an adventure...

first off, let me say that everything is okay.

yea, you parents out there know that phrase is actually code for "something bad happened...but don't you worry your pretty little head about it". and the bad thing is...13 days ago my son got his leg broken in soccer practice.

because he is an overachiever, it was a massive break...both bones...both compound fractures....compartment syndrome that needed to be surgically addressed by fasciotomy (WARNING...this link is NOT for the weak hearted)...you know...a gigantic painful mess.

before...



after...



two surgeries, four days in the hospital and a week at home recuperating -- we are now returning to the semblance of normalcy. we are all back to work and school. now the fun really starts.

when kelly and i have faced challenges in the past, we've always tried to maintain a "hey, isn't this adventure going to be fun?" kind of attitude. usually, at least in our estimation, the challenges had not been too taxing...for example:

question: how do you get two adults to work and a toddler to daycare with one car of which the clutch is going out?
answer: it's an adventure! and, bonus! we can come up with ways to bend the space-time continuum to get everyone where they need to be on time.

question: what happens when the drive part of the transmission goes out, but the reverse part still works?
answer: drive in reverse, silly!

not all of our adventures are car-related (okay, a lot of them used to be), but we always worked it out. this situation, however, has proven more interesting than any other we had faced previously. and, in addition, now we were dealing with a teenager -- an independent teenager who was quite used to taking care of himself and controlling his own destiny. imagine the implications, if you will.

so the three peas are adjusting, to say the least, and growing in ways we didn't think possible, to be generous. but it is all working out...each day gets a little bit better than the day before. there are setbacks, but those are to be expected. we are learning to enjoy small and large victories whenever we can (nathaniel was elected homecoming king a week and a half after the accident and was able to attend homecoming to receive, and proudly wear, his crown!)

but mostly, in this year of "lasts" (last halloween before college, last homecoming dance, last EVERYTHING before college) i am seeing this adventure as an opportunity to cherish the time i get to care and nurture my son back to 100% health. seeing my way clear to that end, though, has proved to be difficult as we are all frustrated and teetering occasionally on the edge of despair, but still i try to focus on the positive.

home is where we let our guard down. the outside world may never see us crumble, but within our own four walls, we can relax. often that deep exhale is accompanied by a flood of tears or a primal scream from our toes or a hysterical laugh that cannot be understood by anyone other than family. that is where we are these days -- putting our best face forward and coming home to unclench our jaws and help each other walk again.

different, but the same...

last weekend, a mood overtook me and possessed me to get all my hair cut off. the entirety of the thought process lasted less than 29 minutes, and the total lapsed time from initial formation in my brain to the shampoo girl sweeping up billowy piles of my locks was 2 hours.

and now, a week later, i'm left feeling wonderfully light, but conspicuously exposed. my long hair was a shield, a curtain that kept the outside world at bay. now, though, with by tresses chopped to shorter than chin length, i'm out here, flapping in the breeze, for all the world to see.

and you know what? when you make a drastic change to your appearance, people who barely know you feel like that is an opening to comment -- "wow! that's drastic...what made you do it?" almost-strangers ask. "none of your business!" is what i think, but politely, ala miss manners, answer, "i was just ready for something different."

i looked in the mirror yesterday and felt like a different heidi was looking back at me. almost as if the hair was plopped down on my head and that by virtue of it being different, it made me different...but it doesn't. still me....

i'm it...

mary beth tagged me and since i'm such a good sport, here goes...

You have to post these rules before you give the facts. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. When you are tagged you need to write your own blogpost containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog.

my middle name is sue...ick. but then when i think about it, what other middle name goes with "heidi?" in grade school, my nickname was "heidi the ty-d-bol lady." what? yea, for those of you under 40, do you even remember the ty-d-bol man? i mean, how in the world are women not freaked out by a man in their toilet? (i almost wrote something not very nice about chuck berry, but i refrained.) it's like that commercial for lunesta...you know the one where a giant prometheus moth lays next to my face just as i fall into a drug-induced slumber--ACK! how is that supposed to make me want to buy their sleep aid. if those are the type of acid-trippy dreams i'm going to have, well, i'll just stick with unisom.

but i digress...

S - silly. i bet you thought i was going to write serious, but no. this is a fact that only a few people know about me -- i'm very silly. ballet pirouet through the living room? check! sing in a froggy voice at the top of my lungs? check! enjoy the most juvenile movie ever made? right on! giggle with glee and clap my hands satisfiedly under my chin when i find a ponytail desk blotter at the antique mall? you can count on it. turn a cartwheel or a roundoff in the front yard? every year on my birthday! i was a very serious kid, and not very kid-like. when i got older, i guess i thought i should make up for lost time. childhood only lasts so long, but silliness lasts forever.

U - unconventional. if you've read this blog for very long, you already know this about me. i do very little that is thought of as run-of-the-mill. nathaniel says i'm a neo-hippie. my boss thinks i'm a little off. i hold down a 9 to 5, am married, a mother, own a home, car, cat, but how i got here was out of the ordinary -- just like my thrift store warddrobe, my dollar store reading glasses, my collection of paint-by-numbers, my penchant for picking up furniture out of other people's trash and my music selection (claudine longet anyone?). the cookier cutter existence is not for me. as my uncle would say, "that's why they make chevy's and fords."

E - eager. ever since i can remember, i've been anxious. anxious to start kindergarten. anxious to be married. anxious to start a family. it's really an eagerness, an impatience that is difficult (if not downright impossible) to squelch. really, just ask kelly the story of our engagement! i want to learn new things, but i often want to learn them right now or sooner, if at all possible. this fact, however, is why i find it hard to stick with something that i'm not good at immediately. skiing, for example. i was excited to strap on the skis for the first time, but then, well, i wasn't good at it...at all. and that fact kept me from enjoying the learning of the skill. this flies in the face, however, of how i stuck with the clarinet for 5 years and i was horrible. my family was thankful when i threw in the towel...oh, the aural agony of my practicing. and you would think, wouldn't you, that after all that time, i would have learned how to read music? nope. not one single note.

okay, now here's the part where i'm supposed to tag people...but all the folks i know who blog don't have the right letters in their names, so i'll tag missy (she has an "s" in her name!) and becky (oh look! an "e")...and hope they don't smack me the next we meet!

and now i'm back, from outer space...

i've missed this little bloggity-blog. no really! hey you! over there in the corner, snickering? i really have been busy. so please don't minimalize my heartfelt outpouring of blog-apologies.

so here's some random...

it is almost autumn and just in time, because i am just about finished with summer! the muggy, the a/c (hate!), the warm water from the tap (too hot to drink, not hot enough to make a cup of tea), the tired played out summer wardrobe (oh, gray target knit skirt that looked so cute and flippy in may. i've worn you to death, girlfriend, and i am wont to throw you in the give away pile due to your pilled fabric and stretched out hem due to the numerous trips to the washer/dryer. too bad you're still so comfy...), mosquitos, the inability to take a pleasant evening walk without a requisite outfit re-do immediately following, and the plant-killing heat. summer, it's been good to know you, now be gone!

i have been doing double duty at my day job and that has kicked my sorry butt. i wish i was exaggerting when i write that i have been working 50-60 hours a week, but i am not. everything else in my life has taken a backseat while we try to hire another me...but i think this may take longer than a little bit. bear with me, people. i'm dancing as fast as i can. oh, and a big shout out to kelly who has taken taking care of me to a new level what with the cooking and the laundry and the straightening and the never-ending supply of hugs, kisses and positive support. he is a force to be reckoned with!

(ed. note - kelly and i have always shared all household duties and chores. the exception for the past two months is that he is doing it all. me, on the other hand? i have been routinely returning home after a 10 hour day, eating his divine meals and then promptly falling asleep on the couch. there is simply no man on the planet that can hold a candle to kelly wallace.)

and last but not least...i found my perfect tattoo artist the other day. i'm reluctant to share this information with the world at large, but something tells me that the world has already figured out how awesome marie wadman is. i sent her an e-mail yesterday and just hope that someday soon she will respond. her waiting list is 6-8 months long. that's good for me, though, because i have a very special anniversary to commemorate that is about two years away. but you know me...a planner and always way ahead of time. i will let you know if/when i hear from her. i've never been to san francisco. to have marie do the work would require traveling there. i'm up for a good road trip.

and i finished the purple monstrosity sweater about a month ago...finally! pics soon.

everyday is earth day...

guess what? when you send out your desire into the universe, sometimes it comes back to you fulfilled.

our local municipality is making recycling mandatory!

to me, this means the world might just be waking up.

good morning, mighty citizens of earth. we've got some work to do. go grab a cup of coffee and let's get down to it!

opening doors...

on saturday night i met a lady, "bev", that founded her own business by accident.

bev worked for a real estate developer part time, handing out brochures in model homes and greeting potential buyers. bev did a great job and the developer asked her to start to work in the office too.

my new friend enlightened me in a number of ways. for example, did you know that there are folks whose job it is to clean model homes? these are not regular cleaning crews, because you know, the stove is not being used, so it's not greasy, but the bathtub does get dusty and the pillows need to be fluffed.

while bev was working in the office she saw an invoice from the model home cleaning crew her developer was using and it was quite high...particularly high because the crew didn't do a very good job. bev thought, "i could do a much better job."

did i forget to mention that at the same time bev was also enrolled in a marketing class at the community college near where she lived? and that one of the assignments was to create a brochure and a marketing plan for a business? bev took her idea, developed it into a business plan (with a snazzy marketing brochure), invested a small inheritance she had just received and "bam" her idea became a reality.

now, fifteen years later, she is the owner of a company with 25 employees. bev is currently working on a diversification idea that could ground her business and turn it into something not as reliant on the real estate market (we all know how volatile that is, especially right now!).

of course, this chance meet-up got me to thinking...

there are opportunities around us all the time but it is our ability to think creatively that enables us to actual see them for what they are. we can't let the door blocking our view keep us from ferreting out the chance...we need to open the doors, knock down the barriers and fling open the sash of the window to see what's right in front of our faces.

summer reading redux...

too hot to cook? read!

too hot to work? read!

too hot to do anything of substance? read!

upon the recommedation of rosie posy, i borrowed from the library housekeeping by marilynne robinson. parts of it were enthralling. the language lovely...but i wanted more story. at times it reminded me of something by james joyce and then, well, i felt like i was reading the bible. and then i needed to get a dictionary. that's not bad in and of itself, but when an author makes so many obscure literary references (without the benefit of footnotes) it doesn't always work to make me feel edified...it does, however, make me feel inferior and that feeling is just a hop, skip, and a jump to wondering if the author is on an ego power trip of showing off all the stuff they know instead of entertaining me, the reader. in addition, the book had a melancholy bent that never went away. without giving too much away, the insinuation that we all teeter on the edge of insanity without much hope that anyone could override this tendency, left me feeling hopeless. this was definitely not light summer fare. if you like to get lost in the words of a novel, this may be the one for you. if, however, you like "lite lit" and a story with a middle, beginning and end (i know...so pedestrian) then i can recommend...

back when we were grownups by anne tyler. if this book were made into a movie, i see kathy bates (the loveable kathy...not the crazy kathy) cast as the lead character, rebecca. all the other folks in the book would be played by whomever you find likeable. and when billy crystal is old and shriveled, he could play the 100 year old uncle, poppy. the story is what you have come to know and love from most modern novels...a story of a sudden self-awareness, a maturation of the character that eventually translates to a sense of being comfortable, but only for a moment. the reader knows there will be challenges in the future of these characters but what has been written on the pages has better prepared them for what lies ahead. so i don't want you to think that i think tidy endings are my preference, but i do want to feel like things are going to be okay.

i am currently reading we are all welcome here by my fave, fave, favorite author, elizabeth berg. this is just as wonderful and almost as delish as pull of the moon which i read over and over, again and again because it is just that good. i've only ever read three other books more than once (okay, i have read some books over but only because they ended up being so unremarkable that i only sensed that i had already read them)...little women, wicked and wuthering heights. please go read everything you can get your hands on by ms. berg. you'll be glad you did.

i missed you...

it's still hot, but i think i'm getting used to it....i don't faint when i walk out of the front door anymore, i just get limp and drag my feet along the pavement. that's so much better!

i feel perched on the edge of something new. "what?" you ask? could be meat...could be cake...could be meatcake. (anyone else like this george carlin sketch? raise your hand!)

see? the heat could be affecting my ability to accurately judge what constitutes "funny."

i'll be back tomorrow, though...i've read a few books and i owe you reviews.

sincerely, i've missed you.

take 5...

i'll be taking a mini-break from blogging...

i'll be back after school starts and the heat wave ends (hopefully, sooner than later)! my brain is soup-y from the over 100 degree temps. can't think straight. don't want to cook. lost the will to write. all i want to do is drink iced coffee, and watch season 2 of weeds on dvd in the dark quiet of my living room while knitting.

hoping the weather where you are is cool and calming.

talk at you later, my peeps.

dancing on the top...

i love so you think you can dance. i've learned so much about the art form from that show...it's really quite amazing. there are so many things that i know so little about, i appreciate the chance to learn even a tiny bit.

during the individual critiques the judges point out miniscule things about each dancer that upon rewinding, i see too -- how neil needs to be more conscious of not holding his shoulders too high or how lacey tends to engage more with the audience than her partner or how kameron danced on top of the floor and not into the floor.

when i first heard that phrase i didn't understand it. i mean, of course, they're dancing on top of the floor, and how could someone dance into the floor. but when i watched danny dance, i immediately saw the difference...solid moves that were a part of the floor, lyrical movement that grew out of a deep place in his body that seemed to sprout from the sole of his foot and continued to the tips of his fingertips.

i'm a top of the floor dancer in life, i suppose. i've written before about living deeper, learning more and pulling into myself the most out of the world around me. i suppose it's time to re-commit to choosing wisely the way in which i spend my time. what can enhance my life? what can enrich my day to day existence? what can root me to this experience?

probably time to evaluate whether watching sex and the city reruns every night is a valuable use of my time.

45!

happy birthday, sweetie! here's to many happy returns!

careful, i think his bow tie is really a camera...

kelly and i got married pretty young. i was 21 and he was 25. at the time, i thought that was perfectly okay, but when i look at nathaniel and realize that if he were me, in less than five years he'd be hitched, i hiccup a bit. but all things being equal, i'm glad we married when we did. i don't know of any advantage we would have gained if we had waited. i loved him. he loved me. we already lived together. why not marry our fortunes together (or at least kelly's small savings account to my substantial student loan balance)?

kelly forwarded this article to me the other day. it speaks to many of the things that kelly and i have experienced throughout the years.

neither one of us was set in his/her ways to the extent that hindered us from easing into sharing our living space. in no small way, we grew up together. and then three years after we tied the knot, we brought our son into the world.

for quite a while, we were one of only two married couples in our circle of friends. and it was even longer than that before anyone else we knew had children. in a way, we were the trailblazers. it also isolated us a little bit -- made us more reliant on one another. because as much as i focus on all the positive, there were detractors from our union. we shared the firm conviction that we were going to do this thing and nobody was going to be able to say, "i told you so." so, and i think this is due in no small part to being young, we didn't let anyone else see it when we argued or felt perched on the edge of the unknown. i mean, who else could we ask for advice? we were the first.

in many ways, we're still the first. our son is poised to fly out of the nest next year, and that is filling me with unfamiliar emotions. kelly is planning for a retirement from his first career and is thinking about what his next will be.

ch-ch-ch-changes!

in one week we will celebrate our 20th anniversary. i can't believe how far we've come and i feel like we're still just starting on this adventure.

it rained on our wedding day. they say that's good luck. i believe them.

tuesday of thanks...

practically every single day i wear something either thrifted or vintage. today, for example, i have on a c. 1973 polyester blouse. the black fabric is sheer and covered in green daisies, white carnations and blush pink roses. i'm wearning that over charcoal grey pinstripe forever 21 low-rise slacks. (i know! who says "slacks" anymore? let's bring it back, okay?)

yesterday i wore a c. 1950 circle skirt i traded some too big vintage dresses for at alice's vintage clothing in the university city loop. i love the skirt with a fervent passion.

both days this weekend i was rockin' vintage dresses and aprons. vintage and thrift make up the backbone of my wardrobe and i have chuck rice to thank for all of it.

indianapolis in 1979 was a far cry from what most would call "fashion forward." i bought most of my clothes, beside my mother, from ayr-way or zayres. given a school clothes budget of $50, i bought corduroys, ribbed turtle neck sweaters, a few velour v-neck pullover tops, a puffy down vest and some non-descript brown shoes. i felt prepared to start my freshman year of high school.

this was also the year i met chuck, another performing arts student. he and i would skip class together, eat fried donuts at the diner down the street from school, talk about writing and poetry and how much we hated the midwest. later we would act out scenes from "fame" while drinking bad coffee and smoking marlboro light after marlboro light.

one afternoon, seeking a valid reason to leave campus, chuck suggested we go to a thrift store. i was intrigued. in my mind only the poverty stricken and desperate would shop at the thrift store. chuck assured me that i would find ways to supplement my woefully plain wardrobe with items from the thrift store. he pointed to his long, black trench coat and wool scarf, "this, and this are both from the goodwill." okay...we got on the city bus and off we went.

the entire world seemed limitless to me that afternoon. t-shirts for 25 cents. jeans for 50 cents. vintage dresses and gloves and bags and hats and, whoa...i was starting to get dizzy.

and when i picked up something that was just not right, chuck told me how it could be altered to make it perfect. chuck (and an article from seventeen magazine) taught me how to taper the legs of all of my, now out of fashion, flare leg pants. chuck showed me the perfect length to cut the fingers off of gloves ala madonna.

chuck was my fashion fairy godmother, and i thank him for that. he helped me form a unique sense of self that i didn't know was lurking in me. i was restless and chuck introduced me to concepts and ideas that started me thinking about how i could ease the unrest and find expression through my clothes.

i don't know what happened to chuck. we drifted apart the way 15 year olds drift apart--without meaning to. but i want to send this out to him...a virtual hug...thanks for helping this awkward outsider feel her way toward a definition of what it meant to be herself in a time when that was all that mattered.

$8.75 + $8.75 + $7.75 = $25.25...

the three of us went to see the bourne ultimatum last night. it was packed with action -- fighting, car chases, quick shots. everything you've come to know and love about jason bourne.

(oh and by the way, does anyone else think that joan allen has freakishly narrow shoulders?)

anyhoo...

there we are sitting in the quiet dark of the theatre. the previews are about to start and in walks a man and a woman, and i think to myself, "is that man holding a newborn baby?" and right then, kelly says to me, "are they bringing a baby to a 7:15 movie?" and then the couple and their newborn baby sit right behind us. yes, right behind us.

we go to evening movies rarely, preferring to spend our money on, i don't know, groceries. we usually go to matinees or early movies where the price is discounted. so it's a splurge to go to a movie at a "date" time.

the baby was pretty good, but it was a baby and, well, it made baby sounds and did cry at one point. then the person sitting next to nathaniel cracked every one of his knuckles (each of the three knuckles of each of his fingers), and the phone belonging to the person on kelly's left rang.

there's not much you can say or do in this situataion to dissuade the offenders from engaging in rude behavior. i am a big "shush-er" to talkers in movies, but i don't know how to handle the baby/phone/knuckle situation(s).

in an ideal world there would be an elaborate fine system, not unlike a swear jar, where the person who disrupts the movie has to pay a pre-set amount based on the offense. the management then would divvy up the "pot" among the other patrons.

i think for yesterday's movie debacle i and my family are owed approximately 58 cents each.

summer reading...

on saturday i started and finished name all the animals by allison smith. i know i'm a crybaby ninny, but this book made me cry full out within the first fifty pages. i knew it was too sad to complete, but i couldn't put it down and continued until i was a messy, puddly mush. thankfully, kelly asked me to go for a walk and bought me dairy queen that night. both cheered me up immensely.

yesterday i started and have almost finished a girl named zippy by haven kimmel -- not a tear-jerky roller coaster ride, rather a laugh a minute account of a girl my exact age growing up in indiana. ms. kimmel even talks about my very favorite lunchtime cartoon show, chuckwagon theatre hosted by cowboy bob (an aside: kelly, i was wrong. sourdough the singing biscuit was not cowboy bob's loveable hounddog, but a puppet of an actual biscuit. i stand corrected). it is a lovely book and i will be sorry when it ends.

and late last week i finished let's not go to the dogs tonight by alexandra fuller. this book took me a long time to finish because i was reading it in snippets before bed each night. ms. fuller made growing up in war-torn africa sound normal and her writing about her mother's mental illness and alcoholism was so factual that it read like everyone in her family was a character from a play not real flesh and blood people. the account of day-to-day life wore me out. i was glad when it was over. and even though ms. fuller longs for africa from the safety of her now home in colorado, i was elated when she escaped.

i think i am calling this my summer of the memoir.

and the winner is...

kim! the prize is still yet to be determined, but knowing her like i do, i think it will have to incorporate the colors purple and green and have a flower-y theme.

thanks to everyone who played!

blog-iversary...

to atone for the fact that i missed my 2 year blog-iversary, oh, back on july 1, i am offering a prize to a randomly selected commenter. please leave a comment between now and monday, july 23 at 11:59 p.m. and you will be entered into a drawing for a fabulous (yet to be determined) goodie. don't forget to make sure i have your e-mail address or some way to get in touch with you. you need not be present to win, but you do have to be attainable. the winner will be announced on tuesday, july 24.

good luck and get commenting (that means you, you lurkers)!

lucky, lucky, girl...

while i was at work yesterday (in the bad luck dress, i might add) our dehumidifier shorted out, burned and melted to the extension cord it was plugged into and as a result melted and shorted out the extension cord connection to the wall. it all might have gone unnoticed had i not gone downstairs to iron something. i heard not the usual whir of the dehumidifier and thought that it needed to be emptied. then, realizing it wasn't full, thought the breaker had been tripped. nope. not that either. then i checked the plug and sparks started to erupt. eeek!

and when i went to check the smoke detector because now i was really freaked out...the battery was dead.

i'm just glad that i had a house to go home to and not a charred pile of burned up rubble.

so the dress has overcome its curse and brought me luck. long live the lucky plaid dress!

w.b.w. & breaking the curse...

after the great closet clean-out of summer 2007, a number of items were re-discovered and this little gem of a vintage dress is one of them. paired with a little 3/4 length sleeve black sweater and some ankle strap suede shoes it's a perfect work-a-day dress. i repaired some failing seams, sewed on a missing button and finished up the night by pressing with a steaming hot iron.

the last time i wore this dress was in 2003. on my way to work that morning, i drove my new car through a pothole the size of lake michigan and got an instant flat tire. i frantically called both kelly and the free roadside assistance that came with my car and then had the state run roadside truck offer to give me help. after a teary time, i chose to wait for the new car company and ended up on the side of the road for over an hour waiting for help. choosing either kelly's help or the immediate gratification of the truck that was already there would have been better, but you know, i like a challenge.

foolishly, i blamed the bad luck on the dress. yea, it couldn't have been the fact that i drove at top speed into a gaping hole whilst trying to avoid a back-up by passing ON THE SHOULDER...yes, that's me...sometimes that's the type of driver i am.

so i decided to give the dress another chance. and on my way to work this morning i was a model of civility on the road. a girl doesn't want to tempt fate.

fragile...

the furniture arrived and i love it to pieces. two of the items were in ginormous boxes emblazoned with bright orange stickers reading, "FRAGILE -- EXPENSIVE WOODEN FURNITURE INSIDE." as opposed to the cheap-ass stuff we usually buy, i guess.

but along with it came two tons of cardboard, styrofoam, bubble wrap and a multitude of little silica packets. we took a full car load of cardboard to the recycling center last night and will have to, unfortunately, throw out all of the other icky mess because there's nothing else to do with it...build a styrofoam fort? send all of my friends styrofoam care packages? sound-proof the basement? insulate the attic?

although it gets easier with each passing day, it's still very difficult to be a conscientious eco-minded consumer. even if you buy items that are kind to our planet, the amount of packaging makes my heart break a bit.

we already recycle everything that we can. our neighborhood doesn't offer free curbside recycling. even if we did participate and pay, the trash company doesn't take cardboard, paper or all plastics so we'd still end up at the the recycling center. does anyone else find it asinine that we have to pay to be good to the planet?

our family of three often puts out less than one can of garbage each week. the couple across the street, though, regularly puts out two or three overflowing cans of trash. how much are they consuming over there?

i guess this is all offset by the bachelor who lives across the street who has never put out even one can of trash. not one. i suspect that one day the roof will be pushed off of his house and coffee grounds will drip down onto the driveway. that is, after i see him on an episode of oprah.