Head Colds and Other Stuff in my Head

I've had a cold for two days and that is two days too many.

After a bad night last night and a long, painful day today, David insisted that I take some cold medicine before bed.  He gave me the "Nighttime stuff" as it's normally supposed to help you sleep and wake up feeling better.  Apparently I am not normal, but that will hardly come as a surprise to most of you, because it's a bit past eleven and I feel more awake than I have all day.  Lovely. 

(It might interest you to know that CIM thinks the "Daytime stuff" got accidentally mislabelled and packaged in the "Nighttime stuff" box.  But RIM would like to point out that CIM also thinks that the worldwide obsession with Purell is also going to lead to the next major pandemic.)

CIM:  Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

RIM:  (all supercilious eyebrows)

CIM:  I'm just saying.

I missed Young Women's tonight.  We were going horseback riding for our combined activity.  Just before it was time to leave, I went in to put on some make-up (I didn't want to spook the horses).  By the time I had finished that job I was exhausted.  I walked back into the family room and had to sit down and rest.  Admittedly it is quite a job to get me looking presentable, but even this seemed a bit extreme, so I called for reinforcements and stayed home.  Other than a couple of family vacations, I think it's maybe only the second or third time I've missed Young Women's in two-and-a-half years.  (The "inside-me's" are now battling it out, fighting over feeling guilty for not being there and feeling content that the rest of the population was not exposed to my head cold.  However, I'm not sure which voice is "reasonable" and which voice is "crazy" in this discussion so I will spare you the gory details.  It's not pretty.)

Did you hear I'm getting the mother-of-the-year award?  Last night Ethan came in our room to ask for help because "water wouldn't stop coming out of his nose."  I have no recollection of this.  Olivia found him crying, wandering the house and after helping him blow his nose, tucked him in bed with her.  And then this morning Caleb came in and yelled in a panic, "Mom, get up! I'm going to be late for the bus."  I asked him why he didn't wake me earlier.  He said he did.  I did not hear my four-year-old, my alarm, or Caleb the first two times.  But I swear I heard Dave every time he rolled over and started snoring.  I kept nudging him all night, wiping my nose and readjusting my pillow.  I could have sworn I didn't sleep at all.  There is, however, quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

RIM:  (shaking her head in shame) 

CIM:  Don't look at me like that, I already know I've scarred them for life.

RIM:  (a pathetic little sigh)

CIM:  Does scarred have two "r's"?  Oh, yeah, otherwise it'd be scared.

RIM:  (disdainfully huffy) They're probably that too. 

CIM:  Does this mean I have to give that award back?

Zerrissenheit

Here's how things are going.

I ran into the store today to pick up a few things for dinner.  As I was loading Ethan and the groceries into the car to head home I remembered that I had forgotten to buy sourdough bread for Olivia's class tomorrow.  (They are having a "cowboy celebration.")   She told me about the bread last night and I have no sourdough starter going in my fridge.  At least I remembered in the parking lot.  I unloaded Ethan and we ran back in to pick up the bread.

Phew.

Got home, out of breath, the phone's ringing.  It's Olivia.

"Um, Mom, someone else is bringing the sourdough bread.  Can you bring a crockpot of pork and beans?"

I swallowed  my "grrr" and my sigh.  I love going to the store three times a day.

I'm losing my mind and  it's not just because of the bread or the pork and beans.  Sometimes there is just so much that I am dizzy from being the "center of the wheel."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her book, Gift from the Sea (a book, incidentally, my mother would not let me read until I was "old enough"...wise woman) wrote:  [This is long, but brilliant.]

"The life I have chosen as wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.  It involves a house in the suburbs and either household drudgery or household help which wavers between scarcity and non-existence for most of us.  It involves food and shelter, meals, planning, marketing, bills, and making the ends meet in a thousand ways.  It involves not only the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker but countless other experts to keep my modern house with its modern "simplifications" (electricity, plumbing, refrigerator, gas-stove, oil-burner, dishwasher, radios, car, and numerous other labor-saving devices) functioning properly.  It involves health; doctors, dentists, appointments, medicine, cod-liver oil, vitamins, trips to the drugstore.  It involves education, spiritual, intellectual, physical; schools, school conferences, carpools, extra trips for basketball or orchestra practice; tutoring and transportation.  It involves clothes, shopping, laundry, cleaning, mending, letting skirts down and sewing buttons on, or finding someone else to do it.  It involves friends, my husband's, my children's, my own, and endless arrangements to get together, letters, invitations, telephone calls and transportation hither and yon. 

My mind reels with it.  What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives.  It puts the trapeze artist to shame.  Look at us.  We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head.  Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control.  Steady now!

Woman's life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, "Zerrissenheit--torn-to-pieces-hood."  She cannot live perpetually in "Zerrissenheit."  She will be shattered into a thousand pieces."

Zerrissenheit, exactly.

This week has been full to bursting with things to do and I have shouldered that load alone, as my husband has been swamped at work.  (Came in last night after midnight and was out of bed before 5.)  I feel my shattering coming on, its hot breath on the back of my neck.

Just this afternoon, somehow I have to get Caleb to violin lesson and scouts, transport and support Savannah at the school talent show (with costume), go to a wedding reception for one of my former young women, buy a gift for said reception, help Caleb finish up his science fair project, practice the spelling words (tests tomorrow), prod my kids to get their homework done, make dinner, clean up, finish folding the laundry from Monday, go to book club, and finish my visiting teaching....oh, and also make a crock pot of pork and beans for tomorrow.

I'm tired.

Ethan came up to me this morning and said, "Wake up sleepyhead!"  And I wasn't in bed or asleep at the time...just fogged over from the lists in my head.  This balancing act is taking all my powers of concentration.

SPT: A Closer Look

The place in my home that gets the most attention is my kitchen.  (After I typed "my" I thought, "I ought to write 'our'," but I really do consider it to be my domain...and mine in every way.)  It is the place where I do all of my cooking, almost all of my homework-helping, much of my listening, a lot of my praying, lots of my crying, some of my laughing, most of my problem-solving, quite a bit of my thinking, much of my homemaking, and most of my nurturing.  It is the center of life for me in my home.  I believe in hearth and home, and in many ways this room is both for me.

When we bought this house I was overwhelmed and, frankly, disgusted by its appearance.  I cried a lot at first.  But the room that just broke my heart was the kitchen.  It seemed so long and narrow with dark cupboards and "busy" granite that didn't match.  There were flourescent lights overhead and weird wire plant shelves in the window.  I looked down that long dark hallway and thought, "I'm never going to be able to cook in here." 

After consulting with my remodelling company (me and my Uncle David), I decided to refinish the cupboards rather than replacing them.  I spent 6 weeks hard-labor on those cupboards.  I cleaned and stripped and sanded and primed and painted and sanded and painted and sealed and painted and sanded and painted and sealed and stained and rubbed and sealed again, until my arms ached.  They were worth every effort, and completely transformed my kitchen.  When I finished I told David that I didn't deserve to live in a house this nice.  I love them and jokingly told my husband that these cupboards better be in my mansion in heaven.   (His eyes replied that even the "mansion in heaven" may be getting my hopes too high.)

I am more happy than I can say working away in my kitchen.  It is where I find true expression in my homemaking and mothering, and I believe even though it is usually not a reverent place, most of the things that I do in it are sacred. 

The Woes of an Elementary School Education

We've been back at school 7 days now.  And I am wondering how far away our summer vacation is.  Just to produce a little bit of hope around here, I wrote "The Last Day of School" and circled it on our calendar today.  I'm not sure we could go on without a dim speck of light at the end of this tunnel.

Olivia has been in a state of high anxiety since yesterday afternoon.  She got her first detention.  Oh my.  I heard her wailing, "My life is over!" last night in her bed.  I'll spare you the gory details, but her crime wasn't all that bad...she didn't hurt anyone or disrespect a teacher...so I simply explained to her that this was just something to learn from. 

"But I don't know where Room 20 is.  (That's where the detention was being held.)  And I'll probably get another detention for being late for detention."  Imagine the last part of that sentence increasing in volume and despair until the last word burst into a sob.

"Then I'll get sent to a school with the bad kids where they poison your food and hit you."

What?!!  Apparently she inherited a bit of the CIM from her dad.

I calmed her down, reassured her that no such place existed, and any one of the very nice, helpful teachers would show her where Room 20 was.

But this morning, there was more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Her life is officially over.  Oh my.   The first day of school with all its joys and excitement feels like a lifetime ago, for both of us.

My son's woes are of a different variety.  Two words:  Science fair.  

He's out of his mind with ideas and plans for the science fair, just two months away (his words, not mine).   And keeps trying to prod me into helping him.  Honestly, I often think I'm the only thing holding him back from complete brilliance.  I promised him this weekend for sure.  He wants to get online and order petri dishes so he can test anti-bacterial soap.  Uh-huh.  "And Mom, we'll need an incubator."  I asked my husband if we could use the one at the hospital.  Uh...no.  But if you'd like a tour of the hospital, he'd be happy to oblige.  So I need to round up an incubator as well.  And all Caleb keeps saying is things like:

"Mom, I need to turn in my proposal next week."

"Mom, I want to do at least 3 trials to confirm my results, so I need those petri dishes right away."

"Mom, I was thinking I could test the school bathroom soap against the samples in my control group."

And on, and on, and on.

And I wonder when summer vacations starts.  How soon can we be riding our bikes around Mackinac again?  Not soon enough.

Hard Knock Life

Savannah got three tickets to Annie for Christmas.   She graciously invited me and Olivia to come with her.

So last night we went to Gammage (our version of "Broadway") and had a great time together.  The musical was wonderful.  Our seats were not...way up in the balcony, but it didn't matter.  The music was so fun and my girls sang all the way home.  To tell the truth, I did too.

Afterwards the girls wanted to get autographs, so we waited by the stage door.  They were thrilled to get to meet Molly, Duffy, Tessie, Pepper, Daddy Warbucks, and of course, Annie.  These little girls were only ten...I can't imagine what that life is like touring around America, but we were delighted to enjoy their talents on our night out.  I will never get tired of evenings like this...me with my girls, dressing up, the girls carrying their lip gloss in their little clutches, enjoying the music and beauty of the cultural arts, mothering with a bit of Broadway magic.   No, "I Don't Need Anything But You."

Beauty Routine or Salad Bar Accident?

Last night as we were locking up and turning off lights David said, "Ap, come here.  You've got to see this."

I followed him into the girls' bedroom and found this:

The other day Olivia asked me if I knew what a facial was.  Apparently it's been on her mind.  My favorite part is that she made little holes in the middle of the cucumbers so she could see.  That, and how very wilted the cucumbers are...we had a veggie tray at dinner and she must have surreptitiously taken a couple of extra cucumbers and hidden them away for later.  (Can you just see the wedding video?)

Savannah went for the more traditional (though admittedly less green) method of beauty sleep.

Yes, I am completely in-over-my-head with these two.  Forget about sugar plums, these two slept with visions of their sparkly eyes and radiant beauty melting the hearts of their "true loves."  Oh my.

Word of the Week: Incandescent

incandescent /adj./  very bright.  shining brilliantly. beaming, effulgent, radiant.  a high degree of emotion, intensity, or brilliance.

incandescent /adj./  1.  My husband finally got all the Christmas lights hung and our house is again dressed for the season in all its incandescent luster.  For over a week, he had only the trunk of one orange tree strung with red lights.  The rest of the house was dark.  It looked like the burning bush, and I told David that people were going to think we worship Moses.

incandescent /adj./  2.  My heart lept with incandescent joy, when I found this card from Barb in my mail among my Christmas cards and bills.  My first "good mail."  I hung the card on my sewing room wall, next to my Will Rogers postcard.   (I secretly think the woman in the card is incandescently giddy over her "seat assignment.")

incandescent /vt. and adj./  3.  I was thrilled to finish a few Christmas projects this week...namely the Christmas cards

and a project I have been working on as part of a gift for my girls.  They are "pencil rolls," which I made and filled with markers and colored pencils.  I am absolutely incandescent about the way they turned out.  And I can't wait for the looks on their incandescent faces on Christmas morning.

  

incandescent /adj./ 4.  There are moments in motherhood that are so full and sweet that it makes all the other moments "worth it."   Incandescent is the only way to describe my heart as I went to Caleb's violin recital this week.  He kept smiling at us throughout his performance, to reassure us that he knew what he was doing and that he was enjoying himself.  I just sat there grinning at him as he played through all the variations of "Twinkle," looking up to smile at us every few measures.

He's the one with the incandescent grin in the middle of the back row. 

Exhibit A

When they haul me away in a straight-jacket, you'll know why.  I would like to enter the following picture into evidence:

I vacuumed through the girls room today and found this under their beds.  Please keep in mind that we keep some of our food storage under their beds so there is really only about 6 inches of space to cram things out of sight.  This is what I found in that six inches.

The part of this that makes institutionalization a real possibility is that yesterday we couldn't find the ward phone list.  (Which is absolutely necessary for survival around here.)  I asked David to go look under the girls' beds.  (I know, don't ask.)  He came back and reported that it wasn't there.  Do you see what this means?  Yesterday David looked under these beds and saw all of this stuff and happily left it there.  Arghh!

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I beg you.

*sniff, sniff*

I had a really bad morning.  Really bad.  (I will spare you the details, though [much to David's consternation and chagrin] they may show up in the Christmas card this year.)  It was so bad I called David and quit.  I said, "You better be here at 3 o'clock because I won't be.  I can't do this anymore.  Well, technically, I CAN, but I won't!"  Then, since I just quit my job, I decided I had the whole day to do something "just for me."  Here is what I did:

1.  I took a shower...and took the time to wash my hair and shave my legs.

2.  I bleached my upper lip hair.  (Technically, this is really for everybody looking at me, but it still felt like it was for me.)

3.  And over-tweezed my eyebrows.  (I got a little carried away in my angst...plus all that crying blurred my vision.)

4.  Went to Zoe's for a little solace in the wool section. 

You'd be surprised at what I paid for this little pile, but just look at it.  A whole yard of red wool.  I'm still drooling over it.  Almost makes me want to cry again.

5.  Drove to Dave's work for a hug and a kiss.  He wasn't there.  He had received my message and driven home to put me back together.  When he didn't find me there, he folded and put away all my  laundry.  When I heard this I started crying again in earnest.  I waited in the parking lot for him and then soaked his shirt and tie.  I love this man.

6.  Made one last stop at Old Brick House for some more retail therapy, and bought an 11-drawer dresser for the toy room.  (A few weeks ago, the cheap, but HEAVY, plywood "armoire" fell on and almost crushed my four-year-old.  This is my idea of replacing it.)  I just marched in there and bought it. 

The lady said, "Wow.  Did you know what you wanted before you got in here?" 

 I said, "No, I just had a really bad morning."

Confused, "So...you really need a dresser?"

I sighed, "No, I just decided it was time to get paid for doing the hardest job in the world.  I needed a reason to stay."

She cocked her head and said, "Oh, honey, I hear you."  

At which I burst into tears again.

So now I'm broke and swollen and ready for bed.  And my kids are on their way. (* Sniff, sniff.* And one of those little shuddering sighs that you get from hard crying.)   The cavalry is not coming.  I am here in the gap.  I am here still. 

(Though I may have to high-tail it out of here before our Sunday budget meeting.)

How Do I Hate Thee?

Let me count the ways.

Perhaps it is a little early in our online relationship to show my true colors, but I almost can't help myself.   When I was about 14, I had a t-shirt that my family still loves to tease me about.  It said, "I Love My Attitude Problem."  And while I no longer love my attitude problem, it is still a problem.  Just ask my poor husband.  Here is a list of things that I am taking issue with today:

1. 

This little baby is campylobacter jejuni, and it is currently making the life of a very good friend very miserable, to say nothing of the injury it is causing her little five-year-old.  For those of you contemplating the plunge into vegetarianism, here's another one in the "pro" column.

2. 

This is our local weatherman.  Note the happy smile.  I would like to give him the campylobacter jejuni and wipe it right off his face.  As if it is not bad enough that it is November 7th and it still has not cooled down in this horrible state  (today we are still 93!), he just keeps SMILING about it!  Every night he talks about how our temperatures are "above average," as if this is going to make me feel better about it.  I know there's a school of thought out there that believes something about not shooting the messenger, and I tried to remind myself of this all through May and June and July and August and September and October...and now, quite frankly, it's him or me.

3. 

Finally,  I hate that there are so many ways to mess up motherhood.  I have one little person in my house right now that cries at everything I say.  Even when I say it in the nicest way.  (Though after this post, it is likely you won't believe I have "a nicest way.")  And I want to say to her, "Yes, I know.  I believe you deserve better.  And yet, you've got me.  That would make me cry too." 

I never thought I would be good at this job.  I never did.  Then I remember one day when Caleb was about 9 months old.  I was walking with David, pushing Caleb in the stroller and remarking that I was good at motherhood.  I had surprised even myself.   I remember being completely incredulous, saying,  "I'm really good at this.  I thought I would be horrible, but I'm really good at this."

Oh, I wish I had some of that confidence still.  It seems the older I get the less confident I become at EVERYTHING.  I doubt and question myself at every turn.  And it's wearing on me.  I hear the old complaints grinding on each other in my mind, and especially in my heart.   I hate that I can't turn that off.   That would be helpful.  So would cooked, bacteria-free chicken and a cold snap...is that too much to ask?