Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Archives for October 2012

Pirates Don’t Read

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Today was Pirate Day at Magoo’s elementary school. Because why? Because why not!? Incidentally, it was also Bring a Stuffed Animal That’s Small Enough to Sit on Your Desk Without Being A Distraction Day at Laylee’s elementary school. Because why?
Because stuffed animals that small must really exist.

It’s days like this that I ask myself why Laylee and Magoo are at different elementary schools. Last night was STEM night for one of the schools. Last year it was math night but this is Twenty to the Twelve, yo. We’re all about STEM. Then tonight is a costume ball at the other school. There are two science fairs, two reflections nights, two PTAs, two different parent-teacher conferences in two different cities. It’s my favorite.

Anyway, as Magoo was getting ready to leave, he started removing things from his backpack and throwing them overboard.

“I’m not taking my nook to school for pirate day! I would look so stupid! Because, you know, pirates don’t really read.”

I did not know that.

“Oh, MAN!” he continued, pulling the Pokemon cards from his backpack. “Pirates don’t play Pokemon cards.” He gave me a knowing smile and shook his head.

Now, this I did know. I have never met a Pokemon-playing pirate. Uno – maybe. Go Fish – likely. But Pokemon – never. We need to keep this authentic.

Apparently a few things pirates DO are:

-Ride on a big yellow school bus, wearing a polyester backpack and a soccer shirt under their pirate vest

-Yell “ARRRRR” at three-year-olds until they cry

-Refuse to keep their pirate clothes on if all the other kids at the bus stop are dressed like civilians

Reluctant Red

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“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” ~Mr. Darcy

I love Taylor Swift against my will. Love. For a while I pretended I was buying her music for my kids, but when I’m blasting her CDs on shuffle as I drive alone in my car, singing along with every word of even her most obscure songs, I know I need to stop denying what we have together.

When her new album Red dropped this week, I was proud of myself for waiting until the day after release to pick it up because I wasn’t going to be near a Target on release day and didn’t want to go out of my way. I thought that showed great restraint. Why didn’t I just pre-order on Amazon? Good question.

Because the Target version of the CD has several bonus tracks and what’s better than a CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups? A LONGER CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups. Indeed it is.

I love Taylor Swift because her songs are about raw emotion and angst and drama, whether real or imagined. Essentially, I love her for the same reasons I love writing young adult fiction. The highs are so high. (You flew me to places I’ve never been) The lows are so low. (Now I’m lying on the cold, hard ground.) I could always use a little more passion in my life.

And her songs are danceable. And they’re fun. And when I listen to them, I feel like she stole material from my junior high journal in all its melodramatic glory. It’s the kind of music that makes you stop at your girlfriend’s house on the way home from Target with a swagger wagon full of kids so you can blast your favorite new song and dance together in the front seat, while your exhausted toddler sleeps like a log in the back seat.

Listening to Red last night brought me back to the days of 6th grade Paula Abdul obsession. Forever Your Girl!!1!!!111! How many artists have CDs I’m content to listen to all the way through? Over and over?

I just wish her perfume didn’t smell so freaking good, because I draw the line at trying to smell like a 22-year-old pop/country starlet. Yes, I smelled the perfume. Don’t judge me.

The Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams

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What Would Jesus Do? You see it on bracelets and bumper stickers, in books and on the radio. This is a question I ask myself a lot. But, sometimes it’s hard to wrap my head around the answer. I don’t always know what He would do if He were me… at Target… with an emotionally eruptive, potty-training-resistant three-year-old. Okay. I do know what He would do, but I am oh-so-muchly-much more mortal than He is.

Over the years, I’ve built up a pretty clear picture of who Kathryn Thompson is, not necessarily the real current Kathryn Thompson, but more a Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams. This Kathryn uses product in her hair as regularly as if it were deodorant. She is so focused on others that she completely forgets herself. She never worries that she’s overshared at book club and this Magical Kathryn Thompson has more patience than Taylor Swift has ex-boyfriends.

I thought a lot about the MKTOMD at the Coca-Cola conference this past week. We created vision boards for our blogs/lives and talked about building our personal brand. I found that my vision board wasn’t much about the content of my blog but more about the intended purpose of what I write.

In my theoretical, Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams fantasy, I want my blog to bring a little more light and joy into the world of motherhood. “How do you intend to do this by blogging about fecal matter and parenting meltdowns?” you ask. I’ll tell you.

I believe that motherhood is the single most universally soul-defining experience shared by women around the world. And it’s in the mess and the chaos, the self-doubt, the clawing our way towards stability that we become who we’re meant to be. We learn compassion, patience, love, and strength as we shove aside our own needs in the face of these overpowering emergent personalities and then learn to reclaim ourselves.

I want my blog to be a place where mothers come and remember to laugh and enjoy the journey, and to find companionship in what is arguably the most isolating, emotionally draining, and simultaneously fulfilling sorority on the planet.

In a panel on Women in the Workplace, female Coke executives were talking about work/life balance and what they said really struck a chord with me. They said, “There’s no such thing as balance.” What you need to do is put yourself 100% into what you’re doing at the moment. Be in the moment. You will be so much more successful than if you’re always trying to multi-task. You will also enjoy your life so much more if you’re living consciously and being present.

This fit perfectly with a talk I recently heard at a church General Conference by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He was talking about regrets people have when they’re dying and one that many people experience is that they didn’t allow themselves to be happier throughout their lives.

“Do we listen to beautiful music waiting for the final note to fade before we allow ourselves to truly enjoy it? No. We listen and connect to the variations of melody, rhythm, and harmony throughout the composition.”

There is a melody, rhythm, and harmony to our lives as mothers. We hear it in the jangling of the change the tooth fairy brings three or four or sixteen days late, in the sound of sucky nursing lips our six-year-old still makes in his sleep. We hear it in the sound of tinkle hitting the potty just minutes before they decide they’d rather do their SERIOUS business in their pants and in one child telling another the secret of how she always manages to win when pulling the turkey wishbone.

The trip to Atlanta, paid for 100% by Coca-Cola, was a great time to get away and refocus my energies for the blog and just for life. I’m hardly on the express lane to perfection, but I did come out of it asking myself more frequently, “What would the Magical Kathryn of My Dreams do in this situation?” and then trying to do it.

More often than not, MKTOMD will laugh, hug her kids and then blog about it. MKOMD is also a fantastic hip hop dancer, and completely unafraid of rodentia. You would like her.

Amy has a great post up if you want to know more about the why of the conference.

Livin’ It Up in Hotlanta

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I’m typing this from my room at the W Hotel in downtown Atlanta. The room is gorgeous and filled with swag from Coca-Cola. They’re hosting ~20 mom bloggers for a 2-day conference at their corporate headquarters, teaching us to live positively, giving us advice on branding and marketing ourselves, and possibly harvesting our organs while we sleep.

They’re being very nice to us.

I stayed at the W in Chicago when I was on a panel at Blogher several years ago. I shared a room with my friend Erin and new friend Jenny and, although we loved the room, the bathroom arrangements were a little awkward for a budding friendship.

The W is big on chic-ness, leather divans, employees that wear black, and it’s also big on dance music in the elevator. What it’s not big on is bathroom privacy. In Chicago, the bathroom was separated from the bedroom by some very thin shutters.

In this room, the shower is clear glass with no curtain or door and is located in the middle of the room, right next to the bed. It’s all very lovely and oh-so-not-sharable with women you barely know. Luckily I’m alone here.

The hotel is chic. The dress for tomorrow is supposed to be “casual chic”. My fashion icon friend Emily said that means “wear a scarf.” I shall do so. And I will report back to you about what I learned… about both chic-ness and positivity.

When speaking to marketing people, I always tell them, “If you want to market to mom bloggers, give them an experience.” We want to blog about experiences much more than products. I loved blogging about Nintendo because they set up events where me and my kids could play wii at a nursing home. I loved blogging about Method because they hosted an event that I’d been planning to host anyway and they paid for everything.

Well, I can tell that this is going to be an experience worth blogging about. I’m hoping to meet and network with some great women, get some much-needed relaxation and writing time in this way-too-swanky-for-everyday hotel room, and learn some things to energize my blogging and fiction writing career.

I’m not entirely sure what Coca-Cola is hoping to get out of the arrangement. I hope we all end up happy and with all our kidneys intact.

So far, I’ve spent a great day with Megan, whom I carpooled to the airport and shared a flight and Taxi with. We’re practically neighbors and I’m glad to know her now. I’m sure I made an awesome first impression, taking two wrong turns on the way to the airport, and then inviting her join me for dinner, only to walk two blocks, change my mind and tell her I’d rather eat a sandwich in my room. So many awesome points for me.

When I’m away from home like this, I vacillate between being overjoyed to have some time alone and missing Dan and the bebes desperately, calculating how many days it would take me to walk home to Seattle from Georgia were the Apocalypse to occur in the next two days. (Write YA post-apocalyptic fiction much? Why, yes, I do.)

The best part of the day was getting a text from my brother, whom I never see, who said he was in Seattle on his way to a Border Patrol training. It turned out he was at the Seattle airport on a layover from Montana and had no idea I was traveling today. So he came and found me as I came through the security line and gave me a hug before I headed to my terminal. I love this guy! What a fun surprise!

Notice the scarf in that picture. See? Previously un-chic. Now CHIC with added chic-ness. BAM!

Bites

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There are a few new awesome recipes up on my food blog, she types humbly. I’ve had great inspriation from amazing chefs and I present to you:

The World’s Best Cornbread
Make it. I promise you’ll be glad you did. Sweet, moist, the best cornbread I’ve ever eaten, restaurants included.

Pumpkin Alfredo Pasta
I cannot oversell how delicious this sauce is, especially for being so low-calorie. You shall love it. You musteth.

Spinach Scramble
This is not so much a recipe as a way of eating a billion vegetables for breakfast and staying full for hours. I eat this several times per week.

Dental Fairies

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Magoo still believes in the tooth fairy and defends her honor in the face of mockery at school. The only downside to this centers around the tooth fairy’s complete and utter moron-acy. She is totally intellectually insufficient.

When his tooth fell out this weekend, I thought, I should care about this. There’s some reason I should care about this. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the drill. But somehow I missed the clue bus. (I did not, obviously, miss the metaphor train.)

Then the next morning, he comes downstairs distraught. “The tooth fairy didn’t come last night!”

As my friend Stephanie said this morning, “A tradition where a kid hides a tiny tooth under their pillow and the tooth fairy is supposed to magically remember it is ridiculous. The tradition should be that the child places the tooth ON his parent’s pillow. I’m sure the fairy would find it there.” I agree. But that’s not the world we live in. We have to take our magical creatures the way they come and the tooth fairy in this dimension likes things done a certain way.

So when Magoo comes to me oozing drama over the fairy’s failures, I have to defend her.

“Well, maybe your tooth is flawed and she didn’t want it.”

He looks shocked.

I continue. “That book we read said she uses the teeth to build her palace and maybe your tooth wasn’t palace-worthy.”

“No-o,” he counters, “It’s a good tooth.”

I shrug. “Well, you can try and put it out again tonight and if she doesn’t come, I’ll pay you 50 cents for it. I’m not building a tooth palace, but I like you. And besides, I could put your tooth under my pillow the next night and try to make a profit.”

“I’ll put it out one more time.”

The next morning he comes downstairs distraught. “Mom! The tooth fairy still didn’t—“

At this point, I have to physically restrain myself to keep from slamming my head into the table. She didn’t come again?! What the hockey sticks?!

I reiterate my offer to compensate him for his dental refuse. But he won’t play. He can’t stand the thought of me hitting the tooth fairy jackpot with one of his extracted body parts.

“You know what it probably is?” he muses, “It was under my Pillow Pet and she probably didn’t realize it was a pillow. She probably thought it was a stuffed ANIMAL.”

So last night he gets a normal pillow from the guest room, and places the tooth underneath. I write TOOTH FAIRY in gigantic letters on my To-Do list. I tell Dan that if he sees her, he should under no circumstances let her go to bed until she’s done the deed.

Then, when the children are slumbering in their beds, and the tooth fairy’s ready to sleep, she creeps up to his room with a fist full of sparkle-dusted coins, removes the tooth from under his pillow… and steps in a massive carpet puddle of urine.

Someone, who shall remain nameless, periodically sleep walks and sleep hoses down his room. This is shocking to find in sock-feet and the fairy ends up waking him up. So there she is with a tooth in one hand, coins in the other with a wet, confused boy awake and staring at her.

I call Dan into the room to help with cleanup and hand him the tooth, telling him that if Magoo notices it’s missing from under his pillow, Dan should “help him find it where it’s slipped down onto the floor.”

Sure enough, as we’re stripping the sheets off the bed, Magoo yells, “Oh NO! My tooth!” and we have to “help” him “find” it.

So we get everything cleaned up and put the tooth back in play and Dan and I leave. The fairy then has to wait 30 minutes for him to go back to sleep before trying again.

And the fairy is tired. And the fairy is sick of it. And the fairy just wants to build her house out of wood with granite countertops like a normal person. And she wants dry socks.

Holding Onto Magoo

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When Magoo gets home from school each day, he doesn’t tell me squat about what’s happened while we’ve been apart. I ask him probing, thought-provoking questions and he shrugs and says he can’t remember. Like a post-traumatic stress victim, he blocks the icky school from his mind.

Today as we were walking home from the bus, he grabbed my hand almost unconsciously in front of another little boy and I closed my eyes and tried to memorize the feel of it because it won’t be long before he’s done with all that mushy stuff.

Kisses are already off-limits.

Then tonight as I got home from helping out with our church youth group, I heard his little voice from the top of the stairs, “Mom. Can you please sleep with me for just a minute?”

I can’t say no to requests like that. Every time I think, “What if this is the last time he asks me to cuddle with him in bed?”

So I marched up the stairs and laid down next to him in the spot he created for me, scooting over against the wall. He pulled out his Calvin and Hobbes book that he keeps stashed between the wall and his mattress.

“You wanna hear something hilarious from this book?”

“Ok.”

“You have to turn on your phone so I can use the light to see.”

I pulled out my phone and shined it on the pages as he skipped from one comic to the next, laughing and each time explaining to me why it’s funny. “It’s funny because Hobbes is scared of tigers, but, you know, he IS a tiger. Get it?” Yes I do.

When I put my light away, he laid still for a hundredth of a second and then started telling me things from his day. Lying in bed next to him is the one time I get all the scoop, what he did at recess, who his girlfriend is, why he got in trouble in class, and today – how some of his friends were putting plastic bags over their mouths and breathing in.

Me: That sounds like a horrible idea. They could get hurt really bad.

Magoo: No. They could DIE! Remember what you told me about being locked in a box and breathing out bad air until all the air was bad and then breathing in bad air and then dying? Well they could do that with the bag, only way faster.

Me: Yep.

So, then Magoo asked me what it’s called when you breathe in bad air until you die and if I could list other ways kids could die from breathing in bad air.

Me: Well, some kids get stuck in a chest or freezer and can’t breathe and then die.

Magoo: Well they’d die even faster if it were a trash can they were stuck in.

This takes me a second to process.

Me: Oh? Because the air is worse in a trash can?

Magoo (proud of himself for solving the secrets of the universe): Yeah. If it was a trash can with diapers in it, they would die SO fast.

Forget about carbon monoxide poisoning, I need to keep that diaper pail locked up ti-ight.

One Suck Per Day

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Laylee discovered the word “sucks” this week. She’s known the word for a long time but this week she discovered it in all its frustration-ventilating splendor.

“I forgot my homework at school. That sucks.”

“Oh man. I dropped the spoon on the floor. That SUCKS!”

“It’s bedtime. It so sucks.”

I use that expression sometimes, probably more than I should, but hearing it from my 9-year-old after every third sentence is alarming. It sounds so negative and a bit crass and… well… annoying.

So yesterday when she used it for the third time in as many minutes, I stopped her.

“Laylee,” I said, “You use that word a lot. It’s a strong word and it indicates strong feelings. If you’re using it more than once per day, then you’re not using it correctly. If you use it that much, then it won’t mean anything anymore.”

She furrowed her brow, thinking. And she hasn’t used it since. Because if things can only suck once a day, then you have to be very choosy about how you categorize your disappointments.

If I’d told her not to use it at all, she might have snarked or rebelled, but to tell her she was misusing vocabulary? That gave her pause.

Words of Wanda

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Wanda is a character. Often found with one eyebrow up involuntarily, she has much to say about the world. She almost speaks English.

Today as I got her dressed:

“Mom! This is the crazy shirt in the WORLD.” There is apparently only one crazy shirt in the world and I put it on her this morning.

This summer as we headed out to the zoo:

Me: What animals do you want to see at the zoo?

Wanda: The muppets!

Me: I don’t know if there are muppets at the zoo, Wanda.

Wanda: It’s okay. We just can see them.

Dan (Walking downstairs): Hey Wanda, where are you going today?

Wanda: We’re gonna go see da MUPPET SHOW!

A few weeks ago:

Wanda is whine-crying in the back of the van, the kind of crying that is high on drama, low on believability, the kind that can be stopped in half a second by a roving gumball.

Wanda: Aaaahhhhhhh. Waaaahhhhhhh!

Me: Wanda. Are you sad?

Wanda (stops crying, a huge grin crosses her face): Nope! I just whined-ed at you.