Holpineville

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. 

 

 

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. 

 

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.  

 

Notes from School

Today, Ruby handed me this paragraph, which she wrote (actually, typed on the Alphasmart) at school.  It’s one of the longer things she’s written by herself, and it also made me laugh.  Don’t tell her I shared; I think she said it was only for me:

“I get all my work done for nothing but congratulations me and by the way I am a bad speller so all the long words I had to ask someone to spell and when I get home my mom ask how was my day and I reply “fine.”  Then I go upstairs and play with my dolls and read and that is only on Friday’s on Monday I go to dance and on Tuesday I go to therapy and on Wednesday I go to music and Thursday I go to music.  I take two music classes because one is drumming and the other is piano and then I come home and do my daily homework (math and spell) and eat dinner and go to bed.  My bed time is schedule is at 7:00 get ready at 8:00 we get in bed read in the dark at 8:30 we go to sleep.  In the morning we go to school at 8:00 but we get up at 6:10.  my teacher is name is Ms. T(omitted to protect the innocent, ed.).  In class, all I do is work, work, work with a brake for ancillary, lunch and recess.  We leave at 3:00 to go home. “

Yes, Ruby’s life is nothing but drudgery, that’s for certain.

And I got a written progress report for Carl from his new teacher a couple of weeks ago:

“Carl is settling into our classroom nicely.  He is still in the process of learning how to choose and complete work independently, but with guidance is willing to work with suggested materials. 

In Math, after a review of “Golden Beads,” Carl has been using the Stamp Game to solve addition problems.  Carl uses hands-on material like string beads and number lines to practice addition facts to 18 with a focus on ways to make ten.  He is also learning the names and values of coins and has been introduced to fractions and polygons in geometry.  Carl is a strong reader.  We recently completed the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI) with all first graders.  The TPRI is a one-on-one reading assessment.  By the end of first grade, students are expected to read grade level material at a rate of 60 words per minute.  Carl is able to read at a rate of 92 words per minute.  He is practicing in class with reading comprehension work.  Carl is drawn to math and science and excels in both those areas. 

It is a pleasure to have Carl in our class.  He is making friends and beginning to learn the routines and expectations of our community.”

Tomorrow is school picture day, so naturally Carl is in desperate need of a haircut AND has a big scab next to his eye, from poking himself with a stick over the weekend at the camping trip.  The camping was fun, although I couldn’t fully enjoy it, thanks to being in charge. 

I spent most of the last two days in my routine visit to Boob Hell.  Actually, it was a new location of Boob Hell, since I have switched mammogram providers, due to the bad ju-ju at the place I used to go to.  I spent much of yesterday waiting around for and then doing the Mammogram of Doom.  Naturally, I was invited back for an ultrasound today, because there are some areas that just weren’t clear enough, and “given your history, dear, we need to be certain everything’s okay…”  And the ultrasound was not much fun, either, but I am all happy and relieved because they didn’t order a biopsy this time, and no one at this mega-cancer specialty place says I have cancer.  I just get to go back and do it all again in six months, because “there is sure a lot going on in there.”  Blech. 

And now I am going back to my regularly scheduled PTO panic (next up:  meeting with Spanish speaking community, then a fundraiser dinner, then the mega-festival, plus some bookkeeping and newsletter writing and board meeting.)  Ruby and I are taking a beading class together this weekend and then next week we are hosting a really big party for some friends who are being transferred to Norway.  Rod is fine; busy at work and getting his Girl Scout troop going.  That’s the news. 

 

Pass the Celery

Poor Carl.  I took him in for his annual checkup and after waiting about two hours (must be a lot of viruses going around) we were told that he’s fine, but he grew too much.  He’s at the 95-97^th percentile on height, and the 95^th on weight.  I think he had a big breakfast that day, and he did need to pee when they weighed him, but still…he gained 11 pounds since last year.  And while he’s very dense and muscular, he got ‘only’ 5 inches taller, putting him at the 90^th percentile for BMI. 

Thus, Carl got the same your-BMI-is-kinda-too-high talk that everyone in the family has been treated to this year.  The doctor would like him to not gain weight while he gets taller—same thing she told Ruby, although the situation with Ruby is a little more serious.  Carl’s very upset that the doctor suggested he should curtail his screen time and cut way down on sugar and “white” foods.  I tried to stop the wailing by explaining to him that really, what he needs is more exercise, and maybe we should find him a sport?  He’s not really interested, however, so I guess I will just have to drag him to the park more or find some family activity we can all tolerate. I thought if he saw how much his friends liked their sports teams, he would want to play, but he steadfastly says no to soccer, baseball, hockey, swim team, gymnastics… His overall diet isn’t so bad, and I can tweak it further without him noticing too much, but he eats a lot, which is harder to control, and perfectly balanced is kind of impossible with most kids.

I hate this whole topic…as if dealing with my own weight issues weren’t enough.  I can accept that there is a certain genetic component, and obviously some bad habits involved; I certainly haven’t been spreading the exercise gospel.  But I also see a societal problem here.  My kids don’t roam the neighborhood outside the way I did at their age, and they can’t walk to school.  Eating out is more common and restaurant food comes in bigger and less healthy portions.  They don’t get as much recess and PE time at school as I did, and school work in general involves more sitting—i.e., you’re on the computer doing research rather than pulling books off the stacks at the library.  Every organized kid activity seems to involve a snack, even if it’s close to a mealtime, and junk food is much more available and much more child-marketed than it seems like it used to be.  And there are more fat kids, so while it’s less socially isolating to be fat, it also seems less horrible of a problem than when I was the fattest kid for miles and miles around. 

Otherwise, Carl is fine: vision excellent, hearing fine (which eliminates one possible reason he’s so darn loud).  He got his flu vaccine, a refresher course on the Heimlich maneuver, and a reminder to wear his seat belt/bike helmet/sunscreen/sunglasses; no lollipop this time, however.

Rod is back and a little tired from the trip, but basically fine.  Ruby has been moaning about feeling sick for days, but she never seems to get actually sick, so I think it’s just a way to vent stress and worry and tiredness.  She is a very busy kid these days.

I have been PTO busy: Carl and I sold lemonade at one fundraiser, and there was a festival meeting, and a moms’ night out.  Today, we concluded another big fundraiser sale, and this week we have the school-wide camping trip.  The weather had better cool off, because it’s been 95 humid and breezeless degrees lately and that might kill me if I have to endure it in the wild.  I finished my back physical therapy sessions (final outcome: underwhelming) and I paid my annual call on my ob/gyn, who thinks we should have another baby; unfortunately, Rod disagrees.  I got my first set of progressive lenses (you know, fancy bifocals), because I was consistently taking my glasses off to read my phone or eat dinner, and I couldn’t knit and watch TV at the same time.  But the adjustment period is pretty rough. It’s like being drunk, or up all night tired; the blurry thing is really bothering me.  I hope my eyes figure it out soon.  

Tomorrow the kids are out of school for Rosh Hashanah (well, officially, it’s the “fall holiday”) and somehow it turns out that I am babysitting four of their pals because their parents Big Important Jobs and Things to Do.  I don’t really mind, because as long as the fighting isn’t too intense, I can probably get some stuff done. 

 

The Upside

There are some benefits to having one’s spouse away on a business trip.  For example:

I get to drive his car, which is really my former car. I’m not one to fall in love with cars, but I do prefer that one to the minivan, at least on a dry day.  It’s quiet, it’s smaller, it has that door unlocking without taking the key out of your purse feature, and it consumes fuel half as fast as the minivan. 

The whole entire bed is mine, and I have total control of the blanket and fan levels.  If only I could shut those yowly cats up, the sleep would be awesome.

There is 86% less yelling and tension in the household and the children are more relaxed.  They even seem to get along with each other slightly better.  It is not that Rod yells much, although he’s definitely louder about voicing his displeasure and generally more demanding of the kids than I am.  I think it’s mostly because there is no other parent to appeal to or to drag into any disagreements.

And of course, that means my child management decisions are all final, with no questioning, no interference, and no countermanding, however well-meaning it might be, and I haven’t had to bite my tongue all week about anything Rod’s done or said.

Plus, the kids are much more huggy, snuggly and attached to me while Rod's gone.  At least, I'm pretty sure it's not my personal charm they're suddenly responding to.

There is 37% less laundry and 45% fewer dishes to wash.  Actually, the dish-doing is down about 70% this week because we have not been eating at home, owing to all those hideous evening meetings we’ve been having.  We can’t really afford to keep eating out like that, but given the schedule, it was the most practical option.

Okay, that’s all I can think of, and it’s not really enough counterbalance to everything else, like the fact that we miss Rod terribly much and all the time.  Rod starts his New Super Cool Assignment when he gets back from this trip, and I am already feeling twinges of sad, anxious and tired because I strongly suspect he’s going to be super-busy, stressed out, and traveling more. 

I guess we’ve been so busy I haven’t had to time to get really needy and mopey about Rod being gone.  There was a big PTO drama that consumed a lot of time and emotional energy this week, in addition to all the ongoing work.  I’ve been spending a lot of time driving around, too, from meeting to meeting and the kids’ school and various activities, and I’m sick of it.  Today Carl ‘forgot” his shoes when we went somewhere, and I nearly cried when I realized there was no alternative but to turn around and go home and get them. 

Ruby has been complaining off and on about not feeling good, but she hasn’t been sick enough to keep home.  Her class had the first weekly spelling list and related assignments this week, and boy, is Ruby in trouble.  Even with the modification of only having to learn 10 words instead of 20, it’s going to be extremely hard for her.  The words are much more challenging that the ones she had last year, and they involve more than one spelling rule at a time.  The math homework has been going reasonably okay (i.e., sobbing fits only one day out of three lately) and Ruby has been getting a lot done at school, so maybe I’ll be surprised at how well this goes, too, but I’m bracing myself for badly.

 

Dithering

I have a PTO board meeting tonight.  The agenda is three miles long and I am super tired already, having prepared for it.  One big problem is our upcoming school campout.  The park we’ve booked is having issues due to the end-of-the-world-drought and 100 degree heat I was telling you about:*  the big child-friendly lake is now an off-limits vaguely muddy dent in the ground,  and there’s a complete ban on any kind of fire.  Some potential campers say “cancel!” Some people say “so what? We can just go for the day, or it wouldn’t kill us to camp without fire.”  One mom knows a private campground that is apparently more relaxed about fire risks and it sounds nice, but is it worth the hassle and additional expense to switch, and can I sign on to someplace I've never seen personally?  I can’t decide and I change my mind every time I talk to someone else, so we’ll have to brawl it out tonight.

Stress compounder #1: Ruby stayed home sick today.  I don’t think she’s really all that sick.  Sure, she has a cold and she's grumbly about feeling nauseated.  But mostly I think she’s tired and feeling needy, judging by last night’s math tantrum and endless sobbing session.  However, some of our friends have been barfing, and she looks a little pitiful, so I just caved right in.   Now, she’s watching a kid sitcom I don’t really approve of on Netflix. I bet she has the nerve to ask me for lunch soon, too.

Stress compounder #2:  Rod was presented with a Massively Exciting Career Opportunity yesterday.  No, not at a different company and not in a different location, and it probably won’t even involve getting more money right away, but it’s Super Thrilling and a huge honor for him.  However, it means he suddenly has to go to a big deal business dinner tonight. 

Yes, tonight, same night as the PTO meeting I’ve been preparing for since last month and before which Rod was going to pick up his children and feed them and put them to bed.  And guess who is now somehow automatically responsible for figuring out what to do about the ensuing lack of childcare? Mmm Hmmm. You think you have a liberated, 50/50 kind of marriage, except of course when you don’t. Of course, I let him take care of 85% of the roaches that need smashing, so there's that.  

Not that there are any babysitters available in a fifty mile radius, because I was looking all last week for one for today and for the weekend.  I should just get my kids voted onto the PTO board, because they’re going to have to come to all the meetings at this rate.

Otherwise, things are okay.  My cold is starting to abate.  I squeezed in a couple of physical therapy and doctor appointments this week (why does that stuff always cluster together on the calendar?)  and put some stuff on the schedule for next week.  There was a meeting of my school-district-wide gifted and talented education committee that was a little stressful, with crazy people squabbling and bureaucrats talking the way they do.  Ruby had her dance/drama/music/OT appointments and I drove some carpools.  Carl had playdates and arguments with his friends. 

I had a lot of random PTO hassles this week, too.  I think one problem I have is that I internalize everyone’s suggestions, and the problems they bring up, and I want to fix them all myself.  Sure, let’s figure out a way to raise the last $100K we need for this project by the end of the year (miracle? anyone?)!  Sure, we need to do something about the disgraceful state of arts education in our school!  Sure, I can explain how the district plan to educate gifted kids is supposed to work, and doesn't always.  Sure, I can help you find a volunteer to do X, suggest places nearby that your after school French class could meet since the principal said no to using the school, buy your classroom a pencil sharpener, teach you how the laminator works, let you into the PTO storage shed, e-mail that person about that note, check on the status of that invoice, meet with the neighbor lady who’s upset about the school’s trees dying (but won’t help water them)....but it just never stops.

Carl’s real birthday is tomorrow.  Someone asked me what the plans are and I guess I haven’t made any.  We’ll do his celebration of life at school and let him open the presents from family and maybe go out to dinner.   He’s been wanting to go to Chinatown for dumplings.  Is that festive enough? Then Rod leaves town for a week or so…to Paris.  I love Paris.  I speak French, kind of. I’m not going.  Le Sigh.

*Drought fun fact:  in addition to the broken water mains all over town (because of the soil drying up), the pavement is buckling and cracking.  Yes, in a city famous for badly paved roads, they’re getting even worse.  No wonder the steering in my car is making weird noises. 

 

Louder, Tanned, and Skilled with Weaponry

Ruby is back from Girl Scout camp.  Like last year, there was a raucous, crazy “talent” show at the parent pick up time.  I know boys get well-deserved credit for being the louder sex and for being hung up on gross-out jokes, but I’m telling you, these girls would give any pack of boys a run for their money.  And they’d win the synchronized dance routine competition, of course.   The girls all looked like they were having fun, but it just brought back bad memories.  I am so glad I’m not at an age where I’m expected to do dance routines in front of an audience anymore.  I turned to Rod at one point for confirmation: no, boys don’t do that at their talent shows, another benefit to being born male.

Ruby says she had a good time.  She didn’t wear her sunscreen enough, she got pretty good with the bow and arrows during her archery elective, she got to groom the miniature horses, and she passed the highest level swimming test.  She says she felt like a left-out, second-class citizen in her group, but then she also made friends with girls X, Y, and Z, so it was okay.  She tried a spicy black bean burger and a cheese enchilada she liked, and—big announcement—she  has decided she likes marinara sauce and it is now an acceptable food, huzzah!  In celebration of her return, Rod made her do her own laundry, under protest, and this afternoon they made homemade root beer. 

Carl and I spent most of the week doing PTO stuff and having play dates with the one pal he had in town.  One day, over lunch, I overheard Carl explaining menstruation to his friend. (He asked me about tampons at the store a month or so ago, and last week he was puzzled by an ad in a magazine for maxi pads, and then Ruby was asking some conception-related question in the car one day. )  It was way funny, and I will always regret not having taken careful notes on what he said, exactly.  I think the funny part was his tone—part “you’re not going to believe this, but really!” and part Rod-deep-in-geekish-discourse.  In any case, Carl got the basics right, about uterine lining shedding and its role in human reproduction.  I started to worry I might have to explain the whole thing to his friend’s mom, but the friend was cool.  “Oh, yeah, sure.  I know that.”  “Yep,” says Carl, “it’s actually a good thing, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any more people.”

Carl also spent part of a day last week watching Netflix.  He presently likes nature shows, but not mere National Geographic specials.  No, he prefers the kind where the host goes off into the wilderness to solve some trumped up “mystery” or in quest of some rare creatures.  He watched all of River Monsters (who would think, a show about fishing could be so exciting, and even funny, in  a campy way?) and then he moved on to Monster Quest.  On Monster Quest, they go out looking for evidence of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster, and other great creatures most of the educated world has decided don’t exist.  But they also go looking for things that do or did exist:  giant squid or Tasmanian tiger.  Carl is deeply interested, but he has a hard time sorting out fact and theory, remote possibility and likelihood.  So he got frightened by one episode where they were checking out a space alien sighting.  The upshot was it took me two hours to get him to fall asleep that night and I have started offering a great deal more helpful commentary on his television viewing.  

In fact, Carl seems to suddenly have some fears he didn’t have before. He sometimes has trouble sleeping and he vaguely, shyly, alludes to things that worry or scare him.  I think they’re partly TV related, but partly I think it’s a developmental phase.  Ruby has a kit to make tiny paper stars, and you’re supposed to write a wish on each one.  She was showing it off to Carl, helping him make one.  Carl wrote on his that he wished to not be scared of anything.  I told him that it makes sense to be afraid of some things, and that maybe he should just wish to only be scared when he should be.   

I had my spine shot full of cortisone and whatnot on Thursday.  I had to be there super early in the morning and there was lots of waiting around.  I have to say, though, those anesthesia drugs were pretty excellent while they lasted, and it didn’t seem to hurt.  I came home and took a nap, which only happens about once a year.  Rod did a very credible job of playing nursemaid.  He invited friends over and cooked dinner, which is apparently a noteworthy enough event for him to take photos of it.  (How sad is that?  I remember when we used to split the cooking 50/50.)   I am still not sure if the shot worked or not, and it’ll be only temporary if it does, but I’m back to regular life now, getting ready for an exciting week:  Phone calls to set up some doctor appointments!  Phone calls to hector people who haven’t done what they promised they would!  Ruby’s occupational therapy!  Ruby’s music lesson!  Catering to Carl’s Lego/TV/etc. obsessions!  Swimming!  More Swimming!  PTO Board Meeting!   If I get really crazy-motivated, I might sort out the school uniforms and order the kids some shoes that fit! 

I guess all the exclamation points in the world can't make that sound exciting.  

Here's a photo of Ruby at camp...