Is he not the most handsome boy!

Muffin, pre hair cut...she gets pretty raggy in the winter, she just got a nice cute little haircut.

Thank You for Visiting my Old Country House! Please make sure to “follow” this blog and to let me know how I can follow you!

Thank You for Visiting my Old Country House! Please make sure to “follow” this blog and to let me know how I can follow you!

The Rug Company now THAT is one talented stylist…

visit my NEW Painting Blogleslidevitopaintings.blogspot.com/

Picture this if you will….. When we FIRST saw the house, and as it is a TRUE 4 over 4. The bathroom, was simply one of the 4 upstairs rooms and measured 18 x 17, just like every other room in the house. It contained the tub above, a nasty wall sink and a toilet. Thats it. It was gross.

We carved the 17’x 18′ bathroom into three rooms: a Master Bath, the Kids Bath and a Master Closet. This console sink, is a Pottery Barn Bath piece that I got online discount website for $49.99 (original price $499)

I am proud to say that I put the shower in all by myself! If you have a Clawfoot tub, there is  great website called, of all things” ClawfootClassics.com”. That is where I got this  special shower curtain which goes completely around the tub. The out side shower curtain I made with Two of My favorite Amy Butler Prints.

To save space we did not put a door on the linen closet. I made a curtain for that to coordinate with the shower curtain. The mirror is Target. Cabinet and coordinating wall shelf – Pottery Barn.

Light fixture – Pottery Barn.Faucet – Ebay

COLORS Used: Walls – All Benjamin Moore
                                        Wickham Gray
                           Trim and Bead Board – “White”
                            Ceiling – Clear Skies

Here is a sneak preview of the MAKEOVER COLORS and Fabrics:

                               
                                 

Wall Color – Ocean Air Love this color, it is the stripes on my Laundry room below.

                                       

from…House of Turquoise – I LOVE this set up and may incorporate it into the Bathroom RE-DO!

…and speaking of “My HapPy Place!”

   Today on Facebook, Country Living Magazine asked, “What was your best bargain ever?”
OMG, what deal have I NOT gotten? Honestly, I should write a book.
     Way back when I lived in NYC, you could get all kinds of treasures, discarded on the sidewalk- dressers, bookshelves, beds, trunks, books, everything. Once, I got an antique sewing machine cabinet from Christopher Walken’s trash. He was a neighbor of mine in the 80’s.

     If I stand in any room in my house, and look around, I can tell you where I got each item, for how much and from whom. In fact, here, let me give it a shot, here is a photo of my Dining room:

    This is my dining room: the table, an original John Stuart (hot shot 50’s furniture designer) table, $250 at a used furniture store. The shield back chairs, on Ebay for $65/each (they are now $150), the cane back chairs at each end of the tale, $5 each at a yard sale and, wait for it…spray paint!, the distressed sideboard I got from the Greenwood Country Store down the street for $350, the mirror from my mother in laws garage. The schoolhouse light fixture I found at Lowes of all places for $19.99 on clearance (they sell for $500 plus at Rejuvenation Lighting), The lamps were Target Lamps that I spray painted orange, the black dresser I got at a yard sale for $25 and painted high gloss black and changed out the knobs, the hutch which you can only see a corner of I got at a used estate sale $150, the lamps on the black dresser $20 for both at a yard sale and the anthropologie shades on sale $20/each, and the best deal was probably the rug, I got at a store, going out of business for $75.  The paintings I did myself to add color and whimsy to the room.

     You do not ever need to pay a lot for style you just need to always have your eyes open and some room in your trunk. Also, and this is crucial, you need to NOT need to get it all done fast, because that pressure can smash a deal. However, if you do need to bang it out, big flea markets are good, but ironically, I despise big flea markets, because I get terribly overwhelmed. I tend to prefer local used furniture places and little junk stores and occasionally a yard sale.
Oh!!!! Speaking of Yard Sales, This is the best one!

This past summer I got a sofa and a coffee table at a yard sale for $25 total. I took the table home and spray painted it gray. I looked on the bottom of the table and it said “Bombay Company”, I looked it up online and found it for $499!!! The lamp, A Stray Dog Designs Lamp, while we are on the subject, retails for $450 and I got it on sale store for $110.

Like I said, always keep your eyes open and the bargains are right under your nose.

the countdown is on! Pretend school, the one that is all ice cream parties and field trips and yearbook signing parties, and extended recess  and field days: is in full swing and we are all sweaty and counting the minutes until we can be a little less: overextended. I have a list a mile long of all the things I want to do, okay so the list is still in my head, but I am sincere, and I cannot wait to have my children to myself for a little more of the day. We will join the not so great pool with all the friends and the ring pops for dinner menu first and take it from there.
I will not give my end of the year speech yet, however, I will say this, it has been an awesome one, the year I mean! and it all started the week before school when I started this blog. I would not go so far as to say that life begins at 50, heck no, it begins when you get born, but I will say, it is NEVER too late to be whoever you want to be! Seriously, I am not just saying this stuff. YOU decide who you want to be and just become that!Try it! You’ll like it!!

now I need to decide to become a nicer wife, but, hey,  Rome was not built in a day!

later, gotta go scoop ice cream!

About 3 months ago, I sent this letter to a magazine. This could forever be known as the letter that changed my life.

Dear Editors,

I have subscribed to and have enjoyed your magazine for decades, throughout the college and NY city years, single, married, having babies. In the early years, I  gleaned ideas and inspiration to transform my cold claustrophobic tiny apartments into warm country inspired homes and more recently, I have poured over each page, looking for support and perspective as I navigate life in our old Virginia farm house, built in 1880, and where after living here 6 years, we have lived here 124 years less than it’s only other owner.

This morning I sat down, for a rare few minutes, and picked my new March issue of Country Living. I got as far as “Finding My Way Home” and out of the blue, as I was reading I started to cry. Gathering how the transitional move from the city to the country with all it’s subsequent discoveries and enlightened perspective transformed the editor ignited in me the angst a person struggling with  a troubled relationship feels when they see a happy couple walking hand in hand down the street, blissfully in love . It is not that I don’t love my house, I do, but it is like the love one has for an ill or aging relative, the love for my home is all consuming, overwhelming and exhausting. My house is always in need of something that I either can’t give it or just gave it. We never seem to have the resources  to give “her” what she needs and like a ailing person with inadequate health care, her needs are bottomless, the punch list endless, and the subsequently, the frustration level high. Something is always broken and when you equate the sad fact that I am the “Mr fix it” in this house, that my husband barely knows a Phillipp’s head from a flat head, well, you can do the math. The sad sad math.
 

I fantasize about winning the lottery or actually being able to get some bank to give me a loan to update the kitchen, the roof, the bathrooms, maybe knock down some walls. As an interior designer, I have taken the house as far as one can on our budget, and it is a pretty house to visit, if you don’t look too deep. There still remains exterior and interior structural signs of age, which are outside my realm of expertise. Thus, at least once a day, I say, I”I hate you!” to my house. I drive through new neighborhoods weekly, and fantasize about things like neighbors close by, new windows, level floors, and walls without 4 layers of wallpaper-under the paint. Houses without huge water stains on the ceiling and drill holes where I recently had to release the water during a big rain. Houses that are not in need of daily medical care, but are young and healthy and stable.

I know that if I ever do finally give up and ditch this old lady, I will never be able to drive past her again. And even if I do forgive my need for such superficial comforts, I will feel remorse, like I pulled the plug too soon, and disappointment for not trying one more live saving attempt to squeeze more life out of this old girl. Worse, I will forever envy the new owner, he who will move in with tons of money to shine her up to perfection, he who will have the absolute joy each day of seeing the view outside each and every window, the glorious simple beauty and while I use my new garage door opener, he  will walk along the creaky floors and listen to clang of radiators. Or maybe not. Maybe I will be free! Or maybe I will miss her too much and so, I stay.  It is the proverbial Love/Hate relationship that only those of us fortunate or unfortunate enough to live in these old battle axes know. And if my ship ever comes in maybe even I can give her a face lift, a body lift, and bring her into this century, but until then, I will just have to hate her, and love her, wrinkles and all.

Best regards,
Lesli DeVito
Artist, Photographer, Nurse Practitioner, MOM

My dining room is command central, my studio, my gallery, the dogs room, and oh yeah… where we eat on occasion. The prettiest and the messiest and the second most used room, (next to the bathroom) of our home.  the pictures say it all:

CAN YOU FIND THE DOG?

Someone called me today and said they hoped I was feeling better and I had to ask myself “was I sick?” and then remembered my moody gloomy self yesterday,all out of sorts and going to my “there is no Place like NYC” place.

Ah gee. Like Simon Cowell would say “Indulgent NONsense”. It is  a luxury to whine and complain when I live in a place where God’s handiwork is so brilliantly displayed in my surroundings and in  those around me who are all so supportive and kind and most of all, patient. I never forget to count my blessings, but I also have come to a place in my life where there is absolutely not one ounce of space in my mind for clutter and so I clean out the closets by venting /  blogging. It has been very therapeutic, if at times, hard to keep up with.
Yesterday, of all days, I was asked how I stay so young, which I just think is the funniest question because in fact, I don’t, but when asked I pulled an answer out of you know where and as the day wore on, my answer actually began to make sense. I do not worry much. I just don’t think much about the next thing. I really truly don’t. It means I might be later than I used to be or forget a Thank You note or twelve, or spend extra long lingering over cold coffee with a friend, but I just have found that I am happiest when I just focus on what I CAN control which is nothing, I try to LIVE in the moment that I am in, which good or bad, and will always pass anyway, and I figure that if history is right then all the things that need to get done WILL get done. They always do. My house is messier, I still yell too much about shoes and socks behind the pillows, but I get it out and I am done and I don’t stay mad and I just am frankly having WAY more fun.

If worrying made one bit of difference, then perhaps it would be worthwhile but it really has no impact on any outcome except when it comes to the subtle worry that makes us buckle our seat belts and not drink bleach, so I just have given it up.
Now there is the worry that having children brings into your life, but I won’t go there, because that is different and you know it. And really, some of that worry is a waste of time too. My kids put their socks on a lot faster after they get a non life threatening giant splinter in their foot, because they remember the splinter way more than the me yelling “put on your socks!”. In all fairness to parents of toddlers though I will say they often seem bound and determined to kill themselves, or their baby siblings and so they just need to be kept in a very small safe little environment where the harm they do is limited. That is why they are so DARN cute and don’t think I did not learn that one the hard way!
off to teach photography to 5th graders, though, today i think they will be teaching me a thing or two!

On days like today, don’t ask me why, I miss NYC more than I can bear. I long to be there and everything in the way of my being there feels like plot against me to keep me from being completely happy. I envy the folks that get to smell the bus exhaust and eat bagels with a shmear at the Utopia on Broadway diner and walk down Spring Street and jog/walk  around the reservoir in central Park. I could care less about shopping, or fine dining, I just miss the city, the heart beat and the energy and the bottomless pit of possibility..
   Do you ever wonder how you got where you are? What piece oif the big picture, that tiny missing piece you don’t get yet? I can handle almost anything. I may scream and be a Mom Bomb but I can take it and I have and I bounce back pretty good. But I cannot for the life of me understand how I ca,me to be on a farm in the country, painting cows . It is not a bad life, it is in fact a good life. But how the hell did I get here!
Give me three wishes and this is what i would wish for. A fourth baby. To live in NYC and , of course, 3 more wishes!!! (I am not crazy!)

      When I woke up today, I was confused. Is it over already? One week ago today, I woke up, excited that it was a Monday with no school and the week lay in front of me like a blank canvas, full of possibility (within the constraints of our “at home” Spring Break).  We spent the first day at a friends home, one of those days where you think it is just going to be  apop-in and the kids get along so famously that you and your friend pour another cup of coffee, or diet coke and you listen as the kids rummage through the Easter candy while you do fashion shows and talk about everything under the sun like lamps and  husbands. But around 4ish the first wave of nausea hit, we drove home with my hands gripping the wheel and me doing labor breathing exercises trying to hold off puking until, well I made it to my staircase. And that was all she wrote. 6 hours and about 6 pounds later, I was done the war over in my body and it took two days to get my land legs back and I really still do not have my appetite fully back.

SO while I was on the bathroom floor, dream husband was at the Masters and thus got a very mad email from me, as if it was all his fault. Oh well, better or worse. Once he returned home the rest of Spring Break was all family, all the time, and we spent some good quality just hanging and eating time that we have not in a long while. It seems the the idea of raising a family and the realities of raising a family are off by about 12 hours. It all looks good on paper but when you go to do the math, fitting it all in, is well, like math, tricky if you don’t stay on top of it. If you fall behind you are in trouble. It is easy as your kids get older to think that they need you less and that you have more time for “you”,  when in fact the actually REALLY need you now. But if I could make myself invisible it would appeal to my teenager more.
Yesterday we were in Chinatown in DC in his favorite store Urban Outfitters. The store has things with the “f” word written and he feels all big kiddish when we let him go in alone. But ironically , yesterday, he followed me around like a 4 year old. I think once I even said “you can go anywhere you want.” and he just mumbled and it was only then I realized that he was a tad intimidated by the city people, and was sticking close on purpose. It is a fine line, I had to pretend he was not there, not look at him or talk to him, but I none the less, had to be visible to him. Sort of sums it all up with a teen, it IS all about them, because they inside are still only as tall as your shoulder while outside a full head taller. Messes with the mind and the heart.

Sometimes I just have to stop and catch my breath and take it all in. Sometimes I cannot believe how blessed I am, how with the exception of an Oscar and perhaps another child, I have gotten almost everything I dreamed of…and then some.  How despite the fact that the roof over my head leaks, it sits atop an incredible home, full of life  and beauty and laughter and nonsense and most of all…love.  How I am surrounded by people who love me and support me, help me find my keys and take me just as I am.

It has been in the era of acceptance and life minus my Mom, that I have tripped upon gifts I possess, which are now bringing not only joy, but helping to pay for the kids braces. It is the most wonderful feeling to know that I have more ahead and talents untapped, or just beginning to find their momentum. It was not that long ago that I silently asked myself, “Are all the best things behind me now?” “Is all the looking forward, now looking backward?” And it seems that just as I permitted myself to go to that place of brief melancholy, just then was I able to look deeper, dig further down and find this ability to communicate, yet another way, with a paintbrush and a canvas.

When I paint, time stops. One o’clock becomes 8 o’clock and I do not even feel it. I am no longer in my dining room  studio but I am inside the painting. Finding the lines and the shadows and the emotions . I am shaken out of my dream when the kids stomp through the room, but I go right back and I just keep painting. The paint, which I am putting on the canvas, actually also seems to surround me as I analyze the colors and take each dip into the bucket.

I wish for everyone to know the bliss I  feel  when I paint.  In their own way. Singing, running, cooking, planting a garden, knitting, kicking a soccer ball, reading…anything. It is the kind of one with the earth feeling that just completes a thought and makes everything make sense. Like a drug, the feeling is addictive, and I have to remind myself to eat and pee and feed the kids. Or pick them up at school. But soon, I am back in my paint brush world, and like my son on his bedroom floor talking to the lego guys and creating complex worlds out of tiny interlocking pieces of plastic, the paint and I make music, that feeds my soul .

I love to paint.

I Hate this house. I hate the country. I hate the isolation and the dirt and leaking roof and the broken everything. I hate it all. I want to live in the city in a two bedroom apartment and get take out food every night and work full time and have a cleaning lady two times a week. Is that so bad? I want my children to stay exactly as they are and stop getting big and changing voices and growing boobs and hair and mustaches! I hate math homework and history tests and stupid science projects with mean lazy partners. I hate the phone ringing and bill people and dogs that turn going in and out the door into a match of wills and speed. I hate my muddy driveway and the dog crap I just stepped in and the dog pee on the bathroom floor that 4 people miraculously did not see. I hate that I cannot see without reading glasses. Did I say I hate the country. I really do. I was not meant for this. I liked the big house, but I am not cut out for all the dirt and the fixing and making do. I really am a lot more superficial and boring than I thought that I was.  I just want a big studio where I can paint and call for chinese and walk downstairs and get everything I want…including away.

   If you know me you KNOW I am not a negative person. I have been pushed to this place. Some kind of big joke is being played on me because I tell you this is never what or where I wanted to be when I grew up! I had it in the palm of my hand and I left the city and my diners and my people and I made a life. It is a good life. I love my life. But I will never be a country girl.

If you know me you also know that tomorrow I might take it back. I will feel sorry for the country and hate the big over done cities that are all like cookie cutter Starbucks malls. Aye me. I hate peri- menopause. I really do. It makes me a maniac and makes my kids call me “The Mom Bomb”.

addendum: my day got better, 360 degrees better!!! I think sometimes it is all about balance…

Oh Nancy, I am so sorry. I did not know your Mother. And really, way back when, I barely knew you. Yet somehow, we have been reconnected by this thing called Facebook, you are in my life, I am loving getting to know you now and now I see your mom has died. I am so sorry. I know, two years into Life Without my Mom, that there is little I can say right now, but I also know how important connection was to me in the early days after my Mom was gone. It meant the world to me to be acknowledged and to have the magnitude of my loss recognized.

You know those stages of grief? They are like being locked away forever in a room against your will, out of the blue, the door gets slammed behind you and you are trapped. At first you think, “This can’t be happening! They have the wrong person. They will be back in a moment.” Denial. And you wait for it not to be true. You wait and you tell yourself they will come back.  But they don’t come back. Anger. You get pissed, really pissed at the audacity of the situation and the unfairness of your plight. You hate everyone and everything that added up to your getting here. Then you think, maybe I should have been nicer, smarted, better at my job, better at taking care of her, brought the kids by more, better at forgiving…her. Bargaining. But she does not come back.  No matter how sweet the deals you strike. And you get sad.I got sad. Deeply deeply sad and hopeless and why does life have to be so hard sad. Can’t get out of bed sad. Can’t laugh at a funny joke sad. I guess for everyone the next step, Acceptance, is different, but for me the last and final step came quietly, while I wasn’t looking, when I began to paint. First the whole interior of the house, and then the paintings and I turned around and realized that there was all along another door out, maybe I painted it, in a different direction, one that led me out into the world, the one that did not include my Mom, but one in which her memory was ever present.

Two days after my Mom died, I went to Barnes and Noble. Pretty much everything I did in those first few days and weeks, I did in a fog. Like I was a wound up robot, going through the motions and all the while watching myself and saying; “Can you believe you actually did that, and your Mom is dead?” Everything felt awkward and yet very fresh and precious, like the first time I did everything, without a Mom, held some kind of significance. Like it was the backwards version of being born. I had to reorient myself to feeling just everyday feelings, which is I guess normal when you have a broken heart. My sister in law, who has lost both of her parents said, “Basically, you gotta give it a year. It takes a year, to go through each day and BE without your Mom. Then your “Normal”, the one that does not include a Mom, feels, well, Normal, or well, as normal as it ever will.”

So, back to day 2 into this new reality, and I went to Barnes and Noble. I love books. They make me feel safe and not so alone and weird. They scare me and excite me and they remind me that however small and insignificant my troubles may be, that there is at least one other human being who has shared the same stupid experience. Sometimes books inform, other take me away and other times they help me navigate my present situation. I wandered through the aisles in my daze, like it was a place I had never been to before, everything looked distorted and unfamiliar and without purpose. I don’t even know what I was looking for really. I guess I wanted to find something that would  make my Mom’s passing make sense to me. I think though, now when I look back that what I wanted was to crack open a book and read something like “It is all okay, your Mom is fine and she will be back next week, this is all a dream and you will wake up soon and everything will the way it was, even better than it was. You did not let her down. You will get a chance to do better, be nicer, more forgiving, practice more compassion and unconditional love. She will recover and she will be grateful for all you have ever done and she will be able to tell you, in words you understand, how much you meant to her. And when she does die, some day a long long time from now, when Your children are grown, and she has a chance to help you raise a teenager and you get a chance to say sorry for being one, and she gets to teach you to needlepoint finally and when she does die you won’t find out with a phone call 1 hour later after she is already gone, instead of the last 10 weeks when you sat by her side, hour after hour, but instead you will be able to be with her and hold her hand and say goodbye and you will never have to worry that she was scared or alone.”

There was no book like that. There were only very sad books written by people stuck at stage 2 or 3, people who could not get over losing their parent, five or ten years down the line, and I certainly did not want to be there ten years from then, so I left… then went back, bought the pathetic books, went home read them and still was exactly where I started. Just like the song says, “Alone again, naturally.”

When you are going to become a mother, you go to classes, to prepare for parenthood. You happily believe that there is a method to be taught and that if you listen hard enough you will get this thing down pat and be a great parent. You buy all the contraptions and monitors, and ointments and mistakenly believe that they have something to do with getting it right when in fact all they do is help with diaper rash. Maybe it is just me, or maybe my generation, but when did we start thinking that we could learn how to be a person.?What I learned, in my first year of being a parent and coincidentally after my first year after losing one is that living IS learning. And guess what? Most of the best parts, the parts that amount to anything, you do alone, in a room with a feverish toddler, a terrified pet or a sobbing teenager, or a husband who loves you anyway. You put one foot in front of the other and walk to the kitchen and make the kids breakfast when all you want to do is stay under the covers forever and ever or at least for a year, you realize that the simple act of showing up is how you learn. It gets easier and easier everyday, Yes, there are bumps, BAM, you hear a piece of music or feel a soft fabric or smell a rose or take a sip of diet coke and burp and there she is in the room again, but it does get easier.

Ultimately, the year passes. Amazingly and miraculously, you reach the other side of the canyon between you  hugging your Mom and holding on literally for dear life and the NOW you, looking at her picture, and somehow, it does not ache as bad. This year, Christmas morning, right before the kids came down, I spontaneously reached over, picked up my Mom’s picture, the one with her dressed all pretty at Robin’s wedding, and kissed it. I said “Merry Christmas Mom!”, and I am 100% certain she was with me,  because now she lives in me and I keep her alive by remembering her and talking about her, and making fun of her and holding Cooper when out of the blue he comes to me crying and says “I miss Nonnie.” She is here, always will be. In their smiles, his chin, my eyes. And it is much like the way I feel about my children… that I have known them forever.

So Nancy, I am so sorry that your Mom is gone. So sorry. I will be here any time you want to remember her, and you can tell me stories if you want to, or send me pictures. I am reminded of a story I heard on, of all places, “the West Wing”. A man falls into a hole, a Priest comes by and the man says “Father, can you help me out?” The Priest writes out a prayer and throws it in the hole. Then a Doctor walks by and the man  says “Doctor, I am stuck! Please can you help me out?” The Doctor writes a prescription and throws it in. Then a friend walks by. The man says , “Can you help me out?” and the friend jumps in, and the man says, “What are you doing? Now we are both stuck! “And the friend says, “Yeah, but I have been down here before… and I know the way out.”

     I have always always believed that every single moment, good or bad, happy or sad, happens for a reason. Or maybe rather,  what I mean is that each moment… is indispensable. Even if the only reason is…to get us to the next moment. Like a step. Like a breath. Like a stepping stone. Nothing is for nothing. I know this with all of my being and I suppose this knowledge is my faith. I have faith in the next moment. I have faith that there is a bigger picture. Each one of us, and each moment, is like a pixel on a camera, we do not amount to much more than a dot of color and yet when you get the millions of dots next to each other.. they/we are all combine to make… magic.

    So okay, I am just in a moment. But one great thing that begins to happen as you age…grow older is that you have opportunities, to see in action, the end of a story, the culmination of a dream, the real purpose.  So while most of my life is like an unfinished sentence, hanging in mid air, waiting for the next word, the next thought, the punctuation at the end of the line… sometimes I have seen how things turn out, or at least part of a thing.

In between my second and third child, I had a miscarriage. And it was awful and sad and heart breaking. I was so grateful that my one year old and my 3 year old kept me busy and distracted, and guilty that they were not enough to make me feel complete. I hurt from head to toe and my heart was a big giant hole. I did not curse my fate. In fact, quietly to myself I thought, “You have been quite lucky to have avoided this…at your age and all.”  But I wanted that baby back more than I could ever articulate. So, alone in my car, I would cry and cry and cry. And then, almost a year to the day I miscarried, I gave birth to a fat baby boy. He is the light of my life, the sad sad story had a very happy ending. Sometimes my heart skips a beat, when I look at him and think about if I had not had the miscarriage… He just walked into the room with about a thousand legos bound up in his shirt. Like he was a kangaroo and the Legos were his babies. And he opened his shirt and said “Look Mama!” And they all tumbed out of his shirt and his smile was a wide as the room. These are the moments I want to freeze. simple little sweet joyful moments that do not amount to not much, but equal everything. Little dots of color.

Saturday Morning, laying on the couch watching a rather silly but cute movie with my 11 year old daughter. The movie ends and a new movie comes one. This one starring Hilary swank. and I  say, “this should be good, I love her! AND we have the same birthday…just ten years apart.” My daughter says, Her? Wait, …ten years older or ten years younger? …cause you look way younger than her!”
I LOVE HER!

Snow!
I will confess, that over the last…I don’t know, few years, maybe since my Mom died, maybe since I turned 50, whatever, I have had this fleeting thought “Will I ever feel that absolutely happy feeling again?” 
     It is not as if I am sad, no, no, far from it.  I am enthusiastic about Christmas and the kids and I do get great pleasure from helping people, I love making people laugh, but I am not talking bout joy here. I more mean the excited, tickle in the tummy, anticipatory, what is gonna happen…feeling.  Like my daughter counting down the days until Christmas, one hour at a time. And I remember watching my children see bubbles for the first time and the twentieth time and each time experiencing pure amazement and wonder and me thinking.”Wow. Bubbles. Who’d a thunk it! I wanna feel like that!”  And then watching them, through their eyes, I did, I would. It is the feeling that has gotten me over many a hump. Just looking forward to the next day, the next job, the next boy, the next baby, the next house, the next dog, the next friend, the next bubble.
     Alone and driving in my car, I have wondered, “Is it all behind me.” and at the same time thought, “Think like that and you WILL be old, find something to make you excited, or get over your stupid self!” So I plug away at my very sweet simple, if sometimes boring to tears,  little life.
      Today, when I woke up, to the sound of “Oh my Gosh! Look Look. Mom, you won’t believe it! ” I admit, with my eyes still closed. I was a  skeptic. Having grown up in Nebraska and subsequently having spent some time trudging through New England, The typical Virginia 6 inch snow falls are fun and pretty, but not something to write home about. So I trudged to the bathroom and looked out the window. OH MY GOD! SNOW!!!The snow was everywhere! A winter wonderland. Big white drifts and bushes completely covered. My car…gone! And with the exception of my Newborn baby’s faces and my husbands eyes, it was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life. It took my breathe away. My country home, turned into heaven, clouds on the ground, peace and absolute stillness and quiet, and pure bliss. Happiness washed over my body and through my  veins and into my smile and I do not lie when I tell you I looked at the sky and said, “Thank you.”

I have been uncharacteristically calm this season.
Not that I don’t have my moments where I flip out… well for instance, like last night when Phoebe and I stayed up to decorate the tree for the third time because that is how many times it has fallen down and we have had to start ALLLLLL over…minus ten or twenty broken ornaments…and she came in the room, smiling and humming Rihanna songs with a ginormous glass of celebratory eggnog and then I heard her say (maybe even for the first time)  “DAMMIT!” and she had spilled its entire contents of the eggnog on my laptop and on the couch and all over the floor and the rug and  table and really there was NO where it did NOT go and I was flying around like a wild crazy psycho mean mommy  bitch until I screamed and spun myself out of gas and  into a heap on the floor with her crying in my lap and me saying I am sorry sorry I care about stupid things and the DE-slip covered couch now naked and my hands wrinkly from cleaning, the tree still bare, and “JULIA and JULIA” which we had just started to watch frozen with Meryl Streep watching the whole scene from the TV screen because I pushed pause when Phoebe said ‘dammit!” and did I mention that during the clean-up process we had heard a “SNAP!” come from the kitchen and we remembered in the same aha! moment that Daddy had set a mousetrap and even through it all, through all the crazy nonsense of the whole thing, there was this very little voice that was chuckling at the whole thing and saying…you DO know that none of this matters right? NONE of it.go have yourself a merry little christmas.

so we stayed up until one Am and finished the tree, Babar’s broken nose and all,  and the eggnog and now today is a new day for which I am always eternally grateful, even if I am grumpy,  because it is just another day to see how it turns out…who wins who loses…and who survives.

so, go have yourselves a merry little something…

When I was packing up my city self to move to the country, I remember a friend, who had moved out here a few years before, saying “the one thing that took some getting used to..was ALL the bugs.” They are everywhere. They are always there. I am not one of those people who flip out at the sight of a spider. I have no trouble squishing a tick. When those million leg bugs come out every night to make their rounds, I can sleep in peace. I don’t hate bugs. But I also…do not love them. They are everywhere…in the country.
My sister in law, told me I should make a coffee table book…Bugs I have Known. Here are some the entries. They show up…everywhere.

Everyday, on my way anywhere, I have the sheer pleasure and privilege of driving up the most beautiful hill in the world. To my right are the expansive and blooming Vineyards of Seven Oaks Farm and to my left side are the rolling hills of the majestic Mirador Farm. Both are landmark properties here, historic farms that are part of the rich history of Greenwood. There are rare days when I slow down to a crawl, just to take it all in, but sadly more often than not, I am almost always running late and thus I fly past the beautiful blur and vow to start earlier next time.
At Mirador, for about the past month or so, there have been hay bales situated right on top of the biggest hill, like candles on a cake, almost screaming, “climb me!” Every day the thought crosses my overcrowded mind; “Wouldn’t it be fun to run down that big giant hill and climb up on top of those hay bales and salute the sky?” But then again, it is private property and I also think “we could get in trouble…well, maybe not.”
Anyway, last weekend, when the Florida cousins made their annual Mid-October trek up to see the fall foliage in full swing, I threw caution to the wind. I seized the day. One hour before my two beautiful, growing up too fast nieces, departed for home, I said to all 5 of the kids “Hey Guys, wanna go have some fun?’

Camera in hand and the tummy tickle of doing something borderline naughty, we drove down the road and parked strategically across the street from the propped open farm entrance gate. “On your mark, get set and go!” I cried. The five kids ran down the steep hill and up the big hill and helped each other up onto the hay bales. The pictures say the rest of the story. All five of them came back, breathless and exhilarated and as if they had peeked at Heaven and they all said “You think its pretty there! You should see what we could see…on the other side!”

Okay. Now I have a NEW goal. I want to get my living room on the Benjamin Moore facebook page. It is not that I think I have the most beautiful home in the world, but I want people to see, how much they can do, with VERY little money. I have done everything myself, except the reupholstering, and that I bartered partially for.

Here are the BEFORE and AFTER shots of OUR Living room.
Before Color: Cowslip
After Color: Spring in Aspen

                            

                                                     MORE TO COME!!!!
                                     

Two seconds, two minutes , two hours, two days, two weeks, two months, and now it has been, two years since my Mother passed away, since she died. I woke up on the second anniversary of her death at exactly the same time she died that day, 5 am, and I am not just saying that to sound cool and eerie. It really happened. I lay in bed and remembered how on the day she died, I woke up, again at 5 am with an awful anxious feeling in my stomach, like a panic attack, and before I could call, the phone rang. It was my brother. “Mom died”. Two seconds. The backwards clock started.

On the day she died, a day like no other I will ever experience, because thank God, I can only lose her once, I found out what an out of body experience truly was. I had heard people refer to the their own experiences with the phenomenon, phenomena? whatever, I had heard them spoken about, but never really had the good fortune to leave my own body behind and take a little trip. But that day, man, it was ALL I did! I kept watching myself, seeing myself go here, go there, watched myself, wash my face, get in the car, walk into the coffee shop, like it was just an ordinary day, which it most certainly was not. I kept ALMOST saying, to everyone, “My Mom died today.” But it was not to get sympathy or a hug or anything like that, it was creepy and more like that thing in us that makes us want to cuss in church. I wanted to see the actual instantaneous responses people would have. I wanted to know if this were a nightmare I might just wake from, unscathed. I was powerless and Motherless but I had complete power over the next second of their lives and I knew it. I was lost and I knew that even the coldest of cold, knows THAT “My Mother died today”, is extremely bad news. I knew that their smiles would crash to the floor. The tears would spill over. The faces would fall. I am sick! The arms would come into my private space and wrap themselves clumsily around me and they would feel SO helpless and bad for me and so very grateful that they were not the one delivering the news. Then they would start in on the litany of gratuitous comments, the classics like; “Well, at least she is not suffering anymore.” “It is a blessing”. “She was a great lady.” and so on and so on. All statements that would further my insane guilt at not really giving a shit if she would be in pain or not really but just wanting her back. Wanting her back. I just wanted her back! Seconds, minutes, hours! I wanted to make it all go back.

But I never did say out loud the things I was thinking of saying and here is what I learned: If you don’t open the door, they don’t go through it. People don’t. Very very few people voluntarily came into my messy, achy, horrible dead Mother space. I got a multitude of beautiful cards, and gorgeous flowers and cozy comfort food food food, But I, me, I was avoided like I had Anthrax. I did not hate them for it or even expect them to, share my pain. Why would they? It sucked. It hurt too too bad. And then there were the loving mean well folks, all well meaning, if clueless, but who would call me and say NOTHING about it, as if it never happened, as if that is possible. They would just chat and gab and catch me up on baseball and school and I would hear nothing but screaming in my head. I came to fully grasp, but like grasping a cloud full of wisdom, fleeting but important and gone as fast as you have it, I realized that, like artistic ability and athletic ability, the ability to empathize and share in anothers loss is not a natural quality most possess. Perhaps it can be taught like form drawing or soccer drills, but there are few Mia Ham’s and even fewer Picasso s. It is extremely difficult to just BE with a person who is suffering. I am pretty sure that I too am NOT one of those gifted at birth with true empathy and I know I fall short on many heart breaking occasions. What I mean is that, try as they/we/I might, most people suck at it and say all the wrong things and after a while, that really is okay and really all I/we can or should expect. I mean, we don’t go around bemoaning the fact that we have so few Rembrants, instead we revere the gifted and try to be better ourselves. IT is baseline, and I was taken by surprise when true empathy crossed my path. And the bearer of the empathy more often than not was not a family or friend. Sort of like when you have a newborn and you bond with the bank teller because she has a 3 week old too, even though you do not know her name and will not be her friend a year from now. It was rare and it was okay. And maybe, when one is truly in despair, just to know that everyone wishes they could be better at making it better, is enough.

For days I had this weird thing happen that I have never experienced before or after. I kept feeling a moaning come into my throat, and I would have to clamp down the back of my throat not to burst into tears. My throat ached from holding it in. It was like holding back a dam. I could not afford to break down, or maybe I was just too terrified I might not be able to ever get back up. And I honestly felt like there was no one who could catch all the million pounds of me and my load of sorrow. I actually even fell to my knees one time in my kitchen and screamed and sobbed, which sounds stupid and dramatic to me now, but I got an email that broke my heart and my legs just would not hold me up.
I won’t tell you anymore today about the slow crawl back, suffice to say that I did make it back up from the depths of despair and now my Mom has been not on earth for two years, and while it does not feel “normal”, it does not feel sad all the time either. I still pick up the phone to call her. And not the local number she had when she lived here, but the old number, in Tampa, where I grew up. I dial it, as if, perhaps she might just pick up. Magical thinking? I miss her so much but I have learned how to put one foot in front of the other and just fake it. I forget her voice sometimes. And I honestly think I am not as funny as I used to be because she was my best material. One visit with her and I could take the room by storm. She was what they call “a piece of work!”
If she were here today I would ask her about teenagers. And I would ask her why she only slapped me once, why once was enough, knowing what I know now about how bad they can hurt you and mad they can make you. And I would tell her that NOW I get it! And even though my hand gets itchy, I have not slapped him. I sincerely hope I never do. But I also never say never as that has gotten me in enough trouble already. Now I understand why one day in a fit of frustration and rage and insecurity, my stay at home Mom took all the dishes and laundry that I was supposed to have done and put them in the middle of my bed for me to find when I got home from school. And I would watch her grin that crazy grin of hers and she would say “Oh no, I didn’t do that did I?” Pice of work!

Why do dogs smell like cheetos? Why do cheetos smell like cheetos? What do dogs and cheetos have in common that make them smell the same?

One time, and actually this has happened to me more than once, I was yelling at my son and when I was done speaking my piece, when I thought I had said what I had to say in as many ways as I could possibly scramble the words, to make my point, until infinity the way you get when you are just “at the end of your rope”…when I went to take a breath, he said “Mom, how may teeth do you have?”…. I think he heard “You need to stop…” and then a little musical number started in his mop top covered head, singing and dancing or maybe a monster truck rally was taking place, who knows, the only thing I know with complete certainty is that he tuned me out, completely, and that he was not listening to me. And you know why…I talk to damn much!

I know I do. You will gain no favor with me by trying to assuage my concern that I bore you to tears or make you feel listened to by telling me, “Oh no, you talk just as much as everyone else.” Because see, I am also smart and I have always been able to tell when a person is lying of trying to get me to feel better or give them money. I know these things. And for sure I know I am a chatty Cathy who at her best is mildly entertaining and at her worst, just a sorry conversation greedy bore.

Its just that I get so excited. I hear something said and the part of me that used to raise her hand just shouts out the answer, “oh, oh I know what you mean, I….” and then I am off to the races at Saratoga, never coming in first but in the top three for sure. And guess what, my kids have become chronic interrupters, or actually since all kids start out that way, what I should say is that they have perfected their innate and  inborn gifts of interrupting me and each other to the point where very little really gets really said and, if said,  ever finished. Usually it all ends with us fighting about who started it and we forget that we actually were talking about  “which is bigger: a corn snake or a black snake, or are the they same thing?”

And you know another reason why I know I talk too much. I can have an entire, even constructive conversation with you, walk away and not even remember your name. I will ALWAYS remember your birthday, don’t ask me why I got that gift, if you can call it a gift. I would prefer counting cards but I got the gift of never being able to forget a birthday. But I am terrible with names. What happens is this: I meet you, we say “Hi, my name is …” and then I notice your teeth. (my kids come by it honestly I guess) or your pretty hair or your bad skin or your beautiful voice and I start thinking about my own those things and all of a sudden the volume comes back and you are saying ” systems analyst, but that didn’t work, so…” and I am so lost it is embarrassing. So I say “I love your purse.” or some other distracting compliment and we just chat, or rather, I chat, and then we say goodbye. I’m sorry.

See,  what I am hoping is that all of this wrting will serve as therapy to get all of these things out of my head and onto the page, so that I can be done with them. Then I will have nothing to say. Or at least not so much and I can take IN some information. I am just full up thats all. Full up to the rim with stories and information that have  no further use and no place to go. Just old words. I want so much to be the one that everyone thinks of as “such a  good listener”, like my friend, K…. I even have started to wonder if that is why my phone never rings except  for…. wait it just rang! here is my chance!

My Goddaughter is 7 today. Where did the time go? She started first grade, got her ears pierced and did not even bother to tell me! How dare she have a life of her own! I will have none of that. We will see if I “forget” to buy her any new earrings for those new pierced ears! how about that! Hmmm?

I have 4 children that can call me their Godmother. In the world of God parenting I pretty much suck.Every once in a blue moon, and with no consistency what so ever, I might remember a special day and just drop something in the mail.  I have been known to remember a birthday but I am not much of a spiritual guide unless ice cream for breakfast brings inner enlightenment. As far as really being actively involved in their lives, I am ashamed to say that they get the short end of my very short stick. And geographically, it gets tricky. Half of them live in different states. All but one are nearly the exact ages of my own children and thus get lost in the shuffle of all our own Birthdays and graduations and sporting events. And one of them I am fairly certain thinks her other Aunt is her Godmother and I think actually she may also be and because the other Aunt is the Goddaughter’s, mothers sister, basically has she has first dibs. Did you follow that? I do count myself one fortunate and blessed person to have been given the privilege to be in all of their lives. When the teens come, I will take each of them in as my own, temporarily or even permanently, should that phone call come. Well, just so long as I can make a trade.

     Then there is the Divine Miss M. My youngest Goddaughter. She is the baby sister I always wanted for my own daughter. The snappy,  little firecracker who is the polar opposite of my own Eleven, isn’t that what sisters do? Eleven is the good little doo bee. Not that the Divine Miss M is not a good girl, but being the baby in her own real family, she is quite sure that the World revolves around her, and in many ways, it does. She is fiercely competitive and she is bossy and she is a smarty pants and she is spoiled and I absolutely, unequivocally adore her. Not being my own child and thus subjected to me at her heels, she is not my nemesis. I think she will and maybe already does give her actual Mom, the country mouse, a city mouse run for her money. And I love that I do not nor will ever have to be the bad guy. I get to sweep in, take her shopping, get her hoop earrings and light up shoes and Build a Bears and none of it has to be needed or kept track of. She can feed them to the dog if she gets the whim. She is the child of mine that I cannot ruin, steer wrong or push into therapy. She has not yet begun to hold much of a conversation, however, she asks more questions than a White House reporter. I don’t really think she is as curious as she is nosy and this is yet another reason why I love her with all my heart. She hungers for gossip and is into  every bodies business like no bodies business. She has eyelashes that hit her in the forehead which sit upon two beautiful big brown eyes, the better to stare with while she catches flies with her wide open mouth. And I hope and pray that somehow, in all the stuff that will happen between first grade and taking flight that she never ever loses her appetite for a good piece of drama. Everyone, every parent, every person should have the experience, the absolute freedom from guilt and responsibility, JOY of being a Godparent. And every Godparent should be so lucky to have their very own Divine Miss M.

I will try to be better with the other three. I really will. They certainly deserve to feel spoiled and enlightened or at the very least…treated to ice cream for breakfast… and lunch and dinner.

My 13 year old son just told me that I stink. Actually, what he said, was “Mom, I don’t want to get you mad or anything, but when is the last time you took a shower?” How does one respond to these things?
Once upon a time, I was a nice person. I was actually known as a “nice person”. I earned two Master’s Degrees and worked 50 hour weeks in the second field of my choice, Nursing. Theater was and always will be my first love. But I loved being a Nurse. I drove 4 hours round trip once a week to serve an under served population of women. Once upon a time,I was madly in love with my husband and  I wanted a baby so badly that to say the desire consumed me was a monstrous understatement of enormous proportions. I underwent 3 invasive surgeries to right to wrongs inflicted upon my internal anatomy during an operation I had long before I was ready to be a Mother. Once upon a time, I happily without looking back, left my career, and my beloved new York City and then her matron of honor, Boston, to settle down and raise a family in a good family town, a small town with mountains and cool hip people and high quality schools. I left it all and with the exception of the shopping, without looking back.
And here I sit, and apparently I stink! And I wonder if there is a punch line at  the end of this joke or if I am indeed the joke incarnate. I know that I am not the first parent to feel this way or be treated this way. I asked, even prayed for it for Gods sake! As long as their have been teenagers, there have been Moms like me, searching high and low for their sweet babies. I know, in some strange way my child is doing his job. But, there is just the feeling I have deep down that tells me that somehow, in some way, I am responsible for all of it. Where did I go wrong and all that jazz? At what point could I have prevented this? Or is everything, like they say, supposed to go this way.
When I was a nurse working in obstetrics, a job for which I often would have paid them,  I was helping a new Mom in postpartum. I was probably assisting with breast feeding or cleaning up a black meconium poop, one of my routine duties. It was change of shift, and a co-worker of mine, thick in the middle of her 5 children who were all teenagers at the time, burst in the room to obtain some vital signs. She observed the oohing and ahhing new parents, marveling at their perfect little sweet smelling miracle, and on her way out the door, took a pause and decided to shoot , “Enjoy it now! 14 years from now you are going to want to throw either yourself or him out the window!”  I now wonder, if on her way out the door to work, one of her little darlings told her that in fact she did indeed stink.
I know nothing…except this one thing and this I know from the bottom of my heart…I want to go back. Back to a place that where my biggest issue was sleep deprivation, not to be taken lightly, but far and away preferable to being called stinky, my God!. I want the insane “you got your hands full” life which included naps and hugs and big giant drewly  toothless smiles and  f’s that sound like s’s, where sishes are fimming and right is left and my messy is beautiful, perfect even and I say things  like “This is my Oscar!” “This is all I have ever wanted to do, or to be!This is enough for me!” The life where I missed my babies when they slept.

relatively new to Blogging, I am inspired,  as are many by the Julie/Julia Project and have vowed to take this school year as my blank slate.  What if instead of making a Julia Child recipe everyday, or really any food for that matter, I just be ME everyday, do my life and then Blog about it?

Cooking off the table, Martha Stewart might have the empire and the prison time and the fame but I have never experienced a shortage of “Projects” from which to gleen my sense of purpose from.
But what I have in ideas, I apparently lack in focus.So I will have to overcome my aversion to routines and road maps and establish some sense of direction. Perhaps the simple routine of writing will provide me with that direction. We can only try it and see. And remember, directions can change…on a dime. I may get lost. Loster. More lost.

 Two years ago I was somewhat set free  as the baby started first grade. I dug out of the closet the  buried intention to take up yoga or to dip into writing or to simply DO something really cool and interesting and impossible with a baby. Well, remember how I said “directions can change on a dime”. I come by that wisdom honestly. My dreamy desires were replaced by the herculean task of finding a reason and a manner in which to get out of bed in the morning, or afternoon for that matter,  and make some sense of my newly acquired life absent one Mother, My Mom died. She died right at the beginning of the school year. And navigating the mine field of emotions and “firsts” without my Mom became my  full time job, with a one year orientation process. Of the 2000 or so calories I required per day, about 1950 went to to righting the boat, my metaphorical boat, The Lesli Jean, which had been completely capsized, rocked off its anchor.  I always knew that Masters in Theater would come in handy. And I wish I had taken up Blogging then.

Year two without my Mom and the stages of grief memorized, but certainly not mastered, last year was to be the year to get a life. If the life I aspired to was one where I painted every room in the house, well then, I was successful. The painting started at the tail end of a PMS tantrum and the sinking in of the recession, too broke to move, too pissy to stay, I had to do something about my shabby surroundings. I am not afraid of change, a gallon of paint is cheap, relatively speaking, and I wanted a pink dining room. Well, you know the one about the women who started by painting one room and ended up painting every room in her home. Thta is me.  I visited the paint store with enough frequency to be on a first name basis with the staff, friends even. I now get a professional discount and if I might say so myself, I became quite good at it, painting I mean.  My daughter wrote, in a story about me, that “the smell of paint is like the smell of cookies baking  to me”. Earth Tones to Water Colors. The transformation was restorative and healing and  I only wish I had blogged the experience, why did I keep all that fun to myself.