September 18, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Once upon a time, in a land far away and in a time not all that distant, I had the first in what I knew would be a series of talks with my children. Really, with my daughter. Monkey was, as you might recall, more interested in playing with his Legos than in discussing the miracle of life.

When I wrote that post, I found it being discussed on another site, and someone had taken a lot of time to write a long, angry comment about how I had “flat-out lied” to my children and my response to the situation was completely lacking. I think I left a comment on that discussion pointing out that I try to gauge what my kids are ready to digest, each time we talk, and that I am not going to outlay more than they’re ready to hear in the interest of being 100% factual right this second. (Not that my explanation mattered; some people aren’t interested in having their opinions cluttered up with reality.)

Anyway. Just as I had predicted, the day for more information came. (more…)

September 17, 2007 | Ottomatic For the People

This weekend—for the second time since our move—the kids went off with their dad and left Otto and me with a vast expanse (okay, a day and a half) of kid-free time. We of course got naked immediately, which was awkward because we were at Monkey’s soccer game when the ex showed up.

(Oh, I joke. We hardly ever get naked at soccer games. Besides, it was COLD here on Saturday! Chickadee and I were shivering and Otto was wearing jeans, and meanwhile the ex was slathering on sunscreen and complaining about how hot it was. That was when I realized that we have acclimated to the weather here. It was FREEZING, man. I mean, I think it was only 76.)

Anyway, the game ended and the kids went off with their dad and Otto had to go to a shoot and I went home and worked, but then LATER we got naked. I mean, later we went on a date. (more…)

September 16, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

(This is just a quickie so that I can go back to this new thing I’m trying of pretending that I don’t work on the weekends. Woo! Am not checking email! Am just, um, petting my MacBook for a minute!)

My family is nothing if not triumphant. I mean, don’t be jealous or anything, but we pretty much rock.

First of all, Monkey had his first soccer game, and they pounded the other team. Just decimated them. This league doesn’t keep score, but I’m pretty sure the final tally was somewhere around 25 to 2. And Monkey—you know I love that kid more than life, and I say this with compassion in my heart—is not actually very good at soccer. (He is, however, EXCELLENT at dancing around on the field and shaking his booty. So there’s that.) I’m sure that the fact that Monkey’s team is composed almost entirely of nearly-eight-year-old boys and the opposing team appeared to be all six-year-old girls had nothing to do with the win. (P.S. To the league: Might wanna mix up the team assignments a little next time. I’m just sayin’.)

Second, I went and sang with the choir at church today, and at this church our robes have assigned numbers. I’ve been given robe number 1, and no matter how many times I throw my arms in the air and declare “I’M NUMBER ONE!” the people in the choir are STILL TALKING TO ME. In fact, today someone tried to recruit me for handbells, too. Because I am just that cool.

September 14, 2007 | Friends

You should totally come visit me. I am such a great hostess! Your every need will be solicitously attended to, and the overall feeling will be one of complete and utter specialness. Why, just ask Joshilyn. You can’t ask her right this second, because she is driving home, but once she gets there and detoxes from the splendor of my presence, I’m sure she can tell you with only a little bit of twitching.

Your marvelous Casa Mir experience starts even before you arrive, when I get it into my head to clean the house so as to best pretend that I normally just keep it clean rather than occasionally sentencing my children to bathroom detail when they’ve misbehaved. While you blithely travel towards me, I am lugging the vacuum cleaner up the stairs and vowing to render my daughter’s bedroom just as beautiful as possible for your stay. I will put fresh sheets on the bed, plump the pillows, line up her dolls in a pleasing yet hopefully not-spooky manner (all of those eyes looking at you, dude, it’s not good), and set to vacuuming. This is when I will discover that the vacuum cleaner is busted. (more…)

September 13, 2007 | Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, The Year of Living Changerously

As I may have alluded to here once or twice (ha!), my transition to southern belle has been a little rocky. I love it here, I really do; this town is, as I’m fond of saying, very much like my hometown but with more bacon. In the sense that a new area could feel like HOME purely on objective environment, it’s aces. Nevertheless, it’s a new place and that brings its own stressors along with it, like having to find everything again and make new friends and just feel like I BELONG.

I don’t know if you have noticed this, because I hide it so well (what with the being incredibly suave and all), but I am sort of an awkward person in general. In any given situation I am apt to manage to meet the bare minimum of polite interaction while feeling like a giant Fakey McFakerpants on the inside, so this elusive feeling of BELONGING is something that doesn’t come easily to me, even when I HAVEN’T just uprooted my entire life and moved to a different part of the country. (more…)

September 12, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I don’t think I’ve talked about Monkey much, lately, because we all know that my favorite thing to write about is ANGST, preferably the most anxiety-fraught, annoying angst I can get my hands on. (Fortunately there is no shortage of that in my life, generally speaking.) And while my daughter seems to share my proclivity towards “the glass is half empty and also has water spots, and a crack! WHY GOD WHY?!” my son rides on a much more even keel.

I was prepared to fight the school district to get him comparable services to what he received last year, and they offered very reasonable accommodations and I didn’t have to fight anyone. I was prepared for him to have a hard time fitting in and to have meltdowns that would really put off his new classmates, and he has shown remarkable maturity this year in managing to hold himself together at school. (He still has tantrums for me, at home, but let’s just pretend that’s because he loves me, mmmkay?) In short, I steeled myself for a rocky beginning here, for him, and I was just plain wrong. (more…)

September 11, 2007 | My name is Grumplestiltskin

I love how you all enjoy my discussion of all the wonderful new wildlife here in the south. And by “enjoy” I mean “squeal like little girls.” I feel you, I do. I don’t like it either. And yesterday as I was reading the comments about our velvet ant sighting, I said to myself, “Self, that is surely the strangest bug you are going to see here in Georgia.”

Ha!

Well, pride goeth before a fall. And denial goeth before more weird bugs. Shortly thereafter, I had the dubious pleasure of sighting something actually much weirder (and LARGER), though it was thankfully in someone else’s house, so I plan to believe no such creature could ever come in here. (Also, it’s a basement-dweller and we have no basement! Ergo, I’m in the clear! Lalalalalala… what? I can’t hear you!) (more…)

September 10, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", The Year of Living Changerously

Last night in bed (oh, how my husband’s throat must close up to see me starting a sentence on my blog that way, it makes me giggle) I grabbed Otto and insisted there was a SNAKE! SNAKE IN THE BED! And he did not seem to find it all that amusing. I cannot imagine why. Because I thought it was completely hilarious. I plan to preface all important announcements this way from now on. Just because I think it’s a snappy way to get someone’s attention.

He got me back this morning, though. Oh yes he did. Not only did I have to rise at the buttcrack of dawn and get the kids ready for school, after they were dropped off Otto made me go exercise with him! To be fair, we’d discussed this last night, but last night it seemed like a really good idea, this whole “morning walk” thing, and this morning, going back to bed seemed like a MUCH BETTER IDEA. Alas. (more…)

September 8, 2007 | Ottomatic For the People

Otto warned me quite a while ago that he occasionally walks in his sleep. I can’t even remember when he first mentioned it. I do know that it only happened once during our first stint dating (only once that I witnessed, anyway): I woke up one night to discover him pacing around the room, and when I asked him what he was doing, he stopped in his tracks. After careful consideration, he answered, “I have no idea.”

We went back to sleep.

I thought that was really weird, but that was only because I had no idea what was to come. (more…)

September 7, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

A few of you have asked whatever happened in the Xtina saga, and the inconvenient truth is that there just isn’t much to tell. I’d love to tell you that she and Chickadee have become the best of friends or that my daughter is somehow helping her out and making her life easier, but the reality is that Chickadee is pretty much avoiding her and Xtina continues to get into trouble on a regular basis. None of the kids like her very much, from what I hear, and although I do remind Chickie that I expect her to be kind (or at the very least, not mean), the avoidance routine is working out pretty well. Her teacher counsels her to steer clear, even, so what else can we do? As much as I’d love it for my daughter to be the one to make this little girl’s life better, my first priority is MY kid. That’s the sad and selfish truth.

It would make a better story some other way, but what I’m learning is that when it comes to my children, excessive storytelling is starting to get on my last nerve. (more…)