Holpineville

Dog Wanted

Ruby keeps asking for help in finding a dog to borrow so that she can style its fur.  Something not too big, not too small, with longish curly fur.  Not too barky, not at all squirmy, definitely not one that jumps up on people or has ever been known to bite, and I suppose it would be a plus if it likes bows.  Of course, we don’t know any dogs like this, but Ruby seems so sure that I can conjure one up, and I just hate this feeling that I'm disappointing her.

Ruby had her first day of the first round of state-mandated testing today.  I, and the other parents, tried hard to play it cool and be supportive without adding pressure...which I have concluded is impossible to do.  Any comment, question, allusion about the test just gives the impression it’s important or difficult or that we have concerns about their ability to take it.  In any case, Ruby and her friends were plenty nervous, to hear it from the other parents.  Ruby was up early enough to watch some Curious George before school for the first time ever.  Another kid wet the bed for the first time in six years, and two of her pals were bickering in the carpool.  For what it’s worth, Ruby reports that today’s test, math, went okay, and she’s thinking the reading portion tomorrow will go even better.

Ruby has learned to play chess, or least a few rules of chess, and so I am trying to brush up on the rules.  It’s more complicated than I remembered.  Did you know I have also forgotten how to play checkers?   I suppose it doesn’t really matter, because I’m playing by the Rules According to Ruby, and she has ways of either winning or quitting while she’s “ahead.”

Already next week Ruby and Carl will find out who their teachers for the next three years are likely to be.  I delayed and dithered about going to visit classrooms and weighing in on who I thought the best ones would be, not wanting to interfere or make a wrong choice.  So I am instead relying on fate, destiny, and the judgment of their current teachers to make good decisions for them.  Please, don’t let it be Slytherin!

By way of updates, I am now a PTO president, no snickering, and thank-you-very-much.  To my shock, my general interest in the job, and my level of judgment and people managing skills did not magically multiply in the wake of the election, and so I am still floundering about.  This weekend there is an all school playdate, then the PTO board potluck.  Then we order and sell new t-shirts and the yearbook, and then we have a big teacher appreciation lunch, and all the while there are regular board meetings, newsletters, a Facebook page, and a website and banking arrangements and bookkeeping to figure out.  Should we have a pool party in a few weeks, or not? Do we order 288 t-shirts, or 294 t-shirts, and which colors and sizes?  Will we ever find someone to chair the big fundraiser next year?

The kids had Good Friday off, and so naturally we went bowling.  I won, but the kids did better than usual and no one fell and split his chin open this time.  We also did some gardening and hung out with friends.  The Easter brunch and egg hunt I wasn’t really in the mood to host turned out to be fun in the end!  We used the empty lot across the street for the hunt, the kids played Legos and soccer and who knows what all, and there was way too much food, just the way I like it. 

Looking forward, I am finally getting my hair fixed tomorrow, then I’m getting Rod’s car serviced, then Friday morning I’m getting up to watch that royal wedding!  Let me be clear:  I have absolutely no interest in, and absolute cynicism about the happy couple.  But I love a good pageant, a protocol spectacle.  The outfits!  The seating charts!  The order of events!  The crazy traditions!  It’s sick, really, but see what twelve years of protocol work will do to you?   And too, I remember sitting on the floor of my parents’ bedroom in the dark, early one morning in 1981, watching that other royal wedding, so there's a little nostalgia at work.  Now I just have to find a friend with cable I can get to invite me over at 4 a.m.  Rod thinks I am nuts, but he knows enough to not say so. 

Midnight at My Oasis

I couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t sleep….I seem to be having old lady insomniaaaaa.....bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am  I……But as long as I’m awake in the middle of the night, I suppose I could tell you about this week.

Think, for a moment, about those days at work when you are just so over your job.  No matter how much you love it generally, suddenly one day it is dull, thankless, not especially rewarding, and your soul fills up with despair.  You look around and you don’t have that much affection for the people you’re working with and you don’t feel terribly competent at your key tasks.  You are bored silly by everything that is normally sufficient to keep you going, and the parts you normally find boring are downright torture.

That was me, the early part of this week; housewife burnout, I suppose.  It’s not that I want a new job with a boss and deadlines and rules, but rather that once in a while, I feel a bit under stimulated by my current role in life.  If that happens when school is in session, I can usually fix it, by starting some new project, having lunch with a smart person, or maybe reading a snobby intellectual periodical.  However, with kids unscheduled this week, I didn’t have as many escape venues as usual, and then the kids were a bit challenging at times, and so I felt like I was an incompetent dolt at the very job that was boring me out of my skull. 

But I have snapped out of it a bit.  I took one night off to go to a meeting, and another to see a movie with friends (SATC2: extremely juvenile but also much better than I was expecting). Maybe I’m just adjusting to summer, right? 

So, this week the kids and I went to the Children’s Museum and the zoo and the library, hosted play dates and swam and did puzzles and played games and took the cat to the vet (he had the sniffles).  We went to a meeting at school about a project I’m involved in, where Carl was a complete angel in front of the principal for a good hour and then turned into an unreasonable beast child for the last 45 minutes.

Ruby’s “home school” hasn’t exactly been happening.  We haven’t abandoned the idea, but we haven’t worked out a routine where I can sit and give her the slavish attention she desires while she does her work.  We have planned her birthday party for the 19^th and she is driving me up a tree, obsessing over the details, asking how many more days, and pressing me to get X and Y ready for the big celebration.  I would be okay with her taking the lead on the plans, except her ideas aren’t really going to work the way she wants, and she won’t listen to gentle explanations of why not and what workable alternatives would be.  We have these endless looping conversations about how best to divide 12 kids into groups for a complicated cookie project and how she wants the whole schedule to go and the rules she wants everyone to follow.  I haven’t worked out exactly how I think it should go, but I guess I have some of my own firm ideas, because I can’t just smile and nod yes to what Ruby says.  Yes, it’s Control Freak v. Control Freak here, folks, and I just hope the birthday girl isn’t crying at her party this year. 

Carl must be going through a growth spurt because he’s eating us out of house and home.  He has also been watching too many Scooby Doo videos and playing the games on my iPhone a lot.  The kids have figured out how to work the TV enough to watch Saturday morning cartoons.  I am happy to allow this if it means they will let me sleep in or have Rod to myself for a while on weekend mornings.  However, Carl, and to a certain extent even Ruby, believes every product advertised on an infomercial is a miracle that we need to own, and that every salesguy is proclaiming the unvarnished truth.  He can quote verbatim excerpts of commercials for vacuum cleaners, kitchen equipment, blenders, toys, and more.  One morning he woke me up all excited, demanding that we call 1-800-Something or Other right away, because I needed to order a tool that cracks eggs (could that possibly be?).  I am trying to gently educate him about Advertising, but I would like to point out that Carl clearly has a very good ability to memorize information. 

Ruby suddenly has a favorite TV show:  “RR.”  “Mom, can I watch “RR” this afternoon?”  I thought maybe she meant “ER,” and although I have been known to find it gripping enough to keep myself on the treadmill at the gym to see the end, I didn’t think it was quite right for a kid.  But no.  “RR” is Rachel Ray. It is funny, seeing Ruby entranced by a cooking show.  She’s all excited about the next one, which will feature minestrone.

When they are not glued to the TV screen, and sometimes even when they are, the kids have been fighting, fighting, fighting.  Or they are baiting each other to start a fight, or they are sobbing self-righteously in the aftermath of a fight.  It has been horrible.  A few times a day, there is a long interlude of peace, harmony and cooperation, but then all of the sudden, they are back in combat.  I know I fought plenty with my sisters when I was little, and I don’t think this is really anything truly different.  Nonetheless, I’m finding it very frustrating to watch and I feel completely inadequate to deal with it.  Or do I mean, Manage it? Referee? Put a stop to it? Ignore? I’m not even sure what the right tactic is.

Okay.  I'm going to try to sleep again now.  Wish me luck.