Peanut goes on strike

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Peanut, my seven-year-old, refused to go to camp today.

He’s never wanted to go to camp. His first try was two weeks of camp the year between kindergarten and first grade, and he loved it. Except that he hates new things and doesn’t like new people, and is generally resistant to all experiences except the ones he’s just had one minute ago. Sigh. It’s as though his neophobia is genetic or something.

(Fun trick: call me and invite me to Hawaii tomorrow. I will panic and break out in sweat and tell you thirteen reasons I can’t go. And in three weeks, when I finally get used to the idea, I’ll call you to find out how your trip was. And I’ll still be glad I didn’t go because it was all just too much to process right now.)

So it’s clearly his own weirdness that gets him to this avoidance of all potential fun. Not my fault at all. As with all his flaws, I had nothing to do with either the nature or the nurture involved.

Ahem.

So in January, I went all New-York-parent on him and told him we had a month to decide on camps, upon penalty of missing all the good camps and being stuck with each other on our own for ten weeks without enough ideas to get us through. He wanted three weeks of camp. I talked him into five. We both felt we’d be okay with that number.

And I would be.

If the little headstrong (not my fault), opinionated (also not my fault), debate-seeker (totally not me at all) guy would go to camp.

He has attended three weeks’ worth of outdoors-y day camp in the eight weeks he’s been off school. And today should have begun week four. But last week and this weekend and this morning he told me that there was no way. His friends loved this camp last year, but he tried it as a partial backup when he couldn’t participate in a super-cool, two-week archery-lacrosse-rugby-soccer-jai’alai-badmiton sports camp because of his broken arm. And he hated it. It was boring, unimpressive, and long, he said. They didn’t make good use of the forest in which the camp is located, he said. The choices they offer are dumb, he said. It’s a waste of being outside in the summer, he said.

Upon hearing his refusal to go today I took a long look at his three-year-old brother, who has no preschool for another three weeks. I mentally thumbed through an index print of the summer highlights: fights over forts, fights over toys, fights over what to do, fights over who’s a better ninja.

“If you stay home, you have to hang out with us. All day. Including him.” I indicated with this pronoun a head nod to the completely angelic, adorable, fun-loving younger brother who is in no way aggressive (not my fault), abusive (so very not my fault), foul-mouthed (all his father), or moody (please…never a day in my life).

Peanut shrugged. He explained a few reasons why he’d rather roll with our planned day of board games and exploration than go to a mellow outdoor camp. None of the reasons was compelling or particularly articulate. None of them would sway my desire to continue with the day as planned.

But I let him stay home.

We spent a lot of time and money planning the summer so that he’d have some time with peers. I spent more effort than I’d like choosing to spend solo time with each child rather than sending them both to camp at the same time so I could work on my book. I voted to give them unscheduled time rather than give myself unscheduled time. It was a terrible vote except for the part that I totally stand by it because it’s what my kids needed.

So as I feel the waves of panic hit, knowing that most of summer is gone and I have worked on maybe one paragraph of my novel, I can’t see any point in forcing the kid into camp this week. Because his brother is home, bugging me engaging me in his creative preschool pursuits. It’s not like I’d get any work done, anyway. The money is spent either way, and it’s not as though an unstructured, boring outdoor camp is getting him into Harvard any time soon. And contrary to the impression I’ve left over five years of blogging about pulling my hair out while I muddle through as a woefully inadequate parent, I actually like spending time with the guy.

He stayed home from camp. We had a family dance party, we made homemade lemonade, we biked/scootered/ran to the distant grocery store for Juan Canary melon and salad bar and cookies. They scrounged up small toys for me to hide in plastic eggs for a Random Monday Egg Hunt. They asked for and fought through an episode of Planet Earth. They beat the tar out of each other over whose fort had a bigger blanket. They screamed about pillows and not sharing and some ridiculous thing about who’s allowed to use the gold origami paper. I calmly navigated each of these battles with suggestions and reminders and distractions. None of it worked, so I yelled a lot of “stop it”s when things got dangerous.

At the end of the evening, I asked Peanut to please, please try camp tomorrow. Just a half a day. Because we’ve paid for it. Because clearly a full day with his brother is not his idea of a good time. Because being bored in a forest beat the heck out of having a clump of your hair pulled out while under a fort blanket.

And I bet you right now that he will put his foot down and refuse to go. I’ll bet he chooses playgrounds and museums and craft projects and Monopoly and fights over unknown amounts of fun with a small group of strangers.

Because seriously, I would, too.

He said three weeks, after all. He said that in January, he said it in February. He said it in March and April and May.

Maybe next year I’ll listen to him. And schedule his brother for the same three weeks.

 

Too tired to think

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Today was a weird day.

I got up early to write, and packed the kids’ lunches at the last minute. The egg-hater got the hard-boiled eggs, the sandwich-hater got a nice big sandwich; the raspberry-avoider found in his bag a container of raspberries and the orange-resister received three clementines.

But I didn’t know that. I dropped them each off at camp, one of two days all summer that they’d be in someone else’s care at the same time. A drop-off foreshortened morning of writing and running preceded a work lunch with a fabulous colleague about some structural changes to my novel. And as I left a lovely neighborhood restaurant, full of channa masala and shahi paneer and excited to see my boys, I took the wrong freeway on-ramp.

And turned around and went the right way.

Then took the wrong interchange and had to backtrack again.

I picked up the little guy and drove him toward the big guy’s camp. And at a stop sign, made a complete stop, changed the song as requested, and started to drive.

A cyclist shot through the intersection and stuck his tongue out at me. Quite civilized, I thought, given that he clearly thought it was his turn. But I had stopped at the sign. Just like everyone else.

I looked around.

What glared back was a stoplight. Still red. And I was halfway through an empty intersection. All clear, all safe. But I felt in equal parts the judgement of the cars still stopped as legally required, and the expectation that the world would crash down around me because I had broken a very important safety rule with my child in the car. And didn’t even know until it was too late.

It was small consolation, but I remembered the reusable bags going into the grocery store. And then left a bag full of frozen berries in the car for several hours. No kids abandoned in the car. But a lot of very sad blueberries who had hoped to make a smoothie some day had their hopes dashed in my obscene levels of discombobulation.

I don’t know where my brain is. I’ve been running on fumes since summer began, but went into warp speed after a conference that inspired me to write, drive change, lean in, and start the revolution.

But I don’t think anybody intended for a revolution in forgetfulness and dangerous driving. Probably. I’m pretty sure. Maybe I just missed that session.

So tonight I’m going to bed early. In the past two weeks I’ve built a web site, written five blog posts, worked on my novel, started a proposal for a client’s memoir, fielded inquiries about ghostwriting, run for preschool Board Vice President, finished a two-month term as preschool Board Secretary, paid bills, and worked on a client naming project, all in the hours when my children slept.

I think it’s time to say, “Yes, you’ve done enough today. Go to sleep.”

And as I was telling Spouse this story, he interrupted twice to ask for details he thought were important but I was positive didn’t matter one freaking bit. After the second interruption, I blew. “Stop interrupting! I want to tell my story my way!”

He graciously said I could. And walked out of the room before I restarted.

So I hollered down the hall towards him that if he wouldn’t listen right, I’d tell my blog. Because you people always listen just the right way.

Anybody else out there want to complain that they’re tired? So very tired? If so, I’ll listen.

Foreign Exchange…progress

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The thought of an international event in which our family learns from someone else and they learn from us sounded fabulous. Language and culture and lifestyle and food experiments without even leaving our own home? Sign us up!It hasn’t quite happened that way.

In the first week Rosí and I had a few intense discussions about poverty and universities and family and priorities and feminism and cancer. And we watched each other in horror as one of us ate egg and ketchup sandwiches and the other faked burgers out of cauliflower and lentils. We squirmed under the new living arrangement, both of us used to living with another adult and two children, and now juxtaposed in a space with four voices to contend with rather than three.

Then we settled a bit. We agreed to disagree. We found a way to respect each other and allow idiosyncracies to go unremarked.

But now I’m totally winning.

When she ran out of white bread, I bought her whole wheat. And she hated it. But a month later Spouse did the same thing. And she ate it. And now she’s having grilled cheese on bread labeled “sprouted multi-grain” the first ingredient of which is “organic high protein sprouted wheat berries.”

Win.

Yesterday she laughed until tears came out of her eyes when Spouse asked her if she’d every tried making mashed potatoes with the skin still on. She’s told me often that her favorite mashed potatoes are those Mamí makes from the box. But today, she mashed her potatoes with the skins still on the potato.

Double win.

The nuanced point that Spouse has gotten her to change her ways on both these carbohydrate fronts is not lost on me. But I will pretend I’m at least partially responsible, because I got the girl to eat a salad.

No, seriously. King me. I totally win.

Our visitor told me a story about how every year for Christmas her mother makes herself a salad. The rest of the year she knows none of the house’s residents will eat greenery. Of any type. Last night, Rosí ate half of the salad I put in front of her. Baby lettuces and raw spinach and Italian dressing. Ate it. Without gagging or laughing or rolling her eyes.

My dear readers, our teenager is now my favorite kid. Because she’s the only one doing what Spouse tells her to do. Mostly Spouse. But also kind of me.

I did it! I did it! I made a whole international exchange of cultures about forcing fiber into another person! Yay me!

 

Writing Tips from the conference: BlogHer’13 Writes

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I posted yesterday the six pieces of advice I heard over and over at BlogHer ’13.

Today I’ve posted on my other site the highlights from writing and publishing panels and workshops from the conference.

Take a look at both for ideas to help your writing and publishing projects.

 

 

Top Six Takeaways from BlogHer ’13

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Tomorrow I’m posting a longer summary of all the sessions I attended at BlogHer ’13, intending to offer fellow writers some of the ideas I heard during my 68-hour foray into the world’s largest blogging conference.

Today, I offer you the six pieces of advice I heard reiterated most often at BlogHer ’13. In the keynote, in discussions, from panels, in workshops, and during highlighted sessions, I noted the following over and over:

1. Find your difference. Write about it well, laugh at it, own it. What you have to offer is your perspective, experience, and knowledge. Nobody wants to hear (or read or see) the same voice with the same message. To be a successful brand you have to offer something different, sustainable, credible, and relevant. The only way to do that consistently is to sing the core of who you are. [Note: this year nobody seems pushedthe idea that an author must be a brand. Apparently we’ve all finally accepted that and moved on. You are a brand. Stipulated.]

2. Publish. Blog numbers mean very little if your goal is publishing. To ask publishers, editors, and readers to pay for your work you have to prove that other professionals think you’re worth publishing. Publish great pieces in books, magazines, newspapers, online spaces by finding the right audience for your message and selling the heck out of your words.

3. Someone aches for what you’re selling. Get it to them. Find the people who really need, want, or pay for exactly what you write or produce. Figure out what you’re really offering and bring it to those who need it. That goes for selling what you make, publishing what you write, or being elected for what you believe. Find the right customer and get your wares right in front of them.

4. Build your platform before you write your book. A lot of people must hear the announcement “I have something to sell!” If they don’t hear you, nobody will buy. And for them to hear you, they have to already know your work. People who don’t know you don’t care about you; they care about a compelling story impeccably told. So build a following of people who know that you’re compelling and can tell stories impeccably before the world hears that you’re selling/publishing/running for something.

5. Get used to feeling uncomfortable. I gleaned this from every writing seminar, keynote, editing workshop, advocacy panel, celebrity panel, and niche panel at BlogHer ’13. Five thousand attendees heard this over and over: Creatively and personally, if you’re going to do something that matters, get comfortable feeling uncomfortable. Lean in. Engage. Query. Take the leap. Incorporate the criticism. Face the music. Do the work. Take the heat. Feeling uneasy is your new normal. Embrace it. It means you’re doing something important.

6. Content is king. The quality of your ideas, writing, music, food, products, message simply must be outstanding, and must say something new about that which is important to your audience. Content. Is. King.

[Note: focusing on content is consistent with the editing phase in which I continually remind authors that the reader is king. Making your writing work for readers is producing good content. So perhaps the content is co-king with the reader? No… content is the crown for the royal reader? No… the reader is the palace in which the king lives. Or vice versa? Or monarchy is so last millennium and we need new metaphors. Maintain an unwavering focus on your reader’s need for great content. There. No more kings. Just robust writing, great content, and engaged readers.]

6. (revised) Maintain an unwavering focus on your audience’s need for great content. 

Did I miss any? Did you hear anything repeatedly at BlogHer ’13 that we must remember as we charge off into the world and create great content?

 

BlogHer ’13: Don’t whine. Find solutions.

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In many ways, BlogHer ’13 was what I expected. I never thought (despite the frenzy  on Twitter) that this international blogging conference focused on celebrating the power of voice would feature unicorns and a keynote from She-Ra. I hoped, just a bit, but my rational side rejoiced in calm, reserved expectations. But it seems as though not everyone shared by approach.

As with other conferences I’ve attended (in other fields), I expected a diverse group of people with varied goals attending panels and workshops of varying levels of professionalism and usefulness. I expected to meet a few amazing people, hear a few snippets of mind-blowing advice, roll my eyes several times, and experience my share of frustration. And exhaustion.

More than 5,000 humans with nuanced lives, experiences, and personalities attended BlogHer ’13 for different reasons and with varied goals, and I was able to get lost and to be found in that crowd.

All this I expected.

What I didn’t expect was the complaining.

“That celebrity writer is just an a–hole! Why did they choose him?”

“I can’t believe we have to listen to her! She’s so annoying.”

“This is a joke, right? Who considers vegetables and hummus a meal?”

“Who the hell planned to have these two sessions at the same time? I’m so mad because I want to attend both.”

Unreasonable expectations? Unfettered sense of entitlement? Undeveloped social skills?

[Note: The only complaints I heard were from women. I refuse to generalize to a gender-specific propensity toward complaining or to a statistical assumption about the odds of hearing complaints from a minority group at a large conference. Simple statement: the only people I heard complain about the programming, the food, the sessions, the structure, the convention center, the bathrooms, or the conference planning were women. And a *lot* of them were complaining.]

Ladies: I have a suggestion.

No, it’s not “get over yourselves.” I wish it were, because I lean toward that reaction. This was a very well-planned conference that attempted to meet the needs of a remarkably diverse group of bloggers. So I wish I could say, “get off your entitled high horse and appreciate what you have.”

But that’s not instructive. And it is fundamentally the same as the whining I heard. My demanding that someone share my perspective (in this case “I command you toward awe and gratitude and joy”) is similar in both tone and dismissive self-centrism as someone else’s whine that they didn’t like the heavy marketing presence at BlogHer.

My suggestion, actually, is that they write a letter.

BlogHer focused programming and seminars and workshops and presenters and conversations and awards and keynotes around using our voice. And most of the sessions focused on finding the right audience for that voice so that it’s heard by the right people.

Complaining to fellow conference attendees gets you nothing. It annoys your fellow writer and squanders your power.

If you don’t like something, speak up. If you felt dissatisfied with the proceedings in Chicago, tell the conference planners at BlogHer 1) what you didn’t like, 2) how a situation didn’t meet your expectations, 3) how you would fix it in the future, and 4) how you will help.

Complaining is rarely effective if you don’t show that you’ve analyzed the situation, your expectations, and the possible solutions. Note that in the above solution you have to do some serious work around honestly examining  your reasoning, articulating how a situation fell short, and developing a workable solution.

You do this at work when you write a memo that explains why your old computer hampers productivity, how your computer fits into the company’s larger technology picture, what options you’ve identified for upgrading, which are your recommendations for a technological change, and where the money will come from.

You do this at home, too. When the family is bickering about the same things or getting stuck at the same time of day, you have a meeting to explain what you see, solicit ideas for change, aggregate recommendations for a new approach, create a plan, and garner approval for the new plan.

If you didn’t like something about a conference, you have to speak up. But complaining, especially to fellow attendees, does not change anything. Examining expectations, stating problems, and offering solutions changes everything.

Use your words, people. Because I want to help you but I can’t understand when you’re whining.

 

 

Blog paralysis

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After attending three days of workshops and lectures and panels on writing at the BlogHer conference last week in Chicago, I have a case of blog paralysis.

Not writer’s block. I’m writing plenty and have gobs and gobs to say.

But I can’t let the posts fly like I once did. I used to dash off my thoughts and post them, unedited, whenever something occurred to me. Silly bits of my day, desperate situations that need heroic efforts around the world…everything.

Now I have several drafts ping ponging around my laptop, all crammed full of thoughts but falling flat. Not good enough, not insightful enough, not powerful enough or fast enough to make a mark in the world. Flaccid, flabby writing several days late and several thousand dollars short, quite unworthy of the brilliant writing I read and dissected and aspired to while surrounded by thousands of bloggers in a convention center turned, for a weekend, into a giant writing seminar.

So I’m dashing off a thought, unedited, as it comes to me while I wade through the notes of finding a niche and writing unvarnished truth and publishing and knowing my audience and finding the right place for my voice and reading as much as possible and…breathlessly unpacking the weighted baggage of my post-trip brain, I’m just going to post this.

It’s Saturday night. Nobody reads posts Saturday night anyway, right? So an imperfect, unedited, unpolished, rambling post that doesn’t further my brand or my craft or my voice or my platform is just fine.

It has to be.

Baby steps, y’all. Baby steps.

 

Schadenfreude

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It’s not nice to laugh at other people, I tell the boys. And I believe it. Mostly.

But our dear Rosí, the foreign exchange student who’s here this summer, just told me a story about what happened while we were camping last weekend.

She thought she found chocolate. She was so excited. Very little of our food appeals to her and she was thrilled to find something she recognized.

She tried the plump bean of chocolate. That was actually licorice.

And she now thinks that maybe she won’t eat ever again.

I tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it. I think mistaking black licorice for chocolate might have been the cruelest thing that happened to her the whole trip.

And potentially the most hilarious.

She got me back, though.

By 6:00 a.m., my children are shrieking with laughter. Every day. There is no morning too early for poop jokes, namecalling, and silliness.

And by 6:07 they’re shrieking in murderous rages at each other. What begins in joy ends in tears. At warp speed and quite loudly.

So Rosí has nicknamed my youngest El Gallo.

The rooster.

Because he crows loudly. Early. And often.

Guess the joke’s on me.

Just in case, though, I’m putting licorice in every cupboard of the kitchen.

Because I’m mean. And running on a constant adrenaline-plus-lack-of-sleep high.

And mean.

Foreign Exchange, week six in review

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We’re halfway done with this adventure hosting a foreign exchange student. She has settled into work and home, and we’re getting used to having her here.

Her English is phenomenal. My Spanish hasn’t improved much because she doesn’t want me to speak Spanish while she’s here. One of the reasons I thought hosting a guest from overseas would be great for our family was that I thought we’d have an in-home language tutor.

Oh, well.

I also thought I’d do a phenomenal job cooking more simply, more creatively, and more enthusiastically while showing someone new how excited we are about food. Nope. Because she dislikes so many of the American flavor profiles (and Mexican and Chinese and Italian and French flavors, too) I’ve also slowed on the efforts to cook new and exciting dishes to woo her taste buds over to our whole-grain, carefully seasoned, locally grown way of life.

But the other night she seemed thrilled with a pasta dish I cooked. Overjoyed, I asked her if she liked it.

“Yes,” she said. “But I bought something to add to it.”

“Great,” I smiled, genuinely excited. “Tell me what it is so I can maybe cook it again for you!”

She pulled the can out of the recycling. Ch*f B@yardi beef ravioli. I tried valiantly not to gag, but failed. She said, “Don’t you eat that?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

Well, you asked, lady. I was going to keep my mouth shut. “Because it’s full of chemicals. It’s not food like something that’s grown.”

“I know,” she purred. “That’s why I like it.”

I still can’t imagine how different life must be for her in this country.

And really, how much different life must be for her in this house. The more I see myself reflected in her eyes, the weirder I know I am.

She told me she found a spider in her closet. I shrugged. She told me that she hates them and is scared of them. So I went to her closet and saw the daddy longlegs in a web by her shirts. I took a piece of paper, asked the critter to climb on, and took it outside. I wished it luck finding bugs and reassured it that life outdoors is better.

She almost passed out from my freakishness.

She all but shrieked, “You don’t kill it?”

‘No,” I said, and put the paper back on my desk. She eyed it with horror. As though spider essence had escaped onto its fibers during the arachnid’s short stay.

“Why don’t you kill it?!”

“I don’t kill things.”

This baffled her.

“I don’t eat meat, I don’t kill spiders, I don’t smash bugs.”

She shook her head and gave up. I am a lost cause.

And she seemed quite sheepish when she asked me a week later, after eldest got lice, if I was willing to kill the bugs I found on his head.

“Oh, God yes! I have to kill them or they’ll come back.”

She seemed relieved.

Maybe she’ll forgive me for under-salting, under-sweetening, under-processing food. And for rescuing spiders.

As long as I’m willing to kill lice, I’m okay in her book.

To prove it, later that night she asked for my opinion about how to start a charitable organization when she gets home. She wants to find a shelter-based solution for the many homeless dogs in her neighborhood and we talked about ways to fund that endeavor.

How exciting that she’s settling in her and still thinking about how she’ll get back into life back home.

The beginning of this experience excited me with possibilities. When I realized how outsized my expectations were, I grew quite uncomfortable with this process. And now that we’re all hitting our stride, this long run is feeling pretty good. It’s still work. It’s most likely going to be uncomfortable again soon. But for now, hosting a foreign exchange student is going quite well for us.

Have I convinced any of you readers to consider doing this next summer?

 

Bugs, bugs, bugs.

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Oh, dear heavens, our seven-year-old got lice.

I really don’t need to say much more than that, for most of us had those insidious creatures as children or have parented small people growing those insidious creatures.

But holy guacamole it’s a lot of work. Our resolve to treat most illness and body issues naturally is seriously testing my rejection of all things insecticidal and toxic.

[UPDATE: See link at the end of the post for a three-week combing plan that requires no spraying, washing, nighttime masks, etc. I didn’t use it in the beginning, but have adopted it now.]

I knew as soon as I saw him scratching that I wouldn’t use neurotoxic insecticides that are illegal for use on farm animals and pets but legal for use on children. (Seriously, FDA? What is this, the billionth time you’ve made the wrong choice at the hands of major chemical companies?)

I also knew that choosing to eradicate bugs without toxic chemicals was going to make life way more challenging. But I had no idea just how challenging. I searched the Internet for nontoxic lice treatments to kill lice without poisons and came up with a regimen of head- and house-delousing that has, incidentally, almost killed me.

Why?

Day One:

  1. Shampoo and condition infected child with our regular, non-toxic products plus tea tree oil. Rinse with apple cider vinegar. Wash towel on hot. Estimated time: fifteen minutes.
  2. Strip all bedding from all beds, all clothes from drawers, all hats from rack, all costumes from basket. Put rugs outside. Sequester all washables in garage. Bag and seal all unwashable items (helmets, stuffed animals, etc.) Begin endless hot-water-and-tea-tree washing and drying on high. Estimated time: forty minutes.
  3. Take long-haired louse-festival and his brother to three stores to get supplies for two weeks of anti-lice tirades. Estimate time: one hour
  4. Spray both children with diluted tea tree oil. Comb each kid with his own with stainless steel nit comb. Boil nit combs. Time: two hours.
  5. Iron bunk bed mattresses. (Yes, with a clothes iron.) Put clean sheets on bunk beds. Estimated time: twenty-five minutes.
  6. Spray car seats with tea tree oil. Estimated time: five minutes
  7. Coat everyone’s heads with coconut oil (mixed with a dash of tea tree oil). Add shower caps. Estimated time: five minutes.
  8. Have Spouse nit comb my hair. Estimated time: forever.
  9. Continue laundry barrage. Estimated time: eternity.
  10. Sleep in coconut oil and shower cap. Estimated time: not long enough.

Day Two:

  1. Wake and comb coconut treatment out of both kids with nit comb. Ninety minutes
  2. Strip beds, throw all pillows, sheets, comforters into dryer in thirty-minute phases. Fifteen minutes
  3. Bathe kids. Wash hair, rinse with vinegar. Let dry, spray with diluted tea tree oil. Thirty minutes
  4. Take them to beach. Time? Who cares? It was lovely.
  5. Remake beds. Fifteen minutes.
  6. Give baths. Thirty minutes.
  7. Comb with nit comb. One hour. (Look at me, getting faster. Or careless.)
  8. Make beds. Fifteen minutes.
  9. Strip car seats, wash and dry covers. Twenty minutes.
  10. Regret bunk beds, hair, resistance to chemicals. All day.
  11. Apply coconut and shower caps. Five minutes.
  12. Reassemble and attach car seats. Thirty minutes.
  13. Have Spouse nit comb my hair: One hour.

Day Three:

Wash, dry. Strip beds. Wash, dry laundry. Comb kids. Wash, condition, rinse, dry kids. Make beds.

I’m going insane.

And I itch all over. I’m convinced I have lice, ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, and chiggers. All right now on my head.

Despite evidence that I don’t.

Day one eldest was crawling with bugs. Combed out maybe 50 disgusting little buggers. Youngest had none. I had none. Morning after coconut treatment eldest had at least a dozen dead bugs. Youngest had one tiny dead bug. Me, too. Morning after second coconut treatment eldest had no live bugs, two tiny dead bugs. Youngest had no live bugs, no dead bugs.

Tonight, after 48 hours and complete freaking adrenaline overload. I can’t find any eggs or lice on either kid. But eggs are microscopic and we have two more weeks, at least, of combing before we can be sure whatever hatches doesn’t grow big enough to lay its own eggs and start the whole insane cycle again.

So I’m psychosomatically itchy. And tired. And firmly resolved to keep up this incessant pace of laundry, combing, and coconutting.

The pediatrician says all we really need is the combing. And patience. Three weeks.
A friend says we could help ourselves by having the kids sleep in sleeping bags on the floor for ease of morning laundry.
The Internet says we have to keep doing all this for three weeks. Unfortunately, the Internet also says to buy lots of products, toxic and non-toxic. But nothing kills the eggs, and hatched critters can’t lay eggs if they’re combed out.

 

So.

What’s a little twelve-step day that takes six hours total? I have a spare six hours every day, right?

Wrong.

But. There are upsides.

  1. My kids are now sitting still (in front of the television, but I think anyone on the planet with excuse me that one) for an hour each day.
  2. We’re cleaning out the freezer of all the emergency, just-in-case frozen meals. Because there’s no way I’m cooking, too.
  3. The bugs seem to be gone for now. Or at least they’re on their way out. I have bested them with my will. And will continue to do so.
  4. I’ve finally needed the numbered-list formatting on my five-year-old blog.

So I guess there are silver linings to every creepy, crawly, disgusting parasite.

Right?

[UPDATE link http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/theliceprogram/index.html%5D

Keep Your Hands Inside the Ride at All Times

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This morning, Butterbean came padding into our room and climbed wordlessly into bed between us. I moved the covers so he could snuggle down, and I promptly ignored him.

I’ve trained him to expect to be ignored in the early morning. If he wakes up and it’s light out, I tell him, he’s welcome to come to cuddle. But if Spouse and I are sleeping, he needs to settle down with us and try to sleep, too.

The “trying to sleep” is always in vain, of course. The kid, like his brother, just began sleeping through the night at age 3.25 years. And when he wakes up at 6 a.m., he’s completely done sleeping. Done. Revved, raring, rambunctious. Usually he wakes his brother with knock-knock jokes or wakes me screaming about covers he can’t adjust. Or sings to himself for a few minutes.

So a quiet ten minutes or so is the best I can get from him, and I gleefully take every second.

This morning he waited only two minutes before he whispered to me.

“Mommy?”
“Mmmm.”
“When the sun goes down at night, do the clouds go away, too?”
[wide grin inside that exhausted exterior failed to show]
“Nope. The clouds float above us in the air and they stay in the night and in the day. If there are no clouds, the sky stays clear. And if there are clouds, they drift along with the wind just as they do in the day. Because the sky is still there at night. We just don’t see as much because we’ve turned away from the sun.”
“Oh.”

And before I fell back to sleep for another two minutes, I died of the cuteness.

This morning was like the moment you’re next in line at the roller coaster. The boring part of the waiting is done, you’re the special one who gets in next, these delicious moments are all about “any second now”. Just before your turn the whole ride seems exciting and new and full of promise. Not jerky and nauseating and whiplash-y and quick and emotionally draining.

Three is a challenging age. Three is screaming and fits and rage and no impulse control and crazy and “can I listen to that song for the 1,095th time?” Three is an exhausting roller coaster that lasts two years or so, pausing infrequently to allow gulps of air before continuing on, terrifyingly quickly and without seat belts.

But at least once a day, Three is so intensely cute it makes my brain think we’re on vacation on a tropical island with nothing but clear warm water and bright blue skies. Every few hours, amidst the crazy and the angry and the are you kidding me, we have a moment of recalling how freaking edible children can be when they are little balls of wonder and exploration and joy.

Mmmmmm. Waking up to silently padding feet and a cuddle and a science question?

That is the pure bliss that Three occasionally brings. And oh me, oh my it’s tasty.

Delicious little pat of Butter.

You Have to Know Who You Are

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Each morning when I dress the part of the human I’m pretending to be, I think about the contexts in which people will see me. An all-kids day means I wear a geek T-shirt, skort, and pair of worn-out Chucks with red recycled-kimono laces. A meeting with clients means a suit (despite the fact that I’m still clinging to pre-kids suits that are way too tight and too short. Because children, apparently, made me grow several inches. Or made my rear-end absorb several inches of pant-length. Probably the taller thing. Because science.) I reject heels with those suits in favor of sturdy brown wingtips with yellow recycled-kimono laces.

When I’m headed to a conference I feign disinterest and fight my personal love of tweed trousers. I pair a crisp French-cuffed shirt with jeans. Sometimes a tweed jacket. Because I can’t help myself. Oh, my word, the draw of elbow patches. I would put elbow patches on T-shirts and jammies if I could. To fight the corporate-academic look I wear boots, especially my canvas and leather jump boots. Because nothing says badass-academic like jump boots and Scrabble-tile cufflinks.

But an upcoming conference poses a perplexing problem. I’m headed to Chicago for BlogHer, a massive conference for bloggers that I never really thought I’d attend. I’m not sure how I got caught up in the excitement and the joy of this conference. Except that I know exactly how it happened. I won a kind-of-a-big-deal blogging award.

A lovely human named Alexandra, who blogs her infectious love of life, family, and women in several places including at Good Day Regular People has been outrageously kind with me since she found my blog last year. She has connected me with sites she thinks I should blog for and has cheered my accomplishments. She’s my age, but I think of her as my abuela. She’s kind and supportive in the way everyone’s families should be.

And when the BlogHer Voices of the Year submission process opened, Alexandra tweeted to her Empire that everyone should submit because everyone is worthy.

Trying to learn from her example, I slammed the door on self doubts and submitted three pieces from last year.

And promptly forgot that I had entered. I was proud enough to have sneered at the internal, “why would *you* ever…” long enough to submit. I didn’t actually think about the process or the possibility that I might be selected.

But my post on autism is one of twenty-five blog posts being celebrated for inspiration at the upcoming conference.

And when I found out, I was incredulous. Then I cried. And then assumed that all further references to Voice of the Year would necessitate an asterisk.

“Tonight we celebrate 99 bloggers who inspired us, and one extra, whom we chose to fill out the extra seat next to them.”
“We have worked diligently to select some of the best writing online this year, and are throwing a bone to a post by a mediocre writer at whom we shrug a lukewarm nod. You know whom we mean.”
Seems a rather disrespectful view of the judges. [Not of myself or my writing, by the way. The judges did all the work. And the other writers. And the webmaster. And conference planners. And the snack vendors. They all deserve the credit.]

After a bit of this disrespectful drivel, I started to think, maybe, perhaps, there are a few other honorees who similarly think their mention is a mistake or footnoted pity vote. That when I’m clapping for the other bloggers whose posts just *wrecked* me with humor and heart and compassion and truth, perhaps one or two might be hanging their heads in embarrassment, too.

Probably not.

What did this to me? What makes me think what I make doesn’t matter? Or shouldn’t count? Or that when people say, “I read that and liked it” that they’re wrong/lying/trying to be nice? Why wouldn’t I say thank you the way I do when clients like my writing or academics like my writing? Why is creative writing, unpaid writing, heartfelt writing less worthy?

I did feel proud of my writing when I hit “post.” And I did feel satisfied enough in my writing that I entered a contest, something I never, ever do. So why would that pride die when I won? What kind of headcase freakiness is this?

All the other VOTY posts I’ve read, without exception, have floored me. They’ve made me want to write more.

And dozens of people commented that my post was important to them. I have a responsibility to those readers, including the judges, to smother the ridiculous nonsense in my head and to take a bow.

So I’m going to straighten up, allow the smile to settle in, and sit proudly with those wonderful writers at the Voices of the Year celebration later this month.

Because I need some applause in my life, yo. And all I have to do is stop knocking myself down to see the hands making that noise. They’re lovely, gentle, raucous, funny, smart, activist, human hands.

So now to the last, little problem.

What does one wear to act the part of someone who is learning to shut the door on self-doubt and to take full possession of her body, brain, and writing? Is there such thing as a tweed skort and french-cuff shirt with recycled-kimono elbow patches? Designers? Call me if you can hook me up with that kind of swag.

Sibling rivalry: the foreign exchange edition

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Before Butter was born, I read a lot about preparing children for a sibling. I read about how to handle conflict between siblings, how to channel competition into cooperation, and how to find family tranquility.

I forgot to do that before our foreign exchange student arrived.

My boys helped prepare her room and drew her pictures to decorate her walls. They helped me shop for groceries she might like. And Peanut, our seven-year-old made a list of places we should take her. All very sweet.

But since she arrived, Butter is completely unimpressed.

Okay, that’s an understatement. He despises her.

When our temporary daughter talks to him, he shouts at her. “Don’t talk to me!”

I remind him that we talk nicely. That if you don’t want to answer, you can say, “I don’t want to talk.” But screaming at our friend “don’t talk to me, stupid Rosí!” is a one-way ticket to alone time.

She is flabbergasted by his rudeness. She has asked him to be nice, and she has told him she doesn’t like yelling. In fact, at one point she told him he couldn’t come in her room. She explained that, “Mommy talks nicely so she can come in my room. Daddy talks nicely so he can come in my room. Peanut talks nicely so he can come in my room. If you want to talk nicely, you can come in my room. But when you yell? You cannot come in my room. Goodbye.”

It didn’t work. He walked out of her room and slammed the door.

I’ve explained to him that he’s my son and I love him. That she’s a guest and we have to talk nicely. That I’m not her mom…I’m his mom.

But he knows that she’s the new baby in the family, taking time and attention from mom.

In her kind attempts to tidy the house, she moves his treasures and puts his shoes in the wrong place.

In her need to understand or clarify or get directions, she is taking from him what he believes is rightfully his.

And she came in full adult form, so he didn’t get his chance to poke and pinch her and test her pain tolerance as an infant.

She interrupts him when he talks, not hearing his thinking pauses in part because she’s unused to the rhythms of a three-year-old.

When he needs something, she often needs something, too. Sometimes she has to wait, and sometimes he has to wait.

She often calls me Mommy.

Worst of all, for him, she often doesn’t understand what he says. She gently tells him, “I don’t understand what you said,” hoping that he’ll repeat himself. Or miraculously become more articulate than his three years will allow.

He bellows, “I said ‘don’t talk to me,’ stupid Rosí!”

¡Ay, dios mío!

As our Dominican guest told me this week, my children are making me an old woman.

Hot cocoa

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There are few things that unify the world like chocolate.

During our first week together I offered our foreign exchange student a cup of cocoa.

And that event has become a microcosm of our relationship.

First she marveled that we call it cocoa. She calls it hot chocolate. Fair enough, I explained, since many people do. I like distinguishing it from edible chocolate. Drinkable chocolate sounds funny. So hot cocoa or just cocoa.

I try to buy only fair trade chocolate. Because I feel it’s important to fight child-slave labor by refusing to buy conventionally sourced chocolate. But after trying all the fair trade cocoas out there, I’ve decided my favorite is the brand this taste test decried as cloyingly sweet and overly vanilla-ed. Organic, but not fair trade.

Too sweet, most tasters at the newspaper said. But our dear friend from the Dominican Republic almost spat out her first sip. She said, horrified, “you didn’t put any sugar in this!” then fixed it to her liking, with three soup spoons full of sugar and a little extra milk.

The next night, she asked me to make her another cup of cocoa.

As I mentioned earlier this week, we’ve been working on getting her more independent. So I pointed to the kettle, explained how it works. I made sure she knows how to turn on the stove. And I told her the water would be ready soon and left her with a packet of a less sweet, fair trade cocoa.

She managed just fine. She found a cup and a spoon. And she knew very well where the sugar was.

Four weeks? Shut the front door!

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When we agreed to host a foreign exchange student because she’s lifelong friends with a lovely couple whose company I enjoy, I thought in abstract terms about timing. A month or a while or a summer or a few weeks is how I somehow imprecisely framed it in my mind. Right before she arrived I started understanding the math of having a new housemate for eleven weeks.

It’s not that this situation is getting old. And it’s not that we’ve stopped learning from each other. But the novelty is starting to wear off. A little. And being only a third of the way done is definitely overwhelming.

Before Rosí arrived from the DR, I told a friend that we’d probably have a great time the first week, hate her by the third, find new and exciting ways to learn from each other weeks four through six, despise her again by week eight, enjoy each other for the last few weeks, and have mixed feelings when she left. So by now, after week four, things should be swinging from “oh my gawd, what have we done?” to “hey, this is cool!”

Um…well…we definitely didn’t hate her during week three. That’s something, right?

This whole experience has a been a roller coaster. I don’t see, so far, many differences from moving in with a roommate. When we met everything was exciting. That phase ended very quickly. Then we realized what living together was like and had to have several talks about expectations. Then I realized what I’d really done was adopted another child. A teenaged child. Once she ceased to be an idea of cross-cultural exchange and became a human in my shower when I had only five minutes to spare, she was not a fun experiment in altruism. She was an extra set of strong opinions and pressing needs in my house when the last damned thing I need is another set of opinions and needs. In my house. A lot of the time.

Now that we’ve settled into our patterns, we’re carefully negotiating whether we’re a host family or landlords. Spouse and I agreed to bring this new friend into our home, thinking that she could stay with us in a downstairs room that has its own bathroom and separate entrance. We knew we’d have meals with our dormer, and we knew she’d stay rent-free (because we’re masochists, really) in exchange for cleaning the house.

But we didn’t know that she envisioned that we’d be surrogate parents.

Rosí is a university student in her native country, so we assumed she’d be independent and keen to explore. But the more conversations we have with her, the more we think that society in the Dominican Republic, personality, her family, or all three have made her timid about taking risks. She wants someone with her all the time, despite her strong English skills, the safety of our neighborhood and city, and availability of fabulous places within walking and public transit distances.

The problem might be that she’s overwhelmed by how much there is to do. Or that she hasn’t shaken the sense of unsafety that she says she has in her home country. Or, more likely, that we have a misalignment of expectations. We want to engage with her about her work, her studies, our work, our life, her country, and our country. We want to show her what we love to do and involve her when we can. Ideally, for us, we’d take her with us on our weekly hike, take her to museums, explore the wonderful sights in Berkeley and San Francisco. But we also want time to pursue our lives separate from her. And I don’t think she wants to be alone. Ever.

The times we’ve included her in museums, hikes, picnics, and travel, she hasn’t had fun. She doesn’t enjoy the things we do. And I think she’d rather we start doing her favorite things so she’ll have someone to do them with her. She’d like someone to shop with her, to see tourist attractions, to take her to the movies.

I hate shopping. I think retail as entertainment is one of the worst choices available, barring perhaps nuclear waste cleanup. But even this latter option helps people, and I’m all for pitching in when necessary. Not so shopping.

Tourist attractions make me itchy. Because they’re full of tourists and have no compelling reason to be so attractive, except that they’re full of retail entertainment which makes people think they’ve experienced something local. Because they can buy a T-shirt that says, “I’ve done something local.”

I do love movies. But we have two small children, and we’ve seen maybe four movies in the theater and two live performance events since the eldest was born. I can name them right now, without much effort. I’m not interested in playing subtitles for Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing right now, thank you. (It was compelling, by the way. You should see it. Crazy what a group of artists can get done in two weeks when they want to.) The bottom line is that I want to be with my family doing the things we enjoy, or with close friends doing the things we enjoy.

I don’t want to be with my roommate doing the things she enjoys.

That makes me a bad person, I’m sure. But it’s my truth. And my blog, so I can kind of owe the truth here.

Look, I’d gladly take someone new on a wild tour of the Bay Area, exploring as much of its fabulous offerings as possible. And I do, with my kids. During the week. But the weekend is crammed with things for the family to do together and with time alone to write. Because these are the things we can’t do on weekdays.

And because it’s little bits at a time. Not eleven weeks of “this is your only chance so hurry and do something important!”

Three months is a marathon visit, and I have lots of work to do. Raising two boys full time is a raucous and exhausting job. Trying to nurture each of my other careers in the few hours of solitude at night and on rare weekends can be both draining and rewarding. All of that put together sometimes borders on too much. But I thought we could fit in having a roommate since she’d take some of the housekeeping tasks. I wanted to help give her an amazing opportunity where she could pursue her passions and learn as much as possible about American culture.

But I don’t want to do sightseeing tours. I don’t want to know that our food is gross and our hobbies are boring and our friends are unimpressive and our focus on our kids is weird and annoying.

I assumed a young person from another country coming to the United States to learn about the culture and language would want immersion in real American life. Not in pursuing typical activities from home in a new location.

I try to remember that, of course she wants what’s familiar. She wants what is from home because that’s what she knows and likes. This is a huge change for her, 24 hours a day. And to be fair, our food is probably gross and our hobbies are probably boring to some people. [Our friends couldn’t possibly be unimpressive to anyone. FACT.]

But I don’t think it has set in yet for her that this is what she gets for the rest of her stay. Unless she takes the initiative to venture out on her own.

Because this is who we are and we’re doing what’s important to us. Going to another country means learning what there is to do and see and eat and experience. So if this household and this way of life—cooking fresh local food, hiking, going outside as much as possible, seeing friends, pursuing beauty and fun—are not your cup of tea, by all means, explore until you find something in this incredible area that floats your boat.

But please, don’t expect us to find your passion for you. We’re doing that for ourselves right now, as boring and gross as it may look to outsiders.