Photography and Homeschooling (Roadschooling as often as we can)
I know you all have heard of Paula Deen. She can make anything taste like heaven. All it takes is butter…a whole stick, or mayonnaise, or butter and mayonnaise. Who cares about the heart attack that happens later in the day? Die happy! Take a look at this; y’all, it’ll knock your socks off!
And thank you to my friend, Leigh Ann, for posting this on Facebook. We think a lot alike.
The day began as any other. The day began better than others. It was a holiday. Also the moon, sun and all 8 planets (or nine if you’re still a fan of Pluto) were in line because Ashlyn slept in until 8:00. I know, amazing. And to top it all off Nonna is visiting, so all parental responsibilities have been abdicated for the next few days anyway. Y’all today started out perfectly.
We headed to DC to visit a little-known summer home of President Lincoln’s. It’s only three miles from the White House, but Lincoln loved going there. We did the one hour tour. Ashlyn behaved…somewhat. We had a lunch at a deli in the area and then headed home. On the way home, in the middle of DC traffic (which was still really busy for a midday on a holiday), Ashlyn coughs and then pukes all over herself. Little ones don’t know when they’re about to hurl. So they cannot warn you. You cannot get a bag and prepare. I guess we shouldn’t have let her eat a whole bag of salt and vinegar potato chips all by herself.
Nonna came to the rescue. I pulled the napkins out of the glove box and just threw them backwards. Nonna got them and started wiping up. That wasn’t it for the poor truck though. There is a shopping area next to our neighborhood and we decided to head to Blockbuster before going home. As Reagan and I were hopping out to run in and grab a movie I turned around and there was smoke billowing out of the engine. Fluid was dumping out the bottom and running all over the parking lot (and all I could think about was, “that’s how I felt when my water broke!”). I was embarrassed for our truck because it’s not a white trash truck. To me it’s still a spry young thing. In reality it is nine years old, which I guess is like 49 in car years.
Here is where I find the blessing in the aggravating and where I’d like to send a huge THANK YOU to God. Somehow our attitudes remained positive through all of this. Du had to stay with the truck while we girls walked home. We only had to walk about half a mile though and we had Ashlyn’s stroller with us, which means I did not have to carry her for half a mile. Our auto shop is only a half mile away as well so Du didn’t have to wait long for the guy to bring some extra fluid to help the truck limp to the shop. If we had not have done the Blockbuster run today then the radiator would have busted tomorrow morning en route to Bible study. And it might not have been a half mile from the repair shop. Oh, and fortunately it was just the whole bag of chips that made Ashlyn sick (well that and a truck that shakes as it idles because it’s getting on up there in age) so we had no more barfing episodes.
The day started out better than others, took a nose dive in the middle, but ended up just fine. Still, I wouldn’t want to repeat it.
It seems like everyone and his brother can win a Nobel Peace Prize these days. From Lech Walesa (respectable and admirable) to…Al Gore (?) to…Barack Obama. All you must do these days, it seems, is oppose George Bush and only mention that you want peace. Actions need not be demonstrated. Therefore, I’d like to give you my top ten nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
10. Barack Hussein Obama: For his “nascent” activities for world peace. As the AP says, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama’s calls for peace and cooperation but recognized initiatives that have yet to bear fruit” BTW, the nomination process supposedly began two weeks before he even took office to try to begin working on the things he’s promised.
9. Every beauty pageant contestant who ever uttered these words: “I believe in world peace!” Because words are apparently so much more meaningful than actions.
8. My friend Lyn: After all, she writes on her Facebook page, “I have three homeschool children and no one’s dead yet.” Hear, hear Lyn! We should nominate homeschoolers as a group. We could be the first large group to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
7. Trash collectors: Imagine how angry and unpeaceful this world would be if we didn’t have people picking up our trash. These men and women have a dirty job and they need to be recognized for the peace they bring while cleaning up after our messy selves.
6. Barney the purple stinkin’ dinosaur: He teaches kids to love each other and be a big happy family. And he teaches the clean up song.
5. Rodney King: For uttering this quote long before Obama came on scene: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?…It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice….Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out.” *
4. My friend Heather: (and every other yoga instructor) As a yoga instructor I am positive that she has helped many people climb down from that precipice of hate to an inner world of peace, which then spread to the people around them. I’m guessing Obama does yoga.
3. Every masseuse on this earth: Relieving stress through physical pressure in those exact right spots. It’s quite obvious that Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do not get regular massages. Obama, however, probably has a table set up in the oval office. He’s so peaceful, he’s said so.
2. The entire canine species: Hey, dogs are people too and they are always trying to make us happy. There should little puppies at every international negotiation session. And they should all have medals around their necks.
1. Every single person on this earth: We are the world, right? Don’t we all play a little part in bringing peace to this world? I think we should all nominate ourselves. And we should all win. And then the Nobel Peace Prize would lose every bit of significance that it ever had to begin with.
*Ralph Keyes. The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When. ISBN 0-312-34004-4
I read a post by a blogger who thought people might consider her crazy if they were to see or hear the way she was acting/reacting towards her children. I can so relate to Scary Mommy. I could see myself in her situation. I remember when Reagan was between two and three. There were two or three times when we had almost literal knock down drag outs. Seriously? With a toddler?
Nowadays the knock down drag outs are a thing of the past. Replacing them are nagging, yelling and threatening. I used to think that threatening-repeating parents didn’t have a grip on parenting. I still don’t. But I’ve become one. These days thoughtful, methodical parenting has been replaced by fly by the seat of my mommy jeans parenting where survival is the name of the game and often times that means talking to the wind. Or to myself. Or to the wall. Or in Chinese. My kids don’t hear me so obviously it’s one of these other options. Because they wouldn’t ignore me would they? Actually it’s kind of like that foreign language phenomenon. You’ve seen the shows where Person A meets a foreigner, Person B, and instead of speaking their language, Person A continues in his own language but just speaks louder and slower so maybe Person B JUST. MIGHT. UNDERSTAND. I am Person A and my girls are People B and right now they’re not understanding my attempts to yell at them. Survival mode.
Evidence that I am in survival mode as a parent: As I am attempting to lead Ashlyn across the street I see a car coming. So I growl at her to “stay with me, we’re in the middle of the road!” (You growl-read that right?) As I finish my basal instinctive attempt to save my daughter’s life I look up and see a new mother pushing a stroller. I manage a sheepish grin and a roll of the eyes with a look on my face that I hope said, “it’s just one of those days.” But who was I kidding. She hasn’t had one of those days yet. What I should have done was yell at her that she would be doing the same thing all too soon and if she were going to judge she better come back and apologize the day that she yelled and jerked her kid across the street.
And I could go on and on and on and each example would include some sort of growling or yelling. In fact, I’m pretty sure that people who regularly walk by our house are coming to know it as “the yeller’s house.” But my friend next door has admitted to yelling at her children as well, so I guess passers-by have a 50/50 chance of being right.
I’m making strides and trying to come up with other options and consequences that will actually impact my girls. Until then I’m hoping that the actions that I have to resort to in public won’t be judged too harshly. And if there is another mother in survival mode maybe she’ll feel a sense of camaraderie and we’ll both roll our eyes at each other and laugh sheepishly at what we’ve been reduced to doing.
P.S. For this post to have any remote sense of entertainment I’m afraid I had to make myself look like a constant screamer. Although I feel that’s how some days are, I am in no way always yelling at my kids. I’m my own worst critic when it comes to parenting and although I know it’s not that bad it certainly does feel it sometimes. My girls are generally good girls and that makes this season in life particularly frustrating. Why do I raise my voice? Survival mode is all I can guess. They certainly don’t react any better in the long run. So there.
Once upon a time (this past weekend), we went to Charlottesville to totally engorge ourselves on presidential stuff and all things 18th century. And to see beautiful scenery. It’s very convenient that all these presidents lived so close to each other. It must have been something in the water. The upstream water.
We had a great weekend, and maybe one day when I’m not so lazy, or overwhelmed, or intimidated by this blog I might start posting the pictures of all the things we’ve been doing lately. So for right now I’ll tell a quick story.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel, which is a pretty shi shi la la hotel. The inside looks like one of those places where if you have to ask the price of something then you can’t afford it. We only paid $60 (thank you last minute “name your price” Priceline deal). Perhaps that’s why we got the special room. We, of course, didn’t know it was special when we checked in.
We spent all day out and about and didn’t get back to the hotel until late in the evening. We went through the bedtime routine with the girls, without much yelling and raucousness, and then slept until about 6:30 or 7:30 when Ashlyn decided we’d all had enough shuteye. This is a Monday morning, by the way.
We were almost done getting ready and were about ten minutes away from vacating the premises when the hotel phone rang. “Odd,” I thought, “we’ve already gotten the bill slipped under the door. I bet this is one of those errant wake up calls where the staff accidentally calls the wrong room. Good thing it’s 8:30 and everyone’s up by now, hehe.”
Me: Hello?
Groggy voice on other end: Is this room 826?
Me: Yes…
GV: I’m your neighbor and I live here throughout the year and I was just wondering when y’all are leaving because you woke me up early this morning making lots of noise and I even heard your child bang on the door and I have medical issues so I was just wondering when you were planning on leaving…
Me: Well, I’m so sorry to hear this and I don’t think my daughter beat on the door, but I’m sorry if she did. Fortunately we’re leaving today so we won’t be bothering you anymore.
I must stop here and let you know something. It was very hard for me at this point in time to not be completely offended and be rude to this person. I was blown away by the fact that she thought we had been loud. That was actually laughable, because for us this had been a quiet trip. Granted, Ashlyn tends to scream when she isn’t happy about something, but that didn’t actually happen very many times while in the hotel. I guess she doesn’t know our history though and couldn’t be grateful. The door she must have heard our child kicking was the door that adjoins one room to the next. And she WAS NOT kicking it. Our suitcase was right next to that door so I’m sure it got banged, but Ashlyn doesn’t go around beating or kicking on doors or walls. Yet. It was all I could do to try to be pleasant and say nice things to her.
GV: Well, you technically don’t have to be out of the room until 12 noon and that’s a while from now…
Ok lady. Are you kidding me?! You’re kicking us out of the adjoining hotel room with 3 hours to spare when I’m already telling you we’re leaving today!?!?
Me: Ma’am, we’ll leave when we’re ready. Bye.
I was dumbfounded, but not quite speechless. If she could hear the noise we were making earlier than she definitely heard me talking about how if someone lives in a hotel room then they have got to expect to hear noise from guests every once in a while and who was she to call another guest and ask them to leave and why didn’t she call the front desk to complain first and there was no way any of us were beating on the door and did she want to see what loud and obnoxious could be? Du, the levelheaded one in this instance, had to calm me and Reagan down. It seems that she’s picked up my penchant for not wanting to take crap from others.
As I turned in our key cards the clerk asked the perfect question, “so, how was everything?” I was able to explain that everything was great until this morning when we were asked to leave by the lady who lives in the hotel and who just happened to be next door to us. I found out that she indeed has done this to other guests and the hotel has asked her not to. Why they don’t put her in a corner room I don’t know.
So, I learned that I definitely have a ways to go in automatically responding in love to criticism. I at least didn’t lash out at her. But don’t think I didn’t play the scenario out in my head several different times where I told her off. Or beat on the wall. Or memorized her hotel room number to call back at odd hours of the night. Ahem. I need to deal with that as well. One’s thought life can be the death of his/her happiness.
The End
It has started.
You know how boys show their interest in girls? They get all stupid and start saying stupid things to girls and start doing stupid things that for some reason they think the girls will like? It’s completely stupid.
And it has started with boys and Reagan. Sunday after church we were walking to the car and the conversation went something like this:
Reagan: Boy 1 and Boy 2 were telling me they were going to peek in my window.
Mommy: Did you tell them you live on the second floor, idiots?
R: Yes, but they said they’d still be able to see.
M: Did you remind them that they have no clue where we live?
R: They said they’d find me.
M: Did you tell them you know the number to the police?
R: They kept saying they were going to find my house and look in my window.
M: Did you tell them you’d kick their butt?
R: Mom!
M: Did you tell them your dad has a gun and he’s not afraid to use it?
R: Mom!
M: I’m serious.
Then I had to go and explain that sometimes boys say stupid things because, well, boys are stupid and don’t you ever forget it. And I encouraged her to stand her ground and maintain that she could kick their butts and that we do practice capital punishment for stupid boys in this house.
Were she any older than she is I would have found out the names of these boys and lit into them. But right now I do think it’s just the stupid stuff that boys do when they start liking girls.
Lord, help us.
Not So SAHM 