My mom just called (well about an hour ago now) to tell me that they are sitting in the fifth row for the Dar Williams show they are probably listening to right this minute.
It's my dad's birthday, and I don't think he really wanted to spend it listening to Dar. He is not as big a fan as the rest of us -- not yet anyway. I predict that after tonight's show, he will have a new appreciation of her artistry.
Apparently he was worried that there would not be very many other men there. Sheesh, it's not like we sent him to an Indigo Girls show! And besides, at a woman-heavy show, he'd be the only one who had no trouble if he needed to pee. (Man oh man, I remember how long I had to wait to pee at the Sarah McLachlan show!)
But they are there, I hope enjoying the show, and if it works out right, Dar may even say Happy Birthday from the stage! On Friday night I sent an email to the house manager at the theater explaining how much I wanted to be there and hoping she could maybe say Hi from me since I couldn't be there in person.
We'll see. It might not pan out. But anyway, join me, please in wishing my dad a Happy Birthday.
P.S.-- it's a good thing this is only your 63rd birthday, because I haven't learn to play "When I'm 64" on the guitar yet. But I'll know it for you by next year, okay?
I am seriously ready to be well again. I hate this lingering feeling that there is a cloud of fuzz between me and the world. It is really time for my head to clear out and up and all those other prepositions.
I hate this part of getting better. It always takes too long!
In the words of Ed Gruberman -- "Patience? How long'll THAT take?"
at parenting this boy.
He is lovely. Don't get me wrong. He is fundamentally a good kid. He shares -- he looks forward to opportunities to share. He loves his sister soooooo much it hurts (both of them some days). He is full of hugs and kisses and great ideas and he loves to make pictures for everyone. This week he made a card for Mara's piano teacher. He doesn't even take piano lessons yet!
But he is also a handful and a half. The amount of time it takes him to go from calm to rage is about 3 seconds. Now, he can go from rage back to calm in just about as short a time, but whew, the rage is wearing me out. The begging is wearing me out -- as in "I'm sorry I hit you/kicked you/spit at you, I won't do it again, I promise, I promise, please not time out, please don't hold me please please Mommy please. Please don't say no TV please, I won't do it anymore ever again please mommy please" Followed shortly thereafter with a 500 decibel shriek if you tell him you are actually going to follow through with no tv or no computer or no whatever else. And then flailing arms and legs. And now he's added spitting to his repertoire. I really hate the spitting. Today he bit me because I told him he couldn't go to the movies. I really shouldn't have to get into full riot gear just to make my son turn off the tv for a couple of hours!
From the level of screaming and begging, you'd think we regularly beat them senseless. You'd think we branded them or pulled their teeth out (well, the not loose ones) or starved them or something else really really horrible. You would think it was worse than no tv or no dessert or no computer time or having to sit in a time-out space with mom or dad. Really. If you just heard the begging and screaming, you'd probably call children's services, because he sounds genuinely terrified. And yet, none of it does any good. He just needs to grow up some more in order to manage his emotions, but in the meantime, I am exhausted.
And I wish this sinus thing would hurry up and finish. It is better, but it was really really bad, so better is better but not all better, if you know what I mean...
I hope you are all feeling very well! Love!
I have another one. I hate this nonsense.
Now cover me in sympathy, please, because I feel dreadful!
last night and kicked my own ass. Unfortunately, as I was getting off the thigh flexor machine, I also kicked some other person in the ass too. But she was very nice about it, understood that I had not assaulted her intentionally, and even asked me to show her how one of the butt workout machines worked.
I did all the machines -- lowered the weight on some of them so I could do more reps, which felt good -- and then I walked 2.25 miles on the treadmill.
That felt good.
Update as of Feb 11 -- I did too much! OWWWWWW! Today was just awful, I could barely MOVE! I gotta go hit the muscles again tomorrow so they know they can't boss me around like this!!!
This is not really even news. We knew it was going to fail.
Folks around here don't trust the school administration or the school board and the job situation is so tight that it's not really all that surprising that nobody wants to pay higher property taxes, even for a good cause.
I'm not sure where that leaves Tim's job. When I spoke with the superintendent last week, she assured me that as long as she's here, Latin is here, but I'm not honestly sure how much of that decision will be hers to make.
On one level, I'm relieved. No more waiting around to see when it happens. No more indecision about are we going to end up here forever. Clearly we are not staying here much longer, because even if Tim does have a job, I don't want my kids in this crappy school district any longer than they have to be there.
Anybody know of terrific Latin programs looking for instructors?
Sigh.
Here is my entry from February 8th, last year:
Not making a big deal out of this or anything, but my son went on the potty five times today and for three of them he actually told me himself he wanted to go!
I would say "Woo-hoo!!!" but that would just jinx it and I don't want to screw it up this time too.
The potty learning process was an absolute NIGHTMARE with Mara. She was doing really well at about 2 and a quarter (y'know, just a little younger than where Matty is now...) and was interested in the potty and willing to try and all that stuff. And I was excited because Matthew was on the way and I wanted her to be potty proficient by the time the baby came, so I was, let's call it 'overly enthusiastic' about her successes.
And it was all going very well until I read somewhere that you are supposed to wake kids up when they are learning to potty so they can go in the middle of the night. So I woke her up to take her to the potty one night and it was cold and she was still half asleep and she freaked out and refused to go anywhere near the potty after that and didn't end up in big girl underpants until she was almost four. Sigh. I really meant to be doing the right thing...
Having learned that lesson the hard way, I am trying to be low-key about it this time around. And so far so good. Just keep your fingers crossed for continued low-stress from his mama, because Math is doing terrific so far and still having fun with his fancy potty seat "ona great big potty!"
Yikes. Sometimes parenting is just almost too much for me!
Update to now:
At 3 and 3/4, Matthew is still not out of the damned diapers. I was working in the basement yesterday and discovered the graveyard of the kiddie potty seat. We have, not one, not two, not even three, but five little potties. None of which he will use. None of which, for that matter, he ever really used with much success.
He will go pee when you ask him to, but that's no guarantee that he's going to stay dry. He can pee in the potty -- apparently gallons worth of pee -- and then five minutes later he has completely soaked his pants. He still doesn't seem to understand "Do you need to go?" or "Can you stay dry just till we get inside the Target bathroom?" On the issue of bladder control, there just doesn't seem to BE any. He is genuinely surprised when he realizes he's wet and genuinely frustrated at needing to be changed.
The question of poop is infinitely more complicated and also much more simple: he just won't do it in the potty. Short of holding him down on the seat, there is no way to get him to even sit there, let alone make a deposit.
I have tried bribes/punishments -- no computer until you poop in the potty, no TV until you poop in the potty, no computer AND no TV until you poop in the potty. I have tried rewards -- peppermints (which he loves), other candies, stickers, ice cream, treats at the mall. I have tried psychological torture -- everybody but you poops in the potty, even Rosemary poops in the potty, and she's only two! Don't you want to poop on the potty like Greyson, Adam, Preston, Mara, Mommy, Daddy, and everybody else.
None of it is working. He has decided he's not gonna do it and he's not gonna do it and I have no idea what to do next except just wait for him to change his freakin' mind. So that's what I'm doing. But I don't like it very much. I don't think I'd even really care much about the diapers, but I'm tired of spending the fortune they cost and I am alternately tired of cleaning up puddles and washing 5 pairs of pants every day before noon. And I am not joking about five pairs of pants. He has literally peed out into five pairs of pants on more than one day. I can't spend my whole day reminding him to potty every five friggin minutes and the fight over the poop is more than I can handle, really.
NOTE: Anybody who reflects that "nobody ever went to _______ (college, kindergarten, first grade, prep school) in diapers" risks getting banned from the comments section, so find some other way to be supportive please. I am not worried about the distant future, I am worried about NOW. Deal in the present or don't deal at all. I KNOW he will grow out of this, I would just like it to be before he's six!
I should warn you now, that I am about to get really cynical, so if you are not up for it today, don't read the rest of this entry.
If you think you can handle it, by all means, join us.
As I promised yesterday, this entry is about the "In Memory 268" car decals that are appearing here in beautiful backward Fairfield County. The decal is very simple, it's just In Memory, and then the number 268 centered underneath. I saw one late last week and at first I was confused. I mean I had just about gotten used to the In Memory 3 and other Dale Earnhart related stuff, but this one threw me for a loop.
And then I figured it out.
Melanie was right. It's for the 29 year-old sherriff's deputy who died here in Fairfield County about a month or so ago. And it's driving me crazy.
Here's the cynical part, which I will cleverly disguise as background exposition for folks who are reading from somewhere outside central Ohio. About a month ago, a kid in a juvenile center semi-escaped. He was still on the grounds, but he had gotten hold of a knife (or some sharp object) and was threatening to kill himself. None of the reports published so far, and trust me, there have been hundreds of them, have suggested that the kid was in any way threatening other people. He just planned to off himself apparently. The Sherriff's office was contacted and a deputy dispatched. For reasons I have not yet understood (maybe he was unclear on the true nature of the emergency?), the first deputy called for back-up. Our hero answered the call and was on his way to assist when he lost control of his patrol car, spun out, crashed into tree, and was killed. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Later details emerged, including the fact that the first officer, having realized that he was dealing with an otherwise not-especially violent teenager who just wanted to get away from juvie (or die trying), attempted to radio the backup officer to let him know it was no big deal. Tragically, he was unable to get through to his speeding colleague because the sherriff's dept. radios are so outdated. There was also some speculation that the reason deputy #2 lost control of the car was that he was driving too fast while trying to answer his outdated radio. Both of those reports were covered by our local paper under the very subtle headline "Did a Radio Dead Zone Kill?"
I feel enormous grief for this young man's family and his colleagues -- especially for the first officer who realized too late that back-up wasn't really necessary. I think it's a tragedy when anyone is killed in a car crash, deputy on his way to assist or just some poor schmuck who happens to be driving in the same place a deer decided to cross. It's especially sad when anyone working for the public is killed "in the line of duty."
But this is getting ridiculous.
The funeral was held in the largest church building in town and it was still standing room only. The procession to the graveside for interment was 45 minutes long -- not 45 cars, 45 minutes (I know this because Tim got trapped by the passing traffic and couldn't get out of the McDonald's parking lot for nearly an hour. He was late getting to his afternoon school. I'm not sure if he ate his lunch watching the mourners' cars go by or if he got to school and realized he wasn't actually going to get any lunch that day).
All of that is fine. I appreciate that so many people wanted to pay their respects. It's a nice sign for the county, for our city, for this man's family and friends. Everybody's funeral or memorial service ought to be standing room only.
And that's where my irritation comes in. What makes this guy so all-fired special? He was a dad. He was a husband. He was a son, grandson, uncle, brother. He was working for our safety, and for that he deserves a helluva a lot of respect, but how did we make the leap to "In Memoriam" pn a car decal?
I guess the crux of my problem is this: of all the ways a law enforcement officer could die, this one was just so mundane: He wasn't pulling a child from a burning building or shoving someone out of the path of a moving car. He wasn't taking a bullet intended for somebody else, or even preventing some particularly heinous crime. Yes, what he was doing was important. He was rushing to to help a fellow officer who didn't really need any help, but does that make it more heroic or less?
What it boils down to is this: he crashed his car. Maybe there are too few deputies available, so he was driving extra extra fast. Maybe the radio was too much of a distraction. Or maybe he just wasn't a very good driver. It is a tragedy that he is dead, but his death was not a heroic sacrifice. It was just a stupid accident.
People die every day in the line of duty -- regardless of what their duties might be. Every day someone is killed by an idiotic accident that probably shouldn't have happened. Kids lose fathers and mothers, mothers and fathers lose kids. It's life. It's tragic.
So why the decals? What makes the particular death so much more special? I guess what it boils down to is this: isn't reality TV enough? What is it about our culture that makes us blow everything so far out of proportion? I don't understand and I wish I did. Some days I suspect I am really out of touch with what is happening in most people's minds and that really worries me. If the majority of people in our county actually think of this as a "heroic sacrifice," is it possible that I'm the one who's wrong? Does it count as a sacrifice just to be doing your job? Would it have been a tragic sacrifice if he was a construction worker who fell off a building? What about a factory worker who is killed by an accident on the factory floor? Do you get to be a hero just because you sign up for a dangerous job and are killed while you're doing the tasks you signed up to do?
And what's wrong with me that I am so bothered by this? I don't begrudge his family the right to call him a hero, but I don't think they're the ones who went out and had the decals made. So who did, and why? I wish I understood why it all feels vaguely sinister. I don't understand where all this is going, but I don't think it's headed anywhere very good.