We left Myrtle Beach late yesterday afternoon. It was 84 degrees and sunny, but as we approached the I-95 corridor the sky was looking stormy due to the line of thunderstorms crossing the Carolinas from west to east. By the time we'd been on I-95 for 30 minutes or so, we were smack in the middle of the storms, my husband driving precariously through intermittent bands of heavy, windshield spattering rain as I desperately fiddled with the defrost mode to find the right setting that would allow a clear view of the road ahead. The temperature reading on our dash was dropping quickly, first 75 degrees, then 70, then 64.
At some point, as we marveled at the beautiful sunshine to our left, the ominous deep gray sky in front, and the stormy mottled sky to our right, my husband remarked that he hadn't found the rainbow yet, for surely there would be one.
And shortly after, sure enough, it came in the form of a brilliant double bow, one whose clarity and depth of color I have never witnessed before. The arc stretched out before us on the right and we were able to see the full bow, end to end, for many miles as we traveled. I tried to snap some pictures, but the quality of color was lost. It was something that had to be seen in person.
It was a lovely moment in a very stressful drive, in a very stressful and busy time in our lives, after a weeklong vacation that fit the description dubiously at best. Rainbows always seem to portend good things, a purging of sorts of all bad thoughts and worries.
As the remnants of a long, hot, ho-hum summer pass on by us, I hope this rainbow does, indeed, mean good things.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Aliens
Last night, G was afraid to go to sleep (an on-again, off-again, but recurring theme). She had a serious conversation with her father when he came up to see what was wrong that went as follows:
Her: "I saw something green flash outside my window. I think it was an alien."
Him: "There are no aliens around here. I'm pretty certain it was a lightening bug."
Her: "Well okay, but if there are aliens around here, I'm moving to Florida!"
Him: "I think you'll find there are a lot more aliens in Florida than there are here."
Really, Florida?
Well, we are going to be spending some vacation time there this summer (no, we're not going to see the rat), so clearly that was fresh in her mind and I'm impressed that she retrieved and used it so effectively.
I'm also amused at my husband's bit of sarcastic humor there. But the joke is likely to be on us. If I know our daughter well, the alien / Florida theme is likely to re-occur, and if it does, it will most certainly be just in time for our trip.
Her: "I saw something green flash outside my window. I think it was an alien."
Him: "There are no aliens around here. I'm pretty certain it was a lightening bug."
Her: "Well okay, but if there are aliens around here, I'm moving to Florida!"
Him: "I think you'll find there are a lot more aliens in Florida than there are here."
Really, Florida?
Well, we are going to be spending some vacation time there this summer (no, we're not going to see the rat), so clearly that was fresh in her mind and I'm impressed that she retrieved and used it so effectively.
I'm also amused at my husband's bit of sarcastic humor there. But the joke is likely to be on us. If I know our daughter well, the alien / Florida theme is likely to re-occur, and if it does, it will most certainly be just in time for our trip.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Confessionals
My seven-year-old daughter, the apple of my eye, the perfect child, has been misbehaving. She came to us in a bout of guilt-induced tears last night to tell us so.
Her heavy heart was lifted some when she got these tidbits off her chest: she'd embellished a photograph from her school writing folder of her sister stooping over a bucket of shells at the beach by adding poop coming from her behind. She'd drawn pictures of hairy butts and things during free time at school. She'd watched Chowder even though she wasn't supposed to. She'd thought the drawings were funny at the time, but now apparently she just feels weird. She said she'd tried to wipe off the markered poop but it just smeared and looked that much worse.
It is very hard indeed to keep a straight face when your daughter confesses her biggest sins and they all center around potty humor. Hairy butts, really? Well, I guess she ought to feel weird! We had to leave the table several times because the hits just kept on coming and at 40 years of age, I guess none of us is to immune to a good poop story once in a while.
These little confessionals of hers have become a habit lately, surfacing every month or so when her laundry list of misbehaviors get the best of her. It seems to me she's figured out a rather crafty way to do something wrong and not really get gravely punished for it. I have to marvel at exactly how deeply Catholicism is ingrained within her DNA!
Anyway, we've caught on to her. After last night's confessional, she'll be serving a punishment of no tv for the foreseeable future. I don't care too much about the drawings, though we tried to stress the inappropriateness of the subject matter. But she is in trouble for watching "Chowder" on Cartoon Network (a perfectly awful little cartoon that she has no business watching) when she'd been specifically told not to do so.
Meanwhile, I need to work on my poker face because it's so hard not to laugh at this sort of stuff. In ten years, when she's coming to me about more adult matters, I know I'll want the times back when the worst thing on her conscience were some hairy butt drawings that sent me from the table in a fit of private laughter.
Her heavy heart was lifted some when she got these tidbits off her chest: she'd embellished a photograph from her school writing folder of her sister stooping over a bucket of shells at the beach by adding poop coming from her behind. She'd drawn pictures of hairy butts and things during free time at school. She'd watched Chowder even though she wasn't supposed to. She'd thought the drawings were funny at the time, but now apparently she just feels weird. She said she'd tried to wipe off the markered poop but it just smeared and looked that much worse.
It is very hard indeed to keep a straight face when your daughter confesses her biggest sins and they all center around potty humor. Hairy butts, really? Well, I guess she ought to feel weird! We had to leave the table several times because the hits just kept on coming and at 40 years of age, I guess none of us is to immune to a good poop story once in a while.
These little confessionals of hers have become a habit lately, surfacing every month or so when her laundry list of misbehaviors get the best of her. It seems to me she's figured out a rather crafty way to do something wrong and not really get gravely punished for it. I have to marvel at exactly how deeply Catholicism is ingrained within her DNA!
Anyway, we've caught on to her. After last night's confessional, she'll be serving a punishment of no tv for the foreseeable future. I don't care too much about the drawings, though we tried to stress the inappropriateness of the subject matter. But she is in trouble for watching "Chowder" on Cartoon Network (a perfectly awful little cartoon that she has no business watching) when she'd been specifically told not to do so.
Meanwhile, I need to work on my poker face because it's so hard not to laugh at this sort of stuff. In ten years, when she's coming to me about more adult matters, I know I'll want the times back when the worst thing on her conscience were some hairy butt drawings that sent me from the table in a fit of private laughter.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Watching the Grass Grow
It's raining again today. This is a good thing, as North Carolina has been flirting with drought status for several seasons now and we need the infusion of water. Plus, my little three-quarter acre has some grass growing on it in nearly every spot, which is nothing short of a miracle!
Growing things here in the south is not the same easy endeavor as up north. Our neighbors, also Maryland transplants, would attest to that fact. Our soil is not the rich, healthy, black soil of Maryland in which anything will grow. Plants and grass do not thrive here, they merely survive, struggling to stretch their roots into nutrient-deprived hard-packed, clumpy, red clay. I cannot simply pick up a beautiful flower from Lowes, bring it home, and pop it into the ground. I must dig, and till, and amend, and supplement. And if I'm lucky, in three or four years, the flower will flourish. Ah, so frustrating for wannabe gardeners like us. When I visit my sister north of Baltimore and listen to her complain about how invasive my grandmother's roses are, and I stare longingly at the massive lilac just planted last season and which is now covered in impossibly fragrant late spring blooms ... well, I just want to smack her.
We have been in our house for nearly nine years now. When I think about it, our yard and garden is largely reflective of our time here in North Carolina, which is going on 13 years altogether. When we bought the house, the yard was nothing more than a tangle of trees and overgrown vines and weeds. It begged for someone to transform it, clean it up, make it work. Similarly, when we moved here from the beach, our lives were just starting out, our future uncertain. We faced difficult times that made us want to turn back, return to what we knew. We had no money, we had no friends. We had difficult issues from back home that pulled at us, complicating our choices.
But we had a vision. We wanted to look out from our windows and see a lawn stretch out before us, with paths and little spots to sit and reflect on the day - something successful from what was once a tangled mess.
Like our relocation south, it was so soon apparent that we'd bitten off way more than we could chew. We cut and dug and tilled and raked and threw way too much money into the dirt. We fussed about the hickory nuts, the oak saplings that sprung up everywhere, the spiky balls from those useless gum trees, the gross, slimy masses of mushrooms that cropped up everywhere, the mosquitos! We seeded, fertilized, limed, and then called in professionals.
This spring, nine years into it, we feel pretty good about what we see. As I said, the grass and weeds are green and growing. Some of the things we've planted over the years are actually thriving. The mature hardwoods have been thinned to a manageable level. There is even a bench. Our lives, too, have paralleled. We have managed to weather the hard times here, set down a few roots, grow a few kids successfully. In our path back to the beach, we are, dare I say, happily wandering along.
I am realistic. I know that in a month or so, when the hot southern heat sets in, and the rain showers become fewer and further in between, the grass will fade, and I will once again fuss about the five gallon buckets I must lug around the yard to keep things alive. I know we will eventually need to don our regular protective coating of Deep Woods Off just to be able to sit on the bench at all. I know I will sigh in frustration at the failure of a plant or two. I know, too, we will face bumps in our own path. That is life. But I feel a sure sense of accomplishment at what I see when I look around, and I have learned to enjoy the heck out of the times when it flourishes, and weather the times when it does not.
Growing things here in the south is not the same easy endeavor as up north. Our neighbors, also Maryland transplants, would attest to that fact. Our soil is not the rich, healthy, black soil of Maryland in which anything will grow. Plants and grass do not thrive here, they merely survive, struggling to stretch their roots into nutrient-deprived hard-packed, clumpy, red clay. I cannot simply pick up a beautiful flower from Lowes, bring it home, and pop it into the ground. I must dig, and till, and amend, and supplement. And if I'm lucky, in three or four years, the flower will flourish. Ah, so frustrating for wannabe gardeners like us. When I visit my sister north of Baltimore and listen to her complain about how invasive my grandmother's roses are, and I stare longingly at the massive lilac just planted last season and which is now covered in impossibly fragrant late spring blooms ... well, I just want to smack her.
We have been in our house for nearly nine years now. When I think about it, our yard and garden is largely reflective of our time here in North Carolina, which is going on 13 years altogether. When we bought the house, the yard was nothing more than a tangle of trees and overgrown vines and weeds. It begged for someone to transform it, clean it up, make it work. Similarly, when we moved here from the beach, our lives were just starting out, our future uncertain. We faced difficult times that made us want to turn back, return to what we knew. We had no money, we had no friends. We had difficult issues from back home that pulled at us, complicating our choices.
But we had a vision. We wanted to look out from our windows and see a lawn stretch out before us, with paths and little spots to sit and reflect on the day - something successful from what was once a tangled mess.
Like our relocation south, it was so soon apparent that we'd bitten off way more than we could chew. We cut and dug and tilled and raked and threw way too much money into the dirt. We fussed about the hickory nuts, the oak saplings that sprung up everywhere, the spiky balls from those useless gum trees, the gross, slimy masses of mushrooms that cropped up everywhere, the mosquitos! We seeded, fertilized, limed, and then called in professionals.
This spring, nine years into it, we feel pretty good about what we see. As I said, the grass and weeds are green and growing. Some of the things we've planted over the years are actually thriving. The mature hardwoods have been thinned to a manageable level. There is even a bench. Our lives, too, have paralleled. We have managed to weather the hard times here, set down a few roots, grow a few kids successfully. In our path back to the beach, we are, dare I say, happily wandering along.
I am realistic. I know that in a month or so, when the hot southern heat sets in, and the rain showers become fewer and further in between, the grass will fade, and I will once again fuss about the five gallon buckets I must lug around the yard to keep things alive. I know we will eventually need to don our regular protective coating of Deep Woods Off just to be able to sit on the bench at all. I know I will sigh in frustration at the failure of a plant or two. I know, too, we will face bumps in our own path. That is life. But I feel a sure sense of accomplishment at what I see when I look around, and I have learned to enjoy the heck out of the times when it flourishes, and weather the times when it does not.
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