August 7, 2012

• Rambling Away

  I feel a ramble coming on – may I ramble? Why, thank you – I think I will.

  This week, I have some time to myself. Our son is away with some neighbors and our daughter has a camp.

  I’m missing the boy. We said goodbye to him on Sunday morning, and I’ll go pick him up on Thursday. He’s having a blast, and I am sure enjoying my quiet time, but I miss the little bugger. He’s been calling home the last two nights, under the direction of my friend, who has graciously hosted him on his extended beach vacation. He definitely needs some work on his phone skills. Lots of “yes” and “no” and “uh huh,” but not much detail. I did think it very cute, though, that he asked to speak to his sister both nights. And then proceeded to hang up on her both times, but it wasn’t on purpose. It’s the phone skills. They are lacking.

  After my morning workout today (rockin’ my ready-for-the-Olympics backstroke, natch), I took a shower and got dressed to go run a few errands and cruise the mall. Just because I could. But then I walked past the kids’ playroom, which I’ve been meaning to organize…..

  Next thing I knew, I was head first in our son’s closet in my skirt, tossing CRAP over my shoulder into piles (trash, donate, keep), sweating my freshly showered butt off, and feeling a little giddy about the ability to go through his stuff while he was 3 hours away. Why does organizing the playroom involve our son’s closet? HA! If you don’t know the answer to that question, then clearly you are not a mom.

  It had the potential to become one of those marathon closet cleaning/room reorganizing time suck marathons, but I managed to keep it under control because I was hungry for lunch. So I took down the wire cubey things from the playroom, put them back together in the boy’s closet, organized the major chaos in said closet, and donated or tossed SO MUCH STUFF. Mostly his, but some of hers…..and it is GONE folks. No getting it back.

  Our daughter, who is very observant and detail oriented, did not even notice that the wire cubey things were gone from the playroom, and therefore didn’t think to ask where her old toys had gone. Brilliant. I should have done that months ago.

  Since her brother is gone, our daughter has been getting our undivided attention. The first night, she got to choose the dinner spot. (Johnny Rockets, where she loves the grilled cheese sandwich.) Last night, we stayed in and had salmon, but told her we could watch a movie. She really wanted to watch something PG-13, because she’s almost 11 and we have let her see a few carefully selected PG-13 flicks in the past, without her brother.

  She was hoping for Hunger Games, but it’s not out on DVD yet. She scanned the On Demand lists and we narrowed it down to two Richard Dreyfuss movies. (Weird, I know.) It was either “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or “Krippendorf’s Tribe.” The Mr. and I remembered the former fondly, but neither had seen the latter. She chose the latter, which is about a college anthropology professor (Dreyfuss) who ends up pretending to have found a lost indigenous tribe in Africa. He films his family members, and in one very un-PG scene, his female colleague (Jenna Elfman), and manages to convince the world that they are members of this elusive tribe. It had some funny parts, and Lily Tomlin with a monkey on her shoulder, but it also had some racy stuff. In one scene, he showed an auditorium full of people a tribal artifact that he declared to be a “primitive dildo.” The Mr. and I nearly spit out our salmon on that one. I ended up having to fast forward through the sex-with-the-colleague section. Oy vey – when did Richard Dreyfuss movies get so sexy?!? Good thing the boy is coming home and we’ll go back to PG movies!

  So during the less sexy parts of Krippendorf’s Tribe (from 1998, I believe), the sending and receiving of faxes play a part in the plot. The Mr. and I kind of glanced at each other with that, “ah, the olden days,” kind of a look. And then our daughter said, “Wow. Faxing is so cool. It’s way cooler than texting.” We laughed and laughed, and she couldn’t understand why. Of course, this is our daughter who has an antique typewriter in her room, so we shouldn’t be surprised at her nostalgia for old communication devices, I suppose.

  Well, on that note. I’m outta here. Ramble over.

   

   

  • 9:26 pm
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