Gearing up for “D’s-day”

Tomorrow is Deylan’s birthday party. I have been planning this for months. Well, me and whole team of my friends. My “baby” is growing up so fast. The other day I was driving home from the doctors office and I was thinking about Jess’s mom. I started thinking about D sitting behind me and how I would handle it if I was going to die. I’m not afraid of death, I have no dear of the act of dying. I *do* have a fear of leaving my son. As I was thinking about it, I just started to cry. I couldn’t help it. The thought of leaving my child scared me. I’ve never really thought about it. Now that it has been harder for us to have a second child, I’m facing the thought that D might be an only child. I’m looking at the pain that Jess and her sisters went through when her mom passed. Then I saw his sadness if I was to die and I was overwhelmed. I’m not usually a morbid-thinking person…this was just a trail my mind went down without my permission. I don’t know what it is…I feel so attached to my boy…my baby. Who is no longer a baby.

I can’t believe that on Wednesday, he will be FOUR! Long gone are the days I can count my child’s age in months. Quickly approaching are “real” school and requests for privacy. I think that I will actually die a little inside the day my son stops wanting “snuggles and buggles”. I love my wife, and when we fell in love, it was like nothing I’d ever been a part of. Even that doesn’t come close to the way I’ve fallen in love with my son. I am so incredibly blessed to have a wonderful family. We have our issues, of course, but I am grateful for the little piece of happiness that we have carved out.

Today we went to Val’s for D’s birthday dinner. I can’t possibly begin to explain how amazing it feels to sit at those tables. The tables my grandmother sat at. The tables my mother and father sat at. I have been going to that restaraunt since I was in utero, since I wasn’t even a thought in my mother’s head. I have shared this with as many people as will go with me. This grungy hamburger diner, where they only take cash, and if you show up at the wrong time, you will wait for upwards of an hour for a table. The waitresses are getting nicer, when I was younger sometimes they were so mean you wouldn’t even tell them if your food was wrong. They don’t have a large menu, and the only thing that has changed there in YEARS is the prices. The first time we took D there, he was absolutely uninterested. He loved hamburgers, but refused to eat one there. It made my heart sad. But now, he loves it, and requested it as his “birthday dinner”! We were late, grumpy, and ready to take out a small fishing village when we arrived. Thankfully, the food didn’t take long and once everyone was eating, the anxiety went away. It actually made me miss my maternal grandmother a little bit.

I have just been informed that Jess wants a Long Board with big, off-road wheels for her birthday. I’m more writing this tidbit here as a reminder for myself than anything.

As I approach this four year milestone, I’m also at a huge crossroads in my life. Being around Camille has reignited some serious stuff. We are so in sync and we’ve always had this dream of owning a salon together. I love doing hair, and she’s is really in to make-up, and we just have a great plan for a salon that people like us would love to go to and we would love to work at. At the same time, I can’t really be going to cosmetology school until next year, and she needs to get the ball rolling sooner. She also has other goals she’s trying to attain, and I’m trying to figure out what exactly my other goals are. I absolutely love photography and feel really called toward being a “real” (i.e.: paid) photographer. I don’t like taking “normal” pictures though, I love to play with size and shape, angles, views. I don’t know how a person like me could really find work as a photographer. All in all, that is my problem. I can see the awesomeness (yup, I typed that) in other people’s dreams. Camille tells me she wants to start a portfolio and the wheels turn…I start to see how it could work and what it could look like. And in more than one way. But for myself…I just can’t see it. I don’t understand it. I feel frozen sometimes. I’ve worked with children for so long (15 years) and while I love it on some levels, I long to do something creative. I would really find a certain level of bliss working with Camille, and yet I feel unsure of how to make it happen. How do I follow my bliss when I don’t even know what it is? I would love to cut hair…but is it “the” thing? Taking pictures makes me feel pure joy. Is it “the” thing? I love being a mother, and while I love taking care of my family, I need hobbies and I need some kind of creative career. I want it, but further more, I need it. How do I go about it? What are my next steps? Can anyone see them for me?

Oh! Here’s my WTF moment of the day: This morning, I saw a small spot on my wrist. A slightly brownish spot that wasn’t raised or anything, but was irregular, and certainly wasn’t there the day before. As my wife has had skin cancer removed, and I used to be a serious (valley girl) sunbather as a teenager, I flipped out a little. I poked it. I scratched at it. I realized it hurt a little. So I kept picking at it. In my head, I’m thinking, “Oh crap, is this some kind of pre-geriatric liver spot? Have I gotten skin cancer? What the hell is this spot?!” After I’ve almost picked it off, I realize that last night, when I forgot my tart-let in the oven, it dripped all over the bottom of the oven. When the oven had cooled, I went to wipe it out and accidentally touched my wrist to the metal shelf in the oven. *doh* Yeah. No liver spots, not skin cancer (B”H), just a tiny burn. I didn’t even have that much sangria last night. Somehow I just completely forgot that it had happened. Yup. I’m AWESOME! :-/