Surprise!!

WE'RE HAVING A PARTY!!!  And SHHH!  It's a SURPRISE!!

In an effort to make up for lost time for almost a year and a half, we have instigated monthly "Cousin's Sleepovers".  They are great, great, great fun - especially if you are fond of having five little screaming banshees swirling around for a while.

And whew, when that door shuts as the last one leaves and the house is quiet again, I. sit. down.  Then have a few little tears because the house is suddenly quiet again.  Then Scott and I talk about our awesome offspring for a few days.

Non-stop.

Heaven help the folks in the grocery store that see us and ask us an innocent "What's happening in your world?"  And they hear about our awesome offspring that are the bestest, cutest, sweetest, orneriest kids ever.

And that's just to the sales help and cashiers that we don't know.

The ones we do know, you see them start to inch away towards the seafood section about 18 minutes into "story-time".

In February, the granddaughters and I planned a SURPISE!! birthday party for Popop, aka, Scott.  It was nothing short of hilarious watching the plans go down.  Obviously, the most fun part was the SECRET!

To get the whole shabang here, you kind of have to say that word with your hands to the side of your mouth, say it in a really loud whisper and make a sweet little lisp with the "S" sound.

Addy would call her Popop and say "we have a surprise!!"  Then she would say, "it's a secret about your birthday".  Finally, giggling and obviously holding her hand over her mouth she would say "I'm NOT supposed to tell you about your PARTY!!"

If you were to ask Addy to this day - she happily and confidently tells you she is really good at keeping secrets.

Chloe and Zoe were kind all 007 over it - they would run upstairs sliding secretly down the hallway to get different crayons to work on Popop's "surprise birthday party poster" - and they would say things such as "DON'T ask us what we are doing in the basement, Popop - it's a SURPRISE for you and you are not supposed to know".

Popop would torment them and pretend like he was going to go downstairs and they would yell "NO!" and slam the door so he wouldn't see their artwork until the proper time.

Even though they just left it lay there when it was time to go home.

It was a lot of fun.

So, for the first sleepover, I told the three older girls that we were going to have a surprise! party for Milliebeans birthday.  They were pretty good at keeping it quiet, but again a lot of giggling, a lot of planning, a lot of "what ifs".  Like, 'what if she doesn't show up?"

I told them all I would be driving her in my car, so I was pretty sure she would be there.

A month later, it's another one's birthday and so we have been furiously whispering, and planning how to yell SURPRISE! and wondering to each other just what the birthday girl might do at the moment of realization.

They just learned the term "pee myself", so that seems to be the growing speculation of what might happen with surprised birthday girls....

For the sleepover-turned-into-surprise-party planned for tomorrow night, it appears the cat is out of the bag.  You can't trust five-year-olds to keep too much under their hats.  Or in their mouths.

Actually, that's why we do it - it's so dang-gone fun to hear them plan and almost tell, plan and whisper and giggle, then plan and OOPS!  it slipped out.

Milliebeans just called me with her confession - "I was just whispering to mommy - and ADDY HEARD ME SAY IT!" she yelled into the phone.

Which is kind of remarkable, because Addy doesn't hear lower voices all that well.

Her mom said it was just like that, except for the "whispering" part......

We laughed and laughed.  Millie and me.  Addy and me.  Then her mommy and me.

Popop said "Milliebeans - you spilled the beans!"  

***

So I asked Addy what she was wanting for her birthday.  I had made her sister twin blankets to go with her Bitty Baby Twins.  I kept going and made two burp cloths.  Then a changing pad.

It turned out better than I expected after, oh, maybe a fifteen year siesta from sewing.  Not great or perfect by any means, but better than I thought it would.

When I asked Addy what she wanted for her doll, she replied immediately "A sleeping bag!!"

So, I started to make one.  Then made two.  And I thought and I thought what to add to them and suddenly my brain said "TENT!  Make a tent!"

Which in some stories is where they insert what they call "the beginning of the end".

I thought I could just whip it out in like two hours - how hard could a tent be - a couple of supports, some fabric stretched over it and Voila!  - you have a tent.

American Girl doll factory, eat your heart out.

I'm on my way to keeping $75 in my pocket.

I didn't have a pattern.  Why, why, would one spend money on a pattern and directions on something so simple??

The fool asks in her heart.

While starting to measure and cut and think and sew it all seemed to start to take shape nicely.

Then, the world tottered a little on its axis and my best laid plans crumpled on the dining room table.

I said the words "no, no, no, no, NO!" maybe 15,478 times.

I hit my head on the table a few times.  Just softly bumping it, but it fell hard sometimes when realizing the error of my way.

The mess just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.  I couldn't think of a way to remedy the flaps - simple tent flaps took well over three hours to simmer inside my brain, bubbling noisily, seeking solution.

I got out the seam ripper and ripped.  I got out the rolling cutter again and cut it down.

Then realized I didn't want it cut down.

I got out the second seam ripper because I couldn't find where I laid down the first one.

If you saw a picture of my dining room table full of tent fabric and cotton batting and cardboard that didn't work and plastic that didn't work and a tomato stake poll that didn't work - you would have also seen my kitchen scissors lying there in the midst of it all, because I mislaid two - TWO - pairs of sewing scissors.

My brain cannot remember where anything has been laid down.  I have systems worked out for car keys, makeup, kitchen knives, anything I want to find more than once.  But anything laid lazily, mindlessly, errantly aside, is gone forever in my brain these days.

And obviously gone from the home as well - I still haven't found either pair of sewing scissors.

Back to the tent flaps, I was almost in the throes of despair and desperation and very close to dialing the number on the website for the American Doll store, wondering with a sinking feeling just how much overnight shipping was going these days, when in walked Scott.

I was a pretty dismal sight.  I told him I had this spankin' idea, it all looked good in my head this morning, but it just wasn't going to work.

I asked him if he knew how much overnight shipping was now.

He surveyed the current work situation, and said decidedly: "we are going to Joann's".

Just the fact that Scott said that should raise a few eyebrows.  Scott has layers of beliefs:  God, family, country, history, baseball and the firm belief that Joann Fabrics is the seventh layer of hell laid out in Dante's Inferno.

So if you know Scott, you more than likely know his disdain for fabric stores, leaving you with the heavy knowledge that he definitely took a bullet for the team here and that I must have looked pretty dismal for those words to even fall out of his mouth.

*Decidedly*, fall out of his mouth.  

And he fixed it.  He and the sales lady found the foam board to use, along with insisting I buy enough velcro, because dangit, I. am. cheap. and velcro is expensive.  

I sat down this morning at the sewing machine and put five, ok six, more hours into a one hour job.

But it's completed, and we are decorated all up for a little party tomorrow night.

***

I was laying on the couch the other night as I have been mostly the last two weeks after 6pm, (and that's after my 3pm nap) and I told Scott I think I knew what was wrong with me the past couple of weeks.

He looked at me as only a husband can when wanting to listen to sports but knowing he needs to feign interest because his beloved wife is making a statement.

He paused the tv, looked at me, and I said:  "I think I'm allergic to radiation."

I have been wiped out the last couple of weeks.  There is the kind of 'wipe-out' when you are stressed and I know that kind and it just wasn't it.

It was very reminiscent of the kind of wipe-out you feel when your white blood cells have tanked and your red blood cells fall right down the black hole after them.  There just wasn't any energy reserve.  I didn't need to take sleep meds again.

Which has happened only twice in the last two decades of my life - the first being the six weeks I was in - feel my brain racing for connection here -- radiation - and the wipe-out period of the three months following.

So my brain is making some connections, and it connected this fatigue back to radiation.

I told him that when the scans start, I can smell the radiation.  My nose feels funny and the room feels different.  I can feel it's presence as it goes down my body.

Call me crazy, call me dense, but I know radiation, and it makes me almost sick when the machine starts to scan my body.

I continued with one more statement before he un-paused the tv.  I told him I didn't think I should have anymore scans.

He looked at me, smiled, then waited a bit.  He didn't say anything, just eventually turned back to sports.

He knows I'll go back for my follow-up scan.  I know I'll go back for my follow-up scan.  But we both know I hate the 'smack-downs' that seem to come afterwards.  

***

Someone sent me a video clip of a young pastor with brain cancer.  I watched five minutes of it, and then our electricity had to be cut because our son was working on our lights, and then Scott was home and I knew I shouldn't watch it in front of him, but I could not agree more with what the guy had to say in the first five minutes.

None of us know "our time".

None of us know the day, the hour, the place, the cause of our demise.

But if there's one thing that the last almost two years have taught me, it is the knowledge that I know I "need to number my days" and make them count, because there is a countdown going on, and sometimes, sometimes, you get a "heads-up" that it might be sooner than you thought.

It might not be, but then again it might.

We could walk outside one day and be struck by lightening.  We could be driving down 71 and be the one leaving in the ambulance, having your car towed away on top of a flatbed truck.  Anyone of us could have something, somewhere sometime go wrong with our bodies and not get home that night.

It's a fact of life.

What's difficult is knowing that you are closer to the end of that line than you thought.  It's difficult knowing this was your life and you spent it like a fool sometimes.  It's difficult realizing your loved ones just might not know how much you cared, because you just didn't have time.

It's difficult - but it impresses on you to change up some things.  Change up the fact that you need to connect more.  Change up the fact that relationships are more important than we ever imagined.  Change up the fact that what you do tomorrow will affect the future of someone - whether you do it or not, it will affect them.

So we are taking the time tomorrow to have a little party.  Our house will be trashed.  Their imaginations are astounding when it comes to using everyday objects to make outstanding, spectacular palaces.  Or messes, whichever side of six years old you land on.

But it's pretty glorious, and we love to watch them and play with them and talk with them and interact with them - they are pretty amazing.

We want them to know how much we cared.

Because now more than ever we know, you get just one life to live.