Raising Yoda
I am neglecting you, I know, because I am too busy basking in the wonder that is having two other adults in the household to keep the children entertained. All of my careful tidying up prior to our visitors’ arrival has been flung asunder in favor of taking out every last Lego and every single doll outfit, and frankly, I don’t care.
Everyone is having fun. Including me! Also, we are busy eating everything that isn’t nailed down. FOOD IS LOVE!
This morning, Monkey took my dad down to the pond for a while to “catch some fish.” This involves dipping butterfly nets into the water, trapping some minnows, transferring them to a bucket for a while, and later returning them all to the pond before they leave. Why this activity is endlessly fascinating, I’m not sure, but that’s okay.
When they came back, Dad informed me that Monkey had turned to him pondside to intone, “Become one with the fish,” as his best advice on catching them. (Dad reports that he tried.)
Love’s good to the last drop
Just a quickie, today, as I’m up to my eyeballs in work and we’ve also got house guests.
My dad and stepmom pulled up last night about fifteen minutes before the kids’ bedtime, which of course meant there was much running around and waving of arms and hugs and kisses and hollering—and the kids were pretty excited, too. We have all sorts of fun things planned, and these visits always make me realize how time is passing, without my noticing, as I watch my parents marvel over how tall the kids have grown and how grown-up they’re looking.
This morning I was up and out with the kids, volunteering at school, finishing up, and back home before my dad even got up. Which is fine—they’re on vacation, and it makes me feel less guilty about having to go do things (and work), anyway. Today we’ll laze about and conserve out strength (heh) until the kids get home from school, and then we’ll run around with them for a while. read more…
Welcome to my school district
I think it’s a testament to my GROWTH as a peaceful and centered human that I have neither maimed nor belittled anyone (to their face, anyway) in our current school district. Why, just last year, what’s happening right now would’ve caused my head to explode in a stunning geyser of expletives and indignation! Instead, I am “gathering information” and “working through the proper channels” and “drinking a lot.”
And bitching to you, of course.
(Also, I am not drinking a lot. My mother once told me that anyone reading my blog would assume I’m a heavy drinker, but I beg to differ. Anyone reading this blog on a regular basis surely knows that my drug of choice is Ben & Jerry’s.)
Let me see if I can explain this without diagrams. read more…
Clean carpet, interesting vocabulary
Poor Otto had kind of A Day, yesterday, and so after dinner he settled into our comfy armchair with a magazine and I just gave him wide berth for a bit. After the kids were settled into bed I decided to do a little cleaning, because my dad and stepmom arrive tomorrow and my house is a pigsty.
(I know! So weird! I mean, there was just a team of maids here last month
Anyway, I went ahead and pulled out the vacuum cleaner and set to work. Sometimes, you know, vacuuming doesn’t yield any immediately recognizable results. And I enjoy some feedback, so I like vacuuming when it looks like something imploded there on the floor before I arrived with my Kirby. read more…
One solution, more questions
I don’t know that I have ever laughed so hard in my entire life as I did at the many and varied responses to my double mystery post this weekend. First of all, y’all have some excellent costume ideas (cereal killer! HAAAAA!!) for sure. And a trip to Goodwill yielded a boy-sized… well, it’s not a trenchCOAT, but it is sort of a trenchJACKET, plus it wins the thumbs-up by virtue of having The Right Price, which in this case was $2.30. He desperately wants to wear sunglasses, but I am JUST THINKING that may not work for nighttime trick-or-treating, so the ol’ fake-glasses-and-moustache may be the way to compromise.
(And that will be even MORE fun because everyone knows the only thing cuter than a little boy dressed up as a spy is a little GIRL dressed up as a spy, and Monkey was mistaken for a girl EVERYWHERE we went this weekend. When I asked him if it bothered him, he said, “Nah. People are silly.” And if I could bottle THAT right there, friends, I’d be rich.)
So: Halloween is a go. As for the puddle in the kitchen… read more…
Two mysteries
When I got up this morning, I walked into the kitchen and stepped in a puddle in front of the kitchen sink.
(This is rarely a good way to start the day.)
In our case, though, it turned out to be less annoying and more extremely perplexing—investigation revealed the puddle to be some sort of cleaning fluid (I suspect the sort of “general cleaner” I sometimes buy by the jug), but we cannot figure out the source. I mean, in front of the sink, there, I expected either some sort of catastrophic plumbing issue or a bottle in the under-sink cabinet gone capsized. And… nothing. We can find nothing. I can’t even find a bottle that matches the smell, anywhere. Nor was there a trail from under the sink, indicating a spill from within. It was simply a self-contained puddle of cleaner. read more…
Love listens
We are in the midst of one of those difficult times that makes being a parent so much harder than ought to be legal. Because the backtalking, yeah, that’s dreadful. The bickering amongst siblings, sure, that’s crazy-making. The leaving things all over the house, the eyerolling, the complaining, the whining—oh Lord, the whining!—these are terrible things, yes? But they pale in comparison to The Hurt You Can’t Fix.
And right now, Chickadee has a hurt we can’t fix. She is trying to speak up for herself, and she is trying to be brave, and yet she’s in a situation where she is not being heard. And it is breaking her heart.
It is breaking my heart. read more…
Blessed are the mandibled
So, um, it’s been rather a rough few days.
Yesterday Monkey had an emergency orthodontist appointment first thing in the morning, because half of one of his torture devices simply fell out of his mouth (band and all). Otto was kind enough to take him to his appointment, and I took Chickadee to school… even though she was having quite a morning, herself, for reasons unclear to me. What was NOT unclear was that she was HIGHLY AGGRIEVED, and—I don’t know about you—I just LOVE getting up at 6:00, making breakfast, packing lunches, and generally caring for my family prior to hopping in the car at o’dark thirty to drive a thrashing, crying, angry child to school. IT’S AWESOME.
So that was… um. Unpleasant, I guess. The way being covered in papercuts is unpleasant.
And then I scrambled to catch up on work all day, and by the time the kids got home from school… read more…
Let’s just say
Let’s just say that last night I started making bread. Bread to go with the soup I’m making today, that we’ll be having for dinner. Let’s just say that after I bake it (which I’m doing right now) it is going to be the best bread I’ve ever made, because it has been kneaded and punched and smacked within an inch of its gluten life. Let’s just say that it is tempting to say “I FOUND THE BRIGHT SIDE OF HELL! HELL YIELDS EXCELLENT BREAD!”
Let’s just say that yesterday I spent my entire afternoon dreaming of pointy objects, bloody violence, and writing STERN LETTERS of complaint to… well, I’m not sure who. Someone in charge. Perhaps the person in charge of appointing mediators for disputes down at my local courthouse. Let’s just say that sometimes the courts order people to mediation and then they appoint someone who is certified and qualified to help the parties in question reach resolution.
NOW let’s just say that in this PURELY FICTITIOUS case, the person who is sent in to mediate is, in fact, Mr. Magoo. read more…
A meanie redeemed
It seemed like I sort of struck a nerve in this post where I talked about trying to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup in the foods I choose to feed my family. I always find that sort of thing interesting, because the HFCS thing was really a sidebar to my main point in that post (which was, I think, “insurance companies and doctors’ offices make me want to eat my own face”), plus I did not (that I noticed, anyway) say, “HFCS bad! If you feed it to your kids or eat it yourself, you’re a filth-encrusted whoremongering minion of the devil!” And yet the urge to justify one’s choices is human nature, I guess, and so responses to that post pretty much fell into one of four categories:
1) “You are so right, Mir! Corn syrup is evil and so hard to avoid! ACK!”
2) “You are so right, Mir! Corn syrup is evil, and that’s why we consume lots of aspartame and sucralose, instead, because I prefer chemicals to genetically-modified corn! ACK!”
3) “You are a whiny alarmist, Mir! Corn syrup never hurt anyone! Why don’t you go hug a tree, you filthy hippie!”
4) “LALALALALALAAAAAA! I can’t HEEEEEAR you!” read more…