Category: BC (beloved child the elder)

the holidays are upon us

the holidays are upon us

Posted on by wrekehavoc

in this house, we celebrate chanukah. and christmas (in a secular way.) and, in a stroke of brilliance that i refuse to take credit for, it’s also BC’s birthday.

we refer to december as the BIG BIRTHDAY BONANZA MONTH!

now, it’s hard enough as a parent to figure out a birthday present. but to have to figure out birthday presents, chanukah (one for each night, mind you) AND CHRISTMAS is a moment i dread each year. and of course, starting in october, grandparents and others start asking for hints. and i have very little clue. i place catalogs in front of my kids – etoys, land of nod, SHOOT, harry and david if it would only yield some answers.

but of course, both of my kids have shown how acquisitive they are. “i want this, and this, and this, and this, and this…” ad nauseum. i remember when i first became a mom how i wanted to raise people who cared about others and loved the earth and all those good, crunchy qualities i cherish. and they do, of course, possess many of those qualities. but they also want polly pockets, and race cars, and a baby doll high chair, and… well, you get the picture.

it makes me feel like i have somehow failed as a mom.

on the bright side, i guess i have ideas now for gifts. i’d better make room in my house for all the crap that will descend starting in early december.

******

of course, the only thing i want, no one can give me.

at the playground

at the playground

Posted on by wrekehavoc

we took a jaunt to a new playground this evening, BC, jools, BS, and BC’s pal, Alison. the kids all started to create a restaurant with some sandy mud and various sticks and acorns. so jools comes toddling over with a bucket first, filled with sand, and announces, “do you want some hamburgers and creme brulee?”

BS and i didn’t know he had ever heard of creme brulee. the fanciest we get is vanilla pudding.

a few minutes later, Alison comes over to collect some more sand near us. another mom is neaby with her little one, who is looking on wistfully, waiting to join in the restaurant biz. “what are you making?” i ask Al.

“Julian says he wants us to bring him a six-pack next.” jools learned this term from the adventures of zak and cody, where the heroes ask for a six-pack of soda. but it’s too long to explain that.

the other mother looks at us. we shrug. we wait for her to pick up her cell and call the authorities. fortunately, she just takes her son and walks over to the kids.

for anyone concerned, my kids seldom drink soda. and that’s about the hardest stuff they’ll get around here.

yee fucking haw

yee fucking haw

Posted on by wrekehavoc

tonight, BS is doing something above and beyond the call of duty: he is escorting BC to a Brownies HoeDown. i believe the fete includes:

bobbing for apples, doughnuts on a string, dancing, and more! get your dancing shoes on!

just what my guy loves to do on a chilly saturday night in november. but he’s a good sport, and he is also someone who apparently, in a fit of g-d-knows-what, was a 4-h square dancer as a kid. (this little fact has provided hours of amusement in 16+ years of marriage.) so he’ll allemande left and allemande right and teach BC the proper way to square dance.

meanwhile, back at the ranch, jools is actually jealous of his big sister. so i’ve borrowed that 1960s classic, the love bug from our library. we’ll pop popcorn, and i’ll experience all the buddy hackett i’ll need to experience for the next decade.

if only i were one of those incredibly creative moms who could think of more educational pursuits. we could make little turkeys out of wax paper and toenail clippers, or something like that. but no. we’ll watch an ancient video instead.

on the bright side, it ain’t the one with lindsay lohan in it.

we're gonna turn this mother out

we're gonna turn this mother out

Posted on by wrekehavoc

after school. BC has plugged herself into the Disney Channel, where aged Sister, Sister episodes are playing back to back. jools and i retire to his room, where his latest activity seems to be discovering that his boom box can do things besides play CDs. it can play tapes, too. AND, it has a radio.

so first we’re dancing around to a CD i found at the library, one of the putomayo things for kids. he is unimpressed. “this isn’t good for jumping on the bed,” i believe, is his criterion. we try another CD, this one an Ella Jenkins special. no dice.

so we turn on the radio. we flip it around. and we come upon our friends in Parliament singing Give Up The Funk “what did he say?” jools asked.

“he asked us to ‘turn this mother out'” i reply with a straight face. (for those keeping track, this is reason # 1,345 why i am a bad mother.)

“is this good jumping music, mama?” he asks.

“the best!” i say, jumping along with him and pretending i’m a soul train dancer.

and then again…

and then again…

Posted on by wrekehavoc

so i’m frustrated.

i’m frustrated about my health (which seems to be a never-ending story of angst).

i’m frustrated because my friendly son cannot seem to make any friends in his class AND the teacher is pretty unaccessible. you can’t talk to her before class. you can’t talk to her after class. today, i merely was about to ask her when it would be a good time to talk to her; she stopped me before i finished my sentence and said, “please, e-mail me. i can’t focus on anything else right now.” it’s hard enough when kindergarten is a black-box experience at public school; but a black-box experience for my three-year-old is completely unacceptable. this has got to change. and if i can’t get any support from the school, then perhaps i need to rethink this whole thing.

i’m frustrated because we uncovered a zillion of these flying ant things downstairs crawling around the deck. i called the exterminator, and she indicated that they are likely not termites (thank G-D) but some sort of ant that begins with “C” that i cannot somehow remember, even though i heard about this 10 minutes ago.

i’m frustrated because BC, her friend (an absolutely delightful little chick who i adore), and jools were so terrified of said bugs that they ignored both open back doors and ran to the front, which was locked. i couldn’t find them; then i had to go all the way back around to get in and let them in. and when i got there, jools had pooped in his pants.

so will somebody please tell me what horrific thing i did in my life to earn all of these things and more?

lord save me from smart children

lord save me from smart children

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…so before she falls asleep tonight, BC smells my breath. “mama,” she asks, “what did you just eat?”

“i ate an M&M.” mea culpa.

“i want an M&M now!” she protested, sounding a mite too close to veruca salt for comfort.

“you’ll be getting boatloads of candy tomorrow, don’t worry about it,” i countered. “i won’t get any from trick-or-treating.” gotcha there, sistah.

“yeah, but you’ll be taking candy from me afterwards.”

::doh::

she continued. “you know, mama, you’ve been taking my candy for seven years now. why don’t you leave mine alone and take from julian this year?”

damn. she actually noticed. this child of mine, who doesn’t notice that she’s wearing stripes with polkadots, who wouldn’t notice if an alien dropped from the sky whistling “dixie”, yeah, she notices anything to do with sweets.

lesson learned: mess with my chocolate and die.

a friend is a friend

a friend is a friend

Posted on by wrekehavoc

i’m making a new friend.

this shouldn’t seem like a big deal; BC gets her extreme friendliness from somewhere (and it isn’t from her dad, you know 😉 but living here, in the people’s republic, i meet plenty of nice people who i enjoy, but not a ton of people i really connect with, people who really seem to be in a similar mindplace that i am in, people who don’t judge me for being, well, a little off-kilter. i’m blessed that i have some very close friends who never make me explain, never need explanations, pulling information from the strands i weave around me and making sense out of it. and liking me in spite of it. some know me from childhood; some from college; fewer still from my adult life. i just don’t get to see them all that much.

it’s not that i find it hard to connect with people; it’s just that making a new friend requires effort, requires time, requires care. many of these things feel like they are in short supply at present on my part. it’s not that i am unwilling; but when you’re a mom, you really don’t have time to undertake these things; and once you finally muster them up and gather them all together, your expectations can still take a tremendous nosedive when the person fails in one way or another. i don’t have the luxury of time to fail. anyway, i have always expected too much of other people. very few ever rise to the level i want or need, and so over time, i have just learned to appreciate the thin veneer of cordiality as a connection in and of itself. it satisfies, if only temporarily.

i often wonder what it would be like if i lived near my close friends, our very own mayberry or wisteria lane. would we grow to hate each other? would we grow together? would we still provide the level of comfort to each other as we can from a distance? because we don’t see each other often, we can still reach back easily and picture each other as a teen, or as a college student, or in some other way. maybe seeing someone each day would push that recollection out of the fore.

i’m probably a pretty crappy friend at this stage of my life. i strive to balance my life, my family’s life, with everything else. there are some people i have met in the last year or so who i would love to get to know further. and it is so hard to get schedules and stars aligning in a way that would make things work. people try with me, and i just struggle to get things together. i’m tired of schedules running our lives. i wish sometimes it could all be so spontaneous, the way it was when i was younger. “yeah, sure, c’mon over — you bring the beer and i’ll order a pizza and we’ll hang out.” that sort of thing. but that seems to be so elusive now.

and still i rise. i am an optimist. (contrary to the people who voted me high school class pessimist as a joke.) right off the bat, this new person and i seem to get each other, she and i. today i feel good about the future.

just because i am making a friend.

hope you had a hell of a piss, arnold

hope you had a hell of a piss, arnold

Posted on by wrekehavoc

note to DH: you understand the subject line 😉 (and the hint for everyone else.)

DH had to go away on business. he doesn’t do it all that often, as he knows we all miss him too much when he goes. but this morning, he left for a business trip to The City (which for anyone who doesn’t know what means, Manhattan.) BC, who had been cheering for days at the thought of her dad’s trip (“now he won’t be here to yell at me!”) was wailing and moaning the loudest of anyone: “daddy, don’t leeeeeeeeeeeeeeave me!” being the biggest boohoo on the planet, i was finding it hard not to tear up seeing her in such grief. DH, though sensitive and kind to his DD, was able to tear himself away, leaving me with little miss teary-deary and jools, who was more interested in dora the explorer’s computer game on nick jr.com. i spent some time explaining how daddy doesn’t go away all that often and sometimes, he just has to. she said the only thing that would make her feel better would be talking to grandma, so i even got grandma and grandpa on the phone (at 7:30 a.m., which makes them pretty damn good sports in my book). no dice. finally, i resorted to the one thing i knew would snap her out of her funk:

curious george. (or, as he is fondly known in this house, curious jorge.)

yep. i resorted to television. once again, i am a bad mom. but i knew that she really wouldn’t snap out of it unless something really diversionary came her way. (and of course, i am secretly in love with the man in the yellow hat.)

it worked.

if i weren’t so pissed off at WETA for cancelling my beloved addiction, eastenders, i would send them money for this.

everyone had a good day at school; gymnastics class was fine. and then, the deluge. it monsooned here, just as i went to pick BC up with jools in tow. it was pissing down rain so hard, i could not see. we got home and had an hors d’oeuvre picnic on the family room floor, complete with BC and i trading off making up a story that was a little departure from the hansel and gretel tale of yore. it was actually fun. i got the kids showered, i read some stories (including my aborted attempt to read the spanish book jools took out from the school library today; BC was actually translating, but jools lost interest.)

we called DH, and he was on a ferry in the east river on his way to see a yankees game. i’m not thrilled about this on so many counts.

i wish he’d come home already.