A Conversation

Emily: "Mom, will you open my sucker? I can't do it."

Mom: "No. If Jane can open hers with one hand you can open yours with two."

Silence.

Next time I look over Jane is handing Emily an unwrapped sucker.

Mom: "Why does Jane have your sucker?"

Emily: "I asked her to unwrap it for me."

Maybe next time I'll be more specific when I'm trying to tell Emily to do something for herself.

Workin' for the Weekend

Since Emily started school, I seem to get questioned a lot about how Jane is doing. Mostly I say it's been a rough adjustment for her.

The truth is that these two are the best friends in the world.

Emily is great with coming up with weird (and sometimes destructive) games and Jane is always up for going along. For Jane's entire life, Emily has been leading Jane on adventure after adventure. Jane's never known any different with the tiny exception of 5 hours of preschool per week last year.

Now, all of the sudden, Emily has become a big kid, while Jane is still a little kid. Emily is gone all day, she talks about school friends and goes to dance class. Jane is feeling left behind and left out.

All this has triggered regression back into the terrible two's (which Jane was just beginning to grow out of). I hope Jane will adjust soon and we will once again be able to leave the house without a feeling of dread. I keep telling myself that Jane will learn to appreciate my full attention. But for now, this kid lives for the weekend, when the real ringleader returns.

Couching My Emotions in Cowhide

We all make bad decisions. Some of them, like the choice to eat too much fiber on any given day can make us very uncomfortable for a few hours. Other choices, like the decision to get a giant liger tattoo, can haunt us until the day we die.

Ten years ago I made a bad decision that plagued me until today. I was a newlywed with a real job for the first time. We were moving into a new apartment that had two (count them, two!) bedrooms in addition to a kitchen I couldn't span with my arms, a fabulous yellow bathroom, a window unit air conditioner and a second floor location that made us all but oblivious to the drug deals taking place in the parking lot. I needed some furnishings worthy of this palace. We left behind our spraypainted coffee table  and couch (which had been left for us by the previous occupant) in our college apartment and we went on a furniture shopping adventure. At the end of the day, we had a coffee table, two end tables and a sofa and loveseat.

Once the loot was in our apartment, I immediately began to feel buyer's remorse. I told myself that this is what happens when engineers try to decorate and that our choices would grow on me. Years passed and the only thing that grew was my hatred for my furniture. But for nothing did I feel more hatred than for this blue couch.

When we moved to our first house, it looked even worse. When Chris replaced our carpet with bamboo, the couch became even more unbearably ugly. I used the couch as a reminder that I made the decision to stay at home with my kids for now and I had plans to replace it as soon as I returned to work next year. I thought I was the only one bothered by this upholstered monstrosity.

This was not so. Last month an anonymous benefactor let me know that my couch was hideous to all involved and expressed a desire to never see it again. This expression was no doubt a sincere one because it was accompanied by a donation to be used towards a new sofa.

And that is why, as I am writing this post, I am enjoying the smell of beautiful leather and why my peripheral vision is no longer picking up a blue blob.

Isn't it fabulous?

Now my only problem is that everything else in the room was purchased to make the blue couch look less hideous. Most of it does nothing to highlight this piece of sittable art. I am particularly sad about the throw pillows, which don't work as well as I had hoped, but which I love. Oh well! I could throw out everything else and just live with this couch. I would be happy.

The First Day of the Rest of Her Life

Yesterday, Emily progressed from "little kid" to just plain "kid" as she crashed party that is elementary school.

Somehow it seemed wrong to be walking to school in the oppressive heat (don't the Berenstein Bears always know it's time to go to school when the leaves turn yellow and the breeze turns cold?), but Emily made the arduous four-block journey with admirable stamina.

(daddy took a bit of time off so he could walk Emily to school the first day)

She wasn't exactly chomping at the bit when we arrived at the playground and she became even more nervous once she was seated at her table. Yes, there were tears on both sides. But she started it. When things didn't get better, I knew it was time to leave. A kind aide assured me she would be smiling at the end of the day.

And she was.

After braving the walk  home, her first concern was for her sister, who had missed her all day. They discussed the day over the remains of Emily's lunch (which were considerable. I hope by the end of the year she'll learn to eat her lunch a little more quickly).

Today she told me she forgot to miss me because she was too busy. She also told me she needed to wear tennis shoes tomorrow. She says she thinks it's because they might play tennis in gym class. One thing's for sure: when she comes home, she probably won't remember what they did in gym class. Or anything else about school. At least that's how it's been the last two days. I'm expecting this trend to continue for the next 13 years. In the meantime, she's happy and that makes me happy.

Those Crazy Kids

Recently I was having a conversation with a group of ladies, many of whom had teenaged kids that had been left at home. I, on the other hand, couldn't get a complete thought out because my kids needed something every 5 minutes. I commented that I would be happy when my kids were able to become self sufficient to any degree. To this comment, I got the response I always get when I mention that having small children sucks the life out of me can be trying at times.

"Good luck. That never changes. My teenager still can't do anything for himself."

That set me to thinking. And mostly I think I feel sorry for people who can make this claim. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sympathy for those with toddler-like teenagers.

I'm sorry that your teenager poops his pants every time you leave the house.

I feel unspeakable sorrow when I realize that your teenager has to wear a bib at mealtime, that she spills her milk at least once a day, that the second she finishes eating, she throws her plate and demands a cookie. It must be so difficult to carry her to time-out during every meal. I can't imagine the indignity of having to wipe applesauce off of her screaming face before you have to pluck her out of her chair.

It must be terrible to have to go to a restaurant with a 16 year-old who can't sit still for five minutes and shortly after ordering starts pounding his fists on the table screaming,"I want my chicken nuggets NOW!" causing you to have to exit the restaurant with him and take laps around the building while the rest of the family eats.

I'm sorry that you can't even shop for groceries without your teenager bawling because you won't buy Oreos, causing every eye in the store to glare at you, silently demanding that you get that kid out of here now as they pass judgement on you for being a bad parent.

I don't even want to imagine what it must be like to not be able to close the door when you go to the bathroom because if you do, your high schooler will take the opportunity of being unsupervised to eat diaper rash cream, empty a bag of powdered sugar on your kitchen floor, completely undress, unlock the door and run out into the street.

How embarrassing it must be that when your child gets on the school bus without his blanket, he starts screaming,"Bwanket! I want my bwanket!" at the top of his lungs. You must get some really interesting calls from the school office.

Your child's date must be horrified when she learns that before he picked her up, you had to bathe him and scold him for having dried poop on his bum, leading to yet another conversation about proper wiping technique.

But all this pales in comparison to the pity I feel for you as I think that when your teenager is acting like a naughty toddler, they don't look nearly as cute as this.

Really, your life must be unbearable. You have my sympathies.

Dear Mrs. Toley

Dear Mrs. Toley,

I know it's been almost 20 years since you attempted to teach me to sew, but I'm sure you remember me. I was the ultra liberated seventh grader who had more important things to do than learn anything about home economics. When you warned me that my grade was slipping, I informed you that you were mistaken if you thought either myself or my parents cared what kind of grade I got in sewing class. When the sweatshirt I made had a neck opening that would have accommodated a conjoined twin, I didn't care. After all, I thought sewing was a skill best left to Donna Reed and laborers in third world countries.

I know it's been a long time, but I think an apology is due. You see, I am now the mother of two little girls and those third world countries are having a difficult time discerning between clothing for preschoolers and clothing for Kim Kardashian. Probably something to do with the language barrier.

I am also an avid clearance shopper. That means that whatever is leftover at the end of the season, I will purchase for the following year. I save an astounding amount of money but I have to take what I can get, whether it fits my ideas of modesty or not. If it isn't modest, I have to make it that way. That's where the skills you tried so valiantly to teach me would really be useful.

Case in point: Who would pass up a Speedo brand swimsuit for $6.81? Certainly not me. I bought two. It wasn't until I got home and had my girls try the suits on that I realized the "v" necklines plunged halfway to their navels.

I had a tie-on skirt from an old swimsuit that I could donate to the cause. I had to make it work.

Make it work, I did, thanks to the skills you managed to get past my less than exemplary attitude.

It wasn't easy, it's not perfect and the back of my work is a total disaster but my daughters will be covered and that's what counts.

So I would like to tell you thank you for teaching me all you did and I deeply regret not learning more when I had the chance.

Your slightly-less-liberated-than-I-thought former student,

Rachael

Olympic Peninsula: The End

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for reading thus far in our adventures. You'll be relieved to know that this will be the last vacation post. Next week I can get back to blogging about crazy things my children have done or the air suspension going out in my car (just to whet your appetite). But for now, I've got to finish what I've started because if I don't I may just forget the important details of our trip. I am, after all, not getting any younger nor is my mind.

Our ferry landed (is this the correct term?) in Port Angeles, Washington. If you recognize that name, then, yes, it's the very same. If you don't, then consider yourself fortunate. And if you remember the name, you'll be pleased to know that we couldn't pass up the opportunity. Especially since it was only two blocks from the ferry terminal. Drum roll, please..........

And there you have it. Yes, they do have mushroom ravioli on the menu. No, we did not eat there. It was 4:00 in the afternoon and we're not that old. I had a crazy notion that we would take a picture with Chris biting my neck, but that was before it occurred to me that there would be other people with eyes around. I chickened out.

A little more geography: the Olympic Peninsula is separated from the rest of Washington by Puget sound. At times, we were only about 15 miles from downtown Seattle (as the crow flies) but you wouldn't have known it. It's prime Bigfoot (and vampire) country and once you see it you can understand why. It's isolated and densely wooded and everyone seems to make flannel their fabric of choice.

And that is why we caught Harry Potter on opening night on a tiny screen with a crease among country folk. It didn't matter because it was SPECTACULAR. And although it cut into our Bigfoot searching time, I wouldn't have waited to see it for the world.

The next day we drove through Tacoma and across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which thankfully did not collapse. Then onto Seattle and back from whence we came.

You may wonder why this portion of our trip didn't include more photos. Or you may not care. The reason is this: I had the camera and by this point in our vacation, I was fantasizing about knocking one of my teeth out castaway style. It wasn't necessary as I convinced a friendly endodontist to hook me up with a root canal before we had been back in town for 24 hours. It's all good now.

Why is it important to mention this? Well, because, I enjoy being with this guy

so much that not even epic (I do not exaggerate) pain could prevent me from having the time of my life with him (aaand fade out to Green Day).