Life, as it happens

John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I say life is what happens while you’re busy trying to clean up and catch up from the last disaster. From the time you wake to the time you sleep, life is happening. Sure it would be nice to be able to take a step back, breathe, and say isn’t life wonderful. But you know something, when I do that, I find that I have snot on my shoulder, old strained peas on my shirt, a 6 year old pulling at my sleeve to play school, a house that has missing upstairs windows and no outlet covers in the downstairs, a wife whom I haven’t actually spoken to in 6 years, and a baby who is just finding his lungs. Did I mention work, lawn, laundry, dishes, dinner, lunch, breakfast, etc, etc, ad nauseum. The point is that life is what happens while you’re living – who has the time to make other plans?

So here’s my life now, as I’m living it. My first grader, yeah I can’t believe that either, had her first day of class. Once again she has returned to French Immersion and continues to learn how to communicate in ways I don’t understand. Not a problem, because I’ve learned that I can respond in one of two ways to most of the things she says. They are: No and No way. If I respond in either of those ways I’m sure to upset her, but at least I won’t be allowing her to go out with her other 6 year old friends in a car they ‘borrowed’ from someone’s parents so they can go to the DQ even though none of them has dime one to their names where they will proceed to order three Blizzards each just to ‘try’ them and then stop at the movie store where they will pick out movies that they can watch at the same friend’s house from whom they ‘borrowed’ the car and stay up all night because the parents aren’t home. See where I’m going with this? If I shut her down right away, she can’t get into trouble.

My 4 month old, who is the size of a small truck and as dense as a rock, has actually started to . . . oops I almost jinxed it. How about this, I will say it in Latin. He has started to sleepius throughus the nightius. I’m not sure it will continue, but for the past two nights this has happened and I can’t tell you how good it feels. I would imagine it’s similar to the feeling one has on drugs or sugar or both. It’s total euphoria. The problem is that now I’m still tired as my body is remembering what it’s like to sleep. Of course Andrea still gets up to feed, but at least it’s not every hour. He has been in day care now and it appears to be going well. He still has all his fingers and toes and isn’t screaming when we pick him up. Of course he is asking who we are, but we hope that will come back to him on the weekend when we spend more time with him.

My wife is good, so I’m told. We’ve taken to leaving cryptic messages with one another – not quite caveman drawings, but not quite legible words either. Our schedule is such that we now only see each other when she’s leaving in the morning and when we go to bed at night, which actually leaves us no time to speak as it would be a violation of rule #1: No speaking at night in Jonah’s room while he’s sleeping. I mean God forbid he should actually work around us and our needs. My last message to Andrea went something like this:

Dear Madam, If you are indeed my wife, I love you. Please pick up the stuff we need. You know, that stuff that we ran out of, that we use daily. Also, let me know if you want to do those things on Friday. I wrote it down somewhere. I ‘m sure you’ll see it. Please do your thing with Xcel. Love, your bed mate.

In retrospect all I can say is . . . What the hell does that mean? I guess I need to work on my writing skills a bit.

And as for me. Well, I’m just a total mess. Nothing new there. Here’s what’s going on in my life. The upstairs still isn’t finished. I think I’ve been working on this project for 13 years, but I lost count some time ago. The progress I’ve made includes taking both windows completely out. The rational went something like this: How can I know exactly what size window to buy if I don’t exactly how big the opening is? The best way to know is to remove the window. Any problems with this? Only one – windows won’t arrive for three weeks. Ooops. Otherwise it’s going well. The walls are white and the floor is covered in white dust. I would imagine this is a health hazard. Don’t tell the city.

I still have the garden outside, but it’s mostly covered in stuff I know I didn’t plant. The weeds are out of control. I actually can’t tell the difference between the weeds and the plants. Just last night I tried to serve dandelions for dinner by accident. Ooops.

Our basement is wet, the doors don’t shut, the molding is still missing, the outlets and switches are missing their covers, there is no electricity to the lights in the kitchen or upstairs, and there’s mold growing in the bath. Ooops.

As you see, Ooops is a consistent theme in my life. As in Ooops, life is happening again.

One of three family photos. Thanks to a woman who passed us by and asked if we wanted a photo, even though I was a cubs fan.


Mia loved this picture. It is in the tunnels at the University of Minnesota. Behind Mia's head is where Charlie missed the toliet.