spring in my step and sparkle in my eye

All is good and calm at the nest. E is home and our worlds are back to normal. YAY!
I did however shed a tear today. Is anyone surprised? I am not. It is all because I read this...

Being a Mom


We are sitting at lunch one day when my daughter casually
mentions that she and her husband are thinking of 'starting a family.'
'We're taking a survey,' she says half-joking.

'Do you think I should have a baby?' "It will change your life,' I
say,carefully keeping my tone neutral.

'I know,' she says, 'no more sleeping in on weekends, no more
spontaneous vacations.'

But that is not what I meant at all.

I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to
know what she will never learn in childbirth classes.

I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will
heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that
she will forever be vulnerable.

I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper
without asking, 'What if that had been MY child?' That every plane crash,
every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving
children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child
die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that
no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to
the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub.

That an urgent call of 'Mom!' will cause her to drop a soufflé or her
best crystal without a moments hesitation.

I feel that I should warn her that no matter how many years she has
invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood.

She might arrange for child-care, but one day she will be going into an
important business meeting and she will think of her baby's sweet
smell.
She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running
home, just to make sure her baby is alright.

I want my daughter to know that every day decisions will no longer be
routine. That a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room
rather than the women's at McDonald's will become a major dilemma. That right
there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues
of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect
that a child molester may be lurking in that rest-room.

However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself
constantly as a mother.

Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually
she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same
about herself.

That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she
has a child.

That she would give herself up in a moment to save her offspring, but
will also begin to hope for more years, not to accomplish her own dreams,
but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will
become badges of honor. Vanity becomes a thing of the past, she will
unselfishly stand back and allow her children to shine.


My daughter's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the
way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a
man who carefully bathes the baby or who never hesitates to feed, change or
play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with
him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women
throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving.


I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child
learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a
baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time. I want
her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts.

My daughter's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in
my eyes. 'You'll never regret it,' I finally say. Then I reached across
the table, squeezed my daughter's hand and offered a silent prayer for her,
andfor me, and for all the mere mortal women who stumble their way into
this most wonderful of callings.

Please share this with a Mom that you know or all of your girlfriends
who may someday be Moms.

May you always have in your arms
the one who is in your heart.

If this doesn't make your ovaries skip a beat and kick baby fever into overdrive. I don't know what will.

Dirt and stuff..

Today I confirmed the following:
1) There is something special about having the sunshine wake you up at 8am on a saturday morning.
2) Despite being so far away from my family and my girlfriends, I am so happy we are living in the bay area.
3) I will some how, some way conquer the weeds that are taking over my back yard and now the front yard
4) I will focus on getting my would be garden up and running.
5) I finished getting rid of the nasty weeds that were inhabiting my would be garden.
6) I hate snails!
7) I hate worms!
8) This is the longest weekend EVER!
9) I don't miss the midwest cold. Today I got to wear at one point during the day, a tank and shorts
10) I do miss my husband and wish it was Monday so he could be back at home already.



Here is the space for my garden to be. Once E gets home, we are going to figure out what we want to grow.



This is the "green waste" bin that I filled up today. If you look beyond the bin, you can see the weeds that become my backyard. I hate weeds!



The motivation to start a garden. This is a lemon that is growning my backyard from our young meyer lemon tree.



Meet Van Gogh. The neighborhood cat. He is the sweetest thing ever! When we first moved in and had all of our doors open. This little snuggle bug found his way many times on to our bed. I wish I took pics of him camping out in our house. He kept me company today while I did my thing in the backyard.



My hand was shaky and my little digital camera isn't so great at the clos ups. So I apologize for the blurry picture. But in reality this snail is HUGE! I ran into even more of them as I cleared out the weeds. They scared the crap out of me!

randomness..

Every day I've been trying to think of something clever to post about. But just can't seem get my thoughts down. So here are some snippets of ideas I have thought to post about this week.

City Sidewalks.....
I work in San Francisco so you have the usually city stuff...traffic, people everywhere, sounds of car horns, which drive me bonkers. An occasional homeless person or 2 maybe 3. Who actually are starting to recognize my face and say hello.
Yesterday I saw a biker--not motorcycle biker but regular street bike biker who had a sign on his front handle bars saying "cars=weapons of mass destruction" I started busting out laughing when I read this. Only in SF.

Driving Stick...
I paralleled parked yesterday! Woot woot!

Reflections on the last 6 weeks
I feel kind of embarrassed about how I was reacting to E being gone. I feel like I didn't handle myself so well and it was only 6 weeks. I think about all those families with their loved ones in Iraq who are gone 10x as long as E and how hard it must be to have them gone. Dealing with their everyday lives. Some raising children all on their own without the help of their spouse or others just not having their loved ones around and worrying about them being in constant danger. Here I am, single--meaning we don't have kids or pets, he wasn't in danger and I was a basket case. I feel a little selfish about how I dealt with it.

My garden
I decided last weekend the best way to get over my hangover was to start cleaning out the weeds and dead vegetable plants. In my backyard, I have a 10x10 area that was used as a vegetable garden by the previous owners of our house. I got about 3/4 of the way through the weeds and dead plants. So with the warm weather this weekend, my plan is to get back out there to finish cleaning out the weeds, get rid of the dead bean stalks and add some fertilizer soil to get it ready to start planting some yummy vegetables. After that, I need to decide what I am going to plant. I am also dying to start my own compost pile so I have good fertilizer for my garden. Plus it will help reduce the garbage that I put out. Gotta reduce my carbon footprint some how.

E
He comes home on Monday. I cannot freaking wait. His pilot hat arrived in the mail last week. I had some fun with the pilot hat and sent him some pictures. When he was home last weekend, he took his pilot jacket in to get tailored. I will be sure to post pictures in his new uniform. No more SWA smurf uniforms. We've chatted about taking off for a few days to Mexico. Maybe next weekend. Do a saturday-monday trip where we can sit in the warm sun and just be. Wouldn't that be nice?

7 days...

Yes.. a mere 7 days more before my hubby comes back from ground school. A week! Just one tiny week more.

The "Tank" update

So overall the "Tank" and I are getting along. I am managing the stick shift thing quite well and it is becoming second nature to me. I've started driving to the other BART (bay area rapid transit) Station that is about 15 minutes away so I can sleep in 30 minute more each morning. I will admit, I do take the long way to get there because it is all flat road. I can handle the start and stops along the way. My goal is though to tackle this steep hill that is in my path between my house and both BART Stations. Maybe tomorrow or Friday I will do this.

Going home, I've forced myself to take the back roads so that I can get used to driving on the rolling hills along the way. I've mastered the art of using the emergency brake to help get the car going and then releasing it when the clutch and gas are engaged together. Tonight, I was able to conquer some the smaller hills without using it :)

My best friend C put it perspective for me about learning to drive this car. She said, look at it this way, E is learning to fly a plane while you are learing to drive a stick shift. For some reason, this gave me the "ah ha" moment of clarity I so desparately needed.

So all you stick shift drivers out there, you can be proud me!! All your kind words of support and encourgagement certainly helped! You gave me the will to not let you down!!!



The Tank and I may never fully get along but at least we are now playing nice.

I'd like to get off the rollercoaster please?

Is there someway I can stop this ride? I can't seem to get a handle on my emotions. One day I am feeling great, happy, loving life, nothing can stop me now attitude and the next day--snap! I am in tears over something really incredibly stupid. I am questioning everything--my job and my ability to survive the next two weeks while E is at ground school. I can't figure out what is causing this roller coaster of emotions. Does going off the pill affect you this badly? It's been almost a year since I went off--while it sucked the first couple of months, could it still be affecting me? Or am I really this unstable? ;) I already called my dad this morning in tears because the stupid car was locked up. I couldn't turn the wheel or get the key to turn over in the ignition. Tears again this afternoon because I couldn't figure out how to get the car in reverse and how to change the windshield wipers. Seriously internet--I know I need to chill out. Luckily, the car in front of me in the parking lot left so I could move forward and my great neighbor came over to change the wipers for me. This all thanks to a call made by E.

I'd like someone to pull the emergency brake for me because I have had it and want off this silly ride.

Big Girl Pants: 50, Me: 0

I am in the final home stretch of E away. If all goes according to schedule I should have my husband home on March 24th. Yay for me. I finally got the bedroom painted, the furniture moved back in. Learned how to change a flat tire, purchased a new tire, etc, etc.

However, someone some where thinks I still need to grow up more because the hits just keep on coming.

Tonight I found out that my alternator in my car is going out. I discovered this because my battery light came on tonight as I was driving home. Now the miss independent that I am trying to be, took a looksie at my owner's manual to see this all means. I quickly found out that what it means is NOT GOOD. I called, um rather... I had E call the mechanic. The mechanic forbid me not to drive the car until we can meet up next Tuesday for him to fix it. If I do, then we have big problems. Essentially the alternator is not charging the battery and if the car is on it will drain the battery.
So I don't drive the car. No biggie right? My husband has his car here and I can just drive that. Well, the problem here is that I am not a great stick shift driver. I can manage but I am just not comfortable on the hills. No, actually I am deathly afraid of hills. Did you know that the Bay Area is FILLED with hills! I even live on a hill!


So I need to go find my big girl pants and teach myself how to drive a stick shift--hills and all.


Is it March 24th yet?