Hello, Thirteeners!

Would you like to move away? Would you like to stay where you are? Does the Caribbean sound good? How about Paris? Yeah, same here. However, we are stuck in River City, Ore. (aka The Other Portland) for at least a year due to circumstances beyond my (our) control. So I am wracking my brain to come up with:

THIRTEEN REASONS I AM HAPPY, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW:

13. The weather is okay at the moment. Even though it’s spring break and this usually means seven days of rain in this part of the country. It was sunny and clear today — the kids even colored with chalk on the sidewalk and played with the neighbor kids.

12. My husband and kids are happy, thus I am happy. I am happy where they are.

11. Chocolate chip pancakes.

10. Good friends, a good community, a women’s group I just joined and already love, and goodness — my yard looks great.

9. I mowed the lawn, the cherry tree and dogwoods are blossoming, the iris and peonies are ready to make an appearance, the hazelnut tree is out of control, the daffodils are still blooming away, and the yellow tulips (that I forgot I had planted) reappeared. This weekend I’ll go and get all my hanging baskets.

8. Midnight at the Dragon Cafe, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (the book I referred to here), The Long Approach, The Little Book of Prayers and this, my favorite poem ever. So much good writing and reading, so little time. And I’ve been writing in my journal again and getting acupuncture. (Always two sure-fire cures for stress and blues.)

7. Waiting to move cross-country gives us more time to work on the little projects we need to do to sell the house (paint the interior, fix up the scenery Wacky Dog spent a lot of time chewing up, all that).

6. Speaking of woof — I miss my dog a lot still, every day, but I am getting over the regrets. (Maybe if we’d tried this, done that, figured out if…) No regrets. Only love and memories.

5. Wherever you go there you are.

4. The kids are on spring break and we’ve been having a lot of fun — movie nights, playing games, Chuck E. Cheese (which, you know, while I don’t always enjoy the large rodent, they always always always love it. And if you go in the morning it’s not too crazeee. This was news to me). (Also, Chuck E. was not present. “Maybe he’s sick,” Wacky Boy offered up. Oh, son — how right you are.) Hockey God is taking the next couple of days off, I can’t wait. We’re going to go swimming, and to the movies. And like I said earlier, sunshine and tulips: a winning combination.

3. Wacky Boy’s birthday is coming up (five?????? What???), and my sister’s, too. (I am not at liberty to disclose her age.) And my in-laws are coming to town, yay! so we can all celebrate.

2. I can handle four more seasons here. Well, five seasons, technically. Spring just started, so I guess that would be spring-summer-fall-winter-spring again and then move in the summer of 2008. Which is not that far away. (Doesn’t 2010 sound so space age, though?)

1. I am applying for jobs here and hoping to go back to work soon. Keep myself busy and all. And I found a great daycare today for both kids. (Keeping fingers crossed — this is a huge deal.)

Byeeeeeeeee! Happy Thursday, y’all!

If you would like our family’s excellent homemade bread recipe, you’ll find it here.

Aw, she’s just scrapping.

A song, from Wacky Boy (do you think it will scar my kids, the way I follow them around with a notebook? I hope not):

“I’m a little person/
walking and flying/
I’m a little person/
that flies around/
I’m the one/
that is an airplane/
I’m the one/
that is a dog’s belly/
I’m the one/
that is a tomato/
I’m the one/
that likes to turn into a tomato/
a lizard/
on your head…”

Denny, you rock.

I know, I know, I KNOW, okay? Other people’s lives are none of my business. And Mary-Louise Parker is not my “real” girlfriend, it just feels like it. But when she was eight months pregnant with her son, and it was right after I was pregnant with my son? And then Billy Crudup, who I formerly had such a hott crush on, from “Almost Famous,” LEFT HER? Honestly, I do not give a rip what a pregnant woman is doing to piss you off — insisting on Orange Crush, demanding foot rubs with peppermint lotion, wanting you to fix her french fries at 10 p.m. — short of trying to kill you, there is no excuse for leaving the mother of your child in her hour of need.

Honestly.

I mean, Billy, what the hell? You have a career to think about. Who’s going to want you, once you pull a stunt like that? Oh, right. Claire Danes. But supposedly they’re on the outs, and now he’s seeing… who cares.

My point is — their son has guess who now for a stepdad-to-be? That’s right, Denny Duquette. The world is a just place, after all.

My favorite actress this month: Brit Charlotte Rampling. (I’m always a little late to the game — everyone else has known about her for ages.)

Children’s Books That Didn’t Make It:

1. You Are Different and That’s Bad
2. The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
3. Dad’s New Wife Robert
4. Fun four-letter Words to Know and Share
5. Hammers, Screwdrivers and Scissors: An I-Can-Do-It Book
6. The Kids’ Guide to Hitchhiking
7. Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
8. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
9. All Cats Go to Hell
10. The Little Sissy Who Snitched
11. Some Kittens Can Fly.
12. That’s it, I’m Putting You Up for Adoption
13. Grandpa Gets a Casket
14. The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
15. Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia
16. The Pop-Up Book of Human Anatomy
17. Strangers Have the Best Candy
18. Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
19. You Were an Accident
20. Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
21. Pop! Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games
22. The Man in the Moon Is Actually Satan
23. Your Nightmares Are Real
24. Where Would You Like to Be Buried?
25. Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School
26. Why Can’t Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
27. Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
28. Daddy Drinks Because You Cry

“With your feet I walk
I walk with your limbs
I carry forth your body
For me your mind thinks
Your voice speaks for me
Beauty is before me
And beauty is behind me
Above and below me hovers the beautiful
I am surrounded by it
I am immersed in it
In my youth I am aware of it
And in old age I shall walk quietly
The beautiful trail.”

— Navajo prayer

How, oh how, Wacky Mommy, you ask, did you get your house and life so organized? People, you need to do this:

* Decide you’re moving, thus you need to get the house ready to sell. (Or you need to get your rental fixed up to get your deposits back.) Begin putting things in boxes.
* Change your whole outlook.
* Change your whole life.

(PS to the guys who think that it’s up to their wives to get them organized. No, no, no. All of this is not “woman’s work,” whatever the hell that outdated expression means. She needs you/you need her/do this together please, thank you.)

Honestly, you would not believe the number we’ve done on our house since we’ve started talking about relocating. My. Friends. Are. Jealous! Ha. (My friends are rarely jealous of me. Mostly they call me, saying things like, “Honey. I’m worried about you.” I love my friends, their loyalty, their relentlessness.)

(more…)

Would Che Guevara play hockey, if he were alive today? Will we move to Iowa sooner or later? Should children be allowed to freely swear? If you commit suicide, are you going to Hell? These and other questions, on today’s edition of Thursday Thirteeeeeeeeeeeeeen…

13. Hockey God: “If Che had been Canadian instead of Argentine, he would have played hockey.”

12. This, from the man who designed a T-shirt with (what else?) a pic on the front of Che, suited up in hockey gear. More Hockey/Less War. Cafe Press banned it. Good for them. Someone needs to put a leash on Hockey God, and it’s not going to be me.

11. This, from the man who insisted on playing hockey on Sunday and refused to go on the huge peace march in downtown Portland, Ore. (I was glad, later, that we hadn’t gone. Arrests, pepper spray, some fights, “Little Beirut” reigns again.)

10. “I’m cold because you didn’t bring my damn gloves!” (Wacky Boy, yelling at me at the park, when I suggested he put on his coat.)

9. FYI, my late father is not in Hell for committing suicide, you freaks and trolls who have suggested as much. Hell is saved for you.

8. Swearing? These two blonde children of mine (ages 4 & 7) curse like sailors. I’m not so cool with this, yet am unwilling to stop swearing. Swearing serves a purpose in my life. Their father has suggested a Free Swear day, where our kids get to cuss all day as much as they want. Only not at school. We had some additional discussion on the following topics: Is “suck” a bad word? Is saying “Oh. My. GOD!” a bad word? Is “stupid” a bad word? I have not the words, honestly.

7. Wacky Boy has started a rewards system for his dad and me. We get post-it notes, with “NICE!” or “U ROCK!” scribbled on the top whenever we behave. Who named him boss? Not me — that’s for frickin’ sure. I mean — damn sure. I mean — darn sure.

6. I want to move to Iowa yesterday. “I WANT TO MOVE TO IOWA YESTERDAY, TOO!” says Wacky Boy. “Can we do that?” No, we cannot, son. Wacky Girl: “I’m fine, either way. Stay, go, move to somewhere else in Portland. I wouldn’t mind staying in Portland ’til it’s after my birthday.” (Next September.) (Also, we’ve discussed moving to heinous Beaverton to be closer to my husband’s work.) “We need to wait a year, then go,” says my husband. I’ll keep you posted.

5. In the meantime, I’ve started looking for work. Here and in Iowa. Because you never know…

4. Wacky Girl gets ice cream when she gets an “11” (all words spelled correctly, plus the challenge word) on her weekly spelling test. This week she got… less than 11. And wrote BLAH BLAH BLAH on the bottom of her test. To which her teacher responded, “Oh, no!”

3. Wacky Girl: “Don’t let Dad see that, willya?”

2. Everyone here has spring fever.

1. I’m still getting the inside of the house painted, move or no move.

HAPPY THURSDAY, YINS!