It was a very merry Halloween
For some reason, we don’t really get trick-or-treaters at our house. This means I buy a bunch of candy “just in case” and then no one comes and then a month later I wonder why I’m fat. It’s a mystery! I wonder if I’ll ever solve it!
Nonetheless, some Halloween merriment did commence. Monkey had been declaring himself the symbol of American freedom for months, so it was a natural choice for AP Dress-Up Day for him to go as, well, the symbol of American freedom:
(I think his teacher liked it. At least, midday I got a text asking where I’d gotten the wings. I’m going to assume Monkey got his extra credit.)
Chickadee and a pal spent the night watching Saw, and I earned bonus Cool Mom points the next day when they went looking for Saw 2 on Netflix only to discover the Saw movies had, apparently, only been available until Halloween, and I went ahead and rented it for them on Amazon. The thing that’s nice about having a nearly-18-year-old child with similarly nearly-adult friends is that I don’t have to stop and think, “Is this movie appropriate?” Instead I can simply think, “Can I possibly curry favor by aiding and abetting the viewing of this terrible movie?” It’s great.
Anyway, that sort of got me thinking about the passage of time and other such “my baaaaaaaybeeeeeees are growing up!” sorts of things, so today I’m waxing nostalgic over at Alpha Mom about how much things and have changed (and some ways in which they haven’t).
Well THAT never happens
You are just never going to guess what happened to me today. NOPE. NOT THAT.
Why, today marks the fifth time in 4 years that my Discover card was hijacked. I have no idea why I’m so popular—or why the dirtbags who try to use it always go spend it so stupidly that Discover immediately catches on—but there you go. (Lest you think I exaggerate: I give you January of this year, August 2014, January 2014, and November of 2011, otherwise known as Saladgate.)
Feeling a little light in the wallet? Just steal my Discover number. Everybody’s doing it.
Anyhoo. That put a crimp in my day, and so I felt like I needed a little levity to take my mind off of it. I bet you didn’t know I’m super artistic, but I totally am. In fact, I made you some great illustrations of parenting teenagers. (If you want prints you can just pay for them with my credit card, apparently.)
Don’t sweat the cold stuff
It’s time once again for an installment of “Mir pretends to know things about parenting.” I’m your host, and you probably shouldn’t listen to anything I say.
With that confidence-inspiring intro, I give you my latest Q&A over on Alpha Mom: How do you make your kid dress appropriately for the weather?
Breaking: Old dog learns new trick
That would be me; I’m the old dog. In this instance, anyway. Duncan is ALSO an old dog, but I don’t think he’s learned any new tricks lately, unless you want to count the fact that he has recently started barking at the oven in the evenings. (Chances are, with his limited vision, he’s seeing some movement in the form of his reflection and getting startled and thinking someone is there. Or, if you like the kids’ explanation, it’s that Duncan Donut has realized his long-lost twin brother Krispy Kreme is trapped inside the oven. KRISPY. IN THE OVEN. Get it? My children are terrible people. They make me so proud.)
So… wait, what were we talking about? Oh! Right!! Me learning a new trick. It’s called butting the hell out. It’s difficult to master but I think I’m getting it. Slowly. Check it out over at Alpha Mom, if you’re so inclined.
Never a dull moment
I really thought that once Chickadee got her license, my life would become less complicated. Like: immediately, and exponentially less complicated. Because everyone knows that just when you feel like your kids have reached an age of relative self-sufficiency, you are then relegated to 24/7 chauffeur status for years while they are too old for you to micromanage their lives but too young to handle their own transportation.
To some extent it’s true that things are easier now, in the sense that I am no longer driving back and forth to school more often than not, because I can let the kids take my car and they do many of the same activities, and then I can just wait at home in my apron to serve them a hot meal they don’t want when they get back. (I almost never wear an apron, so that part is hyperbole.) And while Chickie doesn’t have her own car, we happen to have a spare (you know, the haul-the-camping-trailer truck which, now that the camper is gone, is mostly the haul-the-Costco-shopping-trip truck), so it’s not a hardship to let her take my car and leave me out of the daily GOTTA GO TO THIS THING AND THEN GO THERE BE HOME LATER BYEEEEEE thing.
On the other hand, sometimes the kids don’t have the same activity, and sometimes they still need me for something other than rides (the NERVE), and I’m supposed to be working on work stuff and I am also working on book stuff (shhhhhh; the first rule of HolyshitIamwritingabook Club is that we don’t talk about HolyshitIamwritingabook Club) and I am trying to get back to exercising regularly and it’s getting colder so I need to cook and bake stuff to make the house warmer (that’s totally a thing) and sometimes the dogs need me to play with them. Stuff is still going on, is my point. And mostly it’s manageable.
The thing is, it’s a delicate balance, and it doesn’t take much to upset it. CUE OMINOUS MUSIC. read more…
… and the sequel
You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry
Actually… most of you probably WOULD like me when I’m angry. But other people… not so much.
Anyway, I’m trying to cool down, but: I’m angry. Every day, in a dozen tiny ways, the world misunderstands my kids. That’s the nature of the beast and my mantra is to assume people are generally well-meaning and kind, and ignorance isn’t malice, after all. But every now and then, the ignorance is hard to bear.
I dusted off my soap box for this one, because disability is not laziness, and teachers—of all people!—should know that. C’mon. It’s 2015.
Chicken and parsnips and college
College sounds like a terrible addition to a chicken and parsnips dish. It would make it taste funny! But I am a poor planner and so I am jamming two wholly unrelated things together, plus I am giving you a recipe I sort of Frankenstein-ed together just because I liked it. Hey, you get what you pay for, here.
First, college: It’s that magical time of year when everyone with a high school senior is freaking out about college applications, so I wrote about it for Alpha Mom. You should probably go read it if college applications are in your kid’s future, because if I learned anything while asking around, it was that College Insanity has this pernicious habit of making itself look totally reasonable to its victims. To wit: Some people told me with COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACES that their kid applied to 20+ schools. TWENTY. OR MORE. They didn’t think that was weird at all. That’s because crazy doesn’t know it’s crazy, but don’t worry, because I’m only too happy to point out how utterly bonkers that is.
Second, I made a super yummy dinner last night and it made me happy, though I discovered on Facebook that apparently parsnips are quite polarizing. People seem to either love them or hate them. Me, I love them. Otto, too. Chickadee had an alternate meal because we were eating animals, and then Monkey was very suspicious and told me the parsnips “taste like nothing” so I told him to shut up and eat his nothing. (I kid. I didn’t tell him to shut up.) If you’d like the recipe and a lot of parenthetical commentary, read on. read more…
Reason #7,693 why I love him
When you have kids and you remarry, you hope that eventually your children and your new spouse will someday share the kind of loving bond you already have with your kids. You know that it will take time and hard work, but still, you hope.
Maybe you don’t specifically hope that after 8+ years your oldest will leave this:
… and then your spouse will behold that note, flip it over, and do this:
… but when it happens, you’ll still feel a sense of warm fuzziness in-between giggles.
Problems I can solve
I find it very tempting, when bad things happen in the world, to become furious with everyone and everything and assume that life is hopeless and awful, etc. But I’m trying to figure out how not to do that, so much.
Yesterday Monkey called me from school because he was unwell, and I tried to focus—step by step—on all of the good things this showed me. Yay for a kid who has become able to identify problems even though his own body is often a mystery to him! Yay for ease of communication to relay that information! Yay for flexibility of schedule (me) and health insurance (us) and transportation (despite the fact that Chickadee now drives my car way more often than I do) to take him to the doctor! Yay for meds! And yay for being able to follow specific, useful steps towards making sure my child is safe and healthy, at least for now.
It helped, a little. Not much, you understand. But some.
Before all of that happened yesterday, I put up a new piece over at Alpha Mom, but then the news about the latest school shooting broke and I couldn’t see interrupting that with this. So you get it today, albeit now you get it along with the disclaimer that I’m feeling sad and helpless about the stuff I CAN’T solve, but I’m trying to cling to what I can. Like helping my kid when he needs me, or dispensing advice about how to handle mean girls. It’s not enough. But it’s what I’ve got.