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Forsythia!
March 30, 2007 | Category:
The forsythia bloomed this morning.
Huh?
"I said, Bear, that the forsythia bloomed this morning. "
"How do you know?"
"What do you mean, how do I know?"
"Well... Do mean the guy on his roof?"
"What guy on his roof?"
"The one with the uh-I-don't-know-what-youcallit... snowblower."
"A guy? On a roof? With a snowblower?"
"Right there, Mommy!" Pointing.
"That's a guy on a roof with a leaf blower."
"For snow?"
"No, for leaves. He's blowing his gutters, it looks like."
"Leaves are in the fall, Mommy. Where's his rope?"
"What rope?"
"So he won't fall off?"
"He doesn't have one."
"Did he leave it with his helmet?"
"What..."
"Hey! Get it? Leaves and leave! I rhymed!"
"Well..."
"Or is it that other thing? Cinnamon?"
"Synonym? No - it's a homo..."
"How do you spell roof?"
"Roof?"
"Roof."
"Roof?"
"A-s-y-underpants don't forget the hairstand? That's how you spell roof, hey?"
"Roof?"
"It's yellow."
"No, it's brown."
"No, Mommy." Sigh. Roll your eyes. "The FORSYTHIA!"
Thud
March 28, 2007 | Category: In My Life
That sound you just heard was me falling off my high horse.
Ouch.
I think what I need for those special occasions of moral indignation is a much lower high horse. Sort of a medium-sized one.
Good thing I only climb up on it a few times a year.
*cough*
So! Back in the land of normal (or whatever it is we live), I am no more sure today than I was a year ago that I am doing what is right for Bear - especially educationally.
I look back on my decision to quit (which was also a decision to pull Bear from the posh Happy Private Montessori school - being that money is finite), and I wonder what the ramifications will be in 10, 20 years.
He still mentions Happy a few times a week.
Although he loves being homeschooled, I do take him over to the Bad/Public Kindergarten on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for gym, music, and art classes.
At home, I have no lesson plans, no over-arching vision. I just sit down with him a for a couple of hours (or more, or less) each day and we work through things - lots of maze books (for fine-motor, which is his personal challenge) and writing books. Sight word flash cards, brain puzzles (matching sight words, 'what's wrong with this picture'?).
Some days we work with math problems, or money, or the clock. Some days I remember that science is good and we cook something or make something explode.
Some days the house is messy and we listen to music and clean the worst of it. Some days there's TV for him as I write.
Some days we study a time or a person in history. Or we talk about God.
The public school evaluated him a few weeks ago, and showed him testing higher than he did before I pulled him out of that school.
But if you think their evaluations give me any kind of warm fuzzy, you're off your rocker.
Some days, I frantically decide that we must be more organized. Lesson plans! Themes! Educational experts showing me how to teach for dummies! More Jesus! More Budda! More Yoga and Carrots!!!
Other days, I realize we're eating waffles at noon and talking about whether the Power Rangers could kick Batman's butt.
I am, slowly, finding good homeschool stuff we can do with other kids. We go to a pool to swim with a homeschool group. We joined a homeschool nature group that does cleanups and tours of forest preserves.
Last Friday night, we went to the Shedd Aquarium to join about 150 families in a lock-in; letting our kids loose in the place after hours. There was a buffet dinner, a dolphin show, games, glow-in-the-dark necklaces, music, and all the exhibits were open - with no lines or waiting.
Bear loved it.
There's this part of me that says - despite the chronic allergies/illness, he's having a good childhood. He's learning, he's (otherwise) healthy, he's happy.
But that part of me can't outweigh the doubts.
The dolphin pool at night.
I get face-painted.
Fish that look like rocks.
Bear's blue-light necklace reflected in the store fronts on our way home. It was so misty out, we drove with our window-wipers on.
The Evil We Do
March 27, 2007 | Category: In My Life
I have been in a flare, caught up with my muse (tip-tapping the characters and stories out) and, just to avoid housecleaning, strutting up and down my yard (coincidentally gardening) to show off my pink hair. But I was IM'ing along today and found out about a blogger getting death threats and the absurdity of it stunned me in my tracks. So here are my thoughts on the matter - or, rather, my anti-thoughts.
Wherever there is good, there is also evil.
And evil will always grow, until it reaches the undefined threshold that stirs us up to take a stand.
Good will always be handicapped. Because good? Plays by the rules.
Duh.
This is the age-old axiom that no-one has been able to solve.
More restraints do not make a civil society. The evil just pours istelf into domination.
Less restraints do not make a civil society. Just look at the Internet - a more fertile ground for anarchy there never was, and it just gets crueler every day.
What started out as a grassroots forum of the brilliant and tedious has slowly evolved into a place that harbors malice and screams for controls. We walk here, brittle in the knowledge that to say our names is to paint a target on our backs.
For every happy wedding site, with giddy updates about lace and favors... there is someone lurking by the light of a monitor, tapping away a comment full of hate and vile. A little meaner, now: Next time I will say worse, and worse. And you will rage, and I will win.
It will not get better. High school kids find themselves destroyed in a single night's whim with a vindictive MySpace page. Pedophiles troll openly to rip apart the children barely old enough to launch the Disney site. Politically loud bloggers will find their names eviscerated on a web of sites aimed at making some folks feel big by ripping others down - and most of all, making a hit-count rise.
There are no arms to take up. No plug we can pull. This is the brotherhood we belong to by birth. The one that will define us after we die. It is why we slow down to look at car accidents. It is why we gather for the tragedies, but not the mundane.
It is the evil we do.
It is why we pray there really is a God.
Machiavelli once dared to respond to the question: Is it better to be feared or to be loved?
So many of us would prefer feared, if it came with the attention of kings.
But there find the seeds of evil.
Good is not weakness. It is not boring or pedantic. To seek its growth does not ring the death of ripping honesty, of lively debate, of genius, of wit.
Good is kindness without untruth. It is laughter without meaness. It is critical thought and creativity and yes, heaven help us, sometimes blogs about lace and favors.
Today I wanted to thank and celebrate those who will hold themselves open, knowing trolls live beneath the bridges and daring them up into the sun.
They who are smart, and sometimes spurt-out-your-nose funny, and generous with themselves. They who have stayed, when many have shuddered, sighed, and shuttered up.
And most of all, they who remain wicked but never evil - and would, frankly, smackdown evil with a spoon long before it would occur to them to join the fray.
There are so many, and here are just a few. Thank you:
Gee-oh, Gee-oh
March 22, 2007 | Category: Family, It's a Trip
I'm unclear on these new Child Abuse laws....
Do they include exposing my son to 80's rock?
Because, if so, I am in deep trouble.
Spring came out from behind its rock the other day and viciously attacked us with bright sun, a warming Earth, and a couple dozen purple-and-orange crocuses waving from the front yard.
As we drove from yon to hither and back (the parent's lament), I rolled down the windows and turned up the radio. Flipping through the usual channels because I wasn't in the mood for RadioDisney (which is evil) or classical. I wanted peppy, light.
I got the Police.
As the guitar and drums rolled into the speaker, he shouted from the back "this one, Mommy! This song!" and I wondered if it was a bad thing that he a) recognizes most of the songs from "Ghost in the Machine"? b) and can sing them all by heart?
Nah.
Once upon a time, this album played over and over again during a party at my house Senior year and a guy name Steve and I crawled under the pool table to avoid some inanity and ended up kissing. Steve, compared to the guys I had known before, was a very good kisser.
And though it meant nothing more than that, "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" will forever remind me of being tucked under Steve's arm, hearing him sing some lyrics, and feeling his lips, and smiling while we kissed.
Until now.
Now that memory is going to fight with the one from an early Spring day. A day before the night when we would get to meet the author Mary Pope Osborne. The afternoon we raked out the front yard and laid down extra soil and fertilizer for our last spring in the big blue house. The day we stopped for the 2nd time in a week for Slushies on the way home.
The day my 6-year-old belted out, in tune and on melody, "I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day. And ask her if she'll marry me in some old fashioned way..."
And a moment of misty, thinking, thinking - someday, you know, he might.
And then it was time to sing the "Gee-oh, gee-oh" part.
So I did.
Except, he shouted from the back, "Mommy! It's Hee-o! Hee-o!"
I firmly believe that he should be 7 before I let him win one of these arguments. So I just shook my head in beat and belted out (off key) "Its a big enough umbrella; but its always me that ends up getting wet!"
He giggled.
Gee-oh!
I Did It
March 18, 2007 | Category: In My Life
For a year and a half, I've wanted to dye my hair hot pink... my hairdresser, Vanessa (whom I adore), didn't carry the vibrant shade I was thinking off but said if I would buy it at a local supply place, she'd put it in for me.
My courage never managed to hold long enough for the mission.
Then, yesterday morning, in the family troops for our haircuts (yes, we use the same stylist) and guess what Vanessa had?!?!
I said 'be gentle' and we decided to just do some highlights.
I'll admit.... I like it. Can't believe I was so nervous!! The guys think it is wicked cool. In fact, Bear is the one who took these pictures.
Feet Smoothie, goes down easier
March 15, 2007 | Category: In My Life
When I was working at Mega, I had to socialize with a lot of other executive and glossy-shiny-corporate types. And it was never natural.
Everyone talking passionately about neutral things...
"I can NOT believe how badly Tiger played last week - did you see that round? It was like watching a preschooler on a putt-putt course. Especially the 16th hole. If you missed that one, all I can say is that you missed a lesson in when bad physics happens to good golfers , I tell you what."
And me, who would not WATCH GOLF ON TV even if you baked it in a cheese pie and told me it was calorie-free, would nod so enthusiastically that you would have to check my feet to be sure I wasn't a bobble-head doll.
Except, inside my head a strange crazy lady who looks exactly like me would be screaming "RUNNNNNNNNNN! THERE'S THE EXIT!!!! GO GO GO GO!!!!"
I had a kind of break from all that when I left Mega. For the last year, my professional and social calendar has been, well, yeah, empty. Things have dwindled to the point where there have been no more fund-raisers, no cocktails and crackers, no working dinners at Mortons, no conference ice-breakers, not even a block party.
Which has left me free to sort of rip up the cardboard-cut-out Elizabeth and let it all hang out.
I even giggled to myself one afternoon, thinking of a t-shirt I could make....
Hi, I'm Elizabeth...
I didn't vote for President Bush, I don't agree with many of his decisions and I don't really want to discuss it. I believe good citizenship means shouting with my vote, not tearing others down, so please don't EVEN mention Dick Cheney to me because that man makes it hard to be polite.
And while we're on the subject of non-subjects, yes, I'm Christian and I think it absolutely stupid to parse what flavor. What some do in that man's name curls my hair and hurts my head so let's take that subject off the table too.
I think people should parent according to their own conscience and abiding by the laws. As a working mom I treasured the dedication of stay at home ones and as a stay at home mom, I deeply respect the sacrifice of working moms. I think that people who paint those choices as polar ends of social schism are either misogynist warmongers out to divide and conquer or magazine publishers out to sell an issue.
Oh...
and I HATE GOLF.
But I figure by the time anyone was done reading it their eyes would end up in a place where only my husband's eyes should ever be so...
The point. Was there a point? Probably not.
It was just something that got into my mind because I spent part of yesterday and this morning with our neighbors - she homeschools and the weather's turned nice so her brood has been out playing. Bear, of course, could not be contained against the prospect of going outside to romp in mud with kids his age.
As I talked to her, it was like trying to remember how to ride a bike. Once we got past the weather, I was sort of nervous trying to think of neutral things we could chat about so it wouldn't be awkward standing together for so long.
It didn't go so good. At one point I vaguely remember babbling something about children who die in accidental drive-by's. It's all sort of a horrible slow-motion agony for me.
As Jane Austen wrote, it is something that comes (and, apparently GOES) with practice. Luckily for me, today when we met again, the neighbor lady had apparently decided I wasn't taking my prozac as prescribed and jumped in to fill the white space with kind chit-chat about homeschool websites and such.
God help us if the weather is nice again tomorrow.
Torpedo Tubes
March 09, 2007 | Category: Mother to the First Power
Here's the thing.
No.
Wait.
It's not that.
What I mean to say is that I realized that getting serious about the already serious was what was...
No, that's not it, either.
See, now, I've got myself confused.
Worst kept secret in the world? I withdraw in a crisis. Sink inside my little bluebell mind and blink slowly. Processing. Processing.
Sure, it looks like I'm all cool and Lauren Bacall.
Waitl. I mean, when I'm nervous I get chatty. Have you seen me nervous? It's like a string gets pulled between my shoulder blades.
But that's nervous.
That's not a crisis. That's not looking down at blood pouring out of a wound.
Once we get to blood, well, that's when I start to look sauve.
Except, it's not real.
I realized this about myself once upon a time at a Lesbian bar in Ravenswood.
I don't know how many years ago.
But there was this other group of women. And one of them knew my friend's girlfriend. They had dated at some point and it had ended badly. So there was my friend and her girlfriend and this other woman and people all shouting and throwing issues and unresolved relationships at each other like arrows and the bouncer (yes, there was a bouncer) was all posturing by the door and issuing warnings.
Then someone raced to the bathroom and then someone else started crying over by the jukebox.
I sat on my stool and drank my G&T and when Nina the bartender asked me if I knew what was going on, I said 'Hell, no," ordered another round.
Then somewhere there was a slap.
So the next thing you knew, we were kicked out and piled up in the hatchback driving back home and everyone was all talking at once and, finally, about 5 blocks from the bar, Lyn pulls the car over with a squeal and shouts "OK, I need to process."
But me? I was already deep inside my mind. I was halfway through processed, curled up in a mental ball, sorting it out. And Lyn looks at me, crowded up in the backseat with our friends, and said something like "You kept your cool."
And I said something like "Nah, I barely know what happend. I like to grab a head start on processing a situation. In fact I start processing so early I usually miss everything that happens after the start." Which means, see, that I seem all deadpan but really I'm just clueless and mentally constipated. Plus? Dealing with stuff seems to take me twice as long.
Ask CD. Everyone once in a while, he'll be like "What's wrong?" And I'll be like "You jacked up the credit card for a LEGO ROBOT THING??" And he'll be all, "Hon, that was 3 YEARS AGO!" But me? I just got it processed to the point where I can actually be in touch with being angry.
When I get quiet, it's usually because I'm tucked up inside the gooshy part of my mind. Dealing with something.
The "something" recently is Children's Memorial Hospital. And the doctor's office and the neurologist's office and the pharmacy.
I just have a hard time talking about what's happening while it's happening especially if it's the kind of happening that scares the ever-living crap out of me. I got to quiet down and let my mind process like a cracked-up gerbil in a wheel until I can breath like a human again.
18 months ago, Bear got sick and spiked a fever. It kept topping out around 104 (f). There was hives and vomiting and shaking. And it didn't go away.
The first couple of days, doctors said it could have been one thing. The next couple of days, well, doctors said maybe something else.
10 days. 10 days of extremely high fever, Emergency Leave from work, visits in and out of the clinic and the hospital, and even my mother flying out.
And then, some combination of drugs seemed to finally work. He got better.
No known cause. No explanation. At first, I couldn't care less. I was as giddy as a Muppet, singing with a Gibb brother on a rainbow of satin.
But then... it came back. Like that dammed cat in that song.
And faded.
18 very long months.
The consensus has been that it is an allergy. But he has tested no severe allergies to any of the common triggers.
He spikes a fever, sometimes a little rash, congestion. Then, a day or so later, fine again. Right now, he has severe sinusitis because it's been too much.
We know that because last week, they strapped him down with velcro and slid him back and forth through a Stargate machine. Much less frightening than the torpedo tubes, you know.
Two days in and out at Children's Memorial Hospital. Where helicopters land in loud thwup-thwups bringing sicker kids in for treatment. Where they give you those restaurant-style flashing beepers when you sign in so you can know when they're ready to see you. Where there's a McDonald's in the basement and $10 Mad Lib books in the bookstore.
As Hospitals go, it rocks. As childhoods go, Hospitals suck.
Bear? Is still sick. In fact, being sick is something that has become part of the weft and weave of our life. He's healthy maybe half his days. The rest of the time it is a swinging 40's dance of 'how healthy - how sick'.
And I hate it. I hate it so much that there are moments, away from him, that I gag and try not to throw up all that anger and fear and frustration that is rotting away inside of me.
But I don't know how to talk about it. My brain is still processing. Processing....
Quick! Send Boston Condoms!
March 08, 2007 | Category: Not The Nightly News
According to reports on popular Brazilian celebrity website Glamurama.com.br, Gisele Bundchen could be as much as 2 month's pregnant with boyfriend Tom Brady's baby. The catwalk beauty has been dating the Patriot's football star since before Christmas. Tom's actress ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan recently revealed she is also pregnant with his baby.
I have Tom Brady's autograph.
Although he was born and raised in California and majored in "organizational studies" in Michigan, this guy is New England Royalty.
One day, my brother saw him - OUT IN PUBLIC and everything - and, naturally, stalked him up and down some aisles before finding the chance to ask Tom for it (for my son, who isn't sure if Football is the game with the oval ball or the orange one. But still, an excellent gift with warm-hearted intentions).
But my point here, and I do have one, is that scene of that adventure was - yes indeed! - a drugstore. Proof - in my very own house - that Tom Brady knows how to find one. More importantly, he knows how to ENTER one and make an actual purchase (even with the 4-point difficulty factor of being stalked by my oh-so-not stealthy brother in his Grumpy the Dwarf hat).
Thinking about how that man walked past the infamous glass case has forced me to the sad conclusion that Tom Brady must not grasp the concept of condoms.
Considering his abilities with the ball on the field, I just can't imagine he'd have, um, you know, manipulative dificulties *cough*.
So it just has to be the concept itself. Maybe no one has explained to him what they are FOR.
A multimillion dollar NFL quarterback like him, poor thing, probably never had anyone there to sit him down with the birds and the bees and the Trojan and the banana and explain the whole 'Let's only knock up one woman at a time' scheme that seems so popular with the rest of us.
Or, hell, maybe I'm wrong.
Could be that the man has some kind of super-secret double-pinkie-swear Scientology quiet-alien-birth-invasion plan to repopulate the Earth with really, really, pretty footballers.
Um, in which case....
Carry on.
I Am Waiting For Vizzini
March 06, 2007 | Category: Family, It's a Trip
When I was in my 20's, I did a little too much Princess Bride. Yeah, at first I would tell myself that I was only gonna watch it on the weekends. Then, the next thing you know, I was loading the movie on random Tuesdays - telling myself it was OK, because I'd had a hard day.
I found myself slipping quotes into inappropriate situations; "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned... I got involved in a land war. In Asia." "Have fun storming your wedding!" "Sir, you use the word 'incompetant' a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I made my dad and grandmother go with me to a Mandy Patinkin concert once. Thank God that man can actually sing, because I didn't check beforehand. It could have been so, so, so very bad.
I knew I couldn't make excuses anymore once I found myself late at night... following updates of Cary Elwe's career.
Yes, I knew I needed help.
I just didn't know how to ask.
I go through these phases, these little obsessions. Little. Well, compared to a tsunami, maybe. Princess Bride, wedding flowers, Al Green songs, Dawson's Creek, Tom Selleck, quiche, General Hospital, Lyle Lovett...
It's pretty obvious that I have a problem. Problems. These additictions, indulgences that waste time. That I should give up, probably. And grow up.
Except the Tom Selleck thing. Tom Selleck, I'll never surrender. He was my poster-boy crush back in the day and everyone gets one poster-boy crush. It's in the by-laws.
So somehow these past few months I've pushed myself away from my silliness. Soaked myself up in the rest of my life. Got serious about freelancing, homeschooling, facing what needs to be done. And if I allowed myself a TiVo'd soap opera, then I would only allow myself to watch it fast forward - reading the subtitles to save time.
And, damn.
I'm here to say... I'm here to witness. Girl gets dull and overpointy when she rakes all the fluff outta life.
The other day, I just gave up and TiVo'd a bunch of Alias reruns. In the dark of the night, I made a bowl of salsa and chips and curled up with Michael Vartan.
Well, you know what I mean.
It's good to be back.
