mamacate

Wish you were here

And I seriously wish we weren't going home in less than two days.  This is the view from our back porch.  Seriously.

I've only got moments online, so that's all from me until I'm back.  For those going, have fun at Spa.  Though I love that event, I couldn't quite cut short the Caribbean.  See you soon. I'll be the one weeping and muttering about white sand beachers as I walk through the snow and ice.

Interoffice Mail

Here is the contents of this morning's mail.

--IRB approval for a study I'm managing
--The Chronicle of Higher Education
--this poem:

Petals in the Dirt
Ellen Dore Watson

Your words circle, mine batter.  You're a ramp, I have
no wheels.  The kid who gets the brunt
of our love asks us not to bicker.  Think
of all the people who have lost their right
hands!  The friend who says: Hug me twice,
it could be a while till the next body
I can touch.  Then there's the man who claims he wants
steady, needs steady, but each woman's a lake
he's big enough to swallow.  How will hunger like that
ever learn to use a napkin?  When you bring me
tenderness, it looks like one more thing
I don't have time for.  Maybe when it comes
to love, the happily long-married are the biggest
fools.  I'm fervent but off-and-on about my roses
--how many of us are delirious when the twenty-sixth
blossom does its gorgeous thing?  I wonder
if when I get home those petals will still be
luminous and melting in the dirt.  I'm thinking
maybe I need them.  I'm saying what would I do
without your mouth?

--from This Sharpening

In between the bureaucratic and the informational, a reminder to live.  More workplaces should have a poetry center to send random beauty through interoffice mail, even if it results in 9 am weeping at administrative desks.

One Down

Remember that job I've been working weekends on all summer?  The one that has been dogging me for four years?  That one?  Sent the final report to the foundation yesterday.  Five pages.  That's 1.25 pages per year.

Talk about summarizing.

Anyway.  Where's my martini?

Next project lining up for the smackdown?  The languishing small consulting job.  And then that will be it for overemployment.  And then all we'll have to worry about is the house renovation and the family crisis.

Noooo prob.

Idle Hands

There has been precious little knitting round these parts.  But I have not been entirely idle.

• there's the j-o-b, or technically two of them.  We're now at the point where there's one job during the week, and another on the weekend.  Lovin it. NOT.
• there was the part where Rhys' sister came to visit (the picture is when she and I shared wasabi shumai--whoo! That's my MIL's finger, btw) and I took the kids to Mystic aquarium and we had an AWESOME time.  Great place in the summer--I think it would be kind of limited in the winter, though, for those in range.

• there was the part when we packed up our entire house (except the kitchen, but including the basement) and moved into 3 rooms of our house.

• there was also the part where a giant backhoe came to our house and replaced the sewer line  (which had a charming habit of periodically deciding that *out* was not its only direction, and liked to spill our own raw sewage into the basement, which, I'm here to tell you, is a charming feature in a sewer line, (again) NOT).  We're looking forward to not experiencing that springtime ritual again.
• a giant freakin loan has been taken out, and a giant freakin check was deposited into our bank account, which will soon become a giant freakin money suck out of our bank account and into the builders' bank account, and strangely we're eager for this process to begin in earnest (see above with the moving into three rooms, note for the record that the mamas will be on a futon couch in the *dining room* until further notice).
• let's pause now for a moment to breathe deeply with me, find our roots down through the charkas, here, as a group, and say, collectively "motherfucker, bloody hell, that's a lot of shit you got going on!"  Because we wouldn't be wrong about that part.
• On the upside, it means more sleeping space for Cummington next year, just saying.
• Sadly, it means my fantasies of a party for the Fiber Twist will not come true this year.  Next year, people, we'll be roasting marshmallows over our new fireplace (!!!) while comparing purchases, okay?  This is what keeps me going.
• I also have fantasies of re-establishing the old solstice party, though it's not entirely clear that construction will be complete by Yuletide (kill me now, won't you?).
• But yeah, all you five people still reading here are invited, 'kay?
• There are socks, but they're not done.  There's spinning, and I haven't sent the wheel off to Marcy yet either, yet I'm not spinning much either.
• I'm seriously trying not to become one of those people who can talk of nothing but her home renovation.  And on one level, I think I might be successful: there are people in my life who have heard almost nothing about it, and I have no interest in reviewing the great Oak vs. Maple Debate with the vast majority of people in my life (verdict: maple, somewhat to my chagrin; don't ask).  I mean, if you're not living here, how could you possibly care, right?  Yet I have been captive to a few friends' renovations (not you, and not you either, and not you, except mom, maybe you a little, but since you're my mom you get a pass), and I really don't want to bore people with the minutiae of my renovation.  Yet, my life will, for the next few months, consist primarily of the following scintillating topics:

               - the main job, which I pretty much can't blog about except to say that I have attained what appears to be the pinnacle of my career as measured by syllables and punctuation, sporting, as I do as of July 1, not one but TWO ampersands, and a twenty-one syllable title.  Envy me.  I know you do.

                - the old job, in which I must work weekends to make exciting (!) SPSS tables, in addition to the SPSS tables I'll be making at the main job (I will note for the record here, as a follow-up to my last, scintillating statistical software-related post--because I know what keeps readers coming back!--that SPSS tables is worth learning if anyone but you reads your tables.)  Email me for more info if this is relevant to your life.  n=3, I know.

                - the renovation, and all the ways I'm enslaving myself to a salary and a regular job.  You know, the good stuff.

• I'm just hoping there will be a little knitting between now and then.  And of course, you know, the nervous breakdown, which Henry, Rhys, and I seem to be pacing each other on (Eleanor being the world's most flexible and easygoing child person).
• No promises.
• As an aside, is this actually my government? Okay, a) we're sorry, still, world, truly.  Apologies.  Also, I'm someone who has actually donated embryos to research, personally, like, yes, me, and my personal gametes.  As I mentioned to you in prior letters Mr. Bush, on a variety of topics, I shall repeat myself when I say MY BODY MY CHOICE.  Motherfucker.  I think I left off the "motherfucker" part in the letter to the white house, though.  Because I, unlike some other people (see first link above), have a concept of propriety.  In some contexts.  Shut up.
• Lee Ann is okay.  We IM'd a couple nights ago (I was like "whoa, this is actually *her*!) and she's just as Lee Ann as she ever was.  When they went spelunking inside her skull, they didn't take any of the Lee Ann-ness out.  She's theorizing they did something to amplify it, and she might not be wrong.  Spiff better stock up on chocolate is all I'm saying.
• In other net-connection news, I've had lovely meetups with Wooly Headed Ruth and Kat with a K over the last couple of weeks.  I ran into the manager of Webs at the pastry shop (don't ask) the other day, and she said most of their traffic these days comes from people stopping by on their way to somewhere else on vacation.  Apparently I'm not the only one who plans yarn stores in their itineraries.  I only got one ball of sock yarn, and I haven't even cast it on yet.   I may not be entirely well.  I'll try to keep in touch, but if I don't, just figure I'm too busy watching them tear down my house and writing large checks for the privilege.

Opposable Thumbs

Well, despite having opposable thumbs, this whole making the video camera talk to the computer business is quite the challenge.  It wasn't getting it on the blog I was worried about, it was getting it on the computer.  I managed it, but it wasn't exactly a breeze.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rather freaky "bear in the backyard" video.  Apologies for the shaky bits and the longness of it.  I was about done with my computer fiddling tolerance and didn't get very far in learning how to edit the thing.

I took some of the advice in the comments and called Mass. Wildlife.  They just took down the report.  So I won't worry about bearfriend.  And I'll still hang out in the backyard when the kids play back there.  Because yes, that's their sandbox in the video.  Eep.

Dear Ms. Manners,

The east coast branch of my partner's family is full of grammar fascists.  One does not, under any circumstances, lay down on a bed (unless one is a coat), and ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which they will not put.

So when, each year, my SIL sends a lovely Christmas card professionally printed with the kind salutation "Happy Holidays from the Smith's," the scream I find myself suppressing is no doubt echoing from Martha's Vineyard to Newton Center.  My grammar is anything but perfect, but such apostrophe abuse is rather hard to take, even for a glass-houses type like me.

How do I gently tell my SIL (who, by the way, had access to the very best educational options) to leave the apostrophe under the tree, where she may use it for holiday gift-giving ("thanks to Santa, that new fly-fishing hat is now Karl's")?  Really, the only way she could irk my in-laws more is by making a donation to the Democratic Party in their name.

(Now, wait a minute...there's an idea.)

Well, anyway, I eagerly await your learned opinion.

Sincerely,

Possessive in Pilgrimland

My Just Desserts

I'm still inaudible.  Croaky McCroakerson at my very best, frankly incapable at making a sound at my worst.

It's not that it hurts too much to speak.  It's simply that I can't speak.  I actually feel pretty good, the fact that I had too much wine at a playdate last night notwithstanding (yes, we have good playdates; I recommend it, in moderation at least.  And what was I to do but drink and whisper and croak and drink some more?).  More than once I have either answered the phone or made a phone call, forgetting the fact that I cannot speak.  I know this may come as a shock, but the inability to make a sound kind of hinders the telephone communication thing.  I'm just saying.

But how odd and how nice to be able to communicate fully with my friends in blogs, on email, and IM.  I feel almost normal.

There are certain interactions that can't be helped.  I simply must have my wonderful coffee from the world's smallest coffee shop (holds one customer at a time) on my way to work.  I sometimes need to make transactions in shops.  I walk through the halls at work and people say hello.  One poor soul even stopped her car and asked me for directions.  I gave them to her, in a whisper, leaning into her open window.

But suddenly everyone has to lean in, and everything's a little bit of a secret just between us.  "Yes, my signature has been rubbed off on my American Express card."  "Blackberry muffin today, please."  "Turn around and take your first left.  You can probably find parking at the meters, and they don't ticket after 6."  These little, normal exchanges take on a different character when whispered breathlessly to total strangers and the most casual of acquaintances.  The best part is the fact that almost everyone who carries on an exchange with me starts whispering themselves.  I whisper that I have laryngitis and then I whisper my desire for a muffin or the fact that the card I have proffered is credit, not debit.  Then they whisper a response.  Then they laugh and say "I don't know why I'm whispering too!"  Then I laugh (okay, smile and sort of breathe jovially), and say "yeah, everybody does that," and then they say something in a normal voice, and then they go back to whispering.  It seems it's almost impossible to talk loudly to someone who's whispering back.

Unless you're three years old.

This is probably god's way of telling me to figure out a new discipline approach.  Hmm.

Caution: Major Bummer Inside

I really hesitate to blog this because there's just very little point to bringing everyone else down with me, but I can't work and I can't think so there you go: you get to hear it, if you care to.  Just move along if you're not up for a bummer.  It's not something you need to know about.  Local stuff.  Sad stuff.

(Not) Perfect

Liz has a great post about Wabi-Sabi and the quest for perfection today.  It got me thinking about something that has been rattling around in the old brain for a bit.

We are, um, slightly addicted to listening to Laurie Berkner in the car.  If you have a preschool-aged child, you probably know who I’m talking about, and if you don’t have one, figure 2 parts Raffi, one part Peter, Paul, and Mary, and a dash of, I don’t know, Suzanne Vega or something.  Folky, poppy, kid music.  With an extreme, severe, and gigantic tendency toward getting stuck in your head.  When Jenny of Three Kid Circus mentioned that she was humming Victor Vito in her head, I went out and bought the CD, not realizing that the humming might well not be voluntary.  Catchy.  Yeah, just a little.

Anyway, there’s a song on the Victor Vito CD called “I’m Not Perfect.”  It goes like this:

I’m not perfect

No I’m not

I’m not perfect

But I’ve got what I’ve got

I do my very best

Do my very best

Do my very best each day

But I’m not perfect

And I hope you like me that way.

Then it goes along to sing similar verses for “you’re not perfect” and “we’re not perfect” and in the end it’s “And you know I love you that way.”

And you know, there are days, driving to school after a particularly intransigent morning, or an afternoon where I literally had to drag them out of the preschool building, when that song is a bit of a balm for my spirit.  It makes me feel a little better about the extreme imperfection of my parenting, and my general self, at those moments, and, well, all the time.  So I sing along with it, rather imperfectly, and it kind of makes me feel better.

The thing is, the kids are listening (this is supposed to be kids’ music, after all).  And in short order, they start singing the song themselves.  “I’m not perfect, no I’m not!”  And then I’m torn.  Because part of me wants to shout out, “You ARE perfect!  You are absolutely perfectly, completely, ideally, and faultlessly YOU, and that is perfection itself.”  And I do think they’re perfect, Ellie in her freckle-nosed, round-bellied, pretend-ballet-dancing blur, and Henry in his blond and handsome talkative seriousness.  Even when Henry steals Eleanor’s Groovy Girl and throws it over the backseat for pure spite and she head-butts him in retribution (yeah, that would be THIS morning’s excitement), could they be any more perfectly three?  Any more perfectly twins?  I’m here to tell you, that’s about as perfectly THEM as it gets.  (Which is why I often have a perfect headache.)

So, in the midst of all this perfection, this not-always-desirable and far-from-peaceful perfection, do I really want my kids singing a song about not being perfect?  I mean, I don’t think they’re going to need therapy for this or anything, but I’m just trying to figure out what my stance is.  So I try it on for myself.  What if I was singing that song, and somebody said to me, “Yes you ARE perfect!  You are perfectly scatterbrained, perfectly irresponsible, perfectly sloppy, and perfectly YOU.”  And after recovering from that pretty major back-handed compliment, I might say, um, BULLSHIT.  I’m not even perfectly any of those things (except perhaps sloppy), and I’m not perfect and I don’t want to be.  Perfection is too much pressure.  I don’t want to spin perfectly and I don’t want to knit perfectly and while I imagine I’d like to parent perfectly it probably wouldn’t be very good preparation for life in a world full of real people and anyway, no danger of that happening, that’s for sure.

So perfection isn't for me, but then what do I tell the kids?  Perhaps my resistance to imagining myself as perfectly me, in the glory of all my imperfections, is just the layers of a grown-up life, and perhaps they can still accept themselves as perfect.  Or maybe I should give them the same slack I give myself and say, “No, I tend to think you’re perfect, but nobody is really, and you don’t have to be.  In fact, take my advice, don’t go there.  It isn’t any fun.”

I guess what I really want to protect them from is the idea of perfection.  It’s a word they’ve asked me to define, and I said that someone who’s perfect is someone who never makes mistakes, and there aren’t any people like that in real life.  I want them to strive for wonderful things in life, but I think that the drive to do that is naturally occurring, and sometimes the quest for perfection is what chases it out of some of our hearts.  I know that perfectionism can stop me dead in my tracks if I let it.

For now, I suppose I’ll take the easy, imperfect, lazy-mom approach of which I am so fond.  I’ll keep singing, loudly and off-key, and encourage them to join me in the chorus.  Because I suppose in the end, that’s the point.  “And you know I love you that way.”

Edited to add that I should have linked to my dear friend Sara's column in Bay Windows on a very similar topic.  Thinking about this in the context of disability brings the notion of true perfection to a completely different level, and reminds me that the human version of perfection takes a million different, equally perfect forms.  And because I can't resist the opportunity to show a cute kid picture, I'll link to a photo I posted in response to her original post on the topic.

Scream Quotient=3, or, My Morning in only 1400 words.

Every Wednesday, dearest partner gets up at dark o’clock to drive to her office in New Jersey, over three hours away.  The rest of the week she telecommutes from home, and generally speaking, this is a good arrangement for us.  Well, it’s a good arrangement for us, except on Wednesday mornings, at which time it is a really lousy arrangement for me.

Wednesdays used to be days when I was home with the kids, and we could get off to a leisurely start, cutting through the haze with the conjoined narcotics of television (them) and caffeine (me).  Now that I am severely overemployed, they go to school and I go to work on Wednesday mornings.  None of us is adjusting well.  The last few weeks have felt surprisingly manageable from a job/kids juggling perspective, which I now realize is largely due to the fact that because of weather and illness, DP has not gone to New Jersey in a while.  Short of moving to New Jersey, I’m trying to figure out how I can rig things so she is NEVER AWAY AGAIN.

So, this morning we all wake up bright and early, on time for a change, and toodle happily downstairs for breakfast.  I make the fatal mistake of thinking to myself, “hey, this morning is going pretty well!”  Apparently, god heard me.

Henry, who had a poopy diaper but refused to let me change it, got predictably crabby as he sat in it, at the table, and he predictably started to throw food.  When I removed him from the table to put him in the corner, he bit me.  Lovely.  He has been biting me for two years now, and it still sends my blood pressure through the roof.  We have come a long way with the biting, and it happens relatively rarely now, but as I have mentioned before it is now a matter of malice aforethought.  He’s not doing it because for some strange reason he’s wired to communicate with his teeth.  He’s doing it because he knows it makes me furious.  Predictably, I got furious.  Great, happy mommy moment.  Screaming at your kid before 7:30 am.  Go me.

So after time out, we changed the stupid diaper that was probably the cause of all of this, and I hoped to move on.  Everyone had enough breakfast, they were both completely dressed right down to socks, and I put on a TiVOed episode of Bear in the Big Blue House (or, as we like to say, blear in the blig blue house).  I told them I was going upstairs for a shower, and I’d be back in 10 minutes.

Personal hygiene tasks were performed, and just as I was getting ready to get out of the shower, what do I spy through the frosted glass of the shower door but two preschoolers in the process of GETTING BUCK NAKED?  NOOOOOO!

Now, those of you who have preschoolers know this, and those of you who have not experienced it or blocked it out of your memories, you may now avert your eyes, because getting preschoolers dressed is not a simple matter of applying pants and shirts to legs and arms.  Instead, it is a complex dance of will and mastery, a furious ballet of control and individual self-determination: a pitched battle of Lilliputian grit.  Or, at worst, it’s a freakin wrestling match, rarely won physically and never won emotionally by the hapless parent.  Two naked preschoolers at five minutes of 8 o’clock in the morning is not a sight any working parent wants to see.  Especially when they’re giggling to each other and running away from you.  Trust me on this one. 

After a certain amount of screeching from me about how if they could take their clothes off in thirty seconds they’d damn well better be able to put them back on in three minutes, I relented and assisted them both in selecting Completely Different OutfitsTM to wear.  We have now only reached the level of Moderately Late, and aside from the really inappropriate amount of screaming and screeching I have done before 9 am, I’m feeling like I might just survive the morning.  And god laughs again.

Again predictably, the house looks like it has been tossed by the mob, complete with a cheerio situation in the dining room and generalized, diffuse crap all over the living room.  I turn down the heat and try to forget as I dog-proof the house as best I can (perhaps she’ll spend the day trying to get the cheerios out of the dining room molding—a girl can hope) while exercising ultimate futility by exhorting the short people to put on their coats.  We begin the daily shoe struggle, which typically involves catering to Eleanor’s competing longing to wear Special Shoes, while not getting her Special Shoes even the tiniest bit wet (did I mention there’s 3 inches of blowing snow on the ground?).  Finally, everyone is relatively appropriately dressed for 10-degree F weather, and I go out to the car.  The new minivan.  With the sliding doors.  The sliding doors.  On both sides.  WHICH ARE FROZEN SHUT.  I  yank.  I pull.  I chip.  I kick.  I try the other side.  Both doors are completely frozen shut despite the fact that my car spent the night in a garage (though it did get quite a nice coating of icy snow yesterday afternoon at the office, which apparently melted and then froze overnight).  In go the kids via the back hatch.  I would just like to say that this is NOT what I had in mind when I got the “family-friendly minivan.”

While all this is happening, Eleanor changes her shoes AGAIN, and, more importantly, the dog trots out into the driveway.  This is never a good sign.  She gives me that look, the sideways one that is basically equivalent to the one I got from the naked preschoolers less than 20 minutes before, and RUNS AWAY.  Across the street, into the neighbor’s yard, with me pathetically chasing after her screaming threats and general unpleasantness.  For those keeping score at home, that’s screaming fit number three for the morning.  It is now 8:30 am.  We are Officially Late.

So, relatively brief meltdowns about a) competing childrens’ desires to switch or not switch usual carseat configurations, b) not wanting to go to school at all (cue guilt quickly quelled by extreme desire to sit in an office among adults in complete absence of almost-three-year-olds), and c) wanting to bring our guitars to school but not wanting to share them.  Bring recycling to corner.  Bring milk in to house.  (Why is it that Wednesday is the day that everything is brought to and taken away from our house?)  Still no sign of dog.  Scream the dog’s name a few more times from end of driveway.  Resign self to driving around in search of dog.

The dog has done this before, and when my neighbors are home, they are generally willing to let her in when she finally comes home.  But today it’s 10 degrees F with a windchill factor of way below icy and I won’t be home for 9 hours.  So around we drive, stalking the medical building on the next block, remembering the time my friend called to say she saw my dog out the window from between the stirrups at the OB’s office.  After two full tours of the neighborhood, I return to the dog on the doorstep.  It is now 9 am.  Current status: Obscenely Late.  I resist undertaking another screaming fit and let the dog in, replenish my coffee, and hit the road, ignoring the argument about who gets to talk right now coming from the back seat and trying not to get into an accident on the extremely icy road.

We arrive at school, with Eleanor taking a final stand on footwear upon arrival that results in me carrying her into the building in her socks.  When we arrive at school I realize that this drama is all in service of her desire to wear the teletubby sandals her teacher gave her to wear yesterday, that are now Most Coveted and apparently worthy of major scheming.  Apparently my promise that she could wear them when we get to school (and may I note, these are SANDALS so outside the classroom is not really an option) was not good enough, and she needed extra insurance.  Shoe drama, explained.

I gather that I was not alone in having a truly shitty morning, and, like Jody, Julia’s news puts it all in perspective (I won’t link here since she really doesn’t need a trackback bitching about life with twins, but see the bottom of Jody’s entry), but man.  Off to begin the wild rumpus again.  Let’s see if I can make it to bedtime under my morning scream quotient.  No guarantees.