Category — Maternal Ramblings

This is a day late because we lost our cable internet–heat related, I think:

I mentioned that yesterday was not my most fabulous day ever.  Here are the highlights.

At 4-something in the morning, our cat Isis, who had refused to come inside the night before, managed to push open a not-closed-hard-enough-by-me door and bring a mouse into the house.   So W and I were up “oh-dark-early” trying to rid our house of this mouse.  Isis, meanwhile, had lost interest in her quarry now that she’d brought it home for our review.  As we urged her to  act more  like a predator, she practically shrugged her kitty shoulders and ran for the door to see what else she could find.    Leaving W and I sleepily stumbling over each other in our efforts to catch the mouse.  In fact, we literally stumbled over each other, fell with a crash, and snapped the plastic dustpan I was wielding in two.  The mouse, sensing that this was a place of violence and lunacy, actually trotted right out the open back door.

It was not an auspicious beginning to the day.  And it was not the only home invasion–or perhaps I should say alleged home invasion–of the day.

For almost two weeks now, I’ve been a little bit freaked out by J’s bug bites.  A whole bunch of bumps appeared in a spot that’s normally not exposed, and we had no idea why.  Several days passed, and then one morning we noticed a mess of bites on her legs.

Scabs on her arms, bites on her legs, and she's itching as I take the picture.

Yuck.  First I thought that we might have fleas.  I hadn’t seen any, but lately Isis likes to lie on the princess sofa in our room (you heard about that sofa), so it seemed like a possibility.  Gross.  I got medicine from the vet, dismantled the princess sofa, washed all of our sheets.

More bites.

A neighbor I’d been chatting with started talking about bedbugs.  She thought they were bedbug bites.  She’d had two harrowing experiences while living in the city.  I Googled bedbugs and saw gruesome pictures and examined J’s room and found nothing.  Neighbor said she couldn’t find any evidence, either–until she turned on a light in the middle of the night and there they were, sluggish from having feasted on her blood.

eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww.

I made an appointment with our pediatrician.  Which was yesterday.

Okay, so what I really like about my girls’ doctor is that she does not offer parenting advice, but she does offer almost too much medical information.  In a sort of nerdy way.  Like, both kids will have ear infections, and she’ll choose a different antibiotic for each one of them, and then she’ll explain why she thinks this or that one will be better for this specific infection with this specific kid.  Which is, you know, informative, but sometimes I’m like:  freakin’ give me the script and let me leave now  please.

But it’s endearing, really.  So, at the office, she starts going into a lengthy explanation of spider bites vs. flea bites vs. bedbug bites.  There’s a brief mention of black flies (probably not:  just if we’re around water) and hives (nope:  transient.  J’s stick around).  Based on all of this information, it appears that the bites seem more like bedbugs’ than fleas’, but definitely not spiders’.  And, have you heard, bedbugs are a real problem in Schenectady right now?  I am hoping that this is all a long build-up to a definitive bottom line, but that’s not her style.  She’s not sure, and she’s not going to guess wildly.  Part of me fears that  she is sure that it’s bedbugs, but she’s aware of the enormous shame that I would feel if she actually said it out loud.

Instead, she tells me that there are some excellent Youtubes on Bedbug detection, adding that I should watch without the kids around because they’re so disturbing.  And she pulls out a ginormous reference book on bugs if I’d like to do further reading.  I am just nerdy enough that I spend an extra 15 minutes reading and taking notes, while my panic escalates.  I’ve decided, now, that it must be bedbugs, and the reading seems to reinforce this impression.

We go straight from the doctor’s office to gymnastics, where I plot my strategy.  On the way home, I pick up trash bags and a horrible poison that will kill bedbugs  at the store.  This in spite of the fact that I usually just use vinegar and water to clean almost everything because I’m anti-chemical and I love the earth and all.  I also borrowed a steaming apparatus from my lovely friend whose child is allergic to dust.  She volunteered to watch J for a bit while I completely dismantled her room.

By the time I got home, I was starving, so I ate lunch while watching hideous, horrifying Youtubes on bedbugs.

Then I went upstairs and started the hunt.  What I’ve learned is that, while bedbugs look pretty obvious in photos, they can sneakily hide under molding, in switch plates, or just about freaking anywhere.  On the video the narrator tells about how they once found an infestation inside the tv remote control on the night stand.  Oh. My.  That is so gross that I can’t even believe it. So as I hunted without “success”, I knew that I was going to do everything possible to eliminate any chance of bedbug life whether I found signs of them or not.

You see, I had a strategy.  Heat kills bedbugs.  They’ll start dying at 95 degrees, and they’ll definitely be dead at 110 degrees.  I figured that it was a perfect day for bedbug elimination.  I decided to heat up the whole upstairs.  I shut all the windows and opened all curtains wide for maximum sunshine.  Then I started bagging all of J’s extra belongings and I carried them downstairs and slammed them into my sizzling-hot closed-up car.

Piles of belongings in the hottest car ever.

Meanwhile I was also pulling all of the sheets and bedding from everybody’s rooms and doing super-hot loads of everything, including my dry clean-only comforter.  As far as I could tell, the mattresses are absolutely pristine–those little grooves along the edges are the bedbugs’ favorite home.

Could 200 vermin be happily living in these handhold thingies?

And yet.  The Youtubes had filled me with intense paranoia.  I was blowing compressed air into the handhold thingies and sliding a playing card under the cracks in the molding just in case a bunch of bugs were hidden.  All this while sweating.  Profusely.

After the exam, it was vacuuming and wiping down the floor.  Then I steamed all sides of the mattresses and the rug.

Steaming J's mattress.

As you can imagine, it was getting quite hot.  I followed that up by spraying horrifying toxic poisons in every nook and cranny of the room.  Through this entire process, it’s just getting hotter and hotter. Hellish, even.   Oh, and I learned some tips, in case you ever do this:

• Don’t actually grab the bottom of the steamer with your bare hand.  In case you forgot, it’s hot.
• Remove every last knick-knack, or you’ll find that the one thing that you forgot to move will get knocked over and make a tremendous mess.

J's knocked over "fairy garden".

• Don’t look up and watch as you spray poisonous bug spray, because it hurts when it falls directly into your eyeballs, and you’ll be out a pair of contacts.

Improvised face mask and "safety goggles"

• Just keep the tv on constantly.  Because otherwise your children will join you and make helpful comments like, “Wow, it STINKS in here!”  And that will be before you’ve used bug spray.  So you’ll know that the horrible stink is entirely your own body odor.

After taking care of J’s room, I shut the door with two space heaters, so it stayed at 100 degrees for about 45 minutes.   When I opened the door to check (I was a little bit afraid that the room might blow up), it was literally steaming.  I tried to take a picture, but, alas, you can’t see the haze of toxic fumes:

Hot, hot, hot!

Phew!  That room was done, and I moved on to our room, and then to M’s.  I didn’t bother with the sauna treatment and I was a little bit less vigilant about moving all of the furniture, so it went more quickly.  Except when I had just finished vacuuming and I looked down to see my very favorite earring on the floor.  Alone.  This is the only time when I almost cried.  I shook the vacuum canister in a panic, forgetting that there was a hole for the suction tube to enter, so I spilled vacuum junk on my nasty, sweaty self.  Then I went outside and poked around our steaming trash can, to no avail.  Then I pondered why it was that I’d chosen to wear the Target cubic zirconia in my ears instead of my favorite earrings.  Then I shook my bedside lamp and the other earring dropped from where it had stuck in the lamp’s base! Yay!

Even though I couldn’t ever confirm that there had been bugs in the house, I felt pretty confident that nothing could possibly survive my hours-long heat-and-chemical-warfare onslaught.  So although I still had mountains of laundry to complete and an entire car full of household items to replace, I felt pretty good about my efforts when I finally got to take a shower that night.

The next morning, J had four fresh bites.

Utterly defeated.

Later, I was visiting with Mary and I made a partial confession to her.  It seemed less shameful now that I was pretty sure that I’d been wrong about bedbugs all along.  Turns out, J had been reporting to her every step of the way.  J had said that she thought it might be the cat days ago, and I told Mary that J’d thought so because I’d thought so at first.  Mary had been hearing about J’s room being dismantled.  (Which I should have guessed: she’d told her friend, “My room looks crazy because I have bugs!”  Awesome.)  Anyway, after a long discussion about my various efforts, Mary made her firm diagnosis.  “Black flies and mosquitoes.  They’re both definitely in our yards.  And she spends so much time in the gardens–with her small body she immerses herself.”  I had no idea that we had black flies at all.  Mary was equally firm with her prescription:  Skin So Soft.  Clearly, I should have gone and talked with Mary first.

I put out a call to my moms’ group and a lovely neighbor-mama gave me a bottle of Skin So Soft.

J is out in the yard right now, thoroughly slathered.  Wish us luck.

Did you hear that a week from Saturday there will be an AweSomely Adult Prom?  I read about it on the All Over Albany blog.  I was briefly deeply excited because it’s actually on our wedding anniversary.  17 years, baby!   I do love me some dancin’.  But on second thought, I think that this is really something that you need to recruit a whole mess of friends to truly enjoy.   Sigh. . . looks like dinner for us.   Unless, anyone have some good date ideas?

Anyway, as the anniversary approaches, I can’t help but be thankful that my love life has been a delightful constant in my life for lo these last two decades or so.  (This is where I segue into whining–don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Next week is our last week of nursery school for J. Which means the last week of nursery school for the entire family, after 5 years straight (two successive sisters plus a kindergarten “red shirt” year).  I feel a little bit sad about it.  It’s not because my little baby is growing up.  I love to watch the kids evolve–I spend very little time mourning the loss of my babies and toddlers, because these big kids are wonderful.  And I’m not worried about her starting kindergarten.  She’s ready.  Excited, even.

Nope, I’m just sad for me.  My nursery school experience  has evolved.  I started out intimidated by the people running it and frustrated by M’s sobbing, thigh-clutching separations each morning.  Then I knew many people and over-volunteered.  For years.  This year I’ve already pulled away–I had a very small job, and I don’t know most of the newer parents who come on my “off” day.  But it’s still like a second home, a comfortable fit for me, full of people I know and care about and enjoy seeing several times a week.  It’s the kind of place where you can show up in the morning in your pajama bottoms and burst into tears and you’ll instantly have someone holding your baby for you while another leads your big kid into the classroom and someone else fishes a candy bar out of her bag.  And then dinner appears on your front porch.  Not like that has happened to me.  It’s, you know, hypothetical.

But the truth is, just like J, I am ready to move on.  Because I don’t go out in pajamas anymore (just sweaty workout clothes these days), and I hardly ever spontaneously burst into tears in public anymore.   But I know what I’m losing.  J’s classmates will go to several different elementary schools, and I already know how rarely I see the folks from previous years.  And that doesn’t even take into account the moms’ group friends whom I still miss, even though I stopped doing that two years ago now.  Just coordinating a cup of coffee is a freakin’ logic problem.

I’ve barely gotten acclimated to the elementary school scene, which is, frankly, decidedly less warm & fuzzy than my cuddly ol’ moms’ group and nursery school.  I’m working on that–bringing some more warm-fuzzies in.  But meanwhile, the scariest transition yet is looming.  Soon, I’ve got to come up with a paying job.   I actually thought that this blog could help me to forge a new plan–to see if I could manage to write consistently (along with, of course, helping people find some fun).  But even though I like capitaldistrictfun, it’s not satisfying enough, really, and it sure as heck isn’t going to pay for the new bathroom I want, much less the dang roof.  So if I was operating under the optimistic delusion that this experiment would lead to some sort of Oprah Aha moment that would light my path to the future. . . umm, well, it hasn’t.

I think that I’d just like to stop evolving for a little while.  I know:  that would be death.  Could you stop being a smartass, please, and just feel my thirst already?

Or, you know, you don’t have to just feel my thirst, if you happen to have a glass full of fabulous lucrative career that’s  tremendously satisfying  in what my father likes to call “an asshole-free” environment that gets me out of the house while still allowing me plenty of family time, then I am absolutely open to your input.

I’m feeling pretty grouchy today.  W is out of town.  I’ve had several bad runs in a row.  We need a new roof and we have a stupid Tudor style house which makes it cost, like, expensive times 3.  So I thought that I’d just allow myself to be needy today and ask if anyone’s seen these particular hairbands around.

The last ones left in the house.

These are currently M’s favorite hairbands.  I don’t know where I bought them, and I can’t find them again.  They’re not these Goody ones.  They look similar, but those are a different texture, more like fabric.    I think that maybe they’re these Scunci hair thingies.  But I’m not sure without seeing them in person, and I’m too cheap and stubborn to pay shipping when I’m not sure.  I keep looking at every place that I normally go shopping, and I keep not finding them.  Anybody seen them?  If so, where?  Please?

We have a whole variety of other hairbands.  None of them, apparently, are much good at all.

Unworthy options.

I understand.  I mean, we all tend to like a certain kind of brush or socks or whatever.  And it’s not like M pitches a fit when we can’t find one of her preferred hairbands.  But it’s just irritating.  You know:  you use the ones you like, and then they apparently evaporate into thin air and you’re left with piles  sub-standard hairbands.

And, then, because I was feeling grouchy and mildly sorry for myself for one reason or another, I allowed myself to get sucked into a true time waster.  You see, part of the challenge with M is that she decides on a single hairstyle choice and sticks with it constantly for months.  Currently, it’s the ponytail.  Hence my constant need for hairbands.

But then I got nostalgic for the headband era.  Because, for several months, M wore a headband Every. Waking. Moment.  I’m serious.  She actually stored the headbands on a bedpost so that she could remove the day’s headband after bedtime stories, and then she’d put a new one on in the morning before getting out of bed.  Consequently, for months at at time, it was impossible to get a picture without a headband.    I started out looking for a good photograph of  this one headband that was pink and black that used to drive me nuts because it was pretty–truly it was–but it always made me think that M looked uncomfortably like a pint-sized Paris Hilton.  ewww.  I couldn’t find that one, but here she is sportin’ headbands . . .

While dancin'. . .

Feeding a dolphin. . .

Oh, this one caused some ugly tangles! Bad idea. . .

Originally I uploaded about eight different pictures, but then I thought that you might not be quite so enamored with all the photos as I am.  And her face evolved, too, so some of them started to look like her today, which I usually avoid.  So here are a few, including one with the adorable little preschool face.  Man, I miss that little face.  And, you know, those headbands drove me crazy-crazy-crazy.  But now I even miss them, too.

Seriously, if anyone sees those hairbands around, I’ll owe you one.  With my luck I’ll find them just when she decides that she needs a chic bob.

This morning I was checking out the various blogs, and the TU’s Parent to Parent Blog had what I consider to be an appalling and depressing video of little girls dancing to Single Ladies. Actually, I just went to check, and they’ve pulled the video.  Imagine 8-ish year-old girls wearing thigh-high boots, shorty-shorts & half shirts with ruffles where there will someday be curves, dancing like Beyoncé. Except, you know, probably better than her, actually.  They were great dancers. I won’t go and on about it (although I already did, a little, in comment #14).

It reminded me that I’ve had a draft waiting to be posted that includes this rogue Disney compilation on YouTube.   It’s catchy but also appalling.  For me, at least.  Because for quite a while my girls loved the princesses, and I would try my best to find what was brave and clever about them, because it would be unkind to sneer at these characters whom my daughters admired so much.  But this has every single hotty-seductress princess snippet, so that, as a Feminist Mommy, I was feeling a little sick by the end.

My antidote is to keep a running list of fabulous Girl Power books.   I used to find it difficult to find great kids’ books to support my feminist habit.  Part of the reason was that many compilations are pretty good, but entirely picture-free, like Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, by Kathleen Ragan, or Girls to the Rescue, ed. by Bruce Lansky.  Or there are other stories that include pictures that just don’t appeal to my girls.  In the Barefoot Book of Princesses or Robert Munsch’s classic The Paper Bag Princess, the princesses aren’t really. . . pretty.  And I know, I know:  I want my smart, strong, kind, courageous girl heroines to be beautiful, too?  Well, it doesn’t hurt.

J, in particular, loves really lushly illustrated books of fairy tales and legends, and at 5 she’s already a sucker for a good romance.   I love it when we pick books from  different cultures.  Many of these are from our local library.  Here are some of our favorites (in no particular order):

• Robert San Souci, Fa Moulan: The Story of a Woman Warrior , Young Guinevere. . . others, too.  Love him!
• Aaron Shepard,  Master Maid: A Tale of Norway
• Shana Corey, Mermaid Queen: the Spectacular True Story of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way to Fame, Fortune, and Swimsuit History!
• Emma Bull, The Princess and the Lord of Night
• Jacqueline K. Ogburn, The Lady & the Lion
• Anne Sibley O’Brien, The Princess and the Beggar:  A Korean Folktale
• Burleigh Muten, Grandmothers’ Stories, Lady of Ten Thousand Names, Goddesses, and other Barefoot Books
  
• Louise Hawes, Muti’s Necklace: The Oldest Story in the World
• Laura Krauss Melmed, Little Oh
• Laurence Yep, The Shell Woman and the King
• Diane Wolkstein, The Banza : A Haitian Story
• Judy, Sierra, The Dancing Pig
• Emily Arnold McCully, Mirette on the High Wire, Beautiful Warrior, and The Bobbin Girl
• William Steig, Brave Irene
• Ruby Bridges–there are a bunch of different books on her–mine‘s an older one.
• Amy Ehrlich & Susan Jeffers, The Wild Swans
• Mary Hoffman, Amazing Grace
• Kevin Henkes, Sheila Rae, the Brave

Literally in between typing books for this Girl Power list, I went to check the mail.  And I thought that perhaps my head would explode.  Because I received a solicitation letter to enter my child into the National American Miss Pageant.  No, I am not kidding.  Yes, this was a bad day for that piece of mail to arrive.  The letter starts out, “Congratulations! Your daughter has been referred to us as a possible candidate. . . ” as if some big sister character has made special note that my child among all others is particularly beautiful and poised, and then it went on to tell us about all the money we could win.  It was so clever, I thought, because what mother  doesn’t want to believe that her daughter is really quite beautiful and poised, plus also (I’m sounding like Junie B. Jones in my cheekiness) who doesn’t like money? I was, like, enraged.

Immediately I wanted to find out what product or mailing list had passed my information on to these folks.  There was no 1-800 number, which is probably good, because even though I told myself that I would try my best to be polite and non-judgmental, I think I would have failed.  I requested via email that they remove us from their list, and then I hid the damn thing.  Because generally if my children say that they’d like to do an activity (which is rare–they’d rather hang out and play), we try to do it.  And we will not be doing that.

In their defense, the children are not allowed to wear make-up during the pageant.  The prosecution will point out that their blog’s latest post is about how one of their “role model[s] for our next generation of female leaders” has been accepted as a professional football cheerleader (yay!), and if you Google one of their sponsors, John Robert Powers, Google auto-finishes John Robert Powers Scam.  But,  you know, I didn’t mean to really just go off on this.  I mean, I’m sure that the parents of the cheerleader are very proud.  Because it takes skills, I understand.  And she set a goal and accomplished it.  So, you know, yay.  But a leader of the next generation? Really?!?!

So, I’ve just heard that Breathing Room is starting a Baby and Me Yoga class this Sunday at 2 pm (6 mos. to beginning crawlers).   I know, I know:  there are all sorts of classes starting all the time.  But I know that moms with teensy babies often are looking for anything, anywhere, please-please-please, so I thought that I’d put it here.  If you are looking for a particular type of class, send me an email or comment and I’ll pass it on if I find one.  Or if you know about a teensy baby class or activity that I haven’t shared yet, then I’d love to hear about it.  And if you are someone who’s trying to get people to your class/business, I’ll almost definitely at least add you to my list of links.  So let me know.

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A couple of days ago, I was reading in a magazine about ways to get organized.  And then I was a little disappointed, because I was already doing so many of their tips already.  And the house is still chaos. I thought about it for a bit, and, the truth?

I blame the children.

Now, really, in the vast scheme of all children everywhere, they don’t suck.  M is 7, J is 5, and they do help.  They both know how to make their beds and clean their rooms, and they’ll do both.  Not, you know, consistently, but occasionally unprompted.  They help with setting the table, and they’ve been trained to clear their plates, etc. (although frankly, we’ve been slipping in that category).  And you’ve heard that they put away their own laundry.  So, you know. . . great.  That’s all well and good.

But their belongings are like. . . you know what it’s like?  Did you ever try to make sure that your basement was dry? And so you put those rocks in a trench around the outside of your house, but the water’s still oozing in through the walls, so then you get it painted with some special no-water-oozing-in protective sealant, but it’s not completely dry, so then you hire someone to cut French drains into your basement floor, and now you need a new sump pump, and next thing you know you’ve dropped thousands of dollars and your basement still smells like mildew?

Actually, our basement’s not too bad–we only had to do 3 out of 4 of those things and it’s pretty dry now (knock on wood!), although I’d certainly love to have spent that money on, you know, furniture or something purty.  I’m just generally bitter about home repairs right now because we had a roof-shingle shower during that recent wind storm–are we the only ones?  I’ll try to get over it, but I’ll probably remain peeved until the check has cleared for that one.  My point was. . . about the girls, remember?  It’s insidious, the way every square inch of my house becomes populated by their stuff.

Exhibit A: Random Sock in Front of Fireplace, Scarf & Sandals on the Floor, String of Dress-Up Pearls on Coffee Table.

So, just as an example, note that the otherwise clean living room is marred by J’s items which were abandoned hither, thither, and yon.  Like I haven’t said approximately 600 times per year to pick up these things and put them where they belong (and yes, I did do a math-estimation thing to try to come up with a fairly accurate number).

The sheer number of items cast aside is  staggering.  Which is why I am awed by parents who are truly outnumbered.  M arrives home and likes to peel her socks off and leave them on the floor by the back door every. single. damn. day.  How many times do we have to discuss this? And I refuse to do laundry unless it is put in a hamper or on the washer, so then we have a Horrifying Sock Crisis which causes Great Turmoil and Gnashing of Teeth.  And yet the lesson is never (or, at least, not yet) learned.  And, you know, it doesn’t bother them in the slightest to have dirty socks rotting on the floor, but it drives me nutty.

Another habit that drives me nutty is that they’ll quietly create elaborate set-ups while I’m off doing something else. For example, they help clear the table and set it for dinner, sure, but I don’t realize that several mini-American girls are also invited to dinner, and two of them are “riding” in their slipper vehicles, and they all use several books as a booster seat.  I don’t realize this until after the children have been sent to bed, and the next day I forget entirely until the following day, just after the children have been sent to bed.

Dinner Time for Dolls!

(By the way, I’ll  make a quick plug for that top book, We Were There, Too!:  Young People in US History.  Super cool and interesting stories from kids from early Colonial times right up to Ryan White being ostracized in school because he had AIDS.  Okay:   end of history geek commercial.)

Here, they’ve made some sort of stuffed animal palace by taking our nice master bedroom cushions and putting them on the dusty, dusty floor.  In this case, they’ve scrupulously avoided making a mess in the master bedroom–which is forbidden.  Instead, they take pieces from the bedroom and arrange them all over the house.  It hadn’t occurred to me to tell them not to do this.

And what’s difficult is, part of me likes that they spend all of this time coming up with these alternate universes filled with re-purposed household items.  Especially when they’re doing it happily together.  I mean, we’ve got some creative, imaginative play with strong  narratives.  I recognize this, and it makes me reluctant to rip their creations apart.  Or is that just because I am Wimp Mom?  (Here is where I tried and failed to find an appropriate Roz Chast cartoon, so you’ll just have to content yourself with a not-quite-on-target Roz Chast cartoon.)

Truth be told, the girls aren’t the only perpetrators against the poor bedroom cushions.  Our cat, Isis, thought that the lovely decorative tassle was a fancy-pants rodent that needed to be vanquished.  Hail the Conquering Heroine.

Tattered Remains

So, I’ve been trying to decide lately if I need to just bring the hammer down on the current irritations (leaving belongings and creating fabulous set ups with wild abandon), or acquire some additional chores, or come up with a whole new combination system.  Sigh. . . I hate instituting systems.  For years, it seemed, every several months I’d hit a new parenting crisis and I’d skim about 8 parenting books on the topic and glean maybe two parenting tips that might help a teensy bit.  It’s freaking exhausting.  But I’ve done this one before, albeit with no lasting success. There’s always the Saturday Box, although I often forget to go around and pick up the stuff at night.  Or a chart–I’m just so tired of charts.  I mean, seriously?  I have to go pull out the markers and stickers again?  Aren’t we over this already?  Do I add a disgusting chore as a stick to supplement my carrot stickers?  Or I could just start throwing it all in the garbage, which is exactly what would have happened to me circa 1977.   And which is actually what W  threatens (emptily) when the spirit moves him.   I guess I’ll have to come up with something.

And you know the worst part about trying to re-institute a Keep-The-House-Clean system, right?  You have to manage to get the house clean in the first place.

Hey!  I hope you’re all enjoying the weekend.  Grab yourself a box of tissues and have some serenity moments.

On Being Mom by Anna Quindlen This is something I always give to moms having their first baby.  I couldn’t find this on her site or among the Newsweek columns, so this is just a random blog that would generally like you to be all fulfilled and evolved.  I mildly resent the blogger for throwing in a last line after the essay, but this blog kicks the butt of other blogs that had distracting flashing advertisements.

The Best Day by Taylor Swift You’re not 11–I know!  But try!  And for some reason her official channel isn’t showing it, so this has lyrics over the (genuine) cute home movies, alas.

Happy Mother’s Day from Kelly Corrigan Making the rounds on Facebook this year, if you haven’t seen it yet.  And if that one gets you, you will completely lose it for this one, which is more about women & friendships.

Have a great Mother’s Day.

I’m feeling uninspired, writing-wise, so I’m going to slack off by sharing some links.

First, because OK Go is headlining at Tulip Fest, I remembered their super-cool Rube Goldberg-inspired video.  Didja ever see it?

And in preparation for Mother’s Day I was looking for my Favorite Anna Quindlen Essay Ever.  And while I was looking, I found this one:  The Good Enough Mother.  I particularly appreciated it because, as I was reading it, I looked out the window and noticed that M was pushing J around on a hand truck.  I frequently say that “she’s around here somewhere.”

And finally, NPR shares a Mother’s Mix of songs that you can live stream from their site.

Anyone think I should start doing the weekend listings on Thursday instead of Friday?  Or just earlier Friday?  Or do you procrastinate, like I do, and make your more random weekend plans sometime after breakfast on Saturday?

My five-year-old’s all in a dither about Mother’s Day.  Our nursery school has a special tea on Friday, and the adult women were strictly prohibited from entering the classroom yesterday as the kids worked on their super-mysterious projects.  I peeked through the window, and, as usual in cases like this, the rest of the children had moved on while J continued to toil away, flushed with excitement over her beautiful creation.  Afterwards, we stopped at Price Chopper (which, I learned via Albany Kid, has a $5 Build a Bouquet offer for kids) and we spent quite a bit of time lingering over the flowers.  “Mommy, do you think that Daddy and I could come here later?” she asked.  Sure!  I answered.  Then I decided, what the heck, and pointed out my favorites:  the hyacinths, the mini-roses, and the azalea trees, all still in dirt.

After we’d gotten home, J approached me again. “Could you write down your favorite flowers on a piece of paper?”  she asked.  I chuckled and said with mock suspicion, “But why?”  “Oh, I was just curious, and I thought that I might show them to Daddy.”  Later, at dinner, we were talking about sending packages to the grandmothers, and J misunderstood, thinking that I was fretting that I might not get anything.  “Oh, don’t worry! You’ll probably get something!”  And then she blushed and hid her face behind her hands so that she wouldn’t give herself away.

Keepsake Boxes Crafted at Nursery School

As we cleared the table, J told me that she thinks that I’m the second-best mother ever.  “Oh, really. . . ?  And who’s number one?”  She responded somewhat apologetically, “Well, I was really thinking that Jesus’ Mommy is probably the very best.”  Which is particularly surprising, since we UUs are not particularly well-known for the Cult of Mary or anything.

Speaking of religious preferences, I’ve noticed that Mother’s Day has become quite what my father always calls “a pagan festival”–it just seems to go on and on for days.  It’s a little bit sad for W, because Father’s Day is always right near M’s birthday.  Frankly?  He gets the shaft.  But everyone seems to pay more attention to Mother’s Day than to Father’s Day, anyway. . . is it just me?  I almost feel like the various organizers don’t trust the husbands to get their kids working on a Mother’s Day gift, so they make it as easy as possible by planning storytimes and drop-in crafts and supermarket deals.  These can get a little ridiculous at times.  I remember one storytime when M was a toddler and J was an infant, and the craft that they included was to make a particular gift for Mom.  I can’t remember what the craft was, but I do remember that parts of it were a bit too challenging for most of the kids in the room.  So it was this vast room full of mothers who were sitting on the floor, diligently cutting and pasting little gifts for themselves, while their children became bored and rummaged through diaper bags for Cheerios and a sippy. Good times.

Another portion of the Mother’s Day pagan festival is Momxchange‘s Mom’s Night Out this Thursday night in Albany.  I’m going.  Anyone want to come with me?

I have both girls home sick with me (strep and ear infection), which has completely thrown me off.  M is pathetic and deeply angry.  She didn’t want to go to the doctor, said she was fine, stamped out to the car, and then when I was (in my opinion) vindicated by a treatable diagnosis, she just became more enraged, as if my taking her to the doctor is what actually caused her illness.  Meanwhile J is like, Sure!  I get to drink gallons of juice from a sippy cup on the living room sofa while watching instant Scooby Netflix?  This is the best day ever!

You would think that with all this tv watching I’d be super-productive, but instead I am sulking.  J was home yesterday, they’ll both be home tomorrow, and I’m completely thrown off my game.  I haven’t been completely useless (washed the kitchen floor, did a load of laundry. . .), but I thought about working out, and instead I poured myself a little bowl of chocolate chips and uploaded a gajillion old photos onto Facebook with my new scanning toy.  This is especially pathetic because I generally do this thing where I don’t “get” to take a shower until after I’ve exercised in some way.  But because I’ve been a slacker for a day or two, I was becoming something of a public health and hygiene hazard.  So when I realized that we’d have to go to the doctor, I was forced to take a shower even though I’d done absolutely nothing to “deserve” it (umm, is this sounding freakish?  Would you believe that in college I was such a geek that I would drink pints of coffee and then only allow myself to go to the bathroom after I’d written a certain number of paragraphs for a paper?).  Anyway, now, frankly, there is no motivation.  Luckily I got sucked into trying out a Zumba class tomorrow, so I’ll absolutely have to break the Cycle of Lethargy by then.

Okay, but enough whining!  Back to my regularly-scheduled post!

Generally, if I hear someone mention 4H, it conjures up images of kids raising livestock at the Iowa State Fair or, more locally, the Altamont Fair.  But, you know, you don’t actually have to have a barn to be involved in all sorts of cool activities.  So here are a few things 4H folks can do around here:

• From June 3rd to July 10th, there’s a 5-week gardening program called Little Diggers (it’s on page 9 if you follow this link) for preschoolers and their caregivers at Central Park.  It’s from 10-11:15 am and it costs $50.  There’s a limit of only ten kids, so if you’re interested, contact them right away.
• 4H runs Environmental Education Workshops for 4th & 5th graders.  At these field trips, students learn about a variety of topics, such as native plants.  It’s $1/child.  4H also visits schools and afterschool programs, including many Y programs.
• Each year, students can participate in a Vegetable Marketing program.  In March, the Golub Corporation donates seeds to participants so that they can grow vegetables in their own gardens.  Once they’ve harvested, gardeners can take their produce and sell it to their local Price Chopper, getting the same rates that the big vegetable distributors do.   So your kids can support efforts to buy local and have a summer job.   All of the seeds for this year are likely to be gone, although you can call your local county 4H to check.
• Various groups work on a variety of projects  all year, from Cloverbuds, who are kids in kindergarten to 2nd grade just beginning to learn about nature, up to teenagers, who visit Cornell to do career path workshops and visit the State Capitol to meet with legislators.
• Family 4H is available anywhere.  Even if you don’t have a group that’s convenient for you time- or place-wise, a parent can train in an orientation to be a leader, and you’ll have access to a wide-ranging supply of information and materials appropriate for kindergarten through high school.

Phew!  I had no idea.  Seriously, I am thinking that it would be cool to at least do the Family 4H thing.  I would be all over the Vegetable Marketing thing if I weren’t so demoralized from last year’s tomato blight.  I mean it–that was heartbreaking, wasn’t it?

Okay, I have to tell you that the websites are not always super-clear and helpful, but these will at least give you a jumping-off point if you want to look  into any of these programs a bit more.  I’ll be putting them on the Big Ol’ List as well.

• 4H in Schenectady
• 4H in Albany
• 4H in Rensselaer

Anybody reading been involved in 4H around here?  And if you’re wondering what the 4 Hs stand for, you can click on the first link of this post.  Because I was wondering, too.

Yeah, they’re way better.

We’re mostly just recovering from our trip today.  We drove like crazy people and arrived home at midnight last night, so it’s been unpacking and grocery shopping and trying to make the whole house stop smelling like cat food.  Also, the ants in our ant farm are dying.  We are following Uncle Milton’s directions explicitly, but there are more dead than survivors–the entire upper right section is a graveyard (because the ants are tidy and competent).  Anyway, the whole thing’s filling me with dread.  Part of me wants to order more ants before every last one is gone and J goes into mourning, and part of me fears that to order these ants is to doom them.  Bummer, man.  So I’m just not up for anything super-informative, but I’ll be better tomorrow.

As long as I’m whining, have I mentioned how evil spammers toy with bloggers’ emotions. Long ago I was forced to switch to getting people to type in their email address in order to comment.  At the time it just broke my heart because I was so desperate for any indication that anyone was actually reading the blog, and of course registering makes people less likely to comment.

So, the next level of spammification is to register with an email and some fake comment about the blog so that the tragic, needy blogger will approve the comment and open the floodgates for you to send all sorts of information about bank accounts in Uganda or Viagra or whatever.  Anyway, one of the first comments I got like this was some sort of generic:  “Great post!  Thanks for all of the information!” and like a cute little Bambi in the woods I was all wide-eyed proud until I realized that it happened to be attached to one of those whiny posts I do every once in a while (you know:  like this one!)   Which was particularly ironic because almost all of my posts are filled with information.  I mean, it was like, hard to find one that wouldn’t make that comment seem relevant.  And then I realized that they were toying with me.  Anyway, I had to laugh about it just now, because I just got another spamalicious comment:

I have to say, every time I come to http://www.capitaldistrictfun.com there is another exciting post to read. A friend of mine was talking to me about this topic a couple weeks ago, so I think I’ll send my friend the link here and see what they say.

And this is in response to my Live Blogging the Drive post.  So I’m laughing bitterly, thinking, wow, were you just chatting with your friend about my daughter’s repeated vomiting?  Because it really is an exciting topic, isn’t it?*  They just irritate me so much!! I’m waiting for one of them to send me a comment that says:”You’re such a brilliant writer and a wonderful mother and you’ve just been sounding so much skinnier lately–even though our relationship is merely virtual, I can tell that you’re looking fabulous!”  And, you know, if I’m having a bad day, I might just choose to believe them.