A Jen Too Many

When I was a kid, getting a splinter was a traumatic affair, fraught with terror, filled with agony, heralded with much screaming and throwing myself around in hysteria. And it was all my father's fault.

I would go to unreasonable lengths to keep my parents from discovering I had a splinter. It didn't matter how big the splinter, or how much it hurt, anything was better than having them find out, because they would insist it came out. Immediately. I think there was talk about infection. I don't know for sure; that part of the whole thing is vague. What's clearest in my memories is The Pin.

My dad, as soon as he found out we had a splinter, would get out the matches, and get a pin from my mother's sewing supplies. He would light the match, then hold the pin in the flame for as long as he could, usually until the metal discolored. This was to sterilize it, he told us.

When the pin was properly sterilized, he would grab the part of our bodies (usually a hand) where the splinter was, and start digging. He had a grip of steel. It didn't matter how much you screamed, cried, and fought to get away, nothing was going to free you until Daddy let you go, and he wasn't doing that until the splinter was gone. He'd poke the pin into your skin where the splinter had entered, trying to catch the wood with the point of the pin, so that he could push / pull it out. If that didn't work he'd go to the other end of the splinter and try to push it out from there. If that still didn't work, he'd use the pin to start breaking through your skin over the splinter until enough splinter surface was exposed to let the pin get a good hold of it and pull it out.

I would have cheerfully allowed gangrene to set in and take a limb rather than have my oh so earnestly concerned father deal with even the simplest splinter.

When I had children, one of the first things I did was buy tweezers. I couldn't imagine why my parents had never thought to use tweezers to deal with splinters. It was so brilliant! So simple! So painfree!! My children, I thought smugly, would have all their splinters dealt with simply, quickly and pain-free. No pins for my family, no sirree.

Yeah. Right.

Just today I went through a familiar routine with Oldest Girl Child. (You could substitute Youngest Girl Child at any point in this and it would be just as valid.) She came in the house, sobbing, clutching her left hand at the wrist as she cradled it to her chest.

"Mommy!! I have a splinter! It hurts!!"

I got the tweezers.

"NOOOOOO!!!!!! NOT THE TWEEZERS!!!!"

I think her scream knocked a few squirrels out of the trees.

After a few tries, I coaxed her into letting me look at her hand. There was a very small splinter, almost too small to see, at the outer base of her thumb. I plucked at it with the tweezers, but couldn't grab anything with which to pull it out. I tried a couple of times before she grabbed her hand back.

"It hurts! Don't touch it! Get it out!"

We wound up soaking her hand for a while (30 seconds) in warm water with dissolved Epsom Salts. I don't know why Epsom Salts, except that it's what my parents used to do when they had a splinter they couldn't get out. I don't think it actually does anything, except make me feel better. I'm doing something! Not just standing there while my child sobs!

After about 30 seconds, OGC decided that it hurt to soak her hand in the water, so we gave up on that. After further negotiations it was decided that that magical cure-all, the cartoon character bandage, was the perfect solution to make it all better.

And off she went, happy again, ready to play.

It is so hard at these times not to say, "You know, when I was little ..."

In this era of HDTV and Blu-Ray, I am still stuck in the VHS age.

We only got our first DVD player a few years ago. Currently we have a VHS/DVD player that I stalked for months before snaring it in an after Christmas sale last year. Since then I've been trying to get all our old tapes recorded onto DVD. Just in time for DVD to go out of date. Of course.

I love technology. I just can't afford it.

In the course of transferring the tapes I ran across a tape my family made when I got home from my mission, 15 years ago. Wow!! What fun to watch that again. I'd forgotten I even had it.

Everyone looks sooo young. And two of us look much skinnier!

One of the things that startled me was how much Oldest Girl Child looks like her Aunt Cannwin. She's been reminding me awhile of my sister, but it wasn't until I saw this tape that I realized how striking the resemblance is. It's not just their looks, which are remarkably similar. They also move the same way. There were several gestures, especially, that Cannwin did on the tape that I see OGC do all the time.

That wasn't the only family resemblence. My youngest sister was a few years older than Youngest Girl Child at this point but there were several things she did that reminded me of YGC. Overall, there is a certain exuberance in both of their personalities that is very much the same.

I've got to figure out to take what I have and put it into a format I can email to all my siblings and our parents, so that everyone can have a copy of this. I think they'll have as much fun watching it as I did.

I don't know if it's a consequence of teaching the CTR 5 Primary class, having two small children in school, or The Boy Child working at the local grocery store (although it's probably the fiendish combination of all three) but I have been sick more often this last winter than I've been in years. It's all very annoying.

Last night, my visiting teacher called, wanting to set up an appointment for next week. I had been feeling worse and worse and all day, and by the time she called I had a raging headache and a fever. When she found out I was sick she was full of sympathy, and asked me, "Do you have anyone to take care of you?"

Take care of me? Huh?

No. No, I do not have anyone to take care of me. I'm the mom. I take care of other people, not the other way round. Now, her children are older than mine. Maybe some miracle happens over the next few years. Maybe one day I'll wake up sick and find my children gathered solicitously about me, yearning to take care of my poor sniffly self. But I doubt it. I certainly don't recall ever doing that for my poor mother.

Actually, I am finding lately that I tend to regard my parents somewhat in the same light that I regard my children. I obsess about their safety. I try to take care of them as best I can living this far away. If I don't hear from them for awhile I start to worry something terrible has happened and I have to grab hold of myself to keep from panicking.

The only difference in fact, is that my children are who I teach and prepare them for a wonderful (I hope) future; my parents are the treasure troves of my past who I'm afraid to lose. I care for my children to ensure their future happiness. I care for my parents to ensure my future happiness.

So as much as I'd like to think I've grown out of the selfish child who demands her parents' time and attention constantly, I must admit that I still want my mother when I get sick.

I find it way too easy to get out of the habit of blogging.

So, what's up with us?

• A major windstorm blew the screen door off our back door and knocked over our mailbox.
• I dug a new hole for the mailbox and put it back up. It has not yet fallen down (yay!) but needs more work done to make it completely stable.*
• Valentine's Day resulted in humongous amounts of candy - and that was just the loot from Oldest Girl Child's school party.
• Youngest Girl Child's preschool was canceled because of the windstorm. Her Valentine's Day party was rescheduled for this week, which will mean another load of candy coming home.
• A birthday party on Saturday upped the calorie count even more.
• We had a playdate with one of OGC's friends from school, today. We met at Burger King because the friend's mother wanted to meet me before letting her child come over here. Everything went well until the very end, when another set of children came in and started throwing ice and food around. We decided it was a good time to leave.

We bought a new (to us) car a few weeks ago. It seemed a good time to go car shopping. It was the last week of the year and the economy wasn't exactly doing so fantastically. We thought this should translate into better prices. When you throw in that my darling was driving a car with 216,000 miles on it (original engine*), it just seemed like an even better time to look into car prices.

We came home with something far cheaper than we had dreamed of, which also was very nice-looking (I'm pretty sure he would object if I called it pretty, but just between you and me - it's pretty), and big, and made my sweetheart a happy, happy man. His old car was loaned to The Boy Child, who had been driving an old clunker with an alarming tendency to stop working at unpredictable moments - always a bad thing when you are driving down the freeway.

Happy, happy, joy, joy. Everything is going well and everyone is pleased, especially TBC. Right? So why am I bringing this up now? Not that blogs are only about bad things, but you (clever reader that you are!) are undoubtedly thinking that since I didn't bother writing about it last January, only to bring it up now, something must have changed.

You're right.

The CHECK ENGINE light came on, and TBC took the car to the mechanic. I just got off the phone with them. Seems like stuff happened, then other stuff happened, and now there are serious problems, with things bent that shouldn't be bent. Fixing it will be expensive. Very expensive. So expensive that the mechanic assures me it will be cheaper just to completely replace the engine.**

I'm still waiting to find out their estimate on the cost of putting a new (to us) engine in the car. The last time we had to do something like this it was $1,000, so I'm assuming it will be at least that.

Is it worth it? Do we junk the car or fix it? My sweetie is sleeping and we haven't talked it over yet. We haven't yet gotten rid of TBC's old car, but it probably needs a new (to us) engine, too. I doubt it would cost much less to replace that engine, than to replace the nicer car's engine. Or we could just get rid of both cars, let TBC use my car to get to work, and save lots of money on car insurance. Of course, I'll be pulling my hair out with frustration since I won't be able to do anything while he's off having fun with his friends in my car, so that's maybe not such a great idea.

I'm just glad we went ahead and got a new car already. Whatever decision we make now, we'll be able to take some time and figure out the best approach, not have to beg for speedy repairs while also begging rides to work. (The last time this happened to us it was our only car, and it took that mechanic a month to get the car fixed. Not a fun time at all.)
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*You might be wondering what he was driving. A Santa Fe. He took very good care of it and did all the maintenance immediately if not sooner. We didn't wind up buying another Santa Fe, but we were more than willing to consider it.

**And I believe him. The best mechanic I've ever had, with picture-in-the-dictionary kind of integrity. Sooo nice to be able to work with someone I can trust completely.

Free is almost always a good thing. Not so good if it's junk that someone is trying to Freecycle in order to save themselves the cost of taking it to the dump, but good when it's coming from Amazon. They are currently offering three free games - Build-a-lot, Jewel Quest II, and The Scruffs.

Just in case Akinator wasn't distraction enough.

I have run into an absolutely delightful time waster. Akinator is a website where you can challenge the program to "guess" what character you are thinking about.

I noticed it is heavily weighted toward things familiar to people in their teens and twenties. The Boy Child introduced me to it, and the two of us took turns choosing characters. He tended to pick people from animes, mangas, video games, World of Warcraft, etc., and usually had his characters guessed. As someone a generation older, who really enjoys books from my grandparents' generation, I found that I didn't have too hard a time stumping it. If you do pick an entirely new character, you get to add that who you were thinking of to the database. I got to add people like Wendell Urth and Valancy Stirling, which was kind of fun.

We have a lot of dolls around here. A lot of dolls. Literally buckets and boxes full of dolls. More dolls than you can shake a stick at, though why you would want to shake a stick at dolls, or anything else, is beyond me. Not that I have a stick on hand at the moment.

Yes. Well. Anyway. Dolls. Lots and lots of dolls. All of them completely and utterly unclad. Nekkid. Shamelessly bare, displaying themselves to the world with no thought of modesty crossing their hollow little heads.

We did have one rag-type doll, a gift to Youngest Girl Child for her second birthday, that had clothing stitched to her soft little body. That was quite successful until recently. Somehow the stitches keeping everything on came undone. (I suspect the use of scissors in small hands.) Now Fairy Princess Ballerina doll has joined the ranks of the unadorned, pink skin showing everywhere, while her dress is lying in a corner of the bedroom. She will probably never wear this particular dress again - it will instead be used to dress mermaids up for undersea shopping expeditions. She will be crammed into ultra-tight Barbie dresses in replacement, learning that you must suffer to look good. It's just as well that she doesn't need to breathe.

I have had to make a firm rule that no naked dolls are allowed to attend church.* Any dolls going to church with us must be modestly attired, in a chapel-appropriate dress. It's actually proven to be a good way to keep dolls at home, since once the clothing is removed from the doll it tends to disappear, making it difficult to meet Mommy's requirements.

We do have one doll that can't be undressed, because her clothing is painted onto her dress-shaped little body. That's all right - a solution has been found! Maybe she can't be stripped, but it is possible to put clothing onto her, for a change of pace.

So I guess we do have one clad doll in the house after all.
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*They are also banned from the store, the DMV, the bank and anywhere else we might that involves being seen by people not in our immediate family.

To be done during the two and a half hours Youngest Girl Child is in preschool:

1. Drive to mechanic.
2. Sit around while the new car is inspected, so that we can drive the freeway safely.
   
3. Rejoice in our legality.
4. Drive to the downtown library.
5. Drive around fruitlessly for several minutes, wasting gas, while I try to find a parking space that is closer than a 15 minute walk away.
6. Sneak overdue book into the return slot.
7. Run away before librarian picks up book and realizes I'm the one who kept it so long.
8. Drive to the grocery store.
9. Buy dog food for the four-legged one (who is currently sniffing with great interest in the middle of the living room floor, making me wonder what secrets my children are hiding.)
10. Realize I've left my shopping list at home and wander aimlessly around the store picking up whatever seems like a good idea.
11. Wait in line to pay for my groceries checking my watch every 10 seconds as I start running out of time to pick up YGC.
12. Load the car with my groceries.
13. Realize I left my shopping list on the passenger seat.
    
14. Drive back to preschool to pick up YGC.

The context: Stopped at a stop sign, on the way to preschool

Youngest Girl Child: I know what that sign says! It says, "Check your brakes!"

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The context: Sick at home on a school day, during the first snowfall of the winter.

Oldest Girl Child: If I was well, I could be coming in right now from playing outside and get hot chocolate!

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The context: Said to Mommy, two eggs into last years Easter egg hunt. (I tried to make sure the eggs weren't too hard to find. Obviously, I was a little too successful.)

YGC: You're not very good at this are you?

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The context: Mommy was sewing at the kitchen table. YGC walked into the dining room, bent over, and stood back up displaying the pin she'd just retrieved from the carpet.

YGC: (with a heavy sigh) Mommy, please be careful with these.

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The context: YGC taking a hard-boiled egg out of the refrigerator.

YGC: (crooning) Such a cute little egg! And all for me. (kisses the egg)

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