Doable Resolutions

Generally I don't make resolutions.

Well, I should amend that. I don't generally KEEP resolutions. But in the last few years I've made plenty of changes in my life including turning into SUPER MOM.
Now if I can just quit tripping over the cape…

Most of the resolutions I'd like to take on are impossible to achieve. For example I'd really like to do a better job with the domestic things around here. It would be so novel to have clean clothes in actual drawers instead of baskets, for example.

I'm fairly certain I've ended up washing clean clothes because I assumed they were dirty since they were in baskets.

Or perhaps I could have a completely clear kitchen counter without "the pile." "The pile" always starts out small, a staging area for calls that need to be made, papers that need to be filed, items that need to be reviewed. Then, like a huge black hole, it sucks in all matter of debris.

I don't even know what's in "the pile" anymore. I'm afraid to look.
So I thought I'd try for a few doable resolutions for 2009.

I want to not take parenting so seriously in 2009. I'd like to laugh a bit when my little ones act as if helping with the dishes is akin to water boarding.

I want to take parenting more seriously in 2009. Do more reading and talking to other parents so I can figure out how to survive it.

I want to take my children more places in 2009. We should hit a few more museums and events with food on sticks.

I want to stay home with my children more in 2009. Spend time in our yard, wrestle with the dogs and use finger paints to turn our arms interesting shades of blue.

I want to cook more unusual foods in 2009. I want to expose my children to a few more exotic dishes so they can expand their culinary horizons.

I want to spend less time in the kitchen in 2009. I want to find things we can more easily toss into a backpack as we head out for an adventure.

I want to wake up early in 2009. I want to have the lunches packed and the clothes set out so we can leave the house calmly every day.

I want to sleep in with my children in 2009. I want to cuddle up with them until the sun rays poke at our eyelids, then run around in a mad race against time, laughing as we spill into the car, hoping everyone has shoes on.

Now these are resolutions I think I can keep.

STORY TIME!


Just in time for the holidays! this is just a bit of fiction I'm testing out and if it works I'm tossing it on itunes as a free download... I've got cute pix my daughter did to go along with it that'll be adding in... somehow. Give it a listen and give me your feedback. I think the music is too much, so I'd love some opinions. :)

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Confessions of a Parade Geek

There are a lot of things that are great about living in a small town. But at the top of the list has got to be the parades.

Where I came from being in a parade was as attainable as getting nominated for a Nobel Prize.

I’d watch parade after parade every year, wondering if I’d ever get to march down a street carrying an instrument, or sit regally while waving from the back of a colored tissue filled trailer.

Oh, to be a waver instead of a wavee.

In the big city access to parade participation seems be largely based on some sort of secretive panel of elders who select individual floats based on the same logic that applies to lottery winners. The announcers would talk about the participants as if they had completed perfect SATs, rolled boulders up hill for days, and endured a grilling before a congressional subcommittee just to get an application.

But that didn’t keep me from dreaming. I became a parade geek, watching countless parades on TV, dashing out to the big ones even though it involved camping on the street for four hours beforehand. No kidding.

Fortunately I moved. And I found parade heaven.

In a small town, everybody can be in a parade. No kidding. EVERYBODY.

In fact, pretty much all you have to do is agree to show up. I mean it’s really sort of incredible that anyone is even left on the sidelines.

In our small town you don’t have to have pull in the mayor’s office or belong to some big company. You can just be… well… a parade geek. You don’t have to represent any one particularly important.

In fact, one year we were in the 4th of July parade representing our street -- which is only two blocks long.

That year we inexplicably won first place. I suspect the fact that we had dogs on our float and one of the judges was our local veterinarian helped.

This year both girls were in the Christmas parade on separate floats, one as an elf, the other as a Who from Whoville. Even our dog was in the parade, wearing a single deer antler on his head.

I walked between the floats trying to ensure no one got run over while we sped along at 5 miles an hour.

More importantly, we were all wavers. Even Dyno:

A SNAP in Time

This season's cold snap had us scrambling for our coats and layers of warm clothes. They were all the clothes we had pulled out of drawers in November, only to have the temperatures rise back up to the eighties, making us look for T-shirts and shorts again.

Now as I wrestle with Mireya to convince her that short sleeves summer dresses are simply not an option, I'm struck by another snap.

They're growing up on me. This is despite my efforts to freeze them in place, to dip them in amber, and keep everything exactly as it is right now.

One day we're working our way through the alphabet song then SNAP, she's writing a note to Grammy ("eye" am going to open the door) and hanging it in the window.

One day I'm coaching my daughter on handling the school yard conflicts and SNAP, she's telling me about standing up to the bossy kid.

One day I'm trying to explain why we have to take clothes that don't fit out of the drawer then SNAP, she doesn't sneak over and pull them all back out of the bag. She accepts my explanation like a reasonable person, making me wonder she's been switched with another child while I was in the kitchen.

One day I'm lifting her on the counter and SNAP, she's figured out how to use the drawers as a ladder, requiring me to find a new hiding spot for the cookies.

We're walking through this new season, a change of season I know will come over and over again, and so many things will never happen again. They'll blow away in the cold front, disappearing in the bright blue sky of memory.

Memories like my daughter painting her entire arm red when I was on the phone for five seconds.

Memories like hearing a crash upstairs, followed quickly by the shout "I didn't do it!"

Faster than I'm prepared for, they're dashing out the door, scarves fluttering in the cold, taller than I remembered. I can put on my coat to handle the change in weather, but what do I do to get ready for their next SNAP?

So I take a hundred digital pictures and million mental ones. Pictures to keep me warm for the day they SNAP into adulthood before I can find their mittens. Mittens they won't wear because they have their driving gloves on instead.

What's my line?

“I’m Door Holder,” Mireya said proudly. She was holding the door to the garage open for me, demonstrating just how well she’d got this job down.

“You’re doing great,” I noted, as I carried half a dozen things out to the car.

“No, in school. I’m Door Holder.”

“Oh. Sounds like fun.”

She nodded solemnly, the weight of her office heavy on her five-year-old shoulders.

Sierra bounded through the door and headed outside. “I’m Line Leader!”

“In school?” I asked. It takes me a while, but eventually I catch on.

“Yep.”

“Mommy, what are you?”

What am I not, I thought. This morning I started out as Dreaded Time Clock, getting everyone up out of warm bed. Then I was the Waitress, taking breakfast orders. I had a brief stint as Fashion Designer and Style Advisor to my eldest daughter who never knows what she wants to wear and Voice of Seasonal Reason to my youngest who wanted to hit the 40-degree weather in a skirt.

Apparently someone noted my skills with a toaster and microwave, because I moved up the ranks to Head Chef, my breakfast menu featuring the daily favorites: waffles and cereal.

Once the breakfast hit the plates I became the Crisis Manager. Homework not done? Let’s get that crossword done and read that picture book. Issues with lost dice or library books? The hunt is on.

Then after a brief stint as Head Bottle Washer, I was magically transformed into a Dental Assistant and Hair Stylist.

Then I took on my most illustrious job, Transportation Manager. Or, if we were running behind, Jet Pilot.

As I shut the garage door and we pulled out of the driveway, Mireya piped up from the back seat.
“Mommy! I know what you are!” she shouted.

“What sweetie?””

“You’re the caboose!”

That sounds about right.

Rodent Surprise

I guess I’m just not cut out for ranching because, after much consideration we’ve decided to get out of the mouse businesses.

It wasn’t just that the cost of mouse feed has gone up, or the problems setting up the tiny corrals.

It wasn’t even the preliminary word from the tax office that mice don’t qualify for an ag exemption. Even the trouble we had recruiting mouse wranglers seemed surmountable.

It was the fact that we woke up one morning and there were six MORE baby mice, doubling our already significant baby mouse count. That brought our grand mouse total to 16 - plus at least one more looked puffy and was complaining about her swollen ankles.

Suddenly I envisioned baby mice pouring out of the bars of the cage in a strange never ending mousey ooze. I immediately loaded everyone up in the car and hightailed it to the pet store, and more than my tires were squealing.

Some people would call that freaking out.

They would be right.

So we’ve traded up. We kept both Mousezilla, who is completely black and therefore likely to be snake food, and Shadow, who was our last acquisition. Everyone else, Sugar, Twitchy, and the dozen mouselets went back to Polly’s for holiday re-distribution.

In place of our 14 head of mice, we received one very adorable dwarf hamster.

Hamsters can live alone. This has already greatly endeared him to me. But it hasn’t been all easy going in our transition to a slightly larger rodent. Jimmy the hamster, named after a beloved cousin, has already required a new glass cage after he escaped our old one by literally PRYING THE BARS APART...

Hopefully we won’t end up changing his name to Hulk Hogan.

Here's the most amusing hamster video I could find. It's been viewed 4 million times. Join the madness.

Dishes

Swinging into Christmas...

 Boxes of Christmas

(this is a coffee filter angel created by mixed media artist, Mireya)


They say Christmas doesn’t come in a package.

That’s because they’ve never been in our attic.

In our attic is a really large amount of Christmas. Not all of it, and definitely not the most important part, but let me tell you, we get pretty close.

By Sunday we had recovered enough from the turkey haze to bring out 2 of the 523 boxes of Christmas from the attic.  One was the after-Christmas-sale unassembled  (sorry Daddy) reindeer and the box containing, among other things, the all important advent calendar.

Almost immediately the negotiations started.

“I’ll take this day, then you can have the next, then it’ll be my turn,” said Sierra, moving the giant wooden snowflake among the mittens.

Mireya, alert to being taken for a ride by her older sister, counted through and noticed she might not be the snowflake holder on Christmas Eve. “How about I take this day and you take that day…”

Full of Christmas spirit (and a realization that sisters get considerably smarter when they hit 6), Sierra suggested they BOTH move the snowflake on Christmas Eve, regardless of “turn.”

Further down in the box were the mismatched Christmas villages. Buildings right out of It’s a Wonderful Life mixed in with houses from some long abandoned train set. Little dogs were placed close to their fire hydrant and a giant snowman strolled the street, looking for iced latte. Santa was perched on top of a tiny house like one of those huge inflatable pink gorillas they use at car lots.

By the end, the top of our piano was transformed into a sort of Gulliver’s Travels meets A Christmas Carole with a little Vegas style lighting.

Only one hand painted wreath was in the box, which means the rest of the real Christmas treasures are somewhere in the other 521 boxes. The snow scene made of salt on black paper, the Santa with the cotton ball beard, and the reindeer with antlers made of handprints and a bright red pom pom nose—they are somewhere in there, waiting to make time turn on its head and bring eleven years of Christmases back to life.

Yes, a good bit of our Christmas is in those boxes. And I look forward to hauling out every last bit.

 

Back. Cough. Cough.

Holy cow, what the heck was THAT?

I had a cough that was so bad, I pulled a muscle in my back. Parts of my left lung are lying around here somewhere and my daughters have become so immune to the sound of hacking they'd feel right at home in a TB ward. And I am really, really sick of cough drops. That's all I ate for three days and I slept with one in my mouth - can you say choking hazard?

They finally gave me something to turn off the cough center in my brain when the delightful mucinex, aka the pflegm flavored horse pill, didn't work worth a darn. I didn't even know I had a cough center. Is that like a Christmas store, only open for a few months out of the year? Turning it off artificially sounds kind of scary, but better than getting 15 minutes of sleep between coughing.

I still have some residue cough, but I'm so much better I consider myself largely healed. Exhausted, but vertical for most of the day today! Woo hoo!

Sick mommy.

I'm sick. There are a lot of funny things about being sick.

(Notice how my dogs still look up to me even though, as pack leader, I am infirm. In the wild they'd tear my throat out and take over the pack. Good thing we aren't in the wild.)

1. The doctor asks you if you've been around any sick people. I mean who is SHE to talk.

2. My congestion skips my sinus cavities altogether and heads right into my chest. So who's hogging up my sinus cavities? Sure I can breathe, but only when I'm not coughing myself blue...

3. Mucinex tastes like the stuff you cough up. Is that on purpose?

4. You learn things you never knew. Like your dogs like to eat pop corn (video below). I guess it's not surprising. They eat cat poo too.

5. I went to the grocery store to get my medicine and I was coughing up a lung. Then I placed my hands on the handle of the cart. Then I was mortified that I had just contaminated the handle and quickly wiped it down with a tissue. Then I coughed in the tissue, because, hey I'm ALREADY sick. Then I grabbed the handle of the cart with my tissue in my hand. You can't win in these situations. Healthy people - wear disposable gloves until April.

6. The internet allows me to be around people without getting them ill. Which is killing my whole "misery loves company" thing.

7. Mom's taking care of the kids. Otherwise they'd be right here, fighting me for the computer, falling off the trampoline or requiring me to run around the kitchen until I collapse. It's a vacation, in a way, without the ability to actually enjoy it...

Momsense

If you haven't seen this video:
Momsense:

watch it and then watch this one...

Dadsense:

Anita Renfro, you so rock.

Wreath Rivalry
It was wreath only a mother could love.

It started with the show "100 holiday ideas for a total of $100." Beautifully dressed interior designers frolicked through their demonstrations of ideas that often required a master's degree in glue guns. But then a man in a black turtleneck with a meticulously developed air of bored superiority showed how to make a wreath with drycleaner bags. By tying shredded strips of the plastic bags around a disassembled coat hanger, you could create a shiny, ecologically friendly wreath.

Since motherhood cut down on my dry cleaning (by staining every outfit I had that required dry cleaning) I substituted grocery bags and started cutting and tying strips. A few hours later, I was astonished. Hey, I thought, this looks pretty good.

This is what cable does to you. You actually come to believe that plastic bags tied around a coat hanger "looks pretty good."

I even decided to give it to my mother. When I delivered it early in December, it was fourth grade all over again. She loved it, and promptly displayed it on the mantle. I was a little embarrassed, but also ridiculously proud.

We returned to her house for the big holiday dinner weeks later. On her mantle was a huge wreath. It was gorgeous, the greenery absolutely perfect, the colors flowing in a holiday harmony that would have silenced any decent choir. Martha Stewart would have given her left tit for this wreath.

And there, on the little music stand next to the mantle, was my recycled bag wreath.

"Oh! Did you see the wreath Christy sent me?" my mother said.

Of course. My sister. From across the Midwest she had reached into the open-ended game of sibling rivalry black jack and tossed down a big, fat ace right here, in my mother's house.

I turned to look at my mother, to apologize for my sad little homemade wreath. But one look at her brought me up short. She had no idea of the vast gulf that lay between my wreath with the ripped grocery bags and the Epic Salute to the Spirits of Yuletide on the mantle. In her eyes, they were somehow THE SAME.

I was floored. First, I realized I'd have no chance to ditch my plastic ring of economy Christmas in the closet, sparing myself the inevitable comparisons that would race across the faces of every relative present. Then, it dawned on me.

My mother is incredible.

In her heart and in her eyes, they were from her daughters. They were our love shaped into circles and she cherished them both.

Already I find this beautiful blindness within myself. I see gifts given from the heart of my children are the same, despite all appearances to the contrary.

As a daughter, I'm still completely mortified by the memory of the wreath rivalry where I was so completely left in the dust. Yet I take considerable comfort in knowing that to my mother there was no contest—and there never has been.