Gen-X: Parenting without a license

The Cat

2011-03-03T15:45:00.001-08:00

Most of the time, the cat seems pretty annoyed about living here.

Perhaps I should backtrack a bit.

In my almost 40 years of life, I have never lived with a cat because I am allergic to them, and there’s nothing comforting about itchy hands, non-stop sneezing, and having the whites of my eyes swell until they are bulging out of my head.

I suffered these issues for weeks after we got “our” cat, and learned the pleasure of using the vaccuum cleaner thoroughly and often. The good news is that after about 3 months of allergy symptoms, I was able to return to my regular vacuuming schedule. Which is hardly ever.

You might wonder what on earth caused me to put myself through all of this.

Well… for the child, of course.

Other parents might recognize how a child’s intense, life-long yearning for a kitty tugs at one’s heartstrings. “Can I please, please, please have a kitty?” was one of her first sentences.

The plea was incessant, repeated many, many times for YEARS, until finally we needed something really big to bribe her with so she’d behave when we went on a fun vacation without her.

“A-ha!” say all you other parents. “The whys and wherefores become perfectly clear.”

So now we have this cat.

He was the friendliest, most well-adjusted cat at the shelter.

Of course, now I know that was only because he’d been at the shelter for 6 months and was acclimated.

We brought him to our house, and then didn’t see him again for a full 2 weeks. Our friends, some of them cat people, came by to meet our new cat. I was like, “Cat? What cat? I can show you the paperwork that says we paid for a cat, and I can give you a tour that includes a litter box, a food dish, and a scratching post, but trust me, you will not see a cat.”

Little Miss was over the moon with joy, by the way, despite the fact that the cat was basically invisible. Had I known she was begging for an imaginary cat, she could have had one a lot sooner.

Our cat, whose name is Colby (because he’s orange and we live in Wisconsin), camouflaged himself in the pile of stuffed animals that filled Little Miss’s closet, thereby officially becoming “her” cat purely by choosing to hide in her room.

To visit him, all we had to do was sit on the floor and stick an arm into the pile and feel for the warm spot. A rumbling purr would let us know that we were on the mark.

Oh yes, he purrs madly.

I’d like to say that he's became a well-adjusted family pet, but that would be exaggerating. The truth is more that we've modified our behavior to make this an acceptable home for our cat.

Colby faces many challenges here at our house.

We have a large dog, named Jazz, who, from Colby's point of view, probably seems intent upon eating him, but really just wants to lick him. And sniff his butt.

Colby is also reguarly exposed to an overabundance of affection from a happy little girl.

I can picture him shuddering even as I write that sentence.

I recently read a book called Mindblind, written from the point of view of a 14 year old boy who has Asperger’s Syndrome. I will explain where I'm going with this, but just want to state up front that I'm making fun of cats, not people with Asperger's.

I recognized my cat in the book. His inability to read social cues, the way a hug makes him positively squirm. His insistence upon predictibility -- "Um, hello you. Yes, you, the bringer of the food. It's ten at night. Food time. And bedtime. And you must pet me until I fall asleep. Let's go. Do you see what time it is? It's ten. At night. Food time."

He hates change, and he doesn't cope well with noise or erratic activity. Giggling, screaming little girls make him hide in the closet. Actually, the presence of anyone in the house other than the three people who live here will send him racing into the closet. Three people might even be one too many. If my husband touches Colby, Colby immediately starts washing himself. It's so blatent that it actually looks like an insult.

But don’t get me wrong, he likes human contact and solicits our attention. He just likes things to be a certain way. He wants to be stroked from the tip of his head to tip of his tail, in one long, smooth motion. Repeat. And then he purrs.

So long as we behave in an acceptable manner, he consents to keep living here. And for some reason that makes us feel special.

The Johnson Christmas newsletter

2010-12-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the season, I thought I'd catch anyone who is interested up on the doings at our house.

Our little Miss has become quite the little actress. She's been in a couple of different plays this year, including a stellar performance this week at the Douglas County Humane Society. Oh, wait, I mean the Douglas County Historical Society. The stellar performance at the Humane Society was a whole different sort of drama. She continues to work with her 2nd grade teacher on her behavior management plan, and has had many good days this fall.

Dave continues to be a workaholic. We do see him a few times a week for an hour or two before bedtime, and Sheri has discovered that a home-cooked meal will bring him home right quick and at supper time, even. Unfortunately Sheri hates cooking, and only does it a few times a month, because, ultimately, she's too busy making up stories and lies to do the whole domestic goddess thing.

Jazz the dog continuously amazes us with her ability to regurgitate things she should not have eaten in the first place. This skill has saved her life at least twice this year, once when she ate a large bag of chocolate, and again when she snacked on some liquid drain cleaner. And it also seems that no matter where we hide the butter, she always finds it. Such a nose she has!

We have a new addition to the family this year. His name is Colby and he is an orange tabby cat. Colby came with a regurgitation feature similar to that of the dog, only his system is a lot more sensitive, because he regurgitates just about everything he eats. He also came to us with a very sensitive bladder, and has spent some expensive days in the hospital.

So that's the news from here. We've had no unexpected pregnancies or major animal surgeries this year, and we have not yet received the gift of lice from the elementry school. We count our blessings.

PS. Should anyone think about dropping by unannounced, I urge you to call ahead. I have recently been suffering from these weird hot flashes that have me stripping off my clothes without advance warning.

Peace homies.

Still Gen-X, and still parenting.

2010-08-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe, I know.

Contrary to popular belief, almost seven year old girls still need parenting. I know. It stinks. You'd think we'd be done with all this by now, have her set up in her own apartment, and so on and so forth.

But no. There are laws and things that suggest no matter how grown up a child THINKS she is, it is still illegal to leave them to their own devices for extended periods of time. Like while we're at work.

So the battle continues. Some days are better than others. Living with a miniature pseudo-adult isn't always the easiest task. She disdains bedtime, places very specific orders for her meals, and basically acts as if she is the Queen and we are the lowly servants. She hates brushing her hair, but insists upon looking adorable. Autocratic, demanding, disrespectful, and waaaaaay too big for her girls' size 8 britches. Trust you me.

I've seen her with my own two eyes demonstrate beautiful manners. Please and thank you and even "no thank you, it's not to my taste." I've heard rave reviews of her behavior when she's been away visiting people who didn't have anything to do with her conception.

But that's an anomaly around here. Where did we go wrong? Was it when we let her sleep in our bed in infancy? Was it nursing her on demand? Rocking her to sleep while singing lullabies? Is it the complete array of Disney programming available 24/7 that's only suitable for sarcastic teenagers? Ah-ha! By jove, I think we've got it!

Where is imagination? Where is childhood? Where does this propensity toward boredom on long hot afternoons come from? Bored? Seriously? Okay, let's go load up the truck and bring all those enormously-expensive-but-not-worth-a-fraction-of-what-they-cost plastic toys to someone else's house. Because I'm tired of tripping over them while they collect dust around here.

Noooo? You're saying no? Alrighty then. Turn off the television, turn on your brain, and go PLAY. Be a kid. And don't drag me into it, either, because do I look like a kid?

Truth be told, almost seven is a lovely age. Almost seven can choose clothing off the rack, try it on, and drop it in the cart. "This one fits, Mom." Almost seven goes to church and reports, "When people do bad things, it makes God cry." (Heh-heh, ammunition!) Almost seven loses her first tooth and runs around like a small, crazy person who's just won the lottery. (How come she never gets that excited when I offer her a dollar?) Almost seven can kick my butt at the game Up Words, and spell the word S-E-X while giving me a sideways look and explaining, "It's a word, Mom. And it's not a swear word, it's a love word." (Do I hear myself being parroted back at me? Oh yes, I do.)

Summer is tricky for the parent trying to rewrite a novel. So far there's been ½ day summer school, ½ day acting camp, ½ day supervised playground including swimming and arts and crafts (thank the powers that be for that one), A full week of day camp (all day – bless the stars). We're heading into a two week void, but somehow we'll persevere. Then two more weeks of Y camp, soccer practice and games, and then, thank my happy stars, SCHOOL. Second grade.

Next year she'll be able to read my personal, private text messages even BETTER.

So long as she stays away from my novels. Because I'm not ready to answer those questions. Ever.

Soccer mom... who, me?

2009-06-01T19:01:00.001-07:00

06.01.09

The last thing, and I mean the very LAST thing, I ever aspired to be was a soccer mom. I mean, we're talking sports here. Sports are not in my life. Not even on my TV. I don't know the rules, and I don't care to. Just one more place to be, one more set of specialized clothing to argue about. Seriously. We did swimming lessons until she learned to float and doggy paddle, and then the aggravation of getting undressed, suited, unsuited, showered, and dressed again far outweighed any further benefits of more lessons. After all, to swim a child needs to be breathing, and one more locker room battle might well have negated that important factor.

But Little Miss, as always, has her own reasons and her own arguments about things. She wanted to be part of a TEAM. "There's no I in team, Mom. Don't you think I need to learn how to be part of a team?"

Where does she come up with this stuff? Some days I swear I live with a miniature, humanized version of a Public Service Announcement. Hell, just today she extolled the many virtues of the Nicotine patch, including that it has the ability to prevent irritability.

Anyway. Back to soccer.

I had a game plan for dealing with soccer practice, and, potentially, soccer games. It included a beach blanket, a novel, and a large cup of coffee. I suppose my plan involved weather, but who in their right mind would think a thing called spring soccer would involve temperatures of 33 degrees above zero? I mean, come on.

I received an email from the Y asking me to consider being a coach, "after all," it said, "you and your husband have coached other sports in the past."

BWAHAHAHAHA. I'm sure that person's heart is in the right place, but their email address book is obviously a disorganized mess.

I showed up to soccer practice with my blankie, my coffee, and my book. And about two and half minutes after being settled on the ground, it was brought to my attention that OUR team would be a parental-involvement thing.

Wh-what? I have to put down my coffee, abandon my blanket, and play monster tag? With a soccer ball? Who came up with this terrible idea? I'm OLD. I can't steal a soccer ball from an almost six year old - she's about a hundred times faster than I am. There's a reason I sign her up for stuff - because she never gets tired. And I need a break. Awww, man, I gave up sitting on the bleachers talking to other moms at gymnastics for THIS?

It was a sad day. And even worse the moment that my daughter ran out of her shoes, collapsed on the ground, and I was forced to leap, tuck, and roll to avoid crushing her into the dirt. After drinking approximately 32 oz. of coffee. Don't tell anyone, but I wet myself just a little.

And it was cold. Did I mention it was 33 degrees? That's almost snowing around here. And why does needing desperately to pee make you feel even colder? What is UP with that?

Okay, it was a hard lesson, but I learned not to drink (too much) coffee before soccer practice, and to leave my book and blanket at home.

On to what I learned about soccer games.

Initially, 5 year olds have no idea what "offense" or "defense" means until you teach them. And if you forget, after you've taught them, and use other terms like, "protect the goalie" or "get the ball" they have no idea what you're talking about.

Soccer games go on, outside, during that last May snowfall, even when the 65 mph wind is blowing the ball around the field. Under these conditions, not even blankets and long johns can keep you warm.

But guess what? Yelling helps. Actually, yelling helps a lot.

Little Miss ASKED me to cheer for her. And I did, I swear. I yelled, "Go, Little Miss, go!"

And it's possible that I yelled other things.

"Get the ball! Get the ball! Hey, you're defense now, pay attention! Watch the ball! Stop spanking the goalie and WATCH THE BALL. Here comes the ball! Get it out of there! No, not that way! The other way! Go the other way!"

It's possible, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

What I know is this: during cuddle time a new request was made. "Mom, don't yell so much at soccer games, because it confuses me."

And I am flabbergasted, because I'm such a shy, quiet, genteel person in a mixed group. Where did psycho soccer mom come from? And is there a closet I can stuff her into?

Published author? Yay!

2008-12-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

My first novel, DeVante's Children, will be available as an e-book from Torquere Press February 11 2009.

I am so excited!

It's been a long journey from writing those first chapters to this day.

Writing a novel is tough, and despite that fact that Stephanie Meyer wrote, was solicited by an agent, and published Twilight in 6 months, it's typically not that simple.

Of course, writing fiction for publication is a losing battle - the most beautiful stories are the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we write because we just can't help doing it.

So look for me in February!

DeVante's Children

Gay people are perverts… at least in the minds of Daniel’s dad and step-mother. They didn’t want him around his younger half-sister so they kicked him out of the house. And even though Daniel knew they were being unreasonable, he had plenty of questions about being gay himself. Then he became enthralled by Roderick, ran away from his hometown, and discovered there are stranger things in the world than men who love men.

He didn’t know his first lover was a vampire until Roderick attacked him with such cruelty there could be no other explanation. Roderick insisted that he loved Daniel, but still wouldn’t change him, and Daniel learned his first lesson as an adult; where there is love there can also be pain.

Enter DeVante, Roderick’s creator. He is furious because his personal code of ethics doesn’t allow enslaving mortals for either love or blood. Roderick’s vampire blood is poison to Daniel’s humanity, and Daniel needs to be changed soon or he will die.

When Daniel’s half-sister gets kidnapped, he enlists the talents of his new blood-drinking friends to find her. When he brings her home he expects to become the family hero; instead he’s arrested and charged with the kidnapping. Sometimes you really can’t go home again.

Now Daniel must figure out who he is, what he wants, and if he’s willing to sacrifice another human life to ensure his own survival.

Torquere Press: http://www.torquerepress.com

Sountrack of her life

2008-06-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

02.18.08

Ode To My Daughter

I have a girl child.

She makes me tired.

The end.

It is unbelievable how one small being can turn a household upside down upon its right ear. Who would have ever imagined? Ach, but she’s loud. That’s maybe the number one thing I want you, my readers, to understand throughout the next few paragraphs. My child is boisterous and impish and exceptionally loud all the time. Loud when she’s happy. Loud when she’s unhappy. The days of peace are… well, I was going to say few and far between, but really, what days of peace?

Here is the soundtrack of my daughter’s life at this moment in time: “Stop climbing on the lamp and get your jacket on, stop waggling that sassy butt at me, because I’ll spank it, I will, I’m not kidding, stop kicking me and let me get your boots on, stop talking to me in that sassy voice, get out of there, leave my things alone, hey, that’s MINE, put the scissors down because we have to go, c’mon, now, get your jacket on, no, leave the scissors alone and get your jacket on, get your boots – no, your jacket, wait… aarrrrrgggghhhhhh!”

That’s before we ever leave the house.

Then at the grocery store it sounds like this: “No, we don’t need the little kid cart, last time you nearly broke someone’s ankle with it, I said no little cart, no, no, are you listening to me? I said no. We’re not buying Kool-aid, we’re never buying Kool-aid, no, we’re not buying it next time and we’re not buying it for next summer, do you know what’s in that stuff? Get over here. Get. Over. Here. Watch out for that cart, don’t get run over, get out of the way, get over here, not those cookies, they cost $6. Yes, apples are fine, pick out some apples, all right, fine, I’ll pick out the apples, what, watermelon? Ok, yes, you can have watermelon, no, not right this minute, we have to cut it up at home, no you can’t eat the bulk candy, no, I said no, and you didn’t eat the bananas the last time we bought them so we’re not buying any today, we have apples and watermelon, we’re good on fruit… yes, we need an onion, oh for god’s sake, stop screaming, I’m not going to make you eat it, I know you don’t like it but there are other people in this family who eat, you know. Yes, you can pick out the ice cream, yes, you can have one cupcake but you can’t eat it until after dinner. After dinner. No, not before dinner, after dinner. I don’t care that you haven’t had a snack, you’re not eating a cupcake before dinner. No, you don’t need a candy bar, you have a cupcake, yes, I know you can’t eat the cupcake until after dinner, but you won’t be able to eat a candy bar until after dinner either, no, you can’t have a candy bar, you’re getting a cupcake…aaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!”

“Get in the truck. Just get in the truck. Wait, there’s a car coming, okay, now get in the truck, don’t yank my ponytail out while I’m buckling your seat belt, I said don’t, when I say don’t what I mean is Do. Not. Do. That. I’m not crabby, you’re driving me crazy, can you stop talking for 5 minutes? Stop talking. Shhhhh. If we play the Quiet Game will you please stop talking? I can’t turn the radio down because you won’t stop talking and I’m losing my mind. What? How do babies get out of their mommies tummies? Oh good lord, I’m not prepared for this. Do we have to talk about this now, because I swearwe were playing the Quiet Game. Well, ok, the doctor helps them out. No, I can’t explain any more than that because it’s kind of involved, involved means it’s a long story. Oh thank god we’re home. No, you can’t have that cupcake until after dinner. No, after dinner.”

It continues, but I just can’t. I’m exhausted from recreating one snippet of one day. Her eyes sparkle with merriment, her quest for knowledge (as well as for her own way) knows no boundaries. She is infused with joy and intensity from morning until night. I love her madly, laugh at her frequently, and most assuredly cannot remember life before her.

Can't stop laughing

2008-06-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

02.12.08

My 4 year old said something today that has me dissolving into giggles every time I hit the rewind button in my mind. I even started shaking with laughter during cuddle time, which is quiet, low key, relax the child into sleep time, but remembering her exact words cracked me up all over again.

I had no idea I was raising a proper little DFL-er, and the moment was just hysterical.

On the way to McDonald’s Playland, my daughter announces that she has to "go really, really bad."

We had left the house, gone to the gas station, and gone back to the house, all within the last 10 minutes, but she only realized she has to "go really, really bad" once we got on the bridge that carries us from one state to another across a lot of water.

Daddy's shop is the next closest bathroom. Her opinion of stopping at the shop to go potty is something like this... "I don't like the bathroom at Daddy's shop. I only like the office. And the workers."

I park next to a tow truck that has my husband’s name and logo across the door.

My little girl calls out, "That's my daddy," in a song-song voice, and then adds, in a public service announcement type of monotone, "Dave's Towing, where the workers come first."

I died. I laughed so hard I was having bladder spasms myself. I was still laughing as we walked into the shop. Where on earth did she hear such a thing? Wait, I mean, not that the guys (and the secretary) aren’t appreciated. They work hard, and being on call 24/7 is not exactly a joy. I know from experience that the phone can be quiet right up until the minute you sit down at a restaurant and order food. Then DPD needs you in 20 minutes or less.

Of course, compared to the boss in the book I’m reading (The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger) my husband is a jewel of a boss. Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s what the workers were thinking when they hired my 4 year old to organize their union. This has something to do with last week’s staff meeting, right?

As we head to the bathroom one of those prize workers calls out, "You don't want to go in there right now."

Oops, there I go giggling again. The daughter is finally tired of not getting the joke, and says, “Why are you laughing, Mom?” and that almost makes it worse. We’re both going to wet ourselves.

“Where did you hear ‘the workers come first’?” I ask her. Usually I have a pretty good clue where she picks this stuff up, but this time I was clueless. I can’t imagine that she’s somehow gotten involved with the Teamsters.

“From Dr. Suzi,” she says, “Only she says ‘where the patients come first.’ I changed it.”

Flash back to this morning when she said, “Kiss my ring,” – I think that was a Rugrats episode, as well. Whew. I thought she’d been watching something wildly inappropriate. Remembering how just yesterday she asked, “Mom, are gown up shows on all night?” which gave me a panic moment of wondering exactly what late-night channel she might have caught a glimpse of.

It’s funny how you like to think you know everything they are exposed to and exactly what goes on in their little heads. But as they get older and learn more you lose track of what they know. And eventually you realize that you probably will never know what goes on inside their heads. For now, she’s perfectly happy to tell me, thank goodness, because otherwise I’d be perpetually confused. And I imagine there will come a time (about ten years from now) when she won’t share what she’s thinking quite so easily. But I hope not.

I suppose my chances will be better if I figure out how to stop laughing, but she’s so funny I’m not sure I’ll ever manage it. Among all the challenges of being a mom there certainly are some powerful gems. The gift of supreme amusement and laughter not the least of them.

Sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.

Dinosaur Logic

2008-06-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

01.18.08

She says, “Mom, I can’t go to sleep because I’m scared.”

I’m more aggravated than sympathetic, because this just has the feel of a ploy to stay up past bedtime. Or at least to get me to snuggle in her bed for awhile longer, even though the alarm signaling the end of cuddle time just went off. “What are you afraid of?”

“Bears and dragons and dinosaurs.”

Well, okay, I’m thinking this is easy enough to fix. “It’s winter time and all the bears are hibernating.”

“Every one of them?” she asks.

“Every one. So there’s no reason to be afraid of bears. And there’s no reason to be afraid of dragons because dragons aren’t real.”

“But dinosaurs are real!” she exclaims.

“Ah, well, dinosaurs used to be real. But dinosaurs are extinct, which means they all died long, long before there were ever people on the earth. God made the dinosaurs first, and then they all died, and maybe God thought people were a better idea.”

“But Mom, how come dinosaurs and people never lived on earth together?”

“Because the dinosaurs would have eaten all the people, and God wanted people to live on the earth for thousands and thousands of years.”

“But Papa didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” I retrace my words in my head trying to figure out what she’s telling me. It’s funny how we get to know our children so well that we can do that, isn’t it? Like she’ll start telling me a story that started silently in her head a few sentences back, and after a couple more sentences I’ll have caught on to her logic, or realized what movie she’s talking about. We have conversations that would sound so random to a passerby they might think we’re speaking in code.

So after rethinking how I’d just explained God and people and dinosaurs, I figured it out. “No, Papa didn’t live for thousands of years. Maybe God needed Papa more than we did.”

“But we need our Papa!” She’s very definite on this point.

I had no idea my dinosaur explanation would lead to a discussion on why people have to die. But I’ve been expecting these questions, so I’ve had some time to think of answers. And I know my daughter will never settle for just one answer. “I guess we had our turn with Papa and now it’s God’s turn.” That sounds pretty good – she does a lot of taking turns in preschool.

“Do we get another turn?”

I was doing fairly well until this point, but the answer to this question slays me. I feel that squeezing cringe in my nose and behind my eyes, and here comes the sniffles. “No,” I tell her, hardly able to speak, “we don’t.”

“That’s not fair!” she says in her angry little girl voice.

I have to agree. It doesn’t feel fair, not one little bit. I’m not talking anymore because trying not to sob out loud. Partly I’m crying for me, and I know that. But mostly I’m crying for her. I have thirty-six years of memories of my father in my head. Thirty-six years of lessons in right and wrong and honesty and dignity and humor and goodness. She only has four. How much will she remember for herself?

And then I think of my nieces and how they got less time with my dad than I did. And my great niece. She lost her great-grandpa who she knew and loved - how do you explain that to a two year old? I cry some more.

And my mom, oh, my mom, who’s lived every marriage vow written. Who’s been strong, and scared, and sad, and hopeful and everything in between. She’s been his nurse and his cheerleader, his sweetheart, and his partner. And here she is, cut loose to find a new life. It surely isn’t fair.

I’m really on a crying roll now.

But then I realize that we’re lucky, in a way. My dad was only one half of a great set of parents. We still have one half of greatness here on earth to love. I feel a little better when I remind myself of that.

Now that my crying jag is under control, I still need to get my daughter to sleep. “Hey,” I tell her, “we’ll get another turn when we see Papa in Heaven, okay? And we’ll see Grandma tomorrow, so that’s all right.”

She was still awake a few minutes later when I was talking to my mom on the phone. One “good-night, sleep tight” from Grandma, and she snuggled right in.

Yeah, we’ll be okay.

Requiem for my father

2008-06-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

12.25.07

When I was a little girl, my daddy was a fireman. I felt so proud that my daddy had such an important job. Other kids were in awe of firefighters, and trucks, and hats, and fire stations – and I was a kid who visited the firehouse regularly. My dad showed me all the equipment, let me check out the inside of the truck, and pointed way, way, way up in the hose closet so I could see the hoses hanging to dry. They looked like huge jungle pythons to me. I think he loved his job, because I can’t think of a single instance that he ever complained about it.

How do you explain to a 4 year old at Christmas time that her Papa is dying? She has waited so long for Christmas. She loved decorating the tree and played for hours with the figures in the nativity scene. She begged for pretty lights outside our house like on the houses we drive past every day.

She understands dying, kind of. Well, at least in the sense that the goldfish that no longer swam or breathed was fun to flush down the toilet. She has a vague concept of Heaven, and God, but not a very clear idea. In that respect she’s like a lot of people. She understands that we’re sad about Papa being sick, and that these days Mommy cries an awful lot. “I’m not worried about Papa,” she told me, “4 year olds don’t worry about things.”

I wasn’t worried about Papa, either. If you knew my father you understand, and if you didn’t know him… ah, well, mere words will never do him justice. He was a man of honor, and dignity, and humor, with a concrete sense of right and wrong. During this sad time of good-byes, my brother told me, “I could call him about anything and he always had the answers.” No kidding, I thought, how much easier our lives might have been if we had understood that when we were younger.

As my brother and I grew up and made mistakes, our father bailed us out from time to time. But the help wasn’t offered, it was something we had to ask for. It dashed our pride a little bit to ask, because we were raised to believe that grown-ups are expected to take care of themselves. And yet… there was the safety net, only one request away.

He was the kind of man to whom you apply the words, “fine” and “upstanding” without hesitation. He would regularly wash my mom’s car, and then top off her gas tank so she’d never run low. He always knew where to get the best deal on anything. When I was 13 he took me to a Motley Crue concert because I was too young to go with friends. Talk about self-sacrifice!

He was the man you could say anything to, talk to about anything, spark a rousing debate, and then agree to disagree. We didn’t have to worry about reconciliation or apologies here at the end. We didn’t have unresolved personal issues. We loved him and he loved us, without reservation.

Let it be a tribute to Solvay Hospice House that my busy, often high-energy, little girl loved it there. Something about the environment calmed her immensely, and gave her amazingly good control over her behavior. I spent a lot of time with my dad during his last days, and my daughter did, too. The last time my little girl saw him, my dad raised his hand and said, “Gimme five,” and she did. How’s that for a fabulous goodbye?

My goodbye was a bit more emotional. I told him I was so sad he had to go, and that I would miss him so much, and he said he was so sad to leave us. But he knew he was going to a wonderful place, a place without pain or suffering or cancer.

And my daddy died the way he lived, with honor, with dignity, and without fear.

The Force

2008-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

12.09.07

Sometimes I feel sorry for the world, for the force I have unleashed upon it.

Who knew?

Who knew that I would create a creature of such monstrous determination, such whirling, stomping, dancing, leaping, forward momentum that heaven help anyone or anything that blocks her path?

Take grocery shopping, for instance. Simple enough, we need food, we go to the food store to get some. It’s a fairly regular occurrence, and one that generally holds no real surprises.

I have no idea why it went so badly last time. I had a list. Usually, “Whoops, that’s not on the list,” works like a charm. It’s a neutral third party. It’s clear cut – it’s not on the list, therefore we aren’t buying it. Simple.

The list works because I let her brainstorm with me what to put on it. Oreos? Hmm, well, we haven’t had Oreos for a while, so sure. Let’s put Oreos on the list. Microwave popcorn? Mmm, yup, it goes on the list. Apples? No problem. Apples are on the list. Macaroni & Cheese – hell yeah, that’s on the list in four different varieties.

Over-priced watermelon - not on the list. Chocolate oranges – the fancy ones you bang on the counter that split into neat little slices of chocolate with a hint of orange flavor – not on the list. No, not on the list. No, that doesn’t mean scream for grandma and see if she’ll put it on her list, it means, “NO, it’s NOT on the list and we are NOT buying it.”

When my daughter is not happy she is not quiet about it. Especially when she can run from mom to grandma and back not being happy.

You know how at the grocery store you tend to sort of browse the same aisles with the same people? You meet up in produce or juice, and sort of keep passing and saying excuse me to the same few people pretty much the whole time you’re in the store. Well, by aisle 8 I was feeling pretty sorry for those people.

By the time we reached the meat department and I said “excuse me” to those same people for the 64859628th time since I aisle 1, I was fried. Ok, fine, we’re just going to check out and wait for grandma in the truck. I studied the check-out lines. Could I wait, check-out, bag my groceries, AND leave the store with a living, breathing heathen?

No. I could not.

The whole way out to the truck I’m thinking, is it too much to ask to want to buy FOOD? I mean, really. Bless the Salvation Army bell-ringer who wished us a Happy Holiday and tried to get my daughter to smile. My daughter who was freaking out because there was a stuffed animal in the abandoned cart. Screaming, crying, twisting, feet-dragging kind of freaking out.

Now I ask you why are there stuffed animals at the grocery store? Do we poor benighted parents not have enough objects of desire to navigate in our retail lives as it is? The grocery store used to be a fairly safe zone – huge bags of M&M’s (not on the list), one aisle of cookies (easily avoided), and cheap happy child-lottery machines lined up in a row at the end. Except that suddenly there are stuffed animals in aisle 1. Thanks a lot.

Anyway. We went to the truck, where we had an attitude adjustment. Promises were made and deals were struck, and we decided perhaps we could retrieve the abandoned cart, grab some milk, and survive the check-out line.

I like to think that my quiet, snuffling, well-behaved child received some smirks or at least wan smiles from the people we’d completely annoyed throughout half of the grocery store, the ones who were no doubt thinking, if that were my kid we’d be going outside for an attitude adjustment. But no, we’d lost our place and made our selections amid a new group of co-shoppers, shoppers who probably thought Mommy is a big meanie. Especially the grandmotherly woman my daughter was talking to while I was picking out cheese. The part of the conversation I overheard was in regards to the recent attitude adjustment, and it would not get me nominated for mommy of the year.

She is a force, I tell you. I cannot imagine what sort of an adult she will be, but I expect her to be a mover and a shaker. I used to think she’d be a movie-star, based on her penchant for drama, but these days I’m thinking more along the lines of director or producer. More than anything she loves to be the boss. Demands to be the boss. The boss with a voice that will be heard. And by golly, if she’s not happy, you will hear it.

The world has my sympathy, but hopefully by the time the world has to contend with her, my job will be done. And if the world comes knocking at my door, I’ll just give a toast with my martini glass and say, “May the Force be with you, because heaven knows you’ll never win if it’s against you.”

Musing the muse

2008-06-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

11.25.07

Five and a half days and 14,700 words to go. I want to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. I really do. Now, there’s no way my story will be told in 50,000 words, and I recognize that. My characters are seeming like real people, with jobs, and histories, and speech impediments. But all the ways they are interconnected and the means with which they will resolve their issues remain a mystery – even to me.

Floating around my head are the scene-by-scene bits and pieces, the “today everybody’s in the psych unit, but where will they be tomorrow?” kind of stuff. Baby steps that get my people together and get them moving in the direction of the big finish.

I don’t have a clue as to what that big finish is yet.

Meanwhile. Life intervenes. Children need baths, everybody needs clean clothes, there’s a Thanksgiving meal to cook, and a house to clean up so we can welcome guests. There are friends to see, and a job to go to, a column to write, and sniffles, coughs, cramps and aches. Carpel Tunnel flares up and it’s hard for me to lift anything heavier than a full coffee mug (thank the stars I can still lift a full coffee mug). And I dream of making a living at this?

Yes. Yes I do. And this is why…

Because there comes a point around page 100 where the story I’m telling ceases to be my own, and begins to belong to the characters. I am just a vessel now, the not-so-arrogant creator who’s only true responsibility is to make sure the sentences hit the page in the right order while making some kind of sense. My job is to write without using the word “really” in every sentence.

Did I know that Olivia had twin daughters who died shortly after their birth? No, I did not. Olivia told Jaxx every detail and I cried my eyes out while transcribing the conversation. The control-freak in my head was screaming, “What? Where did this come from? This background makes Olivia important to the novel, but you can’t introduce someone important on page 100, are you crazy?”

That night I went to bed stunned and emotionally exhausted. As I fell asleep… I realized that Jaxx’s boyfriend was the father of those twins, the boy-villain in Olivia’s story who was unable to step up to the plate and be a man in the face of tragedy. How does a teen-ager who runs away when he’s needed most become a man who, ten years later, embraces life to the fullest with a “no regrets” policy?

Well. All will eventually be revealed.

Because that’s what my writer’s brain does. It holds all characters in the subconscious, turning them this way and that, examining emotion, motivation, and human nature. It adds more and more dimension to each person, and each story problem, until clarity bursts forth with all the subtly of fireworks.

And there am I, the vessel, the center of everything, God of the world I have created. I am ready to sit back and watch the events unfold.

Except my child is begging me to play with her. My husband is lamenting the pile of whites that is growing ever larger next to the washing machine. The dog is whining at the door because all the other dogs in the neighborhood get to go for walks. I am scheduled to work 4 of the next 5 and a half days.

The Muse will have to wait. It will sit and stew on what’s supposed to happen next. It will reveal itself in brilliant flashes of brilliant dialogue while I’m driving the car, and will disappear by the time I have paper and pen in hand.

Sometimes I will sit and type words that don’t seem to be going anywhere. I will write less-than-brilliant dialogue as I search my memory in vain for those sneaky flashes of good stuff. None of that is the Muse, however; that all happens when I pretend I’m showing up to write but all I really want to do is browse the internet.

NaNoWriMo: 50,000 Words or Bust will have at least given me a 50,000 word head-start on a new story. Fortunately for me, the Muse will keep the story going all by itself until I show up at the keyboard ready to type. I will discover a detail that has to be added to an early chapter so that a later chapter makes sense. My characters will infiltrate my waking hours, and run around doing mad things in my dreams. They will love each other and I will love them. And that’s really all that matters. Really.

Suspicion

2008-06-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

11.12.07

As I sit down to write this, the dog is grounded to Outside. I don’t know when she can come back in. I just have to wonder… why is everybody around here so darn naughty?

I had a lovely “girls’ night in” last weekend. One friend brought pizza. One brought chocolate. Dark chocolate. Ghiradelli chocolate. With raspberry. We hauled our winter scrap-booking projects out and worked and gabbed the night away.

What remains is chocolate. Two bowls on my dining room table filled with rich, dark, sensual chocolate.

Except that all of a sudden I realize the bowls are empty. The table cloth is torn and scratched. And the dog is acting down-right psychotic.

Oh no.

Did I hear somewhere that chocolate is fatal to dogs? Hmm. That would be two problems solved – waistline and constant aggravation. Whoops, did I say that out loud? Nah, no matter how aggravating the dog is, my child’s devastation would be worse to deal with. At least I think it would be, although… she didn’t have any issues with flushing the goldfish…

Anyway. Before I got distracted by the Case of the Missing Chocolate I was going to talk about counting bears.

Funny how you can tell there’s something up with your kid even though you can’t nail down exactly why you think there’s something up. Is it body language? Facial expression? That creepy sixth sense that mothers just seem to have?

A few days ago when I picked my daughter up from school I could tell there was something going on. Maybe it was the way she peeked into her jacket pocket and then wanted to go home immediately. This, the child who never wants to go home.

“Hey, what’s your hurry today, Miss?”

“Nothing. I don’t have nothing.”

Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll bite. “What do you have?”

“Nothing. I didn’t find nothing.”

“What did you find?”

"It’s a secret."

I’m definitely intrigued now. Last year when she didn’t have anything, I found 20 plastic character rings in her backpack. The kind you might find on the top of cupcakes. My daughter insisted she “found” them. When I asked the teacher if my child should have so many rings, she cracked up. All the kids had been looking for their rings all day long. “But I found them, Mom. I did.” Upon further questioning it was determined that whenever another child set their ring down somewhere, MY child scooped it up and tucked it into her backpack. Finders keepers and all that.

This time her secret was a tiny red plastic teddy bear. Small enough to easily enclose in her fist. “Can I take it home, Mommy?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “Let’s show it to the afternoon teacher and you can ask her.”

The afternoon teacher shrugged. She didn’t know where it came from. It was okay for my girl to take it home.

But the mystery of the bear grew a little more at home. “This is my counting bear, Mom.”

“Why is it a counting bear? Does it belong to a game at school?”

“No, no,” she insists, “It wasn’t part of a game.”

“How many counting bears are there?” I ask.

“Lots,” she says, “But this bear was nowhere. I found it.”

Two days later when I picked her up from school I found EIGHT little counting bears in assorted colors piled next to her mailbox. I am now eight times suspicious of one little red plastic bear. I gathered them up and showed them to the daytime teacher. “Do these belong somewhere?”

“They belong in the math center,” she said.

I looked pointedly at my girl, “They belong in the math center,” I repeated, “and they need to stay at school.”

I could see she was agreeable, but I suspected it was mostly an attempt to keep me quiet about the little red counting bear that was already at home. “I can keep the bear at home, right?” she whispered.

I made a compromise. “Yes,” I said, “until you’re done playing with it, or until you feel bad about having it home. Then it can come back here.”

I’d like to tell you how it all worked out, but I ungrounded the dog 5 minutes too soon, and now I have figure out if the room-sized rug can be saved.

Sometimes a mess can turn your stomach. Sometimes it just smells likechocolate.

CafeMom and other stuff

2008-06-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

10.30.07

There is a place on the internet called Cafemom, if you mothers out there aren’t already spending way too much time on the internet. One can spend hours there writing journals, reading journals, venting, ranting, giving advice, and arguing Christianity versus Atheism. Mostly the last one, and whether that is good or bad depends upon how much you like impossible arguments. Me? Well, I get enough of those at home, thanks.

“It’s too cold to wear shorts today. Yes, I realize the sun is shining, but it’s still too cold to wear shorts. Trust me, it’s too cold to wear shorts. Ok, let’s put on your shoes so we can go. No, it’s too cold to wear sandals.”

And on and on and on, world without end, amen.

But here’s something cool: I joined a group of people on Cafemom who have 4 year olds. Which means I’m not the only person in the world arguing daily about the weather. I’m also not the only person in the world who has a kid who can wipe the front but still can’t reach the back. I have to tell you, this makes me feel great! I can always findsomeone else living with the exact same weirdness that I live with. And that is a cool thing.

The downside is I can always find people who are happy to let me in on the little secret that my soul will burn in hell for all eternity because I think church is boring.

I guess you can’t win them all, can you?

Once in a while I find cute little messages in my inbox that say, “I will pray for you.” This is meant to insult me, which I find amusing because I’m okay with people praying for me. I pray sometimes, too, although I don’t go around bragging about it. Go ahead and pray for me, especially if you think your prayers are going to hurt me, because I don’t think it works that way. And if you think it does, then perhaps you need to re-examine your definition of what it means to be Christ-like (definition number 4 of “Christian” at dictionary.com).

Anyway. That wasn’t my point. My point was that my beautiful daughter is quite normal, as much as a 4 year old can be considered normal. She can be the sweetest, most well-mannered child in the world, and an hour later the most horrid little brat ever. She argues, she dawdles, she races. She doesn’t want to hold my hand in parking lots. She doesn’t want to wear her seat belt. She gives me a hundred kisses, but she loves Daddy more. Until she skins her knee, and then only Mommy can make it better. Until Mommy says she can’t have a 3rd bowl of ice cream, then she only wants Daddy.

I think her grasp of the English language is phenomenal. The other day she said with perfect diction, “Yes, yes, indeed, indeed.” The same day she was laying on the landing at the bottom of the stairs and said, “You can’t expect me to walk up all of those stairs – I’m just a little baby!” The same day the printer was disconnected from the computer and she screamed, “Now I can NEVER print any pictures EVER AGAIN!” The same day she watched the movie Narnia in it’s entirety without falling asleep even for a minute (wow, I can’t even pull that one off).

Every day she says or does something that knocks my socks off. She navigates the pbskids.org website like a pro. And the telephone – she suddenly loves talking on the phone. A friend called me the other day, and his son wanted to say hello to my daughter, and the next thing you know a playdate has been scheduled. At THEIR convenience. I had to wrestle the phone away from Little Miss Grown-Up.

In fact, she acts so grown-up that now and again I make an error in judgment. She’s been talking about a “Spooky Walk” at school, so I figured a li’l haunted garage would be right up her alley. I even called it a spooky walk for her benefit. But the pale silent child that came out of that garage was not the same spunky costumed fairy that went in. Um, whoops. She recovered, however, when she remembered the warning that had been called into the garage as she entered, “Take it easy, there’s a 2 year old coming through.”

Nothing offends her sensibilities more than being called a 2 year old. Not even a scary guy in a glowing skull mask that appears out of thin air. Whew. Saved, once again, by the indomitable spirit of a 4 year old.

NaNoWriMo

2008-06-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

10.15.07

Countdown: 18 days. As in, “How long until that challenge-thingy you signed up for starts?” 18 days. As in, “How long before you can start writing that novel?” 18 days.

I mentioned in a September column that I planned to challenge myself and sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). Well I’m all signed up and ready to go. Thank goodness I have a column and can write something, because plot and character development have been spinning ‘round my brain for so long now that NOT writing it all down is excruciating. Nobody mentioned what an exercise in self-control this is. Or maybe they did and I didn’t pay attention.

So here I am calling on anyone who’s ever said, “I should write a novel.” Now’s your big chance! Signing up is easy – just log onto nanowrimo.org and click the button that says “sign up.” You create a profile that mostly consists of a large empty progress bar that measures word count. Then you can browse forums on the site, add writing buddies to your profile, and even (so they say) find regional and local people who will be working on the same challenge.

In these last weeks until November 1st you can daydream and brainstorm about plot and character and motivation. Do some research, post messages in the forums, and mostly get yourself psyched up and excited to write.

I already warned my husband that there would be no cooking or cleaning in the month of November. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “So what else is new?” I would take offense at that reaction, only then I’d have to cook and clean to make the point that I am perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning, and that seems like a trap I don’t want to get caught in, so I’m going to let it slide. Which, I think, might have been his point. But whatever.

Lookie there! The above paragraph contains 89 words. A word count of 50,000 is all you need to “win” NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words is about 200 double-spaced word processor pages. Heck, that’s no problem. My 2nd novel was 90,000 words, and that one only took me a year an a half to complete. Fifty thousand in a month shouldn’t be awful. 1666 words a day. I usually try to get 800 words into a column, which takes me about an hour, so double that daily – it’s do-able. Heck, break it down like that and it’s not even all that scary.

Hmm, let me think what else you need to know to join NaNo. It’s free, but participants are welcome to donate money to help cover administrative costs. You’re supposed to write a fictional story of 50,000 words or more from scratch. No bringing an already-started, stalled, or half-completed project to NaNo. Some of the beauty of the contest is that it encourages free writing and discourages editing. Pound out the words. Put some flesh on an idea that until now has only been a skeleton. Fiction, fiction, fiction! No biographies, autobiographies or memoirs – unless it’s a biography of your fictional character. Any genre – literary, historical, mystery, mainstream, young adult. Heck, a whole bunch of people out there don’t even know yet what genre they’re writing, and probably won’t know until they find out what kind of trouble their main characters get into.

I discovered all kinds of things I didn’t know when I wrote my first novel. I was charmed and amazed that once the story gained momentum I, personally, had very little control over what happened. Story logic picks up a flow of its own once you’ve created people who live and breathe on the page. Give them passion, intensity, and motivation, and it can be difficult to micro-manage the story process from intolerable problem at point A to happily ever after solution at point B. There are times you need to brainstorm what’s going to happen next, but writing feels phenomenal when characters do and say things the writer never expected, but it’s right and true even if it changes the direction of the whole blessed story.

I’m going to write about a girl who’s hired as a bounty hunter to – ahh, well, never mind. There are 18 days left before even I will begin to find out if thegirl has a screw loose or what. Inthe meantime I’m going to keep all this story pressure building up inside in hopes that it’ll flow out effortlessly come November 1st.

Sometimes the only way it’s going to get done is to just sit down and do it.

NaNoWriMo.org. Or nanowrimo.org. Caps or no caps, either way is fine. Now come join me and write a novel in November.

Home-School?

2008-06-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

10.02.07

Quite a while back I received an email from someone I had met once, very briefly, in a casual setting. The letter exhorted the beauty and potential of my daughter and begged me to think about home-schooling. This person knew nothing about me, my life, or my values and beliefs, and yet here was a letter telling me that God wants me to educate my child at home.

Now, I am one of those people who believe that if there is a God, He knows all our hearts. Therefore I’m pretty sure He created 4K just for me. He knew I was struggling with my smart and busy daughter who has the attention span of a butterfly, and that the day sometimes has more hours than I have patience.

Introduce the Kindergarten Readiness program known as 4K. Five days a week my darling gets up, gets dressed, and goes to school, and I have a blessed 3 hours alone.

Home-schooling might very well be the most attractive option for some families. When I picture it in my head for our family, however, I can feel my blood pressure rising. For one thing, if she won’t let me teach her how to put her pants on, how on earth am I supposed to teach her how to read and write? We love each other to the moon and back, but we get frustrated with one another on a regular basis. And I already find it exhausting to keep her busy for a whole day – I can’t imagine that schooling her at home would be an improvement.

By the time she was 2 and a half I was doing the countdown to school. And by the time she was 3 she was counting down with me. “When can I go on the school bus with the big kids? Mom, can’t I go to school? I’m big enough, see? I’m THIS big!”

All the way around this 4K program is a beautiful thing.

And this is where I have to say… thank goodness for people who love to hang out with little kids and can teach them stuff. Because lord knows, I’m not very good at it. For me it goes like… “Oh, you want to have a picnic? Cool, let’s make a picnic lunch and eat it on the picnic blanket!” My daughter is all for the idea, go mom, you came up with a great idea, yay!

Sure. Only while I’m making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and slicing and peeling apples she gets impatient. “Mom, can I have my sandwich and start without you?” “Mom, I’m taking the apples, please can you put some apple dip in a bowl for me?”

By the time I’m ready to eat, half of the meal has been removed from the tray and consumed.

I carry the tray to the picnic blanket in the dining room and set it down. She says, “I’m done eating. Picnic’s over,” and she’s off to find a new activity. I can’t keep up. I eat by myself. Then I clean up the mess I left in the kitchen because I was trying to hurry. I’m not designed to switch gears at full throttle 35 times a day. It makes me tired.

Daycare provider is so far down on my list of career choices that it’s not even on the list, which is why I am so thankful that it’s much higher on other people’s lists. If it wasn’t for the wonderful, caring, and accommodating staff at my daughter’s school, I would be a basket case. I’d also be living with a little person who has terrible table manners. And worse, I’m sure. As it is now I just give her the “mom eye” and ask, “What happens at school when kids eat like Cookie Monster?” That’s all I have to say because the power of the naughty chair follows her home.

I’ve learned other tricks, too. Like, do you know how important it is for a kid to be the line-leader? All I have to do to get my daughter moving from point A to point B is to say in a song-song voice, “I’m gonna be the line-leader,” and bam! There she is racing past me screaming, “NO! I get to be the line-leader! Me, it’s me!”

That one is useful to me every single day.

Some people probably should home school and are very good at it. For the rest of us, the school district could make it a threat to ensure we carry out good discipline techniques in the after school hours. Think about it.

Hoppers

2008-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

09.17.07

I generally don’t give much though to grasshoppers. I mean, I vaguely remember finding one now and then as a kid, catching it, having it spit on me, saying, “Ew, gross,” and letting it go again. I don’t have a particular childhood memory centered on grasshoppers. I don’t remember them being in my pool, in the car, or sunning themselves by the hundreds on the slide of my swing set. Maybe because I had a metal slide. (Fried grasshoppers, anyone?)

I definitely don’t remember anything quite like the “Grasshopper Run.”

What is the Grasshopper Run, you ask?

I’ll tell you.

First let me set the scene.

A black-topped driveway leads to a peaceful 2-story white house with blue shutters and a wind-chime on the back door that tinkles. A nice large yard has mostly green grass and a swing set with swings, a slide, and a climbing rope. There’s a pool in the yard covered with a tarp. Beyond the pool is a field of high grass and wild flowers. Idyllic, really.

A child stands poised at the edge of the driveway, her merry eyes so blue they glitter like sapphires when she laughs. They’re glittering now as she grins with anticipation and delight. “Say, ‘ready, set, go’ Mom! Say it, say it!”

“Ready… set… are you ready?”

“Yes!” she shrieks.

“Are you reeeaally ready?”

“Yes! I’m ready, I’m ready! Say it, Mom!”

“Ready… set… GO!”

She leaps into the grass and runs toward the field, grasshoppers popping up by the hundreds with every step, until she’s almost engulfed in a cloud of hoppers. Her arms flail and giggles and squeals fill the yard. When she reaches the edge of the field she turns back and hollers, “Did you see that, Mom? Did you see it? There’s a million grasshoppers!”

There is only one rule for the Grasshopper Run. And if you think about it for a minute it’s fairly obvious.

Keep your mouth closed.

I stand on the driveway laughing, every now and again shaking hoppers out of my hair and brushing them off my clothes. The driveway isn’t exactly a safe zone. There is no safe zone. The hoppers are everywhere. They leap into the house, hitch rides with me in the car, and float in the pool awaiting rescue. And rescue them we do, several times a day, and finally tarp the pool because we don’t want to be responsible for any drowning grasshoppers.

I haven’t had one spit on me yet, which I think is odd, because when I think of the hoppers from my childhood what I remember is weird brownish-orange spit. They hop. You catch them. They spit. They hop again. That’s it.

I don’t remember clouds of grasshoppers. Grasshoppers on the house, in the house, on the car, in the car, on my clothes, in my car, leaping, hopping, popping, pooping. But no spitting.

There are more revolting swarms of bugs than grasshoppers, that’s for sure. Army or Tent Worms – those are gross. Actually, they are so gross that I think we’ll just be moving right along and not talking about them. And let’s not talk about the moths they turn into either.

At least hoppers don’t turn into something equally nasty or worse than their original form. And we do get breaks from them because every few days a crowd of blackbirds descends upon our lawn. A hundred birds – two hundred – it’s hard to count them as they march across the yard in an oddly organized formation, filling their bellies with hoppers and ruining, for a few days at least, the game of Grasshopper Run.

Sometimes plagues of insects are really yucky. But sometimes they make for an awfully fun race across the lawn.

School's... in?

2008-06-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

09.02.07

Whoa. Kids are going back to school, and for the first time so is mine. It feels kind of exciting, to tell you the truth. I hear these weepy “put the kid on the bus for the first time” stories from other moms and I have to say… I don’t get it. I’m not crying, I’m plotting and planning all the things I can get accomplished knowing my girl will be in school for 15 hours a week.

FIFTEEN weekday hours. I can get my hair cut. I can go to the dentist. I can go to the optical shop and pick out glasses. I can do household shopping all by myself. Let me repeat that – I can do household shopping all by myself.

Do you have any idea how fast I can buy toilet paper and laundry soap and groceries without a 4 year old alternately dragging her heels and running wild in the aisles? Without the constant pleas of, “Mommy? Can we get this? Mommy! I need this! Please please please?”

Weepy stories? Not me. I’m doing the happy dance.

Now granted, I am not putting my child on a bus. Even I probably am not ready for that one. But her daycare is offering a 4K program this year, which is a lot equal to half-day kindergarten for 4 year olds, and she’s expected to be there from 8:30 to 11:30 Monday through Friday even when I don’t need childcare. And it’s free. Hey, works for me.

I bet you can guess that I don’t consider home-schooling an option, hmm? Yeah, let’s run right out and NOT get involved in that. A lot of people are doing it. Quite a few people have expressed outright horror that I might allow the government to educate my child. I’m not horrified at all. Like anything in life, I expect we, as a family, will be filling in gaps and expressing our views to our daughter on a daily basis. If we need to learn more or learn another viewpoint about something, we have the internet. We also have a library card. There’s a lot more to education than what happens inside a classroom.

I’m not sure I’m smart enough to home-school my child even if I wanted to, although proponents of this type of education tell me that intelligence on my part (the part of the teacher) isn’t anything to be concerned about. Um, ok. That seems a little not quite right, but whatever.

One huge barrier to home-schooling (besides the fact that I don’t want to do it) is that my active, bright, busy little girl doesn’t behave all that great for me. In fact, sometimes we don’t get along at all. But I went on a big field trip this summer with her daycare and witnessed, with my own surprised eyes, that the girl I deal with at home is not the same girl they have at school. She loves the kids, she loves the teachers, she listens, and she follows the rules. Unbelievable.

I love my daughter. I think she is the most amazing human being I have ever met. I really do. But I was a grown-up without a child for many years before I was a mom, and I love being alone with the thoughts inside my head. I’ve missed having that kind of time. So I really am looking forward to school days.

And my Little Miss is looking forward to it, also. Almost every day she asks with a sigh, “Oh Mommy, why does it take so long to grow up?” She’s hoping to learn how to write her name this year. And because she wants to know everything about everything, learning to read is another item on her agenda.

I’m going to challenge myself this fall. September and October will be months of organizing my house and my life. I’m going to go through closets and get rid of stuff, which is one of my favorite things to do. This house is reaching maximum overload with toys that are not played with and “that’s my favorite” clothes that are too small. But just try to get go through a kid’s closet when she’s prancing behind you, screaming, “I need that! Hey, that’s MINE!”

In November the fun begins. I am signing up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer’s Month). My fingers will be clicking the keyboard every spare moment as I make an attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in just four weeks. I have an idea that has my imagination spinning and my fingers itching, and I’m raring to go.

Some people home-school to avoid public education. I say… bring it on!

4 Years = 4 Minutes

2008-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

08.19.07

It takes two… adults, that is. For paper mache. Heck, I can’t even spell it by myself.

My daughter likes to say, “Four year olds can do a lot of things all by themselves, can’t they?” Like fastening and unfastening overalls. Like buckling their own seat belts. Like pouring their own milk – at least if it the carton isn’t too full.

She was desperate to have a piñata at her birthday party. A piñata in the shape of the number 4. I’m pretty sure she got that idea from a little friend who had one shaped like a 6 at his birthday. I thought it was a fun idea, but remembered how hard it was to break the number 6, and how much candy was inside it. I didn’t have a clue where to buy a piñata in the shape of a special number 4. Then a brainstorm. Hey, if we made it ourselves it would be smaller (and thus hold less candy) and thinner (thus being easier to break).

Sometimes I’m pretty deep into a project before I recognize it was BAD IDEA. I wish the light bulb in mybrain were more like a stoplight, with green for “fantastic!,” yellow for “caution, you might want to think this through,” and red for “what kind of an idiot are you, anyway?” This could save me a lot of aggravation.

Making a piñata in the shape of a number 4 with paper mache doesn’t seem like all that big a deal. I mean, we did it in grade school, right? 1 teacher to 30 kids. It couldn’t be that awful. And besides, 4 year olds are great little helpers.

I distinctly remember having this last thought. 4 year olds are great little helpers. It’ll be a fun mother/daughter project. We’ll enjoy each other and laugh as we make a little mess (I did have the presence of mind to know this project would get messy – only in my daydream the mess happened somewhere in the last stage of the project, the stage that involves tempera paints).

4 year olds are great little helpers – but their attention spans are 4 minutes long. If you have a project that takes less than 5 minutes you won’t find a more diligent little worker than a 4 year old. But it definitely takes longer than 4 minutes to paper mache a piñata in the shape of a number 4.

Fortunately I had the presence of mind to blow up the balloons and tie them together the evening before our big project day. Which was no small feat itself. I learned that even tied-together balloons aren’t going to hold their shape all by themselves and politely wait for newspaper strips soaked in flour and water to glue them in place. But hey, holding balloons into the shape of a number 4 sounds like a great job for a 4 year old.

But here’s what else I didn’t take into account on this little project; there is nothing more fabulous when you’re 4 years old than burying your hands up to your elbows in flour. Who knew that flour is the most amazing substance on earth? That’s it’s powdery and soft and silky, and spits fun little “poofs” into the air that slowly waft down to cover the kitchen floor. And the dog. And the new kitchen table, and even the mommy.

Here’s a bit of advice about making glue. Put a little flower in the bucket first and then slowly add water. Because doing it the other way – adding flour to half a bucket full of water – is perhaps not fastest or most economical method. A half a bucket of water takes a whole heck of a lot of flour before it reaches the consistency of glue.

And of course, if you do it backwards the 4 year old gets to play with flour for the entire length of their attention span. Which actually doubles when it involves things like flour and water and results in an astronomical mess.

I don’t think I even have space here to begin to get into howimpossible it is to pull the glue-soaked paper out of the bucket, squeegee the excess glue off between two fingers, and place the paper over the balloons in such a way that the whole mass will eventually resemble the number 4.

But trust me on this one – it’s not a job for one person. And amazingly enough, once the vat of glue mixture is thick enough to use, and the newspaper is torn into strips, and the flour has been put back into the cupboard – the 4 year old is done with this project and wanders away to watch a movie. And there’s mom, up to her elbows in glue, back aching because there’s no way I’m doing any paper mache on my new kitchen table, muttering, “Stop moving, you stupid balloon, you are the crossbar of the number 4… get ON there newspaper, no, not like that, flat, oh for goodness sake, 4, number 4, who’s bright idea was this paper mache thing, anyway?

Sometimes an idea should get the green. Sometimes somebody should just stop me before I even get started.

Am I the Crazy One?

2007-10-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

7.11.07

I will be the first to admit that I shelter myself. I am uninformed, often ignorant, and altogether a lot happier because I avoid “the news.” Television news, newspaper news, CNN, MSNBC – I tuck my chin and let it all zoom by over my head. I figure that if anything really big and important happens someone will tell me about it. I know this is true, because even without turning on the television I know that at the beginning of June Paris Hilton went to jail, then got out of jail, then went back to jail. I don’t care a whit about Paris and I still know all about it. That’s pretty sad. If this is Big National News these days people in other countries must think we’re a joke. Paris is cute and rich and that makes her newsworthy for days on end? What kind of country are we living in, anyway?

Me, well, I guess I’m pretty okay with her going to jail if that’s the usual sentence for probation violations in California. Rich people shouldn’t be above the law… but then again, we all know that those who can afford better attorneys do better in court, don’t we? Maybe serving her time will stop her from becoming just another celebrity train wreck – I think maybe it’s not easy for these people to be alone inside their heads. Being forced to pause for reflection and journaling might help her get to know herself. Might make her a healthier person in the long run. One way or another I’m sure even I won’t escape hearing all about it.

On the local front, I was catching up with Barb Olsen’s news of the city council on the “created” civil service position of Maintenance Helper Worker. I’ll recap my understanding real quick… the city is creating a new position to fill with current workers whose drivers’ licenses have been suspended in jobs that require them to drive. Have I got that right? Where was I when this came up back in February? Oh yeah, hibernating.

The current issue isn’t even WHY the position was created, so yeah, I’m out of date here but… am I the only one whose eyeballs just fell out? Listen up, folks, city workers aren’t losing their drivers’ licenses because of something innocent like non-payment of child support (yes, I’m being facetious here). Mostly I suspect they lose them when they get caught driving under the influence. The good old DUI. Maybe I’m a little too conservative in my thinking (my friends can stop laughing here) but I guess I figure having a drivers’ license is a privilege that comes with certain responsibilities, one of which is not to drive when you’ve been drinking. If your job requires you to have a valid drivers’ license, that’s even more reason. If you didn’t have a drivers’ license you wouldn’t have been hired for a job that requires you to drive, so losing your license should be grounds for being fired. End of story. You blew it, so now someone else gets a chance at a living wage.

As a parent I am always telling my child that there areconsequences for bad behavior. There are consequences for grown-ups, too, and we usually have a pretty good idea what they are well in advance. Done deal.

So okay, I get that I’m probably responding to dead issues at this point, but because I shelter myself from news I tend to be a little slow on the uptake on some things.

Like the Veteran’s for Peace float being denied inclusion in a (Memorial Day?) parade in Virginia, MN. Eh, maybe it was the Land of the Loon Parade – whatever. I guess here’s my question… if a group high school girls in full make-up and dressed to show some skin arrived with a “Free Paris” float – would that float have gained entrance? After all, Paris going to jail is national news. Our boys dying for their country in Iraq just… well… isn’t.

At least this is what we tell the world.

Cindy Sheehan said something that struck me hard in the gut, but I don’t have it in front of me so I can only quote her very, very loosely: How can I make an impact on a country that cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many American soldiers have died in Iraq?

Sometimes I’m actually embarrassed to be an American.

2007-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

6.28.07

It’s been about 5 years since I’ve rescued an animal, and twice today I realized how lacking my truck is in supplies. The animal kennel, fish net, and leather gloves have all given way to beach blankets, sun block, and sand toys. The absence of animal gear was glaring today

First, the baby weasel. On the way home from a playdate I this tiny ermine or martin running along the center line of the row being pecked at and harassed by a crow. It was so small that at first I thought it was some kind of lizard. Adorable like a miniature ferret, it was, but I expect a lot more vicious.

And yet - what do I do but pull the car over and stop, much to the confusion of my daughter. The little weasel was in a panic. So was I, because without gloves or a net there was not much I could do. I settled for rousting the crow long enough for the li'l thing to escape. Just call me Diego… We’re animal adventurers!

Animal #2 on the very same day was a dachshund who’d got himself in a very bad place, trapped on a freeway median in the dark with rushing traffic on both sides. “It’s a little dog,” I said to my husband, “STOP THE CAR!”

The mini-dog ran yapping from one lane of traffic to another, and my heart was in my throat as I crooned and clapped my hands, and begged and called it "Baby" and "Oscar." (Well what would YOU call a weiner dog?)

For five minutes we were at a standstill. Me crouched on a grassy median between two directions of traffic, mini-dog about 20 feet from me barking and clearly indecisive. My wild heart was bruising my ribs because my imagination kept inserting, "SPLAT."

My husband, who I imagined at this point truly regretted pulling over in the first place, now approached the standoff and tossed something at the little dog, and I remembered the bizarre fact that we had hot dogs in the car tonight. Yay!

I backed away slowly as my husband advanced. A few throws later he had one very small and very angry dog by the collar. It squealed and snarled and twisted and seemed quite determined to bite his fingers off. I shrugged out of my sweatshirt and somehow we managed to blanket roll the pup.

I held the snarling mini-beast on my lap for the next 5 miles, glad that I knew exactly where our old dog kennel was because I saw it just yesterday. It was in the garage attic - and could be reached only after a grimy, spidery climb through the labyrinth of junk that we own. Haha. Well, I know just who gets to go up there. Mr. I'm-Not-Afraid-of-Spiders-Hot-Dog-Man, that's who.

Good thing, too, because when our boxer saw the weiner dog her eyes said to her brain, "Rabbit! Rabbit rabbit rabbit. Rabbit, right here in my kitchen. Ooooh, yum-yum-yummy rabbit." Apparently her ears are defective because those mini-barks didn’t manage to translate dog-speak to her over-stupified boxer brain.

Happy ending. I called the police to tell them I’d picked a mean, stubborn little dog up off the freeway, and the little pup’s family had already reported him missing. The little fellow was home by midnight.

We bonded with the mini-beast while we waited for the owners to come for him. He was a whole lot cuter now that he wasn't snarling. He was rather likeable. and this made me like him more. He seemed very suspicious of strangers, paranoid, even, but a few more hot dog pieces broke the ice and were quite good chums in the end.

He was happy to see his mommy and the tear-stained face of his little girl. The little girl would finally be able to sleep now that her bed-buddy was un-lost.

They said they were surprised he came to us because he's very suspicious of strangers. We said, "Haha - yeah, we noticed that. We had hot dogs."

They said, "Well that explains it - hot dogs are his favorite. In fact, his name is Oscar."

Am I good, or what?

Imperfections

2007-10-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

6.14.07

I like to think that I’m not the only parent without a plan. I’m a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of person – impetuous, spontaneous, and, unfortunately, inconsistent. My kid does very well with structure and routine, and I suspect never knowing if I’m going to say “yes” or “no” to something is hard on her. I’m trying to get better because I think my being a random mommy actually may increase the number and severity of her tantrums. Which is just what everybody needs.

Routine and consistency are great for kids. Heck, I proved it to myself with the whole bedtime thing. Bedtime used to take hours and often involved shouting and begging and tears. No more. We’ve got an established, unwavering routine now, and I haven’t cried about bedtime for months. Brush teeth. Pajamas. 3 stories. 10 minutes of cuddle time designated by setting an alarm. Sleeping child. Yay! Well, ok, it doesn’t always result in a sleeping child, but does result in a child who understands she has to stay in her room after the routine. No extra stories, no extended cuddle time, no bugging mom and dad unless it’s a potty emergency.

Anyway. That’s about the only thing we manage to be consistent on. My work schedule is random and I like it that way. Which means her daycare schedule is random. She’s in the habit now at bedtime of asking where we’re going in the morning, and if we’re going “early” or if we get to sleep in. At least she’s smart enough to ask!

My philosophy on requests from kids has long been, “If it doesn’t matter always say Yes,” because otherwise I tend to say “no” automatically to everything, and what fun is that? But lately I notice that I tend to say one thing, such as, “We’re just stopping for milk,” but when she asks for a lollipop or juice or chips I let her throw it in. It’s a quarter or a dollar so no big deal. But she said to me a few days ago, “I’m spoiled. You buy me everything I want, Mom.” I noted the warning bells, but didn’t quite see the fire.

Until we’re at a rummage sale and she wants something totally ridiculous, like a bicycle she won’t grow into for 5 more years. I say something reasonable like, “We don’t need that. You just got a brand new bike a few weeks ago.” She says, “But I want it.” I say, “No.” And here it comes – holy tantrum hell. Totally misery. Any fun I was having is over now because she’s determined to be peevish and bratty. And it doesn’t end there. Heading home I needed to put gas in the car. She’s been utterly unpleasant for the past two hours, and as I pull into the gas station she perks up and says, “Can I get a treat, Mom?”

“No. We’re getting gas and that’s it.” Inside the store she picks up a Tootsie-Pop. “Can I have a sucker?”

“No. We’re getting gas and that’s it.”

“Pretty please?”

“No.”

“But I asked nicely.”

“But you’ve been a brat all morning.”

She made a face at me and put the sucker in her pocket! I put it back on the shelf. She screamed and carried on for the next 8 miles. And I thought, yep, she really is spoiled, and I really need to be more consistent about making “no” mean “No!”

It’s becoming more and more clear. My parenting style is imperfect. The other day I was going to run into the grocery store to get milk, and my girl announced she was going to get her birthday cake. Her birthday is in August. I was laughing as I explained why now is the wrong time to get a birthday cake. “August will take forever, Mom, I can’t wait that long!” And then came the genuine sobs, tears, and devastated screams of “You won’t let me have a cake for my birthday!”

Sometimes she is very astute. And sometimes she’s an irrational lunatic. That’s kids for you, I guess.

One Bad Day

2007-10-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

5.31.07

It was just one of those days.

If you know of Alexander and Australia you know what I’m talking about.

The day kicked off when I tied the dog to the chain and she saw a rabbit that I didn’t see. My sleep-slowed body couldn’t react in time to avoid being clothes-lined by a cable across the ankles. It might have been funny to an observer seeing me face-down in the doo-littered, dew-wet grass… but my ankles were too shredded for laughter to be a feasible option.

Slew of naughty words, however, well that was no problem.

My day ended when I reached the car moments before it started to pour. And dug through my purse in a frenzy until I realized my keys were in my locker at work. Three blocks away. By the time I retrieved them the rain had reached downpour proportions, and you know what? I didn’t waste a moment’s thought on waiting the storm out. From the very beginning of this day I was meant to get pummeled by the pouring rain. In fact, walking those three blocks for the third time I wouldn’t have been surprised by hail. I do carry an umbrella. Really. I keep it in mycar. Once again I didn’t find laughter to be a feasible option. And I was too resigned to cuss.

I’m not even going to talk about the work day that occurred in between those two events, because and there’s not a darn thing I can do to make it funny, so really, what would be the point?

Suffice to say it was one of those days where nothing could possibly go right.

And believe me, I tried, I really did. I bought an expensive gourmet coffee. I ingested really great chocolate. I smiled. I laughed. My internal attitude remained negative 10 on the scale of 0 to Rotten-to-the-core.

I had to pick up two prescriptions for Chantix at two different pharmacies. They were, of course, supposed to be at the same pharmacy. Ha-ha. And if that wasn’t bad enough, my husband said, “Let’s start it on Saturday.” Which equals NOT smoking a week from Saturday. Gosh, sweetie, I was thinking more like the middle of June. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? I think that’s kind of what that saying means – just jump in all the way, go for it, git ‘er done, no holds barred.

7 pm found me asleep on the couch. I woke up at 9 to put my child to bed. I think she jumped on me to wake me up a couple of times in there, but perhaps my eyes betrayed my state of sheer defeat and mostly she let me sleep. Daddy was home – that’s always good entertainment because daddies play differently than mommies.

I think she went right to sleep, but I can’t be sure because the whole evening is a blur in my memory. I went right to sleep after reading her stories and tucking her in. I do remember that.

At 5:30 the next morning I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, fiddling my cell phone like a worry stone, and reviewing my body-systems. Head: check. Stomach: check. Clock: check. Double-check – it’s too late to call in sick even if I could think of a good excuse. I mean, flu or food poisoning… well, I’d have noticed those before now – like maybe in time for them to find a replacement for me. Damn, damn, damn. Am I allowed to call in with a bad attitude? Ah, wait a minute… Sense of Humor: Check! Oh yeah, now I can go to work with gusto.

It’s amazing how miserable a person can be when they lose their sense of humor. I’m glad I found mine again – it makes the days so much more fun. My sense of humor was apparently buried under a pile of “lack of sleep.” I’ll try to watch out for that before I have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Sometimes you can laugh. Sometimes you realize you stuffed your ability to laugh in the glove compartment and then locked your keys in the car. But don’t worry, you can always call Dave’s Towing.

Survivor's Guide

2007-10-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

5.17.07

Day 1,374

It’s Mother’s day again. SHE got a new bike. I got… cramps. Daddy figures… if the kid is happy, mom is happy, right? Especially walking up and down the block 89 times in 45 degree weather.

But honey, isn’t exercise good for cramps?

No, darling. Midol is good for cramps. Which is how we came to be at the store that sells both Midol and bicycles in the first place.

I am a tortured soul.

The child is surpassing me in intelligence, wit, and wile. I think I will be in big, big trouble when she learns to read. She already recognizes some words, and just the other day I realized she has somehow, in her spare time, learned to “point and click.”

Sitting next to her I can see our reflections in the monitor screen, her eyes wide with delight as she points and clicks, clicks and drags, my eyes wide with shock and awe and... astonishment - that I’m going to be fighting yet another human being for quality time with my computer.

Let’s see, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, she’s smarter than me.

She’s going to preschool now, and they teach her things. Really smart things like… smoking cigarettes is bad.

Let’s talk about all the places a person can no longer smoke. Restaurants – that’s a done deal in Duluth and a lot of other places. bars and clubs soon enough… we always thought cigarettes and alcohol go together. Well, not for long the way things are going. And let’s not forget Work - ahhhh, yes, the smoke break at work. Uh-huh. Come July 1st that’s no longer an option.

In the house – well, that’s been a given for awhile now considering that a kid with nice shiny pristine lungs lives here. The same child who has recently announced that there will longer be smoking in the car. It is bad for her and it makes her cough (it does not – she’s a total liar – that’s a fake cough if I ever heard one). But even if it is a fake cough, of course cigarette smoke is bad for her – how can I even argue about it?

The work problem, hmm, I had planned to find a way around it. Nicotine patches or gum or something would get me through an eight hour workday. I certainly wasn’t going to quit because my employer thinks they can make me. And when I realized that even smelling like cigarettes was prohibited (sniff patrol?), well, that was over the line, and I felt even more stubborn about the whole idea.

Then the other day my kid asked, “Mom, will you die from smoking?”

Dead silence. Is there any way to answer that and not look like a complete idiot who doesn’t love her kid?

Oh fine. We’ll see the doc, get prescriptions for Chantix (Dad, too, because I’m not doing this all by myself) and quit smoking, if only to get the child to shut up about it. You can’t smoke a cigarette in peace ANYWHERE anymore, so we might as well just give up. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

There’s a time to be a rebel, and a time to get with the program. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not quitting because my employer says I should, or even because child says I have to. I’m quitting because these days when I cough I wet myself.

The King and Queen

2007-10-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

4.19.07

I didn’t set out to be a redneck. I don’t listen to country music. I don’t watch NASCAR, and, in fact, I’m not even sure if NASCAR is the title of something or an acronym for something.

I have specific rules in place for how many non-running vehicles are allowed on the homestead (that would be zero).

And yet… as the snow melts for real I notice the junk around here has gotten a little out of control and I find myself thinking, “Damn, redneck central at our house.” It’s not cars, just other stuff.

It’s amazing how attractive the little snow-covered hills and valleys in the driveway and backyard were. And not so much now that the thaw has revealed a pile of brush and logs left over from the tree we had to cut down to build the deck last fall, some lumber left over from the actual building of the deck, and an old shaky ladder that didn’t get put away after building the deck because, “somebody might break their neck on that thing.”

In my defense, these items either don’t fit in the garbage can or I’m not allowed, per the city, to place them there.

And as for the acre of dog-doo laden used-to-be-lawn, well… it’s been cold outside.

I’m not the only slacker around here. If left to his own devices I’m pretty sure most of Foxworthy’s redneck one-liners would apply directly to my husband. He’s lucky he has my positive, east-end-girl influence in his life orthings around here would be total chaos. Our history together has included motors and other car parts finding their way into the bathtub, a vehicle or two hidden in long grassy areas, and owning more non-running automobiles than running ones.

What can I say? I married a “really-darn-close-to-redneck” kind of guy, and it’s only by the grace of god and sex and no time whatsoever for television that I’ve managed to keep him from going all the way. And considering he doesn’t like to do things half-way, he’d be the Super-supremo, granddaddy of them all, my mess is bigger than your mess, Redneck King. I’m sure of it.

Okay, for the sake of fairness and the possibility that he may read this, let me admit that I might be exaggerating. And, while I’m at it, divulge that I am perhaps not the ultimate Queen of Neat.

The winters are cold and the summers are hot, work is calling, the kid wants to play… for all these reasons junk gets piled up and ignored. We’re talking a washing machine with a fried motor, bits and pieces of drywall and wood scraps and pallets, large cardboard boxes, broken vacuum cleaners, and a burning barrel full of stuff so soggy it’ll never burn. And this is just a fraction of the stuff in the open carport. I can’t even begin to explain what’s in the two-and-a-half stall garage… except to say that a whole car probably wouldn’t fit in there right now.

I survey my domain of junk on this fine spring morning and feel a massive surge of, “Oh my gawd, I need a nap.”

Maybe we’ll get a dumpster. I’m pretty sure I’ve had this idea before, but maybe this will be the year it happens. After all, I have tikki-parties to plan, and people to invite over to entertain me this summer while my child is sleeping and my husband is busy with the ever-growing, used-to-be-small business.

But my girl and I are catching a plane to Florida this week, so clean up will have to wait for our return.

Sometimes we feel like the masters of all we survey. Unfortunately our kingdom is a mess.

Going Places

2007-10-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

4.5.07

Some days getting out of the house is a miracle. Take today, for example. Little Miss and I were going to visit a new baby in our family. She was excited about this both because she loves babies and because she helped shop for the presents.

We had three hours to get ready.

Three hours seems like an awful lot of time for one woman and one small girl to shower, get dressed, and get into the car.

Mm-hmm. You’d think, wouldn’t you?

It started with she couldn’t get in the shower because she was watching something, and then she couldn’t get in the shower because she had to tell me something… “I never met my brother and sister before that first time, Mom. I never met them before so I was shy. And a little nervous, too, Mom. You know, I was nervous.”

It’s probably not polite to laugh when a little girl tells a serious story, but I was choking back the giggles. Nervous? Where on earth did she learn that word? And how does she know to apply it to an experience she had last September? Her vocabulary amazes me at the same time it cracks me right up.

Anyway. After finally showering there’s the whole matter of getting dressed. For her I’d picked blue jeans with adorable decorative stitching and a matching belt, along with a fluffy pink sweater. But… “I want to wear shorts.”

“It’s not shorts weather, silly, it’s pants weather.”

“I want to wear a skirt. Do we have new tights yet?”

“No. We don’t have tights. And it’s pants weather.”

“Are these easy jeans? They don’t look like easy jeans. They have a zipper and a snap – Mom, that’s not easy jeans. I want to wear shorts.”

Go ahead and loop this conversation as many times as you’d like because it never actually ends.

I finally talked her into the jeans and finished getting myself ready.

Dang, it’s socks and shoes time and I think we’ll be walking out the door on time for once.

“Okay, Mom, okay. But I have to pick out my own shoes.” She proceeds to line up two pairs of shoes.

“The pink ones fit better,” I offer.

“Shh – I have to count them. 1, 2, 3, 5. Oh! There’s one missing. I have to count them again. 1, 2, 3, 5.”

“Four,” I say.

“What? What did you say? Huh?”

“Four. You forgot the number four.”

“Oh, yeah, right. 1, 2, 3, 4. Four shoes!”

In the middle of all this I’m trying to sneak the socks over her toes. “No socks while I count! You’re messing up my counting!”

She counts again, decides four is a good number, then chooses the acceptable pair of shoes, and allows socks, shoes, and sweater to be put on her body.

As I grab my own sweater she slips past the gate that’s keeping the dog (read: mudball) in the back porch. “I’m going outside, Mom. Don’t worry, I don’t need my jacket,” and she’s out the door.

I hurry into my boots and coat figuring I’ll catch up with her in the driveway. But too late. Daddy pulls up to the house in his truck. Fast forward to every waking nightmare that one of us runs over our own child. Stop tape when I hear, “What are you doing outside without your jacket? Does your mother have rocks in her head?”

Chaos ensues as child rushes into the house, dog dashes out, husband sighs in exasperation, and I say, “Ha-ha, listen to you sigh. I’m on aggravating moment #58 already today.”

Little Miss says, “Oh no!” and runs outside after the dog.

Of course it’s inevitable… wipeout… wailing… mud from head to toe.

I know my relatives would like to see her because it’s been awhile. But I’m already exhausted. I don’t think I can stand another argumentative change of clothes. Or another fifteen minutes counting shoes. I decide to leave without her. I called after putting gas in the car to see if I should give her another chance to come, but after I left she had a colossal tantrum during which she rolled off her bed and struck her face on the open nightstand drawer. The result was a goose egg, a black eye, and a bloody nose. Wow, that’s a tantrum, all right.

Sigh. Sometimes you bully your way through, but sometimes it’s best to just give up.

Growing Every Day

2007-10-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

3.22.07

There’s a loud slurping sound coming from the kitchen. It sounds an awful lot like someone is trying to suck up a lone droplet with a straw. Then a little voice floats from the doorway, “That’s a sad, sad sound.”

Oh, she has the power to crack me right up.

“Mom, do you know why that’s a sad, sad sound?”

“No, Miss, I have no idea.”

“Because that sound means my pop is all gone.”

Pop. Soda. Sugar in a can. Kid Crack. Whatever you like to call it, we limit its consumption around here. We have problems enough at bedtime without sugar overload. So… one can of caffeine-free pop is allowed on any given day that we actually have some in the fridge. She’s learned that at eight o’clock in the morning I’ll say yes, but at six o’clock at night it’s a no-go.

“Mom, it’s morning. Can I have some pop? Because I can only have pop in the morning – it’s not a bedtime drink, you know.”

She will nurse that can of pop all day long, my little darling.

The “sad, sad sound” is just the kick-off of funny things she says and does lately. Every day I swear there’s something new. Fairly recently she said, referring to her bedroom, “I’m moving to the other room, Mom, because this room is a baby room.” And sure enough, she started sleeping in the guest room. Hey, so long as she’s going to sleep, I guess I don’t care.

I’m a little sad that her room with the fish border, walls sponge-painted to look like water, and stenciled fish is “babyish” to her already. I worked hard three and a half years ago to make it adorable. But I guess… it was a nursery, and now she’s 3… going on 30.

Last week I took her out to lunch. She unwrapped her silverware, folded the napkin just so and set it next to her plate, and laid out the utensils very neatly. Took a sip of her water, then set the water glass down very carefully. Then she picked up her menu and opened it, saying, “Now, what do I want to eat today?”

I thought the waitress was going to pop buttons, she was trying to hard to hold in her laugh. My daughter is a miniature adult.

She doesn’t allow talking at the table. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s rude. No talking.” Heck, she pretty much doesn’t allow her father and I to talk at all, because if we’re talking to each other no one is paying attention to her, and that’s not acceptable.

She knows the difference between Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, WI, and also knows who lives where. And which side of the bridge we’re on at any given moment. She knows the days of the week and which days she goes to school. She knows the difference between VCR and DVD, and, of course, how to work them all. And all of a sudden she can actually “point and click” with the computer mouse. Dang!

Last week she begged me to take her to visit her cousin. It was after work and I was tired. “I don’t know what they’re doing tonight, sweetie, but I’m sure we’ll see her soon.” Little Miss was quiet for about five minutes, and then she said, “Well, you could call them, Mom, and see what they’re doing.” When we arranged for the littler cousin to come over, she said, “My cousin is probably bigger now, Mom, because I haven’t seen her in a long time. Maybe she can talk because she’s growing bigger every day, just like me!”

She knows the meaning of “extra” and “concentrate” and that you wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. When I told her this month is March she got very excited, and said, “It’s March! We have to make Daddy a cake, a birthday cake!”

She knows grandma is in Florida, and that we have to take an airplane to get there. She asks every day when we get to go on the airplane, and says, “But Mom, I can’t wait that long. I just can’t.”

Oh, and did I mention she loves her preschool, but… “Mom, I don’t want to go to preschool anymore… I want to go to high school with the big kids.” Whoa. Growing more every day, for sure. Too fast, girl, slow down.

The wonder of this smart, articulate girl-child of mine. Sometimes she tells me she’s smarter than me. Sometimes I actually believe her. How scary is that?

Out of Hibernation

2007-10-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

3.8.07

I am a self-proclaimed hibernator. Okay, that’s maybe not an actual word, but you get my drift, right? I’m with the bears on the subject of winter – no worries, I’ll sleep through the whole thing, thank you very much. Well, maybe not exactly sleep, but I’ll stay indoors where it’s warm as much as possible. I have scrap-book pages to put together, email to read, friends to chat with online, and novels to write. If I never had to set one foot in the snow I surely wouldn’t miss it. I hate moving it, and I hate driving in it, especially when the hip yahoos in SUV’s fly past on the road as if they could never be derailed by a sneak ice attack. Suffice to say it’s just not my favorite season.

I didn’t always feel this way. As I child I loved skiing at Chester Bowl, ice skating at Cobb School, and sliding down the hills at Ridgeview Golf Course. I had a neighbor who, at the end of deer season, would give me the foreleg of a deer. I spent hours making deer tracks in the snow. Of course, this was way back when we actually had snow in November. The good old days… for a child at least. I walked to school on top of snowbanks piled six feet above the street, and even before Christmas! The adventures available in the backyard were endless. I prayed for enough snow toallow me to climb onto the garage roof because I wanted so dearly to jump off of it.

I never had to shovel any more than I actually wanted to. Oh, wait, that part hasn’t actually changed much, ha-ha. My husband is in charge of any major snow in the driveway, and I when the post office wanted to put a mailbox at the end of the driveway instead of at my front door I happily agreed. Once in a while I shovel a 2 foot by 3 foot porch. That’s pretty much it.

As a grown up I’ve become a real wimp about snow and cold and winter.

But this year…

This year we had a big storm and I have a 3 year old child.

That changes everything. No more hibernation for mom, because there are mountains to explore in the driveway and rolling hills in the backyard. And a drift behind the shed that reaches darn close to the roof.

My daughter never gets cold. I guess she’s a Northland girl through and through. So this past weekend, the weekend of the “big storm,” I prepared myself to play outside. I suspect it would have been a crime against childhood not to. And of course, SHE has snowpants, and SHE has a hat with little flaps that cover her ears, and SHE has stylish purple snow boots. I have none of these things. I’m sure I owned snowpants before my pregnancy, but I haven’t seen them since.

So I have sweatpants over my jeans. And I have a headband for my ears that keeps slipping down into my hood, and I have really ugly boots that are a cheap knockoff of Sorrel that are ten years old and not very warm anymore.

And yet… I never felt very cold. Perhaps it was the wonder of seeing winter brand new in the eyes of this joyful child. Perhaps it was squeals of delight as her nylon-clad body slipped and slid and rolled down a snow mountain, cushioned and cradled at the bottom by soft cold fluff. As she packed snow into a square box and tipped it over to make a snow castle she said, “It’s just like the beach, Mom!” I would argue that the beach is better, but I refuse to be a buzz-kill on this magical day.

I plopped her on top of the drift behind the shed, where her fingers could nearly reach the roof. “I’m sitting on my tuffet, Mom!” and she proceeded to recite a nursery rhyme I didn’t even know she knew. When she got to the end she squealed slid down the drift and laughed and laughed, her merry blue eyes twinkling with delight.

“Look Mom, the snow sparkles!” and indeed, in the twilight the snow sparkled like a million diamonds. There’s a hush on a snowy night that can hardly be described. “Yes, like fairy dust,” I tell her.

If I hibernated, I’d miss all this. Sometimes our children show us how to feel like children again.

Backpack Adventures

2007-10-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

2.22.07

This weekend my daughter announced, “I need a backpack for school, Mommy. I don’t need the diaper bag anymore. I don’t even wear diapers.”

And thank god for that. There were days last fall when I thought this kid would never be potty trained.

And I have to admit I knew the backpack request would be coming. One little girl at “school” has a Nemo purse, and my daughter certainly wants one of those. Another lucky child has a Pretty Pony toothbrush, and when mine saw one at the store she got so excited I thought she was having a seizure of some sort.

Backpack shopping. Not the most exciting adventure for Mom, but what the heck. I figured I’d have to spend a gazillion dollars on a fancy backpack with Dora and buckles and pockets and traps galore. But my little miss chose a non-character, non-complicated adorable little backpack from the children’s gardening area.

It was a proud Mommy moment.

My husband accused me of setting up her choice by not showing her the Dora backpacks, but he was wrong. We looked at all the choices, and I have a beautiful new laptop bag that cost a gazillion dollars to prove it. My girl stuck to her original decision, and nothing but a Spiderman backpack that comes with a Spiderman watch could change her mind. I diplomatically reminded her she has a Barbie watch (complete with compass!) at home that she already doesn’t wear.

She found that Barbie watch when we got home, put it on, and said, “Come on, Mommy, let’s go get lost in the woods!”

Man, I love this kid.

As we emptied the old and very-well used diaper bag, I asked her what she needs in her backpack for school.

“Pants and panties and socks, in case I have an accident.”

“Do you ever have accidents at school?” I asked.

“No. But someday I might. And I need my mittens and my hat because sometimes when it warms up we go outside. That’s all, Mommy. See? My little backpack is just big enough. But it’s little so I can carry it on my back.”

She’s growing up so fast sometimes it stuns me. I love her use of language; “Daddy’s going to be so impressed, is he?” and, “I’m a big kid now, am I?”

“Mommy, you love me truly madly deeply, andGrandma loves me sooo much, and Daddy loves me to ift… inty… what’s that word?”

“Infinity?”

“Yes, Daddy loves me that.”

Sometimes I remember how peaceful my life was before having a child. But sometimes I also recall that peaceful was pretty darn boring.

The Big City

2007-10-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

1.11.07

So a bunch of internet fangirls meet up in NYC to see a beloved actor perform off-Broadway.

There are so many ways this can go.

But first things first… don’t take the SuperShuttle from JFK to midtown Manhattan. Oh, hell, don’t fly into JFK at all, really. That was our first mistake. The shuttle was really just a continuation of the original error. And it was a doozy. Maybe it was traffic, maybe it was insanity, whatever – but it was truly an eye-opening two hour ride. Yes, I said TWO hours.

Ok, big deal, right? Well, it feels like a big deal if you haven’t eaten in 10 hours. Remember, they don’t feed you on airplanes these days. They can’t. If they did they might have to give you a plastic knife, and that’s a real no-no.

Anyway. The single most amazing thing about the City of New York to this small town girl was the garbage. It was everywhere. No trash cans, just mountains of blue bags on every part of every street. It figures we’d arrive just in time for garbage pick-up, doesn’t it? It was surreal. I don’t even think the people who pick up garbage are on strike right now. I can’t imagine what the city looks like when they are. Or what it must smell like.

New York City in January. My husband shook his head in disbelief as I planned this vacation. He thought I was a little bit crazy. But the whole trip was based on crazy, I’ll be the first to admit that. It was a meeting of my Internet Girls. We all met on the showtime.com bulletin boards because we all loved the same television series. When the show ended and the bulletin board shut down we moved our happy safe little rooms to a place called LiveJournal and just kept talking.

So here are the Internet Girls, taking a trip to the Big City to see one of our favorite actors perform in a play. Hoping to look into his eyes and get an autograph.

Yes. I’m a woman over 30. I’ve never gone seeking an autograph ever before in my life. Not even as a teenager. So I’m pretty comfortable calling this trip crazy.

My husband accompanied me to New York because we have a rule that goes something like this: No meeting internet people alone.

But the girls were all regular people, and everybody was just the way they portrayed themselves on-line. Thank god. Imagine how uncomfortable that could be – sharing a hotel room with an icky person. Whoa. Scary.

8 women and my husband. He’s a tolerant fellow, isn’t he? This is how much fun he had: “Well, now I’ve seen NYC and I never have to go back.”

This is how much fun we girls had: “Think we can swing another trip in the fall?”

We saw: Times Square, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Ground Zero, Fire Station # 10, Battery Park, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Starbucks on every corner, various deli’s on every opposite corner, parts of Christopher Street, a whole lot of the subway system, and a lot of really tall buildings. Really tall. A lot of them. In fact most of my pictures contain some kind of building against some kind of sky because I was a tourist dork who couldn’t stop looking up.

We didn’t see: Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty close up, the works of Picasso at the Whitney, The Bronx Zoo, the Brooklyn Bridge and way too many other things to list. We only managed a fraction of the sights.

But we saw the play. And we met the actor. And we got autographs. It was all good.

I never imagined that typing on an internet bulletin board would lead me to New York City. Or that I’d ever make a crazy trip just to get an autograph. Or take a picture of my girlfriend kneeling in front of Bill Clinton. But perhaps that’s a story for another time…

Sometimes a dream you never knew you had comes true.

Kitchen Chaos

2007-10-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

1.4.07

We had a lovely Christmas season. A good friend of mine added a stunningly adorable baby girl to her family. My own girl was stunningly charming with Santa Claus. She was so enamored and sweet with him I nearly cried (my thanks to the Mariner Mall Santa on Dec 23rd – you were fabulous). On the way to visit Santa, my little miss warned me she might be scared and shy, but when we got there and it was her turn she went into his arms without a qualm. Actually, she flung her arms around as much of him as she could, buried her face in his pristine white beard, and said, “I love you, Santa!” That’s more affection than some family members get sometimes. She told him her list of 3 items and her life story, all in 8 minutes. I believe she included the low down about the new baby.

Ok. Well, with all the holiday busy-ness and the having-to-work time crunch, imagine, if you will, my house pretty much as messy as it could possibly get. And I have teen-agers coming tomorrow. One of them kind-of, sort-of likes things really… um… organized. Ha-ha. Today I had a plan to get my house in order. My girl has lots of fun new toys to play with, so it was a pretty good plan. Except she got a whole lotta kitchen stuff from Santa… and during my final last-minute shopping trip I saw a really cute kids’ kitchen…

And that’s all well and good, right? Quick trip to the bank to cash in the kid’s Christmas money, quick trip to Target, no problem. Home by noon.

Except for the fact that the darling little kitchen comes in a really flat box. And with a LOT of screws.

Let me just say that – ahem – Mommy isn’t exactly the builder of the family, but come on, how much trouble can a screwdriver and a star-wrench be? And I know we have a cordless power screwdriver. Heck, I’ve bought at least two of them. Last Father’s Day I bought a very decent low-quality multi-talented tool kit for my husband because every time I ask him to fix something or hang something he says, “Oh gee, sorry honey, all my tools are at the shop,” and I was pretty tired of that excuse. So I KNOW there are tools in this here house. In fact, I even know where they are.

Only… when I lifted the cute little lid of the cute little black tool box… all the good tools – like the laser level and the cordless screwdriver – were missing. That’s par for the course around here.

Back to manual screwdriver and star-wrench… and three hours later my girl has a brand new island kitchen in her room to go with her brand new pots and pans. Almost. I say almost because the hinges for the oven and refrigerator doors were a bit complicated, to say the least, and had to be left for Daddy.

My daughter put a cookie-sheet in the oven, and being the bright young darling that she is, said with an aggrieved sigh, “The cookies are waiting in the oven. They’re not cooking because my kitchen isn’t done being builded. They can’t cook without the door.”

When Daddy came home he figured out the hinges (although, to my credit, even he didn’t get it right the first time). He also brought home dinner, because there was no time for cooking real food while building a pretend kitchen. I mean, come on, that’s asking a little much.

When my daughter climbed up on top of her new kitchen, my husband said, “I’d keep in mind who built that before I’d stand on it.”

Yeah, thanks for that. Ha-ha. Sometimes the cook is in the kitchen. Sometimes he has to finish the job with a screwdriver.

Common sense

2006-12-27T17:06:00.000-08:00

12.28.06

The liquid soap in the bathroom has a panda bear attached to the pump stem. I have no idea why there’s a panda in the soap, but there it is. Tonight my daughter pointed to it and said, “That panda lives in China.” Well, that’s pretty interesting, I thought, and asked, “How come it lives in China?” The look she gave me was wise and all-knowing as she answered, “Because that’s where pandas live. In China.” Dang. Where does she get this stuff? And who are those people who say television is a useless brain stuck? Surely they’re not watching what my kid’s watching. “Do you live in China?” I ask her. “Of course not, Mommy, I live in Superior.”

Well knock me over and steal my shorts. Can this be the same kid that doesn’t let me brush her hair? That puts her palm around the faucet and shoots water all over the bathroom (and her dry pajamas) and then screams that she’s soaked? The mix of logic and lunacy that makes up the 3 year old brain is stunning. Especially how the part that contains common sense seems to be completely absent.

Even that, I guess, is logical. Just the term, “common sense” sort of indicates knowledge gained over time and through experience. So I guess I have a theory:

Maybe some things are so much fun that excitement out-processes “experience.” Like making the sink facet spray the whole room. Maybe the water shooting with force across the room is an unexpected delight every time it happens, and therefore the realization that the pajamas are soaked only comes well after the fact. Or the puddle in the driveway beckons with such irresistible shininess that it completely over-rules all memory of cold wet shoes and socks.

Sounds logical enough to me.

Some things are just Mommy-driven, however. Like the whole issue with brushing the girl’s hair. She gets furious with me for needing to brush it, and as soon as I finish (if not before I’m finished) she takes both hands and scrubs at her head to mess it all up again. I’m frustrated because I can never get a cute photo taken of this little tyke, and because wherever we go it kind of looks like I never brush her hair. Which isn’t true. I brush it at least once a day.

Yet when she went to the beauty parlor yesterday she was a perfect little angel-client. Now, admittedly, this is heresy, as I was not a first hand witness to the events at the beauty parlor, but my mother is generally pretty reliable in her reporting. She said the girl who won’t have her hair brushed at home sat in the hot seat chatting happily away with the gal giving her a haircut. And not only did she sit still and cooperate for the haircut, she sat like a princess while the beautician put her hair into two beautiful french braids. Of this I have proof. I saw them. And I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. I haven’t been able to get a clear photograph of this child’s beautiful little face in months. But I made up for it yesterday.

Of course today she went to school with two slept-in french braids, so it still looks like I don’t brush her hair. Oh well. It might be an ordeal to undo them. But I’m pretty used to kid-mommy hair battles at this point.

I wonder at what age common sense becomes something you can expect from a kid? I’m gonna say “no” for 3 year olds. And, if I remember correctly, 8 year olds do some pretty aggravating things that you think they should know better… and we all know that teenagers don’t have any… so hmm, twenty-five? Thirty? Maybe.

Sometimes you learn from your mistakes. Sometimes you have wet pajamas night after night after night.

Funny kid stuff

2006-12-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

12.21.06

Kids do say the darndest things, that’s for sure. Every night at bedtime while my girl and I cuddle, she plays with my ear and earring. And every night she says, “Can you breathe, Mom? Can you?” This goes back to a time when she attempted to change the routine and play with my nose instead of my ear, and I couldn’t breathe. So now it’s back to the ear but every night she checks my breathing status.

Her mastery of language continually surprises me, and her love of verbal routine. About a year ago her Grandma C. started this with her… “How much do I love you?” My girl replies, “I don’t know,” and her grandma tells her, “I love you sooooo much.” So trying to get in on the game one day, I asked her the same question. She didn’t miss a beat, “NOT so much.”

It had, admittedly, been a tough week between us, and I laughed until my stomach hurt. She laughed too, and said, “Grandma C. loves me sooooo much.” And to this day whenever I ask, “How much do I love you?” she tells me, “Not so much.” I don’t think she understands the irony and the humor in it, but then again, I wouldn’t put anything past her.

We’re having a little issue with a certain part of potty training. What’s aggravating is she only seems to have trouble with this at home. I don’t understand exactly what the problem is, but I do know she’s mastered the skill elsewhere and is resistant to transferring it. So I’ve told her she has to clean up her own mess and dress herself again. No big deal, unless she’s tired. Then it’s a screaming, crying tirade of, “Help me! You have to help me!”

“I didn’t make the mess. It’s your job to use the potty.”

“But it’s YOUR job to take care of me. I’m your chi-ild.” Child comes out in two syllables.

I don’t know where she gets these fabulous one-liners, but there I was, cracking up again.

This time of year lots of parents use Santa Claus as leverage to achieve good behavior. So far that’s not working for me at all. I say, “You better go to bed on time or Santa will put you on his naughty list and then he won’t leave you any presents.”

She assures me, “That’s okay, I have lots of toys, so I can be naughty.”

I can’t bribe her with Christmas at all. Perhaps it’s her lack of experience with the holiday, the fact that she’s only 3 and doesn’t remember much about Christmas trees or Santa Claus. As we decorated the tree today I asked her if she remembered doing this last year. “No,” she said, “The only tree I ever put balls on was at school.” And although she found the concept of bringing a tree into the house intriguing, when I set the tree on her “picnic rug” (the tree skirt) she was furious. “Move that tree off my rug, Mom. Put it back outside. It’s ruining my picnic.”

She was mildly impressed when I turned on the tree lights. I was less than impressed when I turned from that task to find all of the ornaments, beads, and garland strewn haphazardly across the dining room floor. Even the Woolworth’s antique glass ornaments had not been treated with the dignity they deserve. My husband, from the other end of the telephone, was saying, “Maybe you should leave the antique glass ornaments for next year,” just as I surveyed the mess. All I could do was sight, “It’s a little late for that.” Within moments my girl was bored of putting ornaments on the tree. She resorted to hiding them behind her back, “I have a surprise for you, Mommy, ask me what I have!”

“What do you have?”

“A-a-sk nicely,” (this is a phrase that gets used and, possibly, over-used, here in the house-of- spoiled-brats).

“Please show me what you have.”

A delicate antique glass ornament appears clutched in the not-so-gentle hands of my child. “Do you want it? A-a-sk nicely!” The gleam in her sparking blue eyes sends a zap of irritability straight up my spine. How did she manage to pick my favorite?

Five minutes later: “Look at my new doll, Mom. Isn’t she bea-u-ti-ful?”

It was the angel. The one that’s supposed to go on the top of the tree. Oh dear. This could be a problem. A big empty-tree-top sort of problem. Ah… well. Christmas is for the children, right?

Sometimes you have an angel on the tree. Sometimes the angel sleeps in a child’s bed.

MyWhat?

2006-12-27T16:44:00.000-08:00

12.14.06

Let me be the first to stand up and say, “Yes, I could be a member of the IAA” (Internet Addicts Anonymous). Hell, maybe I could be the founding member… It’s odd, really, how I’m pretty much the same amount of social as I am of shyness (Ahem. Those of you laughing at me right now, stop it!)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I love my computer. I love the opportunity to get to know people via Instant Messenger, MySpace, email groups, and assorted blogs. I love it. Have an interest? Have a hobby? You can hook up with individuals and groups and instantly have something to talk about. Oh, you have an obsession? Other people out there who would love to chat with you about global warming until the world actually explodes.

There’s a misguided notion out there that computer geeks are anti-social, but the truth is that the internet can be an incredibly social way to pass time.

I chit-chat with a lot of people. Say “hello” to me and I’ll talk. I tell stories, talk about life experiences, my work… whatever. So long as a person I’m talkingto doesn’t get grossly inappropriate or tediously boring, I’m more than happy to hold up my end of a conversation.

I do set some limits, though. For instance: I don’t share photos. Why should I? I’m blissfully married and I want to stay that way. I don’t need to see pictures, and I don’t want to send any. Photos seem completely irrelevant to any conversation I’m having with a stranger. After several months of gabbing with someone who regularly makes me laugh I might cough up a snapshot of my fully-clothed self. Might. Then again, I might not. I also don’t give out my full name, address or my telephone number. Heck, I shy away from even admitting exactly which city in the Duluth/Superior area I live in.

I’ve made a couple of exceptions to these limits – my MySpace has one recognizable photograph of me. But I don’t tell just anybody how to find me on MySpace, either, and certainly I don’t make it public information to the people I gab with on message boards, blogs, or yahoo messenger. The other exception is group of nine women that I met on a message board in 2005. We consider one another “real” friends and have sent gifts and cards to one another via snail mail, and talked on the telephone now and again. Most of us will be meeting in New York City in January for a fun-filled crazy girls’ weekend. I haven’t met any of these women in person but quite a few of them have met eachother. And I’m bringing my husband. I know they are real women and real people and not internet stalkers. But I’m still bringing my husband. Besides, he wants to check out NYC.

Be smart on the internet, and be safe. If someone offends you, or acts bizarrely or doesn’t respect your limits of conversation, go ahead and X out of the chat window. If someone verbally abuses you, X out of the chat window. It’s a simple click.

It may sound crazy, but it’s not hard to invest your emotions in on-line friendships. The computer offers a sense of safety and anonymity and for someone who likes to gab (and can also type) it’s easy to make internet friends. Just remember to hold your personal information close. And be aware that anything you type can be saved, printed, archived, etc. and your own words can be used to hurt you, if someone chooses to do so. And it can hurt like you lost a real friend.

And remember this, too… online chemistry is totally different from in-person chemistry. Once in a while I meet people I’ve had fun internet conversations with and they’ve not been what I expected. Most of the time I find I do not like them at all. In fact, this has kind of happened to me often enough that for the past few months I’ve been talking to RL friends on this here machine and avoiding strangers. And it’s been fun. Talking via computer seems to accelerate the “getting to know you” process in RL friendships. And let me tell you – it’s an absolute blast. The moral of this week’s column?

Sometimes it’s fun to talk to strange people. But sometimes they turn out to be just way too strange.

Season of dread

2006-12-27T16:41:00.000-08:00

12.07.06

It’s cold. Ugh. Way too cold. And there’s (ick) snow on the ground. And some days I don’t see the sun at all. So many reasons to curl up in bed for the next few months, bury my head under the covers and wish wish wish for springtime.

It seems like my attitude about winter gets worse every year, but probably not. The sense of dread I feel today is probably exactly the same sense of dread I felt last year. I’m cold all the time. The idea that months will pass before I’m warm again seems unbearable, and I know I’ll have the heat bill to prove it. But ah, well, this is where we live, isn’t it? I know it gets easier as the skin and blood thicken, and the routine of warming up the car and pushing snow around becomes, well… routine. For now I still hate having to grab a jacket, getting to work with numb toes, and never having enough time in the morning to be sure I’ll get to where I’m going on time.

I am still in denial, and still mourning the loss of warm weather and the end of a truly beautiful summer. Was there a day when I thought, “Gee, I wish this dang heat would end?” I suppose so, but I can’t imagine it now. Give me the freedom of shorts and t-shirts, sandals and swimsuits, of running around outside in bare feet.

This may be a particularly stressful winter considering that I live with a high-energy 3 year old child. I feel a little freaky at the thought of us being trapped indoors together for weeks without end. I guess this means I’ll put a little more thought into what Santa’s bringing this year. I think she should get games that I like to play ( read: no Barbie’s whatsoever, thank you).

Most of my adult life I have known people with kids. Heck, I’ve known people who have 3 or 4 or 5 kids. Yet it astounds me how hard it is to be a parent. I never realized how completely one single little person could drive you out of your mind. Needy, needy, needy. Whiney, whiney, whiney. Unreasonable. Contrary. Dawdling. Impossible.

And here’s what really gets me: the people with 3 or 4 or 5 (or more!) kids don’t look or act insane. I can’t fathom it. I have one child, and I’m lucky to have clean clothes on some days, much less stylish ones and fixed hair and pretty make-up.

How do they do it? Is it possible that anyone can require less sleep than I do? Maybe they use that hour after waking up in the morning for grooming rather than serious coffee mainlining?

Somehow nobody ever thought to mention to me how hard this was going to be. I wonder all the time if I’m doing “the right thing.” Is it cruel that she’s an only child? Would her behavior be any different (read: better) if I’d dropped a sibling into her life when she was a toddler? Have I created a monster? If so, is there any hope of turning it around? Will it get better when she’s 4 or is that just the empty hope of a wild-eyed lunatic who isn’t quite cut out for this parenting trip?

And then I stop obsessing for a few minutes to wonder if my crappy attitude lately can be attributed to the unmistakable beginning of winter in the Northland.

That’s probably it. Well, that and the fact that my kid is smarter than me. How the heck did that happen, anyway?

Here’s the Christmas list so far, keeping in mind my kid’s incessant pleas to “play with me, Mommy!”

Perfection: Remember this? Odd little shapes stuck onto short sticks. Dump out the shapes. Press the base down. Start the timer. Then put the little shapes in as fast as you can before the bottom pops up and scares the bejeesus out if you.

JuniorCamping Kit: Includes a tiny tent,a tiny sleeping bag, and eight tiny reindeer. Wait a minute, that’s a different story entirely isn’t it? I think the sleep depravation is catching up with me. That or the cold medicine.

Never mind. Sometimes you’re stuck in this cold cruel world and spring seems a lifetime away from today. Peace out.

The art of being a child

2006-12-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

11.30.06

I think there must be an art to being a “difficult” child. It can’t be easy to always be contrary, stubborn, and at odds with the whole world order. There are time tables, expectations of behavior, and rules no matter where you end up. It’s got to take an awful lot of energy to constantly buck the system. But my kid can handle it. Nothing tires her out.

I just want to know where this “opposite of everything” child came from. I was a sweet child, a people pleaser – the teacher’s pet. A little on the dramatic side, perhaps, but rarely contrary. I agonized about getting in trouble and laid awake at night if I didn’t get my homework done.

I wonder if I can toss her naughtiness into a basket labeled, “3 year old” and leave it there? I read some research on the internet that claims 30 – 40 % of 3 year olds fight going to sleep and drive their parents to drink. Yeah, yeah, ok, I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. I’m not suffering alone, it just feels like I am.

What really blows my smokestack is my daughter’s uncanny ability to re-frame any consequence to her advantage. What this means is even if I’m consistent, have follow-through, and never ever crumble, she still doesn’t learn anything MY way.

I say, “If I don’t finish this column we won’t be able to go to the library.” She answers, “That’s okay, I don’t want to go to the library today.”

“If you turn on your light again after bedtime, I’m taking all your light bulbs.” First she says, “Oh, Mom, you’re funny – you can’t reach the light bulbs.” And when I prove that I can find a way to reach them, she tells me, “That’s okay, Mom, I like playing in the dark!”

“Get off the dog! If that dog bites you she can’t live here anymore.” Big smile. “Give her away now, Mommy, because I want a cat.” This conversation can continue all day. Me: I’m allergic to cats, they make me itch. Her: But I’m not. Me: I can’t live with a cat. Her: Go live somewhere else. Me: Daddy doesn’t like cats. Her: He’d like my cat.

The funny thing is even when she tries not to be contrary she has trouble. Yesterday she was having a tea-party with her invisible friend, Maisey, who has recently moved into our house, and the dog was standing at attention and observing the proceedings with great interest. I suggested to Little Miss that she set a place for the dog and get some doggy biscuits. She loved the idea. “Jazz,” she said, “please come and have some tea with Maisey and me.” When the dog biscuits were all gone, my girl surveyed her table and said, “I am angry and I can’t have no more tea.” She planted her hands on her hips and glared at the dog, “Somebody left spit all over my table. You can’t come to my tea party anymore, you have too much spit.” I could see the meltdown coming in her tight little face and her rigid little body. Mom-must-intercept instincts kicked into overdrive. Washcloth time. It’s all good.

For the time being I can’t get a moments peace even to write this column today, so I guess I’ll leave it short and sweet. Maybe she’ll grow out of this contrariness. But even if she doesn’t she’ll eventually go to school five days a week, so there’s hope for my sanity yet.

Preschool Plans

2006-11-21T21:24:00.000-08:00

11.23.06

I did it. After months of talking about it, thinking about it, and knowing it needed to be done… I finally enrolled my kid in preschool. I procrastinated a long time on this simple little task, for a variety of reasons. One of them was summertime. There was a whole lot of beach and about a million parks to explore when we got on each others’ nerves. And then she wasn’t quite potty trained and I wasn’t exactly sure what the pre-school guidelines were about that, but I suspected it was a prerequisite. Third, and maybe the biggest reason for procrastination, was that the only pre-school I was familiar with was the Head Start program, and I just haven’t been up to the complete and total invasion of financial privacy required to enroll my Little Miss.

We’re the working poor. I know this, and I have certainly come to understand the implications. It means we don’t qualify for daycare assistance but we can’t afford daycare. We don’t receive any welfare benefits so our child doesn’t qualify for free Head Start, but you can be sure after baring our financial souls to some government employee we’d still end up at the top of any sliding fee scale they devised. The other thing I “heard” was that if you have to pay for Head Start in Wisconsin there’s a waiting list (but if you receive welfare benefits there isn’t). Do I need this? I don’t have the energy to jump through these particular hoops.

So here’s what I did. I opened the Yellow Pages to “Schools.” There were several listings under “preschool and kindergarten services.” I called them. One was the YMCA. A very helpful person answered and invited us to come for a tour.

I asked my Little Miss if she wanted to go to school. She didn’t. There are a couple of unresolved #2 potty training issues and, as incentive, I have suggested to her that she can’t go to school until she gets a handle on this. So she was a little freaked out about going to school, but when I said, “We’ll just go check it out,” she got into the spirit of things. I think she said, “Mom, we’re just going to check things out at school today,” a hundred times during the 5 minute drive to school. I laughed the whole way, because this summer we had a bear digging in our garbage cans and for weeks afterward Little Miss would open the back door, hang her head outside, and say, “I’m just checking things out, Mom.”

When we got there she was, of course, enthralled.

Oddly enough for a high-energy kid she doesn’t jump right into things. She hangs back and takes it all in, keeping to herself for a bit. Even so, she thought their toys were pretty darn cool. And when all the kids sat down at atable for lunch there was longing to join them written all over her little girl face.

The gal giving the tour was full of great information. My girl could come for preschool only, or we could sign up for a combination of preschool and daycare.

Which leads to the last reason I had put off the whole preschool thing.

My work schedule is random. The only thing I always know for sure is that I will work every other weekend and have opposite weekends off. I never know anything else until the schedule comes out. So any ½ day preschool program would be a nightmare of transportation logistics. Sometimes I’d be scheduled off. But sometimes I’d be working.

No problem at YMCA. The pre-school hours are built right into their daycare day. I can drop her off early if I have a day shift. I can pick her up and take her to grandma’s if I work evenings. And if I’m off, well, then I get the whole day all to myself (!). Yay for that!

In the car after our tour Little Miss said, “Can I go to that school, Mom? I wanted to sit at the table with those kids, but there wasn’t a place for me.”

“Next time there will be,” I toldher, relived to have it settled. Kids, teachers, stuff to learn, and room to run 2 days a week. How perfect is that? And every once in a while (or more often) a day to myself. Oh yeah. Let’s do it.

Hotel Bliss

2006-11-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

11.09.06

A week in a hotel room by myself, with maid service and in-room coffee. Can anyone say bliss? Of course it would follow that before the week was done I’d come down with a cold. At home I’m surrounded by lots of potential germ-carriers and don’t get sick very often, but I suppose hotel rooms are cesspools of disgusting germs.

Maybe the spotty internet connection at the hotel lowered my resistance to bugs. Yeah, that’s it. The cold symptoms are actually signs of www.withdrawal. I wonder if there are any studies out about this? Maybe I could be the first research subject. Watch my blood pressure rise and my patience drop every time the disembodied computer voice says, “Goodbye,” and the box pops up that says, “You have lost your connection to the internet.” This wasn’t happening every half an hour. It was happening every 2 – 3 minutes. It is an extraordinarily cumbersome way to check email, let me tell you.

Thank goodness I had a contingency plan. I’ve never had real good luck with hotel wireless access to the internet, so as annoying as it was I had planned for such a horror by bringing a mess of scrapbooking supplies, downloading the podcasts of my favorite radio program from www.bobandsheri.com, and made dinner plans with a couple of different people. So I wasn’t stuck moping alone in my hotel room all week. I actually got a lot done. Well, except for that one night I ordered room service and found Miami Ink on TLC. That night was a waste. This is why I rarely turn on the television. I get sucked in and my day is done.

I suppose I could have socialized more with the people from my conference. But you know, I’m pretty darn anti-social, and I don’t know from hanging out in class with people if I want to hang out with them outside of class. What if I naively got sucked into an unhealthy or irritating friendship? Better to stay in my room sorting and gluing pictures to paper than to invite an emotional vampire into my life. There’s always that risk with strangers.

There was a guy in my class who stood 6 feet 9 inches. Do you know that’s 21 inches taller than me? Oh my god. We went to lunch once, and he’d have liked me to stop off somewhere for a beer with him after class, but I didn’t think it was a great idea. He told me he’s heading for the big D, and he didn’t mean Dallas. Umm… Detroit? Dog-pound? I know one thing for sure; I don’t have the patience or emotional resources to provide healthy emotional support to someone I barely know going through a nasty divorce. How about we just not go there? Great class, good job, congratulations you got your certification. Now have a nice life. There’s really no need to keep in touch. Do I even need to mention that it’s difficult for me to have a conversation with someone 21 inches taller than me? It’s a neck strain.

By Wednesday night I had the sniffles and my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Thursday I was a miserable lump of humanity sitting in class feeling sorry for myself. Until my cold medicine kicked in, and then I was a hyperactive lunatic, which was a good thing because I was learning all about non-violent physical crisis intervention, and it was a “get up and move” kind of day.

Anyway, I survived the week that wasn’t exactly utter bliss. I don’t think my child missed me very much. But the dog did, so there is that. Instead of coming home rested and relaxed I came home sick and crabby. Daddy and Daughter claim they had a wonderful week together. And judging from the state of the house I’d say they are absolutely telling the truth. All play and no work makes a big mess for Mommy. I don’t even know where to start. Maybe with the laundry. Or the garbage can that’s overflowing.

The best laid plans and all that. Sometimes bliss leaves a lot to be desired.

Let's get political

2006-11-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

11.02.06

So my editor said he wanted us to write about politics, this being election week and all, and I said, “Guh? You’ve got to be kidding!”

You have to understand… I don’t watch television because it all seems more or less pointless. And I don’t read any newspaper regularly (except the Reader Weekly, of course) because there’s hardly any good news to be found there. So pretty much the only news I’m subjected to is that provided by the AOL welcome screen. How scary is that?

So I’m sitting here eating Cheetoh’s puffs in a fancy hotel that’s way out of my league, trying to think politics. Haha. Yeah, I’m a bit off balance tonight. Ah well. We’ll figure something out. But it’s going to have to be quick because I have in-room coffee and I need to go find a gas station for some creamer. What? You think I’m going to ask the snobs at the desk for milk? Ha! You should have seen the looks on their faces when I wanted to pay cash for the room but didn’t have an extra $200 for a deposit. They’d probably charge me $8 for a lunchbox size carton of milk. And $3 service/inconvenience fee on top of it. No thanks.

Anyway.

Politics. Elections next week.

Get out there and VOTE.

The end.

PS: Think about the cost of war and the cost of fuel (heating your house will surely bankrupt you this winter – well, it will me, anyway) and the supercilious smirk of our President that basically seems to say, “Wow, I’m the leader of a bunch of dimwits,” or “I don’t care what you think, I’m right.” And don’t vote Republican.

I guess you can if you really want to, but I wouldn’t.

Here’s my plan: I’m going to research the Democratic and Independent candidates for my local district and then I’m going to vote as hard Left as I can.

I would have never believed this country could go to hell in just two Presidential terms, but now I know better. And this is what I know… Americans have opinions, and values, and believe in fairness and justice and the (old) American Way. Liberty and Justice for All. Damn straight. We believe in a government held accountable by a system of checks and balances. We believe in Habeas Corpus. We believe in our Constitutional right to free speech, and that right absolutely includes the right to speak out against our Government. It includes the right to criticize our President and his decisions. It includes our right to question the cost of war, and to question the strategy and goals of that war. It includes our RIGHT to wear a t-shirt depicting the current American death toll in Iraq. Come on, folks, can a t-shirt possibly be a threat to Homeland Security? Sure, it can be offensive, insulting, or even supercilious. Might even embarrass someone. But can it possibly be a crime?

Think before you vote. Think about the things you believe in. Take a couple hours to research the candidates of your district so you know not only who you’re voting for, but what they stand for. And then VOTE.

The problem I see is that we’re working hard to survive from day to day in America. It takes two incomes to support a family, and between working, carting our kids from place to place, and trying to keep our house in order, nobody has energy for activism anymore. Do you think that’s an accident on the part of our government? Do you really?

But you can vote. Even when you hate everyone and everything you can still vote for the candidate you think is the least bad. So get out there and do it.

The (bedtime) battle continues

2006-11-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

10.26.06

Although I truly love her with all my heart, I am desperate for time away from my child. How desperate? Let me tell you… I have installed a hook and eye style lock on the OUTSIDE of her bedroom door. I know she’s safe because I am sitting on the other side of that door writing this.

Thank goodness for laptops and wireless internet. My conscience is clear.

Every 2 minutes she yells, “Mommy, I need you!” and I yell back, “Go to bed!”

Here’s the problem: she has decided not to sleep anymore.

I was 32 years old when I gave birth to this incredible human being. So I am dead honest when I say that 6 hours of “alone” time per day is not too much for me. Actually, as a writer it’s not nearly enough. And if I continue to get zero hours of alone time I will go mad.

We’ve reached a point where I am desperate to win. I can picture some parents I’ve known who have given up the battle. The child clearly runs the household and the parent miserably does what she is told. These adults seem to live to appease their children, and the children tend to be, in my opinion, completely out of control.

This can’t happen to me. It just can’t. So at naptime and bedtime Little Miss needs to stay in her room whether she sleeps or not. Until now this has been accomplished with a gate across her bedroom doorway, and she’s been content enough to play on her own when there is no other option. But this week she figured out how to climb over the gate. She is over that gate and down the stairs every 2 minutes, and then needs to be “tucked in” 30 times an hour.

This isn’t working for me.

She is… busy and intelligent and determined and good humored. She manages to make a game out of every type of discipline and consequence I can think of. To put her on time-out is to hold her fighting on my lap until I am exhausted. I came up with one consequence that I thought was brilliant – “Every time I have to tell you to go to bed I will take one of your toys and put it in the shed outside. You may earn them back by staying in your room at naptime and bedtime.”

I explained this while I was taking her collapsible dollhouse outside, and she cried. “A-ha!” I thought to myself, “this is going to work.” Yet in less than 10 minutes she was gleefully pulling toys out of the closet, “Put this in the shed, Mom! Now put my trains in the shed. And my horses!” This is the child who, when I yell in the Mommy’s-had-absolutely-enough voice “GO TO BED,” responds by placing her hands on her hips and saying, “It’s not polite to yell, Mom.”

I am confounded. What on earth am I going to do with this child?

Well this week I’m going to try the hook-lock. I can use the computer or work on her scrapbook just as well upstairs as down, so I’m really not losing any Mommy Time. And once she falls asleep I’ll unhook it. What I’m hoping for, I think, is to get her accustomed to at least staying in her room when she’s supposed to be sleeping. Heck, I don’t even care if she sleeps. That’s not an issue for me whatsoever. But for a couple of hours a day I need her to leave me alone.

Yeah, okay, what I’m really hoping for is to finally win a round.

She challenges me in a lot of ways. But she is also my joy. She has beautiful manners, both at home and in public. She’s having fewer tantrums. She’s mostly potty trained. And she’s getting better about sharing and playing with others. Well, sort of, a little bit. She can learn to go to sleep before I totally blow my top. I know she can.

Sometimes tough love is in order. And locked doors. Cross your fingers for me.

Imaginary delusions?

2006-11-21T21:02:00.000-08:00

10.19.06

So my kid makes it through 2 and a half minutes of Story Time at the library before she starts jumping off furniture trying to catch the Halloween decorations hanging from the ceiling. The other little kids her age are sitting quietly and paying attention to the librarian. Mine is distracting everyone by literally climbing the walls. So I pull her out.

It occurs to me that I have the “disruptive” kid. The one that doesn’t sit still, that flits from one activity to another, has lots of energy and very little ability to focus. Oh dear. I’d like to get her into preschool pretty soon, but I have to wonder if they’ll even take her.

While I look picture books I can read to her without being bored to death, she climbs on top of the wooden book bins and walks from one to another. I tell her to get down, but her channel is set to “Mommy Ignore.” When I physically pull her down she climbs back up the moment I’m not looking. I wonder how much of this behavior is acceptable and how long it will be before we’re asked to leave?

When I look for books for myself she literally scales the shelves. I am mortified. I end up grabbing a handful of books fromthe paperback racks and head for the checkout.

“We are leaving now because you are being naughty. And we’re not coming next week.”

“No!” she shrieks, “I’ll be good! I promise!”

“Too late. You’ve already been rotten. You don’t listen to me and you are climbing everything like a monkey.”

She cries and carries on until we get to the car. And then another shriek, “My Panda! I left Panda in the library!” She’s on her way to total meltdown. But here’s what I know about Panda. Panda is a girl. Her name is Matilda. She is big enough to dress herself and use the potty by herself. And last, but certainly most important… Panda is invisible. So it seems both ludicrous and fruitless to attempt to find Panda in the library. Besides, if you have an imaginary friend, then can’t it imaginarily appear right beside you? So this is what I say, “Oh, look! Here’s Panda! She followed us outside, and now she needs a hug from you because she thinks we forgot her.” Whew, meltdown averted.

As I drive home I work myself damn near into a panic attack thinking, “Oh my god, I have the disruptive kid.” I have the kid that’s so wound up she ruins everything for all the other kids. She climbs the walls, destroys the room, standing, running, yelling, singing. Egads.

At home I do a web search on 3 year olds whose behavior is disruptive. Now anyone who’s ever done this sort of research knows it’s not very reassuring. I find all kinds of freaky stories about hyperactivity, ADD, ADHD… the whole gamut. I read the blog of a woman who’s 3 year old is on an unbelievable regimen of anti-psychotic drugs. Are you kidding me? These are major drugs we’re talking here, not baby aspirin.

So I wonder what behavior is being medicated? Is having an active imagination considered the same as being delusional? Are imaginary friends now equal to visual and auditory hallucinations?

Maybe we’re in for trouble. After all, there is a new imaginary friend around here every day. It turns out we were only babysitting Panda, and now she’s gone home to her mommy. Kitten takes her place. Kitten is a special cat, one that doesn’t make Mommy sneeze (invisible cats are hypoallergenic, you know). In a few days Kitten will move on and a new friend will take her place.

But maybe all will be well. I found plenty of child development resources that claim a lot of 3 year olds are not ready to sit quietly in circle time, and that it certainly isn’t a sign of anything except being a normal, high-energy, inquisitive little kid. I choose to believe the same about the presence of Panda and Kitten. Besides, I’m not about to complain about new pets that require absolutely no maintenance. Maybe we can practice sitting still and listening….?

Echo of the Sublime

2006-11-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

10.12.06

It might be the last truly warm day of the year – although perhaps we’ll be wonderfully graced with another, or better yet, a few… but you never know in these here parts. So my husband and the dog met my daughter and myself at the end of Wisconsin Point for one last wet sandy fling in the wind and the waves. Today, no one got hurt. Our previous trips to the beach have included a head injury, a toe injury, and a hospitalization for heat exhaustion or something else never exactly identified.

It’s funny how it feels like the whole summer was a string of long lazy days basking in the heat with good friends and adorable children. I think we actually only made it to this beach five times. Yet in memory it feels like the heart of this summer.

Everything was new to my Little Miss this year. The beach, the depot, the zoo, the boat tour on Lake Superior. New and scary in that exciting kind of way. I’m hoping I’ll get one more chance, next year, for it all to be new again. Is it too much to hope that the things that were brand new to an almost 3 year old can be new again when she’s almost 4? I don’t know. She lists off the seasons… “Summer’s over, now it’s fall and I’m going to be a pirate for Halloween! Winter comes next and snow and… Santa Claus comes and brings presents!” I wasn’t sure she’d remember the Santa thing – shows what I know. I guess we’ll wait and see what next summer brings for memories.

It’s driving home with a tired, quiet kid in the back seat, and a tired, wet dog in the pick-up truck a half mile behind that the sadness typical of summer’s end drifts over me like a cozy fall blanket.

Time to hibernate, and soon.

The autumn leaves have formed an arch over the ruined but passable pavement on which I drive. Warm sun leaks through the dappled canopy of dead and dying foliage to light the forest with a fragile glowing beauty. For a moment my heart leaps to my throat and I know I will not visit this place again. Not this year, at any rate. Part of me wants to weep as I bid good-bye to the sublime summer.

It’s amazing how much can change in a year.

This time last year I was nearing the end of an incredibly long period of grief over the loss of a friend. I could see the end of darkness and was running full-tilt towards light and laughter, yearning to feel joy again, to love and be loved. I was ready to open my self and my heart to new people and new experiences, heady with the thrill of discovery, half-terrified I’d end up emotionally smashed to bits. All the parts and pieces of widening my social circle beyond family and those few, but precious, friends I’ve known for a lifetime. Stepping away from the safety inherent in isolation.

Here I am!

Today I have 4 friends I hold close in my heart who were strangers, or nearly so, just one year ago. We start conversations that have no end. We talk about the intricacies of marriage, partnership, dating, and parenting. We share time and writing and laughter and love. Some days I feel like my life is amazing – that I am the luckiest woman in the world. And I have to say… it’s good to feel that way again. I’ve been missing myself for an awful long time.

It’s human nature to reach your heart out, and human complexity is endlessly fascinating when you meet someone who draws out your truth, who seems to share theirs… when there appears to be no hidden agenda, no building to something more than this, no pressure and no consequence. Moments of paranoia – “is it real?” are followed by moments of shrugged shoulders because if it’s real, it’s worth the risk that it isn’t.

Driving Beta

2006-11-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

10.05.06

It’s 8:30 pm and it’s fully dark outside. Part of me is really unhappy about this because I am a winter-hater and I can feel like it’s time to hibernate. It would be nice to plan a trip to Mexico for next January or February. So why am I planning one for New York City? Oh, yeah, because I am a lunatic. Sometimes I forget that.

There’s a mommy part of me is really happy that it’s dark at 8:30 pm. Because I get to lie like a dog about the time and tell my kid, “Whoa! Look! The moon is shining in the black sky. That means it’s waaaaay past your bedtime!” For the past month my girl has been staying up until nearly 10:00 at night – which puts a HUGE damper on “mommy unwind time.” No more. 8:30 last night, 8:15 tonight. I’m doing the happy dance. Somebody told me today, “You’re lucky that works. Mine can tell time.” Ha-ha, I say, I expect that when my kid can tell time she’ll also be able to read, so she can go to her room anyway.

The thing is, I can’t really blame her. I hate to go to bed. In an ideal life I’d work until 10 at night, then suck down a lot of coffee, write until 2 in the morning, and sleep in until 8 or 9. Novels get written in the middle of the night around here. Unfortunately I work more day shifts than afternoons, which means I have to force myself to go to bed early several times a week, and even when I manage to do it I’m exhausted all the next day. Staying up late energizes me. I recharge my batteries writing down all the crazy, silly, humorous, or melodramatic thoughts in my head. Middle of the night-time is my creative time.

These last few days of working day shift have been insanely frustrating. Oh, I’ve put myself to bed on time, and even managed to haul my butt out of bed on time… but my husband (a.k.a the Heat Miser) hasn’t approved use of the furnace yet. So what happens when I crawl out of a warm toasty bed into a cold heat-less house is… I spend way too much time in the shower. And standing under the soothing pound of scorching water daydreaming makes me late.

And because my imagination has been sparked, wound up, and set free, the daydream continues the moment I pull out of the driveway.

Driving while deeply immersed in beta brain waves is interesting. Often I arrive at my destination with absolutely no recall of the trip. Generally not a problem. It’s early, there’s not a lot of traffic, I know where I’m going. Whatever.

The trouble this weekend is that the exit to south 35 from the Blatnik Bridge is CLOSED. So I have to grab the Garfield exit to get to grandma daycare. And when I’m driving in beta I forget to do that, so I end up in Downtown Duluth which is totally NOT where I need to be. When it happened the first time last week I said a really, really bad word. Really loudly. My daughter repeated the really bad word the next day. I, in my infinite Mommy-wisdom, ignored it.

It wasn’t missing the exit that made me say the really, really bad word, however, it was that I turned UP 5th Ave W from Michigan Street (by the library) and that street is actually a one way DOWN. I got to the top and my brain said, “Umm, there’s a stop light here, but it’s not facing you.” Hence the really, really bad word as I realized I had to back down the hill.

This weekend I was already leaving the house later than I should, and I KNEW my exit was closed. I knew it, yet because of long hot showers, daydreams, and “driving in beta,” I managed TWO DAYS IN A ROW to forget to take the Garfield exit. I might have said some bad words, but they were all muttered quietly under my breath, and I didn’t say the really, really bad one. The worst part is this: when you’re having great beta brain activity and you’re jarred out of it suddenly you lose all those amazingly profound ideas. So essentially, I’m pretty sure I completely missed out on writing two best-selling novels because of road construction. Not to mention I was late for work twice. And let’s not even get into how the parking ramp at work was closed. I had a very real thought that if it’s this difficult to get to work maybe it’s not even worth it.

Sometimes you get to dream… but maybe it’s not such a good idea while driving, huh?

Brave Ones

2006-11-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

09.28.06

I have always admired the mavericks who have their own style, their own ideas, and their own way of getting through life. I’ve never been part of the “in” crowd and never wanted to be – I was always more like a sideline observer.

So. When my step-teenagers showed up with blue hair and black hair and wristbands and skulls and crosses and heavy metal blasting in their ears… well, I thought they were kind of awesome. There is a bravery in displaying individuality that I have always admired.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen these kids. Okay, it’s been a long, long while. Years. The specific reason for that pretty much boils down to rotten communication skills between parents. I’d say all the adults involved need to accept their share of blame and fear and misunderstanding, and how about we leave it at that? Perfect.

I’d recognize my step-daughter anywhere. She looks like herself and acts like herself. Bright and organized and knows her own mind. Even the blue hair didn’t trip me up. I suppose I did blink a time or two and think, “Whoa, that’s really blue!” This is a girl with a plan. Smart girl. She knew what she needed at the mall, where to find it, and how to make the most of her money. But even still, you know she’s got to be fun, I mean, with blue hair and all. And brave. I think it takes a certain amount of courage to run around your life with blue hair. Oh! Did I mention she’s tall and slim and self-assured… and quite beautiful, really. Even with blue hair.

My step-son – whoa! I’d have never recognized him in a million years. And not because of his clothes or his hair or even his height… just that some boys change so much as they grow – it’s rather astounding, really. More than once I caught myself staring at him thinking, “Wow, where’d my little blondie go?” He’s tall and lanky, black hair in his eyes, black wrist cuffs and half-fingered gloves, crazy pants big enough for five of him, with pockets and buckles, and a wallet on a chain. All accessorized with skulls and silver crosses.

The first thing he asked me, with excited expectation was, “Do you like Korn?” Oh, how I wanted to say, “Yeah, they rock!” but I was so busy looking for the little boy I used to know in that face that what I really thought was, “What, on the cob?” I think I clued in before he realized I was a complete thirty-five-year-old-mother-kind-of-person. The truth is Korn sort of gives me the nervous jitters. Flashback to my own mother saying, “Ack! Turn that music down – I’m having an anxiety attack!”

We’re all new at this. In fact, visits are so few and far-between that it seems like we’re always new at this, always working on getting to know each other again, and that makes my throat all tight and achy. And it’s not that they’re difficult to like – it was such a happy rush to have them here that I had trouble falling asleep. My heart just wants to explode with love for them, and it’s when they’re here that everything we’ve missed feels so terrible and real.

Now I bet you’re wondering what Little Miss thought of her older brother and sister, hmm? Well, she thought they were the best. The nights they were here she stayed up until almost midnight, afraid that if she went to sleep they’d disappear. On Sunday, when the teenagers were getting ready for Dad to take them home, she had a melt-down. A regular old tantrum with tears and sobs and begging for them to not leave. Would that it were that simple, right? I think my husband, in his careful way of keeping his emotions buried, was having a silent tantrum right along with her.

Being apart sucks.

But anyway. Here are my golden words of wisdom for these beautiful young people: Stay in school. Don’t do meth. Oh yeah… and come back soon, k?

Show up for life

2006-11-21T20:35:00.000-08:00

09.14.06

So I’m writing this column on the anniversary of 9-11. I guess I could snark about the surge of patriotism back then that somehow seems to have weakened the independent spirit of Americans and turned us into lemmings blindly following a weasel to ruination. But I won’t. Because who wants to hear my ignorant snarking, anyway?

I didn’t have a friend or family member in the World Trade Center on 9-11. And I haven’t lost anyone in the endlessly complicated War on Iraq. I say “endlessly complicated” purely to give the benefit of the doubt to our fearless leaders and those in the military who take their orders with the spirit of protecting We the People.

What I see and feel as a simple American trying to live my life is this: since 911 I can barely afford to drive my car so I can work to support myself, or to heat my house so I can survive in this iceberg we call Duluth. And this makes me angry because I have a gleaningsuspicion that our Fearless Leader is making money hand over fist because I and millions upon millions of others in my position are forking it over for various types of fuel.

I am terrible at understanding politics. And I am the first to admit my ignorance. But I am not one to follow blindly in the interest of being Protected. When an American born citizen with no criminal record whatsoever gets pulled out of every line for every flight he takes for a specialized search because he happens to have a Middle Eastern name I feel angry. When I read that people are being investigated and harassed by the Department of Homeland Security because they put bumper stickers on their car protesting the government and the damn Iraq war, I feel angry.

America is supposed to be a land of independent people, free-thinkers, a place where individuality is prized and cherished.

This is the spirit that I embrace. I’m not going to hate a group of people because the government tells me I should. I’m not going to change my religion or style of worship because the (conservative) government encourages me to do so. I am Christian or Pagan or Agnostic or Atheist or Buddhist or Jewish or nothing purely based on what feels right to me, not because I am a citizen of the Conservative Christian United States of America.

I embrace people’s right to be gay or lesbian or goth or punk or straight or conservative or liberal or beautiful or ugly or fat or thin. Trust me on this one, folks, what they do has very little impact on how I live my daily life. I get up, I go to work, I write stories and columns and novels. I spend time with my child and cherish her strong-willed personality, I teach her good manners. I teach her by example, I hope, to value doing good work and to be kind. And I respect her right to have thoughts in her head that are different from mine. And I respect that her perceptions of things are different from mine even while I spend so much time keeping her safe.

A stranger says, “Hi,” to my girl and she says, “Hi!” back. And then she wants to follow that person down the street. I say, “We can’t. We don’t know that person.” And she says, “But I do, Mom.”

Difference in perception. Her limited experience as a 3 year old has taught her that anyone with a friendly smile and a “Hi,” is a friend. And thank goodness for that! It means she hasn’t been abused, or damaged, or betrayed, or hurt. Would that I could keep it that way for the whole of her lifetime.

Of course I can’t. As humans we crave emotional connection with other humans, and when we allow ourselves to have it we then open ourselves to the possibility of loss. Loss not only through death, but through death of relationships, misunderstanding, miscommunications, mistakes. When we love we have the capacity to hurt.

I hope people took time on 911 to appreciate what’s good in their lives rather than to bemoan how much we pay for fuel. The only way to fix that one, folks, is to get out there and vote whenever you have the opportunity to do so, for whichever offices are holding elections. This is our country and our lives and we need to show up.

Real Life

2006-11-21T20:30:00.000-08:00

09.07.06

Let’s talk about stubbornness and staying power, shall we? I know I’ve talked about how difficult it is to get Little Miss to go to sleep, and how difficult it is to get her to eat, and how difficult it was to get her potty trained…

But, you know, tenacity is a good thing in this here thing called life. It helps us maintain hope and move past the roadblocks in the path of our goals. It helps us discover or create detours when the problems of life get in the way of living.

So while my child’s having a mind of her own often pushes me to the edge of frustration, it’s not a bad quality in a person. And when I’m all set to blow my top she shuts me right down when she asks, “Why are you mad, Mom?” Because then I realize I’m irritated that she’s doing things HER way rather than MY way, but the end result will probably be the same, so ultimately what’s the difference? That kind of puts it all into perspective.

If you’re going to live a real and full life and pursue dreams I think you need tenacity. Fulfilling dreams isn’t easy, because the hum drum routine of Real Life is always getting in the way.

What is this thing called Real Life (RL), anyway?

When I was a kid I thought real life was being a grown up and being allowed to order in pizza every night if that's what I wanted to do. Eating ice cream for breakfast. Driving a car. You know, all that grown-up stuff. THAT would be Real Life, and I couldn't wait to get there.

And then I did finally get there. And discovered that my infinite love of pizza had to be reconciled with a checkbook that could mostly only afford Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Whoa. Real Life won that round.

In high school and in my early 20's I was very angsty about people who had, took, or created the opportunity to leave this town. I was always sad to be left behind, melancholy, lonely, and jealous. I got the idea in my head that Real Life would begin if only I could move to someplace other than here.

And then I left. And I discovered that Real Life is nothing much more than the routine of daily living, and that a person can get bored and lonely and restless away from here, too. In fact, it was only a matter of weeks before my sense of adventure wore off and I realized that what's real is that life is a series of problems and solutions, whether they be large or small.

Hmm. By age 30 I became aware that we all wear social faces and "masks" to some degree, and I started thinking RL was all the crazy stories going on inside my head all the time. Which is patently ridiculous, because how can the fantasies in my head be any more real than the fantasies people type to one another in online chat rooms? Right. They're not. The inside-my-head-me only becomes part of Real Life when I let a little bit of it out. To Real People. In my Real Life.

Which is a) terrifying b) risky and c) sublime.

Which brings me back to tenacity and dreams. I want to publish a novel. I have a great new online subscription to the Writer’s Market and every day I email novel queries to agents and publishers and every day I get email rejections. Hmph. It’s not fun, but at least it’s fast. A few things are important for a writer: finding value in constructive criticism, being able to look at your work objectively, growing a thick skin, and staying power. Keep swimming, just keep swimming – oh, I mean, keep sending, just keep sending, sending, sending.

Anybody want to represent or publish a strange quirky vampire novel? Let me know.

If you're old enough to drive...

2006-11-21T20:27:00.000-08:00

08.31.06

My daughter drives a Jeep. It’s a purple and pink Barbie-Wrangler. 2-speed: forward and reverse. It even has a radio that plays all Barbie, all the time. She is one stylin’ 3 year old, let me tell you.

The thing is, I always wanted a Jeep. When I was a teen-ager my Dad said, “They’re too tippy.” When I met my husband and told him the next car I got should be a Jeep he said, “They’re top heavy. They tend to fall right over. The way you drive? No.” And it’s never even been open for discussion.

So I think I’m suffering from a bit of “Jeep Envy.”

She just looks so incredibly cool and carefree as she gets in, fastens her seat-belt, fastens her baby’s seat belt, and drives away 4 feet before she runs into the lawn chair. Or the dog. Or the swing set. She actually spends a considerable amount of time trying to drive up the slide.

“Dang,” says my husband watching, “she drives just like her mother.”

Ahem. Thanks.

Let’s not talk about my driving.

You don’t see him taking away her Jeep.

This kid is spoiled in so many, many ways. Sometimes I think we’re the ultimate “mush” parents and we’re going to end up raising a sociopath. So many things are a battle with her and it takes an incredible amount of energy to win all the time. Energy that I don’t have. So things slide. She watches an extra move, she goes to bed an hour too late, she eats a whole lot of macaroni and cheese. And… she’s past three and not potty trained. And that one’s about to end.

Tomorrow begins the great (and late) battle of the diaper. She knows everything there is to know about the potty. She’s used it for a whole day, and she watches and coaches and explains to other kids how to do it. She wake up dry if I don’t let her drink an extra glass of water at bedtime. It’s all done except for the shouting.

And the kicking, screaming, knock-down drag-out, furniture-tossing fury. But I’m armed and ready. I figure the carpet needs a good cleaning anyway, so let’s just do it. She might be stubborn and obstinate, but I can be more so. She might be louder than me, but I’m pretty good at ignoring tantrums. Besides, we’re almost out of diapers and I have lots of big girl panties. The ones she picked out herself.

Bring it on, Sweetheart, ‘cause Mommy’s ready to win.

Here’s my strategy: No diapers. One way or another we are going to get through the day without diapers. And if that means she has to carry a plastic bag around to sit on then so be it. And if that means she screams all day, tough. Mom’s gonna win on this one and there’s no alternative.

Now I’m going to prepare by pulling the spot-lifter out of the closet, the ear plugs out of the medicine cabinet, and settle down for a full night’s sleep. I figure it this way, if she gets a Jeep, then I get a kid who uses the potty.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

not a column, just some pics

2006-09-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the first pic is Isabelle and Dominic's first car date - as it should be - he drives, she fiddles with the radio and just grins.

The rest are pics of my old crappy porch, my nice new porch, and the deck that replaced my imaginary deck.

Dang, I think I have some pretty good friends, hmm?

Happy birthday to me! (smile)

How to be a slacker mom

2006-08-27T15:05:00.000-07:00

08.24.06

I forgot to bring wine coolers to the party this past weekend, so I tried some Boone’s Farm whatever-it-is-funky-wine instead. Um. How much is one half of three and a half bottles? At first I drank it from a glass like the fine young lady I was brought up to be, but after the hazing and peer pressure I had to drink it straight out of the bottle to prove I’m not a snob. Of course, then they just called me “wino,” so I’m not particularly sure what I gained with that move.

But, technically, it was easier to pass the bottle to my drinking partner and back than to keep getting up. And of course, those stupid little plastic cups always want to tip over when you pour stuff into them.

I’m not sure you can actually go on a bender with Boone’s Farm, but let me tell you we sure gave it a good try. And by the third bottle we were feeling a bit territorial. We were carrying that bottle from place to place all afternoon. And the hornet that took a quick dive into our apple wine merely got poured out. We looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Ah hell, how much could he have drank?” and took another swig.

I am so over being freaky about hornets.

Anyway. The fun part wasn’t the effect of the tiny bit of alcohol that’s in the stuff. The fun part was that neither myself nor other gal drink a whole lot as a rule. Which means… by the third bottle it was pretty easy to convince the boys that we were totally blasted and incapable of being responsible for our children.

We earned the title of Slacker moms.

Now that makes for a relaxing day. The boys cooked, watched the kids, handled the temper tantrums, the time-outs, and potty detail.

We washed the silverware.

Oh yeah, and we laughed at their shenanigans.

You know boys – they think of the coolest games. Little kid fishing rods come with something called a casting plug. It’s a weighted plastic or rubber fish tied on instead of a hook so a little kid can learn to cast the line without the complication of hooking things like parents or each other. Now the three little ones had already caught real fish with real hooks, but that required adult supervision, and preferably a ratio of one adult per every hook under semi-control of a child. So one of the boys tied a casting plug onto one of the fishing poles. He wanted to see if he could cast that sucker all the way from the cabin into the lake (he could).

As an unexpected bonus (at least I think it was unexpected, but you never know with boys and kids) the kids thought chasing the plug was the best game ever. I think that game kept two men and three toddlers happily amused for well over an hour. Go dads! The best part was when the line got hung up in a tree and the little yellow fish bobbed over the kids’ heads. Pinata bait. Priceless.

No, I take it back. The best part was the intense concentration on the boys’ faces as they tried to reel faster than the kids could run. Not an easy task with a mini-fishing pole. They looked all wild-eyed and fierce, and, um, well… comical. And I took lots of pictures.

It was a great day.

I think we actually got sick before we got truly tipsy. There’s an awful lot of sugar in that wine. And while the Boone’s Farm silliness was rather short lived, I’m here to attest that the Boone’s Farm headache goes on and on.

But sometimes that’s the price you pay to be a slacker.

Let’s do it again soon. How about next weekend?

Just a simple check-up

2006-08-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

08.17.06

So I kind of dropped the ball on the whole pediatrician thing. The thing is, my kid hardly ever gets sick. Which pretty much means she hasn’t seen a doctor since her 2 year check-up. It occurs to me – hindsight being 20/20 and all that – I should have somehow prepared her for visiting the doctor. I could have checked out a book from the library, or gone to pbskids.org and walked her through the interactive “Elmo goes to the Doctor” story. Or even bought her a play doctor kit for her birthday. But I did none of these things. I organized the heinous Birthday of the Bees instead.

Perhaps not my most shining moment.

I knew my girl’s vaccinations were all up to date and there wouldn’t be any shots this visit so I didn’t think there’d be anything for her to freak out about.

Whoa. Except that I didn’t take into account that getting her height and weight would be a phenomenal pain in my rear end. I’m not even sure what spooked her – the new office, the new nurse, or the fact that she was happily engrossed in playing with the new toys when her name was called. Doesn’t really matter. It quickly became apparent that once a 3 year old isrendered completely uncooperative by fear for whatever reason, there is no way to slow down, back up, and start over. Done is done.

The nurse asks her to step on the scale. My usually cheerful, charming girl eyes it suspiciously, then says, “No. I don’t want to.” Mm-hmm. All righty then. We’ll try for height. I position her against the wall under the little height bar and her legs turn to cooked spaghetti. Then she worms away and runs back to the toy area. I retrieve her. She gets away again. I retrieve her again. The nurse rolls her eyes and makes kind of a disgusted face. Oh yeah, that’s helping. I start to feel a little offended because what does she want me to do? And, I’ll admit, I was a bit embarrassed. Here’s a kid that’s quite capable of higher thought and has a well-developed sense of humor, but none of that’s showing. She’s acting like an out of control brat. A part of me wants to give her a sharp wallop and hiss, “Knock it off!” because at this point my child is not cute and she certainly is not charming. She is going to be stubbornly impossible for the rest of the visit. I try for 1 minute to reason with her, to tell her we’re just going to show the doctor how good she’s growing, but she’s having none of it.

The nurse has a new tactic. We put my girl on the infant scale long enough to get her weight. Then we wrestle her flat on the exam table and mark the paper cover at her heels and head. My daughter, of course, is a screaming, kicking, flailing banshee through all of this. Thankfully the nurse now goes away. We’re alone. I could give her a wallop, but really, what’s the point? Punish her for embarrassing me? Eh. I’ll live.

When the doctor comes in Little Miss climbs on my lap and buries her head between my neck and shoulder. She pretty much stays there quietly right up until the moment her doctor wants to listen to her heart. No way is she going to make anything about this visit easy. I can’t imagine how the doc could even hear her heart past all that screaming, though I suspect he got a great listen to her lungs. Hell, he probably got such a great listen that his eardrums were permanently damaged. She screamed through the peek in the eyes, peek in the ears, split second peek at the throat. Belly check. Whew. We all survived. The doctor, bless his heart, seemed nonchalant about the whole thing. “She’s 3,” he said, and I was thankful someone else understands. I think being 3 is like having Jekyll and Hyde disorder. When the atmosphere is good you have a rational miniature adult. When the atmosphere is not so good you have a perfectly contrary little monster.

Later in the day I saw her out in the yard talking toherself. I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m pretending to have my check-up.”

“What are you pretending about your check-up?”

She stared at me with serious blue eyes, “I’m pretending to be good!”

Maybe the upcoming visit to the eye doctor will go better than the visit to the pediatrician. Yeah, right. Somehow I doubt it.

Bees-day blues

2006-08-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

08.10.06

You might know by now that I really struggle with some of the fantasies involved in providing my girl with the traditional idyllic childhood, so why should birthdays be any different? I’m thinking we can make the whole birthday thing heinous so she’ll refuse to have them, and then she’ll stay a little girl forever. That’s how it works, right?

We all grew up with our birthday traditions – food, family, friends, presents, and the much beloved “Happy Birthday to You” sung completely off key like a chorus of dying beluga whales, then make a wish, blow out the candles, and we all have cake and ice cream. Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

We planned a nice, quiet, low-key birthday party in the park. The day was beautiful. It was sunny, but not too hot. My car rocked gently in the breeze on the drive there… well, okay, “breeze” is a romantic description, but I think a little wind adds a bit of whimsical ambiance to a day at the park.

My husband was charged with picking up the cake, god love him, and he kind of sort of dropped it a little bit getting out of the car. In the moment I took this as a personal affront and a catastrophic event. I had a niggling suspicion the day was forever to be tagged, “The year Daddy dropped your Nemo cake.” As in, “Remember your third birthday? Daddy dropped your Nemo cake,” but it turned out to be just a tiny glitch in light of the horrors to come.

I noticed a few bees around but forgot them as soon as guests started arriving.

Food time. I walk over to the food table and there was something going on with the fruit. I took a closer look. Whoa, I thought, hornets really love fruit. About 15 of the little buggers had their ugly bodies beneath the plastic wrap and were having a party of their own in the fruit bowl. Deep breath. Ok, forget about the fruit. Move it away from the party, uncover it, and leave it as bait.

All-righty then. We’ll cut the cake. At this point it occurs to me that the park is swarming with big nasty hornets. I look at my husband, who’d been all for skipping the park in the first place and having the party at our house, and say, “I’m going to cut the cake. Your job is to fend off the uninvited guests.”

Now, don’t forget the gentle “breeze” that rocked my car.

So I’m fending off hornets, cutting cake, and trying to place them right side up on paper plates that the wind is trying to blow away. My husband is fending off hornets, scooping melted ice cream onto plates that are blowing away.

Apparently hornets love cake and ice cream even more than they love fruit because I was getting dive-bombed. Somehow the kids get parked at the food table. I’m standing there holding cake with two hands looking for a plate while the black and yellow bleepity-bleeps keep trying to land on the cake which is getting massacred by my clumsy hornet-swatting-cake-cutting maneuvers. My husband has his back to me handing a plate to someone. I feel irritable. I yell, “You are NOT doing your JOB here.”

Finally I’ve had enough and I sort of lose it. “Please get the KIDS under the pavilion AWAY from the FOOD.”

Yeah, right, that helped. I finish cutting cake and walk over to the pavilion a few minutes later. The 3 little ones are at a table and hornets are swarming around them, all over the table. First my girl in her adorable yellow party dress freaks out, screaming and swatting the air. Then the little boy across from her does the same, and then the little boy next to him does it. They are trying to eat their cake and they are totally aggravated. It would be hysterical if it wasn’t so awful. It really didn’t matter a whole lot that the cake got dropped. Nobody was able to enjoy it anyway. I feel like I’m in a movie starring Chevy Chase.

We need a plan. “Everybody who smokes come on over here and light up. We’ll blow smoke right at the kids so the hornets will go away and they can eat in peace.”

Nice. Is this PC, or what? There’s something wrong with us. But it worked. The kids got to eat cake.

The party ended when the birthday girl got stung. Many of our guests then came to our (hornet-free) house, where the Little Miss graciously received her benevolent callers from her kitchen-counter-throne while she soaked her foot.

Forget the cake. This one will get tagged The Birthday of the Bees.

Complaint Department

2006-08-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

08.03.06

Column time. Dang, I forgot I have to write a column and I really have no idea what to write. Should I write about how my dog chews up everything, from remote controls to cell phones to $200 eyeglasses? Should I write about our recent weekend away, without the kid, and how it was in some respects fantastic, and in others not exactly how I imagined it would be? What to do, what to do?

Having a chewed-up remote control is really a pain. My daughter loves the book character Madeline, and recently received a DVD from a friend. But she’ll only ever see the first episode (about Madeline and the pirates) because selecting the second episode (about Madeline and the gypsies) requires a working remote. Without one, we are limited to putting the disc in the player and pressing “Play.” That’s it. No scene selection, no playing around with menus or extras. No skipping previews. Egads. It’s like living in the dark ages.

At least the chewed-up cell phone belonged to my husband. And it’s his dog. So there. I don’t even want to talk about the eyeglasses, but let me assure you, it’s HIS dog. Why does the dog chew things up? Well, she needs exercise, of course. A fence? Yeah, yeah, but I’m getting a deck this year. My available project budget (which includes both time and money) is all used up for the year with that. So I should walk the dog. But she’s too much dog for me, so instead of me taking her for a walk, she takes me for a drag and I get totally annoyed. Did I mention it’s his dog? Oh, yeah, I guess I did. Never mind.

Moving right along… a weekend away with my husband. Sweet. Very sweet, actually. What’s really amazing is that he lets me make the most diabolical plans for things he has absolutely no interest in, and then he tags along and pays for everything. Does it get any better than that? Truth is, he’s so grateful for a weekend away from his work phone that he’d be willing to subject himself to almost anything I can come up with. His price? One full night of uninterrupted sleep. Preferably on a Sleep Number bed. Oh my goodness. Have you slept on a Sleep Number bed? It’s like sleeping on a cloud. Or a steel girder, I suppose, if you prefer something firmer than a cloud. Your next weekend away try a Radisson. I recommend the one in Roseville.

We talked about the kid a lot. Like… when is she going to be potty trained? (When she decides it’s time). What should we get her for her birthday? (A new bike? A Hot Wheels race track?) When the heck is she going to stop sleeping on her floor and sleep in her bed again? (Refer to question number one about potty training).

And we talked about the dog. We brainstormed “dog solutions,” and managed to come up with, “Next summer’s project will be a fence.” We heard of a perimeter fence, like the invisible fence, sort of, but no buried cables. You set the thing to cover a certain footage perimeter, and when the dog goes past the boundaries it gets zapped. I don’t know. My dog might find the prospect of chasing deer worth a zap or two. I just hope she doesn’t catch one. I’ve seen the deer run. I’ve seen the dog run. To my untrained eye the dog is faster. Eeek! Also, someone has to test the strength of the electric shock collar before the dog is subjected to it. I’ve been voted to be the guinea pig, but I don’t think electric play is one of my kinks.

Anyhow, we ate good food. Had fun shopping. Talked and laughed and enjoyed one another. We don’t get enough time forthose things in our daily lives. We got a little lost and one of us said, “I told you we should have gone the other way,” a phrase that originated after a speeding ticket fourteen years ago in another part of the country. It’s good to realize that we still like each other as people, and that although we each have changed, we understand that change is inevitable and somehow we accommodate for each other’s growth.

Sometimes a weekend away is just what the crazy life ordered.

Hangin' out with little ones

2006-08-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

07.27.06

Eating out with children can be a trial despite the fact that most area restaurants have crayons and kid menus. As a parent, that’s great and all, but if you really want to make me happy and have me come back again (this being completely a matter of personal opinion, because my fellow diners may not want me to come back ever again) here’s a tip; give me fast service. The faster the better because I have just about an hour from entry to complete meltdown. Feed me quick. Feed my kid quicker.

Moms want to hang with their girlfriends. We hate saying ‘no’ all the time and we want to get out and be part of a world a little bit wider than home and work. But it’s hard to send children to daycare all week long and then hire a babysitter on the weekend. For one, it feels icky. For two, we actually miss our kids. So now and again we risk total embarrassment and say “Hey, I’ll join you guys for supper as long as nobody minds a three year old tagging along.”

Non-parents have no idea how much we love you, our friends, to be willing to do this in order to hang out with you. Seriously. We know long before we get to the restaurant that we’re going be miserable and that our child will be naughty. This is a given particularly for dinner dates at dinner time.

I thought this week I might impart some serving tips to area wait-staff. This will help me, and probably a whole bunch of other parents of toddlers and pre-schoolers. Ready? Set … Go.

Thank you for the crayons and kiddie menus you handed out when we were seated. A separate set of menus and crayons for each additional child would be greatly appreciated. Please come back in 5 minutes to take our order. When you do come back bring a tall plastic glass of crushed ice and a spoon because my kid will be done with the crayons already.

When you submit our order to the kitchen just go ahead and yell, “Three-year-old alert – put a rush on it!” In the end pretty much everyone in the restaurant will thank you for this. A few people might feel annoyed when we receive our food before them even though we ordered after them. Trust me, they will forgive you when the freak show is packing up and they realize they will be able to eat in peace.

If the kid’s meal comes with a dessert, bring the dessert five minutes after you bring the food. This will give the adults an additional seven minutes to scarf down their meal.

Finally, don’t ever bring one check for five women and two children. Whatever is going on in your head that you do this? Bring separate checks. If one is treating the rest they can certainly gather them up. Waiting 10 minutes for the orders to be separated puts us over the allotted hour and a meltdown is guaranteed, because at that point if my kid doesn’t have a meltdown I’m going to.

I have spent the last hour of my life using a series phrases that all parents hate to say, mostly because kids don’t even hear them anyway:

Sit on that chair. Settle down. Be good. Stop that. Be patient for a few minutes. Listen to me. Do you want to go home right now? I take that back, do you want to stay here forever? Because I’ll leave you here. I will. STOP THAT. I am never taking you out in public again. Are you listening to me? Can you just be patient for a few more minutes? Stop that. That’s it, you’re going right to bed when we get home. Knock. It. Off. Are you done? Just a few more minutes. We just have to wait for the waitress to fix our check. Why? Because if I bounce a check to pay for everybody’s food Dad will kill me. A few minutes. Yes, I agree she’s not very smart. Must you climb that? Get down from there. Okay, we’re leaving right now. Get down. Get down. We’re leaving. If I have to drag you by the hair out of here you’re not going to like it. No you won’t.

One last word of wisdom to our child-less friends… If you really love us you’ll meet us for coffee in the morning at a McDonald’s with a Playland. I say morning, because after twelve noon Playland turns into Screamland and it’s really not so good. Even better than that, come over and hang out in my yard after bedtime. We’ve got the tikki torches. We’ve got the bug zapper. Bring your own whatever to drink. I’ll provide coffee and Heath Crunch pie. And then you’ll see me relaxed. Maybe even comatose. If you’re lucky, you won’t see hide nor hair of my child because the NyQuil night air has worked its magic.

Sometimes eating out is fun. I can’t remember any such silliness, but it does still seem to be a popular way to socialize.