The tortoise and the hare-like grandma

Gah! With all the busy-ness of the past week or two, I completely forgot to get a gift in the mail to Bubby! How could I do that, especially for such an important event?

What? Huh?

No, I didn't miss Bubby's second birthday. We'll head to the desert to celebrate that in a few weeks. What I forgot to mark in a timely fashion is World Turtle Day!

World Turtle Day, sponsored by American Tortoise Rescue, was started to increase respect and knowledge for the world'’s oldest creatures. According to ATR, the critters been around for about 200 million years, yet they are rapidly disappearing as a result of the exotic food industry, habitat destruction and the cruel pet trade. The ATR website has some pretty dern informative turtle tidbits, such as, "If a tortoise is crossing a busy street, pick it up and send it in the same direction it was going. If you try to make it go back, it will turn right around again."

This year the 10th World Turtle Day was celebrated on Sunday ... May 23 ... while I was in South Dakota ... where the buffalo roam and where I saw lots of deer and antelope playing but nary a turtle that I had to help make its way across a busy street.

When I realized my blunder of forgetting to mark the day for Bubby -- it fits perfectly with my mission to regularly celebrate wacky nationally recognized dates with my grandson -- I hopped online in hare-like fashion and ordered the most awesome tortoise to be delivered to him lickity split. That's it in the picture above. Yeah, it'll arrive a few days late -- not so hare-like at all, I guess -- but I'm pretty sure Bubby will enjoy it just the same.

And because it's made of plastic, Bubby won't have to worry at all that his turtle toy will attempt any daredevil street-crossings! Frankly, he'll likely need to worry more about forgetting the little guy out in the hot desert sun where it'll melt into a puddle of ticky-tacky tortoise goo, which would be so not in line with the ATR's mission "to save turtles and tortoises for the next generation."

Happy belated World Turtle Day to one and all!

Today's question:

Did you or anyone you know have a turtle when you were a kid?

My answer: I didn't, but my cousins did -- and it was less than four-inches long, which, according to the ATR website, is a seriously illegal critter to have in one's possession. Tsk, tsk on Aunt Ruby for allowing such things! But then again, that was about 40 years ago and maybe turtle possession is one of those things that once skirted regulation ... kind of like hitchiking and entering stores without shirts or shoes.

Wheat, chaff and baby teeth

As I mentioned yesterday, Jim and I spent Saturday with three of Jim's five siblings plus a couple nieces and nephews clearing out the storage shed that held everything from the last apartment Jim's mom lived in, her last home and the place she resided when a stroke unexpectedly ripped her from her life and plopped her down in a hospital bed to wait out her days.

My mother-in-law was always a fastidious housekeeper, a truly tidy grandma. But the unexpectedness of the emergency medical situation meant she never had the chance to tie up her life belongings into beribboned bundles or to even discard such things as drawers full of hair-color conditioner tubes and expired grocery coupons. Which meant her kids had a lot of stuff to go through, a lot of work to do paring her possessions into piles to pass along to her children and grandchildren, honoring her by not pitching it all into the charity bin.

To be honest, it was a relatively quick task as Jim's mom lived a spare and simple life. And, as Granny prided herself on being ever the educator, the task indeed taught me a few lessons about getting my own things and my own life in order so my kids and grandkids have an easier time separating the wheat from the chaff once I'm gone.

Here are a few of those lessons:

Keep a notebook or journal -- placed in a prominent spot -- detailing which possessions you'd like to go to whom. There were thankfully no arguments over my mother-in-law's goods, but we all could only guess what her desire may be ... and I'm pretty sure we missed the mark on at least a few. A will may be the answer, but how many wills go so far as to say which kid gets the red afghan versus the white or the flowered teapot versus the striped?

Always label photos with the names of those in the pictures and the date. As we perused the hundreds of photos, we were at a loss again and again without Granny around to let us know which baby belonged to whom and why one wacky woman wore the getup featuring what appeared appeared to be a bikini-clad sumo wrestler.

Minimize the mementos from your children's early years. Mother's Day gifts made in preschool, unidentifiable art-class and woodshop projects and every scrap of sentimentality have their place, but it's a very limited place. Save only those that really tug at the heart strings, not every crayon-scribbled, glitter-pocked piece of paper.

Speaking of paper, get rid of (most of) it. There's no need to save every single greeting card, every single receipt, every single recipe that one may have intended to try but never did. A paper shredder -- of which we found an unused one in Granny's possession -- comes in handy for such things.

Same goes for toiletry samples and hotel freebies. As Jim and his siblings chuckled about the blue tube after blue tube of the Clairol conditioning cream that comes with the hair color but is far too much for any normal woman to use as directed on the tube, I had to fess up that I have a handful, okay a basketful, of the very same conditioning cream tubes in my own bathroom cabinet. I'll be pitching those ... soon.

Thank you for these lessons and more, Granny. I'll do my best to soon institute them in my life, my home, my piles of stuff. I'll do it in honor of you -- and to nip in the bud the giggles, grins and guffaws sure to come from my daughters if they were to one day discover the Ziploc baggie I have filled with baby teeth individually wrapped in tissues, all deftly pulled from under pillows by this grandma formerly known as the Tooth Fairy.

Today's question:

Which of the "lessons" from above are you most in need of instituting in your life?

Photo replay

March 2008

As you read this, Jim and I are driving back from South Dakota where, along with most of his siblings, we chose the pieces of his mom's life we want for our own. Granny is still living, but she'll never live outside of a hospital again, will never even know her things -- and her former life -- are gone.

Green-eyed Grandma

Contrary to the title of today's post, I have blue eyes. But today my eyes are tinged with green.

Well, they're more than tinged; I'd say they're pretty much glow-in-the-dark, iridescent, color-of-a-leprechaun's-hat green.

More specifically, my eyes are green with envy.

Why the drama? Because Bubby's paternal grandma and grandpa get to see him. Again. In less than a week. And they just saw him less than a month ago. And they get to spend seven days in the desert with Bubby and his mom and dad. And they will be back for more with Bubby in July.

And I want that to be me!

Wah, wah, wah! Yeah, grandmas can still be big ol' cry-baby green-eyed monsters. And today that's most certainly what I am.

I'm not so much worried that Bubby will love his other grandma more than he loves me; it's more that I worry he'll remember her more because he's had these huge chunks of time with her and all he's gotten with me lately are bits of Skyping here and there.

Bubby's "other" grandparents are long-distance grandparents, too, but they're educators, which means they have summers free to spend a week with their grandchild whenever they please. Jim and I, on the other hand, will get just three days in June ... and getting those three days was a bit of a challenge because Jim has a new job and no vacation days.

Yes, I should be happy with even those three days. Yes, I should rejoice that I get to see Bubby at all. Yes, I should be pleased as punch that I can Skype and that Megan and I talk on the phone every single day and I get to hear Bubby chattering in the background or I listen closely and respond accordingly as he shares a few select words with me when Mom hands him the phone.

I am thankful for all those things.

But today I just want to complain.

And see the world through green-colored glasses.

Now if you'll please excuse me, I need to go use the Visine. The red in my eyes from crying mixed with the green of jealousy makes for a very unattractive look.

Today's question:

Who are you jealous or envious of today?

The next Grilled Grandma

This week's Grilled Grandma, Edna, reveals a secret that most grandmas don't talk about: That we still really like our kids, too, not just our grandkids.

I know, I know. That's kind of hard to believe, considering that grandmas typically go on and on and on about the little ones, but often fail to mention the parents of those precious grandchildren. Pictures of the children? You gotta be joking ... where would they fit in a brag book filled with granddaughters and grandsons. Especially when you have SEVENTEEN grandchildren, as Edna does.

But, like I said, Edna admits to enjoying time with her adult children, not just the grandchildren. When asked what she most likes to do when visiting her grandchildren, here's her response:

 Believe it or not, when we go to visit the families I find I also enjoy spending time with my own children as well as the grandchildren. We often are all gathered in someone’s family room where we chatter and laugh with all ages mingled in. The little ones are on the floor, the middle ones are in and out, and the teenagers are part of the fun. Gradually we migrate into groups where I often find I’m with the youngest and we play silly make believe games.

She's right. I gotta admit that as much as we love seeing our Bubby, we also enjoy hanging out with Megan and Preston. Of course, I would have never said that out loud, well, written it, if not for Edna's admission to the same. Now I can't wait to have all the girls and their guys and however many kiddos they produce hanging out with us all at one time. THAT is the kind of family time I truly look forward to!

Read what else Edna fesses up to in her Grilled Grandma feature, which you can find right HERE.

Today's (completely unrelated) question:

If you could teach one of your pet's to do one thing, what would it be?

My answer: I would teach Abby, our tabby cat, to answer the telephone. I hate the phone and Jim just ignores it, but I'm pretty sure Abby -- who alternates between thinking she's a human and thinking she's a dog and who must always be in the middle of everything going on -- would enjoy conversing with anyone who happened to dial our land line.