I did not grow up in this town, but walking onto the middle school campus today felt like a flashback to my own middle school years. No wonder I felt nervous and wondered if I had on the “right” clothing. I had a meeting today with a group of people who would decide if my son, TwinBoyB, needs “special services” as they call it. And I started all this. What was I thinking?

TwinBoyB is a great kid. He’s generally easy-going and sweet–except for the constant score-keeping. (“That’s not fair! He got more than me!”) And he makes a lot of noise and puts too much salt and pepper on his food. And he never closes the cupboards in the kitchen. And he leaves shoes here and there and then can’t find them. Other than that, he’s a good boy. Except, the more I’ve been working with him here at school-at-home, I see how disorganized he is, how he loses focus, how his memory fails him, how he is unable to communicate in written words. I couldn’t figure out if I expected too much of him, or if I expected too little. I read Mel Levine’s books about learning disabilities and saw my son in many pages.

So, awhile back, I asked the principal of the “Virtual Academy” if there were someone who could evaluate my son for learning disabilities. The school district is required by law to offer services to its pupils. Then suddenly, a woman called and scheduled an evaluation. I was to be there with my son. I said, “And who will I be meeting with?” She told me it would be a whole team.

I panicked. That wasn’t really what I had in mind. I just wanted one person, preferably a person who specializes in learning disabilities, to evaluate him. So, I called and postponed the meeting. That meeting finally occurred today.

I did not bring my son. He would have been mortified to sit in a room full of adults while they discussed his shortcomings. It wasn’t even an “evaluation”–it was a meeting to decide if he needs an evaluation.

In the room we sat in a circle of classroom desks with those little baskets on the bottom. In attendance were the virtual academy principal, a psych intern, the school nurse, the main psychology person, a woman with a title I can’t remember–pupil services?–the special education teacher, and an occupational therapist.

I described my son’s difficulty with handwriting, with composing, with spelling, with attention, with organization, with comprehension. They asked to look at samples of his work, which I provided. They listened, they peered at his scrawled writing, they asked some questions and then they basically told me he sounds like an average sixth grade boy.

They were all very nice, so I didn’t feel as if I wasted their time, exactly, but I did say, “Boy, I feel like I wasted your time,” and they assured me that wasn’t the case. I think they minimized his difficulties and have no clue about the work Mel Levine has done. Based on his test scores in third grade, they said he sounds like he’s not eligible for special services. I explained that I thought I was already doing what he needs by schooling him at home and they seemed to agree. They’re going to email me with more ideas on helping him.

So, I guess we carry on. He’s fine and dandy and the fact that he can’t compose, spell, use spacing in his writing, capitalize, punctuate, organize this thoughts, comprehend written work, and stay on track is just the way a sixth grade boy is. We will continue to work and work and work and hope that one day, he doesn’t end up living in a cardboard box under a bridge.

Now in other news . . .

The Cold Fairy has distributed colds to everyone in my world. DaycareKid has a gloppy nose, coughing sort of cold. Babygirl has a cold with no symptoms other than her crabby disposition. She threw two fits today, which is unusual for her. She planned to ride home with DaycareKid and his mom and was furious with me when I plucked her out of the back seat of their car and brought her back into the house. My timid child is outgrowing some of her timidity, apparently. The twins both have colds, mild ones, enough to slow them down and distract them from their school work. And I have the sore throat, stuffy nose, run-down blues. My husband had his cold last week and YoungestBoy seems immune.

Despite all that, I agreed to do some transcription tonight, which explains why I am at the computer and not curled in my bed, gazing at David Letterman. But now, I’ve done all I’m doing and off I go, so that in six hours, I can start this all over agin. Oh joy.

I am extremely delinquent in keeping my blogroll up to date. But I want to introduce you to three blogs I adore.

Anvilcloud is one of the few men on my blogroll. He is a Canadian who writes lovely prose and takes amazing pictures. Check him out here.

I just came across this blog today. “Feeble Knees” is a thirtysomething year old Christian woman who is a fabulous writer. She lives in Massachusetts and writes anonymously. She’s a new blogger, but I hope she sticks around.

Finally, check out Mommy Life. Barbara Curtis is a published writer, mother to twelve children (four adopted, I think) and a brand new blogger. She has a lot of wit and wisdom to share.

So, don’t say I never did anything for you. I introduced you to three great blogs!

I feel really old, but I don’t think it’s because I turned 40. I think it’s because I didn’t get enough sleep last night (my husband and I saw a late movie) and it’s almost midnight again and I still have contacts in my sleepy eyes.

This morning, I had my unruly mop of wild hair cut at 9:00 a.m. It’s still long, but less shaggy, less cocker-spaniel-like. After that, I went shopping with a $30 gift card to Macy’s, where I purchased two unmentionable items of clothing (for $15 total) and two skirts. I love the clearance racks. Not just like, but love them. (Last night, before the movie, I bought four tops (sweaters and shirts) for less than $40 at Marshalls. I am a skilled bargain hunter.)

I need to have half-days off more often. I feel almost human.

Tonight, my husband and I ate dinner at a seafood restaurant overlooking the Puget Sound. Two couples joined us and we laughed our way through our crabcakes and prawns and tempura halibut. Then we finished up with more conversation, cold coffee and burnt creme. Several times, the ferries passed by, brightly lit like floating Christmas decorations. No one made much fuss (thankfully) over me, other than three candles stuck into my dessert.

And now, the birthday festivities have drawn to a close. Tomorrow morning, Babygirl and I have nursery duty, so I’ll be blurrily wondering why in the world I didn’t get to bed before Saturday Night Live started. But if I hurry, I can be in bed, falling asleep before my carriage turns back into a pumpkin and my ball-gown becomes soot-covered rags.

How about this? An actual picture from today, courtesy of Military Mom down the street. Today, we watched SweetBaby (2 months old) while his mom went on a quick errand. Obviously, from left to right, this is Babygirl, SweetBaby and DaycareKid.

Babygirl is not bruised–she put on eyeshadow this morning under her eyes while she stood on the counter watching me get ready. My driver’s license picture is hideous, despite my use of undereye concealer.

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes. I’m sort of lame, asking for people to wish me happy birthday, but then again, if you can’t be lame when you are turning forty, when can you be lame?

Today, I peered out my grimy kitchen window into my muddy back yard and spied the orange-yellow of the spring’s first crocus. I’m a winter-wimp and I blame my upbringing here in the Pacific Northwest. I was born in Wisconsin, but in 1969,my parents abandoned the midwest blizzards and we landed here in the damp, green, overcast shadow of the Space Needle and Mt. Rainier.

That’s why I think winter should end at about the time you pack away the Christmas lights. I expect tulips to be in bloom at Easter, even when it falls in March. I want one day of snow a year, then I want green grass and shoots from perennials coming to life. None of this winter-wonderland stuff for me.

This is why I didn’t fare well in northern Michigan. I don’t snowshoe, I don’t ski, I don’t snowmobile. I don’t hunt, I don’t camp and I don’t like mosquitoes. I want the airport within an hour of my front door so I can fly off to Bolivia at a moment’s notice. (Not that I ever have.) I want three malls within an hour of my front door, not that I ever actually shop. I want a major hospital close by just in case I break a bone or need to have a kidney transplant (I never have been hospitalized).

And I want to see the first crocus before my birthday every year.

(Reminder: My birthday is coming. On Friday, I expect you all to celebrate and leave happy comments. Put it on your calendar. You must eat cake and sing the birthday song out loud and wear a pointy party-hat. Don’t be a party-pooper. I’m giving you fair warning.)

And now, a picture-story of my daughter. Run along if you’re looking for something awe-inspiring.

Every morning, Babygirl wants to get dressed immediately, unlike my boys who would spend all day in their pajamas if they could. As recently as last summer, YoungestBoy would wear his zipper footy pajamas all day, even outside in the sunshine. On Saturdays, I tell them several times to get dressed, please!

But not the girl. She wants clothes and she wants them right away. She chooses which pants or dress she’ll wear and clutches them to herself while I carry her downstairs. Then, I help her get dressed, head to toe, shirt, pants, underpants and socks.

Usually, an hour later, the socks come off.

Today, two hours later, while “washing dishes” at the kitchen sink, she pulled off her wet shirt.

An hour later, she took off her pants after she spilled water on her lap during lunch.

Shortly after that, she said, “I want to be cold.” Then suddenly, there she was, in her birthday suit, watching Sesame Street.

I convinced her to wear underpants and purple pants to bed where she napped, but when she woke up, she ditched the pants.

Then, she peeled off the flowered underpants and carried them over to her play ironing board, where she carefully pressed them using the steam setting on her play iron. Then, she allowed me to help her step back into the underpants.

But by the time my husband came home for dinner, she was nekkid again and no amount of cajoling could convince her to get dressed.

Apparently, among the youngest set, it is no longer fashionable to dress for dinner, if you know what I mean.

I’m turning forty on Friday. Forty. I keep saying that as if it will somehow make turning forty seem real to me because inside, I’m still about 22. Tonight, my husband and I had to use our fingers and toes to count out how old he is because we just couldn’t remember. (He’ll be forty-four this year.) What’s weirder than turning forty is the idea that I’m married to a forty-three year old man.

So, before I turn forty, I have to do one important thing. I have to renew my driver’s license. In person. At the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The last time I renewed it, I did so by mail. The time before . . . well, the time before!

When we first moved here, YoungestBoy was seven months old. So, he was about eight months old when I finally managed to go to the DMV to get my driver’s license. He was a baby who hated his stroller, so I struggled to hold on to him while I waited and waited for my turn. I must have waited at least half an hour, maybe longer. Holding him was like holding an octopus–he struggled to get down, wriggled against me, and found none of his baby toys even mildly interesting.

Finally, it was my turn. The DMV worker instructed me to sit at the electronic testing machine where I would test my knowledge of Washington State driving laws. I sat down and dug in my purse for the key to distracting my baby long enough to pass the test: Keys. Regular car keys. Babies like to slobber on metal, especially if there is a danger of gouging a hole in their esophaguses (esophagusi?).

I fumbled around, digging, fingernails scrapping against the crumby bottom of the bag and came up empty. No keys. A buzzing swarm of worry settled into my brain, but I figured I’d left the keys in the car when I took the baby out of his carseat. Even as I started the test, I fretted that someone had already stolen my old Buick Park Avenue which had nearly 200,000 miles on it. But the test went on.

You are only allowed a certain amount of wrong questions on that test. And after each incorrect answer, the machine informs you of your stupidity. I was doing fine, mostly fine, passably fine, anyway, until I came to the multiple choice question about my birthdate.

I chose the wrong answer.

The machine immediately froze and started laughing at me. Distressed, I saw that I had just failed the test because I didn’t know my own birthdate. I knew it, I just didn’t choose it when faced with multiple choices. Tucking my baby under my arm and my tail between my legs, I went back to wait. I took a number and then rushed to the restroom where I dumped out the contents of my purse on the bathroom floor. No keys. Then, I dashed outside, relieved to see my car still in the grimy parking lot. Sweaty now, and disheveled for some reason, I found my keys sitting on the back seat, right where I’d dropped them to fiddle with the carseat straps.

I grabbed the keys and breathlessly returned to the office where my number was being called. The bored DMV worker raised his eyebrows at me and said, “Birthdate?” I said, “January 28, 1965! I know! I know! I was distracted because I lost my keys and I chose the wrong answer!” He had mercy on me and let me resume the test. I passed.

This time, I’m going alone. And I don’t have to take a test. And I’m writing my birthdate with a Sharpie marker on my palm, just in case.

For four years, we lived in northern Michigan. One year, we didn’t see the green of grass for six whole months. As a transplanted Pacific Northwesterner, I thought I might die of frozen white boredom, but that’s not what this is about.

Just tonight, while I was transcribing a tape from my private investigator boss, I thought of the time I broke the window treatment in the mint-green parsonage bedroom where we used to live.

Living in a parsonage was fantastic in so many ways. For instance, when the preschool-aged twins flushed twelve toothbrushes down the toilet, a plumber came and fished them all out and billed the church. Or maybe he didn’t even bill the church. I don’t know, but I do know that it cost me nothing, other than my pride. We had access to a big old blue dumpster, which was a delight to me, for I could hurl gigantic things into that trash receptacle often. We’ve always generated a lot of debris, for reasons I don’t quite understand, but let’s go ahead and blame disposable diapers. And I like to purge my house, so off I’d go, trudging across the parking lot, with a burden of stuff I couldn’t wait to discard.

But the drawbacks of living in parsonage included inhabiting walls painted in dreadful colors. And what really bugged me was the window treatment in the master bedroom which hung crookedly on the large window which overlooked the rolling landscape and the rotting old farmhouse on the next hill.

One day, I took scissors to the cord I figured was responsible for the crookedness. I intended to cut the cords and tie them evenly and then, in a flash, the too-long cord whipped right through the stiff canvas, up through the hole in the metal along the top and in that blink of a moment, the window treatment broke.

I couldn’t retrieve the string and so for the rest of our years in that parsonage, the mint-green bedroom was shrouded by the broken shade, which hung limply over the window. I hated that.

Some days, I feel like I’m a fingertip away from grabbing an errant cord and then with a swoosh, it flies out of my grasp and all I can do is watch it whip up into an unreachable place. My days are like an inflated balloon that I haven’t quite tied and then just as I’m about to wrap it around my fingers and knot the end, it flaps out of my hand and burbles through the air in a crazy, curly path. The hours are soap that slips from my hand and into the tub, where it skitters away just as I think I have a grasp on it.

Just today, I walked into the house and encountered YoungestBoy who seemed to have grown a few inches since this morning. I grabbed his blond head and said, “Quit growing! You have gotten taller since I saw you last!”

My days are getting away from me. The rollercoaster is about to crest and then I know the second I hit forty (on Friday, don’t forget!), time will zip by even faster and I will never ever get a tight grasp on my life again. All I can hear is the zing of the string whirring away, just when I thought I had a grip on it.

When I was a little girl, tucked under my pink chenille bedspread in the room I shared with my whispering sister, if I stayed awake late enough, I could hear my dad’s laughter echo down the hallway of our tiny tract house. Every night, he ate a hamburger my mother grilled for him and watched Johnny Carson’s monologue before he left for work.

He was a ship-to-shore radio operator for ITT World Communications. A few times, for reasons which remain a mystery to me, I was taken to his workplace during daylight hours. The building sat between two towns in a blackberry vine infested pasture and was built on stilts. I remember climbing a set of wooden slatted stairs to reach the entrance. Inside, I’d find myself bewildered by a dazzling array of radios and equipment with flashing lights. My dad had a cot there and he would doze until he heard the Morse code call letters of the station, indicating that an incoming ship had a message for him to relay.

He mostly hated that job, and who could blame him, really? He worked from midnight until 8:00 a.m. and then he spent the morning tinkering with radios and televisions and eventually, computers. He always ran his own shop where he fixed things that plugged in. He slept in the afternoons, if he were lucky, and just the early evenings otherwise. And then, at the last minute, after we’d already gone to bed, he’d emerge from his dark cave-like bedroom with its room-darkening shade where he wore a mask over his eyes in an attempt to block out the day, dress in a flannel shirt, and roar his irrepressible laugh at Johnny Carson’s smirking grin and raised eyebrow and jokes.

For several years, my father didn’t actually speak to my mother, though they slept in the same bed (though not at the same time). Perhaps that’s why I listened, late at night, to his laughter. It was the only time I heard him laugh.

My parents never fought in front of us, either. Once I discovered tears rolling down my mother’s cheeks while she was preparing to go out to dinner with my father. She assured me nothing was wrong, but I knew better.

It was probably around the same time that I heard them argue through the walls of my make-shift bedroom (my grandfather had built a wall and enclosed the space where our dining room had been, so I had a room of my own, nestled between the kitchen and the living room). My parents were on the other side of that wall and I heard my mother rebuke my father: “I cleaned up your vomit!” He’d had cancer and chemotherapy and she’d stood by him, cleaned him up, survived it with him and he repaid her by leaving us. Cancer had introduced him to Death and Death made him walk backwards from my mother, his wife of thirteen years, and sprint for the nearest exit. He had some living to do, and apparently we were holding him back.

Does anything end up the way you imagine it will? When my dad left, we saw him more than we’d seen him before. He took us bowling for the first time ever. We went on drives and outings. He came to my baseball games. Before a year had passed, I lived back under the same roof, listening in the dark to him hee-hawing his way through Johnny Carson’s monologue. He had a new wife, but some things never changed.

No one laughed harder or louder than my dad, but that laughter is only a memory I can conjure up in words, not sound. None of us have any audio recording of his laugh, so I can describe his glee, his exuberance, his head thrown back, his eyes watering with tears from that hard laughter, but I can’t hear it.

When I heard that Johnny Carson had died this morning, I felt the loss of my childhood and the loss of my father’s laugh. One more tangible part of my father’s history is gone, eroded away by the relentless, coming-and-going tide of living and dying. Soon, the world as I know it will be completely unlike the world my dad knew and the very idea of that changed landscape brings with it a lonesome fog of longing.

And so, off they go, into the night, while I stand here on shore, straining to hear the laughter.

For those of you who’ve been wondering (all two of you!), I read the names of the new guest columnists in our newspaper today. My name was not among them. I wasn’t even notified of my rejection formally, so I still have that feeling of “the pregnancy test says it’s negative, but my period hasn’t started yet, so maybe it’s wrong,” even though I know better.

I have been rejected again. And so I think, well, clearly this is a Sign, and not just a simple stop sign. No, this is a “DO NOT ENTER” sign with red flashing lights. I think I might be heading up the wrong direction on the freeway. Why do I keep getting into the car?

So. Fine. (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about . . . where have you been? Along with two hundred other people, I submitted two sample columnns to the local paper to compete for six guest columnist positions.)

It’s really not fine at all, of course, because a dramatic girl like me immediately draws conclusions from rejection, ludicrous conclusions, which make reckless sense to me. For example: the newspaper rejects me, so that means I am a horrible writer. The newspaper rejection also means: I am a failure at everything I attempt. After all, my kids are mouthy, my floor is gritty and my scrapbooks are hopelessly neglected. I’m not rich, famous or thin. And my husband has a cold. All of this is obviously my fault and evidence of my failure as a human being.

Stupid newspaper.

(Yes, I know I’m being ridiculous, but this is a personal journal and I reserve the right to be ridiculous. No need to tell me otherwise. Only the unblinking, reptilian part of my brain is responsible for composing this post. The rational Mel will return tomorrow, unless, of course, she decides to take up recreational vodka drinking.)