28-Day Pit Stop (August)

This is a repost from August 2010, but it just fits this time of year too well not to repeat.

On the 28th day of each month (in honor of PMS and that whole menstrual cycle thing), we make a Pit-Stop to rally support for each other during a particular moment of PSM.

Submit a comment with your experience. Yours may be just the inspiration or the support or the laugh a PSM sister needs!!

This month's little adventure is entitled "Empty House", because that's what so many of us are left with as our Spawns leave for school. If it's for the first time, their freshman year, the sight of their near-empty room and the silence of the house can be unnerving. There are signs that they will be back - furniture, maybe their car - but you won't hear their key in the door each night or the perpetual slamming door as they come in and out of the house all day come Saturday.

And you suddenly have hours and hours and days and days to fill. You should call a friend. You should join a group. You should sign up for a class. You should, you should, you should. But first, you'll grieve. You may not even recognize it (mine came in an inexplicable hankerin' to watch the first season of the Brady Bunch over and over and over), but, if you can, just give into whatever your mind and heart and body want. If it's the Brady Bunch and Chunky Monkey ice cream, so be it. The world can wait for you and it will.

And, on the bright side, the next year's Fall semester break-up will be much easier. In fact, you may be surprised when you don't cry as they drive away!

Read next to the not so BE-YOU-tiful visual for suggestions to distract you while we check the lug nuts and put air in your tires for the next 28 days. And don’t forget to send in a comment if you have any suggestions for fellow PSMers!!

August's Pit Stop Suggestions:

Get a pillow and blanket and stay on the couch as much as you want to. You deserve a little downtime anyway!! I recommend watching mindless TV Shows about busy houses full of love and humor and little kids like Roseanne, Full House, Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver. They will make the house less quiet.

Just One

*It just takes remembering one conversation like this to feel not so bad about losing our lil' angels to Fall semesters. PLEASE tell me you have one of these to hang on to!! :) Comment below or send me an email!

I wanted to make sure my Spawn knew how much I would appreciate one of these tubs in my future. (The person who invented these is a genius and deserves a statue and a warm sudsy soak in his/her honor.)

“Hey, <Spawn>, come look at this commercial.”

“Yeah. And?”

“I want one of those in my wing when I move in with you in my old age.”

“You know where they have those? In nursing homes.”

“Not in the nursing homes I’ll be able to afford.”

“Well, you have a point. They do require indoor plumbing.”

“Thanks. I took care of your first eighteen years. You should take care of my last eighteen.”

“Eighteen? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You need to make sure you go quickly.”

“When do you leave for school?”

“Not soon enough, not soon enough.”

Testing Toy Story / Pixar or Pickax to the Heart?

The Plan:

I've been told too many times that Toy Story is a must-see, so I guess I must see it. I've also heard that it's about Andy going to college. And leaving his mother and giving his toys to a little girl. I don't have high hopes that I'll get through it without a tear or two, but we shall see. I'll report back....

The Result: 

Yes, yet another tearjerker cartoon from Disney/Pixar. Nothing for the kids to cry about, though. Just the adults. Specifically, the mothers. And God bless any post-single mothers watching this movie.

Why do they keep doing this? Why must all their movies be so sad? Remember Lion King? The father dies a brutal stampede death! I will never forget comforting my 4-year-old Spawn during that scene. (He cried and cried."My eyes are leaking, my eyes are leaking!" It was horrible. His crying (not the father's brutal death - I had only been divorced from his father for a year or so at that point and often dreamed of his violent death) made me cry. And that made him cry more. Did I say it was horrible?

Toy Story 3 was about change and separations and endings. I don't understand how that's entertaining for children, but I'm sure it was necessary for the Bonnie empire to come in what will so obviously be Toy Story 4, 5, and 6.

Plus, there was a whole middle part that was fun for the kiddies, I suppose. But the beginning and the end and the entire plotline. Every time Andy was on-screen, I cried. In fact, just his room made me cry. When the mom said, "Oh Andy" looking at his empty room, I cried. But let me say here that no non-cartoon 17-year-old boy would tell his mother, "I'll always be with you." That did NOT make me cry. That just made me want to write the writers.

I cried the hardest after leaving the theater. It was like I had just relived the worst day of PSM, with all the symptoms, including crying at red lights. About two hours after the movie, while running some errands, the Universe blessed me with a flat tire, which ended my PSM funk pretty abruptly. I'm actually grateful for that annoyance.

Would I recommend Toy Story 3 to other PSMers? Nope. I just relived the most emotional time of my life and will now require some recovery time. And, it's a cartoon for God's sake. Andy didn't even have to grow up. What was the point? To be realistic? He's a C-A-R-T-O-O-N. 

What I'll remember most about Toy Story? Laughing at the army men parachuting out the window because they're "the first to go when the trash bags come out". And Big Baby. Dear God, how do you people with girls sleep with those things in the house?

What's this PSMer's final verdict: Pickax. Definitely Pickax. On a scale of 1-10, a Pickax 11.

The Time Has Come

I thought I was home free. Only two weeks to go, and I really haven’t felt all that emotional. Until yesterday, that is, when he cleaned his room.

He has had a summer project to organize and purge, which he did and ended up with a pick-up truck full of stuff to donate and three lawn and leaf size bags of stuff to throw away. I saw little soccer and t-ball trophies poking out of one bag, but when I went to comment on not throwing his entire past away, he jumped down my throat for backpedaling.

The purging didn’t even hit me, because his room still looked like it belonged to the kid I’ve known for years.

Then, he had to go and clean it. Bed made. Clothes on hangers. Posters off walls. No junk on the computer desk or the nightstands or the armoire. No dishes or wrappers on the floor. Carpet! Hell, there were vacuum tracks.

There’s a song out there somewhere about a father who just sits in his daughter's room after she leaves. But I can’t go in there. There’s a floodgate that I’m pretty sure would take all of freshman year to plug. And I need to work.

I think I’ll make him start closing the door, though, because I know it’s just going to get worse from here, and I have a feeling I already may be taking it pretty hard.