Vacuum Salesman And Veggie Gardens

It was a long day, lots of things got sorted out in the garage, piano lessons got plonked out in the living room, video games got played and school was worked through. I got a little bit more work done on the veggie garden I am putting in and I am feeling optimistic about our chances of getting some real food out of it. I have a little more to plant and the boys are all itching for their own gardening plots too so there is still more hacking of weeds to come. Handily, some of what is growing all vigorously all over the beds is delicious wild chickweed. Free salad! Have to come up with a way to harvest it all and not have boys stomp it to bits afterwards. Maybe I run out in the early morning before they are up?

After dinner tonight an Afghani vacuum cleaner salesman talked his way into the house and gave an in depth cleaning session to our living room carpets while I washed up dishes, A finished his evening tele-commute and I read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to the boys in their beds while the carpet man grinned and vacuumed in the background. I experimented with exercises in holding boundaries and said kindly, "No, we don't want your vacuum, yes, we see that it works well, thank you for the demo but no, no, really...no." And smiled and smiled and smiled. After the spiel wore out, the Aghan man told me wistfully that he has triplets at home, plus one more child and that he has been here in California just about as long as we have. I hope he's home now with his family, enjoying some rest finally. He and his sales partner were out on the curb waiting for their corporate pick-up van for a long time after we locked up and hit the lights. Its strange to think of his wife out there somewhere in the dark, making a new home here like me, taking care of four, crazy kids like me and wondering what time her husband will be done working...like so many of us. Life is universal, all of us are treading this wheel together, be we tired salesman or unwilling customer.

Things That Matter

We are working and working on settling in....I keep taking more things out to the garage again, we keep finding spots for things to live, this week I put up some pictures on the walls and the boys and I bought bulbs (science, you know) and double used them as biology lesson and garden improvement. The garden has suffered, the whole yard has from vigorous tiny-male use and motherly neglect while I have been working on the inside. So many balls to juggle.

Last night something gave and I stayed up....way past my bedtime...I snapped and washed every single dish in the whole house, then swept the floor, then wiped down the counters and polished the stove. And then, I had a cup of tea.

And then I got out my paints in the quiet glow of the office and I made colors swirl together and image magically appear on the blank page...until about 3am. So beautiful, so feeding, so irresponsible. Tonight I am going to bed early.

Boxes matter, dishes matter, gardening matters, school work matters....but painting in a silent house with a mug of tea beside you matters too.

Exhausted In The Autumn

So tired tonight, y'all. So tired. Also....it is 30 minutes past midnight and maybe that has something to do with it.

A and I have been slowly making shifts in our marriage and parenting plans...most of which are about more equality, more honesty, more acceptance. The upside is that I am getting more concrete help around the house, and being more verbal and truthful about what I need. The downside is that these California Weeks are SO MUCH HARDER!!!! Its amazing how much support one other grown-up who truly cares about you can be after a day of complete immersion with kids. Children are drowning in the drama and stress of growing and learning and being small and wanting to be big. Its super draining to be around. My poor sister Lockbox has been kind of shell-shocked by the enormity of living with that whole business.

After marinading in all that crazy, its immensely powerful to have another human adult be with you at the end of the day when the house is finally quiet. Its out of sight to have another human who washes the dishes while you put boys in pajamas, who turns down the bed while you put in a load of wash, who makes you a mug of tea while you change into pajamas. The thought of having that again after these California Weeks makes me cry....every single time.

Tonight is just one of those nights. I cried on the phone with A. I cried after I hung up. I am too tired, and I will feel better after I sleep. Also I am hormonal which never helps. (Must drink balancing herbal teas!) But truth, guys....being loved and supported is such a wonderful and important thing for me. I feel very lucky and can't believe that it took this long in our marriage to figure this out. Life is weird.

Tonight, as I tuck myself in and enjoy my starfish sleep positions....I'm sending out mad, mad props to you single mamas. You are heroes....I have no idea how you do it. Wanna grab coffee?

Golden Days On The Mend

Spending lots of time at home today. Nib has a ridiculous predilection to carsickness and this morning I briskly bundled him into the car to rush off to a bible study and ended up paying the price for my rumbledy driving holding his head over a toilet in the nearest rest area. So much for that outfit. I am really hoping that it turns out to just be a one-off, motion-sickness incident although I do hear that there are tummy bugs about. Boo. 

 On the upside, the weather is absolutely perfection and he felt totally normal again after a morning of work in the garden in which I weeded the strawberries within an inch of their life and the boys completely dismantled the brick wall in another part of the garden. Vitamin D is worth a certain price. I'm awfully glad that dry stacked walls can be re-stacked.

 We've been picking pears off a roadside pear tree that I discovered not far from the house, the flavor is wonderful and they are great treats for tossing in the car as we head off to baseball practices. They're also nice in the juicer, which means we can even find uses for the cracked ones that split when they fall from the highest branches of the tree.

I realize that sounds amzingly Ma Ingalls of me but it truly isn't. It takes no time at all to stop for five minutes and pick pears up off the grass and I haven't canned a single, darned thing this year even though I meant to with deepest intention. This is year two of my great hiatus from tomato sauce and canned peaches. We didn't even pick one peach this year.

 All the things in the vegetable garden were looking a bit past so I trimmed them all down a bit, thinking that I was beginning the autumn clean-up. There was a lot of material for the compost pile and some of the plants (the tomatoes for instance) were trimmed down to mere shadows of themselves. I was totally shocked to go out today and discover that they have all rebounded and flushed new growth such that they look like big full plants again. We are having a second round of produce! There's new leaves on the kale, the tomatoes are blossoming again and even the dahlias have begun  blooming all over. Never give up.

 We laid low today, skipped most of our lessons, read library books, took extra naps, played in the sunshine and watched Cheaper By The Dozen for the first time. I hate feeling anxious about the spread of germs and worrying about being behind but I do like the comfort of knowing that we are masters of our own schedule and if we so deem, we can take a day. I keep reminding myself that this is one of the biggest reasons why we homeschool. I cherish that lucky gift.

 I was just texting A and telling him to hurry soon (he's working late tonight) because any little family emergency is so much better with two. Isn't that the truth? Its so much better to go through crazy with someone who loves you. We have had real troubles in our marriage but I can honestly say, that we both feel that way about each other these days. Sometimes you need to stick it out, put in your time, read, grow, change and get help with wildly tenacious energy. I feel incredibly lucky to be going through life with someone that is a problem solver and a grower.

 I am off to kids club now, running all the non-sick ones off to enjoy their little pals and hoping that we have a quiet evening here at home. May the germs abate, may the hope rise and may you feel that you are over the hump! Happy Wednesday!

Ru, Right Now.

Time to have a son-hunt...peer through the minutia of details that make up my oldest and figure out what is new and different, what hasn't been mentioned, what's unique and what is important in his world. Things change, lets notice, shall we?

Ru Likes:

• The color lime green: His surprising new favorite. I was totally taken aback when he told me. I had no idea. It was red for the longest time.
• Frozen yogurt joints: This is one of his favorite solo outing locations. The frozen yogurt bars with pump your own machines and a long  buffet of toppings are popping everywhere around here lately so they make handy places to bop in and have some quality one on one. 
• Friends: This kid is always pushing us to get out there and get connected. He's an immediate fan of going to anyone's house or meeting anyone at the park and is always asking when is the next chance to have a friend over. Love it. 
• Hugs: This kid can't get enough physical connection. He's my oldest and still one of the snuggliest. A (who is teaching math at our house) has figured out that the best way to sweeten the dreaded subject is to reward hard work on a section with a snuggle session on Daddy's lap. Love that he holds my hand when we are out and about and comes up for a squeeze whenever he thinks of it. I hope he holds onto his love for affection and warm touch. 
• Leave It to Beaver: You can thank me. I introduced him and now his brothers and Lockbox are subjected to an instant suggestion of, "What About Leave It To Beaver???" whenever we get a few minutes to watch a little show. They are not fans. Oops.
• Combing his hair in funky ways: I think I need to buy him some gel. He's old enough anyway...every morning I have "comb your hair" as part of each boy's morning routine and he got really excited about it when he realized that meant he could comb it however he wanted. Almost every morning when he goes up to brush, he comes down with a new part or a zany do. Have to take pictures of them and post a collection. We have a Crazy Hair Day coming up this semester in our co-op we are part of....I think he'll be pretty pleased. I see him nailing it.
• What Does The Fox Say: I have a pre-teen. He looks and sounds just like a pre-teen when "his song" comes on....more so when he has guy pals rockin' along with him in the car to this insanely ridiculous song. 

Ru Detests:

• The word "sassy:" We have been having a challenge with getting him to remember to make respectful word choices and remember to use a polite tone of voice. Somewhere along the line I picked up this word and reflexively use it to remind him. Somehow its like nails on a chalkboard. He hates that word, I'm trying to walk a line between remembering to use a word that he isn't so reactive to (rude, inappropriate, disrespectful) and trying make sure he remembers to be polite even when I do use the word sassy. Tricky stuff, this parenting gig.
• Spaghetti squash: At our house spaghetti night means spaghetti squash with the customary pasta fixins. Ru has taken to skipping the squash which he claims gives him a headache (tall tale? Hmm) and just eating the meatballs, sauce and cheese. I hated all squash as a kid and he still eats other kinds with impunity so I feel bested. 
• Making his bed: He has a top bunk. Making bunk beds is the worst. I hated it that part whenever I slept in a bunk bed and I hated it all through the years when he couldn't make his own bed yet and I was making his bunk bed. Making bunk beds is the worst.
• Having his nails clipped short: Every time I trim his nails he's after me to be sure to leave him a little extra space. I even bought him a nail brush so that he could keep his slightly longer nails clean. Maybe he's destined to be a classical guitarist? I wouldn't cry.
• Readers: He's learned to read and he realizes that "readers" are dumbed down fake books with thin to no storyline. He recognizes that giant print and the absurdly clipped words and he's not down with that and he's no dummy. Time for real books. Big boy stuff, yo.
• Mosquitoes: I mean, who doesn't, right? But, seriously...he's my paranoid skeeter man at the moment. Maybe its living in our yard where we have somehow managed to cultivate a special environment friendly to mosquitoes, they descend in clouds in the late afternoon. He's our bug repellent guard dog, anytime he notices bugs biting he runs in and gets the spray to douse his brothers and himself and then when that particular stage of the evening arrives where they become irrepressible he shoos his brothers inside because he doesn't want anyone chewed up. Love his vigilance.
• Strict People: Some people thrive with structure and love people who make the firm lines clear to them. Some people respect leaders who are disciplined, and then some people feel like those kinds of adults are walking around with a stick up their rears. Ru really doesn't like extra stern folks, extra strict people and people who are very hard-line about rules. If you can't loosen up, you might not end up on his favorites list. The idea of martial arts has kind of faded after visiting a class we thought we'd put him in around the corner with a very strict, traditional teacher, direct from Japan. Ru blanched and said, "Um. How about skateboards?"

Band-Aid Thief

I am a pretty stern hand with the bandaids at our house. I know its an American expectation that kids be given character bandaids every time they bump their shins. I'm mean. I insist on blood before there be handing out of bandages. Stickers are stickers, bandaids are bandaids. When Nib was in the hospital this past spring I relaxed my rule and let the nurses give him as many bandaids as they wanted to try to cheer him up. Mostly, he's back to my standard procedures but every once in a while I find those little plastic tabs on the floor and wonder where he put the contraband bandaid. I just found one of them. Sweet, sly boy.

Upright

New this week: Pom is an upright sort of a person! He can sit up for a short period of time and he's sturdy enough to be slung on a hip while standing at the window or stirring dinner. This is a good development...he's getting really heavy! He's also a grab-machine. This afternoon while I was trying to eat lunch and stopped to pour the two year old some water, Pom took the opportunity to grab my fork off my plate and throw it across the table excitedly. Love watching him discover the world. He's high on crinkling paper munching, curtain waving and slobbery kiss-giving right at the moment. Soaking it all in....Happy Weekend Y'all!

Double Peace

Am back to the drawing board, looking for ways to find the margin and buffer I need to lubricate my life. I have been trying to get up early in the morning and find a little private space before the family gets up. But after a long time battling the urge I am finally admitting that I kind of need space at each end of the day. Last night I had a yoga class and came home after a wonderful meditation session, my spirit warm to touch and went right to bed like a good girl.

 And then I got back out of bed.

And came downstairs.

I wasn't up for long but I needed to be alone. I needed to hear the crickets out the window, to swish the broom alone by myself, to see the cleared and wiped down table gleam in the moonlight and to hear the tiny squeaking conversations of the guinea pigs in the other room and the drip of the tabletop fountain without the sound of any human voice, even to just lie on the floor on my back and listen to the hum of the house itself and feel the boards cool under my hands.

I'm not sure how that works out...the space at both ends of the day thing but I think I'm gonna try to find a way. I love the chance to prepare for a day alone but it doesn't replace my almost desperate urge to recover from a day that just pounded me or even jostled me about in a friendly sort of way. I love the chance to feel myself, to see peaceful emptiness and the recover a little before being asked to rest. I hate lying in bed next to A while he drifts off promptly when there is a sink full of dirty dishes downstairs and I know full well that the potty chair didn't get emptied out. This is about completing work and making sure my slate is wiped clean but its also about psychological recovery and mental space and letting my inner self come creeping out and go pirouetting around in the moonlit rooms when everyone else is asleep. 

I think part of the problem is that by morning Pom has almost invariably ended up in our bed and when I try to sneak out of bed in the morning I often end up taking him with me because otherwise he wakes up the whole household wailing for me. Good to be wanted but...yeah. I do miss my candle-lit reading hour, just me alone curled up on the couch while the sun rises. Nothing like slightly invaded morning time to make you admit your love of private nights after everyone else is in bed. So yeah. Not sure how this will work out. Still need to experiment and think about it...maybe brainstorm with A a bit and try a couple of incarnations. I am certain peace is a worth a little effort and creativity.

“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
― Anton Chekhov

Secretary In Training

I love me some little boy cuteness. Dee is"writing" on his own a lot lately and practicing holding pens behind his ear on the sly. Mommy doesn't say a word. I don't think he knows I saw.

Pint-Sized Bug Man

My thoughtful little second-born, Dee is becoming quite the little scientist. He has a newly emerged special love for bugs of all kinds. He is a careful watcher, a fan of the tiny things in life and curious about things that move. All the necessary requirements.

He got "in trouble" recently at a kid event for secreting along his magnifying glass (one of his favorite toys) and then whipping it out in company and promptly giving every kid there green eyes showing how it worked. I am sure he was looking at some kind of bug...or at least looking FOR some. He seems curious about everything from crickets to aphids to butterflies. His nature loving mama is pretty touched by his new proclivity.

I was a similarly small-picture kid as a little girl and loved spending hours outdoors being still, watching things, often the teeny tiny things, mites under a log, the wiggling tadpole embryos in frog eggs, and all the detail on the seed head of a grass stalk. A lot of slow, silent, solo discovery. Brings back fond memories to watch him on the same path.

I love how gleeful he is about noticing some little, over-looked being that is going about its curious business somewhere like the inside of a lily or the page of someone's book. He's thrilled to learn things about them too and sits happily regurgitating details of the life-cycle of aphids at the dinner table. One of the few times when he is a chatterbox...so fun to have a corner on some information nobody else has. Not even his big, impressive daddy knows what a cricket eats! Love to watch that personal pride in such a good and wholesome thing. Makes me think a lot of E. O. Wilson, of etymological fame.

Am thinking about how to encourage him. I would love to make an ant farm together to watch. I think he would get a big kick out that. I think I had one as a kid a couple of times that was just in a glass jar....but the ones that between two pressed sheets of glass like a picture frame are super appealing. I think a good, large page, nicely illustrated book on insects is in order too for the ever growing library. What else would you do for or with a pint sized bug lover?

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Rocky Mountain Spotted What????

We have been on a crazy, wild roller coaster as a family. Our first, real, health emergency. Sweet little Nib was bitten by a tick, ostensibly right here in our own city yard (we weren't really anywhere else at the time) and came down with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, the deadliest of the tick borne diseases. I've had Lyme's Disease before so I'm pretty cautious about tick illnesses now but this one was the scariest run-in yet. As with many of the tick sicknesses, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is a very evil trickster. It looks like nothing much (fever, rash, generalized aching) and then suddenly it starts doing clever things like attacking your internal organs systematically. The real key with tick borne illnesses is to look carefully for ticks attached to you after you've been outdoors and if you notice any symptoms of illness afterwards (particularly fever) get thee to a doctor and get thee on antibiotics. (So says the CDC in their official guidelines for tick illness.)

Some doctors (ours for instance) are conservative and feel disinclined to treat first, ask questions later and will drag their feet, suggest a wait-and-see plan and tell you it is unlikely you've been infected. While I completely and whole heartedly agree with this plan of action if we're talking about ear infections or the run-of-the mill coughs, tick diseases are different. The stage where they can be cured easily is the stage when they look like nothing much. Once they look serious the patient is often either untreatable or seriously damaged. My personal opinion is, treat....ask questions later. If a doctor tries to get you to have a blood test to prove that what you have is a tick borne disease, go along with it happily but insist that you be treated immediately after the test is administered...not when the results come back. Tick testing takes two weeks or so and waiting that long can be detrimental to health. Don't wait! The treatment is simply an antibiotic, a really kick-butt strong antibiotic but still...that's all it is, nothing crazy or involved.

Nib ended up being hospitalized in order to be observed and to have his antibiotic administered via iv in order to get it in his system more quickly and to keep an eye on the many things in his body that had started to complain by the time he was finally diagnosed (his kidney function, his liver enzymes, his hemoglobin numbers, etc.) after getting the run-around from the first doctors who saw him. We are so incredibly grateful for the internet, for the knowledge available at the tips of any parent's fingers about CDC policy and disease symptoms and even drug details. Without it I'm not sure we'd have our boy alive today.

We are also incredibly grateful to our local city hospital where our son was correctly and swiftly diagnosed and we were given such wonderful care from infectious disease specialists, nurses, pediatricians and everyone else involved in our case. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is a rarity in our area but it is here and so are several other more prevalent tick diseases. Don't fool around with ticks: use repellent, landscape with care, inspect yourself and your children after outings and use your local health department who will often receive and identify ticks  and sometimes test them for diseases which can help you determine if you should seek treatment....even when few or no symptoms present themselves (which can happen).

This week, I plan to call a non-toxic tick control company, lay down a little more mulch, double check our bug repellent stock, hug our son, and breath. Just breath.