New plan, for REAL

I never intentionally quit posting here, but it appears it happened unintentionally. That's at least in part because I have approached each post as a writing assignment, thinking it needed an introduction, body and conclusion with supporting graphics and a nice clean story all wrapped with a bow. Since that's not REAL life, and it takes more time, I've quit doing it.

In REAL life I don't seem to feel like anything is ever finished, some things never even get started, and the graphics are often unappealing.

I hope someday the boys will read this blog and be reminded of funny stories - or sometimes not so funny - and it will serve as a little record of pieces of our history. If that's to be, then it needs to be updated with REAL life, in REAL time.

Last night's REAL was a 5:30 p.m. basketball game which means every family involved scrambles to be there by 5:15 and everyone there is hungry because who eats dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon? Our REAL had included late-afternoon dentist appointments for the boys, which had already been rescheduled once because I had been out-of-town on the original date and I just couldn't push them back again. I sure wanted to reschedule them because it was annoying to rush from school to dentist to basketball, but I didn't.

At the dentist the hygienist called me back to look at Andrew's x-ray. She wanted to show me his five teeth that don't feel loose, but have permanent teeth clearly pushing up underneath and baby teeth roots are that are all but gone. She was just giving me a heads up that he's likely to lose five teeth in rapid succession. I felt like it was maybe more a metaphor for Andrew in general right now. He looks like a 10-year-old with baby teeth, but with lots swirling under the surface. And by lots I mean sometimes stinky attitude, usually stinky feet, immense knowledge of pop music and also moments of completely amazing.

Fast forward one hour, to when one of those baby teeth got knocked out by the elbow of an opponent on the basketball court, and it was good to know that the roots were gone anyway. That allowed us to focus on the blood and cut lip and not panic over the dangling tooth. REAL life.

REAL life was also that his team didn't play very well last night. After Mark helped him get cleaned up in the bathroom, Andrew re-entered the game and played angry. Like so angry he fouled out. REAL life.

The End.

p.s. All photo credits to Karen Burns, an amazing mom and photographer who shared them on facebook, from where I borrowed them. Just keeping it REAL.

The apple doesn't fall far

The adults in this house have been like ships passing in the night for the last two weeks. Damn jobs. No worries, though. It's like Mark is home as long as his mini-me is in the house. One worships at the computer and the other at Disney Channel, but otherwise there's a lot of similarity!

Is this thing on?

So. I guess I took the summer off from blogging. That was unintentional, but some math whiz could probably work up a chart that would track the inverse relationship between the amount of blogging I did and the amount of time the boys were at home and the amount of time I've spent trying to figure out how in the world to write coherently and intelligently about insurance. My summer was awesome and humbling all at once. Now it’s September and the fun of the swimming pool, long bike rides, a California vacation, a South Carolina vacation and a couple of birthdays around here are distant memories. 

Labor Day weekend marks not only the end of summer but also our wedding anniversary. My parents generously offered to stay with the boys last night so we could go eat sushi to celebrate. Anyone who is my Facebook friend already knows that during dinner Mark also needed to participate in an online Fantasy Football draft, so there's that, but we had a nice meal. (In all honesty, it's a father/son league that some friends and their kids organize and Andrew probably enjoys it more than Mark does so it was difficult to be upset with him for having to frantically scroll through available running backs between bites.) We had a great evening but by the time we got home, got the boys in bed and prepared for the beginning of another week, we didn't end up opening our anniversary cards.

I came home this afternoon and decided to go ahead and open this beauty from the love of my life. Isn’t that a nice sentiment?

Then I opened it.

Under some circumstances, on some days, in some moods, I would have been offended. Except, guess what?

That’s right. We bought each other the same card. We purchased them at different stores and I have the receipt to prove I chose it first, but still. Next thing you know we’ll start looking alike and sharing reading glasses. This summer may have been an uphill blur, but at least I’m crawling uphill with someone with the same sense of humor.

A good girl gone

“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.”

-Charles M. Schulz

For all the times that I cursed her endless fur and her general Pigpen tendencies, our dog, Madeline, was as good as they get. She had enough hair for two dogs her size -  that seemed to gather mulch and dirt and grass - and she was generally a little stinky. She was the sloppiest water drinker ever, and I often thought she was barely domesticated because she would eat anything not pinned down; we had the vet bills to prove it. In her day she was a stellar rabbit hunter, and even in old age she could sleuth out a piece of trash or dead animal with amazing speed. She had a sensitive stomach, which is a poor match for a dog that eats like a goat, and she spent more than a few nights of her 15 years on probation sleeping in the garage or a bathroom. And, yet...



She was loyal in a way that only a dog knows. She only went upstairs to the boys’ rooms a handful of times in her 12 years in this house. They were all when Mark was out-of-town and I was putting the kids to bed. She clearly felt like it was her job, in his absence, to help me keep watch.



She also had the patience of a saint. Sometimes two boys provide love in a way that’s less than gentle and she never once complained. Occasionally the look on her face divulged that she wasn’t totally digging her situation, but she sat and took it every single time.




Mark’s first dog, Cody, was her first love, but in the end she loved Mark best of all. That’s partly because he usually fed her and walked her, but it’s also no doubt because she had some doggy gratitude for being rescued oh, so many years ago.



She was an old girl whose chassis was pretty long for her wheels, and the back two had been slowly failing her for months. Stairs were increasingly difficult and some days just getting up off the floor proved to be a struggle. When she fell last night and couldn’t get up I knew that we were likely at a crossroads. I was home alone with all 80 pounds of her and I couldn’t do much to help. Twelve hours later she still couldn’t move and was visibly, and audibly, in pain. This morning we made the heartbreaking decision to free her of her arthritic back and hips and put her down.



We loved her so very much and she loved us too, without doubt. She was gentle beyond words and was a constant companion in a quiet way that I'm certain no other dog could rival for this family. I hope that in her heaven she and Cody are rollicking and she’ll be eating freshly-caught rabbit by dinner.

We’ll miss her terribly.

Ten things I’ve learned in the last ten months

1. College students’ fashion choices verge on ridiculous; some things never change. It’s awesome fun to watch.

2. Uyghur is an obscure language spoken in Western China. The University of Kansas is home to one of a handful of Uyghur language programs in the country.

3. College campuses are dysfunctional bureaucracies that somehow perk along despite themselves. This is also awesome fun to watch.

4. I would enjoy being a lady who lunches.

5. Having any job, even a part-time one on a college campus, takes mindshare and commitment and hours out of your home and officially makes you NOT a lady who lunches.

6. If I can’t be a lady who lunches then it’s good to work in a setting that challenges me and makes me feel like I have an expertise I’m utilizing and offers flexibility and also that pays you not in Monopoly money.

7. I thought I wanted to clean my own toilets. I was wrong about that, but it is possible to train your children to pee IN the toilet after you teach them how to clean the floor.

8. Salsa dancing has become increasingly popular in China during the last decade and you can build a career of researching the how and why of that as it relates to China’s relations with the U.S. and Latin America.

9. Resigning from a job over a sketchy Skype connection to Great Britain is awkward no matter how gracious and understanding the person on the other end of the line is.

10. Change is hard. It’s possibly harder for me than it should be because, well, I’m just not very adaptable.

Last August I quit my job and took a part-time position at KU. Change for the sake of change is rarely recommended, but in this case it was right. While working at the Center for East Asian Studies was definitely a stretch for me in some ways, in others it was pretty safe. I’ve blended in with the woodwork for ten months and basically punched a clock with a firm limit on the amount of time I could work. I have mostly executed relatively simple tasks assigned by someone other than me. I have also, however, learned that if I’m going to have a job to which I devote any brain power, I maybe might as well do something that stretches me a bit in ways beyond learning how to pronounce difficult names and remembering where it is that Uyghur is spoken.

I took this picture walking to my KU office on my last day of work because it was a beautiful
 morning. It now appears to me that two paths are diverging...or maybe they're converging.
Hmmm. Points to ponder.

I have some pretty great people in my life and one of them has recently helped put an opportunity in front of me to change course…again. Next week I will return to working in marketing and communications, for an organization that should also be commended for its willingness to try something new.  These people are willing to take a chance on letting me work primarily from home in an industry about which I know exactly nothing. No pressure, right? I better get this one right. Only time will tell if living through change that you’ve brought on yourself makes you better at adapting, and while I’m pretty terrified I’m also pretty excited about this one. You’ll have to stay tuned for future updates on how I handle cleaning the toilets when I work so close to them!