degrees of difference

Occasionally — just occasionally — we arrange for my mother-in-law to babysit the girls when we go out. Because she does not drive at night, this entails some transportation logistics that make it, well, inconvenient, given that our other sitters all live within walking distance, but there are times when it’s the best option.

A dinner taking place an hour’s drive distant was a recent occasion for such. MIL drove over here before dusk and I frantically showered and changed after putting together a dinner for the girls. I’d been at a dead run most of the day between knocking out housework and laundry and what-all else, and overall I was in a self-congratulatory mode when I actually managed to hit the highway on time to pick up the MPM on campus, per plan.

I drove for half an hour in blessed silence, seeing a few flakes of snow smack the windshield in the dark and just generally enjoying the time alone, when suddenly I realized I’d forgotten to turn the heat up at the house. And since I’d been “doing around” at a pretty high intensity, I’d gotten right warm mid-afternoon and bumped the temperature down a few degrees from its usual mid-sixties setting.

Despite the fact that she’s been coming to our house for, oh, five years now, left alone I know that my mother-in-law will barely turn on a light, let alone get a drink from the fridge or touch the thermostat. And they keep their house at a Floridian 72 degrees. So I picked up the cellphone and got her on the line and told her I’d forgotten about turning up the heat for her. “Oh, my hands are like ICE! I’m practically shivering! I was just asking the girls if they were cold!” she said. (Yeah, ask away; they never are.)

So I exhorted her to set it wherever she needed to be comfortable, telling her I’d been working so I’d turned it down, etc, etc. We hung up, me saying I was glad I’d remembered, her saying she was too, and me reminding her for the umpteenth time that she should ALWAYS feel free to make herself at home, quackity-quack, regardless of what that might be, blah-bitty-blah, now go and TURN UP THE HEAT, lady, please. Wherever you want it.

And I felt relieved to know that I’d forestalled a calamity, a la the time she called and told her son they couldn’t come over any more, since we wouldn’t turn up the heat for them. (We’d turned it up, but apparently not high enough: If you love us, honey, you’ll read our minds.)

So imagine my surprise when we arrived home to a house that was exactly two degrees warmer than I had left it. And a mother-in-law on the couch in her coat and scarf, with a blanket over her, happily telling us how cold she’d been all evening, her hands were just like ICE, she couldn’t believe the girls had gotten undressed and then run around naked before getting in pajamas!

I think I made some feeble noises about having said she should turn up the heat as high as she wanted it, but honestly? I don’t remember. Because that kind of passivity is galaxies away from me, and I don’t have a way to engage. We’re so far apart on the spectrum we’re obviously speaking different languages — perhaps living on different planets.

The surface temperature over here on mine measured in Kelvin, of course.

the favour of a reply

The French for which “rsvp” is an abbreviation means essentially “respond, please.” It means that the person who has extended the invitation to you wishes for you to let them know if you are planning to attend, or if you are — most regrettably — unable to.

To fail to respond, please, while unthinkable in days gone by, has become fairly commonplace.

Simply because it is commonplace, however, does not render that failure any less frustrating to your host’s attempt to provide sufficiently, yet not overly, for the number of guests who will be present. Nor does it render it anything other than — how can I say this nicely? — rude.

I learned early in my entertaining days that an invitation labled “regrets only” was useless as a tallying device, in that the same folks who won’t trouble themselves to regret are the same ones who will blithely fail to show up. So these days I put “rsvp,” and work on the assumption that everyone who doesn’t respond is going to be a no-show. After a decade or so, I’ve yet to have someone ring the doorbell — with or without tasteful hostess gift in hand — after failing to rsvp, so it’s proven generally accurate.

And while I have to presume that it bothers them not one whit, I can assure you that those folks are then pretty much permanently off my invitation list. Because it’s — what was that word again? — rude. I took the time and effort to invite you, and you can’t even be bothered to let me know you can’t or won’t attend? (I feel the urge to insert: Who ARE these people, and who raised them? And why do they appear otherwise socially adept?)

By the same token, if one has rsvp’d in the affirmative and then is unable to attend — one perhaps fell ill, or found one’s pajamas calling irresistably at the appointed time, or even simply forgot — a brief email or voicemail in the days following is a highly appropriate, and appreciated, gesture.

Maybe I should write a book. What could we call it, this strange notion of guidelines for socially appropriate behavior?

how Saturday went down

Woke to the thermometer reading 19 degrees, along with a kicky little breeze, leading to internal debate on a number of things like what to wear and how to get to the start line, which is all of one almost-entirely-downhill mile from my house.  It seemed a little pathetic to drive, but then again! While I know up north 19 degrees is tennis weather, we here in the mid-Atlantic region consider it ass-freezing cold. Come on, it was like 70F two weeks ago.

So when the phone rang and it was friend K saying she could pick me up, I said Yes before she even finished offering. We’d planned to run together too as long as that worked for both of us, so it was perfect. We got there not many minutes before the gun, and that was perfect too — long enough to say Hi to various friends and get situated; not long enough for bone chill to set in.  (For me at least; K has about 7% body fat, so she was at a disadvantage).

I came in just a hair under 1:54, an 8:43/mi pace.  Not as fast as I would have liked, but faster than I had any right to expect, given the overall dearth of miles in my training log and the untimely arrival of my period the evening before (yick).  And the MPM had walked down to the finish line with the girls, snugly tucked in the Chariot, so I even had a cheering section. How great is that?

Looked for K at the finish area but somehow missed her, so started walking home with the fam. Made it about a quarter-mile before some wicked nasty stomach cramps settled in and I realized the uphill trudge home wasn’t happening. Detoured past friends’ house (she of the 6-months-pregnant 1:39 finish time) and settled in on their cozy chair to wait for the MPM to return with vehicular conveyance.

Arrived home to discover that we’d been ransacked. Or maybe just that the MPM had made waffles in the kitchen while the girls played with every toy they could find. And that the short list of Must-Do I’d left for the party prep hadn’t exactly been gotten to. Showered, a blessed hot sauna-like thing, and came downstairs to survey. Ugly. No other word for it. Two hours to party time, and the MPM off to the hardware store with girls to find a fuse to, hopefully, get the heat pump running again.

And as happens, what needed to get done got done, and the first kids to arrive had a total blast taking over the crepe-paper streamer decorating. Very artful indeed. It was 2.5 hours of bedlam and general chaos, and we made it through and everyone seemed to have a good time. After dinner — Megan was so exhausted I ended up literally feeding her in her bed — and party cleanup, I simply couldn’t face doing a major packing for our Sunday a.m. departure, so I settled for getting my list in order and putting most of Kira’s things in a bag, resolving to wake early and rested and knock out the rest of it.

Woke instead at 3a to the horribly unwelcome realization that I’d not escaped the stomach bug that’s making its way through the ‘hood. No indeed. Scratch Sunday departure. Spend entire day in bed. Eat one small bowl brothy soup 8p. Go back to bed.

So what to do? It’s a distinct possibility that should we choose to travel, we’ll be bringing not holiday cheer but disease vectors into my brother and his lovely wife’s lives… and she has spent enough of the last months in a state of unhealth that the last, the very last thing she needs is another botts. I’m thinking we’ll hunker down here, and plan that trek for December.

Heck, maybe we’ll even cook a turkey, since Megan won one in a drawing last week at our Natural Foods Co-op. Anyone free for Thanksgiving?

idiot.

I am an idiot.  Apparently a lucky one, but an idiot nonetheless.  I’m a little, okay a lot, frazzled today because I have that half-marathon thingie to run tomorrow morning, a birthday party to pull together for the afternoon, and a 7-hour Sunday-morning drive to pack for, in addition to the usual stuff I’d like to cram into 4 of my 8 weekly Kira-free hours.  Like a post for my patient readers.  (Be it known that this one will have to see you through for a while.)

Veering from lunacy back to idiocy:   I have a friend who spent time in intensive care after placing a bite of eggroll he’d been mistakenly assured was NOT fried in peanut oil in his mouth, and promptly removing it to tell the waiter to call 911.   And I have personally witnessed a full-blown anaphylactic reaction in a 200-pound adult male, which is a visual with some staying power and a story I tell with no prompting at all to anyone whom I hear say, “Oh, I have an Epi-Pen.  It’s in my (insert remote location here).”  Yes indeed, I’m fully cognizant of the life-threatening nature of allergies.

Today was, is, Megan’s birthday.  This morning, I got up and made and sent in cupcakes (see frazzled, above).  White cake, pink frosting — a little heavy-handed on the red food coloring meant a less-appetizing shade of pink than I’d hoped for, but I gave myself bonus points for the homemade frosting — and hey, let’s toss on some little candy sprinkles.  Around here we put them on oatmeal and on ice cream.  And cupcakes.

There’s a boy in her class with peanut allergies.  If you bring a peanutty snack, you eat it in the classroom next door.  Kids are shepherded to one of three lunch tables based on the peanut/no-peanut content of their lunch.  I know this.  And Megan reminded me of it three separate times this week, in re the cupcakes.

I forgot to read the label on the fucking sprinkles.

After lunchtime, I picked up the container.  “Contains traces of peanuts, tree nuts… “

Fighting welling nausea, I called the school,  knowing they’d already eaten the cupcakes.  A check in the classroom by the secretary revealed the kid answering to his own name, in apparent good health, though I had to wait 15 hours minutes for that information.

I called the mom (allowing time for the school to call her first).  Apologized up and down.  Explained to her that I wasn’t an unconcerned idiot (if you are a parent of an allergic child, you meet lots of them); just a left-my-brain-out-in-the-rain idiot.  She was very nice.  She told me the story of him being kissed, at 2, by a grandparent who’d eaten peanuts, and the harrowing epi-pen-on-the-side-of-the-interstate that ensued.  My nausea returned.  She told me that a reaction would have been immediate, so he was fine, which I knew but didn’t make me feel much better.  She thanked me for calling.  I thanked her for being so NICE about it.

I’m still nauseous.  Close calls do that to me.

red metal

I bought my first new car in 1996. A 5-speed VW Jetta GLX with a sunroof and an arrest-me red paint job. My weakness for horsepower and German engineering had almost led to the purchase of a used Porsche 944, but the Jetta was a more prudent choice and I knew it. And by the time I bought it, I’d mostly outgrown my need for speed — at the time I was driving a BMW 325is that felt, I’m a bit embarrassed to be able to say, absolutely rock solid up to 130mph — but the Jetta handled beautifully and had impressive pep.

I redlined her only once, in 2004. Megan was just under 2; I used to take her to a really really wonderful music class for toddlers that was fully worth the hour’s drive out a two-lane highway of the rural variety. We were on our way back and I pulled off into a remote farm driveway to do something with her – a snack, maybe. I backed out, oriented straight, and had just shifted into third gear when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a white car crest the hill behind us going way, WAY, WAY too fast.

I punched the accelerator flat, and the pitch of the engine hit treble as I watched the road and the rearview simultaneously, bracing for impact.

A car inches (at most) from your bumper affords you a startlingly good view of its front-seat occupant. He was young, and the look on his face made me know that he’d never, ever again drive that road that recklessly fast. It took my adrenalin many miles to settle; I can only imagine how he felt. Those 6 cylinders may not be the greenest thing around, but I owe them a debt of gratitude.

When I drove home last night, the odometer clicked over and six digits displayed for the first time. It’s a digital readout, and it was still at 100000 when I parked in the garage, so it felt right to sit for a bit, remembering. Two boyfriends, a husband, a carseat, a new garage, another carseat… it’s been twelve good years.

German engineering means she’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I can’t wait to see what the next years will bring.

Happy 100th, Baby

validation

Megan came inside from the end of her playdate with her next-door buddy and promptly fell apart. As far as I knew, up til then they’d had a fine time, but now the tears were flowing. Apparently the friend was “bored” of her and had told her she’d rather play with our one-eyed cat. Or something.

A natural reaction to this sort of drama is to launch into a full-blown litany of Reasoning. I’ve done it dozens, nay, hundreds, of times myself. And her daddy, coming in on her heels, was ramping up to do just that, when I gave him the shushing sign over her head, buried in my lap.

And I just listened. And said, Mm-hmm. And, Oh, that sounds like it really hurt your feelings. And a myriad other murmur-y noncommittal things, but all geared toward listening and respecting, and most of all toward validating.

Because earlier in the day I’d read Kate’s post, here, and it had stayed with me. How often do we, in our lives, want someone to move beyond their pain before they’re ready to? Before they feel heard? I think it’s unconscious. Yes, we want to do something to help; but maybe more than that, it’s a knee-jerk response to our own discomfort at being in the presence of someone’s pain.

We’re a society that believes the good face should be put forth. We admire strength in the face of adversity. And to some extent I’m on board with that — being a cowboy-up kinda girl, as I’ve said before — but when it comes to emotional pain, I think the world would be a better place if everyone would learn to say “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s awful.” Period. Full stop. Hug if appropriate.

I mean, let’s think for a minute about the platitudes that rocket around whenever loss or hardship strike. Does anyone truly — really, truly — believe that hearing “I’m sure God/Allah/the Universe has something better in mind for you,” or “Look on the bright side (whatever stretch that may be),” will make even one frog-hair of difference to someone in the depths of emotional upset?

In time they may even come to that place themself, but is it ever as a result of someone saying it? “Wait now, this door slammed shut in my face and about damn broke my nose — but you’re saying there’s another one opening somewhere??! My god! I never thought of that! Thank you!!” No. Those realizations, those pieces of peace, by their nature come entirely from within. And, going on personal experience, I’d say they come over time, and often more of it than one might think.

I’m hardly the first to come up with this, but I suggest that what the person in pain needs most, right then, is the simple act of validation: what you are going through sucks, and how you are feeling is totally understandable.

Without validation, moving forward is, while perhaps not impossible, a hell of a lot harder.

So. I actually think I do a pretty decent job of this stuff in my adult sphere, at some point having learned to just be okay with the awkwardness of simply saying, “I heard about X, and I’m so sorry.”

But with my kid, the queen of angst, too often I see myself with my Fixit Hat on, trying to tell her why she shouldn’t feel the way she feels. It’s tempting, indeed, because the drama is exhausting.

But when I can remember to validate, validate, validate, then I find often we can move on, and I can gently move her in the direction of facts, and other ways of looking at things. And then she can really hear and maybe even see those things, having come upon them from a better place.

And then she can cheerfully go set the table, and we can get on with our evening, without ever having devolved into the awfulness that’s been rampant around here lately.

And that, oh blessed be, is a validation all on its own: I think I did it right tonight.

oh, shit

We bathe our girls twice a week, whether they need it or not. I suppose if they played outside in the sand and dirt every day, the way friend CL’s boys do, we’d find the time to fit in a bath every evening, but the fact is they just don’t often get very dirty and I don’t see any need to heat that much water just for the sake of routine. And, let’s face it, I’m inherently lazy.

We’d already had the weekday bath on Wednesday, but after an early dinner Thursday Kira got it in her head that she wanted another, and it seemed a harmless-enough undertaking. Megan, immersed in a book, was uninterested in other immersion, and the Most Prudent Man suggested that Kira shouldn’t be left by herself.

So it was that I was in the bathroom, perched on the only available seat, reading, when Kira discovered the vast amusement that comes of air expelled from one’s bottom — we call it pooting; I’m sure you have your own term — when underwater.

“Kira POOT in da water!!” she crowed, with a huge smile on her face. And did it again. I had to laugh at her abundance of prideful glee.

And so it was that I was watching her instead of reading, and saw, too late, that familiar look of focus on her face, and, in another second, its transition to dismay. And knew exactly what had happened.

And sighed, and scooped up her tearful self as fast as I could, and scrubbed her and toweled her and got out the gloves and the Clorox.

The take-home message being, of course, that there are some things you just can’t force.

It was a fitting end to a day filled with things gone vaguely, and more, awry.

18 flavors

I’ve been volunteering in Megan’s classroom on Wednesday mornings for the last month, which seems a reasonable use of two of my eight weekly Kira-free hours.  It’s been an enlightening experience.  There are now 22 kids in her class — attrited from 24 — and the spectrum of abilities is, let me say, broad.

Sometimes I’m working with the three or so who are lagging well behind their classmates in grasping kindergarten fundamentals.   There are conceptual lacunae — this is a three-part pattern; no, that’s a P not a B — but there are also developmental ones:  attention to task, following directions, holding a pencil, no we don’t eat snack off the floor.  At least one of these children is already medicated.  Whether or not she has one of the conditions for which school-age children are often drugged, I don’t know, but I feel pretty certain that her most substantial life handicaps aren’t ones that a prescription will help.  At least not one with her name on it.

And sometimes I’m working with the kids who are solidly in the bell, and they are a delight.  The energy and joy of your typical kindergarten kid is life-affirming.  It makes me understand exactly why teachers stay at this incredibly demanding gig for decades.

Yesterday I did break-out reading groups with some of both the Pre-readers (five boys; I had to use my Big Stern No-Sir Voice more than once, but oh my are they cute), working on word/picture matches, and the Readers, who were adorably excited about their Mud Pup story. To hear and see them in their concentration of decoding took me right back to the thrill of discovering that I could find out for myself what Dick and Jane and Spot were up to. Oh, the magic of it!

And there’s that perspective bit, too, as I snuggled with Megan last night, listening to her flying through Shel Silverstein, cadence, meter and all:

Eighteen luscious, scrumptious flavors–
Chocolate, lime and cherry,
Coffee, pumpkin, fudge-banana
Caramel cream and boysenberry,
Rocky road and toasted almond
Butterscotch, vanilla dip,
Butter-brickle, apple ripple,
Coconut and mocha chip, [phonetically, she said "mah-cha"]
Brandy peach and lemon custard,
Each scoop lovely, smooth, and round,
Tallest ice-cream cone in town,
Lying there (sniff) on the ground.

Along with a craving for some butter-brickle myself right about now, I have a better understanding of why her teacher said she was “blown away” when Megan finally consented to read to her (which wasn’t until two weeks ago). She’s farther along the road by a good bit.

Assuredly, most will get there in time; here’s hoping none of them get Left Behind completely. Being inside the system, even a few hours a week, is eye-opening to say the least. Sadly, despite the best intentions of our politicians and policy-makers, you can’t legislate good parenting, or a solid home environment, and there are no standardized tests for those little milestones along the path of educational success.

yeeowch

Cutting into a loaf of nice, crusty European-style bread, even with a good sharp knife, takes a reasonable amount of pressure.

The same amount of pressure — trust me here — that’s required to cut through two millimeters of nail into the bed of your thumb.

And it sounds about the same, too.

The Mysterious Pee in the Night

My brother and I had stories read to us until we were really pretty old. I can’t peg the exact age this family tradition was abandoned, but I’d wager it went on well past the norm, all of us gathered on my parents’ bed. I think eventually my brother withdrew a properly disdainful distance from the rest of us, when he got Like, Embarrassingly Old, but he was still there, listening.

Mom read us books like The Borrowers, and Five Children and It, and she did voices for all the characters — quite an astonishing feat, really, I now recognize. Dad read us, among others, all the James Herriot books (All Creatures Great and Small, et al.,) and The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle. He read them straight, no extra voices, but with a lot of zest. And I recall him laughing so hard at some of the Herriot that he’d have to choke out the sentences with tears coming down his face.

My brother is a bit over 2 and a half years older than I and wicked bright, and I don’t recall any dumbing-down of literary selections for my benefit. So it was at a fairly tender age that I was along for the Doyle, which is my excuse for not having retained quite as solid a grasp as my brother has on some of the lesser-known Sherlock Holmes tales.

I do, however, remember this axiom from the dude in the deerstalker: When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

(Yes, I cheated and looked it up on The Google just now in order to tell you it is from The Sign of Four. I should have just called my brother.)

Which brings me, more or less, to this post. Yesterday morning Kira woke about 6:30, which is pretty par for the course. First order of business is a trip to the potty; she’s been diaper-free since she was shy of two and the nighttime bit came right along with the rest, much to our utter astonishment after a year of night diapers with #1. She’s had maybe 2 nighttime accidents ever, but she can’t quite make it through til morning, so we usually do a service before we turn in ourselves to avoid that 4a.m. wakeup call.

So husband goes in at 6:30, blearily, to get her, does the potty thing, and brings her into our bed where I’m still half-snoozing. I catch a whiff of eau-de-pee, but her zip-up footed sleeper is dry, so I don’t think much of it and she snuggles on in. Before long she starts asking for her blanket, and I hoist myself up and head to her room to get it. Being not far short of legally blind, I do everything at this hour by feel: reach into the crib, toward pale mound brain has registered as approximately the right size for the blanket. Yep, that’s it. But wait, it’s… wet. Quite wet. And hmm, there’s a distinct pee odor about the room.

Remembering the dry pj’s, I query husband: “Did you change her jammies?” He replies in the negative. “Did you take her blanket into the bathroom with you?” Negative again. I do a mental inventory: no bottle, no sippy cup, no nothing. There is no ceiling leak, nor is it raining. I head back to our bed and do a thorough pajama check. Desert dry.

But she has, I realize, recently started learning to unzip them and get her arms out, though the notion that she accomplished some sort of a nocturnal Houdini maneuver smacks of the fantastic. But Doyle dictates my next question.

“Kira, did you take your jammies off and go pee in your crib?”

Quite triumphant, she responds, “Yes! An’ put ‘em back on!”

Mystery solved, at least the how.  As for when, and moreso why, we may need Sherlock himself.

opening/closing on Salem Ave

With apologies to those for whom this locally themed joke is meaningless, I’ve been under some pressure to post a photo of this year’s costumes:

closings and openings on Salem Ave...

oh for cute

We haven’t gone the dance-class route with our girls, but are fortunate to have a friend who gifts us with hand-me-down bags that often include cast-off ballet shoes.

Invariably a huge hit, they spark off much ballerina-ing about for a few days…

out of it for the long run

I started running in the mid-90s, days of the Walkman, or Discman, neither of which was All That.  Big clunky thing to carry along while running, and you only had so many minutes of music anyway.

I had a few flings with petite radio devices, but there was all that interminable searching for new stations when the commercials came on, or a bad song, or I ran myself out of reception. None of it was very conducive to just getting in a groove, so over the years I’ve largely run without any accessories at all.  That’s the great thing about running, really, after all:  strap on the shoes and you’re good to go.

But in my quest for miles to train for this month’s half-marathon, I started dallying with an MP3 player, and as is my wont, I’ve gotten pretty addicted to it. 

I have a low tolerance for running the same routes every week, but since I’ve logged 15 years worth of running miles in the same general quadrant of this small city, I can put together my route on the fly — or the shuffle, or trudge, as it may be — to fit whatever time or distance I’m aiming for.  I may have a general map in mind as I head down the hill from my driveway, but it’s as likely as not to undergo revision, often radical, by the time I sweat my last.

All well and good. But something very strange has been happening since I started running with a steady stream of music in my ears. I’ve discovered that while I process just fine as I’m running (“okay, lessee, I can take Highland across and pick up 6th and down over behind the Y and then come through downtown, hit the Greenway and home…”), and it all comes together perfectly, when I try to go back after I’m done and piece together the route I took, it’s astonishingly difficult.   It’s like I was out there sleepwalking. Sleeprunning?

I think I’ve decided that it’s similar to what happens when I watch a movie, some sort of a beta-zone experience: I’m completely immersed, but the information gets stored somewhere inaccessible. 

Is that just weird or what?

Training log, stardate 2.142857:  90 minutes; route unknown.

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his words, our hopes

“Victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance to make that change.”

What a night. What a speech.

When Kira, sitting on my lap this morning as I listened again, pointed at the computer screen and asked, “Who dat, Mommy?” I said, “That’s Barack Obama, honey.” And then I heard my voice saying, for the first time, “He’s our next President.”

And felt the tears come. It’s been that kind of a dare-not-hope journey.