Me: "Why are you out of bed?"
Whew, feels like awhile since I've been around these parts. It's been one of those weeks where each day felt like a year but the week itself felt like about six hours, you know?
Reminds me of a time many moons and several houses ago, when I was sitting in the livingroom and I heard my daughter start coming toward me down the hall. A few steps, and then - BOOM! [sound of child hitting floor].
Before I even had the chance to call out "everything alright?" (which is Mom Code for "do I have to get up?"), I heard her yell "I Am Okay!"
I settled back, only to hear two more steps and then - BOOM!
"I Am Okay!"
Followed by:
Two steps - BOOM - "I Am Okay!"
Two steps - BOOM - "I AM OKAY!!"
So I finally got up to see why she was so very okay.
And saw her picking herself up and try again to run down the hallway wearing only Dora underpants.
Which were around her ankles.
Thus it has been this week. Constant cycles of a few steps and BOOM (despite my undies being firmly up where they belong), but neverthless followed by yells of "I AM OK!!"
But we still had a great time in Vegas, and it's probably for the best that my favourite new game Fun with Penny Slots didn't actually result in taking home any money, as I have an addictive personality (see: Terry Pratchett, coffee). It seems that we also managed to leave in the depths of winter and return at the beginning of spring if the current temperature of +18 is any indication.
One of our first sights at the Vegas airport. Unfortunately, our time there was short and we weren't able to do this. Next time.
The fountain at the Bellagio - super purty.
Thanks kind stranger for taking our pic!
My big winnings - $30!! Of course, I lost it all again almost immediately. But it was exciting while it lasted.The snow is falling gently...big, fluffy flakes that melt as soon as they hit the ground and turn everything into mushy, gushy grodiness.
Sigh. If this were December 10? This would be lovely. March 10? Less so. Very, very much less so.
Fortunately, a reprieve cometh. The Husband and I are heading off tomorrow for a St. Paddy's Day weekend to meet some friends in VEGAS, BABY! Of course, since we return late Saturday night, it's being somewhat generous to term it a Shamrock Shake kind of weekend, and since none of the friends actually ended up deciding to come, it's more of a twosome getaway, so actual contents were definitely not exactly as pictured.
Nonetheless, it's a getaway and high time for it. Plus, I intend to enact my own personal economic stimulus plan and win enough to buy a house.
(I'm risk averse - think I can win $500,000 on the penny slots?)
So, might be a little quiet over here on PGT in the next while. Which will be different from the other times I just don't post for awhile because I have an excuse. Because they don't have The Internets in Las Vegas, you see.
I've got this love/hate thing going with these pre-fab "fill in your answer" things that people post on their blogs (they're called "memes," right? I'm terrible at the Internets Lingo).
I like reading them, but sometimes it feels like I'm watching a seven-year-old on the monkey bars who is insistently trying to get my attention: "Mom, watch me! Watch me! Are you watching? Moooo-oooom...WATCH ME!"
I'm already watching, you know? You don't need to answer questions with your iPod on shuffle or tell me all about your "firsts." And isn't every blog post a random thing? Isn't 25 of them all at once an embarrassment of riches?
(Okay, that's kind of a Facebook thing. But since I don't do Satan's-tool-and-one-day-you'll-all-be-sorry-when-The-Man-rounds-you-up-because-you're-all-connected-and-have-no-privacy Facebook, I've gotten my dose of random things via blogs.)
They also make me laugh because they pretty much always come with a disclaimer. "I don't usually do these things, but..." "So there's this meme going around and I'm killing time between classes..." "I've got this love/hate thing going with these pre-fab...."
You know what I mean. As though their authors recognize the inherent navel-gazing and somehow need to excuse the fact that they're indulging their desire to "be known" (again, which is kinda what blogging is all about, but those typically don't come with the same kind of disclaimers. Although, maybe they do - check out the first posts of most blogs and they usually start with, "well, I figure I ought to start one of these things...").
But what the heck. The economy's in the tank, it's Daylight Saving tomorrow (ohhh, I hate losing that hour. HATE HATE HATE), and I still haven't cleaned up last night's supper or folded last week's laundry so today's Saturday cleaning is going to be The! Awesome!
Might as well hark back to some happier times, when I was happier than Wilbur in his waste and getting my MA (aka getting paid to read books)**:
Note: Two for the price of one, friends. The "real" list comes from the 2003 BBC's Big Read; the second is the seen-around-the-internets version that Wikipedia suggests comes from a World Book Day list.
BBC Version
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold the ones you have read.
2) Italicize the ones you LOVE. (Sorry, this is too subjective for me - what if I really like one but am not sure if I LOVE it?)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading. (Um, no. Shoulda, coulda, woulda - it doesn't count if you haven't finished it.)
4) Tally your total.
How many have you read?
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (I cannot do Hardy anymore, ever since reading Jude the Obscure while in a funk.)
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot (do I get a point for each time I've read it? Cuz then this one's in the bag.)
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez (I keep meaning to. But I can't find one that doesn't have that stupid Oprah's Book Club sticker on it, so I can't read it on principle)
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett (see, I knew this Pratchett obsession would be good for something)
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Internets Version of Dubious Origins
(same rules, sorry about the double-spacing as I can't seem to clear the formatting)
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (kind of not fair; this one got me about four points in the last round)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (lots and lots of it, but I've sorta skipped a bunch of the minor prophets. And lots of Isaiah. And Jeremiah.)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (again, a whole bunch of 'em. But, seriously, who's got time for Titus Andronicus anymore?)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (no complaints, but did I not already get a point for this under #33?)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (groan. My road to hell has been paved for at least a mile's worth from this one.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Tally:
BBC version - 52; Dubious version - 62
Looks like it's non-BBC for the win! (Even with the Pratchett Advantage.)
Well, 24 hours, some Chipotle, some Internet lovin' (thanks guys), and some sage words of wisdom from my coworker who has grown kids and has BTDT when it comes to all of my parenting problems and I'm feeling a whole lot better about yesterday. As much as it sucks to watch your kids getting hurt, it's pretty much part of the job description of a parent.
I often find myself wishing I could take the punches for her. But half of the reason why I want to do that is because it would be much easier for me since I know stuff like that doesn't matter. And why do I know that? Because I had to learn it for myself from experience. Sheltering kids seems like a grand idea at the time, but then they become adults and don't know how to deal with conflict when the consequences are much more serious.
So, on to tonight's personal battle: dealing with the bittersweetness that is The Girl's First Sleepover. For reals?! She is not even eight years old, and yet tonight we packed up her Barbie suitcase with jammies, a change of clothes, toothbrush and travel toothpaste (and Mom Teddy, natch), and I drove her four blocks away to the birthday girl's house.
Craziness. I'm fully prepared for a midnight call to go get her, but you never know...she's often more independent than her ol' momma, who had to be picked up from Shannon R's house because I couldn't handle listening to devil light rock music before going to bed since our stereo at home was set exclusively to the "All Gaither, All the Time" channel.
Oh, and I think I may have seen the girl to whom I gave the EE yesterday coming to this same party. And, looking back with a day's worth of objectivity, I am not entirely certain that the recipient of my visual wrath was indeed the actual offender - she may have just been a henchgirl. Soooo, it's somewhat possible I may have scarred an innocent (does guilt by association count? Cuz she should know better than to hang around kids who say mean things).
(Mental picture... First Sleepover ruined by "Hey The Girl, did you know your mom gave Michaela Marie the EE yesterday. Nyah, nyah, now we're not gonna play with you ever again and we're going to make fun of you forever until you become The Bad Kid in class because you're desperate for any attention - even negative - and your grades fall and then you turn to drugs and alcohol and inappropriate relationships with boys all because your mom went all Momma Bear on the wrong kid.)
Sigh. I'm so glad they don't require some sort of passing grade on an entrance exam to demonstrate fitness to become a parent (or at least the absence of substantial neuroses). I'm not entirely certain I would pass said exam.
Is it bad to give an eight-year-old you've never met the Evil Eye?
Backing up a bit: today was a parent-teacher conference.
Back it up a bit further: I am having a tough 2009. Yes, I'm totally lucky to have a job, a house, a husband, two fab kids, no known diseases et cetera, et cetera. Hundreds of thousands of Americans and perhaps millions of world citizens would sneer at my "troubles" and invite me to trade my woeful existence for a week in their refugee tent in the Sudan or their midnight vigils in the cancer ward. I know.
But I'm experiencing low levels of anxiety like I don't think I've ever felt before. Nothing major, no need to run for the Effexor. Constant nonethless, and contributing to a toxic build-up of blech that rises ever so slightly with each passing day.
It's partly living in America, where Fear seems to be the dues every member of this country pays faithfully in return for the "security" of living the American Dream. It's definitely the Recession; it's tough to enjoy your daily work when constantly worried that the outcome won't be enough to convince the people with the purse-strings that someone else's position should be on the chopping block instead of yours. And, of course, the Winter that keeps on giving causes my soul to shrivel ever so slightly with each passing day.
Add all of this to the fact that I've been under the weather for the past couple of days, and you might imagine that it was not the sunniest of individuals who went to a parent-teacher conference today. Fortunately, it was The Girl's - that's a pretty easy one. It went well because she's smart and funny and kind and talented and gracious and simply awesome, and afterwards I picked the kids up from their after-school art class and we got ready to head for home.
At The Girl's locker, she was putting on her jacket, when a group of girls came by and one of them taunted, "Hey girl-man, wanna join the Pig Club?"
(Oh lordy, here we go again - my blood is BOILING. Add massive adrenaline rush and skyrocketing blood pressure to the anxiety.)
The Girl wordlessly turned and buried her face into me so the others wouldn't see her crying. At that point, I knew that I was only capable of two options: say something or stare.
Well, I didn't trust myself to say something. I knew that in my state there was no way I could say something remotely helpful, and visions of phone calls from parents angry that I had freaked out on their precious Elizabeth Claire gave me the strength to keep my mouth closed.
So I stared. No, actually I Stared. In fact, you might even say I S-T-A-R-E-D. Stared that [CENSORED] down. I couldn't stop myself, even as I was thinking, "this is so immature - you are going to give this child nightmares about the crazy angry lady or, worse, your child will become known as the daughter of the crazy angry lady and everyone will hate her."
But in the face of such unprovoked pettiness, it was like I totally deflated. It was as much a stare of disbelief and defeat as anything else. My daughter did nothing to them. Absolutely nothing. Her only crime was to have a cute short haircut that looked a little worse for the wear at the end of the day in a school filled with snobby suburban girls who all have long hair and look exactly the same.
(Dammit - now I'm the one crying.)
Hearing that verbal assault brought me right back to my own elementary days. Awful days, some of them. The psychological torture that goes on in schools would crush the most well-adjusted adults. Children, with their lack of emotional armour and their burning desire to fit in, are like lambs being led to the slaughter.
It is one thing to experience it personally (seriously, I can't imagine why anyone tries to relive their school days. Mine were great all things considered, but you couldn't pay me to return to them). It is entirely another to witness your own child gutted by the casual cruelty of another and be forced to stand ineffectually by.
Because there's nothing I can do. I can't fight these battles for her. Sure, I could have said something if I'd had the emotional strength to do it positively. But I won't be there next time. Or the next.
I am not ready for this. I literally quake in fear at the thought of the next seven or eight years of parenting. Everything made sense when they were babies - eat, poop, sleep, play. Nothing couldn't be fixed with either a Mom Teddy or some chocolate milk in a sippy cup.
Growing up? There ain't a Mom Teddy in the world big enough for this one.
Worse, there isn't a Peitricia Mae big enough for this one. I know I'm going to fail, even before I start. I know I will not get this right - I'll try, and I'll (hopefully) do a decent job, but I cannot fix this world and its cruelty. Sometimes I don't think I can bear to watch.
Guess there's always staring.
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
(The Girl's been playing with "Dad Teddy" lately. DT was purchased as a duplicate when we realized she was becoming quite attached to "Mom Teddy." The idea was that we'd have a stand-in for washday or if - heaven forbid - the original got lost. Well, The Girl let us know right away that there was Only One Mom Teddy, and so the duplicate became DT and has spent most of his time relegated to Level 2 Importance. So we've got a little before and after here - the one on right equals the one on the left plus eight years of solid lovin'.)
We had a spa at our house yesterday. Tickets were 10 cents, payable in advance. Funnily enough, there were only three tickets available before the Entire Event! was Sold Out! which corresponded exactly with the number of people at our house.
The list of available treatments.
Mmmm - the massage was my favourite part. For some reason, sunglasses were required.
I'm thinking that this is very possibly The Husband's first pedicure ever. Quite likely his last, given the exuberance of his assistant.
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