October 1st: A Recap

October 1st. It’s 61 degrees. The moon is full.

We have been slowly shifting from a performance focused school mindset to a love of learning school mindset.

The oldest child is nearly 12. We are fully into the moody, blessed years of pushing against the constraints of childhood and getting ready to grow up in mind, not just in body. She’s too dang smart for her own good with her newfound access to technology, and this very afternoon I was googling how to foster self control in children, since that isn’t my strong suit either. It’s beautiful and terrifying to behold. The angsty pixie haircut, the love all things black. The hours spent in her self-made cocoon of sheets and Christmas lights, drawing and listening to music on her headphones. But she still has that cute little upturned nose she got from her Grandma Jackie and sleeps with her ragged stuffed bunny. I coax her out into the sunlight by making her walk her dog and sometimes make her forget her angst by dancing with her in the kitchen until she giggles. She’s smart enough to see how ridiculous the mood swings are and has the grace to (sometimes resentfully) laugh at herself. If I get her alone and out of her room, she tells me all the crazy fun things that are bouncing around in her beautiful brain.

The middle child is in the waning part of his 9th year, set free from the bounds of public school and set loose on the world (neighborhood) to test his mettle. He is a dreamer, a thinker, a builder of epic lego concoctions, a consumer of books, and a distract-o-bot who loves making art and comics with his trusty BFF (the middle F fluctuating between the two parts of Frenemy) /youngest brother at his side. I see him out in the sun on the sidewalk, or catch a bare foot dangling from his hammock and I ask what he is doing. “Just thinking”, he replies. He’s all war and knights and battles and pirates, troll hunters and epic beasts, his eyes lightly skimming over the gore and horror of the topic and landing on the feats of bravery, band of brothers camaraderie, cool weaponry and armor. He’s the one who seeks out new music and chases down rabbit trails of snippets of songs he hears until he says, “Mama. You gotta hear this music.” And I find myself listening to D.J. Marshmallow without knowing how this happened. He’s the one who is never in his body, but somewhere in his head. The scars on his knees and elbows (and this week his mouth) are evidence. He keeps my first aid skills fresh. This week he had me googling “wound care in the mouth.” Good times. He’s still my sensitive soul. The one who passes through logic to the heart of the matter and no amount of words will explain it all. I just hold him while his big grey-green eyes look up at me, as if I have the answers.

The youngest child is my live wire. My prankster, my jokester. My Loki. Still mercurial in his moods, still my early morning riser who greets me (and the dog) at the dawn with the grin only a 7 and a half year old sports, all teeth too big for his face and gaps between them big enough to squish through a considerable amount of jell-o. He’s all muscle and scrappy quickness. He climbs and jumps and leaps where angels dare to tread. He’s the kid who told me days after it happened that he had gone for a walk alone around the block. I never even knew he was gone. I thought he was outside playing in the yard while I made dinner. He follows wherever his big brother leads, but will straight up cut you if you don’t also listen to his opinion. He holds himself to a high standard and when he doesn’t understand or get it perfect the first time, is so hard on himself that I have to tell him that I don’t let anyone talk to my kid that way. Not even him. His mind is quick and logical, cunning and silly. He doesn’t let anything slip past him. Cookies in the house? He knows how many are in the box and how many everyone else has already had. He’s gonna get his fair share. He’s desperate to be big, but is still the one who comes in for a morning snuggle.

Charlie is 9 months old and has a nose for legos. I wish I had started an art piece called “Things I fished from my puppy’s mouth” the day he came to be with us. It would be disgusting and epic. He chews things he shouldn’t but brings them to me as if to say “Please take this away from me.” He’s the best soccer goalie in the family and makes epic stops, leaps and catches mid air, as long as the ball is kinda flat. He’s a great addition to the family and we are finally coming out of that phase where I feel like I have a hairy baby to take care of, but who I occasionally put in a big metal crate to sleep and if he were a human, that would be totally wrong.

I’m 43 and 11 months and I’ve had a grown up job for most of this year where I get paid and everything! And no, I don’t mean homeschooling 3 kids. That’s my other job, which is awesome and I am loving but am not confident in yet. I’m a freelance project manager for a marketing firm and who woulda thought after managing a house, 3 kids, a rental, childcare, finances and everything in between that I’d be good at holding all the strings of a project in my hand and making sure everything gets done. Matt says I’m the best he’s ever worked near. High praise! I got a bit closer to finishing that album I’ve been working on forever and amidst love and loss and Covid, I found that I do survival really well. It’s looking forward and making plans for 5-10 years out that is harder to keep my mind on. We are renovating the house after nearly 14 years of just living with things exactly as they were the day we moved in and this week after working with the guys who were setting the countertops, one joked that they should hire me and the other asked me when I was going to get my General Contractor license. I talk the talk but am still fumbling my way through this process. Hard and costly lessons are good teachers but hard masters. I try to keep my eyes on the good things most of the time. I look for good and glory and grace. It’s hard in the midst of all of this to not get swamped by the weight of it all. I fight the good fight, rest and then wade back into the fray. 

Homeschool - Day 20?

 We are just trying to figure this all out.

6th grade - Khan academy math, research Mesopotamian Art project, Poem memorization

4th grade - Colonial America - model of a colonial village, discuss battle of Lexington and Concord

2nd grade Khan acadmey math, poem memorization and writing, copywork

Building Your Own Pandemic Virtual School Desks - A Tutorial...of sorts

How to make desks for homeschool.

Step 1. (Not pictured) Go to the local big box construction store with 3 kids in masks plus a dog because WHY NOT make it a circus. Choose laminated lumber slabs that are 24" x 48" x .75". Lose one child who keeps running off to find a lumber cart, tell the children to put their masks on 15,000 times, and, for the love, please give other people some space because social distancing. Break up about 14 arguments about who gets to push the cart.

Step 2. (not pictured) Let the kids pick a quart of trim paint in whatever garish shade they want. Do not comment. Ask the youngest 20 times to stop treating the lumber cart like a sled and ooching it all over the paint department. Make your daughter put back her fan of color swatches. Let about 10 people ooo and aaahh over the dog who is in the store and who brings their dogs into stores!!!!????

Step 3. (also not pictured but hubs DID try. I was too focused) Don eye and ear protection and cut those boards to size with the skill saw that you are terrified of because John Hardy lost 3 fingers to one when you were a kid. Insist that hubs supervise just in case you need someone to ice your severed fingers on the way to the hospital. Feel super empowered. Also feel like vomiting a little.

Step 4. (pictured here) Have your surly kids, who think it's too hot and this is too hard, sand the edges off of the desks because of sharp edges and their being prone to needing stitches. Attach the 4 blocks you cut off each board with wood glue and a center screw as a clamp to create corners for the legs to attach. 

This is what the top of the desk will look like after sanding and attaching blocks.

This is what the bottom of the desk will look like after sanding and attaching blocks.

Step 5. Have your kids complain loudly about hard it is to be perfect with power tools that they have maybe used twice in their lifetimes. This will make the process so much more enjoyable. Drink coffee to sustain yourself and maybe sneak off to stress eat a few cookies. Whatever works best for you.

Step 6. Spill an entire can of Kilz 2 on the porch when a kid kicks it over. This is an important step.

Step 7. Prime the desks alone on the front porch while listening to an audio book because the only primer you have now is Kilz (original) and can only be cleaned up with mineral spirits. Get light headed cleaning the brush outside with mineral spirits and google frantically because you don't remember how to dispose of it. Leave it out to evaporate, but where the dog and kids can't get it.

Step 8. Spread out that giant tarp that you are definitely not going to roll dead bodies in and head for the lake if the bickering doesn't stop around here, and let the kids paint their desktops. Clothes will be ruined. They will mysteriously get paint on their faces. Are we eating paint now?!

The dog will get in the mix.  

He will totally get painted. The kids will be filled with self confidence. You will feel like you are killing it at this parenting thing.

Step 9. While the kids are watching The Dragon Prince on Netflix, sneak outside and paint a 2nd coat to make the desktops look like they weren't painted by 7 and 9 year olds. The 11 year old's looks amazing. She's doing a great job so just touch it up a tiny bit on the edge were you can still see primer, but for the love, don't tell her or you will wound her tweenage soul. The desktops will look amazing. Almost as if you had some clue as to what you were doing and TOTALLY not winging the whole thing from beginning to end.

Step 10.  Order 5 different sets of hair pin table legs from Amazon at the appropriate height for your kid and have only one set show up and the others be mysteriously "undeliverable". You will need to order more. Actually this would have been step 1, but then the shipping debacle will happen so here we are. Desktops build and still no legs. 

Step 11. When they finally arrive (2 days AFTER school begins - because pandemic), attach the hairpin legs to the blocks under the desktop and hope and pray that these small children won't actually test the 500 lb weight rating these table legs have. In fact, don't mention it at all, in case they get ideas. Be sure to use screws that are just a hair too long and then do some patching and painting to the top to make it smooth where the wood splintered. Or don't. You can just leave it. At this point, who cares. We are almost to the finish line. It will bother your soul though. Because these kids didn't come by their perfectionistic tendencies by change.

Step 12. Set up the desk in the room that is about to have to have the ceiling ripped out where the 100 year old plumbing pipes failed because could life BE any more insane right now. Step back and marvel at your the children's handiwork and tell them what a great job they did. Just in time for the start of the pandemic school year where you and your progeny will be flung to the wolves of unexpected virtual schooling.

Happy Building!

Quarantine Goes On

It has been months. And months. And months. So much togetherness. No end in sight.

Love in the time of Covid19

We have been on lockdown in Nashville for more days than I can count.  March 2nd was the tornado that closed all the schools for a week. Then the kids went back for tree days and then school has been closed ever since. We don't leave the house much beyond taking the new dog for a walk. Our 16th anniversary came and neither of us remembered until halfway through the day and Facebook reminded me.

All activities are cancelled. Parks are closed. I am attempting to homeschool the children but it often goes south before too much gets done. We watch movies. We write and draw and play outside. The kids run loose like I used to in the woods on Hamby Road.

But in the loneliness is a quiet and a contentment that I have not felt in awhile. It feels good to be still. It feels good to be quiet. The dishwasher hums, the dryer spins, the boys write poems with sticky letters while my girl reads yet another novel on her Kindle. Hubs retreats to his man-cave to play games. It's a good life. We are lucky. And I am happy today.

Love (and Parenting) in the Time of Covid19

My darling I love you
But don't cough on me
We have been here for weeks
In this wretched quarantine

The groceries are scarce
The toilet paper runs low
We are stuck in this house
But there's nowhere to go.

The parks are all closed
The stores are all shuttered
We are shut in with these children
And the house is getting cluttered

With Legos and books
And homeschool papers
We Facetime and Zoom while the
Kinder cut capers.

We attempt to do work
But get nothing done
We send out the kinder
Out into the sun

They explore and they argue
They create and they wander
They ride down the hill on their bikes
And they ponder

What does this dead snake
That I found feel like?
Can I run over this roadkill
With the wheels of my bike?

Can I have another snack?
Can I dig a big hole?
Can I paw through the fire pit
And paint my face with charcoal?

Do I HAVE TO do Math?
Do I HAVE TO write cursive?
They are making me use my mom voice
In threats most coercive.

Wash your hands, wear your mask
Please don't ask again why
If we follow all the rules
We might be free by July

The Homecoming Mum

A short story of a memory.

I guess I should begin by telling you what a Homecoming Mum is.  It seems to be exclusively a Texas thing and is a big fake chrysanthemum flower, usually in the wearer’s school colors, surrounded by and trailing ribbons, bells, braided ribbon, curled ribbon and every plastic dangly item that can be bought at a local Hobby Lobby and may best describe the wearer.  For example, cheerleader megaphone, teddy bear, princess crown...you get the idea.  These mums are worn on homecoming day and gifted to the wearer by a boyfriend, a grandparent, a parent, auntie, uncle, a secret admirer etc. The boys also wear something similar in terms of ribbons and dangles, but it is attached to a garter on their arm and out of necessity, much smaller. That elastic band can only hold so much weight.  Mums, however, have no limit as to how big and elaborate and weighty they can be.  

In the 90’s, things had gotten only a bit out of hand and while the mums were large, they were still mostly wearable.  They could not be pinned to the shirt because it would rip a hole in the fabric. Often they were pinned (if the mum was smaller) to a bra strap for support. Or to the heavy wool fabric of the letter jacket the wearer was sporting and if it was your sweethearts jacket, all the better.  It was all about structure and support. An interesting fact was that these mums were often a measure of popularity.  To be seen on Homecoming day, with a LL Bean backpack and Dooney & Bourke purse, struggling down the hallways, clothes obscured by the mass of jingling and fluttering doodads was the height, THE LIMIT, of cool. The coolest girls got a mum not only from their parents and/or grandparents, but from their boyfriend and bffs. 

In 1994, I was a senior.  And let me be clear, I was, how can I put it best...queen of the nerds.  Well.  Not that nerds had queens then.  That would imply that I had some sort of notoriety as a nerd, but really I was just a plain old nerd and I had a small group of nerd friends, but I was not the queen of them. Chubby, glasses, nose in a book, in the most uncool extra curricular activities.  Academic Decathlon, for example.  We studied and took tests.  For fun.  For FUN! What?  In addition to that coolest of the cool activity, I was also on the swim team and sang in the choir.  These may be pretty cool in some places but in the 90s, these were the backwater of sports and activities compared to the behemoth that is football (and its cute perky girlfriend, cheerleading) in Texas.

I could feel the longing to belong, to have a mum, to be popular, but I didn’t have those skills, or that kind of money.  My large family had enough for necessary and sometimes a bit for what was fun, but shelling out 50 bucks for something I would wear for one day was out of the question. I had reconciled myself to that fact in my Freshman year when I realized what a big deal this Homecoming thing was.  And now my budding rebellious mind had done a 180 and if I could have uttered these words whithout dying of religious guilt and perhaps being struck down in blasphemy at the time, I would have said “F that”. I knew, even in my longing, that it was a ridiculous, extravagant thing and not necessary for the wellbeing of my soul.  At least that is what I told my 17 year old self.

Instead, I decided to go classy.  I was, due to perhaps a glut of reading all things L.M. Montgomery at the time, a bit of a romantic.  Not in the relationship sense, but in the Anne of Green Gables putting herself in a leaky old boat to float out into the water, a pale “dead” maiden while her friend read “The Lady of Shalott” upon the shore and shedding a tear because she looked so dead in that boat, kind of way.  She nearly sank by the way. That’s what being “romantical” got you, even in Anne’s day.  This is the kind of gal I was.  I was very Anne. So I bought a real chrysanthemum and with my best craft store supplies and questionable hot glue gun skills, I made my own corsage.  That was, in fact, where the tradition had come from.  You got your gal a corsage for Homecoming.  It was just a testament to how all things are bigger in Texas that it had gone from that, to the shirt ripping monstrosity it had become.  I pinned it to my own letter jacket (because I had no boyfriend’s jacket to wear) and off I went to school.  

My nerd friends tentatively admired it.  They knew what it was to buck the system and to be seen as enjoying a departure from the status quo, so they kept their praise on the down low. A chrysanthemum is a sturdy flower and needs a lot of water to not go wilty, so I had to keep refilling that green tube of water with a rubber top in which my flower was stuck. It involved a lot of unpinning and getting my jacket wet to maintain this flower, but I did it.  For a full school day.  

That night was the “big game” and I put this in quotes because while I understand football and grew up near football, I literally could not care less about it. Scandalous. I know.  I’m sure I’ll hear about this later.  Especially from my Grandpa who insisted we spend Thanksgiving with the TV blaring the Dallas Cowboys game while my Grandma marshaled the troops and cooked for an army of adult kids and grandkids.  She’s not here to tell me if she would mind my indifference to football but I remember her crinkled bead brown eyes peeking around the corner of the kitchen door for the score every so often.  I stood in the stands, with my back to the game, plastic Longview Lobo cup in hand, drinking my soda and talking and laughing, proud of the corsage on my lapel. When the band would play or the crowd would roar, or people around me would lean forward, sucking in their breath, eyes popping as some play was made for the endzone, I would turn around and watch and collectively chear or “awwwww man!!” with the best of them. A nerd in a Texas Football world has to learn to assimilate, right?

Now the worst thing a nerd could do in public at the time, was appear to not care what other people thought about him or her.  One had to be properly aware of how uncool one was and pay proper deference to the hierarchy. To fail to do so was to risk wrath.  I should have learned that lesson at the Sadie Hawkins dance when I was laughing at a joke with my date, a boy called Russell Hurst who was sweet and very very pale, when a football jock recoiled at the audacity of my happiness and reached over a burned my leg with his cigarette.  But I was hard headed and more than a little ADHD and so I had forgotten to be properly cowed in the presence of cool. I was having a good time and was proud as punch of my little corsage.

A few of the cool boys noticed my forgetfulness and began a plan to put me back in my place.  The uncool are never deserving of happiness, after all.  Whenever I turned my head to look at the game or to look at a friend, this group of boys began plucking out flower petals of my corsage.  Like a snake strike.  Just go for one petal.  Quick as a flash.  I would cover my corsage and shout at them to stop. Then after a few minutes, I would forget to be on guard (ADHD, remember?) and they would do it again.

Now in my head, the adult me replays this sequence of events and imagines I give those boys a massive shove backward off the bleachers where they would lie bleeding and contrite that they had been such jerks. I would flip my hair and coolly sip my coke (which was a Dr. Pepper but in Texas a coke is what we called every soda). Then I would flay them with my eloquent words as I dressed them down for all to hear and my friends and fellow nerds would cheer and say “Serves you right, assholes!” That is not what happened. I was not self aware enough to move to a different spot. I did not have enough self respect to not be a tiny bit pleased with this attention, awful as it was. To be seen and paid attention to, even negative attention, felt better than being invisible to my warped high school mind. So it went on, for the better part of the game until my flower was just a stem and I was mad and close to tears.  

The game ended and we did not win. The 1994 season had not been a good one for the Longview Lobos. The crush of bodies pressed out of the fences and I wandered to find my grandpa, who had season passes and therefore sat in the “good seats” on the other side of the stadium and didn’t have to endure the rabble of the bleachers. I threw away the sad remains of my corsage in the barrel full of discarded Lobo cups and we walked together down the long row of cars parked along the street to his old Ford pickup truck. We didn’t talk much and that was normal. Grandpa was my ride to the game, but not really my companion, nor had he ever been back then. That had been my grandma’s job. Both of us were still reeling from the sudden loss of her earlier that year in April and it was all too fresh. Too real. Too lonely. Being with the person who reminded me most of her and yet was the opposite in terms of comfort and understanding was like holding a coal to remember the warmth of the fire. The pleather bench seat of the truck was cold underneath me and neither of us spoke as he drove. I figured he was mad we had lost the game, and he was a man of few words anyway back then. My chrysanthemum and dignity were a mess and I didn’t have much to say either. 

I looked out the window as that old truck lurched and squeaked and jostled down the road.  It was dark as only rural roads can be dark. The light of the crescent moon was faint and thin and cold.