March 07, 2008

shameless commerce

If you're a runner and a blogger (or otherwise-online-type), you can win a pair of great Oiselle Lesley Knickers over at Fitness for Mommies.

I myself am looking for some running mojo during the ides here in CNY. And since I have no dinero, the shameless blog-post-for-possible-personal-material-return.

Posted by mryonker at 09:38 AM | Comments (1)

March 05, 2008

please learn from my mistakes

H is on her third pair of pointe shoes this year. My fingers are near-bleeding from sewing in the elastic and ribbon. The woman who fits H for her shoes reprimands me every time because I don't make H sew them in herself. But *I* can barely push the needle through the thick elastic--how can I expect her to do it??

I complained, half-jokingly, that H is setting some sort of record for her studio in going through shoes. The saleswoman, a retired ballerina herself, looked at me aghast. "Professional dancers wear out a pair of shoes in about eight hours of use, and in ONE ACT of a performance..." She shook her head slightly at me, as if to wonder how stupid I could be.

Quite stupid, apparently. Here's more proof (aside from having cultivated in my daughter a taste for the most expensive hobby a young girl might have): On the way home from pre-school on Monday, Little J complained of intense thirst. It had been his day for snack, and so we happened to have a half-gallon of chocolate milk, about a 1/4 full, in his backpack. While I knew chocolate milk--or milk of any kind, really--is no thirst-quencher, I still allowed him to swig milk out of the gallon jug. Luckily he did NOT spill milk in the car, but now he refuses to drink milk out of a cup. He'll wander into the kitchen randomly during the day. I'll hear the fridge open and the cap of the milk come off. Then I'll hear him *thunk* return the jug to the fridge and *whump* shut the fridge door. And then he'll wander back out of the kitchen, a small milk-trace on his upper lip.

Gross.

Edited to add: Now he just passed me, walking from the kitchen into the living room, the jug of milk in hand. Great.

Posted by mryonker at 10:57 AM | Comments (3)

February 18, 2008

thwarting winter break

Today we went to the ice rink--as though we don't spend enough of our lives freezing at ice rinks. [That new Dunkin Donuts jingle about "freezing at Pee Wee hockey..." is practically my life right now.] But instead of sitting in the bleachers or working the snack bar, we all skated, including Little J, who is four and is as freakishly coordinated as his older brother. He skated for an hour using this little walker-like contraption, and for the second hour I could barely keep up with him. Big J kept getting in trouble with the rink monitors for "going too fast."

"But Mom!" he tells me, "I don't know how to skate slow!!"

H skated with us for the first hour, and then during the second hour she found a hallway and practiced her jazz routine, garnering a decent crowd of onlookers.

Wednesday we'll go rollerskating (and I'll school the kids then; I spent many a Friday and Saturday night at the roller rink as a youngster). Friday we'll do a movie at the el-cheapo theater.

Tuesday and Thursday are up for grabs, if anyone has any ideas. Maybe we'll venture out and go sledding.

But that involves snow. Blech.

Posted by mryonker at 09:15 PM | Comments (1)

February 17, 2008

winter break

In central New York, the public schools do an especially mean thing to parents.

In the dead of February, when everyone (read: ME) is near insanity with the snow and crappy weather, the schools let the kids have a week off school.

What I have to look forward to this week: Big J on his roller blades practicing his puck-handling with a heavy rubber ball and hockey stick. H working to stick her aerial and back handspring. Little J riding the full-size skateboard (probably in bare feet, which makes my back crawl).

Yes. All of this IN. THE. HOUSE. I'm not even exaggerating.

Posted by mryonker at 09:24 PM | Comments (2)

February 10, 2008

the gods must be crazy

_The Gods Must Be Crazy_ (imdb) is a movie about, among other things, a tribe in Botswana that finds a Coke bottle (it had been thrown from an airplane window).

The Coke bottle becomes immensely useful to the tribe: for grinding meal, stretching and smoothing animal skins, and making music. And because there is only one Coke bottle, the tribe, which has heretofore not had to deal with ownership, envy, or theft, is quickly introduced to the negative effects of having and not-having.

A similar thing has happened in my house. Recently, we got cable. And we have one viable TV in the house, in the living room. There is a TV in our room upstairs, which means to watch the TV one has to go upstairs, which we keep at about 53 degrees to conserve heating fuel. So really, that TV doesn't count.

Since the cable came to the Yonker house, the kids' fights have exponentially increased. They cannot agree on what to watch, and so I'm constantly mediating "It's-my-turn!-No-you-just-watched-something-it's-mine!-No-way-am-I-watching -Hannah-Montana-again!" fights. (On a side note: the Disney Channel is odious. Each show is about spoiled, snotty, back-stabbing, lying, disrespectful children who are completely superficial and rude to their parents.)

And I very much want to do what the dude in the movie does: get rid of the damn thing. In this case, the damn cable.

Why, exactly, am I paying more money simply to bring a barrage of ads into my house, and so my kids have one more thing to yell at each other about??

Posted by mryonker at 05:28 PM | Comments (4)

January 02, 2008

bumpy cookie

We returned last night from the annual southerly pilgrimage, which this year included an additional westerly jaunt to MLA in Chicago for me.

On our way home, we decided to stop over in Baltimore to visit a friend and celebrate the new year. Little J, always on the lookout for new treats, came over to the kitchen table where my friend and I were sitting with some coffee and catching up. He leaned in to my neck and asked, sotto voce, "Can I have a bumpy cookie??"

Neither my friend nor I could figure out what this "bumpy cookie" thing was, so Little J pulled me into the kitchen to show me the bumpy cookie.

It was Star Crunch, probably my favorite of all Little Debbie's snacks. Which now will forever be known to me as the bumpy cookie.

Posted by mryonker at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2007

oh, the places I'll go

Our Illinois/Iowa trip was fabu. I still wish we could have flown, but the big van with armchair recliners and a TV/VCR/Playstation did the trick. I don't know that it made being in the car for a 20-hour stretch *comfortable*, but it certainly could have been far worse.

Now we are back home, and I am officially running the summer camp taxi. This week is dance camp for the niece, Ch., and H has weaseled her way into a "helper" spot for the camp. Big J and Ch. are also in a soccer club that meets two nights a week for the rest of the summer (thankfully this activity is within bike-riding distance for them).

Beginning next week, H will be at the studio for summer intensive every day for two weeks in a row. She starts on her pointe shoes, and she is out of her mind with excitement. I will just grumble a minute here to say that ballet shoes, costing as much as they do, should really come pre-assembled. They don't. You get the shoe, and then a length of ribbon (which seems flimsy to me), a length of elastic, and some hasty instructions for sewing each into the shoe. I am no seamstress to begin with, and then I have to carefully stitch-in-the-ditch some very unraveling ribbon and some very thick elastic...H had to take her shoes in so her instructor could salvage them. Oh! The Challenges of the Dance Mom!

The last week in July is a week long of soccer camp for Big J and Ch. with the coaching staff of SU. The youth soccer league Big J will be playing for in the fall hosts this camp up here in a North Country school district, which will make it nice that I don't have to drive them TOO far.

August I will wrap up my online class, which seems to be going really well for some of my students (those who turn work in) and really scarily for others (those who are still on my roster as registered but have not turned in one sentence since the beginning 9 weeks ago). We'll hop back into that van with the armchair recliners for a getaway to WV, where I will sit in my cabin alone and write while my mom entertains my kids.

Posted by mryonker at 10:40 PM | Comments (4)

June 14, 2007

it's that time of year again

Dance recital time.

Often, the dance recital weekend is pretty stressful. The influx of family members requires that I spend a day cleaning, and usually I needed that day to check to make sure if the video camera works, so having to gear up for the recital plus the family visit normally puts me into high-frantic mode.

But this year the studio is having the recital professionally recorded, so I don't have to worry about misbehaving video cameras.

This year I bought the convertible body bag with days, DAYS I SAY, to spare. I bought the right one. I also bought bobby pins. I am ON IT.

I do think she needs a new pair of white tights...but other than that, people, I'm READY. Bring this recital ON.

And my house is clean, linens are fresh, and my garage is painted.

:) Just don't ask about that, uh, memo* I have to write.

*Lovely D refers to the diss project as "that memo you have to write."

Posted by mryonker at 03:05 PM | Comments (3)

June 06, 2007

is it summer yet?

May and June are strange months for me; I am not "in school" (though I am teaching an online course over the summer semester) but the kids still are. I don't know if it's like this everywhere in NY or in the entire northeast, but the kids don't get out of school in these parts until the END of June.

It probably has something to do with the 4 weeks of snow days we get and the week of "winter break" in February. Where I'm from, school gets out right after Memorial day.

At any rate, this interstitial space is normally a good time for me to work; 2/3 of my kids are gone all day. I get up, get the kids off to school, and then can write and work with only the small distraction of Little J, who when the weather is nice, spends his days on his bike or on the swing set (or, "swing sweat," as he calls it).

But not today.

The school nurse, who is my nemesis, called yesterday to tell me to come get H, her eyes are itching and suspicious-looking. No matter that I'm 4 counties away on my way to a super-important lunch meeting with the boss. No matter that B is only in his second week at his brand new job and cannot leave.

No matter that this dang nurse calls me and tells me to come and get my kid because of a hang nail. No matter that H probably just sneezed and rubbed her eyes a bit and now the nurse wants her OUT OF THE SCHOOL.

I'm not saying that pink eye isn't a serious contagious issue. I'm not saying that school nurses aren't important and wonderful people. It's just that our school nurse would rather everyone stay at home, all the time, and keep their germy selves quarantined--this would make her job much easier.

So dutifully I took H to the doc yesterday, who told me what he tells me EVERYTIME I have a kid with itchy eyes: it could be allergies. It could be viral. It could be bacterial. It could be dust. It could be that aliens came in the night and are using H's eye for alien science.

But here's a scrip for some drops that should help, maybe.

That'll be $20. Oh, and keep her out of school for another day. And probably make sure the other kids aren't showing symptoms either--if they are, keep them home.

So today ALL THREE kids are home.

Because of all this, I burned the crap out of my arm toasting bagels in my oven this morning. Well, the fact that the real toaster kicked the bucket contributed to my having to toast the bagels in the oven. But all three kids are here, and by mid-morning the safe bowls of cereal they ate for breakfast have disintegrated in their digestive tracts. I'm frantically trying to keep them sated--bagels are heavy, no? And I can toast THREE WHOLE bagels in the oven simultaneously, which will save me scads of time.

Except ouch. That hurts.

Posted by mryonker at 09:06 AM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2007

not enough awe

According to beloved B, my post yesterday didn't appropriately convey the awesome-ness that is Little J, who is LITTLE (three short years he's been on this planet) and who now can ride his bike without training wheels.

I guess I've been living so long with super-freak kids, my baseline for what's extraordinary is a bit off.

I will add, though, that I am thrilled that Little J loves his hot pink bike. I got it at the thrift store for $4--a great deal in my book--and figured we could invest in a $2 can of spray paint if he objected. But so far he hasn't complained one iota.

Posted by mryonker at 08:58 AM | Comments (4)

May 09, 2007

listing

The rundown since I've posted last:

1. Finished, almost, the article I've been working on for what seems like forever.

2. Decided that because of my knee injury, that I'm taking off from running until June. Yes, this means that I will not run in Buffalo (though I will still be on as D's support staff--and to this I look forward! I plan to bring my bicycle and chase her around with a bull horn. Just kidding. No, really.) This decision has made me cranky, for the most part, and is making my body wonk out. My legs are jumpy and itchy (mostly at night), my digestive cycle is completely out of wack, and I'm tired during the day and awake at night.

3. Also decided to cut out coffee for a while. This might be contributing to the tired/awake problem I list above. I went for a day last week without a cup of coffee and suffered through the worst caffeine-lack headache. I'm trying to teach myself to be that casual coffee drinker once again, rather than that lunatic who bribes her husband with inappropriate favors so he'll go get her some Dunkin.

4.Watched, in amazement, as Little J rode his bike without training wheels on Monday. Tuesday morning he asked if he could ride his bike to school, and so I obliged him, thinking I could walk beside him. The joke was on me; I had to CHASE him he rode so fast. Before I walked over to pick him up, I decided to put on some jog bras for the chase home.

5. Ate for dinner tonight: 1 avocado mushed with a hunk of cream cheese, garlic powder, and some lime juice. And some chips to carry it to my mouth.

Posted by mryonker at 06:20 PM | Comments (2)

May 06, 2007

remembering what's important

When my kids went down to stay with my mom during their spring break, they all came back a little bit different. Not only is my mom and the rest of my family made of strong personalities, but my kids are like me in that they tend to take on the mannerisms of the people around them. (It only takes me about 5 minutes in West Virginia to start drawling my way through conversations with the convenience store clerk.)

H and Big J came back with a bit of drawl and a bit of sparky Chicago (where my mom is from originally). Little J, however, came back not with any discernable change in accent. Instead, he came back with the habit of repeating the last, or to his mind most important, word or phrase of whatever has just been said, sometimes prefaced with a "Yeah."

Me: Oh, it's SUCH a nice, sunny day outside! You should go outside and swing on the swingset, Little J.

LJ: Yeah, swing.
***
Me [to Brian]: Should we put some vinegar into the pulled pork? Or should we put some Dino sauce?

Brian: ...

LJ: Yeah, Dino sauce.
***

Imagine Rain Man, but instead with a more confident, bright inflection. And imagine him repeating all kinds of crazy words, like "approximately" and "graduation day"--things that 3 year olds normally don't say.

He also now says "Cool," in response to dang near everything. He spent an afternoon last weekend "helping" the neighbor D rake pine needles out of her yard, and asked her question after question. D, being a most saintly kindergarten teacher, answered him patiently, to which Little J repeatedly responded "Cool."

But most important, and the impetus for this post, has been Little J's new imploring request: "I want some loves." This is most certainly from my mom, who is always after the kids to "give her some love." Little J learned quickly that I cannot refuse this request, no matter what I'm doing or what is happening; if he asks for some loves ("yoves"), I am going to reach down and scoop him up so he can bury his soft cheek in the space of my neck.

For the past week I've been on a pretty massive writing spree, working feverishly. And if Little J is home, he wanders back into the office every so often to ask for yoves. And I turn away from the machine, grab him and he sits on my lap for a spell; we'll rock in the office chair for a moment and he'll breathe a few sighs. Then he'll climb down and I'll turn back to the machine, refreshed; so far he's not made me forget what I was in the middle of saying.

This afternoon B and I wrenched ourselves free from the office and played in the back yard with the kids. In the summer we make it a habit to go outside and play with them in the evenings--we do a lot of jumping rope and playing frisbee. Little J was intent today on playing baseball, and we bought some beginner lacrosse thingies (don't EVEN know what they are called) to mess around with. While H and B struggled to play lacrosse-style catch, I pitched a squishy softball-sized nerf to Little J, who apparently bats left. And you know how Big J is a freakishly adept hockey player? Yeah. Little J, who is THREE, can hit a ball with a bat when it is pitched to him. Consistently. As in, it is not an accident when it happens. And he's batting left, but he writes and colors and eats with the right.

Oh, can you say switch-hitter? Can you say watch out little league? My monster toddler, destructo boy...he's all mellowed out and grown up...and is going to be a baseball player.

I love baseball. :)

Posted by mryonker at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)

April 26, 2007

because I only blog when someone barfs

I've had my butt glued to this office chair for about 12 hours straight today (well, of course I did take and pick up little-J from school, the two big kids from piano lessons, and run to the grocery store--but when I've been in my house today I've been glued to this chair). I'm still wrangling with this book chapter/article thing that is totally kicking my butt. (Well, my butt would be thoroughly kicked if it were not glued to the chair. But anyway.)

If you are a writer-friend who sometimes makes yourself available to me via AIM and you have been online today, you have been accosted by me to finish or revise a sentence at least once. My pings have been frantic and free of phatics and niceties: "PLEASE FILL IN THE LAST PART OF THIS SENTENCE FOR ME!"

So, thank y'all for that. At any rate, I've come to a startling and scary conclusion concerning the difficulty I'm encountering in putting this twenty page chapter together: my whole dissertation will not fit in twenty pages.

I maybe should have had a clue, since the title of the proposal for this article, "Network Literacy: Definitions, Practices, and Implications," is pretty much no different than the tentative title to my dissertation, "Network Literacy: The Shifting Roles of Writers."

Duh. So what I'm up against is trying to condense an argument from a dissertation that I haven't written yet (and what I *have* written is scattered and mostly methodology stuff). It would be far easier to excerpt and cobble from a document that was already whole. Instead, I'm anticipating excerpts and having to make decisions about what to include and exclude, without knowing, at this point, which of those inclusions and exclusions are *right*.

In many ways this is a good exercise, but the lessons are pretty much lost in my frenzy to make a deadline.

Oh yeah--and now I've got another barfing kid on my hands. At least when I'm up tonight trying to write, I'll have an occassional distraction in emptying a bucket and sponging a face.

Posted by mryonker at 06:51 PM | Comments (4)

April 03, 2007

fever

Again, I have sick kids.

Big J with his allergies. H and little J both running fevers--little J's fever scarily high, especially at night, so for two nights I've done a lot of half-sleeping, sponge-bathing, motrin-administering, and a lot of worrying.

Add to this: papers to read, a book chapter to write, clases to run, and sanity to preserve. And the question always is, which will suffer?

The sanity. :)

Posted by mryonker at 10:20 PM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2007

love. hockey.

Sat in a frozen ice arena again today. Marveled at my child's freakish athleticism.

That's him in the middle. He scored like a bazillion goals before the coaches relegated him to defense so other kids could get some puck-time. He can be a puck-hog, but it's mostly because no one can CATCH HIM.

Posted by mryonker at 08:46 PM | Comments (1)

February 24, 2007

in attempt to move the last post down

Big J, here on the ground sacrificing his body for the pass.

We spent the better part of the day today watching him play hockey. This is his first year, called "initiation" (or "tykes"--but Big J is certainly no "tyke" anymore), so he's spent the whole season learning. Learning to skate forwards and backwards. Learning to stop. Learning to "superman," a move whereby they skate full throttle, drop to their bellies and slide, and then pop back up to their feet (J is especially adept at this). Dribbling and shooting, etc etc. They have not had any games, except their quick self-scrimmages for the last few minutes of practice twice a week.

But the season is ending soon, and so the initiation teams get together and have informal tournaments, playing unscored cross-ice (ie half-court) games against other local clubs.

Because of my teaching schedules for this and last semester, I've only been able to watch a few of J's practices. In the beginning, J was a quick learn; his fearlessness and size (he's a sturdy boy) made him a graceful, fast skater. But the last time I saw him at practice, he couldn't stop. The coaches (gently) joked him, asking if he'd rather be figure skating since he would pirouette out of control every time he tried to stop.

When I sat in the freezing cold bleachers today and watched this boy play, however, it was like he was a different kid. He stopped almost magically, making the ice shoot up from his blades, his body controlled and agile. I know he's my kid; I know that this makes me completely unable to judge objectively. But DAMN my kid is a good hockey player.

If you click through, there's a couple more pics. J is #29.

Posted by mryonker at 09:14 PM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2007

sick kids

Laura Posts today about sick kids.

On Sunday we woke up and big J had a trunk full of red splotchy spots. They adorned the left side of his chest, his shoulder blades, and a few peeked out from his waistband. Further examination found them on his upper thighs and the place where he will one day grow pubic hair.

B and I, standing in the bathroom, immediately have the negotiation. We've both missed class last week because of the atrocious weather. B says he simply cannot miss his Monday classes again. I counter with the same. And what babysitter wants a kid full of mysterious read splotches? We decide to not decide yet--to wait and see if things get worse or whatever.

Sunday night is a hard one; big J has trouble getting to sleep because of the itching. I put him in a warm bath and then dot his spots with some innocuous bacitracin, hoping the careful attention I'm giving him will be soothing in and of itself. It works, and he sleeps soundly the rest of the night.

Monday morning finds him in nearly the same condition--if anything, he's gained a spot or two, but the spread is barely noticeable. It hasn't gotten better, though. And I argue with myself about whether I should send him to school. I call the doctor, who gives me an appointment for the early evening when B will be home to take him. J is not feverish. It has not spread to me or to the other kids in the house. And he is not itching ferociously.

I send him to school. Because I have to go to work.

I feel torn about it; I wouldn't have sent him if he were uncomfortable or if he were clearly contagious. Granted, I know that I'm not qualified to judge the latter of those specifications.

The doctor said he didn't know what it was, and that he was fine to go to school. He gave us a scrip for some steroid anti-itch cream. And this morning, Tuesday, J woke and the dots were noticeably smaller (though it may have been a function of him not itching any more--who knows?).

And this morning, Tuesday, I sit down to work; all my kids are off at their various schools. And I get a phone call: little J has thrown up in the kitchen of his pre-school.

*sigh*

No rest for the weary.

Posted by mryonker at 02:06 PM | Comments (4)

January 27, 2007

when CAN i drink?

I wanted to weigh in quickly on the current discussion about moms drinking during playdates. Melissa at Suburban Bliss took some flack a while back for posting about cocktail playgroups, and it cultivated enough discussion that she was asked to be on the Today show to talk about it. Mrs. Kennedy at Fussy responds, saying that the woman against whom Melissa was pitted during the discussion was not a mom who understood the silent, lonely, struggle with desperation that some mothers consistently deal with.

Clearly, the segment was too short, but I was interested in the ways in which Melissa and the other woman in the interview (Janet) were clearly on not on the same page; Janet's only response (and she repeated it, over and over), was that women need to find *healthier* ways to relax, to socialize, to have fun.

Duh. This woman does not DRINK AT ALL. Of course she disagrees with drinking around children; she disagrees with drinking fundamentally.

Because my question is this: if women are NOT allowed to drink around their kids, when ARE THEY ALLOWED TO DRINK?? I mean, when are the kids NOT around, or NOT a part of mom's purview? Even if I do hire a babysitter so I can leave my house to drink, I'm still responsible when I get home for them when I get home--probably still with a little liquor left in me?

Where's the discussion about dinner parties, where children and drinks are involved? Is it OK for me to have another family over for dinner, and for us to have drinks with dinner? Oh, no, probably not.

This is not a discussion about responsible drinking, or parenting. It's a discussion about control. Of which we as humans, I assert, have an amount. I can have friends over, and we can choose not to imbibe (which we do sometimes). There are many other factors in my life that could prevent me from getting my kids to the emergency room: My car not starting, for one. Me tripping and breaking both legs as we rush out the door and I slip and fall on my perpetually-icy back porch.

OK, I'm mocking a bit. But I think the more important question must make us look AWAY from the well-off suburban moms drinking expensive wine and cocktails in the afternoon. Those women are not neglecting their children. Those women are not hurting anyone, or anything. The more important questions deal with children who are abused, or neglected, or otherwise mistreated. And such treatment of children isn't ALWAYS the result of drug or alcohol abuse, anyway.

The Today Show is not finding these families and having Meredith interview them. God forbid morning television actually deal with a real problem.

Posted by mryonker at 08:17 AM | Comments (6)

December 01, 2006

when you are paged by the bitch...

Bitch PhD posted discussion a few days back about moms with three kids doing a PhD.

*ahem*

Here's my advice. :) DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. Bitch essentially says, and I summmarize poorly here, that it might be best for the woman thinking of going into a PhD program with an 8, 4, and 1 year old to wait until her kids are damn near grown.

I am of the mind that if you want to get a PhD, do it. I won't lie: the shit is HARD. And my life is especially crazy: I'm trying to dissertate, teaching what I will call full time (5-5 load), AND putting my husband through his undergrad work. I don't do much else. I have quit, at the smart prompting of my advisors, all the community service I did for the first 4 years of my PhD work (that included being a Girl Scout leader and doing board of directors work for a local preschool). I quit all the free lance writing I so love(d) to do (mostly maintaining and designing web stuff for local small businesses). I've nearly quit all my hobbies, including things like writing poetry (which I sorely miss) and knitting. My family eats a lot of processed food because I don't have time or money to make decent dinners; my kids eat school lunch (that we get at reduced price).

But I *love* what I'm doing. Teaching is tough work but I can't imagine me doing anything else, and I mean that. It is worth it to me--all the sacrifices that I'm making right now.

And I take special issue with the way Bitch finishes her post, where she says that those of us who work through the advanced degree with many kids--and multiple draws on our attention--are not taken seriously by our professors or peers. I might be fortunate, but this has not been my experience; I am not treated as though this degree is simply something I'm doing for the sake of doing (indeed--if this were the case, I wouldn't put myself and my family through the stress!). Instead, I feel quite the opposite. Again, I'm fortunate that 2 of my main advisors were women with children during at least a portion of their graduate work. This doesn't make them expect less from me, but they understand the specific kind of support that I need: deadlines, external structure, and mandatory scheduled time away from teaching and home to write. And they know that I'm here *because I want to be*, because I want to be able to use my work here to carve out a teaching/research space for myself in the field. Not because I want to hang a diploma on my wall (shit, I don't even KNOW where my first two diplomas ARE).

The other reason I take issue with Bitch's warning about how moms are treated within academia is that if we moms continue to ACT AS THOUGH we are marginalized, if we expect such treatment, I daresay we will get it. If you expect to be not taken seriously, you run the risk of falling into that predetermined role by acting like someone who doesn't deserve to be.

I know this sounds a bit new-age-ish, kind of like "create your reality by pretending it exists already." But for me it has been true, because there have been moments in my work here where I didn't respect my own work because I had produced it at 4 in the morning on 3 hours of sleep--only once the devil baby went to sleep. It wasn't until I started to RESPECT my work that I was able to give it primacy among my priorities so that I wasn't working at 4 in the morning any more, I was scheduling myself to write during the day when the devil was with a saint, my sitter.

Clearly, a lot of what Bitch says is spot on: you're much better positioned to do PhD work when you have a solid support system in place. I've said this countless times before: an on-your-side partner who supports your decision is essential. Make sure your partner knows exactly what s/he's getting into. Friends and family who will allow themselves to be simultaneously ignored and drawn upon for help are also necessary.

Most importantly, though, is this: if you want to get a PhD, and you can get into a program with people you want to study with, and you're getting something in the way of funding (TA, fellowship even better!), I say go for it. It's not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is, right?

And take up running. It helps with stress, lets you eat a bunch of junk while you're writing, and you get a break from writing and the kids every-so-often.

Posted by mryonker at 08:49 PM | Comments (4)

November 28, 2006

I think this pisses me off

Apology Cards for parents.

Yeah. I'm too tired to talk about why, but the person who wrote this clearly is not thinking about cultural examination...bleh.

Posted by mryonker at 10:59 PM | Comments (1)

November 19, 2006

snack lick

My little-J has been three for over two weeks now. In many ways, he is still a baby to me. He is still cuddly and has great cheeks for kissing. He sleeps on the bottom bunk in a room shared with big-J, but he still gets up early in the morning, around 5, and climbs into bed with us. He has tantrums when he's tired and loves taking baths, but hates brushing his teeth.

He also does some decidedly un-baby things. He likes to play "hide and seek" with George Muttley. This involves J hiding George, mostly in cabinets in the kitchen or under the TV.

He likes marinated vegetables.

He puts his shoes on the shelf when he comes in the house more consistently than any other kids around here.

He flushes the toilet more consistently than any other kids around here.

He says "I love you"--and I don't even have to tell him I love him first.

And today he scrounged under my desk to find my snack stash. Clearly he has known about this stash for a while; there was all the purpose in the world of his scrounging; no serendipty there. He pulled out a small ziploc of Chocolate Chex Mix (which I find to be not bad, but not really great, either). He deftly opened the zip and dipped his small hand in to retrieve a piece (one of the bread sticks, I believe). He held the piece to his nose briefly, and then licked it experimentally.

He then replaced the bread stick, attempted (unsuccessfully) to close the zip, and put the bag back in my stash place.

*sigh* I suppose I should know that at least my Doritos are safe; no one in this family would lick-and-replace a Dorito.

Note to self: 1) Change snack stash hiding place. 2) Devise strategy for booby-trapping stash, so I know if someone's been licking my snacks. Suggestions appreciated.

Posted by mryonker at 12:54 PM | Comments (2)

November 09, 2006

belated halloween blogging

In case anyone's wondering, *ahem*, I did not sew one single stitch for these costumes. The kimono and pirate get-up are courtesy of my mom's most excellent handiwork.


The lion is a throw back from when H was a tot.

Posted by mryonker at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2006

mom blogs, attacked again

In working through Technorati this afternoon, I came across this post from zero boss about when writing about our kids should stop. He laments that The Trixie Update, popular a few years back for its diaper-changing counter, is shutting down once again.

Trixie's dad says that as kids get older, they get less bloggable. As they evolve in to real people, essentially, we should respect their privacy...

But before I could think through what I thunk about that, I managed to find (via Zero Boss) this post from Violent Acres which I have not even read through all the way yet, but holy crap is that lady giddy with the knowledge that we are all setting up our kids for certain future humiliation. This writer (I have not even read her about page yet) makes the following claims:

1) children have a right to privacy

2) it's NOT my child's job to "ease the pain of [my] inferiority complex"

As far as I'm concerned (and I'll probably regret this later): the only rights my kids have are the ones that *I* grant them. True, child labor laws prevent me from putting them into the factories to help me pay the mortgage (which, we are broke enough right now that I'd consider it if it were legal--plus, that would get them out of my house so I could get some writing done). Privacy is not a right, it's a privilege. And I don't remember who said that, but I probably got it from Anne Galloway or danah boyd and so forgive me for not sourcing that properly. At any rate, and regardless of rights, Leta will probably be *happy* that, when in junior high, her peers make fun of the fact that her mom was in a hospital for depression. That juicy tidbit will work wonders in distracting those bullies from the IMPORTANT embarrassments of junior high: ashy legs in gym class (and no lotion anywhere!), trips to the nurse for (forgive me, I love the phrase) "feminine napkins," the long walk down the hall to the band room simply to announce that your bassoon reed is cracked and you don't have a spare.

Further, my inferiority complex exists BECAUSE of my kids. The reason I doubt my abilities as a teacher, as a writer, as a student, and ETC is because my poor brain is always awash in all the minutiae of keeping track of lives other than my own. And believe me, keeping track of my OWN shit is hard enough (just ask the people who had to rescue me, TWO DAYS IN A ROW, with jumper cables because, apparently, I cannot remember to turn my lights off...when I am stranded the first time, that is not enough of a lesson for me to remember the next day to turn the suckers off--then I'm stranded AGAIN). As far as I'm concerned, my kids make my life *hard*. Therefore, it is not too much to ask of them to help me through it. They do a fine job of sliding down McDonald's hamster tubes in other kids' shit, and me getting to write about it is important for me to be able to make sense out of it.

So...I've read around Violent Acres a bit. She's new, there's NO about page, and I found this post where she discusses having been exploited by her mother as a child.

Now, I have a little sympathy, and I'm feeling a little sorry for her. But she uses her own bad experience with her mother to argue that mommy bloggers exploit their kids for revenue, and this is *bad*.

Hm. No, I'd still send my kids to a factory to work for financial gain. I mean, they're living in this house, too, right? They should help me pay for it.

Lookit. We moms cannot win. We leave the house to work, we're hurting our kids. We stay home with our kids and work (and get paid to write about them) we're hurting our kids. I don't have an answer. Right now, anyway.

Posted by mryonker at 04:06 PM | Comments (2)

August 28, 2006

more on the collision

One of the great things about momming it through grad school is that invariably when you feel like a failure in one of those roles, something happens in the other half of your life that is somehow buoying*.

So tonight, after a first-day of teaching and running some conferences with students (from past semesters), I am faced with the fight of my life (as I am every night): brushing the Monster Toddler's teeth. Now let me be clear: I try my best to brush his teeth at least once a day. And when I am calm I can cajole him and we "brush together" and his teeth probably get semi-clean. But every once in a while I get a wild hair (normally when I remember that Hannah had a root canal at age 9) and decided that dang it, he needs his teeth BRUSHED. So I hold him down with one arm, and scrub his teeth. He HATES this, and it completely ruins him for bed time. He screams and hollers and then pouts and refuses to go pee or get his pajamas on and basically I'm screwed for the rest of the night.

This was tonight.

So then, I sit down to the ol' machine to do some email and class prep, and have this chick ping me. And she shows me her finished web site that she worked on during my digital writing course last spring. She finished the site, which is meant to be an online portfolio, after she graduated last spring. I am quite proud!!

So: bad mom, good teacher. :) Today anyway.

*This, of course, is not always true. Often the shit hits the fan on both accounts, and then you INVARIABLY want to throw yourself into the bushes. But it's nice when it happens this way.

Posted by mryonker at 10:32 PM | Comments (4)

July 27, 2006

outside blogging

That is, blogging while outside. Is damn near necessary on a day like this, when it temp is near 90 and closing up the house does little to keep the stinky heat out.

The perks of outside blogging are that one gets to observe, first hand, the oldest son bouncing a golf ball in the driveway enough times that eventually, it hits the windshield of one's car with considerable force (which, incidentally, is already cracked and compromised). Fortunately it does not break.

One also gets to observe the smaller son riding his scooter full speed down the driveway, "popping wheels" intermitently, stopping only nanoseconds before crashing into the garage door. Repeatedly. One wonders when the small boy's luck will run out.

Can one still harvest/eat cilantro after it flowers?

Posted by mryonker at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2006

this is what I want my kids to know/learn/live

If I only teach my kids one thing, it's this:

"As an opposite to what many believe, the best times in life are not passive, receiving and relaxed moments. The best moments occur in general when a human is stretching her body to the maximum in a conscious exertion in order to achieve something difficult and effort worthy"(20).

This tidbit from
Paeonia, who gets it from Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.

I should have known to check this author out a few years ago when a beloved fellow PhD here at SU brought some of his work to class. He will be one of the first on my list to read during the week after I finish my exams--also known as "the week during which I will not be sober for even one minute."

Posted by mryonker at 10:48 PM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2006

competing voices

I'm lying with the boys last night as they fall asleep. Equipped with my head lamp and a book, I dutifully waste no idle moment, and read while I wait for their breathing to become heavy and even.

Hayden White: Romantic artists went to history for their themes and appealed to 'historical conciousness' as a justification for their attempts at cultural palingenesis, their attempts to make the past a living presence to their contemporaries...

Me: Must look up "palingenesis."

HW: In fact, when many contemporary historians speak of the 'art' of history, they seem to have in mind a conception of art that would admit little more than the nineteenth-century novel as a paradigm...

Me: Mmm. History as narrative, as story-telling.

Jack: Mom?

Me: Yes?

Jack: Do frogs bite?

Me: Um. None do that I know of. I could be wrong, of course. We can look it up tomorrow. I think there are frogs that shoot poison darts, though.

Jack: Do we have those frogs in Parish?

Me: No, I think they're only in the rainforest.

HW: A similar criticism can be levelled at the historian's claim to a place among the scientists. When historians speak of themselves as scientists, they seem to be invoking a conception of science that was perfectly suitable for the world in which Herbert Spencer lived and worked, but it has very little to do with the physical sciences as they have developed since Einstein and with the social sciences as they have evolved since Weber...

Me: [Herbert Spencer?] ...

Jack: Mom?

Me: Yes?

Jack: Do frogs have teeth, though?

Me: Um. I don't think so. Not that I'm aware.

HW: In sum, when historians claim that history is a combination of science and art, they generally mean that it is a combination of late-nineteenth-century social science and mid-nineteenth-century art. That is to say, they seem to be aspiring to little more than a synthesis of modes of analysis and expression that have their antiquity alone to commend them.

Jack: Well. Do frogs just catch flies and then swallow them whole without CHEWING THEM??

Me: [still trying to think of who Herbert Spencer is, and wondering if this is why Oh Great Leader in Composition told me to come back to White, after I had an effluvious epiphany about the history of technology, rhetoric, and pedagogy earlier that day] I suppose, if they don't have teeth.

Jack: Man. Didn't their mom tell them to chew their food? They're going to choke. Plus, they won't get all the goodness of the flies if they don't chew, huh Mom?

Posted by mryonker at 09:17 AM | Comments (5)

June 19, 2006

giddy-makers

First, I was overcome with a strange giddy pleasure when I read that our slew of marathon narratives were inspiration (and yes, she uses that very word) for Dr. Write to run a half marathon. She, of course, rocked.

Second, I spent the entire day yesterday at the Fair Haven State Park with 6 children and one really good friend, and we marveled at how our babies are all grown up. I mean, of course they are NOT grown up, but our youngest (hers 3, mine 2.5) are nearly maintence free on the beach. We sat at the water's edge and watched our kids play and did not have to chase them, change diapers, pull our boobs from our suits to nurse anyone, and I could go on. We packed sandwiches, beach toys, and towels and threw everyone on the sand and the flopped into our chairs to enjoy looking at the too-young lifeguards and the fjord-like cliffs ... oh, and to watch our kids. Not chase. Watch (and wipe sand out of eyes periodically).

So when I read Jen's post this morning about letting Nola scream herself to sleep, I felt another giddy rush: I survived that. I'm through it. And if I could console Jen at all (which it's questionable whether or not I can, because I remember feeling and knowing something so isolating and unconsolable when J-baby was a devil baby), I would say to her that the worse it is NOW, the better it is later. Not that later is any better than it would be otherwise, but that living through these specific hells make you appreciate when the hell goes away.

It's like getting to stop after a run. Right now, Jen, you're running. Running hard. And it's a looooong grueling race. And when this one is over, there'll be another. But they get easier.

I think. I hope.

Posted by mryonker at 08:45 AM | Comments (4)

June 09, 2006

how I have failed as a dance mom

Another quick list:

1. her body bag is not convertible

2. her lipstick is not red enough

3. I could not, after three stores and hours of driving, find peachy flesh-colored elastic for the red pill box she wears during her tap number

4. we had no bobby pins in the house for the dress rehearsal, so her bun was not a "true" bun, but instead a strange concoction of twisty braid and elastics

5. I could not stay for the dress rehearsal--I had to meet with my life coach

6. I only bought ONE body bag, and she snagged and put a hole into the only one she has during the dress rehearsal

7. I cannot afford to cater the after-recital party

To make up for my many shortcomings as a dance mom, I will:

1. attempt to cut holes in the bottom of the feet of her existing body bag see #6

2. send my mom, an at-large Sweet Adeline, to the drug store to find the reddest lipstick she can. Because her sense of glam is far more honed than mine, for sure.

3. use a peach-colored marker and color some white elastic.

4. run to the dollar store for some bobby pins

5. tell her to "tough it out, I'll be back to pick you up after the life coach gets me on the right track"--and then get her some Taco Bell when she's done

6. spend an entire Friday frantically searching for a (convertible this time) body bag (I ordered the first one online)

7. make my mom cook tamales for the post-recital party

Posted by mryonker at 07:28 AM | Comments (3)

May 22, 2006

yay. a growth spurt

What, you might ask, am I doing awake at 4:50 am?

My youngest son has been up for an hour, standing at my bedside, begging me for a bowl of cereal. I finally obliged him.

*yawn*

It will be fabulous when ALL my kids can pour their own cereal and milk.

Posted by mryonker at 05:43 AM | Comments (1)

May 19, 2006

my kids are loud

Just a quick vignette from yesterday.

I'm standing at the kitchen counter, reading _Electric Rhetoric_ by Kathleen Welch. I've found that if I'm standing, I am less climb-on-able and thus less of a target for the J-baby.

Hannah has decided it's time to practice her tap routine [so add the noise of her brand new Bloch tap shoes, for which her grandma shelled out $60. Her lovely tap instructor showed her how to take a screwdriver and loosen the taps on the shoes so that they are *louder*. Yay. Also add the noise of Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Cha-Boogie" over and over and over and over.]

Jack walks in, playing his Gameboy (volume up full blast, so insert the theme from Mario here), talking to me about his latest project (which is collecting bottle caps, putting nail holes in them, and stringing them into a snake) and asking me to "Watch this!" and "Can you beat this level for me mom?" and "Are we going to get me a first date* kit yet??"

Josh has his gi-normous Tonka truck (this one, it's big enough for them to push one another around in the dump), and he's running behind it, pushing it back and forth through the length of the house, and it's making a rumbling racket (plus Hannah keeps yelling at him at each pass he makes to "get out of [her] way!!").

Later on during the day, I've moved to the dining room table (where, since my legs are under the table, I have no visible lap as a target--though I'm still quite vulnerable). The boys have taken all the cushions from the couch and are jumping from the coffee table to the couch and back again. Hannah watches the Simpsons, full blast to hear it over the commotion the boys are generating.

I'm telling myself that it's good that I can work amidst such distraction, that it strengthens my ability to concentrate. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

*he actually wants a first AID kit. But he calls it a first date kit, which we find HIGH-larious.

Posted by mryonker at 08:10 AM | Comments (1)

April 08, 2006

sex ed via pop music

So yesterday afternoon, we all piled in the car to run a few errands and grab some Friday haddock.

Short trips in the car frequently involve discussions and arguments about the radio. B and I normally enjoy car time to talk, but Hannah and Jack *love* listening to music in the car. B and I are pretty generous with our taste in music, the presets include rock, pop, country, hip-hop, and "easy-listening" stations, and we just run through them until we find something we all like.

Hannah and Jack would prefer we leave it either on the pop or hip-hop stations (frequently their playlists overlap), which is fine with us.

We have an ongoing fight right now specifically about the song "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper) by T-Pain and Mike Jones. When this song comes on the radio, I flip it, even if the station is playing the "clean" version (Wit a Dancer). Hannah protests (imagine whiney nine-year old voice): "Hey, I LIKE that song!!" Until yesterday, I would simply tell her that I didn't, and that was that.

Yesterday when it came on B had run into some welder's supply place for a second and we waited in the car. I flipped the station, and Hannah protested, this time asking me what my problem was with the song.

Great. Another lesson about sex borne out of pop music .

So I ask her, "Do you *know* what a stripper is?"

She reddens. "Yes."

"Would *you* want your job to be showing your body to people for money?"

She begins to sink into the seat, her eyes willing me to stop. "No. God, Mom."

At this point, B gets back in the car. "What's going on?" he asks.

"I'm explaining to Hannah why I don't like to listen to the stripper song." I turn back to Hannah. "When I was younger, Hannah, I had a friend who had a baby--the baby was your age; we were pregnant together. When her baby was about a year old, my friend had no job and no money. She went to work at a club as a dancer. And while she made decent money--good money, even--it was a hard life. She was always worried about the way she looked, because if she didn't look a certain way, she wouldn't make as much money. She was always worried about the people from the club following her. And even though she worked at night so that she could go to school during the day and spend time with her baby, she ended up quitting school and having a lot of horrible surgery to change her body."

Brian looked at me--he knew this friend of mine, too. He interjected: "Yes, but she made a choice to...do what she did. She didn't have to work at that club. Strippers don't *have* to strip, they choose to."

Then, I went off. I talked about what *is* choice in a culture where the options are: sell what you've got, be homeless, or sell what you've got. That circumstances don't always present themselves as options--that agency and the opportunity to make the "right" or "good" decision aren't available to everyone.

When I came down from the tippy top of my soapbox, the family looked at me. It was quiet for a moment.

And then Jack, who's 6, said, "They take their clothes off? I'd like to see that."

Posted by mryonker at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2006

it seemed like a good idea at the time...

...to teach Hannah how to play "Heart and Soul" on the piano. She plays it constantly now...and I want to heave my piano into the bushes out front.

Time for her to get some "real" piano lessons, I suppose.

Posted by mryonker at 10:49 AM | Comments (4)

February 09, 2006

a funny

A small boy sits on my couch and watches Sesame Street. He and his baby sister come to my house two days a week so their mom can study.

He eats Corn Pops from a small ziploc.

He says to me, "Emily [baby sister] can't eat Corn Pops."

Except he transposes the first letters of the words "corn" and "pops" and sends me into gales of laughter.

Posted by mryonker at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2006

and the magic answer is...

I got an email today from Flossie over at Stepping on Acorns. When, she asks, is the prime time for the academic to stop making decent progress toward her (his) degree and instead change diapers, quit sleeping, and reduce their free time to zero by way of the world's biggest time suck?

My short answer: now, never, 10 years ago, 10 years from now.

There is no good answer to this question. People ask me frequently "HOOOW DOO you DOOOO it??!!" It being, of course, have three kids, teach several classes, and still read enough that I can, with a small amount of self-respect, call myself a grad student.

Here's how I do it. I had a baby when I was a freshman in college--not really planned. I had a second during my MA work (planned). Both times I had my Mommy who graciously, happily, and FREELY (as in free childcare) took my babies while I went to class, studied, worked as a tutor, taught, and etc. I had a highly involved partner who took up probably more than his fair share of my slack.

I had a third two years ago, during the second year of my PhD course work. Now, DON'T GET ME WRONG, and don't send be a bunch of hate comments, but having a baby during my PhD was maybe NOT the best decision I've ever made. Of course, I love my youngest, I'm ultimately happy we had him (how could I not be??), and I can't imagine having not had him.

But nothing short of losing my eyesight in a chemical explosion could have stalled my degree work more. I was three states away from my Mommy and he was the most difficult child of the bunch (colicky, cranky, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't be happy EVER). I could barely get my teaching prep and a little reading done. I got barely 40 pages of writing done in the year after he was born.

This is the scary, honest truth.

Now things are better--I actually have large chunks of time to myself as a result of strategic scheduling, a great friend who babysits, the God of PBS, full day kindergarten, and my terrific husband. I am, now, making slow, decent progress--giving a couple papers at conferences, getting my exams squared away, and teaching some upper division courses.

There are other people who have had babies in my PhD program since I've been here. One was smart enough to wait until she was done with course work. Another was smart enough to wait until she had tenure. (Both as opposed to *my* smart decision to have one smack-dab in the middle of course work.) But I don't think either of them would say it was anywhere near easy, because having a baby even when having that baby is the only thing you're doing is a huge undertaking.

There is no right answer to this question of "when to have the baby." My advice is that if you want to, do it. Key, though, and what will make it worlds easier, is having a partner and support network in place that will provide you with the release time you need. Sure, you can read while nursing, and type one-handed while you hold the baby. But that gets old fast--especially when the baby gets big enough to grab at the keyboard or push the book off your lap with his feet. Do you have friends with children that you can time-swap with? Do you have relatives nearby? Is your partner equally excited and invested in the endeavor (ie you are not secretly flushing your bc pills)?

So my advice is: have your all babies BEFORE you go to grad school. Wait until they're all in school and the oldest is old enough to babysit the others. THEN return to get your advanced degrees.

If it's too late for that, and you want a baby, have one. Babies put stuff into perspective--they show you what is really important in life: a full belly, being warm and dry, and getting LOTS OF SLEEP (that would be *them* getting lots of sleep, though, not you).

Posted by mryonker at 07:50 AM | Comments (5)

December 14, 2005

joshenese

Little J baby AKA Monster Toddler AKA Destructo Boy, has his own little language. And it consists only of a handful of words, each of which has about six different meanings, depending on context.

We have taken to repeating what he says, translating it into *real* English, after every phrase he utters, in the hopes that he will one day leave aside his made up words for ones that people other than those who share his house will understand.

So, a random conversation with Josh often sounds like:

J: Daddy! Ya-Ya!!

Me: Daddy's watching football!

J: Mama! Meh!

Me: Yes, Mommy's drinking water!

J: Mama! EE-ah meh!

Me: Yes, mommy sees the lake!

J: Mama! Meh!

Me: Mommy, please get me some milk!

J: Daddy! Ya-Ya!

B: Look! I'm jumping on Daddy who is lying unsuspectingly on the floor!

Josh Glossary:

Ya-Ya: broken, hurt, scissors, knife, screwdriver, other sharp pointy potentially-wound-inflicting object, or the hole MADE by such an object. also means football or the act of tackling someone, as in football

Meh: water, milk, soda, lake, river, other body of water, and to drink

Gup-ba: food, eat, take my clothes off (normally socks, but can apply to pretty much any object of clothing)

Hot: hot, steam, fire, firetruck

Bah: bus, truck (he said "boo bah" for a while for "school bus" but has somehow left that phrase aside completely now)

Cookie: cookie

and that's about all. Every single thing he says includes some configuration of the above words. Which means that food, water, screwdriver--what else does one need in life?

Posted by mryonker at 08:56 AM | Comments (4)

December 04, 2005

santa rants

Normally I don’t do product reviews here; in fact, I’ve never really done such a thing except to gush uncontrollably about my iPod mini, or possibly complain about my ancient digital camera, etc.

I don’t imagine that this post will develop into more than anything but a rant, either, but hopefully something within the rant might help someone else. Oh, who am I kidding. It’s just a rant.

So yesterday I spent doing Santa’s work. Which, in this lovely technological age, involves batteries, unintelligible technical instructions, and much cursing. My very lovely, and very puerile (in a GOOD way, a fun way) father who is way off in Iowa gets great ideas for Christmas presents, and this year found mp3 (SanDisk Sansa e100 512 MB) players for the older girls in the family. So he sends them to me first, so that I can load them up with music for Charlotte and Hannah. I am, of course, happy, and excited even, to do this, because I know well their taste in music and already have most of it on my iPod for Hannah. (This also means that I can take Backstreet Boys off the iPod!! Yay!! Justin Timberlake, however, is staying put.)

So, since I have a spiffy iBook, I’m thinking: plug n play, drag n drop, bada boom, bada bing, I’m done.

And for the most part, it could have worked that way, except for a couple of bumps in the road:

The large majority of what I have in iTunes for Hannah has been purchased from iTunes. This, of course, moves quite swiftly to the iPod. But because I’m such a trusting soul, I figured it won’t matter—it’s a music player, right? I bought the music, right? I can put it on the music player, it doesn’t have to be an iPod, right?

Wrong. I am now quite schooled about DRM and AAC protected files. I’m also quite schooled in matters of hymn, jhymn, and the fact that jhymn still is not up with iTunes 6, which I think I downloaded last week or something (insert favorite expletive here).

Expletive, expletive.

So, a dear friend, who shall remain nameless so when they come to haul me off to prison I won’t have narked on anyone, had just showed me the wonder that is LimeWire not a week before. I entered that murky world, feeling sneaky and paranoid.

And spent an ENTIRE DAY finding music. O.M.G I found stuff that I’ve wanted for SO LONG and just have put off getting. I found stuff I didn’t know I wanted. And then I remembered I was supposed to be finding stuff for the girls. Whoops.

So I was able to fill up the mp3s with the greatest stuff—and I didn’t even have to go through and convert anything etc.

Which is where we come to the next bump: once you drag n drop files onto the player, good luck trying to get them off. On a mac, anyway. There were some lame ads programmed into the thing, and I inadvertently put the non-radio version of Black Eyed Peas’ “Hey Mama” (dis dat shit [not beat] dat make ya groove, mama") onto one of them. So I’m thinking: drag n drop to the trash, right?

Nope. The files would be gone from the file window thing, but when I unplugged the USB and turned on the player, all the songs were STILL THERE.

I finally gave up and plugged the thing into B’s PC, and found that the mac actually creates an INVISIBLE trash folder on the device, and instead of deleting the files just moves them into that INVISIBLE folder. And of course the damn thing cannot read folder names—I cares not for HOW you arrange your stuff; if it’s on there, it plays it in alpha order of the song title. Even if it’s in a folder called trash. Sheesh. The user manual says to delete files you must highlight the file and hit the delete key, which B claims the mac doesn’t have, that they’ve simply named the backspace key “delete.” This of course is looking like it proves his theory. So to put files ON I can use the mac, but to delete them I have to use the PC.

Expletive.

But, now that I’ve figured everything out, I’m pretty happy. And I like the mushroom headphones, even though at first glance they scared me because of their rather invasive-like nature and strange rubbery condom-y cover things.

>sigh<

So. In other news, the well ran dry last night because our toilet stuck and ran for a few hours once everyone went to bed. B, who can sleep through a 3-way screaming fight over Saturday morning cartoon options; who can sleep through my not-so-subtle kitchen banging, washer-dryer-and-dishwasher-running, my vacuum running, etc; he hears the well pump’s repeated turning off and on at 4 in the morning and gets up to turn it off. And thankfully this morning the well has recovered. I wish he would have told me that that was a possibility. I laid awake the rest of the night worrying about how we’d survive until the spring without running water.

Posted by mryonker at 10:03 AM | Comments (5)

November 16, 2005

good mom, bad mom

good mom: makes french toast for breakfast on a !school day!

bad mom: drops monster toddler at sitter's an hour early so she can spend a quiet shopping minute to buy a new book bag

bad mom: leaves MT at sitter's for an extra hour so she have lovely soup and sandwich with a couple of fab friends

good mom: attends two parent-teacher conferences

bad mom: asks kindergarten teacher, when she mentions Jack's (Loud Boy) inability to use his "inside voice," if she thinks he might have a hearing problem

bad mom: wonders if LB's perpetual raised voice is a function of his parent's not paying him enough attention

good mom: takes Hannah to doctor for an earache

bad mom: waited four days before taking her, to make sure the ache didn't "go away on it's own"

good mom: unwraps Luna bar for MT and LB to split while hanging out in Wal-Mart waiting for the script to be filled

bad mom: doesn't prevent MT from picking up and eating large crumbs of Luna bar off Wal-Mart floor (to be fair--I just didn't reach him in time)

bad mom: returns glares of other women in Wal-Mart who witness MT's off-the-floor eating

bad mom: laughs when MT sneezes thick chocolate-y Luna bar spittle all over Wal-Mart floor

good mom: uses baby wipe to sheepishly clean chunks off Wal-Mart floor, so when someone else's toddler eats from it, it won't be TOO GRODY

Posted by mryonker at 09:33 PM | Comments (9)

August 31, 2005

yeah

right. First read this. Pay special attention to this part: "I was on the phone with my sister tonight outside in the front yard waiting for Jon to call and say that he was on his way home. He has had to work late recently BECAUSE! OF ALL THOSE THINGS WE CAN‘T TALK ABOUT HERE!" Yeah. Ditto.

right. So.

Things going on around here:

H-bear watching The Princess Diaries 2.

J-bear playing Dora on nickjr.com and yellling "Map! MAP!"

J-baby sitting on my lap, eating bean dip with his fingers.

B out, doing his first day of classes.

Me sitting at the dinner table with the lovely zuke soup and some bean dip (b/c the kids won't eat just zuke soup, if they eat it at all).

T, the brother, still MIA.

Yeah. I'll talk about teaching, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't sweat so much (gah. I'll have to throw away the shirt I wore on Tuesday), a different day.

So yeah. Read dooce. Not me.

Posted by mryonker at 07:06 PM | Comments (2)

August 17, 2005

welcome, Damaris!

My dear friend from high school, Damaris, is having a baby. Not something that I imagined would ever happen, mostly because when I left her my junior year, she was the oldest of five children--or maybe was it six?--and I'm sure had had enough of mothering duties by the time she left for college for the rest of her life.

But, apparently not. I've already dissuaded her from reading any posts from my "momness" category, so that while she suffers now as a pregnant lady she'll still feel as though she has something to look forward to.

Oh, I do love my babies. I do.

And today I did NOT nurse J-baby once. Every time he crawled up into my lap and did his little posturing (throw head back, bury face in boob, dig with little hands around to get my shirt up) I told him my milk was all gone. :(

Of course, it's not. I'm feeling all full and heavy now. But the day went surprisingly well. After I'd say, no, it's all gone, I would hold him and hug him and he would kind of lay on me a little, but he seemed to understand and he did not ONCE throw one of his Monster fits.

We'll see how tonight goes. He's still up once a night to nurse, and I'm normally so beat that I just want him to go back to sleep so I throw him in bed with us and let him.

And because you're asking, I'm sure: he's 22 months. I think it's time?

Posted by mryonker at 10:58 PM | Comments (6)

August 16, 2005

vung

Thanks to Deb for her word, "vung," which means (and I gather this only from context): dang, crud, drat, crap, scat.

I say "vung" because today was a doozy. B took a trip to NYC to pick up (what else) an engine. He was gone from 4 am until dinnertime.

From the moment I got out of bed until right now, Joshua (aka Monster Toddler and Destructo Boy) has been AT ME. Right now he happily babbles his nonsense language in the tub. But ALL today he cried at my legs. When I picked him up he cried for me to ____ (not sure, really, what he wanted). He CRIED. And yelled. And cried more.

I spent three hours away from him at a pre-school board meeting, and he was, allegedly, quite good for the sitter (meaning he didn't cry for her).

B assures me that Josh doesn't cry for him, either. Apparently, it's just me.

It is depressing to have a baby cry at you all day. Here, you want to eat this? Want to play with this? I guess if I was smart I would have put him in the tub at 9 am this morning.

Although, now again, he's screaming and screeching. Oh, the humanity. I want to throw him from the window. A first floor window, of course.

Posted by mryonker at 08:14 PM | Comments (2)

August 11, 2005

Frankstock 2005

Sorry for the white space. I have my settings to display the last seven days' worth of posts, and when you go, say, for 11 days without posting, there's nothing to display. Thanks for the heads up, Heather.

Anyhoo: the rundown on the Frank family reunion will probably take a couple of posts/days for me to digest and report completely. It was, in all, a highly enjoyable friendly weekend. I learned several things about myself and my family.

The first: my nagging feelings of not being "good enough" from childhood, which I've managed to squelch as an adult, return full on when I'm among people I haven't seen in 15 years. My car was not shiny enough, my kids not clean enough, my job didn't pay enough, my eyebrows not shaped perfectly enough, my volleyball skills not sharp enough. [Brian points out to me, during the volleyball tourney, that I'm too bossy on the court.]

I have many cousins, most of whom are women and between the ages of 22 and 35, and they are *all* fit, small, pretty, smart. I literally come from a family of beautiful women. My mom and her sisters, all in their 50s now, are all exceptionally good-looking, and were all especially handsome in their youth as well. I'm not saying this just because they're my family, either. 

I just always feel like I'm the one with, you know, skin blemishes and dirty fingernails, and I haven't ridden my bike across Iowa. [yet!]

Whatever. The initial shock of how perfect everyone else is dissapated after a while. We had a pig roast, a moon walk for all the great-grand kids (we had 16 kids between the ages of 2 months and 10 years there), a bon fire, a keg, tamales, barbershop and folk music.

There were, of course, the requisite foibles and rows: the initial site for the reunion (an aunt's house) was nixed by the landlord--but he offered up an empty old house that had 5 apartment units and a large yard instead. I had my doubts about the comforts an unoccupied apartment building would offer to the 7-or-so families who had to travel from out-of-state--but it wasn't horrible. I imagine my aunt spent a good deal of time scrubbing the place before we got there. It was situated about 50 yards away from the railroad that carried the twice-hourly Chicago-to-Milwaukee Amtrak, which shook the building all night and woke kids napping under the trees in the yard during the day. There were no screens in the windows, so during the day we'd hang the doors open to keep the breezes blowing and at night we hung flypaper. Some of the showers in some of the units worked, some didn't; the same went for things like outlets, appliances, etc.

Yes. This was no convention at the Hyatt. But fun no less. Slideshow at flickr to follow.

Posted by mryonker at 09:50 AM | Comments (3)

July 20, 2005

my boys, mostly

Slow progress on the upstairs remodel. The first bedroom is wired, sheetrocked, painted. Doors hung. It still needs trim and carpet. The carpet will just have to wait, as we don't have the kizzy for that right yet. The trim will be raw pine (urethaned, of course), and we have it but it ain't up yet.

The second bedroom is now wired and sheetrocked, but needs painted. I'm hoping dear B will finish painting tomorrow for a big weekend move-back-upstairs party. Ooooh. I will sooooo love him for getting us back upstairs!! Did I mention I'm OVER sleeping in my living room??

Jack was stung by something horrific this afternoon. His newest funnest game is throwing a ball onto the garage roof and attempting to catch it on its way down. So he was out with his new pastime, Josh was splashing in our mosquito-incubating wading pool, and I was sitting on the back stoop wishing away some horrible menstrual cramps (I know, I know, overshare--no one's making you read :). All of a sudden, Jack screams bloody murder and comes running willy-nilly through the yard and toward the stoop. Brian comes flying out the back door and we triage him on the steps. Whatever stung him drew a large quivering bead of blood on the cartilage of his ear, near the top. I ran inside to concoct a baking soda paste and when I returned his ear was nearly double in size, I shit not.

And he's still yowling. Jack, and I know I've mentioned this before, is not a crier. He has ground half of his face into hamburger on the driveway in a skateboarding mishap, and barely batted an eye.

It took a bit of calming, and then he decided oh, it didn't hurt that bad. But his ear was (and still is) enormous. And when he got up and was walking around, he kept saying, "Look, ma, how my ear is wobbling and shaking." Apparently the swollen-ness of it made it feel heavy to him. I kept asking, "Is your tongue getting bigger?" and "Are you getting enough breath?" because it got so big, it made me worry about allergies and anaphalactic shock, which I know NOTHING about.

At bedtime tonight we could NOT find a binky and Josh was freaking out. We were all combing the house, and he was following us around calling "Uh-Oooooh. UH-OOOOOH." Finally Brian found one. Man, it is time to lose that thing for good already.

Posted by mryonker at 10:42 PM | Comments (2)

June 30, 2005

I spoke too soon (or, he's onto me)

Yesterday I posted about getting a peaceful shower followed by nearly a half hour of quiet time. I returned from my run this morning at 715 am to find a small blonde boy, 1 binky in mouth + 1 binky in hand, waiting expectantly at the back door.

Who knew evil could be so damn cute?

Posted by mryonker at 07:51 AM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2005

NIP

iBeth blogs her breastfeeding hero.

The J-baby is coming up on 20 months and still nurses. Infrequently, sure. Mostly at night. But also when he feels out-of-sorts, uncomfortable, or is in unfamiliar environs.

When strangers are around. He wants to nurse.

It is increasingly hard. He is a small boy, to be sure, though still very much a baby to me. And I'm inevitably trying to have a conversation with said "stranger" (who isn't a stranger to me, just to him), and he's in my lap posturing and digging and clawing at my shirt. It is obvious what he wants. And oh, if I put him down or attempt to distract him... !!hooooowwwwlll!! for sure.

I feel compelled to remind (or inform) people that the World Health Organization recommends nursing for two years. And not only for countries where food for children is hard to come by. It is most healthy for mom, too. (I'd find the link, but it's late.)

It's EASY to nurse a small baby in public. Easy. But a big baby, who pops off every couple gulps to survey the scene, or gets down to go get something to immediately come back and resume nursing: this is hard. Shirt up, shirt down, shirt up, shirt down. I've taken to holding my shirt and bra up with one hand so that when he pulls away, I pull down.

Ah, well. I probably only have a few months left anyway, so I should enjoy it while it lasts.

Posted by mryonker at 12:16 AM | Comments (2)

June 16, 2005

scheduling

More talk of daily planning and organizing:Elizabeth at Half-changed World, via Laura at 11D.

The best I can do is have a calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen. When the kids bring home announcements about field trips (requiring specially-packed lunches and bathing suits, or whatever), when I've got a board meeting, when someone's got a doctor's or dentist's appointment, I just write it on the calendar.

You can imagine, with 4 kids + 3 adults in one house, what that poor calendar looks like.

It's probably the lowest tech thing I do. I have no palm pilot; when they became more ubiquitous I was getting my MA and had not the dinero to hop onto that particular bandwagon. Also, Laura and Elizabeth talk about linking up their schedules with spouses (and possibly others, co-workers), but I have no one to link up with, really.

Next fall when Brian is student-ing full-time, we might need something like this.

But I can only feel unworthy and unproductive in the face of color-coding and calendars printed daily. However, today, I have already hauled our recycling to the transfer station, been to the library to deposit books due, grocery shopped, had a cup of coffee with a good friend and done a little reading.

I get stuff done.

Posted by mryonker at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

less ack-uh-dee, more mom

The heat is getting to me. Stinky-hot, I think, best describes the weather here this week, though Thursday it's supposed to be 68, and I look forward to that. Hannah asked me innocently this weekend: "Mom, why haven't you turned the air on??" I answered her: "We do not HAVE air, we live in CENTRAL New York." It's hotter here than it is in SE VA right now, where the bar is set for stinky-hot.

The dance recital was nice, though the a/c was broken in the auditorium so we all sweated and stuck to our vinyl auditorium seats. Jack danced his first ballet, and I think it will be his last (he was over it in March, but we pressed him to finish the year because the choreography was heavily dependent on there being one boy in the class). Hannah was in three numbers, and she ate it up, loved it as always, and did really well. Charlotte danced in the pre-ballet with Jack, and she was quite cute.

The bad news: the vid cam decided that after the very first number it needed its heads cleaned, and the rest of the two-and-a-half hours of video are trash. B tried changing tapes and turning the machine off between numbers, but no luck. I'm very sad. Because we had the vid cam, I didn't even bring the reg cam to take pics, so I have no record of the performance. I am bummed.

Once mom leaves in a few days, I'll be able to get some stuff done. But right now, I'm enjoying the excuse to not do much of anything.

Posted by mryonker at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2005

heartburn

Well. This past week has been...whew.

The run down might look like:

professional development mini-seminar on Tuesday, whereby I was snarked quite snarkily by an instructor who felt that because I'm a graduate student, I somehow have more pedagogical freedom in the classroom. The irony, of course (b/c it's my life; there is always irony) is that if all goes well, I'll be an instructor next fall.

hauling huge-mongous bags of plaster to the dump on Wednesday, where I hefted and slung the first twenty or so that I had packed (and had only half-filled). The first of the second twenty, that brother T had packed, weighed about 200 lbs and I nearly threw myself out of the bed of the pick-up trying to throw it into the transfer dumpster. A nice attendant came out and we hefted them together. I promptly went to the nearest gas station and bought him a six pack.

picked up a truckload of mulch on Thursday, and spent the afternoon spreading it around various bushes in the yard. This was a vain attempt at beautification; however, the ugly bald spots in the lawn, chewed bare by the plow this winter, mock me still. Also on Thursday: dance rehearsal, mudding and sanding drywall, and the arrival of B's parents. >sigh<

Today, board meeting for the pre-school, FINALLY got the garden in the ground (with a little help from Jack, who somehow planted three rows' worth of carrot seeds in half a row--even tried to find and move an already-planted carrot seed? good luck). The boys frolicked in the wading pool; we chased, caught and admired, and released a small frog; AND dress rehearsal for the dance recital, which praise all that is holy and terrific, is tomorrow and then I will bE FREE of the hell that is dance class detail.

We feasted at Ponderosa (hence the post title), and now I'm doing laundry and happy to sit. My mom gets in late tonight with my sister, Rose, and tomorrow will be a frenzy of tights and buns (the hair-do!!) and safety pins.

I'll report back.

Posted by mryonker at 10:00 PM | Comments (6)

June 02, 2005

brightsides and bread ties

Yes. The brightside.

Anyway: the brightside. Blogging really makes concrete the cycle of my moods, what I attribute to be the causes of those moods, and allows me to take myself a little less seriously.

For instance, I get to read and reflect on what I've been funky about in the past, and what has lifted my spirits, likewise.

I have a new approach to seeing events as they happen in my life: "would I blog this?" or "how will I blog this (how will I present it)?"

And though I've felt from the get-go (or "git-go" if you prefer) that my private, personal life inevitablely collides with all things in the public, I'm slowly learning, through this very public genre, that things certainly can, and do, stay private. For instance, there's a whole long drawn-out drama about my brother and niece living with us that I only gesture towards. There are days I am ready to put them out. There are days that are not so bad, where I don't mind them at all, and can see them hanging out indefinitely. And there are often times when their antics stress me out and I deliberately DO NOT blog, because, well, I'm not sure why.

The blog truly is a self-effacing mechanism. And not only in a public manner. Yes, you lay yourself bare (how bare, you decide) to a public, BUT more importantly, you lay yourself bare for your own self to discover and reflect on.

That said, some hodge podge:

We have a little skunk eating catfood off the back porch. We think it's a she because she is small, but we can't be sure.

Tomorrow night begins the insanity that is studio rehearsals before the dance recital next weekend. With 3 kids in 5 numbers (that's 8 costumes for me to keep track of!!) I am just a little anxious.

I've been wearing a bread tie around my little finger to remind myself not to yell and scream and to pick my battles and to generally be more calm. I think it's working--today I didn't wear it and the screaming hag came back for a few hours. I've got the kids in on it too. Hannah asks me: "Mom, where's your BREAD TIE??" when I start up. And when Hannah rages about something, I raise my pinkie at her. "Get a bread tie," I say when someone comes in to tattle.

Posted by mryonker at 10:40 PM | Comments (2)

May 07, 2005

a snapshot

Dunkin Donuts, a busy spring Saturday morning. The boys and I, killing time whilst Hannah is pas de chat-ing and tendue-ing her little heart out, stand patiently-ish in line amongst a gaggle of customers, most of whom are less patiently waiting for the latte machine to get up and running.

I am simply in need of ONE pink sprinkle, ONE plain cake, and ONE coffee regular. And really the only NEED exists for the coffee. They only way Jack can talk me into a Dunkin run is because I can get a caffeine fix.

So, we stand. Jack browses the juice cooler and vies for a gross-looking strawberry milk. Josh attempts to take down the large standing cardboard likeness of the Coolatta. I yawn, my eyes watering, my body exhausted even though it's only 10:30 am. I try to talk Jack into an apple or orange juice instead of the vile, thick-looking pepto crap. He demurs in his sweet way, and I give in. A customer behind me gasps quietly, and I look to her, figuring she's overheard the latte machine is down. She's staring behind the counter, her tall teen-aged son grinning and chuckling and following her gaze. I face front in time to witness a small blonde head with small hands and slender fingers reaching steadily towards the basket of powdered munchkins.

Shit. That's my kid stealing a donut!!

I tear around the counter (who left the gate open, anyway, so that small children could slip through!!??) grabbing for Joshua. But I am too late, and he's already taken a bite from the munchkin, looking pleased as a pig in shit with himself for being so clever. I can imagine him thinking, "Those amateurs, all out their WAITING for these incompetent underpaid disgruntled coffee jerks to get them their donuts--when all you have to do is SERVE YOURSELF."

I apologize to the young girl working the register. "I'll pay for it, sorry."

By the time we get to the front of the line, however, I wonder how she'll charge me for ONE munchkin. I'm mentally dividing 50 into 500 and, because I'm nervous and embarrassed, am having no luck coming up with a figure. She screws up our order, which is easy and doesn't involve a latte, and I decide that I won't remind her I owe her for the munchkin.

Posted by mryonker at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)

May 06, 2005

alone

Sorry to everybody that I stood up last night. Turns out, the science fair did a little sneaking up on us, and I found myself yesterday afternoon up to my elbows in clay volcanoes and those three-sectioned project displays. Actually, Hannah's project (Can you tell the flavor of Kool-Aid without seeing the color?) had already been executed; she simply had to do some work with her numbers. Ha Ha.

Her participants were a little more savvy than we hypothesized.

But the chaos was brought on by Charlotte, my niece, who when the science fair sign-up paperwork originally came home, had declined participation. Yet the excitement of Hannah's highly methodical and scientific cavorting was contagious, so at the last minute had me talked into letting her submit a project as well.

My default project? Good old clay volcano, baking soda and vinegar. Nope, I don't have any red food coloring, but I do have some left over Kool-Aid.

Yeah. So add an afternoon dance class into running to pick up pictures, clay, new markers, and SOMETHING FOR DINNER (gah, I have to feed them TOO??), I look up at the clock and it's already 8 PM. Oops. So much for making the end-of-semester shindig. Eff. Good mom, bad friend.

And this afternoon Brian waved to me from his truck as he drove off in the direction of West Virginia, where construction begins on new cabins on new land. He will return Sunday, but I am on my own to negotiate three dance classes, a first communion party for a friend, a Brownie training run, several meals, a trashed house, a research proposal, and who knows what else ALONE. I am already lonely and hoping the weekend flies by. Conan O'Brien will keep me company for a bit, in a bit. I hope he rows across the stage in his invisible canoe.

Posted by mryonker at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

I probably shouldn't

So in my quest for organized sanity in order to better get work finished, Brian has put a desk in a back corner of the house away from distractions. He's gonna hang a couple shelves and I'll be set.

It turns out, the desk is adjacent to a window that looks out into the back yard so I can keep an eye on the kids as they dig in the mud (in their socks), ride their bikes through the neighbor's hyacinths, fall out of the tree, throw rocks and sticks at one another, etc.

The only problem right now is that Destructo Boy is happiest playing outside, pushing his giant-sized Tonka up and down the driveway or joining in the mud-digging with the other kids. But he is too little to send out on his own. Hannah will watch him for short periods, but gets impatient (and less attentive) the longer I make her stay out with him.

It occurred to me, not briefly, that I could put him on some kind of line so that he could run around without running away or running into the street. And by line, yes, I mean a leash. Except instead of a collar, I was more thinking like a climbing harness attached to a line by a carabiner.

Child protective services would probably be all over me for that one.

We've talked about fencing in a portion of the yard (the yard is too large to fence the whole thing), but even a small portion of fencing is costly, plus it would probably look gnarly to have a little square of fence in a big back yard.

The line would be much more cost-effective.

Posted by mryonker at 07:44 AM | Comments (5)

April 23, 2005

how I spent spring break

Posted by mryonker at 09:27 PM | Comments (2)

April 02, 2005

what doesn't kill us

We drove to the city today so Brian could get seeds from a small neighborhood co-op that sells organic seeds in bulk. It's become a kind of ritual; since we aren't paying members of the co-op and since we don't normally drive all the way to the city to shop, we rarely go there except in the spring to buy seeds.

It is a small, cozy shop with organic produce and health food. I put the baby in a cart and Hannah and I shopped around a little while Brian took the other kids to pick out seeds.

Joshua, as you probably know, is a few things: impatient, strong-willed, and LOUD. He tolerates a little cart-riding, but not much. I drove past Brian to see his progress. He was carefully labeling a packet of spinach, and was about a third of the way through.

Joshua was straining against the seat belt, grunting and squawking. I got him out, and he and I pushed the cart (he likes to push stuff) for a few laps around the shop. It got old quickly, and Joshua began to shop.

To Josh, shopping is running, grabbing something off the shelf, throwing it, and then running to the next item as I'm picking up whatever he's thrown.

I reason with him, I say, "OK, pick it up and put it back." Sometimes he does. Others, he doesn't. We were fine in the canned goods aisle. But then he got into the condiment aisle, where many items within his reach are glass.

He reaches for a bottle of vinagrette. I lunge, grab, replace, and scoop Josh up. He is NOT thrilled with this, as I am clearly interrupting his gleeful shopping spree.

He squirms, squeals. I walk over to Brian to see how much longer. Josh twists, howls. Brian's still got several more varieties he needs to count and label. Hannah is looking at the hand made soap, and I walk over to see what she's found. Josh arches his back, and lets a mighty whooping cry.

"You might want to take him outside." The voice comes from down the aisle. I look over, smiling, thinking that the person behind the voice is commiserating, or kidding (it was pouring outside, and chilly). The face of a man with a tasteful leather jacket, pressed-looking tee-shirt and designer jeans grips his basket stares at me, his eyes communicating no jest. "It's obnoxious. We shouldn't have to listen to that in here. We're trying to shop."

Uh. I feel as though the air has been knocked out of me. I smile, a little wavering-ly. "I'm sorry," I say, and hold my hand out for Brian to give me the keys. I grab Hannah's hand and drag her outside before I cry in front of everyone.

Josh is immediately quiet in the truck; I let him mess with the steering wheel and radio buttons. I, however, begin sobbing. Hannah says, "Mommy, that man was rude to you, wasn't he?"

Was he?

I don't know. I've been around people with uncontrollable kids. I've thought to myself, "Jeez. What a monster." I've been around people who have no regard for the fact that others might not be able to control their circumstances. In Wegmans the day before Easter, a woman huffed and harrumphed her way through a busy produce department, upset that people were so packed and so pokey.

Josh is loud. If there is something he wants that I can give him to make him quiet, I'll do it, especially if we're in public. But if he wants to trash the bulk granola, I'm not really into paying for all that, so I guess he's gonna holler a little.

What this comes down to is: are kids, like, so much of a CHOICE that I should be condemned to never inconvenience anyone else by subjecting them to my daily struggles with them? I mean what really struck me, as I sat in the truck crying, is that that man had NO IDEA. Every. Day. I. Live. Through. what he was simply saying I should take outside because (why? he couldn't think clearly with the squawking? because it "hurt his ears?" because the vibrations were sullying his organic leaf lettuce?).

Look, buddy. I don't get to tell someone to take it outside. This is my life. So I can't live publicly? I can't be in places where other people might be uncomfortable or bothered by what IS MY LIFE? Again, I understand. I have made a choice to make my lifestyle different from people who choose to live, shall we say, quieter lives. Do we need to have grocery stores for people with kids, and grocery stores for people without?

But I'm not angry. Not at him. The clerk came out to the truck to tell me she was sorry, and that she would speak to the other customer, and that I could come back in if I wanted.

Brian assured me he offered the man some well-chosen words before he left.

But it hurt me. Because he was saying: You should not be here. You do not BELONG here. Get out.

Here is what I'm doing with this experience: the next time I'm annoyed by another's actions, inactions, inability to assess appropriate behavior for a situation, or other incident that would normally evoke my utter disdain, I will make sure I remember the way that I felt when I was treated with scorn.

And I won't be annoyed. I'll smile. And maybe cry some more.

Posted by mryonker at 10:21 PM | Comments (17)

February 25, 2005

it's funny now

Monster toddler is working some molars out. His nose runs so constantly that the minute I swipe it, he's got another bubble, trickle, or glob at the ready.

He drools so much that we've had to change his shirt and onesie thrice today.

And he isn't sleeping so well, so he ended up between us last night.

Near 3am, Brad Pitt and I are having a run on the beach. I look over at him, and he leans in (to whisper in my ear? brush his lips on my cheek?), and WHAM! he head butts me in the brow and starts ripping my eyelids.

Ouch. OK, OK, I'm awake. Leave me a few eyelashes, will ya?

Posted by mryonker at 10:38 PM | Comments (3)

February 10, 2005

it happened again

Look, it's not even funny. I was in George's office this morning, and he commented that I didn't need to blog about my embarrassments.

I explained to him that it was already a public event, as several participants in the seminar actually witnessed my tag discovery. And as I explained this to him, I mimed the action of me reaching down, feeling the collar of my shirt, and turning it out enough that the tag would have been visible by those who had been watching.

And to my horror, as I re-enacted the tag discovery, I actually found that I HAD MY SHIRT ON BACKWARDS again.

I am not making this up. Ask George.

Posted by mryonker at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)

February 09, 2005

yeah, I got it together.

Driving into campus this morning on the interstate, I think about how well the morning had gone thus far:

Four kids fed, cleaned, dressed (in clean clothes, even). Two kids to school, two to the babysitter. No one late. No meltdowns about outfits, or what's for breakfast, or what's packed in their lunches, or who brushes their teeth first. All backpacks found. All homework completed. All hair brushed (!).

No one left crying or shouting. All kisses and hugs appeared genuine, as they weren't preceeded by "Will you just get your BOOTS ON NOW for the love of PETE!!"

Wow, I think. I really am doing OK today.

I walk into campus with my jacket open, enjoying the last of our heat wave (it was about 30). I make it to the computer cluster early, and have time to think a little and decompress. As the participants of the seminar trickle in, I feel something itch at the front of my neck. I look down. It's the tag of my shirt.

Yeah, I got it together.

Posted by mryonker at 02:29 PM | Comments (5)