mamacate

Career Choices

Today's kindergarten parent of the week: a firefighter.

"Mama, you and mamarhys should get more instresting jobs.  Because being a college worker isn't really that cool.  Like Amber's dad?  He's a firefighter."

"Henry, I know I'm not a firefighter, but I can show your class how to spin wool.  And we can show them how you know how to spin on a wheel."

"Hmm.  Well, actually, I think I'm going to have Ellie come.  She's pretty instresting."

I can definitely attest to the fact that being a college worker isn't really that cool.  Trust me.  I'd feel bad about getting dropped, but I think Ellie's pretty instresting too.  Fly on the wall during that circle time, that's what I'd like to be.

I think Typepad expired my cookie

It's been a while.  Sorry about that.  Typepad even forgot me.

I learned something new: if you have a kid in special ed, September is not your favorite month.  It was a mofo.  It's not over yet, despite it being October, but I'm hopeful.  Today was a good day, and we're in one day at a time mode.  Not going to blog details, just saying I'm not just quiet because I'm busy.  Sigh.

Panic, stress, and hysteria do sometimes result in knitting, and if I can avoid tempting the knitting goddess here (maybe she can consult with the IEP goddess and they can come to an agreement that my life has sucked enough already recently), I might have something special to wear to Rhinebeck.  Shh.

Which is to say that yes I'm going to Rhinebeck.  (Dammit.)

Back to it.  It might come down to the wire.

Having a Great Time

We've taken so many pictures, I had to download them from the camera, so here I am, late at night, on the computer.  I checked my work email and now I can't sleep, and there's nothing to be gained by replying to crises I can do nothing about, so it's pictures instead.

I think I forgot to mention that some friends were joining us at Disney.

Sara and Hannah!  Swear to god, this was total kismet, and not even engineered kismet.  We planned our trip, then Sara's student won an award...at a conference...planned to be at a Disney World resort...while we were here!  So of course bringing Hannah along made sense (Toby had a prior engagement) and the rest is history.  Hannah spent the day with us on Wednesday while Sara did work stuff, then we spent today playing at the water park (sorry no pix except from Disney, plus the innernet doesn't really need to see me in a bathing suit).  They went home this afternoon.  It was an awesome day, really.

We started off with an early breakfast at Sara's hotel, which just happened to be a character breakfast.

We got to hang out with Goofy...

Minnie...

And Dale (he's tickling them).

Eleanor made her own rendering of the characters on the paper tablecloth:

Then Sara went off to talk about statistics, and we wisked Hannah off to the Magic Kingdom.

We paused after riding Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain RR (okay, to be totally honest Eleanor and I just rode Big Thunder Mountain twice, because we were both chicken both declined to ride Splash Mountain).  Anyway, Henry apparently had his own box right outside the roller coaster.

We took a boat across the lake for lunch at a very fun restaurant at a resort we couldn't possibly afford, then went back to the MK for the parade and a few more rides.  There were a few bumps in the road late in the day (that place is HARD to disengage from--every time you turn a corner, there's another event or ride or fun thing to do), but all in all it was a great day.

Yes, we're pirates.  What's it to ye, buckaroo?

PS: Animal Kingdom tomorrow...

Except Not So Much With the New Preschool

Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful good vibes about preschool.  I don't think I've replied to a single comment because, unfortunately, all the good vibes in the world did not help, and I've been a little busy with all the being called to take children home and Serious Conversations and such.  The first day did NOT go well.  Really not.  Really.  Not.

I need to decide how much of this I can blog.  Mom, don't freak out, we're dealing with it.  I'm in that place right now where you want to spill your entire guts to the entire internets, and then you regret it and they don't respect you in the morning and its there on bloglines and the wayback machine and there's no unsaying.  We're just in a kind of intense place and it's one of those places where it could turn out to be something that we deal with as a major feature of the rest of our lives, or it could be something where you look back 10 years from now and say "damn, four-and-a-half was a bitch, huh?  We sure were stupid for changing schools, changing part-time at-home mommy/primary caregiver, and tearing down our house at the same time, huh?"

I honestly don't know which it's going to be, and that's not for lack of thinking about it.  I had some bad moments last week, but I'm a bit calmer now, and I figure we'll work it out one way or the other.  Whatever that means.  Forgive me for not being more specific.  It's not too terrible, but it's terrible enough that we're seeking help.  We had actually already started seeking help, but now we're on a different schedule.  I suppose that'll give you a sense.

This whole optimistic-positivity thing isn't easy for me, as I say through gritted teeth: "GLASS. HALF. ...FULL!"  But seriously, we have everything we need to navigate this whole thing, and in the end, well, I think we'll be okay.  But any good vibes you got, well, keep 'em coming.  I'll try to keep sending up smoke signals the knit signal (thanks Wendy), and I'm hoping things will look brighter soon.  Plus there's a fireplace (unattached) in our living room, and that's just a sign of good times to come.

Roller Coasters

I'm exhausted, and tomorrow is the kids' first day at their new preschool and we're all kind of keyed up.  Four has brought some worries for us, though it's likely just the combination of changing schools and, you know, knocking down our house at the same time.  Oops.  Please send good, calm, happy adjustment to the new school vibes Henry's way--Ellie's too, but mostly Henry's--tomorrow.  I don't always blog about this kind of stuff, but I'm worried.

It didn't help that I went to the parent meeting tonight and it was so...Noho.  It was me and a room full of a bunch of other upper-middle-class liberal mostly white pretty much intellectual types and though I completely cop to being exactly that girl (lesbian variety), something about it just was so...ugh.  The upside is that this is a pretty good piece of information about our likelihood of electing private school next year, which is to say that I'm looking forward to public school saving the tuition money.  I don't mean to talk trash about the people there--they all seemed totally nice and friendly and smart and sensible and not overly anything except I felt like I was stewing in my own juice, and like the kids would be too.  Yet this school has small classes and experienced and well-supported teachers and....well, there you have it.  And thus we end our review of inequities in US education.  Ahem.  Also, duh.  Anyway.

We went to the county fair in the rain on Sunday and it was pretty fun.  We got very wet but warm pierogies helped with that.  Also fried dough.  Um, and cotton candy.  The festival of carbohydrates!  The kids LOVED the mini roller coaster.  And Rhys, who lives in fear of roller coasters, went on it too.  I think it was just about her speed.

The house appears to actually be happening.  I continue to listen for shoes dropping, because I think we might be violating some law of physics if a construction project ends early.  I suppose the fact that I've been in my office at work for two weeks and they just brought my files and finished painting as of today, and there's still regular construction going on and one bathroom for the entire building, perhaps that is the universe's expression of balance.  But here's a somewhat recent picture of the outside.  This was last week.  The rough framing is now done.

They found a built-in bookcase blocking an old doorway...right where we're going to put a built-in bookcase.  Unfortunately, since it's 2 inches deep and made of paneling (woo!), we won't be keeping it, but it's a funny little relic of the many renovations this house has seen.  There is a little graffiti from the last renovation--it reads "Les + Jill 1987."  Since everyone else on our street has lived here since before the flood, we happen to know that Les is now minus Jill, and I'm not sure whether Jill wants to talk about it, though we could tell her since her mom and dad live across the street. 

I'm thinking that a time capsule in there would be pretty cool.  Advice on time capsule items (must fit in 2 inch cabinet space) welcome.

There is knitting, but it's not terribly interesting.  Eliz spent but one day in time out, and then was sprung and her neckline finally corrected, well, correctly (as opposed to the four times I corrected it incorrectly, yah).  She has the beginnings of a front.  It's a nice sweater.  I'm having dangerous thoughts about Beadwork.  There will need to be some Solstice knitting, and I do hope to spin again someday, and of course there's Rhinebeck so I'm trying to be good.  It's not easy.

That's it.  No knitting photos.  This was supposed to be a drive-by post, but well, I do go on.  G'night.  And extra thanks for good thoughts for school tomorrow.

Pictures! I promised Pictures!

I found the USB cable.  It hadn't strayed far.  There isn't really far to stray when you're four people, a dog, and a cat living in 400 square feet or so.

I've provided handy headers for those who may become bored with endless construction talk.  I can't imagine how, except for the part about how I would be completely bored if it wasn't my house.  Like that.  Anyway.

CONSTRUCTION PICTURES, AND MORE THAN ANYONE COULD POSSIBLY CARE ABOUT IN TERMS OF RENOVATION DETAILS!

No bitching and moaning about my 400 square feet, because look at the progress!

That pink stuff is the fancy-pants stuff that is supposed to keep the water totally and completely away from our basement.  I'll believe it when I see it, but since we were digging the entire house up, it made sense to go all out.  I suppose.

That thar's a foundation drain, to divert the water away from the foundation in the first place, creating a marvelously redundant, belt-and-suspendersish basement drying system.  Plus there are french drains inside the existing basement that we installed when we first moved in.  And it's not even like we have standing water, it's just damp.  We hate damp.  We fight mold.  Seepage, begone!  Obsessive?  Moi? Nous? 

But really, it's all a part of the rationale for the reno: we could move to another house for about as much money as this is costing, but that house would have a bunch of problems that we'd have to, or want to fix.  We know the problems in this house--man do we know them--and the idea here is to fix them without creating too many new ones.  It's a theory.  We're going with it. 

Anyway, somehow we managed to not get a picture of the guys with the giant (GIANT!) chainsaws that spit water cutting into our concrete-block house.  I'm not sure how we missed photographing that, but it was the best, and freakiest part.

This will give you some idea of what they wrought, though.  I mean, not really, but see those lines coming down from the former windows?  Those are where the chainsaws cut into the concrete blocks.  It's crazy.  That's what color this house was 3 or 4 renovations ago, well before our time.  The honey mustard ranch.  The times they are a-changing here in Hamp.  I will miss that big wall of concrete that kept the house cool in summer.  Ah well, we're doing some serious insulating, our windows will finally be tight...hope for the best.

Here's a pile of what they pulled out from those cuts in the wall.

This experience has seriously produced some trash.  Here is a view of the big-ass dumpster that we completely filled with crap. 

Not including the concrete, by the  way, which was hauled separately as hazardous material.  Reduce, reuse, recyle...ahem.  We are giving the few-year-old replacement windows (there was wind coming through the old ones; desperate measures, sunk costs, sigh) to a recycling gig.  But jaysus.  The dumpster was hauled away earlier today and returned, empty.  I suppose when they take off half the roof *gulp* they'll need it.

My yard no longer grows grass weeds moss like it used to.  The excavators saw to that.  Now it grows lumber, apparently.

But look, we're no longer in pure destruction demolition mode.  Progress!

LOOK HERE FOR KNITTING!

Oh, right.  Also, there is progress on Elizabeth.  New yarn, new start, and some actual fabric.  The yarn may make it difficult to pay the mortgage on that pile of rubble house pictured up there, but oh but it is soft and oh but it is smooth and it's merino plus silk and they just had to throw some cashmere in there (but not enough to pill) and I'm just going to have to learn to live with it.  The Webs discount didn't hurt either.

Here's what it looks like now.

I know: red blob.  But it's moving along and I like it (I really like it!) so it might become a sweater at some point in the future.  Good, good, good.  I'll probably do some obsessing about short row construction at some point, but for now, all this picture taking and USB cable finding and blog posting is taking up my sleeping knitting time.  I now have some Claudia-colored DK Zephyr that needs a purpose in life.  And I may have fallen down and bought some red DK Zephyr in a coop when someone made me do it offered a good price.  I couldn't say.  Anyway, I'll have my eye out for nice DK projects when this is done, because that yarn is going to be knitted, no way around it.  The love is too deep and true to go unrequited.

LOOK HERE FOR CUTE CHILDREN!

There's been a bit of family creativity here despite it all.  We're working on decorating the Wall Where Once There Was A Living Room.

And here's Eleanor's reaction to our project of coloring with crayons and markers on the walls that will be demolished.

We should all remember to do that kind of a happy dance at least a few times a week, huh?

'Night!

Weekend Idyll

I don't have any pictures, but I hope someone else will post some (or send some to me).  My camera is in Wyoming with my family.

This has been a lovely weekend.  A fiber festival.  A keg party (no, really) attended by a delightful collection of knitters and spinners and bloggers and friends (coined, by blogless Marcy, as a blegger, thank you Marcy).  My house was full to the brim with friends and fiber and good conversation and good beer and good times.  There were wheels and wheels and a pile of fleeces by the side of the door.

I'm recovering now, though no recovery is really necessary, because for me, at least, the weekend was an utter joy.  I feel bad about my house sometimes, but you know, it's at its best when filled to the rafters with wool and good people, and it makes me glad for all that I have.  And truth be told, the weekend was a recovery of sorts itself.  I miss my family, but these few days of unscheduled relaxation, this is the restoration I've been needing.  I'll be a little bit more put-back-together when I see them next.  And that can only be good for everyone.

This was my second spin-a-versary, as we've apparently been taking to calling it.  Sheila Bosworth taught me to spindle at Cummington two years ago, after a few unsuccessful tries on a wheel the previous winter.  Blogging started shortly thereafter, a by-product of my trolling of the net to learn about spinning and deepen my fiber knowledge.  I confess to being a pinch obsessed with all this; I'm like that sometimes, but I've also been recovering from infant twin mommyhood, from infertility, from a couple of complicated journeys my life has taken me on, and which have brought me to this rather bright and sunny and wonderful place and asked me where I want to go next.  There's a very conventional life out there that I could choose, and I'm certainly conventional enough in many ways.  But the wool and the fibery life is an answer, for me, for the moment, to the question "what else?" 

Moms of infants can lose themselves, and honestly, I encourage surrender to the musty, wonderful world of soft downy baby hair and milk and diapers and life in two-minute increments.  I think moms of multiples lose themselves even further than most, and while I don't regret a minute of it, I am nothing like the person I was before.  Today I'm starting from here, from this place of who I am now and all the history that's behind and all the disparate parts of my self (my self?...My selves).  The wool and the blogging and my participation in this community has been part of the process of reconstitution of the selves of my life, and there have been moments when I've despaired of ever feeling whole again, ever feeling like me, or even knowing what that meant.  I've been playing catch-up, sneaking in moments of self-development like I sneak a few stitches on a sock while waiting in line at the pharmacy.  Busy-busy.

But this weekend was expansive, and it brought together people whose values make sense to me, who invest themselves in something as common and ancient as getting wool from shepherds and making it twisty and putting it into loops and then wearing it.  People with passion that might be a little crazy, but who aren't afraid to admit to that and remember that life isn't all about what car you drive or what your house looks like.  People who measure the world in a way that makes sense to me, and if that just shows that they're not any more normal than I am, and well, I suspect none of us thinks normal is a compliment, and that right there shows me I'm in good company.

There's sadness this weekend, too.  Too many people I know are wrestling with their own private heartbreaks, and there were moments when I breathed loss in the air at the festival.  This Cummington marked too many remembered tragedies and too many fresh ones.  It is, after all, a weekend of memorial here.  Communities are complicated places with webs of relationships that flex and stretch in ways that aren't always comfortable.  But this weekend drove home, even more than ever, why I want to do the work to be a part of it, and why I hold the joy and the sadness of those in my life, together.

So here I am, in my happy, wooly house, feeling the remembered buzz of the humming wheels and the laughter and the friendship.  I'm doing laundry and putting the dangerous and fragile tools away in preparation for the children's return.  But I'm holding on to the shimmering vibrations left in this room and the joy of it, and I'm remembering that there is a world, however far-flung and complicated, to which I can bring a self that is, as near as I can see, just about whole.  That there is a world in which the simple, long-remembered motions of drawing up to a wheel and starting to treadle helps to make the stories and jokes and confessions and boasts spin on with the hum of whirring axles; one where the things that don't matter really don't.  A community that is by necessity distant and separate from quotidian reality, but one I love even a little bit more than I did before.

So thanks for coming.  Thanks for being exactly who you are and expecting nothing less from anyone else.  And if you weren't there, know that you were missed, and know that when I say I wish you had been, I mean you, with all your complications and contradictions and confusion.  But thanks for bringing those things here to my virtual living room too, and I hope we'll sit our wheels or our needles or just our chairs nearby one another soon and have a chance to catch up.  And you'll remind me again who I am, and who you are, and how much more there really is in this crazy old world that sometimes gets so narrow.  So thanks.  Just thanks.

Next year, more room for chairs, though, in the real living room.  I'm just saying.

Big

Happy birthday Henry and Eleanor.

You're four. 

My babies had their last day of being three, and the next day, they woke up and they were four.  How did this happen?  Those little tiny wudges who were curled up in my belly, who slowly unfolded themselves in our arms, who stretched and grasped and scooched and crawled and cruised and toddled and jumped and skipped and leaped and ran, right into being big kids.  And although we've been watching all the time, barely able to glance away, somehow, you turned into kids, and we never knew it.

Those magical and mindbending and maddening first four years have slipped past.  I'm wistful.  I can't believe I will not ever be the mom of babies, or toddlers, again.  But I'm loving every minute of watching the people you're becoming.  I love to read the stories you dictate and look at the pictures you draw.  I love to see you figuring things out for yourself, and amazing yourself and us at all that you can do.  I love when you're Blender, when you're a Boodle, and when you set up a veterinary practice in the bathtub.  I love how you've learned to kiss the cat gently and how I can ask you to let the dog out and all the ways you help.

I love that you know how to play.  Really, really know how to play.

(Yup, those are the handknit sweaters.)

I also love that you know how to live life with gusto, and to get every last morsel off your plate, and out of your life.

Happy birthday my darlings.  Thanks for being here.  I love you.

Blender the Bad Guy

Henry: I'm Blender the bad guy!

Mama: Oh, really?

H: Yeah.  I'm the biggest and strongest of all the bad guys.

M: Huh.

H: I have more weapons than any of the other bad guys!

M: Hmmm.

H: I have more weapons, and they're in my pocketbook.

M: You have a pocketbook.

H: Yeah, I'm a bad guy, and I have a pocketbook, and I have lots of weapons, and I can stop all the other bad guys.

M: Well, you know weapons aren't allowed in our house, but thanks for telling me.

H: Sure mommy.  RRRRRROAR!  I'm BLENDER!

So, if you see a little guy wtih superhero underpants and a pocketbook full of weapons, you'll know you're dealing with Blender.

Blender the bad guy.

Beware of Blender!  And his pocketbook of doom!

I love my queer little family.

Camnesia: 1,000 words instead of a picture

Rhys took a little sojourn to open up her mom's house on the Vineyard.  It gets rented for most (all?) of the summer, and Rhys is taking over the management of it.  So the kids and I went out to dinner last night in downtown Northampton.  I didn't realize it would be photographic moment, so sadly, I suffered camnesia and missed taking a picture of the two of them.  So I will describe for you, instead, what I saw.

Now many of you know Northampton, but it's one of those towns that's full of people who are kind of painfully cool.  Something about the five colleges locally, a sort of artsy-fartsy, latte-sipping, volvo-driving (link to wmv video) kind of New England thing going on.  This is not true of the whole town--there's a healthy parallel universe known as Hamp, but when you're downtown, it's Noho all the way. 

At not yet four, the kids fit right in.  Henry had a smoothie at the restaurant that he couldn't finish, so they put it in a cup that looks like a take-out coffee cup.  Henry liked that it looked like he was drinking coffee.  He was wearing a fleece-lined vest, and was carrying his "coffee" and his map under his arm like a newspaper.  Eleanor had found a hair stick that I am saving for when my hair FINALLY gets long enough to use it again, and I put her hair in a bun with it, and she wore her pink velour blazer from Old Navy.  V. fashion forward. V. shabby chic.

So while I may be a bit pudgy, kind of tired-looking, with bad hair most days and exclusively machine washable, stretchable clothes, my kids look like they fit right in downtown.  The two of them, walking along Main Street, with the cool clothes and the papers tucked under their arms--it was just ridiculous.  If they're cooler than I am at not-yet-four, then I'm pretty much doomed.  Remember when I was one of the girls downtown?  Hanging out at the Baystate?  Being the shockER and not the shockEE at Pride?  Sigh.

"Hop in the minivan kids!"

Hey, at least it's not a Volvo.  But truly, only because I don't understand how a rear-wheel-drive car is good in snow.  I'm that cool.  Yes I am.