Here are the caricatures we had done of the kids in Central Park when we were in NYC a few weeks ago. Apparently Enthusio got the idea to have this done back in May when Reasonable Man took him to Legoland. RM didn't want to pay fifty bucks to have it done at Legoland, but Central Park is rife with artists willing to capture your likeness in Sharpie, so we didn't have a hard time finding someone to make Enthusio's dream come true for a much more reasonable $15.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and instructed the artist thusly: "I want to be like Batman riding a skateboard, only not with wheels -- with rockets." The artist didn't even seem to think this was a weird request -- he just nodded and went to work. At some point he asked Enthusio to make a face like a superhero. Enthusio complied:

Yeah, I've never seen superhero making that face either. Enthusio's picture didn't have that expression. He seemed a little disappointed when it was done -- RM and I think he was maybe embarrassed at the size of his teeth in the picture. We assured him that that was just the way caricatures are drawn, which is true, but between you and me, the teeth are actually not all that exaggerated. I imagine he'll grown into them some day.

While Enthusio was having his picture done, Mermaid decided that she'd like to have one done too. The guy who did Enthusio's had a portrait to do first, but he said he'd be available in about an hour if we could come back. Mermaid surprised us by agreeing that she wanted to wait -- it was pretty humid out and she'd not been enjoying the weather, so I had figured she'd want to head back to Aunt Dana's apartment sooner rather than later, but once Mermaid makes up her mind about something, that's pretty much that. So we took a little walk past the Central Park Zoo and had a snack, then headed back to wait for the artist guy to finish his portrait, and in the meantime, another caricature artist set up his stuff nearby, so we had him do Mermaid's instead.

I may not have mentioned it before, but this past year, Mermaid has decided she doesn't want to smile with her teeth showing. The first reason she gave was that her friend Allyn doesn't smile with her teeth showing, and later on, she told me that when she smiles with her teeth showing in a picture, it makes her "look like a ghost." Yeah, I don't know either. Anyway, no way no how was she going to show her teeth to the caricature artist. No big loss, since as you can see from the finished picture above, he captured her Mona Lisa smile perfectly. He also did a very good job of following her instructions that she wanted to be singing with the Beatles -- I'm not sure how well you can see it in the picture, but it's pretty clear that he's drawn, from left to right, Paul, John and George. (George has enormous ears in the picture. Did George have enormous ears? I have no recollection of that.) Of course, Mermaid did have to point out to me the other night that Paul is holding his guitar the wrong way (right-handed instead of left), but otherwise we all think the artist did a pretty awesome job.

First we went on vacation for nearly three weeks. Within two days of arriving home, I was sick with a nasty cold. So what do you think happened when I was finally getting over that? If you guessed that I pulled a muscle in my back, keeping me away from the gym for even longer, you're absolutely right! So now it's been a solid month since I've been to the gym with any regularity. No wonder I'm feeling so fat.

Of course the book I'm reading right now isn't helping. Fat Land by Greg Critser is a very thorough explanation of "how Americans became the fattest people in the world," and it's not a pretty picture. Contrast the amount of bickering and naval-gazing that goes on just for the powers-that-be to make a decision what they should tell the general population about how much exercise we should all be getting with the free-for-all that goes on with advertising sugar- and fat-drenched foods to kids and the terrible ingredients that make up so much of the food on the market and it's no wonder so many of us are fighting -- and generally losing -- the battle of the bulge.

In other words, my kids picked the wrong week to try to get out of swim practice. I may not be exercising much lately, but they are for damn sure going to if I have anything to do with it.

This house-buying thing has gotten complicated.

First, a caveat. I know there are bigger problems in the world. This town is an expensive place to live, and we've gone from contemplating a major kitchen remodel, which we can afford, to moving to a new house, which we can also afford, while many people around us aren't able to make a move or buy a house in the first place. We live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and none of us would suffer if we had to stay here for a good long while, even if we didn't remodel the kitchen. In other words, I know this doesn't exactly rank in the top 947 great tragedies of the 21st century. Nonetheless, it is currently a dilemma for us, so please bear with me.

From day one of our decision to start looking for a new house, I have maintained that size is not the issue. Our house is small by the standards of some people, but I've always felt like we had more than enough living space here, and one of my biggest beefs with this house is that a lot of the living space we have -- our living room to be specific -- doesn't get used (we don't really need a second sitting room most of the time) or is unusable (the western exposure of our house makes that room too hot to sit in after 1 pm during the summer). The fourth bedroom we added a few years ago suffers from similar problems. And so we spend a great deal of our time in the family room, which is somewhat cramped. In addition, the upstairs of the house is difficult to heat in the winter and even more difficult to keep cool in the summer. Add the fact that the kitchen needs a major overhaul and we don't have nearly enough outside/garage space for bikes and such, and you have more than enough reasons for us to be shopping for another house.

Yesterday I saw a house that I really liked. I sent Reasonable Man over to look at it and he liked it too. The price is right. It has one story and four bedrooms, one of which is at the front of the house and could function as exactly what we would need it for: a place to put the computer, a place where the kids could keep their school stuff and do their homework, and where we could put the futon and have guests stay. It would be an extension of our living space when we didn't have guests and a guest room when we did. The layout of the house is big and open, there is a ton of built-in storage, and the backyard is big enough for us to put in a pool and still have plenty of room for patio furniture and our trampoline. The kitchen would need some work, but it's attractive and it has a pantry. And on the "location, location, location" front, it's basically in the same neighborhood where we live now, where we are very comfortable and where many of our friends live.

So what's the problem? It's smaller than the house we have now, by about 200 square feet. The space it has is everything I think we need when I envision the most efficient house possible for us, but probably not one inch more than that. The family room is not smaller than what we have now, but it's certainly not much bigger. There's no place to put anything bigger than a small dining table, so hosting things like Christmas dinner would be a problem. The family room furniture we have now would fit just fine, but there would never really be any options for moving things around too much.

I've looked at a number of houses since we decided to move, many out of our price range, and although I maintain that size is not that big an issue, the times I've walked into houses with a big, wide-open living space, I've swooned just a bit. The idea of having a family room where you could have one of those great big ginormous sectionals and not have it completely fill the room is awfully appealing. One house in particular stands out in my mind. It's on a busy street, and the backyard is pretty tiny, but when you walk in -- well, the word "cavernous" comes to mind. There is a huge living room, a huge kitchen/family room, and then there's also a huge loft. After Reasonable Man saw it and thought it was pretty cool, I said to him, "but don't you think that's way more space than we need?" He didn't, but I did.

I still think so, but I've definitely come around to the idea that I would like that much space. And therein lies the dilemma, because I can still walk into a house like the one we found yesterday and just feel so sure it could work for us. But five years from now, after doing the work on the kitchen and putting in a pool, will our family of two adults and two teenagers feel crowded, and will we wonder why we bought this house when we could have gone bigger?

This is similar to the the questions I have about my car. I drive a minivan, but I chose the smallest one available, with the best possible gas mileage. Even so, I often wonder: do I really need to drive a minivan? I only have two kids, and we only drive extra people around every once in a while. I could drive a sedan that gets much better gas mileage -- a hybrid even. Then again, it's nice to be able to haul extra kids around when we need to, or drive another family on outings. We have friends who have traded cars with us for an evening or overnight so they could transport more people all in one car than their sedan can hold. Long car trips are more comfortable in our minivan than they used to be in our old Toyota Camry, and storage is never a problem. We can even haul the occasional piece of furniture without any trouble.

In other words, we don't need the extra space every day -- but sometimes we really do need it. Does that occasional need justify the fuel we consume by driving it every day? Similarly -- do the occasional times we feel crowded or want to host a big holiday dinner justify buying a house that's bigger than we need, with the added costs of heating and cooling, not to mention furnishing it? A small house, one that has only the space we need to live on a day-to-day basis and no more, equals smaller energy bills and no reason buy new furniture. That means a smaller ecological footprint we're leaving, and I really do like that idea. It's very Davis. And it's not like we'd be depriving ourselves of nice things, like a pool and a new kitchen. In the end our quality of life still goes up.

Just as long as life with teenagers doesn't feel more crowded than life two grade-school-age kids does, I guess.

I am SO sick, and last night ranks among the most miserable nights of my life. The area around my nostrils is positively rubbed raw, my throat is the sorest it has been in my life, and one of my nostrils is either completely plugged or a veritable faucet at all times. I've gotten way past being glad to be home, being grateful that I didn't get sick until after we got home, or being able to appreciate the merits of our dry Davis heat over the humidity of the east coast we experienced a week ago, because guess what, people? It was 111 freaking degrees here yesterday. Please pray, cross your fingers, get out your worry dolls or do whatever else you like to do to wish our air conditioning unit health in the next couple of days, 'cause I am petrified that thing is going to die and then we will have no choice but to go live at the Holiday Inn Express for a few days.

One of the Few Musical Entries You Are Every Likely to See In This Space

Buuuuut the cat came back (I didn't see her, but Reasonable Man did)
She couldn't stay away
She was sittin' on the porch (under the bushes by the garage, actually)
The very next day (last night)
O the cat came back
She didn't want to roam (anymore, since we're back now and there aren't strangers living in her house anymore and we've been leaving her treats outside the garage)
The very next day (well, last night)
She was home sweet home (actually we haven't seen her since that one sighting, but at least now we know she's not dead and the butt-kissing we'll need to do to get to come back and live in the garage again can commence in earnest)

The Mystery of Emma

We were gone on our trip 19 days, during which time some friends stayed at our house, which was actually very nice. Yes, I had to do more cleaning in the days before we left than I would otherwise have done, but when we got back, the house was spotless, and even though I know it's unlikely that our house will burn to the ground, fall down, explode, implode or otherwise suffer major damage when we're away, I still always breathe a little sigh of relief when we come around the corner and see that minty green edifice we call home still standing there, and so on this, our longest trip ever (so far), it was good to know someone who had our cell phone numbers was staying here and it was likely she would call us if any of those imagined disasters were to befall the Green House in our absence.

We returned Monday evening to find everything as it was when we left -- everything, that is except for our garage, which was missing one cranky 14-year-old female cat. Further examination revealed that her litter box had been used at some point, as had the garage floor. Hey, she's old. All specimins, which were NOT examined closely, appeared to have been left a while back, but it's been hot, so, you know, things dry up pretty fast. In other words: Emma was not in the garage, and there was no indication that she had been in the garage for quite some time.

This obviously made Reasonable Man and me kinda sad. Emma was our first baby. We adopted her on December 27, 1992 -- our six-month wedding anniversary, and for the two years between then and Mermaid's birth on December 31, 1994, Emma was the princess of our household. She spent long evenings luxuriating on our laps on the couch in front of the TV. We squeezed the water out of tuna cans and gave it for her for a snack. We played string with her, took pictures of her, and delighted in her antics.

After Mermaid was born, Emma accepted her demotion in status gracefully. Right around the time Mermaid started to crawl, Emma waged a wily (and ultimately successful) campaign to be let out into the yard (until then she'd been an indoor cat) by yowling loudly by the back door whenever I was trying to get Mermaid down for a nap. She was in her element there in San Luis Obispo -- less so after we moved back to Davis and she was banished to the garage due to her unfortunate habit of peeing on the living room carpet in our new house. Since then, she's been cozy in the winter on her heated pet bed, not so happy in the summer. Sometimes Reasonable Man gets an earful when he's leaving for work in the morning, because her dish is empty or maybe there have raccoons or other varmints invading her space sometime during the night, and other times she will clamor for a little attention. Mermaid rediscovered her out there a year or two ago, after completely ignoring her for about 7 years, and she would go and spend time with her, but otherwise our contact with Emma has been pretty limited in the last 6 1/2 years.

Nevertheless, we're unhappy that she's disappeared. I liked to think that she had maybe felt unwell and crawled off someplace dark to die peacefully -- it seemed unlikely that something more violent would have happened to her after she'd lived in the garage without incident for so long. I asked my neighbor Kim, who is the only person I could imagine would have noticed her around, if she'd seen her. Kim said she hadn't but told me about a time one of her cats got cheesed off about something at her house and disappeared for six days, only to come back after she'd given him up for dead. That made me feel better -- maybe it's not like Emma to leave her shelf in the garage for any length of time, but then, this was also the first time we've ever left for almost 3 weeks and let other people live in our house while we were gone. Who knows what was going through her little cat brain? Kim recommended that I leave food and water for her somewhere outside the garage. I figured I had nothing to lose by following her advice.

Yesterday morning, there was a hopeful sign in the garage -- fresh cat poops under my car! (No, I didn't examine them closely -- I just kind of poked at them with my shoe to see if they'd squish. Sorry to get graphic on you there.) After I swept the garage out, I called Emma's name a few times, and I'm pretty sure I heard her meow back at me. I left some tuna juice out near the bushes next to the garage in case she wanted a treat. It was gone later on, and of course some other cat might have consumed it, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful that our first baby is still out there and might come back to live in our garage again soon.

Books, Books, Books

I eventually brought my total books read on our trip to 7, which officially makes it my best vacation ever! Far and away the best book I read was Alive, the story of Urugayan plane crash survivors in the Andes mountains who had to resort to eating the bodies of their co-passengers in order to survive. Icky, yes, but absolutely riveting. It is absolutely amazing what they went through and how hard they fought to live through ten weeks up on a freezing mountain top together. The events actually happened way back in 1972, but if it sounds familiar, it may be because they made a movie of it about 10 years ago, which by the way I will never watch, and not just because it stars Ethan Hawke. While I understand why they did what they did and commend them for having the will to live, I don't care to see any kind of re-enactment of it...

A couple of fun books I enjoyed: Autobiography of a Fat Bride by Laurie Notaro, who seems to have gotten a little funnier with each book she's written, and Jane Austen in Boca by Paula Marantz Cohen, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice with Jewish senior citizens in a retirement community. Hilarious. I saw online that the author has written another one in Scarsdale -- I will have to check that out!

Dirty Secret

We packed pretty light for our almost-3-weeks-long vacation, figuring that we would be able to do laundry easily everywhere we went except possibly Manhatten, where we stayed at my sister-in-law Dana's upper east side apartment. Little did I know -- Manhatten would the be easiest place to do laundry of all! Did you know people who live there don't do their own laundry? They take it to the laundry down the street, where they pay someone sixty cents a pound to do it for them! We took ours in on a Sunday morning and got it backed -- washed, dried and folded -- that afternoon. I couldn't believe it. Why don't they have this everywhere? I have been informed since I got back to Davis that you can have this done at a laundrymat here in town, but I am betting it costs more than sixty cents a pound, or else everyone would be doing it.

Under the Weather

We picked up a bug during our travels and now we are all feeling a bit sluggish. My throat is sore, Mermaid has been all stuffed up, and Enthusio got pink eye -- gross! When I went to the Rite-Aid pharmacy the other day to pick up his prescription eye drops, the girl at the counter said "hi, Tracie!" Yes, apparently I frequent the Rite-Aid pharmacy often enough that they know me by name there. The girl behind the counter said that she sees my name a lot and that "you're always really nice." Hopefully she would still think that if she knew I have no freaking idea what her name is, even though I'm pretty sure she wears a name tag.

Yeah, But It's a Dry Heat

I want to post more about our trip, but right now my thoughts and feelings about it are unfairly clouded by my blissful relief at being home. My friend Jane, who along with her family graciously provided us with shelter and sustenance during the final days of our trip, says that it doesn't matter how long or short your trip is -- the last day or two, you just want to get home. I don't know what percentage of the time that's true, but I can certainly agree that I always feel that way on any trip of a week or longer. In this case, the time we were away actually passed really quickly and it didn't feel like we were gone nearly three weeks, but those last couple of days were tough, even though we spent them doing fun things with people we enjoy.

It didn't help that the east coast humidity that I had dreaded on this trip really cranked up the last 5 or 6 days we were out there. I'm sorry to all you east coasters (and midwesterners -- it's bad there too, right?) but I don't know how you live with that. California may be brown and ugly for a lot of the year, but at least your clothes and hair have a fighting chance when you step out the front door even on the hottest day.

That said, it's supposed to be 108 here tomorrow! I just hope our air conditioner can make it through. If not, make no mistake -- we will be checking into a motel.

Random Vacation Notes

I'm reading my ass off on vacation. First, I finished the piece-of-crap true crime book I was reading when we left Davis during our layover in Dallas and just left it sitting there on the seat when our flight started boarding. Maybe someone picked it up and started reading it, but I'm hoping security got nervous about something being abandoned in the airport and decided to blow it up right there where it was abandoned, like I saw done at the Paris airport many years ago. It was that bad. Then I started reading my book club book, which is okay, but then I was handed a stack of more appropriate beachy-type reads, so I've been plowing through them. Note: the first Ya Ya book, Little Altars Everywhere, is far superior to its celebrated sequel, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, which was a mediocre book made into a seriously lousy movie. The Glass Castle is a pretty riveting memoir in the "my crazy and/or substance-abusing parents never should have had kids" genre, and guess what? I am finally reading The Da Vinci Code. I've been resisting for three years, but the time has come, and guess what? I'm enjoying it.

We've had our share of disasters this trip, including getting on a commuter train to Grand Central Station instead of our Amtrak train, and having to high-tail it on the subway from GCS to Penn Station, with all our luggage, to catch up with that Amtrak train. We did it, though. And the kids were troopers all the way. I love travelling with school-age kids. Everywhere we go, I see toddlers and pre-schoolers, and just think damn, I'm glad they don't stay that little forever! It is, in many ways, great while it lasts, but there are definite advantages to having that phase be over.

Can't seem to add photos to my blog right now, so I can't show you the cute caricatures we had done of the kids in Central Park right now, but suffice it to say, they are fabulous.

Also, I am pleased to say that, 28 years after my first visit, I still adore the Statue of Liberty. How anyone ever got up the energy to build something that big and that cool, I will never understand, but I salute them!

Yeah, I know it's been a while. You all know I feel massive guilt whenever I've been lame about updating, right? Not that that really helps anything, but I do want you to know I at least think about it.

Anyway, I do have a few little items to report here. First -- the kids are out of school. Hallelujah -- Enthusio is done with his school year from hell and hopefully he will never have to endure another one like that again. I am cautiously optimistic that next year will be better. Unfortunately, our principal is leaving, which means that if we have any issues next year, we will be starting from scratch with someone who doesn't know the history and that could really suck -- but you know, this is not our first time at the rodeo and I think we have a pretty good track record re: dealing with the school and advocating for our child, so we will deal with whatever comes up. I think Enthusio is in a better place this coming year too -- he still has his moments, but he's definitely made progress and I still think having him stay back a year will really help.

Both he and Mermaid brought home good report cards. Mermaid got all B's except for her A in spelling, which is no surprise since she has taken to studying the dictionary in the last few weeks. Maybe we will be seeing her at the national spelling bee one of these years!

So far we are having a pretty lazy summer experience. Both kids started their only activity thus far, swim practice, this past week, and they both like it a lot. With Mermaid that is no surprise, since she loved it last year, but this is Enthusio's first time and it's great to see him feeling good in a group of kids at his same skill level.

In other news, I turned 36 this past Monday. The number just bothers me. Maybe because it's a downhill slide toward 40 now? I can definitely tell you that I don't feel 36 years old. In my mind, I'm still about 17...

CONSUMER ALERT! Costco has changed their ridiculously liberal returns policy, with regard to computers only. Now you can only bring them back for a refund for 6 months. I found this out on my birthday, after fighting with my laptop all weekend. It developed some kind of driver meltdown after I installed the software that came with our video camera about a month ago. This the laptop I just bought this past October, so you can imagine how thrilled I was about this turn of events. Anyway, let me just recap the situation for you:
1. The only reason I bought this particular video camera was so we could upload video to our computer and create our own DVDs. We've now had the camera over a year and have yet to do this a single time.
2. The only reason I finally installed the video camera software was to upload Mermaid's performance of "When I'm 64" at the school talent show to the computer. It turned out that her performance was got taped over about 3 days after it happened, which is a subject dead and buried between Reasonable Man and myself, but nonetheless -- I wasn't able to perform the operation that was my sole reason for installing the software in the first place. This installation proceeded to cause problems with my computer that made it impossible to shut down properly and also caused it to spontaneously restart whenever I left it sitting there for any length of time, on or off.
3. The only reason I bought this particular computer was that it was the cheapest one at Costco, where I believed I would be able to return it for a full refund if anything went wrong with it. Their new six-month policy evidently went into effect over a year ago, and if I'd looked into it at all, I would have known that. Also, I can't blame them for changing it -- the old policy was just an invitation for abuse, after all. Nevertheless, it totally sucks for me, because if I had known I couldn't return the computer like I thought I could, I never would have bought this computer. I don't know what brand I would have gone with, but I can assure you that a Compaq/HP would not have been it.
4. Not only did I buy a computer I wouldn't have bought, but because of how much I spent on it, the Costco people talked me into upgrading my membership so I can get cash back at the end of the year or something like that. I'm still not clear on what the benefits of that are.
In short -- I tried to work the system but didn't do my homework, and ended up getting kind of screwed. Don't let this happen to you.

My final item is that, on the brink of remodelling the crap out of the Green House, we have decided to move instead. It started with me going to look at a house a couple of neighborhoods over from here on a whim several weekends ago and just snowballed from there. So now I am studying the real estate section every week and going to open houses, as well as doing work on the Green House with a mind to selling the place at some point in the near future, and hopefully some time in the next year, we will be living in a one-story house that is bigger, has at least 4 bedrooms, and has a pool. Pretty exciting stuff!

I'm sure there is more detritus to report, but that's all that is coming to mind at the moment, and I need to start doing some stuff around here, so that's all for now!

The Essential Self

This awesome post beautifully sums up an unexpected benefit of having a developmentally delayed child. As Mermaid heads into that great battlefield we call adolescence, she does so with her sense of self fully intact, not caring how she looks or what anyone else thinks of her. It's a quality we could all use.

Enthusio's therapist talks a lot about helping him get in touch with his "essential self" -- those qualities of goodness and wholeness we all have that are the real us, not the constructs of our personalities that keep us protected from the outside world. I admit kind of thought she was full of crap for a while -- you know, "come on, lady -- we just want him to be able to go to school without crying everyday" -- but the more I heard about it, the more I realized that getting in touch with the essential self is a real and positive thing, and we are fortunate enough to have a living, breathing example of it right here in our family.

We focus on all the downsides of autism, and there are many. I wouldn't wish it on any family. But the other side of the coin is what autism doesn't do -- it doesn't allow the child to separate from that essential self that will serve her well when puberty comes knocking on the door in a few years.

Enough Already!

I never thought I'd be in this position, but I'm going to defend Britney Spears. I have to. This is getting ridiculous.

Yes, all the evidence points to her being an idiot. Her taste in men is obviously crappy. Her music has always been pretty sorry, and the bits of her horrible reality show that I saw convinced me that there is some essential character development that doesn't happen when you spend your late teens and early twenties surrounded by sychophants instead of working at low-paying jobs, living in crappy apartments and maybe struggling through school or something.
But I also think she's getting a raw deal in the current media obsession with her parenting skills. Okay -- driving with the baby in her lap? Terrible idea. I'm definitely not giving her a pass on that one, and I'm not buying that crap about her having race away from the vicious paparazzi.
But then -- okay, poor Sean apparently hit his head when something went wrong with high chair and he fell. He was with the nanny at the time. Well, guess what? Stuff like that happens. One time when Reasonable Man and I were right there, we were getting Mermaid out of her high chair and I still don't know what happened, but the tray was off and she fell forward and hit her forehead on the kitchen table. It was awful, and of course we felt terrible.

Last week, Britney and Sean were photographed riding down the road in a convertible. Britney was driving, and the baby was slumped over asleep in his carseat in the backseat of the car. Andhis carseat was facing forward. One article said it appeared he didn't have straps over his shoulders, and another said that he obviously wasn't fastened in properly. Well, maybe so, but unfortunately, babies slump over in their carseats like that sometimes. And yeah, they recommend that you keep the kid facing backward till they're a year old, but I'll go ahead an admit right now that I turned both my kids forward before that myself. Neither of them liked being in the backseat facing backward and not being able to see me, and often that lead to a lot of crying that I decided was not worth it. Sometimes you make that kind of a decision as a parent, you know?

And the latest is -- *gasp!* -- Britney was holding the baby in one arm and had a glass in her other hand, and she tripped. She freaking tripped, people. Yeah, clearly that makes her an unfit mother. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've never tripped since I became a mother...
Oh, except that one time when I did. And I actually did drop my baby. I was carrying her up to our third-floor apartment and caught my toe a few steps from the top. I had to make a quick decision -- drop Mermaid on her back on the landing in front of me so I could catch myself, or fall on top of her. I chose dropping her -- it was only a few inches, and fortunately there was some of that nubby industrial carpet that they have in store and restaurants and stuff to soften her fall a little bit. She started howling and I felt horrible, but she was fine.

Mermaid also fell off the couch when she was a baby. And one time I accidently dropped the cordless phone and it hit her in the head. We all want to protect our kids from those kinds of things, but there's only so much you can do. We all get a bad bonk once in a while.

Maybe Britney gets all the media attention she does because her behavior has been questionable in the past, but I was a young first-time mom too, and I'm just grateful I didn't have the paparazzi following me around and watching me screw up back then. If this keeps up, what's next? Is there going to be an article every time Britney takes her baby out in the sun without a hat? A few years down the road, are we going to hear about every time he fights with his little sister, goes out to play without a jacket, or gets less than 100% on a spelling test?

Maybe I'm a hypocrite that it doesn't bother me if the press beats up on Britney about KFed or her dubious fashion choices, but all this bashing of her parenting skills just doesn't sit well with me. Raise your hand if your parenting could stand up to the constant media scrutiny hers gets?

Yeah, I know:

It's been a while.

Life has been pretty eventful lately. In the good news column, last night was our school carnival, featuring (for me anyway) the used book sale. That means there is no longer an ocean of brown paper grocery bags full of books in my living room. It also means I no longer have to look at the pile of papers sitting on my coffee table (aka my desk) and guiltily think about what I should be doing to prepare for the used book sale. It all came together in the end. The bad news was, it poured rain on the carnival. The good news was, the used book sale was under shelter. The bad news was, the books kept getting wet anyway. We had to keep running around wiping them off with paper towels. The good news is, people bought them anyway. Only maybe a third of the books I unloaded from my minivan at the beginning of the afternoon went back into it at the end of the evening. Also, my lack of volunteers turned out to not be a problem. One lady who showed up to work her shift from 5:45-6:30, and both she and her husband hung around till closing. Her husband wasn't even signed up to work, and he both went around yelling that all books were ten cents a piece during the last half hour we were open AND helped up pack up at the end. I love that guy.

After the carnival was the talent show. A whole crowd of people was huddled in the sheltered spot outside the MPR where the show was going to be just to get out of the rain for quite a while before they unlocked the doors and went in. It was a pretty soggy crowd in there, and we nevered did get a seat, but we watched the whole thing. Mermaid's performance of "When I'm 64" went off without a hitch. She kinda stood there looking away from the audience without smiling the whole time, but she sang it nice and loud, and the lyrics only got away from her once. She was really pleased with herself and we were proud of her. And when the talent show was done, we were able to grab both kids and make a quick break for it, due to the fact that our minivan was still parked right outside the MPR, right by the sheltered lunch tables where the used book fair had taken place.

Priorities when I got home were: change into sweats, pour a glass of wine, and count the money from the book sale. We made $181 -- woo hoo! I feel it was pretty successful, which is good since I've already been informed I'll be running it again next year by the person who volunteered me to do it this year without my permission. That's what I get for being good friends with the PTA VP of Events.

In other news, it's been a rough week for my grandma. Come to think of it, it's been a rough month for her. A rough year, even. She's been in a nursing home since early April, and I've been going to see her every week, which has been kind of nice. I've enjoyed spending time with her, and bringing her stuff to eat (she doesn't love the food at the nursing home), and having me visit seems to give her a boost.

Unfortunately, after my parents went on vacation for two weeks, Grandma ran into some health problems and got sent to the hospital twice -- once with a blood clot in her leg a week ago Wednesday, and then again this past Tuesday night with congestive heart failure, which has been a problem she's had pretty regularly over the last few years. The first time she went in, the nursing home called my parents' home number, left a message, and didn't bother to call any of the zillion other numbers on the list. So none of us even knew she was at the hospital having surgery until two days later, when my aunt and uncle came down from where they live in the mountains to visit her and found her bed at the nursing home empty.

Grandma came through that okay, but started having problems breathing almost as soon as they sent her back to the nursing home Monday night, and she was back in the ER 24 hours later. By this time, my aunt and uncle had had to return to the mountains. The hospital assured my aunt that Grandma was comfortable, but because the hospital was crowded, she was in the hallway of the ER. Big Little Brother, who lives just a couple of miles away from the hospital, went over to see her, and called and told me I should come down, so I did. It was awful to see poor Grandma, lying there in the hospital. She wasn't hardly moving at all, and when I went to talk to her, she told me "I just want this to be over." I stayed there with her in the ER, and fortunately they had a room ready for her about an hour after I got there. On the way up, she said they weren't supposed to be taking her upstairs because "I didn't want to go." Even though she did seem to understand that they couldn't just leave her in the ER hallway indefinitely, she continued to insist that she'd been told she wouldn't be moved once she got to the hospital.

I stayed with her for the rest of the afternoon, went to BLB's for a few hours for dinner and such, and then returned to the hospital to spend a couple of hours with her. The next morning I was back again, and I stayed all day. My aunt and uncle were on their way back down from the mountains, and my parents were flying back from Hawaii a few days early. In the meantime, Grandma was actually getting a little better, much to her dismay. She wasn't eating or taking her medication, and I think she thought that would just finish her off. I was supposed to leave around one, but once the doctor came in and told her she was actually improving, I decided to hang around. Poor Grandma just didn't know what to do, and it was pretty hard to know what to tell her, but I'm glad I was there with her. Once my aunt, uncle, parents and BLB arrived, it was decided Grandma would go back to the nursing home the next day and stay there -- no more going to the hospital. In the meantime, she felt like eating, and went ahead took her meds again. She was pretty tired by then, so we left to let her get some rest and went out to dinner.

I'm really proud of my family. Everyone appreciates what everyone else is doing, and there's no complaining that this person should be doing more or anything like that. Everyone was glad my parents were able to go on their long-planned trip to Hawaii, and they didn't mind coming home a few days early. Reasonable Man didn't mind holding down the fort up here in Davis while I was there with Grandma for almost two days. BLB didn't mind running around, getting Grandma settled in nursing home on Monday night and everything else that followed. And I'm so glad I was able to go down and be with her on Wednesday and Thursday, even though she kept encouraging me to go home. I know she was glad I was there, and I was glad I could be a comfort to her and that she didn't have to be alone. I don't know what the next few weeks will bring, but I'm awfully glad to have my school stuff over with so I can concentrate on more important things and be available for my family as needed.

Spring Has Sprung...

... and it's kicking my butt. If I spend more than a few minutes outside this past week, I sneeze for an hour. Running is out. So is yardwork. I actually don't really like going out to the mailbox all that much, truth be told.

Just one more reason to be looking forward to summer...

Jump Around!

Rewind several weeks back to spring break, when we were spending a morning at the home of my friend Crazy Karin. Moms and kids had finished dyeing Easter eggs and were scattered in various places around the house, and I asked Crazy Karin if she knew where Mermaid was (I knew where Enthusio was: at the computer. He is obsessed with video games and will choose playing them above all else most of the time, even if he's in a girl house where most of the games available involve kitties or ponies or something). CK said "she's out there having a merry old time on the trampoline." And indeed she was. I had witnessed Mermaid on that trampoline many times with other kids, but it was the first time I'd ever seen her on it alone, and "bliss" does not adequately decide the expression on her face.

"I don't know why you guys don't have a trampoline," CK said.

"Neither do I," I replied.

And so, less than a week later, this suddenly glaring lack of a trampoline in our lives was rectified. I did some research online, chose a safe model, ordered it, and returned from a busy morning one Wednesday to find three enormous boxes'o'trampoline (and safety net) waiting for me on the front porch. Being me, I almost immediately set to work assembling the contraption, and about 7 hours later, I had this to show for my efforts:



Also, this:


And so our bouncy adventure began.

Pluses:

The kids are getting lots of exercise. That first evening, when they came in for dinner all red-faced and sweaty, I knew this was going to be a good development. It would be fair to say that our whole family struggles a bit with our weight, and what with all the media hoopla about how we are raising a generation of fat kids, etc., I am happy to add another activity that is actually, you know, active to their life.

Tons kids have passed through our backyard since the trampoline came into our lives. I really like having a yard full of happy kids. A week or two ago, I was coming back from a run and because of the open space next to our house, as I came up the street was was treated to the sight of 5 kids bouncing into view above our back fence -- how fun is that? Jumping on the trampoline is an activity that keeps Mermaid engaged with other kids a lot longer than a lot of other things, so that's great.

Several times we've had dinner with friends and then brought everyone back to the house so the kids could jump and the parents could just sit and hang out for a while. So the tramp has added a new dimension to our social life, and that's always a good thing.

Minuses:

This isn't completely a minus, because it only bothers me a bit and the kids not at all, but 2 or 3 kids on our street who previously had zero interest in playing with Mermaid and Enthusio are now knocking on the door to play with them just about every day. One of them is at least diplomatic enough to ask Mermaid to come out and do things other than jump on the trampoline once in a while, but generally they end up in our backyard. It's really not a huge deal, just a little irritating.

Enthusio seems to end having a lot of meltdowns when the tramp is full of kids, depending on his mental state, how tired he is, etc. When a group of kids gets together out there, they always seem to want to come up with games where if you do this or that or whatever, you're "out," and that situation is always rife with peril for Enthusio -- at this point in time, he absolutely cannot handle finding himself on the losing end of anything, and between his lack of confidence in his physical abilities and his current belief that EVERYTHING is unfair, it just turns into a mess over and over. Reasonable Man and I disagree on how to handle this: he says we should just ban those kinds of games for right now, and I can see the wisdom of that (it's our trampoline and Enthusio should be able to feel safe and happy when he plays on it), but I'm also wary of removing every obstacle from his path and communicating to him that a) we don't believe he can learn to handle things better and/or b) all he has to do is cry a few times and we will make sure he gets his way. I am constantly torn between wanting to let him have his emotions without making him feel he is wrong to feel the way he does, and wanting him to learn to control them already. As always, it's a tough one.

Celebrity New Items

I don't care if Katie Holmes had a silent birth or not. I don't care who dropped Britney Spears' son on his head (the child would obviously have a better shot at living a normal life if he was being raised by chimps regardless of whether Brit or K-Fed was there when it happened, so whatever). I don't care what continent Brangelina's baby is born on or what he or she looks like. And I don't really care about that whole Charlie Sheen/Denise Richards/Richie Sambora/Heather
Locklear mess going on. I really don't.

But I am DYING to know why Keith Richards was in a palm tree, out of which he fell and got a concussion. Seriously. They can't keep that kind of info from us indefinitely, can they? I mean it -- the public has a right to know. Color me waiting with bated breath (baited breath? Whatever.) Inquiring minds want to know!

Life Gets In The Way

I am constantly writing blog posts in my head as I exercise, drive places, dry my hair or do any of the 487 other things that take up my time besides being at the computer. You know when I don't think much about writing in my blog? When I'm actually sitting at my computer, reading email or checking my list of sites I look at every day, which gets a little longer all the time, and I let myself believe that I must go through the whole thing before I do anything actually productive online. Answering email usually comes first, though that's always piling up as well, and then it's usually time to go to the gym, pick up the kids, help with homework, take a shower, something -- and then I don't write in my blog, or do any of the other things I need to do, which lately include:

- Querying the two agents out of my first list of ten who don't accept email queries
- Looking at the email I got a year ago from the woman who ran the used book sale at our upcoming school event, which is now my responsibility, and making sure I'm doing everything I need to do to get the word out that we are collecting used books, not to mention contacting the list of volunteers I'm going to need to help me actually run the thing, which is now less than 3 weeks away
- Working on the novel I started almost two years ago, which is good and which I think about and which I really really really want to work on but somehow never make the time to actually
do so

But let's face it: life has gotten complicated. Just this past week, for instance -- Enthusio is back in school, but he's been home every morning till 10:15 or so because I excused him from STAR testing because one of the practice tests freaked him out, and his teacher and the principal and I all agreed that it wasn't worth jeopardizing an already fragile situation to have him take it. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to just have him with me for that long -- we get Mermaid off to school, go to the gym, get some coffee, and then I drop him at school either before or after I go home to shower -- but you know, somehow taking a 7-year-old places makes it take just a little longer to get everywhere. So there's that. There are only two more days of testing, thankfully, and then that will be over.

Also, my grandmother has moved to a nursing home for the time being, and so going to see her one day a week is now top priority. I have really enjoyed both my visits to her so far, and I'm really happy to be able to go spend time with her. Also top priority is having lunch with Reasonable Man once a week, coffee with Sue, and anything else social. So between obligations (school stuff, getting kids from one place to another and getting their homework done) and spending time with the important people in my life, time gets to a premium. Here's how my week looked:

Monday - gym, quick coffee, quick shower, drop Enthusio off at school, lunch and shopping with Sue and her sister, pick up kids from school, homework
Tuesday - gym, quick coffee, quick shower, drop Enthusio off at school, Target, lunch with Reasonable Man, Trader Joe's, go home to put away groceries, pick up kids, drop Enthusio at Campfire meeting, get Mermaid a haircut, drop her at home, go hang out for the remainder of Campfire meeting, go home and help Mermaid with homework
Wednesday: appointment with personal trainer, drop Enthusio off at school, run errands, come back to school to work in classroom only to discover they don't need me, go home, shower, clean up kitchen/house, kids get home at 1:30, homework, take Enthusio to social skills group and do homework with Mermaid while he's there, go home
Thursday: gym, coffee, take Enthusio to school, drive to Walnut Creek, stop at store to pick up lunch, spend an hour having lunch and chatting with Grandma, drive back to Davis, pick up Enthusio from school and take him to therapy, read therapist's parenting book while I'm waiting for him, go home, do homework with Mermaid, Reasonable Man gets home and we go out for dinner where we have terrible service so we're there over and hour, go to my friend's office opening for an hour and get home after 8 pm
Friday: skip going to the gym, do homework w/ Enthusio, drop him off at school, go grocery shopping, make pasta dish for gathering I'm going to that night and cookies for girl scout meeting after school, clean house, shower, run errands, pick up Enthusio from school, get snack ready for girl scout meeting, host girl scout meeting from 3:15-5:30, take 5 minutes for minor grooming, greet sitter, and go to friend's house for dinner

I'm not complaining. There was lots of fun stuff packed into the schedule this week, and even my "stressful" stuff is not exactly the stuff of which nightmares are made. And not all my weeks look like this, but the school-related activities sort of naturally ratchet up this time of year, so at this point I'm just looking forward to getting it all done and surviving till the end of the school year. Maybe I'll blog more then!

Enthusio Update

He went back to school yesterday, and had great day, according to both he himself and his teacher. I'm having her call me to let me know how it goes each day this week. He did melt down a couple of times yesterday afternoon, and I didn't have high hopes of him having another great day at school today, just because of how things started out. First, he argued with me and then cried because I made him turn off the TV and take a shower before school this morning. Then he acted really put out about a couple of other things before I took them to school. It's never a good thing when we have tears 3 times before he even goes to school!

On the other hand -- I'm beginning to think things are not as bad as we thought with him. Reasonable Man, Enthusio's therapist and I have all talked about his extreme sense of injustice, and his therapist hypothesized that this is because he has developed an expectation that things will never go his way due to low self esteem. But this past week, after hearing from a good friend that her 7-year-old daughter is also going through a major "life is so unfair" phase and that she read in a book about 7-year-olds that this is a common thing for them to go through, I've been asking around a bit, and guess what? Sounds like a lot of them go through this. I know that the constant falling apart and the complete inability to deal with any frustration whatsoever is still not a normal or healthy thing for him, but it's awfully good to hear his belief that everyone else in the world gets to do things he doesn't get to do, etc, etc, is probably a phase and not a sign that his sense of self worth is a lost cause.