I feel so loved. Among all the birthday wishes and little presents from loved ones (Thanks IZ for the shoes, they are DY-NO-MITE!) was a birthday card from the County of Marin. It appears, I’ve been summoned for jury duty. Oh well, at least I don’t have serve on my birthday.
So, I’m leaving for Oregon in 8 hours to meet with my Realtor and I’m still doing laundry. . . sleep is just an illusion tonight. Why is it when, what you think is the last load is on spin cycle, your
child always manages to come up with the sweatshirt that he just has to have clean by tomorrow? Hmm?? You tell me why.
I’m in constant flux with the child. Frustrated that he lost his favorite (and mine, I will admit) Gap puffy vest. Frustrated that he has misplaced yet another sweatshirt (what is this, number 6 in the past year?). Frustrated that it takes 45 minutes to brush his teeth unless one of us is nagging at him. Frustrated that he continues to “Imaginate” for two hours past his bedtime. Frustrated that he leaves rocks in his pockets that always end up in the laundry, rocks that clack away like heartbeats in the dryer, rocks that resist being found despite my unloading all the wet laundry on to
the kitchen floor. Twice. Oh, the list goes on. This, my dear readers, should you not already know, is called the blissful state of parenthood. Parenthood equals frustration.
This starts early. Frustration. It began long before our boy was even born. His hormones did not mesh with my hormones and frustration ensued in the form of continual vomiting for 16 weeks. Every hour. On the hour. Dry heaving what was left of my stomach lining. Oh, you haven’t lived until you’ve thrown up everything you haven’t eaten in days and then throw up again.
But then they are born. They are such amazing little beings. You are relieved that he is perfect, even though he is five weeks early. You are amused that he sounds like a kitten, mewing. You count fingers and toes. You notice he has his grandfather’s fingers, his great-grandmother’s ears, his father’s long feet, and his very own nose. You look deep into his little face, this angel who has caused you to vomit up 20 percent of your body weight, is here. What will he have of yours?
However, frustration is waiting just around the corner. The anesthesia will wear off and you will be compelled to take him home. All six pounds eight ounces, make that nine, now ten, of him. As if to get in on all the vomiting action he missed while en utero, he will discover the joy of projectile
vomiting three weeks later. All over you. All over your clothes. All over his clothes. All over your husband’s boss in a Starbucks one evening. All over the grocery cart just when you bump into your academic mentor (the one who thought you were going on to Grad school not having a baby!) in Safeway. No, this kid is not to be outdone. Not by you, not by any other small child on
earth. Your child is the Champion of vomiting. While he has his father’s feet and his grandfather’s hands, he has your gag reflex.
Which is why, when the boy brought home the envelop today–A golden envelop containing the news that his poem was one of five chosen in the entire school to be submitted to the State-wide anthology, to possibly be published– you grin, you shout, you jump for joy, and you hug the
kid and you say, “I’m so proud of you!” What you really think is, “See, he does take after me!” What you remember is that while parenting equals frustration, it also equals joy.
You know it’s all worth it.
Overheard at our house this evening:
Kid: “Personal Reflection??!!! I hate that! I have to do that at school, but I don’t have personal reflections at home.”
Me: “Kid, you are driving me to drink.”
Kid: “Then drink already! Sheesh.”
And my personal favorite, an email from IZ:
Subject: Lovely Homework.
Of course, if he were attending private school it wouldn’t be any better. . .
I can just see the questions. . .
Q:”How do you think Jesus felt when he was crucified?” or
Q:”Since Jesus was God, why did he allow himself to be put to death?”
Of course, I can just see the answers:
A: He felt bad.
A: He wasn’t and he didn’t.
Ok, in all fairness, that last answer was mine. The kid’s answer would probably have been shouted from the other room:Â “Ah, MOM! You didn’t tell me that Jesus was GOD. Now I have to redo my math homework!”
Next Monday is St. Valentine’s Day. I’m sure this hasn’t escaped your notice–not if Hallmark has anything to say about it. But just in case it escaped my attention, in the Young Man’s (I’ve been told, and I quote, “STOP! calling me Little, MOM”) homework was the a very terse announcement Monday is Valentines Day! Please have your child bring in valentines for their classmates
Are we feeling the love yet?
So the Young Man and I headed out to our local chain drug-store to acquire said valentines. Our little borough is small enough that you have to get a jump on these things when the homework dictum comes down on Tuesday afternoon. Or, Lord help you, your kid will be sending out the Strawberry Shortcake Valentines–and that’s if you wait until Wednesday. Any later and you are relegated to handing out tiny boxes of the “OOP’s Conversation Hearts.” Evidently, spelling counts in these matters. You can just imagine the outcry when some kid hands his mother a small candy heart and says, “Mom, What does ‘Good F/*/C/K’, mean?” Or the confusion that would be created by the ever popular, “Be Dine” heart. No, no, one must not procrastinate.
On our journey to the store I was informed that not only were we in the market for official valentines, “With Candy!” for his class, but the Young Man would also be purchasing a gift for the lovely and oh, so unattainable fifth grader, Chloe. Yes, that Chloe!
Really?” I inquired. “What brought this on? Last I heard you were only giving out Valentines to your classmates.”
“I don’t really want to get that deep into it,” he mumbled from the backseat.
Uh-huh, I bet. “Well, Ok, I guess that’s not a problem.†We spent a few minutes wandering the aisles looking for appropriate Valentines for the class. In eight-year old boy speak that means Valentines devoid of hearts and flowers but inclusive of some form of sugar, preferably the sort that creates a real mess. Once we picked out a suitable box and ascertained that there were plenty enough for left-overs (also a crucial requirement for “appropriate”) the real pondering began. What to get Chloe?
He finally settled on a heart shaped box of Ferrero Rocher truffles and a nice but not too gushy card. “What made you change your mind about giving Chloe a Valentine?” I asked.
“That falls under not wanting to go too deep into it, Mom!â€
My kid never ceases to amaze me. He has managed a way to say, “I love you” without uttering a word to a girl he has admired for two years and who will probably always be way out of reach (and so she should be–he’s only eight!). That takes courage of the
rarest form: the kind that risks being made a fool by the one you love. And I can’t help but think about all the lost opportunities in my life to risk, all the times I wished I had stepped out in faith, knowing full well the odds were against me. If you can’t risk for love on Valentine’s day, when can you? You know, and I know, and even he knows he’s going down in flames. But he bought the Valentine just the same.
All I can say is that Chloe is a lucky girl.
As if life wasn’t complicated enough. It turns out that I can add “Bad Parenting” to my list of growing accomplishments.
You see, it all started decades ago when I was eight. Like my eight year old son I was a budding herbalist. I had a bad habit of “eating off the land.” I lived at the base of a dormant volcano and spent a great deal of time wandering up and down the mountain side. Alone! Something, I might note, I would NEVER let my child do now! What kind of mother do you take me for? I ate anything that wasn’t nailed down or classified as a
vegetable. I had enough sense to stay away from mushrooms and the odd red berry but my favorite and the favorite of every kid in the neighborhood was the small purple flowers that grew in abundance on the hill-side. We called them Periwinkles. We spent hours hunting these things down to pick off the purple flowers and suck out
the “nectar.” Ignorance is bliss.
Evidently, the “eat strange things that grow” gene was passed on to my child. And, due to a tip from his mother, one of his favorite pastimes is hunting periwinkles. He’s been told to stop eating flowers. He, unlike his mother, is not as sensible. We do not trust him to avoid mushrooms and the odd berry. We have suggested that people do not appreciate small boys climbing into their gardens to inspect what he might consume. We have lectured that picking other people’s flowers is both rude and technically
theft. We talk. He is eight.
Enter the dramatic knock on the door. Oh, you think you see this coming, but you have NO idea. IZ answers the door to find our neighbor, the mother of one of the Jr. Herbalist’s friends, just dropping by to let us know that the boys have been eating vinca minor and that she was so concerned that she called Poison Control. POISON CONTROL. She just wanted us to know that while the flower wouldn’t cause serious
harm, it still shouldn’t be ingested in great quantities and it probably wasn’t a good idea for them to be eating them in the first place.
Yes, not only was our child ingesting poisonous flowers, an outrageous behavior he learned from his mother, but he was caught red-handed in the act of corrupting other children. And he had to choose the kid with the most protective parents on the planet. Joy, joy. Yes, I can just hear it now, “But my mother said she used to do it all the time when she was a kid!” I’m sure that when that little detail makes the presses the next phone call will be to DCF. So, maybe the kid does have as much sense as his mother.
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IZ: standing in the kitchen banging the the back of the espresso cup to empty the grounds. “Hmmmm. . .”
Me:Â Sitting across the room clutching my head in my hands. “UGH. . . my head!”
IZ: Bang, Bang, Bang.
Me: “Ugh, Ugh, Ugh.”
IZ: Bang.
Me: “Ugh.”
IZ: “Hmm. Maybe correlation does equate cause and effect.”
Currently, I’m sitting on the couch, half watching That 70’s Show, and typing this post on my shiny new laptop. Yep… the cute guy I cohabitate with up and bought me a new TOY. And after my initial shock that the box didn’t contain a new Prada bag, I’m diggin this. OMG, all I’m missing is a latte and I’d be in heaven. Wait, I can just nudge IZ who is beside me, “Sweetie, make me a Mocha! Pretty Please!” There… heaven on its way.
Of course, I’ve been compelled to join the dark side. . . IZ just laughed at me when I suggested he load Linux. For the past four months I’ve been holding out in Linux land with the threat of bodily harm to his Palm Pilot (picture small silver PDA accidently falling from the second floor window. Oops, how did that happen?) if he even so much as dared to load Windows XP on my computer during the semester. However, I’m relenting with the new TOY. Not like I had much of a choice. There’s a great deal I can do. . . load software isn’t one of them. I think. Wait… maybe I shouldn’t admit that.
Anyhow. . . IZ has been the source of a great deal of levity the past few days. . . which I will happily blog about later. Tonight, he’s “tha’ Bomb”! We can laugh at him tomorrow.
Tonight, you should go check out The Bachelor. He is running this poll where you nominate the three bands/movies you would “Put on the Bus” and drive over a cliff. Heh. Very funny. Visit him and tell him who makes the bus for you.
Your turn:
They’re multiplin’
Turns out, the migraine I was nursing was the beginnning of a full-blown headcold. However, not so full-blown that I couldn’t be called into work today. Alas, my boss’ injured arm trumps my puny headcold (not to mention I like my boss and live a whole hour closer to work, which equates to less misery for me than for her, so here I am!).
As IZ mentioned, Evidently was seriously hacked (or rather the code for P-Machine) which forced an hiatus for me while IZ attempted to clean up the mess. When it became evident that we were going to lose and no amount of coding would keep the spam at bay, IZ opted to scratch the whole mess and start over. Why not Typepad or Movable Type as a platform? Good question–one I keep asking myself everytime we attempt a re-do. But it always boils down to the reality that I have neither the time nor the inclination to pick up yet another foreign language and both platforms require I know more than I’m ever going to–so it’s a WYSIWYG for me. It could be worse.
Truth is, everytime we go down, IZ has to talk me into coming back. Honestly, I feel a bit old to be doing this. Blogging has changed–and my reasons for blogging have changed. So. Who knows. Presently, content, such as it is, will be the same. But over the next few months I may heed IZ’s advice and start posting more of my writing and less of . . . “this”. Whatever that means. Of course, I could just resort to telling jokes. In the meantime, a bit of feedback regarding commenting would be nice. Let me know if you want it, need it, or could live without it.
