Moving On - Part 2

In which I discuss the impact on the girls.

"Mom," she tells me (and anyone else who will listen) several times daily, "when we go to Idaho, I can get my guys back!" ...Often followed by, "Can we go there now?"

The toddler lost all priveleges to her "guys" a few months ago when she trashed her room during a tantrum over a nap. I came in to discover the entire contents of her dresser dumped on the floor, a hardcover book she'd received as a Christmas gift torn up beyond repair, and the Fisher Price Little People she'd been allowed to take to her room as a peace offering strewn everywhere. I found the one she'd named Diego (though I think Fisher Price calls him Michael) under a big pile of little socks and underpants -- his left arm gone. Amputated. I had no idea you could break a Little People (person?), but somehow my child managed to.

I don't know if I overreacted or not: I sent her out of the room, threw away what remained of the book, gathered up all the toys she had in there (including poor disabled Diego), put them in a box sealed with duct tape, and shoved it all on the highest shelf in her closet. I told her she could open the box when we got to our new house in Idaho this summer.

The punishment didn't immediately sink in. Her first words to me the next morning were a pitiful, "Oh, Mom! My guys! My beautiful guys! Can you please get them down for me?" I explained again that she'd made a bad choice, destroyed a book, hurt her guys, and that they had to stay in a box until we moved. She continued to ask for a few days, and then resigned herself to the loss.

That was several months ago. We still talk about her guys every day, though I think by now the lesson has been swallowed up in simple anticipation. Moving to Idaho might as well be code for Christmastown; Idaho is where all good things will come to her: Ice cream cones, pony rides, Chuck E. Cheese, and her guys -- her beautiful guys.

She's got the baby in on the act, too. They rile each other up with tales of all the wonderful things that will happen when they get to "Ha-Ho," as the little one calls it. With such a build up, I hope it doesn't disappoint.


~RCH~

Moving On - Part 1

In which I discuss the getting there.

Each of the visits has ended the same way: Driving away in the late afternoon light; gold and green fields stretching out across the small valley to the hills, dappled with shadow and just far enough away to look soft rather than craggy, on the other side; the whole scene lit with a Thomas Kincaide glow.

In a little more than a month, I won't be there to visit; I'll be there to stay.

It's strange that I'm about to settle in a small town. I grew up in the suburbs of a decent sized metropolis feeling undisguised contempt for rural life. I went to college 2,200 miles from home, taking a family road trip to get there. We drove the back roads as often as interstates -- all the better to see the country with, my dear, and still my preference for travel :-) -- and while I appreciated the scenery along the way, I couldn't believe that people could actually live like that: In dead-end and dying towns, miles from anywhere, with no industry, no arts, no diversity, no shopping. Yuck.

I aspired to be a sophisticated urbanite, myself. I wanted tall buildings, all-night laundromats with neon signs on the fritz, strange accents, a sea of uncaring strangers jostling each other as they passed, telephone poles littered with posters for underground bands and slips announcing rooms for rent. I wanted to feel the efficient click of my high heels on pavement. I wanted to hear a street musician's lonely saxophone wafting up from the subway.

And yet.... I'm just full of complexities and contradictions, lol.

At the same time I dreamed of blissful urban anonymity -- and actually for as long as I can remember -- I nursed a fantasy of openness, of emptiness, of room to breathe and fresh air to do it in, of a road that stretched out straight and gray for miles and miles, its inertia uninterrupted by towns or people. My adolescent poetry was full of trains and highways all headed away from the hurry and bustle toward ... freedom, I guess. The unreachable far horizon.

I guess it speaks to my naturally melodramatic personality that I simultaneously longed for all and nothing -- the biggest city ever and no city at all.

I've become better at integrating these disparate parts of myself as I've gotten older, and I'm to the point now that I think I could be happy living just about anywhere -- even in one of those small towns I felt such disdain for at 17. What it lacks in commotion, my new town makes up in serenity. It's undeniably beautiful. The place and the people are open; the air is sweet with carefully tended farms and gardens. It does not, as far as I know, have an all-night laundromat, but that's all right: I can turn on my dryer at midnight, then step out alone on the back deck and enjoy a swath of stars brighter than any city lights.

I used to believe the journey was the destination -- that the going, the never settling, was the point -- and maybe that was true for me at the time. But now I wonder if this, finally arriving at a destination, is only the beginning of my journey.


~RCH~

SOLD!

I still wish the yard looked better, but hey. It's done. I'm a happy girl. :-D


~RCH~

Overheard

DH, teasing: Toddler, you're crazy!

Toddler, genuinely flattered: Why, thank you, Daddy!


~RCH~

Hypochondria

I'm convinced I have some rare neurological disease. DH disagrees.

For about a year I've had occasional random, painful twitches in my hand -- often when I'm trying to grip something (or unbuckle carseats, ugh), but sometimes with no provocation at all.

A week or two ago, I had intermittent pain in my heel that was so bad I gasped loudly any time it struck (freaking out the girls; the toddler had to remind me not to huff and puff her). I walked on the side of my foot for a few days to compensate until -- *poof!* -- the pain was gone as mysteriously as it had come.

Tonight I've got the hand twinges and the same thing going on in my neck.

With all of these things, it's always on my left side.

DH thinks it can all be explained by ordinary ailments: The beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome, since I'm on the computer so much (and have been much of my adult life for school and jobs and hobbies); plantar fasciitis, from wearing cheapo Walmart shoes with poor arch support; I probably slept on my neck funny. Hmmph.

He's probably right. He is, after all, the one with the extensive medical education from accredited universities, whereas I'm the one who gets her information on rare diseases from House (mmmmm, rowr!). Still, we do seem to have some weirdo diseases in my family, so I feel a teensy bit justified in my paranoia.


~RCH~