A Nap

"Let's begin by taking a smallish nap or two."

-- Winnie the Pooh

Polymer clay sleepy head 5-14-15

"I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four."

-- Yogi Berra

"There's a nap for that."

Sleep school rule number one is "Don't nap." 

Ever.

So I don't.

I can't even remember the last time I fell asleep during the daytime. 

Well, actually, I can. It was yesterday.

A nap ambushed me. It sneaked up one me from the tall grass and pounced. Hard.

I was taking a little post-bike ride, post-lunch break with my feet up in Big Daddy's recliner, about a half hour before I had to get Leo from school. I wasn't planning on falling asleep simply because I just don't do that anymore.

Nearly two hours later, Leo was home and I was just barely waking up. He had to walk home because I never showed up. I'd slept through his multiple texts and calls, as well as "where are you?" messages from my husband. 

That never happens anymore. 

It felt so damn good, though. 

I didn't beat myself up about it, because it was a sabotage nap. I never saw it coming, and there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

I was afraid it would fuck with my sleep last night, but it didn't. Not even a little bit. I slept like a very sleepy drugged baby. I even slept through my alarm this morning and got up an hour and a half late, in blatant violation of sleep school rule number two, which is "Always get up at the prescribed time."

Whatever.

Playing In The Rain

"And it's such a fucking glorious feeling."

-- David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Self portrait 5-13-14

"An unexpected downpour and I'm just giving myself into it.

Because what the fuck else can you do?

Run for cover? Shriek and curse? 

No -- when the rain falls you just let it fall 

and you grin like a madman and you dance with it 

because if you you can make yourself happy in the rain, 

then you're doing pretty alright in life."

-- David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

At what age does it happen that we finally decide we are too old, or too mature, or too well-coiffed, or too well-dressed, or too important, or too busy, or too grown up, or too whatever to go play in the rain, or to simply give in and stay outside when the downpour falls and let ourselves get good and soaked?

When I reach that age, I'll let you know. I hope it's never.

I credit my mother, in part, for my feelings about playing in the rain. She used to shoo me and my sisters out the door when the rains came. We'd put our puddle boots on and go stomp in the muddy trenches along our dirt road (we called it "making cement.") 

I can remember how the dark coils of my sisters' wet hair looked through the see-through translucence of the drenched hoods of their nylon windbreakers. 

Also, the rooster-tail spray off bike tires speeding across rain-soaked pavement is singularly pleasing, especially when you're already so wet that it doesn't matter. 

There's something about being out in the rain, on purpose, when everyone else is cowering indoors, that feels a little clandestine, a little forbidden, a little crazy and outside the lines, which probably explains why I liked it so much. And why I still do.

I doubt my mom thought super deep about sending us out in the rain. I think she was just trying to get us out of the house. So what if she had an extra load of wet laundry to do afterwards? She was doing laundry 24/7 anyway, and rain is, well, water -- no biggie.

I still like getting caught in the rain, especially on a run or a bike ride when it falls in welcome relief after a string of oppressively hot summer days. Thunder and lighting don't even bother me. I've had people slow their cars alongside me and roll down their windows to offer me a ride, and I always say "No thanks. I'm good." And I am, even though they look at me like I'm crazy.

I think it's ironic that people don't like getting their hair or their clothes wet in the rain, but they regularly take showers and soak their clothes in machines full of water.

Make up your minds.

I don't typically dole out parenting advice, but here goes.

This summer, when it rains, send your kids outside to play in it. Don't make a big deal about it. Just act like it's a perfectly normal thing to do.  Because it is. You let them run through the sprinkler don't you?

You can watch from the window, or you can join them, which will either up your cool factor a ton, or embarrass the shit out of them, which is always a fun bonus.

And if you don't have kids, just go out there anyway, especially if your mother never let you. When everybody else is popping up umbrellas and racing for cover, go ahead and stomp in the puddles. Get soaked. 

It may not be so great for your hairdo, your makeup or your clothes, but it's good for your spirit.

You know what the one good thing about a rainy day is? 

The rain.

A Gothic Garden Tool

"Listen garden tool, don't make me introduce you to my power tool."

-- Eminem, "Won't Back Down"

Self portrait 5-12-14

I got the best gifts for Mother's Day.

I got a whole bag of my favorite dark roast Sumatra decaf, from Sam.

I got a whole pound of M&Ms, from Leo.

And I got a bad ass Gothic looking garden tool from my very thoughtful husband.

So about this garden tool ...

My grandfather had something like it. It's not quite a rake, not quite a hoe, but a long-handled, single clawed hook that is exactly perfect for maneuvering around and in between plants without disrupting everything else in its path.

It was the only thing on my one-item birthday list. And even my super-tenacious husband couldn't find one anywhere. Trust me, if it was out there, he'd have found it.

But he didn't give up.

"American Gothic," Grant Wood, 1930

He talked to a guy who knew a guy who happens to also be our plumber and who has a workshop full of all kinds of great stuff. This guy is pretty super-ingenious at making and fixing just about anything. And he happened to have an old 3-prong claw rake that he said probably belonged to his grandfather, which makes the thing more than 100 years old. The claws can be removed and re-configured with screw-down clamps, so he removed all but the single center claw, cleaned it up and delivered it to my husband's office just in time for Mother's Day.

(He also gave us the extra claws. What a sweetie pie!)

I plan to start using it today. My garden plants are sitting in flats, all ready to go. But first I have a few weeds to deal with, and I've got a bad ass hook to do it with, so those little fuckers better watch out.

As for the self portrait?

With all due respect to Grant Wood, I just couldn't resist.

A Grown Up Lunch Date

"I'm not making art, I'm making sushi."

-- Masaharu Morimoto

Play Doh sushi 5-11-14

My, how times have changed.

When my son Sam was little, a "lunch date" usually meant a fast food kids' meal and a trip to the toy store.

Now that he's all grown up (he turns 19 tomorrow), Sam's tastes have matured, a lot. Yesterday, we had a perfectly lovely lunch date at a sushi restaurant (his choice), followed by some upscale shopping to replenish his work/school wardrobe.

He wears a suit and tie to work and classes nearly every day, so he needed some new dress shirts and shoes.

Way back when, he'd have balked at the merest mention of dreaded clothes shopping. Now he shops like a pro. He knows exactly what he needs, goes in and gets it, has membership benefits and coupons that slice the final tally in half and then shave 40 percent off that. I just tag along, try to keep up, stand back and watch him work, and help carry his shopping bags.

As for the sushi, of course there was a day when, like most little kids, he preferred hamburgers and french fries with a toy in the box. He wouldn't have touched raw fish with a pair of ten foot chopsticks. Now, he gets positively giddy over the prospect of yellowtail sashimi and a rainbow roll.

It's Mother's Day today, and while I do sometimes miss the days when my boys were little and wish I could pick them up and hold them one more time, I also love where they both are now -- young men, confident and capable and becoming who they're meant to be. Naturally, with growth comes change, changes in what they do, what they like, and even what they eat.

I'm not opposed to change. I'm intrigued by it, actually. And I hope I'm the kind of mother who'll never interfere with either of my boys "becoming." I'd much rather tag along as an observer and watch the fascinating metamorphosis unfold.

God forbid I should ever stand in the way of such a good and beautiful thing.

Ice

"I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass."

-- David Lee Roth

Vintage ice trailer 5-10-14

"Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish

one sensation, fire, from the other, frost."

-- A.S. Byatt, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice

I ice my feet a few times a day, every day. In fact, I go to bed every night with cold packs on my feet.

Sometimes I ice my ass.

Sometimes I ice my legs.

Sometimes I submerge my whole lower body in an ice bath.

Sometimes I even ice my eyes. Yes, my eyes. When they are all itchy, red and inflamed from allergies, an ice pack is the only thing that shuts off the histamine reaction and calms the irritation and swelling.

The pull-out drawer in our freezer is filled with frozen ice packs of varying sizes, shapes and uses, so there are always plenty to have in rotation. When one gets warm and melty, I can just switch it out for a freshly frozen ice-cold one. And they all get used. All the time.

It may sound unpleasant, and for someone who doesn't particularly enjoy cold it definitely can be, especially at first. (I once gave myself frostbite, actual for-real second-degree frostbite that peeled and everything, from falling asleep with ice packs applied directly to my sore heels. It was painful afterwards, but while it was happening, my feet were blissfully numb and I was asleep, so I never even felt it.) 

Lesson learned.

But used correctly, applying ice to what hurts can be an incredibly effective pain reliever. It even has a smart-sounding science-y name, cryotherapy, which means "cold cure." 

For me, applying ice where it hurts is like hitting the off switch, or the reset button. 

And when it comes to pain, off is the best possible thing. 

Me And My Boys

"Hail! Hail! The gang's all here!

Leave your worries at the door boy, they're not going anywhere."

--Dropkick Murphys, "The Gang's All Here"

Female Goldfinch and 3 male Goldfinches 5-9-14

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family.

Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."

-- Jane Howard

Sam came home last night from his first year of college, which means all of my "boys" are together under one roof for the summer.

The gang's all here!

Which also means I am now outnumbered 3 to 1 in my own home, which is a perfectly good thing.

Yesterday morning I looked out the kitchen window and saw this little female Goldfinch on the feeder, surrounded by males. She looked back at me over her shoulder just as I snapped her picture, as if to say "I know, right? Me too."

Birds of a feather and all that.

Ooh, I almost forgot ...

Ding! Ding! Ding!

It's time for the "One More Good Thing extra bonus round."

I finally have birds coming to my feeders! We moved them a little further away from the house, and it seems to be working, finally. The Goldfinches are clearly the smartest birds of the lot and are the first to have figured out the complicated squirrel-proof designs. Most of the other the birds still just fly in, look confused and leave.

A Reminder Of How Far I've Come

"Now you're beside me, and look how far we've come, so far."

-- "Robert," Enchanted

Self portrait 5-8-14

"What mattered to me in that moment was that I did not freak out.

I did not catastrophize as if it were a person I love who died ... 

Once upon a time, when anything went wrong, I fell apart.

Responding calmly for me is a huge victory.

So I decided to stop and celebrate that, to rejoice in how far I've come."

-- Lori Deschene, "Tiny Wisdom: How Far We've Come," tinybuddha.com

I've had a few rough, restless nights in the sleep department lately.

It's been a while.

Not that long ago it was a nightly thing, me struggling to fall asleep, and to stay there. Insomnia ruled my nights, my days, my life.

But I'm better now, right? Cured. Thanks to months of a rigorous "sleep restructuring" regimen I'm sleeping heartily, robustly, solid as a log night after night. 

Or so I thought.

But it's OK. My sleep specialists told me there would be nights like this. 

So I didn't panic when I started to feel that old feeling creeping back, that one where I'm still lying there wide awake and it's 2:30 a.m. and I'm getting more and more agitated. The one where I wake up night after night at 3 or 4 in the morning and then can't get back to sleep. The one where I'm reaching for the forbidden gin bottle, or Ambien bottle and taking just a half ... and then another half.

I'm not freaking out. 

Instead of reaching for the whiskey, I'm reaching for the rules and the tools I learned in "sleep school" and I am fighting back.

Old me would have had an insomniac-crazed meltdown.

New me feels the scary feelings of insomnia lurking in the shadows, then takes a deep breath and logically reassesses the situation and calmly says "Hey insomnia, I see you're lurking in the shadows there. And that's weird, you know, because I thought I kicked your annoying ass. Don't get too comfortable, because I'm going to make a few adjustments and send you packing again you pesky little fucker."

So I've tweaked a couple of knobs, turned a few dials. It's not fixed yet, but I'll get there. It may take a little while, but I'll get there.

Meanwhile, I've had a good little reminder of how far I've come. How hard I've worked. How much I've grown. Which choices I need to make to protect my sleep. Where perhaps I've grown a little lax, a little lazy.

Reminders are good.

A pain in the ass, but good.