Little Things

This picture isn’t an obvious match to the post, but it makes sense, I promise. Charlie and I were chasing the last few rays of daylight at the park on what was probably one of the few park-weather days we have left this year.

I’ve always thought of myself as one of those people who looooooooves the transitions into the colder seasons. I’m not terribly outdoorsy, so I generally think of bundling up in a cozy blanket with a hot beverage and a book when I think of Fall and Winter.

I’m not sure why I still feel that way, considering the fact that cold weather mostly means that Charlie will go from jumping off of things outside to jumping off of the couch cushions all winter long. What Winter means in parenting reality is that we will probably be in the pediatrician’s office once every week and a half, and my pant legs will be consistently wet all the way up to the tops of my shins once it starts actually snowing.

I really wish I would have started blogging earlier in my life, like in college. Of course, in college, blogging seemed like the STUPIDEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF EVER, so the quality of the posts may not have been the best.

If I had some blog posts from college to read, I think it would hammer home even harder the fact that November (despite all the gorgeous fall-ness) always gives me a run for my money. It seems to be a very intense month for me, despite all of the quietly beautiful things like leaves falling and the air becoming crisp. I think the fact that I’ve always been in an academic setting has something to do with it. My parents were both teachers, I went to college for an “extra” year, and now Paul is a grad student. November means that there are some VERY BIG breaks coming up, and it usually means that your weeks are going to be so filled with work that the breaks almost don’t seem worth it. They are totally worth it, the breaks, but beforehand it sure doesn’t feel like it.

What makes it harder is that, while it’s very stressful in a negative way, it tends to be equally as stressful in a creative way. I’ve been going through all of my blog posts from the past three years, and every November has proved to be the same. I’m always torn between real-life stress and the stress to make my creative goals real-life. This tug-of-war between something so good and something so stressful makes it easy to get negative.

Those other years, though, I don’t think I really had any perspective. I’ve been pretty grumpy about the fact that I’ve had to go through each of my blog posts one by one (I’ll tell you why later . . . spoilers), but really what it’s done is show me the obvious cyclical nature of my life. Every year around this time I start to feel a little panicky, and every year it gets better. Every year, November makes me feel like my quest to do something artistic with my life gets drowned in obligations, and every year I end up coming out of it a few steps closer to my goals.
But, oh my crap, it’s hard to realize that at the time.

This whole thing makes me think of our yard. We’ve got this GIANT oak tree (well, significantly less giant after this summer’s roof-puncturing fiasco) next to our house, and this is an experience that I’ve never been familiar with until we moved here. Acorns are terrifying. They fall so hard that they put dings in our windshield. They hurt like hell when you step on them without shoes on, and they are like baby magnets for small children who are at the stage in which everything goes into their mouths. And, I’m serious, it sounds like you have herds of dinosaurs or robbers straight out of Rescue 911 on your roof sometimes.

But, it seems like the tree saves up for this huge, gorgeous leaf drop, and it all happens in November. Once those leaves fall, it’s time to rake ‘em up and jump right back into them. I’d totally be a liar if I tried to make it sound like I do most of the leaf-raking, because it’s definitely Paul . . . but that doesn’t make those big ol’ piles of leaves any less satisfying to jump into.

What’s important is that there are more leaves than acorns, despite the fact that the acorns are much better at making themselves heard.

I’m writing in the dark right now because a moth has infiltrated our dining room and it’s annoying and I’m too short to do anything about it. Luckily the kitchen light is much more appealing than the light from my laptop.

Annnnyway, a whole bunch of life has been happening around here, and I’ve finally got the time to sit down and write about it.

This one’s pretty huge, you guys. Charlie started preschool. I was pretty adamant about not sending him to preschool until he turned 4, and I even felt a little weird about that. I mean, I never went to preschool, I stay at home with my kids, why on Earth would I want to send him out of the house to be with someone else when I could be the one with him allllllll the way up until Kindergarten? (That was the voice of Smug Lauren, by the way, who almost never knows what she’s talking about.)
One by one, Charlie’s friends started going to preschool, and the questions came in full force. “Where is my school, mommy? Who is my teacher, mom? Is that bus going to take me to my school?”
Come on. How do you say “no” to the little kid who wants to go to school?
It ended up working out that a spectacular little art-based (and wallet-friendly) preschool in our area had an opening, so we jumped at it. Charlie is THRILLED. He loves to go school and seems to be doing very well . . . and I’m suddenly left with 2 hours that contain good nap-possibility for Lucy, and therefore the possibility of ALONE TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF A WEEKDAY.

We did it. Princess AwesomeFace (name exaggerated for privacy) and I ran our first 5k. I say first because, God help us, we are going to try to stick with it, even if it only means running once a week because that’s the best we can do. It was fairly difficult, because neither of us have any distance-tracking technology, so we were doing the training program by time. We’re a little slow when it comes to this running thing, so the actual 5k was a bit longer than we were used to. The facts, however, are these: We signed up for a race. We went to the race. We crossed the finish line running. WE ARE THECHAMPIONS.

Halloweeeeeeen! This was Charlie’s first year trick-or-treating. He handed out candy to kids last year, but didn’t have a costume. I think that was mainly because Paul and I are terminally lazy, and Charlie only cared about handing out candy. This year, we decided to go to a few of the houses on our street, and, although it took him a few doors to get really confident with it, he seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. Honestly, though, I still think he got a bigger kick out of waiting for all the trick-or-treaters to come to our door. We didn’t really have a costume for Lucy, but she had just gotten a cute little hand-me-down jacket with ears on it, so I put some marker on her nose and called her a baby polar bear. Also, I should mention that this Halloween was brought to you by hand-me-downs from Princess AwesomeFace, so thanks, friend. 🙂

There is something I think about all summer long.

The second we get the first 80 degree day in the spring, I start thinking about it. I long for it. I’m even resentful toward iced coffee for a while.

I know it’s trendy to love Fall right now . . . but dudes, I love Fall.

I CAN’T WAIT to go pick out pumpkins with Charlie and Paul and Lucy, and I think we’re going to decorate the house for Halloween today. I love cardigans and jeans and warm beverages and all of the corresponding Fall things that everyone else loves.

But.

This happens every time Fall starts knocking on our door . . . I start to feel just a little bit uneasy. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I go a few weeks feeling off. There’s a chill in the air, but it’s not quite the chill you’re waiting for, so it’s more of a reminder that Summer’s leaving rather than a welcome mat for Fall. As much as I don’t like Summer, I just generally don’t like it when things end. Everything around is changing . . . schedules, menus, attitudes. There’s a lot of upheaval going on for everyone and the hippie blood in me can feel it. I start to worry about the littlest things. I turn the littlest things into things like unemployment, cancer, and zombie apocalypse.

I get a little “woe is me” for a while and then something finally happens. Something like having friends over for coffee or watching Charlie giggle about an acorn falling on his head, or putting my book down to put on a sweater. At some point, the timing clicks and I realize that Fall is actually here, and everything is actually okay.

I’m not quite there yet. It’s probably the fact that there’s still an 88-degree day this week sneering at me from the week’s forecast. That day’s kind of an ass.

It’ll get there, though. Soon the air will be decidedly crisp and Charlie will have to start wearing his blue monkey hat every time we leave the house, and I’ll get to see new long-sleeved shirts on Lucy that I haven’t gotten to see yet. I just need to busy my brain.

Do you guys have any awesome Fall projects for me? Something to tell my brain to stop yapping so mindlessly and actually do something positive and productive?

I’ve said it before, but I am feelingcrazy nostalgic about college right now. I’ve been looking through all of my old pictures on Facebook . . . Minus the Bear just put out a new album . . . and I even found a box of old shirts from my Freshman year.

Let’s just say I was definitely proud of my . . . assets back then.

I’m sure that most of my friends who went to college have some pretty standout memories from those days, because there are a few situations that will never be able to leave my mind. Moving day . . . being in my first college play . . . seeing Paul for the first time . . . these are all things that are branded on my brain matter.

One of my favorite and most painful memories happened in an apartment across the street from campus. These apartments had housed more than four sets of my friends, and I think I had been into each building at least once. They weren’t the nicest apartments by any means, but they were fairly inexpensive, and I don’t remember any of my friends having too many complaints. The hallway carpets were dingy and thin, and, as far as I know, each unit had the same layout.

I think it was late on a weekend evening, and I was hanging out at my friend Ashley’s. I’d like to be dramatic and say that we were having a very emotionally-charged day where one of us had broken up with a boyfriend, but I think it was just a day in which we had been working on a bottle of wine together and watching multiple episodes of something hilarious. We had both just recently discovered that you could make a very tasty dish of “Thai peanut noodles” by simply boiling spaghetti and mixing it with peanut butter and hot sauce.

After sharing a bottle of wine with your friend all afternoon, you’re clearly going to need something to eat.

To our dismay, Ashley had no hot sauce. No problem, though, right? All you need to do is throw a few crushed red pepper flakes into the pasta water, and the dish will be imbued with a delectable spicy essence.

I don’t know what I was doing . . . just sitting on the couch? I don’t know, but, suddenly, Ashley let out a “Nooooo!” as the shakey-lid fell off the bottle of pepper flakes and an avalanche of spicy fire fell into our pasta water.

I think we may have tried to fish the pepper flakes out for a bit before we decided that, since we were just putting them in the water, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.

I remember the flavor started out really nice . . . because, you know, you just get the spice without getting the vinegar that hot sauce usually has . . . and the peanut mixed with the heat is just delicious.

And then, it was horrible. Mouths on fire, we looked at each other in horror and then . . .

. . . we just kept eating.

You know how, when you’ve been drinking a bit too much, your decision-making abilities begin to suffer? Just a little? Just a smidge?

We chugged some milk, finished our meals, and went to bed.

You guys, when we woke up, it felt like someone had forced us, gun in hand, to eat fire all night long. Our lips and tongues were burning, and we felt pretty stupid about willingly causing ourselves so much pain . . .

But we laughed, a lot, and it was awesome.

Dudes. I beg of you, please explain this to me. I don’t get it.

Why in the name of Gravy do you people want to sleep on the couch?

I’m not talking “random nap on the couch,” because those are generally great. I’m talking about bedtime on the couch. Not fully stretching out, not using a real bedtime pillow . . . sleeping on the couch. I just don’t get it.

This has been a recurring point of tension between Paul and me for a while now. I was just pretty sure that my husband had some weird couch-sleeping disorder that I was going to have to live with until the end of time . . . but every once in a while, Charlie proves to me that it’s either hereditary or something inherent to men.

This morning, I woke up to go running with my friend (didn’t go; I couldn’t find my other sports bra because I have to wear two and that’s just a dealbreaker for me), and about peed my pants at seeing Charlie sprawled out on the couch. He didn’t wake up and yell, “Mommy. Mommy! MOMMY!” . . . he got up, went to the couch, and fell back to sleep. I sat next to him, read my book for a while, then fell asleep myself. When we both woke up, I asked him why he had come out to sleep on the couch, fully expecting something about bad dreams or being cold. What he said was this:

“My bed was too comfy, Mom. So I came out to the couch.”

WHAT. IS GOING ON. IN YOUR BRAINS. DUDES?

Is this a dude-thing? Is this a male Bonk thing?

I’m serious, guys, please enlighten me.