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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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3:11 p.m. - 2010-06-25
Another blast of mental buckshot. Bleached the crap out of my hair. Not quite white, but very Harlow-esque as it is longer than it's been in years and rather wavy as well as being BLONDEBLONDEBLONDE. I am feeling especially Harlow since my eyebrows have gone thin and wickedly arched. Not on purpose, mind you, always scattered and sparse anyhow, the last time I tried to shape those straggly few hairs into brows was 4 months ago and the plucked stuff never grew back. I daren't ever pluck again lest I end up like Whoopi with no goddamn eyebrows at all. Still not up to full speed after being knocked on my butt by a cold. A cold which gave my allergies license to join the party. The cold has moved on but the allergies are hanging on like an annoying guest. My nose is chapped from the constant blowing and wiping. Soooo attractive! Near white hair, sickly pale skin and a huge swollen red nose bulging out from the middle of my face. Stupid thing looks like a giant zit with nostrils. Made a raid on the Podunkville farmer's market with MIL after the gym this morning. Today's haul: 2 qts of strawberries, a large mozzarella ball, spinach, dill, roasted red pepper hummus, a couple saucer-sized portabellas to stuff, carrots, and 2 dozen eggs. The eggs were a re-gift from MIL who'd gotten them from an old lady friend of hers who's gone a little goofy and brings MIL a couple dozen eggs a week. Why? No one really knows, but MIL would cut her tongue out before hurting her dotty old friend's feelings, so. Eggs it is. We get eggs. SIL gets eggs. I think MIL's taken to leaving cartons of eggs on neighbors' doorsteps in the dead of night like people do with their excess zucchini and foundling children. Happily these are really nice fresh super-jumbo eggs and aren't something the old lady unearths from her cellar where, you know, she laid up a lifetime's supply during the Depression. We had a quick but furious storm yesterday which knocked out the power for several hours. Also knocked down HUGE branches out of the maple tree that overhangs the parking area of my driveway. Miraculously the branches landed neatly around my car. Spooky how close they came yet not a one hit the car itself. A force field couldn't have done a tidier job. With the power out I sweated my butt off until Mick got home and then I made us all run for it. Took Wolf out for a pre-birthday dinner at LongHorn Steakhouse. We'd never been before and had no clue as to how it would stack up against Outback. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Longhorn was fab. Not overly fond of western d�cor as a rule, but this place was western done right. Classy, gracious, and comfortable. A bit pricier than Outback and there's no blooming onion, but on the whole LongHorn has the edge. Not quite as Korporate Kute as Outback. The food seemed to have a bit more contact with actual chefs too. Except my salad. OMG! Mick had the strawberry pecan salad and it was gorgeous. But mine was a horror. A supposed 'mixed green' salad, this putrid flavorless bowl of watery iceberg was disgusting. I didn't complain outright, but our very attentive server caught my less than delighted reaction. Apologized, sent a manager over who also apologized, and then they gave us our desserts for free. I hadn't asked for any discounts, hey, bad salads happen. But as the manager explained, the 'mixed green' salad was built off-site and shipped in from a distributor. One of a scant few menu items that are. I nicely suggested she shop elsewhere if possible. She agreed. Thanked me for the input and for being so nice about it. Why not? No need to be a customer-zilla over a lousy salad. I figure anyplace with an ambiance and food this good would appreciate knowing if something wasn't up to snuff. Yes, as I said, this was a pre-birthday dinner. My baby is 13 today. Along with all the 'Sunrise, Sunset' schmaltziness I have a small bubble of impending freedom rising ever so gently through my psyche. Oy, I know there's rough seas ahead. I know how many things can go crazily awry. I know Wolf's transition back to district school in his freshman year (2011-12) will be an exercise in patience and fret for everyone. I know about girlfriends, bad friends, trends, growing pains, mistakes, drugs, driving, shaving, zits, attitudes, grades, goofs, and all the rest of the godawful crap that comes with teenage sons. Been there, done that once already. It ain't gonna be easy, but then again nothing about this child ever has been. Yet, oh yet, there is an end. There is a finish line. Not from being his mother, that's a forever thing, but from being THE Mother. And I see its glimmer on the far, far horizon and can't be anything but jubilant about that. No rush, my newly minted teenager. Don't hurry through this time and sprint for the door. I can wait. I'll be here for all the fun and fuming to come. I don't wish you gone, my last little one, not at all. But today you take up your place at the starting gate to being your own whole self and I know it. You know it too. The way you hugged me tight before you went to bed last night told me so. Jauntily (but sort of sadly) saying, "Good night, Mom. Good-bye, childhood. It's been fun." A teenager. An honest to godfrey teenager. Some of you remember and have been here since this wild child of mine was just 2 years old. A hellion, an un-housebroken rampaging unholy terror. The Most Terrible of Two's. In some ways it's been forever. In others it's barely been a moment. A pioneer of sorts, one of the first to grow up on the internet, my baby boy is a fully fledged teen today. Wow.
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