Domestic Psychology

summer reading

// June 1st, 2010 // 4 Comments » // books, school, summer

Ahhh, June first and the start of summer fun school assignments. The youngest children don’t have formal assignments, so they get to choose their own books and we casually work on specific skills. Evan excels at numbers, so we are learning what sounds belong to each letter. Amy’s reading and writing abilities are amazing, so she needs to work on numbers.

Noah and Sarah have assigned summer reading. Noah normally absorbs a novel a day, but he is less than thrilled at his new books. Noah is going to read:
“The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd
“Anthem” by Ayn Rand*
“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
“The Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw

Sarah is going to read:
“How to Read Literature like a Professor” by Thomas Foster
“1984″ by George Orwell
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
“Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
“The Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw

“The Greatest Generation” is on both lists because the school wants every student to read it. The teachers didn’t include it on their printed lists. Sarah took this as a sign that it was optional. I took it as understood, since everyone is supposed to read it. I don’t care if they discuss “The Greatest Generation” in basket weaving class, but they’d better discuss it at some point this year or my name will be mud.

Sarah also has a summer art portfolio and college shopping to get done while Noah learns how to be a part of the marching band. Tommy thinks his summer will be spent sleeping until noon and playing games all night. I’m going to schedule play dates to force him to interact with others and get out of his room. I’m a brutal taskmaster.

*I hate this choice. Like last year’s Catcher in the Rye, I would happily trade for a different book if it was an option.

hiding out

// May 26th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // blogging, me, mental health, parenting, summer

I have no personal space. I thought about hiding in our bedroom closet until I realized that it is filled with everyone’s stuff but mine. It’s not fair to hide in someone else’s clothes. You would think the bathroom would be a safe place for privacy, but you’d be wrong. Even the newest 4-y-o picks the bathroom lock and stomps in to demand whatever it is he thinks he needs at that moment. My first reaction to Color Guard practice not disappearing from my carpool duties for the summer was disappointment. Then, I decided to claim the one hour practices as MY time. I might sit in Starbucks and listen to the vitamin salesman trying to sell his wares. I might turn on the ipod and do some people watching at the park. Maybe I’ll put the seat back in the car and sleep in the sticky, southern summer heat. Mostly, I will sit with my low-tech (not by choice) pen and paper writing posts or working on the project I am doing for the middle school PTO. I will only be dropping off and going home during the three weeks of all day, every day practices, but that’s okay. I’m still going to get more me time this summer than I have had since I became a parent. Anyone want to place bets on how long this lasts before the rest of the family declares mutiny on my selfishness?

pink

// May 11th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // flickr, summer

One week till school starts

// August 3rd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // school, summer, teenagers

Me: “How is the summer assignment coming Sarah?”
Sarah: “I can’t work on that until I finish my book.”
Me: “How is the summer assignment coming Sarah?”
Sarah: “I’m thinking about it.”
Me: “Do you need help?”
Sarah: “No.”
Me: “When are you going to do it?”
Sarah: “After I finish my book.”
Me: “No.”
Sarah: “Tomorrow.”
Me: “That’s correct.”

Guess who will stay up all night reading? I hope Stephenie Meyer helps Sarah get her assignment done.

e-vil cicadas

// July 23rd, 2008 // 4 Comments » // local, summer, TN

After a summer of being a quiet background hum, this week the cicadas cranked up their volume to eleven. That probably means they have doubled their population and are now invading homes, like a bad horror movie. I like to believe that they are just telling us goodbye as they vanish for the winter. I am not a fan of the cicadas and their alien singing. Doug thinks they are groovy. He likes to open the windows and listen to them. It feels me like a white noise machine has broken inside my head. My mother likes to pick the cicadas up and wax poetic about them. This is clearly insanity she suffered from being part of a generation that wore bug themed jewelry. I could run screaming whenever she did that when I was a child. Now, she’s showing the nasty bugs to my children and I have to feign interest so that I don’t inflict my “issues” on the children. “Oh, it’s so very, um . . . shiny.” I have never been anywhere near New York and must therefore base my knowledge of New Yorkers on movies and television. With that excellent wisdom, I am guessing that there are no New Yorkers in East TN right now. If there was, I would hear them screaming at the cicadas. Probably in Italian. Instead, all I hear is that eardrum piercing whistle. One of our neighbors likes to throw firecrackers at birds to keep them out of his garden. I wonder if smoke bombs would make the cicadas go away. Or at least make them be quiet.

fun with fireflies

// July 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // play, summer

Fun for everyone: Catching fireflies.
Fun for children: Letting fireflies go free in the house.
Fun for nobody: Forgetting to let fireflies go free.

no more walkin’ in the rain

// July 5th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // parenting, summer, weather

The threat of rain had everyone evacuating the dangerous outdoors last night. I can remember sitting in Neyland Stadium with technicolor storms overhead while the players never left the field. Is the weather more dangerous now? As children, we never missed a chance to play in the rain. Now, my children whine about never getting to use their umbrellas because I deny them the outdoors when it’s raining. When we were at the beach a few weeks ago, a storm rolled in out of nowhere and I got so hysterical about getting the children off the beach that Doug probably thought he was going to have to carry ME off the beach. The boys have scout camp later this month and Sarah has band camp. I wonder if I should send them directions on grounding themselves or maybe a lightning rod to be installed at the opposite end of camp. Perhaps I should just be heavily sedated with pints of Ben & Jerry’s.

send calamine

// May 31st, 2008 // 2 Comments » // life, local, summer

One night this week, a mosquito viciously attacked me on the bottom of my foot. It woke me up enough to know I had an itch, but not enough to think clearly. I tried scratching with my non-afflicted foot, but apparently my toenails are too short to be useful. I rubbed the foot on the edge of the bed, but despite the fact that our bed is sharp enough to cause Noah to need stitches in the distant past, it wasn’t sharp enough to ease the itch. I finally took my fingernails and scratched the skin off my foot. When the itch became a burning sting of pain, I ceased scratching and rubbed my abused foot on the sheets until I drifted back into a deep sleep. I blame Oak Ridge for my foot’s discomfort. Everyone knows Oak Ridge has secret laboratories with misunderstood geniuses in lab coats conducting top secret experiments. The evil scientists must produce some sort of mutant mosquitoes. I suspect the giant bugs in Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong were all from Oak Ridge labs. I think we should get an Oak Ridge ????????bat that was modified by the good scientists and let it live in our house to eat all the mosquitoes. Then again, maybe it would be easier to just put malaria netting over our beds so we can survive the East TN summers.

vampire bugs

// July 29th, 2007 // No Comments » // summer

It’s not fair to wake up with more mosquito bites than you had when you went to bed. How can I fight back at night? How extra evil is it to repeatedly attack a child sleeping in their crib? Mosquitoes are blood sucking vermin that serve no good purpose. I’m sure they rank somewhere on the food train in nature, but there are a gazillion other bugs that birds and bats could eat. The bees, which have NEVER stung me, are dying but the mosquito population thrives. That is completely wrong. Flies which do no harm live incredibly short lives. Mosquitoes live about three months and make 500 new mosquitoes during their lives. YUCK! Somebody tell the government that the mosquitoes are a terrorist conspiracy so they can get rid of these things.

wildflowers

// July 3rd, 2007 // 1 Comment » // flickr, summer