Month: April 2007

Several years ago we were given a very nice Monopoly set by a friend. The kids love to play with the pieces of this set. Most particularly they like to play with the money from the set and scatter the remaining pieces liberally about the room. So I was surprised this morning when I discovered Link, Gleek, and Patches had set up Monopoly and appeared to be playing an actual game. Within a minute I figured out that while they were definitely playing a game, it wasn’t exactly Monopoly. Playing Monopoly doesn’t require a chess set and a stuffed Bowser. I watched for a few minutes and realized that they were playing a game that was much more akin to Mario Party than it was to Monopoly.

It pleases me that my children think outside the box and explore the full creative potential of game pieces. The games I most remember from my own childhood are not games that were played by the stated rules. Instead I fondly remember rows of toy monsters on a chessboard throwing Popsicle stick missiles at each other. Last monster standing wins. The games we made ourselves from pieces on hand were far more satisfying than games played according to rules created by others.

I still do this in my current life. Most of my publication plans are not standard. The business plan for Schlock Mercenary is not standard. Instead both are created from the pieces we had available to us. My parenting, housekeeping, and decorating styles reflect this as well. I collect pieces and recombine them in the ways that are most useful to me. I can imagine what it would be like to do things the way that others do them. I have a good imagination. I have no desire to live that way. 90% of what I do still fits into the box because the standard way of doing things is often useful, but there always seems to be a bit slopping over the edges of the box and into new territory.

Outside the box is wonderful, unless we’re talking about Monopoly pieces that have been lying all over the house for a week.

I was angry a lot during the past week. The schedule was tight and I felt a lot of pressure to keep everyone moving so nothing got missed. Children, even older kids like Kiki and Link, run on their own schedules. For kids examining the worm on the sidewalk is just as important as getting to school on time. They would dawdle and I would yell trying to usher us all from one activity to the next.

Today at church there was a lesson on anger. Mostly it was a class discussion on what anger is, what causes anger, and what we should do about it. I really needed the reminder that my anger is my responsibility. Anger is a red flag that something in my life is out of balance. I may not always be able to avoid getting angry, but when I do I should pay attention to what made me angry. In the calm after anger it is my responsibility to figure out what stresses in the situation triggered anger. Then it is my responsibility to try to restructure so that it doesn’t happen that way again.

There are environmental situations that contribute to anger. I am much more likely to be angry and irrational if I am tired. I get angry more easily of the house is a mess. If my surroundings are chaotic I frequently feel overwhelmed and anger comes more easily. There are preventative measures I can take against these things. It is not always possible to prevent all the triggers, but I need to prevent as many as I can as often as I can.

There are specific behaviors from my kids that always make me angry. For example me announcing bedtime and the kids either acting like I haven’t said anything or running away from me. The kids have free agency. I can not prevent them from choosing bedtime-avoidance behaviors. However, I can make sure that I announce bedtime in the least provocative way possible. Giving a five minute warning can make a world of difference. I can also choose a calm time to sit down with the kids and explain to them how frustrated and angry I feel when they ignore me or run away from me. They may still run away and I may still get angry, but at least then I will have done everything in my power to prevent the anger.

When I am angry I have a responsibility to channel my anger into acceptable paths. No matter how angry I am at the kids, I should never hit them to relieve my feelings. I do not think the kids understand how tempting it is to wallop a child who is defiant or oblivious. The anger swells inside me and a horrible voice in my head says that if I just hit them then they’d have to pay attention. That voice wants my kids to fear me when I’m angry. No matter how angry I am I can not let that voice dictate my actions. The same voice would settle for me calling my children hurtful names, but I should not do that either. Deliberately hurting another person does not solve the problem. It worsens the problem or creates a new one. No matter how angry I am, I have to remain in control of these voices in my head.

When I am angry what I must do is give myself the space to calm down. It is so hard to walk away from a situation that feels so urgent. Sometimes I can’t walk away, but if I can, I should. I always find better ways to manage situations when I’m not angry. Even if I can not physically walk away, I can still take a few deep breaths and try again for calm.

Even if I do everything perfectly. Even if I’ve had enough sleep and the house is clean and I’ve prediscussed things with my kids, there will still be things which will make me angry. I have to see the anger, identify the anger, do something about the anger, and then I have to let it go. This last is most important. One of the biggest triggers for angry outbursts is carrying around a load of unresolved anger. I do this a lot. I will be frustrated about a problem with my computer and then Patches will ask me for food. He then gets yelled at for making a reasonable request. I should never do that to my kids, but I do all the time.

During the lesson today my backyard neighbor offered the comment that she comes from a yelling family, but she is working hard to make sure that the yelling stops with her. She wants to control herself and find other ways to manage her kids than yelling. She then used me as an example of a person who manages kids without yelling. I was so flabbergasted by this that I laughed out loud. I feel like I yell at my kids all the time. I feel awful about doing it. She saw my laugh and said, “Sandra does better than she thinks she does.” It makes me feel good that she says that. It makes me feel humble. I don’t believe she’s right, but I hope that she is. I hope that I’m doing better at keeping my temper than my subjective observations would have me believe.

I have a responsibility to these young people who are mine to raise. I have to strive to be my best possible self at all times. Fortunately my kids seem possessed of a boundless supply of forgiveness. Each time after I’ve lost my temper, I go to them to offer an apology. Always I discover that they have already forgiven me even before I asked. I am humbled that they love me even when I’ve been awful.

So I begin this next week with resolve. I will be better this week than I was last week. I will be kinder, more patient, and less angry.

Hairdos:
Gleek has recently become much more interested in haristyles. I think this is in part because she is growing out her bangs and unless we fix her hair, they are constantly in her eyes. One day she fixed her own hair. She took a head band and plunked it on to her head sweatband style. Her hair was mushrooming out above the band and there were some straggling pieces of bangs hanging over the front. My offer to help her fix it was vehemently rejected. In fact I got to watch as she removed the headband and then painstakingly duplicated the hairdo while explaining each step in detail. I studied the final product again and realized that the style she had achieved was very anime.

On a different day I was the one fixing Gleek’s hair. But I had to follow her exact instructions. She instructed me to put two little ponytails in the front. These effectively kept her bangs out of her face. Then she had me put two larger ponytails in the back. She proudly displayed the style to her dad, who as a proper daddy, admired it. He then whispered to me that she looked like a squid. She did a little. Of course she also looked like a girl from an anime movie. She loved the look and wore it to school. I’ve yet to allow the mushroom-headband thing out of the house, but it’ll probably happen sometime. Next thing I know she’ll be asking me to dye her hair blue.

Shakespeare:
Last week I got to attend two Shakespeare plays put on by Kiki’s 6th grade class. The plays, Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing, were both seriously abridged. Unfortunately the truncation and the delivery of the lines rendered the plays all but incomprehensible to the grade school audience. I’m familiar with both plays and I still got lost. Gleek, Patches, and Link all got to watch with me. Fortunately I brought snacks and activities too help them sit still. They did love the slapstick bits. They laughed with hilarity for those. Shakespeare was a smart man to put the silly bits in with so much weighty conversation.

I didn’t care as much for the slapstick. I found my entertainment elsewhere. I watched all those self-conscious 11 and 12 year olds saying these lines and doing their best to mean them. It was particularly amusing to watch the dancing scenes. A dozen kids stomped out a waltz to the mellow tune of Christofori’s Dream while trying not to actually touch their dance partners. Also amusing was the moment when one boy came running in to announce the murder of King Duncan. He shouted “Oh Horror!” in tones of delight. Howard and I were hard put to not burst out laughing.

It is amazing to me that, despite my amusement and confusion, I still enjoyed the experience. The magic was in the excitement of the kids performing. Each and every one of the performers had spent hours learning the lines for 1-3 parts. They’d also all provided their own costumes. They spent weeks practicing blocking and gestures and light effects. They begged and borrowed props from parents, siblings, and neighbors. They had put in so much time and effort. They loved being up there performing. They were nervous and some of them forgot their lines, but they were there and they did their best. When time came for curtain calls I clapped my hands numb. I wasn’t clapping for the play. I was clapping for the performers who deserved every clap. None of those kids who performed will ever forget the experience. They will forever have an affectionate attachment to both Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing. Because they love two of Shakespeare’s plays, they may learn to love others. I am so glad that Kiki got to be part of this performance. I’m so glad that the rest of us got to go see it.

For a long time we have had three computers in our house. Howard has his computer. I have my computer. The kids have their computer. We have a wireless network to allow all of these machines access to the internet. All was well until one of the kids cranked the wireless antenna off the kidputer to use it for a sword. The antenna was not re-attachable.

Until recently this was only a minor problem because most of what the kids do doesn’t require connectivity. Then came Neopets. We got piles of neopet cards from our tour of Wizards of the Coast. Kiki quickly realized that there is a neopet.com and she begged to try it out. I picked a good time and let her have my computer for awhile. Now she has it for “awhile” every single day. She has also been exploring worldofdeltora.com. Not to be left out, Gleek has spent some time on Mylittlepony.com and barbie.com.

All the internet activites meant that my computer was frequently in use when I wanted to write or just surf for awhile. The introduction of my Thinkpad has solved the writing problem. I don’t really need to surf, I just want to. So peace returned. I could let the kids use my computer in the basement while I typed upstairs in the sunshine.

This evening I discovered Kiki sitting with my Thinkpad in her lap. She was reading one of my stories. I don’t object to her reading my stories, but she’d picked up my computer and poked around on it without asking permission. She had intruded into my space. I explained to her why I was upset. She nodded like she understood and then launched into a campaign for me to allow her to write stories using my Thinkpad.

I was and am torn. I love that Kiki wants to write stories. I understand her predicament of having things swirling in her brain that she wants to get out. But if I let her use my Thinkpad, she will slowly take it over. I love that I can just walk over, flip it open and write. Walking over and kicking someone else off is not the same experience at all. There would be times where I’ll kick her off without a problem. There would be other times where I’d go without writing so that she could write.

I am on call, all day, every day. My kids play with every thing from my pillow to my clothes to my hair. They firmly believe that everything I own is available to them. Is it so selfish that I want to keep one little laptop to myself? I don’t want to share. I don’t want it dinged, dropped, or broken. I don’t want kids moving my files around or accidentally erasing things. I want it to be always available for me.

When I get a new laptop, one with wireless capability, then Kiki can have this old Thinkpad for writing her stories or essays or whatever. Until then she’ll just have to make do with the kidputer or paper-and-pen.

I love the movie Hook, though I haven’t seen it in years. One of my favorite moments in the film is when the protagonist enters a room and finds an old man crawling around on the floor looking for something. The old man looks up with utmost seriousness and says, “I’ve lost my marbles.” Later in the film we find out that the man is Tootles, one of the Lost Boys grown up. We further learn that the marbles he is seeking are his happy thoughts which allow him to fly.

This week I lost my marbles. I’ve spent most of today finding them again. I looked for them during the week, but they kept slipping through my fingers and rolling away from me. This morning I carefully made sure I had pockets so that I wasn’t trying to hold them all in my hands. Then I began to search for the errant happy thoughts. I don’t have enough to fly yet, but I certainly feel much lighter.

I have so many things in my life to be grateful for. There have been many delightful events in the past few days. I didn’t do much savoring at the time. I was too busy. But because of blogging I have a unique opportunity to savor the events as I tell them to others. Blogging gives me pockets.

For example: I have Peter Pan on the brain because I’ve been reading it aloud to my kids while they eat their bedtime snack. I’ve tried previously to read this book aloud. My mother read it to me when I was a girl. Unfortunately none of the previous attempts went over well. This time they are entranced. If the evening gets busy and I attempt to put them to bed without reading from Peter Pan, the kids protest. At first it was just Link and Gleek I was reading to, but Kiki and Patches joined the nightly crew.

They sit and eat while the rich images of the story wash over them. They delight in all the descriptions and in the little comedic moments which never made the Disney film. They laugh and worry and suppose about what will happen next. They have yet to be confused or put off by the complex language that builds this marvelous story.

I too remember being entranced by Peter Pan. I remember that when my mother finished the book, we still wanted more. I’m not sure at all how my father became the one to supply it. My mother is the storyteller, but night after night we would beg my dad to tell us Peter Pan stories. Perhaps the magic in those stories was because he always put us right there in Neverland with Peter. It was not John or Wendy dancing with the redskins, it was my siblings and I. Eventually I figured out that my dad was lifting plots straight out of television shows. I’d grown too old to love the magic without analyzing it.

Now I watch my kids entranced by the same cast of characters. I don’t know that I’ll continue the tradition of Peter Pan stories once we’re done with the book. Perhaps I will, but it will have to flow naturally from me and my kids. I can’t force a joyful tradition. Perhaps instead we’ll find another delightful book.

Or perhaps we’ll rent Hook. It would be very fitting to follow a book which ends at growing up, with a movie about finding childhoood joy again.

This morning I started methodically cleaning up the things around my house that were making me depressed. It was a good start. I planned to hand Patches off to my neighbor to go to the farm/park. Then I would have 2 hours with no kids. I planned to use those hours to re-center myself. I was going to clean some things up, maybe do some writing. But then Patches clung to my leg and didn’t want to go without me. I could have forced him to go, but that would have handed a screaming tantrum to my neighbor who was planning to shepherd 4 young kids through a farm. I could have kept him home, but that would have disappointed him and my neighbor’s son. The only option that allowed for happiness was for me to change my plans and go along. So I did. It was good. I enjoyed being at the park. I enjoyed watching Patches carefully parcel out his little bag of corn to make sure that all the animals got a taste. I enjoyed visiting with my neighbor.

Then I came home. All the stresses and messes were laying in wait for me here. They are better than they were. Howard is home now. I can see that I’m digging out from under. There is progress. But all afternoon I had to hold onto patience with my fingernails lest it get away from me. It escaped several times. Each time it did I would recapture it and resolve to hold on tighter. It is not pleasant to ride the edge that way, knowing how close I am to shouting at my children. Knowing as I shout that I am over reacting. Also knowing that even on a good day I have trouble dealing with two children crying and a third yelling simultaneously. All day I’ve had this sense of too many things happening at once. The out of control feeling drives me crazy and I feel frantic to do anything I can to minimize the chaos as quickly as possible. So I shout and I make arbitrary decisions because I don’t have time or brainspace to make considered or considerate ones.

Now I am at the end of the day. The kids are in bed. Finally I have time to review, to figure out how far out of line I was. The crises I managed would have been challenging even on a good day. But on a good day I probably would have been ahead of the curve and there would not have been so many crises.

Tomorrow Patches has been invited to go to a local farm/park. I’ve been invited to go along if I wish. I don’t wish. The prospect of having several hours free of all children is more attractive to me than the prospect of going with my friend to watch our kids enjoy farm animals. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll go. I feel bad for sending my child and not helping with the outing management.

Wednesday is the cub scout Pine Wood Derby. There are people who consider turning a block of wood into a car to be a delightful challenge. I am not one of them. I do not have a table saw and sander in my garage. I don’t have that other tool which I don’t even know exists, but which would probably have made construction much easier. What I do have is a pruning saw, a sheet of sandpaper, and very tired arms. Link did most of the sanding and now he’s doing the painting. But on Wednesday is the big event where Link will be very sad to discover that his car loses to the cars of kids whose parents have power tools. Then after the chaos and emotion management of the pine wood derby, I get to go to a girls camp preparatory meeting with Kiki.

Thursday is Kiki’s big Shakespeare play. She has been working on this for months. I have to attend. I can either attend the daytime performance, but duck out to retrieve Gleek from school in the middle of it. Or I can arrange for babysitting and attend the evening performance. This is also the day I’m supposed to volunteer in Gleek’s class. I’ll probably cancel that. And Gleek has a birthday party to attend. At least I have the costume ready. Now we just have to do costume, makeup, and hair before school both Wednesday (the dress rehearsal) and Thursday (the performances.)

Friday Link has a field trip to the hansen planetarium. He informed me of this today and asked me with big sad eyes, could I please come with him? I have never been on a field trip with any of my kids. Going on field trips is supposed to be something that involved parents do, but I’ve never made space for it. Friday is otherwise empty. I could arrange babysitting and make Link very happy. But shepherding hyper children-on-a-field-trip is not restful. It is a high energy activity. I have no energy now and I haven’t even gotten to the busy part of the week.

All of that doesn’t even begin to take into account all the house and yard work chores that I want to have done. I’m tired of being embarrassed every time I look at my front yard.

I’m still on the stairs and though I’ve tried all day I haven’t managed to kick the mood yet. At least Howard comes home in the next hour.

Recently Kiki watched Tomb Raider. She was entranced. She loves the Laura Croft character and now aspires to be like her. Kiki doesn’t want to shoot guns or punch people, but she wants some of that fearlessness. She admires how Laura is very centered and confident. Laura always knows what she wants and she goes to get it.

Kiki didn’t discuss this in detail with me. She just dropped a few comments. But she also started setting her alarm to get herself up in the morning. She made a list of how she wants to run her mornings and it includes meditation and exercise. I love seeing Kiki take the reins of her life and deliberately choose who she wants to be.