My students will eat my ALIVE if I act this way.

Today, common sense is following about 5 seconds behind every decision I've been making.
After closing the door to the house and (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) locking my car key and house key inside, I wondered the direction the day would take.
Break the screen window and go right in?
In a heap of patheticness, call the hubbs for help? Locksmith? Husband? The line is blurry.

Here is a question that will help this story along...
where do you keep your spare car key?
Is there a right answer? If you keep it in the car and get locked out you're doubly troubled.
Inside the house is not helpful if you're locked outside. Purse? I'd rather own 50 but carry everything in my hand (as was the problem this fateful morning).

Here is my answer.
My spare key is in the car.
Saved!

So I head to hubb's office to pick up his house key because poor Drake is locked inside and we had a playdate with Honey to get to later and Drakedog is nothing if not playful and prompt.

It seems as though the day was salvaged once I had the house key so I set off to do my errands at the post office. I locked the car and went inside (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) where I immediately doubted my key's ability to get me back into the car without the beeper part attached. Do I even have keyholes on the doors? I tried to peer at the car through the window across the lot. Don't be silly! I told myself. You have the key you are not locked out!

Well, I was locked out. Who would have guessed that the key wouldn't open the door? (Actually, I guessed it inside, but it was too late, remember? )
I struggled with it a little bit pretending that I was proactively reacting appropriately but it wasn't budging. I could always call hubby to test his car-burgling skills but (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) my phone was locked in the car.

An elderly gentleman saw me struggling and came to my rescue. A knight in a green Pontiac coupe! Hey, I thought, I'll take it. Same man who held the door for me on my way out of the post office. Read: not a total stranger!
He told me to try the trunk (no keyhole) and passenger door ( .... no keyhole) so he said "Guess I can't help you then!" (glad his day was salvaged). He asked if I lived close and could get the other key and forgetting I had just been to hubb's work I told him that in a series of locking myself out of things I could not get into the house anyway. Plus, how does that help? I live the next town over. But I only thought those things because he was far too nice and attempting helpfulness to be snarky to.
I said I'd call my hubby to help but oh! if I didn't have my phone locked in the car. So he handed me his and I stared at it because I don't know his work number and he turns is regular phone off so here I am in 2011 and every modern convenience is failing me. When I told him where he worked he said "Well I'll just drive you there".
So he cleared of the seat in his coupe and I sat down and (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) realize I'm as good as dead because I'm in the car with a stranger (but not total stranger because he had held the door for me) and I'm trying to remember everything I can about screaming fire and sticking my finger up my nose and detaching the taillight wires when we pull up to the hubb's office and he lets me out.

Here I was, back at the office confessing helplessness in dire need of being rescued and trying not to remember that that sometimes he falls too

because it seems as though today, there's only time for one of us to stumble.

All She Keeps

In the kitchen of a modest house in Tipperary, there is a beat up and cracked old toy.

Few would think it is worth keeping, especially with space at such a premium.

The kitchen is the heart of this home, and any who come to visit - rarely leave this space.

It has a huge and always piping hot old stove, a table bursting with seats, and a handful of scattered armchairs. Once your eyes have gotten beyond the pastureland, the Galtee Mountains stand tall in the distance outside each rear-facing window.

We come to this kitchen for stories, for warmth and of course, for the incredible food. Hot apple pies, traditional Irish breakfasts, and soul-warming cups of tea. Despite the close quarters, there is magically always room at the table for one more.

In it's prime, this house was home to 2 energetic parents and 9 children.

Eleven people in total, shared just four bedrooms. Well, three actually, since one room was always reserved for special guests. Today, far less frequently of course, it is the grandchildren who bustle through the doors.

I walked slowly through the house this time, it is simply bursting with memories of kittens at the back door, siblings swinging from bunk beds, and walking the family herd of cows to pastures on the way to and back from school. There are religious figurines and crosses visible at every turn. There are tables filled with pictures of beloved grandchildren in America. And, there are closets that ooze worn-out wellies in every shape, size and color imaginable.

Look at all she keeps.

This visit I couldn't help but focus on a haggard old water-filled toy. How had I not seen it before? I used to play with the same toy when I was younger. Pushing a button shoots rings through the water and the skilled handler shifts the toy around to catch rings on the hooks.

I learned that this faded orange gadget was the youngest child's toy. She played with it during her battle and ultimate surrender to leukemia. It was her hospital toy. It was her home toy.

As her mom kept caring for her and comforting her day in and day out - as she watched her little girl's hair thin and eventually fall out....the water-filled, ring-toss toy was played.

And her mom kept watch. Over her. And her toy.

Now, 25 years later - her mom keeps watching over the toy and the mirky water that fills it.

I'm amazed that she even lets visiting children touch it, but she does. They delight in the simplicity of it - bubbles, gurgling water, colorful rings. It requires no batteries, just attention.

Do my children remind her of her courageous little girl when they pick up the toy to play? I wonder.

When the children lose interest or turn careless with the toy - she removes the toy from tiny hands and returns it to the place of honor very near her kitchen sink in the back corner of the room. The taped side faces out.

In this cozy house the mom keeps watch over the wellies,

the homemade pies,

the statues of Mary,

the memories of bunk bed wars,

the dairy cows mooing in the distance,

the picturesque mountains,

the kittens at the back door,

her courageous baby girl's water-filled toy....

and me.

This is all she keeps.

These Boots Were Made For....

Resting.

(Cape Clear Island. County Cork. Ireland. August 2011)

Declan loved this lady.

And all her other friends.

They are good girls indeed.

I think my son may grow up to be a farmer after all.

The Post to Make Me Remember...

We are just 5 hours in from a 2 week stay in the Motherland.

Our Holiday was all we could have every hoped for + a great big big bowl of cherries on top.

In so many ways, I return from two solid weeks in Ireland and think that Americans complicate life more than they need to.

Let this be the post to make me remember that

bigger isn't always better

closer doesn't always mean close

a shortcut isn't always

families stretch far beyond the limits of bloodlines and lineage.

We (Dame and I) joked about the amnt of photos we'd taken along the way....

I guessed a good 700+.

As the computer churns out the 1,500+ pictures, I have nothing to do but await them....

Humbly.

Ever so Patiently.

And of course, above all...

Anxiously.

I think I know my favorite photograph already.

(But only time will tell).

Ireland was spectacular in every way. Do I even need to tell you that?

At nearly all crossroads, I felt a first line of a blog post brimming up inside me and I felt a tug on my heartstrings to set down and write.

So here is to the pots of gold awaiting my little ones,

and me,

and you...
at the end of each rainbow.

May we appreciate them and
May we know them

when we reach them.

(More pics to follow....God willing).

To all things green, gold and everything in between.


And to our super lovely leprechaun of a chauffeur this afternoon who helped us through the transition from dreamland to reality.


We love you Mr. O'Rourke.

And then some.

I couldn't wait....

I couldn't wait for the day for X to start talking. When he was a baby I used to try to imagine what his voice would sound like.

And now, his voice never stops.

And there are some things that come out of his mouth that are the cutest.

What you have in your mouth, mom?

I have gum mom, I'm Brett Gardner. (a Yankee who chews a WAD of gum)

What smells like mom? (while taking a long sniff)

And there are others that I could do without. The curse words he has picked up on are outrageous. And its not that I can be angry at him about the words. Obviously it comes from those around him (I will not name any names here)...but it is just shocking to hear it coming from his mouth.

I couldn't wait to to hear the words come from his mouth, and now they don't stop coming.

As X lolled about in his bath tonight, he was non-stop talking. To his trucks, to shampoo bottle, to his body parts. Along with singing BOOMBOOMPOW he was diarhhea of the mouth.

And I loved it. I organized my jewelry box, cleaned my room, and loved listening to his musings. It was music to my ears.

By the way, on this lovely summer rainy day, remember this? Ahhh, I hope summer lasts forever.

why we live here...

... because on any given evening...

we can walk from our home

on a path full of art

and cartwheel through a field

into town-

together...

tbc...

believe

so, we're in the kitchen,

my baby and I.

We have just begun listening to a new CD-

an african band with lots of steel and rhythm.

I am walking toward her thinking about how much

she doesn't look like me

with her click clack braids

and her mocha summer skin

and she says-

"mama.... mama- I have actually heard this song before. "

and before I can tell her she is wrong- this is the first time either of us has heard it-

she says-

"my birthmother used to sing it."

And after I catch my breath I think-

Wow.

I am doing everything right.

to be continued...

Love this Lady.

Obeying Signs.

Thanks Mom - for a wonderful 4 days.
Not sure how we'll get on without you.