I’m Hiding Out in the Big City Blinking

I gave you fair warning, but I guess it’s still possible that you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, so:

The familia’s been keeping me busy all over this city (er, metroplex).

Chris went to Indianapolis this week. My sister and niece came in on Tuesday and stayed through this morning. (My brother-in-law joined them, after finishing up business in Shreveport, on Thursday.) My parents came in on Thursday evening, as did my grandmom. And they all corralled at my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Dallas.

I was wrong about them not gracing my doorstep, though, so it’s a good thing I cleaned. Here’s a brief itinerary:

Wednesday:

• Pick up Jen & Claire in Dallas, take them to Babies R Us & the mall
• Go to apartment for nap time, return to Mall, eat at Macaroni Grill
• Return Jen & Claire to Dallas
• Put Caelyn to bed & stay up too late

Thursday:

• Pick up Jen & Claire in Dallas, take them to Carter’s
• Go to apartment for lunch & nap time, return Jen & Claire to Dallas
• Go to grocery store, make dinner for Mom & Dad
• Put Caelyn to bed, stay up too late

Friday:

• Pick up Mom from hotel & get coffee
• PIck up Jen & Claire in Dallas, take them to The Dallas Arboretum
• Hang out with Dad, Mom, Jen, Kev, Claire, Caelyn, & Chris at the apartment

Saturday:

• Pick up Mom from hotel, take her to “The Mothership,” aka Mardel
• Eat at La Madeline with Mom & Caelyn, take them to Gymboree & Baby Gap
• Drop Mom off at Schlotzsky’s to meet Dad, who has an unhealthy obsession with Schlotzsky’s
• Put Caelyn down for a nap
• Hang out at my aunt & uncle’s house, then eat at Mi Cocina with Jen, Kev, Chris, & kids & get ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s

Sunday:

• Go to Flip Flops and Flap Jacks & the actual service at church
• Eat at Chili’s with Chris, Matt, & Caelyn, take family nap, do nothing

I realize that compared to most of your days, this doesn’t seem like that much, but trust me, it’s a busy week here. Too busy for me to have formulated actual posts, but that won’t stop me from giving you a few thoughts that rolled around my head while I was away!

1. “So if you killed somebody, you think you could keep it a secret for very long?”

That’s what I asked Chris while I was making Caelyn’s dinner on Tuesday. Reasonably, he responded, “Why do you ask me such things?”

The answer was that we’d learned on Lost last week that Michael spilled his guts about spilling Ana Lucia’s and Libby’s guts to his 10-year-old son because he just couldn’t bear the guilt alone. Then Chris was watching the end of a Law & Order, and just like in every other L & O, the guilty party broke down in a guilt-enduced confession. I’d always thought that was unrealistic, but I guess it makes sense. A hardened criminal might not open the catbag, but someone who didn’t intend to kill or did it out of “passion” really might.

Then again, I’m a good secret keeper, and I think I could keep that secret a whole heck of a lot longer than Michael did.

But could Chris?

Who knows. By the time I got finished with the question explanation, he got off the hook without having to answer.

You confess. I’ll eat this hotdog.*

2. “It’s not illogical! I wouldn’t expect you to go to some place where they put a bunch of poop on display, attracting cockroaches in mass quantity! And you don’t even have a genuine phobia of cockroaches!”

That’s what I said to my sister on the way out of the Arboretum on Friday. That’s right. I made a claim that I wasn’t illogical in the same breath as “some place where they put a bunch of poop on display.” Poop! On display!

It’s ridiculous, but it’s all I had to work with. In case you haven’t read For the Record long enough to figure it out, I was making an argument for why they shouldn’t force me to go to the Arboretum, where there are tons of flowers and trees and, therefore, tons of bees and wasps and various other forms of my one and only true phobia.

When my sister first mentioned that she was planning on us going to the Arboretum, my immediate response was: “They have bees there.”

“But we have free passes,” she protested. “You can’t turn down a free pass!”

To which I quipped, “A free pass to hell is still a pass to hell.”

She assured me she’d defend me. Then she consulted her friend, who would be going with us and had been there before, and the friend assured her that they must spray for bees and other bugs because she’d never had an incident with a bee there.

Okay.

Except they don’t!

They bring bee hives in on purpose for cryin’ out loud! There’s even a video on the website with an image of a bee and the slogan, “Let Nature Nurture You.”

Let me assure you of something. You haven’t had an bee incident there or noticed them or whatever for one reason: You haven’t been looking for them. I will be. And when I see one, the “incident” will have occurred.

I determined on Thursday night that I wasn’t going into that garden of death, no matter how much they wanted me to. I don’t put my foot down about social activities that my family wants to do very often (or ever), but I was prepared to do it. I even looked up other things I could do in the area after I dropped them off. It just wouldn’t be worth it. There’d be nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. No way to reasonably protect myself without abandoning my child. Plus, they’d be expecting me to sit on walls and rails with rows of sweet-smelling flowers, in need of pollination no doubt, directly behind me and actually smile through it while not dropping Caelyn.

But then it was drizzling and cold on Friday. In other words, it was the perfect day to be at the Arboretum. So I went, with dull-colored clothing and no hair products and the public declaration that I was leaving just as soon as I saw a handful of honey bees and/or two wasps.

I only saw those little “sweet bees,” which still make me a little nervous, but not beyond control, so long as I don’t have to stand amongst them. And please don’t tell me they don’t sting. I looked it up already. I know they do.

So do mud daubers. And cicada killers.

And don’t tell me about how the sting’s no worse than getting a shot or getting your ears pierced, because if you know anything about phobias, you know the sting’s not the thing.

You do what you want. I’m not even looking at this pic.

3. “I haven’t thrown up in six years.”

That’s what I thought this morning when I finished my milk and saw black at the bottom of the little carton. I didn’t throw up. But I thought about it. I thought about it when I drank that orange juice and then turned on my office light to see that the rim was black on the morning after I found out I was pregnant. But I didn’t actually do the deed then either. I’ve been nauseous plenty in the last six years, but I hate throwing up enough to have kept my cookies down.

Now that I’m writing about it, I’m remembering that Jen and I encountered a spewing kid in the mall food court on Wednesday, and I did slightly more than think about it. I didn’t actually see the kid. Jen did and told me to turn my head the other direction, at which point I said, “He threw up, didn’t he? That kid, right where I was two minutes ago! Didn’t he? I gotta get outta here! Sorry. I gotta go. Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!”

Then I piled up all our food and high-tailed it across the food court with my head turned away all the while. I dry heaved a few times when we sat down again, but I managed to keep it together

Black gunk not listed.

4. “What if Caelyn grows up and decides to join the Army?”

That’s what I thought yesterday when I was driving behind an SUV with an “Army Dad” license plate holder. For a second, I thought, “That’s really backwards for me,” since my dad was in the Air Force, but I, obviously, am not. And then it hit me: Caelyn could join the Army. Caelyn could go to war. I could be an Army Mom.

I want to be supportive of whatever she decides to do with her life, and I’m not saying women shouldn’t be allowed to join the armed forces or that I’m not grateful for the service women do for our country, I just hadn’t ever thought about the possibility of Caelyn being in the Army.

I gotta be honest. That one would be really tough for me.

Don’t you point at my baby, Uncle Sam!

5. “I should never go on an overseas flight.”

(In reality, I’d love to see some stuff overseas.)

That’s what I concluded after catching the last half of Cast Away on TNT with Chris the other night.

Maybe it was the sleeping pill I’d taken 20 minutes before, but I had a hard time with the ending this time. I just couldn’t help thinking, “Yeah, yeah. Crossroads. Pretty ranch chick. Wide-open possibilities. You never know what the tide will bring in.”

That’s all well and good (and real), but that doesn’t make me hate Chuck not ending up with Kelly any less. How do you say, “You’re the love of my life” to someone, kiss in the rain, and go back inside to your sleeping husband and daughter? I’m not saying she made the wrong choice — there’s a (whole) lot to be said for fidelity and commitment and staying with your kid and her father — but love sure feels like the right choice. Yes, of course, there’s a whole lot of love in the choice she actually made too. And that’s the tricky/critical part. I’m just sayin’, though. How do two people figure out how to be happily married, when you both know one of you is second choice?

You know I’m a Romantic. You know I believe in ideal, transient love, right?

Okay, so Cast Away reinforces that belief. Chuck survived for the love of Kelly. The movie just doesn’t let them share it together forever. And that’s fine. It — a love that does something powerful within its members but, for whatever reason, can’t continue being held/acknowledged by them — happens in reality, I think. And I’m a believer in being grateful for that kind of love when you have it and for what has been accomplished in you because of the person who gave it (i.e. “I’m so glad she was with me on that island.”).

I’m a fan of being changed by experience and hope on the horizon and crossroads too. And that scene between Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt in her character’s kitchen, making coffee, remembering their old car, and embracing in the street is wonderfully beautiful and sad. It’s just . . .

Well, all I know is that if watching Chuck and Kelly in front of her new house saying I love you and goodbye all at once can put an steady ache in my chest then there’s no way those two will ever stop feeling it, no matter how happy their lives may become with other people.

Or maybe Kelly’ll forget about Chuck, and Chuck’ll follow that road back to the ranch and end up on angels’ wings. But I doubt that’s how it would happen for me (even though I could never really be in that situation since I’m already married with a kid and don’t work for FedEx).

And that’s why I’d better just not go on any overseas flights. Because I don’t know what I’d do when I returned home after four years of being stranded on an island to find I’d been presumed dead and now have to reconcile the love of my life with his new family.

It’s just not a pinch I want to be in.

And the sunburn would be killer too.

* Image by Brandon Hunt from the Law & Order: Artistic Intent Collection, featured on Brandonbird.com.