And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Resurrection and Renaissance

2007-04-19T14:23:00.000-04:00

Hey! Look! Two posts from me in two days! I'd like to keep up the momentum. It helps that one of my best friends was inspired to call me after my last post. It's nice to know that someone still wants to read what I write.

I've been spending a lot of time pondering the intent of this blog. My blog reading has shifted quite a bit recently, lining up with my favorite obsession -- knitting. The deeper I get into that, the more I want to contribute to the world of knitting blogs out there. What a great way to keep track of my progress and growth as a knitter, and to share with others the artistic work I am most proud of these days. Not to mention, it's a good way to hold myself accountable about the number of projects I'm working on at one time.

Yet I still like to write about my kids and funny anecdotes from my life. I can keep in touch with my friends and family this way, as well as document things from Ian and Katie's childhood. I don't think I'm prolific enough to support two blogs, so I'm afraid I'm going to integrate both types of content and hope that whoever finds/reads this blog enjoys whatever I have to say. We'll just have to see how it goes.

So keeping in mind the goal of adding a bit more knitting content to the blog, I'll add a few pictures of recent FOs (finished objects -- unfinished objects are UFOs, you know):

Sarah's socks -- yarn: Cherry Tree Hill (can't remember the colorway), needles: size 1 (eeks, size 1 needles take a long time), pattern: from Sensational Knitted Socks, my sock bible. My sister-in-law's favorite color is maroon, and my mom and I hunted all over the New York Sheep and Wool Festival to find maroon yarn. This is as close as we got. I like how they turned out, but was surprised that the two socks came out with different stripe widths and slightly different color balances (all the yarn came from one skein).

Dad's socks -- yarn: wool, can't remember the name right now, but came from Jo-Ann, pattern: boring, normal sock pattern -- Dad's request -- but I added a little bit of self-designed monogram (D squared) to them. He likes them, even though it took forever for me to get them to him.

Jason's sweater -- I have a new(ish) baby nephew (3 weeks old now), and I was so excited to knit this sweater for him from Oh My! yarn. It's incredibly soft and gorgeous, as well as machine washable. And I was really pleased with how it turned out. Baby sweaters are the most fun to knit -- lots of different things to keep your interest, and they're finished quickly!

Katie's sweater -- yarn: Plymouth Fantasy (100% mercerized cotton), pink -- her choice, pattern: Very Berry T-shirt from MagKnits.com. A nice spring/summer knit, and she loves it. I think it will be easy to adapt the pattern to a size for an American Girl doll, and I may try to do that with the leftover yarn. I wish I could have found a little bit lighter weight yarn at my LYS, but they really didn't have anything else that would have worked.

There. Hope that wasn't too boring. Stay tuned for more current work, and I'll try to throw in interesting thoughts here and there too.

Must . . . Fight . . . Instincts . . .

2007-04-18T15:22:00.000-04:00

(Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't posted in forever. More meta blog talk another time. The following was too good not to blog it.)

So. My family of origin has a little . . . quirk, if you will. We all like to be right. All the time. And if we think we're right, and someone else is not, we find correcting that someone completely irresistible. They don't even actually have to be in the room -- we have been known to correct people on TV, writers in the newspaper, etc. Of course, we mostly correct each other. And to a non-Dockstader, that can get a little, well, irritating when the nitpicking really gets going.

Ever since I married the unflappable, nonconfrontational Dave, I have been pulling away a little bit from the need to prove that I am 100% right all the time. (Dave would say, a very little bit.) I try to let things slide a little bit more. And with distance, I am able to see the irritating side of this trait. Really, I am. It doesn't always stop me from engaging, but I do try.

So I've been frustrated lately that Katie and Ian are beginning to correct each other (and us) to an extreme, about things that just. Don't. Matter. It flows mostly from Katie to Ian, or Katie to us, but they are both taking part, and it leads to pointless bickering that grates on me to no end. The other morning, I had a serious talk with them about the need to learn to let things go, to not correct every single, little, niggling thing that anyone else says or does. I suggested that we should make a chart and hang it on the refrigerator, and mark it down every time someone in the family corrects someone else needlessly -- the point being that I want them to recognize how often the behavior happens, so that they'll understand what I'm trying to say.

This afternoon, I found that Katie has already taken it upon herself to draw up the chart. Here is a picture of it:

10 points for anyone who can fully grasp the existential dilemma I am currently facing.

I'm a Believer!

2006-12-16T19:32:00.000-05:00

Last night I sewed together the front, back, and sleeves for Ian' sweater (Katie's sweater is on the agenda for tonight; the picture -- for which the sweaters are being knitted -- is scheduled for noon tomorrow). After putting both sleeves on, I realized that I had sewn them in slightly differently on the front, and it was obvious. OK, just cut the yarn sewing the sleeve to the front on one side, pull it out, and resew. Simple, right?

Well, it would be, if you didn't miss the sewing yarn and cut the yarn at the edge of the front, thereby mysteriously unraveling four rows and leaving a hole in the piece about 1.5 x 2 inches. EEKS! I managed to kludge together a reknitted section, and it doesn't look too terribly bad, but I alternated between panic attacks and tantrums for a good 45 minutes there.

Anyway, I got it done, and the cute pewter celtic knot buttons sewn on, and tried it on Ian. It fits, just. I swear the boy has the arms of a monkey! But then, this afternoon, I discovered the magic ingredient: BLOCKING!

Oh, sure, I've heard of blocking sweaters. And the instructions did say to block the pieces before making up the sweater. But I thought blocking 100% cotton wouldn't accomplish much, so I skipped it. And it turned out okay. But then I started to sew Katie's sweater together, and the lengths of the front and back didn't quite match, so I looked up how to block a sweater, and decided to give it a try.

I started with Ian's sweater, to see if I could get the armholes to relax a little bit -- they seemed kind of lumpy and crowded. I plugged in my new iron and steamed and steamed and steamed -- and behold, the sweater looked amazing! All the crumply, jammed-up stitches relaxed and straightened out. I tugged on the sleeves and the torso, to make it smooth out and fit a little better. I just can't get over what an improvement it is.

Of course, I blocked Katie's pieces first, and I'm trying to sew the seams a little looser -- I tend to be a very tight stitcher. Hopefully it will come out even better (which is why I did hers second -- since it's light blue, it can be passed down to Ian in a few years, whereas he'll outgrow his by next year at the latest).

I'm feeling more successful at knitting than at baking. I started Christmas cookies today, and ended up with very flat Christmas trees, extra crunchy fudge (note to self: when allowing preschooler to help decorate with sprinkles, make sure to give him the thing with the sprinkler top, so he won't pour out the sprinkles), and flattish snowflakes. I don't know if it's my margarine or what, but it's frustrating. At the moment, I wouldn't give any of these -- except maybe the fudge -- out as teacher/friend gifts. I'm going to have to come up with some more foolproof recipes. Tomorrow we'll be dipping Christmas-shaped pretzels in Ghirardelli white chocolate and sprinkling them with holiday sprinkles. I have high hopes for that project -- if I give Ian the right shaker!

Mwahahaha!

2006-12-14T16:29:00.000-05:00

Fooled you, didn't I? Did I say every day in November? And then go right off on a weekend away to Baltimore to visit relatives and yarn? I did. So no blogging in November (no, I can't remember what happened after that weekend -- I suspect it had something to do with multiple deadlines at the same time). And none in December, apparently, until now. And little cohesive stuff, either, but there are a few bloggish things that have been floating around in my brain.

Thing #1: The kids have been "playing" Dragonquest on Playstation with Dave for the last few weeks. He maintains that any violence is cartoonish, and thus not the kind of thing we need to restrict. I'm skeptical, but I've been letting it go. Hey, at least there's a strong female character! Anyway, they all go up into the bedroom together, Dave mans the controls, and the kids wrestle each other around the room and apparently absorb all sorts of geek language. Conversations around my house go something like this now:

Ian: "I'm a frozen ghost, and frozen ghosts can inflict more damage than liquid ghosts."
Katie: "I'm going to use twin dragon slash on you."

There's also a lot of casting "boom" and "zing" while shopping. I try to pretend they're not mine.

Thing #2: This morning I watched my neighbor's 9-year-old daughter before school because she had an emergency. This girl is pretty much Katie's best friend, and they play often. Friend is hard to describe, but generally okay. However, her family are evangelical Christians, so I found myself being proselytized (to?) before I had my coffee. This is an excerpt from the conversation around the breakfast table:

Katie: Did you know that one thousand billion years from now, the Earth is going to explode. It's true. I read it in a book.
Friend: Well, it doesn't matter because God is going to end the world soon. (turns to me) Do you believe in God?
Me: Yes.
F: Does she?
Me: I don't know, you'd have to ask her.
F: Well, have you been saved?
Me: We believe in a different kind of religion.
F: Well *Christians* --
K: But it's *science* --
F: We're Christian, just a different flavor of Christian than you. There are lots of different religions, you know.
F: I know, but when Christians die, they all go to heaven, and ... I don't know what happens next, but I guess I'll see you guys in heaven.
K: Well, the Earth is going to end one thousand billion years from now, but it doesn't matter, because we won't still be alive.
F: Did you know that back in the time of the Bible, people lived for 300 years?
Me: Some people think that that was just a way of showing respect to people.
F: It's true! It's in the Bible.
K: Sometime the Bible lies.
Me, intervening: People believe different things about the Bible. Some people believe it literally, and some people think it's more of a story. Right?
F nods.
Me: Can we please move on to a different topic??

(Dave is very proud that Katie took up for the side of science, by the way.)

So this afternoon, I went over and gave some of our extra pine roping (note to self: 75 feet is far too much pine roping to buy, even if it does support the PTO) to my neighbor, and I thought I'd mention this in passing. I said, "You should have heard the theological discussion at our house this morning. I hope it's okay that I was telling them that it's okay that there are all different kinds of beliefs." Her response -- and keep in mind that this is someone I'm friendly with: "Not in my world it's not." Ho-kay. I said, "Well, at least that it's okay that we can believe what we want to believe," and headed back across the street. I didn't even tell her about the evenhanded approach to peace in the Middle East that I promoted to her child. (She should know better -- she saw my Hillary sign in the window!)

Thing #3: I'm done with Christmas shopping! Woohoo! Of course, we're not exactly done with decorating -- boxes and bins still strewn throughout the house. In fact, one-quarter of the ornaments still have yet to make it to the Christmas tree. Fortunately, I've got a whole weekend to deal with it -- we were going to have Ian's 4th birthday party on Sunday, but only one child could make it. (Very, very sad.) So we reissued invites today for Jan. 7, and we're hoping at least a few will come. We had to promise Chuck E. Cheese for the celebration of the actual day (ack!), but he took it better than I thought he would. And we'll have a family party when my parents get her next Thursday. Dave's pushing to move his parties to the summer and have half-birthday celebrations, but I don't know that that would be any better.

Thing #4: I've been busy, busy, busy knitting. Sadly, I've succumbed to SSPD (Second Sock Procrastination Disorder), and I have no fewer than four single socks that need their mates. I have reasons -- not necessarily good ones -- for each sock to be mateless, but it's no excuse. Still, they have to wait until I finish the kids' sweaters, which are all done but need making up. I'm working on that tonight and tomorrow, and have to be finished before they get their pictures done tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping to post some pictures of the things I'm doing, but since many of them are gifts, I may have to wait until after Christmas -- I can't trust the recipients not to peek!

And that's it. I'll try to be more profound (and prolific) in the future. I'd really like to build this up to a much more frequent blog. It helps that a phone conversation with a friend the other day revealed that this friend has greater admiration for and faith in my writing ability than I remembered. Nothing like a compliment to spur you on to more effort!

En garde!

2006-11-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

En garde!
Originally uploaded by JennDM.

One more -- notice the wicked grin on Ian's face. Maybe he wasn't quite such a good knight after all!

Glinda, the Good Witch

2006-11-02T12:22:00.000-05:00

Good Sir Ian

2006-11-02T12:20:00.000-05:00

The First Day . . .

2006-11-01T17:24:00.000-05:00

. . . of NaBloPoMo. Fussy is issuing a challenge to those of us who can't partake in NaNoWriMo. She's daring us to blog every day during the month of November. Sounds like a plan. I haven't officially signed up, but I think I'm going to try to meet the challenge. After all, my mom always says that if you do something every day for 30 days, it becomes a habit, and I have to admit I've been slacking quite a bit around here. At the very least, maybe NaBloPoMo will inspire some of my favorite, infrequently posting bloggers to produce more reading material for me!

So last night was Halloween. Costume sewing was taking place right up until the last minute, but I did manage to complete both costumes in the space of four days. (We missed the Halloween parade and costume contest on Saturday, but it was a nasty, rainy day anyway.) This year we had Glinda, the Good Witch, and a knight in chain mail:

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from JennDM tagged with halloween. Make your own badge here.

[Grr. Pictures to come. Has anybody ever gotten Blogger to get their pictures up there? Looking for a workaround.]

Remind me never to volunteer to sew a satin-and-tulle costume again! Maybe I can talk them into fleece every year from now on -- so much more fun to sew. But I was pretty happy with how they turned out. I have to credit Dave with the freehand-drawn dragon on Ian's tunic, necessitated by Ian's rejection of the rampant lion design that came with the pattern.

Katie got to go trick-or-treating even though she was home with a fever both yesterday and today. I have to admit, at least kids home sick with a fever are easy to care for -- stick them in front of the TV wrapped in blankets, and they're pretty much good for the day. I'm just hoping no one else gets it, since we're supposed to head for Baltimore this weekend. I'm already feeling guilty about Katie missing three days of school this week, and next week she's off for Election Day and Veterans' Day -- a total of five days of school in two weeks! I've got to dig out some craft projects or something.

So that's it for the first day. Tomorrow I'll take pictures of some of my knitting projects in preparation for Stitches East (secondary reason for the Baltimore trip; the primary reason is that Dave is presenting at a National Science Teachers Association conference -- my chance to geek out about yarn is just a bonus).

Parenting Challenges Abound in the Thursday Folder

2006-10-26T16:38:00.000-04:00

Katie brought home her weekly collection of papers, graded assignments, notices, etc. today, and I'm troubled by multiple parts of it. Is it PMS? Am I asking too much? I have no idea.

Troubling Item 1: homework/test packet -- Katie's reading test is marked with her first-ever B+. Now, I know I'm a perfectionist and all, and I live in great fear of passing that on to my child(ren), but I'm curious about why. They're multiple choice questions -- are they misleading? Is she having trouble deciphering clues from the context? I found out they're even open-book, and she has the page number by each question telling where she got the answer. I know a B+ is no big deal, but I'd like to go over it with her. Of course, I asked her to bring her reading book home, and she threw a fit. Do I pursue it? Or let it go?

Troubling Item 2: school pictures -- Her smile is lovely; her hair is...well...not the best. Sure, it's not sticking up or anything, but it really looks kind of lank and ratty. Do I attempt to get retakes, even though they're supposed to be only for those who were absent? How do you tell your child, "Sorry, honey, you don't look pretty enough in this picture. Let's try again."?

Troubling Item 3: art gift fundraiser -- The school picture company has this program called Young Masters where the kids draw a picture on a special piece of cardboard in art class, and then the artwork can be put on mugs, shirt, coasters, trivets, calendars, etc. The PTO was talked into this, and I did think it was a great idea. And we made an effort to squeeze it in in time for holiday gift-giving season. I hear the art teacher was even excited about doing it with the kids.

Well. Katie's artwork came home today. The art teacher had her class think up and draw hybrid animals -- Katie drew a horse with the legs of a cheetah, a dolphin tail, and butterfly wings. Very interesting creative exercise, but I'm not sending all of my family $25 pieces of ceramic with a drawing of a "what the hell is that?" on it for Christmas. I'm really pretty pissed off with this, both as a regular parent and as an active PTO member. I feel like the art teacher sabotaged the fundraiser, and I'm pretty upset about it.

Here's the biggest dilemma -- as far as I know, there are no "redos" of this. Even if there are extra pieces of cardboard around I could pull strings to get, I can't see Katie sitting down and drawing a picture to my order without a fight. And I'm trying to rein in my reaction so as not to hurt her feelings -- it's not that it's a bad picture, it's that the subject matter is out there. I'm just so frustrated with all of this.

Any and all advice welcome.

Dave's Parental Failings

2006-10-09T19:23:00.000-04:00

Dave is in the doghouse for failing to back me up while I was disciplining the boy. His downfall? Ian saying quite seriously and with an incredibly fresh tone: "Mommy. Come. On. You are not in charge of my butt."

Laughing doesn't help -- even if you cover your face when you do it!

A Milestone in Parenting

2006-09-11T18:39:00.000-04:00

Today I passed a new milestone with Katie -- we had "the talk."

No, not the one about where babies come from or how they get there. That probably would have been easier.

This talk was the one in which I implant a generalized but vague global anxiety into my gifted child's head, somewhat akin to the anxiety I felt about a nuclear holocaust almost 20 years ago. This being the 5th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, all the news media in New York have been talking and talking and talking about them, and it occurred to me that they might be brought up at school, too. Since Katie was only 2 when they occurred, she's been pretty sheltered from them, so I thought I'd rather she hear about them from us.

The thing is, I find it amazing how vividly I remember that day. We lived on Long Island at the time, about 50 miles away from NYC. I was driving to my aerobics class that morning, with Katie in the car to be left in the gym's child care room, when I heard on NPR about the first plane hitting the tower. I was more puzzled than anything -- it was a gorgeous, sunny day with a crystal-clear blue sky (I still remember this). Not a cloud to be seen. And if Long Island looked like that, it was likely the City did, too. How could anyone make such a mistake as to run into a building with weather like this?

When I dropped Katie off, I saw that the TV, which was usually showing kids' cartoons, was turned to the news -- and I saw, live, as so many did, the second plane hit the WTC. I watched for a few minutes, kind of stunned, and then, well, I proceeded to take part in the aerobics class. People were giving us updates throughout the class, but there seemed to be nothing to do but go on with our lives.

Afterward, I drove home, and called Dave, who was teaching at a high school in the Hamptons. I think I was on the phone with him when the first building collapsed. It was as if I could feel all the people dying when I watched it, and I sobbed, as I'm sure everyone who saw it did. I left the television on all day, while Katie played on the floor nearby. I was so grateful that she was young enough not to understand what was happening, that I could leave the TV on and not worry about her, that she wouldn't pick up on the vibes, as so many young children did, and crash toy planes into block-tower buildings for days after.

But now I think it's time she knew about it. So I called her into the living room to have a talk before school. I started out by asking her what she knew about terrorists, or September 11, and was surprised that she'd really never registered anything about it. I told her that terrorists were people who believed so strongly in their cause that they were willing to kill other people to get their point across, rather than do it by voting, or explaining, or talking. And I told her about all of the attacks -- the ones on the WTC and the Pentagon, and the retaking of the hijacked plane over Pennsylvania. She listened solemnly, and crawled into my lap. I felt like she got the idea, and understood it was important.

Our little talk concluded, and I asked her if she had any questions. "Nope," she said, and bounced off my lap. "My feet are cold. I'm going upstairs to get some socks!" And she ran off.

Not quite the reaction I expected, but I'm glad I talked with her nonetheless. I hope she never has to have a similar talk with her child.

Miscellanea

2006-09-05T23:28:00.000-04:00

#1. Not the Brightest Idea in the World

I was going to take the kids out to dinner to celebrate the first day of school, but changed my mind and decided to roast marshmallows over our fire pit and make s'mores with them instead. Because it's just a brilliant idea to load tired, overstimulated children up with marshmallows and chocolate right before bed. And because starting a fire in the rain to fulfill said promise is a joy as well. Perhaps I should rethink these things a bit. Still, the kids (including neighbor Mikayla) enjoyed it, even if the weird, square, gourmet marshmallows we bought wouldn't catch fire properly. (I like mine carbonized, thank you very much.)

#2. First Day of School

I hate to duplicate every other mom-blogger in the blogosphere, but yay for the first day of school. Sure, it inspires tantrums and angst in the children, which use up pretty much all of my patience, but oh, the quiet when everyone -- including Dave -- is away at school. Not that I got as much work done as I should have. But it was relaxing -- and almost made up for the fits about hair, lost jackets, which shoes to wear, and whether or not the jeans with the embroidery on them match the green shirt Katie wanted to wear.

So, for posterity, here are pictures of Katie (3rd grade) and Ian (preschool/day care) on the first day of school, 2006:

#3. What Have I Been Doing With My Time?

This summer, I decided I don't have enough unfinished craft projects/kits lying around the house. I needed more. MORE! And kits are for sissies! I need to create something with just a couple of sticks and some yarn! I've taken a stab at knitting before, and I even made a really adorable (if I may say so myself) baby sweater for a friend of mine, but I think I may be hooked. I blame Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whom I saw at the Book Expo America, and who writes hysterical books and blog posts about knitting.

Anyway, I decided to try out some socks. I bought a book, and sat down to teach myself to knit with 4-5 needles at a time. (By the way, this is craziness. I've finally figured out the how of doing it, but I'll be darned if I know who came up with this technique in the first place!)

Now, where should you start when embarking on a new crafty venture? By buying the most expensive material you can find, of course. I bought a skein of beautiful yarn that cost $21.00. (Yes, I know -- one can buy many socks for that price. Trust me, Dave's on your side on this one.) However, since I didn't want to screw up my first socks and waste the yarn, I had to make a practice pair first. And I'm happy to announce that I've finished the first sock of the practice pair (made with a skein of Lion Brand Magic Stripes yarn that I found lying around the house -- apparently, I've had this notion for some time now). I can't tell you how much delight it brings me -- it's such a cute sock! And I'm more than halfway finished with the second one, and if it weren't for the time I had to spend, you know, earning a living, I'd be done with the pair. Anyway, a few people of been clamoring -- that's right, clamoring -- for a pic, so I have put a couple below. Isn't it cute! Cute enough to wear even with my Birks, I think, no matter what they say about socks and sandals!

Cute Things They Say

2006-07-31T13:07:00.000-04:00

In a discussion of reptilian anatomical functions (don't ask):

Katie: Do lizards stick their tongues out to smell?

Me: Yes, they do.

Katie: Like snakes. Snakes do that too, right? That's weird. Ants use their antannas to smell.

Me: An-TEN-nas. [Yes, I know it's antennae -- the correct pronunciation is more important at the moment than obscure Latinate forms.]

Katie: An-TEN-nas.

Ian: Right, ants use their antennas to smell. And I fink the TiVo guy uses his antennas to smell, too.

Dave: Not quite, buddy.

And in Target yesterday, where I have to say that we were not the only family having, um, interesting exchanges:

Ian, at the top of his lungs: Hey, remember when Daddy was sleeping on the couch?

[No, we don't know what he's talking about -- some time when Dave napped in the living room maybe? Yes, we laughed hysterically and tried to explain why to Katie. No, we don't think anyone overheard.]

Live, from the Morgan Household

2006-06-15T20:25:00.000-04:00

Actual dinnertime conversation at our house:

Ian, pretending to be Darth Vader, is wandering around the kitchen (this -- both the pretending and the wandering -- is typical). He "slips," and falls down on the ground.

Ian: Darth Vader fell down on the Dark Path!

Katie: There's no Dark Path. What are you talking about?

Ian: Yes dere is. Yoda says dere's a Dark Path.

Katie: Mommy, is there a Dark Path?

Me: Well, yes, there is, but it's metaphorical.

Katie: What is meta-...meta-?

Me: [Offers some kind of random explanation of a metaphor involving getting on my nerves -- subtlety is not my strong suit.]

Katie: Whatever. I can't understand what Yoda says in that movie [Return of the Jedi] anyway.

Me: Why, because he's 900 years old?

Katie: He's not that old in real life!

Me: What?

Katie: You know, in real life, he's not that old.

Me: Katie, he's a puppet. Yoda is a puppet. You know that, right?

Katie: Really?

Ian: I always fought he was a person in a costume.

And we just saw the Muppet displays at the Smithsonian, too!!

[Approximately 24 hours before my status as temporary single parent is relieved. Thank God.]

My Free Spirit -- NOT!

2006-06-12T18:02:00.000-04:00

We just returned from a family in wedding in Baltimore that necessitated taking Katie out of school for two days. We asked her teacher to provide her with classwork to do while we were traveling. She sent home her journal, and told Katie to write each day about whatever she wanted. Apparently, they write in their journal each day in response to specific prompts.

The freedom of expression was just too much for Katie to take -- she was paralyzed, and couldn't write just about her day or the things she did. Instead, she felt she had to make up her own prompts, including this one: "On your trip, you crossed over many bridges. What bridges did you see?" (One of the bridges we crossed multiple times was the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, and we instituted a new family tradition of singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" whenever we drove over it. That's one of the things she wrote about.)

This need to adhere to externally imposed structure is a little worrisome. It's all I need to worry about her having OCD tendencies similar to mine -- and don't even get me started on the new game of walking only on certain color tiles in the mall and how it messes with my own head!

"Fill in alarmist and armageddonist factoid here"

2006-06-04T06:43:00.000-04:00

The above, which was mistakenly published in a Greenpeace press release, is exactly why editors and proofreaders are necessary in this world! Thanks to Peter Sagal and the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me crew for the fun new slogan.

From the Home of the Malaprop-Morgans

2006-05-30T23:11:00.000-04:00

(Yikes! Has it really been a month since I've posted? Real life getting in the way, I guess.)

Two misspoken incidents today to report:

1) Katie was reading a new book, Clarice Bean Spells Trouble (by Lauren Child, author of the Charlie and Lola books -- this book has a waiting list at our house, and I get it next. Clarice Bean is hysterical). She brought it with her to read in the car, and as she was buckling her seatbelt, she said to me, "You know, I'm on Chapter 15, almost at the end, and Clarice hasn't spelled 'trouble' yet."

2) It's so hot, I gathered up the kids and went shopping to spend money in the air-conditioned comfort of Target (we have no central A/C). We were walking through the outdoor/gardening section, and Ian sniffed ostentatiously. "It smells yike fwowers," he observed. "Actually," I said, "what you smell is fertilizer." "Oh." Cut to a few minutes later. "I fink we need to buy some more." "Some more what, buddy?" "Some more turtle-izer." I'm not sure what it is he thinks those chemicals will do to the grass!

Creative Carpentry, or, I Think I May Have Inhaled an Entire Tree

2006-04-30T19:02:00.000-04:00

What do you get when you mix two intellectually gifted but very unhandy people with a home improvement project that is not exactly cut-and-dried? I don't know, but if you want to see the answer, come hang out in our basement.

It all started when I fell in love with a tin-tile-like ceiling at Lowe's and decided I had to have it for my office. Hey, look! It's called E-Z Track! There should be no problem then, right? And look! It installs over joists. We have joists over which to install it. Yay! I get my ceiling!

Um, not so fast. Because it installs flush with the joists, and we have inconveniences like gas pipes and electrical wires and water pipes hanging down a bit below the joists. Hm. Oh. What do we do now?

There were several solution iterations tried out during our "thought experiment" phase (and we've been thinking about this for quite a while). What we finally arrived at was a form of "furring strip" to extend the joists and essentially make them thicker, to which we would then fasten the track of the ceiling system. Of course, we had to drop it down by almost 4 inches to accommodate the pipes, so we decided to use blocks cut from 2x4s as our "furring strips." But how would we fasten these blocks to the joists? Toenail them? Drill in diagonally from each side? We finally decided to use pieces of 1x2 to fasten vertically to both the block and the joist, one on each side of the joist.

Now there are 14 joists, and we need to fasten 12 tracks. 14 x 12 = 168 blocks needed. And 336 1x2 fasteners. Eeks. Fortunately, I've rediscovered my love for the compound miter saw, not to mention I'm able to cut the 1x2 sections in a bundle of 6 at a time. And we're using a nail gun, so that makes it a little bit easier (although 336 x 8 = 2,688 nails, and we're going to need to go to the hardware store [again!] and pick up some more nail-gun strips). However, I'm finding out that sawdust and asthma just don't mix. Dave finally dug out a mask for me, but it's darned uncomfortable.

So I've just fastened one piece of 1x2 to each of, um (quick calculation in my head: 6 8' 2x4s, with 24 blocks out of each, equals . . .) 144 blocks. Dave asked if I felt a bit like Rosie the Riveter, but I actually felt like the 6-year-old assigned to nail scrap pieces of wood together so she won't get in the way of real woodwork. In the meantime, he's solving the problem of fastening suspended ceiling track to the soffit that was built with no studs -- he's finding another use for the 1x2 pieces. One of these days, we'll get our part done so we can call the contractor back to finish the job. It's got to be finished by the second week of June, though, since that's when all our company arrives! Maybe I'll start getting some of the ceiling pieces together tonight. Then again, Veronica Mars, The West Wing, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy are all new tonight . . . Hey! I think I may have just realized why this project is taking so darned long . . .

Overheard from the Kitchen

2006-04-28T19:44:00.000-04:00

Dave: Ian, do you want blueberries with your corndog?
Ian: I'm not Ian, I'm Yuke Skywalker.
Dave (with practically audible eyeroll): Luke Skywalker, do you want blueberries with your corndog?
Ian/Luke: Um . . . or you can just call me Yuke.
Dave, even more exasperated: LUKE! Do you want blueberries with your corndog?
Ian/Luke: Um, what?

There are downsides to having a child who entertains himself.

Two Posts in One Day!!

2006-04-25T16:56:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to write a blog entry about Nancy Drew computer games, and how much we, as a family, love them. And by we, I mostly mean me. Katie loves them too, but she can't really get very far in them by herself. So they've been sort of a bonding experience for us, as the three of us (excluding Dave) gather around the flickering monitor to solve all of Nancy's cases. Heck, even my mother-in-law is getting in on the action, and the last time she was here, she and Katie were trading hints on how to get farther in the various game scenarios.

Maybe it's the titian hair connection, but I've always loved Nancy Drew. As a kid, I devoured as many of the books as I could. I saved them so my daughter could read them. And now she's just about reached that point. Katie can read them, but they're still a bit long for her attention span, unless she's in just the right frame of mind. Instead, she's plowing her way through the little-sister series, Nancy Drew Notebooks. And I'm fine with that.

Remember the Blue's Clues anecdote about Ian? Well, I'm here to tell you that he's merely following in his sister's footsteps. For a little background, I have to admit that I lost my cell phone last week, and there was a great deal of consternation in the Morgan household, with me obsessing about where it could be and Dave calling it at all hours of the day and night in the hopes that whoever swiped and/or found it would actually answer it. (He was vindicated -- I had left it at Olive Garden, and a manager finally heard it ringing in the safe. My luck holds out, once again.) Anyway, in picking up around the house today, I found a little notebook of Katie's. I'm nosey, so I opened it up to see what she's been writing lately. I found this:

I cracked up. Hysterical. Clearly, a Nancy-Drew-in-training if ever I saw one. Poor Ian, always the suspect. You know, when you contemplate having your second child, you worry and fret over how the first one will feel -- whether she'll resent the new baby, whether she'll feel replaced, and so on. I'm finally coming to the realization that it wasn't her tender feelings I needed to be concerned about!!

Kinder-oke

2006-04-25T13:08:00.000-04:00

Katie started swimming lessons last night.

-- Digression: Do I really have to wait until she's in her late 20s before she realizes that sometimes I do know what I'm talking about and I do know what's best for her? The proposal of swim lessons was met with tears and a tantrum and cries of "But I can't swim! I don't want to!" all because she took one set of lessons a year ago and didn't turn into Mark Spitz. (Whew, that probably dates me, huh?) And yet, after 20 minutes in the water, she came out grinning from ear to ear and crowing, "That was so much fun! I can't wait to come back tomorrow!" So, good, I'm glad she's happy about it now. I would have made her go anyway, because knowing how to swim is one of my things -- I wouldn't have backed off, the way I did with the Barnes & Noble American Girl event that made her cry last weekend. Her liking it makes it easier, though, and I'm glad of that, even as I wonder what I was thinking to sign her up for lessons from 6:30 to 7:00 every night for the next two weeks. End of digression. --

Anyway, as we're sitting on the bench waiting for the teenage teachers to figure out what they're doing and who's in what class, a little boy next to Katie starts kicking his feet and singing, "It's hard to believe...that I couldn't see...that you were always there beside me-ee." I chuckled to myself. This song is continually playing in our house -- and more to the point, in my head -- as a result of Katie and Ian's obsession with High School Musical. They sing into our microphone (Ian is a surprisingly good singer for a 3-year-old), Katie listens to it on her new MP3 player, they pretend they're the characters, they quote the lines. It's a true obsession. And the songs are relatively catchy, and harmless, so I let it go. I've been surprised how many of my friends with 7-year-olds are reporting similar happenings in their households. I tell you, Disney really hit its target market with this movie!

So the boy was singing, and I nudged Katie -- she was smiling too. And then she joined in on the duet, despite not even knowing this boy (whose name turned out to be Ian), and the two of them sang a whole verse together. And not under their breaths, actually out loud. It was absolutely adorable, and I wish I'd had my video camera with me. I wonder if I can talk them into an encore performance someday.

I Hate Easter!

2006-04-17T09:49:00.000-04:00

I've just discovered that I hate Easter. I don't recall having this antipathy before, but yesterday both implanted and cemented it. How do I hate Easter? Let me count the ways . . .

1) Holidays with kids begin so frickin' early!!! But at least with Christmas (in my family, anyway), it's stretched out for a few hours. Our Easter festivities started at 7 a.m. and were over by 8:05. After that, the fun began.

2) I feel compelled to buy candy at Easter, even more so than at Halloween. I'm not normally a huge candy buyer, but Easter has all these springtime-only candies: Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, Cadbury Mini Eggs, Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Halloween doesn't do that! So I buy way too much candy to hoard the specialties, then restrict what candy the kids can eat (sorry, children have not suffered enough in their short lifetimes to deserve whole Cadbury Creme Eggs to themselves), then eat it all (with Dave's help -- ask him how many Reese's Eggs he's eaten in the last two days).

3) Why do we have more than one holiday that focuses on gorging oneself with candy anyway? In our house, we have a rule (for the kids) of two pieces of candy a day. Now, these aren't Snickers bars -- they're usually a single Jolly Rancher or chocolate coin, or maybe a small box of Nerds. The kids are fine with that. But for the holiday, I let up on the rule. Sure, they could have more than two pieces of candy for one day -- what would be the harm in that? Well. Let me tell you. Three-year-olds have no concept of what others would consider reasonable candy consumption. Ian? Started eating candy at 7:15 and wallowed in his Easter basket pretty much nonstop until 11, when we finally cut him off. He then spent the remainder of the day alternating between running around the house in circles and throwing monstrous, screaming temper tantrums. Yeah. That was a good plan. I thought the sugar-hyperactivity connection was apocryphal, but after yesterday, I'm not so sure.

4) Katie, the 7-year-old, has been told the "truth" about the Easter Bunny, as well as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I felt like I had to do it because she kept challenging me in front of her brother, and I wanted her to cut it out so she didn't plant suspicion in him. Thing is, I had visions of her being in on the secret and feeling all adult about it, helping to maintain the illusion. I think I remember feeling that way when I was a kid. Instead, she just finds every opportunity to announce that she knows that really I hid the eggs, that I bought the toys, etc. I finally had to yell at her about it -- and threaten to take away her candy. It just about ruined Easter for me.

5) and 6) I hate dressing up. Apparently, so does Ian, as evidence by the fact that the biggest tantrum was about wearing his new Easter outfit (sweater vest, polo, short pants). And yet I felt compelled to dress for the Easter service, even though UUs apparently don't really celebrate Easter. Instead, we had a Flower Communion -- a nice idea -- and shared memories of Easter and Passover. Odd. How am I supposed to teach the kids that there's more to Easter than bunnies and candy when the church we're attending doesn't even acknowledge it from an objective, distant standpoint? Oh, well. I'll dig out the Bible and talk to Katie about it sometime this week. Hope I can find a regular Bible, and not Dave's hippy-dippy Good News Bible.

7) Easter egg hunts and competitive children do not mix. I had a sobbing Katie on my hands at the community egg hunt at the park when she spent all her time looking for the special sparkly eggs, thinking there was plenty of time to pick up the other eggs, and then ended up with only one egg. Her brother got 19. Not that it mattered -- they both had to turn their eggs in to exchange them for free bags of -- what else? -- candy, but it was a life lesson that we had to get through first. Ugh.

So that was our Easter. And now it's Spring Break. Already the kids were screaming at each other as I got out of the shower (one of my least favorite sounds in the world, especially as I step out of the shower). Fortunately, Ian's in daycare today. Katie went to play with a friend. Maybe I should get some work done in this time that I get a break from entertaining the children.

I'm Your Beck and Call Girl

2006-04-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

Katie's home sick for the second day in a row. Ian's also home. I just discovered that I screwed up an editing job and have to scramble to get some stuff done that I didn't realize I had to do. Tension is somewhat high at the Morgan household, although the kids are actually being pretty good (read: watching TV and not arguing while I panic and my head explodes).

Ian asks for an apple. "But I don't want the seeds. You have to take out the seeds." No problem -- I have my handy dandy OXO apple corer right here. That's when the problem starts. "But I don't want a hole in my apple!" Ian whines, as he (gently -- linoleum can be hard) throws himself down on the floor. "And I don't want skin."

"But that's how you get the seeds out, Buddy. Do you want me to slice it so you have slices shaped like Os?"

"No! I don't want a hole in my apple!" issues forth from the supine figure on the kitchen floor.

I continue peeling the apple, resigning myself to throwing it away uneaten in a couple of hours. Inspiration hits. I pick up the intact core, slide it back into the hole, and hand the apple to him. "How did you do that?" "Magic," I reply.

Crisis averted. The omnipotence of Mommy is restored.

Now back to editing and my exploding head -- at least until lunchtime.

I've Always Said White Was Boring . . .

2006-04-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

Long story ahead. Get through it, and you'll get the punchline/blog entry title.

So. We're finishing our basement. Well, not so much we, as there are a few contractors involved and lots of money changing hands. But we're cheap, and we've been brainwashed by TLC into believing that we should be able to do it ourselves, so we're doing as much as we think we can safely handle. So the contractor's done the framing, the electricity, the plumbing, the Sheetrock, and the taping and spackling -- we're doing the painting, the ceiling, and maybe some of the flooring. A huge chunk, I'm sure you'll agree. When it's done, we'll have added about 1100 square feet to our house, in the form of a playroom, an office, a guest bedroom, a workshop, and a 3/4 bathroom.

And when I say we're doing the painting, I actually mean I'm doing the painting, as painting is one thing that Dave absolutely despises. I guilt him into taping and dropclothing and cleaning out paintbrushes occasionally, but it's part of our implicit marriage contract that if there's any painting to be done, I get to step up and do it. And it's a lot of painting. The fun kind -- no trim to paint around or flooring to watch out for -- but a lot nonetheless. I've more or less been immersed in it in my free time (and work time) for the last week, and I expect it to continue this week as well.

Yesterday I got to start with colors, after the boring priming and painting the closets and playroom white. The guest room is kind of a tannish taupe, and while I'm not sure I totally love it yet, I think it will work once it's all decorated. The office -- my home office -- is going to be purple. Now, before you think, "Eww, purple? Really?" -- as I know you're doing right now -- let me tell you that it's a lovely, deep, eggplant-y purple, and it looks amazing with gray carpet and white trim. I know, because that's how my office was in Alabama, and I really miss it. So I can't wait until the office is tricked out to my specifications, with -- most important of all -- a DOOR, purple walls, and my own choice of decorations.

The next section of the background of this story is that since painting is boring, repetitive, mind-numbing work, and I don't have anyone to talk to because Dave is watching the kids while I paint, I've been listening to my iPod nano and really enjoying it. My favorites at the moment are the podcast of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; the Veronica Mars soundtrack; and the audio version of Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire (sequel to Wicked). Although I'm not usually an aurally oriented person, I'm enjoying the audiobook, and have gotten through 11 out of 12 CDs -- I'm not sure I would ever have read that far. Anyway, it's been entertaining.

Also, as anyone in my family, especially Ian, will tell you, I'm a notoriously messy painter. My Trading Spaces paint shirt (bought for inspiration) is almost more paint than fabric, and I usually spend up to 20 minutes after each paint session scrubbing paint from my hands, arms, legs, and feet (I paint barefoot). Heck, I don't mind too much -- when I'm painting with white paint, I just focus on all the money I save on French manicures, what with all the paint under my fingernails. So I've been getting a little paint on the nano, but not too much, and it mostly comes right off.

All of which brings us to tonight's events. There I was, painting my lovely purple office with paint that is turning out to be exactly the right color. I'm on the next-to-last CD of Son of a Witch and reaching the climactic moments. It's late -- about 11:30 -- and I'm about 4/5 of the way done with the room's first coat. I lean down to dip my paint pad in my paint tray . . . and my nano slips out of my pocket and submerges itself in a sea of purple.

Of course, I panic, yelling for Dave and running with the paint-logged nano up to the kitchen, dripping dark purple paint on the beige carpet as I go. I commenced washing the headphones; Dave got to work on de-painting the nano itself. The good news is that, while slightly purple-tinged (and ironically, I'd been thinking that it would be fun to paint the thing purple anyway), the nano was still working when we shut it down. The bad news is that not a small amount of paint got into the USB cable port. We're following the time-honored solution to wet electronics of letting it dry and waiting it out, and I'll be sleeping with my fingers crossed tonight. After all, how will I get through all the second coats waiting for me down in the basement without my trusty little white friend? I'm just kicking myself over and over again for dropping it in the first place. Only I could submerge a $200 piece of electronic equipment in purple paint.

Story of My Life

2006-03-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

Katie has discovered a new website to play on: Claires.com. You can apparently select a figure and dress it and accessorize it and make it dance or something. So she was playing with it today while I frantically try to finish a book early so I can go play hooky with my friend Lani on Friday in the city.

Katie, entering the office: Mommy, what are you wearing today?
Me: A green T-shirt and dark gray sweatpants. Why?
Katie: Oh, I can't find those on Claires.com. I was trying to make one that looked like you.
Dave, smirking: No, for that you'd have to go to Slobs.com.

No respect, I tell you.

The same site inspired a minor tiff between Katie and Ian. After styling a figure like her teacher (who is young, pretty, and stylish, and thus more reproducible than I), Katie offered to make one like Ian's teacher. Miss Linda is African American. Your first choice, apparently, is skin tone. After the third repetition of "But does she have black skin?" and the corresponding anguished "Noooooo," I stepped in to settle everything by explaining that she has dark brown skin ("That's right," agreed Ian). The racial unconsciousness of preschoolers rearing its innocent head.

And spinning off of that, Ian recently pointed to a picture in a knitting book of a little Asian girl wearing a poncho. "She looks like Jada, in my class." "Yes, she does. They looks similar because they're both Chinese, or Chinese American." "No, she's not. Jada's not Chinese!" (This shouted across Barnes & Noble.) I gave up the argument, even though I know that Jada is, in fact, Chinese American; it seemed the better part of valor.

Interesting how kids give us things to think about, isn't it?

They're Trying to Kill Me

2006-02-07T20:00:00.000-05:00

I'm visiting my parents with the kids in Chicago for a few days, and it goes without saying that a one-hour time change + the excitement of seeing Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle John + various levels of snottiness/coughing + sleeping in different beds = very interrupted sleep patterns. I keep bragging about how, after the hell of not-sleeping endured during the first two years with each child, they finally have a regular bedtime, sleep through the night, and get up not earlier than 7 a.m. HA! They are out to prove me wrong.

The first night, they went to bed at about 10:00, and they were up at 5:30. The next, they went to bed at an almost-normal time (8:30), and Ian was up coughing at 4:50, and never went back to sleep. (Of course, I'd stayed up until 12:30 with my brother -- silly me.) Last night, Ian woke up at 3:30 and he and Katie (they're in the same room) spent the next hour alternately yelling at each other and coughing and making me get back out of bed to get them to GO BACK TO SLEEP!!!

This experience has led me to develop a new mantra: If you want to ingratiate yourself with me enough so that I'll, I don't know, continue to feed you, do not stand outside my bedroom door at 3:56 a.m. and whine, "Mommy, I'm bored!"

They. Are. Trying. To. Kill. Me.

Domestic, but in a Weird Way

2006-02-03T18:49:00.000-05:00

That sums me up in a nutshell, sometimes. Right this very moment, cooling on the stove, is a large batch of yummy homemade . . . um . . . pepper jelly. It smells slightly acidic and vinegary in here. I'm not even sure I really like pepper jelly, nor do I know anyone who does, as far as I know, so why don't I just go ahead and make 9 cups' worth? But Family Fun or Parenting or something had this recipe under "Gifts Kids Can Make" (Who, me? Reading a pre-holiday magazine in February? Why, of course not!), and it looked so intriguing that I bought the jalapenos, green and red peppers, and liquid pectin when I was at the grocery store. I mean, who can resist a recipe that says, "Put the seeded jalapenos and 1 cup of sugar in the food processor and process until jalapenos are finely ground. Sugar will be green." How cool is green sugar?

(Naturally, as with any recipe, I didn't have all the ingredients on hand that I thought I did, but instead of substituting this time, I sent Dave out for apple cider vinegar and more sugar.)

Anyway, I'll taste this in about half an hour, and if it's halfway decent, I'll hand it out to unsuspecting neighbors and relatives next week. I'll make my mom and dad eat it when we arrive in Chicago tomorrow night. Hope you've got cream cheese, Mom!

Katie had her third horseback riding lesson today, riding Bob, the pony. (Oddly enough, it didn't occur to me that little kids take lessons on little horses. I expected her to be riding regular-sized horses, but she's out there on this little pony.) She was fairly bouncy at the beginning, but by the end she was finally getting the rhythm of posting. It doesn't seem like she's that blissful while she's out in the ring, but she literally glows after the lesson. I'm glad we get to do this for her, even if she can be a bit ungrateful at times. It's fun to watch, too, although I wonder how long we have to go for lessons before we start to fit in with the horsey crowd -- so far, we're very much the outsiders at the stables.

Our contractor was supposed to start on putting walls in our basement today, but it rained. You'd think that wouldn't delay an inside job, but apparently they won't deliver lumber in the rain. So all that scrambling around last night trying the make the basement as empty/neat as possible so the workers can do the framing was a bit of a waste. At least it's done, so they'll be able to build as soon as they get all the materials. Although I do wonder how all those piles of boxes and stuff, which take up most of the volume of the proposed rooms, is actually going to fit in the confines of the rooms when they're finally finished. Ah well, best to be all Scarlett about that and think about it tomorrow. After all, we don't even have walls yet.

Wish me luck on my 5-day adventure with two kids all by myself. At least the flights are nonstop, and short, and I think I've mustered enough surprises/goodies to keep Katie and Ian occupied. Can't wait to get home and give my dad a great big hug -- and then scold him for giving me such a scare. Off to do the packing before the kids go to bed.

Fine Motor Skills, Still Under Development

2006-02-01T11:46:00.000-05:00

Ian (now three years old -- remind me sometime to regale you with tales of the dinosaur birthday party) is working on his fine motor skills. He likes to sit and draw . . . asteroids. And sometimes shooting stars (I'm not the only geek in the family). Mostly, I think it's because he tries to draw circles, and they come out slightly lumpy, so he dubs them asteroids. The alternate interpretation to his drawings (i.e., his response to the question, "What is this a picture of, Ian?") is that it's "some kind of a fingy-ma-jigger." But mostly he goes with asteroids.

At church the other day, during the Time for All Ages, when they invite the kids to the front of the service for a story or some kid-targeted activity before releasing them to Religious Education, the four kids that were present were asked to draw on a flipchart. The lay minister asked Katie to draw a picture of herself, which she dutifully did. Then Ian pipes up from his position on the floor, "Well, I can only dwaw astewoids, so I'm going to have to dwaw an astewoid." And draw an asteroid he did. This cracked the congregation up -- he's now a star at church.

Then a couple of days ago, he found a Blue's Clues notebook, and decided to play Blue's Clues around the house. He walked up to Dave.

"We're going to pway Bwue's Cwues. Our first cwue is . . . ice!" Pause. "How do you draw ice?"

Dave explained it to him, and Ian concentrated on his notebook, tongue sticking out, as he tried to follow the instructions and draw a picture of ice. Apparently, it wasn't as successful as he wanted it to be, as his next remark was, "Actually, our first cwue is an astewoid."

So maybe I don't have to worry about my perfectionist genes showing up in this one. He seems to roll with the punches.

True Confessions

2006-02-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

This is how much of a geek I am. Every day, I go to three Sudoku sites and fill them in. If I get in the top 25%, I feel pretty proud of myself; if I'm in the top 10%, I'm really, really pleased. One time I ranked 1 out of 101, and it was the highlight of my day. And if that weren't geeky enough, I've now set up a spreadsheet to track my rankings and percentages, charted by day and by difficulty.

Oh, and somebody should figure out how to block Kewlbox from me, the master procrastinor. Santa Balls, Topsy, Pengapop -- they've all got me hooked.

I really need help.

Go ahead, ask me . . .

2005-12-13T20:20:00.000-05:00

. . . how my day went.

Dave: Whatcha doin', honey?
Me: Making my mom's recipe for bourbon balls before I give in to the temptation to finish off this fifth of Jim Beam straight out of the bottle.

Passing the Geekiness On

2005-09-30T16:58:00.000-04:00

I just taught Ian a new ritual. I point to him and say, "You put your chocolate in my peanut butter!" And he replies, "You put your . . . my . . . chocolate in my . . . your peanut butter!" Repeat until we're both cracking up. Sometimes he gets it perfect. It just tickles me.

Nothing like teaching your child 20-year-old ad campaigns for no reason.

And the Germs Keep Spreading

2005-09-29T21:42:00.000-04:00

Just as I'm starting to feel better from this sinus thing (after a fitful Sudafed-laced sleep last night), we have Katie with a tummyache. She even lay down on the couch before dinner -- not her typical M.O. But she was feeling better at dinner, so we let her eat pizza. And she perked up quite a bit after that, asking for spelling words and shouting out, "Challenge me!" and bouncing around . . . until bedtime, when she perked back down. And whined a little bit. And asked to be carried to bed. My mom-senses tingling, I set her up with a plastic trash can and offered to rock, scissors, paper Dave for vomit duty in the middle of the night.

My mom-senses' timing must be off a little bit, because by the time I'd gone downstairs and gotten Ian to bring him to bed, she'd made use of the trash can, with moderate success. Dave got to deal with it -- I didn't even realize what was happening until more than halfway through the cleanup -- and he did wonderfully. No impatience, no frustration, just comforting the child and getting her to bed, which she did quickly, remarking that her tummy felt a lot better. Well, no wonder! Here's hoping she'll get over it soon -- there's nothing to make a mom feel so helpless as a tummyache.

So now my "workday" Friday, in which Dave is to have responsibility for Ian while I work, will once again take place in a fully populated house. Unless I choose to abandon everybody for parts unknown (aka Barnes & Noble). So glad I relished my day alone on Wednesday, as it seems unlikely to repeat itself any time soon!

Quiet

2005-09-28T14:29:00.000-04:00

Ahhh. The quiet. The house to myself (except for the cats, who feel the need to be around me every single second -- do you think they have daycare for kitties?). It's been a trying week, and there are Big Issues preoccupying me. But today, it's quiet. No pressing work. Household duties somewhat under control (okay, the house is a bit of a wreck, but six loads of laundry were done and put away yesterday, and there are currently -- huzzah! -- no dishes in the sink). I could wallow in the quiet. I finished a book I bought as a treat for myself (Jennifer Weiner's Goodnight, Nobody). I napped. I took Sudafed and Advil and coffee, and they combined to eliminate the sinus headache I woke up with this morning. Life is good. I feel somewhat renewed, as I head out to pick up the kids from daycare and school. Deep breaths are the order of the afternoon.

Now if I can just maintain this inner peace through the planned library and grocery store excursions this afternoon, I will be vastly improved as far as the status of my mental health goes. Hmm. Library and grocery store may be a bit too much to ask. Perhaps I will gather up the library books and drop them off myself on the way to picking up Ian. To do otherwise might tempt the fates too much, and I rather like this current feeling. Wish me luck holding everything together!

That Past Tense Is a Killer!

2005-09-27T17:45:00.000-04:00

"Mommy, will you put my shoe on again?"

"Why is your shoe off, Ian?"

"I . . . falled down and my shoe come . . . comed . . . had come off."

At least he's trying!

You Don't Bring Me Flowers . . .

2005-09-15T22:33:00.000-04:00

Tonight, Dave walked in from work and presented me with a bouquet of a dozen, long-stemmed . . . Col-Erase pencils in violet.
Those of you who aren't editors with a fixation on using purple pencil to proofread -- not red, too "angry"; not blue, too cliche; not any other color, either too hard to see or too hard to take seriously -- and who don't know how difficult these are to come by ever since Col-Erase stopped selling them in boxes of a single color (except red and blue) about 5 years ago probably won't appreciate the gesture, but I did. And he did it with no prompting from me after I told him that even when I'd found the pencils sold individually online by various art stores, I'd discovered that they charged exorbitant shipping costs.

I are a happy editor. :)

One-Liners*

2005-09-08T14:33:00.000-04:00

* Or as close to them as I can get, being the poster child for verbosity.

How sad is it to be cranky and sleepy because you stayed up until 1:30 a.m. watching tennis?

Like mother, like daughter: Katie has gotten off the bus every day so far without her backpack (and has been sent to swim against the tide to go back and get it). Think the third time's the charm? We'll see in about an hour.

You know, as much as I like spending quality time with my son, I'm getting a little irritated by being forced to do so during the half-hour-long waits for Katie's bus. It's a tiny town that takes about 5 minutes to drive through, and we're less than a mile from the school. How can the bus be 30 minutes late every day?

Yesterday, as Ian was crunching through some "dead leaves" (mostly grass, with a few leaves), he was anticipating fall, and then anticipating snow. "And when it snows, it will cover all da weaves. And da weaves will bwow around on top of da snow. And we can pway Harry Potter!" I realized that his only frame of reference for snow, after spending a year in Alabama from the ages of 18-30 months, is the Harry Potter movie. How sad! I'm so glad we're rectifying that.

And that reminded me of our first trip to visit Katie's school in Alabama, in January. Many of the elementary classrooms had art displayed in their windows. And in one 1st grade classroom there was a plethora of construction paper snowmen. And it occurred to me that the majority of those children had probably never even seen snow, let alone made a real snowman. Ironic.

Looks like the house sale in Alabama is going to close on Monday, but we're having other setbacks to counter the good news. The $1625 that we were promised in exchange for our moving shipment being 13 days overdue is up in the air, with various factions pointing fingers at various other factions, trying to shift responsibility. I won't post the details quite yet, as I'm giving them until Monday to make progress on resolving the situation. But I vow to post the whole horror story if they don't make it right.

Looks like the little guy is up from his nap -- I should probably spend some time with him not sitting at the bus stop.

Update on Us

2005-09-06T20:28:00.000-04:00

. . . and the news is good.

Today was Katie's first day of school and Dave's first day back teaching. Since you can go to just about any other mom blog to hear rhapsodizing about how quiet and lovely it was (although it really wasn't, as I was with Ian still -- his first day of daycare is tomorrow), I'll just say this. We need this. We need a schedule. We need individual efforts to pursue. We need to not be on top of each other every minute of every day. We need to go away from each other and have the chance to miss each other for a while so we can be happy to be back together again. (And then there's my own need to be alone in my own house for a significant period of time.) And that's why I'm glad it was the first day of school.

Other news:

Torey and David's commitment ceremony was wonderfully fantastic and fantastically wonderful. We were so glad to make it out there and see old friends and be a part of their special day. And traveling without the kids and spending some time just one on one was as close to bliss as I've been in quite a while. I love my kids, but traveling with them is a lot of maintenance. Being able to go a whole day traipsing around San Francisco without once looking at our watches and not having to worry about any sore feet other than ours was great.
The kids were totally spoiled by my mom, who was probably exhausted by the time she left. They loved it and didn't seem to miss us at all. Katie got new matching outfits for her and her American Girl doll, Josefina, and was thrilled to be able to help Grandma cut the pattern pieces out and sew. Ian loved baking cookies with Grandma. It all went just great, except that I didn't get to spend as much time with my mom as I'd like. And of course, I was fairly brain-dead and jetlagged when we did get home. I blame this for the act I perpetrated under the title of THE WORST DAUGHTER IN THE WORLD, EVER!!! The day after we got home, we had to take Mom to the airport. We packed everything up and headed out to the car, Mom taking her duffel bag and me bringing up the rear, telling her I'd get her suitcase. I got distracted looking for a coupon, but we got on the road in enough time to make it the 20-minute drive there. And then we pulled up to let her off, and I realized with shock and horror that I HAD FORGOTTEN TO GET HER SUITCASE FROM THE HALL. Oh. My. God. I. Am. Such an idiot. I dumped her off and tried to race back to the house and back to the airport again, only to get a call from Mom as I neared home, telling me not to bother, because the suitcase had to be in the airport for at least 30 minutes, or they wouldn't let it go on the plane. In other words, there was no way. And I'd rushed off so quickly that I didn't even get to hug her goodbye! It was just tragic, I tell you. And -- I'll never live it down.
Hurricane Katrina: I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said. It's devastating, and I think I've finally just about reached saturation point -- no pun intended. We were lucky -- our house that was still for sale in Mobile had absolutely no damage, save a shingle missing from the back eaves of the playhouse we built in the backyard. So hip hip hooray for that!

Oh, and did you notice that I said was for sale? Eagle-eyed readers will perhaps have gotten the clue that WE FINALLY SOLD OUR HOUSE TODAY!! The final price was $6,000 under the listing price, but no contingencies, and they want to close on Friday. FRIDAY! (The Realtor says that's not going to happen, but he predicts by mid-next week.) Woohoo! Words on a Web page cannot express the profound relief and jubilation happening in the house this evening. Finally, we can pay off the debts we have left from moving and stop living paycheck to paycheck, with a tiny bit of money in the bank. It's tinier than it used to be, but at least the cushion will be there. Financial solidity, here we come!

And on that note, I must go beat the 2-year-old kicking the wall repeatedly instead of sleeping. Kidding, kidding; I kid. But tying him to the bed is not totally out of the question.

Scenes from Our Life

2005-09-04T07:35:00.000-04:00

At dinner at Outback Steakhouse last night, Katie and Ian were fine-tuning their standup routines. Ian started with the only joke he knows, which cracks him up every time.

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Fwor."
"Floor who?"
"Fwor-da!" (Florida)

Katie gets in on the action:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Pencil."
"Pencil who?" (Yes, we've heard this one a million times too.)
"Pencil-vania!"

Much childish laughter. Dave spurs them on a bit with his patented "Car Talk" guys laugh.

Katie goes for another one:
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Miss -- no, wait, this one's funnier -- mouse."
"Mouse who?"
"Mouse-assippi!"

Ah, ha, ha. Now it's Ian's turn. Little Mr. Copycat starts out:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Mouse."
"Mouse who?"
"Mouse -- uh -- uh," searching his memory, "MOUSE-AVANIA!"

Hysterical laughter (genuine, this time) ensued from all parties. I love it when I get the giggles from my own kids.

It's a Blurry Line

2005-08-21T18:56:00.000-04:00

Just now, the doorbell rang. I knew Dave was outside with Katie and Ian, so I figured it was Ian, who's enchanted with the doorbell. Sure enough, it was. He stood on the porch, his hair curling damply, and said, "Oh. I just wanted to see who was in here. Are you Per-fesser Gongle [Professor McGonagall]?"

"Yes, I am," I answered, playing along. Then, noting that he was all alone, "Where's Daddy?"

He hopped down the steps, then turned and looked up at me quizzically. "You mean Hag-id? Hm. I don't know."

"Yes, I mean Hagrid. Where is he?" I asked, a little concerned that Ian was on his own, though I figured Dave had gone around back briefly.

"I don't know. Pwob-wee he's in da Chamber of Secrets, I fink."

Thanks, kid. This immersion in imagination is great and all, but it doesn't help when I actually want to know where your father is.

I can see this is the beginning of a long, long road where fantasy and reality have only the most indistinct of borders. I know. We've been through it with Katie. At one time, when she was just about 4 years old, I'd say she was actually someone else about 75 percent of the time. She's grown out of that now, and it's a relief to know that when you talk to her, you can be pretty sure that she'll answer as Katie, rather than as Spirit, Harry Potter, Hermione, or Notta the Dog (her own creation). But she's still quite impressive at role playing when she wants to be. You should see her horse mannerisms -- you'd never know that she's only been within touching distance of an actual horse a handful of times in her life.

And her brother's following right along. Neigh.

Mishmash of Stuff

2005-08-13T11:18:00.000-04:00

There's not too much interesting stuff going on today, but I've been promising myself that I'll post more often, so here I go.

Yesterday was spent redesigning the website for my freelance editorial business, JM Editorial. It's amazing how three little pages can suck your whole day away -- and that's with most of the graphics done already. And I really have to concentrate, which is hard to do when the kids are a bit squirrelly. Still, I'm pleased with it. I'd still like to tweak it a bit more, but I don't know that I have too much time to devote to it. Comments on the site's design, content, etc. are welcome.

Today we're planning to go to a community picnic here in Walden. Free food, free games, free soda -- in honor of the village's sesquicentennial (that's 150 years) celebration. Of course, it's going to be the hottest day we've seen here -- 95 degrees and 40% chance of severe thunderstorms this afternoon. It may be a short visit to the park. Still, I think it's going to be neat. So far, the romance of small-town living has not worn off.

As far as unpacking goes, the boxes for my office are all unpacked. Of course, their contents are strewn and piled around the room, so it actually looks worse than when I started. But today seems to be a high-energy day for me -- by 10 a.m. I had done laundry, folded it and PUT IT AWAY (including last week's laundry), and run a load of dishes. That's pretty amazing for me. Oh, and I even cooked dinner for all of us last night -- and everyone (kids and Dave included) ate it. I am on a domestic roll.

Dave has been clearing out our foyer this morning, which holds the majority of our clutter at the moment, so he must be feeling the energy too. Let's hope this continues -- we have the incentive of company coming on Friday, followed by my mom arriving on Wednesday. So I'd better get going on the office. If only I knew where to put everything!

Hey, Kettle, This Is Pot. You Know You're Sort of Ebonyish?

2005-08-08T22:12:00.000-04:00

(Yes, it's been far too long since I've updated. To avoid getting stuck in the same old problems I had when I wrote journals as a kid, I'm just going to start from now rather than trying to catch everything up. I'm sure bits and pieces of the horrific summer we've had will come out eventually. On the bright side, things are getting marginally better.)

We went shopping at Kohl's the other day. (I heart Kohl's so much. I bought hardly any clothes all last year because there was no Kohl's in Mobile. I walked into the store up here and felt like I'd come to my fashion home.) Katie had fallen in love with a certain outfit a few days prior, and had thrown a fit when I refused to buy it until it went on sale,* declaring that she'd never get it, and then was beside herself when it went on sale for 40% off two days later until we went the store and got it.

* Never, ever buy anything at Kohl's unless it's on sale. And even if it's on sale, keep checking the ads to see if it goes on bigger sale. Trust me on this.

The outfit is really cute (I'd link to it, but its not online), although even on sale it cost more than $30 for the skirt and crocheted, lacy top. Because we haven't quite reached the fitting room stage for Katie yet, I had her pull on the top over her clothes in the middle of the store to get the right size. Success was achieved, and we headed for other sections.

Fifteen minutes later, disaster struck! Katie realized that her horse charm, from her beloved American Girl bracelet, was missing! Great sobs ensued -- she captured just the right blend of panic and tragedy. Katie can be quite the drama queen when the situation calls for it. As a matter of fact, this was almost a point-by-point repeat of the Tragedy of the Dime Store Ring, which we had witnessed at Ikea a couple of weeks before. In that case, she lost a 35-cent ring -- apparently, her most prized possession -- somewhere in Ikea. Do you people know how big Ikea is? And do you know how much despair a 6-year-old girl can conjure up? Believe it or not, she and Dave went and retraced our steps, and they found the ring in the ballpit she had played in 20 minutes before. Unbelievable luck!

So, back to the horse charm -- the 3/4-inch long horse charm, lost in a large department store. Aha! The crocheted top! With lots of holes to snag things! We headed back to the rack, and sure enough, we found it. All was right with Katie's world once more.

I couldn't resist giving her a little lecture though. "You know, you're really lucky that we found this," I admonished. "In my family, they always joke that I have the best luck for losing things and finding them again [Don't ask how many times I've lost my wallet in my lifetime.]. You have to be more careful with your things, especially things like nice jewelry. If you're not old enough to keep track of it, you're not old enough to wear it out of the house." Properly chagrined, but joyful over reclaiming the charm, Katie nodded.

So we continue to shop. I try on a few more things; Dave browses the dress shirts and tries to figure out what he wants to wear to my best friend's upcoming commitment ceremony on the beach. Ian and Katie run around like nuts because it's getting late and they're getting loopy. I try to herd everyone toward the checkout counter. I assign Dave to checkout, and I head out the door with the kids. Suddenly, I realize that I feel like I'm missing something. My purse! I don't have my purse! And I don't know where I put it down!

I experience a brief moment of panic, then realize that I left it in the dressing room, which is fortunately just a few short steps away. I go get it, and thank the mildly freaking out woman who found it, who was worried about what to do with it.

And then it was my turn to be chagrined. Don't you love it when you find out how not far the apples fall from the tree?

Update

2005-07-20T18:09:00.000-04:00

No, we're not still on the road, though we don't have any furniture yet. I'll post something meaningful shortly, including a list of "How You Know You're Back in New York Again," coauthored with Dave. In the meantime, since Blogger's template was doing screwy things with space, I searched out a new look and found one that I love. Hope y'all (okay, okay, "youse") like it, too. It was downloaded from Point of Focus, and I'll put a permanent link button to the site as soon as I can.

On the Road Again . . .

2005-07-06T21:07:00.000-04:00

(You're welcome for the earworm.)

The movers come tomorrow. Since we are cheap/temporarily poor, we opted to do all the packing ourselves this time around. So in theory, since we've had weeks and weeks of anticipating this day, we should be all done with packing and just kicking back and enjoying our last night of TiVo for a week or so.

HA!

I will say this -- the kids' rooms and the playroom are all completely done. The spa is disconnected from the house (and Dave is still in one piece and not electrocuted) and the washer and dryer and refrigerator are disconnected. The living room is packed except for the TV equipment for all the TV watching we're not going to do. The kids' clothes for the next week or so until we are reunited with our belongings has been selected and laid aside. Our closet is full of things that need to go into our van for the trip.

The rest? Not so much done. It's close to done, which is good, I think. But there are all kinds of dribs and drabs left all over the house. Did I ever tell you about the box we discovered in the attic in NY as we were packing to move here? It was labeled "Mystery Surprise Box," and it was all the dribs and drabs left from the move from our apartment in VA, six years prior. It hadn't even been opened. We found all kinds of fun things in there. I suspect we may be in for several versions of the "Mystery Surprise Box" during this move.

So we load everything tomorrow, and then we're staying at a hotel here in Mobile tomorrow night to recover and/or entertain the kids in the pool. A solid cleaning of the house and some touchup paint, and we're good to go. Friday, Chattanooga; Saturday, Roanoke; Sunday, Wilkes-Barre; and Monday, our new home -- Walden, NY. Unfortunately, we won't get cable hooked up until the following Thursday, so there may be some lag time here in the blog. I'll make an effort to fill the time with the painting of the new house.

So we're off -- two kids, two cats, and two slightly wild-eyed adults. Wish us luck, or at the very least, wish us a sense of humor and some quick-acting amnesia.

Happy Fourth of July

2005-07-04T22:12:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I apologize in advance for all the digressing parentheticals. I try to control it, but sometimes it gets away from me.

Seeing as how it's our last Independence Day in ~~the land of the uncivilized~~ a place that doesn't restrict fireworks, Katie and I hit a "fireworks warehouse" today and spent way too much on mini-mortars, including a splurge on "giant flaming balls" launched from a tube that easily rival many professional fireworks displays of my youth. Anyway, I quite enjoyed myself, even though we had to start before it got truly dark because otherwise the kids would be even more of a mess than they currently are as they deal with us packing away all of their stuff! The kids were a bit more timid (leaving Dave and I, pyromaniacs that we are, scratching our heads wondering if they were switched at the hospital), but I think they liked it too. We were all about the gimmicky fireworks -- happy pagoda, climbing panda, racehorses, fire trucks, little tanks -- although we did bottle rockets and small fountains too. We even did a cool parachute guy, and then had to rescue him from the neighbor's yard. It was a good show, and certainly better than braving crowds and traffic for a too-late community show. Next year we'll do that, as in New York you're probably only allowed to hold up a lighter for 15 seconds or something.

Amusing scenes from our family:
(My mom wanted me to post this one.) After the closing (on Friday! Yay!) of the new house, I headed to Home Depot to buy paint and painting supplies, thinking I might get started on the kids' rooms (ha! I was mentally exhausted and ended up crashing on the inflatable mattress under the fan (no AC) for most of the afternoon). I very conscientiously locked the car with the keychain (I drove around with photos and valuables that I'd taken up there in Dave's car for 4 days, about which I was extremely paranoid) and then decided to open the trunk. Pushed the button, no trunk popping up. Darn it! Maybe I can do it manually. Push the unlock button. Nothing. No click. Car still locked. This is where I panic. (Funnily enough, I didn't try the panic button.)

Having been through this before, it only took a minute for me to hypothesize that the battery was dead in the keychain. And fortunately, I was at Home Depot, where they might have that kind of battery. And if they didn't, I did have my cell phone, and I could call AAA, although I'd feel pretty silly and I didn't want to waste that much time waiting for them. Argh! Stupid car! Stupid keychain! Argh!

There was some suspense while I searched for the right type of battery (and struggled to open the keychain in the first place), but HD came through, and they did have it. Whew! Now I don't have to call AAA to get me into the stupid car.

I called Dave that night and managed to work in a rant about his stupid car (which besides the keychain issue had been getting black goo of indeterminate origin all over my hands for the whole trip), and I told him about the events of the locking-out. His reply: "Couldn't you have used the key to unlock the doors?"

Oh. Yeah. Right.

And about Ian: Today the kids were riding their bikes, with helmets (good children!). Ian's bike ride was short-lived, but he kept his helmet on, despite his sweaty boy-head (yes, already, at 2.5 years old). He even came inside with it and kept it on for a while. As he headed out once again, I called to him, "Ian, don't you want to take your helmet off?" "No," he said distractedly, "it protects me from the aliens outside." And he exited. Dave: "Maybe we should line it with aluminum foil."

I laughed so hard I had to sit down. How early do you think they can diagnose paranoid schizophrenia these days?

Made It Safely

2005-06-29T22:41:00.000-04:00

2 days, 8 states, some 1,000+ miles . . . and I am in New York. Since I spent much of the last two days driving as hard as I could, isolated from the locations I was zooming through and immersed in musicals and "can you hear me now?" cell phone calls with friends, it's actually quite a bit of a culture shock to go from Alabama to New York -- the accents are quite different. I have got to stop saying "y'all."

Brief observations, before Barnes & Noble closes and I have to go back to the lame hotel with no Internet access:
* I stayed in a skanky motel in Chilhowie, VA, last night that actually had a real live key to open the door. When was the last time you saw that?

*The restaurant attached to the hotel had a burger named "The Big Tom Survivor Burger." Seems he's the local hometown hero. Come to think of it, that explains a lot about the hotel.

*Truckers are hands down the best drivers on the road. Almost without exception, they are courteous and keep to their lane and stay out of your way when you want to go faster than they do. Very impressive.

*The worst drivers on the road are those who are towing U-Haul trailers. They are menaces, again, almost without exception. Stay far, far away from these people.

*The prettiest section was northwest Georgia, the little tiny corner of it that I crossed. Beautiful wildflowers along the highway.

*In Joshilyn Jackson's Gods in Alabama, kudzu is almost a full-fledged character. Kudzu, for those of you don't know, is a horribly invasive vine that is taking over the South. When you drive through AL, GA, and TN, you can see it firsthand. It's amazing. Whole areas of vegetation are just covered in this broadleaf vine -- it turns shrubs into a lumpy blanket and trees are just draped with it, like tall creatures trying to pull themselves from this ooey, gooey swamp. I'd actually like to wax more poetic about this, but my brain is pretty fried. Suffice it to say, it's very eerie and strange, even in broad daylight.

That's all I can think of right now, and B&N's making closing-up noises. Tomorrow I get to walk through the house, and the closing is actually set for Friday morning! I'm still waiting for the check to get there -- I hope nothing goes wrong with that. If it doesn't, we may have a house in 2 days!

Off to the Great Northeast!

2005-06-28T08:12:00.000-04:00

Today I'm setting out on my solitary trek to New York to (hopefully) close on our new house. No, the closing isn't actually set yet, but we are crossing all our appendages hoping that it will be on Thursday or Friday. Think good thoughts both for me (2 11-hour days of driving) and Dave (5 days with the kids as single dad). I definitely think I got the better end of this deal.

Scenes from a Bookstore

2005-06-25T20:54:00.000-04:00

We've spent two days not leaving the house, recovering from our vacation, and now we've slipped over the edge into cabin fever, so we decided to get the children out of the house. Now, many people might take their kids to a park or something, but since it's 3,000 degrees with 150% humidity here in Alabama, we opted for our favorite family outing: a bookstore.

Around here, we've got several giant bookstore chains from which to choose, and it usually comes down to Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. I know that as the bleeding heart, politically correct liberal, I should be frequenting small, independent, mom-and-pop bookstores, preferably ones with a large selection of queer and feminist literature, but I can't help it. I love Barnes & Noble. Everything about that store target-markets ME ME ME, from the Starbucks (oh yeah, slam me for that too, why don't you?) to the author-decorated tote bags to the hunter green and cherrywood decorating. I could spend ages in B&N, and frequently have. Dave and I have not infrequently gone there on date nights, even.

But Books-A-Million wins out when we've got the kids, because they've got this great Thomas train table, and Ian can entertain himself for minutes on end. Katie prefers B&N because they have a little stage and benches in their kids' section, and she enjoys pretending she's in a steeplechase and galloping up and down the aisles, jumping over furniture. Yes, I know, we're horrible parents. At least we try to keep the exuberance to a minimum, especially when there are other patrons around.

So BAM it was today, despite ardent lobbying from Katie, who whispered furiously into Ian's ear in the back seat of the van. And it worked -- we got out of the house, we found some great values on home improvement books (tiling and painting and bookcases) to foster our new endeavors with the house, and we spent $100! How on earth we did that, I don't know -- especially since they were having a 20% off sale -- but we did it. And we can rationalize it by saying that at least it was probably less than we'd spend at an amusement park or something, and we do have lots of great, lasting books to show for it. Knowledge! How can you put a price on knowledge?!? Plus, I've still got half of a divine espresso brownie waiting for me to finish it. That's all the rationalization needed at certain times of the month.

There were two blogworthy moments at BAM. In the first, Katie and Ian were eating their ~~brownie bribes~~ nutritious snacks in the cafe. Katie, for some reason, started singing the alphabet song.

Katie: A-B-C-D
Ian, piping up: E-F-G
K: H-I-J-K
I: Ella-emma-o-pee
K: Q-R-S
I: T-U-V
K: W-X
I: Oh, oh, oh.

Okay, so he fell down on that last part. But you have to understand, we've never heard Ian sing the alphabet. He knows most of his letters, and has for a while, but when you ask him to sing almost any song, he just hums it. He never sings words to songs. I have no idea why not. Dave and I started at each other in amazement. Later, I tried to coax him to sing the alphabet song again by himself -- and he hummed it for me (perfect pitch, by the way, but no words). I asked him to sing the words, and he replied, "Humming is the words." Stubborn.

The other exchange didn't involve my kids. I was scanning the fiction section looking for a paperback that was engaging, but light enough to take on my trip to NY to close on the house this week (fingers crossed, knock on wood). At the moment, my nightstand contains books on John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln -- not exactly light reading. Anyway, an elderly woman was discussing a book with a staff member who looked to be about college-age.

SM: It's a really good book. It's one of my favorites.
EW: What's it about?

(I snuck a glance -- it was Animal Farm.)

SM: It's about this group of animals that get together and rise up and kick out the farmer and take over the farm, and then slowly they start to become more and more like the farmer.

Okay, so far so good, I said to myself as I eavesdropped. Then this:

SM: It's really an allegory of our political system.

BUZZ!! WRONG ANSWER!! And if you know me at all, you know I had to be obnoxious and intrude on the conversation.

Me: Um, actually it's an allegory about Communism.
SM: Well, true, but it's almost like what our political system is today. People complain about things and then turn into what they were complaining about.
Me: Yes, but Orwell wrote it about Communism -- that's the main thrust of the book. (To EW) You'll like it, really.
EW: It's not for me, it's on my granddaughter's reading list for school. (Running away with a "Get me out of here" look on her face.)

The staff member then tried to engage me in a political discussion, but I've learned my lesson about doing that down here. Very bizarre.

As I checked out, I found an abandoned copy of Animal Farm at the register. Gee, I hope I didn't have anything to do with that.

They're Trying to Drive Me CRAZY, Aren't They?

2005-06-24T18:04:00.000-04:00

So the house closing in NY was supposed to happen "on or about" June 15. For those of you not familiar with NY real estate peculiarities, let me just tell you that it is absolutely impossible to pin anyone related to the closing down and make them give you an actual date that the closing will occur. Never mind that you have to get yourself from or to another state, or that you have to arrange for childcare, or that your belongings are IN TRANSIT and need a place to land, or that you have a job or anything -- "on or about" means "we really have no earthly idea until magically, by some sort of divine intervention, all the relevant parties appear in the same location at the same time."

This is the third time we've been through this. The first time we were moving from VA and had no kids and two cats. I don't remember how stressful it was, because we sort of had nothing but time. I do remember that Dave and I drove up together from NY and closed on the house, then I left him there and returned to VA to work for another month, upon which he flew down and we drove up together in my car.

Last year, we made plans to move by the closing date because, you know, we thought the closing might actually happen on that day, and then when it didn't, we had to scramble for alternatives. We ended up imposing on a friend of mine and giving her power of attorney so that she could close for us a couple of days later, because we had to get on the road in order to make it to the closing in AL on time. Our attorney (the very epitome of a sleazy NY lawyer, but older) was incredulous that we had dared to make plans around the date -- I don't know how, but he apparently expected us to order up movers and load up the kids at a moment's notice.

Now we're dealing with NY again, and it's fun, fun, fun. As I said, closing was supposed to happen June 15. The only problem? The house wasn't actually finished yet. Big holes in the walls where the units were joined together, no blacktop on the driveway, carpets not installed, etc. So it didn't happen. So we gave them a couple of weeks to get it together, and went to my parents' for a break. Now we're back, and we were counting on closing next week (we have to close by July 5, or we pay a $1200 penalty to the bank for going over our rate lock period). Today, I found out that the house didn't pass for the certificate of occupancy because it needs the carpets (still), a stove, and a concrete landing at the bottom of our steps from the deck. Oh, and the survey has to be fixed. The seller claims this can all be done by Monday, and that the CO will be available by Tuesday. Our current attorney isn't buying it, exactly, and the bank can't really go forward with scheduling the closing until they have the appraisal in hand (also done today).

The thing is, if this closing is happening on Thursday (which, crossing all our appendages, we think might happen), I have to leave on Monday. Preferably Monday morning, since I'll be driving approximately 10 hours that day. I begged our attorney (actually, his assistant) to move mountains to get this to happen on Thursday, and she's promised to try, but at the moment I'm left with not knowing until Monday morning (!) whether I should jump in the car and drive to NY. AAAAAAAA!!!!

It's just all icing on the cake of the uncertainty we've had to deal with over the last few months. I've never been very good at handing control over to anyone. And when I feel like I'm handing over control to no one, well, just fit me for a straightjacket. As a result, I'm alternating between manically pulling things off walls to prep for hole-filling and paint touching-up, or slipping into an cocoon of obsessive denial in which I mess around on my computer or work on a puzzle for hours. I can't take it much longer, and I'm pretty sure Dave can't either, though he's being pretty good at reining any verbal reactions to my insanity.

Is this ever going to be over?

...And We're Back

2005-06-22T18:27:00.000-04:00

We have returned -- though not yet recovered -- from our 10-day trip from coast to coast and back again. Okay, okay, it was the south-to-the-north version (Gulf Coast to Lake Erie), but whaddaya want with two kids in tow? Some highlights of/observations from/advice that results from the trip.

1. Vans are awesome. We packed for this preliminary-to-the-move odyssey, and we didn't even come close to filling up half of our Toyota Sienna -- and that's even counting the giant inflatable bed we had to bring. It gives me hope that we won't be giving the vacuum cleaner away to the neighbors when the moving van's pulled away and we've forgotten all the little things that are still left in the house.

2. Vans are also awesome because they eliminate many of the road trip hazards I remember from my youth -- those of the "He's touching me! Well, she's on my side! Well, he's breathing my air!" variety.

3. Even awesome vans and tons of goodies to entertain the children will not prevent them from uttering "I'm booooored" approximately every 2.4 seconds. (This even applies to the 2-year-old, who doesn't even know what that means.)

4. Sirius radio is seriously cool. It is a pain to find clear FM stations for the FM transmitter to work all the time, but I may be able to solve that by using the tape adapter from my Lyra. It was especially cool to switch to the all-Elvis channel on our way to Graceland, and then find that that channel actually broadcasts from Graceland (well, duh!).

5. Graceland is not so much cool. I'm willing to grant that my perceptions may have been affected by sleep-deprivation-induced crankiness (the kids do NOT adapt to hotels as well as I think they will) and 90+ degree heat and crowds with a median age of 57, but even if conditions were optimal, I'm not sure I'd be very impressed. It looks like your well-off aunt's house -- lots of plush white carpeting and furniture and everything a little bit too fancy, but still small, boxy, out-of-date rooms. There is one room that has green shag carpeting on the ceiling. (Ian's comment: "That wug doesn't be-yong on the ceiling!")

5a. I was very tempted to buy a stuffed replica of Graceland, as it almost fit the criteria for my stuffed object collection. I find a great deal of irony (and I readily admit I may be the only one) in plush versions of inanimate objects -- I have a stuffed Eiffel Tower, a stuffed space shuttle, a stuffed Boston Trolley, and a stuffed Saturn (the planet, not the car). These amuse me greatly. Alas, the Gracelance, while sufficently stuffed, was not furry, so it failed the test.

6. The St. Louis Arch is just an amazing work of art. Every time I see it, I'm just stunned by its simplicity and elegance. I even enjoy the 2001-like little cages you ride up to get to the top.

7. St. Louis's The Magic House is an incredible children's museum -- if you have kids and can get there, go! The exhibits were interesting, educational, and well-maintained. The kids loved racing from room to room, and they also enjoyed the 3-story high slide (that I even remember from when I went there about 25 years ago). I was the only one who would do the Van de Graaf generator (the thing that makes your hair stand up with static electricity) -- the children are a little bit chicken. I was really, really glad we ditched Memphis early enough to get to St. Louis to do this.

8. The Lincoln Presidential Museum was interesting, though we could have spent a little more time there, too. The multimedia shows they have were very well done. (Note to illustrate the difference between men and women: At the end of the stirring holographic Ghosts in the Library presentation, I turn to Dave, wiping away little tears. He looks at me excitedly and says, "I just figured out how they do that and why the window is at a 45-degree angle!") Again, the kids were a bit chicken -- apparently cannon fire isn't their favorite sound in the world.

8a. The absurd souvenir that I had to buy at the Lincoln Museum -- one of those pressed, elongated pennies with . . . LINCOLN'S HEAD ON IT!

9. My parents put up with a lot from us, including this whirlwind visit on very short notice. But they hosted us nicely, and accompanied us on all sort of outings, from a Wilton Tent Sale, to the mall to climb on the climbing structure, to American Girl Place, to the Field Museum, to an Architectural Boat Tour of Chicago -- all in 4.5 days. We did a lot less sitting around the house than we have on previous visits. The kids must be getting older.

10. Katie got to visit American Girl Place and see their show and pick out a doll to pay for with the money she'd been saving. After much dithering, she picked Josefina, but only wanted to buy one accessory set. I couldn't figure this out -- we were there, she had $80 still, and I couldn't understand why she was kind of shutting down. A few days later, she told my mom that if she saved just a little bit more, she'd be able to buy Kaya as well. Ohhhh, now I get it. She's a hoarder.

11. AG Place may be the most estrogen-filled atmosphere in the world. Dave's threatening to invest in property in downtown Chicago to build GI Joe World across the street. It was very entertaining to eavesdrop on conversations between girls and their mothers.

Mother: If you buy the modern clothes upstairs, you can put them on your Molly doll whenever you want to.
10-year-old girl, aghast: No, you can't do that!

12. If you're going to be motoring up and down the Chicago River on a boat for an hour and a half listening to descriptions of buildings on the day before the summer solstice and you're a pale redhead, you'd be wise to BRING SUNSCREEN. Remind me of this when I get skin cancer around my eye and cheek -- the spot that's blistering right now. This act of forgetfulness made me very, very unhappy.

13. Traffic in Chicago is nightmarish. We spent THREE HOURS driving home from AG Place on a Thursday afternoon, and that was leaving at 3:30.

14. The trip home was pretty uneventful, even though we spent longer periods in the car. I now think that we are going to be able to handle 6-hour stretches in the car during the move. Probably without killing the children. Although some well-timed stops at play places may help preserve our sanity. Do you think there's an online guide to those?

15. I've decided that there's a Starbucks on every corner -- until you're actually looking for them. I think I need some sort of GPS chip that will be implanted under my skin, so that I can be anywhere and just call a hotline that will give me directions to the nearest caffeine fix.

Well, that's long enough. As I said, we all survived, and that's the good thing. Now I hear Dave in the other room trying to explain what records are to the kids (I bought him a record player for Father's Day). I don't think I've ever felt so old in all my life.

The View, Obscured

2005-06-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

Before I was just irked by The View and the co-hosts' stance on breastfeeding. Now I'm downright pissed. They said on the show yesterday that they would be discussing the issue on today's show, when Barbara Walters could be there. I just finished watching. Not only didn't they discuss it on the show, but they didn't make any allusion to their promise to discuss it. Clearly, they've realized that they're in trouble with this issue. I used to admire the show's bravery in taking on all kinds of topics. I'm extremely disappointed by this new development.

Oh, and can I just say that I love the new term "lactivist"? So much nicer than "nipple Nazi"!

EXPLODING FRUIT HEADS!!!

2005-06-08T10:58:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm insulated from most commercials these days by my TiVo (I heart my TiVo more than I can say), but I just saw the worst, grossest, aimed-at-kids commercial ever. At first I didn't even know what it was advertising. It just showed two kids with gigantic fruit heads (watermelon and blue grapes, I think) -- think Fruit-of-the-Loom guys but with faces poking out of the fruit. And then the blue grape one SNEEZED BLUE ECTOPLASM ALL OVER THE ROOM.

I cannot begin to tell you how disgusting it was. GROSS, GROSS, GROSS!!! Am I the only one?

(It was for Fruit Gushers, by the way -- candy that even my children won't eat.)

Breastfeeding and Enjoying The View

2005-06-07T20:29:00.000-04:00

Hey, you! Get your mind out of the gutter! This isn't about nursing voyeurism. It's about that TV show, you know, the one with five women who are each specially chosen to represent a demographic so that many people will watch? Actually, I like The View, although I've never identified with the "right" persona. Meredith Vieira is probably most like me -- bold, with a big mouth, wrapped up in the Mommy thing -- but she's at least 10 years older than I. The young ones, first Lisa Ling and now Elisabeth Hasselbeck, have never really fit me. Even Elisabeth, whose new baby is closer in age to mine than Meredith's, doesn't suit me -- for starters, she's very conservative, both politically and personally. I have never met a woman of what I would consider my generation who still uses the phrase "down there" as a substitute for vagina. And that irks me. Why bother with The Feminine Mystique et cetera if women still can't name their own body parts?

Anyway. I watched The View today (around children galloping -- literally -- around an imaginary equestrian course complete with jumps made of pillows and boxes. Boy, I love the "horsey" phase of girlhood). Apparently there was a "nurse-in" yesterday outside ABC headquarters to protest the fact that last week Barbara Walters made disparaging comments about breastfeeding in public -- sorry, Star Jones, I mean she allegedly made disparaging comments. (I happened to catch that episode, too -- BW was telling a story about how she was made uncomfortable by a woman nursing a baby in her row on an airplane.) The co-hosts seem so hurt that their remarks were taken badly, but I wasn't surprised at all.

In all the years I've been (intermittently) watching the show, whenever breastfeeding comes up, they make vaguely disparaging remarks. Meredith and Joy both say that they breastfed, but I think in each case it was for less than a year (I may be wrong about this), so any talk about extended nursing is immediately bashed. You can imagine how I feel about that, given that I nursed both my children for around 2 years each, and have known and respected many women who have gone as long or longer. Star is completely disgusted by the process in the same way my younger sister is and the same way a lot of people are before they actually have a child. Elisabeth seemed to be so grossed out by the idea of it while she was pregnant that I'm really surprised she's doing it with her new baby. It's no wonder they're the target of this nurse-in -- yet they all seemed so surprised by it.

Now don't get me wrong. I do know that many women/families choose not to nurse. I do know that there are people who are uncomfortable with breastfeeding or who have difficulty, and with people I know personally, I am supportive of doing whatever gets you through the day without strangling your child. On the other hand, I am more than willing to offer advice, support, comfort, whatever to women who are struggling with breastfeeding, because I think it's the best way to feed your child. I'm also a big fan of laying it on the line: breastfeeding is not always easy, it's not often fun, and it doesn't equal a soft-focus cozy nursery moment every single time you sit down to nurse your child. For me, it meant toe-curling, hair-straightening pain for about 6 weeks for each kid; full/leaky breasts; not leaving my children for overnight until after they turned 2; and an awful lot of sitting on the couch wishing I was doing something -- anything -- else. But I still think it's the right thing to do, and I'm proud that I did it, and I'm glad that I was able to give that experience to my children.

Where The View comes in is that they reflect and represent -- and I would argue, even influence -- the culture at large. For many, many people, breastfeeding is "icky." You should hear some of the tales out there of nursing moms being shunned or shamed or verbally dressed down in public. It's horrifying. And personally, if The View is supposed to represent women and women's points of view, I'd like to see them be more encouraging. They say they are supportive of the right to breastfeed, but I don't think they "walk the talk" as much as they think they do. I know you can't necessarily change individuals' minds, but I'd like to see them understand that by putting their own vaguely negative opinions of breastfeeding out there, they are failing to be good role models of women who support other women.

I'm sorry that I'm not yet in New York. I think I would have gone into the City for the opportunity to support women in that nurse-in.

Back Among the Living

2005-06-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

I sent off the manuscript I'd been working on last night, and I've returned to the land of engaged living (as opposed to the last few weeks where I've been staring at the screen in my office, often procrastinating). I actually missed my kids -- not just felt guilty that Dave was doing all the work, but missed doing things with them. But thankfully, that's all over, and now it's time to be Mommy again . . . and PACK.

Today I took the kids to a farmer's market and to a playground and actually played with them for the all of 20 minutes we could stand in the heat and the humidity. God, it's hot in the South in the summer! Found a cool park, though, so we may try to hit it again if it ever cools off -- or perhaps we'll go at 6 when the kids wake up.

And then this afternoon I attacked the coat closet and Katie's room with boxes. We actually weeded out quite a few coats and clothes for donation. (Woohoo! Every pound donated is another 35 cents saved! [Yes, really.]) And there were a surprising number of pairs of gloves found. Then Katie allowed me to pack up all of her My Little Ponies except four (yes, really). And we filled two book boxes with her books, and there's still about a box and a half more. I remember when I was little knowing kids who didn't have any books at all -- we seem to have gone overboard the other direction.

Anyway, it's progress. We haven't quite reached the panic stage of shoving everything into boxes willy nilly yet, but if we don't make some more progress, I can see it coming. But it's our only job for the next week and a half or so, so I think we can probably do it.

Since my "fans" (hi, Deb) are asking for a moving update, I figured I should blog about it. I think we've finally worked our way through Plans A, B, and C, and arrived at about Plan X, which may be a winner. The problem with not having one house sold is that there are no deadlines for anything -- you don't have to be out by a certain date, so you can put off the unpleasantness of moving for longer. But our house in NY is supposed to close June 16 (in NY, for some reason, no one wants to admit that they're actually closing until about 28 minutes until they actually do -- I think it's because of the Mafia, but I'm not sure), and somebody's got to be there to sign for the darn thing. And there are two cars, two kids, and two cats to be driven 22 hours away.

Anyway, the plan of the day is that on the 13th, I will be driving Dave's car to NY in about 2.5 days, alone. I'm stocking up on CDs and bringing the Sirius radio along. I'll also have my cell, so if anyone wants to be my virtual road trip buddy and chat with me as the miles roll away, just say the word. On the 15th, I'll do a walkthrough, and on the 16th, I'll close. Then on the 17th, I'll leave Dave's car at the house along with whatever belongings we've managed to squeeze into a Saturn SC2 (I'm thinking it will mostly be guitars), and fly back to AL. About a week later, we'll finish up the packing and load everything into the moving van and head out as a family. Two kids and two cats and two of us, driving about 6 hours a day for four days. Thank God we bought the in-car TV/DVD player before Dave got laid off.

It sounds like a plan. And I think it's better than any of the other alternatives, which included things like driving up in two cars with one adult, one kid, and one cat each in them, stopping to switch whatever entity was driving us crazy. Of course, I'm not the one who's staying home alone with the kids for five days. And it could all be thrown off if for some reason the house isn't going to actually close.

Uncertainty. It's becoming a close family friend.

P.S. EVERYONE is at Book Expo America except me. And I'm pouting. Next year, as God is my witness!

Discombobulated by a "Driveby"

2005-06-03T09:37:00.000-04:00

This morning I checked my e-mail, as usual, and in my "junk" account, I see an anonymous comment to my blog . . . from Scott Bryk, who found me via this entry and left a comment. So it's not so anonymous, but it is absolutely impossible to e-mail him back. So hey there, Scott, how's it going? Yes, I'm the grown-up version of Jennifer Dockstader, erstwhile nerdy red-haired girl who lived in Nebraska, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Virginia -- not necessarily in that order (I put this in in case someone's searching for me :). I don't remember the retainer clicking of which you speak, but I do remember other things -- like yearbook in Mr. Davies' classroom with Mr. Begay, Peter, Angela, and Nikki. It was our own little Breakfast Club. I remember being traumatized by your reaction to the Challenger disaster, and you and Peter pulling wings off of flies in English class. Gee, aren't those pleasant memories? But I also remember thinking you were a pretty cool guy, and maybe having a little crush on you back in the day. If you want to drop me a line that I can actually reply to, try widget (at) jmeditorial.com.

My memory for things that happened to me before college is just horrible. I know people can remember kids they went to preschool with, but for me, I have only a smattering of elementary school memories. Junior high and high school are a little stronger, but I have a terrible memory for names and faces -- perhaps because I got to know so many people over the course of my childhood. I go over to classmates.com and peruse the names there sometimes, and I think to myself, "Yes, that name sounds familiar," but then I can never put a face with it (and I'm too cheap to actually pay for it). Plus, there are few people I really want to get back in touch with. I attended the high school I graduated from in Folsom, CA, only two years, and only made a few close friends. I'd probably go attend a reunion if it were at all convenient, but I imagine there'd be a whole lot of people there that I had no memory of.

Sometimes I think it's sad that I haven't managed to maintain friendships from my childhood. And then I think I'm probably better off. Even my longest friendships from college, though I cherish them dearly, come with baggage on both sides -- we've all done and said things that the other doesn't forget, and let's face it, when you're 16, you do and say some stupid things that even you forget about later. Still, I do find myself wondering what's become of people I used to know, just because I was part of their daily circle at one time, and I wish them well and am curious to find out how they turned out.

So if you do Google me because you knew me long, long ago, leave me a note -- but give me an e-mail address too!!

Laundry Day Success!

2005-06-01T17:11:00.000-04:00

Five loads of laundry, including all kids' clothes, my clothes, and all sheets and towels, washed and dried, all in the same day! YESSSSSS!!

What's that? They should be folded, too? Oh . . .

Laundry Day

2005-06-01T12:50:00.000-04:00

Did you know that having only three school uniforms for your daughter (because they cost three times what normal clothes cost) forces you to be on a regimen of doing laundry twice a week? And that when school is out, you can easily go a week and a half without doing laundry before you get fed up and decide to wash everything in the house?

I just walked around the corner to find Ian wearing an orange Tigger T-shirt (hand-me-down from the Disney-obsessed in-laws) and red plaid shorts. "What are you wearing?" I laughed. Dave replied, "It's laundry day." "I see," I said.

And Ian threw out his arms and caroled, "I'm Yaund-ee Day Boy!!"

Indeed.

A Helpful Household Hint

2005-05-30T11:58:00.000-04:00

Having trouble keeping your house cleaned regularly? Here's a little tip from me to you. Pretend that you have put your house up for sale. Get a friend to call you at random times during the week and announce that she's a Realtor from Such-and-Such Realty, and she'd like to show your house in an hour. Then go into a cleaning frenzy unrivaled even by that inspired by a visit from your mom (especially since you've had the excuse that your mom will understand because you just had a baby...um, 6 years ago).

Oh, this is such a fun aspect of our lives these days. We're trying to keep things cleanish on a regular basis, but The Call always seems to come just when we've let our guards down and the kids have toys scattered from one end of the house to the other and there's black stuff growing in the toilet (it happens in less than a week down here, I swear! And I don't know why) and the dishwasher's full but not yet run and the sink is also full, and we're hesitant to run the dishwasher because it's SO LOUD and we don't want to scare off the prospective buyers and the laundry is in multiple piles/baskets in the laundry room.

We've gotten pretty good at the "battle stations" routine -- Dave Swiffers the hardwood floor; I hit the bathrooms with toilet brush and sanitizing wipes (thank God for sanitizing wipes -- second only to the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on my list of miracle cleaning products); I make beds; he picks up toys and opens shades and turns on lights all over the house and lowers the air conditioning a couple of degrees. I clean the kitchen counters; he gets the kitchen floors. I vacuum; he scoops the cat litter and lights scented candles.

And then we sit and wait and get our hopes up. I tell you, the closest feeling to that of waiting for a looker to come to our house is the ones I experienced when I was 15 or 16 and was sitting waiting for a date to show up. Butterflies in the stomach. Wondering if this connection will be "the one." And then, sometimes, they don't show up during the window in which they said they'd arrive. And you wait a little longer, and wonder if maybe they're just running late. And you keep your high heels and makeup on -- er, you keep the candles lit and lights on and shades open, and wait some more, until finally you realize they're not coming. You've been stood up again. And you wonder what went wrong. What didn't they like about you, and couldn't they have had the courtesty and call and tell you what happened? You'd be forgiving and understanding; really, you would. Honestly, it's exactly the same feeling -- except with house selling, there's a lot more money involved.

Time to straighten the office (always the last room to get "the treatment"). Wish us luck -- again. They're be here in 47 minutes -- or so they say.

Scenes from an Alabama Birthday Party

2005-05-29T20:59:00.000-04:00

So. One of the boys in Katie's class had a birthday party today. Though she's not a particular friend of this boy, and though we received the invitation less than a week ago, I thought she might like to go. She concurred. It was a pool party, and since I had had to rescue Katie at a pool party we attended last week, I cornered the mom at the last day of school party (these kids have a swingin' social life) and sort of invited myself.

Side note: We're at a strange juncture in life -- last year, at the 5-year-old birthday parties, moms and dads and siblings came along, and we had to plan for 20-some people inside the house when we threw preschool-and-under parties. This year, by some sort of hive consensus, the kids are just dropped off at parties. I'm finding this difficult to deal with. I'm not that overprotective, but you know, good moms are supposed to give strangers the third degree over items in their house ranging from guns to child molesters, and somehow, it seems awkward to do that with the parents of one of your kids' classmates. From the other side, I'm a little bewildered by dealing with strange kids staying at my house when I don't exactly have the authority of familiarity with which to discipline them. So I'm going along with this, but reluctantly.

Anyway, given that Katie almost drowned twice, I mentioned to the mom that she wasn't a very strong swimmer, and that maybe I should just hang around just in case. "Oh, you don't have to," said the mom. "I'm going to be watching them like a hawk. This little guy," she said, nodding to her 2-year-old who needs a haircut so badly he's crooking his neck to see under his bangs, "almost fell in the pool last week and gave us a heart attack." "Well," I replied, "if it's okay with you, I would like to stick around." "Oh, but you really don't have to." "Well, I'll talk to Katie about it and see if she wants me there."

Katie, being the somewhat shy (initially) kid that she is, wanted me there. Fine. Then this morning we wake up to gray clouds and predictions of thunderstorms. Sure enough, by 1:30 it's pouring rain and there's thunder rumbling in the distance as we prepare to go to the party. I have Katie dress in her clothes but bring her swimsuit just in case, even though I'm sure there's no way they're going to be actually swimming. The poor mom, I'm thinking, planning outdoor activities and having to squeeze everyone inside to do alternative activities. I took some work along and planned to be a drop-off mom so that I wasn't taking up too much room.

And then we got there, and the house was a mansion. Well, no worries about taking up too much room, I guess. But I have to qualify it. You see, if you went by the invitation, you would have thought that this was a pirate-themed party. I was soon to discover that it was actually an Alabama-themed party. The first clue was the enormous front yard -- which had scattered around it various faded Little Tikes vehicles and a giant trampoline. Yes, in the front yard.

At the front door, there was no evidence of a door bell. In front of the unvarnished entry doors were a 3-foot by 2-foot Army tank toy and a cardboard box with a sad-looking turtle and some wilted greens. We knocked on the door, which was opened by a man wearing jeans and no shirt. This man appeared to be the boy's father, but I'd never met him before and he didn't bother to introduce himself to us. We were ushered in.

The house was huge inside -- probably at least 4,000 sf -- and there were vaulted ceiling and faux finished walls and archways between the rooms. And then I looked at the floor, which was part marble, part warped and twisting wood, part tatty carpeting, and part bare concrete. Yes, bare concrete. The dad sheepishly admitted that they'd had a flood about a week ago and that was the reason for the state of the floors. That's awful, I commiserated, all the while thinking, It hasn't rained in weeks -- how did they have a flood? I found out later from the mom that the 2-year-old, who appears to live a largely unsupervised life, had turned on the water in the bathtub upstairs and put in the plug without his mom realizing it, and then she had left for work. It flooded the whole house and caused $10,000 worth of damage!!! Oh. My. God.

Anyway, we go outside to the back yard, where it is -- let me remind you -- actively raining in an area known for its huge thunderstorms. There are four children in the pool. I am so not comfortable with this, but I gave in to peer pressure (and the fact that there was apparently nothing else planned for the kids to do) and let Katie put on her suit and go swimming, all the while nervously watching the skies. About 20 minutes later, a thunderbolt chased the kids out of the pool -- thank God -- and the moms made noises about having to wait half an hour until the kids could go back in again. Fortunately, food was served -- pizza and hot dogs -- as the only other activity in the house was watching some older boys play a gory, violent, I-wouldn't-let-my-husband-play-it video game on a 60-inch TV. No one seemed concerned about this but me. Katie and three of the girls from her class -- the birthday boy, as far as I can tell, never said one word to her at the party -- sat and ate and acted silly. Then the kids explored the house a little while I chatted with some moms, trying to suppress the idea that they were going to stumble across some weaponry, because -- make no mistake about it -- this was the type of house that held guns. And, of course, every 3 minutes Katie would come back and ask if she could go in the pool again and pout when I said no.

Two of her friends' moms relented and let the girls go in the pool -- traitors! -- but at least one held back and told her daughter to wait until after the cake and ice cream, which bought us a bit of time. We went out back, where it had stopped raining (but I still wasn't happy about the weather) for the cake. The birthday boy had to be almost bodily dragged out of the pool for pictures and singing and cake, while his 2-year-old brother (who had appeared from naptime wearing a pajama top and a diaper -- cringe) had to be stopped from walking directly into the deep end of the pool. He then proceeded to balance precariously on various pieces of lawn furniture, giving the other moms and me heart attacks while his parents and other relatives blissfully ignored him. He also managed to take the ice cream scoop to the remains of the cake and eat about a cup and a half of icing all by himself. When you're at someone else's house, when do you step in?

So much for watching like a hawk. I spent most of the party counting little wet heads in the pool and looking for shadows on the bottom. There were many times when there were no adults outside, and once the 2-year-old was left outside -- around an unfenced pool! -- with no adult supervision. Yikes! I could not wait for the damned "party" to be over with, I was so appalled. Not to mention I was tired of explaining to my daughter that I didn't want her to go in the pool during a lightning storm because I didn't want her to be electrocuted and also because I like her hair nice and straight. I tell you, this child does not appreciate me.

All I can say is, from now on I'm going to trust my instincts about what party invitations we accept. No wonder this boy is the one who always gets in trouble at school.

Trapped by Technology

2005-05-25T09:36:00.000-04:00

Well. Here I am, sitting in Atlanta Bread Company, killing time between dropping off Katie at school at 7:35 and going back to her school at 9:40 for an "event." (Her class of 12 has read 1203 books since January and have made a bookworm (out of paper links) to represent that, and they're walking the bookworm over to the upper school to show off. I'll be there taking pictures.)

Anyway, one would think that this would be an ideal time to get a little work done on the manuscript I'm copyediting. And I did think that. And then I got to ABC, opened up my laptop, and realized that it wouldn't recognize my mouse. @*&#*! Well, obviously, I can't work on the manuscript.

I have a love-hate relationship with my laptop (although I'm a little afraid to type that, worried that the laptop will read this post as I'm typing it in a HAL-like voice and blow up or something). It has never worked properly. I think there's something freaky in the wiring under the place where you rest your wrists, because I can be typing along, and somehow the cursor will jump up a paragraph and let me keep typing right in the middle of a previous sentence. Usually I notice, but there have been times I haven't, and that's bad for business!

Also, I don't get touchpads. I just don't. I know how they're supposed to work, but I can't get mine to do it. So if your laptop has a problem when you type and you can't navigate it to point-and-click, it's pretty worthless, right? Except that sometimes I need to get out of the house to work because there are so many things to distract me at home. I'm at a loss. I think about getting a new laptop, but I'm not so sure all my problems would be solved with a new one, so I stick this one out. Hey, at least it gives us an alternate computer for my daughter to play her horse-jumping video games -- when the mouse is working.

In other news, yesterday was our 8th anniversary. And, of course, we're just like we were as newlyweds. Except we spent the afternoon assembling nine mix-in-a-jars for our daughter's multitude of teachers. And the evening yelling at the kids to get them to sit down and eat dinner and stop fighting in the bathtub. And holding down the boy to get his jammies on while he raged at us. And reading Dr. Seuss books. And turning deaf ears to Katie's cries of "But I'm huuuuungryyyyy" after she was already in bed with the lights out subsequent to refusing the first meal that was offered to her and demanding chicken nuggets for which she decided she was not hungry by the time they were cooked and then refusing them a final time not 5 minutes before she went to bed so that they got thrown in the trash. But oh yeah, everything in our lives is just the same.

We did put a moratorium on TV for the evening and played Trivial Pursuit for Book Lovers, which we abandoned after only earning about two wedges a piece. We decided that whereas with regular Trivial Pursuit, sometimes you can guess, with this version you either know it or you don't, and often you don't. Also, if you don't know the answer, guess "Margaret Atwood." (Am I showing my ignorance to admit that I have no idea who Margaret Atwood is?) I was tickled to see a question about one of Jennifer Weiner's books, given that I'm a devoted reader of her blog. And we also exchanged little gifts which neither of us had a lot of energy to devote to picking out. And there was some romance. (We did, however, have to skip the semi-traditional paging through the wedding album and/or watching the amateur wedding video, as those are packed.) But still, I look forward to the day when we can make our anniversary the holiday it should be once again. Maybe that's why the 10th is such a big deal -- you can finally escape from the day-to-day tribulations of young children and get back to being more of a couple.

Preparations for the move are proceeding apace. And by that I mean, really not at all. We occasionally pack a box. We think we might move in the second week of June, which I'm panicking to realize is only two-and-a-half weeks away. We don't have a mover organized (still waiting on one more estimate). We haven't sold this house. We have only a tentative closing date for the house in NY, and I haven't heard anything about how likely that date actually is. We have a bazillion possibilities for getting selves, possessions, cars, and cats up to NY, and we flip through those daily. At the moment we're thinking that I might drive up to NY with Dave's car by myself and his guitars and other valuables/heavy things (movers charge by weight) to close on the NY house, then fly back for the move out of the AL house. Or maybe we'll caravan up, one kid and one cat to each car. Or maybe we'll leave Dave's car her and come back for it later. We just don't know. I'm waiting for some inspiration to come from the heavens -- something that says, "This must take place on this day." So far, it hasn't come. And really, winging it is not my forte.

All right, I've killed enough time with this. AAA is open and I can go pick up our maps for the trip to NY. And then back to the school for the bookworm parade. Maybe I'll get some work done later this afternoon. Wish me luck.

Living With a 2-Year Old . . .

2005-05-17T09:38:00.000-04:00

. . . like a quiz show, but with far less exciting prizes!

Ian, hanging on the door to the laundry room, with great enthusiasm: Bug-a-buh!
Me: Bug-a-bug? [A species of insect found on Dora the Explorer -- I don't know why he'd be saying that, but I often find his actions inexplicable.]
Ian: No, bug-a-bah!
Me: What, Ian?
Ian, switching to the door handle of the door to the garage: Bug-a-buh!
Me: Basketball?
Ian: NO! BUG-A-BAH!
Me: Bicycle?
Ian, whining and close to a meltdown and doing that thing where he goes limp but bounces with his knees: NOOOOO! BUG-A-BAH!
Me, the light finally dawning: Oh! Popsicle?
Ian, perkily: Yeah! And me want one!

When does the synonym syndrome kick in? You know, when they can find ways to say something to get around the fact that what they are saying in the first place is incomprehensible to the clueless adults?

No, No, Not Yet!

2005-05-16T10:44:00.000-04:00

To set the scene, I have to tell you that I bought our first potty chair when our daughter was 12 months old. I don't know what I was thinking -- it was probably on sale, and I'd been reading about how you should have the chair in the bathroom to familiarize the child with it. Yeah, that didn't really work for us. To make a long story short, I fretted about potty training Katie for almost two years, vowing that she'd be trained by the time she was 3, a deadline she made by about three weeks. And that was only with the help of bribery.

Then here comes the second child. Potty training? What's that? I don't have time for potty training. I'm immersed in all the other trauma in our lives, and oh yeah, have I mentioned that we're moving in less than a month, a trip that will take a minimum of four days in the car? And that we're planning at least one other car trip this summer? And that Ian doesn't turn 3 until December, so I really don't need to worry about this yet?

Yeah, well, apparently my children can even rebel against plans to slack.

We did buy Ian a potty chair (had to buy a new one, as the little "shield" went missing from Katie's). We tried him on it a few times, but certainly didn't push. He's asked to go a few times, but often as not, as soon as his little butt hits the chair, he'll say, "It dee-nent work," and hop back up again. And yet -- for the last couple of weeks, he's gone potty before he gets in the bath, copying his big sister. And then today, Dave found Ian in the bathroom, naked from the waist down, having taken off his shorts and his diaper and gone potty all by himself. He had the lid to the toilet up, trying to figure out how to dump the potty. Mr. Independent, that's my boy.

But we're not ready!

Hey, if he's contrary about this, do you think he might turn out to be the one neat freak in the house? Boy, wouldn't that be nice?

Every Day a Little Death

2005-04-26T20:36:00.000-04:00

I have a deadline in two weeks. You know how you can tell? By the way I'm working on everything but work. Another day, another more elaborate way to procrastinate. I'm sure when I was a kid, I procrastinated the typical ways -- TV, reading later than I should, sleeping, and so on. But those tried and true techniques get a little shopworn after a while. Decades later there was the computer -- solitaire, Minesweeper -- to change up the routine a litte. Then the Internet -- gotta check the e-mail, check the websites. Now I've got ICQ and blogs to spend my procrastination capital on (and there's still solitaire and Minesweeper -- and Spider Solitaire and Snood). But when my wrists get too tired to click and my eyes glaze over from staring at an LCD screen, you'd think I'd sit down and get cracking on the manuscript in my hands.

You don't know me very well, do you?

Two days ago, my brain -- all on its own, I'm sure -- composed what seemed like a simple plan and a solution to a couple of issues here in the Morgan household. You see, we just moved Ian to a toddler bed, and then discovered that while the crib sheet fits a toddler bed, he really needs a quilt or comforter of some sort. Knitted crib blankets aren't quite doing it for him now that they can fall out of the bed. And since the toddler bed is a cheap stopgap measure until we get him a real bedroom set in New York, I don't want to spend too much money on bedding for it.

Concurrently, I've been trying to fulfill Katie's sartorial wishes for dresses, dresses, and more dresses, and I'm just not seeing much at the stores that doesn't A) have "hoochie-mama-in-training" written all over it and 2) cost more than I'm willing to spend on a child who supposedly wears a uniform five days a week.

You see where this is going, don't you? (Ah, I see the crafty among you nodding your heads. The rest of you have that kind of glazed-over look Dave gets when I talk about these things.)

So of course, my brain decided that the solution to these two problems was that I could make bedding for Ian and dresses for Katie! A trip to JoAnn was all that was needed! It would be nothing to whip up a little quilt-y thing for Ian's bed! And Katie could have three dresses from the same pattern, and they'd be easy to do! And she'd be happy with them! And oh, the money I'd save!

My brain is very, very foolish sometimes. My brain conveniently forgets that these things take time, and sometimes in my life, my time is more valuable than money. Especially when there's that little matter of a deadline hanging over my head.

So the last two days have been spent "quilting" (two pieces of fabric with batting in between that are being quilted together) -- and teaching myself about quilting, because it's not as if I even really know how to do this -- and cutting and sewing a dress for Katie. And naturally there was the requisite 2-hour trip to JoAnn to get all the supplies for this.

And it wouldn't even be so bad if I didn't feel the need to jump into all of these projects simultaneously -- although that may be a benefit in disguise, given my tendency to lose essential tools in the middle of doing something. (My fabric marker, used to trace the designs onto the quilt, went missing for a good six hours today until Katie finally found in the one drawer of the apothecary table I hadn't searched. Darned 2-year-old!) But I do, and as a consequence I have a half-finished quilt, a half-finished dress, a barely begun summer sweater for me, and a half-finished knitted iPod holder sitting around the house, tempting me away from the computer. Along with the TV, books, and solitaire. I'm doomed.

Dave (hi, honey!) has done a fairly good job of concealing his exasperation with me as I hole myself up in the sewing room/playroom and sew stars on yellow fabric for seemingly no good reason. But I don't think that will last. And I do have to get to this project one of these days.

One chapter a day, that's all I ask. Better get started. Though I think I'll check my e-mail real quick first.

Domestic Day

2005-04-21T14:58:00.000-04:00

I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work on a project that's sitting on my desk at the moment (okay, technically it's a computer file, so it's not exactly on my desk, but you know what I mean), so Dave and I swapped our days around, and he went out to work while I stayed home. You see, we have a schedule that we developed and actually printed out on the computer, since we are such nerds, to help us organize our days.

Ever since he was let go (oh, did I blog about that? I don't think so -- he was let go the second week of March, which has occasioned the new/old job in NYC and our evacuation of the Southland for the burbs of Orange County, NY, this summer), we have been trying to stick to this schedule to prevent ourselves from sliding into slackdom, a state we're pretty prone to. He has some things to finish up for the job he was working and his online class to monitor; I'm working as much as possible to shore up our income to supplement the two salary-less months we face. I'm also trying really hard not to take advantage of him being home -- I have the tendency to shove the less-enviable jobs onto his shoulders, including childcare. Actually, the last couple of months, I've felt like the "typical dad" -- I work, work, work, then expect to finish working for the day and relax and watch TV. What, dinner? What, baths for the children? What, play with or read to the children? No, darnit, I've worked hard and I deserve a break. I try not to act on it, but I frequently feel like it, since I'm working two to three times as many hours as I have for quite a while.

Anyway, yesterday I earned "good mommy" points -- did a puzzle with Katie and even cooked dinner for the whole family, which we all ate together. It was Chicken Helper Teriyaki, supplemented with pineapple and carrots, but it was an actual hot meal that wasn't mac 'n' cheese, chicken nuggets, or pizza. And we all sat down together. And I used up a box and a can from the pantry (this will be a primary goal over the next two months -- I don't want to move all that food. This is also why my GS troop got gingerbread cookies yesterday, even though, as one little mite told me, "It's not Christmas time"). No luck in getting Katie to eat the chicken teriyaki, so she had pineapple, carrots, and milk for dinner (hey, it could be worse), but at least there were no hysterics or high drama. Today I managed to actually thaw meat that was in the freezer (did you know you could do that? I just usually store it there until it's inedible!) and put together a Slow Cooker Helper meal -- beef stroganoff. Yes, I know it's another box. And I also know that this is a meal that Dave won't eat, and Katie's odds are slim. But too bad, I'm cooking it, because it was in the pantry. I may even put a salad with it, if my greens haven't gone slimey.

So, my domestic day -- since I didn't feel like working, Dave's out at the cafe on his laptop, and I have done the following:

Read four newspapers that have been sitting around waiting for me to read them (it is so an important thing to check off!)
Emptied the dishwasher
Filled and ran the dishwasher
Sorted and folded the laundry that's been sitting around for a week and a half, even Dave's, which I usually -- okay, always -- leave for him to do
Put away Katie's, Dave's, and my laundry (Ian's napping)
Soaked some stained shirts in Oxiclean
Kept the kitchen clean while watching Ian and feeding him a ton of food (I think someone's growing)
Made Katie's bed
Made my little crockpot meal
Tried not to eat anything while bumming around the house
Resisted the call of the nap

I feel quite virtuous, even though I haven't done that much. Actually, the house is pretty much picked up so that it can be whipped into shape at a moment's notice to show it. It's not as hard as I thought it would be to keep that up, though I find it tedious. Cut an apple, wipe the counter. Make a sandwich, wipe the counter. Make some coffee, wipe the counter. It drives me a little crazy. I just don't know how "naturally neat" people do it.

Now I've got to go call the lawn people to mow the lawn. And maybe I'll read and throw away some catalogs. It does so have to be done!!

What Is a Good Mom, Anyway?

2005-04-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

[Note: This is not an abandoned blog. Really. I've just been a little busy the last few weeks. We are moving to New York (not back to Long Island, to Orange County) this summer, and are in the midst of all the stressful things that entails. But it's a sad, sad thing when your own browser doesn't recognize and fill in your blog's URL when you start to go there. Thus, I resolve to try to post more.]

This weekend I flew to Williamsburg, VA, to have a "moms' weekend out" with two of my friends and former NASA co-workers. Our kids are all young -- mine are 6 and 2; Kathy's is 3, and Jackie's are 5 and 2. It was a pretty big deal to get away from the demands of mommyhood, and so we primarily hung out and talked (and talked and talked) about . . . our kids.

Yes, that's the irony of parenthood. All the "experts" tell us that when we go out on a "date" with our spouses, we shouldn't talk about the kids. But 95% of my life is spent being a mom, and the other 5% is spent on sleep. For four out of the last six years, I was breastfeeding. My children wake me up every morning. Even when I'm working, my kids are on the edge of my consciousness, especially if they're acting up while Dave is trying to keep them under control, and I'm trying to ignore them so I can just finish this chapter! So how on earth am I supposed to not talk about them?

We did, however, do a fair amount of meta-mommying -- that is, we talked about the struggles of parenting, about how we often feel like we're not doing the right things, about how we worry about the long-term effects of our decisions, about how our kids drive us crazy sometimes. On my last airplane leg home on Sunday, I mentioned what I'd been doing to the stranger in the seat next to me -- a 37-year-old Navy guy who was married with no kids -- and he asked me, "So are you a good mom?"

Well.

Isn't that the question.

To be honest, I was flummoxed. I don't know.

I breastfed each child for about two years. Does that make me a good mom?
My kids have been known to watch more than their RDA of television. Does that make me a bad mom?
It's always educational television. Does that ameliorate it?
I give my time to be a Girl Scout leader for my daughter's Daisy troop. Good mom?
I prepare for the troop meetings at the last minute and sometimes lose patience with the small herd of 6-year-old girls. Bad mom?
I ask Katie about her day at school every single day. Good mom?
She hardly ever gives any details. Bad mom?
I'm being lax about potty training and letting Ian go when he wants to, rather than a) being helpful and encouraging or 2) being stressed out and pushing. Is that reading his signals or being lazy? Good or bad?
I love my kids more than I can imagine. Good mom?

I think I have good days and bad days. I know I'm probably overly critical of myself most of the time. My mom has told me she thinks I'm a good mom, which is reassuring because I think in the final assessment, she's a very good mom. Sure we had our moments -- 8th and 9th grade come to mind -- but she raised three independent, critically thinking kids to adulthood and we all still talk to her and come to visit. I think my kids think I'm a good mom, too. But that doesn't stop me from judging myself and obsessing over all the things I could be doing better.

One of the most illuminating moments of the weekend was when my two friends commiserated that they feel like they've done their children a disservice by playing with them too much. They feel like the kids don't know how to play on their own without being entertained. My first reaction was that I felt guilty and left out -- I don't think it can ever be said that I've played with my kids too much. I'm better at the mom-maintenance stuff -- keeping the house running, making sure lunch is packed, keeping the kids to a schedule -- than I am at creative play. And that's something I find lacking in my mom-ness. And then it occurred to me that here we all were, attacking the problem of entertaining our children from two diametrically opposed positions -- and feeling equally guilty that we weren't doing the "right" thing. Obviously, there is no "right" thing here.

Why are we so harsh on ourselves? What is the standard we're holding ourselves to, and who created it? Did our moms conduct such self-scrutiny, or were they happy to just get through the day?

I don't have the answers. I do know that getting together with other friends/moms granted me a tiny bit of perspective. On Monday, I jumped into all the chores I've been slacking on lately, like dishes and laundry.

Of course, by today, I'm crabby and back to slacking. So I can't win. All I know is, I'd better find myself some good mommy friends in New York. Perspective is something that's needed more often than once every two years.

Cheater Blog, or How to Find Me Using Google

2005-03-31T13:27:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to do this for a while, because I find it so amusing my own self. One of the features of SiteMeter, my site tracking software, is that you can find out what links people followed to get to your site. Since this is a personal, not-very-often-updated blog, I'm always surprised when new people find their way here. (Hi, new people!) And being inveterately curious, I wanna know how they got here.

An awful lot of people get here through searching in Google or Yahoo or some other site. Few of them are probably actually looking for me, and sometimes I see queries that I could actually help with, had I known that's what they wanted, but which aren't really addressed in the blog. I feel especially bad for the person who asked "what does j l b matekoni stand for," since I was being coy and didn't actually say what it was in the blog -- I mean, I knew the answer and could have helped that person, but alas, we were two electrons passing in the ether.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some of the search strings here. I'll eliminate the obvious and repetitive ones, like "jennifer morgan" or some variation. But maybe you, my loyal (?) readers, will find these as amusing as I do. So here goes, in no particular, though roughly chronological, order [my comments in brackets]:

what does j l b matekoni stand for
i stepped in gum [quite popular -- 7 instances]
james barbour Broadway
"permanent marker" "writes on anything"
ly
How to pronounce Ramotswe Matekoni
roped babysitter [yikes -- I'm not sure what this person was looking for, but I'm sure he (?) didn't find it here]
j [seems like a lot of sites would fit this category]
Who met Santa in "The Little House on the Prairie"
"tearjerker songs" top 10
kids blog "over my knee"
compound miter saw "how to use a compound miter saw" [I felt badly that I hadn't included instructions for this]
freelance work
stallone.macho [Spanish Google]
LEON CZOLGOCZ [Mr. Czolgocz is surprisingly popular]
brie roofing [to top your water-table-cracker house? I had actually misspelled "Bree," the character on Desperate Housewives]
"lani diane rich" [she's popular, too]
"How to use a Compound Miter Saw" [again, I regretted not being a how-to site]
is brie on desperate housewives the mar
carseats on school buses
flaming bag of poop, arson [this, I actually wrote something about]
Lynnette Fromme case
bleah yum [from French Google]
to persuade gum OR che
what is gum made of exactly for science fair
gum statistics -brush after eating
hot booty shorts [can I set this person up with the babysitter guy?]
trefoil shaped cookie cutter
springtime phenomena 2004
"and then" japanese movie 1985
jennifer gum
how many kids died by checking gum
Why do dogs vomit and then immediately eat the vomit [that's a good question, isn't it?]
"Saturn Roadside Assistance"
My pictures of girls flashing at Mardi Gras 2005
maytag washer ruining my clothes
"To kill a mockingbird" + "being a democrat"
gum in washers
naked
speeches on gum
tunics for 8 year olds
book "everyone has gas"
clay soil amendment
Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme
museumology
Giuseppe Zangara [boy, I'm glad I included all these names of assassins in my blog -- sorry, all you kids out there researching term papers or planning anarchic attacks, I'm of no help -- just a Sondheim fan]
mylittlepony
tearjerker songs (UK)
"what college students eat"
m y l i t t l e p o n y f a ?%e [from Yahoo! Japan]
"Scott Bryk" [hey, if that's Scott Bryk who used to live in Bellevue, NE, when he was a kid, drop me a line. If it's the Canadian Scott Bryk, never mind -- I don't think I know you]
mylittlepony.games
elmo cake decorations
leon czolgocz
target Hi-5 April 23 2005

Well, It's No Day at the Beach . . . Oh No, Wait . . .

2005-03-29T21:33:00.000-05:00

Today, in an effort to actually do something during Katie's Spring Break, we planned for an Outing, or Expotition. Our chosen target: The Beach. Now, understand that we are not beach people. I, a redhead, sunburn under a 40-watt lightbulb, as my dad is fond of saying. I don't like swimming in water that has dead things in it. And I'm not terribly fond of sand. Dave feels pretty similarly, even though he spent part of every childhood summer "down-nee-oshun" in Ocean City, Maryland. So even though we've spent the last 13 years (longer for Dave) within shouting distance of the seashore, I can probably count on one hand the number of times we've made a trek to the beach.

Still, you can't deny children these adventures, can you? So we packed up sunscreen, flip-flops, sandals, and towels and headed for . . . Target. You thought I was going to say the beach, didn't you? Well, ultimately we wanted to hit the beach, but one towel was AWOL, the kids had outgrown their beach shoes and couldn't find their sunglasses, Dave's trunks had mysteriously disappeared, and I wanted a floppy hat. And a mochaccino light from the Starbucks in Target. So. An hour (and another stop home for dry clothes for the kids to change into, the camera, and the map) later, we were headed to Dauphin Island.

"Dolphin Island -- does that mean we'll see dolphins?" enthused (there's no other word for it) Katie as we planned the route. "No," I explained, "it's a different kind of dauphin -- d-a-u-p-h-i-n."

Well, that's what I get for being snotty. We actually did see dolphins! I was pretty amazed. I mean, I was kind of joking with Dave about standing on the beach (actually much too cold to go into the water, unless you're an insane and hyper 6-year-old) and looking out for fins (dah-DUH, dah-DUH), when I actually saw some about 100 feet offshore. Dave took some convincing, but he eventually saw them, too -- two or three of them, playing in the water. You could see them arcing up out of the water and spouting through their blowholes, and I even saw one come all the way out of the water. It was just incredible -- I've never seen anything like it before.

The beach was nice too -- clean, beautiful sand, not too crowded (of course, that could be because we didn't get there until 3:30). A little chilly and a stiff breeze (I think we all got a little windburn), but overall, we had a fun time. Katie loved romping in the waves, although she has no beach savvy, and god help us if we ever take her to a real beach with waves and everything. Ian had a ball pretending to be "Captain One-Eye" the pirate, digging for treasure ("Hard work!" he said) and essentially throwing sand all over the place. Dave and I just have sore legs from walking all over the sand. But it was a good family day, and I'm really glad we did it. Maybe I should plan more outings like this. Or maybe I should just wait until I recover to think about that.

Here are a couple of pics: Katie and Ian and all three of them. (Sorry, no dolphins.)

Parents of the YEARRRRR!

2005-03-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

...to borrow a phrase from my virtual writer-friend, Lani.

We just realized, as we were putting the kids to bed, that tomorrow is Easter. Whoops! No baskets set out (by kids -- we'll take care of them tonight), no anticipation, and worst of all, WE FORGOT TO DYE EASTER EGGS!!!

I feel awful. It's true that I've been frantic doing taxes and bills and trying to squeeze actual work in around helping Katie with a cross-stitch project (and rethreading the needle literally every 3 minutes, but she did finish it in two days and she's oh, so proud of herself). I mean, really, what's next, forgetting Christmas? We will go ahead and dye them tomorrow (I have the eggs and everything), but I guess ol' E.B. won't be hiding real eggs this year. Probably for the best, given the state of absentmindedness around here, but geesh! What horrible parents we are! Maybe we *do* need to start going to church, if only to get the holidays cemented properly in our heads!

I even had to send Dave -- at 8:15 p.m. -- to the grocery store for the ham and asparagus for dinner tomorrow. Aiyiyi!

The Invites Are Done

2005-03-06T15:31:00.000-05:00

It took almost all afternoon, but the invitations for Katie's birthday party are done, cobbled together from screenshots of the Flash games on MyLittlePony.com, clip art, and Word. Kate desperately wanted a My Little Pony party, but she wanted to invite her whole class -- seven girls and four boys. And the sanctioned invites say, "Hey, Pony Girl!" on them. Talk about exclusionary. I mean, it's hard enough to plan this party without making the favors and the games too girly. So I made our own.

Speaking of which, Dave and I were wondering why they don't make boy My Little Ponies. Surely Ian's not the only little brother who would like to join in the pony games. (We have bought him his own ponies here and there, but it'd be nice to have some more "masculine" ones. Maybe one with a dinosaur or an insect as a "cutie mark.")

Hasbro's also missing a bet in the franchised cake decorations area. I mean, Bob the Builder and Strawberry Shortcake have their own cake pans and icing decorations. The current plan is to use Wilton's castle cake pan and decorated it as the MLP Celebration Castle. Katie's assured me that she will "help" by instructing me on coloring. Boy, that's a tantrum waiting to happen, I know. I was hoping that we'd find some MLP icing decorations so we could make ponies' heads stick out of the castle windows, but no such luck. Ah well, I'm sure it will be close enough.

I know I tend to go overboard at these parties, but see my entry on planning Thinking Day for my Daisy Girl Scouts. I just can't stop. I have managed to talk myself out of making homemade stick horses out of scrap fabric, yarn, and PVC pipe for each guest, so there's one point for simplification.

Now we're headed out to an arts and crafts show. Cross your fingers that I won't get "inspired" to do some other cockamamie craft project. I have enough on my plate as it is!

"Fond" Memories

2005-03-05T17:11:00.000-05:00

Day 1 as Sole Maintainer of the Asylum:

The inmates are trying their best to drag me over to the dark side, and I am trying my best to resist. So far I am succeeding, having worn them out with physical labor and set them in front of the (purely educational, of course) television. Who knows how long I can hold out, though.

Dave is in Baltimore for four days, and I am playing single parent. It's not a role that either of us relishes, and there are many points racked up by the parent playing the role, no matter how long a period it lasts. So good, I have justification for going off in April for a fun girlfriend weekend. But in the meantime, I have to get through four days.

We started off pretty well. We went to the library's annual book sale and made out like bandits. Well, I did -- and there's no way that I needed more books, but who can resist 25-cent paperbacks? -- the kids only got a couple each. Katie kept gravitating toward the board books for some unexplained reason, griped about the chapter book I insisted on getting for her (Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon), and then proceeded to read a third of it on the way home. Ian got some "Mo-mo" (Elmo) books and a Bob the Builder, so he's happy. I couldn't face the nonfiction section, which was not at all organized by category, so I didn't get anything for Dave. Too bad.

My most brilliant idea during the sale was to have the kids sit under the folding tables while I browsed. They were out of the way, so they wouldn't be trampled in the crush of people, and they had fun playing stable under there and reading to each other. So the trip was a success all around.

From there we headed to Lowe's. It's 75 degrees and sunny today, and I have spring gardening fever. Our front gardens, done by the landscaper when the house was built, are an atrocious mess, and boring too. And besides, what better thing to occupy your kids than gardening with them on a beautiful spring day.

Ha! I hear you laughing now. The thing is, all Katie wanted to do was plant things, and there was a lot more work to be done than that. Dead plants and weeds had to be dug up, and then an attempt at soil amendment was made. I'm sure I did it "wrong," but I wanted to try to do something to break up the clay. (I never thought I would complain about dirt after gardening in the rock-strewn sand of Long Island, but this stuff down here is weird. Red clay that comes up in clumps and stains your skin where it comes in contact with you. I just hope the plants can figure it out.) And all that stuff is fairly backbreaking work by yourself. It's made worse by small children running around, stepping on the flowers, patting down the dirt, and getting underfoot trying to "help." I'm afraid I may have lost it a few times, though they did both get their chance to dig in the dirt and plant things -- eventually. I get through these types of things by maintaining a glimmer of hope/illusion that the recollections of these activities will somehow transmogrify themselves into fond memories of "quality time with Mom" instead of the nightmares of frustration and whining -- mine and theirs -- that I know them to be.

Anyway, one of the front gardens is planted and half mulched. I seriously underestimated our topsoil and mulch needs, and I think I need to return to Lowe's for 4 bags of soil and 12 bags of mulch. Good thing we've got the new van. Tomorrow is supposed to be another glorious day. Let's hope we all survive it.

A New Obsession

2005-03-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

Ian (26 months) has become obsessed with our Baby Mozart and Baby Bach videos. When he first watched them, sometime around a year ago, he was so enchanted with the dragon puppet that he still says that dragons go "Bleah!" But it's been a while since we popped them into the VCR.

Now, suddenly, he's asking to see them all the time. He comes up to me and tells me he wants the "baba zhoh" (baby show) and rocks his head from shoulder to shoulder, using his made-up sign language for "music." Yesterday he saw the two shows a combined total of five times. Five times! This morning, it's only 10:25 and he's watched them three times. The Bach and Mozart concertos are actually competing in my brain with Hi-5 songs for earworm supremacy.

I'm torn about this. Sure, it's not good to plop the kid down in front of the TV for all that time. But it's true that during these shows he tends to watch less and play nearby more. And supposedly classical music is good for the brain, right? Plus, he gets a real kick out of identifying the objects in the videos, and is adding some words to his vocabulary -- "Bach" and "orange" among them.

I don't get this whole toddler obsession with repetition. I can't hardly ever want to see something more than once, though of course I probably did, since it's a normal phase of development. But things get old to me very quickly. When Katie was watching Sesame Street regularly, I used to celebrate with a joyful dance whenever the new season started, as by then we'd seen the same shows about five or six times. Come to think of it, I wonder how much I was able to indulge in my obsession for repetition when I was a small child. It was, of course, the age before VCRs and DVDs. I vividly remember that shortly after we got our first VCR, which my mom bought with money she saved through rebates and coupons (a big deal at the time), my little sister was hooked on Alice in Wonderland, and watched it over and over again. (In fact, we used to just start it near the end to fool her into thinking she'd watched the whole thing so that we could have the TV back -- oh, we were mean.) I guess I had a similar thing for my LP of Pete's Dragon -- so much so that I entertained my parents on hour-long drives with recitations of the movie to my little brother.

Anyway, I'm about done with the Bach and Mozart. It's driving me a little it batty. I guess I'm a Philistine, after all. Maybe I should track down a copy of Pete's Dragon . . .

What Is Wrong with Me?

2005-02-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

Or, Why Type-A Overachievers Should Not Be Stay-at-Home Moms

Today -- well, yesterday, actually -- is Thinking Day, a Girl Scout/Girl Guide holiday on which girls learn about other countries around the world. When I found out that our council wasn't doing anything council-wide for Thinking Day, I was a little surprised. I remember big events, with troops presenting booths on their country, dressing up, serving food, etc. But since that wasn't happening, I thought it would be fun for my Daisies (5- and 6-year-olds) to celebrate at our meeting.

Last week I gathered a bunch of books on different countries from the library and brought them in to show the girls, who I thought -- and rightly so -- probably wouldn't have a very firm grasp on the concept of "other countries" quite yet.* (I had them brainstorming other countries that they knew about, and one poor girl kept naming U.S. states and cities -- "California! Washinton, D.C.! Atlanta! Tennessee! Hey, at least she kept trying.)

* And apparently, I should have been worried about more than the girls. My co-leader, after being the secretary for the brainstorming session, came up to me and said, "I don't know why I wrote down Canada. That's not a foreign country. They're part of us." Sigh.

So the girls had fun perusing the books, but then when it came time to pick one, they all wanted different ones, according to which book they'd latched onto. Of course. So we drew names from a cup -- no "guiding" there from the leader, unfortunately. Ultimately, we ended up with Japan.

I thought Japan was a pretty good choice -- sufficiently "other" to get the point across about different cultures, but not a country I knew absolutely nothing about. Except I didn't know as much as I thought I did. So I ended up hitting the Web, and it's worked pretty well so far. I even have some Japanese things to bring in -- two dolls and a kimono that I think my dad brought back from Okinawa when he went there on TDY, some decorative Japanese chopsticks I picked up from SF's Chinatown, etc. My biggest stumbling block has been the food.

For one thing, I can't really bring anything hot, because there's no access to a microwave or anything, and I don't want to give the girls food poisoning. For another thing, Japanese food is darned hard to come by in Mobile. The grocery stores' "ethnic foods" sections are pretty pathetic. I went to some promising-sounding small markets, but struck out -- International Food Market had mostly Arabic and Jewish imports; Asia Market carried only Indian foods (would it kill them to call it Indian Market, or even South Asia market, then?). My quest for the one Japanese item I really wanted -- sweetened red bean paste, used as a filling for dessert-like teacakes, and pretty much the only thing I think the kids might like -- went unsatisfied.

I did end up with some vegetarian sushi, some rice crackers, chopsticks for the girls to practice with, and green tea. But I decided -- thanks to the goodness of the Internet -- that I would make my own red bean paste.

This is where I think I've finally figured out that there is something wrong with me. Usually you see people being depicted with little devils on their shoulders, spurring them on to act unwisely. My devil looks an awful lot like Martha Stewart.

The first problem is that, like Japanese red bean paste, Japanese red beans are hard to come by. I ended up with "light red kidney beans." I figured beans are beans are beans, pretty much, and by and large I think that's right. And I got the dried version, which means soaking and then cooking for an hour and a half. I did that last night, and put them in the fridge to continue working on them this morning.

Then I was supposed to put them in the blender or a food processor. Food processors are such a pain to clean, so I decided on the blender. Yeah, well, the blender pureed the bottom 1/4 of the beans, and then wouldn't mix any of the whole beans in. So I struggled with the blender for a while. Then I was to press the beans through a sieve. Which would have been easier if they'd actually been pureed like they were supposed to be. And in the process, I lost half the bean puree in a big, cow dung-like splat on the floor.

No matter, right? I'm only making treats for six kids. I continued, halving the rest of the recipe. I sieved the beans (that took a while). I put the puree in a pot, with some vegetable shortening and sugar. And it was an unappetizing pinky-brown color. So I added red food coloring. Now it's kind of a weird red color, rather than the dark red of the storebought paste, but what the kids don't know won't hurt them, right? I tasted it. Surprisingly, it actually tasted like what I was aiming for. Thank goodness I knew what I was aiming for!

The next step in making dorayaki is to make little pancakes to spread the bean paste on. Now here I had no idea what I was aiming for. I ended up with little pale, thick, slightly rubbery pancakes, that, when spread with red bean paste, so taste like they could possibly be Japanese. So it's done. (Well, except for the assembly, which will be done when everything has cooled.)

Want to take bets on what proportion of the six proclaim them "yucky"? I'm not entirely sure why I bother, except there's that little Martha Stewart-shaped devil on my shoulder who wants me to make things perfect. I just can't stop myself.

On the upside, every parent I talked to last night said their daughter was excited about learning about Japan today -- it's a good thing. Right?

Calling Thing 1 and Thing 2 . . .

2005-02-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

Last night I was doing laundry, and I came across a shirt that Dave had taken out of his exercise bag and put in the hamper. I looked at it closely, and called him. "Dave, you realize this shirt is pink, don't you? It looks like it's supposed to be gray, but it really looks pink." And it did. Strawberry sherbet pink. Which apparently is a color that the mildly color-blind can't actually see. I've been giving him a hard time for weeks about a pair of his pajama pants that have snowflakes on them which have turned the same color pink, and he can't see it.

Sure enough, he came into the laundry room and scrutinized the shirt with a quizzical look. "You mean, right about there?" he asked, pointing vaguely to an area on the shirt. "No, the whole thing is pink. Can't you see it?" He admitted he couldn't, and I told him not to worry, I'd put it in with a load of lights and a Shout Color Catcher sheet, which usually works well for me.

So I wash the clothes, which are mostly the kids' and mine. And I used the color catcher sheet. And when I went to put the load in the dryer, I discovered that the pink had completely left the gray shirt. It's now just a normal heather gray.

But two of my bras -- one light blue, and one beige -- are now a hideous mauvey purpley pink. Everything else in the load escaped unscathed. It's like a scene from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back!

Dave suggested I not try to get rid of the pink by using the bras to clean the tub. What a wit.

Time to Go Furniture Shopping?

2005-02-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

This morning, the kids let us "sleep in" until after 6, a relatively rare thing. Well, Ian did wake up at 5, but Dave got him back to sleep. Anyway, I was awakened by Katie at my bedside, saying, "Why aren't you guys with Ian?"
"Wha...?" I coherently replied. "Ian's still sleeping. He's in his room."
"No, he's not. He's in the living room."
"Wha...?" I got up and went to the living room, with Katie. Ian was nowhere in sight, and his bedroom door was shut. "No, sweetie, he's still asleep."
"No, he's up. He's behind the couch."

And sure enough, he was. He'd climbed out of his crib, left his bedroom, closed his bedroom door, and was just sitting there in the semi-dark, playing with a coffee cup. All without making enough noise to wake us over the baby monitor -- and I'm a light sleeper.

Guess it's time to go look for that "big boy" bed, so he doesn't break his neck in the middle of the night!

Teachable Moments

2005-02-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been finding myself having serious, educational conversations with Katie, who will turn 6 next month. One, occasioned by her having four (!) loose teeth*, involved a lengthy explanation of the baby teeth to adult teeth transition, complete with illustrations, while waiting in line at Target's pharmacy. I'm just so glad that we can give back to Target's customers, supplying them with endless amusement at our expense. Ian was listening to our exchange, and came away with his own addition to his knowledge. After getting the story from me, Katie summed it up by saying, "So the adult tooth says, 'Hey, baby tooth! It's my turn! You get out of here, I'm coming in!'" Ian now walks around the house expressing his take on the whole thing: he gestures in an expansive pushing motion with his arms while saying "Gum!" repeatedly until you acknowledge that yes, the teeth are pushing through the gums. Then he screws up his little face to look angry and yells, "You out! I in!" Hey, look, a shoe-in for the school play on dental hygiene. Our little prodigy.

* (I've decided I like Mimi Smartypants's digressions in asterisk form and will copy her, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, of course.) What kind of horrible parents are we, not to have been paying attention to what's going on inside our daughter's mouth? She got in the car after school the other day and said, "Hannah says I have a big tooth coming in behind my other teeth."** I look, and sure enough, she has two adult teeth pushing their way through behind her lower front teeth. And one's halfway up! And I had no idea! Neglectful, that's us. Call CPS.

** Teeth are apparently a hot topic of conversation in kindergarten. Kids are yanking them out during lunch, wiggling them, reporting on their loss -- I can just imagine how much fun that must be for the teacher! Another reason that I trained to be a high school teacher, rather than studying elementary ed.

Next, we had a discussion about my work as an editor. I was copyediting a bibliography and getting frustrated with its poor quality. (Side note: Why on Earth can't authors write a decent bibliography?? I mean, how hard is it, people? You supposedly used these resources to write your book (if I turn a blind eye to the fact that at least one of the references is copied wrong, verbatim, from other sources) -- how difficult is it to obtain the correct information and put it in the correct order? I know I'm there to clean up, by making sure the punctuation is in the right place and it follows the style, but I shouldn't have to spend four hours on a 3-page bibliography!) Anyway, Katie and I talked about the process of writing books and getting them published, and about what I do to help make a book the best it can be. And I emphasized, given how irritated I am about this particular book (could be hormones, could just be a poorly written book, could be both), that it's very, very important to always do your best work before turning something in. I think she got it. She says she always fixes mistakes in the books she writes, like the time she noticed a period was missing and she went back and put it back in. Ah, it warms the cockles of my little copyeditor's heart.

I should really scan some of her books. They're hysterical. Especially the one about the zebra who didn't realize he was a zebra (inspired by the movie Racing Stripes). It ends thusly: "Hay!" he says. "I'm a zebra!" Cracked me up.

The most recent topic of "serious conversation" was slavery and racism. It's amazingly hard to couch these issues in terms that an almost-6-year-old can understand. I think this one started in the car because she brought up the fact that it was President Lincoln's birthday, and I asked if she knew who he was. She really didn't, and you can't exactly talk about how great he was without referencing the Civil War and slavery. I'm not one to get all gushy about the innocence of children, but I was encouraged by her reaction to my description of racism. She couldn't understand why anyone would think that other people were different because of the color of their skin. I know that's typical for young kids, but I'd really like to preserve that feeling, and culturally, down here in Alabama, that's going to be difficult, I think.

Oh, it won't be hard to maintain in theory, but in practice, she knows no people of color. I know no people of color. She goes to a private school where there are few students of other races. It's one of the reasons we're trying to get her into a magnet school, which is not only a good school but which, by law, has a 50% non-black to 50% black ratio. We visited the school on Friday, and I'm pretty confident that it has an atmosphere that I like. Unfortunately, the drawing is by lottery only -- you can't test into the school -- so I'm not sure what her odds are. Guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime, Dave is thinking about accosting the one black dad he sees at dropoff time at Katie's school and asking, "Will you please be my black friend?" We'd like some gay friends too, but my guess is they're even harder to find here in the Bible Belt! So much for cultural diversity.

A First for Me

2005-02-12T15:41:00.000-05:00

There's some talk on my March list of how we should be taking time for ourselves and being less kid-centric. And while I don't think I'm any more kid-centric than necessary when one has a 5- and a 2-year-old in the house, I decided to take it to heart.

For the last almost six years (note the coincidence of that time period being almost exactly as long as we've had children!), moviegoing has been an activity that we rarely partake in. Hiring a babysitter is relatively infrequent, mostly for logistical reasons, and when we do hire a babysitter, paying around $40 (movies and sitter) for two hours of not talking to each other seems a little silly.

So, since I'm a big old crank today anyway, I decided to take myself the the movies to see The Phantom of the Opera, which I've wanted to see for a while . Dave, who despises musicals (except, for some reason, Jesus Christ Superstar), had no desire to see this; I, a big musical fan, was desperate to see it, even though I know it didn't get the best reviews and I hadn't been impressed by the clips I'd seen on talk shows.

Yeah. Well. Does it still count as "me time" if you end up doing something you enjoy so little that you actually cut it short? I walked out. Forty minutes into the movie. It was that bad.

I have never walked out of a movie. Not even from Joe Versus the Volcano, which I contend is the worst movie ever (I spent about 40 minutes during that thinking, "This must be a dream. This is a dream, isn't it? Isn't it? It's too ridiculous not to be" and it turned out it wasn't). But there were so many things that irritated me that I found myself obsessing over all the other things I could be doing. For one thing, I've never seen such obvious (and bad) lip synching in my entire life. I mean, yes, I'm a grown-up. I understand that it's not practical (maybe not even possible?) to actually film people actually singing in a musical. Tracks are laid down afterward. I get that. But geez, people, if you have to lip synch, at least look like you're singing an aria in your highest register -- don't just stand there with your mouth hanging open! Why show only part of a song being sung, with the rest appearing to be in Christine's head (seems like it would be one or the other)? Why show Raoul running/bouncing down the steps while singing but betraying no physical bouncing in his voice? And for the love of God, if your singers aren't the best (which, I'm sorry, they just aren't -- they may be perfectly pleasant, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief and accepting the thrill with which the actors reacted to Christine's debut, because she was not anywhere near good enough, even as the ingenue fulfilling the diva's role. Sarah Brightman, she ain't.), don't land on the notes and draw them out adagio-style. Every song was so plodding, and I just couldn't deal with it. I left* and drove across the street to buy the 2-CD set of the original, but unfortunately they only had the movie soundtrack. So I dug up my highlights album and am listening to it at full volume in my office. Ah, much better.

Sigh. So much for me time.

* Side note: I was amused by the fact that the radio was playing "If You Leave, Don't Look Back" when I got into the car. Maybe my life actually is taking place to its own soundtrack.

And More Evidence

2005-01-31T11:38:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting at my computer this morning, letting Bob the Builder babysit the child while I check out my daily list of blogs. And in come Ian, naked from the waist down, to climb on the couch in my office.

"Ian, where is your diaper?" I demanded. Ever the obliging child, he rushes into the living room to show me, little boy parts bobbing along the way. "Da!" he says, pointing. Sure enough, there is his diaper, abandoned in the middle of the living room floor (amid a pile of pick-up sticks that he had strewn about the room). Then he proudly shows me the next bit. "Da!" he proclaims, pointing to the Poang chair, which has a big, suspicious puddle on it. "Da!" "Ian, did you pee on the chair?" "Yup." Sigh.

As if the cats weren't bad enough.

Joys of Parenthood, Redux

2005-01-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

So y'all read my poop in the bathtub story, right? Well Saturday night was another bath night, but this time Dave was in charge. As the kids get older, bathtime gets easier (except for the part where you have to referee the fights between the two of them). We are not the kind of parents who subscribe to the hypervigilant philosophy that YOU MUST BE IN THE BATHROOM AT ALL TIMES IF YOUR CHILD IS ANYWHERE NEAR AN INCH OF WATER. In other words, we let our kids play in the bath while we're in the next room. They talk constantly; if they stopped, we'd run in to make sure they hadn't drowned.

Anyway, the scenario on Saturday was that Katie had emerged and was snuggled up on the couch with me, reading, and Dave was in the living room at the front of the house. He'd already ventured into the bathroom to catch Ian in the act of getting back into the tub after a foray out into the hall, naked and wet, and warned him that he wasn't to do that. From the bathroom we hear the call: "I-nan, poop!" Dave rushes around the corner, an apprehensive look on his face, and enters the bathroom, saying, "Did you--? Um, do you have to poop? Do you want to get out and poop on the potty?" He was confused, as there was no poop in the bathtub. "NO," insisted Ian, "I-nan, poop!" And he points. To the hallway. Where there is a little pile of poop, all by itself.

I couldn't help it. I started cracking up. Dave was incredulous and indignant. "Is that poop in the hallway?!?" Ian was stoic. "Yup," he replied with his old-time western inflection. "Did you get out of the tub and poop in the hallway?!?" Again, "Yup."

Fortunately, Dave did not go off on him and traumatize him for life with regard to bathroom matters. He actually handled it quite well. Methinks it's time to potty-train the boy.

Requiem

2005-01-28T21:11:00.000-05:00

Driving down the street this afternoon after picking Katie up from school, I realized that today is January 28th. January 28th is a memorable day for me. Exactly one week after my birthday, it's the date that my grandfather died just after I turned 12, in 1985. And one year after that, it's the day that the Challenger space shuttle exploded.

My grandfather's death was the first I experienced in my family, and knock on wood, the deaths have been few and far between in my lifetime. I don't have a huge number of memories of him, as my grandparents lived in Phoenix and we lived everywhere else, but I do have some. They are comforting memories. I remember him sitting in "his" chair and watching the news, something I never understood as a kid who wanted to watch "Wallace and Ladmo" and reruns of "I Dream of Jeannie" all the time. I remember him sitting down on our couch in Nebraska with me during a visit, his arm over my shoulder holding me close while we watched something else. I remember his baldness, which he was able to joke about; his heavy beard which seemed to give him a perpetual 5 o'clock shadow; and the way he smelled like beer -- Schlitz, if I remember correctly. He also liked to drink red wine with dinner and have liqueur over ice cream every night. So mostly what I have of him are impressions, and hand-me-down stories. They're warm, though.

I've been told that my grandfather was pretty strict when my mom and her brothers were growing up, but I don't remember that about him. He always had a smile for us. He'd greet us with an almost-brutal, bone-squeezing bear hug, and during our visits he'd take my brother and sister and I into his backyard to monitor the pool, or pick up citrus fruit, or play. He liked showing off his collection of exotic birds, which ranged from lovebirds to parakeets to parrot to macaws to cockatoos -- he had 38 when he died, I think, though some were being boarded with them. Funny, I remember my grandmother taking care of the birds, but remember him playing with them -- letting them out of the cage and getting them to talk.

His death was a shock to me, especially as a precocious preteen. I have vivid memories of my mom coming to my junior high school to get me -- I was in 8th grade -- and take me out for two weeks. I was in history class at the time, and I was sent to all my teachers to ask for assignments from them before I left. Mr. Davies, my history teacher, exclaimed, "Two weeks! What do you need to be gone two weeks for?" I've never forgiven him for that. Not that the man had been a stellar example of graciousness prior to that, but it showed, in my opinion, an astonishing lack of sensitivity.

I don't remember the trip to Phoenix -- did we fly or drive? -- but I remember arriving at my grandmother's house. She opened the door, and her eyes were red from crying. I was completely shaken -- I'd never seen her cry before. I don't think I ever saw her cry after that, either. The house became a center for all kinds of relatives to gather, as it did for my grandmother's funeral 10 years later. That's the wonderfully ironic thing about funerals -- that they give widespread families a touchstone, an opportunity to say to our relatives, "Yes, we're here, and we love you, no matter how far away you go or how long it's been since we've seen you." I've been heartened by that at both my own family's funerals and at the ones I've attended with Dave.

We stayed for the two weeks, and I didn't flunk the 8th grade, despite Mr. Davies's predictions. I don't remember much beyond that, except the surreal moment-out-of-time feeling of not attending school for that long a period when you're supposed to be. And on the one-year anniversary of his death, maudlin teenager that I was, I dressed in black -- black jeans, a black-and-white buffalo plaid "big shirt," and a black, Shaker-style sweater vest (remember those?) over it. And then during 3rd period geography, we heard about the Challenger. Funnily enough, Mr. Davies plays into this memory too -- his classroom was where our yearbook class met, and I remember him wheeling a TV in so we could watch the coverage. I also remember getting into a fight with Scott Bryk about him being callous and uncaring about the astronauts in the shuttle, because we "didn't know them anyway." I seem to recall throwing out some kind of overdramatic remark about him not knowing my grandfather, either, and bursting into tears and running to the bathroom. Gawd, I don't miss 13 at all.

Anyway, all these thoughts went through my head when I noticed the date. I can't believe it's been 20 years. I'm feeling a little melancholy. I wish my grandparents could have seen my life, seen my children. I hope they'd be proud of me. I miss them.

Mishmash of Stuff

2005-01-28T14:48:00.000-05:00

I have numerous short things to say, so I'm just going to throw them all in here.

RESERVOIR DAISIES

So I started a Daisy Girl Scout troop a few weeks ago. I've got eight kindergartners so far, and the roster looks like this: Katie, Gabriella, Elise, Alice, Madison, Madison, Sarah, and Sarah. At least it makes it easy to remember all the names, something I'm really bad at. I was regaling my mom with the tale of multiple names, and she said, "Maybe you should assign them all a color."

My mind immediately flashed to a scene from Reservoir Dogs, only acted out by 6-year-old girls. I wish I'd actually seen the movie sometime, so I could flesh this improbably vision out even more thoroughly.

BTW, as Dave remarked, remember when the name "Madison" was so freaky that it was actually a joke in Splash?

MO-MO MOJO

Ian has suddenly become obsessed with everyone's favorite little furry red monster, Elmo. Or, in Ian-speak, "Mo-mo." (I don't know why this is, since I know he can say the name of the letter "L" on its own.) Now he has to have his "Mo-mo whoo-whoo book" (a book about Elmo and the fire station) when we go somewhere in the car. Guess it's time to dig out the stuffed Elmo floating around here somewhere. Also, this means that the plan to buy tickets to the Sesame Street Live show coming to Mobile in mid-March is probably a good one.

What is it about that little guy? Why do kids become so obsessed with him? I wish I had some pithy and funny explanation, but I really don't.

KINDERMUSIK BRAINWASHING

Ian and I also started our first Kindermusik class last week. I never got around to doing this with Katie, as we had a few other options that we took advantage of (a regular playgroup and a "Hooray for Play" class). My first reaction to the whole thing is, "8:30 on a Friday morning is way too early to be that peppy." I signed up for the 8:30 class because my friend Tabitha was doing it at that time with her girls (and her nanny), but geez, that was a mistake. Not that we're not up and about by then anyway, but rushing to get somewhere that early is just a huge headache.

The teacher is one of those high-voiced, middle-aged, preschool-teachery types. She seems very nice, if you can tame the nagging urge to look for a lobotomy scar while you're talking to her. She likes to talk about the "mommies" in the class -- which trips her up because class participants also include a daddy, a grandma, and a nanny ("friend Sarah"). And we are chided not to talk to each other in class, which I find really obnoxious. Still, Ian actually participated a bit today, and answered questions when prompted -- the only one to do so. No self-esteem problems with that boy so far. The CD and book that came with the class totally hypnotize him, and I can set him up with that for 20-30 minutes while I'm doing my own thing. Is using music as a babysitter fundamentally better or worse than using the TV for that purpose? Why? Discuss amongst yourselves.

The aforementioned Dad takes time off work to come to the class with his wife and their twins, whom they adopted while they were in utero. In fact, they were with the birth mom when they found out the girls were twins via ultrasound. How strange is that? I'm really dying to know how they worked out the 2-for-1 deal, but I'm being good and keeping my nosiness in check.

Every time I see identical twins, I have flashbacks to seeing Michael J. Fox on Letterman talking about his twin children. He summed them up thusly: "Twins are just weird." And they sort of are, if you think about them too much. But awfully cute. I accused the parents today of cheating because they took pictures of them prior to class when the girls had their name tags on. I imagine it's probably hard to sort out pictures when they come back from the developer.

That's it for today -- just a few things on my mind. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling particularly coherent or witty today. Which is a shame, because for the first time in ages I slept from 11:20 to 6:15 last night. Has Ian finally gotten this sleeping thing down? (He was doing well with the clock for a little while, but then took to getting up at 5:30, as well as waking up once around 4 a.m. each night.) One can only hope.

This weekend, if it warms up and dries out a little bit, we're headed to some Mardi Gras parades. When in Rome, you know . . .

No, Mommy, Don't Eat Me!

2005-01-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

Just now, Ian and I were sitting in front of the computer, him on my lap facing me. I nuzzled his neck and said, "I love you so much, I'm going to eat you all up." He pulled back, distressed, and said, "No, no, I-nan no yum." "You're not yummy?" "No, yum bleah!" "You taste yucky?" "Yeah."

Poor thing. Two-year-olds are so literal!

The Joys of Parenthood

2005-01-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

WARNING: The following post is not for the squeamish.

Not infrequently, Dave and I play a little oneupsmanship game of "Who had to do the crappier parenting task?". You had a bad day at work? Well I had to deal with a sick and whiny child at home all day. You had to give them breakfast and clean up a spilled cup of milk? Well I had to take care of the carpet where the boy peed on it after his bath. The ultimate round thus far was when I had to spend two nights in the hospital with Ian when he was 2 weeks old, sleeping on a plastic recliner that didn't actually recline and nursing a sick, IV-attached infant every hour and a half. Dave had to take Katie, then 3.5 years old, home after only about 3 hours of sleep for all of us, and she proceeded to vomit all over her bed -- twice. He won that one. Vomit trumps almost everything.

I think I might have taken a new lead, however. Tonight Dave went out to a private showing of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Mobile's science museum, the Exploreum. His company, Cassiopeia Foundation, has been involved with the exhibit, producing a video that is both showing in the museum and for sale at the gift shop. So they got to have a "friends and family" night at the museum. Unfortunately, it was adults-only and we couldn't find a sitter, so I sent Dave on alone.

Dave is the bath-giver in our household. It started as something he could do for Katie when she was little to give me a break from the primary caregiver role, and somehow Ian's baths became his responsibility too. I love the fact that I can turn the evenings over to him, and while he's a little bewildered about how it ended up that way, he doesn't complain much. Tonight was a bath night, so Dave drew the bath for the kids before leaving for the event, and I took over with hair washing and body soaping and dinner making (also typically Dave's purview).

And thus the stage was set for my parenting moment of the day. Fortunately, Katie had already gotten out of the bath and was eating her dinner; I was headed to get Ian out momentarily. "Uh-oh!" Ian called. "Uh-oh! UH-oh! UH-OH!" I came into the bathroom. "Poop!" Ian whined, pointing. Sure enough, he'd pooped in the bathtub. Gross!

My primary goals were a) not to freak out and get him upset; b) to get him out of the tub as quickly as possible; c) to get all the toys out of the water and into the sink for a bleach soaking; and d) not to let his sister find out, lest she never venture into the tub again. I think I managed to succeed on all fronts, though I have to say, this is my LEAST FAVORITE PARENTING TASK EVER! Poop in the bath is disgusting on so many levels. But I get pats on the back for not leaving it for someone else (who?) to clean up. I have Soft Scrubbed the tub to within an inch of its life. I have yet to bleach the toys, because I'm notorious for completely ruining my clothing whenever I open a bleach bottle (I may beg Dave to do this for me). Nevertheless, I got through it. Ugh!

But he so owes me.

You Say It's Your Birthday

2005-01-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

Da-nah-nah-nah. Yes, it's my birthday today. I figured out last night that I'm now twice as old as I was when I went to college. How's that for making you feel old? Granted, I went to college when I was 16, but still.

And as cliche as it is, I found myself examining wrinkles this morning as I plucked those random hairs that started appearing on my chin when I hit 30. When does this stuff happen? And how awful that once a wrinkle appears, there's nothing you can do to obliterate it, no matter how unfortunate its placement.

And yesterday I found myself drooling over clothes in a catalog, and it was a Travelsmith catalog. Not hot, fashionable clothes, but clothes you wear on your bus tour of Ireland with the group of elderly Americans who complain the whole time they're in another country. OK, yes, the Travelsmith clothes are very nice -- classy and sophisticated, which I like to think I could someday be (although maybe not if I'm driving a purple minivan) -- but still. On the same page I saw a dress I liked, I saw a traveling suit that reminded me an awful lot of my grandmother.

So I'm 32 and I'm still not quite who I wanted to be when I grew up. I wonder if that ever happens. Will I ever look around and say to myself, "This, this is what I want to be doing and who I want to be"? I hope so. I could do with some contentment right now. But maybe it's an inner thing -- something I have to bring to myself, instead of waiting around for it to come to me. I'll have to ponder that a bit.

In the meantime, maybe I'll recapture some of my inner child by hanging out with Ian for a few minutes. That's all the blogging you're going to get from me today.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2005-01-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

I find it extremely hard to believe that one can approach a business with tens of thousands of dollars in hand and still not be able to get exactly what one wants when the business purports to actually sell that item. I mean, I've heard of bait and switch, and I don't think what we're going through quite comes to that, since we haven't been pressured to spend more money on something we don't want, we've just been told that we can't have what we do want.

Dave and I have finally reached the regular car-minivan threshold. We went shopping in November for a new minivan, deciding on the Toyota Sienna. You know, the one that went through all the redesign to make it family-friendly, the one that has all the advertising showing the kids designing it. Sounds great, right? And we got the promise of a good deal, going through USAA -- $500 over invoice. Terrific. Where do we sign to get the green one with gray interior? Oh, you want green? Well, they don't make lots of them. One might come in in a couple of weeks, or that one might be promised to someone else. What about dark blue? Again, not a popular color. Can we special order? Sure, but we can't tell you when you'd get it -- you have to wait for a certain number of cars to be ready to be painted the color you want, and there's no telling when that will be. Fine, we said, we'd order a green one with the package we wanted.

That was more than two months ago. Since then, I've seen a green one out and about, and green is actually pretty ugly. Now I'm back to wanting dark blue. Surely there have got to be some of them somewhere. But there aren't, according to my car dealer. He's scanning a five-state area -- 1,536 Toyota Sienna XLEs -- and there are no green or dark blue cars to be had with package #6. What the hell? Why even advertise that you can have whatever you want if you don't actually make that combination??? Might as well go back to the Model T -- any color you want, so long as it's black.

Dark gray? I ask him. Nope. Silver gray, maybe -- he's checking for me. So I'm going to get my fourth choice, if that. Do you know how frustrating it is to spend $32,000+ on something and still not get the thing you want? And I know I'll find it dissatisfying. My current car is dark blue, and I've never bonded with it the way I did with my first car, a tropical island green Geo. I loved that car. I loved being the only one around with a Geo. The color so fit my personality. But apparently I'm the only one who loves brightly colored, non-red cars. In America.

Maybe I'll spring for a professional paint job and get it painted purple. Yeah, that's it. Then I can be unique -- the mom with the purple minivan. But I probably won't go through with it -- my practical side will take over. Sigh.

It's Been a While

2005-01-21T14:31:00.000-05:00

Lots of stuff going on that I'm not comfortable blogging about, so I've been preoccupied with that. I'll make up for it today with several short blog entries, all with titled with song lyrics. Does the nifty gimmick make up for the lack of bloggage? Probably not. Especially since at least one is likely to get stuck in your head as an earworm. Hey, don't blame me if you're suggestible!

Screaming at My Radio, Revisited

2005-01-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

Got a chance to listen to NPR's comments from their viewers this morning, and apparently I wasn't the only one upset by the story on the Inauguration Parade last week. "Quite a few" viewers wrote in to complain about that particular comment, which caused them to play it again before reading one writer's letter comparing it to putting a comment from a KKK member into a story on inner-city schools. I don't know that I'd go quite that far, but it's nice to know that there are still some rational people out there.

Screaming at My Radio

2005-01-13T08:59:00.000-05:00

This is normally not a political blog. But sometimes . . .

I had to drive Katie in to school this morning (a rare occurrence, as it's usually Dave's job) because I'd left some things there when we had our Daisy meeting yesterday afternoon. So on the way back I got to listen to NPR's Morning Edition (on the way there, I got to listen to the first half chapter of Meet Kaya, Katie's new obsession). That's another rare occurrence. And this story had me screaming at the radio (this, unfortunately, is not such a rare occurrence).

Seems there's a verbal and legal tussle over who gets how much space along Pennsylvania Avenue during the inaugural parade next week. The ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition is charging that the Presidential Inaugural Committee has a disproportionate amount of prime parade route real estate, and claims that many security restrictions are actually being implemented to prevent protestors. This is not what had me screaming.

What had me screaming was a response from Preston Taylor of the D.C. chapter of a conservative group called Free Republic, who said, "ANSWER and some of the other groups like Code Pink have allied themselves with terrorists and with Saddam Hussein."

AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No. They have not. You idiot.

Protesting the Inauguration, racism, and a war he or she doesn't believe in does not make a person allied with terrorists and Saddam Hussein. Are you kidding me? You actually believe that? So much so that you said it on national radio?? Such protests make someone an American practicing one's First Amendment rights. Just saying someone is a terrorist doesn't make it so. How many times do we have to tell you people this?

Unbelievable. I think I'll go watch Blue's Clues with Ian until I calm down.

Oh, That's Just Sad

2005-01-12T14:12:00.000-05:00

You Are 31 Years Old

31

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

And you know what? I am 31 -- for 9 more days, anyway. Sigh. Don't you hate it when an Internet quiz nails you?

Dreams

2005-01-12T13:01:00.000-05:00

Note: It's been 6 days -- again -- since I've posted. I admire all the bloggers I read who post every day. I aspire to be like them. Sometimes life has other plans. I just haven't been feeling witty enough lately. I'll try to distill my wit more often in the future.

For now, though, I have to post about this absolutely horrible, terrifying dream I had last night (and it was the one that I woke up this morning remembering). We watched The Village last night, which we enjoyed for the most part. I was looking for the "twist" and thought I'd discovered it -- but then there were two more twists after that! Joaquin Phoenix, of whom I'm not normally a big fan, had the most intense, fantastic scene -- I actually replayed it after the movie was over to cement it in my memory. (Dave thinks he sounded like Mel Gibson during it, but I didn't care -- I'm a sucker for repressed guys who are completely overcome by passion.)

Anyway, you'd think that after watching a movie where a town is terrorized by creatures in the woods I'd have some sort of run-of-the-mill monster dream. Nope, not me. The one I had was even scarier.

I dreamed I was on a business trip and driving down from New York to D.C. I was on the highway, and almost there, when suddenly all the exits were closed, blocked off by police cars with flashing red lights. All traffic was being funneled to two lanes and forced to get off the highway into a big parking lot. The northbound side of the highway was empty.

Once the two lines of cars were stopped, everyone was ordered out of the cars by military personnel in uniform with rifles. We were allowed to take a few personal items, but not everything. It felt very concentration camp-ish. We stood on the tarmac (the parking lot became an airport landing field, and everyone was very frightened, not knowing what was going to happen. All I could think was that I'd left my children, and I didn't think I was going to be able to get back to them.

Finally (in that fuzzy way that events progress in dreams) we came to the understanding that we were going to loaded onto small airplanes, about 100 civilians in each plane, and the planes were going to be used to drop bombs on people below. The government would supposedly not be involved in this. We were lined up in single file and marshalled into the planes. I can still see the haunted look in everyone's eyes. Just in front of the stairs up to the plane, President Bush was standing and congratulating each person as they climbed up -- shaking hands and patting backs and laughing jovially. I was really disturbed by this and tried to avoid his touch.

Once on the plane, I found a seat two rows back and on the left. The guy next to me was reading a book titled How to Fly a DC-10 and muttering to himself. Laura Bush was seated in the very front row on the right, dressed in a hot pink, tailored, boucle jacket. Suddenly, we heard a rifle shot, and we all knew that someone had resisted getting on the plane and had been shot by the military. Laura started saying, "You see, that's what happens when you don't do what you're supposed to." Then she described in detail what was probably happening to the person's body -- the lymph fluid was hardening, the brain was being deprived of oxygen (I know, not real technical -- my brain doesn't know the details of death so I think it was trying to make stuff up) -- and throughout it all had a smile and a cheery voice.

And then I woke up. And the ominous feeling has lasted for quite a while. No, I have no idea what it means or why I dreamt it. I'd be worried that it was some sort of premonition, except for the fact that in my family we tend to be very bad dream psychics -- my mom and I have frequently been known to call people because we dreamed that they were dead, and nothing has ever happened. Still, I feel not a little disturbed. Perhaps typing it out will exorcise the demon.

And with that, I'm off to plan my first Daisy meeting. Wish me luck!

Where've Ya Been, Stranger?

2005-01-05T17:58:00.000-05:00

Well. Christmas has come and gone, as has New Year's. I missed any opportunity to send good wishes to my readers or make my resolutions known. Now I'd just be a few days late and umpteen dollars short. Basically, I've been busy. December is clearly a slow blogging month -- few of my favorite blogs were updated as regularly as they usually are. So January should be better, right?

I can't promise this is going to be interesting, but I've noticed that whether I post or not, I've got 5 or 6 people who stop by every day to see if there's anything here. Can't let the PUBLIC down, can I?

What have I been busy with? I see you're dying to ask. Mostly with the playhouse. I haven't updated the site yet, but this past weekend we made great headway -- the interior is painted (sunny yellow for the ceiling and top half of the wall; sky blue for the lower half of the wall) and about half of the exterior is painted, though I think it will need another coat. Today I put in a vinyl tile floor that looks like parquet. Next step is windows and carpet for the loft and painting and installing the interior trim. And as soon as we get that ladder painted, we can install it and the kids can play in it. I've also got to do the gingerbread/Victorian painting for the exterior trim, but that can wait a little bit. Still, I'd like to get it all finished so that I can move on to something else fun to do.

The weather's been great -- in the 70s all week. I think I can live with this. It also seems to finally be "fall," as all the pear trees suddenly dropped their leaves the past couple of days. Very, very odd.

I've also been planning a marketing blitz for JM Editorial. My primary client is cutting down what they pay me, and I'm probably going to need to scare up some work shortly. So I've been updating my business site (if anyone wants to comment on my rough draft, feel free -- the new logo is courtesy of famous author Lani Diane Rich [back when she was just my online friend Lani Schwalbe]) and my resume, and tracking down publisher listings in Literary Market Place. I had a fun afternoon with my digital camera and the LMP in the library -- taking high-res photos was cheaper and easier than using the copier. I also ordered new business cards, and as soon as they come in and I have marketing packets to send out, I'll be making -- gulp! -- cold calls. I'm not crazy about the idea, but it might be a chance to break into some new topic areas. I'd love to get into some fiction or textbooks.

And today was the last day with our nanny, Linda, who's leaving to take a full-time job with another family. I'm going to miss her -- she was so great with Ian and really doted on him, which was exactly what I was looking for. And she seemed to like me, too, and didn't seem to be judgmental (I always feel like I'm being judged for whatever reason). Now we'll be breaking in a new sitter. This one is 27 (Linda was a grandmotherly type) and is also named Jennifer, which just seems kind of weird. But I think she'll be good for Ian too -- at least, I'm crossing my fingers that she will. I bet she won't do my laundry and dishes the way Linda did, though. Man, was I spoiled!

Ian had his 2-year-old checkup yesterday, and was 35.5 inches and 28 lbs. The doctor isn't worried about his lack of vocabulary, especially since he's putting together two words. Actually, he's gone beyond that -- he very insistently told her, "I-na [Ian] boo [blue] 'at [hat] home" when we were discussing hats (I can't remember why that came up). He's also recognizing 5 or 6 letters -- O, M, K, I, F, N, and maybe some others -- consistently and is starting to say some of their names. And I found out yesterday that he knows all of his colors, though he can only say "boo" and "yeh-yow." (He's become very proprietary about the color yellow -- insists that only he can like it. He goes on a little incomprehensible tirade at me every time he thinks about me painting the inside of the playhouse yellow. Gotta love being berated by a 2yo!) Just think how much we'd realize he knows if he'd only talk.

All right, I'll wrap up this rambling post. I promise better in the future -- I was just getting depressed by all the people (the hordes and hordes, of course) coming by with nothing new. So now you've all got something to read while you're procrastinating whatever it is that you're procrastinating -- my New Year's gift to you!

Come, They Told Me . . .

2004-12-23T17:07:00.000-05:00

I have to say, I've really enjoyed our local radio station's all-Christmas music, all the time format for the last month. But I think I'm ready for it to wind down. Good timing on my part, huh?

Anyway, the point of this post is that I've been listening to Christmas music for umpteen years, and I've always gotten a kick out of the choral version of The Little Drummer Boy that's usually played (when they're not playing David Bowie's version, which oddly enough, I haven't heard this year) because it's the same arrangement that we used to sing when we went Christmas caroling in San Francisco with the University of California choirs, and it brings back warm and fuzzy memories of the greatest time of my life.

So how is it that it took me all this time to hear that the little bell they ring at the end of each line is waaaayyy flat? And now I can't stop it from bugging me.

Oh well, only 2 more days to go. And I'm with Kira on the Jesus-Christmas-shoes song. Please make it STOP! Even more than your run-of-the-mill tearjerker songs, I hate tearjerker songs that are designed to be tearjerker songs, as if the songwriter sat down at his or her piano with the intention of being as maudlin as possible. I hate, hate, hate them -- and I hate them even more when they are emotionally manipulative enough to work on me. (This goes for the dance-with-my-father-again song, too.)

I am such a sap.

Remind Me Next Year . . .

2004-12-19T19:43:00.000-05:00

. . . that gingerbread houses -- or even gingerbread trains, as the case may be -- are just not that fun to make. Really. No matter how cute the little kit is. No one wants to hold things together while they dry, and the 2-year-old doesn't understand that the decorated cookie parts in front of him aren't for eating yet. And somehow I ended up finishing this little "family project" all on my own, up to my elbows in sticky icing, while the kids watched TV. Oh well, another family tradition not to add to our repertoire.

Our weekend was spent shingling our playhouse, how was yours? I realize I should be glad that we had good enough weather to work outside, but I do not enjoy roofing. And I wasn't even up on the roof -- I was the schmuck on the ground cutting shingles to measurements shouted at me from the rooftop, where Dave was clinging for his life. He kept humming the theme to Spiderman. My hand is killing me, and I think our utility knife has had it. But the playhouse is finally waterproof -- well, except for the gaping, uncovered windows and doorframe. But the roof shouldn't leak.

And in the Too Good to Be True Department, our nanny, whom I've really enjoyed and who does wonderful things both for my son and for me (folds laundry, does dishes, doesn't judge (well, not out loud anyway)), is going to be taking a full-time position with someone else. She called to let me know before she even called the nanny service. I'm upset, but I perfectly understand -- I know we're not paying her much, and she has to fork over a portion of what we do pay her to the service. And we're not able to take her on full-time (nor do I think I would want to if we were). So we're back to square one with that situation -- daycare or find another nanny?

And part two of the TGTBTD, I think I'm going to get "fired" by one of my main clients tomorrow. Well, not fired really, but they put me on retainer back in late spring, paying me $1,000/month to reserve my services for their use. Not even exclusive use, but to have me drop everything and do their things first. And then they paid me on top of that when they did have projects for me. It's been very nice -- a gravy train, really. Because they haven't had more than one book for me in that time. A couple of months ago, I started feeling a little guilty for taking their money, but I soon talked myself out of that, because it's a business decision on their part, and they do have an out -- a 2 weeks' notice clause that I made sure was in there. They just hadn't chosen to avail themselves of it yet. Well on Friday, my contact there called to make an appointment to talk to me tomorrow, and I suspect the gravy train's pulling into the station and dropping me off. So I'll be looking for more work soon. I think, though, I'll pull a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow -- or after Christmas. Or after New Year's. Or something.

Not now, though. I'm tired and my hand hurts, and pizza's arriving soon. I'm going to go watch AFHV with my kids.

I (Heart) the Internet

2004-12-17T08:35:00.000-05:00

What did we ever do without the Internet? I mean, I use the Web all the time for work (the Library of Congress's online catalog is indispensable to an editor/proofreader), and it's great for entertainment, but the best thing about it is how you can solve those nagging little trivia questions that you obsess over until you know the answer. (Well, I obsess over them; perhaps someone more normal does not.)

Today's issue was Little House on the Prairie. I bought Katie an illustrated LHOTP book called Santa Comes to Little House (it's a chapter excerpted from Little House on the Prairie). I got it for her because I remember it as one of my favorite stories from the series -- it tells how Mr. Edwards brings Laura and Mary their presents after meeting Santa in town. But I remembered that Mr. Edwards came through a blizzard, and Pa heard him coming and was playing his fiddle while singing "Come In and Shut the Door." Instead, Mr. Edwards crosses a high creek in the rain. I was trying to figure out if Mr. Edwards saved another Christmas, and if that was what I was remembering, but skimming seven or eight books is a pain. So I turned to the Internet.

I googled* "Pa," "fiddle," and "come in and shut the door," and turned up a page that said that song was in These Happy Golden Years. I went to the bookcase, pulled the book out, and discovered that I'd remembered the scenario right, and it was Christmas, but it was Almanzo who turned up mysteriously. Aha! Thank goodness. That would have been bugging me all day.

Gotta run -- Katie's Christmas party (and I'm not being un-PC -- at an Episcopal school, they actually do have Christmas parties) is this morning, and I've got to get Ian and myself ready early so we can go pick up balloons (why do I volunteer for these things?).

* Actually, I used Yahoo, which is still my search engine of choice. But right there is a case in point about why TiVo shouldn't make a big deal about not wanting to be used as a verb.

On the Next "Very Special Episode" of "And Then I Stepped in Gum . . ."

2004-12-15T19:57:00.000-05:00

. . . we learn why people actually buy marshmallows all made and everything, instead of trying to copy Martha Stewart and make their own.

(Soften gelatin and bring to a certain temp on a candy thermometer and beat for 12-15 minutes??? Thank god for Kraft!)

Making Progress

2004-12-12T18:35:00.000-05:00

I told you it would be slow without the slavedriv -- er, my dad here. We are not the type to get up early in the morning and jump to work, unless we're shamed into it. Still, we made a bit of progress on our playhouse. The roof is about 1/2 shingled, the doors and windows are trimmed, and the octagon window in the loft is cut out and trimmed (after a couple of false starts) -- and we're only up to Home Depot trip #9. Two more to go before I lose the bet -- and at least one of those will be returns.

Dave stole my blog entry about teaching Ian to tell time and learning to sleep later. All I can say is, that's the best parenting idea we have ever had (and I think it was mine). Ian picked it up so quickly -- knock on wood -- and I hope it will continue. The only downside is that somehow I made the mistake of sacrificing my own bedside clock to the little guy, and now I never know what time it is when I wake up in the night. Difficult for the control freak in me.

Tomorrow night I am running an informational meeting for parents about Daisy Girl Scouts. I'm starting a troop at Katie's school. Already two moms have called to express interest (one of whom has twins), and there are seven kindergarten classes at St. Paul's. There could conceivable be 70 people at this meeting tomorrow. I was thinking about making cookies, and we planning on doing it tonight, until Dave suggested that I could just buy cookies to put out. Now I'm torn -- on one hand, I like making cookies, and I like impressing people with homemade things (yes, I know I'm vain), and I have this very cute trefoil-shaped cookie cutter. On the other hand, I do have other things I could be doing, and why should I work so hard to impress strangers, and, okay, Dave got me with the little dig about being like the Desperate Housewives character, Brie. So I'm not sure what I'll do.

Notice that I am, of course, procrastinating planning the actual content of the meeting -- I intend to do that tomorrow in a cafe while our sitter watches Ian. I also plan to write our annual Christmas letter. What, me, overscheduled? Hey, if I get the letter done before Thursday, when the kids' pictures come in at Sears, I'll be doing great. I already have the cards addressed and stamped -- all 60 of 'em.

Oh, quick Ian vocabulary note. Remember Ian, the one who supposedly can't talk, and who answers almost all encouragement of repetition with a prolonged, "Nooooo"? Dora the Explorer told him to say "abajo," and now he does. Abajo, for crying out loud. He's speaking a second language, and he still won't say "cat"!

Did You Miss Me?

2004-12-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

Eight days? It's been eight days since I've blogged?!? Where has the time gone? Oh, yeah. It's gone into a playhouse for my children.

So now I've taken part in a major woodworking project, and let me tell ya, it's not for the faint of heart. You need a stalwart project manager, for one thing -- one who lies awake recalculating measurements at 3 a.m. and then slogs out through the mud and the rain to get the dang thing done. In other words, you need my dad.

I did, however, learn an awful lot of things. I learned how to use a compound miter saw, and I'm darn good at it. I can produce perfectly measured bits of wood (well, except for that one piece on the front of the house, but we filled that gap in with caulk). I learned how to use a jigsaw, and I'm pretty good at that -- only if I use it horizontally, however. I'm less good at jigsawing openings around windows while not following a line and trying not to shave down the 2x4s framing the openings. But still not too bad.

I suck, however, at trying to nail a piece of siding to a stud, even when said stud is sticking out from behind the siding and a normal person would be able to visualize the stupid stud underneath. I mean, SUCK at it. I finally resorted to chalk lines, because I was developing an undesirable pattern -- two nails in, one nail out, two nails in, one nail out.

The end result is beautiful, and possibly worth the muddy feet, ruined shoes, aching muscles, and mosquito bites. Possibly. And I should alter that to "almost-end result." There's still a fair way to go. I have to figure out how to make an octagonal window, for starters. That should be a challenge. I think it involves tangents. And we've got to hang the door, carpet the loft, paint outside and in, and install railing. But oh, what a neat thing -- I hope the kids will love it. And if they don't, I swear I'm moving my office down there -- once we get an air conditioner unit and a really long extension cord!

It's Wintertime . . . Um, Sort Of

2004-12-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

Winter has come to Mobile. OK, for the rest of you, it's probably actually fall. It's in the 50s, and a little chilly. The leaves have finally turned (coincided almost exactly with Thanksgiving). And we decided to turn our heat on last night. When we did, however, nothing happened. The little LED of a fan on the thermostat turned, but no noise. Hm. Dave thought he'd heard it running before, but I wasn't sure. I think the only time we'd turned on the heat was at night, and we probably didn't notice that it wasn't working. So this morning I got to make the calls.

The heating guy just left, after fixing some wires, and we now have heat. Of course, we also have a house full of smoke and pierced eardrums. Apparently, the first time you run a heating system it burns off some oil or something, and smoke gets spread throughout your entire house, and all of your smoke alarms go off. Poor Ian, he kept pointing to his ears and saying, "Dop! Dop!" I couldn't figure out to turn off the alarms, so I opened all the windows (kind of counteracts the whole "turning on the heat" thing, but what else are ya gonna do?) and we spent a few minutes outside. It did indeed stop eventually.

Oh, and the heating guy pointed out that we should probably change our air filter -- you know, the one that is supposed to be changed every month and hasn't been changed since we moved in in July? How were we supposed to know? We had no A/C and radiant water heat in NY. So I looked like an idiot -- oh well, it's not the first time.

Remember the Maine, the Plymouth Rock, and the Golden Rule!

2004-11-24T13:21:00.000-05:00

(Urgent undercurrent of crowd chanting, "TROUBLE, trouble, trouble, trouble . . .)

All right, I just read a second instance this morning of someone wondering if Thanksgiving is solely an American holiday, or if others in the world share it with us. Doesn't anybody remember the whole Thanksgiving story as we learned it in pre-PC times? You know, Indians (or Native Americans -- your choice, since it's unlikely we'll be giving it back to them), Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, Mass.? Why on Earth would someone think that perhaps Thanksgiving is celebrated in England or elsewhere?

I'm all for political correctness (ask Tori, with whom I got into a discussion about it this weekend), but perhaps global education is making some minds a bit too open and inclusive. Or at least, it's not being done well enough, because there are people out there who aren't getting it.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. (There is a Canadian Thanksgiving, but that's celebrated on America's Columbus Day.) And yes, thank you Dave, Ben Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird (first sighting of that reference was in yesterday's episode of Stanley). So have fun with it. And don't feel too bad for the British. After all, they've got Guy Fawkes Day and the Queen's birthday. It's okay for them to have separate holidays and even their own national identity. Really.

"T" Is for "Two" and "Time Out"

2004-11-18T13:21:00.000-05:00

OK, he's not quite two (about 5 weeks to go), but we've definitely hit that "terrible" stage with Ian. Although he's said the word "no" for quite a while now, he hasn't really been in the "no" phase. Well, he is now. Everything we say to him elicits a response of a firm, unconditional "no." And I've started putting him in time out for it. "Ian, go eat in the kitchen." "No!" (accompanied by flinging bits of banana -- on purpose -- over the fabric I'm working on). Result: time out in his room. "Ian, stop coloring on the chair. Crayons are used on paper." "No!" (accompanied by renewed determined scribbling). Result: another time out. I wonder how long this is going to take.

He also enjoys telling us to "DOP!" when we're doing something he doesn't like, like sitting somewhere he wants to sit or picking up something he wants. He curls up his little fist and sticks out his pointer finger at us and hollers "DOP!" That's just really got to go.

And what's the deal with a kid who can't (won't?) say "dog" or "cat" but has no problem learning "top drawer" and "cuckoo clock"? I tell you, he's just experimenting with us to find our buttons so he can push them for the next 40 years.

Update

2004-11-18T12:21:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you're all just dying to know how my "date" with Alexander McCall Smith went. I did get to go (after abandoning my husband and children at a car dealership to deal with men who want to sell us a minivan for way too high a price), and it was a lot of fun. McCall Smith, who lives in Scotland (though he grew up in Africa), arrived in a lurid orange and pea green plaid kilt, complete with green knee socks, green tie, and leather sporran. It was quite a sight. All I can say is, if I were born into that clan, I think I'd farm myself out to be adopted!

I was surprised by his accent when he began to speak. I'm not sure what I expected, exactly, but he had quite the posh British accent -- no trace of Scottish until he said the word "bewwwwk" (book). He's in his late 50s, probably (too lazy to go look it up), and he had a very dry sense of humor. He shared anecdotes about the "Really (pronounce "rahly) Terrible Orchestra" that he plays in (that's really it's name -- it's like a high school band for adults who aren't musically inclined but like to play for fun), readers who confronted him with the type of books he ought to write, people he'd met in Africa who had inspired some of his characters, and how he never intended to become a "serial novelist." He also answered questions from the audience.

This is where I found the proceedings somewhat strange. The reason McCall Smith came to town is that Tears of the Giraffe, the second book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, was chosen as "Mobile's Book" this year. You might have heard of this program, in which a city adopts a book and encourages people in the community to read and discuss it, and events are organized around it. It's been spreading across the country; the first I heard about it was when Chicago chose to read To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago, and last year Long Island selected The Great Gatsby, since it was set on Long Island's Gold Coast. Anyway, I thought Tears was an interesting choice, but I couldn't get anyone to explain to me why it was chosen. While I find the series a good read, and enjoy the books for their incredible description and characters, I'm not sure how "literary" they are. Even a member of the committee who chose it didn't know exactly why they picked that one, except that, she said, the author had to be willing to come to Mobile to give talks.

I thought perhaps choosing a book set in Africa was a nod to the fairly large, but also fairly separate, African American community within the city. This may have been influenced by my seeing an ad for a discussion of the book at a black bookstore (i.e., a bookstore that specializes in black literature). Maybe, I thought, this book was meant to bridge cultural gaps.

If so, I think it may have been a failure. Of about 150-200 people at the free talk given at the library, I'd say approximately 10 of them were African American. And several of those were either employees of the library or of the aforementioned bookstore, which had a table set up to sell copies of the book for signing. And, of course, McCall Smith himself is white.

What I really wanted to ask him to do, but couldn't bring myself to, was to address the issue of writing novels that are so evocative of a culture that really isn't his own. Recently I've been reading Cry, the Beloved Country, a novel set in the 1940s (when it was written) in South Africa that focuses on the racial divide and violence and the difficult (to say the least) circumstances for blacks or "natives" at that time. And yet that, too, was written by a white man. I know that novelists don't have to restrict themselves to writing characters that are just like them -- literature would probably be pretty boring if that were the case -- but it seems such a leap in these instances. And to me, it smacks of at least a little bit of paternalism -- perhaps unconscious paternalism, as I don't want to ascribe negative motives to anyone without giving them the benefit of the doubt -- but paternalism nonetheless. I would really love to have heard the author address that.

Instead, he was asked questions such as, "What does J. L. B. stand for in Mr. Matekoni's name?" (I know the answer but it's supposed to be "confidential") and, "What does red bush tea really taste like?" (in response to which he gave a plug for Republic of Tea's rooibos tea). I did get a chance to ask a question, and I went with the less-confrontational "Why do you think there's so little action in your books [he had previously acknowledged that there was a lot of tea drinking and cake eating]?" follwed up with "Do your editors ever push you to insert more action, climax and denoument and so forth?" He gave very thoughtful answers to my questions, which just made me wish more people had asked some probing questions.

Another racial note came up when I realized that the reception afterward was catered exclusively by African Americans. Again, interesting. I don't know if people down here don't notice it, but I certainly do. Yet I'm not quite willing to bring it to everyone's attention, which makes me feel a little bit cowardly. It's bad enough being a Democrat.

Eating My Words

2004-11-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

Umm . . . whoops. See that egg? There, all over my face? I made a mistake. Alexander McCall Smith is talking on Tuesday night, not Wednesday. So I think I can go after all (she says with a sheepish look). Unless, of course, I've unavoidably roped myself into a meeting that I planned -- got to go work on getting myself out of that.

God, I'm so embarrassed.