Fourteen / Ivory

Fourteen years, four addresses, three cars, three cats, one mortgage, and one kid later ...

... and I am still literally the luckiest woman alive.

Happy anniversary, babe. I love you.

Happy Family-versary (Again!)

I know how most people feel about Tax Day, but it's different for us. It's a happy occasion, because on this date all the way back in 2009 (is really four years ago already? is it really ONLY four years ago?) Shae's adoption was final, and the three of us became HER plus two old dorks lugging all her crap around. Or, in other words: A FAMILY.

We've been having a hell of a time lately, our little family. Growing pains, mostly. A whole bunch of nonsense and foolishness and trying to figure things out. This stuff happens in families. We have our moments when shift schedules and uncertainty and grad school and sleep deprivation and things unnoticed at the time kind of all sneak up on you on roller skates and whomp you over the head and make you PAY GODDAMN ATTENTION.

This, too, shall pass. And in the meantime, we have each other.

I read somewhere that nothing in the world can make a person crazy like a family can. I can't remember who said it -- Dave Barry or Erma Bombeck, probably. The more you love your family, the worse it is. That is not a complaint, really, but a fact of life. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both. There's a time you've got to go and show you're growing.

I complain sometimes about the problems I have, the guerrilla wars I stupidly throw myself headlong into for lack of anything better to do, but the truth is: I have it good. I have it better than most. I have a husband I love and who loves me, we have a daughter we both adore, and whatever stupid thing we're going through right now, we're going through it together, and we'll come out the other side together, and maybe we'll all be bruised and banged up, but we'll heal. Together.

Happy Family-versary, you guys. I love you. And I promise: someday we'll look back on this and laugh. (We might need a drink or twelve first, but we'll laugh eventually.)

Now We Are Six

I may or may not have been saving that blog post title for the last five years, one month, and seven days. I can neither confirm nor deny. (But you already know it's the truth, anyway.)

"'What day is it?'
'It's today,' squeaked Piglet.
'My favorite day,' said Pooh."

"'When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,' said Piglet at last, 'what's the first thing you say to yourself?'
'What's for breakfast?' said Pooh. 'What do you say, Piglet?'
'I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?' said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. 'It's the same thing,' he said."

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why we call it the present."

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

-- All quotes by A.A. Milne

Something Fishy

Hey, you guys remember that I have a kid, right? Probably not, because I haven't posted pictures of her in approximately forever.

There she is. She's about a hundred feet tall now.

We've only had one or two days of nice weather since the beginning of winter. This has been, like, a nuclear winter or something. It's awful. We're losing our minds.

Which may explain why we're making a fish mouth while we're sticking our face through the eye hole of a giant metal fish statue at the fish hatchery.

I keep trying to remember that Shelley poem, "Ode to the West Wind": If Winter comes, can spring be far behind?

We're all skeptical, but DEAR GOD I HOPE SO.

Ciao, Principessa

We've known it was coming. Hallie was nineteen, and all skin and bones, and last week we found out she had lymphoma, and I had a panic attack when I realized that I would have to do this with only a handful of pictures, because she was a diva who hated having her picture taken.

She was my mother-in-law's cat first, a comfort animal, adopted not long after my father-in-law passed. Then she was my husband's pet: my husband offered to cat-sit when my mother-in-law went on a two-week vacation to Germany, and Hallie had been with him, and us, since. Although my husband was always her favorite, and I could never really get over it, not even after fourteen years of marriage, five addresses, two "siblings," one overly rambunctious child who absolutely adored her, and a partridge in a pear tree.

She is already missed. My kid is having a meltdown -- she is much more aware of what's happening this time, and she has sadness and anger that she can't process, because she doesn't have twenty-odd years of therapy experience, like I do. And for my husband and me, this will always be difficult. This will never not hurt.

Goodbye, Hallie. Say hi to everyone for us.