The 98 things before Summer

There is nothing more disheartening than making the kids’ lunches and finding out shortly thereafter that it’s Pizza Day. And that I thought to write an entire post on it, well it might be an indication that I am ready for this school year to end.

READY.

In the last few weeks I’ve had to remember no fewer than 98 extra things each morning:

• $4.00 for chrysalises and tadpoles.
• Interesting but EDUCATIONAL show-and-share items (Not the Droid Gun Ship you got from Gramma and Grampa)
• Reading Log.
• Shoe box to transform into a rock family’s habitat.
• 40 mild chicken wings for the class potluck. (You know you’re raising boys when)
• Doing the reading for the bloody Reading Log.
• Birthday lollipops for the entire class.
• Birthday pin for the birthday boy’s shirt so the class knows it's his birthday on the weekend.
• Signed and dated math quiz.
• Where the hell is that reading log?
• Shin high white socks for tie dying.
• $13.00 for Naveen’s end of the year trip. (Really? $13?  Not say, a nice round number like $10 or $20?)
• $15.00 for Deaglan’s end of the year trip.
• Library books (Every single time the late notice comes, I scratch my head thinking I have never seen this book in this house)

And although I want to weep around this time, each year because it is excruciatingly clear to me that I did not end up with a career that gives me the entire summer off but my husband did, I’ll be glad when I can stop having to remember 98 extra things every morning.

I won’t have to keep up this charade with Naveen (let’s see, what can I put into his lunch today that he won’t eat  because, Mommmmmy, I told you, I HATE pizza with sauce on it!)

I won’t have to ask Deaglan WHY? WHY DID YOU WEAR YOUR INSIDE SHOES HOME? WHY????

I won’t have to apologize for above question because I asked it in YELLING.

Instead I can sneak away extra early to work out.

Or sleep in because NO LUNCHES.

I can put all wardrobe negotiations on hold. Those are pajama pants. You have to wear regular pants.

And beat myself up a little less on the drive to work for the YELLING.

I can expect to come home to a house that doesn’t look like it’s been robbed and ransacked because well, LOOKING FOR THE BLOODY READING LOG.

Instead I can come home to three sun-kissed, shaggy haired guys wearing swim trunks and mismatched shirts who are very glad to see me. 

Tell Gramma and Grampa, they love that shit

Whenever I get a few minutes alone with Shaune’s parents I corner them and proceed to shamelessly tell them every wonderful thing the kids have been up to. I tell them about recent accomplishments, share funny anecdotes and give them accounts of something kind or endearing one or both boys have done.

I do it because I want to catch them up. 

I do it because I truly believe they are interested.

I do it because my boys are absolutely, cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs, head-over-heels, madly in love with their grandparents and would want me to fill in the spaces when Gramma and Grampa couldn’t be there to witness their lives first-hand. It’s the only time I feel really comfortable gushing about the kids.

Okay. I’ll stop here to give you a second to lower that eyebrow. Umm, hello? This from the woman with an entire blog dedicated to stories about her kids.

While it’s true most of the content over the years here has been about motherhood, raising kids and family life, I’ve tried consciously to stay on this side of humility. I’ve tried not to write entire posts about how athletic, talented or smart my kids are because a) I know you’d likely want to strangle me and b) some of that stuff is private ir at least should be.

At a dinner recently, one of the parents of the other family at the table announced that the two oldest kids had achieved straight A’s on their report cards. I looked around to see if the other kids, not included in this announcement, had heard this. It was out of the blue and it caught me off guard. I busied myself helping one of the kids with a maze he was working through on the back of a paper menu and hoped that Deaglan hadn’t heard.   

My reaction and concern for Deaglan has nothing to do with how he's doing in school. I worried that this announcement could serve to make him feel inadequate somehow. We looked over his report card when he got it, praised him for working hard and helped him set goals for improving where he needed to. 

We made a medium deal about it - not big and not small. 

Because although grades are important to Shaune and me, we're more concerned with raising people who try their best, are kind to their classmates and friends, and have a willingness to keep going when things get tough. 

We also value modesty.

It's tricky though. We, all of us, love our kids deeply and want them to succeed and when they do succeed, we feel overjoyed and proud and also like we've succeeded. It's hard to resist the urge to announce it to the world or to anyone who will listen or at least to all of our Facebook friends. It's tricky and I totally get it.

I wonder sometimes though if we shouldn't just wait for the grandparents to come over and blab ourselves silly till it's out of our systems.

Here are some pictures from iur Family Day weekend.

She's one of my Facebook friends

I saw the perfect man today.

 

He was small, maybe even lean. His pock-marked face was framed by flat, brown, seventh-grade feathered back hair. He was wearing dark khakis with a boring navy and brown striped button down. He was slight of build. But most notably he was whistling through his teeth while he waited to pay for his coffee.

I’m not kidding, he was whistling through his teeth. His lips weren’t puckered, blowing out, the way I sometimes see Deaglan trying to whistle. His tongue was stuck up in the roof of his mouth. His top lip was stretched over his top teeth, and a low tuneless melody escaped; all the while his black eyes darted from one thing to the next.

 

He was perfect.

 

And I considered seriously, for a few minutes, contacting Dexter’s people to let them know I’d found their next villain. Maybe not a high profile axe murderer, but he could certainly make a compelling neighbourhood stalker-type.

Clearly, I need to stop with my Netflix preoccupation. And it wouldn’t hurt to ease up on how often I check into my Facebook account each evening either.

Last week at a funeral, I saw an old friend who I hadn’t spoken to since Matthew’s funeral. We hugged and confirmed that we needed to stop meeting this way. After that, we had very little to say to each other. We joked that that there was no need to ask about how the other was doing; we already knew.

 

She’s one of my Facebook friends.

 

On the one hand I rarely feel the need to call anybody anymore, which works out well these days since my boys turn into home-wrecking maniacs anytime I’m on the phone. People know how we’re doing by reading my blog and I know how they’re doing by paying attention to their Facebook updates. It’s all very handy.

 

I wonder though about the long-term effects. Where are we really going with all this?

 

Oh don’t get me wrong, nothing delights me more than the perfect outfit pin, or a 30-second video of somebody’s baby walking for the first time  or a cost-effective bathroom renovation. I can’t get enough of that kind of thing.

 

It’s the pressure Facebook, Pinterest and personal blogs seem to put on us:

 

To be happy

To post the perfect picture of ourselves

To get more DIY

To present a pin-worthy, photo-shopped, all is joyous in our house version of ourselves.

 

This is what has me wondering. And worrying a little.

 

But maybe it’s just me.

 

Maybe I just wish I could make my kids a birthday banner from recycled orange juice cartons, do a triathlon before 9 am and announce to the world that with no provocation whatsoever, my husband booked me into a spa for the day while he organized our linen cupboard and did crafts with the kids.

 

 

These are my birthday flowers from Shaune and the boys. Deaglan said he picked them out because he just knew they were my favourite. After watching his eyes sparkle while he told me this, these easily are my favourite flowers.

 

My friend Shannon came by last Saturday morning with these beauties, balloons and a new monogrammed coffee cup.

 

Working your way to a mediocre day - a how-to

If you wake up Sunday morning, miserable and ready to fight with whoever makes too much eye contact, there’s really only one thing to do: see if you can get rid of your entire family for a few hours. It helps if your husband can be convinced that he owes you one. Capitalize on even the faintest hint of imbalance to buy yourself some solitude. You took the kids to a friend’s yesterday so he could work on the floors uninterrupted?

He clearly had the better deal.

Once he agrees to get himself and the kids out of your hair, it’s in your best interest to get them ready and out the door – you don’t need him wandering aimlessly looking for the baby’s shoes. On a good day this can rub you the wrong way. Today? It could push you over the edge.

Once they’re gone, make yourself a second cup of coffee and take five minutes to soak in how rotten life is.

And mental note this – write it down if you have to: The next time you’re feeling vulnerable and emotionally generous, promise to keep your theories to yourself. Telling your already fed-up and cranky husband that you might be suffering from a low-grade depression due to weaning your two-year old will most definitely come back to haunt you. Because when next you are acting irritated and unreasonable for seemingly no good reason, he will wax psychologist and suggest you look into hormone replacement therapy.

He won’t care when you accuse him of having paid attention to that Oprah episode.

Drink your coffee and read a few pages of Anne Lamott or Jon Kabat-Zinn but whatever you do, don’t check your Facebook account. If you do, you’ll selectively hone in on only those friends with suspiciously flawless lives – you know who I’m talking about: they’ve already run 10K, cleaned their houses and are now enjoying some educational outdoor time with their perfectly behaved children. And it’s not even 9 am.

Decide to do something that will make you feel better but keep your expectations low. Feeling even a smidgeon better than this will be an improvement.

I suggest cleaning the upstairs bathroom. Especially if looking at the disarray of downstairs due to renovations is making you crazy enough to commit yourself just to have a clean room to live in. Scrub the toilet. And the tub and the sink. You may have to go so far as the floors.  

It’s possible you’re feeling this bad.

Once you get going, you’ll naturally move onto the bedroom. Vacuum up the crackers next to your bed – stop berating yourself for letting the kids eat in your room. It was the only way to get them to settle down enough so you could enjoy one lousy glass of wine before starting the bedtime routine after a long day at work.

Prepare yourself for their return. Have a plan because your husband will likely storm through the door acting entitled and overwrought – after all, he just had the kids for two hours and will point out that you of all people should know how much work that is.

When the kids get in, bring them upstairs because there is no furniture in the living room. Put the baby gate up, turn on Treehouse and tell them you’re going to take a shower. Don’t feel guilty for putting TV on mid day because they were just at the splash pad for a few hours, they could use the break.

Try to resist the urge to weigh yourself before getting into the shower– it could wreak havoc with your delicate emotional state. But if you do give into the urge, don’t (and I repeat, DON’T) weigh yourself a second time to verify that you indeed are down two pounds. It could be a technical glitch with your digital scale and your temporary high, that sense of possibility that all your hard work at the gym is paying off finally, will be short lived, reinforcing that you do actually have a crummy life because on top of everything else you are bloated, overweight, homely and unfairly afflicted with adult acne.

And because it's now your turn to entertain the kids, go somewhere you can tolerate. Costco has a lot going for it. Woo them with hotdogs in the cafeteria and fulfill your need to restock the things you're running low on.

The secrets of wedded bliss

Shaune takes care of our finances.

When we moved in together for good that last time, he asked me if paying the bills could be his thing. I shrugged, said sure and silently took on the responsibility of being the shopper. I try to do my part and also I think it’s important to play to our strengths. This arrangement works fine most of the time. However every few months or so Shaune’s senses seem to heighten and he catches me off guard.

“Is that new?” he asks pointing to a skirt I’ve got on. Purposely I pull at the sweater I’m wearing.

“This? Are you kidding? I’ve had this since 2004.”

Then he goes back to his old self. At other times he just looks at me pleading,

“Do you need to shop Every. Single. Week?”

At these times I remind him of a handful of women he could easily have ended up with, women who have much more expensive tastes than me, who get costly hair and nail treatments every few weeks, wear only high-end name brands. I’m not sure if I really know this about them but it’s an effective rebuttal until my husband says something asinine like,

“I would never have married someone like that; I don’t find that sort of thing attractive.”

You don’t find nice hair and pretty nails attractive?

But sometimes we’re on the same page about our finances. Like this morning when I was on the phone with our cable and internet provider. (I like to keep things confidential around here so I’ll just say this: their name rhymes with Boger’s but starts with the letter “R”.)

I waited two days to file my complaint because I wanted to be calm and articulate.

Because on Thursday when my internet and cable were down, and I was home with two sick kids trying to connect my laptop to my work server, I was definitely not calm or articulate with the tech specialist who was treating me like I was an idiot because I didn’t know the difference between the modem and the router. In fact reciting the serenity prayer did nothing for how I proceeded to conduct myself especially when instead of patiently explaining to me that the power cord was the thin black wire, the tech guy just enunciated the phrase “POWER CORD” louder and louder.

Even after I explained to him that I wasn’t stupid, that my husband usually did these types of things, he continued to treat me like I was a Neanderthal. I had a half mind to explain to him that I had other strengths:

Shopping.
Birthing babies.
Winning half the bread in this household.
Cleaning the bathrooms.
Ensuring everyone has clean underwear.
Writing angry posts about bad customer service on my blog.

Our phone call on Thursday did not end well. When he told me that he would be scheduling a service appointment in the next few weeks and warned that if he found we had messed with our internet or cable somehow and this was the reason it was down that we’d be charged $49.50 for the appointment, well that was when I may have lost my mind. I may have screamed not very calmly into the phone that he hadn’t helped me with a goddamned thing, that I still didn’t have cable for my two sick kids or internet to get my work done.

I may have hung up on him.

And so this morning when I called to speak to the supervisor of that tech specialist to calmly but articulately complain that I had not been treated like a valuable customer who spends $300 a month in cable, internet and wireless fees with her company, Shaune and I were definitely on the same page. While I spoke with her, Shaune sat on the couch pumping his fist if I said something particularly powerful, motivated me with reminders of other ways Boger’s with an R had screwed us over in the past.

We were really in sync.

Sadly this conversation did not end well either. The supervisor showed very little empathy for how I’d been treated and in fact took the opportunity to try to get me to upgrade to the next package level in my cable and internet. I may have blown a gasket, threatened to pull the plug on all of our services and go directly to Boger’s Vice President.

I’m not sure what we’ll do though, shopping for another cable and internet provider seems fruitless. We were with the other company (rhymes with hell but starts with a B) for years before moving to Boger’s with an R and they were definitely no better. I recall some equally frustrating conversations with their support staff. In fact, it may have been the last time Shaune and I bonded this well on matters of finance.

It’s magical moments like these that tell you that the marriage is working.

Better late than never right?

What did Oprah ever do to you?

In three years of blogging, I've never written about Oprah. I could have. But I didn't want to give all the haters the satisfaction.

However,now that it's nearing the end,I've put on my thicker skinned shell, and I'm remembering this is my little corner of the universe - I can write what I want to, so here is my first and most likely last post on Oprah Winfrey.

I don't know why Oprah is so polarizing. What did she ever do besides make billions of dollars providing interesting daytime television?

What's wrong with having a bookclub? Most of the time I read books recommended by friends and family anyway. Why wouldn't I read a book that was researched by a team of paid staff whose sole purpose is to research up and coming books?

And what's wrong with becoming more aware of problems in Africa, an Angel Network or seeing my favourite celebrities in personal interviews?

I just don't see how this is cult-like. That's right, I've heard people who oppose Oprah refer to her influence as a cult.

I'll admit I could do without the play-by-play of the roadtrips with Gayle but I just turn the channel to Ellen those days. No one's perfect including you and me.

The thing I don't understand about your hate (yes, I'm talking to you)is that you can never give me a solid reason why. You usually say something like, she just bugs me. And for the record, I do something because it seems like a good idea not because Oprah said to do it.

And one person even said of the show, that it's what housewives watch. Here's the phone, genius, it's the 1950's and they want their attitude back. Please! Give me a break.

I'm sad that it's the last season not because I'll miss Oprah herself. I'll miss the good programming. I'll miss seeing someone so wildly popular talking about doing good and positive things for children, animals and her fellow man in this world. I'll miss seeing my favourite authors highlighted. I'll miss the pleasant surprise of catching a story that uplifts me. Because I'm not jaded by life. I am still impressed when people commit kindnesses to each other.

And let's face it, you'd be singing a different tune if you or someone you knew was given a bit of recognition for something you accomplished on her show.

Okay I'm done.

I'm joining Shell in Pour Your Heart Out. Check out some of the other posts.