If Not Now, When? If Not Me, Whom?

I don't ordinarily talk much about politics on this blog.

(A quick glance at my sidebar, showing "Politics" as one of my top five tags, might of course convince a reader otherwise, but , if you look more carefully, you'll realize that the few general tags I use are rather heavily weighted in the tag list, given I'm prone to rather esoteric tagging. As of today, out of 182 posts in the past three years, 15 are tagged with "Politics." That means I don't talk about politics around here about 92% of the time.)

The reason I don't talk about politics much on this blog is not because I don't think much about politics. I think about politics quite regularly, actually. Really, pretty much every day. There's a reason I've been jonesin' for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and it's not just because of the naughty, naughty things I would like to do to Stephen Colbert.*

I've actually been known to watch CSPAN voluntarily.

And the reason I don't talk about politics much on this blog is not because I don't have considered, well-developed political views. Anyone who reads enough of my comments on other people's blogs probably knows by now that, even when I'm talking with people I know will disagree with my views, I openly and willingly identify myself as a liberal, a progressive, and a feminist.** I'll even accept the term damned hippie.

I've got the long hair. I might as well rock it. (Though I'll hasten to point out that damned dirty hippie does not technically apply in my case. I do shower daily, people.)

The reason I don't talk about politics much on this blog is that I came to blogging to be part of a certain blogging community. A community of intelligent, articulate individuals who like to talk about the ordinary triumphs and struggles of their everyday lives in insightful and revealing ways that illuminate the common human experience in a way that makes me feel both truer to myself and more connected to the rest of the world. Many of these people (but certainly not all) are fellow parents. Many (but certainly not all) are fellow women. Many are professional or quasi-professional writers, or foodies, or amateur photographers, or someone else with whom I share some random common interest. But every link in that blogroll there off to the left goes to a blogger who has written something that resonated with me, that deepened my understanding of a universal mystery, that seemed to reflect some feeling I have felt myself.

I enjoy being a part of this community.

And I have read political blogs. And political blog posts by writers of non-political blogs. And I have read the comments on political blogs and political blog posts by writers of non-political blogs.

And so I know that, all too often, when people-- even very intelligent, usually kind people who are normally infallibly polite-- discuss politics on the internet, civility goes out the window.

I know that many people are as blindly passionate about supporting their party or candidate of choice as they are their favorite hometown sports team. Discussions over politics, like discussions over football, seem somehow to wake some sort of fierce tribal instinct in certain people that causes some of them to say things and do things they might not say or do in any other context.

And I know that the faceless nature of the internet makes it that much easier for a person to say something careless or insulting without worrying about the consequences.

I see how quickly discussions over politics can get out of hand, even among bloggers who have formed strong relationships over common experience that has nothing to do with their political affiliation. I have seen far too many brilliant, thoughtful people, caught up in the heat of an argument, write ill-considered words that imply that other equally brilliant, thoughtful people must be gibbering idiots just because they have a different point of view.

I don't want to host that kind of crap on my blog.

I'm here to connect with others. Not to disconnect.

However, I also believe that whichever candidate wins the current race for the United States Presidency will face unprecedented challenges. He or she will walk into office facing not just one but TWO ongoing wars-- one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan-- and an increased threat of terrorism. He or she will inherit a record national deficit. A tanking economy. A housing crisis. A credit crisis. A health care crisis. An atmosphere of international mistrust. And a nation deeply, bitterly divided over how to resolve these issues. The future of our nation depends on our next leader's ability to resolve many serious issues created or exacerbated by our current leader's mistakes.

I have some opinions about the best ways to fix the problems we face. It may be presumptuous of me, but, I believe some of those opinions are worthy of discussion.

I also have some observations about the political process, and the coverage of that process by the mainstream media, that I think may be useful to some who might not have the time or energy to follow political campaigns (and the coverage of those campaigns) closely.

So, I have decided, perhaps against my better judgment, that over the next few days leading up to the Super Tuesday primaries, and possibly also occasionally during the weeks thereafter, I am going to write some serious posts here about politics.

I am not trying to alienate or exclude any readers may who hold views opposed to my own. I welcome civil discussion about the issues I'll be raising, and I hope that everyone who comments will do so in the spirit of furthering serious and thoughtful exploration of solutions to the problems we all face together as a society.

I am not claiming to be a political science expert. I am not claiming to be a media expert.

I am just an educated woman who gives a damn.

With a blog.

*Apologies to my lovely husband, who is nearly just as hot as Stephen Colbert, and is also of course the only man for me. While I'm awake, anyway.
**Yes, Virginia: There is such a thing as a lipstick-and-heels-wearing, bra-owning, man-loving, stay-at-home-mothering FEMINIST. I am one of them. Nice to meet you. Step on my rights to educate myself, vote, work for equal pay, marry whom I please, divorce whom I please, or own my own property, and I WILL kick your ass with these heels.

Finished! (Well, Mostly.)

After:

The Sink That Started It All:

Finished:

• New tile floor installed, grouted, and caulked to tub and wall
• Water-damaged wall repaired
• All walls painted
• New baseboard installed and painted
• New wax seal installed in toilet
• Tub re-caulked
• New sink installed

Still To Do at a Later Date:

• Replace vent fan
• Replace toilet seat
• Replace bath enclosure
• Replace bath faucet and drain

You might ask why we didn't just replace the bath enclosure and bath faucet while we were painting so we wouldn't have to do touch-up paint later. Well, partly because we just didn't want to spend any more money on home improvement this week.

(Or rather, we really didn't HAVE any more money to spend on home improvement this week. I mean, other than that imaginary money on our Home Depot credit card, which, luckily, lives in my husband's wallet and not mine. Because if the Home Depot credit card lived in my wallet, it would be maxed out all the time. Forget shoes. Momma needs a new pair of POWER SAWS! *Drool*

The same thing happens to my husband at Radio Shack, but, thankfully, we do not have a Radio Shack credit card.)

And we also didn't replace the bath enclosure because when we replace the bath enclosure, I plan to actually tear out the wall behind the enclosure and replace that too. Because someone who owned the house before us installed the current enclosure directly over greenboard (which is mildew-resistant gypsum board/drywall, for the uninitiated). The trouble is, that sort of installation is no longer up to most local construction codes, which now recommend using cement backer board behind all tub and shower enclosures. Cement backer board is much more resilient to water exposure and is much less susceptible to mold issues.

We don't currently have any serious water or mold issues with the greenboard that is behind the enclosure now, but, it's almost certain to happen at some point down the line if we don't tear it out and replace it with cement board, and, being my husband suffers from severe nasal allergies to EVERYTHING, I want our bathroom to be as mold-resistant as possible.

However tearing out the greenboard and replacing it with cement board will probably be a days-long project, and considering that when this whole New Sink Installation project started it was supposed to take two hours, we decided we really needed to limit the current Bathroom Construction Chaos to one week.

So, expect another Before and After in a month or two.

(And DON'T get me started on what needs to happen in my kitchen.)

Progress

Let's review:

This is what happens when I pay a "professional" hundreds of dollars to fix my floor:

Rustic Scratch Finish in my living room courtesy of Extreme Hardwoods

This is what happens when my husband and I fix our own damn floor ourselves:

Grouting IS kind of hard on the manicure. But, what is art without sacrifice?

Not bad for total amateurs, eh? Extra kudos to my husband, who, for the purposes of this project, taught himself how to cut tile with nothing but cheap-ass generic brand tools and sheer willpower.

Next, we'll see whether my newly patched piece of wall looks like a piece of wall once all the painting is finished, instead of some strange alien spackle creature threatening to take over the room (which is what it looked like before). I figure I can't mess it up much worse than it already was.

No, the Bathroom is Not Done Yet

But this post from Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored yesterday inspired me to show you all the No Solicitors sign you will see in my window, should you ever come to visit my house. I put it up several months ago when I finally got tired of tree trimmers, siding vendors and Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door:



A closer view:




In case you can't decipher the text in my crappy, hastily-taken-between-bouts-of-spackling photos, it reads:

NO SOLICITORS*

*Excepting Gypsies, Fairy Godmothers, or those bearing million dollar checks for the occupants. Girl Scouts also permitted if selling cookies.

Whenever someone trying to sell me something deliberately ignores my sign and knocks anyway, I say, "Are you a Gypsy, a Fairy Godmother, or a Girl Scout?"

That one really tends to befuddle the tree trimmers.

Feature Creep

That's what my husband calls it when someone at work tells him they want him to design a simple project, and then they ask him for just one more feature, and just one more feature, and just one more feature, until, suddenly, what was once a "simple project" is now a huge and complicated mess: Feature Creep.

Ever since we moved into our house a year ago, I have wanted to make some serious upgrades to one of the bathrooms. For starters, the housing inspector told us right away that the grout in the tiled floor was no good, and we'd have to regrout pretty soon or risk water damage to the subfloor.

Then there was the uneven baseboard to contend with. That poorly repaired water damage to the wall surface near the bathtub. The generally crappy paint job. The vintage 1950s medicine cabinet-- creaky, dirty, tiny, and losing silver from the mirror. The leaky 1970s faucet. The ugly, rusting vintage 1980s light fixture. The beat-up, particleboard Walmart sink cabinet, so big for the space you could barely open the bathroom door past it, let alone find room for a step stool so a three-year-old could wash his hands without help.

But, there have been so many other things to fix in the rest of the house during the past year that all we'd gotten to replacing so far in that bathroom was the faucet, the medicine cabinet, and the light fixture. I'd touched up the paint a bit, put in a towel bar where the sellers had illegally ripped one out after closing, and tried vainly to re-repair the poor water damage repair job without ripping out large chunks of wall.

But past weekend, while walking through a Lowes just to kill some time while my husband waited to meet someone nearby, I saw a nicely priced, nicely made sink cabinet, with an included porcelain basin. It was just the sort of wood finish my husband likes. It was just the right size to fit into our little bathroom, leaving just enough room for a small step-stool so my son could finally reach the sink on his own.

It was the only one left in the store.

So of course, we bought it.

I had measured and checked our existing sink cabinet carefully while thinking about a replacement, and I knew that the tile floor continued under the cabinet. I knew the pipes and the faucet we already had in place would almost certainly fit the new sink. Installing the new sink cabinet and basin, then, really, should only take an hour or two at most. Should pretty much be a cinch. Right?




Wrong.

Some previous owner of this property HAD tiled under the sink cabinet, but only partway. This unknown not-so-handyperson had tiled partway under the front and sides and then just used broken bits of tile to shim up the back of the cabinet, to make it sort-of level.

The New Cabinet does not appreciate being put on this dirty Old Floor.

At least I knew now why water tended to pool on the back of the sink counter.

Well, we thought, so what? The tile in our bathroom is a plain, cheap textured white style. How hard could matching it be? We figured we'd buy a few tiles at Home Depot, tile over the empty space, put in the new sink, and voila! I could even regrout the rest of the floor, while we were at it. It would be a one-day job. It would be a cinch! Right?

Um . . .

We went to all of the hardware stores in our area. No white textured tile AT ALL. No eight inch tiles, AT ALL. We went to a specialty tile store. It was there that we learned that eight-inch tiles are out of fashion. White floor tiles are hopelessly out of fashion. And the specific style of tile we were looking for? Had been discontinued, several years ago.

If we wanted a complete, finished, matching tiled floor, we would have to retile. The whole floor.

Which meant of course that we would also have to remove the baseboard, and the toilet.

At this point, I decided, what the hell? Let's fix the wall and paint, too!

And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!

And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?*

So if I'm not around much this week, YOU KNOW WHY.

And yes, of course I'll post an after.


(Soon. Did I mention that's our only bathtub, there? Yeah. )

*Quoted from the Talking Heads

The Almost Accident

My husband, son and I are sitting in the car in the parking lot at Dierbergs, the local grocery store. We have just finished packing our groceries into the back of the car and strapping our son into his car seat. My husband backs out, slowly. There is a car idling in the aisle behind us, waiting for our space even though the parking lot is only half full, because the space we have parked in is so close to the entrance of the store.

As my husband continues to back out carefully toward the waiting car, straightening our car to pull out of the aisle, another vehicle, a white van, parked two spaces down from us, very suddenly backs out of its space. My husband taps his horn at the van, irritated. We are already three-quarters of the way out of our space. We started backing out first. The driver of the van should have waited for us to pass. Had the driver even seen us?

The van continues to back up. And back up. And back up some more, straight toward us.

My husband honks again, this time leaning on the horn in earnest. The van still does not stop. It does not slow. It continues backing toward us, inexorably. There is no sign the driver has heard us at all. My three-year-old son, who can see everything clearly from his car seat, starts crying, sobbing “Stop! Stop! Why don’t they stop?”

“They are not going to stop,” I say to my husband. “You’ll have to back up. Back up!” The van is now inches from our bumper. My husband backs up, still honking on the horn. The car waiting for our space is still behind us. My husband can only back up a couple of feet. Whether transfixed by the drama unfolding ahead, stupidly determined to have our parking space, or somehow completely oblivious, the driver behind us will not back out of the aisle to get out of our way. The van continues backing toward us. People walking in the parking lot have heard the constant blare of our car horn and stopped to stare.

I know this won't be a very bad accident. It's the inevitability of it, the trapped feeling I have, my son's terrorized sobbing, that scare me. In frustration, knowing this is totally dangerous, I open the passenger door and lean out of our car, frantically waving my arms, screaming, “STOP NOW! YOU’RE GOING TO HIT US! WE CAN’T BACK UP! STOP!”

Perhaps the driver of the van sees the red flash of the opening door, or my waving arms. Perhaps the driver somehow finally hears and pays attention to the horn that has been honking continuously for the past several seconds. In any event , the van stops, inches from our bumper, pulls forward, and stops again, halfway in the street, halfway in the parking lot aisle.

In my agitation, I have not even thought to read the license plate. All I have managed to register is that it is a disabled plate, legally parked in a disabled parking space. As my husband angrily pulls around the stopped van to turn out of the lot, I catch a glimpse of a gray-haired, elderly driver,* fixing us with a look something between puzzlement and annoyance; then the van is gone.

And the young driver of the car that had been waiting behind us, refusing to move, pulls into our empty parking space.

* My husband and I still can't agree on whether this person was male or female.

--------

P.S. I know that some of my readers are patiently waiting for the political rant I mentioned in my last post. I promise will get to it. It will be very long, and I have been ill the past few days, so I haven't felt up to making my MIND ill. Heh.

Things About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition, Part, Um, Five?

Did you think I forgot about this? NO! I didn't forget about this. I just got kind of bored with it.

Okay, that's a lie. I thought you were getting kind of bored with it. But, I've been watching too many debates and caucuses and too many self-absorbed MSM news pundits, and I'm on the verge of a political rant tonight, so, I'm thinking I'll save us all a bit of trouble and return to my meme instead.

(This of course is not to say I won't get ranty anyway tomorrow. But at least I'll theoretically be more awake tomorrow. So I may make a little more sense. Ahem.)

Thing Five:

About once a day, for at least a moment, I regret that fact that I did not choose to major in biology.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I did, and still do, adore the illustrious field of Comparative Literature. Despite the fact that 90% of the population has never heard of a degree in Comparative Literature. (If you're too lazy to click the link, the fact that I have a degree in Comparative Literature basically means I had to read tons and tons of books and write tons and tons of essays analyzing them. It's a lot like getting an English Literature degree. Except that I had to read tons of books and write tons of essays in three different languages.

Yes, this sometimes hurt my head.)

But the thing is, I also like to study things like the effect of environmental exposure to synthetic estrogen mimics on maternal epigenetic imprinting in mammalian zygotes.

And I think protist conjugation is totally hot.

My biology teachers in high school (that's right, teachers, because I took not one, not two, but THREE different biology-related courses during high school) were totally convinced I was going to grow up to be a scientist. For a while there, I was totally convinced I was going to grow up to be a scientist.

I'm not sure exactly what happened to change my course.

Somehow something or somebody convinced me at some point during high school that I was no good at math. (This despite the fact that I took, and passed, an Advanced Placement Calculus Exam in high school. But you see, all my friends at that time were taking, and acing, the Level Two Advanced Placement Calculus Exam.) My anxiety over what I thought were poor math skills make me anxious, in turn, about my ability to hack it in college-level science courses.

Also, I spent a summer in high school participating in a special science career program at a local university, during which time I learned that, contrary to the romantic notions I had in my head about traveling the world discovering exciting new species, most biologists spend most of their time in a lab:

A.) Performing incredibly delicate, incredibly tedious procedures with incredibly sensitive, easily broken equipment, over, and over, and over, and over again, in the hopes of achieving some infinitesimally successful result that some senior research fellow will probably take all the credit for

B.) Torturing caged animals

or

C.) Both, at the same time!

I know some people enjoy such things, but I didn't want to do those kinds of jobs. And, since my irrational terror of needles, my anxiety issues, and my overdeveloped sense of guilt would almost certainly prevent me from ever becoming a successful doctor, I decided my prospects with a biology degree looked pretty dim.

Then, my during freshman year of college, two men seduced me, clinching my fate.

They were Jorge Luis Borges, and Kalidasa.

But, oh, endogenous retroviruses. It was so hard to quit you.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Isaac Makes an Endorsement

CHILD: Mommy, don't turn off the TV. I want to watch Charlie Rose and then Curious George.

MOTHER: Okay. You want to watch Charlie Rose?

CHILD: Yes.

MOTHER: Um, okay.

Minutes pass.

CHILD: Is that Barack Obama?

MOTHER: Yes, that is Barack Obama.

CHILD: Why is he called Barack Obama?

MOTHER: Does his name sound strange to you?

CHILD: Yes. It sounds cool.

MOTHER: It's an African name. His daddy was from Africa. That's why he has an African name. His Mommy was from Kansas, where Grandpa lives.

CHILD: Why is he talking on the TV?

MOTHER: He's running for President of the United States.

CHILD: He wants to be a president?

MOTHER: Yes. A whole bunch of people are running for President of the United States. There is a woman named Hilary Clinton. There is a man named John Edwards. There's a man named John McCain, and a man named Mitt Romney, and a man named Mike Huckabee, and a man named Fred Thompson. Do you remember seeing some of those other people on TV? When Mommy and Daddy were watching the debate?

CHILD: Yes.

MOTHER: They are all running for President of the United States, along with some other people, too, and it's up to us, the people who live in the United States, to think carefully about the people who want to be president and then choose which person will be the best president.

CHILD: Oh. We choose?

MOTHER: Yes, everyone in the country together gets to choose.

CHILD: Well, Barack Obama will be the best president.

MOTHER: Why do you think Barack Obama will be the best president?

CHILD: Because he is the best one.

MOTHER: But, why do you think he will be the best one? What do you like about him?

CHILD: He is just the best one. He is nice.

MOTHER: You think he seems nice when he talks on the TV?

CHILD: Yes. He looks nice. Also, I like to say his name.

This Kid Is Totally Smarter Than My Kid (But Don't Tell Him I Said That)

Apparently, there is some controversy brewing on the internets regarding young Lilly's abilities. Some people seem to think her parents must have subjected her to some sort of crazy draconian toddler training system that essentially forced her to learn the names of all these places on the map.

When my own son was about Lilly's age, he asked, nay, demanded that I teach him the name that went with the symbol for every major car company. He voluntarily memorized them all, and would gleefully call out the names of cars as they passed us on the street.

As the parent of such a quirky child, I would have to say, I suspect Lilly really does do this for fun.

Some people just are born geeky.

Who Knew?

After St. Louis lost the esteemed title of Most Dangerous City to Detroit last year, by a hair, I never expected to learn my hometown is apparently also the sixth most literate city in the nation.

According to a study by Central Connecticut State University, St. Louis is more literate than San Francisco. St. Louis is more literate than Boston.

Could someone please inform the photo lab clerks at my local Target?

And we might want to clue in the owner of that bakery store in my neighborhood with the huge sign advertising:

WEDNESDAY "BARGIN" DAY

The preschool evaluation "experts" at the local school district who performed my son's special needs evaluation months ago may wish to be reminded that sentences such as:

"He is able to hold the marker in his right hand with his fingers but is place very high near the top."

and

"He is able to fastened and unfastened buttons but is very slow and deliberate."

are not proper English.

Additionally, local school district officials might be encouraged to learn that "in regards to" should be "in regard to" and "re-create" may be written more acceptably as simply "recreate."



(Wait-- remind me-- why exactly was I upset that these people declined to teach him, again?)




If this is what superior literacy is like in St. Louis, I tremble to think what one might encounter in Texas.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Son of Pedant

Conversation One: Son of Pedant


FATHER: Can I have a hug, son?

CHILD: Yes you may.

*****

Conversation Two: Son of Ranter


CHILD: What is going on with Mommy?

FATHER: Mommy is upset.

CHILD: But Daddy, why is Mommy upset?

MOTHER: Oh, don't worry. I'm not mad at Daddy. I'm just upset because I'm tired of being Oppressed by The Man. Can you say Oppressed by The Man?

CHILD: Oppressed by The Man,

MOTHER: Good job.

CHILD: Mommy?

MOTHER: Yes?

CHILD: Can't you just stop being so oppressed all the time?

Merry

Our crooked yet festive tree:

Isaac and Cammy decorating cookies:

The photo I sent with my holiday cards:

The ridiculously extravagant yet educational present Isaac has been playing with for the past eight hours almost nonstop:

A Bonus Gift of Cuteness:

Merry Christmas Blessed Yule Favorable Solsticetime Etcetera

Is Jon Stewart a Scab?

All right, all right. So I have totally derailed my own meme. Sorry about that. I'll get back to it.

It appears that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will be returning with new episodes on January 7th. Without their writers.

As a writer by trade myself, I have been supporting the Writers' Guild strike by not watching the reruns and crappy reality TV shows the networks have been airing in place of stuff they actually have to pay people to write. I have been resisting the impulse to buy or rent DVDs to fill up my empty television schedule (since DVD residuals are one of the issues currently in dispute).

But, all that's been easy, really. I hate bad reality TV shows. I have better things to do than watch reruns. And my bank account is better off without the DVD purchases.

Can I resist the siren call of Jon and Stephen?

I've been wondering what I would do if the shows came back on the air. I support the writers' strike, and yet, I also honestly believe TDS and the Colbert Report provide a public service, in a very similar fashion as "real" news shows, like, say, NBC's Nightly News, or Meet the Press, do, in that, many people treat The Daily Show and the Colbert Report as their primary news source.

That may sound ridiculous given these shows are presented as comedy, but, in fact, regular Daily Show viewers have been shown to be better informed about American politics than people who rely on newspapers like the New York Times.

Regular news shows have continued to air their programming during the writers' strike, with no protest from the WGA, because providing news is a public service. Should The Daily Show and the Colbert Report be judged as news shows, or as late-night comedy entertainment?

It appears, from this statement released by WGA on the matter, that the Stewart and Colbert may not have had much of a choice about going back to work before the resolution of the strike:

“Comedy Central forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air will not give the viewers the quality shows they’ve come to expect. The only way to get the writing staffs back on the job is for the AMPTP companies to come back to the table prepared to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild.”

It seems from this quote that the WGA believes Colbert and Stewart were told to go back on the air, or risk permanently losing their timeslot. But so far I have not been able to find further information to either confirm or contradict that notion.

So, what do you think? Are Jon and Stephen being greedy jerks for crossing the picket lines, or does their job as providers of news and political analysis, especially during primary season, trump their responsibility to the Guild? If Comedy Central indeed threatened to cancel the shows altogether (and thus put hundreds of staff besides the writers out of a job), does that in and of itself justify a return, or should they have called Comedy Central's bluff?

Will you watch?

Secession

A contingent from the Lakota Nation is attempting to secede from the U.S., citing violation of treaty agreements.

I found this story on Metafilter. Someone in the comments section said, referring to the non-Lakota people living in the disputed region:

"It also includes countless private residences and property. Imagine waking up and learning that your house is now in land claimed as part of someone else's country."

Imagine that, indeed! Waking up one morning, and finding that someone has claimed your land as their own! Without even asking! And now they want you to submit to the rule of a foreign government! Run by people who aren't even the same race or culture that you are!



(I LOLed. The sad, ironic sort of LOL.)

Things About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition, Part Four

Thing Four:

I have moved 24 times in my life.

Mind you, I am 27 years old.

The frequency of moves had partly to do with my parents' divorce, and partly to do with being exceedingly broke (and therefore unable to live on campus) as a college student, and partly to due with becoming a mother earlier than I had expected, and probably lots to do with generally bad housing luck.

I have never lived outside of the St. Louis metropolitan area. I have lived in: Hazelwood, Berkley, Jennings, Bridgeton, Vinita Park, University City, the Central West End, South City, Creve Coeur, and Maryland Heights.

I have lived in crappy, dangerous Section-8 slums, quaint suburban ranch homes, and expensive luxury highrises. I once went to the worst public school district in North County. I once went to the richest private school in West County.

(So, if you think you can pin down my socioeconomic background and guess at my personality by asking The Famous Saint Louis Question, "Where did you go to high school?" you are, in fact, for once, mistaken.)

I'll have been at my current house for a year, come Christmas.

I think I'll be staying here for a while.

Questions from My Child in the Last Hour

"What does 'maybe' mean?"

"How does a doorknob work?"

"What happens when we turn on a faucet?"

"Why does the toilet make a sound of running water for a minute after we flush it?"

"What does 'because' mean?"

"What does the agitator in the clothes washer do?"

"What does the little switch inside the dryer door do?"

"How does the hot water heater work?"


Does anyone want to buy him this for Christmas? And maybe a dictionary?

(More memeage later, when I get enough of a break from all these language and engineering questions to write more than a paragraph.)

By the Way . . .

This blogger is basically being forced out of the house she has lived in for only two years by a corporation that wants to build a condo behind her property. They are refusing to pay her a fair price for her home. They say she has to make a decision tomorrow. Does anyone else want to help make some noise on her behalf?

Things About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition, Part Three

Thing Three:

I fold my underwear.*




*Representative photo may or may not be actual image of blogger's underwear drawer.

Exploding Grammar Headache

Okay.

Given my recent laxity in posting, what power on Earth could make me post twice in one day?

A GROCERS' APOSTROPHE, that's what. ON MY CHRISTMAS CARDS. The ones I was planning to send out TOMORROW.

Misplaced apostrophes make Mommy angry.

Bad Target photo people. Bad, bad, bad. If I had a ruler, I would smack you with it.

Now my poor husband is driving back there in the dark, in the snow, to argue grammar with a highschooler getting paid ten bucks an hour. I wish him luck, given the girl I just spoke with on the phone about the problem was about as educated as a box of rocks.

I guess you get what you pay for. Next year, I am totally making the cards myself by hand for eleventy billion cents a piece with scrapbooking crap from Archiver's.

Things About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition, Part Two

Sorry I didn't post this yesterday as planned. There was something about the silence of the snow yesterday that put me in a reading mood, rather than a writing mood, and before I knew it, I'd read myself to sleep.

But back to the meme:

Thing Two:

I turned down 3.5 marriage proposals before I accepted my husband's.

Marriage Proposal One:

I was in high school. A very lonely, very intense, slightly crazy upperclassman, who spent 80% of his time debating politics, read some essays I had written and was moved to express his undying love. My mother didn't allow me to date anyone seriously yet at that age, but this boy was persistent.

One day, he called me over the phone and proposed that we run away to Utah to get married. He said he had researched the marriage laws in every state, and that Utah (at the time) was the only state where a girl of my youthful age could get married without parental consent. He had been saving money. He had packed a suitcase. He had written down the address and phone number of a cheap hotel. He had a plan all set for evading our parents. He had thought of everything!

I turned him down.

He apparently spent the next couple of years driving by my house at night at least once a month, and staring at my window forlornly.

I hear he's happily married now.

**************

Marriage Proposal Two:

This one is actually really sweet and tragic. It also happened during high school. (I swear I was a total geek, then! And I don't mean the cool sort of geek, either. I was positively mousy. I mean, people made fun of me. I don't know how this kept happening.)

There was a boy at my high school, in the same year as I was, who had a terrible crush on me for basically the entire four years. He was smart, brilliant even. He was nice. He was even cute. (Best of all, he had never made elaborate plans for kidnapping me and taking me to Utah! I mean, as far as I know.)

He was rather an odd at times, lacking in social graces, but, being I was a total nerd myself, I could have handled that.

The problem was, he was one of my best friends; I'd known him since I was twelve, and, try as I might, I could never muster much more than brotherly affection toward him. We tried dating a couple of times, but it just didn't work for me. He kept professing his affection; I kept turning him down. I was always madly in teenaged-love with someone else. But all our other friends knew he had a crush on me, so almost none of them were willing to date me for very long, because they didn't want to break this kid's heart. (Or at least, that's what I like to tell myself. See mousiness earlier referenced for alternate reason.)

One day, when we were both at a bowling alley, this boy bought me a 50 cent plastic ring out of a vending machine, and proposed. I was nearly an adult, then. He was so earnest. It was terribly romantic.

But I turned him down, too.

But he's happily married to someone else too, now!

So I'm not a total bitch, right? Right?

I still have the plastic ring.

**************

Marriage Proposal Three:

I was in college. He was a rich boy from the east coast whose uncle held a position of importance at the university. I was on scholarship, working my way through school unsupported by family, barely scraping by. He was a member of the Campus Republicans. I was a liberal idealist. He was a computer engineering major. I was studying world literature.

We both liked ballroom dancing.

We dated for a tumultuous few months. We broke up. He was leaving town in a couple of weeks anyway, to go work for a huge technology company; I still had to stay here another two years to finish my degree, so, it was for the best anyway, right?

I did miss him, though.

One day, not long after he'd left town, he called me to say he was coming back into town for the weekend, and would like to spend some time with me. I agreed to see him. Then he said:

"You know, I think it would make my parents very happy if I came back from St. Louis engaged."

To which I responded, innocently as can be, "But who on earth would accept a proposal on such short notice this weekend? Are you seeing someone else?"

Because, you know, "My parents would be happy" did not really sound to me like a very good reason to propose.

**************

Marriage Proposal .5:

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What does she mean by half a marriage proposal?" Well, you see, after I rejected the tepid offer by the rich boy from the east coast, I met another man whom I wound up living with for two years. This man was that sort of person who never finishes anything, or commits fully to anything-- the sort who does everything halfway. He never actually proposed to me. But after a certain amount of time had passed, it became inevitable in the minds of our families and friends that we would eventually get married. My boyfriend even actually started talking about where we would get married, and whom we would invite, and some of his friends started referring to me as the fiancee. But he never once actually ASKED me to marry him. Which I suppose was for the best, given I eventually broke up with him.

**************

And then I met my husband.

The End.

We Interrupt This Meme to Bring You the Fact that Dwight is Awesome, Oh and I Talked to Some Other Bloggers Too

So, I went out to the STL Blogger Holiday Meetup organized by the lovely ladies behind NewsBitch and Marriage 101. I went even though I barely qualify to go to blogging events these days, given I've been posting like three times a month (in a good month).

Everyone there was gracious and pretended that they didn't care that I've lost my Bloggers' Club membership card, though. And I had a lovely time.

When Dwight from Dwight's Writing Manifesto walked in, I recognized him immediately, which is weird since I had never met him in person or seen a picture of him before. He actually posted a photo of himself on his blog for the first time ever today, but I didn't see it before I left for the party.

I guess I must have recognized him because he just looks like how he writes. He was wearing a badass leather jacket, and he ordered a scotch and soda. The very image of a writer of hard-boiled fiction, no? I'm afraid I monopolized his time asking him too many questions about the keys to successful writing-while-parenting, but he was kind enough to put up with me.

Raquita and Benticore were there, and Raquita gave me a super fancy jar of super fancy vanilla sugar, because she is super fancy like that. Now I owe her two Christmas cheesecakes.

Rebecca was there. Slacker Mommy and Midwestern Mommy and Farrell were all there, too, kicking it mommyblogger style. (Which means that they, like me, were mostly drinking too much and pretending like they were young, childless and free, except for when we would forget to pretend all that and start talking about our children. By the way, did I mention that Farrell looks like she is, like, 23? But she's actually older than me? Damn. I want to know what moisturizer she is using.)

I met this chick who writes a blog entirely about cupcakes, which of course meant I had to blogroll her immediately when I came home, because, honestly, who wouldn't want to read a blog entirely about cupcakes? Only a person with no heart or no tastebuds could resist a blog entirely about cupcakes.

I also met a wedding photographer, which is convenient given my sister is getting married in a few months.

The famous Dana arrived fashionably late, accompanied by The Sexy, who pretended to be a bit put out by our insistence that his name tag read THE SEXY, but, I think he was secretly pleased.

There were at least 15 other people there I didn't really get to meet, and a bunch of other people I did meet whom I'm sure I've forgotten to list. Basically, everyone was there. Do you hear me? EVERYONE. Which means if you missed this party, you missed EVERYONE.

So, you'd better go to the next one, see?

Things About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition, Part One

Okay, so, Raquita tagged me with a meme like two or three, or , okay, maybe even four weeks ago, and I have not gotten around to writing about it until today, because I am a bad blogger lately. Bad blogger.

It's the "Seven Things About Me" meme, which I think I've been tagged with before. In fact--let me check. Yes, I do believe I was tagged with it back in the days when this meme was a whippersnapper-- when it was still just a cute little ol' "Five Things About Me" meme. Because, in blogging terms, I am THAT OLD. Yes, friends, I have been blogging since 2005. I imagine that in the context of blogospheric methods of time measurement, I have gone past "kickin' it old school." I am absolutely decrepit.

Maybe that is why I can't seem to write here, lately? Maybe my blog has arthritis!

And yet, Dooce seems so well preserved.

*Sigh*

Anyway, I actually really like this meme, since it gives me even more of an excuse to blather on self-centeredly about myself than usual. My usual excuse for blathering on self-centeredly about myself is that, hey, that's what blogs are for! But, see? Someone asked me to blather on self-centeredly about myself this time. So, the selfish self-centered navel-gazing blather I serve up here today for the entire internet's reading pleasure is all Raquita's fault.

**********

Seven Things You Didn't Know About Me: Skeletons in the Closet Edition

Thing One:

I may half an older half-brother I have never met.

My parents married young, divorced early, and vowed to loathe one another 'til death from from their loathing shall them part. During my post-divorce childhood, my father was very open about his loathing of my mother. My mother, however, mostly tried to keep her loathing of my father hidden from us.

When I was a child-- I want to say, ten or twelve or so-- I once overheard a disparaging conversation between my mother and some other person regarding my father. I wasn't supposed to be listening. I can't remember who the other person involved in the conversation was. I can't remember what my mother and this other person were talking about that led to the mention of this salacious bit of information that was meant to be kept from my tender ears. But in any event, whilst unintentionally or perhaps intentionally eavesdropping, I heard that my mother say that my father had fathered another child who had been given up for adoption before I was born.

Later, I confronted my mother about this information. I had the sort of relationship with my mother, back then-- a sort of mother-daugher relationship that I now understand to be rare-- that I could admit to my mother I had overheard such a thing, and ask her such a question. And she admitted to me that this information was indeed, "possibly," true. She said that, before my father and mother started dating, my father had been engaged to another woman. Or, girl, really. Like my mother at the time of my parents' marriage, the person my father had been engaged to previously had been a teenaged girl. And this girl became pregnant while she and my father were engaged.

But, this is where the "possibly" part of "possibly true" comes in: my father insisted that the baby his fiancee was carrying was not his. In fact, he implied it was physically impossible, nudge nudge, wink wink, that the child she was carrying was his. Of course, he said these things to my mother after he had broken up with his fiancee. When he first started dating my mother. And my father doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for honesty. So, who knows? (Besides possibly my father and this child's biological mother, I mean.)

In any event, as was often done in those days, the pregnant ex-fiancee was spirited off to a secret facility, probably run by nuns, while her family probably put it about that she'd gone on vacation. When the baby was born, my father's name went on the birth certificate. And the baby, a boy, was given up for adoption.

As a teenager, with my overly self-centered, romantic, teen-chick-lit-damaged brain, I often feared I would meet this mysterious maybe-half-brother somewhere, by accident, and accidentally fall in love with him.

As a rational adult, I occasionally wonder what on earth I will say to him if he ever shows up at my front door.

I mean, other than, "How nice to meet you! Please, do come in."

I tried, a little bit, to find this maybe-brother, using the nascent internet, back when I was a teenager. I think I did this partly in the interests of preventing myself incurring epic tragedy by accidentally dating him. But mostly because I really did wonder where he was, and whether he was all right. And whether he really was my brother, or not. And whether he cared.

But, as time went on, I realized that this young man might possibly actually be much, much better off without ever meeting the living breathing drama machine that his (possible) paternal biological family. It didn't seem right to me, when I thought about it, to try to find this person when I had no way of knowing whether he actually wanted to find me. So, I stopped.

(But, if you ever find this post, Maybe-Brother, then, I have to say: How nice to meet you! Please, do come in.)

*****

Part Two of this meme tomorrow. I'm doing these one per day. Because I like to leave you wanting more like that. And because it forces me to actually post.

School of Rock

When my kid didn't get into the local super-secret school district preschool program (thanks for the phrase, Christina) for kids with special needs (because significantly delayed in adaptive and motor + average everywhere else = admitted, but significantly delayed in adaptive and motor + advanced in verbal = DENIED, according to their math), I just kept him home again this year, because the KinderTotKidzKeeperAcademies in my neighborhood scare me, and I didn't want to deal with this sort of crap trying to get him into the local fancy private preschools after the application deadlines had already passed.

So, right now, at least theoretically, he's in home preschool, run by me.

Home preschool run by an introverted, bookish, dreamy sort of intellectual, equally prone to fits of whimsy and fits of melancholy. A sometime-workaholic who worked to pay her own way through college, who worked 50 hours a week right into the seventh month of her pregnancy. A mother who quit work gladly to stay home, and is proud of her decision to stay home. A professional who still misses regular work outside the home terribly, goes through phases of feeling completely unmoored even three years later, and often acts childishly cranky because of it. A girl who helped raise her own brother, and was once a nearly excellent nanny. A woman with an obscure college degree who speaks educated English, passable Spanish and a little bit of Hindi, and twitches when she encounters a comma splice in the newspaper, and likes to read science journals, just for fun.

I really haven't the foggiest whether any of that means I'm qualified, or even currently sane enough, to do this.*

We haven't devised an official curriculum. I am not sure if I believe in devising a curriculum for a three-year-old. But of course there are plenty of days when I feel like an idiot and a bad mother for not having yet devised a curriculum, because surely, the other three-year-olds these days all have an Official Curriculum, and a List of Educational Goals, and a Program Mission Statement, and a College Admissions Strategy, and, hell, probably a CV AND a resume. Don't they?

We do have a sort of a schedule. He has music class with other kids his age every Monday, so on Mondays, before class, we make crafts for music class and sing songs from music class and dance to the music class CD. He has occupational therapy every Tuesday (so Tuesdays are largely devoted to crying in frustration, laughing in triumph, and trying not to cry some more in frustration) and every Wednesday morning without fail we go to the library for storytime, and then stay for a couple of hours while I have him read a few books to me, and then I read him books in English and Spanish. And about once a week, we bake something; I make him repeat the ingredients from the recipe back to me, and have him help measure and count.

I've taught him the days of the week in English and Spanish, and numbers in English, Spanish and Hindi. Sometimes read him sonnets by Shakespeare, or excerpts from the Odyssey, just for kicks. The other day, when he asked me, "Where's the sun today, Mommy," instead of saying, "Behind those clouds," I said, "The sun, dear boy, is approximately 93 million miles from the earth. That is also known as one Astronomical Unit. However, please remember that 93 million miles is really only an average, as the earth makes an elliptical orbit around the sun. Oh, and the reason you can't see it today is because the sky is cloudy, and the clouds are blocking the sun's light from view."** (I already knew he knew what "orbit" meant-- he'll show me the difference between a planet's revolution and a planet's orbit by either spinning in place or running in a circle around the coffee table, the same way I showed him when we were playing with his astronomy flash cards.)

I feel pretty smug when I do things like that.

But then, there are the days when I let him play on the computer or just sit him in front of PBS for two or three or even four hours, sometimes so I can clean the house or work but more frequently lately just so I can have a couple of hours to myself, in my own head, maybe reading something that has more than ten words to a page and isn't about kittens, and it's those days that I feel horribly guilty-- even while I continue to let a glowing screen babysit him-- and feel that I am failing. Why am I not doing more, for instance, to teach him math? Why don't I practice his occupational therapy exercises with him every single day, like I should? Why don't I draw with him more? Why don't I play with him more? Why don't I spend more time with him outside? I am unmotivated. I could do much better at this than I am.

At a preschool outside the home, he would get regular math lessons, and drawing time, and playing time, and time outside. He probably wouldn't get Shakespeare, or explanations of the sun's orbit, but, does he really need those things, right now? Or do I?

I do know that, at the very least, here at home with me, he has someone who will make sure he eats balanced meals every day even though he is an unbelievably picky eater. I know he is with someone who won't freak out when HE freaks out over an extra-sticky batch of playdough or a weird noise or a sudden draft-- someone who tries her honest damnedest not to hold his sensory issues against him. I know he is with someone who will not hit him in frustration, or fail to notice he has a fever until he passes out***, or forget him in a van.

I hope I am also doing most of the other stuff right.



*Of course, that also applies to mothering in general.

**My husband, overhearing, hinted I was setting our child up to get his butt kicked on the playground someday when he starts prattling on about astronomical units. Which is probably true. But what else am I supposed to do with all this hard-earned college knowledge swirling around in my head, when I'm not working outside the home, besides impart it to someone else? I tell myself I'll just get him karate lessons, too, so he can be a nerd AND a hard ass. As long as he doesn't actually hit anyone.

*** This happened today to a little girl who was at the library with her daycare group. She couldn't stop coughing, and her cheeks were flushed bright red, and there were two daycare workers there, but they wouldn't take her out of Storytime until she actually passed out. I wanted to kidnap her and take her to the doctor. I thought about it seriously. But I don't think they let kidnappers off for good intentions.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Black Friday

CHILD (watching the news with MOTHER): Are those people in line at Walmart?

MOTHER: Yes.

CHILD: Why are they at Walmart in the dark?

MOTHER: The people just said why. They want to buy a TV.

CHILD: I think we need a new TV. Our TV had static the other day.

MOTHER (laughing): Oh, really?

CHILD: We need a new TV from Walmart.

MOTHER: We don't need a new TV. There is nothing wrong with our TV.

CHILD: But our TV has static! And it keeps skipping!*

MOTHER: You just want a bigger TV, don't you? Like the one in the Walmart circular?

CHILD (seriously): I think we need a Sony.

MOTHER starts blogging about conversation on laptop. Child reads over MOTHER'S shoulder.

CHILD: What are you doing?

MOTHER: I'm writing about you.

CHILD: You typed about the TV skipping.

MOTHER: Yes. I thought what you said was cute. Are you mad at me?

CHILD: No. I am not mad. I just want a new TV. Tell them I want a new TV. This one we have was made in China.

*He means skipping like a CD player. It does not matter to him that this is actually impossible.

The Trillionth Mommyblog Lead Post

Several years ago, back in my young, single, pre-parenting days, I spent some time working for the Mary Engelbreit Store. If you don't know who Mary Engelbreit is, you obviously haven't spent enough time around middle school English teachers, teapot collectors, quilters, grandmothers, nuns, or progressive lesbian-owned independent bookstores.

I have actually met Mary myself, and yes, she is really about as nice as her work makes her seem (though I'd estimate, not quite as cutesy). My co-workers at the store were nearly all easy to work with sorts of people. And my primary job there was to help sell lots of cute, cute, so-cute-you-could-almost-go-blind-from-the-sheer-cuteness-and-in-fact- years-later-I-still-question-my-ability-to-judge-colors merchandise, mostly to teacherly, grandmotherly, teapot-collectorly, etc. sorts of customers, the vast majority of whom were already TOTALLY, MANIACALLY, RABIDLY OBSESSED with collecting the merchandise I had to sell.

In other words, in a lot of ways, my job was pretty easy.

But it was still retail, and, as anyone who has ever worked in retail (or for that matter, anyone who has ever worked in food service, health care, or as a club bouncer) knows, no matter how generally pleasant to work with your establishment's target demographic may be, if you spend eight hours a day interacting with a variety of people, eventually, you run into people who happen to be totally insane.

People who know me casually tell often me I seem exceptionally nice. People who know me well inform me that I am indeed very, very nice a good deal of the time, up until the point I get in a mood about something and morph into a poison-tongued passive-aggressive bitch who could probably verbally lash the U.S. Congress into stunned submission if given the opportunity.*

But apparently it's first impressions that count, because after my first six months or so of employment at the store, an unspoken consensus was reached among my co-workers that whenever an angry crazy person called, I would be given the phone.

Once, a woman called the store several times asking to speak directly to Mary about a complaint she had regarding an entire line of Mary Engelbreit dishes. When it finally became clear to this woman that Mary herself was not in fact answering phones in the customer service department, she asked to speak to the store manager. The store manager, of course, handed the phone to me.**

"Are you aware," the woman I'd been warned was crazy asked me, with the cool patience of someone who is certain the listener is NOT aware of the facts about to be stated, "that the [blah blah line of] dishes being sold in Mary Engelbreit's name were manufactured in China?"

"Yes," I said. "Those dishes are made under license by the [blah blah company], which is based in the United States, but manufactures in China. Do you have a problem with some dishes you have purchased?"

"No!" The woman replied, "I haven't purchased any of those dishes. I am calling to tell you, and would you please pass this message on to Mary-- I am calling to tell you that I am not purchasing any of these dishes, because they are made in China."

"Well, I'll be sure to pass on a note--"

"I will not buy any dishes that are made in China. I don't buy any food containers that are made in China."

"I'll be sure to pass on your concerns, but I do want to let you know that Mary Engelbreit does not own that manufacturing company. She has licensed some of her images to them, but she is not in charge of manufacturing. She is simply the artist who created the artwork they used on the plates. It's that manufacturing company that chose to have the dishes made in China, and if you would like to complain to them directly, I can give you their phone number--"

"Do you KNOW what the problem is with dishes that are made in China, young lady?" At this point, the woman's voice had reached almost a religious fervor.

"Um--"

"It's not just that the Chinese are taking manufacturing jobs away from hardworking Americans. It's not just that the dishes get shipped halfway around the world, which is bad for the environment. It's the Chinese government. There's a conspiracy, you see. The Chinese government is conspiring to poison American children-- with LEAD PAINT! They put lead paint on the dishes, on toys, on everything. Our own government doesn't test things properly. They don't bother to test things, because the big businesses that built these factories in China don't want their goods tested, so they pay off the government to stop testing. Then our children eat off of the plates, they play with the toys, and they get brain damage. This is all part of a plot hatched by the Chinese government to take over the world by poisoning America's youth! And our own government is turning a blind eye!"

At a loss for words, I gave the woman the dish manufacturer's phone number politely, and hung up.

Then I said to my co-workers, "You were right. That woman was batty. She was prattling on about some Chinese government conspiracy to poison American children with lead! Can you believe it?"

Yeah, so, these days I think to myself, maybe this woman wasn't quite so crazy, after all . . .


*I really ought to try this sometime.

**Yeah, for those of you who have never worked in customer service: when you ask for a manager on a customer service line, and they transfer you to someone who sounds vaguely important but can't seem to actually do anything to help you with your problem? That's not the manager. The manager is actually sitting in her office bidding on Coach purses on eBay or playing solitaire, making some poor underling answer the phone for her instead.

Of course, said underling may actually have a better knowledge of the computer system and the phone transfer system than the manager, anyway, so you might really be better off.

Why We Do It

Last year, when the leaves fell, you
worried; you
tried to put them back on the trees,
so concerned that the pretty wooden creatures
might be ill,
that something in the world might have turned
wrong.
This year when I raked leaves into a big, big pile
you waded through them, buried to your waist;
you jumped ,and landed with a crunch, and jumped again
and tossed crisp red and brown confetti in the air
for hours straight,
and laughed, and laughed,
as though a pile of leaves were the best thing
ever in the world,
and I laughed too, and didn’t feel the blisters on my hands
from so much raking.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old

Conversation One:

Clearly I Have Not Been Teaching Him Enough About Limiting Impulse Purchases

CHILD: [Pointing to a recently borrowed library book with a picture of a girl riding a horse on the cover] Does that girl like riding that horse?

MOTHER: Yes, I think that girl does like riding horses.

CHILD: And is the horse nice, and friendly?

MOTHER: The horse does look nice and friendly, doesn't it? I don't think he would let that girl ride him if he weren't nice and friendly.

CHILD: And is the horse happy?

MOTHER: He looks happy to me. What do you think?

CHILD: I would like to buy a horse at the store. Let's buy one tomorrow.

MOTHER: [Laughing a little] You would like to buy a horse at the store tomorrow?

CHILD: [Slightly subdued by mother's laughter] Well, just a plain one.

MOTHER: [More serious now] Well, you see, there is nothing wrong with wanting a horse, plain or otherwise, but horses need a lot of things that we don't have right now. Horses need a big, big grassy yard to run around in. And they need a barn to sleep in--

CHILD: I know! We could get a barn at the store, too. We can check the grocery store.

MOTHER: I don't think they sell barns at the grocery store.

CHILD: They might have barns at Home Depot.

MOTHER: Even if we could buy a barn, where could we put one?

CHILD: I don't know.

MOTHER: There's not enough space in the back yard for a barn, is there?

CHILD: No.

MOTHER: We could try to visit a horse someday soon, if you'd like. We could visit a horse on a farm. Would you like to do that?

CHILD: Yes. What do horses eat?

MOTHER: Well, horses need to eat grass, and hay, and oats, and things like that. And when people want to give a horse a special treat, sometimes they will give the horse a carrot, or an apple.

CHILD: When I have a horse, I will give him carrots.

MOTHER: That would be nice of you. Maybe you can have a horse someday, but right now, we just don't have room for a barn.

CHILD: Well, we can wait to buy a horse.

MOTHER: Yes.

CHILD: We can wait until Wednesday.


**********************

Conversation Two:

Even Though I Am Failing at Teaching Him Basic Economics, He Is Apparently Somehow Learning Environmental Science Behind My Back

CHILD: Mommy, pretend you are a baby and I am your Mommy.

MOTHER: Okay. Waaaaaah! Mommy! I'm hungry! I'm bored! I want a toy! I want you to sit next to me!

CHILD: Actually, pretend you are five.

MOTHER: Okay. Wait, Mommy, if I am five years old, does that mean I can go to school?

CHILD: Yes! And you will have fun at school!

MOTHER: But will I have homework?

CHILD: Yes! You will have homework, and it will be fun, and I will help you.

MOTHER: So, Mommy, what is my homework today?

CHILD: Your homework is to fix everything.

MOTHER: My homework is to fix everything?

CHILD: Yes.

MOTHER: Everything? That is a lot of responsibility for a five-year-old.

CHILD: Don't worry. You can do it.

MOTHER: So I have to fix everything, everything? Like, everything? Like, for instance, global warming?

CHILD: Global warming?

MOTHER: Yes, global warming.

CHILD: You can fix global warming.

MOTHER: And how do I do that? Can you help me?

CHILD: [Patiently] First you fix all the things with leaves. Then, you fix the cars.

MOTHER: [Silence.]

MOTHER: [Silence.]

MOTHER: Well, gee, that is the way to fix global warming, isn't it?

CHILD: See? You can do it.

*************

I know I have been neglecting you, internets. I have no good excuses. So instead of making excuses, I will attempt to placate you by exploiting the cuteness of my child.




See, now? There? Don't you like me better, now?

Helping Isaac

I took my son in for an evaluation with the local school district today, to see whether he would qualify for special services to help him with his Sensory Integration Disorder. In addition to causing some severe eating issues, Isaac's SID has interfered significantly with his motor skills development.

During the testing, Isaac scored a full two standard deviations below average in gross motor skill development, a clear deficit. This score puts him in the bottom ten percent of kids his age for gross motor skills. Mind you, this is how he scored even AFTER a year and a half of occupational therapy.

I honestly wasn't unduly upset by this score. I expected this type of score. My son didn't walk until fifteen months, and didn't run frequently until he was almost two. He didn't start jumping, or standing on one foot, until just a couple of months ago, and that was with the intervention of his occupational therapist.

He is terrified of heights. He won't climb ladders. He clings to the rail when he goes up and down stairs. He refuses to go down the slide at the playground, even if we lift him up so he doesn't have to climb-- even if I go down with him. Whenever he does any activity that challenges his sense of balance, he becomes utterly terrified that he is going to fall.

Isaac's OT calls this issue a "motor planning deficit" heightened by "gravitational insecurity."

I personally call this issue: "Sweet merciful heavens, if we can't at least teach this child how to go at least down a slide without screaming in terror by the time he turns five, he is SO getting his ass kicked at the playground on the first day of school. Not to mention the fact that if I can't teach him to kick properly, jump properly, or hop on one foot, he will never learn to enjoy sports, and will spend the rest of his youth getting picked last for every sports team and constantly trying to duck out of PE with forged doctor's notes. And all of this is really starting to sound disturbingly familiar in relation to my own clumsy childhood. So, if it's at all humanly possible, I would really, really like to get this child a little more professional de-klutz-ification help, mkay?"

More help than my health insurance company is willing to provide even grudgingly, no matter how many letters from doctors I send them.

So, to tell you the truth, I was maybe even a teensy bit relieved that my son scored so low on this gross motor skills test. Getting a score as low as he did on this motor skills test is the statistical equivalent of scoring a 70 on an IQ test. If a kid scored a 70 on an IQ test, you would expect the school district to offer him some extra help, right? So, if a kid scores a 70 on a motor skills test, one might imagine that the school district would be willing to provide some help there, as well, right?

But.

On the verbal development test, my three-year-old scored as a five-year-old.

He knew what day of the week it was.
He knew the names of the seasons.
He knew not only the word for telescope, but also what a telescope is for.
("He knew what a telescope was!" exclaimed the smitten speech therapist. "Would you like to give me the test, Isaac?")

And, well, there's also the fact that . . . he can read. About 40 or so words, last I counted.

Now I have a test for you: What does gifted plus delayed equal, in the eyes of special school district funding?

Average.

We were denied physical therapy assistance from the district.


I'd like to see my son eat words for lunch.

I'd like to see him read his way up a ladder, and down a slide.

I'd like to see him overcome his fear of fingerpaints with the definition of the word "telescope."

But, for now, I'll keep taking him to the library each week, and I'll keep watching proudly as he reads board books to the other preschoolers at story time.

And I'll keep taking him to the playground, and I'll keep praying each time that this will be the day he'll make it down the slide.

Junk Funk

A lot of things have been falling apart around my house lately.

In the past two months:

-One brand new plastic colander cracked when I tried to pick it up after filling it half-full with green beans from my garden.

-Another brand new metal colander that was supposedly stainless steel started to rust. (I mean, really, now. Who makes a colander that corrodes in the presence of water? Who does that? Why, apparently, the same people who make a plastic colander that cracks under the massive weight of a small pile of green beans-- Chefmate.)

-A pricey supposedly rust-proof silicon-coated whisk that I purchased less than six months ago ALSO began to rust.

-A two-month-old pair of my husband's pants began to fray at a seam sufficiently that I could not repair them.

-A nightlight in the bathroom stopped working-- not the bulb, but the light itself. When my husband tried to test it with his multimeter to see if it conducted any current, he discovered that--

-My husband's multimeter has mysteriously stopped working.

-The toilet AND the sink in the master bath clogged at the same time. When tried to unclog them with the auger we bought for months ago, we couldn't, because the auger, despite having been thoroughly cleaned and stored in a dryish place, had completely rusted.

-The remote control to my son's totally awesome remote control moon night light that shows all the different phases of the moon stopped functioning.

-A package of brand new, Disney licensed big-boy underpants for my son came with two of the three pairs already coming apart at the seams.

-My computer hard drive died such a thoroughly tragic death that even my major computer mojo master husband could not resuscitate it.

-The hard drive to my husband's Linux server in the basement ALSO somehow got corrupted to the point that my husband had to reinstall the operating system.

All of these recent unhappy accidents-- along with the rash of recent toy recalls the mainstream media have gleefully gone about terrifying us all with-- have set me to thinking a fair bit lately about how difficult it has become in the past several years for ordinary middle-class people like myself to buy decently made things that last.

Though I have pretty much always, out of necessity, been a mostly* thrifty sort of shopper, I am not the sort to value low cost over quality. When given the choice-- i.e., the cash-- to choose between a low-cost item that is obviously cheaply made and a higher-cost item that is clearly crafted to last, I will nearly always choose the latter. From a practical standpoint, I know paying a bit extra for better quality is likely to save me money in the long run.

And, from an environmentalist standpoint, I know that buying well-made goods that last is better for the environment than buying cheap goods that will soon be thrown out and replaced.

But from a philosophical standpoint, too, I simply appreciate objects that are well-made. I find it much more pleasing to buy a thing when I feel as though another human being really put some thought, effort and skill into creating it. This preference of mine is one of the reasons I like living in my fifty-year-old house. When I look at the hand-troweled patterns in the mud over the drywall, for instance, I think of all the time some person spent making sure those whorls looked just right fifty years ago, I feel a deep appreciation for that unknown man's dedication to his craft. I never felt this way looking at the hastily slapped-together walls so common in more recent construction.

So, whether I am purchasing a house, a table, or a kitchen knife I am willing to spend a little extra time searching, and spend a little extra money, if I have it, to get something that was made with a little extra care.

But I feel like lately it is becoming next-to-impossible for a middle-income person such as myself to buy everyday items, like household goods and clothing, that are made to last. It's not so much that prices have gone up-- it's that the quality of consumer goods across the board seems, at least in my personal experience, to have gone down.

I remember when I could buy a pair of khaki pants at Target or Old Navy, and have those pants last me for three years even if I wore them twice a week. Now it seems like no matter where I go to shop for clothing-- even if I go someplace slightly more upscale, like The Gap, or a fancy department store-- everywhere I look I see garments made of the cheapest possible fabric, or clothes that are already sporting loose threads, frayed seams, or missing buttons right there on the rack. And no item of clothing I buy anymore seems to last me more than a year. I have shirts I bought five years ago that still look new, and shirts I bought six months ago that are falling apart.

I remember when I could plunk down $10-$15 on a stainless steel colander and have it turn out to be, well, a stainless steel colander.

It would be easy to blame all the shoddiness I seem to see on store shelves lately on global free markets and the outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing jobs to foreign countries. But, to tell the truth, when I DO make a point of trying to buy American-made goods (an effort which has become increasingly challenging, given how few tangible goods are actually made here these days), I generally find that THOSE products are cheap junk, too. Like the "Made in the USA!!!" steel storage shelves we bought for our basement recently that were so warped it took two people three hours, a vise and a hammer to put a simple six-shelf unit together. Or the domestically made flag-and-pole set I bought on the Fourth of July that has already practically rusted in half.

I can only conclude that pretty much no company, anywhere, cares anymore about making quality products. And that few business people, anywhere, care anymore about such concepts as pride in workmanship, integrity, or honor. Which is kind of a discouraging thought regarding the moral state of global human society.

I do have some hope left, though. After I tracked down the company that made my son's moon light, and emailed them asking for a replacement remote control, a customer service representative named Jenn actually wrote me back, personally, and sent me a new remote that actually worked in less than a week. I didn't even have to send the broken remote back in. No receipts, proof-of-purchase, mother's maiden name, or ownership rights to first-born children required.

It was practically a miracle.


*Good haircuts, high-heeled boots, books, and gardening accessories notably excepted

Why I Am Moving to a Log Cabin in the Wilderness

It started a few weeks ago.

I came out of the shower one morning to hear my three-year-old son calling, "Mommy, is it okay if I watch this video?"

I went into the living room to find my son sitting in front of his father's laptop. Squinting without my glasses at the screen, I discovered that my son was watching Nora the Piano Cat on You Tube.

At the top of the screen was the Google Video search frame.

My son had found Nora the Piano Cat by starting Firefox, typing "CATS" into the Google box on the Firefox homepage, and then clicking the Video link.

Today, I caught him searching for "GMSS."

You see, he couldn't quite remember how to spell "Games."



(I am currently taking bets on what age he'll be when he makes his first attempt at hacking the NSA.)

The M Word

Ahem.

[Screeeeeeeech]

Is this thing on?

Now, where was I?


A couple of weeks ago, as I was cleaning the kitchen, my son sat at his father's laptop playing educational flash games at an excellent, if somewhat goofy, phonics/reading site called Starfall.com (mad props to the mother of Bub and Pie for mentioning it briefly on her blog months ago). He came across a section of the site that focused on practicing the proper pronunciation of vowel pairs, such as "ai."

I listened to him surreptitiously as he read each practice word as it popped on the screen. Every time he would read a word, he would add a little commentary about it. something I've noticed him doing often as he learns to read-- I suspect it helps him remember new words.

"Snail. I like snails. They have shells."
"Pail. You can put water in a pail."

So, here I was, smiling proudly to myself as my three-year-old boy read real words, all by himself, when suddenly, I heard him say,

"Maid. Mommy is a maid!"


Now, why was I so appalled when I heard those words innocently escape his mouth?

I mean, it is rather understandable that he would draw such a conclusion. After all, my son sees me wiping counters, sweeping floors, scrubbing toilets, vacuuming rugs, dusting bookcases, folding laundry, loading the dishwasher, watering plants, etcetera, etcetera, day in and day out, every single day. A woman cleaning the house, according to the cartoon picture I assume must have accompanied the word, is called a maid. Mommy cleans the house, so Mommy must be a maid. It was a perfectly logical assumption for a three-year-old to make.

I laughed nervously, and called out cheerfully, "Isaac, mommy isn't a m-a-i-d, maid, because mommy doesn't get p-a-i-d, paid for cleaning the house!"

But inside my head, gears were grinding.

There's nothing wrong with housecleaning, of course. We all have to do it, or pay someone else to have it done. And, despite the stigma historically attached to it by our society, I believe strongly that the maintenance of a household is honorable, honest, important work, especially when associated with the care of children.

And wasn't that belief of mine part of the reason I decided to stay home with my son in the first place? Didn't I make this choice, in part, because if if I had gone back to my low-paying outside-the-home job, I would not have had the wherewithal to pay someone what I considered to be a fair wage to do the important work of keeping my home and caring for my son?

It wasn't the idea that my son might see me primarily as a housekeeper that bothered me, I decided. It was my fear that that might be all he saw me as.

After all how could he know-- how could he possibly know, at such a young age, all the other things I have been? All the things I have wanted to be?

How could he know, for instance, that in high school I ran long distance races, or that in college, I wrote high-minded papers analyzing literature and film in multiple languages, that I once spoke Spanish and Hindi well enough to write essays? How could he that I once won awards for my amateur photography? That I once built sets and hung lights in a theatre, where I met traveling performers from all over the world? How would he know that I used to have picnics in parks in at midnight? That, before I met his father, an adamant non-dancer, I used to go out regularly at night to dance swing or salsa late into the early morning?

How would he know that I have at least ten novels in my head that have never been written, let alone published? That sometimes I wish I could go back to school and get a second bachelor's degree in botany, just for the heck of it?

How would he know any of this, when, day in and day out, I get up in the morning, and clean, and cook, and tend the garden, and read my son a few books from the library, and help him practice learning to hold a pencil properly according to the instructions of his occupational therapist, and clean some more, and build a few towers with Duplos, and cook and clean again, and perhaps spend a few hours writing descriptions of dressers or something, or watch tv and read depressing news articles on the internet until I feel like a zombie, and then go to straight to bed?

I feel strongly that I am where I need to be right now, caring for a person that I love in the best way I know how, and yet, I can't help but fear on certain days that I'm losing my identity in such a way that, one day, when my son needs less of my time, it may be very difficult to find myself again.

How do you, the rest of you, find the balance between being a good parent, and being true to yourself?



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Update: Lisa at Midwestern Mommy has nominated this a Perfect Post. Thanks, Lisa!