Nesting

I've been nesting like crazy lately. Or thinking about it, anyway. (And no, I am not pregnant. I promise.) It seems like everyone who comes over wants to decorate my house -- which is at once a kind and complimentary impulse, but also sort of presumptuous and annoying. It's MY house. I want to do it. And I'm slow, I know; I'm sure that annoys all these compulsive decorators. We will have been in this house for two years by August (or was it July when we moved in?) -- though of course I was hugely pregnant when we first got here, and then I had a squalling newborn (plus the other three, who are still pretty good at squalling, themselves). Add in church responsibilities that further strip away any energy, creative or otherwise, I may have and not much is left to contemplate the overwhelming task of personalizing my home. Plus I'm a perfectionist. I agonize over even the decisions I'm 99% sure about because I want everything to be just right, and actually making and executing the decision eliminates all other options which might have been better (if I'd just thought about it a teeeeeensy bit more).

I am beginning to make progress, though! I finally replaced the ancient room darkening roller shades in the parlor and living room with light filtering honeycomb shades. I should have taken a before shot, but I didn't and all I can find in my archives is this evening shot from Christmas:


Before: Crappy vinyl roller shades (which kept falling on my head any time I tried to raise or lower them, so we mostly just kept them down all the time) used to cover these windows. You can see the one shade pulled down to the right of the tree. Please also note the ill-fitting curtains, which came with the house, because I will talk about those in a minute.


After: It's not exactly a fair comparison, because I took this shot during the day with gorgeous natural light shining through while the other was taken at night with just the ceiling fixture to illuminate the room (well, and the tree). But still, this is better, right? My two months' contemplation of these specific blinds (and who knows how long before I arrived at the idea of these) plus measuring and remeasuring seven times before ordering -- I think I did well.

(Plug: I first tried to purchase honeycomb shades from a local home interiors store; based on the size of the windows -- and yes, they are huge -- they quoted me an OBSCENE price. Obscene, I tell you!! I ended up buying mine from ShadesShuttersBlinds.com for 80% less. We did have to install them ourselves, but with the help of DH's uncle that was no problem at all.)

My next task in the parlor is to find drapes. DH likes the burgundy and gold color scheme of the old curtains (which our once-a-week housekeeper decided to hang up in my bedroom after I took them down from the parlor -- see what I mean?) but I feel kind of meh about burgundy. I thought a lovely dark peacock teal would be nice -- it would complement the gold of the antique chair and draw out the colors of the icy greenish / bluish carpet and the green sofa. Plus, though you can't see it from the photos, the wall color isn't flat -- it has flecks of bluish grey scattered around. Peacocky curtains might highlight that and bring more depth and texture to the room (do I sound as if I watch too much HGTV? I do). The drapes I linked to above are a good color, but don't want anything that plain -- maybe with gold embroidery or something. I haven't found the right thing yet. And like I said, DH isn't totally on board with dark teal, so I suppose we're still open to suggestions. (I don't mind help in the form of suggestions, as long as you don't go ahead and decorate it for me!)

Next up is the kitchen. It should have been the first thing I took care of, since the lack of privacy there is our most glaring problem. We have this beautiful big window (or series of windows) that looks onto the back yard where we love to watch birds and where I can see the girls as they play on the grass or in the driveway:



Of course, the thing I love about the window -- the big view -- is also the problem. At night, the entire neighborhood views us:



(The mom of one of Uno's friends, the first time she came over, said it wouldn't bother her so much that people can see us eating dinner; she'd worry more about walking past the window late at night and seeing a masked face peering in right there at the glass. *Shudder!* Obviously she watches too many spooky movies.)

The window has a row of shutters on the top, which DH loves and I hate. He insists that we have to keep them. I might like them better if we could find matching shutters to put on all the windows, but they're stained a very specific color (the same color as all the kitchen trim and cabinetry) and I don't know if I could match it.

DH thinks we ought to just slap a café curtain over the bottom two rows of windows and call it a day, but I hate that idea: The view is already chopped up by the individual window frames; the shutters make it worse; I don't want to further accentuate the broken-up-ness with curtains half (okay, a third of the) way down.

So I guess the conclusion I've come to (and have retreated from and come back to several times over) is that I just need full-length curtains that I can easily slide all the way over during the day and all the way closed at night. Stupid or fabulous? I don't know. I might order these JCP Chris Madden Grommet-Top panels because they're washable and cheap. I guess I'd get them in white, which seems like a very bad idea in a kitchen and with kids but I don't know what other color would look right. Maybe I should look for a print instead? :-P

Blah.

Totally open to suggestions on that one, folks.

I'm also obsessively thinking about the girls' rooms, but I'll save that for another day. I do have one question that applies to their rooms and a few others in the house, though: Most of the rooms are painted (kind of sloppily) with wallpaper underneath (also sloppy -- it bunches and bubbles in spots). If I were going to repaint those rooms, I ought to strip everything down to the plaster first, right? But how do you peel wallpaper off from beneath a layer of paint? And, given the age of the house (109 this year, I think), how do I protect myself / my family from all the lead paint / dust I'm sure that project would kick up? To avoid lead poisoning, should I just ignore the wallpaper and keep on painting over all the old layers?

So much to think about. I'll stop boring you with my nesting for today (but please leave me a comment if you have any help or suggestions to my design dilemmas!).


~RCH~

Send in the clowns

Uno wants to go to circus camp.

Several months ago the girls all watched Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, a not-so-bad-as-kid-flicks-go sort of movie whose protagonist has to endure a few months of First World Problems (she doesn't get to go to California with her parents, and her two BFFs leave her for Borneo and circus camp, respectively). (Seriously, Borneo? Circus camp? Who are these people?) I didn't think the movie had left any lasting marks on their psyches, until yesterday when Uno sat down and started googling.

I always thought sleep-away summer camps were a myth, or only for the likes of Hayley Mills (and Hayley Mills!). Unless you count church camp (which I don't; stupid church camp) (it's just VBS with extra mosquitoes and leeches!), I didn't know anyone growing up who had been to one. But now I think maybe it's a regional thing; plenty of my on-line friends from the East coast went to actual camps with fake Indian names (though oddly, none of them met any long-lost siblings). And they're not all rich, either (that I know of), so it doesn't appear just to be a chi-chi people thing. Go figure.

So yeah, circus camp: Uno's googling didn't turn up any near us, but there is one very near my sister in the ATL. "Don't get your hopes up," I told her. "I'm not sending you this year." But I think I'll tuck that information away in my brain, and the next time I'm tempted to sell her to the gypsies maybe I'll consider the circus instead. ;-)


~RCH~

Party on, man

The morning news meteorologist let me know that Spring officially begins tomorrow (tonight) at 12:14 am, making this the final day of winter. He also said our high for today will be around 81F. What a crazy year for weather.

Saturday was St. Patrick's Day -- a fact I nearly forgot because we had so much else going on (more on that in a minute). But I did manage to get everyone dressed in a little bit of green, even if only a tiny hair bow. Tres (who apparently didn't remember the holiday from years past) was concerned / confused about why "Sir Patrick" wanted to pinch people who don't like green; eventually she came to the conclusion that evil leprechauns make him do it, so oh well. We'll all just wear the green and try not to worry about it too much. There must be a lot of things in life that seem, to a 4yo, equal parts arbitrary and vaguely menacing -- but you just have to soldier on through them (or "shoulder on through," if you're Tres) with Mom and Dad by your side.

Speaking of soldiering, I had one of my occasional bouts of premeditated lunacy on Saturday: I hosted a kids' party. For no good reason. No birthday, no milestone, no nothing. I've done this before.

*SIGH!*

Here's the problem: Uno and Dos both have lots of friends at school whom they would like to invite over to play. In theory, that sounds fine to me; what's one more kid running around? But in practice, since none of their friends live within walking distance of our house, that involves logistical planning with other kids' moms -- a task which makes my heart shrivel into a tight little fist of anxiety. I don't know why, but it does; let's just agree that I'm broken and move on. So a few times every week, Uno and/or Dos will beg to have this friend over or that friend come play. Uno will often offer to make the arrangements herself (though I know I'll still have to confirm it with the other mom, so I might as well do it all myself). I always put them off. "Not today, but maybe soon. I don't know. We'll think about it." The girls are not fooled; they know I have no intention of following up on anything. I feel increasingly harried and guilty; they feel increasingly frustrated and resentful; finally the dam bursts and I say something stupid like, "Fine, we'll throw a party! You can each invite X number of people."

Let's see, which might be more stressful and out of my comfort zone, a one-on-one playdate or a party of 10 excitable, squeally kids...? ::FOREHEAD SMACK:: (But at least with a party, you can send paper invitations with the only RSVP option an email address!)

So we had a party. Three of Uno's friends and one of Dos's (the other two couldn't make it) came over Saturday evening and we all made Shrinky-Dinks (technically Grafix Shrink Film; I have come to like that brand better) and ate pizza and "watched a movie" (which is code for "went upstairs to the girls' rooms instead to play loud / wild / messy games of Hide & Seek"). I think everyone had fun. I hope so, because I'm not hosting another party again for a long time.

Ugh. I don't know why I do these things to myself, but I have definitely recognized a pattern in my life of making grand gestures to overcome trivial anxieties:

As a teenager, I simultaneously craved and feared the looming independence of college. I wanted to get away from the town I'd lived in nearly all my life, so what did I do? Apply to a school a few hours away, or maybe in a neighboring state? Nope. I applied to just one place: A liberal arts college for women 2,000 miles away in a state I'd never visited and where I knew not a single soul. And then I got accepted, so I went. It scared the crap out of me -- I don't know if I could possibly get more out of my comfort zone than that! -- but I soldiered on through (and had an amazing experience).

After college, I moved back home to live with family (first my parents, and then my sister and her family) while I figured out the next steps of my life. Ultimately, I decided I needed to strike out on my own. I had a great job at the time; I could have simply found my own apartment in the same or a nearby town and continued living the good life -- but no. I quit my job, loaded up all my worldly belongings and moved to a large Midwestern city to live with my BFF (so at least I knew someone that time!) (and that turned out wonderfully, too).

I am a timid little mouse whose life is punctuated by erratic bursts of derring-do. (Perhaps it doesn't take a lot of daring for most people to host a children's party, but for me it counts!) I wish I could be more consistently ... uh, normal, LOL -- for my kids' sake, at least -- rather than someone who slides from one extreme to the other, but I yam what I yam. I always have been.

Oh well. My girls will need something to talk to their therapists about when they get older. ;-)


~RCH~

Hey, remember me?

To celebrate Daylight Savings Time (and because I stayed home sick from church today, woo-hoo-hoo-wah-ah-ah), I thought I might try to catch up on my blog. (And speaking of church, I think if I ever get fired as Primary President I'll have waaaay more mental energy for writing. So if you've missed me, you could think up some spectacular scandal and pass it on to my ecclesiastical leaders...!) (Not that I don't love it; I do. The kids are fantastic and it provides me with a creative outlet. But it doesn't leave me with much left for anything else.) Anyway, here I am again.

Tornado

As I'm sure you all know, an EF-4 tornado hit our town ~a week and a half ago. I had seen weather reports the evening before indicating that we might have severe weather during the night, so I made sure the NOAA weather radio was plugged in and had fresh backup batteries. My cell phone usually powers down at night, but I made sure to keep it turned on and plugged into its charger. I woke up at 3am to use the bathroom and turned on the tv to check the local station when I got back. The storms hadn't gotten to us yet, but they looked bad so I stayed awake. At 4am, DH (who was working overnight) called me to make sure I was up and aware and had what I needed. Thirty minutes later, our Tornado Watch turned into a screeching Warning (thanks, NOAA!) so I roused the four sleeping girls, made sure everyone had shoes on, and we went down to the basement to wait it out. Uno had her tornado kit handy -- a duffle bag full of DVDs and a portable player -- so the girls were more excited than scared this time.

Frankly, I was annoyed. 4:30am on a school day is not the ideal time to have a tornado drill -- and that's what most of them are: Drills. Nothing ever happens. (Well, I guess there was that whole tree falling on our porch incident last year, but the local meteorologists said afterward that storm only had strong straight winds, nothing tornadic.) I expected that we'd get some pounding rain or hail, a lot of dramatic bluster, and then the whole thing would be over and I'd be unable to get the girls back to sleep before they had to get up at 7am to get ready for school.

We sat through a few rounds of the sirens, waiting for our Tornado Warning to expire. The power flickered once, but remained on. The girls alternately argued over which movie to watch and pretended to be camping.

DH called me at about five minutes to 5am, right after the sirens quit. "RCH, are you guys okay? The entire back of the hospital is GONE. There used to be a wall there and now there isn't -- the roof, the wall, they're gone. I'm all right. I've got to go."

We were fine at home. At our end of town, less than two miles away from DH, you could hardly tell it had stormed. The ground was wet, but not a bush or branch or leaf looked out of place. We had no damage at all.

I sent the girls back to bed and settled in to watch the news coverage. None of the news people had made it to the scene yet, but reports were coming in of incredible damage from the commercial district around Walmart, through residential neighborhoods behind it, and up to the hospital. DH's uncle posted on Facebook that his good friend (and the realtor who had helped us buy our house) was trapped under the rubble of what used to be her home. The CBS affiliate (which broadcasts from a neighboring state; our most local station is ABC) reported fairly early, before anyone else would confirm the news, that there were fatalities. One, then three....

I hoped at first, when it was still dark, that people were exaggerating. Midwest storms are amazing and powerful and even incidental damage can seem bigger than it may actually have been in hindsight (see: tree limb on porch). DH and his uncle (no offense) like to tell a good story; maybe it wasn't really so bad.

The sun began to come up. The news anchors reported that our town's schools would be closed for the day. An hour or so later, they announced school would be closed for the rest of the week. News trucks arrived on scene and broadcast the destruction: Whole buildings, houses, neighborhoods gone. By the end of the day, the coroner had confirmed six fatalities (a couple days ago the number rose to seven as one more person succumbed to injuries sustained from the tornado). DH, whose 12-hour shift was scheduled to end at 8am, stayed until noon as people were brought in, evaluated, and distributed by ambulance or air to other regional hospitals. (The patients who had been in the hospital at the time had all been moved into interior hallways right before it hit; nobody at the hospital was injured.)

I haven't taken any pictures of the tornado damage. The roads to those areas are blocked off except to the families who lived there, clean up crews, and volunteers; no looky-loos allowed! But a quick Google image search turns up these:


This house belonged to friends of DH (the husband of the woman in the front was his high school golf coach; their son was his classmate). E&P, this is where we went swimming last summer.



This was our realtor's house. It's a miracle she's alive, but she made it out of the rubble with only bruises. Some of her personal belongings were found later in the parking lot of a Catholic school more than 60 miles away.



An aerial view of one neighborhood. Note the trees along the middle right edge of the photo; they are FLATTENED.



If you can't laugh, you'll cry (though I think many people have done both). Painted on the side of a tornado-ravaged house (next to a random prosthetic leg): "For Sale — Fixer Upper." (I couldn't find a big enough picture of it, but after painting that, the woman wrote, "Big Blow-Out Sale!" Har-har.


It has been an emotional week for the town since the tornado (what's the opposite of hyperbole? Hypobole?). We have seen lots of stories of loss and destruction (both here and elsewhere in the Midwest) on the one hand, but also so many incidents of kindness and generosity and human good. People from around the region and around the country have stepped in to help the families affected by the disaster. I think the whole town has felt the power of the collective prayers. It has been amazing and so heartening to see.


And now for some random musings that are not about tornadoes.


I Love This Commercial

How's this for something soothing after all the storm talk? I love all the Sherwin-Williams paint chip commercials; the colors are so bright and the animation so charming. They make me happy. :-)




The Love Song of RCH Prufrock

Browsing my bookshelf a couple months ago, I came across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems. I haven't looked at or thought about those words in a very long time. I felt almost giddy; it was like running into an old friend (which those of you who love books, and maybe more especially poetry, will understand). I've always loved -- and probably over-identified with -- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but when I read through this stanza I grabbed DH and said, "There, see? This is why I'm not a great communicator. Small talk, big talk, whatever; it's too much. Right here. This is the key to understanding me." (Or really probably any neurotic introvert.)

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
    That is not it, at all.'

And DH, who may know a lot about birds (and sports and science and medicine and the lyrics to The Facts of Life and other '80s sitcom themes) but lacks confidence in his literary interpretation skills, handed the book back to me and said, "I will never understand women."

Oh well. Serves him right for any of the sports metaphors he's ever used.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Words Cuatro Can Say

The baby is 16 months old and slowly accumulating some words:

Bye-bye
Dad
Mom
[Dos]
[Uno]
Teeth (a forceful and heavily aspirated Teee to indicate she wants to brush her teeth)
Woof
Meow
Uh-oh
Cute
Thank you (pronounced adorably as Gankooo)
More-more-more (so greedy! I need to teach her Please)
Poor-poor (to indicate sadness, since we say "Poor, poor Cuatro!" when she's hurt or otherwise ornery)

There are probably more, but that's all I can think of -- and now it is nearly midnight (though it doesn't feel like it, stupid Daylight Savings Time!). I began blogging this morning; I should probably quit while I'm ahead and hit the Publish button or I'll never do it and my post will linger in draft form for a few months before I decide it's such old news it isn't worth printing.

I will try to be more consistent in my blogging from here on out -- though seriously, it'll be an uphill battle until I'm "fired" from my church responsibilities, so get on those salacious rumors! Stat! ;-)


~RCH~

Hey Nonny

I haven't given up blogging, but obviously I haven't been writing as much in the last year (with the exception of August, LOL). My life feels exhausting, so at the end of most days I'm too worn out to rehash it all! And then, of course, I get stuck after big events: We went to Utah the last weekend in October -- which included Cuatro's first birthday and the awesomeness that is Halloween in a neighborhood full of young families -- so I'm reluctant to blog about anything else before I've told those tales and posted those pictures. And since I haven't yet, nothing else gets written. D'oh.

But sigh not so! I had a pleasant kick in the pants this week from one of the girls at the blog Hey Nonny. She asked if I would submit a guest post for this week's Friday Feature, and I felt too flattered to refuse her. Please head over there to check it out; I hope you'll enjoy what I wrote. :-)


~RCH~

Happy Birthday to Tres

This week we celebrated a milestone: Tres's fourth birthday, and the first magic (aka golden) birthday in our family, defined as the year one's age coincides with the date she was born. Uno will have hers at 13; Dos will have hers at 26; Cuatro has to wait until she turns 29. (DH and I had ours at ages 3 and 7, respectively, but I guess we didn't know how cool it was at the time. I actually spent most of my 7th birthday stuck in the middle of the desert somewhere between Portland and Boise next to our broken down 15-passenger van. As I recall, it was neither magical nor golden. But I digress.)

Because it was her once-in-a-lifetime magic birthday, I wanted to give her something special -- but I didn't know what. Something lovely and meaningful and important, but something a newly minted 4yo would be excited about. Also something not too pricey, LOL. (In a family of this size, we have to consider precedent!) I actually finagled an afternoon by myself and wandered Toys R Us for a couple hours (this after trolling the web every nap time for days in a row), but nothing felt like the right thing. The giant, elaborately decorated solid wood doll house would have been nice, but the $300 price tag was out of my league. Dress-ups might have been cool -- and you'd think I could have found some good ones, given that her birthday falls in the month of Halloween -- but everything they had looked flimsy and cheap (while simultaneously not being as cheap as you'd hope). In the end, I came home slightly unsatisfied with a plastic Dora the Explorer castle plus a few extra figurines to go with it. Not grandiose, not important, not something so special she'll remember it for years to come....

Of course, one of the things I've always loved about Tres, ever since she could talk, is her vocal and exaggerated gratitude. Every present she opened -- the Dora castle, the off-brand princess Barbies from her sisters, clothes from DH's uncles, an art kit from SIL -- she declared the best ever, her most favoritest thing in the whole wide world, a real life dream come true! "Oh, how did you know?" she'd ask while clasping the gift to her chest. "I love it with all my heart! This is the best birthday I ever had!" And because of some family drama that the girls (except for maybe eavesdroppy Uno) know nothing about, we got to have several birthday celebrations over the course of three days (certain people refuse to be in the same place with other certain people, and some otherwise uninvolved people feel compelled to pick sides and meanwhile I'm just trying to be Switzerland and let innocent little Tres share her day with all the people and it's just a big fat mess). The upshot of which is that just about everybody came away thinking that their gift was her favorite because they didn't hear her say it about every other gift. But really it's true; she loves each of them the most, like a mom loves her kids: Not the most in a ranking from one to whatever, but the most in terms of capacity. It would be impossible for her to love them each even a smidgen more than she does because her heart is full to the point of exploding.

Kaboom. :-)

We topped off the days of celebration with a series of photo shoots, which does fit the meaningful bill a little more than a plastic castle. Usually my girls hate when I try to take their pictures, but Tres allowed me to do it (and even asked if she could do it again after our first session!) because it meant she could wear lipstick (aka chapstick or clear gloss). The photo up top and these below are a few of my favorites (the pics of her in the pink fairy dress and the white dress were taken a few days before her birthday; the ones of her in blue were taken the day after).










And one of all my girls, just for fun:




~RCH~

Grrrrrr

We're heading to my hometown next month for a quick visit, and on the agenda is a family portrait. I feel very self-conscious of my post-4-babies body and don't really want to be immortalized with my belly still looking pregnant, a year after the last delivery (which it currently does). I tried googling fashion tips this afternoon, and came across an article that promised Five Outfits to Disguise A Food Baby!

Except that it came illustrated with images like this:



Seriously? Seriously. I don't think that woman even has a stomach, let alone an ounce of fat. Grrrrrr.

And waaaaah.

Anybody have any real advice? I don't know what to call my body type; I don't think I'm pear shaped because it's not my entire bottom half that's big (I don't think), just my stomach. That would make me an apple, I guess, but then most apples are presumed to have a big chest and I, sadly, do not. It really is just this enormous 6mo-pregnant-looking belly I want to hide.

Ugh, it's all so depressing. And depressing that I care. But I do. :-P


~RCH~

Revisiting Randomland

1. I took the girls today to our hospital's Teddy Bear Care Fair -- it's designed to familiarize children with the hospital and what goes on there so they'll be less afraid if they ever need treatment. They each brought a stuffed animal (a dog, elephant and bunny, respectively) and went through the various stations: Intake / triage; to the lab to have their animals' "blood" drawn; respiratory and physical therapy; surgery -- where Uno's dog had the hole in his tail stitched up! -- and x-ray, where all the animals had their pictures made. Here, for instance, is [a very bad scan of] Dos's elephant, Elli:



Everything looks great except for the lack of bones and the calcified heart. Otherwise, though, a-okay!

They all enjoyed themselves. I think Uno felt a little too old for the pretense (checking the animals with a stethoscope, etc), but she was tired of waiting for me to fix her dog (which she asked me to do months ago; I'm not sure where my sewing kit is) and the nurse just stitched it up lickity split. Dos seemed to think it was all just fun. Tres took it very seriously, which was super cute.


2. I've given up soda. Sort of. I've stopped buying it for the house, anyway -- I'll still order it at a restaurant, or if, say, I came over to your house and you offered me a [case of] Diet Dr. Pepper I would graciously accept, because that's only basic good manners, right? Yes. But I don't have any more cans here, and haven't for most of the week. It's been a rough week. The funny thing is, I seem not to miss the caffeine so much as I miss the coldness or the crack and fizz of opening a new can first thing in the morning or the having something in my hand to sip on all day long. Drinking soda apparently kept my bored eating in check; now I may have to take up gum chewing. Hmmm.

I would really, really love a Dr. Pepper right now. Waaaah.


3. Did I mention that the older girls are playing soccer this fall? Dos is on a grey team; Uno is on an orange team. I never wanted to be a soccer mom, but I think the experience is good for them. I will post action shots if I can ever get any. So far I've been too distracted on the sidelines keeping Tres out of trouble / Cuatro safe in her stroller (usually the same thing -- poor Cuatro) to take any decent pictures.


4. All of us are sick with a cold. It's very annoying.


5. I am in love with the song "Mr. Blue" by Catherine Feeney. Too often I feel like I could be its subject. I try to be vigilant, to make sure I'm not inching toward melancholy that might affect (infect?) my girls -- but then I wonder if the vigilance is just as bad because it keeps me self-absorbed and focused on the thing I want to avoid. It's a conundrum.

*Sigh.* I'll figure it out. And in the meantime, you should love Catherine Feeney too.



~RCH~

Dispatches from the past

Ten years ago, I was a newlywed living in Kansas City and working a desk job for TWA (the even then soon-to-be-defunct Trans World Airlines); one of my best friends was also a newlywed, but living in the hometown of her Scottish husband, near Glasgow. I realized yesterday that since I'm a pack rat even digitally, I probably still had our correspondence from 9/11. I don't think this is all -- I probably wrote her other emails from my work account -- but this is some of what I still have, with names and personal bits redacted, of course.


TO: BeckleTheFreckle
FROM: RCH
SUBJECT: Terrorist Attacks
DATE: September 11, 2001, 12:38 PM

Beckle,

I suppose you've heard by now about the terrorist attacks in the U.S.? I got most of my news this morning from the BBC web site because all the American news sources (Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) were overloaded with web traffic and I couldn't get through.

I actually watched the second World Trade Center tower get smacked by the plane.... I turned on the Today Show as I got ready for work this morning; the first plane hit while I was in the shower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were talking about that breaking news story as I got dressed -- acting on the assumption that it was an accident, which is rare but has happened before to tall buildings. (The Empire State Building got hit in the '30s, apparently, and the Pan Am Building accidentally got clipped by a helicopter in the '60s.) And as they were talking about that and showing live film of the hole in the building, and the smoke billowing out, a larger plane came into the camera's view and deliberately plowed straight into the other tower and exploded.

I had to go to work then, but I listened to the news on the radio all the way there and all morning at my desk. The two towers have since collapsed, as I'm sure you've heard; the Pentagon got hit by another plane; a plane crashed near (but not at) Camp David in Pennsylvania. All flights throughout the entire country are canceled for the forseeable future -- at least for the rest of the day and likely for some of tomorrow. International flights are being diverted to Canada. Flights in the air were told to land at the nearest available airport. The airport here is going crazy with stranded passengers, apparently. I don't work at the airport proper; my office is at the airplane overhaul maintenance base about half a mile south. We're still open, but security is tightened; I guess they're not letting anybody in.

I'm not supposed to play on the internet except at lunch time, but I've been checking the news sites all morning anyway. I hope they don't mind. I think they'll understand, under the circumstances. Two of the four planes that were hijacked were from American Airlines, the company that now owns TWA (the other two were from United). A couple hundred people are dead just from those plan crashes; no word yet on how many were killed at the World Trade Center, though 50,000 people work there so the numbers could be pretty high.

Damn. All of this is pretty hard to fathom.

[Personal stuff follows]


~RCH~




TO: RCH
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: RE: Terrorist Attacks
DATE: September 11, 2001, 1:50 PM

RCH,

I just happened to be sitting around and decided to turn on the tv at about 2 o' clock and I was watching Scooby Doo and for some reason I decided to flip channels and they showed the world trade center on fire...it was horrifying. I saw the second plane crash into it and watched the whole hour while people ran away from the debris and eventual collapse of both buildings live. It is scary to say the least.

I don't even like thinking about the possible outcome...all these insane thoughts racing around my head (and being depressed already doesn't help a damn bit) about never seeing you and K2 or my family again. I was online a bit earlier talking to RW when I got your letter and she started freaking out saying things about her brother and her boyfriend getting drafted....

[Personal stuff follows]


~BeckleTheFreckle~




TO: RCH & Others
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: Hope
DATE: September 13, 2001, 6:45 AM

RCH & Others,

I just finished watching a special changing of the guard this morning on the BBC and it was good to hear the National Anthem again. :)

I can't tell you how the events of the last few days have affected me so far away from home and most of the people I love in America. I'm sure you're tired of the saturation of reports, so feel free to trash this if you want. Still, it's good to see hope shining through all this darkness. There is some good to be made out of every tragedy.

To those back home, I love you so much and I miss you. It never seems to hit as hard as times like these then you realize life is so short and fragile, but there is nothing to be afraid of as long as we trust in each other and do the best we can. Take care of yourselves and know that I'm thinking of you all the time.

To my family and friends here in Scotland, thank you for taking such good care of me. It means a lot.

I'll leave you with this scripture that my Mom has hanging in our house: "Fear not what man can do, for I shall be with you forever and ever."


Love Always,
~BeckleTheFreckle~




TO: BeckleTheFreckle
FROM: RCH
SUBJECT: Random Dispatch from the KC Correspondent
DATE: September 17, 2001, 4:47 PM

Beckle,

Happy Monday the week after! ...Life is beginning to return to normal here (for those of us, at least, who live hundreds of miles from the terrorist attacks and who didn't know anyone who died in them). The news has finally toned down its coverage of the disaster; it's still the only news they report, but they've given up the round-the-clock business and have returned us to our regularly scheduled programs. Which is such a freaking relief! There are only so many facts they can report, and beyond that it's all horrible "human interest" stories of people who lost loved ones. Wives whose husbands called from the hijacked planes to say goodbye, or firemen who lost their whole company in the rescue effort.

I saw one interview with the CEO of some accounting firm (I think) whose offices were near the top of the WTC -- he had been at his daughter's school that morning, so he was the only one of 700 employees accounted for. He broke down in the interview, sobbing: "Seven hundred people! I was their leader, and now I'm the only one left." He could barely speak. "I'm responsible to the families of seven hundred people. They're all dead. All of them." That was the most disturbing news interview I saw, because I'm not used to seeing men cry at all, and he was just a wreck. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for him and all of those families. I tried to clean up my face when DH came home from that day's rotations -- he already didn't know what to do with me when I had dainty little tear-stained cheeks from other news stories, so I knew he'd be at a loss with my big puffy eyes and red, runny nose -- but I couldn't do it. I was too far gone. And the interview was over by the time he walked in the door, anyway, so he couldn't see what had upset me so much and I was in no state to explain it articulately. Poor husband-o-mine. We decided then that I should not watch the news by myself anymore, and even with DH around we'll only watch it if they're discussing details of the investigation.

Ugh. What a week it's been.

K2 and I got our hair done on Saturday! That was fun. Though I felt guilty all week leading up to it, because I didn't know how I wanted it cut (a safe, traditional chin-length bob? Which DH thinks is too short. Or maybe branch out into a new style? Scary!) but I felt so completely shallow for worrying about hair when there were so many people with real problems. But then I'd feel guilty for grieving for all those people in NY and DC because I didn't know any of them.... I felt like I was trying to usurp their grief because I was (again) too shallow to have any of my own. Does that make sense? Because really, what business do I have crying? The attacks didn't affect me directly. My life is a freaking bed of roses. I was having a very difficult time reconciling the sadness and horror I felt with all the banal little details of going on with life.

Anyway. I promise I'm going to stop interjecting all my stories with stuff about the attacks. On with the show!

[Personal stuff follows]


~RCH~




TO: RCH
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: Ramblings
DATE: September 18, 2001, 9:17 AM

RCH,

I must commiserate with you on behalf of the terrorist stuff. DH had to impose a news ban on me too because I got scared on him Wednesday night, I started crying and saying that I was never going to see my family and friends again and we'd never be able to go back to Utah...I couldn't get over seeing the people listening to answering machine messages from their family, and I saw that guy too who was saying he was responsible for everyone and started crying. It broke my heart. It made me want to be around Americans so badly, it made me want to have a flag to fly. It made me want to be able to join in with everyone in feeling sorry and I can't do that. It's been so hard for me over here without anyone to bitch to. People feel bad, but they don't quite understand how scary and close to home it all is. I was checking my e-mail the next day and RW was online and she was freaking out about everyone getting drafted...oh dear. It was a bad week.

The only thing that gave me any comfort was watching any BBC program that had memorial services and played the national anthem. It probably seemed pretty pathetic to passers by me standing with my hand over my heart singing it at the top of my lungs, but it made me feel better.

But it's like a train wreck, you know? You don't want to look, but you just can't tear yourself away. I'm glad the news is calming down a bit. The media is mostly a blessing, but not when it's mass-hysteria inducing.

[Personal stuff follows]


~BeckleTheFreckle~




Ten years later. The death toll was thankfully lower than it could have been, and our armed forces are still staffed by amazing volunteers. Beckle & her DH eventually moved back to the U.S.; my job at TWA became redundant in February 2002 when the merger with American Airlines went through, and I was laid off (though I quickly found work as an assistant at a patent law firm). The horror gradually receded, and life went on.

I watched a lot of the coverage last week leading up to the anniversary -- lots of Where Are They Now? stories about people in iconic photos that I had never seen because I couldn't bear it at the time -- and I watched the service in NYC on Sunday. It all still makes me cry, and still makes me feel ... guilty, I guess, because I haven't "earned" my grief the way the mourners at Ground Zero have. I didn't lose anyone or anything but a belief in the invincibility of my country. Still. It breaks my heart. I have a bad habit of trying to imagine myself in the lives of others. I like to vicariously try on others' experiences, see how they fit, wonder how I would react to what someone else has been through. While empathy may be a good quality in some situations, it's useless here. Completely useless. I'd like to think my "mourning with those who mourn" (to borrow a scriptural phrase) actually means something, but nothing changes the terribleness of that day.


~RCH~

Spooky!

This guy and me, we have an understanding: He can build an elaborate web outside my kitchen window and eat the bugs who congregate by the porch light and I will not try to kill him AS LONG AS he never, ever, ever tries to come inside or send any of his relatives inside. If he does, I will kill him dead.

Of course, I'd have to get over the panic attack, first. And maybe call DH to do the killing for me so I wouldn't have to get too close. (Have I ever blogged any other spider adventures? In Texas once I found a spider as big as my hand crawling on my bedroom wall. DH was out of state -- on a recruiting trip for his residency program, I think, or maybe a job interview -- but I called him anyway. Obviously I knew he couldn't kill it for me over the phone, but I needed moral support! 30 minutes of hyperventilating, tears, and false starts later, I finally squealed and smashed it with a shoe. Another time, in Idaho, Uno and I found a particularly dangerous looking spider on the couch in the basement; it wasn't sooooo big -- though it wasn't small, either! -- but it was black and kind of furry. *SHUDDER!* DH worked close enough to home that he often came home at lunch, so Uno and I sat there watching the spider -- didn't want him to get away! -- from a safe distance for 90 minutes until DH could come and kill it for us.)

Okay, yuck. I was feeling all smooth and brave about this guy, since we have this treaty and everything, but now I'm feeling creepy-crawly. My hair is constantly falling out and every time a loose hair brushes against my neck or arm, I think it's something else. Eeeeew. I shouldn't have started this. Ick. Eeeek.

So sorry. :-(

In other spooky news, I took the girls to the Halloween store this afternoon to get them out of the house so DH could nap a little before his night shift. I thought it would be a fun outing; we'd get ideas for costumes (I told them I wasn't buying today, so no begging!) and look at decorations and props. The first thing we saw as we entered the store was a lawn display, some kind of gory fountain with a guy holding his own chopped off head, blood oozing out of its mouth instead of water. It was gross. I hate that element of Halloween, honestly; it's too over-the-top for me. I don't mind all scary stuff -- witches, zombies, skeletons and skulls -- but I like them to be a little bit classier than that. It's like difference between Hitchcock and cheesy B slasher movies.

Anyway, 3yo Tres was nervous as soon as we entered the store. I tried to steer us to a more innocuous aisle -- steam punk accessories and Indiana Jones costumes -- but then the girls heard barking. I assured them it was probably from some motion-activated Halloween decoration, not real dogs. Because who lets real dogs in costume shops? Apparently this place does, because just after I had the girls all calmed down, we saw two dogs (leashed and with their owner) charging down the adjacent aisle. Pretty much all my girls are nervous about dogs, but Uno is terrified of them. She screamed and clung to me and wouldn't let go. She kept wailing, "Make them go away! Mommy, make the dogs go away!" I had to peel her off of me to remind her that she was safe, and that as long as they were leashed it was Uno's job to stay away from them -- that her phobia wasn't the dog owners' responsibility.

Uno calmed down after the dogs left the store, but Tres remained on high alert. The decorations made her nervous. The masks freaked her out. We tried to stick to the non-gory parts of the store, but that didn't help either. At one point Dos picked up a broom from the Harry Potter section and Tres screamed, "Don't touch that! I'm worried you'll fly away!" We tried to explain that it was all fake, but I guess she's not old enough yet to fully understand the difference between real and pretend. (Though I had thought she was savvy: When she was potty training, I told her not to get her Dora panties wet because then Dora would be sad. "Mom," she told me, rolling her eyes a bit, "Dora won't be sad because that's just a picture on clothes -- it's not a real person!" Huh. That line had worked on her sisters when they were her age! Whatever!) We wandered around some more, looked at the friendly toddler costumes (a ballerina! Strawberry Shortcake! a princess!), but of course around every corner lurked some dark and scary thing so we called it quits before too long.

"Promise me," Tres said, "promise me you'll never take me to the Halloween store again. I don't like it." Poor kid.

On the drive home, I listened to an interview on NPR with the Baltic brass band-influenced alternative musician Beirut. He sounds like an interesting (not spooky!) guy, and I liked the snippets of music they played to punctuate the interview. His first album was Gulag Orkestar; his latest is Rip Tide. I think I'll check him out. Maybe you should, too. :-)


~RCH~

Things I've made recently

I am not a brilliant artiste, but I like to break up the drudgery of my days (and/or make my responsibilities seem more exciting) by crafting things. And of course when I say crafting, I mean using Photoshop, mostly.

Here are some things I've been working on:



I think I mentioned I was making myself a planner. I designed it for September 2011 - September 2012, with space for everybody's activities plus DH's work schedule and my Primary responsibilities on a week per two-page spread, and had it printed at Blurb.com. I like it. The only thing I would do differently is to design more space for Wednesday & Thursday, which fall on either side of the spine; the book doesn't lie perfectly flat, so a bit of each of those days gets lost in the bleed. Oh well. Anyway, this is the cover I made.




Uno saw my planer and wanted me to make her a 12 month calendar. "You can make it with monsters for every month!" she said. "For January, make Yetis throwing snowballs at each other. For February, draw vampires in love. For March...." I protested that I can't actually draw, and that it's even trickier to draw on a computer with a mouse (I don't have a tablet) but she begged me to just try. Like this: "Pleeeeeease, Mom, just tryyyyyyy!" All stretched out and desperate. So I'm giving it a go. Thank goodness for Photoshop shapes and brushes! This is one of two abominable snow people; the other is a boy, and is exactly the same, flipped horizontally, sans eye lashes and painted nails. Now I just have to put them against some kind of snowy background and give them stuff to throw at each other. (Please note that any person or anthropomorphic being I draw will always be facing forward. I can't draw profiles or any action other than arms raised, LOL.)




Tres had a preschool lesson last week about time, both in macro (days make weeks make months make years) and micro (hours of each day, parts of a clock) increments. For the daily stuff, I made this clock. I cut out each of the pieces, "laminated" them all with clear packaging tape, and then let Tres practice putting the icons on each part of the day where they belong -- sun up at 7; breakfast at 8; get the girls from school at 3(ish); etc. We didn't really mess with the hands of the clock because it was all a bigger lesson than I thought it would be, but I've saved the parts for another day.




I'm in charge of Sharing Time in Primary this month, and also designing the bulletin board with our monthly theme (which, for September, is The Gospel Will Be Preached In All The World). I made this 22"x17" poster, printed on four letter-sized card stock pages which I then taped together, representing the Tree of Life as described in Lehi's dream (1 Nephi 8; 1 Nephi 11). I printed out extra fruit, wrote gospel principles on the back of them and "laminated" them again with packing tape, then stuck them on top of the poster which I pinned to the bulletin board. For the activity, we talked about missionary work: What would you tell people about the gospel? Each kid got to come up and pick a fruit off the tree, and then we talked about that principle (prayer; faith; Christ as Savior; etc).

(Oh, and as a last minute addition to the bulletin board I cut out blank paper doll people in various colors and had them hold on to a silver sparkly pipe cleaner representing the Iron Rod mentioned in the scriptures above. I thought it turned out nicely, but I don't have a picture of the finished product so you'll have to imagine those parts.)


I guess that's all for now. I need to start thinking about how to draw spooky/cute vampires before Tres and Cuatro get up from their naps....


~RCH~

Antiestablishmentarianism

1. Clearly, I'm not so good with goals: I began the month with the intention of writing a post every day in August, but with the understanding (explicitly stated) that I would miss some. And I have. But I don't really care. I've posted way more than I have all year long up to this point, so the net result is positive.

2. I first came to resent the whole idea of goal setting as a teenager in my church's Young Women "Personal Progress" program. I think it was designed to mimic the boys' scouting program (but without being actual Girl Scouts, because everybody knows Girl Scouts are a godless liberal training ground) (or something). We were supposed to set a specific number of goals in various categories (Knowledge, Good Works, Faith, etc) over the course of several years and if we accomplished them all by the time we left the program at 18, we got ... a necklace with a generic lady on it. Oooooh! My first year in YW, we were able to come up with our own goals as long as they fit the categories. Then the program changed, and we were only able to choose from a predetermined list. That irritated me.

First of all, I don't like being told what to do. (Even by myself, apparently.) It brings out my stubborn streak. But I certainly didn't like someone else trying to micromanage my personal accomplishments. Yes, I concur that Knowledge, Good Works, Faith, and all the other etcs are important virtues and ought to be encouraged and cultivated. But how I cultivate those in myself isn't really anybody else's business, and dangling a little piece of jewelry as incentive kind of cheapens the whole mess that much more. (Surprise! I never earned my necklace.)

I'm sure there are many, many girls who loved the program and benefited from it. But it had the opposite-than-intended effect on me, and left a lasting bad taste in my mouth.

3. There's a similar program for the Primary children ages 8-11, to prepare them to tackle Big League goal setting when they hit their teenage years. (And also, of course, to help them take responsibility for learning the gospel in more self-directed ways; I need to focus on that.) As their leader, I ought to be all gung-ho in helping them meet the requirements.... But I really struggle with my enthusiasm in this area. :-/

4. It's not all about church programs, though. I never liked the grade grab, either. I'm the sort of nerd who really enjoyed school (mostly, with a big exception for math classes). I loved the sense of accomplishment I got from doing challenging things well. I loved to feel those neurons flying, making connections between disparate points, my understanding of the world growing ever larger. That was enough for me -- if it came with an A, cool; if not, whatever. Education was the point, not arbitrary letters on a piece of paper. If I wanted an A, I used to tell people, I could draw a lovely one myself and stick it up on the fridge.

The "problem" (in other people's minds, not my own) came on the few occasions when I didn't think my educational time was being used well. For some reason we spent the first bit of my senior year AP English class working on remedial sentence construction:

"I have a dog." "My dog's name is Rusty." "My dog is black." === "I have a black dog named Rusty."

Really? That's college level course work? I should waste my time filling out worksheets like that? Clearly, no. So I didn't. And I failed that unit.

And I didn't care.

(I don't mean to disparage my AP English experience as a whole -- we quickly moved on to much more appropriate material. I LOVED that class. It's depressing, though, that the teacher thought any of us needed that unit in the first place, and even more depressing if she was right.)

Anyway, my rambly point: Education is absolutely a worthwhile goal. Micromanaging it with stupid busy work and offering cheap / arbitrary rewards, however, will never motivate me. (I think DH puts more stock in grades as a concept, so if any of our daughters turns out like me we'll have to figure out a way to respond as a united front.)

5. Maybe the real root of the issue is that I'm cranky and / or crazy stubborn. Or lazy; I'm willing to admit to some natural laziness that might disincline me to setting goals. I've just never been a striver -- I don't have the energy and I don't see the point! I don't think everybody needs to be a Type A Overachiever. I'm content to go with the flow, to improve myself as I can in my quirky and individualized way, without the pressure of answering to anybody.

As they say in the hood, I'ma Be Me. :-)


~RCH~

Zzzzz Zzzz

1. Sleep is delicious. I don't understand why my children don't want more of it!

2. Although we all slept in a bit this morning, so I shouldn't complain. For some reason my phone (which doubles as my alarm clock) ran out of batteries overnight (though I always make sure it's charged before I go to sleep, so I don't know what's up with that) and it didn't wake me up. I woke up instead to Uno right in my face exclaiming, "Mom, it's almost time for school!" We actually had 15 or 20 minutes to get everyone dressed, fed, and out the door -- which is pushing it for us -- but the adrenaline of waking up to that realization had everybody scurrying. No tardies. *Phew!*

3. Summer completely screwed up Cuatro's nap routine. I had hoped that when the big girls went back to school and the house quieted down, she'd return to her Cozy Nap After Breakfast, Cozy Nap After Lunch schedule.... But nope. She thinks she needs to be awake ALL THE TIME now (because she mostly was all summer, what with their noise and their wanting her to be their "puppy" all the dang time). *Sigh.* She still needs the rest, but she will cry herself into a tizzy -- she has never once cried herself to sleep; I don't think she's built that way -- any time I put her somewhere she might comfortably nap. If she thinks I'm trying to get her to sleep, she freaks out ... which is why she has napped for the past several days in the high chair; she doesn't see it coming. (Am I a terrible mom? It looks so uncomfortable, but I can't move her without waking her up.)

4. DH's uncle told the girls about a yoga program he likes to watch (watch being the operative word, I think; he has joint and other problems that I believe keep him from participating). "You all are young and stretchy," he told them. "You should do it!" And so, a couple days ago, they did: Uno dragged Dos out of bed at FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING to do yoga with some lady on PBS. 5:00 AM, seriously? When I discovered it, I turned off the tv and marched them right back to bed for another hour; they need their sleep far more than they need to do the downward dog (or whatever). They get grouchy without enough sleep! Thank goodness for a DVR; I'll record it for them and they can get their exercise after school.

5. I had a dream a few nights ago that I, as my teenage self, had to pick up two of my sisters from school -- one from elementary school, the other from junior high. Except that I forgot until way later in the evening. When I realized my mistake, I zoomed over to the elementary school first. All the doors were locked, but I found my sister around the back of the building, playing in a sand box. She didn't seem to care that it took me so long.

Then the two of us zipped up to the junior high, only to find more locked doors and a sign that said, "Student Waiting Area Closes at 10pm! No Exceptions!" It was 10:04. Too late. Couldn't find the sister anywhere. So the years pass, the family grows -- minus one sister (because apparently we never went looking or called the police or anything; sorry!) -- and finally I have daughters of my own that I have to take to junior high. (Don't remember if they were my actual daughters or fictional dream ones.) Lo and behold, who do we find there? The missing sister! Apparently she had waited for as long as she could, then went home with someone else, dropped out of school, stowed away on a freight steamer to Africa where she taught organic farming techniques to rural villages....

"Yeah," she said, "I kind of hate you for abandoning me, but I've had an interesting life -- and now I'm helping other young kids whose families forget about them -- so it's all good. No hard feelings." Then we hugged it out.

Anyone care to interpret that one? LOL.


~RCH~

So... Is this an every other day thing now?

1. I need to go on a spending fast: Necessary purchases only, and no talking myself into revised definitions of "necessary." *Sigh.*

2. DH has been working a lot of night shifts lately, which has its good points and bad points:

The Good
He comes home and sleeps the morning away, then wakes up as the girls come home from school -- which means they actually get to see him for several hours! When he works days, they see him for a minute or two as they eat breakfast, and then maybe after I've tucked them into bed if they're still awake when he gets home (assuming he gets home right away; if he gets a bad case right at the end of his shift, he may have to stay at work another couple hours to finish it up). When he works nights, he can help the girls with their homework, play games with them, eat dinner with us all.... It's lovely and rare.

The Bad
I get no sympathy for my own exhaustion because he doesn't work nights frequently enough for his body to ever fully adjust, and therefore he always wins the I'm So Tired contest. Not that we're competing. But seriously, sometimes -- often -- I really do feel very exhausted; can't I just have that? No, I wasn't up all night saving stroke victims or stitching up the aftermath of drunken brawls, but ... *YAWN!* ... my energy doesn't ratchet up in direct inverse proportion to the kind of night he's had. It's its own thing. Right?

3. I know I'm not supposed to think this way, but lately I've felt down / guilty because I don't do anything. Yes, motherhood is noble and beautiful, and/or the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and/or whatever other clichés you want to throw at me. I get that I'm growing people -- four of them! -- and that's no small feat, but it's such a passive job. I make sure they're clothed and fed and occasionally bathed (LOL) and that they don't kill each other accidentally or on purpose, but it feels like most of my job happens on the sidelines. And nobody notices. And if they do, they're as likely to reject it outright as to appreciate it. (Tres, before having the slightest idea what we're having: "Eeew, Mom, I hate your dinner!" Every. Single. Night.)

I think if they could operate a stove or drive a car, the girls wouldn't need me at all. But here I'd still be, trying to interject every now and then with a "Hey, don't do that -- it's not nice to sit on babies!" while being ignored. What exactly is my net contribution? It doesn't feel like much.

4. Well, that was bleak. Chalk it up to the fatigue mentioned in item #2.

5. Let's see, a number 5.... Hmmm. So hey, East Coast Earthquake, huh? How about that. :-P


~RCH~

Weekend Update

1. Last night was rough. Cuatro is teething; Tres wouldn't sleep; I nodded off on the couch downstairs accidentally, and when I woke up at 3am to go to bed I found Uno and Dos in my bed (DH was at work) WATCHING CARTOONS. At 3:00 in the morning, SHEESH. I kicked them out. I've felt exhausted and mad at the world all day.

2. I took all four girls plus Uno's best friend O to the movies yesterday, mostly to get them out of the house so post-night-shift DH could sleep. We saw Spy Kids, but not in 3D. Except that it sort of was in 3D because, though our theater didn't offer the visual effects, we did get the smell-o-vision card which is supposed to be the 4th D in more "classy" theaters. So 2Ds, plus two, minus one, comes out to 3D -- just not in the way you'd really want. If you wanted any extra Ds at all. Or something.

3. When we took Cuatro with us to see the Smurfs, she behaved herself nicely: She quietly noshed on a bottle, then fell asleep in my lap until the movie ended. Not so for Spy Kids. She made all sorts of noises, so I left the other girls in the row and took her to the back of the theater where I could bounce / sway / butt pat her to sleep. HA! She refused. She screamed a bit (sometimes in a happy way, sometimes less cheerfully), made motorboat noises, vigorously wriggled in an attempt to let me put her on the popcorny ground (I didn't), and occasionally gnawed on the collar of my shirt. One time she grabbed my shirt to chew on it, but spit up inside it instead. Right down the front of me. It was awesome. (If by awesome you mean not at all awesome.)

4. Cuatro is FINALLY getting some top teeth. And I mean it this time! I've thought for the last three months that they would pop through "any day now" -- because really, statistically, they would have to at some point. And she can be inexplicably grouchy sometimes (though she's usually very pleasant). But I saw them today: Two little white lines on her upper gums. They're almost here. Come on, little teeth!

She got her only other teeth two at a time, and now she's getting two top teeth at once -- is that normal? I don't remember the others' very well (I am traumatized by all things dental) but I don't think they came in pairs. Maybe one pretty soon after another, but I don't remember my other girls getting them together like this. Hmmm.

5. Dos lost her other front tooth last week, BTW. On Thursday, I think; she had the school nurse pull it out for her that afternoon while she waited to be picked up. I like it when they fall out / get pulled out at school because then I don't have to deal with any of the icky aftermath. I think she looks like a vampire now with both of those teeth gone, LOL; it's a shame she didn't lose them closer to Halloween! She said I could stage a photo shoot with her tomorrow, so maybe I'll post pictures of her later. :-)


~RCH~

It's August, so naturally I'm thinking of Halloween

1. I've been looking at Halloween costumes for the girls. Mostly just for Tres, because I have no hope of influencing Uno and Dos in their decisions (darn opinionated children!) and Cuatro isn't old enough to get excited about Halloween yet. Tres, at nearly 4yo, is the perfect mix of impressionable and enthusiastic.

2. She doesn't remember her first Halloween (she went as a sack of Idaho potatoes) or the next one (the famous mouse made by my BFF), but she still talks about the puppy costume she wore at 2yo ("I had paws! And a dog nose!"). Her memory of last year has less to do with the costume she wore (a kitty / ballerina combo) and more to do with the fact that I wasn't there (I was still stuck in the hospital with 3-day-old Cuatro). Boo.

3. I want this year to be fabulous. It helps that we'll be visiting my hometown over that holiday, where people get way more into it than they do here. I think we have a significant minority of people in this area who abstain from Halloween for religious reasons, and then also cranky old people who don't want to bother answering their doors. DH is a Halloween grinch (he says he didn't like it even as a kid -- what a weird boy), but it probably ties with Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year. I love the chance to be someone else for a day, and I love seeing what or whom everyone else chose to be. Hooray for chocolate, but I'd love Halloween even without the candy.

4. I wish we had amazing costumes.... Somehow our names ended up on the marketing list for a chichi store called Chasing Fireflies. They sell insanely expensive children's clothing; I've never bought anything from them (DH would have a stroke) (for that matter, I would have a stroke) but I love looking through their catalogs. A couple weeks ago we got their Halloween issue, with costumes such as


The Queen of Hearts, $98

or


Marie Antoinette, "only" $88.

As elaborate as the costumes are, I'm sure they cost a lot to make and their expense is probably justified. But it's not necessary. Not when Walmart costumes can be had for $10! :-P

5. Walmart costumes make me feel terribly depressed, though. They're flimsy and cheap and pitiful. My mom made all our costumes when we were little, and they were beautiful; if I can't sew things for my girls (and believe me, I can't), I'd at least like them to have that kind of quality. Just not for $100/kid. I've been scouring etsy and other places for more reasonably priced costumes (maybe $30 or less?) but so far I'm still unsatisfied.

But I guess I still have time to mull it over.


~RCH~

Another Thursday Five

1. My new favorite recipe (which only Uno and I will eat, but whatever):

Awesome Black Beans & Rice

* 1 TBSP olive oil
* 3/4 cup onion, chopped fine
* 1/2 cup green pepper, chopped fine
* 1 cup (or 1 small can) diced tomatoes
* 1 can Bush's Seasoned Recipe Black Beans; drain & reserve juice
* 1/2 TSP thyme
* 1 TSP garlic salt
* 3 TBSP cider vinegar
* 1/2 TSP hot pepper sauce
* 1 cup cooked rice
* Meat of your choice (if you want any) (I've used ground beef or cubed pork tenderloin)

In a large skillet, heat olive oil. Cook onion and green pepper until tender. (If your meat isn't cooked, throw it in too; if I'm using leftovers I add it at the end.) Stir in tomatoes, beans, thyme, and garlic salt, and cook for 3 minutes. Add vinegar, pepper sauce, and reserved juice, and continue to cook for 5 minutes. Serve over rice.

(Sometimes I leave out the tomatoes because Uno isn't a fan -- I think when I do, I ought to use slightly less cider vinegar. They work well together, but the vinegar seems to take over without the tomatoes.)

2. I think it is too easy for me to disconnect from life. From people, more specifically. I don't blame technology; pundits and other talky types love to fault the internet for depersonalizing our society, making us all antisocial behind our little flickering screens.... But I was antisocial before the internet was born. I actually connect with real live people more frequently thanks to blogs (hey family, blog more!) (says the girl who averaged one post a month before this 5/day experiment) and Facebook and a private message board I belong to. Anyway, none of that is my point. Technology bla bla never mind.

It is too easy for me to disconnect. I am too comfortable in my own head. I love my family and BFFs, and when I'm physically near them I never want us to be apart; I want to always have them with me to talk and laugh and debate and commiserate with. And yet.... I go weeks (sometimes more) without talking to any of them. Part of it has to do with my phone aversion, sure, but also I am just too easily sucked into my own stream of consciousness as I bob and float through the days. I think I'm growing more introverted (if such a thing is possible) as I get older.

Or maybe I'm just completely self absorbed.

3. Our town has a weather vane store. Isn't that a crazy specific niche for a small town business? Maybe if we lived somewhere touristy that had lots of chic design / houseware boutiques and gift stores a weather vane shop would seem like a natural fit, but here it's just ... a crazy specific niche. Odd. Every time I pass it, I think, "You're so vane I bet you think that store is about you" (which is how item 2 segued into item 3, thank you very much).

4. Tres and I had preschool today! We learned about elephants at her request: We read Grandma Elephant's in Charge, learned how to make the letter E in both upper and lower case (lower case will need more practice), and then turned a few simple shapes (circles, a rectangle, and two crescents) into an elephant paper bag puppet.



We also practiced spelling her name, read another book (Pickle-Chiffon Pie), ate a snack (jello), sang the alphabet song a couple times, and of course we went out for recess. Cuatro, whom Tres elected on Tuesday to be Principal Baby, napped through the whole thing.

5. I need a passport. Not that I plan on going anywhere, sadly, but it would be nice to have in case I had to flee the country at a moment's notice. ;-) I used to have one (I've had two, actually) but it was in my maiden name. And then it expired. The girls (Uno especially) love to hear stories of my previous adventures, but it sure would be nice to add some new ones. *Sigh!*


~RCH~

Quickly, because I am exhausted.

1. I never sleep well the night before the first day of school -- I didn't as a student, and I don't as a parent. I'm not nervous; I have no concerns, no negative feelings at all; I simply feel restless. And so I rest less. Ha. Yeah, I'm tired. I fell asleep last night around 3am and got up at 6:30. I hate mornings.

2. Morning drop off was a complete nightmare! I had to take all four kids with me because DH hadn't come home from his night shift yet. We dropped Uno off first at the intermediate school. I parked two blocks away and had to speed walk with a baby on my hip and a dawdly 3yo trailing behind. When we got to the school I tried walking Uno to her class room, but a random teacher stopped me; apparently the new 3rd graders had to go to an assembly in the cafeteria first. So I didn't get to see her room, but whatever. Dos, Tres, Cuatro and I speed walked back out and down two blocks, waited for a break in traffic so I could turn left, and made it to the primary school just in time -- though of course with nowhere to park. Grrr. It's a miracle Dos wasn't late. I imagine they weren't terribly strict about punctuality today, but still. UGH.

I'm hoping the rest of the year will be easier -- today was unusual in that I had to park and go in with them. Most days I'll slow the car just enough for them to jump out, LOL.

3. Tres and I had our first day of home preschool today. All we did was talk about how we wanted the year to go: We made a list of rules -- things like raise your hand before asking a question, be kind and (at Tres's insistence) have recess. We made a schedule, deciding that we would meet twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, for an hour and a half. And then we brainstormed subjects Tres wants to learn about! The first thing? Pinecones. "Okay," I said, "let's write that down as Nature." She shook her head. "No, pinecones." So I guess I need to brush up on conifers! ;-)

I'm excited. I think we'll both have fun with this, and I think we will really benefit from more structured days.

4. Uno was waiting with her best friend when we picked her up after school. I asked O which teacher she had (they aren't in the same class this year, boo). "Mrs. XYZ," she said. "She's old." For some reason, that cracked me up.

5. How in the world are we half way through August already? That makes no sense.


ZZZzzzzzz....


~RCH~

Five Random Ramblings of a Procrastinator

1. I'm in the office looking for our 3-hole punch. The 3rd grade school supply list stated specifically that Uno must have four 2-pocket paper folders with three holes NOT prongs. Walmart had non-prong folders, but none with holes. I know we have a hole punch around here somewhere, but why don't I just sit down for a minute to blog and/or play Bejeweled Blitz...?

Ahhh, yes! :: Cracks open a Dr. Pepper ::

2. I think there ought to be a law to stop currently elected officials from campaigning for another position during their term. During the last presidential election, while John & Barack gallivanted around the country shaking hands and kissing babies, who was looking out for the interests of Arizona and Illinois, respectively? They were each hired to do a job -- and they each got paid for that job -- but spent all their time trying to get a different one. From my experience in the business world (it's been a while, but this seems like a no-brainer), that sort of behavior usually gets people fired pretty quickly and without the shiny references they'd need to keep climbing up the ladder. Everybody kvetches about incumbents and career politicians anyway -- a law like this would at least ensure they had to take turns, one term off and one term on.

Who's with me? :: Insert Howard Dean-style "Yeeeaaahhh!" here ::

3. Ensure vs. insure: Excluding industry usage (i.e., health insurance or auto insurance), the two words seem practically interchangeable; my online dictionary search says that they both mean to guarantee or protect (though the protecting seems more strongly associated with insure). I wonder why we have two distinct words that sound almost alike and have almost the exact same meaning? You'd think one or the other would have dropped out of usage by now. When one does, I'm guessing it will be ensure -- which is why I prefer to use it when I can. Save the redundant words! (I'm such a language nerd.)

4. The older girls start school tomorrow. Sort of. They only have to go until 11:30am. What's the point of that, I wonder? This is the first year I have students at different schools -- our elementary school goes from K-2; intermediate school is 3-5; middle school is 6-8; high school is 9-12. This year Dos will be in 2nd grade at one school and Uno will be in 3rd grade at another.... I'm feeling some anxiety about logistics, but I'm sure it will work out somehow.

In 2017 -- if I did my math right -- I'll have one kid in every place: Uno will be a high school freshman; Dos will be in her final year of middle school; Tres will be a 4th grader at the intermediate school and Cuatro will be in 1st grade. That will be a logistical challenge.

5. I think Facebook doesn't like me, and wants to let me know. A year or so ago I made a friend request to someone I knew in high school, and that person never responded. Which is fine -- I didn't expect to really reconnect anyway, just snoop around to see how his life had turned out and how time had changed him. I'm kind of nosy like that. So the friendship request is still pending, which means I am not privy to any of his deeply personal thoughts or what he had for lunch, but suddenly I'm getting status updates from him every time he accepts someone else as a friend. Is Facebook trying to rub this passive rejection in my face?

So weird.

Sigh. I ought to hunt up that 3-hole punch, I guess.


~RCH~

Family Photos

1. I don't remember how this came to me, but somehow I ended up with a digital version of a slide my grandpa took in the '70s (maybe from him? maybe from my sister?). The baby isn't named, but the photo is dated October 1975 -- which doesn't make any sense, because my sister, at 14 months, didn't have that much hair and I (although precocious in many ways) would not have been crawling at only two months old. I'm pretty sure the picture is of me in 1976; I don't have many (any?) baby pictures to compare it to, but the crazy hair looks familiar:



2. Everybody says Cuatro looks just like me. I tried to test the theory this afternoon by getting a similar shot of her, but she refused to pose correctly. Still, I got some cute shots. Such as:



3. Or this one (please note the crazy hair):



4. Or this one, in which she is reading Columbia, a Roman Catholic magazine we get because of DH's former membership in the Knights of Columbus (I don't think they know he converted). Is this my kid or what?



5. I was going to round out this post with side-by-side photos of DH as a kid and Dos; that child is 100% his, without a bit of me in her. (Uno and Tres tend more toward my side of the family, I think, but without looking like me in particular.) But the photos DH's aunt gave me when we first got married -- a jackpot of shots of him as an adorable baby and toddler on through his awkwardly skinny teenage years and culminating in the most fabulous '80s prom photo EVER -- aren't where I thought they were and I don't want to hunt them up at this hour. Oh well. That will give me something to show you in a future post. :-)


[Note: I may or may not be able to post in the next few days, so if you don't hear from me before Monday it's not because I'm blazy or forgetful or dead (I hope). It's a good thing I'm not obsessive about goals, because my 5/Day plan is already pretty spotty! :-P]


~RCH~