A Jen Too Many

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.

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?

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

I went to pick up my new glasses today. After all, Walmart had called me to say that they were ready to be picked up. It was reasonable to assume I could go in and get them, right?

On the other hand, I also though it was reasonable to pick up something on the shelf at Walmart and try to buy it.*

So, there I am in the Walmart Vision Center, watching while the very nice white-haired little old lady who works there is pulling out the box that holds my new glasses. She looks at the contents, then says to me, "All right. I need your glasses."

And I start to take off my glasses.** Then I pause. Something isn't making sense. "Why?"

"To put your new lenses in."

"No," I tell her. "I bought - and my insurance paid for - new frames. The new lenses should be in new frames. Where are my new frames?"

Much searching ensues. No frames.

"Do you see it here, dear?" she asks me.

I look at the two walls full of glasses frames (which have been rearranged since the last time I was there, so I can't even look in the same place) and try to remember exactly what the frames looked like.

"They were $62?" I offer, feeling wildly inadequate. I look some more. There are way too many frames that look very similar to the one I picked out. None of them seem right, though - the shape of the lenses doesn't quite seem to fit the shape of any of the frames I'm looking at. "Doesn't it say anywhere which frames I ordered?"

She shows me the piece of paper with all my glasses information recorded in blue ballpoint. "It just gives a number, dear."

I memorize the number and start looking at the tags on the frames. The format of the numbers on the tags don't match the format of the number on my order record.

I falter at this point, not really know where to go from here. The Little Old Lady finally goes to the computer and looks up the number. It's bad news, though.

"We don't have those frames here, dear. They're gone. You'll have to pick out new frames."

What? I turn and look at the hundreds of frames lining the walls. I can hardly see without my glasses on. Choosing a new set of frames involves getting so close to the mirror that I can't use both eyes at once, much less see my whole face. It's not easy to get a good idea of how the new glasses will look on me.

In other words, I hate picking out new frames. Doing it all over again, after going through the whole torturous process just last week ... My heart quails. I just want my money back. Can I, though? Or has this already wound its way through the insurance system beyond recall or refund?

"Can I just get my money back?" I ask. "Or am I stuck?"

"Oh, you're not stuck, dear."

It wasn't as easy as I might have hoped, but eventually I did get a refund to my credit card. My prescription was restored to me. My insurance will be cleared by tomorrow, if not sooner.

And then I will have the wonderful opportunity of gathering my willpower together and going through the entire process all over again. Hopefully, this time will be successful.
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*It was cleaning solution for my Clorox mop. They came and took it away from me when I was at the cash register and told me they weren't allowed to sell it. When I asked why, they said something about it being recalled.

Really? Because there were no recalls issued that I could find. And the other Walmart in town is still selling it, no problem.

I probably don't want to know, do I?

**I learned to be obedient when I was young. I've been spending the rest of my life unlearning it. Just say no, Jennifer!

It's a cliche, yes, but may I just point out that raising two little girls to be strong, independent, confident women is an uphill battle?

Bratz are banned from our house. They have been ever since I became aware of them, which was well before the girls started asking for them. Once the girls realized their existence, I quickly put them in the We Don't Do That, Buy That, or Watch That category and that postponed the pleas. Now, however, they are old enough to question me, and while Oldest Girl Child tends to be one of those really good kids, who earnestly tries to be fully obedient*, Youngest Girl Child wants to have Reasons. Good Reasons. Because Ordinary Reasons? Will Not Do.

She has actually driven me to saying, "Because I said so! Now stop asking!" which I swore I would never do. (Yeah, yeah, yeah - one more myth of pre-motherhood, shattered. You may all laugh ... 3, 2, 1 ... OK, that's enough. Stop laughing now.)

After getting that response a few times too many, she has decided to attack from downwind, by casually dropping this kind of statement on me:

"Mommy, when I grow up, I'm going to let my little kids (whatever action I have forbidden her to do)"

Today, on the way to preschool, she piped up from the backseat, "Mommy, when I grow up, I'm going to let my children play with Bratz."

She's said that several times lately, and I haven't known how to deal with it. How can I possibly explain to a preschooler that I have banned those toys because of what I regard as a highly sexualized portrayal of women? That I don't want her being influenced at a very impressionable time in her life by dolls wearing ... well, clothes that can only be described using language I prefer not to use in front of a little sponge.**

The girls have friends with those toys. They see the displays in the stores. There are ads on TV. They inform me that there is a Bratz website with wonderful! fascinating! games! I don't even know where they heard about the website, except through friends, which highlights for me that they are moving out into the wider world, and the influences there are not what I want for my daughters.

It scares me, and it makes me angry. There are so many destructive messages out there. The idea that to be promiscuous is to empowered. The idea that beauty is the most important thing about a woman. That getting attention, no matter how you have to sell your soul to do it, is the road to happiness. That being regarded as sexy is more important than having integrity. That moral courage is an old-fashioned and outdated concept. That being intelligent doesn't mean anything if you're not attractive. That it's impossible to have an ideal and live up to it, and you shouldn't even expect that of yourself.

So I talked with YGC about how the first priority of the people who make toys and other products is making money through their products. How they frequently don't care if what they make is good or bad for you, as long as they can get you to buy it. How Bratz look pretty, but represent a way of looking at the world that is bad for her, and has the potential to hurt her in the long run.

She asked questions, and I stumbled through answers for most of the drive to preschool. And when we were done, she said, "Mommy, when I have kids, I'm going to tell them that Bratz are not good for you."

I never know how much she understands, or how much she is capable of understanding. Sometimes I try to explain a concept that seems simple to me, but turns out to be completely beyond her capacity. And then sometimes there are days like today. I don't know what was processed through her mind; I don't know if her understanding is what I would want for her on this subject. But I am cautiously optimistic that I got through to her, at least a little bit.

At the very least, I am hopeful that I will be able to stop fighting with her about it.
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*And, I fear, will wake up one fine morning, sometime in the next few years, with the rebellion switch turned "ON" and my life will suddenly become all, "Welcome to Hell: Teenage daughters and why it is All Your Fault"

**It's hard enough fighting the stereotypes that I have allowed (and now kind of regret allowing.) I had no idea that I'd have to talk so fast to overcome the influence of those stupid Disney princesses.