Domestic Psychology

The band camp test

// July 31st, 2009 // 4 Comments » // school, teenagers

Even with a drum saving Sarah’s boyfriend from being squished by a teen driver, I forget that we’ve been doing band camp for three years now. It has poured rain every day this week, but the band is still marching, every day, in the monsoon, from 8 in the morning until 8:30 or 9 every night. Yesterday, I sat in the office of another high school waiting for my appointment as a dazed parent wandered in the center of the school preparation chaos.

“Can I help you?”
“Um, yes. My daughter is a freshman, err, is going to be a freshman and doesn’t want to come to band camp anymore. How do I get band off her class schedule?”
“Well, the guidance counselor is away for training all week. Maybe you can reach her by e-mail.”
“Oh, uh, thanks. We’re going home now.”
“Good luck.”

I squirmed in my chair and bit my tongue so that I didn’t blurt, “You AND your child need to go talk to the band director right now.”

Is there a Facebook quiz for that?

// July 30th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // social media, teenagers

Other parent: “Our children are going to be embarrassed that their school is Title 1.”
Principal: “I understand. They’re probably talking about this on Facebook.”
Me: “Unless there’s a Title 1 quiz, I don’t think ANY middle schooler is discussing this on Facebook.”
Other parent: blink-blink

Wednesday quickies

// July 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // aspergers, parenting, preschoolers, teenagers

Yesterday, Amy and Evan disappeared in the creek that borders our yard. Molly’s barking alerted me that something was wrong and adrenaline fueled Doug found them before anything bad could happen. The children got a lecture that started at the creek, continued to the back porch where their muddy exteriors were shed and lasted through the entire bath. It could be heard a mile in every direction. After the world’s longest and loudest lecture, I prompted Evan. “When the creek is wet, what do we do?” “We play in the mud!”

At band practice, the high school students were acting like teenagers when a DRUM saved “the boyfriend” from being run over by a car. I asked Sarah how the band director responded to one of her students being hit by another one of her students. “Oh, she didn’t know until after she saw him limping during the routine.” I knew football players would keep playing with injuries, but I had no idea that the band had to shake it off after near death.

Tommy is scheduled to have aptitude testing at Voc Rehab today. He kept referring to it as OUR appointment and claimed it was from 9 until about 10. When I pressed for more information, he played a message on his voice mail for me. “The testing will last from 9 a.m. until about 3 p.m.” “Umm, I guess you don’t need to stay with me.” I started mumbling that he should pack a lunch and his grandfather chimed in with, “It’s downtown. There’s lots of places to walk for food.” I know he’s going to get lost in downtown Knoxville. I just don’t know how long he’ll wander before he calls us for help.

I am going to be out of the house for most of the day today. My day starts with an appointment at 9 a.m. and doesn’t end until after a meeting at 7:30 p.m. Doug is home alone with all of the children. All of the children except for the extremely helpful Sarah who is at band camp with a scarlet sunburn that she got while marching in pouring rain. Of course, Tommy is downtown with no supervision. Now that I think about it, I think Noah is in charge of the youngest children today. I expect an endless stream of text messaged hysterics today. They’ll be from strangers following Doug’s blog and Twitter stream.

mastering sibling rivalry

// July 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // kid quotes, preschoolers, siblings

Amy: “Evan, you stay out of my room or I will call the police and they’ll put you in jail.”
Evan: “Mommmmy!”
- – - – - – - – - – - – -
Amy: “Where’s my penguin that was in the living room?’
Evan: “I called police and they put it in jail.”
Amy: “Mooooom!”

Mommy Blogger

// July 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // blogging, blogher, me

I ignored the brouhaha the year the women at BlogHer argued over being “just” a Mommy blogger. I am a Mommy and I blog. I have been doing this for a decade now. I’m not embarrassed. I shrugged about the arguments over PR blackouts. If you’re tired of doing product reviews, don’t do them. We need all kinds of blogs and review blogs are just one of them. If you are paid to write posts, it’s an advertisement. Write what you want. Read what you want. It’s all good.

I thought the Motrin ads were funny. I wasn’t offended, but I watched the Twitter mob gathering torches and pitchforks. Entertaining? Maybe in a train wreck sort of way. It should have been educational for anyone who doesn’t think their brand needs to be interacting with consumers. I like to think that kind of energy can be channeled to do good. I know that social media has helped me.

It looks like this year’s topics of introspection are cocktail parties and swag. The posts coming out of BlogHer so far include:
Not all bloggers are like that
In Which I Pi** Off Lots of People and Do Not Care

The swag behavior is childish and may or may not have been exaggerated by the enormous crowd of people that attend BlogHer. From the descriptions I’m hearing, it sounds like the day after Thanksgiving sales. Event sponsors brought swag that was far better than the pencils I get excited about at Knoxville’s First Day Festival. I drooled at the pictures of what women were getting in their goody bags. I could have filled the children’s stockings with all those trinkets. Everyone just got caught up in all the excitement of BlogHer. Maybe crowd control will reduce some of the problem. Maybe lobby tickets were a mistake. Most likely, women will have higher expectations for themselves and others in the future. I believe in women enough to know it will not be a problem next year.

Then, there is the desire to band together and protect any fellow blogger who has been wronged. This is one of the good things about who we are. Please don’t make it into an us vs them. Don’t get mad at Nikon. We should all be lucky enough to have one of their cameras. Don’t get mad at babies. Tiny babies are completely portable and when they are with their personal feeding/soothing device, there is no wailing or destruction. It’s only when they get mobile that they damage property. We can support each other without having to make someone a bad guy.

I don’t want to call myself some politically correct thing like “woman who blogs” or “online diarist” or whatever name people are going to create out of this. I am a Mom. I blog. If someone asks me to review a product that fits in my life, I will do so if there are no strings attached. I would rather write about my life, my family and whatever interests me. I will not do paid posts, but I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see behind the scenes of where my food comes from or have a conversation with elected officials. I write about focused topics on other sites. I’m not paid for what I write over there either. I write e-mails to politicians. That doesn’t make me a lobbyist. It all falls under the giant umbrella of being a mom who has ideas, opinions and a life that she likes to write about. There are lots of Mommy bloggers who are not like that. There are lots of us who haven’t stopped telling our stories. We don’t need a new label. We just need to remember who we really are.

vultures

// July 25th, 2009 // 14 Comments » // blogging, home, life, people

One of the side effects of being poor is that you don’t blog about the bargains from your non-existent shopping excursions or the cool new gadgets that you don’t have. I experience the thrill of finding the perfect purse vicariously on others’ blogs. What I don’t enjoy, are the blogs that post “foreclosure” finds. They link to the latest properties about to be foreclosed and auctioned. They encourage people looking for homes and investments to grab these great deals. They brag about the 100K homes being purchased for 5K. Even people who aren’t house hunting, read these blogs and fantasize about being able to flip property at a great profit. There is a huge difference between finding a pair of jeans on a clearance rack and buying a home at 20% of its’ value.

What nobody talks about are the families who are struggling to scrape together the money to save their homes from foreclosure. The debt that increases exponentially every single day with legal fees and penalties. The stress and anxiety at not knowing what horror the next day will bring. It is implicitly encouraged on the “property watch” blogs that you should check out these properties and bid on them. Checking them out means parking in front of the house and staring, pointing and taking pictures. It means getting out of your car and wandering around on property that still belongs to the family living there. It means strangers walking up to children playing in their yard and asking them questions about their home. It seems to make people think that it is okay to knock on someone’s door and ask if you can come inside and look around. These families are still trying to save their homes. They are financially wounded and struggling to survive. Foreclosure bloggers and their supporters are vultures. They are parasites who prey upon the defenseless. Grave robbers.

We watched in helpless horror as a happy family in our neighborhood lost their home. When they ran out of options and the will to fight, they moved into assisted housing. We tried to keep in touch with them, but as they began to change and adapt to their new lifestyle, the play dates for our children quickly stopped happening. Losing their home changed everything about that family. Their marriage ended. Their personalities changed and they are lost forever to the system. The house at the corner of our cove was the home for a multi-generational family. The bank foreclosed and the family left TN to start over again. That house has sat vacant for YEARS. Now it a place for squatters and suspicious activity. Losing the family that belonged there has changed the landscape of our quiet, uneventful cove.

Sometimes, we still dream of a different life. When I do, one thing about my plans never changes. I want to pay off this house and move somewhere else. I want to give this house to someone else who is struggling. It is our lifeboat in the stormy seas and if we survive this storm, I know it can be the refuge for another family.

I need to be more specific

// July 23rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // parenting, play

Me: “Please do NOT play in the water hose. You are coming back inside in fifteen minutes and I don’t want to give you a bath right now. Don’t get wet.”
Amy: “Okay.”
Me: “I need you to repeat what I just said so I know that you understand.”
Amy: “We can’t play in the hose cause we hafta come inside in fifteen minutes.”
Me: Evan can’t play in the hose either. Don’t ask him to turn on the hose so you can say it wasn’t you. Understand?”
Amy: “Yep.”

I walked inside the house, picked up a stack of folded clothes and carried them to a bedroom. It took all of five minutes to put the clothes away. I walked back in the living room and picked up another stack of clothes. I glanced out the front window. Amy and Evan had stripped down to their shorts and were completely covered in dirt. While Evan threw clumps of dirt at the car, Amy was concentrating very hard on the hole she was digging in the middle of the yard with a shovel. I opened the front door and asked Amy what she thought she was doing. The small child with a glob of grass in her hair smiled and said, “I’m not getting wet.”

the devil you know

// July 21st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // health, me, parenting

I’m done. I want all my children back home. I’m tired of Noah being quarantined with the other scouts, Amy here with a scout sibling and my other children at the grandparents. A night alone with my husband is fun, but this isn’t fun. This is stressful. This is my heart doing that weird flutter thing all the time and me on the verge of tears because I’m not getting any sleep. Instead of staying in our different levels of quarantine indefinitely, I want our lives back. If someone gets sick, we’ll give all the children the $120 per person TamiFlu and be quarantined in the house together.

I knew that I was fighting something that couldn’t be controlled. How many people do we interact with daily who have Strep or a cold or some other contagious cootie? We have spent the past 5 days standing still. Waiting. If I knew I would die tomorrow, I wouldn’t get in bed and try to assume a Sleeping Beauty pose. I would dance and sing and play with my family. I miss dancing. I miss laughing. Tonight, everyone will be home and my body will feel 10 pounds lighter, even if it doesn’t look it. I might still cry from exhaustion, but they’ll be happy tears followed by a night with a 4-year-old snuggled up against me.

I haven’t gone through a transformation. I’m still going to avoid visiting anyone even if they promise to keep their puking child out of sight. With only one prescription for antibiotics for one child the entire school year last year, I think that’s too effective a method to dismiss. I just learned that being away from my children makes me sick. And grumpy.

like a slow motion train wreck

// July 19th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // health, medical, scouts

Late Thursday night, we got a phone call from *camp that two boys in Noah’s troop were sick and H1N1 was suspected. After a sleepless night, we got another phone call saying that the two sick scouts didn’t have H1N1′s trademark high fever and life returned to our version of normal. Saturday, the phone call report was that multiple scouts in our troop AND the camp were sick and one of our scouts was hospitalized. <- insert mom panic here ->

We called the pede before the boys arrived home from camp. Our pede won’t prescribe TamiFlu for the children until one of them gets sick. We sent all the siblings to the grandparents and began the wait for a symptom that would send us to the ER for TamiFlu. I called again the next day when Noah’s temp rose to 99.6 and he started refusing food and complaining of sleepiness. The on-call nurse went out of her way to be rude and insulting to me while telling me there was no reason to go to the ER before the temp is 105. I tweeted a nasty word in frustration. Six people from our troop have been diagnosed so far. In the mean time, every scout who came home exposed every person they saw. The parents in our son’s troop work for Knox County Schools, ORNL, UTK, the U.S. military and more. There is no way to list all the places that our scouts and their families have been in Knoxville since they were first exposed. It is way beyond containable now. Worse than that, one boy is STILL in the hospital. I wonder if the stress knot in my belly will keep me from getting sick enough to need medical care? One major illness without insurance will be one too many for us to bear. I would really like to say c’est la vie, but I think that’s impossible without modern pharmaceuticals. Or ice cream.

*Read the comments on the camp’s blog and see that no matter what they do, they are made the bad guys. Keep the boys at camp? Parents upset. Send the boys home? Parents upset.

Walter Cronkite through my children’s eyes

// July 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // cartoons, movies, people

Watch the rest of “We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story” with the voice talent of Walter Cronkite as Captain Neweyes and multiple Jurassic Park references – part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and the conclusion.