My grandmother passed away yesterday late in the night. She was 87 years old and lived a wonderful, action-packed adventure of a life. I’m feeling pretty OK right now, but the sorrow is still coming in waves.

Colin is sick. I put him to bed tonight with a fever of over 103. He’s miserable! I’m not sure what he has - some mysterious fever virus. Probably picked it up at the doctor’s office on Friday.

Tomorrow I have a job interview. This should be great news, but the job is in Chapel Hill, which is about a 45 minute drive. I’m not sure if I want to commit to driving that far unless I can’t find a job around here. But so far, this is the first interview I’ve gotten from my dozens of job applications.

So yeah. I’m feeling a little sorry for myself right now. Boo hoo.

The emotion comes and goes, sometimes at the most inopportune times. My husband is wonderful! I can’t even think of a better word to describe him right now. He’s rolling with my emotional punches and is staying on the wave - who could ask for more?

My grandmother and I were quite close. In recent years (particularly since Colin had been born), I hadn’t been able to talk to her as much as I had in the past, but I still managed to call her regularly and jabber with her until child-led-WWIII would start breaking out. I recently found a typed letter I wrote her many years ago while in college. I was quite amusing back then! I could picture our telephone conversations that led me to write her the humorous and newsy letter from abroad. I have happy and vivid memories of spending summer-time with her as a child. I remember her garden, her huge lawn, the myriad of cats who lived on the back stoop, the crab-apple tree (and the taste of sour apples - yuck!), the way the floor creaked when you walked into the house, the little mailbox on the front of the stone house (the mailman actually brought the mail to her front door! That never ceased to amaze me as a child), the crystal candy dish that sat over the patched bullet hole on the coffee table, the way the telephone cord stretched all over the main part of the house; I remember her rubbing lotion over a sunburn that my cousin “allowed” me to get the summer I was 10; I remember her love for jewelry, and how much she loved to share it with me; I remember brushing and plaiting her long, black hair, and the underwear she used to wear on her head to keep her plaited bun in place while she slept. I can still picture her standing at the little sink washing dishes with her soft hands and perfect fingernails. Oh, and her love for ice cream! We’d eat ice cream twice a day at Nannie’s house!

I already miss her.

My Liberal Identity:

You are an Eco-Avenger, also known as an environmentalist or tree hugger. You believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools.

Until now.

I’m stressed.  I feel the pull of the deep blue ocean of anxiety rolling over me.  I can’t do anything productive.  I think about the issues that are stressing me out all the time.  I want it fixed.  NOW!  But I am stuck.  Stuck in Stress.  So yeah - I’m a crappy blogger right now.

So here’s the deal…effective mid-October, Chris’ long term disability kicks in, and his salary is significantly decreased.  What really bites about this is that the ONLY reason he’s STILL out of work is because the worker’s comp insurance company SUCKS and hasn’t gotten him a second opinion from a doctor in TWO MONTHS!  I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have him here, but we both want this crap resolved!  So that’s like two weeks away.  So in two weeks (two more paychecks), we will effectively be losing our mortgage payment each month.  Yeah.  Stress.

So I’m going to go back to work full time.  I’m pretty darn excited about the idea of that to be truthful.  Chris is going to be a stay-at-home-dad while I am the work-out-of-the-house-mom.  It’s a flip-flop, and it will take some adjustment.  But I feel OK about it.  I NEVER wanted to put the kids in a daycare setting - that’s just not our style; that’s what kept me from ever returning to work up until this point (well, that and the boob-monsters’ affinity for nursing).  But I’m confident that Chris will be an excellent SAHD.  And I think he’s looking forward to it, too.

But - the stress…finding a job.  My “deadline” is November 1, but even that will give us a period of time with half-pay.  It takes so stinkin’ long to get a job, though!  I’ve been applying and applying, and have found two “dream jobs” that I fantasize about these days.  Unfortunately both won’t even start interviewing until mid-October.  So in the meantime, I wait…and wait…and wait…  I don’t really want to teach right now - the flexibility is nil, and I think it will be harder with the adjustment of losing control.  But I *need* a job!

AND my grandmother isn’t doing well.  She had a pacemaker inserted last week an is having a hard time recovering.  She was sent home, but less than 12 hours later readmitted.  She was put on a ventilator for a period of time.  The ventilator was removed, and a few hours later she was reintubated.  She’s doing “OK” now, but not great.  We just have no idea…

That’s life.  That’s the scoop.  I promise to put up some new photos soon.   I did take one or two at the beach…I think…

Chris and I splurged on boogie boards during the end-of-summer sellout at the local surf shops.  We saddled the “greats” with the children while we played in the ocean.  The weater was wonderful, only raining one day.  It was just perfect!  I hated to come home.  Apparently Colin hated to come home, too, as he decided to scream and whine over half the trip back to Raleigh!  Fun times!

I’m embarrassed to say that I only took about 5 photographs, and none of them great.  I wish I had taken more, but somehow I never managed to have my camera at the right time.  One evening Colin and I took a long walk on the beach and discovered turtle-sitters sitting a next of eggs set to hatch at any time.  We got to see lots of photographs of mom turtle preparing her nest and laying her eggs.  It was extrordinary!  Two mornings during the week Colin and I arose before the sun to take morning walks in the sand.  Why didn’t I have my camera to witness my baby watching the sunrise?  Oh, well…

I can’t wait to go next year!

2> Children are like super heros - they move faster than the speed of light.

3> Menthol chest rub *may* cause seizures if too much is absorbed into the skin, but this generally happens only after vomiting, and all symptoms generally appear within 30 minutes.

4> Poison control doesn’t judge you for being a freaked out parent - you can call them about anything and they will calmly talk you down.

5> It’s better just to call poison control rather than wasting time surfing the Internet for the answer to your question.  See point 4.

And how do I know this?  Because in about 90 seconds today, the children got out of the bathtub, found the chest rub (they have colds, so I was planning on rubbing down their feet before bed) and rubbed themselves down - face, hands, tummy, EYES!  Screaming ensued.  Thank GOODNESS we had some Dawn dish soap left over from Delaney’s expedition with Vaseline (see below), which cut the petroleum jelly and helped us clean them off quickly!

After googling “chest rub” and seeing “seizure,” I called poison control.  Chris thought I was overreacting a bit, but I didn’t care!  And then I came to find out that this could be serious!  The potential amount of chest rub that they rubbed on their body could have been dangerous - luckily we washed them quickly and well!  Poor Delaney did have to suffer through substantial eye irrigation, but she was fine.

So now they are sleeping, without stuffy noses.  And we have a bathtub that seriously needs a bath.

All this excitement had us reminicing of the time that Delaney smeared an entire vat of Vaseline on her clothes, body, bed, sheets, pillow, walls, HAIR, face…everywhere.  It was March 27, 2007 and she was just under two and a half.  She was “napping” (ahem…resting…sort of…).  It was a DISASTER!  It took us ages to get it out of her hair.  We washed and washed and washed with every imaginable soap/clenser that was available and would not like harm her permenantly if it touched her skin.  We corn starched the heck out of her hair - here are some pics.

After combing.  All those tiny white dots in her hair are absorbed vaseline.  Unfortunately it didn’t comb out as well as I though it would.

And you know that post-hurricane beautiful weather? Not so much… Usually after a hurricane it’s only moderately hot with a gentle breeze and bright blue skies. But today it’s almost still and VERY hot and even more humid!

Next we have Hurricane Ike. I want it to hurry up and move out of here! We are supposed to go to the beach next week for the whole week, and we had to cut our trip short because of Hurricane Olivia (or was that two years ago? Whenever it was…). But this year Chris is going with us and we have this nice three bedroom condo thanks to my parents, and WE ARE GOING! I just want the ocean to be as calm and beautiful as it was last weekend.

Colin: No.

Delaney: Do you like football?

Colin: No.

Delaney: Do you like soccer?

Colin: No.

Delaney: Do you like hockey?

Colin: No.

Delaney: Do you like ladies?

Colin: Yes.

Delaney: Yay!  Colin likes ladies.

But the big adventure…the boat started sinking! We were about half way out of the creek toward the sound when Gumpa shouted, “We’re SINKING!” Apparently the boat mechanics forgot to put the plug back in, and we were taking on water pretty quickly. Luckily Gumpa had an extra plug, and saturated his shirt up to the underarm to plug the hole. It took another 10 or 15 minutes of hand pumping and bilge pumping to clear out the water. We had to make an emergency landing at someone’s pier, but we didn’t have get off the boat. But we were late to lunch.

Today we went to the ocean…the OCEAN! Everyone swam. Everyone. Colin, Delaney, Chris and I. It was so. much. fun!

There was a lot of this:

and this

and this

(ahem - note the sand-flinging above)

and this

Colin hasn’t been as keen about ocean swimming as Chris, Delaney and me, but after today, I don’t know that we’ll be able to keep him out! He spent a ton of time wading around IN the waves and “jumping” over incoming waves and floating around. The water was unbelievably clear - we could see the fish swimming just a few feet from our feet - and shallow; the waves were small and calm.

Here’s the little beach comber discovering shells

Spending time with Daddy was very special, though, even if he didn’t make any fish jump onto the hook.

Colin and I hung around the docks, doing our part to scare away all the fish. He did a great job at runing around, pounding the deck, and calling the fishies! In exhausting all my efforts to keep him still, quiet and away from Delaney, I allowed him to take some photos with the camera. This next shot is a “Colin’s-eye” view of the pond from the docks.

Overall we had a nice time. Chris ended up catching one fish - a little palm-sized bream, which pleased the kids. I think we were more disappointed at Delaney not catching any fish than she was - we really wanted to make her first fishing-on-her-own experience a special one.

Delaney has fished before…sort of. She was a bit more patient back then - at least as long as Daddy was singing and bouncing to her specifications.

This photo was taken in May, 2005 when she was 6 months old.

First stop: the ocean  Can’t you just tell how THRILLED we were to have our photo taken?  Thanks to some nice, older dad who took the camera out of my hands and said, “Let me take a photo of you together.”  I can’t believe the children weren’t two little blurs, running out of the frame to get to the jellyfish! and Sea Turtles! and, most importantly, THE DOLPHINS!

We checked out the taxidermy bear, the taxidermy birds, then turtles, the taxidermy foxes and the fake trees, then headed into the past millennium.

We found Acro, but Colin was a little freaked out.  Chris had just taken him to the museum a couple of weeks before, but he hadn’t quite reconciled the idea that that HUGE THING isn’t real!  Here they are, gallivanting around in the dino foot print.

What is Colin looking at so fearfully?  See for yourself…

Since we went to the museum, Delaney has asked several times to go “see the dinosaur with the boo boo.”  See, apparently when you make a life-sized sculpture of a dinosaur, the dinosaur must be injured, complete with missing skin and dripping blood.  I kid you not!  I wish I had a photo of the “boo boo” to show her when she starts obsessing.  Maybe next time…

Chris: pointing Right there.

Colin: Where’s my cuppidy?  [cup]

Chris: pointing again - right next to Colin Right there.

Colin: slides cup about six inches to the side

Colin: Where’s my cuppidy?

Chris: trying not to laugh Right there - where you put it.

Colin: Where?

Chris: picking up Colin’s cup and holding it up in the air Right here.

Colin: avoiding eye contact with his cup Where?

Chris:  holding the cup right in front of Colin’s face Right here.

Colin: doing his Ray Charles impression - closing his eyes and swaying his head from side to side Where.

At this point, both Chris and I cracked up!  We call this the “Where’s my Cuppidy Game.”

Maybe you just had to be there.

I suppose it could be much worse!

She did perfectly!  We did it at Claires, and the two salespeople were very wonderful.  They pierced them both at the same time, which was probably a good idea.  She was stunned, but she didn’t cry!  I thought she was going to, and I think she thought she was going to, too, but she didn’t!  Then when she saw them in her ears, she had this huge grin.  Later, as we were walking through the mall, she said, “I’m happy!  I got my ears shot!”  Every time we went into a store, she told the sales person, “I just got my ears shot” - it was hilarious!