It's time for a haircut!

I had a dream last night, where I was standing in my bathroom just randomly cutting off pieces of my hair, and when I had finished I had gone from shoulder length light brown, to short, spiky black! And it was the most stylish and attractive haircut I had ever had! Spiky in all the right places and it so suited my face, which appeared at least 20 years younger! I was thrilled! Of course when I got up this morning and looked in the mirror it did make me wonder whether my inner self was telling me to cut my hair! Perhaps it's time for a change, but I think short hair demands a young, fresh face, and I feel none of that applies to me. In my mind longer hair makes me look younger, and it could be all my family and friends think the opposite, who knows? Plus I can hide behind my long hair, it's a useful security blanket at times!

Anyway, today turned into haircut day in the Wadge household. The boys go back to school tomorrow, they start pre-k, and I want them to look decent. Oliver spends most of his day peering out from between his too long bangs (fringe for my UK readers) and although his hair is very fine, he needs a good cut because it's far too long. Jamie has thick hair, and it's all over the place. It grows so fast I can't keep up with it, yet both of them hate having their hair cut and will scream and wriggle through the entire process, often ending up with a lop-sided haircut that they refuse to let us adjust!

Chuck started out cutting Jamie's hair and while it was nice and short and spiky on the top, he wouldn't let us use the razor at the back to equal it out. He let me trim around his ears and his neck with scissors and that was that! It was a buzz cut mullet! Oliver cried the entire 5 minutes he let Chuck loose on his hair, but did stop while I straightened up the edges and around his ears. I also cut his fringe so we could see his lovely blue eyes! But he wouldn't let us do anymore, and it's so hard to keep a squirming 4 year old still!

In the end I had a bright idea - and apologise now to everyone who is against bribing their children! I offered the twins a bag of Twizzlers each if they let us give them a full buzz cut! There was almost a stampede to the bathroom!! Each boy sat on my knee facing me, while Chuck got to work! In no time at all they both had really nice haircuts. They want some hair gel so they can spike it and we have promised to get that when we go grocery shopping later.

I went out into the office and left Chuck to clear up in the bathroom, (there are some perks about being on crutches) and I thought he was putting the razor away, until he shouted "Don't be mad at me!" And when I went into the bathroom, there he was cutting all his hair off!! I couldn't believe it, he looked like a convict! He'd done this before, a long time before I met him, and he had told me that he didn't have a good shaped head! SO WHY DID HE DO IT???

Perhaps someone, somewhere is trying to tell me something? Did my dream just tell me I need a change in hairstyle, or was it a forewarning about this day?? Who knows? I just know that Ziggy and I are now wary of anyone approaching us with a razor in their hand!!

They've changed!

There are a lot of children in our neighborhood, ranging from baby to 6 years of age, give or take a year or two. We try and get together at playgroup now and again, but sometimes miss a session here or there. And it's after these breaks from catching up with friends that you look at their children and invariably say "Haven't they grown?"

It's amazing to me how that happens, one minute your friend has a baby, just taking their first steps with those big diapers waddling away on their bottoms, and then you turn around and they are trying to ride a bike and are potty trained! It seems to happen in the blink of an eye, and why should I be surprised? It's the normal state of things, but it still seems to happen so quickly.

Sometimes when I am hugging my boys I say "Are you my baby?" and they invariably reply that they are not babies, they are 'big' boys!

Yesterday we were heading up to Denver, Chuck was driving and the boys were in the back watching a DVD. I turned around to see if they were OK and I realised in that instant that they were no longer babies, no longer toddlers, but boys. I could look at their faces and see the child behind the toddler, could see how they will look as they grow and move onto grade school.

Only last year they were small and a little upset to be leaving me to attend preschool, next week they start in pre-k. Where does the time go to? It's staggering. And while in many ways I miss those little bundles of joy I can now look forward to the conversations I will have with my boys! Already I love to talk with them, to watch them earnestly discussing a game or idea they have. They use their hands to describe their ideas, they have so many plans and schemes for their games it's fascinating for me to listen to them talk about it. Oliver has even started to come and apologize for his bad behaviour - without coercion - and it's a sign to me that he's getting bigger and starting to realise the world does not revolve around him and that he isn't always right and I am not always wrong or mean or horrible!!!

This past month two of my friends have lost their fathers, one in a tragic road accident and another to cancer. It has made me realise how fragile life is, how all this can disappear in the blink of an eye. It has made me want to make more effort to stay in touch with my friends, especially those that live many miles away.

We are often so caught up in our own lives, the dramas and problems, that we don't always give our friends and family the time they deserve. I know I have much to be thankful for, not least my two 'big' boys!

Something weird!

Just lately I have been receiving voice messages to my cell phone. Well, it seems silly to call it a message when the words/noises make no sense at all. I have had 3 calls in the past 2 weeks. Each time I look at the number and think.........."I know that number, whose number is that?" I have tried to call the number but can't get through. After the last message arrived last week I went through my entire address book looking for the number, and couldn't find it. But still it bugged me.

Anyway, I forgot about it and got on with life. Yesterday was my first physical therapy appointment to get my knee back to rights, and of course I arrived early to deal with the obligatory paperwork. Now I have been to this office before, so they pulled all my notes from previous visits and asked me to check and update them. And there it was in front of me, the phone number that has been used to call my cell! And do you know why it was SO familiar to me?? It was my office number! Before the twins were born I worked at HP down on Rockrimmon, and that was my office number! But I was laid off from there, didn't get to go back after maternity leave, except to clear my desk out. So I assumed one of my colleagues was sitting at my old desk trying to call me.

But here's the weird part! The entire section I worked in, is now closed completely. HP consolidated their staff, downsized dramatically and now use only a small part of the building. My area is completely sealed off. And here's the other weird thing............the cell phone I have now is not the one I had then! So how did my old office phone call my new cell phone, when the office is closed and no-one else there has my new cell phone number???

Cue the spooky music!!

The funny things they say! 2

Oliver still has an occasional accident and wets the bed.

One day, after just such an occasion I was in our bedroom changing the sheets on our bed. Oliver came in and watched me for a moment and then asked "What are you doing?" I told him I was changing the sheets (like he hasn't seen me do that before!) He asked me why and I told him they needed washing. There was a short silence and then Oliver asked "Who wet the bed, you or Daddy?"

My boys crack me up!!

The funny things they say!

After my knee surgery I was lying on the bed with my knee covered in bandages and Jamie stood next to the bed, about eye level with my knee.

He stood there very quietly for a while and looked at my knee then up at me and asked me "Can you walk mummy?" I replied "No I can't".

Small silence, then Jamie asked "Can you run mummy?" I replied "No I can't"

A longer silence while Jamie looked at me and then at my leg, then back at me when he stated "Then you can't chase me can you?" At which point he left the room with a huge smirk on his face!!

Knees, crutches and wheelchairs!

I am getting old, it's a pain in the bum, but it's a fact of life! I have been hobbling up and down the stairs lately because the pain in my knees has been escalating. I knew we should have bought a ranch (that's a bungalow to all my UK friends). The stairs are killing me! One night when I was bending down to kiss Oliver goodnight I felt something 'go' in my knee. Not sure where it went, but after that it hurt like hell and I really couldn't bend it and put weight on it at the same time. Watching me trying to go up and down the stairs without bending my legs is pretty comical!

I ended up visiting an orthopedist, a really nice guy called Dr. Stockelman. He sent me off for x-rays - normal - and an MRI - also normal, although it did show a small hole underneath the patella and a fissure at the back of my knee, all caused by osteoarthritis and my auto immune disease. He recommended an arthroscopy to clean out the knee and help my pain along. That was Wednesday, the following Tuesday I was in surgery! It happened so fast I barely had time to think about it.

Dr. Stockelman initially told me I would be on crutches for 6 weeks! I was stunned, and talked to his nurse later, who suggested I had misheard him as it was normal to be on crutches for two weeks at the most after an arthroscopy. I was much relieved! We rented some crutches from King Soopers - how strange to get something like that from the grocery store - and all was fine. My knee hurt A LOT! I could barely walk the first couple of days and found that using crutches was actually very difficult and painful! Anyway, I struggled along, hobbled around the house and waited for the swelling to go down and my stitches to come out. Two weeks after surgery I went back for my post op appointment. I wrote on my Facebook page that I was thrilled to be going to get my stitches out, that I would be running around the place like crazy and couldn't wait to lose the crutches! Silly me!

Confidently leaving my crutches in the car with Chuck and the boys I sauntered into the office to see my doctor. Almost the first words out of his mouth were "Where are your crutches?" I told him they were in the car, at which point he called the nurse to come with a wheelchair for me. I was forbidden to walk at all! He asked if I could remember talking to him after my surgery - and I couldn't - because if I had I might have recalled I didn't have just an arthroscopy. I also had something called a Pick Chondroplasty, which involved punching dozens of small holes into the bone to allow blood and bone marrow to ooze through and coat the knee in an attempt to provide a protective covering where the cartilage has been lost. He told me he often makes patients stay off their feet for 3 months and I should consider myself lucky that I was only 'sentenced' to 6 weeks!

He gave me a prescription for a wheelchair. I didn't think I needed it, but at home I couldn't even fetch myself a drink and take it back to my seat, crutches are not helpful at all in that way. We collected the wheelchair today, and while I feel kind of a fraud for using it, it certainly makes life easier - as long as I can get the boys to keep their things off the floor! Chuck has to go back to work next week, and I return to the doctor on August 27, when I hope to be able to dispose of both the crutches and the wheelchair. But this time......I won't be anticipating anything on my Facebook page before my appointment!

Reality has set in!

I am back from my trip to the UK. The cases have been emptied and put away, the laundry all done and there was such a lot of it, and this week I have spent time putting things away and generally tidying up the house. But it's hard to concentrate on much, I miss my family, I miss my friends and I miss the UK. Seeing my sister and father again, meeting the partners of my niece and nephews and their children brought it home to me that there's a whole family on the other side of the world growing up without me. I think that people who have not moved to live outside of their country of birth cannot understand how hard it is to live your life in another country.

While there are many similarities between the US and the UK they are also very different. The saying goes that we are two countries separated by a common language and nothing could be truer. I miss so many other things, apart from my family and friends. Never being more than a few hours drive to the coast. The wonderful green and lush scenery, the blossoms in the hedgerows and the small villages where you can wander around and buy bread and cake from one store, then head to the grocers for your fruit and vegetables.

And let's not forget the great British pub! Some of the best food (and beer) in the world is to be had in a British pub. There's always one close to where you live. There's no need to get into the car for everything, you can stroll down the village street or the country lane and enjoy an evening out. I miss Cornish pasties, lager and a fresh vanilla slice (it's a cake). I miss Jammie Dodgers, Garibaldi and Rich Tea biscuits (cookies for my American friends). I miss ginger cake, blackcurrant juice and Quavers! But most of all I miss the sense of humor, BBC documentaries and a news program that gives you much more information about what's happening in the world. It's hard to live your life away from all the things that matter the most to you.

The boys were wonderful on the plane, and I should not have worried about them at all. They were fine with everything. Our flight out was overnight so they slept most of the way, returning home we had a daytime flight and while Jamie slept a little Oliver stayed awake, but we were complimented by other passengers on how well the boys had behaved and how lovely they were! I know, my head is at least one size bigger!

The twins didn't always do so well during the actual vacation however. I think it was hard on them sleeping in strange beds and having their routine disrupted. Oliver in particular managed to throw a tantrum at least two or three times a day and getting them to go to sleep became a massive problem. Since we got back home I have restored some semblance of order, their bedtime is back to normal and (touch wood) we haven't had any major problems with them since we returned.

We had a mini reunion and I was able to introduce the boys to cousins of mine I hadn't seen for over 20 years. We visited Yorkshire and London, Wales and Wiltshire. I saw Stonehenge - again, in the rain - again! We went on the London Eye - the second time for Chuck and I but the first for the boys, and we were lucky in that the sun shone and the views over London were truly spectacular. The boys fell in love with Quavers (cheesy, puffy crisps) and soft whipped ice cream with a flake in. They played on the beach, in the 2p arcade - where they won lots of toys - and chased the seagulls down the pier in Whitby.

It was a wonderful holiday, I hated leaving, cried when the plane took off from Heathrow and am now wondering how to get the money together for another trip back next year!