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Sunday, June 28th, 2009
First of all, I think that is my longest post title ever. This is part two of a three part series on our vacation to Ireland.
Part Two: Castles and Cottages and Cliffs, Oh My!
I neglected to mention in the first installment that the framework of our trip was this: fly into Dublin, rent a car and drive around the southern half of the country, stopping for the night here and there, and loop back to Dublin for a final night before flying out the next morning.
In the middle part of our trip, we stayed two nights in Cork, the second-largest city in Ireland. We didn’t actually spend much time in Cork itself, except to sleep and eat one pizza dinner. Our hotel was a former hospital/nursing home built in the late 1800s, so it had a cool The Shining-esque vibe in the halls (which I loved because The Shining is my favorite scary movie).
This was the cheapest hotel room we stayed in, and yet it was just as nice as the rest and probably my favorite of them all. We walked in expecting something kind of small and dank for the cheap price, and were instead greeted with golden “magic hour” light through enormous arched windows.
By the way, that pre-sunset golden gorgeous time occurred around 9 p.m. in Ireland. We were amazed at how long the daylight lasted - day broke at about 4:30 a.m. and the last light didn’t fade from the sky until after 11 p.m. I think these long days added to the otherworldly quality of our vacation.
Back down in reality, on our main excursion day from Cork, we made a loop up through the towns of Cahir and Cashel in County Tipperary, then across The Vee, a pass through the Knockmealdown Mountains, and through the picturesque town of Lismore on our way back to Cork.
On this one day, we saw four castles, a fabulous restored cottage, a round tower, cathedrals, and more. Is it any wonder my legs were sore the next day?
The first place we stopped was Cahir (pronounced Care, though we jokingly called it Chair), where a castle was built nearly 900 years ago. This was our first up-close look at a real-live Norman castle, and it provided all the fun details - a moat, a working portcullis (the sound of which was recorded for the movie Braveheart), round towers with tiny slit windows and uneven spiral stairs (both for defensive purposes), a great hall with dramatic fossilized giant deer antlers hanging on the wall, and a tunnel you could climb under and up to pop out on the other side of the castle wall to survey one’s queenly domain, including the lovely River Suir (pronounced Shur, though we jokingly called it the River Sewer).
After the castle, we went to see the nearby Swiss Cottage, which members of the Butler family - owners of the castle and lands up through the 1960s - built as a place they could hang out and pretend to be peasants. Building such a cottage ornée was trendy with nobles of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Though the idea of pretending to be poor (while keeping your servants nearby) is pretty irritating to think about, the cottage itself is irresistibly charming. Of all the places we saw, I would most want to live in a house like this one. It looks like Papa Smurf’s cottage!
Restored for (I think they said) 5 million pounds in the 1980s after years of neglect (it was even being used as a stable for a local farmer for a while), it has a curving thatched roof, hand-painted wallpaper in the tea room, and a floor inlaid with walnut to look like a spiderweb.
One of the themes of a cottage ornée was to be in tune with nature, so - just as in nature - no two things in the house are alike, and nothing is as it seems. In a room, even if two windows look the same, one opens out and one opens in.
Outside, the house is surrounded by flowers and trees, and it’s only steps away from the River Suir. I hated to leave it. I wanted to move right in.
Alas, we still had places to go and old stuff to see. A short drive away was the town of Cashel, home of the Rock of Cashel, where St. Patrick supposedly converted the king of Munster to Christianity in the 5th century A.D. I was already so worn out I didn’t know if I even cared about touring another castle-type place. I also didn’t know what to expect - was this just a big rock or what?
When the Rock of Cashel came into view, I suddenly felt a second wind. Perched on a hill above the town is a walled site, chock full of amazing stone ruins. A 900-year-old round tower, a chapel of similar age, a cathedral, a castle, and a cemetery full of dramatic high crosses. At one point, you can see the jagged remains of a square tower and on the ground below it, the enormous chunk of stones that was once its top corner.
There’s plenty of fascinating stuff to see within the walls, but - perhaps even better - you can see fabulous views of the green countryside all around. If you have to be buried, is there any more beautiful place to do it?
After we finally left beautiful Cashel - regretfully, slowly, casting lots of glances backward - we headed to the mountain road known as The Vee. There, more beauty awaited us. All over the mountainside were enormous round bushes covered with purple flowers. We stopped at a stone bridge across a stream to take photos, but had to flee quickly because we were attacked by stinging black gnats.
Farther up the mountain, we stopped again. And again. And again. One thing about Ireland, they know how to appreciate a good view. Though the road is narrow and winding, wherever there is a particularly dramatic view, there’s always a broad roadside pull-over spot, some of them marked with convenient signs like “Castle View.”
On the other side of the mountains, we came to the town of Lismore, where there’s an attractive castle overlooking a river. This castle is still inhabited as a summer home by some duke and duchess of somewhere, so it’s not available for tours (you can tour the garden, but we were more in the mood for dinner). We did walk out on the bridge to get a view of the castle … and pretend for a moment that we owned the place.
After that, we retreated to the pub for some “pub grub” - Irish stew for D and fish and chips for me - where we chickened out of mingling with the locals. Then we drove back to Cork, where - after getting lost about 17 times - we finally caught some sunset views of the Blackrock Castle Observatory.
The next day, we left Cork and drove down to the Beara Peninsula. One of “the” things to do in Ireland is drive the Ring of Kerry, but I read in my guidebook (Pauline Frommer’s Ireland: Spend Less, See More, a very useful book) that the locals she’s spoken to prefer the nearby Beara Peninsula because it has similar views, it’s shorter, and you’re almost guaranteed not to see a tour bus.
We spent nearly 5 hours on the Beara Peninsula, so I can’t imagine how long the Ring of Kerry would’ve taken! The long trip was worth it, though. I’ve never seen a more rugged, beautiful, amazing place in all my life. Look to the left, you see blue-water coves and waves crashing against cliffs; look to the right, you see massive gray rocks bursting up from the countryside, and sheep grazing precariously on them. The roads are tiny and insanely curvy as they weave around all the zillion inlets of the peninsula, and we were very grateful for the lack of traffic! By the end, we were stiff-necked from taking in the views and tensely navigating the roads.
The tip of the peninsula was my favorite spot. There, we climbed around on the cliffs - one wrong step away from plummeting to our deaths … well, okay, I stayed pretty far back from the edge. Still, it was amazing to be the only people out there in that incredible place, completely isolated at the edge of the Atlantic. Out there, the wild gusts of wind were chilly and almost strong enough to propel a person backward. The water was midnight blue in the deep places and seafoam green in the shallows.
When D could finally drag me away from that spot, we finished driving the peninsula and back into Killarney National Park in time to catch some of the lush green mountain and valley views before dark. Afterward, we had dinner in Killarney (roasted lamb for D and shepherd’s pie for me) and made it to our hotel in Tralee just in time to go to bed. I was hoping to hang out in the hotel bar that night for a while, but it was already closing by the time we got there. That turned out to be a good thing. The last thing we needed the next morning was a hangover …
See the thrilling conclusion to our Ireland saga in Part Three: Swine Flu?, coming soon.
posted by K | filed under Travel | 3 Comments
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
We just returned from a 10-day trip to Ireland, our last big pre-being-parents vacation. There’s so much to tell about this trip that I’m dividing it into three parts, the other two to come over the next few days.
Part One: Bird Poop
On our first afternoon in Dublin, as we strolled hand in hand through the tranquil park St. Stephen’s Green on our way to the frantic city center, we paused under a tree to take photos beside a pond.
Just as D took the camera to snap a shot of me, I felt something land on my head. As you’ve probably figured out, it was bird poop.
Maybe you’re imagining me at this point running in circles, shrieking, “Get it off! Get it off!” But actually, we both just laughed while D flicked a drop of poop off my shoulder and attempted to wipe it off my hair. All in all, it wasn’t the worst way to start our vacation. They say a bird pooping on you is good luck, and we did have remarkably good luck for our entire trip, with one notable exception (which I’ll describe in more detail in Part Three: Swine Flu?).
The weather was almost universally gorgeous, and the locals everywhere we went pointed out to us how lucky we were to have so much sun. Almost every day there was sunshine, blue skies, enormous fluffy clouds, and cool breezes. The temperatures were similar to what we experience in late fall at home in Alabama. And even when the wind turned chilly or the rain swept briefly in, we enjoyed it, strictly because it was such a welcome relief from the endless, sweltering Southern summer.
But let me go back to the beginning. On our first two days in the big, bustling city of Dublin, we weren’t so sure if spending so much money on this vacation was a good idea. Don’t get me wrong - it was a lovely city, especially St. Stephen’s Green, the park in front of the Dublin Castle Coach House, and the ivy-covered Georgian buildings, and we loved touring the Georgian house museum Number Twenty-Nine, seeing the bog bodies at the National Museum of Archaeology, and eating the most delicious fish and chips of our trip (and our entire lives) at Beshoff’s.
Still, I didn’t have that I-love-this-place-so-much-I-could-die feeling … yet. Ultimately, we are just not big-city people. We prefer walking side by side at a touristy pace to weaving single file through a crowd of people on narrow sidewalks while cars and buses whiz by. We had the same experience in Italy - Florence was nice, and we had a good time, but we didn’t fall in love until we went to Venice.
Our best experience in Dublin was the Irish House Party, an evening of traditional Irish music and dancing at the Landsdowne Hotel.
Not only was the music incredible, the hosts cheeky and fun, and the dancing amazing to watch, we hit it off with the couple sitting across the table from us, Alan and Wendy. They were from Portsmouth, England, and they were in town for the following night’s Take That! comeback concert.
We chatted with Alan and Wendy through dinner, and when they volunteered to join in learning a traditional Irish dance, I snapped photos with their camera (and mine, of course). After the festivities ended, we weren’t quite ready to call it quits, so the four of us stayed in the adjoining pub and had a few drinks. We learned about their town, where American Navy ships often dock and when they do, all the bars sell out of Jack Daniels. We talked a bit about their teenage children, who were being trusted with the house for the weekend; their travels - they’d been to the U.S. on their honeymoon two years before; politics; celebrity gossip; and the funny quirks of pronunciation within the English language (for example, in their Portsmouth accent, rubbish is pronounced a bit like “rabbish”).
Finally, even the pub was ready to close. As we parted ways, we decided to snap photos together, and the bartender volunteered to take one for us. Oh, and while we’re at it, he suggested, we could come behind the bar and he’d take our picture there! Naturally, we scurried over behind the taps, and the bartender took our picture.
Our hotel was only a few blocks up the hill, and Alan and Wendy decided to walk part of the way with us to get to a better street for catching a cab. On the way, we passed a bar that was still open, and in we went. There, Alan and Wendy attempted to teach us the Irish dance they’d learned, and I tried to teach Alan how to swing dance, and that devolved into a general dancing free-for-all, which paused only occasionally to let bemused locals slip past.
As you can see, we were having a pretty good time:
Finally, D had had enough, so we parted ways with our new comrades at around 3 a.m. The next morning we were supposed to check out of our hotel by noon, get back to the airport by shuttle bus, pick up a rental car, learn to drive on the “wrong” side of the road, and find our way to Kilkenny and beyond to Waterford, where we’d be spending the night.
We did manage to do all those things, but only after a very rough start that involved chewing a lot of anti-nausea gum. We ended up sharing a cab to the airport instead with a very nice local couple, who’d actually spent their honeymoon in one of the hotels we’d be staying at later in our trip. They recommended we visit the towns of Thomastown and Inistioge on our way from Kilkenny to Waterford, which advice we later took.
At the airport, we asked the cab driver where to go for rental cars, and he actually locked his car and went into the airport with us to show us, while carrying my luggage all the way. This is after we’d already paid and tipped him, and he expected nothing more in return. We were both a little amazed, and that continued the whole trip - almost every person we encountered - hotel clerks, waitresses, bartenders, rental car clerks, tour guides, and so on - were exceptionally friendly and helpful (in enormous contrast to when we arrived back in the States at Atlanta airport and were greeted with exceptionally sullen and miserable-looking employees at every level).
We ended up renting a more expensive car than we’d planned (the cheapest model was apparently better for city driving than highway driving), and D decided he would feel better if we sprang for the extra insurance. That was the first of several unexpected expenses that would send the total cost of this trip beyond our intended budget. But D adored that car, a manual shift Ford Focus with a diesel engine, so much that he wanted to have his picture taken with it:
Then came the semi-terrifying ordeal of D learning how to drive on the “wrong” side of the road, figure out how to shift with his left hand, and navigate roundabouts/traffic circles and the busy motorway around Dublin (picture that scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation where the Griswolds are driving around and around a roundabout in London because they can’t figure out how to get out, except we were a bit more successful). We knew from the beginning I can’t drive a manual, so he’d be doing all the driving (which would prove inconvenient later, during Part Three: Swine Flu?).
We only got honked at twice during some imperfect maneuvers in roundabouts, but by the time we reached our hotel in Waterford that night, D was doing pretty darn well. By the end of the trip, we actually LIKED roundabouts and were telling people how the U.S. should have more of them.
Also on the way, we stopped in Kilkenny, Thomastown and Inistioge, all along the beautiful River Nore, and somewhere in there we fell completely in love with Ireland.
On the country roads - narrow, twisty, and lined with stone walls or hedges - there was something beautiful in every direction. Sheep or black and white cows dotting a green pasture. Ruined castles and cathedrals popping up around every other curve. Three-hundred-year-old bridges spanning the calm, reflective River Nore.
The scenery got even better the next day, when we drove along the southeastern coast between Waterford and Cork. In the fishing village Dunmore East, we climbed down the rocks to a little inlet of intensely blue-green water, where some local teens were jumping off a boulder into the water, then popping up shivering in the wind.
It was in Dunmore East that I decided my financial goal is to one day have a summer house in Ireland. Every new place we went in Ireland from that point on, I decided we should buy our house there. When we’d pass a house for sale, I’d perk up and say, “Hey, we could live there.” I especially liked any place that looked slightly like a falling-down shack.
At one point as I was detailing how we could buy a house and rent it out during the rest of the year, D chuckled and said, “You sure are dreaming, aren’t you?” And I said, “I’m not dreaming, I’m planning!”
Okay, so it’s true owning a second house at all - let alone one in a foreign country - would require some pretty miraculous financial happenings. But we both agreed that Ireland is our new favorite place, and even if we never have a house there, we definitely want to go back. If our bird poop luck holds out, maybe we will.
Coming soon … Part Two: Castles and Cottages and Cliffs, Oh My!
posted by K | filed under Travel | 2 Comments
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Yesterday at the doctor, I had to have some routine bloodwork done. A LOT of routine bloodwork, apparently, enough that they needed four vials of blood.
Keep in mind that I hate needles. Once, as a teen, when I was going to volunteer at the local VA hospital, at the end they announced we’d all have to have a TB test. No big deal, just a little needle prick under the skin of the arm. I immediately began to feel a swirling pit develop in my belly. Oh no. Oh no. All of us volunteers lined up. I got at the back of the line. Then I let some more people get in front of me. I wrung my hands until the knuckles turned white. My face turned white, too. The swirling in my stomach got worse. Finally, someone noticed I didn’t look so good and suggested I might need to sit down. I took that as my cue and ran for it and never went back.
My needle-related cowardice has also prevented me from donating blood. Ever.
The main reason for my fear is I have those difficult, hard-to-find, rolly veins blood-drawing technicians loathe to encounter. Sometimes they get out those tiny butterfly needles and still can’t successfully draw blood from me. And they’ve learned at one doc to call out the big guns - the expert blood tech lady. On one occasion, I got stuck three or four times, by two different techs, and they still couldn’t get enough blood for a measles test and just gave up.
After that time, the expert blood tech lady gave me some excellent advice - drink a bunch of water before you come because it plumps up the veins. Since then, I’ve guzzled water before every blood-drawing session, and I haven’t had a difficult draw in a few years.
Still, the fear lingers. And now I have something new to fear.
Yesterday, at the doc, we were there for hours, longer than expected. The appointment was at 11:30 a.m., and there wasn’t time for lunch beforehand. When blood-drawing time rolled around at 2:30 p.m., we were dehydrated and hungry. D asked for water for me, and I guzzled most of the bottle.
And to my delight, the trick worked again! The tech found my vein right away and successfully began drawing blood. I turned my head and covered my eyes because I still just can’t look. Even when they show needles going in skin on TV, I have to cover my eyes.
“Are you okay?” the tech asked, not for the last time that day. I laughed a little, trying not to jostle my arm where the needle was stabbing me, and said, “Yeah, I just can’t look.”
But then, the blood drawing just kept on going. I wasn’t looking, so I didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but D told me later she was switching out vials. He, meanwhile, was getting blood drawn in the chair next to mine.
When she was filling the last vial, the tech asked again, “Are you okay?” This time I nodded, but I noticed my “uh-huh” was a little hard to muster.
I was fine enough to move my finger to hold the cotton ball in place and out of the way as she taped it. Then the queasiness set in.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I think so. Just feel a little pukey.”
She eyed me carefully and moved the trash can closer.
Then the queasiness got worse. I tried to sit up straighter, and the tech backed up.
“You want some Saltines?” she asked, and I nodded. She quickly fetched some packets of crackers from a drawer and set them on my little tray. I picked one up, but my fingers wouldn’t work enough to open it.
“Want me to open it for you?”
I nodded.
“Are you okay?” I tried to shrug. I couldn’t speak, or couldn’t make my mind work enough to know what to say.
“Are you hot?” the tech asked and directed a fan at my face. I wasn’t hot, exactly, but a prickling began near my hairline.
Suddenly, I felt very strange. The feeling changed from queasy and weak - a feeling I’m quite familiar with when my blood sugar gets low - to something I’d never experienced before. My breathing got shallow and quick, and sweat popped out on my forehead. I could feel the blood draining from my face.
Suddenly, I was afraid. Later, when I tried to explain it to D, he said, “You felt out of control,” and I had to smile - he knows me so well, he knew exactly what would’ve made me start to freak out.
“Talk to me? Are you okay?” said the tech, hovering in front of me.
This time, I think I managed to shake my head no.
“Call a nurse!” someone demanded - perhaps D’s blood tech? - and someone else got on the intercom and said, “We need a nurse in blood drawing, STAT!”
Almost immediately, a flood of people surged into the room, so many people that I thought, for a moment, “Am I dying?” A nurse ran to my side and gently ordered me to take deep breaths. I thought, “That’s good advice,” and forced myself to obey. Then she held a paper over my nose and told me to smell it. I inhaled the sharp, bitter aroma - camphor? - and even in my addled state, I thought of Gone With the Wind and the fragile Aunt Pittypat, who was forever needing her smelling salts. Just like in the storybooks, the substance instantly made me feel a little more awake, a little farther from the brink.
The nurse instructed me to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. It took a moment to register what she was saying. There were people everywhere, saying things like, “Get her on the floor.” I couldn’t think what good that would do, though later it seemed obvious - if I was on the floor, I wouldn’t fall far if I fainted.
“Her color’s coming back,” the nurse said. “Someone get her a Coke.”
Then it was decided it was safe to put me on the floor, and three nurses came and helped me to a sitting position on the floor. One of them put a pillow behind my back against the cabinets, and one straightened my dress over my knees. Someone handed me a can of Pepsi with a straw in it and told me to sip. Another someone held a pack of opened crackers, and I took one. They set the fan in my chair, pointed at my head. My hair blew in my face, and I let it.
Everyone stood back and watched me sip Pepsi and eat crackers. They proclaimed that my color was much better. I felt much better, if a little embarrassed by all the attention.
“Don’t worry,” they said, “this isn’t the first time this has happened to someone, and it won’t be the last.” They teased my tech about last week when she had three fainters in one day. I said, “This has never happened to me before,” and they said, “That’s what everyone says.”
Gradually, most of the nurses drifted away to attend to more pressing matters, and I was allowed to return to my seat. D went and checked us out, while I sat and recovered a while longer. My nurse - the nurse with the smelling salts - popped in to check on me. I was told repeatedly that the next time I get blood drawn, I need to tell them to put me on the floor first.
Afterward, still a little wobbly but mostly okay, I couldn’t stop talking about my fainting episode as we stuffed ourselves with chicken nuggets and waffle fries at Chik-fil-a (the first fried food I’ve allowed myself in weeks).
This is the most dramatic thing that has happened to me in ages. Someone actually said, “Stat!” in relation to me!
And it was a new sensation letting someone else take over. I like to keep firm control over myself - emotions suppressed, check! - and I’m fiercely independent. When I cracked my pelvis in a car accident in high school and couldn’t walk for a couple of days, I waited till my parents were gone and dragged myself across the floor to the bathroom, so I wouldn’t have to have anyone help me.
But this time it almost felt nice to be surrounded by these medical professionals, all so calm and efficient and confident, and to let them take charge instead.
So maybe I should take a lesson from this - I’m not the only person capable of doing things right, I’m not the only person who can take care of me, and it’s okay to be vulnerable because I have people to catch me.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe my only lesson should be: Eat something before getting blood drawn, or you might faint. Don’t know how that’s going to work out Thursday, when I have to have a fasting blood test. Perhaps I should take the nurses’ advice and tell them to put me on the floor first?
I think this time I’ll wear pants.
posted by K | filed under Misfortune | 3 Comments
Monday, June 1st, 2009
For the first few years I knew my mother-in-law, I was always getting offended because when she came over to our house, she critiqued everything in sight - our furniture, our yard, our bodies, our choices. But over time, I came to realize it wasn’t me personally she had a problem with - I’ve seen her do it to her own kids, her nieces and nephews, even near strangers. She simply cannot - or will not - stop herself from sharing her every opinion, even ones most people would wisely keep to themselves.
Because of the racist things she said when we were trying to adopt a sibling group of biracial African American children - and the fact that the things she said changed the whole landscape of our adoption path - MIL and I only recently began speaking again.
For the past few months, I’ve been trying to make an effort to be civil, mostly because it’s impossible to avoid her without also avoiding my father-in-law and nieces and nephews and other in-laws. I refused to punish my nieces and nephews by not attending their birthday parties just because she would be there.
It was really hard at first. At my niece A’s party, we didn’t speak at all. She came and sat near me, but I was still too angry. I couldn’t even look at her. At the next party two weeks later, I said, “Excuse me,” as I passed her to go the bathroom. Since then, there have been two more parties (we’re a birthday party family) and a dinner at her house on Mother’s Day, and we had to drop by their house last week to pick up some tomato plants. It was on this last occasion - when it was only the four of us, mother-in-law, father-in-law, D and I - that I couldn’t avoid having an actual conversation with her. She seemed happy to be chatting with me - I could almost hear her thinking, “Yay! Everything’s back to normal, and I didn’t even have to apologize!”
Then this morning she and D’s dad dropped by for a few minutes. And yep - things are back to normal. No more tiptoeing around me. Right off the bat, she launched into her old pattern of criticism, because obviously the best way to make up with a person is by instructing them on the proper technique for all the things they’re doing wrong.
First, she addressed Stanley over the fence and said, “My, you’re getting fat. You need to tell your mama and daddy to cut back on your food. If you don’t, you’re going to have a heart attack!” Then she instructed me that we should whip him with a switch to teach him to stop barking. I wish I’d said, “We don’t plan to hit our animals or our children either!” But instead, in the interest of keeping the peace, I made no comment.
Of the next 15 minutes, she filled at least 14 with a steady stream of unsolicited advice and negativity. According to her, we need to cut down the cedar tree that isn’t even on our property, move the hazelnut tree, and fix the gutter in exactly her way. She also criticized every move D made while he planted two blueberry bushes they gave us, told us it must be our fault our refrigerator broke because we probably put too much in the freezer, announced that Millie doesn’t look good with her ear flipped back (huh?), implied that she disapproves of the dogs being cooped up in a fence (right - would she rather us let them run wild and get mauled and almost killed like her dog?), and made a dozen other such observations.
She seriously didn’t say a single thing that was positive or even neutral - and this was a mild occasion! Even though most of the stuff she says is minor and can be brushed off on its own, in combination it becomes infuriating. After she left, I felt like I needed to go lie down! It’s so exhausting to be in her presence because every time she opens her mouth, we hold our breath, bracing ourselves for the next comment and to control our careful non-reaction. We have to be careful what we say, too, because anything could set her off into an instructional talk. D says she’s always been this way, only he didn’t notice it as much until he had some distance.
Now, I must admit my own mother is fond of the pointed critique as well, and if there’s a possible worst case scenario, she immediately leaps to that conclusion (hence her nickname: the Voice of Doom). Also, almost everyone I know has this same trouble with their mothers and mothers-in-law - this disturbing lack of ability to keep opinions to themselves when it comes to “guiding” their precious children (grown or otherwise) in the “correct” direction.
So why do they do it? And is it possible to avoid it? I think the key may be in the chief principle of the Parenting With Love and Logic book I’ve been reading lately. Some things in the book are a bit extreme (it advocates dropping kids off on the side of the road if they act up in the car, though admittedly under carefully controlled circumstances, unlike the case in the news recently), but the general idea is to not be a “helicopter parent,” a parent who hovers around trying to constantly protect their child from harm or inconvenience. The authors of the book say that to raise responsible kids capable of making wise choices for themselves, we must back off a little and give them the chance to make decisions - and yes, mistakes.
Makes sense to me. But apparently it’s much easier said than done, as almost every parent of grown children I know is quick to jump in and “help.” This is how we get situations like my mother suggesting methods for us to lose weight, D’s mother instructing us on a better way to cook a dish we brought to dinner, my friend T’s mother-in-law telling her she’s not feeding her baby enough, and so on. Apparently, you get so used to saying things like, “If you colored inside the lines, the picture would look better” when they’re kids that it’s hard to stop when they’re grown and the issues have higher stakes.
While I wait for our child, I’m noticing stuff like this more than usual. I’m paying attention, too, to the way the people around me parent their kids, and I’m making mental notes. When I spent some time with my sister-in-law and her two kids, I noticed how patient she is and how she is constantly giving them little choices that make them feel like they have control over their situation.
I’m using these observations to get together a parenting philosophy - no, a parenting plan. I’m hoping that having a plan will help me be the kind of parent I want to be … at least most of the time. If all goes according to plan (because everything always does, right?), I’ll be easygoing - I won’t be one of those parents demanding military levels of respect and obedience. I won’t care too much if they get dirty or make a mess. I won’t make them feel bad for spilling something, but I will want them to help clean it up. I will teach them to be kind and respectful to other people. I will try not to make arbitrary demands. I’ll buy dolls for a boy and trucks for a girl without batting an eyelash; I’ll never say, “Put that down. That’s a girl toy.” I won’t make them sit at the dinner table for hours if they won’t eat their peas, but I also won’t give them soft drinks or keep a lot of junk food in the house. I will try to follow through when I make a threat. I will encourage them to read and draw and make things.
And now, I have a new resolution to add to the list: I will try to back off and let them color outside the lines.
P.S. I haven’t posted in three weeks because my blog got hacked and wouldn’t let me post. I’ve spent hours tracking down this problem, and for the moment, it is fixed. Keep your fingers crossed! :)
posted by K | filed under Family, Adoption | 8 Comments
Friday, May 8th, 2009
My plan was to write something perky today. How my 10-year high school reunion was more fun than I expected - even if I did literally walk the heels off my shoes. How my mom, sister and I went to Fort Walton Beach for a few days and the weather was gorgeous and I have ridiculous-looking sunburn stripes because spray sunscreen apparently must be applied VERY carefully. How D is going to be off work for a whole month, so maybe we can get some much-needed maintenance done on the outside of the house.
But. I can’t write about perky things when Margot died this morning. She was one of my sister’s two dogs, but in this family, dogs are not just animals. They are our beloved friends and also our family. Margot - nicknamed Moo Moo - was a sweet girl, a rescue my sister coaxed from being a terrified, abused dog to a comfortable and happy one. She had expressive eyebrows, excessive fur, and a passionate love affair with food. She liked to spring off the ground with all four legs when you were cooking something tasty in the kitchen, hated being crowded on the couch or riding in the car, and loved rolling around and playing with her brother Lewis. For four years, she’s been my sister’s baby, Lewis’ friend and sibling, and just a plain good dog.
Her death was very sudden. One day she was running around with the pack of dogs at Mom and Dad’s house - when my sister comes home to visit, there are four - and the next day she was lethargic, weak, and refusing to eat. For the past two days, she had been on fluids via IV with no response, and the vet said her tests strongly indicated kidney failure. He said the treatments could make her bounce back, but she would never be quite the same girl.
My sister took her home to Georgia last night after a final fluid treatment, planning to take her to her regular vet there this morning. Instead, Margot died in the night. This morning, her brother Lewis was still curled up beside her.
I am glad that Margot died the way she did - at home, next to her mama and her brother. That my sister was spared the pain of having to make a decision about continuing with expensive treatment that might not save her.
But I don’t even know what to say. I loved Margot. I love my sister, and her baby is gone.
We all know this is inevitable when we bring pets into our lives. We know they will only be with us for so long, yet we can’t hold ourselves back from loving them so much. And we wouldn’t want to.
Today, I’m hugging my four babies a little longer, a little tighter. I want to love them as much as I can while I can.
posted by K | filed under Family | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
When I was a kid, if I couldn’t fall asleep at night, I had a trick. I knew crying made me tired, so I would think of my grandfather, my Papaw, and every time, it would make me cry, and I would fall asleep with tears on my pillow, his face in my head. I don’t know why thinking of him made me so sad. Maybe it was because I missed him. Maybe it was because I never doubted for a moment how much he loved me, completely, even when I was bad.
Though Papaw hasn’t known me for a while now, even though he was weak and barely himself for months before the end, I wasn’t prepared for him to die. He has been gone three and a half days now, and it’s just like when I was 9 years old, clutching my teddy bear and crying myself to sleep. Last night at New Era club, I looked out at our host’s manicured flowerbeds and almost lost it, thinking of Papaw leading us through his garden, showing us with pride his new watermelons and squash. I am bone-tired from all the crying, and from watching my mother and grandmother cry, and from staying up late two nights in a row with my sister, making a photo slide show DVD and burning copies of it for the family. Even though I got to sleep in my own bed last night and slept till 10:30 this morning, still I am worn out. D is tired and sore, too, from helping dig Papaw’s grave, an unusual necessity because the family plot is in a small church cemetery with no room for digging equipment.
Now I am watching the DVD my sister and I made, with the song “Man of the Hour” by Pearl Jam playing in the background of the slide show.
“Now the man of the hour is taking his final bow
As the curtain comes down
I feel that this is just goodbye for now.”
There is a picture of my sister and I with him, wearing Mamaw’s old nightgowns, the way we used to do when we spent the night with them. There is a picture from the family reunion of 1984; I am on Mamaw’s knee, and my sister is in Papaw’s arms. There are pictures of Papaw dancing, because he loved to dance.
It makes me wish I had spent more time with him after I was grown up. Makes me wish I could go back and visit those summer days when he would let us build things with him in his workshop; feed us cheese curls, pink hot dogs and Hydrox cookies for lunch; take us fishing with cane poles at Uncle Harvey’s catfish pond; buy me a cheap doll when we went to the grocery store, and I would treasure it because it was from him; put a switch from the peach tree on the top of the refrigerator but never use it; let us ride up the road in the back of his green Chevy truck; sneak us butterscotch candies in church; and wake us up before dawn with a little dance and a rhyme. I wish I could remember everything, every word he ever said to me, every thing I adored about him, but my memory is full of holes. It has been so many years since those summers when we spent a week at a time in his care, going on adventures with him and getting dirty and loving every minute of it.
Here is what I know about the man he was, before Alzheimer’s: He was a quiet man, especially as his hearing got worse, but he also liked to joke and tease. He was generous. He liked to read the paper and watch General Hospital. He dipped Prince Albert snuff from a red can. He liked to eat sliced white bread with dinner, no matter the meal. He never had a cavity in 88 years of life. Every day, he wore tan pants, white ribbed undershirts, and plaid button-front shirts. He styled his hair the way he had in the 40s - waved back from his forehead with pomade - and it looked good on him. He was in the Army during World War II, serving mostly as an orderly at hospitals, and he liked to talk about those years. He kept his nails a little long and very neat. His favorite song was “How Great Thou Art.” He worked hard all his life, and though he didn’t have much money to show for it, he had a house and a little land and a thriving family - a wife of more than 40 years, six children still living, 19 grandchildren, and 21 great-grandchildren.
He was the best person I ever knew.
Eighty-eight years is a long time to live, and for most of it he was healthy and whole. I feel lucky to have known him for so long, but I am sad my children will never have that privilege. And I am sad for myself. He was my Papaw, he was my last living grandfather, and he is gone.
The world just feels different without him in it.
posted by K | filed under Family | 6 Comments
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
As he was leaving for work yesterday, D noticed a baby bird trapped between the upper and lower sashes of the workshop window, where it is half open to accommodate a window-unit air conditioner. The bird’s parents were flying frantically around the outside of the window, chirping at their trapped fledgling, as he chirped back, helpless.
D tried to get the bird out, but he couldn’t and didn’t have time to pursue it further, so he called me and told me about the situation.
I went out and tried to apply my mad problem-solving skills, but the only thing I could come up with was to stand on a chair, poke a stick in the space between the windows, coax the bird onto it, then lift him out to safety. Which would’ve worked fine if the bird didn’t view the stick as the Jabberwocky and scurry away every time it came near. I tried to push the stick underneath his chest and kinda squash the little guy against the glass and lift him out, but he refused to cling on and kept falling off.
After many, many minutes of this in the stifling workshop, I was sweating, frustrated, and on the verge of tears. I couldn’t leave him, and I couldn’t help him.
It had already been an emotional day. Our adoption coordinator had told us about another little boy, this one 8 years old, whose parents are recently divorced and believe he needs a two-parent home (he has ADHD and some behavior issues). They sent photos, and we saw that he was a handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy with a very big smile. From the pics, he looked well-cared for and happy, and we couldn’t imagine how anyone could let him go.
Still, D was freaked out by the fact that he’s 8. For some reason, 6-almost-7 is okay for him, but 8 is the tipping point. I guess there has to be one, though for me I think it would be 9 or 10. Our preferences say we will accept up to age 6, but it’s much easier to set such a limit when you’re not looking into the eyes of a little boy who needs a home. It’s not his fault he’s one year too old or that he’s trapped in this bad situation.
I tried to talk D into reconsidering. I tried to explain to him how I feel - this boy, and the last, and all the children we’ve considered before, haven’t necessarily been what we envisioned when we started this process, but I want to be flexible and leave something up to chance. If our profile was shown for this situation, and we were picked, then he would be our son. That would be that, and we wouldn’t wonder about all the perfect infants we’d missed out on. We’d just love him.
But D proved surprisingly inflexible on this, so at last I realized we couldn’t proceed. I can cajole him into most things he initially doesn’t want to do, and he is usually grateful for it later, but in the case of the child that will be ours forever, even I can recognize he needs to be fully on board.
Still, the boy is on my mind. His face was the first thing I thought of when I woke this morning, knowing I would have to send the e-mail that ruled him out as a possibility.
He was in my head yesterday afternoon while I tried to save the bird, and maybe he is the reason that I finally did a stupid thing. I realized the only way to get the bird out was to take out the air conditioner. I eased it out a little at a time, testing its weight. I knew I shouldn’t try to do it by myself, but - I reasoned - I’m stronger now. I could even see muscles popping out on my arms as I shifted more of its weight out of the window, and I was proud of myself. I would do it myself. I would save the bird.
I had readied the chair nearby to set the air conditioner on, but I didn’t make it that far. Suddenly, too late, I realized most of the weight of the air conditioner was in the back, and there was no way I could hang onto it. It slid from my arms and landed, intact, on its back on the side of a half-rotten old mantel propped against the wall. I stared at my forearms, which were scraped vivid red and burning all over with pain. I wanted to stop and howl, but instead I moved the chair back over and climbed up again. I tried to close the window, forcing my screaming arms to push down with all their might, but the window wouldn’t budge. The baby bird chirped and chirped for his parents, who had flitted away to a tree nearby. That’s when I noticed the sliver of skin peeled up on my thumb and the streak of glistening pink underneath. I couldn’t feel it yet.
I went and got a hammer from D’s toolbox and hammered on the top edge of the window until it gradually began to sink down and my heart began to lift. Finally, I could see the little bird’s head pop up above the window, and then, afraid of squashing him, I gently lifted him out with my hand. His body was so light and soft, and as his tiny claws gripped my finger, I thought, “Why couldn’t you have gripped the stick like that?” I set him down outside the window on the grill, but then moved him to the ground in case he might fall. From my vantage point on the chair, I had seen the birds’ nest inside my dollhouse’s unfinished turret, but I couldn’t put him back there, trapped inside the workshop away from his parents, who had been slipping in a crack around the side of the air conditioner.
He promptly started his chirping again, but I knew his parents wouldn’t return with me nearby. I went in the house, bandaged my finger, then looked up what to do with a baby bird and found, to my relief, that the thing about mother birds not coming back to babies that have been touched my humans is only a myth. And that fledglings like this bird (with feathers) can be left on the ground.
After that, I didn’t check on him again. I didn’t want to know it if he had died, and if he was gone, I wouldn’t know if he had been guided away by his parents or if he had fallen victim to a predator.
So I will just assume he lived his bird life happily ever after. For the little boy who won’t be ours, I hope the same.
posted by K | filed under Extracurricular, Adoption | 1 Comment
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Three years ago (wow, has it really been that long?) I lost about 30 pounds. Over time, I gained back 10 of them and held there for two years until about a month ago, when I decided it was about time to take some more off. This sudden burst of motivation was mostly due to two looming events:
1. My high school reunion. Dun-dun-dun. (That was my attempt at that uh-oh-disaster music.) While I don’t have time to get back to bikini-wearing weight (where - let’s face it - I only hovered for about 10 minutes in the summer of 1997 anyway), I figured I could lose 15 pounds, enough to drop a size and look somewhat less blobby.
When I rhapsodized about my weight loss a bit too much, D got jealous and sniffed, “You just want to look hot for those guys you went to high school with.” I laughed and assured him the guys have nothing to do with it. The women are the ones who will be whispering behind their hands about who got fat, skinny, or tanning-bed-frazzled in the past 10 years.
While I feel much more comfortable in my own skin (and fat) than I did when I was a more slender youth, and I’m fairly proud of the person I turned out to be - especially compared with my simultaneously self-conscious and egotistical high school self - it’s hard to get around the fact that I’m carrying around a few million extra pounds than I was the last time I saw most of these people. I’m hoping the little boost of confidence I’ll get from dropping 15 of those pounds will be enough to keep me from reverting to the wimpy wallflower I sometimes became in large groups. (And if all else fails, there will be alcohol.)
2. Impending parenthood. I read somewhere that being pregnant for nine months strengthens and prepares a woman for the task of carrying around a baby all day. Makes sense. For us adoptive moms, there is no such built-in preparation. So it’s up to me! I’ve been doing strength training and yoga (love!) in addition to walking/jogging on the treadmill. And today, while I was doing bicep curls, I actually felt strong for the first time in a long, long time. I also noticed that when I helped D rehang the heavy wood doors on the water heater closet, I could hold them up with no problem, and just now when I had to haul out some massive boxes to look for photos for the reunion slideshow, it was easy-peasy.
So I’m very proud of myself and feel firmly on my way to baby-wearing and stroller-loading and car seat-buckling with ease. And even if we get an older child instead of a baby, being stronger and lighter would be immensely useful for all those kid things - toting a rebellious tot to the time-out chair, playing that chase-and-tickle game, lugging an enormous amount of gear everywhere we go.
And I’m told you get kinda busy after having a child, so it’s a good idea to devote all this time, energy and effort to myself now, while I still can. Besides which, time and energy are things I have great stores of while we’re doing all this infernal waiting.
Of course, I also want to lose weight for the usual reasons - looking better, feeling better, and the indescribable joy of fitting into a smaller size jeans (yay, I already did it!).
In the past few weeks, I’ve lost 10 pounds, and I hope to lose five more in the two weeks or so before the reunion, then keep going and lose 15 more. Eventually, I’d like to lose another 20 or so, but I usually run out of juice around 30 pounds, so I’ll just see how it goes. I often spend my time on the treadmill calculating exactly how many pounds I could lose in X amount of days if I keep up at the same pace, just like I used to do in high school when I’d make elaborate plans to get down to the elusive 119 pounds of my dreams. Now, though, I know myself better, and I also have more realistic goals.
During my quest for reunion photos, I couldn’t resist perusing old photographs of myself for motivation, saying things like “Wow, I really was skinny for that 10 minutes in 1997,” “Okay, so I could look like that again if I lost X pounds,” or the less-encouraging “Hmmm, I didn’t look as skinny as I thought I did when I weighed X.” But then I pointed out to myself that perhaps I would’ve looked better if I wasn’t wearing extremely tall artfully scrunched white socks and baggy gray sweat shorts. Oh, 1999 Me, what were you thinking?
See, these days I have 10 more years of experience in dressing myself, and I have learned, when having my photo taken, not to tip back my head and grin big enough to show every tooth in my head. Also, my hair isn’t bleached blonde, I no longer have braces, I can say naughty words without blushing, and I do not drive 110 mph. I embrace my dorkiness instead of trying to suppress it, I don’t like mean boys just because they’re cute, I have a permanent prom date who is better than anyone I ever daydreamed about, oh … and I can do my own laundry.
So, million extra pounds or no, I’m way better now. I’ll just keep telling myself that up till the reunion …
P.S. I would’ve said “I no longer oversleep, sass my mother, or bite my fingernails,” but I’m not that mature yet.
posted by K | filed under Extracurricular | 1 Comment
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
It seems impossible to get attached to a person you’ve never met, and yet I apparently have an unlimited capacity for it. Last week, we heard about a little boy whose parents were choosing to place him for adoption. We considered the vague facts we were given and decided we would like to have our profile presented.
The more we thought about him and talked about him, the more we wanted him. He’s an older child, so there would be many challenging aspects, but also so much fun. D daydreamed about taking him fishing. I wanted to enroll him in swimming lessons and take him swimming often at my parents’ pool. My mom and I discussed how we’d wait and let him pick out his own bedding, and even which bedroom he’d prefer - the smaller one next to our room, or the bigger one down the hall. My dad wanted to teach him how to eat shrimp and tell him about all the types of trees he just planted.
While I was on the treadmill (I’m on an exercise kick lately), I’d imagine conversations he and I might have. I practiced how I’d respond if he said, “You’re not my real mom!” or “I’m bored” or if he was sad and didn’t know how to tell me.
Then we got the news that his mom wanted to talk to us (along with a few other couples). D was out of town for the weekend, so Saturday afternoon, I talked to the boy’s mom. This conversation was very different from my last one with a potential birthmom. Last time, the woman was as nervous as I was; she was extremely open about her situation, and she drove the conversation - asking me lots of hard questions. It felt very much like a job interview, which - in many ways - it was.
This time, the overwhelming vibe I got from the little boy’s mom was sadness. She sounded drained and emotional at the beginning of the conversation (she’d already talked to some other couples that day), and by the end she was crying, and - quietly - so was I. I hung up the phone feeling devastated, even guilty. I have been lucky in everything my entire life, except for this one thing. It sounds like this woman has been unlucky in everything, except this one thing, this little boy. And I would be taking that one thing away from her. My life from that point would be fuller, better, and hers would always have an empty place.
Still, after talking with her, we wanted this little boy even more. During our conversation, I found out he likes music, math, baking, and trying new things. He tries to be serious but has a loud laugh. He has never been swimming. He likes books about animals, but he’s never had a pet. They have talked with him about the adoption, and he is “willing.” I don’t know entirely what that means, but it sounds good that he at least has some time to get used to the idea.
Too, I felt that his mother was someone I could communicate with in future. They want letters and photos, so they can know their son is okay. Though our conversation was awkward, I don’t know - I just empathized with her. She loves her son. I know that whatever her reasons are for choosing adoption, they are real and powerful or she would never be doing this. I told her we would always let him know how much she loved him and that it was okay to miss her.
I felt pretty good about our conversation, though there was no way of knowing how her conversations with other couples went. Maybe she connected with all of them. Maybe she didn’t connect with any of us. Maybe she decided this is just too hard and chose to keep her son. Maybe she is still making up her mind.
Either way, we haven’t heard a word since. Right after our conversation, this seemed so real, so possible. Now, with every passing hour, it seems less real, less possible. I have stopped browsing kids’ bedding online and researching bunk beds. I have stopped saying his name out loud and - mostly - stopped looking at his photo. I have stopped saying, “When we get him … ”
It’s funny - I always thought I would be the type who wouldn’t get attached in these situations. I said I would guard my heart, even if we were matched with a birthmother, until the baby or child was officially ours. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. It’s hard to regard a child with detachment, especially if he might one day be ours. Instead, it keeps me up nights - all the pictures in my head. Snuggling on the couch reading a book together. Teaching him how to coax the cats to him. Watching out the window as he and his daddy fix the lawnmower. Holding his hand as we cross the street to the park.
What I keep telling myself is that we will get to do all these things one day, even if not with this child. I’m just getting very impatient for one day to come.
posted by K | filed under Adoption | 9 Comments
Friday, March 13th, 2009
This has been a week of improvements - some small and easy, some large and complicated, all making life just a little better.
1. The 50-gallon water heater. We wanted a tankless, but that didn’t work out, so we bought a 50-gallon water heater to replace our broken 40-gallon one. This one is bigger but more energy efficient, so maybe our gas bill won’t go up, and now we won’t run out of hot water every time we share a shower or I shave my legs.
The installation of this water heater caused much drama for poor D, who bought a shut-off valve to install with it, so in case it ever leaks, we can shut off water just to it and not the whole house. The first shut-off valve kept leaking, and he redid it FIVE TIMES, each time having to crawl under the house to turn off the water, crawl back out, unsolder the pipes, resolder them, and so on. Then he gave up on the valve, soldered everything back together, and then something ELSE started leaking. Finally, he had to turn the water off for a day (fun for me, working from home), go back to Lowe’s and get a different valve and different threaded coupling thingies, and redo everything one more time. This time it worked, thank goodness, and now we have hot running water again.
And can I just say my husband is a genius? I am lucky to be married to a guy who can figure out how to do absolutely anything.
2. The toilet seat. The toilet in our master bathroom is a 1969 model, the only thing remaining of the bathroom that was here when we moved in. This toilet sat outside in the yard for a long time while we remodeled the bathroom, so long that the tank cracked, and we had to combine up two toilets, the one from our hall bathroom that had a cracked bowl, and the one from the master bathroom that had a cracked tank.
Somehow though, we never replaced the toilet seat, which was crazed in some spots, making it hard to get pristinely clean, and the plastic thingies underneath kept breaking off in bits and falling in the toilet. We’ve been planning to replace it for ages, but we only recently remembered on a trip to Target. Now we have a nice glistening white toilet seat with anti-microbial properties. My butt is very thankful.
3. Black-out curtains. The curtains in our bedroom are gorgeous, exotic-print, pale yellow sheers I got on clearance from Anthropologie. It’s hard to find affordable curtains in the proper length for our super-tall windows, let alone find pretty, perfect ones, so I’m in love with these curtains. Alas, our bedroom faces the east, so every morning the sun blithely wakes us up and blinds us with its glare, preventing us from ever sleeping late. With our work schedules, we require sleeping late - it is essential to life. I didn’t realize how bad it really was when I was still at my old job and waking up at the crack o’ dawn, and D - not being a complainer - rarely mentioned it.
I’ve been working this schedule for months, but it’s only now started to really bug me. You know how you can be riding in a car with the a/c blasting on you, and it takes you 15 minutes of freezing to realize, “duh, I could turn the air off”? So I only recently began brainstorming a solution to this problem. I didn’t want to lose my adorable curtains, and new ones for three windows cost a bazillion dollars. Also, we change our bedspread based on the season, so what would match everything except these curtains I already have, which - did I mention - are perfect?
Last weekend we tried buying some cheapo dark green curtains. In the store, we held all the sample curtains up to the fluorescent lights and determined which were the darkest. The plan was to hang them behind our pretty curtains, but when I got them home, that just didn’t work. I had to hang them on top, hiding the pretty curtains, and they just looked like … well … complete ass.
They did block the light, though. After a morning of halfway decent sleep (I only had the dark curtain up on one window, so when I turned to the left I could rest, but when I turned to the right I was blinded by the sun glaring off our white house), I was more determined than ever to fix this problem. I searched online for the better part of an evening, and finally concluded that the most economical and possibly most attractive option would be to buy these white blackout curtain liners and put them behind the pre-existing curtains.
Shockingly, the liners arrived less than two days after I ordered them. We hung them that afternoon, they look totally fine behind our pretty curtains, and this morning I was able to sleep till a glorious 10 a.m. I used to like how bright and sunny our bedroom was - in the daytime, while I was awake - but it just wasn’t practical. Now, we have a shady sleep-cave, and as a bonus, these curtains block out the super-bright moon that used to fill the room like a floodlight; dampens the weird electric humming sound that sometimes comes from the nearby hospital, the train and street noises, the barking dogs, etc.; AND insulates against heat and cold. I swear, the room is so much toastier today than it usually gets when the heat is on!
We may have to get some of these for the baby’s room eventually, too! And the living room!
4. Oh, and I almost forgot about the Roku player! It is a little player thing that hooks up with Netflix and Amazon to let you download movies and watch them on your TV instantly! Just like that, I can watch (almost) any movie I want! It’s the wave of the future, I tell you.
I’m hoping this stops me from feeling the need to buy DVDs and also maximize my Netflix account (their 12,000 instant play movies and TV shows are free with our one-at-a-time unlimited monthly plan).
So far, though, I’ve had a little trouble maintaining wireless connectivity. I’ve watched two movies on it so far, but when I tried to watch It Happened One Night this morning, it went a little bonkers and kept shutting off. So it remains to be seen how life-improving this device will be.
5. The bedroom light switch. For a couple of months now, the light switch in our bedroom has been misbehaving. It stopped switching on the normal way, and we had to start flipping up and simultaneously pushing in. Then that trick stopped working, and we had to start flipping it up and then shaking it back and forth at the top. Then last night, it finally ceased functioning entirely. D has promised that he will replace the light switch today. He’s outside working on the lawnmower now, but I’m sure he’ll get around to it, and we can begin flipping the switch normally again asap.
So with all these life improvements, I am feeling very cheerful these days. It’s so lovely to fix these teensy little problems that bug me on a daily basis. It leaves more room in the day to worry about the big problems - like should I dye my hair red again when this fades out? Yes, I think I should.
