I just left a bright voicemail on my dad’s phone  “Hey dad, this is Esther, <insert cheery voice>  the dr called and they can’t tell if mom’s spleen is so large it’s growing into her liver or her liver itself has some sort of tumor on it, but she needs a ct scan before the bone marrow biopsy tomorrow so I went ahead and scheduled it for 8 am.”
  You’d think I’d just bought freaking tickets to disneyland or something.   Apparently I am devoid of human emotion.  Either that or I am some sort of sick individual who gets their kicks from bad news.

Jim says I’m a pessimist.  I call it realism, but you have to admit that any way you slice it, a low functioning liver, enlarged spleen and ominous bloodwork is never a very encouraging sign;  And certainly something you don’t want to hear in connection with your own mother.   The possible causes range from kickass viruses to luekemia to something called hemocratic anemia which apparently an insidious autoimmnune disease where your body attacks it’s own blood.   They (the powers that be) have all but ruled out the last one, and probably the first one, which leaves us with the middle one, but I’m not hazarding any guesses or predictions until I see a positive biopsy.  

Until then, I will continue to make green smoothies for her.  Both fridges are stuffed with more organic produce than a farmers market. the counters and cupboards are covered in vegetable peels and green juice splatters.  The last delectable treat I made was a spinach-avocado-tomato-broccoli-cabbage-carrot smoothie with a splash of lemon juice.   Yummy (it really was actually).     But I’m thinking it’s going to take more than my new found love of juicing vegetables to make my mom well.

So if you guys think about it, prayers would be greatly appreciated.

It’s only taken me four years, but I finally bought a bed skirt today.   I hadn’t bought one before because although I hated the ugly bed frame and box springs showing, I never had any disposable income to waste on the whole $25 it would have taken to indulge myself.   But yet at the same time, I have no problem dropping the same amount of money on a nice bottle of wine or some imported cheese.   Sometimes I don’t even understand myself.

We also bought curtain rods, a vase from Spain, and a liner for the shower curtain.  Not that we have any disposable income now either, but in packing up the old house I kept finding a $5 stashed here, a $20 stashed there until I amassed almost $100.  I hear that hiding money like some sort of deranged chipmunk is actually a symptom of living through the great depression which I obviously have no claim to, but I did grow up a Summerville, which is basically the same thing.  Besides, it’s fun to find money years later you didn’t know you had.   I have declared it my moving fund.   Now all I need is a couple hundred dollars so I can buy curtain fabric for the living room, rubbermaid bins to organize the garage, and paint for the dining room.   Since when did a hundred bucks could go so fast and do so little?

My goal for this afternoon was to finish Casey’s maternity shoot so that I can spend tomorrow cleaning and organizing without feeling the magnetic draw to the digital darkroom.   I don’t think there was a single bad picture of her in the hundred or so that I took, but since photography is art (in which case more doesn’t always equal better) I managed to edit it down to the 25 that had the most impact.   My top two favorites are this one.
 

And this one.
                                                                                

The first one is somehow both winsome and hopeful and it gives me happy shivers to look at it.
 I just like the “high voltage” and colors in the second one and the way the wind did yummy things to her hair.

Fun fun, I am already counting the days till Lucas is on this side of her tummy and so I can do cozy newborn pictures.  Can’t wait. 

Would you like a little toilet water with that rice?

Hannah showed up this week and after hugging her favorite nephews she promptly went and dropped her 32 gig itouch in the toilet.   We’ll just pretend it’s the first time she’s done that.   It’s nice to know I can blame my similar tendencies on genetics.      I tried to help her resuscitate it by putting the dripping apple product in a container of rice.  I read it on a blog somewhere, which must mean it worked for someone, and besides, it was rancid brown rice anyway, so it’s not like I was destroying precious food or something.    Apparently Jim didn’t get the memo, he came home and promptly started snacking on the tantalizing bowl of rice on the counter. 
 After washing his mouth out with soap he tried to blame us for not telling him it was seasoned with a succulant sauce of toilet water, because we all know how yummy rancid, uncooked, brown rice is.   Delish.

The whole house swapping thing is moving…slowly.  The short version of the long story is that we moved. (obviously).  Next door (down the street?).   We have the same landlords (my Aunt and Uncle), the same address, and the same phone number.  We just went from a one bedroom house to a four bedroom house.   Oh, and my sister Liz lives with us (or we live with her).   I have been busy painting and moving and cleaning for what feels like forever.  It’s hard to accomplish much with Jamie and Charlie.  Charlie eats (a lot) and when Charlie isn’t eating, I am running Jamie to preschool, speech therapy and the park.   When we are at home, I try to tackle a fresh room full of projects only to find myself playing trains with Jamie.   So while I sit there and create sound effects and build tiny bridges for Jamie’s amusement, I am scheming and dreaming about what I’m going to do when Jim gets home and the kids go to bed.  My dreams include sandpaper and picture frames, Jim comes home with far different dreams.  

But he did get the computer set up.  Hallelueigh

Because I’ve had photos trapped in there for weeks, and I was about to go crazy.  I did a maternity photoshoot two Sundays ago for a girl named Casey.  She makes pregnancy look so hot it puts Heidi Klum to shame.  

I need to get these photos to her asap, or the wee Lucas will be here and my photographic attempts will be lost and drowned in the wonderment that is a tiny new babe.    I hope she has as much fun playing Thomas The Train with Lucas as I do with Jamie.

I keep trying to blog, since there are no end of blogging subjects these days, but I don’t like to blog without a picture, and while there are pictures galore, none of them are available at the moment.   So the picture of Jamie trying to use chopsticks, the gorgeous pregnant woman on the beach, and the “before” pictures of what is the wreck of my life right now… will all have to wait for a future time when my big kahuna computer is unpacked.

For now, suffice it to say that Jim tried (and succeeded) to poison himself yesterday with carbon monoxide (accident he swears ).  He is currently passed out in our new (halfway unpacked) room with an icepack on his head.   Apparently recovery is a bitch.
I in the meantime am keeping myself busy running Jamie to school everyday and trying to pack up our old house and move into the new one.  

I’m painting too.  It’s going to be gorgeous.

And lest anyone feel too sorry for me us,  I have a few life savers right now who have come to my rescue.

Peace out.

I had a purple lightsaber before Mace Windu did.

We are rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy and it is giving me flashbacks to my childhood when I spent hours and hours fashioning the perfectly balanced lightsaber with the main ingredient being pvc pipe.  Hardly the mystical process that is supposed to be a gauntlet of sorts for young Jedi, but in my mind at the time, no less important and certainly no less enjoyable.  I hope something captures Jamie’s and Charlie’s imagination the same way.  Who knows, maybe it will even be star wars for them too.  How can you beat John William?

Imagination is good. 

…But I pray that their imagination is accompanied by passion. .

We really don’t want well behaved kids.  Our goal is not a Normon Rockwell painting.   But you only have to work with one obnoxious adult in the real world, who acts like they’re still five, to realize that giving kids a free reign isn’t a good idea either.   I want things to move them to tears, make them laugh and make them angry.  I want them to love truth and act justly on behalf of the innocent.  Of course to even come remotely close to accomplishing such high ideals, I somehow have to keep them alive and healthy first.  They have to learn to read and write too I suppose.   Which brings us to preschool today.  Like the dutiful mom I try to be, I loaded up my boys in the car at an ungodly hour and took Jamie to school (quite the feat for this homeschooled kid)  Normally the people I meet there are very nice and friendly, so I couldn’t help but laugh at the poetic irony of being the butt of a racial slur today of all days.   I was waiting in the parents room which slowly filled up with other parents.  Normally we all exchange friendly hellos and chat about life, kids, the weather…the usual, but today I was a complete outsider.  They all spoke in spanish, introducing themselves to each other.  Nobody said anything to me.  The only notice I got was a glance in my direction and a derogatory comment muttered in a language I didn’t understand fully perhaps, but accompanied by snickers that were discernible enough.  I was in the middle with people on either side of me talking over me and around me for over an hour.   To be perfectly honest it was quite uncomfortable.  Charlie squealed and giggled, trying to get someone to say hello to him, but they just ignored him too.    I’d expound bitterly that it must be because they were Mexican or something… if it were a true generalization, but it’s not.  Normally we are a mixed group in there and typically no one gets left out.   I don’t know what was up with today’s crowd, but it felt rude and awkward, but…perhaps it was good for me.

I don’t know when this showed up in the Valley or how long it will last before the powers that be paint over it, but this propane tank is the Peutz Valley mascot.   We decorate it for holidays and such.  

This is for sure the creepiest rendition.  

Charlie is six months old today.  And wow, that was the fastest half a year ever.  Insane.

In celebration of this momentous occasion, the rats built a nest in the engine compartment, chewed up the hood liner, and gnawed on some rather important wires.  Max, the german shepherd got curious about the industrious rats and mauled our bumper trying to congratulate them.  The mice threw a party in the interior of the car, and I ripped off the bottom of the car on a rock. 

Marvelous day, happy half birthday Charlie.

We have a freaky neighbor. 
Unfortunately he also happens to live in my fairy land and this is the year I will muster up the courage to beg his permission to let me and my camera back into Camelot, since I’ve already met all the fairies on my side of the valley.

I know a lot of people do this (at least I hope so?), but I admit I’ve named most of the trees through Peutz Valley. Yes, they may be a crusty sarcastic group (this is california after all) although some of them are low on humor (a forest fire will do that to a tree), but once a year for a few months, their dark bark gets darker while the dusty green and brown  leaves transform into a lush green.   For .02 seconds it’s actually pretty here in SoCal, and then the heat comes and we all shrug, ignore the brown and trek happily to the beach or turn on our sprinklers.   There are three trees in particular that give me happy shivers every time I drive by them.  I tell Jim they completely inspire me for some reason and every time I drive by them I mentally promise to do a photoshoot there.  But one week turns into two and before I know it, Summer is here, my window of opportunity is gone and I promise to do it next spring.   That is until the end of last spring… I drove around the corner and one of my trees was gone, reduced to a pile of twigs being fed into the jaws of a chipper.  In its place, foundation footings were being dug for a new house.  A house.  The audacity… as if we don’t have enough houses around here as it is.
Peeved doesn’t do my feelings justice.  I still haven’t finished grieving for the darn tree, every few months I moan to Jim again and tell him what a travesty it was I never got to do my photoshoot with it.  

But all that to say, this year I absolutely have to do a photoshoot with the other two trees.  I owe it to fate or something.  Problem is both trees in question live on the property of a man in a cowboy hat who chased me and my camera off his property with a mini bulldozer looking thing two months after I moved here four five years ago.   The next day he plastered his fence with no trespassing signs and I’ve been perhaps slightly nervous about going back ever since.   He has a very long driveway and I’m not sure I’d make it all the way to the top before he shot me or something.  I think he’s from Texas.

I have to ask him though, I’ve already got the photoshoot mapped out in my head; A trash the dress shoot,  I just need a victim volunteer to be my Tim Burtonesque bride. (oh Lauryl?)

I’ve got butterflies just thinking about it.

Charlie and I get kinda bored at Jamie’s speech therapy.  We have to remain on the premises in case of emergency, but we aren’t a part of the actual ah-ah-ah’s and beh’beh’beh’s, so we have to find other ways to keep ourselves amused.   Most recently I decided to freak out that Charlie had no upper body strength and wasn’t getting enough tummy time.   (Something I reserve the right to do as a mother).   To allay both my boredom and my perrogative to worry, I signed Charlie up for a developmental assesment while Jamie was in speech therapy.   I guess it was a slow day because it took no less than three specialists to evaluate him.  People kept stopping by and staying.    Charlie is not the cutest baby in the world, what with his funny yoda ears, and wide eyes, but he acts like he thinks everyone is the coolest person in the world… no matter who you are, and it’s the cutest thing ever;  until you hold him and then he pukes all over you, suddenly it isn’t so adorable anymore.  Poor Charlie, he really does love to be held and cuddled but he has a major spit up problem.   We left a whole pile of toys that needed to be disinfected which paled in comparison to the paperwork he took out with perfectly aimed projectile vomit.

All that to find out that Charlie is…normal.  Not gifted, not delayed.  They say that all babies develop differently and that there is no normal, which is true, but if there is such a thing as textbook, Charlie is apparently it.  I wonder if it will stick?  Jamie taught me that having difficulties and not being the next child prodigy is ok, in fact it’s even pretty cool.  So I am not really worried, or even optimistic.   It just is. 

It was still fun though, I’m glad we did it and we got a bunch of ideas for tummy time since Charlie hates TT with a passion.   

But today at speech therapy someone came up to Charlie and I ( who was gnawing happily on his toes) and said…oh is this the curly kid’s brother?  

Poor kid, I wonder how long that will last.

This picture was from christmas, but I can’t blog without posting a picture.  It’s like apple pie without cheese. 

So it’s a new year.  I am ecstatic.  Obviously.

Since the dawning of the new year, Charlie has gone from woefully behind and slow, to contentedly average.  Jamie has gone to potty trained and then back to diapers.  I have gotten fat, then thin again, then back again, and all in all we’re blissfully happy despite the fact that Jim has no job.

(oh and Charlie can sit up now)

January is always hard for its own very apparent reasons.   Christmas is a hard act to follow.   My cousins and siblings all showed up from the four corners of the globe, and so many good times and memories were had, that it makes me sad my own kids won’t have the same experience (unless certain people get with the program).  Per Grandma’s request we got pictures of us all together since who knows when we’ll all be in the same place at the same time again.  We walked up to the old Monastery where my mom and aunt spent a large part of their childhood climbing trees and hiking around the waterfalls.   My poor Grandparents had two sweet, adorable little girls, and then somehow ended up with 15 grandchildren… who all grew up playing at the same Monastery climbing the same trees and hiking on the same trails.   Negligent person that I am, I’ve never taken Jim there, although I’m not entirely sure he’s telling the truth.  Surely he’s just forgotten, because I couldn’t possibly have neglected to show him such an important place.

The year remains unopened, and holds such interesting blank pages.  Just….God please… may it not go as fast as last year. 

Like Little Jack Horner,  I sat in the corner shed, but when I put in my thumb I pulled out a large, vicious looking bug attached to it.   That will teach me to rummage for wrapping paper without looking where my hands are going.  Although if the truth must be told, I’d rather have an aching, throbbing appendage for half a week than pretend yet again I’m being chased by bees…or be Elmo for hours upon hours. (perhaps a slight exaggeration).   Jamie’s therapist suggested we play one-on-one… on the floor… uninterrupted… for at least 30 min at a time… every day.    Sounds easy enough maybe, and yet to get it done, I have to set the timer.   It’s not that I don’t love playing with Jamie,  really I do, but our separate, first-born agendas run smack head on into each other.  He doesn’t want to make believe stuff I want to, and in this instance his card trumps mine.  Darn speech therapist.  So while I would prefer to scale imaginative mountains and dance wildly in far off kingdoms, Jamie thinks it’s a riot to rescue me from bees.   In the sentiments of Indiana Jones,  why’d it have to be bees?  They’re the only thing I’m truly terrified of in the spiders/snakes/sharks category.  Per Jamie’s request, I run around the house with a bucket on my head and yell “Bees! bees! somebody save me” and Jamie comes running to my rescue, at which point we both collapse onto the floor holding our sides with laughter.  But then we have to do it again, and again, and again, while Charlie just looks on benevolently.

Every year Jim sighs and wishes we could have a Charlie Brown christmas, and every year we deck our halls with homemade ornaments mixed with dollar store crap, and I congratulate him on the charlie browness of it all.  This year, we had an extra dose of Charles Schultz as we cut down a Christmas tree off our own property? (or my parents property, I’m not sure exactly where the line is).   It had a big gaping hole on one side, so I just rotated it around to the back, but then I noticed another gaping hole, so I rotated the tree again, to discover there was yet another garish blank spot in the front like an elementary kid’s missing front teeth and I realized it was a hopeless case that could only be remedied by lots of lights and ribbon.   We covered it lavishly in lights, twirled decadent ribbon around it and if it’s possible, the tree actually seemed worse.  It looked positively sheepish as if it were apologizing for it’s fine feathers that were doing nothing for it’s homely looks.   So I forgave it, and I love it anyway despite itself.   Jamie also loves it although he spent more time trying to decorate himself than the tree.

Tonight while we were doing dishes, Jamie kept sticking his head intentionally in Charlie’s face and then howling injuriously when Charlie inevitably would tug on his brother’s curls.  I tried to capture the thing on video, but of course they stopped doing it as soon as the camera came out.