I think this makes me a real football mom.
Thank you, OxiClean, for getting his practice uniform clean. No, I wasn't paid to say it.
I suspect I'll get more opportunities to practice my mad laundry skillz, since this is the weather forecast for the week:
puts Baby in a corner.
Rest in peace, Patrick Swayze. Not only did I lose money on you, but I really, really liked you.
Yesterday was day one of the Memphis Heritage and Music Festival, and we ventured over there twice. Early afternoon, the festival was just getting started, and we watched some Chinese martial artistry, a cooking demonstration, and genuinely enjoyed a DJ mixing some fantastic techno music. But the sun was high, and we were getting warmer than we wanted to be. Since swine flu daughter was still not 100%, we left, but the we planned to return for the headliners playing in the evening.
As the appointed hour approached, the girl was clearly going nowhere. She was tired and not very interested in live music. The boy, however, was still game, so he and I headed out, finding a decent parking space (not as good as our space earlier, but still not bad). We ran into an old friend of mine from college, who also had been one of the boy's preschool teachers, and she was planning to head over to the same stage we were, to see Al Kapone. He and I both like rap music, and the show was fantastic. Great energy, great band.
I will admit, though, that seeing this show with my son was strange. See, when I'm in the audience, I tend to move up to the front of the crowd, and I get a workout, because I like to dance. My boy, however, does not like to get in the front of anything, so we stayed off to the side, still close to the stage, but not as close as I would have liked.
He and I also have different opinions about volume. At a show like this, I am in the "turn it up to eleven" school of thought. But my sweet boy turns the volume down whenever he can.
All this added up to an early departure, before the set was done. The boy claimed tiredness, but I think he was a bit overwhelmed by the noise and the crowd. Turns out he made a very good decision, though, because we saw lightning as we drove home, and a big thunderstorm began a few minutes later. Since we didn't have an umbrella, our parking space would have been horrible if we'd left later.
As it was, we had a great time, and I think Al Kapone has a new lifelong fan. We might have to go back today....
*****I am well aware that I have completely failed at my September NaBloPoMo effort. I'm not being graded, at least not as far as I know, so I'm okay with it. It's hard to blog when swine flu girl totally hogs the computer to play Sims. Just saying.
Seriously, there is almost certainly H1N1 going on at my house. My daughter's teachers kids have it. My son's BFF from preschool's family has it. And I'm pretty darn sure my daughter has it. And my husband. And maybe me.
But September's NaBloPoMo topic is "Beautiful" and there's nothing beautiful about swine flu. So instead, I'll tell you a story.
Tuesday, I was at the post office. I go to the post office a lot, because I'm selling lots of eBay stuff. But there was this guy in line. He was probably about 20 (if you're keeping score, that's about half my age) and completely beautiful. One of the prettiest boys I've seen in a long time.
And then he answered his cell phone. That mini-crush I had going on? Was completely gone.
See, here's the thing. I value manners. Which is why I live in the South. And this beautiful boy? Needed a visit with Emily Post, stat. He discussed his finances, his academic issues, his finances, his rent money, his career dreams, and more, all in line at the post office, surrounded by people. As his conversation progressed, I caught more and more people commenting to each other on the ridiculousness of the conversation. Seriously, once he was gone, people started talking to each other about how annoying he was.
So, as my grandfather would say, "Pretty is as pretty does." Please, please, please, if you must speak on your cell phone in public, keep it short and vague. The rest of us really don't want to know about your rent money or career aspirations. If we did, we would ask.
I blame swine flu.
More postiness coming.
With the option of participating in National Blog Posting Month any month, I've chosen September. The theme is "Beautiful," which should help me keep a positive attitude. It's a little hard to be cheerful when I just spent the better part of an hour writing an article for Examiner.com, only to click a button and delete the whole thing, thereby forcing myself to rewrite the whole darn thing. Hopefully the unintended rewrite was a good thing.
So, what's beautiful? Last night, it was football practice. My son, who has no prior football experience, is one of the bigger boys on the team, and was assigned to be a defense tackle. Despite that nagging maternal fear, what I saw yesterday evening was truly beautiful. My son was double-teamed, and he kept the other guys back. He didn't cede even a yard. Seeing this slender, gentle, quiet boy being physically tough was stunning to me. His goofy grin as he loped across the street from the park to the house was mirrored by my own. He enthused, "That was the best practice ever!" as we hustled him off to the shower and encouraged him to eat his dinner before bedtime.
Watching him grow into this new person is breathtaking.
It's funny how we all perceive things differently. This afternoon, we attended a picnic for the kick-off of the scouting year. Yes, the boy is joining Cub Scouts. This was not an easy decision, since we're Unitarian Universalists, and the UUs and the BSA have not been on exactly good terms for over a decade. Despite our ideological differences with the organization, however, we have found that a local pack has very sane and open minded leaders, so we're willing to give them a try.
On the way home, the girl was exclaiming about how normal our family has become. With a boy in football and Boy Scouts, a girl in Girl Scouts and piano lessons, a mom who's a writer and a singer, and a dad who teaches college, we certainly seem pretty conventional, at least on paper. I like to think, however, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I would almost never characterize our family as normal, despite how conventional we may seem.
As diehard urban pioneers, we have certainly chosen an "abnormal" neighborhood for our family. This has created some frustration lately, as many of the girl's friends live in the (in my opinion) far more "conventional" suburbs, and her interests have increasingly become more suburban (the mall being the coveted destination).
Our choice to be a one-car family is further evidence of our deviation from the typical American family. Sometimes having just one motorized vehicle creates stress, or just inconvenience, but most of the time it doesn't really make much difference. At worst, it forces us to be creative. For instance, on Saturday morning, three of us had to be in three different places at almost the same time. The husband had the greatest distance to travel, and he was going to work, so he got the car. The boy had football and had to be at the designated site at 9 a.m. We chose this team because it's so close to the house, so he and I walked there. I had to be at a singing rehearsal at 9:30, and it wasn't terribly far from the house (about 2 miles), so I rode my bike. Everyone got where they had to be at the right time, and we all got home about the same time, too.
I'm definitely willing to say that, at least on the outside, our family is much more conventional than we were when the kids were little and we were cloth-diapering, co-sleeping, extended-breastfeeding attachment parents. We didn't choose homeschooling, which took us out of the more radical fringe of parents of school-aged parents. Our kids are, at least this month, interested in fairly gender- and age-appropriate activities, which definitely exposes us more to the mainstream families.
But we're still pretty far from the mainstream. I've got a pink stripe in my hair that says so.
My son started fifth grade at a new school this month. He knew a couple of kids at the school, so the transition was easier than it could have been. He is, however, my sensitive child. While I won't call him shy, I do acknowledge that he takes longer than his very outgoing sister to jump into social situations.
Which is why I was stunned when, while watching the elementary boys practicing football in the park across from our house, he told me he'd like to join that football team.
But I shouldn't really be surprised. This is the same boy who decided to take hip-hop dance as his afterschool activity in third grade. So what if he was the only boy in the class? So what if he was the only white kid in the class? He wanted to dance, and he did!
Perhaps the football is a way to fit in. Perhaps he's simply looking for something physical to do.
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I colored my hair a lot this summer. I used temporary pink for streaks. I did highlights. I bleached the whole thing as pale as it would go, then switched to medium brown. (Yes, I know I'm lucky that I still have any hair at this point.) I bought "new to me" clothes at Goodwill, since staying home does not require the same wardrobe choices as did working at the hospital.
I also started choosing books at the library based on nothing but titles that seemed interesting. As a result, I've read everything written by a few novelists (I tend to get obsessive once I find an author I like, especially mystery writers) and learned a lot about herb gardening. I learned that butter and coffee were much more expensive in Memphis during the Civil War than they are now (and that's not even changing the value of dollars throughout the years).
I've settled into a routine of sorts, since the kids started school. I get up early to get them to school, then bring my coffee to the computer and apply for jobs, read my feed reader, then write. With my new job writing at Examiner.com, I try to find out if anything new is going on downtown, or if I need to revise and publish one of my drafts. Once I'm done with that, I do housework, maybe start dinner, depending on what we're having, then read or run errands. We're selling some stuff on eBay, so the post office is a frequent stop, as is the library, and, of course, the grocery store. Then pick up the kids, homework, dinner, and whatever activities are planned for the evening (football, music, etc.)
Maybe one of the things that was missing from my former job was a routine. Every day was an exercise in crisis management - who had called out sick? who was in the weeds? where was the drama? what food would not be at the correct temperature when it was time to serve it? - and I function much better with a routine. Having learned that about myself, I can make better decisions about which jobs to take, or even which promotions to decline.
I want one of these MADSEN Cargo Bikes a lot.
We're looking at replacing our well-loved and well-worn minivan soon, and the replacement vehicle will be smaller and more efficient. I was thinking about the new car yesterday, when Craig and I were running errands in the minivan. A Smartcar drove by, and I was a little envious, because it would have been just right for what we were doing (returning library books, picking up a bag of sand and a few plants). A few minutes later, a person on a Vespa also caught my eye, because other than the sand, all our items would have fit in a scooter's cargo area, too.
But the cargo bike? Genius. Especially for those of us who love to bike to the farmers' market but then buy too much and have smushed produce from overpacking the backpack.
So click that there link up top and let's all try to win me a bike, okay?
That adorable dog you see above this post came to us with a hidden talent. I don't know if he was trained to do this or not, but he's an uncanny gardener's assistant. I awoke early today and discovered that it was cooler than usual, so I decided to spend some quality time outside, first watering and weeding in our Uptown Community Garden (and only was divebombed twice by the aggressive birds), then weeding my fallow garden.
Despite every dog training authority's advice, I let our dachshund, Klaus, join me in the garden. He's an energetic guy, and he loves to be in the sunshine. I'd also seen his gardening streak once or twice before, so I thought he might be helpful.
Understatement of the year. We had an old cabbage plant that was well past its prime, so I was breaking it down and deciding whether to remove the roots or let it regrow. Klaus found the thick stem I was working on and set about destroying it, systematically, then chewing up the six-inch stem and spitting it out. Compost, anyone?
He's most effective, however, in clearing sections of the garden. If I start pulling out grass or clover, he essentially pushes me out of the way and gets to work. He digs and digs, and, as he finds roots or vines, pulls those with his teeth. It's really remarkable to watch, because he's very focused on the task and does not generalize it to digging the entire yard.
Poor guy, though, he got plenty of dust in his nose, and now he's sitting next to me, sneezing. And falling asleep. Gardening is hard work, after all.
Absentee blogger here. I feel like a deadbeat dad, except I do take care of my kids and I'm female.
Despite my long absence from the world of blogging, I'll skip the update part, because there isn't much to tell. I went to work, I came home, I hung out with the family, I slept, lather, rinse, repeat. Nothing greatly amazing or exciting or even amusing has happened since I last regaled the internet with meme after meme after meme.
Small things that did happen:
My mom joined Facebook.
So did my kids.
My daughter got a cool haircut.
We changed the dog's name to just Klaus.
I gave one of my employees a nickname.
None of my favorite patients died.
One of them grew hair and I didn't recognize her at first, which was funny.
I got to give a kid a bike and have pictures taken.
Our neighborhood started a community garden.
Rock Band: World Tour is the most fun game I've ever played.
My Wii Fit age is several years younger than my actual age.
I cut the grass with a lawnmower for the first time.
I coordinated the remodeling of my parents' new house.
I lost a few pounds.
And that's what's happened here.
There were a few other things, but they don't really bear discussion, or I'm not ready to discuss them, or whatever. We'll leave it at this: I had a rough patch and it's better now. The first quarter of 2009 kicked my ass. But I'm planning to kick the rest of 2009's ass even harder. Because that's how I roll.
So, I'm back. At least for tonight.
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for me, and I'm looking forward to embarking on a creative journey. The book's exercises are intended to last a month or a year, and I'm opting for the year option.
. It shook me up. A lot. No, I don't expect my family will go off the grid anytime soon, but even if we did a quarter of what his family did, we would be making some major changes.
