Someone at work asked me today, "So where are you going this time?"

This has been a travelicious spring for the Brookses. We went to Phoenix in February, to make up for the holiday trip we missed because of my pneumonia. I went to Atlanta in early March, for work. We're going to Salt Lake City tomorrow. And we're actually in Albuquerque in May and then at home for a while, till we hit the San Diego sand in late July or early August.

This weekend's trip is very, very quick. We travel all day tomorrow -- leaving the house around 9:30 a.m. and not landing in Utah until 4:45 p.m. We leave for home at 7 a.m. Monday. (I'm not asking to be robbed. Folks are taking care of the house and the animals, bad guys.) We're celebrating the arrival of a new family member with a brit bat (Hebrew naming ceremony) like the one we had for Emma. It'll be a good chance for Adam to see his cousins and Emma to play with some she's hardly met. Plus, Grandma and Uncle Bryan are really ready for an Em fix.

I've been alternately dreading and looking forward to the trip. There's one unnamed member of his family who tends to cause a lot of stress, particularly for me, and she'll be there. Plus, we basically only have one full day to spend with people and two days of travel. It hardly seems worth it. But it's important to everyone -- including Adam -- that we be there. And, anal as I am, I can deal with the changes in Emma's schedule and the hassle of sharing a hotel room with her. (We'd sworn we'd never stay in less than a suite, so we could have a door that closes between us. But we do have an adjoining room with the gfolks, where someone can skulk while she naps and after 8 p.m.) Still, though, I've been pissing and moaning (at least to myself) about it.

Until today. The new father sent out a schedule of events to everyone and suddenly the trip is much more appealing. There's not time for sightseeing or anything after we arrive Saturday, but there's a party with Buca di Beppo. Sunday morning is the ceremony itself, and the afternoon offers a variety of enticements: golf, sledding, snowmobiling, shopping, Park City visits. Emma's been so sad that we didn't get any snow this year, the first that she was old enough to anticipate it, and I'm really hoping we'll get a chance to show her some. Granted, we have about three items of winter clothing left that fit her, so she'll look a little ragged, but I'm OK with that.

There's even a chance I'll see a Sundance film while I'm there. And yes, I know the festival itself is over, and this is just a documentary series. But it's a Sundance-screened film in a "festival-like environment" shown in Park City. So what if it's about Amish kids? I liked that episode of ER, right?

So, there will be plenty of options to occupy us on that one day. Plus catching up with Adam's extended family, most of whom we don't see enough. So we've packed new Viewmaster slides, books, coloring pages and enough food for the entire plane. Thankfully (salt over shoulder), Emma travels pretty well. And as we lay over in Phoenix, Grandma and PopPop will be joining us, and Adam and I will have a leg of the journey to ourselves. We even have drink coupons ...

This isn't so bad, after all.

See you on the other side. And please, cross your fingers that I have no horror stories to share when I get back.

At the Brooks' household, we're thrilled about the arrival of spring. We've been ready for a while.

So it was no surprise to hear that joy expressed this morning, as gentle birdsong awoke us, for the fifth time this week, about 6 a.m.

"Fucking cardinal."

We're big fans of Leo Lionni children's books. We first discovered him with Pezzettino, bought at a Friends of the Library sale before she was born. Pezzettino is an odd tale of an orange rock who wanders around thinking he's a little piece of someone else -- maybe the One-Who-Runs or the Flying-One, who are rock blobs made of lots of colors. There's lots of, "Do you think I could (insert verb that rock blob is good at here) if I had a piece missing?" Petzy, as Em refers to him when they talk on the phone, finally gets sent by the Wise-One to the Island of Wham. Pezzettino must have the jitterbug in his brain, because he falls down a hill. And breaks into lots of little pieces.

What's the message here? We have no idea. Some Unitarian Universalists say it espouses Principle 1: "We believe that each and every person is important. The inherent worth and dignity of every person." OK by us. We just like the quirky story and neat art.

So, we've been searching for a Lionni book that's as cool as Pezzettino, checking one out every other library trip or so. We've read Frederick, in which the message is very simple: Art feeds the soul. Frederick is a little mouse who doesn't gather food for the winter while everyone around him does, but his memories of color, poems and stories make everyone happy all through the cold. Got it. In Swimmy, one little fish comes up with a plan to keep lots of teeny fish from being eaten. You can accomplish bigger things together than you can alone. Simple. The idea of Tillie and the Wall is exactly opposite, though -- Tillie's curiosity is ignored by all her friends, so she goes exploring and discovers a new world on her own.

Little Blue and Little Yellow, Lionni's first book, is as weird as Pezzettino in its own way, even if it didn't charm us as much. We read it in a Gymboree art class, and all of the parents sat around after asking, "Did you get that?" Little Blue and Little Yellow (just color blobs) are friends. They hold "hands," and there's a green spot between them. They hug, and they get all mixed up into one green blob. What this means, none of us could figure out. Kids shouldn't hug?

So we're still searching for the Lionni book that's as quirky and fun as Petzy. And in Nicholas, Where Have You Been, we found quirk. And gore.

Imagine our surprise as Adam's reading along, about a mouse who goes looking for berries, because the birds keep beating him and his friends to them, and he turns the page to this:



As soon as the initial shock wore off, I couldn't stop laughing. I could barely catch my breath long enough to tell Emma what was going on. (All the mice were pissed off at the birds for berry-thieving. And then the adventuresome mouse gets swooped up by a bird and dropped in a nest, where other birds take good care of him. As he's trying to tell his friends what happened, though, they get stuck on the fact that he was mousenapped. And they start shouting, "War on birds!")

The only saving grace is that the mice don't actually skewer the birds -- if you'll note, the whole scene is in a big talk bubble. They're just imagining what they would do (be sure to note the lower right for the full effect of what they're thinking of).

Still, try explaining that to your 3-year-old. When you can't stop laughing. It'd be the funniest damn thing ever if I'd found it on my own and not while it was being read to Emma. The book won a Jane Addam's Children's Book Award -- as a book that builds peace. Granted, there's no actual bloodshed. The mouse gets to finish his story, the others realize they were wrong and there's a big mouse/bird feast.

Just hope none of the birds see that picture. They'll be pissed.

The first guy I slept with committed suicide.

Sounds like the beginning of a really tacky joke, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, it's true. And looking back, it feels like a bad joke -- only the punchline still hasn't come, 13 years later.

I met J the summer between eighth and ninth grade. He was my best friend's older brother. I can picture with perfect clarity the first time I saw him: His sister D and I had gone to her house after our last official day of junior high. We'd had shaving-cream fights on the bus, and we were giggly and wet. I'd only been at McLoud about half a semester and had never visited her at home, but I was staying for the weekend.

J was asleep in his room. He'd graduated from high school the Friday before. I don't remember why D and I peeked in on him, but he seemed just glorious. The crush only grew when he woke. By the end of the weekend, we were making out while everyone else slept.

We got serious, quickly. He'd had a girlfriend his own age -- something I didn't know when it started -- but he broke up with her immediately. We didn't tell his parents or mine, knowing they would like the five-year age difference. I visited D's house as often as I could, and J and I sent cheesy, passionate letters through the mail. Yup, we wrote love letters. We didn't have a phone at my house, and I don't know that I'd ever seen a computer.

D was a willing conspirator. I'd go to a neighbor's house and call her, and she'd pass messages back and forth for us. Within a few hurried weeks, the time had come. J was leaving for boot camp, and we wanted to spend a night together before he left. D and her boyfriend joined us for cover -- it just looked like J was playing the nice older brother role and driving us all arounD We went out for pizza and then to see Crocodile Dundee II. J and I left the theater after minutes and passed a couple of hours clutching each other desperately in the parking lot, me sobbing. I'd liberated a gold-plated ring from my mom's jewelry box to have something to give him; he thrilled me with his class ring.

When D and her boyfriend came back to the car, we drove them back to McLoud. J had it all worked out about where we'd go; I ducked in the seat while we dropped his sister off. My mom thought I was staying the night at her house; his thought he was out with friends. I didn't know until much later that his parents didn't buy the ruse for long and drove around all night, trying to find us.

We were at the Planet Inn, a classy motel if there ever was one. When J went in to rent the room, I seriously considered sliding over to the driver's seat and taking off, even though I didn't know how to drive. I couldn't stop shaking.

The evening was a bust, as far as romantic interludes go. I'll always call him my first, even though consummation wasn't exactly successful. It hurt, I cried, we stopped. We stayed awake all night, though, pledging undying love.

The rest of the summer passed in a daze of Richard Marx and tears. I wrote him every day and got letters in return almost as often. By this point, everyone knew we were a couple. I proudly wore gold tags that said, "My heart belongs to a soldier."

High school started. I wore J's letter jacket. It was interesting to meet other people who'd known him -- he wasn't exactly the football star I'd pictured him as. Still, though, it was a great setup. I had the cool trappings of an older boyfriend with none of the hassle, as he wasn't around. I got involved in drama, hung out with my friends and wrote him the occasional letter.

A collect call on a Sunday afternoon brought disturbing news; he'd gone AWOL. It wasn't until much later I heard from D the horror stories of the hazing he'd gone through. He told me he'd left for me, and I believed it. I was terrified. I knew by then I didn't really want to be with him if he was around every day.

He was on the run for a few weeks before coming home to his folks to face the music. We broke up and he got a dishonorable discharge. I saw him now and then at D's house; things were as pleasant as could be expected.

The next year, D and her family moved to a town about 30 minutes away. J showed up at school now and then, wanting to talk to me. He asked to take me home one afternoon, and I let him. Later I learned he'd left a pregnant girl standing at the Justice of the Peace that day to drive me around. They never married.

Life continued to improve for me. I went to D's now and then to spend the night. The last time I saw J, he'd come to his folks' house while I was there. They were gone, and we were left in the care of an older cousin. J was drunk, and D, the cousin and I ended up locked in her parents' bedroom while he railed at us. I was the only one he'd ever love, he yelled. He told me it was my fault he had a kid -- if we'd been together, he'd have never gotten that girl pregnant. I'd ruined his life. Eventually, he drove away, still screaming hoarsely out the window.

A few months later, during my junior year, I got called out of homeroom for a phone call from D. We still didn't have a phone at home, and D regularly called the office to talk to me or set up a visit. Everyone in the room was strangely quiet when I entered.

"Did you see J yesterday?" she asked. I told her no, I hadn't seen him since that last time at her house. "You didn't see him at school?" I hadn't even been in town the day before; the academic team had been competing in eastern Oklahoma. "Why?" I asked. "Was he here?"

D said that yes, he'd been there, asking for me. He picked up his transcript. Then he went to his parents' house and picked up a rifle. He drove to a local mall and shot himself in the chest in the parking lot.

Everything after that is a blur. I went to D's immediately, and my role there was very strange. Except for D, everyone just forgot – or ignored -- that I'd been J's girlfriend. I was there only as her friend, to comfort her. Details about what had been going on with J emerged; he'd left a note on the back of his senior picture, signed with his football number and "Desperado." They played the Eagles' song at his funeral, and for years I hated him for that. I frantically changed the station if the song, which I’d once loved, came on.

I'd never been to a funeral before, and this was a horrible initiation. I sat with my mom, who sobbed and wailed like she'd lost her own son. She'd never known J and certainly hadn't liked my relationship with him, but I had to comfort her through the ceremony. I couldn’t cry. When it came time to view the body, I watched with horror as J's mom forced her younger son to look at his brother. I'd been at the house that morning and heard the fight -- he hadn't wanted to come. Not only did the mom make him come, she made him walk by the casket. As if that weren't bad enough, she made him stop to kiss J's cheek. The kid was crying and shaking and begging her to let him go, but they wouldn't leave J's side until the brother had said goodbye in a manner she considered fitting. I thought I'd throw up, right there in the pew.

When it was my turn, I took a quick glance and stumbled back to my seat. For years after, I dreamt that he rose to embrace me as I was passing the coffin.

D and I didn't talk much after that. One of us would call the other occasionally and we saw each other now and then. But she was firmly entrenched in her new school; I was hyperinvolved in mine. I had a whole other set of problems with life at home. J faded into the background.

He shot himself in the spring, just as the trees were starting to bloom. I was 16.

"Protect your child from becoming a statistic by preventing unwanted teen pregnancy." By advocating condom use? Abstinence? Talking to your kid about sex? Oh, no. You should check her panties instead.

And if you're suspicious about your spouse -- husband or wife -- you can keep track of their secretions, as well.

Only $49.95. What a bargain.

Parenting via AIM

Adam: Emma somehow just turned asking me for more peanut butter on her apple into yelling at me about how I don't put enough yogurt and applesauce in her bowls for day care.

Lori: Hey, she's learning to argue like a grownup.

It's definitely spring in Oklahoma. Here are a few ways you can tell:

Every other person you see is clutching a tissue (one rests in my lap right now). Discussions in the hall revolve around Claritin, Kleenex and Visine, as well as the etiquette on holding back a cough in a meeting. Do you try to stifle it? Hack as needed? Swallow copious amounts of water to delay the inevitable? Do you really have to leave the room to blow your nose? Will folks notice that you do this every minute and a half? What about the surreptitious nose wipe?

Your company sends out its seasonal "what to do in case of a tornado" email. It's deleted immediately.

Pedestrians hold their noses as they walk past the prolific blooming Bradford pear trees. There's also the quiet "what the hell is that smell" look from those who think there's a decaying animal hid in a nearby bush. (Emma calls out, "Mom, there's another stinky tree!" every 4.2 seconds as she spots the hordes of white flowers from her carseat.)

One person will have on shorts and sandals, and the next a sweater and boots. Depending on time of day, both have dressed correctly. In this same vein, you run the heater in your way into work and your A/C on your way home.

Football talk begins (if, in fact, it ever ended).

permalink Posted by Lori @ 12:32 PM

I have a tone of voice I try to use wisely -- and sparely. About two words, no matter what they are, can have Emma immediately stop what she's doing, say "I'm sorry!" and run into my arms for a hug.

We don't yell and rarely even raise our voices. So I'm not sure what it is that Emma fears so much about the voice. But whatever it is, it works like a charm. Or an albatross, since I'm not always looking for an apology.

She says "I'm sorry" way too often, in my opinion. I'm constantly telling her, "You don't have to apologize if you didn't do something wrong," but it's a knee-jerk response on her part to almost any criticism. And getting her to the "I'm sorry" point often means she's a little sad, and we have to stop what we're doing to comfort her, even if we weren't really mad to start off with.

Speaking of mad, she's constantly trying to judge my and Adam's emotions. About a hundred times a day (and if you haven't been around preschoolers much, you don't know I mean that number literally), she asks, often in a series: "Are you angry?" "Are you sad?" "Are you happy?" "Are you mad?"

Like the "I'm sorry," it often comes if we've expressed displeasure with her. "Emma, this is the third time I've asked you -- please put on your shoes now. We need to go." As she's trying to shove her feet in, she's asking how I feel. She's trying to find that line -- no, I'm not mad that you haven't put your shoes on yet. But no, I'm not happy about it, either. I'm just ready to go.

She's got another line that she uses in a variety of situations: "You will never, ever stop loving me, right?" "No matter what, you'll always love me." "Even if you're mad, you love me. Even if I'm bad, you love me." I think Adam said something along those lines to her once (and we've read a few books that touch on the topic), and she's always looking for that reassurance. We give it to her, gladly.

She's only 3. And she's a very, very happy little kid, one who leads a pretty charmed life. There's nothing I love more than to scoop her in my arms ("Scoop me, Mama!"), smell her neck and tell her that she's my favorite girl (and hear, in return, "You're my favorite girl, too"). I don't think she's sad or doubts the amount of love she gets, but it's interesting to watch her question the emotional world around her.

We had quite a domestic weekend, starting with yardwork on Friday night (how pathetic is it that I got nasty blisters after 45 minutes wielding a rake?). Saturday morning, we took a random tour of Bricktown, including the much-hated and oft-beloved new BassPro, where we ogled the giant catfish and didn't mention the taxidermied bears, wolves, foxes, turkeys and deer had once been alive. (Never have I been glad she couldn't read, until this trip. I'd have needed to explain the name underneath each animal was the person who'd killed it.) I did get to share fun facts with Adam -- like I know how to use a crossbow, only my puny arms are barely strong enough to pull it back. I've slept on the ground in deer camp, if the only thing I ever shot at was tin cans and this was the first time I'd been (to my knowledge) in the same room as a gun in 10 years or more. And I learned something: They have cute clothes. Granted, much of the stock is covered in various camouflage, but there were plenty of business casual outfits, too. Who knew?

We only visited OutdoorWorld because a good friend was giving us a tour of Sonic's super-cool new headquarters, conveniently located next door. We thought Em would be more interested in the animals than the cubicles, but it turns out she didn't care much about either. She was game for the walk along the canal to lunch, though. She must've worked up one hell of an appetite, as she shocked us all with how much she put away. (At her recent 3-year checkup, she was in the 75th percentile for height and 25th for weight. Her mother's daughter.) Plus, she got a belated birthday gift and new best friend. Quite a morning.

Sunday was family day. We did our requisite weekend grocery shopping (we nearly always go Saturday morning, but had to postpone a day -- yes I'm so anal that we shop at the same time each week). But cooler than the shopping were the ingredients we got for the best granola ever. Em's big on helping in the kitchen, and she could almost prepare this whole recipe herself. And her suggestion of adding chocolate chips was just the right touch.

We cooked pretty much all morning, ending with a giant lunch, stuffed shells at Emma's request. Rest all around for the afternoon, then off to Dad's soccer game. He and Em both got plenty of exercise, him running on the field and her entertaining the crowd in the bleachers.

Dinner, bath and bed for Emma, then cable TV for Adam and I. What more can you ask for in a weekend?