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I’ve always prided myself on the ability to quickly assess situations and judge whether it is a real emergency or not.  My background in social services and teaching has further assisted me in those frenzied moments as a parent, ostensibly “the one in charge”, when I have to decide if we are grabbing a big cloth to mop up the blood or grabbing the big cloth AND racing to the emergency room.  I have found that I am a master at keeping my mouth shut at those times, and rather than gasping and screaming, “Oh my Jesus!” I am able to remain calm and neutral as I inspect the head wound.  Although I am good at these things, I have also learned that I tend to under-react.  I am quick to say, “s/he will be FINE!” and “Buck up kiddo!” and slow to make the doctor’s appointment.

This last week Francis got poison oak…. badly.  The kids like to play in a pretty spot of the woods at my parents’ house, right on the edge of our property and the neighbors’.  Unfortunately, it is full of the stuff.  I did see it, but as I seem to be immune from the stuff, it didn’t occur to me that it could hurt any of us.  Wrong.

On Monday Francis had a rash on her face.  I didn’t immediately think of how we had been through poison oak.  By Tuesday it itched.  Her school sent her home.  While on a shopping trip at New Seasons, a nice man instantly diagnosed her rash in the shampoo aisle.  ”Of course!” I thought, and bought the product he suggested (Tecnu).

I brought her back to school Wednesday with some calamine lotion slapped on there.  The school was not hearing of it.  They wanted her to go to a doctor.  They weren’t going to let her come back to class until she brought a note.  ”What?!  For poison oak?  That is ridiculous!” I said, muttering under my breath how this would never happen in the county.  Haven’t these silly city people ever seen a rash from poison oak?  They wanted to know how I knew it was poison oak.  They didn’t like my answer much.  (I guess growing up in Sheridan does not grant you medical credentials, nor does chatting with a nice guy in the shampoo aisle.)  So we went to the doctor.

Good thing we did.  Francis’s rash got worse throughout the day.  By the afternoon her eye was swollen shut.  An icky crust formed over the rash which the doctor diagnosed as a secondary staph infection.  Yuck.  Prescriptions ensued.  The good news is that she is feeling better and was allowed to return to school.  The bad news is that maybe tomorrow morning it will be her other eye.

6 Comments | In: family, How strange, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

Mom, you are totally screwing up again and leaving diapers in the toilet!

That is absolutely what I say to myself when I see that I have not shaken, rinsed, and wrung a dirty cloth diaper out but rather left it in the toilet for “later”.  ”Later” is unfortunately when I really, really need to use the bathroom.  Yes, welcome to my world.

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Do you know the words to “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”?  I thought I did.  I don’t know what inspired me to launch into this particular song tonight at bedtime, but it seemed like a good idea.  I thought the kids would like it, and even though I haven’t sung it in YEARS, I felt confident heading into the interlude.  And then…

Watch them wash their underwear!  Those little Teddy Bears are having a wonderful time tonight!  See them wash their underwear!  As they picnic on their holiday!

My children dissolved in laughter.  ”Mom!  That doesn’t make any sense!  Why are they washing their underwear on a picnic?”

I didn’t know.  But weren’t those the words?  Hadn’t I sung them all my childhood? My hippy, hippy childhood where we learn things like this song and all the verses to “Riding in my Car” plus everyone sang “Octopus’ Garden” even before seeing it on Muppet Show?  (As a side note, the last time I remembered singing these songs was around a huge bonfire out in a field at a sing-along.)

I looked it up.  There is no washing of underwear at the picnic.  It is “Watch them, take them unawares”.  Who knew?

7 Comments | In: My super freakin' cute kids, Philosophical musings | | #

It’s too rainy.

I started turning soil over back in Mid March before the torrential rains set in.  I managed to carve out 6 sections in a different layout than last year.  This is so that I can “rotate” crops without really thinking about it too much.  I am also trying to account for a big walnut tree that will leaf out sometime in May and start to create too much shade for most seeds to germinate.

I have such a little tiny space to garden in, but I jealously guard every inch of it.  I laugh about this space too.  In my mind, the first year I gardened here was to be the last, as I intended to have a new garden shed in this spot “within the year”.  Three years later I am still turning the soil, with no shed nor even possible shed in sight.

The kids have high hopes for what they will plant.  Zephyr wants carrots (hard!), beets (easy!), and bless his soul, brussel sprouts.  I  hope those don’t get demolished by aphids.  I had better put in my order for beneficial nematodes right now!

Francis wants lettuce, lemon cucumbers and sugar snap peas.  The peas are in on the trellis you see on the back.  The boat owner is not so sure of me fencing him in, but his kid likes the sweet peas as much as mine do, so I figured it would be okay.

I’m growing all the stuff that the rest of the family SHOULD eat, but maybe no one would actually choose to eat: kale, spinach, swiss chard, and various squash family things.  Yes, I am going to pack it all in there.  Just watch me.  And then when it is finally sunny out, I will poke tomatoes in too.  Ha!

I am grateful that the kids are excited about the garden.  I am SOOOOO grateful that they actually eat vegetables.  My parents have this amazing thing called a TV, (that’s short for television), and it projects stories, like in moving pictures!  And there is sound too!  Anyway, while I was out visiting, I watched this program called “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” and there was this super depressing part where he visited a 1st grade classroom and showed kids various vegetables and they didn’t know the names to ANY of them.  It was the saddest thing I have ever seen.  I was so depressed after that, even though I know that my own children, even the proto-lingual one, know the names to most all of their vegetables, maybe except the kohlorabi.

7 Comments | In: food, My super freakin' cute kids, urban farming | | #

It is suppose to rain…. a lot…. this week.  The weather report icons line up in a nice, uniform row.  Each one shows a cloud and rain.  For fun, they threw in some lightening bolts.  I hope we get some lightening and thunder.  That would mix things up.

After making it through one day of solid rain though, I wonder how I am going to “exercise” the kids.  I know this is silly, but I am fairly convinced that children need a good solid run each day to keep them from freaking out…or maybe that is just me.  Yes, I do think of them like dogs.  Yes, I do like to “exercise the baby” just in case.

Thinking that rain is not a big deal, I took Zephyr and Inez on a shortish walk to a local bakery (about a mile).  By the time we made it there, we were pants-soaking, thigh-chilling wet.  It sucked.  We’re going to have to come up with some way to get out of the house this week without getting drowned.  Wish me luck.

All smiles at the beginning of the walk.

2 Comments | In: General bitchin', My super freakin' cute kids | | #

Francis wrote this great essay for school.  I was so proud of her, I thought I would put it here:

En mi familia plantamos un jardin.  Todos en mi familia tiene un cuadrado para plantar.  En mi cuadrado yo quiero plantar calabazas, espinacas y muchos flores.  Mi hermano quiere plantar zanahorias y melocotones.  Mi mama quiere plantar lechuga y guisantes.  Mi papa quiere plantar los mismos cosas que mi mama.

8 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

I don’t know what it is about me and death hikes.  I keep finding them.  I forget that many places that are beautiful to go are

• wet
• high up in the air
• made by scrabbling a barely flat surface into a cliff wall

I was pondering why we always end up like this, a white-knuckle death grip on each kid as we inch along a rock face, hissing at our dear children with each clumsy step.  (I swear that Zephyr starts tripping every third or fourth step when we are up 100 feet in the air clinging to a metal cable.  Swear.)  Why does this always happen to us?  Then it occurred to me… it is the terrain dummy.  We keep hiking to these waterfalls in the gorge.  Gorge + waterfalls = rock walls with just a cable to cling to.  If I were in Death Valley say, this wouldn’t be happening to me.

Anyway, we had a break in the rain this last weekend and we raced for the outdoors.  I feel like such a caged animal these days, eager to get out be RUN around.  I am coming to terms with my true nature.  The truth is that I like exercise.

So why not get it here?

This was Eagle Creek Trail.  William Sullivan, Northwest hike guru has this to say about this particular trail:

The Eagle Creek Trail is one of Oregon’s most spectacular paths, passing half a dozen major waterfalls. The trail is also an engineering marvel. To maintain an easy grade through this rugged canyon, the builders blasted ledges out of sheer cliffs, bridged a colossal gorge and even chipped a tunnel through solid rock behind 120-foot Tunnel Falls.

Yes siree.  It was high up there.

We did this particular hike with our friends Jason and Angela and their two boys Soren and Anders.  It is fun to have a whole family of friends.  Everyone has someone to love!  That is definitely how we feel about these guys, so we were certainly open to risking our lives with them.

Brad is such a good sport.  I have yet to decide if he really likes hiking but pretends not to or if he really does not like hiking but thinks he should or if he just doesn’t like it and… you get the picture.  For him, the best thing about hiking in the gorge is that Edgefield is between us and Portland when we are done.  The kids, (all five of them), were so exhausted that they were really pretty mellow at dinner.  Who can resist?

7 Comments | In: family, food, My super freakin' cute kids, on the road again | | #

I am trying to play more.  I am trying to relax and just be more fun.  My TSPC requirement classes made me sadly realize that I sometimes look at my kids as one great big bother, a source of stress and distraction that I must struggle to escape.  And that’s too bad, because it seems to me that I CHOSE to have these kids, right?  Why the crappy attitude?

I am such a do-er in my daily life.  I feel massive satisfaction from what I accomplish in any given day.  When Brad asks how my day went, I immediately catalogue what I achieved that day as though that justifies my whole existence, as though I am not worthwhile at all if I didn’t complete the siding on the chicken shed, plant lily starts, hang art, finish laundry and clean the kitchen.  I’ve got to fix this I know, because obviously the simple, quiet things are important too— maybe more important.  So I am going to play more and maybe do a bit less.

I’m not going to change too much– I will always love working, achieving, feeling the accomplishment that comes with being physically exhausted because you just mopped the floor on your hands and knees– but I am trying to find a little balance.  The work of mothering is a wide skill set, and the things that kids note at the end of the day are not the same things that I might catalogue to Brad as “accomplishments”.  So these are the things I am trying to do more of:

• Snuggling up with Zephyr at nap time (I would curl up with Inez if she would quit tweaking my nose)
• Reading books with kids (no, my books do not count, although once I had Francis fooled when I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan out loud to her a few days in a row)
• Art projects (like kid ones, not the ones where I tell them to go away and let mom work)
• Dancing around
• Playing instruments and singing
• Cooking projects where they get to make a mess and maybe even lick stuff
• Baths midday (with bubbles!)
• Setting up train tracks

Part of my goal with this year is just to calm down and not achieve anything, because you know, I think I am a good enough person just sort of sitting on my ass… and playing with trains.

9 Comments | In: Current musings, family, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

Francis came up with something hilarious… she is monkey-ing people.  I could tell you what this is, but wouldn’t a photo demonstration be so much better?

First, take one monkey with magnet hands and feet (thanks Devra and Gavin!).

Quietly attach it to someone’s seat belt when exiting the car.  This works best in the dark:

Wait patiently until the target gets in the car and reaches for his or her seatbelt:

Squeal with glee when target FREAKS OUT upon touching a furry, rat-sized monkey!
YOU’VE BEEN MONKEYED!  (This was me on the way to the grocery store this morning.  May I point out that I have already been monkeyed three times?  Good job Francis!)

2 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

I have had a bunch of people comment on how I am not writing.  Well, yes, remember how I said that I would not be writing?  All my creative powers (and non-existent time) is being poured into one effort— to finish classes for my continuing license renewal in order to stay employable.  And yet, I have still heard, “Wow.  I remember that you said you would not be writing, but you are really not writing… like at all!”.  It is true.  But now I am pleased to tell you that I am almost there.

I’m referring to the end of the madness… my classes are almost done.  I fully intend to send the last project off tomorrow, and then I can be a somewhat free woman again—look onward to a brighter tomorrow and all that.

Meanwhile, things still need to happen around here whether or not classes are finished.  Laundry still needs to be done.  That damn dishwasher still does not load nor unload itself once or twice a day.  I hate that thing.  Our refrigerator “fill yourself” option seems to be broken.  No matter how many times I check, it is still lacking the basic ingredients that every household needs.  And the kids.  They need all sorts of help doing things— (So helpless!  So needy!  I tell you, don’t have kids.  They can’t do anything for themselves these days.  Even the baby is useless, useless, useless!).  And get this— the worse thing is that we seem to be invaded by mice.  Just because I can’t get the food off the floor (those kids again!), they think it was left out for them.  Au Contraire raton!  That is for the shark to clean up, which I plug in faithfully each night, but he still seems to be in the same spot each morning as though he went nowhere.

Sigh.  A brighter tomorrow.  And better appliances, please.

3 Comments | In: family, General bitchin', My super freakin' cute kids | | #