Holpineville

Stuff I Should Have Written Down Before Now

In no particular order:

Last Day

It’s the last day of school, and my kids have done no actual school work for two or three weeks, I think.  I’m not upset about it, because they did do some things at the end I’d been campaigning for the teachers to do all year:  arts workshops, field trips, special projects.  Ruby spent a lot of time in the school library, too.  Today, Carl took chips and a Crockpot full of queso for his class party, and Ruby took chips and the stuff to make guacamole.  Tonight, of course, they want to go out for Tex-Mex. 

I have to help sell t-shirts and yearbooks and then take money to the bank for the PTO after school, so the kids won’t be getting out early.  And tomorrow is a teacher appreciation luncheon I’m sort of in charge of, and I still have some PTO letters and accounting to wrap up, so I guess school isn’t really out for me yet.

Score One for Mom

Ruby reports that she did well on the civics portion of the Stanford 10 (standardized exam), because “it was all that stuff you’re always talking about!” So, score one for Mommy, always blathering on about the rights and the Constitution, flags, presidents, patriotism, elections, political parties, and whatnot.  I hate to think my major contribution to her education is a question or two on some bubble-filling test, but at least I made an impression.

Or Maybe Not

Rod and I are often impressed with how smart!  How insightful!  our Carl is. Except, of course, when he’s not. We were talking over some upcoming dates when we got an idea that Carl (seven, going on eight, or first grade, going on second) wasn’t so clear on the basic concepts; and we asked him to recite the months of the year.   He couldn’t do it.  He managed the alphabet, but it was a strain. The Pledge of Allegiance was iffy, too. Please, tell me it’s okay to be going into second grade and still unable to recite “January-February-March-April-May-June-July-August-September-October-November-December.”  His teacher says that's pretty normal in a classroom environment where they don't memorize that stuff, that most of the kids in the class were challenged by a project she gave them that involved putting their work from this year into chronological order.  But I'm not so sure. 

Music Recital

Ruby had a music studio party, instead of a “piano recital,” because it’s a little less formal that way.  Ruby does play a little piano at her lessons, but because she wasn’t practicing consistently enough to make much progress, she started doing music theory with her teacher, and she’s been composing a lot.  They debuted one of her compositions at the recital and it was nice—more modern  than I would have expected.  We had wine/punch/cookies, and then mingled with the other families while the kids and some of the dads had a drumming circle. 

Dentist

By some miracle, neither child had any cavities at their dentist visit last week.  Ruby needs to lose about three more teeth and then it’s time for orthodontics.  Yippee.  Given how much she complains about even the slightest discomfort, I’m going to need ear plugs for the duration of the treatment. 

Carl is sporting an ever-widening gap between his front teeth that kind of bugs me, but the dentist says it’s just that his face is growing and we’ll just have to wait and see how things work out and see what needs to be adjusted in a few years.

Finally, Kitchen Help that’s Helpful

As Ruby’s extracurricular commitments for the semester have been winding down, she’s found herself with a little extra time and energy.  She’s been reading a lot, and trying to see her friends more.  But she’s also been cooking dinner once a week or so, which is awesome because I sure get tired of it.  I actually like to cook, when it’s a voluntary act, but the expectation to produce a tasty, nutritionally balanced meal that 4+ people find acceptable around 6 p.m. every night is very wearing on me.  Also, although I am a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, you wouldn’t know it to hear my kids talk, and having them tell me how awful the food is every night, how it’s not what they wanted, how it was better last time or X makes it better at his house, or “why do we always have this,” or “but I wanted Y!” doesn’t make me any more excited about feeding them.

Ruby’s cooking is about as good as you can expect from a nine year old:  pastas of various kinds, soups, an omelet thing she likes to make but not eat, tofu, frozen dumplings, salads, odd drinks from various children’s cookbooks, and occasionally forays into pad thai, spring rolls, and special desserts.   She sorely needs some more knife training and practice, once in a while she misreads a recipe, she has the same problems we all have with trying to get several things ready at once and cleaning up as we go, and just like her mother, she hates having people give her advice on what to do and how to do it, even if they’re right.  But she’s developing some skills and experience, and I’m just delighted she’s doing it from time to time; there’s nothing better than having your kid say “Mom, I’m doing it.  It’s fine. You go sit down and read or something!”  Yes, ma’am, I believe I will, thanks, sweetie…

Carl cooks occasionally, too, although mostly in the special-project sense:  he has his own recipe for spicy peanut sauce, he makes a good Caesar salad, he likes to bake cookies, and he helps out when we cook as a family. 

Callie, Bubbles and Whiskers

Ruby has two friends who have fish tanks.  One is a serious hobbyist (or at least, her dad is and she helps) and the other is a serial collector of pets of all kinds.  And I should have seen this coming, because of course, Ruby decided she truly, deeply needed more fish, too.   (You will recall that she already has a long-suffering blue male beta named Lillian). 

So Ruby asked, and asked, and researched, and discussed, and asked, and negotiated.  Mommy the Pushover was okay with the pet aspect of the fish, but not so excited about the mess and work factors.  Rod, so opposed to dogs, additional cats, and most other critters, was somehow okay with fish….I think it’s that there’s a pump and some machinery involved, frankly. 

And then we debated how big a tank Ruby could get (20 gallons) and where it would be (it ended up on her dresser, which I am completely not happy about, but I couldn’t come up with a good alternate solution).  And What Fish to Get took weeks of talking, reading, debating,  and because it was Ruby making the decision, crying. 

I was suggesting Ruby wait and get fish as a birthday present, because her birthday is coming up and that way her friends could buy her some gear, if not actual fish.  But no, that was Much Too Long To Wait, and to be honest, she just wore me down.    

One day, my resolve snapped and we just went and got the stuff.  Ruby was pretty impatient about getting the fish, but she waited the bare minimum for the water to do whatever the water in a new aquarium does.  And then we brought home Callie (calico bug eyed fantail goldfish), Bubbles (black bug eyed fantail goldfish) and Whiskers (small bottom-dwelling catfish that I hope eats goldfish poo as promised).  I honestly don’t think they’re living very nice lives, up there in the not-pristine water in Ruby’s hot room, but they haven’t died yet. 

Cross Fingers

Rod is having surgery on his head next week.  His ENT is taking another crack at un-deviating his septum and he’s having that (rumor has it, painful) thing done to the back of his throat/palate that’s supposed to cut down on apnea/snoring.  He’s hoping it will all result in being less dependent on the CPAP machine and the couple thousand dollars in allergy drugs he takes annually. 

I am just dreading it because:

1) Unavoidable anesthesia risk

2) Someone poking sharp objects around in the vicinity of my beloved’s brain makes me tense

3) Rod is not such a great patient.  It takes him forever to come out of anesthesia, he’s groggy and cranky and doesn’t communicate for days, he fainted on me once, post-surgery, and boy did that suck, and he’ll be lying around feeling crummy for a good week or so and I won’t be able to fix it.

4) I am a rotten nurse.  Not only can I not catch Rod’s 200 lb. carcass when he faints, when he’s sick, I don’t really know what to do to help, beyond a cold compress, a drink, and medication on schedule.  I tend to rebound from medical stuff pretty quickly, and I figure everyone else should do the same.  My general thing for sick people is to provide what aid I can for a day or two, and then I somehow expect them to buck up, take a painkiller, and get back to regular life.  Having kids has made me a little more patient, I suppose, but I know I will still be feeling inadequate to the job next week.

5) It complicates the delicate childcare/carpool schedule, which falls into my domain to sort out, even if it’s not my surgery.

6) Yes, once again, we’ll be hitting that high dollar healthcare deductible this year.  There is just never a cheap year.

I Tried, Really I Did

As I was coming out of my PTO presidency haze, I started thinking again about how I need to exercise more:  weight management!  Muscle tone!  Cancer prevention!  Good example for children!  Better sleep!  More energy!  But as usual, no exercise activities sounded very appealing, and the idea of going from deconditioned to a regular exerciser was daunting.

At the same time, a couple of my friends who are generally with me in Don’t Like to Exercise camp independently started doing this program called Couch to 5K.  The premise is that you start very slow, jogging for a minute at a time, and build up over nine weeks to a point where you can run a 5K race.  The more I heard about this, the more it started to sound like a good idea:  I could get up early and do it for 30 minutes and be done, so it would be efficient in terms of time and calorie burn.  Surely I could jog for a minute, right?  And then I could be in reasonable shape by July!

And then I decided I would try to get Ruby to do it with me.  She desperately needs to get more exercise; I think it would help with her weight, with her self esteem, with her energy levels.  She’s very uncoordinated, but it doesn’t matter so terribly much with jogging. 

So we started doing it.  The first day was really hard, but the ones after went pretty well.  Ruby was remarking on how her days went better on the ones we got up early to jog. 

But.  My friend the physical therapist heard about it and strongly told me not to do it.  “I just think it’s too much pounding, running is probably not the right thing for you.”  Then I had my annual general doctor visit, and she basically said the same thing.  “Yes, you really need to exercise, I am totally in favor of that, but with your joint issues, something else would be better, trust me on this.”  “But!” I said, “I’ve lost so much weight!  And I have orthotics now!” 

And then my knees chimed in with a resounding OUCH, and I limped for ten days, and so I guess it’s official, my jogging/running days are over.  I am sadder about it than I expected to be.  It’s just hard to be officially too old and too broken to do something normal people can manage.  Ruby and I are going to keep walking fast a few times a week instead, I think, and I’ve been taking every opportunity to do laps at the pool even though it’s wrecking my hair, but it’s not the same in terms of cardio workout.  

 

The Honorary Girl

Let me start by saying that I'm not really back to the blog, officially. I'm still snowed under with PTO work (five days until the handoff! but there will be some transitioning to do in May), and kid activities and life in general.

Also, my computer keeps having....spasms. Yes, spasms, and it cuts into my productivity. Rod has persuaded me to order $50 in parts that might fix it, instead of chucking it out the window like I wanted to. The parts finally arrived, but now, Rod is gone. So I am waiting for them both to be in the right place, in the right mood at the same time. Cross your fingers.

Rod has just departed with a load of 9-10-11 year old girls for a campout, following the local Girl Scout council's annual fundraiser luncheon, at which Ruby and a couple of the other girls were in the honor guard. This was a huge family production, with lots of honor guard practices in the last couple of weeks, and new clothes! Rod had to get a navy blazer (hard to find in his monkey weird size) and a Girl Scout tie (the official male uniform apparel) and Ruby had to buy some new shoes (you may be shocked, but her feet keep growing) and some khakis that button and zip, and you'd think that kind of pants was poisonous, to see her try them on. Rod updated her sash with all her new patches, badges, pins and whatnot, too. She wore an "historical" uniform for the ceremony, but she had to change into the real uniform after. Oh, and the "historical" uniform? It was from 1996-1997. I feel so old.

An anonymous source told me Rod was being nominated for a Girl Scout volunteer award, but if he was supposed to get it today, he didn't. Maybe it comes later, though, so don't ask/tell him about it. "What, for having a penis?" I joked, when the source told me; after all, he's only been the leader for a year.

But seriously: Rod is rocking as a Girl Scout troop leader. He's almost doubled the size of the troop this year, patiently recruiting girl after girl. He's planned camping trips, activities, and meetings. He goes to endless training sessions and planning meetings. He helps Ruby sell cookies. Last weekend, his Girl Scout boss persuaded him to absorb a whole other troop, too, so his empire just more than doubled. The good part about the new troop? It has some useful parent volunteers. The bad part about the new troop? It has one parent so crazy I'm frightened for poor Rod. I want him to wear a wire to every meeting and have friendly witnesses to every interaction.

Anyway, for a guy who used to not like kids, he's doing an awesome job. And, I think I've identified future PTO leadership material here, people.

In other Rod news, he had to pack up and move his office to a new building this week, and of course he was all fussy about wanting his cabinets and shelves arranged differently from everyone else's, and there was actual work he had to do, too. He's beginning to look like he needs a break.

Carl and I are having some time alone this weekend. It should suit him, as he seems to be going through a little Oedipal phase; he gives me long, full body hugs and asks to sleep with me. Unfortunately, we have a full day tomorrow: the all-school play date I am nominally in charge of, and then Ruby comes back from camp for a rehearsal for next weekend's performance, and we have to drive her back to camp after that.

I can't promise to blog regularly or at all often, but the fact that I'm even thinking about it is a sign that there might be some light at the end of my tunnel.

Surfacing Briefly for Air

When did ordinary life get to be too much for me?  That is the question, but it’s obvious that I am way past Whelmed. 

News:

We had spring break in Chicago.  It was lovely.  We spent much of the first few days with Rod’s brother and family.  Our nieces put up with Ruby and Carl with grace and kindness, to my relief, because I know the little brats can be hard to take sometimes and they don’t see each other all that much.  The kids and I then hung out with sister Heather for a couple of days while Rod made minor improvements and repairs to her apartment (condo?)  and it was also lovely.  Carl went into an obsessive spiral about collecting those squashed pennies you can get at museums and tourist attractions, and Ruby bought a horse (yes, a horse!) at American Girl, where we had a tea that was very much fun.  We went to the aquarium and the zoo and the planetarium and the science museum.  The kids had a sleepover with their cousins one night, and a movie and pizza party with Auntie Heather another (i.e., Date Night for Me and Rod).   Sister Carla worked the whole time, but I did catch a glimpse of her once.  We spent too much money, but we had a good time, and we rented this really cool apartment, so if you ever need a place to stay in Lakeview in Chicago, I can tell you about it.

Then we came back and went to the Livestock Show and carnival, where all Carl wanted to do was try to win stuffed animals (which is possible, but expensive).  We tried to have a long-anticipated sleepover with some of his pals, and it didn’t work out and he was very sad.    Then it was school gala week, with the big event this past weekend.  Everything I have to write about it makes it all sound so smooth, and it wasn’t.  The day before, I had a nail in my tire, just as I was set to transport gala stuff, in the middle of all the last minute nonsense that usually happens.  Ruby had an inconvenient tutorial on Gala day, and decided at the last minute that we really needed to host her friend’s guinea pig for a weekend visit, too.  Carl came down with a high fever the night before, so I spent about $225 on babysitting and a lot of time worrying about my poor sick baby from a distance (who seems to be fine now).

So, the Gala: the hall was cheap but ugly, and Rod worked exceedingly hard, along with several other people, making it presentable. And in the end, it was pretty much of a flop.  Or, I guess I should qualify:  it was a truly fun, great party, everything went smoothly….but donations to the auction were down, attendance was down, and if we are lucky, we made about half the money we hoped to. Big, Big, Ouch.

Rod somehow rallied enough to take his Girl Scout troop bowling the day after, and he has been really busy at work the past few weeks.  He’s going out of town for part of this week, and then next weekend there’s a Girl Scout campout, which he gets to plan and execute up to the point of sleeping, but then he gets ejected for being male.  There’s some scary little Thing growing on his head, which I promptly freaked out about after I found it while groping him one evening. I immediately made him a dermatologist appointment , but he hasn’t had it yet, so I am still worrying about the Thing in my free time.  With my extensive medical knowledge and Googling abilities, I have convinced myself it’s not melanoma, but I can’t rule out squamous or basal carcinoma, although I am faking calm well, if I do say so myself.  It’s probably just, you know, a zit, or scar tissue from getting nicked with the hair clippers too many times. 

Ruby is somewhere between fine and a big mess.  She has a big standardized test tomorrow and Wednesday and there’s a good chance she won’t pass, although the state has yet to define what passing is.  It’s a writing test, and while she can churn out a coherent paragraph when she’s in the right mood, and especially if she gets a little help with spelling, being under pressure is sort of the kiss of doom.  Plus, spelling counts and a paragraph is probably not enough, content-wise.  She’s also having a lot of social anxiety lately, feeling like she only has one friend and very lonely.  I, Queen of Lonely Outcastdom as a child, am no help at all and feel lousy for not being able to fix this for her.  Ruby is also quite busy, with her four fully-booked afternoons every week, homework, Girl Scouts, and yoga on Saturdays. 

I am fighting off a virus and soldering on through PTO duties, which don’t seem to be getting any easier, even as I near the end of the school year.  April is going to be crazy busy, but with a couple of fun trips in it, too.  I am working on plans for the summer; day camp and travel scheduling seems to be harder every year, and I need to plan a trip with Rod but we have spent way too much money this spring.   And I have to hurry up and get taxes done this week, joy of joys.  

Uncle

Do you know how much I love you?  So much that I’m staying up writing this, when I could be tackling something on the Horrible To-Do List, or maybe even sleeping, not that I sleep so well lately. 

I’m not sure where to begin to fill you in on things here.  My life is a complete scheduling wreck and all I can do is try to hang on for a few more months with reasonable diligence.  Then the PTO job should wind down and some of Ruby’s stuff will be over, and maybe I will get a grip.  I am in a rotten, depressed mood about the whole thing, but I think I just have to endure and try to sleep more in the mean time. 

Some  notes:

Ruby lost a molar this week.  She’s read all of the Lemony Snicket books in the space of about three weeks.  I can’t see how she can manage it that fast, but if you ask her a plot detail, she knows it.  She spent much of the last two weeks at school taking “benchmark” tests, which are basically a dry run for the big standardized test at the end of this month.  This whole deal just infuriates me, as it’s a huge, stressful waste of everyone’s time and neatly illustrates the horror of standardized testing gone wrong. 

So maybe it’s no surprise that Ruby cried over her math homework every night this week, and didn’t finish it once, even though one night I told her to take off, as a gift.  She still cried.  She cried in class today, when her teacher told her she needed to do a “writing prompt” (short essay exercise) that apparently she didn’t want to/feel like/was daunted by and so she did a math problem instead.  On the positive side, she and her tutor apparently found some magic key in her brain and she’s on track to get more spelling words right on her test tomorrow than she ever has before.  The secret trick?  She spells them in sign language.  I have no idea why this is working for her, but let’s hope it isn’t a fluke. 

Carl has decided he might finally get a haircut next month, because the weather is getting warmer, you know, but we’re not rushing into anything.  He woke up in the middle of the night with a really gruesome bloody nose; I cleaned him up as well as I could in the dark, but I was still finding drips and spatters this afternoon.   He is working on an invention for school, and he’s doing it so independently I’m not really sure what it is.  Rod helped with some patent research, though. 

To give you a few newsreel flashes, for Valentine’s Day I gave Rod a six pack and a balloon.  I have no excuse at all for being so lame, really, except that life overwhelms me right now.  He gave me this elaborate gear-heart thing he made on his 3-D printer, which is sort of symbolic of our relationship—he puts huge amounts of thought, time and effort into something  that never would be on my wish list.  Anyway, it was an unexpected treasure.  We had a date the weekend before that was solidly good, if not completely stellar.  Ruby’s class didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at all, poor dear (we think her teacher is a distant cousin of Scrooge).  Carl’s class had a little party.  He didn’t like the Valentine cards I got him to take to his friends (“too dorky!”) and so he made his own on the computer, using the draw function in Word and some spaceships he Googled up.  And he carefully put names on each one, and then neglected to hand them out in class. 

We had a workday at the kids’ school a couple of weekends ago.  I cleaned out the Art Room, which is really the Mouldering Art Supplies and Debris Room, since the kids don’t actually have art instruction or art time anymore, thanks, State Legislature!  Anyway, if I was any good at that sort of thing, my house would not look the way it does, and it was very hard work. Ruby was a big help that day in another part of the workday, laminating and cutting out classroom materials, and sharpening 400 pencils.  She was excited to be allowed into the “No Students Allowed!” workroom for the day.  Carl went to Lego Club instead, but you could have predicted that. 

I had a birthday that was pretty darn good, or at least the blow of getting to be THIS old was softened somewhat.  Rod bought and wrapped a present, made dinner reservations and booked a babysitter, all by himself, and it was awesome.  Ruby did my hair in an up-do that stayed up, Carl gave me make up tips while was getting ready, and they both paid me meaningful compliments using their sincere voices.  And my present is so embarrassingly cool I’m not even going to tell you what it is, because it’ll sound like bragging.  (Oh heck, it’s an iPad, the super-fancy pants model.  Completely unnecessary, but I love it to death…so does Carl, of course.) 

Another cool thing that happened:  Alice Waters came to the kids’ school, and I got to have lunch with her.  Yes, Alice Freakin’ Waters, people.  Yes, the legend in her own time, Chez Panisse, eat local, eat seasonal, Edible Schoolyard, that Alice Waters.  All my foodie friends are insane with jealousy.  My only regret is that I am far too camera shy to have properly inserted myself into the photos of the big day.  I’m just a big lurking thing in the background. For the record, she says the trick with kids is to get them cooking the veggies without adults in the process and then serving them to each other.  

Only a little less cool:  Ruby went to a big-deal concert one weekend with her music teacher and some other students.   The teacher said she could bring a parent, but Ruby wanted to go without us, which I thought was mature and I was so tired, my feelings were not hurt.  Last weekend, she and I went to another event, a taiko drum performance, a plan that she had somehow latched onto when she saw a preview for the show on the Internet.  I decided to say yes and spring for the rather pricey tickets because she rarely asks for something like that, and she takes a drumming class, so I thought it was fitting.  It was a very good show, and I felt badly that we didn’t take Carl, because he might even have enjoyed it. 

Last weekend was all about Frito pie.  Rod and Ruby were busy all Saturday getting ready for the annual father-daughter Girl Scout dance.  Their troop was hosting, so there was a lot of work.  This year was a sock hop theme.  Rod got industrial helium tanks, and made a cardboard jukebox prop, and the whole troop made felt poodle skirts (although Ruby’s was a cat skirt, not a poodle skirt).   Several people contributed food for the chili and Frito pie menu, but Ruby was in charge of the vegetarian chili, so we made a huge vat.  The next day, there was a fundraiser for the playground renovations we’re doing at the kids’ school, featuring live music and what else but Frito pie?  So I made another couple of vats of vegetarian chili, some others made the meat kind, and I bought obscene quantities of Fritos.  We raised over $1100 in a couple of hours, so it must have been edible. 

This has been the week of a zillion meetings for me, and next week isn’t looking any better.  If the meetings themselves aren’t bad enough, arranging rides and supervision for the kids while I am at them is enough to kill me (“Ok, if you can pick up Carl and take him to X’s house, X’s dad can watch him until Rod can get home from work, as long as he leaves a little early, and assuming the boys are getting along that day and D is well enough to have company by tomorrow.  Teacher B said she could give Ruby a ride to Y, but she’ll have to arrive a little early, and then she’ll have to just miss activity C, because I can’t figure out how to get her there, and then J will pick her up and take her to Rod, unless I’m done by then and can collect her, or she decides to go to dinner with E….”)

This weekend, the middle school students at the kids’ school are having a huge yard sale to raise money for their field trip, so I’m helping in various thankless ways, and then naturally we also have to have a $#%^&&*! bake sale table at it, for the aforementioned playground renovation project, which is another thing to plan, promote, staff, and clean up after.  There’s also a laser tag birthday party this weekend, an art exhibit Rod really super-please wants to see (it’s mechanical, if you couldn’t have guessed) and Carl wants to go see the Lorax, the first time he’s ever asked to go to a movie theater (the big screen and loud noise scares him, although he won’t admit it anymore).  Then there’s spring break in another week, and then we come back and hello! It’s time for the school gala, which the PTO I am in charge of is hosting.  And then I have an Easter trip planned, and another long weekend after that.   

So, if you don’t hear from me, that’s what we’ll be doing. 

 

 

Swamped Once Again

I do apologize for not writing much, but I’m just a wee bit overwhelmed once again.

Rod is in a busy period at work and the Girl Scouts are taking a good deal of his time.  He has some work trips looming, too.  He and Carl have been hanging out on the weekends some; one day they made a really big foam bow and arrow set, and one morning was completely devoted to some Scooby Doo Wii game. 

Carl is fine.  He complains about his homework, but he does it well, once we break his spirit enough for him to get down to business.  He wants to have a playdate every single day and a sleepover every single weekend, and he’s angry when that doesn’t happen.  He’s also angry that the agenda for after school hours includes anything he doesn’t want to do (i.e., all of Ruby’s activities).  He needs to work on his personal hygiene and he eats tons.  He has certain outfits he favors (basically all the stuff Grandma gave him, although he loves it for itself, not for its origins; she just knows how to pick ‘em) and getting them off of him for washing is a challenge.  He also insists on sleeping with a certain quilt (again, coincidentally, from Grandma) every night…and with a certain towel (go figure), in a play tent that he has to fold himself up to fit into.  To my surprise, he wanted to watch the Super Bowl this year, so we did.  To my further surprise, he sustained his attention for the whole thing, and to my dismay, has been quoting the commercials to me ever since.  He decisively chose to root for the Giants and therefore was unsurprised when they won: “Well, yeah.  I told you they were the best one.” 

Ruby is also fine, but with moments of pretty awful. Someone has to supply the drama around here, and while I try, she’s always ready to pitch in.  I am increasingly concerned about her school situation, but unsure what to do about it.  I have a whole flock of worry components: 1) Ruby’s personal unhappiness/bad classroom fit/socialization, 2) the dysgraphia, 3) her odd teacher, 4) some days it seems that standardized testing pressure is turning our lovely Montessori program into a worksheet distribution center, 5) general concerns about the quality of public education.  Lately I’ve been Googling private Montessori schools, as I dream of a world without the TAKS or STAAR exams. 

Yesterday, I toured a well-regarded private school that specializes in otherwise-smart kids plagued by learning differences, which sounded like it might be a good place for Ruby.   I was afraid to really like it, because it costs about $28K a year, so it’s out of the question unless we win the lottery.  It was excellent in some ways: just six kids in a class, excellent use of adaptive technologies, and just the welcoming atmosphere of a place that understands the difficulties these kids face and what it does to their self image.  But it also seemed to be more than what Ruby needs; some of the kids were plainly autistic, severely ADHD, or just plain odd, and I just couldn’t see her making friends and fitting in.  It was also extremely not-Montessori like in operation, with everyone doing the same things at the same time, and that would be a huge shock for her.  So, no, it’s not the place for us right now. 

I looked at a part-time “classical” private school, because I like the idea of part classroom time and part guided home schooling, but there’s a huge religion component there that I can’t accept, and I don’t know how they handle dysgraphia/dyslexia.  There’s a Waldorf school nearby one can attend part time (and then part home school) but it’s new and I’m not convinced it’s any good,  and Rod thinks I’m completely nuts for even looking at alternatives.   I’m going to figure out a time I can go observe in Ruby’s classroom and some other upper elementary classrooms at her school, and get some more data points. 

Anyway, maybe it’s just a phase and I’ll feel better once the horrible testing is over at the end of March.  Ruby started with her new tutor last week and perhaps that will help.  The tutor is a teacher at the above $28K school, so she knows about dysgraphia and ADD and processing disorders.  She also teaches Ruby’s Brain Gym Yoga class on Saturdays, so they already have a comfort level. 

I am really busy with PTO all of the sudden, too: our treasurer quit unexpectedly, and there are a ton of events coming up.  My energy and interest level is flagging, but it all has to get done and then I need to help persuade some people to run the board next year.  I’m working on our plans for spring break and Easter and I really need to settle down and plot out the summer camp calendar.  Summer goes on forever this year, and the kids are getting picky about which camps they want to attend. 

This weekend, Ruby is going to a concert with her piano teacher and a few other students, she's trying to set up the inaugural meeting of a book club with some other girls, and she has yoga.  Carl is trying to set up a playdate that might last all weekend.  We have a birthday party to go to, and Saturday night Rod and I are going to a Valentine’s Day event at the Arboretum.  The kids are really cranky about having to go to the childcare room for this event, but I told them too bad—that they had to take one for the family and endure it; I’m sure the complaining will up the romance factor.  Apart from that, there are no Valentine’s Day plans at my house.  Carl needs to buy some valentines for his classmates, but now that he’s seven, he’s really just too cool for all that and he doesn’t want to, plus it would be so hard and take so long to have to write everyone's names... (did you just hear the whine? I hope so.)  

XXXOOO to you all. Celebrate well. 

 

Dispatch from Behind the Dryer

I’m stuck at home today, because the line of thunderstorms! and tornadoes! is rapidly approaching, and you know, I get freaked out about street flooding.  The TV weather guy said I should stay put, so I am.  I just hope it hurries up so that I don’t have to abandon the kids at school at pickup time, and I’m secretly hoping Ruby’s drumming class gets canceled this afternoon.  It’s a lovely class and I appreciate having time to sit there and read or answer e-mail while she’s in it, but Carl gripes about having to take her and so I end up having to entertain/discipline/distract him instead.

Date night Friday was an utter disaster.  Let’s see, we spent about $175, I think: $65 for the babysitter, $20 for the kid/babysitter pizza, $10 parking, $80 on dinner, $15 or so on after dinner beer…all so that Rod and I could make each other miserable.  If you had seen us at dinner (the one bright spot: good Indian food!) you’d have said, jeez, people, next time skip the reservations and book the couples counselor instead, because you’re a mess. 

It was infuriating, sad and depressing, although the more so because neither of us intended it to be that way.  And it took me until the next afternoon to buck up and decide to move on from the pain, by sheer force of will.  But by Saturday night, when the kids went to a sleepover at their pals’ house, everything was all kissy-kissy and Rod and I went out again and had an excellent time.  Truly, I swear.  Lovely.  So, if you are a person in a long-term romantic relationship and have ever had a rotten evening together when you intended the opposite, well, now you know you have company.  And if you can’t identify, that’s great and you are lucky, but don’t tell me about it. 

Moving on:

Ruby is almost done with occupational therapy.  Despite the massive expense and considerable hassle of getting to and from therapy, I wish she could keep going.  The therapist feels like she’s done what she can and that Ruby is doing okay, that she just needs to keep doing the exercises and techniques they’ve been working on.  I think am going to try to find her a tutor, someone with some dysgraphia/dyslexia experience, to try to cheerlead and keep Ruby organized and moving forward.  There are days when Ruby seems like a nice bright normal kid, but I am not good at dealing with the times when she’s not, and Rod isn’t, either. Having a third party helps us all maintain a little more perspective. 

I got some new software that I am hoping will help Ruby manage her math homework a little better and free me up from having to scribe for her every night, but I’m still sorting out how it works.  She also needs to practice her typing more and I want to get her some word prediction software, but it’s expensive, and she’s very negative about anything having to do with writing, so I’ve been holding off. 

Ruby just doesn’t seem very happy a good deal of the time.  She has a couple of close-ish friends and a huge pile of acquaintances, but not as many close girlfriends as she would like.  She likes her teacher, but not her class at school, and I don’t sense that she’s as captivated by what she’s learning as I would like.  Sometimes she’s very adult and perceptive and wise when you talk to her, and sometimes she’s so goofy and moody and clueless about social cues that I worry for her.  She enjoys her after school activities, but being so heavily scheduled also stresses her out.  She needs more sleep (despite our being fierce defenders of bedtime) and more exercise.  I am in so far over my head with her.

 

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.