Silent Sunday a Story in Pictures

linking up here:

First Day

Yesterday was the Boy’s first day of preschool. This is going to be one of those mundane posts with lots of pictures exactly like everyone else’s pictures, but it’s a pretty monumental step for us so just bear with me and try not to roll your eyes too much!

The first thing he said to me as soon as he woke up was “do I get to go to big school today?” (as opposed to the Baby Parking, which, as indicated by the name is little kids' school). I was both happy and sad at his enthusiasm. We got dressed and had breakfast in record time and I managed to get in a couple of obligatory first pictures, here you go:

Surprisingly, he let me put his smock on for the picture. 

The enthusiasm makes him silly

Sillier and sillier

And then we sneaked out of the house, cause the Girl was none too happy that her big brother was going to school without her and she had to go back to Daycare all on her lonesome.

The Boy was unbelievably excited at being able to ride his bike to school, “like the big kids” and I sniffled all the way (thankfully it’s a two minute ride, so I didn’t have time to really start the water works).

His preschool is right across the street from that bell tower in the background

He parked his bike right at the front entrance

We explored his classroom together, put everything in his cupboard (which he shares with another little girl), he donned his smock and was ready to go, a little sad to see me leave, but excited to meet the other kids. I walked out and thankfully ran into a neighbor so had to maintain a modicum of decorum, cause I had a LOT of pent up angst. I really hope I manage to get myself together and be a little more relaxed about this stuff or I may die from a heart attack (or lack of sleep) before they get to middle school.

Checking out the toys

You can go now, mama

other classroom

shared cupboards

Thankfully, when I got home and looked over the pictures I found something that snapped me out of my melancholic mood pronto. You may recall a recent post about the Boy’s name and our decision to possibly change it, you can read it here, but for the short version his name is Alexandre, pronounced Alexander, and we’ve started finding some difficulty with his having a foreign name (for Italy) with an unconventional spelling. This is the result:

I’m going to talk to his teachers today, cause I’d really like him to at least learn to spell his name correctly and not have any confusion on that point! As far as the legally changing it part, we’re on the fence still, we’ll see how this year goes.

At noon we rode our bikes home and had a nice quiet lunch, just the two of us, before going to get his sister from daycare. Starting today he eats lunch there, so we’ll see, they have a nice lady who cooks lunch as it’s a small parochial school so it should at least be good!

Toodles for now, I hope everyone else’s first days of school are going well!

Shoe Psychology

It’s no secret that many women (and an increasing number of men) have obsessive compulsive relationships with their shoes, I certainly do. I have an alarming number of shoes, sandals and boots and everything in between. In fact, I’ve never counted them cause I’m a bit frightened to find out the exact number of shoes I own, what I can say is that more than likely I could change my shoes every single day and not wear the same pair twice in a year. Scary, I know.

I’m also an equal opportunity shoe owner; I don’t discriminate at all. I own very expensive designer shoes from my pre-kid, two-income, no-need-to-think-about-the-future days as well as crappy, cheap market shoes. Of course, all these shoes take up an inordinate amount of room and as my one, single, lonely new year’s resolution this year was to de-clutter my life I’ve lately hit upon the unfortunate realization that I need to get rid of some shoes. Today was the day I chose to do this.

Let me just say that today has been highly traumatic for me. I know, I know, most of you are thinking that after all we’ve been through lately, I can’t possibly be traumatized by having to part with some shoes. But the human mind is a mysterious thing and it creates strong attachments in surprising ways.

Let’s talk a bit about shoe psychology, shall we? As anyone with as many shoes as I have knows, shoes rarely get bought with a specific purpose or need in mind, shoes usually get bought for one of three reasons:

- A strong fatal attraction, wherein you’re walking along minding your own business and out of the corner of your eye you spy… something… an imperceptible flash of color, a vibration that tickles your stomach and you turn against your will and find yourself totally and completely smitten. These are the shoes that have the potential to change your life, when you find them you know, deep in your heart that you will suddenly become thinner, smarter, stronger, more confident and more beautiful. These are the shoes that love affairs are made of. You buy them, of course, despite the price, despite your actual need. In fact, you don’t even look at the price, these aren’t shoes you need cause you have to match them to an outfit or cause you have to wear them to cousin Myrtle’s wedding, no these are the shoes you need because once you have them your life will suddenly have meaning and purpose.

- Boredom and dissatisfaction. You’re unhappy with your life, your job sucks, your husband / boyfriend / partner is a dick, it’s been raining for three weeks straight and your bank account is anemic, basically your life looks like it’s going to collapse into itself creating a monstrous black hole that will finally finish sucking all of your joy, hope and dreams into the void. This is when you go out and buy a totally useless, moderately priced, uncomfortable pair of shoes in a funky color that you think you’ll be able to match to something. These shoes were bought simply for the fleeting high generated by the salesperson’s smile, the swish of your credit card and the crinkle of the store bag. These shoes will spend eternity on their shelf in your closet, covered in dust, unworn.

- Actual necessity. This reason for buying shoes boggles the mind. When you own as many shoes as I do it is unimaginable that you’d find yourself in a situation wherein you actually need to buy a pair of shoes for a specific reason. But this happens, with alarming frequency I might add.

So, these are the main reasons why shoes get bought. Guess which one happens to me most often? Anyway, back to the whole point of this post, today I got rid of some shoes. I didn’t count how many but I filled a large, large trash bag. I’m starting to get heart palpitations just thinking about it.

This little exercise was equally terrifying and liberating. Liberating because, seriously, who needs ten pairs of black shoes with the same heel height? Terrifying because who in their right mind gets rid of Blahniks? In any case, I feel quite good and my shoe cabinets look amazing and I’ve found shoes I had no memory of, oh and now all the shoes that are left actually fit. On a side note, for some inexplicable reason my feet have grown exactly one and a half sizes after the two pregnancies. I’m shocked and angry. In fact, this is why I managed to get rid of so many shoes, most of them didn’t fit anymore. It’s been a year and a half since I gave birth last so I’m thinking they’re not going back to their regular size, this happen to any of you, perchance?

Oh, just in case you were wondering, after I was done with what shall now be known as “the great shoe purge” I only went back to salvage two pairs of shoes, because, seriously, who in their right mind throws out a pair of Manolo Blahniks? So there you have it, a little psychology of the shoe.

Tick, Tock

I’ve been sitting here in front of the computer for a while trying to write this post and I just couldn’t decide what tone I wanted to give it. Do I feel ironic? Sarcastic? Do I want to make light of an intense situation by trying to be funny? Or maybe I want to be poignant, and possibly elicit a few tears? I can’t decide. Mostly because the main thing I’m feeling right now is disbelief.

The leukemia is back. There, I said it. I actually toyed with the idea of titling this post Leukemia Loves Us, but then realized that would’ve just been silly, or sad. I guess I haven’t processed this news yet so I’ll stick with a matter of fact tone, how ‘bout that?

The husband had a bone marrow biopsy about a month ago and they told us he had about 2% anomalous cells (cancer cells), so they abruptly took him off the immune suppressants to stimulate his bone marrow into action so his immune system could take care of these cells (apparently this is what a healthy immune system does). And that’s where we were when I left for Brazil. They redid the biopsy about a week ago and he now has about 10% anomalous cells. So basically not only is his brand spanking new immune system not doing a damn thing about these cells, they are actually so comfortable and at home in his body that they are happily reproducing. Just reproducing away, left, right and center. Lucky cells! (and that went from trying to be funny to sarcastic real fast!)

So now we have to make some decisions real fast, like the clock is running fast, like hurry up and decide already fast. We’ve got a couple of treatment options, both of them involving a transplant, just different types of transplants and we’ve got to get everything done in about a month. So basically, no pressure at all. We realized he’ll be having the second transplant at almost exactly a year from the first transplant. This has nothing to do with anything, we just thought it ironic.

That’s it for today, just some news. I can confidently predict some pretty pissed off posts in the near future though, just as soon as the implications hit. So stay tuned! Or, more logically, run for the hills as fast you can, that’s what I’d do!

Vairy, vairy Hairy

I’ve got a hairy leg dilemma. You see, my legs are very, very hairy right now. To the point that I have to wear pants, tights just don’t cut it as I now have the hairiness poking through and it looks like I’m wearing weird angora tights. In fact, I hadn’t really noticed the state of my legs, as the husband and I are on hiatus due to health issues right now, and all the extra hair actually just helped keep me warm what with the first snow falling and all. In truth, the only reason I even noticed was because I wore a dress on Thanksgiving with black tights and halfway through dinner looked down and thought, what’s with all the fuzz on my tights? Aaack, how did my legs get so hairy??!!

So what’s the dilemma, you may ask. Well, you see, I hate shaving, it’s time consuming (once I start I have to do it every day, cause the only thing I hate more than vairy hairy legs is spiky legs), I live in Italy, hence my shower is tiny, hence when I bend down to shave my legs I get the whole rear on cold tile effect, which frankly is bothersome as I’m already bothered cause of the having to shave thing. I usually wax, but this entails me making (and keeping) an appointment, leaving the kiddos and driving twenty minutes to the appointment… etc, basically wasting 3 hours when the whole thing takes at most thirty minutes. Also, if you’ve never waxed before you may not know this, but the longer the hair, the more painful the procedure. Right now, I would probably need an epidural to get through it. So, what do I do? No, really, what do I do?  It’s just, well, honestly it’s getting embarrassing, I went to pilates on Friday and spent half the session readjusting my pant leg so you couldn’t see my hairy ankles. The indecision… it’s driving me nuts. Plus, the longer I wait the harder it is to just get it done. And then I start thinking, maybe I’ll forget about my legs, simply basking in the added warmth of my natural leg warmers, and then the husband and I will decide it’s time to end the hiatus, and after all the issues with his health, literally surviving cancer, I’m going to end up killing him with a heart attack from utter horror.