Of Course, I May Live to Regret This

Yesterday, Finn decided he wanted to cook. So we pulled out some bowls, spoons, measuring cups, candied sprinkles, glitter, and food coloring and cleared a chunk of real estate on the kitchen floor. And then he stirred sprinkled, and poured for, really, hours. (Or maybe it was just a long series of minutes. But they were consecutively occupied by the brewing.)

He was so involved that I went into the other room and . . . did stuff.

Actual stuff.

Like, on my own.

And then I got worried. Where were the incessant pleas for mama or television? He must have sampled his own concoction and was now quietly flailing on the floor and foaming at the mouth, awash in red-and-blue-makes-purple.

I abandoned my free time--it was a little overwhelming anyway--and peeked into the kitchen to see if I had indirectly poisoned my child with lack of parental supervision.

But there he was, stirring, adding more glitter.

"Whatcha doin'?" That would be me asking.

"Making a transformer." That would be him.

He picked up another bottle, uncapped it, and add it to the brew. What was it? Garlic salt? And what was that beside the garlic salt? Onion powder? Dried basil leaves? Chili powder? Lemon pepper?

Finn had raided the spice rack and was seasoning his little Golem (and our floor) with every salt, pepper, and herby product we had.

It was a complete mess. And I was happy.

Wha?

That can't be.

I am notoriously uptight. And even if that weren't the case (stop laughing, I can hear you), I am genetically disposed to not being happy about situations precisely like this. The Mom would have thrown a righteous and glorious fit. If her spice rack had been within my reach.

So what's with the joy? I don't know. I love to see imagination run wild. I love the independence of my kid. I like glitter and I know how to work a vacuum. But I also love knowing that Finn had an idea and jumped into the spice rack to realize it. I like that my child is not a guest in his own home.

(Of course, that probably means I should lock up the liquor and the porn.)

So That Didn't Work Out So Well

So that trying to post everyday in November? Not working out so well. And that trying to lose 20 pounds before December (that I probably didn't tell you about so I would have an out)? That's not happening either. And oh, that 'I'm not teaching so I'll work on my novel this semester'? Not. A. Word. And forget the resolutions etched into a well-crafted spreadsheet last December. Haven't touched that since January 14.

Not so good with the self-promising this year. Perhaps that will be the message of my 2007 Christmas letter. Which definitely has to beat the 2006 theme, which went something like: 2006 sucks. Or maybe that was 2005. That sucked, too.

But for all the stuff I haven't managed to finish or start, there's this:

I don't work on weekends anymore.

I've been cancer-free for 1 year 6 months.

I laughed, tickled, whispered, screamed, dreamed, planned, imagined, cooked, hatched, and legoed today. And oh, wrote in this here blog thang.

And I avoided the temptation to bullet that list.

Okay, now it's out there and I don't feel all that much better . . .

I have a "meeting" today. From 4 to 5 p.m. And I must not be disturbed. The widget will be in his room, with a teeming bowl of pre-inspected, approved, and opened Halloween candy. I may even pull out that new Transformer I was going to save for Christmas.

You see now that I mean it, this do-not-disturb-me-at-nearly-all-costs thing. "Nearly" meaning blood. Or loss of limb. (Which I imagine to be bloody?) Or a radical jump in developmental level. Like native fluency in Japanese. And don't think I will not enforce it. I will. Because today, from 4 to 5 p.m., is the final episode of Charmed.

I've said it. It's out there. And yes, I do feel a touch of silly, accompanied by a tingle of confessional remorse. Maybe I should delete this post and just write about landmark vetoes and light rail.

(Oh, honey, it gets worse.)

Okay, so it's not THE final episode of Charmed. The show kinda very much ended in May 2006. It was late May.

(So much worse.)

And it's not even the final episdoe in syndication, because if what happens at 5 p.m. is any indication (Charmed runs 4 times a day, twice in the morning, twice in the early evening), the series starts over from the beginning and will continue on until, a few months from now, we'll get another final episode. (And even sooner than that because TNT offsets seasons. The morning episodes are a bit behind the afternoon shows, maybe a couple of seasons.)

(Oh, you thought that was it? You know not of whom you read.)

And sure, we own a DVR and I could just record the rerun of the final episode of this show that really isn't that critically engaging. (It's not like it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after all.) But I won't. I'll watch it "live" and I'll run to pee and heat tea during the commercials and I will aggressively shush anyone who tries to disturb Paige when she tries to orb an object across a room. And I will cry when, I hope, Leo is brought back into the arms of Piper. And I will cheer when, I hope, Phoebe finally finds love with Coop (short for Cupid. I'm serious).

And I will do all this--sugar-up my kid and shut down any meaningful dialogue with the fam and turn off my life for a full hour--and not because it means anything or holds some kind of poignant significance to/in/near my life.

But precisely because it doesn't.