Today was Tuesday...the preschool pickup, piano lesson, art class, Latin class, hip hop and modern dance, counseling session, swim lesson, dive practice day. But who's keeping track of the schedule, right? It really wasn't so bad.
My homework for this week is to take some time to think and make a list of all of the physical obligations I'd leave behind if I defected to Colorado. It's very exciting to think of. I think there mere thought of this homework makes my whole family angry. The truth is, I'd bag most everything I'm doing if I flew the coop. I don't really even feel bad about saying that.
I'm on this dog walking kick. It really needs to not be a kick but a lifestyle. Bilbo is fat. Fat like a beagle can be. The diet part is easy to change--just make it impossible for him to get his daily dose of cat food. But the exercise element is more challenging. I have been trying to take him out at least twice a day on a short walk, but I'd like to get to the three walk point. So far, it is helping some. He isn't peeing on the floor as much, and I haven't picked up poop in the house this past week, either (well, there was that nasty diarrhea behind Ollie's bed...how does a kid not only smell poop, but step in it in a nearly spotless bedroom and not know where the source of the poop is? Alas, I found it by sticking my hand right into it. Eww.). Tonight the kids and I went down to the reservoir and took a long walk around the big loop and played at Tom Sawyer Island. The fishing people were out in force, so there were lots of dead and live fish to poke at. Bilbo enjoys getting out and greeting his public. With any luck, he'll get healthier in the process, and perhaps housetrained as well.
Our carpet and hardwood estimate was staggering--more than double what I expected. It's time to search for Plan B. I just want it done yesterday. In preparation for this golden future time, I'm attempting to do a serious spring cleaning and repainting and to purge all the stuff we don't want to move for the flooring folks. I'm wondering if all of our furniture in the bedroom will fit in the master bath. I can dream, right? I'm really wanting this done in the next month. Even if it leaves us with no savings at all.
We're reading Misty of Chincoteague. It's not a book I've ever exactly loved, but since it is semi-local, I'm supposed to adore it. It's okay. And it goes rather quickly because it has pages full of pictures. Still, it's a good book to be familiar with (Ollie and I listened in the past and he remembered most of the details) and for Virginians to know. The older boys and I are reading _Carry On Mr. Bowditch_, another Newbery winner that I'm not sure about yet. It's hard for all of us to get into it, but we're only about 60 pages in, so it might get more exciting. Both this and Misty are hard to read out loud because of all of the dialect. I do it especially poorly and muddle words all up. Still, these are popular books and part of my literacy plan.
This morning I had Frances and Ollie take a cognitive skills test online so that I can figure out a relative baseline before I determine what kind of brain training I'm going to have them do. Ollie's had the Woodcock Johnson and the WISC and did highly variably on both--sky high and rock-bottom on various subtests, so much so that he doesn't have an IQ at all, which is fine with me. But still...do I help him work on his weaker areas. So they did the Gibson Test of Brain Skills, and I made a total muddle of Frances's test. She did so badly that even though it isn't an IQ test, if we treated it as one her IQ would be somewhere around 80, which I know isn't true. I had her do it on my mac and with the touch mousepad instead of a real mouse, and she kept accidentally minimizing and maximizing the screen, couldn't hear the instructions clearly, and had some kind of technical difficulty with one of the subtests, which kept shooting up an error message and starting over. I straightened it out and had her retake the test, and she did considerably better--not alarmingly great, but not alarmingly bad. Now I feel like I know more about where she needs to work so that learning is easier for her. She's a very strong reader, but like my others, she did very sketchily on one of the auditory processing tests. Ollie, on the other hand, took the test on the big computer with the huge monitor and decent speakers, and he was extremely strong--none of his typical weak cognitive areas, probably because he didn't have to use a pencil and manipulate anything but a mouse with his hands. His grapho-motor and fine motor difficulties really affect his performance on more traditional tests. Even his processing speed was up in the mid 90s of percentiles, whereas he has, in the past, been in the 10th. Then again, we have kind of worked up his processing, even with a pencil and paper, through the sporadic training I've done with him.
I also made a decision to push for Frances to get allergy testing. I suspect food allergies, possibly even celiac disease, but I'm wondering if anyone is going to humor me and let her get tested. That's coming up Friday--the begging appointment. I feel like some of her behavior/whininess and her puffy eyes and dark circles may be a result of an allergy to some food, and elimination diets are hard for me with our already limited diet, so I'd appreciate the help of an outsider, even if it is imperfect. I don't know if allergy testing is ever ordered for children who don't have anaphalactic reactions, but I'm going to find out. I change her dosage and configuration of regular allergy medicines; she is now taking Claritin and Nasonex. So far it has resulted in little more than a nosebleed. Hopefully it will relieve her running nose after a few days. I know I act crappy when I have a sore throat or a stuffy nose, so maybe resolving that will resolve some other things.
Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice, and I'm kicking it off with my first tennis match. I'm playing with my favorite partner, and we're playing at the #4 position, which sounds awesome to me. We don't really belong at the level where we are, so being at #4 gives us a ghost of a chance to win. And to be honest, I'm really only having fun with tennis when I'm winning. It's a character flaw of mine. Why play if you aren't going to improve your record? I've been on a roll lately, so I hope that my skill and luck hold out.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
You know it's been a long time since a post when Blogger "forgets" you. Bummer.
There was this big irony yesterday. I was asked to lead the women's Sunday School class, and the topic was Boundaries. I'm still rolling on the floor laughing at that one. What on earth could I possibly say about boundaries, given that, well, I have absolutely none myself. In a friendship gone remarkably wrong a couple years ago, I was given a book on Boundaries, called, I think, just that. I had kind of read or skimmed through it at some earlier point in my life (yes, my boundaries have been pretty fuzzy since about day one), but I read it then and I read it again this week and boy oh boy, I hope there's no multiple choice quiz on the thing. I guess I just don't get it. Actually, I do get it, loud and clear, while I'm reading. Nancy: you suck! But the second the book closes, I can't remember for the life of me at all what it said, other than that the only way to get some boundaries if you aren't blessed to be born with them is to spend $100 an hour on therapy with someone who will not provide you unconditional love. And to have a support group. And that there are a gazillion kinds of boundaries that I wouldn't want to have to differentiate in a final exam type situation. And I probably have none of them. And I can't even entirely figure out where my boundaries went out of bounds.
So here were the nuggets of wisdom that I did find and share about boundaries, along with the props which are still in my purse. There are two verses about a gazillionth of an inch apart in the microscopic-printed Galations in my Bible that seem to contradict each other--one that says that we are to bear each other's burdens, and one which commands that we are to carry our own loads. Huh? So the way this book explained it, the Greek word for "burden" meant something like "enormous things that would crush us if we tried to carry them by ourselves." Like a boulder. And the Greek word translated here as "loads" means the daily stuff we carry around. Like our knapsack. Or my purse, which these days is big and full enough to be more than just a "knapsack" with daily items and, indeed, does currently contain a miniature boulder. Because, see, I have no boundaries and haven't managed to evacuate from my purse the pile of small plastic animals, Fisher-Price fences, miniature knapsacks, and four pound rocks that I put in it to try to get me through this discussion yesterday.
Anyway, the point is, I suppose we are not intended to carry the boulders in our life by ourselves--the things that would crush us. We need help with those, and if we fail to ask for help with them, we'll be crushed, and that would not be a good thing. But we should carry our knapsacks by ourselves. This means that we shouldn't, at 38, be begging our mother for money or coercing "friends" to pick up our children every single day because we are always late, and other things that I can imagine myself doing if I had a mother or had friends who would comply with that kind of thing. And boundary issues arise when we confuse our boulders with our knapsacks or our knapsacks with a boulder. I like the image, actually. Always thinking in metaphors and not afraid to mix them, I imagine that we could also see boundaries as a cell membrane. What they don't seem to be is a wall. A wall doesn't have openings (unless it's my wall, which has a lot of holes from various projects gone wrong, nails in and out, doggie gates ripped straight out of them, spots where I was going to recess bookshelsves, etc.). But a cell membrane is porous and permeable, and bad stuff can come out, and good stuff can go in.
In my weeklong stewing about what I could say on Sunday morning that wouldn't turn into outright whining, TMI, shameless begging, wallowing in self-pity, or dissolving in a puddle of tears, I did manage to do all of the above while plumbing the depths of my problem with saying no to things. And what a week it was to do it in, since I was the queen of resentment and overwhelmedness when I accidentally double booked some spots on my schedule not just once, but three times! Three separate days of heart-pounding, blood-pressure raising, what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-now-because-they-don't-clone-humans-yet two-timing. It was pretty awful. And embarrassing. Tuesday night I told someone who had a legitimate issue that I would meet them at the pool to collect some papers for dive team *at the exact same moment as Frances was getting out of dance class 20 minutes away.* On Thursday I was supposed to be at a director's meeting and a Boy Scout new parent orientation meeting that is a requirement for signing up for summer camp. Sunday I had set up a lunch date downtown with someone at the same time that my daughter was singing in church, and by the time I realized it, I couldn't get in contact with the person. Yikes. I felt so awful. And there was all that blood-pressure raising, heart-pounding crap with it. It all worked out, but I was beyond a chicken with its head cut off!
So here I am with boundaries. As a result of last week, I did step out of my typical conflict-averseness and stand up for my own needs. It hasn't gotten anywhere yet, but I'm ready to pursue what I really need so that I can avoid a year's worth of stress and strife for my family. I'm trying to put some time parameters around my swim and dive board obligations. There are questions I can't answer, loops I'm not in, and I am eating myself up with guilt when I pass along wrong information, get sucked in the middle of confusing information, and don't keep up with every single email without a clear antecedent. I spent much of Saturday blaming myself for something that it turns out wasn't even something I had done. But I didn't know that and assumed I must have been the source of the screwup, since I didn't know for sure that I hadn't. I surely can't rely on my memory any more. I have the memory and attention span of an 85 year old with Alzheimer's these days.
It's all been a signal that I'm doing too much. There are many things that aren't really working in my life, things that I'm plodding through with one foot in front of the other while they still manage to take my time. I have a hard time saying no to things, and I'm trying to trace it back to something I can blame my parents for. I'm reading in all these books that this is what I'm supposed to do. Of course, knowing the root may not get me anywhere for tomorrow. But still, I could stand to pitch a little blame at someone other than myself these days!
So my analysis is that even though I had thought that I grew up in a perfectly "normal" and typical home, I really did heap upon myself some sense of responsibility for proving that my parents could have a "typical" family despite their disabilities. I think I may have felt a sense of obligation to use my various abilities (we're not talking extraordinary gifts--we're talking about basic ability to walk and talk without physical difficulty, to get around in the world, to get to where other people are) "to the fullest" because there are people who are not able to do these things and I should not take them for granted. So perhaps I started doing, well, everything. I was the person who went up to the stage something like 17 times during our junior and senior year awards ceremony because there was hardly a club, publication, society, or activity that I hadn't been a part of. And I also don't think I ever really stopped seeking my mother's approval, perhaps because she thought that I walked on water, and even though she didn't mean to, she may have conveyed to me that I must live up to her seeming belief about me. The thing is, she has been dead for seven years, and quite frankly, no one thinks I walk on water any more, and the wetness up to my neck that I'm feeling as I try to keep my head above water these days is ample proof that yeah, I neither walk nor float.
My solution these days is kind of a drastic one. Instead of actually getting some balls and making changes so that I become a more likeable person, a person that I would want to be for myself, and a person who has a shred of sanity, I've determined that the only viable way out is to move to Colorado. Alone.
To that end, I've decided that I should probably enlist the help of a counselor. This is partly because walking right out on your family is probably legally considered abandonment, and it would be best to have gone through the proper channels to CMA, just in case I did act on this urge. If I was in Colorado, I could conceivably reinvent my entire being, drop my own pretenses for myself, and start from scratch. And I've never actually been to Colorado, so it has to be perfect, right? It just sounds very far, far away. And I don't know a single soul in the entire state. That's a part of the appeal.
What I'm hoping is that a counselor will urge me to either leave part of my family right here where I am or will help me fix all that is wrong with me and make me a less "mean" person who is a better listener. Trouble is, this would be the 4th counselor I've seen, and I'm still pretty screwed up and haven't changed a whole lot. I've even been told that I'm becoming even more mean and cold and horrible at listening, actually, since those previous attempts happened. I'm starting to think that the mean girl thing might be something I should actively embrace, since it may be here to stay.
On the proactive front, I did make some decisions this week. I can't work without childcare. That stupid aquarium is depriving me of things that I really want and possibly need in life. The cleaning/new pump/dead fish of the past week cost more than an entire week of camp for a kid, camp that we supposedly "can't afford." A less-than-one-week-break-that-isn't-really-a-break-because-I'll-have-a-5-and-an-8-year-old-still-home when I don't get a vacation at all from my job, however chosen it is, lost out to a piscine extermination camp that leaked all over our floor and ruined it. And we're still throwing money at it. It went out on Craigslist on Friday, but so far it's still sitting in my living room. I also determined that while I may not exactly bring in any real, useable money, the least I could do was change how I was spending it. We didn't sign up for any classes other than a preschool class for Rutledge while I'm teaching writing and Frances's acting class, which I'm kind of regretting right now because I am going to be playing tennis on Wednesday and can't figure out how I'm going to be in two places at once. I think I'm saving somewhere between $275 and $350 by doing this. I also have been religiously avoiding Starbucks for about 3 weeks now. I've gone once, and it was on what I convinced myself was a special occasion, though now at past midnight a week and a half later, I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what was so special about it. I estimate we'll save about $100 a month just by denying myself that little ritual. If I really need coffee, which I don't, I can make it at home (though the coffee press just smashed to bits in our dishwasher and our drip coffeemaker is missing a pot). Or drink tea. Or drink water, which would be even better. What I'm trying not to do is substitute my Starbucks addiction with a fountain soda one. But at least they tend to cost about 1/3 of the price of even a smallish mocha frappacino. The last thing I did was determine that I must liberate myself from what the Flylady (who I really don't like) calls CHAOS--Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Boy do I have it. My house is mortifying. It is so gross, and much of the gross in it can't be fixed. Like the people who leave the dirty, inside-out socks all over the place and the food wrappers and used tissues on the floor.... Oh wait, I meant the things that couldn't be changed are the things like the water and pee stains that have ruined our wood floors and the lack of sealing on them that makes them impossible to truly clean. And the carpets that are more than 20 years old and that have holes down to the backing in some places, a whole gallon of yellow paint spilled in one spot, and appalling stains. And the walls with the incidental child "artwork" on them and the greasy prints. So I went on a little campaign this weekened. I painted my family room turquoise, which is Pantone's 2010 Color of the Year. It's a little frightening, if I do say so myself. It's not especially "grown-up" looking. Probably more of an accent than an all-over wall color. But there it is. A tropical paradise right in the middle of suburbia. Merely the fact that it's not dirty is a plus for its column. Then I tackled the especially filthy and ball-point pen and pencil desecrated areas below our kitchen chair rail and up our staircase. This had been a brownish color called "Nomadic Desert," but I took it one tone lighter on the paint chip and made it "Divine White." Unfortunately, the red wall next to it seemed to make it 'pull' pink. So I threw myself at the mercy of the Sherwin Williams guy and asked him what the safest neutral for new homes is. What we determined is that instead of changing my wall color, I should change my trim color to a more pure white. I thought I had a very white-white, but after seeing it on a paint chip next to whiter whites, I discovered that it does have a bit of a yellow tone to it. So I bought a particularly over-expensive gallon of semi-gloss to redo my trim in the areas with the new Divine White, and I have to say, the sample spots I did with the new paint may just be able to redeem the pinkish feel and turn it to the "neutral" I've always dreamed of.
There were, in fact, a lot of things that happened this weekend, even though, by some of our ridiculous weekend standards, it was less eventful than some. Walter and Ollie are now officially Boy Scouts. They have their Scout badge and have their first camping trip with their new Troop in less than a month. Their crossover ceremony was on Friday night, and there was a life lesson moment there. They had not done their Arrow of Light, and quite frankly, neither had I. They don't even know where their Webelos books are. So they didn't get to go up with everyone else and receive an award. I told them that if this was important to them, they would have taken some initiative. They didn't. So you don't get the award. But Arrow or not, they are now real Boy Scouts. Saturday night we went to a progressive dinner. This just intensified my feeling that our house is really weird. These houses were so perfect, so tasteful, so...clean. Who knows--they may have someone who comes in to clean once or twice a week. Their kids may be scarred for life because they have to keep things perfect. They may have spent the past 25 hours before we arrived scouring every baseboard and hiding all of their inside-out socks under the beds upstairs so that their downstairs was immaculate. What I can say is that they had the right paint colors. And no one had a turquoise family room!
I play tennis tomorrow morning, and then the suburban season starts the next day. I am played tonight against a friend who is very evenly matched with me, and I won, which felt good. I needed that this week. I can't believe that spring is really here. Rainy. Wet. But here. And I am determined that this is my year to move up to 3.5. That is, if I don't move to a tennis-less hamlet in Colorado!
There was this big irony yesterday. I was asked to lead the women's Sunday School class, and the topic was Boundaries. I'm still rolling on the floor laughing at that one. What on earth could I possibly say about boundaries, given that, well, I have absolutely none myself. In a friendship gone remarkably wrong a couple years ago, I was given a book on Boundaries, called, I think, just that. I had kind of read or skimmed through it at some earlier point in my life (yes, my boundaries have been pretty fuzzy since about day one), but I read it then and I read it again this week and boy oh boy, I hope there's no multiple choice quiz on the thing. I guess I just don't get it. Actually, I do get it, loud and clear, while I'm reading. Nancy: you suck! But the second the book closes, I can't remember for the life of me at all what it said, other than that the only way to get some boundaries if you aren't blessed to be born with them is to spend $100 an hour on therapy with someone who will not provide you unconditional love. And to have a support group. And that there are a gazillion kinds of boundaries that I wouldn't want to have to differentiate in a final exam type situation. And I probably have none of them. And I can't even entirely figure out where my boundaries went out of bounds.
So here were the nuggets of wisdom that I did find and share about boundaries, along with the props which are still in my purse. There are two verses about a gazillionth of an inch apart in the microscopic-printed Galations in my Bible that seem to contradict each other--one that says that we are to bear each other's burdens, and one which commands that we are to carry our own loads. Huh? So the way this book explained it, the Greek word for "burden" meant something like "enormous things that would crush us if we tried to carry them by ourselves." Like a boulder. And the Greek word translated here as "loads" means the daily stuff we carry around. Like our knapsack. Or my purse, which these days is big and full enough to be more than just a "knapsack" with daily items and, indeed, does currently contain a miniature boulder. Because, see, I have no boundaries and haven't managed to evacuate from my purse the pile of small plastic animals, Fisher-Price fences, miniature knapsacks, and four pound rocks that I put in it to try to get me through this discussion yesterday.
Anyway, the point is, I suppose we are not intended to carry the boulders in our life by ourselves--the things that would crush us. We need help with those, and if we fail to ask for help with them, we'll be crushed, and that would not be a good thing. But we should carry our knapsacks by ourselves. This means that we shouldn't, at 38, be begging our mother for money or coercing "friends" to pick up our children every single day because we are always late, and other things that I can imagine myself doing if I had a mother or had friends who would comply with that kind of thing. And boundary issues arise when we confuse our boulders with our knapsacks or our knapsacks with a boulder. I like the image, actually. Always thinking in metaphors and not afraid to mix them, I imagine that we could also see boundaries as a cell membrane. What they don't seem to be is a wall. A wall doesn't have openings (unless it's my wall, which has a lot of holes from various projects gone wrong, nails in and out, doggie gates ripped straight out of them, spots where I was going to recess bookshelsves, etc.). But a cell membrane is porous and permeable, and bad stuff can come out, and good stuff can go in.
In my weeklong stewing about what I could say on Sunday morning that wouldn't turn into outright whining, TMI, shameless begging, wallowing in self-pity, or dissolving in a puddle of tears, I did manage to do all of the above while plumbing the depths of my problem with saying no to things. And what a week it was to do it in, since I was the queen of resentment and overwhelmedness when I accidentally double booked some spots on my schedule not just once, but three times! Three separate days of heart-pounding, blood-pressure raising, what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-now-because-they-don't-clone-humans-yet two-timing. It was pretty awful. And embarrassing. Tuesday night I told someone who had a legitimate issue that I would meet them at the pool to collect some papers for dive team *at the exact same moment as Frances was getting out of dance class 20 minutes away.* On Thursday I was supposed to be at a director's meeting and a Boy Scout new parent orientation meeting that is a requirement for signing up for summer camp. Sunday I had set up a lunch date downtown with someone at the same time that my daughter was singing in church, and by the time I realized it, I couldn't get in contact with the person. Yikes. I felt so awful. And there was all that blood-pressure raising, heart-pounding crap with it. It all worked out, but I was beyond a chicken with its head cut off!
So here I am with boundaries. As a result of last week, I did step out of my typical conflict-averseness and stand up for my own needs. It hasn't gotten anywhere yet, but I'm ready to pursue what I really need so that I can avoid a year's worth of stress and strife for my family. I'm trying to put some time parameters around my swim and dive board obligations. There are questions I can't answer, loops I'm not in, and I am eating myself up with guilt when I pass along wrong information, get sucked in the middle of confusing information, and don't keep up with every single email without a clear antecedent. I spent much of Saturday blaming myself for something that it turns out wasn't even something I had done. But I didn't know that and assumed I must have been the source of the screwup, since I didn't know for sure that I hadn't. I surely can't rely on my memory any more. I have the memory and attention span of an 85 year old with Alzheimer's these days.
It's all been a signal that I'm doing too much. There are many things that aren't really working in my life, things that I'm plodding through with one foot in front of the other while they still manage to take my time. I have a hard time saying no to things, and I'm trying to trace it back to something I can blame my parents for. I'm reading in all these books that this is what I'm supposed to do. Of course, knowing the root may not get me anywhere for tomorrow. But still, I could stand to pitch a little blame at someone other than myself these days!
So my analysis is that even though I had thought that I grew up in a perfectly "normal" and typical home, I really did heap upon myself some sense of responsibility for proving that my parents could have a "typical" family despite their disabilities. I think I may have felt a sense of obligation to use my various abilities (we're not talking extraordinary gifts--we're talking about basic ability to walk and talk without physical difficulty, to get around in the world, to get to where other people are) "to the fullest" because there are people who are not able to do these things and I should not take them for granted. So perhaps I started doing, well, everything. I was the person who went up to the stage something like 17 times during our junior and senior year awards ceremony because there was hardly a club, publication, society, or activity that I hadn't been a part of. And I also don't think I ever really stopped seeking my mother's approval, perhaps because she thought that I walked on water, and even though she didn't mean to, she may have conveyed to me that I must live up to her seeming belief about me. The thing is, she has been dead for seven years, and quite frankly, no one thinks I walk on water any more, and the wetness up to my neck that I'm feeling as I try to keep my head above water these days is ample proof that yeah, I neither walk nor float.
My solution these days is kind of a drastic one. Instead of actually getting some balls and making changes so that I become a more likeable person, a person that I would want to be for myself, and a person who has a shred of sanity, I've determined that the only viable way out is to move to Colorado. Alone.
To that end, I've decided that I should probably enlist the help of a counselor. This is partly because walking right out on your family is probably legally considered abandonment, and it would be best to have gone through the proper channels to CMA, just in case I did act on this urge. If I was in Colorado, I could conceivably reinvent my entire being, drop my own pretenses for myself, and start from scratch. And I've never actually been to Colorado, so it has to be perfect, right? It just sounds very far, far away. And I don't know a single soul in the entire state. That's a part of the appeal.
What I'm hoping is that a counselor will urge me to either leave part of my family right here where I am or will help me fix all that is wrong with me and make me a less "mean" person who is a better listener. Trouble is, this would be the 4th counselor I've seen, and I'm still pretty screwed up and haven't changed a whole lot. I've even been told that I'm becoming even more mean and cold and horrible at listening, actually, since those previous attempts happened. I'm starting to think that the mean girl thing might be something I should actively embrace, since it may be here to stay.
On the proactive front, I did make some decisions this week. I can't work without childcare. That stupid aquarium is depriving me of things that I really want and possibly need in life. The cleaning/new pump/dead fish of the past week cost more than an entire week of camp for a kid, camp that we supposedly "can't afford." A less-than-one-week-break-that-isn't-really-a-break-because-I'll-have-a-5-and-an-8-year-old-still-home when I don't get a vacation at all from my job, however chosen it is, lost out to a piscine extermination camp that leaked all over our floor and ruined it. And we're still throwing money at it. It went out on Craigslist on Friday, but so far it's still sitting in my living room. I also determined that while I may not exactly bring in any real, useable money, the least I could do was change how I was spending it. We didn't sign up for any classes other than a preschool class for Rutledge while I'm teaching writing and Frances's acting class, which I'm kind of regretting right now because I am going to be playing tennis on Wednesday and can't figure out how I'm going to be in two places at once. I think I'm saving somewhere between $275 and $350 by doing this. I also have been religiously avoiding Starbucks for about 3 weeks now. I've gone once, and it was on what I convinced myself was a special occasion, though now at past midnight a week and a half later, I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what was so special about it. I estimate we'll save about $100 a month just by denying myself that little ritual. If I really need coffee, which I don't, I can make it at home (though the coffee press just smashed to bits in our dishwasher and our drip coffeemaker is missing a pot). Or drink tea. Or drink water, which would be even better. What I'm trying not to do is substitute my Starbucks addiction with a fountain soda one. But at least they tend to cost about 1/3 of the price of even a smallish mocha frappacino. The last thing I did was determine that I must liberate myself from what the Flylady (who I really don't like) calls CHAOS--Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Boy do I have it. My house is mortifying. It is so gross, and much of the gross in it can't be fixed. Like the people who leave the dirty, inside-out socks all over the place and the food wrappers and used tissues on the floor.... Oh wait, I meant the things that couldn't be changed are the things like the water and pee stains that have ruined our wood floors and the lack of sealing on them that makes them impossible to truly clean. And the carpets that are more than 20 years old and that have holes down to the backing in some places, a whole gallon of yellow paint spilled in one spot, and appalling stains. And the walls with the incidental child "artwork" on them and the greasy prints. So I went on a little campaign this weekened. I painted my family room turquoise, which is Pantone's 2010 Color of the Year. It's a little frightening, if I do say so myself. It's not especially "grown-up" looking. Probably more of an accent than an all-over wall color. But there it is. A tropical paradise right in the middle of suburbia. Merely the fact that it's not dirty is a plus for its column. Then I tackled the especially filthy and ball-point pen and pencil desecrated areas below our kitchen chair rail and up our staircase. This had been a brownish color called "Nomadic Desert," but I took it one tone lighter on the paint chip and made it "Divine White." Unfortunately, the red wall next to it seemed to make it 'pull' pink. So I threw myself at the mercy of the Sherwin Williams guy and asked him what the safest neutral for new homes is. What we determined is that instead of changing my wall color, I should change my trim color to a more pure white. I thought I had a very white-white, but after seeing it on a paint chip next to whiter whites, I discovered that it does have a bit of a yellow tone to it. So I bought a particularly over-expensive gallon of semi-gloss to redo my trim in the areas with the new Divine White, and I have to say, the sample spots I did with the new paint may just be able to redeem the pinkish feel and turn it to the "neutral" I've always dreamed of.
There were, in fact, a lot of things that happened this weekend, even though, by some of our ridiculous weekend standards, it was less eventful than some. Walter and Ollie are now officially Boy Scouts. They have their Scout badge and have their first camping trip with their new Troop in less than a month. Their crossover ceremony was on Friday night, and there was a life lesson moment there. They had not done their Arrow of Light, and quite frankly, neither had I. They don't even know where their Webelos books are. So they didn't get to go up with everyone else and receive an award. I told them that if this was important to them, they would have taken some initiative. They didn't. So you don't get the award. But Arrow or not, they are now real Boy Scouts. Saturday night we went to a progressive dinner. This just intensified my feeling that our house is really weird. These houses were so perfect, so tasteful, so...clean. Who knows--they may have someone who comes in to clean once or twice a week. Their kids may be scarred for life because they have to keep things perfect. They may have spent the past 25 hours before we arrived scouring every baseboard and hiding all of their inside-out socks under the beds upstairs so that their downstairs was immaculate. What I can say is that they had the right paint colors. And no one had a turquoise family room!
I play tennis tomorrow morning, and then the suburban season starts the next day. I am played tonight against a friend who is very evenly matched with me, and I won, which felt good. I needed that this week. I can't believe that spring is really here. Rainy. Wet. But here. And I am determined that this is my year to move up to 3.5. That is, if I don't move to a tennis-less hamlet in Colorado!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Greetings from the black hole.
I still have no pictures, but I do have a brand new camera that should have been here a few days ago...my birthday present after our previous camera was stolen. And I'm lazy and not very good at getting pictures off my other one, which is constantly in my car or somewhere not at hand when I have time to write.
Here are highlights of the past two weeks:
* Great run of Little Prince. Life changing. Most exciting thing in all her 8 years. A very proud mother.
* An E.R. visit for a possible gallbladder problem, but ultrasound still showed a gallstone, but no blockage, inflammation, thickening, or other indications of an acute issue. Could have been just a serious gluten reaction, though I'm not sure what I might have had. The last thing I had before 8 hours of a gripping, dull pain started was a drinkable yogurt, so that couldn't have been it. And prior to that, I had a salad, but the dressing seemed safe, and I don't usually react to gluten, even when I accidentally get it, this strongly. Whatever it was did end by the time I was at the E.R. I sincerely pray it doesn't return.
* All-nighter of abdominal pain and morning E.R. visit canceled my training for Classical Conversations. Sigh....
* Found a fabulous gf bread that is already made and that can sit on the counter a few days and is edible with sandwiches without being toasted. And it tastes mighty fine toasted, too! Yeah, it's expensive, but it tastes okay and it costs less than me making bread myself, though I suppose the package has less of it. And it takes a drive across town to buy. But yummy gf bread is a cause for celebration.
* Rutledge's birthday party at the pool. He's five! It was a super party. I had been worried since many kids his age don't swim, and it's winter and adults often don't want to wear a bathing suit and get in with a pile of kids. But it all worked out just fine, and he had the time of his life.
* Bad Mom alert...I am the total, carefree loser of the Most Healthy and Organic Lunch contest. Rutledge's weekly tradition is to bring a Lunchable to preschool lunch bunch. This week, he announced he no longer wants Lunchables. He wants a "sandwich that looks like a pie" like his friend Tim brings. I asked and found out it's an Uncrustable. I think they are frozen and come in multi-packs, which might be more convenient than a Lunchable, which I always end up running out for on Wednesday mornings. I'm so glad I don't live in Berkeley, Seattle, or anywhere else where there is competitive lunch-packing.
* New hamster has lived for two weeks! Two new fish from the other fish store have lived for 3 weeks! No problems that I can tell. Our anemone has flaky days, but nothing has died...knock on wood...in about a month. I don't know if it was better quarantined fish, introducing the two at once, or the fascinating relationship with the buddy-buddy yellow tang and the coral beauty. But it's working, and the four fish get along famously.
* Wretched runny nose cold I picked up from Ollie. Colloidal silver has not eradicated it yet.
* Awesome trip to Great Wolf Lodge. Very nice room, tons of fun, great rides, and something for everyone. Rutledge was in 7th heaven. We will definitely be going back, hopefully sooner, rather than later. I'd like to go to the Classical Conversations training and "camps" there this spring.
* Kerry's Grandmother died on Sunday. She was 98, but it was still unexpected. She appears to have had a stroke or other catastrophic blood pressure event, and it happened very quickly. She was the very best of our family and had the kind of constantly confident, loving attitude that I wish the rest of our family could spread. I feel terrible since I hadn't seen her in over a year, but I had not gone down to Norfolk on most of the furniture-getting trips, since we needed the van to be empty, and the last time we went we only saw Kerry's parents, who have moved into one of those inclusive retirement communities. I wish we could have spent more time with her, but I know that she is much happier now, since her hearing and eyesight were so poor that she couldn't read or watch TV and could barely listen to the radio, and she has been bedridden for 2.5 years. We will miss her so much.
* Dive meet where Ollie won 2nd place.
* Getting ready for VaHomeschoolers conference next weekend.
* Being sued for a big amount, but can't talk about it.
* Got hit by a truck in a parking lot, so have had to get several estimates for fixing it, which is not what I needed in these busy weeks.
* Ollie loses metal "grill" crown at Rutledge's birthday party, leaving a decaying stump of a tooth behind. Hopefully it will get pulled Monday.
* Still looking for the right, cheap desk for Ollie. Found an incredible wooden bookcase for Walter's Legos to be displayed on his room. $25.50--you can't argue with that!
* Just finished reading "Anne of Green Gables" to the older 3 kids. Read "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle" with the boys. Am giving them a jump start on reading "Scat" for the library book club, whose date I have forgotten. About to start "A Little Princess" with the older three.
* Woefully unprepared for 10k, so am dropping out. I would like to run when the weather gets slightly nicer, but since I have other obligations that weekend anyway, I think I'll pass rather than walk.
* Next dance performance: "Mujeres," a celebration of the lives of nine influential and renowned Hispanic women.
* Mastered countries of South America, Europe, and most of Asia, as well as the Canadian provinces and the capitals of South America. I'm shamefully awful at identifying African countries, and there are so many of them! Ollie is currently beating me at those, and he has me crushed, hands down, on Asia. Walter has South America mastered and is working on Europe.
* Broke my Ticket to Ride addiction.
* Really want to do some serious spring cleaning.
I still have no pictures, but I do have a brand new camera that should have been here a few days ago...my birthday present after our previous camera was stolen. And I'm lazy and not very good at getting pictures off my other one, which is constantly in my car or somewhere not at hand when I have time to write.
Here are highlights of the past two weeks:
* Great run of Little Prince. Life changing. Most exciting thing in all her 8 years. A very proud mother.
* An E.R. visit for a possible gallbladder problem, but ultrasound still showed a gallstone, but no blockage, inflammation, thickening, or other indications of an acute issue. Could have been just a serious gluten reaction, though I'm not sure what I might have had. The last thing I had before 8 hours of a gripping, dull pain started was a drinkable yogurt, so that couldn't have been it. And prior to that, I had a salad, but the dressing seemed safe, and I don't usually react to gluten, even when I accidentally get it, this strongly. Whatever it was did end by the time I was at the E.R. I sincerely pray it doesn't return.
* All-nighter of abdominal pain and morning E.R. visit canceled my training for Classical Conversations. Sigh....
* Found a fabulous gf bread that is already made and that can sit on the counter a few days and is edible with sandwiches without being toasted. And it tastes mighty fine toasted, too! Yeah, it's expensive, but it tastes okay and it costs less than me making bread myself, though I suppose the package has less of it. And it takes a drive across town to buy. But yummy gf bread is a cause for celebration.
* Rutledge's birthday party at the pool. He's five! It was a super party. I had been worried since many kids his age don't swim, and it's winter and adults often don't want to wear a bathing suit and get in with a pile of kids. But it all worked out just fine, and he had the time of his life.
* Bad Mom alert...I am the total, carefree loser of the Most Healthy and Organic Lunch contest. Rutledge's weekly tradition is to bring a Lunchable to preschool lunch bunch. This week, he announced he no longer wants Lunchables. He wants a "sandwich that looks like a pie" like his friend Tim brings. I asked and found out it's an Uncrustable. I think they are frozen and come in multi-packs, which might be more convenient than a Lunchable, which I always end up running out for on Wednesday mornings. I'm so glad I don't live in Berkeley, Seattle, or anywhere else where there is competitive lunch-packing.
* New hamster has lived for two weeks! Two new fish from the other fish store have lived for 3 weeks! No problems that I can tell. Our anemone has flaky days, but nothing has died...knock on wood...in about a month. I don't know if it was better quarantined fish, introducing the two at once, or the fascinating relationship with the buddy-buddy yellow tang and the coral beauty. But it's working, and the four fish get along famously.
* Wretched runny nose cold I picked up from Ollie. Colloidal silver has not eradicated it yet.
* Awesome trip to Great Wolf Lodge. Very nice room, tons of fun, great rides, and something for everyone. Rutledge was in 7th heaven. We will definitely be going back, hopefully sooner, rather than later. I'd like to go to the Classical Conversations training and "camps" there this spring.
* Kerry's Grandmother died on Sunday. She was 98, but it was still unexpected. She appears to have had a stroke or other catastrophic blood pressure event, and it happened very quickly. She was the very best of our family and had the kind of constantly confident, loving attitude that I wish the rest of our family could spread. I feel terrible since I hadn't seen her in over a year, but I had not gone down to Norfolk on most of the furniture-getting trips, since we needed the van to be empty, and the last time we went we only saw Kerry's parents, who have moved into one of those inclusive retirement communities. I wish we could have spent more time with her, but I know that she is much happier now, since her hearing and eyesight were so poor that she couldn't read or watch TV and could barely listen to the radio, and she has been bedridden for 2.5 years. We will miss her so much.
* Dive meet where Ollie won 2nd place.
* Getting ready for VaHomeschoolers conference next weekend.
* Being sued for a big amount, but can't talk about it.
* Got hit by a truck in a parking lot, so have had to get several estimates for fixing it, which is not what I needed in these busy weeks.
* Ollie loses metal "grill" crown at Rutledge's birthday party, leaving a decaying stump of a tooth behind. Hopefully it will get pulled Monday.
* Still looking for the right, cheap desk for Ollie. Found an incredible wooden bookcase for Walter's Legos to be displayed on his room. $25.50--you can't argue with that!
* Just finished reading "Anne of Green Gables" to the older 3 kids. Read "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle" with the boys. Am giving them a jump start on reading "Scat" for the library book club, whose date I have forgotten. About to start "A Little Princess" with the older three.
* Woefully unprepared for 10k, so am dropping out. I would like to run when the weather gets slightly nicer, but since I have other obligations that weekend anyway, I think I'll pass rather than walk.
* Next dance performance: "Mujeres," a celebration of the lives of nine influential and renowned Hispanic women.
* Mastered countries of South America, Europe, and most of Asia, as well as the Canadian provinces and the capitals of South America. I'm shamefully awful at identifying African countries, and there are so many of them! Ollie is currently beating me at those, and he has me crushed, hands down, on Asia. Walter has South America mastered and is working on Europe.
* Broke my Ticket to Ride addiction.
* Really want to do some serious spring cleaning.
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