Susiej

It’s all I can do to not share this scene with you via You Tube. But I’ll have to wait until next Friday. For now, you’ll have to guess. This should be fun. Below is the dialogue from a scene in a movie. See if you can recognize what movie this is from:

“Let’s not go out for dinner. Let’s stay in.”
“We have to eat.”
“We can eat here. I’ll cook.”
“I thought you didn’t like to cook.”
“No, I don’t like to cook. But I have a chicken in the icebox and you’re eating it.”
“What about all the washing up afterwards?”
“We’ll eat it with our fingers.”
“Do we need any plates?”
“Yes. One for you and one for me.”
“Mind if I have dinner with you tonight?”
“I’d be delighted.”

You have until next Friday, March 5, 2010 to email me your guess, to sjotest AT (spelled out to avoid spam) yahoo.com.
If you’re correct, you’ll be entered to win an Amazon Gift Card and this gift.

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Filed under: Laugh, Life, contest, love stories by SusieJ - 1 Comment →

Dear Kids,

The three days that herald Memorial Day Weekend leave us full of greed, year after year. All winter long, we hunger for these 3 days so that we can hammer through so many of the warm weather projects that we can’t touch all winter.

This year, we were blessed with warmth and your feet pattered around the grass barefoot. As we plowed through one task through the next, I reached that tipping point when one task piled on top of another so quickly that I questioned my own stamina for handling the work required to handle a lake house.

Charlie, the Heron, visited us.

All day long you played. You used the boxes from the furniture we bought to build a horrendous fort in the basement – the bunk room. Most of your time was spent at the neighbor’s building a “lake” on the edge of the lake out of sand. I worried about you and skin cancer all day long; do you have enough sunscreen? Did I miss that spot above your upper lip where cancer attacked me? Is it time for more? When I went down to your “lake” to apply your second helping of sunscreen, sand was impossible to separate from your skin and the sunscreen, so I ended up rubbing it all in together to create a combination mud mask, sunscreen. I wonder, how do you interpret that? Certainly not as an act of desperate protection from someone who loves you. You don’t have the perspective yet.

When I wasn’t de-cluttering the house from the junk we’ve collected over the past three summers, I was out in the garden building your fort. A fort that is undeniable taking up valuable real estate in the garden, as I have enlarged its size by four times since last summer. Will you even play there this summer? Your Dad was busy assembling our new furniture, which you helped build too. A little bit.

Then night fell, and your sprits seemed to soar up, in an inversion parallel with the setting sun. You caught four frogs within the first few seconds after the sun dropped. Dad started the bon fire, and you came into the kitchen searching for marshmallows and graham crackers. While you were busy with the frogs, we took the chance, while we had it, to pull out a few of the boxes from your fort and fan the flames of the bonfire. I’m sorry… but there was no way to walk though. “It was a fire hazard.” Not sure what that means, but that’s what my parents told me when I was a kid and I got out of control.

The bullfrogs are mating; we could hear them in a symphony across the lake. You searched through your drawers for long sleeved shirts, and “long-sleeved pants”, as the mosquitoes were out. Then you headed off in the canoe with your Dad, and your flashlight, to gawk at the frogs. One made it inside of the canoe, but soon jumped completely free and back into the water. There were tears.

Then there was the annual wrestling to get your teeth brushed, and finally we hit our heads on the pillow and you were all blissfully quiet.

As night fell, most of the projects we knocked out were invisible to the naked eye; grown-up stuff that we often find so important, and necessary. You show us, everyday, especially when we’re at the lake, how simple and clear your needs truly are. You would feel complete, I think, in a simple cardboard box that is close to the water’s edge. For a second, I think I would be too.

This weekend, your parents reached their 16th wedding anniversary. We just want you to know, life couldn’t be sweeter; and we’re learning every day, especially from you, what really does matter in life. Sweeter every year.

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Filed under: boy, love stories, the lake house by SusieJ - 2 Comments →

Dance club is a clandestine ritual that parents can only attend by invitation, when you are lucky enough to be asked to serve as a chaperon. I was invited.

First,  Dad was out of town, so the boys and I huddled around the computer together as we watched You Tube videos that explained how to tie a tie.  After several failed attempts, with the clock ticking, we bailed on the Windsor, and just went for a basic knot.

My son and I left, already sweaty from the stress of our preview, the tie dance. Here’s what I observed about dance club.

• The girls stand in a line; the boys line up directly across from from the girls to form parallel lines.

• The instructor serves as DJ, and coach, calling out the dance steps they’ve learned so far with his very Madonna-like microphone. He changes the music seamlessly (covering several eras of music).

• On cue, the instructor tells the boys to move down the line every 5-7 minutes. The girls stay put, as a different boy moves down the line to dance with a new partner every few minutes.
• The instructor has been teaching dance club at this school for 35 years. He’s elderly, and he’s hip.
• The kids have learned a lot… the mashed potato, the cell phone, the electric slide, and the box step.
• Also, the dip.
• I felt a bit cheated when the instructor said, “How many of you gentlemen dipped your Mom’s last week?”  I did not get dipped.  I’ll be looking into that.
• During the box step, the participants are asked to discover three new facts about their partner.
• It was the boys, some of them, that found their groove, and had arms flying and heels kicking in a flurry of excitement. They were truly enjoying themselves, and were sad to see the time ending. This surprised me. Some boys didn’t want to move, at all.

• Girls enjoyed dancing with other girls, and often paid more attention to the girls beside them, rather than the boy across from them.
• The energy radiated off the four lines of kids dancing in unison was intoxicating.
• During the Box step, the music was The Bee Gees, How Deep is Your Love. Tears filled my eyes at the prospect of realizing many of us will all be together again, in some shape or form, as parents at our children’s weddings. I looked around, and many other Moms were wiping tears away as well. I hope I am standing with every one of them at some wedding in the future.  Just so we can say, “Remember when…?”
• If none of those Moms are there at the weddings, I will trust that the Moms I am with experienced something similar, somewhere else, and I’ll try to form that bond with them, and share a tear.

I waited for at least 35 minutes for my son to finally make it down the line to where I was standing… close to my Nikon D80 camera. I lifted the camera to shoot, and my son’s face, in a panic, mouthed the word “No!” to me.

I chose to go with the “building trust” route, and gently put my camera down. I shot only hands and feet.

Next year will be even better, and I can’t wait to be invited again.

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Filed under: Tears, boy, love stories by SusieJ - 3 Comments →

A Mother’s Ring is something I’ve always coveted.  I’ve never bought one because Mother’s Rings look too matronly.  This one is perfect.  See more of Mad Maggie’s Designs, here.

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Filed under: love stories, try this by SusieJ - 7 Comments →

There’s nothing quite like the first week of back to school to light a spark under your marriage. I don’t think I have the strength to sign one more school form, cross reference yet another medical form, or enter one more sporting event on our family calendar. But I do have the energy to sit in a nice restaurant, sip a fine glass of wine, and stare at my husband across a plate of carefully-crafted sushi. And, we won’t be talking about the kids.

This past week was, and already the one ahead is promising to be, grueling. The school supply list required a trip to three different stores, there were late night runs to the grocery store for paper bags for the required book covers that are due tomorrow, the endless parent information nights that we drag ourselves to when we really should be putting our kids, and ourselves to bed. I’m just done with all of it.
That’s not all. Re-entry to land-locked life, from a summer at the lake, has been difficult. First, people are EVERYWHERE; I feel so cramped all of a sudden. Secondly, my sunsets, which once looked like this, now look like this:

That’s the sun there, behind the garage, between the telephone lines. We don’t even have telephone lines at the lake. We barely have cell phone coverage. And, we’re fine with that. Inner turmoil is running rampant through my mind now that I’ve left the lake, and I’m back here to stay. Difficult to put into words.

So, tonight, while fixing dinner, I’m already planning how we’ll take full advantage of my oldest son’s capability of baby-sitting his younger brothers, so that we can sneak off for some adult time. Then, my husband comes home with a frown. He’s sick…it’s something he ate.

I mixed up some peppermint essential oil for him, he rubbed it on his belly, and in a few hours he was doing much better.

Still, there were more roadblocks to come. My oldest son opens his homework… he has a lot of homework. Lots of homework. So, we’ll be staying in tonight, after all. I’m beginning to think there’s no break in sight until next summer at the lake.

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Filed under: Laugh, love stories, the lake house by SusieJ - 7 Comments →

There’s no way to describe the feeling that comes when I crawl into bed with my husband, and I feel those silky, yet muscular, legs between the sheets. This is the part I dislike the most when he’s training for an Ironman Race. The race that is a swim 2.4 miles, 112 miles on the bike, and then to run a marathon, 26.2 miles.

People assume the reason triathletes shave their legs is because it makes them more aerodynamic. This is not true. The real reason for the shave is that not having hair makes it less painful when they have an injury (their average speed on the bike is 25-30 mph) and the lack of hair makes the injury easier to clean.

The absence of hair means that race day is getting precariously close. My heart and stomach are take a leap whenever I think of this. This time, he’ll be sitting on the airplane by himself as he travels to Idaho. There will be no little boy climbing all over the airplane seats, looking out the window, and when he sees the city, saying “Look at that GOTHAM city,” when it sounds like God Damn city, as we bury our heads, and the passenger erupts in giggles, while his brothers say, “Say that again!” And the little boy DOES say it again… and again… and again.

The impending date of this race is causing me to think and to remember. Last time, there was lots of heat. Ninety-seven degrees. Very hot for Idaho. Racers were collapsing on their bikes out of exhaustion, and crashing.

I’m remembering now all the little things that we did for him… not that I don’t think he can’t do the race without us. He will finish, but will it won’t be the same. Things like having someone to eat his oatmeal with at 5 in the morning. Tucking little boys in bed while you’re too nervous and jittery to sleep. Hearing little boys yell “Go Daddy!” Putting sunscreen on his back. Still, of course, he’ll have the team there with him.

The boys were so clever last time, as we tried to manuever our way around the race as novices. We found it impossible to find our Daddy/Husband in the crowd when they all came out of the water from the swim. I frantically searched the crowed of wetsuits climbing out of the lake, dripping, running to transition to the bike, peeling off their suits. I realized there, sadly, that we probably wouldn’t see him for the rest of the day. He would be a blur in this wet suit crowd, a blur on the bike, and maybe, we’d see him briefly on the run. No chance to cheer, “Go Daddy!”

My son had a flash of insight — a brilliant idea. The night before, we had stood along the fence to see his bike and gear — standing, waiting and ready to go. Guarded, by watchful volunteers, all night long. And his bike was close to the end, right by the path for spectators. So, following my son’s great idea, we rushed as quickly as a Mom can when she’s pushing a stroller with three other boys behind, through the crowd, and found the spot and waited. I hoped we weren’t too late. Nope. Bike still there. So, we waited with the crowd and watched other swimmers file in to jump on their bike.

Then, he appeared. Of course, the boys saw him first. We called out his name, knowing, and rightly so, that this would probably be the only cheer he would hear from us for the rest of the day. We startled him. He didn’t expect to see us here, in this “perfect spot.” Not only would we see him, but while he was putting on his shoes, we could spend at least 1.52 minutes with him. Still, the excitement of seeing us flubbed him up a bit, and he forgot which row his back was in, as he stared at us. My son, of course, directed him to the right bike. “Dad, you’re bike’s right there,” he says on the video, while the crowd laughs.

So, I’m crawling into bed with my husband tonight. Hairless legs. While I think about his big race, what happened before, and not yet knowing what’s going to happen this time.

I’m at the lake, enjoy yourselves this weekend. Yesterday was our 15th year anniversary. And check out my review on a great game, that we’re probably actually playing right now, here.

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Filed under: Life, love stories, memories by SusieJ - 13 Comments →