My Real Life

I had to do a search on the blog to see if I had ever blogged about this, because I find it hard to believe that, in all these years, I haven’t blogged about my immense love of the Jurassic Park franchise. However, to my surprise, (and delight, so I could write this post), I have not.

Now, I need to clarify, I don’t love dinosaurs. I mean, I don’t hate dinosaurs, but I’m no Ross Geller. (If you don’t get that reference, this might not be the blog for you)

My family doesn’t love dinosaurs either. The monkeys never really had dinosaur action figures or posters or the like. In fact, long-time readers might remember this little failed adventure into the age of the dinosaurs.

What I DO love, though, is Jurassic Park. And Jurassic Park 2. And Jurassic Park 3. And Jurassic World. And Jurassic World 2. And Jurassic World 3, which is coming out soon, but I know I will love. Oh, and the Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous animated series on Netflix. You got kids who like Jurassic Park or World or Dinosaurs? Watch it with them. It’s one of the best animated series I’ve seen.

Before you ask, yes, I read the books. Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors. Timeline, Prey and Sphere are some of my favorite novels.

I read the novel, Jurassic Park, on the back porch of the house in which I grew up. It’s one of a very few books that I remember every detail about the experience of reading. Back porch, the summer of 1991. It was about 7 months after it had been released and while it had been on my radar, who had time to read in college? I read that book for two days straight. I didn’t hang out with my friends. I barely came in to eat.

I was captivated by the idea of bringing dinosaurs to life. The idea of something being “out of it’s time” is a concept that I’ve always been intrigued by. I’m a huge Dr. Who fan and anything related to time travel, I will watch or read. Jurassic Park is a bit different, though, because no one and nothing is traveling through time, we are just bringing something that no longer exists into our time and, man, does that get my mind racing.

I saw the first Jurassic Park movie the summer it was released. My parents took my college boyfriend and I, (he was visiting from Indiana for a week or two), to see it in the theater. That first moment where they see the dinosaurs in the field made me tear up. I can remember how the theater rumbled with the distant footsteps of the t-rex and how it felt to have that sensation paired with seeing the water in the cup ripple. That distinct sound of the t-rex roar, the first time I heard it…oh man. It remains one of my favorite sounds in cinematic history.

A few years ago, we went to Universal. If you are new to the blog, you can read about that trip here. There was nothing in that park that I didn’t love, but when we walked into Jurassic Park…I can’t even begin to describe how I felt.

I know, I know…it’s a book, it’s a movie…it’s not real life. Calm yourself down, Amy. But that’s why I read books, and that’s why I watch movies. Because I love to get wrapped up in the stories. I love to imagine the “what if” behind it all. And this one is a doozy!

Friends, what if you looked out of your window one day and saw a brontosaurus eating leaves off the trees in your backyard? Or if you were on a walk with your dog and felt the ground shake in advance of a t-rex cutting off your path? We have scientists who have cloned sheep and artificial hearts keeping people alive. Why not this, too?

It’s okay if you aren’t a fan. I’m fan enough for all of us.

This new movie? It’s bringing the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World families together. Dr Grant, Dr Sattler, Dr Dearing, and Grady all together in one movie? AND DR IAN MALCOLM? Come on. How can I resist?

So, why am I sharing this? No reason, really. It’s just been rolling around in my head since I saw the preview for the new movie. And I think we all have some things that we are just super fans of. I have a friend who travels around to watch Dave Matthews in concert whenever she can. Another friend has about 10 copies of each book in the Harry Potter series in all of the different book jackets, in multiple languages. There are David Puddy-like face-painters for their sports teams, and people who cosplay their favorite anime characters, and people who tattoo their entire arm in Marvel characters.

Me? I just wanna hear that t-rex roar.

I had to get glasses when I was in fifth grade.

Believe it or not, I got my glasses and my retainer in the same week, so fifth grade was super awesome for me. But that’s a story for another day.

In 1983, ocular fashion was not, well…fashionable. Glasses were either big and plastic-looking or round and wire-rimmed; but not in a cute way. It’s hard to find pictures of people with glasses in the 80’s where you think, “Wow…those glasses are something!” and the “something” you are thinking of isn’t pretty awful.

By the time I got to high school, stylish glasses still hadn’t be invented, and so when I decided to reinvent my look, during the summer before 9th grade, part of that metamorphosis was leaving the glasses at home.

Did it mean I couldn’t see a darn thing on the board during class? It sure did. Did it mean that my normal klutziness was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t see two feet in front of me? I have the bruises and permanent scars to prove it. But did I look good? I have no idea, because my reflection in the mirror was all a big blur.

College rolled around and I finally started to suck it up a little and wear my glasses on occasion. My eyes had gotten worse from strain and so I had to admit that I needed some help if I was going to function day to day.

I went to my eye doctor and said that I was ready for contacts and he smiled and shook his head and said “Contacts aren’t for you, kid.” Something about the shape of my eye or something…they would either adhere too much or not at all. But I thought that was ridiculous. I figured everyone can wear contacts, as long as they know how to put them in and take them out, right? $300 on contacts and a trip to the infirmary to have the nurse peel it from my eyeball told me I was wrong.

So, glasses it was.

Disclaimer: My maturity about needing glasses did not extend to my wedding or my formal wedding photos. I knew what Real Man looked like and felt fairly certain he wasn’t going to swap out with some other guy as I was walking down the aisle. But our candid photos? There’s barely room for anyone else in those pics because my big, round, wire-framed glasses take up so much room.

This is all a fairly common story. 75% of adults in the world need some type of vision correction. I’m not special. I know this.

However, in my family, vision is no joke. My Dad was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration in his 30’s and lost the vision in one eye fairly quickly. He’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years, and finally, in his late 70’s, it has begun, but thank goodness, he’s under the care of many specialists who are doing their best work to keep that man seeing everything the world has to see.

So far, I’m not showing signs of MD. The doctor knows the family history and checks every time I’m there. I’m so, so grateful for that.

But, at my last eye doctor appointment, a few weeks ago, my doctor was surprised in the rate of decline I’ve had in my vision since my last appointment, a year and a half ago. In a way, I was grateful to hear him say that. In some part of my mind, I think I thought I was imagining it or that I had just forgotten how my progressive lenses worked. But, after he checked my eyes and I explained that I can no longer play the piano, that ringing my handbell music is almost painful, and that reading has become something of a chore because of the angle I have to hold my head at to see the words, he said that what I was reporting matched with what he was seeing. My prescription has changed greatly, more than he would have anticipated, and I needed new glasses. Immediately.

Knowing there was a fix was such a relief. So I went to the little optician that is housed in my doctor’s office, where I had purchased my last pair of glasses, and handed her the prescription and told her that I needed to have new lenses made for my frames. To which she replied, “Okay, you’ll have to leave your glasses with us for about a week.”

I said “Wait, you have the frames I have on file. Can’t you just order new lenses?” To which she replied, “It doesn’t work like that here. I have to send them out to have the new lenses fitted, especially with this type of prescription.”

I said “I can’t leave my glasses with you. I can’t see without them and my last pair of glasses is now two prescriptions out of date. I won’t be able to see out of them at all.” She looked at me and said “Well, then, if you aren’t going to buy a new set of frames, I really can’t help you.”

Which immediately made me cry. Right there. In the store.

Because I truly cannot see without my glasses. But, at that point, I also couldn’t really see very much even with my glasses. And she couldn’t/wouldn’t help me.

So, I left. And wrote a post on Facebook asking people where the best place to go to get my glasses would be. Without breaking the bank. Because the lenses are already going to be so expensive because of the prescription, but frames are also usually pretty pricey. And money isn’t something that we have a lot of, over here.

People came back with a lot of suggestions, but overwhelmingly mentioned Warby Parker. So, that’s where I went. With their app, I was able to see the frames on my face and then they sent me 5 to try on, free of charge. I picked the frames I wanted, uploaded my prescription, sent back the frames I tried on, and a week later, today, in fact, my new glasses arrived.

It’s no exaggeration to tell you that my hands shook a little as I was opening the box this afternoon. And when I put the glasses on, I teared up and then felt giddy. I ran to the piano and sat down. I can see the music. I picked up a book. I can read the pages. I sat down at this computer to write this blog post and I can comfortably see the screen as I type.

Are there trade-offs? Yep. These glasses don’t have the springs that allow them to bend open a little wider to fit my face, so I’m undoubtedly going to get headaches until I can find someone to safely heat and widen the arms. They also didn’t offer the blue light protection on this prescription, so since most of our schoolwork is now on computers, there will still be some eye fatigue. And they weren’t cheap, but they wouldn’t have been cheap anywhere. I calculated that the cost of these glasses is the equivalent of me teaching 15 piano lessons.

But, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t care about any of that.

Because, for now, I can see again, friends. And that is a gift.

Nothing is currently dividing my friends on social media more than the recent online word game, “Wordle.”

Half of people I follow and am social media friends with post their daily scores with glee. The other half post memes about how they don’t care about your Wordle score and how people will do anything everyone else is doing just to fit in.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, (or who cultivated their social media consumption to not see the latest crazes), Wordle is a word game, where the player must guess a five-letter word. Once you enter your first guess, the game lets you know how many letters you’ve guessed correctly and in the correct place, and how many letters you’ve guessed correctly but in the wrong place. The game does this in a way that is reminiscent of the 80’s game “Mastermind,” of which I was a huge fan, by turning the letter blocks green or yellow.

We love word games and crossword puzzles in our house. I have a folder on my phone dedicated to a variety of word games. I love language and words, so word games? They’re my jam. I had a subscription to Games Magazine: World of Games for a few years, as my Dad subscribed when I was a kid, and as soon as it would arrive, Real Man and I would sit down to work on the word games.

So, I play Wordle, every day, along with Real Man and a few of the monkeys. We have a group chat where we send our scores to each other. However, we don’t stop there. Because we also play Dordle, which is Wordle times two. In Dordle, you are guessing two words, in two separate grids, and you just hope that they have letters that are similar between them so you don’t run out of guesses on word two while guessing word one.

But wait! There’s more!

Last night, Real Man texted us all with a link to Quordle. Yep…four words at a time. Amazing.

And, because we also love math, we play Nerdle, and have to correctly guess the game’s equation, including the answer. Then Real Man’s cousin posted on Facebook about Mathler, where they give you a number and you have to guess their equation to get to that number. There’s also Hard Mathler, but for that one you need parentheses, and I’m not playing that game. (Real Man kills it every time)

Those are the ones that the family plays, but when people call it a phenomenon, they aren’t kidding. I wish I had bought stock in “-dle” games at the beginning of all of this because I would be a very wealthy woman today. Or not, considering they are all free.

There is Swiftle, for fans of Taylor Swift, where you have to guess lyrics from her songs. There are also less…respectable versions of the game, which the family and I don’t play (at least not in the group chat).

So, call me a sheep. Call me a follower. It’s okay. I don’t mind. Because the other day I got the Wordle in 2 tries and felt like the Queen of the World-le.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, it’s been a hot second since I last blogged.

When I came back here, I had a few things to clean up on my dashboard, and while I was in there, I saw that I had about 25 drafts of posts in my draft folder.

That was a surprise. Even in the old days, I usually don’t start writing something (something blog post sized, at least) if I’m not going to have time to finish writing it. I know myself…I need to finish when I start or it’s not happening.

Yet, here was some evidence that sometimes I don’t, in fact, finish what I start, and I was intrigued. I started to open the drafts, one at a time, eager too see what was on my mind those many years ago.

Some of the posts were partially written. For example, on New Year’s Eve, 2013, I started a post called “Things I Learned From the Walking Dead.” The obvious first question is, why was I writing a blog post on New Year’s Eve? Why wasn’t I out at a party? Oh yeah…2013. 2 year old, 7 year old, 9 year old, 12 year old. Got it.

Anyway, here’s what I had so far:

On Christmas night, Real Man and I finally took everyone’s advice and  started watching The Walking Dead on Netflix.

Why we waited so long, I’ll never know, because it is awesome.

We were hooked right from episode one, and the benefit of watching on Netflix is that we could binge watch our way through, stopping only when we realized we had better get some sleep because work was beckoning in a few, short hours.

Much like the virus that has zombies overrunning the United States, The Walking Dead has infected my brain and I find myself thinking about it much more than anyone should think about any television show.

Some of my ponderings are storyline related, but sometimes, I find myself thinking about what I have learned by watching the show.

Because the lessons are vast.

1.  If it seems like a zombie apocalypse is imminent, I am getting myself to the ENT and having some high-powered hearing aids made, because, apparently, zombies are sneaky squirrels.

People will be having a conversation right in the middle of the street and then, BAM, zombie right behind them.

See, I always thought that zombies walked around consistently making “Uuuuuuuuggggghhhhh” and “Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh” noises, but apparently, that was a misconception.

Occasionally they will let out a sound or two, particularly when they are running or feasting on a particularly tasty human, but for the most part, they shuffle quietly about the town, minding their own business, until some sound catches their attention.

2.  I need to create a stockpile of antibiotics.

Who knew there were so many ways to get hurt in a post-apocalyptic world?

We definitely need some more first aid kits, but those first aid kits aren’t going to do us a world of good if we don’t have antibiotics to fight infection, and with my accident-prone daughter, we are going to need them.

3.  If I’m not right next to Real Man when the zombie apocalypse begins, I really shouldn’t just assume that he’s dead until I see his body or his zombified corpse stumbling toward me.

Because, people, bad things happen when you assume your spouse is dead in the apocalypse.

Okay, so, I think I stand by that post, except for the fact that I stopped watching about three seasons ago. I loved it while I loved it, but at some point, I found I couldn’t stay awake any more when it was on. But, I’ll carry those lessons with me, just in case.

Some posts were less well formed, like “Random Thoughts” on August 13, 2012. For that post, all I had written was “Alec Baldwin and George Carlin.”

Um…what?

Most were just titles, though, and I am left wondering what I was planning on saying in them.

On August 24, 2011, I titled a post “Me and My iPad…A Love Story” and then I didn’t write anything. What was that about? I’m assuming that is when I first got an iPad and I used it solely for myself. Before the monkeys got their grubby little paws on it and filled it with kid games and took up all my memory so even my Kindle and Nook apps couldn’t hold any ebooks.

Ahhh…those were the days.

I had to chuckle at a post titled “Anniversary” which was aptly posted on October 3, 2011; our 13th anniversary. All I had written for that post was “In case you’ve forgotten…” Perhaps a reminder for Real Man? (Who, in fairness, has NEVER forgotten anything since we were 16 years old and first met) Perhaps a reminder for myself???

But, what were my “Random Thoughts” on August 13, 2012? And who was “Plotting” what on December 20, 2010? On June 30, 2011, what exactly was the “Conversation with My Boy?” and which boy was it? (We’ve got some choices over here.) Why was I “Deconstructing Mother’s Day?” on May 9, 2011?

The drafts folder was a wonderful glimpse at my episodes of “bloggus interruptus.”

Over all the years of the blog, I’ve shared more of my life than is probably normal, and yet, I’m completely consumed with wondering what the intentions of those posts were. I was going to delete them all, but decided it’s more fun to keep them. Because maybe one of these days, something will happen here that I want to blog about and “Stick a Fork in Me…I’m Done” will be the perfect title for that post.

My monkeys are all on the cusp of new ages. February brings a change of age for all of them, and even though the big joke in our house is “Wanna see Mom cry? Talk about us growing up and leaving!” the “growing up” part is actually…well…growing on me.

Let me brag a little first, and then I’ll get to the point.

This month will see Monkey Girl turn 21 and in the beginning of the second half of her junior year in college. She’s almost done with her nursing program, working at a physical rehab facility and doing the job she was born to do. She’s the president of her sorority, she has good friends, and she’s happy. Not all the time, because she’s human, but she’s figured out how to “adult” and she’s doing pretty well at it.

Next week, Monkey Boy turns 18. We just had his Senior Night for his high school hockey team and he plays in his last high school games ever over the next week. He has a job and has applied to colleges and is making decisions that will follow him into adulthood. He has good, solid friends. He’s mature. He’s responsible. He’s growing into the man that I had always hoped that he would.

As of this blog post, Baby Monkey is now 16. He gets his permit next week and will start driving. Baby Monkey is 16. I needed to write it again because it’s still hard for me to grasp. The kid who made daily costumes for himself out of construction paper is 16. But while he’s no longer parading around Target in a Batman costume, he still remains true to himself. He never does something to follow the crowd. My quiet, sweet, hilarious boy has found his friends and is living his life, as always, on his terms.

And by the end of this month, Tiny will be 11. He wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye when I started this blog, and yet, here we are. Next year he will be in middle school, changing classes, using a locker, and changing for gym. He’s still the most sensitive of the monkeys, but man oh man, is this kid a love. He never wants to see someone with hurt feelings, tries to be kind whenever he can, and makes me want to wrap him in bubble wrap to protect him from a world that has shown him, on more than one occasion, that kindness isn’t always returned.

I used to really struggle with the monkeys getting older. I missed having babies in the house. Missed the innocence. Missed the firsts and dreaded the lasts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not a big fan of the lasts, but I’m realizing that with lasts comes a different kind of firsts. Last day of high school leads to the first day of college or the first day of whatever path your child chooses to take. Last night in a dorm room leads to the first night in a new apartment. Last time I drive them somewhere leads to the first time they drive there all by themselves.

But there’s something else. And it’s something that is so good and so unexpected for me. And that is how much I enjoy hanging out with these monkeys as almost grown-ups. We have real conversations about things that don’t include cartoon characters or silly songs. It turns out, we all have the same sarcastic sense of humor, and we laugh together…a lot. We talk about world events, the books they are reading for school, sports. We have group text chats. They have different perspectives on some things than I do and I love hearing them explain how and why they came to their conclusions. I really like the people they have become.

Oh, and…

WE DON’T HAVE TO ACCOMPANY THEM TO THE BATHROOM.

Listen, I do sometimes long for those little faces, snuggling those little bodies, and hearing those little voices. But I’ve made my peace with the growing up because there’s joy to be found in this space, too.

The leaving? That’s one I’m still coming to terms with and think it will be awhile before I get there. I don’t love not seeing Monkey Girl for months at a time, and I’m not looking forward to Monkey Boy leaving in the fall. Even Monkey in the Middle is spending more time out of the house with marching band and jazz band and pit band and movies with his friends, etc, and I miss having him around. I miss them when they go away. A lot. I know, I know…it means I did my job and gave them wings to soar and blah blah blah blah blah, but I don’t like it.

Like I said, I’m not there yet with the leaving. And having Tiny means they aren’t all going right away anyhow.

But the growing up? It’s not so bad.

The world is covered in ice today, and the trees that have stood brown and bare and ugly since the end of November are suddenly sparkling and shining and brilliant.

Everywhere you look, people are sharing photos of their yard, their street, their neighborhood, and captions all relate to the beauty of what the picture shows.

And they aren’t wrong. It is absolutely beautiful.

Yet, as I stood outside, today, looking at the blinding reflections of the sun off of the branches, all around me, the air was full of the sounds of the branches, crackling and groaning under the weight of the ice.

That beauty is heavy and it threatens to bend and break even the strongest of branches that have held their own for hundreds of years.

As I stood out there, looking around, I began thinking about how heavy the metaphorical beauty we wear in public can be and how it so paralleled the weight of the ice on the trees.

The ice is like the facade we show to people. The happy Facebook photos. The silly Instagram posts. The funny tweets. That public face we show to the world where we pretend like everything shines, like we are always smiling; that we are always radiating patience and goodness.

I was thinking how heavy that can be to maintain. The time we spend in figuring out just the right word to make the sentence perfect, or the amount of times we retake a photo until we are satisfied that people will look and approve.

It’s heavy. It’s a heavy weight that can pull down on our minds and hearts and souls until we bend. Until we break under the pressure.

And we might bend. And we might break.

But the hope is that our core…the older, brown, solid wood that hides beneath the gleaming ice…can stay strong. That we can weather the storm and shake off the momentary glitz and glamour, and go back to the true us.

And that we can learn to love our true selves enough to share that with the world

Our knots and decay. Our good and our bad. Our beautiful days and our ugly moments.

That’s the real beauty. Not the fleeting moments that we crafted or had to capture before they were gone. The every day. The ins and outs. The ups and down.

Those things are beautiful because they are relatable. They are the things we all have in common.

They are the human experience and there is nothing more worthy of sharing than that.

Because the ice? It will be gone tomorrow. But those trees? They’ll last so much longer, and it’s the imperfections in those bare branches where the true beauty lies.

We dropped Monkey Girl off at college today.

When I started this blog, Monkey Girl looked like this:

Needless to say, she doesn’t look like that anymore.

She’s 18 and grown and as of today, gone.

Not for good, obviously, but if you’ve gone to college yourself, you know that, while you will come home again, it will never quite be the same.

I miss her.

I went to put a dish in the dishwasher and found that it was full of clean dishes and immediately called out for her to empty it, because that’s been her job for the past ten years. But she’s not here tonight.

I miss the way she would call out “Marco!” when she would get home from work or school to find out where I was in the house. Or, she’d yell it when we were at the store and got separated. I’d yell back “Polo!” and she’d come and find me.

I walked by her room on her way to mine, this afternoon, and realized she had left her light and her fan on. I turned them off and smelled the strawberry scent of the air that is pure Monkey Girl and wondered how long before that scent goes away.

I know that, tonight, she won’t be coming in to lay on my bed when she comes home from work or hanging out with her friends and updating me on her day.

I just miss her presence, tonight.

And I know it will get easier.

I’ll always miss her when she isn’t here, but it won’t always ache.

She’s gonna love college. She is going to make friends and have fun and learn and grow and be independent and is going to do everything that her father and I have raised her to do.

She has already texted that she had made some friends and was enjoying their company and having a good time, and that made me so, so happy to hear.

It’s going to be fine. I’m going to be fine. She’s already fine.

I know I’m being melancholy and dramatic.

But tonight, I’m gonna wallow a little.

Because she was my first baby.

And I miss her.