Back to School Sidewalk Sale

They don't do that anymore do they? shame. I have fond memories of downtown Bountiful, hot pavement, bad selection, picked over sizes, milling crowds and marked down ugly Buster Browns. Oh, on closer inspection, those memories aren't of the fond variety, but remembering the sidewalk sales takes me right back to my elementary school daze. The sixties, nothing like 'em, good times, good times.

Today was the first day (or first of four half days of school, really, why bother?) and the race is back on or, a more apt metaphor would be the gerbil is back on the wheel for another academic year. The only school shopping memories my girls will have will be centered around ripping open the Land's End boxes on the porch. I fear that point click UPS delivery just won't be as evocative 30 years from now of the first days of school as the words "sidewalk sale" are for me, shame really.

However, how do I feel about school starting up again?: If I had half a clue about computer stuff, I would know how to find some zesty graphics or clip art of a tiny defenseless person just about to be swept away by a tidal wave of paper to illustrate how I feel this evening. Having four in elementary school at the same time and keeping track of homework, homework folders, reading assignments, reading charts, spelling lists, menus, student profiles, student supply lists, teacher and classroom supply lists, field trip sign ups, poetry folders, and various ME bags is feeling a bit much right at the minute. So instead, I figure why not update the blog because even though I'm feeling decidedly flat and unamusing this month, writing a blog entry is much less daunting than the pile o' crap waiting for me on the kitchen table. Really, I must be nuts. I really need my head examined because it's not like any of my children were "accidents." This was all planned, I knew exactly what I was doing when I sent in each adoption application, there were no oopsies in the bunch unlike my youngest brother Clark, he was a definite oops, but I really like him so that worked out okay in the long run. So I only have myself to blame, but when Nora's teacher said "I just don't know how you do it?" I replied, "well you're about to see first hand how I don't do it very well sometimes, and only just adequately the rest of the time." I should have added: "Please have patience with me and try not to resent me too much when everything you send home gets lost in the roaring vortex of homework/announcement/half-page permission slip of paper doom," but how do you do it is more of a rhetorical question and I didn't want to overstep my answer.

And it's those half-page sized dealies that are sure and certain to be important as in please mark your calendars or please sign and return before yesterday that are sure and certain to get lost/recyled/used as scratch paper, never fails.

And yes, last spring I made the decision to hold Nora back and within two days, I had changed my mind and let Nora graduate from Kindergarten with her sister. Nora started first grade today. She is tall and competitive and too smart to be held back. I had to process and accept the fact that Nora will struggle to learn and regardless if I made her repeat kindergarten, she would still struggle to learn because that is just who Nora is going to be, a different learner. I can't protect her from the struggle even though holding her back felt like I was protecting her. I wasn't. I was only protecting myself from watching her flail and fail and feel hurt and "less than." And I have to admit that holding her back also protected me from the the extra effort it will take on my part from now on to help Nora do her best in school. It has now become my struggle to find out how to help her learn without so much struggle and tears and shame.

I've had it so easy with the oldest three. They may not ever be Rhodes Scholars, but they won't make me worry about how in the world they will ever make a living or support themselves. I have to come to terms with my Nora, who, in addition to being a child who is an emotional challenge to raise, is also a challenge to teach and learns differenlty than her peers. I can't sit back anymore and just beam with pride like I have for the past five years since Ellie started kindergarten. I have to learn how this whole public education system works and how to make it work better for Nora. And did I mention that I'm lazy? to the bone? and beaming with pride is easy, but learning a whole new language with it's own special jargon and pushing for the right extra assistance is hard and, on the whole, I'd really rather not? But, apparently, that's what other parents do and now I need to do that too. But while I'm doing that, there's nothing says my kids can't look damn cute on the first day of school. Not only do I beam well, I burst buttons pretty good too.

and before you know it, it's August

First, I really must figure out all those slick slide show gizmos because it just took for freaking ever to upload these pics and that will teach me to be a schlump and not update the blog for vast time periods. But here's July is a picture essay.

The Big Dig, SLC version. The whole reason I bought this house was for the proximity to the Jr. High where I envisioned my wholesome teens walking home within minutes of the last bell, cracking the books the second they walk through the door, finishing all of their homework plus the extra credit before starting dinner and tidying up and making me a proud proud mama. It could happen and I bought this house to ensure that it would, but be careful what you ask for because to take my delusions up a notch, the school district granted me a brand new junior high school. Unfortunately, they chose to build right next to the old junior high so the kids don't have to be uprooted during the school year which means the new school is being built in the space that used to be the sports field and heavenly buffer between my back wall and the old school building. No more, they've torn out the playing field and excavated many many feet, I want to say 30 feet down, but what do I know, it could be 20, but however much, it's a ton of dirt and . . .

a great portion of it ends up on the bottom of the pool that shall spurn all covers every damn day. If you can't dope out this picture, those are the tracks in the crud left by the pool vac on a typical day after the diggers have done their damnedest to churn up every piece of grit they could get airborne during their shift. The fellows at the pool supply know me by my new nickname, the Phosphate Lady, and what does algae love to eat more than anything? that's right phosphates. What a big wide pain in my big wide ass this pool has been this year. . .

except for when it's not and the kids are having a blast and frolicking to beat the band and making my heart high.



We drove up to Cache Valley for Grandma's summer birthday although she hasn't been alive for the last two summer birthdays, it's still a great reason to go to my Uncle John and Aunt Elaine's grandkid Neverland (they have a ton of grandkids) to ride Chocolate and Chip, the go carts, the riding mower turned into a wagon train, the little play house, the big amazing water slide built into a gully and powered by a hose dropped into the creek, the girls love love love it up there and I always pick up a great recipe or two from the potluck, so it's a hit for every generation.





Then came Nora's birthday, she turned six this year although it feels like she's still emotionally not quite four yet and I have to admit, my blogging reticence is in large part related to my still not warm and fuzzy feelings about Little Miss Firecracker, it is still hard work to be her parent and it may always feel like this and that's still a hard concept to which I must adjust. But, for her birthday, I sacrificed my comfort and sanity for a day at the local amusement mecca and we hit Magoon (Nora can't remember Lagoon and in 100 degree heat, it feels more like a Magoon) with all pistons firing . . .

with some of this . . .

some of that (click this one to enlarge, does it look like being spun against the outside of the ride over and over and over is a good time?) . . .

a little more of this . . .

and some more of that . . .

and they still were strong after the second log flume ride, the wet invigorated them . . .

until all of the this and the that and the oppressive heat finally wore my Magooniacs down and I convinced them it was time to go . . .

to Grandma's house with all of Nora's gifts in the back of the van and my brother tasked with bringing the cake and ice cream up to meet us. Grandma still too weak and tires so easily that it is by far easier to bring the party to her than to expect her to come to us and it was a good day and I don't have to go to Magoon for a whole 'nother year, yay me.

Alex, what is Provo Canyon?

I can't think of the right category, though, for the question. Potent potables? But that only applies to half of the question: As the sun sets on Lindsay Lohan and my eldest daughter, where are they both laying their heads to sleep? Yep, in scenic but the willies producing Utah County: there's a whole lot of religion and bad architecture going on down Provo way, makes me shiver. The difference is that my chaste and Polly Purehearted daughter is snoozing away at Girl Scout camp where I delivered her excited little GS self this morning and that other gal, the one who is deeply, deeply troubled, sad and self-involved, is sleeping it off a little further on up the canyon in her new get clean digs.

And how about this for a comparison of extremes. Lindsay leaves a drug rehab center after a month of therapy and heads to Vegas to sip energy drinks, wink, wink, yeah energy drinks, with a whole lot of folks who didn't take any stinking sobriety pledge. She so very obviously values her own sobriety and would never take any risks with her career and health, not that Lindsay, she's too much of a smart cookie for those kinds self destructive high jinks.

As opposed to this moring, when I asked Ellie if she had packed her fanny pack, she jumped like she had been shot because she just remembered it still contained two contraband packs of Trident gum that she learned from her last GS camp experience are forbidden fruit and not welcome at GS camp. She tore into the pack, emptied out the gum and cast it away from her, out devil, out. My girl won't even try to smuggle sugar free gum into Trefoil Ranch even without an aspartame detecting ankle bracelet.

But won't my girl get a kick out of knowing that she and Lindsay spent the week just a few miles apart? breathing the same bracing mountain air, both riding horses along side the Weber River, attending group meetings to discuss the principles of beating addiction though a twelve-step program? Oh wait, that one's just for Ms. Lohan. Ellie will be making boondoggle key fobs, whew, what a relief, much better.

And, yes, I agree that I know too much about Ms. Lohan's escapades because (a) you just can't escape the coverage, it's shamefully pervasive, and (b) my girls want to know what it all means, why is she always getting in trouble?, what does rehab mean? what's a DUI? We have some interesting conversations about how Lindsay just keeps forgetting to say no. So we wish Ms. Lohan the best, but since the true human drama is happening about 150 miles south of Provo Canyon, all my best thoughts and hopes for recovery are for those miners and their families tonight. Sorry Lindsay, you're on your own.

Australia

I want to go there and I want to eat rock lobsters in Perth and keep my eye out for Tim Winton who should be easy to spot because he has a really long ponytail and looks literate. I know I'm probably like most Americans who are, how do we say politely, geographically illiterate, but Australia is all about Sydney and kangaroos and a town like Alice to me. I mean I've heard of Perth, but just thought it must be in the Sydney neighborhood where all Australians are bunched up eating shrimp and getting stung by jelly fish on beautifully dangerous beaches. I just finished Dirt Music and was motivated enough to learn more so I could picture the territory the characters were covering and it turns out there is a whole western edge, with people, of Austalia, who knew? So it should be easy to find Mr. Winton, very little stalking involved, right?

Everytime I read a Winton book, it makes me want to book flights so I can go listen to real Australians speak English instead of the fake Australian accent I have playing in my head as I read his dialogue (while the Outback Steakhouse jingle runs persistently throughout). But regardless what this guy writes about, I feel like I'm there and when I'm done, I want to jump on the plane and really be there to see it like he sees it. Even though I read The Riders probably 10 years ago, I still can't get it out of my mind and on my book judging scale, that's some fine writing.

Althought I love to read, I still go through books like I was in fifth grade plowing through the elementary school library: for transport, not for more information or new skills or god forbid, intellectual challenge. So I love a good rich and dense text that is wonderfully chewy, but I'm a wee bit shallow and under-educated and I'm always aware of the fact that if any message or symbol is layered under the story, I'm probably missing it just like those magic focus prints that were all the rage 15 years ago in which I NEVER saw the damn magic picture even though I stared into the distance until my contacts dried up and popped off my eyeballs. I was listening to the Diane Rehm show (even though her voice, oh her voice, how it makes me cringe and I know she can't help it, but oh oh) on the way to work last week and her book reviewers were working over Like Water for Elephants, a book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. One of her panelists said that maybe the book's popularity could be explained because it was so one-dimensional: just a good story that was all there right on the surface and there wasn't anything else to dig for, no deeper meaning. I thought, oh, hmm, really? hadn't occurred to me, I just thought I had missed the deeper meaning just like always.

So I dream about when I'm old(er) and gray(er) and looking even more like a shar pei because they let the senior set audit classes for free or a small fee at my dear old alma mater and I can get the education I missed the first time around. I'm going to sit on the front row of every art and literature appreciation course I can find and give all those kids the benefit of my widsom and experience (e.g. bore them senseless with my endless questions that are really just statements of the obvious). A gal's got to have plans for retirement. My plans are to finally understand all the books I read like I was eating Triscuits for my whole adult life.

But if you need a good read right now, dial up a Tim Winton novel, you will not be disappointed. Then write to let me know was I missed.

loose poop

So, say, for the sake of argument, and of course totally hypothetically speaking, that you had a guest in your home who barfed on your duvet and your deeply discounted, but still brand new, area rug in the kitchen, made your downstairs carpet into a multi-hued canvas in the style of Georges Seurat using the largely over-looked media of loose stool and urine in addition to possessing the ability to create lung threatening clouds of noxious gas wherever she came to rest? Would you let her stay, or unceremoniously ask her to get her skanky dog butt out of your house and hit the mean streets with that business? Or, as I have contemplated, would you secretly put her in a kennel for the remainder of the week and then play it all innocent like when her ride comes to take her back home next weekend?

Oh good hell, Stewart’s dog Gladys is the houseguest from hell. She stayed with us a few months ago and was a relatively good guest even though she was a most prodigious pooper. I had to take the blame for that because I unthinkingly left the baggie full of Milk Bones where she could get at it and talk about adding bulk to a dog’s diet, oh boy. I wasn’t thinking that Gladys would, you know, even get into the bag at all, such bad manners, and I was even more floored that she would eat them all up at one time exhibiting no doggie self-control. My tiny animule dog can make one mini Milk Bone last for days as she carries the increasingly smaller nub from room to room, leaving a trail of crumbs so she can find her way back. Gladys horks down anything in her path and doesn’t ever look back. And after conferring with friends, the horking and gobbling are more typical dog behaviors to which I say, who knew? All I have for comparison is my dainty 6-pound nibbler/bruiser and I just wasn’t prepared for Gladys' reaction to an unprotected stash of Milk Bones. She could have at least saved a few for the end of the week, don't you think? I have no explanation for the current tummy troubles, she hasn’t over eaten and it doesn’t appear that she found any illicit yummies but in a house full of kids, that can never be completely ruled out. She is chipper and Schnauzer-happy, doesn’t act at all ill, I have no explanation for my ruined carpet.

Oh well, I needed to have the carpet cleaners come and deal with the bad stains in the girls’ room, now I can get the three-room and a hallway special and feel like I’m getting a bargain. She sleeps in her crate tonight by damn and her flirty brown eyes won’t sway me. I know she only wants me for my clean duvet cover, skank.

how to void a warranty

Failure to use product according to package directions may void warranty.

Hostable notes

The good good grandma gave us another medical scare this past ten days and it's probably better not to blog when I'm in a high drama dither. She rallied after another couple of ICU stints and is back to the regular ward and will hopefully be discharged tomorrow or Monday. The girls are so flexible. I drag them back and forth from the hostable (Mimi's version of hospital) and they don't complain or balk and I think that's remarkable considering that when they get to the hostable, they can't even go into her room and are trapped in the second floor waiting area with grandpa or Uncle Glenn while I stay in mom's room. When mom is in the ICU with limited visiting hours we walk all over every inch of the hostable on safari to see what we can see and truth be told, there just is not much to see in the average hostable. There are some nice fish in the radiology waiting area, but there are limits to how fascinating fish can be to the average six-year-old for any length of time. All the traipsing back and forth to the hostable, late hours and cafeteria food (which, truth be told, they love and so do I) brings my lack of reliable babysitters into sharp focus. Stew watched them for several hours last Sunday so I could be at the hostable longer and not have to worry about herding the little girls (Ellie is never a problem armed with books and her Nintendo) that was the best gift (not to mention the gratis lawn mowing he threw into the child care package) I've received in a long long time, I am so grateful for such a generous friend. I need to cultivate some teens who don't already have jobs and/or intense social lives and need the money badly enough to watch four kids and not let anyone drown in the ceement pond. When my other brothers arrive solo at the hostable because their spouses are at home in charge of their kids, I do feel more than a twinge of envy, but I get over it. I wouldn't want to married to any of their wives if that was the price for solo hostable visits.

Sparkle Plenty

YuYu is seven. It is hard not to wax rhapsodic about this child and if I could do her justice, I might try. But this loving child’s gifts are beyond my feeble words and descriptive abilities. I wish I were a poet. YuYu needs a poet to capture her loveliness and my feet are not long fellows. All she wanted for her birthday? Seashells. How lovable is that? She was thrilled with this cheap basket of shells from Oriental Trading Co. You wouldn’t think there could be merchandise out there a step down from Lillian Vernon, but then I found Oriental Trading and not only is the quality much inferior, you buy all the inferior products in multiples of 12 or more. Our birthday party goodie bags entered a whole new realm of awesomeness when I discovered this cornucopia of cheap crap.

YuYu is wearing the most deliciously green pajamas her friend Hunter (or more accurately, Hunter’s amazingly thoughtful mom Trish) selected for her in New York’s Chinatown. The color makes her skin look like it is lit from within and she is cool and toasty at the same time. YuYu proclaimed her new pajamas to be “handsome and popular.” What dreadful video has she been watching that gave her handsome and popular? I don't know, but I love it. I love her. She makes my heart high.

Happy birthday bird girl, please don’t grow up too fast.

Bastards

I was actually, no lie, sitting beside the pool tonight as the little girls were splashing and having big fun and thinking to myself: I should go get the camera to snap a few of girls and my Mike's Hard Lime to illustrate a blog entry along the lines of all's well that ends well, but it hasn't ended well, yet. Bastards.

Yesterday we had 14 Girls Scouts and assorted siblings in the pool for an end of year shindig and badge extravaganza complete with exhortations by Juiliet Gordon Low from beyond the grave. I don't know the netiquette for loading up photos of other people's pre-teen kids in bathing suits, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't, so here is a photo of Ellie finishing up the requirements for her small craft safety badge. All I ever remember getting badges for was embroidering and making puppets, man, did I grow up in the wrong generation.



So, it gets to be the end of the evening, I'm inside scooping up root beer floats like I'm on a conveyor line when I'm informed by one of the troop moms fresh from ouside that the pool is giving shocks. Electrical shocks. Not big shocks, but still, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be giving shocks of any size, big or small. I run outside to turn off the pump, not because I think it is the pump causing the shocks, but because I have no earthly idea what could be causing the pool to give shocks and it is the only thing electrical that is on and operating around the pool and I had to do something to make it look like I was in charge and had a handle on the whole pool giving shocks thing. I didn't try to duplicate the problem by getting my own shock because I was needed on the rootbeer float assembly line and by the time everyone left, I wasn't really thinking about it until Ellie started asking about shock and it started to appear to me that maybe the whole thing was a product of over-wrought pre-teen imagination and maybe some girls had seen the empty bags of Sock It To Me chemical shock in the crap bucket in the corner by the deck and thought it was fun make everyone get worried about getting "shocked" ala the Salem Witch Trials where innocent women were burned at the stake based on the testimony of attention-seeking teen-aged girls. I thought no more of it and assumed that I had been witch trialed and my pool was in fine working order after all.

I thought nothing more of it that is until this evening when I thought better and thought that maybe I should question Ellie to see if the "shock" was a product of empty chemical bags and fevered imaginations. I asked her good leading questions and she fell in line and agreed with me: it wasn't an electrical shock, it was because of the empty shock bags. But even I knew her answer was based on my big person intimidation style grilling and the apparent lack of distinction in Ellie's mind between an electrical shock and chemical shock. So I backed off a bit, gave her a chance to explain. She reminded me that it was a troop mother who told me the pool was giving shocks and Ellie confirmed that the troop mother got a shock when she touched the surface of the water NEAR THE POOL LIGHT while standing on the deck. And guess what, you CAN get a shock when you sit on the deck and touch the surface of the water because I GOT a shock when I tried it too.

Which brings me to the bastards. Those pool guy bastards. Drain my pool to the bottom, a thing I should never have had to witness, pull the fixture out, leave it hanging for awhile, then reinstall it so inexpertly that I get a whole new amusement park quality feature in my back yard pool: think hair-raising, thrill-a-minute, Terror Ride, you never know what's going to make you jump out of your skin or Speedo as the case may be. Bastards.

Then add the dust storm in downtown Baghdad that's been happening just over the property line as the excavators tear out a small mountain of dirt to make way for the new Jr. High and didn't have the good sense to get the damn water tank trucks on site to spray down the dust like the damn contract says they should and the money the sub-contractor saved by going thbbbpt to the contract terms should be disbursed equally to all the neighbors to clean the dust off of every surface imaginable. But I kind of doubt that's going to happen, but I think I'm more pissed off about the time it took me to get all the right names so I could call and complain oh so diplomatically right after I made the first call to the county DEQ. Wouldn't you think the school district or the general contractor would have had the sense to warn the neighbors that this shit was going down and wouldn't you think the general would have the good sense to at least apologize when confronted in person by a calm but assertive home owner about the lack of any attempt to mitigate the dust? bastard.

So, no photo evocative of warm, relaxing summer evenings poolside with a cold bottle of alchopop and wet kids enjoying the hell out of the water after a hot hot day. Just my meandering diatribe about the bastards and yes, I have let them get me down, just a bit. I'll review a motivational poster this weekend about the bastards and how not to let them get you down and I'll be better when the pool isn't giving involuntary eletrolysis and the air on my street doesn't go crunch when you get some in your mouth.

Does he have a single brother?

I know, I know what I said about my handsome bright yellow Kartchner power sprayer and I still do love it so, but I've found a man to make me rethink the pronouncement about not needing a husband. I was poking around the big web to do a little self educating on the money sucker embedded in my back yard and I found The One. He should be mine. Too bad The One is married with kids and living somewhere happily, looks like the South, no snow or ice in any of the pictures and the dirt, she is so red. Unfortunately, regardless of the married with kids thing he has going on, at the very least, I'm geographically undesirable, who would want to relocate to the land of bitter cold turns to dry heat and odd liquor laws. And I'm not even going to get into the oh so many factors that make me oh so unmarriageable at this point in time and space, but, I digress and you really need to check this flickr story. Tell me you don't find this man ultimately attractive even though you can't really see his face in any of the shots. What he looks like just doesn't really matter, does it? This Adonis, this faceless god amongst us, this true American hero, rent/wrung/brought forth on this continent that gorgeous after out of the hideous before with his own bare hands and a crummy cement mixer. Gives me the longings that I thought I had long long long ago learned to suppress. Big sigh.

Slumgullion

Hey, who wants to take a dip? Come on in, the water is fine!


Oh good hell, I gasped, then I swore like a cop when the pool guys pulled back the cover to expose this stinking mess. It was either curse or cry and I was all cried out last week, so cursing it was. What the hell, what the hell? Just when I thought I was climbing up the slope on the cement pond learning curve, I got kicked all the way back down. This cost a fortune and I don't know who to blame.

Every fall, I pay someone to "close the pool." They dump a ton of chemicals in the water, float some bags of chlorine, stretch the winter cover over the top and when they come back to open it in the spring, there's a lot of debris in the water, but it's pretty clear other than the floaters. Not this year, that's for damn sure. It was revolting. I had a different pool company close the pool last fall and I called them to schedule the pool opening back in March because every pool service gets so overbooked in late May. The woman I spoke to apparently thought I was a nut job, because she ignored me and didn't put me on the schedule. So by the time they got to me, it was three weeks later than I had anticipated, but still, this didn't get that bad in three weeks, did it? When I moved into the house, we didn't open the pool until July 7 that year and the water was fine. The two young men who had come to get the pool open were full of speculation, all except for the obvious to me answer that someone fucked up the closing and further fucked it up when they didn't get out to open in until three weeks after I asked for it to be done. So, to add salt to the wound, I had to let them drain the damn pool, do an acid wash, and fill the money sucking pit back up with fresh water. I hate financial rape and I'm feeling very victimized, to the tune of $987 victimized not including the water bill yet to come, that will be at least $200. Damn. Then, when the pool was empty, a sight I NEVER want to see again, you can see where the plaster has been worn away (the chlorine eats it up) and the concrete is starting to show and that can only mean one thing (or so I have recently learned); it will start leaking unless it is replastered. Who the hell do you get to replaster a pool? and how the hell much is that going to cost? Now I understand the comments I've received from any number of people who find out I have an antique swimming pool in the back yard: "so, are you going to fill that in?" Well, yes, I just might, dammit.








And last, but not least in my graphic essay of swimming pool nightmare hell, the one bright spot, My Hero. Seriously. Who needs a husband when you already have a power washer?

why I’ve been MIA, or things that whip my ass

Ever felt like Stretch Armstrong? Too many obligations, too much drama, not enought time? Now imagine a vintage Stretch doll that’s someone’s been hoarding all these years in case it became a collectible that could be flogged on eBay for ninety times it’s original value. The plastic on this Stretch is getting crumbly and takes a dog's year to snap back to it’s original shape and it looks like the skin around the lips of a skinny old woman who’s had a two pack a day habit since before the Big War. That’s the kind of Stretch Armstrong I’ve felt like for the last three weeks. Aha, that's telling, it's only been two weeks, but I typed three because the last two weeks have felt like forever and a week.

My Mom, aka my best friend, had quintuple bypass surgery June 5 because she had an episode (can’t get any better info than that, but apparently whatever the episode was, it was significant enough to get her immediately admitted to the CCU) during an angiogram on June 1 to determine why her circulation is so bad no one can find a pulse in her right foot and a big old wound from erupting celluitis that she swears she got because my niece got into their hot tub with too much body lotion and hair product and Mom got blood poisoning from the tainted water. Hey, she's old, she's entitled to a few crack-brained ideas, I guess.

So, starting from the "episode," it all got very melodramatic: thoracic surgeon gives us a cheery prediction of a 50% chance of death or stroke during the bypass because her right carotid artery is 70% occluded (which she knew about but the medical professionals were just “keeping an eye” on it, WTH?) which resulted in a lovely Sunday afternoon with me perched on her hospital bed with a college ruled notebook jotting down her wishes for her funeral service and all the specific dispositions of certain assets that she was too tired to fight my rat bastard father (and no, I do not exaggerate or use the term lightly, in fact, I toned down the description to retain credibility) about when they did their estate planning but she figures that with a wedge of guilt and the wedge of my personality, she can make it happen from beyond the grave. Much too much drama for me, too many tears, so much to lose, very hard, very hard.

But, she survived the surgery! Recovery was a little dicey, heart rate wouldn’t regulate, but eventually it did, on its own, no pacemaker needed, and they sent her home yesterday. And just so you know what a rat bastard my Dad is, when they stopped at the local grocery/drug store to get her baker’s dozen of prescriptions filled, he went inside, determined that he did not want to wait, that he could come back later to pick up the meds, but that Man had his priorites straight. He bought a box of bear claws and Danishes because he was feeling a bit peckish. He had the nerve to hand the box to my Mom, my diabetic heart failure Mom, to hold on the way back to their house where he had not brought groceries home since she was admitted to the hospital a full two weeks prior. Frankly, he would not know how to shop for any food item that wasn't next to the check out stand. In all his 72-years, he has never grocery shopped. There wasn’t a speck of fresh food in the house, but by damn, he had something to eat for breakfast. Rat bastard.

Mom is now on the mend, which is such a relief. She will not last as long as I assumed she would last. My granny was 92 when she kicked the bucket and I didn't bother my pretty little head with thinking about what diabetes was doing to my mother because it looked like she had that old diabetes smacked into submission. But, sadly, the damn diabetes was just silently killing her, damn diabets. In a month, she'll go back in for the carotid artery surgery, then the femoral artery as soon as possible after that, and if she’s not dead or on the way there by that time, they will consider the renal arteries. My poor Mom. Diabetes is the real rat bastard, but my Dad gives it a run for the money.

So that explains where I’ve been, treading water and feeling pulled in a million jillion directions. I still have to work, no family emergency days for the self-employed; I have to keep the specter of malpractice away from and some revenue coming in through my office door, no matter what: I've got four kids. I had the big dilemna about whether to retain Nora in Kindergarten another year. Made a decision and then backed down. I'll try to blog that soon, I need to get my thoughts straight again on that issue. Then, to add to the big basket o’stress, I got a couple of other ass-kickings from some home improvement headaches which have vacuumed my bank account as clean as the 12,000 gallons of fresh water in my pool and, as always, Nora, who absorbed my stress and sadness and reflected it back in her best less than charming fashion. Just when I need her to suck it up and be a team player, she falls apart and acts out as badly as she ever has. Nice. I'm a sad and scared daughter, one step ahead of a bar complaint professional, rigid and over-reactive mother, home handy man failure kind of gal. But my mom is still alive, it's good to be me.

Project 337

Last Friday, no school. The district leaves a make up day on the calendar in case of emergency cancellations during the year. Think snow days. But, even though this is Utah, home of the 2002 Winter Olympics and "the best snow on Earth," we NEVER have snow days because this is Utah, home of Pioneer Spirit and who in their right mind would call off school on acount of a few inches or 36 of snow? C'mon cowboy up, stop your complaining and trudge you big pansy. Literally, I have had to walk ahead of the girls to break a path for them to get to school because there was no way, even if we could get the car out of the garage, to drive them there. But I digress.
So, with a day to kill, we had our choice, this expedition into the art world or the one I chose, pictured above in all my phone's .3 megapixels of power. Cool huh? When they think of art, this is what I want them to think of first. They may reject my sensibilities when they get older and form their own opinions about stuff and the world, but I'm the mom and for now, they have to look at this.

Who's on first

Okay, because I can't always figure out how to respond to comments in private when there’s no gmail account associated with a comment entry, I'll do it in public, because I've already blown any hope for anonymity with this blog. And here’s why if many of you were wondering how I could be so irresponsible as to spread my children all over the web without cute aliases or more care to protect their privacy (which I’ll have to move on soon, password protect or something.)

When I adopted YuYu in 2004, I used a Yahoo egroup* and could approve/deny requests to join the group and guarantee that I was sharing all my personal laundry with people to whom I was already acquainted. So, when I geared up the travel machine to go retrieve Nora in 2006, technology had advanced so rapidly that any fool could create a blog and that’s what this fool did. When I created this blog, it was with the intent to treat it as a travel log and share the address only with people who could give a hoot about my particular madness and me. However, a week into the trip while we were still in Nanning, Stefani, the China coordinator for my adoption agency, prevailed upon me to post the address to the agency egroup (a very large and busy busy group) as a precautionary tale. When you adopt an older child fresh out of an institution, the transition is not always rainbows and salt water taffy. Stefani, bless her, thought it would be good for prospective parents who were considering the adoption of an older child to see the spectacle unfold live and in full color. Kind of a gut check for the uninitiated.

So with not much consideration and in the spirit of public service, I opened this blog, that was never intended to be public, to the inspection of many, and found that I liked writing more than I had admitted to myself and here it is, too much disclosure and not enough privacy. But this gal lives in the same hood and from what I can tell, has not been stalked by wackos, so it may not be that urgent, but I will have to deal with the privacy issues soon. But this gal is taking all the good ideas and I don’t want to be a copy cat (and, no, I’m not that delusional to make any comparison between my weak musings and this gal who is making a GOOD living with her blog (her house is on the non-ghetto side of Foothill) and it's just my lame attempt to be hip and facetious). I’m almost prostrate with frustration because I can’t find the courage to fight the crowds at the new IKEA that opened up down the interstate this week, prostrate I tell you, but she already beat me to the blog and she grows bad body art too and tells the story much better. If I ever run into her at the Dan’s, I’ll just have to snub her.

So, to Abby in MA and Carrie, here’s the roster:

Ellie is really Elizabeth Arlene Fu Yan. She was matched to me in early December 1997 just before she turned one. But we didn’t travel to China (bad agency, bad, I think they could have easily avoided the delay) until end of February 1998. She was meant to be Eleanor, but my mother, with whom she shares the name Arlene, did not approve of Eleanor and me, with no spine, knuckled under and agreed to use Elizabeth with the same nickname I had in mind if she had been named Eleanor. But it wasn’t that much of a sacrifice. I love the name Elizabeth and had/have two great and good friends who share her namesake rights. Mrs. Siska, alive, kicking and kicky and worried about her salvation (very devout former nun) and my dear Liz, taken by bone cancer too soon. Ellie is ten, in fourth grade and being her mom is as easy as falling off a log into marshmallow fluff.

Next came Mimi, who is really Meredith Jean Fuling. When I started the paperwork for Ellie, the social worker who completed my homestudy had adopted two as a single and recommended that I consider someday bringing a sibling for Ellie into the family. Since I had just come to terms with the idea that I was going to be a mother and solely responsible for a child, my reaction to this advice, was, I’m sure, under whelming: I stared blankly, then snorted derisively. No way no how. But after a few years, I got the hang of parenting, Ellie who was the. most. low. maintenance. child. ever and I went for it. I had no name in mind except for Jean, after my funny wonderful maternal grandmother. I was reading Charles Schultz’ obituary and his daughter Mimi (Meredith) was mentioned and I thought: Mimi Mei Mei, Mimi Mei Mei, perfect for little sister. Mimi came home a week before the Trade Tower attack in 2001.

Then came YuYu, who is really Kathryn Marta Rui Yu. Kathryn was my Aunt Fay’s second daughter who died in an auto accident a week before her high school graduation. It looked like Aunt Fay would never have a grand daughter to use the name and my mom suggested that I consider it for YuYu. I love the name, but I’m not too excited about any of the common nicknames: Kitty, Kathy and there were like four Katies in Mimi’s preschool class, so that wasn’t an option either. Luckily, YuYu has clung to her Chinese nickname and doesn’t even remember her given name from time to time. Marta is my maternal great grandmother who was strong, resourceful and courageous. If she ever wants to use either name, I’m all for it, but she’ll always be YuYu (treasure treasure) to me. YuYu was in foster care (with a warm and adoring family) until I adopted her at 4.5 years old in November 2004. She will be seven years old next month, is three months older than Mimi, adopted out of birth order with no apparent issues, yet.

And then came Nora. I finally got my Eleanor. She is Eleanor Elaine Xiao Ye. Elaine is my maternal aunt who has successfully raised 11 children and is what I like to call a Shiite Mormon (in full friend shipping armor all the time) and I love her to bits despite and because of it. Nora’s Chinese name is beautiful: morning leaf, isn’t that lovely? But she dropped it like a dirt clod within a week of coming home, insisting: “No Xiao Ye, NO rah!” She was exactly the same age as YuYu was on adoption day, 4.5 years old, but had only been in foster care (with a family that couldn’t control her) for 4-5 months prior to adoption. Being institutionalized has taken a big toll on my girl. She will be six years old in July and is ten months younger, chronologically, than Mimi, but years behind emotionally.

My own name is a contraction for Margaret or Marjorie, neither of which I was lucky enough to be given. Because I was cheated out of a real name, it was very important to me to choose solid, traditional, real names for my girls. They all have easy, fun nicknames they can use until the nicknames don’t suit them anymore, if ever. I also incorporated their orphanage names (except for Mimi, her orphanage name had negative baggage, so I used her home town) and they can use those names if they want to get in touch with their cultural roots some day. But, if the circumstance requires, they can assert their fully loaded names when the weight and heft I hope they symbolize may come in useful.

*After we had been home for over a year, I remembered that the egroup was still hanging out there. I sat at my desk and carefully copied each post of my heartfelt sentiments, my excited utterances as we say in the legal biz. The posts printed out to my little printer on the credenza behind me. I heard them, the little printer whirred its reassuring whir and I knew I had captured my thoughts in hard copy for time and eternity, as we like to say in Mormon culture central. So when Yahoo sternly and with much gravity questioned my willingness to delete the group, I was convinced of my actions and pulled the trigger with confidence. Only after the cursor clicked did I turn around and look at the printouts to discover, to my horror, that all I had printed was the advertisements and page format surrounding the posts: no content. Nothing, not a single word is left of my first impressions of my treasure treasure, sob.

Spirit of Giving

Or, not so much. I went to a mall, on a Saturday, with four little kids, where do I pick up MY reward? We braved the gaping open mouthed stares from the mall denizens, (yeah, it still surprises me that once we move outside our regular circles, like our neighborhood Albertsons where a middle-aged mom with four Asian kids lashed to her cart doesn't cause a stir any longer, people flat out stare and do the clown college double take as we walk by, I don't think I imagine it, but maybe) as we skidded into Build-A-Bear today to help stuff four bears that will hopefully make it into the arms of kids who need their own homes, but will have to take a bear in a pinch. The working premise is that the bears stuffed at the Build-a-Bear Stuffed with Hugs day, which will eventually trickle down to LOOK Project, another inspiring parent-driven charitable initiative to help meet the needs of the thousands of older children living in Chinese orphanages who may never finds homes. So, keeping things in perspective, paying the emotional price of being ignored by every single sales clerk in the Limited Too this afternoon is a mere piffle in comparison to the reasons and need for this project, so happy to do it.
But, let me tell you that there was no small suffering at the Limited Too. I was ignored to the point I just had to leave the items on the counter after standing there with my credit card in hand like a big bird for a long time. I started to get really steamed and was on the verge of dressing down the nearest 19-year-old to whom I had apparently become invisible, when I thought, heck, no, I can just get this stuff on line. I told Ellie that was the new plan and we blew that pop stand so we could go home and buy them where no one could aggravate mommy in real life. And, this coming on top of the jackass who pulled into the gas station island ahead of me and STOPPED at the first pump. When he got out to take the cap off his tank, I leaned out my window and passively agressively asked him if the first pump had special gas that he couldn't get at the second pump if he had JUST PULLED AHEAD. I bit my tongue to his sharp as a tack answer that he hadn't seen me pull in behind him. I wanted to jump out and get in his face and ask him why my arrival time had anything the HELL to do with pulling forward like a normal Earth citizen. Hmm, if I ever need hormone replacement therapy, I hope they hold the testosterone, I mostly don't need more.





But check out Mimi. She did not want to leave that bear behind. I know, it's creepy to take pictures of your kids when they're crying and distressed, but I thought it would be great to have this photo when she's an adult so I can show her how much she has grown and matured. Provided, of course, that she does grow and mature and develop compassion and that this picture will seem funny in 10 years.