Month: August 2005

I applied for reduced-prices school lunch today. I have mixed feelings about it. Anything that lets me spend less money is a good thing. But I much prefer being a contributor than a dependent. For years I’ve willingly paid taxes knowing that some of that money would get spent in welfare programs like school lunch. I always knew that some people take advantage of the system without real need. I never expected to benefit from the programs directly. Defining “real need” is hard. If I look at things one way, we’re rich. We have a house, we have cars, we have food, we’re in no danger of losing those things. On the other hand our income is low. It isn’t permanently low. But we are currently making ends meet by a steady depletion of assets.

In the end I signed up because my kids like getting school lunch with treats we can’t afford at home. I’ll pinch pennies somewhere that the kids won’t feel the pinch.

I have an extremely sophisticated subconscious Kitchen-work avoidance system. It seems that every time I walked into the kitchen today I intended to do dishes. I have very a very clear memory of deciding that the very next thing I needed to do with my day was dishes. In fact I have at least four memories of deciding that. I have zero memories of deciding to do something instead of dishes. It worked something like this:

Okay time to do dishes. But then I heard the dryer buzzer. If I switch the laundry loads they can be washing while I’m doing dishes. It’s like multitasking, I’m saving time. So I go switch the laundry loads. Then my office door is right there, so I check email “really quick.” Then I’d post in a forum. Then I’d break up a quarrel… hours later I’d end up back in the kitchen and remember Oh, that’s right I was doing dishes. Once again ready to start, I’d remember that the mail really needed to be in the mailbox before the mailman arrived. Then the garbage cans needed to come in. Then Patches needed a diaper change. Then laundry needed to be switched again. Then I was hungry and ended up back in the kitchen. Oh. Dishes. But I decided they’d be easier to do if I got my energy up by eating first. So I sat down with lunch and a book. Then I wandered out of the kitchen with my book. Then I went to make the squabbling kids play outside for awhile. Then I helped Link ride his newly training wheel-less bike. Then we all needed drinks and went back to the kitchen. Dishes. Determined to actually get them done I consciously decided against picking up my book again. I consciously decided against switching just one more load of laundry. I actually opened the dishwasher. This time I was determined to do absolutely nothing else until I’d unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher. Then Gleek and her friend had a meltdown which included biting. So I had to haul Gleek home and help her write an apology note. And Gleeks hair was a mess, so we gave her a haircut. Then she needed help finding the dress-up she wanted. And Patches was having issues with a computer game. And Kiki and Link were arguing over the television. It was time to put them all to bed. So I did bedtime. After bedtime is my moment of solitude and sanity. I get a few moments to unwind, to be by myself. I walked from the kids’ rooms into the kitchen. Yup, still dishes. But I need just a minute first, so I came downstairs and checked email. Then I checked forums. And now here I am writing this journal. Guess what I’m not doing?

I cut off 6-7 inches of Gleek’s hair today. She wanted short hair like her friend’s hair. Howard agreed with her because it would be easier to keep tangle free. (And he is right.) I did the cutting and Gleek seems delighted with her new hair. But I’m sad. Her long hair was beautiful when it was combed and styled. I know it got combed & styled only about 1 day in 3, but I still loved it. sigh.

I spent a good part of yesterday morning with Kiki shopping for school clothes. In this case that meant pulling boxes out of storage and sorting through to figure out what fits and what she likes. Over the past 10 months I’d accumulated quite a lot from garage sales and as hand-me-downs from friends & family. It was really fun to have a huge pile of clothes for her to try on. I had more clothes than she needed which meant that if she didn’t like something she didn’t have to keep it. She liked almost everything. She would try on an item and rather than just saying “I like it.” she would describe exactly what it was about the item that she liked. “this shirt is so soft!” or “I like the way it flares on the sleeves!” or “This one has a really good pattern on it, I don’t have one like this.” It was almost as if she felt like she had to talk me into letting her keep the clothes. She was even able to give me a reason why she wanted to keep two identical sweaters even though she already had more than would fit into her drawer. Going school shopping with my mom and trying on piles of clothes is something I remember fondly. I’m so glad I managed to provide that for Kiki this year. Now I just need to figure out how to keep her from wearing all her clothes before school starts.

I can buy videos at garage sales for $1. I can resell them at the Movie Trading Co for about $.50. This means that I can watch older movies for cheap if I can find them at garage sales. I found Armageddon a few weeks ago. Tonight Howard and I re-watched it. The science in that movie is astoundingly bad. Every time I saw the two shuttles flying in formation like jet fighters I had to laugh. There were fires burning in airless environments. Characters in space suits were warned of events because they somehow managed to hear them through vacuum. The shuttle landed on the asteroid by hitting multiple stalagmites and yet still successfully landed on earth with undamaged heat sheilding. In all Armageddon would be a fantastic movie to gather science people together and have an MST 3K party. Or not, maybe the science would just be too painful.

Tomorrow is Howard and my aniversary. We’ll be celebrating as we usually do, by continuing to be happily married and occasionally pausing to hug and say “I’m glad I married you.” We’ve never made a big deal out of aniversaries. I mean we completely missed our first one because we were too busy painting the exterior of our first house. I think we attempted to make a big deal out of aniversary 5 by spending the night at a hotel. At the time Howard was working customer support and was on call via pager 24-7, not a good mix with “romantic getaway.” The big effort at year 10 was that Howard stayed home from Novell and bought me a mcgriddle. Howard even wrote about it in an Open Letter. The funniest part of that for me was all the people who came to me quietly trying to figure out whether I was upset that my only aniversary present to celebrate 10 years of marriage was a mcgriddle. I wasn’t, I was delighted. I love mcgriddles.

Aniversaries are only important as reminders to us to stop and appreciate what we have. I would by far rather have a joyful life with Howard where he shows his love in little ways every day than have a huge effort at proof-of-love only on “special days” 3 or 4 times a year. In this I am lucky because I share my life with a wonderful person who believes the same as I do. We share life, love, religion, children, Schlock, and a host of other things. It may seem cliche to say “My husband is my best friend”, but cliche or not, it is true. When he isn’t around I save up things to talk to him about. Anytime the children delight or frustrate me, or I see an interesting news article, or have an interesting idea, Howard is the one I want to tell it to. When Howard is away I feel unbalanced. He keeps me centered, helps me clean when I don’t want to, takes over when I’ve lost my cool with the kids. After 12 years we can still keep each other up until 2 am because we’re having too much fun talking to go to sleep. I love him deeply, even the things he doesn’t like about himself. I love him bearded & beardless. I’m a better, smarter, stronger person because I have been married to him. I could ramble on for pages and still not be able to cover all the ways that I am grateful to have him in my life. I love the life we have built together and I’m looking forward to continuing to share it.

About a month ago we had a series of thunderstorms roll through. One storm hit with a bang while the kids were out in the backyard. Or maybe I should say BOOOOM, because it rattled the house. I was in the kitchen and it made me jump. Then I heard the sound of Patches terrified screams dopplering toward me as he fled for the safety of his mommy. This event made a deep impression in his mind. We have frequent conversations about Thunder Monsters even on sunny days.

We live close enough to Hill Air Force Base that we get fairly frequent fly overs by military aircraft. One thing about military craft is that you don’t hear them coming. In fact they deliberately design them so that people won’t hear them coming, but you always hear them leaving. I don’t know what it was that flew over our house this evening. It was really high, and really loud for a very long time. The rumble hit suddenly and slowly tapered away over the course of several minutes. Patches was outside when the first wave of sound rolled over. Again I heard the terrified screams dopplering to the house. He was so scared that he tripped on the deck thus acquiring a scrape and splinters.

Patches is extremely verbal and he always has to talk through an upsetting event. It seems to be part of the way he sorts his experiences and makes sense of them. He had this to say: “The funder monster came and pooped on me! Maked me splinter! Funder monster in sky! And airplane was loud. Funder monster is scawy.” Our conversation reiterated all these points several times, but most upsetting to him was his complete conviction that the thunder monsters pooped on him. My best guess is that there was a physical sensation associated with the onset of the airplane noise, possibly a sonic boom.

At least he knows where to run when he’s scared.

Back in April I wrote about Kiki and Gleek. (Here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2005/04/10/)

The measures did a really good job of improving their relationship. Things were better for almost two months. Then school got out and I stopped working so hard at helping them like each other. Gradually incidents and resentments have piled up until yesterday when I realized that I really need to be paying attention to this again.

The measure that worked best last time around was #3, requiring Kiki to write down 50 things she likes about Gleek. She just has to come up with one thing per day until she has 50. If she can come up with more, great, but she has to find at least one thing. This means that Kiki has to pay attention to the positive aspects of Gleek’s personality. I re-instituted this requirement. I’ll also work some with all the other measures that I listed, particularly making sure that Kiki gets Gleek-free time.

In addition to the things I did last time around I’ve realized that I need to change the way I talk about Gleek to Kiki. Instead of saying “I have trouble with her too.” I need to say “I love it when Gleek…” Thinking positively about people always improves relationships.

School starts in just over two weeks. That is going to shift life around here significantly and I think I can make sure that the shifts are positive. At least I hope to.

Today was an historic first. Or maybe not so historic. Howard recieved a paypal tip from a person, not because they enjoyed Schlock, but because they enjoyed my journal. I feel glad and self-conscious both at once. But since the person in question obviously will read this, I thought I should at least say a big public Thank You.

And in the spirit of continuing to entertain my readership ;-), here is a snippet of my day.

Potty breaks are a biological imperative, even for mothers of young children. Invariably the breaks are never peaceful moments. Sometimes I have kids follow me into the room where they play with curling irons or toilet paper or make commentary on a process that I’d rather remain private. Other times screaming havoc erupts in my temporary absense. Today seemed to break the rule because I was able to end my moment of solitude in peace. This was because Gleek had decided that she and Patches needed to wear sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen. Since this ranked pretty low on the catastrophe scale I simply confiscated the bottle, wiped up floor dribbles and went on with the day.

That worked until 30 minutes later when Patches began shouting “Sting! My eyes are sting!” I grabbed him and headed for the nearest bathroom. I tried wiping his eyes clear with a wet washcloth, but while I was wiping one eye he would rub the other eye with a be-sunscreened hand. I abandoned eyes and tried to wash off hands so as to end the vicious circle, but I shortly realized that nothing short of a full bath could solve the problem.

Patches normally likes bath time, but he was not interested in water play when his eyes hurt. In fact he tried to run away, but then came running back because his eyes hurt and he needed mommy to fix it. I grabbed the poor screaming boy, plunked him into the tub and washed him thoroughly. It was sad, especially when he was crying “Just pick me up!” Life got better once he was wrapped into a towel with part of the clean towel held tightly over his sore eyes. By the time I’d gotten him dressed he realized that his eyes didn’t hurt anymore. That was good news, but he still felt insecure and in need of extra loves. I snuggled him into my lap with his blanket. He gave a sigh of contentment and said “I sweepy. I not sweepy in my bed. I sweepy in your hug.” With such a declaration of trust and dependence I did the only thing I could do. I held and rocked him until he fell asleep. It didn’t take very long, poor little guy.