the indignities of (middle) age

I went to a new(ish) little farmer's market today and it was lovely. But getting there, well, that's another story.

I had given my last $10 to Mariah so she could take Nick to the movies (more on that in a later post) and figured I'd just hit up a cash machine before I got to the market. Stopped at the first one on the way and--no dice. "Your transaction has been denied. Contact your financial institution."

This happened on our trip two weeks ago and I figured it was because I forgot my PIN. That is, I forgot the order of the numbers in my PIN. I know it, sort of, but sometimes it takes me a couple of tries to get the numbers in the right order. Fine.

After three tries I figured maybe the ATM was locking me out, so I went in search of another one. (Hope springs eternal...) I got to the next one I remembered, a little closer to the market--and the ATM was out of order. Fine, again.

This time I headed away from the market, towards a reliable ATM, one that I use all the time, one that always has money for me. But when I got to the parking lot I thought maybe I should, well, you know, contact my financial institution. Since that's what the machine told me to do and all.

So I called the number on my ATM card and started moving through the voice menu. Luckily many of the choices include "I forgot..." "I forgot my account number," "I forgot my member number," etc. The automated voice was remarkably forgiving.

"That's OK," she would say, "I"ll just need to get another piece of information from you."

Luckily I could remember my zip code, my husband's birthday, and my social security number. But at this point the voice system broke down anyway, because "change my PIN" didn't work for me. (I think you're actually supposed to know your old PIN. But if you did, why would you want to change it?)

It might be worth noting at this point that I have long had a terrible memory. Because of my terrible memory, I have many passwords and PINs logged into my palm pilot. Alas, I stopped carrying my palm pilot recently because it's very hard for me to read the entries in it without reading glasses. (Encroaching age, weakening vision. Let's not talk about memory.)

So, to recap: I'm still in the parking lot, talking to the machine that won't let me change my PIN. At this point I have a breakthrough, and say to the machine "talk to an agent," although it has not yet offered me this option. I am almost immediately connected to a human being who verifies that, yes, I am locked out of the ATM system because of multiple log-in efforts. "Did you forget your PIN?" he says. He is not amused by my total failure to recall even setting a "voice password," let alone remember the password, though he does ask for different information that I am in fact able to provide. He fails to agree with me that remembering the numbers out of order is not the same as forgetting the PIN, but he does help me reset the PIN to something I (think I) can remember. Half an hour after my trip to the market began, I was on my way again with money in my wallet and only a little bit of humiliation to temper my pleasure at the lovely vegetables.

Zucchini all the time...

I don't have a vegetable garden overproducing zucchini, but I've been on the receiving end in the past. I've never really minded; I like zucchini, and there's a lot you can do with it. Bread, muffins, pancakes, stir-frys, pastas...the list goes on. Lately, though, all we do with it is grill it. Three of us like it best that way and Nick will eat it if pressed.

Still, I'm always interested in a new zucchini recipe. Recently my mother sent me this one from the NYTimes for zucchini carpaccio--thinly-sliced zucchini marinated in olive oil and lemon and layered with pistachios and avocado. It looked delicious. Alas, though, we have no pistachios or avocados in the house. So I did a little research on epicurious and found these variations, one with mint and another with arugula. Alas, I didn't have those in the house, either, and in our current lethargic state grocery shopping is not high on my list of things to do.

So here's what I came up with instead--it's not quite a salad, because I've recently decided that salads make great pasta toppings (ok, maybe not coleslaw), but you could certainly leave out the pasta and make it as a salad as well.

Zucchini Pasta

3 small zucchini, very thinly sliced (I used a vegetable peeler)
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
about 8 basil leaves, more if you have it, thinly sliced
about 1/4 cup shaved parmesan or other hard grating cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 cup pine nuts
1 lb. pasta (I used gemelli)

Whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice. Spread the very thinly sliced zucchini on a plate (it can overlap) and sprinkle the basil over it. Pour the olive oil/lemon juice mixture over that and sprinkle with s&p to taste. Let sit while the pasta boils.

Once the pasta is done to your liking, toss it in a large bowl with a little olive oil. At this point either toss the zucchini with the pasta or divide the pasta into individual bowls and top with zucchini. Top with shaved parmesan and pine nuts (toasted or not, as you choose--I left them untoasted and they were lovely).

This is generous for four and could really probably serve six if you also had a green salad. It's a nice light dinner for a hot night. Even Nick didn't complain.

The House of Lethargy

While Nick's been getting over pneumonia, I think the rest of us have been succumbing to the bug that bit him. The pediatrician, when she saw Mariah, called it mycoplasma--all I know is, it's kicking us, hard. Nick is at the stage of thinking he's better and overdoing it, then crashing. (Today's a crash day.) Mariah refused to believe she was sick and threw a birthday party for a friend on Thursday--necessitating a trip to the doctor on Friday. The pediatrician mentioned at the time that I might want to call in for a prescription as well, as my throat was sore and my energy completely drained. I waited until today to fill it, but finally gave in when I woke up too early for the third morning in a row, unable to sleep for the pain in my throat. Mark started coughing yesterday and has uncharacteristically spent most of the day in bed.

A houseful of sick people is no fun. I'm glad there are no babies involved, though--no one's too terribly needy, so we're all just lying around watching movies, reading the paper (I've already finished the crossword puzzle, for a miracle!), knitting, and napping. It's a lovely day outside, and I wish we could enjoy it more, but it could be worse.

Lemonade Season

Nick has a lemonade stand. He and the neighbor boys have done this off and on for a couple of years now, and every now and then they make a little money. This weekend, though, Nick got ambitious. He made up some flyers using ComicLife, named the stand (NCL, for Nick's Corner Lemonade), and printed up a price list. He and I looked up a recipe for lemonade in the Joy of Cooking and we made up a big batch, with about eight lemons. And today he dragged a chair and a crate outside, set up the stand, and waited for cars and walkers to stop.

Mark and I tried to talk him out of it. It's a weekday, it's hot, no one will be walking by, we said.

$14.95 later, we are forced to eat our words. The ice is all melted, the lemonade all sold, and Nick is one happy guy. I have a feeling we'll be doing this a lot this summer. Or, to be precise, he will.

[edited to add: you can click the picture to make it bigger and read the text. He did it all himself. Also, the lemonade was selling for only 25 cents a cup, but people are often generous with the tips.]

Breaking up is hard to do...

So I mentioned a while back that I was decaffeinated. I meant to get back to that.

About two weeks ago I went in for my annual check-up. I saw a terrific nurse practitioner who noticed my knitting and we spent a lot of time chatting about that. She knits, too, but can't do complicated patterns because she does most of her knitting while waiting with laboring mothers. (Hmm, what's my excuse?) Anyway, during the course of our chat she mentioned that caffeine is a culprit in, among other things, heart palpitations, which I've noticed occasionally. So I thought maybe I could stop drinking coffee. [Aside: she said tea and chocolate didn't seem nearly as problematic, which made the prospect of going coffee-free seem much easier. She did laugh when I asked her about chocolate, though.]

I switched to decaf the next morning. I really only drink one, maybe one and a half, cups of coffee a day, so I thought it would be easy. I gave up coffee entirely during both pregnancies with no problem. And for a while all seemed well.

Now, coffee and I, we have a history. It began in high school. Seniors had the privilege of drinking coffee and chatting with teachers in the headmaster's study after lunch, and I got in the habit of downing two or three heavily sugared demitasse cups every day. At some point I noticed an inverse relationship between the number of cups I drank and the number of minutes I could sit still in my afternoon classes--but that was a long, slow realization, and the after-lunch conversation seemed more meaningful than the late afternoon classes anyway. (Ah, the rationalization, it starts early!) In college I began to be a coffee snob, bringing my own French press to the dining hall filled with my own grounds so I could brew it fresh rather than drinking the dining hall swill. When Starbucks became ubiquitous I found it rather too easy to spend over two dollars on a cup of hot steaming liquid. It just tasted so good!

But I'm not such a coffee snob that I can't just brew my own delicious decaf and take it from there. So that was the plan: decaf all day instead of just after lunch, a change I made years ago to stave off insomnia.

As I said, at first all seemed well. Nick's illness, our trip up north, all passed uneventfully--at least on the coffee front. I just drank decaf, or (for a few mornings) tea. I vaguely expected a headache or two from the withdrawal, but nothing. I was smugly congratulating myself.

Until Friday, when I had a splitting headache all day. I put it down to aftereffects of travel--my sunglasses are a little too tight, the drive had been long, I was finally home and able to relax, which is sometimes when stuff like that kicks in. That was all.

Until Saturday, when the headache persisted. Tylenol had no effect. A glass of wine with dinner did nothing. This morning I had two more tylenol before breakfast, but nothing changed.

Until lunch today, when I poured myself a cup of coffee, drank it, and about an hour later noticed the headache was gone. (And, yes, for the record: it did taste better than the decaf, too.)

So now the question is: can I drink one cup of coffee a week to stave off the headaches? Do I need to taper off more slowly? Was this just a coincidence?

Follow Up

So remember I said Nick was sick? Turns out he had pneumonia. So that was fun.

To backtrack: it was a big family weekend. We had a wedding on Saturday in Massachusetts, so a long drive Friday. In fact that's really why I took Nick in to the doctor on Tuesday; it felt a little like overkill, but with a trip coming up I wanted to get him checked out. The doctor didn't find much going on, and said there was a virus going around, so told us to take him home and let him rest, and bring him back if the fever spiked.

It did. Wednesday night it hit 104 and he developed a cough; that made me nervous enough to call the on-call doc, who prescribed a tepid bath and more ibuprofen. We took him back in Thursday morning, when a quick blood test showed no bacterial infection but the doctor now suspected pneumonia so gave us amoxicillin. He said it was fine to travel, but if the fever persisted until Saturday we should find a doctor in Massachusetts.

You've already figured out where this is going. As soon as the bride and groom had said "I do" we were on our way to the emergency room with Nick's temp at 102+. (Luckily the wedding was at their house and it was easy enough to get where we needed to.)

After an hour or so in the waiting room (and another dose of ibuprofen--or was this one tylenol?) Nick's temp was back down to only 99. [Aside: While we sat in the ER we watched a parade of mostly young men come in with various head and arm injuries: arm caught in a rope swing, head bump, arm possibly broken from falling off swing, etc. Fun Saturday in the country!] Nick sat quietly in a chair, leaning on me and watching golf on TV--a sure sign that he wasn't fully well. When we finally got in to the doc, the chest x-ray did show the pneumonia our pediatrician had suspected, and we got a new antibiotic and some further reassurance.

Best exchange with the ER doc:
Mark: So I shouldn't worry if he still has a fever?
ER Doc: You're a parent; you're going to worry. I want you to worry. But, yes, he will still have the fever off and on for a few days.

Best exchange with the ER nurse, who had just asked Nick to take his shirt off and put on a gown:
Nick: This is the second time today I've had to take my shirt off!
ER Nurse: Well, at least I'm not asking you to take a bath!

Thankfully corporate America (today masquerading as CVS) knows us, so it was an easy matter to get the prescription filled. Rather than return to the reception, we headed back to our hotel, stopping for fabulous organic pizza and home-made ice cream on the way. Nick's energy was low for the next three days, but he's definitely on the mend. And we were able to spend most of the next day hanging out with the bride and groom, as well as with other assorted relatives, so missing the reception was no biggie. Nick and Mariah played Guitar Hero and other video games with their cousins, Mark went fishing with his brother the groom, and I chatted with in-laws and knitted. There are worse ways to spend a day, certainly--though I'd rather not repeat the ER visit any time soon.

Happy Father's Day

I spent a surprising amount of my childhood hoping to be my dad when I grew up. Oh, I didn't want to be a boy or anything -- having two brothers pretty much dispelled any mystique of masculine superiority -- but I did want my dad's job. It looked like a pretty sweet deal to me: a little telling people what to do, a little dressing up, a little singing, and a lot of reading, writing, and being at home when other people's dads weren't. Yes, he did have to work on Sundays, but then again he was home at least one day during the week to make up for it.

Read the rest here...

Decaffeinated

Nick is sick. He's been achey and feverish since Monday night, waking up drenched in sweat and terrified at odd hours. He's in good spirits, but I know he's frustrated to be missing these last, "fun" days of school. His class is working on a poetry project: each kid writes some poems, edits them (with adult help), copies them neatly into a bound blank book, and illustrates them. I was the adult helper for an hour or so last week and these kids are really writing some great stuff, from the ode to snot by one somewhat mischievous kid, to the acrostic commemorating a lost friend, to the shape poem elongating the child's b-o-r-e-d-o-m with the SOLs (VA's standards of learning tests, for those who don't know). They worked with focus and enthusiasm even though they had a sub running the show and didn't really know me.

In fact, the last time I worked with these kids I was wrangling them backstage at their big dance event a few weeks ago, and I was not their favorite person then. One pair of boys was misbehaving over and over again, and I finally looked one in the eye and said,

"Do you know who I am?"
Nervous nod.
"I'm Nick's mom."
"I know."
"OK, so if you know that, I'm sure Nick has also told you that I'm not very nice. In fact, I'm kind of mean. So you want to do what I say, OK?"
Another, more energetic, still nervous nod. And, for what it's worth, good behavior for the next quarter hour or so.

Given that history, I was glad no one ran screaming away from me. In fact, they brought their poems to me gladly and accepted my corrections and comments gratefully. I felt bad when I had to make corrections--as if correct spelling were the most important thing about their work. (Truly, by the time they're in college, many of them will believe that, or a version of it.) I tried to praise the energy, the idea, the form, first, and then move on to how "tragedy"* is really spelled, or why "putteet" isn't the same as "petite." They nodded and went back to work, hunching over their desks intently.

So that's what Nick is missing this week, though I'm hoping he'll make it in tomorrow. The idea is that he'll take cupcakes in, in the time-honored tradition of celebrating summer birthdays before the end of the year.

Oh, and the title of this post? I'm doing all this--helping out in the classroom, staying home with a sick kid, planning to bake cupcakes--without caffeine. But more on that another time. This has gone on too long already.


*I believe this poem was about being buried by paperwork. It was one of my favorites.

[edited to add: Nick has liked this project so much--and, to be fair, is so bored at home--that he just asked me to go in and pick it up for him so he could work on it at home.]

Things I've Learned Lately

• When I began the 48-Hour Book Challenge I piled up the recent library books on the stairs and just pulled volumes off as they appealed. One that I had also picked up, not for the challenge, was Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting without Tears. It's one of those books that you hear about all the time. It's not one of the pretty new knitting books with lots of pictures; it's all just practical advice. And I learned that not only did I learn to knit wrong, I purled wrong as well. This sort of makes sense, as she explains it. Somehow my "German" needle-holding technique led to the wrong-way purl, which makes the wrong-way knit almost necessary. So now I know how to purl the right way, it makes knitting the right way easier. Sometimes the secondary technique is actually the one that matters.
• I'm not good at following the rules right now. So while I did indeed start the notebook described here, I have not yet used it in the way she describes.
  
• I think the not-following-rules thing is a function of age. It began just as I entered my forties. I remember one morning standing up to Nick's preschool teacher, who didn't like how long it took us to say good-bye in the mornings ("Y'all linger," she said disapprovingly). I ignored her, figuring I could take as long to say good-bye to my baby as I --and he-- wanted. That didn't bother him, but he did get upset with me when I didn't cross the street at the crosswalk and backtalked the security guard who gave me a hard time about it. I was ok with Nick wanting to follow the rules--that's appropriate for a four-year-old, after all. But I sure wasn't going to let a guy in a uniform tell me I didn't know how to cross an empty street, holding my son's hand.
  
• The thing is, I was like Nick long into my adulthood. Rules matter. I like rules: they tell you what's expected, they simplify decision-making, they provide order and continuity in what can be a disordered world.
  
• But maybe what I really like--and certainly what Nick liked at that age, and still does--is ritual. The calming certainty that things will be done the same way as before. Nick's good-bye ritual at age three was a fascinating thing to behold (and worth its own essay, another time); one of my favorite things about it was that it seemed such a child-sized reflection of my own need for order and consistency.
  
• I've become one of those people who says "when I was your age" or "when I was younger" even "at my age." This, too, is obviously a function of age (middle).
  
• When I was younger order mattered to me more. I need to think about this for a while, but I'm seeing the signs everywhere--not just in petty defiance of preschool functionaries, or the refusal to follow directions in a writing book. In unpaid bills and missed deadlines (not so good); in messy creative re-thinkings of previous projects (maybe ok).
• At a party the other evening I found myself saying "at my age" and being called on it. Turns out no one there believed I was over forty (or at least they were really really flattering me, for no particular reason). I think I might start telling people I'm fifty just to hear the flattery. (Yes, I'm aware of how this one might backfire. So probably not.)
  

MotherTalk Blog Book Tour: Writing Motherhood

I began reading Writing Motherhood on Monday evening, and Tuesday morning I went out and bought the notebook I'd been eying for months. I had a little notebook in my purse already, but it's littered with to-do-lists, dimensions of the refrigerator we replaced last fall, lists of books to read, knitting patterns, the model numbers for the bionicles Nick most wanted for Christmas—well, you get the idea. It is, in fact, a mother's notebook par excellence. But it's—mostly—missing what I most want to have in it: my writing, daily reflections, ideas for further exploration. Inspired by my reading of Lisa Garrigues' new book, then, I got a bigger one, one that can hold all I'm already carrying around and my own words as well.

The Mother's Notebook is only one of the helpful ideas in Garrigues' new book, but it's probably the central one, the one on which everything else depends. Once you get the Mother's Notebook going, you've got invitations to write, inspirations from other writers, reminders that you're not alone, and suggestions for ways to share your writing. It's almost a parent-writing class in volume form: just add students and stir. That's not surprising, as it comes out of Garrigues' experience as a teacher and workshop leader. It gives the book a useful structure: one really could just work through it, preferably with a group, and jumpstart a writing practice that had gone stale, or get one off the ground for the first time. But it can also be a useful reference tool, a resource like other writing books, to dip into for inspiration and useful reminders. The writing prompts Garrigues crafts—she calls them "invitations," which makes them sound, well, more inviting than "prompts"—are mostly linked to motherhood, but little in the book would be foreign to any writer, especially any writer who does something else, whether paid or unpaid work. (And, really, how many writers don't do "something else"?) What motherhood adds to the writing process, then, in addition to great material, is a sense of balance: other writing books may assume all you do, or all you want to do, is write, but Garrigues knows you've already got a lot on your plate. Fifteen minutes a day is all she asks, for starters; then she adds play-dates and time-outs as well as regular writing group meetings, making it all seem manageable and even fun for a time-pressed parent.

Here's what I wrote in my notebook:

Tuesday morning, conversation w/Nick, ruling out causes for his stomach ache. I ask if he's pooped lately. Yes—so no constipation, I say. "If you got constipated, would you throw up, or would you just explode?" he asks. Much hilarity.

Ah, potty humor. It never loses its appeal. Maybe that's not the most interesting conversation we've ever had—indeed, I know it isn't. But it is representative of our conversations lately—equal parts true curiosity and nine-year-old gross-out. And I know I wouldn't remember it if I didn't write it down.

Will it ever make it out of the Mother Notebook? Well, it just did, didn't it? But no, I doubt I'll use it in a story or essay. Garrigues reminds us, though, that writing begets writing, and that paying attention is one of the skills both writers and parents need to cultivate. I may not need to remember our conversation about constipation, but I do need to listen, and writing things down helps me do that.

Now that I've finished reading the book I want to go back and reflect on it as well, pay attention to the parts I read through quickly, make a plan for how best to use it. This book came to me at a great time: as summer begins I'm thinking already of how to jumpstart my writing, and I have several projects I plan to work on through the next academic year. Inspired by Garrigues, I'm thinking of trying to get a small local writing group going (leave me a comment if you're in central VA and think that might be fun), and I'm making a resolution to write in my notebook every day.

Check out the conversation with Lisa Garrigues here, and the other posts in the blog book tour here.

Kindergarten readiness?

(Cross-posted from the other blog...)

Lots of posts out in the world today about yesterday's NYT article on kindergarten readiness. The take-home lesson I got from it was that if you can afford to think about "red-shirting" your child (keeping him--and it's most often him--home for a year when he's technically eligible for kindergarten), then whether you do or not, he'll probably be fine. That is, school "success" is primarily a socio-economic, not an age, issue. If you need the free day-care, and your kid isn't really ready for school, you'll send him/her anyway and s/he may not "succeed" as well as one might hope. If, on the other hand, you don't need the free day-care, you can probably provide what your kid needs.

Yes, this is reductive. But note that all the "red-shirt" success stories are from people who didn't need free day-care.

Anecdotes:

I was a young starter: with a February birthday I should have started kindergarten at five, but since I knew how to read, I started at four. (I was briefly "held back" when we moved, but then started first grade--in another school--at five.) At my recent college reunion I kept reminding people I was a year further away from fifty than they were. Nice. (Hmm, maybe those social skills still need work?)

I probably should have taken a gap year between high school and college. My parents wanted me to, but I was academically ambitious and up for the challenge. Emotionally/psychologically, maybe not so much, but I got by ok and I don't feel scarred by the experience. As a nerdy kid, I was used to being a bit on the outskirts of things socially anyway--I'm not sure age had a whole lot to do with it. I did take three years between college and graduate school, and that was an absolute necessity, in my case. I think grad school would have chewed me up and spat me out at 21, but at 24 I had supported myself for three years, moved across the country, and figured out that I was both employable and at least marginally date-worthy. I no longer thought my only successes would be academic, and that made grad school's pressures much easier to bear.

Mariah, with her December birthday, is one of the older kids in her grade. One of her best friends, three months older, just graduated from high school; Mariah's got another year. She's academically at the top of her class and seems to be holding her own socially/emotionally. She could have skipped at one point, but we opted for a multi-age grouping (in a Montessori middle school) instead. She doesn't seem to have any regrets, and is considering taking a gap year between HS and college even though this would have her turning 20 as a first-year college student. (I wish all my students would take a gap year...)

Nick, with his early August birthday, is one of the youngest kids in his grade. He's not markedly smaller than other boys--this is the year some are shooting up and some aren't, and he's still right in the middle--nor is he particularly delayed socially as far as I can tell. (He does sometimes cry more easily than other kids, but is that his age or just his temperament? Hard to say...though it's true that his mother was a big cry-baby in elementary school.) Academically, he's doing more than fine. According to "conventional wisdom"--which is that boys mature more slowly, so should redshirt if anyone should--he should have been held back and Mariah sent ahead, but we actually did benefit from the free day-care (public preschool at age four) and never really thought seriously about holding him back. Will he struggle in college? If he's like his sister, maybe we'll suggest a gap year at that point. Right now, though, he's fine.

One more anecdote: when my younger brother was tested for kindergarten, he was asked to draw a man, but drew something else--maybe a table?--instead. He was a bit young (November birthday) but pretty bright. The teacher or principal or someone called my mother and said he wasn't ready, he couldn't draw a man. My mother, though, talked to my brother who said he just didn't feel like drawing a man--and convinced the school administration to take him anyway. Years later he admitted that he really couldn't draw a man--but he did know how to game the system!

So there are my anecdotes. I find myself wishing more and more for flexibility in schooling, for some kind of readiness-testing that looked at the whole child rather than just the age or just a test or two. Obviously that's what home-schooling gives people, and that's absolutely what's most appealing about it. But for those who can't or won't take that option, for whatever reason--what to do?

knitted wire bracelet

This is a gift for a dear friend's daughter, the first of our cohort to graduate from high school. It's knitted out of 28-gauge wire with glass beads strung randomly on the wire. Easy and fun.

Saturday accomplishments, family edition

• One batch of chocolate chip scones, made and partially eaten
  
• Three SAT II tests, taken
  
• Two hours of club penguin, snuck in there before I noticed
• One cd collection, cleaned, dusted and organized
• 18 songs, burned to the "Nick's favorite hits" cd
• Two bathrooms, cleaned
• One water-damaged wall, partially restored
• One picture, reframed and hung
• (assorted kitchen equipment mildly damaged during picture restoration)
• One graduation gift, completed (photos above)
  
• One trip to the pool, planned for noon, accomplished by 4:30
• Six chicken thighs and assorted summer squash, marinated, cut up, and grilled
• One family, reasonably satisfied with the day
  

weekend update

Mariah and I spent the long weekend (ours started Thursday) in Boston and environs. I had a conference, she wanted to look at colleges. It seemed we could do both, and we (mostly) did. The conference was huge, but the children's lit papers were good and it was helpful to get some feedback on my paper and catch up with some folks. We were in a great location, too--we could walk to the things pictured here.

The Make Way for Ducklings Statue

The Swan Boat (made famous, at least for us, in The Trumpet of the Swan.)

It is a great pleasure to travel with Mariah, who loves children's literature as much as I do, and who took all the pictures here.

True graffiti:

On Sunday we had a little blogger meet-up with Becca and her daughter M before we had to get on the plane to come home. That was truly lovely; we'd met before, Becca and I, but in our pre-blog years, and it was great to catch up in person. M and Mariah hit it off instantly, and Becca and I fell into the kind of conversation you have with a friend you know well but don't see often enough. A perfect end to a great weekend.

I'm sure there's more to say--about the waitress who snapped at me, "When I get to it, OK?" when I asked for more water, about the cabdriver who spent the entire drive to Logan airport motioning as if to run his hands through his hair, but three inches above his head, about the good talks we heard, the great food, the lovely (if surprisingly warm) weather--but you'll just have to imagine it. Mariah's back at school (the attendance lady called to tell me she wasn't, though she actually was), and I've got so much paper piled on the dining room table that the table is invisible. Sigh.

maybe this is only funny to me

Apparently not everyone's been paying attention to the altered rhythms in our house lately. As we got in the car to go to school this morning, Nick said to me, "Where's your bag?"

"I'm not going in to the office, so I don't need it."

"Oh. Is your school out already?"




(Graduation was May 14.)

more on boys and danger

Jody over at Raising WEG has a great post about the title and marketing of The Dangerous Book for Boys. Of course she's right, and I'm sorry I didn't really address it in my earlier post. I was interested in thinking about danger and kids in general, and the way that has played out with my particular kids--which has gender implications, but I didn't raise the implications of the book's title itself. It is, as Jody says, a problem to suggest that only boys are interested in dangerous stuff, or that you're not a boy if you're not interested in dangerous stuff (or not a girl if you are). So go read her; she's smart about it.

I was also thinking about stereotypes and gender yesterday when I went to the last of Nick's four dance performances of the weekend. (I was also backstage mom for one, and went to the second one with the rest of the family.) The kids were spectacular. For the opening and finale there were 700 (give or take) kids on stage, all dancing more or less in synch. They smiled, they clapped, they stomped and turned and bounced and swayed. I loved every minute of it, and as far as I could tell so did they. Nick liked it so much he's trying out for the advanced program, which involves a lot more ballet technique (and a lot more performance).

So on the way out I was more than annoyed to hear this exchange between parents. There were two couples, and the mom from one said to the dad from the other: "Wouldn't you be proud if your son got picked for the ballet?" Only, from her tone, it was clear that she didn't think he would be--that, in fact, it would be somewhat embarrassing to have a boy in the ballet. She followed up a minute later with, "well, ballet and soccer, I guess they balance each other out." (Doesn't she know soccer is European, and European men aren't manly, either? Oh, never mind...)

How you could walk out of the performance we'd both just seen and assume that somehow dancing wasn't quite manly enough for boys stymied me. (Never mind that nine- and ten-year-old boys hardly ought to be aspiring to manliness anyway...)

Luckily Nick doesn't think dancing isn't manly. Well, he wouldn't: his tae kwon do instructor, whom he reveres, danced with the ballet for years. And breaks cinder blocks with his hand. Take that!

Mother Talk Blog Bonanza: Danger!

Yes, here I am, participating in another blog bonanza, related to another book I haven't read. (Disclaimer: the MotherTalk Blog Bonanzas are linked to topics raised by certain books in the news, but not necessarily to the books themselves. So the not reading thing shouldn't be an issue.)

Anyway. I've been thinking a little about boys and danger lately, mostly because Nick has had two black eyes and more than a few bruises and scrapes in the last three weeks. This came as a shock to me because he was my cautious baby. Mariah threw herself into things as a little one: she started walking at ten months, before she really knew how to stop. So she fell a lot, she ran into things, she tripped. And she got back up again, and again, and again. We had a tall metal slide near our apartment in LA, and I remember my dad being shocked at how boldly she climbed up it, grabbed the overhead bar, and flung herself down it, thumping her feet HARD as she came down.

She did break a wrist doing something similar in our basement a few years later, but for the most part she was fine. And at some point she became a little more cautious, a little more like her mother.

Nick, though, was slow to walk, and careful when he did it. He looked behind himself when he sat down, making sure he had a clear spot. He crawled downstairs backwards, carefully. We did have an emergency room visit with him, but it was pneumonia, not a broken arm. Because he was such a careful kid, we stopped worrying about him, stopped insisting he wear a helmet when he scootered or skateboarded, let him play outside with friends without supervision. (And yes, we live on a reasonably busy city street--it's not New York, but it's no suburban cul-de-sac, either.)

Somehow, though, he's gone the other way from Mariah: as she got more cautious, he got less so. Is this a gender thing? Or did her early risk-taking teach her fear and caution, while his early caution gave him confidence? In either event, I've seen a range of behavior from both kids, none of it so terribly dangerous that it gives me pause, though some of it might not quite pass muster with the safety police. Since I grew up playing in a vacant lot (where, yes, I did once get snagged by barbed wire and need a tetanus shot), walking to school by myself, and riding the bus to the end of the line for fun, I wish for more freedom for my kids, not more rules. So far they seem like they can handle it.

(The book I'm --loosely-- talking about here is The Dangerous Book for Boys, by the way. I'm intrigued, I must admit...)

On buying bourbon at mid-day

Mark didn't think it was a good idea, going into the ABC store at mid-day, but I thought it was fine. Growing up in New York I remember Mom putting a bottle of scotch or vodka into the cart along with the rest of the groceries--there it was on the shelf, and it was no big deal to buy a bottle now and then. When we lived in LA the Safeway across the street from us sold "Fresh Fish" and "Liquor," according to the signs outside--to us it always looked like they were advertising "Fresh Fish Liquor" and we used to refer to our occasional booze purchases as such. Buying booze at the grocery store seems so wholesome and normal.

The ABC store, though, with its haze of stale cigarette smoke and even staler regrets, does feel a little seedy, especially at mid-day. But I wanted bourbon for a marinade (really! 1/4 cup each bourbon and low-sodium soy sauce, 2 tbl. brown sugar--a great marinade for two one-pound pork tenderloins) and I braved the atmosphere. There was a well-dressed guy in a bow tie picking up some good gin, and I brought my bourbon to the counter proudly, ignoring the tiny bottles of schnapps that sit next to the counter, like packs of gum in the grocery store. Does anyone just throw a couple into the cart at the last minute, as they might the gum? I don't know.

So all was well until I went to sign the electronic signature pad, and my signature came out looking like I had the shakes. I tried to laugh it off: "my signature always looks terrible on these things" and the clerk said "everyone's does" with a mixture of condescension and, um, was it derision? Did he think "everyone" had the shakes? Doesn't he know my signature looks just like that at the grocery store, too? (Where, sadly, they don't even sell beer and wine, let alone bourbon or fish liquor...)

But even that would have been ok. I know, after all, that my signature always comes out weird on those things. Backing out of the narrow parking lot--really, just keeping my foot on the clutch and rolling--I was thinking more about my signature than the telephone pole which I, therefore, bumped. Rather gently, but still. It's pretty scarred up, that telephone pole.

I guess a lot of people are buying bourbon at mid-day.

Black Belt

Here's Nick receiving his black belt yesterday, after his successful test. Even before he tested, he had to submit two essays on martial arts topic for approval. Here they are:

VITAL SPOTS & THEIR USES
by Nick

What are vital spots? Vital spots are the unprotected parts of your body. They are also more sensitive than other parts therefore you are caused more pain when you are hit in a vital spots.

The main reason for martial artists to know vital spots is so they can get away from a fight before they get hurt too much. Martial artists use vital spots because we're not in a fight to hurt somebody, we're in a fight because we were attacked and we want to get away as soon as possible. This means we hit somebody so we can run away before we get hurt too much. I know that sounds like cowardice, but "He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day." Also vital spots are different with different weapons (empty hand, blunt weapons, etc...). With a blunt weapon, you would aim for the bony parts of the body, such as skull, top of the hand, knee, or top of the foot. But with something with a sharp edge, say a sword or dagger, you would aim for the fleshy parts, such as stomach, bicep, or thigh. With empty hand you can aim for both. If you're using a palm strike you aim for blunt weapon vital spots, but if you're using a punch, you aim for the sharp weapon vital spots. This may make vital spots sound confusing but you only need to know the main ones, such as: solarplex, shin, chin, nose, and ear.

Meditation
by Nick

What is meditation? There are at least two different kinds of meditation, but martial artists only use one. The kind we use is used to stimulate chi or ki (energy*).

When meditating, you are supposed to clear your mind and relax. But there's more to meditating than sitting down and closing your eyes. There is a proper way to meditate and an improper way to do it. The proper way is to sit up straight, have your hands palm up in a giving/receiving position, with your tongue at the roof of your mouth. Breathe in seven counts, hold it four counts, breathe out seven counts, hold it out four counts. Also when meditating, you should breathe through your lower diaphragm, meaning when you breathe in, your stomach inflates and when you breathe out, your stomach deflates.

Meditation is to relax your mind, but also to focus your body. When you meditate before your martial arts practice, it will help you loosen up even though your body is still focused. This combination of relaxation and focus is what you need to stay calm so you're able to keep control of your movements and aim your strikes.



*Chi is important to martial artists because it helps us focus but it also is our energy, and how would we defend ourselves without energy?

bad mother award

Nick went to school last week with a black eye. He got it playing baseball out in the front yard with the neighbors. It was a plastic ball--something like a whiffle ball--but he got it right in the eye at close range. Mark and I were in the back yard and heard screaming, and it took us a minute to register that it was 1) Nick and 2) pain. Mark ran out of his shoes as we both pounded up the sidewalk to find out what was going on. We got ice right on it and it subsided after really only a day or two of bruising.

This evening Mark and I were in the back of the house and we heard a pounding on the front door. Nick has a habit of going out the back door and then pounding to be let in the front, and I was a little annoyed as I walked up to let him in. He almost fell inside, dropping his scooter on the front porch and holding his hand to his cheek. I had him in the kitchen for ice before I asked him what had happened. Face plant while attempting a trick on the scooter. Ouch. I felt bad for being annoyed when I heard the pounding.

The ice seems to have kept the swelling over the eye down, again, but the road rash on his cheek is --well, it's there. It's big. It stung when he showered and it'll definitely be there for a few days, maybe even until his dance performance next week. Let's hope not. I had a little thought that maybe some safety equipment while scootering would be in order...but then again, how do you protect your face?

(Nick says, "I'll definitely look like a settler, not like a Londoner." His dance performance tells the story of the Jamestown settlement. I think he'll be ok.)