Scooting along

Laura is scooting—there’s no denying it anymore!

She’s been kind of getting a little bit moved around lately, but it’s mostly been roll, semi-scoot, roll, roll, semi-scoot, roll. Tonight, however, Robert sat her in the middle of her explor-a-blanket (I don’t know what else to call the darned thing—we got it at Ikea and it’s got squeakers, mirrors, textury bits and a hidden spider) and came into the office for a minute to get something. When he got back in to the living room, mere minutes later, she had scooted her way all the way off the blanket a good foot or so onto the carpet. When he called her on it, she reacted pretty much the same way she acts every time she gets caught doing something—she laughed.

I guess this means I need to vacuum the living room now.

Crap.

I guess this also means I need to get going on baby proofing, at the very least, the living room and her room.

Double crap.

In other news, Harrison went back to school today (yay!). Not that I don’t love my son and his every wish, desire and whim. But seriously, I need a rest occasionally. The one day of resting means that when he comes home from school talking a mile-a-minute, begging to play video games and bouncing off the walls, I have the patience to talk him down from the proverbial ledge and calm him down. Have a civilized chat with him. Cuddle. All the good stuff, without the desire to Homer-style throttle him.

[Disclaimer: Yes, my son gets spankings when he as done something that is off-the-charts-bad, but he usually sits time out on his green carpet. My threats to choke/beat, throttle him are hollow, and he pretty much knows it. Getting the monkey after him when he’s piddling and wasting time, though—that’s another story entirely.]

So I had today off, which was nice. I did f&@k all. Watched a few episodes of This American Life on Netflix. Played YoVille on Facebook. Pinged messages back and forth with friends from my childhood with whom I’ve recently gotten in touch. Between three of us, we identified nearly every kid in several class pictures I had posted. It was pretty cool being in contact with them again. My family moved to East Texas when I was fourteen and so I didn’t get to graduate with the kids I grew up with. I kept in touch with a few from the old school, but for the most part I had completely lost touch. Apparently, they are going to have a 15 year reunion this August, so I’m going to make Robert go to Houston with me and go see all my old buds.

I’m pretty excited about it, but I’m a little worried about it too. Robert and I were just discussing the complete randomness of schoolmates just the other day. The kids you grow up with are a total lottery that is entirely dependent on your parents’ choices of where to live, whether to put you in private or public school and a whole host of other factors. Once you get into your school, you generally have a group of kids you have in your classes year after year. This could be good, or this could be bad, depending on your relationship with those kids.

My point is, these relationships are totally random. When kids become friends in this kind of situation, I wonder if they are actually hanging around with the people they choose because they like them and want to be around them or if it’s a defense mechanism. Going with what is more comfortable, if you will.

I worry because I spent years with these guys and I remember them being really good people. I see the adults they have become and I’m truly excited for them—they have gone to prestigious schools (UT, MIT, etc.), they’ve become doctors, innovators, and adventurers. They’ve done some really cool stuff and I knew them back then!

I just wonder if we’ll have things to talk about after the ‘I remembers’ are out of the way. Tony Soprano said that ‘Remember when…’ is the lowest form of conversation. Now, I don’t take all my life advice from a mob boss, and I enjoy a back-in-time conversation as much as the next person, but I just worry about the conversation after that one.

Seeing what these guys have done and where they’re going, I have a feeling there will be some pretty interesting discourse in the future.