Last night, Ruby started crying at about midnight. I leapt up from my desk and went zipping upstairs, because something certainly had to be wrong. We’ve been so lucky — for two years we have put her in bed between 7 and 8 and she has slept like a soft little log until 7 or 8. So, of course, when she cried, I went up there!

“I want some water,” she said, as I went into her room.

“That I can do,” I thought, and gave her a little Dixie cup of water.

“Wanna see Dennis,” was next. Dennis had visited us earlier in the evening and helped me pack some things up in the basement. He brought her a groovy jacket for her birthday (and an equally groovy hat), which she then wanted to find, try on, ask about and ask about and ask about.

Then, Popcorn! An entirely original thought at midnight — she wanted some popcorn. And…to know where Daddy was and Moose was and Nonnie was and Grandpops was and Grandpa Lynn was and Grandma was and Aunt Carrie was and Fred was and Aunt Jenny was and Andrew was and Uncle Roger was and Aunt Keren was and oh, she sure would like some more water too. And to watch some TV. And paint.

So last night I caved (because even if I could have handled The Screaming, I figured our neighbor Eddie could not) and brought her downstairs. Before I knew it we were eating popcorn and watching TV. Granted, we were watching “SuperNanny” and I was pointing out all the bad behaviors of the children and saying “See, they all have to go to bed now.” Finally, we both turned in again at about 2AM !! in the same bed. Every time I started to do the dip into the crib, The Screaming started again. So I just curled up with her in my bed and called it a night.

Tonight, I figured that had just been an isolated event. I ran out while Monica was here to treat myself to a mocha, and when I came back, there sat Ruby, next to Monica on the couch (she went down at 730 and it was now 10), watching TV and probably asking where I was, a lot. Monica sort of shrugged when I came in, then we said our goodbyes for the rest of the summer.

I didn’t do the popcorn and the water water water thing tonight. Instead, I thought I would do the rock rock rock thing and the sing sing sing thing. I whizzed through “Tell Me Why” and “The City and the Traveller.” Not asleep. “On Top of Old Smokey” came to mind, so I sang that. I was whisper-singing, too, the kind which is supposedly guaranteed to put all kinds of people to sleep. I wished, for a moment, that I could remember the words to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” for no other reason than it is a damn long song.

Then, in a desperate attempt to sap her to sleep, I started to channel Judy Collins. When I was 12 or 13, I knew every Judy Collins song ever written, and I could hit the high notes too. I used to listen to them on my parents’ victrola for God’s sake, wearing grooves in every 33″.

I did “Send in the Clowns,” “Marie,” and “Dorothy.” My big finish (my arms were about to fall off at this point) was “Starmaker,” which I sang with great feeling. Rock, rock, rock, sing, sing, sing. I imagined being Ms. Collins at Wolf Trap (the place I first saw her), climbing higher and higher into the rafters with my voice, drawing people in, feeling every note. Crushing. My. Heart.

I realized in the background that instead of cheering, the sound I heard was actually Ruby wailing. In my Elvis-drop-to-one-knee swoop during verse three I had actually just thrown Ruby on the floor (the crowd went wild!) and completely lost track of what I was trying to accomplish. Not only was my performance ruined, but her Almost Asleep state had returned to The Screaming.

At this point, I gave up. I apologized for tossing her to the floor in a sappy-love-song-crescendo, and, defeated, placed her gingerly back in her crib. Still Screaming.

“At least,” I thought, as I crumbled down the stairs to put my headphones on in the basement, “I did what any self respecting child of a 70s-mother would do. I gave her something to cry about.”

There are new pics at flickr from our Ireland jaunt in May. I reached my upload bandwidth limit so I am waiting for my pro account to kick in to add more.

In the meantime, check out the new entries at 5ives, one of my favorite sites for a smile. The guy’s a riot!

You gotta love when your clock radio wakes you up with that song. I don’t foresee any problems today.

I’m new to this blogging stuff. Having a great time, though, and getting some good laughs out of it. There is a little program called Mint that tracks your visitors…I’m just getting used to what it actually does. One thing it does do, though, is tell me how folks are finding fannfare.com — what they are “googling” for when they end up on my site.

Someone looked up “popped achilles tendon,” and found my site because that’s what the photographer showed up with at Ruby’s birthday party. Easy to understand how that search happened.

Also easy to connect is the search for “she kicks me in the groin” because I posted in the past about Ruby the Diaper Dodger. The more interesting question would be “What was that searcher looking for exactly?”

The head-scratcher today though is the search for “photos of friends having a wrestling match.”

I’d like to see that myself!

So I am almost off for my Colorado adventure, heading to the Rockies for the duration of the summer. I am worried about parts of it, excited about others. I’m not leaving behind anyone that I will lose, just lots of folks that I will miss. Miss Ruby and I will be on our own, continuing to learn about each other without the comfort of the other wise moms that we troll the playground(s) with. No movies and couch commentary with TBone for a while. No monthly dinners with the Hawaii gals. My family may come out to visit in chunks, but I’ll spend a lot of time staring at the beautiful mountains with Ruby and Shaun and Moose. Some days that sounds blissful.

Today I had to say goodbye to another group of folks that have come to be important to me, although thankfully, not for good. My therapy group all agreed that I could come back in September and join in where I left off — the part where we are all healing and helping each other. That was welcome news, as I have come to feel part of something there.

Take care, Mary. See you in the fall.

I am married to a father now, Ruby’s father. But, Father’s Day for me is still mostly about my father, and now Shaun’s father too. It’s a day to celebrate all their quirks and gifts, to think back on memories with them and dream up new together-times for tomorrow. My father made that pretty easy this year, because he has been so excited about Ruby.

For Father’s Day he bought her a pair of gardening gloves and was going to have her help him pull up pansies after dinner. She ended up turning into a pumpkin before that, but the plan was ever-so-sweet.

Shaun’s Dad was the life of the party at her birthday picnic, even with everything he has on his plate. He made Ruby feel special every chance he got.

I dated a guy in my early 20s that I thought for a time I would marry. I loved his parents, his mother and his father. When he and I broke up I remember thinking “I am going to have the crappiest in-laws someday, because what’s the chance another guy will come along with such fantastic and loving parents?”

Voila.

Happy Father’s Day, Grandpa Lynn and Grandpops.

Yeah, that one.

I’ve always been freaked out by the occasional shoe I see in the road. Whether in the middle of the road, or off to the side — no shoe in the road ever says “Hey, I’m having a great day!” Maybe it’s my work with the American Association of Suicidology or something, but I just shudder whenever I see one. Did someone get hit out of their shoe? Did someone’s shoe fall off as they were jumping from a car/bridge/embankment? I don’t know. I just don’t like it. I always know where my shoes are! At least the ones I left the house with. On my feet.

Well today, as if to say “The wearer of every shoe you have ever seen in the road is just fine,” the world showed me another possibility. I drove out to the airport to pick up a rental car, and took the Dulles Toll Road (expressway out of the airport) home. In front of me was a Volvo sedan, nice and new, zipping along. The man in the driver seat seemed very focused on where he was going (read: driving fast) so I was staying behind him with his lane changes.

Then it happened. Out of his driver side window flew The Shoe. From what I could tell as it was flying and then rolling towards me, it was a men’s sneaker, dark colored. He then appeared to fumble with a map (very large paper thing obstructing his view) and swerve around a bit. But, he didn’t crash, burn, get squashed, or die.

I am still puzzled as to what that was about. Was the shoe sitting on the part of the map he needed to see, and he just got frustrated with it and chucked it? Maybe he took it off his foot because it was blistering ?? and threw it out the window in exasperation. Or, he could have been balls-to-the-wall crazy and figured “I’m never going to be able to get anywhere if The Shoe People don’t stop whispering and steering me in the wrong direction. Every. Day. Be gone!”

I’m not going to think about it much more though, except when I see my next shoe. When I do, I’ll just think “Oh, it’s nothing. Just some nutty shoe-throwin’ traveller.”

And here she is all graduating from high school n’ stuff!

When her mom gave me the title of Godmother to this great little lady, I never thought so far into our future together. I just enjoyed her moment by moment, and I still do.

Other memorable tidbits?

1. My husband, who had never met said Goddaughter’s (mostly absent) father, said “Her dad looked like the leader of a cult.” It was either the Bono-like glasses indoors, the slicked back hair, or just the general creepiness, but I sort of had to agree with him.

2. My foundation garment (“Look, Mommy, that lady’s ass is tight.”) actually cut off the circulation to my entire left leg.

and 3. Here’s what Ruby thought about the whole thing:

You can read her mind can’t you?

“It’s way after bedtime, and I graduated in my pants about an hour ago.”

How did this happen?

It’s sort of a train wreck, isn’t it? I just couldn’t stop watching. David Lee Roth! I think I would have been less surprised if he had peeled his face off and eaten his own cheek.

I feel bad for the musicians. They are all probably very talented and struggling for an audience. When David approached them, I’m sure that was quite a conversation…

Mandolin guy: “Come on, guys, it’s David Lee Roth from Van Halen!”

Bass guy: “Yeah, but he seems to have jumped the shark, dude. What’s with the puffed up chest and the finger-snappin’?”

Guitar One guy: “He sort of has a Jim Bakker meets Michael Flatley vibe these days.”

Guitar Two guy: “I’m willing to give it a chance…I mean, Bonnie Raitt has never returned our calls. I got bills, man.”

Banjo Guy: “It’s just one gig, and then maybe we can ditch him.”

Violin Guy: “Is anyone going to mention him lurching around poolside at the hotel last night trying to talk us all into a daisy chain?”

Steel Guitar guy: “Whatever. Let’s just let him in the band. Maybe we’ll get on YouTube.”

So we’re packing to leave for a couple of months. Well, packing to leave for three weeks (two here, one at the beach) and then two months (Colorado). And packing Shaun and Moose up to leave even earlier than Ruby and me — for three weeks. And, leaving the house in some semblance of order, with stuff to use and live in/around, for the family coming in after us. I hope I remember to take Ruby. Sadly, if she’s not in a Rubbermaid bin, she may be left behind.

I saw The Inimitable Grace tonight and spent the first couple of minutes telling her about my complete inertia surrounding this process. The tens and tens of minutes I spent just standing in my room thinking “Sweet Mother of God, let’s just torch the place.” She laughed as I was thinking, “No, really.”

Once I got over the fantasy of just walking out the door with my hands up and never looking back, I started in little bitty steps to make piles. What we need at the beach. What can be thrown away (liberating, isn’t it?). Given away. What will I need to make Colorado feel like home? What will Ruby need?

And there’s where I lost what seemed like cavernous hours. Ruby has a box of toys that simply would not all fit in the car (next to the dog and the computer and the clothes and the car seat and the craaaaaaaap). It’s a big box, full of lots of tiny things. Two of my favorite things (which I will now call the evil time-sucking devil-toys), are her “My Little Alphabet” soft toy collection, and her collection of little tiny (they were so cute when I bought them) books, 26-in-all, representing the alphabet as well.

At some point, someone (read: not me!) just chucked all the little teeny plush toys and alphabet books into the very big box for someone (read: me!) to eventually sort out. My brain made a sort of “frying egg” noise when I saw the detritus that was once a neat collection of alphabetania.

And the sorting began. Weeks ago, I realized that we were missing the little “E” book. It really did take me a number of hours to get past this emotionally, and “We’ll find it someday” worked as a band-aid for the time being. I felt, however, that same anxiety start to overtake me as I neared the inevitable closing of the (see-through! As if to say “I taunt you, letter loser!”) box with only 25 letter-books in it. I hate it every time.

And then! I was deftly tucking little plush toys into their letter pockets (Ball, Queen, Lion, Nail ??, Kite) and realizing I was reaching the bottom of the box. Wait! Where is the Tree? The Pencil? The Fucking Fish? This would not end well. Not the “E” again!

Shaun sensed my approaching mania and started digging in the box and peeking under cabinets to find the tiny treasures. The Fish, Tree and Pencil all came forward, and marched into their fuzzy pockets. My task was almost complete, when I felt the emptiness of the V pocket. I had already worked through the loss of the “E” book. How could I deal with this “V” thing? The Violin, no less (note: yes, I do spend a lot of time feeling frightened that I know the content of each of these pockets! Go ahead…ask me one! Dog! Moon! Jam!).

Finally, with a complete relocation of the couch, Shaun unearthed the Violin. And, BY GOD, the long-lost “E” book as well. E is for Elephant! Egg! Eyes! EUREKA!

“Tonight,” I whispered to Shaun, “E is for Blow Job!” but we both knew that our collective satisfaction had just peaked for the evening. Momma Can Get No Higher.

As Shaun wandered off to bed alone, I daydreamed about the tiny violin, playing a lone, beautiful note…. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”