(I took this shot during a competitive round of mini-golf (is there any other kind?) with my fam on Friday night in town. This child was walking around like this, with his mother right behind him.)

I woke early this morning, anxious to get the day started. I grabbed my sheets, knowing I needed to get them in the wash so I could move them to the dryer before I left for work. With company coming, I needed the one set of sheets to be clean and back on the bed for tonight.

LM got up to use the bathroom and then fumbled back to bed, hoping for a few more minutes of sleep. I quietly opened his door, careful not to let the dog out and tried to lay next to LM on his single bed. Eli, eager to be up and to get outside was all over us on the bed. He tried to lay between us, pushing me nearly off the bed. Anytime we successfully got him off the bed, he would bound back up, landing square on my stomach. LM laughed and we enjoyed a few minutes of joy together as our day started.

I took Eli out in the yard. I went back in to rouse LM. He crawled to the shower with a blanket over his head. Holding on to the last clutches of sleep. Eli followed me around as I folded a load of laundry and put the winter blankets, fresh from the wash, away in the closet.

The kids wanted to take Eli with us to the bus stop again this morning, but I had errands I needed to run on my way to work and I have to leave work early, so I insisted we drive. Kaitlyn got on her bus just fine and LM rode with me to help return a movie and a library book.

Near the library we saw a young boy riding a bike to school. The bike was low to the ground, which looked quite comfortable to me. Like a recumbant bike, but for the road. LM said he knew the kid, it was Brian, from his school. I handed him my book and he ran up to the drop box and returned the book.

Around the corner from the library parking lot is a four-way stop. As we pulled up to it, the car across the intersection was already there and stopped, but he made no motion to proceed. Another car approached from the right, but with the car across from us confusing the order, the car to my right started into the intersection when it was really my turn to go. I hadn’t yet moved forward, so I just sat and waited for him to cross in front of me.

Which is when the car came flying through from our left. He never saw the stop sign. He came up over the ridge, over the railroad tracks and right through the intersection. He just ran right through the stop sign as if it weren’t even there.

He was well through before I thought to honk. The car across from me was still stopped. I made my left turn and realized if we had gone a second before, when it was our turn to go, I would have been hit. Hard. On the driver’s side.

A block down the road we saw Brian, peddling along to school on his cool bike. What might have happened to him, if he had been just a few moments behind?

I dropped LM off at school, wishing him great joy for his concert this afternoon, reminding him that I was so looking forward to his band concert tonight secretly knowing that my dad and Judy are on their way and will hopefully be there to hear him play, too.

And as I pulled out of the school driveway, all I could think was how different our morning might have been if that car hadn’t hesitated at the stop. If the other car hadn’t taken a turn ahead of me. If I had been more impatient and just pulled out. What a different day altogether, this might have been.

But for the grace of God, go I.

I know better than to count my eggs as chickens, but…

I had applied to a marketing position with a local non-profit (which, amongst other things, does foster care) last week. I received an email requesting a phone interview, but within the email she implied that the position was part-time. Upon further clarification, it was confirmed that this position was in fact only part-time and I was forced to withdrawal my application (the ad specifically mentioned paid time off and 401K benefits, so this was a surprise to me that it wasn’t full-time).

Today, I received an email from the company stating that they had further discussed the position and have agreed to make it full-time. Would I be interested in a phone interview considering the change?

And did the angels sing GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST?! Did the heavens rejoice?!?! Were the skies opened and the sun….

well, okay, I simply replied with an “absolutely” and we’ll see where this goes (which potentially could be to a full-time position that I would thoroughly enjoy but only pay me half of my current salary) but nonetheless, this news came at exactly the time I needed to hear it most.

(forgive me if I make a run to the ladies’ room to do a little private happy dance.)

I come by it innocently enough, my love of great American western novels. I can remember my mother picking out books and sending them to her dad – all but the last ten pages, which she held onto until he had read the rest of the novel in an effort to make sure he didn’t read the ending first.

I read All the Pretty Horses years ago, but never the following two novels in the Border Trilogy. I thought I would re-read this one before following up with the other two. I wasn’t far into it when the plot and characters came flooding back and my heart rate quickened. I am certain I have also seen the movie (Matt Damon, perhaps cast as Grady?)

In All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy introduces us to Grady and Rawlins, two teens set out from Texas, crossing the border to Mexico to escape a life they would rather leave behind. They know little of Mexico, other than that it isn’t Texas. En route, a young man named Blevins befriends them and joins them for a short while on their travels. While Grady and Rawlins have their reservations about Blevins, they are unable to shake loose their moral sense of doing right by him and at the very least, helping when they can.

Eventually, we see the heart of Grady’s character when they are taken in by a rancher and Grady’s talent and natural gift with horses comes shining through. There is little time for the reader to relish the beauty of the horses, or to become engrossed in the plan for the ranch, or even to follow the complicated romance of Grady and the rancher’s daughter, as Grady and Rawlins are arrested and thrown into a Mexican jail.

It is here where the heart of the story comes alive. There is so much cultural influence, of matters of justice and legality that we are forced to reckon with in our own minds as Grady and Rawlins struggle in theirs.

The novel comes around full circle, bringing Grady around to face his own sense of justice and righting the wrongs in his journeys. As readers, we are left with the keen understanding that while this novel (and movie) can (and did) stand on their own accord, a sequel is a much welcome gift and I look forward to following this journey onward.

I cannot even begin to explain today how badly I need a new job.

Sigh.

Suffice it to say I would love to be posting nothing but pictures this morning, in a birthday party recap, but the pictures are all blurry. Yes, that sound you hear is me, banging my head on my desk after spending a near fortune on a new digital camera not six months ago, only to have a dozen blurry birthday photos to show for it. A manual will be consulted. A remedy will be found. Or Circuit City will be fixing the problem.

So, the party went well. Other than Eli nipping at LM’s best friend (who is already afraid of dogs.) I think it was just all the excitement, and they made up as friends by the time the party was over, but still. The boys bowled (three games, the last one without the aid of gutter blockers. High score in the previous games? 98. High score with real gutters? 52.) They had pizza and laughter afterwards and then headed for home where they hunkered down in a fort they had built and I hid out with Eli in my room, only emerging to serve up cake and to quiet things down around midnight.

And the cake. After years of LM not liking whatever cake I labored over, I have long-since learned to give up all hope of being appreciated for my remarkable cake decorating abilities. Last year I ordered an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery, but since it’s ice cream layered around actual cake and then covered in (heaven forbid) icing, LM still didn’t like it. This year, HE ordered it. It was a DQ cake (flavorless, cheap and remarkably bad decorating) and he loved it. Go figure.

In the end, my house was still intact, friendships were still well bonded, the boy is officially eleven and I am officially old. Or at least that’s how I feel.

At what point did I become the grown up telling them to stop goofing off at the bowling alley, and to point your thumb forward in order to better ‘steer’ the ball? At what point did I become the one telling them that no, we were NOT going to play arcade games, they were simply a waste of money? At what point did I become the grown up telling my son that if he was only going to eat the crust of the pizza that was a huge waste and he needed to eat the whole piece or leave it alone? At what point did I become the one telling them to quiet things down around midnight because I could barely keep my own eyes open any longer? At what point did I become the adult who could barely work the portable DVD player in my bedroom while the kids watched a DVD and then played PS2 games in the living room? At what point, exactly, did I become a mother of an ELEVEN year old?!

yes, the crisis has begun.

Just wait until my birthday. When I fall over to the dark side in the “over 35” category.

Yeah, that’s going to be fun.

You can blame Midwestern…

A- Attached or Single? Very.Remarkably.Attached (to my dog)
B- Best Friend: My sister (don’t tell her).
C- Cake or Pie: Cheesecake.
D- Drink of Choice: Iced down Diet Coke.
E- Essential Item: Books.
F- Favorite Color: Navy Blue.
G- Gummi Bears or Worms? Bears. (not sour)
H- Hometown: Woodstock, Illinois
I- Indulgence: LM’s birthday cookies.
J- January or February: February (lesser of two evils)
K- Kids: as many as possible, one way or another.
L- Life is incomplete without: laughter.
M- Marriage Date: May 22, 1993. (Divorce date: Ironically, May 23, 2001).
N- Number of Siblings: 2 (sometimes I only claim one. Sometimes I think Stacy and Chris are both long-lost sisters.)
O- Oranges or Apples? Apples. Golden Delicious.
P- Phobias/Fears. Never falling in love again.
Q- Favorite Quote: “Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt and dance as though no one is watching.”
R- Reasons to smile: LM, my pets, my home, my friends, payday, that it’s Friday…
S- Season: Autumn
T- Tag Three: Bearca, Jules and Poka (cause none of you post often enough right now!)
U- Unknown Fact About Me: I played the oboe in high school.
V-Vegetarian or Not: holy cripes no. Red meat is my friend.
W- Worst Habit: cracking my knuckles.
X – X-rays or Ultrasounds? Ultrasounds (x-rays are for something broken, ultrasounds are usually for something alive!)
Y- Your Favorite Foods. Anything I didn’t make myself.
Z- Zodiac: Completely irrelevant.

This morning I put on a summery pair of navy crop pants and a blue and white striped, boat-necked crew top. Was feeling all summery until I looked in the mirror.

I looked like a remarkably cute and stylish pregnant woman.

Only,

I’m not anywhere near pregnant.

Yowza. That was a harsh realization.

I almost didn’t post the birth post (and I do hope you skipped right over it, Newly…) I am one of those people who just think your birth story is YOUR birth story and frankly, no one else wants to hear it, but I wrote it down more because this is my little scrapbook of sorts and I forget sometimes (or try to ignore at times) that it is, in fact, sort of interactive, but I just have to say…

You are all so incredibly sweet. I mean, it’s like looking at your neighbor’s slides of vacation folks…it’s a birth story!! (You all have them, okay, most of you have them, (I’ll let you off the hook PS2) but you still not only read LM’s, but you commented such remarkably sweet things…

I am so touched.

Truly.

You all rock.

(cookies are on me!)

P.S. (Thanks to all of our hard work and antagonism, Jules posted!!! IT’S TRUE!! Go look!)