Happy Mothers Day!

We ended up donating to a cause of our choice this year (Save the Children) in leu of cards and flowers. I just thought it was a better use of the money. I wish we all did that for Christmas too. Its so much money spent on stuff we don’t need. Its nice to give gifts and get them and it can be fun to shop for people, but the excess of it all bothers me when there is so much real need out there. I would like to start a tradition of giving and volunteering in our family. I can just see me dragging my whining brood off to the soup kitchen. They would love me for it. Maybe we will just do secret santa through the post office. Nothing like a ride through East Harlem on Christmas Eve to deliver gifts to total strangers where the mother looks at you with an expression of gratefulness mixed with contempt (yes, I have done this a few times before). I dunno’ I guess we will figure out something.

I had a great Mothers day. I got to sleep in and then spent the morning outside planting the flowers we bought in lots of pots and under the tree out front of our house. It was sunny and cool and I had a good cup of joe. I don’t have a yard, just a cement patio out front but we use it as a play area for the babies and have all kinds of pots of plants. We even have tomatoes and peppers this year. Two blocks away is a community garden, we spent a lot of time there last summer and will be on the list for a plot this year. We all went to the Brooklyn Flea in Ft. Green. It was all booths of artisans, artists and vintage stuff. Ruby and I got some clothes, and Tom left with a stack of records of course. We parked the strollers by the crates of records and and the guys selling at the booth were blasting some old soul. Toonsie started bopping up and down in her stroller and the guys asked if they could hire her to dance all day. She is so cute, she just loves to dance…anything physical. We went to Tom’s sisters house and Ruby spent the time playing Wii with Tom’s nieces. It was Tom’s parents 40th Anniversary and we had them cut a cake while we sung “The groom cuts the cake, the groom cuts the cake, high ho the cherry-o the groom cuts the cake” …and the same for the bride. It was really sweet. Tom toasted them and said that they were an example to all of us. Its true. My parents are still together which is a rare thing these days. Tom and I are both pretty old fashioned in that we believe that the commitment is serious and that you don’t make it if you can’t commit fully. I have, however, since going through my divorce changed my philosophy on it and now believe that it is a necessary thing in some circumstances and am thankful that I live in a society where it is possible. Ruby has an interesting take on marriage for herself. She says that before she commits to someone she will have to know for absolute sure they are the one for her. She doesn’t think she will ever get married though but if she does it won’t be for a long long time from now. And said that she doesn’t know if she could trust someone that much ever. And that she doesn’t think she could ever allow herself to love someone that much because she doesn’t want to get hurt when the person leaves. It is sad that she sees it this way. I hope that as the years go by and she sees Tom and I together and being good to each other, this may change her outlook on it. It took me a long time to be convinced that it was possible myself.

So I am going to be calling my kids by their nick-names on this blog now. Marlowe is now “Toonsie” (after Toonces the driving cat) and Jack is now “Dutch”. (Because if you ask him what his name is he says “Dutch” as in “just call me Dut-ch”) and I am not sure what to call Ruby, her nicknames are from when she was little and are a little embarrassing now. So I guess “Ru” will be it with the occasional substitution of “sunshine”.

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