So, recently I received a giant, heaping, pile of cow crap in the mail. It got EVERYWHERE. It stuck to things it could not have possibly come in contact with, just like dog doo and chewed gum. It smelled exactly like cow crap always does -- at first you think, "oh gross, it's poo." Then you breathe in again and remember that there's a reason this is never going to be a best-selling scented candle aroma. At first it's bad, and then it's astonishingly bad. And then it's truly horrific, yet still possessing a pungent quality that leads us to ask ourselves, "Was it really that bad? Maybe I should take another sniff." We always do and it is always and precisely that bad. And it LINGERS. For daaaaaaaaayyyyyysssss.
I should probably clarify at this point that this was a metaphorical meadow muffin, and not, thank the great god of fainting goats, an actual one. The manifest form of this patty was a critical review of a piece of writing I had submitted for a contest. The reader was both universal and specific in his or her (I have no idea who the reader was) critique of my story, taking time to write four extra pages extolling exactly how derivative, rambling, smarmy, un-funny, and unoriginal I was as a writer. They took time to rewrite passages to show how they could do it better. They plead with me to try actually reading some science fiction if I thought I was going to write some. (Apparently my collection of 100+ sci-fi books and multiple decades reading them isn't enough. Because, of course, the goal is to make sure my book sounds exactly like every other sci-fi book written. Whoops. Gotta pause here, ranting is not the point of of this post. Ahem.)
I have received MANY critical reviews in my life, both as a writer and as a human being. This one really felt unnecessarily mean. Having raised and worked with pre-teens and teens for the better part of three decades, I thought I was pretty criticism-proof. I was wrong. This one hurt. It happened to zap me right at a time when I was already feeling a bit vulnerable for entirely separate reasons. When I saw the envelope in the mail, I got my hopes up for maybe a little bit of positive feedback, maybe a little bit of happy in a temporary sea of meh. Nope. It was a big, steaming, fragrant pile of shit. Sorry for the potty word, but that's really what it felt like.
As mentioned above and just like the actual waste product, it somehow managed to stain and ruin every other aspect of my life for the next couple of days. I was sad and felt injured. I couldn't manage to read the entire write up and put it in the trash, just to pull it out the next morning and see if was really as awful as I thought it had been. Maybe there was some positive stuff too that I had just not read because I round-filed it too quickly? Nope. It really was that bad. There was a moment of hope when I found a sentence that started "You are a good writer . . . " but then went on to say that this was only because all the words were spelled correctly and there were no grammar errors. Great. I'm right on par with Spellcheck. The sentence finished by saying if I completely started over and tried again with another topic entirely and followed the aforementioned suggestion of not being a complete sci-fi moron, I might think about entering the contest again. Yes, I'm definitely going to get right on that. Just as soon as I finish pulling all my fingernails out one at at time.
By day three, after spending an evening trying to not cry as I finally told my husband what was bothering me (because Holy Llamas in the Sky, am I really CRYING over one person's opinion of my HOBBY?!), I knew I needed to get a grip. After mentally drafting the long, scathing, but clearly still calm and rational (?! Do I really think such a beast actually exists anywhere but my imagination?) email I intended to send the next morning to the contest organizers, detailing precisely how mean and cruel their so-called "critics" (really just ordinary people who also like to write and were willing to volunteer their time to help review all the contest entries) were, I took a big step back.
I am not, despite my feelings of the prior three days, thirteen years old. I have one of those currently living in my house (fifteen actually, but difference is about the same as that between the colors teal and aqua--different but not really.) and have daily reminders of that flavor of irrationality. I am, gray hair, wrinkles, and joint pain included, a bona fide adult. Additionally, I had entered this particular contest specifically because they do provide feedback. Almost no writing contests do this because it is so hugely time consuming. The angry gorilla in the room of my pain, however, was the fact that, setting aside the painful wording of the critique, the reviewer was right about a lot of what he/she pointed out.
Most of the reviewer's many points were precisely the aspects of my story I had been struggling with all along. But, because I felt personally attacked and completely misunderstood, I allowed the emotion of the situation to prevent ME from growing and improving. I have no idea what the personal intent or situation of the reviewer is or was. Maybe they like making people sad, maybe they're really a super villain, maybe they just suck. But probably not. The overwhelming likelihood is that he/she is not a super villain and takes no joy in hurting people, but instead is a regular person just like me who took the time to give a thorough review, intended to be helpful, and has no further thought about me one way or the other.
Which still leaves me with a mound of poop to deal with. What do I do with this? Allowing that the reviewer didn't really mean to crush the joy of life from my soul, I still feel hurt and angry. So I examine the patty. If it were a real pile of crap, I could recognize that while it's soooo gross, it is actually great fertilizer and a valuable commodity. I can take that poop, shovel it into my garden soil, and benefit from it in the long run as bigger, better vegetables and flowers spring up. It's going to be hard work, it's still going to smell, and won't necessarily be anyone's idea of first choice for an afternoon activity. But I will be so much better because of it if I CHOOSE to make the effort. It is up to me what to do with the poop.
It can be really hard to be thankful for our trials because they can be devastating, much more so than this simple critique was to my ego. What would be worse, though, would be to deliberately multiply the damage of that trial by acting out in anger, in revenge, or in deliberate malice. If I started throwing the cow pie back at the reviewer and organizers, not only do we both get covered in bovine feces, but also my garden does not get the benefit of the fertilizer. The long-term benefit is lost and I have added exponentially to my own suffering.
What really helped pull me back to this awareness (which I have learned before but apparently need constant refresher courses) was a passage from our family scripture study in 2 Corinthians 12:10, but the concept is found in all major religious and philosophical studies: " . . . for when I am weak, then am I strong." Sounds like a contradiction, but it's the foundation of all growth. We can't get stronger if we aren't first weak. And those areas where we struggle and practice and fail are where we eventually grow and become successful.
So here I am, pulling up my big girl panties and finding the value in the poop.
And I really just wrote that sentence.
Pretty sure the reviewer had a point.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Anchors or Guppies
Watch out -- I'm about to drop a universal truth on you.
Are you sitting down?
Ready?
Did you take your high blood pressure meds?
Do you need your inhaler nearby? Go grab it.
Ok. Ready?
Here we go:
Parenting is hard.
I KNOW, right?
One of the more challenging elements of raising kids, in my twenty-eight years of parenting experience, is finding out who your kid IS. (Yeah, I know it should be whom but that just seems pedantic. Sue me.) We've usually spent a number of decades just trying to figure out who we are, (ditto) only then to realize we need to start the process over with the small, loud, smelly, and generally unhappy naked mole rat to whom we've just given birth. We all pretty much have some preconceived notions of what our new child will be like, whether we realize it or not. We assume our kiddo basically will be like us, with a generous sprinkling of our SO. And generally our child takes the shortest amount of time possible to disabuse us of our assumption, usually an amount requiring complex math to define exactly how small it is.
Lemme give you an example. My mother was a competitive swimmer as a youth. It just came naturally to her and she loved the feel of the water. Fast forward a couple of decades or so and she found herself a young mom of three kiddos within three years. (This would swell to seven kiddos eventually, but there were only three of us at the time of this story.) One evening, my parents decided to take us all swimming for a fun family night. We went to the local community pool and donned our adorable, homemade swimsuits. Mine was pink gingham checked and had a little skirt. It was the best of what early 1970's fashion had to offer, which, we all know, was truly quite limited.
I think I was about five at the time, easily old enough to begin learning the rudiments of the Dog Paddle. My parents perched each one of us on the edge of the pool and tossed us back and forth to help us get used to the water, and then supported us from underneath as we gleefully kicked our little legs like mad in the chlorine-dense water. After a few go-rounds, it was time to give each of us our first attempt at solo swimming.
One after the other, we all sank like lead rocks. Over and over and over. I went straight to the bottom -- I actually remember looking up from the pool floor and thinking "wait a minute, this isn't right,"-- while my sister refused to get anywhere near water deeper than the bathtub. For years. My mother was floored. She LOVED swimming, her genetic offspring were supposed to love it too. And even if they didn't love it, they should at least be good, or even capable, of it. But no. She had a little pod of anchors, not guppies. We were, in this aspect at any rate, not the people my mother expected to know.
In one way or another, every parent goes through this process. And in one way or another, every parent has to manage the ancillary process of figuring out which elements of his or her child's personality is something to love and accept or something to change. Going back to my mother's experience as an example, she first had to acknowledge that her children did not naturally take to swimming as she had. However, being a wise parent raising children in the Pacific Northwest where we were surrounded by water of all shapes and sizes, she knew she had to change at least part of our natural inclinations and teach us to swim. In the case of my sister, this would be a very long and arduous process -- I think she was friggin' EIGHT before she would willingly dog paddle -- but she did it. This does not mean she forced us to like swimming, I will still avoid putting my face in the water if given the option, but she did need to force a partial change in us as part of being a responsible parent. We needed to know how to swim.
And this is what was on my mind the other day when I had my 9,467,583rd argument of the week with current teen #2.
Me: "This isn't acceptable."
Teen #2: "It's fine."
Me: "This is not what God intended."
Teen #2: "God made me this way."
Me: "And sent you to me so I could fix this."
Teen #2: "I don't need fixing."
Me: "Yes, you do."
Teen #2: "No, I don't. Accept me as I am!"
Me: "No."
Teen #2: "Just accept it, Mom! I'M A SLOB!"
I bet you're thinking I made up this argument. And you'd be halfway right because honestly I don't remember what all we said to each other before he stood in the doorway of his smelly closet and took his stand on his pile of gangrenous socks and rancid gym shorts. But boy howdy I remember the last line.
To be fair to him, he has been loudly proclaiming his citizenship of Slobdom ever since he was old enough to toddle over to a bookcase and remove every item from every shelf he could reach. He has purposefully dumped out toy boxes and Lego tubs and lay down on the piles to relax. He has screamed at and kicked in the shin of anyone who has attempted to clean his room. He has hidden so many snacks in his bed, he contracted ants. He has worn shirts and socks so long without washing actual decomposition was occurring before they could be forcibly removed from his body.
I thought it was a stage. I thought he would grow out of it. I thought it would end when he discovered girls.
I was wrong, so very, very wrong.
But now we have reached the full-blown terror that is hormonal adolescence and teenagery. Truth: you can smell his upstairs room from the downstairs front entry if he leaves his door open. The other day he had to bring his football gear home and I thought I was going to die. Or at least vomit all over everything. Have you ever been in a place where you could actually SEE the smell? It's true, this can happen. I'm here to testify that the odor of my son's sports gear was a yellow-green-brown with horrible little specks of putressence and death. Flies flew too close and died mid-flight plan. The leaves on the front yard shrubbery turned first to gray and then to ash and fell in to nothingness as he walked past. The sun dimmed a little.
And this is where I must make a stand. As a responsible parent, I am morally required to turn the hose on him. With the jet nozzle attachment. For sake of all this is light and good, I must request that his older brothers threaten willing and violent harm on his person if he does not shower. AND USE SOAP. AND SHAMPOO. AND I WILL CHECK. In the name of public health and safety, I will don my Level 4 BioHazard suit and double wash all his laundry even though he told me I was "not allowed in his room for any reason whatever and leave my clothes alone they're just fine nobody cares if there's food on them and it's pointless to wash them because they'll just get dirty again anyway and do not expect him to fold or put away anything because he didn't ask for them to get washed."
This sacrifice I will make for my child because NO.
It's not always easy to know which elements of our child's nature need redirection and which need to be allowed to develop on their own. But sometimes it is. You don't have to like soap, but you will damn well use it.
Are you sitting down?
Ready?
Did you take your high blood pressure meds?
Do you need your inhaler nearby? Go grab it.
Ok. Ready?
Here we go:
Parenting is hard.
I KNOW, right?
One of the more challenging elements of raising kids, in my twenty-eight years of parenting experience, is finding out who your kid IS. (Yeah, I know it should be whom but that just seems pedantic. Sue me.) We've usually spent a number of decades just trying to figure out who we are, (ditto) only then to realize we need to start the process over with the small, loud, smelly, and generally unhappy naked mole rat to whom we've just given birth. We all pretty much have some preconceived notions of what our new child will be like, whether we realize it or not. We assume our kiddo basically will be like us, with a generous sprinkling of our SO. And generally our child takes the shortest amount of time possible to disabuse us of our assumption, usually an amount requiring complex math to define exactly how small it is.
Lemme give you an example. My mother was a competitive swimmer as a youth. It just came naturally to her and she loved the feel of the water. Fast forward a couple of decades or so and she found herself a young mom of three kiddos within three years. (This would swell to seven kiddos eventually, but there were only three of us at the time of this story.) One evening, my parents decided to take us all swimming for a fun family night. We went to the local community pool and donned our adorable, homemade swimsuits. Mine was pink gingham checked and had a little skirt. It was the best of what early 1970's fashion had to offer, which, we all know, was truly quite limited.
I think I was about five at the time, easily old enough to begin learning the rudiments of the Dog Paddle. My parents perched each one of us on the edge of the pool and tossed us back and forth to help us get used to the water, and then supported us from underneath as we gleefully kicked our little legs like mad in the chlorine-dense water. After a few go-rounds, it was time to give each of us our first attempt at solo swimming.
One after the other, we all sank like lead rocks. Over and over and over. I went straight to the bottom -- I actually remember looking up from the pool floor and thinking "wait a minute, this isn't right,"-- while my sister refused to get anywhere near water deeper than the bathtub. For years. My mother was floored. She LOVED swimming, her genetic offspring were supposed to love it too. And even if they didn't love it, they should at least be good, or even capable, of it. But no. She had a little pod of anchors, not guppies. We were, in this aspect at any rate, not the people my mother expected to know.
In one way or another, every parent goes through this process. And in one way or another, every parent has to manage the ancillary process of figuring out which elements of his or her child's personality is something to love and accept or something to change. Going back to my mother's experience as an example, she first had to acknowledge that her children did not naturally take to swimming as she had. However, being a wise parent raising children in the Pacific Northwest where we were surrounded by water of all shapes and sizes, she knew she had to change at least part of our natural inclinations and teach us to swim. In the case of my sister, this would be a very long and arduous process -- I think she was friggin' EIGHT before she would willingly dog paddle -- but she did it. This does not mean she forced us to like swimming, I will still avoid putting my face in the water if given the option, but she did need to force a partial change in us as part of being a responsible parent. We needed to know how to swim.
And this is what was on my mind the other day when I had my 9,467,583rd argument of the week with current teen #2.
Me: "This isn't acceptable."
Teen #2: "It's fine."
Me: "This is not what God intended."
Teen #2: "God made me this way."
Me: "And sent you to me so I could fix this."
Teen #2: "I don't need fixing."
Me: "Yes, you do."
Teen #2: "No, I don't. Accept me as I am!"
Me: "No."
Teen #2: "Just accept it, Mom! I'M A SLOB!"
I bet you're thinking I made up this argument. And you'd be halfway right because honestly I don't remember what all we said to each other before he stood in the doorway of his smelly closet and took his stand on his pile of gangrenous socks and rancid gym shorts. But boy howdy I remember the last line.
To be fair to him, he has been loudly proclaiming his citizenship of Slobdom ever since he was old enough to toddle over to a bookcase and remove every item from every shelf he could reach. He has purposefully dumped out toy boxes and Lego tubs and lay down on the piles to relax. He has screamed at and kicked in the shin of anyone who has attempted to clean his room. He has hidden so many snacks in his bed, he contracted ants. He has worn shirts and socks so long without washing actual decomposition was occurring before they could be forcibly removed from his body.
I thought it was a stage. I thought he would grow out of it. I thought it would end when he discovered girls.
I was wrong, so very, very wrong.
But now we have reached the full-blown terror that is hormonal adolescence and teenagery. Truth: you can smell his upstairs room from the downstairs front entry if he leaves his door open. The other day he had to bring his football gear home and I thought I was going to die. Or at least vomit all over everything. Have you ever been in a place where you could actually SEE the smell? It's true, this can happen. I'm here to testify that the odor of my son's sports gear was a yellow-green-brown with horrible little specks of putressence and death. Flies flew too close and died mid-flight plan. The leaves on the front yard shrubbery turned first to gray and then to ash and fell in to nothingness as he walked past. The sun dimmed a little.
And this is where I must make a stand. As a responsible parent, I am morally required to turn the hose on him. With the jet nozzle attachment. For sake of all this is light and good, I must request that his older brothers threaten willing and violent harm on his person if he does not shower. AND USE SOAP. AND SHAMPOO. AND I WILL CHECK. In the name of public health and safety, I will don my Level 4 BioHazard suit and double wash all his laundry even though he told me I was "not allowed in his room for any reason whatever and leave my clothes alone they're just fine nobody cares if there's food on them and it's pointless to wash them because they'll just get dirty again anyway and do not expect him to fold or put away anything because he didn't ask for them to get washed."
This sacrifice I will make for my child because NO.
It's not always easy to know which elements of our child's nature need redirection and which need to be allowed to develop on their own. But sometimes it is. You don't have to like soap, but you will damn well use it.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Ice Cream For Breakfast and Other Adult Truths
This summer I had the opportunity to spend a day at Cub Scout Day camp. Some of you may question my use of the word “opportunity” and think I might have done better to choose “chore” or “penalty,” but as I didn’t have a kiddo there of my own to fret over (and was simply filling in a needed chaperone spot per my church responsibilities), I did think of it as an opportunity to be outside in the sunshine with nothing more to worry about than making sure our van returned with the same number of small humans it arrived with. TBH, I wasn’t super worried about making sure they were actually same small humans as made the morning trip in my vehicle, but I figured getting the right number was good enough. Fortunately for all of us, we did manage to match up the correct large human to small human at the end of the day. Go us!
During the course of the day, however, I had an odd conversation with another adult chaperone and it was on a topic that I’ve thought about for many years: why we energetically and enthusiastically do stuff we hate.
Here’s the setting. Our particular group of kiddos was made up of chunks of three different troops, so there was a fair amount of getting-to-know-you going on among the adults and finding-the-weak-link among the kiddos. It was very awesome to watch most of the grown ups, without any prior discussion or agreement, take turns redirecting errant scouts and gently dispersing growing tensions between tiny warriors.
By mid-afternoon, it was hot and everyone was tired. Two had gotten stung by yellow jackets but were putting on a brave face. Three had declared they were still hungry despite having just finished lunch. And now we were assigned to play field games. Joy. So we trudge out there and immediately all cluster underneath the tiny bit of shade provided by one pop-up tent. The two teenagers running this station are no less disenchanted with the prospect of running helter-skelter under the blazing eye of the death orb in the sky than are any of the grown ups. Sadly for the teens, this is what they are getting paid (albeit poorly) to do. So they get the game of Capture The Flag going and manage to eke out about 2/3 of a game before everyone is either exhausted, sweating to death, or bored. At this point, the teens basically abandon ship and slink away. But, because eight year-olds can fully recharge their batteries by sitting down for 38 seconds and drinking one slurp of water, the moms are left with 20 minutes to kill before we can move to the next station.
Earning instant hero-status, one of the moms engages some the kids in another game. Those not inclined to do any more running go with a second mom to work on the day-long scavenger hunt. Within a couple minutes, all the kids are once engaged in doing something that doesn’t involve whining, fighting, or telling the same knock-knock joke on endless repeat (shudder).
At this point, one of the adult chaperones in our group, an adult with plenty (2+ decades) of parenting experience, made what I thought was an odd comment: “I guess they’re just really in to this,” meaning the moms who had stepped up to the plate to keep the boys involved. She went on to say, “this isn’t really my thing.”
I was kinda floored. I mean, holy flying cats, OF COURSE it isn’t really any of our thing. Does she really think either of those moms was just waiting for the teens to flake out on us so they could get a turn to answer the same question 17 times from 5 different kids? Was she under the impression that all the other adults were eagerly waiting for a chance to spontaneously create a high-energy game with a complex rule system that allowed every single player to be victorious? (Because if you think, during a “we don’t keep score” soccer game, that every single kid on that field doesn’t knows EXACTLY what the score is, you are clearly an pediatric academic without kids. Honestly, early childhood education professionals should look at “no score” sports games as a clear-cut way of teaching all kids how to count effectively.) Furthermore, this impromptu activity would need to keep these miniature, bipedal nuclear reactions, also known as “children,” constantly both happy and engaged so that they didn’t devolve from Sméagol in to Gollum with the speed of a “but it’s MY turn to hold the flag!”
NONE of us WANTED to do this by this point in the afternoon. ALL of us would have rather been, I don’t know, sitting by pool with a cool drink, or eating lunch with a friend, or having a bit of an afternoon rest, or honestly just sitting in a dark closet staring at the wall! And yet there we were, out in the middle of a hot field, trying to create a system of scoring that allowed all players to win simultaneously.
This is what we do. It’s what being a grown up is all about. To the basic question, “why would any sane person willingly undertake a task they hate doing with little to no reward,” pretty much anyone would answer, “They wouldn’t. That’s ridiculous.” And yet we do all the time. For example, basic human instinct causes all of us to be repelled by fecal matter. And yet we willingly (please note this is different than happily) change diapers and scrub bathrooms. We generally avoid honey buckets like the plague, but we will stir the biffies if we have to (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m guessing you’ve never been to a rustic sleep-away camp.) Why do we do this? Because it has to get done. Thankfully, toilets don’t care if we have a happy tone of voice or if we consider equally both the seat’s and the lid’s feelings. In fact, you can swear nonstop at them and they won’t even blink an eye. Trust me.
But sometimes that unpleasant job does require that we put on the happy face and pretend “to be really in to this.”A LOT of a parent’s job, especially and specifically a stay-at-home parent, is doing all the crap nobody else in the house wants to do, either because they simply aren’t able or aren’t physically there. I do not love laundry. I do not love dishes. I seriously do not love cleaning toilets in a house of five sons. I am SO not in to this. But I do it and I find ways to be “in to it” because it has got to get done.
This is basic adulting. And so I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge each and every one of you who GET THIS. You over there, the one who stands in the rain every Saturday morning when other adults are having a relaxing morning in bed, who is willing to coach the team despite having no experience when no other coach could be found, THANK YOU. And you, the one who researches the best way to work with dyslexic kids because none of the teachers your kid has knows what to do him or her, even though you have no educational background, THANK YOU. The one who drives the carload of middle schoolers to the football game and then sits through the game so you can drive them home again, even though you have zero interest football, THANK YOU. The one who stays up late hot-gluing feathers to a T-shirt to create an epic macaw costume so that your twelve year-old feels confident enough to participate in the class play, even though the last time you used a hot glue gun you literally glued yourself to the chair, THANK YOU.
Thank you for doing the stuff you don’t want to do. Thank you for doing it with a smile and a light step when you were inwardly dragging your feet as though you were approaching a three-hour dental appointment involving the words “multiple,” “root,” and “canals.” Thank you for understanding that the manner and approach you present to children when you interact with them is critical in their developing sense of the world.
Thank you for being an adult even when adulting sucks. Just remember, adulting also means we really can have ice cream for breakfast, nay for all three meals, elevensies, and high tea, if we want. And we can use bad words when cleaning inanimate objects. And throw away our serving of broccoli when no one is looking. I promise I won’t tell.
During the course of the day, however, I had an odd conversation with another adult chaperone and it was on a topic that I’ve thought about for many years: why we energetically and enthusiastically do stuff we hate.
Here’s the setting. Our particular group of kiddos was made up of chunks of three different troops, so there was a fair amount of getting-to-know-you going on among the adults and finding-the-weak-link among the kiddos. It was very awesome to watch most of the grown ups, without any prior discussion or agreement, take turns redirecting errant scouts and gently dispersing growing tensions between tiny warriors.
By mid-afternoon, it was hot and everyone was tired. Two had gotten stung by yellow jackets but were putting on a brave face. Three had declared they were still hungry despite having just finished lunch. And now we were assigned to play field games. Joy. So we trudge out there and immediately all cluster underneath the tiny bit of shade provided by one pop-up tent. The two teenagers running this station are no less disenchanted with the prospect of running helter-skelter under the blazing eye of the death orb in the sky than are any of the grown ups. Sadly for the teens, this is what they are getting paid (albeit poorly) to do. So they get the game of Capture The Flag going and manage to eke out about 2/3 of a game before everyone is either exhausted, sweating to death, or bored. At this point, the teens basically abandon ship and slink away. But, because eight year-olds can fully recharge their batteries by sitting down for 38 seconds and drinking one slurp of water, the moms are left with 20 minutes to kill before we can move to the next station.
Earning instant hero-status, one of the moms engages some the kids in another game. Those not inclined to do any more running go with a second mom to work on the day-long scavenger hunt. Within a couple minutes, all the kids are once engaged in doing something that doesn’t involve whining, fighting, or telling the same knock-knock joke on endless repeat (shudder).
At this point, one of the adult chaperones in our group, an adult with plenty (2+ decades) of parenting experience, made what I thought was an odd comment: “I guess they’re just really in to this,” meaning the moms who had stepped up to the plate to keep the boys involved. She went on to say, “this isn’t really my thing.”
I was kinda floored. I mean, holy flying cats, OF COURSE it isn’t really any of our thing. Does she really think either of those moms was just waiting for the teens to flake out on us so they could get a turn to answer the same question 17 times from 5 different kids? Was she under the impression that all the other adults were eagerly waiting for a chance to spontaneously create a high-energy game with a complex rule system that allowed every single player to be victorious? (Because if you think, during a “we don’t keep score” soccer game, that every single kid on that field doesn’t knows EXACTLY what the score is, you are clearly an pediatric academic without kids. Honestly, early childhood education professionals should look at “no score” sports games as a clear-cut way of teaching all kids how to count effectively.) Furthermore, this impromptu activity would need to keep these miniature, bipedal nuclear reactions, also known as “children,” constantly both happy and engaged so that they didn’t devolve from Sméagol in to Gollum with the speed of a “but it’s MY turn to hold the flag!”
NONE of us WANTED to do this by this point in the afternoon. ALL of us would have rather been, I don’t know, sitting by pool with a cool drink, or eating lunch with a friend, or having a bit of an afternoon rest, or honestly just sitting in a dark closet staring at the wall! And yet there we were, out in the middle of a hot field, trying to create a system of scoring that allowed all players to win simultaneously.
This is what we do. It’s what being a grown up is all about. To the basic question, “why would any sane person willingly undertake a task they hate doing with little to no reward,” pretty much anyone would answer, “They wouldn’t. That’s ridiculous.” And yet we do all the time. For example, basic human instinct causes all of us to be repelled by fecal matter. And yet we willingly (please note this is different than happily) change diapers and scrub bathrooms. We generally avoid honey buckets like the plague, but we will stir the biffies if we have to (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m guessing you’ve never been to a rustic sleep-away camp.) Why do we do this? Because it has to get done. Thankfully, toilets don’t care if we have a happy tone of voice or if we consider equally both the seat’s and the lid’s feelings. In fact, you can swear nonstop at them and they won’t even blink an eye. Trust me.
But sometimes that unpleasant job does require that we put on the happy face and pretend “to be really in to this.”A LOT of a parent’s job, especially and specifically a stay-at-home parent, is doing all the crap nobody else in the house wants to do, either because they simply aren’t able or aren’t physically there. I do not love laundry. I do not love dishes. I seriously do not love cleaning toilets in a house of five sons. I am SO not in to this. But I do it and I find ways to be “in to it” because it has got to get done.
This is basic adulting. And so I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge each and every one of you who GET THIS. You over there, the one who stands in the rain every Saturday morning when other adults are having a relaxing morning in bed, who is willing to coach the team despite having no experience when no other coach could be found, THANK YOU. And you, the one who researches the best way to work with dyslexic kids because none of the teachers your kid has knows what to do him or her, even though you have no educational background, THANK YOU. The one who drives the carload of middle schoolers to the football game and then sits through the game so you can drive them home again, even though you have zero interest football, THANK YOU. The one who stays up late hot-gluing feathers to a T-shirt to create an epic macaw costume so that your twelve year-old feels confident enough to participate in the class play, even though the last time you used a hot glue gun you literally glued yourself to the chair, THANK YOU.
Thank you for doing the stuff you don’t want to do. Thank you for doing it with a smile and a light step when you were inwardly dragging your feet as though you were approaching a three-hour dental appointment involving the words “multiple,” “root,” and “canals.” Thank you for understanding that the manner and approach you present to children when you interact with them is critical in their developing sense of the world.
Thank you for being an adult even when adulting sucks. Just remember, adulting also means we really can have ice cream for breakfast, nay for all three meals, elevensies, and high tea, if we want. And we can use bad words when cleaning inanimate objects. And throw away our serving of broccoli when no one is looking. I promise I won’t tell.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Watch Out For the Robots
I HAVE BIG NEWS!! CAN YOU TELL I’M EXCITED?! Actually, I should whisper this because the gods of hormones like to be jerks. AAAAAHHHHHH I DON’T CARE! I’M TOO EXCITED!! Ready?!
Ahem. (Coughcough)
I haven’t gone back to bed in the morning in TWO WEEKS!!!! Yes, you did read that correctly! No, I am not kidding!!
What’s that? Someone seated over by the back window is wondering if this statement with worth all the font points? That person is clearly not fully human. That person is clearly part robot. These partial robots live well-infiltrated among us. They hide so well you may be sitting by one RIGHT NOW. You may actually BE one! (Ever seen Blade Runner? See, I’m right.) I actually MARRIED one. So did my sister! How do you know if you are married to a Manbot or Wombot? (Not to be confused with a Wombat, although both do have pouches for carrying tiny members of their species, can be temperamental if you cross them, and literally have a tough a . . . er, backside they will crush you with. No, the noticeable difference between a wombAt and a WombOt is wombAts have no fashion sense and wear the same fur all year long. Pedants.) Here is how I figured out my husband is a Manbot: when he wakes up the morning, he has so much energy, he physically has to slow himself down. He actually runs in to large pieces of furniture and walls because he just can’t help it. He smiles. He tells jokes. He asks questions and ACTUALLY EXPECTS ME TO ANSWER. WITH WORDS. My sister made the terrifying discovery very shortly after her wedding: “He wakes up singing show tunes,” she said, brow afurrowed and glowering of expression. “At FOUR A.M.”
Clearly no real human could wake up in such a state, thus I am certain they are part artificial intelligence and Microsoft has a pact with the government to conceal it all. If perchance, you suspect that you might be part robot, let me explain what it’s like for real humans.
Light is streaming through the window. Your alarm is going off. It has been sounding for sometime now and you’ve hit the snooze a few times. You contemplate smashing your alarm with a large hammer, but that would require not only getting out of bed but also destroying your phone, as it’s your alarm. You try to open your eyes. It’s so hard. Your eyelids are so much happier closed. You breathe a sigh of peace as you let them close. But that peace is short-lived. Sound is again intruding on your well-being. It’s a harsh, high-pitched, rapid sound. It's not the alarm, you stopped that nonsense. The sound is getting louder. It’s in your room, it’s next to your bed. Why must the universe torture you so?! You struggle, you draw on your mighty intellect and college eduction to decipher the sounds. Words. Ah yes, those are words. But what mysterious language is this? Has some alien begun its invasion right here in your bedroom? No, wait. You know that word. The alien is saying it again. “Mmmmmmahhh . . .” And again, “Mmmmmaaahhhhhhmmmmm . . .” Despair fills your being. That alien is YOUR alien. You crack one eyelid. Your four year-old is standing at the side of your bed, eyeball to eyeball with you. “MOM!! SUN IS UP!! GET UP!!”
Everything aches. Everything hurts. Am I hung over? No. In fact, I don’t drink, ever. Was I beat up by large ruffians last night? A substantial portion of me wishes I had been. Then I would have a solidly legitimate reason to stay in bed and be fussed over. People would bring me delicious homemade meals and extra fluffy blankets to comfort me. I could binge crap tv and sleep when the mood struck. Ahh, what bliss that would be, other than the assorted broken bones and internal hemorrhages. But no such luck has befallen me. This, my friends, is how I feel every morning.
Every. Morning.
Why? I have spent decades, literally, figuring this out. A gia-hugic part of it has to do with the fact that I went back to bed yesterday morning and slept another 2 hours and 18 minutes. When I woke up the second time around, I felt fine. Sure, I wasn’t singing show tunes or trying to move at sub-atomic speeds, but at least I felt like I’d rather be up and moving than be in full-body traction. But that morning nap meant I couldn’t fall asleep last night. And I couldn’t stay asleep. Did you know almost nobody posts interesting stuff on Facebook at 3 am? They need to get on that. “Random and Interesting Crap to Read at 3:47 am” definitely has the ring of my new internet addiction. And guess what, they still haven’t posted anything interesting at 4:17 am. Or at 5:02 am. And thus I fall asleep while standing up in the middle of my kitchen at 9:28 am.
How did this wretched heinous cycle start? Oh, pick your poison: continuing bad habits from college late-night cramming, getting sucked into a delicious book because I finally have ten minutes to myself, waiting for the washer to finish so I can get that load into the dryer so everyone has clean underwear tomorrow, or falling into the great maw of that sleepavore known as MOTHERHOOD. And with the big M come all kinds of sleep-death traps.
This is why my sleep has been crap for the last three decades. And this is why every day for the last three decades, I crave going back to sleep like an earthworm craves mud. And like the poor worm, most of the time I get stranded out on the treacherous pavement of life, waiting to get flattened by the enormous shoe of Having to Deal with Puking Toddlers, or Cranky Teenagers, or Traitorous Vehicles and Their Mysterious Workings Under The Hood, or Conniving Sales People, or COSTCO (truly, this is what Hell will be like) while only 43% awake. On a good day.
Now you can begin to understand the sheer joy, nay, revelry I find in accomplishing that which seems most basic -- staying awake during the day. How have I accomplished this? Working my friggin' tail off, that's how. (Sleep hygiene/diet/exercise/natural hormone therapy/kicking my kids out of the house one at a time/keeping a daily routine.) But I did it! And guess what? I still hate morning. And I still think it should be illegal to sing or make loud noises or even breathe aggressively before ten am. But at least I'm awake to grumble about it!
Ahem. (Coughcough)
I haven’t gone back to bed in the morning in TWO WEEKS!!!! Yes, you did read that correctly! No, I am not kidding!!
What’s that? Someone seated over by the back window is wondering if this statement with worth all the font points? That person is clearly not fully human. That person is clearly part robot. These partial robots live well-infiltrated among us. They hide so well you may be sitting by one RIGHT NOW. You may actually BE one! (Ever seen Blade Runner? See, I’m right.) I actually MARRIED one. So did my sister! How do you know if you are married to a Manbot or Wombot? (Not to be confused with a Wombat, although both do have pouches for carrying tiny members of their species, can be temperamental if you cross them, and literally have a tough a . . . er, backside they will crush you with. No, the noticeable difference between a wombAt and a WombOt is wombAts have no fashion sense and wear the same fur all year long. Pedants.) Here is how I figured out my husband is a Manbot: when he wakes up the morning, he has so much energy, he physically has to slow himself down. He actually runs in to large pieces of furniture and walls because he just can’t help it. He smiles. He tells jokes. He asks questions and ACTUALLY EXPECTS ME TO ANSWER. WITH WORDS. My sister made the terrifying discovery very shortly after her wedding: “He wakes up singing show tunes,” she said, brow afurrowed and glowering of expression. “At FOUR A.M.”
Clearly no real human could wake up in such a state, thus I am certain they are part artificial intelligence and Microsoft has a pact with the government to conceal it all. If perchance, you suspect that you might be part robot, let me explain what it’s like for real humans.
Light is streaming through the window. Your alarm is going off. It has been sounding for sometime now and you’ve hit the snooze a few times. You contemplate smashing your alarm with a large hammer, but that would require not only getting out of bed but also destroying your phone, as it’s your alarm. You try to open your eyes. It’s so hard. Your eyelids are so much happier closed. You breathe a sigh of peace as you let them close. But that peace is short-lived. Sound is again intruding on your well-being. It’s a harsh, high-pitched, rapid sound. It's not the alarm, you stopped that nonsense. The sound is getting louder. It’s in your room, it’s next to your bed. Why must the universe torture you so?! You struggle, you draw on your mighty intellect and college eduction to decipher the sounds. Words. Ah yes, those are words. But what mysterious language is this? Has some alien begun its invasion right here in your bedroom? No, wait. You know that word. The alien is saying it again. “Mmmmmmahhh . . .” And again, “Mmmmmaaahhhhhhmmmmm . . .” Despair fills your being. That alien is YOUR alien. You crack one eyelid. Your four year-old is standing at the side of your bed, eyeball to eyeball with you. “MOM!! SUN IS UP!! GET UP!!”
Everything aches. Everything hurts. Am I hung over? No. In fact, I don’t drink, ever. Was I beat up by large ruffians last night? A substantial portion of me wishes I had been. Then I would have a solidly legitimate reason to stay in bed and be fussed over. People would bring me delicious homemade meals and extra fluffy blankets to comfort me. I could binge crap tv and sleep when the mood struck. Ahh, what bliss that would be, other than the assorted broken bones and internal hemorrhages. But no such luck has befallen me. This, my friends, is how I feel every morning.
Every. Morning.
Why? I have spent decades, literally, figuring this out. A gia-hugic part of it has to do with the fact that I went back to bed yesterday morning and slept another 2 hours and 18 minutes. When I woke up the second time around, I felt fine. Sure, I wasn’t singing show tunes or trying to move at sub-atomic speeds, but at least I felt like I’d rather be up and moving than be in full-body traction. But that morning nap meant I couldn’t fall asleep last night. And I couldn’t stay asleep. Did you know almost nobody posts interesting stuff on Facebook at 3 am? They need to get on that. “Random and Interesting Crap to Read at 3:47 am” definitely has the ring of my new internet addiction. And guess what, they still haven’t posted anything interesting at 4:17 am. Or at 5:02 am. And thus I fall asleep while standing up in the middle of my kitchen at 9:28 am.
How did this wretched heinous cycle start? Oh, pick your poison: continuing bad habits from college late-night cramming, getting sucked into a delicious book because I finally have ten minutes to myself, waiting for the washer to finish so I can get that load into the dryer so everyone has clean underwear tomorrow, or falling into the great maw of that sleepavore known as MOTHERHOOD. And with the big M come all kinds of sleep-death traps.
- Babies who sleep on the Jack-In-The-Box schedule -- will he wake in two hours? Or six minutes? Or 30 seconds after I get into the bathroom?
- Babies who decide to sleep eight hours straight after waking up every 23.8 minutes for the last three days so that now I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening so hard to the basinet for the slightest indication of breathing that I'm pretty sure I can hear my own ventricles opening and closing. I think I have a murmur.
- Toddlers who vomit all night.
- Toddlers who think it's perfectly fine to wake up at 2 am and go for a walk.
- Toddlers who like to wake up and stand over you while you sleep and whisper "moooommmmmyyy . . . "
- Teenagers (no qualifying situation is needed here.)
This is why my sleep has been crap for the last three decades. And this is why every day for the last three decades, I crave going back to sleep like an earthworm craves mud. And like the poor worm, most of the time I get stranded out on the treacherous pavement of life, waiting to get flattened by the enormous shoe of Having to Deal with Puking Toddlers, or Cranky Teenagers, or Traitorous Vehicles and Their Mysterious Workings Under The Hood, or Conniving Sales People, or COSTCO (truly, this is what Hell will be like) while only 43% awake. On a good day.
Now you can begin to understand the sheer joy, nay, revelry I find in accomplishing that which seems most basic -- staying awake during the day. How have I accomplished this? Working my friggin' tail off, that's how. (Sleep hygiene/diet/exercise/natural hormone therapy/kicking my kids out of the house one at a time/keeping a daily routine.) But I did it! And guess what? I still hate morning. And I still think it should be illegal to sing or make loud noises or even breathe aggressively before ten am. But at least I'm awake to grumble about it!
Sunday, August 19, 2018
The Unkillable Bill
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jen," you say. "Where's your proof?" You say, "because my uncle is pretty amazing, even though he may or may not be named Bill."
"Well," I say, "being named Bill is definitely a requirement because, you know, then he wouldn't be an Uncle Bill. But there are a few options available to you here."
Is your uncle regularly referred to, with good reason, as Wild Bill? Then your uncle might be as amazing as mine.
Does your uncle also hold the highly esteemed title of Grandpa Bluejay? Mine does. I mean, seriously, how can you not be legendary if your own grandkids call you Bluejay?
Are there DOZENS, nay HUNDREDS of stories floating out there in the world about the legend that is your uncle? There are about mine. In fact, I suggest you share yours in the comment section!
"And yet," you say, "you have not yet supported the claim that he is the Unkillable Bill."
Oh just you wait, I've got the proof and then you're gunna feel silly for doubting me.
Never doubt the Unkillable Bill.
Way back once upon a time in 1948, an adorable baby boy with brown eyes and a huge grin was born to Rachel and Roger, who had been given a pretty solid warm up with the birth of their first genius/bonkers child, Sarah. But a tiny, teeny piece of Baby Bill was missing. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal as none of us are born completely perfect and quite a few of us out there function for years without noticing there's a big gap between our ears. This little bit of Bill that was missing, however, happened to be in his heart. Bill was born with only two parts of the main valve in his heart that is supposed to have three. Now remember, this is 1948. Open heart surgery was extremely new and not at all reliable. But after a few years, he underwent surgery to replace that malformed valve with a new one ... from a pig. Yes, Bill was given a pig heart valve.
Now listen up, because this is the key element to why Bill is Unkillable--
Bill is part BACON.
How can you not be a superhero if you are part BACON?!
But that's not the end of my proofs, in fact we're just getting started!
Things that have failed to Kill Bill (besides Uma):
 |
| Look at his face!! Bhahahahahaha! |
- Two more open heart surgeries
- A pacemaker
- Being a champion wrestler for the Army with said heart
- Being a moron and smoking while being a wrestler for the Army with said heart
- The Vietnam War
- Continuing to be a moron and continuing to smoke for five decades with his Bacon-heart
- Innumerable solo excursions in to the wilds of the Cascade Range to pursue the perfect Fly Fishing experience with said moronity as mentioned above
- Growing up squashed between three (bossy) sisters. Ok, well, one of them isn't so bossy. I ain't saying which one, though.
- Literally having scars from said sisters (but not from the not-bossy, unnamed one.)
- Having to raise my cousin, Jessie, Queen of Bossy Big Sisters. And yes, that's coming from ME, Grand Dame of Bossy Big Sisters. Oh yeah.
 |
| Don't be deceived by her pixie cuteness. She will take you DOWN. |
And most recently, a tiny bump on the head.
"Really?" You say, "You're comparing a tiny bump on the head to the entirety of the Vietnam experience?"
"Yep," I say.
OPEN BRAIN SURGERY, PEOPLE.
 |
| GULP!! |
After acquiring a subdural hematoma one afternoon, HE WENT FISHING because, you know, it's Bill. Yep, Grandpa Bluejay took his grandson fishing because he's just awesome like that, but then began to feel a mite poorly later that evening. And when his right hand stopped working, thus preventing him from riffing on his slide guitar (I mean, c'mon! He's even the guitarist in a real band!) he finally decided that this was more than a bump on the noggin and a long day of fishing.
With the greatest of sacrifices to the Gods of Beautiful Hair, the great white mane was shaved and a friggin' baseball-sized blood clot was removed from his BRAIN STEM.
And with standard Unkillable Bill-ness, he's not only fully recovering, he's doing it twice as fast as expected.
I'm telling you, at the end of the Apocalypse, it's going to be a load of cockroaches ... and Bill.
PS -- He rejects the Bacon-Heart Superhero category and politely requests that you refer to him as the Atomic Hero with the Bionic Valve. But I think he's wrong. Bacon is way better than atomic bionics.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Your Friendly Neighborhood Autocorrect
But for now, the Autocorrect Droid is still suggesting that I swap one nonsense word for an equally garbled nonsense word. Sooo helpful, AC. Methinks, though, that I am being a bit too quick to bite the digital hand that is helping me. AC DID pick up cjoxlate as a misspelled word. I just garbled it so badly it didn’t know what to do with it. “Sheesh what did she type now? I mean I know I’m programmed by MIT supergeniuses and can recognize 2,657 different languages and dialects, but there’s only so much a megacomputer program can do!”
So, touché, AC. You make a fair point. Yes, your suggested correction was crap, but so was the input I provided. It got me thinking, though. What if Autocorrect was programmed to correct our real lives, not just our crappy typing?
(Wavy scene transition and “Woo-woo” music clip)
Scene: Saturday evening, on the stoop of a modest apartment. Two 20-somethings walk up to the front door and stop.
Dude, still surrounded by the haze of cologne he bathed in before the date and wearing his only clean button up and jeans:
So, this is where you live?
Chica, still bearing the vestiges of the makeover her roomies imposed on her before departing on the date:
Ah, yep. This is the place.
Autocorrect:
That should be, “Yes, this is the correct location.”
Chica, sighing and closing her eyes in resignation:
Ok, sure.
Autocorrect:
Do you confirm this correction?
Dude, staring at Autocorrect:
What?
Autocorrect:
This is not a complete sentence. Please stand still while I draw a blue wavy line around your feet.
Dude:
Do NOT draw on my shoes!
Chica, waving off AC:
It’s ok, I understood what he meant!
Autocorrect (with a hint of stiffness, getting down on all fours with a large stick of blue chalk):
The wavy lines will remain until corrections are made.
Dude:
Fine! I meant to say, “what is going on here?”
Autocorrect:
I suppose that will suffice. Please continue your discourse.
Chica, side-eyeing AC:
So, yes, this is my apartment.
Dude:
Looks pretty nice. How long have you lived h . . .
Autocorrect:
RED WAVY LINES! RED WAVY LINES! STRANGER DANGER! PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
Chica:
Chill! He’s not a stranger, I just went on a date with him!
Autocorrect, leaning towards Chica and whispering loudly in her ear:
Why is he asking about your living arrangements? Does he have a criminal record? Did you ask for references? Did you properly vet him on the national register of sex offenders?
Dude:
I am NOT a Sex Offender!
(Elderly couple approaching on the sidewalk give Dude the Rascally Varmint Stare and cross to the other side of the street.)
Dude, glaring at AC:
Thanks.
Autocorrect, fully serious:
I exist to serve you.
Chica:
Listen, Autocorrect, can you just take a break for a bit so we can have a conversation?
Autocorrect, with an offended sniff:
Fine. Take your life your own hands. Don’t mind me, just trying to save you from sex offenders.
Chica:
There are no sex offenders here!
(Elderly couple on other side of street begin scurrying away)
Dude:
You know, I have to be at work early tomorrow. I, uh, had a great time. I’ll call you.
(Walks away quickly.)
Chica, watching her date walk away like his shorts are about to catch fire:
Well, you did it again, Autocorrect. What can I say?
Autocorrect, back turned to Chica:
You should apologize.
Chica, outraged:
Apologize?! You just ran off my seventh first date this month! I haven’t made it to a second date since I updated your program!
Autocorrect, with grave majesty:
You are most welcome.
Chica:
I WASN’T THANKING YOU!
Autocorrect:
Someday you will. Just keep an eye on the sex offender registry. I’m certain one of them is bound to show up.
Chica, opening her front door and slamming it in Autocorrect’s face:
GO AWAY!
Autocorrect, running and calling after elderly couple:
Excuse me, I believe I just heard you use the phrase “hoodlum” and this reference is unclear to me. Please halt while I draw a blue wavy line . . .
So, thinking about it, random gobbledygook corrections aren’t so bad, considering what Autocorrect could be. Or maybe I should just learn how to type and spell.
And for the record, the word I was attempting to type was CHOCOLATE. Honestly, AC should have gotten this if it knew me AT ALL. Sniff.
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