the sieve of summer

The sweat of summer is upon us.  The late nights that you swear you're gonna rein in once school starts. Barbecues, ice cream, swimming.  It's all good.

Or is it?

Lately I've heard people talking about what the kids lose during summer.  And I'm not talking about teeth or a sweatshirt, which is where MY mind went.  People seem to be concerned with smalls losing academics -- their grip on school and school work.

At first, I started to worry...  What did I need to do to make sure that nothing learned academically was lost for my kids?  What could I do to prevent my smalls from backsliding?  Jesus -- what could I do to stop Summer???

Panic set in.

Then, just as I felt the ulcer starting to form in my gut, I stopped.

Breathe.

Count to 10.

Thankfully, sanity started to appear, like a light at the end of a very long tunnel.

See, forget the smalls.  Forget the backsliding.  Even though the days are harder to fill in Summer.  Even though the months/weeks until school starts stretch out like a marathon.  Even though I really would love to have more of the evening to myself, instead of putting kids to bed, hours after they should have already been counting sheep.  Even though I can't stand the heat.   Or the sun.  (I'm more of a Nova Scotia or London kind of person.) I'm trying to embrace the irritations -- the things about Summer that make it, well, Summer.

Yup.  You read that right.  Because in the end, you know what I realized?

I need Summer.

Desperately.

I need to have a time of year to NOT nudge the smalls.  To NOT worry about what's for dinner, or how late dinner is served.  A time to let things slide, or at least let them simmer.

So, if I'm the only parent who isn't stressing that my smalls might forget something they learned last year.  Well, so be it.  I have the entire school year to help them learn it again -- plus some!

And you know what?  I'm breathing easier.  I'm nicer.  If the backslide is happening,  I'm helping it.

Am I a bad Mom?  Who knows.  The only thing I do know is:

I embrace the sieve of Summer because I am embracing my sanity.

that ain't my baby...

When did my babies grow up?  I know I was there for it, but somehow it seems like it just happened right under my nose and I was out to lunch, or something.  How can it be?  The days felt like they crawled -- with the two hour feedings, the nights of croup, watching them every second for fear they fell from whatever they were attempting to climb, and the dreaded potty training...  How do my smalls now look like real children and not stretched toddlers?  Where have I been???

It's not that I really want to go back and have a do-over.  I'm quite fine skipping some of the Abu Ghraib phases.  It's just that as much as I tried to be present, and even when I was, it still doesn't lessen the sense of the speeding freeway of time, upon which we all are traveling.  Whether we stop, rest stops, pit stops, it feels like we're all getting to where we're going faster than we thought.  This is the little secret other adults older than you have been trying to share with you for years.  The proverbial, "Don't rush, sweetheart, it goes so fast, you'll see."  Which, if you're anything like me, you met with rolling eyes.

I couldn't have believed it, because I couldn't have known.  The journey is so all absorbing, you don't realize how fast it's going, and then when you do, it's too late.

I am so liking who my smalls are becoming.  I'm so excited for all that lies in front of them that I'd be lying if I said I wanted them to stay babies forever.  But there is a melancholia, a wistfulness that is both strangely comforting and yet, uneasy.

Perhaps the comfort comes in knowing that you've been told all your life that this is how it is, so it isn't a surprise and is, apparently, exactly what one is supposed to be feeling.  But, sadness comes with the feeling which makes one a tad uneasy, because you now realize that you've become one of the old people who understands that it's true.

I watched my children this weekend.  Their legs are getting longer, they can reach things they never could reach before, and things that used to result in sulking or a tantrum are now taken in resigned stride.

Time has moved on, and so have we.  Are babies are children, soon to be teenagers, and we are becoming well ensconced in middle-age.  But no matter how big and old they get, they will always be my babies to me...

that ain't free

Let me share my most recent pet peeve.  It is petty, I grant you, and probably not on anyone's radar.  Let me be clear, I wouldn't have the time to obsess about it if I felt that I could do something about the other things that bother me: greed, politics, not nice people, to name a few.

But, I've resigned myself to be powerless over those grand subjects, and I guess my focus thus becomes the smaller issues, in an attempt, perhaps, to rail against something meaningless when that which is so meaningful seems out of my grasp.

So onto the peeve:  free.

Now the meaning of the word free is where the problems lies...  By definition, free means: given without consideration of a return or a reward provided without, or not subject to, a charge or payment.  

You with me so far?

See, when I go to the bank, and they try to sell me some new, better package, usually one of the selling points is that, for example, the checking is "free".  Last I checked, when you make money off of my money, that ain't free.  Nor is it "free" when you require me to keep a certain amount of money in my account so that then I get the bonus of "free" checking.  That.  Is.  Not.  Free.

When I go to the store, and I'm offered a "free" gift (usually something crappy, made in China) if I spend a certain amount of money, that isn't free either.  And we can just do away with the ridiculousness of "buying one and getting the next free," because in the actual sales pitch, admittedly it isn't free, because you had to buy something in order to get the thing in the first place!

When I got married, the hotel told me that they would give us a room, the night of the wedding, "free."  But wait a minute, didn't I just spend thousands of dollars at your hotel for the wedding?  That means that the room isn't free, it's just a nice gesture.

I've now gotten into the habit of correcting people when they feed me this b.s.  I know, it's a little rude, and maybe even argumentative, but I can't help myself.  I get a small satisfaction in watching the wheels turn in their heads as they try to counter me; justifying why what they are giving me is actually free.  There has yet to be a time where my logic is disproven.

I'm not comforted by this as I'd prefer to be wrong.  But, when there's a purple cow hanging from the ceiling, it's pretty hard to pretend it's not there.

So my suggestion to all you bankers, store owners, restaurants, etc.?  Just call it what it is.  It's a charge free checking account, a 2 for 1, or a gracious gesture.

Don't make me feel like a moron, like I have to be manipulated into redefining free, or that I'm too stupid to know what free means.  I know what free means, and all of you, clearly, don't.

Oh, and by the way, this rant is brought to you free, and I won't subject you to a 2 for 1 on the topic.

reruns

My life this week has been one long rerun.

My daughter has been sick for 4 days.  Every single day I think the next day will be the day we will finally get a new episode: health.  I'm desperate for some original programming around here.  This rerun jag we're on is getting old, old, old!

Not only does my small feel miserable (tonsillitis), but I'm not sleeping.  Small in bed + necessary ibuprofen doses = one tired Mommy.

Late last night I finally decided to call a spade a spade and accept my lack of sleep.  I headed downstairs for a little TV.

Why is it, that now, in my fourth decade on this planet, I'm just realizing that it's true -- if you wear a red shirt on Star Trek you're guaranteed to not have a re-curring role.

Middle-aged IQ test?

lists

My lists have lists.  Really, I could condense my life down to a vertical list of to do's, or at least that's how it feels sometimes!

My kids have an endless desire for newer, bigger, and better toys, it seems.  Sometimes it's because the thing they want is really cooler than something they have, and other times, well, it's just cuz they like getting new stuff...

So, when one of my smalls says, "Mommy, I really want one of these...", or "Mom, this is so cool, can I get one for Christmas?" I tell my kids that I'll put it on the list --  and I have the same response to all similarly posed questions.  "No problem, sweetie, it's on the list."  "Sure, I'll remember to put it on the list." You get the drift...

Now, for the details:

This particular list isn't real -- it's an imaginary paper filled with wants from here to Timbuktu.  I just placate my children by making them think their wants and desires are actually being recorded somewhere.  Interestingly, my kids have never requested to see said list -- and I don't think it's just because they trust their Mama -- it's more like they're comforted just knowing it exists.

Perhaps, just maybe, there is something I could learn something from this.

Or,  I'll just wait until that thought passes.

we all want a porsche

  My male small is into cars.  That's a prerequisite for the male part, right?  Anyway, he's into them, and even at the ripe old age of 6 he knows the difference between a jalopy and a "nice" car.  Apparently this is where the car-as-penis-extension thing starts with men, and we have to feel sorry for them, really.  Such an awful disease to start at such a young age...

But I digress.

On the way to school the other day, my boy was commenting on all the many cars he saw on the road.  We saw a Porsche.  Then we saw another...  Finally, after seeing the third Porsche my son asked if it was true that they were really fast.  I told him it was true; they're super speedy.  This was met with silence, as my boy contemplated.

"If they're so fast", he asked, "how come everyone doesn't drive them?"  This caught me a tiny bit off guard, as I didn't want to get into the whole $$$$ of it...  So, I talked about how they were small and that a lot of people liked to have bigger cars to fit more stuff in them.

I thought I'd made a clean getaway, until he brought up that new bigger Porsche -- the Panamera (I had to look up the name), with it's 4 doors and back seat and all...  The bastard!  I played it off with a parental, "hey look, no hands!" maneuver to change the subject.

Suddenly, we both heard approaching sirens, and, as if with perfect timing, two police cars went speeding by -- I mean really hauling ass to try to get somewhere.  I made some annoyingly clumsy comment about how fast they were going, opening the door for my son to walk through...

"Hey Mom, if Porsches are so fast, and police have to be fast to get the bad guys, how come the police don't drive Porsches?"

I was stumped.

"Well, uh, they want to, or I mean they should..."  I stumbled -- aw, screw it.  "Ya know honey, life isn't fair.  There are more people who want Porsches than there are Porsches to go around, so not everyone gets one."

"But they wish they did, right?  They like them, right?" my sweet boy asked, trying to understand...

"Yes, love, they like them.   Everybody wants a Porsche."

the chronological advancement of digits

Yup, the years just fly on by.

Lucky us.

Next week I celebrate my Birthday.

Lucky me.

My smalls can't wait for their Birthdays.  Like, they ask every other day through out the year -- starting the day after their respective celebrations.  The proverbial "are we there yet?"

I, on the other hand, am happy to forget the day, but then it's the damn day that makes you remember.

Sweet gestures from friends and loved ones, 10% off cards from establishments I haven't been to in eons, and no matter how I try to will by mind to forget, my body remembers.  Damn the thing!

My husband's Grandmother confided in me at the ripe old age of 95 -- and she was a tough old broad -- "You're screwed.  I might be 95, but in my head I'm still 30...  Maybe even 28.  It's a Goddamn conspiracy!"

Soon after this, she passed on, the conspiracy over for her, at least in this life.

I keep remembering what she told me, and it does seem patently unfair.  In my mind I, too, am infinitely younger than my digits demonstrate...  Infinitely cooler.  Infinitely hipper.

That is, until I encounter your average 17 year old.  That's when the harsh reality really comes crashing down:

I'm so uncool.

I'm so old.

So what is one to do but embrace the march of time?  But, I will allow myself to wear a new description: Counter Cool.

Perhaps then I can be so uncool, so retro,  that I come around again to coolness...

It's a thought.  Or a dream.

Happy Birthday to me.