As I mentioned way back when Brenna graduated from her preschool program, I’m so glad this school celebrates this as a simple occasion and not a Big Deal.  (Because it’s really not a Big Deal.)

I took a few pictures that did not turn out well but partway through the presentation I managed to remember how to take a video with my camera (it’s been a long time since I’ve used that feature) and then when I got home I discovered that I have movie-making software on my computer!  (Apparently this machine is not only good for surfing the web… who knew?)

And because I had to sit through was lucky enough to watch the performance, now so can you.

After the ceremony I couldn’t convince him to let me take a picture with his teachers or any of his friends, but he consented to taking one by himself.

And with me.

*In case you were wondering, there is a very big difference between the quality of the pictures taken with my camera and my phone.  Can you guess which is which?

Yesterday was their last day; both kids are officially finished with school for the year.  It is almost unfathomable that Tony and I now have a third grader.  I’m pretty sure I went through third grade just a few years ago myself.  And as I wrote as my Facebook status yesterday to commemorate the occasion:

“Last day of school for both kiddos today. Anthony plans to spend his ’105* days of summer vacation driving his sister insane**’ and Brenna wants to live at school and just start 3rd grade now. I think Anthony’s goals are entirely achievable, and Brenna’s understandable.”

*Yes, he made me count them all.
**From the Phineas & Ferb title sequence theme song

I apologize in advance for the very poor lighting during her uneven bar routine. It was because of the angle – which I couldn’t help because of all the other family members in attendance – and because of those two large windows that allow in the backlight.  You can still see most of her skills, though.

I’m very proud of how much progress she’s made since she began taking lessons here, at this non-competitive facility, a little less than two years ago.  She loves the sport, and for several months, due to a combination of make-up classes and free extra practice nights in addition to her normal weekly class, she was able to get in the gym and work three evenings a week.  At home, at school, and at every other playground we go to she spends the majority of her time on the monkey bars, and I’m completely envious of her upper body strength.  If we were the same size she’d be able to beat me up with her hands tied behind her back, no question.  (Thankfully, for now I’m still bigger.)

You can probably tell that her weakest event is the balance beam.  One of her best friends from school broke her arm falling off the beam earlier this year and the idea scared Brenna; she’s still very timid about performing skills independently.  But she tries, and I’m so proud of her tenacity overall.

COOPER

I’ll start with him because he’s the most visible. (Even if the grainy picture above says otherwise.)

First of all, Cooper turned two in March.  Almost the moment he hit that benchmark he matured incredibly.  He’s calmer and less spastic when it comes to protecting his kids in their own yard.  At 8pm each night he’s ready to settle down, and if we’re downstairs watching TV he curls up on the rug next to the couch; otherwise he joins us in the upstairs hallway until we turn out the lights for the night.  At that point he walks over to my side of the bed, turns around in a circle to find the Best Spot, and goes to sleep for the night.

He’s finally matured enough that we feel comfortable leaving him in our yard when we have errands to run.  Sometimes it’s only for a few minutes but there have been other times when we’ve left him for an entire afternoon.  I asked our neighbors about his behavior one day and they mentioned that while he barked at passersby (see below) he stopped and wasn’t at all annoying. Phew.  We do still always put him in his crate if we leave him inside, though.  Not that I don’t trust him but because it’s our routine, and he’s comfortable in it.  He often sleeps there during the day when I’m on the computer, and I always want his crate to be a part of his life.

I am Cooper’s Alpha.  He listens to me the way he listens to noone else in our family, and given that I’m the one who is mainly in charge of his daily care, that’s just fine with me. He knows when he’s disappointed me; I snap my fingers and he comes; I look at him sideways and he drops to the ground, belly-up and contrite.

Tony is NOT Cooper’s Alpha.  Tony lets him get away with things Cooper would never attempt with me.  Like jumping up on our bed to wake him (or just to snuggle with him) on weekend mornings.  Begging for food in the kitchen.  Insinuating his nose under Tony’s arms while he puts his boots on before work.  Jumping on him when he gets home in the evening.  Tony is Cooper’s friend, and his daddy.  (It’s funny how this is not so different from how The Critters view my husband.)

What I love about him:

He’s not a wanderer.  We can open the front gate to allow him there with us, and he stays in the yard.  If Anthony is riding his bike up and down the sidewalk Cooper will follow him to and fro, but doesn’t go in the street to follow Brenna.  He’ll sit with us in the driveway and watch the neighborhood, and stay. (Mostly.)

He loves the camper, at least when it’s in our driveway.  How he handles it when we’re on the road is yet to be seen.  He gets so excited every time I open the camper’s doors; he hops in, finds a comfortable spot to lie down on the carpet runner we have inside, and just keeps us company.

He must always have something in his mouth when we come home.  This is a silly thing to love, I know, but he’s such a baby when it comes to getting excited about us being home.  I think it’s the retriever in him but when we walk in the door he searches for something to pick up and hold, whether it’s a toy or a random sock or one of our shoes.  Even a piece of paper will suffice in a pinch.  Then he walks around, snorting his pleasure at our return, until we’ve taken a few moments to pet him and reassure him that yes, we returned.  Like always.

He’s not a perpetual barker.  He does bark at people and dogs who walk past our fence, and he really, really doesn’t like the little girl who lives down the street and will stand in front of her, barking ferociously until I tell him to knock it off, and then he does (he is a good judge of character, here, is all I’m saying).  But when the fire engines roar past with sirens blaring, he doesn’t join in with the other neighborhood dogs that howl in harmony, nor does he normally feed into the barking frenzy that other dogs start up when the mood strikes.

He’s a good boy.  He really is.  He’s terrific with The Critters and all other kids who come to our house, and though he gets excited when someone new comes over, he settles down within minutes.

 
He loves me.  I might be his alpha, but I’m also his mommy, and he makes sure I know it.  Of course, I am the one who feeds him and keeps his water bowl filled with clean, cool water throughout the day, but I’d like to think he’d spend time with me even if I didn’t do those favors for him.

What I *don’t* love about him:

He steals food.  Still.  He takes food out of The Critters’ hands if they’re not paying attention, and will stick his nose into the garbage can to grab something out if it’s closing and we’re not paying attention.  I still can’t leave food unattended on the counters without fearing he’ll jump up and take it.

He still eats our underwear. He’s gotten a little better about this since I got smarter about how to keep it from him, but if given access to dirty underwear, we can guarantee that he’ll shred it quickly.

He destroys toys quickly.  Anything that’s stuffed is in danger of losing a limb and all its stuffing.  He’s gotten better about not taking The Critters’ toys – because I’ve yelled at him enough times – but occasionally he claims one for his own.  He is, however, really good about the ‘drop it’ and ‘leave it’ commands.

He makes me pick him up to go in the back of the cars.  Seriously! I have a video as proof but it won’t upload so you’ll just have to take my word that this dog, who will jump the three feet up onto our bed or the five feet to the top of our retaining wall refuses to jump into the back of either of our cars, and is too scared to ride anywhere else.

He gets dirty quickly.  That’s not his fault – his fur is white and we have a dirt backyard.  He can’t help it.

He poops.  Again, this is not his fault, and to give him credit he goes in a corner of the yard where it belongs.  And granted, it’s Tony’s job to pick it up but when Tony leaves on his deployment this will fall on my shoulders.  And I don’t LIKE poo-picking.

His Favorites:

Squirrels.  Actually, I don’t know if squirrels are something he loves or hates, but he knows the word and is vigilant about keeping them out of our yard.

His tail.  The only trick he knows is to chase his tail, which is really comical when you’re watching a 75 lb dog going in tight circles over and over.  Good thing he nearly always gets it.

Dogs on TV.  It’s amazing to see him respond to seeing dogs on television, but he gets right up to the screen and tries to chase them.

His ball.  He loves his ball – any ball – and will ask us to play all day, every day. (He also loves rocks, when a ball isn’t available.)

Hikes.  Going on hikes where he’s allowed off-leash are his favorite thing to do.  He’s really good about coming back to check in with me if he’s wandered too far ahead, and likes to keep The Critters in check, too.  When we go for regular walks I use the Gentle Leader with him, which keeps him from pulling me but which he hates.  So off-leash is always preferable for him.

In Summary:

Cooper is a wonderful addition to our family.  He has his issues, as all dogs do, and while I am not generally a fan of being a dog owner he makes me love having one.

WASABI

Wasabi is my cat, through and through.  He likes Tony and Brenna, and he tolerates Anthony at times, but he loves me.  Nearly every night he can be found curled up, asleep, next to my legs, and during the day he sleeps on my side of the bed.  He is still our ‘bedroom cat’.  Oh, and he turned three in March, making him the oldest of all our animals.

Now that spring is here, Wasabi uses every possible chance to escape outside, and now that he’s done this often enough I’m comfortable letting him do so.  He always jumps over our front gate and runs to our next-door neighbor’s yard; when he first began doing this he’d hide under his back porch for hours until he was brave enough to risk running the thirty feet across his yard to the fence that stands between us, and return home.  These days when he’s ready to come inside he walks along the top of the fence, squeaking his squeaky meow until I hear him and go out the back door to scoop him up and bring him back.  Occasionally he comes to the front or back doors to wait for someone to notice him, but normally he wants me to do all the heavy lifting.

Oh – and he waits to evacuate his waste until he’s back inside, because apparently he’s domesticated enough that a litterbox is the only place good enough for him.

Speaking of his litterbox, he LOVES the new automatic cleaning one we have.  I don’t have a picture of it, but after he’s used it, he sits outside and waits the seven minutes until the timer begins to clean it.  I’ve even seen him jump inside to set off the sensor, then sit and wait for it to start; he sits in front and watches the globe spin around, finally leaving the laundry room when the cycle ends.

In summary: He has the softest fur I’ve ever felt on a cat, and completely debunks the “black cats are bad luck” myth by being one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever owned.  (And I should know – I’ve had a LOT.)

FRISKY

Frisky is 100% Brenna’s cat.  He could care less about me, Tony, or Anthony, and frankly the three of us feel the same way about him.  But he loves Brenna, and she loves him.  He will turn two on July 30th.

We had some major issues with Frisky earlier this year when we initially got the new litterbox and he didn’t like it.  Except that he would use occasionally, except at night when he peed and pooped on the hallway carpet.  If you’ve ever had a cat pee on carpet then you’ll know that it’s pretty much impossible to get it out, and so despite the fact that I’d steam cleaned over and over he could still smell it there and kept returning to the scene, night after night.  However, since we pulled up all the carpet on the main floor he’s been perfectly behaved.

We had Frisky declawed at the same time we had him neutered, as soon as he was old enough for both, because he’d been crazy.  He would climb up the curtains and up the screens, and attempted to climb up the walls themselves.  I knew the only way he’d make it without me tossing him outside for the foxes to catch was to have his claws removed.  Ever since his name has been less appropriate; though he’s thoroughly enjoyed the Miller Moth infestation that is just now finally ending around here, he is lazy.

And fat.  I haven’t brought him to the vet in awhile but I’m pretty sure he weighs close to fifteen pounds.

Frisky is completely comfortable with Cooper.  He will actually engage him in play, rather than running from him as Wasabi tends to do.  Cooper likes to chew on Frisky once in awhile, and Frisky tolerates it, just whining now and again when Cooper’s teeth get too chompy.  He is still playful, but not wildly so.

At night Frisky sleeps with Brenna when she allows it, but because his favorite way to wake her in the mornings is by chewing on her hair, she often kicks him out before he goes to sleep at night.  It’s then that he sometimes curls up by the foot of our bed – he doesn’t seem to have a preference between my side of Tony’s – or more often he sleeps on our bedroom floor.

In summary: Though he’s not my favorite cat I’ve ever owned, I do like Frisky.  But he could leave our family tomorrow and it would make little difference in my life. Brenna would be sad, though.

CLIMBER

I mentioned Climber – Brenna’s hermit crab – when I chronicled our spring break adventures back in March, but in case you don’t want to read through that post to find it, I’ll sum it up:

Brenna has a hermit crab named Climber.  She got him for her eighth birthday and has been taking pretty good care of him but we woke up one morning and he’d vacated his shell.  We rushed to the pet store to get him a new, larger shell and he’s seemed happy ever since.

HOWEVER.  Two days ago Brenna came home from school and went to her room to change out of her uniform.  She came downstairs crying, “Now I know what a dead hermit crab looks like!”  Pieces of Climbers’ claws lay strewn across the bottom of his cage and we couldn’t see him inside the shell.

So we waited until Tony came home to take care of the problem, when he he peeking inside and said, “Hey wait – he’s moving!”  Sure enough, Climber was still alive.  What we didn’t know before we do now is that they periodically molt in order to grow new ones, and that’s what we saw.  (Unfortunately we cleaned up his cage, which I now know we shouldn’t have done. I guess I need to put some eggshells in there for him to replenish his calcium!)

Other than that, Climber has been a good hermit crab.  He doesn’t make much noise, doesn’t smell, doesn’t take up too much room, and despite the fact that Brenna thought he’d died because she’d been neglecting to feed him for several days, makes a good starter pet into the world of Responsibility.

And that’s it.  (HA!)  That’s all the animals we have, and it’s going to stay that way for as long as I can stand it.  (Let’s not talk about the fact that Anthony wants a rat, like Ron did in ‘Harry Potter’.)  Occasionally we see how much Cooper loves the company of other dogs and we have a momentary lapse in judgement where we say, “Wouldn’t it be great to get him a friend?” and then we come to our senses a minute later and remember that we have enough Critters to care for as it is.  But overall, we’re happy with the size of our Fur-Family and enjoy them all.

Most of the time.

PROS:

1. I’m using the dryer much less.  I do still use it, for socks and underwear**, and occasionally for towels when the lines are otherwise already pretty full and weighed down.  But those few items that go in only need 20 -30 minutes, depending on what type of material it is, which is half the amount of time I’d use for a full load.
2. All wrinkles fall from the clothes as they hang-dry, which means I don’t have to iron.  (Not that I ever iron, but still.  Now I don’t have to feel guilty about it.*)
3. No shrinkage of clothes from extensive heat in the dryer.  (Tony always buys his shirts a size larger to compensate for the fact that I manage to shrink them the first time I wash them, which is nearly always before he gets a chance to wear them even once.*)
4. Whites are whiter!  I haven’t had bleach in the house since before we moved back from Okinawa, so harnessing the natural bleaching power of the sun helps get those stains that I don’t pre-treat to fade a bit more than they would otherwise.*
5. No static cling!
6. I fold the clothes as I take them off the line, and from there they go directly into everyone’s individual laundry basket.  When I use the dryer there’s a REALLY good chance that the load will sit in the dryer for a couple days hours before I get to them, which means I generally re-start the dryer at least once, if not three times twice.  Because there’s no way I’m going to leave clean laundry outside overnight, I remember to take it down, and because of number two (see above) I can’t justify just tossing these wrinkle-free clothes into the laundry basket all willy nilly.  It’s built-in protection against myself!
7. I very much feel like a pioneer mama whenever I “put out the wash”, as Tony calls it.  Like I can be self-sufficient and do anything.  Rawr.

CONS:

1. I get through fewer loads in a single day.  I used to save up all my laundry for one day each week and was able to power through five or six.  I’d do another load or two for towels later in the week, but all our clothes I could wash, dry, and fold in just one day.  With the line there’s no buzzer to tell me when the clothes are dry, so I tend to let them stay out longer than they need.  I can do two – maybe three – loads in a day using this method, and because I haven’t changed my laundry habits to reflect my new schedule, I’m always about a week behind.  We’ve run out of underwear and socks a couple of times (which is ironic given number one in the PROS column).
2. Rain.  This is not actually much of a problem here in sunny (and hardly ever rainy) Colorado – especially my neighborhood which seems to get clouds that might deliver precipitation diverted around it.  But the first day I used the laundry line, it rained.  Another example of irony, here.  Related: sprinklers.  Now granted, we haven’t even turned ours on yet this year because there’s no grass in the backyard to water, and we don’t need to give the weeds any more incentive to keep growing.  But if the sprinklers were turned on, I’d have to be careful to make sure I’d taken in all the laundry before they automatically come on at night.  (Or just not do laundry on those three days of the week.)
3. Jeans and other naturally dense fabrics feel stiff after they’ve been line dried.  This isn’t enough to make me put them in the dryer, because they soften within minutes of being handled and worn, but The Critters have initially bristled at the texture several times.  (This could also be due to the fact that I don’t use fabric softener anymore, but rather white vinegar. But all our other clothes are just as soft as they were when I was still using softener.  So I blame the jeans themselves.)
4. Pet hair isn’t removed by line drying as it is with the dryer.  Nor are pills or lint on clothes, though the latter is actually good because I think they won’t wear out as quickly.  And being outside anything that’s flying in the air sometimes gets stuck on the laundry if it’s wet.  All I have to do is shake it out, so that’s not a big deal.
5. I’ve been lazy about doing laundry since Tony put up my line.  In fact we all have. Part of this is because of number one (see above), but I also blame my excellent idea of buying a small basket to put each of our piles of laundry in instead of piling it on the couch or in our one basket.  We tend to go shopping from our baskets, which sit on the raised threshold of our fireplace, instead of bringing the baskets upstairs and putting them away in drawers.*
6. Our retractable laundry line sags a bit, which isn’t a big deal but which limits how many towels and other really heavy items I can put on it.  Because it’s not permanent it attaches to a pole on the other end of the yard, and because we want to bring this contraption with us the next time we move Tony didn’t cement the receiving end into place.  The line hasn’t fallen yet, but I’ll be really angry if my clean, wet clothes fall on the dirt below.  (See number two above)

*My nomination letter for “World’s Best Laundress” practically writes itself, doesn’t it?

**Socks and underwear go in the dryer because while we have a 6′ privacy fence around our backyard, people can still see it through the gaps.  I don’t want people seeing our underthings, and as far as the socks are concerned, I don’t have enough clothespins to hang them all up.

As you can see, the PROS outweigh the CONS in terms of numbers, but also in the fact that I do really like this small way that I’m decreasing my carbon footprint.  Though I haven’t been using it long enough to determine how much of a difference it’ll make in our electric bill – and therefore our budget – it’ll at least help keep the house cooler in the summer months when the temperatures rise and the lack of air conditioning makes me want to move into the camper at night.

While I’m on the subject, how about an update on my homemade laundry detergent?

In short: I have not bought the commercial stuff since last July, and haven’t looked back once.

About once every six weeks or so I discover that I’ve run out of detergent, and spend a bit of time making some more.  Up until the last batch I was hand-grating the bars of Castile soap, which took about fifteen minutes per bar and a lot of elbow grease.  Castile soap is considerably harder than Ivory, which took me just two or three minutes, but I like it better and was willing to go the extra mile to use it.

Last time, though, I decided to try using my food processor once more to grate the soap.  I cut the bar into chunks that would fit in the chute, then fed it through the grating blade.  The resulting shreds were not as small as I needed, so I poured the entire batch into a bowl, took half back out and put it in the processor with a different blade, and processed it for about 10 seconds.  That got the texture exactly where I needed it, so from there I just poured in the borax, super washing soda, and OxyClean as usual, and processed the whole thing for another ten seconds.

My food processor only holds a small quantity, which is why I make my detergent in two batches for each bar.  Since I always do a batch with lavender soap and another with citrus soap, this means I end up doing four separate batches in one sitting.  When hand-grating the bars that used to be a forty-five-minute process, but now that I figured out how to eliminate that step I’m back down to twenty minutes, start to finish.

I know that’s more of a time and effort commitment than many people want to make, but it’s worth it to me.

And I still love it.  My clothes always come out clean, and though I can never actually smell the lavender or citrus scents after the clothes have dried, those scents are light enough that I feel good while doing the laundry.  The only problem – if you can call it that – is it doesn’t remove the smell of Tony’s deodorant, which is very strong and chemical-ly.  Regarding body odors, though, which don’t stick around from my homemade deodorant in cotton shirts but which do in synthetic fibers, this detergent removes those smells from both types of fabrics.

I have had no issue with fading of colors, stains come out (or those that are easily removable, anyway*), and I always feel as though the clothes are clean.  And that’s the point.

I should point out that a friend who uses my recipe does not include OxyClean in her recipe and has had some issues with grey socks and underwear.  I always use equal parts borax, washing soda, and OxyClean in my batches and have not had this problem at all.  Even when I someday use up the last of this 15 lb. box (which at the rate I’m using it will be sometime in the next two years) I’ll continue adding it to my recipe.

Like I said in Item Number Seven under the PROS Column: RAWR!

Up until Tony and I put our very first budget into use, I hardly ever carried cash.  Maybe a dollar here or there and a bit of change, but I operated almost exclusively with my debit and credit cards.  Tony did as well. The only exceptions to this were foreign money, because it seems Germans and Okinawans are much smarter than Americans; very few establishments accepted plastic at all, but rather dealt solely with cash.  (This was good for us; it kept us from buying too much on either economy that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.)

But from the second pay period that our budget went into effect, we stopped using those debit cards (we’d paid off and cut up our credit cards months earlier) and began working exclusively with cash.  This was easier for us on Okinawa, as our opportunities for spending money were much more limited than they are in the United States. What had worked for us so well there once again became a challenge to overcome when we returned, and it took nearly a year and a half to get back to our envelope system.  I’ve been using cash once more since January, though, and our budget is much better off because of it.

Look – I’m not the one who came up with the idea, but it works.  When you get serious about making a budget and sticking to it, using cash is what makes it work.  My budget is all nerdified, which means it’s color-coded according to purpose and function, and I have a specific color for our cash categories.  This way I know exactly how much money to take out each pay period.

Our categories are the following:

• Groceries
• Restaurants
• Family Entertainment
• Pet Expenses (food; grooming; vet bills)
• Kid Expenses (school activities and fees; babysitting; allowance)
• Hair & Makeup
• Blow Money, aka personal spending that we can “blow” on anything we want

In Okinawa we also had car maintenance and gas as cash categories, but those were manageable there, whereas they are not here.  Originally I had separated food groceries from cleaning supplies and household products, but I quickly learned that this was too tricky to keep track of.  It was only after a few months of trial and error that we were able to really make it work for ourselves, but now it works really well.

Dave Ramsey sells envelope systems, and we used those for a long time.  Earlier this year, though, I found a wallet with many different compartments, and put little sticky labels on each section so I know where all the money belongs.  It helps me keep track of how much I have for what purposes, and it’s much more attractive than the old brown leather wallet I had been using.

Things still get a little skewed when I am the one carrying all the family funds but Tony needs to stop to pick up a loaf of bread or gallon of milk on the way home from work, but we’re always able to make it work in the end.

In short, using an envelope system for our spending money keeps us on track each month.  It’s what makes our budget work and enables us to live comfortably without compromising our goals or financial lives.  It’s not the easiest system to get used to if you’re accustomed to swiping a card every time you buy a pack of gum, but it’s a really smart way to keep yourself on track and well-worth the adjustment period involved.

About my 52 Bites Project

Follow My Progress

Disclaimer: Affiliate links in this post will allow me to earn a small percentage from Simple Mom if you buy the book.

Everywhere you look you’ll see talk of how much servicemembers sacrifice, and their spouses are quick to jump on board asking for credit, too.  Rightfully so: military spouses absolutely deserve credit for sticking with it when times get tough. When their husband or wife is deployed for a year at a time, or constantly traveling for training or conferences; when they miss more holidays and (birth)days and school events than they’re home for.  When the mission comes first.  When they come home broken; in pieces physically and emotionally, and it’s all they can do get up each day, nevermind return to life as a parent or spouse.  It’s part of the job; it comes with the territory.  And it sucks for everyone involved.

That is not our story.  The Army has been good to us in so many ways.  We’ve had the opportunity to live overseas not once but twice; we’ve been given the chance to live in our beloved Colorado not once but twice.  The moves are challenging, of course, because any trans-continental relocation comes with obstacles and headaches, not the least of which is the fact that our children know only a transient lifestyle that has never allowed them to live in one place for longer than two-and-a-half years at a time.  But still, we’ve been well taken care of, and for that among many other reasons, I have no complaints about this life.

I’ve made sacrifices over the years, for sure.  I sacrificed spending our first year of marriage together so that I could finish my degree while Tony began his training as an Army officer.  I sacrificed having grandparents in Brenna’s and Anthony’s daily lives when they were infants (and toddlers, and preschoolers, and gradeschoolers) because we just didn’t – don’t – live close enough to them for that to be a reality.  I have picked up my life and relocated to unknown parts of the world more times than I ever imagined; I’ve left behind beloved friends and had to navigate the murky waters of reaching out to make new ones.  I’ve changed our plans over and over and over again because the motto I live by as a military spouse is: “Nothing is certain in the Army until it’s already happened“.

That last part: that’s the most difficult part for me.  As a planner who likes to know a year in advance what’s on the agenda for the following summer, it is not easy to fly by the seat of my pants.  Especially when our ever-changing itinerary affects others.

I graduated from college ten years ago.  I have seen just five of the women in my class three or four times since then; women with whom I spent four of the very best years of my life living, attending classes, talking, getting ridiculously intoxicated.  Women who helped me transition from child to adult in the gentlest of manners.  Our ten-year reunion was something I’d been looking forward to since I realized that while Facebook has been wonderful in getting me back in touch with many of them with whom I’d otherwise have lost touch, it’s no substitute for seeing them all again.

If you didn’t attend a small college, you may not understand why this is so exciting for me.  I’m a self-described introvert and I had six really good friends while there, and many others with whom I was friendly.  We graduated in a class of 120 women; there were 600 total students enrolled in the entire school; that’s half the size of the high school I attended.  So for me this was not simply a return to a campus whose buildings housed and educated me, but a return to a community that I was a part of.

I had made plans to attend.  I originally hoped to bring my family with me, but when plane tickets and car rental and registration fees precluded that being an affordable option for us, I decided to attend alone.  I needed the weekend to myself, anyway.  I made plans to fly to the city where my former roommate lives; my roommate whom I have not seen since we walked across the stage and were handed our diplomas.  We were going to catch up, drive to the reunion together, and share a room once again, because it’s been far too long.

But then Tony found out that his unit is training that weekend.  Out in the field, day and night, on the exact days that I’d be gone.  Mandatory training that would not be surrendered for my reunion.

I was devastated.

And this? This is where this life sucks.

To know that we have two sets of grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles who would gladly take my children for three days if only they didn’t all work full-time on the other side of the country.  To know that I have many friends here in town who would gladly take my children for those three days if only it didn’t involve coordinating my children’s different school schedules and activities with their children’s school schedules and activities, on top of the fact that I fully intend to rely upon these friends when I truly need it during the months that Tony will be gone next year.

To know that I won’t get to hug my fellow Vixens, or witness the inevitable sea of pink and green converging in one place.  To pose for our class picture wearing class rings on our pinkies as a symbol of the sisterhood that can never be understood to those outside the bubble.  That the next time I’ll likely have a chance to make it back for a reunion another decade will have passed, and I’ll be preparing to send my daughter off for her first year of college.

Our Army life caused this.  And I’m sad.

Life will go on.  I’ll meet up with my BFFs later this year or maybe the next; I’ll meet the babies have been born and grown without me there to see them.  Eventually I’ll get the chance to introduce my children to that roommate.  I’ll bring Brenna there again to see the campus – hopefully this time when she’s actually thinking about college and when there are students and faculty to see holding class on the Dell or first years avoiding the Senior Stairs, to run with her on the Dairy Loop, past the stables and the students preparing their horses for a fox hunt.

I’m sorry to miss our reunion, my fellow ladies from the Class of 2002.  Have a wonderful weekend.

Holla holla!

photo credit

Two days ago our neighbor, Cecil, came over to chat.  He’d been housesitting/catsitting for my next-door neighbor, James, and had come by to ask if I had James’s cell phone number; he’d been gone for a month with no word, and Cecil was getting concerned.  I didn’t have James’s number either, and together we brainstormed ways to figure out how in the world to contact someone who clearly doesn’t want to be disturbed.

Cecil came over again just now, though, with news that James had returned yesterday.  “He was up in Montana and Idaho; he just lost track of time,” he said.

“I wish I had the kind of life where I could just travel and lose track of time,” I replied.

But a few minutes later I realized, yes – I do wish I had so much time that I could afford to lose track of large chunks of it now and again.  But first I need the kind of personality that could support such an adventure.

It sucks being time-conscious, sometimes.

1.  Tell all, show all, regardless of their age.

2.  Tell some, show some, regardless of their age.

3.  Tell some, show none, regardless of their age.

4.  Tell all, show all, with an age cut-off.

5.  Tell some, show some, with an age cut-off.

6.  Tell some, show none, with an age cut-off.

Up until now I’ve gone with the first option, at least when it comes to telling stories about The Critters.  There have been few topics that I haven’t felt comfortable broaching, and though I do omit some important identifying details, both in pictures and in words, I’ve mostly felt comfortable with this decision.

If you dig into the early archives of this blog you’ll see that I referred to The Critters as Bear and Bug, and then eventually I gave up on that.  There are widely-read bloggers who manage to always keep their children’s identities more anonymous, and I admire that.  I’ve also seen widely-read bloggers who put it all out there.  I admire that, too.

The point I’m making is, I’m in the process of making a shift from being a #1-type mommyblogger to a number #5-type blogger.  At least when it comes to Brenna.

I am very aware of the footprint that I leave behind when I hit the ‘publish’ button on my posts.  I am aware that what I say is then put out there for whomever among you are reading, and there’s no taking it back.  This is something that, someday, when The Critters are allowed to dip their toes into the pools of InternetLand, I will do my damnedest to impress upon them.  For now, the footprints that are left online are of my doing, and I need to exercise caution as I do so.

Brenna is a tween.  She is in the process of transforming from a little girl whose world is her family, to a slighter older girl who is not yet ready to deal with or understand the politics of those three and four years her senior, but is certainly more sophisticated than girls two and three years her junior.  It’s a precarious place to live.

We’re giving her more freedom, more room to make decisions and mistakes, and then – hopefully – learn from those choices.  As she tests the ever-deepening waters around her, Tony and I are learning how to help her when she begins to sink a bit, rather than floating gently on the surface.  This is new for us, too.  I anticipate lots of sinking episodes to come as the months and years march on.

The thing is, it’s not my place to tell her stories in all their specificity anymore.  I feel as though I can refer to incidents without sharing details, that this is what is best for her now.  I share the details of our life with far too many people for her to be comfortable, and after an incident that occurred yesterday, she made this clear to me.

{Note: What follows is likely what you will see in future posts.  Generalizations, but few details. My take on it all, not hers.}

There is something that we have allowed Brenna to do for several months now, something that she loves and makes her feel grown up and responsible.  We have taught her how to do this thing, and we trust her judgement in executing it.

Yesterday, she changed the way she approached this task.  She took a risk despite knowing better, and then took another one.  She lost track of time and though I am not a worrier by nature my mind immediately jumped to the worst conclusions.  When we finally met up I told her how I felt, and then asked her to explain to me what poor choices she made, and why they were poor.  Then I asked to to choose her own punishment.

She named one, which I didn’t feel was severe enough, so I added on to it.  When we’d both had a chance to think about the situation on our own she apologized, and asked that we not tell Daddy. I denied her request.

There will come a time when there will be topics she’ll want to keep between us, and when she’s older I’ll keep her confidence.  But for now we are a family, and as her parents Tony and I maintain a united front.  We make our parenting decisions together, and we enforce them together.  But I assured her the matter would stay among the four of us.

That she’s concerned about her privacy is telling, and I need to respect that.  It’s why you’ve seen fewer posts about Brenna on this blog than Anthony, and why this will be a continuing and growing trend in the future.  It has nothing to do with playing favorites, but rather protecting my child’s online profile.  A child who will – sooner than later – be creating her own online identity, and doesn’t need me tainting it before she even has a chance to defend herself.  Who doesn’t need me recounting all the mistakes she’ll ever make for the public to dig up should she choose to live her life in the spotlight, to use against her.

As her brother gets older, I’ll begin censoring his stories, too.  It’s my aim to memorialize both the good and the bad on my blog, but poking fun at myself is one thing; poking fun at my old-enough-to-care children is another.  (This goes for Tony, too.  He is not perfect, and neither is our marriage.  That doesn’t give me the right to exploit him online.  Occasionally virtually laughing at him and his antics?  I’m okay with that, though.)

You’ll still see her.  You’ll see us all. Just, perhaps… less.

For example: Anthony.  I mentioned awhile back that he seems to have matured incredibly over the past few months, and his levels of independence are just astounding me.

To back up, Anthony began preschool a month after he turned three.  This was also when I put him in a group sports activity at a place that does parent-child classes from birth to age three, and child-only classes from that age up.  He’d never been in daycare, never been away from me, really, and the transition was not an easy one for him.  Up until this past January, in fact, he hid behind me whenever we entered his classroom or the building where he does his sports/karate classes, nevermind that the teacher he had for the latter had been his instructor once a week, nearly every week, for eighteen months.

But then all of a sudden he started running ahead of me to enter these rooms.  He started initiating conversations and responding when others talked to him, rather than hiding behind me and ducking his head.  He went from choosing not to color when I told him I wouldn’t ask the lovely people at his activity place for the supplies, to pulling over a chair and asking very politely, without my help, each time.

Last week, we were sitting in a booth at Chick-Fil-A and he took a look at the prize that came with his meal, I mentioned that within this series of prizes was not only the nature journal that he’d received, but also a camping lantern.  He caught a glimpse of the latter as another child walked past with it, and decided that’s what he wanted instead.

“I’ll go ask for the lantern,” he told me, and I told him he’d have to go by himself.  “Okay,” he responded, nonchalantly.

I prepped him before he left the table.  “You need to say, ‘May I exchange this for a lantern, please?’” and he repeated my words to me, then got out of his seat.

“Do you need Brenna to go with you?” I asked, and he said, “Nope. I can do it by myself.”  Brenna and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and after he walked away she followed behind to watch him.

He waited until a cashier was ready, walked up to the counter, parroted what I’d told him to say, and I watched from my booth, a good 30 feet away, as she did, indeed, exchange his nature book for a lantern.  (Brenna relayed that he even remembered to thank her.  Without me prompting him.)  I was floored.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am a huge chicken when it comes to interacting with new people.  I’ve slowly learned to start pushing past my own comfort boundaries, but asking strangers for things still makes me squirm inside.  I’m nearly positive that I didn’t order my own meal in a restaurant until I was a teenager, and it’s because of this that I’ve encouraged both of my children to do so from a young age.

(I was about to go off on a tangent about how I think the whole “stranger danger” concept that’s drilled into kids’ heads is ridiculous, but I’ll spare you.  Instead, know that I think most strangers are good, and the chances that my kids will run across the drastically fewer bad people in this world are slim.)

And then on Tuesday, when we were at Costco and of course he needed to use the restroom, I walked him to the shared entrance of women’s and men’s rooms.  I headed toward the women’s room, as usual, but he walked off to the right.  “I’m going by myself,” he called over his shoulder, and I said back to him, “I won’t be able to go in if you need help.”

“I won’t need any – I can do it,” he said as he walked out of my sight.  And he did.

Several minutes later a man my father’s age walked out; I could hear him telling Anthony, “Well you’re just self-sufficient, aren’t you?”

“Is he doing okay in there?” I asked the man, and he answered, “Oh yes.  He was just washing and drying his hands by himself.  He knew exactly what to do.”

It’s not that I’m surprised that he can handle this on his own.  He’s been potty trained for nearly two-and-a-half years now, and both at home and at school he’s expected to complete the process, start to finish, by himself.  But public bathrooms are more difficult.  The toilets are taller, the doors harder to close and open; the sinks and soap are often out of his reach.  Though I’ve let him go to a restroom in stores or restaurants with just Brenna before, he’d never used a public restroom by himself.  Now, all of a sudden, he can.

I envy their self-confidence, these kids.  At almost thirty-two I still hesitate to speak to anyone I don’t know, and am still quiet even among my friends.  That The Critters seem to have inherited Tony’s ability to talk to people with ease makes my heart swell.  It’s one of his best traits, and one of my biggest weaknesses.

*The pictures in this post have nothing to do with the content, other than to maybe prove that this child is goofy and continues to make me smile on a very regular basis.

I do not count myself among those people.

I am a mother, and I am very actively involved in the pursuit of raising my children.  Much in the same way that Tony gets promotions and raises and awards for doing his job, I expect the same recognition that at this point in my life, mothering is my biggest, most important job.  And I’m working really hard at it.  Therefore I expect to be honored for such.

As I told Tony as we were getting into bed on Sunday night, he won’t have to celebrate me forever.  It will be his job to remind our teenagers to do something for me, once they’re able to plan and execute these things on their own, but I fully expect that once my children have grown and begun living their lives on their own terms – and my days of raising and actively parenting them are over – I won’t expect more than a cup of coffee from him and maybe a phone call from The Critters.  I’ll be more than happy to pass the laudatory sentiments to my daughter and/or potential daughter-in-law, should they choose to someday become mothers themselves.

But for now, I want to be recognized.  And given that last year’s Mother’s Day was a very big disappointment in that he all but forgot about the occasion until the evening before and then halfheartedly tossed a “Happy Mother’s Day” in my direction that morning – and didn’t include the children at all – I made sure they understood what I wanted.

As I had them captive in the car one day, about three weeks earlier, I pulled out my pointer finger and waved it at each of them.  “Mother’s Day is coming up.  Last year you guys didn’t do anything for me, so this year I expect presents.  Not expensive ones, and I’d prefer that you make them yourself.  But I want cards, and for you to remember me on that day.”  I waved my finger in the air, making my point.  “And if I don’t get that from you guys… I’m leaving and not coming back.”

They laughed at me, calling my bluff, because that’s all it was.  So I tried again.  “Okay, then if I don’t get celebrated on Mother’s Day, I’m not going to do anything for your birthdays this year.”  They fell silent.  That’s a threat they believed I’d follow through on.

Tony made sure their birthdays would be properly done this year, by doing Mother’s Day properly for me.

The introductory letter

Einstein Bros Coffee & Espresso Bar for breakfast, where my next clue was at the register

*So we headed to the Safeway in the same stripmall…

…this was sitting on the front of a shelf, waiting for me to bring up to Customer Service to get my next clue

Tony knows me so well, it’s frightening.  I was, indeed, freaking out about the fact that I had to talk to complete strangers in order to get each clue, and had just made that exact comment when I opened and read this one.

He sent me to the playarea at the mall where I met a very good friend.  Together we deciphered and traveled together to the next several stops, the first of which was Dick’s Sporting Goods.  The clue here should have been on a bench near that playarea but was gone; it likely had been removed by the evening cleaning crew.  So I called Tony and he dictated the clue to me over the phone (though Brenna was with me and could have told us where to go).

Once in Dick’s I received this running hat (so that I would stop stealing Tony’s)…

and this clue:

Off to “Things Remembered”

Tony and Anthony met up with us where he’d planned to have us all eat lunch, but since we’d eaten a late breakfast and Brandi’s family had decided not to meet us (her husband had brought her girls out for breakfast so she could sleep in and didn’t want to repeat the experience) we skipped lunch.  Before Brandi and I left, Tony handed me this clue:

So off to the Barnes & Noble across from the mall we went.  We had a bit of trouble finding this next clue, as Tony had wedged it between books by an author who I’d like our book club to read but which hasn’t been decided upon.  It was there, though, along with this:

So after grabbing some cold drinks from Starbucks and meandering around the bookstore for awhile, pointing out books we’ve read and loved (or hated), we headed down the road to Whole Foods.  And there, taped in front of Ben & Jerry’s ‘Late Night Snack’ ice cream (which is a fantastic treat, by the way) was our next clue:

You guessed this one, right?  Edible Arrangements for this:

which were delicious and not shared with The Critters, thankyouverymuch.
(I did share them with Tony, though.)

These clues were attached:

**So I dropped Brandi back off at her car and headed to the natural pet food store where I buy The Animal Critters’ food, and this was waiting for me:

…as well as this clue (from the cats) that had me return home:

To sum it up, I was thoroughly spoiled.  Let me be clear: I had not asked for this elaborate production, but I loved every (scary OhmyGodIhavetotalktostrangers!) moment of it.  I’d thought maybe I’d get a couple handmade cards, a cup of coffee, and something from Edible Arrangements (because Tony has figured out that while these creations don’t last as long as a bouquet of flowers, they’re far more appreciated).  This – ALL THIS – was far, far beyond my expectations.

Yes, Tony planned this all out by himself, and yes, he wrote all those clues by himself.  (I told you that the reason I bothered talking to him when we first met online was because he paid attention to details like spelling and grammar, and because he quoted poetry to me, right?)  Add in the fact that he gradually allowed me to dip my toes into the scary waters by joining me for the first two clues, then sending me with Brenna and Brandi for the next few, so that by the time I collected the final one I wasn’t shaking anymore, and he knows me better than I could imagine anyone would.

I am a very lucky woman.  (And for $200 an hour, I’d be happy to loan him out to you for all your scavenger hunt party planning needs.  He’s worth far more than that, so this is a bargain, really!)

* One of my favorite commercials

** Best dog ball EVER. Cooper – the dog who can destroy a tennis ball in under a minute – has had this ball for well over a year and it’s still in perfect condition. Well worth the cost.