Booming

 Originally published in The Miami News-Record, July 2019 

Growing up, we always went to Nana's on the 4th of July. Always. There was no option, no variance, it was always to Nan's for the noon meal. We took day-works - firecrackers, snakes, sparklers, pop-its, jumping Jacks, and the like. There was always watermelon and homemade ice cream. When my cousin Russ was alive and still mobile, we cousins would gather around him in the living room floor before and directly after lunch and play dominoes or Boggle. The women cleaned the kitchen and visited, the men dozed off in the post-meal tradition. Then finally! We'd climb the chat pile out back (hello, lead poisoning!) and Dad and the uncles would oversee the explosives. That was Dad's side of the family. Mom's side of the family was fairly fluid in their plans. Sometimes it was our house, sometimes it was Uncle Larry’s, occasionally we gathered at Papa's farm, it depended on where he was with harvesting or mowing or how sick Memaw was at the time. They were the evening festivity people. More sparklers, plus fountains and all the other fun, booming, high-in-the-sky stuff. It was always a day of cousins and food and stickiness and dirt and fun.

When Sis and I started families of our own we were just excited to have reason to buy fireworks once again. Paul and I were so broke when the kids were little, but starting in June we would scrimp and save up $100 for fireworks. It seemed like a lot until we got to the tent, then it seemed paltry and like it never bought enough. Sam always picked out something that pooped, Abby like the screaming chicken laying a fiery egg, Kady usually cried and whined that one of her siblings picked out the firework she wanted and the world was surely coming to an end.

Since we moved to Wyandotte we somehow created this tradition where every year on or around the 4th, we blow something up with a stupid amount of Tannerite. Over the years we’ve blown up a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, and this year a stove and a dog house. My Big Family™ came over on Saturday, for volleyball (we don't play by many rules, there is a lot of smack talking and even more of Abby and me avoiding the ball at all costs), the littles played in the kiddie pool. After dinner we got ready for the boom. Like the diligent rednecks we are, we warn the neighbors (this year I posted in our neighborhood watch Facebook page to let everyone know we weren’t under siege) and record it all on our phones. A storm was trying to blow in as Paul set up for the shot, so there was the added drama of “Will we be struck by lightning while waiting for the massive explosion that could possibly send debris flying at us?” It. Was. Exhilarating. One container was sufficient for the dog house, but instead of using the remaining three for three separate explosions the guys decided to duct tape three together for one GIANT cook stove explosion. We’re talking meth lab proportions, folks. It rattled our livers.

We don’t get together with Mom’s or Dad’s sides of the family anymore. We have become our own family unit I guess. Our group has gone from Mom, Sis, me and our spouses to a whopping 18 with all the grands and great-grands. This year Cousin Jason came out as well. (I’m not sure the man will ever be the same. I should probably call and check on him…) and one of Kady’s friends came out, too. I hope we only continue to grow as the years change the dynamics. I know certain folks will leave, more will come in, everyone will grow older, and eventually they will begin their own family units and start their own traditions. And maybe the group that continues to gather up here on the Mountain will become boring people who don’t blow up discarded appliances, but gosh, I sure hope not.  

I blame the spider

Originally published in the Miami News-Record, May 2019 

“Terrified” doesn’t adequately express how I feel about spiders. Abject horror, paralyzing, gut-deep fear is more accurate, but not quite. When bad weather is imminent, someone else must sweep the cellar. I would rather face down an EF5 tornado wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt, leggings and my Crocs flip-flops rather than go into the cellar with creepy crawlies. We knew the storms would get going early in the day, so that morning Kady swept it out. I inspected and found it to my liking. 

For most of the other warnings (so. many. warnings.) that day it was basically get the kids, babies, and dog in the cellar and I stayed out. If I did go under, it wasn’t for long. It’s my duty as a lifelong Okie to stand in the yard during any tornado warnings. I think it’s in our DNA and I’m pretty sure my parents signed some kind of oath when I was born that they would continue this tradition with their offspring. 

Once Paul got home from work, he and I kept our vigil together on the porch while our little brood was tucked safely underground. After warning Number ?, we knew we had about an hour until the next one hit, so everyone came up, we got out stuff for sandwiches, and let the girls run a bit. I had no more finished making my sandwich when another warning went off. We were so tired of the chaos it took to get everyone down there so we waited a bit. I stood in the yard and watched the clouds. It felt different. Finally I told everyone to GO. I stood at the door of the cellar and watched the clouds start to rotate. Abby came up to video it and then the wind switched direction and even Paul, the tornado naysayer said, “GET UNDER!” The grandgirls were happily watching “Bubble Guppies” on their tablets, the dog was asleep on her bed, we had to threaten the men to refrain from any and all farting. It was pretty calm inside while the outside was a hot mess. Petal got sleepy, so I sat down in a lawn chair to put her to sleep. I felt a plop on top of my head.

About the time I said, “I think someone needs to check my head to make sure that was rain and not a bug,” Abby said in the calmest voice I’ve ever heard, “Mom. Don’t freak out. [absolute certainty I was definitely going to freak out] There is a spider over your head.” If she had said that while in a house, I’d have simply gotten up and run. In an 8x8 cellar you don’t run. You are trapped. You are trapped with a spider dangling menacingly over your head and there’s not a doggone thing you can do about it. It was actually a raindrop that had hit my head, but I imagined a virtual waterfall of spiders raining down from the tiny vent over my head. I let an involuntary whimper escape. Everyone in the cellar was just staring at me. Abby, again so calm, said, “Mom. I’m going to take off my shoe so I can kill it. I need you to slowly get up and not drop my kid, okay?” I got up and went as far away as I could get while she whacked that eight-legged monster with my favorite flip-flop (her shoes had gotten soaked earlier, so she was in my Crocs flips - shame I have to burn them now. Or at least, the left one.) “Okay, it’s done. It’s stuck to the ceiling but—“ I interrupted her with a shrieked, “IT’S STILL ON THE CEILING?!?!” And once again, my eldest, the voice of reason, said, “Mom. It’s the best I can do. It’s dead. Stay calm.” And then my youngest asked if she could wipe my tears. The tears I didn’t realize I was crying because I was so blasted scared out of my mind. It was not my proudest moment. But I did learn that my girls definitely know how to take care of their momma. 

Pictures and cake

Originally published in the Miami News-Record, October 2019. 

A couple weekends ago, through some bizarre form of maternal magic, I managed to get all of the kids and their significant others to our house for an extended period of time. Sam’s girlfriend, Maegan, is playing basketball in Arkansas now and it was the very last weekend she was going to be able to leave campus until the holidays. The weather was forecasted to be good, we needed to celebrate Abby’s birthday, so I planned family pictures. I stressed to the kids that I needed this to happen. The next time we see Maegan will likely be after a ballgame or as we’re chowing down on Thanksgiving dinner and neither an is extremely photogenic moment. The stars aligned. Everyone was available. The plan was to start taking the couples’ pictures around the time the grandgirls were getting up from nap and then they’d come up once the girls were awake and dressed. 

Outdoor pictures are fickle. Lighting is tricky and if you use the sun the way you should, everyone is squinty. If you don’t risk corneal burns, you have face shadows. Then, top it off, we live on the highest hill in Ottawa County. The wind hadn’t blown all day, but as soon as we walked outside it started in. Hair was getting stuck in lipstick all over the place. Earlier in the day I had asked Paul to mow out a little spot at the edge of the field so we’d have a space to stand. As we headed out to take pictures I saw that he had not done so. But all of the sudden it didn’t matter because as we walked out to scope out the area, Penny, Kady’s dog decided that THAT particular spot was THE most perfect place in our gigantic yard to take not one but TWO significantly sized poops. She’s not even that big of a dog. 

We took Sam and Maegan’s first, then moved on to Zach and Kady. We were finishing up as Abby and Dakota drove up. As soon as Penny heard the grandgirls’ voices she tried to run for the hills. She is terrified of them and tends to poop when she sees them, but considering the fact she’d already taken care of that business in our original backdrop, she thankfully wasn’t doing that. We got the girls distracted in another part of the yard while we snapped the last few with the dog, then Kady took her in the house to safety. 

The next hour was spent making absolute fools of ourselves for the sake of a few smiles out of Wemberly and Petal. Wemberly is smiley and expression-able, but Petal takes a little more coaxing. And coax we tried. They did amazing considering they are two and three and of course, I find them two of the most fetching creatures on the face of the earth. 

While we were waiting for a ladder for the group shot (since I’m the photographer, I have to have something to set the camera on when I’m in the pictures) Sam took the camera and snapped a few of me. I had my hand resting on the back of a chair, I had just lowered my scathing “Bass eyebrow” because my husband had been acting a fool and sometimes the eyebrow is all the works. 

I have some reflections on the photos he took, but those will have to wait for another day. I feel like waxing poetic and reflective on your crow’s feet a mere paragraph or two from where you described your daughter’s dog’s photo-sabotaging poop-scapade might be conflicting and not at all literarily correct. It might affect the general tone of both stories, so we’ll leave it at this: 

My family is awesome. Family picture day is always stressful, windy, chaotic, and this year, poopy. But when the pictures were over, it was the almost-21-year-old who said, “Hey, Mom? We all smiled pretty. Can we have cake now?” And it was my pleasure to lead them inside for cake at the dining room table. They are my whole heart. 

The First Half

In case you've been hiding under a rock on planet Xenon474, it's kind of been a shitshow since 2020 started. I shan't go into all the worldwide details because I'm preeeeety sure you've actually been here living it like the rest of us. 

The program I work for hosts a cultural trip for the students each semester. Sometimes it's a play or the ballet, but this spring semester it was a several-day trip to Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX, over Spring Break. I don't particularly like to travel and I was also in the final weeks of my own final semester of college, so I opted to stay home from the trip and also took the week off work just to kind of chill a bit. There were mutterings and small news blurbs of a virus teetering on the verge of epidemic, but honestly nothing alarming. Then every day there were more reports and that tiny broken part of my brain where OCD lives took that information and started crocheting a little granny square of panic. Then it started to become more of a tea towel. When I felt like we were reaching afghan of doom territory, I decided to use one of my precious days at home alone to go shopping. I went to Sam's Club, Aldi, and Walmart in Joplin that day. My little red Camry was loaded to the hilt simply because I rarely ever make all three stores in one fell swoop. I didn't overbuy or hoard a thing - the cases of water and toilet paper were just my usual purchases when I shop. I've always been a toilet paper stocker-upper because -- well, I don't know why. It's just security to me. I know, I'm weird. I mean, ya'll pretty much knew this from the start, right? If you didn't, that's probably just on you. I text my coworkers a joking text about how I was shopping and people were kinda crazy, shopping carts were full, crowds were busy and rude. They said Texas was totally normal, you'd never know there was talk of a virus there. 

By the time they got back from the trip things were different. In a matter of a few days it went from quiet murmurings to borderline panic. I went to work that following Monday after Spring Break sick at my stomach, nervous, scared, unsure. Paul didn't want me to go. Hell, I didn't want to go. We had a meeting that morning with the college president who said, "This meeting is out of CDC guidelines and will be our last of this kind." That didn't help my anxiety. I spent the whole meeting trying to focus on his words but instead looking around noticing how many people were touching their faces, how close we were all sitting to each other, and wondering if anyone in the room was infected. It was very surreal. Not long after the meeting our department director called us each in her office individually and asked if we wanted to work from home. I nearly jumped across her desk to embrace her, but thought better of it. When I left that day I didn't return to campus for 10 weeks. My stash of Slim Jims in my desk expired and my trail mix went stale. 

About two weeks into lockdown Paul and I talked and then talked to Abby and Dakota and made the decision to quarantine the girls here with me while the guys hunkered down together at Abby's house. Both guys were essential and were going to be working the whole time and with Abby and Wemberly having asthma, we just didn't want to risk exposure. In a matter of hours, she packed food, clothes, and toys while I did a quick child-proof on the house, packed Paul's bag of clothes, food, and medicines, then sat on the porch crying until they got here. We did that for six weeks. I regret nothing. We existed on Walmart grocery pickup, two Aldi runs by me where I basically wore a beekeeper's suit and sprayed a cloud of Lysol around me the whole time. It wasn't until a month in that we felt brave enough to ev3en do a Sonic run. 

The first week of June the four of us in our department at work started going in and covering the office one day a week each. We mask up, stay to ourselves, and just do our time. School is scheduled to start on-ground mid-August and we've been advised to leave each day like we won't be coming back. I doubt we keep the entire semester on-ground, but given current numbers Oklahoma and Missouri should both be back in lockdown and that hasn't happened yet, so who knows.  

I'm sick of the phrase "new normal," I'm tired of being asked what the semester is going to look like, I'm tired of wondering if every time I get a tickle in my throat I am infected, I am sick of being scared all the time. I'm not tired of not going to Walmart, though. Grocery pickup was my best friend well before this whole shitshow began. Too people-y for sure on any given day. 

Now for cuteness:

Her apples always look like a mouse has gotten hold of them. She just nibbles them to death. 

Wemberly found this rock on Pa-Paul's nightstand the first day they were locked down at my house and she carried it everywhere for a few weeks until she lost it. She slept with it, it took a bath with her, it sat next to her plate while she ate. 

We had many many bed parties while in quarantine. While the mom I was always said no to jumping on the bed, the grandma almost always says yes. ;) 

Running off some energy! 

Every morning while I would work on school work, the girls would get the color. They liked their morning activities much more than I liked mine. 

Family Zoom meetings kept us from feeling completely alone in the world up here on the Mountain. 

 

Petal's speech therapist was a rockstar on Zoom! Petal hated it and screamed a lot, but they managed to make it through with very little regression. 

Wemberly got a teal streak in her hair just like Momma and Kiki! Is that face not the most precious? 

I told them if they could be responsible and not push any buttons they could
Facetime their Tatty all by themselves. <3 

The wasps coming out when it started warming up kept us inside most days, but occasionally we'd get lucky enough to get to spend some time out on the porch without being under attack. 

While it was certainly not how we had intended to spent six weeks of our spring, I will always remember the time I got with three of my girls. 

My nap buddy every day during quarantine. I loved having that time with just me and her, snuggling, giggling, marveling at the miracle she is. I didn't get to do that with Petal because Petal is a tiny tyrant and pretty much hates me lol. I'm working on her. 

Tatty and Zach surprised us with a window visit one afternoon! 

The Easter Bunny came to the Mountain this year! The candy is always the best part. 

Pa-Paul came up to mow the yard and we had a window visit! 

It was a big deal to get her to pick the pizza up by herself! 

We had a Zoom birthday party for Sammy's girlfriend Maegan since she couldn't party like normal. 

Best helpers! 

So serious

I was editing student papers and watching this insanity unfold before me. 

We pulled Momma's old dollhouse down off the shelf and it was a perfect "new" toy to play with and keep them occupied! 

Petal had never had her toenails painted. She smiled the whole time! 

Wemberly was VERY excited! 

First car ride in over a month! 

The week after the girls moved back home, I finished school and while I didn't get regalia or a ceremony, I dug around in my hope chest and found my mortarboard from high school graduation and plopped it on my head for a selfie. It was a lackluster celebration for a degree that was 29 years in the making, but I still did it and FINALLY finished! 

So here we are, halfway through July, numbers spiking, people arguing, the future very unknown. I'm reviving the blog, writing for the newspaper again, focusing on going back to work and staying safe. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on masks that coordinate with my outfits, and try not to spend every moment of every day in a panic attack. 

Thank you for sticking with me and my sporadic posting. It's a work in progress. I have had this beautiful home on the internet since 2004 and I am ready to come home and settle in again. Blogging is probably a dead art form - or at least the way it used to exist, but I've never been one to do what's "normal" so here I am. Blogging again. Like a boss. 

2019 - a (mostly crappy) year in review

January: Paul and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. Sam and I started the year out on a nearly holy level by seeing the Broadway tour of Book of Mormon in Tulsa. I was fairly certain during one song that the entire theatre was going to be struck by lightning, but aside from that underlying fear, we laughed our asses off and I am hoping to go see it again this year in Arkansas. I turned 46. woot.

February: Paul turned 56. A friend in Tulsa gave me two tickets to see The Play That Goes Wrong at the PAC. Sam couldn't get anyone to cover his call, so I took Mom. It was cute and I plan to see it again this year in Springfield with Sam.

March: Paul, Kady and I got the flu during spring break. That was super fun. Mine went into pneumonia. That was also super fun. Abby, Kady and I went to NEO to see Frank Warren of Post Secret fame. It was spectacular, especially since I was reading Post Secret when it started.

April: Paul started a new job with the City of Miami. We continued our years-long journey into trying to find out What's Wrong with Kady™. Mom, Pops, and I rode to Tahlequah together to see my niece in a Greek thing for her sorority. It was on that car ride that I verbally announced to the first people on the planet my intention of going back to school to pursue a degree in Journalism/Public Relations. My anxiety went through the roof. Speaking it makes it more real. Later in the month Mom, Sis and I dressed up in 1980s dayglo and went out in public. Mom was adorable. Sam dumped his motorcycle and we spent all night in the ER getting him sewn up and a CT done just to be safe. He took a few years off his momma's life.

May: Paul bought a motorcycle. My anxiety went through the roof even more. I attended my first nerd-themed wedding. It was spectacular and the most fun I've ever had at a wedding. Sam and I continued our theatre adventure by seeing Something Rotten in Springfield. It was entertaining, but I'm not sure I'd see it again. Kady graduated from high school (a year early). Most of Ottawa County flooded.

June: Paul, myself and the kids journeyed to Silver Dollar City for the first time in ages. I rode a roller coaster for the first time in over 10 years. It. Was. AMAZING. The day after SDC I began summer classes online. We began construction on turning half the house into an apartment for Kady. The week after classes began there was a crackhead on a crime spree in our neighborhood and a high speed chase that ended up going literally through our front yard. Kady suffered some serious trauma from it. It was the first time in my life I ever pulled a gun on a person with the intent of shooting in self-defense. At the end of the month we went our our every-other-year traditional Big Family™ vacation. 18 people, one house, much chaos. And food.

July: Wemberly turned 3. She wanted a "birthday party [themed] birthday party" so that's what she got. Kady finally got into a GI doc who listened to her and agreed with our suspicion of Ehler's-Danlos Syndrome.

August: Celebrated my one year anniversary at Crowder. Started another semester of college - one online class (World Religions) and three seated (Journalism, Public Relations,  and Quantitative Reasoning - math). Kady also started her first semester of college at Crowder while Sam began his final one. At the end of the month a very crazy storm rolled through the area - 80 mph winds which took out trees and power lines everywhere. Our power was out for four days. We ran a generator to keep the fridge and freezer going and showered in various places, including a state park. During that time I started having some abdominal pain (and honestly just thought I was constipated because of the fact we'd had no water and I'm a shy pooper lol). Also, Sam and I reached the pinnacle of the year's theatre experience when we saw Hamilton in Tulsa. I was so sick, running a fever and in so much pain, but wasn't about to miss out on the experience. It was absolutely phenomenal!

September: Sam and I got home from seeing Hamilton around 2am. I was in tremendous pain, so I took some Aleve, got a heating pad and slept horribly for a few hours. Paul went up to a neighbor's to work on his trailer. After some googling and a few phone calls, I decided to shower and pack a bag for the hospital. Paul had left his phone in the truck while he was working on the trailer, so Kady had to run up and get him. He careened into the driveway, ready to carry me in his arms if that was needed. I made him shower and just drive me instead. We went to Claremore Indian Hospital since I didn't have insurance. A CT showed diverticulitis with an abscess. They said they were admitting me and planned to do surgery in the morning, however the surgeon took one look at the scan and said, "I'm not touching her." So I took my first ambulance ride in about 40 years in the middle of the night to OSU Medical Center in Tulsa where I spent four days with three teams fighting over if I was going to have surgery and what kind. I was septic and miserable and scared and two hours away from my family. I ended up not having surgery, thank God. Abby drove in Tulsa her first time in order to get herself, her daddy, and sister there to see me. In order to not have to drop classes altogether since I was slipping behind in the journalism classes, I switched my major to General Studies, dropped the journalism classes and added a couple of second-eight-week online classes (Philosophy and Music Appreciation) to allow me time to heal and also keep me enrolled full time. I got home from the hospital just in time for Petal to turn 2.

October: On his way home a weekend with his girlfriend in Arkansas, Sam hydroplaned in his truck and left the roadway. The truck came to rest about 1000 feet into the brush. It took the tow truck 4 1/2  hours to get him out but there was ZERO damage to the truck. His mother's nerves, however, were another story. Mom had a tumor removed from her bladder. I followed up with the surgeon in Miami who suggested getting some insurance and considering a surgery to remove a significant portion of my intestines. I scheduled a colonoscopy with him for the next month. Abby turned 23. Paul and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Ladd and Ree Drummond (aka Marlboro Man and Pioneer Woman).

November: Sam turned 21. I had my colonoscopy. I woke up during it. That was bizarre. The doctor found some hyperplasia and said the diverticula were vast and widespread and the surgery should be even more highly considered than before. We had pizza for Thanksgiving because Momma wasn't up for killing herself to cook a giant meal in the midst of ...... well, everything.

December: The whole family went to see Polar Express in the theater. I passed all my classes with As. Sam finally graduated from Crowder with his Associate degree in Journalism/Public Relations. The whole family (minus the babies) saw White Christmas in the theater. Kady turned 18. We took her gambling. We sang Christmas carols for our 80 year old Uncle Tom. We had our annual Christmas Eve Mario Kart tournament. I made chocolate gravy for the first time. Kady saw a rheumatologist who shrugged his shoulders over her and referred her to a geneticist. So that saga of What's Wrong with Kady™ continues into the new year.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

2019 wasn't great. Pretty crappy, if you want me to be honest. Yes, pun intended. Sure, we all survived. It could've been worse. But if you asked me to rate it, I'd likely not give it five stars.

2020 will see me finally graduate college with an Associate degree in nothing special in particular. This will mark 29 years since I took my first semester at NEO right out of high school. What should've taken four semesters took 29 years. I mean, I did it my way, right? I'm still working in Project NOW at Crowder and still love my job very much. I work with amazing people and I love helping the students. I hope to see better health and wellness - physical and mental - for us all as a family.

Kady has decided to take at least a semester off college to see what full-time work feels like being all grownup and stuff. She has a fast food job, but an interview with a bank tomorrow. She's still living in her little apartment next door and has been sharing it with her brother and his girlfriend since early December.

Sam and Maegan just moved into their new apartment today in Neosho. She has an interview tomorrow and Sam's working parttime at Crowder with hopes of a full time position soon.

Paul's still with the city. He still has his motorcycle much to my chagrin. He still leaves his little red beard hairs on the sink. We just celebrated our 27th anniversary.

Wemberly and Petal are in occupational and speech therapy respectively and are making great strides. W has Sensory Processing Disorder and OT is helping her with that so much. Petal is largely nonverbal, but speech therapy is helping her communicate. Abby and Dakota are amazing parents who absolutely devote all their energy into helping those two little girls thrive. Those two grandgirls just thrill my Kiki heart to no end.

At the beginning of last year I claimed a word for 2019: Wellness.

........you see how that worked out.......

I have adopted no word, no theme, no claim for 2020. We'll just see what happens.

Oh How Things Have Changed

Growing up, we always went to Nana's on the 4th of July. Always. There was no option, no variance, it was always to Nan's for the noon meal. We took day-works - firecrackers, snakes, sparklers, poppits, jumping Jacks, and the like. Lunch was burgers and hot dogs. There was always watermelon and homemade ice cream. When my cousin Russ was alive and still mobile, we cousins would gather around him in the living room floor before and directly after lunch and play dominoes or Boggle. The women cleaned the kitchen and visited, the men dozed off in the post-meal tradition.  Then finally! We'd climb the chat pile out back (hello, lead poisoning!) and Dad and Uncle Mike would oversee the explosives. That was Dad's side of the family. Mom's side of the family was fairly fluid in their plans. Sometimes it was our house, sometimes it was Uncle Larry and Aunt Sue's, occasionally we gathered at Papa's farm, it depended on where he was with harvesting or mowing or how sick Memaw was at the time. They were the evening festivity people. More sparklers, plus fountains and all the other fun, booming, high-in-the-sky stuff. It was always a day of cousins and food and stickiness and dirt and fun.

Then we grew up and as soon as the meal was over, we left whatever house we were at with our respective boyfriends and girlfriends to go see a movie or go to their family's shindig. I dated a guy in high school and they had a lake house and a pontoon boat and a lot of money. I hated the whole scene (they were *gasp* Republicans) and I really just wanted to go back to my family where we had cheap hot dogs and not filet mignon for lunch.

When Sis and I started families of our own we were just excited to have reason to buy fireworks once again. Paul and I were so broke when the kids were little, but starting in June we would scrimp and save up $100 for fireworks. It seemed like a lot until we got to the tent, then it seemed paltry and like it never bought enough. Sam always picked out something that pooped, Abby like the screaming chicken laying a fiery egg, Kady usually cried and whined that one of her siblings picked out the firework she wanted and the world was surely coming to an end. Most of the time the gathering was at our house because Mom lived in town and Sis did until she briefly lived in the country for a few years. One year we caught the field on fire. That was scary and fun all at once.

When we moved to Wyandotte I forced Paul's family to get together for the holiday. They are definitely not like my Big Family™. They don't actually like getting together. Mine anticipates the next one before the current one is over. My family lingers in the kitchen, there is always noise and laughter and eleventy-seven conversations at once. His family gets a plate. Quietly. Then some sit in the living room, some go outside, some sit at the picnic tables, some sit on the porch. There is rarely conversation and if there is, it's quiet and short. Mostly one syllable replies. Some nodding. That's just how they are. 

But the ONE thing I always anticipated with Paul's family coming up on the 4th - blowing shit up. We would trek to Academy the week before to buy a stupid amount of Tannerite and unfortunately, it seems there is always an appliance to go out some time during the year to provide the explosive entertainment. We've blown up a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, and I think a hot water tank. It was always a good time.

Last year I had surgery on the 3rd, so our 4th was quiet. I came home from the hospital that morning and just rested the rest of the day. Apparently it would usher in a series of quiet 4ths.

This year we are empty nesters. Kady has an apartment attached to our house now, but she's her own person. She cooks for herself, pretty well stays to herself these days. (Although she still relies on us some since she STILL doesn't have her driver's license.) I slept until 8 this morning and when I woke up Paul was gone. He had gone up to Abby and Dakota's on the tractor to fix their perpetually washed-out driveway. He wanted to get up there and back before the humidity got to swimmable. I made coffee, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, made some breakfast, checked Facebook, and just kind of marveled in the fact that we bought ZERO fireworks this year, no one is coming over, we aren't going anywhere (unless we decide to venture to Lowe's for some trim to finish the dining room later), and how different our life has become. The grandgirls are still too little for fireworks of their own, although Petal likes the noise where Wemberly HATES it. My Big Family™ will be over on Saturday, but even then we aren't doing any fireworks. We are volleyball obsessed, so there will be a pool and slip-n-slide, much food and MUCH volleyball. We don't play by many rules and there is a lot of smack talking and laughing and even more of Abby and me avoiding the ball at all costs. But we will be together and that will be the best part.

As we got onto the interstate last week headed for Branson for Big Family™ vacation, Paul kind of sighed and reached over to pat my leg. "It's pretty strange.....looking back and seeing your kids driving their own cars, following you to vacation, when just a few years ago they all three were right there behind us in the backseat, with us." He is far more sentimental than I these days, so I just squeezed his hand and said, "Yeah, but they're still with us, there are just more of them now. And besides, when they were in the car with us, it was much louder. And I was usually reaching back to smack someone at any given moment along the way. It's not bad, the way we are now. Just different. Enjoy, Mr. Hoover. We've earned this. This quietness, this calmness, this getting to watch them now instead of being immersed in it nonstop." He shrugged. He's seeing this part of life much differently than I am. I was in the trenches, doing most of the work when the kids were little. He worked, I stayed at home. I never got a day off. I was on the job 24/7. He had a 30 minute drive to and from work ALONE and if the house got loud, he just went out and mowed the yard or piddled in the barn. And now that my work is mostly done, I am enjoying the break, the quiet, the calm, the spectatorship of it all. Maybe he feels he missed out. I can't say for sure. I know I didn't miss anything. I was in the trenches, covered in blood, guts, gore, sweat, tears. It was exhausting. Rewarding as all get out, but also exhausting.

However, I do know this: I am enjoying the hell out of my empty nest right now. Maybe I'll get lonely? Maybe I'll get bored? I doubt it. For right now I'm still Kady's Uber driver, I find myself drowning in hours of homework every day, I am learning to cook for two rather than the NINE we had in the house just a few short years ago. I like my clean and tidy tiny little half-house. I like it when the kids come to visit and bring the noise and chaos and I like it when they go home again, back to their own homes where they now do their time being young adults, growing families, learning how to be adults, getting educations, becoming the amazing individuals we raised them to be.

And if they need us? They know where to find us.  ❤️