I Think I’m Gonna’ Throw……

Well, I thought I’d made it through the winter without getting sick.  After all, Easter was Sunday, right?  Winter is over.

I was wrong.

A couple weeks ago my little great-nephew came down with a stomach flu.  Throwing up, diarrhea, nasty sick.  Then his mom, my niece, got it.  Then her sister, my other niece and her husband got it.  Then their mother, my sister, got it.  Then, my little great-niece, who lives with my sister, got it.  Then my other sister got it this past Thursday. 

From the time my great-nephew got it, I fretted that I would get it.  When my nieces and sisters got it, I fretted that I would get it.  They kept telling me, “Oh, you won’t get it.  You’d have had it by now.”  I didn’t believe them.  Every time my stomach gurgled I thought, “Is this it?”  I imagined myself into nausea that never materialized. 

By Easter, I figured I’d beat it.  I cooked a feast, served it, and ate it.  Sunday night I was pretty happy.  If I hadn’t gotten it by then, I probably wouldn’t right?  Wrong.

Monday, was my day off from work.  I spent it happily picking on Easter dinner leftovers.  I felt fine.  I was fine.  Fiiiiine and dandy.  I went to bed Monday night and slept the sleep of the healthy.  Until 2:30 AM.  I awoke with an impending sense of doom.  An awful, restless, shivery, feeling of terrible anticipation.  Not necessarily nauseous, just….awful.  I got up.  I got back down.  I went into the bathroom and paced.  I got back into bed.  I got back up again.  I waited and waited for the inevitable. 

I can’t even remember the last time I threw up, but I knew that feeling.  I knew what was coming and at this point, I was praying for it.

I tried to go back to bed and pretend it wasn’t happening.  I tried to force myself back to sleep.  It wasn’t happening.  After what seemed eternity the awfulness finally happened.  I threw up.  I hugged that toilet and wrenched my guts until I cried.  Yes, I cried.  Like a baby for my mother.  It was totally involuntary, just like throwing up. 

 I had gotten it.  The stomach flu that had ravaged my family had now found me.  I spent the rest of the night alternately sleeping and throwing up.  By morning, my stomach had calmed down, but my body was wracked with pain.  Hot, feverish, spine searing, head splitting, hit by a truck pain.  I couldn’t open my eyes – the light hurt.  It was okay, though, because all I really wanted to do was sleep, and sleep and sleep.  I slept.  I slept all through the day and into the night and into today.

I woke up this morning feeling oh, so much better, but weak.  So weak and shaky and headachey.  But you know what?  I’m so glad.  I’m glad it’s over.  Waiting and wondering if I was going to get sick and throw up was almost worse than actually getting sick.  Now it’s over and done with and I don’t have to worry anymore.  It’s a relief, really.

So, I’m on the mend.  I’m glad I got “it.”  And if I never get “it” again in my life, I’ll be even gladder.

The Easter Bunny has left the Building

So, my kids are all adults in their twenties.  And they live with me. 

My oldest is 27.

 This is the first year the Easter Bunny didn’t come to my house.   I feel a little guilty.

When they were little, they got the traditional Easter basket – chocolate bunnies, Peeps, Reese’s peanut butter eggs, Cadbury eggs, a little toy of some kind, all nestled in a bed of green, cellophane easter grass.  When they got a little older, they got the candy plus things like baseball cards, Pokemon cards, kites, Matchbox cars, action figures – GI Joe guys, Star Wars guys, Batman figures, fancy pencils, markers, etc.  Older still, they got the candy, VHS movies, CDs, toiletries like deoderant, shampoo, shower gel, and little grooming kits with nail clippers and tweezers.   Some years they got cool t-shirts or a hooded sweatshirt, baseball caps – stuff like that.

Every year, it seemed to get harder and harder to find interesting stuff to put in the basket.  The Easter Bunny still used their original baskets from when they were small – awesome, beautiful, old baskets that had been given to me by MY Easter Bunny.  Every year it became more and more of a challenge to arrange and fit all their loot into the basket.  Every year it seemed to get more and more extravagant and a little ridiculous as I waited until all of them were home from their various nights out and in bed sleeping, so that I could sneak into their bedrooms and deliver their baskets.

A couple years ago, when my youngest was in his late teens, the Easter Bunny downsized, dropped the baskets and scaled down to just a gift bag with some chocolate and a DVD. 

This year, the Easter Bunny didn’t come. 

 I don’t know….I just felt the time had come to retire the Bunny, but I feel kind of sad.  I mean, how long does the Bunny come??  My Bunny stopped coming when I was 19 and got married and left my parents house.  If my kids had left the house, the Bunny would, obviously, have stopped delivering, but they won’t leave.  I just kept thinking, “Paula, Adam is 27.  It’s time to let the Easter Bunny go.”  I had scenes in my head of him being in his thirties and still waking up on Easter morning to his Easter Bunny gift bag.  But, I couldn’t stop delivering to one and keep delivering to the others, right?  So I made the decision and no one got anything.

I feel like a mean mom.

Does this make me look fat?

How many times have I asked that question?  In my life?  Too many times to count. 

Heck, I asked it just this morning of my youngest son, before I left for work.

 I’ve always been overweight.  I had a few years in my late teens and twenties when I was, what I realize now, were “thin,” but I was an overweight child.  Not huge, but overweight enough for mean boys in school to make fun of me and forever imprint me with the knowlege that I had a weight problem.   I can remember my pediatrician telling my mother that I was overweight, but it never sank in until Robert Watkins taunted me while walking home from school, calling me “Maya the elephant,” in front of my friends.  In front of other kids that I didn’t know, who walked the same route.  In front of the world, in front of the universe, as far as I was concerned.

 I slimmed down a little when I hit puberty, but not enough, apparently, because I can remember the doctor at my first gynecologist appointment, telling my mother (once again), that I was “obese.”  Obese, being 10 pounds over the “ideal” weight on the chart on the wall.  It didn’t seem to matter that I was healthy, that I was active.  My mom didn’t drive so I walked nearly 4 miles to and from school or anyplace else that I wanted to go.  I rode my bike.  I ran the laps and did the squat thrusts in gym class.  But none of that mattered.  I was obese.  

 It didn’t help my self-esteem any, that my best friend, who’d always been fat like me, betrayed me, not only by getting her period before me, but along with it, becoming positively skinny without even trying.  Overnight.  She, whose mother made homemade pasta and chocolate cakes from scratch which she could now eat with abandon.  My daily food intake, on the other hand, was strictly overseen by my mother, who by now, didn’t want to take me to anymore doctors appointments and hear how she’d failed as a mother by having an obese daughter.  I had been left behind by the only person who understood how I felt.  We had always been fat together and now I was fat, alone.  She moved on to discover boys and have them discover her.  I discovered boys too, only they weren’t interested.  The biggest insult came when one of my other thin friends started “going out” with a boy she knew I had a mad crush on. 

I became, a “Weight Watcher.”  My mother, who had a weight problem of her own, and I, joined Weight Watchers.  Weight Watchers back then was far different than the Weight Watchers of today.  Weight Watchers today is all about what you can eat.  Weight Watchers of yesterday was all about limits and deprivation.  I learned to weigh and measure anything and everything that went into my mouth.  I learned to eat tuna fish salad with mustard (and pretend I liked it).  I learned to toast a piece of bread and shave it down through the middle of the slice, vertically, making two paper-thin slices of bread with which to make a sandwich, so that I didn’t go over my “starch” allowance for the day.  I learned to deprive myself of everything delicious, that I loved to eat and feel like I was starving – to lose 1/4 lb. a week.  That was about the size of my weekly weight loss at ”weigh in.” 

That was all just the beginning of my long, unsuccessful, attempts to be thin.  As I mentioned above, there were a few years where I achieved thinness.  The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I finally succeeded at Weight Watchers.  I left my junior year of high school a shy, chubby, self-conscious girl, and returned in the fall, a shy, thin, self-conscious girl.  It was like I’d had a mini-makeover.  I grew my hair, I wore make-up, I wore stylish clothes.  That first day of school in my senior year, was an education in itself.  People, kids and teachers, raved about how good I looked.  Some kids later told me that they thought I was a new kid.  Shoot, I hadn’t changed THAT much.  Imagine.  Being fat hadn’t made me stick out the way I thought it had, it made me INVISIBLE.  Suddenly, I was there.  Suddenly people noticed me.  Where the heck had I been before??  Hidden under fat, I guess. 

 I managed to keep the weight off for a few more years into my twenties.  I met my husband the summer I graduated.  I was 17 and we got married when I was 19.  But all the while, it was a battle.  I did Weight Watchers on and off, I did a version of the Atkins Diet.  I did diets from Glamour magazine and Good Housekeeping.  I can still remember waking up and eating one slice of American cheese and an orange for breakfast.  What the heck was that??  The thing is, inside, I was still fat.  I never enjoyed those years that I was thin because I was so worried about being fat again.  The other thing was, I convinced my husband that I was fat, even though I wasn’t.  I was thin when he met me, but I was so hung up on staying that way, that I made him aware.  He was aware of my dieting.  He was aware of what I ate.  He was aware of how my clothes fit.  I told him I was too fat and he believed me.  To his credit, he never said I was fat, but when I asked him that question, “Does this make me look fat?” I knew he was thinking that I could stand to lose a few pounds. 

When I got pregnant with my first baby it was all over.  I gained 49 pounds and I never lost them.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t have another baby until I lost the weight from the first, but it soon became apparent that he’d be an only child if I kept that promise.  I had two more babies and have never been thin again.

 It’s 27 years since I had my first baby and over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m a fat woman, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.  I went through a few years where I told myself, “You’re fat, that’s how you are.  As long as you don’t get fatter, it’s okay.  Accept it.”  I tried to embrace it and get along with it, but shoot, I realized that I was fooling myself.  I’ve accepted that I’m probably never going to be thin, but I don’t want to be as fat as I am.  I don’t so much want to be thin.  I want to be less fat. 

My kids, bless their mother-loving hearts, tell me I’m not fat.  They compliment me and tell me I look nice.  And, when I ask, “that question,” they always say no.  I raised me some smart boys.  I don’t really know what the heck my husband thinks.  The other day, I came downstairs dressed to go out.  I had on a new sweater and a pair of jeans.  He looked at me funny and in my insecurity I asked, “Do I look okay?”  He answered, “You’re fine.”  A little while later, he looked at me funny again.  I asked, “What?  Does this sweater look okay?”  Again, he said, “You look fine.”  A third time, I caught him eyeing me and I finally demanded, “WHAT?  WHAT’S WRONG?”  This time, he laughed and said, “Nothing, nothing is wrong, you just look really good, kind of sexy.”  Well, for crying out loud.  Why couldn’t he have just said that to begin with??  Here I am thinking I must look too darn fat to be seen with him out in public and he’s thinking I look sexy! 

The stupid thing about “that question,” is that since I am fat, I look fat in everything I put on.  So, logically, the real question should be, “Does this make me look fattER?”  Of course, those of us who ask that question, expect to hear, “Oh, no, it makes you look THIN!”  And here we have another, funny side of the coin.  Sometimes I’ll wear something and people will say, “That outfit makes you look so thin!”  Which really makes no sense at all.  What they really should say is, “That outfit makes you look so much less fat!”  Right?  It’s okay, I don’t mind being told I might look thin in an outfit.  It gives me hope.  Hope, that in my quest to be “less fat,”  I don’t have as far to go as it appears to me.

In the meantime, I’m trying Weight Watchers again.  I have been for the last two years. I’ve lost 16 pounds, six of which I gained back over Thanksgiving and Christmas, three of which I lost again.  I’m not discouraged.  Some of you might think that’s pathetic, it isn’t working.  But it is.  As long as I’m not gaining and there’s a chance I might lose, I’m happy.

So, yes, I’ll still ask, “Does this make me look fat?” Knowing all the while, that it probably does, but loving the fact that the people who love me will say, “no.” 

Dash’s Eyes

When my sister Jan, decided she wanted to get a dog, roughly 9 years ago, we started researching to find the ideal dog for her.  She wanted a calm breed that would get along with her two cats, who wouldn’t shed too much, and wouldn’t be too active in the house.  Having a bad back, she wanted a dog that she could go on leisurely walks with, who wouldn’t strain at the leash.  She loved boxers, but they required more exercise than she felt she could provide.  Labs fell into the same category.  She didn’t want a toy breed or a breed that required a lot of grooming.

I told her to get a stuffed animal. 

After a while, I remembered that I had read somewhere about retired racing greyhounds and how they had a calm nature, were quiet in the house and, once retired, didn’t need loads of exercise.  They were short-haired and were leash trained during their training at the track.   They seemed perfect except that she’d never even considered them as a potential pet.  We started researching again, learning all we could about the breed and browsing Grehyound adoption agencies online.  We learned that once adopted, most of them housetrained very easily, and many lived quite comfortably with cats. 

My sister had found her breed. 

When Jan and her husband went to adopt her boy, Jacob, I of course, had to go along to “help”. We walked into the kennel at Greyhound Adoption Service in Salisbury, MA., and just oooh’d and aahh’d at all the sweet greyhounds clamoring to see us through their crates. As we looked around, I noticed a big, red fawn greyhound over in the corner, in one of the bottom cages.  He was curled up tight and staring out at us with a truly hateful glare.  He didn’t get up to greet us like the other dogs and really looked like a dog with a bad attitude. He gave me a chill.  I nudged Jan and said, “Ooh, look at THAT one! I’d NEVER adopt him, he looks like he hates the world!” Jan agreed.

We were at the kennel for a few hours and Jan saw quite a few greys before she chose Jacob, a big 5 year old red brindle male, whose racing name was “Ima Royal Son.” Now and then I’d glance over at that bottom cage and there was that dog…glaring out at us, his head down and his eyes looking up.  Again, I was struck by how cold his eyes were.  Finally, Jacob’s adoption was complete and we left. We even talked about that nasty looking dog with the scary eyes, on the way home in the car.

After meeting Jacob, all I could think about was adopting a greyhound and I finally convinced my husband that we needed a dog.  I spent hours and hours looking over the GAS website.  I saw a couple of dogs that I was interested in and there was one in particular, Blazing Diablo, a 2 year old fawn, who I thought was so pretty, but I didn’t consider because he was recovering from a broken hock.  At the time, I didn’t know anything about injuries, and I didn’t know if this dog would require further treatment or have special needs that I wasn’t equipped to deal with, so I eliminated him from my choices.

About a month later, the day of my adoption appointment came and now Jan came with me.  We arrived at GAS and I had my little list of the dogs I wanted to meet.  We noticed that the dog with “those eyes,” was still in that bottom cage.  

One of the dogs I wanted to meet had already been adopted, one was recovering from injuries sustained in a fight and wasn’t available at the time, and the other one just wasn’t the right fit for my family.  Marilyn, the director of GAS, had other ideas for me anyway.  She showed me several dogs that she thought would suit me and my family, and while they were wonderful, they just didn’t “click”.  Finally, Marilyn said, “There’s one more I’d like you to meet.” With that, she walked to that bottom, corner cage, opened it and let out the red fawn dog with the “hateful eyes”.  Out bounded the most joyful, goofy, sweetest greyhound of all the greys that I’d met that day.  Not only was this the dog that I thought had evil eyes, he was also “Blazing Diablo”, the dog with the broken hock, that I said I wouldn’t adopt!  Marilyn explained that his leg was fully healed and shouldn’t need any further treatment or special care. She thought he’d fit in wonderfully with my teenage boys and since he wasn’t cat-safe and I didn’t have a cat…well he did fit.  He won my heart with his sweet, joyful nature and I brought him home that day and named him Dash. 

After Dash was home, I realized that those eyes weren’t glaring out at us with hatred and mean spiritedness, but with boredom and futility.  He was a healthy, good natured 2 year old who had been waiting for someone (ME!) to notice him and bring him home forever. He had been at the kennel for 6 months during his recovery and I believe he was depressed and starting to lose hope. When that kennel door opened and he bounded out to greet me, his new life began.

Now, nearly 9 years later, dear Jacob isn’t with us anymore.  Three years ago, he developed Lymphoma and had to be put to sleep.  Dash will be 11 in July and had his own bout with cancer last February.  He beat it and thankfully, is healthy for the time being.  I look at his beautiful eyes now and wonder how I ever saw hatred in them.  I see pure devotion, he loves us and he knows we love him.  Sometimes I see mischeviousness, there are paper towels to shred and socks to steal.  Sometimes I see anticipation, there are walks to take and goodies to beg for. Most times I just see contentment, that comfortable, knowing look, that says he has us wrapped around his great big paws and we won’t ever let him down.

He knows he’s home forever. 
 

Come Saturday Morning….

Mmmmmm…..what is it about Saturdays that turns me into a complete and utter inanimate object?  I mean, sit around the house in my pajamas and do nothing til’ 4:00 in the afternoon.  If I don’t have anything planned, that’s what I do. 

 Yeah, yeah, it’s the weekend and we’re supposed to “relax” but I think sometimes I take it to another level. 

I’ve never been a morning person, but I usually get up at a decent hour for the weekend – between 7:00 – 9:00 (usually somewhere in between).  Late enough to have felt like I slept in and early enough to be up before everyone else.   It’s also early enough to be able to do all the early morning things I like to do, like pray, read my bible, read the paper, and drink my coffee – all normal stuff, I know.

So I do.  I sit around, pray, read my bible, read the paper, and drink my coffee.   But then, I’ll sit down at the computer and blow a couple of hours there, doing important stuff…. like checking email and seeing who wore ”The 10 Worst Fashion Flubs at the Grammies.” By now Steve and the boys are all up and the television is on.  Worse yet, they might have popped in a DVD.  Now I’m sitting for another 2 hours – in my pajamas.

It’s not like I don’t have other things to do, like get dressed, go food shopping, buy dogfood, dust, vacuum, and clean the bathroom.  I do.  But, ewww.  Who wants to do that when my Pjs are so warm and squishy and my coffee is so yummy?  I tell myself (all day long) that I’m going to get ready and go do all that stuff, as soon as I finish whatever it is that I’m doing at the moment and before I know it, it’s 4:00 in the afternoon.  How does that happen?  During the week, when I’m at work, time passes in it’s normal way, hour by hour.  But on the weekends, I get up in the morning and then it’s 4:00.

Eventually, I do get myself washed and dressed.  But now I tell myself, it’s too late to clean and I really don’t feel like going out, joining the masses and trekking all over, doing errands.  So, what do I do?  On an “energetic” day, I’ll go do a couple of those things that need to be done.  

On a typical day, I’ll pop in another DVD and decide what take-out we want for dinner.

Mmmmm….weekends.  

I Heart You

My heart is so full today.  Yesterday, my husband surprised me with a mini-surprise party for my 50th birthday, which is today.  He took me out to dinner and when we arrived at the restaurant, all my family was there; my parents, sisters, brother and sister-in-laws, nieces, their kids, nephew-in-laws, all there to celebrate me. 

 I had such a good time, was so honored and happy to be together with everyone – I don’t think I expressed how much it meant to me.

This morning, as I was thinking all about it and thinking about my family, my heart filled almost to bursting.  Tears came to my eyes when I realized how much I love you all.  Tears are coming now as I write this.  I want you to know how much you all mean to me, how blessed and fortunate I feel to just know you all, to have you in my life. 

This family is growing in so many wonderful ways and to be a part of it all, to have you all around me, to know you’re there….well, it fills my heart.

I love you guys.

A Nice Ham

Yesterday was a busy day for me.  We needed food.  I know because my husband kept saying, “We need to get some food.” and “We need to go food shopping.”  “We” meaning, me.  We also needed a new toilet seat.  We only have one bathroom in our cozy house, so the one toilet seat gets a workout.  It sheared off it’s little polished chrome hinges and  was basically resting on the rim of the toilet.  If you weren’t ginger about sitting on it, you could very likely skate right off the toilet at a critical moment.  So “we,” (again, meaning me) needed to get a new toilet seat.  My youngest son, who is in college, also needed a calculator for his Statistics class, so “we” needed to get a calculator.

So after my morning coffee and the Sunday paper, I got ready and left the house to get all these things we needed.  I rarely cook a real Sunday dinner, but I had it in the back of my mind that I’d pick up a “nice ham” while I was food shopping and make a nice Sunday dinner for the family.

In case you don’t know, the family consists of me, my husband, and my three sons (all in their 20′s), who for various reasons, all still live at home.  Oh yes, there’s the dog too.

So anyway, I stopped at Target first to get the toilet seat and lo and behold, they also have the calculator that we need.  Cool, I’m done here.  I zip over the the supermarket and spend a good couple of hours shopping.  I get the nice ham.  I have visions in my head of us all gathered around the table while I place a platter of ham down, much like the Norman Rockwell painting of the family sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner -Togetherness, smiling faces full of gratitude and eager anticipation of a delicious meal.

I hauled my shopping home and the happy visions started to fade a little.  After getting all the bags into the house, I realized that there are dirty dishes in the sink.  We do not have a dishwasher.  Well, actually, yes we do; me.  So I’m putting the shopping away and  I start to think to myself, “Hhmmh, I’m out dragging around getting all this stuff for them and no one could even do those dishes.  Huh.”  Granted, two of my kids were working, so that left my husband and my oldest home.  I finally got the food put away, got the ham into the oven and started on those dishes.

I could feel my attitude just plummiting while I was scrubbing.  My husband was upstairs watching television in our bedroom and my son was scavenging for something to eat while he watched television in the living room – a couple of yogurts, two cans of mandarin oranges, half a box of Wheat Thins and some Triscuits (crackers were on sale). I’m thinking how much my head and shoulders are aching and wondering why I’m doing the dishes…

 My husband announces that he’ll put the new toilet seat on.  I tell him “Great, but the toilet needs to be cleaned first.”  Well, that puts a hold on the toilet seat because, well, I can’t expect him to clean the toilet, now, can I?  Well, I CAN expect him to clean it, but it seems to go right over his head, so the toilet seat sat, wrapped in the box while I finished the dishes and started peeling potatoes.  I finished the potatoes, went up and cleaned the toilet and gave my husband the okay to put the new seat on.

 I finally got dinner on the table (but not without getting annoyed that no one offered to set the table) and we sat down to eat.  They tuck in and eat their fill, tell me how great everything was and leave the table.  

There’s dirty dishes in the sink again and I’m sitting there all annoyed and in a bad mood.  The warm glow of the thought of a nice ham and a family dinner had dimmed down to a cold, dark, lump of coal where my good mood had once been.

 So here’s the thing… why did I want to make a nice dinner for my family?  Why was I in a bad mood? 

Well, I’ve been thinking about it today.  I wanted to make a nice dinner for my family because I wanted to please them.  I wanted to make them happy.  I wanted to sit down to Sunday dinner with them.  Should there have been strings attached?  Did I think because I went food shopping and did errands and cooked dinner that they owed me something in return? 

I guess I did.  And that’s where my problem is.  My problem.    I do this all the time – to myself and to them.  I used to walk around the house, muttering out loud about how unfair it all was.  It would go something like this, “Geeze, you’d think it would kill one of you to lift a finger around this place?” and “You’d think I was the ONLY one around here who knows how to wash a dish!” and “It must be nice to have a MAID!  I’d like to know what it feels like to leave MY stuff around and know that someone else will just pick it up!”  I used to do that all the time while I was doing whatever it was that I was complaining about.  I decided a long time ago, that I didn’t want to be that type of wife or mother anymore.  I’ll tell you here that I prayed about it and asked God to help me change my attitude and He did.  I did stop walking around muttering and complaining, and my attitude has changed, but sometimes I slip back into my old self and instead of muttering and complaining out loud, I think it, to myself.  Before I know it, I’m stewing silently, and I swear, there’s a visible black cloud over my head.

I admit, there’s nothing I’d love more than to hear someone say, “Oh, let me clean the toilet.” or “Can I peel those potatoes?” or, “Here, let me do those dishes.”  But experience has taught me that I shouldn’t expect it the way I do.  It’s sort of like when you let someone cut in front of you in traffic or you stop to let someone cross the street and then get mad because they don’t give you a little wave in thanks or appreciation.  I’ve been known to mutter to myself, “Yeah, you’re welcome, PAL!” as the recipient of my favor drives off into the sunset or plods across the street without even glancing up at me.  Why do I feel mad?  Why did I let them go?  Did I let them go because I wanted their gratitude?  Did I let them go because I need to feel good about myself?  I don’t know.  I like to think I let them go because I’m a nice person and it was the right thing to do, so it shouldn’t really matter to me if they thank me.  Right?  Right.

Looking back on yesterday, today, I’m disappointed in myself.  Why couldn’t I just be glad that the errands needed to get done and I did them?  I wanted to cook dinner and I did.  Why couldn’t I just be pleased with myself that I had goals for the day and I accomplished them – without any help, instead of resenting my whole family for not reading my mind and doing things that I didn’t even ask them to do?  Sigh…I don’t know.  But hopefully, I’ve learned something about myself.  I want to do the things I need to do because they need to get done, not because I want thanks or gratitude or even help doing them. 

We’ll see how it goes.  Next Sunday I’m planning a roast.