Book Review: The First Husband

Reading The First Husband by Laura Dave was like reading dialogue between my best friend and I. Dave's ability to capture the exchanges between two women is impeccable, and I can only hope that every woman is as lucky as I am to have those kinds of relationships as exemplified by Annie Adams.

OK, so I know that's not the point of the book, but it's worth noting.

This book is an easy read and perfect for a summer get-away, but don't expect to solve great mysteries or unravel an unpredictable plot. It's classic in the way that you would expect love stories to be- girl gets heart broken, girl meets boy, boy saves the day, girl and boy fall in love, ex-boy is lurking, and an eventual (predictable) choice is made.

What saves the novel is Dave's savvy writing and her ability to paint pictures with words. You're not just reading; you're in the scene.

I could relate to Annie Adams and the challenge issued to her by her best friend (be the opposite of you!) because I challenge myself to the same thing...sometimes. What if I took a chance? What if I did the opposite of what I've always done? Will the results be the same, different? Will I be more satisfied? Sometimes I think it's worth checking out.

To join in the Blogher discussion, visit: http://www.blogher.com/bookclub/now-reading-first-husband.

I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own.

Family drama, cleaning closets and no meat



It's been three months since I stopped eating meat and I don't miss it. I haven't noticed any super changes in my body or in the way I feel (good or bad), but I do believe not introducing the process chemicals into my system is good. I'm up to walking nearly 2 miles every day and eat a lot more fresh things.

I'm blessed and fortunate to have friends with great fashion taste who clean their closets. Don't ever think you're too old for hand-me-downs (you're totally not). I Facebook status'd the other day about a great dress I was wearing and someone wanted a picture. This isn't the dress, but an outfit I wore the other day. When people say, "Oh, that is sooo cute, where did you get that?" I definitely don't say, "My friend's closet."

Family drama is moving at the speed of family drama. I'm sad, resigned and glad to be in the place I'm in - as far removed as I can get. That's a different place for me to be in. I'm always the fixer, the mediator, the negotiator, but not this time. My reaction is the same one I'd have to road kill ("I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole.") It doesn't mean I don't feel the losses or the ripple effects. It just means I'm under no obligation or illusion that I can make any of it better.

I wish I would've counted the times I said "Tuck, no! Fooey!" this morning before 7. I got tired of hearing my own voice. And then I start pleading, "C'mon, buddy, we had a good vacation together. Let's keep it up." But not when there's flip-flops to chew and food to grab, Skye to wrestle too rough with and table legs to chew on. Everyone wanted to know how he did on the 2,028 mile trip. He did great! I'm lucky that all my dogs have LOVED to travel and view the back of my car as their space. 

Skye missed me. She didn't miss Tuck, though.

I brought home some really great vintage things for the Cottage. Some have already been spread throughout. Others need a little work.

Life is exciting right now for a lot of different reasons. I'll divulge when I can, as I can!

For now, let's get this party started.

I’m no road warrior. Who am I kidding?

Two hours into my 13-hour drive home Monday, I wondered if I’d really make it. I think I actually thought a thought along the lines of,“What if I ditch my car in Memphis and Tuck and I fly home?”

But I popped some pills (Tylenol), tossed out a Facebook status about how I wasn’t sure the condition I’d arrive home in, and I settled in for the long haul. The really long haul.

A really long haul with no AC and 96-degree heat because what's a road trip without AC in 96-degree heat?

But in all seriousness, I'm getting too old for that shit, and it's probably time, after 22 years on the road, to hang up my road warrior hat and don my paranoid old-lady driver bonnet.

Because that's what I've become.

The symptoms are all there. Blinker on 45 seconds before merging so everyone in a 2-mile radius knows I'm comin' over. At least two car lengths between me and the car in front of me, allowing enough room for people to pass me on the right and still squeeze in between me and the yahoo in front of me. Honking and cursing at people who cut me off (OK, maybe I've always done that). Frantically scanning my front seat and grabbing my purse to make sure I didn't leave my wallet at the last gas station. Walking at the rest area for 10 minutes at a time.

And then the pain.

The magnificent pain in my knees, hips, femurs, my collar bone, shoulders and long bones in my arms. The numbness in the tops of my legs, the ringing in my ears, the trembling in my hands.

I'll embrace the old lady in all her old lady demands until the next time I want to travel. By then I might have forgotten the pledge I made all the way home from Kentucky that I would never (ever!) do that drive again.

It's the open road after all. And I'm in love with it.

{my} Kentucky Kids

How much do I love Kentucky? Let me count the ways, and a big reason is because of all the little munchkins who I love who are being raised by the people I love in the town I love.

Which is why it’s perfectly normal to me that there’s no such thing as sleeping in on my Kentucky vacations, not when 2-year-old little feet are pitter-pattering outside the bedroom door, and little hands knock, and excited voices call my name while their mother’s “shhhhhh”quickly follows.

And it’s also why I’m able to hone my conversation-navigating skills when surrounded by toddlers and kids. It’s like playing a game of dodge ball.

“So I think that I’m..”
“Mommy!!!”
“…finally at a place…”
“Mommy!!!”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re fine.”
“Baby, what do you need?”
“Cows.”
“Yes, you see the cows?”
“Cows. Hay.”
“Do cows eat hay?”
“Yes.”
“What else eats hat? Do horses eat hay?”
“No way!”
“Yes, they do, you silly boy!” (I’m involved in the conversation now)
“No way!”

And when it’s a conversation that us adults are doggone determined to have, our voices raise octaves above the kids’ until we realize we’re yelling in the pizza parlor and the kids now think it’s a contest. It’s not so much that it’s important stuff (I was talking about my finds at a yard sale, and another adult was telling me about the shoes she bought that day), it’s that these are the two seconds we have to catch up after the spaghetti’s been cut and the cheese pizza’s been snagged from the heating rack.

Until and unless you’ve been around kids (A LOT), you might not realize this, but they’re a demanding bunch of critters. Especially when you get more than one in a room, or at a table. And that’s when you see a bunch of adults talk really loud and declare martial law at the dinner table. You’ll hear things like, “Because I said so,” and basically that means there’s no good reason for the rule, but for the love of peace and all things orderly, sit down and keep your hands to yourself.

Watching my friends parent is like watching a gardener and a circus ringmaster. The seeming chaos is organized somehow to produce lopsided balance, and the minute-by-minute toil it takes to raise kids who are smart, conscientous and obedient is messy business. Exhausting, really. I get tired just watching and hearken back to my nanny days when I was joining them in the parenting fray, including sleepless nights, potty training accidents at the playground and shenanigans at the table.

But it's paying off, all the interruptions and the not-being-able-to-pee-by-themselves, and the arguments and fusses, the laying down the law and the pleading to just listen.

I know it's paying off because my friends have great kids - the kind you want to be with. The kind who I vacation to see and the kind who I don't mind being woken up at 7 a.m. to visit with. The kind who joke, the kind who are bossy and the kind who remember me. The kind who want me to babysit them and the kind who are sad when I leave. The kind who let me tuck them in bed and the kind who say they're sorry when they hit me on the foot with a hammer.

So, what I was saying wasn't all that important in the grand scheme of things, in the moment when a conversation about hay and cows needed to happen. And of course I'll comfort you when your fearless self decides to leap off the playground equipment, and when you want to tell me all about your ballet recital, I'll listen. When it comes time to sing songs before bed, I will, and I'll always sit with you in your chair to read a tractor book as many times as you want. I'll change your diapers and put your PJs on, I'll give you a bath and drop you off at daycare. I'll play peek-a-boo with you behind the pillow and when you're ready to get out of bed but your mom isn't, I'll break you free. I'll always tell you your Elmo drawing is spectacular, and when you tell me there's a bug on my shirt and I freak out and you laugh, I'll laugh too. I'll look at your yearbook and listen to you explain who I'm seeing and who you want to be your first grade teacher. I'll take your tour of your house because though you remember me, you don't remember I know your house. I'll kiss your bald head and I'll always tell you to listen to mommy and daddy.

And, of course, I'll always love you, my Kentucky kids.

Kentucky farm and Kentucky roads-where-it-doesn't-look-like-there-should-be-one

My Kentucky vacation mornings are starting out much the same way my Texas every-day-mornings do...a walk with Tuck and a cup of coffee.

Only here we get to walk on a Kentucky farm and my cup of coffee is shared with my friend and her 2-year-old, and Tuck gets thrown in the back yard with her five dogs.

I found this field. Not like it was hard to find, it's behind the barn and not far from her house, perfect walking distance for Tuck and I. From here, it looks like a contiguous field.

It wasn't until we kept walking, right up to the edge, that we discovered it's not continuous at all.

There's a road there, right through the middle of what we saw was two fields. 

We walked all the way down the road and back. Of course, for me it's not just a once-invisible road in the middle of two fields. It's a metaphor for a lot of what life looks like for me right now.

Impossible.

Suffocating.

Claustrophobic.

The road is my hope, but to find it, I have to walk right up to the edge and maybe take a first step into the unknown before I see it stretching before me.

I've just got to figure out: what's my edge? what's my unknown?

Kentucky morning

My best friend's farmhouse is silent this morning, except for the dog whining in a crate and his tail hitting the metal sides, sending off a "ping, ping" in the morning stillness. The only other sounds are my fingertips on my keyboard and Tuck's occasional bark from my car.

The day is about to explode in all its ferocious glory, but for now, it's me, my coffee and this screen. Earlier, it was me and Tuck on our morning walk in the Kentucky farmland.

He and I drove the 13 hours yesterday from Texas to here. Here. Where it feels like home in all of its comfortable familiarity. Even my car is happy to be here, to finally be here after its wheels spun us the entire 744 miles.

I was worried about that, you know, as I've been worried about a lot of things as of late.

Since when did I worry so much?

Since, well, forever, but sometimes worse than others.

This is a some time worse than others.

I was worried we would break down, I was worried that I wouldn't have money to fix the imaginary problem. I was worried all day yesterday that we would crash.

And so I became a paranoid old-lady driver. Blinker on 45 seconds before merging. Two car lengths between me and the vehicle in front of us. Look twice (three times) before switching lanes. Double-checking every gas station stop to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything or left my wallet anywhere.

Since when did I become old-lady paranoid driver?
Since yesterday, apparently.

I don't want to worry all the time, it just sneaks up on me.

"What else is there possibly for you to stress out about?" a friend asked me the other day after I spewed my current worries, some real, others not.

"Just give me time. I'll find something," I said.

I don't like admitting it, but it's true.

"I need to chill out...big time," I told my best friend on the phone yesterday.

And I do, which is probably why I'm on vacation and what better place to be to chill out big time then the place that knows me best and with the people who love me despite my uptight and highstrung tendencies?

the {dog} birds and the bees

My dog's heat cycle has been the topic of conversation for about four months now. Or, at least the expected May heat cycle, and then the non-existent May heat cycle.

Text conversations have ranged from, "Are we making babies this month?" to "Skye's still not in heat yet...crap."

Unbeknownst to her, she's provided {dog} sex education for my non-dog-reproduction savvy friends who wonder how often she's in heat (is it every month?) and why I can't breed her at day one of her heat cycle (that's not when she's ovulating).

So I've been sitting around waiting for her heat cycle to start, and it's not.

"I've raised a pro-choice bitch," I texted her baby-daddy's daddy.

Or just a bitch.

My momma's girl got a "will bite" sticket in her folder at the vet today! I wanted to dispute it. She's not a bad girl!

But she did bite the vet. After she ripped the muzzle off. After she screamed and was snapping when he touched her. After she freaked out over the three attempts of getting her temperature taken. After she lovingly greeted the vet techs.

You can see the progression there. I mean, she warned them like six times: don't touch my body. Please.

Xrays were successfully taken and the results are that her hips are great (no dysplasia and no future signs of it!) and her spine too.

And I was asked to go retrieve her from her kennel where she was groggily waiting for me because "she's not having any of us."

And then I texted a friend (several) of the good news:

"Skye's hips are cleared! We can have babies."

And then the appropriate response:

"Good. You are a go for sex."

{Dog} sex education is coming along nicely.

terrific moments of terror

"Mom, I'm going to have to let you go." Click.

Tuck had run over to the neighbor's house and had not heeded my command to return. So off I went for the second time in a row to fetch him and instruct him (again!) that when I say "here," I mean it.

It happened the other night, too. What should have been a simple obedient response to "here," turned into 15 minutes of "you need to learn that when I say it, I mean it."

So, forget the work I was doing on the computer at the time, or the conversation I was in the middle of, my dog disobeyed and I had to attend to it.

It was a trend tonight between both dogs. We headed down to the river, Tuck on a leash, Skye loose. She was the one who was misbehaving (completely ignoring me), and in a terrific moment of terror, decided to chase something on the other side of the river, which meant she had to swim across. It also meant she was stuck swimming across a swiftly running river and I could see from my vantage point that there was no way she could get up on the other side.

I started envisioning her drowning body and my inability to do anything. Then I wrote the headline in my head: Dog drowns while owner watches.

All the while I'm calling and yelling for her to join me on my side of the shore. She was swept downstream and eventually worked her way over to me.

I was terrified.

And when her excited dripping body climbed out of the water, I started: "Don't ever do that again! Do you know how scared I was? There's no way I could've swam in there and saved you."

As if she understood a word I was saying. In her mind, she got a great swim in.

It's a matter of perspective, isn't it?

Tuck thinks he's being a friendly visitor.
I think he's being disobedient and rude.

Skye thinks it's a good night for a swim.
I think it's not a good idea to swim across a body of water that can sweep you away.

I guess there's room for compromise.

Tuck can visit, but must return when I say.

Skye can swim, just close to shore.

the day my friend went off on me

I've had this thought lately and it's become more pervasive in my psyche:

"God, I wish I wasn't doing this alone."

This sleeping alone.
This cooking dinner for myself.
This traveling, eating, gardening, walking, shopping, laughing alone.
This drinking coffee alone, paying rent alone, being responsible alone, sharing burdens alone, worrying alone, planning for a future alone.
This it's-all-up-to-me-to-survive alone.

Truth be told, it gets old after awhile.

This aloneness.

This morning I was talking to a friend as we often do in the morning, either via text or on her back porch after we've busted our asses during an Insanity workout.

She was drinking coffee on her couch; I had just finished my 1.5 mile walk with the dogs and was sitting down to my own cup of coffee. We were talking. Talking about life, about our simple morning routines that make us content.

And then she said:

"Life isn't about filling it with mediocre things...there are so many thing in life that are mediocre. Love should not be one of them. Loving your dogs, morning walks and cups of coffee are from mediocre. That is our happy place. You don't need to "find" someone to be with...when morning walks and coffee are just as important to them, you will feel so complete. When you connect with that person they will be so lucky..."

Her words were the perfect blend to my pervasive private thoughts, because in some concoction of bitter and sweet, sweet and sour, I am in love with the core of my life.

The core, you know. The part of me that revels in silence and regenerates my soul during my morning walks, coffee and dog training. The part that indulges in my independence and selfishly enjoys my own space and having the whole bed to myself.

But I can't deny this other part of me, and it's getting louder.

A friend has told me, "You are alone now because you want to be. And when you decide you don't want to be alone anymore, you won't."

I'm wondering if I'm getting closer. I wonder if he (whoever he is) is getting closer. I wonder if my getting closer and his getting closer will explode in some sort of magnetic energy that rocket launches our paths together.

I've never been much of a romantic, I'm too matter-of-fact for that. Our conversation would probably go something like:

"You like me? Great, I like you too. Let's make a go of it."

And then we would globe trot together, he lucky to have me, and I lucky to have him.

But for now, for tonight, it's me. Me and the dogs. Me and the Cottage.

Just me.

I get up

Do you ever feel like you're chasing your tail?

Or, in my case, chasing two?

The time I spend sitting in my chair at my dining room table is done in increments according to what mess Tuck is making at the moment, and depending on where Skye has decided to jaunt off to.

A typical evening may look like this:

Sit down to eat my overcooked salmon and fresh sugar snap peas. Tuck grabs the foil out of the trash and saunters off.

I get up. Get the foil, throw it away.

Sit back down to dinner. Tuck grabs the foil out of the trash and saunters off.

I get up. Chase him around the kitchen until I grab the foil. Put the trash on the microwave.

Sit down to dinner. Tuck grabs my sweatshirt off the top of the microwave.

I get up. Grab the sweatshirt, put it back.

Sit down to eat dinner.

Sit down to edit a story. Tuck and Skye jog off.

I get up to call them back.

Return to edit story. Tuck and Skye jog off.

I get up to call them back.

Return to story.

Move on to edit a second story. Tuck plays too rough with Skye.

I get up to yell at him.

Sit back down with story. Tuck grabs my flip-flop and runs outside.

I get up to find it.

Back to work. Tuck finds the dust pan and runs off with it.

I get up, sweep the floor, go outside to fetch dust pan.

Return to story. Tuck starts chewing his leash.

I get up and take it off him.

Sit down again.

I get up a lot and for other reasons too.

I'm a restless writer, a restless editor. At just the moment when I'm feeling most inspired, I have to get up and walk away, get tea, coffee, something, and then return.

I get up and sweep.

I get up and start dinner cooking.

I get up and run the dogs through a training exercise.

I get up and talk to the neighbor.

I get up and pluck my eyebrows.

I get up and wash the dishes.

Getting up is in my DNA, I guess.   

I can be over the top somtimes, especially when my veneer of patience is scratched a bit.

Like, when an employee tells me to stay in Aisle 29 and someone will come help me find the plumbing supplies I've been charged with purchasing for a friend's dad, and then no one comes. And I get pipe lube on my fingers because I was fiddling with a piece I ended up not needing.

I wondered how long I was supposed to wait in Aisle 29, but eventually I wandered. By the time I found the nearest employee, I was in a near panic.

"Somebody said they would come and then no one did and now I'm very overwhelmed standing looking at all these pipes and I have no idea which ones I need."

She helped me.

Last Thursday I stood in my eye doctor's office holding my broken pair of glasses.

"I really need a new pair of glasses - my dog chewed these - and I really need them soon." They had them to me the next day.

And today, standing in the Walmart vision center holding my broken glasses.

"My dog chewed my glasses and I need a new pair of frames, but I don't want to pay a lot of money for them in case he does it again. This is just really not in my budget today."

I paid $18 for a pair of frames she popped the lenses into.

I was very mad when I woke up at 5 a.m. to *him* chewing on my 3-day old frames that I thought I had put out of reach last night. So mad that I wanted to cry, but so mad that I couldn't. So mad that I was silent to him, but so mad I was screaming to myself: You idiot!

I wished I could have relived the previous 8 hours, but instead I told myself, "Stress enables ingenuity. There's nothing you can do about it tonight. Put your ass back in bed and sleep for two more hours. You can duct tape them together and then get a new pair."

So that's what I did.

I guess I've always had a flare for the extreme and melodramatic.

So when my patience is wearing thin with kids these days and their attitudes about life and relationships, I say that when I have children, I will convert to the brotherhood of the Amish.

Some common refutions I hear:

"First thing to go is your cell phone and no more Internet or Hulu Plus."
"You would have to make your own clothes and only 3 colors."
"Say hello to bonnets and strings."

All to which I smile and mumble, "If only you knew..."

"You'd probably have to get rid of your dogs and have 10 kids."
"You'd have to do everything your husband told you to do."

And then I start reconsidering my rash conversaion.

Really all I want is to work my kids' asses off and make them grow food. And help me build shit and not become so infatuated with materialistic mumbo jumbo that they don't know what a hummingbird sounds like or that blackberries grow in the wild (and you can pick them!)

Who knows. Maybe by the time I'm fruitful and multiplying, our society would have worked into such an automated frenzy that we fry all circuits and have to return to foraging, or our own version of the Hunger Games.

In any case, patience is a virtue I have to work for.
And when I can't be patient anymore I can be over the top sometimes.

this new hobby I miiiggghhtt have

I know. I said it here. That I'm not one of those crazy people who photograph birds and then documents them.

But wouldn't you know it?

That's exactly what I did today.

Well, not the whole day. A girl has to work, you know.

But between cups of coffee and pacing while writing,

And digging my dogs out of my neighbor's visitor's car and assuring her neither of them would hurt her or her children,

And apologizing when one of them jumped on her, and realizing I was not wearing a bra at the time of our encounter,

I captured my guests outside my kitchen window.

these days

These days are peaceful days.
Yes, there is uncertainity around me, and yes, there is the sadness.

But these days {my days} are peaceful.

Tuck and Skye and I are settling into our routine of being a family of three. Someone recently told me they had no time to watch TV because they had four kids. I wanted to say, "I have no time to watch TV. I have two dogs and a newspaper that publishes 365 days a year," but I didn't. I get her point. Unless you've had two dogs and a newspaper that publishes 365 days a year, you probably wouldn't get mine.

My peaceful days start in the Cottage and very early. Or, at least early for me. The dogs and I are usually up right as the sun's rising and every morning we walk a mile. I get that out of the way before the coffee's brewed.

By the time we're done, they're exhausted and laid out panting on the kitchen floor. I brew the coffee, maybe sweep the floor, but always check on my little garden. Maybe I'll water. Or maybe I'll wait till the evening.

A couple hours after my day starts, I'm off to work. Off to the swirling newsroom, as I like to call it. And then I'm home again.

Home to walk with the dogs again.
Home to train them.
Home to read a book and write a book review.
Home to drink a beer, catch up on emails and Facebook.
Home to check on the garden again. Maybe water. Maybe not.
Home to sleep.

These are my days in a comfortable ebb and flow, just the way I like it. Organic. Peaceful. Robust. Simple.

Peaceful. 

the sadness

Last night was a crying night.
I didn't intend to cry, not like it's something that's always planned, but it didn't feel like the crying-kind-of-night at the beginning of it.

There was a tipping point, an obscure thing, and than one tear fell, and another. Before long, I couldn't stop them.

I cried until I couldn't breathe through my nose.
I cried till 1 a.m. and cried until I eventually fell asleep. I woke up and my eyelids were translucent and puffy from so much crying.

They were grieving tears.
They were sad tears.
They were tears I'd kept inside for a month.
They were tears that needed to fall.

So fall they did.

Today I just feel empty, summarized in one word.

Sad.

Book Review: You Have No Idea

In the middle of the swirling dysfunction of my own family, it's comforting to know we are not alone. Vanessa Williams didn't always listen to her mother; Helen Williams was emotionally distant and yelled sometimes. In a single word, they are normal, and in the 282 pages of the pair's new release, "You Have No Idea," they exemplify family disputes, difficult years (not just days), and respect that powers through.

From the first chapter, the reader is made aware of the scandal that engulfed Vanessa Williams in the last six weeks of her reign as Miss America in 1984, and her subsequent relinguishing of the crown. It's a flagrant move to hit head-on the star's notorious scandal and to dispell rumors that have probably circulated for years. It also sets the defining tone of the book: Mom might know best, but sometimes we have to figure it out on our own.

In a flip-flop narrative style, Vanessa takes the lead in the book with her story, and Helen inserts her opinion in the sassy language Vanessa describes her in. Some scenarios in Vanessa's life Helen didn't realize until she read them; she's very honest about that.

Overall, the book is an easy read (I read it in a day and a half), and it's inspiring. It illustrates the fact that there is not a single perfect family, but respect and love can mend relationships. And, at the end of the day, we are family. It's inspiring to read about Vanessa's goals (described by herself) and see how, in the course of the book, she achieved them. In what feels like candid transparency, she admits when she was wrong, how she fixed it, what she learned and how she moved on.

It's something we could all learn to do more of.

"This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own."

I'm thankful

I'm thankful for dogs who are always happy to see me.
I'm thankful for hushed conversations in the break room.
I'm thankful for beer that makes me sleepy.
I'm thankful for books.

I'm thankful for friends who close the distance.
I'm thankful for friends who work 10 steps from me.
I'm thankful for dogs who return from the river.
I'm thankful for text messages.

I'm thankful for family, even when they hurt.
I'm thankful for fulfillment in my job.
I'm thankful for new glasses on the way.
I'm thankful for a new cell phone.

I'm thankful for all things beautiful, small, unsightly.
I'm thankful for life's detours and redirections.
I'm thankful for goals and power to achieve them.
I'm thankful for faith.

Big boys still need to be crated

Every dog has caused me some sort of consternation, much like I'm sure every child does a parent.

For three days, Jada peed inside.
From my position in the cart, I would rake my hand over items in the grocery store aisle and make them all come tumbling off the shelves.

Marley ate a piece of nearly every Victoria's Secret bra I owned.
For the umpteenth time, my mother left our full cart of groceries and took my screaming self home.

Skye had a habit of running away and killing sheep.
"Holly, don't step on the floor...mommy just mopped it." And my toes would cross over and my eyes would defiantly meet hers.

When I got out of the shower Monday morning, Tuck snuck by, but I could see what was in his mouth. My cell phone.

I yelled.

Last night I fell asleep and woke up to the sound of Tuck chewing on...something.

My glasses.

And wasn't it just yesterday I told a reporter, "At least it was my cell phone, and not my glasses."

I yelled and picked up the pieces (oh, so many pieces). And I tried to put them back together as best I could, but I'm missing an ear-bar-thingie and half a lense.

But I can see, kind of. At least enough to drive to my eye doctor and get new glasses ASAP. And until new glasses, I've got enough pieces on my face to see my computer screen.

So, maybe one day, I'll be able to reflect on Tuck's chewing days with humor and a thing in the past.