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.
Always bucking the trend
I love reading articles about “today’s teens” because they never actually sound like they’re about any real-life teenagers I’ve met. Granted, my special snowflakes are the specialest and the flakiest (haaaa) and their friends also tend to be anything but regular, but still. “Kids today” are risk takers! “Kids today” act first and think later!
Well, okay—that’s true even of my kids, I guess. Except instead of using drugs and sleeping around, my kids are doing things like stabbing each other in Minecraft “by accident.” (OOOOOHHHHHHHHH! Rebels!!)
Therefore, I humbly offer as an antidote to umpteen articles about how kids today are all suffering from FOMO: A piece about teens dealing with the opposite of FOMO, over at Alpha Mom, because ’round here, that’s how it goes.
Because reasons, that’s why
It has come to my attention that my perception of “normal” may be… a little off. Weird, right? I—and my family/home—am the picture of boring normalness, surely. (Voices in my head: Yeah, no. Also, don’t call me Shirley.)
I mean, doesn’t everyone reassure others about their competence by announcing that they’re a dog door? No? Or own their stupidity by exclaiming “Gorgonzola!”? Also no? Weird.
For some reason, this morning, I started thinking about all of the weird little things which happen around here and strike me as perfectly normal even though it’s POSSIBLE that they’re not. Or maybe they are and I’m just really confused. That’s also a plausible explanation because let’s face it, I spend a lot of time being really confused. A day where I’m NOT confused is probably… a day when I’m asleep. (Wait, is that an option? I would like to be asleep right now.)
So for my own amusement (and maybe yours?), here’s an assortment of things which I’m sure are perfectly normal: read more…
Greetings from Crankytown
I’ve got sleep on my mind, because we are currently experiencing a shortage. It’s no one’s fault, really, it’s just a lot of stuff on the schedule and less-than-ideal time management and the usual crop of minor crises. Everything’s fine. We’re just tired.
It did seem like a golden opportunity to make with many words about how important sleep is to growing teens, though. I swear I am more or less following my own advice, it’s just that life is unpredictable and also morning seems to come very early.
You can read more on Alpha Mom while I fantasize about taking a nap. (I won’t actually be taking a nap, though, because I’m about to go have a mammogram, instead. I KNOW HOW TO PARTY!)