Sandra Tayler

Like parents everywhere, Howard and I frequently provide “incentives” for our children to encourage behavior that we want. (We like the word “incentive” rather than the blunter “bribe” because it makes us feel less guilty for using the tactic.) The most common use of this tactic is at dinner time: “Kids who finish all of their dinner can have chocolate milk!” This is usually followed by the devouring of all food and demands for the promised treat, which we happily dole out, having gained our point. Sometimes however this tactic has uninintended results. Patches doesn’t much like hamburgers. There is something about the flavor or consistency of the meat that he simply doesn’t like. However her really really likes chocolate milk. So when Daddy told him he had to eat up all the hamburger in order to get chocolate milk, Patches put his brain to work and found a way to meet the requirments without actually ingesting any of the despised hamburger. He carefully bit, chewed, and spat back out every single bite of that hamburger. Howard and I only noticed this process when the hamburger was almostly completely rendered into a ground up pile on his plate. To Patches dismay we removed the mess and required him to eat a hot dog instead. We don’t give Patches hamburgers anymore.

I figure while I’m spouting uninformed opinions I’d weigh in on gas prices. Part of me is glad that gas prices are going up. Americans spend far to much money maintaining and running far too many cars. We spend municipal money on roads and overpasses that could be spent on mass transit, parks, or bike trails. Maybe the high gas prices will finally force americans to take a close look at our wasteful consumption of resources. In my neighborhood we live less than a mile from the school, but the vast majority of parents drive their kids to and from school. Maybe if Americans used their feet more and their cars less we could also solve the growing problem of American obesity. Just a thought.

On the other hand, ouch. My budget is pinched enough without having to spend any more. I think I’m done persuing garage sales for the year because it costs too much to drive to them. I’ve started walking Link home from school and I may start walking him to school as well. Kiki’s school is further and walking isn’t really an option. I’m increasingly tempted by the thought of buying a bike with a child trailer attached. Unfortunately I can’t tell whether this is an expensive whim, or whether it would be wise financial planning. Biking to school and back is certainly easier and faster than walking. It is even possible that Kiki’s school might be in bike range, although probably not. Gleek’s preschool rotates through houses in the neighborhood, so no gas expense there. And the only out-of-neighborhood after school activity is Link’s soccer, which just became more expensive because of gas. I think that I may ask my neighbor if I can borrow her bike and trailer for a spin around the neighborhood some afternoon. I’ll either come home wanting one even more or I’ll decide it isn’t worth the money and storage space.

I watched some footage of looting this morning. I have to say that I understand why it happens. It is very hard on the store owners, but the store owners and clerks aren’t there to take money and people NEED supplies. Most of the people I saw in one clip were adults carrying large packages of diapers or food. I have no arguement with those people. Anything they can do to keep their loved ones alive and healthy while waiting for evacuation is okay with me. That flavor of looting will voluntarily cease to exist if emergency teams can provide other sources for essential supplies. Unfortunately in this case some of those people won’t get help for days. If I were in their position, I would loot too. I would also try to provide restitution when survival was no longer at stake. Many of these people will do the same.

I DO have an arguement with the healthy young men who were filmed running off with bags of dry cleaning. I suppose it is possible that they needed the clothes for survival, but I doubt it. Their faces and body language were too gleeful.

Oh, and I’m also mad at the New Orleans mayor who thinks that choppers should have been pulled off of rescue efforts in order to plug the levee and prevent property damage. People first Mr. Mayor.

NOTE: I’ve edited this entry on Sept 2, 2005 as I refined my thinking about what was important. Some of the comments will no longer be pertinent.

Over the last day or so I’ve been watching the fears of hurricane Katrina’s landfall and the evacuation of New Orleans. New Orleans is a city that I’ve wanted to visit someday and now it may be too late for me to do so. I feel for those people and I find it strange to realize that on this same beautiful clear morning when I’m sending kids off to school there are other people huddled in shelters in fear for their lives. There isn’t much I can do for the people in New Orleans right now except send prayers, so I’m using the excess anxiety in a little mental exercise of imagining what I’d pack if I ever had to evacuate my home.

If I had to evacuate and had no time to plan or pack I’d grab the kids first. If there was time I’d make sure they had shoes and I’d grab our 72 hour emergency kits.

If I had 10-30 minutes to get out I’d also grab my file of Important Records (birth certificates, passports), scriptures, a toy or two per child, some extra bedding, Kiki’s hamster, the entire contents of the medecine cabinet, and some clothes.

If I have an hour to plan, then the limiting factor becomes “what will fit in the van?” In addition to everything already mentioned we’d put in additional food, photo albums/scrapbooks, Howard’s external hard drive (containing back-ups of his computer), additional books/toys, back ups of all my computer data, and the camera.

It is amazing to realize how much of what we’ve accumulated I’m willing to abandon in an emergency.

The tub in our master bathroom has one of those pop-up plugs. You push it, it pops open. Push it again, it pops closed. At least that is the theory. Ours actually requires hitting 5-7 times before it grudgingly pops partially open or partially closed. It needs fixed.

The tub in the kids bathroom worked great. We used it all the time. Then one day we discovered a small bulge in our downstairs ceiling. Popping it got us wet. Water does not belong dripping from sheetrock ceilings. That is bad. Some unintentional experimentation demonstrated that water run down the drain in the kid’s bathtub runs out of the ceiling in the family room. So, tub two needs to be fixed.

Since our house has two showers separate from the two tubs, we’ve still been able to stay clean. The tub problems have been gathering dust awaiting funds enough to pay a plumber. The funds finally arrived last week, but I’ve been busy so never made the call. (I also suspect that part of me was still trying to figure if I could solve the problems without spending money. Not logical, but oh well.)

This morning a toilet clogged. 10 minutes of plunger work, 1 soaked Sandra, and 1 liberally splashed bathroom later and I still had a completely clogged toilet. I decided that since I needed to call a plumber anyway, I’d let him deal with it. He shows up today sometime between noon and 2 pm. Hopefully by the time he leaves all my plumbing will work again.

My kids started school today. We all had to get up almost 2 hours earlier than we wanted to. Thats a big biorythmic shift to swallow all at once. Add to that the imposition of Schedule and today was rough. It is now 8 pm. I only have half of my kids in bed and none of them are asleep yet even though theoretically the younger two should be in order to get enough sleep. Homework time was exhausting for me. All of it was exhausting for me. The schedule seems overwhelming to manage. I know that I’ll adapt and in a couple of weeks it’ll be easy, but right now the thought that I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again makes me want to cry. They kids each had a great day, so that’s good at least. How is it that I can simultaneously feel like the schedule is a workable one and also feel like it is insane and no one could manage it?

The best part of today featured an unexpected package in the mail. It was a gift box full of small toys for my kids. Thank You SomebodyStrange and Davesanngel, that was incredibly thoughtful of you. It was a much needed morale boost in the middle of a very rough day. Rather than “sensibly” saving up the toys for a birthday or christmas, I’m going to hand them over to the kids right away because sometimes the unexpectedness of a gift is half the value. You picked well, the kids will have a blast.

And now back to parenting with me.

I unexpectedly ran into an old family friend today. This woman has been a friend to my family since before I was born. She was my primary teacher when I was 5. Every memory I have of her breathes warmth and love. She was the first person of Tongan decent I ever knew and I’ve had positive inclinations for all Tongan people ever since. She was that wonderful. Seeing her today was like going home. Even more like going home than actually visiting my hometown, because when I’m in my hometown I’m confronted with all the changes time has wrought. I had a wonderful, but short, visit with her and her husband (whom I didn’t know well as a child) and I’ve discovered that they’ve moved to a town only about 20 minutes from here. I may play adopt-a-grandparent because my kids are short of local grandparents and I’d love for them to know her.

I’ve spent a good portion of this afternoon sorting through random memories that were dredged up by this encounter. I’m suddenly thinking of wading and catching polywogs in The Arroyo. I’m remembering a chestnut tree that used to grow in the courtyard of our church building. (It had the most fascinating spiky balls that fell from it yearly. Do chestnuts do that? Maybe it was something else.) I’m remembering tagging along on my brother’s Cub Scout outings because my mom and this friend were the den mothers. I’m remembering playing with a dozen friends whose paths went different ways in junior high and high school, people I haven’t thought of for years.

All of these memories seem imbued with a sort of idylic glow. They were happier, less worrisome times. But not because the world was a safer place, I don’t believe it was all that much safer, the glow is because I was a child and it wasn’t my job to make the world better. I was free to just enjoy it. The times that my kids will remember as idylic are taking place right now. Years hence my kids will look back on today as some sort of golden age when life was simpler. I will too. When I am a grandmother, watching my children raising children of their own, I too will look back on today as a golden age.

This is why I need to keep this journal, so that years from now when I want to tour The Golden Age, I’ll have a guidebook.

Yesterday we had a marvelous BBQ with some friends. Any excuse to make kebabs is a good one, but this excuse was even better than most. These weren’t people that I’d had much contact with, I’d met them once. Howard had met them at a couple of local conventions and corresponded via email many times. After dinner Howard and the dad disappeared into his office so that they could talk about ship designs in the Schlockiverse. I was left to talk to the mom, her teenage daughter, and a pre-teen niece. One of the things I really enjoyed was watching the way this mother and daughter interacted. They were obviously really good friends. They shared all sorts of geekish interests and spent a good part of the time talking to each other while I got to sit quietly and observe. (Note, I didn’t at all feel left out, I was thoroughly enjoying listening to the conversation and occasionally participating.) I hope that I can foster that kind of friendship with my own kids through their teen years.

The afternoon of fun was even further enlivened by Gleek getting stung by wasps. Apparently they’d created a colony underneath the pink towel that had been hanging over the deck rail for a month. The wasp colony had significant objections to Gleeks decision to use the towel. She got stung twice on her arm. We slapped on a plaster of baking soda and water and gave her some benadryl. While I was administering this first aid Howard went out with a can of raid and wreaked Daddy Vengeance on the wasp nest. The first aid seems to have worked because within an hour the stings were reduced to little pink dots.

Interestingly the mosquito bite that Gleek acquired right between her eyes on the day before yesterday began swelling up. By bedtime she looked a little bit like a star trek alien with a nose prosthetic. Howard assured her that even though she looked like a bejoran it was okay because all the bejorans on Star Trek were pretty. This resulted in her refusing to let me medicate the swollen bite at bedtime because she wanted to look pretty. The bite continued to swell overnight and she awoke this morning with one eye swollen almost shut. She has decided it isn’t pretty anymore and she cooperated with medication.