Life Is Just Like that Sometimes

So, I've been hoping that something hilarious would happen to blog about.  Usually, I get some kind of funny inspiration every few days so that I can keep this blog alive.

But, nothing's happening.  Everyone around me has been dry, dry, dry.

Or, maybe that's me, since I am studying for an exam.  It could be that I am the one who is dull, since my mind is wading up to its hips in terms like "operant conditioning" and "cognitive behavioral therapy."  Boring has become my business.

You would think that at least my children would say funny things.

Well, there was the little boy who told me that when he is grown up enough to read the newspaper, he's going to read it in this order: funnies, sports, market news (by which he means food ads), weather report, then LDS news.  That's sort of cute and funny, but not exactly hilarious.

There was the child who cut his bangs, thinking no one would notice.  When Dad caught him, he said I had trimmed them.  When I caught him, later that same day, he stood stunned in the kitchen for a few minutes, then admitted he had done it.  At least he didn't tell me Dad had done it.  Or another lie.

There was the child whose big sister called me to report that she was being bossy to the little kids and that, when corrected, had flown at her.  When I got home to talk to this child, she said somebody had to help her little brothers while the teenaged baby-sitter just lay on her bed listening to her radio.  "She's not a good enough baby-sitter, so you appointed yourself?" I asked.

"She MADE me help him with his homework.  She told me to MAKE SURE it got done."  There was some weeping involved at this point.  When I asked big sister about it, all of that turned out not to be true.

Actually, I guess I don't think that my kids becoming good liars is very amusing, so I still don't really have any material to use for my blog.

Let's see.  There were the three names my husband brought home from work: Riunite, Tiawanna, and Spechel.  I wrote a silly names post before, which was widely read, but I doubt three more names is going to hit the jackpot, no matter how "spechel" they are.

There were some stupid people I ran into at the gym.  I try not to make fun of stupid people, because there but for the grace of God go I, but this pair was remarkably dim.

Okay, I know.  Once I start a story, I have to finish it, right?  

Okay.  I was in the bathroom when someone yanked on the door handle.  It was locked, of course.  Well, that person kept yanking and yanking on the handle on and on and on.

It's a good thing I was washing my hands already and not trying to perform.

"Don't they usually leave this open!?" someone shouted in frustration.

I opened the door.

Two guys stood there.  Two guys.  Not one of them thought to say to his buddy, "Hey--maybe someone's in there."  I looked each of them in the eye.  There was a marked absence of light in each set of eyes, so I didn't say anything.  If a woman coming out of the bathroom didn't teach them why the door was locked, there's nothing I could say that would.

There's a woman at the gym who might not be stupid, but her laugh is.  She's friends with the perfect ten that I get dressed with each morning.  That is, the perfect ten gets dressed out in the open.  I put my clothes on while still in the shower.  I wouldn't want her to get self-conscious or anything.  Then, we fix our hair and makeup side by side while I stifle myself from singing that old thirties' song, "Keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved!"

Anyway, this girl with the stupid laugh has sometimes been in the locker room with her perfect ten friend, perched up on the counter talking about everything under the sun that is shallow and mean-spirited.  Okay, I know I need an example to back that up.  Easy: how she was going to sue a salon that gave her a free sample because it she got a pimple afterward.

Anyway, when this girl isn't talking, she's giggling.  In.  Cess.  Ant.  Ly.  If she's in the building, you know it.  You can hear her woody woodpecker giggle from anywhere in that cavernous warehouse of a gym. 

So, as I said.  I really haven't got anything much to write about tonight.  I'm just digging up the dregs at the bottom of the well of my life that is usually full of interesting things.  As you can see, there's really nothing much there.  Which reminds me of when I have had to show my children that the ice cream carton is truly empty.

You know, sometimes my best friend and I have loads of interesting things to say to each other after a weekend--or even an evening--apart.  And sometimes, we just say totally mundane things to each other because that's all we've got.  Life is just like that, I guess. But we still talk just as much because we're friends and we check in with each other like that.

So, please bear with me while I get through this.  I may or may not have much to say.

Unless you want to hear about stratified sampling or disengagement theory.

Homework Gone Gaga

Today, I received several emails from my children's teachers.

One was a whole page long, telling me what homework assignment she is giving the class.  Okay.  Hopefully, she told her students, too.  Because if I'm supposed to read, digest, understand, and teach my child that (times seven teachers in her school), I need to retire now.

One email was telling me that my five-year-old, with two whole weeks of formal school under his belt, ". . .is not regularly turning in his homework assignments."  Would I please make sure to go through his homework each night and make sure he is doing all the homework and turning it in?

The third was telling me that my little girl's homework-on-the-computer requirements are tripling.  I've already told this teacher that my little girl doesn't own a computer.  Do I have a computer?  Sure, and I was in my thirties when I acquired it.  And--I need it for my own work and homework.  After my full-time job, I write.  And I am studying for my own test.  Suddenly, I cannot study because all of my children are doing their homework on my computer.

I find that children have their own computers to be a huge assumption on the teachers' part.

So, the last email went on to say, "I am going to put their math homework up on [some website].  Will you please go over it with them and check and recheck their work?  And always make them show you their work?"

Sure.  Just as soon as she helps me with my daughter's laundry and dinner.

I may be alone in this, but this is how I look at it.  Children already spend six hours a day at school.  That's almost as much as a full-time job.  And they're not adults.  I really don't believe small children should have homework beyond school hours.  The work of a child is to play.  When is a child in full-time school with homework going to play?  And, if children have homework, I believe it should be something they can do by themselves.

Personally, I don't need seventeen teachers assigning me homework to do.  I've gone as far in school as I intend to, and I think I'm old enough to assign myself my own homework.  I am now working on 54th grade, I guess.

Also, I send my children to school for six hours each day.  That six hours is the teachers' opportunity to teach my children whatever they need to teach them.  I certainly don't have six hours a day with my children.  In the two or three hours a day that I have with my children, I already have to make sure they get fed, have baths, have clothes to wear, have time to practice, have time to play, and learn the things that I want to teach them.  If teachers give my children homework, they are infringing on my time with my children.  The least they can do is teach them how to do it and not expect me to.

Plus, as an adult in my own right and the mother in this household, I just might have something of my own to do. (After my full-time job.)

Not that I shouldn't help from time to time--I don't mind that.  But I don't need pages and pages of busywork every night to track. My children feel overwhelmed by the amount of homework they get.  Unfortunately, they don't feel any more overwhelmed than I do.

I never wanted to home-school my children.  And I don't have time for it.  I'm not their teacher, I'm their mother.  Our roles are different.  That's not to say I don't teach my children, but the things I want to teach my children may not be the same things they want to teach my children.  Let's not get confused.

What If. . . .

I asked my husband a question when he got home from work last night.

He loves my "what if?" questions.  (Not!)

We're both intrigued with the idea that one different decision can lead to an alternate path that would make your whole life different.  The difference is that sometimes I want to imagine walking down those other paths.  And he doesn't.

What if I'd said that on our first date?

What would you have done if I'd insisted on not immunizing the children?

Who would you marry if I died?

What would we have named quadruplets?

He HATES these kinds of questions.  Some people just have no imagination.

So, last night's question was, "What if you had a clear choice between a life of travel or being married to me?"

And my beloved said: "I don't know."

He did!  That's the first thing he said.  I knew he didn't mean that.  (I think he likes to punish me for my what-if questions.)

He quickly recovered, though, and talked about how much he likes to travel, and would like to travel with me more someday.  (Yeah, wouldn't we all?  But we're largely homebound right now.)  He talked about how, after a while, all the motel rooms seem the same--you have your bed, your TV, and your bathroom.  And how it's fun to see new places and say that you've been somewhere famous, but that, in the end, it's not terribly fulfilling.

He talked about his great interest in one location and how he really has no interest in going to some places.  He mentioned that there will always be more places than a person can see, so anyone would have to let some things go.  And how, after a while, a person can come to feel like, "Yeah, I've done a lot of that already--maybe I'd like to do something else with my life now."

I watched him, feeling somewhat amused as he talked.  It occurred to me that he has already made this choice.

And I won.

He used to work in a job where he traveled constantly, staying in a new place every single night.  He liked the variety and the chance to see new places, but he traded it for becoming a family man.

So, in the end, it didn't matter what he said.  It mattered what he did.

I used to feel guilty sometimes, realizing he traded a quiet life of his travel job and his three cats for the chaos that our life together entails.  Of course, he probably brought some of that chaos with him, but I supplied plenty.

In less than five years, he had taken on a marriage and two step-children, three mortgages, two babies, two moves, and a wife in graduate school.

He used to say that life was a lot like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose.  And he was right.

We're past most of the chaos now, kind of in the eye of the storm before taking on several teenagers at once.  We've fallen into some easy rhythms.  He knows I'll keep up the laundry as regularly as Old Faithful.  I count on him to cook dinner and do the shopping. (Not in that order.)  He makes sure the house payment gets paid.  I make sure the utilities get paid.  He gets the kids to school and I do the homework with them after.  We've both noticed life is easier with a reliable partner.

In the end, it doesn't matter what fantasies we've had.  It matters what we do.

Monday Mornings

I start on Sunday night.  First, I pack my jewelry.  Then, my clothes.  I try not to forget to put a towel into my gym bag.  And my makeup.

Everything else is already in there.  So, in a way, I've started long before Sunday.  Long before the weekend even arrived.

I should be ready for it at any time.

If I have a night of insomnia, it is likely to be Sunday night.  Even though I've forgotten all the things I dealt with during the week, worries start creeping back overnight.  When I wake, I tell myself to forget again.  Don't think about that!  I tell myself.  And then, Don't think!  At all.

I don't exercise on Sunday.  I work out pretty hard the other days, so I let my body rest that day.  I think that's part of why I don't sleep as well--I'm not as exhausted.

It doesn't matter whether I have screamers on my caseload or not.  The transition from home life to work life is hard to make.

I take a pill to help me.  But, on Sunday nights, I often still struggle.

In the morning, everything should go like clockwork.  I've already packed my gym bag, purse, and project bag.  I slip an orange, two hard-boiled eggs (done ahead) and a glass of milk into my lunch bag.  Also, my lunch, an apple, and possibly other snacks--more fruits or a vegetable leftover, or nuts.

This does not take me long.

I'm not sure, actually what takes me so long.  I try to get out of the house a half-hour after my alarm goes off, but it rarely happens.

This Monday morning, I was rinsed, dressed, packed, prepared, clipped back, and weighed.  I was ready to go.  I stood in the dark kitchen with my hands on the straps of my bags, and I had an epiphany.

Leaving my house on Monday mornings is the hardest thing I do.

Not because of work, really.  I like my job, and am grateful to have it.  When I can help a pregnant woman get an outfit to wear to interviews that isn't striped jeans and a polka-dotted shirt--her only clothing that will fit--or something like that that really makes a difference, it's downright fun.

Not because my first stop is the gym.  I long ago acclimated myself away from any thoughts of not going to the gym.  Honestly, even if I haven't slept well, I know that I will not sleep that last hour before work if I know I am missing my workout.  I can feel fat accumulating on my stomach and my muscles taking off on vacation.  And I can't sleep.  Not then.  Ever.

It should be easier to leave.  No one else is up.  No one is asking me to sign their homework or get them a drink of water.  There is no one to talk to.  Just me and the dark.  The easiest time to leave, I should think.

But it's not.

I don't usually hesitate as long as I did this Monday, having my epiphany.  (Epiphanies can take up time, I guess.)

Leaving at that time is totally my choice.  I wouldn't have it any other way.  But I feel the heaviness of my choices resting on me at that particular moment in the week.

What if someone wakes up sick?  Or from a nightmare?  What if someone needs something in the morning that she didn't think about before going to bed?  What if I miss one of the little boys saying something cute?  What if the power goes out, or there is some other kind of emergency?

How tempted I am to just stick around until my family gets up.  Just to make sure they are all right.  I would rather they all leave me and go their ways and leave me at home.  I could find plenty to do around here, just fine.

Chances are, that everything will be fine.  No one will need anything from me that their dad can't handle or they can't call me on the phone about.  Their clothes are all picked out.  Their homework should be done.  No disaster is lurking around the corner with the dawn.

But, I know if I wait, it will be even harder to leave them while they are talking to me, needing their hair done, making a fight with their brother.  I know if I don't get to the gym now, it ain't gonna happen.

I know in the back of my head that supporting my children is a big part of taking care of them.  That I need to stay fit in order to be here for the years and years that they will all still need me.  I know that whatever I do to take care of myself, I am also doing for them.

So, I heave up my bags, and leave.

The week stretches out ahead of me, long and uncertain.  But I have already tackled the hardest part.

The Best Moments in Life

Last night, my mid-twenties son said four precious little words to me: "Mom, you look thin."

I appreciated this at the time, but I thought about it more this morning.

Yesterday was kind of a downer day.  And, after the long weekend--having gotten to bed a little late--I woke up groggy and, you know, just meh.  Sometimes, it can be hard to put your real life (translation: work week) back onto your shoulders and move forward.

I don't know how this happened, though I suspect it to be cosmically connected to the fact that I have the "test of my life" to study for, but there are suddenly dozens of books lying around my house that I haven't read.  

After I blogged about my child's Harry Potter birthday, a good friend challenged me to read the series.  I explained to her that I had a test to study for, but have somehow managed--in three weeks' time--to make my way through the first three books.  Having finished The Prisoner of Azkaban yesterday morning, I was glancing around for a new thing to put me to sleep last night, and my eye fell on one of these mysterious lying-around books.  I gave it a try.

It was one of those books where you know the whole story from the first line.  I groaned and almost closed the book.  But, as my object was to go to sleep, anyway, I tried the second line.  It was better.  I kept reading, and, while I wouldn't have written the book that way, the author is quite charming, and I think she's managed to get me hooked.  At least for now.

It's a light-hearted construct about falling in love that, I suspect, can draw any chick in.  I forced myself to stop reading it this morning so that I could get to the gym, and thought about it while driving.  The girl in the book's true love just happens to walk into her life, and she finds herself having "the conversation" she has "waited for all of" her life.  

I thought about the power of this construct, and how it drew in even a middle-aged, married, mother-of-seven, skeptical woman like myself.  I guess even old women like me, who have to exercise their necks to keep them from looking crepey, long for magical things to happen to them.  

Not that some man is going to walk through the door and change my life, like in the book.  That's already happened to me.  I remember how I felt when my husband started dating me.  I could hardly sleep, just knowing somehow that I would soon be married and having more children again.  That was a magical moment in my life.

Though, a long time ago.  And then, I wondered, is it pathetic for people to still hope for magical moments, when they've already had them?  Maybe not the same ones, but other magical moments?   We all need to have hope for good things to still come to us.  Are there still conversations waiting out there for me that I have been waiting all my life to have happen?

That's when I remembered my son's four words, "Mom, you look thin."  That is definitely something I've been waiting to hear, I realized.  I remember how hard I worked after having my last baby while he was away for two years, because my weight had gotten up almost to a very scary number, and I had promised myself that I would get and stay far away from that number as fast as I could.  I remember hoping that when this son got home and saw me again, he would say something like, "You look like you did when I was a little boy."  Those are the words I conjured up for him to say at that time.  Because, when he was a little boy, I was pretty hot, in a thirty-year-old, single-mom kind of way.  Not that he noticed it then.  Then, he tended to tell cashiers my age and once told me I was so old that I had forgotten how to run.

("I ran all the way around this park today," I told him then.  

"You did?"

"Twice.")

But, unless we somehow become the characters in our stories, not even the writers among us get to hand the people in our lives scripts and have the conversations we've imagined.

Not that conversations we haven't imagined exactly right cannot be the conversations we have waited for all of our lives.  Sure, there are conversations I'm still looking forward to having.  "Mom, you look thin" definitely qualifies.

And that's the magic part, I think.  The magic happens when you are just going about your mundane life, doing the things you have chosen to do because you believe that, someday, they will lead you where to want to go, and then some words are said to you that tell you you are getting there after all.  Because there is no more mundane part of my life than getting up each morning and getting myself to the gym.

But hearing my son say that created for me one of those magic moments when the mundane details of life pay off.  Remembering his words this morning chased all my drowsiness away.  No more meh.  Energized and purposeful, I moved forward and worked hard.

I like to watch for those moments--a meaningful look someone you know intimately throws you to silently share something that he knows amuses you both, a little arm around your neck, something hilarious happening, receiving a well-meant gift from a child who has put his whole heart into making it,--and tell myself that I am right then in the best moment of my life.  Because, who's to say it's not?  Those moments are so few and fleeting by comparison to mundane moments--I like to think I can catch them like emotional snapshots and, by acknowledging them, somehow elevate them into something lasting.

Being pathetic avoidance insurance, I think.

Down or Back? Both Work

It was our baby's first day of kindergarten.  Don't worry.  He still lets me call him my baby.  Now that he has started school, I expect that will change any minute.  But, until then, I will still sing the words, "My baby. . ." in his lullaby.  When he asks me to change, I will.  And I won't even mention my broken heart.  Kids take their moms' broken hearts for granted, and moms need to, too.  Some things just can't be helped.

Of course, we wanted some pictures of him in his new outfit, carrying his new backpack, and all ready to go.  We wanted shots of the excitement on his face.  Not to mention, we wanted shots of his face while it was still chubby and had his little teeth in it.

My husband went for a wet hairbrush to brush our son's hair all the way over to one side, sixties' Brady Bunch style.  He posed with him for some pictures, and then I handed him my camera and held out my hand for the hairbrush.  I brushed our son's bangs back down onto his forehead for my picture with him.  He is so cute with a natural look.

It's not that we think the other person's way is WRONG.  We just don't like it as well as we like our own way.

Sometimes, we don't care if our spouse has things his/her way.  Either one of us can and has capitulated then.  But when we do care, we have had to learn to deal with it.  Without fighting.

There are times when I just don't feel like I can shovel what I want under the surface.  And there are times when I've suggested we take turns when he has looked at me like he cannot imagine it ever being my turn.

This has led to some interesting compromises: two different kinds of stuffing at Thanksgiving, two different kinds of gravy, and at least four different kinds of pie.  The silver lining of this is that it keeps traditions alive from both his family and mine.

And sometimes sleeping in different locations--one where the TV can be on and one where a reading light can be on.

And, did you notice?  Two cameras--the digital and the film kind for the scrapbook.

But at least we're happy, well-rested, and well-fed.  And have lots of pictures.

A Novel in the Trash

I am not the sort of person who would throw away a novel.

I generally save and savor books forever.  Supposing I could imagine not wanting to keep a book, the worst I can imagine doing is sending it on to a second-hand store.

However, when I finished a novel the other day and closed the back cover, I found myself doing just that.  I reached down and set it in the wastebasket.  Where it belonged.

I'm not sure where this book came from.  It was just there, in my stack of unread books, so I gave it a try.

It wasn't the language--although there were a few words I would never use, unless for some reason it was important for me to repeat someone else who used them.  It wasn't the two or three gratuitous sex scenes, although I generally disapprove of those being thrown in just for titilatory purposes.  Well, it was partly those things that made me think that my religious second-hand store would not appreciate the donation of that particular novel.

But, what really made me set the thing in the trash was that I could not think of any value anyone could ever get from reading it.

There was a plot and three sub-plots, sort of.  The plot seemed to be to get a rascal appointed to be the vice president of the United States.  The subplots had to do with his pending divorces and on-the-side romances, a conflict in a third-world country--boringly handled, and a serial killer on the loose.  None of these plots was satisfactorily resolved at the end of the book.

Oh, the VP was appointed, all right, but the whole book had been about how vacuous his sense of morality was, so there was little point in it.  He abandons his long-term wife and family.  He lies to the president about his affair, but the president, in the end, helps him with all this.  He uproots one woman and transplants her across the country, only to never see her again because he is already carrying on with the next one.  Depressing, really.  And the author's point didn't seem to be about how disturbing it is to have our elected officials act like idiots.  It seemed to be to portray this sort of irresponsible instant gratification as normal, desirable, even.

The main characters, the fictional president and his wife, were portrayed as robots, not human beings.  The president, with a pathetic name I would not call anyone over four months old, spent the whole book handling about twenty situations a minute with perfection.  His wife was supposedly the head of the CIA.  As if THAT would ever happen!  There was no human emotion in either one of them.

The purpose of the book really seemed to be for the middle-aged author to expound his worldview that women are only in the workplace to have sex with their bosses, and it isn't ever really sexual harassment, because the women invite it.  All the women in the book looked like Barbie dolls and behaved this way.  All the business trips involved the mistake of a suite with an interior sliding door between the rooms being booked instead of two rooms, and all of the women could be found on the other side of the doors in towels or bathrobes, having just showered in preparation for their bosses to summon them.

Women accosted the president in order to thrust his hands--against his will, of course--into their bosoms.

Most exasperating, I really believe this author believed he was treating his female characters fairly because he made them all "smart," "successful," and "gorgeous."

I just can't see how a book like that is going to help anybody.  This story had nothing uplifting about it.  There was no human struggle against evil, just a wholesale adopting of it.  There was no character development, just characters with no character.  There was no humor, nothing to learn, no reflection of real life. You feel nothing for anyone at all or anything that happens.  With the exception of disgust.

It wasn't even well-written, with some clever plot twist or any degree of craft.  There just weren't any more pages.

At the end of the book was a very pompous page or two about how you could TRY to contact the author (assuming, of course), that you were a rabid fan, but it would be better to contact this person for this and that person for that.  If you wanted him to speak, you could send your money here.  If you thought you saw an error, don't bother to tell him.

For a minute, I thought of contacting him to tell him what a waste of time his writing was, but decided not to waste my time.

Amazingly, this guy seems to have about forty other books out there, presumably just like this.  Thinking about the money he might have made makes me want to weep.  And when I think about how little effort it takes to read something really worthwhile--something human and uplifting, something with a story or based on at least plausible circumstances, it seems amazing the he has been published and paid and read.

We can do better than that.