You would have been two years old today.
I’ve been thinking for the past few days about what I would write in this post, and I sort of had an idea in my head. Then I woke up this morning and read what your mom and dad wrote for you, and I realized that I’ve got nothing.
So I’ll just say that Maddie, we all miss you, and love you very much. The world is a better place because you were here, even though it wasn’t long enough. Not nearly long enough.
We’re having a lot of fun with the in-laws, except for the fact that Dave and I seem to have come down with whatever cold Catie had last week. So we wake each other up coughing all night, and I’m losing my voice. Good times.
Of course, this is in keeping with our tradition that it is impossible for my in-laws to come for a visit and not be felled by some sort of plague or accident. Seriously. Let’s recap:
1.) Their first visit, December 2007 – we all came down with the flu.
2.) Second visit, December 2008 – Catie wound up in the hospital with a major asthma episode.
3.) Third visit, March 2009 – My mother-in-law fell in the grocery store & wound up in the ER with a concussion.
So, you know, by comparison, Dave and I being sick is not a huge deal. It could be worse. Lord knows it has been in the past.
But, since I’m feeling cruddy and hacking up a lung here, let me leave you with this (short, less than a minute) video of Catie telling the story of the 3 Little Pigs. Because it cracks me up everytime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLXTLI0otYwYou can also hear just how awful my voice is. It’s totally hot, right? Blargh.
Forgive the quick entry, I only have a few minutes to type this up.
1. My in-laws are coming today! Catie is super-excited and keeps saying, “Grandma and Grandpa Roger are coming to see ME!” With her hand pressed to her chest for extra “ME!” emphasis. Yes, sweetie, they are. And now excuse Mommy while she panics and tries to clean the whole house from top to bottom.
2. I’m not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I thought it was fun in previous years, but with the visit from my in-laws and my entire family coming for Thanksgiving, there’s just no way on earth that I’m going to have time.
3. Halloween was so much fun! We went over to Cat & Tony’s neighborhood so the kids could trick-or-treat together. Catie had so much fun getting to hang out with her cousins, I think she’ll be talking about it until next Halloween.
And since I have to get to my last-minute frantic clean-up-a-thon, here are some of my favorite pictures from Halloween. The whole set is here.
Subtitle: How Facebook F’ed Up My Day, Again
In 1999, I met a guy. His name was Stowe. He was a bouncer at a bar, but he wasn’t at all like your average bouncer. He was a big guy (6’3″), but he had sort of an intellectual, nerdy look about him. I saw him across the room and immediately liked his face. I commented to my girlfriend that I thought he was cute, and it turned out that she knew him (he was friends with her boyfriend), so she introduced me. We talked a little – it’s hard to talk in a loud bar, plus he was supposed to be working – but he asked us to hang around and go get breakfast with him after the bar closed… at 4 a.m.
My girlfriend left. I waited for him.
We started dating immediately.
The odd thing was, we started dating in July, but we both knew from the get-go that our relationship had a pre-determined shelf life. At the end of August, I was moving to Wisconsin, and he was moving to Chattanooga to go back to college. So we never officially broke up, we just ended it when we both had to leave town. We saw each other a few times over the next few years. Weekend visits here and there, that kind of thing.
During my many single, lonely years (read: before I met Dave), I would fantasize about how if only we both lived in the same town… but we never did. And really, who knows if things would’ve worked out if we did live in the same town? I kind of doubt it. We never went through any true relationship trials because there was never a chance that it would turn into anything long-term.
We’ve stayed in touch off and on over the past few years. The last time we talked, it was after I moved to North Carolina. We had an IM conversation, he mentioned that he had relatives in the Raleigh area and he might come visit me the next time he was in town visiting them. I joked that I was sure my husband would love that idea. And he talked about his car collection. I teased him for being the douchebag who was all about cars. He laughed it off. I think he liked it when I gave him a hard time like that.
The new Facebook layout has a section where they list friends who you haven’t talked to for a long time, and suggest that you get back in touch with them. I saw Stowe’s name there, so I clicked on his profile just to see what he’s been up to lately. And it turns out, he died a few months ago.
I was stunned. I saw all of these “Rest in Peace, Stowe” messages on his wall, and I was confused. I thought maybe it was some elaborate practical joke and I just didn’t get it. So I googled his name and found his obituary. I have no idea how he died. He was 35 years old.
I don’t want to get all shmoopy and romantic about an ex-boyfriend here, because I don’t think it’s appropriate. But I just wanted to use my little space here to say: Stowe, you were a really great guy. I honestly did love you for a tiny moment there. I’m sorry I wasn’t better about staying in touch more often. And I’m really going to miss you. I hope heaven has a chess club.
I’m always a little bit careful of what I write here because there are a lot of people who know me in real life who read this blog. I wish I could be one of those bloggers who just pours their guts out into their posts and lays it all out there for the world to see. I’ve even thought about having a separate anonymous blog where I could do that. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. And really, there’s very little that I have to keep private. Certainly not enough to populate an entire separate blog.
So, this might get me in trouble with people who know me in real life, but I’m not sure I care anymore.
Almost exactly 13 years ago, I met the girl who became my best friend. I was living in a dorm on campus and was sick of dorm life. I found an ad in our school paper; two girls were renting a three bedroom house off-campus, and they needed a third roommate. I met them and liked them immediately, and decided to move in with them.
Of my two roommates, one of them was a little odd, but the other girl? She and I bonded, like, fast. We lived together for the next 3 years, until I moved to Wisconsin. After that, though, we still stayed in touch all the time. We talked on the phone, emailed, and flew out to visit each other whenever we could.
I don’t even know how to sum up here what she’s meant to me over the past dozen plus years. She was the one who taught me how to flirt with guys. She took me to my first gay dance club. She turned me into someone fun who knew how to throw a good party instead of the awkward wallflower I had always been. But there was more to it than the fun stuff, we also supported each other through a hundred different rough phases in our lives. And our friendship stuck even as we got older and more settled in our lives. I had two bridesmaids at my wedding: my sister was one, she was the other.
Things have been strained between us for the past couple of years. I had a falling out with a mutual friend of ours, which caused her to feel stuck in the middle. Then I went and had a baby, while she was still single, which was hard because we couldn’t relate to where the other person was. (Example: When Catie was 4 months old, she wanted me to go out dancing with her and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to stay out until the wee hours. Meanwhile, Catie was still sleeping in 3-hour stretches and I couldn’t fathom anything I’d rather do less with my exhausted post-partum ass than get dressed up and go out on the town.)
Then she started dating a guy who I didn’t particularly like, and she married him. He’s not a bad person, and I was glad she was happy, I just didn’t “click” with him and it made it hard to hang out with her if he was around. Her wedding was hard for me because the ex-mutual friend was her maid of honor. That hurt my feelings, that she asked this person I hate to be in the wedding and not me. I mean, I’m not huge on wedding-y stuff and I don’t really have any desire to be a bridesmaid, but still. It hurt. I admit it. And then she got mad at me because apparently I was so focused on avoiding my ex-friend that I inadvertently also ignored my friend (the bride). So there were hurt feelings on both sides, and it made things harder.
That was about 6 months ago. I guess I just thought that we were going through a rough phase, but that eventually we’d come out of it. And last week I realized that no, this is just how things are now. I no longer have a best friend. The truth of this fact smacked me in the face last week when she did something huge and life-changing – I won’t get into the details here, it’s not my place to share her business – but it was something that required months of forethought and planning, and something that I could’ve totally related to her about if she had chosen to share it with me. But I knew absolutely nothing about it until after the fact, when she announced it as her Facebook status update. A lot of other people knew in advance – and of course the ex-friend flew out to stay with her for a week during this transition phase, which stings even more – but I hadn’t heard a peep from her about it. I didn’t even know this change was on her radar.
My heart is broken. I keep reading this post by Dawn, and the realization that I used to have the kind of friendship she’s talking about there, but I don’t anymore? That’s a pretty freaking empty feeling right there.
And it’s not to say that I don’t have any friends, because of course I do. I have Dave, I have a fabulous family that’s the best support system anyone could ask for, I have a few semi-close friends in real life, and I have an amazing group of Internet ladies (y’all know who you are) who are brilliant and hilarious and who actually seem to “get” me. But there’s something about that connection with that person who’s known me since I was an awkward 20 year-old junior in college, and who has this intense and complicated history with me. And it’s gone. And it’s making me cry. A lot.
I know I don’t usually get all deep on you here, and I’m sorry for this post being sort of a downer. I promise to get back to telling funny stories about my kid, or talking about flu shots or recipes or whatever-the-hell very soon. I just needed to get this out of my system.
When I was little, I thought that my grandparents lived really far away. In reality, of course, that wasn’t the case at all. I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. My dad’s parents lived in Meridian, MS, about 80 miles away. My mom’s parents were in New Orleans, which is about 200 miles from Jackson. Both sets of grandparents were a road trip away.
In hindsight, we saw them relatively frequently. Holidays were generally split. We spent Christmas with my dad’s parents – which I guess is fair, since my dad is an only child and we were his parents’ only grandchildren; my mom, on the other hand, is one of seven, so there were plenty of grandkids around during the holidays for her folks. A couple of days after Christmas, we’d go to New Orleans and usually stay there through New Year’s.
Flash-forward, and now I’m an adult with a child of my own. And Catie’s grandparents genuinely are far away. My parents are still in Mississippi, which is a good 800 miles from here. And Dave’s parents are in England. Both sets of grandparents require airplanes to visit, not short little road trips.
We’re lucky that Mags (Dave’s mom) has been able to come over for a few visits. But Catie has a granddad (Dave’s dad) who she’s never met. Heck, I haven’t even met my own father-in-law either, and Dave and I have been together for over five years. He & his wife haven’t ever come to the US, and Dave and I have never gone over there – which was first because of problems with Dave’s visa, and later because we had a new baby, and then we just couldn’t afford it with the move. There was always a reason that stopped us from going.
Now, though, Dave has a green card so he can freely leave and re-enter the country (hooray for that!), and we aren’t quite as broke as we were a year ago. So, we’re going to England for Christmas. Actually, we’re going for more than that – we’re flying out on December 11th, and we won’t be coming back until December 28th. Seventeen days. Hopefully that will be enough time to see all of Dave’s family, make a touring visit of his friends who’ve spread out all over the country, and also do some sightseeing, since I’ve never been to England before. How sad is that? I’m 33 years old, and this will be the first stamp on my passport (because they don’t stamp it when you go to Canada).
Obviously, we’re all really excited. It’s going to be weird for me because I’ve only spent one Christmas away from my family in my entire life, but I’m also really looking forward to this trip because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
I emailed Dave’s parents yesterday to let them know we’re coming, send them copies of our flight itineraries, etc. Dave’s mom of course is thrilled; she and her partner, Roger, will be coming over for a visit in a couple of weeks, but she’s like any other grandma in wanting to get as much Grandbaby Time as possible, so she’s very happy. And Dave’s stepmom emailed me back to say that when she told Keith (Dave’s dad) that we’re coming, he got choked up and teary. He’s beyond happy that he’ll finally get to meet his only grandchild. Of course, hearing that he teared up made me all misty, because that’s just so damn sweet – and, well, also because I’m a big wuss.
And honestly, I’m feeling a little bit guilty that we haven’t made more of a concentrated effort to go there sooner. There probably was a time when we could have gone to England, and we didn’t. I guess neither Dave nor I truly realized how important it is to them. I think that in the future we’ll have to work harder at that.
I had an idea for a blog post in my head, but then Catie got this stuffy nose that woke her up (and hence, woke me up) no less than six times last night, and now I can’t remember what I was going to write about. So until I get a decent night’s sleep and get my brain back, here’s some other stuff that may (or might not) interest you.
First, I had a post published over on Aiming Low! It’s something that I wrote three years ago, back when we were trying to get pregnant with Catie. Anyway, I love the ladies who write over there, they are a freaking hilarious group of women, so I’m honored to have my little guest post featured as part of their Three Day Weekend series.
Second, since I have no brain today, here’s another round of “Cute Things My Kid Has Said/Done Over the Past Few Days.” With pictures!
1. The Fashion Consultant
Catie’s recently become fascinated with playing dress-up, which is something she’s typically been indifferent about in the past. She suddenly has very big opinions about what she’s going to wear each day, which is also sort of a new development. I knew this was coming eventually, but it’s still surprising when it actually happens.
And then there’s the mimicking of the things that I say. The other day, she ran her hand down my chest, and said, “Mommy, I love this shirt on you.” Like she’s my own personal Tim Gunn or something. And it’s totally the kind of thing I say to her when she gets dressed in the morning, it just sounds doubly hilarious when someone three feet tall says it back to you.
2. Halloween
This is the first year that Catie has picked out her Halloween costume. And she picked a dinosaur.
I cannot say how happy this makes me. I know that she most likely will have a princess phase, and that’s fine. I’ll deal with it when the time comes. But I’m also happy to put it off as long as possible. For now, I love that she has this balance of the super-girly – like, she adores pink and purple, she picks out clothes that have butterflies and flowers and hearts all over them – with the regular kid (or stereotypically “boy”) stuff. Like, she loves Thomas the Tank Engine, she has a weird sort of obsession with lizards, and when presented with aisles full of girly Halloween costumes – princesses, fairies, and ballerinas – she picks the dinosaur.
(FYI, the dinosaur costume looks great over yellow flowered PJs with a hot pink hat and mittens, and furry brown winter boots.)
And for those of you keeping track, last year she was a spider.
And the year before that, her first Halloween…
…she was a cat. My mom made that costume. And that picture still cracks me up to this day.
3. Social Butterfly
We’ve been going for walks to explore our new neighborhood. She likes the new playground here a lot.
It’s about ten-minute walk each way, although it’s more like 20 minutes going at a two year-old’s pace. There’s also a pool there, which is closed for the year; it’ll be fun next summer.
What amazed me was that one day when we went out for walk, we passed a group of kids (maybe 8 or 9 of them) that were playing freeze tag in their front yard. Catie ran over and said, “Hi, kids! I Catie!” And she just joined in the game. Of course she has no idea how to play freeze tag, but she ran all over the place with them and had a great time. She found two little girls (who were both a lot older than her; I’m guessing one was around 7, the other was probably 10) and she was holding their hands as they ran within about five minutes.
It’s just astounding to me, I don’t know that I was ever that brave when meeting new kids when I was little. I hope she keeps that ability and doesn’t get shy as she gets older. Because I think it’s awesome.
I think she’s pretty awesome, too. You know, not that I’m biased or anything.