The Lost Month of September

I'm sure you've all been dying to know how Ben's trip was. But i'm not going to tell you. Go ask him.

What i am going to tell you is how Ben's trip was FOR ME (open acknowledgement of narcissistic issues).

Ben left on Sunday, September 2nd at around 4am.  He tried to get out of the house with only a brief peck on my cheek and a quick wistful glance our our peacefully sleeping children.  Course, after i heard the door close and it registered in my sleep-addled brain that he was leaving FOR A MONTH... i ran out the door in a tank and undies and up to the car park to jump on him and hold on for dear life. When his father's headlights came down the driveway to pick him up and take him to the airport, I let go and ran back to my house hoping that my father-in-law did not see my desperate undie-only goodbye...

That morning the Lost Month of September began. I went back to bed though couldn't fall asleep and lay there waiting for the day to start in earnest.

Death:
When the day did begin, it was a whirlwind of getting ready for Jeff's Wake. A dear friend of my family's died from an unexpected heart attack at the age of 49 only a few days before leaving his wife, son, and all of us to wonder what in the hell is happening to the world.  Jeff was one of the most generous and sweet people i have ever met. We put up giant tents and tables. We moved furniture and hosed out coolers. We strung up lights and hauled wood for a giant bonfire. That evening many, many people (most of whom i didn't know) came to say goodbye to a man who had already left.

Life:
A few days after Jeff's wake, my niece made her long-awaited debut into the world. Unfortunately, it was not smooth entrance and resulted in both her and mom staying in the hospital for the better part of 2 weeks. My parents went up to the hospital in Pennsylvania (2 hrs north of where we are) to support my brother and his girls and help in anyway they could. I stayed in the hollow.

A few days after that, my first cousin-once-removed made HER debut into the world, though with less drama than my niece (though not without any).

Living:
With my parents camped out up north, I took care of their dogs and home. I took care of my home. I got the kids up and fed and ready for school every morning. Asa started preschool and cried every day of it because apparently, being 3 years old and having your father go off to Japan (may as well be mars) for (what is to you) an inconceivable length of time can open up some abandonment issues. I worked from home and was at least spared the drive to and from the office. I wrote e-mails to Ben every night (and most mornings and some afternoons) cataloging the events of the day, trying to make sense of how alone i felt.

Snakes:
And then there were snakes everywhere... eating toads and laying in the middle of the path AT NIGHT. This makes no sense and so i feel i need to share it in an equally nonsensical way.

On Being Insane:

All the girls got discharged from the hospitals. My parents came home. I waited for things to slow down, take on a rhythm... And perhaps they did in a sense, but more like a crazy jazz rhythm than a steady heartbeat rhythm.

Toward the end of this Lost Month my day looked like this:

6 am- wake up
7am - feed kids, pack lunches, log-on to work computer
8.10 am - put Esther on bus
8.15 am - take Asa home to poop and get ready for school
9.00 am - try not to cry as i watch Asa sob while leaving him at school
9.10 am - drive to j's house to pack her cesarian wound
10 am - work in earnest
1.20 pm - pick Asa up from School
1.30 pm - put something on stove for dinner (x 2) and put Asa down for a nap (or in front of a movie)
3.00 pm - sign out of work
3.10 pm - finish up dinner(s) put one to cool and pack one in basket
3.20 pm - pick up Esther off bus and head to my brother's house
3.50 pm - bring m&c dinner and sniff my niece
5 pm - head home
5.40 pm - re-heat dinner and feed kids
6.40 pm - pack their backpacks for tomorrow
7 pm - bathtime
8 pm - bedtime
8.30 pm - write to ben and put in some un-clocked time in to work to make up for any time during the day i couldn't put in because of driving or fit-throwing


The Surprise:
Ben and I had talked about him cutting his trip short before he even left. Having purchased the travel insurance he thought it wouldn't be a problem to just change his ticket to whenever they had another flight home. This was not necessarily the case and after several long, arduous, and not-a-little close to tears hours on the phone to airlines and expedia and who-knows-who-else, it seemed he couldn't come home early. The mistake i had made was telling the kids when I expected Ben home everytime we got a new possible return date. This resulted in a couple tantrums... on all fronts...

And then one morning i received an e-mail from Ben (3 actually, and a text) saying "i'm on my way home to you".

And then he was home.

Photo re-cap of our summer...

before i cut myself some bangs

Gettin' ready to go to work

At the New Freedom Carnival

I've been on an ice cream making bender... This here is blue berry ice cream sweetened with agave and of course blue berries

Not sure what this means for his future, but man he's a cutie!

This is their new favorite thing to do when it rains

Asa's summer uniform. briefs and boots

Baby chickens in a tree at SidebySide Farm

Large alien plant in the hoops house at SidebySide Farm

This is how we've been picking up the CSA. We hook Thor the dino-dog up to the kids wagon and make him pull us on the bike hike trail... 

Asa's monster mouth from a Sunday breakfast/brunch outting with Lali and Granpa and Miah and Ceci and Lollo and Jocelyn

Punk rock hair

Do-it-yourself aerial yoga!

or maybe i'm just pretending to be a silk worm

reunion after Esther spent 5 days at Oma's house. Longest trip away from home... 

They really missed each other

More home-made ice cream joy... this time it's just vanilla with a couple grain sweetened chocolate chips on top for fun!

And this is Mommy and Daddy's special treat, Guiness Floats

Delectable

Such funny faces...

Jesy's beautiful belly. It's been so cool to watch  her and Ceci grow with babies...  They're both due any day now... 

This is me trying to fetch a frisbee out of a creek... I'm waiting for it to float down stream



It's been a very laid back summer. I'm a bit tentative about the fall, like i said in my last post. It helps to re-cap the summer and remember just how much fun and low-stress we made it for ourselves. Maybe i can make the fall fun and low-stress too... 

Happy 7 year anniversary blog!

Happy 7 Year Anniversary my darling BLOG!!

And as a present i got you this lame-@ss post! aren't you so excited?

 It's been a long road... and it's getting to the point where i hardly post any more... which i feel sort of guilty about considering i had hoped to record my children's lives through this channel so that we could always look back...

It's also been pretty helpful in tracking my own crazy moods, life changes, etc...

All that said, i have no plans or vows to start being a better blogger on the horizon.  I have a busy, crazy life full of children, work, being a bi-polary-type mess, and [insert other thing to finish the list off here].

Esther starts kindergarten next week. I'm more scared than she is. I don't know how well i'll do putting her on the bus that first day... wish me luck. I'm excited for her, scared for her, sad that her toddler-hood is officially over...

Ben leaves for Japan in less than 2 weeks. He'll be gone a MONTH... i'm nervous about doing the lone-parenting thing, worried about the delicacies of working from home, annoyed that he is going (at all and/or without me/us), tired of thinking about it all... I know i'll be fine.  To be honest, it'll probably be easier without him. I have lots of offers of help from family and friends. I'm hoping to hire a neighbor girl for one afternoon a week to just give me some breathing room and let me play catch-up a bit.

I guess that's it for now. The storm from last week blew out our wireless router in the hollow. So i'm hoping the new one will be more powerful and will reach down to our house allowing me to blog from home rather than during breaks at work... here's a'hopin'

Does anyone know what happened to Dr. Sears?

I can't seem to find Dr. Sears Cool Fuel drinks anywhere, it's out of stock on all the websites and all the stores. The drsearsessentials website's shopping cart doesn't work and when i call the customer service phone number, it's been disconnected.

Is the Dr. Sears corporation going under?

Ben is going to visit his crush...

Ben booked his ticket to Japan.  He is leaving 9/2 and will be back 9/30. I'm going to ask my boss this afternoon if i can work from home for a month... wish me luck... :(

Chincoteague Vacation

We did it. We had our very first successful FAMILY VACATION!
There's this myth running around that family vacations are inherently fun. Or am i the only one that was operating under that fiction?

After we had Esther we tried and tried every year, sometimes twice in one year to have a family vacation. Pretty much all of them, with the exception of a few moments, turned into stressful, bickering, aggravating pits of hell.

This year? It was FUN.  What happened? well, i think it was a culmination of factors. I think the kids are old enough and independent enough finally to have fun and let us have fun too. I think that i have lowered my expectations tremendously and come to the conclusion that my personal moods have a great effect on the over-all mood of the family. If i want them to have fun and be easy going, i have to be. Seems simple enough, but my moods may as well be Andre the Giant for all i seem to be able to tackle them sometimes...

We rented the cutest little house:

We didn't do a lot while on vacation. We hung out in our adorable house during the heat of the day and took the kids to the ocean either early in the morning or late in the evening. We went to the play ground. Ben took Esther crabbing, i wish i had pictures of that.  We played a round of mini golf, took walks, went to the toy store, and got Esther a pony ride... Ben and I didn't bicker at all and in fact have been making a point to be extremely sweet to each other. Asa spent the whole time recuperating from his sickness (see previous post) and Esther was just psyched to have a new house to explore (read: destroy), especially one that included a Bonk Bed (bunk bed).