October 19, 2007 | My name is Grumplestiltskin, Ottomatic For the People

Recent events have turned me into a not altogether pleasant person. I am worried sick about Monkey; there is a story forthcoming about The House That Will Not Sell that sort of makes me want to punch myself in the face because, honestly, there should be a limit to the number of times a person can whine about such things, but mostly I want to punch my realtor in the face (hint: he is “just as frustrated” as I am about the current situation, he likes to assure me); work is a little stressful right now (ha! ha! just a little!); and next week I have to go have an MRI because I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT. So.

This results in things like sitting on the couch with Otto in the evenings, being not nearly so interested in the Red Sox as I ought to be because I’m busy working on my laptop, and whining a lot. (more…)

October 18, 2007 | My name is Grumplestiltskin, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I am trying.

I am trying to see and appreciate the good in the folks who are TRYING to help my child despite various limitations, be they the constraints of school policy, understaffing, or their own preconceived notions.

Or their own faulty memories.

So let’s get this right out of the way up front: I love Monkey’s teacher. I do. She’s a veteran and she has gone out of her way to to do certain things for him even when the school administration has dragged their feet, and despite the occasional interesting spelling (this week’s feature: candycorn! all one word!) I think she’s pretty good at her job. More importantly, I can tell that she genuinely cares for Monkey. I can forgive a lot in the face of genuine affection.

But I am reaching my limit. (more…)

October 17, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I don’t know what it’s like when you have more than a couple of kids (Chris?), but when you only have two, there is a very fine unwritten rule to which they instinctively adhere: Only one child can be in crisis at a time*.

*The exception to this rule is a direct confrontation between siblings, at which point it is permissible to both run screaming to your mother as if being chased by rabid wolverines, whereupon you will end up drawing equal consequences for squabbling over a pencil with such fervor.

Yesterday morning, Chickadee got up on the wrong side of the bed. The side of the bed from which she arose was located in Newark airport, I suspect, as that was the most unpleasant place I could envision within a reasonable radius. And the way she was acting, it was very easy to picture her having arisen in the airport on Christmas Eve, with her flight canceled, during a blizzard, trapped overnight with no luggage, and a large hairy man with body odor squished down next to her on the floor. THAT was more or less how she was acting. (more…)

October 16, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

Fall has arrived here in Georgia! I know this because our grass is dead. Oh, sure, it was dead before. But now it is REALLY dead. Deader than dead. You can hear it crying as you walk across the lawn and huge tufts of it throw themselves up out of the soil behind your shoes, begging to be put out of their misery.

The pool is closed (that sounds so much more important than “we done threw a big tarp over the water”) and the mornings are chilly. I have been leaving my office door open in the afternoons to catch a breeze, and although it’s still hot around lunchtime, the rest of the day is actually quite lovely.

This is the time of year when I start cooking things that make the whole house smell good, partially because I like to cook and I love to eat, but mostly because delicious smells wafting out of the kitchen temper the bite in the air. Only, the problem is that any bite October has in Georgia, by noon it’s been replaced with HEAT, so my internal cooking thermostat is off. (more…)

October 15, 2007 | Ottomatic For the People, What do I do all day?

… have big plans but in the end are astonishingly lazy.

(Wow, that really doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the way the original does, huh?)

The kids spent the weekend with their father, which meant that after Monkey’s soccer game on Saturday they piled into a rental car and headed off to… well, I’m not sure where. Maybe they told me, but I was too busy waving and driving off with Otto yelling “FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST!” Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad.

We set off on a rollicking adventure which would take us out to lunch and over to the local Goodwill. Because we are WILD.

We also, of course, had weekend plans equivalent to about three weeks worth of projects and decadence. On the one hand, there were so many things we needed to accomplish around the house, things which would be easier to do without kids underfoot. On the other hand, ice cream. You can see our dilemma, I’m sure.

So we did our best to make the most of the weekend, despite the strong gravitational pull we experienced from the couch. (more…)

October 13, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Retail Therapy

So if you had the WHOLE DAY to go do absolutely anything you wanted to WITHOUT CHILDREN, what would you do?

If you were me and Otto, you’d (finally!) go over to Pier 1 with that $25 gift card the realtor gave us in June and promptly fall in love with the most expensive dining room table and chairs in the place.

(It costs… slightly more than $25.) (And by “slightly” I of course mean HOLY HELL, BACK AWAY FROM THE LEATHER CHAIRS WHILST YOU OWN TWO HOUSES, CRAZYHEADS.)

The rest of the day was sort of a wash, after that. We had to use the rest of the afternoon to ponder whether we’re stupid beyond belief or just have impeccable taste. And don’t think our empty dining room isn’t mocking us while we wonder, either.

October 12, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

It is never a good thing when the phone rings in the middle of the day and it’s someone calling from school.

It is a double plus ungood thing when the phone rings in the middle of the day and it’s the principal calling.

My day yesterday was going pretty well; Otto and I went out to breakfast, and later Tammy and I went out to lunch. (Yes, that much eating out is unusual for me. Apparently I’m just not very good at spreading these things out. I was caught up on my work and looking forward to the weekend.

And then the phone rang and in very short order I wished I was back in bed.

He took his time getting to the point of the matter, too, which made it even harder, to have to listen to a dozen related-but-not pieces of information before finally getting to the heart of why he called. (more…)

October 11, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

Otto and I once vowed to go out to breakfast together once a week, but we did it a few times and then his car got hit and we got busy and we’ve just not managed to keep it up. This morning, though, as I sat at my desk, fantasizing about going back to bed, Otto announced that we were going to breakfast.

He lured me in with promises of hot coffee and stone-ground grits, so really, I had no choice. Work? Work, schmerk! It would still be here when I got back! (It was, too. Plenty of people hire ghostwriters… maybe I could hire someone to just take care of my more annoying assignments while I’m out holding hands with my husband. I should look into that.)

We headed downtown for our breakfast date and—as usual—I started feeling very old amidst the college students. (more…)

October 10, 2007 | Retail Therapy, The Year of Living Changerously

This morning while the children slurped their Cheerios and I slumped at the kitchen table, half awake, sipping at my orange juice, Otto slid a section of newspaper across the tabletop to me.

PUBLIX GRAND OPENING TODAY, 7:00 AM!

I checked the clock. 6:45.

Chickadee craned her neck, allowing her to read sideways instead of just upside down. “MOM! It’s today! You should go right now! Otto can take us to school!” Methinks my daughter is tired of walking up and down the aisles at Kroger with me while I comment on the fruit flies, the gray meat, and the fact that no one seems to actually work there.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll go right NOW,” I answered, “because I’m just not sure I need to be walking into Publix in my PAJAMAS.”

“But MOM!” she continued, having read the full-page ad top to bottom, now, “You can get a FREE TOTE BAG!” (more…)

October 9, 2007 | Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

One of the things that appeals to me about homeschooling is that you get to decide WHAT and HOW your child learns. Now, I know one of the complaints often leveled at homeschoolers is exactly that, that they can (purposely or not) end up educating their children in an incomplete manner, and whether or not that’s true (I mean, I think the majority of homeschoolers strive for—and achieve—a better education than one ends up getting in a public school), at least the parents are doing the selection.

Of course, I would never ever in a hundred thousand million YEARS elect to homeschool my kids, for all sorts of reasons, but the primary one being that I like them a whole lot better when I don’t have to spend every single minute of every single day with them. (Oh, how horrible! some people are now thinking. Whatever. I call this KNOWING MY LIMITATIONS and also BEING HONEST.) I, personally, am a better mother when my children get the majority of their book learnin’ elsewhere.

Besides, this frees me up to be dissatisfied with the public school system. (more…)