Blading

My daughter's friends whiz down the street laughing like maniacs on their rollerblades.  She turns pleading eyes to me.  "Mom, can I please have new rollerblades?  My old ones don't fit me anymore."

"Put it on your Christmas wish list," I reply, because at this time of year that's what I always say.

She does.  The last item on a short list.  It stares me in the face every time I get something from the fridge.

Thinking I am so prompt and on top of things, I look online for a cheap pair of rollerblades for my daughter's Christmas gift.  Because I am me, I find some second hand that look great.

I send my husband to look at them, and he buys them.  When he gets them home, he tells me he doesn't like giving the kids second hand things for Christmas.  It makes him feel cheap.  I say, "Isn't that a good thing?  Feeling cheap means you're doing something right."

He disagrees.  Then I disagree.  In the end, we decide to give the rollerblades to our daughter now, the deciding factor being she won't be able to ride them at Christmastime.

That very night, I have the pleasure of watching my daughter whiz down the street, laughing like a wobbly maniac with her friends.  It is one of those moments a mother files away in her memory box to pull out later and remind herself that life is good.

Ugh! Frustration!

I had two hours to write this afternoon, if I was a good girl and buckled down to do it.  I was planning to be a very good girl because I've been working on revising a story.  Working for quite a long time on this revision.

I got onto my computer, and looked at all the files on my desktop.  Then I looked again.

I can't find it anywhere.

The only explanation I can come up with, is my son, who uses the computer for school and so is on it more than anyone else, must have done something with my precious, precious story.  It's a good thing my son is gone right now, because if he were home, I would probably scald his face with my scathing words of accusation.

As it is, I will allow my words time to cool.  Unless he really is guilty of making me redo all my hard work.  In which case, I will bring those words back to a boil and let them fly!

A Heavy Load to Bear

Two weeks ago, our neighbors moved.  My older son asked if he could help them load things up and they told him no, probably thinking it would be a relief to him.  He came home bummed that he didn't get to help.  He said, "When our new neighbors move in, I WILL help them."  He did.  Every day they brought over small loads, and my son was there.

On Friday, I took two kids, including my elder son, and my sister shopping.  Since he was still being uber-helpful, my son told me to tell him what I needed as we walked around and he'd put it in the cart for me.

"I need milk."  He ran to grab it.

"I need grapes."  Done.

"I need flour,"  I said, pointing to a fifty pound bag.

My sixty-five pound son jumped at the chance to heft something nearly as big as he was.  Wrapping his arms around the bag, he lifted.  To his credit, he had it in his arms before gravity took over.  My son began bending backwards to compensate for the weight he carried.  Then the flour laid him out, right there on the aisle floor.  The monster bag of flour perched on his chest, the clear victor.  Trying to get air to his crushed lungs, my son gasped.

So did I, but I was laughing.

He had to suffer through several seconds before I controlled myself and lifted the flour into the cart.  It was heavy.  Still chuckling, we continued on down the aisle, passing another shopper who stopped us long enough to say, "That WAS funny."

Wait, I Had a Childhood?

Anyone who has tried to get me to remember something from my past will know that my memory ceases to function if it's been longer than a month ago.  I won't recognize dementia or alzheimer's until I'm being put in a home.  Sad, really, but there it is.

Yesterday, I was chatting with my niece and she was saying things like, "Do you remember when we would go and buy as much penny candy as we could and then we'd go back to your house and put them in baggies and sell them out of the "store" in your brother's room?"

I just went with it.  "Oh yeah!  That was fun."

She laughed at me because I obviously didn't have a clue.

Then she told another story.  "Do you remember the time we saved up all our money to give to this family in our neighborhood because we heard they were having a hard time?"

"No.  But that totally sounds like something I would do."

It doesn't.

She continued. "We pooled our money (along with the cousin who lived across the street from our houses) and then carved out a little pumpkin, shoved all the money inside and rode our bikes to this neighbor's house.  We put the pumpkin on the porch, rang the doorbell then jumped on our bikes, peddling like crazy to get away before she opened the door."

I remember nothing, Nothing, of this adventure in doorbell ditching.  It took me several minutes to even recognize the name of the neighbor she was talking about.  But it's nice to know that I was such a great kid.

 I hope my mother was paying attention to that story because her memory is as bad as mine and, if nothing else, I want her to realize just how wonderful I really was.