Nothing Could Be Better

I've accomplished not one useful thing today. I couldn't be happier.

I Got Up

I worked. I sat through meetings and reigned in my sarcasm by not sitting with Snellings.

I accomplished stuff.

Cody came by and we gossiped. One of his friends, my former student, is in the hospital possibly having her leg amputated.

Tam lost the cow suit. I don't understand our legal system at all.

I got home at 6:00 and the students aren't even back yet.

Daddy is coming early in the morning to deliver beef and is making me get up early to clean out the freezer for it. He's also going to fix several more things around the house. I'm grateful, but I really want to sleep late.

Sybil is coming for a visit tomorrow, though I told Ada I would be taking them to Christiansburg to get glasses. I hope I can figure out a way to pay for said glasses, but I'm scared that if I don't order them soon, Wyeth will run out of contacts.

It's cold. Really, really cold.

And the dog has really, really stinky gas. I'm sitting in a sauna of dog fart right now as I type.

I think I'm moving to another room. Good night.

Day Two, Take 36.

Wow, what an eventful day. Wyeth spent the night at Tam's so I took Lenora to school with me. She did quite well for about two hours and only started complaining right when my computer went completely wonky with grades. On the plus side, I was only an hour late turning them in.

Tam and I communicated poorly and she ended up dropping Wyeth off at the house instead of school like I thought she would do. Lenora had brought the phone with her, so he was home without a means of calling me for a little over an hour. I brought Lenora back and headed back to work.

As I was halfway through lunch, my darling boy texted me that he couldn't breathe. Several conversations later, he called me panicking and barely able to talk. I bailed on the work day, with permission of course ;) and raced home just in time to greet the housecleaner who had come over expressly to help Wyeth sort his room.

In the car on the way to Christiansburg to get the boy doctorized, he told me that he couldn't breathe and actually grabbed his throat with the choking gesture. I panicked a little. He wasn't blue, but he was really scaring me. We ended up at our local doctor's office after I called to ask if we could be seen. They rushed him straight back and he and I both breathed more easily, figuratively speaking, after they measured his blood-ox levels and it was 94%. Poor Wyeth was still wheezing.

Two hours, one xray, and a nebulizer treatment later and we were in the pharmacy spending $94 on an albuterol inhaler, a steroid inhaler, and a spacer for both. Yes, that was with insurance.

On the plus side, I got more chill out time than I anticipated tonight. On the downside, I'm going to have to work this weekend probably to be ready for my classes on Monday. At least my baby boy is okay, if snotty.

New Year? What's that?

Looking at a new year and realizing that I really miss writing. I'm not that interesting and I have no hope of readers because few people have a clue that I have a blog at all. The anonymity of the internet makes me want to journal. Therefore, I will endeavor to miss very few days recording the boring, wonderful moments that comprise my life.

Today, Lenora and I had a Charmed marathon. For the first half of it, she played Wizard101 while I tooled around on Webkinz. I watched R.I.P.D and Lenora joined me for the second half.

She's laying in the floor for just one more episode of Charmed right now, yelling, "Just for the record, I hate Phoebe's new do!"which is absolutely killing me with the inability to laugh since I hate her hair for season 6 too.

Tripping down memory lane is customary at New Year's and Charmed helps with that. I can't believe how many guest stars are now big stars on my other favorite shows for nowadays. Castiel, Crowley, and Sylar are the ones that pop into mind right off.

The best part of today was watching Goonies with Lenora. It was her first viewing and she watched it with interest. While I can't say that she loved it like I do, she really liked it.

The lack of necessity to be coherent is amusing me. I wonder how long I will keep this journaling up this time? At some point, I'm going to rant about the person who is currently making me crazy, but for now, I'm going to watch witches kick demon ass. Merry New Year!

Because I Said So

Hi. I’m your mom. I have one goal in this adventure called parenthood--to raise you to think your way through situations and make good choices that will lead you to productivity and a happy life. When I ask you to do something, there’s a good reason behind it. Sometimes, I can give you the simple reason and you can choose to understand or not based on the emotions of the moment and how high your hormone levels are. Sometimes, if I’m doing my job right, you can challenge my reason, and get me to see the situation from a perspective that I hadn’t seen before. Sometimes. If, however, you challenge me and I respond with, “Because I said so,” your best recourse is to shut up and get busy with whatever I just told you to do.

I know you though. I’ve watched you every day since I found out I was pregnant with you. I know that as soon as you hear “Because I said so” you brain misfires with the flat-out injustice of receiving such a vague answer that really tells you nothing. Chances are, you’ve ignored whatever simple answer I’ve already given you in favor of trying to weasel just a little more time doing your activity instead of whatever activity I’ve just asked you to complete. Chances are, I didn’t immediately respond with the dreaded “Because I said so” because that’s not my way. Again, my goal in this raising-you thing is to get you to understand why we have to do what we have to do. By the time I pull out the Because-I-said-so card, you’ve pushed me or something else has been making my day go wrong: I don’t have time to explain; I’ve tried to explain and you didn’t want to hear me; I have something else to do and I need this conversation to be over. Any of these are reasons I use this annoying expression. I hated it when my parents played it on me and, just like I’m sure you’ve vowed to do in your head, I swore I would never say it to my children. I would take the time to patiently explain until they understood, so that my child would’t feel this ridiculous frustration at not comprehending why my adult-activity was more important than their kid activity. You already know I’ve broken that promise to myself or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I’ve spent much time teaching you the value of honesty. I’ve punished you for lying. I denied you privileges because you’ve broken my trust. I’ve modeled good behavior and spent so much time explaining family behavior versus societal behavior that I really hate that there’s a difference. You know how important honesty is to me, so you also know that for me to break a promise to myself, there must be some significant forces involved. There are. Quite simply I didn’t understand what my parents were saying with “Because I said so.” Now I do. 

“Because I said so” is what I say when I simply don’t have the time or the energy to explain all the reasons behind whatever request I’ve made. There are reasons. Usually, there’s such a slew of reasons that I know you would lose track a few seconds into the explanation and never make it through the whole explanation. That’s the purpose of this conversation. To give you the background that I don’t have time to tell you when I ask you to get off the computer to clean your room. Or do your homework. Or feed the dog. Or go to bed. Or any of the other requests I make that result in a “why” from you.

My first reason for getting my way in everything is because I survived childhood. Heck, I survived puberty, something that still hasn’t been decided for you. I made my choices, some good, some bad. Guess what? You don’t know everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been through, just like I don’t know what goes through your head and all you’ve experienced. We only know what we share with each other and just like you hold back from me for whatever reason, like embarrassment or just because it’s none of my business, I don’t tell you many of the aspects of what I’ve gone through. I may tell you some when you’re older. I may not. Some things are just private. Some things require a level of maturity to comprehend. Some things are just too embarrassing to want to share with anybody, let alone the people I’m trying to guide in life. 

I’m not saying you don’t have original thoughts. It’s possible. Chances are that I felt the same way about my parents that you feel about me. Whatever internal dialogue you’ve got going on in there when I frustrate you, I know I had a similar conversation with myself when my folks made me crazy. Those grandparents you see are not the same obnoxious, unyielding individuals who guided me into the reasonable adult I’ve become. I have some body-swapping theories about how aliens use the distraction of a grandchild’s birth to replace parents with grandparents, but that falls under a differently titled essay. Suffice it to say, they would have murdered me for the things they let you do. I’m pretty sure the hope of you is the only reason I’m still alive. I know the only thing keeping you breathing some days is the thought of the grandkids you’ll give me. 

I’ve been through this hormonal stuff. I’m still going through my own hormonal stuff, though thank God it’s slowed down. Once those little boogers stop raging through your system, you’ll be able to see more clearly and use the reasoning skills I’m trying to get deep enough in there that they have a fighting chance against the hormones right now. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, about 80% of what you feel is chemical until you’re past puberty. It’s scientific fact. It’s also how I console myself that an end to the crazy, whiny things you do will eventually surface. Also, I’ll admit here, that despite my telling you that I was never that bad, I was. I can remember what it was like to feel so strongly and basically be out of control. I do remember. I learned to control it and then my body stopped harassing me with all those chemicals. I really was there. I prevailed. So will you. Part of what got me through was my parents losing their cool and tossing out “because I said so” because I was too out of control to realize it. 

I have experienced so many things that you haven’t experienced yet. I’ve traveled. I’ve seen different cultures. Several different cultures. I’ve met so many people that I couldn’t begin to guess a number. Some of those people I liked and some of them I didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t even have a reason. I’ve learned to trust that small voice inside my head because the few times that I let the people around me talk me out of that voice’s perceptions, the voice has always been proven right. Always. You have that voice, too. When I was your age, it sounded a lot like your grandma. Nowadays, it sounds like your daddy. Regardless, it knows what it’s talking about. My experiences have made my voice smarter than yours. I better know what to look for in people to let me trust them. I’m able to see the big picture more clearly because the time I’ve lived has widened my perceptions. When you’ve seen as much as I’ve seen, your voice will be as smart as mine. Until then, “because I said so” will have to suffice in place of “because I just know so much more than you” some of the time.

Even after reading this letter you may not get why all these things play into “Because I said so.” I’m okay with that. I’ve done my job as a parent to present the information for you to think through. You don’t have to agree with me. Glory knows that I don’t agree with my parents all the time. I just wanted to sit down for once and take the time to explain because once upon a time, I promised myself that I would explain it all to my kids. 

Did you understand it? Can you measure the experience and put it all together and process why doing that chore is so important at this time? I hope so. I hope I’ve raised you right and that you are smart enough to plow your way through this and honest enough that you can see two sides to every situation. I hope you are going back and evaluating what I say and reaching your own conclusions. 

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter. I’ve earned my right to tell you what to do simply with the fact that I haven’t killed you yet, so now that you’ve finished this, please go work on whatever I’ve asked you to do that you didn’t want to do. If you’re not convinced that I have a good reason, don’t worry about it. Just do it because I said so.

Juanita Sleep

When I got home, I finished decorating the cake for my seven-year-old daughter's Valentine's "snack time" (the word "party" is not allowed) tomorrow. Then I checked my facebook and uploaded pics of said cake. Next, I clicked and scrolled my way through my daily checkins on the websites to which I am addicted simply because of their mind-numbing awesomeness. Then I got up and found a marker so my daughter could address her Valentines.

Next, I got headphones and started watching Vampire Diaries on my laptop instead of the big screen so she and my ten-year-old son wouldn't have nightmares, but after only five minutes of the episode, daughter finished her shower and I had to go tuck her and the boy into bed. (On a completely unrelated note, my son made me tuck his covers in at the top of his bed so that he can sleep in a cocoon of sorts. His toes stick out the bottom, but this seems perfectly sane to me and I wish I had thought of it as a child since I could never feel secure enough from the monsters in the hallway.)

Once they were all snug in their beds, I resumed my adventures with hot, not-nearly-shirtless-enough vampires. After one episode, I realized that I was tired and should go to bed, but I simply couldn't. Something undefined was keeping me awake.

So I watched another episode.

When that ended, I unequivocally realized that another episode of Vampire Diaries had done nothing to alleviate this undefined need that was keeping me away from my lovely pillow and snuggly covers.

Searching for an answer to what was wrong with me, especially since insomnia is not one of my multitude of problems, I popped back onto my favorites page and noticed that the thumbnail for the Bloggess had updated since my earlier venture through my daily fixes.

I loaded it up and began to read. With a very small downward scroll, I discovered what my psyche needed to tell me so that I could finally give in to my exhaustion and sleep: a stuffed weasel.

I never would have suspected that this was what I needed so badly, but I am now dozing in and out as my fingers roam the keyboard. Thanks, Juanita. Sleep well, Jenny.

Christmas

I'm ready for it to be over.

I do love Christmas. It's my favorite holiday. I love the carols and putting up the tree and the excitement of my children on Christmas morning. My main complaint is that Christmas doesn't end on December 26.

It's December 29 today and we're finally on our last trip for Christmas celebration. The joy of seeing family and friends ended some time ago. I could really give a hoot whether we go today or not. It's not the family that we're going to see; if they had been earlier, I would have been more enthusiastic. It's the fact that this is my tenth Christmas "party" of the season. When you add in my son's birthday celebrations, I will have had 12 wonderful, joyous get-togethers with people that I care for. We will have eaten celebratory meals and exchanged gifts, talked and laughed and simply enjoyed being with these people. Lovely times with lovely people.

And I'm sick of it.

I want to go home, sit in my lazyboy and do absolutely nothing. I want to have no visits hanging over my head. I want that tree out of my living room and I want the garbage bags of paper hauled off for good. I want to hear rock n roll instead of beloved holiday jingles. I want the melodious laughter of my children to silence into the murmurs of video game playing and television watching while I cease to think and plan and coordinate. I want a good eleven months to pass before I hear any more bells ring, other than school bells to dismiss my classes. I want the end of Christmas.

And I want it now. I guess tomorrow will have to do, but I'm not happy about it. 

I'll make myself enjoy riding with my friend to my aunt's house and I'm sure that I will enjoy being at her house and eating her food and opening presents one last time. I'll be grateful for the time we have together and I'll delight in the sound of my kids' voices enthusiastically receiving the gifts that my aunt spent hours shopping for. It will be good; I know it will.

But it won't be quite as good as the next day when Christmas is finally over.

Finally. Over.

Snuggie, here I come. Tomorrow.