Holpineville

Waste

Yesterday, I went to a long, contentious, and very draining meeting of this school district committee I am on.  It was all about being $43 million dollars short for next year, even after all the horrible budget cuts this year, and how everyone just loathes the new teacher appraisal and development system I spent most of last year going to meetings about and working on (oh, no, we’re not all getting 5 out of 5 ratings anymore!), and how the graduation rate is only 74% (but that’s better than it used to be!) and some people are just crazy, is all I can say.  Driving home, I listened to a news item about the horrible state of public education funding and the huge gaps between the haves v. the have nots.  Then, I helped Carl finish his homework, lice combed Ruby’s head, and read to them for a very long time, because we were at a pivotal point in the bedtime book de la semaine (actually, they have about five separate bedtime books going, which is a little much even for my variety-loving tastes, but they aren’t complaining.) 

Then, after I thought I was off duty for the night, Ruby had a big hysterical crying fit because she was suddenly afraid the house was going to catch fire and burn down while she was sleeping.  Later, there was a long string of PTO emails about exciting things like supply fee reimbursements (more of the crazy people) and gala invitation dimensions, and how many t-shirts to order in which sizes.   Naturally, the burglar alarm went off at 4:15 a.m., scaring the bejeezus out of Ruby, and after I got everyone back in bed, Rod snuffled or squirmed every time I got close to being asleep.  

You won't be surprised to hear, then, that tonight is the night I have finally managed to secure a babysitter, in an effort to reinject some joy and romance into the marital partnership, and I will be such! Fun! to date!  There is definitely a 4 p.m. coffee run in my future.  Also, I have no grand plan for the evening Fun & Romance and I hate to just default to dinner and a movie.  Gah.  I know, I wouldn’t want to date me, either.

Anyway, back to my main point: wasted resources.

If, like my household, yours shops Amaz@n.com very often, you really must always due it via an affiliate link to a charity.  What, you say?  You see, if you start at www.wilsonpto.org/fundraising, you’ll find a link to Amazon.  Shop like normal.  Use Prime, redeem gift cards, get free shipping, download to your heart’s content.  Whatever you spend, our little PTO will get a donation of 6% or so.  It’s anonymous, so you can buy underwear, tampons, gas remedies, marital aids, or whatever, and you won’t have to worry that we’ll know who has the addiction to romance novels or how much your new washing machine or camera cost. 

If you’re not into supporting my kids’ school, fine.  Go find the link at the website of your public radio station, or local museum or symphony.  Everybody’s doing it, and it’s free money!

More free money: 

Do you recognize this:

It’s a Boxtop for Education.  They show up on many, many products.  Here’s the list.  You may think, as I did, that your household doesn’t really buy that much processed food, but I bet you’ll find a few as you look through your cabinets.  These little puppies are worth 10 cents each to a school, sometimes more when there are bonus deals.  Don’t throw money in the trash!  Pull them out of your neighbor’s recycling bin, too.  Then give them to a parent of school aged kids, mail them to the school down the street, give them to the preschool at your church. 

 

See this: 

It’s a Label for Education. Same deal—the list of products is here.  They are valuable, and schools go to a lot of trouble to collect them.  It drives me nuts when people tell me it’s too much trouble to save that stuff. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do it, because I can't find $43 million (really, we probably need five times that to educate children in the still-modest style I would find appropriate), but I can make sure the school gets my 6% commissions, and those little ten cent bits of paper, and so can you.  

Rhymes with Nice, But It's Not

Rod returned from his trip just in time to find me discovering lice on Ruby’s head, a joyous homecoming if ever there was one.  I think we have the little critters on the run, but the hour spent combing every evening is brutal, given the already tight schedule.  I have my suspicions about where Ruby got them, and yet you can’t really go around critiquing people’s combing techniques and how they treat their kids’ heads, right?  Just please, don’t let them find my head….

 

This week is just an ongoing slog of after school activities and PTO meetings and work on the school’s fundraising gala, which is coming up.  Rod had a day trip to exciting Ft. Worth, and I stayed up late several nights stuffing envelopes, which lends a glaze of exhaustion to everything else.  Today I had the great honor of talking with one of the Early Childhood classes, in Spanish, no less, about the joys of volunteer work and why one would be crazy enough to be the PTO president. Apparently the teacher is moving on to other parents with more impressive jobs to talk about professions and the importance of higher education.  So, there was a minor sting to my pride when I was invited to talk about volunteering, but I smiled and said yes and refrained from explaining what an important person I used to be before I retired early.

 

The meeting with Carl's teacher was okay.  She's trying to figure out what to do with him when he gets so mad he's not interruptable, which is rare, but scary.   He's so big and strong she can't physically remove him.  She wants him to work on recognizing when he's upset and stepping back from the situation before he can't, and to build his emotional vocabulary so that he can talk about what he's feeling instead of clamming up or lashing out.  Which all sounds lovely, and exceedingly difficult bordering on impossible, but I'm trying to chat him up about it at home, too.  The teacher is also concerned that some of the other kids have figured out how to make Carl mad and are starting to do it for sport, or to get him in trouble...even though they're friends, which sounds a little like what his sister does, even though she's his sister.  

As for the grade skipping, the teacher seemed to think we should go for it.  She says his writing might not be completely second grade, but otherwise, he's a year ahead, he doesn't seem to see himself as a first grader at all, and she worries he'll be lonely when all his third grade pals move on to a new class next year.   

Tomorrow, I’m hosting a big ol’ coffee for people who might do some work on that fundraising gala, which means I’ll be spending the evening cleaning the house, baking muffins, and snapping at my family.  I think Rod is having a little geek party on Sunday, along with his Girl Scout meeting, and then the kids are off Monday.  I am toying with the idea of taking the kids around the neighborhood to clean up trash in honor of Martin Luther King, which would make it a tradition, since it’s the third time, or we’ve been invited to a party to make packages to hand out to the homeless guys at the intersections around here.  Really, could things get any more exciting?  

 

It's Sole Authority Weekend!

Rod is away for the weekend, bonding with his brother and his high school and college pals in Las Vegas.  He had better be having fun, and I imagine he is, but the whole thing just sounds tedious and exhausting to me.  I really must be getting old. 

Rod’s departure coincided neatly with the beginning of the Girl Scout cookie sale, thus dooming me not only to a weekend of single parenting, but also to door-to-door sales, my Least Favorite Thing Ever.  But Rod spent a lot of time last week dealing with his troop’s cookie sales paperwork, plotting out meetings, planning the father-daughter dance, and chatting up parents of prospective members.  A born leader of Girl Scouts, he is. 

The kids are back in school; the re-entry following winter break wasn’t as traumatic as I feared it would be, until Friday when Ruby had a 6 a.m. crying fit about how she was dead, just dead, because she hadn’t finished her work for the week and there was just no way she ever would.  Every effort I made to cheer her up, strategize about the situation, or calm her down was met with utter negativity. She's very frustrating to me when she gets in that mood.  For the record, when I picked her up from school, she was still very much alive and had managed to finish all but one thing. Next week will be the real test of mood and endurance, when Ruby’s after school schedule fills back up.

The kids’ report cards came out Friday.  They are very vague and not informative.  Ruby’s was great last time, and it still is now.  Carl’s was okay to good last time; he was marked down a little for not getting enough work done, and some  (but not all) of those grades were up this time.

Children, and What to Do About Them, continues to baffle me.   Carl:  will he go on to invent some geeky thing that transforms the world, or will he be arrested for ignoring and then shoving some peace officer who dares to ask him to move along while he’s playing Angry Birds?  It really seems too close to call most of the time.  More important, I can’t see how to make the former more likely than the latter. 

Here are two intertwined Carl problems.  Problem A: A couple of people separately suggested we should try to have him skip second grade.  I believed grade-skipping in our district to be impossible, but it turns out it is technically possible, if you apply by February and make your child take tests in June.  However, it’s extremely rare that anyone passes all the tests.   The rationale in favor of skipping second grade would be 1) Carl is one of the oldest kids in his grade so it’s a close thing that he’s not a year ahead anyway, 2) he’s physically very, very big, 3) academically he could probably cope fine,  4) he prefers to hang around with older kids anyway, and 5) if we did it this year, he would keep the same teacher because his class is first/second/third grade.

I’m not entirely in love with the idea, even if Carl could pass the test.  I skipped a grade, and while it may have spared me a year of academic torture-by-boredom, I’m not sure it was all for the long-term best, either.  Third grade here is where all the standardized testing pressure and insanity cranks up, and I hate to take away a year of Carl’s innocence.  And while he’s generally well-behaved, he has moments where he loses control, and there are some kids he has a tough time tolerating. 

On to Problem B: So on the one hand, I have people telling me how brilliant and mature-seeming Carl is, and then I get an e-mail from the teacher, inviting me for a conference next week because he’s having trouble controlling himself when he gets angry.  There was an incident just before Christmas when Carl got sent to the office and had a nice long conference with the principal.  They made a deal that Carl would be the one to tell me about what had happened. 

So guess what?  Carl said nothing at all about it.  Finally, after the principal dropped a big hint, and a little girl in his class came up and told me he’d been sent to the office for hitting, I asked Carl about it.  He seemed appropriately remorseful and downright embarrassed, but clammed up and wouldn’t give me any details at all. I asked if he had apologized to anyone who needed an apology, and he said yes, and that was that.

The teacher says he’s not generally a problem, but apparently there are enough times when he is, or maybe he’s scary enough when he gets enraged, that she wants to talk to me about it.   So, what do I say? 

Moving on, this week I took the kids to check out a karate school nearby.  Carl has been asking for a long time to take lessons, and of the options around here, this was one of the more feasible.  Let me just say that karate is so not my thing: you have to practically shovel the mumbo-jumbo BS in those places, and the actual class looks like a really dull exercise class, only with the counting in Korean.  But the kids liked it, and the old lady with a black belt instructor, and the older kids in the class who helped teach it, were welcoming.  Carl seemed to catch on fast and punched and kicked with a certain amount of power and coordination.  Ruby is too busy to sign up just now, but I promised to find us some tae-bo to do together instead.   I will probably enroll Carl, although I think he’ll find the whole thing less charming once he’s signed up and has to follow orders.  I’m hesitating, because we were also talking about signing him up for the local equivalent of Little League, and I don’t think the schedule will bear both. 

It’s late and I’m rambling.  More news later.

 

 

Merry Christmas from the Family*

I just thought I should check in.  We’re fine.  Christmas (and poor Rod’s birthday) was very good.  Santa came, we are rolling in an embarrassing number of presents, we reveled in moments of wonder, awe and holiday spirit. We ate a lot, drank a lot, shared the joy, loved each other and generally felt luckier than ought to be allowed. 

And yet, it’s Christmas as an adult: Even the sweetest parts have their bitter undercoating.  I was sick and sleepless the whole week before Christmas, and really, I am still not quite out of it. I gave the virus to Rod; he seems a little less sick than I was, but he still sounds awful.  During that week, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make things festive, partly for the kids, partly for me.  Partly, I succeeded; partly, I didn’t.  And it feels like I lost nine days in the frenzy and now I'm trying to pack two weeks of vacation into one. 

I find, too, that I miss my old tribe.  It just seems wrong, it being only the four of us on Christmas Day.  My in-laws are averse to holiday travel, for which I don’t blame them at bit.  My dad would love to see us, but he’s far away and long remarried, with another set of schedules to juggle, so we don’t have every Christmas together.  And at holidays, I miss my dead mom, my dead grandparents, the dead uncle and the dead aunt and all those cousins, and even the relatives I can’t quite figure out how I’m related to.  It wasn’t that things were so perfect back in the day when it was a given I would see some large fraction of them all at holiday time, but it was a kind of built-in celebration system and bonding opportunity, and it evidently set my expectations for what Christmas is supposed to be.  It could be worse: my sisters got stuck doing the working spinsters thing alone together this year, for instance.  And yes, we could have hit the road and imposed on someone, but it just wasn’t feasible, schedule-wise or money-wise this year.  Sigh. You don't know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone….my life really is a series of pop music clichés, people.

Now in Holpineville we’re getting ready:  planning for the New Year’s Eve party we nearly always have, even though (or maybe because) I hate New Year’s Eve; getting some PTO stuff ready to go, because school starts right away after New Year’s and the spring agenda is packed; wrapping up some year-end bills and paperwork and cleaning out some long-term household messes.  Carl is nearly done assembling his Christmas Legos (all five big sets) and Rod is obsessively printing giant Lego minifigures (or would that be, Maxifigures?) on that damn 3-D printer with some silver plastic Ruby lovingly bought him for Christmas, just for fun and to make the kids happy. I’ve also given him a list of things to fix around here, and I think he wants to brew some beer, and did I mention, he’s not feeling so hot?

 

 

*Beloved local-color holiday song traditionally sung each year at our friends’ Christmas Eve caroling party; a wonderful mish-mash of hymns and popular songs and kids and dads volunteering to play piano, guitar, recorder, tambourine, maracas, and sing solos…it was glorious as usual this year.   If you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah, I hope you had a moment or two of transcendental joy and peace, too. 

 

In the Waiting Room

The waiting room at the occupational therapist is surprisingly low-key, in terms of the emotional energy.  The parents don’t chat with each other as much as you’d expect.  Some of them have other kids to watch; some of them are catching up on work; some just want the forty minutes or hour of peace.

But we all know why we’re here.  We’ve all been down a path that starts with wondering if something your child does, or doesn’t do, is just a little personality quirk, or a sign of More.  We moved on, probably, to other people noticing things about the child, to someone suggesting or even insisting that we get the kid “evaluated.”  And then there was the either a sad day when your kid got a really big label, or maybe the verdict was less clear: a series of “well, it could be this,” “there are indications of X,” “s/he seems to have an issue with Y,” “you should probably consider Z,” “let’s try ABC and see if it helps…” 

These parents are learning the same hard lessons you are about which therapy does what, public v. private school, what’s a disability and what’s not, accommodations, 504 plans, IEP’s, advocacy.  They, too, know the stress of dealing with tantrums and all stripes of impulsive, antisocial and age-inappropriate behavior.  You know they worry, just like you, about their “different” child making friends, getting through school, and navigating adult life.  How, you wonder, will this kid ever make it through college if she can’t write more than a simple paragraph?  How, that dad wonders, will my child ever hold down a job when he can’t make eye contact and screams when he’s frustrated?

But it’s not as depressing as all that.  Here, at least, people get it.  You don’t have to explain the weird thing your toddler is doing in the corner.  And the therapists are gurus, counselors, guides… angels, really.  Finally, there’s another adult who not only can understand what you’re dealing with, she’s in a position to offer those rare gems: useful opinions about your particular child!  You can ask all those questions that occur to you in the middle of the night, you can get a sense of how your kid compares to others, you can have a plan.  You don't have to worry about boring the therapist, or annoying her with your own brand of crazy, obsessive worry, like you might with a friend or your kid's teacher.  The therapist gives you a break:  a time or two each week when someone else takes on the burden of dealing with the Big Furry Problem you live with.  We hang on their words, when they emerge with our kids: “He had a good day today!  We worked on X,Y, Z.  He told me about ABC, and we talked about how important it is to try hard at DEF, and this week he’s going to work on doing J.“ We can go home, knowing we’re Doing Something, having a plan to attack, or tame, or at least co-exist with the Big Furry Problem.   

___________________________________________

I’ve been stewing over that bit for weeks, and it’s still not meeting my exacting Blog Standards, but I’m ready to move on.  As for the household update:

School is out: we had the groundbreaking for the new school playground/soccer field/etc.  and the class parties and the “winter songs” programs and general PTO meetings.  The Girl Scout campout went well; Rod and Ruby are tired but everyone seems to have had a good time and somehow they made it down the freeway and back with the minvan-dwarfing U-Haul of gear.    Carl had a sleepover with a friend one night, leaving me to go to a party by myself for the first time in probably a decade.  The next day we played ball and read books and he resisted my efforts to get him to nap, and we went to another party that night, ‘tis the season and all.  Yesterday, there was a big impromptu pack of kids at my house. Supposedly they were here to make Christmas cookies, but the kids mostly played and fought with each other while the organizing mom and I did some baking….not really the satisfying parent/child bonding activity she’d envisioned, and honestly, the cookies weren’t so hot. 

I still don’t have a grip on Christmas/Rod’s birthday/New Year’s.  Amazon Prime is my only friend at this stage, and Rod is trying to gently action on various fronts.  Santa is very uninspired this year and I hope my little brats aren’t too disappointed.  I need to figure out what to take to a Christmas Eve party and then what to eat on Christmas Day, and I need to get an invitation out for the New Year’s Eve party we’re having  (no better way to celebrate your least favorite holiday than with a big party at your house!).  To top things off, I’m keeping up a proud pre-Christmas tradition by contracting a Huge, Rotten, Sleep-Impeding Cold complete with sinus pressure, drippy nose and hacking cough, which makes me look and sound lovely and I am undoubtedly passing it along to everyone else in the house and the neighborhood, so I’ll get to deal with it again, even after I recover.    

 

Not Jolly Yet

I keep trying to think of nice happy things to tell you, but I’m just not in a good mood lately.  I’ve never been medicated for depression or anxiety or anything else, but there have been times it might have been a good idea, and it’s possible this is one of them.  I’m neglecting my sweet husband; the kids alternate between the extremes of marginal parenting (Clearly Raised by Wolves, or, Hopelessly Overindulged by Helicopter Mom); I don’t exercise, eat right, or sleep enough; I am completely unprepared for Christmas or the end of the fiscal year; the house is a mess even by local standards; no knitting or reading or anything else is happening; and I’m not really getting my all-consuming PTO work done, either.  In short, I’m not coping well in any of my life’s roles and my hair is falling out (seriously, it is, big time, and I don’t know why.  To think, I was worried about Rod’s scalp showing through…)

Things are going on, however, despite my mood.  Rod is busy at work because he'll be off while the kids are on vacation (yippee!) and he is completely obsessed with his 3-D prototyper machine when he’s not.   A friend of mine refers to her husband’s hobby as “that goddamn guitar,” and I am beginning to relate to the sentiment, if not use the same tone of voice.  Rod’s even got Carl interested now:  he taught Carl how to use Google Sketch Up, and then they made some of Carl’s designs.  Carl had to do a special project for school about Hawaii, and they came very close to making a 3-D poly-lactic acid model of the whole archipelago. 

When he’s not doing that, Rod is still busy.  He humors me, mostly, during this phase of depressive angst of mine.  He rescued a friend from a plumbing disaster and is fixing the oven that had the nerve to break on me last weekend.  He deals with these kids who live here.  He took them both shoe shopping last weekend.  What they came home with was not what I would have bought in terms of size, style, quality, type or price, but I was spared the trip and the stress and arguing that always ensues when I do it.  He is doing a fine job as Girl Scout troop leader:  he organized a super-fun pottery-making meeting, he recruited some new members, he went to a long training class, and he’s taking a pack of girls camping this weekend (yeah, right before Christmas, what’s your point?). 

As for Ruby, she’s been very busy.  She’s had a lot of sleepovers with one particular friend, which is nice, but she’s having a hard time expanding her list of buddies beyond that.  She has been making things:  remaking t-shirts by chopping parts off and adding embellishments, and sewing very basic patternless clothes—a tunic for Carl, and a polar fleece holiday dress for herself. 

Ruby was a spur-of-the-moment shepherd in the Christmas pageant at a friend’s church.  It was great; the show was outdoors, with a real camel and a choir and everything.  Ruby did fine, but she was disappointed that the live goat she was supposed to tend got rowdy at the last minute and was removed from her care. 

Under the influence of an animal-crazy friend, Ruby decided that she wanted to get a class pet for school.  In Montessori, class pets are encouraged as a way to teach children responsibility, respect for living things, biology, etc.  But in practice, some teachers just don’t like having them and don’t do it after an initial try or two.  Ruby’s class didn’t have one, and I suspected that was per the teacher’s choice.  But the teacher said it would okay to have fish, so that’s what Ruby got.  It’s a little female betta named Pearl, with an enormous and over-decorated tank that Ruby and Carl and I had a big cranky fight about buying, and the poor tortured fish has been back and forth to school three times in two weeks already. 

Carl is growing again.  His hair is longer and his clothes are too small.  He had one of his best new buddies sleepover last weekend, which was really fun.  His teacher says he’s doing a little better at getting his work done at school, and she’s having a hard time keeping ahead of him in math, because he’s moving through the curriculum so quickly.  He’s had the second grade homework the last couple of weeks, which does seem to challenge him a little.  He got in trouble at school yesterday for something, but I’m not supposed to know about it; the principal only said she made a deal with him that he could be the one to tell me about it.  And so naturally he hasn’t said a word, and therefore I don’t know what happened.  Frustrating little twerp he is, sometimes.

What else?  We got a Christmas tree, and it only took two weeks of boxes strewn all over the house to get the decorations unpacked and up.  We went to some parties last weekend.  I have done no shopping at all yet, and I thought I had time, but suddenly everyone is telling me it’s the very last minute and ack! Ack! Ack!  There won’t be much shopping this weekend, though, because Rod and Ruby will be Girl Scout camping and Carl has only a limited tolerance for that sort of thing.    Out of town relatives:  look for a nice Memorial Day gift, okay?

As for me, well, last week there was a teacher appreciation luncheon and a PTO Mom’s Night Out, and the school book fair, and a bunch of other lesser meetings.  This week, I have a newsletter to write, two PTO meetings to host this week, two “winter performances” to attend at school, a budget issue to resolve, and so on.  Tomorrow morning is the groundbreaking for a huge park/renovation project at school, for which we need only raise to another $100K or so, preferably in the next three weeks.  I used to do a lot of event planning for work, and I am going completely crazy from the lack of planning that’s gone into this groundbreaking.  Apparently we’re just all going to show up, and someone will have fancy shovels, and we’ll play it by ear.  I will have anxiety hives by then—there’s no timeline!  No script!  No props!  What if it rains?! Of course, everyone else involved thinks I’m a little kooky for worrying about that stuff.

I have to get some presents for the teachers and staff by tomorrow, and I have to acquire food for the kids to take to their class parties, and I have to go to a big deal committee meeting this afternoon, and I have to help Ruby pack for camping, and, and, and.  

All I really want is vacation…time on the sofa with a book or a movie or some knitting, a little holiday spirit to creep in.   Which it will, but I had hoped to be there by now.  It’s taken me three weeks to write this for you, and I see that it’s not very good.  I promise to come up with better material, once I make it through Friday.  

 

Advice Floodgates Open

Last night, Ruby's occupational therapist basically said I should consider getting Ruby evaluated for attention deficit disorder.  She hinted around until I flat out asked her if she thought it was something we should look into, and the diplomatically phrased answer was yes.  She says Ruby definitely isn't hyperactive (no ADHD), but she isn't sure whether the problems Ruby has with staying focused on her work and getting things done are strictly due to her difficulties with language processing...or not.  And as a statistical matter, dysgraphia/dyslexia often comes with ADD/ADHD.

So, processing all that myself, I touched base with a couple of friends whose kids have ADD/ADHD or know people who do: what do you think?  Is it possible?  where should I go for a good evaluation?  I'm really iffy about medicating a growing brain, but what if it helps?

Oh, my, do the opinions come flooding in: you should try the X Diet, you should give up gluten, you should eliminate dyes and additives from her diet, you should give her fish oil, you should make her do heavy-duty exercise for 90 minutes a day.  You should talk to A, she gives her kids some weird supplements but it really seems to help.  You should see Dr. X, or Dr. Y, or this naturopath I know, or go to Z clinic for a full something or other workup. Give her some coffee every morning; if that helps, then you know she's got ADD (or, maybe she just wakes up slow like her mom).  

It's funny, because I still think ADHD is way over diagnosed in little boys, but in Ruby's case, I am starting to wonder.  A couple of her previous evaluators have brought up the possiblity, and after working with her on math for hours and hours on Sunday, it makes a little sense.  She knows how to do the work, she wants to get it done, and yet getting her to plow through and finish is a struggle.  Maybe she's not just trying to yank my chain about homework.  When you talk to her, she switches topics randomly pretty often, and she complains about the school environment being distracting.  From what I've seen of kids on ADD meds, though, there are serious trade offs and side effects, and it doesn't seem to work for everyone.  

Nothing like another expensive, time-consuming problem to tackle.  Blah. 

9:20 p.m.

The time of the last knock on the door Halloween night, in case you were wondering.

What is with all the adults trick or treating?  Some of them told me it was “for the baby, he’s in the car,” but still.  I know times are hard, trick or treating is (sort of) fun, and candy is expensive, but still.  Weird. Also, your school-age children need to be in bed by 8:30, and the younger ones before that.  But I’ll still give you candy and wish you a Happy Halloween!

The fact that we had any trick or treaters at all is cause for great celebration.  It’s weird; we live on the edge of one of those neighborhoods where people buy 22 pounds of candy and it’s all gone in an hour and then they have to turn off all the lights and hide behind the sofa.  But cross one intersection, and you’re in my turf, where we’re participating in a neighborhood “safe trick-or-treating!” program to try to get even a few visitors.

It seems that Carl was originally going to be a “spy.”  For a day or two, he offered Ruby a choice:  keep the secret about his costume idea and get a Jolly Rancher.  Or, spill the beans and face certain death.  Well, which will it be? Jolly Rancher?  -- or Death!?  

Which amused me at idle moments for the better part of a week: “Jolly Rancher? Or Death?”

But then he heard someone else had that idea, to be a spy.  So Carl had another plan, but it, too, was rejected for some reason.  And then he was going to be “a midget,” including crouched-over duck-walking and wearing oversized clothing, but then he and I had a chat about how he was wearing mostly normal attire, and he’s not really midget-y, and isn’t that a term that’s sort of out of favor, anyway?  Carl said he’d just be a dwarf instead, and I explained that dwarfism isn’t really something to be made fun of, or into a Halloween costume, and so he settled on being “Sleepy Guy” or “Lazy Guy”, because he was carrying a pillowcase to collect candy.  The big conclusion:  he doesn’t really like costumes, and now I sort of understand all the underdressed preteens who come up to my door asking for candy.  Maybe they’re all just part of Carl’s tribe. 

Ruby was a good Athena.  But: at 2 p.m. I got a call from school that she was in the nurse’s office (just a term of speech, because we don’t actually have a school nurse, after all those state budget cuts, thanks , Rick Perry!)  and feeling bad.  Was she really ill?  There are plenty of viruses going around, to be sure.  And surely she’s not dumb enough to fake it on Halloween?  And yet, she had a math tutorial today, which she would prefer to avoid…. In the end, I’m not sure.  No real fever, but she looked pretty pale and acted a little wonky.  She had a snack at home and I made her do her homework and then I proclaimed her fit to trick or treat, which she did.  We shall see how she is tomorrow.

There is not a lot to recap.  I have been doing some embroidery (no, I can’t really explain it, either.)  Carl continues courting his new, older, more sophisticated pals at school and managed to finagle a sleepover with one of them on Saturday.  Rod has been working hard at his actual job, and at child tending, and at assembling this super-ultra-cool 3-D printer/prototype thing he bought. 

Ruby did a whole lot of long division over the weekend, against her will, and really, mine.  Saturday night she went with an acquaintance to a party at one of those churches that doesn’t really acknowledge the existence of Halloween, yet still feels compelled to host a party around that date every year.  She emerged unscathed (and unconverted) and then decided to spend the night with the acquaintance, which was a big step.  Maybe she’ll make a new friend; she could use more.

This week is full of PTO drivel.  There is good news:  the school was moved from the “Unacceptable” (no kidding, that’s what it’s called) List to “Academically Acceptable” and finally the principal and teachers can sleep at night.  The whole system is a bunch of caca, I have to tell you, much as I like ratings and data and would like to have a useful state rating system .  I have been completely disillusioned by this process. 

And there is PTO drama:  Big Fall Festival is on Friday!  Bake Sale (no, not kidding about that, either) next week.  I will be exhausted and cranky--- well, I am already, truth be told.  This weekend, Ruby has the debut of her latest musical stage production: African Find.  It cracks me up that my kid is a composer and stage producer, but she is; thank you, Music Teacher Extraodinaire. 

On the weekend, Rod has his 20^th college reunion.  Mine was last year (he is actually older than me, but I am smarter, and therefore I finished college sooner, you see).  However, I know a lot of people from his year and therefore I have to worry about what if that cute guy I always sort of liked shows up, and what about that girl Rod went out with just enough times to make me jealous while I was studying abroad, and what on Earth am I going to wear, and how twenty years have not been precisely kind to my looks, and maybe I should  have pursued an actual-capital C-Career so I’d have something to talk about…. Which will likely end up being stress all for naught, and I will just be happy to see people I haven’t seen in a long time.  But I can’t help myself.   Is it too late for Botox and a partnership-track job?

 

 

Slacker

Today, I had a conference with Carl’s teacher.  I figured it was as much for her benefit, as a first year teacher wanting to show that she was communicating well with parents, as it was for me.  Carl seemed to have been doing just fine, after all.

Hah.  Carl is doing just fine at school, better than fine, even -- but only when he feels like it, apparently.  He’s not getting as much work doneas he should  every day, just some of the days.  He and his buddies have a mutual distraction society going on, and it sounds like Carl is also good at the procrastination/daydreaming/loafing when he’s not interested in the task at hand.   Also, contrary to what he told me, he does have handwriting practice to do, he just hates doing it and avoids it.  The teacher confirmed my impression that Carl’s handwriting, while not out of developmental range or raising questions of a disability like Ruby’s, needs work and makes it harder to see how good his work is otherwise.

All of which kind of disappointed me to hear, because I had thought he was being appropriately productive at school.  So I gave Carl trite Parental Lecture No. 745, the one about I Know You’re Capable of More Than That, No. 123 (I Expect You to Do Your Best), No. 328 (Sometimes We All Have to Do Work That’s Tedious and Dull), and probably a couple of others. The teacher is going to look for things that interest Carl to use as potential carrots, and asked that we alert her to the same.  I am going to nag him about staying focused and not chatting the whole day away.  The possibility of extra homework to make up for unproductive classroom days was raised as well.  In fact, the teacher is going to start giving him the second grade homework, so that it will be a little more challenging for Carl (the stuff he’s been doing is a joke, really).  There are also some special projects for the gifted kids (and he is one, even if he doesn’t always act like it) coming up, which may also make him more motivated. 

Ruby is also having less than her best week, academically speaking.  She brought home a report card that couldn’t be any better; all the grades, which are very vague at this age, were at the top of the scale.  And then accompanying the report card was a note that said “Based on the results of recent testing, your child is in danger of failing math.  Therefore, she is required to attend a weekly tutorial….”  Which seems weird, given the excellent report card, but Ruby says there was some beginning of the year assessment test and everyone who scored under 80% has to go to tutorials.

Which sent poor Ruby into a giant sobbing freak out.  First, she’s upset because her after school hours are already very tightly scheduled, and this is one more block of time she has to give up.  Second, although a ton of kids at school have to go to this and similar tutorials, neither of her two best friends do, so she gets to watch them going off to have fun without her.  Third, Ruby’s problem isn’t so much math, as it is dysgraphia.  I don’t think her understanding of math concepts is lacking at all, and her knowledge of “math facts” has improved dramatically this school year, but she just has trouble with transposing numbers, mixing up + and -, working too quickly and not checking her answers, etc.  But the school, and really, the whole district and the whole state, is running scared about standardized testing and the new test that is being rolled out in spring.  It’s expected to be much, much tougher than the one everyone is used to.

Ruby says she’s also going to get an additional, sizeable chunk of weekly homework in reading or writing, aimed at trying to raise her performance on that part of the big test from merely comfortably passing to “commended.”  Which would be lovely, in principle, but I’m not sure she needs the added pressure.  And all of this is so anti-Montessori, it’s like a sick academic joke.

Otherwise, things are chugging along.  Carl keeps saying “ain’t” in an affected way in general conversation, which would make me laugh, if it didn’t make me cringe every time.  I hope it is a short-lived phase. We found a place to have the PTO’s major fundraiser gala next spring.  I had my lovely PTO board meeting, where we resolved very little, but instead came up with a couple more projects (for me) to implement.  I went shopping with the chair of the quickly-approaching fall festival to buy supplies, I wrote newsletters, I asked people to do hard work for free and to give money: the usual.   

Ruby and Rod made mozzarella cheese on Sunday.  The end result was truly identical to the supermarket kind, so I was impressed.  It made for good pizza, too.

I took Ruby to have her wart removed last week.  There is no new painless magic way to do it.  That liquid nitrogen looked extremely painful, but she was very brave.  We go back for a check in a few weeks, but I am hoping it won’t require another zap.   

Rod and I were all set to allow Carl some major freedom Saturday morning.  He wanted to go to a little park a few blocks away, by himself, on his scooter.  I grilled him about his name and phone number and stopping to watch for cars and the guidelines for dealing with strangers, and he said all the right things.  I took a deep breath and loosened the apron strings.  Secretly, I figured I would white-knuckle it at home for 20 minutes and then sneak over and spy on him.  I made him promise to wear his helmet.  He thinks it’s unnecessary for scootering, especially when he’ll stop so safely at all the corners.  I assured him I was worried about bad drivers, not him, and that’s why we have the helmet rule. 

Then I walked out to the garage and saw Carl leaving without the helmet. I had him come back and made him put it on.  I think I said this was his big chance and if he ever wanted me to trust him again before he turned 26, he needed to follow the rules.  And then he scootered away. 

A minute later, Rod went out the front door and saw Carl, zooming down the street, helmet off.  Busted!  A long day of self-righteous sobbing about how we don’t trust him ensued.  I’m not even sure he learned his lesson, the little twerp. 

For Halloween, Ruby is going to be Athena.  She and Rod made a chiton, and she got a wig with some gray in it and a little stuffed owl to ride on her shoulder.  Carl is going to be….something.  He won’t say exactly what, except he says I know what it is.  But if I did ever know, I’ve forgotten.  I think it has something to do with the karate outfit he made me buy him a few weeks ago, or at least the belt from it.  Maybe it involves wearing more than one belt, come to think of it.  Carl has never really been much for Halloween costumes, so I am trying hard not to get too worked up about it, either.  He’s happy with his plan, and we can always figure something out that day, right?

 

All a Blur

People are crazy.  The PTO job has taken a slight turn for the ugly, with one pair of volunteers, each critical to the cause in their own way, fighting in the corner; others burned out from a job that’s too hard and has taken too long, or competing responsibilities in their home lives; another being driven insane by bureaucracy; one organizing a big event with a partner who’s not acting like a partner....and so on.  Human resource management is not my strong suit, let’s say, and I am somewhere between very stressed and just plain burned out on the whole thing.

This week has been so busy it’s silly, even compared to last week and what’s coming up next week.  On Friday, we hosted a going away party for some friends who are moving.  Another friend sent the invitations, so I didn’t really study the guest list, and I don’t know exactly how many people that was.  But oh, my, was our house full to the top.  I told Rod I was surprised the cops didn’t stop by, but he said no, not even close: we’d have to play the music a lot louder, or have a lot more drunks throwing up in the bushes for that. But it was an impressive event, for a bunch of geeky old people with kids. 

I think everyone had fun, including me.  We started at 5 and the last guests left a little after midnight.  The kitchen overflowed with potluck food and the recycling bin with bottles of all kinds.  I was so tired when we started that I was wobbly, thus I was practically incoherent at the end, and not just from the wine.  I am sure I will be hearing about things I said but don’t remember for weeks to come.   It turns out we can just barely wedge one of those inflatable moonwalk things into our backyard.  I rented one, thinking it would get some of the kids out from underfoot, which it did. But it also gave them new ways to get rowdy.  Carl got a bloody nose; he says a four year old girl hit him, but I think they just collided. Luckily, I think that was the worst injury sustained and after that, the dads took turns policing the bouncy until the rental company hauled it away 

Saturday morning, I tidied up and vacuumed about six bags of ground up chips from the floor while Rod organized a group of dads to transport some very heavy picnic tables they had made to school.  Then I had a PTO meeting about some upcoming events, and later I took Ruby shopping to buy her friend a birthday present.  Rod and I went to an Oktoberfest party while the kids were at the birthday party (nice when you can work that out) and then I helped a friend with the silent auction at her kid’s preschool gala.

Sunday was devoted to PTO work and Legos and Ruby’s homework, more party clean up, and feeding and bathing children.  Rod moved more tables and led his first Girl Scout troop meeting, and tried in vain to fix the chandelier that came crashing down at one point during the party on Friday (he thinks he needs to replace the dimmer switch, too).

Monday, I got my hair done, dealt with a bunch of PTO blah blah blah, and then hosted the Monday night post-dance class dinner party (Whole Foods premade-meatloaf-for-busy -people, homemade macaroni and cheese, Brussels sprouts, salad; plus naked pasta and chicken fingers for some of the picky little guests). It must have been fun, because our friends stayed until pretty late, leaving me to deal with Ruby’s resulting exhaustion-generated homework tantrum. 

Don’t tell her I told you, but Ruby shyly expressed a desire for a cell phone.  I told her not for a few more years, because I don’t see the need.  As we talked about it, it became clear that she really only wants it to play games and check her email and look cool in front of her friends; there aren’t that many people she would call and texting isn’t compatible with dysgraphia.  I would get her an iTouch or maybe a netbook to use around the house at Christmas, so she doesn’t have to negotiate computer time with me and Carl, but then Carl would want one, and he’s already so far down the screen time addiction rabbit hole that we just can’t go there. 

In another sign of maturity, Ruby had her first zit.  It was tiny and didn’t last long, but still, it was there.   I feel bad that she has to be related to me, because I’ve had serious acne since about age 10, and I would hate for her to go down that road, too.  But on the other hand, I’ve learned a lot about treating pimples, so I gave her the skin care pep talk and a little bit of my favorite prescription zit-killing goo.  She’s also complaining about a wart on her hand, and she finally agreed I could take her to the dermatologist and get it removed, so I set that up and now I just hope it they’ve come up with a less painful method than when I had it done as a kid.  Ruby also thinks she has athlete’s foot, which isn’t my thing and kind of grosses me out, but I faked parental competency and bought her some stuff for that, too.  I curse those cheap fake leather shoes she’s been wearing.

This week, the children will be hating me because I’m going to make them help out with and attend the PTO spaghetti dinner (I’d rather skip it myself, but holy cats, I’m in charge), and sit through the monthly school Shared Decision Making Committee meeting and the PTO board meeting all in one day. I also get to be the bad guy to enforce Rod’s new rule for Carl (Well, it’s really a joint rule, but since it has to do with going to school in the morning, it’ll mostly be Rod invoking the rule and then me getting to apply the penalty in the afternoons). 

Otherwise, not much is going on.  I have a raging case of stress-induced insomnia and a painful-ish TMJ flare up going on...I wonder why?  Rod and I are switching banks and that’s a big pain, and I need to figure out what we’re doing about Halloween costumes, and holiday travel, and tax planning, and how to keep the possums out from under the rental house.