The state of the hole and Hector big wood

I thought I'd give you an update on the elevator. It's still going to be another six to eight weeks till it's in, they say.

Since it's a plastic tube and you choose from three set sizes, I assumed they could just call up the elevator store and be all, "Yeah, so we need three 12-foot long 37-inch tubes."

And then the elevator people would to go the 12-foot racks and take three off and stick them in a truck and there we'd go.

Australian Builder laughed very hard at the assumption. (Thankfully he was not around for the alarm conversation.)

Turns out you order them and it takes six weeks to make and a week to install. There's no sticking a tube between a floor and a ceiling, installing some buttons, and pressing Go!

So you may recognize this as the site of the former cat-pee hole. For which I now have an unopened and un-sent-back-to-Amazon bottle of Nature's Miracle for cat stuff.

I'm holding onto it until we've ripped all the necessary holes in all the relevant walls. And then, assuming we find no more cat pee to neutralize, I'm going to give it to someone with a cat pee problem (or rather, a cat-pee problem) - because if your cat has a pee-problem, I suggest the vet and possibly antibiotics, stat.

So before they cut the hole - which they did on every floor, perfect circles, all the way up (and covered with plywood so nobody falls through) - they built these walls to shore up the floor above while they were putting extra beams in. Nick assured me that even if they weren't properly supported, the floor would just slowly bow rather than falling directly on our heads.

But really, why not avoid that kind of thing if you can?

Also, it just occurs to me, are they walls if they have no sides? They're wall structures. I call them walls. Although I suppose they look more like prison?

I mean, if prison were plywood. Which would be so stupid because even if you didn't have a saw you could probably slowly gnaw your way out, you know?

Anyway, I quite like how the supporting wall/quarter-prison perfectly matches our child-proof gates. Don't you?
So, one of the construction guys is named Hector, and I believe he's the one who carried in the boards. I say this because when I got home one night Jordan pointed and announced, "Hector big wood!"

Every time we pass by the wall, he says, very matter-of-factly, "Hector big wood."

He likes to know you've heard him, so if you don't repeat it back or at least reply in the affirmative, then he keeps saying it. Overandoverandover until you make it clear that you heard him and you're in agreement.

These are how our conversations go.

Jordan, pointing: "Hector big wood."

"Yes, you're right. They're building a wall."

"Hector big wood."

"Yes. Hector big wood."

We say this like 50 times a day. I don't even know Hector's last name. But I'm pretty sure that he's always going to be Hector Bigwood to me.

Johnny rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard

If you had walked up to me last weekend, and you’d pointed at my son and said, “Would you like me to take him off your hands?”

Assuming I’d been able to hear you over the indignant shrieks of the screaming little buttercup of my heart, light of my life, I’d have said, “YES! HERE! Oh, and here’s some cash! Buy yourself some ear plugs and liquor! Good luck! BYE!”

Because overnight, from Friday to Saturday, he’d transformed into a relatively sweet, charming little boy into a malevolent creature that shrieked, screamed, threw things, and generally made you want to run the other direction.

I don’t mean he spent every minute behaving that way. Just every minute that he wasn’t getting exactly what he wanted the instant he wanted it.

So, for example, when he wanted to read a book, but it was actually time to have breakfast, “Read book” transformed into “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEED BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!” Screamed at such a high pitch that I’m quite sure you could precision cut glass with it. It was this way with everything. Screaming. Crying. Kicking.

You might think I’d staged this picture, but no. This is my child drinking a blueberry smoothie. Or buebelly fooey, as he likes to call them.I’m pretty sure this is right before he poured the rest of it on his tray. My clue that he’d done so while I was turned to the sink was his exclamation of, “You dumped it!”

You Dumped It! is one of our favorite games. It’s up there with NO Brush Teeth!

Which is more like "NO! BRUSH! TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETH!" and then a fling of the toothbrush behind the radiator.

That one made me so angry this weekend that I sat him on the bathroom floor and hissed, "You! SIT!"

It scared him. He sad.

Now, there were very sweet moments that then instantly made you forget the horror film that was your morning. And then minutes later, this tender little morsel of delight would turn into a fire-breathing dewdrop of evil.

He'd be so dreadful, and there were five million a couple times where I just had to walk out of the room. At which point he’d start crying and running towards me with outstretched arms. “Mama! Mama!”

As if I his world would crumble without me in it. So of course I walked back in, and picked him up. Knowing that it was just a matter of time before Beelzebub would appear.

Or I would piss him off and he’d reach out and say, “Daddyyyy! Buh bye Mama.”

Summarily dismissed. Thank God.

It’s hard, you know, because with anyone else, you could just say, “You’re being an asshole. I’m going out.”

But when it’s your child, you can’t really go out without your asshole. Unless you take turns at asshole duty, which we did a bit of. But mostly we opted for family time. Strength in numbers and all.

Too pretty for suicide

The truth is, I don’t know which day my dad died.

I know you're not going to know what to say, and that's OK. You don't need to say anything. But I need to write this.

It might have been yesterday, two years ago. Or it might be today, two years ago.

They were both warm, sunny May days, full of lush, green grass and vivid flowers. I remember that. And I remember thinking, a beautiful day is not a day to kill yourself.

These days are too pretty for suicide.

It took a long time for the coroner to determine cause of death. I won’t go into details, but there were two to choose from, and apparently for insurance purposes – Nick says to rule out the possibility of involvement by a beneficiary – it matters. It was hard to imagine how it could fucking matter, at that point, but it did.

I wanted to call them up and say, “Just fucking pick one! Just pick! And give us the final death certificate and let us move forward!”

But it dragged. And when the documents finally arrived – multiple copies, because you just can’t believe how many places need a copy – I couldn’t look at it. I still haven’t. I don’t want to know.

Because he left very quietly Friday morning, the morning of the 15th. My mother called me about noon that day, and said, “Dad is gone.” And we knew.

I left work in a panic, but I knew. We were frantic, terrified, you name it, all day. All night. All the next day. Until late afternoon, when we’d exhausted all ideas, and Nick suggested we call the morgue.

We called them about 45 minutes before their representatives came knocking on the door. Nick and I were out driving around in DC, and we got back to my parents’ house shortly before they arrived.

So we bore the news. They just added some details. They were very nice. I seem to recall everyone being nice.

But I don’t want to know, either way. I don’t want to know that it was Saturday, because then I wonder and wonder what he was doing, and if he was reconsidering, and why didn’t he come back home, and do you know how many times I called his goddamn cell phone that was turned off and do you know how unfair all of it is?

But I don’t want to wish it was Friday, because that’s one fewer day. You would never take a day away from someone, particularly a last day.

And so I don’t know. Is that easier? I don't know. It's what I can manage.

Because who wants to be like that tree falling in the forest not making a sound?

So on Thursday I put up this post about reading and alone time and such.

It resonated with a number of you. Which always makes me happy.

I'd had a busybusy day, and so I read the comments in my inbox, but didn't have time to get on comment back. And then, then later, when I went to respond, I couldn't log in. And then my post wasn't there at all.

And now it's back, but with none of the old comments.

I've now been using my blog as a journal for four and a half years. It's my holding place for memories of huge and small events - both good and bad. I refer back to it when I'm writing other things. I need it.

And beyond that, I need the comments. I love reading them, love having them in response to things I've written. I go back and read them as I am going through old posts, and they make me laugh and think and wonder and I just love them.

People always say be careful of what you post on the Internet, as it pretty much lives on forever. And I suppose this is true. But it can also disappear on you immediately.

Server outage in Siberia. Poof! Content unavailable!

Now, my blog isn't important in the scheme of the world. It doesn't save lives, promote world peace, or feed the hungry. But it's important to me.

Which makes me wonder if it's time to move to Wordpress. Which, I suppose, would also mean it would be time to enlist the help of a professional. Which is all kind of daunting.

Gin a body meet a body Comin thro the rye

What makes a person?

Yesterday I was talking with a couple of my colleagues about the cojoined twins in China. They cannot be separated, because they share one and a half hearts, and have only one set of all other organs. They're in critical condition.

And I was thinking, "Separating them? They're not two people. It's one person with two heads."

But one of my colleagues said, "No, it's two people. There are two heads and two brains."

They're twins. Twins that just didn't separate correctly.

And this is horrible, truly horrible, but part of me thinks, well, why wouldn't you just cut off one of the heads, so that the one could have a chance at a normal life? I didn't say this out loud at the office, because of course I don't want them to know what a terrible person I am. (The Internet, however, is a whole nother story.)

Of course, the argument against this is that you'd be killing a person. But it's a person who would be a disembodied head if you separated them. Which makes...a head.

But even if you were allowed to do that - and I don't know that you are, because would it be murder? - you'd have to make a Sophie's choice kind of decision. Which would be brutal.

Which makes this another one of those situations that makes me wonder if there is something very wrong with me.

I know there are stories of cojoined twins having happy lives, playing sports, dating, marrying, having children. I just cannot imagine. Life is hard with the regular amount of everything.

The couple had no idea until three days before the birth that their baby had two heads. Or rather, that they had twins with one body. So it wasn't like they knew ahead of time and made a choice. They didn't know the sex, because according to the article, in China you're not allowed to know, so that you don't have a sex-selective abortion.

This is not something I could handle. But this is also something I know I would never have to. I get to look at this from a very safe distance. I'm quite sure the parents aren't thinking, "Why don't we just cut off a head?"

Why do I think these kinds of things? Particularly when the normal human response is, "Oh, how terrible! I hope they survive!"

And really, what makes a person?