7 Quick Takes Friday: Volume 6

1. As I was leaving my daughters' room this evening after putting them to bed, my five year old yelled, "I don't like you!" and the three year old chimed in, "Neither do I!" What a lovely way to start the kid-free portion of my evening. I must be doing something right.

OK, I did make them mad right before departing, but this was AFTER a good 10 minutes of kisses and cuddles and squeezes and I love yous and all manner of cute nonsense. It was also after my parting shot, which was: "You MUST stay in your beds tonight, I do NOT want to put you to bed multiple times!"

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2. I saw a sign today that said HAVE A GREAT DAY! IT'S UP TO YOU! I wanted to slam into it with my mini-van. I'm all for a positive outlook, but sometimes, there are forces out of my control, such as a three year old who picks the last possible minute before the family has to leave the house before filling her underwear with stuff that definitely shouldn't be there or an eleven year old who picks the last possible minute to realize that he doesn't actually like the shorts he's wearing and do I know where his blue ones with the white stripes are or a five year old who can't find her shoes but CAN find the wherewithal to writhe on the kitchen floor in lost-shoe-agony until I carve out five seconds to walk in her room and see her shoes RIGHT NEXT TO HER BED IN PLAIN SIGHT.

Sure, I can have a great day. Someone needs to tell my kids that I deserve one and they better get with the program.

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3. The other day, my son created an elaborate machine works contraption in his room. He rigged up a xylophone, propped at an angle against a tall building block, down which he slid a mason jar full of rocks, so that the jar hit a video cassette, which then hit a rubber duck, which moved forward and knocked over a book standing on his desk, which hit a series of square blocks set up like dominoes, the last of which fell off of his desk and into a box on his bed, landed on a ramp in the box, slid down the ramp and ran into a pair of scissors that were set up JUST SO, with a piece of ribbon laid between its blades. While the end of the ribbon lay across the scissors, the rest of it wound all the way up to the ceiling. Just before reaching the ceiling, a small pencil was tied into the ribbon, with the end of the ribbon taped very lightly to the ceiling.

The object of this whole project was to get the pencil to fall on the floor by sliding the mason jar down the xylophone. If everything went as planned, the scissors would cut the ribbon and the pencil would fall.

It took him about 12 tries, but it finally worked, and I got to witness it. It was awesome. Oh, and he wouldn't let me take a picture. PTHPT to him.

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4. The only reason the machine work contraption was possible, and the only reason I found my daughter's shoes in five seconds, is that THE KIDS CLEANED THEIR ROOMS ON SUNDAY. Earth, commence spinning once more. Netherworld, stoke those fires, to thaw the recent freeze.

Bribing them that they would get to go to a movie if their rooms were clean did the trick. I haven't seen the floors in those two rooms in weeks. It's nice to have them back.

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5. Have your kids seen the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie? Oh, I highly recommend that they do! My kids saw it, and the best part was that my husband took them, giving me 2+ hours in my house with only my youngest daughter, and I got so much done. That's what I call a GREAT movie. I LOVED it, without having to see it!

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6. I am trying to go to bed earlier, so that I can get more sleep. I am truly amazed at how hard this is. My younger kids go to bed between 8 and 8:30, my older ones sometime between 8:30 and 10:00. We're flexible like that. Everyone sleeps through the night. We succeeded in kicking strays out of our bed in the middle of the night. I could potentially be getting more sleep than I've gotten in years. 11.5 of them, to be exact.

But I don't. I don't put myself in bed. I stay up way too late, often watching stupid television, sometimes working on a freelance project, sometimes blogging or surfing the net. Occasionally reading The New Yorker. Or sometimes, like tonight, I go to bed too late, and then, have so much on my mind that I wake at 2:30 in the morning and can't go back to sleep, so I creep down to the kitchen and drink multiple cups of tea and surf blogs and get ideas and decide what is wrong with my parenting style and resolve to get the damn chore chart in place and operational...and do many, many other things less important than sleeping.

I always think that I can't afford to sleep because I will be so far behind tomorrow if I don't get more laundry folded (my watching stupid tv activity) or if I don't do one of the things nagging me from my to-do list. I am fairly certain that starting the day with enough sleep under my belt might do as much, if not more, for my productivity level, but I can't convince my body to rest when it's time to rest.

What is up with that? Why do we resist doing things that we know will be good for us? Truly one of the great mysteries of life. Please, share any wisdom you have on this topic. Because I like to read your comments after my kids have gone to bed.

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7. And I conclude today's post by stealing a quote from Conversion Diary, the host of 7 Quick Takes Friday, because I have been thinking lately about how to teach my children to consider other people's feelings and thoughts more and also about how to let go of my own self-interest. This one is a beauty from Thomas Merton:

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Or, just ponder it for a moment.

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Happy Friday to all.

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Weeds

When I was a child, I did a lot of weeding.

When I became an adult, I put away weeding-ish things.

That lasted for over 20 years. But now, I have come full circle, and have become, to my surprise, a weeder. Dad, if you are reading this, I do apologize for not ensuring you were in a sitting position from the get-go.

* * *

I recently left my part-time job at a wonderful landscape architecture/design-build firm, primarily because it was too far away from my home and was therefore not proving to be worth the drive and being away from home and our home-based business two to three days per week. So hubby and I conferred: if I started doing some of the maintenance work for our clients (read: WEEDING), and if I had more time to devote to running the day to day office operations of our fledgling (but shouldn't be fledgling because we've been at this for five years now) business, then I could very likely help bring in at least the same amount of money as I had been making at this other job.

So I left.

Which is why, on a sunny Thursday afternoon a week or two ago, I had the great good fortune to be weeding a client's garden overlooking San Pablo Bay, with water lapping against the beautiful houses, boats motoring by, sea gulls calling overhead. There I was, doing the work I hated doing as a kid, and enjoying it. Not just enjoying it, but discovering an entirely new experience in it. It was glorious and peaceful.

And extremely satisfying. You see a weed. You pull it. it is gone.

This is quite different than, say, seeing a stray pair of shoes in the living room and asking the person whose feet fit in them to put them away. You see the shoes. You ask a kid to put them away. The shoes stay right where they are. You ask again. The shoes remain. You raise your voice, aware that it is taking some effort to mask the building rage. The kid skitters by, ignoring the shoes and the mother. You expend precious, un-renewable energy screaming at the kid about the god forsaken shoes. The shoes do not move. Exasperated, and convinced of your abject failure as a parent, you storm over to the shoes, pick them up with a ferocity that unnerves you, and blindly fling them -- hard -- into the kid's room, unsure if you care if anyone is in the path of the projectile footwear.

See? Very different.

So now, I have become a weeding fool.

Our annual garden tour is in 2.5 weeks. But that weekend is huge for a handful of other reasons as well: family visiting from out of state...three soccer games on Saturday...an annual and absolutely not-to-be-missed party at the San Francisco Exploratorium, hosted by a company we do lots of business with...and the father-daughter dance at the girls' school. So we cannot, as in years past, be gardening by head-lamp the night before the tour. We must be done by at least Wednesday of that week, which means we have TWO WEEKS.

In times such as these, it's helpful to have a weeding fool in the family. I have been doing so much weeding lately, that when I close my eyes, I see weeds spiraling around in pretty, dizzying patterns. When I am running errands, I notice all the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk, or in a store's planter boxes, or even on the side of the freeway, and my fingers itch to pull them.

I have discovered that weeding suits me. I sit down on my gardening cushion, armed with a small trowel, and give a long hard look to the patch in front of me, messy and overgrown as it is, weeds taunting me, boldly defying that they can be conquered. But give me enough time, and the weeds are defeated. What is left is a clean patch of dirt, or a clean bed of gorgeous and varied California native plants: rosy buckwheat, California poppies, Douglas Iris, salvia.

For those who complain about the Sisyphean nature of weeding, I say that for mothers, repeated weeding is no burden. The amount of things I have to repeat in a day, or even in a hour, have forever changed my perspective on things I need to repeat once a week or a couple of times a month. Give me a house full of kids who listen to me the very first time I say something and then MAYBE weeding will seem like a chore.

But no. Tending our garden is a joy, one that provides me with a little time and space to think and breathe fresh air. And maybe that's the biggest reason I have enjoyed this new task so much: it's been a long time since I had time and space and fresh air, and I have welcomed them all back with open arms.

I leave my thoughts on weeding as life metaphor for another time...they are far too deep and profound (or is it murky and unformed?) for current publication.

Happy Spring everyone!

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What Ails Me?

I have lost the ability to see my crazy life as humorous. Hopefully, this is temporary. I read other blogs, and laugh at the antics, or the craziness, or the stinkbugs, and I think: "Wow, my pink eye, barf, broken appliances, broken bones, flooded garage, and garden-that-needs-a-radical-transformation-before-our-annual-garden-tour-in-3-weeks could be funny too! Why can't I find the funny? Why, instead, do I feel the need to bury the details of this miserable happy life so far from view that they all might just disappear if I wish hard enough?" I think this is why I haven't been blogging. I start to write, and then I hit the delete button very hard about 200 times, curse at the computer, curse at the laundry, and go feed people instead. Because I can always count on someone needing to be fed, or wiped (as in as I type this right now).

But as Spring Break limps to a close, and I'm both more than ready for the kids to go back to school AND not ready because uniforms aren't clean and backpacks from 10 days ago still hold lunch boxes from 10 days ago (one smells extremely citrus-y), I would like to get back to this blog.

So, as Spring Break limps to a close, I will limp back to my blog...hoping to find the funny, and the sweet, and the beautiful.

Right now, I am going to go out in the rain, to clean toys off our lawn, so that Rick can re-seed it and put down a layer of soil. This must happen in the rain, because we have to have each and every day of the next three weeks bring us closer to a show-ready garden; rain cannot stand in our way. If I find anything funny while I'm out there, I'll be sure to write about it.

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Good For What Ails Me

God, grant me the valium
To put a happy face on the things I cannot change,
The liquid courage (I prefer Guinness) to force the children to do what I want,
And the wisdom to know when to put myself in a time out.

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Good For What Ails You

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

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What Has She Got Against Easter? And Other Thoughts on Spring Break

Last year, we had a very interesting Easter. This year, we're stretching the fun out over the entire week, it seems. Our washing machine broke on Friday, sending us into the weekend with no way to wash clothes or towels or peed upon sheets or socks. (Side note: Socks, I think, will be my final undoing. I hate socks. Socks hate me. We are locked in mutually assured destruction.)

Not only did the machine break, but it spread water all over our garage as well. I do thank my friend Tina for pointing out that there is reason to be thankful that our laundry room is not in our house. On the other hand, I want to smack Tina and all her silver lining brethren, as I look at the boxes of books we have strewn about our garage, which are now soggy and soft.

So the good news about the washer is that we have a friend who is a handyman, and he fixed the thing relatively easily and for very little money. So that's done.

But I should know by now, having been through a few of these things called Family Holidays, that the fun was not going to end there. Lola, apparently, has decided to mark the Resurrection of Jesus with an annual visit to the Emergency Room. This year, she was one day late, but we still managed to spend 3 hours at Children's Hospital, waiting to see if she had, in fact, broken her finger. The verdict: she has a very tiny "chip fracture" in her left hand ring finger, at the joint between her phalange and her metacarpal. A weird place to break a finger.

So we did the ER thing, and it was a fairly mellow experience. Upon coming home at 11:30, I was feeling rather proud of myself. We got our washing machine fixed and handled our first broken bone, and we're doing just fine! Everyone ate dinner, the washing machine and dryer were whirring away in the garage, doing their thing, and all was right with the world.

Please, someone, clonk me on the head when I think we've got everything under control, please.

Today dawned bright and beautiful. Today is closing on a barfing three year old with a fever of +103 and goo-infested eyes, one sinus-clobbered husband, a girls' room that sounds like a TB ward, more loads of dirty laundry than I started with and a wii-obsessed tween. (And thanks for nothing, those of you who assured me that the wii-obsession would wane, who breezily gave me false hope that I wouldn't have one of of those kids, the kind that can't put down the almighty wii remote, the kind whose eyeballs turn into TV rectangles, the kind who forsakes food, family, nature, literature, and daylight for the virtual crack that is the infernal wii. Cuz you lied to me.)

Today sucked just a little bit.

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I am seriously starting to fear the teenage years (recent FB posts notwithstanding). My tween is becoming a monster right before my eyes, and I can't even blog about most of it because he'll say to me, with his eye rolling backwards and his posture slumping in disgust: "You're not gonna put this on your blog, are you? Don't put me on your blog!" So I'll have to think of creative ways to tell his stories and seek some feedback from others.

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I have a friend whose 11-year old son is evil. He is sucking the air out of the family home. He is making it difficult for his mother to remember what a fantastic, beautiful kid he is. What should I tell her?

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My three year old is a handful. I've been known to speculate that had she been the first, there would have been no more, so abhorrent is some of her behavior. She's a force of nature, and I find myself mentally trying to prepare myself for extended periods of time in her presence, trying to fill my arsenal with tactics to control her and to help her siblings deal with her shenanigans, trying to anticipate and head off difficult situations. But tonight, as she lay in a fever-induced lump in my lap with her swollen eyes crusting over and her fever heating the house better than our 65 year old furnace, I realized that I prefer her nice and fiesty, thank you very much. Seeing her with no pep was unsettling to say the least.

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I drove the kids on an errand this afternoon (before I realized that I was carting Typhoon Mary around). We drove through some nearby hills, and shouted MOO at the cows like we always do, and Vincenzo said "Hey Lola, you like steak so much, there's some steak!" I said "Yeah Lola, here's a fork, there's your dinner!"

Lola: "HAND ME A GUN, MOM!"

She seems so mild-mannered and sweet. She's fooling everyone.

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This has been random, sleep-deprived thoughts from a woman who should never, ever underestimate just how off-kilter life can get. And one who cannot get the smell of barf out of her nostrils.

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Trucks, Dogs and Green Houses

This post has nothing to do with country music. Instead, my subject is, again, my three year old daughter.

Tallulah loves trucks. She especially loves garbage trucks, but lately has been exhibiting just as much passion for tanker trucks, tow trucks, 18-wheelers of any variety, and delivery trucks. Next time you are on a freeway, take a minute to notice how many trucks you see. Then, imagine that every truck is greeted with a shriek of excitement bordering on ecstasy by a maniacal three year old in the backseat.

Lately, she has also been shrieking at all dogs -- because her truck obsession is mirrored by her dog obsession -- and all green houses -- because green is my favorite color and she sweetly wants to point out all green houses for my benefit. If I miss a dog or a green house, the tearful pleading sets in: "Go back, mama, go back; you missed the doggie, mama, go back! You have to see the doggie, mama!" (For some reason, she lets the trucks go, maybe because she realizes they are driving? I like to pretend there is a method to her madness.)

So now, when I am driving, I keep my eyes out for dogs, trucks, and green houses, because if I don't, I am unprepared for the sound waves produced by her screams that slam into the back of my head and make driving less than safe.

I'm thinking of developing a driving course for parents. I would include things like: How to reach a sippy cup rolling around in the back seat without taking your eyes off the road; How to appear to be engaged in a conversation with a rambling toddler while actually listening to Talk of the Nation; and How to drive safely while being assaulted by screaming children.

Anyone want to pre-register?

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Impressive, Really

I spent most of my day taking advantage of a unique opportunity to see our court system in action. Translation: I had to go to court to take care of some traffic violations. Yes, "some." Apparently, there was this little matter of a roll through a stop sign THREE YEARS AGO that I never properly took care of. (In my feeble defense, I thought I had.)

Then there was the matter of the two fix-it tickets I got recently, which I also neglected to take care of until uncomfortably late. Apparently, ignoring those perforated envelopes that come from traffic court is a costly little mistake. Yes, I am the last person in the country to realize this.

I will not bore you, or fascinate you, as the case may be, with the gory details or the gorier fines I must now pay. I will just say this: I am an idiot.

But then, exhaustion and overwhelm are the stuff idiots are born of, and I experience both in spades. The fact that I manage to have a day here and there in which I do NOT exhibit idiot tendencies is, I think, cause for celebration. So I was taking the whole day in stride, or trying to. I was armed with a notebook (for writing my next blog entry, which did not happen), a recent New Yorker (which had some laugh out loud funny cartoons), and a bottle of water (which, it turns out, I could not drink in court).

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Also as it turns out, I need not have brought along anything at all to pass the time. The best part of the day was watching and listening to the judge assigned to traffic court. What an amazing guy: his instrutions to us were clear and he was personable. He was funny on occasion, and he was respectful and courteous to every single person there. He was efficient and he was engaged in his job. He made it actually very interesting to watch the process of traffic court unfold.

There was a large contingent of Spanish-speaking folks there, and the translator did a fantastic job. There was one man there whose first language was French; without a French translator at the ready, the judge quickly assigned the man a new date, about a month away, and promised him an interpreter would be there for him. And whenever the judge was doing something, like arranging for an interpreter, he would give us an explanation of what he was doing and why, and how the laws of California mandate that he do such and so, like making a translator available to anyone, in any language, who needs one.

Before going to court at 11am, I had to track down a police officer to sign off on my fix-it tickets; I found a 35-year veteran of the local police force, who gleefully told me that I was probably going to be his last sign off before he retired and started traveling the world. He was also personable, professional and engaging.

So I am feeling rather proud of our civil servants today, which is good because I started out feeling rather un-proud of the neglect which led me to court in the first place. If a person is going to screw up royally, it's awful nice to have good people around to help manage the situation with dignity.

Thank you Richmond police and traffic court, for restoring my faith in civil society and for reducing at least one of my fines. I sure do appreciate what you do every day.

And I promise to try real hard to outwit my own exhaustion and overwhelm so that I do not again have the opportunity to see you in action.

O. M. G.

My three year old is soaking up the language and mannerisms of her older siblings.

The other day, she and I spent most of the day around the house, working in the yard and whatnot; I wore my usual work around the house clothes: jeans and a big bulky sweatshirt.

When it came time to go get the kids from school, we headed to the van, where I realized it was really quite warm out. I peeled off my sweatshirt. Underneath, I was wearing a black t-shirt with three-quarter sleeves and a rather dramatic v-neck. Not a fancy shirt, you understand, but certainly more attractive than a hoodie.

The three year old actually did a doubletake. And I'll try to get the timing right, in my punctuation and structure here. She took a step backward, put her hands out at her sides, flat and slighty raised, and said:

"O.

M.

G.

You.

are SO.

PRETTY!"

Score one for the grungy moms of the world! This little affirmation moment came at a good time (but then again, don't they all?), as I was in the midst of one of my episodes of existential angst, sturm und drang, if you will, and her little cartoon-character voice just pulled me right out.

And this will serve as my reminder: there is very little wrong in life that a v-neck t-shirt cannot make right.

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And to swing the pendulum all the way back in the other direction for a moment, I also heard a child say this today, to describe why he wasn't feeling well: "It's like a bunch of tiny hammers all banging around in my head at the same time." That's my boy, the one who thinks "too much" and worries about people and wants everyone to be so, so happy. My boy who tells me a little white lie, and then can't stop feeling bad about it, long after I've forgotten it completely. My boy who is searching already for the meaning of life and isn't always very happy with the answers the world shows him. My boy who loves to talk, a trait that will forever make me both grateful and crazed. My boy, who couldn't sleep tonight and couldn't even watch the season opener of Dancing With the Stars because he was so distracted and full of thought.

I remember when I was a little girl, nothing soothed me more, or made me feel more relaxed than having someone play with my hair, trace my face, or rub my back. He's also my boy in this respect: I know I can help him, can soothe him, if we lie down and talk, and I play with his hair and rub his back. You know what I love about him? Reason #673? That in one moment he'll say that he just can't explain what he's thinking or how he's feeling, and in the next moment, words are pouring out of him in poetry and plenty. Give him just a pinch of space and time, and you'll hear everything you need to know. That's a good quality to have in someone on the brink of the teenage years.

Tonight was no exception. And no wonder he felt like hammers were pinging around in his head: he had a lot to say about his day and his life and his surroundings tonight. If only we all had that time and space to talk until we were all talked out. He's sleeping like a baby now.

Talk and touch: two things we all need. And in my case, a v-neck t-shirt doesn't hurt either.

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Don't Be a Butt

The other day, my son noticed a sign posted near a flower box: Please, no cigarette butts.

In one of those beautiful and telling misinterpretations of childhood, he took this to mean: No idiots who smoke may be near these pretty flowers. We had a great laugh over that and decided his take on it was much more accurate -- and entertaining -- than the intended meaning.

We turned a corner and about 20 feet in front of us stood a guy taking a smoking break from a nearby restaurant. "Look mom, it's a Cigarette Butt!"

So fun. I think he's brilliant.

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I Venture Back With a Question

It's been too long, dear blog.

But, I am working again today (no deadline, though, just everything that got neglected for my deadline), so I haven't much time to write. I would, however, like to pose a multi-part question.

Why do other people's clean and shiny wood floors seem like evidence of my personal character flaws? Why, when I look at these beautiful floors in other people's houses, do I hear a mean little voice saying "What the hell is wrong with you, why can't you keep your floors clean like this Uber-Capable-Mom?" Why is it that we can know something with our heads and yet feel every fiber of our being reacting in an entirely opposite fashion?

I know a clean floor does not--cannot--chastise me. And yet, I feel chastised.

And finally, is there anyone out there who would like to come and, for a fee, shine my dingy floors? I do believe that money would be just as well spent as any therapy costs I could otherwise incur.

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