Cheers, not tears
There were a few things different, this year, as we tried to corral the kids for pictures and they rolled their eyes and bickered and insisted they were just plain over it. For one thing, even in wedges, and even on her tiptoes, Chickadee can no longer even pretend to be taller than Monkey. For another, I sent one of the pictures to Kira and she immediately sent back, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but someone has swiped your baby boy and replaced him with an enormous man.” (This is true. Also: Terrifying.)
We were having fun. Then Otto mentioned that this would be our last photo of two sets of shoes together on the first day of school. That’s different, too. That’s nothing short of miraculous, frankly.
We’re in the final countdown to liftoff, and I’ve never been more excited. You can head to Alpha Mom for more details on why I won’t be wasting any time being sad this year.
Snippets in no particular order
I remember when preparing the kids for the start of school was practically an Olympic event. You’d get the list of school supplies and head off to your local Big Box store to buy your assigned allotment of glue sticks and whiteboard pens, and if you were supposed to have a magenta with teal striped 2.5″ 3-ring binder for a particular subject, well then, you had best find yourself that exact magenta with teal stripes 2.5″ 3-ring binder OR ELSE. Plus the clothes shopping. LORD. Uniforms, for the uniform years, or just replacement of what’s outgrown (him) and stocking the latest trends (her) before the big day.
Preparation for school this year:
Me: Does anyone want to go shopping for clothes? Do either of you need anything?
Monkey: No.
Chickadee: I’m busy.
I picked up some loose-leaf binder paper one day when I was getting groceries and they had a B1G1 special at the supermarket. Then I ordered a box of pens and half a dozen spiral notebooks from Target. Later that same week Chickadee deigned to go thrifting with me (first day outfit: procured) and I gave Monkey a haircut. Done! I LOVE HIGH SCHOOL! read more…
In which I pretend to have a grip
There will always be an element, for me, of “why in the world would you assume I have any idea?” even when I am being paid to dispense advice. The technical term for this is “Imposter Syndrome.” The Mir term for this is “just being my normal neurotic self.”
Today at Alpha Mom I’m offering up some thoughts on knowing when to suspect autism spectrum disorders in your small child, now that I have the luxury vantage point of my kids being nearly grown. On the one hand, I’m not an expert, and I’ll be the first to tell you I made (and continue to make) a lot of mistakes… but on the other, my general philosophy on when to seek help is a simple one, and I think it’s served us well over the years.
And in other news, I found three tiny, perfect cherry tomatoes this morning that the squirrels missed, so I’m taking that as a good omen.
As my denial comes to an end
I don’t know if you know this, but APPARENTLY simply refusing to think about the realities of having a child applying to college/graduating/getting out of Dodge doesn’t stop it from happening. We are gearing up to start Chickadee’s senior year and I have many, many feels. SO MANY FEELS. But I have to pretend I don’t, because, GOD, MOM, STOP. So it’ll just be our little secret, Internet. I know you won’t tell anyone.
We went through the Cabinet Of School Supplies last week and determined that we still had plenty of pencils left over from the last time we bought a gazillion-pack, but we needed loose-leaf paper, and spiral notebooks, and a few other things. All items were picked up or ordered. And then we were at Costco buying All The Maple Syrup this weekend and they had 2-packs of pillows and I thought, Huh, that’s a good price, and we’re here, and she’ll need pillows for her dorm room. It seemed reasonable. The next thing I knew, I’d ordered her a duvet after arranging with a local crafty friend to have a duvet cover custom-made because EITHER my child is extremely picky and wants something that doesn’t exist in the world in duvet cover form OR this is my lame way of making sure she knows HER MOMMY LOVES HER even after she leaves. Or both. Whatever.
The countdown is on, and I still have no idea what I’m doing. Only now there’s an expiration date on my influence. Fantastic! This prompted me to expound on my cluelessness even further over at Alpha Mom today, because ready or not, senior year is going to be a challenge for both of us (more me than her).
I’m just stroking his ego, really
I view myself as a strong, independent woman. I was fine being single. I don’t NEED Otto, you understand. I just WANT him. I like having him around, because he’s cute and funny and my rotten children often do not laugh at my lame jokes. But I could totally manage without him if I had to, despite his frequent assertions that I married him simply either for his health insurance or because I needed a lawn boy.
Once the freezer was cleaned out the other night, many items had been thrown away. Various mystery or in-need-of-disposal items, however, were in glass containers, and so we chucked them into the sink for defrosting so that the containers could be dumped out and then cleaned.
Yesterday—because my Pavlovian response to a big stack of dishes in the sink is to make an even bigger mess in the kitchen—I baked some “one-bowl muffins” which, true, only used one bowl, but also used my food processor and a bunch of other items, and filled the sink the rest of the way up. Once I got dinner going, I finally turned to cleaning up the carnage. I loaded the dishwasher, dumped out now-defrosted containers, washed items by hand, and then… turned on the garbage disposal when I was all done.
Did I mention, yesterday, all of the little containers of pesto in the back of the freezer? Darling tiny glass jars, each one juuuust small enough to slip down the drain unnoticed and be ground into a couple dozen jagged shards of glass while I cursed and leapt to turn off the disposal. Whoops. Nice work, me! So I’ll tell you that I don’t NEED Otto, but it’s a lie, because yesterday I needed him to extract all that broken glass and fix the garbage disposal. Or maybe I’m NOT a dumbass, and I just like making sure he feels needed. HARD TO TELL.
Whether I need him or not, soon it’s going to be just him and me again, so today I’m over at Alpha Mom planning for the future. (Not on my list: grinding up more pesto jars.)
Christmas in July?
Every Christmas, Otto makes his family’s traditional Christmas cake, which is actually a recipe that yields TWO bundt cakes. If we have company or are up north visiting, both cakes are consumed. If we’re down here with just us four, one cake gets eaten and the other one gets wrapped and put into the freezer in the garage.
I liked the Christmas cake well enough when I was still eating wheat, but I did not… how shall we say… hold it in the same reverent esteem as Otto and his siblings do. And this is sacrilege, you understand, not to feel a deep devotion to the sacred Christmas cake. (It’s hard to explain to someone how nostalgia might augment a taste in a way that cannot be recreated for those who lack similar experience.) No matter—Monkey was only too willing to jump on the Christmas Cake Is the BEST! EVER! bandwagon with Otto, plus Chickadee isn’t exactly going to turn down an offer of cake, especially for breakfast.
This is all preface to saying that last week, I went to get something out of the garage freezer, and I saw the second Christmas cake in there, and decided it was time for second Christmas. I pulled the cake and set it on the kitchen counter.
“Is that… CHRISTMAS CAKE??” asked Monkey, licking his lips.
“Yep,” I said. “Merry Christmas!” My family proceeded to eat cake every morning until it was gone, and I felt like a hero without expending any effort, so I’m calling it a win all around. Plus I was patting myself on the back about how great it is to have that extra freezer. read more…
The beauty, it’s genetic
I should have known the second I posted about sitting in the new dog bed to encourage Duncan to love it that someone would ask for a picture. And because I live to serve and also have zero dignity, well, why not? Besides, I thought it was time to really embrace my exquisite, graceful beauty, and lay claim to my child’s, too.
Here I am:
And here’s my girl:
Oh, did you happen to notice that awesome hair? Don’t worry, I’ve got the whole scoop on how to do unicorn hair over at Alpha Mom, if you want to check it out once you’re done marveling over how two people can look SO MUCH ALIKE. It’s uncanny, I know.
3 critter(s) tales, plus a redirect
1st Critter Tale: I swear (probably) this will be the last (most likely) thing I have to say this year about my garden and the squirrels, but I feel like this MUST be shared: Every single tomato in my garden is gone. GONE. In the space of about three days, the squirrels blew threw the red ones and got so annoyed about it, they also bit/tore down all of the remaining green ones. I have five giant tomato plants, all completely BARE. My beautiful tomatoes! It was like the scene in A Christmas Story after the Bumpus hounds destroy the turkey, except instead of “No turkey sandwiches… no turkey ala king…” I was wandering outside going “No tomato sauce… no BLTs… no caprese salad….”
I realize this is the first-worldliest of first world problems (I suppose I can buy tomatoes at the store or the Farmer’s Market, after all), but I am still hung up on the injustice of it. Especially because…
… with all of the tomatoes leveled, I figured the one saving grace would be that the squirrels were DONE. Oh, I’m adorable when I’m naive, no? Why, once the tomatoes are gone, why not start gnawing on the unripe squash? Bite each one a few times! Make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN they are not delicious, each and every one. That’s the ticket. Thanks, squirrels. You’re assholes. read more…
The dawn of a new era
If forced to keep it to a single word, these days, about how life is, or how the kids are, or how I feel in general, there’s no question that the most explanatory word I can grasp is WEIRD. Life feels weird. I feel weird.
Visiting a bunch of college campuses made it all real, I suppose, except it didn’t make it any less weird. Chickadee is a senior. Monkey is a junior. After years of just-get-through-today we are now firmly in plan-for-your-future mode and it should be GREAT, yes? It is. There were times I didn’t know if we’d ever make it to this point, so it IS great, and we celebrate (quietly, without any sudden movements, so as not to scare anyone or upset whatever deities were kind enough to see us through to this point), but it still feels surreal. It’s easy to talk about a mythological “someday” and even if it’s all you ever wanted, it’s still strange for “someday” to become “right now.”
So, the good: Seeing Chickadee think about her future with excitement. That is VERY good. Seeing her passionate about goals—which, to be honest, is something that’s been missing for her for years—that’s awesome. There is nothing but excitement and pride for me in getting to watch her figure this stuff out. It’s not 100% smooth sailing and there have been and will be disappointments along the way, but that’s exciting, too, because she’s dealing with this thing we call NORMAL LIFE and figuring out how to ride the waves instead of just rolling over on her back and floating or (worse) shrugging and resigning herself to drowning. She’s swimming, swimming, swimming, and I don’t know that it’s fair to want any more than that. read more…
It was nice while it lasted
We have lived in Georgia for eight years. I’ve been growing vegetables here for seven years. I’ve battled slugs, aphids, thrips, and the dreaded tomato horn worms. I’ve set up rain barrels and coaxed plants along in the constant 100+ temperatures. And never, EVER, before this year did I have any problems with my tomatoes simply disappearing.
Never before did tomatoes simply start appearing atop the fence.
Never before did my husband set up a video camera to catch the shameless thieves, until now:
Unmasking the tomato thieves from woulda on Vimeo.
It’s mid-July and I’ve already processed about a gallon of tomato sauce. But that might be it, because right now my plants are BARE.
Have I mentioned that I hate squirrels? I really, REALLY hate squirrels.