The Food is Gone

Last week we experienced two back to back thunder storms that knocked out the power at our house both times.  I'm told it was not a tornado either time but trees and telephone polls ripped power lines down out of the skies and insurance men are crawling the neighborhood this week along side the piles of appliance boxes placed on the curb this garbage day.  With the first storm we had no electricity for two days, I didn't open the refrigerator and the house stayed fairly cool while we retreated north to spend the night at Grandma's.  The power came back for a full afternoon before the second storm hit sending cars on Main Street afloat as sheets of water fell from the sky so dense it seemed if you were standing out in it you'd drown. I lost all the food.  It got too warm and everything in the freezer thawed to fast and too dangerously for a "hurricane party" to be thrown.

Instead of restocking right away I packed the kids and headed to Lake Michigan to enjoy the day-after-the-storm waves.  The lake didn't disappoint.  Waves as high as the kid's shoulder pounded the beach and the kids.  Someone on Facebook said they were closing some beaches because of the high waves and still, I stood watch on shore while the kids squealed and pushed the limits of their bravery wading out into the turmoil. I only forced them back inland when their lips were blue and shivering and then I made them sit under dark towels in the sun until they begged to go out again.  Finally warming up fireside that night, Ella pulled out her ukulele and the kids sang all the theme songs to all the cartoons she could remember how to play until it was quiet time in the campground.  Next we told stories about the happiest we'd ever been and the most jealous we'd ever been and the most surprised we'd ever been all the while stuffing our faces with an array of various degrees of melted and burned marshmallows.  At some point Jack asked to go to bed.  We exhausted, scraped up and sunburned campers found our tents and slept hard.  We barely heard the rustling of wild animals in our campsite opening all the coolers and tightly sealed rubbermaid tubs of food or the rustling of wrappers and munching of raccoon mouths on graham crackers.  The next morning I stepped out of the tent to find, yet again, all the food gone.

What Do We Tell the Children?

When I am sitting at karate next to another parent and I say "Did you have The TALK, yet?" we aren't referring to sex. The hard conversation we don't know how to approach is what to tell our kids about police.

The children are pre-teens and some of them are tall. They are awkward and rowdy, able to haul garbage cans to and from the curb and maybe even take the city bus around town on their own soon, certainly big enough to take a dollar into the gas station for candy. These cute round faced children who are thinning out and tripping on their feet will drive soon.  We have an egalitarian household where we don't bark orders and one can argue a point for weeks, but I fear there is one realm where irritability and defiance (two qualities pre-teens have in aces) can get you killed. Where being a petulant punk who's not so round-faced and small, can get you tackled and handcuffed or worse. In these United States we're tasering eight year old children, using pepper spray in schools, and shooting twelve year olds on the playground.

I'm not sure what to say about it to my child who sometimes still believes in the tooth-fairy and is afraid to read Harry Potter before bed, but is big enough to steal my hoodies and flip-flops. What do I say to the kid about officer friendly?  I've got a rambunctious boy who's deaf in one ear and has a panache for running around pretending he's shooting bad guys.  What do I tell him?  Do I talk to him about it the same time all the magic of Santa Clause dissolve into the realities of the 5 o'clock news? Exactly how tall does he have to be before he's considered a "possible threat?"

Yes, yes, of course our perfect children will never get into trouble, never encounter an officer yelling at them, never have a reason to get face down on the cement, never get pulled over and look guilty. They same way they'll never have reason to walk calmly out of a burning building, or huddle into a bathroom and be silent for a lockdown, or duck under their desks and put a book over their heads, or swim to the edge of a pool, or not chase a ball into the street, or refuse to give directions to a skeezy candy wielding guy driving a van, or be smart enough to just say "no."  Not our kids.

Yeah, this is the discourse I don't have an after-school special for, no pamphlet on how to discuss, no first lady to tell us what to shout.  This is the talk that is hardest, because friends and relatives we love wear a blue uniform, because we teeter between just cooperate and 'am I being detained? Am I free to go?' ourselves. And while each parent's 'birds and the bees' lecture is slightly different than the next, I certainly don't want to be the 'abstinence only so we aren't talking about it at all' parent.

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Children, Musicians, Hippies, Artists & Poets at Willow Creek

I painted things when my little ones were coaxed to the creek to catch craw-daddies and get mud behind their ears.  I had the sun on the back of my neck when I stretched it looking over the rise of the little road to see the corn reaching up from the glen with golden fingers into the August sky.  I rested my paintbrush in the dirt when my son ran back to camp with a tiny dead fish in his water wrinkled fingers.  He asked me to cook it for him. When I told him it was too small to cook and made him throw it back into the creek I saw him steal a taste.  He licked it's white belly and then threw it overhand into the clear water where I'm sure it settled to the bottom and found it's way into the bellies of the craw-dads.  All the while behind me, my daughter changed from her soaking wet mud-shoes into my dry sandals and was charmed away to another campfire by intriguing musical instruments. 

On Self-Sufficiency

I asked the kids to get themselves ready to run a few errands with me today.  A mere three hours later, my eldest had taken a full shower, was coiffed and ready to go.  My youngest was also dressed and ready making sure to wear his plastic fake monster teeth, an inside out long sleeve hoodie he's outgrown with the hood up, matching blue socks under flip flops, and plaid shorts.  Great job kids, thanks for getting yourselves ready. Yes, we went into the store like this, luckily he tired of the teeth.

"This Is My Ninjit-Suit"

I took the kids to see the TMNT movie in the park downtown last Friday.  To the disappointment of the people in the lawn chairs behind us, Jack rolled, kicked, ran and did somersaults for 90 minutes. I'm not even sure he actually saw any of the movie.

Thick Days

These are the thick days of mid July filled with humid sunscreen and stinging bug spray.  Every cool pool of water has tiny feet begging to sneak in, though the well worn swim suits, sun faded, stretched from chlorine and slightly grayed on the underside from lake mud are at home on the floor of the front hallway.  Left over fireworks and grilled beer soaked meats waft through the neighborhood replacing the tiger lilies and lilacs sweet redolence. There is barely time for the free waterpark ticket, the theme park coupon, the ten hour air conditioned sleep and the last canoe trip.  Back to school supplies loom in frigid grocery store aisles.

Sonflowers

I tried all last summer to grow giant sunflowers next to the deck.  I wanted the flower faces to be at eye level during midsummer dinners so we could watch the birds fly in and eat the seeds.  But some asshole from the neighborhood wildlife community kept creeping by in the middle of the night and digging up the seeds for a late night snacks. After loosing another row of seeds this spring I planted some in an egg carton in the house.  Every day I put the seedlings outside for a day of sun and then I bring them back in at dusk to keep them safe. They're a few inches high now and I think I have to put them in the dirt or watch them suffer from not enough root room.  I'm going to try to devise a screen or some sort so they don't get bitten off at the base and munched late in the night.  It makes me anxious.  It's scary to send my sprouts out into the backyard...  Imagine when I have to send my actual children out into the world!

Sledding

We stopped thirty-eight times to get the snow out of a wrist cuff and drink hot cocoa.

We Are Not Singing This Year

Photo has nothing to do with story, I just liked it.

I always mean to make a great Christmas post but it doesn't happen.  The season is going so fast with such twists and turns that it's all I can do to keep from getting whiplash much less pausing to carefully write my thoughts on the season.  Just when the Holidays wrap up, it's my eldest's birthday which I always go to extra efforts to observe lest it be overshadowed by the above mentioned festivities.

This year we considered a sledding party until the actual snow came.  It was accompanied by negative temperatures and meaner wind-chill factors.  We opted for a good old fashioned house party.  We are in fact inviting boys to this one.  No biggie, they just happen to be friends that are also boys.  We also are not having cake... well, maybe cup cakes but they're going to be cool NOT cute. We aren't singing any happy birthday songs and mostly we'll just be hanging out and maybe playing some music.  Maybe we'll make a play list, and have some dub step, and maybe Uncle Joe will bring over his laser music light show and a black light and a disco ball, just in case anyone feels like dancing or something or whatever.

By February, I'll be officially ready for a couple chocolate hearts chased with a green beer.

In which I also narrate something boring and mundane

My kids are addicted to watching other people narrate playing video games on You Tube.  My ten year old's aspirations aren't pop-singer or movie-starlet but to become a You Tube Vlogger.  My four year old opened his hand knitted Stampy Cat hat Christmas morning and exclaimed "I'm going to wear this ALL DAY!" While I get wearing a hat you love all day the watching of these shows... I just don't get.  I don't watch videos of people narrating drinking beer and playing cards. Though now that I type it I do realize there is a whole series of poker shows with announcers and card by card commentary and a whole industry of sports shows where nonstop barking about the exact actions you are seeing on the screen with your own eyes, is the preferred.  Why don't they just play the game? Why listen to people blab on about their virtual adventures? Why fill the house with an odd niche of voices having one sided conversations with themselves about mining and building and skins and esoteric nerd references that only I am old enough to get?

Mighty

Some days I feel like I kicked ass.  This day I managed to; get two kids to school and home safe and clean with homework done and snacks/lunches packed, finished an illustration of someone's house, calculated shipping to France, went to the dentist, got two fillings, hit the hardware store, the copy shop and the grocery with a numb face.  Cooked dinner, vacuumed, did a load of laundry all before leading a Girl Scout meeting while simultaneously entertaining a four year old boy at the meeting.  I'm still trying to catch up from when I was sick, so some some days this week have extra things in them, so they look like today but with added phone calls, errands, laundry, coffee and staying up late. Sometimes when people say I should sit down and try a new show on TV or I really should read the book their telling me about I feel like kicking them in the shins.

Rediscovering What's Good

I was trying to describe how loud my house is at any given time in the day to a friend today.  He is young and single.  In my home, about every five minutes someone beckons "Mom!, mom! mom, mom....MOM!" Overlay that with what feels like a continuous soundtrack of Adventure Time or Sponge Bob from the television and whatever You Tube thing is streaming from several personal devices hung from my children's faces and lace it with NPR droning away in the kitchen and the retired neighbour obsessed with leaf blowing and mowing. Throw in the stomping of little feet and laughter and fighting and whining and every five minutes "Mom!, mom! mom, mom....MOM!" and you almost have it.

In the last two days, since the weather cooled down, the kids have rediscovered the forsaken third floor playroom in our home.  Every toy they haven't seen since last spring seems brand new and they're enjoying avoiding the in turn response to "Mom!, mom! mom, mom....MOM!" which is "Did you get your homework done?" "Haven't you watched enough ipad?" and "Who's socks are these?"  Occasionally they sneak down the stairs and into the kitchen for juice boxes and pre-wrapped food to leave on the carpet. (Which reminds me: Ella told me the other day she doesn't like 'crumbly things for breakfast' any more, I have no comment about that I just wanted to note it)

So the last few evenings have been extremely quiet for me.  It's unnerving, having gone from constant noise to just an occasional rumble from the third floor. I feel like I forgot something important.  I keep looking around to see if I left the stove on and walking up to the playroom to peer around the corner at my busy children.  Even now, I have this uninterrupted time to type my thoughts and I keep stopping every few minutes and looking around to see if someone need me to wipe or pour something. I think I'll put the TV on for some noise.

Cue the neighbour's leaf blower.

Two Birds with Gum-ball Machine Ring

Much like how sugar just seems to accumulate in our house from various well meaning bank-tellers and check-out-clerks we also have a good amount of small toys that just appear.  They come from prizes won at school, pridefully cherished right up until the moment my child gets off the afternoon bus and walks in the house at which time I find the "prize" next to the crumpled worn socks of the day in the front hallway.  They are hastily grabbed in a hard fought scrum of children scrambling for the innards of a pinata at a party. They are begged from the edges of parade floats and given after finishing one's nuggets and fries.  They spontaneously appear in the bottom of my purse and in the floor boards of my car, in the pockets of the children and underneath the couch; these hot wheels and whistles, tiny bottles of bubbles, Frisbees with insurance agents phone numbers on them, squirt guns, packs of just three crayons, maze books, necklaces, temporary tattoos, gum-ball machine rings, rubber lizards, inspirational wrist bands, plastic frogs, tops, fuzzy moustaches and various plastic eggs that crack open to reveal something gooey, sticky and guaranteed to dry into a giant crust of gross on your mother's carpet.

As I find these items I've been throwing them all in one place, along with the missing dice, legos, meeple, marbles and playing cards that will only be important when they are missed.  They go into one giant bowl in my dining room.  Twice this year it's overflowed and I dumped it into a grocery bag with the intention of handing it back to a teacher to give out as prizes again and then having it instead collect dust in the hall closet.  Upon walking past the overflowing bowl again today I realized the most incredible solution!  Halloween. If you get to my house to trick or treat this year, you could get a candy or you could get a little balsa wood plane, or Alvin the Chipmunk on a skateboard. I hope you don't get the goo filled egg.

Morning Alarm

This morning I woke up to PEEP....PEEP..... PEEP! I think the smoke alarm battery is going dead. And I get out of bed slightly and hear it coming from the left of the bed... there's no smoke alarm there, so I sit up wide awake thinking the neighbor's house alarm is going off. I go to the window and tilt my ear and look around furiously, then I hear it coming from the other window... it's really loud now PEEP....PEEP..... PEEP! Standing at the other window it sounds like maybe it could be driving around the neighborhood. I wonder if a small bulldozer is backing up somewhere... I can't really tell where it's coming from... I sit down on the bed and wonder if I should investigate further.  My young child rolls over, it is then I realize... it's his nose whistling while he sleeps.

Link

Once We Become Parents We Don't Want to Hang Out With You Anymore (But Not for the Reasons You Think)

yep.

Oh Lolli, Lolli, Lolli...

These pictures were all taken yesterday at various places in my house.  Here's the thing; I have never bought a lolli-pop.  But apparently the whole world thinks my kids should have one.  The doctors office, bank tellers, the grocery check out ladies and every valentine.  The kids give a polite thanks and then hoard them, probably in the same place they keep their marbles, markers without lids and endless supply of stinky socks rolled into a ball.

I've pulled them out of car seats, off the carpet out of hair and even off the top of the toilet tank.  I'm not even sure Jack knows there is a center in a tootsie roll pop.  He just gets some taste and says "nope" laying it down wherever.  Ella thinks all lollis have a chewy center of; candy, gum or just plain paper stick.  Later I find a soggy half spit ball - half lolli stick, while reaching into a pants pocket or leisurely sliding my hand under a couch pillow.

I can't stop them.  The nice folks who give them out always ask.  But that's the thing... they always ask in front of the kids.  "Can they have a CANDY?" and then I sense a tremor of excitement emanating from the adorable cherubs who's very flappy eye-lashes enticed sugar from the finger tips of a stranger.   And that's the point of no return already.  Unless they've been terrible, it's impossible to say no without being the meanest Mom in the history of ever.

I realize what a stupid first world problem it is to be all winey about free candy.  How affluent does a society have to be, before they give what was once only available to royalty, away to every human that walks by? And how much more affluent does a society have to be before mothers start complaining about it? Cripes.

Self Made

Among the busy bustle of the everyday living of one adult and two kids my son decided to potty train himself.  He and his sister are different in so many ways.  She was content to hang out and quietly color, play with small toys and/or join in the adult conversation.  He wants to chase the dog and climb tall and dangerous things and in general keep me on alert every minute of the day.  But it's incredible he decided he wanted to be done with diapers and then ever more that's how it was.  No effort from me.  It's how he is, when he decides something he figures it out and just does it for himself.  He can load his own dvds into the computer - starting with turning it on, he can pour a bowl of cereal (milk supervised), he can get dressed all on his own and I imagine soon he'll have how to drive the car figured out.  I think he'll be one of those guys people say is a self made man, but hopefully the kind that looks back into the camera and says "Hi Mom!"

Rainy Autumn Wednesday in the Midwest

We are in the house playing with rediscovered toys and books, realizing how funny we can be contorting our faces into monstrous imaginings after shouting "Hey! Watch this!"  We eat toast and milk and oranges.  We wish for snow.  We chase the dog around in the big circle of open space on the first floor and squeal at the clickitty clickitty noise her nails make on the wood, through the kitchen, the dinning room, the living room, the entryway, the hallway and back again to the kitchen, times ten. We stare closely at a house spider before giving her a one way ride in a drinking glass out the backdoor.  We fold some laundry and watch an episode of cartoons.  We make animal noises and talk about all the colors in the rainbow.  We count each other's toes.  We watch out the window for the school bus to go by heralding the arrival of another playmate.

Boots

Of five shoe stores in town I found one pair of boy's snow boots toddler size 10 for $39.99 and got a lead on another pair at another store for $69.99.  We looked at literally walls of girl's boots by the hundreds all sparkly and lighting up, full of characters and exotic furs in every color, lacing, zipping and velcro-ing this way and that in a veritable playground of fasteners.  For boys, the aesthetic choices dwindle to a meager; cars, super hero, or camouflage pull-on style and if you narrow that down even further to an actual size the choices were none and none.

When I got in the car and called the place with Footwear in the name of the store, the clerk offered the only pair of boy's toddler boots they had on the shelf, but they were a size too small and would I like to put a hold on them anyway?...  I declined to pounce on the idiotic opportunity to have her take something I could never use and hoard it behind the counter awaiting my desperate arrival.  I'm not sure if she expected me to buy boots too small for my boy and jam his foot in there anyway or if she was just on autopilot but I was clearly the only one bothered by the suggestion.

He's going to wear them for four months tops if he doesn't outgrow them first.  They need to entice him enough for him to want to wear them.  I just want him to have a fluffy pair of mukluks in a racy red for sledding in.

These Packed Days

I had another one of those nonstop days packed with doctor's appointments, grocery store errands, leaf raking, sick tree diagnosing, scheduled after school activities followed by open house, book fair and a 7:30pm cooking of three different dinners for my picky people, with a liberal dose of dog hair and some potty training and the day felt as arduous as this run on sentence.

It all moves so fast I hardly have time.  I keep taking photos, hoping at some point I will be able to sit down and see what happened.  I imagine, the day after Jack goes to college looking through seven hundred thousand photos and laughing at how busy and frazzled it all was.  And then I'll sleep for a week.