Did I mention here that my 8-year old daughter wears glasses now?

When Grace was in kindergarten, her teacher would explain to me that Grace complained about her forehead hurting.  I would say things like, “Yes, she does that sometimes.  I think she needs to drink more water.”

Grace herself would complain to me about her forehead hurting and I’d say something helpful like, “Yes, you need to get more sleep,” or “Really?  Maybe you should eat more protein.”

The truth is I was convinced she was a hypochondriac, complaining about her head hurting because she didn’t really want to go to school.  I didn’t believe her at all.

So, earlier this year Grace informed me that sometimes her eyes didn’t work quite right.  I quizzed her and she explained that she couldn’t always quite see the board at school.  I didn’t believe her.  At all.

With much internal eye-rolling, I made an appointment for her to see the eye doctor.  I intended to rule out this so-called vision problem, confident that she just wanted glasses for the thrill of owning glasses.

She answered all the questions, got eye drops and endured the rigmarole involved in the exam.  Finally, the eye doctor turned to me and asked me a few questions.  I explained about the board and how I was there to rule out problems.

Then he informed me that my blue-eyed girl is far-sighted, meaning she can see distances quite easily but cannot see close up very well.  Since she is young, her muscles compensated for her vision deficit, but the doctor said she didn’t really need glasses since she had no complaints.

That’s when I remembered the headaches–the same headaches she still complained about but that I had totally dismissed for two years.

“Uh, well, she does complain her head hurts during school.  Would that be related?”

I’m pretty sure the eye doctor rolled his eyes at me.  “I gave you an opportunity to mention any problems she was having . . . ” he said.

“I know, but I never connected the two things . . . ” I said.

So.

My daughter got glasses.  Her forehead doesn’t hurt at school any more.

I disqualified myself for the (non-existent, I hope) Mother of the Year Award.

And about once a week I have to take her forgotten glasses to school when she realizes she doesn’t have them with her.

Now.  Don’t you feel better about yourself?

I bet you haven’t let your baby suffer with headaches for two years because it never occurred to you to have her vision checked out.

Every night when I put her to bed–in a big rush because by bedtime I am finished, just finished–she asks, “Are we going to do anything tomorrow?”

She just wants to know what the day will bring.  (She always hopes that it will bring McNuggets and a Kit-Kat candy bar and possibly a new stuffed animal.)  Once she has the information, she snuggles under her blankets and says good-night.  She can sleep in peace when she knows what tomorrow will hold.

I’m the same way.  I’d really like to know exactly what the future holds.  That’s why this past year has been particularly difficult for me.

A little longer than a year ago, our lives became shrouded in a fog of uncertainty.  We didn’t know where my husband would be working.  Therefore, we didn’t know where we would be living.  Those are two pretty big deals.

I slept away some of my dismay.  I fed my anxiety a lot of cookies and ice cream.  At long last and in slow-motion, the answers came.

And now we know what is going to happen–it’s begun to happen already.

He has a new job.  We know where we’ll live.  It’s just a matter of getting from here to there, picking our way through the landscape of smaller uncertainties:  will the children adjust?  who will rent our house?  what moving company will we use?  what schools will the kids attend?

He moved to California four months ago.  In four and a half months, we’ll join him, so this long stretch is nearly halfway done.  I’m starting to wonder where I’ll grocery shop and how hard it will be to adjust to sharing a closet again.

This all reminds me that even when I don’t know what the future holds, I know Who holds the future.  And that is some comfort in the midst of all the unanswered questions.

Yesterday when I picked her up after school, she looked distressed.

“How was your day?”

“Fine.”

But I could tell it was not fine.  Her pale face betrayed her.

“What happened?”

It turned out that she got in trouble for kicking a first grader.  “She kicked me first!” she said with outrage.

Miss Lynn, the educational assistant who supervises them while they wait to be picked up, didn’t care.  She told Grace that she may need to speak to the counselor the next day because there is no reason to kick anyone, even if they kicked you first.

And, to add insult to outrage, Grace confessed she’d also gotten into trouble when she ran into the multi-purpose room to wait for pick-up.  “But someone was CHASING ME!”  Running is not allowed in the school hallways.

With that, she burst into tears.  She hates to be in trouble.

And I tried not to laugh.

I know.  But I can’t help it.  My poor girl keeps getting herself into trouble with her overactive sense of justice and her propensity for vigilantism.  She cannot understand why she should be in trouble for meting out apt punishment for bad behavior.

Of course, I tell her that she cannot kick someone just because they kick her.  I tell her to yell, “HEY, STOP KICKING ME!” so the other person gets in trouble.  And then fake cry.

I direct her to tell a grown up.

I shake my head and purse my lips and remind her not to get involved when one friend shoves another because it’s not her problem.

But secretly, I’m kind of glad she’s the kind of kid who will kick someone who kicks her first.  She is a girl who stands up for herself and will not timidly allow someone to behave badly around her.  She’s feisty and will instantly get involved when she sees friends shoving one another . . . and she will shove one of them on the behalf of the other.

She is a bossy, indignant kind of girl.  She’s my kind of girl.

If you kick us, we will kick you right back.

Consider yourself warned.

I was a creative child.  I was a creative teenager and a creative college student. (Really.  I have proof.)

I was even a creative young mother, an avid collector of craft books who led my uncooperative boys in art projects.  I painted dressers and stenciled walls and wrote prose and composed music.  I pored over recipe and gardening books.

But now?  Now I fear the riotous color of my life has been painted neutral, just like the walls in my house.

I am boring.  Boring, I tell you.  Void of ideas, empty of that flash of inspiration, just plain dry as desert sand.

I am also worried that I don’t have a creative bone left in my body.  They’ve all been replaced by plastic and metal that will set off alarms at the airport.

My life is a straight line of delivering kids to school, buying groceries, doing laundry, vacuuming, working at the computer, cooking a boring dinner, cleaning up after dinner, napping and working some more.

Bore.  Ing.

I’m a bore.

Will I ever have a clever thought again?  Will I be able to string together a necklace of words that shimmer even on an overcast day?

I either have to make peace with this dull turn of events or figure out a way to locate my missing creativity.

And I’ll do that as soon as I find the time.  (In other words, in about twenty years, give or take three months.)

Last week was my birthday.  My husband flew home from southern California to celebrate with me.

Thursday, while I worked during the afternoon, I sent him out on some errands.  He was kind enough to take my van for an emissions test and then for a car wash.  (I have an inexplicable aversion to car washes.  I blame my long-dead father.)

Since my husband has moved, he no longer has a regular set of keys that includes house-keys.  I handed him a single van key as he left on his quest.  Perfect.

Later on, after I finished worked, we gathered up our four kids and climbed into the van and went to eat at Red Robin.  A nice time was had by all.

We returned home at about 7 p.m.  As I emerged from the van, I heard my husband say from the shadows of the sidewalk leading to our house, “Do you have the keys?”

The keys.

By that, he meant a house key.

No.  I did not have the keys.  I left my complete set of keys hanging in their usual spot on the refrigerator.  I didn’t grab them because I wasn’t driving.  Why would I take my keys?

“Why didn’t you bring your keys?” he asked.

“Twelve years of habit,” I answered.  I could tell he totally thought this was my fault.  I absolutely believed it was his fault.

No problem, I think.  My teenagers have a separate entrance to the house and they habitually forget to lock their doorknob.  (They have a deadbolt with a number combination.)

But, not this time.  This time, in response to my husband’s reminder, they locked the doorknob and the deadbolt.

The patio door was locked.  Every window was locked.

My 8-year old daughter began to cry.  One of her many fears is being locked out–or locked in.  I assured her we’d get in, that there was no problem, that everything was fine.

My husband left us all in the cold, dark driveway and drove to his handyman friend’s house.  (He couldn’t call him because he’d inadvertently erased all his contacts from his phone.)

The rest of us stayed behind to mill around and leave fingerprints on all the windows as we tried to break into our own house.  Within a few minutes, we were joined by two teenagers–one who came to visit and one who came to spend the night.  My neighbor and his son came from down the street after his wife read my Facebook status about being locked out.

Meanwhile, I called another friend and he sent me the number of a locksmith.

Long story short, the locksmith arrived.  He could not pick the locks of either door.  (They were too new, he said.)  He ended up having to drill a hole in the doorknob, thus destroying it.

Forty-five minutes and $120 later, we were back into our house.

Now, who is to blame?

Me, for not bringing my own set of keys even though I never bring keys if I’m not driving?
Him, for not realizing that he only had a van key and no house key?
The teenager for locking his doorknob?

We managed not to fight over this stupid incident . . . when you’ve been married as long as we have you look at these situations as opportunities for a great Facebook status or material for a blog post.  As someone on Facebook pointed out, “Everyone needs a good Locked Out of the House story.”

Now we have ours.

I went to see “The King’s Speech” today.  It’s that time of year when I attempt to see the movies that are nominated for an Academy Award.  (I try to see the movies featuring the actors nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, too.)

Seven gray-haired couples were in the theater with me, including one couple that came in late, said, “HAS THE MOVIE STARTED?” even though it clearly had started, and then talked in the very loud voices characteristic of the hard-of-hearing. Fun times.

The movie deserves the accolades it has received, by the way.

(I’ve also seen “The Fighter” and “Black Swan” and “True Grit” . . . all good movies but deserving of their R-ratings, so beware.)

After the movie, I drove to my home-away-from-home, also known as Home Depot.  Today I purchased two small containers of walnut-colored paint for the scarred windowsills in two bedrooms.  I also picked up a floor lamp for the Boy Cave.  Then it was time to pick up Grace from school, cook dinner (homemade spaghetti sauce) and help Grace make a photo collage of her life since she is Student of the Week, an honor she’s been waiting for all year.  They go in reverse alphabetical order.

After dinner, I attempted to put up a curtain rod in the Boy Cave.  Their window had been covered with battered shutters.  I removed those and thought I’d simply put up a curtain rod and some tabbed curtains.  Easy peasy, right?

No.  No, because the curtain rod hanger-things (what are they called?  hooks?) that were installed by the previous owner are 84 inches apart.  I don’t know if you’ve purchased a curtain rod recently, but the adjustable size goes up to 84 inches.  I bought one but it was too flimsy and fell apart when stretched to 84 full inches.  (Mind you, the window itself is probably 72 inches.  An 84-inch curtain rod should work fine, except those dumb curtain-rod hanger-things are spaced so far apart.  And since the walls have already been painted, I don’t want to remove those things and move them closer.)

I thought maybe I just need a sturdier rod . . . and stupidly bought another 84-inch rod.

I spent some frustrating, sweaty time trying to get that thing to work.  I even pulled out the duct tape.  It doesn’t have to be permanent.

But no.  That did not work.

I resorted to duct taping a roll of cheetah-print wrapping paper onto the window itself.  It’s very classy.

Tomorrow I guess I will buy a very very very long curtain rod . . . which will probably still sag in the middle because it’ll need a center curtain-rod hanger-thing which I do NOT want to screw into the wall because I don’t have a drill anymore because someone lost the drill-bit a few years back (and by “someone” I mean someone other than me).  I am |<- – – ->| this close to stapling the curtain to the wall.

And now it’s almost 1 a.m. and I’m so sad about that because tomorrow a different painter guy is coming here to pain the family room ceiling and the master bedroom ceiling at 9:30 a.m.  And I will be tired when I wake up.  Again.

This house is trying to kill me.

Last night I could not fall asleep.  At 2:30 a.m., I turned the television back on and watched an episode of “House Hunters International.”  A Canadian couple was searching for the perfect vacation home on a Honduras island.  I think.

I fell asleep some time after 3:00 a.m.  My iPhone alarms were set for 6:05 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.  The first time I woke up, I checked to make sure my 12-year old was up for school.  Then I went back to bed.  The next time I woke up and got dressed so I could open the door for the carpet-installer guy.

At 8:17 a.m., while in the middle of writing a snide comment on Facebook about the lateness of the carpet-installer guy, his white van pulled into my driveway.  He was due to arrive between 8 and 8:30 a.m., so he was right on time.

I welcomed him into the echoing Boy Cave.  Last night, we had to move all the furniture out of the Boy Cave into the family room:  2 twin-sized beds, one full-size electric piano, two end tables, one computer desk, two IKEA chairs, and a small kitchen table holding an enormous old television set.

(Yes, moving all that stuff from one room to another was just about as much fun as you are imaging.)

After the guy had a good look at the room and I explained where the various doors led (storage room, laundry room, family room, closet, heat pump), I told him I’d be upstairs, probably sleeping.  And that’s what I did.  I went upstairs and made my bed and then sort of slept under the spare comforter we keep on the bed.  The noise from downstairs sounded like he was hammering off the roof of the house.

By noonish he was done and gone.

So, I got out my newish vacuum cleaner so I could vacuum all the bits and fuzz from the new carpet and the brush wouldn’t rotate.

I’ve had this trouble before and it’s weird because sometimes the brush rotates and sometimes it does not.  This problem is quite maddening.

I had the good sense to turn to the Internet where I learned from a Google search that there are TWO BUTTONS on that vacuum cleaner.  There is a red power button and right below it was another button in a shade of gray that perfectly matches the handle all chameleon-like.  I never, ever noticed that particular button before.  And do you want to guess what that button does?

It turns on the rotating brush.

Sometimes, unbeknownst to me, I accidentally turned it off and other times, I accidentally turned it on usually while turning the vacuum on its back and smacking it around and growling in annoyance because the brush wouldn’t turn.

In due time, the room was vacuumed and the furniture was returned to the room only slightly rearranged.  (My teens were adamantly opposed to moving anything from its original position and lucky for them, the television had to stay in place because of the cable connection and thus, everything else had to stay pretty much the same, too.)

(Oh!   Did I mention that the door to the heat pump won’t open at all because it is now obstructed by the height of the carpet?  Oh, yes, real fun.)

This was the final big household improvement, so now the real estate agent comes on Thursday to take a look and very soon the house will be on the market and then I’ll be bobbing in that curious space between terror that the house won’t ever sell and fear that it will sell too soon because then what will we do?  Negotiate a closing date, sure, but what if, what if, what if . . . we’ll live in our KIA van?

Adding to the delight of this day (during which I worked nine hours), my 8-year old was home sick.  She has a cold and was sick enough to stay home but not sick enough to stay in bed, so she interrupted my work-day a hundred million times and then tried to convince me to take her to McDonald’s for dinner.

And tonight, even though she seemed so bored all day, she asked if she can stay home from school tomorrow.  And I said no, but even as I looked at her while saying it, I noted the dark circles under her eyes and her reddened nose and realized that missing another day of second grade probably won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Plus, that would mean I could sleep in.  So, there’s that.

On a day when I’m feeling sorry for myself (for perhaps a ridiculous reason, though maybe I’m justified), I hear horrible news about someone’s personal tragedy.

And how can I complain?

But I still feel pretty gloomy so I eat cookies.

And then I feel worse because . . . well, cookies make you fat.

Circling around makes me dizzy, but unfortunately does not make me any less fat.

(And then I think who cares if you’re fat . . . at least _____________________ [insert super awful occurrence] didn’t happen to you.  You should be happy!)

But thinking that doesn’t actually work very well.  Reverse self-pity fails again.

I started babysitting when I was ten years old.  I was left in charge of children younger than me and paid with a pile of coins on my dresser.

When I was fourteen, I rode a twelve-speed bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco.  (My stepmom accompanied me, my brother and a sister.)  For vast stretches of Highway 101, I was utterly alone, pedaling on the shoulder of the road as cars and trucks whistled past, sometimes blowing gravel into my face.  We slept in sleeping bags . . . and didn’t even bring a tent along.

When I was seventeen, I spent a night alone in the Miami airport while waiting for my connecting flight back home to Seattle.  (I’d been in Jamaica on a missions trip.)  I can’t imagine my boys in the same situation.  (I do remember some scary moments encountering overly-friendly men, but I simply set my chin and strode away as if I had somewhere important to go and something important to do.  Seventeen.  Imagine.)

So, I suppose it’s no wonder that when I was eighteen, my dad bought me a bus ticket and drove me to the local Greyhound station and sent me off to college.  I rode that bus for days and nights, traveling totally alone to Missouri from Washington state. I’d never even seen the college before I arrived.

I can’t believe how loosely my parents held me as I grew up.  I was allowed to circle my neighborhood on my banana-seat bike from the time I could ride without training wheels.  As a teen, I had a curfew but also  the freedom to ride around with my friend, Shelly, in her old yellow Volkswagen bug whenever I wanted to go.  I rode public transit into Seattle.  I rode my bike miles and miles and miles without ever telling anyone where I was going.

Now that my own kids approach the age of eighteen, I have no idea how to act.  My own upbringing offers no helpful hints.  I would never have allowed the young me to have the freedom that I was granted.  (Or maybe no one ever really noticed me since I was never any trouble.  That’s a possibility.)  On the other hand, nothing bad ever happened to me.  Aside from a few scares from weird people and a lot of catcalls from passing cars, I was able to navigate the world without harm.

How do parents do this?  How do you know whether to throw your kid into the pool and let them thrash around or whether to cradle them in your arms as you inch slowly down the steps into the shallow end?  When do you let go?  How do you let go?  Clearly, there is some middle ground and that’s where I’m trying to stand.

But it’s hard.

Hard to let go, hard to hold on, hard to imagine my kids in the big wide world without me right there whispering suggestions in their ears and reminding them to flush the toilet and brush their teeth.

I don’t know how my dad did it.  He gave me the gift of independence.

He was brave to let me go.  (I didn’t know until much later how much that cost him but that’s a story for another day.)

The painter never showed up today.  And he never called.

I know he will be back tomorrow . . . I think he will be back tomorrow . . . I have no reason to believe he will not be back tomorrow.  (Will he be back tomorrow?)

I will be relieved when the painting is finished.  My room has one unpainted wall and then the Boy Cave is the final task.  And it’s a pretty big task.

I have spent so much time in that room removing items, cleaning, moving things.  Paint, carpet and then we’re ready to put the house on the market.  I think.

In keeping with my insidious plan to drive myself crazy, I have scheduled another appointment for myself tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m.  I wish I’d stop making Monday appointments.  The precious hours between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Mondays are my only “free time” anymore . . . and I keep squandering them on grown-up things like eye appointments and dental appointments.  It’s maddening, really.

And now, it’s almost 2 a.m. and the eye doctor is going to scold me for having bloodshot eyes but it’s NOT MY FAULT.