Please don’t take it personally, but I don’t want to hear about your dreams.  My daughter likes to tell me about her scary dreams and I try to follow along, I really do, but I just can’t keep up.  I get distracted.  Is a dream really interesting to anyone other than the dreamer? Not really.

But . . . I have to tell you about this dream I had.

I am a hypocrite, an inconsistent weirdo.  But this dream made me laugh, even hours and days later.

In my dream, I was crowded into my Bible college cafeteria.  Why?  Who knows.  But in the dream, I said, “It’s so crowded in here we’re all going to need birth control!”

(I woke up thinking that was hilarious.)

In my dream, I ended up getting interrogated and then kicked out of the Bible college because of that joke.

Getting expelled (in my dreamworld which was not a dreamworld at all but more of a nightmare-world) was traumatic and upsetting and distressing . . . but then I’d think, “It’s so crowded we’re all going to need birth control” and amusement would tamp down the anxiety and I’d admire my subconscious mind’s sense of humor all over again.

Does your sleeping self ever make jokes?

Now, in my spare time, I have something new to worry about.

I worry about Annabelle.  Is she lonely?  Does she have enough to do?  Does she need company?  Is she comfortable?  Is she happy?  Does she need a companion?

Yes, I have spent valuable brain power pondering the emotional state of the guinea pig that lives in my daughter’s room.  I feel responsible for the rodent’s happiness; nevermind that Annabelle doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know what “happiness” even means.

Meanwhile, Roy is clearly unhappy, judging from the stink eye she gives me when our paths cross.  Roy the Girl Cat slinks around like a schizophrenic striped ham with legs (no tail!) who is trying to avoid a coyote.  Roy has a personal problem, some mysterious angst she expresses by peeing on dirty clothes the boys leave in their room.

At least that is my theory.  How else can you explain cat pee on the boys’ laundry?  Surely Chestnut the semi-sane cat isn’t doing that?  Though who can tell?  If you have more than one cat or child, you never really can get to the truth of things without a little cooperation.

When I was a child, someone in my family left the back gate open.  I don’t know why that was such a crisis–maybe a dog sneaked into the back yard and left a deposit?–but my dad was so upset with us and demanded to know exactly who left the gate open.  I know it wasn’t me.  And my brother and sister also denied responsibility.

So, my dad spank*d each of us with a ping-pong paddle for the first and only time I remember.  When no one takes the blame, everyone feels the pain.  (Hey, that sounds like an actual slogan, but honestly, I just made that up.)

To this day, no one has confessed.

(I blame the cat.)

The night air has cooled.  I can almost imagine a changing of the seasons, especially since the sun is setting earlier and earlier.  Soon, it’ll be dark at 5 PM and Christmas will come and go and we still will have no reason at all to wear a coat around here.

It’s been almost three years since my husband accepted a job here and moved, leaving me behind with the kids and pets and the task of packing up our house while preparing to sell it.  The whole family has been here for just over two years, long enough that the walls could use some paint and the dishwasher died and stuff seems to be piling up.

I never, ever think “I hope it doesn’t rain” because it just doesn’t usually rain.  I know my way around, though from time to time I do get my house numbers here confused with my house numbers there.  Which is weird.

My friend, Diane, once told me it takes a good five years to really feel at home somewhere and I suppose that’s true.  It certainly has never taken me less time.  So I try not to notice that some days go by and I haven’t talked to an adult other than my husband.  I assume that everyone here knows everyone else and that when the music stops, there will be no vacant seats.

Musical chairs.  Remember that game?  When the music stops, you have to scramble for a chair or you’re out of the game.

I guess I feel . . . out of the game.  Sidelined.  Sitting on the couch, wondering if someone will talk to me.  Yet knowing that the responsibility is mine.  And I’m too afraid, too tired, too busy to strike up a conversation.

And when I do have a conversation, it just sputters and dies.  You know?  Like, you have a nice visit with someone but you walk away thinking, “I am an idiot.  Why don’t I just shut up?” or you walk away thinking happier thoughts but when the conversation ends, that’s it.  You get in your car alone and drive home.

So, I’m feeling lonely.  And I’m feeling abandoned by the people who seemed to be friends.  And I’m feeling guilty for the friendships I didn’t tend to long enough, those friendships that withered due to my neglect.

I’m unbelievably busy and tired and exhausted from worrying about all manner of things that I have absolutely no way to control.  Every weekend is about soccer.  My calendar has appointments marked in it that fill me with unreasonable amounts of dread.  My desk is piled with folded laundry and a suspicious stack of papers.  I have both a toothpick and tweezers in plain view of my keyboard.  My computer monitor is lined with a rainbow of sticky notes with scrawled messages and reminders.  Last night, I completely forgot to pick up  my son after work.

This is what my life has become.

I have a lot of unanswered questions.

Tonight, I had to take my daughter and one son into town.  They had to be somewhere at 6:15 PM.  I invited Lola the Dog along and she went absolutely nuts while I put on her collar and leash.  We drove to town and dropped off the kids.

I had really wanted to just drop them off and go back home and lie in bed and play Candy Crush or read or watch television or nap.  But I bossed myself around and I lied to myself to get myself to put on walking shoes and getting the dog into the car.  I promised myself that I could just drop them off and go home.  But just in case, I was prepared for a walk with the dog.

And sure enough, that trickery worked.  I dropped off the kids and drove to the beach where I easily found a place to parallel park.  Lola the Dog was on good behavior and the sun glowed orange-yellow as it slid toward the horizon.  And we walked and heard waves crash and saw the sun set and saw the moon rise.

At one point, I had a moment of clarity, a feeling that my life is good, a realization that I am too quick to entertain all these ridiculous feelings, too willing to listen to the lying liar in my head who warns me of impending doom and terror and failure.

These are the good old days.

This originally appeared on my blog on September 11, 2006.

You may want to read the comments here and here.  Here are two comments made by people who knew Thomas.

Kathy Kuveikis Kurtz September 9, 2011 at 8:05 am

I did a search today for my cousin Tom as the 10th anniversary approaches. I came across your post and wanted to say thank you for saying all the kind things about Tom. He really was a great person, a wonderful dad, but most importantly a hero. Like people have stated over time, “It is so easy to run away, but to run towards the tragedy” requires a true gift of heroism. My cousin was and is my hero always.

James Schaus September 11, 2011 at 7:36 am

I remember Tom “Las Vegas” Kuveikis as the coolest guy in our class, and a very good friend. Tom had a magnetic personality, and of course had the starring role in our high school movie project “Born to Be Wild…Starring Wheatley’s Wildest Cats”. He was also in our Sha La La music group, and was the only one of us who actually looked good in gold lame. I guess you can take the boy outta Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn outta the boy. He returned to Brooklyn to do what he loved, helping others, and he left this world what he always was, a hero. We are forever grateful for his courage, kindness, and heroism.

* * *

I am participating in the 2,996 Project, for which 2,996 bloggers volunteered to write a memorial for one person who perished in the attacks on 9/11.

Today, on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States, I remember Thomas Kuveikis.  He was forty-eight when he died, the same age I am now.

Thomas Kuveikis was known to his family and friends as Tommy.  He grew up in Brooklyn, attending Blessed Sacrament Elementary School.  He graduated from Wheatley High School in 1971 after his family moved to East Williston.

Tommy studied architecture at both SUNY Farmingdale and the Pratt Institute, though he never completed a degree.  He dabbled in carpentry, a skill learned from his father.  He joined the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in August of 1977 when he was twenty-four years old.

Within a year, Tommy made a name for himself as an aggressive, brave and tough firefighter.  His younger brother, Tim,  once said, “If I could be half the fireman he was, I’ll have a really good career.”  (Newsday.com)   He loved the action of firefighting in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood.  (His father was a legendary firefighter who died in November 2001.)

But Tommy wasn’t just a tough guy.  He came up with an idea to help a poor family at Christmas.  Starting in 1987, members of his squad visited a priest at St. Barbara’s Roman Catholic Church and ask for the name of the poorest family in the parish.  Then they would contact the family, set up a Christmas tree and provide presents.

Tommy was married twice and was about to be engaged to Jennifer Auerhahn, who described him as “sweet, funny, kind gentle and unselfish.”  His brother Jimmy wrote about him on September11victims.com website saying,

“It was really tough to lose Tommy as he became such a kind, considerate guy over time.  He was not always this way, especially in his twenties, but ‘life’s difficulties’ made him become a great human being.  He was a vegetarian, he gave money and time to Putnam County Land Trust to preserve ’special’ land . . . he loved animals, kids and good people.  Tommy was already a tremendous fireman, working in a poor area of Brooklyn, where he could experience many more fires than the average fireman, just like his father did.”

Kathy Gelman said her brother, Tommy, was “honorable, honest, humorous, humble, humane, and hero.”

In his spare time, Tommy worked as a carpenter.  In fact, he built a steam room in Squad 252’s firehouse.  He had a reputation for not charging enough for his carpentry work.  One day a year, he would donate a day of carpentry to the Putnam County Land Trust.

Tommy had one daughter, Kristen.  He had five siblings, sisters Christine, Karen and Kathleen and brothers, James and Timothy.

Tommy had been a firefighter for twenty-four years and a member of Squad 252 (“In Squad We Trust” was their motto) for five years when his squad answered the fifth alarm at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, at 9:00 a.m.  He was forty-eight years old that day.  CNN footage shows his squad pulling up to the east side of the Trade Center around 9:28 a.m.  The six members of the squad entered the north tower, rescued a man from an elevator.

Two of the firefighters’ bodies were found in the C stairwell 18 days later.  The other four men of Squad 252, including Tommy, were never found.

Today, I remember Thomas Kuveikis.  Thomas Kuveikis is one of the 343 FDNY firefighters who died on September 11, 2001.  He is a hero.  We will never forget.

We will never, ever, ever forget.

Eleven years ago, as I was fixing my boys frozen pizza for lunch before our planned Labor Day excursion to the pool, I noticed I was having contractions.

How strange, I thought.  Which is strange since I was nine months pregnant.  My due date was September 5 but I fully intended to have my baby on September 10.  I figured that would be a much more convenient time since school was due to start on September 3.

However, my uterus had other ideas.

When I review my thoughts and actions of that day, I have to laugh.  I sent my husband and the kids to the pool without me, telling him I’d join him in a couple of hours after getting some rest.  I planned to make my contractions go away.

After they left, I called my midwife “just in case,” and took a bath and waited for my contractions to subside.

Except they did not.  When I got out of the tub, the contractions were more regular.  I started tracking them in a notebook and noticed that they came every two minutes.

I thought that was strange, so I decided to check my pregnancy book to see if the length of the contractions mattered more than the intervals between them.

As I sat on my birthing ball, alone in my house, paging through my book, I started to cry.  I didn’t mean to cry but I couldn’t help it.

I called my midwife again and left her a message.  When she called me back, I couldn’t speak because my contraction was so strong.  I think that’s why she told me she’d come and check me.

I thought I’d go downstairs and wash the lunch dishes.  On the way, I noticed my boys’ bedroom was messy.  I straightened it up, stopping to breathe through contractions.  I vacuumed and made their bed.  Once downstairs, I saw a mess in the living room.  I vacuumed, kicked toys to the center of the floor and picked them up.  Every two minutes, I stopped and leaned over and breathed hard during contractions.

By the time I reached the kitchen, I realized I could not possibly stand at the kitchen sink and wash dishes.  Instead I got a bottle of water and went upstairs to wait.

The midwife arrived at about 5 PM.  I informed her I changed my mind and didn’t want to have a baby.

I telephoned my friends and told them I was in labor but not to come quite yet, that it would be awhile.  When my husband called, I told him to stay at the pool with the boys.

This, my friends, is a story of denial.

Despite that denial, less than two hours after the midwife arrived, my baby girl was born.  My husband came home ten minutes later.  My sister and my friends arrived even later.

I will never stop being amused by the fact that I was in labor on Labor Day.

And I will never stop being thankful for the daughter God gave me.

Happy birthday to my Labor Day baby!

Something happened and I thought to myself, “Self, that would make a good anecdote for that blog you write.”

And so here I am.

The major problem, however, is that I can’t remember what that incident might have been.  I’m not sure who I pity more: me or you.

Around here, things are busy.  We’re having friends stop by for an overnight visit tomorrow.  They’re from North Carolina, traveling to Mexico and so we are a handy pit-stop on their journey across time zones.  All of this means that I spent hours today trying to deal with the Dog Hair Situation and the Laundry Situation.  And for the first time in a long, long time, I don’t have baskets of clean folded laundry cluttering up my office.

The Dog Hair Situation seems  under control, but only for minutes because Lola the Dog is the fuzziest, most shedding dog that God ever created.  Fine black dog hair drifts into my eyeballs and onto my tongue.  It’s the secret ingredient in everything I cook.  (Oh, now it’s not secret.  Please, don’t tell anyone.)

Anyway, tomorrow I will use the handy-dandy Swiffer in a quick and pretty much hopeless effort to eliminate the floating dog hairs before our guests arrive.

Today’s efforts also included a Magic Eraser, Windex, a rag and a lot of sweat and trips to the recycling bin.

In other news, my kids are finishing up their second week of school.  I am finishing up my seventy-hundred-fifty-billionth week of work.  Actually, I just had my six-year anniversary at my company.  I KNOW.  Six years!

I wish I could remember what it was I was going to tell you.

Well, since I can’t, I will spare you from further wanderings through my addled brain.

I’ll be back.  And I’ll try to bring my clever anecdote with me.

I wasted this whole day.

When you grow up in the soggy Pacific Northwest you learn to never, ever waste a sunny day.  When the sun comes out and the skies are blue, you find a reason to get outside and to soak up the sunshine.  What if the sun doesn’t emerge again for a month?  That is what you think when you live there.

I doubt that impulse will disappear even though pretty much every day here in San Diego County, the sun smiles and if you miss it, you can assume that tomorrow will be Groundhog Day.  Another chance to get it right.

Still.

I feel like I wasted the day by staying inside reading most of the afternoon.  I didn’t see the sky as the sun set.  I missed everything.

I slept late and then took the dog for a sweaty walk.  Then, while I was still sweaty, I took the dog and my daughter to the pet store so we could wash the dog.

The dog does not appreciate being washed.  These days, she will walk right up into the tub, but once secured, she is not happy.  She sits down firmly, trying to avoid the spray.  I scrub her, then rinse and rinse and rinse and eventually, she tries to jump out and then she howls and then she sits again so I can’t rinse her tail and then she shakes so that I am covered in dog-shampoo scented water droplets. My plastic apron always falls off and fuzzy dog fur tickles my nose.

I brushed her before we left with my patented Smear Peanut Butter on the Side of the Refrigerator technique, so after the bath, I did my best to blot her dry with a towel and then we hurried out of the pet store.

I dropped my daughter off at a friend’s house–she’d asked if she could go once she realized I had nothing exciting planned for the day–and when I got home, I showered and then took a nap.  A NAP.  It was only 2:30 PM which is ridiculous unless you are eighty-five years old but I was tired. And I will be eighty-five in . . . well, thirty-seven years which is just the blink of an eye.  I’m tired just thinking about that.

When my husband returned home at 3:30 PM I pretended to be wide awake.  Then I read for the rest of the day, breaking only to cook and eat dinner.

So, I missed everything outdoors.  I did not hike to the top of a mountain like someone posted on Facebook.  I did not go bowling like someone posted on Facebook.  I did not explore tide pools like someone posted on Facebook.  I did not go to my high school reunion (thirty years!) like someone posted on Facebook.  I did not take my kids anywhere, see anything exciting, enjoy the weather, explore my surroundings or make today count.

But my dog smells great.

I wrote last on this blog a week ago for those who are keeping score at home.

As usual, the clock’s moving at the speed of time, leaving me exhausted and wondering why we are going so fast.  For instance, on Monday my son starts his sophomore year of high school.  How can it be back-to-school time when summer just barely started?  Especially since my Baby Boy is five years old in my mind.

Last weekend, my 10-year old daughter had a soccer tournament.  This involved crawling out of bed super early on a Saturday morning and devoting the whole day to shin guards and soccer balls.  Before the first game, the referee (who I heard is a high-powered “bulldog” attorney in real life) insisted that my daughter remove her earrings before she could play.  Normally, girls with newly pierced ears just put Band-aids over their earrings, but we hadn’t remembered to do that and so she came running across the field to me, giving me a fright because of the upset panic all over her face.

She told me she had to remove them–which was a gigantic deal because she hadn’t removed them since getting them pierced awhile back.  I said in my calm mom-voice, “It’s okay.  I can take them out.”  And then I yanked them out as gently as I could and sent her back to the field.

The tournament lasted two days and the girls almost won first place.  (They lost the championship game against a team they’d beat the day before–and the final goal was scored by a girl who made a personal foul against the coach’s daughter, a foul which was overlooked by the referee.  It was tragic.)

Saturday night, we joined some families from church at the beach where they were having a giant camping trip.  That was exciting in its own way when my daughter disappeared from the campsite . . . we found her swimming in the ocean with two friends without any adult supervision.  At least she had the good sense to be sorry when she realized she forgot to ask permission. We stayed for three hours–long enough to eat dinner and watch the sunset–and I may or may not have semi-promised my daughter that next year we’ll try to spend the night, too.  In a tent.  And sleeping bags.  Have I mentioned that I am not the camping-type?)

This week has been busy with school preparation and a weird work schedule since I’m covering for another employee and working odd hours while my husband has taken the week off (mostly).  He’s spending time with each of our kids.

Today, a friend and I took my daughter to the jewelry store where she originally got her ears pierced.  The lady there thought it was impossible that the holes had closed so quickly, so she tried to wiggle the earrings in and finally used her piercing gun to get them back in place.  My poor daughter only cried a little and reported afterward that they didn’t really hurt after the fact.  (That is a relief since the original piercing hurt her a lot for a couple of days.)

Afterward, we had a hurried brunch before I had to return to work.

This weekend we have another soccer tournament and you can bet that we will be hypervigilant about covering those earrings with Band-aids.

I just wish we didn’t have to be at the soccer field at 7:15 AM.

And then Monday morning and the first day of school.

My life is pretty much a conveyor belt speeding up while I’m shoving chocolates in my shirt and my hat and my face as fast as I can.

Last Saturday, I set my alarm to wake up at 6:30 AM.  Getting up at such an hour is painful when you’ve gone to sleep only five hours earlier.  However, a sacrifice had to be made.

This is where I went with my daughter and our friend.  Notice the oh-so-cool surfer van at the bottom of the picture.

We arrived at the beach around 7:30 AM.  SEVEN THIRTY IN THE MORNING.  Oh my.  We found a parking place easily and walked down the stairs toward the beach.  And then we practically bumped into Bethany Hamilton, the surfer we’d come to see.  She had apparently finished warming up and was showering in the outdoor shower.  A man approached her to ask for her autograph as she finished her shower and headed toward us and I heard her say, “I can’t do that right now.”

My daughter and our friend and I looked at each other, mouths open.  “Did you see that?  That was HER!”  We were kind of star-struck, I admit.

Do you know who Bethany Hamilton is?  She’s the Hawaiian surfer who had her left arm bitten off by a gigantic shark while surfing when she was 13-years old. In the ten years since then, she’s continued her professional surfing career and been the subject of both a documentary and a major motion picture.

We set up our chairs and began watching the first heat of surfers.  Four surfers at a time had 25 minutes in each heat to surf as many waves as they could.  I’m not entirely sure how points are scored, but it was fun watching them catch the waves.

Then, as we sat waiting for Bethany’s heat, I turned my head in response to some commotion and saw her jogging in my direction.  I grabbed my camera just in time to snap her picture.

I couldn’t have planned that picture if I’d asked her to please jog past my chair in slow motion.

We had the best day.  In addition to watching the surfing, we had our hair braided and got free stuff and had lunch at Dairy Queen before watching more surfing.  More and more people joined us on the beach as the marine layer burned off and the hours passed.

All in all, it was a pretty great day. (I love the shirts the surfers wore – this was the Supergirl Pro Surf competition.)

This is one of the professional surfers, preparing to surf.

And this is Bethany Hamilton, surfing while we all cheered and took pictures from shore.

And then she had to contend with the crowds when the heat ended.  I think she was lingering in the waves, waiting for the other three surfers to make their way through the crowd first.  All the surfers were mobbed for their autographs, but Bethany actually needed security to escort her through the crowds.  She was scheduled to sign autographs at 4 PM but we didn’t even attempt that since the line started forming by about 1 PM.  We heard that the day before she signed autographs in another town and some moms and their daughters waited in line for four and a half hours, only to be cut off when she stopped signing at the appointed time.

At any rate, we had an excellent time.  How much do I love living in a beach town?  (Answer:  A whole lot.)