Interview With A Boo

Swiped from Barren Albion.


1. What is something mom always says to you? "Get back in the living room."

2. What makes mom happy? "When I stay in the living room."

3. What makes mom sad? "When I get out of the living room."

4. How does your mom make you laugh? "When you tickle me."

5. What was your mom like as a child? *bites lips, looks confused*

6. How old is your mom? "10"

7. How tall is your mom? "Let me go get the measuring stick to tell."

8. What is her favorite thing to do? "Drive." (uh, no, it's just what I do a lot of.)

9. What does your mom do when you're not around? "Sleep on the couch with The Bug." (not every day, kid.)

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? "When you get married."

11. What is your mom really good at? "Driving." (heh)

12. What is your mom not very good at? "If you're not doing anything you get sad."

13. What does your mom do for her job? "You do your computer." (Too bad I can't get paid for having a close, personal relationship with my laptop.)

14. What is your mom's favorite food? "Salad." (Dood, what house do you live in? Salad??)

15. What makes you proud of your mom? "When you drive, it makes me proud."

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? "You can be anything you want to be."

17. What do you and your mom do together? "We make something special for grammy."

18. How are you and your mom the same? "We both drive." (huh. Must check that odometer.)

19. How are you and your mom different? "We can be silly."

20. How do you know your mom loves you? "If you love me, if it's not Valentine's day, we cheer up." (oooookaaaay.)

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? "Work." (Such a comedian.)

This Post Won't Win Me Any Fans

I finally got around to watching Twilight today and frankly, I was disappointed. Maybe it's because I didn't get to have the whole Twilight experience of going to the theatre and watching it with a room full of adolescent (and wanna-be-adolescent) girls, but I thought it was flat and kind of dull and couldn't understand what the hell the attraction was between Bella and Edward. They both seemed a bit wooden and emotionless, which was not the feeling I got from the books at all. The book portrays this simmering lust that can't be satisfied, this longing for each other and this all-consuming passion. I got none of that from the movie. I didn't see any chemistry between the two actors, at least not that they were showing on camera. There was a lot of gazing into eyes, but it didn't communicate much, at least not to me. Am I the only one who felt this way? I'm kind of feeling like it because all I've heard, from friends and strangers alike, is this breathless awe at the film. I felt there was far more chemistry between Buffy and Angel than between Bella and Edward.

I'm kind of bummed because the part of my brain that is still an adolescent girl loved those books with a squeeing joy, even as the rational, adult woman part of my brain was saying "Whoa, hey, um, stalker much?" among other, less kind things.

Maybe I need to watch the movie again with O. She is just panting to see it and maybe some of her emotion will rub off on me. But for now, all I can say is roll on, Harry Potter.

From The Too Much Time On Their Hands Department

I do have posts that I'm working on, I swear. This was too good not to post, though.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I've always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-of-my-pants kind of parent, taking advice from books, friends and family, applying what works and discarding what didn't as needed. Reading Out of the Mouths of Babes by Dyan Eybergen has made me think I didn't do all that badly.

The book covers all the major topics - sleeping thru the night, eating issues, toilet training and sibling rivalry, among others. I agreed with most of her ideas, although I did have a few little quibbles here and there.

I really like her idea that you should tailor your parenting to each child rather than expecting your child to adapt to your personality. Since every kid is different, each one reacts in different ways to their experiences so it only makes sense to adapt to the kid as needed.

The chapter that resonated with me the most was the one on toilet training. I have long thought that I was a lazy parent because I let my kids dictate when they were ready to potty train, allowing them to remain in diapers until they showed a readiness to use the toilet. This, needless to say, bothered my mother no end. "When are you going to get that child out of diapers?" she'd bark, staring when they were around 20 months old. My answer was always "When they're ready." I didn't see the point in fighting for months with a kid who just wasn't capable of recognizing that they had to use the toilet. Why not wait? What's the big deal about changing diapers? And lo and behold, when the child told me she was ready, it only took a few days to have her using the toilet all the time. I didn't use rewards, I just heaped praise on them for using the bathroom like a big kid. This is the same philosophy that Eybergen espouses - her book validated my method and who doesn't like a little validation?

Other topics she covers in the book haven't cropped up for us yet - night terrors and general fears haven't been an issue thus far, although I'm sure they're bound to happen. It will be useful to have this book on hand to reference.

This is a lovely little book, full of common-sense advice, with a friendly, down to earth tone. While it may not apply to every issue or aspect of child-rearing, it has plenty to recommend it.

This is a Mother Talk book review. To see reviews of this and other titles, please visit Mother-Talk.

Heathers, or Why Middle School Sucks

I don't write often about O because she's 14 and an anomaly in that she's a very nice, very fun teen-ager. There's very little drama most of the time. She does her homework, she helps out around the house (ok, I have to prod her, but still - she does it) and she occasionally makes pancakes for the whole family. You have to love a kid who helps feed her mother's maple syrup addiction. In short, she's a good kid.

This year, she's in the 8th grade and it has sucked from the start. She's struggling with some of her classes, but the biggest problem is a couple of girls who just won't leave her alone. Two of these girls were her friends but suddenly turned on her around October, for no reason that she can think of. These two, whom I shall call Heather, became friends with a couple of girls who are troublemakers. The troublemakers, Celine and Sarah, have, between the two of them, given one girl a concussion and broke another kid's finger. And now all four of them seem to be going after O and one of her friends.

These girls haven't physically harmed O, but their words and actions have caused O a lot of stress. They call O a slut, they get in her face, daring her to hit one of them and they glare and stare and whisper about her in the halls and in the classroom. At one point, it was so bad that O was losing sleep and throwing up because of it.

Of course I've talked to the school and they have reacted, to a certain extent. But some of this is still going on and O is at the point of giving up. And to be perfectly honest, O and her friend are very dramatic, so I'm unsure how much of this is going on (especially the glaring) and how much is O making mountains. I am not doubting her stories, not at all, and neither is the school, but I think it's gotten to the point that if one of these girls sneezes, O takes it as them being mean to her.

I'm not sure what else to do. The school has spoken with the other girls' parents, they've all been spoken to by the guidance counselor and by the vice-principal and I've had an on-going discussion with the same v-p about it. O has filled out bullying reports but she claims that nothing else is being done. I honestly don't know what else can be done at this point. The school seems to be taking the position of "We can't do anything unless/until one of them physically harms you." I am not too eager for it to get to that point, although O told me the other day that she'd rather one of them do something than keep going thru this stress. I can see her point. '

The mama in me would like nothing more than to go up to each of these girls and light into them, but I won't. I just wish I knew how to make this stop.

Stuck

I seem to be suffering from a severe case of writer's block on this blog. I have no idea what's wrong with me, why I can't write anything, but I can't. I can think of little snippets of things, like my crush on Rachel Maddow (smart! pretty! funny! did I mention smart?)























or the new rules implemented at work, which involve smiling. All the time. Which makes my head want to explode.


I could just post videos for a while, until this passes, but that doesn't really seem to be a way to get more readers.


I could post about
how much I'm
enjoying Dollhouse
(which, hey, I just did)
but I'm not a TV critic, so all I can do is sit here and say "Ooooh, it's gooooood." I have loved all the Joss Whedon stuff I've seen and I know I'm late to the party, but I'm going to start watching Buffy on Hulu since I missed it on the first go-round.




I could whine about how I want to revamp my blog but can't afford to pay for a new design and really don't want to lose my little tiki monkey. I would, however, very much like to lose the blue background.

I can't seem to come up with a complete post, though, and it's very frustrating. (Although, upon review, this is pretty much a post, albeit a disjointed, all-over-the-damned-map post.)

So anyone have any brilliant ideas on how to fix this? Or topics I could write about? Or questions you want to ask?

Anyone?

Bullets Over Bedhead

I've been working on a post for a week now and I've managed to type and delete the same few paragraphs about 87 times. So I'm doing a bullet post in an effort to keep at least one regular reader of this blog. We shall see how that works out.

• I am going to BlogHer. I bought the plane ticket and the event pass, so it's official. Of course, I might not even have a blog by then if I can't kick myself in the ass and actually write, but I'm still going. I'll be the one clutching a beer and rocking and muttering to myself in the corner.
  
• It's snowing. Again. I am so fucking sick of this weather. And yeah, I know, I chose to live in New England and it's better than having wildfires and tornadoes and hurricanes and huge-ass bugs, but still. Enough already.
  
• My skin looks like the Sahara dessert right now. My fingers are cracking and bleeding without any provocation and my shins resemble an alligator.
• I'm re-reading Twilight for book group this Friday. We're having a vampire-themed food thing - anyone have any suggestions for what to bring? The hostess (Hi, AM) is already doing bloody Marys.
  
• I finally have health insurance again and my lovely new GP gave me a five week supply of Cymbalta. Yippee for the happy pills.
  
• On the downside, the new insurance doesn't cover O's current endo at Joslin and she's not happy about it. I can try to appeal, but there are two other endo groups they do cover, so I'm not hopeful.
• We all have The Crud over here - sneezing and coughing and generally being miserable. We seem to be passing it back and forth and it sucks and I'm sick of it.
  
• The little old lady across the street from me has more energy than I think I've ever had in my life. She's already out there shoveling. Of course, it looks like she cuts her yard with a ruler and nail scissors, so I think she may be a little anal. Still, she's nice and she doesn't mind my barking dog, so it's all good.
  

And I think that's it.

Oh, except for this: This little fellow makes me smile every time I watch him.


I think it may have something to do with the crush I had on Fred Savage back in the day....

Things I Don't Get

Or, The Post In Which I Channel My Cranky Old Lady-ness.

I want to put hangers, with clothes on them, thru these whenever I see them. And I wonder what this will look like when these people are old and saggy. Bleurgh.

These are so expensive. Wouldn't it be cheaper, not to mention more environmentally friendly, to buy the regular package of your snack of choice, take it home and portion it out into little containers? Or am I the crazy one?

I don't even have words. They're just weird. What's the point of them?

On a related note, really? Leg warmers? We did this once in the 80s and it was a bad, bad look. It's still bad. If you're a dancer or a cyclist, fine, but as a fashion statement, with high heels? No. Just no.

Someone please to explain.

BlogHer

I'm all over the place about whether to go to BlogHer or not. It's going to be pricey, especially if I try to do it without a roommate (which, really, I'd rather not do - as much as I like my solitude, a conference like that would be more fun with a roommate or two).

Mostly it's the whole "Will anyone talk to me" bullshit that I get all freaked out over when I start thinking about it too much. I am such a pile of nerves over this that it's ridiculous. It's the main thing holding me back. I worry so much about whether anyone will even know who the hell I am - this is definitely NOT an A-list blog. I'm not even sure it's an E-list blog.

So I dither and I worry and I freak myself out about 10 times a day over this.

Why am I such an idiot about these things? Do other people do this or am I really the freak I think I am? I feel like I'm about to attempt to infiltrate the cool kids table while carrying my big, nerdy pile of books, glasses askew and wearing last year's fashion.

Oy.

Dither, dither, dither.



Could this post get any more navel-gazey?


ETA: I found a ticket for $118 round trip ($167 with all the taxes and fees), so I booked it. Lordamighty, what have I signed myself up for?

Anyone need a roommate? I don't bite. I might correct your grammar, though.

Things That Are Cheering Me Up

Reason #8,947 Why I Hate People

A few days ago, I was working at The Big Box Store, cashiering. A family came thru my lane - it was slow and they were the only ones there. I could hear the woman berating her children before they got near the registers. Her tone was mean and dismissive and I cringed because I can't stand people like that.

When she got to the register, she had 5 or 6 kids with her, all around the same age. She continued to harangue her kids, who were not misbehaving by any stretch of the imagination. I attempted to tune it out, not very successfully. I could see that the children were not phased by this, acting like it was something they heard often.

Then she turned to two of them and said "If you two don't shape up, I'm going to send you to foster care." I felt my stomach churn and surreptitiously looked at the two kids she'd said that to. They both had bleak looks on their faces and dropped their heads a bit at her words.

As she finished up her order, she told me she'd adopted 10 kids. I murmured something in response and she turned to one little boy and said "But this one is the worst of the bunch. I don't know why I put up with him. I should send him back." The boy just slumped against the wall, looking totally defeated. I was in shock.

She bought about $350 worth of stuff, mostly food and clothing, but also a boxed set of DVDs, which, she informed me, was a treat for herself because she deserved it. As she walked away, I thought "Lady, you deserve something, but it sure as shit isn't a boxed set of Little House on the Prairie DVDs."

Once they were gone, I cried. I felt so bad for those kids. As nuts as my girls sometimes make me, I can't imagine saying such awful things to them. I can't imagine my children getting used to hearing such vile words. And I can't fathom why someone would adopt children when they obviously didn't like them. It breaks my heart.

The Help

I can't possibly be objective about this book. I loved it. You should go buy it, right now. If it's too late to get to a bricks-and-mortar store, order it from Amazon. It really is that good.

Now, for something resembling a review.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is a story of the South during the Civil Rights movement. It's told from the point of view of three women: Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are black hired help and Skeeter is a 22 year-old white woman, fresh out of Ole Miss and returning to her home town of Jackson, Mississippi.

The story opens with Aibileen, who has raised 17 white children but lost her own son in an industrial accident. She works for Miss Leefolt, caring for her daughter Mae Mobley as well as the house. Aibileen is motherly and meek, but keenly feels the cuts inflicted by her white employer. She makes a concerted effort to teach Mae that there really isn't any difference between white people and black people, other than the color of their skin. In 1962 Mississippi, this could prove to be dangerous. Aibileen goes about it quietly, though, causing as few repercussions as possible and putting up with blatantly racist treatment along the way.

Minny, Aibileen's friend and a fellow maid, is the polar opposite. She is acknowledged to be the best cook in the city but she also has the biggest mouth and has lost many jobs because of her outspokenness. As the book begins, she has been fired by Hilly Holbrook, the town's social maven, who runs the Women's League and holds most of the white housewives in thrall. Minny, in desperation, goes to work for the Celia, a white trash girl who married well but can't make a dent in Jackson society.

Skeeter is the daughter of well-to-do parents who comes home from college to find that her beloved maid, Constantine, has disappeared and no one will tell her where she's gone. As she delicately noses around, trying to find out, Skeeter realizes that there are stories that these maids have and she begins to see the injustice perpetrated on these women by the white women she calls her friends.

As racial tensions grow in Jackson, Skeeter hatches a plan to tell the story of Aibileen and other maids in town and get it published. Over the course of the book, Skeeter eventually wins the trust of Aibileen and, miraculously, the ever-suspicious Minny, in addition to 10 or 12 other women. It isn't Skeeter who convinces these women to tell their story but rather Aibileen and the murder of Medgar Evars that prompts these women to speak their pieces. Sometimes those pieces are tales of mistreatment but there are also stories of joy and happiness and geniune love between these black maids and their white female employers.

Stockett deftly switches back and forth between the voices of the three main women in this story, weaving in personal tales about each of them in addition to touching on the greater civil rights issues occurring at the time. It is that, the instances of intimate situations combined with the larger, looming tensions of the era, that make this book so compelling and such a great read. These are characters and stories that stay with you, that make you smile and even laugh out loud, all while knowing, sometimes in the background, often in the forefront, that there is this ache going on, this wrong that must be righted in some way.




This is a review for MotherTalk. You can go to their website to read what others have to say about this, and other, books.

So, Tell Me...

What are you reading right now?


Me?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It's fantastic.

Also, The Sins of the Wolf by Anne Perry because I love her mysteries.

I got a $100 gift card to Barnes & Noble from my son, so I have a stack to work thru, but I'm always up for hearing about what the rest of teh internets are reading.

...There Are Simply Too Many Notes....

Today is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday and the local classical radio station was doing an all Mozart day. I love classical music, although I'm not very well-versed in it, tending to be one of those people that says "What's this piece called?" and then humming, badly. But I do love me some Mozart.

First they played this:



Then some of this:



And this:



So I was grooving along in the front seat, humming and whistling and just generally geeking out enjoying myself when, during a break in the music, Boo's voice pipes up from the back and says "Mama? I don't like violins. I wanna hear Soul Butter."

Obviously I'm failing at their musical education. My kids are fixated on one band and one band only.

Why I'm Happy, Why I'm Not Satisfied.

Her Bad Mother tweeted this earlier and I'm posting it here because it is fantastic. It was originally posted at IllDoctrine.

The First Family

I can't even get my head around it. I wasn't sure this day would actually come, but now that it has, I can't stop grinning.

There Has Never Been Anything False About Hope

I'm keeping Boo home from school tomorrow so we can watch the inauguration. I know she's only 4 and will probably drive me nuts begging to watch Blue's Clues or *shudder* Lazy Town, but I want her to see this, to witness this event. I want her to see an African American inaugurated as our next President.

Mostly what I want is for her to think it's not a big deal, that by the time she's old enough to understand politics, a black man being inaugurated will seem commonplace. That anyone, literally anyone, can be President - man, woman, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, green, whatever. That this will be the new normal.

I am giddy about tomorrow. I know that Obama is going to have a very tough road ahead of him, that this country is well and truly fucked in so many ways and that he can't do it all, but in spite of all of this, I still have hope, still have faith that things will change for the better now, that things will improve and that we can recover as a country, as one country, and hopefully as a country that isn't so radically divided politically.

I remember when Michelle Obama was slammed for making a speech when she said she was finally proud to be an American. Today, on the eve of this historic event, I'm feeling the same way. I'm feeling proud of this country. But mostly I'm feeling a hope that I haven't felt in years, hope instead of disgust, hope instead of despair. I feel hope. And that feels wonderful.

Send Vodka

We woke up this morning to no heat. I knew we were getting low on oil but was hoping to eke out what was left until tomorrow, when That Canadian Boy I Married gets paid. Alas, no such luck. Fortunately, you can put diesel into an oil tank, so that's what I planned on doing.

I got the girls up and dressed and out the door to school. The house was cold - 50F - but I figured it wouldn't take long to warm up once I got the fuel. Dropped the girls off and The Bug and I went to the bank. On the way home, The Bug started complaining about being hungry, so I stopped at the house to get her something to eat.

Since they don't plow my road worth a damn, there's a five inch layer of ice and snow built up and as I was pulling into my driveway, I skidded into the snowbank with a big crunch. Fuuuu-huh-huh-huh-huck.

Upon stepping out of the car, I noticed a trail of green. Dammit. I thought I'd either ripped the hose off or damaged the antifreeze reservoir. When I saw exactly how much green, I figured it was the reservoir. I rushed The Bug into the house and phoned TCBIM to tell him he had to come home and pick Boo up from preschool and oh, by the way, fix the car. As I was talking to him, I looked out the window and noticed that my front bumper was smashed all to hell. Great. Just great.

He attempts to crawl under the car but it's too low to the ground. However, he thinks I punched a hole in the radiator and maybe damaged the compressor.

Fanfuckingtastic.

So, the car has been towed to the repair shop, which is just down the road, thankfully. It's probably going to cost $700 to get fixed which, in the greater scheme of things, isn't a huge sum of money, but still. We are living paycheck to paycheck and money is very tight around here and this throws a real wrench (arf!) into things.

*sigh*

I need a Mulligan on today, please and thank you.

Not A Morning Person

I hate getting up in the morning. I much prefer the slow, gradual wake up, with periods of dozing and stretching and just generally taking my time getting adjusted to the fact that I have to get out of the warm, comfy bed and face the day.

Sadly, my children are not of this mindset, try though I might.

The Bug wakes up very early every morning. 6 a.m. is sleeping in for her. Most mornings, she wants to get up, go downstairs and "have beffast, mama, time for beffast." Bleary-eyed, I follow her toddling little steps down the stairs and get her some beffast.

But some mornings, like this one, I manage to convince her to climb into bed with me. If it's still dark out and she doesn't hear That Canadian Boy I Married rummaging around, she can be convinced to lay in bed with me, snuggling.

So this morning we snuggled. She fitted herself into the crook of my arm but she was soon wiggling and rustling around and finally told me that she wanted to lie on my tummy. She does this sometimes - lays herself out on top of me, one arm crooked so she can suck her thumb, the other twirling her hair. She fits her head under my chin, snooks herself into place and we doze, me loving the feel of the weight of her across my body, rubbing her back, and murmuring soft reassurances.

Finally she was done. Usually she whips the covers off and clambers out of bed but this morning was different. This morning she lifted her head, and even in my dozy state, I felt her moving, felt her head come up. I opened my eyes and she was smiling at me and very softly, she reached up and patted my cheeks and said "Goo' mornin', mama. You want to get up now?" And then she gave me a little kiss, patted my face again and slid away and off the bed.

I know these days are fleeting, that soon she won't want to snuggle, won't want mama's arms around her, won't need to have me near her all the time. And part of me looks forward to that. But part of me will miss this, miss these hugs and kisses and pats on the face.

As much as I complain about how difficult it is to parent two toddlers, this, these moments, are what make it all worthwhile.

Vanity Fair?

I don't think I'm a vain person. I don't walk around thinking others are drooling over me. I'm more inclined to think that people are viewing me askance, possibly even with horror rather than assuming they're thinking I'm cute. I do spend time looking at my face in the mirror, but only so that I can stare in bemused wonder at the fact that I have a lot few grey hairs and acne happening at the same time. What the fuck is that all about? What kind of cruel joke is this?

But lately, I'm starting to feel positively invisible. I'm in the process of losing weight and thus far, am down 23.4 lbs. That, in my book, is not chump change. I haven't been ballyhooing it around because I've been down this road before and I don't want other people dwelling on it, but dammit, that's a nice amount of weight to lose. And no one has noticed. The other night, I demonstrated for my husband how I could now remove my jeans without undoing them and his comment? "Huh. Neat." That's it. No one at work has noticed, neither of my parents have noticed and only one friend has said anything to me about it (thank you, T, you made my night). I think I'm officially nonplussed.

This, of course, sends me into a tailspin of "Jesus, I must be huge if 23 lbs isn't even showing." Then I head right for the biscotti I have hiding in the back of the cupboard.

In an effort to outwit the grey hair that is taking over peeking thru the brown, I dyed my hair today. Red. It's not flaming red, but it's definitely different than my normal mud brown. And no one noticed. Not my husband, not my kids.

I'm seriously thinking of piercing my nose, just to see if they'll spot that one.


And apparently it's delurk day. So if you read but never comment, please feel free to leave one. It'll make me feel less invisible.