awkwardly gaye

i attended a party last night. as usual, i settled into the corner behind the dessert table and chatted it up with the only other people who felt extremely uncomfortable at this gathering - the interior designer, donald, and his boyfriend. i forced donald to talk shop - since i need all the decorating insights i can get - and slowly drove his boyfriend away from the dessert corner. eventually a nice woman, whose name i didn't catch, walked up and talked with me and donald for a bit before jutting out her hand to donald and saying "i'm gaye." donald looked slightly taken aback and put out his hand and said "kay?" to which she replied "no, GAYE." and donald said "gaye, like with a g?" and she replied "yes, gaye." thank god for the mouthful of homemade, slightly too salty, peanut clusters i had or else i surely would have laughed out loud.

about a boy

lately every time my son mac leaves the house, it is with a handful of about 30 to 50 pages of paper, loosely stacked (and i use the term stacked loosely as well), a pen and a clipboard - which serves only as backing, with its clipping function unutilized. if he is on his way to or from school, then he is wearing his backpack, which is unzipped with papers spilling out of all gaping, flapping pockets. he may also be carrying up to 6 garfield "fat cat 3-packs" which are multivolume collections of the garfield comic strip. i say lately, but really, he has always been some version of this picture. when he was three, he wouldn't go anywhere without shaggy, scooby, velma, daphne and fred. they were small rubbery-like bendy figures just big enough that they wouldn't all fit in his hands. i used to have day- and nightmares about losing one of those meddling teenagers. after the scooby phase, i had to keep up with portions of a wooden track along with thomas, henry, gordon and james. if you aren't familiar with these characters, i envy you in a bitter, ugly kind of way.

the inner workings of his mind are a mystery to me (and apparently to everyone else). i don't understand how his shoes are always separated from their match. and i don't mean that they aren't side-by-side by the back door. i mean, one shoe might be in his bedroom and the other inside a publix bag in the backseat of the car. occasionally, i will discover that he is wearing his school clothes over his pajamas. if forced to provide an explanation, he will tell me that he was simply too busy to remove the pajamas.

he is an excellent negotiator. why just yesterday he said "mom, i will give you free beer if you let me on computer." his teacher, too, has learned to pick her battles. recently, after two weeks of constant badgering from mac, she allowed me to bring our dog, daize, to school to celebrate her first birthday. daize and i met the class on the playground and we all sang happy birthday to her while she cowered and peed a little.

nearly every other day, i discover collections of hundreds of tiny drawings or cut-outs of figures from pokemon, donkey kong, or kirby that remind me of the scene in a beautiful mind when jennifer connelly discovers russell crowe's crazy room. i have to laugh when i look at the accuracy of these tiny drawings - no detail omitted from princess peach's crown or dress - and remember therapists' concerns over his fine motor issues. he could diffuse a bomb with the precision he demonstrates with a wii-mote, but can't tie his shoes. i shouldn't say can't, because i suspect, that like removing the pajamas, he just doesn't have time for that.

a day in the life

after a long, boring, unstructured, campless, activity-free summer, the school year is finally upon us. and on day two of this new school year, i excitedly got up at 5:40am to prepare lunches and breakfasts and deliver the kids to their respective schools. after drop-off, i went home, tended to the dogs, paid some bills, checked facebook and looked at the clock - 2pm, time to collect them. after a 25 minute wait in carline, i picked up my son mac from elementary school. then we proceeded to the next carline to pick up my daughter amelia from middle school - another 25 minute wait. however, on the way to the second carline, we stopped by mcdonalds and picked up two oreo mcflurries because i knew we would be late getting home. when i had both kids in the car, we headed to the stables for horse riding lessons.

when we arrived, amelia hopped out and headed in the barn to ready her horse. mac tore through the barn making neighing sounds. really loud neighing sounds. i rounded him up and told him that he had to be quiet and stop running - he knows the rules. i made him bring his drawing that he had been working on so that he would keep quiet during her lesson, then we headed out to the lesson ring. mac sat at the picnic table and started to work on his drawing and i walked a few feet away and rehashed the day's lack of events with a friend on my cell phone. after a while, i went over to check the progress of the lesson and the drawing and i saw that mac had, with a pen, drawn pokemon and "diary of a wimpy kid" figures all over the picnic table - deep, carved figures, accurate and detailed. embarrassed and apologetic, i said to the teacher, "mac has drawn all over this table," her response to which was complete and awkward silence.

i gathered mac up and we had enough time to drive 10 or so miles to the next town and buy a sponge and some cleaner (along with some antacids for the heartburn i felt creeping into my left shoulderblade). we came back, cleaned the table - to the best of our ability - and then headed back to the barn to get amelia and go home. only amelia wasn't finished cleaning the horse and putting him away, which meant more time for mac to get into trouble. but before i had even processed this thought, i saw everyone looking down the hall of the barn towards the screeching noise. i couldn't see mac, but i knew it was him. i turned the corner, following the noise, and he was nowhere to be found. i searched each stall and outside the barn. as i began checking stalls for a second time, mac came barreling through the barn and ran right through the horse accupuncture station, where wires attached to the horse's back run from the horse to a small device of some sort. the accupuncturist, along with the stable manager shot me looks that could have killed, which at this point would have been a pleasant escape for me. i yelled at mac and sent him to the car. i checked amelia's progress then went back to the car to hide out for the remainder of the lesson and maybe yell at mac a little more, but then i saw that he was walking around in the front seat. i opened the passenger door to find that he had spilled the melted oreo mcflurry all over the front seat, covering my sunglasses, two books, some papers, and my ipod shuffle and ear phones.

i was barely holding it together at this point, but managed to get amelia in the car, mac back in his carseat and we drove home. in silence. when we got home, mac climbed over amelia's seat to get out of the car and amazingly managed to both knock over amelia's cup of water and spill the contents of his backpack, which was unzipped. when we finally all made it inside the house and started the homework process, i checked my phone and had a text from a friend saying "hope you are having an awesome day! how great is it having the kids back in school?!!"

club level

i recently had the opportunity to do something i have never done - i stayed on the club level at the ritz carlton. for those of you that have never experienced club level, i thought i would provide a short summary of what i learned there. and for those of you who frequent the club level at the ritz carlton, are we friends? because you sound like an asshole.

the first thing i learned is that club level people are better than you. it is obvious who is and who is not accustomed to the club level experience. this became clear to me when i ventured to the dessert bar in the club level lounge. as i lifted lids and meekly peered underneath for something i recognized, a very distinguished-looking man in his 50s asked if i was there "with the conference" - as in, "clearly you are not the sort who can afford a club level room at the ritz on your own." i indicated that i was indeed with the conference and he nodded and resumed conversation with his wife whose accent could only be described as being from somewhere better, wealthier than wherever you are from.

second, i learned that heineken tastes like crap even at the club level, confirming everyone's suspicion that wealthy people are not beer-drinkers.

the third thing i learned is that ritz carlton club level children are the worst kind. these matching-pajama-and-slipper-clad kids drinking hot cocoa and snacking on gourmet rice krispie treats are better than you and they don't even know it. i don't know why it makes it worse that they don't know it - but somehow, it does. their level of comfort in the club level lounge is disturbing, so much so that i had to take my heineken and my fancy rice krispie treat back to my room where i propped myself on layers of down to watch back-to-back episodes of law & order.

the last thing i learned that i will share with you is that apparently yippy little dogs are allowed on the club level. club level yippy dogs are only slightly less annoying than club level children.

i miss the old days, a simpler time when people like me couldn't afford to stay at the ritz carlton. when there was no need for club level, because the entire hotel was club level. when it was unnecessary to offer beer because no one low-brow enough to drink it was there. a time when there was no giant jar of cookies or coloring book in the lounge for the precious little ones because the precious little ones, like the family pet, were not welcome at the ritz carlton.

gas and vomit and other reasons to not cook

sunday, my husband steve and i were both in kitchen, oddly enough, throwing together a spaghetti dinner at the gas cooktop when i noticed the strong odor of gas. i didn't think much about it since we did have one of the eyes on. but then later, i noticed the smell again and saw that one of the burners was turned to low, was not in use and had no flame. i turned it off. i came back about an hour later and saw that the burner right beside the one that had been on, was now turned to low, was not in use and had no flame. i turned it off. then i went outside and watered my withering plants that i stupidly planted during a heat wave. it took probably an hour before i was satisfied that everything was either dead or drenched. when i went back in the house, the smell of gas was unmistakeable. when i called the company that had delivered gas to us in the past, i was told the number was not valid. so i called georgia natural gas, even though i knew i was not a customer, in the hope that they could tell me who to call. well, they did even better - they told me they were sending someone to our house to check it out. in the meantime, they asked us to wait outside and to not turn on or off any electrical appliances. they also asked for my cell number - not my home - presumably because the home phone would likely be destroyed in the explosion. so we waited outside, for over an hour. we played with the dogs for a while and then my son mac decided he would kill time by spinning violently around the yard. not surprisingly, he felt sick after that and because it was still over 90 degrees out, despite being nearly 10pm, steve thought he might be more comfortable in the car with some air conditioning. and this seemed to be a great idea, right up until the point where mac vomited spaghetti all over the back seat. in the meantime, the gas guy arrived (from a not-so-nearby town, he pointed out) and was apparently not excited to be at our house. he was even less excited when he informed us that we weren't on natural gas, we had LP gas. he said this as if he were explaining the difference between the floor and the ceiling. he also had detected no gas in our house - at all. and so, we thanked him, he grumbled and then drove away. and so we took our dogs, our daughter and our vomited-covered son back inside and called it a night. and i think we all learned a valuable lesson. i learned that cooking is dangerous and should be avoided and mac learned that violent spinning should only be done at a friend's house.

perfectly polished

recently an acquaintance gave me a brochure for an extra curricular activity for my children. this may sound harmless, perhaps even thoughtful, until i tell you that the brochure was for an etiquette class called "perfectly polished." i tried not to take this personally - as a suggestion that my children needed an etiquette class - although admittedly, they are neither perfect nor polished in any sense of the words.

but i decided i would look online anyway and see what this class was all about. on the home page, i saw that the classes included social education, covering topics like handshakes, table and telephone manners, and a cotillion class concentrating on host/hostess duties, napkins, the dos and donts of dining as well as several dance classes instructing kids on the fox trot, waltz and shag. a lot of words like "grace," "foundation for success," "poise," and "higher standards" were thrown about to the point of making me uncomfortable. it was then that i realized that not only did my children not know the proper use of utensils at a formal 13-piece dinner setting or the caribbean hustle, but i didn't either. how had i made it this far in life and how dare i send my kids off in the world to suffer the same fate - or worse, subject those of higher standards to my unsophisticated clan?

not too long ago, i saw the acquaintance's daughter and asked her how the class was going and she replied with something like "really well, thank you for asking." of course, i couldn't hear her very well because my daughter was screaming at her brother to stop making farting noises.

straw man

i live in the south where pine straw is used to fill flower beds. our beds were in need of filling and i found a guy who would deliver and lay the straw in my yard. i watch a lot of law and order svu, so i was pretty sure he was coming over under the pretense of delivering and laying pine straw, but with a well thought out plan to rape/torture/murder me and deposit my lifeless and potentially dismembered body in a ravine only to be discovered days later by an unsuspecting couple searching for the cell phone that the wife had tossed out the window of their car during an argument. but as it turned out, he came over to torture me in a different way - by talking to me about long-needle pine straw. here is an excerpt from that conversation (and i use the term "conversation" loosely):

straw man: this here's my dad. he works with me. we got long-needle pine straw. lot of places'll tell you they got long-needle pine straw but it ain't. they'll say it's long-needle, but it ain't long-needle. see this here - this is long-needle. see how long them needles are. an look, it bends first and then it breaks, that's long needle. it holds up a lot longer than straw that ain't long needle. and i got long-needle. now i got a hundred bales of it that i bought this morning for $3.50 a bale and i charge you $4 a bale. that's 50 cents a bale i make. cause i work for sweat. i'm out here working. you can ask my daddy [points at dad, who is actually laying pine straw]. he knows i'm honest with my work cause if i wat'n, i'd have to answer to him. now i'm going to have enough of this long-needle to do those two beds right there and those are the two you want me to do, right? cause if i have any left, i will do that one right there too but i'm gon do these two right here first to start with because those are the ones you told me that you wanted done first and then if i have any left over, i will do that one. now i can do more cause i got a hundred bales and it's all long-needle. an it's hard to find the long-needle. lot a places will say it's long needle.....

me: well it looks great. thank you.

straw man: that's cause the long needle just has a better color. now my brother does the same thing i do [and i am thinking, talks too much? repeats himself?]. he sells pine straw and he lays and rolls it just like i do. and my dad, he does masonry but he's helping me today. he's laying it around that bed now. the long-needle just looks better. and it lasts about 6 months. the other stuff falls apart and breaks up a lot sooner than that. but the long-needle is hard to find. i was excited when i found that truck this morning. i paid $3.50 a bale for it. but he only had a hundred bales. it's hard to find.

i nodded along, with the straw man still talking. and walked backwards for several steps while he continued to talk. and then i just turned away from him and walked into my house. within minutes, he was at the door asking if his dad could have some water - i am sure that having done most of the work himself, he was indeed thirsty. i obliged and as i gave the water to the straw man to give to his father, he started the entire conversation again. eventually, the straw man and his quiet, hard-working, hydrated dad packed up their things and left. finally, i was free to go outside and admire my long-needle pine straw. and i do think it looks nice. it's not surprising that it is so hard to find, because it looks nice. and it cost me $4 a bale. and i like it. because it's long-needle.

online rejection

because i am new in my town and through a series of unfortunate events ended up homeschooling my son, i haven't made a lot of friends. well, i tell myself those are the reasons for my lack of friends. and as a pathetic attempt to remedy this, i decided to join an online but local homeschooling group. as i perused the posts from other women in my area unfortunate enough to homeschool, i realized why i have such difficulty finding friends. i had ruled out several of the group members as potential friends based solely on their children's names. i know, this seems harsh. but seriously, i don't see my son mac getting together to obsess over video games with aspen and cedar. similarly, i ruled out several members based solely on their usernames, including cooksfromscratch, myhighercalling, birthchic (this one just grossed me out a little) and faith41jesus. i rejected another member because she was selling a book called "baking with whole grains," which she described as emphasizing "a biblical creation perspective." seriously? a book on baking with whole grains managed to squeeze in some biblical creation? i almost bought the book from her just to see how one might accomplish such a daunting writing task. but this is the problem with trying to find friends online - you don't see the whole package. in person, despite baking with whole grains, this person may actually dislike her kids, drink too much, and possess all of the other qualities i am looking for in a friend. i mean, afterall, she is selling the book. or maybe she bought the book to torture her children by feeding them whole grains and simultaneously emphasizing biblical creation. or maybe the book was a gift from a friend she met online, perhaps faith41jesus. so as i went down the list of group members, rejecting them one-by-one for their virtual flaws, i realized, i need to get out more. i am much more confident in my ability to reject people in person.

foreign distractions

today i decided to call myself a writer. and not just because i got this cool leather-bound journal that makes me look like a writer. i decided to call myself a writer because i have officially set myself up for rejection by a real literary agent. i emailed this agent that recently spoke at a writers conference in my area. i guess though if i were a real writer, i would have attended the conference. and if i were a real writer, i wouldn't be sitting here at starbucks, trying to write in my new fancy journal but completely distracted by the people beside me speaking a foreign language. sadly, i am not worldly enough to recognize the language - perhaps french? and really, they aren't bad looking people. but i believe that speaking another language, or speaking english with a heavy accent of almost any kind, automatically makes you more attractive. for instance, we recently went skiing and my son's ski instructor was very nice and not unattractive, although he did have a substantial gap between his front teeth. when he spoke, however, it was with a fantastic british accent. it occurred to me then that with an accent, you really can get away with more physical flaws than you can without an accent. had andy, the gap-toothed instructor, been from south georgia, he would have been nothing short of hideous. okay, that may be an exaggeration but you get my point - that if you are unattractive, you should move to another country where you might be more appreciated. and speaking of appreciated, i need to go and check my email for rejection, something that if i am going to be a real writer, i should get used to.

green with irritation

i went for a run the other day in my new town. the run ended in 5-points, an area of town that thinks a lot of itself. because there is an earth fare (over-priced specialty grocery store) in 5-points, i decided on the spur of the moment to pick up my kids' organic gummy vitamins. but on the way to the vitamins, i picked up some fancy cheese, some special crackers, a bottled water (because i was thirsty) and a few other items. well, because it was on the spur of the moment, i did not bring my own grocery bags despite that i am an avid recycler and reuser - and by avid, i mean obsessive. so i put my items on the belt and the cashier rang them up and pushed them on down the line. i swiped my card and the transaction was complete. only my groceries were still sitting there on the giant silver tray. the tray that up to this point i had considered to be a holding area until the cashier or i placed the grocery items into a receptacle that i would then transport to my vehicle. however, no such receptacle presented itself. and the cashier looked at me and i at him until finally, the silence was broken by his statement that i could pay five cents for a bag or i could carry my groceries out without one. trying to explain to him that i usually brought bags was like trying to explain to the guy at the liquor store that all three six-packs were not for me. futile. we ended up compromising - apparently the cashier could provide me with a box to carry my purchased items in and then we would be reusing a box and the store would not charge me for that. so i took my box of organic and special things to my car and everyone was happy. well, happy might be an overstatement.

college kids

my husband steve and i had a date tonight. our plan was to go downtown and have dinner and then go to this bar and see a band that we have been wanting to see. unfortunately though, steve was on call for our date. we left our house at 6:30 and in the 15-minute drive to downtown athens, his phone rang no less than seven times. and as it turns out, someone had broken or severed or dislocated something or other and he had to go in and deal with it. rather than wait at his office, i decided i could better spend my time downtown. so he dropped me off.

spring break is over and the college kids are in abundance at all of the downtown bars at 7pm on a friday night. i stopped by the globe, a bar that has been on the corner of clayton and lumpkin for a million years and has beers from around the world. i had a local pale ale. as a side note, i was sitting in front of a sign that said (and i am quoting exactly) "we go to jail if we fail to check your ID. please have IDs ready when ordering alcohol." i wasn't carded. so i finished my ale and i headed over to the restaurant where we were planning to eat dinner, the last resort. i managed to secure a spot at the bar alone and immediately thereafter, a swarm of college girls descended on the bar, completely surrounding me. i didn't intend to eavesdrop, but i couldn't help myself, i was alone at the bar, surrounded by beautiful young girls chattering away - about nothing. the conversations were so stupid and meaningless that it made me quickly try to remember whether i, too, had had such stupid and meaningless conversations at bars while seated beside real people, desperate for a night out away from their children. i decided that my conversations may have only been slightly more meaningful. but it made me realize that i didn't want to be that young and stupid again. and that it is totally overrated. i mean really, when you take away the freedom, the friends and parties, the total lack of responsibility, the tighter, firmer skin, the perkier breasts, the thicker hair, the better attitudes, the ability to drink more and stay out later, the flat stomach and the ability to recover from a hangover by having a mcdonald's cheeseburger and a large coke, there really wasn't anything that special about it.

eventually steve arrived and after checking with the hostess and realizing we still had an hour and a half wait for our table and a babysitter on the clock, we decided to head on home. we picked up some pizza on the way and headed back to our more responsible and important lives.

2009, what a year!

Dear friends and family, I can't believe another year has passed us by. And what a year 2009 was. There is so much to tell. I will start with Steve - not only is his medical practice flourishing because he is a skilled and highly-regarded surgeon, he is also a wonderful father finding the time to coach both Mac's pole vaulting and travel soccer teams and work with Amelia on her pageant training. And can you believe, he still managed to hand-dig a pool in our back yard? He carved the stones for the decking himself from a boulder we found on our 17-acre estate. As you can see from the pictures, he is quite the mason.

I wish I could say that we had enjoyed the pool more, but between Amelia's horse shows (12 first place ribbons this year!) and Mac's travel soccer (he's team captain, again), they rarely have time for swimming, aside from the weekly meets at the country club.

And speaking of Amelia, puberty has finally set in and let me say, wow! We are going to have ourselves one rocking-hot teenager living under our roof soon. What a beauty! She is still making straight As at the Academy and when she isn't showing horses, she is doing community service as part of her duties as Miss Northeast-of-Atlanta PreTeen. We are very proud of her and her coach assures us she has a very promising future in pageanting.

Mac is still homeschooling until we can find a school that can accommodate his intelligence. After blowing the Mensa test out of the water (we don't know where he gets it!), he was able to refocus his energy and efforts on pole-vaulting and has developed quite a reputation in the North and Middle Georgia pole-vaulting community.

When I am not in the H3(my mobile office!), driving the kids from place to place, I like to spend time decorating - let's face it, 8300sq feet takes a lot of planning - not to mention fabric! I am still running regularly and am actually running (the Sante Fe Jingle Marathon!) while typing this up. So as you might guess, I stay pretty busy too.

I hope this letter finds you well and that your 2010 is as good as ours will be.
Have a blessed holiday season.
Nicole, Steve, Amelia & Mac