so this is them...

it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with my personal feelings toward wearing progressive-slash-bifocal lenses, or whatever the heck they're called. it has absolutley nothing to do with conceit, or pride, or age, or even denial. it just has to do with me having to search for the tiny reading portion of the lens and never being able to find it. it just has to do with me having to move my entire head from left to right when reading so that i didn't lose that seemingly microscopic portion of lens once i did find it. it just has to do with walls, and floors, and spatial elements distorting every time i moved my head. it just has to do with things going fuzzy if i only moved my eyes to see. it just has to do with angles going from 90 degrees to 38 degrees if i didn't tilt my head just right. it just has to do with me constantly feeling like i did as a kid when i put my mum's glasses on and it felt like i was stepping across a floating floor. it just has to do with balance or a lack thereof. that is why i returned my glasses and had them change out the other lenses for just simple, straightforward, single focus, distance lenses...so i could actually see!

just for you caitlin...

liam will come and give me a cuddle in the evenings and tell me "i really miss caitlin"

i had him watch michael phelps historic swim which inspired him to want to do the same thing. his plan is to swim in the olympics in 2016. of course he was a little baffled as to why he needed to join a swim club, or even take lessons...apparently he already knows how to swim. duh?!!!

izzy trying to hypnotize you into wanting to come home.

she was so tiny - remember when she could barely see over the side of the baby pool?!

honestly caitlin, she is sooooo stinkin' spoiled. even as i type this she is at my side whining, yipping and doing that low, rumbling "ggruufff" thing she does when she wants your attention. ok, she's gone to pout on a pile of towels...oh, and chew connor's headset...gotta go...bad dog!!!!!

i'd like the humble pie. and can i get a side of crow to go with that...

so my head is usually in some kind of haze. seeing clearly, emotionally or psychologically, has never really been my strong point: i'm used to that. but in recent months i've noticed that my actual vision, the ability to read my abc's, has been getting more and more fuzzy. i mean i can still make out what most of the street signs say, peoples faces are still three demensional and i'm not checking out the large print books from the library quite yet, but i have noticed that the edges of just about everything seem soft and fuzzy 99.9% of the time. at first i tried to blame it on my eyes just being tired, i know, denial, but when i recently became aware that i was doing the whole eyebrows-raised-neck-drawn-back-arm-extented thing i had watched my father do when he'd misplaced his glasses i had to admit that my time had finally come...about the only thing i could see clearly was that a visit to the optometrist was probably a good idea.

appointment made...suspicion confirmed...new frames ordered. and to tell you the honest truth i don't even mind that i have to wear glasses. they have so many cool styles stamped with hip designer names...and word on the street is, there are those who choose to wear glasses even if they don't need to - they wear them as a fashion statement. professionals even wear them in an attempt to look smarter, to be taken more seriously.

so i really don't mind wearing glasses for the rest of my natural life...it's just that i had always kind of prided myself on having pretty good eyesight. i could see things way off in the distance that others couldn't. most of my family wears glasses, many from a very young age, and if i was being completely honest, (which i'm not), i would probably admit that i have sometimes felt just the tintsiest bit superior because i was born with "the good eyes". it's not like i mocked or poked fun at the occularly challenged when i was a kid, but i was hugely relieved that it was julie hurnell who failed the school's vision test in the seventh grade and not me.

but life seems to have the ability to serve you up a heaping plate of humble pie in such a way that makes you wish you had nibbled on it a little more as you went along, rather than having to down it all at once! not only did dr. tieu inform me i needed glasses...but she dared use the B-word...she casually tells me she is writing a script for...BIFOCALS...progressive lenses is the new feel-good term for them, (beware the sheep in wolf's clothing). "oh, they're no-line bifocals" she assures me...like that's supposed to erase the 10 years i had just instantly aged at the meer mention of them!

of course hindsight being 20/20...i now realize that if i'd had to get glasses back when i was 12 i could at least have blamed it on genetics; now the only thing to blame is age. father time can be a little cruel sometimes. he has a sense of humor that i don't always appreciate. personally i think it's an abuse of power! but what can you do? what can i say but...

BRING IT ON OLD MAN...BRING IT ON!!!

i guess we all have our crosses to bare...

::

caitlin left for australia

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we switched to 8:00 a.m. church

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liam is reading twilight

::

lost: coolness factor. last seen at the 4:80 showing of mama mia...

ABBA hit it big during my early teen years. they were HUGE! everybody loved ABBA; even if you didn't really want to you somehow got sucked into loving ABBA. i remember me and chizzy de palma dancing and lip-syncing to Fernando and Dancing Queen at our 7th grade talent show. the crowd loved us, (what can i say, it was 1976, kids were easier to impress). ABBA was cool, er-go, we were cool.

the whole ABBA revolution thing has been in the works for a number of years now. made all the more acceptable because of a little production called "Mama Mia" - the play inspired by, and written around, various ABBA hits. it's been ABBA Gold all over again.

a few years ago one of those record-company-produced teen bands even tried to muscle in on to the act - i remember the surprise on my girls' faces as i began to sing along to one of the ABBA remixes...they were astonished that i knew all the words. "how do you know the words to that song?" they asked, and i did the whole autobiographical when i was your age... thing. i could tell by their nods that they were really impressed with my ability to retain so much of my memory from the olden days. i could tell they were equally impressed that i knew more of the words than they did; i watched, delighted, as my coolness factor rose on that parental barometer kids tend to wear on their sweet, but ever questioning, pre-adolescent faces. i felt a surge of victory...i was well on my way to being a cool mum.

fast forward to july 2008, gilbert arizona, the 4:30 showing of "Mama Mia: the movie", the hollywood version of the popular broadway production. we made it a girls afternoon - annette and i went with our girls and a couple of their friends. we, annette and i, were so excited. you might even say giddy; we'd heard how good the show was, we were looking forward to the nostalgic trip down memory lane, and, in our defense, we even warned the girls that we could not be held responsible if we felt compelled to sing along. their look said it all, "you better not!!!"

well WE DID! we sang! we couldn't help ourselves - it was fun; we laughed, we cried, we clapped, and then laughed some more...and heaven forbid, we sang! not loudly. and we certainly weren't alone in our efforts. but i guess we sang loud enough for maddie and roxy to hear. loud enough for them to give each respective mother "the look". the one that says, "oh. my. gosh. are you serious?", with it's accompanying elbow press to the ribs, and a hushed but still threatening "SSSHHHHH". but the best part was...we didn't care!! we were in our own little 70's world...and we didn't have kids telling us what to do. it was great! i actually found myself wishing i was meryl streep - up there full of life, letting it all out, not really caring what anybody thought.

when we got out of the movie annette and i realized that the parental barometer on our girls' faces was leaning towards the negative. at first i was a little disappointed to find out that our daughters thought of us the same way we used to think about our mothers...not cool!

but i've been pondering this cruel irony in the days since. this snag in the delicate fabric of motherhood. and i have found solace in a little thing called karma: the philosophy that what goes around comes around. and so i say...look out girls...because in about 30 years some hollywood mogul will have this bright idea to resurrect the spice girls and....well, i think you know how the story goes...