Archive for » January, 2010 «

Balancing

29
Jan 2010

I am trying to figure out when to step in and say something on behalf of my child. This is something that I normally do not do, but I am reaching the breaking point and apparently, my daughter is right there too.

I try not to rant and rave on my child’s behalf. I prefer my child to handle the issue on their own.

At this point, I am encouraging her to speak out on her own behalf. Her initial plan was to form a protest with a group of students who felt they were being treated unfairly. She was angry and running off at the mouth. I was upset over the same situation, and I hadn’t expressed my disappointment to her, and I was surprised at her own anger. Until that point, I thought it had just been me.

Her dad and I talked to her and gave her recommendations on how to handle it on her own (and how NOT to handle it). We suggested she approach the adult in charge privately to discuss it. We suggested she ask what she could do rather than make accusations. We also suggested she not bring anyone else into the issue — make it about just her and not the group of kids.

As a mom, I had already started thinking about how I would compose the letter I planned to write to the adult in question. While I am upset by the treatment my child has received, I can see that it isn’t just my child.

At this point, I’m happy to let my child initiate this needed conversation with the adult in question. It is something my child needs to learn to do, and I hope she takes the advice her father and I gave her. But if she doesn’t get results, I’m more than willing to take the next step. After all, I already have that letter partially composed….

Category: Parenting  Tags: ,  3 Comments

Failbooking.com

25
Jan 2010


see more funny facebook stuff!

Category: Digital Rhetoric  Tags: , , ,  Comments off

Not in the Driver’s Seat

25
Jan 2010

AutumnDriveI am a little bit more gray today. My oldest daughter, you see, has her level one driver’s license. This means I am regularly forced to sit in the passenger seat and turn over a two-ton vehicle to the girl who couldn’t keep track of her first two, possibly three, pairs of glasses.

OK, forced may be too powerful of a word. I mean, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. This time next year, it won’t have to be me that is forced to stay up past 10 p.m. in order to drive to the school and pick up children returning from away games. It won’t be me who has to spend time sitting outside the school waiting for various practices to get out and go around from school building to school building picking up the various children only to find myself at home after 6 p.m. exhausted.

But to get to that point, I need to go through this, and this, isn’t pretty, but it is getting better.

From the passenger seat, I notice that my daughter cannot do two things at once. For instance, she cannot maintain a steady speed and do important things like turn on a blinker or the windshield wipers. Never mind all the times she cannot maintain speed because she wants to do things she doesn’t need to do like turn on the radio or grab a drink.

Another aside: Is it wrong that as soon as she obtained her license, I directed her through a fast food lane? I figured she needed realistic practice, and I was hungry. Her food went cold because she had no idea how to eat and drive. I, however, was enjoying my meal.

When Autumn started driving, she tended to wiggle within her lane. That is, a cop driving behind us would probably strongly suspect she was drunk although she never crossed the yellow or white lines. This is not conducive to relaxed supervision.

She has been driving in good weather and bad. She has been driving on snowy and icy roads. And when her dad takes control of the supervision, he does things like tell her to slam on her breaks despite the ice on the road. I am not that adventurous.

I tend to say, “Slow down,” a lot even if, technically, she isn’t speeding.

I never knew 45 mph could feel so fast! But when a 15-year-old is behind the wheel, it can feel like a rocket shooting into the atmosphere.

I never knew two full car lengths was such a short span of space. When a 15-year-old is behind the wheel, it feels like she is tailgating.

The most exciting (harrowing) moments, however, have happened more recently. I have been letting her drive after dark. It makes it harder for me to see what she is doing as well as what is going on outside our vehicle, and it has ratcheted up my nerves even more.

I also suspect the girl is somehow a descendant of some type of insect because it appears she is attracted to bright lights.

And where do you see bright lights when driving at night? If you guessed “the headlights of the oncoming vehicles,” you would be correct.

That is right! The first time she drove, it felt like she kept making a beeline for those oncoming headlights. It was very disconcerting. In an effort to make it home safely, I made her ride the line — the white line that is. Whenever her right tire even THOUGHT about leaving the white line, I would gasp and yell to force her to steer back to the right and away from the lights.

Also, the girl has not yet mastered the art of turning right in places that have curbs. Before there was snow, this meant the van would rise up a bit and come back down. Now, with snow, however, we are constantly in danger of ending up high centered on a snow bank. She really needs to practice turning right.

Or turning in general. She seems to have two speeds when turning — super fast or stopped. It is always nice when she decides to stop in the middle of the road and just sit there for minutes at a time (OK, probably not minutes but it can feel that way) before turning even when turning right. Some of her turns are scary.

More than once as I sat in the passenger seat, I would get the feeling that I just couldn’t take one more moment of her behind the wheel. I had served my time for the day, and I was done.

But it doesn’t get any better when I am in the driver’s seat. Suddenly, I have a driver’s training instructor sitting next to me.

“Did you stop before the stop sign?” she’ll ask me.

The good news is that this experience is making both of us better drivers. Why just yesterday, she managed to reach over and turn up the music without any swerving within her lane while maintaining a steady speed. Progress.

Editor’s NOTE: Please note that the girl was NOT driving when the picture was taken. The vehicle was in park.

Category: Parenting  Tags: , , ,  2 Comments

Saying No is Hard

13
Jan 2010

I just told my mom no. And when she whined and sighed and had her voice full of guilt and exasperation and reminded me of all the favors she has done for me, and I said no again.

And she still didn’t hear me.

Then I went into a little rant where I reminded her of all the times I told her that if in the future this should happen, I would not do this. And I mentioned how my husband does not want this to happen, etc.

Mom did not like that I said no. I suspect that even now she is on the phone to my siblings complaining about me, and together they all agree, I am a rotten spoiled child.

I am willing to do a lot of things for my mother. I even do some things she’d rather I didn’t do (she likes to save things, and once in a while, I declutter for her and probably get rid of things she’d rather keep).

But several years ago, I told my mom I would no longer watch her animals when she went on a trip. At the time, she had a parrot. I don’t like birds. They are messy. Plus, this parrot would bite, and I had little kids.

A big reason for me saying this was that I don’t like birds, but it was also because my mom travels a LOT, so I ended up watching her animals a LOT. In fact, two of her animals are buried in my backyard because they died while in my care. Really, given my track record, you would think that she wouldn’t want me to watch her animals.

The big thing you need to know about my mom is that she is almost never home. She travels a lot. She goes on trips, and she goes to her boyfriend’s house, and she goes to see friends. Many of her travels are not pet-friendly, which means she can’t take her pet with her.

I watched her animals for a very long time while she traveled with my dad, and again when my dad became sick and she stayed with him, and after my dad died when she traveled. In the beginning, it was easy to do. Her animals were familiar to me because I had lived with them before moving in with Steve.

I have even driven to her home when her dog was hit by a car in order to bury it for her. For another dog, I took it to the vet for her when it needed to be put down. (Again, I don’t understand WHY she thinks I’d be a good person to watch her dog — I just admitted to being associated with the death of four of her dogs.)

But when she was down to just the bird, I let her know that I couldn’t watch her animals any more. She traveled too much, and it was too hard for me. Mom didn’t want to give up traveling, so she found a new home for the bird.

She went animal free for quite a while, and it was nice. Once in a while, she would talk about getting an animal. Whenever I heard her say anything like that, I would remind her that I would NOT watch the animal for her.

A couple of years ago, she bought a puppy. It is actually the brother of one of my dogs. Before she bought him, I reminded her of how much she travels and that I wasn’t watching her animals. When she bought it, I told her “I am not watching your dog for you.” I stuck to that for a long time, and I wish I’d never made an exception, but it is HARD to say no to your parent.

When my mom stays with us, she brings her dog, and it stays in our garage. Her dog and my dog together are obnoxious, and they don’t stop or tire.

Then last summer, Steve and I both had to be gone at the same time, so I asked my mom to watch my kids. The day I picked up my kids, my mom asked me to watch her dog. (She plays dirty.) Reluctantly, I said yes.

And when my husband found out, I was in trouble. He doesn’t want me to dog sit for anyone. For one, he is allergic to both cats and dogs. We used to own cats, but we don’t any more. We do have dogs, but my husband also has allergy medicine that helps. Plus, my husband and I have both agreed to say no to any more dogs.

I can’t remember if I’ve given in any other times. I think I might have during a time my husband was gone. (He still wasn’t happy.) But, for the most part, when my mom asks, I say no.

And even though I know I told her before she even had the dog, I still end up feeling guilty. She works hard to make me feel guilty too.

BUT I don’t want to watch her dog. I don’t want to watch anyone’s dog. And this isn’t news to her or my siblings. I have been very clear about this.

I own dogs. I have three of them. I don’t ask anyone to watch them for me. I don’t travel a lot, and when I do travel, I stay close to home so I can still care for my own animals OR I take them with me. I know how hard it is to travel with pets, which is one reason I don’t travel a lot.

I need to figure out, however, how to stop feeling guilty about saying no.

Category: Life with Linda  Tags:  2 Comments

Oh Noes! She DID the math!

07
Jan 2010

Math is evil, and as an English major, you would think I could avoid it. But, alas, I can’t. It seems numbers keep popping up all over the place. I have those horrible numbers on my bathroom scale, the number of wrinkles around my eyes when I smile, the number of birthdays my children continue to celebrate (today Justin turns 11!), and then there is the checkbook and the paycheck and the monthly bills and well, you get the idea that even as an English major, I find it hard to avoid numbers.

But that doesn’t mean I willingly go off and chase them down. Oh no! For that, I have Lani (even if she did temporarily for writing purposes only change her name to Lucy).

She did the math. In 516 days, Lani will turn 40. And Lani is a member of Club 32, and it just seems impossible to me that anyone in Club 32 will be 40 in 516 days. And I’m not sure I agree with her assessment that she is almost 40 because if I did that then by default, Club 32 is “staring down the barrelhead of forty.” Not because she is wrong but because I don’t wanna!

And. And. She is delusional. She claims she will blog every day for 516 days. She who disappears for months! And this isn’t me being mean. She admits her faults herself.

AND just maybe that is what I really object to — the idea that it might be time that I wake up and realize that here in my brain I am no longer 32 (or as she says 24). That maybe the way I have been doing things is wrong, and I might want to think about changing. That maybe the real me in my head and the me presented to the world (all nooks and crannies of my world(s)) should match. Possibly.

What is Club 32? Well, it is a bunch of women who were and/or are members of Momwriters (hopefully that one is self-explanatory) who all turned 32 in the same year and who pretty much started blogging that year as well.

There were a LOT of us, and I hesitate to name them all for fear that I might miss someone, but here goes: Lani, Shelley, Kira, Kim H, Cate, Lisa and me. There were also unofficial members (they who weren’t turning 32 that year) like AGK, Barb Huff, and Kim W.

I do NOT even want to start counting how long it has been since we were 32, and for that matter, I’m not ready to count the days until I turn 40. It is NOT this year. It is NOT next year. I don’t care what Lani and her math say — I have at LEAST two years!
40-38=2. This is all I need to know. We will NOT do algebra and figure out the whole, 2x-y if x=365 and y is (365 x 2)-z where z is the number of days that have passed from Aug. 19 to current day.

And YES that formula will work, but I do not want to figure it out. I never said I could NOT do math. I just don’t wanna!

But most of all — I am just happy that one of my favorite writers (and someone I call a friend) will be writing more often, so I can read her words. She plans to write differently, more deeply about the real her instead of the public her, and I hope I learn how to do the same from her brave example.

But mostly, new daily reading material! Yay me!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Category: Weblogs  Tags: , , , , ,  7 Comments
« Previous Entries