"BACK IN THE DAY WHICH WAS A WENDNESDAY"--DANE COOK

SAYING GOOD-BYE TO MAX


This week aliencg at Swamp Gas & Moonlit Reflections - is doing an 80s thing on his blog. I thought I would jump on his bandwagon and add my 80s favorite... Max, who is moving out today. I'll be driving him away and leaving him in the town to the left.

The photo above is of Max with his nephew, Mikey taken two years ago this month. Both boys have certainly changed. Max has lost any trace of baby fat and Mikey has gained it! ha.
As you can see, we are a baby loving family.


Max was born very quickly in 1987... I'm not kidding, 45 minutes of labor to delivery. When my sister, Cinderella looked at Max she said "My goodness he's sturdy!" Indeed. A muscular baby... who knew they existed?

Hairy too. He looked like some wolf child... hairy shoulders, a line of hair that ran from those hairy shoulders down his back and into his butt crack... dark black fur. My little Lycan. He also had a silver streak down the side of his furry head. It's still there in that thatch of curly hair.


At age three he asked me... if we walked on the ceiling... how can we reach the door knob? Until this time it never occurred to me that the door knob is farther from the ceiling than it is from the floor. Max figured that right out. He's still like that, noticing things that the rest of us might miss.



Now an old man of 21, he's moving out. Time to say good-bye to the child. His friends all live in the town to the left. Now he will too. Bear and B-wreck are both there. My children are exceptionally close. They all talk all the time on their cells, on line, in game mode, etc. I am happy for Max, its Squeaky that I feel sorry for... he's stuck with only mom. Yikes. Poor soul.

Because it is 80s week we are doing... Here are the 80s things that have something to do with Max.

First, where Max got his name: Mad Max the movie.

mad max 2 opening start first scene

mad max 2 opening start first scene.

Max Headroom Art Of Noise Paranoimia
3 min 19 sec

Max Headroom, the TV series. Very cool beans.

And Maxfield Parrish, the artist.

And this is the song we sang to him as a baby:

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

It's a wonder he didn't become demented.
His dad gave him a silver hammer when he was 4.

Max and I are still very close. He is the guy who takes me to movies or to a concert. If I have to run errands, he rides along to keep me company. We have marvelous conversations about anything you can imagine. He can talk classic movies, books, politics or just listen. He is gentle, protective, funny and very strong.... but you have to be in my family. Good qualities in a man.


I don't worry about seeing Max. Even when he's away, he calls and checks in. They all do. I don't know how I managed that.
I am only a little bit sad about it. Mostly I am happy for Max. He has already assured me that we will be going back the the Crystal Ballroom to see K.M.R.I.A. for their Christmas gig... they're a Pogues cover band. So things like that are not going to change a whole lot yet. A steady girl may change that quickly.
But I'm okay with that too.


The best part... I get Max's room. Yeah... no more sleeping in the living room. A room of my own again. See me smile!

Thank you to Michael at Innocents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations for the Dane Cook quote. :-)

GORGEOUS OREGON

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These photos are so awesome...

the sky will steal your breath! I think you can enlarge them by double clicking on them.

They were taken on a hiking trail above the John Day River in Oregon.

Night in the country, far from the lights... aaaahhh. Doesn't it look relaxing? You can imagine maybe a guitar and songs around the camp fire. Marshmallows toasting on a stick you walked around to find and cleaned by picking off the bark. You have to raft to get here or hike a couple of miles. I do not raft. Nope. Water and I have an agreement. I do not pollute it with my person and it leaves me on the shore.

Last night Squeaky turned seventeen. My last baby. I guess I'll have to start letting go and teach him how to drive the clown car. Max has some understanding of the clutch and can roughly drive. But don't tell him I told you so... he needs an automatic! Squeaky will not have that problem. He has coordination by the pounds. The only reason that Max does not have a license by now is that I'm afraid for my car! Not fear of his having an accident, he's pretty cautious but my clutch would not last long at all. Yikes. I don't want to have to put in another new clutch anytime soon. I am not a mechanic and I can't afford to pay for one.

Have you guessed yet that mom is a bit over-protective? Sigh. I know... they are boys, let them become men! I'm trying. It's hard. I had no trouble teaching the Bear... their sister. She learned how to drive when she was 14 and was excellent at it. I had serious asthma problems at the time that resulted in trips to the hospital that ended with me singing Wizard of Oz songs from the medication. I had no business driving home that way. I had no one else... so the Bear learned to drive. You do what you have to do.

Well, Squeaky only wanted a hard drive for a lap top he's building from scrap and scratch. What he does not know is that I'm buying a car from the Bear and hubby... for him. I think it's great that he was happy with just a hard drive. I'm pretty proud of him... a junior in high school who already has 3 college classes under his belt and will have almost a full term by the time he even arrives there... and keeps his grades up. I think he deserves the free ride.

I hope your skies are filled with a billion stars tonight and that you sleep as soundly as one does in the fresh air of the wild country.

HAL 9000 LIVES!

Yeah! The bugs are finally worked out. I am so excited. Now I will have the time on computer to do my blog justice and not have to fight boys.

Just got back from the next town to the left... had a wonderful diner with the boy's dad... at a great Mexican food place. Yum. I had to drive Swell up there to stay with friends... and I don't go in the clown car anywhere by myself, in case it dies. Boy's dad is good about that. He is a gentleman. I will give him that. We actually got along well for a change. He even drove so that I could have a margarita. Okay, two. He had chicken enchilada suiza and I had the grilled chili lime chicken with a fresh salsa made of cabbage, onions cilantro and tomatoes. Awesome! Now I have food for lunch tomorrow too.

Even the drive home was great. I mean it was dark, but the entire distance is next to the river. Our river is up to a mile wide. It curvs and varies.I could see all the lights across the way and their reflections shimmered on the dark water. There was enough light to silhouette the clouds here and there.
Very pretty. No rain either. That was a nice break.
On the way up Swell (Max) and I cemented our plans for St. Patrick's Day. A trip to the big city to one of the Gaelic clubs called Kells. We are going to take the Viking (He looks like Thor... swear to goodness!), Nature Boy (So called because he loves to wear his kilt without a shirt.) Nature Boy and the Viking are brothers. Very handsome fellows. Sigh. (But like sons.) And B-wreck of course. Those four are a quite a team. B-wreck will be the designated driver. Anyway, four handsome guys, the best music in the world and enough to drink to make us silly. Ought to be a good time. I won't lack for dance partners that's for sure.

But coming home and finding that Hal 9000 was finally well... that was the icing on the cake. Have a wonderful night. I am going to sleep like a rock. Oh, guess my giving up drinking didn't last too long did it. Good t hing it wasn't for Lent.

Son Two, Child Three

Max, my third child and second son, insisted that I use his real name... because he likes it. We also call him Swell (Max-Swell, get it?). Max is an enigma. I am not even sure how to describe him to you. He has a great, huge brain that collects everything it sees, hears or experiences. When there is something that cannot be recalled, the entire family asks Max... who can always recall the answer.
When he was three and and he and I were laying down for a nap, he was looking around. He turned to me and said "If we walked on the ceiling, how would we be able to reach the door knobs?" I had never noticed that the door knob is farther from the ceiling that it is from the floor. It was a good thinking question, especially for someone only three years old. That is what Max is... a thinker. A voracious reader. A chewer of information and a fun conversationalist for it. I can talk to Max all night if the mood strikes us.
If Max has a flaw, and who does not, it's his impatience with people who do not see things his way. Not that they disagree, but that they don't get what he is saying. He is fine with disagreement. Welcomes it and in fact loves a good debate in a non-angry spirit.

Max is now 21 and discovering the pub life. I have mixed emotions on this subject. I have seen more people lost to alcohol over the years than I have ever seen lost to drugs. Truth. But he is young and in Oregon, the pub life is about all there is to do in the small town we occupy. One has to have friends and friends have to have a place to gather. He has very interesting friends too.

My favorite memory of Max happened when he was about five years old. He was playing with a neighbor kid, who had whacked him on the head with a squirt gun. His sister and the neighbor boys brought him home to me... blood running from his hair, down his neck. I am a believer in the "calm mom" keeps fear at bay. So I acted as if a hole in his head was the most normal thing in the world and took him to the bathroom. Seated upon the counter with me snipping the hair from around the wound, I asked what happened. Max looked at me with his huge brown eyes, expressive as any hound dog's and said... "I've cracked my head open and now I'm going to die."