In Other News...

You guys.  It's like E!News Central around here.  The air in this household is abuzz with gossip. Hushed murmurs abound.  You wouldn't even believe the vibe here.

9 has a girlfriend.

Before I go on, let me stop and say that I am NOT writing this simply to announce on a mom blog that my teenage stepson has a girlfriend.  That would be stupid and lah-ame for a variety of reasons. It'd also be boring because it's not really anything special.  That's what teenagers do, right? They date.  9 has had girlfriends before.  So this is not news, and this is not what I am writing about.  I repeat, this is not what I am writing about. What I am writing about is the reaction of my family members to the change in 9's relationship status.  It's bananas.  The drama!  The excitement! The betrayal! (I'll get to the betrayal thing in a minute.)

It started a few weeks ago with a text that Matt sent me.  It said "9 just told me that he has a gf."

The thing is, that though he meant to text it to me, he accidentally texted it to 9.  And 9 was all "Uh, did you mean to send this to someone else?" So then Matt had to explain himself and kind of apologize.

Awkward.

Then the kids found out.

Pg is totally laid back and whatever about it.  J doesn't understand why 9 would want to date a girl because in J's world, all the love stuff is stupid and embarrassing.  Whenever we tease J about getting married someday, he insists that he won't because (and this is a direct quote) he "wants to have a happy life." So, clearly Matt and I have been a wonderful model of love and marriage for him.

In fact, if I had to guess about which kid, if any, would have a problem with 9 having a girlfriend, I would've guessed J.  A few years ago, at Knott's Berry Farm, 9 got pulled out of an audience to take part in a shotgun wedding skit in which he was forced to "marry" a man dressed as a hillbilly bride.  9 had fun with it and was playing it up.  I was laughing so hard that I had tears coming out of my eyes, until I looked down at J and discovered that he was crying for real.  He thought 9 was really getting married off and leaving us.

So you can imagine my surprise when it turned out that Roo is the one child who is having the hardest time accepting this little change.  I was totally unaware of her feelings because if the subject ever came up, she stayed pretty quiet.  However, yesterday 9 was home from his summer camp job for the first time in 6 days and Roo announced at the dinner table that she was calling a family meeting.  She took the floor and hmmed and ha'd for what seemed like forever.

"Um, I really want to ask 9 a question?  But I'm embarrassed too?" She was shuffling her feet and staring at the floor.   I had a feeling that since the question was directed at 9, it would have something to do with his girlfriend.  I said a quick prayer that she wasn't going to ask anything that I didn't want to know the answer to, and told her that it was okay.
"I feel really weird about this." she said.
"Well, you called the meeting Roo, so spit it out."
"Oooooooooookay.  Fine. 9.  Is it true that you have a girlfriend?" she asked.
9 smiled and said "Yes, it's true. I have a girlfriend."
Roo made this weird groaning sound and then she took a deep breath and asked "Is it true that her name is Lily?"
9 said, "Yes, it's true that her name is Lily."

And then Roo got this embarrassed smile on her face and ran from the room.  9 and I exchanged "What was that?" expressions as I left the room to follow Roo.  I found her in her bedroom, laying on the floor, with her feet up on the wall.  I asked her what was going on.

"I'm never talking to 9 again."she said.

"What? Why not?"

"I don't know.  Because I feel weird."

"Because his girlfriend has the same name as you?"

"No!  I just feel weird."

I tried to reason.  "Um, okay.  You know, he would still talk to you if you had a friend named Kynen."

I got an eye-roll response, so I shrugged, turned, and walked away.  I was half way down the hall when I heard her get up, stomp to 9's doorway, and loudly proclaim to him "I am NOT happy for you!"

Then she stomped back to her room and slammed the door.

I walked to 9's room.  "Did she just tell you that she is not happy for you?"

He was still laughing. "Yes."

"Oh, PLEASE can I write about this?"

He told me to go ahead.  He's a good sport about stuff like this.

What cracks me up is that if 9 ever decided to bring this girl around us, it wouldn't be me or Matt she would have to impress.  To win Roo over, this girl better show up with really cool hair and makeup, glitter or sequins somewhere on her outfit, and she had better know the words and harmonies to each and every song from Frozen.  It'd be for her own good, because truly.......

does this look like a face you'd want to mess with?

This Is Summer, This Is My Brain On Summer

Hallelujah, the summer days are upon us!  School let out 6 days ago and though it feels like it's been much, much longer than that, it's (surprisingly) not because my family has been driving me nuts here at home.  In fact, they've been dreamy and by dreamy, I mean half of them have been gone.  9 is working a job up at a summer camp in Big Bear, PG is at her third year of camp at Hume Lake, and Mr.C has been at a three day planning committee thing that he's repeatedly explained the purpose of and I've repeatedly forgotten.  So, it's been me and the littlest of the littles and they spend most of the day deeply entrenched in imaginary play.  Here's a pic I snapped of them this afternoon:

Part of me worries that J is getting too old to get so lost in his imagination.  I wonder if he shouldn't be a little more self-conscious or embarrassed to don the crazy outfits he comes up with, if he shouldn't play more sports, if I should ask that he spends more time here in the real world with us.  Then I remember that I am an advocate for stories and storytelling and that I have a son who spends most of his time bringing all the stories in his head to life and that most of the famous and talented artists and storytellers that I know of speak of spending their childhoods in much the same way.  When I remember that, I feel better about it. (Not much, but enough to make me worry less.  Because worrying is apparently what I do.  I know.  I'm just as annoyed by it as you are.)

Anyway, I got off track.  I was explaining why this week has felt so long.  It's not because being trapped in the house with the kids has made it feel long......as has been the case in some past years (ahem, I'm looking at you 2004-2011, aka "the baby years").   It's just that the lack of schedule has turned my time into a long, meandering tunnel of no demands that opens up into a vast, sunny meadow of no obligations.  With this, I have no problem except for the fact that it's messing with my writing.  Without a schedule, my brain is on like a hippie free-flow drive and I can't focus on getting one common theme to thread into an interesting post.  So, forgive me this twisty-twirly post.  It's just reflecting summer's effect on my mind.

I guess if I had to pick a theme for this post, it'd be hair, which I know is cheap because my last post was about hair, but I can't help it if the Universe chose this week to make hair a theme in our household.  Besides, part of what made hair a theme this week was the aftereffect of the great bang massacre that I wrote about last week, and I'll explain all of this in a moment (I'll be honest with you- it's not that interesting, especially now that I've built it up), but I first need to point out that if hair was not a theme before, it most certainly is now, if for no other reason than the fact that I've now typed the word "hair"SIX times in just this one paragraph.

So.  Let's talk about hair.

Roo crawled into bed with me the other morning.  I happened to be Googling "Rockabilly Bandanna Hairstyles" because I was looking for a way to hide my bangs and a bandanna seemed like a good place to start.  (By the way, my sweet friend Alisha commented on the last blog that I should just "sweep my bangs to the side" until they grew out.  Dear Alisha, "sweep" is a word that suggests an element of elegance, and I assure you, there is nothing elegant about what happens when I try to "sweep" the hot mess that lays on my forehead to the side.  I'm sorry.  And I love you for trying to help.)

Anyway, Roo watched a few tutorials with me and asked me if I could give her "Rosie the Riveter" hair for the day.  I have to say, I love this about my Roo.  She Loves (capital L intentional) hair and makeup.  I remember exactly when this obsession started.  It was Halloween a few years ago, in which we dressed the kids as Lock, Shock and Barrel.  She was Barrel, the Skeleton, and as I sponged the white face makeup onto her face, she was absolutely enthralled.  Not like giddy, happy enthralled; more like serious, all of her senses open to the experience, taking it all in enthralled.  She loved the nearness of the other person's face as they patted her makeup on and filled in her eyeliner.  She loved following my directions of "blink" or "close your eyes" or "stick out you lips".  For months after, she relived all of it through her play.  I spent quite a lot of time letting her apply fake makeup to my face, the soft puffs of her breath on my nose as she ran a soft brush across my eyelids, giving me directions on opening or closing my eyes and alternately holding a mirror up to my face.  She a girly-girl for sure, but for her, it's about the transformation.  She loves it. So naturally when she saw the tutorial for Rockabilly Bandanna hair, she was interested.  And when I did it for her, I nearly died from the cuteness.

I've always regretted not being part of the Rockabilly Movement (was it really a movement, or just a trend?).  I may be able to live vicariously through my Roo though.

Here's the other part of hair in our household this week: J got his head shaved.  Here's the before and after.

When I was looking at this picture, I realized that the before picture is exactly how I fear J is going to look in the future after he's moved out and doesn't have to listen to me tell him how to take care of himself: scraggly hair, food on his face, and wonky eyed.  I think it's his default look, lord help me.

Now that I've written close to a thousand words about pretty much nothing (I'm so sorry), let me leave you with this one last thing.  Yesterday I was vacuuming PG's room when I came across a ring of index cards filled with quotes.  I guess her teacher had them write a quote a day and keep them on a ring in their desk.  Maybe I'm just feeling extra sentimental from missing her while she's away, but reading that ring of quotes made me just fall in love with her teacher.  That one little activity didn't have much to do with math or reading or writing, but what a beautiful way to teach children perspective.  I got a little teary-eyed reading through them.  No one should dare say anything against educators to me for quite a while- this one act has made me feel fiercely protective of them.

So, I leave you with this one quote from my daughter's ring full from her fourth grade year: "Today, me will live in the moment... unless it's unpleasant, in which case me will eat a cookie." -Cookie Monster

I'm going to make that my motto for the summer.  No plans.  Just living in the moment, and when life gets rough, I'll have a cookie.

Have a great night.

Slow

Last night Matt asked me to help him shave his head.  (Shaving off his hair is a last day of school tradition for he and Jake.)  I said "Um, no."

He asked "Why not?"

I said, "Do you not remember when I helped you last year?"

Last year was the first and last time that I helped him.  He had handed me the razor with the blade guard on the shortest setting and instructed me to "just start at the back and run the razor in rows over my head." I did what he said, but I have notoriously bad hand-eye coordination or WHATEVER, and by the time I was finished, his head kind of looked like this:

I had shaven him completely bald in spots, different lengths in others, and then just for good measure, I had left a few sporadic tufts of long hair to complete this stellar look.

It's pretty sad when you have to call a hairdresser to fix something that even Brittney Spears managed to do perfectly well all by herself.  Not only that, but there were probably a lot of Paparazzi bulbs flashing in Brittney's face, so it's likely she shaved her head blind.  I had two hands and two eyes, and I still botched it all up.  

Anyway, apparently Matt didn't remember any of this, so in order to not seem like a jerk, I had to start coming up with legitimate reasons for why I shouldn't shave his head.  The best one that came to mind was that in Kindergarten, my teacher Mrs. Stone, put me in the low reading group based solely on my ineptitude with scissors.  This was totally offensive to me at the time, because I was a good reader.  I knew I didn't belong with all the nose-picking babies didn't even know their ABC's.  However, back then, poor fine-motor skills were considered a sign of a slow learner, and there was no doubt about it.... the jagged rips and tears that zig-zagged across the dotted lines of my cut-and-paste worksheets screamed THIS CHILD WILL NEED RESOURCE SERVICES.

Eventually my teacher realized that I was a good reader and that my lack of small motor skills wasn't a sign of anything other than the fact that I'm just really, really bad with scissors.  So, she moved me up to the advanced reader group, where I began my lifelong love of reading, as well as a lifelong feeling of self-righteousness that washes over me whenever I recall this particular memory.  (Seriously.  Me in a low reading group? The woman could have at least apologized.)

Anyway, I explained all this to Matt, but when I looked up to see if he was convinced, I saw that he was asleep.

I'm taking that to mean that I'm off the hook.

However, I'm telling you all this because I am still terrible with scissors.  I know this about myself, yet that didn't stop me from attempting to trim my own bangs today.  They'd gotten really long and I told myself that it'd be okay, that I'd just follow my brow line from one eye to the next and that it'd all be lovely when I was finished.

And now I'm rocking' Jim Carey's look in Dumb and Dumber. 

What do you think?  Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, right?  

The worst part about all this is (besides explaining it to my hairdresser), is that Mrs. Stone was right all along.

I am a slow learner.