Two Missing To Do Items
We've had a strange blast of weather that's reminded me of childhood days living in San Diego. The remnants of hurricane Newton brought a very different kind of rainstorm. The day before yesterday we had on and off drizzling all day. It was humid but also much cooler than our normal monsoon temperatures. The perpetual overcast look was also very different from our normal stormy weather. In the morning J made an off-hand comment about how "this is isn't beach weather" and I had to point out that actually, this was exactly beach weather! Most of the time in San Diego, that's what the weather is like at the beach. Overcast and muggy. If it does rain, it is an endless drizzle. My kids are used to the monsoon thunderstorm bucket dumping that we call a rainstorm out here. It pours, the wind tears everything apart, and then it's suddenly over (and you're looking at a foot of water in your retention basin and wondering how it's possible this can be the desert). Anyway, the oddest part of it was that yesterday's beach weather made me just smile a little bit in remembering.
It did not make me homesick.
There are still things about living in the desert that seem unnatural-- I don't prefer dirt and dust and scraggly bushes to the ocean-- but it does feel much more like home. Amazing what ten years can do. (Though it's now almost 14 years we've been in Arizon altogether. I can hardly believe it!)
On a completely different subject, this morning was another one of those adventures in parenthood that seem so ludicrous that it must be fiction. Only it wasn't. Last night I crashed early. I got through piano and then got my newsletter put together at lightning speed. After dozing my way through the bedtime routine for the kids, I climbed into bed and zonked out no later than 9:30pm. I needed it-- I had a busy morning planned for the next day (that would be this morning).
About 10:30 M shook me awake. I was pretty incoherent at that point, but she managed to get it through to me that K had cut his hair (????) and I needed to come see. I blearily told her that there was no way I could get out of bed and that her dad would take care of it when he got home. Then I immediately conked out again.
My alarm went off at 4am sharp (a lovely time of morning but still quite dark). I stumbled through the room in the pitch black, my blurry eyes noting the motionless dark shape on the other side of the bed. Except in truly unusual circumstances, Terence usually makes it to bed sometime after I've been asleep for several hours, and I get up several hours before he does. So he tries to be pretty quiet when he gets home at night and I try to be considerate about lights and noise in the morning. Anyway, I was only half-conscious when I threw on my clothes and headed out for 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't until I was pulling up to the house nearly 90 minutes later when I realized that Terence's patrol car wasn't parked in front of the house.
What the . . . ???? Had he gotten called out while I was on my bike ride? Why hadn't he called me? I pulled my phone out and realized that he had texted me twice during the bike ride.
From his office, 45 minutes away.
He had never made it home from work. I had been kindly, considerately, making sure that I didn't wake up a long pillow. OK, it was dark in there. But what was my excuse for not noticing the missing patrol car when I left the house for the bike ride in the first place? Seriously fatigue? Early onset dementia? Complete and utter obliviousness when I have my ipod on?
Anyway, it also meant that Terence had never dealt with the hair catastrophe. When I woke up K, I soon saw it was every bit as bad as I had feared. He had take scissors to his hair, all right, and in places he had cut it so close to his scalp as to leave practical bald spots. Not good.
That was why I found myself at 6:00 am shaving my son's head for the first time. Luckily, I do know (in theory) had to get the clippers to work. Terence has made me try cutting his hair for him before, but we have learned that he is far, far better at it than I am. Normally he cuts the boys' hair. Maybe they don't squirm and flinch and twist away and cry for him. It was like trying to have a wrestling match where the goal is to shave the squealing piglet.
Not exactly the way I wanted to start my morning.
But hey, at least Terence rolled up in his patrol car just as it was time for me to load the older kids into the van. (He was supposed to have S this morning so I could go to the temple.) My morning got back on track and it went very, very well,
I just needed to add "barbering" to my to do list for the day-- and "check to see if husband made it home from work." No problem!
It did not make me homesick.
There are still things about living in the desert that seem unnatural-- I don't prefer dirt and dust and scraggly bushes to the ocean-- but it does feel much more like home. Amazing what ten years can do. (Though it's now almost 14 years we've been in Arizon altogether. I can hardly believe it!)
On a completely different subject, this morning was another one of those adventures in parenthood that seem so ludicrous that it must be fiction. Only it wasn't. Last night I crashed early. I got through piano and then got my newsletter put together at lightning speed. After dozing my way through the bedtime routine for the kids, I climbed into bed and zonked out no later than 9:30pm. I needed it-- I had a busy morning planned for the next day (that would be this morning).
About 10:30 M shook me awake. I was pretty incoherent at that point, but she managed to get it through to me that K had cut his hair (????) and I needed to come see. I blearily told her that there was no way I could get out of bed and that her dad would take care of it when he got home. Then I immediately conked out again.
My alarm went off at 4am sharp (a lovely time of morning but still quite dark). I stumbled through the room in the pitch black, my blurry eyes noting the motionless dark shape on the other side of the bed. Except in truly unusual circumstances, Terence usually makes it to bed sometime after I've been asleep for several hours, and I get up several hours before he does. So he tries to be pretty quiet when he gets home at night and I try to be considerate about lights and noise in the morning. Anyway, I was only half-conscious when I threw on my clothes and headed out for 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't until I was pulling up to the house nearly 90 minutes later when I realized that Terence's patrol car wasn't parked in front of the house.
What the . . . ???? Had he gotten called out while I was on my bike ride? Why hadn't he called me? I pulled my phone out and realized that he had texted me twice during the bike ride.
From his office, 45 minutes away.
He had never made it home from work. I had been kindly, considerately, making sure that I didn't wake up a long pillow. OK, it was dark in there. But what was my excuse for not noticing the missing patrol car when I left the house for the bike ride in the first place? Seriously fatigue? Early onset dementia? Complete and utter obliviousness when I have my ipod on?
Anyway, it also meant that Terence had never dealt with the hair catastrophe. When I woke up K, I soon saw it was every bit as bad as I had feared. He had take scissors to his hair, all right, and in places he had cut it so close to his scalp as to leave practical bald spots. Not good.
That was why I found myself at 6:00 am shaving my son's head for the first time. Luckily, I do know (in theory) had to get the clippers to work. Terence has made me try cutting his hair for him before, but we have learned that he is far, far better at it than I am. Normally he cuts the boys' hair. Maybe they don't squirm and flinch and twist away and cry for him. It was like trying to have a wrestling match where the goal is to shave the squealing piglet.
Not exactly the way I wanted to start my morning.
But hey, at least Terence rolled up in his patrol car just as it was time for me to load the older kids into the van. (He was supposed to have S this morning so I could go to the temple.) My morning got back on track and it went very, very well,
I just needed to add "barbering" to my to do list for the day-- and "check to see if husband made it home from work." No problem!
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