Testing

I have been seriously neglecting this blog and I am thinking of starting fresh with a new tumbler instead. I need more things to distract me from my life.

Well in any case, a friend recently told me that it isnt right to test the people in your life when they dont know they are being tested. This came after I told her my idea that the person you love should go get you lobster at 2am if that is what you wanted. And I suggested that it be put to the test without the other person knowing because then you can really know if they will do it.

So I guess I kind of agreed, its not fair to judge people or test them without their knowledge but now I have changed my mind and here is why...

If you were being tested on knowledge, like what is my favorite ice cream and my sisters middle name, ok those are facts, things that you could ask and remember and study for.

new york superfudge chunk and Leigh in case you were wondering.

but if i am testing you on character then no, i can pull a test out at anytime i want, pop quiz style or surprise final exam and you should always be prepared because your character should not be something you need to remember or study for.

If i ask you if you would get me lobster at 2am and your instant reaction is to say no and i have to explain to you why i believe that is what makes you my soulmate well than you are not my soulmate.

And if i test you with information about a crisis in my life and you dont respond like i think you should why should i give you a second chance?

I have been through a lot of tragedy in my life and the thing is... I have discovered a quick and easy way to weed out the dead weight, the excess baggage in my world.

When my family is sick or in need of a prayer or a phone call or just an email and that doesnt come...well what do i need you for in my life?

Exactly I dont.

If you fail the test, you dont get a makeup or a do over or a second chance.

And that may sound shallow, judgemental or just plain mean but I am going through a tough time, just one short email like hey nancy how are you? no need to dwell on the issues, just a quick hello how are you?

if not, back away from my life please, i do not need a fair weather friend, too much has happened and too much can happen.

I dont have the energy to worry about it.

You failed the test.

Done.

Dr. D4little

I am going back to writing stories about my family which was the point of this whole blog anyway. I think maybe all of my readers have had enough of my ridiculous ideas about the world. I reserve the right to continue to blab if the following occurs:

1. Sarah Palin ever runs for anything again. I have a follow up to my If you give a moose a high powered assault rifle to share called Cloudy with a chance of Assininity.

2. Kid Rock asks me too write a blog about his life.

Ok back to my story.

D4 is a serious animal lover and she is a dedicated animal lover which really just means that she will pick up any stray animal and want to keep it forever.

Presently this weekend she will be babysitting for 3 cats and 2 dogs. I told you she is dedicated.

So way back when, I wish I could remember the date exactly but it was springtime maybe 4 years ago or so when D4 was about 10, we had an incident we like to call the bad bad bunny incident.

We are in the house minding our own beeswax when the landscaper comes to the door holding something little and furry in his hands which I instantly think is a rat and hopefully dead.

He explains that while he was mowing the lawn, a group of little baby bunnies sprung up from the ground and ran off but these 2 were left behind. Obviously the runts of the group.

He is cradling this little bunny in his arms so I refrained from suggesting he stick them back in the ground and run over them with his lawn mower.

I am like Ok what do you want me to do with some rejected orphan wild bunnies.

And then D4 hears this and comes racing down with a bucket and says oh can we keep them.

Uhhh...if she didnt hear we could have had some nice rabbit stew for dinner but NOOOO, there we are in the backyard transferring them to a container and bringing them in the house.

Wild rabbits in the kitchen. What else do I need? Dont answer that.

So we settle the bunnies in, at the time we were between dogs so we were pet free.

And we head off to the pet store to stock up on rabbit supplies.

A cage with toys and rabbit fluff for the bottom, rabbit food, who knows what else.

So we bring it all home and make our new wild rabbits a home in our house.

D4 has a giant bucket that she lets the bunnies go in so they can play.

We leave the bunnies in this bucket which has 14 inch high walls and no top on top of the kitchen table you know so they can play.

D4 comes into my room in the morning and says where did you put the bunnies?

Where did I put the bunnies, I wouldnt touch those things, they are in the bucket in the kitchen.

Umm, no they arent.

D4, dont be funny, of course they are in there, how could they have gotten out.

Mom they are not in there, they escaped.

Yeah right how could 2 tiny baby bunnies jump over a 14 inch wall from the kitchen table and not be splattered on the kitchen floor.

You better be kidding, D4 or I am going to kill you.

Suddenly I start picturing bunnies multiplying in my walls. Millions of bunnies taking over the house, you know what they say about multiplying like rabbits right?

Or then I picture days going by and then there being a smell, a smell that is a combination of rotting flesh and ass, combined with burnt broccoli and farts. If you never had a dead rat in your wall you might not be familiar with this smell but I am and I never want to smell it again.

Or I think perhaps I may go into the bathroom one day and a giant rabbit with pointy teeth may come out of the drain to get revenge for our lack of car in taking care of it. A rabbit that has grown to epic proportions by being exposed to a combination of soft scrub bleach and curly hair shampoo.

Or worst of all I fear that we will be looking for something long into the future and we will find a dead little bunny curled up next to my precious Mrs. Beasley doll desperately trying to find its mother and resigning itself to dying alone and sad with a 1970's retro doll.

So we begin the search. Hubby is whispering, Nan there is no way we are going to find them. They are tiny and who knows how long they have been gone. And I am starting to freak out like yeah we are going to find them. WE ARE!!!

The kids start looking around and the bunnies are no where to be found. Seriously how the hell did 2 tiny baby rabbits figure out a way to get out of a bucket on top of a table in a pretty big house and disappear? I saw them whispering together the day before but I thought they were just admiring my hair. I didnt know they were concocting an escape plan.

After quite some time and the realization that they were gone for good, I remember that once a long time ago I found a dead mouse under the stove. Maybe that is a secret hiding place for bunnies.

And lo and behold, there was one of them. And when I found him he said Tag your it. I didnt know we were playing a game. Where is your brother I said to bunny 1? Thats not how the game works, you gotta find him too.

So I search and search and I decide to look in all the places rodents have been before in my house and that is where I find him hiding behind a box in the den.

And I say Ok D4 out they go to the world. No mom they are too little to be on their own. Oh yeah they just escaped from a high security prison cell and now you want me to what put them in solitary.

Obviously they cant be trusted they are making up secret plans. Who knows what they will do next, infiltrate the TV station and make every channel play Bugs Bunny. This could be dangerous D4 we must let them go.

and we did and that is why today when we come home and there are bunnies on our lawn we try to ask them some questions to see if they are the bunnies that we fostered in our home for a few days in the spring of some year i cant remember.

And that is why D4 was planning on being a veterinarian until she became obsessed with George Clooney from ER and is now going to be a pediatrician.

Oh damn I hope she doesnt find some homeless children to bring in, I dont know if I have a cage big enough.

Love at 16

It must be some sort of crazy coincidence that I never feel the urge to blog until I have a ton of homework to do.

I have clearly had the whole summer, even days where all the kids were gone and I was totally alone but did I blog? Ok maybe a little but this morning with Abnormal Psychology homework looming, I thought, hmm, I should blog.

I hated high school.
And everything about it, from the teachers to the cliques to the drama, the only thing I could say about high school is that I was soooo glad it was over and never looked back.

I got married 6 months after high school and while everyone was off going to college, drinking, partying, Hubby and I were in our first apartment living the newlywed life and loving every minute of it.

We found out we were pregnant in July 1986 as most of our friends were heading back to college for their sophomore year.

We were in such a different place(physically and mentally, we lived in Boston) than most people our age that we didnt really keep in touch with anyone from high school.We just had nothing in common. No one could understand why we wanted to be together instead of out running around playing the field.

Many many people criticized our choice and made sure we knew it was never going to last. They said we were young, didnt know what we wanted and when real life dealt us some blows we would see it would all fall to crap.

But instead we have built one of the most beautiful, pure, love relationships that I have ever seen even in the movies. We knew then that we loved each other and despite the failures of relationships like ours all around us we survived, not just survived, flourished.

Life has dealt us more than our share of blows. Things that could and normally would paralyze any couple until they just broke apart without any possibility of fixing it. but I have a theory and of course I know you are dying to hear my words of wisdom.

When you are 16, the age I was when I realized how much I loved Hubby and wanted to spend my life with him, people will say it isnt real and things change and you have to grow up first and I have to disagree based soley on my own exprerience but still...

When you are 16, life is just beginning. There is a whole possiblity of a future in whatever way you want it to go. You picture yourself either in a career, oh i want to be a doctor or finding the love of your life or whatever. The possiblities are endless and because of that you are free to pursue every feeling as it is, pure. You love, you hate, you get angry, you get sad, you laugh yourself into hysteria, they are real feelings.

Later as you get older you start hiding those things. Some emotions are socially unacceptable so you dont cry out or laugh too hard. You tear up or you stifle a laugh but you have already begun to hide yourself from the world therefore shielding yourself from the possibility of true, deep love.

When 16 year olds say I love you to each other as Hubby and I did when we were that age, we meant it with all of our hearts, we meant you make me feel so good about myself and I want that to continue. When we were 19 and found out I was pregnant and said I love you it was different but it meant we are a family now, we are growing our love. At 27 when Hubby had cancer and didnt know if he would survive and we said I love you, we meant I have loved you for a long time and I want to love you some more,please dont leave me.

And after all the years of I love you's, the rest of our beautiful childrens births and proud moments, our anniversaries, our illnesses, our pain and suffering through trauma after trauma, of course it means something different now. How could it not? After all the things we have experienced together, we know each other better than anyone else.

At 16 I couldnt have known that he would get me lobster at 2am if I needed it. I couldnt have forseen the look in his eyes when each daughter was born. I couldnt predict the pain we have gone through in the loss of some extremely special people in our lives. All I knew is that he made me feel special and I loved him for that.

I still believe that it doesnt matter how old you are when you find the true love of your life and they love you back you should go for it.

Hubby and I went to his 25th high school reunion a few weeks ago although it caused me to have an unbelievable panic attack right before we went in. Hubby was so excited to go, because unlike me, he loved high school and was anxious to see everyone after 25 years. I made some last minute pleas in the parking lot and he said we didnt have to go if I really didnt want to.

I knew how much he wanted to go though so I begrudgingly walked into what I thought would be a night of total hell. "who are you?" "No i dont remember you from high school" Brings me right back to senior year when hubby left for the navy and i had no friends.

Anyway...we actually had a great time and saw some people that were interesting and fun.

So it was with a little bit of anxiety that yesterday I agreed to meet the Girls of 84 for lunch. Of course you know I am way younger than them, I graduated in 85, but all my friends and various boyfriends were from the class of 84.

There were about 13 of us, all from different groups and cliques. And we had a blast. Some of the people I didnt know too well in high school I was happy to talk to and get to know a little better. It was fun and funny and it was just what I needed to see that although I thought everyone was having a great time in high school that wasnt always the case.

Each of us has gone through something, be it death, sickness or divorce. High school wasnt the party everyone says its supposed to be for a lot of people.

As time goes on and you hear the stories you wonder why you didnt know back then that other people felt the same way as you, why you thought you were the only one.
High school is a moment in time. When you are 16 unfortunately it is your biggest moment in time and therefore you have no reason to believe that things will change.

But let me tell you, they will. Life will continue to change and you will make a decision to change with it or remain stagnant.

Hubby and I changed together, with each others support, with love and caring, we wanted that and we made it work.

Any idiot can sit and chair and talk about change and possibilities but unless you are working on that each and every day you are going to find yourself stuck in a moment, that you cant get out of.(ok so i stole that line from Bono, but it worked here)

You can be that person that goes to their high school reunion with the flock of seagulls haircut and the jordache jeans talking about the last football game of the 83-84 season or you can be you but a little more developed, a little more interesting and with a lot more I love you's under your belt.

Its your choice, make it however you want and run with it.

Shitting in a hole

As you can guess from this title, I am having cesspool problems again.

Like all other things that constantly fail in my life I have given up the expectation that they will work.

Sooo... I was not surprised yesterday when I heard a weird sound coming from the sink.

It was kind of a groaning, whining, clanging sound.

Apparently it was the sound of sewage backing up into my downstairs bathroom.

Who knew? I guess I am not a cesspool expert.

What I do know is that the genius who keeps coming here to fix it has a different idea everytime, but last night at 8pm when he was stepping in toilet paper and poop from what looked like 2 days he came up with a doozy.

"The cesspool is like a concrete coffin. It has different chambers that fill up with waste but the concrete dividers stop the solid waste from moving from chamber to chamber. The water moves back and forth but the solids they would need to be pumped out because... lalala blah blah blah...give us money and we will screw you again. 750 dollars wasnt enough."

So hubby, who always blindly believes the cesspool people because he is not a cesspool person and he does not play one on tv, tried to explain to me why this makes sense.

"The cesspool is a solid block of concrete because its old, the new ones have holes in them so waste can seep out, blah blah blah lalala."

So my question is this...
How barbaric is this ritual we have?
We bury a concrete coffin into our front yard... and we shit in it.
For real.

I can turn on my computer today and talk live to someone in China. I can get medical information from someone in Australia. We can reattach hands and feet, cure people with cancer, transfer millions of dollars instantly from a bank in Switzerland to a bank in Mt. Sinai, engineer bigger lobsters, juicier apples, genetic engineer little perfect babies with blue eyes, give birth to healthy octuplets, and buy retro toys from the 70's on ebay like Mrs. Beasley and the careers game.

Yet we cannot invent anything more advanced than a cesspool so we shit in a hole.

Yeah, we open a porcelain hole and we shit in it and flush it out to our front lawn.

Or in my case, we try to flush it out to the front lawn but it comes back into the house. Into the downstairs toilet, with everything we washed down the drain from dinner and anything from the dishwasher.

Is there no super powered technologically advanced way of getting rid of Waste?
Why have we settled for this?

I heard some rumors about sewers in the city that transport waste in a better way.. but what because we live in the suburbs free of cockroaches and noise at 7am we cant get this so called "better waste system"

I have insomnia and if you have ever seen Fight Club, insomnia can make you do some pretty weird things.

I have been reading old blogs and i found out a few things.

I was way funnier last year before cesspools and sick husbands and kids with pain in their knees and their hearts made me very unfunny.

I have already forgotten lots of what I wrote down already and I need to double time it with all my stories before the mad cow takes over.

and the brain shrinkage.

Insomnia, Fight Club, its all making sense.
Delusions.
Delusions of grandeur.

Delusions that cesspools will work, knees will heal, cockroaches will die under Little Women and women will raise good boys that dont break hearts to be selfish.

Or should I just build an outhouse?

Letting Go...and Letting In.

I am not sure when I started noticing the chapters of my life going so quickly.

So many years went by when time seemed to stand still and now so much of it is gone.

My four girls are 8 years apart. So the first 10 years of my marriage we were getting pregnant, giving birth, breast feeding, and in a whirlwind of diapers, doctors visits, and potty training. We dealt with cancer and debt and it was life and we lived it.

When I was married for 10 years my girls were 8,7,2 and 10 months old.

The next 5 years were filled with lots of laundry and food shopping and girl scouts and school functions and it was so busy all the time, I barely had time to stop and breathe, must less shower or think of the future.

I went back to work when D4 was 5 and I worked and cared for a family of 6 without ever thinking anything of it. Life was moving along and it seemed like our world of chaos and giggling and fun would go on forever.

The point is that I never thought that time would end. There were moments when I would have killed, literally killed for a hot bath and a manicure. And now when I have the time for a man/pedi, I want someone to go with me.

I am desperately holding on to the time I have left because after all these years, the time is coming to an end.

In the book Insomnia by Stephen King, there is a death timer that the guy can hear that clicks away, ticking off the last moments of life. That is how I feel now.

Each moment, each event is one day closer to the day when I will have to let go of them all and let them go their own way.

I had a very hard time leaving D1 at college and then the next year I had a really hard time leaving D2 at college.

But we got used to it. We went from a large table of 6 to a small table of 4.

We went from laundry piling up all over the place to a few loads a week. We ate less, spent less at the Outback and enjoyed our new life as a small family.

And things were good for awhile.

The older girls came home now and then. We refinished the bedrooms and made one room a "guest room" where they could stay when they are "visiting". D1 came home last summer for awhile and for awhile this summer while she searched for a job after college.

And today... we moved her into a new apartment.

And she is gone. Gone from a long chapter in our life, on to the beginning of her new life. With so much hope and so much promise. Life for her begins today. She has set out on a journey of Newness.(not a word right? whatever.)

A new world. A new day. No day but today.

And although we will miss her in our own part of the world, I am pleasantly settled in my feelings of her starting her life. I am confident in her ability to adjust and settle in and I am grateful that she has found the most awesome roommate/friend/apartment finder in the world and that they will be sharing this experience together.

Letting go is hard. I helped her move in, we cleaned and shopped and hauled 22 years of stuff up 3 flights of stairs. And then it was time to go. I could have stayed forever.

I wanted to clean more so everything would be spotless, to cook something so they wouldnt starve and to lecture for hours on the dangers of two young girls loose in the city.

But it was time for me to go.

Figuritively and Literally.

Time to go, to let go.

And next year when D2 begins her new life I will let go again. And when D3 leaves for college in one year, more letting go.

And then in just 8 years I will be letting go for the last time. Letting go of my last daughter, letting go of motherhood and all the things that go with it.

I have spent quite some time complaining about my life. Complaining about my kids, my husband, my house, my homework, never my job, i love that.

But I loved it all. Every minute of this crazy ride.

There were many times I didnt think I could make it through and there are rare times when I didnt even want to.

Letting go is part of the ride. Part of the ride I always dreaded. Part of the ride I thought would never come.

But it is here.

And as my time as a mother is starting to end. letting go of one life I loved, trading it for the possibility of another life.

I cant imagine loving anything more than being a mother but until I became a mother I could never imagine life with my children.

The possibility of a new life is one I have to let in. The future is as uncertain to me today as it is to D1 on her first night in her new apartment.

But we are strong determined women and we will make it.

Life has changed and I have to change with it.

I am letting go today and letting in.

But I'm gonna miss this.

Reality TV

How about this for a new reality series?

A woman is driven to the brink of insanity by little things that go wrong for weeks like computers and tvs breaking and cesspools backing up and family issues and teenage worries and then just when you think she is going to explode her daughter needs knee surgery.

Once the surgery is over and the operation is successful the family is quietly sitting at dinner when the husband has a heart attack??

Too much right?

When you watched it you'd be like "Oh my god this would never happen in real life"
"This is ridiculous do they expect us to believe that someone could endure all this crap and then just leisurely eat brownies and play scrabble with her children"
"Please give us something more realistic like pretty little unicorns fly over a city and use their horns to cure cancer, not that is something i might believe"

SOOO....I wish I could say that this was a fantasy, but unfortunately NO, this stuff really happens(happened)in my life all the time.

Sometimes its comical, like when we looked up Hubbys symptoms and learned that it is entirely possible to scare someone to death.(Ok D3, no more jumping out and scaring daddy as he comes out of the bathroom)

And when we looked at the dinner table while they were taking hubby out in a stretcher and the ambulance crew said "Do you eat like this regularly?" Just because there was 5 lbs of buttery creamy mashed potatoes and 4 lbs of mooing steak and corn drenched in butter sauce.

My friend said I should have said, "No the rest of the people are on their way now"

Granted for years I have been laughing about sticks of butter in my food, cream in every cup of coffee I drink and my famous 3000 calorie pasta primavera, sorry Maria, cant make that again when you visit.

My family reacted to this latest Dooley:For Real episode in true dooley family fashion...we whipped into action, calling 911, D1 catching hubby as he collapsed and attempted to fall off the chair and giving me vital sign updates while i was on the phone with 911, no hes not breathing,calling his name and ignoring him when he insisted that she get his shoes so he could go outside, what are you Clover? that is what we do when she has a seizure, go outside little doggie... lalala taking care of business.

But then, when the ambulance crew gets there, that is when the comedy routine begins, "Nice try dad, trying to get out of doing the dishes" "oh the sticks of butter finally did you in" And Hubby when they take his blood pressure "Ha its only 118/70" Well congratulations on having a heart attack and winning the lowest blood pressure award.

By far though the funniest moment had to be when D1 was describing how Hubby wasnt breathing to the cop and ambulance crew and D3 goes yeah he sounded like this and snorts.

It is our way. We dont know how to do this any other way. We cannot make it without our laughter. We have been through tragedy unmatched to other families yet as time goes on our humor gets more perfected, funnier, more inappropriate, "Holy crap, imagine dad beat synovial sarcoma which has a .17 survival rate just to get some other rare heart disease, isnt that funny?"

Maybe the word isnt funny...I dont think any of this is funny... I just know that if I am laughing, I am not crying, and as long as I am not crying I can do anything, and I can do it effeciently and well. As long as I am laughing, I can listen to doctors and get information and make decisions, when the laughter fades, so does my world, I cant do it without laughter.

I told the kids to tone it down in front of the ambulance crew, because apparently they take everything so seriously, they didnt find our brand of humor particularly amusing..

And even when I got to the hospital and I asked if this could have been caused by living with 5 women, they looked at me strange like "Are you making a JOKE about this?"

Umm yeah and I find myself highly amusing.

Well i am glad someone does...

Laughing, crying its all the same thing, tears from your eyes or spit from your mouth...I prefer laughing, it doesnt smear my blue mascara.

Destructive Habits

In real life, every day you might come to a new conclusion about yourself and about the reasoning behind your behavior, and you can tell yourself that this knowledge will make all the difference. But in all likelihood, you’re going to keep doing the same old things. You’ll still be the same person. You’ll still cling to your destructive, debilitating habits because your emotional tie to them is so strong—so much stronger than any dime-store insight you might come up with—that the stupid things you do are really the only things you’ve got that keep you centered and connected.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Now, More, Again