Veggie Tales.

I guess the fall isn't so bad. It's pretty darn beautiful, and still hot as of this weekend. But the mornings and evening are cool, and it's getting darker a couple of minutes sooner each night. I've bought a couple of cute jackets, one classy red one the color of my husband's Igloo lunch pail and another more casual grey, emperor cut one. When I wore it for the first time my dad asked with his still child-like bluntness and curiosity, "Are you pregnant?"
Ethan and I went to his cousin's birthday party yesterday. There was a garden, and Ethan was absolutely enthused. Jenny gave him one tomato and one cucumber and he carried them around, one in each hand, showing anyone who would listen, " See? They came from the garden."

By the end of the party total strangers where taking pictures of him with his vegetables.

Warning! Make Sure to Lock Up POWDER with All Posionoius and Otherwise Non-kid Friendly Items!

Well, what can I say. It happened again. I don't even hardly use powder, but Ethan has managed to empty a Costco size container in his bedroom. Twice. This time was worse than before. The thing with vacuuming up powder is it comes back out as a cloud of dust. It has been a good week now and your mouth still gets all chalky just walking into his bedroom. I hate to think he is sleeping in that, what it is doing to his young, cancer-free lungs, but what else do you do?

You still get a *puff* of powder rising around you when you sit in the chair. You just can't get this stuff out. I mean, at least it isn't red, right?

He had a blast, I can tell. He told me how he climbed up onto his kitchen in order to reach the powder that was on his dresser. When I found him, he was cooking with it in his kitchen sink. Then he showed me how he was using it as soap to *wash* the ottoman, chair, and all of his toys. You should have seen his toy rocking horse. Looked like a ghost. As with all colossal messes Ethan has made, he was very proud.

I was too, sorta.

*cough*cough*

Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!

I think it is the change of weather but I can't stop thinking about how I would like to make over my house. I spoke with my friend Angel and she said she is thinking of the same thing. The scary thing about make-overs is every time I get an idea, it's a different one. But the one I had yesterday was something like this:
My bedroom has black and cream bedding. Right now I have a piece of black furniture and a couple pieces of brown. I have a big picture of some lilies that are blues, greens, and creams. I have two big green plants. And I have gold and cream curtains hanging behind my bed, serving as a headboard in a silly way.
My favorite style is older, quaint, cottage-ish. I like my bedroom to be pretty and romantic, but not over frilly. I would like to do is find a pretty, older looking pea green that I could paint my two pieces of brown furniture. Paint the walls a cream instead of white, and (dreaming) finish it off with hardwood floors, the kind that have both light, dark and even blackish tones in them. Then I would get back out my cream shag rug. Not sure if I would keep the gold and cream curtains behind my bed, maybe replace the gold with something else, although I think they would still work as is. So that's the bedroom.
For the hallways I would like to re-paint them a cream versus the tan they are now, lighten things up a bit. And of course, hardwood floors.
The office already has a very peaceful Green on one wall that looks so slick with black furniture. So maybe I will paint my book cases, and desk, black instead of brown.
Ethan's bedroom....this one I am still debating. But I love the molding you can put on the walls halfway down, or even those cottage looking boards that go halfway up the wall...you know what I am talking about? And then you paint the top? I just want to make his room super special for him, and I am not sure how to do it. I want to do something that he will grow into, so Cars or a Nemo theme is sorta out. I did see two awesome pictures at TJ Max that I could actually try to to replicate in my amateur way; they were just boxes and circles with all sorts of fun colors.
So that is still up in the air.
The living room....every wall but the big one that goes into the dining area the cream, with the larger wall a dark brown. On this wall I would have to have my cream wood furniture to contrast with the dark wall. Finish it with hardwood floors, a new rug....and curtains. Dark brown curtains, contrasting with my cream walls.
So sorry if that was boring but I needed to get it down so I would remember it. Rarely can I see the whole house like that.

Two Worlds.

Ethan slept with me last night. And last Friday night too. Now he just falls asleep--instead of rolling and flopping all over the place like a fish on a rock. Both mornings I woke up barely hanging on to six inches of a California King size bed, but it's cool. He likes to stay close.
And yes, it did rain last night. So the color of things outside look darker and clean. It's definitely colder, just cold enough to where a cup of coffee tastes so good, the warm cup in your hands like a cozy fire.
Writing has been increasingly difficult. I don't have time to pay attention anymore to how I am feeling about what is going on, I just ride it out. My mother told me once working full time "takes you in an entirely different direction" than not working. I'm seeing a little bit of that, a little bit of being in one world forty hours a week and then trying to switch over to a different one the other remaining hours, which are few, really, if you take out sleeping. I find myself thinking of the "work" world on my weekends, waking up Saturday morning worrying about the problems waiting for me Monday morning.
And then there's Ethan. Sleeping like a picture beside me. His hair smells like Bisquick and his cheeks are soft like a white rose pedals. He's got his blankey, and when I roll out of bed he reaches his hands in the air, fists closed, eyes still shut tight, and then lets them fall with a sigh of his little breath. It's early morning dark and quiet when I leave the room, shutting the door quietly behind me.

Fiebe's surgery and Drawing.

Fiebe had her tiny tubes tied this morning and I miss her and I think Riley does too. We are both in the kitchen now, very quiet, only the hum of the refrigerator and the wind outside to listen to. I think we miss Fiebe's peppy-ness, her unassuming eyes and crazy, uncontrollable hair. I can't wait to hold her little, tired body, her big bat wing ears sinking low behind her head. She is the most pitiful thing you ever saw anyway, but after this surgery I think she will be like a wet cat.
It's stormy outside, windy, maybe rain? I like the change, the trees shaking.
I haven't talked with my little sister in weeks it seems. And I've started drawing. Yes, the painful process of trying to create something on paper with a pencil. It has been dreadfully frustrating, I hate the two portraits of Ethan I have started: in one he looks like a devil child out of a horror movie and the other he looks like a sorta cute alien with an oblong head. But I haven't ripped them up. I know good drawings take time and patience, something I suck at, I am realizing.

Santa Cruz

My husband planned the most amazing weekend. Being back in Santa Cruz felt like a different kind of home. Like a time warp: my hair was short like it used to be, we didn't have a kid, the streets and shops all looked the same. But I kept having to remind myself, slow down. You don't have a babysitter waiting for you to come pick him up. You don't have to be worrying about tomorrow, or the next day. Breath for gosh sakes.

That's what was different. They way I felt. Five years ago when I was in Santa Cruz I wasn't having to remind myself to breath or to just enjoy the afternoon without thinking about tomorrow. It took conscious effort this go around.

We only had one episode, one blowout in the car parked in the parking garage. It actually started at the brewery we went to for dinner, I was sipping on a cocktail waiting for my salad, trying to fill the crazily annoying married silence that hovers over "date" dinners by asking Joey questions.

"So, do you remember your first kiss?"

Joey hates this question. He also hates all other questions involving past girlfriends. I find it giddy and exciting to talk about, like when I was in seventh grade.

"So do you remember where you did it? Behind the mobiles maybe?"

He glared back at me.

"I don't like these questions."

I laughed off his frustration for a little bit, wishing he would just lighten up. Jeese. I tell him I am just trying to get to know him. I asked him if it feels like I am squeezing his head in a vice, a reference from an old cartoon.

He didn't find it funny.

But then he continued to press the subject, asking me why I am never satisfied, why he can offer me the world, or Santa Cruz, and I still want more.

And instantly, I am quite ticked. Suddenly the only thing I can see are individual pieces of lettuce on my plate, a crouton. I stabbed each one deliberately before chewing it and swallowing it. It tasted like dirt.

Everyone around us is having a good time. Drinking, laughing. My cheeks are hot. I dab my eyes because they are wet.

I want to leave so bad. Our poor waitress doesn't know what to do with us; she approaches us with caution to ask if everything, food wise, is OK. I can't look at her.

So anyway, back in the car, in the parking garage, we just let it out. I can't remember what I said, something about being pregnant, even though I don't think I am pregnant, but that is just what came out.

I don't get emotional like that very often. Joey asked me, "Is something really wrong, or are you just emotional?" and I wanted to punch him in the face, but thought better of it. Looking back, I think what made me emotional was just being there. Transported back into a time of singleness, possibility, freedom, youngness, juxtaposed to our crazy life back in the burbs of Reno, lovely Stead, NV. Just brought up emotions usually buried deep under responsibilities.

But that was it. One little *bleep* and then the rest of the weekend was so amazing. Running through Capitola, smelling the thick air of Mount Hermon, curling up in bathrobes on our bed.

The bed and breakfast was luxurious, a type of once in a lifetime place. I felt like a queen.

Wake up!

I miss my son like crazy. Joey took me on a trip this weekend (Santa Cruz! Amazing!) so I didn't see Ethan all weekend and then two times this week he fell asleep on the way home from babysitters and didn't wake up all evening, sleeping right on into the night.
I go in to see if by opening the door I will wake him up, but he just stirs, and then breaths deep. I dip down and smell his sweaty cheeks and I want to cry.
That is what he is doing now. Sleeping. I feel all depressed, like my dog died, only worse because he is my baby and he is changing everyday, growing up, even strangers say it--wow, he's a big two year old.
Not really. They don't even know what they are talking about because Ethan is absolutely teeny, but still it is a big gong in my head: YOU ARE MISSING IT! and then jabs of guilt, deep in my gut.
It about makes you go crazy, like when someone asks me to do something on the weekends, which is my time with Ethan, I want to scream and tell them to back off, leave us alone, like I am defending out lives. Like they were trying to kill us when really they just want us to come over for dinner.