its not the kids

As heard on a recent installment of Grey's Anatomy:
My apartment is a mess; my closet is a mess; but I'm not messy.

And for all those years we had kids living with us and now we don't,
we didn't realize we are probably the messy ones.

super crunchy

It was like meeting myself in a time warp.

One minute I'm on the phone with a young friend who
just had her fourth baby. I'm holding her hand and stuttering outdated advice. Next day, I'm eating birthday lunch with my fourth baby.

He picked the Orient Garden.
Lotsa people swarming around without jackets on a springlike Sunday--I figured either the prices were cheap or the food was good. To conserve brain activity, I quickly ordered the special and watched the birthday boy carefully circle his sushi choices on the menu.

Eighteen years ago, same boy was propped in a high chair at my mom's while we waited for Aunt Mary to deliver the fluffy yellow cake from her farm kitchen several hilly miles away. When she arrived and while we drooled over the homemade confection, she murmured that an Indiana ice storm was no fit day for a one year old's party, and she turned around and drove back home. Without a pinch of frosting.

When he turned two, we were snowbound in our snug, cedar-sided Cape Cod dubbed "Ponderosa" in the picturesque Finger Lakes of New York. We cut a face-sized hole in a recently emptied moving box and with crayons, drew a bear shape on the outside.
As his three siblings crawled in and out of little boy bear's den, we spread the teddy bear picnic on a blanket on the living room floor, birthday cake and all.

When the waitress brought our food, she smiled and pointed to the super crunchy roll on the wooden platter of sushi and whispered to me, "Try some of that; it's cooked."
The texture was right, the flavor sublime.

Next time, it's all super crunchy for me.

resolved

I did New Year's a little differently this year.
I stayed awake til midnight.

It wasn't so easy, and late day caffeine helped.
Once the Big Moment's snap, crackle, pop had fizzed into ten after,
I left my family playing out their annual game of Trivial Pursuit
and pursued some serious shut-eye.

Waking up is kinda fun when you get older.
It's like starring in your own series on The Discovery Channel.
Where am I? Who am I? and What am I doing here?
(The mirror is a blast--the widebody image resembles sandwich-pressed human. Panini is in.)

On this particular day, one eyelid squinted open and spied the
time--giant red digits on the ceiling. As that lid rolled shut, the other blinker unglued to watch a ribbon of light curling through the window blinds.
H-m-m. Might be morning. And this looks like earth.

Seemed like an ordinary arising, until I finished mental
calculations and realized it was the first daylight of 2007.
As muscle cricks were inventoried, I felt a twinge of regret for not drafting a laundry list of resolutions. Then the internal dialogue engine combusted: outcome of such a list is insanely predictable even if the notion of self-help is enticing. The conclusion: tradition has failed to change me.

As toes tested the floor, weight to follow, I thought, what's the point?
And that query became my new year's quest.
Every day has one.

gifts

The biggest gifts we gave this year weren't under the Christmas tree,
but over at Eddie's Automotive. It seems the older our boys' trucks, the more repairs necessary to satisfy Soft Touch's safety requirements.
Their sister preferred new clothes. At least she looks smashing.