Tag Archives: parenting

stay cool

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cool-waterStay cool, my Northeast friends. It’s gonna be another hot one!

Off to the South End. This time I am wearing sensible shoes. I had forgotten about the bricked, uneven, heaving sidewalks. And, leaving more time to roam around the neighborhood, because last time it took me 25 minutes to find a place to park.

I took Jack back to the vet yesterday. His panting, lack of appetite, and weakness are not heat-related. When the tech took the leash over to bring him in the back for blood work, Jack stared and stared at me without turning around and actually backed his way to the lab door. Poor boy.

And sleeping, 17 yr. old D? Upstairs. THAT poor guy worked the pizza ovens last night and came home completely wiped. Maybe NOT such a great summer job, afterall. His brother, C., didn’t come home last night. Which probably means he and his friend gamed until 5 or 6:00 a.m. What game? I can’t say.

Which reminds me of a moment, perhaps a year ago, on the release date of a hot, hot game, how weirdly proud I felt about being ‘in the know’ when a supermarket employee strolled down to another supermarket employee who was stocking the shelves (both young men, naturally), leaned in, and said, “Got Black Ops II yet?” – and I knew what he was talking about.

Yesterday, driving around, I started talking outloud (I do this. Sometimes with the phone held near ear to hide the true nature of my speech). I was noting hypocrisy, or let’s call it ‘the flexible nature of judgments’. Mine. How in law school I had written (and passionately written) a paper scorning the legal decisions that allowed the First Amendment to trump the safety of women (we’re talking pornography, here).  ‘How could anybody possibly believe that what we digest visually does not affect how we think, feel and act??!!’  And now, having watched from the sidelines as my boys have played endless hours of first-person-shooter games, I think, ‘Come on! They’re killing Nazi Zombies!!! How could that possibly affect their sensibilties?!”

Not unlike how pretzels came to be viewed as health food in our house.

And so it goes.

And now, it is time to pack up the iron etc. and go!

A silly diversion for today

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This morning, during a surface-clearing interval in my studio,  I found the little ditty below.  It was held with a magnet to our basement fridge, under a photograph.  I offer it to you, dear readers, as a little something to smile at today.  If you are like me, you have already cried in front of the television at least a few times.

It was written in haste, I’m sure, during the very, very hectic years of raising the boys.  It is silly, and it also contains a few truths (I’ll say no more about that!!)  It somehow captures (better than most scribblings of that era) what my life was like then.  It was part reaction to all the advice people love to give you when you are a young parent, part reaction to a lot of the syrupy things one can read in print about being a parent, and part reaction to the boys themselves.

Not Quite a Prayer for Parents

Try not to kill your kids

scream when they scream

change rules daily

ketchup is a vegetable and belching is

to be encouraged

buy all the toys

TV works            so do seat belts

give them lots of love

let them see you mad        medication is

an option — for all parties

celebrate victories

[photo taken at the historic Ropes Mansion Garden in Salem, MA yesterday.  These girls’ mother was sitting in the shade of a crab apple tree nearby while I took their picture]

Freak outs, Interruptions, Mandala

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Computer freak over the weekend.  I am NOT a PDA owner, I have an ordinary phone, I’ve sent perhaps six text messages so far and two never made it because I pressed the wrong button, I can go on vacation and not look at a screen — but this weekend, when a virus made our whole system go ga-ga, I panicked.  A little.  (And, probably only a little because I have such faith in my husband’s ability to fix these things).

And Ken DID fix it over the weekend — two days re-whatevering, and it seemed fixed — but yesterday, the weird pop ups popped up again.  And again.  Oh, GOD AND AGAIN!

So, if I disappear for awhile, you’ll know why.

And then, there are the interruptions.  The interruptions associated with having a recently disabled sister in need of lots of help (yes, she’s getting better, but housing? work? benefits? — the list is substantial)…  as well as the tasks associated with having two teenage children —

trips to the dermatologist, the dentist, the orthodontist, attending track meets, ordinary pick ups and drop offs, homework review, homework nag, computer supervision, computer nag, cooking, shopping, making lunch, making breakfast, cleaning up from breakfast, making dinner, making snacks before dinner, washing clothes, folding clothes, hunting for things like a particular sweatshirt or the mate to a ski glove,

and other jobs —

hunting for the source of stink in the fridge, cleaning the containers that held the stink in the fridge, cleaning out a closet now and then, stripping beds (I’ll never admit how ‘now and then’ THAT gets done), scrubbing tubs and toilets, unearthing the dining room table, looking for a summer cottage for 14, vacuuming up dog hair, walking the dog, asking other people to walk the dog, bathing the dog, cleaning up after my sister’s cat, feeding the cat, getting the car in for brake-fix, putting shit away, hanging up wet towels (Oh, wait a minute that last item belongs up with having two teenage boys in the house), putting more shit away…

all these things have a way of taking up time without necessarily granting me (or anyone?) the sense of having ‘done’ anything…

This is not a complaint, truly, not a complaint, but an observation that (I believe for cultural reasons having to do with gender), I have to keep making over and over.  I have to keep noticing over and over how my time is ‘not my own’ — not only because I forget, but because in forgetting, the accumulated pile of things not-done have a way of starting to criticize me.

And then, of course, there are the queries (upheld by various practices that I needn’t go into) —

why does anything attain the status of ‘interruption’?  Why is anything deemed unimportant?  Why can’t I see that things unfold as they should…

Ahhhhhhh.  There’s the rub.

Above, a mid-winter mandala that I don’t know what to do with — not a pillow, not a wall-hanging — don’t know.  But it cheers me up to look at its hot, bright colors.

In the Upper Field with Jack this morning (Bowen/Thompsonville field, not Heaven!), the light spoke straight to my heart about spring.  Snow squalls on the way this afternoon, frigid temps returning this weekend, I know, I know, but the light does not lie… the oaks ringing the field were awash in a lemony-rose color that tickled my chest in a way that only people who live in wintry climes understand.