a letter to the absent Chip

 

 

 

 

Dear Chip,

In the week that you've been gone, your son:
-Broke the cord to our internet wifi hotspot thingie by ripping it off the wall
-Tore up the carpet by the upstairs bathroom (piece by little bitty piece)
-Knocked over an entire (freshly pumped) bottle of breast milk
-Spilled a glass of water

Has tried to eat:
-My chicken and cheese enchiladas
-The brownie right off my plate
-His sister's cereal
-French fries
-Salted pretzel caramel ice cream
-My flip flops
-His sister's stuffed Piglet
-Several books
-A Costco magazine
-A dinner napkin
-A ballpoint pen
-The cat

Has NOT eaten:
-A single bit of the rice cereal I've been trying to feed him

He has also contracted a cold, wouldn't sleep very well, and generally continued to be charming and adorable.  In spite of himself.

He misses you.  As does his mother.  And sister.


This place just isn't the same without you,
me.

now with bow tie

After Max's frightening visit to the hospital in April, I felt compelled to flee the state with kids in tow.  Don't ask me for details of the solo-parenting flights to Salt Lake (a frightening blur), but the memories I'm left with are these---

A month of reveling in familial goodness
A month of my parents mugging on Alice and Max
A month of playing with cousins and visiting with our nearest and dear
A month of checking in with our dear Winston, checking on his amazing recovery
A month of fun and backyard play

And also this, Max's blessing day, with every single one of my siblings in attendance.  All of the cousins except for one (we greatly missed Taylor).

I was the perfect reason for Max to don infant formal wear.  He was very dapper.

It felt like we were swimming in an ocean of love.  We can't thank mom and dad enough for opening their home to us.  And the hugest of thanks to Kimmie, Steve, Curtis and their families for everything. 

I do so love this group of crazy people.

I'll do my thing and you watch your football

...directly quoting myself from just a few minutes ago.

'Tis the season for much football watching and football discussing and much much much reviewing plays with the DVR and much much much much much attempting to get me interested in the football on the screen.  I resist, naturally. 

One of my favorite football discussions in our house goes like this----
Whimsy: When is that going to be over?
Chip:  There's only ____ minutes (insert number here, could be anything like 9 minutes or 2 minutes or 27 minutes, etc) left in the ____ (quarter, half, game, etc).
Whimsy:  Which means that this will be on for another ____ minutes (wherein Whimsy does a quick calculation and multiplies whatever number Chip gives her by FIVE to account for the many inexplicable delays in this even more inexplicable game).


I sound awfully cranky about it, don't I?  I'm not really that cranky.  It's just the post-Christmas doldrums magnified by Intense Pregnancy Crazy, which is not a pleasant situation.  I also counted approximately how many Saturdays we have left before this baby makes his entrance into our world and HOO BOY if I had not already been feeling the nesting insanity then I am surely in the throws of it now.

You know the most shameful Nesting Crazy Thing I forced Chip to do last time around?  (this deserves all caps, as you'll see) I ACTUALLY MADE THAT POOR MAN CLEAN THE EDGES OF ALL THE BASEBOARDS WITH TURPENTINE...WITH (wait for it.....) A Q-TIP.  True story.  When I recalled that tidbit a couple of weeks ago, I laughed until I CRIED.  And then I gulped and realized that, at the time, it seemed a very reasonable suggestion (demand) to make in order to clean up any paint or glue splotches left over from installing our hardwood floor.  Which means that I am RIPE for some homebrewed CA-RAZY soon.

Stay tuned, I'll see what I can do about seeing through the fog and telling you all about it.

For now, I'm frantically cleaning out closets and inventing new projects for myself that have nothing to do with cleaning.  Nice.

Oh, and also: I'm working on a photo for you guys, but a photo requires me to pose in front of a camera and I haven't been doing a lot of that lately.  The closest I've come to that is when Alice put every hat she could find on my head, finished off with some fabric bags, called me a birthday cake and then asked me to take a picture of her creation.

For those of you who have been pregnant, what was the craziest thing you did in the throws of THE NESTING?




...Let me also add that today is my mother's birthday, and although this post has NOTHING to do with her or her birthday, I'd like to wish her a very happy one.  Filled with lots of cake and ice cream and time to do whatever she wants.  I would not recommend cleaning out closets, mom, more along the lines of naps and such.  Happy birthday, I love you.  I'm nuts and you should be very glad that you're not here with me right now.

celebrating chip's birthday in three easy steps

Step 1: A cake of requested frosting color.

(No really - this is what he wanted.)

Step 2: A cake of requested cake color.

(No really really - this is exactly what he wanted.)

Step 3: Enjoy.

a time capsule for the dark days

 I love stumbling through the archives of these pages.  Especially when it's been a rough day, a cranky day, a no nap day.

I love coming across reminders of bright spots that happened once upon a time.

These pictures are evidence of one such bright early autumn day - a day last week when all three of us escaped to the park to enjoy the last of Seattle's sunshine.

I made Alice laugh until she spit out a mouthful of Cap'n Crunch.

And after we had talked and whispered and laughed until our stomachs growled, we escaped for dinner on the water.

Watching dogs jump into the chilly waves as they chased water-logged sticks.

Alice and Chip took turns throwing rocks into those same waves.

And I counted myself lucky, so very lucky.

pulse

I remember the sound of running: the thwack thwack thwack of sneakers on pavement, my breathing working in syncopated measures.  I remember listening to passing sounds of lawnmowers, cars, the smack of a storefront door slamming in the distance - and I remember how these noises seemed to fill the spaces of my own running melody until it was a symphony of my own making.  And even later, when I'd walk through my front door exhausted and sweaty, the steady beat of that music worked its way into my life: something to live by, to breathe by--- a steady drum tattoo that kept time with the blood pumping through my veins, a rhythm I could call my own.

The rhythm of my life and ways has changed dramatically since those days of solo runs and eating chinese take-out in front of the television.

Those first six months of Life With Alice were so full of stops-and-starts, the search for some kind of drum beat that would work for us took far longer than I ever would have imagined.  And in the past three years, the beat itself has had to suffer through the small adjustments that all veteran parents know: teething and sickness and potty training and sleeping in a big-girl bed.

I'm not talking about a schedule.  This is not about a schedule.  I'm talking about the pulse of our lives, the measure of breaths we take as a collective we, the silent but palpable tick of our family's clock.

A month ago, Chip and I listened to little Polly's heart for the first time.  We waited while my doc maneuvered the doppler to first hear the strange sea sounds of my internal workings, and for a breathless few seconds worried when we couldn't find Polly's own beat.  But then it was there: a thumping steady badow-badow-badow-badow-badow at 155 beats per second.  The sound of it filled our senses with this very new rhythm, one we're already trying to work into the sounds that we know and love, knowing that it's going to change everything come some unknown day in March.

And now, after two months of having him as a daily presence in the house, Chip is going back to work.  It's a bittersweet experience for all of us: Alice will miss him something terrible, as will I.  And Chip, dear Chip---- I venture to say that he's making the biggest sacrifice of all.  I know that the rhythm we know will skip and stutter for a while, that it might suffer mindless abstractions of disruption while we look for new things that will work for us.

A change of routine.  A change of sound.  A change of method.  A change.  Lots of changes.

But I think if we try, if we have the faith to keep putting one foot in front of the other, we're going to find the music in it.  And it's going to be great.

   

through several lenses

Hello.  I am officially reporting from the other side of Operation Paci Removal.  It's a surreal view so far, and a little too soon for me to say much about it except that we all survived.

Including the fish (at least so far).

Each of us has some opinions about the fish.

A few of those opinions are shared:

1. The pineapple house is fantastic.

2. The tank needs some greenery (which, after these photos were taken, we went out and bought a small plastic plant that's just perfect).

3. Having fish is strangely entertaining.

4. Their food is smelly.

5. It's really hard to take a good picture of fish.

The rest of our opinions are best represented this way:

According to Alice:

According to Whimsy:

According to Chip:

According to the Fish:

on transitions and change: the view from the pacifier bowl

It is late Wednesday evening as I write this.  I am listening to Alice over the room monitor.  Her first night without a pacifier.

So far we have gone in there for trips to the bathroom (notice the plural), to find specific buddies (little Elmo, Grover), to answer questions, to take clothes off a buddie (it is unacceptable that Elmo go to bed in corduroy pants and flannel shirt), and to deliver a tiny book about cats that Alice is convinced she cannot sleep without.

During the last Alice pit stop, Chip decided to stay.  He is now hunkered down on her bedroom floor, hoping that his presence will soothe her into dreamland.

I don't think that Alice is the only one who really misses that paci.


- - -


We've been working toward this for months.  She hasn't been allowed to use one for more than actual sleep in a year.  And in the last six months, we've tapered off her even holding more than one at a time.  Meanwhile, I have been thinking hard about what motivates this girl, and after some serious deep thinking, I came up with FISH.  Which sounds weird, I know.  But she wants a pet, has wanted a pet to call her own for a long while.  And she's allergic to anything with hair.  So we have fish.  And you know, with enough build up and visits to the pet store: fish are EXCITING.

It turns out, according to Alice's parents, fish are also EXPENSIVE.  So expensive, in fact, that they can't be bought with money.  The pet store will only take paci's as payment.

Two days ago we bought a small fish tank and several fish tank accoutrements to Alice's liking.

And today, we walked into Petsmart, picked out three little colorful fish, and Alice paid for them with a bag full of pacifiers.


- - -


She named them Spoonjab (phonetic spelling), Annie, and Miss Hannigan.


- - -


After getting the trio set up in their new digs, we had a family picnic in Alice's room because she couldn't bear to be away from her new fish.


- - -


The reality of Life Without Paci hit dear Bean as soon as I was done reading her bedtime story.  When she asked for a paci, and I reminded her that they'd been left at the store, she sort of just looked.  Blinked.  And then said, "But I need something for my mouth!"


- - -


I usually resist writing anything when I'm still in the middle of it --- it's like trying to describe the ocean while swimming neck-deep in it.  The view obscured to a straight blue line, small bobbing things far off in the distance.

And it's just as true in this instance as in any: I can't tell you what it's like on the other side, only tell you that her pain and frustration and worry is real. 

Here's hoping for better nights to come.




How have you handled transitions at your house?  How long does it take you or your kids to get used to the change?  Have you ever gone back to an old way of doing things because the transition was too hard?

a brief note of explanation

I am interrupting this week of 'Ber Love for an underlining note about my displeasure with late July/August.

It started when we were on the Epic Summer Trek through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado.  First there was the obvious discomfort from all that traveling: the constant pressing drag of the unpack / sleep / repack / drive long tedious distances in a car with a three-year-old who has developed the fine art of being entertained by something for exactly three minutes before insisting for sumfing else, sumfing else please.  On top of this hot mess was the day leading up to leaving for the trip, which should have been full of laundry and packing.  Instead, there was an emergency run to Alice's doctor and the fantastically-timed diagnosis of walking pneumonia (both lungs, y'all).  When the doc handed me the prescriptions for the nebulizer treatment and the antibiotic, I should have noticed her shaking hand.  Shaking because when I got those prescriptions filled, our bill was in the TRIPLE DIGITS.  After insurance.  I am convinced, to this day, that that antibiotic was made with melted gold and the nebulizer could only have been manufactured using bits of ACTUAL DIAMONDS, because seriously---DUDE.

By the time we got to my parents' place we were happy to sort of melt into the woodwork.  But that was not to be, because we got a call from Amanda who had bad news.  She and her six-year-old Zander were looking in on the cats while we were gone, and because of all the time we'd spent doing a doctor visit and having prescriptions filled (paid by SIGNING OVER OUR HOUSE)--- we hadn't had a chance to give Amanda an actual key.  To the house.  But not to worry!  Of course!  Brilliant Whimsy just said HERE IS THE GARAGE DOOR CODE!  YOU CAN GET IN SO EASILY!  NO KEY NEEDED!  

Amanda's phone call was along the lines of, Um--- I can't get into your house.  I've tried the garage code about five times and it doesn't seem to be working.

And of course, no one has a key to our house.  Not a soul.

There was some discussion of overnighting a garage door opener to Amanda, or even the key on Chip's key ring.  That option was denied because it was Friday night and nothing was open, and even in the best of circumstances it would have been Monday before she'd get the package - leaving the cats without water and food refilled in six days.  

We ended up calling a locksmith, who met Amanda at the house Saturday morning and then proceeded to explain that he would be charging us over $300 to drill through our locks and get inside.

Um.

Chip talked him down to half that and then we just hung up the phone and gulped.

Meanwhile, Amanda watched him drill through our deadbolt, rendering it unusable.  She made plans to have her husband come over later to install a new deadbolt.  You know, so no one else could get inside the house.

This is a really long story to illustrate something along the lines of how tired we were of those kinds of surprises.  But there were several more in store.

Ten minutes inside Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, dear Alice Bean threw up all over the backseat of the car.  I didn't know it could come out of a person's nose like that.  That one ended in a four-hour detour of washing every article of clothing, fabric, and upholstery in our hotel parking lot.

There was the time that I got sick, also in Moab--- my body had the good taste to wait until very late at night, when Alice was already asleep in our bathroom, of all places.  I had the pleasure of attempting to deal with my situation a little more discreetly.  Inside the public hotel bathroom, downstairs.  AWESOME.

Then there was the small matter of Chip getting laid off when we were only one day from returning home.

A week later, our house presented us with a belated welcome home present: a broken hot water heater.  Replacing it, the only option.  The plumber quoted us $1,300.  Luckily, our dear friends Kate and Abram came through (yet again) with the far cheaper solution of doing it ourselves--- we bought the water heater, and Abram and Chip spent that Saturday installing it.  We were only out hot water for about 36 hours, which left me feeling immensely grateful for Modern Conveniences and Very Good Friends.

Since then, Chip has found a new job and things have normalized a little--- but we have had to buy a new lawn motor, replace a light fixture, install new shelves in Alice's room, and buy a replacement laptop for Chip.

Then, last night we got locked out of our house.  Not because of a broken garage door code - but because of a broken door knob, the one leading from the inside of the garage to the house.  Try as we might, we couldn't get it unstuck.  We finally got back inside thanks to some masterful window climbing by yours truly (helped by Chip's sturdy back).  

Later, standing in line at Home Depot as we purchased a new door knob fixture thingie (technical term), Chip rolled his eyes as I reminded him that August hadn't killed us.

Yet.



Truth is, somewhere inside all this misery is humor.  I think it's pretty funny, how everything sort of just happens at once like that.  At least in my life, for some reason, the misery is always dumped together in one moldy heap.  I think it's that way because it forces me to keep moving through it, to never stop and fully digest one part of it.  If I hold on to a single bad thing for too long, it will poison me from the inside out.  But the Revolving Door of Misery has this Zen gist to it--- that things come and go, ebb and flow, even in darkness.  August didn't kill me.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that the cooling days of September have something really great in store.
 

    

what to do with August

Here's the thing: after ten days of blog silence and countless stops and starts in writing, I've figured it out: I hate August.  Hate it.  There is a long drawn-out yuck to August that marinates my muscles until I can't move without feeling an August squish.  And it's gross.  Gross, I tell you.

I am sorry to all of you perfectly lovely people who celebrate a birthday in August, or (shockingly) profess to love this late-summer season of languor.  I wish I could join in the love, but I'm done being fake about it - I can't love this month, I don't love this month, and I'd like to be done with this month as soon as possible.

To that end, in the next week I am going to tick off the things that I do have to look forward to, once the drawn-out dog-days of AUGUST are behind me.  You know what this means?  NEW CREAMERY CONTENT.  I know, you're shocked.  And dubious.  Maybe even dubiously shocked, because this is coming from Whimsy, and Whimsy has been on the absent end of blogging lately.

We'll see.  This is my call to fall, my love letter to the coolish days of autumn that hold promise even on the very beginning fringes of September (first of my beloved 'Bers).  I don't think I could let the 'Bers down by not celebrating their very existence with little blog entries.

Tell me: what things do you want to hear from me?  Any special requests?  I'm open for requests, even in the lanky lunk of August.  Would you like to hear about upcoming sewing projects (I have some planned)?  Or how we celebrate September?  Or our favorite recipe for pumpkin bread?  Let me know, I'll see what I can do.

And because I'd hate to not give August one very well-deserved thank you: this terrible, no-good, uck of a month did give us this: a new job for my beloved Chip.  And job that will have him working LOCALLY, as in, home every evening and in bed snuggling with his very lucky wife.  Every night.  We couldn't be happier or more excited.  Thank you so much for all of your well-wishes and prayers, we felt the support and feel abundantly blessed.

and then you get up in the morning

The numbers run like this:

Twenty-three days.

Twenty-two nights.
Eight hotels.
Five states.
Two time zones.
Several dozen tanks of gas.
More fast food than a person should ever consume.
A pair of very happy grandparents.
One overjoyed Alice.
One brand new nephew.
Several family dinners.
One porch-viewed lightening storm.
A graveside visited and cried over.
Ashes scattered over one lazy curve of the Colorado river.
More hours than were meant to be counted in a car.
Precious handfuls of time spent with the parents.



How many memories were collected in the pages of my mind to be pored over when the sun is not so bright, when time has spent itself, when I am closeted away in the dark winter?



We are home, and so happy to be here. But just one day before reaching our dusty porch, in one last night spent away from familiar bed and roof, one last surprise waiting for us: dear Chip was laid off, part of a corporate restructuring of which Chip wasn't the only casualty--- there are a lot of fancy words used to describe it, words that have become far too familiar for so many of us of late.



But new challenges await us, this is something I know. We have each other, and we have faith. There is beauty to be found even in these pavement cracks. I've laid low for this many days, collecting my thoughts and coming to a place where I am able to share these words with you. In the meantime, life beckons. The days roll on. Alice is growing and wanting more of me to stretch her mind and lengthen the reach of her understanding. She reminds me that even when the daily foundation of my life seems destined to quake - even when I feel like the planet should stop spinning for an hour while I try to catch my breath - even when everything is changing and I can't hold on to a sliding bit of it---- the days still shift and turn, the sun goes down, night noises descend on the house and sleep--whatever small bit of it--comes. And then you get up in the morning.

life in snippets, and having something to do with sand

We spent all day Saturday and all day Monday outside in the sun, building planter boxes and a sandbox. (Well, Chip built planter boxes and a sandbox. I painted. And wrangled a three-year-old.) In all that time, I didn't get a stitch of sunburn. Not a bit.

I spent 45 minutes in the front yard with Bean yesterday evening, and managed to burn the backs of my arms, my neck, and bits of my back - through my shirt, mind you.

- - - - - - -

We believe there is a conspiracy of Sand Box Sand Sourcing Companies to jack up the price of sand. Because SERIOUSLY.

- - - - - - -

I always thought that two was the Age of Getting Dirty, and somehow we'd sidestepped it. But it turns out, the Age of Getting Dirty, Really Really Dirty, is three. And we are rolling in it, people. I'm talking two and three clothing changes a day because I won't let her back in the house and up on the furniture when I can't tell the color of her pants for all the dirt.

Which was the origin of the sandbox: if she wants to be playing in organic matter, why not give her SAND instead of plain old DIRT?

- - - - - - -

In the grand scheme of things that Chip and I might have discussed over the weekend, some of those possibly were---- the sandbox sand pricing racket, the moral implications of a midnight run to the beach wherein a person (or persons) could liberate some of the perfectly available, and yes, FREE sand, and different methods for covering a sandbox to keep poop-burying creatures from turning a brand new sandbox into the neighborhood outdoor toilet facility. I'll let you guess which of those conversations took place more than once, each for an unseemly amount of time. Hint: there are a lot of details to plan for a fictitious midnight beach run.

because he saves my life

There are weekends that pass by in a slogging haze of work and chores and too many commitments. There are weekends that fly past because they are jam packed with fun: too much fun, with sticky fingers and giggling and fizzy drinks that you wouldn't normally consume except during a weekend of big top happiness. There are weekends that droop around a person in a murky clinging fog. Gray weekends and pink weekends and weekends of stripes. They exist. I know they do, because I've lived them.

This was not one of those weekends.

But although I'm not going to talk about what kind of weekend it was, exactly, I'm going to tell you this: there were moments--- excruciatingly painful moments, when I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I worried and wondered and wanted more than anything to feel confident about the next moment to come.

It wasn't the best breeding ground for good communication with Chip. In other words, I was sensitive and cranky and let's just say it: a bit on the crazy side.

It was in some of the worst most crazy-making horrific moments when Chip would reach out to me, take me into his arms, and hold me.

There are weekends when you feel as though the very laws of gravity don't apply to you, and everything you own, everything you are, your very existence is going to fly off into the atmospheric void leaving nothing behind but a dark smudge. If you are very very lucky, those are the weekends when someone is there to hold on to you and keep you grounded in safety.

And I am that lucky.

I love him for so very many reasons. But above all, I love him best because he saves my life.

on bruises

This was Chip's gift to me: an away place, a place detatched from memory, a place to think, a place to be quiet.

I don't know why exactly, but there is something bruised deep inside of me. It's like those mystery bruises that show up on my shins from time to time: unbidden and unremembered, I'm only aware of them later when I go to kneel down in front of Alice --- to tie her shoes or straighten a hair ribbon --- and as my knees hit the floor there is a sharp stab of pain, the blossom of purple staring quietly from my skin.

A soul bruise of unknown origin. Invisible, but felt at odd times - most especially when I'm reaching into that place to share something of meaning here. The aching pain, the stab of tenderness. It's why I shy off, time and again, from writing anything real.

I talk about our days, skirting the abyss with photos of Bean. Her face is a star, the winking silver drawing my mind away from anything that stings.

And Chip: my confidant, my best friend, my protector and husband. He brought me to this place as a gift. Even when I couldn't find words to tell him about the bruise, he noticed my shift in demeanor, how a smile doesn't stay long on my face, how I spend extended moments in the studio, how I say that I keep hoping for peace.

It wasn't long after I told him that I was glad I couldn't hurt a sewing machine - that I couldn't say the wrong thing or misunderstand a piece of fabric; it wasn't much later that he told me he was going to Lake Chelan and wanted us to come with him. A short trip, he said, but a beautiful one. A little vacation, he offered, for quiet thinking.

So that's what it is. And that's what I've done.

There's a bruised and painful place inside of me. It's tender near my heart; so tender I can't quite face it, can't put my fingers on that place for fear that I will pass out from the pain.

When Alice hit her head a few weeks ago, the bump rose on her forehead: angry red and deep purple. In the days that followed, she watched the geography of her face change and kept asking me about it. I gave her the name for it: bruise, just a bruise, honey. And I promised she could watch it go away if she gave it enough time. The purple mark turned dusky gray and yellow: so ugly she worried that it was mad at her. But in another week, and then two, and then three--- it faded. The rise of skin, the smudge of injury: gone. Only her perfect ivory skin in its place. I caught her touching the place just yesterday. She put her fingers over the spot and made faces at me in the bathroom mirror. Look Mommy! It's gone! It was just a bruise- and now it's gone.

Which is what I tell myself now: just a bruise. I will give it time, some space, an occasional viewing in the mirror. Just a bruise. In no time, I'll be just fine.

polandroid to the rescue

.

Yesterday in pictures, driving to Eastern Washington with Chip for a brief visit to Lake Chelan.

Apple orchards and rolling green hills.

A hotel right on the lake.

We've been promised 65+ degree days.

I'm thinking we're in for a nice time.

I'll let you be the judge.

word economy

It was called word economy. A term for using only the words necessary to describe an action - a term for editing the extra verbiage, an abbreviated way of telling us to use less words. We used the term in high school debate, when time was short and the volume of ideas was encompassing. Word economy: say what you mean, but only use the most necessary statements to do so.

When I think back on last week, this past weekend, word economy comes to mind. The quiet celebration of Bean's birthday in a blur of cake and presents (A TRICYCLE) and the occasional necessary couch lay-down for Chip, punctuated by the sound of both Chip and Alice's coughing.

Around Saturday morning I started to feel the telltale pressure in my eardrums, the growing weight of sinus pressure in my head. I refused to acknowledge the approaching Storm of Sick, knowing that Chip would be leaving early Monday morning for a week-long business trip. Oh how I dread being sick and incapacitated during stints of solo parenting.

Word economy. I used that on Sunday when the Storm of Sick circled our house in one vast cloud. Best to not talk about it at all, really.

So we approach this week with hope and few words, though I have some saved up for longer posts in the days to come.

And these words, most economic of all:

Beautiful.

Just beautiful.