This is not Going to Help

Henry

Henry walks into my room, and, appropos of nothing, says:

"You are good vacuumer, good driver, and most good mommy in the world."

Better

I'm better.  I was somewhat refreshed by Henry's nap, for one thing.  Then I took the kids on some errands and found myself far more patient and far less awful than I'd been earlier in the day.  Finally, we met Adam at our neighborhood bar/restaurant, where it just happened to be reggae night.  The kids danced and danced until they were sweaty and crazed.  They made friends with everyone there, except that paunchy fortysomething guy who was almost certainly a divorced, bitter, non-custodial father.  The singer was so excited by the kids' excitement that he gave them a free CD.

When we got home it was dark, and I can't really remember the last time we were all four awake in the dark.  Franny wanted to go outside where she could look at the trees in our yard in the dark.  Then Adam suggested fireworks, so we set off a couple.  That'll teach those neighbors to live next door to us. 

Today was a banner day, actually.  It was our 6th anniversary.  And it was my parents' 40th anniversary.  And it was Riley's 8th birthday.

Prop open your eyelids

I am in such a foul mood, one that seems so bottomless that I worry it isn't hormonal and that it might actually be my new personality.  Surely thoughts like that are hormonal, right?  My experience is this:  if you fear that it isn't hormonal and that you're actually undergoing some sort of life-altering sea change, that just means that it is absolutely hormonal, especially if you're unable to convince yourself that it's hormonal.  So, the fact that I feel like I might be losing my mind and becoming some terrible monster of a person/wife/mother forever is good, right?  Even though/especially since I cannot actually believe that hormones would make a person feel this way and it absolutely must be that I'm going mad and should just lock myself in a basement.  So.

I'm going to take you on a little tour of my hometown of Harrison, Arkansas.  If it seems like I'm blatantly trying to bore you, please keep in mind that I post this with the intention of boring my offspring with it in the future.  Feel better?

Here is my mom's house.  It used to be my house, but that's another story for another time.

 

Here is the house my parents are finally building!

Here is where my mother grew up going to church.  Now an apartment building in a state of extreme disrepair.  I like to imagine her prim little shoes walking around here.

Courthouse, where I used to spend most of every Thursday and Friday.

Courthouse where I used to spend Wednesdays, which were the very most fun of all.  Also was once the Federal building.  And my law office was on the top floor of that modern building in the background to the left.

The north side of the town square, including the Lyric Theater, where my parents grew up going to movies together and the Harrison Daily Times office where I once worked.  And the Townhouse Cafe where I used to eat fried shrimp for lunch every Friday.  Isn't this fascinating?

The Daisy Shop, named for my great-grandmother Daisy Cecil, who opened it and ran it about a million years ago.  Also on the square.

I've been meaning to do this mean thing to my mother-in-law

but only because I love her.

Arkansas

I have that strange summer sensation of doing absolutely nothing and everything at the same time.  I could not quite tell you what I've done, but it has worn me out thoroughly.

Obviously I've not been posting.  The connection is a bit slow, and I've turned 35.  If this makes sense to you, congratulations!  You must be old, too.  To add injury to insult, I've somehow crapped out my neck and have pain shooting down my left arm and what feels like an electric current along my jaw.  It has improved over the course of today, which really just means that I no longer feel like I might vomit from the pain of turning my head too far or something. 

I've covered ailments, so now I'll tell you about the weather.  The first week we were here, it was over 100 every day.  This past week, it has not broken 80 during the day.  Very, very strange doings for August in these parts.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll try to load some photos.

Here is Henry bossing me around while driving around naked:

Here is Franny with "Doo-Dad."

Henry and his great-grandmother, "Gigi."

Franny and their other great-grandmother, "Mema."

Franny and Henry looking out the window of what is to be "their" room at Grandma and Doo-Dad's new house.

Whew.  Night night.

My girl turned 5 today

And she asked me if I was happy and sad at the same time about it, and I agreed that was exactly how I felt.  I think I know how lucky I am to have her, but I know that if anything ever happened to her, I'd look back and I would know I didn't.  

So, August 1, 2003, little Franny was born in Memphis, Tennessee.  I think when she's older, this fact of her provenance will crack her up.  She was supposed to be a C-section, for reasons I'll keep to myself.  I was all prepped for surgery and the anesthesiologist came in and scared the shit out of me by talking like some crazy Victorian doctor. He said that the last C-section he did the anesthesia for had gone really poorly and the woman was fully conscious and felt every little thing.  But then he told me that it had just been a BAD VIAL OF MEDICINE.  Um, what?  I was waiting for the punchline.  It was not forthcoming.  Anyway, talk about informed fucking consent.  There was no damned way I was letting that guy anywhere near my spine with a needle.

When my doc came back in, I told her that rather than being sawed in half while fully awake and alert, I'd like to try to just push the giant, pumpkin-headed baby out.  Come hell or high water.  And that's just what I did.  And now sometimes I wet my pants, but it was worth it.