I truly love my daughter more than words can describe. She is my pride and joy and after two sons I was thrilled at the thought of all things pink. What I wasn’t prepared for was how different she would be from me, I don’t understand her at all.
Now, I think I have a good sense of humor, but what in the world would possess my sweet little princess into doing something like this to her little brother?
Kenny had just put his toothbrush in his mouth when blood began pouring out over his chin. I saw it in the reflection of the mirror so I turned to look at him, his eyes were wide and he just stood there with his mouth hanging open and the blood pooling in his lower jaw.
“Spit!” I told him. He leaned over the sink and spit out the blood and froze there watching it drip, drip, drip, into the sink.
“What happened?” I asked. “I lost my tooth!” he said with a big grin. I looked in the sink and sure enough, there was a little pearly white tooth mixed in that sea of red flowing towards…..the drain!
I fished it out of the sink and I have to say, Wow! That little tooth had the longest root left on it that I have ever seen on a baby tooth! He has knocked his teeth loose a couple of times so I am going to guess that is why it came out like that. Look at the size of the hole it left!
Isn’t that the most proudest big-boy smile you have ever seen?! I resized the picture so it is not too big for this post, but if you look carefully you can see that his top tooth is a shade of gray…that one was knocked loose by a sidewalk in California about 18 months ago but it has held up pretty well. His 2 top teeth and the 3 left on the bottom are just a tiny bit wiggly now. He was very happy with the dollar the Tooth Fairy left for him (yes people..I did an informal poll of the moms in my area and the going rate is $1, do not give your child more so as to make my kids feel gypped 
) so he cannot wait to lose those teeth, he has some big plans on how he will spend his money!
It has been 10 days since Dad died. I have been trying to write something about him every since, but the words are not coming to me. What an odd phenomenon! I have something to say about everything…even if its not the right thing to say at least it is something. Through the years I have learned when it is appropriate to speak up and when it is best to keep my words to myself, but I can use one hand to count the number of times I have experienced speechlessness. Dad, on the other hand, always said exactly what he was thinking. He had an opinion on every subject and he would tell anyone what that opinion was. He blurted out all his thoughts no matter if it was politically correct or not. Think Archie Bunker, and you will know a lot about my dad.
He spent his entire life tormented by the memory of his childhood. He was a little German boy raised by Polish Catholic nuns in a Buffalo orphanage during WWII. All those adjectives are important as he spoke of these facts until the end. The last few years of his life he spent his time researching and looking up the people from the boy’s home. “Why wasn’t I put in the German orphanage?”, he wanted to know. He became a staunch Athiest and was afraid of the finality of death. His hopelessness broke my heart.
He was mostly deaf in his right ear, he said it happened when he was about 6 years old when a nun slapped him on the side of his head which caused his eardrum to burst and bleed. I cannot recall exactly what he had done to “deserve” this punishment. It may have been the night he snuck down to the kitchen to find some food. The kitchen was locked but he found cake in the garbage. He said he remembered the cake was delicious and could not understand why it was thrown out. That event may have been what triggered his lifelong obsession with dumpster diving. He loved to bring home the treasures he found and as a kid I didn’t know any different. The used toys he would bring us were more fun that no toys. Heck, I got my first skateboard by climbing into the storm drain and finding one that someone had lost to the road gutter. Dad was proud!
There is much more to say of this man that lived for only 74 years, he really did a lot with his life and to me it is all amazing. Dad had cancer for over 10 years, but death is still a shock. I will have more words later.
My “Birthday Week” was much fun! Here is what I have been up to:
I took myself shopping for some new clothes and found many great bargains. Since many of the major department stores are run by a corporate purchasing office in some far-off-land with a Fall Season, I was able to walk past racks and shelves full of sweaters to the clearance Summer items. The only thing better than having new clothes is having new clothes at a bargain price! I really don’t enjoy trying on clothes so when I find something that fits well and I really like it, I buy more than one, especially if it comes in different colors. Buying 2 or more items for the price of one really works great for me!
I also bought myself a bread machine. The only downside I have found to making bread in the machine is that I can only make one loaf at a time, but it is so easy I can make a new fresh loaf everyday! I just put the ingredients into the machine, push start and viola! Fresh bread will be ready in about four hours. I can leave the house and come home to the yummy aroma with no effort.
Then I went a little radical (for me anyway!) at the hair salon…I am now a brunette! Not a even a wisp of blonde hair anywhere on my head. There are no highlights and most importantly, not a sign of that kinky white hair trying to take over up there. I think the darker hair makes my eyebrows look a little odd so I have been experiementing with different eyebrow pencils to get it right. (I sell MaryKay so I have my own personal beauty supply store in my home!) So far, I am having just as much fun as I have had as a blond. Hubby really likes it…his reaction reminded me of episode 72 from the show All in the Family 
The kids spent Saturday night with Bigama and Papa so Hubby took me out on a date. We went to the movie theater to see Superbad. I enjoyed it, I didn’t think it was as funny as it could have been, but there were some very clever scenes that will go down in movie history. We then went out for some delicious Italian food at a place that leaves the bottle of Chianti on the table but charges by the glass with an honor system of asking “how many glasses did you pour?” They even sang Happy Birthday to me in Italian, fun!
I visited my dad, and he while he knew it was me he could not remember the date of my birthday. He says he is comfortable and happy and that is all that matters at this point.
My oldest brother called me to wish me a happy birthday and we had a nice chat. His son was diagnosed with leukemia last year and he told me he is doing well enough to go back to school this year so that is very good news!
When the kids came home they gave me The Sims 2, Bon Voyage (and KK spent the rest of the day on my lap watching me play-and begging for me to let her play her own family, and Kenny wanted me to tell him to come look anytime a new car showed up). Hubby gave me the DVD set for the first season of Heroes. He also promises to upgrade my PC, I just need to tell him what I want. It is a pretty good PC for what I do with it. Most likely I’ll get more RAM but I have to do a little research on what else I could do to get it to run a bit better while playing TS2.
Appropriately enough, my mom missed my party to go to a ballgame! 
While I didn’t see her during my birthday week, she is going to take me out for lunch tomorrow to one of my favorite Mexican food restaurants so I will just extend the celebration a bit.
Now, it is time for some leftover birthday pie, Lemon Supreme, YUM! (cake is soooo over-rated..everyone should have pie! 
)
It is that time of year again…the annual celebration of the day I was born! I never was one to make a big deal out of my birthday, except for the “special” ones….10, 13, 16, 18, 19 (that was the legal drinking age back in 1983!), 21, 30, 40. Eleven became special for a really fun reason. I had spent the summer with my cousins in New York (which is a fun story for another blog entry all on its own!). Lucky me, my flight home was scheduled for my birthday! Early in the day my aunt threw a little party for me, a combo bday/bonvoyage thing. I hopped on the plane for the 12 (yes! twelve!) hour flight home. All by myself. On my eleventh birthday. For 12 hours. When I arrived home…it was still my birthday!…and I’ll add, “home” was Hawaii!…With “1″ cake in NY and “1″ cake in HI, I was really “11″!
Now that I am on the down side of the hill, I think I will celebrate them all with lots of gusto! I think this year it will be my birthday “week”, and sometime down the line I will begin celebrating my birthday “month”. I have known people that celebrate their birthdays for a year…“This is the year I am 75!” I think someday I will do that too. You never know how long you will live, but I am okay with thinking I have less years coming than as many that have passed. Middle-age is really cool. I really am exactly where I want to be in life. I don’t need to work to get there, I just need to maintain.
Here is a cool bit of trivia…the day I was born, my mom labored while watching the LA Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs as Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game. (Mom is a huge baseball fan and, being from NY, was perfectly fine with the Dodgers moving to LA when she did!) I wish that I could say that proved to be a good omen, that my life would be a “perfect game”, but I have had my fair share of strikes. When I look back at the crap-part of my life I can see how it got me to where I am now, which is really a very good place for me to be so I am not going to complain about anything. I have thought long and hard about my life’s experiences, and if I had a time machine there are 2, maybe 3 places in my life I would like to go back and make a different choice. But, I really don’t know if I would like the outcome so I think I’ll be happy with the status quo.
When I turned 30, I made a list of “Things to do before I turn 40″ and I did them. Some of the biggies were “Run a marathon”. Check. “Climb a mountain”. Check. (I hiked Mt Elbert, the highest point in the Rockies!) “Jump out of a plane” had to be moved from my “Do before 40″ list, to my “Things to do as a widow” list when Hubby vetoed it. My dad moved in with me the year I turned 40, so between taking care of him, my family and trying to deal with my own health issues I never made my “Things to do before 50″ list. I moved Dad into a hospice home and I am finally on a good medication so I can begin to get things done. If anyone has any suggestions bring it on! So far the only ones I have are , “Learn to SCUBA” and “Take a cruise”…oh yeah, I want to subject myself to “Boot Camp” at the gym so I better add that to the list too. I should do that one before scuba lessons, then use my scuba skills while on some exotic cruise! Oh, yeah. It is all coming together. The next 42 years are going to be great!
