Bonehead moves and the damn key

“So I made a total bonehead move,” he says the second I answer my phone. “But I’ve already come up with a solution. I just realized I have the key in my pocket.” Yes, you read that right. ‘The’ key. The one key. To the car. The one car. Stupid, I know, but as it was going to cost $100 plus for another key, it just hadn’t made it to the top of the priority list. 

He was on his way to San Diego for the week, and not having a car was not an option. I could have killed him. Thankfully we have some of the best friends in the world. Steve arrived with my key about an hour and a half later after having retrieved it from the United Service desk. Bless him.

Fuming and taking deep breaths I tried to let it go and give him the benefit of the doubt. Even though that sort of bonehead move is not an unusual occurrence. He’s an amazing dad and husband, but he can be sort of an airhead. 

Unlike me. I’m so responsible and with it that I let the toddler play with the keys at my moms house. Mmm hmm. Not even two days later. What’s that thing that pride goeth before? Damn. 

After about 3 hours of searching, one towed car, and $108 to the Honda dealership later we now have three keys to the car. 


Oh, why three? Because apparently the toddler put the key in the ONE place we didn't look--under the rug in the den. Sigh.

Houses and neighbors...

Jeans into dryer. Towels in to washer. Head upstairs and try to ignore the kitchen. Weave my way through various items of ski clothing and leftover Christmas boxes. Pair of jammies on the stairs. Move aside vacuum cleaner and deposit Ash’s clean clothes onto the dresser next to his new potty. Move bag of outgrown clothes to the banister. Put away towels, but first rearrange the closet so that they’ll fit somewhere on the shelves. Discover overturned sippy cup leaking all over clean clothes and Scott’s new magazine on the bed. Hastily put away clothes. Hang magazine over bed rail to dry. Strip sheets. Deposit pile on the landing with other various dirty items collected along the way. 

Then go and sit on the stripped bed and close the door. Close the door to the bathroom too--no one wants to see that. But open the door to the closet. Admire the neat rows of hung up clothing. Shirts, sweaters, jackets. The perfectly aligned piles of jeans and sweaters and the containers of socks and belts and scarves and bags all in their own place. It’s a small comfort, but it helps. One room--or one space rather--in this house is tidy. One. But it’s a start, and it does help. 

It’s a combo this time. A mixing together of ‘it’s been Christmas vacation and I couldn’t be bothered’ and ‘I just don’t have the capacity to do anything much about it.’ Thankfully it leans more to the Christmas vacation reasoning, but it’s been very much on the other side of things for months if I’m being honest. 

My friend Susan talks a lot about our spiritual house. That our hearts and spirits are like houses. Full of rooms. Some comfortable and open and well-used. Some full of old baggage. Some kept shiny-clean for guests. Others kept dark and locked away. 

My physical house is a good representation of my spiritual one. Every single room in disarray, but an underlying desire for tidiness and even a brave start on the process. Even if it’s only one relatively little space.

Guilt creeps in. What right do I have to feel so lost and forlorn? To have a spirit in such disarray? I have not lost a husband--as two close friends of mine have. My children are all relatively healthy--unlike another very close friend. I’m not starving or homeless. I have so very much to be thankful for. I try to remind myself with deep breaths and brave encouragement that their stories are not my story. Their nightmares are not my nightmares. Those are not my dragons to fight. I have my own dragons, and they are formidable to me in this moment in this place.

Some of the pain is old. Years-ago stuff laying strewn about in my spirit-rooms with fairly newish items. Some of it simply needing to be sorted and put in its proper place. Other needing to be purged and the area it was left in given a good cleaning and refurbishment. 

Much of it is actually from just this year. I have put on such a brave face and tried so hard to be cheerful and flexible, but I grow weary of limbo and confused about my place in the world.  

My reflections turn to a wise friend’s recent suggestion that the thing about houses is you’ve got to have neighbors to help you sort things out when they get chaotic and in disarray. I pause to consider this. Can I look beyond the lonely? I can. I locate a very genuine ‘thankful’ for neighbors today. The expected and the unexpected ones. The ones who come out of the woodwork when you’re not really looking. The ones who are always there. The ones that are developing into good friendships. 

So. Here I go. Off to sort things. In both houses. They both really need it. Perhaps I’ll even call a neighbor or two...

2012 'Want to' List

Not ready for resolution quite yet. I hope to get there. For now, I’m starting with what I want. Knowing that I want very much to make the journey from here to there.

I want to read. 

I want to dream.

I want to create something beautiful.

I want to write something profound.

I want to clean out the basement.

I want to make new friends. Good friends. Come over right now and drink a bottle of wine (or even tea) and eat copious amounts of chocolates and let’s make right the universe or at least avoid the laundry friends. 

I want to not live so far away from my friends who fit the above bill.

I want to catch up on the laundry.

I want to be in shape.

I even want to exercise.

I really, really want to lose 10 pounds.

(The problem is that I also) want to bake chocolate chip cookies and eat most of the batch with the boys before bed then lay in bed giggling and talking until way too late and then sleep in in the morning and make pancakes and stay in our jammies all day and do nothing.

I want to laugh more with my boys.

I want to read them more books.

I want to stop nagging them and fighting them, but I want them to start picking up their clothes and stop picking their noses (for the love) and to get along.

I want to sort out a monthly budget that will eliminate stress and worry and get us halfway to a downpayment by the end of the year. 

I want to heal my guts.

I want to embrace healing in my heart.

I want to reconnect with some old friends and be better at staying in touch.

I want to mend some broken relationships.

I want to have the courage to let some relationships go.

I want to teach my boys to do the same.

I want to know how on earth to begin...

the thing is...

I want to figure out how to get up from this damn green chair. 

I want to know why it’s so hard to put one foot in front of the other.

I want to know where in the world I lost my passion. My courage. My ability to look life in the eye and get shit done. 

I want to not feel so depressed.

What about you? What is it you’re wanting in 2012?

Birthdays and English hospitality

Hosting people is a favorite. Hosting them in a country they’ve never been to or have only traveled to a time or two? Even better. I wasn’t quite sure what to think when she called. I didn’t really know her. We’d had a conversation at a family gathering or two. One phone conversation when she was in the thick of cancer and politics and life with a sick loved one. So I was surprised when she called and said that it was her birthday, and could she please spend it with us in England. Sure. Absolutely. See you soon. 

She arrived the day after we returned from Celle. A near-perfect vacation filled with good food and good people and good scenery and good culture and everything that is so wonderfully Italian. So I was primed to be hospitable.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Bring wellies I had recommended. She showed up with the world’s largest suitcase. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’ve got grace--it’s tricky to know what to pack when you’ve never really been somewhere before. (To be fair the same suitcase travelled back a few months later, but with everything she needed for herself plus her two kiddos). 

During the days we walked with Kelly and the dogs. Kelly can make anyone feel like an old friend rather than a stranger. We took the kids to school and my friends kissed her cheeks and made her feel at home--they’re good like that. In the evenings we sampled English beer--she’s a big fan and a bit of a connoisseur. We sat on the floor and talked and laughed and cried and discovered that we shared a mutual and somewhat odd and obscure favorite snack of popcorn with salt and brewer’s yeast. We talked. Then talked some more. Then talked and talked and talked a little more. 

She came for her birthday. So we gave her the choice of dinner locale--both pubs of course. One to drive to and one to walk to. We gave her a good-natured ribbing at her choice of footwear when she decided on the walk-to pub. Heels seemed a bit of an odd choice for a path through an ancient churchyard and behind the horse pastures and over rocks and mud. She’s appropriately stubborn and strong willed for a survivor. For a widow. For a single mom. So she stuck by her choice. And looked great. And didn’t complain once. And always wore wellies to the pub after that. 

It’s funny how a person can go from an acquaintance to close friend in only a week. I no longer disbelieve the possibility, but it still definitely surprises me. A year later, I’m homesick for the hospitality of the English countryside, and for my friend. My good friend. Happy Birthday!

Today it feels like Fall. Misty-rainy and overcast hoody weather. We traipsed off to school and back without the usual drenched-clothes get-me-to-the-shower-asap feeling as soon as I got home. After my appointment today I ran in for a Starbucks treat and oh so appropriately Pumpkin Spice Lattes made their yearly debut this week. Maybe it seems trifling or silly, but it awoke so many deep emotions in me I had to go to the car and listen to the rain and cry...

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are the Starbucks in Idaho Springs on the way to or the way home from the mountains. Aspens in their full glory in September. Snow scenting the air in October. Crazy roads in November and December. Windshield time and holding hands and life-changing conversations.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Scott’s annual Fall Mix. Playing on Saturday mornings and in the car and weaving its way into an anthem for the coming year.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Rob gutting pumpkins on our back porch at the condo. Chili in the crockpot and gluten free pumpkin bars in the oven. Everything set up for the annual pumpkin carving extravaganza.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Race for the Cure with my sisters. Coming around the bend at Invesco Field and seeing thousands of women ahead and thousands stretched out behind. The pink shirted survivors dotted here and there and the bib on my back commemorating my own mom’s victory over breast cancer. 

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are finding out my gran died in the Jardins des Tuileries outside of the Louvre in Paris. A train home to London to discover our car stolen and our house ransacked. A flight to the US alone with two little boys and my sisters meeting me at the airport with just the right treat to cheer me up.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are rainy London days feeling homesick for Colorado and the Portobello Road Starbucks barista’s indignant exclamation of “Ew! No!” when I asked if they maybe? possibly? carried Pumpkin Spice flavoring in the UK.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are the Colorado barista who wouldn’t sell Scotty any Pumpkin Spice syrup, but gave him a cup of it for free which he poured into a rubbermaid container and duck-taped close. It made it all the way to London without spilling and made my day!

But this year it was something different. The quintessential ‘Colorado Fall’ thing became an amalgamation of homesickness...a little puddle of sadness and loneliness in the Starbucks parking lot. The grey rain making me positively ache for England. For wellies and romps in the woods with Kelly. For pub walks with the gang. For cups of tea in Loulou’s living room and trips to London with umbrellas in tow. But then there was the crisp weather and pumpkin yumminess making me look very much forward to a Colorado Fall. The kind of Fall I’ve been pining for the last three years. To golden Aspens and hoodies and pumpkin carving and the fall mix. Homesick. For all of it. All because of a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

How about you? What makes you wax nostalgic?

Brunchish medicine

You know what is absolutely and wholly restorative? To body, mind, and soul? 

Brunch. 

Brunch is a beautiful thing. Especially when eaten on a small neighborhood-joint patio with mismatched vintage furniture on an spectacular September-in-Colorado day. Especially whilst consuming a fresh squeezed grapefruit mimosa served in a cutie-pie vintage mini milk jug and sipped through a straw. Especially after strolling through a European-ish market searching for just the right table--all by oneself. Especially while friends who love your children nearly as much as you do volunteer to take the lot of them to the zoo. And especially when it follows an hour-long pick-up-where-you-left-off conversation with one’s best girlfriends who live halfway around the world and for whom you positively ache with loneliness. 

Brunch. It’s just the thing.

Ahhhhhh...

How about you? What’s been the surprisingly restorative medicine for you recently?

The Sound of Summer

Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop. $5 at Old Navy and our summer is complete. Flip-flop to the pool. Doing the duck-waddle as they strain to learn how to keep them on their feet. Flip flop home and a complaint that their legs (aka calves) are tired. Flip flops lost whilst peddling hard on their bikes. Flip flops lost running across the grass at the pool. Summer feet protected by squishy rubber flops across the burning pavement. 

“If you’re wondering why I’m wearing them inside it’s ‘cause I really like the noise.”

Flip-flop. Flip-flop. “Mama?” he says, “Don’t you just love that sound.” Yes, my sweet boy. I do. That is the sound of summer.