Fighting MAN (Ruby)

So the search continues for the job of my dreams, or just the one that will pay me, and some days I am more engaged in this search than others. There are so many days when my kids just look at me and repeat the following, without a pause: “…what are we doing today? Can we go somewhere? There’s nothing to do. I’m bored. Can’t we just go do something? Are we going to the pool? Can I have ice cream? Can we go to a movie? Can we rent a movie? Can I have a ride? Can you make me my lunch? Did you do my laundry? Can you cut my hair? Can I have ice cream? Can we go shopping? Can we go to the pool? Can we have lunch there? Where are we going? Can we do something?”…which can slow me down a little. And my classic response - “I’m trying to get some WORK done” – does not go over well because they cannot comprehend that you actually have to “work” at finding work. Hmmm. So I try to balance it all out. Typically Scot and I work out in the morning AFTER getting Louki on the bus to his morning summer program and after both of us squeeze some “work” in. By the time we return, charged up and clean, those kids are drooling for some ACTION, after their fourth or fifth breakfast-snack-lunch-breakfast-snack. I squeeze in a little more “work” and then often take them to the city pool, which loses its appeal within one hour or as soon as the six - or so - busloads of camp kids arrive, turning the place into an asylum with lifeguard whistles blaring, children running, screaming, shrieking, drowning, fighting for their lives in the deep end. Medusa sits in the shade, with perfect posture and an increasingly annoyed look on her face. The boys like to spend the whole time eating after one quick trip down the slide. But, remember, we are on the austerity plan and so I beg them not to beg me for food but often give in because of my failing parenting skills.

Then I return home for more “work-to-find-work”…if I can get OUT OF THE KITCHEN which is, more times than not, set with booby traps that capture and hold me hostage for hours at a time. The sink is one of those traps… I often don’t walk by it without staying for a full week. And then my children remind me that they have not actually eaten any food yet on that particular day (????) and so I prepare something…then clean up…they could clean up themselves – I know what you are thinking – but let’s be real. By this time, it is 3:oopm and time for me to do some “work” but my children are already eager to talk about what’s for dinner and don’t really want to hear me say that I am “working”…

Then there are the days like last Monday, when I hunker down with NO DISTRACTIONS because I am in a dead panic about being unemployed and I make it very clear that WE ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING TODAY…I am WORKING all day and that’s that!!!

And so on Monday I applied to several jobs and then signed up with yet another employment agency online. I probably have two thousand username / password combos for all the various ones I have signed with but this one TOOK THE CAKE. I spent much longer than I typically spend, creating my profile, answering a multitude of questions, uploading my resume and cover letter. This particular one seemed to be more focused, asking more relevant questions, offering more options for location preferences and lines of work, and it felt very worth my while. Literally three hours after I had started this search, I was ready to hit submit and get my first peek at the available jobs, hand picked for me. Yay!!

And this was the intro at the top of a list of job possiblities that were pooled just for me:

“… these are the best jobs which match your primary job category and the list of desired work locations in your Account Profile. They are ordered by Relevance (best match).”

All the jobs were in the Air Force. I get nervous just saying “Air Force”. I am terrified of my own shadow. I listed Advertising, Design, Writing…things like that, in my Profile. I also divulged that I am FEMALE and WHITE, which is optional information to reveal. So this and many of the hand-picked jobs they came back to me with said (at the very end of the job description) FOR MALES ONLY…hmmm. Makes me just kind of scratch that girly head of mine and ask “what part of GIRL, CREATIVE, etc. did you not get?” This was my favorite:

Job Description
COMBAT CONTROL APPRENTICE A Combat Controller is an air traffic controller in remote and sometimes hostile areas. He is a precision parachutist capable of penetrating hostile areas to perform his duties. He is skilled in water operations using both scuba and amphibious techniques, and he's been trained on motorcycles, snowmobiles, rappelling and fast-rope procedures, all as ways to get to work. The combat controller is an expert with maps and compasses, capable of overland travel in any environment. Survival training in various climates enables combat controllers to function under the most demanding conditions. As an air traffic controller, he establishes assault zones and directs aircraft within those zones. Combat control is a very physically, mentally and technically demanding job, one of the best and most prestigious the Air Force has to offer. The faster an Airman can run and swim, or the more repetitions he can do on each exercise, the better…

Needless to say, I applied immediately. I am particularly intrigued by the “fast-rope procedures” as a means of transportation…which could totally come in handy during summers in Madison when EVERY street in the city is under construction. And then “….capable of penetrating hostile areas to perform his duties…” caught my eye as well; this can’t be too far of a stretch from life in Corportate America, right?...nor all that different from certain days in a house full of teens and teen-wannabes, right? And since extreme fluctuations in temperature would NEVER affect my mood or stamina, I am IN!!!

Tuesday was a day off from searching for a job for me (and maybe simply because I sensed that I’d finally found my calling??)

Yesterday I found a smeared and tattered UPS envelope leaning against the front of our house so I brought it in and opened it, with Scot as my witness. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WIN, it said, and I almost threw it out because it looked like all that JUNK mail that we’re all drowning in. Scot took a few more minutes to read the pages and pages of stuff and we then realized that yep –indeedy! We have won a 3-night stay and airfare for 2 to this lovely place in Lourges, France…at a winery in the heart of Provence. It all started with a “French Cocktail Party” that a friend of mine had invited me to. It was an online thing that was taking place at many locations across the country at the same time and anyone who participated had the opportunity to enter to win this trip; the password that I had initially chosen, just to RSVP to the party, alluded me at one point and I couldn’t get a confirmation that I had entered the trip contest, so I said…”stupid thing!” and told Scot that if he wanted to do it he could figure it out…which I guess he did. This is the first time I’ve ever won anything, although I have been purchasing Power Ball Lottery tickets sporadically since I lost my job…

So we are working out the details…how exciting is that??!!!! And then I’ll have to get my combat boots polished up and SWING into action as a FIGHTING MAN when I return!!

Another day in the life…

Ruby

Lex Lutheran (Patty)

I am throwing stones from a glass house a little, regarding the older kids in the household being in charge in the kitchen. Zeke is in this grueling summer program as you know, leaving the house by 8:30AM and returning around 10 or 11PM most nights. I have been basically packing food for him this entire summer. He'll say something like "Just put 2500 calories in a bag" which I hear as "Thank you for providing breakfast, lunch and dinner". Right when I thought my sandwich-making days were over...on any given day I might pack a muffin, a couple of sammys, 3 bananas, leftover pasta, a chocolate bar,cookies...he's eating me out of house and home! Could he make his own lunch? Of course, but I feel like we are getting through this architecture stuff together...just 2 more weeks!
There are 35,000 Lutheran teens in town doing various charitable works. They all have matching T-shirts, and it's quite funny to see a streetcar full of Lutherans go by, or a hotel lobby full of lime green shirted Lutherans, or just a pack of them coming down the sidewalk.
We have been The Poche Hotel recently. This week our visitors include John's childhood friend, Azby (great name!) who is visiting from Japan with his 14 year-old son, Max. Max is quite brooding, he has long, highlighted hair that completely covers his eyes...he occassionally takes a quick peak out into the world but then he goes right back behind his hair...Azby is a perfect guest; he teaches Architecture at the University of Kyoto and I have an Archie student in the house, so that's a great connection. He is also involved in translating movies into Japanese, and one day this week, John went with him to view The Impostor, a Ben Affleck movie that will be released in September. They got to see it in a private theatre located in a secret warehouse building, this is like summer camp for John and he will be sad when it ends. Last night, we had a dinner party (more like a barbeque technically...) for Azby's friends, who over the years, are becoming our friends, too. Madison and Zeke showed up towards the end of the evening, and after John and I went to bed, they stayed up another hour or two with the grown-ups. That was a first and another little step toward complete adulthood!
Inner beauty is overrated. Yeah, yeah, I know it's whats inside a person that counts, but a porcelain complexion certainly wouldn't hurt!! I pick BEAUTY!

Patty

Skin Deep (Ruby)

I’d pick MONEY. And I think we know why; cute just isn’t that cuddly when you’re scraping by…

Besides, you know those women we’ve all seen who are technically unattractive but who make so much of their looks that, in a pulled together kind of way, they are just stunning? I don’t think you have to be “beautiful” to have a great look…I think of it as very European – the perfect haircut, stylish clothes, unique accessories, dynamic makeup, impenetrable confidence but with a face that would never be called “pretty” by any standards. There is this all-American look that’s cute in a predictable way – it was so apparent to me when I lived in London as a kid - the perfectly straightened teeth, blonde-ish hair, possibly dimples…and while it always looks good, like the Land's End line of clothing or a cute bunny rabbit does, there is something about “strategic” beauty that is more interesting BY FAR – to me – than “natural” beauty, in all its perfection...because it’s all about good design and drama, really. But no matter how you slice it, the age thing appearing on a face isn’t even about beautiful or not beautiful…it’s about “tired”…we were out last night with the kids at a funky restaurant and I was seated in an odd place where I would catch my reflection in an adjacent window all too often and my one thought was that suddenly my eyes look exhausted and my eyebrows appear to be on crooked…what’s up with that? Did I ever have balanced eyebrows? All the eyeliner in the world won’t poof me into some magically fresher time in my life, which is fine…you just have to laugh at it…and you have to get really good at smoothing a few lines on your face in photoshop if you’re in the mood for a good picture. Enough said : )

Inner beauty is a whole different topic…this has nothing to do with a face, tired eyes or great style, obviously, but something to do with being at peace vs. in pieces. Back to that another time.

And speaking a smidgeon more of looks, your comments about the folks who work in health food stores having a certain “look” reminded me that I’ve certainly thought about the fact that we’ve dubbed healthy eaters “health-food-NUTS” or “health-FREAKS” (I too have been called these approximately a million times); the naming alone implies a touch of craziness, something unleashed about any behavior that would make someone actually like Tofu…something that spills out beyond the norm when you choose sprouts over gristle. The act of making the planet a better place, from careful food choices to an earthy approach to hair-care, from the politics of freedom to the nurturing and perpetuating of all things local, the tie-dye joie de vivre is all about individual choices, and dreadlocks, body piercing and tattoos fit well within this niche of creative expression. I’m too much of a hybrid to pull off the health-food-store-hippy look myself; while I live fairly religiously on organic nuts and produce, fresh juices, and nothing that has a mother (cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, fish…you get the picture) I have never wanted to stop wearing leather (hats, boots, bags), or start wearing shoes that are higher in the front than the back for optimal spinal (or spiritual?) alignment, I don’t consistently shop with my own cloth bags, have no plans to give up my eyeliner and lipstick…and have actually found some PLASTIC toys throughout my years of childrearing that I believed to be superior to their wooden counterparts, I refuse to use a netty pot for my sinus annoyances and keep forgetting to compost. All this, I suspect, keeps me OUT-OF-THE-CLUB when it comes to being able to think of myself as pure enough to be called: earthy, tree-hugging (this would bug me, anyway), “green”, except when I am sick, although I think I do fine for someone who isn’t trying to be perfect at it…just haven’t gone down the path (yet) of twisting and back combing my tresses into dreads (although I was VERY close to a burning desire for white/bleached dreads in my 20’s but didn’t know where to start).

Your description, by the way, of the waitress being all “hummused up” is too dang funny…the next time I see you I’ll have to turn you on to Goji Berries (so you can say that you “did some Goji” or “got Goji’d up”)…these have been gaining in popularity over recent years but, between you and me, I have been eating these things for so long I’m pretty sure I invented them. I may have led you down the wrong path with the “Target Brand” yogurt; the Target’s store brand I was referring to is called “Archer Farms”. The graphics are very clean and they’re in many segments of the store, from soap to hot dogs…give it another try before we go blaming the sweet, limping city of New Orleans for not stocking those Target shelves competitively. Enjoy it if you can find it…or you could always buckle up your Birkenstocks and invest in a Yogurt Machine like the one I had years before I invented the Goji Berry : )

FYI (and keep in mind that if you find the price of OIKO yogurt off-putting, Goji Berries are the equivalent of buying chunks of GOLD at Health Food Stores – I once bought a 10oz bag for $15.00):

The goji berry, a sweet red fruit native to Asia, serves as both a botanical medicine and a food, and has a very pleasant taste - somewhere between a cherry and a cranberry. It has been used as a medicinal food for thousands of years, and has been studied extensively in modern times to substantiate its health benefits. With over 15% protein, 21 essential minerals, and 18 amino acids, as well as lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBP), goji berry is a nutrient-dense superfood in a class all its own.
Here are just a few of the many benefits you get from eating goji berries:
Strengthens the immune system
Provides antioxidant and anti-aging effects
Protects the liver
Builds strong blood and promotes cardiovascular health
Supports eye health and improves vision

And finally – I will add that I made no new friends as a result of my Goji habits but I fully enjoyed that 10oz bag. Very empowering if you enjoy a tough chew! Chomp…chomp!

Ruby

Hitting the target (Patty)

It is not my place to judge, but (do you sense judgement’s arrival?)....it is not OK for a 20 year old man to leave butter and cheese and things strewn about, you need to walk in to wherever he is sleeping and have him get up and clean up. That’s the only way the behavior will change. It can be different with a husband, a lot of times it’s a marital agreement: if he keeps the roof overhead or provides other services like home repair or child-rearing, it’s more than fair for the wife to do the cooking and cleaning. It’s also different with a 9-year-old child; if they “bake cookies”, you have just signed up to bake cookies, too! But by the time they are 20, the rules need to change!
I went to Target specifically to check out the yogurt that you had so strongly recommended, but our Target doesn’t carry it’s own brand of yogurt…boo hoo! There is America, and then there is New Orleans. By U.S. standards, this city should not even exist, not much of a “bigger is better!’ attitude, no real emphasis on monetary success, often stores are simply “Closed Today” or “Closed for Amy’s graduation” and you just get used to it. It is quite possible that all Targets nationwide carry Target brand. But our Target simply does not…whatever! My favorite brand is Oiko from Whole Foods, but it’s double the price of regular yogurt…
Speaking of healthy food, it’s so weird the way employees of health food stores always fulfill the stereotype: tattooed, facial jewelry, nose rings, tie-dye, etc. I don’t understand why all kinds of people aren’t drawn to a vegetarian lifestyle. Why doesn’t anyone preppie or conservative ever seem to work there? Anything you read supports the idea of better quality of life through plant-based meals, beans, soy, I’m not telling you things you don’t already know… There is one vegetarian restaurant in New Orleans, and they are so hippy-dippy, that I can’t go there much. If all 5 of us go, one of the meals just doesn’t show up at all and the server, who is always cute and petite, is just too hummused up to refill the water glasses and the experience is awful, but you can’t even get mad at the waitress because she’s so sweet, like “Sorry about that other meal! We are NOT even going to THINK about charging you for that!” Why can’t vegetarians be restaurateurs? Why can’t restaurateurs be vegetarians? Life’s unanswerable conundrums.
Of course, Medusa is gorgeous, it’s in the genes! Who has it better, you or me? (How many question marks can I put in one blog?) Whether you admit it or not, you must know deep in your heart that you were overserved in the beauty department. I feel that I was overserved in the money department. If you put 100 women in a room and made them choose between way above average on beauty for life OR way above average financially for life, one or the other, black or white answer, gun to your head, you have to pick one…what do you think the results would be?
I think a lot of the women would be shot; they would insist on discussing the grey area!
But seriously, I really am getting scary-looking, I probably need to move under a bridge soon, but I’ll bring my laptop with me for sure, so I can stay in touch.

Patty

Life in America: donettes, sore fannies & Pink Flamingos (Ruby)

Here’s my first scary thought of the day, completely random, just drifting through my head as I tidy up (attack) the endless pieces of the midnight-snacking puzzle that my hungry-at-strange-hours 20 year old has left for me to deal with as I enter the early morning kitchen…with eager fantasies of peace and solitude (open bread bag on counter, mayonnaise left out, 2 bags of Hostess Mini donettes tumbled on their sides and left open in the closet where I hid them so they would be here for the other children’s breakfast today, the zip-lock feature of the baggie of ham broken so that it no longer closes – but miraculously in the fridge vs. out on the counter, cheese out of the cheese drawer, all the cupboards in the kitchen left in various states of “open”, a knife left in the butter, crumbs on the floor that were not there when I went to bed, etc.)…yep, here’s my scary thought: I will never have a job again because I cannot break free from the constant onslaught of assignments in my kitchen, my personal straight-jacket. I think I stood at that sink for four straight hours yesterday. I got up at 6:00am this morning to write and am finally sitting down almost 2 hours later, after an over dose of speed-laundry-dog-duty-kitchen-patrol.

Then I get my footing again as the scary thought passes; ahhhh, my first sip of coffee is delicious, pleasing…and at this particular moment, no one else is up. Triumph. I have nothing to complain about…I may even find a job someday. Directly to my right are the 2 recovered bags of donettes that I have placed on the counter; one bag is chocolate frosted, the other is powdered sugar and there should still be enough for the ravenous ones who will scurry in like desperate looters trying to score in their own kitchen …any minute now.

And like I just said, nothing to complain about, really...except that I can relate all too well to your comments about having a sore butt. For years now I have wanted to get us all to fess up about the fact that nothing hurts like a woman’s fanny. I remember being at focus groups a handful of years ago with a group of women I worked with, no men. We’d had time to get a little shopping in before the groups started on the second day and when I wandered into a fabulous store with every imaginable massage item, I could not pass up the “Thumper”, a small-but serious thumping and vibrating gizmo for my sore back, neck and butt. It turns out we were all so damn sore already from one full day of sitting and observing consumers (and life in general) that not one more minute went by when one of us wasn’t thumping ourselves or each other in the back room and I’d be naïve to think that this doesn’t sound a little lewd, but rest assured, this was simple, innocent, pain management. And this is when I heard the confession for the first time: every one of us had a seriously sore butt…admitting that we’d often ask our husbands for “backrubs” but what we really wanted was for someone to squeeze all that pain out of our frikkin’ fannies; I don’t know what to make of this, I have no idea why we have such tender tushies but it’s the facts-Jack!! I lied, there was ONE MAN in the room with us – the guy who was running the video streaming of the groups for the folks who could not attend and he was a silent, almost invisible presence…until one faint snicker came out of him and he divulged, without looking any one of us in the eyes, that he had to rub his wife’s sore butt all the time….before returning to his invisible man status again. So before I got up this morning to write - I mean, clean the kitchen – I was lying in bed, so sore, thinking of you and your sore fanny (the word fanny makes me laugh, so I am going to just repeat it until I get it out of my system) and then I just HAD to get up to get a hot water bottle against my lower back, aka – “FANNY”, which I have finally just done, as I have my 2nd (Yay!!!) cup of coffee. So maybe the pain comes from the whole birthing thing, who knows…but I will say one thing here with certainty: IT IS NOT FROM SITTING ON OUR BUTTS in a lazy way, God NO…

I wanted to share more “observations from nature / the outside world according to Ruby”, with you this morning, after our first camping trip ever as a family…I will try to keep this brief (HA!) …

Let’s just say that I should have read the many helpful hints at campingearth.com BEFORE we went camping because I would have read this nifty tidbit of info and avoided one of my panic attacks on Tuesday night: “Raccoons are even more crafty and often develop sophisticated ways to beg or find their ways into your food. They can open coolers and get into protected areas…”. The storm was approaching, the wind had picked up dramatically, which was enough to ruffle my feathers…but hearing that damn raccoon in the vicinity of the cooler which we had left next to the firepit – despite concerned suggestions from our daughter, ‘Medusa’, to put it in the car – was alarming. When I aimed my flashlight out of the tent into the black night, I saw that animal poised over the cooler like a guy grabbing a beer at a tailgate party. Scot hissed and banged at the side of the tent to “scare” him away but that raccoon looked back at us with so much attitude, like…”excuse me, I see your lips moving but I don’t believe I hear you SAYING ANYTHING…” (not unlike the warm response I get from my kids these days). Because the storm suddenly picked up and there was torrential rain for the remainder of the night, Rocky only stayed engaged long enough to help himself to my Peach flavored Greek yogurt and an omelet morsel that Scot had saved. The storm scared me silly and this was just one more validation that there is not enough Valium in the world when it comes to my personal nervous system. I left Scot to die in our 'parents-only' tent since he was unmoved by my second source of panic that night, and went to hunker down in the car…where my boys joined me from the kid-tent. Medusa was quite impressive on this trip; not only did she not wear a hint of makeup, she also wore old and almost camp-appropriate attire, let her hair dry naturally and used her time well…never complaining about being bored. She came to the car eventually but declared, in her characteristic deadpan style: “…only because I didn’t feel like being in the tent alone…not because of the STUPID storm…” (sidenote: she is so gorgeous right now that there is nothing she can do to ugly it up, not camping, not nothin’…but I caution myself as I am almost drawn and compelled to look at her sometimes…to AVOID AT ALL COSTS making eye contact…you know…the whole turn-you-to-stone-thing…one cannot be too careful).

Oh, I forgot to mention the hiking extravaganza…I am not a hiker…even my “hiking boots” have a 2 or 3 inch heel…although chunky vs. stiletto, to my credit. I have the startle reflex of an infant and loathe a bird’s eye view of anything…even standing on a step-stool in my kitchen leaves me jittery…so let’s just say that the climb DOWN on that slippery (yet beautifully purple-hued), DIZZYINGLY STEEP rock-cliff-thing was a very hard pill to swallow. I came down the majority of it on my famously sore FANNY, slowly, methodically, with a terrorized look in my eyes.

All in all, we loved the trip; it was cozy and refreshing in spite of my panic attacks, and my fire-roasted root vegetables were so undeniably yummy I could have just yelped with pleasure with each bite. Unlike Medusa, I maintained my lipstick and eyeliner routine the whole time and we had enough hand sanitizer to sink a ship; note to self: next time - more fire wood, more warm clothes and blankets, more wine, more meal-planning, possibly less hand sanitizer. I couldn’t look at Ollie without wincing after the first couple of hours; he looked like one of the Lord-of-the-Flies boys…really wild, really dirty, caked in remnants of food and a layer of stickiness…I stopped offering hand sanitizer after I realized it doesn’t work on some people. He and Bowie were business-as-usual as they measured the value of every moment of their day according to how soon they’d be allowed to have to have their next treat from the concession area by the little beach. Favorite items: Snickers Ice Cream Bars, hot pretzels and the usual lure-of-all-lures, SODA…what would any camping trip be without some partially-hydrogentated creature comforts?

For Scot, it was all about his very cute Oberon Pony Keg from Barriques : ) and I had my wine.
And my final observation: there are campers who are so at home in their spot in the woods that they actually decorate. I aspire to be this evolved one day. My favorite was the site right next to the bathrooms. It had electricity, unlike our site, and it was adorned with strings of lights that gave it holiday appeal. There were a couple pop-up campers and tents strewn around the site and the pièce de résistance: an American Flag and 2 Pink Flamingos at its entrance. I wanted to take a picture but didn’t want to act like a tourist in the woods.

Gotta go work out…see if I can get the blood to flow to the vicinity of my fanny today.

Ruby

Foamy Bats and Other Important Topics (Patty)

You are quite the font of nature's ways these days, the camping, the squirrels, the birds. You are Ruby Newbie, the Science Goobie (I reserve the right to mangle the English language when I deem it necessary...that was my variation on Bill Nye, the Science Guy).
Madison returned on Friday night and when I got up on Saturday morning she was already gone...you know how they had the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona on Saturday? Well, they have the Running of the Bulls in the French Quarter as well, but it's mean Roller Derby girls with foamy bats. (not the animal kind of bats, Goobie). I am always surprised at the huge turn-out this event generates, especially because it is at 6AM, the only time of day in July when it's not hot as hell.
Zeke has been cutting his own hair, and today's wrangle was "the haircut". He was not bothered as much by the appointment as by the fact that it was at 9:30AM. Remember when that was a ridiculously early hour?
I have to tell you that I am starting to look VERY old and have decided never to have my picture taken again. I am trying to transition to the attitude of how I FEEL being more important than how I LOOK. I discover new body parts every week that I didn't know could hurt, my eyes hurt occasionally now, and recently my butt started hurting for no particular reason while I was just sitting on it. So I am getting pleasure out of ordinary, painfree living.
That's what is happening in New Orleans today! Can't wait to hear s'more about the camp-out.

Patty

Crazytail, the Bully Squirrel (Ruby)

You know how it makes me perk up when I catch myself observing nature, right? So yesterday morning I called Scot to the window to ask him what the HELL that animal was – the one right there, frantically swinging on the tire swing, then climbing up the ladder of our elaborate and gigantic Rainbow Play System thing that takes up the entire backyard.

I wasn’t convinced at first when he said “Squirrel”; this animal was oversized, with a super-long tail that was not puffed up like squirrel tails but thin with a single white stripe down its center. His style and his silhouette was different.

This morning, PATIENTLY waiting for my coffee and observing my little plot of nature again, I saw that same Crazytail, jumping all over the play equipment but this time he was doing Martial Arts with another squirrel, seriously. His timing was impeccable, knocking that other rodent off the ladder with panache, standing again and again in a face-off and winning every round. Then he played dead on his favorite bright yellow ladder rung when the puffy-tailed opponent squirrel scampered off into the bushes; he watched from his playground perch until, like a stealth stalker, he crept toward that bush for his next attack. I could see the 2 tails spinning and tossing up out of this bush as they fought/played… like cartoon fights when things fly out of the spinning blur of bundled characters.

Then my coffee was ready and I had to leave my kitchen window perch but I remain amazed by the style of confrontation these squirrels have, not unlike fencing partners with their tails gracefully poised like the free arm of a fencer. I have no idea if they’ve emerged from that bush; for all I know, Puffy-tail could be dead.

I will continue with my nature-observations-by-Ruby when I return form my camping trip this week…if I am not too busy with my mani-pedi routine inside the tent : )

Ruby

What is it with boys?!? (Patty)

Boys love adventure. Zeke was going on a field trip to Auburn today with the School of Architecture, it was an overnight trip, and they had a nice deal at a little bed and breakfast for $39.99 per person...but Zeke and his friend wanted to camp out NEAR the B&B...can someone tell me why they can't just stay at the B&B?! Enjoy breakfast, have a nice bed...it must be that same thrill of breaking away that Ollie is going through!!
I did a little breaking away of my own this month. I love Europe. It’s so rude that God put it so darn far away! Maybe this is why I always feel lucky to be there, never knowing when it is my last trip…it’s a fairly strenuous destination, lots of walking and heat and did I mention heat?
We couldn’t bring our phones, so we were rendezvousing with Madison in Galway the old-fashioned way: 3PM at the statue. But we were walking down a random street earlier in the day and she had left a book at McDonald’s (the child has been a vegetarian for 10 years, but apparently Micky D’s has a good restroom…) and there she was just walking towards us and I’m like “oh hi", as though she had just moseyed into the kitchen rather than met us 7000 miles away from home…
From Ireland, we flew to London. And we met up with Madison there as well, a plan we, the parents, were extremely jazzed about and Madison was maybe one-third to one-half-jazzed about… I attended the first day of Wimbledon, at one point I was at the rooftop bar and ordered (cmon it’s Europe!) a sandwich and a glass of wine. When the wine was served in a real wineglass I said to the teenage Brit serving me “Oh, I thought it would be in plastic, can I take this down with me, or do I need to stay up here?” He started cracking up, and replied “I have to admit I have NO IDEA what you just said!” We were speaking the same language…sort of…
From there, we took the Chunnel to Paris, this is one of the world’s best train rides; you get on the train, they serve café au lait (with a little piece of chocolate of course) then a beautiful breakfast, and before you know it (2 hours and 10 minutes) you are in Paris. Also Spike Lee was in our car, one of John’s heroes, the train to France seemed like part of the fun…
After a short visit, we took an overnight train to Salzburg. It was a quaint little Alpine town. When I file under the category “things I should like but don’t”, I’d have to add quaint little Alpine towns. The Sound of Music was shot there, and the Sound of Music Tour is 4 hours long. Given the fact that the entire movie is only 2 hours long, that was a little more Von Trappiness than I was up for, so we took a tour of the Hapsburg Castle, which was more like dungeons and lumps of stone. And stairways. Lots and lots of stairways. The place is in the Alps, which is so often hilly. Those archdukes must have had awesome calf muscles. Around this time, I started to see Michael Jackson’s picture on various TVs around town, but everything was in German. Several hours later, we were in a taxi and the driver was silent, so we could hear the radio loud and clear. The dj said something to the effect of “Haffin zee bloppin, King of Pop”…and I asked the driver, “So what’s up with Michael Jackson?” and in that German accent, with the type of emotion you might say something like “You are DEAD to me!” he sort of screamed, “Michael Jackson! HE DEAD!” and then reverted to complete silence, and it was probably hormones but even though, except for Bruce, the MJ concert was the best I’ve ever seen and he has to be Top 5 in Important Celebs of Our Day and he always seemed so lonely…it struck me as hilarious and I had the giggles the rest of the cab ride.
Then we went on to Vienna, such a beautiful place. I had arranged a Segway tour of the city, and when I told this to John, it was as though I’d told him I’d arranged an Iditarod expedition to the North Pole and that he was the lead musher. I endured two days of subtle (not) comments like “You’re the boss, but if I break my arm, we will both have a BAD trip…”…. “Hmmm, it’s your call, but do you think a brand new endeavor is best attempted in a HUGE city like Vienna?” “You PREPAID? It’s probably going to rain; can you get electrocuted on those things?”…but in the end, it was one of the highlights of the trip, Segways are fun and easy to use!
So those are a few highlights of my trip. Did you miss me????

Patty

Satiety: the feeling or state of being sated / from Satis ‘enough’ (Ruby)

So, while you were touring Ireland – and I hope it was great – I spent a couple weeks in the hospital with Blue – number one son, about to turn 20 – because of somewhat bizarre complications from an otherwise routine appendectomy. I won’t even attempt to describe the outward appearance of the abdominal distortion that resulted from a hematoma, nor the pain that he expressed because of an Ileus (resulting blockage and shutting down of the intestines). Such a surreal reminder of all the times you sign something, acknowledging the risks, accepting the outcome in advance. Typically, nothing happens beyond the ordinary…we wake up from surgeries, our scars heal, our lives resume. We don’t expect something to get knicked unnecessarily, poked or popped, for things to leak into unexpected places, for one minor move on the part of a surgeon to turn into a condition that later has him admit to you that he is truly “stumped” for several days. Some very uncomfortable moments for all of us and especially for Blue who was in horrible pain, all of which he has recovered from at this point, thankfully.

While nothing about this was anything I’d wish for again, I must admit that it felt very special for me to be able to be with him for so much of the time, to sit quietly with him for hours, holding his hand, watching him sleep. It segued into so many flash backs, a speed-rewind to our time as new Mom and first baby in the late ‘80’s, the first absolute solid focus in my life and it had me thinking so much about SATIETY on the part of a child or a Mom...or anyone…as in when do we ever have enough of anyone, or anything? Will we recognize it when are in the thick of it? Or do our need states just run us over, like a perpetual freight train, colliding with us unless we quickly switch tracks and start needing something else?

Since the spring, so very few months ago, I feel like my kids have changed in interesting ways…entering new phases of need…redefining “enough” as a broad concept. I told you a few months ago about my youngest’s (Ollie – 10) new wanderlust and his accusations (not yet angry, still mild accusations, thank God!) that I have essentially locked him up his whole life as he tries to convince me that “other Moms” simply don’t keep tabs on their kids…nope, not those other Moms…they let their kids just go wherever, do whatever and figure it all out on their own. Well, as of July 2009, this child is literally breaking loose every day in one way or another…not just to leave our yard for greener grass, but for the sheer pleasure derived from escaping, that thrill of having a secret…of giving your parents the sense that you are predictably in one place, while you move and roam quickly, sneakily…if only from the back yard to the front, just to get away with it (which in the case of our home, as I have described, is not easy to do because of the particular style of moat & alligators / lock & key that we adhere to for the safety of autistic Louki (17) who will definitively escape if we’re not careful, as well as the Peach – our insatiable Puggle – who believes that, according to her highly evolved dog-snack-strategy, she will get the snack of her dreams if she somehow temporarily runs away and has to be lured back home by something yummy being waved – with desperation - at her from the front steps of our house). So Ollie has figured it all out, how to slither and slink through impossibly narrow openings, how to bound over the tops of fences, walls, snarly vines, splintery obstacles, agitated bees, etc., for the singularly triumphant feeling of getting away with something he hasn’t done before and of not being where we think he is. Something magical about it. And like I’ve said before, I think it’s healthy…but not so healthy that I was eager to share his new skill with Scot the first time my visiting Mom and I noticed Ollie’s wispy frame crawling through vines at the top of our privacy fence around our backyard, before jumping down onto the top of our air conditioning unit at the side/front of our house. He looked horrified to have been busted in the act and I talked to him about needing to be super careful and to never wander away after breaking free to the coveted front side of the house, but when Scot discovered him doing the same thing a few days later – because I had not “tattled” on him to “Daddy”, Ollie protested that “Mommy said it’s fine!” which is the well honed method of children throughout history - to scapegoat one or the other parent when the moment calls for it. So this is the beginning phase of a child who has Aspergers and is severely OCD and normally super dependent on me, no longer wanting me to design his days, not even wanting me to know where he is or what he’s doing and he cannot get enough of this. He thirsts for this freedom from the moment he wakes up until bedtime and so far it has the ingredients of a self-made fun and mildly adventurous summer even if it never goes further than the front or back half of our own property.

Bowie, who just turned 12, is experiencing his own wanderlust too but his involves getting further from home than the front yard and having an infinite amount of money to spend on snack food. How perfect then that a new close friend of his lives a couple miles away and very close to some key fast food joints, including McDonald’s and Dairy Queen…other than the fact that the never-ending flow of money is not happening long term and he is too young for a summer job (although he’d love one). He did receive some cash for his birthday and will most likely invest it mostly in Blizzards, Soda and fries and although I’d love to be a parent who could tell him he has to save ½ of what he got, I think the experience of being just a tad more “out there”, making some choices on his own, budgeting at least a little and understanding that what he has is finite…has some noteworthy value.

So all of this brings me back to Blue, baby-first-born; as I sat with him in the hospital in June, I was reminded of crazy first-mom-ish behavior when I’d nurse him for as many as six straight hours and not because I thought this was a great idea but because he was insatiable and somehow I did not know, then, how to say "enough is enough" (I say this as if I know how to do this today...hmmm...still working on this one). After his appendix was removed and the complications had started to take over, Blue couldn’t drink anything for a few days and he became consumed with thirst, it was all he could think about, it almost eclipsed his pain. At the same time, he was needy, thirsty for my undivided attention and it was reminiscent of those early years when he wanted me to never take my eyes off of him, to never stop nursing, to have no interruptions take me away. During the hospital stay, I would be with him virtually all day, with quick trips here and there throughout the day to grab a meal, pick up groceries, do laundry, say hi to the other kids, etc., and while he slept when I was with him, I’d use my laptop; all of this he saw as distractions, the things that added up to my inattentiveness to him, my not being present and focused. And the crazy metaphor of his real thirst and a never-ending need for love, care and attention at this particularly vulnerable time had me thinking quite a bit about the concept of never enough presence vs. never enough absence in the lives of my children. And I don’t mean literally absence but the need on their part for you to turn your Mom-head (the one that does NOT have eyes on the back of it), let them be free, let go of them. It’s such a push-me-pull-me reality for Moms. The message is so clear: COME HERE RIGHT NOW / NOW LEAVE / LOOK AT ME / NOW BACK OFF / STOP LOOKING AT ME / COME HERE / HOW COME YOU CAN’T BE HERE FOR ME WHEN I NEED YOU? / NOW GO AWAY…

And then there is my own “thirst” and it sounds like this: I wish I could simply wave a magic wand that would make them all understand better that I am here for EACH of them as much as I can be, that my presence is sincere, not without effort and even when it does not appear to be so, it is a 24/7 commitment on my part… but that not one of them can gobble me up entirely without negative consequences for them and for me. And that when they’d prefer my “absence”, that I cannot promise I’ll ever truly look away, not meddle to a degree, not share my opinions…because this is the other side, the under-belly of a Mother’s love…and all part of the very normal ebb and flow (this comes up a lot, doesn’t it?) along the normal-but-wacky babies-to-children-to-adult continuum.

Phew...can't wait to hear about Ireland...

Ruby