Month: May 2005

An Hour and a Half Segment of My Day

Prepare lunch. YoungestBoy returns home from his half-day of school. Instruct 12-year old to watch CuteBaby roll on floor. Hear Babygirl say, “The baby spit up!” Tell her, “Get a tissue and wipe it up!” Phone rings. Agree to let YoungestBoy go play at his friend’s house.

Give lunch to DaycareKid. Turn on dishwasher. Get distracted by stuffed-full refrigerator. Begin cleaning it out. Stop.

Check on baby. Discover he’s eaten half a tissue which is now wadded on the roof of his mouth. CuteBaby’s mom arrives. Confess that her baby ate a tissue. Wave bye-bye. Sit at computer so YoungestBoy can dictate the novel he’s decided to write, even though naptime begins in five minutes.

DaycareKid appears, whining. “What’s wrong?” He points to feet, mutters. Sniff, sniff. What’s that smell? Oh no! He pooped his pants! Cart him to bathroom. Phone rings again. Talk to husband. NeighborKid walks in, starts talking to me. Wave him away. DaycareKid cries in bathroom, waiting to be cleaned. Get off phone.

Turn on television for Babygirl’s pre-naptime show (“Max and Ruby”–we call it the “funny rabbit show). Wave good-bye to YoungestBoy as he climbs into his friend’s van. Find wipes, clothing for DaycareKid. Begin cleaning him. Get poop under fingernails. Put him in tub, wash, rinse. To bed he goes. Deposit poopy clothes in washing machine.

Nap with Babygirl. Answering machine clicks on. I’ve slept for ten minutes. She’s asleep on the floor. Go downstairs. Eat lunch. Wonder what to make for dinner. Call Greyhound to see how far $150.00 will take me.

Don’t Mess With Me: I Have Stamps and I’m Not Afraid to Use Them

A couple of years ago, we had our mortgage refinanced. The mortgage company set up our account to hold funds in escrow for our home owner’s insurance and our taxes.

A year later, a representative from my insurance company called and politely requested that we remit the $441.00 we owed for our policy.

“Oh,” I said, “Our mortgage company is responsible for that payment.”

“Oh,” she said, “They said they weren’t and that we should call you.”

“Oh,” I said, “Let me call them and get this straightened out.”

I called my mortgage company and the customer service representative was unhelpful, but did notice that they failed to withhold the funds. Oops, they said. Sorry. We’ll fix that and you’ll have to pay the insurance company yourself.

We live on a very tight budget and at the time, I did not have an extra $441.00 lurking in my bank account or my pockets or even under the couch cushions. I can’t remember how I managed to scrape together the cash, but I was irked at having to do so.

I used to work in customer service in the correspondence department, and I know a thing or two about writing a compelling letter to a company. I whipped up a complaint letter. I asked that they “make me happy.” I demanded an apology and a refund of my $441.00. I did this all in a tone so sweet it could give you a cavity.

Some numbskull called a month or so later. As I recall, I was holding my infant daughter while she cried and he explained to me that there was nothing he could do for me. I said, “Well, let me talk to your supervisor.” He left me dangling on hold for a while, then returned and said, “My supervisor says this is our regular procedure and there’s nothing we can do.”

“Then send my letter to your supervisor and tell her that I want a written response that makes me happy.”

I never heard back.

About six months later, I sent a second polite letter, decrying the insurance company’s lack of responsiveness, describing my unhappiness. I asked again for $441.00 and an apology. In writing. I am unable to accept phone calls during the day as I am busy taking care of two babies, I wrote.

Soon after, I received a phone call. My annoyance abated when the customer service representative asked for a copy of the $441.00 bill. I mailed it in. And never heard back from them.

Six months later, give or take, I sent another letter, still polite, more insistent, suggesting that I would never be able to refer anyone to this particular insurance company if they did not make me happy. I received a generic response telling me they were researching my issue and that they’d respond within three weeks.

Another six months passed. I wrote yet another letter, attaching my previous letters. This time, I researched the name of the company’s president and including a notation at the bottom “cc: President’s Name.” (I didn’t actually send a carbon copy, though–I figured just the idea of him getting a copy would motivate them.)

Yesterday, I received a phone call from the office of the company’s president. She explained my problem (as if I were clueless) and said, “So, we could reimburse you the $441.00 from your escrow account, but then you’d have a negative balance in that account.”

I said, “NO! I don’t want the money to come from MY account. I want the money to come from the company’s account to compensate me for my inconvenience. This was not my mistake. This was your mistake.”

So, she offered to reimburse half the amount to me.

I agreed. (Now, I think I should have held out for the whole amount.)

Don’t mess with this housewife. I have a computer, a printer and a supply of postage stamps and I’m not afraid to use them. If you are a company who crosses me, I will prevail or bug you until I die trying because at some point, composing demand letters highlighting your incompetence and demanding satisfaction becomes a hobby to me. Your “no” only means I need to talk to someone higher in the food chain at your company.

Persistence pays. And so does my mortgage company. Ha.

In the Beginning, at the End, and a Little in Between

My alarm rang at 5:10 a.m. and I decided on the spot to forsake my walking partner and stay in bed. My head felt like a granite stone stuck to my pillow by the force of gravity. Who can get out of bed with such a heavy head, let alone walk with it balanced precariously upon one’s shoulders?

CuteBaby’s mom dropped him off with this concerned comment, “Last night, he had some paper in his poop.” I responded with horror, “From my house?” She didn’t come out and say so, but seriously, the kid is five months old. It’s not as if he’s been to the library and chowed down on a few books while she was working. He rolls now and my floor is admittedly not pristine, so apparently he found and ingested some kind of paper while under my care. I suck.

While he napped, I vacuumed until my a wide ribbon of gray smoke wafted from the vacuum cleaner. I changed the belt and cleaned the filter, to no avail. The vacuum is dead. May the vacuum rest in peace.

When I returned from Target tonight, the boys were sprawled in the family room watching television. I ignored them until a ruckus broke out. TwinBoyA yelled at YoungestBoy for spilling his glass of milk which TwinBoyA left sitting on the carpet in the middle of the floor since dinnertime three hours earlier.

He thought YoungestBoy was at fault for not noticing this glass of milk in the middle of the floor.

And so ends a delightful day of digested paper and spilled milk.

Tomorrow’s goals:
Prevent CuteBaby from swallowing foreign objects.
Plan dinner before dinner-time.
Keep children alive.

I’m keeping it simple.

Counting Down

Come close. I can only whisper this. Shhhhh.

I can’t wait until my twins are old enough to leave home. Only six more years.

I’m not kidding.

This afternoon at 2:30 p.m., Babygirl woke just as my husband took the twins to their meeting with their mentor teacher. I’d secretly hoped she’d sleep longer so the house would be quiet all at once. It was not to be. Instead, her long-legged, lean body wobbled on my left knee while I clicked and clacked on the computer keyboard and discovered that the twins had done very little work for the day.

We are on Week Five, counting down to the end of the school year. They must accomplish a great deal of work so we can end on schedule. It’s not optional. Each day this week, they need to do eight lessons. Today, TwinBoyA did three lessons successfully. TwinBoyB did four lessons, all wrong. He failed two assessments and skimmed over his literature to such an extent that he missed had no idea when the Middle Ages were and what the Crusades were.

I typed out a letter to each child explaining what they’d accomplished and what they needed to finish before they could play or watch television. Upon their return, TwinBoyA read his letter and cheerfully finished five more lessons. TwinBoyB exclaimed at the unfairness of life, stomped his feet, cried a few dramatic tears, declared he would not do anymore work and furthermore told me firmly, “DO NOT TALK TO ME ANYMORE!”

I search my heart and find that I will not miss this. As my husband left (I can’t remember where he went), DaycareKid and CuteBaby woke. YoungestBoy returned from school. The two neighbor boys showed up and I told them they could only play in the back yard. The baby needed his bottle, so I sat on the floor feeding him while TwinBoyB babbled on and on, struggling to find a way to avoid actually reading his science material. He took the assessment four more times after failing it the first time. Finally, he understood that the inner core of the earth is the inner part.

At one point, I was trying to get to the laundry room to put YoungestBoy’s baseball shirt into the dryer, but I kept getting distracted. CuteBaby needed a diaper change. The phone rang. Babygirl wanted shoes on. I need to pee. Oh wait, the laundry room . . . oh, I need to fold that basket of stuff.

Then I smelled the unmistakable odor of a half-potty-trained kid gone wrong.

“Did you p o o p in your pants?” I asked DaycareKid.

Big brown eyes looked innocent and he said, “No.”

I said, “Come here.”

I felt his backside and found a solid little ping-pong ball of it hanging in his brand new Spiderman underpants. Why do kids think no one will notice this personal problem?

(Well, this is a rambling story, isn’t it?)

At 5:20 p.m., I carted CuteBaby upstairs to hand over YoungestBoy’s baseball shirt to my news-watching husband and he said in surprise, “He’s still here?”

Yes. Him, DaycareKid, Babygirl, TwinBoyA, TwinBoyB, YoungestBoy, and Neighbor Kid One and Neighbor Kid Two. I was trying to feed YoungestBoy an early dinner, answer the phone, hold CuteBaby, wipe DaycareKid’s nose, shake off the leech-like grip of Babygirl, boil potatoes and not go insane. The daycare moms both came at once, the phone rang again, my husband left with YoungestKid, but not before bumping the car into Babygirl’s trike which was abandoned at the car bumper by DaycareKid on the way to his own car.

Yes, yes, yes . . . we’ve been over this before and I should be am savoring these crazy days of mothering. But I can’t see how I will miss TwinBoyB’s antics and his complete lack of interest in all things academic. I sat in the living room at 7:00 p.m., going over his literature lesson with him. He is fully capable of reading his student guide and the accompanying literature book, but he most often won’t do so without eagle-eyed supervision.

Why? Why? Why? (I say this while flailing my arms in the air, clutching great snarls of my own unruly hair and foaming–just a little–at the mouth.)

Maybe this is like transition in labor. You know, that point where you think, “I absolutely cannot do this. I changed my mind. I’m not having a baby.” You are too far in to change your mind and there is no choice but to carry on, breathe in, breathe out, focus on the end result, maybe scream a little and clutch the sides of the birthing pool and look into the eyes of the women in the room who know that they did it and you will, too, and someday, you’ll forget just how much it hurt. Maybe even tomorrow.

I hope so. I’m looking into the eyes of those of you who did this and lived–and I’m talking about having twelve-year old boys who hate school. We’ll be okay, right? Right? I can do this, right?

Okay, then. Okay. Tomorrow’s a new day, a new opportunity to accidentally squish slugs while I’m walking in the rain and a new chance to get this mothering thing right.

Salamander in Her Pocket

Despite a rotten night of restless sleep, I met my friend for our morning walk at 5:30 a.m. I kind of wish it were still pitch black at that hour of the morning so no one could see how rumpled and bleary I am that early in the morning. How does my friend appear so fresh and with such smooth hair?

A drizzle fell on us, the exact kind of rain which characterizes our region and causes transplanted people from sunny states to curse and then forsake my Evergreen State. We chatted as we hurried along. I looked at the ground to avoid stepping on slugs and to keep the raindrops from falling into my eyes.

Right in the road, I spotted a lizard-like creature. “Look!” I said. She leaned over and peered at it, then said, “Cool!” and picked it up by its tail.


Not Actual Salamander Posted by Hello

She cupped the salamander in her hand said, “You can give it to [YoungestBoy].” She knows how much he loves animals. Then she zipped it into her pocket.

“I hope you don’t forget that thing in there.”

And on we walked, stepping carefully around the baby slugs which are growing larger each day.


Slimy Example of Full-Grown Slugs Posted by Hello

I worried in silence about that salamander. Would she expect me to transfer it to my pocket? What do salamanders eat? Could it live in a jar temporarily?

When we approached her house and my car, I remembered the salamander.

She did not and I didn’t say a word.

Call me squeamish, but I just didn’t want a slimy pocket pet, even for a moment. I’m not a very good Boy-Mom and clearly, I’m an even worse friend.

This? Or That? Maybe the Other Thing

I have a logjam of things to talk about. This? That? The other thing?

I’ve been brewing up a mental storm about my sister, the one I invited to be the photographer to my second homebirth. What a fiasco! We haven’t spoken in two and a half years when she left town for Japan and took with her twelve pictures of my birth which I expressly forbade her to keep. (She had copies made and didn’t think I’d notice, I guess.) She’s in town and I need to talk all about it here because my husband is sick of hearing about it and I don’t want to put my mother in the middle of it and because she is so irritating I grind my teeth together just thinking about the photographic image of my unclothed self with a baby half-born circulating throughout Asia. If I ever go to Japan, people will recognize me from behind. (If I am devoid of clothing, that is.)

But that storm will have to continue to strengthen to hurricane force, because tonight I want to talk about my dad.

Tonight I went to a production of “Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.” I sat near the back and smiled with anticipation when the lights dimmed. A woman sang, then an actor burst onto the stage. Tears sprang to my eyes and I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying.

Why? I’m getting to be an old sap, but crying? At a romping musical? Where a stageful of men sing and prance and wave hats in the air?

Then I remembered sitting in the small audience at the Community College playhouse watching my dad on stage performing his heart out. For one play, he shaved his head to play a German spy in a spoof of some sort. I remember a bird prop going horribly wrong and the audience howling with laughter while my dad and his leading lady improvised hilarious lines.

My dad was more alive when he stood on a stage than at any other moment of his life. He emoted, he sang, he even danced a little. His eyes shone and he projected confidence and joy. He performed only in community theater, but he adored the stage. My youngest sister (not the picture-thief) has file folders stuffed with photographs of him and press clippings.

The theater itself was dingy and small, but the magic outshone the reality of that small building. The make-up, the glaring lights, the bare-bones props somehow led to a magical pot of gold and ushered us to another time and place.

I saw my dad in new light when I saw him perform, but I always wondered if maybe I were glimpsing his true self, his secret self, the self that was almost extinguished–but not quite–by his harsh father and his broken home and his desperate marriage and dismal job. At home, sometimes the actor-dad would burst through the regular scheduled monotony of our lives–job, school, job, school, job, school–and he would leap onto his tip-toes like a two-hundred pound ballerina with a goatee and sing, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty!” And I would roll my eyes at him and laugh.

So when I sit in the audience and watch actors perform, I cry, even when it’s funny. Every baldish man with a goatee and a too-long nose reminds me of him. When it’s over and we clap, I blink back tears. The lights come on and I look down and dig in my purse and pretend I wasn’t about to cry for no reason at all.

No reason–except that for a second, I felt my dad in the room. Then the stage went dark all over again.

The Longest Walk

Yesterday, Babygirl and I walked around our circle. You’d think that two healthy human beings could cover one-tenth of a mile in a reasonable amount of time, but no. Not when one of those human beings is two and a half. (I asked her, “How old are you?” and she said, without pause, “Twenty.”)

Babygirl jogged at first. Then she did a bear-crawl and became distracted by a black ant. We stopped to gaze at the Gnome-Lady’s house. She has twenty-seven gnomes strategically placed around her front yard. I convinced Babygirl that the Lady would not want her to walk on the rocks to see the gnomes.

We were nearly half-way around the block. Then came the puddles. Babygirl stooped to look down the storm drain. She jumped in the puddle. Because she is close to the ground, she noticed a ladybug crawling along. I placed the newsletter I carried near the ladybug so the bug would climb onto the paper. I thought we might take the insect home, but it flew away.

A few houses later, Babygirl saw rocks. She stopped and stuffed her shorts pockets full, awkwardly crossing her right arm across her small body to put the rocks into her left pocket.

When we finally reached home nearly an hour later, I emptied ten rocks from her pockets.

As someone said recently, the days are long, but the years are so short. Before I know it, she really will be twenty. I hope we’ll still take meandering walks together, even thought she might be wishing we’d go a little quicker and I’ll be the one stopping to poke at ladybugs.

Wondering

A few things I wonder:

1) When did “scrapbook” turn into a verb?
2) Do people realize there is a difference between a conservative Christian and a Christian conservative? I’m one, but not the other.
3) Are labels ever helpful? Does it give you a clearer picture of me when I describe myself as a Republican or do you automatically think I’ve been lobotomized by the right-wing media? I think labels blur true identity. I shun them, but sometimes I use them reluctantly as a short-cut because really, who has time to read a year’s worth of blog posts?

But I don’t really want to be swept into any category like so many crumbs on the floor.

I decided today that when one woman presumes to speak for All Women, she ends up speaking for no one, not even herself. I get annoyed when I read in a book or article how “women” feel about this or that. I speak for myself, no one else. I’ve never had trouble speaking up.

Just ask my seventh grade teacher. I was sent to the principal’s office for being mouthy. I was only asking questions. Why did we have to go over every single answer on the worksheet? My teacher did not appreciate my impertinence.

So I shut up in class for the next five years. Kudos to that teacher for shutting me down.

But I digress. All I’m saying is, “scrapbook” is a noun, not a verb.

Discombobulated

What? It’s already past 10:00 p.m. A half-full, Costco-sized ketchup bottle sits on the kitchen counter. Open Prang watercolor paints on the kitchen table accompany Babygirl’s latest ragged freezer paper painting. I never did correct TwinBoyB’s grammar work from today, nor did I put water in the crockpot after I scooped out the remaining stew. My house looks somewhat abandoned, as if we all ran out during a fire drill.

But you can’t really blame me because last night I googled a variation of myself and found a stunning mention of a particular blog posting I made way back in February. I discovered this last night at 11:15 p.m., way too late for a woman whose alarm rings at 5:10 a.m. I’ve been preoccupied ever since with this derogatory mention of myself in a stranger’s lecture.

I had already been contemplating how disconnected I feel from our society, how belittled I feel as a woman who votes Republican, cherishes her faith and stays at home as a primary caregiver. I am sick to death of the mockery of conservative Christianity by people who claim to embrace diversity and tolerance. I am weary of the voices that refuse to admit that those of us who oppose abortion might have a valid point. There is all take and no give, it seems.

Why–please, someone tell me–why are women of faith, Republican women, women who scrapbook–assumed to be stupid? As if our default position is one of unthinking acceptance of ridiculous theology and backward political viewpoints? As if we are the ones who are intolerant and judgmental? All too often I find myself in the spotlight of judgment by people vastly different from me. All I can do is squint through that glare, trying to look into the eyes of those on the other side. Turn off the light! Come closer and sit down. We can talk, you know. I’ve got nothing to hide, even though I’m made to feel ridiculous for my belief system. I resent the implication that I am dim because of my conservative leanings and my choice to stay at home and raise my children.

I speak my personal truth here. Sometimes I throw caution to the wind and knowingly spout off something provocative, like when I called Michael Moore “smarmy.” Most often, I’m just describing how things look from here, inside my house, inside my head. I think this goes a long way towards forging common ground–because if you begin to see my viewpoint and offer me a glimpse of your viewpoint, we can find those intersections of our lives and see that we are really not all that different. With common ground, comes understanding.

This is not a monologue. It’s my half of a dialogue and ideally, you provide the other half by commenting here, writing on your own blog or even mentally mulling things over.

As for me, I might clean up the kitchen counter before I go to bed, but most likely, I’ll leave that for tomorrow. I’d hate to have nothing to do in the morning.