The Ghosts of New Year's Present

I have to tell you I don't mind seeing the back of 2010. As I write this, a friend of 40 years is sitting with her dying mother. Three friends have divorced, after 25, 17, and 7 years of marriage. My beloved niece saw the end of a long relationship as well. My brother-in-law lost his father two days before Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law's brother and his wife were in the process of adopting a baby girl and kept her for three weeks before the birth mother changed her mind. My daughter's teacher lost her mother to a sudden heart attack which no one expected. So many of my dear, dear friends and loved ones are experiencing loss and heartache, and it makes me so incredibly sad for them. I hope that 2011 brings healing and peace to them and to all of us, and better memories.

I lost my big dog, BC, to bone cancer in November. I took him in for his regular shots and they came back and said he only had a few weeks to live, so I took him back home with pain meds and steroids. After about 3 weeks the pain medication simply stopped working and I had to take him back in. I had hoped he would go peacefully on his own, but that's not the kind of luck we have in our house with our animals. It took the Mountain Man 4 hours to dig a hole big enough for him. We let all the dogs sniff him so they would know what happened and not be looking for him. The two older dogs took turns sitting vigil by the grave for a few days.You'd think one dog out of five wouldn't be that noticeable, but he was so big that the gap he left feels like more than one dog is gone.

This is him next to the dining room table.

When last we spoke in July, I mentioned my visit to my grandmother. We went to the grocery store and I talked her into sitting in one of those wheelchair carts and I pushed her around the store. At age 97 she was getting unsteady on her feet and using a walker to get around, so I convinced her that since I didn't know my way around the grocery store it would be better if she rode around. We had a lot of fun and I was very glad to get to see her. As it turned out, it was my last visit. About the middle of August she developed an infection, and her systems just all gradually shut down. She spent about a week in the hospital before she died, but she had a few very lucid moments toward the end. At one point she realized she was dying, and her last coherent words were "Jesus" and "victory." Now I don't know what, if anything, you believe, and more to the point, not sure what I do, but that woman had an abiding faith that sustained her through a very difficult childhood in poverty, constant relocation as the wife of a Methodist minister (who went overseas for two wars), and the loss of two of her three children at young ages (one as a baby and the other - my father - at age 27) and her husband of 72 years in 2007, among other things. She turned 97 in April, and she told my cousin and me on separate occasions that she thought she would probably die at age 97, since my Granddaddy was 97 when he died. Whether that was a self-fulfilling prophecy, or she just sensed something I don't know. At any rate, their 75th wedding anniversary would have been Christmas Day, and they got to spend it together, and she kept her wits up until that last week, for which I am profoundly grateful.

School started August 4. We love the Queen's first grade teacher. During the week Grandmother was ill, the Queen participated in a play, Beauty Lou and the Country Beast, put on by Missoula Children's Theatre. This is a fabulous organization that travels around the country to schools. They audition kids on Monday and have a show ready to put up by Friday. It's an amazing process and was an excellent experience for all of us. They start with first graders, so DeBoy won't be able to participate until year after next.

Here's her solo. Turn it up.

September and October weekends were full of soccer. Over Labor Day weekend we went back to Nashville to pick up my share of Grandmother's furniture. On the way we stopped at Kentucky Down Under, where the Queen fulfilled one of her dreams - birds ate out of her hands.

They weren't on the same team, two different ages had the same color - the Mountain Man coached both teams, and he requested the same color so he wouldn't have to have 2 t-shirts. Trying to save the league of bit of money (the league buys the coach shirts), but it was a nightmare telling the teams apart.

DeBoy turned 5 in October. He's grown 4 inches since his 4th birthday. My baby is a baby no more.

The number 5 birthday pancake.

Since it was Sunday, we had cupcakes and favors for the Queen's and DeBoy's soccer teams and other friends. It was the only cold, nasty, rainy Sunday we had all season.

 The cake for the party at home.

The Queen lost a top tooth, courtesy of her brother 2 days before. The other fell out about 2 weeks later, and she was still singing "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" two months later. They still aren't in.

 DeBoy sums up his birthday.

A quick trip to the Knoxville Zoo for fall break. This is the same lion where we took in October 2007.

 

Hiking in the Lilley Cornett Woods.
 

Halloween: The Red Power Ranger and Sleeping Beauty

This is me with a very dear friend - we decided to dress up as 80s rock divas. We couldn't decide whether to call ourselves Desperately Seeking Dignity or The Gone-Gones.

And we come to November. For the End-of-the-Season soccer party, the league rented the roller skating rink. The kids had never skated before, and the Mountain Man and I hadn't been in about 12 years, so it was slow going at first. The Queen was getting the hang of it. DeBoy fell down a few times, but was doing pretty well. Then about an hour into it, DeBoy did the classic skating fall: both feet fly out, twist in the air, catch yourself on one arm, break the arm. Both bones. Fortunately, the Queen's best friend's mother is a PA at the clinic, and she had him splinted up and called the ER for us within about 10 minutes. We went right in and were only there about an hour and a half. He was x-rayed and they put a proper splint on it. We had to go to the orthopedist the next day and he said it was a greenstick fracture (meaning it didn't break all the way through), so he would have to break it completely and reset it for it to heal straight, and while some orthos will do that sort of thing in the office (it happened to my sister-in-law), he thinks that is cruel and unusual punishment (as do I), and we scheduled an appointment the next morning so DeBoy could be put under anesthesia and have the bones set. He was such a good little patient and very brave. He complained very little about pain. I was very nervous about the whole business after my horrendous experience in the hospital, but apparently if you're a cute little 5-year-old, you get better treatment. Which is OK.

And how many people do you know who had their cast signed by Santa Claus?

The obligatory arty shot of the Christmas Tree, put up the weekend after Thanksgiving, as they should be.

This was the Christmas card. It wasn't intended to be the Christmas card, but I liked it best.

And then it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. Friday December 3 was the last day of school until January 3. There was talk of going the week after Christmas, but it snowed then, too. We had snow on the ground from December 3 until December 30. (There for a few days we were afraid we wouldn't have a white Christmas, which after dealing with all that mess for the previous 3 weeks would have been highly annoying.) So the kids went back to school on January 3 - 6, then on the morning of the 7th it was snowing so much they dismissed school at 8:30. Apparently if you call off school before the day starts, you also have to cancel the ball games. So they went to school for 35 minutes in order to keep the ball schedule. Give me strength.

My Mom came to visit the first full week in December. In a way the snow was good because the Queen didn't miss out on any Grandma time, but we did missed some activities.

The Queen is showing off the three baby rabbits that came with her Littlest Pet Shop set. I thought we had escaped the Littlest Pet Shop craze, but she discovered them about 3 months ago, and that was all she wrote. DeBoy asked for a Buzz Lightyear and was much happier with it than it would appear in this picture.

One of our snow days included an 8-hour power outage, so we did this.

Sugar cookies!

And here we are in a New Year and the Queen turned 7.

And of course, more snow, with more to come.

And I'll leave you with this view of yours truly, discovering the best use of our driveway.

A Post in Need of a Title

Forgive me, Bloggers, for I have not written. It's been 2 months since my last blog post. (We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties - has my background disappeared for everyone, or just me?)

I sent an email to Suldog a month ago in answer to his inquiry, and am revising that email for the first part of today's post.

April and May were very very busy. The Mountain Man and the kids threw me a very nice little birthday party, complete with a decorated cake. My beautiful 6-year-old daughter - who can now read! - wrote me a birthday card all by herself. It said, "Dear Mom, You are the best Mom I ever had. I am never going to give you away. Love, the Queen."

Here's the cake. Didn't they do a good job?
Because of all the snow days, and because we had no school on election day the 18th (all the schools are polling places), we had to have school on Saturday the 22nd. The Queen's dance recital was also May 22, with rehearsal on the 21st. VERY long day. Then she sang in the children's choir at church on the 23rd, and we played soccer games that day.

After the dance
The Queen (purple - for royalty, of course!) scores a goal.
DeBoy shoots . . .

. . . and scores!
We went rock climbing on election day to celebrate the day off. I still had not fully recovered from the pneumonia (actually still haven't), but getting outside felt very good.

On the 26th the school loaded up the buses and took the K-3 grades an hour away to the nearest Gattiland. A number of misguided parents including myself followed. Gattiland was singularly unprepared for 300 kids to be playing games and collecting tickets (although they had plenty of food), which I found interesting since they knew we were coming, as we got there before they officially opened. Whoever invented Gattiland (and its equally evil twin Chuck E. Cheese) should spend eternity standing in a line surrounded by loud music, flashing lights, and screaming kids who constantly break line of front of him/her. Knowing the whole time that he/she does not have enough tickets to redeem the prize the child dearly wants.

Because we don't have enough pets, the Mountain Man helped the kids make worm farms. It's pretty interesting to watch the new tunnels they're making. The kids have kind of lost interest now that the initial glamour has worn off, but I'm enjoying checking on them more than I would have expected.



I did a bit part in Charlotte's Web, which opened June 2 with two school shows. We had a Sunday matinee for the general public on the 6th. Fortunately I only had 6 lines, so I went to the blocking rehearsal and didn't have to go back until the last two weeks. I also helped with some of the costumes. The last day of school was June 4. We hit the county pool yesterday. It rained a bit, but no thunderstorms, which we've been running into most days. I want to get in as much swimming as possible this summer. School starts back August 3. Not much time.

We're participating in the Summer Reading Program at the library. They have something every day for various age groups, but we go on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesday is storytime with crafts and Friday is a special program. The first Friday they had folks from Kentucky Down Under, who brought various animals native to Australia: a blue-tongued ginko, bearded dragon, a kookaburra, a wallaby, and a border collie. That was the best behaved dog I've ever seen. The trainer led him around the auditorium, though we were not allowed to pet him. Then she let him off the leash and parked him on the step next to me (overflow crowd). After a bit I looked at him and he took one step toward and put his head in my lap. I broke the rules and petted him, and he didn't move until she came back for him. I guess he knew a dog person when he saw one.

If you're looking for something to read, I highly recommend Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. The first one is The Eyre Affair and there are 4 sequels: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and Thursday Next. They're incredibly inventive and he refers to and/or parodies most of classical literature. In addition, he's written the Nursery Crimes series, which so far includes The Big Over Easy, and The Fourth Bear. In the first one, Humpty Dumpty's death turns out to be murder and Jack Spratt is the detective in the case. I haven't actually read those yet - the library only had The Eyre Affair, so I did the rest through interlibrary loan. I'm also halfway through Charlaine Harris' vampire series featuring Sookie Stackhouse (those are the novels on which the HBO show TrueBlood is based). And I reread the Harry Potter series and Zimmer's Avalon series.

None of my family were hurt by the flooding in Tennessee, but plenty of folks I know had a lot of property damage. It will be years before it's cleaned up.

A number of you kind folks asked about my Mom. She has fully recovered from her radiation therapy back in January, enough so that she just had hip replacement surgery last Tuesday. She was up and around the same day, and went home on Friday. She gets out of bed and out of a chair without assistance and does pretty much everything she wants. She is not supposed to climb long flights of stairs for about 2 weeks. She has done remarkably well with this thing. She's a survivor, my Mom is. She reminds me of that Knight in Monty Python, missing all his limbs and yelling, "Come back and fight, I'm not dead yet!"

Last but not least, I'd like to bid a fond farewell, but not forgetting, to Sarah at Slouching Past 40. She has retired her blog, in a truly touching last bit of poetry. Even if you don't read her, you will be moved by this piece. She didn't say, but I'm hoping that she has retired her blog in order to devote full-time to writing a book. At least one!

I am so far behind in reading blogs. I can't just read the latest post. I have to go back and read everything I missed, because it's like reading the first and last chapters of a book without reading the middle. But I do think of you all often, and will visit soon.

Of Pups, Spaceships, a Pumpkin Patch and Marriages and Things

Um. Hello?

Remember me?

Yes, I'm back.

Where to start.

When last we left you, we were in possession of 5 of the 6 puppies. We found homes for 3 of them within 2 weeks (which indicated to me that these people did not even TRY to find homes for any of them, they just dumped the puppies). One of them ended up with a former student of mine, which was pretty cool. The two that we kept are now 5 months old and weigh about 40 pounds each. These are going to be big dogs. They're already bigger than Zoey.

On the Monday after we delivered the last puppy to her new owner, I heard the dogs making a huge racket and then I heard what sounded like a cat being tortured, and I ran out in the yard and found this little guy.

This one was promptly named Buster Brown and weighed in at 5.8 pounds. Here he is next to Chewy, the "little" puppy.

And for comparison purposes, here he is next to BC. We found a good home for him after about a week.
Until we're sure they're completely housetrained (Gadget is being slow), the puppies live in this kennel. One day while they were outside, BC decided to try it out. Please note I would NEVER attempt to put this giant dog into this kennel. Until I saw it I wouldn't have believed he'd fit. (The red by his leg is a chew toy, not blood.)

I baked bread one day. I'd like to do it again. This is my mother's recipe and I was very pleased that I managed it.

We have two sets of dining room chairs. One set was my grandmother's, the other set was the Mountain Man's grandmother's. My grandmother's set (on the right) was recovered by my stepfather along about 1988. The other set was last done around 1965.
So I recovered them. I haven't quite finished. I have 3 more to do. What you see underneath the torn part is brown vinyl. Underneath that were two layers of a black upholstery which was quite pretty and predates my mother-in-law. And then some fluffy stuff that used to be padding and wanted replacing.

Here are two of the finished ones.

DeBoy and I accompanied the Queen's kindergarten class on a field trip to a pumpkin farm. He was VERY proud of himself and got to ride with the big kids on the hay wagon.

He's feeding the goats here. That's him sporting his new short haircut. I took him in to get the bangs trimmed, and he kept telling the stylist "shorter!" I might get over it. Someday.

The next day was his 4th birthday - the theme was "Dinosaurs from Outer Space."
The blue spaceship cake he requested. They continually test my creativity.
Not a baby anymore.
They both played soccer again for the 6-week recreational league. DeBoy is #12. He scored like a madman, but wasn't necessarily discriminating about which goal he aimed for (in this particular picture he was correct).

Also in October we traveled to South Carolina for our niece's wedding.

At the rehearsal dinner.
At the reception, DeBoy discovered DeMicrophone.
The Queen with another family friend - they gave out rose petals to all the guests to throw at shower gently upon the newlyweds on their way out. I made the dresses and my mother-in-law made the baskets.
After a full day that threatened rain- the wedding ceremony was dry, and followed by the most beautiful sunset.

Bustin' a move on the dance floor.
The Queen dances with her cousin and new cousin-in-law. The flower arrangment on the mantle was done by the Mountain Man's mother.
Reflections . . .
DeBoy admires the lights decorating the bushes on the path the bride and groom left by.Collecting the used petals. We still have the basket. And the petals. Actually they make quite a nice potpourri in her closet.
We stopped at a scenic overlook on the NC/TN state line on the way home.
Halloween!

Superman and I attended the party at the Queen's school. It was quite the occasion. The kids all parade around the football field dressed in their finery and then go back to their classrooms and eat lots of sugar until it's time to go home. I dressed as Belinda, the Unmentioned Witch of the South. There are no pictures.

SuperMan and the Fairy Princess
The Mountain Man puts the finishing touches on the Jack o' Lantern.
A Rainbow for trick-or-treating!
And a sunset.
We got in one last day of rock climbing in November. Here the Queen scurries up a route next to the big boys.
We went to the Mountain Man's parents for Thanksgiving. The kids took a walk with their cousin.

And now we come to December . . .

Santa's elves help decorate the tree.

Visions of sugarplums . . .
December 5 - the puppies experience their first snow.

And it's tasty, too!

The Snow Princess



Airborne puppy.







And in addition to all that, I've been doing some sewing for pay, as well as making some Christmas gifts. Tuesday the Queen started running a really high fever, and the doctor said she had the flu so now all four of us are on Tamiflu and she's not allowed to leave the house until Tuesday. She missed her last dance class which was to include a performance for parents, the American Girl party at the new library (which opened October 12 and is one of the reasons I've been away so long), and she will miss the Christmas performance of the children's choir at church on Sunday. She started in choir after soccer was over, and they had a Thanksgiving program, so she didn't miss everything, but it's still pretty lousy timing. She'll have 4 days of school then she's out for Christmas.

School has been interesting. I thought I would have more time once she started school, but it turns out I have less. Part of it is the hour in the car every day to pick her up from school (the Mountain Man takes her usually, though DeBoy and I have done it a few times), but there's homework (very limited since it's kindergarten - gets them used to the idea and I certainly don't mind it) and other things like class parties and such.

And the fundraising. We've had around 6 this semester, although I lost count. Every time I turn around it's another fundraiser. But the Queen loves kindergarten. She's missed it this week while she's been home.

The puppies are taking a lot of time. They require training and I'm really not that good at it so it's taking awhile, because the Mountain Man has absolutely no time for it.

My mother came to visit for about a week, and the Mountain Man's parents were here for DeBoy's birthday, so the house has been cleaned more than usual. :)

I am REALLY not prepared for Christmas now. There were a number of things I wanted to do that aren't going to happen. I've lost most of this week because of the Queen being home sick, and I was already behind before that happened.

I'm sure there's a lot of other stuff but I can't think of it right now. And I'm sure the 5 of you who showed up gave up several pictures ago.

I plan to come visit all my buddies, but I don't know if I'll try to read all the posts I missed. It might take another 3 months.