Heather Curlee-Novak

Friends, I have a confession to make:  I am not just your average stay at home mama.

Last week I dreamt that I awoke to a snow-covered yard.  I know, it is now June and these fears should be far behind me, but the seasons have been discombobulated. We need to admit snow in June might not be completely off the table.

My husband says he is a grumpy old man even though he is not old! He is a little bit of a cynic. While his loyalty runs deep to work, friends and of course, darling me, he rarely feels safe meeting new people.  He’s seen enough human behavior to know he wants to choose carefully how he spends his heart and time. I on the other hand, am the Five Year Old. He likens me to that freckled girl in pigtails of my youth standing in the front yard addressing everyone passing by with “Hi!  I’m Heather! Wanna be friends?!?”  He’s not wrong.  I find people fascinating.

I got to play in the snow this week.  We got nineteen inches give or take eighty.  So I played in the snow but not in the fun way. I played in ‘the dog won’t go on her own and you don’t want her to pee on the porch” sort of way.  Our poor sedan that should be put out to pasture got stuck TWICE in one day.  I told my husband John to just leave it there with a ‘FREE PLEASE TAKE’ sign.   

It is so very cold, and it is so very dark.  The cold seeps into my bones and makes me want to just sit here in my chair with a fuzzy blanket and slippers.  I only have energy to zone out in a book or watch Netflix until my eyes dry out.

The thing I want all of you to know is there was one time I nailed this stay at home mama deal. Sure, it was just that once, but since I left my job in August, I am here for the small wins!  In one day the house was kind of tidy, the kids got haircuts, we researched the past owners of our hundred year old house and I voted.  I also laid out a tray of hot cocoa and fresh oil popped popcorn for a pal and her brood. It was a socially-distanced-bonfire-and-whatever-you-find-in-the-garage playdate. Then I put dinner on the table.  I kind of impressed myself. This ONE day.

Unless you live under the proverbial rock, what I am about to say should spark recognition: “Nailed it!!”  Do you know it?  This current standard in our ‘Pinworthy’ You Tube Social Media World should make you cringe or smile.  “Nailed it!” is the recognition that what we see, what we attempt, and what we actually create….do not match.  (Google the phrase when you need a belly laugh.)  If you were a gymnast, “nailing it” would indicate mastery and perfection.  Shall we imagine together that it originated in carpentry? 

What in the world is going on in the world?

You know how your parents or grandparents are too…old…to understand technology?  How you can explain it slowly, simply but still no comprende?  They cannot learn this crucial technology fast enough, and they need your help all the time.  Technology matters to our daily lives.   (Especially under quarantine lockdown where the only thing between most of us and a complete psychotic break is a little glowing screen.)  I know not all of the boomer-plus set are lost when it comes to tech…many folks are savvy.  My family runs the gamut from “Me Text You Long Time” with texts so long they should b

Long ago my Grandmother Lutes said I should be a writer.  I’ll bet some of you have a grandma who said you would be a great writer, too. It is a typical beloved family member thing to say.  I wrote letters by hand in those days (Yup, I am that old). After the dinosaurs died out and we enjoyed the industrial age, I wrote a typed missive of a Christmas Letter to send to everyone including Grandma.

So I took a trip this Fall.  I have ventured all over the United States and also went to Cancun as is required for most young people mid winter.  Once, when I was way up north in Michigan for a work assignment, I ventured over the bridge to a Canadian Tim Horton’s. Then I went back across the bridge because it was late and I was tired.  I never had a passport.  I suck at geography.  Even as lovely church missionaries and Doctors without Borders and Peace Corps people head across the ocean to help other people in other countries, I was content here at home in Indiana.

It is not even 8:30 in the morning when she has stormed upstairs and I have slammed a door and bellowed that our fun plans for the day are cancelled.  I sit in the bathroom where I am hiding from her, fuming.  I am too mad to pray. I’m too mad to write.  I’m too mad to think in any kind of a reasonable straight line.

Many of us have a bit of vanity and as we age and wrinkles show up we either give up and go with it (which I think is healthiest) or we start buying those $200 neck crèmes and trying botox.  At my solid age of…‘marvelous’ …I am grateful to be a good ugly.  I say good ugly because my face has had a Bell’s Palsy adventure I do not wish upon any of you.  Being uglier has taught me many things I’d like to share.

I have always considered myself a B+ pet owner.  I don’t follow the year round flea and tick treatment and I don’t have my dog’s teeth brushed by the vet under sedation.

Have you heard? It is my BIRTHDAY! Well really it is my birthday month, or it was anyway. Still is, if I haven’t gotten cake with you on the calendar yet! After becoming a mama, I moved my traditional Birthday Week into a Birthday Month because…KIDS. As a parent, my needs are often overlooked in lieu of raising awesome young people. I kind of have to get an appointment with my own Dad to not have our conversation overruled by the epic cuteness of my two daughters. But, the more birthdays I have, the more furtive I feel about them, not the “ME! ME! ME!” of it, but the…number of it.

The domicile in which I live has always been important to me.  I grew up on Troy Court in South Bend Indiana, then Alpine St., Twyckenham and then Emerson Ave for most of high school. I moved out a bit early (a bit young but needing to escape family struggles), into a furnished second story apartment above a house on Pleasant Street.  I lived on both 8th and 9th streets in Mishawka , and on Columbia  St.

Sometimes a person wants a big change.  Life can get too easy or predictable.  I’ve been married for 11 years to my handsome husband. We have two kids, one dog, two guinea pigs and a fifteen cent goldfish that could survive a nuclear bomb. I love my life but wanted something new.  I wanted something younger and more exciting and so I did what anyone in my situation would do: I went online.  Pictures say a thousand words and I spent several weeks swiping left or swiping right looking for that special someone.  Before you judge me, you should know my husband was into it.

I have a question to ask you, friends…and all of you can answer this one, probably without too much embarrassment: How many coffee mugs are in your kitchen cabinet at this moment?  When this sentence formed in my mind I realized I would have to answer it myself: I have eighteen mugs in the cabinet and one on the counter, dirty.  I honestly do not know how my mug number reflects on me.  What is the average number of mugs in other people’s cabinets?  We have a tiny kitchen and there is truly not room for one more mug, but I am loathe to part with them.  Each mug tells a story.  Each mug carr

So…we have this shiny new year.  We are only a little bit into this 2018 and we hold our breath against the anguishes we knew in 2017.  We pray and we hope and we cast spells or throw dishes or journal until there are no pages left.  Good people we know die.  Others experience pain so rocking and deep we cannot even.  We do not know what to say, or do or…we sit like Job’s friends around them in silence, just being there. Or we avoid them.  Sometimes we wish we could avoid ourselves.

With all the monstrous highs and lows for Americans these days, here is a crazy truth about our world: There is snow on the ground and people are camping in it for fun.  You know, canvas tent-sleeping bag-peeing outside-heating up coffee on a firepit, camping.  A local Boy Scout troop was snow camping just last weekend and my husband has shared a few stories about snow camping, but I do not see the appeal. 

When I was young and single every day was an adventure of possibility; would I meet a cute guy?  What would happen at that party? Would those new shoes hurt my feet?  Nowadays as a middle aged mama and wife, my thoughts (if I have any at all) are more mundane: What could I make for dinner?  Will my pants hurt by the end of the day? What the hell am I going to make for dinner?