A Jen Too Many

Best Christmas present ever:

The Light of My Life has today off.

Somehow, we always wind up wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. I suppose it's a sign of how much I've come to dislike the task that I always leave it until the last minute. That's not a tradition though, just a bad habit!

Out traditions include going out on the lawn before bedtime to spread a few handfuls of oatmeal out for Santa's reindeer to snack on while he is in our house. The girls write letters to Santa and leave them on the table with cookies and eggnog using a special Santa-decorated mug and plate.

During the day we follow Santa on NORAD's Santa Tracker (if we remember to do so - last year we forgot until just before bedtime.) Today we will be making cookies for Santa, baking the pies for dinner tomorrow (pecan, apple, and mince) (I love mince pie; we're going to find out this year if the rest of the family can learn to like it too), and making the Jello Salad of Instant Diabetes*. We will hang up the stockings at some point.

We will eat cookies. We will drink eggnog. The girls will try to persuade us to let them open, "Just one present, please, please, please?" (The answer will be, "No.") Eventually everyone will fall asleep (this will take awhile) and then Santa will come.

Small people have been instructed that they are not allowed to get up until their alarm clock goes off (6:30 a.m. has been negotiated.) They are allowed to get Mommy and Daddy up at that time. BUT NOT BEFORE!!
___________________________________________

*Jello Salad of Instant Diabetes

Ingredients
1 3 oz box of flavored gelatin
1 8 oz tub of whipped topping
1 15 oz can of crushed pineapple
1 8 oz can of mandarin oranges
1 16 oz tub of small curd cottage cheese

Directions
Drain the crushed pineapple and mandarin oranges; save the juice. Prepare (according to package directions) whatever flavor you prefer of gelatin. (Lime is popular for this. I like raspberry, personally. Cranberry is also good, especially at Thanksgiving.) Use the saved pineapple and mandarin juice in place of some of the water.

After making the gelatin, put it in the refrigerator to chill until it is about the consistency of a raw egg white. Mix in the fruit and cottage cheese. Fold in the whipped topping. Return to refrigerator and chill until firm, in whatever bowl you will be serving it in.

Variations
Some people like to add nuts and marshmallows. Maraschino cherries are also popular. Feel free to throw in whatever goodies your family likes best. (There are a lot of variations of this. Throw the search string "jello cool whip cottage cheese" into a search engine and you'll come up with a ton of recipes.)

Once a year, sometime in December before Christmas, The Love of My Life will go out on his day off to fill up the car and come home with chocolate covered cherries. He gets one for each member of the family and hands them out when he gets home, tossing them to each of us, sometimes playing guessing games before handing us our candy.

It's the only time he ever buys those, and the only time we ever eat them. I didn't realize until today, though, when he was standing in front of me, saying, "Pick a hand!", that it's become a tradition for us. (I picked the wrong hand, but he gave me my candy anyway.)

It's not a big deal. It's not something we've ever even talked about. It's not part of our plans when we discuss Christmas. And yet, when I realized he'd brought the candy home, a small voice inside me said, "Oh, good, that part of Christmas is taken care of now."

It's just a quiet little thing, and yet, it's funny how important a part of Christmas this has become to me. A little affectionate gesture that helps to bind our family together, perhaps more important than the bigger traditions precisely because of how small and quiet it is. And, I can't help thinking - how typical that this kind of tradition originated with him. I tend to think of the bigger, flashier things-to-do and rope everyone into participating. He just goes out and does his thing, quietly and efficiently, not making a big deal about it, but bringing all the more meaning to it because of that.

Conversation between the girls, while playing around and under the Christmas tree, with various dolls and sundry stuffed animals:

Youngest Girl Child: Attend (translated: pretend) we had a sleepover

Oldest Girl Child: So we can wear our capes!

YGC: Yes.

OGC: The kitty is alright!

YGC: Attend your kitty liked it

OGC: Does she like it? I'm glad.

YGC: Attend she has to stay in the cage. (pause) Santa came last night!

OGC: He did? Is she alright? Did you see Santa? Tell me you didn't!

YGC: I did! Just kidding!

OGC: Come 'ere girl. (gasp) You kicked her! Just kidding. (to the stuffed cat) You need to be washed! You have fleas. Friend, can you hold her still? Kitty! Don't worry, it's gone. Now!

YGC: I'll hold her. Meow, meow, meow. Attend you messed her up.

OGC: Meow, meow, meow. You've got to shake her!

YGC: Attend she didn't like it and she was crying.

OGC: She's hiding. (to the stuffed cat) Don't worry! We'll fix it! Pretend when she said that she came right back up. (to the stuffed cat again) It looks like you like it. (brushing the cat's hair)

(discussion about the right way to brush a cat)

OGC: Pretend this is her home

YGC: And her kittens slept in the Christmas tree. Attend her kitten was sleeping.

Continuing on like this for quite some time...

The Little Demon Up The Street was here this morning. There has been snow (much excitement!) and they played outside, then inside, then outside again. Then Oldest Girl Child asked if she could go play at TLD's house. I told her, "No." She accepted it, albeit with a pout, and went back outside.

I just went to check on them and there is no sign of any children. I have no idea where my children are, but I'm willing to be they're inside TLD's house again.

I hate, hate, hate this. I don't want to have to be harsh with her. I've re-evaluated my stance again and again, but I can't see that I am being unreasonable. I need to know where she is. I need to know if she's inside someone's house. I cannot let her run wild around the neighborhood without accountability. The world is just too dangerous for that. All I ask is that she let me know where she is. I try to keep the Nos to a minimum. She still is fighting me on this, though.

I have to figure out what to do next. I have no idea what consequence to use next. She was grounded for a week this last time. Do I make her start checking in with me every 15 minutes? Ground her for longer? When I was little, I would have gotten a hairbrush, belt or wooden spoon to the bottom for this kind of behavior. I don't agree with that kind of punishment, but I do have to say it had its advantages. I would have been much too frightened to pull this sort of stunt (at least not twice.) But ruling that out still leaves me with a problem - how do I convince her to obey me without terrorizing her?

Can I quit this gig? Just go have a nice easy career solving world hunger, finding a cure for mental illness, or discovering the key to Faster Than Light travel? 'Cause that would be simpler than trying to raise my children to be responsible, capable adults, I think. Easier than trying to teach them to be independent while keeping them safe.

Or maybe I'll just go hit my head with a hammer. It'll make a nice change of pace.

So, y'know, the question of the day is - How do I keep my sweet, darling, precious little angel from being sullied by her association with that nasty little hooligan over there, who is constantly finding ways to lure my little snookums into terrible acts of deception, manipulation, disrespect and general misbehavior?

No, really. Stop laughing, guys. I am serious!! How the heck do I keep my kid away from the bad influence of The Little Demon Up The Street? I have been wrestling with this all week.

The other day Oldest Girl Child went up the street to play with TLD. I had specifically told her that I didn't want her going inside to play. I wanted her to play outside. It wasn't that cold and after being in school all week she needed the exercise. Besides, playing inside with TLD tends to lead to trouble. Like the Nail Polish Incident. And the Deliberately Running Away And Excluding Youngest Girl Child Incident. Not to mention the TLD Lying To OGC And YGC About People Being Mad At Them Incident. And a host of other Incidents.

That day, I wanted to surprise the girls with a movie (a real movie, in a real theater with popcorn, even) so when it was time to go I went outside to call OGC home. There was no sign of her, so I went and knocked on TLD's door. There she was, inside, a guilty look on her face, absolutely and completely busted.

I talked with her when we got home. I was very calm and patient, but firm. (Really, I was. I didn't yell once. Not even a little bit.) I talked with The Love of My Life and Father of My Children and we agreed that grounding was appropriate. We did allow her to go to the movie with me and YGC since that is an unusual treat and it seemed overkill to take it away, but we gave her a choice. She could have a couple of extra days of being grounded, or she could stay home from the movie. (She chose the movie and the extra days of grounding, obviously.)

When we got home from the movie, OGC had a quiet talk with her father about the importance of obeying us and the dangers of going somewhere without telling us. Afterward he came to me, rather shaken up. He had gotten his first ever serious rebellion from OGC. As he described it to me, she wasn't bored, or distracted. She was flat out rebellious, taking a you-are-so-stupid-attitude toward him.

He wanted her to never play with TLD again, feeling that this attitude was not natural to OGC, but something she had picked up from her friend. Now, I've been thinking this same thing for awhile. As I said before, there have been a number of incidents with TLD that have more than alarmed me. I haven't felt comfortable with just banning her, though. I thought that would provoke further rebellion, and I wasn't sure how well I could enforce that rule since she just lives a few houses away. I did not want OGC playing up there with her anymore, though, since my attempts to keep control of the situation have been so easily undermined.

Soooo... We've been thinking this over this week. I expressed the feeling that we were looking at two ends of the spectrum, and we needed to find a third solution. Not to ban TLD forever, and not to let the situation (clearly a negative one) continue, but something else, something in between the two extremes. After thinking it over, and talking with a few people I trust, this is what we came up with:

She can keep playing with TLD, but it has to be over here, where I can supervise the situation. I even managed to put it to her in a way that didn't upset her. I explained that TLD's parents have a different way of looking at the world than we do, and it's not fair to expect them to make sure that OGC makes the sort of choices that we think are appropriate. Therefore, since our standards are the stricter, and since she plays over there so much anyway, it would only be fair to have TLD play over here. That would make things easier for TLD's parents, and give them a break from always having the kids there.

I am hoping, honestly, that TLD will not want to play here. If she does come over, though, I will make sure I stay in the same room as the girls and aggressively monitor what is happening. That will let me break up any bad behavior before it gets a foothold, not to mention allowing me to keep my peace of mind.

Can we do this? Can we Provide A Good Influence? Tame the Demon? Teach her to Play Nicely and Tell The Truth?

Time Will Tell ...

Around the beginning of November Oldest Girl Child and Youngest Girl Child walked up to me in the kitchen, wearing I-have-something-important-to-say expressions.

"Mommy," said OGC, "It's about time we start ..."

She paused, looking for the right words. YGC helped out with a conspiratorial, "You knooooow ..."

I thought rapidly. "Being good for Santa?" I contributed.

There were eager nods and grins. I laughed.

"I have a hunch," I told them, "that Santa looks at your behavior the whole year, not just right before Christmas."

The eager faces suddenly looked nervous.

Now, only a few days from Christmas, I am ready to pull my hair out. Forget the rest of the year. They can't even be good for five minutes at a time this close to Christmas!

I am dreading Christmas vacation. Why, oh why, do the stupid schools have to shut down for two weeks?

Every year when we put up the plastic tree, we have cookies and eggnog. The kids and I put the tree together, while their father takes pictures. Sometimes the girls like to dress up. We always use multi-colored lights, because I am the one who buys the decorations and that's what we had when I was a kid. I like a tree with those kind of lights.

Either Mommy or Daddy puts the lights on, then the kids put the ornaments on. We have a tree skirt I made many years ago, some old glass ornaments I got at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store when I lived in Oregon, several newer glass ornaments (that are gradually decreasing in number as one or two break every year) and a large number of figurine-type ornaments that were either gifts from friends and family, or made by the girls at school and church.

This year we have two new ornaments - a wreath the Youngest Girl Child made out of sparkly pipe cleaner and a milk jug lid ring, in kindergarten, and a styrofoam ball studded with beads and sequins precariously held on with pins made by Oldest Girl Child. The ball is already starting to shed pins and I worry for its longevity.

We also have: a tongue depressor Star of David (OGC), a tongue depressor snowman (YGC), a tongue depressor Rudolph (OGC), a felt-and-pipe-cleaner sled made by one of my sisters and given to me many, many years ago, a blue glass ball with "Merry Christmas R.S. '98" written on it in puffy gold paint (given to me by a friend who died a few years later), a white plaster (I think) snowflake on a blue background (OGC), a plastic bead wreath (unknown), manger figurines I bought a few years before I met my husband (baby Jesus has been lost for years), and a piece of lace the girls found at the bottom of one of the boxes which I used to use as garland back when I was roommates with Cari.

At the top of the tree we have a star, also lit up with multi-colored lights. and another decoration that I brought with me when I got married. The girls both want to be the one to put it up on the top of the tree, so we arranged things this year so that they could both have their hands on it when it went on. (That's another good thing about an artificial tree - it's really easy to make the star stay on.)

There's nothing on there that would impress a decorator, but I love everything on there. Christmas trees are supposed to be gaudy and tacky and full of little kids' art projects. There's a law about it. Somewhere.

A woman I know slightly has been blogging about some steps she is taking to improve the way she treats her husband. She started off by doing something nice for him. He didn't exactly respond well. In fact, his reaction was to accuse her of trying to lay a guilt trip on him. Unsurprisingly, she started feeling like she was wasting her time. She squashed that reaction, though, and reminded herself that it would take a while for real change to happen.

I posted a quick comment encouraging her and then had to stop myself from hauling out the soap box. "Good luck," I wrote at the end of my comment. "You won't regret doing this." What I wanted to say, though, was more along the lines of this:

We live in world that encourages us to think in terms of profit and loss. We tally up. We keep track. We measure our energy and effort output and compare it to what the people around us are doing. We do this in our friendships, in our work relationships, and sometimes, especially in our marriages. If I do something for you, what are you going to do for me? Have you done as many good things for me as I have for you? Have you paid me for my favors to you, if only in being appropriately grateful for how nice I have been?

It's not a good way to handle a relationship, any sort of relationship. Especially not a marriage.

When I wrote, "You won't regret this doing this," I didn't mean, "This is going to work, and everything is going to be wonderful in your marriage if you just keep it up." I meant, "You will never regret doing the right thing, and in marriage, refusing to keep an ledger of favors done and received is the the right thing. Even if he never acknowledges a single thing you've done for him; even if everything falls apart, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did what you could to keep your marriage strong and healthy."

(Now, I did not say that to her, because I don't think she needs to hear anyone saying, right now, "Hey, even if it doesn't work out ..." So I'm saying it here, on my personal always-pulled-out-for-easy-access soapbox.)

I was taught throughout my childhood to look to Jesus Christ as an example of how to live. He loved and served others regardless of their ability to "repay". I need to do the same thing with the people I know. It doesn't matter what they do in return. This isn't about their choices. It's about my choices. I have a responsibility to treat the people around me with love and kindness regardless of how they act. Not that I always achieve my goals in that, but I keep trying and like to think that I am improving as time goes by.

Several years ago I had an experience that made me aware of a very simple, but powerful, truth: I have never regretted obeying the Lord.

In all my life, I have never once said, "Wow, I wish I hadn't kept that commandment!" or, "What a waste of time it was to do the right thing!" I have never regretted following the Savior's example. I have never been unhappy that I kept a commandment. I have never been sorry I did the right thing. I have only ever been glad when I did those things.

On the other hand, I have always come to regret those times I have lived down to my worst impulses, or even just my not-so-lofty impulses.

So when I say, "You won't regret this," that's only shorthand for everything I just said in this post.

There was much sorrow in our house this morning. School was not cancelled.

There was great hope for a cancellation, since the weather forecasters were predicting an ice storm that would have shut everything down for at least the morning, but nothing of the sort happened, and everyone headed off to work and school this morning just as normal.

"School is not so fun!" Oldest Girl Child complained to me after the umpteenth time of checking the school website did not reveal a new message cancelling everything. I gave her my mini-lecture about the importance of school, that fun isn't the most important thing in the world, and her job right now is learning. And I'm sure it really sunk in, this time. I swear - she listened intently. Really!

I spent tonight teaching my daughters the fine art of artificial tree branch fluffing.

When I was a kid, we always had a real tree. One year it was a live tree, in a wooden barrel half. I think my parents were being ecologically correct that year. (The tree went outside after Christmas was over. I don't remember what happened to it after that, although I would be willing to lay money on it having died of neglect eventually. Green thumbs do not run in my family. Herbicidal thumbs do.) A couple of times we went out to tree farms and cut them down ourselves. Most years we just went to a tree lot.

Dad would always get the biggest tree that would fit in our house. The house we lived in when I was in high school had cathedral ceilings, and he really went all out after that, at least as far as height went. You see, a 10 or 12 foot tree is not cheap - unless you are going for the very tall Charlie Brown tree. Especially when you are buying it on Christmas Eve just before the lot closes for the year. I wish I had a picture of some of those trees. Not much in the way of branches, but they were certainly tall!

I was a Christmas tree purist when I was young. Artificial trees? Blasphemy! Yet here I am, on my *mumblemumble* year of our artificial tree, and very happy with it. OK - there's no smell. There are also no needles that are still being vacuumed out of the carpet in March. No worry about the dog drinking the tree's water and poisoning himself with tree food / preservative. No stress about scheduling when to get a tree, and how to get it home. No having to make sure to remember to put it out at the right time to have the garbage service pick it up free of charge.

So my children will have fond Christmas memories of putting the tree together before decorating it. That's OK. We have a living pine in a pot on our porch. If I remember to transplant into a bigger pot this spring, it might not even die.

When I was a kid I was notorious for constantly having a book in my hand. (I still do, it's just not as obvious that it's a book, since I keep my books on my PDA now.) I walked home from school, reading all the way. I walked around the house, reading. I even read while I was supposedly listening to my teachers in junior high school, hiding the book under the desk, on my lap (until I got caught by an irate science teacher.)

This morning, Oldest Girl Child was walking around, re-reading her latest library book, Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime. Every time I turned around, there she was, reading instead of getting ready for school. We had to pry her away from the book in order to do morning scripture study and afterward, when her father was trying to get her attention so that he could ask her to give the family prayer, she replied, "I know, I know, I'm just reading a little bit."

She left the house for the bus stop, nose buried in her book. I couldn't be more proud. That's my girl!

Oldest Girl Child has announced that she is too old to call me Mommy anymore. Her friends all call their mothers Mom, and she has decided it is time for her to do the same. She let me know this yesterday, and has been working on it ever since. At first, she kept slipping up, but now she is calling me Mom fairly reliably.

It's a shock every time I hear the word Mom coming out of her. There's a little flash of pain that deafens me for a moment and grays out my vision. I'm losing something precious here, even more than when she made the change from baby to toddler. This is as big as when she went off to her first full day of school.

I remember when I made that change. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember that same feeling OGC describes - the feeling that I was much too old to call my mother Mommy; that it was time for me to start calling her Mom. I was so proud of myself. I felt so mature and grown up. I understand how OGC feels right now; I wonder if my mother felt as sad as I do.

Youngest Girl Child is not happy with the change. This morning she made it clear that she has no intention of ever doing the same thing - she will call me Mommy forever. OGC told her (in that smug big sister way) that she would change her mind when she got to be OGC's age. YGC indignantly denied it. OGC insisted she would. I had to separate them at that point.

Recently I was teaching my Sunday class of five year olds about the importance of obeying your parents. "I know my mommy's name!" one little boy burst out. "It's Mommy!"

"Good-bye, Mom!" OGC called this morning as she headed out the door to the bus.

My name is Mom now. I'd rather be Mommy.

Yes! The oven is still working! The house has not burned down! The turkey cooked faster than I expected!

OK, so maybe that last isn't such good news. But it's amazing how much better the oven works now that it has a new bake element. I hadn't realized just how much the temperatures were off with the old element. The Love of My Life tells me that next time I will know what is happening when the oven starts to heat erratically and I just replace the element before it melts all over the interior. I told him that next time that happens I would rather just buy a new oven ...

We had a nice Thanksgiving. I hope you all did, too! And now I can say:

I'm back!

A big Thank You to my baby brother (who is considerably taller than me, but who's measuring?) who suggested that I check the monitor. Yes! It was broken!

Unfortunately, that was not the only thing that was broken.

Another big Thank You to the geeky guy at Geek Squad! When I brought my computer in he told me to call the company that made my computer to order a new recovery disk. He saved me lots of money!

Gateway does not get a thank you. They make you order recovery disks online, a place that is hard to get to when your computer insists on rebooting every time it tries to run Windows. If you happen to be lucky enough to find a phone number for them, you will get sent to various places, told by everyone that they cannot help you because your computer is out of warranty, and then finally told that you have to go online to order the disk because ... your computer is out of warranty.

Thank You to my sister who patiently went through the Gateway website with me, reading to me, typing in as I directed, and who has faithfully promised she forgot my credit card number faster than I read it off to her.

Nothing was lost permanently, thanks to Mozy Backup. Seriously, if you don't have a backup in place, take care of it now! I would have been fine losing most of our stuff, but not the family photos. The very thought makes me hyperventilate.

I have also fixed the oven, just in time for Thanksgiving. It was scary! Very, very scary! I don't like working with wires, which is what you have to do when you replace your bake element. I unscrewed a panel at the back of the oven, pulled the wires forward and then spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to detach the blasted element from the wires. Then the new element was a little too lose and I had to try to clamp everything tighter. I am now living in terror that I did something wrong and will wake up to a fire fighter beating at my door some dark night.

Oh - when working with electricity, always remember to TURN IT OFF FIRST. I almost didn't. I was carefully placing the flashlight so the light would shine in the right place. I idly thought how it was a good thing the element was in several different pieces, so that it couldn't come on and melt the plastic flashlight. And then I thought, "Oh. Right. I should turn off the electricity." And then the magnitude of my goof really hit me, and I panicked and became obsessive about making sure the electricity was off. I flipped the breaker for the range off, then turned on all the burners and the broiler element and watched them carefully for 10 or 15 minutes to make sure nothing was heating up.

But I did it! And it worked! Watching the oven element heat up (after I turned the electricity back on) was quite the moment of triumph for me. It feel as competent as my mother.

That's right! The vacuum is a major appliance, too. Silly me. I guess it felt left out? That makes three broken appliances this week. Who cursed me?

We'll see if this works.

Posting through my phone because the computer is not currently working. Neither is the oven, which needs a new element.

I am seriously considering replacing the water heater as a preemptive strike, as it is the only major household appliance we have not had to repair in the last year, and it is probably only a matter of time.

(I do NOT like trying to type on a cell phone keyboard.)

We will be offline for an indefinite period.

I am living in terror. Now that everything from the car to the fridge has gone kaput, what's next? An alien invasion?

The fat little guy on the left grew up to be the father of my children (who looked very much like this when they were babies.) No idea who the other baby is. A cousin? A friend? I'd also love to know whose hand that is he's holding. I'm guessing his mother.

Judging from what I saw the girls do when they were babies, that lopsided grin on his face means he's concentrating on something very interesting. He also looks like they did when they were still learning to sit up - I can just see him getting all side to side wobbly like babies do just before they fall backward.

I've been trying to see if I can see a trace of the adult in the baby, but nope. All I see is a baby, completely interchangeable with any one of his children.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

The context: Driving past the local high school and the technical institute next door.

Oldest Girl Child: (pointing to technical institute) When will I go to that school?

Mommy: Well, that depends on what classes you take in high school. Some classes are over there, like if you want to learn to be a mechanic.

OGC: What school do you go to if you want to cut hair?

Mommy: (firmly) First you have to graduate from high school. Then you can go to a beauty college.

YGC: What school do you go to be a princess?

Mommy: Oh, you don't go to school for that, sweetie. You have to be born a princess. Or marry a prince.

YGC: (extreme disappointment)

A few photos from Halloweens past:

When last we left our heroine, she had been dropped into the Paleozoic Era by the evil wiles of Professor Periwinkle! Barely had she stumbled from the chamber of Professor Periwinkle's time machine than she was snatched up by the fearsome Nemicolopterus, and hoisted into the skies to be carted home as an offering to its rapacious offspring! Fortunately for our heroine her struggles proved too great for the creature's grasp and she broke free - only to find herself plummeting through caustic gases toward the crater of an immense volcano that was actively spewing molten lava! We take up our story where we left off ...

"And that, Janet, is how I repaired the time machine, captured Professor Periwinkle, and was reunited with my one true love, who turned out to secretly be a Time Patrol Agent - the same Time Patrol that Periwinkle was seeking to uncreate with his dastardly manipulation of time."

"Golly, Jennifer! What an amazing story! Whoever would have thought it was possible to accomplish such amazing feats of intelligence and physical prowess! And all this from a middle-aged mother of two!"

"Well, thank you, Janet, but I'm nothing out of the ordinary. Why, everything I've done could have been done by any woman with the courage of her convictions, a pure love for her husband and children, and a pocket-sized nuclear device."

"But weren't you afraid of altering the time-stream and forever changing the future?"

"Oh, Janet, that was never a concern! The futuristic Danellian supermen put everything to rights! But enough about me; is this your new pet Tyrannosaurus? What an adorable little thing. Look! He fits right in the palm of my hand!"

OK - time to jump back into Vintage Photo Fridays!

These old school photos are all of my mother-in-law. The Kilgore referred to is Kilgore, Texas. Later on she became a Kilgore Rangerette, which my husband informs me is a Big Deal and Very Impressive.

Genetics crops up again, here. In the first two photos I can really see the resemblance to Youngest Girl Child, but in the two later photos she reminds me of Oldest Girl Child. I see my husband and The Boy Child in the two youngest photos, too.

It's most striking in the first and last photos - '42/'43 and '47/'48. I've seen that exact same expression on YGC's face ('42/'43). In the last photo, it's the way she's looking at the camera. She smiles like her oldest granddaughter and has a look in her eyes that I've seen in OGC's eyes.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

Amazon is giving away free mp3s to celebrate hitting one million followers to their Twitter feed. You get a credit on your account of $1.29, which is enough to give you a free song (most of them run around 99 cents.) The catch is, you have to use the credit by this Sunday, September 6.

Free mp3 from Amazon

Woohoo!! I love free stuff!

Travelin' Oma's School Days Seminar - Day 4 Homework

I missed yesterday's homework assignment, as you might have noticed. Busy, busy day. Much to do. Not to mention a nap to take. Wheee!!

~List at least 25 of your unique abilities and qualities. Words that might apply: caring, aware, generous, hospitable, tactful, open, able to teach, good cook, listener, optimist, creative, etc.

1. Good at teaching
2. Earnestly striving to improve
   
3. Smart
4. Good cook
5. Fast reader
6. Good listener
7. Creative
8. Imaginative
   
9. Loving
10. Forgiving
11. Thoughtful
12. Responsible
13. Caring friend
14. Compassionate
15. Good at puzzles
    
16. Like to laugh
17. Resilient
18. Strong
19. Determined
20. Conscientious
21. Loyal
22. Know how to preserve food - canning, drying, freezing, etc.
23. Good at understanding people
24. Independent
25. Writer
    

This was hard to do! I got stuck at 17 and couldn't think of more for a while.

Of all my qualities, I value resiliency, strength, and determination / stubbornness the most. They are the traits that have gotten me through some very tough times.

I am sitting in the house, nearly alone. The Boy Child is the only one here and he is leaving soon to go hang out with some friends. My Sweetheart has gone to work, the girls are gone to school. I have been working on shoveling out the living room, which was left in a more than usual state of chaos this morning.

Except for the buzz of the computer fan and an occasional metallic clack from the dryer, everything is quiet.

I am handling the first day of school very well. I seem to have gotten my weepies out of the way last night at 10:30 p.m. when I turned off the movie I'd been watching and starting my nightly closing-up routine. That's when it hit me that I would spend the next day without a warm little cuddlebug filling the house with her special brand of sunshine, and I broke down and spent about half an hour crying.

Yesterday was filled with getting ready. There was paperwork from orientation to be filled out, clothes to be laid out, pictures to be taken (for the school's star student* forms), backpacks to be filled up, and interspersed throughout the whole thing Oldest Girl Child's fits of glee, and Youngest Girl Child's bouts of, "But I don't want to leave you, Mommy!" followed by hugs and weeping. Her weeping, not mine.

Not that YGC was as upset as she made herself out to be. Her feelings were real, but I know her well enough to recognize when she's exaggerating or pretending more than she's really feeling. I've probably mentioned before that she does this thing where she sometimes decides how she's supposed to feel and then acts it out. Unfortunately, these feelings usually tend to be negative. She decides she's afraid of something, or some situation, for example. Or she decides she's shy. Or she decides she doesn't like something. That's what she's been doing with school - taking her normal trepidation and acting out this dramatic, negative scenario.

I recognize what she's doing, because, well, that's what I used to do when I was little. It wasn't a positive trait for me either. In fact, it caused me a great deal of trouble in my early years, especially the tendency toward being negative. If I had allowed myself to be positive, it might have worked to help me, instead of hinder me, but... *shrug* With YGC, I'm working on teaching her to overcome that negativity, to be positive and find a way to make the good happen, instead of going all passive and moving to avoid the bad that might never come.

I hope I am doing the right things to help her. It scares me to think of how difficult her life will be if she doesn't learn this.

For example: Last night OGC said to me, "Mommy, do you remember the girl who sat at my table during orientation? I think she wants me to be her friend. She looked like she was shy."

I couldn't help flashing back to what YGC said after leaving her orientation. "I don't think they want to be my friends."

They are both going to be self-fulfilling prophecies, if I can't head YGC off.

When she forgets to be negative, though, YGC is very excited about going to school. Just before bedtime last night the two of them were literally jumping with excess energy and the decibel levels were getting alarmingly high.

We had orientation a couple of nights ago, which had us going to the school for the girls to meet their new teachers, and for me to get school supply lists and find out what the teachers' expectations are for this school year.

YGC's teacher seems very nice. YGC had drawn a picture for her (a fountain, I was informed, looking at the confusion of blue marker blobs and lines) which we gave her as soon as we got in the room. She smiled brightly at YGC, thanked her and said she'd hang it up. She gave us a sheet of paper with everything we might need to know - start times, lunch times, etc. I would have loved her for that alone. In Oldest Girl Child's previous years at school no-one has ever done that for me. I know more now about how the school operates than I ever have.

OGC's teacher is the only man teaching in this school. I think this will be a good experience for her. I was impressed by his manner during the orientation, and rather taken aback by his announcing that the kids didn't need to bring any school supplies. He will provide everything they need, although we are welcome to donate anything we like. So I sent OGC off to school this morning with everything we'd bought for her, telling her to give it to her teacher.

We've been working for the last month on getting YGC in the habit of getting up at 6:30. She is a little night owl, much like her parents, and has always been resistant to a schedule. Oh, I could get her on one, if I worked hard enough, but the first breath of wind that came along would knock her off that perch.

Really, the amazing thing is not that YGC is a night owl, but that OGC is such a lark. She's been waking up at 6:30 all summer, just because that's what she's used to and she likes to get up that early. She's like my brother S, who has also always mystified me. After half a lifetime of early risings I still hate, hate, hate them, and take several minutes to figure out how to keep my balance and make my eyes focus. If I jump out of bed too quickly I tend to walk into walls.

To make life easier (on me), we bought the girls a nightlight alarm clock. OGC is usually up before the alarm goes off, but YGC has been waking up very nicely to the alarm and, after taking a few minutes (to get her balance and focus her eyes?), will stagger out to the living room, wrapped in a blanket. She'll huddle in a corner of the couch watching some half hour show, like Fetch, or Cyberchase, then emerge to announce that she's hungry.

Last night, we discussed the morning procedure for school days. "No TV until you are dressed!" I told them. OGC was fine with this. In fact, she was up and mostly dressed when I staggered out of the bedroom this morning. My alarm goes off five minutes before theirs, so I was able to hear their alarm when it went off. YGC staggered out, OGC went to turn on the TV, and I stopped her. "Remember? Clothes?"

"Oh, right!" So then OGC turned to chivvying her sister into her clothes.

TV is a great motivator. YGC was moving in record time.

Their father is working swing shift right now, but he wanted to be up to see them off, so I got him up at a quarter after, and he joined us for scripture study and family prayer. Then we headed off to the bus.

Which was 20 minutes late.

This was good and bad. It gave YGC time to play with the other kids at the bus stop and relax. It also, however, gave her more time to agonize and cry and worry about bad things. In the end, though, when the bus drove off she was grinning as she waved to me from her window.

And then I went home and took a nap, which was absolutely delicious. Right now I feel rather weird, kind of twitchy and itchy. Even with TBC here the house feels empty. I'm feeling very relaxed after that nap (two whole hours!! Do you know how long it's been since I took a long nap like that? Usually I catch, at most, 15 minutes, and even then it's frequently been while sitting up with YGC on my lap.) I've been cleaning, while rejoicing that it won't all be undone in the next half hour. I would listen to music, but I'm enjoying the silence way too much. It's so nice and peaceful here right now.

But the emptiness is still making my skin feel weird.
___________________________________________
* Every student at the school fills out one of these forms. Over the year the school counselor will randomly draw a few every week, which will go up in the cafeteria until the next week. When they come down, the kids get to take them home, along with a folder and a certificate and pencil. I guess it is meant to be a self-esteem builder kind of thing.**

**Something that tends to backfire on OGC. Last year she came home from field day with a ribbon for participation. She ignored it until I picked it up and said, "Oh! You got a ribbon?" She kind of rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, everyone got one of those." It's now just another toy, played with rather less than most of the others. She does enjoy being a star student and having her picture up, though. She adores attention.

Travelin' Oma's School Days Seminar - Day 2 Homework

~Blog about a trip that was a disaster. Ideas: "Our honeymoon should have been perfect, but" or "I woke up in Disneyland with chickenpox."

To be honest, my memory is a little hazy about that trip. Or maybe not hazy. Maybe I've just repressed large blocks of time.

We had gone travelling the previous summer with The Boy Child. I was 7 months pregnant with Oldest Girl Child, huge, miserable, already short of breath. It was only meant to be a day or two, but after visiting Kirtland we thought we'd jaunt on up to Palmyra, and after getting to Palmyra we realized the Hill Cumorah Pageant was going on and that seemed like something not-to-be-missed, so we stayed to see that, and, all in all, it wound up being a week before we got home.

It was a tiring, breathless trip, filled with small mishaps, but also full of wonderful experiences, memories that I still treasure. So, the next summer, it seemed only logical to block out the time to take a trip to Nauvoo to see the temple during its open house.

The trip wasn't all bad. I saw my first fireflies. I saw the place where some of my ancestors lived. Ummmm ...

Give me a second. I'm thinking.

Things went wrong from the beginning. OGC was the sort of baby you couldn't overstimulate. She was never happier than when in the middle of a noisy crowd, a trait that was apparent in her first few days. They was so much to see! Hear! Do! Learn! Even then, she was a raging extrovert.

Which meant that, faced with the stimulation of a trip, she wouldn't sleep. All day long that first day of travel, sitting in her car seat, watching the countryside outside her window, nearly delirious with delight. That night, at the motel, at 2 a.m., with an exhausted sobbing Mommy, who still hadn't learned to let Daddy take over sometimes.

I go blank after that.

The next thing I remember is standing in line to tour Carthage Jail. It was sooo hot. The line was huge. OGC wanted to get down and practice walking. I was Excessively Tired and Not Happy. I left my husband standing in line with the baby while TBC and I went to find a drinking fountain and a bathroom. I looked at several highly memorable and significant Mormon memorabilia with complete indifference, then shuffled back to the line to find my baby running around barefoot. Some ... woman ... had taken it upon herself to remove my infant daughter's footwear. It was too hot for a baby to be wearing shoes! she told me, smiling cheerily at the woman she obviously considered a completely incompetent mother. I was too angry to speak.

... filing through the uppper room at Carthage jail, hot, hot, hot, very crowded, just wanting to get out of there ... driving to Nauvoo, where we parked amid a huge number of cars, then walked and walked to get to the restored cabins ... TBC (or was it his father?) leaving my camera behind at the blacksmith's demonstration and not realizing until much too late that we'd lost it - all our photos, gone! ... getting baby food at some convenient grocery store ... sitting on the floor with an excited baby, so so tired, and too afraid to let her cry herself to sleep, because the noise might get us in trouble with the hotel management ...

The next day it is our turn to take a tour through the Nauvoo Temple. We are short on time when we finally get there, I don't remember why. Realize the baby's wet, ask where is a convenient place to change her. Get blank looks from the volunteers. After much discussion, get directed to a portable restroom, which doesn't alarm me. This isn't the first LDS temple open house I've been to, after all, and the facilities are uniformly clean and sweet smelling. (We put a lot of effort into making these things nice.)

Open the door and walk into the nastiest, filthiest public bathroom I've ever seen. Nowhere to lay the baby down but the floor and I didn't even want to set a foot on that floor, much less my baby. Obviously the volume of visitors has overwhelmed the small Mormon community in the area. Go back to the volunteers. I am worrying about missing the scheduled time for our tour. More confusion and blank looks from the volunteers. Impossible and ridiculous suggestions. I give up (she's only wet) and we get in line.

Ask another volunteer several minutes later, when we are nearly at the head of the line if there is anywhere to change a baby. Well, maybe. Back there? He thinks? Checking it out would mean losing our place in line, possible losing our chance to see the temple, all on the weight of a "maybe". Decide to take my chances with the perceptibly loaded diaper, but feeling increasingly frazzled and unhappy. Not to mention, the baby is heavy. I'd pass her to her father, but if her diaper goes, my dress is easier to clean than his suit.

More waiting in another line. We finally get in the temple. I am too upset and distressed, too worried about the baby's diaper to enjoy the once in a lifetime experience.

And then it happens. The diaper hits critical overload and a long line of liquid splashes down my dress. Luckily the absorbent fabric of my skirt catches it all. The brand new carpet I am standing on (back aching) is safe and dry.

I am ready to burst into tears.

We finish, go back out. See another volunteer, ask again about a place to change the baby. Get directed down a long staircase, to the first bathroom. Back aching, dress stinking, feet hurting, I look at those long stairs, then lose it entirely and give the poor young woman the most venomous glare and refusal I have ever given anyone in my life, frightening her and causing my husband to look at me as if I have lost my mind.

Sit impatiently and angrily through TBC and my husband eating something sweet. Frantic to get back to the car, where I can finally change the baby. Finally, finally, FINALLY!!! get to change the baby. Trying not to be angry on the way back to the hotel. Trying not to ruin the experience for TBC and my husband. Not succeeding.

The baby finally started sleeping a little on the trip back, but I still can't think about that trip without getting angry and weepy over it. And while we'll talk sometimes about the previous summer's trip to Kirtland, no-one ever brings up the Nauvoo trip.

It was years before we traveled for fun again.

I ran across a link to this and decided to participate. It's 12 weeks, so that's three months of hopefully not pulling a blank on what to blog about. Right? Maybe?

First Day Homework Assignment: ~ Write a page about you. Introduce yourself. Prompt: If you were a character in your own book, what would your name be? Describe your inner self and your outer self. Prompt: "He saw her sneak into the classroom. She was ____, but he could tell she was____. . ."

Tough one. I chose it several minutes ago and I've been doing all kinds of avoidance surfing since.

OK! No more avoidance!

Jennifer

She had always seen her name as common, but herself, the essential Jennifer inside, as un-. As the years went by, however, and life's stressors increasingly left their mark on her face and body, she realized she was becoming invisible, just another overweight, middle-aged woman, easily tabulated and dismissed by the people she passed in the store or on the street.

When she was younger she'd fought - and thought she'd won - a battle with her self-image. Now, after only a few years respite, it was creeping up on her, worse than before. It was upsetting to look in the mirror and see just another dowdy, dumpy over-the-hill-type. It wasn't the person she expected to see there. That person was 15 years younger, intelligent, interesting. She had one chin, firm triceps, and no incipient lines shadowing her upper lip.

In self-defense, she started to avoid mirrors - a neat trick considering a giant mirror (longer than she was tall) nearly covered one wall of her bathroom. Naturally it was directly across from the shower.

The secret was to slide your eyes to the left as you undressed, staring at the Mr. Clean MagicReach where it stood propped in the corner where the tub and closet met. Take your glasses off before you turn toward the counter, keeping your eyes down lest you see even a blurry silhouette. She was safe once she was in the shower. There were no reflecting surfaces worth noticing there, and afterward steam covered the mirror.

Inside, she knew, she was still intelligent, still creative. She was capable, competent. But when she looked in the mirror and saw that fat, stupid face, dull, uninteresting, old, it was hard to remember what she really was. So she didn't look.

I've been reading Kira's blog, Kiwords, for years. Not only is she a brilliant writer, it's a fascinating glimpse into life with little boys, something of which I know very little. (The Boy Child was no longer particularly little when his father and I married.)

In Kira's latest post (about triumphing over a video game that had given her trouble) she says:

"Can I try now?" Raphael wanted to know. "Can I have a turn?"

But no, he couldn't because it was bedtime.

I immediately visualized how a statement like that would go over in my estrogen laden household, and I couldn't help but wonder if boys react anything like girls to being told, "Sorry, but it's bedtime. Fun's over. Go brush your teeth."

Is there an immediate emergency siren-like wail of despair? Stomping? Inadequate teeth-brushing as a way of punishing the mean mommy?

Do they lurch as they stomp, physically overcome by the cruelty of the world until they cannot walk without throwing themselves about, reeling side to side, backward and then forward with every step? Are there slammed doors? Is there earsplitting weeping, sufficient to make the dead wince and cover their ears?

Is there prolonged sulking once the initial dramatics are over? Pouting as they throw themselves onto a corner of the couch, staring blankly at the TV screen? Can you see a recounting of past wrongs done to them flickering across their little faces? Do they slump over with groans of despair and anguish to lie obstructively across the couch so that no-one else can sit down?

Do they yell at their siblings?

Am I going through all this because I have girls, or because I have children? TBC was not inclined to dramatics until he became a teenager. If the girls increase the drama by the same percentage that TBC did ...

Wow. Ummm - can I just go hide in a hole when that happens? Please?

I'm trying to figure out where I got this song from. I think I remember my mother singing it to us when I was a kid, but the memory is fuzzy. I started singing it to my children in the mornings when I was getting them out of bed, several years ago.

Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning I say!

Good morning!
Good morning!
And have a good day!

Is anyone (siblings o' mine, chip in, please!) familiar with this song? Did my mother make it up, or did it come from some longer song?

I'll ask her, too, but honestly, I doubt she'll remember. She tends not to remember stuff like that.

I need to blog. I really, really do. I have neglected the blog shamefully for the past couple of weeks. And I have things to say, I really do. In fact, I've taken to noting them down, listing the ideas as they hit me.

Someday I might actually do something with those ideas. Today, however, and probably for the next little while to come, every time I sit down to write all I can think about is, "School! My baay beee!!" and then my stomach gets all tight and I have to fight off tears.

I am such a wimp.

But, oh! She is so soft and cuddly and warm! She fits so perfectly on my lap. She is going to be gone All Day Long. She will come home talking about friends who are only names to me. She will have all sorts of experiences that I will never know about. She will have problems and have to solve them all by herself, because I won't be there.

This is good for her. This is good for her. Keep chanting that, Jennifer. This is good for her!

It just stinks for me.

Because I am a wimp.

Yes, yes, I have mixed feelings about Youngest Girl Child going off to school. We all knew this was coming. No matter how excited I get about once again having a life that does not involve being continually on stage, having to scrutinize myself constantly to assess the example I am presenting, I am still letting my baaay beeee! (sob) go away from me for hours and hours a day, five days a week, into the care of strangers who will surely not care nearly as much about her sensitive nature and tender heart as I do.

And today I found out that it's all going to be four hours a week longer than I thought it would be.

I still haven't gotten anything telling me who YGC's teacher will be, so I was nosing around the school district's website, trying to find out if the letters have gone out yet. I noticed the new bus schedules were up, so I clicked on it to confirm what time the bus will hit our stop, and if the stop is going to be in the same place as last year.

The bus will be using the same stops as last year. The pick up and drop off times have changed dramatically. The girls will have to be at the bus stop 20 minutes earlier in the morning. They will be dropped off 30 minutes later. That's an extra 50 minutes a day on the bus.

It wouldn't be so bad, except that my kids are one of the first stops in the morning. In the afternoon, the bus takes the same route, in reverse, which means my kids are one of the last stops in the afternoon. In other words, the bus turns left in the morning, after entering the subdivision, and right in the afternoon, so that the kids who get picked up last in the morning are the kids who get dropped off first in the afternoon.

This annoys me. Very, very much. I intensely dislike how much time the schools claim out of my childrens' lives as it is, and now they're taking another hour a day. For no good reason! It's not like I can't make good use of this time. I've got quite a bit for them to do every day, and only so long before bedtime to get them through homework, chores, outside play time, dinner, and family socializing. I'd like to start Oldest Girl Child on piano lessons this year, which adds another daily commitment. And how am I supposed to find the time to let them take some other kind of lessons, like ballet, without pushing bedtime back - which I am not willing to do?

I'll have to think this over for a few days, make sure I'm not emotional about it anymore, and then maybe call the school district and ask them to reconsider the first on / last off thing. Could we at least have the first kids on in the morning be the first kids off in the afternoon?

One of The Boy Child's best friends is getting married, so I've been going through the loving couple's online registry this afternoon gauging how much we can afford to spend on a present (and rather surprised at the modesty of their list - the most expensive thing on there is a $100 vacuum.)

Funny story - years and years ago, before dinosaurs walked the earth, I had a roommate who was getting married. She was in college and all our friend were either in college or working for minimum wage. In other words, everyone we knew was as broke as we were. The week she got married there was a sale on drinking glasses (six to a package) at one of the local discount stores. Sure enough, when she was opening presents after the reception she found that she'd gotten 14 dozen sets of glasses! (And boy, wasn't I relieved I'd gotten something else? I actually had considered those glasses ...)

When The Love of My Life and I got married we kept things very small. We weren't even planning on having a reception, but a friend decided we needed to have one and threw us a small open house at her home. We wound up getting something like 10 presents out of it, several of which were broken. It wasn't a statement on anyone's feelings about the marriage, honestly. It was just a funny coincidence. To this day I have a beautiful cobalt blue pottery bowl with a long, thin crack in it that I am very careful to never use for anything heavier than dried flowers.

Do you have any funny wedding present stories? Share them in the comments!

So we wound up getting the new transmission instead of the used one, because we realized we didn't know how many miles would be on an old transmission and what was the use of getting the transmission replaced if we were just putting in something that was also going to run out of miles soon, too?

Which turns out to be a good thing.

Yesterday, driving home from church, the car gave a huge jerk / lurch. I thought I'd hit something - something big, like a log in the middle of the road. I looked in the rearview mirror to try to see what I'd just run over, but saw only the car behind me (way too close - my momentary hitch had caused them to nearly hit me.)

I drove on for a little bit, feeling that premonitory "How expensive is this going to be?" churning inside. Sure enough, when I had to slow down a few blocks later I heard strange noises as I tried to get back up to the speed limit. Which is when I started sending loving thoughts to my fantastic mechanic, who had urged us to get the new transmission with the 3 year / 100,000 miles / all parts and labor covered warranty.

Because it was the transmission. Yeah. The transmission. Not the engine. No, no, no, no, not the engine.

I made it safely home (hooray!) but when my beloved tested the car later he confirmed that I'd been lucky not to be stranded by the side of the road. The car starts, but it won't go into reverse. Or rather, it will shift into reverse, it just won't move. He didn't check to see if it would go forward - we have enough problems without crashing into the house.

All of which leaves me sitting here, waiting for 8 a.m. so that I can call our mechanic and arrange to have a tow truck come pick up my poor van.

It was two weeks to get it back last time. We have 3 1/2 weeks of summer vacation left. So much for fun day trips. I guess we'll spend a lot of time playing in the wading pool, instead.

Unscheduled time is good for kids, right? Right?

"Beyond the wall, the waves picked up light, rolled it into scrolls and unrolled it again, like a spell in some forgotten language across the sand."

You might have already seen this, but I thought I'd share it anyway. How fun!

The context: The Best Daddy Ever had been gone for a week. Youngest Girl Child cried every day on my shoulder about how much she missed her Daddy. His daily phone calls were momentous occasions and the Ceremony of Crossing Off the Remaining Days was an event not to be missed, lest there be floods of tears and storms of weeping.

Daddy: (walks in the door, home at last)

YGC: (racing up and throwing her arms around his knees) Daddy! (backs up a few steps to be able to look into his face) What did you bring me?

Emanuel Lupkin, the cute little guy in this newspaper clipping, grew up and had a band. He's the guy standing up on the left. We don't know what the name of the band was, or what kind of music it played (my husband says, "1920s kind of music.") We do know that they did a certain amount of traveling, and that Emanuel played the violin. That seems to be an L and a B on the front of the music stands (? Podiums?)

I have hopes of someday finding an old newspaper article that will give us lots of information about them. We have another side of the family that was musically inclined, and we have information about them from just such a source. I'll post a photo of them next Friday.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

According to Youngest Girl Child, it is impossible for her to sleep, "...because it's too dark." This just scant hours after having told us that she was too tired to participate in Family Home Evening. She was too tired, she informed us, "...because I didn't get enough exercise today."

Recently YGC has taken to staying up until around 11 p.m, which means that at least one of her parents also gets to stay up, as a deterrent to naughtiness and dangerous behavior. (If you have children you have no need to ask, "What dangerous behavior?" If you are unfamiliar with this miniature form of the human species, allow me merely to point out - 1) Complete mobility, 2) No experience to speak of, 3) Judgment that measures somewhere in the negative numbers, 4) A degree of impulsiveness that makes a butterfly look like a tortoise.)

The Love of My Life and Father of My Children has just gone to bed after informing me that, "I'd have had children just for the comedy value." He has been dealing with YGC's excuses ever since her bedtime, while I cravenly escaped to our room, where I spent the evening leisurely reclining upon the pillows, reading science fiction and enjoying myself hugely.

It is 10:30 p.m. Do you know where your children are? Mine is lurking in her bedroom doorway, trying to find a way to convince me to let her come out and watch TV.

My old template broke. I couldn't figure out how to fix it. There was no reason for it to be broken and nothing I tried produced any magical improvements. So, I've given up. I'm going to be working on something prettier and better, but for right now, this will have to do.

Because it's always good when people can actually see the words you've put down on the computer screen.

I ran across this video and the article explaining the story behind it while I was news surfing. Very funny and well-done. As The Boy Child said when he saw it, "Don't mess with talented people."

This group is called Sons of Maxwell.

Alonzo Bryson, Jul 23, 1840 - Feb 29, 1920, and his wife, Valeria Wright Bryson, May 21, 1839 - ????. I found the pictures at the Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive when I was idly Googling for Alonzo Bryson one day.

I was hoping to find information on a different Alonzo, the father of Dow Gilbert, but didn't mind getting distracted with this photo of his identically named cousin.

Here's the thing that makes my head hurt, though:

Isaac Bryson (b 1771) married Jane Carr (b 1775). They had 16 children (that we know about.) One of their sons was named after his father. Isaac, Jr. (b 1816) grew up and married a girl named ... (wait for it) ... Jane Kerr (b 1817).*

You can imagine that with 16 children (that we know about) Isaac-n-Jane the First had an absolute ton of descendents. The family was very fond of certain names, which means that I have to wade through dozens of Alonzos, Isaacs, Isabelles, James, Charles's, Pearls, Margarets, Janes, Johns, Williams, Priscillas, and Valerias, trying to track down which is who. They're not as bad as the Kanatzers, however (another family line), who were absolutely obsessive about the name Elizabeth (oops - have I complained about that before on here?)

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.
___________________________________________

*It reminds me of a family I knew, three brothers and a sister. Two of the brothers married girls named Emily**. Their sister's name was also Emily. Now there's a family that's going to give some poor future genealogist a nervous breakdown!

**The name has been changed, although I would guess if any of them read this they'll recognize themselves.

More financial disaster. Now we need a new transmission for the car I drive. $1,750 for a used transmission (which does not include the cost of labor), or $2,550 for a new transmission, good for 100,000 miles (and the price includes labor).

Except that my car has (last I checked) 88,000 miles on it. Since I don't use it for much - just to the grocery store, doctor appointments, driving kids here and there, much of a muchness - the mileage doesn't matter. If it will last just another couple of years (where have I heard that before?) we'll be better able to afford a replacement. So I need to check on the cost of labor for the used transmission and if it's more than, say, four or five hundred dollars less than the new transmission, we'll get the used transmission. And put a whole heck of a lot of money on our credit card again.

Yep. Two steps forward, two steps back. Shall we dance?

The context: It had been a long day and she was tired.

Oldest Girl Child: (sobbing)

Mommy: Honey, what's wrong?

OGC: I don't want my hair to change!

Mommy: What?

OGC: When I get old! My hair will lose its color! (increased sobbing)

Mommy: (goes into a long and rather frantic explanation of hair coloring techniques, the beauties of graying hair, and a rather sheepish explanation that it's simple vanity that has me coloring my gray)

****************

The context: None. This came out of the clear blue sky for no reason that I can discern whatsoever.

Youngest Girl Child: (cheerfully bouncing on the bed) I'm never going to move out! When I grow up I'm going to live with you, Mommy, until I'm dead! Dead, dead, dead!

Mommy: (thinking that she's going to get a nasty shock on her 18th birthday if she doesn't grow out of this idea pretty quickly)

I made a quick run with the girls to the grocery store last Saturday. They were wildly excited about the holiday and, before we'd gotten past the bakery section, were dashing wildly about playing some sort of running and shrieking game. They were admonished once as we passed the deli, twice in the produce, and again when we went down the salad dressing and condiments aisle.

In the soup aisle, I'd finally had enough. I stopped, called them to me (this took a few repetitions) and calmly pointed out that, although the prospect of fireworks was very exciting, there were a few truths that they were not recalling:

1) Treats and toys must be earned; possession of them is dependent upon good behavior.
2) Bad behavior will lose them treats and toys.
3) The treats and toys (snakes and snappers from the fireworks stand) that were promised to them following the grocery store visit were in serious jeopardy of being taken away.
4) It was in their best interests to calm down, stay near me, and play some game that was much quieter.

Halfway through my list, a shopper near us chuckled. As I finished I looked toward her and saw a white-haired woman watching us with a wide grin. She gave me a thumbs up and continued down the aisle, still chuckling to herself.

I was left feeling relieved I'd kept my temper and hadn't threatened anyone.* It's so much nicer, after all, when perfect strangers think you're a good mother.
___________________________________________

*I ran into an acquaintance at the store a few days before this, when I was doing our weekly shopping. She congratulated me on how well the girls were behaving. I confessed that she was only observing a momentary aberration and that the whining and fighting were driving me batty. She admitted in turn that she had been thinking of beating her four and then running over them with a truck. Ah, motherhood. It brings such joy. Such contentment. Such thoughts of violence.

Yesterday was Friday, wasn't it? And I spent all day yesterday thinking it was Thursday. But no, it has to have been Friday, because today is Saturday. Which means tomorrow is Sunday, and I haven't even looked at my Primary lesson.

So, no Vintage Photo Friday yesterday, sorry.

Happy 4th of July, everyone! I plan to spend the day letting my children play with dangerous explosives. (Just kidding, darling!)

One of our neighbors goes all out every year with the fireworks. Our little neighborhood has a display almost as good as the city's, thanks to him. So, later tonight, we'll camp out on our lawn with a blanket, admire the fireflies, play with sparklers, set off our own small collection of fountains, and feel smug about not having to fight the crowds at Memorial Park* to see a great fireworks display.
___________________________________________

*Is there a city in the country that does not have a Memorial Park?

Lately, every time I run into an acquaintance I haven't seen for awhile, the same question comes up.

"So, what are you going to do come fall?"

At first I danced around the topic, distracting my questioners by talking about refocusing on my writing career again. I felt like I had to justify my existence, now that my full-time stay at home mom gig was dropping down to nights and weekends. I worried people would think I'd be spending my days lazing around, spending all those school hours watching TV, playing on the internet, and getting fat.*

I've been thinking about it though. As of the beginning of this next school year, I will have spent close to a decade of full-time parenting. That's nearly 10 years of acute sleep deprivation. Nearly 10 years where the longest time I have spent away from the kids was one 24 hour getaway with my husband. Nearly 10 years of being constantly on call.

I have spent whole nights cleaning up after vomiting people, washing load after load of laundry. I have changed more diapers, disposed of more pull-ups, changed more wet sheets than I care to think about. I have talked, talked, talked at my two little ones (I try to make it "with" but it usually ends up being "at"), made them role-play, stood them in corners, and given them time-outs, all in the name of teaching them to get along and play nicely with others, "starting with your sister, kid!"

I have dealt with far too many emergency room visits, involving everything from gushing founts of blood to mysterious tummy pains that had the girl in question writhing in agony.

Mostly, though, it's about being on call 24 hours a day. Let me repeat that:

24 / 7 = Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week = Every second, of every minute, of every day.

All in the service of miniature humans who insist they cannot bear to be separated from their mother for more than a few minutes at a time.

I am tired. And I think I deserve a break.

So here's my official answer to the question of what I will be doing this next fall:

I am going to take a few months and spend them on myself. I am going to finally get to join a fitness club and spend quality time exercising my sweat glands, without having to jump off the machine every few minutes exclaiming, "No! We do not write on our sister with permanent marker!"

I am going to enjoy the novelty of having a house that stays clean for more than 5 minutes at a time. I am going to go shopping by myself. I am going to be the only person in my fitting room when I try on clothes.

I am going to nap.

I am going to play the non-child-appropriate music that I haven't listened to in years, and I'm going to listen to it at a volume that would hurt their tender little ears. In the middle of the day, I will watch whatever TV show I want to watch. Dora and Diego will not be welcome. I will sort toys while I watch PG-13 DVDs, and throw out any toys I deem appropriate, no negotiation required.

I will play loud music in my car whenever I am driving somewhere, and I will sing along with my favorite lines. When I don't know the words I will sing anyway. When I buy birthday or Christmas presents I will bring the presents home openly, not hiding them under bagsful of groceries in the back of the van.

I will rediscover who Jennifer is when no children are around. And when I have done that, then I can go back to writing and being an otherwise productive member of society. But not until then.
___________________________________________

*As if I need to have the kids in school to do all that!

One hour waiting to see the doctor.

Five minutes (maybe less) spent talking with the doctor.

And yet, I left the doctor's office completely happy because she confirmed that Oldest Girl Child wasn't going to die within the next 24 hours, or lose her foot, or any part of her foot. She wasn't bitten by a venomous snake, she wasn't bitten by a venomous spider, there was no poison coursing through her sturdy little system, and All Was Going To Be Okay.

(Oh, hush. I'm a mother. I'm entitled to panic when my child is mysteriously injured - as long as I don't let the child in question know what kind of wild disasters I'm imagining.)

It all started a little before noon yesterday, when OGC ran home from the friend's house where she was playing, hysterically sobbing. She'd stepped on something. Her toe hurt. The world was coming to an end.*

I looked at her toe and couldn't see anything, so I reassured her that it would feel better soon and gave her a placebic bandage. (An adhesive bandage can fix anything, especially if there is a Disney princess on it. Or Barbie. Dora is also good and so are rainbows and butterflies. Just not as good as princesses.)

She ran off back to her friends, but not before complaining that her toe was starting to feel strange. I dismissed her comments as hyperbole. Bad idea. For once, it wasn't exaggeration.

She was back a few minutes later, even more upset and hysterical. Her foot was swelling up, the swelling spreading noticeably from the area around her toe. We tried to comfort her, we tried to get more details about what had happened, and about five minutes after she got home her father suggested Benadryl.

The swelling had spread another half inch in that five minutes, but after taking the Benadryl, slowed dramatically. I called the pediatrician and got an appointment for 3:00, then waited, suppressing my alarm and impatience in the interests of keeping my little daughter from freaking out even more. Her alarm faded rather rapidly, actually, and before long she was expressing her acute disappointment at having such a cruel and heartless mother, who wouldn't let her go back to play with her friends while her foot was swollen.

When we finally got in to see the doctor (whose waiting room was the most packed I've ever seen - she really did not need another patient that day!) she confirmed that there was no broken skin. It wasn't a spider bite (I wasn't seriously concerned about a snake bite, not between her two toes - c'mon, I have some common sense), although it might be some kind of sting. It was probably an allergic reaction, but she wanted us back the next day to make sure it wasn't some kind of fast growing infection. She reassured me that since it was only a local reaction we weren't likely to have to cope with an anaphylactic reaction the next time she ran into whatever had caused this, gave OGC a mini-lecture about not running around barefoot, told me to give her Benadryl every eight hours, and sent us off much cheered.

Her foot is still swollen today, so we are watching movies (The Swan Princess: Escape From Castle Mountain is currently on its third airing today) until it is time to go back to the doctor's office. Hopefully she'll be back on her feet soon. I can't take much more of that blasted swan.
___________________________________________

*Why, yes, she was wearing shoes when she left the house. No, she wasn't when she came running back. Yes, we have discussed this matter. In fact, she brought it up, sobbing out, "I'm never going to take my shoes off again!"

This is my mother-in-law's class photo, probably taken around 1944. She's the little girl in the front row with the black pinafore. She grew up to be a strikingly beautiful woman, as you can see in this prom photo from 1952 or '53. She's the dark-haired girl in the middle of the picture.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.