Slowly...slowly...

This morning I laughed so hard I couldn't even breathe. I was snorting and wheezing. All because my son did a slow motion fall from the backseat of my car onto the driveway.

You should have seen the look on his face. With one butt cheek balanced precariously on the car's seat, he lost his balance and couldn't save himself, but his grasping hands and backpack made his fall slow and almost graceful.

From my spot in the front seat, I was the only one who could see him, but I couldn't possibly save him. So I just watched. And he narrated.

"Whoa...

I'm falling...

slowly...

slowly..."

And then from his ass on the pavement, "My slowness saved me."

I don't know why I find this so hilarious. But even now I can't think about it without cracking up.

Sometimes it is the little damn things.

"Slowly...

slowly..."

Crack my ass up!

Hot Boy

I think, every once in a while for parents it just hits you that your kids are growing up. And I love that. I love every second of it.

This weekend we went to a violin workshop. After the play in (an informal concert where anyone who can play the chosen song just gets up and plays) my daughter asked me if I had seen the boy on the end.

"He was so hot," she said.

Now there is a sentence I've never heard her utter before. She's liked boys before, but usually boys she's known for years and who are nice to her in some way. This was the first time she had signaled one out on looks alone.

But I was a bit worried. If I recalled correctly, the boy on the end was about 17 or 18, had a shaved head, goatee and tattoos. If her taste is swinging that way, I should probably put my husband in anger management classes now.

So at the last concert I asked her to point out this "hot" boy to me.

She pointed out the most angelic, baby-faced twelve-year-old ever to grace the Earth. He was actually very cute, almost pretty. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief!

You know, I was thinking about it. She's never gotten into actors or singers before. She scoffs at all things Jonas. But she has had what one might consider "celebrity crushes" on violinists she's seen perform live.

She's actually gotten to have master classes with a couple of those violinists. For her that would be like having a singing lesson with Justin B-whatever-his-name-is. Except these guys really can play the violin.

Ultimately, I'm glad she's comfortable enough with me to share her "hot" ratings. And I'm even more grateful she doesn't share my taste in men.

Careful What You Wish For

I have a kinda-sorta secret and it is driving me nutso. I'm not good at keeping secrets. I'm just too damn honest. Besides, it is a kinda-sorta secret that my husband and I share and want to talk about sometimes. And occasionally we blurt.

In fact, my mom figured out our kinda-sorta secret by overhearing something completely innocuous that I said when she was two rooms away.

My husband is deploying again.

We've been expecting it because he is long overdue. We were just hoping that we wouldn't get just a couple of weeks notice again like we did when he went to Iraq.

So now the opposite is happening. He is going to that other desert place next September. That's the longest lead time we have ever had before a deployment. Or a move, or anything!

And it's actually made things harder, I swear.

He still has a bunch of training he needs to do this summer, so he'll be gone half of June, half of July and some of August. But he doesn't know exactly when he's leaving yet so he doesn't want to tell the kids.

Plus, three (to six) months is a long time for them to be stressed about Daddy leaving. It just feels like it is too early to tell them. So we have to be careful what we say.

I hate that. They're smart enough to figure out that something is up anyway. They've been through this four times before. They know the signs. It feels like it is against our value system to withhold information from them. We're walking a line here.

But also, my husband doesn't want to tell his mother yet. He just doesn't want to deal with her worry. I think it is...funny, or maybe weird that he is more worried about telling her than he was about telling me.

So, I can't really tell anyone. (Except the blog-o-sphere) I'm not really worried or stressed yet. But occasionally I do think Oh man! Soon I'll be doing this all alone again.

If it is even possible, I am now even more grateful for the way our life has settled this year. And that I turned down that symphony job. And that I am slowly but surely making some friends here.

Ah, sigh. My warrior is heading back to be a warrior again. Sixth grade and third grade will forever be remembered as years when Daddy was gone. And I'll start sleeping diagonally across our bed again before too long.

Unplugged Six Years In

Given how little I have been writing lately, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I just don't have anything interesting going on. You'd be right, and you'd be forgiven.

I don't know. I've actually had plenty of things going on but I find myself drawing into myself more and more lately. I'm just not feeling the need to share.

I've been simplifying my life more and more. Which has been great. But it means that I talk to less and less people. And I'm okay with that. For now.

During the first week of March, my kids were on Spring Break. I'm not sure how it happened, but my father somehow used his impending blindness to guilt me into letting my parents take my kids for the week.

So my husband and I were going to maybe take a trip or spend the week at home remodeling the bathroom. But he ended up going TDY (and not inviting me along...pout) so I spent an entire week home alone doing absolutely nothing.

It was heaven.

Okay, actually I took a couple of days to Spring clean, but I spent the rest of the week reading and watching Bones and Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

I had intended to blog every day, since I was alone and all that, but I ended up barely going online at all.

I find myself being more and more resentful of technology and its ability to keep us absolutely connected and available all the damn time.

Sometimes I worry that I'm going to be one of those old widows who lives alone in a house filled with crap and never goes outside. I can envision it too easily. I'll never wash my hair and I'll re-read the same dozen books over and over and watch handsome men on television all day long.

I'm going to have to get a boyfriend in my old age.

And on that note, I just realized...today my blog turns six-years-old. If it was a kid it would be in Kindergarten. Holy heck!