Taking a Break to Celebrate

I am driving my kids to Iowa tomorrow and we will be gone until at least Sunday. We are travelling to Iowa to help celebrate my grandparents' 60th Wedding Anniversary. Sixty years! How wonderful. During those years they had nine children (though one, their first--Linda, only lived a few days). Now they have 22 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. What a legacy; it's certainly worth celebrating.

I am going to take this time with my family to stay completely away from my computer. I'm not even going to take the laptop with me or check my site at someone else's computer. For some time now I have not been happy with how my blog is going. I'm not pleased with my writing or my subjects. I am putting pressure on myself to be funny and we all know how that turns out: the more you try, the less it is. By taking a break, I hope that when I return next week I will be able to reset myself and come back with a renewed energy. I may or may not be funny. Brace yourselves.

Do do do do, Do do do do

I submit to you a portrait of a mother with one dream: a day without bickering. On this particular morning she lies in bed in a true dream state. She awakes to pleas for breakfast. Or does she? Up ahead, a dream with all her desires, an entrance that leads to calm, happiness and...The Twilight Zone....

Today was one of the best and freakiest I’ve had in a while. In fact, it was such a freak of nature that I’m wondering if there’s a full moon. A change in the wind? Hormones? Pod people? The Twilight Zone? What on earth can account for the fact that my children got along today? I submit the following evidence for your approval and amusement.

Freakiness the First: I was snuggled up nice and warm in my bed. My children asked for breakfast and I figured, hey, they’re 5 and 8, they can make their own. I decide to suggest they make frozen waffles knowing full well this will be met with escalating levels of hysterics, but I figure it will give me the impetus to get myself out of bed. So I explain how to make frozen waffles and . . . THEY MAKE THEM. Oh, yes. They did. No fires. No melty butter on the counters. No sticky syrup on the floor. And I didn’t even have to move the covers.

Freakiness the Second: After breakfast I suggest we all watch The Corpse Bride in my bed because, as I said, I ain’t movin’. THEY AGREE to watch the movie with me. Let me break it down for you. We watched the movie together with no bickering. Neither Max (oldest) nor Wild Thing (formerly known as Munchkin) complained when I paused said movie so one or the other could go to the bathroom, get a drink, or get a snack. No one cried because the other was closer to laying on top of me than the other. It was nice. And cuddly. And quiet. And civilized.

Freakiness the Third: After the movie they both agreed to go upstairs and PLAY TOGETHER. I heard nothing but laughter and friendliness for an hour. I made phone calls. I read blogs. I folded that last load of laundry I told you about--without any interruptions or wailing or cries of “I just wanna play with yoooooooouuuuu Mmmmmommmmmm!”

Freakiness the Fourth: When I suggested we meet a friend at Wendy’s for lunch I was met with, “Yeah! This rocks!” instead of the usual, “I don’t LIKE Wendy’s! I want Old McDonald’s!” Wait. It gets better. At Wendy’s they both agreed to sit beside their friend and made room for all of them on ONE side of the booth. No one complained that the mommies were sitting at their very own table. After lunch I took all three children to QuickTrip and each one quickly chose a treat under a dollar. Yes. Without a huge shopping ordeal or changing their minds each time they came close to the register. After QT we went to the friend’s house where they played together with that ONE friend and no one was left out.

Freakiness the Fifth: Given the choice of going to a baseball meeting at McDonald’s with my husband or sitting with me for an hour at Wild Thing’s first hip-hop dance lesson, Max chose the hip-hop lesson so he could support his sister. When we drove into the parking lot of the dance studio, Max declared his stomach felt weird. Wild Thing agreed that her stomach was weird too. They both discussed it and decided it was butterflies. Then they had this conversation (Max in bold, Wild Thing in italics):

You know that feeling you get when you go to a party?
Yeah. Like you don’t know if they will like you are not.
Together: Nervous.

Max did not complain once during that hour. Instead, he was eager to see what Wild Thing had learned and then tell her how well she did.

 

Seriously. Who has my kids? And just what am I supposed to do with pod children? I would have enjoyed the day, but who knew when that other shoe would drop? And yes, I realize I just jinxed myself. If you think about it, though, I’m not sure I could survive another day like this anyway.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Here are just a few things that happened today in no particular order.

The Good: The very last load of laundry is in the dryer. And that’s good because I used up all my laundry soap doing that load.

The Bad: The tension on my sewing machine has been giving me fits for 24 hours. I threaded and re-threaded the machine and bobbin. I messed with the dials. I even consulted the manual. After talking with Shannon at least three times, I finally fixed the tension on my sewing machine. How? By taking all the thread off my bobbin and re-threading it. I have no idea why that worked when nothing else did, but it did. Thanks Shannon.

The Ugly: A little background before this riveting story: Google Earth is a free program that rocks. It shows satellite images of everything. You can type in your address and see your house, you can type in Statue of Liberty and see that, etc. It’s cool, educational, and just plain fun. My son loves maps, site-seeing, and statistics—you can get all of these things via Google Earth.

Today my son asked to play around with Google Earth while I was taking my shower. Sure, why not? A little education on a day off from school is just gravy in my book. So what was he looking up while I’m in the shower? Crime statistics all over the United States. The crime stats tell you how many assaults, robberies, burglaries, larcenies, murders, and rapes are recorded for a certain area. My son was going through each of these and finally couldn’t take it any longer. “Mom, what’s rape?” Yeah. Great. At this point I would like to say a great big THANK YOU to my husband who showed my statistic-loving son how to check the stats in the first place. Why couldn't he ask me what larceny is? I was taken off guard so I told him rape is making a woman do something she does not want to do. I’m sure this particular definition will come back to haunt me at a most inopportune time. So, after our little talk my son continues his stat checking—-I mean, why stop him now? Well, I’ll tell you why. We check out the suburban neighborhood our friends moved to in Chicago. The stats are clear (all zeros). He sighs with relief. We move over to Chicago proper and the stats are staggering. My son whispers to himself, “Those women have to be tough.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Sharing with my Daughter

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was Cinderella. I still have it. It is worn out and faded, hanging together, literally, by a thread. I’m not sure why I loved it so much. I wasn’t prone to pretending to be a princess, but I loved Cinderella and Snow White (that book is in much the same condition as my Cinderella). My daughter, Munchkin, has never really shown much interest in either of those books, let alone the movies. She has never been entirely interested in any of the princesses except Jasmine. I suspect it is Jasmine’s gauzy two-piece that jangles when she walks that Munchkin is most interested in. No, she doesn’t really like the princesses as much as the animals. In fact, we’ve been to Disney World three times and each time she was happy to meet both Cinderella and Snow White, but not as happy as she was to meet Timone and Rafiki.

Last night things seemed to take a different turn. My husband called from the video store to ask Munchkin which video she would like to watch that night: Cinderella or ?? Of course, Munchkin asked for Spy Kids instead. As luck would have it, Spy Kids was out and my husband came home with Cinderella. My daughter is entranced. Entranced I tell you. She is watching it for the second time this morning. I haven’t seen her this engrossed since she watched Shark Boy and Lava Girl for the one millionth time.

I have been trying figure out why I’m so happy she likes this movie. So many movies these days are loud and incoherent. The story is barely detectable amidst the special effects and off-color jokes meant for the adults accompanying their children. Cinderella has a story, magic, singing, animals, a happy ending. Simplicity. I do think my daughter is more interested in the fact that Cinderella can talk to animals and said animals morph from raggedy mice, dogs, and horses to regal footmen and horses. I loved that too. The bottom line is this: I’m pleased to have this part of my life in common with my daughter.