Four Essays on (my) Life

About four months ago,

Our dog died.  The one we brought in to rejuvenate our aging first dog (which totally worked, FYI). She was more the boy’s dog, but over time, grew on me.  She gave us a semblance of “home” after our move, and I loved her for it.

[Crazy side bar: our first Easter here, she suffered a traumatic spinal injury. Literally in one second, she went from meandering the backyard, to both hind legs completely immobile, paralyzed by a slipped disc.  I’ll never forget the sound of her shriek or her wild, frightened eyes locked on mine as she drug her limp body towards me. One of the most bizarre experiences of my life. Miraculously, she made a full recovery.]

This spring, however, amid the hoopla of a Sunday family brunch, she vomited what looked like a small pond in our kitchen. We simultaneously admired her handiwork and clamored over each other in a chorus of “not it’s” for clean-up duty. Poor middle child; always a step behind.

About Thursday I clued in that the vomiting was not going away. I also noticed she was staying outside more…under the deck…trying to keep out of sight…when it hit me like a punch in the gut; she was not well.

We went to every great length, but by Monday, she was gone.

[Crazy side bar, 2.0: she died of an infectious disease only found in Kansas and Missouri.  We asked the Vet (in front of the children, rookie mistake) if she would’ve contracted it in a different state like for instance, Texas? No, he answered, she would not have.]

Losing a pet is heartbreaking, regardless. But it seems especially cruel to lose one due to (re)location, a year after she’d clawed her way back to us from a near death experience.

Life, you are one bitchy little chain-yanker.

About three months ago,

I’d been belly-aching that my almost senior hadn’t wanted to go on ONE SINGLE college visit.  Meanwhile, I was missing our bonding opportunities and lagging behind the super-planners whose Facebook posts induced envy (laced with panic) each time their bright-eyed child was pictured frolicking on some campus quad. And spare me the “it’s not about me” lecture.  It’s entirely about every mom when their little birds are inches away from leaving the nest. (Which might explain why our young go momentarily feral, but that’s not my point.)

I got my college visit after all!

Turns out, my first born wasn’t quite ready to start planning his whereabouts for next year, because he was still working out his plan for this year.

What’s that you say?  You want to transfer? Your senior year? To a private school?  A week before summer?

Long. Dramatic. Pause.

Let me get right on that.

So I start cranking out the calls and, most fun of all, crunching the numbers. The beauty of public education is, you don’t really know you’re paying for it. Private ed, on the other hand, reminds you monthly. My next several weeks (which had the trapped feel of an endless winter snow day) were spent reworking a budget; from cable to cell and all the insurances in between. We did a complete overhaul.

But he’s happy. So happy. It’s like we got our kid back. We hadn’t realized the extent he’d gone missing. Once he got to own his destiny, he was released, set free, and we are pleased to see the ease return to his manner.

Life, you little son-uv-a-gun, throwing a curve ball out of left field. That’s hard to do, even for you.

About two months ago,

I was lamenting my lost summer, the one spent indoors with a legal pad in hand, and no fun vacation on the horizon. I mean, Come. On. Is this first world or not?  Since I’d recently been crowned the queen of all research, I took the liberty of finding us a last minute VRBO in our favorite mountain town of Breckenridge, Colorado, situated where we could walk everywhere. Or bike. Or longboard (which is a skateboard, but longer.)

It was a beauty of a week; from the weather to the adventure to the togetherness. I spent my free time reading a (not at all trashy) novel on our deck, overlooking the mount, face gently turned toward the sun, while Phil and the gang took various long boarding jaunts.

On the last day on their familiar trail, as Phil rounded a downhill turn, slow walkers appeared out of nowhere and he had to quickly maneuver to miss barreling into them. In so doing, his longboard flew out from under him and he went airborne, down a ravine, into the picturesque creek, where he encountered a rather large rock.  The boys were behind him, thinking what a cool stunt, until he emerged, bloodied from head to chest.

And when I say bloodied, I mean possibly mistaken for the victim in a very special episode of CSI Colorado. My Lord. He was never unconscious nor dazed&confused (miracle #1), but at the hospital we learned he’d broken, but not displaced, a vertebra in his neck (hence he could still walk – miracle #2), and would need surgery to repair his sheered scalp. The trauma surgeon told us the procedure was so intricate, it was beyond his level of expertise. He actually admitted that. (miracle #3)

So off to Denver via ambulance Phil did go, while the boys and I packed up the condo for a 2 day layover at Centura Medical.

The surgery was a success and the prognosis for his neck good.  For optimum healing, he’d have to wear a brace for 8 weeks. And not drive.  At all.

For the better part of 7 weeks now, driving is all I’ve done…be it Phil to and from work, or our non-permit having underlings, everywhere else. Has it sucked? Yes. Yes it has. But in light of what I could have been doing, like giving sponge bathes or reintroducing myself to my husband, I try to remember it could always be worse. And then the front seat of a Ford F-150 doesn’t sound so bad.

Well done, life. You pretty much are the best teacher.

Let the good times roll!

About one month ago,

A friend mentioned casually over breakfast she was interviewing for a job. I equally as casually said I’d love a job like that. She said she’d hook me up. A few emails and an interview later, I was newly employed.  It was all very casual.

My first “paying” job in almost 18 years! Notice the “air” quotes. Let the record state, I have worked every day the last 18 years, as all home-keepers do, it’s just the revenues aren’t cold and hard like say cash, as much as they are long-term investment realizations like say a mostly idyllic childhood…which don’t “just happen” because life decided to be sweet to you. No, someone worked their ass off to bring you that childhood. You’re welcome.

So what is this casual cash cow I’ve stumbled across?

A four morning a week barista at a legendary mom&pop that’s decided to take it’s talents to south KC, which is where I roll. In other words, I’m working at a bakery that has a storied history of connecting with the community and creating space for its patrons to linger, converse, and draw inspiration from their surroundings. The goal is not mass produce and move along, but slow down and engage socially.  I would think it a clever ploy to entice a hopeless nostalgic such as myself, except they’ve been doing this in mid-town since 1945.

People love this place. And I love people. And baked goods. So it’s a win.

Oh life. Whoever nonchalantly said you were a bitch and slapped it on a bumper sticker, had not waited around long enough to see your other side. Bearing your misfortunes and mishaps and downright horrible days is a necessary course of action to finding you, the you we’re always looking for.     The Good Life.