mars

my insane children are "cleaning" their bathroom. you see, razi dared to tell me, on the way home from school no less, that my ideas about what to do when we got home were "boring." i angrily told him that if he was bored he could clean the bathroom and zora turned that into the funnest idea of what to do, ever.

that child is from mars.

i can only hope they don't do anything purely revolting with the toilet scrubber or the toothbrushes or something like that, but i can't supervise, i just can't. i suppose this means i'm a wuss.

i can, however, go up and check on them occasionally. so, what does this "cleaning" mean? water all over the floor. every single washcloth soaked and dubious. zora covered with soap. razi running around in his underwear. me wanting to send them all back to school.

sigh.

preparing for school

this morning the kids saw a pile of backpacks that their father had set aside to check out. i have decided that two are going to charity but one will now be zora's new school pack. they got all excited about how they will start back to school soon, so this has become backpack morning.

lilah was wearing the old "Dora the Explorer" backpack i bought for her brother when he turned three (over four years ago. it's holding up well.) razi had me fill his brand new pack full of the school supplies i bought for him and zora has been stuffing her new pack with so many books and toys that she probably won't be able to carry it.

razi is still wearing his new pack on his back. he doesn't start school for two days. i wonder when he will decide to take it off. ;)

ahh, i was wrong. she CAN carry it. on the other hand, she's unbalanced!

hot stuff

i learned something tonight. if you cut up a hot pepper for your sandwich, you will want to wash your hands with soap before you touch your eye. yes, even an hour later.

cat love

me, holding the wacko cat. "isn't she pretty? (in cat-baby voice while scritching cat's head) she's such a pretty widdle lunatic, yes she is. (in my own voice) don't you think she's pretty, honey?"
spouse. "yes. she'd make a lovely hat."

i month and 1 day till public school starts again.

i officially hate summer. the kids are often bored, the heat takes a lot out of me, and everyone else i know can afford to send their kids to expensive day camps all summer long. (all right, that's a lie, it's much closer to a quarter than all.)

i finally fired lilah's speech therapist. i'd been resigned to just suffering through eight more weeks of chronic lateness and mediocre quality speech therapy, but i was kvetching to a friend about the ST and she told me to fire her. at first i was surprised and unwilling, but less than ten minutes later, she'd convinced me. it turned out to be remarkably easy. i called the first steps coordinator, told her what i wanted and why, she told me how to find the resumes of the available providers on the web, and i picked someone who (runs? works at?) the local university's speech and hearing clinic. i am hopeful that she will not only help lilah improve over eight weeks of therapy, but that she can help me navigate the scene of transition and what comes next. i am worried that lilah won't get into public school. if she doesn't, i have a huge array of choices to wade through. heck, even if she DOES get in i have choices to wade through. either way, i am going to want some guidance.

talking about dieting is boring as all get out, but i am finding it hard to diet lately. i read this article about these wacky weirdos who believe that if they limit their caloric intake (to levels that the article's author thought were insane) they could live to be 120 years old. i don't particularly want to outlive everyone i love or get a congratulatory letter from 2088's republican nightmare president (aren't i an optimist?) but, i usually eat about the daily calories that the people in the article eat. (from 1250 to 1500 a day.) at least, i did until i read the article. now suddenly i'm eating more again. maybe when summer is over i can exercise more and eat less. and enough of that boring topic.

if lilah gets into a developmental preschool i'll have a lot of time to myself. she'll ride the bus and her sibs will be in school till three. so i want to write that novel. we'll see how that goes. perhaps instead i will just have a much cleaner house and more clean clothes. as long as i manage to do something productive, it ought to be all right.

creativity blossoms

oh wow, lilah just plucked some of her hair up into "ears" and said "look mama, a rabbit!"

Yay.

I figured out where to buy a dress.
Goodwill.
Actually, I bought four.

Really, it's so odd. I went to a department store, and their dresses made me feel awful. I went to a discount store and they didn't even SELL dresses. I went to a thrift shop and felt fabulous and skinny and pretty and bought my whole summer wardrobe. How have the "real" stores gone so wrong?

Eh. What do I care. I have summer dresses!

disconnect

weird comment yesterday. i went to pick up the market day order, and the chick in charge asked why i bought 5 boxes of the big-ole pretzels that heat in the oven.
"we all just really love them."
"oh! that's great! i just wondered if you were having an affair."

uhhhhh.....

oh, right. she means a PARTY.

This morning my son jumped on my husband's side of the bed, pretended to sleep, and then pretended to snore. Then he jumped up and told me proudly: "Snoring is important for grown-ups!"
"Well... not exactly...."
"Only for boy grown-ups!"

my new chest

a very, very long time ago, a lovely woman i knew was moving out of her house to enter one of those nicer assisted living placed for older folks. Evelyn packed up everything she wanted, then her kids and grandkids cleaned out everything they wanted, and then she asked me if i wanted anything.

Evelyn gave me a freezer. an 8.3 cubic foot chest freezer. it is probably the most generous gift anyone other than my parents have ever given me.

yesterday i went into the garage to pull out some frozen bread, and found... mostly defrosted bread. uh-oh. the outlet still worked, that was easy to tell, because plugged in right above it was a little light-up plug, to let me know that the small appliance it was attached to was done charging.

so i called my husband at work, and he offered to try to fix it, but really, that wasn't realistic. the thing could have easily been twenty or thirty years old. we have no idea how old it is, but it was free and it worked perfectly for us for five years or so, and it was clearly done working now.

plus it had two or three hundred dollars worth of food in it.

so, spouse came home, emptied out his minivan, went to lowe's and bought a $268 8.9 cubic foot chest freezer. when it was cold inside, we emptied the old one and filled up the new one.

the stuff at the bottom of the old one was still frozen solid.

i love having a chest freezer. i hope this one lasts till i don't have kids in the house anymore. at least.

what does godzilla have to do with bedtime, again?

part of the standard bedtime routine around here is a "special extra story" that used to actually be special and extra. ;)

the two older kids start every day with an assumption of three storybooks at bedtime, plus the special extra story (which razi used to earn by reading a book to ME, but that sort of evaporated when his little sister who couldn't read at all got into the act).

one book is for staying clean and dry all day, which should be a given since zora is almost five now, but sometimes she gets lazy. argh.

the other two books are for cleaning up the two downstairs rooms in a timely manner at clean-up time. if they finish in under half an hour, they get both. if not, fifteen minute intervals come to take away the other two books and then the special extra story.

last night zora lost everything. then she had to lose something else even beyond the special extra story, so she lost the priviledge of drinking soda next shabbat. she was devastated. good. maybe she'll learn that screaming fits are not the best way to deal with disappointments.

razi, though, still got the special extra story. now, my spouse is a genius for making these things up on the fly, with prompts the children give him right before. our cats, hello kitty and godzilla are regular stars. but last night it was apparently my turn, so i told a story of godzilla rising from a laboratory at the local university and destroying the town we live in. of course, my spouse - genius that he is - saved the day with the judicious placement of a sleeping-pill-laced lean cuisine on top of a freight car.

everyone knows that godzilla's favorite snack is a train. ;)

yes, it was a goofy story, but razi seemed to like it.

may i interest you in a fine whine?

last night my spouse got home, took one look at me, and asked me if i wanted to go out alone for an hour to myself. i must have looked pretty bad.

of course, i really appreciated my spouse's generosity, but my neighbor/friend becky couldn't go out, so that was a bummer, and becky suggested TJ Maxx, and that turned out to be horribly depressing. because there i learned that i am a chestless wonder who can't afford decent shoes and whose taste in dresses is so far off the beaten path of normal that it might as well be martian. plus the only cute tshirts are in junior's sizes and would look ridiculous on me, so i am just broken.

then i ended up at the supermarket, which is where every mother of three wants to spend her last half hour of totally free-n-clear / guilt-free / alone / whatever-i-want-to-do time.

then this morning lilah had the most massive tantrum when it was time to leave her sister at preschool. of course, i realized after 5 or 6 minutes of her screaming on the floor that i, mother-of-the-year, forgot to FEED her, so no wonder the poor thing was a total wreck. sigh.

then when i got her home i was sitting here in between bouts of cleaning the front room for her always-late speech therapist (today: 36 minutes late and counting) and she brought me a copy of the cat in the hat and said, clear as you could want: "cat a hat" !!!!!! so i wanted to read it to her immediately. of course, she brought me a copy in hebrew. blasted spouse and his charming, useless ideas about learning hebrew with children's books. i tried to interest her in a different story but she asked for TV instead and i caved.

studio ghibli

you know you've shown too many japanese movies to your 2 and a half year old when she bows to you and squeals something that sounds suspiciously like "hai!"

(which is essentially the japanese for 'yes.')

driveways, garages and minivans

my driveway is really steep. we've lived here almost 4 years and i always park on the driveway because my spouse always has the garage full of computer junk. we already had to pay to have the minivan's emergency brake redone once and the other week i realized that it had suddenly gotten really loose again. so i started parking on the street - which is a pain - and my spouse started cleaning out the garage. this took a few weeks of intermittent effort. he's been working late nights at the shop and could really only clean the garage on weekends. i was getting very impatient to park in the garage.

today we finished cleaning out the garage. woot! so i pull my minivan in, and keep pulling, and get in as far as i possibly can without bashing into the deep freezer or the stairs, and lo and behold, the back end is still under the door. yes, my minivan is too big for my garage. argh! aaaand, it's back to parking on the street.

mammogram

my mammogram results came in. i don't need to go back for a year. that's nice to read. :)

Super Poopers

i've been meaning to do this for ages, but only this winter did i get the chance to enroll my son in an acting class. we have a "playwright's project" in our town and they have acting classes for a wide range of ages, but every class i saw for him until this one cost a great deal more than i felt able to spend. razi likes to memorize lines from movies, he's an excellent reader, and i thought acting might help him with focus and concentration.

so when i saw that the playwright's project was offering a class for first and second graders that lasted six weeks and only cost $60, i enrolled razi pretty much immediately. the four kids in the class all chose which superhero they wanted to be, and razi wanted to be "superstitch" - sort of from the movie lilo and stitch. he chose the superpower of "super-claws." lilo and stitch is a cute movie. i have no idea why razi got obsessed with stitch, but there you go.

the other kids were "superowen" - who could walk through walls (and other things), "megaeyes" - who could SEE through walls, and the evil villain "miss stare-a-lot" - who could freeze people with her stare and then steal their superpowers with a mere touch.

the acting teacher wrote a short script for a play with those characters and they practiced for about 6 weeks and then had the actual play.

we'd wanted to hire a sitter for lilah but were unable to, so joshua stayed home with lilah. but zora and i went, and i got almost the whole play on my digital camera, which can make little movies. it's hideously grainy, but it's on my computer for posterity.

the play was what you would expect, i suppose. one kid overacted horribly, one kid was basically fine for an 8 yr old, and two kids - including mine - mostly got their lines right but were pretty distracted and didn't really take it seriously. but it was cute and i'm glad he participated. he was the youngest actor and the only one who hadn't done the class last year, so i think he made a good showing.

i'm certainly not opposed to enrolling him in another class like this again in the future.

38 and counting

I've done plenty of things that have made me feel like I was growing up. Like I was "really an adult now." I finished school, got my first credit card, got married, had babies…. I’ve felt like a “real adult” for quite some time, now.

I seem to have graduated from the milestones that make me feel like a real adult, to the milestones that make me feel like I am aging.

Today I had my first mammogram.

It was… not as awful as I feared it would be. The films will be read on site, and the woman who did the exam told me that it is common to be called back for a second set when one gets a baseline. They won’t really know what is normal for me and what isn’t, and that may lead to questions. I was grateful for the warning.

Now, I wait.

Good thing patience comes with age.

harry potter: a prediction, a d'oh! and a squee

first the squee.
book seven!! this summer!!! july!!! OMG!!!

second, the d'oh: i can't believe i never saw this before, but an online friend pointed this out and i had to figuratively facepalm. how did i never see this before?
by putting the curse on the DADA position, Voldemort assured himself a bit of a free field. it's in DADA that students learn to defend themselves against the likes of Voldemort. no decent DADA class/teacher, for years and years and years, and Voldemort won't be facing a whole lot of true, effective opposition. smart Voldemort. and dumb Dumbledore for letting Voldemort into the school, where he was able to put the curse on the job!

third, the prediction:
draco malfoy and werewolves will somehow interact in book seven in a significant way. the foreshadowing starts all the way back in book one!

crazy morning today!

My seven year old son now has braces. Good heavens.

This morning was crazy. My four year old meandered and dawdled and wasted time and made us totally late. Late as in, when everyone else was ready to go she was naked, in the bathroom, and had eaten nothing. Argh! So I rushed her into her clothes and made her a sandwich (which I wrapped in a paper napkin and shoved in my pocket) and sped the girls to school. Then I left Razi in the car while I ran them in and didn't even bother to sign them in. I never leave the kids alone in the car like that! But I knew we were already late for his orthodontist appointment and I was freaking out.

So then we hurried over to the orthodontist, who is practically around the corner from the preschool thank heaven, and they started by cleaning his teeth. They said the whole appointment would take two to two and a half hours and I could run errands if I wanted; so when about twenty minutes had passed and they really didn't seem to need me, I went to the supermarket and bought some essentials. (How are we always out of chocolate milk and bananas?) And then I went to Target and bought him practically a whole new wardrobe. He's grown out of almost every pair of pants because he’s sort of tall and very skinny. He has my childhood body. I bought him four pairs of pants and two long sleeve shirts and a sweater. I only spent about $56 because I tried my hardest to buy only things that were on sale. Also we probably won't keep all of it. We'll decide what to keep and what to return tonight – with his father’s help. Joshua's gonna get roped in because buying the boy new clothes was his idea!

Then I went back to the orthodontist and Razi was almost done getting his braces on and wired and everything. The most relaxing part of my day so far has been sitting in the orthodontist's waiting room, reading People magazine!

When Razi was done we rushed through checking out because I had this stupid idea that I would get him all the way across town (a 15 minute drive) to his school, then drive 15 minutes back to pick his sisters up, then all the way back home another 15 minutes in the car to get the girls and myself home. But I realized, thank goodness, that I was being an idiot. So we picked his sisters up 15 minutes early instead of 20 minutes late. And I left him in the car again. There goes ‘mother of the year.’

Then I brought him to school and I had to go inside and sign him in and I just left both of the girls in the car while I went in and dropped him off. My goodness, what is the matter with me?! At least I could see the van from inside the school office. I couldn't see it at all from inside the synagogue/preschool. Then I brought the girls home, got them in the house, fed Lilah a lunchy sort of snacky thing while I ferried a ton of junk into the house, put Lilah down for her nap and closed the door on her while she screamed, and poked at the laundry with a pointy stick. Yowza, I need a nap!

Now I need to make Zora her pasta and peas, cycle through more and yet more laundry, and maybe catch a breather for a few minutes.

the colts, miami, and zora

Zora and I went to Miami, Florida last weekend. My oldest cousin’s two oldest children had a joint bar/bat mitzvah ceremony, and Zora and I went and represented the whole Indiana branch of the clan. Zora had a really marvelous time, and I could not be more proud of her. She stayed up really late both Friday and Saturday nights and she was a perfect little delight the whole weekend anyway.

We flew in and out of Indianapolis the very weekend of the playoff game, and wow, the fever over the football thing was everywhere. Not my thing, but it seemed to put everyone in a good mood, and that was a very nice side effect.

The weather in Miami was fantastic. I actually took a nap outside on Saturday afternoon. Considering that when I checked the weather for Indianapolis on the internet the next morning I learned that at home it was 27 degrees and snowing, that was a nice break.

But I’m glad to be home, even if it is cold and snowy here.