Fixed up for company

The last time I posted pictures of the house (and the only time) was when I posted non-staged pictures of what it's like to live here. Since we spit-shined the house to get ready for company (Landen's First Communion) I seized the opportunity to take pictures of the house in that rare people-are-coming museum-perfection state of being. Though I have highlighted signs in these photos signs that despite its clean and polished surface, people do really live here. We'll start upstairs.

I went through all the trouble to do those cute little thought bubbles for my animals, and then you can't read them for the size of the picture. Lily is happiest when Murphy is out of the house. She is second happiest when he's pissed because he can't reach her. My boy would give anything to be able to hop up on that bed, though for all his exuberance all he does when he manages to get near her is put his front paws down. So this is the guest room, a.k.a. Lily's Room, and it's about to get pinked out. I'm refinishing a chest of drawers and a mirror in a raspberry color and re-using a comforter from my single-girl days when all my shit was pink. I'm subtly telling the universe when it's time to have a baby, I need it to be a girl.

This is the boys' room, which is undergoing a redecoration process. We got rid of the little-boy pirates theme, and now we're themeless, with browns and greens and blues. The pictures above the bed are photos Cydney Wilson took on a day last year when Justin took them fishing. They both caught fish and were photographed holding them up. There are curtains in the plan and two big blank walls. Like I said, it's a process.

This is my beloved oldest, Jake. I told them to get off their beds and out of the picture I took above, and they both opted to hide in the small crack between their beds and the wall. There are some signs of life you just have to allow in a kid's room: hats on the headboard is one of them that I hate but choose not to fight. Signs of sweet life are the pictures of his mother and a girl from his class that he lurves on the dresser beside his bed.

Landen has a picture of his mom by his bed, and behind all these pillows is the fuzzy purple heart pillow that belonged to Erin, that he sleeps on every night. Sometimes I think he's trying to put the pillow away and lose the crutch, but he's just not ready. Last night it wasn't on the bed when I went to put him in it, and when I asked where it was, he smiled and retrieved it from the trunk of costumes in the corner of the room. We don't push, except that I do hide it when company comes because it doesn't match. And other little boys might not understand why he has a fuzzy purple pillow and tease him. 

This is the sunroom, in which we attempt to block most of the sun from coming in with lined bamboo shades. You may notice the blinds on the right are lifted a bit. That's so my puppy dawg can see when I've pulled into the carport and wag his tail SO HARD waiting on me to get inside to him that his head shakes from side to side. This is also the room where Jakes does his computer homework and plays Rome: Total War on the computer. It's the room where Landen plays Xbox and gets banished when I don't want to listen to SpongeBob in my living room. And where we shoot martians on the Wii as a family of snipers.

Behold our bedroom, with the chests I lovingly sanded, primed, painted and polyurethaned with help from the Mister. Most of those pillows actually live one of the two wingback chairs in the little sitting area on Corey's side of the bed - one othem holds five unused bed pillows and that throw and the other holds ALL HIS CLOTHES. Don't buy lamps from Ikea. They're garbage. But I like the way they look so much and I don't want to spend money on new ones. I'll have to wait for a happy accident to stumble upon a ridiculously-low-priced pair somewhere.

Our house has three larger-than-average bedrooms and two and a half apartment-sized bathrooms. This is the master bath. Thank God for double vanities. I hate these mirrors. They're leather-framed (?) and on my list to replace with something oval and frameless. There are two, yes TWO, blue-china monkey soapdishes in this bathroom, because they are my kryptonite and I cannot help but buy a blue-china monkey when I see one. That mirror leaning on the window is there because I sit on the toilet backwards and apply my makeup. Whatever works. That little spraybottle is this amazing stuff I got from my mom. It's called Poopouri, and you spray it in the toilet when you take a shadoobie and it makes the bathroom smell lemon-y and not poop-y!

Even though you don't see him, I promise that Murphy is in whatever room I am taking a picture of. He follows me everywhere I go. Every day. All day. My mother cleaned the fronts of my cabinets with 409 this weekend. My handi-capable mother, sitting on a stepstool, washing cabinets. It did not occur to me until I saw this picture that the stickers are still on my garbage can, and maybe we should remove them. Idiots live here sometimes. Shit happens.

I had a vision of coral-print curtains when I moved into this house, and it took me six months to find a suitable and affordable version. Affordable ended up being stalking several online fabric stores for months to find the lowest price on thirteen yards of fabric needed to make four 96-inch curtain panels. Corey also gave me shit when I told him how high he needed to hang the rods. Don't f**k with me when I have a vision, a Southern Living vision. I got the fabric on Wednesday and spent the better part of Friday night cutting the fabric and lining and pinning all of it. Don't scoff. When you pin shit, you have to measure at every pin to make sure the seam is the same size on each side. I'm not meant to be crawling around on my floor. The bedroom was the only place in the house where I could lay 105-inches of fabric flat to pin seams. Then my mother spent Saturday morning sewing the panels on her 40-year-old Singer. Oh, what a glorious difference they make!

Signs of a party: fresh flowers on the ottoman and a sheetcake on the bar instead of my grandmother's silver tray with carafes and wine glasses that live there normally.

Dining room ready for guests, except (signs that people live here) the backpacks in each of the (broken) chairs by the sideboard. I got that mirror on sale with a gift card my parents gave me for my birthday. The next piece of furniture to move for an extended period of time into the garage for a facelift is that sideboard. I'm thinking about painting it a blue so dark it looks black from a distance. That's a project that shan't be started until after the hot sumbitch of a Louisiana summer passes.

I do have a kitchen, but I don't believe in taking pictures of it. Nor the laundry area or half bath, and the boys' bathroom hasn't changed since we moved in and hung the map shower curtain and the picture of Bo Obama in front of the White House. So yeah, this is our love shack. It's 1,850 square feet of moi, or the version of moi that's married to an Army dude with two little boys, a bulimic cat and a dog who takes every toy out of his toy box and hauls it into the living room every morning. I love to turn down my street, and I get excited every. damn. time. because I know I'm going to be reunited with my house soon.

We're in a relationship together, my house and me.

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Landen made his First Communion!

I think they call it First Eucharist now, but I'm Catholic old school, and I say "First Communion", "First Confession" and I don't hold hands with my neighbors when I say the Lord's Prayer.

The church requires that the boys wear these white ties that they provide, and there's just no shirt that looks spectacular with a white tie. So I decided that he would wear a white shirt, and I found some gray slacks that fit him perfectly. I'm not bragging as his parent, I'm certain this statement is true: Of all the second-graders receiving their First Communion today, his was the cutest hiney. I did not get a picture of it. You'll have to trust me.

It was important to us that Landen not have less of a celebration than Jake had, so we invited Erin's friends and extended family to participate in this celebration with Landen. It was so great for all of them who came or sent cards to congratulate Landen on his special day. Landen doesn't deserve for his day to be less jubilant, but there was a level of sadness present. Jake's First Communion was a huge deal to Erin, who appreciated all milestones and rites of passage and commemorated them appropriately. Thinking about how she belonged next to Landen at Saturday's student/parent retreat and all the festivities and pomp and circumstance today had me tearing up all weekend. I did not want to cry, because I didn't want any of my sadness to affect Landen's joy and pride.

But she was there, because her friends and family loved her and love the boys enough to come celebrate with him. And he walked down the aisle and received his First Communion (we let him have wine too!) between Corey and me with his mother's pocketwatch in his pocket. Jake supported the initiative and wore Erin's Miraculous Medal around his neck. We all lit candles for her before Mass started too.

Landen loves any excuse to be the center of attention, so a birthday AND a religious rite in the same season is just the bee's knees to this boy. He ended up with $160 and several cool gifts. After church we had a pastalaya lunch at our house - our first soiree in the new abode. I only took pictures before we left the house, outside the church before Mass and after Mass with Father Gary. Traffic patterns caused a logistical delay for getting the meal ready for everybody and in visiting and being a good hostess, I was not sticking a camera in everyone's face. It was a lovely day, and my dear boy is upstairs with visions of holy wine and dollar signs dancing in his head.

He's divine, I tell you. And he loves to dress up. Can't wait until he can do it every day.

Best brothers. Landen is going to shoot up past Jake any day now, and then we're going to have a whole new psychological struggle to contend with on the daily.

My heart goes pitter-pat.

Somebody needs to tell this man's wife she's pale as hell. And YES, Corey and I matched our outfits on purpose.

This is a terrible picture of the boys and a cute picture of me and of Corey.

Y'all have no idea how long it takes me to get a good smile out of these kids. As many times as they've had to pose for pictures on their short lives, you'd think they could just snap to and smile away.

With Mawmaw and Pawpaw before church.

Mawmaw and Pawpaw with all their grandbabies. Look at Jake hugging Casie!

I love little girls in little dresses with ruffled socks and matching bows! How cute are these little girls?!

Always a stinker, even sitting on the altar.

This is one of three "classes" of kids who made their First Communion at St. Theresa this weekend.

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Easter beachsters

In 2009, we took the boys to the beach for Easter. Last year Corey was deployed and we did not go. This year, we decided early on that we wanted to go back to the beach and started looking at affordable condo rentals instead of the four of us roughing it in a hotel room for 4-5 days. Easter Sunday happened to fall on the one-year anniversary of Erin's passing, so we gave the boys a choice to go to the beach for Easter or stay with their mom's family and observe the anniversary. They choose beach and returning with shells to place on their mom's grave.

I get very stressed and pissy before I travel. Planning, packing, readying the household for an absence and making sure the furchildren are pampered while we are gone almost sucks the joy out of any roadtrip for me. It stresses me the hell out packing up four people and a dog to go see my parents in Jena. At one point last week (it may have been on the day we were packing to leave) Corey called me a dragon. Not untrue, but also not helpful.

We left after work on Thursday and got to Okaloosa Island (between Fort Walton and Destin, FL) around 10 PM. Landen slept the last part of the trip while Jake watched Thundercats, Season One. The condo had a bedroom, bunk beds built into the hall and a sleeper sofa. The boys went for the bunks the first night and the sleeper sofa after that. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were beach days. The schedule went like this:

9 AM - Wake up and eat breakfast (this was actually the time they were allowed to wake up the parents.)

10 AM - Covered in sunscreen, head down to the beach.

11:15 AM - Move from beach setup (chairs and umbrella came with the condo) to pool to rinse off.

11:30 AM - Return to condo for lunch and rest

1:00 PM - Trek back down to beach, sunscreened, with full load: two beach bags, two folding chairs, ice chest, sand toys, body boards

4:00 PM - Pack up beach party and return to pool

4:30 PM - Return to condo to shower, put on clean pajamas, watch TV, eat dinner and then Little Debbies (except Saturday night when we went out to dinner)

It's the best beach schedule and I highly recommend it.

We had a yellow flag on the first day, which was manageable, and a red flag on days #2 and #3. The waves were rough and big and the undertow was strong. The boys were only allowed in the water when one of the adults was in the water or standing at the water's edge. Corey bought them body boards at Target and Jake really took to this activity. He would let the waves separate him a bit from his dad and his brother, stay shallow, and ride the hell out of that tiny Sponge Bob body board. It was very intense to watch him, so methodical in choosing his waves. Our oldest is nothing if not focused and intent on activities of his choosing.

Landen preferred to be in the water with Corey, trying not to fall down and body surfing in. He had a Sponge Bob board of his own, and would use it with Jake when Corey was taking a break from the water. There was one point when Corey was out alone that the undertow was so strong he feared being washed away, so exhausted was he from trying to fight the pull of the water. So all of the water-activities were very supervised. This is but one of the many differences between coming to the beach with your girlfriends and coming with your children - you cannot cover your face with a shirt and take a nap or devote all of your attention to the latest edition of People.

During the vacation, Landen developed the worst bout of smartassitis I've ever experienced with him. I know it took great restraint on the part of his father that we managed a spankless vacation. At Fudpuckers, I asked him not to play all over the dinner table with his balloon animal, and he said it wasn't OUR dinner table. Sunday night I told him that was his last Reese's egg for the evening, and he sharply pointed out that Corey was still eating candy. He was asked to pick up the bucket of sand toys and carry them up from the beach, and he shot back that he didn't ask anybody to bring the sand toys TO the beach. These are but three of the 25+ that occurred in a four-day period. It was so bad that at one point he was saying he wasn't having fun on vacation because he kept getting in trouble. He rallied, because he managed to go all day on Monday without pissing his parents off. And six hours on the road in a car does not happy families make.

Jake, on the other hand, managed to hold it together all vacation until the car ride on Monday. You see, we do not give him the stimulant medication for his ADHD on days he is not at school. When his father was deployed and he was in extreme emotional turmoil, unmedicated days were the days he would scream at me and I would send him to his room and sit downstairs and cry. He did that to me one time with Corey home to witness it and has not done it since. Now Jake's explosiveness (which is rare) is released in crying big tears for absolutely no reason whatsoever, when he's in the company of his father. So Monday morning was the fourth day since he'd had a stimulant, and he was due. But the time lunch at Cracker Barrel rolled around and he started crying because he couldn't have bacon on his cheeseburger, I knew what kind of day we were in for.

Did you know that there are chemicals in caffeine that trigger the same corrections to neuro-deficiencies caused by ADHD that the stimulant medications do? Jake's medicine that he takes on school days effects his dopamine levels and reduces blood flow in his brain, which allows for increased focus and attention levels and better impulse control. Caffeine does the same thing. So on a Saturday or a holiday or a summer day, when Jake's brain goes wonky, I shove a Coke at him. We have the support of a psychologist and a pediatrician on this. I'm not sure Corey believed me until he saw the heaviness lift from Jake's face at the Cracker Barrel, and now he's a believer. Letting the 53-lb. ten-year-old have caffeine as part of his daily routine is unhealthy and ill-advised, but in a pinch, when shit is getting heated at the Cracker Barrel (or when he's yelling at a nun that her office is the devil's den), caffeine is our friend. Also, since I have a son and a husband who struggle with pretty severe ADHD that heavily effects their executive functioning, the boys' psychologist recommended I read Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents' Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning. It explains in applicable and layman's terms how ADHD affects the "command and control" functions of the brain and tricks to modify those behaviors. It's equally applicable to children and husbands. I recommend it to those of you with similar struggles. This has been a public service announcement on educated parenting and wifelihood.

Anyway, aside from the occasional hiccups that any family as quirky as ours is bound to experience when going on vacation (we're no Griswalds), it was wonderful, amazing, enjoyable family time. Thrills me that I picked the beachy coral print for the curtains in the dining and living rooms. My memories of my beach time with my family when I was little are a prized possession, and I am beyond grateful that Corey and I get to give those kinds of memories to our kids. We want to take them on a cruise before Jake is old enough to hate hanging out with us.

We have until about age twelve, right?

I leave you with a slideshow of thirty of my favorite shots of the weekend, in no particular order. I'm only in one of them. I prefer it that way.

The Landscaping Adventure That Almost Wasn't

For six months, we have been planning a landscaping weekend for my Dad to come down with various tools and machinery and tend to various and unsightly problems with our front yard. (The back yard is a separate trip.) This included buying sod, which is apparently the more costly and more attractive alternative to grass seed, so this had a budget of more-than-one-but-less-than-five-hundred dollars. We were not deterred by this project with the federal shutdown looming, until we got word as my parents were packing the truck to leave Jena, that Corey's mid-month pay would be half of the usual if the government shut down on Friday at midnight. This would mean that we would have to exhaust our landscaping budget to subsidize the missing pay and buy necessities like fuel to get the children to school and food to feed them when they told us they wanted to eat. 

For reasons far more pressing than our plans for beautifying our front yard, we were relieved when Congress struck a deal at the 11th hour to keep government open. Trying not to get all uptight and worried about something is every bit as exhausting as just going ahead and getting all uptight and worried about it, so Corey and I had to hug it out when CNN broke the news late last night that there would be no shutdown and he would get a full paycheck. We went to bed and this morning my dad showed up with a chainsaw, a tiller, some shovels, an ax and a saw.

The only pine trees in our subdivision are in our front yard. We hate them. The roots of these suckers have eaten our neighbor's driveway, which he had to dig up and repave. They are starting to pop up our driveway, so taking the chainsaw to the roots was priority on the list. Dad took at them with a chainsaw and the shovels while Corey whipped some ass with an ax older than he is. So old, in fact, that after every fourth swing he would have to tap the top of it on the root for fear the blade was just going to fly right off. Landen got dressed and came out to help, but we made him stay on the house side of the sidewalk, to protect him from debris and flying ax blades. He was allowed to inspect the progress when no gas or man-powered machinery was in operation.

As it turned out, the tentacles of our pine trees are strong and mighty and some of them cannot be removed. Death will visit them, because they were severed from the tree. But complete removal as Corey and Dad has envisioned was not possible without a winch. Lots of winches in Jena. No winches to be borrowed in Baton Rouge. We poured dirt over it and laid down some sod and we'll water the hell out of it and see what a couple good south Louisiana rains to do how unsightly this is.

When we bought this house, half the front yard (the part with the 20+ year-old crepe myrtle) was covered with burgundy chips and weird bushes. We have removed the weird bushes and most of the ground cover incrementally because I wanted grass there. This morning there was a very old tiller fired up so the dirt could be loosened, fertilized and prepped for sod. The pine trees across the tiny yard have millions of little roots coming all the way up to the house, it appears, so there was lots of whacking and pulling of roots that I did not capture in pictures. I also requested that they remove the brick border because grass needed to come up to the edges of the sidewalk and driveway.

Jake came out periodically in his pajamas and his bedhair to check on everybody, but did not take enough interest in participating to put clothes on. That's not true. Corey  made them stack bricks and he did it in those pajamas.

After this there was a handoff. Corey had to go to work for a little while and Dad and I took off to Home Depot to get sod for $1.59 per 1x2 foot piece. We ended up using 72 pieces in the yard. Great Clare stayed behing to tend to the boys. Justin was waiting to take over for Corey when Dad and I got back from Home Depot. He used an ax to cut sod in puzzle pieces to line up the odd-shaped area of yard.

And someone picked up some beer along the way.

And then (six hours after we first fired up the chainsaw) there was LAWN! And the irises Dad put in the brand-new edged circle around the crepe myrtle. Murphy has more grass in the front yard to make deposits on! We did leave about two-feet off the front porch to add shrubbery later. I'm thinking gardenias so I can sit on my porch swing and smell my flowers while I drink white wine and watch Murphy take dumps on the lovely St. Augustine we just lovingly placed in the yard. Now it looks like this, which is glorious, and after six weeks of watering it every day and not cutting it we'll have a full natural lawn!

The plan was for Dad to grill steaks but everybody needed to shower first. ALL the boys were filthy, even Murphy, so every Allbritton boy got a shower or bath. I even needed to get clean even though I did nothing but share my vision, supervise, make a hefty charge to my Home Depot Card and take pictures. I mean it, y'all. I did not lift a frigging finger. By the time I got in the bath there was very little hot water, but even Jake and Landen did more manual labor than I did today, so I took my lukewarm bath. I did bathe the dog, who'd been laying in tilled dirt every chance he got all day. Even he was entitled to hot water.

We got to put everybody at our dining table, extending it for the first time, while we chowed on New York strips, Dad's famous potatoes, salad with homemade ranch dressing, garlic bread, Snickers cake (I bought it) and vanilla ice cream. I took no pictures of any of this. But I did take some pictures of the food afterglow, like Jake chillaxing with Great Don, Landen getting all excited about watching Men in Black II later and Dixie being rubbed by five people at the same time.

Corey and Landen had a slap-off, which I'm not posting video of, but Landen won. Wrestling makes me nervous. Everybody's having a great time until someone's ear gets boxed and then I get pissed as the mom and forced spectator.

It was a beautiful, beautiful day. All my people I love most in the world were under the same roof, my roof, the roof my husband and I own and care for. Then everybody went back to their respective hotels/apartments/couch beds (it's Slumber Party Saturday!) and Murphy and I piled into my bed to watch Grease 2, sing the lyrics to Cydney via text message and play with our pictures and blog.

I mean it. I did NONE of the work today. But I love the shit out of everybody who did.

This is the longest blog post ever.
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Till there was you...

This weekend was the first weekend I had no husband and no children since December 18th, when Corey came home. The boys were with their grandparents and Corey had his first drill back. Murphy and I slept a lot, painted some furniture, cleaned a very minimal amount and did a disproportionate amount of lolling about on the couch. It's what we were doing at the time I started this post, having just slep through all of Interview With a Vampire. I also spent the weekend collecting thoughts on how different my life was before the introduction of the inhabitants of this love nest.

Now that I'm 31, I have loved or hated Corey Allbritton for more than half my life. Life sans Corey means that there was never three pairs of shoes and dirty socks and underwear lying around the floor on one side of the room. The sheets on the bed remained tucked in at the bottom corners. I would not know where and how to pin a CIB on an ACU. I would not know what a CIB or an ACU were. I would never have been pushed to my emotional limits. Until I married Corey, I was waiting for someone to show me my purpose. I would not know what it was like to fall head over heels in love with someone every time I watched them close their eyes and take a breath in with every hug they got from their children.

Till there was Jake, I never heard myself apologizing to a nun for someone calling her office the "devil's den." I never, ever made a cake that didn't have icing on it, or intentionally left some cupcakes un-iced. I didn't buy or cook corn on the cob, broccoli or green beans. My middle-of-the-night-get-up-to-tinkle did not include tip-toeing upstairs to apply Vaseline to the entire bottom half of someone's face. I never knew the joy of seeing the clouds on a sad child's face part and respond to something with pure delight. Before I knew Jake, I'd only felt the heartbreak of a cheating boyfriend or the death of a relative, not the heartache of a child in pain that you cannot help. I never hoped that a kid would touch me, much less mean it.

Till there was Landen, no one had ever told me I was The Worst. The only person met before him who hated onions as much as I do was my Aunt Soupie. I'd never been told my cooking was "not so good" or that my chocolate cake was the "best only I can make." The last time I'd seen a hiney that cute was on his dad in 1995. Before Landen, I'd never experienced the dichotomy of being completely amused and entertained by someone and never wanting to hear their voice again in the same car ride. No one had ever hugged me and said "I'm never letting go." Without Landen, I never would have mastered maintaining anger while trying not to laugh. I would have no one for whom to dread their teenage years. I would be older than this before someone attached themselves to me as their mom.

Before there was Murphy, I did not consider myself a "dog person." I would certainly never let someone's dog lick my face, wipe his face on my pillow or eat off my plate. I had never stepped barefoot in shit before. I paid no attention to those statistics that say dogs improve heart and cholesterol health and are good for mental illness and grief. I never imagined the joy of having the dog who, were he human, I'm sure would be a cross between Alfafa from The Little Rascals and Rip Taylor. I would sit in my white chair watching my evening shows with my arms empty and no fuzzy, twenty-eight pound being cradled in my arms.

Lily was here before any of them were. I barely remember a me without Lily. She'll turn twelve this year. I tell Jake and Landen that she'll still be here when they go to college. She's what keeps Landen from being afraid of zombies and ghosts - he trusts her as his personal alarm system for threats to his safety. I have moved her into TWELVE homes in as many years. Then I had the nerve to bring home a man. Then his two kids. Then the dog. We have never demoted her status as High Priestess of our house. Murphy sleeps in his kennel every night so that Lily may reclaim her rightful place in our bed. And the most ironic development of her life is that now, when the boys are home, she's probably in their room, keeping watch. She stacks herself in with the stuffed animals or stretches out in a basket of clothes (clean or dirty) and observes. And because we continue to evolve as a family, she now lets BOTH the children from whom she has previously drawn vicious blood (Jake from his HEAD) rub her affectionately.

This is my home. This weekend it was clean and quiet. By Saturday evening, I'd had about all of that madness I could take.

Click here if you love The Music Man.

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Numbers oozing from one's ears

"I got numbers comin' outta my ears. For instance: ten. That's how many months old my baby girl is. Six. That's how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I've been married - and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That's my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I'm guessing zero is the number of times you're gonna call it."

I love that scene in Erin Brockovich. It's inspired this post, because I too have numbers coming out of my ears, although mine are a little less "Les Miserables" than hers are.

Eight is the number of drinks I was served At My New Favorite Restaurant On the Planet for my birthday two weeks ago - six glasses of wine, a shot with the funny name the bartender gave us on the house and one glass of sparkling shiraz, also on the house. It was spread out over many hours. I do not admit this lightly.

One was the hour that Saturday afternoon I found myself sitting next to my husband in a class about resiliency. It was a less-than-riveting experience for both of us. We'd had a celebratory night the night before and the topic was mandatory and the speaker unengaging but then suddenly I was flooded with a squishy, giddy, teenagery love for the man on my left who was complaining about his shoes and having to tuck his shirt in all day. None of these set the stage for an outpouring of affection, but there it was, and I could not throw my arms around him and kiss his face. All the energy a husband and wife are supposed to have for each other and their marriage is totally bogarted by the children, and I forget how much I truly like the man until we're away from the kids.

Thirty is the number of pounds of mirror I dropped on my own head this morning when I knocked into my dresser and the mirror resting on it flipped over me and onto the floor. It did not break. Not only do I not have the capacity to be a wife, I am also having trouble caring for myself. Last week I put a glob of hair conditioner in my palm and applied it enthusiastically to my armpit. This week I put my Blackberry in the garbage, folded a used paper plate in half and stuck it in my purse and made it to my car before I realized I had just completed simple tasks out of order.

Four is how many loads of the boys' laundry I washed, dried and folded last night because we did NO laundry last week and here's why. By the time I've worked all day, driven 30-45 minutes out to Gonzales to pick up the boys from school and 25 minutes home (I don't control traffic), cooked supper and fed it to my children and my husband who has walked in the door from HIS all-day job just in time to eat it, studied for tests while Corey cleaned the kitchen, then got the boys clean and in bed, there is nary a household chore being done in this house. Corey and I sit in our respective chairs and watch mindless television and not talking to each other for the ninety to 120 minutes between their bedtime and ours. The other night I was on the phone at 9:30 at night and sweeping the entire downstairs after I got pissed off watching the balls of cat hair tumbleweed across the living room floor. But I do not care because

Eight is also the time at which my boys lay their heads on their pillows, with the safety and security of knowing where they will be and what will happen to them tomorrow, which is not something I was able to give them this time last year. And I know of other children whose parents are not able to provide this for them today. So I will not lose sleep over cat hair and multiple loads of laundry.

My housework doesn't get done in a timely manner so my boys can look like this when they watch Men in Black with their dad.

Two-hundred-twelve is the number of approximate bursts of laughter Jake and Landen had watching Men in Black for the first time last night.

Two is the number of vehicular accidents that occurred in my driveway TODAY. The first was when Corey Daniel Allbritton knocked his side mirror off his new car when he hit the fencepost whilst backing out of our driveway. The second was when Corey Daniel Allbritton said he was going to bring the 96-gallon trashcan on wheels up from the curb and his wife did not check to see if he had actually done it before she backed down the driveway and knocked that bitch straight into the street.

Zero is the inches of hair that Murphy has left on his body. No, really he has about 1/4 of an inch of hair. This happened to us last year when we grew out his mane and he launched a full-on assault of the hairbrush. The resulting matting required a close-body shave of the entire dog. Even though we didn't let his hair get that long this Spring, it has happened again.

This is what he looked like yesterday.

This is what he looks like today.

Twenty is the amount of money I spent on snow cones last week, not including the two I had for free at Jeff and Emily's wedding in New Orleans on Saturday. My high school bestie - a snazzy, savvy, creative, Southern Baptist list-making fashionista - married her Sugarbaby - a younger, Jewish, midwestern, problem-solving finance wiz in a "best of both worlds" ceremony and party last weekend. I'm not posting pictures I took of the wedding because she's honeymooning in Costa Rica and will post pictures when she's ready to reveal them. There was also a photo booth, and I'll post the photos we took in that.

Justin and Corey are on the left. They don't make a cuter couple than we do, right?

Thirty-eight represents the percentage increase in tuition we are going to experience when Jake and Landen start their new school in the fall. Yes, we got in! We still haven't told the boys. I'm not sure Jake is stable enough to hear some planet-shaking news like that and not have a violent outburst in an inopportune place, so we're going to wait until school lets out. Or right before school lets out. I have HUGE anxiety about them changing schools, for various reasons. Because I graduated with the same group of students I started kindergarten with. Because Jake does not take to change well and I feel we have wreaked enough havoc on him to earn the pain he is sure to cause us in his teenage years. Because their current school is the only church and school family they've ever known. Because they have a high level of tolerance for the grieving process these kids have brought to school with them every day this year. These people took special care of them when their mother was dying. Hell, these people took special care of their mother when she was dying.

On the other hand, if I'm correct in my assessment that what they crave most is to be normal, to be like everybody else, then there is a positive spin to be placed on this. At St. Jude, they will not be those boys whose mom died of cancer while their dad was in Iraq. Maybe it's good to have no history somewhere, to start the same as all the other boys in the class. That's how we're going to spin it. That, and

Sixty is the number of additional minutes everyone except Dad will get to sleep in the mornings when we start the new school.

.....

March(ing along) in photos, and I had a birthday

So we started out the month with Jake's Saber Tooth. He never complained about it, just casually mentioned that his tooth was loose and hurt him enough that he could not chew on that side of his mouth. That weekend, he looked like a chipmunk with a nut in his cheek. On Monday, I took him to the dentist, who promptly removed the tooth. It was a baby tooth and the root was not dissolving as the adult tooth grew in, which created an abscess.

Last weekend we went to visit Corey's mom and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews in Florida. Corey's brother Zack and his wife Brittany just had a new baby girl, Rylynn. She's the tiniest baby I've ever seen. Just delicious. Jake said he was ready for one of these tiny babies at his house. Landen tried to rub her head like she was a puppy. The boys know that we're going to try to grow our family, but we want to settle in as the four of us for a year or two first. I have four years before shit starts getting difficult.

One of the great things about where my in-laws live in Florida is that it's bigger than Jena, but rural like Jena, and the kids have a huge yard to run around in and a private street that gets little traffic. So cousins Xander and Max and Dad were able to help Landen with the bike-riding he has to master before he can put a foot on the skateboard he got for his birthday. We still have a lot of work to do on this.

Adults control the TV at my in-laws' so the kids have to stay outside and entertain themselves. Even though we limit the amount of both the boys are allowed per day, without television or computer games, Jake was much more relaxed and social the entire time we were there.

The Corrao cousins drove up from Orlando with their Razor Drifter, which is a little go-kart that the kids went crazy for. Little kids and big kids.

We got some great cousin pictures. Here are Jake and Landen with Corey's sister's sons Xander and Max.

And all the grandbabies - Rylynn (held by her mama), Elle, Landen, Zoey (Elle's twin) holding little sister Stella, Xander, Jake and Max.

The twins had a softball game while we were there and the Allbritton family went to the ballpark to cheer them on. Those girls moved too fast for me to get pictures, but here's a sweet brother shot from the bleachers.

School was out for Mardi Gras last week, so when we got back on Tuesday, they boys left to spend the rest of the week and the weekend in Beaumont. Corey had a mandatory soldier conference (we'll just call it that because the name's uninteresting) in New Orleans on my birthday weekend so my choice was to go with him or stay home all alone. On Friday I turned 31 and that night we went to Byblos, a Greek restaurant on Magazine Street with some couple friends of ours and two other soldiers that are like Corey's family. We laughed a lot and drank a lot and I sent a hungover SSG Allbritton over to his conference Saturday morning while I lolled about in bed trying to stop feeling like arse. Saturday night Corey and I went to have the best pizza in New Orleans, at Slice Pizzeria on St. Charles. We got back this afternoon, reunited with the boys and had belated birthday pizza and birthday cake, with candles and singing.

A family post would not be complete without Audie Murphy Daniel Allbritton, shown here snuggling with Daddy in the bed, before he was tucked into his own bed for the evening.