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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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12:25 p.m. - 2012-06-17
I got my good day. A couple of them actually. Wrote all about the first one but of course the last entry I wrote went poof! when the power dipped momentarily. Why the document recovery didn't work is unknown, but typical. So rather than start over I got busy and had another nice day. Since we last spoke I've done a bunch of running around. Tedious to go into all the details. Took care of a few necessary things like doctors' visits, getting Wolf's bathing suits and filling the downstairs freezer with meat. (Yes, bathing suits- plural, one will live exclusively at MIL's, the other two will be on hand here.) I know I'm just begging for the large appliances to start going fubar by stocking half a summer's meat in the big freezer, but Mick's in full 'Must spoil the wife' mode and I have to practically wrestle him to the floor every day to let me cook instead of whisking me off for a meal out on the town. I can already see that the biggest hassle this summer won't be keeping Mr Busypants from driving everybody nutty with the chores, but to keep my adoring husband from blowing our budget to smithereens by his insisting on taking me out to eat every night. My budgetary prudence didn't stop me from letting him buy me not one, but TWO Wizard of Oz music boxes at The Christmas Factory yesterday. Wolf had gone with his father down to New Jersey to see Mike's sister so after some seriously good alone time Mick and I hopped in the car and went to the Poconos. The drive down through the Delaware Water Gap is gorgeous. State park land? National park land? Not quite sure, but the upshot is that with the sole exception of some grandfathered corn farming there's nothing but trees, trees, hills, trees and the occasional flash of the Delaware river for miles and miles along a gorgeous, curvy 2-lane road. I love it there. Then when you come out of the park land there's a couple of small towns chock-a-block with resorts, touristy shops and attractions, plus a fabulous diner, and a honking huge flea market. The flea market was our original destination and we were shocked to find out the whole place had packed up and moved to a former outlet mall outside of E. Stroudsburg, PA, but we found it eventually. The flea market coughed up a few bargains as places like that are apt to do. Fireworks, some birthday goodies for Wolf, antique coins for Mick's collection, etc, etc. My best thing was a new purse, a black leather satchel with a tidily sectioned-off interior. Should put an end to my tumbled mess purse woes. Besides, my current bag is batik patchwork and way too busy to carry when I'm wearing my summer wardrobe of floral prints and tie-dyed gauze dresses. The gaudy batik bag (the product of one of my fave micro-loan businesses) works fine with my stark monochrome cooler weather clothing, but I am soooo not ready to completely embrace my dippy crazy old lady destiny of multiple prints, clashing colors and blithe disregard for the esthetic sense of those around me. Sure, maybe someday Mick will step out in plaid Bermuda shorts, an Aloha shirt, a jaunty checked cap, knee-high black socks and mandals, while I, his beauteous mate, am resplendent beside him in a sequined tropical print muumuu, carrying a neon pink faux alligator purse pockmarked with metallic 'designer' logos, my coif a spectacular thinning pouf of aquamarine-tinged silver blue, and wearing orthopedic sandals with daisies on the insteps, but for now I try to keep a lower (saner) profile. Hence the sleek leather bag which despite its gold-toned hardware is discrete and quiet looking. On the way home Mick and I got to giggling over how middle-aged our day's 'adventures' had been. No rock climbing, no zip lines, no seeking out some Burning Man type stuff and dancing around in our mud-smeared birthday suits. Okay there'd been sex, but no drugs or rock-n-roll. We drove along the Delaware, we didn't kayak down it. We wore sun hats and comfortable shoes and went to factory outlets and a flea market. And we were okay with that. Occasionally I get swamped with the blues that my youth was a horror of abuse and grinding work, and that I have stupidly wasted my entire adult life doing the mom thing. I gnaw the insides of my cheeks when Mick laughingly recounts his exploits from his younger days and declares himself delighted to be finished with clubbing and dancing and carousing and hopping in the car and taking off for parts unknown. I think, "Okay, great. You had all your big fun while I've been a fricken PTA mom for the last 28 years and now when my life is finally starting to free up all you want to do is ride your bike and play chess online. Fabulous. I missed fucking everything and you're thrilled to be a homebody. That's simply wonderful." Then I take a reality check and know true I made dumb choices, but there's two new human beings who wouldn't have been here if I hadn't made them and that's got to be better than any kind of partying foolishness I might have gotten up to. Besides, my fun times aren't over before I had any, I just have to adjust my thinking and see that the world is still open to me, I simply need to decide what it is I want. If I'm honest I can see I like comfort and cleanliness too much to bum around the Amazon like my nephew Jon. I'm a quaint 3-star inn type, I don't really want youth hostels and hitchhiking. If I want to dance all I need to do is crank the iPod and boogie in the kitchen. I'd feel like a dope at a techno club in Berlin. And if I'm really, really honest I have to admit that I'm only free to whine over my supposed 'lost youth' because I have made my dearest dreams come true already. Bigger and far more valuable to me than adventures in the big wide somewhere is how I have made a haven for myself. All the wandering I've longed for would be meaningless if I didn't have someplace to come home to. It's more than just my house, as terrific as that is, it's how I finally love someone who loves me back. Someone who'll love me even when we do start wearing plaid shorts and sparkly muumuus. Mick who bought me pretty music boxes which play 'Over The Rainbow' and the 'Emerald City' song. One a delicious porcelain trinket box with a twirling Wicked Witch of the West and the other a bigger rectangular box with a mirrored interior and ruby slippers inside. Silly sentimental things which he insisted I have when he saw my longing gaze, and then twitted me about later for being 'such a girl'. A joke between us because he knows how starved I am for exactly this kind of thing. Mick understands the big hole in my soul and is determined to stopper it with all the lacy, frilly, girly goodies he can give me. With Mick I can be both my tempered steel and my spun sugar self. I like that. I like it a lot. So what yesterday's 'adventure' was sedate, commerce-driven, and physically undemanding? We had fun and got some cool stuff. I know in my heart if I take a yen for Civil War reenactments or culinary school or opening a tarot card salon that Mick will have my back. I made stupid choices and did my time for them. Wolf will be 15 next week and my obligation to be Mommy-on-the-spot is almost over. If I really and truly want to go to Burning Man or Berlin or Bora-Bora I still can. No law saying since I didn't have a misspent (or any) youth it doesn't mean I can't have a misspent middle age. Right?
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