mom

I am so tired

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Mom tells me that she doesn't understand why flying is so difficult for me. She goes to the airport, goes through the security screening, waits for her plane, boards her plane, sits in her seat for the flight, deplanes, and boom, is where she wants to be. She never has any of the stories I have about flying, about traveling, about one-more-thing going wrong in the adventure. Oh, the one-more-thing-going-wrong means that I have stories to tell when it's all over (and oh boy do I have stories to tell), but in the middle of them, I really wish they were someone else's stories.

So, I told her, pay attention. We'll have stories on this adventure. I'll point them out IN REAL TIME.

She laughed.

I think it was a nervous laugh.

569

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Well, today is the day the streak ends.

For 569 days in a row I have communicated with my mom. Some days we exchanged "Good morning!" texts, and that was it. Some days, we hiked along a volcano ridge together. Most days, it was in between. Technology has helped us connect every day for five hundred, sixty-nine days in a row.

Today, Mom is out of reach.

And the streak is broken.

I sent her a text anyway. She'll be back in a few days, and we can try again.

In the meantime, Dad and I are up to 65 days in a row. We aren't as consistent.

Yet.

520 days

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521 days ago, I realized I wasn't keeping in touch with either of my parents as much as I wanted to be in touch with them. I wanted to be in contact with them frequently, so that they knew I was thinking about them, that I was hoping they were doing well, that I love them, and that I was hoping they were healthy and enjoying life.

I had recently started using Habit List on my phone, so I added "Mom" and "Dad" to my daily habit list tracker to start the next day. My goal was to contact Mom and Dad very day for a year. Could we stay in touch daily for a year? Phone calls, emails, texts, visiting, all of these counted as "staying in touch." Sending a text by itself didn't count as staying in touch, they had to respond and engage in a conversation for me to be able to say, "Yes, I contacted each of my parents today."

Momma at Volcano

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I really want to put a "the" in that title....

End of the third day in Kona

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Living the high life here! We found a deck of old style Skipbo cards in the condo during our cleaning, so I asked Mom if she'd like to play. She agreed, and despite not having played in years (maybe a decade), she kicked my butt. Which I will admit is a bit frustrating, since I KEEP HAVING MY BUTT KICKED AT HOME, TOO.

I swear, my Skipbo mojo is weak.

Waking up at Mom's

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One of my favorite places to wake up is at my mom's house. I wake up to a gentle breeze drifting in from the window over the bed, some birds chirping in the yard, other birds hooting, and the dog walking around the yard with her tags jingling. Sometimes there's the undertone of a plane flying overhead or kids in the next yard over, but more likely the sounds are just nature.

It almost feels like a beach house in Hawaii, without the humidity.

It is a most wonderful place to wake up in. One of my favorites.

Remembering a meltdown

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Today I witnessed the complete and total meltdown of a four year old. He was upset about something or other that I suspect neither he, nor his father, actually remembered. The wailing, the tears, the destructive moment, the pounding, the air-hitting, all of it warped into a

And I thought about the number of times I had done that as a child. I recall only a few, but certainly not because I had only a few. I'm sure I had a lot more than a few, with that certainty coming from my grumpy face in more than a small number of family photos.

Actually, of the photos of my childhood that I actually have, my nose is red from crying more often than it is not.

I was clearly either a frustrated and / or frustrating child.

After seeing the meltdown, I texted both my mom and my dad and apologized, once again, for being such a horrible child. I'm not sure I actually was any more difficult than any other child, as a whole I couldn't have been too bad: I didn't use drugs, I enjoyed going to school, I had good grades, I had good friends. There's a difference, however, between being a good kid and being an easy kid.

And I know that I wasn't an easy kid.

Both my parents responded.

Nature finds a way

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After lunch today, as Mom and I were walking back to the Museum, she asked if I would mind a detour, she wanted to show me something. No, I didn't mind; sure, let's see what it is.

We walked to a house that was converted to a restaurant, walked up the porch and to a large ficus on the far side of the building. Mom commented, "Yeah, last time I was here, a hummingbird kept dive bombing me. I didn't understand why until a mom came up and asked if we would mind if she let her son take pictures. We looked up and saw the nest. At that point, you couldn't even see their beaks over the edge of the nest."

The baby birds were about 3 cm long, and just sat there as I shoved the camera up their beaks.

Lucky Red Pencil

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I went into the office this morning with Mom. She leaves the house at 7:00 am, which is really three hours before anyone should be moving, much less heading off to work. Really. When I asked her to wake me at 6:25, she looked at me oddly. "It means I can snooze a bit."

She looked at me harder.

"I'll be up."

"And ready to go by 7?"

"Yes."

And I was, but it was close. And surprising to Mom. I jumped in the shower at 6:47, and really a shower by me that is fewer than 23 minutes in length? Nearly unheard of.

When we arrived at the office, Mom was a little worried for me, how was I going to set up to work, would I be okay, could I work? I didn't have any problem working yesterday, so was surprised she was worried about me this morning. We talked a bit about the project she was working on, and I had an opportunity to introduce the word "metrics" more fully into her vocabulary, replacing "indicators" in her speech patterns.

Eat your vegetables

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"We're getting rid of the refrigerator."

"You are? Why?"

"Eric thinks it's too loud."

*blink*

*blink* *blink*

"Oh, the irony."

Yeah, I could not stop laughing before my stomach ached from laughing so hard after that one. If you know Eric, this is very, very funny. Even he laughed, though he could have been laughing at my laughing. And I would have deserved it.

This evening, Eric decided that eating his vegetables would be a good thing.

So, he ate his carrots.

If only all vegetables were so tasty.

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