angelbirdflies

I took a well week off from work. A week to focus on wellness and get my healthy feet planted firmly under a solid, shining, energetic body (positive affirmations you know). Day 1- tending to a very sick little boy. He has been sick for four solid days, running a temp between 100 and 104 degrees. His little lungs are all congested and he has to take breathing treatments four times a day in combination with some heavy antibiotics for a serious ear infection. To combat the blues we colored eggs and transformed the front yard into a flamboyant invitation for Spring.

Pristine splendor dancing across a hidden horizon and the family takes some time to enjoy the inclimate splendor, Bodhi particularly liked this mode of transport and building our reclining snowman. Who is crash dieting in the front yard as we speak and is sweating bullets and girth beneath a wide sunny sky.

Good bye. How does one say good bye? How does one relinquish the warm hands that carried you over troubled waters, that gently wiped salty spray from crying eyes, or warmed suppers to fill an empty belly and warm an aching heart. I don't know. I know that I will be glad when she is no longer in that restrictive body, yet the warm memories of my Bonny, my Grande', come rushing to the surface, filling me with a nostalgic longing. The melodic cadence of Italian flowing in a stream of sweet nothings peppered with injunctions to "eat", to "have courage", to "love", won't follow my sons down the driveway or greet them crossing thresholds. I don't know how to make her Italian roasts, her greasy breakfasts, her meringue pies. I don't know her prayers or even her deepest hopes. I know only that she loved me, utterly and completely, and she is leaving and I am sad.

Prescott. Going home is always an odd experience, both familiar and devastatingly unfamiliar. This time was no different. Mama, beautiful and plodding forward as only a mother can. My brother, gorgeous, brooding and cloaked in a 007 veneer of uncertainty. My dear sister-sister, a touchstone of devastating joy and constant support. Overall it was a poignant trip, made more moving and painful as it was a good-bye visit to my Grande' who is shuffling, ever so slowly into the wide horizon of unknown possibilities.

My big brother came for a one day visit, with our mutual brother-friend Leroy. It is wonderful to link with blood, occasionally trying and hair tearing, but this visit was beautiful without either of us schlepping our baggage and stories all over the place. It is interesting to witness the passage of time on the canvas of those closest to us. A poignancy of time-lapse memory, singing a melody across the years.

feces, BM, stool, waste, excrement, poop, shit, poo-poo, number two, dropping a load... No matter what you call it we have it in spades at our house and I've been drowning in it. Yes, yes, I realize that there is a great little metaphor dangling over my head at this odorous hour, but I prefer to just focus on the facts at hand. I am potty training a two year old and a puppy simultaneously, and doing a poor job with both I might add. This morning, my little ray of sunshine took off his underwear pleasantly and pooped on his brother's carpet, then waltzed over to me (in the back room) and announced, "I POOP ON BRO-BRO'S FLOOR!". Later that same day, as I finished cleaning him up after his second pee incident and was tending to my urine splattered kitchen floor, he said, "I HAVE TO POO MAMA" simultaneously trailing poop all over the kitchen and down the hall as he scurried toward the toilet. A few short hours later, Maia escaped from her temporary s...

THIRTY-FIVE... Can you believe it!! I know, I know, I don't look a minute over thirty-four. I hear that all the time. Well the day started with an elaborate pity party with hair shirts and fan-fare and plenty of doctors waving needles. I sang out into the wide sky Bonnie Tyler's signature song, "I NEED A HERO", and Shane came riding in on his white horse and whisked me off for a hike in the wilds of Colorado. AAAAAHHHHHH! Now that is a birthday worth celebrating! So Happy Birthday to Me ... OH... and to my brother who also happens to have been fortunate to have arrived on MY special day, two years earlier than me.