Monday, September 1, 2014

Summer Wrap-Up

Here we are, folks.

Drawing the curtains on another summer — a summer which, if you are inhabiting the Upper Midwest, never really arrived. Any day now... so, October?

The close of August has left me contemplative and I'm taking stock of what has changed around here, and also what needs to change. Starting with this blog design. But I'm reminded of that hilarious t-shirt I once saw:

Things I Ain't Got Time For:
1) That.

But I digress. Here's how Trotters are faring at the start of (gulp) September.

Home:

Contrary to what you have heard about the consistency of modern building design, our home has shrunk. I think the rental listing billed it at 1,500 square feet, but I have reason to believe we're operating with about 850 these days. While, no, the perimeter has remained stationary, and the ceilings are not dropping, there exists a buffer wall of dog hair and kids toys that creeps ever centerward, like calcium deposits on the skeletal system. There is no walking from Point A to B; there's hopscotch and juking and kneeing four-legged mammals (more on him in a minute) as I try to lock my gaze at a fixed destination, obscured by so much colorful plastic crap. There are Olympic-level long jumps over masses of dollhouse furniture. There are NFL-esque high-stepping gauntlet exercises through minefields of My Little Ponies. With such acrobatics, there's frequent loss of balance, sending me crashing into musical educational toys, thus triggering a discord of bells and midi-file Mozart and sounding like something tripped the alarm in a Japanese pachinko shop.

I've always been a bit smug about keeping the toy population in check, instituting Draconian tactics banishing all items that didn't fit snugly in the low shelves behind our couch. That worked — for one kid. Two kids? Two different developmental stages? Lots of frigging toys. June, God love her, is the sort that will generally sit and play with one thing for a while, and she's always been that way. Tess (also God love her) is fitting our predictions of her being a little adventuress and leans toward the "more is more" camp, plucking and chucking each item from a basket before moving on to find something with an electrical current on which to chew. This kid likes her stuff where she can see it, that is, everywhere. So I sit here at my desk, staring at a partially assembled Mrs. Potato Head where my AP Style Guide usually sits, amid complete and utter chaos.

But truly, who frigging cares. They're fabulous children.

Kids:

As I alluded above, my babies are huge and wonderful all that other stuff that makes a mama weep. June is a kid. Her legs are growing lean and muscular; her once zaftig belly is flattening out; her face more chiseled, her eyes less naive. It's breaking my heart and delighting me concurrently. She misses nothing, and has to know everything. She relishes her independence. Her conversational ability, recall, vocabulary and analytical skills astound me. She's selflessly kind and so considerate. All that and she can negotiate like a preschool-aged Karen Lewis. Observe:

June: Mama, can I please have something to eat?
Me: Let's take a food break, Bug. You just ate lunch.
June: Just something real quick. Real quick, mama.
Me: Later, Bug.
June: Just one fruit snack.
Me: No, June.
June: Just two fruit snacks, I promise.
Me: No.
June: Just three fruit snacks and some pretzels, real quick.
Me: GAH! FINE! FRUIT SNACKS! YOU WIN!

She brings limitless joy and energy with her everywhere — which is why I'm real damn ready for her to start school again. Dear sweet Jesus, I love this child. But she needs to leave me the bleep alone for a minute.

That sounds awful, with good reason, but I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. She's like a Border Collie, and if she's not given enough exercise will start running wind sprints through our very compromised (see above) home by 4 p.m. That or jumping. Or climbing. On me. She's not what I would categorize as particularly high energy, but she's 3, and her peak comes right at my valley. I was feeling a little worn out the other day — just your usual cocktail of fatigue and forgetting what my body felt like without someone attached to it. My "alone time" comprised a trip to the grocery store — so, so sad sounding but it was a delight. As I was ho-humming my way through dry goods, I spotted not one, not two, but three parents walking their adult special needs children through the aisles. Looking for a wake-up call, moms of healthy kids? Watch an exhausted elderly woman hobble through a supermarket on the arms of her 30-year-old daughter loudly sobbing about not finding the brand of tampons she prefers.

I shut up right quick.

Anyway.

And Tess? Sweet, sweet, Tess. That kid is on the move. While she's not "crawling" per se, she has developed a rather efficient butt-scoot style of transport that Greg noted was evocative of a hermit crab (or how Mrs. Peacock from that one episode of "The X-Files" might get around). I watch her practicing her form — sliding onto her belly, pushing herself onto her knees, shooting her legs out in front of her — like doing baby burpees. She's very much the second kid, in that when she discovers a fossilized Cheerio long ago lost under a piece of furniture, I'm a little slower to jump into action — if at all. I've always been fascinated by birth order and personality development, especially coming from a family of four kids who bear pretty discrete character traits. "How can children raised by the same two parents in the same exact way turn out so differently?"

I'll tell you how. They're not raised by the same parents.

June and Tess have two different mothers. June's mom was sweet, patient, adventurous and calm. Tess's mom, however, is a bit hotheaded, weepy, unstable and prone to saying things like, "You need to leave me alone with this wine right now before I lose it." Tess's mom has — tada! — more than one child.

June spent her first few years assuming I had two modes: talking sweetly or singing sweetly. Then we had Tess and I added a third to my repertoire: Cranky Stresserson-McShortfuse. One day I left for the hospital all pregnant and happy; a few days later I returned with a baby and what June must perceive as a personality disorder.

Tess has born emotional witness to a few more tears, a few more "Fine, I give ups," and has the insatiable yen for dog hair to prove it, thanks to the lax supervision she generally enjoys.

This is how kids turn out differently, folks.

Gypsy:

Old Man Red Dog is hanging in, you guys. He's a bit more ornery, has a few more mystery growths, andhas an ever-looser sphincter — but he's got some puppy left in him. He still lives for fetch and is a solid running companion, but we're seeing more elderly old coot traits than even a few short months ago. He grunts when he gets up, takes a few more indoor dumps than we'd prefer, and tries to hock up loogies that just aren't there. This reminds of when my maternal grandfather was alive and he and my grandmother would spend weeks visiting from their home in Florida. My grandparents would claim the family room with the pull-out couch (and one TV) as their sleeping quarters, and then my grandfather would plant his flag in the den with the recliner (and the other TV) for the daylight hours. He'd pass out in the chair with a ball game on and wouldn't move until dinner. Imagine the fallout when children hopelessly addicted to television would come running in from school only to remember they had been ostensibly thrown into rehab, going cold turkey amid a full-blown case of the Tom & Jerry jitters. We'd instead crowd around the small black and white kitchen set, jonesing hard and settling for a fuzzy episode of "Gilligan's Island" — the canned laugh track punctuated by an occasional apnea-cough from my grandfather sleeping in front of our precious, large color TV.

No, I wasn't sitting at my beloved grandmother's knee begging her for fascinating stories of her youth; no, I didn't plead to watch the game with my grandfather, letting him impart his wisdom upon me. I was shitty and resentful and counting the minutes before we could watch "The Jetsons" in peace. And now neither of them are alive. Well played, Kerry.

Stupid TV.

(Wait! I didn't mean that! I take it back!)

But that was quite a segue — back to Gypsy.

He's so patient with Tess, who is completely smitten, but you see the fear in his eyes when she Mrs. Peacocks her way over to him. We see his barrel chest rise and fall a little faster, his eyes widen, his tail go ramrod straight, all while she's contemplating, "Hmm, do I shove my thumb in his eye or do I give that ashy elbow a good licking?" He takes the abuse for a minute or so and then he awkwardly hoists his lumpy girth up and away, tufts of undercoat left in his wake. Tess is bummed, but then she eats some dog hair and presses on.

Side note: I just accidentally kicked him square in the head as I was stepping to avoid doing a banana peel-slide on Funshine Bear across the dining room floor. Sorry, buddy.

Garden:

Oh, my poor garden. It's not terrible this year, but it ain't great either. I guess I have to consider any output a success considering it spent its first six weeks under water (thank you, Wettest Summer on Record). I determined that I need to get $3.50 worth of value out of each plant in order to break even, and I'm about three-quarters of the way there. So in that sense, yes, not bad. But by the looks of it, you'd think it had been abandoned. The tomatoes are gasping to churn out messed-up looking fruit, as the blight systematically creeps its way to choke out the tallest, greenest leaves. A fully ripened red bell pepper fell effortlessly into my hands the other day — because it had rotted from the inside out. The cucumbers are runty and malformed. The carrots, all frond. The weeds, however, are doing fabulous. Strong and green and flowering. See? Not a total bust. My hot peppers are on point, too, as are the few herbs I planted. My onions and lettuce from seed have been worthwhile additions, and we're looking to reap a hefty crop of fall raspberries from our one climbing bush, if I can beat the birds to them. For anyone concerned about the decline of the bumble bee population, worry not, they're alive and well and getting drunk off berry nectar in our backyard. I told Greg that if you stand close enough, I swear you can hear a lascivious "Ohhhh yeaaaahhhhhh" as they hump each flower, rise awkwardly on their disproportionately small wings, and crash land on another. Oh, and don't believe the hype about the Plushies of the insect world. Those effers definitely sting.

One thing I've been doing this year, thanks to the general shortfall, is making the best use of garden scraps. Since we rent and rotting garbage is generally not preferred by landladies who share your yard, we do not compost. So I save all the little ends and bits and ugly pieces and throw them in the small food processor attachment of our immersion blender (it's a lot easier to use and clean than our big Cuisinart). Chunks of tomatoes, onions, half-used garlic cloves, hot peppers, kosher salt and a squeeze of lime get a few pulses and whoomp — really, really delicious salsa. So there, this post wasn't totally worthless. I just gave you a recipe.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm off to do my 30-Day Shred, which as it stands is looking to be more of a 22-day affair.

Eh.

Happy Fall, y'all.



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