family

Speak Too Soon. Invite the Jinx.


I spoke of giving up blogging in my last post because I wonder what good it is doing me any more and what I could possibly have left to say that might interest anyone. It’s not as though I, or my life, is all that interesting. But just when I thought I didn’t need the cathartic outlet that is my blog at its essence, my sister-in-law shows up at our home – four days later than she originally planned and with intentions of staying for a week. Did I mention she dragged – literally – her seventeen and thirteen year old children with her? No? Well, she did.

I like Shannon. I do. She can carry on quite the conversation and is very polite (aka Canadian), but she is in her seventh year of widowhood and stuck beyond even the most generous standards of grieving. Many of our conversations have centered around grief even when they started out about something else. Being problem solvers, both Rob and I have countered her at every turn with solutions to her fixed position – which she claims to not be happy with by the way – but for every solution, she remains attached to the problem like velcro. It’s exhausting in a way that reminds me of my time on the widow board.

Today, I escaped to the gym and then after lunch (did I mention they sleep til lunch?) I absconded with Katy to the library and to shop for groceries. In my absence, she decided to drag the teens to the mega-mall that is about a 45 minute drive from here. Upon my return with my raccoon-eyed child (teens make noise that intrigues and keeps five year olds up way past bedtime), Rob assures me that we will never have company over the holidays ever again and while I am being mollified, his sister calls to let him know her car has died. The night she arrived, she told us that the vehicle had been leaking anti-freeze for some time but she just took care of this by constantly refilling it. So, the anti-freeze was gone and the car wouldn’t start. Rob bundled up and went to fetch them and tow the car back. It was 8:30 by the time we had supper. Katy was beyond tired and nephew and niece were still wearing the stunned looks that I imagine overtook them when they realized that coercing their mom to take them home before the weekend wasn’t in the cards anymore.

My sister-in-law has taken to her bed. Our guest bed. I haven’t seen her at all. Rob says she does this.

It was easy to deal with widows who refused to help themselves when they were on the other side of the ethernet. I hit the ignore button. Now I have one in my basement. God help me.

Time Flies


Not literally and yet literally, time flies. And it’s not about fun either. I am not always having fun. The dishes, the laundry, the child, the cat, the groceries, the miscellaneous errands. The care and maintenance that goes into the all of the aforementioned can run a considerable range up and down and around the old fun meter. There are my various physical activities (running and swimming) and mental activities (my novel, the blog, attempting to keep up with the world of literature and the news of the day – although sometimes I don’t get to today’s news until tomorrow). I have written about this before but I just run out of time, nearly every day it seems.

As I sit and type this, I can hear and feel the roof shuddering because Rob is out back in the pitch dark building a new gable over the kitchen window box because the roof is leaking and it’s pretty much winter here now. And he hasn’t time either and I don’t need to wonder why or how this happened. We merged our lives and doubled everything essentially but the time we are alloted.

So, the novel is over 31,ooo words and 108 pages and I am certain I will hit the 50,000 within a week but I will likely not be done. More like 3/4ths done. I have discovered however my novel writing style, which as I suspected it would be, is not a start at the beginning and write to the end; but more of a have a good idea where things go and write as the ideas germinate whether that is starting in the middle or rearranging chapter order as you discover that you wrote chapter 11 when it should be chapter 2. My writing is more and more consuming time. I am becoming of those people who sit in waiting rooms with their laptops open and pounding away.

Tomorrow I promise to blog more topically but tonight I am tired and there is a novel calling and a hay fever attack subsiding and my husband is back inside to be snuggled up to. Time just continues to fly by.

Happy Halloween


It’s been a full day. Katy has been in her Dancing Princess costume since 10AM and as I type this Rob and Katy have been home once to get a bigger bad for her “collection taking” (and to drop off our cat who has followed them up and down the street playfully attacking swinging goody bags and trying to gain entry to our neighbors homes when they open their doors).

Katy’s new school is not like the one she attended back in Des Moines. My old school district was very careful with Halloween, as they were with all holidays. Never acknowledging by name. No parties. No costume parades. In fact, the city of Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs neutered the holiday long ago by refusing to allow it to be held on the 31st and changing its name. They referred to it as Beggar’s Night and with the exception of only one year in the twenty that I lived there, it was always held on the 30th for two hours. This was supposed to cut down on vandalism and maybe take some of the “satanic” taint away from it. I find it ironic that Halloween is thought to be a holiday of evil. It’s druid origins have more to do with acknowledgment of the departed than the calling up of demons, which is actually Christian nonsense anyway.

I volunteered to help out in Katy’s class again today. It was fun. The kids from all the grades gathered in the gym. We sang – okay, they sang – O Canada and then each class got to parade across the stage to show off their costumes. Katy’s teacher had an assortment of party stations waiting for them back in the room, and we helped the kids make Mardi Gras type masks and decorate those tiny “pumpkins” and make tracings of familiar Halloween images like bats and ghosts which they labeled themselves.

Katy was so impatient to get out a trick or treat tonight. She decided that Rob should take her because he couldn’t be trusted at home with the candy. Katy was sure he would eat most of it before anyone could come knocking for it. I don’t think he would have. Eaten all of it that is. Some would be a given though.

After they returned, we set out for the bookmobile as Wednesday night is library night. Rob, me, the little dancing princess and our cat tagging along. We probably made a very heart-warming sight and looked quite the nuclear perfect family. Little would anyone guess where we all were at just a year ago, though I don’t like to make those comparisons. I didn’t decorate this year because Rob isn’t ready for tombstones in the front yard, even if they aren’t real, but I was ready in a way. I listened jealously to my best friend describe the haunted house that our Jaycees friends build every fall to raise money for charities. Will and I fell in love while building one in the fall of 1998 and shared our first kiss in the shower scene I created. There amidst the splayed body in a tub full of blood with spooky music in the background and strobes blinking was were it all began for us. Couldn’t have been anymore romantic. And those memories are good ones. Decorating and remembering creations past feels okay these days. There are things that don’t come back. Priorities change and continue to evolve for some time after the loss of a loved one. It’s inevitable and probably not a bad thing at all. Some people go the whole of their lives without ever given a second thought to how they live their lives and in my opinion that doesn’t make them luckier than I am.

So, Happy Halloween, my friends.