Pictures of my life in a thousand words . . . more or less.
Here’s a link which tells you how to make homemade egg rolls. I use the wrappers located in the produce section of the grocery store and vary the fillings, though I usually use some sort of sausage and shredded cabbage. (Some of you had asked for my recipe, but I usually just wing it, sort of combining the recipe on the back of the package with stuff I have on hand.)
And here is a blog which made me laugh today . . . and which also gave me some great ideas!
My husband rocks. He took my boys out for lunch, then to the church for three hours today. “A three hour tour, a three hour tour.” (Sorry. I suddenly started singing the Gilligan’s Island theme song.) The youth pastor at church has video games and a pool table set up, so my boys love to play there, but rarely do.
So, this afternoon, all the little ones were sleeping (except my daughter, but she was upstairs watching t.v. having a “quiet time”) and I savored the silence. And later, to make up for my calmness, I lost my mind entirely and decided to make stir-fried rice and eggrolls from scratch while watching four little ones. My big boys were all outside waving swords and sticks around with the neighbor boys. The little ones were playing in the family room, stealing toys from one another and squealing at each other.
And then I looked out the window and saw branches falling from giant trees across the way. I squinted and looked closer and saw lumberjacks (can I call them lumberjacks?) perched way up the trunk of the trees, chainsawing branches off one by one as they climbed higher. I hollered for all the kids to come and see. The lumberjacks (arborists?) climbed the tree with spiked boots and ropes and when they got within ten feet of the top, they lopped the whole top off and we watched as it seemed to float down. Then they moved eight or ten feet down and lopped off another section, until they reached the ground again.
I’d never seen a giant tree removed before, so I was fascinated and, I admit, a bit distracted from my cooking extravaganza. And the kids were fussy and crabby and my daughter was bossy and then my trying-to-help-son barely burned his finger on the stove and I felt terrible, but HONESTLY, I don’t want help I JUST . . . WANT . . . TO . . . COOK . . . IN . . . PEACE . . . AND . . . QUIET!!!
A-hem.
Anyway, cooking dinner before all the kids go home is always an exercise in juggling and not just ordinary three-ball juggling. No. It’s like juggling flaming swords with baby chicks perched on the handles. Very delicate and someone is likely to get hurt. Or yelled at.
But the eggrolls were delicious.
When two adults are asleep at 3:11 a.m. and one of the adults wakes up and hears a child crying, why does said adult wake up the other blissfully snoring slumbering adult and say, “Hey, I hear crying?” causing the second adult to also wake up and therefore, become responsible for tending to child?
I’m just asking.
Today is the first day of Spring Break. And yet, I am not posting from a cruise ship. Alas, I’ve never even been on a cruise ship.
If I were on a cruise ship, I would tell you about the fabulous pools, the magnificent meals, the scintillating conversations with strangers. If I were on a cruise ship, I’d definitely have hot-pink painted toenails and a tan. If I were on a cruise ship, I’d be well-rested and my Oprah magazine would be tattered and wrinkled from being splashed poolside.
But I’m not. My magazine is unblemished. My skin is glow-in-the-dark white. My toenails are hidden in white fuzzy socks. My conversations include discussions about snack foods (“I want an apple with no skin,”) and taking turns on the computer (“That’s not fair! It’s my turn! Wah-wah-wah!”) I do have a pool in my backyard but it’s actually a sandbox full of collected rainwater. The meals around here depend on my creativity and crockpot.
I could be well-rested if I had any sense and went to bed eight hours before I had to wake up. If I went to bed early, though, I’d sacrifice the nighttime silence and that is a price too high to pay. I may be sleepy tomorrow, but at least I will be sane. (One can hope.)
My daughter wore her pajamas to church this morning. Saturday night, she’d mentioned that she intended to wear them, the Carter’s footie-jammies with horizontal lavender and baby blue stripes, but I didn’t really believe her. (Actual pajamas not pictured, but boy, what an outfit that is, huh?) She’d also picked out a yellow and blue dress with gauzy ruffles around the hem.
But this morning, when she woke at 8:35 a.m. (which in her uninformed brain was only 7:35 a.m., but now it’s Daylight Savings Time, SURPRISE!), she told me she would wear her pajamas. And I said, “Okay.” We had to leave by 8:45 a.m. . . . well, really, we should have been at church at 8:45 a.m., but let’s not quibble over details. I tucked her dress, tights, shoes and sweater into my bag, just in case.
I taught Sunday School to three preschoolers and then my daughter and I headed upstairs to claim our rightful position in the second pew on the left side, right behind my boys who, judging from the greasiness of their pre-teen heads of hair, failed to use shampoo again last night during their showers. A lady behind me noted my daughter’s unusual attire and said, “You’re a more relaxed mom than I was!” and in the pause between that and her next statement, I wondered if I should take offense, but then she said, “Good for you!” I said, “Well, I figured, what does it matter, really?” As I said to my husband tonight, if you can’t wear your pajamas to church when you are three years old, when can you?
We lasted through all the stuff that happens before the sermon begins, then headed to the fellowship hall where we could see Daddy preaching on closed-circuit television while also running around in circles (her, not me). My daughter is seemingly ravenous on Sunday mornings . . . but the truth is, she knows that the kitchen holds loot, desirable loot like cookies and brownies and sometimes, cake. This morning, she feasted on Hostess “donettes,” those small chocolate covered ones. She also brought a cookie to our table, a snickerdoodlish cookie.
The cookie sat. I sat. My daughter sat. Then my daughter, wanting to shake things up and shake things out, asked if she could put pepper on the cookie.
“No,” I said.
She asked again.
“No.”
She said, “But I want to put pepper on the cookie.”
“I said NO!”
She asked again.
I enunciated very carefully, “Look . . . at . . . me. I . . . said . . . NO.”
She added a little whine to her request and asked again.
“Listen to me. The answer is NO!” I used my most stern voice, the one just short of screaming my head off, because after all, I was wearing pantyhose, sitting in the fellowship hall at church.
She paused, smiled sweetly and said, “I love your dress.”
* * *
(These tiny cut-out pictures are her handiwork. They are the actual size . . . my daughter is good with scissors. I’m thinking she’ll either be a hair stylist, a surgeon or, maybe she’ll operate first, then style her patient’s hair.)
* * *
A Note to Clarify:
She had rejected the cookie already. She merely wanted to make a huge pepper and salt mess on the table, using the cookie as an excuse. I did not want to clean up a big mess, so I told her no. I have no objection to peppering cookies under other circumstances. (What? I personally do not pepper my cookies.)
Here’s what I’d like to do today:
1) Go crazy trimming ivy and hedges in front and back yards.
2) Remove old perennial growth from fall and grin and wave at new growth.
3) Sweep off patio and gather up toys from yard.
4) Eat lunch at Taco Time.
5) Nap.
6) Read all afternoon while my maid tidies up and my chef cooks dinner. (Oh wait, I think I just lost my tentative grip on reality.)
Here’s what I’ll actually do today:
1) Eat oatmeal while waiting for boys to become lucid and ready to work.
2) Sit at kitchen table for two or three hours and participate in School-At-Home.
3) Make lunch for little kids.
4) Put all little ones down for naps and thank God I made it through the morning.
5) Wash, fold, put away laundry.
6) Wonder what to make for dinner.
7) Make dinner.
8) Thank God for parents who retrieve their children and for neighbor kids who go home. (Eat dinner. Clean up after dinner.)
9) Try to read 13 Ways to Look at a Novel while concentrating on keeping eyes open. Wonder if I’ll ever actually read a novel again or if I am doomed to be stuck in the middle of this extra-long-super-deluxe-big book about novels forever.
10) Watch pointless television, maybe.
11) Read blogs, definitely.
12) Think about working in yard tomorrow, but realize that I’d rather leave my house in a car than stay home and work. Plan my escape.
Update: What I Actually Did
1) Finished eating oatmeal.
2) Changed baby’s diaper.
3) Dragged almost-13 year old twins through an entire unit of poetry. They were not impressed (hostile, really), but we conquered it with only a minor fit-throwing. One boy wrote his own poem about gluing a cat to the table, accidentally, of course.)
4) Debated merits of pitching navel orange at Reluctant Student’s fit-throwing head. Refrained from violence. Barely.
5) Laundered three loads of clothes. Swept and mopped the laundry-room floor. (You really don’t want to know.)
6) Made lunch.
7) Cleaned up disgusting kitchen mess.
8) Wondered how it was possible for whole house to look like a Goodwill store, post-bomb-explosion.
9) Figured out how many lessons of each subject we need to complete per day for the last ten weeks of school. (Answer: A lot.)
10) Ate Pizza Hut pizza, delivered personally by my husband, Mr. Candyland.
10) Watched mindless television (“Deal . . . or No Deal?”), read 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (curse you, Jane Smiley, for writing such a long and meticulous book!), and thanked God for Fridays.
Actually, I have been thinking, so I take that back. I’ve been thinking about this rave after-party in Seattle at which party-goers were shot and killed by Kyle Huff. My sister (not the one who stole my birth pictures and hasn’t spoken to me since, but the other sister who is seven years younger than me) used to go to raves in Seattle in her wild and crazy days. She’d be gone all night. Once I arrived at my mom’s duplex on a Saturday morning just as one of my sister’s friends was leaving. The friend’s black clothing contrasted with her painted white face and stark red lips. She looked more dead than alive. My sister knew this girl only from the raves and after the dancing to thumping electronic music, they’d made their way back from Seattle on the bus and slept a little in the wee hours of the morning.
(And if they thought we didn’t notice that they were behaving strangely and dangerously and using crystal meth, they were sadly mistaken. Because rave = drug use no matter what you say.)
So the reason I keep thinking about Kyle Huff shooting all those ravers after he was invited to their after-party to hang out is that he could have shot my sister. She used to go home with people she didn’t know and share needles with people she didn’t know and drink alcohol with people she didn’t know and then lie about it. I used to toss and turn at night, praying, worrying, wondering how she’d live through the choices she was making. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t be stopped.
Two of the girls (ages 14 and 15) who were shot dead by Kyle Huff were much younger than the men who were shot. If news reports are to be believed, their parents knew they were going to a rave. They didn’t know one of the girls would lose her friends and go home with strangers. That girl’s dad didn’t know she was missing until the next morning. But the parents knew what their kids were doing, staying out all night, partying. (I can’t understand this. I know we are overprotective in many ways, but I believe strongly in boundaries for kids.)
This news story about the murders of six people plays in my head like a catchy tune stuck on repeat. Over and over and over again, shooting and dead bodies and the devastation in the rave community. (Did you know there was a rave community? I didn’t.)
My sister, during those run-away days of Greyhound buses and needle tracks hidden by long sleeves, said to me once, “I just wish I was still grounded, at home in the living room.” For only a short time before, she’d said to my dad, “I hate you! I wish you were dead!” And then he died when she was sixteen and she tasted the frightening freedom for which she’d yearned. And when the highs faded and the hangovers lasted longer than the fun, she changed her mind.
The consequences of the choices she made back in those days continue today, of course, even almost twenty years later. But at least she stopped before she was dead. Not all kids living more in the night-time than in the day are so lucky.
That’s why I can’t stop thinking about Kyle Huff and the six dead people (two of them only kids) and shots ringing out at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Hi.
Do you sense that yawning chasm in my brain? Because I have been digging around in there and find that it’s pretty much empty. Just echoes in the air and foil wrappers from chocolate Easter candy littering the floor.
I would like to point out that if you arrive on my doorstep around 3:00 p.m., you will find my house in a state of complete disarray. I don’t bother picking up toys or straightening up the kitchen or doing much of anything between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. These are the sacred hours, the Nap Hours, the house during which I try to trick my 3 year old into staying upstairs, watching television. These are the hours in which my almost-13-year old boys disappear into their room, wandering out only to find a snack. If they speak to me, I say, “Please, do NOT talk to me!” I suppose they’ll discuss my behavior with their therapist in years to come.
And from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., I am doing school-at-home with the boys while keeping an eye on my daughter, her 3-year old buddy and the 16-month old baby boy. You can imagine the utter devastation occurring moment by moment.
My daughter woke up at 4:45 a.m. She was hysterical over a bad dream she’d had. In her dream, a spider licked and licked a bee, then ate it and spit it out. Apparently, this is terrifying if you are three and a half. She insisted on watching a video, so I pushed in “Blue’s Clues” and warned her not to wake me and abandoned her in her room. Because I am self-centered like that and completely delirious in the dark hours of pre-dawn.
She woke me once to ask for a cookie. (“No, you can’t have a cookie. Go back to your room.”) Then at 6:00 a.m., she crawled into my bed and slept. Problem was, I had trouble falling back asleep and so this morning at 8:00 a.m., I was not ready to face the day. I’m still not really ready, but the day is moving forward anyway.
And now, my bladder pleads with me to heed its call and I hear a baby crying somewhere in the distance. (Oh wait. Too much information?)
Bye.
This husband is on strike. My only question is, “And how would that be different from not being on strike?” I bet his wife is happy he’s on the roof. If I were her, I’d put the ladder away in the garage. One less person to pick up after.
(This is no way reflects on my husband, who happens to be a great husband and father. I offer this proof of his superiority to all other men: he plays Pooh-Bear Candyland every night with my daughter so I don’t have to.) Sure, he wants me to iron his pants (*gasp* OH THE HORRORS OF THE PATRIARCHY!!) but honestly, everyone has to make some sacrifices and that’s mine.
From USA Today.com: So, President Bush “believes the best way to end the black market in labor, which has drawn an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to the USA, is to legally expand opportunities for foreigners to take jobs that Americans don’t want. ‘By creating a separate legal channel for those entering America to do an honest day’s labor, we would dramatically reduce the number of people trying to sneak back and forth across the border,’ he said Monday.”
That makes sense to me. And yet:
“The House bill by Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., passed in December, would make illegal immigration a felony and increase penalties on employers. It would also expand 14 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border by 700 miles, at an estimated cost of $2.2 billion.”
Eleven million illegal immigrants are here. The question is, what now? Isn’t a a “guest-worker” reasonable? Am I missing something, Mr. Sensenbrenner? Are we seriously considering making their presence a felony, increasing our the load our courts and prison systems must bear? What is the penalty now for being an illegal immigrant? And how did we accumulate 11 million of them before we decided to take action?
See? I’m so confused. I need more information and yet, I’m not sure I’d have enough unbiased information to ever really understand these sorts of things.
I’m also confused about Michael Schiavo. Why would a man who claims to shun publicity and decry public interest in a so-called private matter write a book about it? Am I missing something? I have no patience for a man who began dating, having children and cohabitating with another woman while waiting for his wife to die. What ever happened to duty and faithfulness? And why put yourself back in the news just when we were starting to forget that he begged the courts to deprive his wife of nourishment (and water, too).
I wonder about Rusty Yates who is getting on with his life, while his ex-wife faces a second trial in the drownings of their five children. How does one just move on like that? Don’t dead children require at least a decade of mourning? And what kind of woman marries a man with that kind of baggage? This boggles my mind.
And just when you thought a pastor’s wife was a quiet little woman with a beige personality, along comes Mary Winkler with her sassy haircut, three little girls and husband shot dead in his bed. I know. We are all thinking the same thing: What was her motive? Why would she shoot her husband in the back? (Oh wait, I presume guilt. Shame on me.) Still. Why? Why? Why? Why didn’t the vision of her children with a dead dad and an incarcerated mom stop her?
I don’t understand a lot of things today, I guess.
Actual Unretouched Photo 