Me: “You’re probably right.”

Avery: “But you are the Captain of the Builders.”

-pause-

Avery: “Actually, you are a better builder than Flash because you made me.”

The Okey Dokey Chronicles have moved to a new url.  Same content, new look.  In fact, I’m kind of indecisive and will likely be playing with the look of the page for a while.  So if there are things you like/dislike, please let me know.  I have moved the content from my first blog Prichard Family link onto this url as well.

Thanks for reading!

Check out:

http://itsokeydokey.com

Enjoy!

Chris

The Makings of a Fine Pesto

Ashley came by this past Sunday and we made a batch of pesto. Yummy. I started out by harvesting all five sweet basil plants from my garden, which was enough to yield about 10 cups of basil leaves. The recipe goes something like this:

2 cups basil leaves, packed

3 cloves garlic

2 T fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 c olive oil

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts, or if you’re like me and you burned the pine nuts, toasted walnuts

salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in food processor and mix until they form a paste. Freeze by the 1/2 cup in plastic bags. (We used snack sized bags put the snack bag into another snack bag so they are double wrapped. Use on pasta, pizza, tofu, chicken or fish. I like to put the pesto on noodles and add chopped green olives, artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes. Good stuff.

We made five batches and will be eating summertime goodness through the winter. I’ll likely do another batch with purple basil before the end of the month.

In a word: “crabbedy.”

As I was getting breakfast ready under a fog of Benadryl and lack of sleep, Avery asked me one of his standard morning questions: “Am I staying for nap today at school?” Unfortunately for him, the answer was “yes.” So I cringed, waiting for the whining, pleading, and stomping onslaught to begin.

“I HATE NAP!!!!!” Avery screamed, only the preamble to a verbal tirade that I endure on a daily basis. Why he does this, I’m not sure. It is rare, if ever, that I give into this type of behavior.

To be fair, I know nap time is hard for Avery. He rarely falls asleep anymore and is forced to lay on his cot for at least an hour while much of the rest of the class sleeps. This is very difficult for a boy of Avery’s energy level, and I feel for him. I’m amazed that they can even get him to lie down, really.

I gave up on Avery napping at home at least 3 years ago. The last straw came when I told him I would lie down with him, hoping to get a bit of a nap myself. But he proceeded to kick, whine, and finally just talk and laugh for two hours as I pretended I was asleep next to him in his bed.

So, I figure the kid really doesn’t need to nap. However, at Alabama Waldorf School, all kindergarteners who stay past lunch must rest quietly if not napping.

He has for the most part learned to live with it. But with the napping comes the whining about napping.

So it began this morning. Usually, this type of tirade is enough to put me in my “mean mom” mode.

Enter Flash.

He says to Avery, “Quit being such a crybaby.” But with my Yankee ear and his Southern accent it sounded to me like, “Quit being such a crabbedy.”

I really admired that quaint Southern-sounding word. “Crabbedy.” I put it in my new word file, pleased that he introduced me to such a useful new tool. Had I heard him correctly, I probably would have bristled. “Crybaby” to me is name-calling and a taunt. Probably unproductive in my best estimate. He sees it as an accurate description. Which is true to an extent. But I still don’t like it.

Then Flash and I spontaneously started a conversation in Whinese. We whined and moaned to each other in our best whiny voices for darn near five minutes (trying desperately not to laugh) as Marely and Avery watched us wide-eyed and silent.

Then Flash took his coffee downstairs, and Avery cautiously approached me asking why we were talking like that.

“Why, didn’t you like it?” I asked.

And with a hint of a smile, he said ,”no.”

“Well, how do you think we feel when you whine about things?” I asked.

“I guess you don’t,” he said.

That’s the first time it really seems to have sunk into Mr. Crabbedy’s head that being crabbedy ain’t that cool.

Chalk one up for humor.

Suffice it to say, the long-awaited arrival of Flash has more or less taken place. He keeps saying things like “when I get here,” as if he hasn’t moved in yet.  (I don’t think he considers himself “here” until the house is arranged to his liking; we’re not there quite yet, I am told.) Yet it seems like he’s here to me.  Much of his stuff is here.  And he’s rearranged so much of our living space, I feel disoriented in my own home.  Yet grateful.  Things had gotten pretty chaotic around here.  And this guy has the perfect combination of obsession and organizational skills to tackle things like building shelving and rearranging furniture and CDs until things make more sense. 

And they do.

Even though I am looking forward to our continuing journey, the patterns I created with Marley and Avery after Mike’s death have been disrupted, leaving me feeling somewhat  dazed and unfocused.  For instance, this afternoon, Flash built shelves in the cabinet where the trash can used to be.  Tonight, while preparing dinner, I must have opened that cabinet 25 times meaning to throw trash away, although the trash can had been moved to a different location in the kitchen.

Back in the summer when we were discussing his imminent move here, we talked about the impending adjustment period.  As I thought about the implications of this move for Flash (huge, almost beyond comprehension why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to my household in such a permanent way), CC, and Marley and Avery, I didn’t include myself in the equation.  Somehow the adjustment period really didn’t seem as if it would apply to me.

But now now that my patterns are changing, I realize that I am not exempt to the adjustment period.  And I’m not just talking about trash cans here.  It’s way bigger than that.

It is, however, change by choice and it is welcome.  But still, almost daily, I find myself feeling surprised to be experiencing a new love affair in my forties.  I never expected life to take such a turn.

And it feels okay.  If a bit surreal.

But it becomes more real every time I throw something in the trash can.

Like at 6:45 pm while standing in line at hideous Wal-Mart where I had to make a last minute run for pullups instead of starting dinner. (Hmmm, pissy bed in the morning or hot dinner the night before? Such are the daily guilt-inducing decisions every parent without a partner makes.)

With pink pull ups in hand (for some reason my oh-so-boy boy LOVES the color pink), Avery asks through tears why I wouldn’t ask anyone that worked there whether they sold Harry Potter glasses, even after we cruised through the toy department and saw nothing Potteresque.

Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, poof! There goes mom, a smoldering pile of ashes on the floor. Somehow that image was extremely satisfying.

And after we get home at 7:15 and are all ready to eat Honey Nut Cheerios for dinner—God, I can’t even get my shit together on the weekend–there is the bread, wide open on the counter for the third time today. “Marley, the bread,” I say.

“Poof!” again.

Don’t you think mom reduced to a pile of smoke and ashes on the floor might get the point across once and for all?

And at 7:30 pm Avery screams,”Mom, I think I have diarreha!”

Poof!

“Just sweep my ashes across the floor sweetie, and it should mop up just fine! Glad to be of service!”

Hmmm, I can see potential in this.

It’s certainly better than feeling the cold and lonely sting of doing it all by myself day after day after unending day.

I’ve found no good way defend myself against the pain. It comes uninvited.

I am haunted by a past that is gone and a future that no longer exists. It began in the relative quiet of Labor Day after Flash, CC, and her kitten Casey departed from The Okey Dokey Ranch after spending a raucous and rainy but fun Saturday and Sunday here.

This afternoon, Marley went to Tannehill State Park with her friend Bella, which left me alone with Avery. The boy has been quite wild all weekend—a draining surprise after he acted disarmingly docile and charming Friday afternoon after school. By Monday afternoon I was, shall we say, finding it difficult to appreciate Avery being anywhere near me. I really just wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

Drained and vaguely sad by 3 pm, I decided to nap. I asked Avery if he would like to join me, but he declined and agreed to let me sleep in peace. But he quickly became bored and kept bothering me, despite the fact that just an hour earlier, he had used nearly all of his allowance money to buy a Bakugon and a Transformer during our trip to the dreaded Wal-Mart. He began hopping onto my bed and was generally disruptive.

I gave up on the idea of a nice siesta in a fit of frustration and tears, and decided to work in the garden. But Avery was only mildly interested in participating in any garden chores. He picked two tomatoes and was over it and then he sprayed some fire ant hills with vinegar (an experimental treatment I’m using) all the while saying “I can’t wait until we get chickens so I don’t have to do this.”

Finally, he became more interested in eating dinner than helping out. And he began repeatedly asking me when Marley would get home. And when could he have a playdate and on and on and on, incessantly demanding my energy and attention. I rather on edge by this point.

So I began to make dinner with the fresh tomatoes and basil we’d picked . Avery begged me to play some Bob Marley. I dropped in a CD from our collection, and wham!—heart piercing grief dropped in for a spell. This music, I realized, came from another life. I cried as I sliced tomatoes. Marley helped me make decadent little pizzas on thick slices of wheat bread topped with a touch of marinara sauce and a giant basil leaf covered with a large slice of havarti cheese and topped with freshly-picked tomato slices which we then smothered with feta and parmesan cheese.. The result was phenomenal,  bursting with flavor. The kids raved as they gobbled up their mini pizzas.

Then, a remarkable exchange took place:

Avery: ”I wish daddy were here, he’d really like this. What’s his phone number?”

Me: “He doesn’t have a phone anymore.”

Avery: “What was his phone number?”

Me: “222-6237”

Marley: “That’s a lot of 2’s!”

Avery: “I wish I had a phone. A spirit phone. It would kind of be like Facebook for spirits.”

I should have known Avery was thinking about his dad. After dinner, Marley kindly gave me a backrub.

And at long last, I put the kids to bed. All the while, the phone keeps ringing.

Is it any wonder that I sit alone and frozen in the dark, unable to answer the calls of the living?

But reality always returns, and it stings. Rediscovering life as a single parent is a trying and lonely affair–especially after a travel-induced period of giddy denial filled with grandparents and cousins who gladly watch your children while you chum with old friends.

But now we are home and it is back to reality again. Manning The Okey Dokey Ranch with the help of only a seven year old (no matter how precocious) and a five year old can get downright depressing in short order.

Although Marley started school two days after our return from Minnesota, Avery did not. So I had to bring him on all of my home renovating errands–a major drag for both of us.

Combine that with absolutely no freedom to exercise or adults to talk to and, voila! You have the perfect ingredients for a mental breakdown. I spend most of a sunny Saturday in bed crying.

But miraculously, Sunday was a glorious day, despite heavy rains.

Marley and I made a batch of muscadine jelly. I made a chicken dinner. And Flash stayed overnight, tipping the household vibe into positive territory.

The boys joust in the man cave.

He set up a “painting zone” in the basement, now under heavy construction (click here to see the vid of Flash doing his thing), which will eventually house his personal space and occasionally his daughter CC and along with them our newly-formed household.

The fabled blended family.

Anyway, Flash thought it would be fun for the kids to paint the floors and walls before he completed the rooms. So fun that he joined them. He started painting words on the walls and saying that he was “channeling,” which made me flash back to a time nearly two years ago when me, my mother and my dear friend Suzanne Kilpatrick painted similar words on the walls of the basement following Mike’s accidental death in the man-cave.

Suzanne felt that writing positive, loving words on the walls would help cleanse the space and help us heal. We did this, and about a month later, I knocked down the walls on which we wrote and painted the remaining walls blue. Suzanne also said she saw the corner of the basement eventually becoming the creative hub of the house.

I distinctly remember thinking “never.”

But now it is becoming just that. And somehow, Flash just knew it. So, on that rainy day, I joined him and the kids and painted a bit, too. And finally, things felt like a nice Sunday at home with my family.

Thanks, Flash. I love you more than you could know.

Marley paints the subfloor

Flash loves Christine

4022 5th Avenue South after GreenSpace did a total renovation.

4022 5th Avenue South Before GreenSpace.

Wow, I even amazed myself looking at the “before” shot….the world has changed in so many ways since I shot the first pic in July of 2008. In any case, the house is for sale and if you’d like more info, check out:

ReMax website for 4022 5th Avenue South

A word of warning: you do need to register on their website to see all of the photos…but its worth your time.

So, that leaves just my burned out rental house to finish (less than 3 weeks of work) and of course the never ending projects at The Okey Dokey Ranch. Looking for help on projects large or small at your ranch? Let me know; Flash and I would be happy to help you out.

Marley:  “I wish for a dog, a horse, four Guinea pigs, daddy to come back, and another horse.”

Avery: “I wish for daddy to come back.”  Then he looks at Mike’s dad and earnestly asks, “Did you ever meet my dad?”