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December 06, 2007

Suspicious Minds (not original I know, but I'm tired and ill - cough, cough)

I have been tagged by my good friend Nina to participate in a suspiciously different meme. She got tagged by Drowning Pisces, which was interesting to me because I am also a pisces. You know, the zodiac is just not getting the respect and play it used to. I mentioned something about a sign, or my sign, or something, to the kids I teach and most of them had no idea what I was talking about. Well, that is often the case, but this one surprised me.

I am supposed to write a list of things that make me suspicious. On a day to day basis in real life I am not a suspicious person, or even a suspicious acting one. I pretty much just go along taking everyone at their word and everything at face value. Mostly I won't think to be suspicious until way later (sometimes too late, but mostly it works out okay for me). Like right now I just realized I recently did something that some people I know would think odd (read not wise- only because I don't want to call myself stupid- yet).  I found a piano to buy on craigslist. It is located in a city relatively near my small town. Last Saturday (while in the very beginning stages of my current illness) I drove with my son in to check it out. I thought nothing of following the pleasant young man down the siedwalk, into his apartment and into his bedroom to see the piano. Seriously. I never thought of anything other than seeing the piano. And this evening I drug my drugged and coughing body out of bed and back into town to give him $300. I will pick  up the piano on Saturday. The only reason I think to mention this is because on a bulletin board I post to one of the members today mentioned that she doesn't like craigslist. She doesn't like the thought of people coming to her home. Ooops. I've invited people from other countries that I barely know to come stay with me.

With that background I will be able to show you how truely dichotomous I am.

On to the meme.

I am suspicious of people who are nice to everyone all the time. Do they really like everyone that much? Do they like me or are they just being nice because they are nice to everyone?

I am suspicious of 7th graders talking quietly and then asking to go to the bathroom.

I am suspicious of parents who believe everything their kids tell them about how they got their grade and then e-mail me with strange accusations.

Letters to the editor when they are in the paper in our town make me suspicious. But you would have to live here to understand that. Did that guy who wrote in last week think we were too stupid to figure out that he was married to the woman he was writing about, just because they have different last names?

Like Nina, I am suspicious of the first item on the shelf and will reach behind it to get the next, most of the time. This is especially true with milk.

There is something deeply suspicious about any credit card company that would want to give me credit and spends money sending me offers.

I am suspicious of anyone on any plane with a really short haircut sitting next to me looking suspiciously like Timothy McVeigh. I just found this out about myself last summer when we were at the gate waiting for the sniffing German Shepherd to be brought on board.

I am suspicious of people who pray loudly on street corners or even people who pray too loudly or too long and want to pray for me using phrases like "Please lift my friend up on wings of Eagles, Lord."

I sometimes become suspicious of my online friends if the board becomes very active on a day when I am not able to log on. Are they extra talkative since I am not there? Are they using the opportunity to rejoice that I am not in the way? Maybe they avoid the board when they see I am there?

And, ya know, that whole NCLB thing and WHOEVER thought that up makes me very suspicious!

I'll try to think of someone to tag and get back on that. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't.

Change is good

I don't really do change. I mean I don't choose it usually. Some change is just forced on me and I am okay about adjusting.  I guess.

Like, there is nothing I can do about the fact that the Hippiekid grows and changes every day. While that sometimes makes me melancholy with worry about abandonment issues, generally I am so entertained by the new versions of his personality that I am okay with it.

You may have noticed that although I have had this blog up and running for over a year (yep, failed to acknowledge my own blogiversary) I have never changed the template. Mostly I didn't think about it, which is kind of weird if you knew the number of blogs I read and the various designs and site changes that go on regularly. Lately I have thought of it, but never got to it.

Now, due the great luck of contracting one of the multiple viruses I come into contact with regularly, I have been home in bed all week. Whatever I have reared back it's viscious little head and laughed at the antibiotics I have been assaulting it with. So here I sit with my laptop as bed partner and a catalog of clicks at my disposal.

I think I like it. For those of you like me, who never rearrange the furniture or change the positions of the knickknacks, I apologize for any discomfort this may cause you.

Now I must go brace myself for the fact that we are bringing a piano into my small house this weekend, which will force me to move furniture around and perhaps even artwork. Oh the things we do for our kids.

December 02, 2007

Double Digits Dude!

10thbirthday_035

Hippiekid is 10 today. We had the party and the whole shebang (yeah, I grew up in Oklahoma where we say things like that, try to live with it). Once again, his friends brought gifts to donate to the animal shelter. It is his birthday tradition I guess. I think this is the 5th year for it. I intend to just drive by and throw them out the window this year. We have enough pets of our own now (both aquired from this animal shelter).

I have a birhday tradition of my own, for his birthday. Since I was not the one actually birthing him 10 years ago I always think of his birthmother on this day and the days leading up to it. My feelings for her are so numerous and so intense and often confusing and conflicting. I love the son we have both created more than I could ever explain. He is so totally and completely my own perfect son, and yet he was hers first. It is a weird feeling. I have grown a son in my body and I have lost him to death, so I know first hand the feelings, both physical and emotional, involved. My tradition is that every year on his birthday I post a poem to his birthmother. I have posted to bulletin boards and other places in cyberland. Last year my blog was still pretty new and I posted it here for the first time. (I did not write it and I don't know who did. A friend sent it to me years ago.) Here it is again.

A BIRTHDAY

It's my child's birthday

He just went dashing by

His eyes are sparkling with the excitement meant only for today.

Presents, kisses, hugs, cake, ice cream

It all seems so natural.

It's a day of looking back and looking forward.

It's my child's birthday

But there is something different happening inside me.

This should be a day of complete joy

A day for Thanksgiving

But in the midst of all this excitement

I pause, because my thoughts are about someone else for a time.

It's my child's birthday

I have no memories of his life growing inside me

and fighting to be released.

Another someone was there

Another someone suffered for my joy.

It's my child's birthday

But someone, somewhere, is feeling emptiness inside.

I'm sure she is wondering

Who he looks like

If he is big or small.

Wondering if he laughs much.

It's my child's birthday

And in the midst of this blessed day that was given to me

I have a prayer...

Oh God, that I may never forget

that someone suffered so much to give life to my child.

That someone loved my child so very much

that she gave him the right to live.

May I never forget for a moment

and especially now, today, to offer a prayer of thanks

for that someone

and that you, dear God, will always be there for that someone to help her

through the hurts she will have

when she stops to think that today is "my child's birthday."

Thank you, whoever and wherever you are.