kids

Hits and Misses

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Debora

So remember when I said that I don’t need any special events to show me how far Luke has come in the past six months? Well it turns out I get one anyway, because life is just that kind of awesome these days!

Luke has a history of being kind of a spaz at school. From day one he has found the whole environment there to be too noisy and chaotic and populated with untrustworthy sorts who were probably all Out To Get Him. It’s been…a challenge, for him and for his teachers and fellow students.

Over the past couple of months or so I’ve been getting an occasional Friday phone call from his teacher to tell me that he’s had a wonderfully good week. He’s been learning to sit quietly in class, do his work at the same time and in the same manner as the other kids, and play cooperatively with his peers at recess.

And today at the school awards assembly he was presented with a P.R.O. Award.

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It stands for People Respecting Others, and it’s awarded to students who have been exceptionally good citizens and demonstrated exemplary social skills. For Luke to have won it is huge. I could not be more proud of him.

And then there’s Elizabeth. She’s been having the sort of week that reminds me that underneath that marvelous veneer of brilliance and creativity there’s still a regular kid who from time to time can be as refreshingly goofy as the rest of us.

Conversation a few days ago in the car on the way home from the bus stop:

Elizabeth: “We’re learning about the colonists this week.”

Me [because sadly my geek brain instantly jumped to various colony planets in the Star Trek ‘verse and I was pretty sure her class wasn’t studying any of those]: “Really? Which colonists?”

Elizabeth [pausing in a “busted” sort of way because she was probably thinking about dragons or something while the teacher was talking about the colonists in question]: “Um…the…um…the colonists in the American Revolution?”

Me: “Oh! The American colonists, okay.” Duh.

Elizabeth: “Our class is divided up into groups. I’m in the ‘colonists’ group. We were supposed to write letters today. I wrote a letter to the colonists telling them not to do the Boston Tea Party.”

Me: “Really? You don’t think the colonists had a right to protest being taxed without governmental representation?”

Elizabeth: “….”

Luke: “She just thinks it’s too girly and she doesn’t want to have to do it.”

Me: “Too…girly…Elizabeth, you weren’t really listening to the teacher when she was talking about the Boston Tea Party, were you?”

Elizabeth: “Um…possibly not completely….”

Me: [Gives a brief description of the colonists dressed as Indians raiding the ships and dumping the tea into the harbor and why they did it.]

Elizabeth: “Oh.”

Me: “You were picturing a bunch of old guys in powdered wigs and, like, frilly aprons — ”

Luke: “And their dolls!”

Me: “…And their dolls, sitting around sipping tea?”

Elizabeth: “….Something like that. Yeah.”

Elizabeth has been having That Sort Of Week. The topper came yesterday at recess when she decided to find out what would happen if she let go of the swing chains in mid-swing. Luckily that part of the school playground is on sand rather than asphalt, so she got away with some impressive abrasions on her face rather than a fractured skull.

Today when she received her Bookworm Award she looked like she’d just gone a few rounds with a belt sander.

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And somehow in that moment I finally saw a resemblance between us.

The tomboyishly scraped-up face, the certificate officially recognizing her bookworm status…yes. That was me at ten-going-on-eleven.

Take that, aliens! You MISSED a couple of my genes when you were replacing them with your extraterrestrial DNA!

Yeah, this is why I have a blog. So I don’t say stuff like that out loud at school awards ceremonies.

Luke and Elizabeth? You guys rock.

Categories: Family, Humor, kids, Life, Love, School | 2 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Who Is This Very Tall Person With Huge Feet Living In My House??

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Debora

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Categories: Family, Humor, kids, Life, Love, Wordless Wednesday | 4 Comments

The Winding Road

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Debora

We haven’t done the karaoke thing in a while; it’s been a few weeks now, I think. Part of the reason is because the place up in Idyllwild has started making the kids leave at 10pm, and the karaoke doesn’t even start there until 8:30, so it’s not really worth the drive for such a short stay. The local place, Casa Gamino, is the other option, but that’s a little awkward for me since Steve practically lives there. Also he has apparently worked his way through most of their waitresses and at least one of them seems to resent my existence, because she glares balefully at me the whole time I’m there and won’t wait on me. And when you’ve got one waitress and EVERYONE ELSE AT YOUR TABLE has the other waitress? Yeah, that’s a little awkward.

Anyway.

Today at church, instead of the usual congregational singing, all the children came in from the Sunday School area and lined up to perform. I was surprised, since my kids hadn’t mentioned anything about that, and I was wishing I’d brought my camera.

And then the Children’s Music Director set up a mic out in front of the group, and gestured to Elizabeth, and my girl came up front and belted out the lead vocals with karaoke-polished expertise.

Later I commented to the Director that Elizabeth hadn’t told me she was going to be singing today, and she replied, “That’s because I didn’t tell her. She seems to do better that way.”

After the service people came up to compliment Elizabeth on her singing, and she responded with a fetching combination of charm and airiness, “Thanks; I do karaoke too, you know.”

I was struck by how much she had grown and changed since we started coming to this church back in September. And struck more by the further evidence that every single step along the way — even the apparently frivolous detours, like the karaoke thing — has served a tangible purpose in our lives.

Last Friday I had lunch with our Pastor (he was the only local person I could think of who could talk me down from the splendid rage I had worked myself into over, you know, stuff) and he said basically the same thing about me. That I’m almost a different person from the one who had first come into his church six months ago. I FEEL like a different person. Like something completely new beginning to emerge from an old cocoon. (Or as the pastor put it, “Right now all I can see is your beak.” Same concept, different metaphor.)

And I don’t need any special events to help me see that Luke is a healthier, happier, more confident boy than he was six months ago.

And the really cool part? I’ll probably be saying the same things about all of us in another six months, and six months after that. The road’s too winding for me to see very far ahead, and some days’ journeys are rougher than others, but I’m walking along it in (mostly) joyful gratitude and an absolute faith that it’s leading us to a much better place than where we’ve been.

And my lilacs are showing unmistakable signs that spring is near. It’s really hard to feel grumpy in the presence of swelling lilac buds.

Just keep walking, that’s the key.

Categories: Family, kids, Life | 5 Comments

You Should Have Seen The Post I Wrote BEFORE I Calmed Down!

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Debora

It’s probably a good thing my Internet’s been down for the past few days so I couldn’t blog anything; sometimes that cooling-off period makes a big difference in what actually makes it online.

It was a pretty epic post though.

So. Where do I begin?

Recently I’ve been forced to come to terms with some things about Steve that I simply did not want to see during our marriage, even though they were right there in front of me. This isn’t a subject that I want to get deeply into on a public blog, but it has some major potential to threaten the physical, mental and emotional health and safety of my children, so it’s been weighing pretty heavily on my mind this past week.

And while I was mentally wrestling with this concern my sister sent me an email saying that our mother is in the third stage of renal failure and is basically circling the drain. And all I felt about that was relief. My mother is a poisonous sociopathic parasite, not to put too fine a point on it, and the world will be a cleaner and safer place when she’s out of it. I hadn’t been in touch with my siblings in months, but the day after that email my brother called me (collect) and asked me to pass a message on to my sister, so I called her, and during the course of that conversation she casually mentioned that she (her word was “we,” so she meant she and my brother at the very least) had known all along that Steve was fucking around with other…people (I really wish I could just type “women” here, but that would be, as they say, only half the story)…all throughout our marriage, and had COVERED FOR HIM.

Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of me finally hitting the end of the amount of outrageous personal betrayal that I am willing to tolerate from my batshit-crazy blood relatives. And there’s a FUCKING LOT of outrageous personal betrayal leading up to this point, let me assure you. I will leave my siblings in my address book just long enough to send them the URL of this blog post, and then I’m finished with the lot of them. I’m just…done there.

Okay, I think that’s all for today. Mighty pretty weather we’re having lately, isn’t it? I really think spring is right around the corner.

Categories: Family, kids, Life, Marriage | 7 Comments

Self-Sufficiency: Not Just For Tree-Hugging Hippies Anymore!

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Debora

When my marriage ended, my Immediate Goals suddenly became very basic and specific. I didn’t want my children to be homeless. I didn’t want the three of us to be hungry. I didn’t want us to freeze to death when winter came. And if at all possible I didn’t want Luke and Elizabeth to suffer the emotional devastation that I went through as a child when my own parents divorced.

The homeless issue settled itself: Steve’s parents welcomed him back into their home with open arms, he was happy to move back in with them, and they all wanted Luke and Elizabeth to remain close by. So the kids and I have stayed here in the only home they remember, and for the most part that’s worked out fine for everyone.

I spent last summer and fall collecting firewood the way a squirrel hoards nuts, and barring any unexpected natural disasters it looks like I can safely check “Do Not Freeze To Death” off of this year’s list of goals.

Emotionally, the kids have actually thrived far better under the new arrangement than they did during the marriage. Luke is practically a new person, open and confident and affectionate and so much happier than the wary, slightly neurotic child he was only a year ago. Elizabeth…well…honestly, who knows WHAT goes on in Elizabeth’s head? But she seems to be comfortable with the new status quo. And she has requested that I not remarry, because things are so nice just the way they are. Yeah, I’ll, um, take that under advisement.

That just left the food issue. And it was kind of a global issue at the time of our separation, with worldwide food shortages and scarcity riots hitting the news and some grocery stores beginning to ration rice, and food prices in general soaring to new heights. What I really wanted was to reduce or eliminate my dependence on others for our daily meals, as much as possible.

I already had a great garden, but when Steve lived here most of our food came from the store. After he left I began to experiment with different kinds of meals, things I could prepare from whatever was growing on hand, and our grocery bills dropped dramatically. Last summer we ate like kings just on produce from the garden and orchard and the homegrown beef in the freezer, and nobody missed the old menu.

But I still felt dependent — on the seed companies. What if some year I couldn’t buy seeds for whatever reason? Or what if something happened and I wasn’t able to do the big spring planting job? What would we eat then? I started looking into edible perennials: plants that, once established, will live for years or decades and produce bigger crops every year. And I discovered that there are TONS of perennial options that I never even knew existed! Seriously, I could almost do away with the annual crops completely, if I weren’t so fond of tomatoes and bell peppers and those troublesome watermelons.

The subject of food gardening seems even more relevant now, with the economy tanking the way it is. A lot of folks are talking about putting in victory gardens, even if they’ve never grown anything before.

So I’m going to start a new series here about perennial food plants and edible landscaping. Not everyone has the space to set aside a big garden plot, but almost anyone can incorporate edibles into their yard in creative and attractive ways, and reap the benefits in health, food quality and financial savings.

Stay tuned!

Categories: Family, frugality, Gardening, Health, kids, Life, Self-Sufficiency | 7 Comments