Teen vision
We don’t see Chickadee very much, lately. Between band and other activities—not to mention her strong desire to get as far away from her embarrassing parents as possible—I feel like I’m lucky to get five minutes with her in a day.
The bad news is that I kind of miss her, and I despair of her room ever actually getting cleaned up.
The good news is that it’s a lot harder to get into an argument when we barely see each other, plus she seems happier to be around us for these short bursts, too. I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m usually either feeding her or doing her laundry, or Otto is driving her somewhere or giving her money. Ahem.
The best part, though, is the random little declarations and interactions we’re treated to these days. Just the same way that babies are cute so that their mothers won’t EAT THEM when they won’t stop crying, teenagers are entertaining so that their parents won’t boot them out and change the locks when they’re being all… teenagery. read more…
Calling it like I see it
It’s Tuesday, so that means I’m over at Off Our Chests today. And—fair warning—today’s post isn’t for those of delicate constitution where saying the names of body parts is somehow alarming.
I don’t spend a lot of time discussing vaginas… I mean, no more than the average person (what, exactly, would be an “average” amount of time discussing vaginas…?), but today I am all about the lady flower. And I’m not holding back.
Go check it out if you can stand some frank discussion. Because it’s become quite clear you’re not going to get it from today’s product marketing campaigns (quelle surprise).
On the seventh day, we pigged out
So, um, I never quite know what to say after a post where I’ve worry-vomited all over the keyboard and the majority of you are so sweet and kind about it, holding back my hair and assuring me that it’s okay. I want to follow it up with OH HEY FALSE ALARM, IT’S ALL GOOD! but that isn’t really how it goes.
On Saturday morning, Otto left at the crack of dawn for a work thing, I packed the children off with their dad for the weekend, and then I spent the entire day being responsible to no one and not talking about anything. Not solving any problems! Not discussing my feelings! Just being silent. Blessedly silent. And possibly shopping for shoes and watching bad television.
So Saturday was kind of a break from being “on” and it was just what I needed. Eventually the dog and I crawled into bed and when we woke up on Sunday morning, Otto was back! Hooray! read more…
Which one?
Yesterday everyone got home late and we had take-out for dinner and I was scrambling to put out everything we needed, and I opened the silverware drawer and stopped short. For some reason, the last time Otto unloaded the dishwasher, he decided that our silverware organizer was arranged incorrectly. For four and a half years it has been (left to right) knives, forks, big spoons, little spoons; what I looked in on as I was exhorting Monkey to pour milk and Chickadee to get out the napkins was big spoons, forks, little spoons, knives.
This halted the entire operation. “What did you DO?” I asked Otto, totally baffled by the drawer. He mumbled something about how he thought the new arrangement might make it easier to set the table (he and Chickie both often reverse the knives and forks). “But you can’t… just… do THAT!” I sputtered. “You can’t just CHANGE it without any WARNING! That’s not how it GOES!” By now both kids had come to marvel at the rearranged drawer, and Chickadee looked at it, then at me, and set to putting the drawer back to the way it had been. Monkey just looked horrified. I grabbed my son. “DO YOU SEE this little OCD acorn right here?” I demanded of Otto. “He didn’t fall far from THIS TREE”—indicating myself—“and that means you can’t just REARRANGE EVERYTHING I KNOW TO BE TRUE ABOUT SILVERWARE without TELLING ME.” read more…
I fought the nachos, and the nachos won
Once upon a time, in a land long ago and far away (okay, fine, it was here, and it was last May; I may be exaggerating just a little, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?), my darling, sweet, beautiful, talented daughter signed up to be in the marching band this year. And lo it was VERY EXCITING, because being in the high school marching band as an eighth grader felt like a Really Big Deal, and she was excited, and we were excited for her, and we filled out and signed roughly three pounds of paperwork.
Medical blah blah blah. Permission blah blah blah. Agree to the code of conduct blah blah blah. Deposit submitted blah blah blah. Schedule blah blah blah. Volunteer sign-up blah blah blah. Sign here, date here, put my name on the list here.
You know where this is going, right? We survived band camp. The football season started and we’ve been there cheering Chickadee on and, uh, lamenting how rotten our football team is. Everything’s great. And then last week I remembered that I signed up to volunteer… sometime. read more…
It’s all in my lungs head
It’s Tuesday, so that means I’m over at Off Our Chests, and today I’m thinking about the legacy of my childhood asthma, even though it turns out that—from a medical standpoint, anyway—I’m barely affected by it anymore.
I’m not quite crazy enough to take up running, or anything, but I definitely need to get over this feeling that my body is the enemy. (Or that I’m just a little crazy. Because… I mean, yes, OBVIOUSLY. But you know.)
Come on over and share, if you’re so inclined.
Wrapping it all up with a little arson
So far as Monkey is concerned, there are exactly two good reasons to go camping: 1) getting to play his Nintendo DS (which his mean, mean mother only lets him use on trips, lest his eyes glaze over and he and his console become one melded hybrid beeping creature), and 2) s’mores.
While I don’t understand the first item, I can see the s’mores love. What’s not to like about s’mores? I myself have been known to set several marshmallows on fire at a time, all while lovingly explaining to my vegetarian, marshmallow-loving daughter exactly how they get gelatin. (She makes an exception for marshmallows, because somehow the devotion to sugar overcomes her refusal to eat animals. Perhaps we should try candy-coating our bacon.)
Often, we go camping in the summer to places where it’s entirely too hot to even contemplate building a fire, so this last trip was Very! Exciting! because we had a fire both nights. And there was much rejoicing, and much s’more-ing. read more…
We’re naturalists. Naturists. Well, we smell.
Fall has arrived, and with it the dulcet tones of me suggesting to Otto that “it’s time to get that damn thing off the driveway.” See, during camping season, we keep the trailer in the driveway for maximum access and annoyance. But once it’s been determined that we’re done annoying everyone at our favorite campgrounds, we store it for the winter.
Of course, this means we needed one last camping trip before everything gets packed away for the season. And with Chickadee in marching band this year, she is free to camp… never. Except this weekend! This weekend she didn’t have a game, so off we went.
The trip began with careful instructions to the children ALL WEEK LONG that they should be PACKED AND READY TO GO before leaving for school on Friday. So Monkey packed and was ready to go, and Chickadee insisted as she left that morning that she was “almost ready!” So when it was time to go on Friday afternoon there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and stomping, because it’s not like we TOLD her we had to go, or anything. read more…
Like that
Every now and then, Otto does a Big Thing designed to make me feel warm and fuzzy—my birthday surprise and the festivities that followed come to mind—and it’s very sweet and wonderful and everything, of course. But the truth is that I may even love him just a little bit more for the small things, because I’m a sucker for the I-was-just-thinking-about-you gesture.
So a week ago, I wrote this post, which contained the following:
The list says “Thou shalt not list the things you, the parent, do for the kid as if it deserves veneration.†Because the only appropriate response from the child at that point is, “I didn’t ask to be born, you know! You shouldn’t have had kids if you didn’t want to do that stuff!â€
Instead, I gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly than necessary as I drove her back to school in complete silence.
And my darling husband came home that night with a plush steering wheel cover for my car. “So that you won’t hurt your hands when the kids are rotten,” he said, by way of explanation. That was a week ago and EVERY TIME I get into my car, now, I laugh.
Twenty-two years into knowing him, four-and-a-half years into the marriage, and I still feel totally lucky. It’s AWESOME.
Poisoning your child for fun and profit
(The title of this post is a complete lie. There is no profit in poisoning your child which I can figure out, though if there were, I would be ALL OVER THAT, pronto.)
I’ve been thinking I may need a completely separate space to discuss Chickadee’s mystery skin condition—I’ll call it As The Rash Spreads, natch—because it occurs to me that normal people may not actually find my (*counting on my fingers*) four years of endless blather about biopsies and medications and sun sensitivity and whatnot all that fascinating. I KNOW, RIGHT? I mean, what’s NOT entertaining about a cranky child with undiagnosed, pervasive creeping crud? But still, I should maybe take it somewhere else.
Today is not the day that’s happening, though. Sorry. Because this week we went back to Emory (again!) and have a New Plan (again!). And I just know you want to hear every last sordid detail. read more…