Mommy Mutterings

Give me my kids.

Wow. That didn’t take long. I just blipped the entire blog in the first line.

I miss my kids. Haven’t seen them in twelve days as of today. When I booked my ticket to Hawaii I thought I’d return to have them for Sunday and Monday over Labor Day weekend but then while I was gone, their dad said his mom was coming up and they were all going to go to Portland for the weekend.

Now Portland’s a fabulous place. I love the city, I really do, especially as my late grandmother, Rosemary Porter, was born and raised there and she had stories about Portland. Her dad the German chef. Her brothers, Uncle Franz, Uncle Rum, and Uncle Jacob. (No German ancestry in my blood, no sirree.) Her father’s tragic drowning death in the cold Pacific(went for a swim before/after work one morning at 28 and drowned). Her bout with polio. Going to live in the convent with the nuns. Becoming a photographer’s muse in her teens. Running off to Hollywood at eighteen. Grandma was a kick. Beautiful, blue-eyed, strong jawed, strong-willed with a great laugh, a love for Bridge and Gin Rummy, a taste for Bourbon and Seven, Grandma Porter made life interesting.

But alone in my Bellevue house (okay, I’m not alone today, the one-eyed bulldog puppy has returned from her ‘camp’ trip with Dan the babysitter) I wait for my kids and I’m bordering on fretful. I know the boys’ dad doesn’t take them away to punish me, but I was flying home to see my boys and then to get home and spend two days putzing around an empty house is frustrating. I could have stayed in Hawaii. Or I could have made other plans.

I didn’t. I didn’t know I’d need to, so there I was last night pushing my shopping cart around QFC, my neighborhood grocery store, at nine o’clock, pretending I liked shopping at nine on a Sunday night with other people who clearly have no where else to go.

All these mutterings do lead me somewhere, I promise. Because the kids aren’t back yet, and I’ve done their back to school shopping and purchased their school supplies and filled out all the medical release forms and cleaned their backpacks and laid out the new bus routes (whew) I’m now free to surf the net.

And here’s what I’m loving on the internet right now, a great website for moms (particularly those working moms) called www.mommytrackd.com and okay, they’re featuring me right now in their spotlight www.mommytrackd.com/wmom.php. So if you’re a mommy and if you find five minutes you can steal for yourself, check out a site that gets the whole working mom gig and celebrates it with wit and style. Go see. Even if your kids aren’t road tripping but standing right next to you yanking your chain.

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