Yesterday was a rainy, dark, foreboding day with weird barometric pressure. Some time after lunch the sky opened up and dumped rain all over everything and I could barely see out the window. It creeped me out. You never know how close other cars are to you when the rain makes a translucent shower curtain on your windshield. I started thinking about werewolves. Whenever the weather gets really grim, I wonder about werewolves—specifically, why we as a culture aren’t more worried about them. I digress.
So I got started on some items on The List. I’ve got a couple of people willing to help me bake things with dough, a history teacher who laughed but then agreed to try and explain the US government to me (probably wondering why I don’t understand it this late in the game, especially with West Wing available on Netflix), and I ate the lunch Thomas packed for me today instead of buying, so…that counts as saving a ton of money. I also fixed something—my skirt was blowing around a lot in the wild wind, so I weighted it down with binder clips. The kids thought that was pretty funny. And I know Princess Diana used to weigh her hems down when she was out in the wind—if it’s good enough for the People’s Princess, it’s good enough for The People’s Grownup Adult.
However, those were the easy parts. The difficult parts are also starting to rise up in the darkness with bared teeth (Werewolves. My problems are all werewolves. They seem like no big deal then they’re WOLVES). For instance, I was trying to read the directions for “how to use a compass” online, and I got pretty confused. I had flashbacks to trying to use a compass in junior high for science or something, and how everybody else seemed to get it but me. I would turn and turn, and the needle would turn, and I would get dizzy, and I would still be where I’d started. Which was more lost than I’d been BEFORE I got the compass. So…make that what you will.
I also started listening to Spanish pop music to help me learn Spanish passably well. Unfortunately, pop music of all languages is built on idioms and slang, and if you wrote the lyrics out in a sentence they might not MEAN anything. Go ahead, think of a great pop song. Yeah. I might get a few words here and there, but I don’t get it. Although the beats can be extremely catchy.
So I’m thinking about giving up already and maybe blogging about something else. Like…television shows. I could do reviews of shows that went off the air in the mid-nineties. Or find shortcuts through these things. Maybe I could just watch other people bake and write flattering things about them. That’s what the old me would do, anyway. The pre-30 me. The me who didn’t have gray hair—yeah, I found some the other day. But I’m a grown-up adult—Lindsay, Driver of a Mitsubishi, Future Baker Of Bread, Mother of Werewolves.
Oh yeah—the other reason I’m thinking about werewolves is that Drew refused to nap the other day, all day long. And as his eyes got more red, Thomas asked him, “Why aren’t you napping?”
Drew grinned and replied, “Wolf!” And began to howl.
“Are you telling me that you don’t have to nap because you’re a wolf?” Thomas asked.
I guess so.
Wolf creature or not, Andrew loves animals, from dogs to ducks to monkeys. In true Saint Francis fashion, he has to go around hugging and kissing all his stuffed animals before he can watch his shows—Duck, Horse, Puppy, Pup-Pup, Elephant, Dinosaur, and Fish all have to get big hugs. But his favorite animal is the statue of the Komodo dragon at the zoo. He returns to it every time, hugs and kisses it (I try to stop him), and climbs up on its back. He’ll turn to leave and wait for it to follow him. Somewhere in his mind, he and this Drew-sized dragon are having amazing adventures. I used to think that he would love the elephants, but he doesn’t care so much about them. He bypasses all the more conventionally appealing animals to get to the last thing—the Komodo dragon, the one that never moves. It’s always there, but it always seems to disappoint him because he can’t get it under control.
What does a statue of a dragon have to do with any of this? Well, I picked Andrew up from daycare the other day and let him stand on the trunk of the car while I held his hands, looking at his awesome face and blonde hair, wondering how I ever lived without him. And honestly, when I think about that, the fact that I might look dumb doesn’t matter as much. And I want Andrew to be able to ask me for help when he’s older, and as of now, I couldn’t help with much unless he needed a song parody for a project, or somebody to tie his shoes. Or drive him to the zoo to see the dragon…as of now, I could only drive the back way, what with my still-strong fear of highways.
We all have our Komodo dragon statues—things we care about maybe more than we should. I’m not sure The List is all that important on its own, but I need to give it a try. I don’t know why those particular things are, in my mind, the hallmarks of personal accomplishment. Maybe it’s because I’ve never figured them out—they’re still there, out of my reach, and I’m not able to move them. Or maybe the dragon statue is just something that a little boy loves. And I’m something Andrew loves. And he’s the greatest person ever who will grow up to be amazing. HE will know how to use a compass. And if he doesn’t, it’ll be because he was too awesome for it.
Also, I think he might be a werewolf. So…you know, be careful.
I’m definitely going to do this stuff, you guys. Even if I look stupid. I already walked around all day with office supplies stuck to my skirt. It can only go up from here. And if using a compass turns out to be as impossible as bringing a statue to life, at least there will be real experiences along the way.
the heartfelt awkward 