Susan’s Journal

I was pretty proud of myself.

Yes, it’s a week before Christmas, but I gave my son his present yesterday afternoon. It was so nice outside, and we’re going to be gone all Christmas weekend, so I wanted him to have a good day of riding his Christmas present–a new bike.

The problem was that this meant I had to assemble it myself. I had mentioned it to several friends, including Scott, but no one was able to come through. Dammit, I put the thing together myself. It didn’t take a real long time–I think if it had hand brakes it would have, but I was lucky.

Dylan wheeled the new bike down to the sidewalk, straddled it, and got up on his tippy-toes, balancing on the seat of the bike, for me to snap this picture. He took a look down the sidewalk, then turned to me and said, “Mommy, can I have my helmet?” I chuckled, and Rain went and fetched it for him.

I watched him ride down the sidewalk with one eye closed, cringing, waiting for the bike to mysteriously fall into a million pieces… but it didn’t. Then I waited for the bike to go crooked, or the handlebars to go off-kilter from the front tire, but they didn’t. He rode up and down the sidewalk, then my neighbor friend took him with her for a spin around the neighborhood with Rain and her daughter too. I talked to another neighbor from another house (have I told you how much I love my neighborhood?) while the five of them were out of sight; then my neighbor standing with me said, “Here he comes.” Dylan was at the lead of the pack, zooming on his bike, still in one piece. All was right with the world.

Later on I found myself staring at this cute picture of him on his new bike, and it dawned on me that I thought something was wrong. I asked a few of my friends online, and sure enough–the fork is on the front tire backwards. Easy fix–all I have to do is loosen the bolt and flip around the front tire. Pretty good, I still think, for a mom with two kids who’s never put together a bike on her own before.

And on this day,
December 20, 2006… Hah! How funny is that? Today, last year, a picture of Dylan with his bike helmet on.

When I was in sixth grade, I remember being in the cafeteria when someone said to me, “You need to go to the school nurse. You look like you have the measles.” Down the hall in the school nurse’s office, she turned my left arm over in her hand, then announced, “You have vitiligo.”

It was the first time I had heard the word, but it would definitely not be the last. I found out later that my brother has it also, but on his right arm I think it is. Now, fifteen years later, my own daughter has it too, though more on her elbow than mine, which is farther up my arm and across my back.

I think vitiligo is either more prodominent in black people, or it’s just more blatantly obvious. This topic came up today because of this news article about a reporter that has come out with not only his own story but photos (click on the arrows beneath the picture) of this discouraging disorder. You can’t catch it’ it doesn’t hurt; but on some people it really looks weird. You can’t really notice it much on Rain and I unless we get a good tan; and then, since it’s on our arms, you only notice it if we’re wearing t-shirts.

Not that there’s a whole lot I’ll defend Michael Jackson on; but when he came out and said he had vitiligo and that’s why he wore so much face makeup, I easily believed him. Someone as stuck on his image as he was would do anything he could to try to make his skin look even and normal.

I applaud Lee Thomas for coming out with his story. It’s very difficult for those with such an extreme pigment difference as he has–it’s difficult just to go out in public every day. I wish more people knew more about it. You can read the wiki page and learn more about it here.

I’m sorry, but this is FRICKING INSANE. I’ll tell you why.

First of all, the kids are on the school bus, it’s warm, they’re safe. Save for the fact that they’re probably hungry, they’re alive and they’re fine.

Their parents don’t know that, though.

Remember the whole controversy about kids having cell phones in school? Well, I’ve always been an advocate that they can take them to school, as long as they’re off, stowed in their backpack, etc. I know that will draw tons of arguments, but it’s how I feel.

This is exactly why. If my child was stuck on a school bus in traffic and a foot of snow, I could call her. Yes, she’s in elementary school and she has a cheap cell phone that I pay ten bucks a month for. (well, her dad does.) On the school bus, stuck in that traffic, I can call her say once an hour, say hi honey, I love you, everything ok? See you in a little while. Without a cell phone, I can’t.

So say they won’t lift the ban on cell phones. Fine. Where is the bus driver’s? Why shouldn’t there be an emergency contact list kept on the bus in case of an emergency? All right, you don’t want the bus driver to have all the numbers–give him the principal’s number, have him call a teacher assigned to him with hourly updates, and that teacher can call all the parents on that bus. Is that so unheard of?

This is so easily fixable.

Now the issue of the kids being hungry isn’t as easily fixable. Nothing totally easy is coming to mind on that one. What do you think? I want to hear your opinions…

Right after Scott moved out, I wrote a post or two of just sentences, trying to force myself to write. I have missed writing, but whenever I actually think about sitting down and doing it, my brain lately seems to just say, “I don’t wanna.” So now, I’m going to sit here and force myself to write something, no matter how full of mush it may be.

In the past few weeks I’ve had a friend introduce me to a band–new to me, old to the rest of the world I suppose. They’re called The Flaming Lips, and I’ve really become smitten. I don’t know enough of their songs to take a thirty minute walk and sing the whole time, but I’m really digging the sound. He made me a CD of his favorite songs of theirs and gave it to me today, and I’m just parusing my way through it, enjoying it and the energy rush it’s giving me… or maybe that’s the Mountain Dew refill I got from Arby’s. I think I’m going to go buy another one, it’s almost empty.

Screwy = me.

Let me turn a 140-character twitter post from yesterday into a paragraph here. As I was driving home from a quick Wal-Mart run after taking the kids to school, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Sure, you’re getting divorced; but count your blessings. You have two beautiful, wonderful, healthy, well-behaved children. You have a working car. You have a beautiful house. You have a little money in the bank (a little). There are SO MANY people so much worst off this Christmas season. Just enjoy it. It was almost as if I could feel God smacking me around (isn’t that a band?), waking me from this dopey haze I have been in. I got home, brought my bag-or-two into the house, sat down at my laptop with my iPhone, plugged it in to sync, hit a few keys, and effectively wiped out my whole address book. What was that, again, about counting my blessings? heh.

The bad news is that so many of the pictures I had in my address book were of people in California, or New England, or New York, that I probably won’t see again for a long time. THAT hurt. There’s a difference in the iPhone in taking a photo specifically for a contact, and taking a photo then *attaching* it to a contact. If I had done the latter with most of them, I could dig through my computer and find most of them.

But I didn’t.

I’ve switched my work-at-home days to coincide with my kids’ basketball practices. This way, I’m not screaming out of work an hour early, driving for an hour and a half, picking up the kids, then driving another half-hour to their practice. Last night was the first night of this, and it went WAY smoother. Each kid playing one sport is going to keep me busy for quite a while.

This weekend will be the first full weekend I’ve worked in the media center at my church. I’ve helped out with a service here or there, but not a –whole weekend.– So I get to hang out Saturday afternoon while they have rehearsals, then work Saturday night service, then work the two Sunday morning services. The people in there are super nice to me, and without even trying it seems like I’ve made a couple really good friends. It helps, you know?

I guess I’ll quit rambling now. I somehow have to get myself out of this feeling, that everything I do in my life lately is bugging someone–because that’s really, really how I feel.