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| Something Like 12 Days Has Gone ByWow. When I eventually failed at my Daily Blogging Goal, I REALLY failed at it. It was bound to happen. Sooner or later you just run out of things to say, right? Wrong. I always have plenty of interesting (to me) stories to tell, but lately I ran out of steam (and time and energy and will) with which to write them. It all started when I joined my husband in Las Vegas for a weekend, where he has been working for the past month. Have I mentioned (a few thousand times) that we don't live in Las Vegas? The rest of us, I mean. His wife and his three children. We don't live anywhere near Las Vegas, so having him in Sin City for the past month was a wee bit of a struggle. A lesser wife and mother might even have complained about it. I tried hard not to mention it much, on here. Then I went to visit him and...well, so much has happened since then that it will take me a while to catch you up.
Unfortunately I have a command performance at the local Outback Steakhouse in about 1 hour where my mother will be honored for Mother's Day by myself, my three children, my husband and her husband. Therefore, I have to get dressed. One might reasonably wonder why we picked the Outback Steakhouse, of all possible venues, and here's why: they have a gluten-free menu, of course. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, as my personal opinion is: only an idiot goes out to eat on Mother's Day. However, my mother feels differently, so hopefully it will go well and we will all enjoy it.
My husband is sleeping with the three kids right now, and we must leave in 25 minutes if we are to arrive on time. I'm guessing the kids are not appropriately dressed, for a Mother's Day celebration, though I haven't looked at them lately. It's Mother's Day, after all.
Hope you're all enjoying the day, honoring yourselves our your mothers or your grandmothers.
Every time I think about that sentence, I think of Commodus in The Gladiator, and Russell Crowe saying, "the time for honoring yourself will soon be over." That's how it is for me, today. The time for honoring myself will soon be over, and it will be time to get back to my life of general service and self-effacement. I'm good with that. | | |
| Horrifying Things That Happened Today, in Order of Horrifyingness, From Least Horrifying to Most1. My sweet basil plant is dying. If that weren't enough, ugly, nasty, wormy looking bugs are killing it. They're disgusting little bugs, truly.
2. My daughter peed in her car seat today. At least a gallon.
3. I discovered that our thirteen-year-old, crotchety Yorkie has been peeing in a remote, quiet corner of the living room, on the wood floor. Recall that we are mere tenants in this temporary living space. I discovered the peeing, after what appears to have been weeks, because of the smell.
4. I am scheduled to leave town in the a.m., for a visit with my husband which is supposed to roughly correspond with my birthday, after weeks of separation, and my 8 year old got off the bus this afternoon with fever, sore throat and a stomach ache.
5. My kids got off the bus today, and no one was there to meet them, and no one was home to greet them, because they were supposed to be in an after-school science program. It lasts one hour, once a week, after school. It's the only science they get, incidentally, aside from the bug fair and a few other random reading/art projects thinly disguised as "science." I signed them up for it in January. A couple of weeks ago I reminded them both they had science, and I would pick them up at 4, so they shouldn't be alarmed when they are taken out of the bus line. My kindergartner (thankfully) shared this with his teacher, who called me because the science program was inexplicably cancelled, on that day. Only on that day. For no reason. With no notice to the parents. Luckily, thanks to the diligence of my son's teacher (who is a wonderful human being and a fantastic teacher) disaster was averted. I shrugged it off. No harm, no foul, right? Today, I paid for my complacency. Today, again, inexplicably and with no notice to parents, the science program was cancelled and the kids were sent home on the bus. My kindergartner and first-grader were dropped at an extremely busy intersection, with no supervision and no parent. Fortunately, the nanny of a neighboring family saw my kids get off the bus, realized no one was there to meet them, and walked them home. When no one answered the door, she let my kindergartner use her cell phone, and he BRILLIANTLY remembered my cell phone number (which he had to memorize for his karate belt-test as part of a self-sufficiency/self-defense oral exam). Imagine my HORROR when my kindergartner called my cell phone from A STRANGE NUMBER and said he and his brother were standing around in the condo-plex with someone else's nanny.
I'm still so steamed about this entire sequence of events that I can't even rant about it cogently tonight. So, let's move on to an even MORE horrifying event.
6. I cleaned out the car seat. I pulled off the soaking wet animal print cover, and then peeled off the under-foam thingy, and then gingerly wiped down the straps (luckily, pee is sterile. I learned that on Friends. It must be true). OMG. OMFG. Please, excuse both the language that I used, AND the language that I'm thinking, because OMG, I very nearly puked all over the car seat. I'm not easily grossed out, my friends. I have three kids. I've potty trained 3 kids myself, and yesterday had this conversation with my daughter:
her (staring at poop in potty): it would be yucky to eat poop.
me: oh yes, very yucky.
her: poop is kinda pretty though.
me: no sweetie, poop is very very yucky. Please don't touch the poop. Please don't eat any poop.
her (crooning to the poop): good poo poo. You're good poo poo. Bye bye poo poo.
I do not particularly shy away from moldy foods, pee, vomit, poop, pus, blood or medical emergencies. I once sat in an emergency room for over 3 hours administering gatorade to a 2 year old, over and over and over, on the advice (and in fact, insistence) of the triage nurse, only to end up covered, literally COVERED, in gatorade vomit.
I don't know why this is, and let me just preface this by reminding everyone that I am NOT a scientist or an inventor or even a crafty person, but for some unknown reason car-seat manufacturers make the plastic-molded baby-shaped car-seats with these peculiar, deep pits in them. They're not a smooth baby-shaped seat, covered with a soft cover. They're weird shaped, underneath the cover. If you don't believe me, and you have a small child, remove the car-seat cover and look for yourself. If you don't have a small child, google it. If you can't be bothered to google, know this: the plastic frame of the car seat has these strange, deep pits in it. When a child drops something, say, a raisin or a hair clip or a mouthful of juice or pee, and it slips beneath the cover and into the plastic part, you can feel around all you want and you will never find it again. Ever. It disappears, seemingly forever. Seemingly, into another dimension, where you no longer have to worry about it.
But no, no, it does NOT slip into another dimension. Instead it slips into one of these peculiar plastic pits, where it turns into fuzzy, moldy, smelly, utterly disgusting and completely unexpected black, slimy, thick car-seat goo. DISGUSTING.
I've got two boys in elementary school. I remember now, the first time I took off the seats of their car-seats. Quite frankly, however, I completely repressed the memory and I was, once again, shocked and completely horrified at the things that were living at the base of my daughter's car seat. I'm surprised she hasn't died from inhaling the fumes. I'm surprised I didn't die from inhaling them.
This may or may not horrify you: I used an ENTIRE roll of paper towels cleaning this disgusting mess, and I mostly used Purell. Yes, yes, I got the spam about how children die from alcohol poisoning if you use Purell on their hands, and yes, I got the follow-up spam about how it's really true, and not just a piece of internet legend spam. So sue me, I still keep some Purell around the house. Tonight I found an excellent use for something that can allegedly kill 99.9% of all bacteria.
My middle son just came downstairs (long after his bedtime) to inform me that I PROMISED his friend Jason could come over on Thursday, and today is Thursday, and I never invited him and he didn't come over. Yes, yes, it's not news, my son: I'm a terrible parent. Some day you'll understand this, and you'll stop interpreting my vague wincing and curious head movements as "promises."
In the meantime, I've got a brand new bottle of red wine, just ITCHING to be opened.
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| I Am A Terrible Parent, Part XCMIIIVLIII don't mean to whine, I really don't, but we are on week 4 of my husband's absence, and I am starting to break down. I am starting to fray a little bit around the edges. I know some (better) women (than I) do this all the time; parent their three or five or eight or fourteen small children all by themselves while their husbands fight wars or face-off in the corporate arena or save lives or just run off with the secretary or the neighbor. I know thousands of women, right here in Podville, who make mechanized, scientifically accurate bug fair projects worthy of display on national television. I know that many, many, many first graders across the country participate in fifteen Little League baseball practices per week and spend their weekends at Little League baseball games and church and Chuck E Cheese birthday parties and still have time to read fifteen minutes per day with Mom or Dad and do their busywork worksheets and remember to find a flashlight for Flashlight Day while their mother competently finishes up her thesis for her PhD while holding down a full-time job and learning to macrame on the side. I know, I know, I know, I have it easy. Many people can do this. I have no explanation for my failures in this regard. Refer to the title of this post if you have trouble remembering why I can't seem to manage all these things on my own.
After I blogged about the Bug Fair last night I suddenly realized that all our flashlights are out of commission. I've known this for some time; it's on my List. #221: Buy New Flashlights. #222: Buy New Batteries.
Our flashlight crisis began when our boys were 3 and 4 and developed a sudden and enduring fascination with flashlights. They like to sleep with them, play with them, take them apart, put them together, shine them on each other, read with them in bed, shine them at the dog, shine them at the T.V., bring them to grandma's house in the minivan, etcetera. When my boys turned 3 and 4, there was no longer any place in the world unsuitable for, or unimproved by, a flashlight.
For a while I tried to maintain and even augment the flashlight collection, to make up for the continuous destruction and ruination of flashlights in our home. One feature of flashlights which might be unfamiliar to you: a 3 year old can easily open one and extract the batteries and (hide them? eat them? throw them at things in the backyard?) replace them at will. Thus, it is extremely difficult to keep any kind of useful battery inventory. I tried. Ultimately, however, I completely ceded control of the Flashlight Issue to the God of Things That Will Work Themselves Out. As a result, the last time we lost power our entire family had to gather around the one ancient and slightly aromatic tea candle I found in the back of the bathroom cabinet. We stared at it, as if at a miracle, and talked at length about the fact that we should really get some more flashlights and batteries.
We have one flashlight, actually. It's a Mag light. In case you're not familiar with the MAG, it's basically a huge metal truncheon that lights up and hooks onto a law enforcement officer's utility belt. How did we come into possession of the MAG? That's a story for another time. The MAG remains stocked with size D batteries at all times.
You probably don't know this off the top of your head, but most flashlights take C batteries, if they don't take AA. Flashlights, as a matter of interest, are one of the few things in the world that take C batteries. This why you never see C batteries at the checkout lane. You have to go deep into the internal organs of a store to find the Cs.
My husband, ever-helpful from his free room in Las Vegas, suggested I let my kindergarten son go to the elementary school Flashlight Day carrying the MAG. Putting aside the weight and the heft of the MAG, there is the small matter of it being a WEAPON. It won't fit in a kid-sized backpack. It isn't appropriate for a kindergarten Flashlight Day. Most importantly: it's my only protection in the event of electrical Armageddon, and I'm just not prepared to yield even the MAG to the vagaries and whims of the black hole that is my family.
I puzzled over the Flashlight Day dilemma last night, because once all the kids were in bed and the problem presented itself to me, it was too late to do anything about it. Obviously I can't leave my 2 1/2 year old asleep in her crib, alone with two highly dangerous and unpredictable young boys, while I run to the store and get a flashlight. Equally obviously, I can't allow my kindergartner to go to school without a flashlight, when EVERYONE ELSE will have them, thereby confirming for the umpteenth time that I am a terrible parent. Yet, I had no flashlight. You see the difficulty. I couldn't even think of anyone to call and beg for a flashlight, as a) I have no friends in Podville; and b) most of my friends have kids in kindergarten and need their flashlights; and c) it was after 10 p.m. and therefore too late to call.
Eventually I located a flashlight, a cheap, plastic flashlight with a pumpkin head (yes, I realize most flashlights don't have heads at all), sadly missing its batteries.
This is where, for about twenty minutes, I was a magnificent parent: this morning I got my kids ready for school fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, which, I tell you, was no small feat. I loaded them up in the van, my littlest one still wearing her Tinkerbell nightie and her hot pink crocs. I remembered to bring the pumpkinhead flashlight. I drove to the drugstore. I did not blow my top when the drugstore was closed, and I continued on to the grocery store. I let my kids run wildly and somewhat uncontrolled behind me into the grocery store, on a shared mission to find size C batteries. We laughed and joked and worked together. I remembered to try the pumpkinhead flashlight with the new batteries, right there at the checkout, before I even paid for the batteries, to make sure it worked. It didn't work. Of course it didn't!! That would be too easy, right??? I paid for the batteries anyway (of course) and then let my children run through the store to Aisle 13, where we found (at last!) a collection of flashlights. I did not argue about how many flashlights or which flashlights to buy. I allowed each child to purchase his or her own, special electrical-Armageddon protection, and then I drove them calmly (and within the speed limit!) all the way to the school. With their seatbelts buckled.
Ah, it was a brief and happy respite. I was a magnificent parent this morning. My kids were sooooo happy.
Unfortunately, that brief spell of perfection totally wore me out and this evening I a) slammed the middle kid's finger in a door; b) refused to read my daughter any stories; c) yelled at my oldest and made him go straight to bed with his hair wet and his teeth unbrushed because he sassed me; d) ate cookies for dinner; e) lectured the boys at length for things that were mostly not their fault; and f) started in on the wine much, much too early. | | |
| Why the Ant is Not EnoughAnyone who is still reading my crazy blog lately is probably thinking I'm completely off my rocker for suggesting that Podville moms might hire someone to do their kids' bug fair project. Okay, maybe I haven't (yet) heard of anyone whose bug has been crafted by a local artist, but today one of my friends kindly warned me that I might need to step up my game a little bit for the First Grade Bug Fair.
We were having a very casual conversation (which mainly consisted of me cradling my head in my arms because I've procrastinated to the point of no return on my legal research) when she asked how my bug fair project is going. I told her my college roommate was in town this weekend and we helped my son sculpt an ant out of clay. I said, "it looks pretty decent, really. It has an unintentional swivel head and its legs can't support its body, but I think it's pretty good." She said, "I'm sure it's fine...what are you doing about the habitat?" I said, "what habitat? I don't remember anything about a habitat." And she said, "from what I understand, this bug fair is a big deal. People really break out all the craft supplies on this one. Last night we were using my glue-gun to make the roach wings..."
When someone says "glue-gun" anywhere in my presence my eyes glaze over and I go to that secret place inside where no one can find me. Same with staple-gun or double-sided tape or acrylic paint or virtually any word that refers to something they sell at Hobby Lobby, other than cake-baking supplies. For that matter, words describing cake-baking supplies are an extremely recent addition to my lexicon. I'm sorry, I am, but I am not "crafty." I am handy, in a Handy Manny sort of way: I can make my own crown molding and I can change my own tires and I'm good with a drill and I know how to put on a new doorknob. However, I can't sew and I can't make slipcovers for old furniture and I don't know how to darn (or even what darning *is) and I never, but NEVER, have occasion to use a glue-gun. I don't do pottery, either, or paint or scrapbooks or macrame, and I can't knit. I cannot understand WHY, for the love of God, I can get through 38 years of a productive life and some fairly extensive education without ever having to acquire any of these skills, and suddenly I am stumped by first grade. And here I was worried my math skills might become an issue, when my kids need help with schoolwork. No, nope, my math skills have not yet even been tested. Instead, it's my craft skills that are creating a Perfect Storm guaranteeing my son will be humiliated at the First Grade Bug Fair.
This afternoon I frantically scrambled through the paperwork for the Bug Fair project (because, all indications to the contrary, my reading comprehension skills are pretty decent) and it SAYS you have to craft a bug. It suggests, obliquely, that you might want to go overboard and create a full-on diorama or performance-art piece or "other" (use your creativity!!) to depict your bug's habitat, food preferences, and perhaps, social arrangement. For example, maybe you'd like to spin a honey-bee hive on your garage pottery wheel, in your free time? (Please make sure your child helps you! Our kid-created projects are THE BEST!!!)
According to my source, the kid-created projects are certainly NOT the best, but everyone pretends the BEST projects are, in fact, kid-created. Ah, what a sick, sick world we live in. She also told me I should block out that entire day on my calendar, as the bug fair is A Very Big Deal, and Not To Be Missed, and an occasion on which you could seriously emotionally scar your child if you didn't realize you should be there the entire day. Of course, I'll be standing proudly next to my ant project during the bug fair, like all the other mothers.
Now I'm kind of freaking out (it must be said) about the fact that the pipe cleaner legs can't support my clay ant. I mean, it really doesn't represent my best work. It was a collaborative project with my son, who actually IS in first grade. He thought the pipe cleaner legs would look great. They DO, in fact, look pretty good. They're just not functional. My son has never seen a First Grade Bug Fair. He has no idea what the basic level of professionalism is going to be, so discussing this with him is not going to be that helpful. The last thing I want to do is freak HIM out about the First Grade Bug Fair. So far, he's pretty happy with the ant.
The other thing about the ant is: it is about 800 times the size of a regular ant. Truthfully, I have no idea if it is 800x. My math skills aren't that great. Here's a better way to explain it: the ant is about the size of a Snickers bar (and roughly the same basic shape and color). It is, as my husband says, "anatomically correct," meaning it has a thorax and an abdomen and six legs and some mouth parts and antennae. But nevertheless, it's a really, really, really big ant. So if one were to craft, say, a pretend ant hill, by making some posterboard into a cone and then slathering it with Elmer's glue and covering it with playbox sand, exactly how much posterboard would be required, to make it to scale? I mean, really, ants aren't that meaningful in an "anty" way unless they're seen in a line with a bunch of other ants, climbing the anthill with bits of trash and food clasped in their little ant-hands (mouth parts, whatever). This is something that is NOT happening: the clay sculpting of additional ants.
I have some extra clay. For a few minutes I considered the possibility of sculpting some trash-ant-food, like a half-eaten apple or some pieces of a moldy sandwich. But that would require additional acrylic paint and quite a bit more natural artistic ability than either I or my son possess.
To be fair, it all began to go wrong with the pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are fuzzy and wiry, but not that strong. To look like appropriate legs, they had to be pretty long pieces of pipe-cleaner. It's not like you could have a 3 millimeter (a little metric for you math folks!) piece of fuzzy, wiry pipe-cleaner and call it a leg. It would look too fat and short and weird to be an ant leg. We used roughly half a pipe-cleaner for each leg, which meant they are each about 4 inches long (a little standard measurement, for you red-blooded Americans!). An ant with visibly fuzzy, 4 inch long legs is a BIG ant. Here's the thing though: pipe cleaners were on the recommended list of potential supplies for insect legs!! Someone should review that list. I'm just sayin'.
I'm quite far behind on my legal research. So far behind, in fact, that it is overdue and I'm not even close to finished and I have a huge headache just thinking about it. I drank EASILY ten cups of coffee today, and I still have more work to do. On top of that, tomorrow is Flashlight Day in Kindergarten and the Kindergarten Talent Show is approaching and our loan papers for the new house are overdue at the bank and the house is coming down to a busy, hectic finish, and my husband is out of town again and the youngest has croup and the tee-ball season is in full swing and my hair is falling out again in big clumps in the shower, which must mean something bad. I never did get that eye exam I've been needing to get, and I'm still driving around with all that Goodwill junk in the back of the van because I can't find the Goodwill truck ANYWHERE.
I ask you: WHERE am I going to find the energy to ("help my son") make an oversized anthill??? | | |
| Yikes...and other sentiments.We didn't make it to the farm, to help with the planting, so I didn't get to check it out. We didn't go for a few reasons, but chief among them was this one: since we've been separated for several weeks, my husband and I didn't want to split up on the weekend. Therefore, if my Seattle friend and I were going to check out the farm, we'd have to load the whole family into the minivan and take a day trip to do it. This would be fine, but there is just no way my 2 year old would be able to make any helpful contributions to the planting process. The 6 and 7 year-olds aren't all that great at hard labor either. They're particularly not great at hard labor over a period of four or five hours that requires even a minimal amount of continuous concentration. I was imagining standing in the fields in my straw hat (potentially in the rain) yelling at the boys to stop shoving each other into the dirt while carting my daughter around on my hip. Yeah, not so much.
The yikes part: I got a follow-up email chastising me (and all the other email subscribers) for "not taking community farming seriously." Yikes! I'm not even sure I want to go down this whole community farming road, quite yet, Farmer Joe. One thing I don't need in my life: more guilt. Another thing I don't need: pressure.
Unfortunately I *do* want and need some Mad-Cow-Free beef, and maybe some fresh, organic vegetables along with it. Eggs, too.
We have three strawberry blooms on the strawberry plant. At this rate it will only take six or seven seasons for me to work up a whole fruit salad. I'm an optimist, though: I know the wilting basil that's beginning to take on a pale, unhealthy hue is going to survive.
A friend called me this morning and told me a rather long story that boils down to this: her sixth-grader (age 12) was walking the neighborhood with five boys from his baseball team and four girls who are evidently "super-popular." These girls hooked up with the boys at a neighborhood elementary school carnival, where *they stole* a big stack of elementary school spirit shirts, which they wore for the rest of the day. That's right. They STOLE them. Then, they took the boys to one of their homes, where there were no parents. Evidently one of the girls is known for "2 minutes in the closet," or whatever. Eventually they left that house and went to another house, where one of their fathers gave all the girls Coronas. You know...Corona, the beer. My friend found out about this because she picked her son up at around 5 or so, and took him to family dinner. The other kids, who were apparently still wandering the streets unsupervised, kept calling his cell phone. He told my friend what happened, and she (naturally) freaked out and said he can't hang out with those girls anymore.
Hmmm. There are just so many things wrong with this story, I had no idea what to say.
I helped my seven-year-old son craft an ant out of clay this weekend. We used pipe cleaners for legs. It *sounded* like a good idea, until the clay dried and hardened and took on a weight and density far beyond any you would believe a mere clay sculpture could possess. The legs are utterly useless for holding it up. Also, it has a crooked swivel head. We attached the head to the thorax with a toothpick, but when it dried the hole in the head proved to be big enough that the head swivels at will. Hmmm. Luckily, the instruction sheet says, "bugs created by kids are the most unusual and best additions to our bug fair!!!" By that, I assume they mean they're sick to death of perfect parent creations that could never have been made by someone under the age of twenty-five, and they will love our unfortunate ant with the swivel head. My son wanted a brown ant, because black ants are apparently evil. (??)
I kid you not: I bet some of the bug fair creations are hired works of art. You doubt? Ah, skeptics.
You know what? He's eight. I don't have a seven-year-old anymore. ~sigh~
The next four weeks are going to be extremely difficult, so I'm trying to work up some gumption to tackle them. I don't have the energy to tell you all the ways in which they will be hard, but suffice it to say, on May 29, I will be a very happy person. | | |
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