Early Birds and Night Owls

I haven't used an alarm clock in years.

Thing One wakes up every morning at 6AM.  He has some kind of internal alarm.  It makes no difference what time he's gone to bed or whether the sun is up.  He has (finally) learned to be relatively quiet in getting up and going downstairs, but it took a while to get there.  It's not his fault that I still usually hear him and wake up--I have ears like a hawk after listening for three babies in the night for so many years.  (And under pain of death, he is not to go downstairs until the hour hand on his bedroom clock reaches the 6 under any circumstances!)

Thing Two wakes up between 6 and 6:30.  Unlike his brother, he can be relied upon to wake the dead.  RattleRATTLErattleRATTLE (the stairway banister) followed by the THUMPthumpTHUMPthumpTHUMPthump of clomping feet on the wooden hallway floor.  If I was not already awake, this does it.  The only blessing is that I no longer have to get up with the boys immediately.  I lie in bed, catch up with my blogs and the news on my laptop, and mentally gird my loins for another day.  When I've mustered the necessary energy, I go downstairs, see to The Hound, and get the day started.  This involves much coffee.

The Girl, like her parents, is a night owl.  (The boys take after their paternal grandfather, who is up before the birds.)  Left to our own devices, we would go to bed very late and then sleep in.  Since the whole sleeping in thing does not happen (see above), it takes the three of us a while to get going in the morning.  The Girl usually comes stumbling down the stairs around 7:15, grumbling about her brothers and their racket. 

I'm told that eventually my sons will start to sleep in.  I hear that happens when they hit the teenage years.  And I can't wait.  Why?

Because our regional high school starts its school days at 7:30.  And the school buses pick up around 6:30 out here.  I will enjoy getting to wake THEM up every day.  Payback is sweet.  

Murphy's Law

Why is it that there is always someone driving very slowly in front of me when I am in a hurry to get somewhere?  A question I ponder often, especially since the road between my house and civilization is two-lane and twisting and generally deeply lacking in passing zones.

Today was just one of those days.  And it's my own fault.  As usual, I overscheduled--trying to squeeze in a playdate for Thing One where there really wasn't room (maternal guilt), a quick trip to the gas station on my way to pick up the kids from camp, a class this evening at the end of a long day.  I am efficient to a scary degree and can whip through a to-do list like nobody's business, but sometimes I would be a lot happier and a lot less stressed if I just took a few things off each day's list and built a little more flexibility into the schedule.  

This morning, I cursed Murphy's Law on three or four separate occasions when various things slowed me down and made me late.  But in retrospect, if I hadn't been in such a darned hurry the whole morning, trying to get so much done, I might not have even noticed all the delaying annoyances, because they probably wouldn't have made a difference. 

Wonder if Murphy's Law is still a problem when people don't notice its effects?  Kind of like the tree falling in the forest when nobody is paying attention...possibly silent as well.

I need a day off. 

Yes, I Am A Dork. Why Do You Ask?

This evening, I'm feeling compelled to share an observation from physics.  Not my favorite subject (actually, the absolute bane of my existence for years), but I still think about the second law of thermodynamics every time I look around my house.

In relatively plain English, this law states that natural processes will always proceed in the direction that increases the disorder of a system.  My home is the living embodiment of this principle.  

My children are the force of chaos.  Every time I look around, something that was formerly clean is now dirty.  Some area that was previously tidy is now a disaster.  I do my damnedest to restore order, but it is a fundamentally futile effort.  The odds are stacked against me (three against one, plus the dog!) and I fall short.

But at least I recognize the law at work when I see it.

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction.”

Albert Einstein  1879-1955)

Emily Yoffe, Let's See How You Feel About Using Your Professional Title After You Earn One

I frequently read the Dear Prudence column written by Emily Yoffe at Slate.com.  Her column posted on July 16th includes a segment relating to the use of professional titles on wedding invitations (the parents of the groom and the groom are all physicians), and her advice on that subject seemed perfectly reasonable to me.  However, she went on to add the following:

"I have more of a problem with people with Ph.D.s using the Dr. title, which I think is better reserved for those with medical degrees."

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I have a Ph.D. in Biology.  As you can imagine, this comment rubbed me the wrong way in a big way.   I earned the damned degree.  It was a lot of work.  If I want to call myself "Dr.," I can.  Legitimately.  I don't want her cheapening my degree by implying that it isn't worth the professional title that customarily accompanies it within the professional arena.  It is worth noting that the average Ph.D. candidate in the sciences (I can't speak for other fields) spends MORE time in his or her doctoral program than does the average medical school student in medical school.  When I was in grad school, the national average for a Biology Ph.D. was about 6.5 years door-to-door.  Med school is typically a four-year program.

Now, I can completely understand that calling yourself "Dr." in a public (as opposed to professional) context when you do not have a medical degree can cause confusion.  Especially when a medical professional is needed in a hurry.  For this and other reasons, I actually don't use the "Dr." title in general life.  Most of the people with whom I regularly interact probably have no idea that I could.

According to Wikipedia, Ms. Yoffe is a journalist.  If she has earned a doctoral degree, the entry does not include it.  But I would venture to guess that if she had, she would be less dismissive of those of us who earned the right to use the title "Dr." via an avenue other than medical school.  Even if we don't.           

The Ultimate Expression of Love

Hopefully Himself will never read this post. He is very modest and absolutely hates it when I brag on him. Which I do regularly because he is a wonderful man and father and all-around human being. (He won't read my Facebook posts about him either.) I figure that if the worst thing I do as his wife is embarrass him because I have so many good things to say about him, he's doing pretty darned well in the grand scheme of things.

A long while ago, a good friend gave me a book called "The Five Love Languages" by a marriage counselor named Gary Chapman. The basic premise of his book is that there are only five major ways that people express and understand love--

1) Words of Affirmation
2) Quality Time
3) Receiving Gifts
4) Acts of Service
5) Physical Touch

--and that understanding which of these is most important in making your significant other feel loved and then doing it is the key to maintaining a long-term, healthy relationship. (I am oversimplifying, but this is the gist.)

The longer I am married, the more this idea resonates with me. For example, I am a card-carrying "Acts of Service" kind of girl. Gifts and words and quality time and touch are all very nice, but the way to my heart is to do something kind for me. Someone who notices that laundry needs to be folded or beds made or dishes washed or recycling taken out (etc, etc) and then takes care of it (without me asking) might as well be screaming "I LOVE YOU" to me. No words needed. It is worth noting that Himself is not an "Acts of Service" kind of guy, meaning that this is not the way he would instinctively choose when trying to express love. However, he knows me well, which brings me to the reason for this meandering post.

I am a gardener. He is not. I like vegetables. He eats only a limited few kinds. He does not have a lot of free time, and the vegetable garden is the absolute last place in which he would ordinarily choose to spend what free time he does have.

However, I have been stressing about the five cubic yards of mulch in my driveway and my lack of time to distribute it in the garden where it needs to go before the weeds take over the universe.

This afternoon, he organized the kids into a bucket brigade and did the heavy shoveling and wheelbarrow-hauling himself and it took the five of us about two hours to do together what would have taken me days by myself in the garden.

If that is not love, I don't know what is.

The message came through loud and clear, and no words were needed.

I love you too, sweetheart.

Thanks, Mom

As a kid, I didn't know how good I had it.  Mom never missed a basketball game or a band concert or an awards ceremony.  She was always active in whatever community we lived in, but she was there for my brother and me (and our dad) first and foremost.  Love, support, cupcakes...whatever we needed.  Not knowing any better, I took that for granted for years.  

Then my eyes opened, around the time I left for college.  I had friends whose mothers tore them down emotionally and friends whose mothers' dysfunctional relationships had scarred them.  Friends who could never please their mothers no matter what they did.  One particularly close friend whose mother screamed so loudly at her over the phone that I could hear every bitter word clear across the room and I would have to leave because I couldn't take it.

How many times did I call Mom after witnessing episodes of serious maternal craziness and thank her for not being like that? A dozen at least? There but for the grace of God went I, and at least by that point I had the sense and perspective to appreciate the fact. In the grand cosmic mother lottery, I hit the jackpot.

Happy real birthday, Mom. I'm proud (and grateful!) to be your daughter.

Not My Mother's Real Birthday

My maternal grandmother was born on August 8th, 1908. 8/8/08. For obvious reasons, she decided that 8 was her lucky number.

My mother is her youngest child. She was born on July 29th. For reasons that make zero sense to me (Grandma was a true character and I say that with the greatest possible love and respect) she decided that she was just going to pretend that Mom was born on the 28th. Why she did this for only the third child, I have no idea. Her second daughter did have an "8" birthday, but not the first, and the first has always celebrated her birthday on the 7th, the day on which she was actually born. Novel concept.

The way Mom tells it, she had no idea her birthday was actually the 29th until she needed her birth certificate to apply for a passport as a grown woman.

Of course, by that point, she was used to celebrating on the 28th. I call her with birthday wishes on the 28th AND the 29th. We call the 28th her "love birthday."

Happy love birthday, Mom. Your mother may have been way too superstitious about the number 8, but now we have two days each year to celebrate you. ;)