Lawyer Mama

Hot Water Heater Hottie

Our hot water heater died several days ago. The costs have been adding up:

Monthly Y membership for showering (heaven forbid we actually use the Y to work out): $86

Large stock pots to carry stove warmed hot water to the bathtub: $45

Extra deoderant for when I'm too lazy to go to the Y or carry pots: $5

New hot water heater installed by a trained professional: $2,300

Having a super handy husband who can tell the "trained professional" to shove it & install the hot water heater himself: Priceless.

And he's hot. (Pun absolutely intended.)

Life, Love & Welcome Midwestern Readers!

Welcome my new Midwestern readers, particularly one from Marshalltown, Iowa.  Feel free to look around.  Just remember that I don't tolerate nastiness in my comments.

Yes, there's something going on.  No, I don't want to write about it on my blog yet.  Other people are involved.  People I care about and love.

Love is a funny thing, isn't it?  I remember being freaked out about having a second child so soon after Hollis.  People kept reassuring me by saying that my capacity for love wasn't a pie.  There isn't a finite amount in my heart to be doled out among the people I care about.  Rather, the heart is a flexible muscle that expands as needed.

Maybe for some people the heart contracts as well, but that's never been the case for me.  Once I love, I love fiercely and deeply.  It's not something that ever goes away.  My husband, god bless him for the saint he is, understands this about me.  in fact it's something that he tells me he loves about me.  Others have too.  Unfortunately, my capacity to love can also hurt.

For those I've hurt over the years and more recently, I'm sorry.  It was never intended.  I would never intentionally try to hurt someone.  I may be thoughtless, react or lash out in anger, but I never try to hurt.

Whatever happens in the months to come, the two people I always keep in my mind are Hollis and Holden.  I'm thankful that they're too young to know what, or even that, something is happening.  I will always have their well being first and foremost in my mind.  No one has the right to second guess that, to feel sorry for them or to judge my parenting, least of all those who don't have children.

It's hard for me not to write more, but I'm respecting the privacy and feelings of others for now.  Until we all know what comes next, I'll keep living my life, loving my children and stopping to just breathe whenever my thoughts are overwhelming. 

The heart is a muscle.  And it keeps beating, despite the pain.

Lucky 13

This has been one of the hardest years of my life.

Between the depression, deaths, and basic life upheaval it's actually hard to look back over the last year without regrets.  I can't even bring myself to process the photos from my visit to Louisiana for my grandmother's funeral in March.  It's just too painful and it's easier to ignore for now.

With all that's gone wrong in the last year, there's one thing, one person who has helped me more than I can say.

T.

He's my best friend, my soul mate, father of my children, my everything.  He's more than I can say.  So in a rare move for me, a blogger, I'm going to save the rest of my words for him on this, our 13th wedding anniversary.

I love you, T-bear.

High School is History

*****
Edited to add: After I wrote this post, I read something that made me incredibly angry.  Some people who didn't like me in high school for god knows what reason and have never known me other than by name, have decided to hurl insults at me from afar. Talk about being stuck in high school.  But, sweetie, let me make this clear: you don't want to get into a bitch fight with me on the blogosphere.  Trust me on that.

I write about myself and my family on this blog.  I don't write about the daily bullshit of my life - going to the store, scrapbooking, picking up the kids from soccer.  Frankly, that bores the shit out of me.  If you think I'm self-absorbed because I write about my inner world or that I'm living life as an adolescent because I wrote two posts about high school in the last TWO YEARS, maybe a blog isn't the right place for you.  I'm just sayin'.

And yes, I tend to swear a lot when I'm angry.  My husband loves it.  (-;
*****

Everyone has a gripping stranger in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it's the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing white shoulders who stamps your book at the library - a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying, "Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida," you'd follow them. 

-- Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

I've been thinking about my personal history a lot over the last few weeks.  Maybe it's because of my little walk down Boyfriend Memory Lane.  Maybe it's because old friends from my two high schools keep popping up on Facebook or in my email.  (Hi, Brian, Katie, Bobby, Christy, Dan, Scott, and anyone else from high school who wanders by!)

This isn't to say that I live in the past.  In fact, aside from the last week or so, and a moment of discovery here or there, high school, isn't something that I spend much time thinking about at all.  I haven't shared my high school foibles and romances here in Flashback Fridays like so many people do.  I haven't posted my prom pictures or reminisced about the crazy things we did after football games and at Katie's lake cabin.  I don't write about much of that because I don't think about it.

However, I'm afraid that a few people, one person in particular, after seeing the huge number of posts about high school - yeah all two of them - and the people from it, have gotten the wrong idea.  I am not a single post (or two) on my blog.  From that small selection it would be easy to decide that I regret something or someone. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Although I'm certainly not a religious person, I do believe that everything happens for a reason.  To understand that about me, all you have to do is read my series on infertility.  Everything in my life has led me to where I am now, with my family as it is now.

There are people from my past that I will always care about and yes, be curious about.  There is one person in particular that someday I would love to sit down and just catch up with, without all that baggage and bullshit that accompanies relationships.  Someone I wish I could be friends with.  Someone I once loved and now wish all the best in life.  Someone I wish I could know would be OK in the end, despite all the bad luck and tragedy.

Does that make any sense at all? 

I'm not a threat.  I shouldn't even be a disturbance or a blip on the radar because, let's be absolutely clear here: I married the love of my life.

T is my soul mate, my bashert, my gripping stranger.  The day I met him changed my life forever.  He is my best friend, the best of fathers, an amazingly caring and understanding husband, and the best man I've ever known.  He tells me that I give him too much credit, but he truly is my better half.

Together we have two beautiful little boys and will hopefully have another baby if my battered body, and my endocrinologist, will let me.  (No, not right now.  Mom, Dad, no need to alert the media.)

These three boys, one big, two small, are my world.  We were meant to be.

I met T when I was 21.  A mere babe.  We got married when I was 22 and he was 25.  Looking back on our very young selves, T and I both realize how incredibly lucky we've been.  So many of the people we know who got married right out of college are now divorced.  Some are even on their second marriages. If you think about it, 21 or 22 is really far too young for most people to get married.  I didn't know who I was or what I really wanted at 22.  Hell, I'll go so far as to say I wasn't really a grown up yet.

T and I will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary in two weeks.  We survived because we worked hard at our relationship.  We grew together, instead of growing apart.  Still, T and I are just different enough to keep things interesting.  I'm a Democrat; he's a Republican.  I have a law degree; T has a masters in International Relations and undergraduate degrees in political science and history.  Wanna guess what we fight about the most?

Ah, the fighting.  I think that's actually what made me realize that T and I were going to be together for good.  The first time we had a conflict, he actually fought back.

You see, I'm a pretty stubborn person.  I'm also quite the steamroller.  And I can be a little intimidating.  (Or so I've been told.)  I'd never dated a guy before T who didn't just give in or only put up token resistance to my arguments.  I don't want someone who either agrees with my every thought or, disagrees but hates conflict so much he just lets me have my way.  I've had both of those.  Neither is conducive to a lasting relationship that grows.  Boooooorrring.

I'm convinced that fighting is what makes our marriage work so well.  Some think that any conflict is a sign of trouble.  I think that's ridiculous.  Conflict is a sign of passion.  Conflict is also a sign of two independent-minded people who have to figure out their differences and compromise in a way that works for both of them.  A marriage without conflict is boring as shit.  A marriage without conflict never grows.

So you see, T and I, we're for good.

I spend about 99 percent of my time on this blog talking about myself (well, it is my blog), my kids (they're so darn adorable how could I not?), and my husband (just to keep him on his toes).  The other 1% of my time covers political posts that leak over here from MOMocrats and people from my past.  That pretty much sums up what's important to me and in what proportion.

So read my blog or don't read it.  Pretend I don't exist and delete me on Facebook.  (By the way, ouch. That stung.)  But this is the last post directed to you.  Perhaps your very own blog post seems like overkill, but this is something that I need to say and obviously it's not going to happen through direct communication. That's too bad, but I'm not going to be dragged into a drama that doesn't concern me.

My blog is more or less anonymous.  Some people know who I am because they are my friends or I've let them know.  But if you look at my blog, my full name doesn't appear anywhere on it.  And honestly, if I'd thought anything I wrote here on my blog would hurt anyone, I wouldn't write it in the first place. If passively aggressively hurling insults makes you feel better, knock yourself out.  You're free to write anything you want on your blog, just as I am free to write what I want on mine. 

You don't have to read it if it bothers you so much.

I have the kindest of thoughts, wishes and hopes for you and your husband.  Whether you believe that, and how you feel about me, is entirely within your control.  But don't make me larger than I am.  Don't make me more important than I am.  Don't make him more important to me than he is.  Because he's not.

They are:

He is:

I don't know how to make this any clearer.  Got it?

*** No, that isn't our wedding picture.  It was taken at T's brother's wedding in January of 2002, I think. Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong!

The Urge to Bare All

Sometimes I censor what I write here.

Surprised?

I know some of my readers are.  You're thinking, "Dear lord, she's already told us the nitty gritty details of her infertility, pregnancy complications, birth, breastfeeding, depression and every disappointment and joy in her life.  What else could there be????"

Others are nodding in agreement thinking, "Yes, we all censor.  Even to ourselves.  Who ever really bares it all except in the dark of night in those terrifyingly torpid moments when we wonder who we are and why we seem to be traveling at a glacial pace to nowhere?" (Or maybe that's just me.)

I don't write about my job or my clients.  I don't write things that might hurt family members or friends.  There are certain areas of my marriage that are off limits.  Aside from that, I don't censor much.  But you see I've run across something, or should I say someone, from the past in the blogosphere.  In my corner of the world.  Not that I own the blogging world, but it's made me think even more about what and how much I reveal here.

I'm not worried about the mundane details like name, address, and phone number.  If you've got enough time that's easy enough to find.  I've been easily Google-able since before Google.  It's not that I have a diary of my daily happenings on display.  (Y'all know I find that as about as exciting as watching paint dry.)  No, what's bothering me is the display of those even more personal details found only inside my head and on the digital pages of this memorialization of my soul.

I'm 35 years old, so what do I have to hide?  From people I know now?  Nothing.  You've never known me as anything other than what I am.  I don't hide who I am now.  From people who once knew me long ago?  Who walked beside me in hallways, watched from stadium risers, and knew more intimate moments?  Everything.

I wish I could explain this with more clarity, but I find myself for once, amazingly, almost stuck for words. 

There's a bit of an exhibitionist in every blogger.  I have a need to put myself, my words, my thoughts, and my art out there for you to see, to read, to judge, to admire.  Admiration is the crack that feeds the writer's blogger's soul.  For awhile I wondered who I was writing this blog for.  Me?  Or the hundreds of people who read it?  (OK, so maybe it was hundreds.  In my blog-slacking over the last 6 months it's become more like hundred, no s. On a good day.)

But only when faced with the possibility of the ultimate of readers, the ultimate admiration, by someone who once was everything and who still does, and always will, occupy a tiny piece of my heart, do I realize the truth:

This blog is for me. 

It isn't for you.  It isn't for her. 

It isn't for him.

It would be better if I never looked again.  If I deleted the link, the contact, and walked away.  But morbid curiosity, wonder at what might have been, or even the need for some glimpse of what will be, will keep me going back.  I know.  Just to look.  To peek.  Maybe even to gloat or revel in my blessings.  Silently, of course.

I already suspect a line or two written for my eyes.  A reminder of what is no longer mine, what really hasn't been mine for a very long time - half a lifetime, almost.  I know that.

I have my own life.  I have my own love.  I have my own family.  There are no regrets.  Everything in my life made me who I am now.  Despite all my insecurities, neuroses, and overly complicated, twisted, self-absorbed, overly reflective mind, I love who I am.  I wouldn't change a thing that happened 20 years ago or 15 years ago. My first love, my first heartbreak, my first everything brought me to where I am now, to the love of my life, to the two loves of something even more.

After almost two years of frank exhibitionism, I realize that there is one person I don't want to perform for.  There is one person I don't want reading this blog.

So I'm hoping that he won't.  And I'm hoping that you won't give him the chance to.

For Him....

Happy Father's Day and Happy Birthday, T.

You are my everything.

Missing My T

Every day there are a thousand little things I take for granted:

You take out the trash.
You change the cat litter.
You feed the cats.
You do the dishes.
You vacuum. When you can pry it away from Hollis.

You do laundry, and not just your own.

You feed the boys dinner.
You give the boys their bath.

You mow the lawn.
You clean the pool.
You make sure my car is inspected and oil changed.
You fix my flat tires.

You rescue me when I run out of gas. (She sheepishly says.)

You kiss me goodbye every morning and goodnight every evening before we fall asleep.

You call me every morning to hear about the boys' morning and daycare drop.
You call me every afternoon when you pick them up to tell me about the day.
If I call you at the last minute and ask you to pick up or drop off the boys, you always do it if you can, no questions asked.

You call me during the day just to say,"hi," or, "I love you."
When you ask about my day you actually listen to my answer. Unless I start babbling on about contract provisions and then I totally understand why you tune out. I'd tune me out too.

You are my calm in the storm.

You give our boys confidence and security.
You teach them to run, and leap, and hop.
You hold them when they trip, stumble or fall.

You flip Holden upside down.
You play Ring Around the Rosie.
You build sand forts and lego castles.

You help Hollis scare away the thunder.

You help me scare away the thunder.

You don't see the extra pounds I've gained since we started our family.
But you always notice when I lose weight.

You know what I'm thinking without even having to ask.
You love that I'm sarcastic and snarky and you tell me so all the time.

You think I'm funny.

You love what I write.
You love that I write.

You get me. You really, really get me.

We miss you.
I miss you.
We'll see you soon, Daddy.

**************
Please go over and check out Julie's Hump Day Hmmm topic for this week. It promises to be a good one. Hopefully Julie will forgive me for posting this instead. It just had to come out.

Leaving On a Jet Plane...

No wait, that's not right. We're leaving tonight in a car, driving 3 hours to DC in rush hour traffic (better make that 4 hours), staying overnight, flying to Omaha, and then driving 6 hours to the in-laws. So I guess I'm leaving on a car, a jet plane, and a rented SUV. It's just that it's hard to sing that line.

I know, I know. Try to contain your disappointment, but Lawyer Mama will be absent for more than a week. If I survive the almost 26 hours of combined travel (half of it on Friday the 13th) and then the withdrawal from Internet access, I will be back in 10 days.

I can, however, offer you something even better than a consolation prize. I have guest bloggers scheduled for you! You'll have to check back to see who and what and to party in my absence. I just ask that you pick up all your empty beer cans from the lawn and remove the drunk people from the bathrooms before I get home. Oh, and try not to let the cats outside.

***********
Before I leave, I do want to thank The Queen of the Mayhem, not only for letting me trash her castle in her absence, but also for the Rockin' Blogger award she bestowed upon me. You're the best, Queenie!

I have to pass it on to some other Rockin' Bloggers that I know, so here it goes:

CPA Mom - She keeps her main blog private. Damn. it. But you can check out her reviews here and catch her at The Soccer Mom Vote. You'll have to trust me when I tell you she is one rockin' chick. I know she's been tagged with this before, but she deserves two. One for each blog.

Julie at The Ravin' Picture Maven - Julie keeps me thinking and on my toes with her wonderful thinky posts and her Hump Day Hmm's. If you haven't participated in one of her roundtables, you should. It's a great way to exercise your brain. I think Julie's gotten this one before too, but she also deserves two. One for each hand. Why not?

DD at TKO - This lady keeps taking hits and coming back for more. He blog touches on infertility quite a bit and that's a personal subject for me, but her observations on life, love, and the pursuit of baby are amazing. I don't know how she does it, but she makes me laugh through tears on a regular basis. I don't know if she's been named a Rockin' Blogger before but she deserves two anyway. She's just that fabulous.

I also have to say that there isn't a blog in my blog roll that doesn't deserve this. And many more blogs that I've been too lazy to add to my blog roll, but that I read all the time. You're all fabulous but, once again, I'm too damn lazy to put any more links in this post.

********************

Don't forget to go check out Julie's Hump Day Hmm's for the week. They're all up now at her place.

********************


I leave you with this:

We had a loud storm last night. In fact, it was a dark and stormy night. (I've always wanted to legitimately use that line!) We were having a hard time putting the boys to bed, with crashes of thunder that rattled the house. I heard Hollis tell T, "Daddy, the thunder scared me."

T, carrying him to the window, "Well, you go right ahead and scare thunder back. Tell it who's boss."

Hollis crawled up on the window ledge, scrinched up his face, curled his hands like claws, and growled, "ROOOOOOWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!!!" through the window.

"Thunder scared now, Daddy."

Hollis went right to sleep.

You see why I love my men so?



Try not to have too much fun without me.

Love Of My Life

Today is my twelfth wedding anniversary.

When I met T, he was 23. I was 21. It was January 1, 1994, and a college friend had invited me over for her Orange Bowl viewing party. I had nearly met T easily a dozen times before that day. I nearly met him when I was involved in a serious relationship (as serious as all the drama of twenty can be). Again I nearly met T when that serious relationship was ending, of course, in a hail storm of acrimony and hate.

For more than a year T shadowed my footsteps, or I his, and we never realized it. But "exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier," we met.*

At the football party, Nebraska was playing Florida State, and while I'm definitely no Seminoles fan, at the time I would have rooted for pretty much any team over the Huskers. So I cheered for FSU in a subdued manner to avoid lynching by the crowd. Florida State won the game and as the evening progressed, that cute guy who kept staring at my chest got drunker and drunker. I somehow ended up taking care of him when we all made the inevitable late night run for pancakes. T made several drunken passes at me.

Somehow I avoided smacking him.

Three days later he finally got over his post-drunken remorse and screwed up the courage to ask our mutual friend for my number. When T called, we talked for three hours.

And when we had our first date, we sat in the car and talked all night long. (Well, in all honestly, we didn't just talk, but T will kill me if I go into details.)

That was it. I knew he was The One.

But I had no idea if T knew that I was His One. And when he finally got around to admitting it a few months later, we both knew that we would marry.

We were incredibly lucky. T was 25 and I was 22 when we wed. We were babies. Who meets their soul mate at 22? How do you recognize a kindred soul when you don't even really know your own soul yet?

I can't answer that question. I can't explain it. If I think about it, our relationship defies logic.

Logic is the lodestone of my life. But logic can't explain why T loves me. It can't tell me why T believes that I'm beautiful and, more importantly, that I'm funny and smart and a good mother. (Boy do I have him snowed!) But I do find it illogical that T loves me. Sarcastic, overly analytical, neurotic, pessimistic me.

You see, T is the best man I know. I chide him for his political beliefs, but I know that T would save the world if he could. In fact he does try to do so in ways I can't talk about here because T is so private. He carries too much responsibility on his shoulders, my Atlas, but I cannot imagine a better man to raise our two boys. He's a far better person than I am. Even more so, because he doesn't realize that he is indeed the better person.

The thing is, I don't believe in fate. I think that life is what you make of it. Off of the top of my head I would probably tell you that I don't believe there is only one person out there for each of us.

But if I really stop to think about it, on this day, our anniversary, maybe it was fate. Maybe I was destined to be here with T and our two boys today. Living our simple, happy lives.

Oh, how I love my T.


But I still hate the Huskers.


* Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow is T's 37th birthday.

My mother-in-law has kept a journal for most of her life, so I know a bit about T as a baby. It was hot the Summer he was born and there was no air conditioning at the house on his family's farm in Southwest Nebraska. There was sand in the well water MIL used to wash T's diapers and it gave him a horrible diaper rash. So T was a cranky baby for a few months. One entry from MIL's journal reads "T was nasty today." For some reason that makes me laugh and I remind him of it when he's grumpy.

MIL and FIL have also told me that T was quite an, um, energetic child. An endearing trait that he has passed to our sons. When he was a tween, he and his younger brother decided to bring the calf they were raising for 4-H into the house. Through the living room. He still doesn't remember why, but they thought it was a really good idea at the time.

T and his brother, K, liked to play Superman in the tree in the front yard. They had the brilliant idea to put blankets on as capes and jump out of the tree, whereupon they would of course soar into the air. T didn't want to try it first. Neither did K. So T pushed K out of the tree. Apparently K still has the scar from the nasty tree gouging he received. The boys thought they'd get in trouble, so they never told their parents.

And then there was the time T backed over his brother in the truck. And the time he almost shot him. And... I could go on and on.

When T was 17, he joined the Navy and went off to boot camp. He spent some time in Florida, Chicago, and two years in Scotland. Then he came home and finished college, with degrees in history and political science, in three years. When I met him he was in graduate school working on his Masters in International Relations. Now T is a computer geek, and it suits him, but he loves to talk and argue politics.

T loves to eat pickled pigs feet (ewwww), olives, and steak. He loves Spring above all other seasons. He can't pick out a matching outfit to save his life.

T loves to take the boys for rides on his lawn mower. He wants to teach them to ride horses and how to milk a cow. He's teaching them to say "yes, sir" and "no, ma'am" and to be good men.

T loves to give hugs at least 50 times a day. He always ends his calls to his parents with "I love you." He's not afraid to tell me what he feels.

T cried after Hollis was born because he was so overwhelmed with love. He loves to watch the boys sleeping. He would do anything for me or the boys. Anything.

We are so lucky.

I am so lucky.

Happy Birthday, T.

I love you.