Love is sweet
Here’s a real tragedy for you—this year Pi Day fell during spring break. This was quite disappointing to my nerdlings, but fortunately my son’s math teacher recognized it for the tragedy that it was, and deemed the first day back to the school the Official Pi Day Celebration.
They celebrated with pie, of course. Here’s our contribution (click to embiggen) to the festivities; it’s a chocolate cookie crust filled with chocolate pudding, cherry pie filling, and whipped topping. (Mmmmm, Pi Sugar Rush!) Fueled by pie, Monkey won the day’s pi recitation contest by rattling off 54 digits before succumbing to a complete sugar coma.
I hope this is the sort of thing he’ll think of when he reflects on his childhood, someday. I hope he remembers the whipped cream and licking the beaters and winning a set of markers from his math teacher, and time softens the hard edges of the rest of it.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone. (Bonus pro tip fo the day: When in doubt, add more sprinkles.)
The word of the day is disappointment
There are days when I feel like I only exist to disappoint my kids.
And not the yeah-no-we’re-not-going-to-stay-up-late-and-eat-candy sorts of disappointments, which—truth be told—I rather delight in. When my kids want something unreasonable, I’m apt to say no with relish. I’ll be the first one to point out that I am RUINING THEIR LIVES because I am SO MEAN and I NEVER EVER LET THEM HAVE WHAT THEY WANT! I’m not talking about that sort of stuff.
I’m talking about days when I feel like I am forever saying no, justifying the things that hurt or upset them, and just generally feel like their own personal harbinger of doom instead of the kind of mom who loves, protects, and bakes cookies. I mean, I try really hard to do that stuff, too. But on a day when I’m busy breaking their hearts, who the hell cares? Cookies only fix so much, you know.
And I hear I could get into trouble for making them margaritas. So. read more…
Entire subscriptions, really
I have trust issues.
(Okay, let’s be clear: I have LOTS of issues, all over the place. Not saying my only issues are with trust. But if I get into the rest of it, we’ll be here all day. Possibly all week.)
Anyway. I realized while writing yesterday’s post that I still have trust issues; it’s complicated, of course, but I am very quick to lash out if I feel someone has kicked me while I’m down. Although I meant yesterday’s words in a general way, I regret writing them as a reaction (okay, an overreaction). But then, lately I have a lot of regrets about a lot of things.
Today I have a post over at Off Our Chests about trust. Because I’m learning that not every hurt feeling means you can’t be trusted, but I’m kind of a slow learner.
A brief note on the Hardship Olympics
I’ve found myself talking about this in blog comments a lot, lately, and with friends, too. I think it bears a bit of probing, because I remain absolutely astounded at the number of otherwise kind and intelligent people who just Do Not Get It.
The theory is this: There are no Hardship Olympics. Nobody wins for having it worse than everybody else. There is no honor and glory in that which sucks. Any sort of one-up-manship that happens in the discussion of difficulty is a dick move, because no one wins and it’s not a competition.
Furthermore, the fact that the world is full of tragedy—always, actually, though seemingly moreso right now—does not mean that if you personally didn’t lose your home, family, and pet chinchilla in a tsunami that your struggles don’t matter or somehow aren’t hard. I mean, sure, if someone is sitting there moaning about their hangnail, I get how that might be kind of trying. But I really think Plato said it best: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. read more…
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack
I don’t know where the time went, but suddenly it’s baseball season again, and Monkey came back from his trip with his dad just in time to come play. The problem, of course, is that Monkey and Lemur haven’t seen each other for a WHOLE WEEK, which meant that all four boys (Lemur has two brothers, remember) were much more interested in comparing Pokemon and finishing the lyrics to some song they’re making up about death, destruction and farting (really, I tried not to ask) than in actually doing anything remotely baseball-like.
But they ran around the field, and even kind of participated. Although Monkey got crabby over not being instantly perfect at it and even got himself good and wound up at bat and tried to storm off when he couldn’t hit the first few pitches, but in the end we got him settled down and he managed to get a hit. (And, I think, yelled something at the pitcher about “finally throwing a decent pitch” as he headed to first; my son, the trash-talker.) Chickadee even agreed to swap shoes with me (I wore good sneakers, she wore cute shoes) so that she could go up for a turn at bat. (I may or may not have commented to the person next to me that Chickie may have been one of the only “non-challenged” kids there, but you certainly couldn’t tell that from the way she hit the ball and then flounced her way around the bases. Ha.)
I am convinced that there is very little in the world that watching a motley crew of special-needs kids all playing together while no one stares or disapproves or makes stupid comments couldn’t fix. I’m just sayin’.
Paging Dr. House
Yesterday was a no good, terrible, horrible, very bad day, and every time I think about it I get mad all over again. It was the sort of thing where I couldn’t help just stepping outside of myself, mentally, even WHILE it was happening, and thinking, “If I wrote this up as a fiction story people would be all, ‘Yeah, it’s just not believable, I’m sorry.'”
Like that.
So I am too lazy to find the old posts and link back, but for anyone who’s new ’round these parts, my darling daughter has some sort of chronic skin condition that she developed when we moved to Georgia which has been steadily worsening ever since. We are about to begin The Four Summer Of Mystery Rash, only this year as a SPECIAL ADDED BONUS, Chickadee busted out the rash in December (the earliest yet!) when she had the flu, and though we sort of contained it for a while there, she came home from her band trip with a full-blown rash, as well.
We see a team of dermatology specialists at Big Atlanta Medical Center who supposedly Know Things, so we’d called to let them know what was going on, and yesterday morning they called and said “Can you be here in two hours?” read more…
Welcome home, please shut up
My nice quiet bubble of solitude has been popped. Chickadee came home filled with stories about her trip, all of the things they did and which kid said what and how she ordered a veggie burger one day that was GREEN on the inside, SO GROSS.
Me: Maybe that means it was made of real vegetables! Did you try it?
Her: No, it was just GROSS. Veggie burgers are not supposed to be GREEN.
Me: Plenty of vegetables are green. Maybe instead of soy and chemicals it was made of GREEN VEGETABLES?
Her: I don’t think so.
Me: So what did you end up eating?
Her: Oh, it’s okay! I had my french fries, and a Sprite, and some chocolate mousse thing for dessert.
Me: Truly, you are a beacon of health and an example to vegetarians everywhere.
Her: I KNOW, RIGHT? Hey, do you have any SUGAR??
There are many important things she has to tell me, is my point. I am actually enjoying it, in a horrified, bleeding-eardrum kind of way. (Apparently the Tower of Terror is REALLY SCARY. Who knew?) But there is the matter of her sunburn. read more…
I picked up a toddler last night
Chickadee is home again, and I know it’s wrong, but the regression she experiences when tired and uncomfortable totally makes me giggle. I swear last night I navigated a crowd of parents and stinky middle schoolers and plucked Toddler Chickadee of Yore out of the crowd, she who hugged me and delighted in my having brought the dog and promptly broke down into sniffles because her face was sunburned and it “huuuuuuuuurts” to wear her glasses (sniff, sniff). I tried to be solicitous, I did; but I kept laughing. It was all just so very pitiful.
I brought her home and tucked her into bed and am not anticipating seeing her today for many hours, yet. Poor little pumpkin of impaired judgment.
While the dog and I wait to see whether we get well-rested and happy Chickadee or cranky pubescent harbinger of doom, I’ve been musing on a little something I’d like to tell my younger self, and possibly pass along to Chickadee, as well. And that important message is over at Off Our Chests today. (Hint: It involves appreciation of Life Before Gravity.)
Home alone
I spent my entire weekend alone, and I cannot tell you the last time I did that. Such an auspicious occasion seems like it deserves exotic plans and special activities, but the reality is that I pretty much 1) unplugged (even though I had a ton of work to do) and 2) did a lot of nothing, albeit much of that nothing involved GOING OUTSIDE, which is something I am not generally good at while on a schedule.
Otto is away at this little conference you may possibly have heard of before. The day after he left, Chickadee left on the Big Band Trip (and OH THE DRAMA leading up to that one, hooboy, I just about kicked her out of the car bodily when it was time for her to go). And then the following day, Monkey left on a trip with his dad.
And then it was just me and the dog. I have to tell you, Licorice is pretty much the perfect companion for me, because whatever I want to do, she thinks it’s a superawesometastical idea. Like, not just “oh, okay” but more like “OMG THAT IS THE BEST IDEA EVER!” And that is why dogs are awesome. read more…
Nothing else matters, except it does
I’m having trouble tearing myself away from the earthquake/tsunami coverage, today. I just… can’t even imagine. Even looking at pictures, I just can’t imagine what must be happening there. I feel like I should DO SOMETHING, and if I can’t, well surely my life—my non-natural-disaster-rocked, comfortable life—should just go into suspended animation until the world rights itself again, somehow. (I feel stupid, just typing that.)
The news I was bursting to come and share yesterday afternoon feels inconsequential, except that it is still, for us, a very big deal: We found a therapist for Monkey, and not just A therapist but actually THE therapist we’d wanted from the start. She wasn’t taking new patients; after over a dozen rounds elsewhere I returned to her office to see if that had changed, and they said it had; actually, it hadn’t, but she called me back after I submitted paperwork and readers, I am not ashamed to tell you I BEGGED. It worked, which means I love her already. I think Monkey will, too.
Another hurdle cleared. I hold this bit of hope close to my heart today while praying for peace and safety for those facing much bigger matters.