What the bloody hell am I'm watching?

Oh, wait. I know. I'm watching Ten Things I Hate about You. It's sad and bad and all kinds of horrible 90's angst-y wonderful. Ahhh, 90s, you really made the most out of movies where the heroine was deep and bucking society's conventions and the assholes who tried to trick her, yet later fell in love with her. No, honest, they were really in love with her and they were going to change everything. Just everything.

So, basically, they portray high school the way everything felt, not the way everything was. Sweet. And I only come to this conclusion after four glasses of wine and a pile of nachos. And I'm 39. Crapcicles. This late realization does not bode well for my kids, their sobriety or sense of proportion. 

I registered my daughter for kindergarten and promptly lost it

I'm working from home again, today to get parental stuff done. And as the title suggests, that parental stuff involved registering my youngest for kindergarten. It was so easy and so horrible at the same time.

I brought in everything they asked for and had done the pre-registration online, so all they needed was documentation and we were good. So I got back in my car after the school signed off and I signed off and drove toward home. I started thinking, "Hmmm, should we have her do the pre-k summer school so she's used to going and knows the kids she'll be in class with for the next 6 years? We'd have to take her out of preschool for 3 weeks, but it'd be worth it probably. I hope kindergarten is easier on her than it was on Rags. I hope she thrives. I hope she's not lonely. And I hope....Oh, God! My daughter's going to be in kindergarten in 9 months!" Cue the meltdown.

I shouldn't be that upset. The universal reason children are born is to grow up. But it is bloody devastating. Both to the kid and to their parent. This time next year, there will be homework.There will be less play. There will be the push, push, push to get her out the door, just like we push, push, push her brother. There will be tears about kids who are mean to her.

We'll have to have the talk that you never have in preschool that was so horrible when I had it with Rags: not everyone is your friend. In preschool everyone is called your friend, but that kid over there? The one who hit you or called you stupid? Not your friend. And your teachers won't always protect you, so you have to identify who is your friend and who is not and avoid people who are assholes (even if you're not allowed to call them that yet).

And the day I watch my teeny tiny little girl get on the bus and wave goodbye alongside her big brother (who may or may not agree to sit with her), I will be even more devastated than I am now. Because I'll know that my kids are both doing what they're supposed to - growing up and growing independent - and I'm so proud of them yet so sorry that they're both going to be at an age where a hug and a kiss no longer solves their problems.

I had no idea parenthood - those simple stupid little milestones you don't think anything about - would cause such visceral, violent reactions that I'd have to tamp down. This is way harder than not knocking heads at work.

Oh, the glamorous life!

My kids were asked yesterday what I do for a living. Apparently they told the person asking that I a) tell people who to do and b) read a lot and then c) tell people that's they're wrong and why. When I asked if I do that at home, they said not so much b and c, but yes to a. Oh, well.

What's most sad is that they're not entirely wrong. I usually tell them, "Mommy helps people get their medicine and helps make sure that they get it safely and in the right amounts." Which is true, but apparently I've worked at home enough around them that they've heard me debate several times with government agencies and give technical requirements to our tech group, which I'm sure is way more scintillating than it sounds. Right?!

So right now, I'm gearing up for another fight. Which means tons and tons and tons of analysis. Right now I'm waiting for my laptop to cool down and finish doing it's thang while I take a much-needed brain break and bore anyone who reads this sad, sorry blog.

I wasn't a technical person until 2 years ago. But apparently technical work warps your brain and you find yourself being the annoying shit constantly pointing out how data proves someone else incorrect and demanding to know  how they arrived at their own analysis.


I could be wrong, but I'm sure my kids' teachers hate me. A lot.

Stop it - you're doing it wrong

I was thinking about Martin Luther King yesterday, as many of us Americans are wont to do on Martin Luther King Day. I was thinking, "Jeez, I wish I had the day off, too," but mostly I was thinking about how far we've come since before his assassination and yet how far it feels we're sliding backward. And it blows goats.

This blog is not generally a serious blog. God knows that, between stores of my children pretending to be drunken ducks (should NOT have let them watch that much Looney Tunes) and my sleep-deprived rantings of what a dumbass I am, most people probably don't know much more about me than I'm borderline insane, like Sherlock and really do not like having my feet peed on (I'm lookinga t you, Evelyn).

But even if you don't know me, all I ask is that you do one thing. Just one thing. And that's to do something - anything, regardless of how big or how small - to make someone else's life better. Whether it's listening to someone who needs to be heard or owning up to your own prejudices and confronting them, or just treating another person like they're human, do it.

It doesn't have to be specifically with the intention of eliminating injustice - just with the intention of being better and helping others to be better, too. So there.

Another day, another bottle of whine

Today has turned out better than I expected, though still with some suck-itude. My five year old daughter had to have a cavity filled. I had been one of the smug, "my children drink juice or soda in my home but once every month!" moms, but avoiding the sugar apparently doesn't matter when you strip all the fluoride out of your water with a reverse osmosis water filter. Who knew?

It's amazing how having children will make you into an unwitting liar. Top five best examples, at least from my life as a parent so far:

• "I will NEVER feed my child anything other than homemade organic babyfood." (until I realize that if I do that, I will never sleep)
• "They will never eat at McDonald's." (until all his friends got to go to McDonald's after baseball...except him, until I relented)
• "No formula for mine!" (until I had a seizure, resulting two week migraine and astronomically high blood pressure that made it difficult to sit up, much less nurse)
• "Children do not ever belong in the marital bed." (until our child screamed so long and hard he vomited and I realized I couldn't do that to him or myself ever again)
• "I don't believe in bribes for children. Ever." (until Rags was having his first good day in months when he was going through the "terribles" and I could tell he was about to lose it and just couldn't handle another bout for a couple of hours)

It's always the absolutes the come back to bite you in the ass, huh?

Anyway, the cavity worked out well enough. Apparently it wasn't deep enough to require any anesthesia - no novicaine, no topicals - whatsoever. And our dentist prefers not to introduce needles to children unless absolutely necessary. So instead she let her look at the tools for a bit, showed them how they worked, cleaned her out with the drill, filled the tooth and let her go - all in about 15 minutes. No pain, no apparent discomfort. Did I mention that I love our dentist?

And now, here I sit, "working" from home. Working in quotes because my work is about to reorg again and I'm waiting for more legislation before I can move forward on really anything. So all my afternoon meetings are canceled, I'm spinning my wheels when I should be proactive and burnt out from working 14 hours a day for three weeks with no breaks only to suddenly find myself with downtime. Which I apparently can't handle.

Rant Du Jour

Today's rant du jour is brought to you by the public school systems in our county and this morning's "late start for professional development," requiring me to work from home and lose at least one hour of productivity. The district my children attend is the best in our state, which is good. So perhaps I shouldn't complain. But.

In general, it really chaps my butt that they are still operating as thought it were the 1980s. They're at least 20-30 years behind today's American family. Meaning, more than half of American families have two wage-earners, mine included. Which means that when they just decide to start late for "records" or have no school at all during bank holidays or random Mondays for development, let alone the two week breaks students get thrown in with almost three months off in the summer, it's phenomenally inconvenient and expensive to scramble to find childcare in order to keep your job.

I am lucky. 100% of the employees in my team are virtual. I'm the only one that goes to a local office, so no one bats and eyelash when I just work from home. My husband also earns enough money that, although we take a significant hit, we could still pay our mortgage if I weren't working for whatever reason - at least for a few months until I found something else. But for Pete's sake - if I were working hourly for minimum wage, it seems like dealing with this crap would be almost insurmountable.

No, school is not a substitute for childcare. But, just like any business, wouldn't you imagine that the expectation would be a consistent schedule and standard business hours? From the parent's perspective, your options in the current system are:

1. Find childcare. This could be extremely expensive if you have no immediate family nearby or some other adult or older sibling willing and able to pitch in.

2. Take the random days off, be deemed unreliable and lose your job, putting your household at risk. If you're lucky you have an understanding work place or someone who will swap shifts with you, but you still may carry a stigma of unreliability OR if you get those days off, you're out the money for those hours, which isn't good if you're living paycheck to paycheck.

3. Be considered a neglectful parent by leaving your kid to their own devices during the day while you go to work.

4. Drop them off somewhere free (library, mall, cheap museum, other) to mill around aimlessly. See option 3.

From a kid's perspective, it's awesome that I occasionally get to sleep late or just mill around the house or somewhere else, but during the summer I'm losing at least two and a half months of school, falling out of practice with newfound academic skills and have to then regain lost ground at the start of the school year. Also, perhaps I'm just getting to the point where I'm mature enough to be able to sit still as long as school requires - at this point, I could have lapsed back into squirmy and have a tough time getting back to school expectations (which are kind of excessive given that they diagnose kids with the medical condition of being children).

From a teacher's perspective, I get these days off, but some of the days I may or may not get paid for, I'm still working. During the summer, maybe I do or do not have to take a separate job. Not many people want to hire seasonal workers except retail and a few other limited industries. The kids come back and I have to drill them until they're back to where I can teach them the current syllabus. They still have vacation brain, making them difficult to manage.

So far the only reason I can think of that this "works" is that that is how it has always been. But the thing is, the circumstances that drove things to "always" be that way no longer apply. Kids don't leave cities for months on end to escape the heat. Most schools have air conditioning. Virtually all businesses operate on a five day per week basis with standard hours from 8-5. More than half of all parents work, mothers and fathers. Schools aren't babysitters, but wouldn't it be better, more effective and just plain easier for kids, teachers and parents if schools operated year round or at least with far shorter summer breaks and more consistent hours? Or am I just smoking crack?

There. Done. I'm sure there are teachers out there who can explain this to me and why I'm smoking crack. Though I still reserve the right to be miffed that my kids have a two hour late start the week after they've been out of school for two weeks straight. So there.

2015!

It's a new year. The year I'll be 40. Back when I was my son's age (around 8), 26 was my "cut off" year for some reason. It was the year I'd be truly old. I never could've imagined I'd still feel like I was in my 20s even as I approached 40. Who knew?

My husband will turn 40 in just a few days; I'll follow in November. My daughter will enter kindergarten and my son the 4th grade. At last this year, everything will fall into place. Everything will get done. Or not.

The best I can hope for is that we'll make it through the year healthy and smarter. Hopefully my mom will get her transplant soon, but she seems to be doing ok. Hopefully my sister and brother in law will be happier than they were this year, struggling with a newborn and a little boy in the throes of the terrible 3s. Hopefully friends and family will enjoy a successful, fruitful year.

Hopefully the world will be better and our city will heal and people everywhere will no longer be persecuted just for being them. I doubt it, but I girl can dream, can't she?

Welcome, 2015. I hope you'll be good to us. We'll do our best to be good to you.