Frazzled

Going out of town solo for the weekend (50th anniversary celebration for my aunt and uncle), leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow.  The universe has accordingly conspired to make this week (and especially today) as crazy as humanly possible.  School, garden, pool cleanup, meetings, errands, laundry, trying to get everything in order to leave behind.  Since the school year ends a week from tomorrow, it was going to be crazy even without the trip...last minute events and obligations galore.  As a counterbalance, I'm feeling every bit of the weight of summer lurking around the corner and trying to savor my last few days of relative freedom even with the madness.  I really can't decide if having all this school crap over with for the summer is worth the price of having to referee constant bickering for three months...I'll let you know in September.  Wish me luck!

Least Favorite Question Ever

At some point in casual conversation, it always comes up.  "Where are you from?"  A simple enough question, but for me, there's no simple answer.

I was born in New York, but only lived there for two years, and we were only there for my dad's work anyway, not because of any personal ties to the place.  Before I turned three, that same job sent my family overseas, and we moved from international city to international city every few years until I got to junior high.  I was able to stay in the one place for the six years of junior high and high school, but then it was four years of college back in the US in one state, grad school and work for six years in another, and then the final move with my husband to the state in which we now live.

To my amazement, I've been here for thirteen plus years now (in my current house for almost eleven)...more than twice as long as anywhere else in my life.  By that measure, this should be home, but I am not with my tribe here.   My husband is from the general area, my kids were all born here, but this is just not where I belong.  "Home" used to be the city in which I went to junior high and high school, but that's more than half my lifetime ago now, so that doesn't really apply either.

If you ask me the question and I don't feel like going into the whole explanation of how I'm not really from anywhere, which is most of the time, I usually say that I'm from Oregon, a state in which (ironically) I have never lived.  My parents now live there most of the year, I've visited many times, and I love that particular corner of the universe...call it a spiritual home of sorts.  It's as good an answer as any!

New One On Me

Saw this yesterday while at a house party.  Darnedest thing ever.

In case you can't believe your eyes, let me confirm: this is a kiddy-sized, honest-to-goodness motorcycle with training wheels.  And the kid riding it was three years old, I kid you not.  I asked to be sure.

Yeah, his dad was right behind him on another motorcycle.  And yeah, he had on a helmet just like this one, and kneepads and motorcycle boots and the whole nine yards.  BUT...just seems to me that a kid shouldn't be on anything motorized until he or she doesn't need training wheels anymore, at a bare minimum.  This kid will either be the next Evel Knievel or have a frequent-flyer card at the local ER before he's 10!



 

On The Benefits Of Children Getting Older

Four cubic yards of mulch were deposited on my driveway at 5:30PM today.  By 8:30PM, at least three of those yards had been successfully relocated to my garden, where I hope they will permanently suffocate the $&!?@ weeds that plague my summers.

Himself (bless the man) kept the wheelbarrow and buckets filled with mulch from the pile and my sons hauled them to the garden in a sort of boy-powered conveyor belt.  While that was going on, Petunia finished up the weeding and helped me spread the mulch around the plants.  It would have taken me days to do that job by myself and I probably would have thrown my back out in the process, too...let's hear it for kids big enough to make themselves useful and a husband who loves me!



 

Old And Square, Right Here

Went with Thing One to a school awards ceremony last night (still can't get over the fact that my laser-focused-on-math-and-science kid received an award for art.)  Anyway, I sat in the school gym for a good hour just people-watching, since there wasn't much else to do.  The middle schoolers in particular are an interesting bunch...some still look like they are nine or ten; others could pass for high schoolers easily.  What really strikes me every time I go to one of these school functions, though, is what some of the girls choose to wear.  And more importantly, the fact that their parents permit it.

The trend for tween girls appears to be really short dresses and skirts.  Like barely-covering-the-butt short.  As my daughter is only six, this is not an issue we've had yet, but I am observing the older girls from an almost anthropological point of view and girding my loins for future battles.  Thankfully, the friend from whom Petunia's hand-me-downs flow also has tall, long-legged girls and similar views on children not dressing hoochie-style, which makes my life easier, but I'll be damned if my kid shows up anywhere in public with her ass flapping in the breeze.  Especially at 12!  There has to be a middle ground that does not involve my daughter looking like she should be on a street corner somewhere, and in four or five years I anticipate many arguments over that middle ground.  I'm sure she will be royally pissed off at me, too, but I'm her mother, not her friend, and that's okay.

Interesting Evening

Finished planting my garden after the kids went to bed...a few weeks late but oh well.  Not so into the whole thing this year...when we redo the back yard, I may switch over entirely to container gardening.   Now I need to mulch so I don't spend the whole damned summer weeding!

Quick shower, pack the kids' lunches for tomorrow.  What's this in my in-box?  Oh goody...one of my geocaching friends sent me the link to a puzzle to solve, since I love puzzle caches.  Fifteen minutes later, I've figured out that the little Lego guy in the animated file is doing semaphore and I've decoded the numbers he's signaling.  Next up?  Explaining to my husband why we may need to explain the concept of being transgender to our eight and ten year-old sons.  (Long story not having to do with anybody in the family, and boy, am I hoping to be able to find the right words for the conversation with the boys.)  Never a dull moment around here!

Unnerving Dependence on Technology

My children, the young'uns that they are, have no idea that there was a time when cell phones did not narrate directions to you turn by turn, never mind that there was a time when cell phones did not exist at all and people had to use (*gasp*) paper maps to navigate.  When we have these conversations, I feel very VERY old.

I spent a lot of this weekend in the car.  Friday night was that birthday party of Thing Two's I almost forgot about.  Saturday I had a baby shower for one of Himself's cousins to attend in the afternoon and then the end-of-year party for Thing One's soccer team that evening.  Today, it was Mass, Home Depot, Petunia's soccer game and then a haul out to the boys' tournament site to catch the last two games (sadly, I missed all four of Thing One's games this weekend and the first two of Thing Two's...the realities of time and space sometimes suck.)

I'm familiar with the park where the birthday party was held despite its 30-min distance from home, but needed directions to avoid the major highway leading to it at rush hour.  I am totally unfamiliar with the areas where the bridal shower and tournament were held (each at least an hour from home in opposite directions) and the soccer party was at a house so far off the beaten path that two of the three direction-finding apps on my iPhone didn't even acknowledge its existence!  Mapquest and the basic maps app were both clueless...Google Maps was the only one that came through on this particular occasion.  I felt like one app or another was telling me where to go all damned weekend between the to-ing and the fro-ing.

All things considered, the apps did pretty well.  I got lost going to the park on Friday and suspect that I came home from the tournament by an exceedingly roundabout route, but I did eventually get to where I was going in both cases.  And considering that my alternative in each case was having an elementary schooler navigate from printed directions, the apps were a much handier alternative, although it is always disconcerting to be relying entirely on a device that may well be leading you completely astray for all you know!  (see e.g. the park debacle, in which case I ended up on the wrong side of town entirely and had to switch to a different app in a random parking lot somewhere.)

Oh, and the kids' record for their nine games of soccer this weekend??  1-8.  Thing One's team won once and that was it.  Thing Two did shine today, though, particularly in the second game, in which he played goalie for the second half against a far superior team and shut them out entirely except for a freak goal they scored in the last 30 seconds of the game.  That's his last game of the season and all three coaches were effusive in their praise after the game, so at least his season ended on a high note from a personal standpoint even if they had just lost four games straight as a team in two days.

Now we are home, and it is quiet.  The kids are in bed and there are no electronic voices to be heard.  It is a major relief to me that I do not need direction-finding assistance to get me anywhere I need to go tomorrow!