Mar. 20: Please learn my kids stuff

I know I speak for many parents when I say how frustrating it is to tell your kids the same things, over and over, and they STILL don’t get it. There are the standards, like:

• Wash your hands
• Wipe your feet
• Clean your room
• Turn lights off when you leave a room
• Do your homework before you go out and play
• Don’t fart in the car

My children fail at these standards 70 percent of the time, or it seems that way. Grrrrr! But there are other concepts they refuse to learn, too, the ones that you think are common sense but find, in many unfortunate ways, that they are not common sense to your (apparently) deaf children. For instance, I actually had this conversation the other day:

Me: OK, I just picked up four towels off the floor of your bathroom. If a towel falls down, PICK IT UP.

Jack: But what if it’s Katie’s towel?

Me, incredulous and through clenched teeth: YES, even then.

Since it seems my kids still haven’t learned the things I’ve repeatedly tried to teach them, I’d like to suggest a possible solution.

LET’S TRADE KIDS.

I’m not being Lazy Momma; I’m simply out of ideas after my gazillionth effort to get my kids to follow some really basic rules. Maybe they’ll listen to someone else. It takes a village, right? So, just for a couple hours one day, maybe we could teach each other’s children how to be decent human beings. Perhaps hearing it from someone else’s mouth can make the difference? Besides the ones listed above, here are a few of the ideas I want my children to grasp:

• Clean clothes belong in your dresser and/or closet; dirty clothes go in a hamper. There is absolutely no debate on this issue.
• Garbage goes in a trash receptacle, not on the ground and not on your bedroom floor.
• If you spill something, clean it up. If you don’t know how to clean it up, ask.
• Food in your bedroom = ants in the whole house.
• If you’ve washed your hands thoroughly, the hand towel should not be filthy.
• You can’t wear the same [article of clothing] five days in a row. Two is probably pushing it.
• Do not leave the house without having brushed your teeth. This is another “no debate” thing. Bonus: you’ll make friends!
• You may “hate” your sibling, but you still need to treat him/her decently.
• A glob of toothpaste in the sink turns to cement if you don’t clean it up immediately. And it’s really easy to clean up immediately…. so… clean it up immediately.
• Would it kill you to offer to help out with household chores?
• Your toys (iDevices, video game consoles, sports gear) are expensive. Treat them with care.
• Seriously, stop farting in the car.

I’m ready to draw up a chart to schedule all our children to rotate houses until we’re not embarrassed to release them to the general public. Yes?

Yes.

Jan. 26: Choosing joy (between clenched teeth)

My self-improvement effort this year is to choose joy; when faced with a situation that has the potential to super-duper piss me off, I want to try NOT to be pissed off. I don’t know if that’s how everyone else defines the “choosing joy” thing, but that’s how I’m doing it, because it has the greatest potential to being life-changing for me. I realize this is a very lofty goal. ;)

When crossed, my usual first reaction is to defend myself. This might be because I’m human, but also because dissension and confrontation make my heart beat too fast and I prefer for everyone to always be on the same side for always and ever ever ever… or at least not to be assholes. During the State of the Union address last week, when so many Republicans refused to applaud or even pay attention to what the president was saying? Oh. Em. Gee. That made me furious, not because they disagreed with the president (that’s their right), but because their behavior was completely childish. And while I know we’ll never reach consensus on how this country should best be run, do we have to be assholes?

(That answer for many would, apparently, be “Yes, because Obama.”)

  Choose joy, Jen. Choose it. It’s right there. Embrace it.

Ooooooommmmmmmmm…

Sometimes I read the news and think, “Why is this news?” because the issue seems so the-answer-is-clear-why-would-anyone-argue-with-this? straightforward. Example: “bee stings hurt!” Duh. They do. That’s probably 95 percent fact (I suppose some people like ‘em). Not news.

Articles about the importance of getting our kids vaccinated so we don’t revive long-dead pandemic diseases? WHY IS THIS NEWS? It’s news because people have chosen not to vaccinate after a few celebrities said vaccinations are bad. Not scientists, or physicians, or people who actually know what they’re talking about, but people who are beautiful and happen to have a platform.

Brilliant parenting move, people. Brilliant move, too, as a member of the human race.

I take these irresponsible decisions personally, because my immune system was completely zapped during chemotherapy. I did my best to stay away from places where I could easily be infected—airplanes, crowds in general—but couldn’t avoid the occasional risk. The idea that someone I encountered might be carrying measles, and my body couldn’t have fought it off? Geez. It’s scary to think there are people out there who don’t even know they have a weakened immune system, and they go on a little ol’ vacation and come home with the Plague. (Worst souvenir ever.)

There was a piece in The Onion last week about parents’ choice to immunize their kids. It’s satire, but only barely.

So, I’d love to choose joy when I read about WHY people aren’t vaccinating their kids, but it ain’t easy.

Same thing, though slightly less significant for the short term, with, saaaay, climate change deniers. How do people so easily disregard scientific facts? And how is that EVER a political issue?

It kinda reminds me about a Sabbath School teacher who insisted dinosaurs, like unicorns, weren’t real because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. I remember wondering then, even at nine years old, what those huge fossils archaeologists had found were, if dinosaurs never existed.

Goodness and gracious. Serenity now.

My biggest challenge, obviously, is choosing joy when I see absolutely no joy in or around a situation. It becomes even more challenging when the situation involves people who have attacked me personally. I asked a very wise friend about how to deal with these things better, and she assured me that karma is a very real thing; if I can believe that all people eventually get what they deserve, I can probably back off from my need to exact revenge on the mean ones. She was very right.

I’m not perfect, and there’s still time for me to get fed up with choosing joy, but nowadays, when rotten stuff comes along and I just can’t get it out of my head, my method of coping goes like this:

1. I remind myself that we get out of life what we put in. When I’m especially hurt or angry, I like to think of driving the karma bus through a parking lot full of mean people. (I don’t think that’s exactly what my wise friend had in mind, but hey, it works for me.)
2. I watch cat videos on the Internet, read quotes about kindness and authenticity, pet my critters, cook stuff, or clean.
3. I make a conscious choice not to be angry, hurt, or sad about things/people not in my control.
4. Sometimes it works. More often than not, it works.

If you’re looking to be less critical and/or bothered by the things around you, here’s my advice to you:

1. Ignore it if you can.
2. Distract yourself.
3. Express yourself in a way that will not hurt others (write in a journal, create something, scream into a pillow)
4. If possible, find a way to fix the things that bother you—as Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
5. If those things don’t work, avoid people and weapons and alcohol and posting on Facebook. In other words, don’t be an asshole.

Take it from me, because, y’know, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

May 22: Sullen teen = sullen mom

The Boy frustrates me a lot lately. A lot of it is his snarky attitude—where on EARTH did he get that???—but the nagging required to get him to do anything other than play video games and play more video games is exhausting.

He thinks piano is stupid because most of his friends don’t play. Ask me how much I care about that opinion. Someday he’ll be glad I forced him to take a minimum of five years of lessons. I know this. But right now, I am sooo tempted to give in. I hate that he once thought it was so fun, but because of his idiot friends, he thinks he has to hate it now. I hate how he loathes practicing even though he really truly is good at playing; he caught on way faster than Katie did. I hate that he stops playing mid-song if the practice timer dings. I hate that he still has another year of lessons to get to FIVE and I really just want to get it over with so I can nag less.

I also really, really hate “Scarborough Fair.” So much. But I can’t ask him not to play it.

It’s not just piano. He makes the I’d-tell-you-I-hate-you-if-I-thought-I-could-get-away-with-it face if we remind him to do his homework before he gets on the Xbox. He makes the face again if we ask him why he hasn’t turned in assignments and therefore has a 29% in social studies. He makes the face if I ask him to push his chair in or pick up trash he’s let fall to the floor or hang up his towel. I do not enjoy that face. I want to smack that face. He has no idea how lucky he is that we’ve never adopted a spanking/slapping disciplinary method. He also has no idea how close I am to re-thinking that policy.

So… yeah. I’m sometimes not a big Jack fan these days. If I’ve had a little bit to drink, I refer to him as some not-very-nice things, and that is why I don’t often drink around him.

But then last week he came home with a recipe from his FACS class (FACS = Family & Consumer Sciences, this generation’s Home Economics) and wanted to make us dinner. It was basically homemade Hot Pockets, but he was excited to re-create what was “so delicious” in class that day, so we got the ingredients and let him make us White Trash Dinner. It’s hard to complain about a kid who wants to prepare a meal for his family.

The next day he came home with recipes for lemon chicken and blueberry muffins. I noticed he kept referring to the iPad while making the chicken, and assumed it was a FACS web site or something; when I asked, he said “It’s got tons of recipes and they look so good. It’s mar… tha… stewart… dot com.” I think he’d be even more impressed with her if I showed him this:

 

While the chicken was grilling, Jack even set the table. We ooohed and aaahed over the yumminess of the meal. It really was quite good. When we were done, he cleared off the table. In other words, he acted like a normal human person.

Last Friday he came home with a cheesecake recipe—a cheesecake recipe that called for THREE AND A HALF POUNDS OF CREAM CHEESE. I thought that was slightly excessive, and encouraged him to find a different one. At the same time, I was glad he was wanting to make things from scratch rather than reading directions on the back of a Jell-O cheesecake box. Once he’d settled on a new recipe, he was eager to get started on it, and stayed up until midnight to wait for it to finish baking.

That cheesecake was fall-over-dead delicious. He was so proud, too, to watch us devour it.

After twelve long years of feeding that kid, it’s kinda nice to have the favor returned.

Now he’s talking culinary school and getting all snobby about food. It’s hilarious. Forget that the kid has still never eaten anything green, nor does he ever plan to. He thinks he’s a foodie now.

And it makes my shriveled black Mean Mom heart fill with love and adoration again for this little boy who can still acknowledge that not everything that makes Mom happy is as horrible as piano. Today, cooking. Tomorrow, maybe a concerto? Eh, I can hope.

Apr. 30: Month in review

April 2014 is over. I haven’t done one of these month-end things in a while, but I sooo want to bid this month GOOD RIDDANCE that it seems appropriate to resume the semi-habit today.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• Ummmmm… can’t think of a one. I mean, some good things that happened this month, sure. No actual celebrations, though.
• Sherilee swung/swang/swinged/swunged through town while touring college campuses with her son. We met up for breakfast and had a lovely visit, as we always do. I’m crossing my fingers that Seth chooses Lewis & Clark so she swings through town even MORE often!
• I had a court date for My First Speeding Ticket Issued From a Person, Not a Camera. I know, I know… it’s not so shocking that I got stopped for speeding, but that it had never happened before. The whole thing was unremarkable, as I shared in my Facebook status immediately after. Boo.

• Spring is here, finally; we had some really beautiful days this month—this week the temps are hitting the mid-80s. The sunshine is a lovely thing to see.

I saw things with my eyes:

• Lots of good stuff on TV these days… And OH so much trash! Chrisley Knows Best, I’m talking ‘bout you.
• I’ve watched (listened to) Frozen on repeat most the month. You know those annoying people who recite movies word for word, beginning to end? It physically hurts me not to do it. Ye be warned.
• Katie has now been introduced to The Breakfast Club. She knew about the movie from its references in Pitch Perfect and had been asking if she could watch it. Like an idiot, I forgot to consider all the reasons it’s rated R. Oops. (How does that saying go? Something about “great parenting falls somewhere between ‘don’t do that’ and ‘oh, what the hell.’”) I think what Katie enjoyed most about it was recognizing four of the five stars from their episodes of Psych.

This month’s good and bad:

There’s really only one thing to talk about here: Theresa’s husband lost his cancer fight on April 10. I rambled a bit about it here. It’s hard to write about for many reasons, but mostly because I want to be respectful to Scott’s family’s grief. I’m intensely angry and so, so sad.

There aren’t enough four letter words for cancer. It’s time to invent new ones. I bet Val could help me with that. :)

I likes to share the silly stuff:

I want to close on a less bummer-y note, so here are pictures I’ve been collecting.

 

 

 

Time to move forward. May will be good, right? 

Oct. 7: Sports are for… momma?

As I’ve bitched about mentioned already, Jack is playing tackle football again this year. It’s an incredible thing to watch each game. And by “incredible,” I mean “frightening,” because the combination of not-too-serious and very-scary-looking injuries, refs who don’t make the calls they should, and that one horrid mom sitting too close to me (just my luck her kid had to be on Jack’s team)… well, they cause my blood pressure to spike, my anxiety levels to go sky-high, and my skin to do something it shouldn’t. I don’t know exactly what my skin does, but I just read that stress is not good for women’s skin. Thanks, Idiot Scientists! Like we didn’t know that stress is pretty much bad for everything.

And Katie is competing in cross-country again this year. After not-great finishes last year, she’s finally grasped the importance of building up her stamina. Even so, every time she gets home from practice, she whines and whines (don’t know where she gets THAT) about how exhausted she is. I remind her that cross-country is exhausting—the name of the sport implies such—and also that no one is forcing her to do it. Pretty sure she’s in it for the Nikes and the season-end pizza party—I mean, she only played soccer in first grade because of the post-game snack.

The fact that our kids’ two chosen sports share the season is no picnic for me and Victor; our afternoons are different every day and therefore impossible to remember. It’s really only our sync-ed online calendar that keeps us sane.

Mondays: Jack gets home at 4:30, Katie stays at school for CC practice and I pick her up at 5:15.
Tuesdays: K&J get home at 4:30, Jack has to eat a hearty snack and get his gear on so I can take him to FB practice near the school at 5:15, Victor picks him up at 7:45.
Wednesdays: I pick up Jack at school at 4:05, feed him quickly and head off to Katie’s CC meet 4:35-6:00 at a park or school in the district, Jack’s FB practice is near school at 5:15 (hopefully he can hitch a ride with a teammate; otherwise one of us misses the CC meet), Victor picks him up at 7:45.
Thursdays: Jack gets home at 4:30, Katie stays at school for CC practice and I pick her up at 5:15, she showers quickly before they both have piano lessons 6:30-7:30
Fridays: K&J get home at 4:30, Jack has to eat a hearty snack and get his gear on so I can take him to FB practice at a local park at 5:15, Victor picks him up at 7:45, or they end at 7:00 if there’s a HS football home game that night and the moon is full and you’re holding your head just right.
Saturdays: Jack’s football game, anywhere from Sandy to Hillsboro, anytime from 9am-5pm; he has to be there an hour and a half before kickoff—Victor usually takes care of this delivery, thank Buddha.

The whole sports schedule is chaotic, to say the least, because things like dinner, homework, orthodontist appointments, and piano practice have to happen in waking hours too. I still work occasionally, and those twice-a-day naps won’t take themselves. But there’s something that makes the crazy all worthwhile for me.

No, it’s not alcohol.

Well, it’s mostly not alcohol.

Several of my friends with kids in cross-country (like Stephanie, Cristina, Dawn, and Julie) attend the weekly meets. Football games are all-Dina-all-the-time, plus some other fun moms. Not only do we get to hang out and sip from our flasks all stealth-like, we get to pretend we’re good parents while we cheer for our kids.

Momma likes the win-win.

Aug. 10: Football parents (ugh)

Just now I started to blog nasty things about football parents and it was all sounding very familiar, so I looked back at August 2012, and sure enough, I blogged about it then. Here’s what I said last year at this time, and I mean it even more this year. Just ignore the part where I whine about my hair—not that those complaints don’t still apply too, but OMG, I was really annoying whining about my hair like that. Thanks for not telling me. Sheesh.

So, yeah, apparently football parents can be real jackholes. As an adult, I’ve seldom been told preemptively to behave like a decent human being; this makes the second year in a row I had to go to a meeting to hear exactly that. And again, it just surprises me so much that these things need to be said.

I know I don’t always make the right decisions about how best to handle situations that make me unhappy. I know I can be a jerk. I fully admit that I go into the football season every year with a frowny face. But I know my place when it comes to being a football parent. That, I know.

Here’s why Victor and/or I would contact my kid’s coach:

1. To tell him Jack is going to miss practice (rarely happens)
2. To tell him Jack is going to miss a game (never happens)
3. To tell him Jack’s arm fell off (you never know)

Here’s why Victor and/or I would contact the head coach or league president:

1. To tell him we’re pretty sure the kid on Jack’s team with the full beard isn’t 11 years old.
2. To tell him we discovered that Jack’s coach looks exactly like and has the same name as the president of NAMBLA.

Here are things Victor and/or I would NEVER say to my kid’s coach, the head coach, or league president:

1. “I want Jack to be on [specific coach or player’s] team. Make it so.”
   (This is a tough one… the right teammates make carpooling to practices so much easier!)
2. “Why did you let that other kid go in for Jack in the second quarter? He’s way better than that kid. I’m emailing you a list of reasons right now.”
3. “When will Jack get to play quarterback? He’s worked so hard! I’m emailing you pictures of him in an NFL jersey right now.”
4. “Jack only got 136.5 seconds of playing time in the last game. The other boys played 142 seconds. No fairsies!”
5. “I’ve been watching video of the last three games we lost, and I’ve come up with a great play I’d like to share with you.”
6. “Can I stand next to you during the games? Maybe occasionally yell things?”
7. “Remind me again: what exactly is a ‘down’?'”

Every one of us is committing our entire fall season to football. The coaches and league board members volunteer incredible amounts of their time to making it a good one. Our job, as good football parents, is not to see if our kid can get special treatment, or to offer up our vast football knowledge, or really, to question the way the league runs. We take our kid to practice, get him the gear and apparel he needs, go to his games, and cheer for his team. We praise our kid, win or lose. We encourage him to work hard, be a good teammate, and have fun.

But some parents think the coaches need help doing their jobs, and those moms and dads are the ones that have made a parental behavior contract a necessity for all of us. Pffft. What are we demonstrating to our kids?

…

People super-suck sometimes, and when I am reminded of that, it changes the way I look at the world—and not in a sweet-tea-and-sunshine* kind o’ way. I’d like to practice an act or two (or eight) of kindness today to balance out the universe a bit. If you’d like to join me, here are a list of really easy ideas found with a quick Pinterest search:

• Send a snail-mail card to someone
• Pick flowers from your yard and give them to someone whose day needs brightening
• Put coins in a vending machine to surprise the next customer
• Give another driver your parking spot
• Donate to Goodwill
• Pass popsicles out to the neighbor kids

So, yeah. Let’s be nice.

*Yep, that’s a shout-out to Sherilee, who manages to stay positive, or at least blog that way, even when faced with stuff that sucks. Good on ya, Sher!

Apr. 14: Chuckles

My “save this crap to share on blog” folder is overflowing. Here ya go.

 

 

This really, really makes me throw up a little:

 

 

I showed this to Jack and now he won’t stop asking when we’re going to do it to our kitchen.
If we ever make a secret hide-out, it’s gonna be secret from the kids. Why else would we have one???

 

This might be the funniest photo re-creation I’ve seen:

 

Every. Single. Day.

 

 

 

 

 

Just ignore these last ones if you know nothing about Les Mis…

 

Have a good week, friends.

Apr. 13: Is this racism? I don’t know.

On my way out of the school yesterday, the principal pulled me aside to tell me about an incident with which Jack was involved. I immediately started to apologize—it’s a habit—but this time it wasn’t Jack’s fault… because he can’t help his ethnicity.

Seems one of the instructional assistants heard another fifth grade boy calling Jack “Asian.” Not referring to him as Asian, but actually calling him “Asian,” like a name. I was kinda “meh” about it until the principal said the same boy calls another kid “Little Mexican.” Together, these things made me super-prickly. I was glad the IA reported it and the principal gave this situation the attention it deserved: the kid was reminded of the rules about name-calling at school and asked to apologize. (For those of you familiar with our PBIS program, I don’t know if he was given a warning or referral, or spoken to only.)

I don’t know if I should be angry or sad or mama-bear-protective. My boy knows his ethnicity doesn’t make him better or worse than anyone else, so I’m not worried he’ll be scarred by this incident (it helps that he doesn’t like the kid much anyway). I think the whole thing mostly just makes me sad. What makes me prickly about it is that a kid—any kid in 2013—thinks it’s OK to talk to others this way. Have these racist attitudes been taught at home? Or could it be that the school staff and I are all overreacting because it’s typical at this age to be unintentionally insensitive?

When my nephews were in high school, I remember my sister being shocked to hear them and their friends call each other the n-word. To them, though, that was just a silly name that meant “friend.” It seems like many of the racist attitudes we were exposed to while growing up in the 70’s are mostly history, at least in this part of the world. This makes me very happy. The idea that people who grew up then might not only still be hanging on to those attitudes, but teaching them to their kids, makes me very unhappy.

We all have biases, some so much a part of us that we don’t even remember where they came from. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I am biased against ignorant and/or mean people, bad drivers, and jackasses who walk slowly in crowds. But when it comes to the biggies—gender, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc.—it is so, so important that we point our children in the right direction, discrimination-wise. 

Stepping off my soapbox now.