I am one of those people who has felt like a full-blown adult ever since I was about six. I'm not saying that I'm MATURE, because lord knows I am NOT, but neither am I one of those "Oh, gosh, when did I become the grown-up??" sorts of people. I can't remember NOT feeling like a grown-up. (I do remember feeling mighty aggrieved when I wasn't being treated like one, as a kid and particularly as a teen. I see this same frustration in my daughter and when it's not DRIVING ME UP A WALL it cracks me up. I think we should isolate the chromosome responsible for this premature sense of adulthood and...
Me: Haircuts this afternoon. Him: Not for me! You're not cutting MY hair! Me: No, not for you. You're all wild and shaggy. Just Otto and Chickie. Her: Yeah, cuz he's a... a... Me: Hippie. Her: Hobo! Me: No. Her: Yes! Same thing. Me: A hippie and a hobo are NOT the same thing. Her: Practically. Me: Ummmm... NO. A hippie is free-spirited. A hobo is HOMELESS. Otto: Dude, have you been sleeping in empty railroad cars again? Him: What? Her: Oh, whatEVER.
So yesterday we had this big end-of-season soccer thing for, I dunno, six hours? Three days? A LONG TIME, is what I'm saying. It was a SOCCER EXTRAVAGANZA! With extra soccer! And hotdogs! And staying out entirely too late on a school night. And after you've played several billion hours of soccer (Monkey) and run around the fields with your BFF (Chickadee) and eaten your weight in potato chips (both of them), you are maybe a little tired, right? The kids sat in the back of the car, vibrating slightly from the large cups of lemonade they'd consumed (Countrytime Lemonade: Less Lemon Flavor,...
Last summer, when we moved here, the drought was severe and our little neighborhood pond mostly a half-hearted mud puddle. It smelled of baked earth and rotting plants and after a visit or two to sort of scope out the area, we didn't go back again. Why would we? It was teeming with mosquitoes and not much else. This spring, the kids have rediscovered the pond. Now there is no greater prize for them than being told they can pull on their rainboots and grab some cups and buckets and go out to the pond to "explore." Exploring is serious business, you know. There are creatures to be captured...
Yesterday Otto got a wild hair---and by "wild hair" I of course mean that he set out to do EXACTLY what he'd been telling me for two months he was going to do, but I was just sort of hoping ignoring him and practicing denial might stave off the inevitable---and declared it an Outside Work day. We have a couple of acres, here, and the best part about it is that most of it is WOODS. Woods are awesome, because they're shady, and they present lots of opportunities for your children to go out and muck around and turn over logs and find gross bugs, but BEST OF ALL, woods do not require mowing,...
Other than some good ol' boy showing up on my doorstep yesterday to ask if "dat dere truck's fer sale, I's seen it jus' settin' dere a few times," it was an extremely ordinary day. (I told my visitor that the truck was not, in fact, for sale. He seemed perplexed, and reiterated that he's seen it "jus' settin' dere" for a while now, and I assured him that we use our little pick-up for special events like trips to Lowe's and clearing the brush out of the backyard. Then I wondered why I was justifying our truck usage to a stranger, and bid him a good day and closed the door. Chickadee---who had...
Sometimes, I sit down to write in the morning and there is a Big Thing on my mind that I really do NOT want to get into, so I try to find something else to natter on about, and then sometimes there is simply nothing shiny available and my children have been neither unusually delightful or horrid and then---very rarely, but it happens---I wander off and realize twelve hours later that, Oh, hey, I never wrote today. Whoops. So I could get into a BIG GIGANTIC RANT to finish out the week (Hint: Are 504 Plans optional, and should the school which is ONCE AGAIN in violation open a conversation...
Things have been a tiny bit tense around here lately; I don't suppose you've noticed. To say we've all been a little stressed out would not be inaccurate. And while I can't speak for the kids, obviously, I know that I personally feel a lot more angst when my children are having trouble getting over a hump and I can't seem to help them. Both of them are struggling right now with different things. I am left feeling like what I do is never enough and that if only I could find THAT THING that would fix it all, we could all heave a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, THAT THING is completely beyond my...
Mom. MOOOOOOOOOM! Did you write a mushy post about me? REALLY? DID YOU? Because 10 is not interested in your mushy-gooshy love. How EMBARRASSING. Why are you always embarrassing me?? GOD. Clearly we need to go over the rules again. And just to drive the point home, allow me to follow The Weekend Of All Things For The Child with some pointed behavior to let you know that YOUR EFFORTS ARE NOT APPRECIATED. In fact, the harder you try to do something special for me, the greater my urge to stand in the middle of the kitchen and pee on the floor just to see the look on your face. Not that I would...
