60 Hours of Driving.

On Memorial Day, we woke at 4 am, threw the last of our things in the van and tied two suitcases to the roof rack and then headed out the door. The TV was unplugged, the sprinklers were set to go off every other day rather than every, the A/C was set to 85 and the sun was just starting to toy with the idea of rising.

We stopped for coffee, gas, and donuts and then headed over to gather the kids from my mom's house, where they'd spent the night so we could go to a wedding the night before. They were awake and dressed, and we bundled them into their car seats with their blankets tucked around them and their travel bags of toys and books next to each seat.

That first day, we didn't know how far we'd get. we only knew that our goal was to make it as far as we could before we lost both kids to epic meltdowns. We made it to Flagstaff around breakfast, so we stopped at a McDonald's so the kids could work out some energy and we could all use the restroom and get something to eat and drink. They were pretty excited to get back on the road, and we were anxious to put some distance behind us. The next few hours took us around the Grand Canyon National Park to the east, through reservation land where the sand is colored salmon and ochre and violet and the skies are baby blue. It was still early, and with the windows down and a cool breeze the ride was easy and went quickly enough. We stopped for an early lunch outside of Lake Powell.

Before hitting the road again, I took a few minutes to snuggle my puppies in the back of the van and telling them it was time to take a nap. Amazing as it seems, they DID nap. Success!

A few hours later, we checked into a hotel south of Salt Lake City and took the kids to dinner. The weather was amazing and the mountain range was topped in white snow when we found a sweet little elementary school and raided their park. Poor kids were so beat from a day of travel that they only played for a bit before asking to go to the hotel to sleep.

We went for a quick swim at the hotel's indoor pool, bathed the kids, and tucked in for the night. Luca and I laid down in one queen bed and Mo started the night next to Darrick. Before I fell asleep I felt his warm little body climb in next to me, and I drifted off for the first night of vacation sandwiched between my two kids and completely in bliss.

10 hours on the road, complete.

(to be continued)

First Day/Last Day

Luca's last day of preschool was today. And, in spite of my big fears it would go otherwise, I rolled with it pretty well. I only got choked up once, when talking to a co-worker about how I couldn't believe we will have a preschooler and a kindergartner in August.

She's grown and learned so much these past two years. She is completely the same in so many ways, but new in ways that really matter. Above all, preschool gave her a chance to become her own person outside the world of our family and gave her confidence. I look at the pictures of her biting her lip before walking into her first day of school, and compare that to the happy girl who ran to the car today to start summer break and I am eternally grateful for growth.

First Day:

Last Day:

First Day:

Last Day:

First Day:

Last Day:

15 Feet from Bed.

It's been awhile since I updated on our master bathroom, mostly because it's been awhile since we did anything significant in there. Shortly after my last update we hit a stalling point. I spent a solid day with my mother-in-law helping me to finish the tile surround (going up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs to get from the bathroom to the tile saw is not the MOST fun I've had in a weekend), and then it sat like that. For....um....weeks. Because the next step was to go in there with a green scrubbing pad and hot water and make those tiles shine. And really, there is very little that sounds as un-fun to me as the idea of spending hours scrubbing every last bit of thinset off of and from between tiles so we can grout.

Except grouting. THAT sounds less fun, but really only because my husband buys epoxy grout which is about as easy to spread on the walls and into the joints as frozen peanut butter being spread onto soft white bread.

We did manage to move the mirror up a few inches to accomodate the taller counters. That was all KINDS of fun, but it's done and it worked.

Anyhow, once the tile was up and I was officially stalling to avoid scrubbing it clean, we had a few other bathroom items to attend to before we could move on. Number one on the list was a new toilet. The old one worked fine, but it was almond colored, and with all the fixtures in the bathroom being white now that just wasn't working for me. So one Saturday morning Darrick followed a Craigslist ad to a rich neighborhood not too far away to get two new white toilets. Turns out, rich people buy houses brand new and then rip out the unused toilets and sell them on Craigslist. For $25 each. When they would have cost about $150 new.

We ended up getting a second one to replace the toilet in the other bathroom because why not, right? He still had to run to Home Depot for toilet seats and lids (no way were we getting THOSE off Craigslist!) and while there he decided it was as good a time as any to buy our new countertops and 2 new ceiling fans. Why new ceiling fans, you ask. I'm not sure. I mean, we needed them but we did not need to spend that money and deal with installing them (3 hours each, anyone?). Alas, we compromised on the ceiling fans and I let him keep one for our bedroom but made him return the other for now.

I also let him keep the countertops, which look like these except without the cheest 1992-style builder basic faucets.

Once the new toilet was installed, my husband got kind of lazy. Ok, that's not entirely fair as he's been working his butt off, but it might be considered accurate to say he got complacent. I mean, once you're without a master bathroom toilet for 5 months and then you get one back....what more does a man need? He can shit in his OWN BATHROOM! And you had better believe I heard that no less than eleventy bajillion times in a week.

But this weekend? This weekend we killed it. First, my husband installed the cabinets in their place by screwing them into the studs. Then he put the countertops on them and attached them to the wall with liquid nails and added the side splash guard things (which he kept calling bumpers for some unknown reason and thusly almost drove me nuts to the point where I just bit my tongue instead of correcting him so that I could then feel very proud of myself for not correcting him when he was in the bathroom slaving away). Once those were in place, I reattached the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, and then 'we' went back through and took the drawer fronts off and re-reattached them because 'we' hadn't done it well enough the first time and they were a bit loose and crooked. And the only thing that's allowed to be BOTH loose AND crooked is a hooker in an old Clint Eastwood western.

::ahem::

When all that was done and the tiles were scrubbed too (Finally! Jeez!) Darrick installed the faucets and then we stood back and felt really special about the whole thing cuz DAMN does it look nice.

This is where I should share picures, but: (a) I don't have any uploaded, and (b) I'm waiting to show pictures when it's ALL DONE. Which at the rate we're going will be sometime in June or November.

The last thing we did? Picked a godforsaken paint color (and, sadly, threw away the collection of 3,472 paint sample chips I've amassed since January) and slapped a first coat up on the wall. And after MONTHS of going back and forth and taping up samples and even buying a gallon of paint only to hate it on the walls, we decided together on a color we both love:

From: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAPJjpQBhn54V9Yn_5F0FQahsCtVC1YB4nWmWV428mCfE5nX3kriBM1Ejp0ClR-dT7m7as0d0pH1KnZj7pU1EVQjNCrHLufEy0zNYLJ3_iBiq_YNNOO_jUSbod6saM1cUMSWoiB7SMs3q1/s320/Color+Swatches.jpg

Can you guess which one? Dun dun duhhhhhhhh...

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Time to update the to-do list!

- Call insurance and file claim

- Remove baseboards
- Remove toilet and cover hole
- Remove tile
- Remove subflooring below tile
- Remove flooring BELOW subflooring.
- Remove tub surround (also involves removing showerhead and closing off that pipe)
- Pull out and discard tub (also involves removing and covering drain into floor)
- Have insurance assessor look at damage and determine if it's going to be covered by insurance
- Cut away water-damaged drywall in garage ceiling
- Put in new insulation and replace drywall.
- Potential repair/replacement of subflooring in bathroom
- Potential refinishing of cabinets
- Sand, stain, buff, and poly cabinets, doors, and drawers
- Build risers to increase height of cabinets
- Buy new counter tops and faucets for cabinets
- Move sink plumbing on both sides to accomdate taller cabinets
- Move, replace, or cut down mirror to accomodate new taller cabinets
- Replace layer of plywood on subfloor, sealing together with Liquid Nails
- Install Hardi Backer over floor plywood with mortar and screws
- Install new tile
- Grout new tile
- Fix pipes below floor level for toilet
- Replace toilet flange and put in new toilet
- Removal of current counters and cabinets
- Removal of hardware (towel rack, light plates, etc.)
- Spray paint bathroom hardware to brushed nickel
- Buy new globes to cover bathroom lightbulbs
- Spray paint light fixtures to brushed nickel
- Spray paint cabinet hardward brushed nickel
- Clean ceiling to prepare to paint
- Repaint bathroom ceiling and walls
- Move existing drain and pipes for bathtub to accomodate new height of tub
-Move showerhead up 6"
- Build support box for tub to sit in
- Installation of new tub and surround
- Buy and install new waterproof drywall for shower surround
- Tile new shower surround
- Tile front of tub- Hook up plumbing to bath and shower
- Paint room- Reinstall fixtures on walls
- Reinstall bathroom lights
- Installation of cabinets (either refinished old ones with risers or new ones)- Paint and install new baseboards OR use tile as baseboard
- Installation of countertops (either current one or new)
- Put in new faucets- Add new shower curtain and bath mats and toilet paper roll
- Look into storage options in room
See?!?!?! Almost there!!!!! I can't wait until we're done because while the coup de gras for my husband was shitting a mere 15 feet from his bed, for me it will be the first long bath in that nice new tub!

She Is 5, She Is Mine.

This little baby:

She is 5 today.

I don't know how it happened, but the little doll-baby with the huge blue eyes and peach-soft cheeks is now a little girl.

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Birthdays in preschool mean treats, so Darrick dropped off Rohan this morning so I could steal some sweet alone time with my first baby. She chose a fancy purple dress for school and we pulled her hair away from her face. We drove to school talking about parties and balloons. I took her to the store where she picked popsicles for the class treat, and she made sure we didn't forget Skittles for her friend in class who has allergies. He's not allowed to eat birthday treats because of fear of an allergy attack, but Skittles are on the short list of treats he is allowed.

We walked into class together, her tiny hand with newly painted nails (Hello Kitty sparkle polish) grasping mine. I handed the bag of treats to her teacher, and she pulled out the Skittles and asked for it to be put aside for her friend who can't have popsicles. I felt a tug at my heart for this girl, my girl, who always remembers her friends.

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Dinner tonight was pizza with family and best friends. We played games and won prizes and laughed and ate cake. She tickled the cheeks of her baby cousin and colored a picture of a butterfly to give her best friend.

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Since her birthday was a Monday and I couldn't miss work we made Sunday into Luca Day. "Anything you want to do," we told her. "Anything?!?!" she asked. The world hers for the taking, she chose donuts for breakfast, park and splash pad fun, and lots of cuddles.

Grandma and Grandpa took us out to dinner, her first fancy meal to celebrate a certain sense of coming of age. From toddler to child. From little girl to little lady. There were big glasses filled with Sprite and fancy linens and roses on the table just for her. There was the story, from Grandma, of how she was born and 4 days later I walked with her in my arms across a huge, hot parking lot so she could see her Daddy graduate from ASU. For dessert, she had a piece of cheesecake all to herself. Afterward, we went to a park nearby and walked around the lake. She held her brother's hand and chased trolls from under the bridges that criss-crossed the lake.

It was one of those nights where everything was perfect: the sky, the food, the company, her. Always her.

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For Christmas she asked for a horse. When we told her it wasn't likely that Santa would deliver because we couldn't possibly house one in our yard, she acquiesced and said a unicorn would do.

She got her unicorn.

When we got home from dinner, Darrick and I had to work together on installing a new ceiling fan in our bedroom, so the kids decided to make the best of it and throw an animal party. Before we knew it, every stuffed animal in the house was circled around the unicorn in her bedroom. Big and small turtles, Minnie and Mickey Mouse, three bears, a duck, a hippo, a puppy - all sitting on the floor together facing the desk in her room, where a CD was playing from her Disney Princess player.

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Bob Marley was singing and the animals were listenig. And in the middle of it all, a unicorn nursed her young. As soon as she was done, Luca dressed her properly in a rainbow glitter tutu, then took a seat to milk the unicorn.

"You're milking the unicorn?"

"Yeah, she has a baby who drinks her boobie milk. But all these other babies - " sweeping a hand over her minions, "- they all need her milk too."

"Oh, well by all means. Milk away."

They filled several small buckets with invisible unicorn boobie milk and passed them around. Letting the other animals drink the fortifying magical milk of unicorns.

I could not make this shit up if I tried. And I also can't even pretend to be anything less than smashed-to-pieces in love with this kid. This girl. This beauty. This amazing magical wonder whose soul is older than dust but whose spirit I hope stays forever young and full of wonder.

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Tonight they splashed together in a tub of bubbles, Daddy washing their hair and scrubbing their backs while I remade their beds with fresh sheets that smell of gardenias and honey. I wrapped them in towels, tousled their hair dry, rubbed lotion into their skin before letting her choose the bedtime story. I sat on the floor and she stood in front of me and it was only when she asked me what was wrong that I realized I was smoothing lotion into the knees of a kid. Not a baby, whose fat knees are smooth and puckered. A kid, whose knees hold the stories of trips and falls and scrapes and 5 years of life.  But I couldn't explain that to her because how do you tell your first-born you're both mourning the loss of baby-soft knees and listening to the stories to be told by that ever-changing skin?

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Wrapped under a gauzey tent that hangs above her bed, cocooned in a swath of pink blankets, she asked to hear the story of when she was born. We were just to the part where we'd left her Grandma and Grandpa's house and rolled down our windows to breath in the last moments of Just Us as we drove home when I spied Rohan, listening in from the doorway. She invited him in and then it was the three of us. Minnie Mouse played the part of Luca, hidden below my shirt. Giggles erupted from both kids when I told them how I'd been unable to sleep, so full of excitement and all, so I'd bathed and done my toenails and then watched movies and slept on the couch all night only waking here and there to aknowledge the early cramps of labor.

Her eyes grew huge when I remembered all the people who came to meet her and how we all just stared into this tiny, beautiful face and these impossibly huge blue eyes and fell madly, swiftly in love.

"It hurt when I was born, right mommy?"

"It did. But I don't really remember it hurting. I just remember being so happy."

"So when you have a baby, it hurts? And then the baby is born and love comes in and fills all the spaces that hurt? And instead of being full of hurt, you're all full up of love?"

"Yes, I think that's about right."

"So love is soft like your belly?"

"I guess that must be true."

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"You're not a baby anymore, Luca. But you will always, always be my first baby and I'll always love you more than you could ever know."

"Always?"

"Absolutely."

"Wow."

"Absolutely."

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Five years ago yesterday, I was anxiously working through labor, pumped with adrenaline and wonder. Waiting to meet her.

Five years ago this morning, at 12:10 a.m., she came earthside and I felt the world collide around me. Waiting to know her.

Five years ago tonight, I was exhausted and elated and stayed awake despite the pleas of nurse just to watch her sleep. Waiting to find the mom in me.

Five years, filled with so very much love and soul-expanding lessons in being humble and human and greater than I knew I could be for her. For both of them. For us.

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She is 5, she is mine.

 

Love Love Love

Proving It To Myself.

Tomorrow is Pat's Run. I registered for Pat's Run just after I had the Color Run under my belt. I was a C25K graduate and was feeling positive and optimistic. I was running 3 miles in January, so I figured by the middle of April I could pretty easily get up to 4.2.

For the month after the Color Run, I trained. I wasn't quite working the bridge to 10k training I'd hoped to follow, but I was running and it felt good to keep going. And then, late February and early March happened. And it looked like this: DC for work Feb. 24 - 29. Home and hit with a bad cold March 1 - 3. Baltimore for a training March 4-6, still with the cold. That cold hung around for well over 3 weeks, a time during which I did attempt some running unsuccessfully.

And the next thing I knew? It was April and I was 3 weeks out from the run. And wouldn't you know the mere 3 weeks left to train intimidated me straight into inaction. I DID run in April...once? twice? But I most decidedly didn't even come close to prepping to run 4.2 miles. Shoot...at this point I'm not sure I could revisit a 5k successfully.

So back and forth I went in my mind. One day, I was going to buckle down and start waking at 5 am to run. Dammit, I was going to get OUT there, no matter whether I could only put out a mile or I managed more than 3. And then I realized how dark and, well, early 5 am really was. So I thought about going back to nighttime running, but between late bedtimes and nutso work schedules, my plan to have the kids in bed by 8:30 and be out running by 8:40 usually ended up being closer to kids in bed before 9 and me searching for my ear buds still at 9:15. And then I'd get frustrated. And pissed. And I'd be bitter because dammit I know it's important to keep moving. It's good for my body and my mind and my soul. But it felt like I was alone in that belief. Like no one in my family was seeing or appreciating how much I needed to get out there and run. To be fit. To be strong. To train for this race. To be healthy. To not quit, because once you quit going back is the hardest part.

Of course I told my husband this. And, of course, because I am such a passive aggressive asshole sometimes, I let it stew until one day I blew up at him. My alarm went off at 5 and I hit snooze - twice. And he was pissed. Seething. Because as soon as that happened the under-5 set in our house was awake and then HE was awake and meanwhile I'd hit snooze and passed the fuck out. So the next thing I knew he was doing the whole, "If you don't want to get up and run please just shut off your alarm. It goes off two or three times and we're all awake an hour before we need to be!" only when he said it I swore it was something more like, "You lazy fat bastard, if you can't haul your flabby white ass out of this bed to get 20 minute of cardio in the morning you are really a bigger sack of worthless, bloated shit than I'd previously realized and I'm disgusted by you. Pig bitch."

I never claimed not to be defensive and somewhat overly self-critical.

Look, I knew rationally what he meant, but in my head I'd been self loathing and belittling myself for weeks. Talking myself up to get out there and run, and then falling apart. Once even trying to run and feeling my legs turn to cod livers as I stumbled back home, leaned into the side of our van and buried my face in my arms to cry, then calming myself outside for 10 more minutes so my husband wouldn't have to know I'd barely made it around the block. Making deals with myself. Telling myself how great I would feel after. Telling myself how shitty I would feel not-after, if I didn't go. And just generally reconvincing myself of every damn lie I ever told myself about what I am or am not capable of with this awkward, pasty, chubby, pink-ankled, fat thighed body nature chose for mocking me.

And so I might have blown up at him that morning and then felt like shit later. And we might have talked and made up but there, bubbling under the surface was every bit of insecurity and disbelief in myself I'd ever had, like a thousand fucking voices of a thousand girls who are prettier and thinner and just plain better than I am and I could not for the life of me figure out how to shut it all off. I surely didn't just put on my damn running shoes and tough that shit out to push past it. Instead, I burrowed into my home and retreated into my body because I know every lump and bump and unappealing body part well enough to be able to criticize myself without even having the self-respect to put any enthusiasm into it. When you're spent your whole life thinking of a thousand things wrong with your love handles, after all, you're going to one day realize that it doesn't even take any real effort to remember how ugly they are and what a miserable fuck of a human being that makes you, all around.

So then suddenly it was this morning and I walked into my office at work and there was my boss, making a joke about the race shirts for this weekend's race and it hit me that I had managed to completely shut my brain off and pretend that the race isn't this weekend. And if my boss hadn't also registered to run it and had she not mentioned the shirts then said something to the effect of how we (co-worker and I, who registered together) were 'quitters' if we didn't at least go walk it, I might have pranced right through this weekend ignoring Pat's Run facebook posts and letting my mind pretend I forgot. When really...I knew. I knew, you know? I knew.

Being wishy-washy about the whole thing herself, my co-worker sort of had me convinced to skip the run. I mean...who really cared, right? Our money will go to charity no matter what, and why battle traffic and people and logistics just to say we did it if we're not ready and we're not in it, heart and body? Right?

But then, we decided we sort of wanted those silly race shirts and I figured maybe I could just stop and get our packets on the way home and then we could skip it. Right? We could totally skip this thing and who would care anyhow and we might feel guilty but who would care? Really? Who?

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She called me as I was driving home from picking up the packets. After a text I sent to her that 99 other people would read as "Convince me I need to run tomorrow and not skip this race seeing as how I'm not properly trained and it's going to be hot!" (because, I mean...that is what it said) and she read it as, "You need to call me now. YOU because YOU are the person I texted because YOU and only YOU will know exactly what my mind and my self esteem and many years of internal voices telling me I can't run unless someone is chasing me and I'm too fat and and and and  is doing to me and YOU can help. Can't you please help?"

So she called and we talked and she let me decide not to run and she didn't judge me and then I was crying. Crying because -fuckall!- who WOULD care is me and why it DOES matter is me too. I am why and I am who and suddenly we were talking about something different. This wasn't about well should I or shouldn't I and can I or not. It wasn't that at all anymore. Suddenly a switch flipped and I realized there was no other option. There was no yes or not there was just the need to do this thing. The need to get out there and suffer. And know I might not run it all...or much of it, even. I won't have a good race time. I won't beat any records or surprise myself with how 4 weeks of utterly and complete sloth status magically transformed me into a natural and gazelle-like runner. And I'm probably going to be pissed at myself and disappointed and THAT IS THE POINT.

That is the point.

The point is to be that. And to experience that. To live it and to remember it and to USE it to motivate me. The point is that I'm probably going to hate parts of tomorrow's run. The parking. The mass of people. The burning lungs at 5 minutes in and the legs on fire at 12. The feeling that I am going to stop running and just trudge myself down into a puddle of sweat and goo and they will find me later, buried under plastic drink cups from the water stations and no one will know I've gone missing anyhow. The finish line, so damn far away and past so many hills and people. I'm going to fail at it all. I am going to hate it and wonder what the hell is wrong with me and wish I was at home in bed or laying on the couch with my kids or any-damn-where but there, in that moment. And I am going to go through that and then on the other side will be...what? A moment of satisfaction? Elation? An epiphany wherein I decide to dedicate my life to running?

Doubtful. On the other side, I think, of tomorrow's run will be this: the knowledge that I didn't prepare and I let my mind psyche my body out and that I did it anyway. That even when I know it's going to be hard and suck and I'm going to dread it, I am the kind of person who does it anyhow.