I check the weather report every morning, as most people do I suppose; as I’m drinking my coffee and deciding what I’ll wear for the day. It has become part of my morning ritual – once the weather and traffic report are shown I turn the TV off and go about my day. One of the interesting things about our local weather guy is, in addition to weather and tidal information (very important this time of year in CA) he gives a little bit of extra information, sometimes to do with Astronomical events happening like a meteor shower or what planets are really visible, sometimes it’s a tidbit about Baseball – mostly little league because that’s what his kids play, and sometimes if you catch it at the right time he will tell you how many hours of sunlight are in the day. As a person with night blindness, I tell you, watching the number go down as we head into the deepest dark of winter makes me cringe. I start to think about all of the things that won’t get done because I’ll be rushing home just barely making it before full dark sets in, and many days I pray my way through the traffic disasters, wondering if today will be the day I get stuck behind one and have to white knuckle it all the way to the house. This morning though we hit a new high, a little more than 10 hours of daylight! 10 hours I decided I could work with. I’m noticing that the sky is pink toward the beginning of my drive to work and the morning star is harder and harder to find these days. And – I actually have at least an hour of light (not full mind you – but light just the same) after I get home, giving me time to move out to my garden and pull a few weeds or turn soil before I can’t see what I’m doing anymore. Even though we’re still bitterly cold, and spring is a long way off, for a few minutes each afternoon I have a small reprieve in my back yard and a feeling of wellbeing takes over – I have made it through another dark winter, sigh, I can breathe again when I drive back and forth to work, deeper sigh, and soon, I’ll be able to start working in all of the things I’ve missed out on during the long dark nights. 10 hours of sunlight – doesn’t seem like a lot but to me it is the tipping point to spring even more so than the mark on the calendar designating that day.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
Why do they schedule things at inconvenient times?
On my way into work this morning I was listening to a DJ complain that he had missed a big football game this last weekend because his daughters Soccer game was scheduled at the same time. He was lamenting to the group that there should be more consideration in scheduling, he’s trying to be a good dad, he wants to be a good dad but it’s hard to be 100% a good dad when people don’t take into consideration scheduling of the parents.
I chuckled to myself at this – thinking back to when the girls were small and played youth soccer, remembering having to be at the field by 7am on Saturday and Sunday mornings for games and wondering who in God’s name was making the schedule? What person in their right mind gets a 7 year old up and out of the house to be somewhere that early in the morning and enjoys it? Needless to say the girls only wanted to do one season of soccer and thank goodness for that because as a young parent there was no way I could keep up with my partying at night and trying to make it through a game of screaming little people with a hangover.
Now that the girls are older, there’s a little more wiggle room to their schedules, but, we are still at the mercy of some nameless/faceless person dictating when we’re supposed to be somewhere and where that place may be. Every Sunday I look at the girl’s game schedule and try to accommodate dinner/social and general house plans around when they have to be somewhere. I then try to coordinate errands and meetings around the times and locations they will be at. Invariably a game gets rescheduled for a different time or location, or cancelled all together, or my absolute favorite the phone call from the child stating that their ride/coach/person has decided to stay for a later game and they won’t be back for hours past when I’ve scheduled all of said errands, meetings etc. I’ve learned to factor that into the equation, so as not to be completed screwed up on my own plans but I have to tell you I spend more time waiting for my kids then I’ve ever waited for anything else – perhaps with the exception of the 2nd coming of Christ.
This last week I was at the oldests' basketball game – it was nearing 5pm and I was trying to factor in dinner with a meeting later on in the evening when my phone rang. It was the younger one telling me they were going to be a little later getting back since the wanted to finish watching another game before the left. I said ok, hung up the phone and then realized that up until that point I had not thought of where my daughter might actually had been – I had forgotten about the game and assumed she was wandering around the campus or sitting with friends watching the game I was at. I quickly took out my calendar and pulled up my email and…there it was, and email from her coach - “Change to Schedule this week” - it had been sent late Sunday night. I suppose no harm no foul, but, it just proves that there’s no use trying to work or fight against the nameless/faceless scheduling system – you just have to roll with it.
I chuckled to myself at this – thinking back to when the girls were small and played youth soccer, remembering having to be at the field by 7am on Saturday and Sunday mornings for games and wondering who in God’s name was making the schedule? What person in their right mind gets a 7 year old up and out of the house to be somewhere that early in the morning and enjoys it? Needless to say the girls only wanted to do one season of soccer and thank goodness for that because as a young parent there was no way I could keep up with my partying at night and trying to make it through a game of screaming little people with a hangover.
Now that the girls are older, there’s a little more wiggle room to their schedules, but, we are still at the mercy of some nameless/faceless person dictating when we’re supposed to be somewhere and where that place may be. Every Sunday I look at the girl’s game schedule and try to accommodate dinner/social and general house plans around when they have to be somewhere. I then try to coordinate errands and meetings around the times and locations they will be at. Invariably a game gets rescheduled for a different time or location, or cancelled all together, or my absolute favorite the phone call from the child stating that their ride/coach/person has decided to stay for a later game and they won’t be back for hours past when I’ve scheduled all of said errands, meetings etc. I’ve learned to factor that into the equation, so as not to be completed screwed up on my own plans but I have to tell you I spend more time waiting for my kids then I’ve ever waited for anything else – perhaps with the exception of the 2nd coming of Christ.
This last week I was at the oldests' basketball game – it was nearing 5pm and I was trying to factor in dinner with a meeting later on in the evening when my phone rang. It was the younger one telling me they were going to be a little later getting back since the wanted to finish watching another game before the left. I said ok, hung up the phone and then realized that up until that point I had not thought of where my daughter might actually had been – I had forgotten about the game and assumed she was wandering around the campus or sitting with friends watching the game I was at. I quickly took out my calendar and pulled up my email and…there it was, and email from her coach - “Change to Schedule this week” - it had been sent late Sunday night. I suppose no harm no foul, but, it just proves that there’s no use trying to work or fight against the nameless/faceless scheduling system – you just have to roll with it.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Speak freely, just not stupidly
I read an article on the internet today about an elephant that had killed its handler; it was a small story, no more than 10 lines, not many details since the family hadn’t been notified. The article itself made me a little sad since I know that most of the animals kept in captivity have had horrendous lives and occasionally they turn on well meaning people trying to take care of them. What really got to me though were the comments listed below by others that had read the story. Tell me what does the species of the elephant have anything to do with the political climate of today? In another story recently where a police officer had been shot, a person had wrote that we should be celebrating the day because a “pig had been sent to slaughter”; or another where a young woman was brutally beaten and raped by an older family friend, and again there were comments celebrating the act and pushing for more acts of the same kind.
I know the internet is for the most part a nameless faceless place for people to voice their opinions from the comfort of their desks; it can be empowering to know that your “message” is out there for all to read if they want to (me included in that). So here’s my two cents for all the idiotic people that think that just because they’re nameless and faceless on the internet, that your message is still wrong. Your argument is flawed, and just because you were smart enough to find a computer and type the words out on the screen does not mean that you have an informed opinion on the matter.
I actually appreciate more the people that are trying to sell things in the comments, like you can get 50% off if you go to this website, or I got a message about a family member that was trapped in a foreign country, please help me send money; because they at least are upfront about their sale – they’re like the sleazy car salesmen of the internet. But why for goodness sake would you comment about anything you don’t know the whole story on, twist the message around to whatever convoluted point you want to make, basically drop a word bomb then casually slink away back under your rock to strike out again at something later.
Don’t get me wrong, I have read some of the most heartfelt comments under the articles, people who genuinely care about the story and the people in it. I have seen debates back and forth from the readers arguing both sides of the message and thought they were brave and informed on both sides of the matter – something that I applaud and think is so very wonderful about the digital age. And I know there are people out there that tell me to not read the comments and then I won’t be upset, but that’s just turning a blind eye to the matter in general.
So where does that leave me? Well in the same spot I was before I started writing this morning, this afternoon I’ll be back out to check the news and weather, I’ll scroll to the bottom of the page to catch the first few comments and will either be astounded at the stupidity and cruelness of the world at large, or renewed in hope by the love and support poured out in some ones words. Free speech and our right to it abounds in the digital age, but as my grandmother always said, if you don’t have something nice to say, at least sound smart while you’re saying it.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Grief healing?
Next week marks the 2nd anniversary of my father’s death. It’s truly amazing how time can move so slowly with some things and so very fast with others all culminating over the same time frame. This year I’m trying very hard not to think about all of the hurt that still creeps in on family events, or the sudden realization of loss when trying to do some mundane task. I want to try and work through some of this and be in a happy place as I think about him. My dad could be a mean SOB when I was growing up, I’m the product of 2 failed marriages and one happy one, I have 2 older step-sisters that had either moved out before my parents got together or lived with their mother, so by the time I came into the picture my dad wasn’t really up to raising another snotty kid or teenager. For a time it made things very hard for my mother and I, but when I moved out on my own and starting having children things slowly changed between my father and I. Sunday dinner – a mainstay at my mothers house for many years, found me in the kitchen talking with my dad and learning about some technique for cooking our meal. He would show me how to use a certain knife, or explain why it’s so very important not to use soap on your cast iron. He would offer out new ideas and food to expand my idea of what home cooking and really good cooking could be. Some mornings I would stop by on my way to work unexpectedly and he would get up from his crossword puzzle to make me a breakfast he deemed fit for me, instead of the coffee and snack bar I had shoveled down before I left my own house. It’s funny they always had eggs, cheese and some sort of bread to make an omelet and toast no matter what was going on with them in their daily lives. Many have told me I have my twisted and dark sense of humor from him, both of us found Fargo to be a hugely funny movie. And one of the best compliments I’ve ever received came from my dad a few years ago after cooking a birthday dinner for my mother. “You know Sarah, I really don’t like coming to your house to eat, it seems I’m eating the same food I cook at home”. A culinary feat for me since I had worked hard, from the time I got my first set of pots and pans, to mimic the taste and texture of some of my dads favorite recipes. In the kitchen of my parent’s house, I learned about many things over the years, joy, heartbreak, politics, humor, I told my parents I was pregnant for the first time, sitting across the counter while my dad made dinner, and years later that I was getting divorced – with tears of anger and regret. For any of you that knew my dad, you’ll know that I can’t really repeat any of the things he said to me during those encounters, but I’ll let you smile and lovingly remember on your own, how truly colorful he could be. But, I’ll tell you the truth today, not one of my very fondest memories of my dad are anywhere else but in the kitchen, no matter how good or bad things were in our lives, no matter how much he liked or disliked you at any given moment you knew that once he got in front of that stove and started crafting together a meal you would be entertained, taught something new and above all loved through what he was cooking for you. I only hope that, as my girls get older they will learn that from our kitchen as well, so that the legacy of Grandpa Chuck can continue for many generations to come.
Charles Ray Koscinsky
1937-2010
Charles Ray Koscinsky
1937-2010
Thursday, April 12, 2012
It never fails
I realize in my life that I might create a little drama of my own from time to time, and if you ask one of my dear friends at work he’ll tell you I’m a drama queen, but, what I have discovered in my life recently is that I may not be the creator of all of my drama, unfortunately someone close to me – be it husband, ex, mother, children or dogs, and if it’s close enough you get sucked in like a vortex of emotion and bad acting. In addition to that, when the drama does come on, it’s not a trickle from a stream; it doesn’t come up and ask, “Hey, is this a good time for me to tweak your world for a bit?” No, it hits you like a bad storm – wave after wave of mind numbing information and emotion that you must process and react to instantly and, with as much tact and grace as you possibly can.
Case in point – This last week was supposed to slow down for us a little bit, we had finished off March Madness with a bang, no more Jr. NBA for the younger child and no more high school games for the older one. I was truly excited about this because it was going to give me my Friday nights and Saturday’s back – I for some reason volunteered to run the Snack Bar for all of the home games, it started off innocent enough just for the Volleyball season that somehow moved into basketball, and then for both the women and men’s teams, then for the elementary kids on Saturday as well. I digress. For some reason my husband and I decided it was the right time to put our puppy into obedience training, not really for obedience but for the social skills they get from playing with other well mannered dogs and the only date available that was convenient for the both of us was….you guessed it Saturday. In the middle of all of that the younger daughter loves softball, and for reasons unknown to anyone that doesn’t love softball that means we have to be at games on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and of course Saturday’s, sometimes all 3 in one week too. Her first game was supposed to be when? Of course this last Saturday, But that’s not really where the chaos begins, this is just a little taste of what it’s like to have too many things up in the air all the time and only one adult that remembers all of the families schedules mostly in her brain but sometimes does have the forethought to put on paper or a Yahoo shared calendar. The chaos started on Monday when my loving husband called accusingly asking why the teenage was still in bed, I being a responsible parent thought desperately as to why the kid might be home at 1:30 on a Monday afternoon for the life of me couldn’t think of ANY GOOD reason, on top of that I leave so much earlier than the kids do that I couldn’t even tell him if she had gotten up to go to school or had just stayed home completely. Come to find out, there were parent/teacher conferences and she had half days all week before spring break, Monday night school meeting, Tuesday night School meeting, Wednesday I’m sure there was something but I completely shut down Wednesday evenings, just to have one evening of downtime. Thursday I couldn’t quite get up the energy to actually physically go to work so I stayed in my jammies and took conference calls from home all day, until (queue scary music) my grandmother calls to inform me that we will be moving Easter dinner to my house because my aunt who recently had hip surgery had some sort of infection and would need to go back into the hospital to get it cleared up. Then when my husband gets home from work he tells me Tara – our older dog had a hard time getting up this morning and limped around for a little bit before he left for work. By the time the evening was over, the dog couldn’t walk, my aunt couldn’t walk and I was feeling rather helpless on all fronts. Friday morning starts out with a trip to the hospital for my aunt and off the Vet for us. Updates for both parties happened around the same time, Auntie is fine, just a superficial infection at the incision she won’t need to have the hip replaced again (not that I knew that was on the table until someone had mentioned it after the fact), the dog seems to have pulled a muscle or slipped a disc in her back and needs to be on “bed rest” for the next week, along with taking an anti-inflammatory. I thought about this after the fact – how do you put a dog on bed rest? It’s not like they realize that what they’re doing is what’s hurting them, they just know they’re hurt. Saturday rolls around and the dog is worse, mostly our fault, I figured since we didn’t take any walks or go to the dog park we were doing ok – another trip to the Vet and they stress that we’re going to need to keep her crated as much as possible for the next week and absolutely no playing with the puppy! By this time we’re exhausted, I have to get my house clean for 35 people the next morning and I’m thinking good God it never fails. Just once I would like to have a weekend that didn’t revolve around trying to catch up from things that didn’t get cared for over the week, or trying to find new ways to resolve some random problem. To make a long story longer, we did mange to get the house cleaned, My Aunt made it home from the hospital in time to celebrate Easter with us personally and after a week the dog is starting to move a little smoother. As I’m easing into the end of the week I’m hoping that maybe this weekend will be just a little bit slower, I’m not really expecting it but would love to be surprised by it.
Case in point – This last week was supposed to slow down for us a little bit, we had finished off March Madness with a bang, no more Jr. NBA for the younger child and no more high school games for the older one. I was truly excited about this because it was going to give me my Friday nights and Saturday’s back – I for some reason volunteered to run the Snack Bar for all of the home games, it started off innocent enough just for the Volleyball season that somehow moved into basketball, and then for both the women and men’s teams, then for the elementary kids on Saturday as well. I digress. For some reason my husband and I decided it was the right time to put our puppy into obedience training, not really for obedience but for the social skills they get from playing with other well mannered dogs and the only date available that was convenient for the both of us was….you guessed it Saturday. In the middle of all of that the younger daughter loves softball, and for reasons unknown to anyone that doesn’t love softball that means we have to be at games on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and of course Saturday’s, sometimes all 3 in one week too. Her first game was supposed to be when? Of course this last Saturday, But that’s not really where the chaos begins, this is just a little taste of what it’s like to have too many things up in the air all the time and only one adult that remembers all of the families schedules mostly in her brain but sometimes does have the forethought to put on paper or a Yahoo shared calendar. The chaos started on Monday when my loving husband called accusingly asking why the teenage was still in bed, I being a responsible parent thought desperately as to why the kid might be home at 1:30 on a Monday afternoon for the life of me couldn’t think of ANY GOOD reason, on top of that I leave so much earlier than the kids do that I couldn’t even tell him if she had gotten up to go to school or had just stayed home completely. Come to find out, there were parent/teacher conferences and she had half days all week before spring break, Monday night school meeting, Tuesday night School meeting, Wednesday I’m sure there was something but I completely shut down Wednesday evenings, just to have one evening of downtime. Thursday I couldn’t quite get up the energy to actually physically go to work so I stayed in my jammies and took conference calls from home all day, until (queue scary music) my grandmother calls to inform me that we will be moving Easter dinner to my house because my aunt who recently had hip surgery had some sort of infection and would need to go back into the hospital to get it cleared up. Then when my husband gets home from work he tells me Tara – our older dog had a hard time getting up this morning and limped around for a little bit before he left for work. By the time the evening was over, the dog couldn’t walk, my aunt couldn’t walk and I was feeling rather helpless on all fronts. Friday morning starts out with a trip to the hospital for my aunt and off the Vet for us. Updates for both parties happened around the same time, Auntie is fine, just a superficial infection at the incision she won’t need to have the hip replaced again (not that I knew that was on the table until someone had mentioned it after the fact), the dog seems to have pulled a muscle or slipped a disc in her back and needs to be on “bed rest” for the next week, along with taking an anti-inflammatory. I thought about this after the fact – how do you put a dog on bed rest? It’s not like they realize that what they’re doing is what’s hurting them, they just know they’re hurt. Saturday rolls around and the dog is worse, mostly our fault, I figured since we didn’t take any walks or go to the dog park we were doing ok – another trip to the Vet and they stress that we’re going to need to keep her crated as much as possible for the next week and absolutely no playing with the puppy! By this time we’re exhausted, I have to get my house clean for 35 people the next morning and I’m thinking good God it never fails. Just once I would like to have a weekend that didn’t revolve around trying to catch up from things that didn’t get cared for over the week, or trying to find new ways to resolve some random problem. To make a long story longer, we did mange to get the house cleaned, My Aunt made it home from the hospital in time to celebrate Easter with us personally and after a week the dog is starting to move a little smoother. As I’m easing into the end of the week I’m hoping that maybe this weekend will be just a little bit slower, I’m not really expecting it but would love to be surprised by it.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Quick pick
This last week my husband and I did something we rarely do, we bought a few quick picks, . I even went so far as to join a pool at work with 4 of my dear friends (although one only joined because if we did win he didn't want to be the one left out). I managed to make it to a store that didn't have one of the huge lines, and asked how we would go about getting quick picks, after a few looks of disbelief they pointed me to the front counter, I walked out with $25 for the pool and $10 for myself. When I came back into the office we made our copies talked very seriously about who would keep the tickets and where was the best place to store them, then we moved to the more important parts of conversation...What we would do if we won, I found out a few things about my friends that I didn't know that day and even more about my husband while we were driving out to dinner that night:
- everyone knows what they would do with a little bit of the money but not what they would do with the rest of their lives
- There's always a bit of money that goes to family and Charity - you know taking care of your parents and putting money away for kids college funds
- one of my more practical friends mentioned that we would need to probably get security for our children because once you claim your winnings it's on public record and you can't keep the whack jobs away after that
- 600 million dollars is a lot of money
- My husband and I have very different ideas about what we would do if we had lots of money
- I think he may be greedier than I am (and I do say this with as much love as I can after a statement like that)
- We all have different ideas about how much is enough money
We talked about what we would do first - Get a lawyer, then a financial planner. But then what? I figured we'd need to stay working for at least a little while because I'm sure Saturday morning they weren't going to start writing checks and you'd still have to wait until the bank opened on Monday morning to deposit it - I'm sure those large cardboard checks you see on TV do not fit into an ATM machine. On top of that the bank is going to want to put a hold on the money for a few days/weeks so they can earn some interest off of it before it actually goes into an account that belongs to you, and if your like me you don't have enough money to live on for a few weeks if your not working, while your waiting around for a check to clear. And again then what? I guess that's a question that only those that have won could answer, for most of us working Joe's we'll never truly know and for me that's OK, because even though I know we don't make enough to do all the things we want and sometimes even need to in our normal lives, I'm not sure that having all of that money would really fix any of the bigger problems we have and, more than likely they would just add on to what we already deal with. Of course I say this also because we didn't win the big money - Just $2, and it's easier to take the lofty high road in a situation like this so that your less than middle class existence seems better that it is, but just to make sure I know where I stand in the world, God or Karma made sure to remind me that we were due up for our every 6 month plumbing fiasco in our back bathroom and I finish writing this I prepare to put on gloves and grab a wrench to stand shoulder to should with my husband and continue to fight the good fight.
- everyone knows what they would do with a little bit of the money but not what they would do with the rest of their lives
- There's always a bit of money that goes to family and Charity - you know taking care of your parents and putting money away for kids college funds
- one of my more practical friends mentioned that we would need to probably get security for our children because once you claim your winnings it's on public record and you can't keep the whack jobs away after that
- 600 million dollars is a lot of money
- My husband and I have very different ideas about what we would do if we had lots of money
- I think he may be greedier than I am (and I do say this with as much love as I can after a statement like that)
- We all have different ideas about how much is enough money
We talked about what we would do first - Get a lawyer, then a financial planner. But then what? I figured we'd need to stay working for at least a little while because I'm sure Saturday morning they weren't going to start writing checks and you'd still have to wait until the bank opened on Monday morning to deposit it - I'm sure those large cardboard checks you see on TV do not fit into an ATM machine. On top of that the bank is going to want to put a hold on the money for a few days/weeks so they can earn some interest off of it before it actually goes into an account that belongs to you, and if your like me you don't have enough money to live on for a few weeks if your not working, while your waiting around for a check to clear. And again then what? I guess that's a question that only those that have won could answer, for most of us working Joe's we'll never truly know and for me that's OK, because even though I know we don't make enough to do all the things we want and sometimes even need to in our normal lives, I'm not sure that having all of that money would really fix any of the bigger problems we have and, more than likely they would just add on to what we already deal with. Of course I say this also because we didn't win the big money - Just $2, and it's easier to take the lofty high road in a situation like this so that your less than middle class existence seems better that it is, but just to make sure I know where I stand in the world, God or Karma made sure to remind me that we were due up for our every 6 month plumbing fiasco in our back bathroom and I finish writing this I prepare to put on gloves and grab a wrench to stand shoulder to should with my husband and continue to fight the good fight.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Save the Boobies
I feel sorry for my husband more and more, I don’t think he realized when we got married that he was entering into a world of “Girl Heck”. The oldest has always been strong willed and vocal about the atrocities in her life, but the baby has always been our “Little helper”, she’s the first one to ask if you need anything, if you’re having a bad day she’s the first one to give you a hug and tell you she loves you. Slowly though we’ve started see a little tarnish on her shine, she gets a little moody now and then, and recently she’s started stomping off when someone makes fun of her or if she gets a little embarrassed. Generally I would shake it off as her being a little tired but, as I watched her stomp to her room a few weeks ago I started to do the math.
- Mood swings – check
- BO – check
- Small patches of acne – check
- More time in front of the mirror – check
It hit me suddenly that my “baby” was definitely on her way to becoming a young woman. I mentioned this to my husband, who very promptly cut me off and told me there was no way that our little girl, was anything but a little girl. I tried to explain to him, that being a woman I would know the signs better than he, but that didn’t matter to him at all, as far as he was concerned it was bad enough that he had to go to the store for “womanly things” for 2 girls in the house he had no intention of adding a third for at least 5-10 years. I laughed at his math and told him she would be out of the house and almost 21 in 10 years but that didn’t faze him, she was the baby and if she knew what was good for her she’d stay the baby until he was ready for her to not be. I dropped the subject knowing there would be no changing his mind for now and didn’t think about it for a few days. But as all unfinished business must be attended to at some point, this argument was resolved sooner than my husband would have liked.
It happened after dinner on a rather benign evening while we were watching TV, the oldest had shoveled her food as fast as she could and had promptly retreated to her cave to do whatever Emo-teenagers do, with their radio’s blaring and their fingers moving faster than can be seen, texting her friends. The baby sat on the floor in front of me, half watching the show but more interested with a spot on her shirt. My husband as usual was sitting next to me, half watching the show and searching for things on the internet with his I-phone. Our of the corner of my eye I caught the child pulling her shirt tight behind her and shaking her head back and forth, then she would let loose and pull he shirt open to look down the neck, after a few times of watching her I asked what she was doing. She startled not realizing anyone was watching her, blushed, smiled sweetly said “nothing” and went back to pulling her shirt tight. As I watched her for a few more minutes it dawned on me that she had little boobs! And as far as I could remember until that moment she had never had them before, it was like she left for school flat as a washboard and came home with super bouncing balls hidden under her shirt. After my husband sent her off to the shower I confronted him with this new evidence, he stared at me silently for a few minutes and then said softly “You’re lying”. “If you don’t believe me, go look at her in the shower”. He got up quickly and sped to the bathroom, threw open the door and yanked back the curtain. I heard a small scream from the child and something mumbled from my husband. The shower curtain was closed and the bathroom door was quietly shut. Then I heard footsteps coming back to the room. My husband stood in front of me for a few seconds staring blankly at the wall behind my head. I waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts; he finally sighed and turned to walk out of the room. “Where are you going?”
“Too the garage, our daughter has boobs!”
- Mood swings – check
- BO – check
- Small patches of acne – check
- More time in front of the mirror – check
It hit me suddenly that my “baby” was definitely on her way to becoming a young woman. I mentioned this to my husband, who very promptly cut me off and told me there was no way that our little girl, was anything but a little girl. I tried to explain to him, that being a woman I would know the signs better than he, but that didn’t matter to him at all, as far as he was concerned it was bad enough that he had to go to the store for “womanly things” for 2 girls in the house he had no intention of adding a third for at least 5-10 years. I laughed at his math and told him she would be out of the house and almost 21 in 10 years but that didn’t faze him, she was the baby and if she knew what was good for her she’d stay the baby until he was ready for her to not be. I dropped the subject knowing there would be no changing his mind for now and didn’t think about it for a few days. But as all unfinished business must be attended to at some point, this argument was resolved sooner than my husband would have liked.
It happened after dinner on a rather benign evening while we were watching TV, the oldest had shoveled her food as fast as she could and had promptly retreated to her cave to do whatever Emo-teenagers do, with their radio’s blaring and their fingers moving faster than can be seen, texting her friends. The baby sat on the floor in front of me, half watching the show but more interested with a spot on her shirt. My husband as usual was sitting next to me, half watching the show and searching for things on the internet with his I-phone. Our of the corner of my eye I caught the child pulling her shirt tight behind her and shaking her head back and forth, then she would let loose and pull he shirt open to look down the neck, after a few times of watching her I asked what she was doing. She startled not realizing anyone was watching her, blushed, smiled sweetly said “nothing” and went back to pulling her shirt tight. As I watched her for a few more minutes it dawned on me that she had little boobs! And as far as I could remember until that moment she had never had them before, it was like she left for school flat as a washboard and came home with super bouncing balls hidden under her shirt. After my husband sent her off to the shower I confronted him with this new evidence, he stared at me silently for a few minutes and then said softly “You’re lying”. “If you don’t believe me, go look at her in the shower”. He got up quickly and sped to the bathroom, threw open the door and yanked back the curtain. I heard a small scream from the child and something mumbled from my husband. The shower curtain was closed and the bathroom door was quietly shut. Then I heard footsteps coming back to the room. My husband stood in front of me for a few seconds staring blankly at the wall behind my head. I waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts; he finally sighed and turned to walk out of the room. “Where are you going?”
“Too the garage, our daughter has boobs!”
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