Pop quiz time! 1) You are a typical seventh grader. You receive a manageable assignment which is due in three weeks. You: A) Complete it right away---no use wasting time! B) Chart out your anticipated work trajectory, chipping away at it regularly for the next few weeks and finishing right on time. C) Work on it here and there, spending most of the evening before it's due finishing up. D) Spent five minutes on it one day and then the night before get super-annoyed that your mother won't just "edit it" for you (where "edit" means "do") so that you can hand it in. 2) As a gifted student...
Haaaaaaaaappy Valentine's Day! I hope that today brings you whatever form of either commercially-sanctioned or rail-against-the-MAN celebration you desire. I know that some women tell their significant others, "No, really, I don't need to celebrate, we don't need to do anything, honey," and then they would go sulk when their words were heeded and the day was, indeed, nothing special. Me, we're closing in on four years of marriage, and it is still 100% true that I am grateful for Otto every single day. I mean, sure, I guess I could demand/expect flowers or chocolate on this particular day,...
There is Logical Me, and there is Emotional Me. Logical Me is, well, LOGICAL. It knows things. It understands reason. It is measured and wise and only if-thens things which truly have causal relationships and is very rarely given to panic and knows exactly what to do in the unlikely event of a water landing without so much as raising its voice. I love Logical Me, but Logical Me is kind of a robot. Emotional Me is Chicken Little on steroids. The sky isn't just falling, it's SHOOTING TOWARDS US and there's NO WAY TO STOP IT and therefore requires that Emotional Me runs around, arms flailing,...
You know how I never talk about sex here? That's about to change. Sort of. Hang on; let me rev up my spam filter, because I'm about to get slammed with a lot of spammy links for things that I'm desperately going to wish I could unsee. (Like, you know, yesterday's thing. Apologies to those of you with delicate sensibilities.) So I spend a lot of time lamenting the thing I do wrong as a parent or the things I think I ought to be able to fix as a parent, and it was pointed out to me that I really am not given to appropriately celebrating the things I do RIGHT as a parent. Today I thought I...
Lately it feels like there's a million little things happening at once, but no cohesive story worth sharing that has a beginning, middle and end. You know? Right now we are living a lot of middles, and the beginning maybe isn't so interesting and the end is still unknown. And I'm having trouble coming up with things that feel worth the retelling when they feel incomplete. I got a very nice email from a reader who wanted to know how Monkey was doing, and that's a middle if ever there was one. On the one hand: The surgery was such a success, physically, it takes most of my energy not to spend...
Otto doesn't like it when I brag about him. I love him dearly, but on this he can suck it up because I don't think I'm ever going to stop being amazed at how he just never, ever phones it in with these kids of mine. And I am here to tell you that---while also beautiful, talented, funny, and amazing---my kids can be GIGANTIC pains in the butt. No one would BLAME Otto for occasionally throwing his hands in the air and walking away, is my point. Chickadee is at a magical age. One minute she is hilarious and loving and perfect and the next... uhhhh... somewhat less so. (AHEM.) ("Mom, why do all...
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Monkey is not exactly the most popular kid in his class. He has his BFF, and a couple of other kids he likes, and then on a good day, he tolerates everyone else. (On a medium day, he doesn't acknowledge anyone else's existence, and on a bad day, he gets himself punched in the face.) Monkey's teachers, however, tend to adore him. We've been inundated with emails and phone calls throughout all of this, and both his parapro and his homeroom teacher have already paid him post-surgical visits. (This is why I bake cookies, y'all. Because I can't afford...
Things have been going along pretty well, post-Monkey-carving. Some might even say TOO well. (Please cue up the foreboding music of your choice right here. I'll wait.) Despite my fears that post-surgical Monkey would be a giant ball of pain and anguish and HULK ANGRY HULK SMASH misguided energy, for the most part, post-surgical Monkey has been calm and agreeable and positively robot-like in his apparent inability to recognize that he might be in any pain at all, most of the time. In fact, I was just reading Jean's post about Jack's recent dental work and laughing that slightly hysterical "Oh...
Monkey's recovery continues apace. Yesterday was briefly a bit rough---he woke up in pain, pain bad enough for him to recognize---but with enough drugs TLC we were able to smooth things out and have a pretty uneventful day. By bedtime he was looking kind of ragged again, though, and as I gave him his last dose of pain meds I said, "How ya doing, buddy?" and he crawled into bed saying, "Not so good, actually." So either I've already made him into a full-fledged drug addict who doesn't deal well with the monkey on his back (ha! a monkey on Monkey's back!), or it turns out that having a bunch...
