Belly and The Bug

Another family holiday under the belt

And by under the belt, I truly mean under the belt. I think I've eaten my weight in creamy dips and chocolate-peanut butter balls in the past four days. I need salad...

I'd say Thanksgiving was uneventful, but that's not entirely true. My mom and all of her kids (there are six of us) were together. We played a TON of games - Apples to Apples, Quiddler, Yahtzee, Scrabble, Boggle - and had an equal amount of fun. We also teased/harrassed each other mercilessly. It seems like everyone can dish it out, but not everyone can take it. And as is the case at many of our family gatherings, we parted with some sadness and some relief. I personally parted with an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness that I can still fit into my jeans.

The girls had a great time at Grandma's house. We forgot to bring their high chairs, so meal times were much more loosey goosey than usual and they thoroughly enjoyed it. They also ate only about half as much as they usually do. Buggy actually spent most of the holiday sick. She had a fever that kept spiking (at one point hitting 102.7 degrees) and she vomited twice. All of her symptoms eventually vanished and we have no clue what was the cause of this crappiness. She somehow managed to remain upbeat throughout the whole ordeal. If the tables were turned, I would've been decidedly crabby. What a great kid!

Now here I sit - fat, exhausted and about to start the craziness of Christmas prep. Maybe I'll take a few days off first.

Thankful

I have 90 other things I'm supposed to be doing right now: clearing the dishes off the table, folding laundry, cleaning up the kid debris that is all over the floor, making caramelized onion dip, baking pecan pies. And I will do all those things in the next two hours, but first I'm having a teensy glass of wine and writing this here post. Erika, Billy and D will be here in about two hours. Sissy is bringing them from the airport and I think Bri is coming over as well. I want the house to look good, blah, blah. But this is my last 10 minutes of quiet before the holiday officially begins.

I used to be better about the holidays. I absolutely love getting together with everyone and eating and playing games. It's the best! But as I get older, I'm finding that I have less patience for avoidable chaos. I have a harder time just going with it. Maybe it's an age thing or maybe it's because I've got two kids who thrive on structure that has made me way more structured than I ever was before. Whatever it is, I fear I'm getting a little uptight. So I'm focusing on being as easy going as I can be this holiday week. Everyone will have their own plans and agendas and I'm going to do my best to go with the flow. I am going to endeavor to only lay down the law when it comes to my girls and nap times and bed times and stuff like that. Because, my peeps, I need to get over the little things and give thanks for all the things this holiday is bringing my way.

I am fortunate enough to have multitudes of things for which to be thankful, so I'm only going to highlight a few (as I said, there's pie to bake!). And with that, I'm thankful for pie. I am beyond thankful for my tremendous family. We're something of a motley crew (as opposed to Motley Crue - I shared a wink with Tommy Lee once, but he is decidedly not in my family) and I really wouldn't have it any other way. I am thankful that I don't have to work right now and get to spend so much time with my growing daughters. I am thankful that we always have enough food - and it's good, organic stuff. I am thankful we have the Charmer to provide us shelter and warmth. I am thankful for all of my friends (who really fall in that motley family category). And I am thankful to have health insurance, a reliable vehicle, and my Wusthof knives. And also? I'm thankful for you, Internet Friends. I can't tell you how nice it is to have something - this here blog - that is mine all mine. I like writing it. I like hearing from you. It's an entirely good thing. There. Okay. I gotta go. I just heard the dryer stop.

Chri$tma$

I bought our plane tickets to Arkansas for Christmas. $800 each for four tickets. If you can do simple math, then you know that I just spent $3200 to go to ARKANSAS from OREGON. Just for fun - and because we had talked about going there in 2010 - I priced flying to Germany for 10 days in March. They were only $80 more per ticket. Needless to say, we will not be able to do both Arkansas and Germany in the next year, so Arkansas it is. It hurts, people. It hurts. And don't get me started on the fact that those tickets were the cheapest I could find, they're on Southwest Airlines, and we have two stops in each direction.

BUT... I'm excited to be going. I can't wait to see my dad and stepmom, my sister Molly, her husband Stan and my two nieces, ages 4 and 18 months. Plus Erika, Billy and D are going to be there. Fun! Molly and I have already bought coordinating Christmas jammies for the little girls so we can take unbelievably cute/tacky pictures of them together (consider that your notice that I will be posting these unbelievably cute/tacky pictures after the holidays).

Thinking of Christmas, however, invariably leads me to think about purchasing gifts for everybody. It's a pretty huge and pricey undertaking. In my family, everybody gets everybody else a gift (couple gifts are acceptable, though). Dude and his sibs stopped exchanging gifts a few years ago. Now we just buy gifts for each other's kids. But even so, there are twenty-one family members for whom I need to purchase gifts. This does not include Dude, Belly and Buggy. Let's say that I spend $25 per person, that's $525 + Dude + my kids = more than I can afford. SERIOUSLY. How did the holidays get so effing expensive? My family (the side that is my mom and her kids) is considering starting a new tradition next year wherein we each purchase one cool gift that anyone would be happy to have and then play a game to dole out the gifts. I'm assuming we'll still do gifts for all the kids, but this seems like an extremely reasonable solution to the high cost of adult gift giving. Anyone have other suggestions? Keep in mind that my family's Christmas is all about food and family (meaning, no religious activities or observances involved that would take the place of tearing open a mountain of gifts in about 8.7 seconds flat).

I'm too late

The night after I wrote that last post about my old friend Michelle, I decided to google her. I hadn't done it in a couple years and you never know what'll turn up. It's a little tricky, though, because I don't have a location or anything like that to put in with her name. Two pages in, I found her obituary. She died last year. I think I almost passed out because everything went dark around me except for her name on the screen. I. Just. Couldn't. Believe. It.

The obit only gave her name, dates of birth and death, said she had been living in Milwaukee, and listed her surviving relatives. That was it. When I wrote about Michelle before, I didn't talk about her issues with drugs. She had them. I never thought she was addicted to anything but that's such an easy spiral to go down, especially when you've used for years. I don't know what happened to Michelle, but I would put money on her death being drug related. It completely breaks my heart.

I've been reaching out to old friends (whom I haven't seen or talked to in 14 years or so) via Facebook over the last few days trying to piece together what happened. So far I can't find anyone who kept in touch with her longer than I did. I feel like I need to know to have some closure. I will call her dad if I have to, but I'm trying to avoid that if I can.

In the meantime, I am profoundly sad. I can't believe that she was in Milwaukee and I couldn't find her. I can't believe that no one else seemed to know she was there either. And I can't believe that she's gone. Michelle was a dear friend whom I loved tremendously, even when I didn't know where she was. And if she had not introduced me to Dude all those years ago, my life would be wholly different right now. I cannot think of another friend who has had this significant of an influence on my life.

I don't know what else I can write here. I'm just sad and stunned and... everything.

**Additional note 11/23/09:

I wasn't able to make much headway by reaching out to old friends, so I ultimately ended up calling Michelle's dad (well, her mom's former boyfriend who was the closest thing to a dad Michelle ever had). His name was listed in the obituary and I found his number online. I wish that I'd known his last name all these years because he clearly could've connected me with Michelle. I explained who I was and why I was calling and he was very, very sweet. He said that she'd been in Colorado most of the time I was looking for her and had been back in Milwaukee for about a year before she died. Her death was a terrible accident that was the result of mixing the "wrong" drugs and alcohol. We chatted and cried for a few minutes about how much we loved her and then that was about it. So... I guess that's closure. Damn. I have a certain sense of relief in knowing that she wasn't some strung-out, lonely junkie but I'm not feeling any less sad about the whole thing.

My Michelle

When I was 18, I had a friend named Michelle. We were the best of buds, roommates and even waited tables at the same restaurant. Regardless of how much time we spent together, I never got sick of her. She was wacky and unpredictable and courageous and vulnerable. We lived in a five-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee, WI with a revolving cast of crazy roommates and it was the quintessential party pad. On any given night of the week, you could find random boys crashed on the couch or the floor or the couch and the floor. I was the baby of the house by about three years (Michelle was 25) and I enjoyed a certain level of protection from my debaucherous roomies. That's not to say that I didn't engage in some nuttiness. I won't lie. I did. But peeps, I saw some crazy stuff.

Anyway, Michelle is who introduced me to Dude. She had dated his brother casually but had ended it when she got back together with her ex. One day, Dude and his brother came into the restaurant where Michelle and I worked. I expressed an interest in Dude because he was hot and she set it up. As I said, she was a good, good friend.

Michelle had a rough childhood. Her dad wasn't around much. Her mother committed suicide when Michelle was thirteen. To say this scarred her is a gross understatement. She was terrified of abandonment. She often felt that she was to blame when things went wrong around her. She craved approval. After her mother's death, Michelle moved in with her grandparents. Her grandma was very loving and did what she could to provide for Michelle, even though they were people of simple means. Her grandpa was the kind of old guy who did not show emotion, did not exude a lot of positivity. Even though she was seven years my senior, I was incredibly protective of my dear friend.

Michelle ended up moving to Denver with her boyfriend. I spent the night there midway on my move from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. We stayed up late giggling. She came to visit me in LA not long after that and we were as close as ever. Some months went by and I didn't hear from her. I called her but her number was disconnected. I got in touch with her grandma who gave me her current number. Michelle and I kept in touch for a little while but then lost each other again. Dude moved in with me in LA. We got engaged. I wanted to invite Michelle to the wedding and again I called her grandmother. Except her grandpa answered the phone. He said that his wife was not available and I got the distinct impression that she had passed away. I explained who I was so he didn't think I was a telemarketer and asked him if he could either give me Michelle's phone number or pass mine on to her. He said, "I haven't talked to Michelle in over a year. I don't suppose I ever will again. The last I heard, the cops were looking for her and they thought maybe she'd gone to Mexico. Good luck, young lady." Click. Michelle often had shady friends and found herself in wild situations - she'd even married a one-legged Jamaican guy so he could get citizenship (I'm so not making that up) - but I was not expecting that.

I have never again heard from Michelle and I can't tell you the number of times that I've thought about her. If I had the chance to reconnect with anyone from my past, it would be her. More than anything, I'd like to know she's okay. Today is her 41st birthday.