Day Seventy-one: Making candles with Sara and Faith

The girls (ages 10 and 12) up the street have been hanging out at my house every few days until school starts. Once that happens, I’m their new after-school hang-out spot. They’ve been itching to make candles since they first laid eyes on all my supplies. So, today we made birthday candles for their parents, both of whom have birthdays this week. I was skeptical at first, “What? You sure your dad would want a candle?” Eager nods and unison affirmations, “He lives for candles!”

It would be poor form to not make a candle for someone who lives for them! I warned them, “Candle making is really boring.” And I was right! They spent the afternoon bouncing from the kitchen to the Wii in the living room. Good thing I had back-up entertainment, eh?

Me? Well, watching wax cool is boring. But sitting with a cup of tea listening to siblings rival, well… that’s absolutely fascinating.

Day Sixty-nine: When the Universe hands you a pumpkin blight, bake cherry pie.

Turns out, I did double the sugar. Sigh. One bite and I pitched both pies. It’s a waste, but it was simply inedible.

So, I woke up this morning convinced more than ever that TODAY I would make pumpkin pie! Off to the store I went, for a can of pumpkin only to discover an empty shelf at Safeway. Turns out, last year’s pumpkin crop caught a case of the blight and Safeway just barely had enough supply to last through the holiday season. They’ve been sold out since.  Evidently, the Universe is trying to tell me something.

I’m not listening.

Since we skipped our annual cherry pie for the 4th of July (We ate chocolate cake to celebrate IZ and my SIL’s birthdays) I scooped up some cherry pie filling instead. You can blight the pumpkin crop, Dear Universe, but I’m still going to bake pie!

Real Girl. Real Dress. Real Brave.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a dress kind of girl. But it seems like the older I get (read: hello turning 40 and poof, waistline!) the harder it is to find a dress that is both flattering and, dare I suggest it, “age appropriate”. I know, I know, that’s completely open to interpretation. Trust me, I’m pretty sure the entire world would agree with my choice to not put MY body into a 23″ dress with no sleeves. And even if you’re one of those people who can rock the barely clothed look, if you work in any kind of office or school you’ll still need a sweater. Forget modesty or social convention, air conditioning alone will drive you into the arms of something wooly.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to find a dress that had, let’s say, sleeves? A dress that was long enough  you didn’t broadcast your panty choice to the paparazzi upon getting out of your chauffeured limo? A dress that didn’t look like you shopped in your 13 year old’s closet?

Yeah, me too! So, you can imagine my utter glee when I was contacted by Shabby Apple and decided to take a look. I had a little apoplectic fit. Real Dresses. For Real Girls. Real Smart! My tonality aside, I was deeply impressed. Shabby Apple’s  take on women’s dresses made my heart absolutely melt.These are dresses that a girl like me can wear. More importantly, these are dresses that I can imagine wearing with my very real girl body. So, I went shopping!

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Twenty. Last year I cheated and put up an archived post from a past anniversary. And while I’m proud of that piece and still stand by the sentiment, I regretted doing it. In retrospect, I wish I had found the right words to sum up the moment. But the words decided to play a game of  hide and seek—and no matter how closely I looked, they evaded me. So, I took the easy way out and pulled an archived anniversary post.

This year is different. Let the damn words hide. I will make up new ones. Because you don’t reach this landmark without stopping. Without stopping, reflecting, and putting up a sign that says, “We were here. And we’re still very much in love.”

So, twenty. Today we reach that landmark where we  can look back and see as many years married as not. Half of our lives we’ve journeyed together with conjoined names and linked hearts. And every day is a blessed day. We can look you straight in the eye and tell you without guile that we know the meaning of “For  better or for worse.” But unlike our earlier selves, we also know that the worse is not to be feared or avoided or endured. We are wiser, if a bit more wrinkled. We are happy, if a bit overwhelmed with life at the moment. We are still married.

And we are still very much in love.

It has not been without work. Or tears. We are pock-marked and scared by this life. And I’m not about to sugar-coat the losses. But again and again, I come back to you. It’s your hand in the horror that holds me close. It’s your voice in the darkness that keeps me sane and reminds me: we are still married. We are still very much in love.

And it will not always be so scary and so hard and so fraught with meaning. Life will cycle back again, and someday soon we will find ourselves at another anniversary—calmer. We will still be married. And we will still be very much in love. For better. For worse. Again and again. It’s this promise I’m keeping.

Happy Anniversary, IZ. I love you. More than these words. So, so much more.

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky. ~~Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)

You can just make out the bite marks. (click to embiggen)

I’ve been waking up every morning to an interesting phenomenon. Day after day I wake to find the Honeysuckle attempting escape. I’d placed a small bouquet in the living room when our friends  came to visit—and every morning the Honeysuckle is half out of the jar. I’ve been shoving it back down without much thought. But, really? Day after day? Does it want outside that badly?

Me: I just don’t get it, IZ. How does it keep moving like that?

IZ: Uh, Kitty. It looks like Snickers has been munching.

This is not a big deal. I just  feel really stupid for playing along all week without noticing. Once again I can just hear that cat mocking me. Snickers 1, Wende 0.

(make-up your own interesting segue here, because I don’t have one. We’ll call this the reader participation portion of this post)

And what’s up with June? I don’t know what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, but it’s downright November out here on the coast. Ok, I exaggerate. A touch. But it’s not what I had in mind for June. I had plans and those plans involved sunshine and sandals and short skirts. Someone needs to stop feeding Pudge the fish tuna. (and if you’ve been reading this blog for anytime, then you know I like to kick this particular cultural reference until it’s dead.)

Speaking of plans, it turns out… talking about them is a big no-no (um, is this the reason I’m sucking wind losing weight? No, it’s probably the chocolate cake, ahem). Apparently, simply announcing our plans and being acknowledged for them is enough to fool the brain. It’s interesting research, based on a study done in 1933. Which, I think might explain the expanding girth of the American population. We’ve been talking smack and that strokes our egos enough we don’t bother to follow through (Or it could be the chocolate cake)  It certainly seems to shed some light on a particular generation’s tendency (MINE MINE!) to be the epitome of flake.

Anyway, go read it and tell me what you think.

While you do that, I’ll tell you what it makes me think. It makes me stop a bit short on posting all my June plans!  You know, all the plans that float around in your head during June because the impending onset of summer makes you think you have unlimited time, resources, and are 12 years younger than you really are? Yeah, those plans. Call me superstitious or just scientifically informed, but I’m not willing to jinx all the stuff I’ve got on the agenda this summer. So, I guess you’ll just have to assume I’m up to no good.

Like the cat.

The World’s Cutest Baby came for a visit yesterday—bringing sunshine and lots of laughter.  His equally adorable parents brought ridiculously yummy cheese and good conversation. It’s just what we needed!

IZ and me… and some really self-satisfied guy. Don’t ask me who he was, but I bet he gives good advice.

Two weeks. In just two short weeks we hit 20 years. And that should make me an expert on marriage, right?  Yeah, not so much. I’ve always taken a “no advice” approach to the topic, because I believe that marriages are as unique as the individuals in them. If it’s advice you’re looking for, the google can point you to any number of books on the subject. And there are more blogs with twenty-something experts willing to tell you how wonderful marriage is and how you can solve every argument in a mere 15 minutes if you just take their webinar. And I’m pretty sure Dr. Phil is still on the air. Don’t even get me started on the twitter gurus.

But I don’t think a successful pairing of individuals can be boiled down to pat formulas. What works for us may not, probably won’t, work for you. However, I would be disingenuous if I said I hadn’t learned something in the past twenty years. I suspect there are some universals; like respect and compassion and understanding the difference between need and want, I just don’t think those universals solely apply to marriage. They are the universals of a life well lived. And you hardly  need me or some expert to explicate the obvious!

What I can tell you, is that I’ve been ridiculously blessed. And I can honestly say  I’ve attempted to live every day mindful of how fortunate I am to be spending this life with IZ.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Tonight I am breathing in roses and reading bedouin poetry.

Desires have their way,
circulate freely,
but I cannot see your share of my heart
given away. ~~Dhu al-Rumma (d. 735 CE)

My Cecile Brunners are blooming. Which has nothing to do with this post. Let’s call it a pretty diversion.

What a week! It’s been a chaotic mess of me figuring out wicking and realizing I needed to reorder all sorts of supplies and spilling more wax than I thought possible and testing, testing, testing. And more testing. And somewhere during the week my kid grew.

I think it was Thursday when he passed me in the kitchen and said, “Um, mom. My underwear is TOO small.”

“Uh huh, honey. Gotcha. But I’m kinda in the middle of pouring right now. I need to concentrate.”

“Ok, but, they’re REALLY tight.”

Sigh.

Seriously? Does he ever stop growing? No.  No he does not. Nor does he stop eating. And it seems like there should be a correlation between those two things and that I could simply stop one and fix the other. But that only makes him hungrier.  Teenage boys are big sucking sounds on your wallet. You people with girls have NO IDEA.

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My kid kicking it Old Skool and a parable for your Friday afternoon.

Fate was late today. Terribly late. Bigger than detention late. The kind of late that gets to you sent to summer school. And if I were Fate’s mother, I’d be a little chagrined with her behavior.

But Fate is incorrigible. She doesn’t mind being sent to Summer school because there is a boy there she likes. Really likes. His name is Destiny.

Funny name for a boy, but Fate does not mind. Fate likes different and unique and she’s an optimist. She knows that in the end, it is not the name you were born with that defines who you are. It’s your willingness to bend and flex and be late when it matters. Besides, he has really long lashes. The kind Fate’s mother, Hope, would kill for if Hope was the killing kind. And that makes him beguiling.

Fate was terribly late today. But she had a good excuse. It just wasn’t her turn to be on time. And she’s pretty sure she can explain that to her mother.