It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Posts tagged dawn
Escalator
4June 20, 2008
by Abby
in I have some daughters
Today was Thursday pretty much all day and it was my turn to host the Thursday potluck. Now I’m riding high on caffeine and socializing, and instead of cleaning my house I’m blogging. Yay.
As sometimes happens on Thursdays, we did a lot of talking about parenting and how we suck at it. I’ve been thinking about something in particular that I struggle with and I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. I have a serious problem with regard to how I react to the children when they’re having difficulty with a craft or math or rollerblading or opening a cereal box or a new DS game or a maze or whatever. It’s not the fact that they struggle, it’s the fact that they have to whine about the struggling that just sends me over the edge every time. It finally occurred to me that I have an extremely unreasonable expectation that when they have some kind of difficulty, that they’ll say in a normal tone of voice, “Mother, I am having trouble and I would be ever so grateful if you would assist me.” Instead, they usually use their whiniest voice to say, “I caaan’t doooo iiiiitttt!” and then they stomp and flail. I don’t like that. If I were a mature adult I would hear that and calmly reply, “There, there, let me see if I can help you.” Instead, I have an extremely immature nervous system which reacts with a fight-or-flight response when faced with super-deadly whining. I usually say, “Stop whining and I can help you,” which looks fine in print, but if you heard the tone of my voice and you were a very sensitive lass, you might pee your pants from the fear that my words were actually going to choke you. This is my least favorite thing about myself. First of all, it just escalates the problem and, most importantly, it goes against everything I believe in as far as emotional health. I would never tell them to stop feeling mad or sad or anything like that. In this house, we share our feelings and our feelings are respected. But when it comes to their whining because of having difficulty with something, I feel like they should understand that it’s ok to struggle and they should have an attitude of, “Huh. This is hard. I guess I’ll have to ask for help.” When in reality, nobody acts like that when they’re having a problem. We all whine and stomp in our own way. My asking them to stop whining doesn’t work because then they think I’m mad at them and that freaks them out and then they can’t relax and then they cry and whine more. It’s really quite the opposite of helpful. So I’m turning over a new leaf and I think it’s going to be life-changing. You know, like Jesus and The Secret. Only with less bloodshed. Hopefully.
TGIThursday! And Other Stuff For Which I Am Un-Thankful
7June 12, 2008
Yeah, yeah, I know you all read Pepper Paints and she already blogged about Thursday’s fun. Too bad. Read about it again.
I missed last Thursday’s homeschool park day because I was in Michigan. The potluck was canceled (obviously, what fun would it have been without me?) Or maybe it was because Dawn has a job or something lame like that. Anyway, we’re on for today and I have an extra kid with me so it will be extra fun. My 10-year-old niece is visiting us for a bit and she’s really sweet so she gets along nicely with my kids and my kids’ friends. The pool even gave her a free membership for us so we wouldn’t have to try to sneak her in. Nice of them. Bryan and I were actually planning to just pay an extra 10 bucks to get a pass for a family of 6 instead of 5, but Bryan didn’t know if she had to be immediate family or what so I guess he stammered around saying, “I forgot, our step-daughter will be with us a lot this summer, so I need a pass for 6, blah, blah, blah.” The kid at the desk was like, “Whatever, geezer, have a free pass.” Yay!
I didn’t say anything to Bryan, but it’s funny that his choice of the word “our” really stood out to me when he was relaying the story. Poor little bunny from a two-parent home doesn’t understand that there is no “our” when you’re talking about step-daughters. Unfortunately, I’m quite in-the-know on all matters of step-crap. For the lie to work really well, he should have said my step-daughter. Right? It’s the little things that make a lie believable.
Speaking of step-crap, I’m making a new rule and I think all children of divorce will get behind me on this one: I decree that our parents only get one shot at “blending” families. Got that? My dad is now going through his 2nd divorce, so I will have an ex-step-mother and 2 ex-step-brothers and 1 ex-step-sister to go along with my ex-step-father whom my mom divorced several years ago. I’m not having anymore steps. My dad’s next wife will be “my dad’s wife” and my children will call her by her first name or Mrs. Clement, but not grandma. Same goes for my mother’s next husband. If they don’t like that, I will go to plan B, which is to refer to the new spouse as “my dad’s current wife” or “my dad’s next ex-wife” or some such other equally degrading term. I think that’s fair.
OMG, Thrifting!
11May 19, 2008
Kristen and Dawn have introduced me to the wonderful world of thrifting. You would think it would be a no-brainer for me: I’m poor, I should buy used clothes on the cheap. But I don’t like to shop and I absolutely hate to shop in chaos. I <3 T@rget so much when I absolutely have to buy something, not because it has good stuff, but because it is neat and orderly. Order soothes.
I thought the thrift store would be very chaotic, but it was lovely. Everything was sorted by color, which I didn’t think would be a good enough system, but it was. I kept getting butterflies every time I saw something that I liked that was in my size for $1.50. A dollar and a half! I had to really work at keeping my excited squealing under control. We ended up spending more than 4 hours in a single store. I don’t spend more than 4 hours Christmas shopping without a food break. Actually, if I were ever to shop in regular stores for 4 hours in a row, that would involve 1 lunch break, 1 coffee break, 7 potty breaks, and a cheesecake break. And I would spend 3 times the amount of money and come home with 1/8 of the stuff.
By the time I came up for air and decided to look at my watch, I thought it might be around 2:00ish. It was 5:15. I was in a thrifting-related time warp of some sort, the likes of which I haven’t seen since 1991 when Bryan bet me I couldn’t drink a fifth of Jack Daniels. (The last thing I remember from that night is slamming down the empty bottle, standing up and saying, “Somebody owes me TWO DOLLARS!” And then I woke up and it was 1993).
Anyway, yeah. Thrifting is fun. You should totally do it. But set an alarm or something because the time warp will get you and then you’ll realize that you’re starving and you didn’t get groceries like you planned to and then you’ll decide that you and your thrifting friends and their husbands and children should all go to the Chinese buffet for dinner (since you saved all that money at the thrift store) and then you’ll try to run the next morning with a pile of buffet food in your guts. Not a good idea. But the thrifting was totally worth it.
We’re Supposed to do Things Right?
10May 16, 2008
Dawn tagged everybody with this meme about 3 things we do well as mothers, and then she verbally assaulted me at the park yesterday and threatened my life if I didn’t do it. (Not really, she just asked me to do it and so I am. Because she’s the boss of me. But you can totally see her verbally assaulting me, right?)
1. I take an interest in what they find interesting even if I find it horrendous. You know, so we can talk about it and I can be excited about it with them. I think they like that.
2. I cuddle with them endlessly.
3. I’m teaching them that their feelings matter and that they don’t have to go along with something just to avoid hurting a friend’s feelings.
Number 3 has been more uncomfortable for me than anything I’ve ever done as a parent. And that includes saying the word vulva. This seems to come naturally to Maya so far, but for the rest of us, it is hard to say no to people we like. It is hard for me to allow my kids to say no to playdates or birthday parties, but if they don’t want to go, I’m not making them go, despite my extreme discomfort. It literally goes against my make-up as a precious pleaser to do this (right now, my Ohio friends are saying, “What? You’re the biggest bitch I know!” and I’ll take that as a compliment, thankyouverymuch.) In the past, Lena and Liberty have asked, “What if so-and-so gets mad at me because I don’t want to go to his birthday party?” And, while my instinct is to say, “You’re right! We don’t want people to get mad at us. What will we do if somebody gets mad at us? I guess we better just ignore your feelings for the sake of somebody else’s feelings. Get in the car,” I have choked down that sentiment, broke out in a cold sweat and said, “Well, darlings, it’s like this: Your feelings matter. If your friend gets mad at you just because you’re not comfortable going to his birthday party, that is your friend’s issue, not yours. You aren’t in charge of other people’s feelings. Chances are, your friend will come to understand and respect your feelings. If he doesn’t, then he’s not a true friend.” And then I passed out from the effort of conveying this most basic truth of humanity. Our own feelings matter? WTF?
This trip is hard. Dawn is right when she says other parents make all the difference in the world. We need other parents who can be open and honest about the struggles in their parenting, the struggles in their marriage, the struggles in their lives. And you know what? We need to be able to talkabout the good things without setting off a competition. If it comes up in conversation that I cuddled with Lena while she talked about her Pokemon DS game for ten minutes, it makes me uncomfortable when another mom comes back with, “Well, I cuddled with my precious for even longer while she was talking about something even more boring to me.” It makes me feel like I made her insecure with my very small good thing and I didn’t mean to do that. And then it makes me feel like I’m in a competition that I didn’t know I was in. I usually get a free t-shirt whenever I sign up for a competition. I don’t have one, so I didn’t sign up. Stop it.
This is not a new idea, but we really, really do just need to be able to share and not be judged or fixed or competed with. It’s amazing how many of the posts for this meme start off with something to the effect of, “I’m supposed to say what I do right as a mother, but there are so many things I do wrong,” even though the instructions clearly say we’re not supposed to say that. We can’t help it. We’ve been burned too many times by the mommy olympics and we’re afraid that if we say we’re doing three whole things right, 800 other mommies are going to feel insecure and point out exactly what we’re doing wrong, or what they’re doing better. Stop it. We don’t need that shit. Let’s celebrate ourselves because, no matter what we do, our kids are going to be pissed at us. Let’s just be there for each other when it happens.
Oh, I’m tagging Mechelle, TooTightPonytailGirl, Sharon, Alissa, and Kristen. Five chicks who are ever so hard on themselves and deserve to talk about what they do right because there is a lot. A whole effin’ lot.
Is There Something on My Face?
6May 5, 2008
It could be guacamole. God bless avocado season. I regularly pay $1.50 for avocadoes, so I’m in heaven when they’re 66 cents! Or it could be frosting from my birthday cake yesterday. My lovely husband and children baked me a white cake with chocolate frosting. My favorite. I’m special. I’m 33 now, which is how old Jesus was when he died, in case you were wondering. I could be at risk for crucifixion. I could be. You don’t know. I’m definitely at risk for leaving the house with frosting or guacamole on my face. That’s a given.
I had a good birthday until my stupid van started smoking. Effin’ machinery. Pontiac piece of crap. We’re supposed to go to West Virginia this weekend to visit my brother and his family and see The Weber Brothers
play. For free. They played at my brother’s wedding. I have a picture of them, but I can’t make it show up in my stupid blog. Effin’ blog. Do you hear me, Dawn? I say, I can’t get a picture to upload. I was yelling that, but I didn’t put it in all caps. Just trust me. So, we assume the mechanic will want to be paid for fixing the stupid van, which might mean no free Weber Brothers for us since we’ll have to spend the billion dollars of gas money that we were saving for the trip on fixing the stupid van. I hate budgets. Except for the part where they help us be debt-free, budgets suck. And they’re lame.
Now I want more guacamole and I’m going to have some because our budget allows for unlimited avocadoes when they’re 66 cents each.
