In December I posted about my genius idea to time the kids in church to see how long they could stay reverent. It was the best idea ever until it wasn’t. Things went downhill quickly with that little plan. [Read more at Parenting.com]
State of the Union – Sure, but do we have the money for that?
The SOTU always sounds so pretty. Giving all kids the chance to succeed in their education, helping build businesses, constructing new roads, expanding light rail, which in some cases is faster than taking an airplane and doesn’t require pat-downs. (President Obama didn’t have many good one liners last night so little moments like that packed a big punch.)
I liked all of these things. I liked the Chilean miner stuff, the Allen Brothers’ Solar Panel stuff, lots of good things, things that make me happy to ponder upon, things that make me think, “I want to live there. That sounds like a dad-gum awesome country.”
And as much as there have been snickers about Members of Congress sitting together, purposefully integrating the two parties as an ineffectual symbolic gesture, I liked it. I like symbolic gestures. I think they’re a good starting place. When I’m sick and Dan buys me flowers, I know they won’t cure me, unless they’re some stinkin’ special Tangled-style magic flowers, but knowing that he wants to help (or even that he’s willing to help when asked – sometimes I ask for flowers) is comforting to me.
So I say, “Good Job Members of Congress! Thanks for playing a bit nicer last night. Let’s take that ball and run with it. Pretty soon you’ll be giving each other mani-pedis and fixing Social Security together.”
I think my favorite line from President Obama’s speech last night was near the end when he said forcefully, “If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.”
I turned to Dan and said, “REALLY?!? That is awesome. The President is going to veto all bills with earmarks. Really?!? Doesn’t that mean he’ll veto all bills?” I hope he does and I hope things change but this has the ring of “Read my lips. No new taxes,” to me.
Earmarks and crazy amendments to bills are just the way business is done in Washington. They’re the reason I am very reticent to join a campaign in favor of any bill. It doesn’t matter how awesome the bill looks on the surface, I rarely come out strongly in favor of one because who knows what’s swimming down below?
It may be a bill for better education funding… that also buys a congressman a fleet of ponies, and outlaws the polio vaccine in favor of an over-the-counter polio remedy that some pharmaceutical lobbyist thinks we should be selling more of, and sends all McDonald’s Franchise owners to Disneyland where they will learn how to infuse Big Macs with methamphetamines.
I wish the process could be simplified. For all the talk about helping the average American, they sure make it hard for us to figure out exactly how we’re being helped.
Also, I don’t think we have the money for any of this. I’ll rephrase. I know we don’t have the money for any of this. Did the President just say he was going to find extra money by doing a massive re-org/layoff of departments of the federal government because that’s what it sounded like. That is a good starting place.
Whenever I suggest to Dan that we buy a fleet of ponies or plan a trip to Disneyland (with or without illicit drugs), he asks me if we have the money for that. And I check and then we usually don’t do the thing, although ponies are SOOOO awesome, because we’d have to go into debt.
Going into debt isn’t even the issue right now in our country. We’re trying to slightly lower the amount by which we get deeper in debt every month by a few billion dollars here and there. I can’t even wrap my brain around the immensity of the problem.
I want to plug the entire federal budget into YNAB and then start slashing things, things I like, things I use, things I care about. We don’t have the money for that.
I recently got a call from a political pollster who asked me questions like, “Do you favor a massive increase in taxes or would you rather kill old people?” and “Are you a democrat or do you hate children?” Eventually I just stopped the survey because the options were so ridiculous.
Maybe we just need to wipe out the entire budget and start from scratch. A certain amount of money for old people, a whole bunch for children, throw some money at education, health care, job creation, road construction. Heck, I don’t even mind if you spend a little something to defend our country. But I don’t need a pony until the deficit is gone. I can wait.
Please Don’t Ask About My Mini Watermelon
Please don’t ask me about my mini watermelon. It’s kind of personal, you know?
Dressing the Part
For our anniversary this December, I got Dan a bowtie, a real bowtie that you have to tie yourself and that you can pull lose at the end of the day and it hangs down on either side of your neck, a man’s bowtie.
It was my version of giving him anniversary jewelry. Plus I thought it would look hot on him. Plus it reminds me of the beginning sequence of Up, the sequence that makes every woman in America cry her brains out, where the couple grows old together and can never have kids and then (SPOILER ALERT!!) she dies and (DOUBLE SPOILER ALERT!!!) he ends up wearing bowties.
I thought it would be a sweet symbol of my wanting to grow old together with Dan and (SPOILER ALERT!!) eventually die, but mostly just grow old together and he would look all hot and distinguished and such while we were doing it.
He loved the tie but neither of us knew how to tie it and we didn’t take the time to get our YouTube on and figure it out until a couple of weeks ago.
It just so happens that on the Sunday we learned to tie it and he wore it for the first time, they announced in church that he would be the new choir director. He’d never worn a bowtie before and it looked suspiciously like he was wearing it as some sort of uniform for his new job. Little did everyone know, he was wearing it as some sort of uniform for romance.
Then this weekend Laylee and I walked down the hill from our house to buy groceries. I packed some reusable sacks in our little red wagon and we went on our merry way, holding hands and talking with very little carbon footprint.
On the way back up the hill, or as I like to call it, THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY, we got hot and sweaty. We got so hot and sweaty that my lungs nearly exploded and I had to restrain myself from showing Laylee how to dial 911 if I passed out on the side of the road. Let’s just say the wagon was a teensy bit heavier now that it contained 3 gallons of milk, several pounds of produce and a couple of loaves of bread.
I was stopped for one of our many rest breaks and I got to thinking about how the two of us must look, carting our groceries home from market, Laylee’s hair blowing uncombed behind her, our wagon full of organic milk and vegetables in their cloth sacks. “I’m totally playing the role of earth mother today.”
Then I looked down and noticed I was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, a tie-dyed shirt that I made myself with a group of neighbors under a tent outside last summer, all communal-like. The perfect touch.
Sometimes you dress the part without even thinking about it.
Hands as Soft as a Mom
I got a wicked blister this week from peeling too many potatoes and carrots. Dan says I must have soft delicate computer programmer hands like him. And that’s funny.
The problem is – I am not a computer programmer. I am a mom. Shouldn’t a mom have calloused hands, worn tough from performing good mom-ish works?
This reminds me. It’s about that time of year anyway. I should check to see if the bathrooms need cleaning… and then add that to Laylee’s chore chart.
Grownups Make Big Giant Mistakes
“Don’t believe me? Come with me to the library where I’ll yell out loud, throw a fit, hit some kids during story time and then fling my body down the stairs. I promise it will be convincing.” [Read the whole post at Parenting.com]
Lost in Fiction
Someone asked me recently if I’d gotten lost on Facebook because this blog has been a ghost town the past few months. Twitter and Facebook have changed things for me to some extent.
In some ways I think they bring me closer to the people I care about. In others I think they put a wrench in meaningful communication. I’ll see a tweet about today being the best day ever, accompanied by a picture, only to find out weeks later the blurb on Twitter was meant as a wedding announcement.
I’ll go a week without checking in on Facebook and find I don’t know what’s happening in my friends’ lives. Someone will say, “Oh, you know what’s going on, I put it on Facebook,” and I’ll think, “I’ve seen you three times in the past two weeks and you didn’t even tell me you’d changed jobs because you’d put it in a status update.” Weird.
In the past when I had an interesting little nugget to share, I’d sit down to write the one sentence and it would turn into a 400-word blog post. Now it remains an interesting little nugget, just a few characters long. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s concise.
But no, I haven’t gotten lost on Facebook or Twitter. I’ve gotten lost in fiction. I’m working on a novel that I’m really excited about and I find that I pour all of my writing energy out into imaginary characters whom I love watching come to life on my computer screen.
I’ll keep you posted and I’ll keep blogging. I miss it.
For the past few months when I’ve gotten a bad case of writer’s block on the novel, I’ve just stopped writing and blogging altogether except for my posts over at Parenting.com. Then the longer I go without writing, the more I start to believe it’s because I’ve lost the ability to write at all. Like a castaway living in silence on an island with a volleyball named Wilson, I lose my words.
So my plan is to blog when the fiction world grows too thick to slog through. Whenever I’m not here, you’ll know I’m a step closer to delivering my project. Mom, I’m talking to you. You’re still reading, right?
And yes, this post will appear in my feed on Facebook.
Do Your Parents Lick You?
I should never be allowed to read books to children in public. [read more @Parenting.com]
Reverent in Church… And Quiet Elsewhere
‘Magoo is not yet ready to appreciate a cultural event of this nature. If I’d known that in advance, I’d have bribed him, just like I do in church.” [Read more at Parenting.com]
Magic Makers – A Coming of Age Story
When Laylee and I went shopping for ballet shoes this fall, we found ourselves waiting in line behind 2 tween ballerinas being fitted for pointe shoes. Knowing how excited she is to one day dance like the big girls, I mentioned them to her later.
“Laylee. Did you see the ballerinas in there?”
“Do you really think they were REAL ballerinas?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged.
“Oh, I knew it! I knew ballerinas were real, just like FAIRIES!”
“Yes,” I thought, “And dentists and musicians. They’re all very real.”
This is Laylee. She has a crazy vivid imagination. She loves anything magical or mystical or fantastic. She was told quite suddenly two years ago that the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny weren’t real but a year later, she’d talked herself into believing again.
This week we had a talk about Santa.
I love Santa. I always have. My dad (picture above) is one of his special helpers. At times I have been employed as an elf. “The Ho-Ho-Ho Guy” is a big part of our Christmas celebration but definitely not the focal point. We enjoy encouraging the magic but try not to make direct claims about him. I tend to respond to questions with more questions.
“Do you think Santa’s real?”
“That’s a good question. What do you think?”
This year as the Christmas season draws near, my kids already have the fat man on the brain. Laylee told me she’s been thinking about it and she’s decided that the only way Santa could do all the magical things he does is if he were given special powers by God.
She came to this conclusion because Saint Nicholas was a good guy who loved Jesus and loved being kind and giving gifts to children. She figured God would want to reward someone like that and help him do an awesome job celebrating His son’s birthday so He allowed him to live forever and slurp himself down chimneys at supersonic speed.
There are a couple of things I like about this theory. As someone with a firm belief in God and Jesus Christ, I like that she knows where true power comes from. I also like that she knows what Christmas is really about and sees Santa as someone who just does a kick-butt job of celebrating it.
What I don’t like about this theory is that it puts God and Santa on the same roster. It leads to the question, “If Santa’s not real, then was all that stuff about religion an elaborate hoax too?”
I couldn’t let it stand. So I pulled my seven-year-old aside for a talk I’ve been dreading. And you know what? She left our discussion giddy to be initiated into the world of adults who spread joy, magic and love to others. Here’s how it went down:
I asked her to help me give Wanda a bath and while we washed the baby, I brought up our earlier discussion about Saint Nick.
“You know what happened to Saint Nicholas, Laylee?”
“What?”
“Like most people, he grew old and he died.”
She looked confused.
“Do you know how he got his power and continued to give gifts even after he was dead?”
She shook her head, wide-eyed.
“After he died, many people loved what he’d done so much and loved how his kindness reminded them of the Savior’s gifts that they all decided to make the magic of Saint Nick continue. Kind people all over the world are the real magic of Santa Claus. Isn’t that amazing? It’s not just one person but a whole bunch of people working together!”
At this her eyes grew even bigger and she started to smile.
“So when kids want to know more about Santa and their parents decide they’re kind enough and old enough to help, they get invited into the group of grown up magic makers to bring fun and joy to other people. Are you ready to help me make the magic of Santa for your little brother and sister? Are you ready to be Santa with me?”
I was getting really worked up at this point, using my most confidential voice, my most excited face. And she was thrilled.
“Oh yes! I’m ready,” she whispered and then let out a little squeal.
I hugged her and promised that I loved her and I’d still make sure that Santa visited her as well. We then proceeded to have a serious discussion about how only a parent can decide if her child is ready to become a magic maker so Laylee was absolutely forbidden from spoiling the fun for other children until their parents decided they were fully ready to become part of the brotherhood.
I also reinforced that I didn’t want her to confuse fun people like Santa that we create using our own imaginations with the real Being who created us.
Of course the discussion was over-simplified and I’m sure we’ll fine tune it over the years but for this week it was enough. She seems to get it. And she really seems fine with it. I promised her she could go Santa shopping with me at least once to pick out a few things for Magoo and Wanda. More squealing ensued. We magic makers have a hard time containing ourselves sometimes.