meanie mom diaries

Idiotic Conversations Mr. C and I Had Before We Had a Ton of Kids

2012-01-25T14:53:00.000-08:00

If I had a time machine at my disposal, I would go back in time to 2003. 2003 is when this house was being built. 2003 is also when Mr. C and I had the following idiotic conversation:

Me: Ooooooh! We have money for a little upgrade! What should we do?
Mr. C: How about we tile the entire great room area?
Me: Fabulous! What color should we get?
Mr. C: White! That won't be hard to keep clean at all! And that empty field of dust that is behind our property? I'm sure it'll never blow dirt into our home! Plus, our future children will be born with a special gene that will prevent them from carelessly dropping food or questionable matter all over the floor! You won't ever have to sweep 3 times a day!
Me: I love it! And you know what? I bet our future pets will probably never shed all over it! Also, if we have a particularly hateful feline in the future, tile is an exceptionally wonderful choice for us because when she pukes up hairballs, I'm sure she'll be polite enough to do it on the tile where it's easier to clean!
Mr. C: I just thought of something else! If by chance our future dogs happen to be drooly animals, we'll never slip or slide in puddles of it all over our tile floor!
Me: Oh my gosh! You're right! We are so smart for choosing to cover over half of our home in ceramic white tile! I was thinking about maybe using the upgrade money towards classy granite countertops in the kitchen and bathroom, but this is a much smarter choice!

Okay, obviously that's not how the real conversation went, but you get my point. We weren't just stupid. We were like, Snookie stupid.

However, I believe that I may have discovered a way to gain back my sanity and keep the floors clean:

Have you seen one of these before? Aren't they cute? It's a robot- (like Jetson's style) officially known as a Roomba. I'm sure you've seen them. They've been around a while. And ever since my friend informed me that she loves hers so much that she'd name her next kid after it, I want one. I want one bad. I want one so bad that I even did some math to figure out exactly how much my life would improve if I had one of these.

So the tile floor space in my home is approximately 900 square feet. Each tile itself is 1 square foot, so that means I'm sweeping/mopping over 900 tiles a day. Then you have to add in the approximately 400 square feet of tile that is in the kitchen area that is getting cleaned an additional 2 more times a day, which means that I am cleaning about 1700 tiles a day. Now, say that every time I sweep, I feel 50% annoyed, 20% bored, 30% frustrated. (Which could be how you're feeling right now reading this). It would follow that each individual tile is responsible for .058% of my negative energy. From that I came up with the following formula:

Let x= the number of tiles and y=hours spent cleaning the floors

y(.058x)= grumpy annoyed mother

However, with a Roomba, y=0 because I personally would not be spending any hours cleaning my floors. Therefore,

y(.058x)= delirioiusly happy mother who now has time to spend on Pinterest.com

You can see that mathematically, my happiness factor increases when I have a Roomba.

(Now would be a good time for you to forget that I am a tutor. No one check my math please. Also, for you nerds out there, I am aware that if y really did equal 0, the answer to the equation would be "no solution". But that didn't work with what I'm doing here, so go stick it in your pocket protector.)

Also, Mr.C read over this and suggested that I square the second half of the inequality to represent his happiness factor because you know what they say.... when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

And a Roomba would make this mama happy.

Have a good day!

P.S- I think internet laws require that I mention that no one from the Roomba company is paying me to write this. I do not own a Roomba, nor am I endorsing them. I am merely stating that if I don't come into possession of a Roomba sometime soon, I will be in danger of fallen into a deeply depressed state.)

*disclaimer #2- I realized that me hating the floors in my well-insulated, electrically-outfitted home that comes with plumbing is a first world issue. I assure you that, despite my rant, I am grateful for what I have- although to be honest, a home with a dirt floor doesn't sound half bad.

Oh, calm down! I'm kidding!

Kind of .

Seriously, though. At least I wouldn't have to keep it clean!

KIDDING! I'm going now.

Bye.

On Her 8th Birthday

2012-01-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

Dear Gracie Kay,

Tomorrow when you wake up, you will be 8 years old. It follows then, that when I wake up in the morning, I will have been a mother for 8 years. How we got here together is by one of the many puzzling dichotomies that is parenting: How can it be that I feel like I've been your mama since forever and still feel like these last 8 years have lasted as long as the flash on my camera?
By the way, I'm using my college words today. I guess I should tell you what "dichotomy"means, in case you read this before you go off to college. A dichotomy is when something is twofold- it's one whole part, but it can be divided into two seperate and often conflicting truths.(And if you're reading this after you've gone to college and you still didn't know what a dichotomy is, then I'm sorry. That would mean that you're probably got stuck at a state school because your daddy and I couldn't afford to send you anywhere else. Sorry 'bout that.)

Anyway. Dichotomies. Parenting is full of them- that and cliches. It's the best job I've ever had, it's the hardest job I've ever had. It fills my heart with joy, it fills my heart with fear. The days are long, the years are short, and man how we've loved watching you these last 8 years! Your world is getting bigger and it's coming at you fast, baby girl. You've been handling it beautifully. But this last year, I've seen a bit of a change in you- a hesitation. A little bit of your confidence seems to have gone and I wonder what part of the big bad world did that to you? Was it a friend? A teacher? Was it me? You see Gracie, this is the kind of thing that will keep me, your mama, awake at night. Because of everything, everything, that I want for you to have intact when you go out and give life on this crazy blue marble a whirl, your confidence is absolutely the biggest, most important thing.

I know this is a cliche (I told you, parenting is filled with them), but if I could have anything for you, I would wish that you could see yourself the way that I see you. You are such a unique individual. I love your sense of style. You are vintage classic all the way, from your love for black and white movies to your obsession with obtaining a crystal chandelier for your room. How many other little girls are that cool that young? When you were around 2, your daddy and I started calling you our voodoo princess because you found a bracelet made of skull beads that belonged to your brother. You put it on and wore it for a month straight. And girl, you owned that look! You wore it with skirts and ruffle socks one day, and then with denim and a t-shirt the next. How'd you know how to do that- to put a feminine spin on non-girly stuff? We were in awe, and still are.

Here's another thing we love: how creative you are in creating little minature worlds- remember last year when you drew plans for you dream house? You worked on it for months- taking the same worn piece of paper out and sketching on another room or garden whenever an idea struck you. That's perseverance! Don't lose that. And another thing, when you were little you took the cutlery and cups from your play kitchen, lined the cups up outside your door, stuck silverware in the cups, and hung colorful teacups upside down on them. That was your garden, you informed us. We weren't to move it because you wanted to keep it pretty outside your bedroom door. So we didn't. We let your "garden" stay there for weeks, shaking our heads and marveling at your imagination.

But of all your gifts: beauty, intelligence, creativity, I think perhaps the greatest is your gift for empathy to others. You are incredibly thoughtful towards other's feelings- human and animals alike. I think this gift is what is going to help you make your mark on the world- but I'll leave that to the future to decide. For now, I just want to tell you that I'm proud of this kindness you possess. No one else in our family but you can actually make me feel bad for my negative attitude towards the cat. That's the bar you set- and truth be told, when I soften my attitude towards the evil kitty, it's not for the kitty's sake, it's for yours. I'm just trying to rise to your expectations and abilities. (Er, most days I try. Some days I don't get there, but we can blame the cat for that. She's just so mean sometimes.)

Now. The future You may read this and try to deny it- deny how wonderful and amazing you are. Don't do that. Every word I say is true and I can say this because I know you. I know you because it's been you and me, from the moment I learned of your existence and began going about my days with you in my constant thoughts. I held my breath in traffic so I wouldn't inhale car fumes, for goodness sake. And I'm only confessing to that kind of crazy behavior to make my point, which is from the moment I knew you were with me, I've put you in my heart and tried to make the best decisions for both of us. Tomorrow I'll light the 8th candle on your birthday cake and when you close your eyes to make your wish, I'll close mine and make one too. This is what it'll be: May you always know how beautiful you are, inside and out. Don't ever forget it. Own it. If the world tells you otherwise, then the world is wrong. Know yourself, know how wonderful you are, and cloak yourself in that wonderfulness.

Listen to your mother.

You are my heart.

Mom.

You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For The Procrastination Queen

2012-01-06T16:56:00.000-08:00

Hi.

Not really sure what I'm doing here right now. I'm bored, and though my options include paying bills or cleaning house, I have decided that none of that will get done as long as I have these stupid little mini-post like thoughts bumping around in my head. Can I just share them with you so that I can clear them out and move on? Yes?

Thank you so much. I always appreciate friends who enable my need to procrastinate. (Honestly, I do. I wasn't even being sarcastic. Any person who feels the need to point out my priorities or resonsibilities is no friend of mine.)

So, here's the first thing. Yesterday I took the kids to the park and was half watching them, half reading a book. I relish this age they're at- where they can play on their own at the park without my having to hover over their every move. For too many years, I would be the parent gazing longingly at the group of mommies with older kids who were able to sit on the perimeter of the park and socialize with each other while I had to follow my tots around to make sure that they didn't fall off the play structure/run into the parking lot/eat woodchips. So now that I'm able to keep half an eye on my kids and engage the other half of my brain on something less mind numbing than pushing them on the swing for an eternity, I love it. Except for yesterday. I didn't love it yesterday.

Yesterday, my peace and happiness was ruined by 3 teenagers who walked past me and one in particular who felt the need to loudly proclaim "WHO WOULD GO TO THE PARK JUST TO SIT AND READ A BOOK?" to which I could have said so many things, but didn't. And that's when I realized that the rest of my day was going to suck. It was going to suck because, while their comment didn't really bother me so much, the knowledge that I would spend the rest of my waking hours trying to think of the perfect witty comeback, just pissed me off.

That ever happen to you?

(By the way, I still haven't thought of anything good. I had one comeback, but it included the word 'doy!' and you don't really hear people say that word anymore. We should, though. We should bring 'doy' back. There is a certain level of satisfaction one feels after saying it in the appropriate context.)

Anyway, the second thing I wanted to tell you was a joke my kid told me. I don't know if it's really that funny, or if I just think it's funny cuz I'm his mom. In any case, here's the joke:

J: Knock knock.
Me: Who's there?
J: Hoo.
Me: Who hoo?
J: A lion!
Me: That doesn't make any sense, J.
J (thinks for a minute and then says): Okay then. A lion who ate an owl!

I just like that he figured out how to make the joke work. It's one of those little signs that mean he's getting bigger and smarter. I hang on to those signs, because on days when I catch him trying to bury a piece of my jewelry in the cat's litter box because he's pretending it's treasure, it's good for me to remember that on the inside where I can't see it, his brain is in fact, developing.

The last thing is that I got PG's birthday coming up in a few weeks. This year I told her she can have a party. We don't do parties every year for our kids, not because I'm afraid of spoiling them, but because I am a psychotic freak when it comes to planning parties. I've written about this before. The last time PG had a party, she was turning 5. What started off as a small party at the park next door turned into a huge carnival themed extravaganza in which I hired volunteers to come and run 6 different booths. There was also a jumpy house, a popcorn machine, cotton candy, face paining, and 50 of those ice cream cone cupcake deals with marshmallow frosting. It was insane. I was insane. That was when I realized that I kind of had a problem.

So this year, we are keeping it simple. She's having a sleepover with 7 of her friends. I'm ordering pizza and we'll do an ice cream sundae bar.

Except.

When I was researching, I found this on the internet:

And now I can feel myself sliding back into my party planning psychosis.

So, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go find a downloadable "old fashioned ice cream parlour" font. And I also need to hit up the dollar store for some cute sundae dishes. While I'm at it, I need to also hunt down some empty ice cream containers to send home party favors in. And.....

Hey, look at that! Looks like housecleaning and bills will have to wait for another day. I've got too much party planning to do! You all have a good weekend!

Sincerely,

Tacy, expert connoisseur in the art of procrastination

Salvation Mountain

2011-12-31T14:41:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

Two days ago Mr. C and I took the kids for a short road trip out here to the Salton Sea. Now, before you ask what in the world is out there that we'd want to show our kids, let me answer- there's PUHLENTY of weird stuff. Like, a beach where the "sand" that crunches under your feet is made up entirely of sun-bleached-broken-up-fish bones. And a supposed "Fountain of Youth". And a man-made technicolor mountain.

Yep. Lots of weird stuff. In fact, there's a whole post worth of which I have aspirations for writing later on in the week. For now I just want to write about one little piece of the trip because I think it pertains to the New Year. At least, I think it does. Maybe not. Maybe this is just what happens when I drive out to the middle of the desert and start trying to think deep thoughts. Or maybe this is what happens when I stay up late to celebrate the New Year and try to write something serious the next day.

Maybe this'll all be a load of bunk. I don't know. Just stick with me.

Okay. So. Out in the middle of the desert, off the shores of the Salton Sea near this weird place called Slab City, there's this other weird place called Salvation Mountain. You may have heard of it. The guy who built it was in a movie made back in 2007 called "Into the Wild" (Good movie, by the way. It's not about Salvation Mountain, but the character in it stopped there in his travels, and so you meet the real Leonard Knight, the creator of the mountain, in the context of the movie). There's also been a few documentaries done on Mr. Knight and his mountain. Those, I haven't seen. However, for the few minutes of screen time that I did see of Mr. Knight in Into the Wild, I can tell you that he comes off as very gentle, very loving, but also slightly um.... batshit. That's okay though. That's about what I would expect for someone who lives out in the middle of the desert and builds a monument to God from cement and window putty, all on $242 a month. (I'm not sure if the desert attracts people who are already a little nutso, or if it turns them that way once they're there, but it sure does seem like these spots are full of people with eccentric personalities.)

At any rate, the mountain itself is a pretty impressive sight. The story is that Leonard Knight stopped there for a few days in the 80's after a failed attempt to launch a massive hot air balloon with the words "God is Love" on it. He decided instead to build a small monument to God, which turned into Salvation Mountain. The first mountain actually crumbled a few years after he started it, so he started the whole thing over again from scratch. He lived out of his truck, worked with the sun (except in the summer when it was too hot- then he'd work from dawn to 10 and take the rest of the day off), and relied on donations of paint from people who supported his cause. (And once word got out about what he was doing, people started coming by the hundreds.)

The end result is what you see here:

I had 2 different perspectives while at Salvation Mountain. When I first arrived there, I was just viewing it as a massive piece of folk art. Leonard Knight was by no means a serious artist, he was simply a devoted artist. When you walk around the mountain you can see that he poured the paint on thick, thick, thick, not minding where spatters and splatters flew. It's folksy, it's impressive, but I wonder if most people don't look at it and think, "Well, what a wonderful wacky little piece of weirdness done by some religious yahoo. He really must have had too much sun. "

Honestly, that's kind of what my first impression was.

Then, however, we noticed that some members of the community were kind of sitting around- almost like they were keeping vigil. One guy was sitting next to Mr. Knights' truck, another was sitting in a folding chair near a patch of used paint cans. Brushes were just sitting on top of the cans, like they were waiting to be taken in hand and used again. I picked up on this feeling- like I was at a wake, and this prompted me to pull out my phone and do some quick research on Mr. Knight. I learned that he had died on Dec. 13th, just over two weeks prior to our visit. So, his friends were, in fact, there at the mountain keeping vigil.

Now I know this kind of makes me shallow- to change the way I look at something just because death has touched it in some way, but I think I've always been pretty honest with you guys when it comes to my short comings. So I don't feel too bad confessing that this new knowledge made me look at Salvation Mountain as more than just a piece of folk art. Knowing that Mr. Knight had been working on his mountain just 3 short weeks ago and would never come back to it again, caused me to think about the mountain in terms of its creator's life.

This guy had a message that he wanted to share: Love is Universal and God is Love. Wether you agree with his message or not, aren't you impressed that for the last 30 years of his life, he devoted himself completely to sharing that message? When he was awake, he was mostly working on his mountain. He didn't take vacations. He gave up almost all worldly goods. He had no water, gas, or electricity. He lived out of his truck, and yet he also managed to create this community around his mountain- people who saw his message, saw his devotion, and supported him. Twice, the vision for his message failed-when the hot air balloon rotted and when the first mountain crumbled. Each time he just started over, simply thanking God for showing him his failure so that he could do it better. He was 100% devoted to his passion. Was he a little nuts? Maybe. But maybe not. It takes a lot of courage to give up conventional society. He was living his truth. When you think about it, that's kind of....... marvelous.

As we drove away from Salvation Mountain, I found myself grateful to be given the opportunity in the last few days of the year to see an example of someone living exclusively for their own passion. What if we all were able to do that? Of course, I don't believe that we should all take it to the degree that Leonard Knight did- I love hot showers and kettle chips too much to do that. But it was so good to be reminded in time for the New Year, with all its promises and new beginnings and fresh starts, of what can be waiting for us when we strip away things like finances and stress and society. I may not be able to build a physical mountain like Mr. Leonard Knight did, but in this new year I'm hoping to keep in mind a metaphorical mountain- a truth that I can devote time to for no other reason than to feed my own soul. I think we should all do that. Personally, my mountain would probably take the form of this blog. Or maybe it would just be my kids. Both these things feed my soul. (Although there are days when it feels like the kids are actually eating my soul....but those are the bad days and I'm trying to be positive here, so forget I even brought that up.)

At any rate, I encourage you to ask yourself what your mountain would look like and then start building it. I bet what you end up with will be wonderfully weird. Or weirdly wonderful.

Just like Salvation Mountain.

Take My Santa License, Please

2011-12-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

You guys.

I think I'm messing up the Santa thing for my kids. Some of you may remember two years ago when I wrote about abusing the Power of Santa. Well, I'm still abusing the power. Oh yes. I am abusing that power all over town. And now I think I've gone too far. As in, I'm pretty sure that me and Santa are finito.

Let me explain a little. I thought I was using Santa the same way all you other parents use Santa. Now I wonder. It's like....have you ever watched a kid playing a soccer game when he gets the ball and starts taking it the wrong way down the field? And then he kicks it in the goal and scores for the other team, but he still doesn't know it? And then when he turns around you watch as the joy of domination, then confusion, and finally deflation play across his face in just a few split seconds?

That's me with the Santa thing. Consider the ball the Power of Santa, and I'm just kicking it down the field, feeling all great about participating in a cultural tradition, and then something'll happen and I'll stop and say to myself, "I don't think this happens in other families."

For example, do other parents pull out their phones in the middle of their kids' tantrums and tell them that they're going to take a picture of them and email it to Santa?

This is J, in the midst of a serious fit trying to hide from my camera. He reminds me of a criminal in a high profile case when they're try to hide from the media on their way to opening arguments.

Do other kids believe that Jesus, God, and Santa Claus conspire together like some kind of Big Brother Holy Trinity? Mine do. They took what they learned in church about God being everywhere, and combined that with "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake"and drew their own conclusions.

Here's the final nail in my coffin of guilt. I almost don't want to write it because it's terrible. Think of it as a confession, and next time you make a terrible parenting mistake, you can remember this and say to yourself "AT LEAST I DIDN'T DO WHAT THAT MEANIE TACY DID!" You'll instantly feel better. You can even consider this my present to you- a guilt absolver. Just what every parent needs. Merry Christmas.

Okay. Here goes.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine passed around a website that makes personalized messages for kids from Santa. The parent logs on, inputs their child's name, age, grade in school, city of residence, gift wish, uploads a picture, and then they have the choice of clicking on whether their child has been naughty or nice.

Well.

It had been a particularly rough day with J. I was feeling tired, cranky, and a little bit vengeful. So you know what I did. I hit "naughty" and then "send".

That's not the part I feel bad about.

The next day, Santa sent J a message. He was ecstatic. He sat on my lap while I opened the link and hit "play". He loved seeing Santa on the screen talking exclusively to him. He was amazed to see his picture in Santa's book. He was happy to hear that Santa got his letter and that he knew J wanted a 3DS.

Then Santa told his elves to go get J's file so he could see if he was on the naughty or nice list. J leaned forward in anticipation. The elves went to some machine and typed in J's name, and the machine whirred to life. Right when I started having second thoughts about this whole thing, red lights flashed and the elves exchanged some concerned glances. Santa raised his eyebrows and looked straight into the computer screen at J, whose fingers went nervously to his mouth. Santa very gently told J that there was still time and that he knew that in the next week J could be a good enough boy to get on the nice list. J looked at me and incredulously asked "I'm not on the nice list???"

That's not the bad part either.

After telling him that Santa didn't exactly say that he was on the naughty list, and that there was still time for him to get himself on the nice list, and blah blah blah he got off my lap and said "I don't like that video, mom."

Then he wet his bed that night.

That's the part I feel bad about. I made him believe that he was on the naughty list, and it's bothered him so much that he reverted to bed wetting.

All this makes me wonder...what kind of mind games am I playing on my kids? Seriously guys, this Santa stuff is whacked. I've lost count of the number of lies I tell every day to explain holes in the Santa myth (For example, Roo asked me the other day why Santa can't remember her name and what she wants for Christmas. You see, we've met at least 5 different Santas over the season at various parties and festivities, and every time a Santa asks her "What's your name little girl?" I can tell that she's thinking "Don't you KNOW by now????")

I know people say that Santa is supposed to be the embodiment of the spirit of giving, and I like that EXCEPT for the fact that it's a metaphor and kids don't get metaphors. For them, Santa is about presents and reindeer, and the North Pole, and all the other stuff we tell them- and then we attach their behavior to it as leverage. I can't make it sit right with me. For those of you who do Santa the right way- who get it- who can make it a good fun part of the holidays for your family, I'm envious. Keep on keeping on is what I say. For me though, I've decided that I'm no good at this game. I understand now that the Power of Santa comes with a lot of responsibility, and just as irresponsible people should not be allowed to drive a car, some people just shouldn't be allowed to use the Power of Santa. I'm one of them. I'm turning in my license.

My friend wrote on Facebook that "A child's faith is fragile." I've thought a lot about that and decided that I don't want to mess with that. I'd rather have my kids, especially J (who I know I've written about a lot this year, but it's because his 5th year has given me lots of material to work with) be their naughty selves and I'll deal with it the old fashioned way- with consistency, as much patience as I can muster, and wine. Lots o' wine.

*By the way, this doesn't mean that I'm going to tell them that Santa isn't real. I'll ride this train out, but I'm avoiding the naughty or nice thing as much as possible.

As far as J goes, this morning we were reading a story about how Rudolph helps Santa, and the story asked "Wouldn't you help Santa if you given the opportunity?" to which J rolled his eyes and replied, "If he took me off the naughty list I would."

*Sigh.*

I have a ways to go with him, but I have to admit, his criminal mind amuses me.

Merry Christmas, you guys!

I'll Need Some Teeny Tiny Q-Tips, Stat

2011-12-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

This is a conversation we had in our car on the way to school this morning. Two things you should know before you read this:

1)We watched J's school Christmas performance last night, in which he and all the other kids wore elf hats.
2) I have a freaky obsession with keeping my kid's ears clean.

And yes, these 2 facts weave together in a weird way in the conversation below:

Roo: Mama, tomorrow can I be an elf?
Me: Ummm, yeah. Sure. How are you going to turn yourself into an elf?
J interrupts: Wait. Do you want her to be an elf mom?
Me: I guess. If it makes her happy then I want her to be an elf.
Roo: It do makes me happy.
Me: Okay, but Roo- you're going to have to grow some big long pointy ears by tomorrow.
Roo: Okay.
J:WELL. Mom. I know something about that and it's going to make you VERY sad.
Me: (thinking he's going to say something along the lines of about how Roo will have to live far away with Santa at the North Pole or not be with us at Christmas or something.) Okay, what's that J?
J: Elves have big long pointy ears so they probably have LOTS of ear wax.

Elfin earwax. Huh.

I'm going to file this conversation under "Things that I never would have thought of had I not become a parent."

Making Christmas

2011-12-07T19:09:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm at the point now where I don't expect much of myself this time of year. Some of you will read that line and interpret it as a statement of disappointment and resignation. Others will read it and see it as a statement of relief and joy. It's the latter of you who are my people. MY PEOPLE.

This year I am happy to report that I am cured from what I like to refer to "Holiday Disillusion Disorder". (Yes, I know just a few weeks ago I made up another disorder: ESCR- Extreme Shopping Cart Rage. I'm thinking that maybe it could become my thing. I'll just go around making up fake disorders for everyday minor annoyances and then write about them. What do you think?)

Holiday Disillusion Disorder is a slow progressing disease that occurs over the course of the year. It causes a person to forget the reality of the holiday season, and causes a dangerous blurring of the line between what one believes the holidays should be like, and what their actual capabilities are when it comes to getting it all done.

Yes, the fog has lifted and this year I can say with absolute certainty that I WILL NEVER BE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO GETS HER CHRISTMAS CARDS OUT EARLY.

Also, I SHOULDN'T TAKE ON AN ENTIRE DAY DEVOTED TO BAKING BECAUSE WHEN I DO, I START TO HATE MYSELF AN HOUR IN.

Oh, and then there's THE LIKELIHOOD OF ME GETTING ALL THE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS BOUGHT AND WRAPPED BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE IS EXACTLY 0%.

This is so freeing! I think I'll share a few more.

TRYING TO HANG ORNAMENTS IN AN ORGANIZED FASHION OR USING A COLOR THEME FOR YOUR TREE IS STUPID WHEN CHILDREN LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE BECAUSE THEY WILL INSIST ON HANGING TACKY ORNAMENTS FROM A HAPPY MEAL RIGHT NEXT TO THE VERY SPECIAL ANTIQUE ORNAMENT THAT WAS HANDED DOWN TO YOU FROM YOUR GREAT- GRANDMOTHER.

And finally, CREATING WARM HOLIDAY MEMORIES BY MAKING A GINGERBREAD HOUSE IS ACTUALLY A MESSY AND TIME CONSUMING NIGHTMARE. PLUS, THE KIDS WILL PUSH YOUR PATIENCE TO THE EXTREME BY ASKING YOU EVERY 2 MINUTES IF THEY CAN EAT THE CANDY DECORATIONS.

(That last one is actually a revelation that occurred last night, so I guess the true test from whether I'm over my disorder or not will come next year when the kids ask me if we're going to make another gingerbread house.)
(Actually, I know we'll probably make another gingerbread house- the test will actually be whether I take on the endeavor under the disillusionment of making warm holiday memories, or armed with the knowledge that the experience will probably end with me solo, re-gluing gumdrops for the 100th time onto a gingerbread roof that keeps collapsing.)

Still. It's so nice to know these things about myself and to not be held hostage by my Holiday Disillusion Disorder. Now that I know my limits, I'm free to go about the holidays in my own sucky, inefficient, yet stress free and jolly little way.

What Holiday Disillusions do you all suffer from?

The Best Little Whorehouse In Oz

2011-11-29T10:32:00.001-08:00

Hey all! This post has been floating around in my head for a couple of weeks now. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with it, but won't you walk with me while I figure it all out?

So. A couple of weeks ago Matt and I took Roo to Target to spend some of her birthday cash. She's been on a Wizard of Oz kick for a few months now (or as she calls it, The Lizard a Boz), so when she saw this Special Edition Dorothy Barbie doll on the shelf, she immediately wanted it. We put it in the cart, paid for it, took it home, pulled it out of the box, let her play with it, and when she was done we propped Dorothy up on it's stand and displayed it on her dresser.

That's when I noticed that something was very, very wrong.

Since when does Dorothy's mid-western Kansas garb include thigh-highs? And when did the hem of her dress rise up 6 inches? WHEN did she walk down the yellow brick road in 6 inch heels befitting a porn star? And OH MY WORD SHE IS OUTFITTED IN A LACE UP CORSET THAT EMPHASIZES HER BREASTS! Really? Really, Mattel?

Now, let me leave this topic for a short minute to say that those of you who know me know that I'm a keep-it-simple-kind of girl. I don't put a lot of stock in analyzing things or over thinking them. I know too many people who do this and end up making themselves sound like assholes. (Case in point: Me in college driving in the car with my father. American Pie comes on the radio, and I launch into a 7 minute speech about how I believe that song to be about the loss of American innocence during the Cold War era and the implications of the hippie movement. My father listens, waits a moment, and then says "I'm pretty sure that it's just a song about Buddy Holly's death." See? Classic case of one being a superfluous douche bag.)

However, sometimes you just gotta go there. This is one of those times. This kind of thing has been on my mind anyway for a month or so- ever since last month when I watched an entire female team of 5 year old soccer players take their team picture with identically curled hair and tiaras. I questioned it on Facebook and one of my friends wrote that it was "Just another messed up message we send to our girls." That one resonated with me, though there were a wide variety of opinions on it. Some people said that it showed that girls could still enjoy being girly while kicking butt, and I feel that may be valid as well. If that's true, though, what's the empowering message with the scantily clad Dorothy? That a girl should look her best and show a lot of skin, both over the rainbow and in the real world?

I'm so confused.

I do know that every time I see Roo pick up the doll, I cringe. I feel like every time she plays with it, Slutty Dorothy gets busy with imprinting her secret little message on my daughter's psyche. It's like she's saying "Oh, hi Roo. See my short little dress? See my pretty little stockings with bows at the top of my thighs? Aren't they pretty? Don't you want to be pretty? Be sure to dress just like this when you grow up and everyone (especially boys) will think you're pretty too!"

Yep. I'm pretty sure that's what it is saying, even though Roo probably isn't conscious of it. I'm not even sure she could really verbalize the difference between the looks of the doll and the more modest movie version of Dorothy... I could ask her, but the truth is, I'm a little afraid to. Best case scenario would be that she didn't see the difference at all, and the worst case scenario would be that I would have just pointed it out to her.

The most disturbing question for me in all this though, is why in the world didn't I see all this when I was in the store? I mean, we were at Target to get my new phone too so it's a slight possibility that I was really preoccupied with my new toy and didn't focus properly on hers. But I don't think so. I'm usually too much of a feminist to let this stuff get past me. Maybe this whore-of-a-Dorothy just didn't stand out as much when she was on a shelf amid other sluttinas Barbies? Is that how I didn't see it? Or has society just conditioned me to believe that girls should look this way so that even when I had her in my hand, I didn't even blink at her implied sexiness?

I don't have any answers, or even a good way to conclude this post, except with more questions: Am I over thinking this? Ten years from now will I be sending her back to her room to change into decent attire with her screaming "For christsakes mom! Even my freakin' Barbies are allowed to dress sluttier than me!" Should I burn the doll? What do you all think?

You Too May Be Suffering From This Disease

2011-11-23T16:23:00.001-08:00

Hi.

I went to Costco on the day before Thanksgiving.

Stupid, I know. I won't ask for your pity because I brought it on myself. However, whilst there (love that word, 'whilst'), I learned a few things.

First, I need to make a shirt to wear specifically for when I go to Costco that says "If you stop short in front of me, I will ram my cart into your ass." I'm also tempted to write on the back back something like "And if you block my way to slowly peruse the free food samples, it's fair to expect me to run my cart through you."

Second, I learned that the shopping carts at Costco are torture devices. Anyone else experience painful electrical shocks to their fingertips and palms while manuevering their cart around that demon hole of a store? I was trying to figure out if it was just me or if there were others having the same problem, but it didn't seem that anyone else was having issues. However, it's possible that where I live is a factor in this since nearly everyone else in there was over 60 and grounded by their orthopedic rubber soled shoes.

Third, the problem does not lie with only Costco. I had to also run to Stater Brothers for two slices of bacon and a red onion. There I encountered a family of six who walked slowly down every aisle and blocked other customers from passing them. They were carrying a small while ferret with a sweater on.

In a food establishment.

They were carrying a rodent.

In a food establishment.

And it was wearing a sweater.

At that point, I just got out of there fast because I was starting to feel unpredictable behavior coming on. Unpredictable behavior that I would not be able to be held accountable for on account of the fact that I suffer from a very serious, very real disease known as ESCR. Extreme Shopping Cart Rage. It's like road rage, except with shopping carts. If you've had to repress urges to beat the shopper in front of you over the head with the double sized bag of brussell sprouts that you've grabbed from your cart, then you too, suffer from this terrible disease. So there you go. Now your pain has a name. You're welcome.

Tis the season, all. Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

Tacy- sufferer of ESCR and various other made up mental illnesses (as well as a few legit ones)

October In A Bundle

2011-11-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

Hi!

So I haven't written in a while. I'll spare you the why because to be honest, I don't really know the reason. Maybe it's because I haven't been feeling motivated/creative/funny/attractive/intelligent/articulate/awake/healthy/ human lately. So there you go. Pick a reason, any reason. The important thing is that I'm writing now. (Actually, what I'm going to do is just patch together paragraphs from the 5 unfinished posts that I did start writing but never finished for the aforementioned reasons.)

Also, New Girl is on in 35 minutes. It's imperative that I finish this in time to watch that show since I believe that one of their writers did a subversive character study on me. I mean yes, Zoey Deschanel's character is funnier and more charming than me, but the dorkiness? I relate to it all too well. We are soul sisters, but that's neither here nor there. Let's get down to business, shall we?

In this month of October, we have:

prepared our house for Halloween. Two years ago I wrote about how Mr. C and I have an annual argument over how scary we should make our courtyard for the trick or treaters. This year I'm happy to announce that I have tamed the beast. Our home was relatively normal looking (and by normal I mean that there were no baby doll heads on sticks decorating our front lawn.)

However, Mr. C had to have some kind of outlet for his dark side. One morning I walked out of the house to find this:

And when I got in my car the next morning, I found that he had moved her:

So it went for the decapitated Barbie throughout the month of October. She has been placed in many compromising positions and is currently residing on a hook next to where we keep our mailbox key.

I don't want to admit this, but I do believe that there is a good chance that we are the weirdest family on our block.

Anyway, our house was a hit again on Halloween. We ditched the strobe light/scary mannequin guy this year and went with a Nightmare Before Christmas Theme. We turned the courtyard into Oogie Boogie's lair by painting a bunch of props with glow in the dark paint and investing in some black lights. Here's a little glimpse of how it turned out:

There's someone inside that Oogie Boogie suit. Someone who sat very, very still while we passed out candy and then jumped out at people and scared the beejezus out of them as they were leaving. It was so fun, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll tell you more about Halloween later.

Also this month we attended the annual Palm Desert Golf Cart Parade. Yes, you read that right. Golf carts, in a parade. Golf carts are big out here. We have lanes for them, much as other cities have bike lanes. We also have designated parking spots for golf carts at certain grocery stores and businesses. So, yes. Pasadena has the Rose Parade, NYC has the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and we, of the Coachella Valley in this great state of California, decorate golf carts and make a parade of it.

I make fun, but it's actually a good time. The whole valley participates. Who doesn't love a marching band?

Plus, there were bonus points this year because 9 walked in it. We had extra fun embarrassing him as he went by.

This also leads me to a confession. The day before the parade, against my better judgement, I let J watch some of Poltergeist with me and PG. It was the televised version, so it was fairly safe. They omitted the freaky stuff like the guys' face falling off in the mirror, which led me to believe that it would all be okay. However, he ended up coming away from the movie with a healthy fear of clowns. (Do you remember the Poltergeist clown in the closet? Freaky.) And what do I, his mother, do to him the next day? Drag him to the Golf Cart Parade where the theme is "Circus Fun"and 9 feet tall clowns wave and leer at you as they meander past.

He is now afraid to walk down the hallway at home in broad daylight, and I believe that besides being the weirdest family on the block, I am also the meanest mother of the weirdest family on the block- with the poorest judgement.

Anyway.

Speaking of J, I know I've been writing about him often, but it's just that he's at this age right now where half the time he is cracking me and Mr. C up. The other half of the time he's being an obstinate a-hole. But the times that he's funny kinda make the other half of the time worth it. One of those times was last week when at the bank, the teller gave him and Roo a lollipop. On the way out he's sucking on his lollipop and this older gentleman holds the door for us. J takes out his sucker, waves it in the direction of the guys face, and tauntingly cheers "Bet you wish you were a kid!".

I can't wait to see what kind of adult this guy turns into.

The other thing we did in October was take the kids to the LA Museum of Modern Art to see the Tim Burton Exhibit.

It was lots'o fun and very inspiring. Also, I learned that Tim Burton and I share a hometown of Burbank, CA. Apparently, according to the exhibit's information, Mr. Burton was so bored by Burbank's non-culture that he had no choice but to unleash his creative genius onto his sketch pad and wait out the time until he could leave. I too, found myself waiting out the time until I could leave Burbank, but that had more to do with wanting to find cute boys who I didn't go to Kindergarten with and who didn't already know what a huge dork I was. I guess you could say that though we had different motives, I believe both our paths to be equally difficult and our achievements high.

Har har.

The museum exhibit inspired our Halloween theme. This year our whole family dressed up as the cast of characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Matt was Jack Skellington, I was Sally, the kids were Lock, Shock, and Barrel, and 9 was Oogie Boogie. This may be my most favorite Halloween yet.

Not just because I made most of the costumes myself.

And not because our house was the most fun one on the block.

And not because my nieces, nephews, and sister provided us with hours of entertainment playing Just Dance 2.

But because while all this was going on, my other sister was in the hospital having her baby. You know, the one I wrote about here.

Can I tell you, first of all, the "coincidences" that surround this situation? When I found out I was pregnant with Roo, my sister had just, days before, been in Florida going through her first failed adoption. I felt so guilty and ended up waiting for 12 weeks before I told her and the rest of my family about my pregnancy. My sister, instead of being upset- which would have been a completely understandable and NORMAL reaction- was extremely excited and happy for me. So we had her be a part of the pregnancy as much as we could. She came with us to the ultrasounds and was in the room with me when I was giving birth. She and Roo have a special bond. 3 years later, she called me within weeks of the anniversary of the failed adoption to inform me that I'm going to be an aunt. She went into labor on my birthday, and although she missed it by 23 minutes, Elianna Tacy Alvarez was born on Nov.1, 2011.... right between my birthday and Baby Roo's- who was born on Nov. 5.

If you don't want to call that Divine, than call it magic, because there's no way you can tell me all that is a coincidence.

Besides, I've never had anyone named after me before. And you know what?

It feels really good.

You all have a good night!

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Facebook Addicts

2011-10-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned to you all that my mom is a therapist? I think I've talked about it before. I'm not sure though. Lots of times when I tell people what she does, they remark that that must come in handy for me. (Apparently other people see me as someone who would need a therapist to talk to often. Go figure.) I'll admit that nowadays it is handy, especially when I need to know (usually on a daily basis) if something that my kids are doing is weird or not. It was not handy when I was a teenager and she was in the midst of earning her therapy license. Me and my hormones would throw some teenage drama emotional vomit her way and she'd respond with a cool "And how do you feel about that?", which drove me and my hormones crazy. We hated her.

So to sum it up: back then mom therapist= bad, now=good. I'm only telling you all this because I wanted to talk about a trend she told me that she saw occurring in her practice. Apparently more and more parents are bringing their kids in for addiction problems. Not addiction to drugs, or alcohol, or any of the usual stuff that we're used to hearing about. No. Parents nowadays are bringing their kids in because they are addicted to technology. Facebook, video games, texting- these things are becoming number one priorities in the lives of kids and grades, health, and social lives are going by the wayside. Not only that, but she thinks we're going to hear more about this kind of problem in the future. Apparently, Facebook Addiction is going to be what cutting and childhood obesity were for the last decade. I believe that someone should call the program directors at Maury and The View to let them know so they can start booking addicts now.

So when she told me this, I was all "HAHAHAHAHAHA. OH PLEASE! HOW HARD IS IT TO UNPLUG YOUR KID????"

HAHA.

HA.

Heh.

Um. How hard can it be to unplug your teenager? Well. Let's speak hypothetically for a moment. Let's say hypothetically we have a teenager in this house with that kind of problem. If I was going to really get into it, I could write a really good (hypothetical) tale with several good examples of what NOT to do in order to raise a teenager who isn't addicted to his phone/computer/video games. I could probably make it kind of funny too. But I won't. Because hypothetically, if there was a teenager like that around here, his life would be his and not for me to write about.

Hypothetically.

However, I will say this: A couple of months ago a friend of mine on Facebook wrote this: "I'd rather give birth to a ten pound baby while hanging upside down from a tree branch than have to raise another teenager."

The image made me laugh. Then it made me cry because I know only too well how she feels- how she probably just wants to do what's best for her kid, and he thinks she's stupid, and how she knows she's not only not stupid, but that she knows exactly what he's thinking because she once thought it too, and she tries to tell him and he doesn't believe that there's any way in the universe she could understand what he's thinking, and then she gets frustrated because she sees him making mistakes that she has the foresight to stop, but he, in his vast experience with life, thinks her foresight is just lame and wishes that she would just go away because he doesn't believe that he's ruining anything for himself long term.

Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Anyway. Before I go, I wanted to ask you if know how before you enter a momentous stage of life like marriage or parenting, and people seem to like to offer little tidbits of advice like, "marriage is work" or "having kids is hard"? You say "Yeah, yeah", not because you don't believe them, but because you know it's something you just have to experience before you can understand it? Yes? Well. Having teenagers will age you.

There you go. Consider yourself warned.

Mother Mary & Me

2011-09-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. It is 6 o clock on a Monday morning coming out of a very event-filled weekend. I have no idea why I am awake this early-especially when all 3 of the littles are still sleeping- but I do have to say it's not that bad. I am sitting with my coffee and laptop in front of an OPEN window that has COOL air coming through. In fact, I realized how long it's been since we've even cracked our windows when I opened our bedroom window last night to let the breeze in and was attacked by a 3 foot vine that was growing on the inside of the screen. Sometime last spring it must've found a little opening on the side of the screen, pushed it's way through, and then happily grew there all summer. I had no idea. A better housewife probably would've known that a plant from the outside of her home was invading the inside of her home, but I've never claimed to be a good housewife. So there you go.

As I was saying, we had a very full weekend. Saturday was a bear of a day that got off to a bumpy start when I learned that I was supposed to bring snacks for J's soccer team. The irony is that I asked Mr. C the night before if we were supposed to bring snacks, and his response was "No. Someone else is assigned."

He's the coach and holds all game, snack, and practice schedules in his coaching bag, so when he said that someone else was bringing snacks, I assumed he was correct.

Well.

As my old boss used to say about the word "assume": it makes an ass out of u and me. Next morning The Spotted Turtles played their little hearts out and had no snack or juice to show for it, because in fact, we were supposed to bring it. It turned out that it really wasn't fully Mr. C's fault- there was a couple of miscommunications, for most of which I carried the blame- but I didn't know all this at the time. I just was thinking how I was the mom, and the moms are supposed to bring the snacks, and how all these little guys were expecting food and hydration and some kind of treat (preferably something with food coloring and corn syrup), and how when it's forgotten, people blame the mom, never the dad. So I was a little irritated. And my irritation showed. It showed a lot. It showed in front of a lot of people who I don't know very well, but with whom I will be spending my Saturday mornings with until approximately Thanksgiving.

Not my finest hour.

So I went through the rest of my Saturday feeling crummy about myself. My short fuse had already been on my mind lately since my church has been advertising an upcoming women's study. This session's title is "Mary, Martha & Motherhood". One of the taglines I saw said something like "How to worry less about being like Martha (Stewart), and more like Mary".

Now, if you know me you know that I never worry that I'm not enough like Martha Stewart. Woman's an OCD nut job as far as I'm concerned. I once watched her on Oprah talking about the proper way to fold a fitted sheet. She had this very intricate and complicated method, and the last step involved an inside-out flip turn maneuver that was more reminiscent of Japanese Origami than anything else. I'm shocked that someone took up airtime on the Oprah Winfrey show to do a tutorial for such a thing. Do you want to hear how I fold a fitted sheet? I cross it over once, twice, sometimes thrice and then I mash it into a ball and toss it onto the top shelf of my linen closet.

No, I am totally okay with not being enough like Martha.

It's the Mary part that gets to me. I have really conflicted feelings about this. Part of me feels like holding up Mother Mary as an image for wives and mothers to aspire to is unjustifiably oppressive. Am I really supposed to be quiet and loving and serene all the time? Do I have to support my husband, even when I disagree with him, and be a model of grace and dignity during difficult times? I'm supposed to keep my emotions in check at all times? When the kids are being argumentative and impossible, I'm not supposed to yell? Am I aiming to be like the crazy mom in that Resolve carpet cleaning commercial who smiles and says "That's okay!" when her kids spill grape juice on the carpet? Really? Because I hate that mom. That mom is dumb and unrealistic, and what's more is my kids see that mom and then think that I'm mean because they know I would never ever EVER be okay with them spilling grape juice on a white carpet.

On the other hand, a guest speaker at our church a couple of weeks ago referred to his wife during the sermon as "Saint Kathy." I thought "That is so sweet! I'd love it if Mr. C thought I was saint-like." Then I remembered all the ways I am not saint like. Like when I'm throwing a party and I go berserk during the planning process and vent my stress all over everybody and everything around me. Or the time I went psycho mom on some kid who bumped his car bass real loud in front of our house after I had just gotten a newborn Roo down for her nap. Or when I almost got into a fist fight with some teenagers who were partying loudly at 2 in the morning in the campsite next to us. Or when I screamed until my throat was sore (literally) at Mr. C when I was pregnant with J for smoking a cigar in the backyard. Or when-

You know what? I could go on forever. The list is long and is full of shame, shame, shame. The thing is, this is me. I was born this way. I have big emotions, and I tend to wear them on my sleeve. I can't help it. Even if I could, I think sometimes I wouldn't. The lessons I think I'm supposed to be learning are in all my most unsaint like moments. I keep trying to convince Mr. C that it's all part of my charm. (He's not buying that yet, but I really think he should because it's true.)

In the end, I'll probably end up signing up for the women's study. I'm finding that most of the Bible's commandments work pretty well for me: don't kill, love each other, be kind, tell the truth- these are all good guidelines. Maybe I do have something to learn about modeling myself after the Virgin Mother (I can't even type that without laughing. Me aspiring to be more like The Virgin Mother is a bit like Charlie Sheen saying he's going to aspire to be win the Nobel Peace Prize- it's a lofty goal). However, I guess it can't hurt since right now I'm 0 for 0: Martha wouldn't have forgotten the snacks and Mary wouldn't have shot Joseph scathing looks and eye rolls for the world to see.

As long as I don't end up like a Resolve Carpet Cleaning Mommy Drone, then I'm happy. Wish me luck!

The Jungle

2011-09-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

*This is edited to inform you all that I actually wrote this last Thursday with intentions of posting on Friday. However, the technology stars were not aligned in my favor and half the post was deleted. So after throwing a fat tantrum about the unfairness of it all, I put on my big girl panties and rewrote it. today. Here you go:

Duuuuuuuuude. You guys, this was another crazy week filled with weirdness and emergencies. I actually wrote an entire post about it, but in the end decided that all's well that ends well. However, because I'm not a big enough person to completely pass up the chance to complain, can I just tell you that the last 7 days have included a multi-state power outage (in 118 degree heat), an ambulance trip to Loma Linda for Roo (who is fine now), the 9/11 anniversary, and a situation that involved one of my children doodling a penis onto a paper placemat at an Italian restaurant (said child defended herself by pointing out that she was merely completing the sketch of the Statue of David on the placemat. I didn't know that there would be a down side to exposing your children to classical art at an early age, but I guess this would be it.)

As I said, all's well that ends well. Moving on......

Yesterday, my friend posted a link to this Blog here. It's a great article about how we should all hang on to that optimism and spirit of awesomeness that we have when we're five. It's very inspiring, and judging from the comments left under it, very helpful to a lot of people. I have to admit though, I read it and thought "Yes, well, that's all sweet and good until you grow up and reality bites you in the ass." (I know. I know.  It's just that sometimes I feel like I have a little ball of meanness inside me that needs to be cold and cynical in the face of hope and goodness.)

Anyway, my thinking was wrong, I admit it. I knew it when I thought it, and then I really knew it when I scrolled down through the comments and saw that someone else had voiced the same thought I had and was called an asshole by other readers. So I'm sorry. I guess my mindset hasn't been primed in the last few weeks for sunshine and optimism. However, I found myself thinking about the article for the rest of the day. There was something about it that was bugging me. I realized what it was later in the day when I was tutoring my middle school client.

To give you some background, I've worked with this student for the past 3 years. He's a great kid and he has a great family, but I'm pretty sure that right now he's not "feeling his awesomeness"(to reference the article). While I was working with him, it came out that he's been unhappy at school. His good friend from last year is being homeschooled this year. The social circle that he hung with last year is making it clear to him that without his friend, they don't want him around. He's got learning disabilities that make him a little bit different. On top of that he's got 14 year old boy hormones. In other words, he's a perfect storm of social awkwardness right now. I went home feeling so sad for him and complained to Mr. C about the meanness of middle school social dynamics. Mr. C, who is about 98.9% practical and 1.1% emotional, responded with "Yes, but that's the jungle."

He's right. He works at least 8 hours a day in the high school version of the jungle, so he would know. Of course, that doesn't make it all right. But I realized right then what my main problem was with the article.   I can tell my client how smart and funny and original he is (and I did), but at that age, not only will he not believe me, he's not going to feel any better either. His parents have talked to him, but do you remember how lame you thought adults were when you were in Middle School? Your peers were the rulers of your kingdom. Is it fair or realistic to expect a child at that age to be able to roll things like that off their back? It's hard enough for me, as an adult, to be objective about people who don't think I'm AHEM, awesome. And anyway, don't we learn how to navigate ourselves socially by the reactions of those around us? It's great to believe in ourselves, and the author of Waking Up Full of Awesome made a good point of saying that we can't let other's decide our value, but I think this point would be more realistic if we lived in a society where people were taught to honor other people's awesome, even when they can't see it.

I know. Just between you and me, and taking into consideration my experience with the general public, honoring the idiots whom we may encounter is our daily life IS SO FREAKIN' HARD!

There's this quote though, that I found the other day and it relates to this. Actually, it's not so much a quote as a summarization of some bible verses. It says "You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy it's results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, and treat each other with dignity honor and respect." I love this because it acknowledges that getting along with others is hard work. You don't have to be on board with God to know that that is true. People are stupid. People are really stupid.   However, it's important to remember that everyone has a story. There's a whole web of reasons for why people behave and do things the way they do- we all have different values, different cultures, different beliefs, even just different moods. It makes it hard to relate to one another, and then typically we get mean. We yell, we exclude, we gossip, we stereotype. We try and take away their awesome. We make The Jungle a hairier place to be.

So, in light of the trouble my tutoring client is experiencing, I'm going to make a renewed effort to respect and honor the people I encounter out there in The Jungle. I'm going to try to be a better example for my children where this is concerned. I don't have high expectations for myself. Like I said, it's hard. I can't think of many people in my world who've successfully exemplified the spirit of unconditional respect and love for others except maybe Ghandi and Mother Theresa. However, the next time I step out of my home and encounter a rude person in the grocery store, or an obnoxious parent of one of my kids' classmates, or a lame driver on the road, I'll try to remember to respect their inner awesome.

I don't know though. Mother Theresa nor Ghandi really had to drive around Palm Springs during season with all the Snow Birds and their big, fat, Cadillacs. I'll try though.

I will try.

I will try.

I will TRY.

You all have a good night.

Old Love, New Adventures

2011-09-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

Thanks for your sweet comments and empathy last week. Really. You made me feel that maybe, possibly, I'm a little bit normal after all- with "little" and "bit" being the key words.

Anyway, a little rain, a little wine, and we're all ready to start fresh this week. Hallelujah!

Today I just have a short post on my mind. I want to introduce you guys to two of the best people in the whole wide world.

There they are:

Aren't they a beautiful couple? (Aside from the pixelation. Blame my mother's cell phone that the pic was taken on.) That's my grammy and grandpa. You may have noticed that they are on an airplane. Now, for my grandpa, that's no big deal. Despite his age (87), he's travelled regularly-in the last 10 years especially- to Alaska, Canada, Hawaii, and various states along the East Coast.

For my grandmother, the fact that she is on an airplane is MONUMENTAL. She has kept her feet on solid ground- and I'm talking no planes, no boats, not even a raft in a swimming pool- for 84 years.

(Actually, that's not true. She flew up to see my aunt in Oregon once 20 something years ago and swore never to fly again. She also let my grandpa push her around on a raft in our pool on July 4th, 2005 for approximately 10 minutes. Other than those instances, she has, as I said, kept her feet on solid ground.)

I just want to say this about my grammy: It is not easy to be her nowadays. The world has changed, and to her eyes, has become a scary, unfamiliar place. She doesn't understand the internet, she refers to Facebook as "Myface", and she can barely operate the remote control to her television, let alone a computer. She keeps 3 locks on her door because when she watches the news, she is terrified by what she hears. She's also extremely modest. Let me give you an example: I gave her and my grandpa my copy of The Notebook to watch, thinking that they would like it because it's a love story set in "their" era of the 1940's. I completely forgot that there was a love scene in it until my grammy handed it back to me a week later without saying a word. My grandpa explained in a whispered voice that they had to "fast forward through all the good parts."

My grammy is also an amazing cook, the most fun to make laugh because she'll crack up until she cries, and the most competitive card player you'll ever meet. The best thing about her is that she loves all her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren with the best, warmest, most cozy unconditional love anyone could experience.

My parents travel a lot and when they can, they take my grandfather. He likes to get out and see the world. They usually ask my grammy to go, but in the past she has always declined. That's why this time, when my grandfather called my parents back and said Grammy was in for this trip to Hawaii, we were all shocked. I don't know what he said to her, but whatever it was must've been good. I'm sure there were plenty of times when she probably wanted to back out- the sheer thought of passing through the body scanner must've made her want to crawl through the floor- however, she stuck with it. (In fact my mom posted this morning that grammy went through the scanner without even knowing that she did it).

So that's why tonight, I am so looking forward to going outside and looking up at the moon. I'm going to imagine my grandparents standing together under that same moon, with their feet in some Hawaiin sand and enjoying the fact that 65 years into their marriage they have finally made it off the continent of North America and onto an island paradise.

Goes to show, you are never too old to find the courage for a new adventure!

And My Heart Keeps Limping Along

2011-09-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

Is it Friday yet? I heard a rumor that it was Friday and I'd like to believe it, but given the emotionally draining roller coaster of a week I just had, it just sounds too good to be true. Is it really Friday? Really? It is? Are you sure?

Oh, then all I can say is... THANK THE LORD IN HEAVEN ABOVE US!

I mean every word of it too. With every ounce, every cell, every little bit of my being, I am thanking God that it is over. The first week of school this year kicked my kettle chip butt. Then it handed it back to me on a platter. Then it made me kneel before it and listen while it berated me for the blithe and naive manner in which entered this school year.

Seriously guys. This week was hard.

Besides what I already wrote about J getting sick at school on the second day, I started my Baby Roo in preschool, which I thought I was mentally ready for. Then I got her there and was getting ready to say goodbye when all of a sudden I got that panicky feeling of "Wait! How did we get here??? She's not big enough yet!" Do you guys ever get that feeling? It constricted my throat and I could feel the muscles in my face twitching, wanting to go into The Ugly Cry formation. I fought through it with deep breaths, but it was a close call that wore on my heart for the rest of the day.

That was the first of my heart's casualty for the week.

So then, we had that little incident with J- which by the way, turned out fine. He wasn't really sick with any kind of bug- which I'm not sure is better or worse than the truth- which is that I had woken him up from a nightmare that morning and it stayed with him. That combined with nerves made him throw up. I don't know where he gets that kind of weird behavior from (says the lady who once fell asleep while reading Stephen King, dreamed about it, woke up, threw up, and to this day, has never finished that particular book).

Anyway- that turned out to be the easier part of my week because on Tuesday I picked Roo up from school and she had a low fever and runny nose, which she has now passed on to me. I am operating in fog mode, which I liken to that feeling you have in the first few weeks of bringing home a newborn. Do you remember? You're so tired that your eyes burn and you're not really sure how you're getting things done- you just know that somehow you're doing it? And you keep pushing through it because there's no other choice? That's how I feel. It sucks.

On Wednesday night, Mr. C and the kids were wrestling and all of a sudden PG, who is usually pretty tough and never cries, burst into tears. The tears escalated to wailing and the wailing escalated to screaming, which then turned into sobbing for the next straight hour. So I rubbed her back, put the other kids to bed, and had a little one on one with her. Turns out that second grade has been disappointing for her so far. She feels left out because most of her friends from last year were put into the other class. She misses her first grade teacher. She has to sit next to this kid who says mean things to her and embarrasses her (By the way, when I asked her what he said she sobbed that he told her that she wasn't a good writer, which kind of makes me proud that she finds that as equally offensive as if he said something about her appearance.) The final nails in the coffin were that her teacher gave the class 2 tests in the first 3 days of school, and that she has a different lunch time than her friends.

My first instinct was to go in and switch her class, or at least talk to her teacher about moving her away from the ding dong she has to sit next to. However, I reminded myself of my main goal in this parenting venture- to raise my kids into independent and happy adults, and for them to not hate me when it's all over with- so instead I just talked to her about the choices she can make when the ding dong bothers her. Then I sympathized with her about missing her friends and last year's teacher.

So that was the second casualty on my heart (and btw, Ding Dong has a limited time to fix his behavior before I step in and have a chat with the teacher).

The final casualty was on Thursday when I dropped J off for Kindergarten. The day before he went in with no problem, but this time I knew something was remiss when we got onto the playground and he didn't want to go play. He stayed close to me and when the teacher rang the bell to line up, I saw the tears start welling up in his eyes. He really was trying to be brave, which only made it harder to watch as he got in line and I could see the corners of his mouth pulling down. Then (and I'm pretty sure the teachers teach them this on the first day strictly for the purpose of making parents cry), he gave me the ASL sign for "I love you" and held it up as he walked in the door with tears streaming down his face.

The really terrible thing was that I had left my sunglasses in the car and I had nothing to hide my fat puffy eyes behind while my heart shattered into a million pieces.

That was my week. You can see why I am looking forward to putting the kids down for bed tonight and going out with Mr. C. We're leaving them with the 15 year old high school Sophomore who lives with us and who, as far as I can tell, had a fairly decent first week of school. At least that's what I am assuming, because even if it was bad, I don't believe he would tell us. We have both ends of the spectrum here guys, and neither one is good.

And this is why I drink wine.

Happy Friday!

Kindergarten Jesus

2011-08-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Well.

I woke up this morning with plans to spend my kid-free time writing a post about Kindergartners, what a sweet perspective they have on the world and how we should cherish it. But then I got a call from the office at my son's school asking me to come and get him because he threw up. So now, instead of thinking about Kindergartners as funny, innocent, little rays of sunshine, I can only picture an army of visious pint-sized tormentors who could potentially mark my son as "the boy who threw up on the second day of school" and tease and taunt him and make him hate school forever and ever.

No, I'm not moody today. Why do you ask?

Anyway, puking aside, I'm still going to go forward with this post and try not to let my mommy neuroticism get the better of me. I'm also going to try to forget about the fact that I can still, to this day, remember the name of "the pukers" from my elementary school days and hope that video games have softened this generation's young minds enough so that they don't have the same razor sharp clarity of memory that I do, especially when it comes to other kids' humiliations.

But let's not talk about that and move on, shall we?

I started thinking about this post after talking to my friend about her daughter, who is entering Kindergarten this year. This little girl is bright, sweet, and very creative but my friend was telling me that she was a little worried about taking her in for her pre-K assessment. Her daughter kept insisting that her last name was Tots- which is actually her nickname. As a former K teacher, I think that's adorable (and I'm sure her current K teacher would think so too), but because the Pre-K assessment is the first time anyone other than you officially judges your child's ability, my friend was worried. She and her husband spent days coaching, teaching, and then asking their daughter "What's your full name?" and every time she would gleefully declare "Taytum Tots!"

After some more coaching, she still had a mental block when it came to remembering her last name, but progress was made in that she at least understood that her last name wasn't Tots afterall. Though her parents continued to work with her, her brain wasn't quite ready for the concept of having two names. One day, perhaps feeling a little frustrated, her dad decided to take a break. Her gave her some time, and after a while went back to her and called through the bedroom door- "Hey Taytum! What's your last name?" There was a brief silence, in which I imagine Taytum freezing in her play to stop and search for the right answer. I know she wanted to make her parents proud and I know she wanted to think of a really good name- the right name.

A brief silence, and then she tentatively answered through the door, "Um, Jesus?"

Are you laughing? I hope you're laughing. I'm so glad my friend shared this story with me (and that she gave me permission to share it with you). It reminded me of the countless Kindergarten moments that I experienced when teaching. Like when it was raining outside and I had a little boy show up for school wearing swimming goggles. Or the little girl who came to the first day of school with her security blanket tied around her neck like a cape because she couldn't bear just yet to leave it at home. Or Jamal, whom I wrote about here, who was able to remember the shape of the number 3 because (in his words) "dat look like tits!"

My partner Kindergarten teacher used to say that she loved teaching Kindergarten because the kids come in without knowing how to line up, and leave so much more mature and independent. This is a bittersweet truth that I only fully understood after becoming a parent. They go in as babies, but there's a whole hidden curriculum in Kindergarten that's about focusing, learning social skills, and how to function in a group. Kindergartners will transform into more mature independent thinkers, but it's a trade off. Their small-ish world gets bigger and loses some magic and innocent perspective. In a few weeks, Taytum will forget that she ever thought her last name was Jesus. You won't catch a first grader wearing goggles to school. And I like to think that Jamal no longer thinks of breasts when he writes a 3 (although that could still be possible).

This is it guys. This is when the metamorphosis happens. Enjoy who you're kids become, and treasure who they are now. Write it down, tell other people, celebrate it, and don't worry about them not being "smart enough." They'll get there. They always get there. Just love the beautiful little spirits that they are now, because it's fleeting.

And if you'd tell them to be nice to the pukers, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Shut Up Tacy

2011-08-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

A few years ago (okay, like 15 years ago but it feels like a few which is what counts, right?) I had an English professor in college who assigned us to research our first, middle, and last names. That meant, at that time, I would be researching the names Tacy, Kay, and Herrington. To be honest, I didn't think I would find much, especially for Tacy since it's unusual and never in my lifetime before had my name come through for me in any kind of positive way. You see, I grew up in the 80's..... a time when the personalization of kid products hit the market and every little girl had a unicorn embellished license plate for her bike with her name emblazoned on it- except for me. I'd twirl the racks which displayed the personalized plates and trail my fingers down the rows, past the Tracys, Stacys, Caseys, but never was there a Tacy. Not once.

It still hurts.

Not really. But I have often wondered if my great grandmother, whom I was named after, also had to deal with calling banks, DMV's, or government offices because official documents get printed out to a Tracy. You see, people automatically assume that an "r" was left out of the name on the original form. Or if she got tired of having to repeat her name over and over to new people she was introduced to (and if she ever just finally gave up, as I have at times, and let the new person just think her name is Stacy). Or if lame college boys ever asked her if she was "tasty", har har. Or if she ever traded name tags with bus boys at work because it was easier to pretend to be a Jose for the night than to deal with customers at her tables who, upon learning that the name on her tag was printed correctly, didn't see anything wrong with inquiring if her mother knew how to spell properly. Did she get as tired as I do of explaining? I'll never know because she passed away shortly before I was born, but I do know that when my parents announced to her that they were going to name me after her she said "Oh, don't you dare do that to that child!"

I don't think they took her seriously.

Despite all this, I'm honored to be named after her. She was a great lady with a great name, and I like it. In fact, I stubbornly like it. It's my name. It's me. Those people who are rude or stupid about it can go off and spread their stupidity into other corners of the world- they don't bother me none.

Going back to the assignment though, after doing my research it did become clear that despite the peace that I have with my name, it's definitely not one that would bring good juju to a child in any sense. "Tacy" is Latin in origin and means silence, or 'to be silenced'. One resource I found said that it was a name used most often in the 16th century, and it was given as a reminder to a girl of her place. In other words, my name was a metaphorical gag given to girls as a reminder to sit down and shut up.

Humph!

It doesn't even get better from there. "Kay" means left handed fool, and "Herrington" originated in Wales from a fishing family.

So, in short, you can say that my name means "Shut up, you left handed, foolish, smelly fisherman!"

It's a lovely legacy.

(By the way, in marrying my husband, I have dropped the fisherman part, and replaced it with a name that is derived from a successful group of horse thieves. So now I'm "Shut up you left handed horse thief!" Not much better.)

Anyway. Although the origins of the silence part can be offensive to a modern day woman such as myself, it does kind of fit me in a way. I've been trying to find a way to explain to you guys what I mean by this for a while now, and I think the best way to do it is to first ask you to watch something. (for your viewing pleasure, it's a little bit of the mid-90's version of Brad Pitt. I know- and you're welcome.)

You never could have convinced me the first time I saw that movie that in 20 years that scene would come off as corny. I'd have been crying too hard anyway to listen to you. However, it does strike me as corny now- which makes what I'm about to say equally corny (and I do so hope that I'm not offending anyone who's had a stroke/caring for a loved one who's suffered a stroke, etc.). When I saw that movie, it occurred to me that I was Anthony Hopkins' character. I have things to say, it's all in my head, but it's such a struggle for me to get it out and articulate it in the moment. I don't believe that I think in words, I think I think in feelings, which can be hard to translate into words quickly, and that is why I tend to like myself more in writing. I've learned this about me. Writing gives me time to process my thoughts and feelings and put them in words. I joke with myself that if I could just carry an iPad around my neck and write my thoughts to people, I'd be happier with my interactions.

So, the irony here is that my whole life I've been carrying this name that means "to be silenced", and it was the better part of 36 years before I realized the lesson that life was trying to teach me: to quiet myself more often and just listen. It's not a bad thing to be "the quiet girl". I think I used to know this about myself, but then adolescence hit, along with the need to be liked, and I started drowning out my insecurities with chatter. Since then what I've learned is that too often I wasted both breath and words putting in my two cents, when if I had just listened more, my thoughts would've doubled in value.

So why am I sharing this with you? I don't really know. It's more personal information than I usually share on here. I guess I felt you should know this about me. What goes on my head is usually much better than what comes out of my mouth. There. I said it. It's a source of frustration for me, but it's also a blessing because I'm learning to know myself. I'm Tacy. I'm quiet, and I'm glad we had this talk.

What I mean to say is..... "am happy".

10 Things A Girl Appreciates Upon Returning From 7 Days of Camping, And One Thing She Dreads

2011-08-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

1. A hot steamy shower
2. An oversized bar of Jo Malone Fig Bath Soap
3. A loofah
4. St. Ives Apricot Exfoliating Scrub
5. A razor
6. A clean, fresh, fluffy towel
7. A blow dryer
8. Soft, pretty, feminine pajamas
9. A nail brush and file
10. A big, soft comfy bed

And the thing she dreads.......

Taking him through the above process (excluding numbers #5 and 8, of course).

You all have a good night!

I Kept You Waiting (For Superman)

2011-08-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

So here's what is going on in my life: For the last year I've been searching for a job- on Edjoin, on Craigslist, in the online newspaper listings, all to no avail. Then, in this last week I got 3 calls for interviews and one job offer. I've spent the last few days updating my teaching portfolio and going on interviews. So now my life feels like it's in limbo while I wait to hear news, any news. Of course, things are further complicated by the fact that we're going on vacation, so the receiving of any news that may occur will be delayed by a couple of days.

I like it when God answers prayers, but sometimes I hate the way he does it.

(For you non-religous peeps, all I mean is that even though I asked for this, it still kinda blows.)

And as if I'm not feeling enough anguish and upheaval, it happens to be a fact that the job I want most of all- a teaching position for a 2/3 combo class- starts on August 29th, which is J's first day of Kindergarten. I would not be able to take him for his first day of school, which is almost a deal breaker for me. In fact, just thinking about it makes me feel like a failure as a mother and makes me want to cry. However, as my husband says, I need to take one thing at a time and please please PLEASE let us just enjoy our vacation and leave the stress at home.

Amen.

So anyway, tonight I am going to write about Waiting For Superman, which I've mentioned several times and have never really gotten around to discussing in any kind of length. At one time (actually for a long time), I felt fired up about it, but now I just feel tired and a little cranky.

What made me angry about this movie is that it could've really helped the state of education in our country. It could have made people aware of how poverty levels affect learning, or about how pacing guides are causing teachers to rush through the curriculum without allowing for time for the students to really understand a concept before they have to push on to the next concept (and all these concepts are crammed in the first 6 months of school so that they can be taught before the state testing occurs). It could've discussed the importance of parent involvement, or the impact of the HUGE influx of second language students in the last 2-3 decades, but it didn't. Instead it oversimplified things to a ridiculous degree and it played the blame game. If you watched Waiting For Superman, you probably walked away from the movie thinking that our education system is failing because teacher unions and tenure prevented administrators from firing bad teachers.

Bullshit.

I've said it over and over and over. Of course there are bad teachers. I had bad teachers. I survived bad teachers, just as I have survived bad bankers, bad customer service reps, bad waiters, bad community service officers. Your child will survive a bad teacher, and so will you. They are out there, but the majority of teachers are good and well meaning and loving and most of all, they want your child to succeed.

I'm so tired of saying that. The thing is, if you are of the belief that teachers are overpaid sloths who are in the job for the summers off, then you're an idiot and there's not a lot I can say to you to change your mind. The politicians have managed to to get everybody riled up about teacher pay, accountability and teacher tenure. My personal feeling is that this is a deliberate diversionary tactic. In a manner typical of our government, it's easier for them to blame the teachers than to do something productive and work to save an outdated, failing public school system.

Because this whole topic (so obviously) irritates me, I won't spend a lot of time debating points from the movie. Let me just get the following things off my chest, and then I'll shut up.

*Teacher "overpayment"- I'm not sure why it's anyone's business how much teachers make. I don't have any idea what my doctor or grocer or any other service member in my community makes, but suddenly it seems that people feel like teacher's salaries should be discussed and scrutinized publicly. I don't feel like this is fair, but I'll talk numbers if I have to. Mr. C's district's salary schedule starts at $42,000. (By the way, the national average household income is $55,000) For every year of service, employees get a small increase. The schedule caps around $78,000, but that's only for employees who have their Master's Degree. Considering the hours that teachers work, the overtime they put in, and the extra events that they attend, I don't feel like Mr. C and I are earning an unfair salary. I know people who work less, don't have a college degree, and who make more money than us.

*Teacher "tenure"- Ugh! I hate how politicized this topic has gotten! In Waiting For Superman, the woman who served as the D.C School Superintendent, Michelle Rhee, shut down 13 schools because of poor performance. Imagine that you are a teacher in one of these schools. You go to work everyday and dedicate yourself to students who may or may not have any support at home. They may not speak English. They may be being hungry, or even abused. You teach them and do your best to make a difference for them, but the state test scores from your school are low. (Of course they are- studies have shown that poverty has a detrimental effect on learning.) However, one day, because of these low test scores, your school is shut down. You no longer have a job, because one person-this Michelle Rhee- has decided that the teachers at your school are ineffective. It doesn't matter that you've seen your students improve and blossom. Because they haven't scored well on the standardized test, you have now lost your job.

It is because of people like Michelle Rhee, that we even have tenure and unions. We need it to protect ourselves. However, if it really matters all that much, then take it! It never mattered to me and Mr. C. We were both tenured, along with 1000's of other teachers, when we were pink slipped two years in a row because of budget cuts. Tenure never really meant that much.

Finally, let me say this about the unions- I agree, they've become too politicized. I don't like that every October I get a pamphlet from the California Teacher's Association telling me who they think I should vote for in the November election. I have my own mind, and with it I make my own decisions, thank you very much. However, I blame the politicization of our unions on the structure of our government, not on the teachers themselves. I view the union as being useful for what it was created for- to protect my rights and livelihood from being intruded upon by any power plays from the government.

I will agree with the movie on one point- in education the focus has shifted from the kids. It seems everyone is arguing about all the stuff I talked about above; standardized tests, accountability, unions, tenure.... but no one is thinking about how to make it better for the kids. Our system is overloaded, ineffective, outdated.... but so far no one has been able to give us answers for what we need to do to fix it. Teachers are returning to work, and they'll continue to do what they do. They'll care for the kids, they'll go through the curriculum the best they can, as fast as they can, and they will just.... teach.

As fo me, I'm curious about what you all's thoughts are on this. I know I came off pretty strong up there, but I do want to know what other opinions and thoughts are out there. How much are teachers to blame? What exactly do you think is wrong with our system? Should I take a job that won't let me take my son to his first day of Kindergarten?

Just kidding on that last one. Kind of.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. I'll be out fending off bears in the Sequoia's somewhere, but I'll be happy to see your thoughts when I come back.

By the way, I realize I have broken internet safety rule #1- never tell the internet that you are leaving your home. However, you should know that if any of you are considering breaking into my home while I'm gone, I have arranged for house guests to stay here. Plus, I have a big, mean, toothy dog who is very loyal to us and our home. He will be on guard.

So there. Don't even think about it.

Have a good night!

Loving Someone Means That Sometimes You Have to Lego

2011-07-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

J turned 5 this last week. I mentioned in my last post how I can get out of hand with my party planning, but what I didn't mention is how every time I plan a party, everytime, I turn into a lunatic. (Actually, I think I went into some detail about this last fall, when I wrote about Mr.C's surprise 40th birthday party). This time however, I thought I was doing okay. I had decorations bought, lists made, jobs delegated, and up to an hour before the party I still hadn't snapped at any family members or bared fangs. But then 40 minutes before guests were due to arrive, cupcakes were still unfrosted, the food hadn't been organized, the kitchen hadn't been cleaned, and I hadn't showered yet. Mr. C was wandering around with a rag wiping down the walls.

In hindsight, yes this was helpful.... but I believe Mr. C was was deep in the trenches of what's known as man thinking. Swiping walls when there was obviously more important, pressing things to do? Nor was I in my right mind, because the next thing I knew the lid blew off the can of my own brand of crazy and I was hysterically shrieking "WE ARE SCREWED!!!!! SCREWWWWED!"

Mr. C looked at me standing there panting, bug eyed, with frosting in my hair and he started to laugh. I immediately felt embarrassed, because even for me, that was a bit dramatic. I shook my head and mumbled "I know. I know." Then I threw down my towel and decided that a shower would be a good way to center myself.

In my (5 minute) shower, I reminded myself that this was not an Iron Chef competition. This was my family and friends coming to my home to celebrate my son's 5 years on this planet. I reminded myself that I was doing this for J, because he's been counting down his birthday for the past 35 days, because he's the middle kid who often gets gypped, because 5 is officially "big kid" territory and I want to make this birthday memorable, and because when he smiles, it shows in his eyes too. I wanted to make him smile.

I got out of the shower to find that Mr. C had cleaned up the kitchen and put out the decorations. (Man thinking aside, I really do have the best husband in the world). I ended up decorating the cupcakes while guests were arriving, but that was no big deal. The food got organized and placed out.

Can we just take a moment to recognize the food labels, set in special Jedi font, glued onto black card stock, and decorated with gold and silver star stickers? That's Wookie Cookies, Muja Fruit, Patawan Popcorn, Darth Dogs, and my personal favorite, Ewoks- which were really gummy bears. We also ordered "Pizza the Hut".

I'm sick, and I'm aware of it.

Actually, J did not really care about the food labels- no surprise there. He was there to enjoy the swimming:

present time:

and the goodies. (By the way, those are supposed to look like Lego block heads. I think I'm going to give up trying to jump on the cake pop wagon.)

He did think the Lego letter J that his big brother created was pretty cool:

but mostly he was all about cake time and blowing out the candles.

It was during that time, with the lights dimmed and me standing next to him while our family and friends gathered around singing Happy Birthday that it became crystal clear exactly why I got crazy about this particular party. It's because he's getting big fast, this little boy of mine. He doesn't even let me give him kisses in public anymore. In fact, he rarely allows me to kiss or hug him at all. I know that's normal, that is what little boys do. But it's hard for me, his mom. I'm used to spontaneously giving squeezes and kisses whenever the moment strikes me. And now I'm forced to find other ways to demonstrate my affection. So I read stories to him and enjoy sitting close. Or I listen and laugh at his silly jokes. Or I just sit back and observe him in his play, marveling at his imagination.

And I assemble 100 pieces of Lego's out of fondant, and I make stupid Star War food labels, and I freak out when it's unsure if it's all going to come together.

And for that face, I would do it a thousand times over.

Happy Birthday, J! Your the Chewbacca to my Hans Solo, the R2D2 to my C3PO, the...... I don't know. Mom's not so good with the Star Wars metaphors. Sorry. Just know that I love you.

Good night!

Some Call This Brain Potpourri But I Just Call It a List

2011-07-20T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hey there.

It's been over a week since I last posted, which seems to have become my norm. I wasn't even going to write anything tonight but then I was overcome with self loathing at my lack of follow through, so I'm basically writing this out of old fashioned Catholic guilt.

(Except I'm not Catholic, but times like these I wish I was because I figure that if I'm going to feel guilty, it'd be handy to have a religion to blame it on rather than to have to search inwardly and reflect.)

Anyway.

I haven't written for all the same excuses that I've been given you all year: when I sit down after the kid's bedtime, the couch and Netflix kill any motivation that I may have had. Also, Mr. C has been gone again. I do realize however, that I've written at least 5 different posts this year around the theme of him being gone, which means I've likely exhausted any further sympathy on the topic. Besides, no one has actually gone ahead and thrown me the dang parade that I'm so sure I deserve, so I may as well just go and shut up about it.

Moving on: just because I haven't written doesn't mean that I don't think about writing. I think about it a lot. And in the last week or so, I've been thinking about writing about several things, of which I have included in a list below. I'm hoping that maybe if I actually write them down and put my ideas out there, maybe, possibly, there's an inkling of a chance that I'll feel accountable for them and actually expound my full thoughts on the topic someday. Here they are:

1. I watched Waiting For Superman and am full of things to say about it- not all of them bad. Once again though, I am feeling that I need to get back up on my soapbox and defend teachers. I can't help it. I'm married to one, my in-laws are teachers, I used to be one, and many of my friends are teachers. I'm just trying to find a way to write it so I don't sound all preachy and tiresome. Because, well, you know..... yuck.

2. Roo is growing freckles across her nose. She said the cutest thing regarding them a couple of weeks ago. I need to write it so I'll remember it forever, but first I'm waiting for Mr. C to get a really good close up shot of her speckles before I post. That way you all can see for yourselves how cute they are. (Yes, I know that statement makes me sound like an overly obsessed doting mother. In this case, I'll own it.)

3. I'm planning J's 5th birthday party. It's just supposed to be a small, no big deal swim party at our house, but I made the mistake of doing internet research on Star Wars parties, and now I'm feeling that energy that I used to channel for designing really cool lesson plans surface again in the form of OCD party planning. This has happened before to me when I did a few of PG's early parties. Her 5th party was supposed to be a small get together at the park next door, but it turned into a full blown carnival with game booths, face painting, popcorn, hot dogs, balloons, and a bouncy house. I felt a little ashamed of myself afterwards. You have to understand though, today I found a site with menu ideas like Yoda Soda and Wookie Cookies. You can't expect me to just walk away from that.

4. I still want to write some kind of book review or book report every month. Just don't know how to go about it in an interesting way. Anyone have ideas?

5. Finally, 2 weeks ago Mr. C and I were in the middle of watching True Blood when we heard this horrific yowling at our door. For a minute I totally confused reality and fiction and wondered what a werepanther would be doing in the middle of our desert, but then Mr. C opened the door and we found a baby kitten sitting there. We, being the suckers we are, let it in and even though I keep telling the kids that we're not keeping it, they don't believe me. That may be because we've gone ahead and bought kitty dry food, kitty wet food, kitty milk, a kitty litter box, and named it- Canon- because it's favorite spot is in Mr. C's camera bags.

(I wanted to name it Chop Suey, but no one around here ever listens to me.)

By the way, El Diablo is pissed that we let a kitten into the house. He rarely deigns to set foot inside the house nowadays, which bumps kitty waaaaaay up on my list of likable animals.

So. There it is. Quite possibly the lamest post I've ever written about things that I'm hoping to write about someday. You know, the someday when my husband is home and I'm not planning a birthday party or potty training a kitten or in the middle of a really good book or watching Netflix, or anything else that gets in my way.

It could be possible that you never hear from me again.

Have a good night.

Settling

2011-07-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

One day back in 2003 I was packing up my cute little condo in Palm Springs to move in with Mr. C and 9 when the phone rang. It was my ex- boyfriend calling (after a year and a half of being non-communicado) to see if I would be interested in "starting something up" again. You may be thinking that that sounds somewhat cocky of him- and it was- but I confess to be mostly to blame because I had let this person get way too comfortable with keeping me on a hook for the better part of 7 years. I, being thrilled to have the final ball in my court, gleefully informed him that I was not only going to be married in a matter of weeks, but that I was also pregnant and expecting a baby in 8 months or so.

Now had this conversation occurred today, I probably would have handled it better. However, between you and me, I think we need to acknowledge that this little scenario is the stuff that every jilted girl dreams of. I mean, the climax of movies, books, and plays throughout time are written around this scenario, right? A very mature 28 year old woman would have handled things with compassion and love, however I admit that I was no mature 28 year old. I was happy-no- I was absolutely filled with joy at the opportunity to use my happiness as a weapon against him. Today I can regret this and feel sad that I was so cruel, but like I said, in my immature mindset I was not about to waste this once in a lifetime Lifetime Movie Moment. I was mean, and the more despairing he was, the meaner I got until he finally got mean back. He accused me of 'settling' for Mr. C.

Well.

Tomorrow Mr. C and I celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. Obviously, I did not 'settle' for him by a long shot. While I know that 8 years is nothing to really toot your horn about when one's talking about the long haul of marriage, I do think it's been a long enough time to teach me this: sometimes loving someone is easier than liking them. I've loved Mr. C every minute for most of the last decade, but there have been times when I haven't liked him much- and I know that likewise is true for him in regards to me. (I'd love it if I knew that there were people out there who found that hard to believe. Anyone out there? Anyone?) Anyway, those were always our hardest times. They are always our hardest times. When people say that marriage is work I think that's the part their referring to- finding a way to make sure that you still like your partner. Mr. C and I have had our rough patches, but overall we've managed well.

Here's something else I've learned about marriage: it's really unpredictable. I know people who met each other in their teens who are still blissfully happy today, and other high school sweethearts who's marriages blew up in their faces 10 years later. I know people who married after a short courtship and are still together, while others dated for 12 years, married, and divorced after two. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason. In fact, a friend and I discovered this while having a deep conversation about relationships: when you're married, you have to learn to accept things about your partner you will never be able to change. On the flip side, you also have to accept that life and circumstance will often change your partner before your eyes. No one is the same person at 60 that they were at 20. Being married means that you have to love your partner and yourself through all that plus run a household together, manage finances together, raise children together, care for your parents, care for your pets, care for yourself. It doesn't stop. It's very....... unsettling.

So tomorrow while driving through some back roads in Temecula Wine Country with my husband, I know that I'll be thinking about 3 things: first, how lucky I am to get to a whole day to myself road tripping with my best friend. Second, I'll be thinking about how much I have in the present to be thankful for. Third, I'll be thinking of how happy I am to be so unsettled with the best guy I ever was accused of settling for.

I'll also probably be thinking about wine a lot. We'll be in the Wine Country, so that's natural.

Finally, in case any of you were wondering about the ex... I've heard through the grapevine that he's happily unsettled himself these days. See? Everything happens for a reason and all is right in the world.

You all have a good night!

Devil and Angel

2011-06-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

Okay, officially I'm not venting about the fact that I've been a single mom for most of June.

But really I am.

It seems that every year I forget how much overtime Mr. C puts in (unpaid- YAY teachers!) at the end of the year. Between award ceremonies and graduations and senior parties and end of the year meetings, Mr. C was not home much for the last two- three weeks of school. And then right after school let out, he took the three older kids camping, which left me home with Roo for a week. Then he came home for a day, repacked, and went to Missouri with his student for a Skills USA National Competition, while I stayed with all 4 kids. Then he came home for a day, repacked, and is now currently in Anaheim at a Creativity Conference where he is spending the night at the Paradise Pier Hotel and going behind the scenes at the park with the Disney Imagineers.

Through all this I've had a devil and an angel on my shoulder and their conversation goes like this:

Angel: What a lucky wife you are to have such a talented husband who has such passion for his job! See how his students are succeeding? Doesn't it feel good to know that he plays a huge part in that?

Devil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what are you? Chopped liver? How come he gets all the pats on the back with everyone telling him how great he is and how proud they are of him while you're running yourself ragged keeping four kids entertained? Plus, have you even thought about the fact that he's gotten to have a nice comfortable hotel bed all to himself for the last 9 days?

Angel: Oh. pish posh! It's your job, silly, to take care of the kids! It's what you signed up for! What do you want? A badge? A parade?

Devil: Yes! A parade! A parade is not an unreasonable request! Someone should very well throw a parade for all that you've been managing! And while they're at it, you should get a badge too! If the Girl Scouts get a badge for babysitting, then you get a badge for running the show solo for weeks on end!

Angel: Tsk tsk! Nobody likes a whiner.

Devil: Oh, whine, wine. Get a straw and suck it up, sister.

To tell you the truth, I'm not partial to either one of those guys. In fact, I don't think I like either of them because neither one makes me feel better. One of them invalidates all of my true feelings, while the other one just spews more negativity.

I hate negativity.
I hate complaining.
I hate feeling like what I do isn't important.
I hate being jealous of my husband.
I hate the feeling of needing recognition.
I hate stupid, fluffy, soft, comfortable hotel beds.
I hate that the word 'hate' is in this post 7 times.

Not that I'm venting or anything.

You all have a good night! And don't worry- next time I talk to you Mr. C will be home and I'll be a nice, new, shiny happy version of myself again.

It's A Cooking Post, Yay!

2011-06-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Here's some shocking news for all of you: me and Mr. C, we be poor. I mean, we're rich in a lot of other things, but in the bank account- not so much... which actually doesn't make us very different from many other people nowadays. I think I've written before that someday I look forward to a time when we don't have to choose monthly between getting our car serviced or going on a date night. Or buying the kids shoes and having a date night. Or feeding the animals and having a date night. You get the idea? For right now, that's how it is and we've found a way to make it okay. We just have date nights in. Yes, some people have staycations, me and Mr. C have stayte night.

Just kidding. We don't really call it that. That'd be terrible.

We don't call it anything but "give the kids chicken nuggets for dinner, put them to bed, make some really yummy food for ourselves and then watch Netflix on the couch" night. It works for us.

Since it's been a while since I've done a cooking post, and since Mr. C was hanging around the kitchen anyway while I cooked, I asked him to take some pictures for the blog. It was a little bumpy at first, because I had a preconceived vision for this post of which I had to try to relate to him while he just seemed mostly interested in taking pictures of the champagne bottle. But in the end it worked out okay.

Still not sure what he was trying to capture with all that.

So let's get started, shall we? This is a recipe for Pasta Carbonara. It's another Rachael Ray, the last recipe in her first cookbook, Cooking Round the Clock. She titled it "The Only Recipe You'll Ever Need". I'd like to amend that and call it "The Only Recipe You'll Ever Need If You're Planning on Clogging Your Arteries and Having a Heart Attack Before Middle Age". However, fattening as this recipe may be, it is deliriously delicious and perfect for a late night meal with your sweetie.

Here's the ingredients:

That's 1 package of rigatoni

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

5-6 chopped garlic cloves

1/4 pound pancetta (chopped)

1 tsp. red pepper flakes

1/2 cup dry white wine (I used bubbly which was a little too dry, but whatev.)

2 large egg yolks

1 cup of Parmesan Romano Cheese

(Also, I do realize that the alignment above is a disaster, but after spending an hour messing around with the format in HTML form, I no longer care.)

(Actually, I do care, but only enough to let you know that I am aware of the problem. I don't care enough to spend any more time on trying to fix it.)

(And now I think I might have cared too much, because now I have three aside thoughts in a row explaining exactly how much I do and don't care.)

Anyway.

First things first: get a nice, big pot of salted water to boil.

Can I just stop for a moment to say that I think I'm going to permanently hire Mr. C to take pictures for any future cooking posts? I don't think I could have ever made boiling water look that cool with my little point and shoot camera.

Add the rigatoni and cook it for 8 minutes.

Okay. Now, in that 8 minutes, you have to cook everything up in your skillet fast so that it's ready to add to the hot pasta. So go! Go! There's no time to waste!

(Unless you're messing around with Rigatoni binoculars. Then it's okay to waste a little time.)

Heat up the olive oil in a large skillet and add then add the pancetta. Brown it for about 2 minutes.

Then add the garlic and the red pepper flakes.

Cook 2 or 3 minutes longer, then add the wine (or champagne) and stir it up with all the pan juices.

Mmmmmmm-mm-mm. Wish he had taken a better picture of that, because this one doesn't do much to help you understand how delicious the smell of the garlic cooking up in that wine sauce was. It was mouth watering.

So if you can tear your nose away from the skillet, take some time to look at the noodles. By now they should be pretty much done and you'll want to stir in your skillet stuff while the noodles are nice and piping hot. So listen up!

Take those eggs and separate them. Do whatever you want with the egg whites, but please PLEASE don't hurt the egg yolks.

(By the way, my egg separating skills are courtesy of Mrs. Rogers, my Jr. High home ec teacher, whom I wrote about here. Turns out I got more from her after all than just horror stories involving digestive juices inside of pudding.)

Dump those yolks into a bowl or measuring cup and beat 'em up real good. Then, before you drain the noodles, take about a 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water and add it into your eggs. Then go ahead and lightly stir that together.

This is called "tempering the eggs". It keeps them from scrambling and ruining all your hard work.

Okay, now you can drain the pasta.

(I know you don't really need to see a picture of that, but again, I'm just really impressed with Mr. C's action shots. Look at that steam! I had to include. Sorry.)

Allrighty. Now is where you've got to MOVE. Take the drained noodles and dump them into the saucepan over the pancetta and garlic sauce. Then you pour the eggs over the noodles, and start mixing it all up like crazy. Make sure you toss that sauce over each and every noodle!

Then toss a handful (or two... or three.... oink) of the cheese and mix it in there real good, too.

Get it all melty-like, salt and pepper it, and then put some extra cheese on top right before you serve it.

Now, Rachael Ray writes that it's sexy to just eat it out of the saucepan with two forks. Go ahead and do that if you want. I wouldn't judge you. But Mr. C and I rarely get to eat like civilized folk, what with a table full of kids and all, so we set out plates all fancy like.

Then we enjoyed a quiet meal, in which no one interrupted us to complain about the food, or spill their beverage, or ask us how much more they had to eat before they could be done.

See? Just like date night, except cheap, fast, and easy. And yes, I realize I could take that last statement so many places, but since I've already slathered this post up with huge amounts of my dorkiness, I'll just go ahead and let it be.

You're very welcome.

Hope you all have a great day!

Men In Mommyworld

2011-06-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

As I've written before (like here), sometimes things happen in my world that are unrelated, yet they share a common theme. I always refer to it as the Universe talking to me. It happens a lot. Seriously. Kinda freaks me out. Most of the time though, I like it because it feels a little....... magical? Beautiful? It's like that plastic bag blowing in the wind from the movie American Beauty. It's simple- these random little occurrences- and it's beautiful because from each one a thought is pulled and weaved together to create a truth.

(Actually, I'm not quite sure how that's like the bag blowing around in American Beauty, but the truth is that my explanation of this got a little artsy-fartsy and the blowing bag is where my brain defaults to when it comes to symbolism. Apologies.)

So, it started yesterday when I was in the mall parking lot with Roo. She was in the stroller and we were walking to the car. When we got close, some guy who'd been circling the parking lot, decided to follow us the rest of the way and wait for our spot. (By the way, I hate it when people do this because then I always feel like I have to rush- which I usually do as a courtesy to them because I'm polite that way- but I've always hated the imposition.) Anyway, I took Roo out of the stroller and put her into the carseat, deciding that I'd buckle her after I loaded the stroller. See? I was trying to be all streamlined and fast for this guy which turned out to be all for nought, because when I went back to collapse the stroller I heard him yell "Oh, come ON!"

What in the world did he think I was going to do with the stroller? Leave it there? Pick it up and shove it into my bag like Mary Poppins?

I thought maybe, perhaps he was listening to some sports on his radio and his team had just made a bad play because I couldn't see how I had done anything that warrented being yelled at. I was moving fast, wasn't I? Trying to get him into this spot as fast as I could, right?

So ignoring eye contact, I lifted the stroller into the trunk, shut it, and went back to Roo so I could buckle her. And that's when I heard him say, "Are you kidding me?".

Then he pounded his steering wheel like a big fat two year old baby.

Let me leave this story for a minute and tell you where I was mentally before all this happened.

Earlier in the week, my whole family had gotten together and celebrated my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. 65th. 65th. That's six full decades and half of another one. I don't know about you guys, but my brain can't wrap itself around that number when it's in reference to spending it with your spouse.
(Mr. C and I joke that we're going to have to retire to two different spots of the country- him to a hacienda somewhere in New Mexico where he can hike and photograph to his heart's content, and me to my country dream home with a wrap around porch, where I will lounge and read and sip ice tea for the rest of my days.)

Anyway- back to my grandparents. To look at them now, they are an excellent model for love and marriage. However, I know from talking to both of them, that they had their share of rough times. My grandma was telling me the other day how my grandfather, being like most men in 1950's America, was completely clueless to how hard she worked in the home. He never once changed a diaper, helped with housework, or prepared a meal. When she asked for help his standard response was "Look, I work all day. I'm exhausted. You're here all day. You can sit down anytime you want and take a nap."

Let's take a moment to gasp collectively.

Him being my beloved grandpa, I can easily forgive him. That's just how it was in the 50's. Besides, a Cesarean section and subsequent 10 day hospital stay for my grammy taught my grandpa the error of his thinking. (My dad loves to tell the story of how my grandpa, during his disastrous week home with his kids, tried to serve a roasted chicken that was burnt on the outside and still frozen in the middle.) But my grammy, though she has long since forgiven him, still gets worked up when she's telling me about that time in her life- and it's 50 years later. That's some powerful anger there.

Coincidentally (or not), my friend posted this article here up on Facebook written by a father, calling out the clueless dads. It's a good article and I hope you all click over and read it. I'm happy to say that most of the dad's I know are completely in the game; diapers, dishes and all. However, there are a few fathers I know of who'd I love to pin down and force-read the article to. I have fantasies of going all Jillian Michaels on them and yelling "You're a loser! You think you're a man? You're not a man!" into their faces. Aggressive, yes, but I get so sick of seeing their wives tired and beaten down from doing it all themselves.

So, I guess this past week ignornace about children and child rearing was in the forefront of my mind- how it was in the 50's and how we've progressed but there's still people out there who are living in an Ozzie and Harriet nightmare.

So there I was sitting there in the mall with Roo, just prior to the tattooed bald man baby throwing a temper tantrum in his car, sipping on my Starbucks and watching Roo play in the play area. A group of mommies were there for a playdate and I found myself observing them: the sippy cups, the snack baggies, the conversations about nursing, the kid/mommy language ("Hands aren't for hitting, sweetie!") I was suddenly overcome by this rush of UGH. I don't know why it happened- on any day any of those ladies and I are easily interchangeable- but in that moment the sheer momminess of mommyworld just completely got under my skin. I packed up Roo and left.

Then I got accosted by the big bald man baby in the parking lot.

As I was driving home, I felt so worn down by stupidity. Not just the man baby- I mean, yes, he was totally stupid, but it was more than that. It was that mommyworld had totally gotten to me, not the first time that had happened, but it was the first time that I realized that the stupid part of parenting- the day in day out silly details of it- is probably is the only thing that the clueless people see. And I suddenly understood how all this stuff was connected for me:

The daily ins and outs of parenting- I understand that it must look silly on the outside. The bulging diaper bags, the silly songs and rhymes we sing to entertain the kids, the runny noses.... I could go on forever. It looks like a bunch of mundane boring stuff that doesn't have a lot of value in it. (Which is probably why a grown man found it socially acceptable to be impatient with a mother in a parking lot.) The truth is though, that this stuff is so completely invaluable because it all adds up to time spent with your children. How sad that there are people who don't get that. How sad that there are fathers who don't get that.

So that's what this has turned into. A Father's Day post. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there who get it and see the big picture- the ones who aren't afraid of being silly and changing diapers and spending time with their kids. You are priceless.

To Mr. C- yes, you're an amazing father BUT perhaps today what I appreciate most about you is that when I need it, you are my superhero rescue from mommyworld. When I need to NOT feel like a part of that world, you are the person in the universe I turn to who is best at making me feel like the 'me' I was before kids.

And a Happy Father's Day to my own father, who made me smile by writing this under my facebook vent about mall guy, (and I quote) "Tacy, if I had been there, that guy would've been tooting his horn through his back pockets."

Thanks for having my back, dad. Love you.

(Not) Sleeping With The Enemy

2011-06-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all.

It's 5:30 in the morning. Do you want to guess why I'm up? I'll give you a hint: it's not because of any children. Mr. C took off for camping yesterday morning with the oldest 3. Roo, who stayed with me, is still sleeping soundly in her bed. The house is peaceful and quiet, which may make you wonder- why am I not curled up under blankets and sleeping soundly myself?

I'll tell you why.

Because the cat has decided that 4:30 or 5 a.m is when it wants it's first of three meals of the day. And I have decided that this is it. I am going to write the post that I have held back on for so long. I am going to devote an entire post to why I detest this cat.
*disclaimer- if you are an animal lover and are prepared to tell me why I need to be more compassionate and tolerant of this animal, then you should be warned that I haven't had my coffee yet, I'm up extra early for no reason and extra cranky because of it. You don't want to mess with that, do you?

A little back story before we start: The cat was 14 years old when we brought it over here from 9's mom's house. We didn't know at the time that she has a tendency towards puking. Actually, we didn't know a lot of things. We assumed we were getting a normal cat.

This is not a normal cat. This is El Diablo Estupido.

(That is what I secretly call her).

Here is a list of my grievances towards El Diablo Estupido:

Per the vet, we have to divide her daily meal up into 3 increments if we want her to puke less. This has confused El Diablo because she now thinks that anytime I am in the kitchen, she will be receiving a meal. This means that she spends most of her day circling my kitchen island like a shark. To count, this household has lost 2 plates, 1 drinking glass, 1 pie pan, and 1 cat dish because El Diablo has gotten underfoot and tripped me in her constant greediness for food. This is not to mention the number of times that nothing has broken but I have tripped and sent food flying all over the tile.

Which reminds me, the tile. Over half of my house is covered in tile, yet, anytime El Diablo pukes, she makes sure to do it on the carpet.

She went on a starvation strike when we tried to switch her to dry food. She refused to eat it, and then I caught her up on my pantry shelf like a feral raccoon. She had torn through the plastic on a brand new loaf of bread and had devoured it. So we switched back to wet food.

That brings me back to the feeding her 3 times a day thing: you know what I want the first thing I smell to be in the morning? Coffee. You know what I'm accosted with instead? Friskies Whitefish Ocean Dinner. It smells up an entire side of the house.

And then there's my laundry room. My laundry room has been taken over by the litter box and her food and water dishes. To get to my washing machine nowadays, I have to perform acrobatic stunts of epic proportions while stepping in the sand that she kicks out of her littler box.

Finally, there's the persistent meowing at 5 a.m. No matter how many pillows I've thrown at her, how many threats I make to sell her to a ghetto restaurant, she will not shut up with the pre dawn meowing. We resorted to closing her in the laundry room every night so that we could sleep. One night we did this when my best friend was over. My best friend is a cat person. The cat started crying and my friend, (who never offers me any pity when I'm bitching about the cat) had the nerve to say "That is breaking my heart." And I wanted to say "Really? REALLY? That's breaking your heart? That? What about your friend who you've known since you were six who, between babies, pregnancies, and kitty cats, hasn't gotten a good night's sleep in almost 8 years now? WHY DOESN'T THAT BREAK YOUR HEART? WHY DOES THE DAMN CAT GET ALL YOUR PITY? Huh? HUH?"

But instead I just threw her a look and said, "Trust me. At 5 a.m. that's the safest place for her to be."

Another, more gentle friend suggested that perhaps the cat came to our household to teach me about loving difficult things. I wanted to hug her and tell her that she was sweet for that I thinking that I was going to look for lesson about love in this scenario. She didn't know me very well at the time.

As an afterthought, I just realized that I've gone through the terrible 2's with 2 children and am in the midst of them with another. I know all about loving difficult things. El Diablo and I are not on that path.

On the up side, the stupid cat did motivate me to get up and write a post on the blog that I've been neglecting lately. How are you all doing? I've missed my blog and will try to do better this summer. I already took pics for a cooking post that'll be coming up. Me and Mr. C did an at home date night and made Pasta Carbonara. It was actually better than anything I've ever tasted at a restaurant and easy to make. I'll get that up soon to share with you. For now, I guess I owe one to the cat for getting me up and writing.

Score 1 for the enemy.

You all have a good day.

Anger and The Mother

2011-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all.
Thanks all for the sweet comments about my sister and her situation. She’s feeling great, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted on what happens with the girls. As of right now, they’re still with us. In fact we’re packing up this weekend for a big- HUGE- family camping trip to celebrate my brother in law’s birthday. There’ll be 8 adults, 12 kids, and 5 tents.

You can wish us luck after you stop laughing.

So, tonight I’d like to write about something that I’ve been thinking about for a while: anger. It’s not talked about often, but I’ve noticed it’s a theme among mothers. At the park, at playgroups, at Girls’ Night Out, in our conversations, in our rants, and even in our jokes, anger is often the bottom line.

I remember waaaaaaay back in one of my college Sociology classes, the professor mentioned something about a formal study that found that women who identified their occupations as “mothers” reported feeling more angry than any other occupation. I guess I made note of it, because I still remember it being said, but I didn’t think much about it beyond class because, well, at the time I wasn’t a mom so my attitude was all “Who cares? When is he going to start explaining the male psyche? That’s information I could use.”

So, obviously now I’m a mom. And I care. And I know we’re not supposed to talk about it because moms are supposed to be all sweet and quiet and nurturing and long suffering. Don’t worry, I’m all those things too, but I’d have to ask you have to throw anger into the mix as well. Let’s face it, I can’t be all those things without being a little pissed off about it.

It’s taken 5 years of stay at home mommy experience, but I think that I may have got the anger thing figured out. I believe that what makes moms crazy is the simple idea of input vs. output. You see, generally, when you spend time and energy on something, you do it because there is going to be a payoff. You scrub counters so you can have a clean kitchen, you clean floors so your feet don’t stick to the tile, and you do laundry so you can get rid of the pile of dirty clothes (I freely admit that I do laundry purely for the sake of getting rid of the pile. Clean clothes are just a side benefit).

Now, I can’t speak for all the stay at home mother’s out there, but I can tell you what my experience is. I clean the counters and inevitably some little person comes along and spills a juice or dumps a Crayola mega pack all over the place. Or it’s time for another meal. Or playdough project. Or snack. I will spend a full 45 minutes sweeping and mopping the 1000 square feet of tile in my house, only to have the dog come in and shed all over the place, followed by the teenager walking his bike through the kitchen to the garage, followed by 6 little dirty feet who were just playing in the muddy yard. It takes me 2 days to do laundry for this family of six, and no sooner will I put the last sock away in a drawer do I turn around and see that the laundry basket is already half full.

It doesn’t sound so bad as it’s put in the above paragraph, but you have to understand that this stuff happens day in, day out, for weeks, months, and now years.

Didn’t someone define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? No wonder moms feel crazy. I clean, I clean, I clean- and while I’m cleaning I’m having circular conversations about why we have belly buttons and I’m scheduling naps and cooking the next meal and helping with homework and I’m being nurturing and patient through it all. Then I’ll see a little person wipe their macaroni and cheese covered hand on a wall and I’ll go ballistic because OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET CAUGHT UP THIS HOUSE WILL ALWAYS BE A DISGUSTING STY THEY’RE ALL WORKING AGAINST ME AND TRYING TO MAKE ME INSANE.

Not everyday. But there are many days like that.

And I love the older people who tell you that you shouldn’t worry about housework so much. They’ll say that they made that mistake and now their children are grown and they realize in hindsight that they should’ve spent more time enjoying their children. I appreciate their wisdom and insight, and I do make it a point to enjoy my children, but the truth is that they’ve forgotten about the circular conversations about bellybuttons and homework help. If they could go back in time and do it again, they would be forced to care about housework because the truth is, stepping in a pile of crunchy cereal that was left on the floor while in the midst of all kinds of other craziness is enough to send a person over the edge.

You may be asking why I don’t just have other household members help, and the answer is I do. I’m a big believer in autonomy and independence. Once my kids are big enough to handle a chore, they more or less do it. Furthermore, when my husband is home, we split the work and help each other. But it’s still my show that I’m running. I’m the one that is responsible and therefore, I am the one that feels the craziness from the never-endingness of it all. Mr. C feels it sometimes, but mostly he’s baffled about why I’ll start yelling at him when he tries to put a perfectly still-clean pair of jeans into the laundry.

Do I sound terrible and high strung? What kind of person goes nutso over spilled juice or dirty laundry? I hate this anger and I worried for a long time that I was the only one, but then I had a friend- who’s also a neighbor- come over. She was sitting at my white ceramic tiled island counter and she asked how I felt about it (the tile), since she has the same kind in her house. I casually replied “I don’t like it much. Too hard to keep clean.” To which she nodded solemnly nodded, narrowed her eyes and said, “Tacy, some days I want to take a bat to it.”

Hallelujah, I ain’t the only one.

Anyway, there is a point to this post beyond me bitching about housework. I, my friends, have found a pretty good outlet for my anger. Wednesday night my friend and I walked into the Coachella Valley Boxing Club. This was hugely intimidating because a) We were one of the few women in there, one of the few white girls in there, and definitely the only mommies in there. b) It was a boxing club. People hit each other. For fun.

So, once I got over the feeling of how stupid I looked and felt, I enjoyed the workout. The only bummer was that our trainer didn’t let us use the bags this time. He said we need to go get our own gloves. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go buy a pair of pink Everlast boxing gloves and every Monday and Wednesday night, you will find me there, at the boxing club, hitting a bag as hard as I can. Over and over and over again.

This mama’s gonna knock you out.

(Not really, but it seemed like a good way to end this post.)

You all have a good night.

A Mother's Day Story

2011-05-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

You all know how much I love stories. I love to read them, I love to hear them, I love to watch them, I love to write them, I love to talk about them- you get the idea. I also love to think about the idea that everyone and everything alive has a story- there’s something so attractive about that to me. The idea that people make choices based on what’s happened in their past and that this shapes their future and other’s futures, and that this is how stories are made- I find it so powerful. I may even go so far as to say that if everyone stopped and listened more compassionately to each other’s stories, this world may be a more peaceful place to be.

So now that I’ve found the answer to world peace in the first paragraph of my post, I guess we can all go home now.

Kidding. I don’t want you to go yet, because I have a story for you today that has been silenced and I want to share it with you now. I’m interested in telling this story mainly because the person in this story wasn’t able to talk about what she was going through for various reasons; some that were understandable, and some that were (in my opinion) just plain stupid. Whatever the reasons, this person kept her focus, swallowed anger and vengeance, and just quietly kept her faith. I think she deserves to be recognized.

So now I'd like to share her story with you.

The main character in this story I’m talking about here is a girl I know. She’s been wanting to have a baby for over 5 years. She comes from a large extended family full of girls, and when her sisters and cousins began marrying off, she was right there with them. Yet when pregnancies started to be announced and nieces, nephews, and more cousins began to be born, it was she who stood alone at the end of it all, childless. So, she went to doctors and specialists and had blood drawn and did scans and charted and mapped and wondered and waited, and then they told her that she and her husband would probably never conceive. This was sad news for the girl- while she loved being around her nieces and nephews, she wanted a baby of own. Silently, she dealt with the painful fact that she’d never get to experience a pregnancy & childbirth of her own.

Then she and her husband decided to adopt.

Her well-meaning family and friends asked her the same question over and over again- “Why don’t you just try in-vitro fertilization?” to which the girl had to reply over and over again, “Because I’m feeling in my heart of hearts that I’m supposed to adopt.” This was fine, except that the girl started getting the impression that people didn’t feel like an adopted baby was as good as having her own baby. This was hurtful and frustrating, but because she knew people were only trying to help, she remained silent about her feelings.

Nonetheless, the girl and her husband moved forward with the adoption plan. They found an agency, took out a loan for $25,000, submitted a portfolio, and then they waited. They waited and waited, and finally one day they got a call informing them that a mother out in Florida wanted to give them her unborn baby. This girl and her husband met the mother over the phone and liked her. The woman liked them too, and so they agreed that in March they would fly out to Florida to be there at the baby’s birth.

The next 9 months they spent getting ready for their new baby. They painted a nursery, they bought clothes, they told their families. They spoke with the biological mother on the phone each week. Every time she assured them that, yes, she was ready to give them her baby.

March came, and then it happened- The Big Call. The mother informed them that she was going to be checked into the hospital for an inducement on Sunday. This was Friday. The girl and her husband excitedly called their families to let them know they were on their way to get their baby. They packed 3 suitcases: one for the girl, one for her husband, and one filled with blankets, diapers, and teeny tiny clothes for the baby. Then they drove to the airport, got on a plane, and flew to Florida.

The first thing they did when they landed was call the hospital. The hospital said that no one by that name had checked in. They thought maybe they had called the wrong hospital, so they called another hospital, then another, all to no avail. They called the mother. The phone rang and rang. They called the adoption agency. The agency claimed to be as befuddled as the girl and her husband. They drove to the apartment where the mother had been living (and to where they had been sending her checks for rent and groceries). Her apartment was empty. The doorman said he hadn’t seen her in days- furthermore, he was surprised to hear that she was pregnant.

Not even pregnant? The couple called the adoption agency. How could the agency sponsor someone without knowing for sure that they were pregnant? Where was the social worker who was supposed to serve as a liason between the biological mother and the agency? The agency informed them that the social worker lived in another state- 300 miles away from the client she was supposed to be assisting. The agency also refused to acknowledge any accountability on their part for the circumstances of this failed adoption. Furthermore, the couple was told that if they put forth any disparaging comments about the agency in any type of public forum or form, they would be held in breach of contract and their full $25 K (of which the adoption agency got to keep half of anyway) would not be refunded. The contract protected the agency, it protected the rights of the bio mother, but it did nothing to protect the rights of the young couple.

The couple stayed in Florida for a few more days, hoping for word from the mother- hoping that there had been a misunderstanding. By Sunday it became clear that there were no misunderstandings, she did not give them the wrong hospital, she had not given them the wrong dates, she had just disappeared. There was not going to be a baby. So they picked up their 3 suitcases, one for the girl, one for her husband, and one for the baby that was not going to be. Then they flew home.

When they got home, the girl shut the door to the nursery. She didn’t go in that room for a very long time.

One or two years later, when her heart had healed up a little bit, she and her husband got the courage to talk about babies again. Since they were still paying on the $25k loan that they accumulated for the failed adoption, they decided to this time adopt through the county. So they took a deep breath and began the process of fingerprinting and taking class after class and signing paper after paper and doing home inspection after home inspection and jumping through hoop after hoop, until finally they got everything squared away.

Then they waited again.

On the day the call came, it was not for one baby. It was not even for two babies. It was for 3 babies- sisters actually, ages 3 and under. The youngest was just an infant. The girl was nervous. Could she do this? Should she take this on? 3 children at once! She prayed. She talked to her husband. They prayed together, and then they decided to go ahead and do it.

The first 6 months were not easy and nothing close to a fairy tale. The girls were scared. They were malnourished and confused. They were terrified of the dark. They didn’t know how to play. They had health issues. They had trust issues. They missed their mom and dad and yet they were simultaneously scared of their mom and dad.

Some days the girl felt like she was going to lose her mind. But gradually things started to get better. The girls were less fearful. They loved playing with their cousins and her family took them in and loved them right away. There were still things that were hard- the girls were needy almost all the time, which required more patience than most any person has. But eventually the girl got used to her routine with her new little ones. They started calling her mama. As for the baby, she knew no other mother.

Then, about a year later, the girl got another big call- this time it was from the county. They said that there had been a bureaucratic mistake and that the girls would most likely be going back to their mother. This, despite the fact that the girls had been placed in an adoption program, not a fostering program. Despite the fact that the girls had finally adjusted and had friends, preschool, a routine, and normalcy, they would be leaving- although the county was sorry to tell her that they didn’t know exactly when that would be happening.

This is where I really would love to give you the background of the girls’ story, so you could understand how emotionally devastating it will be for them to go back at this point- how taking them from a safe environment where they have routines and safety and putting them back into the chaos that was their lives before is unimaginable to anyone who understands a child’s mind- but unfortunately, I can’t. That part of the story has to remain silent for now- mostly for the sake of the girl’s case- but also to protect their bio mother. To that I say, what about this girl who’s been mothering them for the past year when they didn't have anywhere else to go? Who is protecting her?

If there was ever a reason for someone to be angry or resentful or bitter, I would think that this girl has earned full license, yet that’s not what she’s shown the world. I’m sure she has her days when she’s filled with those negative emotions, but her focus has been on her faith throughout. It’s been hard for her since now she has to enjoy her time left with the girls while guarding her heart as well. She still doesn’t know when the county is coming to take them back.

So that’s where our story stands for now- except that while this isn’t a happy ending, something has happened that has made it a happier ending.

Are you ready to see it? I can’t wait to show you.

Here it is- she’s pregnant!

That’s my niece or nephew, due to arrive next fall! The girl is my sister and I am so proud of her.

Sis, not many moms get to earn their heart for mothering before they even hold their firstborn, but you have- 10 times over. I love you and I love that little human inside of you. However things end up with the girls, you have done the best you can by doing what you did- just loving them. I know that's a story they'll hold close to their hearts forever.

Teacher Talk Tuesday, Edition: Creativity. It Rocks.

2011-05-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I did a Teacher Talk Tuesday and you should know that it's not because I don't think about it. I do think about it- alot. In fact, when I can't sleep at night, one of the things I do is lay in bed and design imaginary lesson plans. If that doesn't tell you that a) I have a passion for teaching and b) that I'm a big nerd, then I don't know how else to prove it to you.

Actually, I guess you could peruse the archives of this blog. There's some pretty solid evidence there too.

Anyhoo. There's been a lot of stupid stuff in the media about teachers this year, and I've held my tongue for most of it- surprisingly. You'd think that when things piss me off to a phenomenal level like the whole Wisconsin Teacher Union thing did this past winter, I would have written about it. For whatever reason I didn't- probably because of the funk I was in. It was easier to sit on the couch and complain to Mr. C about the lameness that was on the tube in front of me, instead of getting up to assemble coherent thoughts and then relay them to you guys. Besides, Mr. C held the kettle chips hostage in the living room. I stay with the kettle chips. Always.

However, getting back to my point, (sorry! It's the kettle chips- they always distract) this week happens to be Teacher Appreciation Week. I decided to get on here and shine some positive light on you teachers out there, but mostly on one particular teacher, my favorite one- Mr. C.

Mr. C is a digital photography/imaging/animation teacher at Cathedral City High School here in our desert. His kids are part of the Digital Arts & Technology Academy (or DATA for short, which you should pronounce as I do- with your two front teeth protruded over your bottom lip and your eyes crossed. I love to make fun of the nerdy name). Mr. C though, he LOVES his job. Don't get me wrong, some days the self centered, lazy, all knowing shittiness that is teenagers gets to him and he comes home cranky. But most days, he is fired up to be in his classroom. Here's why: he loves creativity. He loves to point out (and I love this and use it all the time too, because I know it to be true), that there are some kids who would not get up in the morning and go to school if it wasn't for the art classes. Or the music classes. Or the dance classes. Or whatever class you can think of that isn't on the traditional "academic" spectrum.

Luckily, Mr. C has the support of the district (not financial, everything they have comes from a grant that he and the other DATA teachers applied for) and the parents. He's done an amazing job finding opportunities for his students to participate in. This year they've shot runway shows during fashion week, participated in Art Festivals, interned with our area's most popular photographers, shot concerts, and entered multiple contests. This last week, he went to San Diego for a conference with his Skills USA team, and his student won the Gold Medal for photography for the state- which means that next month he'll be flying back east with said student to participate in Nationals.

Here's what I want to point out: all this stuff that he does with his kids is on his own time, unpaid. Besides the amount of time that just basic teaching takes; the meetings, the grading, etc., he's giving up evenings, weekends, vacations, entire weeks to be gone. While he's doing that, I am holding down the fort and slowly loosing my mind while taking care of 4 kids. Um, did I sound bitter there? I'm not, really. (Well, maybe just a little- usually while I'm in the midst of a week without him and so exhausted from being on duty 24/7 and knowing that he's in a nice quiet hotel room somewhere.) But mostly I'm proud of him and I'm proud of the service he's giving to his students. I only sound bitter when I have to listen to certain idiots out there who believe that teaching is a part time job. Gets me hot under the collar.

Anyway, last night we went to the Palm Springs Unified Digicom Awards. Schools across the district submitted various short films and documentaries around the theme of "Making A Difference". Mr. C and some of my old work colleagues were there to receive an award for their project "Pandora's Box." If you want to see the project for yourself, you can follow the links. Click here to see the creation of the project, and click here to view the finished product.

I was just excited to see it because it was a collaboration with 3rd graders from the elementary school that I used to work at. Really, you should look at it. I think a lot of people still think that classrooms should be a place where desks are lined up in rows and teachers pace the aisles with the answers from the teacher's manual in their arms. See for yourself what classrooms look like when dynamic learning is taking place.

Now I'm just rambling. I'll go ahead and leave you with a pic of Mr. C and our crew last night before they went into the awards- before they saw their dad's students go up again and again to the podium to be honored, before they were inspired by the creative interpretations that kids- sometimes their own ages- gave about "Making A Difference, before they saw why their dad does what he does.

That was before they saw it, but now they know. And they couldn't be prouder.

Sneers, Jeers & Cheers (and now I'm gonna go drink a beer)

2011-04-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all.

Sorry bout that silly title. This has been a really difficult post to put together. It's taken me a couple of days, so I'm a little loopy. The above mentioned beer is definitely deserved.

Let's get started, shall we?

I've been a reader of mommy blogs for about two years now. I read other varieties of blogs too... I read teacher blogs and food blogs and gossip blogs and fashion blogs. Sometimes I even read finance blogs, but that's only because I have this false vision of myself as a well rounded person so I force myself to try to care about things like finances and stocks. (Which, by the way, never works. After years, I still don't know what NASDAQ stands for and I'm still not totally confident that Dow Jones isn't a person.)

ANYWAY, in my 2 years of blog reading, I've noticed that somewhere in their archives, most mommy bloggers have a post that either proclaims or rejects themselves in relation to the term "mommy blogger". It seems that the term carries a negative connotation- like we're all just a bunch of silly smitten mommies who feel a need to share with the world the mundane routine of life with our wonderful snot nosed brats.

So, mostly because I am a smitten mother who feels the need to share with the world the mundane routine of life with my snot- nosed brats, I don't have a problem with the term mommy blogger. In fact, I'll go ahead and piss off a couple of feminists and say that in my opinion, it's partly the fault of the feminist movement if people perceive modern day mommies as bubble headed martyrs. I'm not sure when it happened- maybe when more women began entering the work force, but I believe that it started becoming so that just being a mother wasn't good enough anymore. I think it became this larger than life thing and mommy martyrdom took over. Maybe it was because the traditional stay at home mothers felt excluded when mothers began entering the work force. Or maybe it was because the feminists felt that the stay at home mothers needed validation. Or maybe the feminists and all the working mothers wanted to include the stay at homers. I don't know. All of a sudden it seems that parenting was being defined, and studied, and theories were built on it, and there were books and magazines and methods and kids no longer just played at each other's homes, no, they had playdates and parents had to worry about quality time versus quantity time and blah blah blah blah blah.

I think it's all silly. If you know me, you know that the only method I follow is the KISS method- Keep It Simple Stupid. I feed my kids, I bathe my kids, sometimes I play with them, sometimes I tell them to leave me alone, I laugh with them, I take them to school, I help them with their homework, and I keep my fingers crossed that I am raising polite and pleasant children who will hopefully become happy and productive members of society. I do all this with the knowledge that it's all a crapshoot anyway, because you know...... The Butterfly Effect and all. My power is limited. My control is limited. It's in another's hands.

Anyway. Back to my point.

Since the term didn't bother me, I wasn't going to write a manifesto-like post defining myself as a mommy blogger or not. But then I read this post at HerBadMother, and I am telling you, this woman always makes me think long and hard about things. She pointed out that historically there has not been a public forum for women to discuss their experiences of motherhood- in most cultures it's been silenced in one form or another. She pointed out that when people sneer when speaking of mommies and mommy work, it's because historically this was not usually work that was revered. It's been labeled as silly, mindless, endless, not life important- just necessary. And I started thinking, "Hey! Yeah! What is up with that?" I thought about all the times that the "sneer" is obvious- from snarky radio dj's to people in the grocery store rolling their eyes at me when I'm trailing a load of kids, to the most loathesome reference to kids that I've ever heard: "crotch droppings". (Actually, that'd be kind of funny if it wasn't so derogatory.)

So, for the sake of standing up to the sneer, it looks like I'm writing that post after all, the one where I claim the term "mommy blogger". Here I am. I am a mommy blogger, but don't you dare sneer at me. You can sneer at my content, that's fine. But don't sneer at who I am. Because this is really the hardest work I've ever had to do. It requires the most patience, the most risk, the most fear, the most willingness to, as the quote says, "let your heart go walking around outside your body". I'll spare you all the speech about what parenting takes out of you, partly because most of you have kids and you already know, and then partly because those of you who don't have kids don't need the whole martyr speech.

I hate the martyr speech.

Can I just end also by saying that I live everyday with the full awareness that someday the children in my life are going to grow up and leave? I know that this is just what I'm doing now. In the long term, this is just a little precious piece of time. I know I have to keep in touch with that other person inside me, the one that was there before the kiddos came along. The one that likes to read and think and be creative. She's really the reason why I write- and she's the reason why I don't just write gushing posts about my kids. I write about cooking and books and faith and loss. But yes, I write about my kids too, because they happen to be my job (my heart) right now (forever). But when they leave I'll need that other me around. Until then, I feed the beast with the writing of these stories. So don't sneer at this mommy blogger okay? Because there's nothing sneer worthy about motherhood, just like there's nothing sneer worthy about any job that anyone takes to their heart. If it's in your heart, then the story is worth telling.

I think that's my new motto.

You all have a good night.

Wish You Were Here

2011-04-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all.

You know, this last year I've been thinking a lot about how lucky Mr. C and I are to have the people and connections in our lives that we do. When my oven breaks, I have a grandfather who (even at the age of 86) will come over, lay flat on his back on my kitchen floor, dismantle the innards of my oven and diagnose the problem as a broken ignitor, thus saving me hundreds of dollars and a call to the Maytag Man. When my brakes go bad, I call my brother in law who works for a mechanic and my problem is solved at a third of the cost that the dealership would charge. I have a friend and my mother in law who both happen to be hair stylists, so it's rare for anyone in our family to pay for a cut and ahem, color. And then there's my best friend who happens to work for AEG- an international company in the music industry who own concert venues all over the world. That's how Mr. C and I go to Coachella every year. And this last weekend, that's just what we did.

We had fun, but I got the impression from people at times who I told we were going to Coachella that they thought we were dumb- like we were too old to go and trying too hard to hang onto our youths. Or maybe that's just my insecurities reading too much into people's reactions.

My insecurities are annoying that way.

At any rate, if that in fact really was what a few people thought, then oh well. I don't worry about them because they don't get it. It's my friends who do get it that I was thinking about- the ones who understand that it's the variety of music, and the sun, and the food, and the famous people that you see, and just the party in general that make Coachella something to get excited about. If this is you, if you are one of the ones that get it, then you should know that I really did want you there with us so badly. Truly, I thought of so many of you (you all know who you are) and wished that I could share my fun.

If you were there with us, then you would've been there to see the dude from Cage The Elephant wearing a dress and stage diving:

We actually left the show a little early because I was nervous that he was going to try to dive on our side of the stage. I didn't want to drop him. Mr. C just didn't want a sweaty dude in a dress jumping on him.

Maybe you would've been braver.

You could have also watched The Black Keys, Kings of Leon, and Bright Eyes from right in front of the main stage, cuz you woulda had a V.I.P. all-access wristband pass. This would have also let you go backstage to the artist lounge and see lots of famous people. Now that I think about it, it actually would have been better if you were there with me, because it wasn't until after I was home browsing the internet that I realized I saw a ton of famous musicians without even knowing that they were famous musicians.
I know. I didn't deserve that wristband.

Anyway, you would have been with us when we were totally taken by surprise at the energy that Mumford and Sons got going. That band threw a PARTY that we didn't see coming. They are now one of my new favorite bands and it's on my bucket list to see them live again.

You would've been there to witness the beautiful sunset during Duran Duran's set:

That picture doesn't do it justice at all. This one is better:

You also would've been able to experience this beef short rib burrito from the Koji Taco Truck. The flavors in that burrito were poetic, man- and I don't throw that word around a lot. (Mainly cuz it sounds cheeseball. But trust me when I say, that it's the best adjective for the job in this case).

You woulda been able to relax in this pretty spot while waiting for Flogging Molly to come on:

Actually, no. This was kind of a romantic. You woulda had to get lost.

Kidding.

Finally, you would have been able to see The Strokes perform this song. It's one of mine and Mr. C's favorites, since it's from the soundtrack of that first summer we were hanging out together.

Untitled from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

And finally, you would have missed my most favorite memory from the whole weekend. I'll give you a hint: My favorite thing was not seeing The Strokes, or The Kings of Leon, or Damian Marley, or any of the bands. It wasn't hanging around famous people. It wasn't even the Koji Burrito.

It was this guy:

Tell me this. If you were there with me, would you have run up and thrown yourself against him with all your might?

Because I had to seriously repress the urge.

I really do wish you all were there. Mr. C and I had fun like we always do, but this year I really missed my friends. So here's what we're going to do: start saving your change and I'll start cleaning my house. By the time you have enough money for a ticket, I should have my house ready for guests. Mr. C will get the pool ready for you, I'll make some kick ass guacamole, and we'll have a great big Coachella party at my place next year before riding over to the festival. What do you say?

Have a good night!

Rejecting Reality

2011-04-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

You know, I have never had a lot of luck with Spring Break. When I was in high school and too old to be satisfied with laying around in my pajamas all day watching soap operas, I begged and begged and BEGGED my parents to let me go away for Spring Break somewhere. I mean, with all the vast experience I had at the ripe old age of 15, I would have been okay- right?

Uh, yeah.

So you'd think that when we moved to Palm Springs after I graduated from High School, I would have had had plenty of opportunities to frolick in the sun and party it up with college kids from all over the nation.

Uh, no.

That year happened to be the year that Mayor Sonny Bono decided to put an end to the infamous Palm Springs Spring Break party. He closed down Palm Canyon Dr. and declared the week after Easter "FAMILY FUN WEEK". Hundreds of Spring Breakers drove in to discover a Ferris Wheel and kiddie rides set up on their main drag. Sadly, my bikini clad, baby-oiled self was left standing in the dust as they drove off and continued on to the River.

It didn't matter, anyway. Throughout my years of college, I had this thing called a J-O-B that I had to attend to. I worked through most of my Spring Breaks. There was only one year when I actually went away with a friend to Lake Havasu. It was a good time for a while. We met boys with boats. We met boys with Seadoos. We laid in the sun. We drank. We drank some more. Then we drank even more and THEN I got alcohol poisoning. For a souveinir that year, I ended up bring home some gnarly scars on my knees (that are still there) that I got from crawling all over a rocky beach because I couldn't stand up and walk. Attractive.

Long story short, that pretty much took the wind out of the Spring Break sails for me. (And that's without me telling you the cold cuts story from that trip. Don't ask. Ever.)

This year, my bad juju with Spring Break continued. For starters, Mr. C's district and the 4 nuggets' school district couldn't make things easy and just coordinate their vacation time. Nooooooooo. Mr. C was off the week before the kids. So while yes, this meant that I got to take advantage of him being home with Roo to get some Spring Cleaning done (oh, YAY), it also meant that the following week I would be left alone to entertain 4 kids ages ranging from 2 to 14.
all. by. myself.

Plus, it meant that any spring cleaning I accomplished would be immediately undone by said children in their time "off".

So, what did I do? I planned. I planned a trip to the LA Zoo. I planned a trip to my parents' cabin. I also planned a trip to the water park.

And what did Mother Nature do? She literally peed all over my plans because IT RAINED. It rained on zoo day. It rained on water park day. And yes, it rained down here on cabin day but up there in the mountains it was SNOWING. I don't drive in snow.

Just so you know.

Anyway, end result was we had a pretty boring Spring Break around here. We had one movie day and I tried to let the kids have friends over often. We squeezed in a trip to my grammy's, but all in all, it was a pretty uneventful week.

Then, this morning while the kids were eating breakfast, all that boredom must've really got to me, because something took over my brain and turned the conversation into this:

Me: So what are you going to tell your teacher was your favorite part of your vacation?

PG: I think going to M's birthday party was fun.

Me: Oh yeah! Are you going to tell her about the cake that they had there that was 40 stories high? And how we got to climb all the way to the top of the cake so we could dive off into a pool of strawberry whipped cream frosting?

PG: Whaaaaaaaaat?

Me: You don't remember? I can't believe you don't remember. What about the day that we went to the beach and saw that whale. Remember? Remember how we single-handedly saved it and got it back into the ocean? I bet your teacher will want to hear about that.

PG: Mom, what? No-

Me: And then they threw a parade for us and everyone was cheering and we got to ride on elephants that were borrowed from the circus. You made friends with the trapeze artist and she showed you how to do tricks on the trapeze. You don't remember?

PG: Because it didn't happen! (J, by the way, is looking both doubtful and hopeful that all this really did happen)

Me: It did. Remember? Then while you guys were in the parade, two talent agents from a big Hollywood agency saw you and decided that you had to be in the next Ironman movie. You guys did a whole scene with Ironman. J, you got to to fight Ironman! Tell me you remember this.

J: (grinning) Nooooooooooooo.

Me: (sighing) I don't know why I take you guys to do anything fun. You don't remember a darn thing.

You all think I'm crazy- and I totally am. But my kids know my sense of humor and they know when I'm messing with their heads. They were entertained and left the breakfast table with smiles on their faces. Me, I'm not sure what lesson I may have been teaching them. Maybe that lying is okay? Attempted brainwashing is entertaining? They should embrace insanity?
If anything, what I hope they got is that imagination is key to turning around a boring moment/boring life.

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere."- Albert Einstein

You all have a good night.

Coffee With Jesus

2011-04-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read me last year know that I've got me some religion. I wrote a whole post about my "coming to Jesus"story (it's ridiculous and not in the least enlightening, but if you want to read it go ahead and click here). Religion- or rather, spirituality- is something that I've carried with me for almost my whole life. Um, actually if we're being honest, sometimes I've carried it and other times I've put it down and walked away, though never completely. I usually stop and sheepishly inch back towards it, biting my nails and throwing furtive sideways glances the whole time before picking it up again and hurrying along on my way.

However, I can't quit it, because when you get to the bottom of it all, I've seen beauty in terrible things and I know there's order in the world's chaos and I've witnessed "coincidences" that I know were not coincidental but divinely designed. I know that the bible says to help each other and to love each other, and I know that when humans practice this, good things happen. I believe that all this is God.

But that's just me. You can do your thing, and that's fine with me. Maybe it's the public school teacher in me, but I don't have a problem with people having different beliefs. As a Facebook friend of mine put it, "Leave children and animals out of it, and we're cool". I think that philosophy, combined with the whole "actions speak louder than words" thing, is a good way to go.

Anyway, (I've gotten way off course) I didn't sit down to write about Jesus tonight. At least not directly. What I wanted to write about tonight was faith. Here's what I want to say about it: it's hard.

I mean, it's really hard.

Here's the thing: I love God, but you know, life is often confusing and I get frustrated sometimes at how elusive and invisible this guy is who's running the show. Why can't he make an appearance once and a while and let us rest assured that he's definitely there and watching over us? What's with the big mystery? Here's what I would like. I would love, love, love it if he would come down every once and awhile and have a little meet and greet with me, one on one. We could meet up at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. He'd order something clean and pure, like a White Jasmine Tea and although I'd really want something like a White Chocolate Mocha, I'd downgrade it to something less sinful- like a coffee of the day. He'd do that miracle thing and refill my cup when it was empty, and by the time we finished chatting I would feel equally enlightened and caffeinated.

This is what I would ask him: How am I doing? Am I a better person than I really think I am, or am I worse? Am I doing any permanent damage to my kids? Is it really THAT big a deal that the kids eat their vegetables, because the daily fights at the dinner table are killing me.... so can I lay off those? How am I doing as a wife? Did I choose the same guy that you chose for me? If I didn't, is the whole universe going to be affected somehow? Thank you God, by the way, for my kids. They are amazing. I am learning so much and I really do get that they are gifts from you. How about my stepson? How am I doing with him? How much more should I worry? Or should I stop worrying? Tell me what to do with him. Have I been a good enough friend? I haven't, have I? I'll get right on that. Can you help me learn to listen better? I talk about myself too damn-oh sorry- too dang much. One last thing Lord. Tell me, really- what does happen to those lost socks in the dryer?

I realize that I might've taken on a flip tone here. Truly, my intention is not to be blasphemous. I'm just trying to relate to you the difficulty I have with faith. And to point out that we all need encouragement. We need pep talks. It'd be nice to know which of what we're doing is right and which of what we're doing is wrong. The guesswork can be exhausting.

This whole thing reminds me of this really beautiful quote from the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". It says "Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards." To me, that's a really eloquent way of saying "figure it out for yourself". A huge part of the human experience, that part that shapes our character and our choices, is the fact that we're moving forward blindly, not knowing how things are going to play out. And I suppose, if I was to be really honest with myself, I'd have to admit that to know all the answers ahead of time would be to grey out the colors, the feelings, the emotions, of our daily life experiences. It'd be like reading the ending of a story and missing out on the weaving of the tale.

So I guess what I've learned through this whole little rant of mine is that Faith is a gift, also. Jesus doesn't show up for coffee because (duh) he's letting us learn and grow and experience life on our own. That's fine. Doesn't mean I don't want that chat anyway. I really would like to know what happens to those socks in the dryer.

You all have a good night.

Excuses, Excuses (And Some Inspiration)

2011-03-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

Wow.

I don't know. Do I owe you an explanation? There isn't really a good one. I just got..... uninspired, I guess. Writing started to feel like a drag, and it got much easier to park my kettle chip butt on the couch every night and watch Instant Netlix on the Wii. (Do any of you have that? I think it's one of the decade's best inventions, discounting the fact, of course, that it's sucked away all of my creative drive. But other than that it's been dreamy. I've gotten all caught up on the early seasons of Dexter, The Tudors, Weeds, and Cake Boss. Sweeps Season? BRING IT, baby. )

So, yes. Let's blame Netflix Wii. While we're at it, we can also blame the fact that I stopped exercising, started complaining a lot, and continued to spend massive amounts of energy hating the cat. None of these things are helpful to the creative process.

Slowly however, I started getting little sparks of inspiration here and there. This post from Big Mama about love overcoming pettiness was a kick start. It really is a beautiful post, and I wish you would click on over to it and see for yourself. Then I read this post from This Is Reverb about creativity and depression, and I started to wonder if the Universe was talking to me again. Then I discovered this blogger at HerBadMother, and have become obsessed with her. I love her. She writes my thoughts, but more beautifully than I ever could. Plus, she has this thing called "The Basement", where people can anonymously guest post about whatever they want/need to and let. me. tell. you.... there is some juuuuuuuuicy good stuff in there. I can see myself getting addicted to The Basement, and I already have a whole slew of topics that I may submit, the first of which is a nice long rant about a certain household feline. (But in keeping with the whole anonymous thing, you didn't hear it from me)

Anyway, during all this, things were also happening in my life, and little by little I started to realize that I wanted to write about them again. Like when all this stuff with the teacher's unions in Wisconsin was happening, and I SO wanted to get up on my Teacher Talk Tuesday soapbox again. Or like when Roo sent me into a fit of hysterical embarrassed laughter when she addressed our water guy as Santa because he had a white beard, and I spent the rest of the day mentally writing a funny story about it. Or like when this person on Facebook, who I didn't even know, started an argument with me on my friend's page. I took the high road with her, but what I really wanted to do was to write to you guys about all the ways that she was lame, and most importantly, wrong. Or like when there was an unfinished conversation that came up and I wanted to poke and prod at it some more, just cuz I think it was a conversation worth finishing. Or when I made my dad's famous chili and realized it probably would've been a good cooking post. Or when I read The Hunger Games and even though I haven't written a book report in over a decade, wanted to do one anyway because it was THAT good...

I could go on and on and on, but you get my point. Things are happening. I want to write about them. I'm going to give this another shot. So bear with me. After all, how hard can it be to stay motivated if the worst thing in my life is a hateful cat?

Perhaps I shouldn't be asking questions that I don't want to know the answer to.

You all have a good night.

Candy Cane Fudge

2010-12-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

Hey all.

Where've you been? I've been looking all over for you.

Kidding. Just thought I'd try some reverse psychology.

I haven't been writing for the same reasons I wrote about the last time when I explained why I haven't been writing. Busy. Tired. Angry. Plotting against the cat.

Someday I'll write a whole post about me and the cat. I'll title it "Poor Kitty". It'll be an ironic title, because 'Poor Kitty' is just what everybody says when I try to explain why I hate our cat. No one ever says, "Oh, that animal sounds retarded and exhausting. It must be so irksome and annoying having to co-exist with it."

Cuz that's what I want people to say.

Instead, for some reason they always say "Oooooooohhh! Poor kitty!"

That damn cat has everyone fooled.

Anyway. I haven't been writing, but since the major networks are through with Sweeps Week, I thought I'd at least try to get one Christmasy post in this month and share with you a really easy and yummy recipe for Candy Cane Fudge. I make it every year for my kids' teachers, my neighbors, and anyone else who I love and appreciate in my little circle of the universe.

I'd give some all to you guys if the internet cloud allowed things like that, though if we give it a few years it'll probably be a possibility.

Let's get started. Here's what you need:

In case my amazing photography skills don't make it immediately obvious, that's one package of candy canes, 2 10 oz. bags of vanilla baking chips, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract, and red food coloring.

You may also want to include a little helper. Here's mine:

We call him J, aka Bubbas. We like him.

(Most of the time.)

So here's what you do. Choose a casserole dish that's around 8 or 9 inches in length and width. Wrap some foil around it.

Let your helper grease it up real good. Get the corners too. That's important.

Now here's the hardest part of the whole recipe. No other recipe or website in the whole entire world will mention this because it sounds so simple, but I am here to give you a heads up and validate your experience when you too, are faced with the annoyance that is unwrapping cellophane from 12 individual candy canes.

Those suckers stick to your hands.

Get off already!

Sheesh. The nerve of some cellophane.

Glad that's over. Now we can move on to the easy stuff.

Put all those candy canes in a plastic bag and grab the nearest blunt object. I used a rolling pin.

Start crushing.

Whee! Being destructive is fun!

Seriously. What is it about destruction that's so appealing? I made J hand over the rolling pin so I could have a turn at whacking the candy canes. It felt good.

I may or may not have pretended that I was whacking the cat.

Anyway. Now you empty the vanilla chips and sweetened condensed milk into a medium saucepan and stir over medium heat. Right before it's completely melted you need to take it off the heat. Keep stirring it. It'll look like this:

When it looks like this, add the 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract:

Then you stir it up, little darling. Stir it up.

Sorry. We're almost done.

Last, you add in the candy canes and a dash of food coloring:

Now, last year I only added one or two drops, stirred it lightly, and ended up with a real pretty red and white marbled effect. This year, a certain little helper got a smidge liberal with the food coloring, so my fudge turned out this color:

No matter.

Spread it into the foil lined casserole dish, sprinkle a few renegade candy cane crumbs along the top, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

At the end of the two hours, remove from the fridge and cut into 1 inch blocks.

Delicious.

Someone told me last year that they made this with dark chocolate chips and that it was divine. THEN, today I had what I think may be a brilliant idea. What if we put a teaspoon or two of ground expresso in the mix with dark chocolate chips and made Peppermint Mocha Fudge? You know- like the Starbucks Holiday Drink? If any of you guys decide to give that a try, be sure to let me know how it turns out.

As for me, I'll probably be making an extra batch of this this year in case Animal Cruelty gets wind of this post and comes knocking on my door. You think they accept bribes?

Have a good night!

The Facebook Status' (or Statuses? Status's? Stati?) That Never Were

2010-11-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Hi guys.

Last year, when I wrote my posts, I wasn't working. Well, I was tutoring in the evenings, but I wasn't working during the day which means my kids weren't going to daycare, and I wasn't spending all day every day in a crazy rush from place to place. Therefore, usually something would happen and it'd occur to me that I'd want to write about it, so I'd spend the rest of the day more of less writing the post in my head.

This year, as I just said, my life feels nuts. I actually thought that once my kids started going to school full time, I'd be less busy. (In fact, I said this out loud to one of my Texas relatives over Thanksgiving last week, and she flat out laughed in my face). Somehow, my time has gone the way of my bank account- it feels like I should have more, but when I look at the cold hard reality of things, there's never as much there as I feel there should be.

It's a sad thing (but a darn good metaphor, if I do say so myself).

My point is that I never have a moment to mentally write posts anymore. The only things I mentally compose are my Facebook status's. And lately I've been in such a foul mood that the one's I've come up with aren't even fit to be posted. I fear people would defriend me, or at least stage an intervention for my anger issues. Here's just a few from the last couple weeks:

"Day 4 of the huge pile of white socks sitting on the couch cushion, Day 4 of no family member showing any interest in moving them into appropriate locations. It's a fascinating social experiment."

"My daughter just wrote 'I love Davy Crockett.' in marker across her vanity mirror. Help."

"Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is a sandbag that is about the approximate size and weight of the damn cat. That way I can at least feel what it'd be like to get to kick the s*#% out of it."

"Dear Santa, please give me a new family."

"Dear Santa, scratch that. Just give them a replacement mother. Thank you."

"Does anyone else have a husband that doesn't know the difference between a frying pan and a sauce pan, or is it just mine?"

That last one gave me the idea for this one:

"There should be a social network created exclusively for the purpose of venting about your spouse with no repercussions to one's marriage."

See? I'm poisonous.

However, I remembered that I had a blog that I've been ignoring. Technically, I can write whatever I want since no one really has to read this if they don't want to. As for the repercussions and consequences, I'm pretty sure I've only really offended Mr. C and maybe PETA. One of those parties, I'm pretty sure I can handle.

I'm not saying which one.

You all have a good night.

Thank You

2010-11-11T22:58:00.000-08:00

I had big plans for this Veterans Day post. I really did. I had planned to upload a picture that my father had found of himself on the internet a couple of years ago. He was reading something Vietnam related and saw a picture of a young soldier jumping out of a helicopter, whom he recognized as himself. Crazy, huh? He says he remembers at the time seeing a journalist out of the corner of his eye, but being that he was getting dropped off in the middle of the jungles of Vietnam, he had other things to worry about.

I was also going to include this great photo of my grandfather with his WWII buddies. It was taken out here in the desert before they were shipped out, and I have to confess that one of the reasons I was going to share it was so that you all could see what a bunch of hotties my grandpa and his friends were. But then I remembered the lesson that Back To The Future taught us all, and I realized that such statements could have serious repercussions. So I'll just say that it's my opinion that men of the 1940's were much better looking than men today and we'll leave it at that.

Wow. So far this a really reverent and moving post.

Anyway, I was going to upload those images and write about how proud I am of my father and grandfather's Veteran status. But of course, I never got around to asking for the images.

I know. Me. Not getting around to something. Shocking.

So, I'm relegated to just uploading a short clip of PG's speaking part at her school's Veterans Day performance. She's the last one to speak and in case you can't understand my shy girl, she says "This government is of the people, for the people, and by the people, so you have to do your part!"

I thought she performed it wonderfully.

The whole program was, in fact, wonderfully done, but it was the end part (after my camera ran out of battery) that I really wish I had videotaped. The teachers ran a slideshow of pictures that the first grader's families had sent in of their loved ones in service. While the slideshow was running, the kids sang the following song:

When I lay my head down every night

and I go to sleep in peace

I can stay there knowing all is well

while you're standing on your feet.

Keeping watch, protecting, shore to shore

In the air and oceans too

Defending freedom at all costs

For the Red, White, and the Blue.

To the soldiers who have travelled on

to countries far and near,

In peace and war you pay the price

For the cause you hold so dear.

Thank you, oh Thank you

Men and women brave and strong,

Because you've fought so gallantly

we sing this grateful song.

Between the images on the screen and the sweet 6 year old voices singing the words above, there was not a dry eye in the house.

The first stanza in particular spoke to my heart. I've been thinking a lot, since becoming a parent, of how lucky we are to not know war on our soil. We're spoiled, really. I can't imagine that terror that would come with having bombs dropping around us and trying to keep our children safe. For so many people in the world, that's a reality. For us Americans, it's a blessing that we've made it this far without knowing that fear.

Thank you, to all the Vets out there. I know that I can never truly understand the depths of the sacrifice that you made for me and our country. For every vet out there today who can not feel safe in a room without having their backs against a wall, who can't hear the sound of a helicopter without thinking about medics and body bags, who can't talk about what happened because it's too hurtful to remember, who lost brothers, who lost faith, or who are just haunted, I know I can't understand what of your life you've sacrificed for our country. I can only say thank you, and hope that someday God gives you the answers to the questions you may be asking, and peace in your heart.

You all have a good night.

My Roo is Two

2010-11-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Baby Roo,

Today you turned 2. Which means that 2 years ago tonight I was in the hospital holding a brand new chubby-cheeked you. You looked like this:

Well, to be honest, more often you looked like this:

but that's because you had a high fever for the first few days. We got it all under control and you settled down.

Thank you for that, by the way. My hospital room mate, wherever she may be, thanks you too.

Two years ago tonight was also the night that I shouted out the word "ouchie" when I was deep in the middle of labor with you. I realize that since that time you have heard a wide variety of swear word pass through my lips, but I really do hope that you appreciate the fact that I kept it clean while bringing you into the world.

Seriously. Appreciate it, because when I think back on it, it's pretty embarrassing. AND I missed out on a perfectly legit opportunity to drop an f bomb publicly.

Anyway.

However fast the first year flew, this second year flew by even faster. Here you are on your birthday last year:

Sorry 'bout the dumb crown. At the time I thought it was cute, but now I see that it was just kinda dumb. If it makes you feel any better, I have a million photos of myself in the 90's that follow that same precedent.

Here you are last winter:

Walking!

Last spring you suddenly got all 'big girl' on us:

And by last summer you were completely out of the baby stage and doing all kinds of crazy tricks in the pool:

That little scream you do when you jump in just kills me every time.

Anyway Roo, you're getting big way too fast, but your dad and I have been at this parenting stuff for long enough now to know that we just have to accept that fact. We love that you're the baby of our family and I know we love on you way too much, but I just ask that you humor us for a little longer because it makes us so happy to do it.

Plus, we can't help it. It's your fault for having really yummy cheeks.

So, happy birthday my Roo! We love everything about you: the way you twirl your hair when you're tired, the way you over-enunciate the 'L's in your name, the way you misunderstand the use of possessive pronouns by saying things like "happy my birthday" or "hello my kitty". Most of all though, we just love YOU. Thanks for being our caboose.

Love to the Moon and Back,

Mommy and Daddy

P.S.- I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for whatever in utero switch you turned on in me that's responsible for my Kettle Chip obsession. It all started with a pregnancy craving, but it's turned into much, much more. While my thighs and ass may take issue with it, my taste buds do not. Thank you.

Halloween/Birthday Queen

2010-11-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

Another Halloween, another birthday come and gone. I'll get to the Halloween part in just a minute, but first I want to address the birthday part. I turned 36 yesterday, which means I'm offically old. I've decided that this is true.

Don't even try to change my mind.

I will say though, in my old age I've come to the realization that there are birthdays and then there are Facebook birthdays. The regular old birthday that one celebrates with their family and beloved friends are invaluable and must never ever ever be done away with. However, the Facebook birthday? That is something else entirely. It's like one's own little social media version of It's A Wonderful Life, where you get to be reminded of everyone's lives you've been a part of, and everyone who's been a part of your life as well. Yesterday, in a 24 hour period, I received well wishes from people who met me in the hospital on the day I was born, to my elementary school friends, to former high school bff's, work colleagues, mommy friends, neighbors.... you get the idea. I felt very loved and grateful all day long.

I know. I'm getting sappy in my old age. I need to get a grip because really, it's just Facebook. It's what people do.

Still.

Anyway, I'm posting tonight because I promised a couple of weeks ago to show you guys the final result of our Halloween House of Horrors and I'm trying to be better about following up on things. Especially since I've failed you all on Fall Food Fridays.

And Teacher Talk Tuesdays.

And I never really got around to doing any kind of regular book-related post.

Is anybody even still out there?

Anyway, I hate to subject you all to another video with me narrating, but there was no other way around it. I also hate to subject you to poor quality video, but again, there was no way around it. The Flip doesn't come with any type of night vision recording device (that I know of), so I got all MacGyver on you guys and just lit the Flip with a flashlight- which amounted to very limited vision. Basically, you're going to be looking at darkness and blurs for the next minute twenty. Sorry. But I've done what I could to give you guys an idea of why Mr. C proudly holds the honor of having the scariest house on the block, and it's all thanks to 9, mostly.
You'll see why here:

Halloween '10 from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

Is that costume 9's wearing freaky or what? This one group of girls got so scared that they did a lap through our house and out our garage door, while all my family and friends watched and laughed.

Empathy is not really a strong trait around here.

Anyway, that's (almost) all I have for you tonight.

Just a quick aside- a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine posted on FB that she "loathes Halloween" and I seriously had to take a moment and talk myself down from defriending her. I'm glad that I did, because in real life she is a wonderful and warm person. It's just a tad hard for me to not take it personal when someone doesn't like Halloween. With me, it's one of those things that are up there with politics and religion. If you don't like Halloween and you happen to be my friend, well then, we'll just avoid the entire topic altogether like a big fat elephant in the room.

For those of you who do 'get' Halloween and love it as much as I do, I want to say thanks for celebrating! I hope your day was filled with all kinds of parties and spooky fun.

Have a good night!

Pieces of Me

2010-10-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I posted. That's mainly because in order for one to blog about their lives, one must have a life-and I haven't had much of a life lately. Lately, my existence has consisted mainly of waking up, taxi'ing everyone around, going to my 3 million jobs (not really, but it feels like it), and then coming home and doing the dinner/homework/bedtime routine. Come evening, I just don't feel like talking to y'all.

No offense.

Anyway, a better writer would be disciplined and sharp enough to sit down and turn their mundane experience into interesting stories, but you all know that that's not me. I'm happy to be a mediocre writer who's kind enough to have saved you the pain of reading about my boring life and who waited to document it until I had something worth sharing.

Like the Dia De Los Muertos altar that I created in our home last weekend.

Don't freak out- I'm not going all pagan on you guys. I'm not even going to pretend that I know enough about Dia De Los Muertos to even have made an authentic altar. I learned enough in my college course on Cultural Sensitivity to know that any true Mexican may look at this white girl's altar and become deeply offended- but to be honest, I spent that entire course biting my tongue and fighting the urge to tell people to LIGHTEN UP ALREADY.

With that in mind, here's why I made a Day of the Dead Altar:

1) because my friend Lisa had one in her house last year and it was really cool

2) because I like the idea of having a place in my house where family members who have passed on are remembered, even if it is only for a couple of weeks.

3) because I'm the boss and I can if I want to

Seriously though, the farther along I got in the process, the more important #2 became to me.

For instance, here's a picture of Billie, my mom's mom, and her mom- who I called Mama Kay. I never knew Billie because she died before I was born, but my Mama Kay lived until I was 8 or 9. She was a Southern Belle who wore Coral colored lipstick everyday.

She had many husbands and a ton of secrets. In fact, I should probably do some research on her. It'd probably make a good novel.

If you're wondering what that shot glass is doing there, many altars
include objects that were favored by the deceased. They also feature food and drink to give to the "spirits" on their journey. I figure I'm just killing two birds with one stone. It was no secret that my grandmother liked to party- so there you go, Billie. Cheers!

Here's a picture of Mr. C's grandparents:

Nuts, you can't see. Look down towards the shadows and you'll see that there's a tool there from his grandfather, who was a do-it-yourself-fix-it-man.

Do you have time for a short ghost story?

One time Mr. C came in from the garage kind of spooked. He said that he was thinking about his grandfather when, all of a sudden, this one tool that happened to belong to his grandpa rolled off the table and fell onto the floor. Mr. C said he hadn't been touching the table or anything.

I love that kind of story. Gives me the best kind of chills.

The other thing in the picture there is a cork screw that grows out of a dog's butt. I didn't ask why that was one of the "favored" objects that Mr. C chose to include, and I don't really want to examine what it means that it's included. The answer could be scarier than any ghost story.

That's my grandfather- my mom's dad. He helped Boeing engineer the fuel-injected jet plane, but ended up being buried on Potter's Field. Long story that I really only know a bit of.

I really should write a novel, I tell you.

There's some more pics of Billie.

And finally,

some more pics of Mr. C's Hungarian relatives on the left. On the right is my great- grandfather when he was a boy with his parents, who (I think) were direct immigrants from Wales.

Neat-o.

Also, the picture is too small for you to see, but the lady sitting in the picture on the left is Matt's grandmother. If you look real hard, you can see that Princess G has the same wide cheek bones and face shape. Except for the blond hair, the resemblance is a little astonishing. For this reason, we like to tell her that she's a Hungarian Gypsy.

She loves it.

So that's it. That's my post on my Dia de los Muertos altar. You all may think I'm weird for even putting one up, and truth be told, it started out as mainly being another way to decorate the house for Halloween. But since I've put it up, I keep finding myself drawn over to that corner. I'll spend long moments staring at the pictures and making observations. I'm noticing that I've got Billie's chin, my great-grandfather's nose, and my Mama Kay's face shape. I'm looking at my grandfather's proud stance and wondering what aspects of his personality I've inherited.

Physical DNA aside, I love mulling over what I know about these people while at the same time, wishing, wishing, wishing that I knew their stories. After all, these are the people who're responsible for my existence- as well as those of my children. It seems fitting that I have a corner of my house set up for a few weeks to honor them.

You all have a good night!

Finally Fall:Edition Sneaky Peek Preview

2010-10-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Mr. C dragged the Halloween box down from it's shelf in the garage and I wrote on Facebook that we were having our "annual fight about how scary is too scary". I thought it would be okay since I had written about this same thing last year in the Story of a Boy and His Ghoul post.

It's one of my favorites.

Turned out, Mr. C got a little bent out of shape over the whole thing. He says it's not tactful to let the world know about marital conflicts, and maybe he's right. Tact has never been my strongpoint.

I just feel like all couples have little fights over stupid stuff and if I can see the humor in the situation, I assumed others would too. It really is a stupid little fight.

Anyway, he also pointed out that it's not really a fight because he's been giving in every year and listening to my "suggestions" (quotation marks are his). I suppose this is true. For the most part he has let me take his Halloween Night Horror vision for our house and whittle it down until it resembles something more along the lines of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

And in my defense, I think Mr. C forgets that there's a good reason I don't trust him with the decorations. Like the fact that 3 years ago we had an old bloody baby head on a stick in our courtyard. And a life size dummy with a bone sticking out of his arm. And this guy:

He's still here, against my better judgement.

Anyway, I didn't sit down to take pot shots at Mr. C. I sat down to write about our decorations this year. It's a work in progress still, but here's a sneak peek.

We've got wigs:

We've got bones:

We've got spiders,

ghosts,

and snakes.

(A quick word about that snake. Last week, before the Halloween decorations went up, Mr. C hung it there as part of a practical joke. He was hoping I'd walk out the door, see the snake hanging there, and scream loud and long. He thinks that kind of thing is hilarious. I, however, walked right by that snake for 5 days before I even noticed it was there. I can only wonder what the neighbors, friends, and Jehovah Witnesses that came to our door during that 5 day period thought.)

To continue with the story....

we're hanging lights,

making props,

and in T minus 15 days, I'll be able to show you the final product. Like I said, this is just a sneak preview.

In the meantime, look what I caught Mr. C rigging up today:

He said he was just putting it up to mess with me, but I know him better than that. He was hoping that this would go the way of the snake, and I'd fail to notice it.

Yeah right.

I will admit though, you've got to admire the man for holding onto his dream.

You all have a good night!

Teacher Talk Tuesday: Dr. Titzer Would Not Approve This Message

2010-10-12T22:24:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

So, it's Teacher Talk Tuesday, which means I have to work my brain and squint and try real hard to come up with something to say that makes me sound smart and knowledgeable. This is something that's becoming harder and harder to do, as my brain gets mushier with every episode of Dora and every game of Candy Land.
Up until this afternoon, I thought I had this week covered: a couple of days ago J and I were playing a game of Pick Up Stix that turned into a game of discovering which letters we could make with straight lines. I was all set to write a whole post on turning everyday things into teachable moments, but this afternoon I went to recreate the whole scenario and record it for you guys, only to have J decide to play dumb.
Is that too mean to say? Is it okay that I'm saying that my son played dumb? Cuz he did. I can't think of another adjective. I was all, "Let's make A's!" and he was like, "Okay." And then he'd let me run tape for 2 minutes while he messed around and made a house or something, and I peppered the silence with lame comments like "J, is that the top of your A?" And he'd say, "No. It's a roof." And I'd say, "Can you make an A out of your roof?" And he'd give me the silent treatment again.

Teachable Moment Lesson #1: You get one shot at them, and after that there is no going back.

So I made another video with him later that was much more successful. This one is about Phonemic Awareness. Do you guys know what that is? A lot of people confuse it with Phonics, but they are 2 separate concepts. When I was teaching, I often wished that I could pull all my parents in and teach them the importance of phonemic awareness because it's such an important key to reading success. Studies have proven that a lack of phonemic awareness is a prominent characteristic of a struggling reader. Most Kindergarten report cards have a whole section on it- when a child shows proficiency in this section, then that teacher knows that he/she is ready for 1st grade.

So what is phonemic awareness and how is it different from phonics?

I usually explain phonemic awareness as being the ability to play with language. It's the ability to manipulate sounds that we hear in words. Most kids naturally do that anyway- they make up nonsense words, or they'll purposefully add or omit sounds in words. Most of this is done under the pretext of being silly- but it's also a cognitive ability that their brain is developing. They're listening to the sounds of our language independent of their meanings and learning to play with them. That's also why songs like Raffi's Willaby Wallaby Woo or The Name Game song are so popular with kids. We adults may hate them, but our kids are developing cognitively while they're listening and singing along.

Once a child has a good grasp on phonemic awareness- the sounds of language, then you can teach them phonics- the relationship of those sounds to written language. The two work together- not independently, but phonemic awareness must be understood first. That's why I joke that Dr. Titzer from Your Baby Can Read wouldn't approve this message. From what I've seen, those babies are recognizing the letters as symbols (not as sounds) and understanding the word meanings (which technically, yes, is reading) BUT if you asked those babies, "What word would you make if you took away the 'h' sound in 'hat' and replaced it with the 'm' sound?", they wouldn't be able to tell you because a) they haven't learned how to talk (duh) and b) they've only learned to recognize the symbols, not the sounds associated with them.

Are you with me or am I boring the heck out of you with all this phonemic/phonic/symbols/cognitive stuff? Here's the nitty gritty of what you need to know:

1. phonemic awareness is a pre-reading skill
2. it's the ability to manipulate sounds in our language
3. it's really important
4. Dr. Titzer is a lame-o.

Kidding on that last one. I know next to nothing about Dr. Titzer. And I'm assuming that he eventually teaches those Baby Geniuses phonics, since at some point in their little lives they're going to come across a word that they'll need to sound out- hard to do without phonemic awareness. Or they learn it on their own- which a lot of kids just do naturally. I'm guessing that kids master phonemic awareness somewhere between 3 and 8. That's a pretty big gap, and if you're kid is going to public school, they'll need to have it mastered between 5 and 6. So here's some things you can work on with them to help them along: word rhyming and rhythm, segmenting words, blending words, identifying beginning and ending sounds, and syllabication.

Below is the video I made of J showing me his current level of phonemic awareness. He's got a ways to go, but I was impressed with what he showed me. You'll notice that I don't correct him- that's because I was trying to keep the video short and because I know we have time to work on this stuff. PA doesn't happen overnight- it's a long process. There's lots of games you could play- like the sounds in the word game (to the tune of Wheels on the Bus, in case my warbling isn't clear). Or, for those of you interested in learning more, there's a really great book called Phonemic Awareness: Playing With Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills. I'm pretty sure that every Kindergarten and Preschool teacher I know owns this book. It's 125 pages filled with games and reproducibles. Mine is falling apart, but any of you who know me in real life are welcome to it.

K- here's the vid of J in his Batman PJ's showing me his super hero reading skills:

Untitled from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

See? Any parent can do this stuff. And when you do do it, call your kid out on saying "gun" instead of "sun". I didn't catch that the first time I watched the vid.

Little stinker.

Anyway, hope this was helpful to those of you with little pre-readers running around. I'm going to go have a glass of wine, watch "Glee", and get my brain back to mush mode.

That's its preferred state nowadays.

You all have a good night.

Not Sure What's Scarier, The Creepy Crawlies or My O.C.D

2010-10-10T22:19:00.000-07:00

I've got a creepy story for you that's better than any Jason or Freddy freak out.

Not really. But there is a certain gross out factor in what I'm about to tell you:

We have an ant problem. Yesterday morning I went to pour a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, only to discover that a swarm of ants had invaded the box.

I know. Ew.

Even worse than that was the night before when I pulled out a Caramel Apple pie to serve to company, opened the box, and became aware of a tickling sensation slowly crawling up my hand. When I looked down, I had no less than 20 ants on my fingers, hands, and arm. Are you squealing and covering your mouth in horror?
Good.
Then you'll know exactly how I looked. Except for the covering my mouth in horror bit. If I could've taken my arm off and throw it into the sink, I would've. Instead I just ran like a sissy girl to the faucet and thrust my entire arm under the water, all the way up to my shoulder.

Then I served my guests some old ice cream that we had in the freezer and said a prayer of gratitude that my guests were family and would have to at some point, come back to our home.

Anyway. After throwing away an entire barely-used box of Honey Nut Cheerios, it was clear that I needed to clean out my pantry and spray the little suckers with some poison. This was a project that I foolishly thought would take me about an hour at the most to do.

An hour later this is what my island looked like:

This is what my counter tops looked like:

This is what my dining table looked like:

This is what my Roo looked like, after getting into her sister's Cupcake Maker and spilling sprinkles all over the floor.

Dang. She's cute even when she's causing trouble.

In the end, this is what my entire kitchen looked like:

But 4 hours later (we took a break and went to a birthday party, and I'm only telling you this because I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of person who'll spend 4 hours organizing a pantry. 2 hours yes, 4 hours no)... anyway, THIS is what my pantry looked like:

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Can I tell you a secret? I really think I wrote this whole post just so I could show you a picture of my organized pantry.

That's it. I have no moral, no point, no punchline.

Just a clean pantry.

I keep going back and marveling at the neatness of it all. It's a sickness.

A sickness that I don't really want to be rid off. Cuz if there's something wrong with loving my nice, clean, organized pantry....

then I don't want to be right.

You all have a good night.

P.S- I can't believe I just wrote a whole post about cleaning a pantry. What's happening to me?

Teacher Talk Tuesday: Asking The Big Question

2010-10-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a kindergarten teacher, I did a thing every morning called "The Morning Message". It was just a short little note that I wrote to the kids on an easel about what we were going to do that day. A lot of teachers do this- it's a powerful tool that can be used to engage students in decoding, finding sight words, using context, and conventions of writing.

The first year I did it, I would call kids up one by one to "find" things on the morning message- certain sight words or sounds, periods, rhyming words, etc. It sounded like this:

Me: Okay! Can any of you find our new sight word that we learned yesterday up here on the Morning Message?

I'd look out at the small sea of faces to see about 12 faces earnestly looking at the easel. A few kids would be staring off into space, there'd be a few girls would be playing with each other's hair, a couple boys would be rolling around on their backs and shooting imaginary artillery at the Word Wall, and since this was Kindergarten, I could always count on the obligatory nose picker or masturbator to be in the audience as well.

Me: Charlie? Do you see our new sight word? Can you come up and circle it for me?

Charlie ambles up and circles the word.

Me: Do you want to call on a friend to read the word you just circled?

Charlie: Uuuuuuuuummmmmmmm. (He labors this decision like it's some kind of career choice, then finally choses a friend in the back row. Meanwhile I'm secretly longing for a wall to bang my head on, since I know that Charlie's friend is not going to have a clue about this particular word.)

Do you get the idea? At some point in the year I silently renamed the Morning Message Morning Misery because it was just painful. I knew the way I was using it was ineffective, yet I didn't want to give it up because I knew Morning Message carried some really good teaching potential.

What to do? What to do?

I honestly can't tell you how I figured this one out- if I learned it in my credential program, if it was advice from a colleague, if I figured it out myself (doubtful, since I'm not usually that clever)- but I did figure it out. And what I learned remains to this day, the single most important piece of teaching advice that I could give someone:

The next year, I put up a Morning Message on my easel. I would open the doors, my class would come in, and sit down on the rug. Then I'd ask them this question:

Me: Good morning guys! Tell me, what do you notice about the morning message today?

20 hands would shoot up into the air.

Henry: I see the letter A.

Me: A? Excellent. Let me circle that letter there. That is indeed an A!

Lucy: I see the word "in" inside that big word there.

Me: Wow! You spied a word inside a word! Good work!

James: You used a red marker for the date and a yellow marker for the words.

Me: Yes, I did James. Good observation.

See? That made all the difference. As soon as I wasn't looking for specifics anymore, the whole thing opened up and became much more powerful and interactive. The students were engaged, and I could mentally assess where each child was along the curriculum and form ideas about where they needed to be pushed. Plus, through their answers, my students were teaching each other. Kids tend to listen better to other kids, especially if the other kid is receiving positive feedback from the teacher. So if Suzy raised her hand and said "I see that you forgot to capitalize the beginning of the sentence.", I'd act real impressed that she was smart enough to catch that. Next day I'd "forget" to capitalize a sentence, and half my class would be waving their hands around, just dying to inform me of my mistake.

Little boogers.

Anyway, I continued using this little trick of asking What do you notice? through the rest of my teaching career. It's come in handy as a parent too, which is why I'm sharing it with you here tonight.

It's easy to tune kids out when their constantly demanding your attention. Half the time when my kids say "Mom! Look!", I answer them with a spacey "Mmmhmm. Yeah, I see." And then I go back to whatever thought was occupying my brain at the moment. But sometimes, just for kicks, I'll snap to and respond with "Oh yeah! What do you notice about that?" Their answers can surprise me. A lot of the time what is most obvious to me is not at all what they see. Or smell. Or feel. Or taste (which can be sometimes scary).

When you ask a kid "What do you notice?" what you're really asking is "How do you see the world?", which is why kids respond so well to it. Most of the time, adults are telling kids what to think. Asking them for their perspective makes them feel connected and important. And who doesn't want to feel that?

Good night!

Finally Fall: Edition I Have No Idea What Hungarian Traditions Have To Do With Fall, But Just Go With Me On This

2010-10-04T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

As I sit here and type this, there's a beautiful breeze blowing right on me through my open window. Not just a cool breeze, but most definitely a COLD breeze. And by cold, I mean that we've finally hit below 75 degrees at night, which here in the desert qualifies as mitten and scarf time (truly, that's only a slight exaggeration). Anyway, all this makes me so happy because YAY! Fall is finally here and the A/C is off!

Hallelujah and bring on the Pumpkin Spice Lattes!

Normally what I like to do on the first day of the weather change is open all my windows, put out the fall decorations, and then bake something yummy smelling, like pumpkin bread, while I sit on the couch drinking tea and watching Sleepy Hollow. ( If you're thinking I'm a dork, you're not only right BUT you've also seriously underestimated me when, in my previous entries, I wrote about how much I love October.)

So suck it.

I kid.

Anyway, turns out that this year it doesn't matter because my dang stove broke. The timing in this is terrible. Really, it's just these next three months that I really need my stove and the rest of the year I pretty much ignore it. However, Murphy's Law and blah blah blah and none of this really is relevant except to explain to you that this Finally Fall Edition 1 was supposed to contain some kind of Fall Comfort Food and instead I'm doing a post on Hungarian Chicken Paprikash, because it can be cooked on a stovetop. And because it was my mother in law's birthday and she's from the Old Country- and I wanted to attempt to cook her something outside of my comfort zone.

I'm one of those people who never really seem to learn from their past mistakes.

Anyway.

Hungarian Chicken Paprikash. Here's the ingredients you will need:

That's 8 slices of bacon, 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, 3/4 all purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, 2 to 3 pounds of chicken, and for the drop noodles you'll need 2 1/3 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 slightly beaten egg, and 1 cup of flour.

I don't know why the milk made it into the shot. I think I was confused.

Now, before we start I need a few words. First, please don't expect much from this FF post. It's been a month and I was rusty. In addition, the photographs in this post are about as unappetizing as you can get. I forgot that I wouldn't have as much light to work with this time of year as I had over the summer when I was doing FFF. You can blame astronomy and my little point and shoot camera.

Second, just a quick word about my mother in law and her background. She was born in a work camp in post-war Europe. Hungary became a displaced nation after Hitler marched through, so her family saved what they could and came to the United States through South America (where they were able to obtain Visas). They came to Los Angeles, worked and went to school during the day, took English classes at night, and made a life for themselves. I love that I married into this story- doesn't it make me so much more interesting to tell people this, as opposed to relating my own mutt-style cultural heritage?

Mr. C says he remembers being young and going to his nagymama's (neh-mama is Hungarian for grandma) house and watching her and his great grandma spend their entire day in the kitchen cooking and talking. They made their own noodles and dried them in the back bedroom. Meat would hang out in their workshop. This is what they did all day long- cook and talk. They also smoked like a couple of chimneys, but it was the 70's and yes, the life of a housewife was that glamorous.

Anyway, my whole point in telling you this is that cooking was not a chore- it was their day. I'm kind of fascinated by it and that's why I took this on. My mother in law had given me a little Hungarian cookbook, complete with the cutest little drawings of a Hungarian girl in native dress posing here and there next to the recipes. So it was this recipe that I followed for Csirke Paprikas Galuskaval- or just plain Chicken Paprika with Noodles for those of you who can't get that tongue rolling thing down.

First step was to fry the 8 slabs of bacon.

Easy enough.
Then, you add in the 1/4 cup of chopped onion and fry that up too.

Still on the bucket list- learning to take a good picture of frying food. This entire post is filled with blurry shots like these.

Okay, the next part I found a little um, difficult. The recipe book said to "disjoint and cut chicken. Slit the heart, and remove the blood vessesls. Then, cut away and discard the tough lining from the gizzard. Refrigerate the liver, and place heart, gizzards, and neck into saucepan."

Wow. Now I was looking at the drawings of the little Hungarian girl in a whole new light. For instance, I now know that in the upper left corner she's carrying a chicken in her bag. I don't know what I thought was in there before.

And down there at the bottom she's chasing the chicken with the intent of ripping out it's heart, slitting it, and then cooking up it's innards in some bacon grease.

I would've never made it in the old country.

So, I just skipped that part like I never read it and chopped up my 3 pounds of boneless, skinless, chicken breast that I had bought at my neighborhood Costco.

Then I put the flour, salt, and paprika into a bag,

along with the cut up chicken pieces.....

and shook it all up until the pieces are all covered (totally like Shake n' Bake).

By this time I've removed the bacon and onions from the fry pan and set them aside. (You did do that, didn't you? I forgot to mention it, but you should know that you do have to do it. So go ahead. Okay? Okay.)

Okay, so now fry up those chicken pieces in the bacon grease.

Then you cook up those pieces over medium-low heat until they're nice and tender- about 10 to 15 minutes.

You can cover the pot if you want.

While that's going, bring 2 qts. of water to a boil in a large pot. This is when you start making the noodles. Yes, you read that right- you are going to make the noodles.

Crack the egg into a bowl and add 1 cup of water.

Okay- this is where I got tired and started getting lazy about documenting the process. You're going to have to fill in some blanks here.

Working with a third of a cup at a time, mix the flour into the egg.

That's what it looks like after the first third. I must've been talking to my MIL or something during the rest of the process, because I have nary a picture of what the dough is supposed to look like before you move it to the cutting board. I can only tell you that it's supposed to be thick, but only slightly thicker than the consistency of Elmer's school glue. Can you picture that?

Okay, so Mary showed me how they did the next step Old Country Style.

Take the dough, glop it onto the cutting board, and stand over the pot of boiling water. Then take a knife and start slicing the dough into the water, dipping the knife into the hot water each time to clean it off and heat it up for the next slice.

Sorry. Action shots are not my thing.

Can you just try to imagine what I'm talking about?

Once you get all the dough into the water, it'll look like this:

Kinda like cooked brains. The Hungarian Cookbook girl would've been all over this.

Cook those up for about 10 minutes, and then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

In the meantime, go back to the chicken. Add the bacon and onions back in, along with 1 cup of water, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, and 2 tsp. of Paprika.

Stir it up. It'll turn a nice, creamy, pink-ish color- much unlike the yellowish-gray that you see below.

Again, you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that in real-life, it looked a lot more appetizing than this.
Serve it over noodles and present it to the birthday girl:

Feel relieved when she likes it. Or at least when she says that she likes it.

Then give her a carrot cake for dessert.

Sing to her.

And be glad that someone in your family has an interesting history to share with you and your children.

Have a good night!

Anniversary

2010-09-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

I spent this whole week anticipating the fact that the 1 year anniversary of this blog was coming up today. I got the kids down early, set the DVR to record Modern Family, sat down to write, and then realized when I went back thru my archives, that I wrote the first post on Sept. 28th, not 29th as I had originally thought.

Day late and a dollar short. Story of my life.

So anyway, Happy Belated Anniversary to me. I know I've told those of you who I get to see in my every day life how much I love this blog. It's like a baby to me- except less exhausting and I didn't gain any weight giving birth to it, unless you count the pounds I put on this year with my kettle chip and wine obsession. (Which I don't.)

And please don't roll your eyes, because I know that I get repetitive with this, but I do so love those of you who check in and read me on a regular basis. Not to get all existential on you guys, but my favorite thing about this whole entire human experience is that everyone, everyone has a story. Wrap your brain around that. Everyone! And all I'm doing here is turning my daily life into little written stories, and you guys come and read them and then you come back again. I love it! Thank you!

Those of you who've been faithful followers this past year have been with me as I've joyfully abused the Power of Santa, learned way too much about alternative uses for breast milk, tried my hand at a cooking blog, and traumatized my children with the Tooth Fairy. By far however, the most eventful occurrence of this last year was when my stepson lost his mom to brain cancer. That was something that was so personal to 9 and Michelle's family that I almost didn't write about it. However, it was a personal thing for me too, and I was so grateful to be able to process it here on Meanie Mom. As I wrote at the time, it felt like something that was too big to stay in my head.

It's with that post in mind that I want to write the next few paragraphs.

I may call myself a Meanie Mom and I may spend a lot of time here on this blog complaining about the drudgery of motherhood- the clean up, the sleep deprivation, the fighting, the refereeing, the crazy schedule. But something has changed for me since last January. Sometimes when I'm frustrated with one of the little kids for whatever reason, and maybe I'm yelling at them, or maybe I'm huffing around, or maybe I'm slamming things and showing anger, I'll look up and see 9 in the room and I think "My god. What must he be thinking of me? Here I am having a conniption fit over the tiniest blip in our day, when his mom is not even here anymore. I must look so dumb to him." Then my mountains become molehills, and a new perspective comes into focus.

With October being National Breast Cancer Awareness month, and with it being this blog's anniversary, and since I'm not a big enough blogger to do giveaways and stuff like that :), I'd like to ask you guys to please just dedicate a few quiet moments of your day today to thinking of any mothers you may know who are battling or have battled cancer. Give them a sweet shout out in your mind. Thank them for their strength and for their bravery. Then please thank God, or Jesus, or Allah, or the Universe, or whoever you happen to pray to for another day with your own little mess makers.

I'll be thinking of Michelle and my big, tall, camaro-driving, Harley riding, beautiful, blonde Aunt Charna, who passed away in 2004 from breast cancer.

Who'll you be thinking of?

Good night!

Teacher Talk Tuesday Edition: I Think Oprah's Pissed Me Off

2010-09-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

I decided to go with Teacher Talk Tuesday as the title for my new weekly meme. It's boring, but to the point. Also, I've come to accept the fact that my mind is about as sharp as a dull Number #2 pencil, so little puns and school-related references (like the one I just wrote) use up all my brain power, thus leaving no room for me to come up with innovative post titles.

So sorry.

Anyway, before I pass on my weekly teacher tip to you, I have something to discuss. I've been feeling compelled to get back up on my soapbox lately. You know, the one about supporting our teachers? I faltered on my stance last week, realized a few things about myself, and then caught wind of the whole Oprah and "Waiting For Superman" thing and MAN do I have some things to say about that. So while I know that you guys (23 of you- thank you so much for reading!) don't check in here to read my political viewpoints, I do need to just say a few things and then I promise I will SHUT UP about the whole EDUCATION thing and just get back to trying to be humorous about mommy life.

Keyword: trying.

All right. First things first.

Last week I (hypothetically) complained about my daughter not getting a Star Student award. She got one last Friday, so obviously, as my husband reminded me many times when I was (hypothetically) complaining, I was overreacting just a tad.

Which I now see.

BUT. People, the teacher gave one away every single day, and we were on like, day 20 of school or something, and my kid still hadn't gotten one! So what was a mother to think (hypothetically)? Especially when I- er, I mean PG, really wanted the award so very badly?

I hope you're catching my tongue in cheek-i-ness here. I realized this week that I was morphing into those parents that I so disliked when I was teaching- the ones who tie up their own self-esteem and self worth into their kids achievements and end up giving their kids a complex? I hate that I'm capable of being that parent. Hate it.

But I am.

And I vow to stop it.

Let's just move onto the meaty part of my post.

I think Oprah's made me angry. I say "think" because I still haven't seen last Monday's Waiting For Superman episode, but I have watched the follow-up episode she ran on Thursday, and that made me angry so I'm assuming that Monday's episode would've made me want to kick a wall or something. I tried to find it on YouTube and was unsuccessful. If any one you happen to have a link, can you send it to me?

Anyway, for those of you who don't have a clue of what I'm talking about, on the 21st, Oprah featured the documentary "Waiting For Superman" on her show. The documentary is about the current state of public education in our country. Like I said, I haven't seen it, but people who have told me they walked away from it with these three points: a) the failure of the public school system falls largely on the teacher's shoulders, 2) Charter Schools are our only saving grace, and 3) Teacher Unions are evil.

Let me just address these 3 beliefs (and I'll try to be brief, although I could probably write an entire thesis on the topic).

1) It's the teacher's fault:
No. It's not. I'm going to tell you a story. It's my best example of why test scores aren't usually a reflection of a teacher's performance. I apologize if you're a real life friend of mine and have heard it (cuz I use this example a lot).
For the first 3 years of my teaching career, I taught in an extremely low socioeconomic area. Despite the amazing staff, excellent opportunities in professional development, and a great principal, the school tested in the low 700's. Maybe even in the 600's. I'm not sure.
Then, my principal got called to open a brand new school in a more affluent area. She took half her staff with her. The year we opened, we got the highest test scores in the entire district. Same teachers, same principal, different socioeconomic class- better test scores.

It's not the teacher's fault. It's about socio-economics.

In fact, I would go on to say that the teachers who stayed behind in the low-socioeconomic school deserve higher accolades. They return to school every year, every day knowing that they are going to deal with students who have unstable home lives, who haven't eaten since lunch the previous day, whose parents are in jail, or (worse), strung out on drugs. Many of these students don't speak English and their parents don't speak English. It may sound like I'm being dramatic to those of you who (like me) exist mainly in the middle class. I tell you though, that's truly the way of life in these areas. And while these good teachers exist at these schools, there are many factors beyond a teacher's control that affect their ability to get these students to a proficient level. These teachers are doing what they can for these kids on a personal level, on an individual level, yet on a school level they're still earmarked as "under performing."
Shame on you Oprah, for disgracing these "under performing" teachers and blaming them.

2. Charter Schools are the only answer:
I don't have much to say about this because I don't know much about charter schools. I do know that they don't have the same government restrictions that public schools do- which shows me that the less government is involved in education, the better.

3. Teacher Unions are evil-
This one burns me. Oprah featured a former Union Rep on the follow up show who said that she believed that Unions solely exist to keep bad teachers in the classroom. This woman was stupid. She is wrong. She had no right to appear on public television and make such a ludicrous statement. The teacher's union exists for the same reason that all unions exist: to make sure teachers are treated fairly. When I was working for the school district, the union went to bat for us to protect our health benefits, which were going to be taken away due to cut backs. During cutbacks they also negotiated for us, so that we could work with the district and reach financial agreements together, rather than just have our salary hacked to pieces without any rights or say in the matter.

Are there bad teachers? Of course. The same way that there are bad bankers, bad policemen, bad city officials. There are bad people in every profession. But I believe that the majority of teachers out there are good, good people who are dedicated to their profession and who now have to deal with an undeserved backlash because an extremely influential talk show host was irresponsible in her statements about how teachers are at fault for the failure of public schools.

And let's talk about that- are public schools failing? I believe most teachers would answer yes- but I also believe that teachers would be most excited about inciting change. They'd be first in line to get a conversation going on the topic. After all, they are just as stuck and frustrated in an outdated failing system as the students they are teaching. But they know that change does not start with more rules, more regulation, more blame, more finger pointing. In fact, I believe we are where we're at because there's been too much of that. We all need to start working together.

Parents! Teachers are awesome. Revere them and teach your children to revere them.
Teachers! Parents just want the best for their kids. It's your one very big responsibility to them. Remember that and make it your mantra every day when you open the door to your classroom.

Whew. Okay I'm done with my soapbox. I don't even have wind enough to write you a tip for the night. I'm just going to leave you with a little funny that a friend of mine sent me from her trip to San Diego. It's a list of duties for a 19th century school teacher.

This person? In dire need of a union.

Have a good night!

It's the Heat's Fault

2010-09-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Allright. I know I haven't been giving this blog the attention it deserves lately, and that will be fixed soon (I hope). But I'd like to take a short moment here tonight and let you all in on just a few little things that've been on my mind. Such as, WHAT IS WITH THIS HEAT? WHERE IS MY FALL? I WANT TO MAKE CHILI WITH THE WINDOWS OPEN AND CRISP AIR COMING IN! I WANT TO WEAR JEANS AND DRINK MY PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE'S WITHOUT THE A/C RUNNING! I WANT PUMPKINS, CANDLES, COZY EVENINGS AND SCARY MOVIES!

That is what I want.

This is what I have:
freshly steam-cleaned carpets and one sick child who promptly threw up all over them.
a huge electric bill from running the a/c
a broken oven
a bad attitude

I have no patience for September in the desert.

Make.
It.
Go.
AWAY.

I'll talk to you all when I can be civil again.

Have a good night.

The Universe, Starring Mr. Miagi

2010-09-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

It seems that God, the universe, or whatever you want to call it, is doing that thing again- that thing where I take a stance on something and let the world know about it, and then I spend the very next week being bombarded by a cosmic hailstorm of situations and examples in which my new stance is tested. Frankly, if the Universe, God, or whatever could just manifest itself into a human form, I'd like to take it out for coffee and be all, "Hey man. Listen. I am over this little 'keep Tacy on her toes' trick that you like to play. Would it kill you to just let me have something figured out for once?"

And then the Universe would throw back it's head and laugh this big hearty laugh and it'd say something new age-y like, "Oh, patience little grasshopper. I'm just trying to show you that the cup of knowledge never stops flowing."

Or some crap like that.

Cause in my imagination The Universe totally looks like Mr. Miagi.

(What? I grew up in the '80's okay? Mr. Miagi is bomb.)

You know he is.

Anyway. Ever since I posted my Big Fat Soapbox post, I have been tested, tested, tested with situations from my children's teachers that have made me question if I didn't just feed my faithful readers (every single beautiful one of yous who I love and appreciate so much for reading my ramblings) a load of BS.

Should we stand united with teachers all the time, even when they hold out on rewarding your child with being a star student, even though your child has returned all homework, been on time, kept his/her name off the board, and been in uniform every day? And you have a sneaky feeling that it's because she/he is wearing TwinkleToe Sketchers, which do follow the dress code of the school, but your child's teacher, a self-proclaimed uniform Nazi and maker of her own personal dress code expectations probably doesn't like and is therefore waiting for your child to show up in Oxfords before she gives her star student honors? Should we?

That's a hypothetical situation.

Or how about the teacher who requires that parents purchase a $60 out-of-print textbook that she/he decided she wants to use for curriculum, even though you know, as a teacher, that technically that's illegal? This is not mentioning that she wanted the book by the 2nd week of school and there's 6-8 week shipping on it?

That's another hypothetical situation, by the way.

I've been arguing against myself in my head all week long, bouncing like a tennis ball at a Wimbledon Match: Parent camp! Teacher camp! Parent camp! Teacher camp!

Then I remembered that my main point in the Soapbox post wasn't that we should chose sides, it was that we should work together as a team. So, I guess I have to say that I'm still standing united- just not as enthusiastically as before. I'll probably go buy PG- er, I mean, a certain hypothetical child a hypothetical pair of white Keds from Payless so she can get her dang hypothetical award.

Hypothetically, I'll feel a little bullied about it, but you know, the pedestal and everything.

Rah, rah pedastools.

Also, this has made me realize that I want to write a little weekly meme (pronounced meem- not me-me, as I first thought) that would include tips that I learned as a teacher and would be helpful for us parents to know. Things like decoding the teacher remark section of the report cards, or tips on how to help your child pick a book that is at the right reading level for her. Things like that.

Only, I need help thinking of a name for it. I initially wanted to go with some kind of Double Agent theme- you know, since I'm kind of like an educator who's on the inside of the parent world and a parent on the inside of the educator world? Like GoldFinger/GoldApple kind of thing?

I actually just ran that one by Mr. C and it got a big thumbs down. So never mind.

Any ideas you guys have would be greatly appreciated. Leave me a comment.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

(Another great 80's reference. I'm on fire tonight.)

You all have a totally awesome night!

Weird Day

2010-09-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Hi guys.

Weird day today, so I'll keep it short. Here's why today was weird:

1. I had to go to the courthouse this morning to deliver documents for my mom. At the entrance, I heard a bunch of yelling, but could see nothing but a petite woman in a magenta suit walking briskly towards a flagpole. She was pulling a rolling briefcase, so I thought she was a lawyer. It wasn't until I saw her begin to repeatedly kick the flagpole that I realized that a) the yelling was coming from her, b) she was yelling at an invisible person and c) "she" was a he. Thankfully, security took her away before she got behind me in line at the metal detector. I don't do well with the mentally ill.

This is despite the fact that I work in a therapist's office 2 days a week.

Go figure.

2. One of our boxers had to be put down on Tuesday. This isn't funny at all, but it has been weird all day seeing one leash hanging in the garage, one food bowl sitting empty, one dog bed in the corner. Maybe next week I'll write a memorial post for her, but not today. Everything still feels too weird.

3. Our air is out. This is not weird, just annoying. But it adds to the overall weird out-of-wack feeling that has been today. It was too hot for the kids to sleep in their bunk beds, so they're camped out in our bedroom in front of the open slider. I'm going to go join them and toss, turn, and hope that the ceiling fan makes it cool enough for me to get some sleep.

Happy Friday, everyone! You all have a good night!

Surprise, Surprise

2010-09-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

I am SO happy it's September 12th. Want to know why? Because yesterday, on the 11th, me and Mr. C's side of the family threw a surprise 40th birthday party for him and I HAVE BEEN WANTING TO BLAB ABOUT IT FOREVER!

But I couldn't.

Because it was a surprise. And because sometimes Mr. C checks in and actually reads my blog and I couldn't blow it here on Meanie Mom.

So, in this whole process I've learned two things. Actually it was more like one and a half things. I already knew that I hate planning parties. I wish I could be the kind of party planner who's laid back and takes things in stride, but I'm not. Party planning turns me into a freaky ball of stress. And when I say "freaky ball of stress", I mean take what you think a freaky ball of stress would like on a person, square it, then multiply that by 10, and you're halfway to the hot mess that is me planning a party.

So, the half point beyond the fact that I hate party planning is that I really hate planning a surprise party. More specifically, I hated planning Mr. C's surprise party. This is because as I disintegrate into my quivering mess of insecurities and neurosis, there is only one person in the whole world who I trust to witness me in this pathetic state- and that would be my husband. And while I'm sure he'd be glad to give that honor up to someone else, I REALLY NEEDED him to vent to.

(See how I take something that's supposed to be nice for someone else and turn it into being all about me? It's a talent o' mine.)

Besides, there were just some things that I felt he needed to know. Like when my brother in law sent over a slideshow that he made for the party. I opened it up and watched a bunch of pictures of Mr. C flash on the screen and OH MY GOODNESS all of a sudden it was like I was looking at J! And I wanted to run to Mr. C the minute he walked in the door that day and say "OUR SON IS YOUR MINI ME! IT'S EERIE! IT'S UNBELIEVABLE! IT'S AWESOME! COME LOOK!"

No, really. Look:

Isn't that nuts? Wouldn't you want to blab all about it to your husband, if you were me?

It's amazing that I held my tongue. Worthy of a medal, really.

The other thing I learned through this whole venture is that if one is going to throw a surprise party, follow the KISS method- which, for those of you who haven't heard this before, stands for: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Stupid is right. Because after I broke into his email and Facebook accounts to steal his contact's info, I had to:

1. Lie to him about not doing much for his birthday.
2. Coordinate baby sitters for my kids and my nieces and nephews.
3. Play it cool when he told me that he RSVP'd yes to a work party that coincided with the surprise party.
4. Let him think we were going to the work party and tried not to panic upon learning that it was a costume party as well and that he was planning on wearing a costume.
5. Track down the email for the host of the work party, write her, and let her know that we wouldn't really be coming to her party, but to not say anything to Mr. C about it, and then feel slightly awkward about not inviting her to Mr. C's party.
6. Call the restaurant to find out the cost of using an LCD projector & then almost choke upon learning that it would be $265 minimum.
7. Track down a free LCD projector and amp.
8. Lie to him about my whereabouts on the day of the party while I ran around finishing last minute details.
9. Smuggle a 6' x 8' foot slideshow screen out of the house.
10. Talk him out of wearing a costume.
11. Let him think we were driving 9 to the restaurant for a friend's party.
12. Pretend to have to pee so that he would park the car and come in. (And I do believe that that was an Oscar winning performance.)

And of course, during all this there were a million other things going on as well which caused me to whine on the phone to my mother, "WHY does this have to be a surprise? Can't we just tell him?"

Upon which she reminded me that this is not all about me.

I swear, I keep forgetting that.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all wondering whether or not Mr. C was surprised. And the answer is........

not in the slightest.

Which made me want to strangle him.

Instead I just ordered a big glass of wine and enjoyed the rest of the evening. I also made a mental note that for his 50th, I'm going to send him on an Outward Bound Vacation or something.

That way I can just lay around the house with my Kettle Chips and wine.

You all have a good one!