I’m working on getting some new things here on the blog.  A little facelift is in order, or at least some new makeup. 

In the meantime, I’ve put the typewriter header in storage for a while and am going with the minimalist theme.  Part of that is because it has the comments section set up for threaded commentary, meaning I can jump in and get involved in the discussion if I want to.  The other part is because I’m trying to find a different layout where I can incorporate all the stuff I like without having to have things I hate on here.

I felt weird when I would get a comment and sometimes send an email directly to whomever said something, but my response would not show up in the blog anywhere.  So when someone would ask where I got something or what my favorite something else was, the comments section looked like I was just ignoring what people were saying.  I decided to change that, and I hope if you have a comment you want a response to, you’ll subscribe to future comments and/or subscribe to the blog itself. 

I know that with many blogs, people subscribe on a newsfeed or a reader, and I do that myself.  And I don’t expect comments every time out there. But I read every single comment and those of you who have commented know that I work hard to try to respond to as many as I can.  This way, if it’s general information, everyone can see the answer.  Occasionally, I get some really personal comments and/or emails and those will be answered privately.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be working on some new things for this space, but don’t expect sweeping changes.  I’ve carved out a niche with food and whine, my crazy family, big family stories, rants, pictures, motherhood, PMS, bad hair and anxiety attacks.  Like they say, write what you know.

Meanwhile, it is spring!  Flowers blooming!  I don’t have allergies! 

I got some buyers under contract on a really great house that they’ve been planning and saving for, for over 30 years.  My car is getting new brakes tomorrow and it’s costing less than $300, and the guy is letting PC work to pay it off instead of asking for money, and we get to drive it home tomorrow.  My mom’s sisters are visiting her this week to give her a bit of comfort, laughter and breathing room.  And there’s a new episode of Glee on tonight. 

Life ain’t bad at all, baby.

Yesterday I went for a walk along one of our city’s many excellent bike paths.  I had my iPod and was listening to an hour of This American Life with the goal of walking until the 30 minute mark, then turning back and using the last 30 minutes of the walk to get home. 

Along the way, I met an old guy on a bike, two college girls running, a middle-aged couple walking hand in hand.  A strange-looking guy was walking toward me with his shirt off and his belly looked like he was 8 months pregnant.  He stepped over the invisible center line of the trail and started talking to me and I just motioned toward my earbuds and smiled, so he veered back to his side of the trail and kept walking. 

Later on the way back, a pack of Wesleyan students, likely on the track team, jogged past.  Ten or twelve guys…all legal age…no shirts.  Wholesome looking.  Smiling. 

Listen.  When something like that goes past you, you are required as a Christian to admire the handiwork of the Lord.  To not appreciate His creation is just not respectful. 

Anyway, it made the walk so much more pleasant. Is all I’m saying.

I got to Rabbit’s school and went in to get her from the after school program.  She was excited to see me, even though I was sweaty and bedraggled looking.  She was happy to skip down the hall to get her backpack, and all was well until I told her we were going to walk home (all of FOUR BLOCKS) because I had been walking and didn’t have the car.

Well, you would think I had told her she had to saw off her right leg and give it to the poor. 

“Buy why do we have to walk?” she whined. 

“Rabbit.  It is not that far.”

She slumped her shoulders.  “I don’t want to walk.  I feel constipated.” 

?

“I don’t want to walk,” she said, half a block later.  “My leg hurts.”

By block three she was mutinous.  “Mommy, can I crawl the rest of the way?”

“Oh for God’s sake, Rabbit! No, you can’t crawl the rest of the way.  We only have a block to go!”

“Well, can I lay down then?”

I rolled my eyes and walked on without her.  Turning back, I saw her on hands and knees, an exaggerated pout on her face, crawling on the sidewalk.

“Get up.”

She sat back on her heels.  “I HATE walking this far!”

I ignored her and kept walking. I heard her trudging along behind me.   In less than a minute, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of our house, under the big pin oak tree.  Rabbit was about ten yards behind me.

“Mommy!” she shouted angrily.

“What?” I shouted back.

She looked at me stormily, standing there in front of our yard.

“Mommy, we could have been home by now if you had just drove your car!”

Um. Tornado watch, severe thunderstorms and lots of lightning. No bloggy tonight.

This is what happens when you leave two 80-lb bags of quick-setting concrete out behind the garage over the winter and they are soaked in melted snow and rain that gets under the tarp.  Pull off the wrapping paper and VOILA!  Two giant concrete forms and one of them looks like a pillow.  I believe they would look great at the head of a “bed” of flowers, which I’m planning to put in soon. 

And this?  This is what you get when you leave a 40-lb bag of quick-growing child cooped up in a house all winter looking out the window at the dreary skies and hearing her parents complain about life.  When things greened up and started blooming, Rabbit just exploded.

Looking up from beneath the flowering tree, I felt the grass and buried tree roots through my shirt, poking into my back.  The wind made the boughs sway and bees hummed among the blossoms.

The blue sky beyond the white flowers was timeless, and I was ageless and everything seemed to hold its breath for just a moment in the way things do when life bursts forth from the ground and the trees and the death of winter is just a distant memory.

Anything can happen in the spring when the flowers and leaves and sky and earth are so alive you could almost believe nothing bad would ever happen on a day like this.

Almost.

My dad has been in the hospital since late last week, after complaining of difficulty breathing. He had been steadily losing interest in going to the dining room for meals at the retirement community, and simply sat in his chair, playing solitaire or watching “The Andy Griffith Show.”

When his cough got worse and his breathing became labored, my mom called the doctor and they sent an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The medical staff determined that Dad was dehydrated and that it was possible he had pneumonia.

Within a couple of hours, my mother had told her sisters that my dad was having another cancer surgery and that they shouldn’t bother coming up to visit the way they had planned, since he was near death. “Just wait til the funeral,” she told one of my aunts.

After getting that all straightened out (No, Aunties, he isn’t dying. He has pneumonia and his last surgery was over four months ago), my dad had a restful weekend at the hospital. Mom couldn’t visit him Sunday because the shuttle bus from the retirement place doesn’t run on Sundays. Today she went to see him and when she was ready to leave, she sat and waited for an hour for the bus to come. 

While waiting, she became more and more confused, and finally one of the hospital staff drove her back to her apartment. Later, when talking to my sister, Mom announced that Dad had come through his lung surgery just fine.

My sister had to call the hospital where (and HIPPAA rules be-damned) they assured her that Dad had not undergone any surgery and that he was going to have a little physical therapy before they release him later this week. They let my sister know that Mom was getting confused but that everything was fine.

My sister wasn’t sure whether or not she should call and correct my mom about the surgery. I think she probably should, otherwise everyone in the retirement place and all my aunts are going to hear the wrong version of the story within two hours.

I don’t know where I was going with this. I’m just reporting the situation.

Twenty four more posts and I will have written ONE THOUSAND blog posts since I started this thing in 2006. 

At least 25% of those posts are phone-ins, complaints about having nothing to say, the woes of writer’s block or having a headache. 

I’m thinking of stopping at a thousand, but you know I won’t.  I’m thinking it would be nice to not have to blog every single day.  But I already don’t have to.  I just choose to.  And the idea of not posting every day is a little weird now, to be honest. 

I’m all out of clever.  I’m all out of new stuff.  I don’t want to be a mommy blogger and I don’t want to write about my cats.  And yet, I’ve done both.  My husband doesn’t want me writing about him, my family doesn’t want me writing about them, I can’t write about work, and I have chosen to have this blog be a 99.8% curse-free zone. 

People, you can see from that last paragraph the limitations I’m under. 

So for any and all who have kept reading, my thanks and my apologies and my sympathies.  Really, I do know that 2008 was my high water year and 2009 had some good stuff, and that 2010 has been just one Fonzie on water skis after another.  Bear with me.  I’m working my way through some stuff and if I can bring myself to write about it when I’m on the other side, it might be worth waiting for. 

And if not, there’s always 1,000 and done.  We’ll see.

To take my mind off of everything else going on, I decided to have a productive Saturday.

In the morning, I baked a loaf of honey oat bread, and then a loaf of whole wheat bread.  I read an entire copy of The New Yorker cover to cover.  I did two loads of laundry.

I synced my iPod to make sure I had the latest podcast from This American Life.  Then after PC settled in to watch the NFL draft on TV, I went for a walk.  I put on a This American Life podcast in order to time my walk to be an hour.  I went through our neighborhood, past Rabbit’s school (where I stopped to stretch my legs because I had neglected to do so before leaving the house and was having leg pain already), and on to the bike trail, where I crunched along the gravel, then onto pavement, past back yards full of collies and gardeners and mowers and readers and visiting neighbors. 

I don’t know how far I walked, just that the sun was out and the wind was buffeting past my ears and I had to take off my jacket and stuff it into the backpack purse I had with me at about the halfway point.  I turned around and started back home, making it up the driveway with just five minutes of the podcast remaining, so I listened to it while sitting on the swing on the deck.

PC and Rabbit had already had a light lunch, and I sat down with another New Yorker magazine and ate two slices of homemade bread with some cheese. 

Then PC and I started yard work.  I got out the hedge trimmer and shaped up the boxwoods off the deck, as well as the yew hedge by our picture window.  I raked up the twigs and leaves, and then cleaned out the big planter box behind the garage and bagged up leaves.  PC mowed the front and back, and Rabbit came outside and shrieked at the grubs I found in the garden, and then she played with worms. 

We swept leaves off the deck, made a border around the garden with stones and bricks, trimmed with the weed whacker and swept off the patio.  As soon as we finished, the sky started to cloud up and thunder rumbled in the distance. PC ran an errand, and while Rabbit watched cartoons, I finished baking a third loaf of bread, white bread I’d forgotten was rising in the kitchen while I did yard work.

I made a casserole for dinner, and Rabbit ate three slices of bread, two helpings of casserole and two dishes of applesauce.  Fifteen minutes after dinner was done, she threw up.  Her belly was way too full.

So now she is freshly showered and stretched out in bed.  PC is in the garage putting away all the gardening tools. 

And my legs hurt.