Absolutely Bananas: Seattle mom blog

Birthday karma

It’s my birthday. And- it’s raining.

No, POURING.

It’s like the gods have decided to turn their bathwater upside down on my head.

With wind. Gusty wind.

On my BIRTHDAY!

Life is so unfair. Especially in Seattle. In January. Ask anyone… they’ll tell you.

I trod steadily toward the bus stop. My left arm is becoming increasingly damp. Somehow, no matter how I angle my umbrella, my left arm always gets wet. It’s enough to drive a good woman mad.

I cross the street and then… as if in slow motion… I see it.  The gutter, overflowing with muddy water.  The truck, barreling towards me, gritty spray spewing from its tire like the wave behind a water skiier cutting hard across the wake.

This muddy gritty wave is pointed right at me.

I leap sideways, in my heels.

And somehow, miraculously, the wave of water passes. Only a few droplets on my shoe.

A man at the bus stop applauds.

Is it birthday karma? I wonder, grasping the handhold and trying to catch my balance. The bus is standing-room only and fogged over with the mouth-breathing of too many commuters on a cold, wet day.

It must be birthday karma.

He sees donkeys

We’re sitting at the dinner table when Jay says, “I see something in the kitchen but you can’t see it because it’s INVISIBLE.”

CJ looks over his shoulder. “I see it,” he says matter-of-factly, “It’s a donkey.”

Jay snorts spaghetti out his nose and turns slightly green. ”It IS a donkey!” he exclaims, “When I said that something was in the kitchen I was thinking of a donkey!!”

I turn and look but I don’t see any donkey.

CJ looks smug. “I can see it,” he tells me, “I can SEE things that are INVISIBLE.”

It’s one of those moments when I have to wonder…

can he?

What happened to Absolutely Bananas?

A few weeks ago I logged into Google Analytics to check my stats. Don’t ask me why- I blame a severe case of not-wanting-to-go-to-bed.

So I’m scanning through the usual suspects of keyword searches that led people to my blog.  And then I see it, number three on the list:

What happened, indeed?

A lot has happened since we last spoke. For example last year we pulled CJ out of public school and enrolled him in private school and then I got pulled into seven thousand committees and then there was the trip to Disney World and the trip on the catamaran and then I tried out boot camp and then hired a personal trainer and STILL I don’t look like Jennifer Aniston (can you BELIEVE IT!) and then I went back to work FULL TIME and Jay quit his job and I started hot yoga and oh yeah Christmas, New Year’s, and the trip to Palm Springs.

So we’re caught up.  Good.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my blog. Specifically: am I done blogging? and also: if yes should I close it down and IF NO when will I start blogging again and what will I blog about?

I notice that as CJ gets older our trials and tribulations and funny stories all circle around topics that are really not bloggable like that one annoying kid or the reeeeally annoying mom or a million other things that I can’t write because someone might read them and then I’d be in hot water.  And CJ… as he grows… his stories feel more and more like HIS and less like MINE. And is it ok for me to share his struggles and deep-dark secrets with the whole entire universe even if no one reads it?

Then there’s the teeny-tiny issue of Time (haven’t got any) and Energy (have even less) and without either, how do you blog?

Still, I’m not a giving up kind of gal, so I hang onto this desperate hope that I can pick up the blogging string again and turn it into something that I do for fun and that isn’t a burden. Because the truth is I love blogging. That it makes me write. That it makes me look at life through a little different lense. That it’s MINE and mine ALONE bwah ha ha ha ha.

(and how will I get a book deal and become wildly rich and famous without it?  I mean SERIOUSLY)

So I’m going to try again. Today is a fresh start in which I will post REGULARLY and I will NOT OBSESS and YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Ok maybe not the last part. Unless you’re my mom. (hi mom!)

We’ll see how it goes.

Dear Santa

“Mommy, what do you REALLY want Santa to bring you for Christmas?”

CJ sits up and look at me with an expression of great seriousness.

“Hmm… well… I guess I don’t really know,” I say. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Maybe a new house?” CJ asks.

“No, I like our house.” I say.

“Me too.” CJ pauses. “But maybe a clean house. I know! Maybe Santa could clean our house!”

I bust into great peals of laughter even while feeling the weight of my inferiority.

There’s no way around it; when your six year old wishes Santa would give him a clean house, you KNOW you’ve failed as a housekeeper.

Vaccinate this.

In the last two weeks I have had swine flu and/or pneumonia about sixteen times.

Now, when I say I “had” those things I don’t mean that I actually had them, but that I was pretty sure (100% confident) that I had them. Swine flu. And/or Pneumonia.

Death was imminent.

Only I didn’t. And it wasn’t.

Which, when you calculate the freak-outs and heavy breathing and HOURS spent on webmd.com and cdc.gov, can result in only one thing: a mild feeling of disappointment.

I mean seriously.

I think it’s great that the government is madly working to create vaccines for this piggish flu.

But I also think it would be helpful if they put a bit of effort towards other things. Like making the test for swine flu available over the counter.

This is a good idea on so many levels. First of all it could be a great revenue stream.  I’d probably buy, like, 100 of them if this week is any indication. And I know that, as far as demographics go, I represent a big old heap of crazy.

It’s also a good idea because if we could test ourselves for swine flu, then we would know if we’d had swine flu, which would help us opt in or out of the whole SHOULD I VACCINATE BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MERCURY IT HASN’T BEEN TESTED OH YES IT HAS IT’S ALL A BIG FREAKING CONSPIRACY BUT OBAMA SAID I SHOULD debacle.

One more brilliant idea while I’m feeling inspired…

They should make a web browser just for hypochondriacs. Here’s how it could work.  If you type in a search like “strange symptoms neck throbbing sore throat swine flu?” or try to navigate to websites like webmd.com or click on freaky news links such as “President declares swine flu a national emergency” you’d just get a picture of a soft fuzzy bunny with some Enya playing softly in the background.

Like this.

Don’t you feel better already?

I do.

Bunnies are amazing.