Pictures of my life in a thousand words . . . more or less.
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My brother used to call me “Little Miss Perfect.” This is the type of insult that is difficult to refute. Argue against your accused perfection with examples of your imperfections and you protest too much. Agree and you sound conceited.
Mostly, I never really understood the insult. Maybe the view from my set of eyeballs was vastly different from the view from my brother’s, but I somehow doubt it. What was he really saying? That he resented my tendency to follow rules and get straight A’s? That he wished he, too, could play the piano and babysit on the weekends? That my beauty was so stunning that he was half-blinded when he beheld my visage?
That old “you think you are so perfect!” insult is blatantly false. Does anyone really think they are perfect? Is anyone actually so blinded to their own reality inside their skin? Where are these people who truly believe they are better than all the rest?
I ponder these questions because today I received the following message from a girl from Lompoc, California, in my inbox: “Isn’t begging a little beneath your intellect and purported brilliance? And yes I choose to be annonymous [sic] just like you choose to be obnoxious.” (She was referring to my recent post at my old blog address in which I implored my readers to come to this address instead.)
And I have a few questions for her, so pardon me if you came here and you are not living on Ocean Avenue.
1) Do you have me mixed up with someone else?
2) Have I declared myself brilliant and of superior intellect? (Because if I haven’t yet, let me point out that I did score a 31 on the ACT, the SAT alternative. On the SAT I only scored 1240 (670 verbal, 570 math), but I had no idea you could study for those tests. Also, have I mentioned that I was ranked fourth out of four hundred academically in high school? No? Well, I have been remiss. But now you know. I am smarter than you.)
3) Did you realize that when you post anonymously your IP number is captured by most stat-counters? And so I can tell who you are and from where you post? Duh.
4) Why do you torture yourself by returning to my blog time after time? (Eighty-eight times–no, eighty-nine times so far.) Is my obnoxiousness so riveting?
Well, that’s all for now. I hope you have a swell day.
Signed,
Little Miss Perfect
My 3-year old has been a fairly reliable nighttime sleeper for quite a while. I can’t tell you the specifics because my brain synapses no longer fire since I’ve been living with at least one child under the age of four for thirteen long years. But trust me. She normally goes to bed easily and sleeps all night, waking up ten to eleven hours later.
Except last night when she woke up at 1 a.m., 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. And tonight, when I put her down at 8:30 p.m., 8:50 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. (My husband tended to her that last time.)
I don’t have a point, either. I’m just saying that I’m distracted and tired.
* * *
Today, my back yard was filled with men (okay, well, three men) who put together one of those mammoth Rainbow Play Systems. Now we have a slide, ladder, fort, sandbox, two regular swings, one tire swing, swinging rings, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Afterwards, while the men were sitting around swigging bottles of water, one of them explained that two years ago today, his father died. And so he’d planned to come down here and construct the play system today, in memory of his dad. Did I mention that he donated this play system to us in the first place? (His kids outgrew it.)
I think it did his heart good to see my kids frolicking and swinging and christening the fort a “castle.” My daughter has never, ever been so dirty. At one point, she scampered inside, grabbed a pink fleece hat and ran back outside where she flopped down on her back in the sand and proceeded to make “snow angels,” only in sand.
* * *
My 13-year old sons have nearly finished their second year of school-at-home. A few weeks ago, we read a children’s version of some excerpts of Don Quixote. My blue-eyed twin, especially, adores the ideas of knights and swords and quests. He laughed out loud as I read of the exploits of Don Quixote and his sidekick. Then, he asked if I could get him the book Don Quixote.
I explained that the actual book is really long and challenging and he said, very seriously, “Mom, I think I can handle it.”
The book arrived from Amazon two days ago and he’s a dozen chapters into it. He thinks it would be a fine thing, indeed, to be a knight and to wander about seeking quests while carrying a real, live sword. I just want to clutch my throat and close my eyes in gratitude for this teenage boy who still thinks a fort can be a castle and who calls himself “Master King” and offers to knight anyone, including his 3-year old sister.
The midnight hour approaches. Seven hours until the house begins to wake up again. And how much sleep does a mom need?
(That’s right. Just ten more minutes.)
My 3-year old daughter and I went grocery shopping tonight. The shopping car weighed a ton by the time I wheeled it to the check-out lane. I’m not sure I purchased enough ingredients to cook more than one decent meal, but we have enough snack food and lunch components to feed the men who will be installing our (used) Rainbow Play System tomorrow.
So, as I parked the cart in preparation for unloading and paying, I remembered that I’d forgotten bottled water. Now, I do enjoy a cold, refreshing bottle of water, but I think of it as a luxury item because, after all, we do have tap water and drinking glasses and even ice in our house. But my husband adores the plastic-encased water you pay money for at the store and the kids super-adore it and that’s why you can never find a bottle of water in the fridge when you are actually in dire need of a chilled bottle to take with you in the car. Or to school, in a backpack.
We abandoned our cart–for the second time (the first time, we left it unattended and full to the brim right next to the deli counter because my daughter clutched herself in a very unladylike manner and declared, “I NEED TO PEE!”)–in the check-out lane and rushed a few aisles over to the drink aisle. As I scanned the shelves for the cheapest bottled water, a voice floated right up to me and snapped its fingers in my face.
I looked up, bewildered. Me? Are you talking to me? I focused my eyes on this woman, right there next to the bottled water. I tuned in just as she said, “And I’m homeless and hungry.” I might have blinked a few times, confused, and then I said, “Well, if you want, I’ll buy you something to eat.” And I took note that she reeked of cigarettes and seemed to be about my age.
(Last time a beggar surprised me in a parking lot with a story about being homeless, hungry, blah-blah-blah, I handed over a few dollars and then vowed that next time, well, next time, I’d offer to buy some peanut butter and bread, just to call the beggar’s bluff.)
This time, I had a strategy and I offered food. She said, “Really?” and I said, “Yes. Meet me at the checkout lane.” Then I allowed my daughter to grab an overpriced bouncy ball from a display and herded her back to our cart. I muscled a case of thirty-five bottles of water with me.
And the lady with overprocessed white-blond hair appeared at my lane a few minutes later. She plopped down two yogurts and a sports drink (whew–I was all ready to give her a little lecture about my not buying alcohol) and two oranges. She said, “Thank you so much!” and I said, “No problem,” and continued to unload my groceries. Then she asked, “Hey, would it be all right if I got some beef jerky or something?” and I said, “Sure!”
And so off she darted to look at beef jerky. When she reappeared, she added beef jerky (“If it’s all right with you–it’s $5.99,” she said) to the conveyor belt. And I smiled, but without really looking into her eyes and said, “It’s okay.”
Then she walked away again.
While the checker scanned my items, I said, “Hey, did you recognize that woman right behind me?” She said she hadn’t noticed her. I explained that the woman claimed to be homeless and I just wondered if she was a regular at the store.
Just as it was time to pay, the homeless woman reappeared. She stood behind the checker in the next aisle, clutching a backpack and a soft drink with a straw. The checker said in a low voice, “I haven’t seen her before,” and I said, “Oh.” Then we reached the items for the homeless woman–I’d separated them so they’d be easy to bag. I said, “Just add these, but bag them separately, okay?” and she did.
As she scanned the items, though, she murmured, “Are you buying all this for her?” and raised her eyebrows. I said, “Yes,” and then, “It could be me,” when, of course, it couldn’t really be me because I would never make decisions that would land me in a grocery store with bleached straw for hair begging for food. So I amended my statement and said, “Or someone you know,” and I was thinking then of drugs and how they steal yourself from you and how you could end up in the grocery store, waiting for a stranger to purchase a few items for you so you could save your cash to buy drugs.
And the checker handed me the bag. I sneaked a Hershey’s candy bar into the bag and handed it to the stranger. She said, “Thank you so much!” and I said, “You’re welcome. Good luck!” as if she was going to compete in a spelling bee or maybe bid on a house at auction.
She strode out of the store, heading right, while I used all my body weight to shove my cart out of the store heading left. My daughter and I stopped for a moment to ride the coin-operated car (well, she rode; I watched) and then exited to the parking lot. As I struggled to guide the cart to my 1987 van while keeping my girl from being struck by a careless car, I saw the woman in the distance, walking across the parking lot.
I noticed she was walking down the street when I climbed into my van.
When we turned left at the stoplight, I saw her at the bus stop. I glanced over as we drove past and saw her spooning yogurt into her mouth with the same quickness I use when placating a gaping baby-bird-mouthed baby.
Was she homeless? Where did she get a spoon? Was she saving her money for meth, as I suspect? Does it matter? It really didn’t to me. For that woman was someone’s daughter and that is enough reason for me to spend $10.00 unexpectedly on a stranger at the grocery store.
I hope she is warm tonight and safe.
I went to King’s Bookstore in Tacoma yesterday and felt a mixture of awe, longing and hopelessness. (Awe=Look at all these books! Longing=I want to curl up and read for ten years straight! Hopelessness=So many books . . . what is the point of adding to the stacks with an original work?)
I only had ten minutes before my movie started at this non-profit movie theater. I felt so cosmopolitan, shopping in the local independent bookstore and viewing a movie in an independent theater. The streets were mostly deserted, though, because Tacoma is Tacoma, not Seattle.
(The book I bought? Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.) At the movie theater, the woman who sold me my ticket tally-marked the movie I intended to see in a column. Then, she moved over to the popcorn area and sold me popcorn. I counted about a hundred seats in the theater itself. What an odd experience compared to the fifteen screen megaplex where I usually see a movie. (Cheaper, too, almost by half.) And, I’m sure you’re wondering what movie I saw: “Thank You for Smoking,” which I chose by default.
My husband has taken my daughter and her three year old buddy to the park, so I’m enjoying a guilty moment of freedom from her incessant crazy demands. When she woke up from her nap, my husband said, “You need to get dressed and comb your hair,” for she was wearing her 8-year old brother’s pajamas and had a head full of fuzzy curls. She decided this meant that she must take a bath–STAT!–and furthermore, she wanted her friend to watch her. I said, “No, he will not watch,” and she cried pitiful tears into the bathwater before forgetting her woe.
Then she poured cupfuls of water over her head and used two brushes at once on her head. She looked pretty much the same post-bath as pre-bath, except her clothes matched (sort of). Pink flowers and green leaves on pants . . . entirely different pink flowers and green leaves on jacket which was wholly unnecessary because it’s supposed to be eighty-five degrees this afternoon.
Anyway. I should be cooking up a scrumptious dinner at this very moment so the big kids will have something worthwhile to complain about. But it’s so much more fun to blog about life than to live it.
Here is what happens when you spend Mother’s Day going to church and then spending a solitary afternoon at the movie theater and then shopping for bargains at Value Village. Follow that up with an evening watching the finale of “Survivor” and you’ve got enough dirty laundry to clothe an entire Third World nation, especially one that favors stripes and pink underpants and animal print comforters.
(If you truly wish to emulate my laundry incompetence, you might want to ignore the laundry pile on Saturday, too, just to ensure a super gigantic stinky mountain of dirtiness.)
At heart, I’m a pessimist . . . except on Saturday mornings. On Saturday mornings, I somehow trick myself into believing that I will get extra sleep, even on days when my husband leaves the house early, as he did this morning. My daughter wakes up at 6:55 a.m. and I barely open my eyes as I pluck her from her crib and run bath water.
As the water runs, I return to bed and precisely four minutes later, return to the bathroom to turn off the water. I am still mostly asleep, convinced I will be sleeping in this bright Saturday morning. I am a Saturday morning optimist. I crawl back under the covers.
Six minutes later, she beckons me and I stumble back to the bathroom to answer her nonsensical question (ie. “can I have a cloth-cloth?”). She has very few made-up words in her vocabulary, but she calls a “washcloth” a “cloth-cloth,” which I find very charming. But I still would rather sleep. So back to bed I go.
Ten minutes later, she’s finished with the bath. I wrap her in a towel, turn on her television, bring her a bowl of dry Cheerios and a drink and stubbornly return to bed. I am sleeping in! It’s Saturday!
Soon, she appears at my bedside. “Can I sleep with you?” she asks. So, I scoot over and she climbs in. Moments later: “Will you turn on a show, please?” I turn on Nickelodeon and plump up my pillow. I am sleeping in!
She’s eating saltine crackers in bed. She turns on the light. She’s in. She’s out. She’s up. She’s down. She’s talking to me, even though I AM SLEEPING IN! It’s Saturday!
At 9:15 a.m., I’m still in bed. “Sleeping.” Lights are all on, so I’m suffocating under the covers. The television is loud. How did it get so loud? And then the alarm begins to ring in the bathroom. This alarm clock almost outsmarted me, but one day I read the instruction booklet three times in a row and figured out how to turn it off. Only, somehow, now it’s beeping. I say to my daughter, “Hey, can you go push the buttons on that clock and turn it off?”
She goes, but can’t get on the counter because she’s wearing her 8-year old brother’s pajamas and her feet swim in grievously long pajama legs. She keeps slipping. I say, “Can’t you push the buttons?” She says, “I can’t! I’m slipping!” Finally, I throw off the covers with a mad flourish and stomp to the bathroom. I say crazy things like, “FINE! WHY WON’T YOU LET ME SLEEP IN?! IT’S SATURDAY!”
And so the day begins.
Yesterday, my daughter got a new dolly (because she only has a dozen dollies, maybe more, so deprived and all, but lucky for her, a church lady donated this really lovely and lifelike doll to my poor little girl’s cause).
So, I said to my daughter, “What is the dolly’s name?”
“Mrs. Zippy,” she replied.
“Mrs. Zippy?” I asked, confused.
“Yes, Mississ-ippi!” she said. I laughed and she said, “Just kidding!”
I locked my son out of the house today. I did. He’d run outside to make a dramatic point about the horrors of repeating a failed spelling test. When I saw the door ajar, I closed it, locked it and then made sure the other doors were locked, too. Ha! (I, myself, am the model of maturity, to be sure.)
And when he knocked at the front door, I leaned in close to the door jam and said with mean glee, “Enjoy your time outdoors because I don’t allow children who are disrespectful into my house!” And then I checked to make sure the deadbolt was still turned and stomped upstairs where my daughter was taking her third bath of the day and was vying for my attention. (“WHAT?!” “Um, I need a stick to put in his mouth,” she said, indicating a plastic shark. At which point, I died from a heart attack. The end.)
I never, ever, not one time in my whole adolescence sassed my parents. (At least not out loud.) I never set out to annoy them, to displease them, to make them want to lock me out of the house. Never. I was a pleaser, a good girl who wanted only to get perfect grades. I volunteered my time at a hospital, at a 4-H group, at church and more. If you needed help, I was your girl.
And how has all my goodness been repaid? With stinky boys who feel free to complain and whine and slide off their chairs onto the floor in protest when I expect them to take a spelling test. With sons who don’t hesitate to tell me in no uncertain terms what they will not do. (“I will NOT take that assessment!”) With kids who break pencils to protest the injustice of my expectations.
Karma-schmarma! Phooey on karma, I say! I deserve a child who yearns to read the captions and the footnotes, in addition to the regular text. I deserve a child who is utterly grateful for the sacrifice that schooling-at-home is for me. I deserve a child who displays some maturity and some respect. I deserve a child who loves to read more than play Nintendo.
And I get mouthiness and stubbornness and kids who are like giant anchors needing to be dragged up from the sea bottom. And they are tangled up in seaweed, just to make matters worse.
But they are my anchors. And so I unbolted the door, accepted his apology, gave the spelling test again. For whatever reason, God thought these were the kids for me, so away with you, Expectations! Hello, Reality! I’m not quite ready to hug you yet, Reality, but I guess you can sit over there in the comfortable chair for now while I say farewell to my fond Expectations.
(“Buh-bye!” she says, weeping.)
As you can see, her outfit the other day wasn’t really complete until she added the scarf and gloves. She’s peeking out from the overgrown laurel hedge where the children like to hide. 
And here is a close-up of those authentically tacky 1970s shoes, size 5.5. Don’t you wish you could wear them with tie-dye and bell-bottoms? Or a short polyester dress and “suntan” pantyhose?
Finally, I have to ask: Is this your shoe? It’s not ours! I’d never seen it before yesterday, when I uncovered it in a pile of stuff on the stairs.
Remember when I found a pair of socks that didn’t belong to us? I can imagine how a boy could forget his socks at someone’s house. But I am mystified picturing how a boy might have left one shoe here. Did he hobble out without realizing that one foot wore only a sock? Did his parent not notice? To whom does this shoe belong?
This is the mystery I ponder.
Actual Unretouched Photo 