clearview

Fatalism: 1990s vs. 1950s

2012-01-22T19:24:00.000-06:00

It's all the same really, a sense of fatalism about the future. But there are things for which this attitude is appropriate - the actions of others you can't control, for example - and things for which it isn't, your own performance and attitude chief among them. We make our own luck as much as luck makes us.

Parental lecture over. Carry on.

10 for Tuesday: Best and Worst of Middle School

2012-01-17T15:07:00.000-06:00

Having a middle schooler apparently makes you think a lot about your own experiences in those years.

1. Best class in Jr. High (except for Band): As I look back, I think the class that had the most long-term impact on me was my seventh-grade Literature class at Magnolia Junior High, Mr. Calvin Louis Fudge in charge. English class was all grammar and spelling; in Mr. Fudge's class, we read. As in, we walked into the room, picked up the paperback book that he had assigned to each of us individually, and read until we reached the end of a chapter. Then, we got up and got a 10 question True/False quiz out of the filing cabinet, marked it appropriately, and handed it to Mr. Fudge. You had to get 7/10 correct to continue to the next chapter. I always read grade levels above my age, but I didn't read for comprehension until Mr. Fudge made me, and assigned me to read a lot of books I probably never would have chosen on my own. He was also the first actual published author (of romance novels, but still) I ever met.

2. Runner-up: Coach Mc's 8th grade American History class. Coach Mc taught me to take notes, which has proven to be an excellent tactic for avoiding trouble. Except when it gets me in trouble ...

3. Worst class in Jr. High (after P.E.): Career Orientation. Basically, we went through the U.S. Department of Labor Guide, job classification by job classification. At the time, I thought it was better than taking Home Ec but I'm not so sure now ... knowing that the teacher turned out to be a serial pedophile just adds to that sense.

4. About P.E.: In Little Rock, only nerds took Band. Knowing this, and not accepting my inner geekiness, I signed up for P.E. -- except that was what the people too poor to buy Band instruments and too butch to take Choir took in Magnolia. I was neither of these, and, to add insult to injury, more butch and developed than most of the other girls, and completely uncoordinated. I ran in and out of the locker room faster than I ran inside the gym.

5. Binders: When we moved to town, that August before seventh grade, I convinced my mother to buy me a Trapper Keeper because that's what was fashionable in Little Rock. I remember it was a big deal because it was like $7.

(photo from Paxton Holley's Flickr stream. Mine is long gone, and was green anyway.)

What was fashionable in Magnolia? Plain blue denim binders like this one, that were then decorated with Sharpies and red and white paint pens. ~$2. I thought Mom was going to kill me.

6. Best teacher: Hands down, Mr. English, the high school band director who taught Brass at the Junior High. I loved Mr. Sutton (the actual Jr. High band director, and a wonderful woodwind guy) too, but Mr. English took me on mid-year in seventh grade and taught me to play the trombone well enough to make first band by May, and All-Region Alternate by mid-autumn. He groaned and slumped in his chair when I did something wrong, hummed along with me when I played well, complimented me profusely when my playing warranted, chewed me out when I deserved it. By ninth grade, I could tell what he thought by how his mustache twitched, before he ever consciously moved or said anything. He had an odd combination of honesty, humor, toughness, and tenderness, of expecting perfection but knowing that some days I just didn't have it in me. Noone else ever was able to get so much out of me - not my other two high school band directors, not the lady trombone professor I took lessons from in college. I often wonder where he is ...

7. Best Way to Learn to Faint without Hurting Yourself: mid-to-late afternoon Marching Band practice in southwest Arkansas --like twenty miles from both Louisiana and Texas -- before water bottles were a fashion accessories. Really, what were they thinking?

8. Stupid Things You Do at 13. The one I'll own up to: in the winter of 9th grade I decided not to wear a coat because I wanted a particular football player to give me his letter jacket. I said I was not cold and that I didn't like my coat because it wasn't cool enough (sorry Mom) but that was the real reason.

9. Best thing about Junior High: friends. Those I have left from then loved me at my worst and still do, somehow.

10. The Other Best Thing about Junior High: It's 30 years gone.

Except that by having children, I get to do it twice more ....

10 for Tuesday: Things I Don't Like & Probably Never Will

2012-01-10T13:38:00.003-06:00

Following along with Mali & Indigo Bunting ... and trying not to say Me too ...

Green peas. They're just ... mushy.
People who have all the answers. Most of them are wrong.
Fruit in my beer. or my coffee. Not a fan of it in my tea or my chocolate, either.
Minivans. It's not legally necessary for mothers with 2 or fewer children so don't judge.
Scraping noises. (Covering ears, so can't type.)
Trash anywhere but in a trash can. Little candy & lozenge wrappers drive me wild.
Short airplane flights. As soon as my ears get adjusted, we start falling out of the sky, albeit in a controlled manner.
Large amounts of condiments on sandwiches. Doesn't matter what it is (well, okay, Indigo is right: Miracle Whip is gross), I just want a little. And the people at Subway, God love 'em, mostly don't get the meaning of One thin stripe of lite mayonnaise, please.
Bric-a-brac. I used to love all those little knick-knacks on shelves and things ... Bluebirds of Happiness, figurines, etc., etc. More and more I don't. I don't like cleaning it, I don't like cleaning around it, and it takes up space I could fill with books. Priorities, right?
Micromanaging people. Whether it's employees, fellow volunteers, or my family, I want to be able to trust people to do what needs to be done without me hovering every moment of the day giving instructions and forcing focus. I prefer guiding and helping to overseeing and enforcing.

If you like any of these things ... more power to you. Want my share?

The Lesson of the Pollyanna Hat

2012-01-08T22:38:00.000-06:00

Earlier in the Fall, before I started teaching online courses as well as continuing to practice architecture, relive sixth grade, and do all the crap that modern moms do, I signed up to take part in a BlogHer themed event called Life Well Lived, where bloggers write on assigned questions over a four-week period.

When I first got the email on Tuesday I felt my eyes roll into my head.

How do you plan to create happiness for yourself in 2012?

I'm not exactly known for being a cheerful sort of person. I threw away the Pollyanna hat years and years ago.

I actually had a Pollyanna hat. A light tan straw with a tall side band decorated with a tan cotton sash and a wide brim, I wore it occasionally throughout undergrad and grad school. It wasn't an everyday thing, but it made me feel like the sun was shining and the birds were singing and everybody was happy.

A month or so into my first professional job, I wore my cheerful hat to work. As I walked down the aisleway between the cubicles, I heard the Vice President of the company, Sandy, snicker and nod towards me as she whispered to her assistant. I was busy, they were busy, so I didn't stop. I set my hat on top of my monitor and hummed and worked all morning.

As I came in from lunch, Sandy beckoned to me from her seat. What's with the Pollyanna hat? she asked, her mouth curling into a smile, sharp incisors above red lips cut into her wide face. Her voice had the sappy mocking tone cruel people reserve for the stupid. I saw it. I knew it, and I was ashamed to be caught in my naivete so easily. My face hot, I muttered something about the sun at the bus stop, and escaped to my cubicle. The hat sat on top of my bag, under the desk, for the rest of the afternoon.

Waiting at Kingshighway and Manchester for the always late northbound bus, I tossed it on top of the empty Pepsi bottles and fast food wrappers in one of those 55-gallon-drum trash cans, turned my back and walked away.

All these years later I think about that hat with regret.

I don't regret my failure to confront my boss. That was a situation my 23-year-old self could never have won; even now I probably would just walk away. Some battles are not worth fighting.

I don't know that I really regret the loss of the physical object. But what I do know is that in the moment I left it behind, I accepted her judgement as being more important to my life than my own.

So, while some may find their keys to happiness in the comfort of a Seat Belt, mine will come from reclaiming my Pollyanna hat, and with it not only the joys of simple things, but also the knowledge that living by my values is more important than pandering to the glib acceptance of others.

You can join in the Life Well Lived conversation in a few ways:

Share your thinking on the topic here and on the main Life Well Lived page.
Learn to live in the moment with Dr. Aymee's Happiness Seat Belt
Also, if you're dying for a Kindle Fire, here's your chance.

From our Kitchen: Simple Machines

2011-12-13T12:23:00.000-06:00

This was the Girl's homework last night: take photos of Simple Machines you find them in your house. We found them all in the kitchen.

Wheel and Axle

Lever

Pulley

10 for Tuesday: Musings on the Parable of the Talents

2011-12-06T09:16:00.000-06:00

It's been a month ago now, maybe more. I got up one Sunday morning and through the ringing pain of a headache decided I was going to Eucharist. It was in those few weeks when Stewardship is the main topic, when the church is trying to understand its financial and volunteer assets for the coming year, which is when the Parable of the Talents shows up in the readings.

Typically the sermon runs something like this: God our Master gives us talents - in the story, the coin; in our lives, personal abilities, skills, and assets - and it is our job to make the most of those in His service. In modern parlance, we say that to those much is given, much is expected.
In many ways, that view of the Parable drives our culture. The Anglo-American Protestant work ethic suggests that in working hard to honor our Master, we will be rewarded - not only in Heaven, but in the material gains of our everyday lives.
This interpretation is what allows politicians like Newt Gingrich to get away with saying that poor children have to be taught to work by being put to work. This interpretation is what makes people center their lives around their work, and to be devastated by unemployment not only because it wreaks havoc on their financial lives, but because everything in our society tells us that if we cannot earn enough money to buy things - homes, clothing, food, cars - we are of no use to the society at large, and indeed we have no redeeming personal value. The Poor are worthless. The Poor are evil. The Poor deserve to die of diseases and conditions that commonly killed people 80-100 years ago but not in the post-Vietnam War era. They deserve what they earn, and nothing more. It's the American Way.
The homilist that day was a young black woman, her dreads neatly arranged, a multi-colored stole pulled over her shoulders, her white vestments bright against the beige stone of the steps to the chancel. The Rev. Wise is chaplain to the Episcopal City Mission, and her focus was not on the first two servants, who multiplied their Master's bags of gold, but on the third one, the one turned away as Unworthy:
“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
She tried to use the words of the Unworthy one to talk about her charges, the children in detention at the City's Juvenile Detention Center, and by extension the victims of the Penn State debaucle. I was not convinced, but her focus on that part of the Parable, which I had never really paid attention to beyond the traditional interpretation, got me thinking.
"Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed." Isn't that the core argument of the Occupy Protesters, that the 1% have profited beyond what their work would rationally give them, and used their wealth to gain further advantages from our political and legal systems?
Are the Unworthy's words not those of revolution, of standing up against what is Wrong and saying, I will not take part? Does speaking words based in justice make us unworthy in the eyes of God as well as society? Is he not Wordsworth in an earlier time, calling our attention away from the material to the spiritual?
As my son says to me, This homework has no point beyond keeping me busy and I have other things I'd rather do. is he speaking from laziness or from the position of the Unworthy One? And by forcing him to complete his work, am I playing the part of the Unjust Master whose only values are those of greed because I am so focused on his learning to work hard so he can "be a success in life" rather than pursue happiness now?
When I do my part in the consumer culture, getting and spending on things made and grown by underpaid people in China or Latin America or even in my own country, am I following in the footsteps of the Master who takes advantage of others for personal gain? Is that what I really want to do?
In the next chapter of Matthew, as he is being bathed in expensive oils, Jesus tells the disciples, The Poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. In Mark, he adds And you may help them any time you want. Is this making it optional? Is it an abdication of earlier scriptures that instruct us to give all we have to the poor in order to follow in His footsteps and serve God? Whose side is Christ really on, anyway?
Whose side am I really on?

Three-Letter Words

2011-11-30T07:48:00.000-06:00

We were sitting at the still-drawn-long dinner table as a meal of leftovers was winding down: the Boy across from me, next to his father; the Girl on my left.

I don't remember the context now; something about music? I shrugged and said, as I often do, Yeah, well, I'm a fogey.

The Boy smiles winningly. It's that three-letter word, Mom.

What three-letter word? asked his sister.

The one that starts with O and ends with D, he said, absolutely Cheshire-cat-like.

ODD!! said the Girl. The Husband laughed.

Odd. Exactly. That's my girl.

Living on the Red-Eye

2011-11-21T22:10:00.000-06:00

Mama, will you help me with my grammar?

She walked into the dining room, worksheet in hand. Sure, let's see it. I'm the household grammar geek, the lover of properly placed apostrophes and semicolons.

Possessives, based on Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story, which they're reading in class.One of those assignments where they give you an awkwardly worded sentence to render simpler with a bold apostrophe. The honesty of children is refreshing. becomes Children's honesty is refreshing. That sort of thing.We discuss the logic of it, plural vs. singular, ending with s vs. not ending with s, and she's off to the races ...

Mama?

Mmmmmm? I say, pondering how to deal with a J, a V, two I's, a U, an F and a W on my Word with Friends bench.

How about this one? She sits a little straighter in her seat. The eyes of the grown-ups were red from lack of sleep. Do I really need the "The" when I rewrite it? Couldn't it just be "Grown-ups' eyes were red from lack of sleep?"

Well, you could, but then it would imply all grown-ups' eyes instead of just those specific ones.

But all grown-ups' eyes are red from lack of sleep.

Crash

2011-11-19T20:40:00.001-06:00

There was another accident at our corner this morning, interupting the anticipated slightly sleeping in with a crash other than the one we would have preferred.

We leaned against the walls in the bay, conducting amateur fourth-floor forensics. Looking south, our next door neighbors (ages 8, 5, and 2) and other neighbors were visible in enfilade doing the same.

Six cars. Best we can figure, Altima #1 turned left illegally (or maybe the lights were still on flash?); the Jeep hit it, careening to hit Altima #2 parked in front of our building. Altima #2 slid forward, hitting somebody's boyfriend's Mercedes convertible whose front bumper wound up nearly a foot underneath our neighbor Bud's burgundy Avalon, which hit the Acura in front of it.

Altima #1 had practically no engine compartment left. The driver was taken away in an ambulance.

The Jeep landed with its rear wheels in the laripe, held in place by one of the two parking meters it raked down in its path. There were pieces of Altima #1's side trim embedded in the grille.

Altima #2's trunk was completely smashed in, all the way to the rear door pillar. The front bumper fell off as the tow truck operators were getting it ready to go.

The Mercedes had broken rear and front bumpers, and lost two headlights. The other cars got off with minor scratchs and bumps. There was debris scattered on the road and on the sidewalk halfway to West Pine.

A few hours later, after retrieving the Miata from its most recent nose job, we walked around to the front of the building with Jim, a fellow fourth-floor denizen who slept through all the excitement, and stood next to the stoop talking. Bud came out, shaking his head as he walked up so that the WWII Combat Veteran ballcap waved from his head, pointed at his car. Can you believe it? I had a case of wine in the trunk!

Jim looked at him. Is it ok?

Well, heck no! Seven bottles broken! Can't you smell it?

I sniffed obligingly, shrugged.

I just can't believe it! Last accident I had - I was sitting at a stoplight with a case of wine in the trunk and Wham! Got rear-ended. Lost seven bottles that time too, and a bottle of bourbon!

Jim shook his head. Well, I guess you know now you should keep it up front!

We all laughed and moved our separate ways.

Back on the fourth floor, I stood in the bay looking down at the street still littered with broken plastic and glass, at the traffic lights cycling in their endless red yellow green sequence. I watched a mid-90s Lincoln turn left on the green light (not the green arrow, so an illegal turn), its beige bumper narrowly missed by an oncoming northbound green pickup. I shook my head.

I should start planting white crosses at the beneath the Left Only on Left Arrow sign, as a warning that you're taking your life in your hands if you run it.

Pretty Like Mommy

2011-11-16T18:20:00.002-06:00

A friend posted the link to her Facebook feed yesterday: Gymboree: Harmful Gender Stereotypes Don't Belong on Clothing! so of course, I clicked over to see what the latest Internet outrage might be .... and discovered onesies.

And I thought, Well, my daughter didn't have that problem.

When she was little, the Girl was astonishingly beautiful. I'm not just saying this as her mother, although I spent many, many hours puzzling over how on Earth such an ethereal creature could come to live with me - I'm judging by the reactions of the rest of the world.

Porcelain skin, red-gold corkscrews, deep blue eyes ... the kind of gorgeous you see on film. In movies. In magazines.

Not like me.

People would turn and gape and watch her walk by at the grocery store, the playground, Target. They would stop me and say, She is so beautiful. Most of the time they would look at me - grown up tomboy in chinos and man-style oxfords - puzzled and walk away.

Sometimes women would stand a little longer and add, Aren't you worried someone is going to steal her from you? The answer was generally no but I watched those ladies more carefully since they evidently had thought of it.

At the Farmer's Market, fruit vendors would run after us as we passed, calling out to me, Ma'am, ma'am, here's the most perfect [peach, apple, strawberry] for your little girl, let me give it to her - she's so beautiful. Small toys, candy, innumerable little gifts, were pressed into her tiny hands, always accompanied by those three words.This happened so consistently that I began to worry about her taking it all too seriously, that she would focus more on her appearance than her intelligence.

Not like me.

In first grade things started to change. The ringlets straightened out, becoming a graceful curve at the ends of mostly straight brown hair. She decided she was more of a tomboy than a girly-girl, more interested in climbing and sweat pants than dancing and skirts, that she hated pink and purple and really liked green. These days, people don't stop and stare, don't give her things, don't tell me constantly She's so beautiful.

Not because she isn't beautiful.

She is.

But in a more quiet way of intense blue eyes peering from under over-long bangs.

More like me.

Ten on Tuesday: Week before Thanksgiving Edition

2011-11-15T10:49:00.000-06:00

Since I have a long history of kvetching about the week before Thanksgiving, I will simply state - for the record - that really, I am not complaining. There's a lot to do, but it's my choice. Middle school homework be damned: I am not cancelling Thanksgiving. So here's what has to get done:

Fix the chair that the Boy broke by slamming his body onto the seat in a fit of pique. Nearly twelve, he just really doesn't understand how big and powerful he is becoming. It's kind of a problem.
Replant the kitchen herbs into the new black window boxes purchased on clearance at Target two months ago and still sitting on the floor adjacent to the windows.
De-green the fish tank. There are really fish in there, I promise ...
Finish the annual take-everything-off-the-open-shelves-in-the-kitchen-and-clean-it exercise. Currently I am 7/22 complete with this task. The Girl is being very helpful. She marvels at the delicate glasses, the smooth pastel letters of the Lu-Ray salt and pepper shakers, the curves of the serving bowls and platters. I keep telling her, This was your great-grandmother's. When you have your own home I will pack these up and bring them to you. They are yours.
Figure out what to do about the cat box. About a month ago, the Boy decided that he would train the cats to use the toilet. This isn't an instantaneous thing - nothing about cats is. It's a process. Step one: move the litter box into the front bathroom. Step two: put it on phone books so it's a little higher (the idea is that you move it up to the level of the toilet seat, then onto the toilet seat, then get rid of it). Step three: take the lid off it so it can be moved up the next step. This is where we are stalled, mainly because the Boy hasn't had time to deal with it. Unfortunately, the Sistahs are slobs. They dig and dig and shoot gravel all over the room and shake their paws wildly and it's just a mess. The bathroom in question is the one that all of our guests use. So now I have to decide: do we move it back to the sunroom and start again? Do we put the lid back on and put it in the corner, moving backwards two steps? That's where I'm leaning, just because it's less work. But then the guests have to share with the cats.
Move my stuff - mostly papers for chess and Girl Scouts and family budget and homework, but also and especially my big 24" monitor - out of the dining room. This will make working more difficult so that's not happening until next Wednesday. I'm trying to clear a spot in the Laundry Room so I can at least stand up at the folding table and work.
Find a temporary home for horns that is not in the middle of the living room or dining room. There are five of them - two alto saxes, two trombones, and a euphonium - so this isn't as easy as it would seem. And the violin needs to move, too. And maybe the keyboard. And the music stand. Out, out.
Color my hair. Mom's not grey, so I can't be either.
Go to Randall's and buy a case of Beaujolais Nouveau. And more vodka.
You know. All that other stuff.

So now, I must get back to the billable work that pays for the coffee that allows the non-billable work to get done.

Sunrise, Sunset

2011-11-10T17:36:00.000-06:00

I'm Just a Little Passive Aggressive ...

2011-11-09T12:51:00.000-06:00

(and frustrated.)

Anyone wonder why I've been blog-absent for the last 10 days?

Apparently She Understands Computers

2011-10-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon, time for chores and homework and, for the Husband and I, sitting catty-cornered across the dining room table with the leaves pulled long, catching up on things left undone in our cold-ridden torpor Friday. The Girl came to me waving the Handwriting practice packet she'd been working on in her room. My hand is tired. Can I finish it tomorrow?

I glanced at it. One sheet left. No problem.

A little while later the Husband brought the packet to me. Did you see this? She's supposed to write a paragraph about this.

I looked at it, shook my head. Does she even know that's a computer, or what any of those parts are? The old Gateway died in what? '99? And I bought Medusa, and you've had a work laptop all this time ...

He shrugged. Should be interesting to see what she writes.

The next morning I woke up thinking I heard the TV on in the kitchen - a problem because we had told the children that it was to remain off until all homework was done. Pulling on my robe, I walked groggily up the dark hall. The Girl was sitting on the stool at the bar, writing. I smiled. Thank you for working on this without our asking. I appreciate that.

She nodded. Can I watch TV when I'm done?

If your brother is still asleep. I said, turning to go back to my room.

An hour or so later, the Husband went to the kitchen to make coffee. He came immediately back. You gotta see this. Holding the sheet in front of him, he read:

A few days ago many things went wrong. The speakers and printer wasn't turning on. Neither the mouse, mouse pad, and power cord were findible. The monitor and keyboard died but I have the hard drive.

Apparently my daughter understands more about computers than I thought.

Ten x T

2011-10-19T13:03:00.000-05:00

Two weeks it's been since I posted here. Seems like a lifetime and an eyeblink at once.
Telephone. Most basic function: Telephoning. Fail.
Texting, however: Where was this all my life?
Trombone. The Boy is doing well, first chair, maybe moving up to the next band at semester? We'll see. It's fun. Why did I stop doing this? Oh yeah, that whole architecture school hazing thing. We went to a recital by the Trombones of the St. Louis Symphony sponsored by the St. Louis Low Brass Collective last night - absolutely amazing. Gerry Pagano rocks that big ol' bass 'bone. Unfortunately, we had to sneak out before the World Premiere Quartet and the Reading Session because the Boy was just too tired to hold his head up anymore, so we were not assimilated.
Tears, too many of them. Best shed in the shower, not in the car to Night Ranger.
Teaching online course in Photoshop & SketchUp. Different from bricks & mortar but similar as well.
Travel. The Husband, it's Wednesday so it must be Chicago. The family to Arkansas, almost two weeks ago now, for an exhibit featuring the Pater Familias's work. One of the Twin Houses gone.
Tired. Always tired, tired, tired.
Trees, fleetingly golden, now stripped bare by days of rain.
Too much to say, Too much that can't be said out loud, Too much I don't want to say even to myself. Too much.

This Post is Not Epic.

2011-10-03T11:03:00.001-05:00

Dear Middle-Schoolers:

Please be informed that the definition of the word Epic (as listed in dictionary.reference.com) is as follows:

adjective Also, ep·i·cal.

noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usuallycentered upon a hero, in which a series of greatachievements or events is narrated in elevated style:Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.

resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.

heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of thewar.

of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epicproportions.

noun

an epic poem.

epic poetry.

any composition resembling an epic.

something worthy to form the subject of an epic: The defense of the Alamo is an American epic.

( initial capital letter ) Also called Old Ionic. the Greekdialect represented in the Iliad and the Odyssey, apparently Aeolic modified by Ionic.

Unless your activities approach those of Odysseus or Superman or Iwo Jima, or the object being described is truly of blue whale level monstrosity, please refrain from using this word. Because frankly, with the exception of how much a few of you talk, nothing around you is Epic. And if you don't, I'll make you read real Epics, starting with Beowulf. And not the Seamus Heaney version, either.

Thanks so much,
lisa

In Which She Admits Which Tree the Apple Has Fallen Too Dang Close To

2011-10-01T23:01:00.001-05:00

At the Boy's school everyone is required to take one quarter of Home Ec. It's not called that anymore, of course, but that's what it is. Four or five weeks of sewing, four or five weeks of nutrition and cooking, that's really all there's time for.

So they spent all their sewing time working on pincushions made of felt, with accompanying emery sacs. Despite growing up under the legs of the sewing table and doing all sorts of crazy handwork, I have no idea what an emery sac is. Neither does my son from what he has communicated to me.

The final piece of the pincushion assignment was to write an advertisement for their pincushion.

So, how's your ad? I asked last night at the end of dinner.

Let me get it. He got up, shuffled through his binder, brought back a small slip of paper. Clearing his throat, he read in his best radio-ad salesman voice:

Star Guy Pincushion

The Star Guy Pincushion is Epic, and for so many reasons. Firstly it is not completely finished. This means that your child can have a fun, interactive activity that is actually productive. The Star Guy Pincushion is also very useful: it can store over 50 pins at once! Remember you can buy this special item for only $5.63 5/16 cents.

The Husband and I audibly checked our breaths. We didn't dare look at each other across the table. A wisecracking tour de force, making fun of himself as well as the assignment. Who would have thought?

Flash back to Mr. Evans, way back in sixth grade. I could hear his words echoing off the concrete block walls in my mind: Miss A, you Smart. Smart-Aleck, that is.

Mr. Evans was right, of course.

Maybe having a smart mouth is just part of that age.

The Boy was waiting, his proud smile sardonic beyond his years.

So, don't you think you should edit that a bit before turning it in?

He shrugged.

Just like I did to poor Mr. Evans.

TGIF

2011-09-30T11:17:00.001-05:00

The last day of September 2011, and I feel overwhelmed ... with thankfulness, not angst.

This morning I laid in bed 20 minutes after the alarm, not wanting to get up. Finally, I pried myself out of bed, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went to the kitchen. A few minutes later, as I was still staring vacantly at the sink full of dishes, the Husband walked by.

Oh, did I wake you? I'm sorry.

No, no. I was awake.

If I had known that, I would have stayed in bed.

Go back to bed. I'll see the Boy to the bus.

So I went back to bed, and drowsed until the door slammed behind them. Time to wake up the Girl to finish her homework that didn't get done before soccer practice last night. I woke her up, fixed the computer, and she dismissed me, completing the entire assignment with no urging or further discussion. I made coffee, finished the dishes that the Husband had begun to put in the dishwasher, and started laundry, feeling proud of her work ethic and great attitude.

The Husband returned from his post-bus walk and made crepes for breakfast.

After the yellow bus came, whisking the Girl off to school without my having to drive her there, I crossed the eight lanes of traffic and went into the Park. I took the sunny part of my favorite route first to warm up faster and the slight wind as I ran raised goosebumps on my arms. The big maple at the foot of the bridge has started to turn, the red leaves edging the bottom of its canopy like a fringe. The wildflowers on the river path, long taller than me, have begun to dry and brown. Fall is here, and it is my time of year. I can almost tally another 12 months gone by, and here I am, running a mile at a time, something I never did in the first 30 years of my life.

I came home, showered, sauteed some mushrooms the Husband bought on the way home from work last night, and heated up some of the Avocado Soup he made at my request on Monday for a sauce. An amazing brunch.

So now I'm sitting here in my dining room starting my workday, and while there's not as much to do as I would like, I do have billable work. Not big, not rocket science or architecture with a capital A, but people pay me to do it.

And tomorrow's Saturday, so I can sleep in and the pressure to do and get done will be less.

Yes, I thank God it's Friday. With relief. With gusto.

Ten on Tuesday: How Middle School has Changed Since 1984

2011-09-27T15:10:00.001-05:00

1. It's now called Middle School, and it goes from grade 6 to grade 8. Maybe it's a regional thing, but I went to Junior High School grades 7-9. That final year we were proud to write FRESHMAN all-caps on the spines of our paw-print encrusted denim binders because we were, you know, Top of the Heap. Not a lowly seventh grader, To Be Certain.

2. Study Hall is no more.

3. The Eight Period Day. I'm not sure I thought six academic classes were enough, but I often wonder if eight is too many. That said, I don't know what I would cut. We had to choose between Art, Choir, Band, and P.E. They have Art as one quarter of a year-round series of courses, P.E. or Dance every day, and a choice of Vocal or Instrumental Music.

Me - 7th grade - ~1983	the Boy - 6th grade
Geography/Arkansas History	Earth Science
English	PreAlgebra
Study Hall	Band
Band	P.E.
Off-Campus Lunch	Social Studies (lunch splits the class, which is stupid imho)
Math	Communications Arts
Physical Science	Home Ec/Art/Computer
Literature	Spanish

HTML Tables

4. Foreign language wasn't offered until high school - I still remember my disappointment on enrollment day that I would have to wait two more years to start learning French. At least he gets it now, while it's useful. And he chose Spanish over French. More practical, he said.

5. The homework. Except the long-term projects I procrastinated until the last day, I don't remember ever spending 2+ hours on homework, and certainly not on a practically daily basis. I don't remember needing a Covey-style planner to keep up with it.

6. School lunch. We had off-campus lunch, which I typically spent at the Spudnut Shoppe or Chick-a-Dilly, but I remember the week of lunch detention I served after my fifth tardy. I brought a brown bag sandwich to eat as I wrote my punishment sentences (minimum 100 per day) but the smells coming into the gym from the adjacent kitchen was dark and mushy, as were the rounded scoops on the trays of my fellow prisoners. At his school, they have choices. Pizza and burgers, stir fry, tacos, salads.

7. Gym uniforms. We didn't have them in our small Arkansas town, (I know this because I chose P.E. first, then switched to Band mid-year) but the Boy is required to wear his every day, and if he doesn't have the exact pieces, he might as well not be there at all because he gets a big fat Zero for the day.

8. The homework. Long term projects: I remember having fewer of them for the entire three years than the Boy has on the slate for the semester.

9. Note-taking. Until Coach Mc's U.S. History class in eighth grade, in which we were required to copy the outline from the overhead word for painful word, I took notes sporadically and still got A after A. Coach Mc taught me that I got in less trouble if I wrote everything the teacher said word for word, so I did that for the rest of my academic life ... but pretty much never looked at my notes. These days, kids live and die by Cornell Notes from fourth grade on. It's shown as the Only Way, and enforced through notebook checks and emails home. I don't really buy this, but write it off as a Teacher Authority issue. Long live Coach Mc.

10. Independence. We had a lot more of it.

Parallel Lives

2011-09-21T12:35:00.001-05:00

Over the summer, sitting in the multi-purpose room in Richmond Heights during the summer chess club, I watched the teenagers discuss this and that and the other, but mostly anxieties about college admissions and homework. One evening, Pia brought one of the books they were assigned to read and write about before school began again in August, a thin red graphic novel called Persepolis. I flipped through the black-and-white pages, opened the iPad and requested it from the library. I was number 28 in the queue.

It finally arrived two weeks ago. I skipped the Introduction, went straight to page one, to a picture of a girl in a black veil, elbows on table.

This is me when I was 10 years old. This was in 1980.

To Julie and Pia, 1980 is ancient history almost to the point of fiction.

But 1980 is clear in my mind, as a cusp point in so many ways. My parents newly divorced. My first unrequited crushes on boys. My first awareness of politics, of international events: the larger events around the story as the opening frames of ABC News after the theme to Happy Days faded into a cheerful Florence Henderson commercial for cooking oil. The tense voices of foreign correspondents, the photos of the embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis, and of crowds marching in the street carrying giant photos of the Ayatollah Khomeini. I remember being afraid but not knowing exactly why.

So I read the book with a mixture of horror and almost nostalgia. The fashions and posters smuggled over the border in coats and suitcase linings were familiar. I sang Kids in America along with her. But I didn't have to worry about being hauled away to an inquisition for wearing my Michael Jackson button and jeans. My relatives weren't tortured and killed for having opinions contrary to those of the government. I didn't have to hide my heavy metal posters behind dark curtains. And boys, peripheral to her life by necessity of the regime, were far too central to mine.

Two lives, parallel. I was about her age in 1980. And by 1984, I was much, much younger.

*this is not a sponsored post, just what I'm moved to write. The link to the book on Amazon does earn me a few pennies, tho.

Where was I?

2011-09-18T16:56:00.001-05:00

I've been camping since Friday with 18 fourth-sixth grade girls, Bridgett, and two women I had known as blog characters before last weekend. After last week's ordeals, it was restful. Despite slamming doors at intermittent times when girls shuffled out to go to the toilets, I got more sleep Friday night than the two nights before. Best of all, I wasn't in charge of anything. I'm an extra pair of hands. I told Bridgett. Tell me what to do.

I wanted to say, Just don't make me think. Just please, please, don't make me think.

Not wanting to think is contrary to my nature, as is being inactive. Indeed, I found myself wandering into the kitchen or onto the porch with my hands open, looking for some way to help, for some purpose, for something to do.

It's not that we didn't do things over the weekend: we canoed and did some archery and sang and made a fire and talked in the dark and all that kind of good stuff. But while the girls played Flashlight Tag and mancala, made things out of pony beads, and developed, rehearsed, costumed and performed a song-&-dance skit I read two books (one I brought and one I borrowed from an 11-year-old) and looked through all the Girl Scout ~~propaganda~~ information Bridgett brought with her, thinking about the Girl and Addie and the others who I'll be guiding through the Bronze Award process this year. But I wasn't responsible for anything.

Which brings me back home, to the laundry waiting to be flipped from washer to dryer and the groceries to be bought and the Boy's homework and my projects and finishing the unpacking and laundry and a to-do list that adds four things for every one I check off. There's no time to do anything *but* think and do. And do. And do.

Where was I?

I was talking to a mom at soccer practice the other night - an attorney, with a doted-on only daughter. Things are so frantic these days, she said. We did things as a kid, and my mom worked, but I don't remember it being so desperately hectic for her. What has changed? Is it all this technology?

I shrugged. I don't know. I wonder that sometimes too.

And then I remember my own childhood, full of skating and choir practice and church stuff and Girl Scouts. I think of all the times I heard the typewriter ding and the carriage whine with an extra eeemffffph! as my mother finished typing a paper or a story and pulled that final sheet out. She'd walk into the kitchen, her brown eyes focusing on the clock hanging above the stove before she looked around at everything and nothing. I wonder if the expression on my face when I'm standing in my kitchen taking stock of what's left to be done before bed is similar to the one I recall on hers in those moments, if the question in her mind was the same?

What We Would Choose To Do

2011-09-15T11:11:00.006-05:00

and You

God only knows

It's not what

Would Choose

to Do.

-Pink Floyd, Us & Them

It's frustrating, this middle school thing with my Boy. We spend an hour every day going through his stuff, trying to keep him organized, trying to keep him on track, but there's always something he didn't write down, he didn't get the parameters for, that leaves us scrambling for requirements and trying to figure out where the hell the ball got dropped.

We ... meaning me. I have the flexible schedule, so that's my life, mid-afternoons till bedtime, five days a week. I try not to let it bleed into the Husband's life, or the Girl's, but it's kind of unavoidable.

It's not what I would choose to do. It wasn't at age 11, it's not now.

We spent another whole weekend forcing him to do homework - the second one in four weeks - or is it the third? We cancelled his life again - his plans to go to the introduction of the Chess Merit Badge down the street, his plans to play D & D with friends, even to read the Sunday comics - to spend another 16 hours doing things that should have taken maybe three or four. And this time the in-laws were here to witness the stupidity and frustration.

We ... meaning the Husband. I escaped, with handy excuses. On Saturday: The Girl and I have to go to the Girl Scout Shop, might as well go to Target while we're out and oh do you need anything from Schnucks? On Sunday: Oh, she's got Soccer and Girl Scouts and did you need anything from Straub's?

It's not what he would choose to do, either. It wasn't at age 11, it's not now.

I came home Sunday evening and found in my email yet more assignment requirements from a mom who I sent the rubric (such as it was) for the science essay/poster. A list of vocabulary words the Boy had gotten from a friend, the mini-poster requirement we knew about, and this: Select 6 words to illustrate in color. Write a short story using at least 8 of the words.

I stared at the email in disbelief. I had been in the teacher's room Thursday afternoon, and we discussed this assignment. She said, Define the words and write a sentence, and don't forget the poster. Nothing about this other stuff. I looked at the transparency. I don't remember hearing or seeing this.

So I called the Boy to me, read the email. What about this?

I didn't know anything about it Mom. Really.

Hard to say from what's written in your notes, but whatever. Go do it.

The Boy walked in the kitchen a few while later, downcast. My mother-in-law and I were sharing the window seat, chatting with the Husband as he cooked dinner. Aren't you done yet?

Head shakes. Color illustration? have you seen these words? How do I illustrate Hypothesis in color? or Science?

I scanned the list. Bias, Ethics, Variable, Scientific Method ... he had a point. I shrugged. That's the assignment, and it was due Friday, so you should have some sense of what other people did. Figure it out. Do it.

That's ridiculous. said my mother-in-law as he left the room . That assignment makes no sense.

It's what's assigned so he has to do it. I said. It doesn't matter that it's inane.

But it would be far, far easier with my apple-far-too-freakin-close-to-my-tree son if it were not senseless and poorly defined.

At his age, neither his father nor I would have cooperated with that. The Husband would have likely blown it off completely, and I would have found a way to subtly be a smart aleck about it while spending as little time as possible doing so. And our parents would have likely never known the difference.

They would have never known the difference because they didn't spend an hour or more every day micromanaging us. Not that I ever envisioned myself doing it.

It's not really what we would choose to do.

Which rather begs the question of why we are doing it.

And what exactly it is we would choose.

Where the Bullies Strike Us

2011-09-08T12:01:00.067-05:00

The principal said it was a fight.

What it was, apparently: *Two girls ridiculing another until she pointed index finger pistols at them in anger and frustration, Bang Bang, she's hauled off to the Office. There's Zero Tolerance for guns in this post-Columbine age, so the bully received her Mandatory 10-day Suspension as required by district policy.

I heard last night about something rather disturbing that happened at school, the Husband said to the Boy, as he asked about it.

The Boy shrugged. I don't know. I didn't see it.

It's an inappropriate overreaction, the kind of thing I can see you doing without even thinking. You can't because in this day and age, it will follow you forever. You have to walk away. If they follow you, go stand next to Mr. C.

You can't walk away. the Boy scoffed. The administration's reaction to the incident was to assign seats for lunch - the only time the kids have to interact casually with each other - boys on one side of the cafeteria, girls on the other. You have to hold up your hand to get up for any reason.

I sighed, walked into the kitchen with a armful of plates and bowls and glasses, shaking my head. Another win for broad-stroke over-reactions; another loss for socialization, for learning appropriate reactions to the actions of others, for learning that bad behavior leads to logical, predictable, individual consequences.

This morning we rode down the elevator in silence, trotted down the stairs and around the corner, the orange light throwing the purple shadows off the trees, the first crinkling brown leaves blowing in the cool wind.

You'd tell me if anyone was treating you like that, wouldn't you?

He grunted, noncommittally.

I understand this. I never told my mother, either.

You'll stand up if you see someone else being treated like that, won't you? If not to the person doing it, you'll tell someone who can help - Mr. C, a teacher, me?

He grunted, more of a Sure, whatever. I'm becoming an expert at deciphering grunts as this is, after all, how 'tween boys communicate with their mothers.

Do you know why I feel this way? Do you know that every time I look in the mirror, I still hear the things kids said to me at 11, 12, 13?

He turned his head too look at me, sad eyes barely visible under the edge of his sweatshirt hood. That's just wrong, Mom.

Yeah, but it's there and I guess always will be. Words hurt a long time. That's why I won't stand by and let it happen to you, to your friends, to anyone, if I can do anything about it. Will you help me?

The shadow of his head nodded in the darkness. Yeah.

*facts slightly changed to protect those involved.

Ten on Tuesday: Where I Am

2011-09-07T12:00:00.000-05:00

4:45 a.m.: fumbling in the quarter power dimmed darkness of my bathroom, brushing my teeth or putting in my contact lens or cursing about the clothes I didn't set out the night before.

Some time between 5:10 - 5:20 a.m., whenever I'm alert enough to look up from morning correspondence to realize that Oh crap that Boy is not up yet.: Tripping over things in the narrow aisle between the lofts in the Master Suite, whispering loudly, Hey! Are you awake!

5:55 a.m.: someplace on the half mile stretch between here and Ye Olde Yellowe Buss Stoppe.

6:40 a.m.: in the kitchen, gulping iced tea after my run, contemplating finding the Girl - is she awake yet and playing? or still curled up in her bed. Time to start Part 2 of the day.

8:35 a.m.: on the sidewalk, waving goodbye as the second bus of the day pulls away from the curb. She studiously ignores me, because I am, you know, no longer cool.

11:20 a.m.: standing in the open refrigerator door, pondering lunch, the project I left on the computer screen, the rest of the too-long for too-few hours to-do list.

3:ish - 5:ish p.m.: going through all the Boy's papers and his agenda while quizzing him about the day's events, assignments, and what he didn't bring home or write down. serving the Girl a snack while she does her homework (usually Math, which requires my surveillance to avoid a tearful meltdown). watching her pull on shin guards and long socks and tie her cleats before we run out the door for soccer.

7:05 pm.: wandering through the house killing every task possible while in a daze, pausing as I clean the hall mirror to gaze at the dark circles under my eyes. Is it time to go to bed yet? No, kids are still awake. No, still stuff on the to-do list. No, it's not dark yet. No, No, No.

10:40 p.m.: waking up in my bed, my forehead planted in a book or on the iPad screen.

11:53 a.m., Wednesday: realizing it's not Tuesday anymore.

FML. Not.

2011-09-01T07:14:00.000-05:00

Some mornings you just feel it ...

the stars are stacked against you Girl better get back in bed ...

and yesterday, for me, was one of those.

Got up late - late, even, for Wednesdays, when the alarm is set half an hour later because I take the Boy to school on my way to Eucharist downtown. Got a 4.5 mile workout out of an exercise in repeated stupidity, about half of it spent talking or sending email from my cell phone as I walked. Then the phone lost its mind, and the netbook lost its mind, and I found myself standing there looking at both of them, thinking, Today I seem to have trouble with any technology more advanced than rocks and sticks. F*** My Life.

We see those three letters so frequently on Facebook, on Twitter. It's said out loud in casual conversation, both the words and the three letters as a shorthand in front of the kids.

I try never to say it. Never. It reminds me of something Helene's mom said to me once when I exclaimed, Goddogit in her presence back in the early 1980s:

He will.

What you ask for is what you will receive. Maybe it's the hand of God, maybe it's just the power of your own thinking making your luck, but writing or saying or even thinking FML seems to be begging for trouble in that same sort of sense.

I don't need trouble. My life isn't perfect, and it isn't all that I want it to be, but the kids are healthy and we are relatively so and there is a roof over our heads and food to eat and gadgets to play with. I don't need trouble.

So I won't go asking for it.

Not that way, anyway.

Why I Run

2011-08-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

footsteps drumming on
wood plank bridge, green leaves blow in
cool wind - Solitude.

(edited slightly from comment posted on Couch-to-5k Running Plan Facebook page, but liked it too much to let it stay there. also downloaded a Tabuta training app just to add some spice to life. but the reasons stay the same..)

Walking in Whose Shoes

2011-08-19T05:41:00.000-05:00

It finally happened early one morning about two weeks ago: I drowsily wandered into the Entry Hall, grabbed my running shoes, and sat down on the sofa to pull them on.

My foot wouldn't fit into the toe box. I opened my eyes a little further to study beyond the pink ridge of the upper: a silver N marked the side, not the graceful lines arcing from ankle to tread. Her New Balance, not my Asics.

She's in fourth grade.

I was in sixth grade when I caught up with my mother. I was thrilled to have access to her wardrobe of strappy heels and cute flats. She was openly delighted a year later when my feet measured too big to wear her shoes.

I got up, picked up the Boy's new silver and black Nikes, put them down on the dark grey tile next to my shoes.

Same length.

Nose Job

2011-08-17T08:07:00.001-05:00

The Miata got sideswiped, the same driver's side quarter panel that we just had repaired last fall from the last incident scraped again. Annoying, considering it happened the day I phoned in the hail claim on Rexy, but not a big deal, really. 19 years of living here and parking on the street we're way over considering cars as precious objects.

Sunday evening as the Husband pulled the RX-8 into a parking space after our jaunt to the pool, I remembered the Miata's appointment on Monday morning. Are you going to remember to drive this one in the morning? The last time I asked him to drive the big car, he forgot, which resulted in a bit of a clown car situation. Or should I write you a note?

Note, please.

So I wrote a note, and the Boy took the pen out of my hands and added a sentence.

I laughed. Problem is, she's mostly steel.

So? Are people Plastic?

School Year 2011-2012: Day One

2011-08-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

The routine begins, again.

Time after brushing my teeth and finding the camera.

Walking to the bus. This is as light as it will be until May.

Off to the first day of middle school.

The bus arrived 10 minutes late and on the wrong side of the street, but still before the sun.

2.5 hours later, the Girl's turn.

Both kids off to school, I took the Miata to the body shop. Sitting on the bench at the Metrobus stop, I realized I could wait for the bus, ride it home, get dressed and go running or walk the ~4 miles home and call that my day's exercise.

So that's what I did.

Art Deco beauty (For Lease!)

After the Fire

Which way from here? (Kingshighway viaduct south of Shaw)

None may enter.

Skate park under the viaduct.

Towards the Vanishing Point

Yummy Caramel Glazed Tile at Oliva

Home, Work, etc., totally Zombiefied.

The plotter is plotting against me again.

Pedestrians, Beware of Wild Women Jumping from Yellow Buses!

Girls after School

Summer 2011, the Last Monday

2011-08-12T08:29:00.000-05:00

The last Monday of summer found us on the road for a weekday weekend trip to Little Rock to visit Granny. The Boy took the camera for the moving parts of the trip, and I got it when the car was standing still.

$47 dollar fill up!

I wonder which definition of Apt this church fits?

Stormy skies near Cabot

Crepe myrtle.

We play many vicious games of Skip-Bo.

(Mom was visiting too)

Sharing earbuds on a Playaway audio book.

Time for bed.

I am Yin, neither Passive nor Afraid.

2011-08-05T12:54:00.000-05:00

In Chinese cosmology, Yang, the male principle, is associated with fire, and is directed upward, joyful, and phallic; Yin, the female principle, is associated with water, passivity, and fear.

Fear of falling, fear of being rejected, fear for our physical safety. I find it interesting that fear is the female principle: everyone feels those things, male and female. All of us fear something. Things I fear: bugs, high places, guns pointed in my direction (even toys), power tools, concrete median walls on the freeway, people with loud voices. I think a large part of what afflicts our society in general, and females in particular, is that we have been taught to fear - and not just the Other, which in modern society translates to everyone, but also ourselves.

I was reading in the Utne Reader this month that a majority of women live in a constant state of fear of being attacked, no matter where they live. This constant fear affects them physically; their immune systems are weaker, they suffer more frequent nervous breakdowns, etc. When I was very young I made a concious choice not to be afraid; that moment came one cold, snowy day in 1980, when a friend of my mother's from college died. She was, like Mom, a senior journalism major at UALR (the local commuter college); they worked together as the editors of the campus paper and as stringers for the Arkansas Democrat, covering the state Legislature. She lived near Jacksonville, half an hour away on I-40, and one day as she was driving away from the dangers of the city, she was caught in the head by a stray bullet. If it was an accident, if it was a sniper, they still don't know. But that January day as my mother (already shorter than me) cried on my shoulder, I felt something snap. I knew I couldn't live my life in fear. I couldn't allow it to rule everything I do and everywhere I go. Mind you, I'm not stupid about it, I just live with that as a guiding principle. How else could I get lost in the streets of Rome by myself and enjoy it? How else could I come home from the studio at three or four in the morning, park on the street, and walk to my apartment, enjoying the way the buildings look in the sodium light and the quietness and the emptiness of it being just me and dozens of waiting cars. The City even smells different at night, more innocent and mysterious.

And then there are those other, internal fears. Overwhelming social dilemmas and fear of rejection have always been a dominant aspect of my life, and perhaps that's partially because while my body is that of a woman, my parents more or less raised me in the societal norms we think of for boys. Maybe part of this was accepting that I was the only girl my age in the neighborhood; but really I think the main motivation was trying to teach me not to be a pawn to the desires of whatever males were in my life. I lived with incredible freedom. When I was a kid there was a piece of land on the edge of the subdivision earmarked for a park, but the city didn't have enough money to develop it as such so it was just woods, adjoined on three sides by backyards, the fourth by the small collector street that led to our school. My sister and I ran with the boys in these woods (none of the other neighborhood girls were allowed to on a regular basis, not even those who had brothers), and often, because I refused to play the acquiescing female parts that they wanted me to play, we took instead the roles of foes in a long drawn out war, chasing each other through the underbrush and young stands of pine, each attempting the bold capture of the other's lean-to forts and scavenged treehouses.

As adults, we compensate for fear by hiding from the world and by demonizing people different than ourselves. We fear the actions of Conservatives if we are Liberal, those of Liberals if we are Conservatives. White people fear Black people; rich people fear The Poor. We divide the population into categories that are really meaningless because the horrors we fears can be perpetrated by anyone anywhere. More than anything else, I fear the part of me that wants to draw that line, and call the things on one side good and right and peaceful, and those on the other side evil and wrong. I fight it in every moment, and in this way, I am Yin, water, constant, but neither passive nor afraid.

I've been sorting through the binders and notebooks from my academic career over the summer, and found this in a beaten purple binder full of essays written for a grad school seminar entitled Architecture and the Other. I was struck by it as much because of how much my views have changed since I wrote it in 1993 as how much they remain the same.

I look at that list from 1993 and almost laugh at my naivete: bugs I have made an uneasy truce with; heights I deal with as required for work; power tools an accepted part of life in a 100-year-old house. If only things now were so concrete, so visible as those in the list rather than this sense of palpable trepidation about the economy, about the Boy's new school, about the issues confronting aging parents and grandparents and how all this government insanity might affect their lives and thereby ours.

So, Fear has been chasing me, and every time I think I have turned a corner and left it wondering which way I went, it springs in front of me and rips me into breathless wakefulness whether I am sleeping or not.

This week started out better. Then I opened the preview of this weekend's Lectionary and there it is, in the text. Matthew 12: 22-33: Jesus walks on the water, and Peter tells Christ to command him on the water as proof that is him. But when Peter notices the strong wind, he becomes frightened, and begins to sink. Jesus, hauling him out by the arm, berates him for his lack of faith.

Monday morning, reading it for the first time, I ran away from it. I clicked the x in the corner of the window and went on with my week.

But Fate, or Providence, or the Hand of God - whatever you want to call it - sticks to a theme. The feeding of a crowd with two fishes and a couple of loaves in the Gospel for Wednesday's Eucharist. Later that day, fascinated by the blurb on my Flipboard, I click over to Trent's blog and find it there again in a series about the ten evils he found in a martial arts book:

Fear drove me in every instance. Fear drove me away from my potential. It pushed me from what I could be into something much smaller.

I hear Herbert in my head: Fear is the mind-killer.

That's the common thread: Fear diminishes us, takes us away from what we are meant to be, what we are meant to accomplish. Fear breeds Doubt (coincidentally the next of Trent's Evils). Fear takes us away from all love, all aspiration, and leaves sinking paralysis in its wake.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer ... the little-death.

I must not fear.

Not so easy. I return to that brave statement from the Spring of '93. I am Yin, water, constant, but neither passive nor afraid.

Ah, the arrogance of Youth. What I missed then, but know viscerally now: it's not about the absence of Fear - because for most of us that absence is really Ignorance, knowing or unknowing - but the ability, the courage, the faith, to walk along with it instead of running from it.

My Name is Lisa, and I'm a Horrible Mom.

2011-08-03T11:30:00.014-05:00

There, I came out and said it.

We all feel it, don't we?

One of my Facebook friends posed the question to us, her working-mom friends, with the preface Am I a horrible mom if I ...

I don't know why she posed the question just to us; I think our Stay-at-Home colleagues are just as prone to feeling it, but they have insulation from some of the guilt because they stay at home.

We usually leave it unspoken, but it's always there, behind every decision, large and small. It starts in pregnancy and I pray it ends when they get out of grad school, get married, have a family of their own.

Am I a horrible mom if I've lost 14 pounds in the first trimester? or if I gain 14 in the second?
Am I horrible mom if I don't exclusively breastfeed my baby for the first six months of life, or maybe even if I do?
Am I a horrible mom if I let them watch 3 hours of cartoons on Saturday morning?
Am I a horrible mom if I let my kids walk in from the bus by themselves?

If we stay home, some studies suggest that our children miss more school the first few years because they haven't built up immunity to every virus and bacteria on the planet.
If we work, some studies suggest that our children become overweight spoiled brats with attachment problems.

There isn't a moment in any given day that we aren't given reason to question the wisdom of every single thing we do.

Friday the Boy came with me to the office, as he does on summer days. He forgot to bring his lunch (horrible mom alert: I not only didn't pack his lunch, I forgot it too.) so I handed him a $10 bill and told him he could go over to Coco Louco Brasil next door and get a lunch special to go. My landlady and her friend Molly, both long-time neighborhood residents, were in the office, helping the officemate with preparations for the Beacon's upcoming big event. After he'd been gone a few minutes, I started to wonder about him, and a few minutes later, turning my chair to face the conference table, I said out loud to noone in particular, I wonder if I should go find my son?

Molly turned and looked at me. Oh, I don't think so. Give him a few more minutes. He's probably talking soccer and having a good time.

We started talking about what it was like raising kids in the neighborhood 30 years ago: the construction projects in the alleys, bicycling to Forest Park, trips to Martin's Variety (RIP) to spend allowances. We just went to other people's houses and the kids just played. They didn't have to be overscheduled like kids today.

A few minutes later he walked in with his box of food, smiling, chatty, visibly proud of taking care of this little thing himself. Here, Mom, I got you some bacon.

I didn't feel so horrible, for a minute. Or maybe it was just the bacon, soothing me in its subtle, fatty way.

*I found this in the blog Drafts folder, originally dated 6/30/2010. Why I never posted it, I don't know. Sad thing is that the feeling is still, and I guess will always be, relevant.

10 for Tuesday: You Know It's Hot When ...

2011-08-02T14:48:00.004-05:00

In no particular order ....

The shades in my living room are drawn all day, blocking the green view into the leafy park, to keep the heat out and the coolth in.
I start wearing tank tops all the time.
The Husband leaves the convertible top up.
The local newspaper tries baking cookies inside a car.
Cacti stretch for the sun as if they've been starved, while the basil and oregano wilt unless watered daily or more and the flowers in the garden brown like cookies in the oven.
I don't complain about the kids lying in their beds listening to audio books and reading instead of scootering and biking on the alley. Or at least, I don't complain much.
I skip morning coffee in favor of Diet Cokes and Iced Tea.
I drive my neighborhood errands.
The long-haired cat takes up permanent residence on the cool tile of the bathroom floor.
The calendar says August, and I realize that I should plan my trip to Central Arkansas before school starts, and I might as well because it's not that much hotter there.

Summer 2011, Week 9, Day 1.

2011-08-02T06:22:00.000-05:00

Kids are at Mom's for the week, attending Robot Camp and hanging with their cousins. I'm trying to crank through my to-do list hoping to head to Granny's for a day or two next week. Glorious thing about working for myself is that most things can be done remotely.

The car has half a crankcase of oil, said the Husband.

So I poured in a quart and a half, mistaking 20W-50 for 5W-20.

An early morning trip to Zisser's for oil change = Federhofer's for breakfast.

eaten next to a stack of tires.

Hot Flowers.

HD Radio Rocks.

The Swedish Ivy very stealthily takes over.

One serving of chocolate chips.

Morgan naps on her favorite Danish chair.

You gotta get in all your naps so you're ready for the Big Sleep at night, after all.

Mary watches goings on in the kitchen.

Cheese course.

Garlic. It's what for dinner, along with its BFFs.

Time for bed.

The Lost Upside-down Dream

2011-07-31T12:04:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I dream about doing cartwheels. Sometimes it's a waking dream, inspired by a linear flooring design down a long hall or across a sunlit lobby, or a flat grassy stretch between an allee of tall oaks. Sometimes it's such a vivid image that I can feel my hands on the double-loop carpet, the rush of blood to the head as my body straightens upside down.

Then I remember the summer evenings spent falling awkwardly into the weeds of the only flat spot in our front year, injury added to the insult by the prickles suddenly stuck in my bare arms and legs. Try as they might, Shell and the Shrimp and Stacey never succeeded in teaching me to do one.

Somehow, I think at this point it's too late.

Summer 2011, Week 8, Day 1.

2011-07-25T22:52:00.000-05:00

It's so hot my brains have melted.

But the camera, fortunately, has not.

This morning I was reminded once again how thankful I am to live in a community, not just a subdivision. I scheduled myself for an 8:00 meeting 30 minutes away in West County.

Hmmm, this is not quite what I drew .... not really at all what I drew ...

But (brains fried) I forgot that (a) the Husband is traveling today and (b) the kids are attending Track Camp this week. Fortunately, a friend stepped into the breach and took the kids at 7:30 for a 9:00 Camp start.

Something I didn't consider in signing them up for Track Camp:

Long Jump Practice means sand in new shoes and on Entry Hall Floor.

Post Camp, Post Lunch Game of Girls vs. Boy Chess

On the average Monday, I forget to take my camera to the Chess Club meeting in Richmond Heights,

and my phone's battery is exhausted from the day. Tonight was the exception.

Mr. E explains the theme for the evening.

Tonight was Wacky Chess Set Night.

This Made in China set was the favorite of the girls attending.

The Boy assists in getting whipped by Chesster.

A Lllama. (Incans vs. Spainards)

This family was too cute.

He came back to me singing Cortez.

What? time to go?

Peaches

Word Du Jour

Two more weeks of summer.

Summer 2011, Week 7, Day 1.

2011-07-19T13:27:00.000-05:00

Started the morning with a walk, then coffee and upside-down leftover chocolate pie.

The Husband has made salsa and guacamole twice in the last four days, yet we still had a ton of serranos left over, as well as the vinegar solution from the escabeche he made on Sunday. So I pickled the peppers and some carrots. If nothing else, they're pretty.

The house is a wreck, nobody wants to do chores, which begs the question of why I'm reworking the chore lists and schedules ...

It's hot, too hot for me to feel good about sending the kids outside to ride scooters and bicycles on the alley.

The Boy is home from camp, and has taken up residence inside a book. Numerous books, actually.

The Girl, on the other hand, keeps herself amused by making clothes for her cat.

You can decide for yourself what Mary Dora thinks about it.

Summer 2011, Week 6, Day 1.

2011-07-12T16:08:00.000-05:00

OR ... what?

First ride on a flatbed for the blue car.

We didn't hear any growling.

the View from my Office Chaise (afternoon)

On the way home from Chess.

Thoughts from my Desk (Not my Own)

2011-07-08T08:58:00.001-05:00

I have a thing for quotes. Always have. They collect in snippets on my desk, taped to the wall, the monitor, etc. I've been moving my office this week, so it's time to clean out again.

Tradition & Paranoia:

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past. - Maurice Maeterlink.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him until tomorrow to confess, then hang him! hang him! - Oscar Wilde. Lines of the Czar, in Vera, or the Nihilists, Act 2. Prince Paul replies, Sire, you are anticipating history. This is Count Petouchof, your new Ambassador to Berlin. Note that Wilde died in 1900.

What Killed the Dinosaurs! and You Don't Look So Terrific Yourself:

I just saw it on TV. I don't know what it means. - M. Boman (daughter of a former colleague), age 10.

Television sucks everyone up. - the Boy, age ~18 months.

What We Do:

Art is making something out of nothing & selling it. - Frank Zappa

For most DESIGNERS, creativity means a constant struggle for equilibrium between self-expression and the externally imposed, rational consideration of the communication problem. - Allen Hurlburt

I prefer Drawing to Talking. Drawing is faster, and allows less room for lies. - LeCorbusier

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. - Thomas Edison

Life Lessons:

Work first and then rest. - John Ruskin

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are. - Susan Sontag

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. - Samuel Butler

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. - Jorge Luis Borges

All power corrupts, but we need the electricity. - Unknown

Maybe it's the journalism background, but I'm also a sucker for headlines ...

My favorite ever newpaper front page.

Another favorite headline.

Summer 2011, Week 5, Day 1.

2011-07-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

A rainy start for the drive to Arkansas ...

The rental has only enough room in the trunk for one silly Girl.

Clear skies at the Bread Co. in Rolla.

I will never understand why the building and its outdoor seating face

the metal building across the street and leave this view for the parking lot and the dumpster.

Reading on the porch as we get in the car to head back.

Dinner at LuLu's

cool mid-century drive-in (now Chinese, of course) next door.

Home Again.

The View from My Window

Five for Friday: Things I Love About the 4th of July

2011-07-01T12:43:00.000-05:00

(an abbreviated version of Brdigett's Ten on Tuesday)

Blackberries. This time of year, the blackberries, wild and tame, come to full juicy ripeness. When I was a kid hanging at the lake for the long weekend, my sister and cousin and I would walk along the dusty road, our faithful cockapoo trailing behind, with a plastic bowl or empty bread bag in hand, seeking sweet fruits in the prickly wild bushes. The flavour still reminds me of those hot, delightful afternoons.
Fireworks. In my pyrophilic family, The Fourth of July was almost a holy day. It was the only time all year we shot off fireworks, and we ached for it from the time the first red-and-yellow tent went up on the west side of County Line Road in June. The adults carefully metered the fun: firecrackers after noon, the black windy charcoaly snakes when the grill was stoked up before dinner, bottle rockets at dusk, and sparklers, Roman candles, and fountains after dark. Then we'd all pile into the ski boat and drive slowly to the middle of the lake to watch the show put on by the people with the big lots and the big houses on the other side. Now, we go downtown or, if we're visiting the Husband's folks, to the hilly shore at Panther Bay to watch the show over Lake Norfork.
Getting Rid of the Kids … or getting them back. Every summer, the kids go to stay with their grandparents – one week for the Husband's parents, one week for my mom and her husband. Invariably, the holiday bookends the trip to Arkansas to deliver them to the in-laws, mainly because the long weekend gives us an extra day that makes 12 hours of driving easier to do. It's wonderful to leave them, to know I have my Husband to myself for a few days, and it's wonderful to drive up and have them hug us hello when we're half in, half out of the car. Of course, the same applies to taking them to Mom's place out in Chesterfield, it's just less dramatic because the trip is so much shorter.
Music. One of the great things about living in St. Louis is that the Fourth inaugurates Celebrate St. Louis, the city's biggest free music festival, with a riverside fair and concerts, and then two smaller concerts later in the month. Some years the lineup is lackluster, and we go down to Arkansas, to Norfork, to the mountains. This year it's Steve Miller Band on Saturday, and Maroon 5 on Sunday. We'll skip the country guy on Monday, not because we don't like country but because we don't like him. Gavin DeGraw is coming later in the month, as are Barenaked Ladies. We bump into friends, the kids run and play frisbee and lay on each other, it's all good.
The Heat. Yes, I mean it. Here and in Arkansas, the first week of July is the beginning of the apex of the humid hotness of summer that lasts through mid-August. When I walk out of the house for my early morning run, the hint of the dampness remains in the air, but not on the grass. The afternoon sun is strong and hot on my skin as I sit in my chaise by the pool, driving me into the water until the goosebumps rise. The haze of St. Louis smog to the west makes the sunsets peeking throgh the park trees red and orange and gorgeous. I live without sweaters, without long sleeves. I wear tank tops, the only time of year I can and not be cold. Yes, I mean it. You know, I can't change it so I might as well love it.

Summer 2011, Week 4, Day 1.

2011-06-27T22:53:00.000-05:00

More proof the Girl can sleep anywhere.

In this case, in one of the Danish chairs while listening to the Carmina Burana.

But her cat was very awake.

Sunset.

Carmina Burana on Living St. Louis. Small screen, big speakers.

Living two blocks from a major medical center, emergency vehicles come and go constantly.

But hearing the sirens stop immediately outside the windows gets my attention.

The silverware battle continues.

Pork Loin Roast. I cut three chops off for dinner tonight, and I'm cooking the rest to freeze to eat over the next few weeks. It's cheap, easy, tasty food. Great as barbecue or tacos. Yum.

Work to do ... not complaining but tired.

Time to give up and start again tomorrow.

Letting Go of the Forks

2011-06-24T14:05:00.000-05:00

The Boy brought my attention to it. What's this, why is everything in the wrong place?

I looked into the silverware drawer. We don't do that very often, if you think about it. We generally just reach in and grab whatever it is we're after by feel, by instinct. But this time, I really looked into the silverware drawer, and realized that the spoons and the forks had switched places.

Huh. I don't put away the silverware very often. Maybe once or twice a week since the kids were 3 or 4. It was hard at first, allowing all the forks and spoon to just be jumbled in, not stacked neatly and tidily nested into one another, size by size, but I told myself it was worth it to teach them some responsibility for the household chores. Eventually I got used to it.

Did you not do that?

Glare. No.

Well, put them back the other way if you prefer.

This morning as I poured the water from the kettle into the French Press for my coffee, the Girl, putting away the silverware, emitted a pouty, irritated sigh. Why is everything in the wrong place?

Oh, are you the one who did that? Your brother and I were wondering how it got changed.

This way is wrong. It's supposed to be the other way.

What do you mean? It's always been this way - knives, forks, spoons.

Well, it's wrong. It should be knives, spoons, forks.

But it's always been this way in my house. It's the same way at your Grandma's house, and at Granny's house.

Knives and spoons are together when you set the table. They should be together in the drawer, too. she said, as she took everything out and began to put it back in.

But ... I stopped, thinking. Was I really going to insist on this trivial thing based on matriarchal tradition when I had been given a rational reason it should be different? Do I really care that much about how the flatware sits in the drawers?

No, I decided. I don't. It doesn't matter, especially if someone else is doing it. Okay, then. I said, shrugging.

Eventually it too will feel like the way it's always been. And this time there's a reason to enforce the order, so it will be better ... as soon as I stop pulling out spoons when I want a fork.

Scouting for a New Home

2011-06-23T12:22:00.000-05:00

My co-leader looked across the table at me. It was mid-March, and we were doing the prep work on a craft for the girls to do during the meeting that afternoon. You know, once we leave the school I'm not going to want to do this anymore. I don't think I can bear walking into the building twice a month after ...

She fell silent. I nodded. She's been very invested in the place and deciding to move on has been painful. I kinda figured that was coming. I don't see any point in my continuing either - I just came here because it was a convenient place, and you were here. So, what do you want to do? Do you want to reestablish as a strictly neighborhood troop, meet at our houses? With your two, my girl, and Mariah we're 80% of the way there, and I think Amelia might be interested since the troop at their school disintegrated. Or do you just want to see what the troop in the new school is like and get out of the leadership business yourself?

I think the second. I've been thinking about this whole starting over thing - I don't want to be the Girl Who Can't Say No anymore. I'm going to draw closer limits. I'm not going to volunteer for everything. And while this Girl Scout thing has been good, I think I'd rather focus on other things, like sports, that the new school doesn't have.

We worked through the rest of the school year with the notion of providing the girls a great Girl Scout Spring to set the stage for continuing next year or, if the new leaders don't materialize or they don't want to go in that direction, as a source of excellent memories for the rest of the girls' lives. We also budgeted the monies available carefully, leaving enough in the account to pay for all the returning girls' dues to council and to the troop, for the new leaders to join and be trained, and to pay for a Fall camping trip or major activity.

We succeeded in all of these things. We sent the girls off with a series of positive, focused experiences. I'm proud of that.

But now, what do I do about my Girl, all excited about continuing as a Junior, about all the new adventurous things she'll get to do.

I talked to her about it in May, as we started planning the Bridging Ceremony. So, it doesn't look like we're going to continue doing Girl Scouts with our old troop. Do you want to join the troop at school?

She shook her head. Oh, no. There's too many people, and it gets so noisy. And they're all the same age. It's fun to be with people older and younger than you are.

I felt an inner relief. I prefer my kids not be involved in activities that I don't want to be part of, and the troop at school is too big for me to be able to cope with either in terms of both noise and chaos. Ten girls I can do, 24 is way too many. Then I need to find a new place for us to be. She nodded, and I continued. So I know what to look for in a new troop - what kind of things do you want to do in Scouts?

Horses. And camping and archery and horses. Maybe some crafts.

So I started looking around. The obvious troop meets alternate Saturdays, but isn't into the outdoorsy stuff the Girl and I enjoy doing - they're more into tea parties and such. And the main leader has sent out several emails to all the leaders in the District about the Journeys and her excitement that the entire Girl Scout program has been revamped to embrace them.

I could write a lot about the Journeys. All gung ho as a new leader, I really did try to like them. On one hand, I know that kids need to be in touch with their emotional intelligence, and that in my family of introverts we don't spend a lot of time on that sort of thing. But on the other hand, I really believe that we learn many of those lessons, and develop real self-esteem based on accomplishment, by getting out in the world and doing things, not sitting inside and talking about them.

On the third hand (Moms have those, you know) ... well, I *really* did try to like the Journeys. When I went to the Girl Scout Shop to get my books to prepare for my first meeting as a leader, I bought Welcome to the Daisy Garden, with the leader guide and everything. I went home, read my Leader Guides, then started looking at the Journey book. Almost immediately I realized I didn't want to do it. Glancing over the calendar, with meetings every other week and eleven petals to earn, I could justify this decision. We didn't really have the time. I gave the book to the Girl and said, Here. If you want to do this, I'll give you the badges as you complete the requirements.

A couple of days later, when she complained that she was bored, I asked, What about that Daisy Garden book? Why don't you do some of those things?

She shook her head. No, that's no fun. It's just another workbook like at school. Will you help me with the Promise?

I listened as she practiced reciting the words. Given that my own child wasn't interested in following the Journeys, I didn't feel bad about skipping it from then on - through the Daisy year and two years of Brownies.

So here I am in the Spring of 2011, trying to find a troop that meets at a time we can go (our school dismisses an hour after every other school around, so that's an issue), that does the outdoorsy stuff, and that plans to skirt most of the new program design.

Not much luck. I emailed a friend, the leader of a troop in another neighborhood, early in May to make sure it might be possible as I began to look around. This week, after the Girl and I discussed our findings, that's where we decided to be. I scheduled coffee to talk about actually doing it. And it's all good.

So, on my next trip to the Girl Scout Shop - it's a sash troop, right? My friend nodded, tight curls bouncing gently around her face. And we need all the standard insignia except the flag? She nodded again. And remind me - what's the troop number again?

D2, N2, Troop 66, she said.

Troop 66. I had forgotten.

Given where I started Girl Scouting, some 34 years ago, that feels like cosmic confirmation that we've found where we belong.

A List from My Bedside Turtle.

2011-06-22T15:58:00.015-05:00

Every summer the entire family joins our library's summer reading club. For most of the denizens of Chez S, it's more an exercise in recordkeeping than encouraging us to read, but for the Girl (who reads, but isn't absolutely enthralled by books like the rest of us) the multiple stage of tangible rewards do motivate.

The adult program starts on May 1, but I didn't manage to get signed up until after Memorial Day for some reason, even though I'm in the library at least once a week. This year, to make it a little more challenging for the Boy and to ensure that the Girl is spending her time on quality books, I set the requirement that all the books on their lists had to be ones they were reading for the first time, only one could be a graphic novel, and only two could be audiobooks. I've been encouraging them to read award-winning books - Newberry and Mark Twain Awards in particular, although I've also started shoving Hugo winners at the Boy.

I picked up Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson on a whim - it was on an endcap in the children's department with that conspicuous silver medal sticker. It's a story of an unlikely friendship between a girl, a stranger moving into a small town, and a boy who doesn't know anything but life in that place. I found myself reminded of The Secret Garden for some reason. It was delightful, but unfortunately, as with so many Newberry winners the climax is tragic. (I never have understood that. Can't kids just enjoy a book and it still be good? Aren't happy endings good? That's a whole 'nother blog post, I think.) I handed it off to the Husband and plan to try to get at least the Boy to read it too.

We listened to an audiobook of Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls that a couple of weeks ago on our drive to Arkansas for the Husband's mother's sister's 50th anniversary party. I remember reading it when I was a kid, and watching the movie what seemed to be every year between third and sixth grades during the last week of school, along with Old Yeller. I had actually forgotten most of the book, and everyone in car yearned and laughed and smiled along with the narrator through the first five-and-a-half CDs. Of course, the last 30 minutes we were all crying, a thin stream of tears rolling down the Husband's face, the Boy's breath broken into choking sobs. Still worth it, though, in everyone's opinion.

As always, I'm engrossed in a new science fiction author for the summer: this year, it's Tim Powers, and it's all my mother's fault. Of course, she'd say it's my fault because I got her started reading the Laundry novels by Charles Stross in the spring. As we walked around the corner to lunch one day in May, she said, Oh, oh, oh, you have got to read Tim Powers. I just finished reading a novel that sets up the entire world of the Laundry - Angleton, all of it. You have to read it. Declare.

So I started with Declare, which weaves the Kim Philby double agent/defection story into a science fiction spy thriller. Our hero, Andrew Hale, is a literature professor on leave from the British Secret Service's supernatural division (although it's not called that) who gets called back up decades later to finish up a botched job. I love spy thrillers - I don't miss seeing a James Bond flick in the theater, and I've read the entire catalog of the major writers in the genre. Combining that with an alt-now is a sure hit for me. Loved it.

Next on my list was Three Days to Never, simply because it came to the Hold shelf in the library first. This novel continues the theme of supernatural secret agents, but combines it with a compressed (three day) timeline and the phenomenon of remote viewing to heighten the suspense. Historical characters include Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein, although both mostly by reference.

Finally, I read On Stranger Tides, which turns young marionnettist John Chandagnac, bound for Jamaica to avenge his father's death, into pirate John Shandy, impressed under force after his ship is captured by associates of Blackbeard's. The twist is that the pirates use magic to help them with their work. It was amusing, but not very substantial after reading the other two. Probably would be a good beach book, and it's innocent enough that I offered it to the Boy, who snubbed it because it's not part of a series. (sigh)

I'll probably read more Powers in the future, but not until Fall or after. The novels were good, but a little too similar back to back.

From the Husband's stack of books I grabbed Ian McDonald's Brasyl to read poolside on Father's Day. I'm only a couple of chapters in, and it's just so ... foreign. Lots of text-speak, lots of Spanish, and it just feels very difficult. But I loved Desolation Road so I keep trying.

The current audiobook is The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie King, which places a precocious 15-year old girl named Mary Russell in the world of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels. This is apparently the first novel in the Mary Russell series by King, and fifteen tracks in, seems pleasant enough. I've been on a Holmes kick since Christmas anyway. I have all of Conan Doyle's Holmes stories on Google Books on my iPad.

There is also a stack of non-fiction sitting on my bedside turtle. The current read from that group is The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz, one of my favorite writers on issues of domesticity and feminism since undergrad days. What are you learning from that? the Husband asked when he saw the cover, and the answer is not much, really. What's most interesting about this book is that it arranges the material by what she calls myths about American family life: "First Comes Love, then Comes Marriage," We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet," and "My Mother was a Saint" among them. The overriding theme is that what we want to think of as an optimal family structure - the nuclear family in its single family house, with the mother at home being a Ruskin-esque domestic priestess and the Husband braving the public realm on behalf of the family, and the children living a life of idyllic luxury - is an image that has existed for less than a century, and even then for only a small segment of the population, whose privilege was largely borne on the backs of those less fortunate. Another major theme I find more salient is the comparison between private and public morality, and the natural strain between individuality and the necessity of collaboration in modern society. One of the results of these trends is an increasing depersonalization of contact with others that allows us to make decisions based on our individual interest without considering the people impacted by our choices. It's worth the time of reading just to make me think about those things.

The next book on my stack should provide an interesting juxtaposition to that: Jacob Needlemann's Money and the Meaning of Life, which I discovered via an editorial in the Harvard Business Review last month. After that is Viktor Frankl's classic Man's Search for Meaning, in which he lays out his psychotheraputic method of Logotherapy after an essay about his life in the Nazi concentration camps.

After all of that, I'll still lack one book completing my ten for the reading program if I follow the rules I set for my progeny, since I read Where the Red Fern Grows (does thirty years ago count? Mr. Jr. Lawful Good says it does.) Something light would be in order, I think ...

Coupon Crazy

2011-06-21T16:55:00.001-05:00

It's been part of the Sunday ritual ever since I was a kid, going through the paper and studying the coupons.

There for a while we didn't look at them at all. Not worth the bother for a busy two-career family. We ate out a lot. We bought rotisserie chickens and boxed Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

Then we didn't look at them because they were mostly for brand name items, prefabricated meals and junk food, things we hardly ever buy because they're too expensive and bad for you.

But budgets being what they are, lately I've been looking again, largely because of things I've found online. One of my friends liked Money Saving Mom on Facebook. So I started reading it, and realized that I'd been missing a whole system, a whole strategy on using coupons. I can use more than one coupon per item? Yes, at stores like Target and Walgreen's where they offer store coupons, you can usually use a manufacturer's coupon and a store coupon for the same item. I can combine coupons with the Gift Cards and Store Cash Back offers? Wow. Whole new worlds. You can print coupons from the newspaper circulars from other areas? Who knew?

But it's more complicated than that.

To get the maximum value, you have to combine all of these things with the weekly sales. I tried it one week, and even though I spent over an hour things didn't work out like I expected. Luckily, I discovered two local blogs, Saving Money in Missouri and Coupon STL, that match everything up to the local stores. Suddenly that part of the work is done in a snap. Okay, this is better, I thought. I divided up my weekly list to take advantage of the best prices at the stores I usually shop, and tried again.

Like anyone trying anything new, I make a lot of mistakes.

I went to Walgreen's mid-afternoon on my way to pick up the kids from school one day during the last week of classes.

Mistake #1: I made my list like I usually do, just annotating a series of items without noting which I had coupons for or expected deals with.
Mistake #2: I went to the store with a short timeframe to do my shopping.

I got all my products together and went to the cosmetics counter to check out since one of the items I needed was a package of razors. After all the items were scanned and paid for, the expected $10 in "Register Rewards" didn't print out. The clerk and her manager and I puzzled it over it. Was it that the manufacturer's coupons took the total below the required $25? We tried different combinations of items and coupons to no avail. All the while, I was painfully concious that bell time was growing ever nearer.

It turned out that while we had all thought that any Gillette and Energizer products would work, reality was that the deal was limited to the products printed in a particular area of the ad. The manager held it out to me. You know, I do this too, she said kindly. Make your list very specifically listing the products you have to buy and the coupons you're using, and check out over here. We'll work with you on making it match up, multiple transactions, all that. I thanked her, looking at the flyer in her hand.

Only one of the products I needed was in the prescribed area. I shrugged, processed a return on the items that I was buying just to get the Register Rewards, and left with one small bag. I got an excellent deal on the things I bought - three cans of the Husband's favorite shave gel at about half price once the coupons and the sale combined, and the razors netted at about $3, about 30% of their usual price - but I felt like an idiot.

The next attempt was at Target. They were running a "Buy $25 of these products, get a $5 gift card." deal on toilet paper, paper towels, and other neatly plastic wrapped household things we were pretty much out of. I made my list-a more detailed list, with the items I had coupons for starred and paratheses around the Get a Gift Card things, gathered the children, and headed for the store.

Mistake #1: I took the children on a major couponing expedition.
Mistake #2: I went to the Big Target in Brentwood.

My list included everything from sunglasses and bug spray to swimsuits for the Girl to frozen food and household supplies. We covered almost every corner of that unGodly huge store. At about sporting goods, 7:00 from the 12:00 of the store entrance, both children had had it.

By the time we got to the refrigerated section (9:00), I had had it. I picked up a six-pack of clearance Oatmeal Stout, and headed for the paper goods aisle.

Mistake #3: I assumed that the tags on the shelves were in the right places.

This was essentially a replay of the Walgreen's experience, except that since it was 3:45 on a bright sunny summer Friday afternoon and the line was backing up behind me, I took my reciept to the Customer Service line to examine while I sent the children to the adjacent restroom and waited my turn. Oh, no. The green package is the one you need, not the red one. The tags must be in the wrong place. I looked at the cart. There was 15 times more paper products than I really needed, I wasn't getting the deal I expected, and I was too tired and irritated to figure it out. I returned everything related, despite the fact that I lost several $1 off coupons in the deal. I went home and opened one of my clearance beers.

The next deal worked better. Carie posted about the Entertainment Books,which I've never bought an Entertainment Book before - once again, it's mostly coupons for things I have no business buying. But the deal she outlined looked intriguing: buy two books for $20. Each book contains (6) save $5 off a $50 order at Shop & Save coupons. Then, buy a gift card with one of those, buy your groceries on $10 off a $50 Thursday using your gift card, and use another $5 off coupon. Even if you don't use any of the coupon for other things, the books net $40 on groceries, and anything additional? Bonus.

So the Boy and I went to Shop & Save on our way home from West County after my stepfather's surgery last Thursday. I put him in charge of the calculator. Pretty much everything we bought was on sale: pasta, tomato products, frozen veggies. The total on my phone's calculator when we went to the register was $57.67. Subtract $2.55 in manufacturer coupons, my Entertainment Book Coupon, and the $10 off special, add in the taxes, use the gift card ... I paid $45.16 for my groceries, a savings of about 25%.

Encouraged, yesterday, I tried again. The Girl and I went to the CVS on the corner near Willmore Park, where she's going to day camp this week, with our stack of coupons and our list. We picked up a variety of things that we needed on sale - everything from toothpaste to Benadryl cream - and some Cokes at a great price. Total: $23.60. I used $9.75 in coupons, and paid $14.82. I got $6 in ExtraBucks printed out with my receipt. I'll probably use them to buy milk ($3.38) and something else tomorrow, or, since they don't expire until July, save them for a future experiment in "rolling" them.

My officemate watches my antics with both amusement and disgust. Everyone wants something for nothing. Where will it stop? It's not good for the economy.

Well, maybe. I have rules for myself. I don't buy more of anything than I can use in a month or so - I don't have room for a stockpile which seems to be an pretty normal part of the Extreme Couponing lifestyle. I abhor waste, so I also don't buy stuff I don't personally need just to get a deal or because it's "free." (I may reconsider that stance so that I can start to donate personal care items to the local food pantry, where I know they are desperately needed.) The point is: I'm not that crazy mustard lady that was on TV.

I try to do as much of my bargain hunting as possible at the Targets, CVSs, and Walgreens of the world, and at the big local grocery store chains. I figure they get enough of my money in state and local tax breaks to build their ugly buildings everywhere to justify my taking some back out of them, if only for the aesthetic pain they inflict on my City.

Carie describes it as being almost a game, and I agree. It's like pretending to be Robin Hood. And if I can play for an hour a week, and save my family more than $100 a month in the process?

I'm winning.

Summer 2011, Week 3, Day 1.

2011-06-20T20:59:00.001-05:00

A Day in My Life.

The beginning of the Girl's day at camp: everyone standing around looking at each other.

I left the Boy at Lucas's house and headed downtown to check out the progress on the sign.

I was hoping to run into the electrician as well. No dice.

Love the details on this. I am so good.

And modest, too.

A portrait of the blogger in red door.

The back door to the office. Perhaps the fact it's roughly torn and crumpled says something.

Paper cranes in potted trees in the parking lot at Trinity Episcopal Church, across the street from the office.

Closing Ceremonies at Camp.

They don't do it right, Mom, said the Girl, proceeding to explain in great detail the Girl Scout Official Way to do the evening flag ceremony as she learned at Camp Cedarledge two weeks ago. It's okay, it's okay, I replied in my most calming voice as I backed the car out of its space.

She was not convinced.

Asleep in Granny Fendley's Rocker.

Morgan perched on the arm where the writing pad used to sit as Granny Fendley - my Granny's Granny - wrote long letters to her sisters and cousins living elsewhere. Sealing the fat envelopes, she'd call my Granny, then about the Girl's age, from across the street - Sis, will you take these to the post office? And my Granny would run across the street and downtown to the post office, stopping by the drugstore on the way back for a piece of penny candy.

Like Minds

2011-06-15T20:02:00.001-05:00

Late as usual for Scouts, the Boy and I hurried to the car. I unlocked my door with the key, unlocked his from the armrest rocker. Sliding into my seat, I slotted the key into the ignition.

I looked through the windshield through green leaves to a perfect blue sky, glanced into the rearview mirror to see the Husband's red Miata parked behind me, then looked at my son.

Why are we in this car?

I don't know.

I pulled the key free, and in unison we opened doors, stepped out.

I've got the locks, he said, pressing the switch.

We walked the 10 steps to the Miata, I unlocked my door with the key, fell more than sat in the low seat, leaned over to unlock the passenger door. After sliding the seat forward so my left foot could throw the clutch all the way to the floor, I started the car, held the buttons for the power windows sequentially so the old motors run most efficiently. Together, we reached up to loosen the latches holding the top down, and pushed it up and back to rest on the platform behind us. I pulled out of the parking space, around the RX-8, to the stop sign, and sighed. Perfect convertible night.

A smile spread wide beneath his freckled cheeks and nose. Yes. Yes, it is.

A Letter to Camp

2011-06-09T10:43:00.000-05:00

Midday Monday, I was thinking about the Girl, down at Cedarledge at camp, and thought, I should write her a letter. So I went to the secretary in the living room where we keep the papers, dug around the cubbies looking for a cute card with kittens or something, and failing to find one, settled for a card with a vintage postcard photo of our building. I wrote a quick little cheerful note, sealed the envelope, addressed it, and started looking for a stamp.

Tuesday afternoon at the office I found a stamp. I put the letter in the side pocket of my little red Target clearance purse so I wouldn't forget to mail it on the way home.

Wednesday around noon as I was leaving to fetch the Boy from Mom and go get his glasses fixed, I realized it was still in the pocket. I ducked around the corner into the mail room to see if the mail had come. Envelopes of various sizes and colors hung out of the stainless steel mailboxes like flags, waiting for the postman to pick them up. I sighed with relief and carefully balanced my ivory envelope similarly, and forgot about it until 9:30 last night when the Boy & I came in from his Scout troop meeting.

And it was still there. No mail in the box, or in anyone's box. Was it some sort of Federal holiday that I didn't know about?

So the letter is sitting here on the table beside the computer.

And my girl didn't get one scrap of mail for the entire week of camp.

Which takes me back to my own camp days, sitting in mail call as camper after camper was called up to collect envelopes and brown boxes containing now-forbidden goodies. I usually got a thin letter from my mother about four days in. I remember one year the Shrimp wrote me a little note; I don't remember what it was about now, just the surprise of receiving it. Never a note from my dad or grandparents. Never had a boyfriend over the summer to write me lusty missives. But Mom could be relied upon.

But my girl? She didn't get one teensy little scrap of mail for the entire week of camp. Not one.

How to Blog about What You Can't Blog About

2011-06-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

It's been hard to blog lately. Part of it is the crazy schedule of the last few weeks, which has made thinking, much less writing, difficult. But the other part? Most of my brain power is taken up with things I can't blog about for any number of reasons.

I could write a long post or two or five or twenty about my anxieties about the Boy going to middle school in the fall, intertwined with hot button issues like homeschooling, homework, and school choice, but since I'm already working to make some of the things that I fear most about my choice better, saying anything might sabotage my efforts before he even walks into the building, and his experience after he does.

I could write a long post venting my frustrations with the way things wound up with our now-ex-violin teacher, which would include those same popular-in-St.-Louis topics along with righteous indignation, parental angst and competition, and lingering feelings of inferiority, but, once again, it's not just my story, and I'm trying to take the high road. Why, I don't know.

I could write about the mixed feelings I have about leaving my Brownies behind, and the uncertainties I feel about the future (although I have made arrangements to join a small troop of girls I think my daughter will enjoy), but it's not just my story, and I don't think my compatriot wants her part of it told.

I could write about in-laws and out-laws, the relations between words and actions and the feelings we have about all of those things. And I may yet write about that in the past tense, even though my thinking is mostly in present and future tense.

That's four examples among the partially written and overly pondered items in my head. The fact that I've come to the point of censoring myself to the point of creating terrible writer's block dilemmas makes me wonder if it's time to quit this thing, or at least, to reshape and refocus, away from me, my children and my family. They're getting old enough that maybe that's what I should do.

But then what would I write about?

Social Media Marriage

2011-06-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

The Husband and the Boy are off canoeing with the Boy Scouts this weekend. I last saw them in the parking lot of St. Roch's Church: the bigger one standing next to his gear, piled against the fence; the smaller one running across the lot towards the troop's storage room in the back of the gym, to help his troopmates with the patrol boxes and other communal equipment.

When he got home from work last night, five minutes after we were supposed to leave, the Husband plugged in his cell phone and set it on the counter. I don't need this.

It didn't hit me till later. Much later, around midnight, after I had read Bridge to Terabithia start to finish, played all of my Scrabble games, and started another Tim Powers novel.

I miss him, perhaps more than I do when he travels. I miss his Facebook presence, the quick little texts we send each other, the Gchat conversations. Spontaneous, and best of all - searchable. Very important for visual people with bad memories.

Back in the mid 1990s, when we were young architects working 80 hours a week in the days before email and all the things we now take for granted, the Husband and I would sometimes fax each other notes and quotes. Nothing earthshattering or private or even sexy. Just a snippet to say, I'm thinking about you, with a heart scrawled next to an initial.

One of the women in my office sneered as she delivered one of his faxes. This is pretty pathetic, you know.

So I told the Husband to stop sending them.

I hated the loss of the connection. No, it wasn't much. But it was something. It was the best that we could do and keep our jobs. It's probably not a coincidence that I left that firm within a few months.

So now I find myself wondering if the current state of affairs is pathetic or sweet.

I'm going with sweet.

The Last Three Weeks (in Crappy Cell Phone Pictures)

2011-06-02T11:43:00.001-05:00

Ready for the Race

Pre-Bridging Ceremony Badgeness

Checking Out the Site

The Girl's Haul

You People Can't Park.

Loving on Uncle George's Beagle.

A Stop on Highway PP on the Road Back

Ice Cream as Big as Your Head

Rabbits & Rexy

Oh, Hail.

Things You See at Jay's

The Velvet Touch of Sea Creatures in a Shallow Pond

Take a picture of that butterfly, Mom. It's posing for you.

In Which Her Father Introduces Billy Collins

Lost Dog at QuikTrip

Bus Stop, the Last Day of 3rd/5th Grade

One from the Road

2011-05-27T21:14:00.028-05:00

Last weekend found us making a whirlwind trip to Arkansas: St. Louis to Mountain Home to North Little Rock to Conway to North Little Rock to Searcy to St. Louis in 54 hours. When we weren't driving, we were sleeping, visiting with family and friends and going to a funeral for the Husband's uncle.

Fifteen hours on the road, with no audiobook (the Dr. Who radio play read as blank in the CD player, and the Rick Riordan mystery proved to be inappropriate for children), and two cases of scratched up burned CDs that we ejected straight into the Schnucks bag full of drink containers and gum wrappers in the passenger floorboard. The kids had their Nintendos, of course, but over that many hours in so short a period, even video games wear thin. And for either of us adults, in this situation, what the grieving party wants to do is drive and think, not talk. An audiobook is easy to politely ignore. It doesn't expect answers to musings about the river levels of the White, Black, and Current Rivers or to discuss the crops growing alongside the road.

Back in the pre-CD player days, we had rituals for driving trips that were almost as easy to play along with mindlessly as an audiobook. Things like pointing at the horses along the road. Saying See that water tower? every time you passed one. We don't do so much of that anymore.

Most of the rituals that have survived are jokes of one form or another.

Throwing a penny out the window as you passed through Menifee, to pay your Mini - Fee.

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North of Pocahontas, Arkansas:
Isn't this the field where I cleaned out the ditch that time?

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Yeah, funny how hard it is to judge distance when the road is so straight and flat.

Who's bigger, Mr. Bigger or his son?

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His son's a little Bigger.

Doggone it, no wonder we never get on the road to Success, we're always following the arrow to Little Rock.

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My family down in Central Arkansas doesn't find that very funny for some reason.

This trip started a new one of these traditions, I think: after we crossed the state line on Highway 67, coming home, the Boy said, Ummm, Dad, I need to stop.

We passed a green mileage sign. 17 miles to Poplar Bluff, many more than that to Saint Louis. Can you wait?

Sure.

On the new by-pass around Poplar Bluff - which is still the new by-pass even though it's been open for five or six years now, a green sign showed State Route PP one mile away. Too bad, should be PB. I mused.

I think PP is pretty apropos, said the Husband, steering the car off the exit.

So do I, said the Boy.

<
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We had dinner at Tio's, a new Mexican restaurant about half a mile off the main road. Standing on the patio afterwards, waiting for everyone to return to the car, the Boy said, What did Pac-man order at the Mexican restaurant?

Deep sigh. My son has an obviously genetically acquired affection for groaners. I don't know. What did he order?

Waka, waka, waka-mole. Big grin.

We got in the car and continued driving north, our eyes searching through newly stripped landscape and the now four-lane road, for Scherrer's, which is about 20 miles further north than we thought it was, and stopped for scoops of ice cream big as the Girl's head before driving the last two hours home.

Found Object Sculpture: I Got Your Problem Telephone

2011-05-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

Actual Google Voice Transcription (punctuation added):

8 and doing down:

yourself.

patients.

It's 7:15.

I got your problem telephone on birds.

(Click here for Previous Found Object Sculpture s.)

Learning to Fly

2011-05-20T14:00:00.019-05:00

Spring at our place brings back the small grey doves, their soft hoots resounding in the canyons as they mate, nest, raise their young, teach them to fly.

Holy Wednesday I came home to find the door between the back of the house and the kitchen closed, and the cats trapped in the bedrooms away from their food bowl. When I opened the door the Girl's cat ran through to the kitchen, jumped onto the window seat, and stared towards the dining room. The Husband walked in about then, and in the harried process of dinner-making I somehow remembered to ask about it.

Well, the baby bird was learning to fly, and it landed on that windowsill over there and it's mom couldn't get it to get off. So I put the cats in the back so they wouldn't scare it. He leaned to look out the kitchen window in the same direction as the cat. Yeah, there it is.

I followed his gaze to see a bird about the size of a potato nestling in the window next to the sash. And through the window, I noticed the can of mineral spirits I'd been meaning to move, and a bunch of leaves off the Swedish Ivies. What a mess, I thought. After a few minutes I wandered into the dining room, not thinking about the bird but about cleaning up the windowsill. As I approached the window, the bird, startled, leapt off the sill and half-flew, half-richocheted from wall to wall to the concrete floor of the canyon.

I was transfixed and horrified. I stood close to the window, leaned out, trying to see where it landed.

The Husband shook his head as I walked back into the kitchen. Really? You couldn't leave well enough alone?

I shrugged. Wasn't really thinking about it--got distracted by the to-do list. The mom's down there. I think it's okay.

I took the Boy to Scouts that evening, and as we walked through the canyon to the car the mother bird fluttered up to a first floor windowsill, watching us warily. I was relieved to see the baby sitting on top of the transformer. I was thankful that it was at least marginally safe.

The fledgling finally figured the whole flying thing out and flew away, of course. That happened long ago.

This past Saturday, there was another baby sitting on the third floor laundry room sill, its mother alternating between standing on the ledge beside it, flying across the canyon and cooing, flying across the parking lot to the adjacent building and calling while the baby sits huddled, rotating its head to follow her.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, said the Husband. The mom was standing on the sill, rubbing the baby's neck, up and down, and the baby's wings were flapping. Some kind of weird reflex.

This one learned faster. That evening it was gone, doubtless exploring the skies with its mother.

The brown tabby still spends much of her time on the windowseat, studying the neighbor-one-floor-up-and-across-the-canyon's window where the grassy, twiggy remains of the nest poke beyond the edge of the limestone sill, even after the wind and storms of the last few weeks. She blinks green eyes but continues watching, knowing they'll come back.

And that next time, she'll catch one.

The Dangers of Folded Fitted Sheets

2011-05-10T15:36:00.000-05:00

Sunday evening I forced my first-born to help fold sheets. Every bed in the house had been changed; there were a stack of them. We worked together as if in some sort of dance, pulling the corners out with our arms extending to our sides, walking forward to meet, back to pull taut again, forward, fold, fold, set on the bed.

I showed him how to fold fitted sheets neatly, and as we finished the second one, I said. See how easy that is? When you're living in your bachelor pad and the love of your life opens the linen closet, she - or he - will see the neat stacks and think, I have to marry this man.

She. He said quietly.

I nodded as we started another twin sheet. Girls, is it? Okay, then. Any one in particular?

He smiled shyly, said nothing.

Anyone I know?

He shrugged, still said nothing.

I shrugged back, but I can't say I'm not wondering. It's not like I don't know every girl in his grade. Is it the redhead on the chess team? the petite chatterbox who is one of his sister's best friends? the tall dreamy blonde who reads all the time like he does?

A few hours later, talking to the Husband. So, yeah, I said, the love of your life opens the linen closet and she - or he - will think, I have to marry this man.

The Husband shrugged. Or, they'll think, Oh, crap, he's a serial killer.

Things Done and Left Undone.

2011-05-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

In which Lisa looks up, realizes it's Thursday again, and takes stock, pondering the meaning of that phrase, of things done and left undone.

It was on my mind this morning as I left the house for the second time, after doing dishes and vacuuming and going by the office to get what I forgot and volunteering at Girls on the Run and running and going to Target & Home Depot to get stuff for the Brownie Camping Trip tomorrow (gasp! already?) and returning the trickle charger I borrowed from JW and being lost in South City because everything in that area between Gravois and Grand and Carondelet Park and the River Des Peres is just fuzzy in my brain and taking a shower and gathering my stuff and actually driving to the office.

I've been crazy busy this week. Not only do I have a few small projects I'm working on, it's the last month of school, which is always intense with kid-related stuff. The Boy has to finish his term paper, the marked-up draft to be returned on Monday. The Brownie camping trip is this weekend, and the Bridging Ceremony/Family Picnic is on the 16th ... we still have to do all the planning for that. The Girls on the Run 5k is next Sunday, and our celebratory banquet on the 17th. Not sure what needs to be done for that. We're planning 5th grade "graduation" and there's stuff to do for that. Why did I sign up to do the slide show, exactly? I don't even think these things are appropriate. Deep sigh.

Late last week I got invited to teach an online course, and on Friday at 3 p.m. I got an email informing me of my enrollment in a training class ... more than a week after it started. I hate being behind on things like this. it offends so many parts of my psyche I can't keep count. So I've spent a lot of time doing 16 days of work in 5 days, including writing 5 essays and making a whole lot of comments on my classmates' work. (This is why I haven't been writing here, or visiting you, oh bloggy friends.) I'm excited about this; I've missed teaching terribly and this asynchronous medium looks like a great way to combine it with my practice and the rest of my life.

Having done all of that, I can go on this camping trip and go to Microfest and maybe go to church, since it's the Flower Festival and have Sunday lunch with my mother and sister and otherwise enjoy the upcoming weekend without thinking about it. And maybe run another practice 5k sometime too.

What you might construe from all that: there's a lot left undone. I didn't pick up all the papers strewn across the living room before I left this morning. I didn't put in a load of laundry from the overflowing basket in the hall. I didn't wipe every countertop in the kitchen. I didn't do a lot of things.

And I'm feeling bad about it, because the things left undone are largely those that affect my family.

But not too bad ...

After all, they could pick up: the sweaters, the shoes, the newspaper I didn't even read, the raisins dropped from the canister onto the kitchen floor. They could vacuum: the dried up grated cheese under the table, the powdered sugar next to the baking center. They could fold the laundry waiting in the dryer, take down the recycling filled overflowing onto the landing and sort their papers stacked every which way on the table in living room.

They could, at least those who have been home could. The Husband has been traveling, so he's exempt.

No, I'm not feeling too bad at all.

For the Record

2011-04-28T14:52:00.000-05:00

For the Record, I care not one whit about the Royal Wedding tomorrow.

For the Record, after what seems weeks and weeks of rain and greyness I think today is far too beautiful to spend inside working on a Fifth Grade Term Paper. It's only three freaking pages and we're starting Hour #6 of staring into the computer this afternoon. But he has to finish the draft that's due Monday and turn it in tomorrow if he wants to go to Camporee with his Boy Scout troop this weekend. Sigh.

For the Record, people who email me docx and xlsx files for legally binding signatures are really, really naive. Or stupid. Or both. The liability concerns inherent in my chosen profession probably makes me feel this way. Perhaps this very serious guide issued by the major liability insurer would help explain that:

For the Record, Twitter is the New Ham Radio for following tornadoes and such. This Spring, with the repeat waves of severe weather reminding me of the spring of '78 when I was the Girl's age and every weekend brought another round of sequential tornado warnings for Garland County, Saline County, Pulaski County. We lived near tornado alley, with a mobile home park at each end of our street of modest tract houses. Even then, I had seen the reports on the news enough to know that trailers act as tornado magnets, and when the watches showed up on the screen I cleared the laundry from the hall closet and moved in with my book and my red blanket until Dad decided that was ridiculous and taught me to storm spot. These days, I walk through the house with my iPad in hand like Dad used to do with his 2m walkie talkie; my west-facing bay takes the place of the driveway across the street the men used to stand on, watching the southwest sky.

For the Record, the MAP ended last week and really, teachers, it's time to slack on the homework. Monday the Girl came home almost in tears. I have three pages of math problems to do and a book report due Friday and I can't bring the book home.

Oh really? Let's see if we can get it from the library. We went up to the Julia Davis branch Tuesday afternoon and picked up the book. The book report, according to her teacher, is to be seven sentences, written in class today. The Girl is a slow reader; so far as I know she's on Chapter 8 of the book.

But back on Monday, after determining where we could pick up the book, I looked over the math. Grab a snack and get as far as you can on this page in one sitting, then we'll talk about what we do next. Thirty minutes later, I reviewed at her progress. Math is not her strong suit, but every problem is correct. Okay, good enough. Do the word problems and I'll write Ms. F a note about the rest of it.

She had 30 more problems Tuesday night. Argh.

For the Record, it's the last week of April and I'm singing Alice Cooper, full voice. I'm done with Winter cold and snow, with Spring storms, with school. Summer, bring it on.

Next Problem ...

2011-04-25T12:30:00.000-05:00

Walking to the car after Girls on the Run practice a week or so ago, I half muttered, half said to myself, as I often do, Next Problem ...

Noelle, walking behind me, said, That's not a very positive way to view things.

It's not for most people. For me ... well, I don't really view the word Problem in its typical American meaning. Design school changed that for me: it went from a negative word to one connotating opportunity.

Except that there are a whole class of problems called wicked problems. They are ill-defined, with conflicting parameters, and no way to wrap your brain around the issues and come up with a creative solution that solves all of them. And that describes the state of Life, where most of the time the next problem is essentially a repeat or extension of the previous one, where there is no clarity or solution, just the repetitive deja-vu-all-over-again thing, day after day after weary damn day..

This Monday, that's a problem of the negative sort.

Four Things: What He Forgot

2011-04-18T09:50:00.001-05:00

The Boy went on his first camping trip with the new Boy Scout troop this weekend. I tried not to nag--I'm a little disappointed in my performance on that and all of my Lenten resolutions, but that's a whole 'nother story--so at 8:30 Saturday morning, half an hour before he was supposed to be standing on the parking lot of the neighborhood Catholic church, his clothes were still spread across the living room floor.

Are you going, or not? I asked. The sky was grey and raining. Weather.com listed the temperature as 43 degrees.

He looked up from the computer screen at the clock: oh yeah. and suddenly flew into motion, pulling on green pants, carefully tucking in his tan uniform shirt. He stuffed clothes and miscellaneous supplies into my old grey Eastpack: Boy Scout book, no pen or paper; antihistamines but no toothbrush; two sweatshirts, thermal underwear, but no clean boxer briefs; bandana, first aid kit, no flashlight. He got his pocketnife out of the living room secretary and put it in a buttoned pocket. Oh, I'll need extra socks. he said, and went back to his room to get some.

Food for this trip was Every Man for Himself. The Boy pulled a package of hot dogs, some wraps, and a bag of grated mozzarella cheese out of the fridge and put them into a small cooler with four Granny Smith apples. Want some cereal? I asked, holding up the Gladware bowl his sister has been carrying to Girls on the Run Thursday mornings. He took it, put it in the bag. Unconvinced he had enough, I emptied his box of raisins into a ziploc and put it in.

At the church, the seven boys split between three cars. We'll call when we're on the way back, said the Scoutmaster. The Boy said, Bye Mom without looking back as he climbed into a navy blue Suburban

When I got back I found three socks on the floor, and shook my head. I knew he had forgotten many things.

Sunday afternoon he was cheerful but quiet. Obviously tired. So, how was it?

Good. I had a tent to myself--one of the little ones, so I'm glad even though I had to wait for someone else to be done packing their tent before we could start with mine. We played Capture the Flag and King of the Mountain and built a bridge and got lost in the forest and it was good.

Did you have enough food?

Yeah, one apple left, and a little cereal. Although I kind of cheated--Mr. W brought Poptarts--Target Brand Poptarts--for everyone this morning, and I had a couple of those. They're good heated over the fire. Needed to bring some bbq sauce for my wraps.

What will you not forget next time?

A flashlight. He said quickly, and paused, obviously mentally taking stock. I only had one clean sock--kind of a problem with these. He shook a hiking boot clad foot. A water bottle. I borrowed one of Mr. W's but he took it back a little earlier this morning than I would have liked. Maybe I should pack all the essentials like that in a small bag that I can just throw in with my clothes next time.

Maybe you should.

Maybe you actually learned from your mistakes ... I suppose the proof of that will be in a couple of weeks when you pack for Camporee.

Maybe I should let you make more of them.

In this Moment ...

2011-04-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

This week's theme seems to be Inspired By ... and today's model is Bridgett.

In this moment, I'm still breathing hard from my morning run.

In this moment, I'm waiting for the last three slices of Bavarian Smoke Haus bacon to fry so I can eat them standing here in the kitchen with a small slice of leftover cornbread and get rid of the post-run shakes.

In this moment, I'm wondering what else will break. This morning I sat down on one of our Barcelona Chairs to do a quick bill pay transaction and the front stretcher snapped. Somehow I managed to lift myself off before any of the straps or the seat tore, and the iPad stayed firmly in my hand instead of hitting the floor. Turns out that front piece isn't monolithic--it's a piece of chrome fastened by concealed screws to the legs pieces. The screws failed. God knows how old they are--we bought the chairs a decade ago from an architecture firm that fell victim to the 2001 recession.

In this moment, I'm tired of the phrase, At least we can fix it. Yes, we can fix the chairs. Yes, the wine refrigerator is fixed. The spray arms for the dishwasher are soaking in a five gallon bucket of vinegar water. It is absolutely unbelievable how much gunk was in them. Hopefully that fixes that. I don't want to talk about cars. Ugh. And it's not like either the Husband or I is frickin' Bob the Builder.

In this moment, I'm a little worried about the Girl's cat. She has an inflamed nipple, which the internet says could be just a skin thing (put cortisone on it), an infection of some sort (go to the vet and get antibiotics), or something much, much worse (cry). Tonight we'll start with the cortisone and see where that gets us.

In this moment, I'm thinking a shower and a bike ride to the office are the order of business. But I'm enjoying the Arabic music playing on the stereo (some playlist he put together this morning before I got up) so I will sit here for another moment and finish my Ozark Brewery pint glass full of iced tea. And Breathe. Breathe.

My Favorite Things ...

2011-04-11T11:29:00.001-05:00

Invariably, the phrase brings to mind the Julie Andrews classic, blaring from Grandma Cora's TV set at some holiday gathering, year after year through the 1970s. Easter was The Wizard of Oz, I think. What holiday was The Sound of Music? I don't remember.

And that, in turn, reminds my of my former orthodontist, who used say every time the Shrimp & I entered his office, Oh look it's the A-- Sisters and chuckle. Sigh. Definitely not one of my favorite things as a teen.

My favorite things ebb and flow with the days, the rhythm of the weeks and months and years. Today's top ~~five~~ ~~six~~ seven ....

My house. Sometimes I hate my house. The constant struggle to keep up with the dust and dirt and crap that four people drag in, day in, day out, wears on me. There is always something else to fix--the painting that fell off the wall last week, the brass kick plates to be installed, the stupid too-rapidly aging appliances ... Saturday I thought the washing machine had died with a clatter and I went and fetched the Husband practically in tears. I can't wash clothes by hand, after all, and all those loads every day, every weekend, to take downstairs to the community laundry in the basement ... it would eat my entire life. He started the drain cycle again, stood and watched as it spun and spun and finally stopped, quietly . I think it's okay. But then I walk into the living room and see the pink-flowering cherries and the dogwoods contrasting against the vivid chartreuse pollen and the kelly green grass in the park and the crisp white of our window trim ... the frustration dissipates. I'm in love again.

Having my music back. The Husband has been working to get the device that syncs, controls, and catalogs the contents of our three 400-cd changers back on line. Suddenly, if I want to listen to the Indigo Girls or Styx or Pink Floyd or Gorecki's Symphony #3 in full stereo on the speakers in the living room, I can without spending hours and hours searching for the disc in question. He's not done yet but I can actually do that. It makes the space they consume worth it.

My neighborhood. I love, love, love, living and working here--Nicki's blog gives a taste but really it's about the everyday, about walking and biking to work and the grocery, the pharmacy, and the library, about crossing the street to run and bike and play in the park. Sometimes I get fed up with the neighbors, City politics, the lack of kids playing freely in the streets and alleys (a remembrance of a mostly dead world, as I reminded my neighbor A about five years ago) --but really the only other place I can see myself is in the middle of a bunch of acreage in the Ozarks somewhere I can't see anyone else. I envision myself being one of those nightmare neighbors in the suburbs, with a mostly bedraggled yard and too many cars and other half-done projects and gutters needing cleaning and the paint always chipping and needing redone. I don't think I fit in the in-between.

Getting back outside. Yesterday was a hot April day here in St. Louis - almost 90 degrees and muggy. I went into the park for a run early evening, and it was glorious despite dripping with sweat and the growing irritation of my sinuses and eyes because of the pollen. But I could breathe despite it all, unlike the 3/4 mile run in 30 degrees two weeks ago that left me coughing for four hours. I'm planning two camping trips already - one with my Brownie troop (let's not talk about the paperwork), another over Memorial Day weekend with Rless and his family (which should be an adventure of a completely different kind.) and already pestering the Husband about the summer, about going back to the Buffalo, to the Land between the Lakes, maybe on some greater adventure.

The times when the children actually get along. Few and far between, and perhaps lovelier for that preciousness. Saturday morning I came up front and they were playing a computer game and singing together. This morning they played Two-Square waiting for the bus. I like it when they glance at each other with that eye-rolling, Parents. OMG , can you believe them? look. My absolute favorite is when I find them curled up in a bed or on the sofa reading together. So, so sweet.

The moment when the children get on the bus and it drives away. I almost feel bad for thinking that, much less typing it, but it is so, so true. Suddenly, as I wave goodbye, I can take a deep breath and take stock of my day. Yes, there are always chores and to-do items that aren't necessarily mine to accomplish (for example, picking up the Husband's suits at the dry cleaners so he has something to wear on his trip this week tops today's list), but in that instant the momentum shifts, and for a few hours it's mine to determine when and how. I choose the deadlines. I choose the order of operations. This is especially lovely on Monday, when routine returns after the chaos of the weekend.

The Husband. He's not really a thing, although sometimes he is so still I'm not altogether sure. He's not perfect. Nobody is. But I'm thankful for his calmness, his patience, his constancy. He's my rock. And he makes a damn fine cup of coffee.

I'm beginning to resemble that Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition: everything I type brings to mind another thing. But I need to stop, and do something real. Like go get the dry cleaning. Like go to work instead of just answering emails and phone calls from here.

(Inspired by this post from a Syracuse priest, found on the Facebook feed of the newly appointed Dean of Christ Church Cathedral downtown.)

What I Did Over Spring Break

2011-04-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks ago now, so I guess I can admit I was out of town without fears of compromising security. Except there's more to show than to say about a trip to Little Rock. We left in the snow, and drove into perfect sneezy springtime. We visited with Granny and with friends. We climbed a mountain, went horseback riding, planted gardenia bushes, and enjoyed two bonfires in as many days. The kids ran in the woods with the dogs, the goats, and other kids.

It was a good break that seems too far away now.

Yes, I am Proud of You.

2011-04-04T15:17:00.067-05:00

The Girl walked into our room the other day without knocking, soaking wet from head to toe, wrapped in her foam green monogrammed towel. We looked up from our reading--the Husband from his newspaper, me from the first Flipboard scan of the day on Aphrodite the iPad.

Look. I took a shower. she flipped her short-bobbed hair, sending a spray of water droplets flying through the air to land in neat circles on the hardwood floor. Aren't you proud of me for growing up?

The Husband and I glanced at each other, puzzled. This is the child who, like her namesake, dislikes her head being wet. She usually seems quite satisfied to be in the youngest child role. We murmured something vaguely approving, wondering if we'd growled, GROW UP!! in an irritable recent moment. Seemingly disappointed, she wandered out of the room and down the hall to get dressed.

I tried to tell her that I am proud of her, not because she is growing up--that none of us can do anything about--but how she is growing up. She wasn't in the mood to listen; she was tired and wanted me to read King of the Wind to her. Hard to say no to that. So I'll say it here instead.

I am proud that she is kind and thoughtful, that she thinks nothing of using her own money to buy something at the book fair for someone who hasn't been able to get anything, that she will give others a meal when there aren't enough to go around because she doesn't know if they have food at home. I'm pleased that when her brother calls her names, she doesn't respond in kind. I wish she wouldn't scream, Stop it! or Be quiet! in his direction (which is usually my direction, too) at the top of her lungs, but I try to take my blessings where I get them.

I am proud that she has performed so well academically over the last two years, despite essentially skipping a grade in the move to the new school and getting virtually no support--not even from us, because we've been distracted by her brother--in making that transition. Best of all, she seems to be finally enjoying novels, something that has worried me for years since the Boy has been reading them voraciously since first grade. She doesn't read like him, or her daddy, or me, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am proud that she is taking more responsibility for her things, her work, herself. Taking a shower is the very least of it. She does her homework on the bus or in the car on the way home. She volunteers for chores on days they aren't hers to do, at least as often as she whines about doing them. The biggest relief to me is that she is brushing her hair herself instead of refusing then crying when I do it in the last minute of the last moment before running out the door to the bus in the morning. That is huge, huge beyonds words.

So, Girl, I am proud. I could never have dreamed when I first held you in my arms nine and a quarter years ago, little one, how very proud I would be.

Doing Battle with the Dishwasher

2011-03-27T19:44:00.001-05:00

I wanted to like the new phosphate free dishwashing detergents.

Really, I did.

I tried them back when they were proudly advertising Phosphate-Free! as an environmental benefit, because I like doing the right thing, and because I hate rock snot and algae between my toes as I wade my beloved Ozark streams. The dishes didn't get clean, so I switched back. No problem. Until they made the wholesale shift.

I tried three or four different brands. The dishes just don't get clean.

I tried making my own, but the dishes didn't get clean.

For the last month or so, I've been hand washing the dishes and using the machine as an autoclave ... all to no avail.

The dishes still don't get clean.

This morning, I walked into the kitchen after the Boy put away the dishes to find half the load back in the already overflowing sink. I turned, looked at the Husband, who shrugged. They aren't clean. Picking up the stainless steel bowls, I felt the grit and slime on them. Not clean. Not by the vaguest possible description.
I stared in frustration at the dishwasher, a three-year-old top-of-the-line Kenmore. We barely had to rinse the dishes, much less go through all this.

There's nothing wrong with the machine, said the Husband from behind me. It just needs the right detergent.

Well, whatever, but right now it's a waste of my bloody time.

So I cleared the sink and filled it with hot foamy water, and started hand washing and rinsing the dishes. The Girl hand dried the glasses with a clean black towel and slotted tupperwares and pots and silverware into the empty dishwasher, using it as a drying rack. Ninety minutes later, after lunch was eaten, the table cleared, and the clean dishes put away, the Boy and I started Round Two.

As I salted and rinsed the cast iron skillets, the last two things left on the counter, the Boy sighed.

Takes a while, doesn't it? I commiserated.

No, that's not it. He shook his head. It's just kind of ... satisfying. We came in here a while ago and there were dirty dishes everywhere, and now they're all clean and put away, out of sight. I feel like we accomplished something.

I looked around and nodded. That's actually one of the things I like about doing the dishes. The sense of Done. lasts a little longer, generally, than anything else, even laundry. After all, you're making more clothes dirty by wearing them as you wash others.

But doing all the dishes by hand isn't practical. The Husband cooks and bakes and bakes and cooks all weekend. A three dishwasher load (plus cast iron and other stuff that doesn't go in the machine) day is typical. Five is not abnormal, and I'm always still catching up on Monday. Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas? I count on 10 loads. By hand, I'd never get those breathers I use to clean the rest of the house, set tables, and do all that other hostess-y stuff.

On my way home from dropping the Husband at the airport, I stopped at Home Depot and bought some Trisodium Phosphate. It's sitting on the countertop, labelled neatly: 1/2 tsp per load, ready for duty tomorrow morning. Living here in Missouri, where more than half the power used is generated from coal, doing it the other way--by hand, washing and rewashing, and all the other shenanigans--seems the worse environmental choice.

Hopefully it will work.

And if it benefits the human dishwasher as well, in saved time and scalded skin? All the better.

Winter ... Win. Spring ... Fail.

2011-03-26T12:25:00.000-05:00

INSTALLING SPRING...

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33% DONE. Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. thanks to Lori P. for the graphic

It's Saturday, March 25, the last day of the week after Spring Break.

I'm sitting on the window seat in the kitchen scanning email on my iPad. The Husband looks up from the netbook on the bar counter. Somebody needs to update her blog.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I need to update the blog. I need to finish gathering our tax crap. I need to clean, really clean the kitchen. I need to take a shovel to the kids' rooms and the play room. I need to do a lot of things, most of which I feel deeply ambivalent about.

It's supposed to snow again today, another 2-5 inches. It's not so much that it's unexpected; as noted in previous years, The Annual Snow Tire and Frozen Daffadil Festival is part of life in this part of the world. But it's been a snowy-er than average winter, so much so that even the kids are over it, and it's interfering with spring activities. The Boy's Boy Scout camping trip cancelled, the Scoutmaster writing: Camping should be fun, and frankly, wet and cold is the worst(and most dangerous) weather to camp in. It's harder to find dry wood to keep a big fire going, it's harder to keep people dry and warm, and cold wet scouts are the most miserable people I have ever been around. The Girl and I are supposed to go later and help with a water station for a 5k at Wash U. I was thinking of doing the 1 mile Fun Run. I don't know. Probably still will. Better to be running in the snow than standing around handing out water? Probably.

What I'd rather do: curl up on the sofa with my Girl, my man, and my coffee, and watch the DVRed Dave Matthews appearance on Austin City Limits. You know, live like it's winter, while we can.

Giving Up

2011-03-08T22:38:00.001-06:00

Dinner hit the table a little after 8. The Husband, frazzled from cooking on an evening when everything was twice as difficult as usual--the chicken that wouldn't thaw, the flour tortillas that weren't there because they got eaten, etc.--sat heavily in his chair. After a few minutes punctuated only by requests for food, we reviewed the day, and eventually the table discussion wound around to Mardi Gras, and to Lent.

What's everybody giving up? asked the Boy.

Or trying to improve? I reminded.

Maybe I'll help Dad cook every night. mused the Girl.

Maybe you should try to stop sucking that thumb. he replied.

The Boy was mostly quiet, as was I. I've been pondering trying to implement some Primal diet strategies into my life, and to keep up the process of Lectio Divina we worked on during the class at church that just wound up.

The banter around the table shifted in my mental absence. Maybe you should give up nagging. someone said I looked up, not catching who said it, but realizing that it was directed at me.

Me? I don't nag. Do I?

I do ask people to do things repeatedly: Pick up your stuff. Do your homework. Put away the dishes. Are you finished with your homework? Hello, the dishes are not back here. Pick up your stuff. Put on your shoes. Have you finished your homework? Why are your shoes not on!?

Okay, fine. I nag.

I hate it.

I mean, really hate it.

But it's a normal daily part of life because that's how things get done. That's how I keep the Boy focused long enough to do his homework, keep people on track to get out the door on time, and keep from having to do quite so much myself. And I hate it, every moment of every day, and I hate myself for being one of those Moms. One of the lazy, yelling bad ones. One of the Old Nags.

So, I said. Supposing I give up asking everyone to do things, and you don't. Who does that hurt?

The kids giggled and said in unison, You.

Yeah, I thought, that was kinda my point.

Maybe I should give that up, too.

The Winner Takes It All

2011-03-02T12:20:00.044-06:00

I was the Boy's age in 1980, and I could sing every word of this song.

It was really rather bitter. I rarely won much of anything besides short distance skating races and contests with other TAG (Talented and Gifted) friends about grades or who could calculate some complicated multiplication problem correctly the fastest. Otherwise ... my basketball team tended to lose abysmally, and the prettiness/popularity contest, quickly becoming the most important one ... well, yeah. Never mind. I've talked about that before.

Monday morning I found myself doing the beginning of the week paperwork at Crestwood Court, where the Gifted Resource Council was holding the Spring Equations Tournament. I rode the bus with Mr. C and the fifth graders, helped get the tables set up, and after the parents were summarily dismissed from the room, sat in Starbucks drinking coffee while I worked. At the appointed hour, I returned with my salad bar box from the Schnucks across the street to eat lunch with the kids and watch the Awards Ceremony.

Sitting between Bethie and the Boy, I listened as the Director said over and over again in announcing the winners, In no particular order ...

Bethie glared, muttered at me. That's baloney. You win or you don't. Why don't they just say it?

I shrugged. It's the symbol of our times, for every kid get scholastic recognition, no matter how bogus; for every kid in class to be invited to birthday parties; for every kid in the basketball league to get a trophy, for the best block of wood at the Pinewood Derby to win its own ribbon. It's all smoke and mirrors, a thin attempt to veil the rejection and failure that are a natural part of every human life.

And by this age--third through eighth grade--the kids know it too.

Ten on Tuesday: Things I love about March

2011-03-01T13:10:00.000-06:00

February torpor has sucked my brain dry. Must. Write. Have been writing, actually, but can't seem to bring anything to a close. But this, this is easy.

Ten Things I love about March ... in no particular order.

Coming out of hibernation. And this winter, it has been more the case than usual. I have wanted mostly to lie languid in my navy-ceilinged interior room, cocooned between my striped flannel sheets, warm and asleep. I long for the burst of energy based in light and warmth, not anxiety and caffeine.
Daffodils. We're headed to Central Arkansas for Spring Break, to visit friends and family, and I hope to take the kids to Wye Mountain. The Boy won't get much out of it, probably--I foresee a lot of sighing and grumbling on his part. But I remember going when I was about the Girl's age, in my yellow eyelet Easter dress that Mom sewed, matching ones for the Shrimp and me, and they seemed to be an ocean of bobbing heads as far as the eye could see. The benefit of a lower eye position, perhaps, but vivid and magical in memory even now.
The End of Chess Season. That seems strange, maybe, but by the end of the State Scholastic Tournament at 8:30 p.m. on the last Saturday of February, I have had enough, every single year, and this year more than ever. The last practice is next week, and the half-day tourney we host at school is in early April. Then we're done till September. Thank God. It's time to go outside already.
Construction. Usually in March the clients wake up and realize that it's Spring and time to build, so business gets a little more busy-ness.
The return of the light. This year, the "Spring Forward" is on March 13. Can't come soon enough. Oddly, it's reminding me of this song by Concrete Blonde, which is actually just the opposite. Whatever. It's time to go outside already.
The Wardrobe Flip. I am tired of my winter clothes, and the children's winter clothes, and to a lesser extent, the Husband's winter clothes. I am tired of picking up coats and jackets and sweatshirts and boots and gloves and scarves and and and all that other crap that we wear to stay warm. I want to see my spring and summer clothes again, on my body instead of in the closet.
Opening the windows. Of the house, of the cars, let the wind run through our hair. Until the oak pollen paints everything with its yellow green dust, anyway.
My bicycle. I'm too much of a wimp about cold to ride all winter. Did I mention it's time to go outside already?
Watching the Park put on its summer clothes.
Lent. Time to set new habits that take six weeks to lock in place, or to break old ones that are becoming a bit frightening. Time to Refocus, to Contemplate.