Category Archive

My nephew, Juicy, loves “Piderman”. A lot. He sings the theme song over and over, I’ll record it tonight and add it to this post for your enjoyment, it’s original. Sweetpea and The Mancub enjoy “Piderman” too. This morning I played the best version of the Spiderman theme song for them, they loved it very much. I’m so proud. Below, for your enjoyment!

My brother-in-law, the Gallo Negro, Dad and I powerwashed the patio a couple weeks ago. I was going to post pictures of the process and before/afters. However, we had rain for days so the dang thing never dried up enough to see the difference. Now I’ve got proof: Power washers ROCK.

It began, innocently enough, when Dad pulled a couple of things out of the shed, one of them being the power washer that my nephew, Keg, lent to Dad. I was drawn to it like a moth to the flame, I could clean with POWER!!! So, I decided to set it up, clear the patio of stuff and wash it.

Except that I couldn’t make it work. At first I thought “surely this can’t be power washing. I could scrub better with a toothbrush.” I had it hooked up properly, I knew that, but just couldn’t get the power thing going.

So, Dad called Keg who ran over and fiddled with the power cord, then suddenly I HAD POWER!!!!! (insert mad laughter here)

Here is the Patio before

See how it’s yucky looking? It’s got 40 years of muck.

This is the power washer up close and personal:

I started the process, then I had to stop to go see RiotGrrrl’s achievement celebration. (Which rocked.)

Here is the Gallo Negro at work:

and here. If you look closely you can see the muckety build up of goo where the patio meets the flower bed. Euw.

Now, here is a picture I took this afternoon, see the loveliness of a clean patio?

Just a note: My Dad was out there cleaning in his basic Dad uniform. Shorts, white socks pulled up midcalf, white t-shirt and slippers. I was tempted to photograph him, but decided that I would do it a different time. He was a lovely sight.

Extra note: Gallo Negro is my Brother-in-law’s nickname.  Sometimes it’s also Gallo Frito.  But that’s personal.

This morning as I took pictures of the garden before a coming storm, the Box accompanied me.  He insisted that I take a picture of him in a tree.  Taa Daaa!

This is him showing his inner Spiderman:

It was a few weeks ago, and while I’ve been meaning to post tons of witty observations and such, I’ve been hit with various things. Unfortunately bloging ended up on the bottom of my heap.)

 To understand something fundamental about my Dad is to watch Steven Segal’s “Under Seige” with him. He doesn’t watch it for the ‘plot’, the stars or the dialog. He watches that movie so he can see my iron sister, the USS Missouri. I have other iron sisters, the USS Iowa and USS New Jersey. Since I thought it would be way more fun to have an iron sister on the cake, here is what I got Jeff from the bakery to do for me:

Yup, that’s Dad with the way so cool Battleshiped cake.

Here is a close up:

Happy Birthday, DAD!!!!

That’s hello in Lithuanian, which I’m desperate to learn as I’ll be going there in a minute. Well, in a little more than a month. Yeeee Haaaaaaaa!

Dad and I are going with my brother, Fred, and his lovely wife, Rasa, to introduce him to her Lithuanian family. We are in the process of planning an Eastern European tour, so we may go to Russia, at least the little bit of it that’s trapped on the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland, and we will be going to Poland. The thing about Russia is that we will need a tourist visa and a letter of invitation. Both are pricey, so we probably won’t go, but I’ll work on it.

I’ll get to see castles and stuff. One place I want to see is the Hill of Crosses. Fred and Rasa have promised we will go there. I adore travel, and getting to see bits of the world is fascinating.

I will add more as I get it, but hopefully, I’ll be posting from there. I plan on taking my computer and sending photos and updates here on my travels. YAY!!!

But since mine is in July, I never get to.  This year my lovely sisters planned a fantastic blowout for me.  Yummy wine, incredible cheeses, fruit, vegetables and chocolate filled chocolate cupcakes.  Very elegant and very fun.

One thing about birthdays that I can’t stand is the stupid song.  It’s terrible, awful tune is hard to sing, and very hard to sing well.  So I refuse to sing it well.  This time the twenty odd people did a fine stand up job defiling that song for me.  Their rendition was awful, raucous, loud, out of tune, ugly and ear piercingly hideous.  I loved it.  The only thing I regret is that I didn’t record it so I could share it with you.  Really, it was the WORST I’ve ever heard any group sing it.

Hopefully I’ll post a list of the wines and cheeses soon.

Jujubee turned one this month. He is a source of endless delight to us; he is cute, funny and has a squishy, huggableness that we adore. Sunday, after his birthday party, I took him for a walk in the backyard. It has been raining, like cats and dogs actually, so there are nice puddles in the lawn. Jujubee finds himself in one with his feet bare. He looks at me with joy and then starts to splash with all his might. That was a wee slice of heaven watching him discover the reason God gave little people feet when he invented rain puddles.

These are the happy days, I get the kids and we get to have the kind of fantastical conversations that only children get to have. We’ve even got a soundtrack for these days. Ladysmith Black Mombazo, especially track 11, or as we liked to call it, The Tap Dance Song. The Mancub asked for Justin Timberlake. I said no, and I meant it. We also listened to some opera (they didn’t like, mostly) some U2 (they did like), Christmas music and some other stuff.

There was a special order to who got picked up first too, I had to alternate which child I got first or I would hear it from them, everything had to be fair.

We also had special ways to get home:

• The Fast Way - Route 50, highway, it was quick and they liked this best in the dark. I never liked it because I just didn’t like taking them on the highway.
• Bumpy Bridge Way - This way includes Cry Baby Bridge on Govenor’s Bridge Road, renamed to Bumpy Bridge by me because of the bumpy effect of the corrugated steel surface and because I don’t want to explain why on earth some grown up would name it Cry Baby Bridge. Someday I’ll tell them about the Goat Man, who is said to haunt these parts. The best thing about this road is that we were usually the only ones on it. It’s a very picturesque two lane road with cows and horses and some geese.
• Lost Way - Once Bumpy Bridge Way was flooded and I just made a left. Patuxent River Road is another one of those lovely, winding two lane roads with farms, flowers and cows. The kids freaked until we came out onto 214. Such the fun road though. The first time we drove it I had to stop so that Princess Sweetpea could stop and be nauseous. After they got over being afraid, they loved it.
• Long Way - Just 424, another 2 lane road, but much busier and not nearly the charm of the other two.

Somedays we would stop and pick up fruit or flowers at a roadside stand. Once we watched a Med-Evac chopper land. We stopped and waited for the passenger, then for the chopper to take off again.

The best part about these days were the conversations, like the one about the injured man. They asked the best questions, mostly unanswerable (what happened? did he die? does his mother know?), and we prayed for him. Other conversations went something like this:

The Mancub: Guess what happened in class today?

Me: I don’t know, tell me.

The Mancub: My butt farted all by itself, and it was stinky!

And so on. Sometimes we would talk about God, I’d tell them Bible stories. They especially loved the stories about David and Daniel and their encounters with wild animals. One story didn’t go as planned. At least as I planned it. I told them about Noah, the Ark, God’s promise and the Flood. After I finished explaining that the Rainbow is God’s visible promise that he won’t destroy the world in a flood again, The Mancub says “That mean’s I’ll never drown!” Stupidly I respond to this with “Not really, honey, what that means is…”

I never got to finish. The Mancub burst into tears and started wailing “I don’t want to die!!!!!” “I want my MOM!!!!!” Both Princess Sweetpea and I are trying to calm him down, but it’s not working. Part of my problem is that I won’t lie to the kids, especially not about God. That’s why I don’t tell them Santa Clause is real, when the time comes I don’t want to have to explain elaborate lies about an unseen magical man. If I need to tell them about anyone unseen I wanna make sure that I actually believe what I’m saying, so I limit my mystical conversations to Jesus and God. It’s not that I don’t tell them stories, I do, but I make sure they understand that I’m telling stories.

Well, The Mancub finally calmed down. Okay, it wasn’t me, it was his Mamma. She yelled at me not to tell them anymore scary stories, so we haven’t talked about Noah again.

Princess Sweetpea loves to hear stories, The Mancub too, but Princess Sweetpea thirsts for them. I tell her about battles long ago, about the Dark Ages, Rome, Greece, about brave people who stood up for what they believed in. I can’t wait to tell her more.

It’s not my favorite month, for lots of reasons. It’s always freakishly hot, I don’t like hot. It’s the end of the summer, can’t much like that either. Two of my sisters were born during this month, and while I like them just fine, it’s not my birthday, so I still don’t like this month.

Besides all of that, this is when my mom died two years ago. She died of pancreas cancer, a nearly perfect killer. The cancer that ravaged her, ravaged us too. It killed her relatively quickly as cancer goes, we found out at the end of May and by the end of August she was gone. We had to figure out in such a short time what this killer did, what it’s MO was and what we could do to fight it. Turns out, not much. It was always running so far ahead of us that we never even had a chance, it wasn’t a fair fight. We had lost it before we even knew we were in a fight.

Pancreas cancer is a sneaky killer, it’s one of those stealth cancer’s that you only find when it’s too late. Rarely does anyone live past two years, usually it’s six months. For my Mom it was eleven weeks. Just eleven. And what it did to her. Unspeakable really, her pain was enormous and unbearable even with morphine. She never complained. Really, she was incredible the whole time.

Mom died on Friday August 29th, at 4:25 in the morning. It was cool and rainy, a soft drizzly sort of a rain. In the room was Dad, holding her hand, I was behind her, my sisters Jennifer, Annie and Laura, Laura’s husband Jon, my nieces Sam and Noelle, my nephew Dirk, and my cousin Carolina. It was so peaceful where just a few hours earlier the room had been hectic and filled with equipment and the smells of a sickroom.

We left the room after we were sure she was really gone, when the ragged breaths came no more. We cried and called who we had to call. Laura and Jon left to get Uncle and bring him back for Dad, Dad stayed downstairs with Dirk to make some last calls and just to take in the full body blow of losing his wife of 51 years.

The girls, Annie, Jennifer, Noelle, Sammy, Carolina and I, all went back upstairs to wash Mom’s body. The first thing we did was to open the windows and light candles to air out the scent of death. We washed every part of her, including her hair, she had slept naked that last week, and so we chose one of her favorite nightgowns, dressed her, arranged her hair, put on her favorite rose perfume, changed the bed and called Dad back in the room. In that light, a soft glow from the candles and the reading lamp, Mom was lovely in death. Her face was peaceful in a way we hadn’t seen in months, since the first whisper of cancer had hit us.

The mortuary came to take her about three hours later, she still looked lovely. Hideously, the football sized tumor on her liver was still warm, the rest of her started to grow cold hours before she took her last breath.

The pictures we took that day don’t capture the beauty I saw, maybe it was just grace that day. But my Mother was lovely in death. Washing her body was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been privileged to do. It helped me more than I can say.

When it comes to take us, death is never pretty and always unsettling. At least it should be.

Jessica Lunsford was just 9 when she died a horrific death in the hands a convicted pedophile just yards from where she lived with a loving father and loving grandparents. Terry Schaivo is ,even as I write this, being starved to death because her husband decided that was what she wanted and the courts agreed. 10 people in Minnesota are dead because Jeff Weise decided to kill them. In other places people are dying because someone else determined that somehow, death was profitable. It’s not just money, but influence, convenience, revenge, theology and worldview all come to play in death and how it is dealt from the hands of humans. We are cruel and inhuman to each other, and most horrible of all, we are cruelest to the weakest. There is an irresistable ecomony to eliminating the inconvenient and expensive amoung us, it is even better and easier it seems if they are unable to speak for themselves.

While death is always horrible, sometimes it’s just time. I’ve personally seen two women die, one the 92 year old grandmother of a friend and the other my 70 year old mother. My friend’s grandmother had been failing for a year, her lungs were continually filling with fluid, and she was ready to go home, she said so. She stopped breathing one day, her daughter called 911, the ambulance crew inserted a breathing tube and carried her to the ER. When we got there, it was clear she wasn’t coming back, and in fact had asked not to be resuscitated. So, after a little while, her daughter asked to have the respirator removed and we watched her die. It took 15 minutes, maybe 20, but not more. It wasn’t pretty, she struggled, her breathing became ragged, it slowed, and then she stopped breathing all together. We cried, her daughter and granddaughter most of all, but at the same time, it was peaceful after. She had lived a long and full life, and then she was done. My mother’s death was different, she had pancreas cancer and was in terrible pain until the end. Right at the end of her life awful things happened in her body, excruciating painful things. But the moment she drew her last breath, an amazing peace entered the room.

Death isn’t the way we were supposed to end. In fact, we weren’t supposed to end at all. We were supposed to live forever, enjoying God and enjoying the world he created for us for all eternity. Sin entered the picture and with it the consequences of sin, which is death. We will all die eventually, but how we die depends largely on the people around us. That isn’t just our families, but the people nearest to us, the ones with access. .

Dad and I were going to the mall three days before Christmas to meet Kiki to have dinner and do some shopping. Kiki got there first and we were still wading through rush-hour traffic with a topping of Christmas shopping frenzy. Fun. Not. Dad and Kiki were calling back and forth to see where we were and what was our ETA. When we eventually got to the mall, Kiki called to guide us to where she was parked. She’s my brilliant little Peruvian flower. She got us to her row and told us to come to where she was parked, her lights would be on. In the middle of a crazed night of consumerism, she had managed to park her car between two spots, front to back. She just parked her car between the two so she could move up or move back depending on how we got there. Woo hoo! That was a nice little surprise. She said she’d received some very interesting and seriously non-holiday greetings from shoppers wanting our spot.

At the restaurant I noticed that the bar was packed with shopping widowers. There were no women there, just men. You could almost see the “cha-chings” registering in their minds as they waited for their wives to come back laden with gifts. After watching the number of drinks downed I hoped that they were only there as pack mules and would not be driving home.

Now, here’s an interesting thing about shopping at Christmas time. There is a weird and twisted competition among people headed for the same store. It’s bizarre, we would be walking towards a store, see some others headed in the same direction and they would suddenly put on speed to get there first. I could care less who gets there first, but it was lots of fun to speed up a little and see what other people would do. If I didn’t need to actually purchase stuff, I would lurk in malls and tweak people in mock competition all season long.

Is there something about the winter solstice that causes American’s to suddenly forget how to use certain polite phrases, things like “Excuse me.” I couldn’t believe how many people, I have to assume are otherwise well behaved, act like barbarians during Christmas. My toes were bruised by all the trampling. I think I’ll get some steel-toed boots for next year.

We are staring at another monstrosity, a Christmas yard display gone horribly awry. The lawn of a neighbor is covered in a collection of Christmas and Holiday figures that seems to have been chosen for one common feature, they all plug in. It’s blinding, I put my sunglasses on in an attempt to ward off night-blindness when I look away. I see other neighbors slathering 35 sunblock on and sitting in lawn chairs hoping to get a late season tan. My mind is full of anything but Christmas cheer.

“It’s beautiful Auntie Vivian. I love it.” says my nearly 4 year old nephew, The Mancub.

“Look at the pretty colors!” says Sweetpea, my 6 year old niece. “Isn’t it lovely?”

“Yes.” I lie. “See the reindeer’s heads moving? And their legs move too.”

“Ooooh!” Both of them sigh.

Sweetpea asks me to pull closer to the manger scene. As we pull up, they Oooh and Aaah in unison. This display also glows from within.

Sweetpea squeals “Look, there’s Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, and the Wise Men.”

“Ooooh!” The Mancub sighs

I think the visit to the lights is going swimmingly. Then comes the question.

“So, where was everyone before Jesus was born?” Asks The Mancub innocently.

“Well, they were all here.” I said.

“But you said Jesus is God. How could they be here if he wasn’t born yet?”

Me, not seeing the trap answers “Honey, Jesus is God’s son,…”

“That means Joseph is God?” The Mancub smartly closing this little pre-school trap on me.

What follows is me trying to explain that Joseph isn’t God, the eternal nature of God and the incarnation. I try to relate how Joseph is Jesus daddy on earth, stupidly, through adoption. They know that I had a daughter and gave her up. Somehow, I think they understand this, we’ve talked about it for the past two years. I think, this is an easy way to explain. I was wrong.

“No. You know how Amy is my daughter, but Susan and Harry are her Mommy and Daddy?”

“How old were you when you gave her up?” they ask.

“17. So back to Jesus…”

Sweetpea “17 is young.”

The Mancub “Those sure are pretty lights.”

Me “Yes, it is young, yes they are pretty lights. So God wanted to send his Son Jesus…”

Sweetpea “Did Grandma and Grandpa get angry at you?”

Now I’m beginning to feel terror, Pandora’s Box is open and I can’t seem to close it. “Yes honey, they were angry. So Jesus…”

Sweetpea “Well, you were very young.”

Me “Yes. Jesus…”

The Mancub “Look, Santa’s on their porch. Is he real?”

Me “No, he’s a statue. Now, back to Jesus…”

Sweetpea “Will my Mommy and Daddy ever give me up?” I begin to hear the coming flood. “Can I live with you if they ever have to give me, (sniff) up?”

Me “Sweetpea, your Mommy and Daddy will never ever give you up. And you can always live with me. So, now Jesus…”

Sweetpea “Well, you were young.”

I chicken out and decide to run “Look! More Christmas Lights!”

The Mancub and Sweetpea “Oooohh!”