We All Kept Our Dignity This Time

My mother-in-law Betty and I went to Ikea today. She is visiting for a couple of days, and we were drinking coffee in my sunroom this morning when she espied a little footed bowl in an issue of Country Living. We had just gotten Hank off to school, so we agreed we should go down there in search of this footed bowl that would probably solve all our problems and make us better people. The desert would bloom if we only had this footed bowl.

So we rolled down there.  Then we each had the meatball plate.  Then I tweeted that we were at Ikea because I am all about the examined life.  @SuburbanHaiku responded with her usual pith:

Ikea field trip
Overwhelmed! I always choke.
I'll just have meatballs.

Yes, exactly. But Betty and I ate our meatballs.  I was feeling good. I was feeling the pleasure known only by a woman in the middle of the morning while her children are in school, miles away.  A woman wearing tall wooden clogs and comfortable jeans. I was ready to put the hurt on some Ikea. But then I got serious. "Listen," I said. "No matter what I say to you later, no matter what you hear, don't let me buy pillows or textiles.  No matter how I beg. I need you to be firm."  Betty promised to throw her body between me and the Annamoa fabric-by-the-yard.  I still haven't done anything with the two yards I bought the last time, the time my sister threatened to punch a guy.

In the end I kept myself pretty well in hand. There was one close moment, down in the downstairs section where they have all the dishes.  That's where I can sometimes just lose my shit.  I don't need a thing in there, but when faced with decorative trays in graphic patterns or whimsical highball glasses, I kind of black out and start buying presents for people I don't even like. I'm highly aware that this is a trouble spot. So I confined myself to taking a picture.

See? Nothing I couldn't resist, even if they did have the most adorable tablecloths and dishes to match that blue floral pattern. I just remembered my mantra: I already have nice things. I already have nice things. I already have nice things?

In the end, I kept myself in hand. I bought:

roll of easel paper
taper candles in celery green
tealight candles
scissors
CF lightbulbs
batteries
doormat to replace the one the dog barfed on
a small sheepskin

I know, BORING. But I already have nice things. I already have nice things.

Betty bought tab-top curtains, a small sheepskin, scissors, and casual silverware. She said, "I'm tired of polishing my silver all the time."  I was just impressed that she polishes her silver. I never do that because I am slatternly.  I tell myself it's a beautiful patina.

We couldn't find that footed bowl anywhere. And we didn't even get any cinnamon rolls.  I already have nice calories.  I already have nice calories.

Then we headed back north. I like to just pop in to Ikea from time to time and see what is going on in there. It was a nice morning for us.

Do you have a shopping mantra? If so, tell me what it is and I'll put it in my rotation. xoxo-B

I'm Back at It, Baby

This morning I played in my first ever tennis match.  This is huge for me.

Despite being generally active (and liking the outdoors), I've never been what you would call athletic. And team sports? My sister can corroborate: the Odom girls do not do team sports. Too much chance of jamming a finger or somebody ending up crying. Yes, there are moments from my brief childhood church softball career that still haunt me.  Like the time I was in the outfield and managed to catch a fly ball.  I was so surprised and thrilled that I just stood out there doing a special little dance instead of throwing to second base.  It was awkward.  Watching adults try to restrain themselves from pointing out my mistakes was not my idea of a good time.  Better to go inside and play Trivial Pursuit.

Yet last winter, I let Normal Neighbor talk me into getting on a beginners' tennis team she was starting.  During my first team practice, I pulled a muscle in my butt.  I felt like such a jock!  Glutes!  GLOOTS!  I practiced for several weeks before getting sidetracked by the whole breast cancer shebang.  I had to quit before I ever got to play.

But spring doubles has started back up, and we got together for practice yesterday and had our first match today. Boy did I miss Normal Neighbor at the first practice. She was our team captain before she had to quit and deal with her own cancer stuff, and I needed her out there to put up with my shaky serve and gossip during water breaks.

And today we had our first match.  I was put in line 5, which means I'm mathematically the worst player on the team. My partner was very sweet, though, and our opponents, Misty and Christy (no joke) were also newbies.

Y'all, it was really fun.  We lost, but I had some good moments, I really did.  I'm not uniformly bad in all areas.  I think the 30 Day Shred really helped me. I ran around and didn't get tired.

One especially super awesome moment was when I had to yell out to our team captain, across another court, "HEY WENDY, IS IT OKAY IF I SERVE UNDERHAND? THAT'S LEGAL, RIGHT?"  Everyone from the other team paused and looked over to see the Venus Williams in their midst.

Then I served underhanded, the ball was in, and we played the point.  I heard my name being called.  I turned back to see the captain and my other teammates shaking their heads.  "No, Becky," they called out. "You can't bounce it for a serve."  Oops.

You see, at an earlier point in my life that might have been embarrassing.  But somehow my self-image is unassailable by that kind of thing. We all laughed.  

Live and/or learn.  

It was really fun. I was happy just to play and I can't wait to get better.  Another plus is that, in this league, there is major food after the match.  I already hold a Grand Slam title in women's snacking and I will be defending it vigorously.

One Year Out

Wednesday was one year from when I got diagnosed with breast cancer.  I noted it, and I'm glad to have put it a whole year behind me, but I don't really want to see that date etched in marble.  It's funny, I can think about and remember my surgery, which was March 30, or the weeks and months of chemo, or having 28 days of radiation treatments, without any pain.  By the time we were doing those things, we were in a state of purposeful action. I don't feel bad thinking of those times. I even feel proud. After all, everything went well, and a lot of good things happened too. Like, I don't think about chemo without remembering what a great summer we had--so many fun mountain weekends and so many tubing trips down the river--but when I think about the shock and newness of that diagnosis, and the time leading up to my surgery, where every day lasted a week, I shrink up a little inside.

To celebrate (?) I had to go down to the surgeon's office yesterday for a mammogram. I knew she wanted to see me in March, so like a good girl, I scheduled the appointment. As soon as I'd done it, I felt fear. I knew everything would be fine, but I just didn't want to go.  That night I had this conversation with Matt.  I paraphrase:

Me: Why does everything suck so much?

Matt: Um, which things honey? Because actually everything is awesome.

Me: I don't know. Things.

Matt:  This is about having to go get a mammogram.

Me: Yes. I guess that's what is sucking. I'm cool with everything else.

So it had me in a funk. But guess what? I went and it was fine.  When you're having a mammogram of only one side, it doesn't take as long. Bonus.  And the radiologist read it right there and then the nurse came and told me it was all clear.  Then she said the radiologist wanted to meet me.  I was like, "Of course he does! Having seen that, come on!"  But it was a chick and she was very sweet. Then I was on my way, relieved.

I'm not really worried about the other breast anyway.  I'm worried about having a metastatic recurrence somewhere else in my body.  I say I'm "worried," but it's not that I'm losing sleep. More that this possibility, sometimes a dread, is now part of my new normal mental landscape.

I have several magical beliefs, though, about keeping the cancer from coming back that I'm acting on:

1) I feel that if I exercise regularly, the cancer won't come back.
2) I feel that if I eat good whole foods, the cancer won't come back.

Those are the two main ones.  Then we get into a still more magical realm.  I have lots of beliefs about things like green tea, a robust social network, cabbage, and having a grateful heart that I will not inflict upon you right now, but we can talk about it if you want to.

One that might interest you is my now almost paranoid avoidance of BPA.  You know, the stuff that is everywhere in plastics and can linings? Okay, avoiding it in cans is not paranoid, it's just good sense.  We don't eat anything out of cans anymore unless I know the canning process to be BPA-free (very few of them are). But lately I've been reading about how BPA is present in much greater amounts on cash register receipts.  The thermal printing process that a lot of stores use has a powdered form of BPA coating the paper, activating the ink.  Have we gone crazy that we are putting this stuff everywhere?

Anyway, so when the cashier says, "Would you like your receipt?" I say no thanks. And if they automatically hand it to me with my change or whatever?

I drop it on the floor.  Yes.

I just haven't figured out a way to say, "You know, no thanks, that is covered with a toxic endocrine disruptor and I don't want to touch it, but you hang on to it."  So I just let it flutter to the floor.

Now you know everything, reader.  At the beginning of this post you were probably all on my side and now you think I'm a litterbug.  I have some good qualities though. I hope you'll stick around for another year at least.

Teacher Appreciation Week: Mo' Appreciatin'

Sunday night, after the kids were in bed, I was mentally surveying the week to come. Imagine an old-time riverboat captain, very grizzled, dueling pistol tucked into his belt, studying the river ahead of him for logs, outlying shoals, or maybe one of those little Huck Finn-type rafts. I am like that Captain. So I was scanning the week in my mind, wondering what needed navigating around and what hazards lay hidden, waiting to swamp us.

Do you get cheery like that on Sunday night?

Then I saw it: Great Caesar's Ghost, Teacher Appreciation Week. Helm hard alee! BACKPADDLE!!!

I have held forth in this space before about the phenomenon of the suburban Teacher Appreciation Week and how it offers unparalleled opportunities for moms to outdo each other while adding extra items to your domestic to-do list, every single day, for a week. Sure, I'd gotten about twenty emails from the room mom about this event, but somehow, when I saw Teacher Appreciation Week looming up out of the fog, it gave me a nasty turn.

My first fearful thought was that Monday was Handmade Card Day.  Laura had gone to bed, so I was already planning to lay out the card-making supplies and have her tackle it before getting on the school bus. Then I double checked and breathed a huge sigh of relief: Flower Day.

"I hope she likes daffodils," I thought.

I went out into the dark and cut the only two daffodils I'd managed to protect from Hank's predations.  (You know the adorable way that little children bring you a flower that they've torn from the stem about two inches below the bloom? Let's just say I have lots of bud vases.) I bundled them up with the old wet-paper-towel-in-a-sandwich-baggie trick and called it a night.

There are other goodies for each day of the week, and every morning a different mom is bringing the teacher an iced, nonfat, no-whip chai latte.  I am not one of those moms.  I guess I have given myself a pass this year.

Today was handmade card day, and Laura wrote this note:

She thanks her teacher for being "good-natured and respectful."  I don't know what to make of that.

She also wrote a poem which I will not inflict on you, as asking other people to appreciate your child's poetical offerings is like wanting them to listen to the dream you had last night. Suffice it to say that it included the lines:

In Autumn, leaves fall like colorful tears,
Color strikes the world like a prodigious ray,
The outdoor design is different each day. 

Hmm, if that don't make her feel appreciated, then I don't know what will?  But just in case, I'm sending in a gift card for Ann Taylor.

Improvisation

Last week when Matt was preparing to go to his Granddad in Little Rock, I packed a bag for him.  I do this sometimes to ensure that he arrives at his destination with more than boardgames and socks that were packed to cushion the boardgames. I only packed casual clothes, though, so when he was leaving, he got his suit out of the closet and checked to be sure he had tie, belt, etc.

A couple days later, I was in our closet getting my own things ready, when I happened to look over at Matt's side, where I espied his suit pants.  I thought, "Hmm, I wonder what pants Matt took with him?" He is a one blue suit and one tuxedo guy, so there were not lots of options. I grabbed the pants and took them along. 

Then we were in Little Rock, in our hotel room, getting dressed to go to Granddad's funeral.  The shirt he'd brought was a new one.  After taking the pins out, he said, "Should we iron this, or should I just keep my jacket on?"  I love that question.  And his liberal use of the word "we."  So he whipped the iron out and I did a quick but okay job.  I just hit the fold lines, you know.

Then he put it on and said, "Uh oh, this is a tuxedo shirt."  It had French cuffs and he hadn't brought any cufflinks. I could not think of anything to substitute for those, so I invoked Tim Gunn and told him to put on his jacket and make it work.

In the lobby, I asked his dapper cousin, Michael, if he had any cuff links. I mean, Michael had tied his own bowtie that morning. He looked like the guy to ask.  He had no cuff links, but he told me I could create some out of hair elastics. He produced two of them from his wife's stash and told me to tie them in little knots.  "They'll look just like the ones from Brooks Brothers!" he said. I was skeptical, but I did my best. And look, not bad!

You just tie a knot in the end of one of the skinnier kinds of hair elastics, and then put the little loop left hanging out over the knot you've made.  Thread it through the buttonholes and do the same on the other side. It got the job done. True, they were olive green, but I am practically certain nobody cared.

And in case you would like more narratives of people getting dressed, I wore The Hardest Working Dress in Show Business, a black floral number that I wore to my cousin's wedding.  This dress has truly been to four weddings and a funeral. It's good to have something you can always reach for, you know? For this occasion I added a black sweater and pearls.

And Laura wore an Easter dress and a white cardigan. I don't think anyone puts children in dark clothes for funerals, do they? I mean, unless you find yourself attending a service before 1901? This could be a regional thing. 

We trekked up to Hector, Arkansas, for a wonderful graveside service led by a close family friend, then back down to Little Rock for a memorial.  There were many happy, celebratory moments.  I loved seeing all the family.

And I think that how nice we looked is the reason that the state trooper who pulled us over for speeding between the burial and the memorial did not give us a ticket.  I like to think those hairband cuff links played a role.

"Great Grandpas always give advice."

Laura and I are preparing to leave town for a funeral in Arkansas. Matt's Granddad, who was 93, grew ill just in the last few days and died last night.  Matt left home on Friday and was able to get there in time to see him and have one last conversation.

His name, Olen, is also Hank's second middle name. John Henry Olen.  The last few years, Granddad kept up his relationship with the kids by writing them letters.  Laura would write to him, giving him news and photos, and reliably, a letter came right back.  Granddad's letters to the children tended to be short and sweet, neatly typed in all-caps.  When he heard that Hank had started preschool, we got this in the mail:

Master John Henry,

I have been keeping up with your family through your grandma. They tell me that you are going to school now. This is the time to shift gears from being a little boy to a school boy. Mind your teacher as you did your mother. Your parents are both highly educated, sweet, and kind people. You be likewise. You have a lot of ability. Use it.

Great Grandpas always give advice.

I love you. You are a part of me.

PS: The world is changing--go with it or get run over.

I love everything about this but that postscript just kills me. Especially when I think about how much his world changed in his 93 years. One thing about Granddad is that he was always current.

Master John Henry is staying here with my parents; I decided the 20 total hours of driving was too much for him. But the rest of us will gather together in the next few days and see Granddad buried in the family plot in the tiny town where he was born.

Here's to Granddad Olen and to 93 years for all of us.

Little Pleasures

Here are a few things I'm enjoying right now:

The other day I got my toes painted a true purple. If you chewed Bubbalicious gum as a child, it's the color of the grape flavor. This is outside my usual toe repertoire and I'm really liking it.  Except that I went to preschool pickup yesterday wearing green flip flops, and the combination looked like spa day for the Joker.

"Downton Abbey" on Netflix Instant streaming.  It aired on PBS in January after having been on British TV last fall.  These were written by Julian Fellowes, who also wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park, another fave.  I watched the last episode last night, actually, and today I feel sad.  If you like period pieces and could give an explication of the hierarchy of servants in a great house, this is for you.

Still plugging along with my daily chapter of Les Miserables. I look forward to it every day. Something about stopping with just one chapter, it has some kind of magic.  I think I'd been Andrew Lloyd Webered into not realizing how good it would be.  I really hope this book indeed has 365 chapters. Can anyone confirm this?

The trampoline the kids got for Christmas.  The weather here has been so wonderful the last week, the kids are out there all the time. Last Saturday and Sunday, they stayed on it, joined throughout the day by different groups of playmates.  They are out of my hair, and I can monitor their activity by the happy shrieks. Also, the trampoline is nice for adult stargazing.

AND, since I've picked back up with the 30-Day Shred workouts, my abdominal muscles have strengthened and I can jump on the trampoline without feeling like I'm going to wee wee.  Too much information? Some of you ladies know what I mean.

What are your little pleasures this week?

Owl Lamp: How About Now?

Remember when I showed you this owl lamp I got out of a dumpster in North Carolina?



In that post I was thinking of spray painting it ivory and finding a new shade for it. I had reservations, though. I thought it might look a lot less interesting all one color. I wasn't sure what to do with the eyes, either.  I asked for your thoughts.  Click back there to refresh yourself.  Opinions ranged from "Yes! love it! paint it!" to "If you paint it you change the species!" and my favorite, "Put it outside, in a sturdy tree."

I pondered these things in my heart. I was a little daunted by the rewiring so I let it rest down there for a while. Then I was at Pottery Barn with my mother last week and they had a redorkulous sale on lampshades. this huge linen drum shade was sitting there for $11.  Marked down from $59. Good enough that I broke my streak of not having bought anything for myself or the house since Jan 1. It wasn't the solid color shade I'd been envisioning, but I thought it might make the as-is version of the lamp work.  Yesterday I brought the owls upstairs, dusted them off, and gave them new wiring.  Then I put the shade on and sat them in the dining room. Go ahead and tell me what you think.









Now, I had planned to put it on top of Hank's chest of drawers.  The problem is that when he walked around the corner and saw it, he said, "AAHH!"  Then, a while later, he saw it again and said, "AAHH!"  Laura hadn't heard any of that, and when she came home, I said, "Laura, come in the dining room and look at my lamp."  She walked in and said, "AAHH!" I don't think it is really so scary, I mean, look at those sweet faces. I think it is startling in its largeness.  The picture with Hank gives you some idea.

So I don't know. Part of me is curious about what it would look like painted. But it's kind of growing on me as it is.  You know what? If I had a buffet or sideboard in my dining room, I would put it on top and leave it in there. Doesn't it look happy in that room?  Have I lost my mind?