Infernal Clock

My husband is an early riser. Time was when I used to get up with him, because it seemed so romantic to spend a little time together in the morning. Lately our alarm has two alarm settings: O-Dark Hundred Hour for him, and 6:15 for me.

Last week, after my honey had been gone for 6 days and returned with major jet lag, he set the clock ahead by mistake while setting his alarm. It practically went off before the eleven o'clock news finished. He arrived at work before at 5:15 AM and I was out of the shower by 5:30. We only realized the mistake when I tried to wake our new teenager, who screamed at me for getting her up an hour early. Whoops!

We've had that clock for years and it has always sucked. It's hard to read. The buttons don't make any sense. It's hard to turn off. So we resolved to get a new clock.

Being very type A, the man arrived home with the brand new equipment on Saturday. It's shiny silver. It can recharge my phone. You can set the alarms for a week in advance. It has a remote. He was very excited about it on Saturday night. And being quite the traveler this month, he left for California on Sunday afternoon.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you? My sweet man set the new clock before he left for California, but didn't share that information with me. When it went off Monday morning at 5:15, I was shocked and stunned by its ear drum-shattering shriek and by my inability to turn it off. Then I couldn't get back to sleep.

Later I had my revenge. Once I realized that I could not figure out the remote control, I yanked the plug, confident that Tuesday morning that I would get some sleep. Sadly I was wrong. The clock's brightly lit face might have been blank, but the alarm soldiered on, shattering my nerves at, you guessed it, 5:15. I hit it the same way I did on Monday only to have it fight back – it rang again ten minutes later, just after I fell back asleep. Ok, we're on, you little f*!%$r. I picked up the clock and threw it, still ringing, into my daughter's room down the hall. I quickly closed the door. (She was sound asleep in my bed.)

You'd think that was the end of it, wouldn't you? I could see that this clock is designed for a person way beyond my pay grade. But I had one last trick up my sleeve. I shoved the clock into my linen closet last night, covering the speakers with flannel sheets. This morning I don't know whether the clock went off or not. I was busy sleeping.

What's Next?

The cancer's gone. I finished my treatment about ten days ago and have been given a clean bill of health. I have to go to a couple of check ups in a few months, but have been sent back into the world to live my life. This is wonderful fabulous news.

What's next?

I keep asking myself that question. Before my friends at Dana Farber sent me away, they sat me down to tell me about something called "Ending Treatment Effect." The nurse who described it made it sound something like post-partum depression. Kind of ironic, since the whole cancer trip took about nine months. At any rate, a few tears are normal, but if I find myself hanging out on the couch in my pajamas and crying for days on end, I'm supposed to call someone. So far so good - I'm wearing pajamas only at night.

But I see what they mean. For so many months my life has been defined by appointments and treatments. I've scheduled getting poked and prodded and waiting to feel bad. I've timed my life in the context of how much I can get done during the twenty minutes I feel good. And now I have to go back to the schedule and the me that was before. Except I'm not the me that was before. So what's next?

I don't know. I'm working on making peace with the fact that the next few months, maybe even nine months, will be a work in process, just like the last nine. But one thing I have decided is to pick up one important new habit – going to the gym. To inspire and provoke me in the process, I've signed up to ride my bike in the Pan Mass Challenge. I plan to ride 88 miles on a very hot day in August in order to raise money for Dana Farber. After all, they sent me back out into the world. Isn't it only right that I send something back? And through the process, I hope to find out what's next.

The Chemo 15

Did you know that most people gain weight when they get chemotherapy? I know, all the movies say that you get thin, pale and drawn, but it's a lie. What really happens is that you get puffy and fat. Totally true. Stinks, doesn't it?

Ok, not always true. One patient I know had a horrible time and was so very very sick that she actually lost a lot of weight. She looked fabulous, but it was a heck of a way to go.

So I'm not that girl. I manage to get rid of the sick feeling with crackers - lots and lots of crackers - or maybe a little ice cream or a candy bar. Soup is good - but only if I eat it until I feel full so there isn't any room to feel sick. Pot roast or a little chicken work. So does dry toast and buttered toast. Lots of it. You get the picture.

I look at my bulbous belly with a mix of fascination and horror. I don't think I've ever put on weight so quickly - even when I was pregnant with twins. It is pretty remarkable what the body can do. My own chemical cocktail led me to put on five pounds in just one night recently. It was a crazy mix of fluid and who knows what else, but it completely changed my face.

So I am hoping, actually praying, that all this crazy chemo weight will fall off my body as quickly as it climbed on. After all, I won't need the crackers in a couple of weeks. I might still want a candy bar or two, but I'm betting I'll get my will power back. And hopefully a single chin.

Something New

So I have this cancer thing going on, and I have to say it is pretty much the pits. I'm trying very hard to make lemonade, but some days are very trying.

Earlier this summer, I kept having the thought that I never get sick, that this is so out of the ordinary for me. And then this very wise woman said to me that we repeat and repeat and repeat our life experiences, and then, if we finally get it right, the goddess gives us something new. I'm more into God than the goddess - to each her own - but this thought totally resonated with me. Something new. That's what is happening to me - something brand new. And so I have been trying to keep that in mind as I go through each new experience.

I am someone who loves routine. I am not a person who asks for help easily. If I need help, and I am wildly self-sufficient, I have maybe two people that I will turn to. These last few months I have been completely overwhelmed. Besides the fish and dogs, (the cat ran off when she saw things were going downhill) I have these three gorgeous children to take care of. I decided it was time for something new.

Friends I know wanted to organize meals for our house. Normally I couldn't have stood it. It's too much work - we don't really need it. But the fact is that I do need it. So I decided to look at it as something new. Let people bring food to my house. It won't hurt. They've been bringing dinners now for the past two months that meet our crazy egg-allergy rules. I never would have asked for the help before and I can't tell you how grateful I am to have it.

I cannot drive myself to my chemotherapy treatments. When they started, I couldn't bear the idea of someone that wasn't close to me (i.e. my sweetie) going with me. I didn't think I could be sick in front of anyone. But as it has turned out, people are driving me and it is just fine. I have had someone different take me almost every time, and I have had wonderful days with these fantastic men and women. I am in awe the way they have gone out of their way for me, whether getting heating packs for my arm or running a mile to get me a sandwich I craved. Not a bad lesson in something new.

And then, last weekend, I got the most delightful gift. We had a family wedding and suddenly, as I was on my way to the rehearsal dinner, I felt great. Not simply fine or ok, but really and truly great. And I continued to feel great all through the weekend. Definitely something new!

I'm trying not to think to much about what's ahead, or how all of this is going to impact my family in the long run, but I think we've all got to be better off if I can keep letting go of all the old baggage and keep embracing something new.

P.S. Sorry for the trite little flower picture – I promise to find something with a little more bite when I'm feeling better.

The Gratitude Experiment

As someone who has always been wildly and continuously healthy, I decided that my illness is God's way of giving me the gift of something brand new. Once I started thinking about all of this as a gift, it got me thinking about all the other gifts that have come my way in recent weeks. And thus the gratitude experiment was born.

Sometime each day, especially when it is a day that I feel like crap, I am trying to think of five or six things that I am especially grateful for. There are lots of them – from the fact that my chemo is working to the wonderful dinner someone brought me last night to my beautiful children and the lovely cards and messages that are coming my way. Or the energy that helped me write a new chapter, an incredible sunset, the gentle neck massage I got from my husband and the gorgeous flowers I received from a dear friend. The gifts are everywhere.

In the past, I have tried to remember to be grateful for the things I've been given in my regular life, but most of the time I'm just caught up in the muck of life. So right now, in the interest of doing something new, I am doing the gratitude experiment. I find that there is something incredible about methodically cataloging the big and small gifts received each and every day. My mind gets clear and energetic and I feel especially, vividly alive.

So here's a little gift that I would like to give back to you, in the hope that you won't have to learn this particular lesson in the way that I am. Try the gratitude experiment. See if it works for you. Maybe you could get something out of all this without having to have the cancer - wouldn't that be fabulous? Or rather one more thing to be grateful for?

Curbing My Competitive Instincts

I am a very competitive person. I've learned how to tame it a little bit - so while I don't try to outcook every other dish at the annual teacher luncheon, I can't help taking a furtive look to see how I stack up. (The result of too many hours spent watching Iron Chef.)

But what can I say - I am a younger sister. And one of the curses of being the second child is that you're always trying to do what the older person can do - whether it's walking, crossing the street without an adult, staying up late, or riding your bike to school. The list goes and on and on and on. Trying to do what she can do is programmed into you from the earliest days. First you just want to be like her, then you want to be even better.

It didn't help that I got born into a striving family. I can't remember a time when I didn't know that I would go to college, for example. And it had to be a good one. We heard a lot about the places we could go and the places my Dad wouldn't pay for. Once I actually applied, and really wanted to go to Duke (an approved school) my college counselor told me that out of all the students in my class applying (something like 15) I was the one she was sure wouldn't get in. That made me desperate to go. Luckily, as it turned out, I was one of two who did get in. I was pumped.

So now it's a million years later and I have cancer. I am finding my old competitive thing trying to raise its ugly head. But not in the way you think. It's so insidious. For example, my mother had a very serious stage 3 breast cancer 15 years ago. My instinct would have me be better than her. But I am learning to be very careful in my thinking. It would be very good for her to have the worst breast cancer in my family. She can win. I don't need to out-cancer her.

As they're sharing success stories, people tell me about women they know who have been sick and the size of their tumors. I try to remember that I don't need to have the biggest tumor in the room. Instead, I think about how lucky I am to have a very popular cancer - so many women have it and get cured - and I want to swim in those hundreds of thousands of women who are boringly fine years and years later. I don't want any fancy complications or interesting new diagnoses. I don't want anything rare. Give me an ordinary, run of the mill, easy to get over, lots of research on, easy to remove, tiny cancer. Save that competitive thing for a bake sale. I know, it's still not pretty, but at least no one's health is at stake.

And by the way, years later, I found a copy of my college application and re-read the essays I wrote at 17. There I discovered the secret of my admission. To the question "what will you add to our community," I found that I had the nerve to write that the school would already be filled by incredibly smart, high-achieving brains. So what they needed was somebody interesting to fill out the bottom half of the class - me. I'm guessing that after they fell off their chairs laughing, they said "sure, we'll take her."

My Unexpected Summer

The night before my sweetie and I took our kids on a surprise vacation, I got my own surprise. It was midnight, we were getting up at 3:30 and I wanted to go to sleep. But I couldn't, because the honey was busy doing who knows what with the light on.

So I said to myself, breathe, relax, we're going on vacation. Think about something else. And that's when I decided to do a breast exam. I know, who does a breast exam before going on vacation? Me, I guess. And my surprise was that I found a lump - a big, fat, somewhat hard, lump. I made my sweetie stop what he was doing and come over to feel what I thought I was feeling. We both freaked. And then we decided to pretend nothing had happened. Because we knew that if we stopped everything to check it out, and there was bad news, then there would be all kinds of things to do, and we'd never go away the surprise vacation. One week in the grand scheme of things wouldn't matter. So we got up at 3:30 as planned, woke the kids at 4, went on the vacation and it was truly wonderful. And then I came back to reality.

I have an aggressive stage II breast cancer. In the last seven weeks, my life has completely changed. I strip for anyone. My boobs have been shown so many times that my kids are lucky I'm wearing a shirt. I'm bald and I keep forgetting about it. I am trying to keep my head covered in an effort not to scare small children (or myself, for that matter). It's not elegant or pretty. I have "folliculitis" aka nasty oozing itchy stuff on my scalp which I hope will be cleared up soon with my new potions from Dana Farber.

I have become a champ at taking uncomfortable tests. I thought I was a total wuss. Among the battery of tests I had to go through was an MRI. That's the thing where they shoot you into a tiny dark tunnel.

I really don't like closed in spaces. It's just a little paranoia left over from a summer spent getting stuck in the Brooklyn-Manhattan subway tunnel under the river in a hot, dark, packed subway car. But I'm a trooper when it's a good cause.

I made it through my first MRI by pretending I was having a gentle massage - pretty impressive considering that my boobs were forced down these crazy slots and there were incredibly loud electric sounds every few seconds. (Ok, in the middle I had to stop pretending I was getting a massage and instead imagine being a test subject in a crazy sci fi movie.) I made it through.

But then I had to have a second MRI - this time while lying on my back. Now I'm scared. One of the nurses suggested that I "take a little something" before the test. It would help me calm down. I thought that sounded like a fine idea, so grabbed the newly prescribed bottle on my way out of the house. I first go to my first test of the day, a second biopsy. Waiting with my coffee, it's time to take the happy pill prior to the MRI. I yank the pill bottle out of my bag, ready to get happy. And then I look more closely at the bottle. By mistake, I grabbed the dog's hormone replacement therapy! Cursed canines! They follow me everywhere. But what do you know - turned out they were happy pills.

Spring is Here

It seems like a minute ago that I was lamenting my pathetic attempt at vegetable gardening last fall. But here we've passed through the winter from hell and come out the other side. Hope springs eternal - I planted 40 tiny boxes with at least 4 seeds each on April first. And my gardening prowess (or lack thereof) is a steady constant. Out of all those little seeds, only 5 managed to sprout.

But luck is with me on almost every other front. My mother-in-law managed to survive a horrific accident back in January and her recovery is nothing short of a miracle. Her strength is an inspiration to me. Her son has made me so happy these last months. And I started writing a new book back in December that absorbs and obsesses me.

Here's hoping that spring has managed to shoot new life into your days and nights. May the season be blessed and joyous.

Excuse Me, But That Wasn't In My Contract

Don't be fooled by those sweet puppies to your left. If you're a little squeamish about bodily fluids, I want to give you fair warning to click now, and get the heck out of this blog. It's gonna get gross in here.

Ok, this one's for the die hards.

When I married the man, we were very clear about what was and wasn't in the contract. He really wanted me to manage the food - cooking, reservations, whatever - but he didn't want to have to be in charge. Ok, it's a little retro, but I can handle that. I'm a control freak, I love to cook, this works. I can't stand poop - more specifically, dog poop - so I stipulated that I would never be required to pick up after the 4 dogs and 3 puppies he brought into the marriage, or any subsequent animals. Fine, says he, no biggie, he's got the poop under contol.

So this morning when I went down to our basement to take out the dogs, three, yes three, of them had pooped in their crates. Now I want you to imagine the disgust of this. There is a slight telltale scent when I start down the basement steps. It gets stronger as I walk through the nice big room to the unfinished crate room. But then, when I open the door, the stench of that bad boy slaps me in the face and nearly knocks me out with its evil power. It was clinging and noxious.

There, standing up in their new crates, are three of our four puppies. Each is covered in wet diarrhea. So what's my job? I have to reach in and encourage each puppy individually out of the crate, pray that he/she doesn't jump on me in greeting (fruitless) and then help said puppy up the stairs and out of the basement door to the backyard. So without actually cleaning up any of poop, I am already deep into it.

I'm sorry, I know this is really gross, but can you feel the complete and total yuck I'm having here? I'm not going to give you any more details because I hope you are feeling my pain by now. Suffice it to say that when I was done, I needed new clothes and a shower.

So what did I do after taking these remarkably dirty dogs out? I cleaned out their crates and then mopped the floor. Got on my knees and reached into the grossness to make sure it was really clean in each crate. Got dog poop under my fingernails because I forgot my rubber gloves. Dude, this is so not in my contract.

But this morning I didn't have it in me to hold the man to our quaint little contract. The mess was making me retch, and it was relatively fresh. It would be so mean to make him clean it up later, when he gets home from work.

And to me, the events of the morning are like a tiny window into the work of my marriage. This time it was me who had to do what I was never supposed to do, what I never agreed to, but that was just chance. Could have been him. Next time probably will be.

Save My Toast!

Oldest child tells me that writing about gardening is incredibly dull when I could have shared the toast incident. "Now that was funny," she says. "You have to stop writing about things that are so boring."

So here it is.

We were having our usual morning on a Wednesday. Oldest child caught the middle school bus at 7:15. Once she was out the door, I had 45 minutes until the next bus, which we spent on cartoons, cereal, lunches and getting dressed.

I got the usual request for cinnamon toast from my younger girl. Picky picky picky about her toast, it has to be just the right color pale brown, have just the right ratio of butter to cinnamon sugar and, most importantly, the crusts must be cut off. We had a misfire, that is to say that I burned the first batch of toast, requiring me to make more. Finally the toast was perfect, but a ticking clock forced the child to eat it on the road. We raced down to the bus stop, where we meet up with our neighbor and his kids. Being the slow poke that she is, she had only taken a bite or two out of her first slice (she had two) when the bus pulled up. She stopped to press the toast into my hand (no eating on the bus!) before running like heck, crying "Save my toast!" over her shoulder.

Once she couldn't hear us, my neighbor and I howled at the thought of it - right - I'm going to save the toast until she gets home. Then, when we turned around to walk back home, I lobbed the toast over the bushes and into the woods. We kept laughing about it as we walked all the way up the street.

Now it's 3:35 and my neighbor and I are again down at the bus stop, this time waiting for our children to get home from school. His dog has followed him down, because their electric fence keeps getting run over by the lawnmower, so the collar no does anything. Lucky comes and goes as he pleases, and this time he was pleased to come with us to the end of the street. Then he runs into the woods just as the bus pulls up.

Four kids come flying off the bus and the dog comes prancing out of the bushes to meet them with, you guessed it, the unbitten piece of cinnamon toast carried in his mouth like a serving tray.

"My toast!" my sweet girl cries in dismay. "You promised to save it!" and the sad thing is that there were actual tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. However, my neighbor cannot contain himself and has fallen down on the ground laughing. I have to say that I needed the laugh preventer to help myself maintain my composure and sympathy. Then the dog opened his mouth and swallowed the toast whole, making the kid laugh too.

Better?

My Hundred Dollar Tomatoes

I live in the land of apple orchards and farm stands. My neighbors all compost. There are gorgeous flower gardens and huge plots of tomatoes, cucumber and squash. There are even people who sell their backyard tomatoes and flowers at little stands in their front yards. We have a town garden, where you can rent a plot for the summer, and it is always sold out.

Can you feel the garden pressure yet?

I have lived in the country for 14 years. Fourteen falls of pathetic vegetable output. You'd think that 14 years would be long enough to figure out that I stink when it comes to growing things to eat.

I used to think my problem was water. I lived in a house that had only one inconveniently located tap in the front of the house and a big yard that was sunny for twelve hours a day. I made too big a plot that was too far away from the house. I would drag hoses from one side to the other and it was a big pain. It was so much work.

Gals I know would tell me about how much money they saved in the summer, eating produce they grew. I thought, Gee, I could save money if I would just be willing to carry some hoses.

And then I moved to a yard that was easier to water and I started over again, very hopeful. This time I put the garden in a much better spot. But my plants didn't get very big. I got like one cucumber and two zucchini. I must have planted too late.

So the next year I got plants sooner and I made an above ground bed, thinking, Now I'll get great vegetables. And I got one bigger green pumpkin and a couple of orange ones, too small to carve.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Last year I planted heirloom tomatoes and they all died of blight. I bought special dirt - not your typical in a plastic bag dirt that you get at the hardware store. No, this is really special, in a black heap at the nursery, delivered to you in a truck load kind of dirt. I put it everywhere and I got incredible weeds. Not just crab grass, but remarkable, foot high crab grass. That and the incredibly dead tomatoes.

I bought a composter myself - and threw in various kinds of food garbage, not to mention grass clippings, old leaves and other recommended stuff. Then, to take it up a notch, I bought compost accelerator - this organic stuff (it's all organic - has to be organic) that I poured on the stuff to make it compost more quickly. Plus this year more heirloom tomato plants, because last year was so wet - you can't go by one wet year, can you? - and here is my embarrassing output for the year:

Tomatoes: Maybe 10 pounds - probably more like 5. Plant cost: $25

Leeks: They are the size of small green onions and there are 10 of them. Plant cost: $12

Potatoes: Maybe 5 pounds of harvest. Plant and pot cost: $36

We're not talking about the cost of the special dirt, the composter, the compost accelerator, the tomato fertilizer (organic is always more expensive), the cone things to give them water when you leave town, etc. etc. etc.

Will one of my devoted readers please help me remember to just shop at the farmstand next year? I don't think my bank account can take another Petter harvest.

Life on the Chain Gang

My family has a little first day of school tradition. We all go down to the bus stop together, the kids strap on their new backpacks, and we pose for pictures. I know, this sounds pretty much like every other family's tradition. Who cares! And what makes it especially fun is the annual neighborhood first day of school shot, where we line all the kids up and check out how much they've grown since last year.

This year the drill changed just a little bit - we all got up a little earlier because the oldest two, mine and my neighbor's, started middle school. So early Tuesday morning, we all run down to the bus stop, six kids and three adults, laughing and taking our annual pictures. There are lots of hugs, kisses on tops of heads and last minute adjustments. And then the bus arrives.

Now I'm used to the perky, cute, elementary school bus. The tiny kindergartners sit up front and everybody blows kisses to their mom as the bus pulls away. So the bus starts to pull in and my hand goes up to wave, just like it always does. And then I see them – a long line of enormous stony faces with their deadpan stares in every window. My new middle schooler quickly pulls away from me. I drop the camera just as fast. I don't think I've ever been so uncool in my life.

"Wow," my honey says, "She's joining the chain gang!" And we laugh, he, my neighbor and I, because it is so damn true. Clueless before, we get it now. But once the bus goes hiding behind the trees, my neighbor and I quickly blow our babies one last kiss.

3 More Business Days Till I Get My Life Back!!!

It's 5:45 in the morning, I'm sitting up in bed chatting with my sweetie, who is busy getting dressed for work. I start telling him about our visit to the vet yesterday, a subject I think he'll find interesting, seeing as he's the reason we have all these dogs. He turns to me and says, with a huge grin, "Oh my god your life is boring! I'm really sorry!" and we both crack up because it is so damn true.

Ok, I'm sorry all you fabulous home-schooling mothers, who I have tremendous respect for. So before we go any further, let me just say that what you are doing is magnificent work, a wonderful use of your time and energy, and your children will be better for it.

Whew. Not that there's anything wrong with home schooling, but I WOULD LOSE MY MIND if I had to have these kids around me 24/7 for 52 weeks a year. I am totally the Staples ad, singing "It's the best time of the year," to myself each time I pick up another new folder or box of pencils. I CAN'T WAIT to shove their little behinds on to that bus and get back to my real life.

Ok, the puppies and bunnies have created a nice diversion. (Did I mention that said sweetie brought home ANOTHER PUPPY on Sunday? This one all the way from New Jersey?) Loved spending time with my whole family on vacation, especially the part where I got to read on the beach. But I am SO READY to move on to fall. Can't you see it in the ALL CAPS that I keep writing in?

Oh, and since I'm offending people with this post, I might as well fess up to another sin. It suddenly occurred to me the other day, while putting out cat food, that the cat might be pregnant. I know - I should know how these things work by now - but our focus was always on trying to get animals (including humans) pregnant, not trying to avoid it. Come to find out, via a quick visit to the vet, that I kind of blew it with the cat. Vet offered a solution, which I jumped at. Am I a horrible person? Which brings us back to where we started. You probably would be bored by the vet conversation too. But thanks for making the effort.

Mama, Can I Keep Them?

While attempting to sell one more puppy (move them out!) the nature aspect of our home got totally out of control. There were two puppies racing around the back and a couple more running up and down the stairs to the deck. Suddenly we hear this very strange noise.

"Go and check that out," my sweetie says to the 11-year old. She doesn't move. We hear the noise again, and it appears to be coming from the racing puppies. "No really, go and see what is going on," and he gives her a little push.

"Daddy?!" she cries and he goes rushing over.

"Get me some towels!" he says. I run into the basement and grab a bunch of dog towels, wondering what the heck I'm getting into. I run back out and discover that our sweet puppies have pulled some newborn rabbits out of their burrow and are carrying them around the yard.

I gently picked one up and cradled it in the towel. I've never seen such tiny things. There are two of them, eyes still shut, about 3 inches long each, with tiny little ears that are just starting to sprout. The kids come flying over to see them and ask the inevitable: "Mama, can I keep them? Please?!"

We searched around the yard and found a few more in the nest, which is across from the bulkhead door for our basement. We tucked the tiny sweeties back into their grassy beds and set up a portable dog pen around it to keep the puppies away. I've been taking little sneaky peaks into the nest each day. Today their eyes are open and a tiny foot kicked at me when I lifted the grass.

Down Time

I'm in a frenzy of unwashed laundry, trying to push it through the system before we leave on vacation tomorrow. I am finding that there are few things that I treasure more than those quiet moments on vacation with my family. Like the quiet when my honey and I have our reading lights on, going blind trying to read because we couldn't possibly sleep because it's so early, while the kids toss and turn and slowly go to sleep. Or the quiet hug that happens because one kid is cold with blue lips and the other two aren't ready to get out yet.

I'm trying to take it all in, because I know that when I blink it will be over. They'll be jumping in cars with their friends, moving into apartments and going to the beach with their own families. In the meantime, better wash me some more swimsuits.

And You Think You Have Pet Hair Issues!

It's at least 90 degrees out. Russell's brushing dogs this afternoon and this is what my porch looks like at the moment. The collies are dropping their winter coats. Pretty awesome, isn't it? And this is just from the first two. There are seven more to go!

Don't have much to say about this - I think in this case the picture is worth at least 10,000 words. Just looking at it makes me hot. I'm going to get a glass of ice water now.

The Freedom of the Big Fail

I made an incredibly ugly shed this week. I didn't mean to – it was supposed to be fabulous. In fact, I secretly pride myself on having an incredible color sense. On my mom's side there were generations of Scottish weavers, and I imagine myself to be the beneficiary of their collective artistic magic. I don't announce this to people, but I think it, when I'm all alone.

So we have this shed in our backyard. A standard wooden shed, which doesn't have to be painted, but had weathered to kind of an ugly blackish brown. I followed Martha's advice and picked out colors after lots of deliberation. I painted swatches to see them in all kinds of light. I looked at it for days, soliciting opinions and only listening to the ones I liked. (Isn't that always the way?) Then I painted and I got help from a variety of inexperienced young painters.

Check out my ugly shed! Everyone's been really quiet about it - a sure sign that it's ugly. Finally today I got a comment that I think kind of sums it up. My friend had called me artistic a few minutes before. Then I showed him the shed.

"Wow! What are you going to paint it?" he said.

"I just painted it. I think I don't like it," I replied – to give him room to say he liked it.

"It's awful – someone else picked the colors?"

"Nope – all me - and you just called me artistic, remember?"

"Yeah...well your artistry is really with words, you know?"

I don't always give myself permission to have the big ugly failure. I'm worried about what people will think of me and hate to draw attention to myself. I make the small quiet tidy choice, instead of the bold, potentially horrific one. And I'd like to thank my sweet husband for being pretty nice about the ugly shed. I am trying to fix it, it just might take me a while to figure out how. Now that I'm properly humbled, I'd love your suggestions.

I Love the Name Stephen Hawking, Don't You?

You never know what you're going to hear when you're driving kids in the car. As you turn the key, you become magically invisible and they talk as if they are alone. And it starts young – even toddlers are not immune.

This was the conversation that I got to overhear as we went to school recently:

"I love the name Stephen Hawking, don't you?" says one first grade twin to his sister.

"Is that what you're going to name your baby?"

"Maybe. Especially if it's a boy. He has ALS, so he is in a wheelchair. He talks with a machine."

"I'm not going to name my baby Stephen Hawking."

"That's ok."

Life Off the A-List

Someone tracked dog doo on the carpet and up the stairs yesterday. I scrubbed up that mess, and followed it up with a few more minutes cleaning up cat yorp. This is my life. All the while I mused about something my friend told me at lunchtime – my town has an A-list.

My life has been spent pretty much off the A-list. I was the kid everyone fought to have on the other team in kick ball. Never a cheerleader, didn't make homecoming queen, passed over for a sorority. Don't get me wrong - I've had my share of friends - good ones. I'm quite happy and I think pretty well-adjusted. But I find myself being envious of the people who are invited to all the right everything, and yet I'm a little uncomfortable once I'm actually in the room.

In my imagination, A-listers never have to deal with mundane matters like bodily fluids. They have people calling them for intimate dinners, cocktail parties and weekends away. Their children get invited to all the nice birthday parties and their houses are always clean, with fabulous furniture.

I have a lot of ambition too, but the social kind, or maybe it's just social savvy, got left out of my DNA. I'm left with my own day dreams about becoming a back-up singer, what I'd make to win a Project Runway challenge, and my Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Like my bathrobe?

The Reign of Terror Is Ended

I have located the talking toy. It is a tiny veterinary establishment, complete with x-ray machine and examining table. When you touch the x-ray viewing module, it says in a British accent, "There, aren't you feeling better now?"

I think the cat was getting an x-ray. It was either that or some kind of haunting.

I have disabled the toy by removing its power source. Be silent, cheerful British woman!