Filed under: blog, other | Tags: anger management, danger! she has an idea!, holidays make me rage, other things, personal, rambling
Considering it’s been nearly two months since my last post and the subject I’m writing about now, I’m beginning to wonder if I don’t have a massive issue with holidays– and, of course, what this massive issue I have is. Whatever, it’s my blog, if I feel like dissecting my consciousness, I’ll do it. Right now, though, I’m here to bitch.
This year, both of my kids started at a new school. K went to kindergarten and first grade at a school about 7 miles from our home: we liked the kindergarten and were disappointed in first grade. As such, when we were looking for an ECE for M, and discovered the program at the school that was reopening near my parents, we decided to enroll them both. It was mostly for the program– green living, community consciousness, learning by participation and student input– but also because I can’t bend the laws of space and time, and all elementary schools get out at the same time.
Now, we love this school. So far, it has lived up to all of its promises. My daughter’s class has planted a garden from which they were able to harvest vegetables this last fall for a party, calculated the amount of energy their school is using through lighting and how to reduce it, and have become educated such subjects as biomass, solar energy and recycling. My son’s class is all about learning how to work with others and grow as a person within a community. They’re both thriving. They do yoga every morning and they complain when they have a day off.
So why am I tantruming right now? Valentine’s Day.
It’s likely not for the reason you think. I’m against kids being left out, but, in my experience, both as a kid in school and with K, I’ve never seen one left out. You’re required to bring a Valentine for everyone in the class. Seems nice enough to me.
Their school has decided to “reinvent” the holiday. No store-bought Valentines. No candy. Kids are “welcome” to make handmade Valentines for everyone in the class.
Now, that’s all well and good. There is entirely too much consumption in the world. But I’m pouting. Why? I made a plan with the kids to make little organza bags with a handful of candies inside and whatever Valentine boxes they wanted from the store. I’m not the mom who forbids princesses and Disney from the house. I understand the love of those strange little cards in the flat boxes. Why not indulge one day a year?
And, most importantly, at least to me: why no treats? If this was a treat-free school, if we’d signed on for that, then fine. But, really, this is a school that likes a party. The Winter Fest in K’s class included cupcakes and cookies. Every birthday has been marked by the same. Sugar is not forbidden. Neither classroom is peanut-free. Chocolate flows freely.
But Valentine’s Day has brought a sudden turn-around. I am not a sap. I don’t give two shits about getting a card or flowers from my husband. For me, Valentine’s Day is two things and the first is candy. My family is all about holidays where you eat. We’ve changed most of them to become about the eating rather than anything else: turkey on Thanksgiving (it’s the model, of course, for all other holidays), prime rib on Christmas, more turkey on Easter (made spring-like with asparagus and salads), burgers and pie on Fourth of July. We’re an eating family. Valentine’s Day means sweets.
But, more importantly to me: Valentine’s Day is a day to remember to be nice. Yes, it’s a manufactured holiday, invented solely to increase card and candy sales. I don’t believe the conspiracy about making single folks feel bad, but, sure, it’s a way to drive up spending on things you wouldn’t ordinarily think about. But, when you’re a kid, it’s about getting to tell your friends you like them. And that’s important. Kids, in general, are assholes. My kids certainly are, and I think they’re superior to most. Kids need to be reminded not to be dicks for a day.
In this vein, their school is having them write letters to each other talking about what they feel makes their classmate a valuable member of the community. Great! But no one can write twenty letters in the allotted time in class. Considering how K likes to fluff up her writing, making up a fake sort of cursive, if she gets through one, I’ll be impressed. How’s that for making every kid feel included? Each child gets through two or three letters, plenty of kids are bound to be left out.
I’m a gift-giver. I love giving presents, I love finding things that will make people smile. I’ve been that way since I was very small and, as my father likes to tell people, kind of constantly, I would give everyone who came my way a slice of bologna. It was my favorite thing, and so I wanted to share it. I send my best friend gifts constantly. I rarely see something I want for myself, but every time I leave the house, I find at least a dozen presents I’d love to give people in my life.
Valentine’s Day is about delicious sweets and being kind to others. What, exactly, is so wrong with making sure everyone of my kids’ classmates gets a little handful of candy from him and her? It’s really the simplest thing: this is something I like and I want you to have it. Reinvent the holiday? Why are we fixing the wheel?
Filed under: blog, other | Tags: ate lead paint as a child, moment of zen, other things, rambling
The brain is a funny thing. I can barely remember my name from day to day– no, really, recently, repeatedly, I’ve tried to sign things with my maiden name and came up blank on my first name while writing an email– but I can readily pull up memories from years ago that will not help me in any way right now. For instance, my brain did its usual meandering along the path of thoughts, starting with school supplies, then to organization, then to the shed in our backyard and how it scares the crap out of me because my husband’s version of “organize” is to shove things in and close the door quickly (plus, we had an enormous black widow spider living in there for a time), and then struck upon an image that has most definitely not hit me in a good number of years.
It was of the little red barn in my parents’ backyard of the house they owned for twenty years before moving to the one where they live now. When I say barn, I mean it was shaped like a barn. We lived in a rather established neighborhood near downtown Denver, so this was no big farm. It was a shed, shaped like a barn. Maybe it was a baby barn once upon a time. As it was, I could climb on the roof. And jump off. I never claimed to be bright.
My parents are some of the tidiest people on earth. My father is a packrat, but his version of this involves lots of Rubbermaid containers. My mother could likely clear their house of everything but a low bed and a bell and be pleased as hell with herself but, as we’ve recently deduced, the older she gets, the more she resembles a cat. She’d be happy anywhere with a soft spot in the sun.
When I was a kid, the barn held the basics of any other shed: lawn mower, bikes, tools. What I remember best about it, and the vision that struck the other day, was how organized it was. No cram and slam like my husband. The barn was, as I said, very small, but my father had organized it to the point that there was a path for walking inside. It was easy to get my bike in and out. What I clearly envisioned the other day was the view from the over-sized door: the bikes lined up at the front, in front of the lawn mower that sat unused once a lawn service was hired, along the walls a gas can, saw horses, rakes and shovels and hoses, lawn chairs hanging from tidy hooks on the ceiling. It smelled like gasoline and dust and sunlight. I don’t believe we ever had anything more than a house spider in it.
I inherited my father’s love of organizing, and also his packrat tendencies. I did not, however, get one iota of my mother’s simplicity gene, though I have her same sort of supposed-OCD, only without the motivation behind it. I want everything to have its place, but finding those places and putting them there exhausts me with the mere thought.
It goes without saying that I’m not much of a housekeeper.
This is likely why I adore back to school shopping so very much. I love the idea and promise of such clean and amazing organization. I love the unused slots of folders and newly sharpened pencils, backpacks not yet straining under the weight of books and notepads. I’ve not attended school in some time– I graduated college in 2002, attended a handful of classes in 2004, and had to wait until 2008 to reasonably spend money on school supplies when my daughter entered kindergarten a year early, and so it’s like Christmas, in a way.
My son is starting school for the first time this year, so we’d been waiting for both lists of required supplies before heading out. When we got them, I might have been more giddy than the kids. Outside the exciting parts, the backpacks and lunch bags and folders, they’re unimpressed. I want to do lines of fresh erasers, roll around in pencil shavings.
I told my husband a stupid story I read in a John Mayer interview (that’s right). It was something about the most romantic gift he’d given a girl was a basket full of office supplies, as they’d both confessed a love of them. I woke up on my birthday to a filing box full of folders, notebooks, pens, highlighters, a hot pink stapler, and post-it notes. I think I cried. It truly was the most romantic gift he’d ever given me.
Today, I organized the kids’ supplies while they decorated their folders. I couldn’t help it: I picked up a pinkie eraser and took a long, deep sniff. It sent chills down my spine. Apparently some memories just never leave.
Filed under: blog, other, Uncategorized, writing | Tags: holidays make me rage, NOD (tm), other things, rambling
I’ve run out of the Christmas spirit.
To be fair, I had little of it to start with. I’m the type that likes the concept of holidays, then gets angry/bewildered/flustered/disappointed at the execution (see previous post about Halloween and imagine how much I had to drink directly thereafter). I am a perfectionist, and a planner, and also incredibly lazy. This is a hard combination to overcome or even make sense of.
Surprisingly, the issue this year has not been money, despite me losing my day job. The husband is working and I am receiving unemployment while I tread these underwhelming waters of non-jobs. I was nearly done with the majority of Christmas shopping shortly after being laid off. I have a handful of gifts left to purchase. I have a few things to make (and you know where that will lead, so I hardly need to go down that road. Suffice to say: buy stock in Salior Jerry rum and cheap red wine), and all of the wrapping to do, but that’s all rather controllable.
It’s the ritual that goes with this that I am now finding making me flail. Today, I spent 20 minutes trying to find a Santa to take my kids to. There were few requirements, but they were steadfast: early enough Saturday or Sunday that A could attend, was within a reasonable distance, and was free. This was harder than you’d think. Festivals where Santa would attend had him at his station in the afternoon, knocking them out of contention not just because of A’s schedule, but that beautiful, precious naptime I still require from M. I didn’t look outside Denver, and so our options dwindled quickly. Mall Santas all have required photo packages, which irks me to no end. I have a camera, and two small children, and I know exactly how the photo will turn out: K will give her patented simpering smile that she does when called upon to pose, and M will look suspicious, if he is willing to get in Santa’s lap at all. I can make my own copies of these lackluster photos. I do not need to shell out between $20 and $75 dollars so you can give me a photo ornament of this event that will likely give me an eye tic for years to come.
Granted, I could skip this. Did last year. But this year, the children have demanded they SEE THE REAL SANTA. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. But I found one and we’ll be going in the morning. To a pedestrian mall. And our weather’s been topping out at 20 degrees during the hottest point of the day this week. Can’t wait.
This shouldn’t be enough to knock me right into the Grinch cave, sharing his bottle of rotgut and bitching about the Whos down in Whoville and slurring about their haircuts. I’m not that totally heartless. As it always goes, when it rains, it pours, and my family likes to do holidays up in style, complete with screwed up work schedules, birthdays slapped in the middle (K’s is the 20th and M’s is the 28th. They were both due on Christmas, two years apart. April is my breeding time, like a rabbit), houses and cars self-destructing, badly-timed periods, and even animals and relatives dying. Something about Christmas makes us want to be the ones dragging our fingernails along the blackboard and this year is no exception. It’s got me back on my idea of becoming a recreational alcoholic and, I’ll admit, having a special coaster for wine on my desk might encourage this… misconception.
In the midst of this, the NOD ™ has languished and, in a fit of hormonally- and pine-induced rage, I have declared it will be complete next Friday. I don’t know, entirely, why I’ve declared this, but it has something to do with the aforementioned wine, a Canadian actor and a never-ending pile of laundry. My declaration, however, does box me into a corner which, with my personality, I most definitely need.
And so I make it official here: I will have the NOD ™ completed by 11:59PM Friday, December 11th. I will post with the note that it has finally allowed me to call THE END. My reward has been presented to me like a carrot dangling from a stick by the husband, who has been unrelenting in his nagging support: an overnight at a bed and breakfast at some hot springs. I’m an easy sell and I want to feel accomplished in my time there, before my unoriginal holiday angst swallows me whole again.
Until next Friday…
Filed under: blog, other | Tags: danger! she has an idea!, holidays make me rage, other things, photos, rambling
I like to think of myself as crafty. I have my moments– for a time, I ran a moderately successful, extremely small-time children’s clothing shop online– and am a rather creative person. The issue, of course, as I am sure it is for other people, is my vision rarely matches my capabilities. I can envision really amazing things– say, a set of fairy wings using nothing but a hanger and a vintage lace shrug; but the outcome is dubious– said fairy wings looked like a hanger and tissue paper.
I am both stubborn and a perfectionist, two things that are oddly misplaced within me. Both my mother and I have discussed how we want to do everything perfectly the first time and will give up or, worse, not do it at all, if that is not a possibility. That’s stupid, and we both know it, and we both have areas where this is patently untrue, but it gives us an out when we have an idea, and the means to do it, so we can drink wine and bitch about how well we could have done it if we had bloody well sat down and done it.
We’re tragically alike, my mother and I.
As such, since I had children, I’ve had this idea that NO CHILD OF MINE WOULD HAVE A STORE BOUGHT COSTUME. And that was all well and good on my daughter’s first Halloween. She was ten months old, not walking, and rather game about letting me dress her up like a doll. My mother-in-law, a tapestry artist and knitter of the voluminous output variety, knit her a tail and hat with ears, and we dressed her in black sweatpants, a black Halloween shirt and black slippers. A kitty! She was adorable. The next Halloween, which featured me heavily pregnant (and wearing a make-shift pumpkin shirt my friend had Sharpied and foisted on me before he’d allow me to take K trick-or-treating), and K with a walking cast (her leg had broken due to a congenital deformity of the tibia), we recycled the hat, I stitched wings to a black shirt and, VOILA, bat!
We made it to the next year, where K announced she wanted to be “someone who likes to pick pumpkins.” I decided to translate that as “farmer” and got her overalls and a flannel shirt, plus a straw hat. Her brother, ten months old at the time? A pumpkin of course. This year featured me in a costume that is still spoken of today: I dressed as a cow. Now, it wasn’t that impressive, except I seemed to have forgotten how many udders a cow actually has. I cut up a pair of pink rubber gloves and glued them to a t-shirt. What, cows only have four udders? Posh, this cow will give you milk for weeks. Oh, breastfeeders, we are a funny lot.
I was getting anxious the older my daughter got and more, how should we say, UTTERLY AND BATSHIT OBSESSED she became with princesses, particularly those of the Disney variety. I am not a girly-girl. I am baffled by ruffles and lace and high heels. My daughter is infatuated with them, with all the classic princess accessories. So I was relieved when she, just a couple months shy of her fourth birthday, requested to be a flower for Halloween. That, I could do.
Sort of. Did I mention my output rarely lives up to my vision? It might have helped if I’d started the costume before the actual day. That’s another prevailing theme in my life: I apparently like to run, headlong, into a deadline.
I made a long netting skirt out of bright green material, then made a “headress” of petals. Even K was unimpressed, but she wore it dutifully. In the effort to keep pairing the children for as long as I could, I decided M should be a bee. But to make a bee costume? I waited until no one was looking… and bought one off eBay.
It felt oddly shameful, like ordering porn. What mother didn’t take time out of her day to make her baby a costume? A lazy mother, I scolded myself, tugging the adorably chubby costume over his head. I was a terrible mother. When they entered therapy as teenagers, the blame would land solely on my shoulders.
Last year, K asked to be a princess. M wanted to be Spiderman. Working full-time, 40+ hours a week, I threw in the towel. My parents bought her the standard ice blue ballgown of Cinderella fame and M received his bodysuit and mask from Target. Their other grandparents arrived with a whole set of plastic jewelry, crown and heels for K. I was ashamed, and I was tired and amused. I ordered pizza and delighted in their excitement over the holiday. Where other kids can’t handle those plastic masks that come in costume sets? My boy has a commitment to a bit and never took it off.
Preparations for this year’s Halloween started, oh, last November 1st. I gave them guidelines: mid-September, they had to give me the final on their Halloween costumes. They did: M wanted to be Kung Fu Panda and K wanted to be Tinkerbell. All well and good, but I, for one, think Halloween should be the one day you get to dress in something that you ordinarily wouldn’t pull out of your closet. K got a Tinkerbell costume for Christmas the year before. Plus, Halloween in Denver is historically cold and snowy and, let’s face it, Tinkerbell doesn’t cover much skin. In an effort to dissuade her, A suggested she dress as our dog, Zooey. To wit:
She thought it a grand idea. And then so did M. And then my wheels were turning and I thought: this couldn’t possibly be that hard.
I shouldn’t be allowed to think to myself.
I started with black pants and white hooded sweatshirts, then picked up sets of black gloves and an accidental metric ton of black felt and a little wire. This couldn’t be that complicated, except I didn’t want to sew. And so I fell back on what I’d done for the famous cow costume: glue! I could then, after Halloween, wash the sweatshirts, the felt would fall off, and they’d have new hoodies. Genius.
The issue is: Zooey is mostly black. And so I glued giant pieces of felt to the front and backs of the shirts, which dried and took on the malleability of cardboard. Great. Making the ears proved a more daunting issue, as everyone wanted to maintain the perkiness. More felt, more glue, whip and running stitches to adhere them to the hood, much poking of fingers and cursing. The tails were more whip stitches and a safety pin and, in the end, they looked cute but… Puppies? I’m not entirely sure…
They loved their costumes. I was relieved. Puppies indeed.
I have now forsworn to never make costumes myself again. The visions will have to live within the contents of my skull, rattling to be let out. I’ll pour another glass of wine, salute their determination, and go back to discussing how very impressive that project would have been, if only I’d been the one in charge.
she's a girl with glasses 