ingrid

Once upon a time we all lived on our little farms in our little villages, or maybe we had miserable little hovels in the middle of huge medieval cities.  Anyway, we lived somewhere in contact with “our people”, and I can’t help but imagine that the world might have been a little easier in some ways.  Raising children for example.

It is bizarre that the only job title that attempts to describe what I do AND that people seem to understand is “stay at home mom”.  It is bizarre because “staying at home” is little of what I actually do.  I wish sometimes that I could stay at home.  Staying at home would be a lot simpler than the crazy racing around that I do.  I often wish that I lived with three generations of family or had my sisters all next door (or one farm over as the case might be).  People who complain about not getting any freedom from their families don’t get a lot of sympathy from me.  I would like to move my parents or Brad’s parents right next door.  Freedom be damned…. I want help.

There is so much to be done and none of the schedules match.  Francis needs to be at school at 8:50am, Inez starts napping right around 9am.  Zephyr goes down for a nap at 1pm and would like to sleep until 3:30pm, but I need to wake him up at 2:45 to get Francis by 3pm.  There are chores, and diapers to be washed, food to be purchased and kids to put to bed.  My work day stretches to 9pm just to finish dishes, (as I have to jump up from the dinner table to put kids to bed).

Child number three really pushed me over the edge in many ways, but it also spurred some very healthy changes.  One change is that I actually take people up on what they offer.  When the neighbor says, “Well I can take Zephyr to the park if you want!” I actually let her.  If someone says, “I’ll walk Francis home from school whenever you need it”, I actually call and arrange that.  I try not to worry about seeming like I am taking advantage of others.  After all, they offered; I’m barely holding on here.  My job is to accept.  

I also try to accept people, rather than being all over-protective and paranoid.  No, I haven’t run criminal background checks on every mother who offers to walk my kid to school, but you know, my gut says it is okay.  My gut says that it is important—- essential to surviving right now.

Along with accepting though comes some complications.  Reciprocity makes life easier in many, many ways, but you have to store so much more in your brain, and my brain is fairly taxed from the demands of my normal life.  This week has been sort of hilarious.  Let me run it down for you:

• Tuesday I had to teach a class at Francis’ school, so I brought the kids to school where another mom watched them while I taught the class.  Bringing the kids involved packing a wagon about a mile high as I needed to bring 20 pounds of clay plus all the stuff that I fired last week.  I pulled the 70 pound wagon 6 blocks to school while carrying Inez on my back.  Ridiculous.
• Wednesday the neighbor walked Francis to school.  This gained me 20 minutes to prepare to drop Zephyr and Inez with the other neighbor for babysitting.  I spent my 4 hours free cleaning the house, washing diapers and doing the grocery shopping.  I picked up Zephyr and Inez at 1pm, then at 3pm, picked up Francis and brought the whole crew to church for religion class.  We were there until 4:45pm.  Luckily I had made dinner at 11am that day and wasn’t too stressed heading into the evening.
• I woke up at 5:30am to try to get some time to work on my teaching classes.  Ha!  I had the poor judgment to think that I could take a shower.  The kids woke up about 10 minutes after I started homework.  At t 8:00am, the neighbor dropped her son over here (she is substitute teaching today).  I walked everyone to school then returned, and tried to put Inez down for a nap.  Yet another neighbor’s 8 year old came over.  I am teaching him art lessons in trade for her putting my kids to bed on Gospel Choir nights.  I worked with him for an hour and a half.  15 minutes before he was to go, my sister came by and dropped her two boys off while she went to a doctor’s appointment.  My friend Angela stopped by to pick Zephyr up for a fun time.  I was to finish my art class, then take Inez plus my two nephews to Omsi to meet up with Zephyr and crew.  Now we are home for a quick breather (I have 5 minutes) and then I go pick up Francis and neighbor boy at school.  I have the neighbor until 4:15pm.
• Tomorrow morning the neighbor walks Francis to school again.  Oh thank God.  
• Next week I babysit for a family down the street in exchange for a future date.  I think this should go well.  My kids are pretty flexible so we are putting everyone down to bed at their house and then I will move mine back home.  All the mess is at her house!  Ha!  And she thinks I am doing her a favor!

I couldn’t do this without help.  I am so happy to have a community of people to work with.

Okay, five minutes are up!

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I was feeling sort of dull and like I hadn’t experienced anything new lately, so I thought I would convince someone to shove me in an MRI machine.

On Thursday I tripped down to the old “Cancer Center” (note to Providence: this is not a comforting sounding place to go for a doctor’s appointment) at Providence and hopped up on the gurney for an adventure into sound and space.  I think they played Pink Floyd in there, but I am not sure.

Actually, they didn’t.  And I had experienced an MRI before, but not in a year or so, so it was time to take a peek into the old brain to make sure everything was getting along well.

You see, about a year and a half ago, I started having these really alarming episodes.  I would suddenly feel a little sick to my stomach, then the light would look sort of weird and otherworldly, and then I would just get all blind in 1/3rd of each eye.  I could see okay from the outside of my eyes, but somewhere in the center would be a big blob of nothingness.  Blind.  Truly.  This would last for about 30 minutes and then disappear, leaving me confused and sort of tired.

The first time this happened, I was sort of scared.  I needed to drive and get Francis somewhere and yet I knew I could not drive being unable to see.  The second time it happened I sat right down and cried.  I thought, “I knew it!  I’m going to be blind by 40!  Why did I fantasize about being Helen Keller?  It’s just not that great!”.

The third and fourth time it happened I did something that I rarely do:  I got on the phone to my doctor and tried to find out what the hell was happening to me.  My doctor sent me to get an MRI “just to check things out”.  I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what I was getting into.  I knew that they put you in a tube and that the space is sort of tight, but as I don’t have a lot of claustrophobia issues, I thought I would be fine.  I sort of imagined that I might be able to take a nap while I was in there.

Little did I know that being strapped down to a table and plopped in a MRI is about the LOUDEST place you could ever hope to be.  That first MRI was awful.  I laid in that white plastic tunnel and just cried as I was blasted with robotic nonsense cacophony.  I felt like the noise just drilled into my brain.  I hated it.

This is how the MRI works: (from Alberta Health Services informational webpage)

MRI is a non-invasive procedure that uses powerful magnets and radio waves to construct pictures of the body. MRI imaging is based on the magnetic properties of atoms. A powerful magnet generates a magnetic field roughly 10,000 times stronger than the natural background magnetism from the earth. A very small percentage of hydrogen atoms within a human body will align with this field. When focused radio wave pulses are broadcast towards the aligned hydrogen atoms in tissues of interest, they will return a signal. The subtle differences in that signal from various body tissues enables MRI to differentiate organs, and potentially contrast benign and malignant tissue. Any imaging plane (or “slice”) can be projected, stored in a computer, or printed on film. 

I love how peaceful that description is.  It is a “powerful” sound, not a deafening one!  The machine makes the worst sounds I have ever heard.  It makes crazy “we are now melting your brain” noises so even if your eyes are shut up tight, you can’t help but imagine the machine malfunctioning and shooting laser rays into your skull.  And you can not escape.  And you can not move.  And you can not sing along to try to make the noise better, nor pray, nor think as the noise is roaring through your brain even with the earplugs and baffles.  So basically it sucks and makes you feel like you are dying even if you are perfectly healthy.  And you are stuck there for more than an hour.

So a year and a half ago, I did my “just in case” MRI and they found a special extra thing in my brain that they called a “lesion” but I like to think of as a brain spot that gives me special powers.  They injected me with this dye stuff during the MRI to see what would happen with the brain blood barrier and apparently, the dye tells them that the lesion is probably not something bad.  Bad lesions, versus special extra ones, take on blood.  Cancerous tumors and such suck up all sorts of blood, so please, everyone who loves me, do not get dramatic on me…. I’m not dying yet, or rather, I am, but just VERY, VERY SLOWLY.  After the special powers were found, I was sent to a neurologist and she wisely diagnosed me with occular migraines.  The special powers might not have anything to do with the migraines or they might be the markings expected to be found in the brains of those similarly afflicted with the ‘graines.  I was told to come back to have my “brain do-dad” (her real words!) checked out in 6 months.  I was also told that I was not to take birth control as a migrainey person was at a much higher risk for stroke when using hormonal birth control.  I then did what any reasonable person would do after being told to not take birth control pills:  I got pregnant.

When pregnant, you can not be MRI’ed, or should avoid it if possible.  I did.  I continued to avoid it for another 12 months, but then I had to face it.  I faced it last week.

There were some bumpy spots on the road to the big white tube.  I had an appointment scheduled for Monday morning bright and early.  When I got there and was all ready to jump up on the tray, they noticed that I had written down that I was breast feeding currently.  

“Oh, you do know what the contrast does to your breast milk, right?” they asked.  Wha?  Apparently the substance in the contrast dye passes into breast milk and scientists have little idea of what it might do to babies.  They do know that it kills people with kidney problems though.  Hmmmmm…..

The technician then asked me if I had 24 hours worth of breast milk built up because I wouldn’t be able to feed Inez for 24 hours.  WHA?  Nursing women will know that this is unbelievable!  That is a lot of breast milk!  Of course I didn’t have that much!  So I was rescheduled for the end of the week, which in my mind would still not be quite enough time for me to pump that much.  I feed Inez about 8 times a day, maybe 4 to 6 ounces at a time.  When I pump, I get about 8 ounces if I haven’t recently fed her.  When I have fed her, I am lucky to get 2 ounces.

So this was my week:  feed the baby, feed the family, feed myself, pump out milk.  Rinse and repeat.  After about 6 hours of this schedule, I felt exhausted.  I felt like Someone had hit me over the head, or maybe I had the flu, or maybe had run 15 miles but forgotten about it.  

Time for a picture:

This was awful.  If I never have to interact with a breast pump again, I am fine with that.  It is exhausting to have your body feed just one baby.  It is over the top to try to feed and create a future food supply at the same time.  I was baffled thinking that I could drink a whole Nalgene bottle full of water and hope to extract more than that in just a couple days.  How could I possibly put in enough liquid in order to take out that much?  But I did!

Anyway, I did the MRI on Thursday and it wasn’t half bad.  The sounds were horrible, but not as horrible.  Because they only needed to look where my special powers are, it was much, much shorter.  

Inez and I even lived through the 24 hours of no nursing (during which I had to continue to pump out my zombie breast milk and dump it down the drain to infect fishes in the Willamette River).

Science is a wonderful thing, but I am happy to not have to be part of the wonder this week.  I go to have the images read in a week or so.  I’ll let you know if anything is exciting, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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TSPC is Teachers’ Standards and Practices.  They make sure that we teachers are smart enough to jump hoops.  They also make sure we send the checks on time.

I have to renew my teaching license before my birthday next December.  In order to do this I either need to substitute half the year (NO THANK YOU!), work at least half time, (and pay HOW much in babysitting?), or take 9 credits of graduate level classes.  I need to keep my certification as I fully intend to return to teaching in the next 8 years; if you let your certification lapse, it is a REAL pain to get it back again.  With two kids at home and one in school for the not-so-convenient hours of 9am to 3pm, it seems I have little choice but to take the classes.  Normally I would not complain much about the classes.  I like to learn.  It would be fun to jump on the MAX and head downtown for classes in a (probably) air-conditioned classroom.  That would be a good use of my summer and probably more fun than washing diapers!  But guess what?  There are so many teachers who need to take these classes at the same time that the gods of continuing education are offering something called “distance education”.  Oh Lordy!  Almost all I have to choose from is internet courses!

And guess what?  Not only am I going to be stuck at the computer doing 8 credit hours, but they are friggin’ expensive.  I am taking Literature Based Writing and World Literature for the classroom and it will only add up to $1470.  Couldn’t I go on a cruise with that much money?  Hey— maybe I could take my classes ON the cruise?!  

I do get to take the only “live” class of the 9 credits I need.  It will actually be really cool— I am taking Drawing the Strengthen Literacy at the end of June and I am looking forward to it.  Two days of drawing class will be like a vacation for me.  I think I will get a pedicure on the way home from THAT class.  Would it be distracting if I wear a sunhat and bikini to class?

But that is expensive too.  Please tell me that other underpaid professions have to do stuff like this.  You do, right?  Other people have to take classes every 5 years for the privilege of making less than $40,000 a year, right?  Excuse me while I go write a nearly $2000 check to allow me to remain a teacher.

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It feels goofy that I would even have any opinions about house keeping.  I never thought it would be me.  It occurred to me that it is true that when you do something OVER AND OVER again, no matter how small, how meaningless it might seem, you develop a certain pride in how you do the work, (and maybe even a self-importance that keeps you from admitting that what you do is not that great).  You develop very clear ideas about how things should be.  This is actually why people become obnoxious out in the world, why the fussy lady at the library wants you to only use black push-pins to hang your garage sale notice, why the neighborhood association says the garbage can goes on the left side of the driveway, why the clerk at the grocery store sighs when you pull out your recycled plastic bags.  They are drowning in meaninglessness about their work, scraping out a sense of being in knowing that there is ONE SMALL THING that they do more efficiently and better than others.  And they nitpick over stupid details.  Sigh.  This is why I am so irritated when someone puts short cups on the side of the dish washer where only the tall cups fit!  Or why I wish that the person moving the laundry over would always hang up the cloth napkins (because they get wrinkly in the drier).  And has anyone noticed that only BLUE towels go upstairs?  The green and white ones go in the DOWNSTAIRS bathroom.  What would happen if you could put any towel of any color just anywhere?  Anarchy.  What is wrong with these towels-in-the-wrong-bathroom people?  They obviously don’t understand the importance of properly loading the dishwasher or non-wrinkled napkins either.  How could I live with such slobs?

Anyway, this is not suppose to be about MY household.  This year I read most of the “Little House on the Prairie” series out loud with Francis.  We stopped at the final book as Laura was grown up and had become boring like the rest of us.  Francis didn’t care about Laura’s Happy Golden Years.  As I read, I noticed that there was a lot to learn from the Ingalls family on the plains.  They did a lot of things very, very effectively.  Here are some tips I learned from Laura and the gang:

1)  Pick a day for each house keeping activity.  The Ingalls family did the washing on Monday, sweeping on Tuesday, baking on Wednesday, walked to town (if there was one) on Thursday, mending on Friday and kept the weekends for leisure.  I never thought I would prescribe to this sort of order, but it sure does make sense.  One thing I really hate is watching how laundry can just go and go and go.  It is truly alpha and omega, never-ending, never really done.  It makes me crazy.  I have watched laundry in someone’s house get washed, go in a pile to be folded, fall on the floor, and be thrown back in the laundry.  And that is the problem with kids too.  If you give them a pile of laundry to put away, chances are, they will figure out a way to throw it back in the laundry mixed in with the dirty stuff on their floors.  So this is what I do.  I wash on Monday and fold on Tuesday.  By the end of Tuesday night, the laundry must be folded and put away.  I fold, put it in baskets for the various bedrooms and carry the baskets up to the rooms to put away, or I supervise the stuff being put away.  Then I don’t do laundry again until the following Monday.  This way I don’t have to feel like laundry is taking over my life.  

2)  I only grocery shop on Thursdays in the morning.  Thursday morning at 9:30am is a great time to go shopping.  Only the bread delivery people are in the stores.  You can get in and out really fast.

3)  Don’t hitch up the wagon multiple times a day.  Walk to town as much as you can.  I try not to drive more than once a day.  I aim for keeping the car parked most days.  If I can do most errands walking, I will simplify my day into the things that I really need to do and I will get the exercise that I need.  I have lost more baby weight walking across town for errands than I ever lost running miles and miles.

4)  Eat lots of beans.  Beans are a great food!  You can buy them dry in the bulk food section super cheap.  They keep fresh forever.  You can make them really quickly if you pre-soak them, then put the ones you aren’t immediately cooking in the freezer in a bag.  Then they are available when you need to cook something fast.

5)  Use every part of your meat.  Soaking bones to make broth is not ridiculous.  It actually works really well and it is a great technique to combine with all those beans you need to cook.  You just cook the beans in the broth.

6)  Simple food is okay.  Not every meal has to be a knock-out.  Laura as a child was pretty stoked to get fresh carrots or an orange at Christmas.  It is okay to have a potato and some brussel sprouts for dinner.  It is also reasonable to eat foods that are in season.  This means that you don’t have to eat salads all winter while lettuce is not growing near you.  You are going to live.  It is a very western idea that we need all this variation in our diet every single day.  Most of the world eats the same damn thing all the time.

7)  Eat pure, real foods without worrying about fat.  If you are just eating pure, real foods, you probably won’t need to worry about how much fat is in that bit  of butter or avocado or olive oil because your overall eating is so much healthier.  Butter is about the best invention ever.  I have no need for fake butter or egg whites or non-fat milk.  God gave us these awesome foods.  Let’s eat them without looking like ingrates.

 If you go on a trip somewhere, bring back a present.  It doesn’t have to be a big present, but you should bring something.  Once Pa brought peppermint sticks for the girls and some fancy white sugar for Ma!  These are simple things but so excellent for the ones left behind to know that they were thought of.  (Please don’t bring me white sugar, Brad).  

9)  Accept invitations.  If someone bothers to ask you to something, make every effort to accept.  People are not required to include you and if you are constantly making excuses for not sharing your company with others, they might just tire of asking you.  Why are you so great that everyone should work with your schedule?  You’ll be great and lonely, sucker!  Your special, busy, important life will change and then you will wonder why you don’t have any friends.  The prairie is large.  There might be a hard winter next year.  People need to stick together.  Make some effort.

10)  Don’t look down on the neighbor boy.  (Wink wink Brad!)  You might think you are too good for him one day, but the next day he might be a strapping young thing with two beautifully matched horses.  If you really want to go for a ride in his buggy,  give him a little respect.

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A friend recently asked me what has been up recently.  I had this sensation of just being terribly, terribly busy and yet I had a hard time coming up with exactly what we’ve been doing.  I think this is because we have been sort of low-level sick since mid January.  What have I been doing?  Running back and forth to the doctor’s office.

We don’t seek a lot of medical attention around here.  My remedies are usually more sleep, a pot of tea and a long bath, and I apply those rules to my children as well as myself.  This month pushed us though.

First it was coughs and runny noses which we didn’t really worry about much.  Then, Francis complained of a painful ear down in Eugene.  We dosed her full of decongestant, but despite this mild intervention, found out two days later at the doctor’s that she had perforated eardrums (both sides!) I was totally shocked and sad.  How could we have let this happen?  Truly, the kid was happy and playing on the playground one minute and crying the next.  KER-POW!  Perforations.

The day after that doctor visit was Inez’s well-baby check up.  To the doctor’s office for vaccinations!  ”She has really red cheeks,” says our dear Doctor Norris.  ”Tell me if she develops a rash because that could be a virus.”  She had no rash, but the next day I break out in pin-prick sized red dots.  Besides this I feel fine, and being a person with somewhat problematic skin anyway, I decide to wait it out.

Mid February and Inez gets a stinking angry welt under her arm.  Unfortunately it is a Saturday, so it is off to the urgent care for us!  We wait until midnight in the emergency room wondering if Inez has a flesh-eating virus.  I rock Inez in the waiting room and scratch my back. 

The next week, Zephyr became super whiney and said, “My ear hurts!”.  Back to the doctor’s office where we wait in the examination room and I scratch at my neck.

Meanwhile, the rash grows over most of my chest and back and starts to creep down my arms and legs.  It is hard to see until I scratch, and scratch I do!  I scratch so much that my shirts start to get strange red spots on the back where I have scratched too much and drawn blood.  With all these appointments for kids, there is no time to make one for me and my mystery body rash, so on the visit for Zephyr’s micro-perforated ear drums, I try to fish for advice on my rash, but my doctor doesn’t fall for it.  ”Wow, you ARE rashy!” he says glancing at my exposed neck.  That’s it.  No un-paid for medical advice.  And so, I itch.  I have now had a rash half of February and I feel like it is moving!  I swear that I will see someone if I still have this March 12th.  That will be a month of rashiness.

Thursday night Francis starts coughing and vomiting.  Believe it or not, it is sort of hard to diagnose whether or not a 5 year old is really sick or not.  They are sort of dancing around one minute and vomiting the next.  I think their digestive tract is close to the surface too because sometimes they throw up for what seems to be no apparent reason and are great a couple minutes later.  It took me an hour or so of watching Francis Friday morning just to be sure that she really was sick.  She danced all over the place when I picked up the video camera, but quickly deteriorated from there.  I kept her home from school and got this priceless picture that really captured our week, no, month:

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Francis taught Zephyr how to say this.  It is the sound she makes when she asks an incredibly confusing and circular question and then the answerer gets it (inevitably) wrong.  The sound means you are a big loser.  

“Do you want no mustard and no catsup on your hotdog or just nothing?”

“Nothing!”

“Wa, wa, wahhhhhh!”

Ever feel like this is your life?  

Inez is continuing her delightful habit of crying the last hour and half of each day.  I’m not sure how to escape it and keep my chin up.  Do I want to put on a brave face and do social things to escape the crushing demands of my children or would it be easier to retreat and hide alone?  Do I put my shoulder to the plow and push on through or maybe hibernate in the bathtub?  

It is depressing and bewildering to have a child cry (and cry and cry and cry and cry…..).  I like to fix things and I just can’t fix this one at all.  

Wa, wa, wahhhhhh.

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I want to exercise, but it is truly ridiculous right now.

Yesterday morning my friend Angela called me with a plan.  We were going to zip over to a community center, put our kids in childcare, and take a dance class.  ”Okay, ” I thought.  ”Here is my chance to start this whole post-partum thing out right.  Exercise.”  But no.  Inez needed to nurse and didn’t seem to be getting the job done.  I had woken up and made french toast instead of nursing her first thing and now I was engorged and uncomfortable.  I didn’t have time to pump and find something to wear for a dance/exercise class (that is assuming any bra in my wardrobe would fit over these huge, full breasts) AND get Inez dressed.  No childcare in the world was going to want a hungry, crying baby (who was also somewhat rank smelling to boot).  With chagrin, I acknowledged that I could not do it.  I hadn’t given myself the requisite two hours planning time necessary to execute actions of such a complicated nature!

This is what I run into over and over again: the rules of the world no longer apply to me.  I can’t count on a shower every day or even every other day.  I don’t necessarily get to eat when other people do.  My clothes that might fit at one moment won’t the next (and sometimes that is good!).  As the writer William Lychack says, (children) “make sleep and showering feel like indulgent hobbies”.  Add to that, being on time or doing things efficiently.  You go through life assessing how much time certain activities will take, and you carry these rules in your mind.  Suddenly, none of it works.  I can’t get anywhere very fast anymore.  

Luckily my friend is incredibly understanding.  We changed the plan to a walk with kids in strollers around the waterfront.  There are a few miles there.  We should be able to get some exercise, right?  Maybe.  After two stops for snacks, three for the bathroom, two to nurse and one for lunch, we MIGHT have gotten some exercise.  Maybe.

Obviously exercise that is actually going to happen has to be either a necessity or incredibly enjoyable.  I have a few friends who are completely car-less, which I really admire.  For them, getting kids to school or the store or social events is also exercise, and you can bet that they aren’t packing any extra pounds or suffering from any health problems.  I guess I need to pretend that running to the store is the only way for me to get there.  

In terms of enjoyment, I love to skate.  I am a big dork who will not admit that 1990 is long gone.  No one seems to rollerblade anymore, but I still love it!  Now I just need to get Francis up on that bike so that Brad and I can skate the other two.  Or I need to get Zephyr in preschool so I can skate with Inez during the morning.  Something.  I know the answer is out there.

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I just got the most lovely thank you card from my mother today.  Yes, that’s right, my mother.  Even though I don’t feel that I technically need a thank you card from someone so closely related, it made me reflect on how nice and important thank you cards are.

I tried to explain this to Clementine when she lived with us.  You MUST always write a thank you card when someone gives you something.  You can NEVER forget to write a thank you card.  If you think that anyone will understand or forgive you for forgetting to write a thank you card, well, you are dead wrong.  They will not understand, and they will not forget that you are the rude, inconsiderate clod who did not send a thank you card.  They will make unsubtle comments at family events like, “I wonder if my gift MADE it to so-and-so as I never got a thank you card!” or, “Maybe I should SEND so-and-so thank you cards!  Maybe that will help them as they set up their new home.”.  If your family is like my family, and you are the one who has neglected to send thank you cards for your wedding, you might as well kiss that first baby gift goodbye.  If you are lucky, you might be sent a pack of thank you cards.

I live in fear of forgetting to send thank you cards.  I think I am mostly good about this, but I fear that I might have forgotten someone along the way.  I also agonize on whether or not to send a written thank you after giving a verbal one.  I worry that maybe the verbal one was not sufficiently enthusiastic…  

The thing that is unfair about thank you cards is that they fall under the category of domestic correspondence, and once something is in that category, the duty to keep it up falls unfairly to the woman in the relationship.  A couple gets married and gets a whole bunch of nice presents that benefit both of them, but if the thank you card is not sent, it only really reflects poorly on the woman.  ”Why that is a girl who simply does not have any manners!”

It is not that man can not do this; it is that men are not properly trained to do their part.  Even my darling husband doesn’t seem to understand that a thank you card is not an occasion for sarcastic jokes about the gift that might not be understood.  Brad has a friend who has lovely manners and does a fantastic job keeping up all sorts of domestic correspondence like birthday cards and even anniversary cards (he wrote ours down!).  I don’t know his life well enough to understand why he has these powerful skills.  Even so, he is an unmarried man, and I wish I knew how to tell him that I am impressed by him and that he would be a catch if only for his card sending skills.  

But I digress.  Here are some do’s and don’ts for sending thank you cards:

• Send thank yous quickly (within a week if possible, or three months in the case of a wedding)
• Reference the gift directly
• Send them for gifts received by mail
• You don’t have to send a card for gifts you opened in presence of the giver (unless you are paranoid like me or feel you might have not given a proper thank you in that moment)
• You can show your personality or creativity, but don’t forget that the card is a time to express gratitude for someone’s thoughtfulness.  Make sure that message always gets through.
• I couldn’t find this rule written down, but I think that my mom trained me to never cash a check that was a gift until the thank you card was sent, but as it would also be rude to just hold on to a check for a long time, you have to send that card within the first couple days.
• One of the most important parts about properly corresponding with people is to be prepared.  Keep a list of addresses of invitees to a wedding or party.  When trying to guide Clementine after a high school graduation and then a wedding, I found over and over again that she had no system for keeping addresses around.  She never wrote them anywhere in any organized fashion.  She didn’t know anyone’s last name nor how to spell their first name.  When she put wrote them on the graduation announcements, she promptly lost them and had to re-gather them for the thank you cards.  Then she needed to find them again at the time of her wedding.  I have no idea what luck she is having with thank you cards now, but I imagine those addresses are in a recycle bin somewhere pining away.
• Keep thank you notes around.  Keep stamps around.  Keep addresses around.  All these things on hand will help you send those cards and not end up looking like a rude clod.

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Clementine & Mohammed's courthouse wedding

This week.  I swear, forces that be were trying to kill me.  I got sick, like really, really ill with a viral infection.  Then “the weather” descended on us, socking us in with inches of snow even in urban Portland, and Francis was home from school and looking for me to entertain her all day long.  The courthouse wedding happened Wednesday, quickly followed by a Gospel choir practice.  I raced from place to place, trying to smile, trying to have a good attitude, but mostly just wanting the week to hurry up and pass!

Wednesday’s courthouse wedding was a bright spot for us, as it was simple, lovely, and we had very little to do to make it happen.  Mohammed and Clementine were happy, although Brad and I had the sense that they wondered why all the Americans were making such a big deal out of this ceremony.  Bantus just have a party and call that “the wedding”.  All this paperwork and such didn’t mean much to them!  After the service, Mohammed caught a ride back to Seattle to complete his training for a new forklift job.  When Clementine was asked if she was going with him, she replied, “No, why should I?”.  To Clementine and the Bantus, maybe they weren’t really married yet?!  The next day at our house, everyone seemed exactly as they had the day before:

But not for long!  Saturday came with gale force winds, a few inches of snow and ice.  We thought the weather was bad before, but we hadn’t seen anything compared to this!  Calls started filtering in either saying that they wouldn’t be able to make it or asking if the event was still on.  I had never seen such a storm in the city.  I actually don’t remember such snow since 1996 when I lived in Toronto.  But this is Portland!  It is mild as the day is long!

“The girls” showed up at about 11am and commenced to wait around.  The girls were like Clementine’s entourage of unmarried friends, but as she is “older” for Bantu marriages (almost 21!  Gasp!), these girls weren’t really her actual peers.  She seemed to find them remotely irritating, (which I related to even as I was struggling to be open to this different culture).  I guess waiting around was sort of expected as no one seemed too surprised.  Did I mention that Clementine was gone during all this?  She was off getting her hair done professionally for the first time, as feat that I would have loved to see myself.

What can I say about the girls without sounding like a jerk?  Not much I guess, but I guess it is valuable to reflect on your interactions and assumptions when dealing with another culture.  The girls are teenagers, so they didn’t interact with me willingly unless they needed something.  That is not so different from some American teenagers, but I still struggle with my newfound identity of “old person” that I have gained in the African community.  Mohammed and his people need to have some context for Clementine living in our household, and they can only seem to conceive of me as “Clementine’s Mom”, which is just SOOOO NOT ME!  Come on people!  I am young and hip (right?).  I guess for the purpose of the wedding, they need a “mom”, so that is me.  (As a side note, Clementine HAS a mom who lives in Burundi.  Clementine hasn’t seen her since she was 8 years old as they were separated during the war in Congo in 1996, but as this woman actually birthed her and nursed her and fed her, THAT woman deserves the title of “Mom” of this lovely young bride.)

Anyway, My sister pointed out that the Somali Bantus are some of the most tribal of Africans, and have limited interactions with Americans or people of other cultures.  I had noticed that Mohammed and his family don’t eat different foods or try new things.  They don’t come with the same Pan-African experience that someone like Clementine has.  She is Congolese, but has lived in Zambia, interacts with Burundians, Ugandans, listens to music from across Africa (and other places in the world too). ” The girls” were hard to read sometimes.  At one point, they stood around the stove starring with visible disgust at what I was cooking.  They were also impressed and shocked at the natural gas stove.  ”How do you do that?” one girl asked me.  They brought their own food in one big bowl which they plunked down on the floor in the kitchen and crouched around eating it with their hands.  Even though they did not want to touch my food, they are open to some recognizable sweets.  Everyone was amazed with my chocolate chip cookies.  ”Can you teach me to make these?” a girl asked.  I chuckled thinking of how I dutifully followed the recipe on the chocolate chip bag…  I am just NOT a baker.

The one charmer was Amina, the littlest girl.  Brad took her sledding with Francis and Zephyr in the morning and she was super cute.  She also helped out a lot with Inez, bringing her to me when she was hungry or needing attention.

The evening came on and we realized that the weather was really a lot worse than we had thought.  Drifts of snow had formed around our car and more was coming down all the time.  My parents were stuck in Sheridan and unable to make the punch or bring the coffee supplies that they had volunteered to take care of.  It was miserable out!

Adding to this, we suddenly had no plan for what to do with the kids when they got tired at the reception.  My parents had been our plan, and suddenly we were on our own.  Luckily Francis and Zephyr had napped adequately that day.  I proposed to Brad that we just keep them there all night.  He didn’t like that idea much as he was already crafting a way to escape the party.  We packed some blankets to try to make the best of it.

We rushed off to the wedding really early as we didn’t know how long it would take to traverse the 8 or so miles to St Johns.  We also needed to stop for punch and coffee supplies and make the drinks once we got there.  

Here is the problem with being me:  I take my responsibilities really seriously.  I internalize them, wanting to do a good job and I define that good job as doing my very, very best.  Sometimes no one cares though, and at those moments, I would be smart to shake off the worry and anxiety that I have put on myself.  I struggle with this though.

I got to the community center.  No one was there.  I was freaked out about making the punch, but there was no punch bowl or cups.  I was freaked out about organizing the tables, but the people with the table cloths weren’t there yet.  I bossed Brad around about the tables until about 20 young men descended upon us and moved everything we had carefully argued about!  They were friends of the groom, or maybe just friends of the DJ, but all of a sudden, the room was a whirl of masculine energy, barking orders (or maybe just talking?) in Somali, moving tables here and there, whisking my coffee table right out from under me to put to service as the DJ table.  ”These guys have a plan,” Brad said.  ”I can feel it”.

And they did.  I told them that I needed to figure out where the punch and cake went.  ”No no no!  We bring out the cake at about midnight and then put it in the middle…”  Woa!  This party was not going until midnight, a detail that the boys seemed in complete denial of.  Plan or no, these boys were there to DANCE, which they started doing immediately.  After their perfunctory moving of tables, they settled in to get down for the rest of the evening with immense enthusiasm.  It was sort of charming, even though I was annoyed as hell trying to find a new home for the coffee maker.

So there we were…. us and 20 boys, no wedding party in sight, no table cloths, no punchbowls, no nothing to do.  I was way stressed out with “my duties” and yet had no way to execute them.  And no one cared.  They just wanted to dance.  Man, I just needed to shake it all off!

The other thing about the boys is that they play their music at a truly skull-busting level.  I don’t think it is just because I am old.  I mean, I love to listen to live music.  I love the crowds, I love the bass pounding through your body and shaking your internal organs.  I can handle loud music, but this was ridiculous.  I worried for my children.  I worried for the lack of fun that we would have if this decibel continued.  I worried.  And fretted about the stupid punchbowl.  In short, I wasn’t having much fun.

Finally, the rental stuff showed up, but the punchbowl was missing.  No matter.  At this point I had actually worked through my emotional freak out and had accepted that nothing this evening was goin to go as planned.  The bride showed up about 5 seconds after the table cloths and flowers were thrown on the table.  Here is the grand entrance:

Francis leads the way as a flower girl

You know how I said that the Bantus consider what we westerners would call a reception, actually a wedding?  Their ritual part is this walking in procession.  They do this two or three times during the party, with the bride and girls changing outfits for each walk.  There is also a sort of circle dance where I was led up to hold hands with Clementine and we just sort of bop back and forth.

Mohammed's brother is upfront with two of the girls

You can sort of see Clementine in this picture.  She has awesome hair and a gold headdress thing.

Clementine and Mohammed are seated at a head table

She looked lovely of course.  Mohammed looked handsome too!  Francis was thrilled with her important job of walking in next to Clementine.

Not much to say about the rest of the party.  We struggled with a variety of inter-cultural communication issues (the other women on Clementine’s side of the “family” dug about 30-40 metal forks out of the trash where party goers threw them.  Why?  I don’t know.  The boys threw away a bunch of sparkling water as “there was something wrong with it”).  A adult friend of Clementine’s harassed the boys every time they turned up the music, so thankfully, it stayed at a mostly sane level.  She marched right up there each time it snuck up!  Awesome!

I did start to have fun at a certain point, but it was an exhausted, over-extended, sick-of-all-of-this, sort of fun.  I wanted to go home, but I also wanted to be there for Clementine.  I wanted to be responsible and helpful, but I also wanted to hide.  I wanted to be understanding and culturally sensitive, but I also wanted people to quit throwing forks in the damn garbage can.

In short, this event really stretched me.  But it is done!  Wooo hoo!

I wish I could show off my dress better...

Clementine is now gone and the house is quiet.  Thank God it is all over.  Thank God for this life.

2 Comments | In: Current musings, Defies Categorization, family, General bitchin' | | #

Here is a list of expensive things:

raw-edged (meaning lazily unfinished) designer clothing

movies shown in little tiny movie theaters

local beer in glass bottles

old bikes put together for a non-profit

brown free range eggs

anything to do with plumbing

those really good laughing cow tiny cheeses

new things made to look old

syrup that comes from trees

buying a bus ticket for someone else (the ticket might be $15, but the “gift” fee is $18)

“handling” charges on theater tickets

framing $5 posters

decision making with children

chicken feed in the city

I went shopping with Kendall today.  It was fun, but sort of an ordeal.  First of all, you can’t just go shopping, you have to arrange for baby sitting, move car seats around, and plan for nap times.  Then, even with the best of planning, once embarked on the actually shopping part of the day, I had to stop for 30 minutes to change and nurse Inez.  It seriously cut into my shopping!  I am also struck by how shopping with a child causes me to make many errors in judgment.  I know that studies have been done showing how people will spend more than they should with a credit card.  What about people who spend more than they should and buy things that they don’t quite consider fully because of their children?  Case in point:  recently I bought a bed for the basement.  We really needed a bed down there as we had guests coming.  I knew the bed that I wanted, but it was out at Ikea and would need to be transported home somehow.  I arranged with a sister to drop the kids and borrow her car so that I might pick the bed up.  Once I got to the store however, I found out that the bed I wanted was only HALF in.  That is, some of the parts were there, but others were not.  The parts weren’t interchangeable.  The sides that I needed “might” be in after a week or so, but then again, “they might not”.  In my exhaustion and haste, I decided to just buy a freakin’ bed already, because it had been such a big deal to borrow the car, arrange child-care and find the time to get to the store.  I bought a bed.  Now I realize that the one I chose takes up the whole room.  The headboard doesn’t push up against the wall because it has this special flare design.  Now I wish I could take it all back and get the bed I wanted, but it is too late now.  Man!

I bought pants today that I think are too short.  I couldn’t find what I thought was the right size.  Inez was screaming her head off in the store and I was almost done.  I needed to meet Kendall in a few minutes.  I couldn’t actually remember what length I was looking for.  The numbers were blurring in front of my eyes.  So I just grabbed the nearest pants and headed for the check stand.

When I was NOT pregnant with Inez, I ran out to find a swimsuit bottom.  I had 15 minutes.  I tried on tons of bottoms, but as I am of traditional build (that is a “Number One Ladies Detective Agency” joke), I find that I usually had more than enough bottom for my bottoms.  I finally found a good butt sling, carried it to the cashier, waited a long time in line, and then he said, “I will have to go check on the price on these as they are maternity”.  Wah?  I guess I could have stopped him as he ran off to figure out how much my prego-pants were, and mind you, I WASN’T PREGNANT, but frankly I didn’t have the time or energy.  I just bought them.  I also thought, “Great!  Now I am going to get pregnant!’.  I know that is not the way it works.  

I went searching for chicken scratch yesterday, and found myself at the city chicken plant nursery place in our neighborhood.  They are a little snooty there anyway, but their offer of a $30 bag of cracked corn really amazed me.  What happens to the $12 bag to make it arrive at $30 once it gets to the city?  I don’t get it.  Here is a case where I did not succumb to my haste.  I will not pay $30 for chicken scratch.  There is a reason people have the expression, “Awwww, that’s chicken scratch!”, and it is not because $30 is a deal.

My sister was very patient with me when I followed our trip to Banana Republic with a request to find the nearest feed store in Woodburn.  I mean, we were in WOODBURN, and that is sort of like the country!  I found my chicken scratch, slapped down my $9.99, and slung the 50 lb bag on my shoulder.  Yeah!  That is more like it!  Chicken scratch, man!

This is a cautionary tale people!  Don’t be like me with your money.  That is, only sometimes be like me, but without buying too-big beds, too-pregnant bathing suits, and too-short pants.  Remember chicken scratch!

1 Comment | In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, General bitchin', urban farming | | #