Karen's Journey

These are my neighbor's flowers that I snuck (sneaked? I never know which word to use any more -- I grew up saying snuck, not sneaked; and dove, not dived; and now these words just don't seem to exist -- did they never exist? Snuck is in the dictionary, but shows up here as a misspelling and you never hear it or read it in the media....but I digress) over to take photos of. Because they're so pretty. I would plant some along my gazebo so they would adorn it each year, but the gazebo is falling apart. Until we decide what to do about that, the gazebo gets annual morning glories. Which  I hope to have photos of soon. They've been blooming, but I just haven't gotten out there with the camera. . These were my front stoop flowers. Until T stopped remembering them in his daily watering rounds, which I have to admit, grew exponentially from a few plants to dozens. Now this is a container of brown sticks and leaves, probably irritating the neighbors to no end. Oh

T and S You were so done after the birth of your second biological child. As in "undergoing a procedure to make sure you were done" done. And then I came along. I was making plans already to adopt a child.  I was going to do it solo. Being with me meant being part of those plans. So you accepted the reality of being a Dad again, even though you thought you were done. "Vasectomy Fail," as you say. This child didn't arrive in our lives without careful consideration. He arrived after much planning, scrutiny, endless paperwork, and significant expense. So you accepted not only me, but my dream of being a mom. A real mom, not the second-class mom-ness that comes with being a stepmother. And we walked through the adoption journey together. We came home with a really great kid who needed lots more attachment work than either of us would have ever expected. And you've struggled with that more than me -- having had two children just bond with you with no e

I got my long-awaited lilac bush for Mother's Day as a gift from my husband and my step-daughters the year before T arrived. It bloomed that year. The next year, no blossoms. No lovely lilac fragrance. I chalked it up to the severe winter and assumed we'd get blooms the following year -- in the spring of 2011. 2011 arrived and blossom buds appeared. Hooray! We were going to get flowers. But then they started disappearing. From the ground up. Bunnies. Our bunny-friendly yard was attracting lilac-eating bunnies. So we caged the shrub until the flowers had a chance to bloom. Bunnies have to eat, but they can find something other than my lilacs! How about the greens from the hundreds of dandelions that grow in our yard, much to the delight of our neighbors, I'm sure? I'm the neighborhood whack job who refuses to poison my yard, my family, and the wildlife for the sake of a dandelion-free yard. My inside bunnies have always loved dandelion greens as much as I love c

Why are our attachment-challenged kids so reluctant to ask for help? T and his kindergarten classmates each grew a sunflower seedling from seed, in a little plastic cup. Last night the seedlings came home. I didn't pick T up, so I didn't know about this. T attempted to plant the thing in our garden on his own and in the process chopped it in half -- leaf part on one side and root part on the other. Fail. If he would have shown it to me and asked me to help him plant it, I would have found a sunny spot, showed him how to dig the hole, helped him get the plant out of the cup and into the ground in one piece, held it in place while he back-filled the dirt around it, and watched while he watered it. But he didn't want to ask for my help, so now his decapitated seedling is in the compost pile. My initial question is rhetorical. I know the answer. Asking for help = vulnerability. Vulnerability = I might not survive. Therefore: Asking for help = I might not survi

I swear this is not turning into a running blog. I swear. Cross my heart. But... Sister S and me post-race.  She took six minutes off her time from last year.   Saturday was the annual Freihofer's Run for Women. It's a huge race, sponsored by a company known for their chocolate chip cookies -- a box of which are included in every race packet -- with about 5,000 participants ranging from elite, world-class runners to first-timers who take more than an hour to work their way around the 3.1 mile course. I love it. It's absolutely one of my favorite races. First of all, it starts uphill. Once I learned how to run uphill, I learned to love the uphills, except when the race ends on an uphill. That just takes the kick right out of a finish. Fortuitously, since this race starts on an uphill and is a loop, it means that it ends...downhill. It's the best race for a finish kick I know of. Hit the traffic light at the top of the hill and fly. No matter how tired you are