Pressed

The new year is here. For nearly a week it felt like spring but the cold has returned, shrouding the night in ice and mist. The glitter and twinkle has been packed away in old hat boxes and stacked neatly in the attic. Green and red tablecloths nestled in with holly garland and mistletoe. I'm still amazed at the holiday wonderland that slumbers quietly beneath the eves all summer long. Such magic that in a single day the house is transformed with fairy lights and the smell of clove and spice. The excitement builds...gingerbread houses, foamy egg nog, crystal snowflakes hung from the chandelier.

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Perhaps the real wonder is how quickly the Christmas cheer that has surrounded us for nearly two months can be whisked out of sight in mere hours. The house seems to echo a bit.

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Either way, here I stand at my ironing board. The old blue cover frayed and stained at one end from spilled coffee on a hurried morning. Ivory damask with a lovely mossy fern pattern lies piled before me. A new season, a new tablecloth.

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Tiny flakes of white dance past the window as the hiss of the iron fills the room. Steam rises, the pale cloth smoothing beneath the ferrous plate. The heat feels delicious to my cool fingers.

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The rhythmic pass back and forth quiets my scattered mind and I find myself thinking of wrinkles. Sometimes it seems that a significant amount of my time is spent in this quest to eradicate them. Tablecloths and napkins, pants and soft cotton dresses...the crisp white shirts my husband wears to work. Curtains after a wash, the silk scarf I love to wear with my raincoat. The skin about my eyes.

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Who decided the lines resulting from decades of laughter should be injected or sanded or peeled from my face? Does it make me look younger...or just that I haven't a sense of humor? Would the world pause if the napkins had furled edges?

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I've made no new resolutions this year. Being healthy and loving madly seem to cover just about everything for me, but perhaps I will think more about these wrinkles in my life. Perhaps as they are natural and lovely in their sweet crinkly way...perhaps this is a battle I shall concede.

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Happy new year, my friends.

Confessions of a Vitamin Junkie

As the exec director of several child development centers, a couple years ago I was also building points on my Doctor's "frequent flier" card towards a vacation in Monte Carlo. I was on his top ten list of "Patients with Funny Stories." (usually these included flying boogers, projectile vomit, or parents who insisted that little susie's radiant scarlet eyes were due to a "shampoo incident" and certainly NOT to pink eye) Um....yeah. I laundered my clothing in bleach, snorted hand sanitizer, and used lysol as perfume. (I was partial to Springtime Meadow--so fresh and dewy)

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Yet there I was, time after time, sounding like an emphysema patient or chucking monkeys at the porcelain goddess. I'd had it. So ye ole google and I came up with a solution. (exactly what in the hell did we ever do before the Internet??) After looking up `immune system and vitamins' I had come up with a list of goodies that were essential to your health. These included garlic, a, e, the b's, c of course, zinc and magnesium. Off I trundled to the drugstore to purchase a granny-sized seven-day pill holder in a lovely shade of robins-egg blue that I could use as a weapon in a pinch. A regular women's daily as well as additional supplements of the others on the list filled up my basket and nearly cleared out my checking account.

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It took almost two hours for me to conquer the child-proof lids and safety seals and dole out a weeks worth of pastel pillege--not to mention assuring my husband that I had indeed not lost my marbles and replaced them with liqui-gels.

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Month one passed......wow. Month two....holy wow. YEAR one.....Saint Jehosephat's nads, this is WORKING! Folks, three years and seven months--not a SINGLE cold. Not O. N. E. I have three boys and a husband who have brought home a vast plethora of snot and sniffles, more than one case of the chuckles, and NADA. And then.....

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Oh ye hateful arrogance! Smash ye to cinders all who scoff at the anti-bacterial wipes for grocery carts even as ye watch the red-eyed pigmy demon hock up el-mucus-o and finger paint on the handle of the buggy next to you.......ye shall PERISH!

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Cough...sputter...gasp.

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This week.....for the first time in nearly four years, I have gotten ill. (ahem) Make that, "I have visited the tunnel of light and am clinging to life with broken fingernails and lifevest made from halls wrappers." I've woven a rope from used tissues to tie myself to the brink of sanity. I have had lengthy conversations with the most adorable little asian doc-ette about the color of the crap I cough up. Bigelow Tea has offered me a spot as spokesperson as I've broken the world record--27 cups-o-liquid-love in less than 12 hours. My pee smells like lemons....and menthol.

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I have met the maharajah of viral malaise and he whooped my proverbial ass.

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It has terrified my kids--they have no real memories of sick mommy. They have also eaten pizza, hot dogs, and cold cereal three meals a day for a week. My husband has been grand and the wonton soup he has brought home by the bucket has been my single joy as well as the only thing I can taste.

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I'm still a believer, and still popping the goodies....along with anti-biotics and have begun to have strong feelings for my nasal spray. However, I am praying that this will be an isolated incident...once every four years I can handle--although the holiday timing of this has really jacked up Santa's schedule.

My eldest said from the doorway of my room--afraid to enter, "Too bad it's not halloween mum, 'cause you'd be a really good Darth Vader."