Alabaster Mom

“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.” ― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist  My youngest sister stepped out of the truck, a dying butterfly held gingerly in her hand. "I found him at the gas station," she said. "I didn't want him to die there." I hadn't seen her in a year and was anxious to hug her. Our two families met in St. Louis last week (which is roughly halfway between our home and theirs) for a long weekend. My brother-in-law was competing in an enduro bike race while we were there, too. I gave her a quick hug and then she deposited the dying butterfly, its torn wing rippling in the breeze, on a grassy patch near the hotel where we'd spend the next three days in adjacent suites. Her three boys tumbled out of the truck right after she did. My brother-in-law was already inside the hotel, getting checked in. I subjected my nephews to hugs and noogies. We settled into our suites. ...

My niece recently went off to college. It's kind of a big deal in our extended family because Blondie was the first-born grandchild, niece, etc. She's currently a freshman at Penn State (more specifically, she's in the honors college - we're all very proud of that). My sister has three other kids at home to drive her insane take care of but I know she misses her college kid desperately. I cried right along with her when she had to leave her daughter in the dorms and turn around and head back home. Having my niece head off to college got me thinking . . . I only have six years before my kid leaves, too! I am pretty sure that she'll go to an in-state school (unless some college in New Hampshire throws a bajillion dollars at her or something), so she probably won't be more than a few hours away. But, still. I know she wants to study music but I may encourage her to choose a minor in something else. As talented as she is, the pool of talent is quite large and I d...

Our little clan recently returned from a week at the beach. It takes about 18 hours to get to my dad and stepmom's condo in Ocean City, but we had six glorious days of sun and sand before we had to turn around and head back. A co-worker let me borrow his toll thingie (that's the technical term) and let me just say that this was a game changer. I think it cut at least an hour off our trip. The mister and I didn't have to waste time fighting over where the toll ticket was, how many quarters we needed, etc. We just sailed right through. My co-worker will just let me know how much we owe him. Easy-squeezy. We've now ordered our own toll thingie. We can't believe we've lived without one for so long. We've been driving cross-country at least once a year for 22 years. We didn't drive straight through on this trip, of course. We left our house on Friday the 11th and stayed at a hotel that night. We finished the drive on Saturday the 11th. When it was my husban...

We made it back from our anniversary trip to Orlando. Pro tip: it's hot there.  It's so hot that I wore shorts every day. Normally, I would not subject the general public to my legs but apparently I am getting to the "let it all hang out" stage of my life. Our vacation technically started on Friday the 21st. P dropped the dogs off for boarding while I took our kid to the airport. She flew to DC to hang out with my middle sister and her family. Since the airport is a couple hours from home, we booked a hotel room. Our flight was scheduled for the next day. I didn't want to fly out the same day as our daughter - it just seemed too risky. If her flight had been delayed or canceled, we wouldn't have been able to catch our flight. (Can you imagine us catching our flight anyway and yelling, "Okay, good luck with everything!" as we headed to the gate?) Fortunately, everything went as planned. The kid caught her flight on Friday and we caught ours on...

The Boy has been given his pink slip. Apparently my daughter cut him loose right after the school year ended. She is not allowed to have a boyfriend, of course. She is only 12. However, it is normal and natural for her to show interest in boys so I don't have a problem with her interacting with them. Whole relationships are carried out via text message these days. It seems pretty harmless for the most part. I check her phone periodically just to make sure the texts aren't actually coming from some 50-year-old pervert from Albuquerque. This is the third boy who has been sent packing since September. I can only imagine how her love life will play out when she gets to high school.  The halls will be littered with broken-heart emojis.  Speaking of which, the most recent boy was listed in her phone with his given name plus some gooey emojis (hearts, etc.) Now, his name is just his name. He's probably lucky that she let him keep that. The first boy (from back in September) fe...

My daughter and I participated in a local cycling event for charity today. Participants could choose from multiple distances ranging from 15K to 100 miles. We chose the short, family-friendly one. Last year, we finished the event but she complained relentlessly the whole time because her bike didn't have gears. She couldn't adjust the resistance on hills and such. I fixed this issue by buying her a brand new bicycle for Christmas. The new bike has 18 speeds. That's about 17 more than she had before. I figured we'd be all set for this year's bike tour.  I warned her to practice ahead of time since the gear-shifting bit was new to her. This morning, I hauled her out of bed at 6:30 so that we could be out of the house at 7:30.  I loaded the bikes onto my bike rack and we drove to the starting point for the bike tour. As we prepared to set off, everything seemed fine. We applied sunblock and checked in with the organizers. We mounted our bikes and started the route....

I finally did it! No, not the murders I'm always threatening to commit. I got my first pedicure. I have mentioned my reluctance to get a pedicure in the past. I always just felt very weird about it.  I had planned to get my (finger) nails done on Tuesday afternoon so I decided that maybe I should go ahead and get my toes done, too. It's summertime so my toes are spending more time on public view, as it were. I normally keep blue or black nail polish on my toes.  I do this in direct protest of all the times my mother said, "Blue fingernails?  You look like you're in heart failure!" when I was a teenager. I decided I'd better take the polish off before going to the nail place. I had a hard time getting all of the blue stuff off so I still ended up looking like I, um, have heart disease. You win, Mom. The nail place wasn't too busy so I ended up in the pedicure chair right away. I was assigned to a nice motherly lady who spoke very little English. She ...