Here a pig, there a pig

We got a second guinea pig.  I'm not sure what I was thinking, exactly, but I was the one who instigated getting another one.  I stalked the website for the humane society nearby and checked Craig's List several times a day looking for anyone who was looking for a new home for their furry friend.  I researched how to introduce the new one to the "old one" (our first is only 7 months).  I looked at larger cages and other guinea pig paraphernalia that would be necessary with two.  As Max stated, "We have everything we need for a second guinea pig.  Except the second guinea pig."

It took my two older kids a year to convince me to get Elizabeth, our first piggy.  I didn't want the mess.  I didn't want the stink.  I didn't want the responsibility, despite my daughter's promises that she would do all the work (yea, right).  But I finally gave in and we got little black baby guinea pig.  She's cute.  And as she got more comfortable around us, she really started to grow on me.  We fed her carrots and spinach.  I would throw in the core of the apples after my kids finished their snacks.  She makes this happy little chirp sound whenever she sees me (I feed her, so it's more about the food than about how wonderful I am). 

As more people found out that we had a guinea pig, I heard more and more that they are pack animals and they like to have a companion.  I blew this off for the first few months, but as my kids lost interest, I started thinking about what a sad little life Elizabeth was leading.  She's not like the dog or the cat who demand attention by nudging your hand with a wet nose or curling up in your lap when lounging on the couch.  If we don't take the initiative and get her out of her cage, Elizabeth is left to watch.  Alone. 

Our babysitter volunteered to bring up her two guinea pigs so we could see how Liz would get along with others of her kind.  The three of them huddled together in a box.  No fighting.  We fed them carrots.  Still no fighting.  Ok, I thought, I guess we're going to get another one. 

Once the decision was made I was hardcore searching for a cage-mate for Elizabeth.  The picture of Lucy on the humane society was not flattering.  I don't mean to tell them how to run things over there, but if you're trying to get people to adopt your animals, wouldn't you make an effort to take a cute picture?  It was of her back.  She looked like a furry, fat, egg.  I called about two other guinea pigs that were also shown (and had cute pictures posted, I might add) but both had been taken (point made, thank you).  I spent the next few days scouring Craig's List.  When we had decided to get Elizabeth I had turned to trusty Craig to find a cage.  I found one that seemed reasonably priced and called.  In addition to the cage, she was wondering if I wanted her guinea pig as well.  Sure, I said.  And Lizzy joined the family.  But this time around the only piggies I could find were male or currently lived in Orono. 

And then it dawned on me that while I was frantically searching for a second guinea pig, Lucy was waiting for a home.  She may not photograph well, but did that mean she didn't deserve a family?  I packed up the kids and drove to the humane society.  She was cute.  And liked to be held.  She even put up with Lily's patting (which is much more like hitting than petting).  We brought her home. 

Lucy and Elizabeth are currently neighbors, not cage-mates, but I am hoping that will change eventually.  Mainly because I'm already tired of cleaning out two cages.  We ordered a bigger cage, and we're giving them time to get to know each other.  When we let them out to spend time together they sometimes fight, but like siblings, in the next moment they are best friends, cuddled up together in their little cardboard box. 

I am a little afraid of being that family.  You know, the one with all the animals.  Who's house smells like a barn.  But so far I think I've managed to keep my house from smelling (I'm sure my mom will tell me otherwise, however) and I like that we have animals.  I like that my kids have creatures to whom they show compassion.  Sure, I end up cleaning up the cage(s), but the kids feed them and give them attention.  I like watching them care for something that's dependent on them for safety and kindness.  And I like that something around here makes a happy chirpy sound when I'm around. 

New Age

The kids left the television on earlier today and an infomercial started. Something to make me look better.  Younger. Cindy Crawford was selling it with Valerie Bertinelli.  I wasn't watching it.  Wasn't listening, really.  Until I heard someone say, "Who wants to look older?  Who wants crows feet and laugh lines?"

I know I may regret saying this one day, when I'm really old and my skin is sagging and full of soft, paper-like wrinkles, but I like looking older.  I like my crows feet.  When I look back at pictures of me from college, or even from my wedding, I have a baby face.  Smooth, yes, but there's something lacking.  Life is lacking.

I don't recognize myself in those pictures.  My face today shows a little wear and tear.  There are lines around my eyes and mouth.  My lips aren't as plump as they used to be.  My skin is blotchy, though nothing that a little foundation won't cover up.  But I'm not complaining.  When I see a picture of myself from last year, or last month, I like what I see (except my thighs, I would definitely change my thighs). I like that there's a glimmer of wisdom in my eyes, and that my mouth has learned to hold it's tongue.  I like that my skin has survived the acne of, not only my teenage years, but three pregnancies. 

A friend posted some pictures of me on Facebook a while back.  He had taken them when we were in college.  They were black and white shots of me looking off in the distance.  When I saw them all I could think was that my face looked round.  I don't ever remember having a round face.  I've been told me whole life that my face is oval.  But in those pictures it was round.  Maybe smooth equals round.  Now my face is thin.  And I like it thin.  I like the indents along my cheek bones when I take the time to put on some blush. I'm okay with the fact that my nose looks pointier now then it did fifteen years ago.  I'm not afraid of looking my age.  Like I said, I may regret saying this someday. 

I'm not saying I don't want to take care of myself or my skin.  I want to look healthy.  I want to look attractive.  But I don't want to look twenty-two.  Because I'm not.  I'm a mid-thirties mother of three.  And I am quite happy looking like just that.

But seriously, Valerie Bertanelli looks as young now as she did thirty years ago. Maybe that stuff really works!  

A Model Dentist

Dentists should not be good looking.  I have had male dentists before, but they were old.  Not that old men can't be good looking, but my dentist wasn't.  Plus, I was 16, so old was probably 40, which doesn't sound so old anymore.  Anyway, since college I have had a female dentist.  She is good looking, so I should refine my statement to read: Male dentists should not be good looking.

I suppose there's a bit more to it than that.  Until this morning I was able to brag about the fact that I have never had a cavity.  Fine, I had one in a baby tooth when I was a kid, but baby teeth don't count.  At my last cleaning, at the end of August, the hygienist informed me that my dentist was out of town.  Would it be okay if one of the other dentists at the practice checked my teeth?  Checking my teeth has always meant my dentist took her little pointy metal thing and poked at my teeth for a second, then sat back and said "You have beautiful teeth."  Any dentist could do that, right? 

In walks Dr. Peterson.  Dreamy, tall, perfectly coiffed bed-head hair Dr. Peterson.  Only he didn't say I  have beautiful teeth.  He said "You have a break in one of your teeth.  We need to get that filled."  He didn't even say "a break in one of your beautiful teeth." 

This morning I was in to have it filled.  Having never really experienced this before, here's what I thought would happen: I sit down in the chair and make a joke about not having my coffee yet this morning.  Dr. Peterson, chuckling, says, "We'll get you outta here and having a cup of coffee in no time."  He has me open up and then gently fills the break with whatever they use for that type of thing.  Then he says, "That's it.  Wait 20 minutes for that coffee, okay?  Oh, and you have beautiful teeth." 

That's not what happened. 

I sat down in the chair and made a joke about not having had my coffee yet this morning.  Dr. Peterson said "We'll get you outta here and having that coffee in no time."  He laid my chair back, I opened up and he sticks a needle in my gum.  A few minutes later he has both of his hands, a cheek shield and the hygienists fingers all crammed in my mouth.  Then he starts drilling.  DRILLING!  I've heard the sounds of drills in dentists offices and often thought how awful that must be.  And now I know, for an absolute fact, how awful it is.  I get that this is a normal, every day occurrence for a dentist.  But not for me.  For me this was scary and sad and a little bit humiliating, now that I don't have perfect teeth anymore. 

But as I lay there with my mouth stretched open and the horrible sound of drilling in my head, I suddenly realized I was much more concerned about the fact that I'm due for my lip wax, but haven't gotten it done yet.  I started regretting my decision to just throw on sweats.  I could have at least put on decent shoes. What if I have a booger in my nose?!  None of this would have mattered to me if it had been my normal dentist.    But because Dr. Peterson is soap-opera-star handsome, not only was I depressed that I now have a filling (I refuse to use the word cavity), but I had to feel self-conscious as well.

The whole thing seemed to last forever, but couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes.  My tooth feels funny and now that the Novocain is wearing off it's starting to hurt just a bit.  He told me not to eat anything hard for a while and not to drink my coffee on that side of my mouth.  He said he'd seen me at my next cleaning.  He didn't say that I have beautiful teeth. 

A Moment of Expense

Imagine coming home to a clean house.  You just walk in the door and the floor is mopped, the bathrooms are sparkling, the baked-on chili, which no amount of scrubbing seemed to loosen off the stove, is gone.  Of course it only lasts for a moment, just long enough for dirty shoes, a little boy's bad aim and boiled over mac'n cheese for lunch.  

Ugh, housework.  It's something that I hate.  And I'm not good at it.  So, I hired a cleaning service.  They only came once a month, it's not like I had a live-in maid, but it was definitely a big help.  I got to have a clean slate (pun intended) once a month, and my goal was to maintain it until they magically showed up again four weeks later.  But my cleaning fairies are no more.

I started thinking about how expensive that moment was.  That moment, post cleaning crew, just after I open the door to my house and just before the kids and dog catapult in behind me.  It's an amazing, fresh, sparkly moment.  And for a little while I was able to convince myself that it was worth any amount of money.  But now that I've mostly quit my job, and therefore mostly lost my paycheck, I had to reconsider how much that moment is actually worth. 

Tomorrow is the day the cleaners would have come.  They would have dusted my dining room hutch and Windexed all the mirrors.  They would have gotten my kitchen sink cleaner than I've ever been able to, almost as clean as my mom can get it.  They would have stacked all the kids' books in nice, neat piles and lined up the stuffed animals on Max's top bunk.  They would have.  If I hadn't called earlier this evening and told them not to come.  Again.  Ever. 

So, tomorrow I'm going to get up and dust.  I haven't really dusted since the cleaners were here a month ago.  That's first on my list.  And then I'm going to wipe down my kitchen appliances, taking great care with my coffee maker, of course.  Wiping down appliances was something I never really did before, not unless something was splattered on them during one of my baking fiascoes, but it was my favorite thing the cleaners did.  Made such a difference.  It really did.  And I'm going to do windows tomorrow, too. 

I have a strange kind of excitement about whipping this place into shape on my own.  I think I've been feeling kind of useless lately (a topic for another day) and I'm ready to create my to-do list while sipping coffee in the morning.  And I have always gotten some satisfaction from crossing items off as I get them done. I don't need that cleaning crew.  But I definitely need to tell Wade to splatter less of his chili on my stove. 

Love at First Grade

My daughter came home from school today and told me that she has a boyfriend.  She has been talking about this boy for a few weeks now, but it was just today that things started to get serious.  She's hoping to marry him someday, but she said it's too early to know that for sure.  I was happy to hear that, as she's six years old.

She has started to care about what she wears and talks about how she looks. Until very recently, Sophie asked me to pick out her clothes.  And if she picked them out herself she looked like some kind of deranged clown.  Competing patterns, glaring colors, a thick heavy sweater on a 95° day.  But even in her crazy get-ups, she is stunningly beautiful.  So put her in a cute pair of jeans and a fitted little tee and she's a six-year-old knockout. Who wouldn't have a crush on her!

Years ago, when Sophie was about nine months, we were in an ECFE class.  All of the moms sat in a circle and in the center was a roly poly mess of babies.  My only memory of that class is Sophie, who wasn't quite crawling yet, sitting amongst the chaos.  A bigger baby started crawling in Sophie's direction and I watched as Sophie's little face lit up.  She reached her arms out toward the approaching baby.  But that bully of a baby plowed right over her and kept on going.  The anger I felt toward that other baby frightened me.  Of course, rationally, I knew that that baby hadn't done anything wrong.  But the mama bear in me wanted to hunt that child down (she was lost in the gaggle of babies and I had no idea which one had wronged my Sophie) and set her straight. I sat there, in that circle of mothers, as Sophie picked herself up and happily continued to look around.

I think what amazes me most about my eldest daughter is her ability to bounce back.  I have always been so afraid that people won't like me, that I'll be rejected somehow, that I have a hard time putting myself out there in the first place.  But Soph isn't like that.  On top of being cute, Sophie fearlessly, and with great vigor, puts herself out there.  She will talk to anyone, about anything.  And she has no qualms about announcing her feelings openly.  She will declare to a little girl she has just met at the park, "You're my best friend."  She loves everyone, and she assumes that everyone will genuinely love her back.  I have a lot to learn from this little six-year-old. 

Still, I am at a loss as to how to handle this boyfriend business with Sophie.  I know first-graders are too young to know what is means to fall in love or get married, but I don't like the idea of her only focusing on one friend, boy or girl.  On the other hand, I don't want to squash her excitement and I don't want to instill in her the fear that I'm now trying to overcome.  Plus, I know, in her future, there will be broken hearts.  Just a word of advice to those boys: watch out for mama bear.

Washed Up

I have a very strict laundry schedule.  Mondays I wash sheets.  Tuesdays are towels.  Wednesdays I wash the kids' clothes and Thursday I wash my and Wade's.  I have it written out on a piece of paper... somewhere. And sometimes I even stick to the schedule.

On the weeks when I follow my strict laundry schedule, everything seems to go smoothly.  I don't feel overwhelmed by large monster-sized piles of clothes or bath towels.  I walk upstairs and it feels so big, so roomy, without having to step over the separated lights, darks and reds (my mom can at least be proud that she raised me well enough to do that) looming in the hallway.

It's not just the laundry.  When I stick to my laundry schedule, I tend to be better about vacuuming.  Most likely because I can see the carpet.  It's easier to get ready in the morning, both for me and for the kids.  Instead of trying to piece together an outfit, Sophie can pull her favorite shirt from her drawer and off she goes.  I don't have to try on all my clean pants to see what fits me, when the laundry is done I just have to grab my sweats and head to the bus stop.  My house feels more organized, and therefore my life feels more organized. 

One would think, then, that I would stay on top of the laundry to ensure that the rest of my life is running smoothly.  One would be wrong.  It starts on Mondays when I forget that I'm supposed to wash the sheets.  Or I remember that afternoon, when I know I won't have everything washed and dried before bedtime.  That means that I put the clean sheets on the beds, but the dirty ones are in a pile on the laundry room floor.  Tuesday, already feeling behind, I get to work washing the sheets, and pile the towels in the hallway upstairs.  Wednesday is when things really fall apart.  I start the morning sorting the kids' clothes, but rarely get to putting them in the wash before heading out for the day.  That means that Thursday I have sheets, towels, clothes for three kids and two adults and, lest we not forget, the cloth diapers, too boot.  Needless to say, I rarely get caught up.  And all too often, I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even get started.

It seems that for every good laundry week I have, there are two or three bad ones.  For some reason, I can think of three off hand, I just can't seem to get it together the way I imagine most people do.  I do have high expectations for myself.  My mom is the perfect homemaker.  She works very hard and it shows.  Her house is clean.  Yes yes, she no longer has kids at home, but it was clean even when the three of us did live in her home.  And I don't remember stepping over heaps of laundry when I was growing up either.  Although, I do remember one time when my mom had covered her bed in folded laundry, ready to be put away, and my brother and sister jumped on the bed, creating a huge laundry mess.  My mom sat on the edge of the bed and cried.

I think, all too often, I try to live up to her standards, and when it becomes clear that I can't, I just give up completely.  So I'm trying to set my own standards.  I'm working towards understanding what my limits are and reaching those, rather than always trying to go beyond and being disappointed.  I'm also working on remembering to wash the sheets on Monday, so that the rest of my week, in more ways than just laundry, gets off to the right start.

Today is Wednesday and I just heard the laundry buzzer.  I'm happy to report that I am currently washing the kids' clothes.  From last week.  Maybe next week will be the good laundry week. 

Hi Sister

Sometimes, around 3 or 4:00 in the afternoon, my sister and I have a cup of coffee together.  Over gmail chat. She's in New York City and I'm here in suburban world, so a computerized cup of coffee is the best we can do.  If things were different, that's to say that if she lived here, I would like to think that having a cup of coffee together would be a regular occurrence. 

Many years ago, when Molly and I were growing up, we shared a bedroom.  As the older sister, I hated it.  And loved it.  She was a fun little sister, cute, silly, gullible.  Once, when I was mad at her, I put tape across our room and told her she had the half with the window and I got the half with the door.  She stood at that tape-line and cried for over an hour.  When I was nine and she was five we moved to Bloomington, IL and into a house where all three of us kids had our own rooms.  For the first couple of weeks she slept in mine.

Molly is just enough younger than me to have been a true little sister.  The kind of little sister who yelled things like, "Sara loooooooves Joel." when the boy I liked happened to call.  She and my brother spent hours making silly movies in our basement and ganging up on me for siding with my parents when we were deciding where to go for dinner.  And then, one day, she grew up.  As we got older, and became closer, we started talking about boys, relationships, friends.  It took me a long time to take her advice seriously.  As she would be talking to me, and usually giving me very good, insightful input, all I could see was a little seven-year-old girl blabbing on and on about her made up language or singing one of her silly songs (pizza pizza patio / how do you know it?).

Seven years ago she moved from Chicago to the Big Apple.  Her life is so different than mine - acting, roommates (although now she lives on her own, which is equally different than my living situation), taking the subway, working in Manhattan.  She lives in Astoria.  The last time I was out to visit her I helped her move into her new place, a cute basement apartment with a sweet, if not over-protective, landlord. 

Eventually I was able to see that she's not a little girl.  But she is my sister.  She knows me better than just about anyone else on this planet.  She might be worlds away from husbands and changing poopy diapers, but she has helped me through trying times and laughed with me through the joyful ones.  She's been here for the birth of all three of my kids.  She calls me Suki (she's the only one who's allowed) and tells me when I have too much mascara on or when my butt looks really good in my jeans.

When I was pregnant with Lily, but didn't yet know it was Lily, I would think about having another boy or another girl.  I know that my brother has always wished that he had a brother, and there was a part of me that wanted that for Max.  But when it came down to it, I couldn't imagine Sophie not having a little sister.  Maybe someday, when Sophie and Lily are grown and living their lives on the same block or different continents, they will meet for coffee.  Or, at the very least, their holograms will (because it's the future...get it?).