….nothing…nothing...

Me: "XavierELLA."

100_0700

~~~~~

You know what is too funny? One of my carpool riders calls me "Zsa Zsa".

My daughter Macy's birthday is coming up next month, and I got this bright idea to make her a dvd containing old family photos, her baby pictures, and shots of her younger siblings that she barely knows, set to what (I hope) is an evocative soundtrack. Due to my constant companion scope creep, it has now turned into this huge job of finding, choosing, scanning, cropping, enhancing, importing, editing transitions, illeg@lly downlo@ding...OMG this is a lot of work…for both Macy and Ashley. It is a slow process, mainly because I have to fight Jalen "Runescape" and Risa "hannahmontana.com" off the computer each and every time I want to do something.

Let me tell you it is KILLING ME to look at all their baby pictures! I resist the urge to drive down to Chicago and do something bad to my ex.  I mean like placing a flaming bag of poo on his porch. What did you think I meant?

This dvd is sort of a peace offering, since I was admittedly not exactly "generous" in making family photos available to my ex back in the day. He was busy STEALING MY DAUGHTERS AND MY MONEY, I'm sure you understand. Divorce is like that. My daughters probably have never seen most of these images, and it is important. Who they are, where they came from.

Despite the girls ignoring us so well and for so long, I have to believe that they have enough of me in them, they must care a little bit. Somewhere deep down. WAY deep. And I will admit that a dark little spot in my psyche sort of wants to show out, let them see that they have missed out on as much as I have.

Bear in mind that it is entirely possible my ex will shanghai the dvd before she sees it and not let Macy have it at all. So I picked out a fly little outfit to send her, including camo pants, patent-leather Converse sneakers, a cropped hoodie, tank top and a handknit-by-a-friend skullcap. I am pretty sure she will like all that, anyway. It is just what I would wear if I were 15 years old with a flat tummy.

And it has plenty of oversized pockets for me to hide the dvd in.

~~~~~

I participated in a survey last week for A Certain Company, purely because I like their product and I wanted to let them know. It was not a long survey, like 10 minutes out of my life, no big at all. Today I got an email asking me to verify my email address and that I had won a $150 amazon gift certificate.

I was all "I'm so SUUUUUUURE I won a gift certificate."

But I did get a $150 gift certificate (which I spent up in 15 minutes)!  I bought some videogames --NBA Ballers Phenom and And1 Streetball-- for Jalen for his birthday, also a hip hop dance instruction video and some ballet books for Risa. Also a booster car seat --since we have been in non-compliance with the Wisconsin seat belt law since January 1-- And some video-editing software for me.

Nothing for Coach because he has already been spending too much money on chrome bells and whistles for his stupid new truck.

But FREE. I never win anything!

Sorry, I am just being Becky when I blatantly ignore all the rules of this meme:

1/ My (female) doctor yesterday told me I could "really carry off a wrap dress". In my dirty little mind she was totally telling me she liked my cans.

2/I could eat nothing but fruit ever again and be very, very happy.

3/I have become a recycling NAZI lately. I just can't bear what we are doing to the earth. My futuregrandchildren (and yours) may have to live on Mars or something.

4/There is some crazy work stuff going on right now that I wish I could share, but I can't, so I won't. Yet. OMG it is killing me.

5/I hate all the (sickening, constant) play Eva Longoria/Tony Parker are getting in the press. Who cares? Thank God the stupid Spurs won, hopefully it's over now.

6/When I'm really excited about something in a meeting, sometimes I will forget myself and loudly address a roomful of my co-workers as "HEY YOU GUYS!!!!"

7/We are starting to think about buying a house. Or building one. Or renovating a shitty one in a good neighborhood. The possibilities are endless.

8/I am getting a tattoo for my birthday. If anyone wants to design it for me…email me.

~~~~~

You're it: Cricket, Danielle, Gwen, Say, Dana, Kim, Nani, and Fish.

So we are off to Iowa for a funeral. Coach's uncle died of a heart attack unexpectedly last week. He had some health issues but he was only 52 years old. The men don't live long in my husband's family, I tell myself it is because most of them never had health insurance, and that this doesn't mean Coach will die young. Anyway, I am very sad. Tony was a sweet and fun (if a little perverted) dude. He will be missed.

Risatony

I had to buy a new dress for the funeral, all my black dresses have "been seen" far too many times. Coach helped me choose a nice frock at Burlington, but now I am afraid it is a little too dressy. Oh well. It's going to be 88 degrees and sunny, and I wasn't at all worried about the dress until I started thinking about my mother in law and how she always tries to ridicule me about what I'm wearing. Examples:

MIL: "It's nice that Coach buys you good jewelry…you just don't have to wear it all it at once dear."

Me: "Oh, this isn't all of it."

MIL: "I wondered why you were going to the club wearing your pajama pants."

Me: "Pallazo pants. JEEZ."

And my favorite:

MIL: "Remember, you don't have to wear your hair curly or get a tan, just because you married a black man."

Me: "O.M.F.G."

~~~~~

"They're all gonna LAUGH AT YOU…"

--Carrie's mom.

So this morning I am alone in the bathroom at work taking my morning dump (I know, but I start at 6:00am!) I had wisely chosen the perfect place for this sort of business, the innocuous 4th stall in a line of 10. Not the first stall, not the last, not the handicapped, so non-descript I'm almost invisible.

Mid-dump, the outer door creaks, heels click across the tile, someone has come in. Someone with big feet. Someone who, despite the nine other available stalls, SITS DOWN RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

I survived, but only thanks to a system of precisely-timed flushes. I wanted so badly to lay into girlfriend about her poor stall choice etiquette, but I couldn't think of anything I could say that didn't sound completely insane.

~~~~~

"Ours is a culture of pale skin, emotional repression, and discomfort pooping in public bathrooms."

--Plain Jane

Yesterday I took the entire day off and went on a field trip with my son. I was told there would be hiking and a scavenger hunt. I was assigned my son and two other nice little third grade boys to be responsible for. I guess I had happy visions of meandering throught the calm, beautiful woods identifying trees and picking up little bark and pinecones and stuff. The worst thing I imagined was getting startled by a snake. Or maybe finding (shudder) a tick on me.

We jumped aboard a yellow school bus and rode about an hour outside the city. Jalen and I sat together and did word puzzles to pass the time until we arrived at the very beautiful state park. We were told that the teachers were "cool with us exploring any trails we were comfortable with" and that if we wanted to we could tire the kids out on the "rock trails" and just "be back at noon". I think all my boys heard was "COOL WITH THE ROCK TRAILS!"

This is the description of the trail they selected and never asked me if I was comfortable with: "CCC -- A difficult, steep, climbing trail with stone steps on the south face of the East Bluff with many scenic views. .6 mile, approximate hiking time 1 hour." In case you missed that, it was an HOUR. To walk NOT EVEN A MILE. They should have added two more words: STRAIGHT UP. Then another hour coming down, which is weirdly much harder on the body than going up.

Becky is 41, sort of out-of-shape, and also extremely afraid of heights. I was so totally unqualified to chaperone this field trip I can't even tell you. Ten minutes in, I'm huffing, puffing, heaving myself up the side of a MOUNTAIN, my ankles screaming at me to sit my fat ass down already. About halfway up we met some crazy young rockclimbers, one of them was chillin' on a hammock suspended over a half mile of air (with a bunch of jagged rocks at the bottom). Turkey vultures were flying over our heads, threatening us with turkey vulture poop on the head.

At one point another (even more out of shape) parent chaperone whispered to me: "Somebody died here last month, I am not even kidding."

This is the kind of view that we had:

Devilsdoorway

(when I wasn't shoving the kids' faces in my bosom and shreiking "FOR GOD'S SAKE stay close to me! Don't you know that somebody DIED here last month!") Because nobody was dying on my watch, no way. They ban sandals in some schools, but here they think this kind of field trip is FINE. Wisconsin schoolchildren are raised badass.

When we got to the bottom we all gathered on tarps and ate our sack lunches. I have never been so hungry in my life, I don't think. We got back on the bus to head home, a few kids fell asleep on the ride back, and there was a fair amount of practical joking going on at their expense, but all in good fun. A little girl asked me no less than 6 times if I was Jalen's mother "for real?" JC on a tightrope get these kids some diversity classes or something. While Jalen was snoring on my shoulder I gleaned from talking with his classmates that my son is an amazing soccer goalie and that more of the little girls "LIKE HIM like him" than not. Not surprised at all by that, you should see his daddy.

A funny thing happened just after I got home. You are not going to believe this. I actually got that adrenaline high thing that I've heard tell about but never experienced myself. I felt so good, so alive, like I could do ANYTHING. This place is an hour away from my house so I won't be doing it again too soon, but I think I might actually look for some trails around my house to hike with my family...

I like hiking. Hell hath truly frozen over, now.

Check my daughter Macy, the incredibly gorgeous one on the left. I grabbed this photo off Ashley's MySpace page.

<deep shuddery breath>

She still hasn't cut her hair.  At least I have that.

Macy

Well she's walking through the clouds
With a circus mind that's running round
Butterflies and zebras
And moonbeams and fairy tales
That's all she ever thinks about
Riding with the wind.

When I'm sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It's alright she says it's alright
Take anything you want from me, anything
Anything.

I have been wanting to change my hairstyle for a long time.  I'm stuck for far too long in the 
squared off, Asian girl bob style that I never liked in the first place, but my husband insists 
is "me".  So I showed him the picture of a haircut I like:
    
    
    


    

        

    
            

        
                
        
            
            

                
Haircut
            
    
        
    





(saw it on Shear Genius, the stylist cut it with a hedge trimmer!) 
 
He immediately zones in on the fact that my bangs are not as long as hers, I have a 
widows peak, and her bangs are parted WAY over to the side.  He digs in and starts fingering (heh) 
my hair, moving my part and making the whole situation very static-y.  
He's all:   "See?  Your hair won't even look like the picture."  
And I'm all:  "Get your f'ing hands out my hair, YOU RUIN EVERYTHING."  
He sighs deeply.  "What you should do is... you should go get your hair cut How You Want, 
When You Want, Where You Want... that is what I think."
I didn't mean exactly like the picture.