Quote of the Week
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
-Gail Godwin
Do I?
When we got home today the boys, who had been so good I thought they might have been abducted and replaced by alien doubles, so as to better study our life forms. They were so good that they were allowed the supreme privilege of watching a movie on a school night, and I had checked out Bedknobs and Broomsticks from the city library. I love that movie, not just because it has a pre-Murder She Wrote Angela Lansbury doing musical numbers as only she could do (didja know she did musical theatre? well, I did).
Middlest Boy didn’t want that to be the movie. “It’s a grown-up movie,” he complained. “It’s going to be scary. I don’t want to see anything scary.”
“It’s not scary,” I assured him. “Look – it’s got a magical island of cartoon animals, and they play soccer. You like soccer.”
He was convinced, finally, and he watched it along with the other two boys.
Treguna… makoides… trecorum… satis dee. I really did want to watch it, actually, but right at about the time that the Wermacht invaded Pepperidge Eye I nodded off.
“Pepper, hush!” Middlest Boy said, startling me.
“Wha-huh?” I snapped awake, wiping the drool from my mouth.
“You were snoring,” he said. “And you were wrong. It is scary. There’s ghosts!”
“Ghosts?” I looked at the TV. Armored knights without bodies were routing the Germans as disembodied bagpipes played on the crest of a hill. I held Middlest Boy in my lap. “Do I really snore?” I asked him quietly.
“Yes!” all three boys said in unison.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll be quiet now.”
The Viking and Highlander costumes resisted the German beachhead, and the Empire was safe.
After helping to put the children to bed, I asked Monsieur, “Do I ever snore?”
He looked cornered.
“Seriously, I just want to know,” I assured him.
“I – cannot remember any instance of you ever doing so,” he managed to say.
Happy birthday, Maggie
You have made three fantastic boys. They learn little details so quickly that it’s a challenge for me to keep up with them. They have all come to learn that I’m not perfect or even as smart as they are; like you did, they have intolerance for people who aren’t as smart as they are.
Well, with me, they are learning patience. That’s something you had trouble with. They are also learning about achievement and disappointment, about this wonderful and terrible world, and (with me as a caregiver), they are learning about how authority isn’t always perfect, but it’s in charge.
With Bigglest Boy’s 9th birthday last week, he is in his last year of single digits. Next year, he’ll be a tween. I may cry when that happens. He got an Erector Set for his birthday, but not the motorized one that he wanted. He has already figured out how to modify an old electric toothbrush to use as a motor, and has attached it to gears to slow it down so it won’t completely shred whatever it is he’s inventing.
Littlest Boy also had a birthday – his 3rd – and he, I am both sad and pleased to say, thinks he is no longer a baby. Except he still needs to be held and rocked to sleep. I guess I do, too, sometimes.
Middlest Boy is the little man. He sometimes gets me to tie a bandanna around his head, so he can wear one like his daddy does, when he has to do dirty work like mop the floor or paint. It’s funny to see them out by the creek, hacking brush, both with bandannas on. He looks so much like his daddy now, except when he is angry or frustrated, and then his eyes flash and his teeth grind and, well, he looks like you, I’m afraid. Terrible and beautiful.
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Above, a scrap of Maggie’s music, which rather shocked me when I found it last summer – the song that this blog is named after: Paul Simon’s “How the Heart Approaches What it Yearns.” Boy, that freaked me out so much when I found it, then as I dug further I realized she arranged about a hundred of his songs. For fun, for a diversion. The way you and I would do a crossword puzzle.
I don’t know what to do with all these notes and sheet music that you wrote, but I promise I won’t throw them out. Girlfriend, did you ever hear of “filing”? There are three big file boxes of this stuff, and as I go through them, finding songs you arranged, notes and outlines that you wrote, and crazy hilarious little snippets of t-shirt ideas or bumper stickers, or bad parodies of Dostoevsky or Robert Louis Stevenson novels, I wonder if you ever slept. There’s enough stuff in these boxes to make twenty movies. And that doesn’t begin to go into the music that you recorded.
I have often thought that you knew what was going to happen and you knew that you only had so much time and so many things to do that you just would go and go and not ever stop until you’d pass out. You have written long manuscripts on the history of the way people think. There are what look like chemical formulas. There are scraps, little bits of this and that. I remember watching TV with you, a Will & Grace rerun, while we giggled and snarked. The whole time you were arranging some piece of music, writing notes and scratching them out, and also you were throwing a piece of wadded up paper for the cat to play with. Oh, and you kept an eye on tomorrow’s dinner in the oven. I have a hard enough time just clearing my head enough so that I can watch TV, but you were doing four – or five – things at once and that was when you were relaxing.
feeling my molly bloom
I only have a few minutes to get this in. sorry no time for spellcheck or good proofreading / editing or anything.
Tonight Monsieur when out to some musician’s get together; I stayed home as it was just for musicians, serious songwriter’s workshop thing. When he got back he showered and got in bed, and I spooned right up against him. He draped his arms around me in a certain way and I knew he wanted me. I moved against him trying not to be too eager but it’s been a week, as usual, since the last time, and I hadn’t had time to pleasure myself in days. I was rarin’ to go; I was a total wildcat, I had to bite my hand to keep quiet. I cooed and wiggled and played with myself and totally abandoned all to the feeling. I was getting close when he let out this sort of sigh/hiss sound and then gasped.
He started to apologize and I said, “shhh… For what?” and then I realized he came! It has been weeks, I don’t know how long since he’d done that, at least with me. He apologized and I told him he didn’t have a thing to apologize about.
With him softening inside me, his eyes burning into mine I kissed him and then he kissed me back, and I clenched on it and he sort of got up supporting himself on his arms so that we were only connecting in that one spot and he just held it there and I needed the movement but he held still so I started to masturbate and I really got into it! it was fun – carefree – and I got to giggling and being silly, not worrying about his orgasms, my adequacy or inadequacy, anything – and finally I stopped giggling and I dunno how, I just had a nice juicy one while he held me, and told me he wanted me to stay with him, for ever and forever, while I clenched my eyes to hold the tears and clenched my pussy, and finally let the tears (and him) slide out of me, and my heart was yearning like mad and “yes…” I said, “yes I will… yes.”
note: edited for spelling, and a link to tell you non-liberal arts majors what the hell the title of this post means.
Ideas that get away are quick, clever and unlikely to be captured alive.
Littlest Boy: Pepper?
Yearning Heart: Yes, Littlest Boy?
Littlest Boy: I had an undea.
Yearning Heart: What‘s an undea, sweetie?
Littlest Boy: It‘s an idea, but I forgot it. So, it got unrased. So, it‘s an undea.
Three Feet High and Rising
Happy MLK’s Birthday.
No school today – partly because of the holiday, in which federal, state and bank employees get to stay home and celebrate their black heritage. Also because of the weather, as Canada decided to invade the Plains with 4 – 6 inches of “wintry mix” which froze immediately and downed power lines, trees, and random motorists.
Here’s a picture of the flood-level Blanco River, not far from us:
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the flood-level Blanco River
Water accumulated very quickly in the area, partly because the drought made the ground so bone-hard and impermeable that the water just sat on top of the fields, not soaking in. The water tried to run off but the rising creeks and rivers backed up the runoff, so the water just sat there.
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the water just sat there
Then the cold front really kicked in, dropping the temps today from its usual highs of 60° F to about 24° F. From our neighborhood clear up to the Arctic Circle, an ever-thicker blanket of ice is covering everything.
Instead of salting the roads here, they simply stay home, since it won’t last but a day or so. Monsieur is working with Skip the Gay Rancher right now, making sure that the private road is clear to the ranch road. Skip’s tractor is pretty well suited for hauling or towing.
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an ice-covered tree
I just heard from Monsieur a few minutes ago – he’s still in Skip’s tractor, and it would seem that there is more than one truck that can’t make it up the slippery frozen caliche road. So, Monsieur is a snow-plow operator, a search and rescue worker, and a taxi driver today.
The ground under the chicken coop is freezing over with a layer of ice, so I have moved the chickens from the yard to the basement, and they’re not happy about it. They are pecking and fussing like, well, like old hens. The rooster is trying to argue his way out of his imprisonment. The cat has been locked in Bigglest Boy’s room. Bigglest Boy is up there with him, trying to convince him that it’s not a punishment, and that we didn’t inflict this storm on him out of spite. The Two Littlest Boys are coloring with crayons. Middlest Boy’s drawing is of Hoth, the Ice Planet. There are a couple of ATAT walkers, delivering the mail, and Luke Skywalker driving a John Deere tractor. Littlest Boy is calling his drawing “Brown,” which is a very apt description.
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the chicken coop is freezing over with a layer of ice
Where have I been?
Well, I’ve been here. I’ve been busy and all, but that’s not really why I’ve been reluctant to post lately. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that Cat, with whom I went to high school, found my blog.
Hi, Cat!
Even though she PROMISED not to tell the whole world about it, and give away my secrets, I still feel very funny about it. I know that it’s not as if my dad found it, but still I feel funny talking about my feelings to the whole world now. Even though they’re very valid feelings, and nothing to be ashamed of, I have lost that sense of privacy/anonymity that I once had here. I know, with all the detail that I supply, it was bound to happen someday, right? And what was I to do once it did happen? Shut it down? Move it? Or pretend it never was discovered and keep going?
It’s not as though I’m really thinking clearly about all of it.
There’s this … other thing that’s been bothering me.
I’ve been getting the loving from Monsieur about once a week. It’s been very nice, and I really had nothing to complain about, but sometimes he was just getting me off and not getting himself off. I would not have noticed for quite a while but once recently, I guess it was after Thanksgiving. I’d had this mind-blowing orgasm and he stopped, slowing down deliciously first. I was going to flip over and ride him to try and get him off, too. Fair play, right? I mean, it’s his turn and all.
So there I was, cowgirling away with my thighs on either side of his waist. He was rubbing, pinching, teasing and caressing me, but I took his hands in mine and I leaned over him and whispered, “Don’t worry about me, darling. I’m done. Just go for it.”
That’s when Monsieur stopped. “I think I’m done as well,” he said, taking me in his arms and kissing me.
“Did you come?” I blurted out, surprised.
“Well…” he began, and trailed off. “I’m fine,” he said, smiling. He started to get up but I held him down.
“You don’t want to get off?” I asked him. “Or do you need me to do something else?”
“I’m fine,” he repeated. “I don’t need more.”
So, I’ve sort of noticed that he doesn’t always get off. I guess I’ve been somewhat oblivious to the fact that the wet spot is usually all me, and none of him.
It didn’t bother me at first, but the next time we made love, I noticed it. Then the next time, then the next. No stain, no gain.
I don’t know why, but it bothered me. I was spending all this energy trying to get him to make love to me once a week, and once I started getting that, I guess something in me made me check to see if all was as it should be.
The next time, I said, “You didn’t come.”
“No,” he said, “but I’m all right.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t think I am. I need this, too, sweetheart.”
“You need this, too?” he asked me.
“Yes, I do.” I was being firm, but gentle. “I really do. Now, if you can’t for some reason – if there’s something I’m not doing right, or something, please tell me.”
“Perhaps,” he said gently, “now is not the right time.” He kissed me, and tried to reassure me that it was him, not me, and he was fine with what we had. He loved me, he would take care of me, and so on.
I don’t want to nag him about it. I won’t nag him about it. It’s his body. It’s his choice, and he says he’s fine.
It’s not fine. I want that load. It’s mine, dammit. I earned it. Why does that seem so unreasonable? I feel like such a brat sometimes.
I guess … it’s how men feel if they didn’t get the girl off. Once, twice, it’s not a big deal but if it becomes a pattern I guess it just weighs on me. Sigh.
Xmas Haul
Well, the holidays are over and boy am I glad. It’s exhausting when three young boys are involved.
This year, we started a new concept for the holidays. For one thing, when the children made a Christmas list, it wasn’t about what they wanted to get, it was a list of things to give and people to give them to.
I got five great CD’s, a bunch of lovely books on classical art and classical music, about which I know nothing, but I need to learn it if I want to be in this family. Which, I do.
The other development has been that Monsieur asked me if I had a passport, and since I don’t, he paid for my application for one. I asked him if that meant we were traveling anywhere, and he said, “It is just in case I do need to travel, this time I would like for you and the boys to come along.”
Well, I thought, I can do that. I went to Kinko’s and had the photos made, and I still had an extra copy of my birth certificate. So, I gathered that all together and went to the post office one day, and I turned in the application and affirmed that I was an American. We’ll see if the State Department thinks I’m too dangerous to move freely.
Coming Home
“Hi,” said the owl with his head so white,
“Another day and a lonesome night,
I thought I heard a pretty girl say,
She’ll court all night and sleep all day.”
We were singing that in the van as we rounded the corner Saturday night, headed for home. Monsieur was at home, making something yummy for dinner and I knew what it would be. It was his delicious beef and lamb and venison stew, and before you say it, yes, that’s little baby calf and woolly fluffy lamb and Bambi, dammit. I loves me a big bowlful of Disney.
We rounded the corner, as I was saying, and though the temperature was over 35° F there was a little patch of ice that my rear wheel slid across and cause my back end to fishtail and slide. I overcompensated, like a greenhorn inexperienced driver, and ended up spinning around the other way, facing the wrong direction with my van’s tail end in the drainage ditch, stuck. I spun my wheels only for a second, and then got out to make sure I was truly stuck. I checked all three kids, then turned off the ignition and called Monsieur.
“Can your Volvo bio-diesel station wagon pull a Dodge minivan out of a ditch?” I asked. We were only two minutes by car from the front door, on the loop road. However, it would have been a forty-five minute walk on a muddy road with three small boys.
“Not likely,” he said. “P equals MV squared, I always say. In times of great inclinations such as this, I recommend a man who could pull a train.”
In ten minutes, Skip the Gay Rancher, our friend and neighbor showed up on his Ford 846 tractor with a tow bar and chain. Monsieur was riding on the tow bar. He hopped off and helped Skip to hook the chain around the axle of the minivan. The boys stood by in the sleet and watched. They could not be convinced to sit in the warm van during such an adventure. They watched, all their faces the image of seriousness.
We were towed out in a moment, and we thanked Mr. Skip and invited him to dinner with us, which he refused in a good-natured way. But he did promise to stop by for Christmas Day.
All of use piled into the van. Monsieur took the wheel after I asked him to, not trusting my luck. He drove us home while we finished singing our song:
“Hi,” said the jaybird sittin’ in a tree,
“When I was a young man I had three.
Two got sassy and took to flight,
And the one that’s left don’t treat me right.”
It was dark, darker than I thought it should be and then I remembered, one of the longer nights of the year had already begun and it was only 5:20 in the afternoon. No, it was in the evening. The sun had gone down behind Blue Hill. I thought to myself how different the rain in Texas was, so much colder that the snow in Kansas at this time. In a week’s time, the Texas rain would give way and the cold weather would be gone. I was getting used to it, the winter that didn’t come and the cold snaps that did. I had my gloves on. I hugged my knees to my chest and thought of home. I looked up and the house was covered from the eaves to the shrubbery in white, purple, red, blue and green Christmas lights. I know I had stopped calling Kansas home but I still called it “back home,” as in, “I probably won’t be going ‘back home’ this year.” Now, Kansas is “my parent’s place” and all I could think last night was, “It’s great to finally be back home after a long day.”
“Oh, my goodness,” was all I could say.
Through the rain it looked like a postcard. The lights twinkled and glimmered in a shimmered, watercolor effect. The kitchen light was on, and there was a fire burning outside in the fire pit. It smelled of burning pine needles and cedar logs, and of chestnuts.
When we got inside the air was heavy with the smell of ragout and rising bread dough, and of brandy cooking in something sweet.
“Yum,” I said.
“Mmm,” agreed the Littlest Two of the Three Boys.
“I need to put the rolls into the oven,” Monsieur said. The Bigglest Boy went to go wash his hands immediately, as he was expected to participate in all bread making. That is his kitchen lesson this month. Normally he would have kneaded and rolled out the bread, but we had been late doing Yule shopping, plus we had been stuck in icy mud coming home.
“I want rolls,” added Littlest Boy.
“You get dinner, with rolls and green salad and bean-beans, as soon as it’s ready,” assured his daddy, pointing him out the kitchen door and giving his little bottom a gentle but firm shove.
“And zert,” continued Littlest Boy.
“For dessert, there will be Papa Noël cake,” Monsieur said.
“Mmm,” said the Two Littlest Boys in unison. I led them away to wash up.
After dinner I sneaked out to haul in my gifts to Monsieur as he washed up the boys, hiding them in my underwear drawer wrapped in a newspaper. I then pulled out the gifts to the boys, carefully hiding them under the Big Bed.
This year, we’re doing two things a little differently. Instead of making Christmas lists of what we’d like to get, we make Christmas lists of what we’re going to give. Also, instead of spending the day playing, we’re going to Monsieur’s church and volunteering with a food bank, sorting some canned and boxed food. So I’m taking some joy in what I’m giving this year.
We went downtown to the Dell Community Center for latkes, klezmer, dreidels and gelt. We brought our Round Mountain Menorah to light, and I met a lot of people Monsieur hadn’t seen in years.
For some reason, Monsieur wants us all to have our passports in order and ready for a trip at any time. He says that work may end up causing him to take an assignment overseas, but he doesn’t know where or for how long. Last time he was out of town for work, he was gone for two weeks; we got fussy and missed him terribly. If it should come to that, he wants us to be a long, all of us. I’m cool with that. Also, I’ve never been anywhere except Florida and New York City, and I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the world, should it happen.
Meanwhile, we’re holed up, the rain tap-taps the windows, I’m in my plaid flannels, the Bigglest Boy is wrapped up in three blankets and thinks I don’t know that he’s reading the Discovery flight reports under his blanket with a flashlight. I’m going to go and gently remind him he’s not going to be able to get up on time if he stays up reading.
I’m then going to ask for one good thing from Monsieur, the one thing I always want, that one thing that can make me sleep more soundly than warm cocoa with a shot of cognac.
Have yourself a Merry little Christmas.
armistice day
This post began as a reply to Agony, but it deserves its own post.
We’re looking only at the therapy because we really don’t wanna play with meds right now. Monsieur has vetoed that, and he’s the daddy, I’m just the … well, I have veto power about some things too, but I’m gonna go with his instincts on this one. We really, really don’t know much of the long term effects of these meds, is his argument, and there’s a very good chance that he’s going to have to get along without them, should he decide to be an American and play the Great American Health Care Crap Shoot Lottery. He may someday wind up on no insurance and dependent – even hooked – on meds that are $200 a month in a crap economy. Then he’d not have the means to deal without; no experience with reality on the terrible, ugly level and how to find that happy place.
I’m putting what he said in my own words, as I didn’t write it down when he said it, but that’s the gist of it.
To all of you, thanks. Bigglest Boy and I’ve been talking and he’s OK with me. A little. Sometimes. He agreed to call a truce because we both have decided to live in this house; him because he was born there, me because I just think that it is my destiny.
I hope it’s a truce, and not a cease-fire.
Agony
Bigglest Boy has been going to therapy. You might remember that he has had major issues. He’s such a good student and all, but I know a lot of kids, growing up, who were good students but had terrible behavior. I’m trying to be understanding but the rage & destruction really scares me. I don’t know what to do with him sometimes; I send him to his room but lately he’s been so scary that I’m afraid to do that. I’m afraid… I’m afraid to even say what he might do when he’s full of that loathing.
Yesterday, after a bad day at school when he was separated from everyone else for the entire day. When we went home the Two Littlest Boys were allowed to paint and make designs and decorations and Bigglest Boy had to sit in the kitchen and read. Bigglest Boy had to bathe before dinner, which he hates doing, and an outburst at dinner meant he had to be separated from the table and he had to eat with his daddy in another room. I can’t control him and I think the only thing that keeps him in line when his daddy is around is a realization that there’s someone else in the house who is stronger than he is.
Bigglest Boy is now much, much stronger than I am. He is eight years old, he is almost five feet tall and weighs about 98 lbs. However, he can throw a large, solid oak glider rocker that looks like this all the way across a living room. When he did that, it missed me by maybe half a foot. It scared me. It caused me to think that the other kids aren’t safe from his anger. When he is away from other kids and he is sent to his room, I try to talk to him but all he could do was cry. And it wasn’t a child’s cry, it was the serious, self-loathing cry of someone ten years older.
“I wish I were dead.” “Why don’t you just put me in jail?” And finally he came out and said, “I really just hate you.”
“Why do you hate me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just wish you weren’t here, and I was in jail,” he sobbed.
“Why do you wish you were in jail?”
“I wish you were in jail, too,” he said, through his sniffles and tears.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you’re bad. Because you make me angry. Because you killed my mother.”
I couldn’t even take a breath when he said that. Did he really think that?
“Why did you say that?” I asked. I tried to stop from crying but it just started pouring out. I was so furious at him, while I tried to remember that he’s just a little boy. He’s eight years old.
“Because you hated her,” he said, and he turned and pressed his face into his pillow, and punched the pillow as hard as he could.
“I never, ever hated your mother,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I loved her more than any friend I ever had.”
He sat up, turning around slowly and looking at me like I was poison. “More than Daddy?”
I thought about it, and said finally. “Yes. Well… I don’t know. A lot. I don’t know. Well, about the same, if not more than your daddy.”
He looked away.
“A lot,” I repeated. “I loved your mama a lot.”
He lay face down again and cried. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he shrugged, not facing me. I tried to touch him gently on his shoulder, but he moved away quickly.
“I should take your shoes off, if you’re going to lay on the bed,” I said softly.
He didn’t argue, so I slipped his shoes and socks off. He flexed his feet, which made his toes creak and crack like an old man’s. I squeezed his feet, one in each hand, and he sighed. I took that sigh as an okay, and kept rubbing his feet, which felt like bags of rocks; they were so knotted and tense. I had been squeezing and rubbing his feet for about five minutes when Monsieur stuck his head in the door. I looked up and smiled at him, and kept rubbing Bigglest Boy’s feet. Monsieur smiled back, and closed the door.
Bigglest Boy had stopped sniffling. When my hands got tired, I stopped and I said gently, “Feel okay?”
He nodded into his pillow.
“Still hate me?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I took that as a positive sign, and told him he could come back downstairs with us when he was ready.