I am writing on a derelict com’uter that has a broken letter p.  I can ty’e a p when I try really hard, and ‘ress down on it intentionally. But most of the time, I will be too lazy to accom’lish that.  Sorry in advance. The a’ostro’hes will go as well. Oo’sy.

Well if that didn’t scare away the reader, then maybe the rest of this entry will be just for you, that one special person for whom a hard press of the letter will be made.

Today Pann is thinking about the nature of the egregious task.  What on earth is that, you may ask? An egregious task, in this household, really, is any kind of task that simly must be done, and no matter how much whining one does, it all comes to the simle fact that it has to be done, so it is.  Usually involves something unleasant or stinky.  When you have two kids, three cats, and two guinea pigs, there’s a lot of unpleasant stuff to manage.

POOP.  Not to mention, there is plumbing to be managed. It is annoying how often the larger mammals around here clog up the toilets.

Funny, though you may at this oint be thinking that I am complaining, I actually feel pretty good and I don’t meant to complain at all.  I did several egregious tasks today and I don’t mind much.

The one I really didn’t like was plunging the toilet.  Because, YUCKY POOP! Stinks, you know.

I also scooped the cat boxes. But that was stinky but not as bad as plunging. I also cleaned up my younger daughter’s room, which was messy but not poopy or stinky.  That wasn’t bad, but it is an act of fierce futility.  I looked and even entered my older daughter’s room, but the level of chaos there defeated me anyway.  I don’t know how she feels about it, but oh my. Egregious state of affairs indeed, and not even poopy.

The letter p key seems to be sticking less. That is good.  What is the point of this particular little missive? The moral of the story is, if you have the time, go ahead and do the yucky stuff that has to be done. You’ll be glad you did.

And maybe just maybe you’ll be lucky to have your letter p get unstuck in the process.

Perhaps.

When I was first taking an anti-depressant drug, I think it was Lexapro, I was finding that my dreams were ultra vivid, and much like movies in my head.  They were fully visual, with complete colors, details, sounds, even smells.  They were very real.  I figured that my mind was simply responding to a stimulation due to an increase in serotonin from the medicine.

I actually stopped taking anti-depressants approximately 10 months ago, and dreams were the least of my concerns at this radical departure.  Because I’ve had a variety of symptoms of mental depression, the worst of which were the suicidal thoughts, I took anti-depressants for a few years.  But sometime last summer I came to a place in my life that felt safe, secure, happy, and I began to wonder if I really needed the anti-depressants anymore.

I decreased them, and eventually was off entirely. All was well. I’m still well, and have made it through most of winter, including the difficulties associated with the winter holidays.  I have weathered quite a bit of anxiety about our financial situation– and a big concern that our children would not only have stop going to private school next year, but be forced to stay home THIS YEAR as well, because we didn’t have enough money to pay up on our current tuition.

All of this uncertainty, anxiety and fear are real, and I feel so proud to have coped so far.  I still have uncertainty but things are looking up.

And I’m pleased to say, I still dream lot.  What is the meaning of our dreams? If they are merely the idle playtime of the brain, why do some dreams seem to guide us, others just seem to be there to please us, and yet others make us wake in fearful sweats, grasping for reality as much as the blankets bunched up at our feet?

I woke up this morning feeling sweet.  My dreams had been good, so very good. I didn’t seek reality in the morning light to try to figure out whether a feeling of well-being was really called for.  I just accepted my good mood and went on to make pancakes and coffee.

After dropping off the kids to school, I put away laundry, and made my bed.  Then I had the urge to write, and write and write. Could be the  coffee, but it could be the dreams, too.

Because my parking spot was taken.

I blew my top. I blew my horn.  I got out of the car and yelled at the empty street. I got into the car and sat there fuming. I used choice vocabulary.  All because of a parking space, you ask?  What the hell?

It was an emotional reaction, so there’s part of me that wants to say, hey look, I can’t really explain it.  I was just mad. Really mad.  I can tell you the rationalizations that I have for expressing so much rage.

It’s fairly simple to rationalize this reaction.  You have to know something about my geographic location:  I’m live in a neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia, in which day after day, our particular streets are usually pretty empty and there’s ample parking. This is not true of many neighborhoods in my city, but it is true here. Usually, if someone is in “my spot” I just park a few feet down from there.  However, it’s February, and our street is still extremely cluttered with a foot of snow that fell several weeks ago.  There are two spots on my side street, which are clear of snow, and which are MY SPOTS because I spent several hours clearing them.  Shoveling heavy snow and ice to make it possible to park there.

The custom around these parts is not to park in people’s spots. It’s just considered bad manners.  People will put out chairs, or other obstacles to make this clear, most of the time.  I had recycling bins out to mark our spots.  It turns out that my husband hadn’t put them on the street, however, when he had gone to work, so someone had parked a big pickup truck right in the middle of my hard-earned parking places.

What particularly made me angry was the fact that a driver of such a large, rugged truck with its large, rugged wheels really should not have had much trouble parking on the un-claimed, poorly cleared, icy areas on the other side of the main street.  He or she did not need to park on my clear, dry, parking spots. Yes, spots. For this truck had not only taken up ONE space, no indeed. He or she had parked in such a way as to block BOTH of them. It made me unreasonably angry.

I had my tantrum in front of my two girls. My girls rarely see me angry.  Sure, there’s the occasional spat with my husband.  Or I get peeved about politics or other idiocy. But they hardly ever see an example of my on a full-on, furious, demon-like rampage.  I was beyond agitated. I was loud, and outrageous. I wrote a nasty note, which my seven year old read over my shoulder.  She commented that she wouldn’t say the note out loud as it evidently contained a word which she’s not supposed to know, let alone use.

Smart kid.

But now, it’s quite a few days since my tantrum, and I’m thinking it all over, trying to see what part of the human condition is illuminated by all that noise and bluster. I simply didn’t need to make such a big deal over having to park somewhere else. There was another place to park, after all, even though it was trickier, further from home and covered with a dangerous, slippery, pile of ice.  But I did, because I just felt like I had to, express that rage.

I’ve gone through a range of emotions while processing my own “bad” behavior.   I was self-righteous at first, because I am a hard worker and I shouldn’t have had to work for some jerk to take away my hard-earned prize. I was embarrassed, after a bit, because of making such a fuss.  But now I’ve come to the new rationalization, that I did myself some good that evening.  I let myself and my kids know that when I feel, really feel mad, that I can express that emotion.

I can let it out, and then let it go. Let it out, people.  And then let it go.  That’s is the moral of this blog post.

You can look around at the goings-on and let out a complaint.  Here are some fabulous examples of complaints, taken from real life:

“Ugh, my jeans are too tight.”

“I don’t have any clean underwear.”

“This dinner tastes too spicy.”

“I am sick and tired of all the snow. Can it be spring now?”

These and many more, and variants therein, I am sure you may have heard, or uttered, or at least thought.  I know that they are familiar and comforting to me in some way.

The best part of letting yourself complain, is that having voiced your discontent, it now gives you a direction in which to take your onerous situation.

Whining is a special type of complaining. It goes from merely stating the matter of discontent and takes it on the offensive. Now it’s time to take your complaint, and make the other people around you suffer, too! Just whip out the whining and you can punish those around you who are probably responsible for your misery anyway!

If you are someone who works with children, as I am, you will likely be familiar enough with whining at the pinnacle of its form, so that you will not be in need of any further example. Besides, making specific examples of whining in which they can be differentiated from the odd complaint is more difficult in written text. It would require a fair amount of inflection, for whining is that linguistic equivalent of the old fingernails-on-blackboard sound one hears in old fashioned classrooms.

In my work with children, both in a school setting and at home with my own daughters, I have to admit, it can be challenging responding to and dealing with complaints. Whining complaints are the worst, however.  If you work with kids enough, you may find that you grow either more immune to the pain of whining, or perhaps instead you grow less tolerant of it.  I think there are days when I lean one way, and other days when I go the other direction.

Whining from adults is the hardest to tolerate.  Complaints, on the other hand, are merely a call to action.  No matter who it is initiating the complaint, this is a function of human critical thought. It can be acceptable, even desirable, but only when the complaint is followed up with action of some sort.

I myself like to complain a bit now and then, as it reminds me and motivates me to do stuff. The lack of clean underwear can spawn some flurry of trips to the basement to wash clothing.  The tightness of jeans could inspire me to lay off sweets for a while.  Indeed, I encourage everyone out there to complain a bit.  And then LISTEN to yourself.  Whatever it was that bugged you enough to complain, do something about it.

But, please, don’t whine. At least not where I can hear you!

You know, I really can be distracted rather easily sometimes. I know I opened up this website so I could write about something that was in my mind. Then I saw the TITLE area and lost my train of thought. I started to write: Beautiful Summer, and Life in the Slow Lane, and Birthday Blues, and… well then I thought all of those were fairly nice titles but have nothing to do with what I wanted to write about.

Which was?

Yeah, I’m easily distracted. This is something of a running joke in our household. Which one of us has the ADD, again? The one thing I keep coming back to which makes me deny having ADD (or ADHD, if you prefer) is that I made it all the way through college and grad school without any medication or treatment for ADD. That was six long years of being educated— lots of papers all handed in on time, lots of exams prepared for and taken, no incompletes, no withdrawing from classes… So, that makes me think there’s no way I could really have this disorder and still get by. And with a 4.0 GPA in grad school– and a 3.7 GPA in college.

Or maybe I just do well at school stuff. Is the single-minded structure of go-to-class, do-your-homework enough structure to make me succeed? I don’t know, really, but I am proud that I was so good at school.

My attitude fluctuates greatly. My default setting is “I can do anything I set my mind to.” Of course, I know that’s not exactly true. There are some things I probably cannot accomplish, but that would probably also be the fact that I don’t WANT to put my mind to them.

Today I want to put my mind to putting down some adhesive tiles in my children’s bathroom. I’m going to cover over the old tiles that are there, because they are cracked and incomplete, with sections of the floor that is just kinda grungy cement. I would take a before and after picture, but yesterday Carla and I managed to break my digital camera. Maybe I can borrow a camera from someone else, though.

I asked Drob if he was okay with me putting down these adhesive tiles over the floor in there, because they aren’t exactly high quality. They are pretty, though. I figure it’ll make an improvement, maybe last a couple of years. Maybe by then, we’ll have enough money to really fix up the bathroom for real.

He said, “Hmm… you might find it difficult.”

“Meh!” was my response. Difficult? Pshaw. I don’t think so!

What’s difficult is getting organized, getting a shower, finding all the things I need to do it, cleaning the floor before applying the tiles, finding a good cutting tool to trim them to the right size. Once I do all that, I’m gold. It’s gonna be a cinch.

Carla is turning nine on Saturday. We’re going to have one of my favorite kinds of birthday parties: Low key, low tech, getting down with nature at a park with a creek nearby. We’ll wade in the creek, eat watermelon and cake, hang out and chat, maybe do a pinyata. And that’s all. Easy.

I like easy stuff.

Easy stuff? Okay, now I know what to title this entry, incoherent though it may have been.

That sentence is not a healthy one — hang on a minute while I take it out back and shoot it to put it out of its misery.

There.

Starting again now.

I have had the chance to spend some nice long chunks of time with each of my girls. Carla and I went shopping together, and doing other errands in a leisurely way on Sunday. Then on Monday, Carla was at camp, so Annie and I got to cuddle and watch a movie together. By evening, Annie and I were on our way to New York to visit my mom, and in preparation for going to the funeral this morning. On the drive up to NY, Annie suddenly said pensively, “I hate what we’re doing right now.”

Alarmed, I replied, “What, just sitting in the car waiting for the time to pass so we can get to Nonna’s house?” I figured she was probably just getting bored stiff.

“No, not that,” she answered. “I just hate that our car is polluting as we go.”

I’m back home now. I missed my big girl (Carla) but I really did enjoy getting some time just with Annie. Annie is so ridiculously chatty and sunny, her personality is shiny and bright as a new copper penny. She bursts with song, stories, and creativity. It can be a little daunting, I guess, for the uninitiated.

But luckily I am her Mommy. So I’m prepared to appreciate her endless prattle (oops, I mean, fabulous gift of the gab), as well as her harmonica playing (don’t knock it till you’ve heard it!), and she is quite the singer / songwriter. Said Annie, “Ok, Mom, I’m going to play you some harmonica songs now, and you’re going to have to listen, cause you’re my Mommy!” Can you say CAPTIVE AUDIENCE?

It was really fun actually, riding home from NY today in the car, with her in the backseat. We hit some rather heavy rain, and she decided that was because of Mother Nature crying her heart out over global warming, harmful pollution, and the passing of my Aunt Aileen.

She decided that the only way to calm Mother Nature’s nerves was to sing to her. So we sang. And we sang, and we sang some more. Singing in the Rain, Raindrops keep Fallin’ On my Head, Robin in the Rain, Yellow Submarine, Red Red Robin, Bushel and a Peck, Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, Her Majesty, Clementine, You are My Sunshine…. and more. I was so pleased to be able to remember the words, or most of them!

I actually really love singing in the car. (When Carla is in the car with me, she tells me to be quiet, that I give her a headache. Annie, by contrast, eggs me on, and sings along when she knows the words.)

Anyway, when we finally had passed through the cloud burst and out the other side, Mother Nature rewarded us mightily with a beautiful rainbow. The huge wonderful kind that any happy child colors over and over and over again in their notebooks. We sang our hearts out even more after that. It was really stunning. I kept having to make myself focus on the driving. So we sang even more. Rainbow Connection, Somewhere over the Rainbow, and LOTS of renditions of You Are My Sunshine.

Annie is really sensitive, in a lot of ways, but she’s also a pretty happy kid. Carla is more of a mystery to me, and keeps a lot of her thoughts to herself. When the three of us are together, the two of them interact MUCH more with each other than with me directly. I butt in to their little arguments when they get out of hand, or get on my nerves a bit much.

And so, it’s very nice to have had these individual times with each of them. I look forward to figuring out more ways to work individual attention time into our schedules. I feel much closer to each child, as a result of the time we spent together. This should not come as a surprise to me, but yet it does. It is really eye-opening to think that these children, as vital to me as they are, haven’t gotten much special Mom Time all year long, even though they are with me for hours. The poor dears have to share me, not only with each other, but also with a dozen or more of their peers.

I really must think about ways to make this better for them next year. Sigh.

She lays down in bed, and takes the squishy thing into her arms and pulls it close to her. She squeezes it, and hugs it in a cozy and loving manner. This is what she calls “clinging” to the pillow. Sure, sometimes she takes the stuffed animal of her choice to bed with her, bestowing upon “Calico” (a cat), or “Cloe” (a bear), or
“Sammy” (penguin), or even sometimes “Steel” (a labrador puppy), her good graces and unmitigated kid love. But the hot pink pillow remains a constant in her bedtime clinging routine.

The other constant is wanting snuggles. From me, or if that’s not an option, Drob is another acceptable snuggler. Tonight she waited up for me to come give her snuggles. It was late; with my work schedule and such this week, we didn’t eat dinner until well after 8 PM, perhaps even after 9. We gorged ourselves on this fantastic rhubarb cobbler and Drob read from the chapter book we are currently engrossed in (Peter and the Star Catchers).

So it was quite late when bedtime came, about 10:15PM. I was bustling around (I’m in a really really good mood, though I can’t really say why) and I didn’t want to go snuggle right away. I figured that with how late it was, and what a long busy day, that her eyes would shut and she’d be out cold before her head even hit the pillow. Or at least as soon as she started to cling to her pink pillow.

She called out to me, from her room, however, asking for snuggles. I bustled five more minutes, wanting to get the most out of my unusually high energy level. Walking down the hall to put away some stuff in the linen closet, she heard my footsteps and called out to me again.

“I’m WAITing here, you know!”

I was very surprised that she was still awake. I finished putting away the sheets and towels and walked over to her room.

I laid down on her bed, and drew her into my arms. She was clinging her pillow, and I was enveloping her into my arms. She told me, “Ah! You’re clinging me!” I was, too, I was holding her in a tight kind of snuggle, all wrapped up safe and close in my arms. She had her pink pillow in her arms, cozy and secure. I realized that for her, the clinging she does to her pillow is a kind of replica of the kind of snuggles she wants from me.

“Mommies are better for clinging than pillows, I guess,” I told her. She answered, “yeah and they smell better than pillows, too.” This is not surprising, especially since her cling-pillow is one which doesn’t have a pillow case to keep it fresh!

I laid there, and held her as she fell asleep. In the dim light coming from the hallway, I could see her sweet features up close. Her eyes, closed, I could see her black eye lashes resting on her soft pink cheeks. I could see the tenderness of her clinging to her pillow, and watched as she slipped deeper into sleep. Her grip on the pillow relaxed– she was clearly getting some good rest.

How much longer will I be able to hold her and watch her fall asleep, content and safe in my arms? I am a little sad that I don’t still do this with Carla, her older sister. I think I still would snuggle Carla to sleep if only a) she didn’t have a loft bed or b) if she didn’t wet the bed. Carla is a kid who seems to want extra physical affection. She still loves to sit on my lap and get lots of hugs, and piggy back rides. I make a point of giving her the opportunity for physical closeness, because I know that eventually she’ll want more distance as she becomes more of a tween.

The tenderness of holding your child as she falls asleep is wonderful. I adore both of my girls tremendously, and I swell with pride at their many acheivements. It’s no wonder that the simple joy of watching them sleep still fills me with happiness.

Now, I know, and you know, that driver’s license photos are always unflattering, right? But PennDOT is kind and wise, or maybe just kinda wise. They let you see your photo before it is printed on your license. You can do it over if you don’t like it. As much as you want.

My first try was awful. I’d tried to smile, and it just looked like gas, or something, and WHOAH, HELLO DOUBLE CHIN! Yikes! I asked her to do it over.

The second try was better, but also looked bizarre. Who is that crazy lady, was my first thought. Then I remembered, oh yeah, that’s me. The smile was kind of rictus-looking, but the chins were a little less obvious. The hair looked okay for a crazy lady.

On the other hand, a few nights ago I went out to a party* with Drob, and I got all dressed up. I even put body makeup on my boobages. Glittery boobages! I borrowed a swanky sexy red dress and did my hair and put on makeup. I can’t believe there are people who actually do that every day! Ok, not the dress, but the rest of it. Everyone told me I looked great (hot, beautiful, pretty, awesome, etc.) That was nice. Should have gotten my driver’s license photo done that night. Of course, that isn’t possible, and there’s something wrong about getting your driver’s license photo taken when you are stumbling around, having had too many mojito’s.

Still, and anyway, it’s good to know that I can clean up nice from time to time. I had the worst headache ever the next morning, but I don’t regret it at all. It’s not like I made out with random strangers and puked on my shoes. THAT would be a crazy party.

*Fundraiser for school! Does that count? Yes, it does, because I got kinda drunk and danced around in a distinctly undignified way.

Yesterday was Annie’s sixth birthday, too. She came to our bedroom in the morning of her birthday. “Good morning, Happy Birthday,” I told her. “Lucky died,” said Drob, explaining my sad face and the little still bundle of black and white fluff still sitting on the bed.

It was very hard to be cheery and full of excitement. Lucky was just a tiny, sick little kitten and there was nothing more we could do for him. Annie was not as affected by his death as I was. I think she just understood, that he could die, from the beginning. He’d been so obviously ill over the last few days. I was ever hopeful.

Still, the bigger lesson is there, and it’s not an easy one. The little kitten showed us that you can care, and offer comfort even when it doesn’t result in a happy ending. I showed my children that you can care, and still lose something precious. Life does go on when there is a loss. That’s an important lesson.

Another lesson here is that when you think about it, you realize that ALL life on earth is temporary. We live just a little while. What will we do when we are here? Where will we go when we go? We don’t know– but we can think about the impact we make on others during our little lives. We can love large. We can offer hope. We can try, and we can fail, but that never negates the trying itself.

We’ve spent over $1000 on this old car so far this year– but that’s a lot less than buying a new car. Carla and Annie think we should get a hybrid. They would rather walk than pollute, but it would be even better if we could drive without polluting when we have to. I think it’s great that they have such a good grasp on this: their generation is the one that is going to be most affected by the planet’s status.

Sometimes I just feel guilty, though. I think that this may be the default setting for motherhood. Better to cheerfully grin and bear it, than be hangdog. Guilty? Yup, I sure am! I’m your mom after all! Tell it to your therapist, baby!

I remember sitting in the hospital just hours before going home, when Carla was a wee little babe on my lap. She was tiny and perfect (to my eyes) and I could see that I had my hands full. I started to think… and cry. “I’m sorry that you’ll have to go through middle school someday, baby!” I murmured to her tiny self.

Looking back, I know that was at least partially those wonderful post-partum hormones kicking in, but something larger is at play when you think of your children as they grow. After all, adoptive moms go through just as much worry and stress and guilt as any other mom. It’s the thought that your child will go through some kind of adversity, and the knowledge that though you are protecting your child as much as you can, you still will see the day when SOMETHING goes amiss.

This underarm odor thing is really normal, and I shouldn’t get worked up over it. But like any little thing, it sure is easy to be alarmed. It’s like a Check Engine light. I can tell something is up, but I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want to make a big deal about a little odor — and I don’t want her to feel like her natural body is icky. But on the other hand, I would hate for her to be teased or just uncomfortable with herself.

When she and I talked about the body odor thing, I brought it up as follows:

“I’d like for you to get a bath tonight. Or, maybe, 8 and a half is a good age to start taking short showers in the morning. That way, you’re nice and fresh for school.”

C: “NO SHOWERS! I HATE SHOWERS. They’re like standing in boiling water rain! NO!”

“OK, bath tonight, then, that’s fine. I noticed that your body is starting to grow and change some, and it’s normal for kids your age to have more body odor, so a bath will help.”

C: “Maybe I should start wearing deodorant.”

Since she’s the one who brought it up, I think I should maybe follow her lead. I will want to research this and find something in the natural products range. Just deodorant, and not antiperspirant.

If only getting my car to work right were as easy. Or solving the global climate crisis, for that matter.

Unfortunately, on the way home the Check Engine light came on. Great!