Lemme At Her!

I have had a bad weekend, even though absolutely nothing went wrong. The bad is all in my head, brought about by an uber-mother to-do list that would gag Martha Stewart. (BTW, since I don't have TV, help me out on this. Is Martha Stewart still around? Still an icon for over-achievers? Or should I choose someone else? Who?)

Who is the "she" in, "I don't know how she does it?" I hate that bitch. Or, "She who must be obeyed?" Lemme at her. What do they have that I don't have? Brains? Talent? A superior day-planner? A better multi-vitamin? My husband, seeking to comfort me, actually dared to say, "Don't sweat the small stuff..." I spun around and pointed my blazing six-shooter glare at him. "Are you about to tell me, '...and it's all small stuff?'" Si raised his hands in the air "No. That's a stupid saying. Not everything is small stuff." "That's right. The person who coined that phrase? Notice how we haven't heard from that person in a while? That person was murdered by some mother who found out at the end of the first quarter that she was in charge of treats for her daughter's soccer game." "Oh...which reminds me...", he says, looking at the roster on the fridge.

Deep down, I know I'm being dumb. I'm reading a book by Ishmael Beah that graphically depicts what it's like to have real problems. (By the way, I'm about half way through it, and recommend it highly if you, like me, need to be reminded about what is and isn't "small stuff") Maybe this is why I'm more frustrated than usual: I'm not able to make headway on even non-life-threatening tasks.

Kate's list of recently dropped balls, all of which need to be scooped back up and juggled some more, along with a whole bunch of new ones:

• Colored pencils in diverse, multi-racial skin-tones for Sara's art project.

• Nate's skeleton costume. Still consists of a black body suit and a pile of white felt.

• Four pots of decorative, drought resistant grasses bought but not planted. I got the lilac bush in the ground, but not these. Will the neighbors get to watch me this evening, digging in my garden in my skirt, stockings, dress shoes? Won't be the first time.
• The Duplo, Brio, Playmobil, Lincoln-Log and Polly-Pocket families had a major block party this weekend and are all hanging out, hung over, in each other's boxes. Frankly, do I care? The kids don't.
• My ex-vegetable garden is still clogged with crispy tomato plants, rattling in their cages, waiting to be removed.
• Work. God, let's not even go there. Of, yeah. I am there. Well, OK, I'd better get to it.

Gourds are Good

So the gap that Nate carved in the jack-o-lantern's teeth works well for this.

Fire Drill

[Before I write tonight, I want to aplogize for my neglect. I have not been to visit my friends' blogs in a few days, and I miss reading about each of you. I makes me sad to miss out on the happenings in your lives, and I will be reading madly to catch up in a couple of days.]

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At the school where I work, it is Emergency Preparedness Week, which means that during the day the little kids march outside for fire drills; shelter under their desks from imaginary earthquakes; and practice lock-downs, in which everyone pretends that the doors to our classrooms actually lock.

People are, I have discovered, much less concerned about the evening adult education program. I suppose this is partly because they are grown-ups and party because my boss, who is in charge of fire drills, doesn't work nights. In the 15 years I have worked at my school, we have never had a fire drill during evening classes, so we decided to give it a try. This was a drill for a drill, really. To do a proper drill, the fire alarm has to go off, and it has to be a surprise. Setting off the fire alarm requires a joint effort on the part of my boss, the alarm company and the fire department. Sometime soon? My students tell me they would prefer to wait until summer, when it's warm.

At any rate, the staff and I assigned ourselves evacuation tasks and decided to have the drill at 7:50 PM. I spent time before the drill going from classroom to classroom, explaining fire drills and evacuation plans to our students. This is an English as a Second Language program, thus requiring broad gestures to indicate the proper stairwell, the nearest exit and the "meeting place". By the fourth explanation or so, I felt like a flight attendant, or like I was doing the "Macarena". Everyone agreed to pretend to be surprised and put their coats on.

It went pretty well, but we did learn some things from the experience.

1. Regarding the sounding of the alarm, there is no substitute for the real thing. Kate parading through the hallways with a pot and lid from the school kitchen is a poor (though amusing) substitute.

2. If you have a fire drill at night, it will be dark. I had told all the groups to congregate on the street in front of the school, find their supervising teachers and check in so everyone could be accounted for. Instead, we all milled around trying to find each other until we gave up and went back inside for coffee. I need to get a little flashlight for each teacher, so she can be easily spotted. As it was, we were reduced to bleating like sheep searching for our lambs. And you know how it is. You call out, "JOSE!", and eight male voices from all directions shout, "HERE!"

By the way, when is the drill over? When can I stop the stopwatch? When everyone is A) out of the building? B) clear of the fire zone and at the "meeting place"? C) accounted for by the supervising teacher? If it's "C", the drill isn't over, yet.

3. Walkie-talkies are cool, but it helps to know how to use one. As arranged, our Floor Manager, Mark, had grabbed one and I had grabbed the other at the beginning of the drill. As we exited the building, I could hear him: "Kate, the building's clear. Do you read?" In the dark, milling with the crowd, I was randomly squeezing bits of walkie-talkie, going, "Hello? Hello?" Afterward, back in the building, he showed me the button to press. Oh, OK. I went to the end of the hall so we could try it again, and unthinkingly held it up to my ear, causing my head to explode when he talked. "It's not a phone, Kate!" Right.

I don't know if our students feel any safer, but they were highly entertained.

"Pumpkins 900"

Unfortunately, my degree in mommy-ology did not include this course. It's graduate level, and I didn't get that far. After I failed "Girls' Hairstyles 350", they didn't think I had potential for an advanced degree. Here's the jack-o-lantern Nate and I made.

In my defense, Nate and I both worked on the mouth, and while I was smoothing and trimming one side, he was busy on the other, humming softly to himself. "Dentist....dentist...I am a dentist..."

Simon, on the other hand, sort of took over Sara's jack-o-lantern. He likes to try something a little edgier. Push the envelope. He would never admit it, but he LOVES carving pumpkins, 'cause he's English and they don't do a lot for Halloween; at least they didn't when he was a kid. The Celts (I believe) made the first jack-o-lanterns, but out of turnips, not pumpkins. Talk about time-consuming... Here's Simon's interpretation of Harry Potter in flight, reaching for he snitch with his scarf blowing out behind him. Can you see it, now that I've told you exactly what it is?

Oh, yeah, sure enough.



And then "HP" in lightning-bolt letters on the back.

Sara and I think we would just get him a pumpkin of his own next year. "Sunset" magazine had some great falling leaf patterns.

Get busy, Si.

Mixing Paints

I had actually planned to write on a different topic, but the kids are sobbing and shrieking upstairs. Finally, I can't stand it any more.

"GET DOWN HERE, BOTH OF YOU!"

The sobbing comes closer...closer... They are standing at attention in front of me.

"What. Is. Going. On?"

Sara, through her tears: "Itoldhimhecouldpaintwiththewatercolorsbuthedoesn'tevenreallywantto painthejustwantsto mixthecolorsallup. He's MIXING and MIXING..." (She dissolves again into tears.)

Nathan: "Weeeellllll, I DO want to paint..."

Sara: (Interrupting) "YOU DO NOT!!! Moooommmmm, he's not painting! He just keeps telling me he's going to flick paint at me."

Nathan: "Am not! I want to paint and I need to mix the colors. (In a meditative, sensual tone...) I MIX the colors, they are soooooo pretty. I put my brush in the red, and then in the orange..." He is looking sideways at Sara. He is saying this because he knows this will make her scream:

Sara: "NO!!! NO MIXING!"

Nathan: "Aaaand, she is (he holds up his hand and begins to itemize on his fingers) pinching me, slapping me, flicking bits of paper at me..."

(Sob-surge from Sara.)

I am exasperated at this point. "Oh, Sara, cut it out. You know how much those paints cost? Almost nothing. Big deal if he mixes the colors - we can get more at the grocery st-"

"MOM! DON'T YOU KNOW!?? THERE'S THE 'MIXING PAINT' AND THE 'NON-MIXING PAINT'! HE'S MIXING THE NON-MIXING PAINT!"

Actually, no, I was not aware of this important distinction between our two little trays of watercolors. They both look utterly hashed to me.

Finally, I said, "Sara, Nathan can paint any way he wants. If he mixes the paint, big deal." While I was thus chiding Sara, Nathan got this smug, s*** eating grin.

"And you, Nathan..." Ooops. The grin is wiped suddenly and cleanly from off his little face, replaced by false remorse. "There will be no flicking, throwing, smearing or other uses of paint for torture."

"OK, Mommy." "OK, Mommy."

Nathan exits the interrogation and Sara, once dismissed, lunges after him in a way that makes me yell, "SARA? I saw that. Do not pinch your brother." I guess I'd better go upstairs now. There is an eerie silence that does not bode well. My husband had to work today. I envy him.

Foosball

We just bought flooring at a local furniture place and got a $99 special deal on this fabulous foosball table. It'll be great in the rec room downstairs, after the flooring project is over. It arrived a few days ago, and Si opened the box, just to "make sure nothing was broken".

I came home the next evening and he had emptied the box, to "check that all the parts are there".

Then the little men went on their rods. May as well get started with some of the preliminaries.

Two nights ago, I discovered it was all put together except for the legs. Si was eyeing them and saying, "Those legs. I hope they're not wobbly. It seems sturdy up to this point, but the real test will be the legs."

Yeah, sure enough I got home last night, and it was all done. Now it's too big to remove from the living room.

Five Things

I was tagged by "Flying Pink Elephants" to play "5 Things". I like being tagged - it offers me a chance to blog without pondering a topic. What a relief.

5 things found in my room:

• MY BED! God, how I love it. I don't get to spend nearly enough time in it lately, so I think about it all the time. Cream-colored flannel sheets patterned with autumn leaves...cotton comforter from Target that I just bought this summer, but feels like it has been washed a thousand times. Orgasmic.
• Cozy sofa with brass reading lamp;
• The beginnings of my black and white photo gallery;
• Books I've hung onto since I was a kid: "Anne of Green Gables", the "Little House" books, "Narnia", "Winnie the Pooh";
• Unused bottles of perfume on my dresser. I'm not a big perfume person - patchouli, if anything. But every time my MIL comes to visit, she brings me a bottle.

5 things I’ve always wanted to do:

• Scuba dive;
• Ride in a helicopter;
• Take a nice, long canoe trip in the Boundary Waters in September. Maybe 8-10 days;
• Go to medical school so I can join "Doctors without Borders" and be useful;
• Visit the places my students are from: Mexico, Vietnam, Tibet. Not like a tourist, though; like a member of the family.

5 things in my bag (I'll do my carry-all, 'cause my purse is so boring):

My carry-all is genuine fake patent leather. It has a slinky woman in silhouette cavorting on a chile pepper. It says "Muy Caliente!"("Very Hot!") It is beyond tacky and utterly inappropriate.

• Flash drive in a Ziploc bag, 'cause I lost the cap;
• "Energy" mints, with caffeine. The can in which they are contained has a satisfying rattle. Unfortunately, it takes 8 mints to equal a cup of coffee. Geeze.
• Leatherman tool;
• Receipt from "Hair by Edie" (I went there today. Being shampooed by Edie is almost as good as going to bed.)
• Ancient bottle of hand lotion so gross and crusty that it once tested positive for explosives at airport security, necessitating a pat-down. I've been frisked.

5 things found in my wallet (this is REALLY boring):

• A tiny booklet called "The Basics", which tells me how to use my cell phone; then the remaining contents are all cards....
• Pink punch-card for 10 free spinning classes at the rec center. I need to use it before it expires. The pressure.
• Cards, cards, cards: voter registration, credit, debit, rec center membership, city library, county library, health insurance, dental insurance, driver's license, Costco;
• Oh, and a little money;
• And a blank check, folded small in a hidden compartment.

5 things I’m currently into:

• Uh, blogging.
• Photography. I'm trying to learn. I wish I could move to Florida and apprentice myself to Seagrape. She's incredible.
• Making terrariums (or, is it terraria???), which is my upcoming project with my daughter's Brownie troop next week. Pray for me.
• My knees. My friend M. had knee surgery last week, and ever since I've had...knee awareness. Ooooh. Is that a twinge I'm feeling right now? Could it be (gasp!) the meniscus? I'm being so nice to my knees this week.
• Tequila

There! Whew! OK, I'll tag 5 friends now, per the rules of the game. Anyone else want to play? Please do!

• Jess
• Shirley
• Joann
• Elizabeth
• Alice