August 2009 Archives

My sister has three children and she homeschools.

I have one child, and my achievements in educating him are "how to draw zigzags" and "advanced skills in pillow fighting."

When I visited my sister in June, she has 84 books checked out. A few months back, she had opened a library card for her oldest daughter because they had maxed out the 100 item limit on my sister's card.

This weekend, we had 42 books checked out.

We went and got more.

By now, on her birthday, Grace should be in her new home, in the suburbs, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

I was going to say "But I wouldn't know, because I am not reading her blog anymore, because I hate her for moving away." Then I realized that if she had posted that she got there but something horrible happened along the way, I would feel like a tool for writing this post.

Now that I know she got there safely, though, I am posting, and I am also boycotting her blog from now on. I also did not send her a birthday card because I think it would give the impression that I still consider her a friend even though she abandoned me.

She should have warned me five or six years ago when I hired her that we would become good friends and then she would move away across the country. Obviously she is a bad person and cannot be trusted.

Fie on her.

I have received a comment that I feel the need to address, related to the post in which I disclosed that Boy Detective was sleeping away from home for the first time:

You need to follow up here...what happened? And, by the way, I believe this is the first time I have ever read your blog. I can't promise I will again...

I'm not sure where this commenter gets off demanding specific content when she states that she will likely never patronize the blog again. However, it was a mildly interesting episode and one I did not blog about on the kiddo's own blog, so I will comply.

Boy Detective's grandmother had just finished a successful afternoon babysitting shift that allowed me and C-Man to get away from our no-nap-today progeny for a few hours. I don't even remember what we did. Whatever it was, we were still both pretty drained when it came time for us to take back our child care responsibilities for the evening. So my MIL said "Why don't I take him to my house? Boy Detective, do you want to have a sleepover at Grandma's house?"

Grandma's house, you must know, is the epicenter of all Good Things. Blueberry pancakes, finger paint, tubs of toys, two pet cats, and most importantly Aunt FrogPrincess (no relation to yours truly except by marriage). Oh, how this boy loves his Aunt FrogPrincess. So once he has been asked if he wants to go to Grandma's house, it's going to take some work to pry him off the idea, no matter how freaked out Mommy is feeling about the whole thing.

It's not like I thought anything horrible would happen, because there are enough adult drivers involved to transport the child back home at any hour of the night if it all goes horribly wrong. But I don't think he has a clue what "sleepover" means, so this does not qualify as informed consent. I also don't like to be rushed into making decisions, and suddenly I had Boy Detective yelling "Go to Grandma's house" and MIL saying "It's going to be so much fun!" and C-Man saying "Sure, why not, where's the pack and play?"

When we couldn't find the pack and play sheet, I was relieved.

Then C-Man kept looking and looking and I was so annoyed that I had not put it away properly and then lo and behold he found it. I felt like I was being pushed along by a train and so I packed up a diaper bag and sent them on their way.

C-Man and I walked down to the Whip In, the nearby liquor store that was actually a liquor store when I lived right behind it in 1996. Now it's added a seating area, a selection of hippie groceries, and you can get Indian food. Their slogan is "Namaste Y'all" and I think that just about sums it up. We came home with treats and watched The Fall, a movie which was very lovely to look at but way too depressing. It was really nice to be able to watch a movie while sitting on my own couch and turn the volume up to a level where I could actually hear the dialogue. Most of the time, these days, we turn subtitles on.

By the end of the movie, though, I was regretting having sent Boy Detective over to his grandmother's. I did not have enough time to think about it, I haven't been over to her house in a long time so I have no mental picture of where he's sleeping, and I just feel icky about the whole thing. By this time, it's about 9:30 p.m. C-Man asks if I want to call over there, but I don't want to call in the middle of MIL trying to put him to sleep. His bedtime is around 8 p.m. usually but when she babysits over here, he has often managed to play her like a cheap violin and wrangle far more songs, backrubs, stuffed animals in the bed, bottles of milk, and various other delights than his parents would ever provide.

Which is what grandmas are for.

I finally said yes, call on the cell phone. No answer. We get a call back. He is not asleep. He is bouncing around in his pack and play getting Aunt FrogPrincess to sing to him about elephants. Grandma is ASLEEP. Aunt FrogPrincess is trying to put him to sleep by herself, despite never having done it before. And she has not given him his pacifier, without which the child has not gone to sleep since he started not falling asleep while nursing.

The phrase "WHAT KIND OF CLOWN SHOW ARE THEY RUNNING OVER THERE?" may or may not have been uttered by me.

Within the next few minutes, the following happened:

1. Aunt FrogPrincess was instructed to bring him back if he was not asleep at 10:00.
2. She woke up Grandma, who had apparently fallen asleep in the dark room with the pack and play while keeping Boy Detective company as he was supposedly falling asleep.
3. Pacifier was located, since it had been packed IN THE SAME ZIPLOC BAG AS THE BOTTLE THEY GAVE HIM HIS MILK IN.
4. Grandma called and said everything would be fine now, thanks!
5. Grandma was instructed in no uncertain terms to bring child back NOW.
6. Grandma called back and said that she told Boy Detective his father said he had to go home, to which he strenuously objected because SLEEPOVER WITH AUNT FROGPRINCESS!
7. Grandma replied "But you're not sleeping!"
8. Boy Detective said "SLEEPING!" and lay down and within 2 minutes he was asleep.

Do you believe that last part? 'Cause we're still not sure if we do.

When he arrived back home the next morning, he was pleasant and cheerful despite going to sleep a full two hours later than normal. He didn't even take an overly long nap.

Do you know what I spent all day thinking?

OH MY GOD MY TWO YEAR OLD IS GOING TO START STAYING UP UNTIL 10:00 AT NIGHT AND MY LIFE IS OVER!

But it did not happen.

So that, my friends, is the rest of the story. I hope my little sister who never reads my blog is happy now.

So yeah, there's this thing which I spent most of my spring dealing with extensively. I brought it upon myself, but only because I saw no other course of action, if I was to continue thinking of myself as a good person. Which I do. A self-centered person with poor impulse control, yes, but fundamentally a person who would pick up the hungry kitten instead of kicking it.

The hungry kitten responsibility that I took on is a lot like parenting a second child, one whose needs and behaviors are nowhere near as clear cut and easy to meet as the actual parenting that I do every day. Even when the actual parenting I did yesterday involved cleaning up after a two year old who was throwing up. A lot. What else do you do besides keep them cleaned up, act like it's no reason to panic, monitor liquid outgo, and break out the carpet cleaner? Easy to figure out.

The hungry kitten responsibility, though, involves multiple people's needs, desires, and personal drama, as well as weeks and weeks where my working days are interrupted, cut short, turned upside down, and intermingled with demands upon my skills from a previous profession - one which I got out of for a reason. I have far less control over the actors and the likely outcomes include some that are fairly serious.

If I had it to do over, I would still make the decision to take it on. I wish it hadn't happened, but if it did, taking it on was the right thing to do, and I have to see it through.

However.

This week, I had finally started to make progress in the battle of "stop waiting to improve your life and actually do it," which means creating a routine, eating fruits and vegetables, and pulling some semblance of a to-do list system back together. I was caught up on work for the first time since BlogHer and obviously blogging a lot more as well.

So this week, the hungry kitten situation decides to go from bad but holding to worse and not holding, in a way that requires my immediate attention and most of the limited emotional resources I have left over after parenting.

And I am cranky about it.

The end.

The Princess: Do we have enough tofu in the freezer now, do you feel secure?

C-Man: Are you trying to say something?

The Princess: We better eat it quick when the Apocalypse comes, because we won't have electricity anymore.

C-Man: I think that will be the least of our concerns.

The Princess: I'm detail oriented.

The Princess, after shrieking loudly: A roach! Will you kill it?

Houseguest: Okay. And I'm supposed to be the Buddhist here.

The Princess: You may be the Buddhist, but you're far braver than I am when it comes to roaches.

Houseguest, to roach: Should I kill you quickly or slowly?

Our air conditioning went out last Sunday. Tons of people live without air conditioning, including in Texas, and obviously it would not have killed us to go without it for a few days, but I was still quite glad that it was fixed within a few hours of the sun coming out on Monday morning.

It got me thinking, though, about what I would give up if it were guaranteed to solve the climate problem. We usually air condition our house to 82 in the summer, would we be willing to go to 90? 95? When it's cold, we heat to 65 or 68 depending on how much I'm moving around the house. Would I be willing to go to 60?

Would I be wiling to say okay, we'll only drive to the library closest to our house, and the park that's closest, and only to each of those once each week? We'll entertain the two year old within walking distance of our house for the other five days.

If I wore makeup, would I be willing to give that up?

Would I be willing to give up margarine? I can't imagine it's a good use of resources to manufacture it and make all those plastic tubs. What foods that don't grow within Texas would I be willing to give up?

Would C-Man give up buying new video gane consoles? Would I give up buying new non-organic cotton fabric for quilting until all the pre-existing fabric in America was re-used, and then only buy locally and organically grown fabric? Would I drive to Colorado instead of fly?

I realize that consumer choices alone are not the solution. We probably can't not-buy our way out of this mess. Also, if we all decided to avoid purchasing anything we don't need for bare survival overnight, I think the current recession would pale in comparison to the economic collapse that would ensue. My small individual day-to-day purchasing decisions can't re-plan cities so that more of the neighborhoods are walkable, the majority of our electricity is suddenly produced by renewable resources, our houses are a reasonable size, and the majority of our population eats lower on the food chain a lot more often.

But when you look at the average resources consumed by an American versus someone elsewhere in the world, you have to stop and think: if they were suddenly consuming like we do, how much would that mess things up? And if we can't afford for everyone to be us, then what about our current way of life has to change to bring it down to a level that we can afford to have everyone enjoy? What would that look like? What would I be going without?

If my handwriting were as interesting as this and I could take decent photographs, I might have done otherwise.

Love #171 by Flickr user ashley rose, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license

Dear The Dog,

Since Boy Detective was born, you have done an excellent job adjusting to your adjusted place in the household. We have appreciated your patience, forbearance, and general good nature despite the attention drought that has been your lot for the past two years.

If you are so bored that you feel the need to take up a sport, though, may we recommend something other than football? That object was purchased in the toy aisle, not the sporting goods department, and it's entirely synthetic. We can't imagine that it is going to withstand much more being carried around in your teeth.

The fact that you only remove said toy from its place downstairs when no one is looking does lead us to believe that you may be aware of our feelings on this subject, so perhaps some time with your own conscience would be helpful in this situation.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
The Humans

Obviously this is a strange question coming from someone who signs her posts "The Princess," but please feel free to take a look at my dandy new About page if you're one of the last three people on the Internets who doesn't know my real name. I actually should be better about remembering to tell people that they CAN use my name in association with this blog, though I appreciate it when people are cautious.

What I mean by pseudonymous is a hypothetical blogger who calls herself a perfectly normal name on her blog, something like Emma. So you go along reading her blog, and you're thinking "I like this Emma person, she's neat."

Maybe that's not so odd. Maybe Jennifer has a desire for privacy.

But let's say Emma/Jennifer posts pictures of herself on her blog all the time. She writes about what town she lives in, where she shops, etc. If anyone who knew her came to her blog, they'd be like "Hey, it's Jennifer's blog!" So she's not doing an anonymous blogging thing per se.

What happens when you finally meet Jennifer? Let's say she goes to a blogger meet-up. You recognize her, and you're like "Oh hey, you're Emma." Then she says "Actually my name is Jennifer."

When people, including myself, use wacky pesudonyms on their blogs, the reader knows what's up. You're expecting to find out that Wild Empress of All Suburbia is named Pam. But when Emma turns out to be Jennifer, it's just seems like a bit more of an adjustment.

Thoughts?

Watching my husband, still in his work clothes, sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Park"...

with an empty laundry bakset upside down on his head.

I don't think that would have happened without us having a kid.

I want to get up in the morning when I'm ready.

I want to take a shower when I want to, without having to negotiate order, timing, or any other responsibilities. I want to eat my breakfast without anyone else asking for part of what I'm eating. I don't want to make small talk while I'm eating, I just want to sit at the computer with my breakfast and browse the internet.

I want to clean up the house at the pace I set, so everything is settled and I can relax for the day. (Note that I said clean up, not clean. There wouldn't be much day left if I actually cleaned.)

I want to choose exactly what I would like to do with my day, including getting out big messy projects and leaving them unattended when I stop to eat lunch. I want to make one meal for lunch, for myself, without taking into account what anyone else wants, will eat, or will insist on eating if I'm eating it. I want to finish my lunch and wash only my own hands.

I want to go out in the afternoon to do something fun without making an elaborate plan to cool down the car so it's safe for those too young to defend themselves from evil burning hot metal buckles.

I want to avoid having any conversations that start with any of the following phrases:

• Could you please...
• What's our plan?
• What do we need to get done?
• How are we going to...
• Who's going to...

And yet, I want to cross a whole bunch of things off a list.

I want to sit on a couch with a good dinner and watch television, just because I'm tired and I feel like it. I want to turn the volume up to where I can hear all the dialogue. I want to relax for the evening without hearing the quiet static of a device designed to keep me informed of anyone else's activities.

Then I want to go to bed.

I reckon I have about 10 more years before this happens, yes?

From our mailbag:

Why aren't there any books about the Khans (as in the Mongols) for kids? Why doesn't somebody blog about that? [...] there's plenty of other books for kids about scary historical figures that killed a bunch of people (I have almost 5 on the first "emperor" of China.)

And this is why I will never homeschool. I think strange enough thoughts as it is, I don't need to add "analyzing lack of bloodthirst in children's literature" to the list.

Cash for Mama's Junk? at The Mental Pause Chronicles

Naomi Tries To Sleep at Precious Living

The person I want to be at From the Mixed Up Files of Happy Fun Pants

"Allah" means God, and if you didn't already know that I'm glad I just told you otherwise this post wouldn't be funny at Slice of Lemon

Stationary Bike Rack Fail at Looky, Daddy!

Underachievers, All of You at Falling Out of the Wardrobe

I Want to Dance Like A News Anchor at 52 Faces

By Elizabeth Knox Photography. Thanks, Elizabeth!

I picked C-Man up from work on Friday so we could have dinner and see G.I. Joe (review forthcoming on Heroine Content, obviously). As we were leaving his office after an interminable length of time that I spent pretending I wasn't bored while waiting for him to get done working, he said "Do you mind driving?"

Turns out homeboy's coworker had crunched two of his fingers in her car window earlier that day.

I've been all "Oh ouch, poor you" and "do you need some ibuprofen?" and "No really, let me take Boy Detective outside in the 100+ degree heat for an hour to play so you can ice it" even though what I've been thinking is often more along the lines of "You haven't even gotten your shoulder fixed and now you busted your hand? Oh great, another thing to make my life more difficult." Because the most important thing about my husband's pain and suffering is how it inconveniences me. (Note to self about personal growth: get some.)

It was only tonight that I realized I don't know how it happened. What kind of programmer hijinx involve sticking your hand in an open car window? Do I want to know? How far was it open? Why didn't he notice the window was closing? Does this coworker have some kind of grudge against C-Man that I don't know about? Why was he out in someone's car anyway since he took lunch with him that morning?

And why didn't I think of any of these things yesterday?

When bloggers don't get comments or don't get as many comments as they would enjoy having, they often think they're doing something wrong. I've been wondering lately, for blogs I enjoy but don't comment on, what my reasons are for that behavior. This is what I came up with.

If you have found yourself in the situation of wanting more comments, you might find it interesting to note how few of these reasons have anything to do with the blog itself, and how many of them are all about me.

• I meant to, and I even bookmarked that post, but then I forgot, and when I found it again, it was two months later and that just seems silly.
• I can't figure out a way to comment that doesn't sound like I'm just hijacking your blog to talk about myself.
• I can't figure out anything else to say but "Good post!" and that's really boring.
• I enjoy reading your blog, but I know NOTHING about the topic you're writing about compared to you, and I'm afraid to sound like an idiot.
• I ran across one of your posts somehow, and it was cool, but I don't want to comment because I just can't read any more blogs on an ongoing basis, and I don't want you to think I'm reading your blog on an ongoing basis and then be disappointed when you later (somehow magically) find out otherwise.
• Your post already has a ton of comments, so it seems redundant.
• Your blog has very few comments, and everyone who comments seems to know you in real life, so I feel awkward, as if I might be intruding.
• I don't want to create a login just to register on your blog. I already have Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress.com, TypePad, and probably some other logins, and I'm done making more.

For the record, I have also decided that commenting on other people's blogs (even if I can't read them all the time) is one of my biggest pick me ups, so I'm going to work on not letting these things get in the way. So if you're reading my blog, I want to head over to your blog - because we all have good posts, and I would love to read yours and at least say "Good post!" even if I can't think of anything more creative or substantial. Tell me where your blog is in the comments, okay?

Three of my favorite things Boy Detective has been saying lately:

• Biker boots!
• Have mercy!
• Watery grave!

The second two are from books (George and Martha, Madeline's Rescue), but the first one's origins are unknown.

How this child has not cussed yet given how we talk around him, I have NO idea.

We were hoping it would be $600 and we were willing to spend that for repairs, so apparently it's worth $552 extra so we don't have to add "buy a car" to the to-do list.

That, and it's easier to sell a car that doesn't need $1152 in repairs.

We eat dinner in front of a large sliding glass door, calmly surveying the remnants of the garden that is on its last legs in the Austin summer drought. If we're lucky, my husband will ask me what I'm thinking about.

"Oh," I'll say casually, "I'm thinking about how much of the back yard I could terrace and farm so we don't starve to death when society collapses."

I am such a pleasant conversational partner. No wonder he goes to work so cheerily every morning, earning money to keep a roof over our heads.

"Not much," he says.

"The part that stumps me is the protein. I don't think we can grow enough soybeans for all three of us. We could keep chickens for eggs?"

He grimaces. "Chickens are horrible. Better to make canals and have fish swimming in the rice paddies."

"Where exactly are we going to get water for irrigation after the fall of organized society?" I ask. "They could do that in Houston, we'd have to drive there and get fish if we were going to start eating fish."

"With all that gasoline that will be freely available, just like in Mad Max."

"Exactly."

I have to say, though, that with the agricultural output we managed this year, we may have sufficient produce to barter for protein. The zucchini plants only produced one edible zucchini before being scorched to death, but the cherry tomato plants were awesome. In fact, to properly demonstrate the size of the harvest, I had to find an appropriate visual comparison.

Cherry tomatoes half the height of Godzilla! It's amazing. Surely we won't starve when whatever the bad thing is happens and we're reduced to living off the land.

(Does the sepia thing help camouflage the fact that my camera focuses wherever it wants and I'm too lazy to override it? Good, I thought so.)

On Saturday I did keep my appointment with Mr. Creepy whose car I hit, and I left unharmed. Once I had bought the part for his car, I said "So where exactly did you get that old address anyway? It's not on my driver's license and it was a bit creepy to have you suddenly bringing that up on the phone."

What I got was not terribly satisfactory. It started with "like I said, I thought I saw it on your driver's license" and had a bit of "you blog" and then there was the word "resume."

Ah yes. Surely that was it, an old resume left inadvertently on one of my websites.

Nope. Doesn't exist.

I did finally found my name in conjunction with that address, in the Huffington Post's Fundrace 2008 section of their website that identifies donors to that presidential campaign. There's a little blue donkey sitting on my old apartment building on the map. It's the third result on one particular version of my name.

I'm going to assume that's where he found it, because the alternatives are pretty farfetched and unsettling. I'm still quite disturbed by the whole thing, but for a while I was hard pressed to explain why. I think I've narrowed it down to these issues:

1. On the day I hit the car, I pulled out my driver's license and showed it to him, offering to let him copy down the information. He declined. Then he Googled me. That feels sneaky.
2. When I asked him about where he got the information the first time, he lied, saying he got it off my driver's license.
3. Men should know that women generally feel less safe when their identifying information is suddenly mentioned by a man who has not been directly given that information, and this guy didn't seem to have a clue.

If I had been the one whose car got hit, would I have Googled the person? Absolutely. I would have written down the driver's license information, then gone straight home and turned on the computer. Who knows how old that driver's license was? And if I needed to rebudget for next month because the offending vehicle's driver was only in town for 48 hours from their new home in Bangladesh and thus unlikely to show up next week as agreed with my money, I would prefer to know sooner rather than later. But for pete's sake, if that person did continue to return phone calls and make appointments as promised, I would not suddenly bust out with "Oh, and how is your daughter, is her broken leg all healed up?"

I once read an article, written about the time that Caller ID was becoming prevalent, that said you should never answer the phone with "Hi Mom" when your mom called because it was rude to reveal that you were watching your incoming calls and deciding which ones to take. That suggestion struck me as silly, but I do think there is some value in knowing when to pretend you do NOT have certain information. I have a very public web presence, and I expect that people have access to information about me. If you read my blog, and you start the conversation with "I read your blog," then there's all KINDS of stuff that you could conceivably bring up that would be fair game. If you're in a commercial transaction with me, though, even though you have access to that information, it's really none of your business.

And if you feel you absolutely must bring it up, just say "I was nervous about the fact that a stranger hit my car, so I just did a few Google searches to see if you even lived in town." That's far less objectionable than pretending you didn't go looking.

Boy Detective is on his first sleepover without his parents, to his grandmother's house, at her suggestion.

Supposing that the liquor store we walked to after they left had in fact been in possession of champagne and I had therefore purchased some, and given that Boy Detective's usual bedtime is between 8pm and 8:30pm, what is the earliest hour that I could have concluded that he was unlikely to be brought home in hysterics and need to nurse to sleep?

Just planning my mimosa schedule for next time.

Lead Type by Flickr user jm3, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license