Rules, Rules and Nothing But Rules

(With apologies to Bernadette Peters and "Greens, Greens and Nothing but Greens" from "Into the Woods".)

I've been wanting to write about this all week, but I'm exhausted. The past two nights I've been asleep by 9:00 p.m. This full-time g'parenting is just exhausting. And please note that that statement is not a complaint—it is merely a statement of fact. I was able to pull this full-time duty when I was in my 20s and 30s. But, People, I'll be 60 in seven months, and this is hard damned work.)

The babes attend the local Montessori school. The administration there is very conscientious about the environment and healthful nutrition and the like. But, for my taste, they're a little too conscientious.

I've been having to pack the babes' lunch every day. The first day I tucked in some Hallowe'en fruit snacks that were left over from Saturday night. When Ridley got home, she told me, "That's fake fruit. You can't send that again."

Fake fruit? FAKE FRUIT?! The babes' mother does not purchase food that is not nutritious. She doesn't purchase fake food.

And, by the way, I know from fake fruit. My mother kept a bowl of wooden fruit that was brought as a gift from Honduras by a family friend. That's fake fruit.

And to remotely and figuratively slap my hand because I sent a decent snack that you deemed inappropriate. Do we maybe need to be a little less intense about some things?

Okay, I know you have precedents you have to uphold. And I'm just an agent of my grandchildren's parents. So I'll try harder next time.

But I reallllly don't like people telling me what to do. And I don't like the thought that you have deemed a perfectly decent snack to be "fake fruit."

Whatever!

Rules, Rules and Nothing But Rules

(With apologies to Bernadette Peters and "Greens, Greens and Nothing but Greens" from "Into the Woods".)

Makin' Up Stories

Instead of reading stories before bed, the babes and I frequently make up stories. One person will start, pausing where someone else is to add a word or take over the story line.

Last night I started a story about a boy with four cats and a dog. Ridley named the boy's father "Jim", and Boston named his mother "Rosa". The boy became "Sam", and the cats were "Sally", "Willie", "Sarah", and "Wally". Then I asked Ridley what breed of dog Sam had. She said, "a Chocolate Puff." Hmm, that's not a breed with which I'm familiar.

I asked her what a Chocolate Puff was. She said, "You know. A Chocolate Puff. Like Guide."

That would be a Chocolate Lab to the rest of us. The photo above? Guide, at nine weeks, when he moved in next door.

Jaci's Live Blog

Jaci, with the help of cameraman Tyler, is live-blogging from New Orleans. Her posts are must-see Internet. If you have never met Jaci, a single viewing of these videos will explain to you why everyone who knows her falls in love with her. Her personality just glows through these videos.

Go. Read. And keep checking back for more as the week progresses.

Day 1
Day 2

Did You Vote?

How nice that my life thsi week is including quiet post-8:30am mornings into which I can slip a conversation with an old friend or a pastry at Panera. Or voting without stress.

If you're a Mahoning County reader, please vote to keep the light on at our libraries.

Go vote—it's your right, your privilege, your obligation.

The Grandma Report, Days 1 and 2

I have made it through two days as full-time grandma; it's 8:45 and I'm ready for sleep!

Yesterday began at 6:00 a.m., involved a PIT airport run at 8:30 a.m., an afternoon at the Akron zoo, and a dinner of fish sticks followed by a make-up-the-rules-as-you-go game of Pictionary.

This morning I was up at 6:00 to get my shower and be ready to go before the babes got up at 6:50. Unfortunately, I had a headache that started around 3:00 a.m. We got breakfast, clothes, practiced piano, put the dogs out, scraped frost off the windshield, and made it to school in time. My day continued with iced tea and the crossword at Panera, then my annual GYN appointment, a run into BB&B for a new shower curtain, a quick call to the office to try to solve a problem, picking the babes up from school, errands, more piano practicing, a cupcake-making session, more fish sticks, and a game of Life.

By the time I turned their light out at 8:15, I was totally ready to drop onto my bed. My head is still hurting, and I'm trying to stay awake long enough so I won't wake at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Rain is forecast for tomorrow, and snow showers for tomorrow night. As soon as this weather settles down, my head will stop hurting and I'll be a more long-suffering grandma.

There were a couple of high points to the day. One was seeing how low my blood pressure was at the doctor and realizing it was a result of the beta blocker. So: higher weight, but fewer headaches and lower blood pressure.

The other high point came at the end of our game of Life after dinner tonight. Boston said, "That was fun. I'd much rather do that than watch television." When is the last time you heard your 8yo say something like that? I was thrilled.

I feel privileged to pick them up from school and hear their conversations about their days. Boston talked about the boy who told him he hated him. Then he talked about the girl who told him she loved him and how nice that felt after the boy saying he hated him.

I feel grateful that my son and daughter-in-law trust me enough to allow me this privilege for a week.

I feel tired.

---

Several friends have asked how I'm managing work with this responsibility. I'm not. I took the whole week off—two-and-a-half days of vacation (all that's left for the year), and two-and-a-half days leave without pay. I can't imagine trying to balance work with everything that's required to manage these kids' lives.

The Word of the Day

My grandchildren's vocabulary never ceases to amaze me. I'm spending the week with them, so am getting lots of amazing moments.

Today we stopped at Wendy's for lunch on the way to the Akron Zoo. Ridley, ever amazed at her own ability to tell jokes (funny is in the brain of the beholder, dontcha know?), asked me if I knew what the dummy's favorite restaurant was. When I gave up, she responded, "Denny's". Okay, so Denny's is the babes' favorite restaurant, and "dummy's" and "Denny's" sort of sound alike. Vaguely.

I told her I didn't find her joke funny. Boston then said, "It's awkward." I asked him what was awkward. He said, "Her joke." Awkward. Hmmm.

Then in the evening after finishing our dinner of fish sticks and applesauce (whew, I made it through day 1), they delved into their Hallowe'en baskets. Boston came up with some candy corn, which he loves. He was sorting through the eight-or-so kernels he chose for his dessert, and held up one misshapen kernel. "This is awkward," he observed.

There you go. The word of the day, from an eight-year-old's point of view. "Awkward." Can be applied to jokes or candy.

My Grandma Instincts tell me this week is going to yield lots of blog fodder!

Soul Custody

I'm nearing the end of "Olive Kitteridge" and, although I don't like the character Olive very much, I am loving Elizabeth Strout's writing.

In the chapter I listened to on Friday's evening commute, the teenaged girl's mother had left home when the child was very small to go to Hollywood to be an actress. The teenager wanted to find and get to know her mother. Her father, a minister, told her that would be impossible, as he had filed the papers and had sole custody. The girl, when she heard that, thought he had "soul custody."

I left my children when they were small, and although I believe I acted in their best interest, I agonize—to this day—about that decision and action. Reading about a mother who leaves her child(ren) is difficult for me. Reading about the gossip and disapproval of friends and neighbors is even more difficult. An outsider can never know what goes on inside the life of another.

"I loved you so much I gave you up." What a mixed message. How seemingly hypocritical.

I've been privy to an adoption discussion on Facebook over the past few days. Adoption is such a hot topic for me. In retrospect, I believe my struggles as a parent and my struggles in my many marriages were tightly connected to being adopted. How can a person who has never felt accepted or loved or "good enough" be a partner or a parent?

One of the contributors to the adoption discussion shared the fact that a friend who had just met her true love found out they were both adopted and it gave them a special bond. My marriage to John—his third, my fourth—was the perfect marriage for both of us. His mother had died when he was three and he spent the next five years in and out of foster homes and an orphanage. I always felt we were able to fill in the holes in each other's souls, and that's why the marriage was so successful.

The fewer holes one has in her soul, the easier it is to have custody of her own soul.

Wow, That's A Lot!

There are so many lessons that must be taught to children for them to successfully navigate the world. I attempted to teach one of those to Ridley yesterday.

She and I were sharing the bathroom as we were getting ready for the babes to go back home after a sleepover at Grandma's. Ridley is fascinated by the scale in my bathroom and hops on it every time she goes into my bathroom. Every time! She still doesn't grasp the difference, at 6, between height and weight, between measuring and weighing. Sometimes she'ls look at the scale readout and say, "Look how tall I am." We're working on that lesson, for one.

Yesterday she was so proud to be "almost 80". Then, as I weighed myself before getting in the shower, she looked over at the scale and said, "Wow, that's a lot!" Ooh, bad thing to say.

I have gone back on a beta blocker, after twenty-plus years, to stem my frequent headaches. It has been a tremendous success—I've had fewer headaches in the past couple of months than in any two month period in the past, oh, ten years. The downside to the beta blocker is that I've been piling on the pounds, no matter how careful I try to be with my diet.

On the great scale of life, if I have to choose between carrying some extra pounds or dealing with daily headaches, I guess I'll take the pounds. But that doesn't mean I'm not sensitive about the weight. So I told Ridley it was better to not comment on people's weight, that it was considered rude. She said okay, and smiled.

But in retrospect, I'm thinking maybe my weight isn't as bad as the scale has been indicating. This morning, for example, I got on the scale before my shower and it said 205.5. I may be heavy, but I'm nowhere near 200 pounds!

Maybe it's time for new batteries!

It Could Have Been Worse

As we discussed my recent speeding ticket before staff meeting this morning, a colleague told me about the day his wife got a speeding ticket on the way to work, then another, in the same location, on the way home. From the same trooper!

Now there's a big Oops!

In My [Worst] Dreams

I thought I was fine with yesterday's speeding stop, and that it was just another fact of my everyday long commute.

This morning I woke at 4:30, then was able to go back to sleep until 6:00. During that extra bit of sleep, I dreamed I got stopped [again] for speeding and had to go someplace with the policeman. I had left the front door of my house—a little square white number—standing wide open. When the policeman brought me back home, every single thing had been stolen out of my house. Every stick of furniture, every item of clothing, every knickknack and gewgaw. Gone!

I'm not sure what lesson I should take away from that dream, but I'm thinking I need to pay a little closer attention to my speed. And ask Santa for a radar detector!

Usability

My colleague and I spend a portion of each day thinking about usability—How can we make our screens and error messages friendlier for our users? How can we get our point across without making the user feel denigrated?

On this morning's commute I had a mandatory roadside meeting with an Ohio State Trooper. When I got to the office I went onto the county website to pay my fine. ($140 - ouch!) When I clicked "Pay Court Costs and Fines", I got the screen you see below.



I'm thinking Portage County needs a little help with their usability studies!

Central Heating

This week I'm listening to "Olive Kitteridge," the Pulitzer Prize-winning "novel in stories" by Elizabeth Strout. The narration on the audiobook is beautifully performed by Sandra Burr, who nails the Maine accents.

There are so many beautifully-written lines in this book. I wish my iPhone gave me the option to click a button and bookmark a paragraph. I may have to buy the hardcopy book and read it again, just to be able to highlight all the brilliant writing by Ms. Strout.

This morning the line that caught my ear was "Bonnie was the central heating of his life." Wow! The central heating of his life. How much more graphic can a metaphor be? How much more clearly can one indicate how close to the core of one's life something is?

If you haven't picked up your copy of "Olive Kitteridge" yet, go! Borrow or buy! This writing is worth every minute you devote to it.

And what are you reading?

Don't Be Givin' Me *That* Treat!

The babes and I had our regular Tuesday night dinner date last night—Denny's, of course—while their parents attended board meetings and book clubs.

I was searching for conversation topics, and settled upon "what kind of candy do you hope you get for trick-or-treat?"

Ridley, chasing after my own tummy, replied, "Lots of Hershey's." Oooh, chocolate. I like how that girl thinks.

Boston, to my shock and surprise, replied, "Candy corn." I parroted, "Candy Corn???" "Yes", he said, "I love candy corn."

Well, somebody has to, I guess.

(If you were wondering, I was excused from creating Hallowe'en costumes this year. Boston is going as a skeleton, thanks to Walgreen's and a glow-in-the-dark marker from Jo-Ann's. Ridley is recycling her witch costume of two years ago. The only item that needed replacing was the hat.)