Thursday, June 13, 2013

Happy Anniversary

Becky and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary yesterday. 21! Woo Hoo! 21 years with such an attractive, intelligent, talented woman. I really am the luckiest guy in the world.

We went out to eat at Applebee's then caught Star Trek: Into Darkness. Dinner was good. The movie was good. As Becky put it, Star Trek was exciting, action packed, full of special effects and yet they still managed to find time to make us care about the characters.

We also saw a longer trailer for Man of Steel than I've seen before. Oh man, it looks soooo good. I mean, like worth going to the theater even if Star Trek wasn't good. And Star Trek was good! I don't mean to diminish it was in any way. The Man of Steel trailer was just that awesome. So awesome that as we walked out of the theater Becky asked, "How broke do we want to be this paycheck? Like should we take the boys to see Man of Steel this weekend?"

I vote yes.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Lessons from Tabby

Tabby is so sweet. I mean, not all the time. When she's tired she can get like, well... like her surly teenage brothers. With Tabby it comes across more diva than surly, but it's pretty obvious she's mimicking them.

Mostly, though, Tabby is just sweet. She tries so hard to make us happy and sometimes it really is hard. Like in the mornings when she has sooo much exciting things to talk about with us ... like Bay Beach is open! Or there's a rabbit living under our tree! Or her birthday is in only 2 months! There's just not enough time and all we seem to be worried about is her catching the stupid school bus. On top of that, just getting up to speed sharing with us is an effort because she really isn't a morning person. Definitely a night owl. Like sometimes she just plain doesn't fall asleep for a long time. We'll hear her up in her room talking to her stuffed animals until, like 10:00, even when she's in bed at 8:30.

Mornings, though? Ugh. I can relate. It's hard to get moving. Sometimes that makes for some sad mornings when she can't get going fast enough and ends up arguing about things. Sometimes she loses her afternoon computer or TV time. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens. When it does, I'm not sure if she's more distraught about losing her priveleges or about us being angry with her. Like I say, she's a sweet girl and just wants us to be happy with her.

So this morning looked like it was heading an unhappy direction. Tabby was complaining about not feeling well... like she does sometimes when she doesn't want to get moving. And also talking about us going to Bay Beach next week. And school being almost over. I was trying to hurry along. Telling her she'll feel better once she eats breakfast and gets going for the day. She had to hurry! There are only 2 days of school left and she needs to go enjoy every last minute of them! She didn't want to hurry and it was heading for one of those hard mornings.

Then she threw up on my feet.

As soon as she stopped retching, and it took a while because she threw up a lot, her relief was palpable.

"Now you have to let me stay home," sigh, "and you can let me watch TV."

"Yes, you should stay home today. Get some sleep and get better."

"Yeah, and I can watch TV while I sleep."

She was just so happy that today she convinced us that she had a good reason to not move fast and we weren't going to be mad about it. Even if she had to throw up on my feet to convince me. Being sick didn't matter, at least everyone was happy.

She is so spontaneously sweet, too. We live next door to her music teacher, Mrs. Carlson. That's exciting. Tabby loves her and loves seeing her outside of school. The first time she memorized a whole song, she had to go knock on Mrs. Carlson's door and sing it for her just to show that she still knew it. A whole day after they'd learned it!

Well a few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, Tabby picked a bunch of dandelions and took them to Mrs. Carlson. She does that for Becky pretty frequently. It was one of the exciting things about Spring finally arriving in Wisconsin. She could give Mom flowers! This time though she was so excited that she had thought of taking flowers to someone who wasn't Mom. Someone who really liked getting them. It just couldn't end there. So she also made a card for Mrs. Carlson. What kind of card do you make for someone to whom you have just given flowers you might ask? A "your welcome" card, of course.

That was probably the last time Mrs. Carlson ever saw any of her students. Turns out she wasn't feeling well that day. She'd gone to the doctor and gotten some antibiotics, but still wasn't feeling well and stayed home from school on Monday. In the early Tuesday morning hours she passed away.

That was an unbelievable shock. She was only 48! She seemed healthy enough. Becky said there were a lot of visitors to her house on Tuesday, but that's not unusual. She has a college age daughter and school is out for them and her son is a graduating senior this year. They get busy sometimes. So when the school district sent out an e-mail Tuesday night telling us what happened ... man, Becky and I both literally just gasped out loud. Unbelievable.


What a poignant lesson from Tabby, though. You just never know what's going on in people's lives. You certainly don't know what's going to happen in the near future. Even the small acts we perform might have a greater impact than we could ever imagine. I mean, forever now, the last time Kim Carlson saw any of her students it was Tabby, letting her know how much she was loved. In just a small way. But man, it really drives home how important even just the smallest of kind acts are.