Chickie’s big night out
It has recently come to my attention that there’s the possibility that my oldest child has observed a year of her younger brother getting a lot of attention for repeatedly falling into messy chunks, and that she has since concluded that the best way to get love and affection in our family is by behaving badly.
[This conclusion is fueled by a deep need to believe that her recent rottenness is the result of incorrect conclusions rather than an honest-to-God sociopathic streak, and I AM OKAY WITH THAT.]
So over the last month I have been trying very hard to Spend Quality Time With My Daughter, because I love her, and because I’m hoping that doing so will help to curb some of the behaviors that make me want to rip her face off. And part of that strategy has been to essentially “reward” her for being older/more mature than her brother, by taking her to things he doesn’t get to go do.
All of which is preamble to saying that this weekend I took Chickadee to a cocktail party. read more…
Canine brain overload
The children have been out of school for a day and a half, and already the dog has gone completely insane.
To be fair, there’s a crew here working on the new fence, and when you are a 12-pound vicious guard dog that requires a lot of running back and forth from one end of the house to the other, barking and whining, just in case the pounding and trucks in the yard hadn’t yet alerted you to the fact that INTRUDERS are AFOOT. The fact that said intruders are hard at work erecting a dog run for your spoiled furry ass is apparently not a deterrent to this behavior, by the way.
But even yesterday, before the banging and clanging began, the dog was already on the edge of clinical insanity. I suspect that she—like me—goes off the rails pretty quickly when her sleep is disturbed. And when the kids are at school, she sleeps almost the whole time. Now that they’re home? No such luck. read more…
Sigh of relief, stab of fear
I’m the one who’s not sentimental. I’m the one who gathered with the other moms for coffee on that first day of preschool and while they blubbered about how their PRESHUS BAYBEES were growing up and they couldn’t stand it, I was all, “Are you going to finish that scone?” and “This is the first uninterrupted cup of coffee I’ve had in three years!”
It’s not that I’m in a hurry for my kids to grow up, it’s just that… it happens. And so far I’ve only liked them more, the older they’ve gotten. And sometimes, yeah, it feels like a grind—inbetween the rainbows and fluffy bunnies and tender moments, natch—and so passing a milestone is pure fist-pump “We made it!” celebration, with no room for nostalgia about what leaving this chapter of life behind might mean.
And yet…. Today is the last day of school. Today is the last day of elementary school for Monkey, and it really does feel like the end of an era. read more…
Endings of eras
I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing about my school days, lately. I guess it’s a side effect of this academic year coming to an end, and the fact that I am about to be Officially Done Being An Elementary School Parent, which doesn’t seem possible. (Seriously, how is that possible when I still have to ask my kid if he remembered to put on underwear??)
Anyway, today I’m over at Off Our Chests remembering my first time, though it’s not what you might think. C’mon over if you ever had an idol who ended up surprising you (or even if you didn’t).
Between naps
It’s amazing how many things you can pack into any given day between dragging your butt out of bed late and then sinking into a catatonic slump shortly after lunch, and then between wiping the drool from your chin later that afternoon and falling into bed shortly after the children. (Related: I seem to be drinking a lot more coffee than usual. Hmm.)
Our pool is officially open for the season, de-murk-ified, and filled with small, unmarked bills. Oh, wait. That’s not quite right; we filled our local pool supply place with small, unmarked bills, and they, in turn, came and filled our pool with FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS of salt (not an exaggeration, actually). They also removed our old chlorinator and instead attached some fancy doohickey that monitors the salt content of the water (possible readings include “pretty salty,” “very salty,” and “hey, did you know there’s salt in here?”) and spins the salt into gold. Or chlorine. Whatever. It’s all very exciting and so, of course, the weather—which has recently been in the 90s every damn day—spontaneously cooled off and it’s now 56 degrees outside, which is positively arctic for Georgia in May. read more…
Zzzzzzzzzzz….
So the good news is that I feel confident that I’m now firmly on the road to Less Crazy, thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals. (And all God’s people—or at least the ones who have to live with me—said AMEN.)
The bad news is that this seems to be being accomplished by rendering me narcoleptic, and I am simply unable to stay awake long enough to be significantly depressed and/or anxious. Now, it’s true that prior to this I hadn’t been sleeping well for a few weeks a month two months a really long time, but you would think that eventually I’d be caught up and could stay awake for 16 consecutive hours, no? I’m apparently not there yet.
The kids are with their dad for the weekend and Otto and I had big child-free plans that have been mostly thwarted by inability to stay awake. Today we’re off to The Big City and I’m hoping that if I sleep all the way there he won’t have to carry me around when we arrive. Wish me luck.
On a good day
This morning over breakfast, I mentioned to Otto the recent article showing that March conceptions are most likely to result in autistic kids, which I find fascinating. (I like to think I’d find it fascinating even if Monkey hadn’t been a March conception, but whatever.)
Monkey was immersed in his cereal bowl but I could tell he was listening. “Isn’t that weird, bud?” I asked him. “I mean, weird that it’s apparently true, and that they figured it out. And… I dunno, could you even imagine what you’d be like if you didn’t have Asperger’s? I can’t.”
He immediately leapt up from the table, stiffened his arms at his sides, and intoned, “Hello. How are you. I am fine.”
“If you didn’t have Asperger’s you’d be… a robot?” I asked, confused.
He laughed. “No, I’d just be totally dull, no creativity or anything. BORING!” He laughed again and went back to his cereal.
Lord, I just love that kid.
Traditional; modern; cerebral
We have arrived once again at the portion of our program where life needs to pause, briefly, so that Otto and I can contemplate our life together. The fact that I have been half-joking for weeks that thinking too hard about this past year can only lead to madness was not a deterrent to my handsome husband; today’s our anniversary/familyversary and that means CELEBRATION.
Regular readers may recall that last year on our anniversary, Otto looked up the traditional 3rd anniversary gift and found that it was leather. Not wanting to deal with a vegetarian-staged protest over his gifting attempt, he elected, instead, to buy us all crystal sun catchers for the kitchen (crystal being the “modern equivalent,” though I’m still wondering how leather turns into crystal, exactly).
I had a feeling that perhaps a tradition had just been started, but I didn’t know for sure until this morning. read more…
I didn’t used to be a farmer
To listen to me yammer on and on about my garden, you might be tempted to believe I’ve always been a natural-born nurturer of living things.
That would be an erroneous assumption.
Today at Off Our Chests, I’m giving you a little peek into my past… back to a time when I was only too happy to let things die. Maybe YOU didn’t have to have a tortured youth to come out of it a relatively useful adult, but I did. And I think it worked out okay.
C’mon over. Please tell me I’m not the only one who used to be rotten…?
Meanwhile, out in the garden
So I’m trying to keep busy while the world continues caving in, because I hear that helps to pass the time and make things seem less dire. HAHAHA. It’s not working, yet, but hope—and MIIIIIIIIINT!—springs eternal.
This means, of course, that I am turning all of my energy to my gardening efforts. Because school never calls to tell me that my tomatoes are poorly behaved! Basil never screams that it hates me! And although I’m no fan of the slugs, they are entirely predictable and survival-oriented in their quest to ravage my harvest, whereas the Mother’s Day discovery that a certain surly someone managed to send $40 worth of texts IN A SINGLE DAY maybe shouldn’t have surprised or infuriated me, but did, on both counts. (P.S. I know we will look back and laugh someday, but someday feels a very long way off, today, and may as well have been Pluto, yesterday.)
I shall find salvation in my garden. It’s a little reassurance from Mother Earth that not everything I touch turns to despair. I’ll even take credit for the mint, which as we all know hardly needs my permission or coddling to flourish. I know. I’m still taking credit, so shut up. read more…