Lynn's blog

It's only October and I'm already waiting happily for 2010, not because this year's been so horrible, but because it's been so up-in-the-air. I've decided 2009 is the Year of Breaking Things.

My brain broke in February (well, it'd been broken for years, we just figured it out then). It's repairing itself fairly well. I still have ups and downs but they're not nearly as ^UP and _DOWN as they used to be.

My uterus broke in April, and I discover I didn't write about it here! I've been so distracted. I nearly bled to death in April, from a regular old period. I ended up in the hospital for two days for a near-emergency ablation and two units of blood. Who knew you could bleed to death THAT way!

Our kitchen ceiling broke in August. The upstairs toilet plugged and ran at the same time, and there was nowhere for the water to go but out. The upstairs bath flooded for about 30-45 minutes. We discovered it when water came pouring out of the walls in the pantry hallway and basement staircase--it had come through the bathroom's pocket door into, rather than down, the walls. And we saw a little bit of water coming out of a light fixture. Long story short, the next morning we woke to a crash and discovered the kitchen ceiling on the kitchen floor.

Lookee! A baby!

My sister-in-law Katie gave birth to her this morning at 3:21 am, no weight or height released at this time. We're going to go see her today when John gets off work. Welcome to the world, Miss Zoe!

One of our relatives asked us for family photos for a class project. Ben, Ben, Ben. You should know never to ask for stuff like that:

One of my other projects that absorbed too much of my time is now out of the way, I've finished the upgrade on the site (almost--couple of stragglers), and it's all purty again. How you like?

If you catch any bugs or problems, please let me know. In the meantime, now that this is my main blog, I hope to be spending more time with you for reals.

If you can believe it, my youngest girl is eight. Some of you have been following this site since before she was born, and now she's eight.

Hey, guys. I'm sure a few of you are wondering, what the heck's going on with Lynn? A few things.

I'm going to be upgrading TNH's software--it's really, really out of date!

I think I told you guys we were going to sell our extra lot. Well, we put it on the market and it sold--with a backup offer--nearly full price in less than three days.

This is very good news. It means we'll be mortgage-free. It also means we'll lose our big yard, and I'll finally say goodbye to a dream I had for myself: urban self-sufficiency. Ever since I bought this place I wanted to have a big garden, chickens, maybe a wood-fired oven.

But first I got divorced, and my gardening nut ex-husband moved out. I remarried John, but he really hates yard work--despises it. And then I got sick. So there was this yard, slowly going fallow. Nothing I did to get help with the yard worked. I had my chickens, but it became an enormous battle with the kids to get them to do their chores and feed them.

So really, it's clear. That dream is never going to come true. I don't have the family support, and I don't have the strength. I'm Not That Guy, as we say around here, though I really wanted to be That Guy. The sale of the lot means financial relief, but it also means goodbye to my chickens, who are already in their new home. And it means goodbye to the idea of me as an urban farmer. Bye, Farmer Lynn.

I miss my chickens already.

I'm on a YouTube kick!

This? Is AWESOME:

Looking for a good Halloween read? Novelist MJ Rose--a longtime TNH sponsor--is releasing her romantic thriller The Reincarnationist as a free ebook between now and the 31st of October!

Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.

A trail of present-day murders takes us deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems or memory stones whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.

MJ is releasing the second book in this series soon, so you'll want to read this one quick!

And I DO mean "mucking out." Stables ain't got nothin' on LouLou.

As you may have seen, Anhata and her husband Frank are adopting two little kids from foster care, tripling their children overnight! Since Josie moved into the downstairs guest room, Lou's had two beds in her room, the built-in bed that Jo slept in, and a wrought iron daybed. We gave Hata and Frank the daybed for their new daughter to sleep in until they found something else they wanted.

So we're taking the opportunity for a major mucking-out of Lou's room. So far, we've found long lost dishes, scissors she wasn't supposed to have, several reams of paper, rotten fruit, stolen packets of raisins and the lid off the caramel sauce, and we've collected a bathrooms' worth of laundry, some of it clean, some of it mine. What was she doing with my flannel sheet set and my Jayne Cobb, Mercenary t-shirt?!

I point to this every Halloween because it's just too damn funny. There are some naughty words, so if that bothers you, don't click.

I Didn't Knit That for You:

"When a tall, handsome stranger asked me if that was handspun, well, I'd never had a man talk to me like that before!" bwaaahahahahaha!!! I love those Mason-Dixon girls!

John and I have been doing this thing in the past few months we call "Not That Guy." "Not That Guy" is the guy you wanted to be when you bought all that stuff for, say, scrapbooking. You wanted to be That Scrapbooking Guy, but you're not scrapbooking; it's all sitting there in the closet gathering dust and taking up space. You're Not That Scrapbooking Guy. So it's time to get rid of That Guy's stuff.

So far John has admitted he's Not That Woodworking Guy, and we sold the bandsaw and Shopsmith that have been taking up space in the garage, unused for five years. I have admitted I'm Not That Drumming Guy, and sold my beautiful quinto drum that has sat in a corner of Josie's room, unplayed, for more than 15 years.

(Quick side note: We discovered in this process that we are Those Biking Guys, however, and we took the money from the sales of Those Other Guys' things and bought some new bikes. I am now the extremely happy owner of an Electra Townie 21 speed, the Purple Poem one. Go get on a Townie, they will renew the joy of biking that you lost somewhere in middle school. And John converted his mountain bike to an Xtracycle sport utility bike, which is the coolest thing EVAR. He can haul a week's worth of groceries AND LouLou on that thing. And we have a tandem. I highly recommend tandem riding for couples, it is hella fun.)

The greatest thing we have had to acknowledge, though, is that we are Not Those Gardening Guys. I was That Gardening Guy, but that was before my illness. Now, I'm Not That Guy any more, and I never will be again.

After a lot of thought, we have decided to sell our extra lot, the yard next to our home. We had considered moving--we even looked at condo living--but in the end, selling the lot is our best choice. It severely reduces the amount of maintenance and/or guilt we face, it allows us to pay off our mortgage, and it puts us in a much better position to improve the house we have. It needs insulation, new, more efficient windows, a new kitchen (our kitchen is falling apart and we have no dishwasher--aagh!), and the laundry needs moved upstairs from the basement. If we did those things, we could stay in this house happily for at least another ten years if not longer. We love our neighborhood, and we want to stay.

So, Not That Guy. We wanted to be That Guy, but we're Not That Guy.

Well! That summer just ripped by. We didn't even get summer here in Oregon until July, and then poof, it's September. Josie turned 11 yesterday (!), totally took me by surprise. Well, not that much; we have a party planned and everything. Just snuck up on me.

This has been the busiest summer in memory for us. I got a new bike and have started riding as much as possible. This is monumental. Less than two years ago, I couldn't walk to the end of the block, and I wasn't allowed to drive. We NEVER thought I'd be able to do some of the things I can do now.

We went camping. I am not a camper. I'm still not a camper. The people we camped with didn't understand that if I don't sleep the night before, I am no good the next day--really no good--and I will do what I have to do, namely take it very, very easy. We learned a lot about what we need when camping, though, and next time it'll be easier. Next time I'll remember a copy of Roberts' Rules of Order and motel reservations down the highway, just in case.

I completely lost the will to knit. No idea why. Today I finished two socks that have been sitting on the needles languishing, waiting to be bound off. I feel in the mood to knit again, in fact, even saw something in the new issue of Knitty that I might attempt.

And I've been writing. A lot. Nothing I can show you here, but it's felt very, very good indeed.

This is Henry:

Hello, dear ones! Things are nuts, and I am being torn in several directions right now. I'm still here checking on things, and eventually I'll be blogging more as I get things straightened around in my head and my life. But for now, hey, new pictures!

John, Josie, me and Louisa, taken in April--I think on Lou's birthday, but I'm not entirely sure.

Me and the girls, taken the same day. Pix courtesy Gramma Arlene (hi mom!). I'll be back, I promise!

She won! she won! she won! squeal! If you heard screaming, it was the girls and me.

You KNOW how I am about Dancing with the Stars. Kristi totally pwned the boys tonight, though, you know, I am so not sad Jason and Cristian made it to the finals. Holy cats, them are two gorgeous men, and I could look at them a lot longer than these last few weeks. But Kristi deserves it, completely and utterly. She is shorter than they are and still stood head and shoulders over them all.

Go Kristi!

Louisa Mei is seven years old today!

Have you gotten the Great Respiratory Virus of 2008?

INVISIBLE LOLZ!

Totally invisible, because I'm miserable. I've been trying to muster the energy to update the software here, and I just haven't had it. Now I know why. I'll try to make sure JJ goes through the comments queue tomorrow morning.

I've noticed a lot of visitors to the site are using "Fun Web Products." There's some debate as to whether this is spyware/browser hijacking software. But I thought I'd at least tell you guys what to do about it. Best tip: Use Firefox. It's far and away the best browser.

I am so frickin' not ready for this.

Today Josie and I went to Freddies and bought her four little teenie bras. She doesn't really have anything much to hold up yet, but not for long. And she does need that extra layer under her shirts now; she's noticeably, uh, pointy in the chestal area.

oy.

According to the British website alljoinin.com, the average British housewife would earn £30,000 were she actually paid for her labor. That's well over the actual average wage in Britain. At the current exchange rate, that's just under $60,000. That number has stayed amazingly consistent--this isn't the first time something like this has been calculated out.

So should homemakers be paid a wage? I say no--I mean, who's paying?--but we do deserve more legal protection than we have.

For 20 years now, I haven't had a closet with a door on it--the entire time I've lived in this house. When I lived in the downstairs bedroom (now Josie's), it came with a curtain over the door, which was the first thing I removed when I moved in. When we remodeled the upstairs, we ran out of money and space for a proper closet in our bedroom, so we made do with a couple of cheapo fabric-covered wardrobes that fell apart almost immediately. And yet we continued to use them, because we had no alternative.

Until now.

Last night we finished up installing two lovely new wardrobes from IKEA. (Heilsa IKEA!) And now we have not only enough room to hang all our clothes, but also a proper shoe rack, and room for John's large collection of boots. (One of his nicknames is "Imeldo.")

What makes the wardrobes the most lovely is that they have doors. Real doors, with, like, hinges and handles, and they're made of wood, or a wood-like substance anyway. We still have room for shelving in the wardrobes, which is a project/IKEA run for the week.

aah. adulthood at last.

My Valentine's Day present to JJ was a bag full of goodies that cannot be discussed on a family forum. The girls got bouquets of flowers from their daddy. And I got three hours to myself at a writing workshop featuring Kim Stafford.

I haven't been to a writing workshop in 25 years. That last time, I embarrassed myself so thoroughly with my own pomposity that I couldn't face doing another one and have actively avoided the teacher (a fairly prominent regional novelist) assiduously ever since.

One of the prompts was to write a love poem about the most beloved inanimate object in our houses. Since I have fibromyalgia, that would be my Tempurpedic bed, which I worship. Here is the poem:

Oh, bed. Oh, my bed.
In winter, you are comically hard when I first slip into you
Needing my heat to soften you to the point where you don't feel like a frozen board
Like I'm lying on the tundra, the permafrost
But oh, my bed
When you warm under my body, you mold around me and hold me up
All flannel and warmth, reflected back, my own warmth captured and transmitted into softness
And next to me, under the down and chenille
My boy, drowsy and moaning in his sleep
His mouth so soft and childlike and the little gray patch in his beard
I turn over on my side, careful of the box in my chest that keeps my heart from stopping
And you hold me up another night and let me sleep
Oh, my bed.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

Josie has her own room again, after nearly 7 years of sharing one with LouLou. Lou kept the old room upstairs with us, and Josie got the guest room downstairs off the dining room.

My mom said, "But where will I sleep when I come?" Josie will move upstairs to her sister's daybed, and guests will use her bed as they always had in the past.

It took us nearly two days of work to get the guest room ready, Josie's stuff downstairs and put away, and Lou's room mucked out. And I mean mucked out.

I don't know how they managed, but we've mucked out their room three times this month, and each time it's as bad as the last. It's one of the reasons we gave Jo her own room, so that they're responsible for their own messes now.

Josie has kept her room fairly tidy so far--and is living in there, I never see her it seems like--and Lou has actually made a few strides toward tidiness herself. I got her out of bed last night (she wasn't asleep yet) to put away her books and toys, and this morning when I went into her room I could actually see the carpet. So there may be hope yet for this family.

I'm getting old. I can tell, because silly things make me cry.

Today, for instance, I got a notice that someone had looked at my profile on classmates.com. Went and looked; it was an old boyfriend of sorts who'd looked me up before, no big thing. But elsewhere on the page, I saw a name, a name I'd sorta been looking for, a name I'd even googled once. For here, I'll call him A. He was...well, I never really said it before today, not even to myself, but he was my first love.

A was brilliant. I mean, really brilliant. I mean, I'm smart and I felt slow around him. I mean, he didn't take calculus in high school; he helped teach calculus. He was sweet. And he was beautiful. Stunningly, amazingly, unconsciously, heartbreakingly beautiful. As much as I love my husband, and as handsome as he is--and friends, my boy is darling--A remains the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. Green eyes, golden hair, swimmers body, perfect teeth. And he liked me, for a little while at least. He was the first boy who ever asked me out, and I worshipped the ground he walked on.

Of course, it didn't end well.

One of my greatest regrets in life is that I had the chance to kiss him, for him to be the first boy I ever kissed, and I blew it. I was in his arms, and we were saying goodnight, and I went to kiss him but I was so nervous I kissed his cheek. And then the moment was gone and I never got another one.

For all I know, he's gay. For all I know, I was just something to pass the time when he came home from college (he was two years older). For all I know, the embarrassed look he gave me as his sneering best friend drove them away the last time I saw him wasn't embarrassment but shame. For all I know, he's never thought of me once since. For all I know, he's thought of me as often as I've thought of him, but I doubt it.

I just wrote him a quick note via classmates. I don't expect to hear back, so I told him what I needed to tell him: That he had been so special to me, and that I hoped he was well and happy.

And now I'm sitting here crying. I'm nearly 47 years old and I'm crying over a boy from high school. I'm getting old.