Life

Holy Stowaway, Batdude!

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Debora

Friday night we were watching “Hook” on dvd from Netflix and consuming enormous quantities of popcorn, when suddenly there was an exclamation from Steve’s end of the couch (he’s been coming over for family movie night the past couple of weeks). “Whoa — a bat just flew in!”

I paused the movie. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Neither did I,” said Elizabeth. Luke said he hadn’t either.

“It flew in the window,” Steve insisted. “I think it flew down the hall!”

So we briefly searched the back of the house for a bat, found nothing, and finally decided that Steve had seen a moth or something.

This morning Elizabeth was taking her bath and noticed something clinging to the wall mouldiing above the tub.

Poor little guy must have been starving after two days and three nights in the house.

After some discussion we decided to wait until dusk to release him outside, so he wouldn’t be disoriented and helpless in the bright light of day. When Steve came over to see the kids this afternoon he got elected, by virtue of being the only one tall enough to reach, to capture little Batdude in a towel.

I love bats, I truly do. Bats Are Our Friends. But little Batdude was seriously pissed off by the whole experience, and he was making some remarkably unattractive faces at us involving lots and lots of teeth, and he didn’t seem terribly receptive to our apologies, so we just took him out on the porch and let him go without further ado.

He exploded out of the towel and into the twilight sky with reassuring vigor — at least he wasn’t too weak from his ordeal to hunt.

I bet he won’t be flying into any more windows anytime soon, though. At least he’ll have a story to tell his grandkids. “So there I was…clinging to a barren wall in enemy territory for days on end….”

Categories: Animals, Family, kids, Life, Wildlife | Leave a comment

I Know I Left It Around Here Somewhere…

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Debora

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
~Mark Twain

You know what I used to have? A sense of humor. Seriously, it used to be one of my best features. That’s probably hard to believe if you’ve only met me in the past few years. So how did I go from being Queen Of The One-Liner in my teens and twenties to being the humorless wretch you see before you now? I’m not sure…maybe it had something to do with cohabiting for thirteen years with someone who never got my jokes. Sorta took the fun out of telling them, you know? Anyway, I’ve decided that this is an Unacceptable State Of Affairs. I gotta get my funny back!

I figured this blog would be the place to start, so yesterday I resolved to sit down and write the most hilarious post I could come up with. But as it turns out, I don’t get to be hilarious again just because I want to. Try as I might, nary a hilarious idea has presented itself. Hunh.

Alrighty then.

It’s been said that a sense of humor is really just a sense of perspective, so maybe what I really to do is take a step back and look at the big picture. When viewed through the Lens Of Perspective, my life has all kinds of stuff in it that I should be thanking God for instead of focusing on the less-than-ideal aspects. In that spirit, and in lieu of anything actually funny, I’ve decided to list five things that I’m extremely thankful for. Who knows, maybe a healthy dose of perspective will help me recapture that elusive sense of humor again. Here goes:

1. My children. Luke and Elizabeth are far and away the best thing(s) that have ever happened to me. They keep me grounded, give me something larger than myself to live for, and provide much-needed laughter and whimsy in my daily soundtrack. They are the mirrors that reflect back to me the best and worst in my own behavior. My heart is so full of love for them that it hurts sometimes, in the best possible way.

2. My home. I love this place. I love my garden and the orchard and all the space for kids to run around in, and how close it is — a short ride on a fast horse — to uncivilized wilderness. I’m slightly less euphoric about the cardboard-and-staples circa 1972 mobile home, but that’s why renovation projects were invented, right? And I’m thankful that Steve wants to keep his kids nearby, so selling the property isn’t something I need to worry about just yet…knock on wood.

3. My friends. One thing I didn’t expect about my marital breakup was that it would turn out to be a sort of litmus test to show me who my true friends are — and aren’t. There were people whom I had considered friends that simply stopped answering my calls when they found out that Steve and I had split. Perhaps they feared that divorce might be contagious, or they were turned off by the social stigma, or maybe they felt the need to take sides and they took Steve’s? I don’t know, they were just gone. Thank heaven for the brighter side of that coin: friends who immediately stepped in with words of comfort and support and/or offers of company and diversion. They made me laugh when my world was crumbling. They gave me a bit of solid ground to stand on and something to lean on and bolstered my faltering self-esteem. They kept me from sliding past grief and into true despair. I don’t even want to think about how much harder this experience would have been without them. Their friendship is a treasure beyond price, and I thank God for them every day.

4. The lessons I’ve learned. Everything’s a learning experience, right? In my darker moments I feel like I’ve completely wasted the past fourteen years of my life, but in all fairness that’s not really true at all. If I’m honest, I have to admit that I’m a better person for knowing Steve. The lessons weren’t always easy or fun, but I think I’ve come out the other side of this marriage stronger and wiser and more balanced than I went into it. I know a lot more about how to get along as a functioning member of the human race than I did before I met him. So, I do appreciate that.

5. Hmmmmm. Surely I haven’t run out of stuff to be thankful for already…? OH! I’m thankful for this guy that hit on me today at the supermarket. I sorta blew him off (nicely) because I’m nowhere near ready to start dealing with men again yet and he didn’t look like my type anyway, but still. When you’re 39 years old it’s always a compliment, and frankly I appreciated the ego boost. So thanks, guy at the supermarket!

Okay! Got my happy thoughts back, let the hilarity begin!

Any minute now.

Yeah, stay tuned. I’ll get back to you on that.

Categories: Family, Friends, Humor, Life | Leave a comment

In Which Debora Waxes Introspective Again

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Debora

I’ve come to accept that a clean break with Steve isn’t one of my options. The marriage is over, but we still have kids together, and the more I stretch out into my new life the more I rely on him to take on a larger share of the parenting while I reconnect with other aspects of myself. He’s fine with this; the kids are old enough to come with him on some of his horeseshoeing rounds, and he seems to sincerely want to strengthen his relationship with them. So for the sake of the kids and general harmony, he and I are trying to be friends.

Being friends with Steve isn’t all that hard if you don’t expect stuff like honesty or reliability. He prefers all of his relationships to be superficial and free of any actual effort on his part, but he’s a personable and easygoing guy to be around. As long as you never mistake the friendship for anything meaningful on any level, he’s perfectly good company.

A while back I was talking to Julie about how easy it would be to be casual friends with Steve, if I could just figure out how to switch off the love that I have always felt for him. She said something that has stuck with me ever since. She said that even though her own ex-husband was an abusive jerk, even though her marriage was destructive and toxic and she can see how much better off she is without him, even though she’s with Josh now and they love each other dearly, a small part of her still clings to the old bond with her ex. She said she believes that something sacred and irreversible happens when you stand before God and speak those holy vows. They bind you. Your souls are inextricably knit together, till death do you part.

It makes sense. The Bible says pretty much the same thing. So, I have been trying to fit Steve into my new life in ways that acknowledge that permanent bond without being too painful for me.

Last Sunday I was feeling comfortable enough with the balancing act to invite him over for a family game of Clue and to toss a few steaks on the grill. (Due to a weird dealer error when the who/what/where cards were placed in the envelope at the start of the Clue game, it turned out that the lead pipe did it with a revolver in the the hall. That was just…odd.) Everything was going great until after dinner when Steve made a comment that brought all my happy thoughts to a screeching halt.

“Don’t think I don’t feel really bad about all this,” he said. “I took a perfectly nice girl and ruined her.”

Lovely.

“I’m not ruined,” I growled. “You’re giving yourself way too much credit. FUCK you. I’m going to be just FINE, thank you very much. I’m not fucking RUINED.”

Obviously, Steve’s comment wouldn’t have made me so angry if part of me didn’t worry that it might be true.

A few years ago I was talking to someone who had just broken up again with her on again/off again boyfriend. “From now on,” she’d declared, “If I ever get into another relationship I’m not going to be the one doing the sacrificing. I’m not going to be the one doing the forgiving and compromising and giving in.”

My thought at the time was, “Then you have absolutely nothing of value to offer a relationship.” Because realistically, that’s what all healthy human interactions boil down to: people compromising and forgiving and occasionally giving in, when the relationship is more important than the issue at hand. That’s ALL relationships, not just the romantic ones.

Steve’s comment upset me so badly because deep down I wonder if I even have it in me anymore to commit that way to anyone again. I’d like to find Mr. Right and remarry someday, but I’m not sure that I’m capable of taking that leap of faith one more time. I knew Steve for fourteen years before the first separation, and it turned out that I didn’t really know him very well at all. The next guy could turn out to be a child molester or something. I have lost faith in my own judgment. I wonder if have permanently lost my ability to give people the benefit of the doubt, to assume that they probably mean well, to shrug off thoughtless comments and actions as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I wonder if I can still give freely without expecting anything in return.

If I can’t do those things, I’ll never have a healthy, successful relationship. I really will be ruined. And I don’t know how to fix it.

The best part of this story: when Steve saw how his remark had hurt me, he apologized profusely and said it was a poor choice of words and he hadn’t meant ruined and he offered me a comforting hug.

And when I accepted that, he tried to turn it into a make-out session.

It’s like trying to be friends with a five-year-old that has never grasped the concept of impulse control. He just does whatever feels good at the moment and never thinks about the effect it has on others.

I refuse to let myself be “ruined” by this guy.

But I don’t know how to heal the part of me that he damaged. Maybe it just takes time, or maybe I’ll end up sharing an apartment with 47 cats in my old age, boasting emptily that no man ever got the best of me.

There’s a nice comforting image.

Categories: Life, Love, Marriage | 4 Comments

Second Verse, Same As The First

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Debora

Now that Steve and I are separated (again), he has donned his Devoted Dad hat (again), and begun making time every day to spend with Luke and Elizabeth. From my perspective this is of the good; I firmly believe that kids benefit from having a healthy relationship with both parents no matter what the state of the parental union may be. Luke, especially, has become a lot more confident and outgoing and less…well…neurotic, in the past four and a half months since his father has decided to give him some actual focused attention.

Being the astute child that she is, Elizabeth has picked up on the rather fickle nature of Dad’s devotion (as in, it comes and goes in inverse relationship to how secure he feels in the marriage), and she’s been visibly cooling toward him. I can’t blame her, but it makes me sad anyway.

And speaking of our Tough Cookie, she took a big tumble yesterday.

Some backstory: ever since she was four or five, Elizabeth has liked to walk out to the horse pasture and shimmy up a front leg and onto the back of a horse or pony, letting it carry her wherever the herd took them. At first I was VERY concerned about this pastime, and considered putting a stop to it, but she always chose the nice quiet mounts and nothing bad came of it, so I relaxed a little and let her have her fun.

A couple years ago she came in complaining that Balki (an Icelandic pony we used to have) had tossed her off and hurt her arm. This was the same pony that gave her an actual concussion the first time she rode him, so we just told her to stick to the safer horses for her pasture jaunts from now on, and let the fun continue. (A week of “My arm feels better today, Mom”s later, I took her down to have it looked at and learned that she had been WALKING AROUND WITH A BROKEN ARM FOR A WEEK. Hence the “Tough Cookie” nickname.)

The other day I caught her trying to slip onto Mahogany’s back from a top fence rail. I nipped that plan right in the bud. No ridee Mahogany! But when I saw her hacking around on Marshall, I thought it over and decided not to fuss. Marshall’s young and green, but he’s also calm and friendly.

Okay, so yesterday I glanced out the window just at the right moment to see Marshall BOLT out of the corral into the pasture, and Elizabeth hit the dirt in his wake. I shot out the door and into the corral, calling her name. She was all, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” but she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer my questions about where it hurt and what body part she’d landed on. Her knees were all scraped up, and she seemed very disoriented. I brought her in and settled her on the couch and shone a flashlight in each of her eyes, and her pupils responded normally. I suggested a warm bath (she was filthy from the corral ground and her scrapes were very dirty, and I figured she would feel better after a nice soak). She got in the tub, but then started wailing that her head hurt. I checked and found a respectable goose-egg on the back of her head, so I gave her some Children’s Tylenol and went to find her some clean jammies.

When I got back she was kind of zoning and sleepy. I helped her out of the tub, and she got dressed in slow motion; she just wanted to go take a nap. I knew there was a good chance she had another concussion (for those of you keeping score, that’s one broken arm and two concussions so far. CPS should be knocking on my door any day now), but I also knew that if I took her to the emergency room they would: 1. keep her waiting for hours before anyone attended to her, 2. most likely eventually diagnose a concussion, and 3. tell me to take her home, keep her quiet and give her plenty of rest. So I let her go take her nap, opting to spare her the stress of a trip to the ER. She slept and SLEPT and slept. I went in every half hour or so and nudged her until I got some sort of response, because there is a risk of a concussed person slipping into a coma if they’re allowed to sleep too deeply.

She seemed to feel better when she finally woke up around 5pm, and she had some supper. And then threw it up. And then threw again at bedtime. Steve and I talked back and forth on the phone for a while about whether taking her to the ER to check for complications would be worth all the additional trauma it would put her through. (The ER is in Murrietta, btw, almost 50 miles away down winding mountain roads.) Finally it was decided that I would sleep with her, and if there were any signs at all that things were getting worse instead of better, down we’d go.

She woke up early, around 4:45am, and seemed to feel a lot better, so we all heaved a sigh of relief. But around 9 or 9:30, she kind of crashed again. I called her pediatrician, and miraculously they were having a slow day and said they could see her in the office at 11:15.

The doc gave her a careful examination, including a rather alarming bit of hands-on skull twisting to check for fractures, but Elizabeth was unruffled by that. He confirmed that she had a concussion, but said that there didn’t seem to be any life-threatening complications, and that I should take her home and keep her quiet and give her plenty of rest. No running or bouncing or anything that might possibly cause her brain to slosh around in her skull for at least a week or two, and no riding horses, climbing trees, or anything that might cause another head injury for at least a month. So, the Tough Cookie’s on the sidelines for the rest of summer vacation. Poor kid. She threw up again the instant we got home, then went and took a long nap in the hammock.

She’s a little cranky.

So I guess our Summer Of Adventure will have to be limited to non-physically-strenuous activities from here on out. No swimming, bowling, roller skating, bike riding….Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of movies.

Where’s that catalogue where I saw that child-size bubble-wrap clothing? I know it’s around here somewhere….

Categories: Family, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Marriage | 3 Comments

Summertime And The Livin’s Easy

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Debora

This is my favorite time of year, foodwise. Preparing healthy meals is never easier than it is in midsummer when the garden and orchard are in full swing and everyone’s in the mood for light fare.

For breakfast this morning we polished off the last of the apricot crop, with the grain product of our choice on the side. I had granola, Elizabeth and Luke had cinnamon-raisin bagels. The plums are just beginning to turn color; I give them another two to four weeks before that feeding frenzy begins. Luckily we have one apple tree that ripens very early in the year, and while it’s still a month or so away from actual ripeness, its fruit has reached that tart/sweet green stage that’s not bad to munch on at all. So that’ll carry us from apricot season to plum season without total fruit deprivation.

Then there’s the berries. I have managed to produce actual blueberries this year, for the first time ever! Apparently the secret is to water them almost every day. Troublesome, but totally worth it when you pop one of those tangy little balls of goodness into your mouth. We also enjoyed homegrown raspberries and strawberries this year — yum!

Around noon I commented to the empty kitchen that a nice frosty milkshake sounded pretty good for lunch. Like magic, Elizabeth materialized out of thin air and began assembling ingredients. She has just recently mastered the art of making milkshakes, and fixes them for us almost every day.

Our recipe–

Add to blender:

About 1 cup frozen berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or whatever you like. We use storebought organic, since our own production from the new plantings is still pretty small).

Two ripe bananas

16 oz vanilla yogurt

About 1/2 cup milk

Blend well. Pour into glasses that have been stored in the freezer. Makes three or four shakes, depending on the size of your glasses.

For supper I went down to the garden and filled a basket with everything that looked good: an onion, a bulb of garlic, a zucchini, two tomatoes, some swiss chard, some kale, some carrots. I cooked a pound of ground beef with salt, pepper, the onion and the garlic. When it was browned I added the rest of the veggies, all chopped into bite-size pieces. Simple but very tasty. This is the sort of meal that absolutely requires the use of fresh, just-picked veggies, or it won’t taste right.

Between the heat (and marital stress) dulling my appetite, and all the fresh produce I have been eating, my winter weight has been melting away pretty dramatically. This morning I weighed in at 118 lbs! I have not weighed 118 lbs since before my first pregnancy! I love my garden. 🙂 (The marital stress, not so much.)

I was supposed to plant cherry trees and blackberries this fall, but I think that’s going to be out of my budget this year. Especially since Julie has invited me to a five-day horse-camping trip next month up in San Luis Obispo with a bunch of her friends, and I can’t possibly say no to five days of riding, camping and girl talk. What’s another couple hundred dollars on the credit card for a good cause, right? The cherry trees will still be at the nursery next year. Or, you know, probably different cherry trees, but whatever.

Then there’s the grapes. We have eight grapevines, each a different variety that ripens at a slightly different time. So from late July/August to October it’s a nonstop grapefest. Mmmmm, grapes.

Someday when we sell this place I’m going to need half a dozen U-haul trucks just to transfer my orchard to my next home, because leaving it behind doesn’t even bear thinking about.

What? Thirty-year-old apple trees don’t transplant well? La la la la, I can’t heeeear you…..

Categories: Family, food, Gardening, kids, Life | 4 Comments