I started writing this post this morning but didn’t get it finished. The dogs were out of food, #5 had batting practice, I went to yoga, #4 had batting practice, I made dinner, I called my mother, I forced the kids to do chores. We had a very pleasant visit with kid #1A who is returning to college tomorrow. All of this is to tell you that everything is pretty much the same here in spite of my absence.
See below:
Jack is status quo.
#5 informed me the other day that he’s going to be graduating in 2020. It doesn’t seem possible to me that he will ever be that old, let alone that it’s in seven years. He said he hopes he gets 20 pounds of bacon for his graduation gift. Since I have a source, I think we’re getting off easy. That’s way cheaper than a laptop.
The last time I made bacon for him, he held a piece up in the air and said, “I guess Charlotte couldn’t save Wilbur this time!”
This from a kid who set his alarm for 6:30 am on the weekends. When his sisters asked him why he gets up earlier on the weekends than he does for school days, he replied, “So I can play video games. Who wants to get up early when you’re not allowed to play video games?”
There’s a new post for Tuesday. I’ve blogged ahead, taking advice from Thoughtsy. I hope you come back.
The best part about this video is that Roundabout Theater Company actually threw down some cash for it. This is a well-produced piece of work. That, plus you get to see Chita Rivera chugging a bottle of champagne. The cast of Edwin Drood in actor Andy Karl’s rap about why bustles are hawt.Bustle Fluffah.
If I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of things won’t get done.
That’s been the theme of the last six months for me. It seems like CC and I had a month’s reprieve from being in production at the same time (read: a shitload of overtime for both of us) and then it kicked back up for him.
Huh. I just checked the calendar and there’s no “seeming” about it, that’s actually how it happened. Nice to know I’m not crazy. About that, anyway.
He’s been out of town a lot. Like, for weeks at a time. Many. Weeks. I’ve been running the household.
I can hear many of you married moms going, “So?” or “I wish my husband would go out of town!” and the like. Well this is a very risky post for me, not only because I am revealing online the absence of my husband
-I interrupt this post to inform you that I am, indeed, armed, and while I’m not as good a shot as him, I am decent enough and I use a bigger gun
-but it’s also risky because I am revealing the fact that my husband does everything to run the household. If the women in my town knew exactly how amazing he is, they’d be plotting against me, five kids or no five kids.
He does all your typical man stuff. But he also cooks and cleans and does laundry and makes the kids’ lunches and lets me sleep in. He can sew, and he can wire the furnace into a generator when the power goes out. He has power tools and one of his greatest joys is teaching the girls how to use them. He grocery shops, which I totally suck at.
And most of this year, he’s been working like ninety jobs’ worth of hours out of town and I am trying to fill his shoes here at home, and every day I sit down at my computer and think, if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. Because while my husband can get a tasty meal for seven on the table in twenty minutes, it takes me half a week of planning to make that happen. If I don’t plan to run this household, I’m screwed. Or they are, depending on how you look at it. Not a damn piece of it comes naturally to me.
Like, I made cookies. Chocolate Chip and a few White Chocolate Chip. They were really good too, because I added cinnamon. Because I add cinnamon to everything. The kids were not impressed, but I knew that when they got hungry enough they would eat them. Particularly since there wasn’t much else to eat in the house. The next day I was outside engaged in a life and death struggle with the power washer power washing the house. The puggles were on the couch at the window watching me. They disappeared. I figured they just didn’t like water aimed at their faces through the window. But actually they were gettin’ busy.
What was wrong with these four?
That’s two dozen cookies that you don’t see because they’re in dog bellies.
I like what you did with the cinnamon
I feel guilty enough for both of us.
Here are some other highlights from this week:
I never restocked the refrigerator after we had to dump everything from the power being out for a week. We’re still eating out of the pantry.
I entirely forgot to pick up two of my children from school on Thursday. Never even entered my mind.
I managed to get an entire month behind in paying my babysitter. I may have to take out a loan to get current.
We now have to bring the dogs with us on our upcoming road trip and board them when we get in Indiana, about a 12 hour drive, because I couldn’t get all the details squared away in time. Though in my defense, Jack had a strong hand in it by spontaneously developing an upper respiratory infection the night before he was supposed to get shots.
What’s that? Road trip? Indiana? Why, yes! Which is why again I say if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. There’s a lot to get done to prep five kids and two dogs and me to head out. We can’t wait! We get to see my whole famdamnily, and CC has Thanksgiving Day off so I get to retrieve him and bring him back to my mom’s.
Maybe when I get back I can restock the refrigerator.
*****
Meanwhile, back in New Jersey and New York, cleanup efforts continue. I got to see a former co-worker of mine yesterday who lives on Long Beach. We saw pictures and videos of the sea busting through his foundation, of the water rising up to the ceiling. His neighbor drowned in her home. And though he lost nearly everything he owned, including all the years of custom work he had done on his place, he said he sees so much good coming out of it. Before, he said, nobody would speak much to each other on the street. He only knew a few of his neighbors. Now everybody knows each other, they ask how they’re doing; they pitch in and help out.
More train lines are back up and running. Oddly, it made my commute worse, as there are now no trains between 10:14pm and midnight to where I’m going. I’m sure there’s a valid reason for it. I mean, the freaking land that many of the tracks are on washed away. The people along those lines were scrambling every day to try and find a way into work, and many of them still are. A friend of mine who also commutes explained it to his little boy like this: You know how you have your toy trains on your train table? And sometimes the tracks get moved and you have to put them back so the trains will run? Well, here, the train table washed away. He said his mouth dropped open.
And say what you will about Snookie, but she and her guidos/ettes raised a million bucks for their shore town. She was also at the telethon we performed on, early in the morning, answering phones. In Snookie-shoes.
Keep those positive stories coming. We all need them. I opened up the Sunday paper last week and just wept.
By the way? The gas rationing thing totally worked. Granted, getting more stations on line with power and more gasoline helped. But in a week we went from waiting in a line after midnight for two and half hours to no lines.
******
Here are your links:
So my babysitter (the one I owe all the money to) informed me that I really should investigate whether there was a seatbelt law for dogs because she saw something posted at the pet store.
I just spent an hour looking for an article about gratitude that conveyed what I feel about it (that’s the equivalent of two loads of laundry started, for those of you playing along at home). I found it: Giving Thanks from Woman’s Day.
And let’s close this Sunday post out with a link I found on The Bloggess to a 1984 video clip from the Today Show about a toaster possessed by Satan. It Makes Good Toast.
******
PS: If you are, in fact, going to break into my house, could you please throw a load of towels in the washer? They’re going to moulder while I’m gone. Help yourself to the lemons in the fridge. There’s like, forty in there. Lemons are unfazed by power outages. They’re lonely.
We, personally, are unscathed. We had more damage during the non-storm on Memorial Day when three trees fell on our house.
The estimate is that 150 trees are down in our neighborhood, but our only inconvenience is that we don’t have power yet and probably won’t for another week. Gas is hard to get and the commute into the city to work is a different adventure every day.
But the grocery store is open and stocked; we have hot water; the stove works. We even have a generator that runs as long as we find gas for it. By all counts, we’re lucky as hell.
Yet even that is enough to send me over the edge. The logistics of day-to-day living have never been my forté, ever, long before I somehow became responsible for helping with the logistics of six other people besides myself and two dogs. Now it’s all about logistics and it takes all my energy to make anything resembling normalcy, and I feel like a complete asshole as I stare down my limitations; limitations both in my attitude and what I’m able to make happen.
Because this is nothing like narrowly escaping your house after it breaks into three pieces and gets sucked into the Atlantic. It’s nothing like having your two children swept out to sea right out of your arms. It’s not a damn thing like losing everything you own. It isn’t like having your houseboat now docked in someone’s back yard, seeing your drowned neighbors pulled out of their attic, not having access to clean water or food or heat anywhere, or dealing with how the hell you clean up when on Tuesday the sea was in your house halfway up the second floor.
I’m very lucky and it’s time to start acting like it.
Jersey Boys is going to be part of the telethon tomorrow on Good Morning America to raise funds for hurricane relief. We sure would appreciate it if you tune in and give a donation if you can. The cast is arriving pre-dawn, I’m arriving pre-cast, and the guys that run the show get there some time around one a.m. (even though they don’t have power either and their commute is also an adventure).
To help find gas in the area, check out GasBuddy. Twitter is a good resource as well; this article lists several potentially useful Twitter handles. Your local paper is also a good bet.
Crazy-ass pictures of the hurricane’s impact on the city: The Grist
We all need to laugh, and sometime can stand to change our stinky attitudes. Here’s one of my all-time favorite posts on Hyperbole and a Half: Sneaky Hate Spiral.
The best remedy for a sneaky hate spiral is gratitude, and I have an awful lot to be grateful for. Here are two, illustrated:
As a direct result of last year’s storm, I have a tiny pumpkin growing in my “yard”!
For Jack, everything is business as usual.
I would love to hear what you’re grateful for. Happy Sunday.
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 