Really Puttin' the PUBLIC in Public Library

So, I've worked with the public a lot in my life. Most of my jobs have dealt directly with the public. Well, make that ALL of my jobs. The only job I've had, actually, that didn't put me face to face with the public was when I talked to them on the phone at Pearson. Always, the public. And not necessarily the educated or good-smelling public. Nor the polite public.

Children's Librarian sounds like a pretty low-key, easy job, don't you think? Read to some kids, shelve some books, order some books. Make some fliers, orgainze reading contests, hand out prizes. Book performers, budget and plan for all of summer reading, hand out more prizes. Kick idiot teenagers out of the computer lab for being too loud and rude. Clean profanity off of the windows. Tell old, crusty (and young, crusty) guys that no, they can't watch porn on the library computers and now they also can't come back because we've blocked their account. Bust robberies in the parking lot (no kidding, did this last year.) Answer the phone.

Wait, answer the phone? Oh, yeah, that's right, I'm also the freaking receptionist for the entire library. Because I'm not busy doing anything else upstairs at the library. So I get to answer the phone. A lot. I share this task with one colleague and together we answer the phone all day every day for the entire library. People call asking lots of different things. They want to renew their books. They want to order books and materials through the inter-library loan system. They want to know "what is that one book about dogs by that one guy but I don't know what it's called". They want to ask what the phone number is to the Post Office. They want to know how to file their taxes. They want to know if A Girl Named Lisa is in the computer lab, (and no she's not because we don't take calls for other people, in case you wondered). They want to know if we have an extra book drop to donate to the high school drug-free coalition for their Such and Such Project. (WTH? an EXTRA BOOK DROP?) Real call I took two weeks ago.

As a source of information for the community, I know we can expect some of these calls. But, I have to say that day after day it gets really freaking old. Is this why I got STRAIGHT A's in COLLEGE?? (If you sense bitterness there, you're spot on.) And I think I can speak for my colleague, Derrol, when I say that we both detest the calls that come in as such:
"Mattoon Public Library. This is Laura."
"Uh, you just called me."
"I'm sorry?"
"Someone from there just called me."
"Did you request a book from the library?" (we do call dozens of people every day to say that their materials from other libraries are in and we leave messages...)
"No."
"Well, then I don't know who called you."
"You don't have to be rude about it. Someone from this number called me."
"I'm sorry, but I have no way of knowing who picked up the phone when we weren't looking and used it to call you. But we don't take calls for patrons."

And, yeah, I probably sounded rude. And that hurt a little that she said I was rude, but after answering this particular call at least twice a week for 3 1/2 years, I'm tired of it. We only allow people to make calls for emergencies, but what constitutes an emergency varies from one staff member to the next and I know that people use the phone downstairs without asking sometimes.

So, we get our fair share of Stupid even over the phone, as if enough doesn't walk through the doors every day. Balance Stupid with Needy and you've got yourself a full time phone answerin' gig. These are the callers who call EVERY DAY. That's right, the same people call the library every single day, and we know their voices like we know our loved ones'. One lady, we'll call her "Bonnie", calls several times a day and fills us in on her aches and pains, her woes, her physical therapy, her knew haircolor (caramel) and also tells us she loves us after we've taken her request for audiobooks (she's listened to them all by now) and dvd's (mainly horror movies but lately some documentaries on Ancient Greece and the philosophers, as well). I have a soft spot in my heart for Bonnie because she is a Def Leppard fan. She's only in her 60's but some disabilities have left her unable to live on her own or get out and about. Lord help me if that happens to me and I have to call the library for company. But at least if I do, karma's on my side, cause I've spent hours of accumulated time on calls talking to Bonnie. I'm never sorry to hear her gravelly voice on the line.

Then there are the people whose voices you know the minute you pick up the phone but who you aren't so glad to talk to. The lady who regularly calls on her cell phone from Wal-Mart to request an endless list of paperback crap that she's too cheap to buy even from Wal-Mart. The former hippie who had one bad LSD trip too many who calls to renew his stuff, request books on very random stuff from manicuring nails to how to get an office job, and ruminates about his depression with us. The stinky guy who was stalking Derrol for a while with his computer malfunction issues and always wants a different Star Trek or Henry Fonda movie. The tween who can't find her library books to save her life and who calls for her whole family to renew everything on each of their cards every other week.

And this brings me to the MPL Prize for Most Hated Caller Award: GNC Psycho. It was about 2 years ago now. This guy with an incredibly distinctive voice started calling regularly and asking very, very random questions. "Could you find out who the lieutenant governor of Minnesota is? And what is her phone number?" "Can you get me the mailing address for the Comptroller of the state of OH?" And the best one "Can you get me the phone number for the GNC at the Such and Such mall in Someplace, AZ?"

No kidding. And during one of the first calls that he made to us, I must have been feeling extra jovial because he mentioned something about birthdays and then he asked when mine was and I foolishly said "In February". Well, guess who called back several months later in February? Yeah, and he said "Hello, Laura (and you'd just have to hear me do the voice impression in person to get the creepiness factor, but think The Joker mixed with, um, The Joker, I guess), Happy Birthday this month."

Yeah, so since the library cannot afford to upgrade to caller ID (figure that one out), we had to call the police and have a trace put on our calls but only AFTER he called. We finally figured out that Mr. GNC Psycho was calling from a local nursing home. We called them and they knew who he was immediately and took away his phone priveleges. No more creepy calls.

Creepy visits abound, though. There's one right now as I'm typing this and I've just about had it with this guy. He actually said "I've been coming up here to see you a lot" just a few minutes ago. I was like "uh huh" but this isn't the kind of guy who gets it when you give him the cold shoulder. I've beem giving him the freeze for years and he knows that I'm married and he's still super creepy. The staff unanimously thinks he's creepy, too, so I know it's not just me. He sent the staff flowers for Halloween and then came upstairs to make sure that I knew that they were really for me because I'm his "friend". (Don't tell my husband.) Yeah, that creepy.

I'll save the rest for later. Installment Two just might be about how homeless people now have laptops. Stay tuned.

Life's Little Events

My baby girl is going to be eight next week. It seems impossible. I look back at her newborn baby pictures and I honestly feel like it was a different lifetime, like those youngsters holding that teeny tiny baby are not me and my husband but different people altogether. Those people didn't know anything about babies, let alone babies with reflux, or toddlers who throw hour long tantrums or kids who refuse to brush their teeth. In short, we had no idea what we were getting into. But who does? Who can prepare you for this journey of infinite joy and snot?

Yesterday, Maia had two "eeking towards tweenage" events: 1) she lost her 2nd front tooth and 2) she received her very first sleepover invitation.

Let's start with Life's Little Event #1. She lost her 2nd front tooth during school yesterday. Unbeknownst to us, she put her tooth in her tooth fairy box and left it in the hallway (so that the Tooth Fairy doesn't scare her by coming into her room). We totally forgot about the Tooth Tairy deal until I saw the box sitting in the hallway this morning. She was already up and in the kitchen waiting for Shad to cut her some watermelon for breakfast. Somehow, I got his attention as he passed through the living room and he said "Go cut her watermelon and make it slow...". Okay.....

So, I lumbered around for just the right knife and I labored over cutting the watermelon just so. Still, as I got her a plate for the giant watermelon slice, she very animatedly perked up and said "I forgot to check for my tooth money!"

"OH! Well, here's your watermelon," I offered in a much more spritely tone than typical in an attempt to entice her to stay in the kitchen, but what kid isn't going to go racing to see if she got $ from the tooth fairy? "OK, go CHECK FOR YOUR MONEY" I half-yell towards the back of the house so that Shad will know she is coming. I have no idea if he's found money yet...

She comes back to the kitchen with a $5 bill. Good save by Daddy, and that's some generous Tooth Fairy! (It was all he had...).

Which brings me to our #2 Little Life Event from yesterday, the sleepover invite. Maia is typically ok with spending the night with her grandparents. She has done this so often since she was little that she does alright with not being scared. However, she has never.... NEVER... spent the night at a friend's house. So, now she is invited to a sleepover. And the invite states that any girl who wants to leave at 8:30pm instead of spending the night is welcome to do that. I figured that might appeal to Maia, but she is set on spending the night. It is this Friday. So, we'll see how that goes.

Shad was surprised, as well, that Maia wants to try this. It is a family that we know well, so we are fine with her trying to spend the night if that is what she wants to do. He was talking to her about it when a surprise (yes, Surprise!) #3 Little Life Event got thrown into the mix:

Shad: "Well, I guess if you want to stay then maybe we should find somewhere for Nate to stay overnight too. Then Mommy and Daddy can have a date."

Maia: "You just want to have a date so that you and Mommy can be alone to kiss and have sex."

WWWWHHHHHAAAATTTTT?????!!!!! Shad nearly ran the car off of the road. Did she really just say that??? WTH???? For the love of all that is sacred, what on earth do you say to your almost 8 year old when they so brashly accuse you of wanting to have sex with their mother?

What does this mean? Am I supposed to have The Sex Talk with her now? Do I need to inform her? How do you tell an 8 year old about sex when they still believe in the Tooth Fairy!!!!!!!

I need help here. I don't know what to do. I honestly do not know what to say to her. I wasn't there when it was said... but it sure sounds to me like she has a pretty good idea about It. And I know not to make the mistake of thinking that she can't possibly know more than we think she does... she ALWAYS knows more about EVERYTHING than we think she could possibly know. And I don't need her being the kid on the playground talking about how her parents have sex everytime they have a date (as if). Is that what she thinks we do on a date?? I see that she has the kissing thing and the alone thing down... I guess I need to talk to her and see what she does know so that I can figure out where to go from there.

But I don't want to. I'm not ready for this particular Little Life Event. I mean, can't we have the "Santa isn't real" talk first??? "Mom and Dad are the Tooth Fairy"...... that even sounds terrible. I can't deal with the dichotomy of (im)maturity in this child!! Nobody prepared me for this!

So... any advice??

Going Bananas

Those of us with children in preschool and the early elementary grades know that every new school year these days comes with a new behavior system in place to help our child's teacher manage the classroom (and, conversely, to help our children control their behavior). Every room is a little bit different, but they all have a similar system of warnings that follow a predictible pattern. Sometimes this comes in the form of the ever popular "stoplight" model where students remain on "green light" (or green ticket or whatever) until they break a rule. This is actually the system that my husband uses with his first grade students, and he has found that it's the easiest for everyone to understand, parents included.

This year, Nate is in the 4 and 5-year-old preschool room at his daycare. They have a new jungle theme in his classroom (which is fitting because it seems like there are quite a few monkeys in there). There is a coconut tree outside the door and a tiger roars at you as you enter. Vines hang from the ceiling. And over on the far wall, near the circle time area, there are about 60 little, laminated paper bananas stuck to the wall. Each banana has a child's name on it. And each child has 5 bananas. Why 5 instead of 3 or 4, I'm not sure. But the idea is that when they get in trouble, the lose a banana.

For the first few weeks of school, Nate was losing a banana every day. I couldn't believe it! In the 3-year-old room, if they lost a seashell (or baseball or whatever it was for the season), they didn't get a prize from the prize box that day. And you'd think that the promise of getting a junky prize at the end of the day wouldn't keep a rowdy 3 year old in check all day, but most of the time it did. Maybe once every other week Nate would get in trouble enough to lose the prize box privilege, but not too often. And usually his infractions would happen at naptime, when he wasn't being quiet because (God's cruelest joke) Nate doesn't need a nap anymore. So, when he moved to the "big kid room", I was appalled that he was losing a banana every day.

Well, I finally got to talk to the head teacher and she reassured me that Nate was really doing fine. I guess in the new system for the 4's and 5's, they get to lose one banana and still pick out of the prize box. If they lose 2 or more, though, no prizey. And Nate had only lost 2 bananas in one day one time in the first two weeks of school. He was doing fine, she assured me. Nothing that wouldn't get ironed out as he got used to the new "sticter-getting-ready-for-kindergarten" rules. (Nate does have a tendency to talk too much when he's supposed to be quiet and interrupts the teacher because he has lots to share. )

I'm not sure how I feel about the new "lose one and still get a prize" system. Clearly, Nathanael figured this out right away and has been maximizing his ornery-time to be bad and still get a prize. But I'm not the teacher, so who am I to say...

Then, today my mom picked Nate up from school for us. And, as they were leaving, one of the helpers from his room, Miss Somebody, (NOT the head teacher), stopped my mom and Nate and explained how bad Nate had been today. He lost a banana (but I thought losing only one wasn't a big deal?), and he was too loud at naptime (is this why he lost the banana?), and he also LICKED someone. Okayyyyy. So, licking someone is weird and not alright. Not socially acceptable, obviously. But did he lose his banana for not being good at naptime or for licking someone? And if my son is continually having a problem at naptime, what are they doing to help him? Because I can tell them right now, the child doesn't need, doesn't want, isn't gonna take a nap. Not most days anyway, and the problem isn't gonna poof disappear. And you know what, we don't even want him to take a nap. When he does happen to fall asleep at naptime, the child is awake until 10:30 at night or later. He doesn't need a daytime nap. *sigh*

This is not all to say that Nate is blameless or that he is the victim of a faulty classroom behavioral system or rigid Naptime Nazi regime (although I do think that 2 hours is a bit long to make a 4 year old lay on his cot quietly!) No, I know that Nate is anything but angelic most of the time. He is active and stubborn and impulsive, and I'm sure that I don't want to be his preschool teacher!!

And when I talked to Shad about it this evening, and I reported the licking incident, what do you think Nate's Dad's first concern was? "Did he lick a girl?" If only I had the answer to that...

Why Isn't There More Kahlua in My Coffee?

Wow! That was Michael Phelps Fast.
Summer vacation ends, well, pretty much NOW. School starts tomorrow and we'll all have to be up at the butt crack of dawn to get the children (and their father) out the door and off to school on time.

These are the possible obstacles I see to the new (old) routine going smoothly:

1) Maia's hair/aka rat's nest
2) Maia's inability to choose a breakfast food
3) Maia's shoes
4) Nate's refusal to dress himself or wipe his own tush
5) The Computer
6) The Neighbor's Pool

Ok, so these are the reasons why the above numbers 1-6 will likely be an issue, if not tomorrow, then by next week:

1. Maia's hair is not like my hair. My hair was always as straight as the road home. Her hair is like her paternal grandmother's hair, undulating like the sea and knotty as pine. Unless she wants to get up at 6:30 and get in the shower, we will have to find a way to tame it every day. This typically involves lots of anti-frizz cream and sometimes the straightener. It involves a wide toothed comb and sometimes crocodile tears. I was never good at hair (and any woman can tell you, you're either good at it or you're not). And just when I think Maia's hair is A-OK and cute as can be, she will pull it out of it's ponytail holder or barette concoction and deem it horrible and terrible and no-good-very-bad-hate-it-don't-want-it hair. That is when I walk out of the bathroom, leaving her screaming, and tell her to do her own hair. I'm mean like that.

2. Two years ago, at the beginning of kindergarten I started insisting that Maia choose her breakfast food at night and we would set it out (if possible) before bed. This choice was not to be deviated from in the morning and would save us at least 10 minutes of ridiculous wailing about not being able to decide on breakfast. This worked for a while. Then it stopped working. I'm sure you can see the loophole in the plan. She gets up in the morning and has a solid reason why she can't eat the chosen food then quickly and easily chooses another food and negates all efforts of the night before. Soon, we stop bothering with the nighttime choosing because maybe it will be ok to choose in the morning after all.... riiiiiggghhhhttt. After a week or so, we're right back where we started.

So, now, for 2nd grade, we're not really doing any better than we were two years ago. Last night I went grocery shopping and as I chose waffles, mini-muffin tops, Trix and bagels for our week's breakfasts, I thought to myself "WTH am I setting myself up for?? I should get ONE item--albeit two or three boxes-- and make them all eat it every day this week. Kids in other countries don't have 4 or more choices (cause there's already bread for toast and oatmeal at home!) for breakfast!!" If there is one tear over the freakin' breakfast in the next week, we are goin' on the Outer Mongolia Plan.

3. Maia has a new pair of tennis shoes for school. They are Nike. I am not proud of this. She is supposed to wear them every day so that she doesn't need gym shoes. She has agreed to this. I paid almost $40 for these shoes so that they would be cool enough to wear every day --not Payless like all of her other shoes in other words. And I know that I likely aided in the exploitation of at least 7 Chinese children in the process. Don't think this irony is lost on me. And how much do you wanna bet that one week into school she will have an outfit that "doesn't go" with these tennis shoes? I would bet my next paycheck that we will fight about her wanting to wear flip flops to school within the next 7 days.

4. Nate is starting preschool. He has been going there already for over a year but was in the "three year old room" and, thus, not technically in preschool even though he learned to right his name and all of his letters. Now he is officially moving to the preschool room and must have a folder and backpack and all of that. Something tells me that he will also still be taking his blue blankie with him, which I admit that I haven't tried to break him from because I might just love that blue blankie and all that it stands for as much as he does.

I assume that it is the anxiety over switching rooms next Monday that has him a little antsy about school. Well, maybe "antsy" isn't the right term. He is mainly saying (over and over again) "I Hate School". And then he comes up with a new ailment that he's pretty sure should keep him from having to go to school. The ailment, like today's proclaimed mouth sore, typically makes it impossible for him to change his own clothes. He has also started to scream for Mommy (why is it always me?) from the toilet and say that he can't wipe himself. I realize that a year ago I would have paid good money just to have him potty trained and would have gladly wiped his butt, but the honeymoon is over, my friends, and the kid should be wiping his own arse.

5. We've had the talk. She's knows the rules.

Maia is supposed to be completely ready for school before she gets on the computer. Even if she gets up early. Even if she knows that she will have time to get ready later. Even if it's Mom's late day and we don't have to leave as soon. She is still supposed to have her clothes and shoes on, have eaten her breakfast, have combed and fixed her hair, have brushed her teeth and have her bag and whatever else she needs ready to go by the door BEFORE GETTING ON THE COMPUTER. The latest yahoo buzz about Hannah Montana can wait.

I give it two weeks, maybe a week and a half before we start fighting about it.

6. I don't even know where to begin about the neighbor's pool. But let's start by saying that them having a pool shouldn't be affecting my amount of sleep. And yet all summer it has been forcing me to sleep in Maia's room 1/2 of the time (or more) because they are so freaking loud that it keeps us awake in our room even though we have the windows closed and the air on. Who puts a pool with lights and water jets and a stereo and a fire pit in a yard the size of a Cadillac? Who then proceeds to party until 1AM in said pool with complete disregard for sleeping neighbors?

We are so the boringest people in the neighborhood. But, hey, I often work on Saturday mornings. I should be able to go to sleep by 10 or 11 without a thumping bass or screeching kids or cackling laugher outside my window. I don't live on freaking campus! I pay a mortgage instead of rent so that I can have my privacy, thank you very much.

If they even try to do this after school has started, I will have to break the Amazing Tolerance and Neighborly Friendship Pact that has kept me from saying anything thus far. That will snap the very thin wire that we are treading on right now with the pool situation. One school night pool party will be all it takes because we are all gonna need as much sleep as we can muster at our house starting yesterday.

All of that said, I'm sure it will be a fabulous start to the school year for at least the first 4 days (oh, and soccer season, too, let's not forget that!) And can I just say that at this time of year, when the library gets really quiet... I don't miss teaching at all! :)

Little House in Country Gardens

You know you watched it: Little House on the Prairie, circa 1980 or so. "Pa, Laura's stuck in the barn and I can't see through the blizzard to get to the tin bucket clothesline contraption to follow the rope and blindly save her. Plus, I might have small pox and may not make it through the night."

Maybe it was just me, sharing the name of the winsome, if buck-toothed, heroine of the show, but wasn't it the best hour of television in your 6-year-old week? The way that Caroline and Charles loved each other through the hardships. Laura's spunk, Mary's shocking blindness, Nellie Olsen (Nellie Olsen!!) and her band of snobby, town girls. And if you were an elementary school girl in the late seventies or early eighties, you know you had at least one dress in your closet that resembled something the Little House girls wore. It might have had a high, frilly neck or an eyelet embellished chest. It might have been gingham. It most certainly had a bow in the back. (And you wore it with color coordinated cable knit tights. You KNOW you did!!) Such was the desire to be like the girls we admired on television, nevermind that they were portraying children from the 1800's.

Alas, short of American Girl books and shows, there is now little in this historical/prairie-girl-wannabe genre for our daughters (and/or sons... I don't want to leave them out!) Even though (gasp!), I have never read the Little House books, I do admire them and was delighted when a recent honorarium was made to the library to buy specifically any Little House books that we might still need in our collection. Well, we had new hardback copies of most of the major books in the series, but there are several offshoot series that we didn't yet have and I was able to get about 14 new books to add to our Little House offerings. I made a display of them in the windowsill here on the Children's floor complete with a family tree print out of Laura Ingalls Wilder's female relatives (whom most of the offshoot series are about--her mother, grandmother and daughter). Many of them have been checked out, and I was fairly intrigued when my Junie B. Jones-reading daughter decided that she wanted to try a few of them.

Think about life on the prairie over 100 years ago for a little girl: it's oven hot and dusty in the summer, icy blizzards and illness in the winter. Ma making you churn butter. Pa taking the wagon out to hunt and maybe never coming back. Farm animals making manure to scoop. Outhouses, root cellars, barn raisings. We're talking about as different from Maia's little Nintendo DS hazed world as you can get. You can bet your cable knit tights that Laura and Mary Ingalls had chores on the farm, for instance. That's right: CHORES, aka Tasks that children used to do in order to help the family survive, pulling their weight in making sure that there was enough to eat or that the family homestead didn't perish in a fire or violent prairie pirate attack (they had those, right?) So, maybe just reading about these chores that the children did back in the olden days would be good for Maia, I thought.

In fact, at the same time that Maia got started reading these fine historical novels for youngsters, Shad and I determined that Maia needed to be more disciplined in helping around the house. We've had chore charts from time to time and she'll help out here and there for the odd quarter or maybe $0.50. But, as of a week ago, I'm ashamed to say that the child had no hard and fast chore list that belonged to just her. Clearly, we had been asleep at the wagon wheel on this one. But, it's never too late to start, right? That's the thinking anyway, and so Shad and Maia laid out a daily chore list for her. Do the chores without complaint, earn some cash. Simple as pie. Whine about the chores, do them anyway, earn zero cash. Refuse to do the chores, lose privileges like computer or DS time. Regardless of attitude, chores must be done. Do them nicely and get rewarded. It seems so simple.

And yet simplicity is not a theme that I would ever use in reference to my daugther. Nothing about her is simple. She is no Laura Ingalls, starting with the roughly 20 summer shirts she has stuffed into her dresser drawer, her iDog, her Nintendo, last summer's ebay business, her ability to sight read words like "diminuendo", her desire to give to charity at a pace that will have us adopting ALL of Lima, Peru by 2011, and last but not at all least, her frenzied leap into crazy at the drop of a hat.

Thus, it was last night, three whole days into the new chore list system that Maia Lost It about her chores. During supper. While we were trying to eat spaghetti. Just me and Shad trying to eat some noodles and sauce with a breadstick or two. We had already weathered Round One of Nate not wanting to eat anything but pretzels and were trying to salvage what was left of dinner when the Chaos Ensued. She wanted to play a game with me after supper. Shad reminded her that we couldn't play anything until she had done her chores. Screaming, crying, flailing, the works. "It's not fair!!!" Shad carried her to her room. Now she would not be getting any allowance for the chores, but she would still have to do them if she wanted to play a game with me. (We've long ago determined that taking things away from Maia doesn't work too well. It's the parent time that she is really wanting, and that is what we have to take away to make any type of punishment work with her. It sucks.) She carried on quite valiantly for a long while. Shad actually drove away in the car for solace and to keep from losing what's left of his mind.

Finally, a switch flipped in her and she came out and began to empty the trash. Silently, she went to the backyard and picked up all of the yard toys. She made her bed. It took all of 5 minutes.

Here's my question: Do you think that Laura Ingalls or her sisters ever yelled at their parents about doing chores? I'm pretty sure they weren't getting an allowance for it. Did they say "That's not fair"? I'm bettin' my general store licorice whip that they didn't. Did Ma and Pa have to take away their corn husk dolls when they didn't cooperate? Right... of course not. They just swatted them if they had to and went on with life. And I bet that didn't happen too often, either. And so, given the difficulties in their life, all of the sweat and dirt and flour ground from the corn grown in the soil that they tilled with their one horse ... was it really that much more difficult? Would I trade the simplicity of their day for the craziness of ours? I think I might. We all know how very spoiled young Nellie Olsen was. Has my own child tipped that side of the scale already? Well, she's not mean to other kids like Nellie, thankfully. But the shades of entitlement and disregard for authority are not pleasing to me. And I know that Shad sees this every day teaching school. I even saw it here at the library today in two kids that we had to kick out for spitting on other kids. I know it is not a problem unique to our household, but that doesn't make it ok with me.

Here's to Caroline and Charles and their brood of young darlings on the prairie back in the 1870's. I have to wonder if they took a nip of the moonshine after the girls went to sleep, a chapter left out of the classic tales of innocence.

Nate's ' Nother Family

You hear about this all of the time, a young child who has an imaginary friend. Maybe he's an only child and goes about imagining up a playmate to help fill the sibling void (while the rest of the kids who have siblings go about imagining that they didn't have them...). Or maybe it's something that he's done as some type of attention-getting mission. "I won't eat my peas, but Charlie will. Charlie loves peas." Fine. No big deal, right? It's supposed to be one of the hallmarks of child development, almost a rite of passage to have an imaginary friend. I even feel cheated that I never had one.

I remember when Maia was 3, before we moved back to Mattoon and had The Brother, she was obsessed with watching The Wizard of Oz. And for just a few days, we found her randomly talking to Dorothy as if Dorothy were there with her. It was never a problem and passed as quickly as it started. Nate, on the other hand, has been full of imagination to the point of creating an entire " 'nother family".

It started a few months ago, mostly when we were in the car. He would tell me stories about what he had done that day, and it was all clearly not true. Then he would ask me "What did you do at your 'nother house today, Mommy?" And I would make up a story about what I did at my 'nother house usually involving heroic feats of strength and monster fighting. Sometimes there were bears. And then we would laugh about how silly it was.

Not long after he started with the tall tales during car-time, we were on a trip to the dr. for one of his various infections this past winter and he proclaimed that his 'nother mommy was a doctor. Hmmm... I thought. Ok. He wants to have another mom and she is a dr. Of course she is. I was a little bit perturbed with this revelation but, he's 3, he's got a good imagination, so whatever. Well, the 'nother mommy business escalated into an entire 'nother family. Soon he had tales about what his 'nother dad and, quite particularly his brothers, were up to. When Tara and Hans had baby Alton, for instance, Nate suddenly also had a baby brother named Alton in his 'nother family. And he has big brothers, too. Older brothers who are undoubtedly very cool and resemble some type of superheros, I'm sure. One day we finally asked him what his big brothers names were. Without hesitation he stated that one of them was named "Bloodhead". And now, of course, we all refer to Bloodhead by name. Sometimes Bloodhead is a baby and is personified in his actual boy baby doll and other times Bloodhead is older, like, say, about "fifty-ninety-nine", which is apparently the oldest that anyone in the 'nother family can be. It's a very big deal to be fifty-ninety-nine.

Last night, during a very rare family meal where everyone SAT AT THE TABLE and ATE FOOD TOGETHER (typically Nate will not sit at the table with us... 'nother story), Nate announced some Big News. The 'nother family had all died. We were taken aback, to say the least. I told him that that made me very sad to hear that and that I was very sorry. Clearly, though, Nate wasn't grieving about it and also had no idea the gravity of the situation (having one's 'nother family die, I would think, would be a big deal...). After a brief pause, he explained. "My 'nother family is living with Alfredo. They don't have a house or clothes or food."

Now, Alfredo is our newly sponsored Compassion child from Peru. He is only a month older than Nate, and because he resembles Nate so much, I couldn't pass up sponsoring him. We showed him the picture of Alfredo and Sissy explained why we will be sending money to help him... because he needs money for clothes and shoes and food and his house. Nate evidently really took this to heart and had constructed a situation whereby Alfredo has none of these things and also needs a new family to live with him. I wasn't sure whether or not to laugh or cry when he said that his 'nother family went to live with Alfredo. And the idea that they had to die here to go live with Alfredo.... *sigh* I really don't even know how to get inside an almost 4 year old boy's head, but I think this is a pretty good look at how his mind works. I tried to explain that they could move there without being dead, but I wasn't at all sure that he understood me.

So, this morning, after Nate slept ALL NIGHT in his OWN ROOM (another very rare occurrence... we think there must have been something in the green juice at daycare yesterday), Nate told us that--SURPRISE-- his 'nother family had just been on vacation. They're back from Alfredo's house.

"See," he said to me and pointed to the end of his bed. "There's Bloodhead! And he's fifty-ninety-nine!"

I looked at the end of the bed. "Wow!" I said with as much amazement as I could muster. "Hi Bloodhead! Welcome back!"

Nate leaned over to my ear laying next to his on the bed and whispered very seriously, "Mom, he's just pretend!"

Right. I knew that.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...

I once had a plant, a spider plant, and I named him Sunshine. And he died. I was 8. I think I knew then that I didn't have a green thumb, but I have still held onto the belief that some day, in some way, I will have my very own organic vegetable garden. I won't use any pesticides or herbicides and, thus, will save my family from the harmful effects of the chemicals that bathe everything we buy from the store. We will eat from it all summer and our very skin will glow with the health and fortitude of the earth. I will till the soil myself and harvest the fruits of my labor (or, rather, the veggies of my labor, ... oh, AND fruits, because you know that tomatoes are really a fruit. They have seeds.) Anyway, it will be glorious and I will have enough produce to give away to all of our family and friends and they will say things like "This is really fabulous, Laura. You grow the best_______ (insert random vegetable name here.)" And after a few years of this, we will move to the country and start a real sustainable farm (with free range hens and everything) and sell our wares at the farmer's market.

Yeah, right.

Alas, I'm afraid that this dream can be chalked up to fantasy because I highly doubt that I will EVER have enough time to pursue a garden of this variety, even if I did find the courage to undertake it. BUT what about all of my other dreams. Do I have time for any of them? How do I find time to even think about them let alone pursue them? I started a family at a young age, making it harder for me to pursue a career. And now, even though I am working full time, I am making less than I have ever made in my adult life at this job because we have chosen to live in a small town and because I have chosen not to pursue a more stressful career in lieu of having some sanity left to raise my children. So, given the fact that I am working away from home 40 hours out of every week, I am not exactly making a name for myself. And I'm spending a lot of time away from my children, evenings and Saturdays included, which was never my plan when I set about conceiving and birthing these kids.

But here's the thing... if I have to work, and I'm pretty sure that I do... my husband is a teacher... I love being at the library while I'm working. And when I dissect that--to further examine my issues, it gets broken down into the following parts:
a) I love books because
b) I love to read them and
c) I love words and how they get put together in different ways which is
d) Why I majored in language, albeit foreign, and
e) My favorite course in college was Hispanic Short Story because
f) I love to read and
g) I love to write

AH! There it is... I love to write. And I want to write more than I'll ever want to garden. That's the thing. At this job, I do get to write a little bit. I get to write a monthly library newsletter. Ok, so only 12 people read it, but I still get to write it as part of my job. And, recently, since we are bossless, I have been put in charge of writing the monthly library newspaper column in the illustrious Mattoon Journal-Gazette. Hey, it's not the Trib, but it's my words finally out there for other people besides those who are emailed a link to my blog... not that there's anything wrong with that.... :) Oh, and it's boring drivel about the library, blah blah this and blah blah that, but still. It's there. In the newspaper. And they'll likely take it away from me when we get our Important New Director who will, no doubt, have much more important things to say given that she/he will have a master's degree in library science and that makes you immediately more newsworthy than I could possibly be.

On the other hand, lots of people have commented on my articles. So, huh. And it does feel good to get words on paper, regardless of what they are saying ("Libraries in Illinois are funded by property taxes..."). It makes me want to get out the 1/2 of a novel and the 1/2 of a YA novel that I should finish. But, there's the rub. The writing for the paper or for the library is stuff that I can do at work. And it's stuff that I'm not emotionally invested in. My other writing is the kind of thing that I need to have uninterrupted time for. I can't be sitting here all engrossed in it and then have to answer the phone at work AGAIN just to tell someone that we're open 9-8 Monday through Friday and 9-5 on Saturday. It's the kind of writing that just pours out of me, that has a life of its own, characters that are literally alive inside of me--dormant--waiting to be let out. That kind of writing does not stop for Jim Bob Jones' printing problems on the patron computers or to help Cody's Meemaw find him just the right early readers (although I do typically enjoy helping with that particular task.)

I don't know that many of my dreams will ever be unearthed, organic or not. I'm not even sure I know what most of them are. (Hiking through Europe? Running a mission in Central America? Running for Congress on a platform of ending sweatshop labor?) But I know what a few of them are. And I know that if I don't pursue them that one day I'll be old and even achier than I am now and I'll be mad at myself for not trying harder.

Which leads me to my final thought: I've been in this place before. That place where I'm convicted to work on my goals and dreams and not let them fall by the wayside. And then Real Life kidnaps me and holds me for ransom. The payment? A son with a broken collarbone, a daughter who needs fillings and glasses and who has emotional needs beyond what I have the patience and energy for most days, the alarm clock going off way too soon, and piles of Spiderman underwear that need washing. I pay the ransom and then it's too late to follow the dreams and meet the goals, they're sitting at the coffee shop waiting for me but I never show, which is rude. So, the unanswered question is how to pay Real Life and somehow trick her into giving me more time and energy back.

I'm going to ponder this (again... still...) while I help Swastika-Lizard Tattoo Face Guy print his latest tattoo design from an email on the patron computers.

1/2 the Woman I Used to Be

32 is not 16.
At 16 I was much stronger physically than I am at 32. I suspected this... ok I knew this... but I confirmed it today when I decided to embark on a VHS excursion of the NYC Ballet Workout. But let me start at the beginning...

I have never claimed to be an athlete. Other than a brief career in 6th grade basketball at Bennett school (brief because I played one game before breaking my foot at my friend's house and being relegated to the bench for the season) and a few races in 5th and 6th grade track (which I WON, thank you very much), I never played organized sports. I was a little too girly for all that ball throwing and sprint running. And, mostly, I was afraid of getting my nose broken by a ball or elbow to the face.

HOWEVER, ... however..., I started dance class after 2nd grade and seemed to take to it alright. If I do say so myself, and I think I am about to, I turned out to be a kick-ass dancer. I spent several years practicing, donned tutus and pointe shoes, and took the show on the road a few times with my gals at the Mattoon Academy of Dance. In Junior High and High School, I had an illustrious career on the pom pon squads and had some of the best high kicks in the line-up. And I had muscle.

But alas, that was 1/2 my life ago, and since then I haven't exactly kept up with the dance class or pom pon practicing. (BTW, I'm not so old that I had to use the big huge, fluffy poms with the skinny plastic... we at least had the smaller ones! But we did wear lots of ugly sweaters and pleated skirts. *sigh*) In my early twenties I did manage to exercise here and there and did plenty of Tae Bo so that I could have easily kicked an assailant in the head. But, let's face it, since the kids came along, fitness has fallen by the wayside. I took a semester of yoga at the Yoga Institue in Urbana (where the teachers actually train in India) when Maia was about 2 and it nearly killed me. I felt like I had a major flu the day after every single class. I thought yoga was supposed to be relaxing, but this was like Nazi Yoga and even my toe joints would hurt afterwards ("PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS AND SPREAD YOUR TOES! LENGTHEN!") So, no more yoga for me, thanks.

After the yoga experience, I think I stuck to walking with the stroller as my main form of exercise. And then came Nate who would not sit in the stroller long enough for me to break a sweat. And then came working full-time on top of having two little kids. I think some of you can relate to this: fitness=low on the priority list. I find myself sitting at the computer at the library WAY too much and, now, at age 32, my dancing muscle has atrophied. I feel like I'm stuck in a mom-body, and it scares me. And, yes, I know that I'm not overweight or anything... don't even go there with me... but I have gained enough that my clothes don't fit and I think we can agree that a whole new wardrobe just ain't in the budget. Besides that, I have a family history of arthritis and cancer and all kinds of other stuff that isn't going to be pretty. Already my cholesterol is high and my ankle hurts all the time. Exercising is one of the best ways to stay healthy, and I need to do this for my children as much as for myself.

So, while perusing the DVD and VHS offerings of exercise videos available through the library system, I ran across this NYC Ballet Workout video. It says "Stretches and Exercises that ANYONE can do..." and, well, with the ballet background still there at least in my brain, I figured I could give this a try. I need something low impact due to my back being messed up from a seizure in '96, so this sounded like just the thing. And I tried it this morning. And I already hurt.

I only did 20 out of the 60 minutes, too, knowing that I needed to start slowly and not over-do it. But I am no match for these completely sculpted ballet guys they have on the video. Seriously, they have six packs and the most muscular legs you have ever seen. When they say "anyone" can do these exercises, I think they mean any super- strong gay man at the NYC Ballet. I think perhaps they have lost perspective there on the average American's graceful abilities. I may need the heating pad on my ass by the time I get ready for work. And I should probably have lined up an immediate chiropractic appointment.

If you have any advice for a wimpy 32-year-old trying to re-gain some muscle, let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and sign up for 2027 Heart Attacks Anonymous.

V, P, B Day

Where does the time go? (And how old am I that I say things like "where does the time go?") Seriously, though, it's already the middle of February which seems impossible. This time of year brings Valentine's Day and President's Day which means we have one school party and one day out of school. Both kids had to have Valentines for their classmates. Nate had to have cups and plates to contribute to the school junk-food-fest, because loving your friends does literally require cupcakes and sugary juice. Nate also had "homework" that we didn't learn about until last night that is due tomorrow. He is supposed to make a Valentine bag or box to keep his cards in at school for tomorrow. And since I am working tonight, that means that Shad will have to oversee the creation of this bag/box. You might think that since Shad teaches 1st grade that it is not a big deal for him to have to take charge of this type of homework. You would be wrong. I made sure to enlist Maia's help before taking the kids to school this morning. Getting her pumped up about it may be the only way it gets done because Nate isn't usually too keen on his little "homework" assignments. She is planning to print some paper hearts off of the computer to help decorate the bag/box, so that should get them started in the right direction at least. (And I'm not one to question the motives of a teacher, knowing that they do what they can with the little resources they are given.... but isn't the Valentine bag/box a staple project of every preschool curriculum created specifically to take up at least 40 minutes of a cold February morning DURING preschool?? Since when is this task relegated to homework? But what do I know. I'm just a librarian.)

As for President's Day, we have nothing planned for this collective day off work except two dental appointments. Nate has his first cleaning, and Maia has an appointment that I'm trying to pass off as a "check-up" but which is very likely going to turn into the dentist pulling one of her baby teeth. He said that we need to get it out because the tooth coming in behind it doesn't have room, and we've wiggled it to no avail. It simply has no wiggle. It's not comin' out on its own. So, likely he is going to pull it. AND she has a pinpoint cavity in a molar that he is going to fill "without needing to numb her". WTH??? And I'm supposed to send her back there and sit down in the waiting room like it's just a check-up? I'm covertly planning to send Shad. (Ok, not too covertly. I told him about it yesterday. But I did manage to make the appointment during a time when I knew he would be able to take her.) The last visit, for the rotten molar that needed a major filling, was so traumatic that I don't think I can face another one already. That said, I don't know how either of us will manage to get her into the dentist office because she knows that he said he might have to pull her tooth and she's not keen on the idea. I'm just not going to mention it until it's almost time for the appointment. Then I'm going to bribe her heavily with pretty much whatever it takes. This would be a good time for her to ask for her own cell phone or maybe for permission to have a boy/girl party when she's 13, because I will say yes to almost anything to get her to agree to go to this dental appointment without screaming and flailing.

And finally, the middle of February, this terrible black hole of winter, steely cold and drab with its infinite gray sky and barren land, brings my birthday. This used to help bring cheer to the winter and pull me up out of the blahs, but alas the years of being excited about one's birthday have passed me by. Turning 32 means that I've been driving for 1/2 of my life, means that I'm only one year younger than Jesus was at his death, means that I'm closing in on "mid-thirties" and could be cast for a part in "thirtysomething" if it were being cast now instead of 20 years ago... didn't those people seem OLD then??.... It means that I'm no longer sure who all of the music "stars" at the Grammys are, and I find that wearing Birkenstocks make my feet and ankles feel a lot better even if I do look like an old hippy. It means that I've officially given up on growing taller and am now thinking that I should be starting calcium supplements so that I don't end up being 5 feet 1 inch with a hip fracture by the time I'm 50. And being 32 means that I'm finally resigned to the fact that my birthday comes 5 days after Valentine's Day and I will not get a night out for each of these occassions but will have to settle for one night out to celebrate both. Of course, no matter how old you are, your kids always think you are old, so 32 or 27 or 38 is all the same, right?

RIGHT??!!!

Glasses!! Between Daddy's bad eyes and Mommy's bad eyes, it's not a real shock, but the eye dr. confirmed that Maia needs glasses. They were buy one get one "free" (yeah, right!) so she got blue AND pink. She is SO excited about them. Here's to hoping they stay in one piece for at least the first week.

OH, and we found the lost train engine Saturday morning. After getting out the new on Friday night...

L

Bad Mommy?

You know what I mean, right? You've had those days where you just KNOW that you have failed on some level as a parent. It's usually something pretty intangible, though, like you yelled a little bit more angrily than you should have or you wished that your kids would just go away for 20 minutes and leave you alone. OR maybe you've experienced the tangible form of this type of failure, like serving hot dogs more than twice in one week for dinner. With no vegetables. These are minor things, really. They happen to all of us (at least, I assume they do... they happen to ME.)

But this week, I experienced something that, for some reason, feels like the most tangible of parental failures that I have yet to experience: Maia had her first cavity.

And this was not just any cavity. No. This was pretty much an entirely rotten tooth. WTF?? I about lost my cookies when I looked in her mouth Friday night and saw that one of her molars was literally a blackish/brownish/grayish color and, well, just rotten! She had complained of it hurting some but we thought it was a sensitivity issue... that and Maia has a tendancy to exaggerate aches and pains to the point that we don't pay much attention to them. And we also thought it was a baby tooth, which I know you still have to take care of but, let's face it, if one of them has a problem you don't worry about it quite as much. In fact, I thought that she still had a molar coming in behind this tooth and that it was probably causing some of the dead look to this smaller molar by infringing on it's roots or something. I knew she'd been eating too much candy and not brushing well enough, but surely this couldn't be just decay I was seeing.

Well, knock me down and call me Sally, because this tooth wasn't just being crowded out and it isn't a baby tooth. NO!!! It's a PERMANENT tooth and it's rotting!! Take me home country roads! I mean, Shad and I do both hail--in the way way back generations--from West Virginia (yes, we are probably cuzins), but having a kid with a rotten tooth is only one step up from owning an outhouse in my book. I was mortified. Horrified. Terrified.

Terrified because a rotten tooth means only one thing. A filling. And that is exactly what we faced on Monday when I took her to the dentist. He said we had to get right to it, and before I had even gotten back from calling the piano teacher to tell her we wouldn't make it, they had pulled out the big needle and were holding her down in the chair to get her numbed up. And looking back on it, maybe it was better that they started it while I was out of the room because my terror might have been too apparent and she might have actually escaped the room instead of just screaming her head off and flailing about like she was a seal ashore without a flipper.

I felt like a total failure. How could this have happened to one of my precious baby's permanent teeth??

Well, ok, I know how it happened. It happened by way of Skittles and Twizzlers and Starburst and Nerd Ropes and Root Beer along with an unhealthy dose of stubborn refusal to brush for more than 20 seconds most of the time. I gave up harrassing her about her bad brushing habits over a year ago. I left it at "You will get cavities and you will have to have a shot in your mouth and they will drill a hole in your tooth." I thought that might scare her enough...just the thought of it. But evidently it took actually having some shots in her mouth and a hole drilled in her tooth (well a hole drilled into the hole that literally was her tooth) to get her to brush more appropriately. This week she has been a fiend for the toothbrushing. Not balking or whining when I say "another minute please" and remembering to get her brush all the way to the back. I think that before she didn't really believe what we told her about cavities, that they could really happen to her. And that scares me more than anything, I think, because it means that she is the type of kid who has to fall on her face first before heeding our advice. Stubborn Irish Lass.

So, maybe when it is all said and done, this is not a total failure on my part. It's not like I'm the one feeding her all the candy. Hello!! They get SO much candy at school these days. And at church! Holy Kit Kats do they ever pass out the sugar at church. Donuts and chocolate milk in Sunday School. Laffy Taffy, suckers, chocolate after the children's sermon in worship. What happened to just being happy with a sticker or a stamp on your hand?? I don't even know where to start with it, and my husband has asked that I please not take on the entire school district about it because he needs the ability to pass out Skittles in the bathroom line every day or the heathen children will not be civil with one another. He has no other way to make them be good anymore. They're not scared of the principals.

Maybe it does take a village to rot a child's teeth! Too bad the "village" couldn't be there when she had her filling done to help me hold her down. Stay tuned for The Filling Part II in a few months when we go back to have the molar re-done with a permanent filling. I do think that it should be Candy Addicted Daddy's turn to go with her then.

Holiday Reporter

Well, we survived the dizzying rush and rumble of the holidays! Nobody got sick. Nobody had any huge meltdowns (at least not on Christmas and not in front of all of our family). Nobody called us out on Santa--although there was a VERY VERY near miss at 10pm Christmas Eve. Maia is even still talking about how she "heard Santa setting up Nate's train set". Shad and I haven't jumped to our feet so quickly in years as we did upon hearing her pop out into the hallway and head into our bedroom to find us not yet in bed. I grabbed her and turned her away from the living room and ushered her right back to bed where she and I laid AWAKE for an hour. By then Santa had finished the train set...

And speaking of the train set, it turned out to be a big hit with Nate. The only problem now being that he has already managed to LOSE the train engine that makes the train go... It's just not nearly as much fun if you have to push the trains and there is no engine. So, I caved and ordered a new remote control engine set yesterday to the tune of $25. I'll admit it is as much for me as it is for him. I actually love this train set business... it is SO FUN. And you can set it up so many different ways! Clearly, I never had one as a child... being a GIRL, of course. That would have been like giving my brother a Holly Hobby doll or something... But even he didn't have a train set. We were trainless, and so the excitement of it is relatively new to me.

All of this begs the question: Where in the frick is that train engine? How could he have already lost it? Santa brought a fabulous LL Bean bag that says "Nate" on the front specifcally for storing the train parts (Santa is very clever like that). The rest of the train parts are there. It was put away a week or so ago and now, BOOM, no engine. I've looked freaking everywhere, too. The fridge. Inside our snow boots (which we may need again by tomorrow morning...). Under the couch, the recliner, beds, blankets. Behind shelves. In Nate's room, Sissy's room, OUR room. Inside bookbags that haven't been used during the break. In the laundry bins. With the tub toys. In the dogfood bag. The train is still M.I.A. I'm beginning to think that Jr. deposited it in the trash can. But asking him is bringing no clues whatsoever. He's not looking sneaky or guilty at all. He seems as perplexed as I am.
And so yesterday I ordered the new train engine. I figure, if nothing else will find the original one, getting a new one will. The chances of it turning up the day before the new one comes in the mail are pretty strong. And if it still doesn't show up, then at least we can play trains again. :)

Finally, I'd like to report that Shad and I got to hit the town for NYE this year. It's been a LONG time since we did anything but stay home for the occassion. The kids were invited to a "slumber party" at Shad's parents' house and so we were in good shape to pursue a night on the town. We went out with Hans and Tara and ate in Effingham at the Firefly Grille. The food was absolutely fabulous. The service was crappy. For the $ it was a little disappointing to be treated rudely by waitstaff, but the food did make up for it. (Yes, it's that good. Go try it.) We then trotted in to Jeleniz and drank a few (ok, more than a few) and rang in the New Year. Here's proof that we got out of the house for once:

Nevermind the drunken, squinty eyes that we both had by the time I whipped out the camera and made Hans take our picture. Also, a big thanks to Tara for driving us and putting up with a little bit of extra crazy.

Happy 2008!!