Not-calm.com

Making a dent in my crayon box

2010-03-01T23:56:57Z

I took a desperately-needed twenty minute break from work today to take photos for the red and white crayons. (If you are all, Huh? Read this.)

I'm at home because 3 out of 5 of us are sick. And we recommend sugarless gum for our patients who chew gum. Really, though, twenty minutes from picking up my camera to sending to flickr. That and a glass of cold peppermint tea, and I'm not quite so crabby anymore.

We've been hangin with Vanessa and Zac

2010-02-26T15:19:13Z

Willow turned seven yesterday and has been watching High School Musical movies every waking moment since just to drive that point home. Nathan gripes and moans and literally writhes in agony about it (while sitting on the couch watching with the rest of us).

If you subscribe to the Waldorf theory about kidrearing, that puts all four of my kids (7, 8, 11, 13) right in the phase where they're most interested in their friends, so I'm thinking, Hey! I'm kinda done here.

Kidding, of course. I still have to feed them and drive them all over the free world.

Yesterday Sean sent me this link, so at lunchtime I walked over to the grocery store and picked up My Very Own Box of crayons.

I'm not sharing, because I need this box for the next year or so, and this is the fate of poor, hapless crayons around here:

Thru this Saturday is week 12: macaroni and cheese

Check out the flickr pool, pick up your own box of crayons, dust off the camera and play along on the home game. If the sun comes out this weekend, I'll catch up on the first eleven colors.

No rules charades

2010-02-24T06:28:28Z

Willow is standing in the middle of the living room, and we are all watching her, except for Lex who is watching Hulu in his room. It's her turn, and she's pretending to climb, like maybe up a tree or a pole or something, but you can definitely tell she is climbing. We know she's trying to be an animal, and for a hint she says, It starts with a Ceeee. So, of course, I yell Koala! And she says, YES, and SG goes, Huh - koala starts with a K, dude, and I said, If you wanna win, you have to think like a six year old.

Sophie, of course, had the best run, but I can't remember all the ones she did. There was the one where she got on her back and flopped around: Hobo having a seizure; and the one where she pointed to her foot, so we all yelled FOOT, and then to her brother's crotch, and I said, OhMyGod, *sigh* Football?

I think the very best was the one where she sat, her chin resting on her knees which were drawn up to her chest. I'm a kind of food, she said, and then didn't move, didn't even blink I don't think. So we started guessing foods that she likes, and then she yelled, It's my FAVORITE spice! Without missing a beat, Nathan yelled PARMESAN CHEESE! and SG and I laughed until we cried, while she pointed out that she was sitting triangle shaped. Trust me, it was funny as hell in person. It's like playing charades with Salvador Dali, if he were smoking opium; but in a good way, you know?

This week begins the 6 days a week of sports routine that will be here for the next few months. Willow has softball Monday nights and Saturday mornings AT 8:30 EVERY SATURDAY UNTIL MAY. Soph has soccer Wednesday nights and Saturdays, and the boys have wrestling Tues/Thurs/Sun nights. We will blow off the Sunday wrestling, I think, because it's 30 miles from here and ends too late to be out on a school night. Still, though, our schedule is gnarly full and that's not even the science projects and homework and skateboard riding and guitar playing and all that. I'm not complaining, though. I love it even though it's relentless. Willow's first softball practice was last night and holy crap you never saw anything so cute as her little team. The batting helmets are so big on them you think they'll wobble right over, but they can all hit off the tee and Willow even got a couple of ground balls with her new mitt that SG got her. I can't wait to see them in their little uniforms with their visors.

I like this. I like the crazy busy, fifty things a week. Sure it's a pain and super expensive and no doubt I will gripe about keeping it all straight, but I love tucking them into bed when they're worn out from having fun. I don't spend as much time with my kids as I wish I could, and it feels like we're doing stuff they'll always remember.

Amen, pass the potatoes

2010-02-18T06:21:44Z

~Sophie. She likes to sleep in my bed at night. SG said to her (but not at all unkindly) SophODemon, are you going to still be sleeping in your mom's bed when you are eighteen?

She did not miss a beat. She rolled her eyes, exhaled, turned her face toward her right shoulder, Uh, NOOOH. I'll be sleeping with my boi-friend. Sigh.

And SG looked at me and I looked at him and we could not help but laugh though I was also kinda praying a little, because, well, because.

~Over the weekend I forced the girls to pick up the toys in their bedroom, heartless bitch that I am. You know how it is; they act all stunned, look at you, openmouthed and outraged. Well, they say, will you at least HELP US? And I say, Uh, no. I have stuff to do and it's your mess and your room. And YOU WILL CLEAN IT. ALONE.

Later, after they actually did a fantastic job of picking up (I only had to drag stuff out from under the bed and out of the closet twice before they stopped with the stuffing/cleaning) followed by vacuuming, I heard that Willow turned to Sophie as they were picking up the 47 stuffed dogs and 53 Playmobile babies and 6 million candy wrappers and said this:

Mom is treating us like SHIT. Like a BIG BAG OF SHIT.

She's six. First grade. I should be absolutely utterly and completely horrified. Instead? SG and I spent a few days getting her to say it again, and then reminding her that she can't say that at school or around her friends' parents, unless it's a friend she doesn't really want to hang out with anymore.

The baby of the family has it made, man. We eldest children aren't allowed to get away with anything, but the babies get to be evil and parents find it entertaining.

~While I'm at it, I'll retell this story. When Lex was about four and Nate was two and Sophie was newborn, we were all at the barber shop, getting Lex's hair cut. He was sitting in the barber's chair, on a booster, all cute and chatty with his little brown sandals poking out from under the cape. He and the barber started talking about smoking.

Lex: My dad smokes.

Bob the Barber: Oh. Well. he looked at me But your MOM, she doesn't smoke.

Lex: Noooooooo, my mom doesn't smoke.

SHE DRINKS!

It's hard work defending that Mother of the Year crown

2010-02-12T16:47:37Z

you'd think that in New York, of all places, Fashion Ave wouldn't be just one way

So yesterday I got trapped in my own shower. At first, I was laughing, because how dumb is that, to get stuck in your own shower? But almost immediately the claustrophobia kicked in, and I started to get very nervous. The door comes off the track all the time, and it's not a big thing (except for that one time when the door came OFF the track and fell on me, but I survived that). This time, though, the door that always gets hung up did its thing and it messed up the other door, too, so that neither of them would slide more than a few inches away from the wall. It kind of felt like all the air got sucked out of my lungs and I started talking out loud to myself like I would to one of my kids who's freaking out, Ohhhhh, this will be just fiiiiiiiine! I said, Everything will pop right back into place and you'll be out of here in just a second! Really! Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. . .

Obviously, I was able to escape, which I almost regretted given how poorly the rest of the day was: kids elbowing each other so they could be the first one in the van; foot stomping and whining and lots of wandering off during the *&%$*&# Valentine making; an epic brawl (pushing and scratching and threats of bodily harm included) between the girls because one "accidentally" closed the others' tab on the computer; and the crying - dear, sweet, merciful Lord, the crying - about picking up toys, about going to bed, about not getting to go ice skating, about having never been to Disneyland, about shoes and food and tangled hair. I was just all, DUDE, I wish I were still trapped in that damn shower. But then, then I thought how much better it would be if I just threw the kids in there instead, knocked the door back off the track and let them brawl it out, Celebrity Death Match style. Ooooh, or THUNDERDOME! With costumes, natch.

As luck would have it, we are coming up on a three day weekend and the kids are with me! Bring. It. On.

A handshake is worthy, it's all that you've got

2010-02-04T04:57:00Z

This is the five dollar apron I found on Etsy last week that improved my day by at least 300% just by being in my mailbox when I came home after work. Why, yes, I am wobbling on the side of the kids' bathtub because I don't have a full-length mirror. That big can of beer was totally helping me keep my balance, though.

Yesterday morning when I merged onto 101 N, I was listening to one of my favorite albums from when I was just a scootch older than Lex. I guess I had a little cabin fever to get out after two days working at home with sick kids, because I got all Mario Andretti on the freeway with my stereo cranked up really loud. Anyway, I was thinking about my kid and my own self when I was about his age and how radically different those two personalities are but, even so, how well he and I get along now. He's much, much more mature at 13 than I was. Don't get me wrong, he still has a 13 year old boy sense of humor (like, he *really* wants to get this tshirt), but he's far more aware of both himself and the world than I was back in 1983. He's motivated to study and do well in school because he knows that it will be a big huge deal later on in life. I did alright in school, but I was so wrapped up in where I was that I didn't really think much about becoming an adult. And then I was one and found that really quite often I was thinking, Damn, I wish that I had _____. I don't think Lex will be doing as much of that.

I can never remember exactly what year it will be when he graduates from high school, so as I drove, I counted off on my left-hand fingers: eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth; and the right: two thousand eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. . . and my stomach sank because that's only five more years. I already feel like I don't see much of him; that when he is around his sisters take up all my time. I try to talk to him as much as, more than, I ask him to do things like take out the trash or vacuum or clean the bathroom. He either still likes me some or he humors me and sits down to talk with me, but a lot of times a couple minutes into a conversation I can tell that he's dying to go text his friends or watch Hulu. And I get it. It doesn't even really hurt my feelings. In fact, if a 13 year old boy would rather hang out with his mom than his friends, no matter how awesome she may be, then he's probably not going to be the happiest kid in school, you know?

It's amazing to watch him navigate being a teenager. He's so much better at it than I was. He's, well, he's capable. I don't think he'll be kicking himself in the ass when he's grown as much as he will be kicking everyone else's and taking names.

I think I could love a Kindle

2010-01-21T04:32:38Z

rainbow out the window at work today, missing the middle shot (taken with the iPhone)

I never thought it would happen, honestly. I swear. I have always been one of those Gimme my REAL newspaper, you can't curl up in bed on a rainy day with a laptop in the same way you can read the paper in bed. Sunday morning newspapers have to be PAPER. And books?! Don't even mention electronic books to me. Really. Puhlease. They can't come in the bathtub; no pages to smell and feel and turn; no row of spines on the shelf reminding me how much I loved reading them; no margins to scribble notes in. The horror. Seriously.

But there I was last night in bed, the NPR.org app open on my iPhone. I read about Britain's effort to curb binge drinking and Colbert's sponsorship of the US speed skating team, and just a little bit about Haiti (too sad). I let my newspaper subscription lapse months ago, because literally months would go by without me reading it. In print, anyway. I read the local paper online a couple of times a week, thanks to the email updates they send me.

So, I don't know, last night it just hit me that I am a total convert. I don't need hard copies of everything when I can fit it all on my hard drive. I don't need to waste all that paper when I can read it online. You know? And the electronic device may be a little cold, but I'm seeing it as a way to have so much more with so much less hassle. Part of me is all Hello? Who ARE you?

I used to work in a doctors' office, back in the day when we used computers, but only to print stuff out. Part of my job was FILING. Filing papers. Like, in alphabetical order and everything. And working for two neurosurgeons, there were a lot of papers: MRI and CT and X-Ray reports; Face Sheets; summaries of medical histories, illnesses, injuries, and operations to fix them; dictated letters after each patient checkup; Triplicate prescriptions; Insurance approvals and bills and OMG the insurance paperwork - incredible. Our complex wouldn't recycle paper, and one of the doctors would get so disgusted by the huge stacks of paper that we went through and he'd say, in his Massachusetts accent, Holy shit, the trees are cryin! And, really, they are. And I'm not sad to trade my aesthetic preference for paper in for however many trees will be spared if I continue to go paperless. Also, my bookshelf looks pretty ok with those framed photos and stuff along with the books, so extra room is not a bad thing.

So, okay. I am NOT for getting rid of books entirely, of course. Not even. Or magazines or CDs or newspapers, or any other thing that can come in an electronic format. But I do think it's going to be the case that I save the paper versions of things for the super-cool stuff, like my teeny, 1910 copy of Write It Right, by Ambrose Bierce (even though there is a free download available!), or my 1959 copy of Shakespeare and Company, by Sylvia Beach. I'm one of those people who doesn't even print out my receipt at the gas pump to save paper, and I've gone paperless on all my bills. A Kindle may seem too sterile at first blush, but everyone who holds one is holding the thanks and huge relief of one more tree. As soon as they come out with one I can take in the bath, I'm totally there.

Text "HAITI" to 90999

2010-01-15T03:43:34Z

Alex walked in after school today, Mom? Can I send a text to donate money to Haiti? It adds ten bucks to the phone bill, and the phone company donates all the money.

Of course you can, I said. Please do. And thank you.

"U.S. cell phone users have contributed more than $5 million in $10 increments to the Red Cross for Haiti disaster relief, by far the largest outpouring of support via mobile devices in history."

Rather than send a text, I chose Direct Relief. They are a stand-up company.

I've been following the harrowing news reports on NPR.org, but it's so very difficult to read, and I have such a hard time looking at the photos. All those bodies, and the tiny ones among them hurting to look at even more. I read about an eight year old girl in a makeshift hospital. Her whole family is gone. Eleven people. And I look at my own eight year old girl across the dinner table tonight as she tells us, over her bowl of homemade chicken soup, what she wants to do for the science fair. None of her ideas are experiments, really. They're inventions. But her eyes are so bright and she's gesturing with her spoon as she talks about hooking up a camera to a remote-controlled car or seeing who in the school is the strongest by building some kind of lifting machine that she can keep adding weight to. She will invite everyone via the school intercom system to test it out when classes are over with one afternoon next week, even the fifth graders. And suddenly I am crying for how broken this other girl must feel. This other little girl just like mine, this utterly orphaned girl, who maybe a couple of nights ago was making her family laugh at the supper table as she talked about what she wanted to do.

Meet Chrystal (or maybe Chloe)

2010-01-07T23:52:11Z

Looks like I really do need to spring for that AGD brush.

Actually, I am the one knitting the scarf, but I made her be in the picture because my hair looks even worse than hers. I'm happy that Willow is happy with her new doll, and I'm happy to knit it a scarf, but honestly, some dolls skeeve me out. It must be the no-blinking thing.

Dive in

2010-01-05T18:50:43Z

I had this weird dream last night that involved water and scuba diving and really cool steampunk kinda stuff. One part of it was Willow, standing on an indoor platform with her hands held up above her head like a diver. A diving board diver, not a scuba diver. There was a man with a clipboard who told her to hold still, and then he made a calculation based on the angle of her pressed-together hands and drew an X on the floor and said that if she dove from that spot she'd, go up seven feet in the air and land right here.

Sunday morning

2010-01-04T01:00:46Z

Mini pancakes.
Medium pancakes.
Traditional sized pancakes.
Heart shaped pancakes.

Made with melted butter in the batter. Not gluten-free. Served with the syrup that costs more, ounce per ounce (I think) than the good tequila.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T00:25:45Z

2009, I love you. A lot. I don't think I have ever had so many good days in one year. I'm sillilly happy about 2010 (that's two-thousand-ten) arriving all the same, even though it means I'll be turning forty.

Oh. I just got a little woozy.

I don't know, there's just something about a whole new year that feels good. Nothing's really different from yesterday, but everything is shinier to me all the same. I love new calendars and days that stay light longer than the ones before them.

Happy New Year xo

Do your duty, come on, shake shake, shake your booty

2009-12-29T16:09:35Z

Ever since the Sugar Babies at Halloween, I've been really into the holidays this year. Like, fifteen pounds into it. Roughly. You know, give or take. However much it is, it is 80% in my butt, so I've been calling it (previously ONLY to myself) my Christmas Booty. As in, Damn, I sat here waiting for those jeans to get out of the dryer so I could get dressed and go to that party, but ACK! Christmas Booty! They will not button. Why the hell did I give away all my larger jeans?

This morning I was in the shower, and I thought that I'd better shave my legs. I have a shower stall, not a tub, which means that if I want to shave my legs, I have to prop one foot up on the wall and balance on the other. In order to keep the water from spraying into my face and onto my legs and washing off the soap before I am ready to rinse, I put my backside to the water and face the back of the shower stall. So this morning, I finish a row or strip or whatever you call it, and I go to rinse the razor in the stream of water behind me. Only, instead of just rinsing the razor, my arm, which is not yet used to the dimensions of the Christmas Booty, didn't extend out and away from my body enough. I felt a scratch. Then a sting. I stood there, with one foot up on the wall, shaking my head at my own self, thinking, Really, Jen? Really? Did you really just CUT the Christmas Booty? While shaving your LEGS?

I looked down and didn't see anything and thought for a second that I was okay. But, then little droplets of blood appeared in a two and three-quarter inch (again, roughly) line right across the back of the Christmas Booty.

After my shower, I put on a couple of Hello Kitty bandaids, because I figured the CB would like the cute factor. Today I will wear a skirt instead of my too-tight pants, and I will eat all the rest of the peanut butter fudge** so that I can stop eating it. (That is Holiday Logic. Don't look at me like you don't know what I mean.)

** Um. I just googled the peanut butter fudge and turns out it's got like 375 calories PER PIECE. If I do the math I will faint, so I'm going to just, as Willow says, EX that window.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T19:06:16Z

If I had it together enough to send out cards, I think I'd use this photo. Or maybe this:

But, you know, I don't even have it together enough to blog.

Happy Holidays! xo

Not Calm family mealtime

2009-12-10T15:23:24Z

Tuesday night the kids and I were having supper (Tuesday=Tacos, soft shell) and Sophie and Nate were horsing around, and Sophie, even though I've taught her better manners, pretended to be grossed out and pretended to throw up. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw Willow go pale and put her hand up to her mouth, her little body stiffen. STOP SOPHIE! I yelled, and Willow had a kind of hiccupy shoulder heave and looked woosy. You're making Willow sick, DON'T. DO. THAT.

So, of course, she and Nate both start in, heaving and gagging and giggling, and Willow again nearly throws up and so I stand up and bang on the table with my fist and say, DUDE, if you make her throw up you will clean it ALL up.

The fake retching stops. Willow shudders, and starts to cry, climbing into my lap, They almost made me throw up. That was so GROSS.