Milk, bread, and snow

Good thing we bought milk and bread at the grocery store last night, along with everybody else in North and South Carolina. Unfortunately we were several hours too late for hamburger and bananas, but we got the important stuff, and sure enough, this morning we have what Chris estimates is a quarter inch of sleet/ice/snow (it looks like more to me, but what do I know?). Cancellations are running on the tv, and I’m waiting to see if we’ll have school Monday. Although people were talking about the weather all week, I didn’t really think we’d get anything to speak of, mostly because this year I finally bought sleds for the kids. Last year we just used the laundry basket.

Having lived in the North a couple of years, I know people up there always laugh at us and our snow, but it’s different in a number of ways. For one thing, what we’ve got right now isn’t really snow—although we call it that because we don’t get enough white stuff of any description that we want to distinguish—it’s really best for the kids if it’s all snow. But it’s really a good layer of ice laid down on the roads with a nice dusting of light snow on top of it. And the second this mess starts in Michigan, where we lived, the trucks get out and salt the roads down—here if we’re lucky we get salt on the bridges and sand on the roads. I guess they figure no sense buying that big expensive equipment for twice a year.

Last night in Charlotte, a water main broke near the bookstore we were hanging out at, and just past the gushing water in the road, a wet trail of tire tracks leading out of the water was already black ice—it couldn’t have been broken 10 minutes, and already at least five cars were busted up in the general vicinity. And that was before any of the sleet. Part of the problem, of course, is that we don’t drive enough in ice to know how to—but a lot of it is that you just shouldn’t really drive in ice. So here we are at home this morning, all the curtains and blinds wide open even though it makes the house colder, so Will and Laura can watch it snow. And later, we’ll go sled up and down the driveway and have hot chocolate afterwards. If only it was Monday, everything’d be perfect.

Poor Will

Sometimes I think everything I write about William is about “poor Will”. Second babies definitely don’t get the same level of intense scrutiny their elder siblings do—although maybe this is good. Will had a really hard week at daycare last week, and we have no idea why. He could be cutting molars. He could be waking up at night and not going right back to sleep. He might be having some trouble adjusting to the new teacher in his classroom, Miss Amber, although she seems very nice (yes, they’re all Miss, even if they’re Mrs. They don’t seem to like Ms. at daycare).

Every morning we took him in, he would cry if anybody even looked at him. There’s this climbing toy in the room, basically four big wooden boxes with holes in them stacked together so you can climb through one into the next—every morning last week he wanted to climb into the bottom-left hand box with his pillow and blanket: “I want to get in my hole!” He’d just lay there and cry and cry. Eventually after poor Mama or Daddy dragged themselves out, leaving little inconsolable boy, he’d stop crying and go to sleep. Amber and Amanda spent the week sitting on the floor next to the hole patting Will on the head reading stories to the other kids or whatever until he went to sleep—he absolutely would not come out until after he’d slept a while.

Then Wednesday they called to tell us he wouldn’t wake up for lunch (which is supposed to be followed immediately followed by naptime)—not the in a coma kind of not waking up, just the really cranky sleepy kid kind. Chris went and picked him up early and took him to school with him—he seemed better by then, because of course he’d napped all day. Thursday I dropped him off and told them just to let him sleep til he felt happy again—he slept from 9:20-3:20 that day. Evidently he felt a lot better afterwards, since he ate a giant lunch of chicken nuggets and tater tots (they saved his food for him)—and was a different boy then.

He’s feeling better this week, but I’m sitting here looking at his “My Day” sheet from last Thursday—it tells his nap times, what they had for lunch, any special art projects they do during the day—we get one every day so we know what happens during the day. One section is called “Today I was” and the teacher circles one or two descriptions: very energetic! busy as a beaver! quiet as a mouse! soooo silly! a good leader! super! perfect! a creative kid! full of fun! Will usually gets very energetic (he never gets perfect—I wonder if they just put that on the sheet to freak out the parents, frankly), but for Thursday he had quiet as a mouse, and they wrote in sleepy. I should say so.

He seems more like himself this week, although still a little slow to acclimatize to the room. I guess it’s tough being two.

Shave the goatee, please

Ever since he had his accident at work, Chris has been growing a goatee. At first his face hurt too much for him to shave his upper lip, so he was just shaving the sides. And then mysteriously he’d always wanted to try a goatee. So he’s let it grow—it’s been a little more than two weeks. It looks a lot better than his beard in college did (very patchy), but I still don’t like it. And I definitely don’t like how it feels. At least it’s winter now so that if he decides (please) to shave it off he won’t have the multi-colored face. Remember the yellow shirt, Chris? I gave it up for you.

Economics 399

I debated long and hard about what kind of economics class I might teach, if I were an economist, and if I wanted to talk about the economics of my real life. My first thought, the Economics of Convenience. But I really just had to dismiss that right out of hand, and in fact, I’m offended with myself for considering it in the first place. There’s just not one single thing convenient about it. Then I thought, ECON 399: The Economics of Overwork. Or perhaps Haste? I’m not sure. Let’s see.

$4.23	Blockbuster rental fee for a movie I already own, but hadn’t planned to show in class until next week, so my copy was at home (after I was called at work to come pick Will up early from school because he’s sick)
$ .34	Buying gas in Lancaster ($1.72) instead of Rock Hill ($1.68) because I was running too late to work this morning to stop
$ .75	Toy for Will as a bribe while I dragged his poor sick self through Walmart trip to buy cardstock and kid Tylenol (and that was a bargain, let me tell you)
$1.50	How much more I had to pay for the slightly more expensive colored cardstock for Laura’s school because Walmart was out of stock of the cheapest brand and I couldn’t drag Will somewhere else to find it cheaper for that little bit of money
$1.20	Overdue fees for Laura’s books, which were due Tuesday, and which we tried to drop off Monday when the library was closed, but the drop-off bin was full (well, I’m giving the worst-case scenario estimate here—it might be only .60, depending on if they check in the books dropped off in the bin during the day—Will had fussed himself to sleep by then and there was no way in the world I was getting out of that car for that little bit of money)

$8.02 squandered in haste today. If I did that every day, it’d be close to $3000 bucks. Of course I’m ignoring the big-ticket items—the mortgage, the student loans, daycare—but it’s not really those that do us in. Nor most people, I suspect. Well, this certainly accounts for why I don’t buy my hot chocolate at Starbucks anymore.

Skipping church

Oh, I should also have mentioned—a follow-up to the religion question recently. After the sleepover, Kristen had to leave early this morning for church (but Adeleigh is still here! Almost twenty-four hours! Doesn’t her mom ever miss her???). I got the distinct impression last night that Kristen’s mom had a little talk with her about alternate attitudes about religion recently, since she has suddenly stopped calling Laura every single Sunday to invite her to church. And I mean it. Every. Single. Sunday.

Chris picked up Kristen while I was getting Will packed up and ready for the movies, so since I hadn’t talked to her mom, when I saw her later, I asked Kristen what time her mom was picking her up. 10:30, so she could get to the late service at 11:00. Well, Laura didn’t quite hear what she said and asked her to repeat what kind of service. Kristen said, “You know, late service. There’s an early one at 9:00, and one at 11:00 for people who like to sleep late, and then some people don’t have to go at all.” Thank God from the people who finally get to not go at all without being called at 8:00 Sunday morning to get invited anyway.

Official end of our holidays, for real and finally

After Christmas and possibly New Year’s, you’d think the holidays were over. In our family, though, the holidays go from early November, starting with my nephew Sebastian’s birthday, to mid-January, ending with Laura’s birthday. Holiday birthdays in our family include my nephews Harrison, Sebastian, and Manny; my mother, my father, and my brother; and me and Laura. So in that two and a half month period, we have three national holidays, eight birthdays, and final exams.

That sounds like a lot, but when you add in the fact that we typically have three holiday celebrations (one with Chris’s mom, another with his Dad—damn that divorce thing—and then one with my family) and some multiple birthday parties too, well it just gets to be quite a lot to do. Aside from being practically bankrupt right now, I am just pooped.

Laura’s ten now, and she had three parties, although all very small ones this year. Chris’s mom came last weekend with a birthday cake, so that was number one, complete with presents (my mom and dad gave Laura her presents at New Year’s, but with their typical low fanfare). Number two: our family party—just the four of us, usually, but this year my brother Matt and his wife came to have dinner and cake with us too. And then third and final, thank God, Laura’s sleepover last night with her friends Adeleigh and Kristen.

I felt terrible for Kristen all night—I’d really sort of forgotten the three-girl sleepover phenomenon, where one is the odd girl out. It was definitely Kristen. Laura and Adeleigh were just singing their lungs out to their favorite cd in the car, and Kristen was just listening. Laura and Adeleigh were playing My Scene Barbies just as hard as they could, and Kristen was trying hard to pretend like she was interested. Laura and Adeleigh probably stayed up til 3:00, and Kristen, who had gotten up early that morning to take care of her horses, fell asleep almost as soon as she hit the bed. Of course, she was up for a long time by herself the next morning too. Poor thing. I hope it wasn’t too awful. I sure do remember that feeling. Ugh.

Laura seemed to have a wonderful time, although Adeleigh was her usually high-stress, high-maintenance self. That child gets sick every time she has to do something she doesn’t want to, and sometimes when she does. And you ask what’s wrong, and she says, oh, it’s just stress. This from a third-grader. I’m glad Laura’s a little more flexible. On the whole, though, I think Will had the best time. Chris and I took all the kids last night to see The Incredibles—Will’s first real movie-theater movie. He loved it, especially the villain robot. He talked to my mom on the phone last night, and it was hilarious to listen to: “We went to the MOVIES. We saw The INCREDIBLES. There was a big ROBOT. We had POPCORN. I made a MESS.”

So we had popcorn. We had pizza. We had cake and ice cream and presents. And we made a mess.

Just slightly weird

OK, wait, I take it back, not wacky, not enlightened. Old fashioned. Or maybe just old. I had already blocked out the poetry journal release party last weekend when running across an old email this morning reminded me. I had a poem published last week in a very nicely produced local journal and had promised before I knew much about it that I’d attend the release party for the new issue. I would’ve backed out when I got the details finally except that I really wanted to see the journal, and I knew I could pick up my contributor’s copies there.

The party was held at this private club/local dive, one of those places that are lighted only by the beer signs and the light over the pool table. The invitation tempted us to come “meet some real people” in a smoking-OK environment where we’d be listening to lo-fi and city jungle & down-temp trip-hop. I don’t even know what that is. When Chris and I got to the party, really it seemed like most folks were not too much younger, and quite a few were considerably older—but it still seemed like ages ago that I was that young. People were wearing either something cut to show off just about all your major attributes, or the standard poet black. I hate that.

The reading was fairly interesting, though—several poets who were really quite good, a couple who were (in my professional judgment) awful, and one woman who sounded just like me when I used to get really nervous reading—I recognized the quaver instantly. Chris had a beer and I toyed with the idea of getting food—but we decided to cut out early and go to the movies instead since we already had a babysitter. We went to see National Treasure, which I was interested in because of the similarities to The Da Vinci Code, but I didn’t know much about the movie and couldn’t believe it when the Walt Disney logo flashed up on the screen. Nobody truly cool or hip or yoga-inspired would really cut out of a poetry reading early to go to a dang Walt Disney movie.

Slightly weird but enlightened

I am not at all an exercise person—the only two times I ever exercised, I had a serious short-term reason for it. When I was in college, I had to take a PE class, so I signed up for tennis, and believe me, it was one of the most embarrassing displays of a lack of grace and coordination that you might ever have had the opportunity to witness. Now I give my students in class all the time the example of how practice might not make you ultimately fabulous at a thing like writing, but can certainly help you improve: me in tennis. It was so awful I thought I’d lose my scholarship when my grades came in (fortunately not).

The second time was when I was pregnant with Laura and took prenatal aerobics for him (poor Will. I was so queasy with him I just laid on the couch for months). I had never attended aerobics classes before, because I didn’t want to be the clumsy slow one in the room full of scarily beautiful people—I used to Jazzercise secretly at home, just because my mother had the album and I like the music. But everything changed when I got pregnant. I found pregnancy a thrilling and terrifying thing. Women are used to having their bodies do odd things, on the whole, what with menstrual cycles, but pregnancy will really let you know that there is just no way in the world you are in charge of that body, babe. There’s so little control over the experience that I thought I had to maintain what little I could. I gave up caffeine and drank water by the gallon and started exercise classes, even though I didn’t want to. But prenatal aerobics are wonderful—everyone is getting big! Everyone is clumsy because joints are loosening everywhere you look! Sure, somebody in the room’ll be nine months pregnant and look like you do at five months, but all the women are so preoccupied with their Braxton-Hicks contractions or glucose tests or cervical mucous that nobody really cares. And you have a ready-made friend in the class—the mother whose due date is closest to yours (preferably just ahead of you, so you can have the benefit of her experience). I loved prenatal aerobics—and I quit it after Laura was born.

I finally got to my first yoga class last night, after trying all through Christmas and then missing what should have been my first night last week when Chris had his accident. I suppose this officially represents my first effort at organized exercise in ten years. But I’m not really going to yoga for exercise, anyhow. I am sick of working non-stop, at home, at work. I never have any time alone. And one hour a week will be my time away from all those things. Fortunately, it looks like I’ve landed in the perfect class. I’d always heard that yoga was supposed to reduce stress, and boy did it ever. It felt wonderful to stretch and breathe, although I am still just as uncoordinated as ever, exhaling when I was supposed to be inhaling and whatnot. I especially loved being in the classroom space, the Arts Council main gallery. Every time I needed a focal point, there was a painting in front of me. The gallery’s in an old restored downtown building, and the ceiling has beautiful plaster designs in the tiles. Really, you spend not inconsiderable amounts of time looking at ceilings during yoga. Very relaxing dim lights and—well, I do have to admit the new age music was pretty awful, but I didn’t really hear it after a while anyhow, which I guess must be the idea. I hear that yoga is becoming less new age and more mainstream—although the photo of the guy on the package of my yoga mat didn’t really suggest that to me—but I’m not sure. For now it feels like one more step down the path of the slightly weird but enlightened. Not that I had much farther to go anyhow. I can’t wait til next Tuesday.

Aliens turn ten

Something about having children seems to exaggerate whatever social position a person has chosen—I suppose it’s because you’re no longer an independent individual, but instead the matriarch (or patriarch) of your own little clan. And instead of you behaving in whatever ways you see are appropriate, suddenly you’re indoctrinating the next generation into their social and cultural position.

My daughter Laura is turning ten, double digits at last, and once I get over the wild idea that for ten years Chris and I have single-handedly managed to keep this child alive, I am stumped by the ways that her life has changed ours. And even moreso by the ways that her life is about to depart from ours. I know, I know. She’ll only be ten. She’s not going to college tomorrow, although we did have a lengthy discussion over Christmas break about how you chose a major in college and whether you can take any classes you want.

But think about this. She loves all the Harry Potter books and movies. In the first, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry turns eleven and goes away to wizarding boarding school. Like so many children in fiction, Harry has non-existent parents. I can’t figure out if parents just would interfere too much with various plot lines because they would never allow their children to do the various things the orphans in all the novels do, or if there are really that many children being raised without kids, but think about it. The Boxcar Children. Dead parents. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. Parents who are never there. The Chronicles of Narnia. Didn’t the parents leave the kids with the old guy whose house had the wardrobe? Many, many of the books my daughter is reading have missing parents. The Harry Potter books in particular are disturbing to me in that regard—Ron has lovely parents, who are involved if sort of clueless at times, but Harry only has his awful aunt and uncle, and Hermoine, who has loving if boring Muggle dentist parents, spends all her summer vacations with Ron’s family. They all choose to stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas holidays instead of going home to be with their families. If I were Hermione’s parents, I would be so lonely for my daughter.

I’m not lonely for Laura yet, but I guess it won’t be long. Of course she now has her own life at school, her favorite friends (and not the ones I would have chosen, of course). And of course I am delighted that she has the confidence to go out into the world and start to make it her own. In fact, I guess she’d better hurry, since she only has a limited time to do that before she might choose one day to have kids—and then she’ll be worrying about the same things I am. It’s usually small things. We’re planning her sleepover birthday party for this weekend—we’ll take the kids to see The Incredibles and then have cake and ice cream. Nothing special. Every time we have other children over, though, I feel as if our entire lifestyle is on display in this appalling way. Last time Adeleigh came over to play, Will was watching Hercules, his new favorite movie of all time (at least for the next couple of weeks—who’d have thought anything could’ve supplanted Toy Story 2?). Lots of monsters, and an interesting if inaccurate introduction to Greek mythology. Adeleigh happened to come in while Hercules was talking to Hades, and she asked me what was happening, since she’d missed the rest of the movie. I usually turn the tv off when Adeleigh’s around, or run her out of the room, because her family is pretty conservative and they don’t allow her to watch Harry Potter (vile witchcraft) or most other movies, to tell you the truth—and she is pretty suggestible and has bad dreams, so I can see that.

But try explaining Hades Lord of the Dead to a child raised in a conservative Baptist home without offending anybody. Imagine try to explain mythology when the child has been taught that myths are lies. Now I’ve taught my daughter that myths are our way of understanding the world—that we try to think about our lives through stories, and that Christian mythology and Greek mythology are both examples of how we try to come to grips with the idea of life and death. I believe, and I’ve tried to convey this to her, that there is something spiritual beyond this life, but we don’t know what that is and never will until we leave it. I see value in both these narratives about life. But I wouldn’t want Adeleigh’s or Kristin’s mother explaining to Laura the wonders of reading the Bible literally, so I don’t offer up these interpretations to their children. But every little thing—the movie my son is watching, the book my daughter is reading—is one more sign of how unlike every other family we seem to be. And I just keep thinking that we can’t be that odd. But last time Kristin was here, I was grating cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches, and she was amazed because she’d never seen a cheese grater. It’s bad enough to be a wacko because you let your child study witchcraft in the Bible belt (which is how these parents seem to see it—I think I’m letting my daughter read a wonderful book about how we struggle against evil and how difficult those choices are). But when even your standard-issue cheese grater marks you as different—well that’s just getting to be a little too much. Add that to Kristin calling every single Sunday to ask if Laura can go to church with her—and yes, I told her it was fine if she’d like to go with Kristin and try it, and no, she doesn’t want to go—and it is just plain too much.

It’s seemed so exaggerated this week. Last Sunday during church, which we don’t attend, Chris’s mother was here for a visit and wanted to go out to breakfast, so we went over to IHOP late around 10:30 so we could miss the rush right before or after church. All these people wearing BLUE JEANS were there! IHOP was packed, and almost everybody else there was a heathen like us! I have to say, it was thrilling for once not to be the clearly marked non-Church going family in the herd of Sunday schoolers. Then last night, Chris had Open House at school, and I had to work late, so instead of trying to get dinner at home, which he didn’t have time for, we just met at the Chick-fil-a near daycare. Monday night, and the place was packed, mostly with older couples. I actually looked for the retirement home bus outside to see where these folks were traveling from. But they were all locals. I asked at the counter what the big occasion was—it was church bulletin night. Bring your bulletin from church Sunday and get a free Chick-fil-a sandwich. At least everybody was just dressed in everyday and work clothes, so other than age, there wasn’t any visible indicator of your status as Elect or Damned.

I don’t quite understand this split—and I hate that Laura is getting caught in it. I don’t like it for myself, but I’m a grown-up. I know how to keep from being proselytized, and I’m confident in my own spiritual beliefs. I don’t believe all Muslims are going to hell, thank you very much, as one of my dear friends from graduate school does. And I’ve learned that she and I just don’t have that conversation if we want to be friends. But Laura is still learning this, and it’s hard. She doesn’t want me to talk to Kristin’s mom because she doesn’t want to alienate her friend. And as much as I want to help, sometimes I just make it worse. Years ago she asked me why they hung purple cloths on the cross at Easter, and now it’s a standard family joke: don’t ask that question or you’ll get the purple cross answer—too long and complicated. Sometimes I wish I found these questions simple. But I don’t. How did I get from a birthday party to this? Just another example of my purple cross thinking, I guess. Well, writing this won’t answer my questions today, if ever. And while the metaphysical and philosophical are always engaging, sometimes you just have to go to work.

Win the lottery next time

Chris’s new year started off with a bang. Yesterday at work he was climbing around on his computer tables hanging his album covers on his classroom walls, when he slipped and fell on the edge of a fold up table that was, for reasons I can’t quite account for, folded and standing on end, so that the edge of the table rather inconveniently connected with his face on his way down. Evidently he bled like a stuck pig for quite some time, and the office staff actually rolled him downstairs to the nurse’s office in another teacher’s rolling desk chair—he actually got dizzy, which goes to show how hard he hit.

I was home, repotting an orchid, with moss and dirt all over the counter, when the phone rang—the first time the school nurse has ever called me to come get my husband. Laura and I picked him up and spent the afternoon with him at the oral surgeon’s while they x-rayed him twice to see if he’d broken the roots on any of his teeth, and then stitched up the inside of his mouth. His teeth look ok now, unless the nerves were damaged, in which case he’ll have to have a root canal later.

In any event, he’s on a soft foods only diet—no chewing at all—for a week. I put the ham in the freezer for later and bought all kinds of jello and pudding and made soup tonight and stock for another soup for Thursday night—and finally got all the orchid moss wiped off the kitchen counter. Maybe tomorrow if I’m lucky I’ll get to the floor too. In the meantime, Chris feels bad enough that he’s mostly parked on the couch, where he’s getting meals hand delivered on a tray while he watches The Daily Show and hurts himself trying not to laugh.

It’s odd—one of the quirky Chris 2004 productions I considered for the Christmas letter was a faux journalism piece he wrote for the high school paper (he’s the advisor) about another teacher beating him up. They staged a fight and had pictures taken of it, and then he Photoshopped his face all bruised up. He says next fake article he writes is going to be about us winning the lottery.

Rethinking Resolutions

That was certainly quick, wasn’t it? I changed my mind and decided to have one formal New Year’s resolution: always check the junk mail folder on my email—I had an email with my first poem acceptance for 2005 there today! It was sent on January 1. Maybe I am a little superstitious after all.

Rules for New Year’s

Every year I wonder about New Year’s Day. Since I teach, my new year happens every time a semester starts. August is really New Year’s Day to me, but then we have the mini-beginning of Spring semester too. Summer rolls around, and it’s thank God that year’s over. This year I really am pretty happy to say goodbye to 2004, which was a difficult year, but I still don’t feel any better about New Year’s celebrations.

Chris wanted me to go to a party with him with a few of his friends and a bunch of other people he didn’t know. He didn’t tell me about it until it was really too late to get a babysitter, and I didn’t really want to go either (I don’t know most of these people—it turns out he didn’t know anybody but his host!), so I told him it was fine if he went, and I’d stay home. Is this a sign of a healthy relationship that gives room to both people, or the glaring violation of all the codes of romantic life that it seems on the surface?

Then there’s the food thing. So much of our family ritual involves food. For Christmas Eve for more years than I can count Chris and I have been eating oyster stew for dinner (the kids would never eat it, so it’s our treat). Christmas Eve without oyster stew just sounds wrong. This is a personal ritual, not a shared one, but the New Year’s rolls around and there’s that luck and money thing—greens and black-eyed peas (is this just a Southern thing). I absolutely can’t stand black-eyed peas. Their texture is just nauseating. Greens are OK, but nobody else in my family will eat them—and you can’t just make a few greens. It seems so stupid and impractical to make food nobody wants so you can have a traditional token bite or two. A couple of years ago, I finally decided I wasn’t cooking them anymore—that luck and money thing had never really seemed to work anyhow. But still every New Year’s Eve my mother calls to tell me she’s cooking them, and we’re welcome to come eat with them. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but still feel every year that bankruptcy is bound to strike since I didn’t cook collards.

Resolutions are the biggest issue, really, because they transcend the immediate day of January 1 and presumably follow you throughout the year. The newspapers are always running stories this time of year asking people what their resolutions were, and did they keep them, and I read this year about a website that you can actually go log into all year to post your progress on your goals. Ugh. I used to make resolutions, but since I am the sort of person who really makes a resolution every time I make a list, I’ve sort of stopped doing that too. I guess if I had to say what my resolution this year would be it’d be to go to yoga (my first class is tonight). I really need some time for myself right now, especially after two straight weeks of family togetherness. But right now the only yoga classes in town are on Tuesday nights and I often have meetings for School Improvement Council then, so I already know I’m not going to make every class. If I do yoga at home two or three times a week, will that count? The resolution concept seems just so complicated and ridiculous, so prescribed, and so doomed. I wonder if anybody ever keeps theirs?

My little Will just woke up. I’ll resolve to have my hair played with a lot this year. I know I can keep that one.