I remembered! To take the kids to the dentist! And technically, I remembered twice, because the rescheduled appointments left an hour in between cleanings, so we left….and I remembered to go back! 

At this point in the lazy summer, I like to celebrate small victories.

When we got back from the 9am appointment, followed by the 10am break (which was filled with one quick errand and a stop at the school to drop off medication for the new school year and visit a teacher or two), followed by the 11am appointment…..the kids were “sooooo tired” from being “on the go all day.”

Wow.

As soon as we finished lunch, they wanted me to sit and play a card game with them. A card game that we just finished after two consecutive nights of playing. And just so we’re clear, here’s how that went:

-It’s your turn. It’s your turn. Did you take a card?

-Discard. Don’t forget to discard. Discard. Did you discard?

-Now it’s your turn. It’s your turn. Come on, it’s your turn.

-Please sit up. You can’t play cards in that position.

-Stop making that noise.

-Stop touching each other. Hands to yourself. Hands on your cards. STOP!

So, no….I wasn’t really interested in another round. Plus, I needed to clean out the fridge – and avoiding a reprise performance of Card Nazi was just the motivation I needed to get that work done.

The kids decided to play against each other, without me. Well, “decided” might not be the best word. He whined to her about playing, she said no. (“Because we’ve been on the go all morning and I just need some quiet time with the iPad.”) After I finished rolling my eyes in her general direction, I told her she had to play three hands of cards with him. She spent the entire time saying things like, “Stop talking,” because he was mumbling his every card playing action under his breath just to irritate her. It worked.

When she finally got her quiet iPad time, I was relieved to have them apart again. Now what would he do? “Go get your book. You need to get more reading done so you can finish the summer reading sheets.”

Early in the last school year, he was awarded a chance to be “teacher for a day” in his classroom. This was a reward for accruing 100 “accelerated reader” (AR, in the school lingo) points faster than any other second grader this teacher had ever had in class. This same boy just put down his book after a long five minute reading session. “I diiiiiid reeeeaaaadddd! I just diiiiiiiid.”

He’s been banished to his room for 20 straight reading minutes. I’m so mean, huh?

The iPad is here with me. I think I may have told our daughter she could watch TV instead. I may have even said something like, “Go ahead and rot your brain.”

School starts Tuesday. It’s time, folks. It’s time.

 

Summer is winding down, so I thought I’d share a few photos highlighting how I spent my time.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I spend an awful lot of time poolside as a swim team mom. Here’s a shot of our son doing the butterfly in his individual medley race at the championship meet. It’s blurry, but I’m sure you can see his lovely form through the blur and the splash.

Back on Independence Day, we went to a different fireworks display than in the past, and we really enjoyed it. It was out in the country, we were with some fun neighbors, and the view was great.

I wish we could have gotten out on our boat more this summer, but whenever we did we had a great time. This is an abandoned house on the banks of our favorite creek. The kids love going down this way to go tubing and wake boarding. I always insist that we anchor in front of this house so I can gaze at it while I eat my lunch and wonder about who lived here and what stories those walls could tell. And sometimes I imagine what we could do to it as a fixer upper. (Maybe start by removing the tree from the indoors?)

Early in the summer, I took our daughter away for a “girls only” weekend. She took this photo with my phone from the hotel lobby. She was in awe of this hanging glass sculpture.

Here are several from our beach trip, starting with the view of our beach entry point, taken from the back deck of the house. Just a stone’s throw away.

Here’s another view from the deck, and one of the water, taken on our first evening at the beach.

 

This is a tiny little frog that we found near a lake on the other side of the house from the ocean. They were everywhere, and each of the four kids in our group caught one for a photo.

Here’s a sand structure made by Professor Brother-in-Law, which cracks me up every time I look at it.

Here’s a frosty beverage I enjoyed alone on the deck on our last evening at the beach.

And finally, a shot taken on our last trip of the summer to my homeland of New Jersey. I know all the “which exit?” jokes, and they don’t really bother me. When I learned to drive, I knew I always needed to follow the signs for “Shore Points” to head towards home. Here’s the first one I saw as I approached the shore with the kids.

There is at least one more pool and boat outing in our summer this holiday weekend. What are you doing to send summer out with a bang?

 

Yesterday, during the kids’ scheduled dental appointments, we were at the pool. I was completely oblivious to the fact that we were playing hooky from the dentist, even though they had called to confirm and required me to return the confirmation call, which I actually did. But that was last week. Who remembers last week, when the days are so mindlessly unscheduled? I don’t even remember yesterday.

So while I was at the pool with three boys who were either under water or inhaling food the whole time, and one girl who was reading voraciously in the shaded lounge chair next to me when I wasn’t forcing her to go in the pool and swim, the dentist and his entourage of technicians and assistants were twiddling their thumbs, I suppose. I called today to apologize and reschedule, and they said they would waive the $50 per person missed appointment fee. YOWZA! Good thing I always politely return those confirmation calls, even if I don’t actually follow through on the appointments! 

They rescheduled the kids for Thursday. Here’s hoping I can remember this whole thing come Thursday morning.

Friday morning is the “Meet the Teacher” extravaganza at Bubble Elementary. It’s always a ridiculously chaotic scene — the kids want to rush to their classrooms to see who is in their class and actually meet their teachers. However, once you get there, you are given a double sided sheet of paper with instructions on where to put each of the sixty gazillion things you purchased for the back-to-school supply list. They usually try to make it seem fun, like a scavenger hunt. Except that it’s just overwhelming, crazy, and not at all fun.

“Put your glue sticks in the bucket near where you would hang something on a cold day!” Oooh, oooh! I know – near the coat rack! YAAAAYYYY! (Except as soon as I think about the “coat rack” I think about “lice” and I get the willies. But that’s just me. The glue sticks don’t seem to mind it at all.)

While “playing” the scavenger hunt game, parents are trying to talk to one another and not snap at the whining siblings within earshot of the new teacher. And then there’s a second classroom to rush to and do it all over again. Then comes the “ice cream party,” where the PTA feeds kids ice cream sundaes at 10am while simultaneously throwing papers at the parents and asking them to write out big checks.

But at least we have something to do on Friday, so who’s complaining?

 

I didn’t spell that wrong. I’m talking about a ballet barre, not a cocktail bar.

Have I mentioned that I sometimes take barre classes for exercise? I don’t know. But now you do. Professor Sister told me about it and she knew I’d love the nod to ballet, which was always my favorite form of dance back in my dancing days.

It’s not really a ballet class, but a portion of the class takes place in front of a ballet barre, where you work the teeny tiniest muscles in your buttocks and thighs – muscles that you probably didn’t even know you had, but that will definitely be easy to locate when they start burning during class. And when I say burn, I really mean burn. It kind of feels like spontaneous combustion might be possible. 

And I like this? Yes, yes I do.

So the other night I rushed off to take a “pilates barre” class when the Mr. got home from work. I usually go to the mid-morning classes with the other SAHMs, and some very fit retirees. The after work crowd is different, in that these women are fitting in this workout after work. Oh, and they are younger. Much younger.

As I looked around the room at the instructor and my fellow barre goers, I realized that I was the oldest person in the place. Probably by a lot, too.

I often joke with my daughter that she is 10 going on 40. She gets that from me – I have often been described as mature for my age, or wise beyond my years. That means that I have often found myself surrounded by people older than me, and often took on responsibilities at a younger age than expected.

My first job out of grad school, when I was 25, was as Director of Operations for a physician practice with 9 locations. There may have been a few technicians or receptionists in some of the centers that were younger than me, but that’s about it. I was half the age of most of the people who reported to me, and it didn’t phase me.

I found that it most certainly did phase the older people who reported to me, though. It made them wary, wondering why this young person was being brought in to “tell them what to do.” Once they got to know me, though, my youth became something they admired and that we would joke about. It sort of became “my thing.” People would always comment, in my places of employment, about how they couldn’t believe how much I had accomplished at such a young age.

Uh, now I’m 40. I think I can no longer play the youth card. And then there’s the whole being-out-of-the-workforce-for-almost-10-years thing.

So, what’s my new thing then?

I don’t know. But in the barre class, it became the fact that I was the oldest, but could keep up with all those young ladies. The teeny tiny muscles in my butt are just as capable of near spontaneous combustion as theirs are.

Can that be my new thing?

I have declared today to be a “Day of Sloth” because I need a break. I just want to hang out in my bedroom with my book, my cheesy reality shows, my laptop, and myself.

So far, on my self-declared Day of Sloth, I have:

• Partially unpacked from a road trip with the kids
• Done one load of laundry
• Cut up an entire watermelon
• Taken out the trash
• Loaded and run the dishwasher
• Baked a cake with an 8 year old 
• Cleaned up from baking a cake with an 8 year old
• Returned calls to the piano teacher and the allergist
• Not read one single page of my book

I’m sure you’d agree that I am a bit of a failure at slothiness.

Why do I need a break, you may be wondering? Look at the calendar, folks. We have now reached that portion of the summer in which all the trips have been taken, school has not opened, and everything in the entire universe has become “so boring” to the kids I have spent the last 9 weeks entertaining.

Most recently, I took the kids on a road trip to my homeland of New Jersey. We drove up in 5.5 hours on Friday with little incident, save for some sibling in-fighting in the backseat. Oh, and the EZPass wasn’t working. 

If you live anywhere north of where I live on the East Coast, then you know what a monumental problem this is during a trip from VA to NJ. Instead of breezing through high speed bridge/tunnel entry lanes and empty “EZPass ONLY” lanes at regular toll booths, I had to wait in line with all the other chumps who are paying a $3.00 toll with a twenty dollar bill.

When you reach for the wallet at every toll between here and there (and several side trips within NJ and then back here again), you realize how expensive it is to travel by car in this part of the country. $9.00 in MD, $4.00 in Delaware, and about $8.00 in NJ. In each direction. That’s a lot of stopping and rummaging for cash.

While we were in NJ, we went to the Boardwalk and shelled out a bunch of cash for rides, and carnival games, and ice cream, and water ice, and food, and mini golf, and the arcade, and, well, you get the idea. Tons of fun, but tons of cash! I guess I’m so used to being able to slide my credit card for everything, that reaching for the cash money hurts a little bit more – even when it’s just $3.00 here, there, and everywhere. But, hey, at least we got a stuffed Smurf, Angry Bird, blue fish, and green teddy bear out of it.

We also got a chance to visit with many good friends and family members, and we had a great time throughout our trip.

It’s just that the minivan and the hotel room are significantly smaller than our house. It’s a lot of togetherness. Especially since the return trip took an hour longer than the trip up, thanks to a total closure of I95 in Maryland and a not-so-convenient detour.

School starts in two weeks, and there isn’t much of anything on the calendar between now and then. Which is good, and also troubling.

Hence the Day of “Sloth.”

In theory, at least.

Today I rode an Amtrak train for 2.5 hours, reading a book set in the 1930s the entire way. When I stepped off the train at my home station, I’ll admit that I felt a bit shocked to see it was actually 2012. It seems that hearing the sound of the train in the background while getting lost in a novel about Manhattan in 1938 was a disorienting experience. In a good way.

I was devouring the last chapters of “Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles, a novel which begins with a gallery viewing of photos taken with a hidden camera on the NYC subway system in the 1930s. The story is fictional, but the photography exhibit was real – Walker Evans published the shots he took in his book, “Many Are Called,” which I have now requested from the public library. Maybe a relative of mine was photographed on one of those trains. My ancestors lived in New York at that time, so it’s possible. Unlikely, especially that I would recognize them – but possible, nonetheless.

The reason for my travel was a reunion of sorts, with my two closest friends from high school. It was a good time, except for the rats. One was squished in the road in DuPont Circle and two were alive and well on the banks of the Potomac River. I had forgotten all about them until a friend decided to write a blog about hamsters and tangentially mentioned rats. (You know who you are – thanks for nothing.)

Rail travel, especially for a trip of that length, is quite delightful. It was 100% rat free, there were no restrictions on when I could use electronics or the restroom or access my luggage. There were outlets to recharge my phone, right at my seat. There was no security or boarding fanfare. You get on, you sit down, you get off. Simple.

During my return trip today, it occurred to me that I probably should have saved some of my cash to pay for parking my car in the station lot. I had only $6 remaining in my wallet, and I knew that wouldn’t cover the cost. Thinking ahead, I stopped at the ticket booth to ask if the parking attendant would be able to take my credit card. No, but you can use the ATM in the lobby was the response I received.

Except that the ATM was broken. Awesome. Welcome back to 2012 with a slap in the face, sistah!

Luckily (for me) there was another woman in the exact same predicament as me. We bonded in our mutual need for cash after a journey home to our very humid city. We set off on foot for the nearest grocery store, which the nearly comatose Amtrak ticket clerk claimed had an ATM. We cut through the back of some fairly shady buildings and stepped through some under manicured landscapes, dragging our suitcases all the way. (We could have put them in our cars first, but we were apparently too sweaty to think clearly. Plus, it was kind of fun to see everyone look at us FREAKS WITH SUITCASES IN THE SUBURBAN GROCERY STORE!!!) 

We got our cash and knew enough to wait for one another to trek back through the sketchy back lots on our way back to the train station. We had a little chat in which she told me what she does for a living and I felt old and out of touch because she said something about a technology platform that I had never once heard of. But this was my own issue – she was lovely and friendly and a perfect suitcase toting companion for a sweaty walk to and from a grocery store cash machine.

I returned home to the little ones, who seemed to be getting along well and had not run their grandmother too ragged in my absence. And they even saved me some leftover kid’s meal pizza for dinner. Score!

I enjoyed my trip, and I enjoyed my book. I will leave you with this passage from Amor Towles’ book, which I read on the train today and sums up exactly how I feel whenever I am fortunate enough to pause my daily life and reconnect with my oldest friends:

“We walked shoulder to shoulder…at an easy pace, conversing like friends from youth for whom every exchange is an extension of the last, regardless of the passage of time.”

 

I drove three hours in each direction today to retrieve the boy. It is soooo good to have him back home. And, for the record, he’s been here with his sister for nearly  2 hours, and they haven’t even bickered once. (You know I just jinxed it.)

He had a great time at the beach, from what I can tell. Here’s a sample conversation from the ride home:

Me: So did you go out for dinner last night to the seafood place?

Him: Yes.

Me: What did you eat?

Him: Seafood.

Me: No, I meant specifically. What food did YOU as a person, eat for YOUR dinner last night?

Him: Ummmm. I had some ribs and some mac-n-cheese that was really good and some ice cream.

Me: So, did you eat any fish?

Him: No.

And there you have it. Little detail, and questionably reliable information to boot.

When he got in the car, he asked if we could stop and get a drink. Like a chocolate milk from Starbucks. He was able to direct me right to the front of a Starbucks, where, much to his delight, they did not have chocolate milk boxes, after all. He ended up with a $4.40 “tall” (aka “not really small, but the smallest we’ll sell you, suckah!”) coffee-free frappucino type thing with a very chocolatey name. Sheesh – what a pushover I am after just a few days away from that sweet boy’s face.

I used my solo car time to catch up on a dorky podcast that I like, which was fun. And dorky, especially when I was laughing aloud at the content. After our son finished his fancy shmancy beverage, he settled in for a nap, so I clicked over to the audiobook I have been listening to for months now. It’s the Barbara Walters’ memoir, Audition.  The fact that I’m listening to that, and have been for months now, is dorky in a whole different way. I wonder if anyone else under the age of 60 has read/listened to this book? Anyway, it’s enjoyable. She has had a pretty fascinating life. The section I heard today was all about her interactions with the most recent Presidents and their wives. She doesn’t really give any dirt, but it’s still fun to hear a little “behind the scenes” stuff. If you’re a dork like me, anyway.

Do you do listen to anything dorky in the car to entertain yourself?

I feel a ramble coming on – may I ramble? Why, thank you – I think I will.

This week, I have some time to myself. Our son is away with some neighbors and our daughter has a camp.

I’m missing the boy. We said goodbye to him on Sunday morning, and I’ll go pick him up on Thursday. He’s having a blast, and I am sure enjoying my quiet time, but I miss the little bugger. He’s been calling home the last two nights, under the direction of my friend, who has graciously hosted him on his extended beach vacation. He definitely needs some work on his phone skills. Lots of “yes” and “no” and “uh huh,” but not much detail. I did think it very cute, though, that he asked to speak to his sister both nights. And then proceeded to hang up on her both times, but it wasn’t on purpose. It’s the phone skills. They are lacking.

After my morning workout today (rockin’ my ready-for-the-Olympics backstroke, natch), I took a shower and got dressed to go run a few errands and cruise the mall. Just because I could. But then I walked past the kids’ playroom, which I’ve been meaning to organize…..

Next thing I knew, I was head first in our son’s closet in my skirt, tossing CRAP over my shoulder into piles (trash, donate, keep), sweating my freshly showered butt off, and feeling a little giddy about the ability to go through his stuff while he was 3 hours away. Why does organizing the playroom involve our son’s closet? HA! If you don’t know the answer to that question, then clearly you are not a mom.

It had the potential to become one of those marathon closet cleaning/room reorganizing time suck marathons, but I managed to keep it under control because I was hungry for lunch. So I took down the wire cubey things from the playroom, put them back together in the boy’s closet, organized the major chaos in said closet, and donated or tossed SO MUCH STUFF. Mostly his, but some of hers…..and it is GONE folks. No getting it back.

Our daughter, who is very observant and detail oriented, did not even notice that the wire cubey things were gone from the playroom, and therefore didn’t think to ask where her old toys had gone. Brilliant. I should have done that months ago.

Since her brother is gone, our daughter has been getting our undivided attention. The first night, she got to choose the dinner spot. (Johnny Rockets, where she loves the grilled cheese sandwich.) Last night, we stayed in and had salmon, but told her we could watch a movie. She really wanted to watch something PG-13, because she’s almost 11 and we have let her see a few carefully selected PG-13 flicks in the past, without her brother.

She was hoping for Hunger Games, but it’s not out on DVD yet. She scanned the On Demand lists and we narrowed it down to two Richard Dreyfuss movies. (Weird, I know.) It was either “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or “Krippendorf’s Tribe.” The Mr. and I remembered the former fondly, but neither had seen the latter. She chose the latter, which is about a college anthropology professor (Dreyfuss) who ends up pretending to have found a lost indigenous tribe in Africa. He films his family members, and in one very un-PG scene, his female colleague (Jenna Elfman), and manages to convince the world that they are members of this elusive tribe. It had some funny parts, and Lily Tomlin with a monkey on her shoulder, but it also had some racy stuff. In one scene, he showed an auditorium full of people a tribal artifact that he declared to be a “primitive dildo.” The Mr. and I nearly spit out our salmon on that one. I ended up having to fast forward through the sex-with-the-colleague section. Oy vey – when did Richard Dreyfuss movies get so sexy?!? Good thing the boy is coming home and we’ll go back to PG movies!

So during the less sexy parts of Krippendorf’s Tribe (from 1998, I believe), the sending and receiving of faxes play a part in the plot. The Mr. and I kind of glanced at each other with that, “ah, the olden days,” kind of a look. And then our daughter said, “Wow. Faxing is so cool. It’s way cooler than texting.” We laughed and laughed, and she couldn’t understand why. Of course, this is our daughter who has an antique typewriter in her room, so we shouldn’t be surprised at her nostalgia for old communication devices, I suppose.

Well, on that note. I’m outta here. Ramble over.

 

 

This whole Chik Fil A thing reminds me of when the Mr. was filling out his application to become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. He was asked to answer a question as to why he was eligible to seek citizenship, and given the following options:

- are your parents citizens? (yes)

- are you married to a citizen? (yes)

- have you lived here longer than X years (yes)

- are you the parent of a citizen (yes)

One of these items alone would have qualified his application, so the rest (while applicable) were really superfluous. 

Our family doesn’t eat at Chik Fil A because:

- the food is total crap

- the crap food is fried in peanut oil

- the owners are close minded, ignorant homophobes

See what I mean? Never went before, not going now. Doesn’t really matter which box we check. 

 

Or a chump, depending on how you look at it. 

Today, I attended my last swim meet as a “mite parent.” That sounds like some sort of parental illness, doesn’t it? In case you don’t speak Swim Team, that means that I will no longer have a swimmer in the 8-and-under “mite” division. For the last four years, I have been a mite parent and therefore have participated in lining up kids for mite relays.

Unless you have been through it yourself, there are no words to convey to you the extreme chaos and confusion that this activity entails. On Facebook today, I tried to sum it up as “herding swimming cats.” But really, that doesn’t quite capture it. Now that I am seated on my couch with my aching feet up, I think that it is more appropriate to say it is like herding fish. Because even though they are out of the pool during the herding, they are slippery like fish. Every time you think you have the four swimmers you need to shuttle to their lane in the right event and right heat, one of them is missing. Do you know how hard it is to find a missing fish child that is dressed like every other missing fish child, down to the identity neutralizing swim cap and darkened goggles? No, I don’t think you do.

Today’s meet was an indoor meet between qualifying swimmers from about 15 different swim teams — referred to as a “Champs Meet.” You know who wasn’t a champ today? Whoever was in charge of organizing relays. 

Swim meets have their own language. The person whose job it is to shout out the names of swimmers, thus assigning them a heat and lane for their event, is called the “Clerk of Course.” Inevitably, when you are a new swim team parent, you think everyone is saying, “You need to go the clerk, of course,” and you wonder why everyone is being so damn ornery and pretentious and presumptive. But really they are saying, “You need to go to the Clerk of Course,” which is just where you need to go to check in your swimmer.

The Clerk of Course, or “Clerk” for short, is always chaotic. Anytime you have a lot of anxious kids crowding around a hallway waiting their turn…..you have trouble. But when each lane involves a group of 4 children who are all under the age of 8?!? I tell you, there are no words.

Our son swam in two of these relays today. For the first one, we stood in the hallway with about a zillion and one other parents and swimmers, all pushing forward towards the Clerk’s table. A single person was shouting swimmer names? team names? random facts? and none of us could hear a thing. Every few minutes a dad would put his fingers in his mouth and do one of those horrible “listen up” whistles, which caused exactly NO ONE to listen up and shattered countless young ear drums in the process. When I finally was able to read the lips of the clerk to know that our son’s heat was being called, I realized that only 2 of the 4 swimmers were there to check in. In a feat of physical and mental heroism, I somehow managed to single handedly flag down a coach and send her to find one missing child while I physically dragged the other missing child over, and managed to lie to stall the Clerk long enough to prevent the relay team from being “scratched.” (The cat-like term is appropriate for all the ineffective cat herding, but it just means they can’t swim.)

This first relay was a medley, meaning that each swimmer swims a different stroke. So, in addition to keeping the kids together, you need to repeat OVER AND OVER, “You are back, you are breast, you are fly, and you are free.” The response is usually a confident nod, followed by, “Wait, what am I swimming?”

Once the swimmers are assigned a heat/lane, the mite parents usually have to escort the swimmers into the pool and begin the next near impossible task — getting the right two children to the other side of the pool. The goal is for all 4 swimmers to be in the same lane, which would ideally be the lane they are assigned. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen at Champs, so you can leave your kid at Clerk and go whine to the other parents about how much you can’t stand this whole process.

I figured by the second relay (hours later) that things would go more smoothly. I guess the Clerk actually did do things a little better that time, but really she had nowhere to go but up. The kids, on the other hand, had clearly not hit rock bottom (in terms of behavior) until Event 33 of 35. Some of the things I said while lining up my team of 3 boys and 1 girl:

• “Don’t put your fingers in his mouth!”
• “You’re going to fall through that glass!”
• “Stop sitting on your goggles.”
• “Don’t put your swim cap over your nose.”
• “Don’t blow up your swim cap like a balloon.”
• “Swim caps aren’t supposed to taste good.”
• “Don’t wear his goggles on top of your goggles.”
• “No more wedgies!”
• “Where did she go?”

• “Where did he go?”
• “Who are you?” (random swimmer trying to join our team)
• “I’m sorry that he squeezed your butt cheeks, but you need to stay here.”
• “Hey! Hands off his privates!”
• “OUCH!” (I got whipped in the face with a wet towel, by accident)

That is one small moment in a four year career as a mite parent. Do you see why I’m a champ?

And now I’m done. My last mite will be aging up before winter swim season. It’s all sweet, and no bitter.