Update

Everything went well! My mom was out of surgery, transplant successful, at around 7 pm. We're planning to stop by to visit her on our way out of the state tomorrow. (I did think about staying here, but she'll be in the hospital for at least a week, and there's not much we could do for her until she gets home. My sister and brother and many of her coworkers and friends will be visiting her this week, I'm sure.)

Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes our way.

Karen

Christmas Gift

My mom might get a kidney tomorrow! She has to drive up to the big city hospital to get a blood test at 6 am and wait several hours for the culture results. If everything's good and the donor kidney is good, she will have the transplant tomorrow afternoon.

If you're a praying person, pray. If you're a wishing/hoping person, wish and hope. She (and we) expected to be waiting years because of her high level of antibodies from transfusions. She just got the call this afternoon.

Of course, when a kidney becomes available, that means someone has died. In this case, it was a 22-year-old woman somewhere up North. Her family is mourning tonight.

Early Present

You know about the bunk beds we were going to buy. I may have even told you we bought them. We picked them up about a week ago, in five quite heavy, cumbersome boxes we had a hard time squeezing into the minivan, even with all the seats down.

Our plan was to have my parents watch the kids for a couple of hours on Christmas Eve (no, really, the guy at the furniture store said it should only take an hour "with both of you working on it" hahahahahahahahaha), assemble the beds, then come back down to get the kids. Then we started thinking . . . Christmas Eve, they'll be excited already, new beds . . . Plus, we're leaving the day after Christmas to head up South (Florida joke), and they'd only get to sleep in them for two nights.

So, what about this weekend? As planned, we took the kids down to my parents so we could "do some Christmas stuff", a comment in which Emily seemed disappointingly disinterested.

We cleared a space, removed the old mattresses, and, of course, took some pictures.

First, the boxes, the space for the beds, all the pieces laid out and ready . . .






Oh, and before starting any job like this . . .



Don't forget to charge your power screwdriver.

The photos, naturally, don't do justice to all the tight-space screwdriver work that had to be done, all the Allen wrenches we successfully stripped attaching the bed rails, or the way both of us seem to use the other's name as a kind of curse word when we are frustrated. Or the fact that real, actual curse words were employed. But we did it.

The hardest part was definitely lifting the top bunk onto the bottom bunk, especially for me. I failed the first time and we had to carefully, painfully replace the bunk on the floor again. C went and got me a plastic bin on which to stand. And hoist again. Actual construction time from box to finish was probably closer to 3 1/2 hours.





We quick (!) made the beds, threw the blankets on top and photographed our handiwork, with the late afternoon sun sparkling through the windows.





Someone made the obligatory Big Lebowski joke about the bed "really tying the room together" although "dominating" might be more accurate. The bunk bed is a large piece of furniture and the room is very small. We can open all the doors and drawers, though, and there's floor space to play, so it's all good.

Then we went down to my parents' house to eat dinner. We even talked about putting the beds together right in front of the kids. A couple of times Emily said, "What are you talking about?" I said either, "Putting something together" or "You'll see when you get home." Even with my deliberately limited subtlety, she didn't seem to catch on. She just said, "Oh" and carried on destroying her ham sandwich and dipping her grapes-on-toothpicks in her water.

When we got home, we had to take care of a pee pee emergency (for Penny). This required one of us to run into their room for a change of pants for Penny, lest the excited photo shot we had planned be ruined or compromised by her clothelessness from the waist down. Once Penny was re-pantsed, I said, "Okay, into your room, both of you!"

"Why, Mommy?" said Emily.

"There's a present in there for you," I said, "Go quick!" And they were already gone.




They're definitely happy about it. They actually seemed happy about going to bed, which isn't the usual state of affairs around here. Penny was given strict orders not to climb up to the top bunk. Emily was given strict orders to call us if Penny started to climb the ladder. Daddy lifted Penny up just so she could see what she'd be missing (no, that's not why he did it--we were all just giddy). She did not want to come down.





But she did. They took baths, read stories. Bonus: we can all fit on the bottom bunk to read together! No more sitting on the floor (after I broke the toddler bed)!

Now we're waiting for them to fall asleep, in their proper bunks . . . All's quiet . . .

Christmas Photo, Take 17

You can guess which one we used.

Who am I?

A calm, domestic almost-goddess, who lovingly and sustainably removes the extra meat from her roast chicken, to make a marvelous chicken salad (thanks for the recipe, Sis!) to feed herself and hubby economical lunches for the week?











or . . .






A crazy hormonal* carnivore who is sucking every delicious bit of chicken flesh from the carcass even though she's just had dinner and is seriously already full?



*And no, Mom, and anybody else, "hormonal" is not code for pregnant, just female.

Weekend of Racquetball Courts and (Artificial) Trees

You know, when you remember your childhood, if your family celebrated Christmas, you probably have one glittery, magic-tinged memory of visiting Santa's Workshop or a Winter Wonderland display of some sort. Maybe your community center, or your community theater, or perhaps your preschool even, elaborately decorated a room or a portable (trailer) filled with gauzy fake snow and empty boxes wrapped with gold and red paper and lots of bows. A miniature train choo-chooed along a track, dolls and stuffed animals were set up among the dainty fake trees and mountains of the cozy wintry scene. (I could have gotten some of this mixed up in my memory of It's a Small World at Disney World. I could.) Maybe you were only 4 and lived in Florida where it might have been 75 degrees outside and you didn't even remember snow, but Man, that was the best thing ever.

So, our Y, which does wonderful things, had a Breakfast with Santa on Saturday. They talked it up and handed out flyers at the girls' gymnastic classes, so the girls were excited. While I wasn't expecting the rosy, possibly imaginary visions from my childhood, I was at least expecting breakfast. C. says the correct interpretation for these sorts of public "breakfasts" is "pancakes." Unfortunately it was just donut holes and cartons of milk. (Like public school breakfast at Title I schools! I kid you not--I worked in two! Except some days we had deep-fried french toast sticks.) The kids dug in. I stood there, wiping powdered sugar off their clothes. Okay, maybe I ate one donut. One chocolate and one powdered sugar.

The picture with Santa is very very poor, but the Y took one (free) of every family and I just have to pick it up at the desk. I hope it's better, although I don't know what I'm going to do with it, exactly. I had to snap fast because the time with Santa was very precious.

What was more fun than all that was the racquetball courts. The old racquetball courts, which don't get used much now that the new building has nicer ones. I remember these courts from my childhood, with their tiny doors (5 feet tall, I judge, from the number of times I failed to duck enough going in and out) and open, netted roofs. The girls played This is our house, please knock and I will show you around. I only got one picture before the battery died. Of course. But it was fun.

Maybe I'll find my mystical winter wonderland again someday . . .




Emily really really wanted to get the Christmas decorating done, like, last week, and Penny was excited because Emily was excited. So after we'd come home from the "breakfast" and had some real food (Apples! Eggs!), I said, "Let's do it." Cue roaring crowd and jumping pixies, one of whom is wearing both her "princess dress" and her "princess skirt." So Daddy got down all the boxes from the top shelf of the closet, where only he can reach them.





After these blissful, if messy, scenes of children and ornaments, Daddy went on the weekly grocery run. Penny wanted to go, too, so Emily and I stayed to finish the tree trimming. Mostly this consisted of me hanging ornaments and her 1) rearranging the manger scene 2) opening bags and boxes and saying, Ooh, Mommy, look! or 3) playing a game with two little girl ornaments and one bigger Girl Scout ornament who served as the mother for her purposes, mostly telling the little girls, Yes, they could do that, but, Be careful.

I was adjusting something on the bottom branches, kneeling on the ground, while simultaneously talking to my sister on the phone. So my head was basically tipped to my shoulder, holding the phone, when I heard a crack and the tree began to tip.

"Yikes!" I said, or perhaps some less polite word, and told my sister I'd have to call her back. Emily tried to help me hold up the tree, while I tried to snap one of the cheap-o plastic base pieces back into the base. Of course, the cheap-o plastic piece was cracked, and then another one cracked and the whole tree came crashing down, to more impolite words about the world ending and no-way-am-I doing-this-all-over-again. Emily ran to her room, crying, convinced by my irrational ravings that there would be no tree this year. And probably no Christmas.

I had to lure her out with a snack of buttered bagels. Yum.

If I had been thinking like a blogger, I would have taken a picture of the destruction; instead I just de-strung the lights, un-hung the ornaments, discarded half of the cheap-o garlands I'd been keeping year after year for no discernible reason, and pulled the dadblasted tree into sections small enough to fit into plastic garbage bags.

When Daddy got home from the grocery store, I sent him back out to Lowe's, where we scored a not-quite-as-cheap tree (half off!). Then I went out for an exercise walk with my iPod and let him redo the trimming.

And finally, who likes the tree? Kitty likes the tree!



He's been sleeping under it every night since, like, 2 days ago when all this happened.

Getting some sunshine

On Saturday, we took a trip to the nearest state park--really near, only about 20 minutes away. My sister and her husband have a motor home (snazzily appointed in original 70's design, wood panels and fuzzy orange chairs and all). It was just me, my kids, my brother-in-law and their kids. My sister was still recuperating from the Great November Cold and Flu and hoping to catch some sleep with the baby. My husband was hoping to watch Virginia lose another football game. So I packed some food, my brother-in-law brought a little grill, and we set out for the park.

The park provided lots of space to run around, multiple picnic areas, and miles of walking trails. The weather was warm and sunny, but not hot--70's probably. (Admittedly, sometimes we Floridians refer to that as "cool" rather than "warm"--it's all perspective.) Our enthusiastic after-lunch hike didn't get too far, as--what do you know?--two and three year olds have short legs, like to look at stuff on the ground, and are too heavy to carry very far when they inevitably ask you to pick them up. The kids had a blast, though. Outdoors is good.






When nature just isn't enough, find a playground. There were two of them within our short-legged walking route. The older kids even found another couple of kids with whom to play race-to-the-tree. It's so neat to watch them effortlessly, instantly connecting with other kids.






Two days before, we had a low key Thanksgiving at my parents' house. My brother and his girlfriend Emily were visiting, along with Emily's mom, Susan. I don't have any pictures of them, though, but I do have pictures of the new niece, though, being held by my dad. (See why I have to get my eyebrows waxed . . . it's genetic!)



I was even there . . . rare photo of Mommy . . . like my new highlights?



Many toys were played with . . . and spread out all over the floor.




Penny loves Daddy. And TV.




Penny and her cousin continued their piano duet tradition, sometimes accompanied by dancing and/or singing of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"--at least the first two lines.





I'll leave you with another look at the beautiful new niece. She smiled either right before or right after this picture, and every other one I tried to take. Can you tell?