Tag: parenting

The kid turns 11, virgins in books, and stormy weather.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as sitting at my desk writing during a wailing pounding rain storm with a purring cat in my lap.  I’m almost not even worrying about the enthusiastic leak in the living room window caused by over 10 hours of rain pummeling all the south facing windows in the house.

Max turned 11 years old on Monday.  I’m not going to wax nostalgic at his disappearing little kid years cause, as most of you know, I enjoy seeing him grow older and don’t miss stages we’ve passed.  I’m enjoying my kid in the present and trying to stay there.  I try not to project into the future either because I find it unproductive.  I’m very zen about parenting at least five minutes a day.

Max requested that I make sure he doesn’t grow up to be a serial killer.  So we had a discussion about why I already know he isn’t going to be a serial killer.  It’s funny because back before I was staying in the present with my kid I used to worry about that exact same thing.  Raising a boy really scared me.  I’m still kind of scared of messing him up, obviously, but I work much harder not to focus on it.

He had a checkup last Friday and he’s doing well.  His medication is still working, his vitals are all good, and we’re not to worry about his weight gain because he’s “at that age” where boys apparently experience a lot of physical changes.  In other words the doctor was warning me that he’s about to hit THE HORMONAL STAGE.  Damn.  For his birthday he had his two best buddies for a sleepover (something I never let him do because it makes me hate all children to have three young boys in my house for more than 2 hours at a time, he’s usually only allowed one friend at a time for a sleepover) – anyway – I noticed one of his friends had B.O.  He’s 11 years old and his sweat is stinking!  Max’s still hasn’t started to smell “manly” but I get it – it’s what’s coming.

I’m reading a book right now that has made me realize that if a make-out session lasts more than one page I find it incredibly tedious.  I already knew I didn’t care for all the details of a character’s sexual encounters to be painted out for me, but I was reminded of this fact last night.  I will not read this author again because she has used the word “throbbing” in her sex scenes.  So now I just want to get the book over with.  If there’s another 3 page description of the “innocent” but eager virgin getting taught the glories and delights of being almost deflowered (manually, if you catch my drift) this indicates that I’m going to be treated to the ACTUAL deflowering event (oh joy) and I may just abandon the book.   I want to know what happens and until the word “swelling” was used to describe the state of the hero’s trousers the writing wasn’t bad and the story was interesting.   Bummer.  I’m branching out and trying new authors and new books.  I’m bound to find myself disappointed plenty.

-The Next Day-

My sister suggested I skip pages in books to avoid the shit I don’t want to read.  Brilliant-it has never occurred to me that I can do this.  I will try it.  Even so, I prefer not to read authors who write in a manner I find distasteful so I will not read more of this one.  At least I can finish this book without being further assaulted by the adventures of virginal nipples.

On our way to Portland we (my mom, sister, and I) engaged in a book discussion which was really interesting.  I have realized for some time that I work very hard to protect myself from the kinds of stories that make me angry or that go on to live uncomfortably in my head.  I used to read everything.  Everything.  Just trying new authors at this point is going out on a limb for me.  I have mixed feelings about this.  It makes me feel weak and stupid to only read books that I know will be enjoyable without depressing me or riling me up.  Like back when I chose to not watch the news anymore.  I did it for my mental health but it still made me feel stupid that I would have nightmares about the news all the time and be sunk ever-deeper into my already established state of depression and anxiety.

There is another side to choosing the limitations I do on my reading: ever since starting to write “The Winter Room” I have felt it is important not to allow much influence of other words in my head.  I’ve been re-reading all my favorites over and over because they are known and will introduce nothing to my psyche that wasn’t already there for a long time.  I feel it’s more important to keep my moods neutral as I read, keeping my reading enjoyable rather than life-changing.  That’s truly only a minor issue to me but still, it’s there.

I’m off to Portland again today.  I’m going with my sister, Max, Philip, and we’re meeting my brother there.  Max hasn’t seen his uncle in about five years.  We’re going to Powell’s books and then to the Kennedy School for lunch.  It’s still raining but not storming like it was yesterday.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

A Reconstruction of Events: The Apartment Fire

At 6:20pm on Tuesday the 18th of October, Max and I took Chick for a walk.  We cut through the apartment building complex parking lot off of 27th street (around the corner and visible from our house) to walk through the Rite Aid parking lot.  Max’s choice route.  We were talking about a Harry Potter Minecraft mod that Max thinks someone should create.

At the same time, two little girls were setting fire to toilet paper on their bed using a lighter.

At 6:30pm Max and I had circled around to the parking lot again, still talking about what cool Harry Potter items should be included in the imaginary Minecraft mod.  Just as we both said (simultaneously) “Dragons!” a tiny chihuahua made a big fuss over Chick from behind the chain-link of the apartment buildings to our right.  Chick whined pathetically to be allowed to play (or eat) the tiny chihuahua but we kept walking.  Just as we passed the next block of the apartment building we noticed thick black smoke pouring like acrid deadly vaporous water from the end ground-floor unit.  We stopped in our tracks.  Completely stunned.

Then we heard the windows of the apartment explode and a giant wall of flames shot up towards the second story.  I think we watched it for about two stunned seconds and then took the few steps to reach the sidewalk where a woman was shouting hysterically.  We asked urgently if everyone was outside.  She said both her kids got out safely but she was wailing that two of her pets, a rat and a weasel, were still inside.  I asked if she had already called 911.  Other neighbors were beginning to gather.  We heard sirens in the distance.  She was holding a small animal to her chest yelling about the animals left inside.

Max shrugged, looked up at me and said “Well?  Should I go in and get them?”  I looked at the front door of the apartment where black smoke was pouring out and I don’t know what I was thinking, I looked at how low it was to the ground in the apartment, as though considering Max’s request, and said “No, it’s much too dangerous.”  I would never have let him go in there.  It was curious to even be contemplating the logistics.  He asked me why he couldn’t go in, he may have said something about the fire being at the back of the apartment.  I told him that he didn’t know where the animals were and just breathing that smoke could kill him really fast.

We asked if there was anything we could do but the lady was just freaking out, the fire department had arrived.  We walked home.  Which took two secconds.  We made wishes for the trapped animals.  We felt very grave.

I got an idea.  Her little animal, whatever it was (I think it was a guinea pig) would eventually have to be set down.  We know what it’s like to have your house on fire.  You can’t stand around all night holding your pets.  You need a place to keep them safe.  We have pet carriers and I asked Max if he would come with me to bring them one of our pet carriers.  We grabbed Ozark’s carrier and ran back to the scene around the corner, which was now completely chaotic with neighbors watching and firemen filling hoses and cutting traffic off.  We headed for the woman with her pet and asked her if she could use the carrier for her pet.  We just wanted to help, we explained.  She waved wildly, she spoke incoherently, as one tends to do when fire is destroying your home, and eventually let us understand that her girls had their little dog over there (hazy waving in general other direction) and the dog was much more likely to need the carrier.

So we located the two little girls and then everything got surreal.

A drunk neighbor woman was attempting to soothe the scared crying girls.  She slurred and spoke somewhat wildly.  No one seemed to understand why we brought the carrier.  We kept trying to explain and then none of the adults would answer us, they kept asking us to repeat what we were doing and why we had the carrier.  It seemed they spoke a different language.  The drunk kept asking me where we lived and made a bizarre request for me to leave my name and phone number.  I got the feeling she wanted me to give them money later.  I explained that I was in no position to make “donations” to other people and once again explained that we were just trying to help out with the pets.  She continued to insist on me going into her apartment to leave my vital information.  The two other adults standing around (apparently not drunk) were completely unhelpful until at last the drunk insisted I follow the tattooed latino man named John into the apartment.  I was definitely not going to do that.

I picked up the case and said that if they didn’t need the carrier, that was fine and we made to leave.  Finally the other woman said “No, please, we can use that later” and so I stood back up.  Max asked what he could do.  He even told the two girls that he knew what they were going through because we’d been through it too.  When I made to leave Max asked me if he should stay with them.

As though I would leave him in such a situation!

The man named John followed me towards the sidewalk and told me not to mind the lady, that she was just really “emotional”.  No names and addresses required.  He then launched into paranoid speech about how no one had a right to ask questions about that fire.  In my head I felt that shrinking resignation that I always feel when listening to paranoid people, of which there are a lot in this little town, talk about what is and isn’t anyone’s business (nothing is anyone’s business, ever, obviously).  It makes me so tired and sad.

I don’t know what provoked it but at some point I patted the tattooed paranoid muscled stranger on the back and told him not to worry.  Later I wondered at my uncharacteristic behavior.  I never pat strange men on the back.  Ever.

Max and I walked home with the same sense of gravity and worry over the animals we worried would still be in the fire.

A sudden awful splitting headache tore my brain to pieces.

The emergency lights flashed through our windows for two hours.

Then I remembered that my son had seriously offered to go into a burning building to save a rat and a weasel.  I realized that I had to explain to him why he couldn’t do it because I knew he would do it if I didn’t give him a concrete and definite reason not to.  Just like the time when he was three and he didn’t want to hold my hand crossing the street.  He asked me why he had to do it.  I told him “Because it’s dangerous” and he kept asking “But what would happen?” and no answer I gave was enough reason for him to obey.  He wanted the truth.  Nothing less would do.  I didn’t want to tell my three year old that if he crossed the street by himself he could be hit and killed by a car.  I wouldn’t say it.

So he said “Is it because I’d be smooshed by a car?”  That told me a lot about my son.

The fact that my son’s first instinct on assessing the whole situation was to save the animals at his own risk, that if I’d said “Yes!  Let’s go get them!” he would have been game to rush into a burning building for those pets, that tells me almost all I need to know about the person I’m raising.  I am very proud of his instincts and the calm way he spoke with everyone and the way he so freely offered his help.

And that when I spoke of the incoherency of the drunk woman he pointed out that she was a very nice lady.  He’s right, it is more important that the lady was a kind neighbor to those frightened girls than that she had obviously been drunk before the fire even started.*  I agreed with him, she was a very kind soul.

Postscript:

I read the report of the fire and have since found out that ALL  the animals were rescued and that the fire was caused by the two little girls (ages 5 and 7) burning toilet paper on their bed using a lighter.

*It was not just the incoherency of her speech but the smell of old and fresh alcohol rising from her skin that tipped me off, if you’re at all curious.

Don’t be an Arrogant Parent

One of the most startling and unpleasant discoveries I made on becoming a parent is how many parents indulge in flattering themselves that everything good about their children is because of their parenting prowess.  If their kid is well behaved it’s because they don’t “let” their kids misbehave.  If their child is smart it’s because they’ve been reading to their kid since birth and played intelligent music for them and didn’t let them watch any poisonous television.  If their kids eat well it’s because they wouldn’t “let” their kids be picky.

It became immediately apparent to me as a new mom that what was troublesome about my child was troublesome because I wasn’t parenting him well and that all his amazing qualities were due to my good parenting.  Or, at least, that’s what other parents constantly implied.  It struck me that many parents I met had what I almost think of as a god-complex; that it is by the grace of their own hands that their children are good or bad, smart or dumb, sweet or mean, sinners or saints, well adjusted or a psychological mess.  All the recriminations of other people’s parenting styles and the self congratulatory comments on their own methods made me feel like I was sucked down a worm hole of unreality.

There are so many things that influence a human being’s development that I think it ridiculous for parents to believe that they raise their children in a bubble in which the only influence is themselves and that their methods, if they work on their own children, will work on all children universally.  It ignores the fact that children are as much individuals as adults.

Other influences on a child’s development:

Their own personality.

Their individual temperament.

The environment they are raised in.

How that environment works with the child’s personality and temperament.

Their physiognomy (brain function, neurological wiring, body function)

Other people.

Sibling dynamics or the effect of being an only child.

Culture.  The world outside.

Just because you made a baby doesn’t mean you are automatically a great parent and equipped to handle the challenge of parenting.  I know that I am ill-equipped for this challenge and I do the best that I can but  being a mother doesn’t make me some kind of god of wisdom.  Some women start off with temperaments better suited to dealing with the constant needs of children and others have to adapt to it more.  Just because you are doing well with your own child/children in no way means that you are capable of parenting all children well.  Just because you’ve found methods that work well for your own kids doesn’t mean you know anything about parenting other people’s kids.

Just because your kids seem well adjusted and happy now (and well behaved and good eaters and not overweight and completely mentally healthy…) doesn’t guarantee that they will continue to be so.  The totally well behaved 7 year old may turn into a pregnant substance abusing 15 year old.  There is no guarantee that you are raising a prodigy just because your kid is smart at 11 years old.

Arrogant parents do a great disservice to other parents, especially ones seeking advice or help.  The arrogant parent will give absolute advice and let it be known to you that if you try their advice and fail it’s because you failed at carrying it out.  This is an awful way to set up new parents.  I know, because I was there so many times and it turns out my kid is, as I knew he was from the beginning, not the least bit usual and doesn’t respond in any of the expected ways other parents implied he should and I spent so much time thinking that my kid was struggling because I was a shitty parent.  I know better now.  I realize that anyone reading this blog on a regular basis knows that periodically I write an “I suck at parenting” post.  These posts are inevitable because I am NOT arrogant.  I question myself constantly.  I ask myself “what am I not doing for Max?” and “Why is this method not working?” and “What shortcoming of my own is resulting in all of us banging our heads against the wall?” and asking these questions of myself is an important part of my parenting process.  Raising an unusual kid means that I never get to rest on my laurels (mostly because I don’t have any) or be smug about my parenting prowess.  My kid has special needs and they don’t allow me to rest for a second as a parent.  I have come to understand that part of parenting a special needs kid is to let off steam from time to time.  So I do.  Sometimes I need to thrash myself to get it out of my system.  Any regular readers also know that I come to the same conclusion over and over again: I am the best person I know to be parenting Max.  There are many “better” parents out there but I don’t know any in my acquaintance who could handle my son’s challenges better than I am doing.

What makes a good parent?  Obviously opinions on this vary wildly.  I don’t think any parenting method is inherently better or worse than any other (barring abusive parenting, obviously).  I don’t believe that my parenting methods are better than yours.  In fact, I’m sure they’re not.  In the beginning I might have looked at your kids and judged your parenting based on their behavior but that was a long time ago when I followed everyone else’s cues.  I know better now.  I know that how your child behaves is not necessarily a direct result of your parenting ineptitude or greatness.  It might be, but that’s not something I can know unless I know you very very well.  Even then, it’s not something I can be sure I know because I don’t parent your child.

What makes a good parent, in my opinion, is a parent who chooses their parenting methods based on who their child is as an individual.  A good parent will recognize when the boundaries and ideals they’ve set aren’t working well for their child and will try different methods and set different boundaries.  A good parent will not flog their child with ideals they think they SHOULD be following and blame the kid when it doesn’t work.  A good parent will recognize that if their own methods are working well it’s because they’re using methods appropriate for their child but if a sibling comes along and doesn’t fit the same mold, a good parent will adjust.  A good parent, like a good spouse, is flexible and evolves and seeks to make a life appropriate for the individuals in their family and not try to fit their family into some general ideal of family life.   A good parent doesn’t view parenting as a power struggle or as an autonomy in which your child must be made to be the person you want them to be.  A good parent sees their child’s strengths and builds on them.  A good parent sees their child’s challenges and stretches to meet them, to find the best way to help their child through them.

Arrogant parents give dangerous advice because they fail to acknowledge that what worked for them with their own kids might be disastrous with a different kid.  I keep this very much in mind when I find myself advising anyone on parenting, which, I don’t often do in the first place.  If asked my opinion I will tell another parent what has worked so far for Max and I try to emphasize that my methods may be worth trying in their own family but their kids aren’t Max and so it may not be as effective for their kids.  Parents need each other’s support and I think it’s truly valuable to discuss parenting methods with each other to get new ideas and to help us get through parenting challenges.  However, it is important that all parents acknowledge that kids are individuals and there is no one method that will work for all kids and for most of us there is no one method that will work for one child and that our best bet is to put together a unique set of boundaries, rules, routines, consequences, and rewards that suit our wonderfully different children.

As a parent of an almost-eleven year old, my best advice to new parents is:

Trust your gut over everyone else’s advice.

Have some humility.

 

Army Shootout: My 10 Year Old’s Animation

Come watch this animation at Mrgamesecrets
Come watch this animation at Mrgamesecrets

Philip finally figured out how to get Max’s stick figure animations onto youtube so he put the first one up on Max’s youtube channel (Mrgamesecrets).  Max may change his channel soon but would you all please go and watch this and subscribe to him so you can leave him comments?  It would mean a lot to him if you did.

Just click on the picture and it will take you there.

He made this.  I can’t make this.  Can you make this?  I think it’s very cool.  He still says he wants to be a game designer.  I think if he can do this at ten, he is on his way.

 

Under Water

 

What’s on my mind right now:

  • I worry that I’ve ruined my son by making him so comfortable and confident about being a person with mental illness that he has no motivation to work on his challenges and thinks that if people don’t like him exactly like he is then they can put a stick up their noses for all he cares.
  • My left hip has been hurting me for months now.  I rarely mention it to anyone unless I’m in a group of women discussing their hip replacements and pains.  Back of my head is the knowledge that it doesn’t matter if the joint degenerates and cripples me, I can’t get a hip replacement.
  • We still don’t know if we get to keep our house.  Silence from the bank is unsettling.  Philip keeps meaning to call for an update but I don’t think he wants to make the call in case it just means finding out we didn’t get approved for HAMP.  15 months of this uncertainty and counting.
  • My teeth need a major dentistry overhaul.  I apparently chose to take a vacation instead of taking care of my teeth and the gravity of that decision is only now sinking in.
  • When I don’t drink beer for four days it’s amazing how I’m just fine.  Except for the sleep thing.  It wasn’t really horribly bad until last night.  Last night was so bad I want to punch things today.  Insomnia alternating with nightmares.  Took me two hours to get to sleep, then when I did I kept waking up from the nightmares.  Nathan Fillion and I are no longer dream BFFs.  I will soon make an appointment with my doctor about the sleep thing because I’m committed to not drinking beer or any alcohol at least 4 days a week again.  It feels good.
  • Max’s eating.  Always there.  This anxiety.  I get so tired and give up.  Then I make a push for a while and sometimes get some fleeting results.  Then I’m exhausted and depressed from it so I give up.  The cycle is never ending.
  • Max’s sleep issues.  In our case the apple actually never fell from the tree at all, we’re apparently so much alike.  It makes me so sad.  So fucking sad that he should be at all like me.
  • Been feeling really depressed all summer.  It’s always like this in summer.  Worse than usual this year.  I’m really depressed all the time if I’m being totally honest.  Will talk to my doctor about this too.  I hate to have to up my medication.  Especially after what I experienced when upping my paxil.  I’m still wearing that consequence on my bones.
  • I’m being continually haunted by the first chapter in Jane Doe and know that the whole book has to be consistent with it.  I want to dive in.  I am feeling itchy to bury myself.  It’s calling out to me that it’s time.  It’s ready to be written.  Can’t scratch that itch.  Canning season is here, my family needs me, I can barely find the time to even cook anymore, work needs me, and my head is too cluttered.
  • I’m also scared of where that book is going to emotionally take me.  I know in my gut that it’s the one that’s going to scream the loudest if I don’t bring it out into the light.  It’s a dark dark place.  You can’t ignore what you were born to do because if you do the rest of your life will corrode around you.
  • Scared of how Max’s mind is practically an adult’s mind and yet his emotional state is younger than his years.  Scared of the stark divide between his toughness and his vulnerability.  I don’t know how to raise him.  I think I may already have ruined him.
  • Skin issues bother me and nag at my head.  My skin hates me.  Max’s skin is sensitive too.  Every time a mysterious rash appears or my athlete foot returns (I think that’s what it is) or rough patches show up I feel sharp anxiety as though it is the signal of the end.  Maybe a sign of the apocalypse I don’t even believe in or maybe a sign of physical decay or oncoming cancer.  I know it’s irrational.  That does not make me feel better.

Being a mentally ill mother is not a good gig.  I’m heartbroken when I realize the things I’m not doing for Max because I’m too tired to do it or too stressed to cope.  I should be enforcing more chores on him and creating more independence in him but his challenges mean that chores require 100% supervision from me and I don’t have the energy to do that when it’s so much easier and faster and less frustrating to just do things myself.  I know it’s a disservice to him but I just don’t have it in me.  So when people criticize him for being “lazy” and for not doing anything himself as though this is some terrible shortcoming in him I want to scream at them to leave him and his character the fuck alone because it’s MY FAULT AND MY SHORTCOMINGS they’re criticizing.

Then I just want to tell everyone to fuck off.

For god’s sake, this is not a cry for help.  This is just sharing.  Share back if you like but please don’t try to “fix” my problems.  I am not helplessly experiencing my life.  I have doctor’s appointments to make, I have sleep to try catching, I have my child’s therapist appointment to make.  I have medications to take and possibly more that are needed.  I don’t want a list of things I should do to help myself or my kid.  I’m a pro at being mentally ill.  I know that this is just part of the cycle.  I know how much in my head is irrational.  I know how much my brain blows up my worries, my fears, and my depression and projects them on the dirty back wall of my brain.

What I want is support.  What I want is to hear that others sink too.  I want to know that other parents drown under their responsibility.

I want to not be alone with all this in my head.

 

My Deliverance Approaches

Even the garbage is more colorful in California.

My head is a messy messy place today.  My internet connection is crawling like a swimmer with no limbs through sludge.  This makes doing my work very difficult.  I have repressed 5 screams and the urge to smash all the electronics in the house.  Nothing’s really wrong but I have feelings of panic and dread.  Which come in waves and then go.  This chipmonk is getting itchy to hoard food for the winter but books don’t publish themselves and so I have to compile a list of agents to query and get on that elevator going up cause this vestibule I’m standing in right now is getting very dull and dusty.

I was just chatting to a friend and my brain spat out “nipple clamps” into our chat.  I’d really like to know why that was hanging out in my head.  I was not aware of it until it was enjoying itself in my chat window.  I think it was a reaction to seeing too many cupcakes and listening to too much talk about fluffy babies and the Lord God today.  My head likes to keep things in balance.  If you think about it, nipple clamps are a perfect balance to cupcakes, babies, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Southerners and nipple clamps.

See?  That was the next evolution of that offering.  Care to speculate on how many southerners are into nipple clamps or if southerners are in any way metaphorically similar to nipple clamps?  What the hell is my brain trying to say?

School will start in a couple of weeks which I’m so happy about.  The season of ZERO structure and my kid falling apart because of it (I cannot provide structure and work at the same time).  Although Max loves being out of school because school is work and he doesn’t like to have to work, he responds very poorly to loose or no structure to his days.  Whatever works for your own kids I totally trust you to know.  My friends aren’t usually the ones who question me on this but I do know that there are parents out there who are sure that if their kids thrive on a three month break from early bedtimes, early wake-up times, well defined periods for specific activities every day, as well as times set out to eat and get exercise then all kids must thrive on a three month break from all that rigid structure.

My kid needs rigid structure.  In an ideal world I wouldn’t have to work for a living and could actually provide this structure when he’s home for the summer like I did for him from the time he was born until he was five years old (which is when we moved and then had the store and basically was the end of my stay at home days though technically I “stay at home” to work you’d be amazed how hard it is to take care of a kid who’s home while trying to examine written content and be a meticulous employee.)

Unless you do as I do.  In which case you know EXACTLY how hard it is.

Add to that a kid whose eating habits are a constant strain, who has to have a parent running interference between him and his friends and the world, all the little details that have to be just so, the difficult mood swings, and the narrow field of interests and you have a parenting situation that is uneasy for 16 hours a day.

When he’s in school (well, not for most of last year, I admit) his mind is engaged, his activities are focused, his mood swings are less focused on ME, he gets more naturally tired, he grows more, he is a lot easier to be around.  Last year was the most difficult school year he’s had.  Until he transferred to the charter school.

I CAN NOT WAIT FOR SCHOOL TO START AGAIN.

We are all so much better off with structure and cooler weather and BREAKS FROM EACH OTHER.

While I was away Max agreed to go rafting on Yamhill river.  This turned into THE WORST DAY OF HIS LIFE AND A PROMISE TO NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN.

For a kid who is already at high risk of becoming agoraphobic, this is serious.

To soothe all that ails me I am reading “Venetia” by Georgette Heyer.  As soon as I’m done working I plan to plop right down and read some more.  Maybe when the air has cooled off I’ll go do some forms.  I must take it slowly because of that muscle I kind of pulled on my trip.  I think it’s mostly healed now.  Soon life will return to order and a slightly more peaceful version of itself.

 

Vacation, Business Cards, and Raising the Next Tarantino

I leave tomorrow morning for Southern California.  I have not gotten my business cards yet.  I really need them.  The package requires a signature.  This is one of those times when I really wish I had a doorbell.  And maybe that I didn’t have a ghetto gate instead of a proper and easy way to get to the front door.  Which we actually don’t use.  Everyone uses the kitchen door.  In order to encourage the mail-person to come knock on the “front” door I must be sure the dogs are locked inside.  Especially Chick who will hurtle herself over ten feet walls to get at anyone daring to enter our yard.  Only twice in three years has any mailman been brave enough to enter the ghetto gate to actually knock on the door.

So I hope it’s fairly clear why I’m feeling a little anxious this morning.  I’m writing a note to the mail-person right now explaining that I will die of shame if I go to the Blogher conference yet again without business cards.  It is the height of ridiculous to go to a networking event without cards.  If the mailperson doesn’t get a signature he’ll take them back to the post office after he’s done with his route and it won’t really be available to me until tomorrow for pick up.  But I’ll already be on a flight out of town.

The biggest blessing is that it’s not supposed to be hot while I’m in Southern CA.   It’s almost as if the universe heard my pleas and decided to give me a break.  Now that I’ve said that I’m sure a surprise inferno will streak across San Diego and Santa Monica.

In other news, we met up with my friend Taj and her partner Joey at the Kennedy School while they were in town last weekend and we had a great time!  Max and Philip came with us and Max made them a little comic.  It’s very violent, of course.  Joey posted it on Reddit and it’s gotten a ton of comments.  Both good and bad.  Lots of it is amusing.  If you want to see it you can check it out:

Max Asserts That Ice Cream is Superior to Cheese

Here are some things people are saying about it.

I’m really surprised by some of the comments about how kids can get arrested for drawing pictures like this.  It’s my opinion that the more you repress the expression of violence the more you encourage actual violence.  Being able to express it, apply humor to it, and understand its place in our world, the less likely you are to need to exert actual violence.  I really don’t think that most of the world’s most violent criminals and monsters drew violent comics prior to committing heinous crimes.  I don’t believe it’s an indication of maladjustment.  It’s surreal that all those people are talking about MY SON.  I may need to become a member of Reddit just so I can take part in the conversation.

So what do you think?  Is he the next Tarantino or the next Columbine kid?

OR the next Jim Henson?

Wilkins Coffee Commercial

Seriously, get a load of that violent puppet persuasion.  (“If you don’t drink this coffee you will be blown up…” yowza!  And notice how parents across the states feel damn warm and fuzzy about him? )

Well, I have some sewing to do so I’m off.

Electrocution

I was electrocuted yesterday.  I didn’t see it coming.  There were signs.  For one thing, Armageddon failed to impress, so obviously something else bad needed to happen to the sinners like myself, and what better than a little sudden frying of flesh?

This guy saw it coming and was actually trying to send me a warning message telepathically which, afterwords, I translated as “Don’t touch that fence.  Seriously, lady, that wire is charged.  Are you a fucking idiot to not listen to me?  Stop- don’t- yeah.  You’re dumber than a pile of pellets.”  It HURT.  It was startling and weird.  I’ve had little shocks a couple of times before but this went THROUGH me, buzzing.  It was also embarrassing.  Naturally I immediately had to tell someone.  So I told my mother, who was waiting at some distance from the goats with her salivating dog, that I’m as dumb as a pile of pellets.  I patted her on the back and told her not to sob too hard over all her shattered hopes and dreams for me.  There are still group homes and rousing games of Go Fish for people like me.

All those farmers who say their fences aren’t charged strongly enough to hurt their animals are lying.  I realize that those fences are effective, but don’t tell me they don’t hurt cause they do.  All this excitement took place at Max’s charter school.  These windows you see above are his school building which is located on some church property behind which is goat pasture.  He goes to school in the real countryside in an old decrepit gymnasium.  It’s not for everyone but as Max pointed out, we’re a funky family.  School ends for him in three days.  He’s been going for two and a half months and he claims not to have had a single bad day at school.  I’m a realist and know he’ll have them at some point, but it’s looking like he might not have his first bad day there until next year.  Is it weird that I’m not sure if he’s graduating as a fifth or a sixth grader?  Yes.  We’re hardly living a usual life and this kind of stuff happens in irregular lives all the time.  He’s been doing some high school math, apparently.  And he may be ten years old entering seventh grade.  I was 12 years old entering 7th grade.  The kid will do alright.

A little suddenly, we’ve decided that we can just afford for me to go to Blogher 2011 in San Diego.  I wasn’t going to push to go, originally, because I am allergic to southern California.  It’s the land of eternal and purgatorially perpetual sunshine.  It’s bright as HELL down there unless the smog is especially thick and then you can’t even go outside unless you want to get instant cancer.  They have this thing called Santa Ana winds which blow 120° gusts of wind at you and fry your skin until it feels like cracklins.  I know whereof I speak.  I have been to southern California many many times.  I have family down there and consequently, most summers, we took a family trip down to LA hitting La Costa, Carlsbad, and San Diego.    I have many poignant memories of our Ford Van crawling up the grapevine, me counting the number of smoking cars on the roadside that broke down because their radiators couldn’t take the crazy pounding heat, me imagining us breaking down and a week later the highway patrol finds our vulture picked sun-bleached bones.  When we reached the top and saw Los Angeles sprawling like a malignant sore across the landscape we saw it through visible waves of heat rolling across the road.

On the other hand, my sister has made her home in Los Angeles (she refuses to live her life according to the comfort of my skin) and that’s only a couple of hours from San Diego.  I couldn’t possibly go down to the mouth of hell just for a Blogher conference, but the chance to see my sister was enough to tip the balance.  So I’m going.  Even though I promised I would never travel again as a fat person.  Nor see all those cute pretty women looking chic and getting drunk while my stomach protrudes farther out than my boobs.  Being fat in hot weather is definitely the worst, the humidity in New York definitely made me look like a really creepy sausage person with a sheen, but I had so much fun anyway.  So I caved to my desire to take part in the panels and to see my workmates and bosses.  I caved to the overwhelming desire to have a week away from my family, all to myself, with my camera, walking until my shoes fill with blood and I wash them in beer (or maybe the Pacific Ocean).

I’m going.  I’ve already been doing things to take better care of myself in general and this trip has given me the push I need to make greater strides.  Before this sudden decision to go, I weighed myself.  I haven’t done so in months because I know what I’ve been eating and drinking and I wasn’t eager to find an excuse to hate myself.  Kindness seemed like not knowing too much and working blind to improve my self discipline.  I was surprised to find that I had not reached my highest weight again, or if I did (who can say what truth the scale may have revealed in January?) my recent efforts have kept me 13 lbs under that depressing top weight.  This was pleasing.  But what’s better is that in the past 5 days I’ve lost more weight.  Exercise + less cheese + less beer = less weight.  That’s an equation that nearly always works.  But do any of you remember all those years when I was plugging in the factors and coming up with this: exercise + less cheese + less beer = 20 lbs weight gain?  When I gained weight no matter what I did I seemed to constantly spiral downwards emotionally and upwards weight-wise.  So regardless of whether or not I maintain the self discipline necessary to lose weight, what is uplifting is that my body is working like it should again.  I have not forgotten (and if I’m being honest, I am still traumatized) all those years of frustration when my body wasn’t doing what it should have been doing.  Paxil did me many great services (sleeping at night even though an earthquake could happen at any time is a luxury I didn’t have before paxil) but that weight gain was evil and has damaged my self esteem severely.  I’m recovering.  Things are behaving the way they should scientifically behave.  I’m making effort and seeing results.  This gives me hope.  It is a world I understand.

After so many times I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and put the boxing gloves back on here in public only to fall flat on my face again, I’m reluctant to discuss it over-much.  I’ll probably be fat the rest of my life.  I’m not going to record the minutiae of my efforts here with regards to food and weight.  Not unless there’s some philosophical angle I’m thinking about.  I just thought I owed it to long time readers and friends to report that there really was something working against me all those years that was out of my control and if I do stay fat now, it’s definitely my own doing, and I can live with that.  But all those times I complained, railed, cried, and pounded the walls in frustration and gave up and resumed poor habits because- why not?, that wasn’t because I was failing myself.  I think I spend enough time taking responsibility for myself, for my life, for my mishaps, that it’s a relief, for once, to know that something WASN’T MY FAULT.

I’m amazingly sore today from practicing forms and walking distances.  It’s good to be sore from physical efforts that my body craves.  I love walking more than any other exercise.  I walk fast, in case you don’t know that from the personal experience of walking with me.

I need a striped sun hat.  The kind you can crush in your luggage and reconstitute.

I am really happy that the death penalty is now administered by lethal injection in most places.  Not that I’m a big fan of capital punishment, in general.  I am a fan of it in very very limited circumstances which I’m not going to explain right now.  Electrocution is truly ghastly.  Farm animals everywhere think we humans suck.  Oh, for so much more than the electric fences.  Our crimes are huge, but that one, that one is such an insult.  I get it.  I’m with the goats.  I’ve always loved goats.  I now think they may be smarter than humans.

Simple Mothering©

I don’t know what all the fuss is about, if you follow a few simple steps, kids practically raise themselves.

People ask me all the time “Wow, Angelina, you’re such a great mother.  Can you tell me your secrets to Simple Mothering©?”  Today, in honor of Mother’s Day, I will share a few of my secrets to Simple Mothering© free of charge!

  1. I feed my child EVERY SINGLE DAY.
  2. I only hit him when he’s really annoying and NEVER out of anger.
  3. I never neglect him when I don’t have something better to do.
  4. I let him speak his mind whenever I’m in the mood to listen.
  5. I only give him certified 100% recycled plastic straws for toys.*
  6. If there’s only one cupcake left I will always eat it myself, teaching him discipline.
  7. We avoid all schooling.**
  8. I never raise my voice to my child, unless he’s not listening.
  9. I only use restraints for his own safety.
  10. I only give in to his wishes when he no longer cares, this prevents a sense of entitlement in him and saves me tons of energy and money.

It’s all well and good to share these easy Simple Mothering© techniques with you, but it’s meaningless unless you can hear for yourself how successful I am, and what better way to demonstrate this to you than to let my son tell you, in his own words, what makes me a great mother:

“I love my mother because she never makes the restraints too tight.  I can get out whenever I want, if she’s in the mood and doesn’t have any guests over.”

AND

“My favorite thing about my mom’s Simple Mothering© method is that I know exactly what starving kids in China feel like, so my mom never has to give me boring lectures about finishing my daily meal.”

And if that doesn’t convince you, there’s more!

“My favorite thing to do is pretend that my straws are Legos and Bionicles.  It keeps me happy for hours and I almost never get them stuck on my tongue or up my nose.”

So stop making such a fuss over mothering and follow my Simple Mothering© method today, contact me for price and details!

*They’re CHEAP, they’re more or less safe, and I believe that kids should be put in a situation where ALL their play is forcibly creative and none of their ideas are supplied by overly-designed products or crafts that may inadvertently or intentionally turn children into crappy human beings.

**We simply got tired of all the arguments for and against every method of schooling out there, including the allways fascinating “un-schooling” which sounds a lot like our method of avoiding school but is actually a very rigidly undirected method of education that I find much too stringent.  If you’re tired of all the parents bitterly arguing about how to properly educate children, simply don’t educate them at all!  It saves time, it gives them plenty of room to decide for themselves what level of achievement is right for them, and best of all, you don’t have to argue with ANYONE!

Disclosure:  Results may vary.


Here is what Max really says about why he likes me for a mother:

“You’re not overly careless, but not overly strict.  You’re not all yell-y when your kid does something wrong.  You’re smooth-going.  You don’t pressure your kid, you know, to do a certain job.”

Well, no one, NO ONE, besides my kid has EVER called me smooth-going.  I must be doing something right with him!

All Night Writing Jags: otherwise known as “the death of me”

Yesterday doesn’t exist for me.  I blot it out as the lost day.  Day of no brain.

Oh, except that when I woke up at 11:40am I hustled my butt out of the house in a completely unwashed state to get on my bicycle and meet two good friends for a brown bag lunch on the library benches.  I didn’t inform them that I was unwashed but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have looked less dubious than if I’d just gotten in from 24 hours of travel with an unintended overnight layover at JFK with no where to sleep.  I looked that good yesterday!  I didn’t actually have time to make my own lunch which I had intended to do so, like a modern day moron, I stopped by the “health food” store downtown for a sandwich.

My sandwiches are so much better than theirs.

I had a lovely chat with Lucy and Nicole about dreaded symphylans (a terrible soil pest the Pacific Northwest is noted for) and how it has been recently discovered that potatoes are poisonous to symphylans but symphylans are as attracted to eating potatoes as diabetics are to buckets of sugar.  This is a completely useful discovery because now instead of having to not plant anything in your symphylan-rich ex-strawberry bed for years, you just plant potatoes.  The symphylans feast on your potatoes and die and the soil is cleaned up.  I forgot to ask Nicole if symphylans are tasty to eat.  Can I eat the potatoes or will they be rendered disgusting?

I wouldn’t want to blot out my great lunch.

The problem with yesterday is that I stayed up until 4:30am on Sunday because I’m a middle aged party animal.  There was a keg, underwear on the flagpole, and several Tom Cruise worship stations.

It would be so awful if anyone actually imagined that in their heads.

I have been experiencing a little writer’s block, apparently.  I have all the information I need to get moving with my third draft of Cricket and Grey* and yet I have not been able to begin the rewrite of chapter one.  The rest of the book needs polishing and cleaning but chapter one needed a complete rewrite.  So on Sunday I woke up and said to myself “I will not go to sleep until I have written 5,000 words into chapter one” and promptly got busy writing a post for Stitch and Boots instead.

One pm rolled around and I had to chain myself to my desk and shut down my blogs and just get to it.  And I did.  It took me at least 4 hours just to write a second paragraph which I ended up scratching because it sucked.

Truth be told, the whole rewrite of chapter one is pretty questionable.  The main thing is that I held myself accountable and I did not go to sleep until I had written 5,034 words.  I crashed into bed (full of beer too because I couldn’t keep the brain ticking without it) and didn’t wake up the next day until almost noon.

I went to bed at eleven last night with the idea that I’d get loads of good sleep and wake up early-ish to get my job done so I would have a little time to get right back into the novel writing.  I did not get good sleep.  I had nightmares in which I couldn’t breath while trying to catch very bad people doing very bad things.

I’m not exactly rested.  For some reason, I am feeling just fine anyway.

I already said this on facebook so some people have already heard me express concerns about this, but I want to say here that I don’t think it was a good idea for Prince William to give Kate his mother’s engagement ring.  I’m all for handing family jewels down and for not buying new diamonds when there are plenty of antique ones to buy on the market, but I think if you know a ring was given to a woman by a man who didn’t love her and who went on to have a long term affair with another woman, and if that recipient of the ring went on to divorce the man who gave it to her (after having her own affairs, incidentally, being far from innocent in the “marriage”) and then died in a car crash with a controversial lover, maybe that isn’t a ring with the best luck.

It seems that the royal wedding is getting a lot of people twitterpated.  That’s all I have to say about that.

Max’s school is working out really well.  We’re on week three and he hasn’t started the whole “I hate school” discussion we used to have every day.  He comes home pretty happy, tells me he isn’t getting in trouble, and goes to his room to work on his animation.  My boy is animating his violent stick figure cartoons!  It’s amazing!  So now he spends about half the time playing video games that he used to and spends that time MAKING little videos.  It is way too cool to see his passion, which many view as a negative soul destroying activity, be turned into a creative outlet for him as well.

I think there’s a bigger life lesson in here: whoever you are, whatever your passions may be, there are positive, neutral, and negative ways to channel and express them.  So instead of worrying about the interest or passion itself, find a healthy way to channel it.

Warriors can find ways to express their need for combat that don’t have to involve hurting actual people.  For the record- I am not one of those people who thinks video games are evil.

But I will say that if Philip sat around playing video games all the time I would not be very attracted to him because grown men who spend most of their free time playing video games are a serious turn-off to me.  It makes them seem adolescent and I’m not interested in feeling more like a parent to my spouse than a contemporary.

I am about to ride my bicycle to meet Max and Philip for a doctor’s appointment.  It’s gorgeously sunny but cool out.  My whole day has been elevated in status from pretty good to pretty fucking fantastic because a close friend of mine who I ADORE but don’t see often just randomly stopped by and brought me an enormous bowl of eggs from her mother’s chickens.  Most are the sweetest small banty eggs like we had growing up from our little Cochen banties Molly, Madeline, and George.  It’s not the eggs that truly elevated my day but my friend’s gorgeous smile and the surprise of seeing her.

Chick was beside herself with excitement because Laurie profoundly loves animals and Chick knows it.

I hope you all get the equivalent of a bright visit from a friend or a bowl of homegrown eggs or just a little dose of sun if that’s what it takes to make an okay day become something wonderful!

*Which is not what the actual title of the book will be.  That’s just what I call it now because I don’t have a title yet.  I’ll tell you what it WON’T be called: Moon Over Minneapolis.