The Po Show

Greetings from Chez Grandma

So the first week we were here in Oxnard, I unsuccessfully sought to pick up a wireless connection from some unsuspecting neighbor's router. I morosely wandered about the house and backyard, carting the laptop, trying in vain to find a signal strong enough to hook up and get my email. No luck, so I spent four weeks Unwired.

In a way it was fabulously liberating not to be joined at the eyeball to the internet. I paid much closer attention to the kids. I read 8 novels! We spent loads and loads of time out doing stuff. I honestly didn't miss it all that much. There were a few times I had to run to my brother's house to get online (like when I was notified that Tessa's gardening camp was canceled due to lack of enrollment and I had to scramble, without success, to find an alternative). These days I just don't get much email, now that my ebaying days are over. I missed my online friends (and missed some messages from friends here who needed a few reminders to remember that I could not be invited to things via email :) ), but it was kind of like detox, to be offline for awhile.

Then the other day, as I was reading the four weeks of August list digests I had copied and pasted into an AbiWord document, the laptop was suddenly connected. It had searched for and found itself a very weak but nonetheless serviceable connection. I was dumbfounded. So I had been sitting here for weeks, and I could have been online?? I didn't have to run to freaking Starbucks the other night (I needed some emergency info)?

But it's okay. As I said, these weeks have been very good and it was healthy for both me and the kids to remain offline for that time.

They have been having a wonderful time, as they always do at Grandma's (aka heaven). What's not to like when your every wish and desire is instantly fulfilled for you? How can you not be ecstatic when you arrive and already the exact Wii game you've been wanting is waiting for you, when all your favorite foods and drinks are constantly well stocked, when your favorite cousin in the whole world is here to play with you? Nice work if you can get it.

Something miraculous has happened this summer. Both of my kids are learning to swim. This is a HUGE deal. Matthew has had swimming lessons twice, but as of the week before we left NY, he still couldn't bear the thought of putting his head in the water. Tessa was still convinced that she couldn't get her ears wet. Now they both can dogpaddle (Matthew can go for 30 feet without stopping!) and are dunking their heads. Tessa's floating on her back and doing a rudimentary backstroke. It's phenomenal.

As for me, I've been throughly enjoying visiting with my best homegirls every Sunday. There is just nothing in the world like sitting, in person, with friends who know me and understand me (and still love me) the way that they do. It's like regaining a body part, feeling my blood reoxygenate.

I've missed Ross particularly desperately this trip, though. We've been apart for four and a half weeks now. He comes in a week, so that will be five and a half weeks. By far the longest we've been apart. Usually it's around 3 weeks, so I just have to get through 2 weeks, and then look forward to seeing him in another week. This time, after 2 weeks, our separation wasn't even half over. I had really hoped that he'd be able to come for a long weekend in the middle of the trip (I was really hoping he could be here for our 19th anniversary, which was July 31. We've been apart on our anniversary for the past 4 years), but it just wasn't possible. Neither one of us is a phone person, so even though we've talked every single day, it's been sad. Not to mention the fact that the only time we've gone even close to 5 weeks without sex was postpartum Matthew (we barely waited 4 weeks after Tessa was born, and she was born vaginally!). We plan to go to L.A. and spend a night, which will be lovely. We have only gone away together and stayed overnight away from the kids ONCE, and that was when Tessa was 10 months old. She's 6 years old now. I think we're overdue, but that's what happens when you live away from family and only see them for brief periods of time.

It's always curious for me to hang out in my hometown, to stay in the house I grew up in. I see my high school (now empty, as they built 2 new ones), the movie theater I used to go to (now boarded up), the houses where my friends lived. I have no idea if their families still live there. I have not been in touch with a single person from high school in years, even my very best friend. I feel like a ghost, wandering around my past, my youth.

One thing's for sure, it's a hell of lot cooler here than in NY. And we'll be back there on Aug. 21. Nothing has panned out for Ross on the job front in L.A., so we have to go back. I've resigned myself to it, and am looking at the positive aspects (Matthew is due for his tri-annual testing this fall in school, which I wanted him to have, and I had been afraid we'd have to pay for it ourselves if we moved to CA before it took place). At least the kids never knew that moving here was a possibility, and it is still a possibility, so they didn't have to be disappointed. I still feel, in my heart, that eventually we'll be back.

In the meantime, we're looking forward to going to Disneyland :).