Tippy Toes and Tantrums

So, it's March Now

The past two and a half weeks have gone somewhere, I just don't know where. 

We spent a weekend at Hidden Villa with other families from Clover's class. We did this two years ago and it was a relaxing, unplugged weekend. This time that wasn't the case, as we had to leave the farm for a few hours for baseball pictures and hit-a-thon, and the first game of the softball season. It wasn't relaxing, but there were great moments, like when Rocket was standing alone in a clearing between the cabins, and when I asked if he was okay, said, "Mom, did you hear the cows mooing?" 

We visited the cows, pet the baby lambs (so soft, really like a baby merino scarf), checked out the chickens, and saw the huge piggies.

Then it was my birthday, which was partially spent at a tile store.

Which felt as realistic as pinning a photo of a house with an indoor waterslide because the house remodel is on hold-ish, as we await getting our plans approved. It feels like that day is never, ever coming. 

Foot issue persists.

Gym continues. 

My new personal massager arrives tomorrow. When I told Kevin about how I got three massages at the gym from my trainer using a personal massager called The Stick, I could tell by the look on his face that there was a misunderstanding. This happened at the dinner table in front of the kids, which meant my attempts to clarify weren't helping.

Me: "No, it's a personal massager, the kind that you rub on your muscles."

Him: "Yeah..."

Me: "No, not that kind. It's a long stick with a handle."

Him: "Uh...huh..."

Me: Whatever.

I see now that The Stick is called, "the toothbrush for muscles." Thankfully I didn't know that when I talked to Kevin or the misunderstanding would have deepened. 

But today was a special day: it's the final day of Girl Scout cookie sales for 2012! I dropped off our troop banking report - the final step - and walked away feeling happy enough to skip, which I would have done if I didn't have that damn plantar faciitis. 

Self Medicating with Reruns and Cake

The upside of not watching much television is that shows in syndication are new to me. Instead of waiting for my favorite show once a week, with summers off, I get to watch it two or more times a day, not including frequent weekend marathons. The downside is that I've spent the past few weeks addicted to The Big Bang Theory.

I'm feeling kind of blah lately, maybe from the heel pain, the fact that I ate a good portion of a cake this weekend, or that during a certain time of month, I just want to either take a nap or kill somebody (in a justifiable homicide kind of way), but this explains why I want to curl up under the warm covers and watch sitcom reruns. 

My heel healing is working! But when I wear a pair of shoes with less adequate support or do exercises that leave my right foot unbalanced, it hurts again. When I complained about the dorky look of tennis shoes with jeans that I am sporting nearly 24/7, it was suggested I suck it up and buy granny shoes. The term granny shoes wasn't used, but when I heard "extra support," I remembered my nonnie's love for old lady Naturalizer shoes, which was fine because she was an old lady, but I am firmly in denial.

The double velcro version is called the Leisure Strap, while the single velcro version is called the Pleasure Strap. This is not a joke. Think about that the next time you see an old lady wearing them.

  

Boots may be sexy, but the one that I wear to bed challenges that thought. 

I'm bringing sexy back, triple pleasure strapped

But it works, even though I ordered a size too big and am too cheap to order a smaller one. 

I baked the best cake EVER, just because the p's (Pinterest and period) made me want a cake. I cannot remember the last time I baked a cake - it's been well over 10 years - and I even had to buy the pans. I should note that I buy cupcakes and cakes for my kids' birthdays, in case anyone was pitying them for growing up without frosting. My secret recipe: Duncan Hines butter cake mix, chocolate ganache for the center, and chocolate buttercream for the outside. Step aside Martha Stewart expectations, I had a coupon for a free cake mix. Free tastes awesome. The downside is that jeans a size smaller arrived in the mail this week, but after the cake, I'm going to wait before trying them on. 

Letting a Sleeping Dog Lie

This photo is for my sister, who acts like I am Michael Vick, and for people who are shocked to find out we have a dog.

This is Maddie, the neurotic pug. I came home the other day to find her sleeping on my sweater, which had fallen from where I'd left it. I rolled my eyes, and even though I wasn't happy with her new bed, I let it go, allowing her to hibernate on. The only thing that will get her up from a deep winter slumber, is the gardener, and he wasn't coming by for four days, so this could be a long stay. Maddie slept for a few hours, and the moment she got up and walked away, the sweater went straight into the hamper. But the point here is that I let her sleep on my clothes, uninterrupted, earning myself a badge in compassion.

Maddie has always been crazy, but now, at nearly 11 and a half, she's old lady crazy, and I'm treating her as such. She barks at the wind, she cannot hear, she's pushy in the kitchen, and she complains through grunts if someone has blocked access to one of her two beds. (Two beds! Living in luxury!)

We met with our architect on Friday, who asked if Kevin and I wanted any special pet considerations in a mudroom as we fine tune our renovation plans. One of us snorted, and the other laughed. I see the mudrooms with dog baths on Pinterest or the built in dog bowl trays on kitchen islands, but that is not where we are as pet owners. We had planned on keeping the carpets until Maddie passed on, but those are going too, because I'm tired of looking at the awful carpets, then at the dog, then at the calender. Hard wood it is. Maddie doesn't care, as long as there is sunlight, two beds, and a gardener to bark at.

Pagoda the Turtle is a different story. Pagoda's needs are simple, except that he needs to tan more than Pauly from Jersey Shore. Finding a home for his aquarium is not so hard, but finding a spot for his aquarium, plus his heat lamp is a burden. When talking about theoretical fire evacuation last night, Rocket said it was sure going to be hard to carry the big aquarium to safety. I told him that we would grab Pagoda and run. Rocket said, "I hope he goes into his shell and waits it out there." Of course, last night as I tried to go to sleep, my last thought was of me standing in the dark, across the street from our burning house, with Kevin, two kids, a senile dog, and a snapping turtle in my hands. I'm knocking on wood to make sure it never comes to this.

More Than Innovator, Steve Jobs was a Dad

My first computer - our family computer - was a slightly used Apple IIe my dad bought, probably for too much, from a slick relative when I was about 12 years old. It had huge flippy disks that I used for basic word processing, card making, games, and making giant signs on the endless reams of dot matrix printer paper. It was ugly and big, but for once, our family was actually ahead of the curve. I bought my next computer myself as a college sophomore, working two jobs all summer (camp counselor by day, Straw Hat Pizza order taker by night) to earn the $1802 that my Mac SE cost at the campus bookstore. The SE lasted for years, through graduate school and my first job, when I was able to buy iMac GS, which still lives in our garage, as colorful as the day I bought it. I now own a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini, plus Time Capsule, an iPad, an iPhone, and a handful of iPods. That's only me, not our household total of Apple products.

Read the remainder of the post over on Silicon Valley Mamas.

Living with a Five Year Old Con Man

The phone rang after Rocket was asleep and Clover's bedtime was near. Kevin saw from the caller ID that the call was coming from his cell phone. He answered to the sound of muffles. It was like during a horror movie when it's clear the call is coming from inside the house. He ran into Rocket's room, where he was supposed to be sleeping, but instead Rocket was in bed, playing with kevins iPhone under the covers. Busted.

The next day, minutes after he got home from school, Rocket was suspiciously trying to get under one of the ottomans in our family room. [Ed. note: it should really be ottomen, right? But I looked it up and the correct plural is ottomans, which sounds so wrong.] As I walked quickly toward him, he assured me he was "doing nothing." I found a pack of Raisels that he'd nabbed from the kitchen. "I would have given you a pack, had you asked," I told him as I walked the box back into the kitchen.

When I went to the kitchen, he went toward the front of the house, and after what we'd been through, I quickly checked on him. "Just going to the bathroom, mom," he said, super depressed sounding from behind the closed bathroom door. It was silent, not like when he uses the hand soap to coat the entire bathroom as part of his helpful "cleaning." I walked away, worried he was coming down with something.

I got played. I got played by a five year old. This kid gets me time and time again.

Within minutes, I got an email from a friend that said, "oh?" It was in response to an email from my account that was pure gibberish. For a split second it thought I'd been hacked, but then I remembered the boy in the bathroom. Also, it helped that at the end of the gibberish, it said, Sent from my iPod.

I ran to the bathroom, and pushed the door open, to see him sitting on the toilet with my iPod. He quickly put it low behind his back. I had to walk in slowly, like I was talking someone off the ledge because if he dropped the iPod into the toilet, it would be done. I don't care if the iPod could be saved or how many bleach wipes scrubbed it, it would be unusuable to me. I wouldn't even be able to fish it out without our long barbeque tongs. Calmly I asked for him to hand me the iPod, and he did. Then he screamed from his perceived injustice of it all while he moved to a new seat for a time out.

I'm starting to feel like a prison warden.

The Finish Line is Near

School begins tomorrow! There are not enough exclamation points to fully express how I feel. I imagine it's like running the last half mile of a marathon: sure, my nipples are bleeding and I've crapped myself, but I can see the finish line.

For the last day, I planned a day trip to Stinson Beach, but Clover wanted to work on Lego all day, and Rocket decided he hates getting wet at the beach (the sand stays glued to him forever, like he's a small, walking craft project). I compromised with Half Moon Bay, but the weather is supposed to be cold and cloudy all day, so I gave up, which was when both kids changed their minds about the beach. Clover suggested instead we go see the final Happy Potter movie before it leaves the theater. Rocket is too young for such a dark movie, and she casually said, "That's fine, he can stay out." I don't know if she meant at home, in the car, or outside of the theater door, regardless, I don't think the girl has a career as a social worker ahead of her.

As a final compromise, I'm taking the kids to Johnny Rockets for lunch, after a morning of Lego play. I do not like Johnny Rockets, but my kids do. I hope they see this as proof of how deeply I love them, especially as I feign joyful surprise as the server makes each of us a ketchup happy face even though both of my kids are engrossed in their coloring paper. I only act interested to make the server feel better, which is messed up, because I think all of us - me, the kids, and the server - would love to skip the ketchup happy face part of the meal.

Oh well, one more day.

Silence Without Chaos

Something so bizarre is happening at my house right now. I was suddenly struck by the intense quiet, so much so that I almost started yelling "Get out of the bathroom!" because any parent knows that quiet means serious mischief is underway, and yesterday it was the kids' bathroom, which was redecorated with toilet paper and playing cards. I slowly leaned back by shifting my weight but not taking a step for fear of breaking the silence - I wanted to catch them in the act of jackassery -- when I saw them both reading, peacefully, on separate reading chairs in the family room. I don't know what has happened to them, if this is a sign of an impending sickness or if they may actually be maturing. I'm hiding out in my bedroom to avoid breaking the spell.

And this is after a morning where I hit a new low: I took the kids to Ikea for the 45 minutes of free childcare. I bought a lamp. It was worth it to have the kids jump in the ball pit and throw foam blocks at each other while I tried to sound out Swedish names. (I looked at the Sultan Harestua and the Florvag, but bought two Stams, a Lagg, Format, and a Fjadrar. With a side of meatballs.)

Okay, they're fighting again. Back to normal.

The Annual Crap Purge High

My kids have been at my parents' house for the last few days and whenever I tell someone, they comment about how much I must be relaxing and taking it easy. First of all, that goes against my tightly wound personality, and second, this is the only time of year when I can ransack my kids' rooms. As soon as I wave goodbye and the car driving my kids away disappears, I start grabbing bags. This year, 15 bags are leaving this house, making me feel like I lost 20 pounds.

This was the year we said goodbye to anything not aimed at kids ages five and up. All board books, Little People, and wooden fruit for pretend cutting were collected and put into various bags. Some for a cousin, a bag of girl clothes for a friend, some to hold onto in the attic, a good chunk to garbage and recycling, but most of it to charity. My kids rooms still look perfectly full, but no longer full in the overflowing way that makes it look like a Hoarders audition. The beauty of doing the purge while they're gone for a few days is that they don't exactly remember what was where, so they cannot pinpoint what's missing. If I did this during a school day, they're likely to remember that the mound of buttons hot glue gunned together sat on the windowsill. Only I know that it's gone to the garbage.

Among the many things I found that were funny included a diary (it was open), where Clover used up several enteries complaining that I owed her $8 and never paid her back. Each day, the entry noted that I had once again not paid her. In fact, it was the only thing she was reporting, so clearly this was a major life event. Judy Blume books never covered the dirty secrets of a financial diary. I was tempted to make an entry myself noting that I had paid her back, just to clear my good name. The reason I borrowed money is because the girl has wads of $1 bills around her room. This is perfectly reasonable in an eight year old's room, but 10 years from now, the sight of so many ones in her room could send me into a parental freak out.

Some of the highlights:

From a school file, the Notes to Parents section, presumably for important school information that we needed. Clover added her own note. She was probably going to use the $8 I repaid her without receiving proper credit.

She's been obsessed with getting to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and she's not discouraged when I ask if she knows how much it would cost to go to Florida. Determined and prepared, she made a shopping list. My favorite is the general, keep-the-options-open, "Stuff that I don't know of." It's always best to budget for the unexpected, especially when it's not your own money that's at risk.

This one was a little startling. She spent a good amount of time on this, writing just so, then getting the glitter dots just right. This is the front:

My first thought was "Oh Jesus," but it quickly turned to God when I flipped the page over.

As in, "Oh my God, does she need professional help?" Kevin wants to know if the third person from the left is crying or just cannot bear to look. I wonder why someone needs to hold the rope if it's also tied to the wood? The job seems kind of risky.

The great purge is over for another year. We now have two bins reserved solely for weapons. They grow up so fast.

It's Easy to Be Zen When the Kids Aren't Around

Kevin and I went away last weekend, which I promise to post about this week. It was quiet, lovely, and even more quiet. No one tested out a comedy routine based on burping, no one screamed at another person for looking at them, and no one complained of being hungry, thirsty or in urgent need of a bathroom, despite having just left the house three minutes before.

The best part was that I was able to push things out of my mind. It's hard to turn off the type-A personality stuff, but when I started to think about emails that needed to be sent, lists that needed to be made, or things I needed to do, I let it go until the weekend was over. I've taken mediation (and medication) and have tried so many times in the past to push things out of my mind, but I failed, until this weekend. It turns out, I can live in the moment, as long as that moment has a clear end time.

I fell asleep without tossing and turning or feeling like I should get up to work. It was amazing...until I tried to go to sleep last night. Back at home, on the precipice of a busy week, all of the stress came back. I couldn't sleep. I picked at my cuticles. I went back to a sleep deficit. Once again, I'm tired. It's like we never left.

Cold Eggs of the Future

Everything is happening at once, which isn't unusual for this time of year. The school year ends and spring sports end, but both bring a flurry of activity. I cannot wait for vacation, but those don't happen without planning, and I've been working on that this week too.

But! Soon it will all be made easier with my new robot! To put it politely, Rocket is a little windy and there are some mornings that I cannot get him to preschool fast enough so that the talking (to me) will stop. This morning he began with, "Mom, how would you like breakfast in bed?" Even though we were leaving for school, I said that I'd love it because I've never had it before, unless you count hospitalized bed rest, and that's nothing to dream about.

"Maybe you should sleep in my bed, so we can share the breakfast," he said. This kid is a bottomless pit who left me at the back of the line at his school potluck last night, so that he could cut ahead to get his food without wait. Now he wants first pass at my first breakfast in bed.

"Who is going to make this breakfast?" With one member of my little labor force waiting to share my breakfast, that only leaves Clover, and she doesn't serve anyone.

"Oh, the robots will make it!"

Great.

"Mom, what supplies do I need to build a robot?"

Breakfast is not coming anytime soon.

For the record, he's getting himself a giant robot, and me a smaller robot that will also trim my trees.