Not everything has to be creepy and supernatural, you know.

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Conversations with Bean:

Bean: If that was your last one and you used it, you have zero left
Mommy: That's awesome. What happens if I had two left and only used one?
B: Then you'd have one left. And if you used that one, you'd have zero left.
M: You're really good with numbers. Did you learn that in school or is it something you figured out on your own?
B: I figured it out on my own.

B: (grouping her animal magnets) These guys are all together because they have hoofs. Pigs have hoofs, goats have hoofs, sheep have hoofs, zebras have hoofs and giraffes have hoofs.
M: You're right - the all have hooves.
B: Cows and horses have hoofs too, but they aren't here. If they were here, they could join in the hoof party.

B: Can we go to a cemetery?
M: Not right now, maybe this weekend, though. I'll find one where you can walk around and look at the headstones.
B: And find Paul. (For those who don't remember, the death of Paul, a PT at Bean's therapy place, is what began the death/dying/cemetery thing)
M: Well, I'm not sure we'll find Paul because I don't know which cemetery he's in.
B: Can we try to find Paul?
M: Sure, I'll look. Maybe I can find a pet cemetery, too.
B: Maybe there will be horses.
M: Probably not horses, but dogs and cats.
B: What other kids of pets?
M: Maybe birds, hamsters, bunnies ...
B: If they just died that's okay, but if somebody killed them that's *not* okay.

So now I'm busily searching online for local cemeteries, for the cemetery field trip this weekend. I was hoping to find a pet cemetery locally, but there doesn't seem to be one. It's Memorial Day Weekend, so I'll be able to wrap a good message into the field trip, and we'll stop to buy some pink flowers for Bean to randomly distribute. See how I take something that's kind of ... oooky, and I make it into something kind of nice? It's a skill. A gift, really.

Stefany, I can't believe it's been a year, either. Time really flies ... Late April was the official year since I'd moved out, so that was a kind of rough time for me. And I still have moments of regret - not really for anything I could have changed, but regret that he didn't make his case earlier and regrets that our marriage didn't get the effort it deserved. And, I'll say it, I do miss him; or, more accurately, I miss all he was in my life - my best friend, my confidant, the person who knew everything and told me everything (except, apparently, the really important stuff ... sigh). That romanticized, rose-colored-glasses view of the past that makes us better at nostalgia than at carrying a grudge.

Dave and I have a very good post-divorce relationship. Currently. It wasn't always that way, but I've come to understand enough about why it wasn't that my more magnanimous side gives him a pass. The Catty Catterson side has a few snide remarks, but usually only when I'm in my cups a little and feeling all snarky. Going forward, we may have a few more rough spots, although I'm hopeful that the good relationship we're cultivating now will see us through.

One thing I'm thankful for is that even when we were smacking each other around verbally, we somehow managed to keep the kids on a completely different *planet* and never made it difficult for the other to have the relationship and the time they wanted with the girls. I know it's not always easy to put children first in a divorce, but because we were successful with that, I think it made a lot of other stuff easier.

The fact that Dave is an involved, fantastic father and I'm a great mom is another huge plus for us - often one parent makes it hard to respect their parenting skills and their commitment. I can count on one finger the concerns I had about Dave's parenting choices, but I'll let y'all guess the finger. Without that rock-solid faith in him as a father to the girls, I think the divorce and the fallout would have been much harder.

So a year after moving out, and 18 months after finding out my marriage was in trouble, I'm in a good place. And it seems like it's a place I've been both forever and for just an instant ... a kind of "I can't believe it's only/already been this long." I'm wondering if that's a pretty typical way to feel - it seems like it almost should be, especially in the first few years ...
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Beanisms and musings

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Nuggets of joy gleaned from a 30-minute phone call from Bean

I hope you don't break both your legs, mommy.

I'm going to ask all the humans did you crash Paul? Did you crash Paul? Did you crash Paul? And if they say they say yes then I am going to crash them too because that's not nice to crash people!

And I'm pretty sure you're going to love me always mommy. Even when you're 100.

Can I come to your house mommy? I will take care of you. Every time you sneeze, I will bring you a tissue. But I can't take care of daddy and Miss O, too. That's a lot of people.

Miss O just attacked me. Apparently she wants to knock me over.

I'm going to put the phone down and go ask daddy. Don't talk until I come back, okay?

Well, my big girl definitely misses me. And talking to her really drove home how much I miss her, too. And her sister, but Bean is just kind of a force unto herself, you know? The things she says and does are so interactive and engaging and unique that being away from her for this long has been really hard. I miss the little one for the more obvious reasons: my baby girl, nursing, her consistent presence. But Bean is who really puts the life and dynamism into my home.

She initiated the always awkward mommy and daddy are divorced conversation. This one began with "you loved each other for a little while" kind of discussion. Sometimes I wish I had a kid who was just not interested in the world around her, you know? I wouldn't have to talk about dead people, wouldn't have to talk about divorce ... We could just talk about her and her ponies. (Daddy got her a "medium size" Toola Roola pony, with "sparkles on her butt-butt and on her nose and in her mane!" ... the girl loves her some Ponies.)

Somehow she drew the conclusion "you still love daddy a little". Ummm ... no. Caught off-guard, I replied "no, sweetie, daddy and mommy are just friends." She asked her daddy if we were friends, and he must have shaken his head, because next I heard was "Yes you are. Mommy said you are friends" and, in the background, Dave's "yes, we're friends."

This is a bit of a shift in verbiage; historically we've kind of made mommy and daddy just separate entities, and used 'mommy and daddy aren't friends anymore' as the reason for two homes and the divorce. But as Bean's understanding of things - and her social context - expands, it seems like we'll need to wrap our co-parenting relationship in different terms.

And since, in her social context at school, "not friends" is defined in terms of exclusion, meanness and scratching, it's probably best that she thinks mommy and daddy are friends. Thankfully, I'm not alone in my thinking, so friends is the new terminology. Of course, this was followed by Bean vowing "We will all be friends forever. Mommy and Daddy and me and Miss O." So I think there will need to be some nuancing of the term, over time, so she understands there are gradations of friendship, but for now, the 'friends' bucket seems a much better place for mommy and daddy's relationship than the 'not friends' bucket :)

On the health front, I think I'm past the feverish portion of the flu, but I still have a nasty cough and the general feeling of being run down by a truck. I was out for a little while today to mail a few things, return some library books and pick up my own mail, and found the 15 minutes of driving exhausting. This is after a good night's sleep. I ended up taking a two-hour nap and woke up about 4 hours ago, but I'm already yawning again.

Still no word on swine flu results. Looks like the first local school is closing based on 'probable' swine flu, so it's just a matter of time before the first positive shows up around here. Whatever version of the flu I have, it has definitely knocked me on my ass much harder than the flu usually does. Although I've never had the flu at the same time I was returning to work and putting my kids in full-time care, so I imagine that life itself was knocking me down a few pegs already :)

The girls are on the rebound from whatever non-flu issues were ailing them, so hopefully one or both of them will be able to return to school tomorrow. Dave has totally been a rock star, keeping them over there all week, and staying home with them while they're sick. It's not a huge shock to me that he's doing all this, as his daddy skills were never in doubt or question, it's just really, really nice that he's doing it - mostly to keep them away from me, but also because it gives me a chance to recover. And, ostensibly, to work from home. Which is easier said than done, as my already limited ability to stay focused has been shredded by the combo of illness-driven malaise and medication-induced brain fog. It's taken me all day just to type this post, and I've had to give up finding an appropriate quote to use as a post title because I keep getting sucked into all sorts of silly things ...
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