Harry Potter Weekend (Spoiler-Free)

Just to re-iterate, no spoilers here.

Sometimes I’m a really good mom/aunt. Friday night, I loaded up all three of my kidlets, plus my niece, and we went to a Harry Potter release party at the mall. They got to get their faces painted, which cost more than I could really spare even though the clown DID give me a discount (not ALL clowns, it seems, are evil, but check out http://www.ihateclowns.com/ anyway; I want to buy the T-shirt that says “can’t sleep… clowns will eat me,” but I digress…). They got to color wood elf masks and sprites, ate a piece of a giant cookie cake, learned how to make fizzing potion and invisible ink, and tried some of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. That was my first experience with them, and I only tried one (bacon) but… ewwwwww! Gross and yet oddly fascinating. Them Jelly Belly people are incredible, and I grew up just down the road from the factory…

Anyway, back to Premiere Night… After those festivities, at around 11:00 p.m., I shuttled the short people back home, deposited them safely in the care of their grandmother, and then headed down to Wal-Mart, where I was able to pick up my copy at roughly 12:03 a.m. Then hustled back home to the kidlets, to read Chapter 1 aloud to them, and sent them off to bed. Then sat up another hour or so reading… spent the next day, while my older 2 and my niece were at a Girl Scout thing, reading more… and finished (albeit missing several details, I’m sure, due to my excessive speed-reading). Through most of the book I was a little disappointed, and I freely attribute that to the fact that this is the first time I let myself get caught up in the hype, which makes it easy to feel let down. Then it got to… let me see… roughly chapter 26, and that was it… I was in tears, saying out loud, “No… NO! They CAN’T!!” (My same reaction to the end of “Pay It Forward,” if you’ve ever seen that movie… Again, no spoilers here, but one unthinkable thing happens, and one issue that I’ve been waffling on throughout the series is so much murkier now, I just have no clue what to think…

Read up!!!

Dead Or Alive

Morbid though it may be to post these back-to-back, I ought to explain Dead or Alive.

It’s a game I play with my equally morbid mother and sister, and I can’t recall where, when, or how it began. But at some point we developed a game wherein we name off celebrities past and semi-present, and then have to determine whether they are dead or alive. When it first started, it was just a game to test what we knew about who was still around. (“Isn’t he dead? Let’s play Dead or Alive!!!”) Over the years, it’s evolved into a way for us to tell each other (mostly for me to tell them) about celebrity deaths. Some memorable ones in recent history: Tony Randall, Robert Palmer (for goofy reasons a special one to us), and of course, poor darling Luther Vandross. That one was hard; I heard about it in the car and was able to keep my tears in check, right up until they played “Dance With My Father,” which never failed to induce uncontrollable weeping when Luther was alive, and so hit extra hard. Got me thinking a lot, too, about other things, but I digress…

My family handles death oddly sometimes. On my mom’s side, we pretend it didn’t happen. I suspect if there weren’t laws against it, Papa would still be sitting in his recliner in front of the TV. As it is, we’ve retaliated by holding the __th Annual Wilson Family Picnic Where Nobody Died for several years, ever since my mom and her siblings noticed that we usually only all gather when someone croaks. (You can’t even depend on weddings and childbirth to draw a crowd anymore – let’s face it, if we did that we’d be in each other’s faces 24/7. Big family.) On my dad’s side, we don’t have a lot of experience with death at all. Plus, it’s the Italian side... you know, the people who use any large gathering as an excuse to eat way too much, drink too much, and let the men stand out back smoking stinky cigars. Oh, and flirt. You can’t go to a family gathering without being flirted with, but that’s not as gross as it sounds. You see, on that side of the family, you’re family if you’re a close friend of the family… or if you’re family of a close friend of the family… or if you’re a close friend of a close friend. I’m apparently related by marriage to half the island nation of Guam.

When my great-grandmother died when I was 17, we discovered that my sister and I, and to some extent, our father, handle death by making fun of it. (Mom does too, but… well, long story there…) The first indication of my dad being this way was when my dear stepmother, still relatively new to our (lapsed) Catholic family, innocently asked for an explanation of the rosary. To be fair, Chelle and I tried to be serious. We began explaining the prayers for each “trip” around the beads… the Five Joyful Mysteries, Five Sorrowful Mysteries, (pardon me while I have a flashback… okay, fine now) and Five Glorious Mysteries. But then… oh, but then… she handed us a straight line, she really couldn’t help it, any of you who didn’t grow up Catholic would too… She asked us to explain exactly what these “mysteries were.” And so we told her.

The mystery of where the missing socks from the dryer go. The mystery of whether or not fish get the dry heaves. Now I know those sound obviously crazy, but again, she was new to the family, and she couldn’t imagine we would be joking at a time like that, when our precious Nonna had just passed. She looked to my father for confirmation, for surely he would not mislead her on something so serious and sad. He looked her straight in the eye, nodded solemnly, and added the mystery of why joggers wear shorts on the outside of their sweats. Needless to say, Chelle and I lost it. It was the first of many inappropriate jokes surrounding those solemnities. It was also soon followed by my grandmother’s nervousness regarding the one pallbearer we were waiting for. Looking around at the room full of menacing-looking Italian men in dark suits, I whispered to my sister, “How many pallbearers do we need, anyway?” Her response: “Six. And one to change the lightbulb.”

How we avoided the lightning that day, I will never know.

Time Keeps on Slipping...

Listening to the radio this morning, they were talking about the impending shuttle launch. A friend of mine actually works for NASA, or some related agency that’s involved in the launch, so I knew it was coming. What I hadn’t realized was that it’s been two and a half years since the Columbia disaster.

I guess every American my age and older pretty much remembers where they were when the Challenger exploded; most of us saw it live on TV. I was still in grade school at the time, in Northern California, and we were all glued to the TV in horror and disbelief. Still, I was young and it was far removed.

Columbia was different. I had been a Houston-area resident for over a decade, I had until recently lived in the NASA/Clear Lake area. Heck, my middle daughter was born at St. John’s, right across the street from the entrance to Johnson Space Center. So Columbia hit a lot closer to home. One of the crew members belonged to another ward of my church, and I later read, with tears in my eyes, how his son had been on a Boy Scout camping trip when it happened. The day it happened was odd. I usually sleep with the TV on (DVDs these days, but still…) and it was a Saturday morning so I was drifting in and out of sleep. I remember the weekend edition of the Today show was playing and I heard, through my half-asleep haze, that the shuttle should soon be visible coming in for its landing. As the minutes ticked by with no further report, I woke up fully, dread already settling deep in me. Off schedule is NOT a good thing in these cases. NASA has a tendency to be pretty precise. And then, something that looked like a huge jet of smoke in the air. I knew then that something was horribly, terribly wrong. I called my mom and stepdad immediately; it was probably aobut 6:30 a.m. in California and I don’t know why I felt I needed to be the one to tell them to turn on the TV, but I did. (Maybe it has something to do with Dead or Alive, which I guess I will post about soon too.) Either way, I called them and we watched together as the media finally acknowledged what we all saw. Columbia burning up on re-entry. Things were a little crazy around here for quite a while afterward. I just can’t believe so much time has passed, but then again, the swift passage of time has been on my mind a lot lately.

Childbirth, Take One

So a while back, I mentioned that Hurricane Miah had been present at the birth of all three of my short people. (Gonna have to stop calling them that soon, as fast as Big Girl is growing!) I also promised a somewhat sanitized version of at least one childbirth story, so here goes. I promise to keep it as gore-free as possible.

Big Girl/Nic/Coco/The Clone is my oldest daughter, my firstborn. Hard to believe that she will be 10 this September, but time marches on. Anywho, as I said, she was my first, and so going in I had no clue what any of this would be like. Primarily on the advice of my mother (who had given birth to my sister in 1968 with whatever kind of childbirth drugs they had back then, and to me in 1973 with nothing), I decided on “natural childbirth.” Her reasoning, which actually is quite sound, is that when you are numb giving birth, as feeling gradually returns to your body, you are quite taken aback by the pain. Whereas natural childbirth is, and I quote, “like hitting yourself in the head over and over with a ballpeen hammer… it hurts like hell, but when you stop, you feel sooooooooo much better!” Yes, I fell for it…

So throughout the pregnancy I plan natural childbirth. For reasons of my own, my sister-in-law is my Lamaze coach, and we really throw a monkey-wrench into all our plans when, four days before my due date, my husband and I decide to move to the hill country, 60 miles outside of Austin… a good 3-4 hour drive away from my in-laws, and Miah. On my birthday. Massively pregnant. The day before the move, I visit my doctor to be sure it’s safe, and she confirms that, while I’ve begun to dilate, that is perfectly normal, and first babies tend to come late anyway. As long as I do no heavy lifting, bring my medical records with me, and find a new doctor in Austin on Monday (the move took place on a Wednesday), everything should be fine. So with much wringing of hands, the in-laws help us move, then head back to Houston to wait what we were sure would be a few weeks for the much-awaited first grandchild.

Saturday comes, and it is house-cleaning day for the friends-that-were-practically-family that we had moved in with. All day I am a little tired, a little sore, and having the same Braxton-Hicks contractions (“false contractions”) that I’d had for the last several weeks. But around 7 p.m., I noticed that they just weren’t fading like they usually did. Not too strong yet, but certainly more regular than they are supposed to be. I asked the mother of the family if she thought I was in labor, and she felt my stomach and agreed that I could be, but that it was too soon to tell, or to worry. So we all went back to Scattergories and ignored it. Until about 10, when I knew for sure I was in labor, and we called the hospital. They told us that as soon as the contractions were so bad I couldn’t walk or talk through one, I should come on in. Here was the first of our errors… I failed to inform them that we lived about an hour away. An hour later, we made the second big error. Deciding it was time to leave for the hospital, we didn’t call to let them know we were coming. For future reference, many hospitals do not have an OB/GYN on the premises after midnight on a Saturday. So. 11 p.m.we decide it’s time to head out. It is midnight before we are all loaded up, with my husband flinging things into the as-yet-unpacked suitcase, and the entire family rousted from their beds for the event… both parents, all three kids, and the weekend guest. We load up into the van and head for the hospital. An hour drive. Over bumpy country roads. By this time, the contractions aren’t actually beginning and ending, they are overlapping one another (a physical impossibility, I’m sure, but that’s what I was feeling).

Going to skip over a few fun details now, and get us into the hospital. So. We pull into the emergency room driveway and unload me into a wheelchair. At this point I have decided that natural childbirth is NOT for me, and am begging for drugs. They tell me no, first they have to admit me. My husband stays downstairs to start the paperwork while they rush me up to a room and page the OB on call. When we get to the room, I again request drugs. Nope, they need to “check me” first. Now, that wasn’t a pleasant procedure when I was NOT in labor, much less so now that my body is frantically trying to expel what it has finally noticed is a foreign body. After that, I once again requested drugs. At this point I was told they needed to draw my blood. Foregtting that I had never been to this hospital and all my prior bloodwork had been done halfway across the state, I asked if they didn’t already have enough of my blood, “you f***ing vampires!!!!” The nurse smiled and patiently took my blood. She swore we could get my drugs soon, but I had to sign something first. I blew up. “I can’t BREATHE, much less WRITE, can’t my husband sign it?” Well, no, he couldn’t. I signed and once again asked for drugs, once again denied. “As soon as the doctor gets here!” she tells me, WAY too cheerily. Meanwhile, hubby has arrived upstairs, and mom-of-the-household is also with us. Shortly thereafter comes the arrival of my mom-in-law and sister-in-law, for while we had forgotten to call the hospital, we HAD called the in-laws and Miah. She showed up, video camera in hand, a few minutes after the others. So aside from medical staff, we had five, count ‘em, FIVE people in the room with me. And then the nurse tells me “Don’t push.”

Several thousand years of human evolution tell me to push, she tells me not to. So after some degree of argument she agrees that I can push, but “not too hard.” Hubby to one side of me and sis-in-law/labor coach to the other, they each grab a hand and I begin to push through counts of ten. The easiest way to push, now, is to hold one’s breath and bear down. After a few pushes, as everyone counting was still on “five,” I gritted my teeth and spat out, in my best Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist voice, “You’re counting too SLOW!” Bless their hearts, they all kept a straight face and sped up the count. Every few minutes I would ask if I could have my drugs now, and every few minutes was told that I couldn’t until the doctor got there. Finally, the door swung open and the nurse cooed brightly, “Oh good, the doctor is here!” Just as brightly, I said, “Good! Now I get my drugs!” At which point the sadistic witch took great joy in telling me, “Oh, no, honey, it’s MUCH too late for that now!” Two ticked-off pushes later, I became the proud mommy of a beautiful baby girl.

Suffice it to say, it was my last experience with natural childbirth!

My love affair with music

I’ve started ripping CDs to my hard drive at work, and also buying downloads (I have a few CDs I need to burn and ship, and yes, it’s a legal burn LOL). I have music going, albeit quietly, all day at work and I’m loving it. The CDs I’m making are going to be full of guitar music… one acoustic, or at least acoustic-friendly, and another with some more skillful electric stuff. At least, that’s the layout I’m looking at right now. I’m a guitar gal at heart. See, my daddy is/was a guitar player, and so was Papa, my mama’s daddy. My Daddy used to be a rock-n-roller, but pretty much stopped before I was born. When I was growing up, all I heard was what he played in the church choir, though I have to confess that as Catholics, we had some of the better church music! When I was 11-ish, he started taking flamenco lessons, which was SUPER cool. And finally, once, when I was a teenager, I got to listen to him spend an evening going back to his roots, playing 60s and 70s rock.

Papa wasn’t a rocker; he was more folk/traditional type stuff. When Chet Atkins passed away, it made me miss Papa all over again; that was his type of stuff. Roy Orbison too. Papa was actually a professional musician when my mama was small. He played with people like Buck Owens and Bob Wills. In fact, apparently most live recordings of Bob Wills feature Papa on the guitar, because Bob Wills could stay sober long enough to cut a studio album but not to actually tour it. One of the best memories I have is when my oldest daughter was born, and we took her out there to see the family. Papa hadn’t played in years because his hearing was so bad. In fact, I hadn’t heard him play since I was a wee one. But Mom and Mike and my husband and I coaxed him to play for us a while, and we caught it on video. He played the old stuff I remembered like “Mama Goes Where Papa Goes” and “A, You’re Adorable.” He also played songs I had long since forgotten, like one that he wrote when my Uncle Bob, his first child, was born. Remembering it now has me misty. That was the last time I ever heard Papa play, and the last time I ever will, since we lost him several years ago. Nic is the only one of my children who ever heard him play, and she was so tiny, she will never remember. But I will.

So the fact is, I love the guitar. And also have a bit of a soft spot for those who play it. Well, for those who play it well anyway LOL. Even though these CDs are for someone else, they’re kind of a labor of love. Not love for him, though he is a sweetheart and I love him as I love all of “my boys n girls.” Love for the music, for the medium, for the instrument that imprinted on my heart before I was even born.