Archives

This morning I told Liam that it was time to get dressed.  The following conversation is what followed:

Shannon:  “Liam, it’s time to go get dressed.”

Liam:  “I wanta wear de orange shirt, please.”

Shannon:  “Well, okay.  Let’s see what’s clean and in your drawer.”

[The only orange shirt of his that I could think of is an orange thermal with tiny blue stripes, so I began digging in his drawer for it.  I was holding him at the time, so he could see in the drawer.  I pulled out the thermal and showed it to him.]

Shannon:  “Here’s an orange shirt, how about this one?”

Liam:  [pointing to an orange and blue-striped rugby shirt] “No, Mama.  I want that orange one, please.”

Shannon:  “Well, okay.  Let’s get you some pants.”

Liam: [pointing to the drawer again]  “I wear blue jeans, please.”

Shannon:  “Okay then.  I guess that takes care of that then, doesn’t it.”

———————————————————————————

We were in the Trader Joe’s this morning.  I was standing in the bread section perusing the hamburger buns when Liam started gesticulating wildly and pointing to the wall above the bread.

Liam:  “STOP.  STOP.  STOP.  I see STOP!!!”

Shannon:  “Actually, that says bakery ‘shop’ Liam, but you’re really close, that’s great!  Stop is spelled s-t-o-p, but that spells ‘shop’ s-h-o-p.”

Liam:  “Oh.  Okay.  Shop.”

I swear, the kid’s going to be reading before he’s three.  Nothing shocks me anymore.

———————————————————————————

While we were in the Trader Joe’s, Liam made fast friends with one of the employees, as he is wont to do.  This time his friendship got him a balloon, in the color he chose (which was red).  After we finally got into the car after dealing with the groceries in the pouring rain, I tied the balloon to the door handle on the passenger’s side of my car so it wouldn’t obstruct any of my vision (especially since the weather was already horrible).

We were driving down the road, about five minutes later when the thing unexpectedly (and terrifyingly) popped.  It scared the bejesus out of me (anyone who knows me knows that I was the kid who could never win the relay on field day that involved sitting on a balloon and popping it and the idea still makes me nervous now, so this made me jump out of my skin a bit) and left Liam asking what the noise was all about.

Liam:  “Did you hear that sound?  Did you hear that?”

Shannon:  “Yep.  That was your balloon.  It popped.  I’m sorry about that, kiddo.”

Liam:  “Oh no.  Where’s da balloon?”

Shannon:  “It popped.  That means it’s broken.  It’s all gone now.”

Liam:  “Oh no.  So sad.  Balloon gone.  Liam so sad.”

I could see him in the rearview mirror and he was genuinely distressed about the loss of his balloon.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  there’s nothing worse than seeing your kid in pain/sad/distressed.  At least this time it was short-lived as several fire trucks passed us shortly thereafter with their sirens blaring at which point he forgot all about his balloon and began reciting the words from his fire truck book under his breath.  Being Liam’s mom is fantastic.  I wish I could bottle the cuteness and save it up for his adolescent years…

[Scene:  Liam is sitting at the table eating a snack while I get ready to prepare dinner.  I go to pull large pot I need out of the cabinet only to find that it’s dirty and sitting in the sink.]

Shannon:  “Oh come on.  Really?”

Liam:  “What’s wrong, Mama?”

Shannon:  “The pot I needed for dinner is dirty so I’m going to have to wash it before I start cooking.”

Liam:  “I’m so sorry, Mama.  I’m so sorry.”

Too sweet for words.

(I went into Liam’s room this morning to get him up and ready for the day.  The following conversation is what awaited me.)

Shannon:  Good Morning, Liam!  How did you sleep?

Liam:  No good morning Mama.  I want Da.

Shannon:  Well, Da had to go to the dentist this morning, so I’m going to get you up today.

Liam:  No want Mama.  Da get Liam up, please.

Shannon:  Da’s already gone, so you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.

Liam:  Go back asleep.  Night night.  Wake up morning Da get Liam up.  Night night.  See you in the morning light.  Sleep well.

Shannon:  Well, I guess this means Mama gets the day off.  I’ll let you know when Da gets home.  Have a great day.

Liam:  Night night, Mama.  Go get Da?

I think it’s a really good thing that Matt’s going to be here for a few extra days this week.  Rejection this early in the morning will be a hard pill to swallow if I have to do it for days on end…

For the past week, when I’ve walked past a certain point in my kitchen I’ve smelled bleach.  For the first five days, I tried to convince others that they smelled it, too.  They didn’t.  Then, two days ago Matt finally smelled it too.  We didn’t figure out what was causing it, but at least I didn’t feel crazy.

Tonight when I went to pour myself a glass of milk, I noticed a giant puddle on the floor.  I called Matt in to investigate, hoping that it was merely spillage from the dishwashing he’d just finished.  It was definitely coming from under the sink.  Upon further inspection Matt determined it wasn’t coming from the pipes.  It was coming from a bottle of bleach solution I’d used to clean the grout in the bathroom.  It was flowing out of the spout like a faucet.

Matt:  “I want you to know that I’m blaming this on you.”

Shannon:  “How could you possibly blame this on me?”

Matt:  “Well, you obviously created a vacuum.”

Shannon:  “How could I possibly have created a vacuum inside a spray bottle?”

Matt:  “I don’t know, but I’m blaming it on you anyway.”

On the upside, the bottom of the cabinet and the kitchen floor in front of it are really, REALLY clean.

I’ve never been to Vegas (nor do I have any desire to do so), but something tells me that if I were a betting woman, it would feel much like home improvements to me.  The latest gamble is paint-related.

On Saturday we headed to Lowe’s to pick up some paint.  We even bought samples and tested them out to make sure that we were buying the right thing.  I had some doubts about the color we picked for the treadmill room (grey-blue), because it looked more grey than I had intended, but it turned out that as it dried, it looked great.  The beige color we picked for the hall and the office also looked great and I couldn’t wait to get it up on the wall.

Before we got the chance to work on the office and hallway, Matt had to replace two fluorescent fixtures in the office.  Both lights had gone completely caput and it’s hard to do a good job painting without light.  He got the new lights installed and we began painting the hall and office.  We then tried for about 8 hours to convince ourselves that the grey/purple tint of the the walls was due to the new lighting and the fact that the ceiling and trim were still an awful dingy, dirty yellow.  It turns out the lighting wasn’t the problem.

Today, my mom and I continued work on the office and hall.  I was working on trim and she was cutting in around the ceiling with the beige paint.  She used up the first can of beige and moved on to the second.  As she was finishing up I came in and noticed that the paint she had used from the second can was a different color than that from the first.  She thought that maybe it was because it was wet and the walls were dry.  I knew in my gut that that wasn’t the case since the second color looked like the sample.  It did not look at all like the prison grey on the rest of the wall.

I began inspecting the two paint cans.  The dots of paint on the two lids are different colors.  I went and got the sample paint can.  I began comparing numbers.  The color name is the same.  The Lowe’s secret paint-mixer numbers are the same.  The “tinter” was different.  The sample and the second paint can are the same (Tinter B).  The first paint can is different (Tinter A).

Matt’s on his way home now so that we can eat dinner and he can go deal with getting a replacement can of paint at the Lowe’s.  If only they could give me a refund on my time.

Update:  We just returned from our 5th visit to Lowe’s in three days.  The first thing we discovered is that the designation “Tinter A” vs. the designation “Tinter B” simply means that the cans were mixed on different machines.  The second thing we learned is that our painting techniques are flawed in about 83 different ways.  The third thing that we learned is that when I say that I think we should bring both the first (incorrectly colored) can of paint and the second (correctly colored) can of paint we should bring both.  The fourth thing we learned is that my eye is rarely wrong.  After getting home and putting both colors up on the wall to confirm that they are, in fact, different colors, Matt is headed to Lowe’s for the 6th trip in 3 days, this time with both cans of paint in tow.

Update #2:  Matt just got back from Lowe’s.  We learned a 5th lesson: machines are sometimes wrong.  What appears to have happened is that the two machines at Lowe’s are calibrated differently.  One is correct.  The other isn’t.  What remains to be seen is whether the paint for the treadmill room was affected as well.  Hopefully if this one’s wrong we’ll catch it before we’re almost finished.

All I wanted was a beige wall.  Now I also want chocolate.

This morning started out normally enough.  Liam and I ate breakfast and got dressed and ready to run a couple errands.

The first stop was at World Market where I went to look for alphabet pretzels for my mom (which is a long story and much less interesting than the one I’m going to tell).  I searched all over the store for them and after having no luck, I reached for my phone to give her a call and find out if there were any acceptable substitutes for pretzels shaped like the letter E.  When I opened it up I found that I had a slew of missed calls and one new voicemail.  I also discovered that my battery was low, but since I’ve been holding my breath for weeks waiting for a call back from Liam’s pediatrician about the H1N1 shot I went ahead and listened to the message before calling my mom.  It was the message I’d been waiting for and it was from yesterday afternoon.  The nurse who left the message said that there were a limited number of shot appointments available for today and Saturday morning.  I panicked and put everything in our cart back on the shelves and ran outside to plug my phone into the charger and call the nurse back.  It was at this point that I realized that somehow, at some point, my phone was put on silent, hence the missed call.  I called the nurse back and left a message praying that my ringer mishap wasn’t going to cost Liam the vaccine we’ve been waiting for for a month.  I also called Matt and left him a message to let him know what was going on.

I continued on to my next errand, hoping that the phone would get juiced enough to use by the time I got there.  Unfortunately I had thrown it into my lap when I got ready to pull out of the parking lot and it had apparently dislodged the charger, so by the time I got to the Target, there was nothing left.  I decided that it was a sign and didn’t even get out of the car.  I just plugged the thing back in and tried to figure out how to proceed.  I was in the process of calling my mom to ask if she had thought of any substitutes for E-shaped pretzels when Matt rang in on the other line.  I assumed he was returning my call from a few minutes earlier.  He wasn’t.

Matt:  “Where have you been?  I’ve been calling you all morning.”

[Matt calling me multiple times is never a good thing, so I immediately acquired a rock in my stomach.]

Shannon:  “We’re out running errands.  Apparently my phone was on silent.  Why have you been calling me all morning?”

Matt:  “Have you seen the AJC this morning?”

Shannon:  “No.”

Matt:  “Well, there’s an article in there about a SWAT standoff at Kirk Road and S. Candler.  I called my parents to see if they were okay and if they knew anything.  I talked to my mom.  It’s William Studstill.”

Shannon:  “Oh God.  What happened?”

Matt:  “Shannon, he killed his wife.  He was holed up in his mom’s house with a knife.  He killed his wife.”

William Studstill was in my graduating class at Decatur.  He lived down the street from Matt.  We knew he’d had mental health issues as of late, and there’d always been something off about him, but no one ever thinks that someone that they grew up with is capable of this kind of thing.  This is certainly not the story we expected to read when we woke up this morning.

News travels fast in our little town.  By the time I checked out of Liam’s doctor at 2:50, Tangie (who works at the office and also was in my graduating class) already knew and asked me if I’d heard the news.  We both knew to which news she was referring.

I’m just sitting here.  Stunned.  I realize that I am truly a mother now, because my first thought was how awful his mother must feel.  He is her only child.  Then I thought about his wife’s parents.  I cannot imagine how any of them feel and hopefully I won’t ever have to.  I definitely hugged Liam a little bit harder today.