OT: Crib Notes - for the irish in all of us

More horse news soon, but in the meantime:

Erin Go Bragh and Pass The Green Salsa

There are not too many places on earth where the sound of bagpipes mixes with the roar of low riders and smell of fresh tortillas.

My neighborhood was one of those places.

We lived across the street from Bel Air high school stadium in El Paso, Texas. El Paso is a border town, ninety percent Hispanic (in our neighborhood, it was closer to 98%), making the high school's choice of the Highland er as a mascot so bizarre; I can't quite fathom how it could ever have occurred. Did a rogue Scott take over the school board at an opportune moment? Were the distant mountains an inspiration of "high land"? Were darts involved?

Whatever the reason, the Highlanders had become a formidable football team, and at every game, in addition to the huge marching band, were a dozen bagpipes in full regalia. A dedicated and gifted band director (what else would you call a guy who could teach Sousa AND Irish battle songs?) held practice for the bagpipers at six in the morning. Since there is no volume control on a bagpipe, no one learns this instrument indoors.

On the cool desert mornings every fall, the bagpipe division of girls (because in those days no Hispanic boy would be caught DEAD in a kilt) would fill their plaid bags with air and the cry of the bagpipes would climb above the desert floor. The sound would bounce off the concrete stadium and enter with full intensity into my bedroom.

I'd feel the strain of the notes; at first interrupted so often that it was more like a chorus of demented car horns than music. But slowly the band director would coax the songs free from the breath of the girls who'd listen to rock music on the way home from school, cruising in low and slow Chevys and Fords.

I'd wake up from my confused dreams, trying to figure out why in my sleep I was bounding through rolling green hills when I lived my waking life amid yucca and sand. The bagpipes would pull a yearning from me for a place I'd never seen, yet who's music slipped into my childhood like a lost leprechaun wandering into a circle of mariachis.

In a few days I'll be scrambling for green shirts and hats for my kids. I wonder about the bagpipe band alumni. Are those bagpipers now mommies with little leprechauns of their own? Do they have the same misplaced sense of nostalgia every St. Patrick's Day? Do they tell their children about the days with the warm bag at their side, the pipes in their fingers? Are there bagpipes tucked into the attic, waiting for the next generation of players?

Do they secretly consider themselves descendants of a lost tribe of Celtic warrior princesses?

Okay, that was probably just me.

So this St. Patty's Day we'll wear green bowler hats complete with shiny foil shamrock and reminisce about the days of bagpipes and yucca plants. Erin Go Bragh and pass the green salsa!

Crib Notes: Low and Slow, Low and Slow

We were driving to a friend’s house the other day when we noticed an unusual sign. It was one of those warning signs, a yellow diamond shaped sign with a black silhouette designed to slow traffic.

It said “Slow Children at Play” and had a design of two kids on a seesaw.

“A SEESAW?” Sierra said incredulously. “The symbol for kids is a seesaw? Who plays on seesaws anymore?”

I had to admit she had a point. A see saw is just one out of many types of playground equipment that I managed to survive. I also survived those whirling things that we sat on and spun around in circles until we were about to lose our afternoon snacks. Of course, in hindsight, I realize that I’m one of the lucky few to have made it through countless hazards of childhood relatively intact.

Most folks might recall that there was a pair of slides locally that were pretty darn scary. Or maybe I was the only one scared to climb up those spiraling stairs to the top of the twin slides in Landa Park. Sierra was about five years old the first time she begged me to go on that slide set.

This was back in the day when I had this crazy theory that I needed to encourage my daughter to be brave by demonstrating that there was nothing to fear. I wanted to teach her to face her fear, whether it was lady bugs or dirt. Unfortunately I failed to make the “ridiculously tall slide” exception.

As we were going up the ladder, I took note of the 5,000 ways I could injure myself on this slide. I wondered if our medical insurance would refuse to cover my hospital bills since clearly I should know better. It seemed likely that my claims adjuster was going to deny my bills, citing some sort of “you got to be kidding me” clause.

Frankly the slide down from the lofty height was rather anti-climactic. Then we had to climb back up the OTHER side and mommy nearly hyperventilated.

The crazy tall twin slides are long since gone, replaced with safer options. So are most seesaws and whirly-go-rounds in playgrounds. It seems like highway department may need to update those signs on my friend’s street, since plenty of kids born after 1980 won’t have a clue what a seesaw looked like.

I’d like to suggest they could go with a nice, low profile slide instead.

Crib Notes - The Perils of Chlorine

It's been a while since I posted from my Crib Notes column regularly. Just in case you've missed them, here's one!

 

Chlorine Makes An Early Entrance    

 

Chlorine is back.

It just took one day of temperatures over 85 for it to tangle its chemical fingers back into my life. It does this every warm spring, try to slip in before summer, before I have my game plan in place.

When I was a kid we were friends, chlorine and I. We hung out all Summer,  and slowly chlorine destroyed the elastic of my swimsuit and ate through my towel. It was worth it. I was young, elastic was over-rated , and thin, holey towels were the official flag of a successful Summer.

Now it’s different. And it’s not about the towels or the elastic. It’s not about the concern about what chlorine is doing to our skin since its job is kill more things in the water than I want to think about.

It’s about the hair.

I always counted myself lucky to have dark hair that was safe from the green tinge you foisted upon my fair-headed friends. I had no idea a worse danger lurked.

Curly hair.

Keep in mind I spent many a night during my pregnancy wishing that our second little bundle of joy would be born with her dad’s curls and not my straight hair. Sure enough, sense of humor soundly intact, the good Lord gifted Mireya with a riot of curls. Curls so springy they attract attention anywhere she goes.

It took just a few years for me to realize that this was how I was going to be taught the value of patience. Still it seemed worth it – until the first chlorine attack.

Add a little chlorine and terrible, terrible things happen to Mireya’s hair. Curly hair, which is already an adventure around here, turns vicious when joined with chlorine. It mats up instantaneously, becoming utterly un-comb-able.  No amount of conditioner can slick it into submission once chlorine has its death grip on each of the 5 million twisting hair shafts.  In no time Mireya looks like she should be singing lead in a Reggae band, dread locks scattered all over her head. Let me tell you, “dread” is the right word.

This time we’ve got our game plan. It involves  everything from buying a swim cap to slicking her down with half a bottle of conditioner before she’s allowed to get within five feet of chlorine. Still I know that when suddenly someone just jumps in the pool and we’ll be back to the tub, spending our evening coming out mats that inspire thoughts of buzz hair cuts.

Still, at least we’re prepared. I bought a case of conditioner and, as a back up, I’m teaching Mireya all the words to Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up.”

Just in case.

Mighty Heart and Book

Two items of news. There's a Mighty Heart update on Crib Notes.

And the Crib Notes Collection is out. Here's an amusing excerpt:

I found myself wandering through the house rethinking my decision to have children. For this I gave up Shiner and ice tea for nine months? I actually volunteered to stay home so I could wrestle with a loud, rude, and completely irrational human being? Yeesh. I could have kept my other job for that and at least gotten dental insurance in the deal.

I'd stare at this screaming banshee at my feet, who was demanding that I make her baby shoes fit her again or bring back the toy she shattered in last week's tantrum and longed to look her straight in the eye and say those two little words: "Day care."

Promise it'll make you laugh at least once. These days, that's gotta be worth a buck. :)


Rode Smokey yesterday, we'll have a joint report tomorrow.

Off Topic - Crib Notes Mega Monday

Some Mondays are more Monday than other Mondays.

Some Mondays you carefully plan your entire day to make it to an appointment in San Antonio and arrive five minutes early! That is, five minutes early for the time you carefully wrote down. Which is the wrong time. The one hour wrong time.

I tried to think of myself as only 55 minutes late, but it was cold comfort on the long drive back home.

My fate Monday was sealed early on. Right around 4:30 am I glanced at the clock and noted that yes, the alarm was set, and yes, I had another hour and a half to sleep.

Unfortunately ignorance is sleep inducing. My dreams were so optimistic, consisting of all the things I was going to get done later in the day. I felt positively productive when I woke up, until I glanced over and realized I was an hour behind, because although my alarm had gone off, it had done so silently.

Only I would keep an alarm that goes off silently. Granted, it isn’t designed to go off silently, but it has a sticky button that every now and then changes the volume from dream shattering to dream extending. I keep thinking I’ll remember to double check it and it won’t be a problem.

And now it won’t be. That clock is off to a nice big land fill.

Mireya got a tardy slip at school, the first day they were giving them out. She gave me that look as she took possession of the slip. That “you have totally ruined my reputation with the new principal” look. I encouraged her to have a good day despite the rocky start. She refrained from rolling her eyes, but just barely.

The spirit of Mega Monday continued. I tried to drop off books to donate at the library. The box they were in was falling apart, but after some careful stacking I managed to struggle over to the Friends of the Library store doorway. Only to find that the Friends of the Library are closed on Mondays.

Smart cookies, those Friends of the Library.

I managed to get my books back to the truck without dropping them on my foot. Some times fate has a little bit of sympathy. Not enough sympathy to keep the other box from falling over when I opened the door, but enough to keep everything really heavy inside the truck.

All I can say is thank goodness it’s Thursday. 

(Do you enjoy these? The ebook collection will be out in a month! )

Crib Notes - the Tarantula saga part ewwww.

As I mentioned, life has been very horse free lately, but it has featured an arachnid. Here's part Ewww in the tarantula saga.

The Cobweb in the Sky

The tarantula saga continues, thank goodness.

Fuschia, the pink-toed tarantula we are arachnid sitting for the summer, is a casual eater, dining on her crickets only periodically. I have yet to see her dine on her buggy entrees, a lucky coincidence I earnestly hope to continue experiencing.

But as a result, I can’t just dump a load of crickets every other day in her terrarium/condo, but have to peer in to see if any of the doomed hoppers remain. She usually moves a bit, a tiny leg wave as if she’s annoyed that I’m blocking her light.

Then, on Thursday she didn’t move. I came back later and checked again. Nothing. I blew gently on her, which is a sure fire way to get her moving. Still as a rock. I was horrified. Somehow we had managed to kill the third grade class tarantula. The kids were out of town for the night with dad, so I decided to spare them the bad news.

The next morning my guilty conscious required me to send a message to Mr. Herzog, the teacher who had entrusted us with Fuschia’s care:

Bad news. The tarantula has gone to the big cobweb in the sky.

While Fuschia has been a relatively quiet member of the household, I was not looking forward to breaking the news to Mireya who would be mortified that we had managed to fail arachnid sitting. She’s been a dutiful, if distant, guardian of the eight-legged summer guest, regularly filling her water bowl and reporting on her location in the web.

When they arrived back home I realized it was time to break the news. I checked on Fuschia one last time.

I did a double take. It looked a little crowded in there. Like Fuschia had a guest.

Certainly we had not invited over any gentleman suitors to her condo. And, as far as I knew, no one else was bringing in more “pets,” although around here you can never be sure.

I peered in for a closer look, and sure enough, there were more legs in there than there should be. I left the room to… er… get some air.

Then it slowly dawned on me. Fuschia has molted. And apparently she has learned from my daughters that the best place for a discarded outfit is right in the middle of her room.

I sent an update to Mr. Herzog. He had been out of town, but had surmised that we were witnessing molting, not expiration.

He then suggested we could keep Fuschia’s outgrown shell, to which I sent a message back:

Ewwww.

Horse? What Horse? How about a Crib Note?

Tis the season of the birthday parties here (Dad and both daughters) and that means Momma has no time for her four hoofed kids. It showed when the farrier came. Lily was fine, Smokey was a brat - but he was just bored. We got it done, but fun it was not.

Plus its hot enough to smelt copper.

Hopefully this Friday will give me some horse time. Until then, here's a Crib Notes to get you laughing... I'm going to post part one of what is the tarantula trajectory:

Not our tarantula, but definitely her twin sister. Or brother.

First, some background. Our adventures with tarantula started on the last week of school:

Our youngest daughter, the one who still runs from moths, volunteered to take home the class pink-toed tarantula. Since I consider this one small step on ridding her of her bug phobia that has made spring such a delight, I agreed. This is despite my rather spotty record with tarantulas (I wrote about the wild tarantula incident four years ago, drop me a line if you’re really curious).

This sudden desire to have a large hairy spider for the entire summer was my first indication that the bouncy princess I have been dropping off every morning was being replaced by someone else entirely. Someone who didn’t mind having a tarantula and its prey - jumpy, noisy crickets which are ALSO bugs, by the way – acting out the cycle of life in her room.

Now let's fast forward to June for a Crib Note titled "When the Crickets Chirp":

So far our tarantula sitting duty has gone exactly as expected.

Disastrous.


If you ever find yourself having to buy crickets to feed a tarantula, remember, size is everything with crickets. In our case, I bought ones that were so small, they escaped their containment box. I managed to keep this hopping, jumping, buggy problem hidden from my children until I rounded up the escapees and taped up their enclosure.

I didn’t disclose the cricket escape because there would have had no room in our bed for adults to sleep since the kids would be too freaked out to sleep downstairs. Then our pet sitter and friend, Steph, thought the tarantula escaped while we were on vacation. When the news leaked out, it looked like we’d have to relocate upon our return since there was no way either kid would come back into a house with a loose tarantula.

Fortunately Fuschia, the renamed pink toed tarantula, was merely hanging out in a thick part of her web tunnel. On our next cricket acquisition trip I got a more appropriate sized crickets. Just one problem. Bigger crickets really make lots of interesting scurrying noises in their box. I was upstairs working when I heard a crash. We looked around but didn’t notice anything amiss.

Then, while I was outside I got a call on my cell phone – from inside the house.

“Mommy?” Mireya’s voice was so small, I had to strain to hear it. “There’s a cricket loose. I’m hiding upstairs.”

I rushed back inside to find both girls hiding out upstairs, and the entire box of crickets turned over in the living room. The cat was staring under the couch, twitching his tail nonchalantly, attempting to maintain an air of plausible deniability.

Fortunately, the crickets were easy to catch. Each one had suffered mild injuries during their cat encounter and full on hopping was no longer possible. It did mean a Saturday filled with sudden screams of AAAHHH!

Another issue is once a cricket gets to a certain size it can chirp. Chirping crickets, which has always been a signal to me to relax, are having the exact opposite impact on Mireya. Chirping crickets mean there are bugs in her room, which FREAKS HER OUT.

Who knew tarantulas only feel the need to eat periodically, and until then there’s chirping and therefore a little kid in our bed upstairs.

So, in case you’re considering adding a pink toed tarantula to your world take my advice.

Get a pet rock.

Off Topic - Crib Notes - Attack of the Giant Ball

And now for something completely different. From my Weekly Column...

I had a friend once who always showed up at kids’ birthday parties with one present - a large ball. I knew she was on a budget, but still – a ball?

I’m here to tell you at every party it was a huge hit and it was all you could do to get the kid back to open up the other presents. I was shocked every time. Not one to be swayed by reality when faced with mommy peer pressure, I never had the courage to show up at a party with just a very large ball. But I never forgot how fun it was.

With summer insisting we all get our sunscreen on and hit the pool, the kids decided to break out their own very large ball. Very, very large – in fact it’s a GIANT inflatable ball, easily four feet in diameter and after nearly sending three of us to the hospital for oxygen, we blew it up to spherical perfection at the neighborhood pool.

Endlessly entertaining, the ridiculously large ball played the part of a slippery island, a monster, a bomb, and, at one moment, a way to conk your sister when she was becoming obnoxious.

Even a ball has its dark moments, I suppose.

When it was time to pile into the car we discovered that the ball, which had traveled to the neighborhood pool mostly deflated, was now far too large to fit in the car with passengers. This particular fact of geometry did not dissuade Sierra, who at 12 has a little bit of a stubborn streak (where could she have gotten that from?).

She squeezed herself and the giant ball into the front seat but discovered she was pinned in place and couldn’t reach the door handle, let alone close the door.

“Move the seat back! Move the seat back!” her sister shouted from the back seat.

“It’s already all the way back!” she shouted back, her voice muffled by the ball.

“Tilt the seat!”

Sierra moved slightly, the plastic of the ball squeaking in protest against the dashboard. No go.

“Why don’t you just deflate it a little?” I said between laughs.

Both children looked at me as if I was crazy. Hadn’t we nearly died blowing it up to the absolute perfect level of plumpness?

There was no way… well,… around it. We pulled the plug and let out some of our last gasps - and laughed all the way home, having had a “ball.”

Giant inflatable ball - definitely on my next gift list.

Off Topic - Crib Notes - Movie Night in Peril!

This is next in our Netflix rotation. A true sign of desperate times.

Friday movie night is in big trouble.

With an eight year old, a twelve year old, and a pair of late 40 somethings, it’s getting pretty challenging to find a movie we can all endure… er, enjoy.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, we are somewhere between Stuart Little and the Lovely Bones. It’s vast movie wasteland, populated by Home Alone and a few classics, like the Sound of Music. And after a while, the hills are not so alive with the sound of music.

It’s not just the age difference either. It’s tough to find a movie with some action for Dad, nothing too scary for third grader Mireya, some innocent romance for tweenager Sierra, and some caliber of production quality for me. As in dialogue that has multi-syllable words.

We are the ultimate tough room.

Movie night is a tradition we started some years ago and our resident traditionalist, Mireya, insists it take place so matter what the circumstances. There were many times we had “Rerun Movie night” since not every week delivers something worth watching.

Now that we are in the Bermuda triangle of family movie watching, I’m considering a replacement for movie night. Among the options are:

Family Game Night – We have tried this before, but due to wildly different interpretations of the concept of “rules” I hesitate to try again. Marriage is fragile enough without having to google the rules for collecting $200 in bookopoly. And here too the age and interest differences don’t help. There is no middle ground between Pretty Pretty Princess and Black Jack.

Craft Night - Once a craft queen, I considered reviving our crafty ways. But given that I have a house filled with flower pens, dioramas, and dried out clay sculptures of... something, I don’t think I can find the shelving for the results. Of course, if we focused our efforts on paper mache we might open up a miniature pinata shop this summer.

Cooking Night - We’ve entered a stage with Mireya that I recognize from years with her older sister - she is unwilling to eat anything outside three favorite items. But there’s no such thing as a skinny chef! Maybe we could explore new worlds of food! We could watch the food network and cook just one thing that wasn’t chicken!

Fortunately the days are getting longer, the weather nice and warm, the canker worms have left the trees to become moths. Maybe we can just sit outside on Fridays and roast hot dogs (those are one of the three favorite foods), sing songs, and count stars.

Maybe the ultimate solution to a tough room is getting out of it.

Off Topic - Crib Notes - Schools of Parenting

News flash: I'll be putting together a collection of crib notes as an e-book and am looking for a review or two. If you're up to it, drop me a line. In the meantime, here's what's going on in our end of things...



Schools of Parenting

We walk a fine line in parenting between two schools of thought. One is the if-you-leave-them-alone-they-will-work-it-out. The other is the sometimes-you-have-to-kick-them-in-the-you-know-what.

To the outside observer I’m sure it looks like we’re vacillating wildly from one school to the other. To those of us on the inside, it feels the same way, only with whiplash.

For example, let’s take the chore of loading and emptying the dishwasher. At first I was fairly certain that unloading the dishwasher was a task that could happen with little to no supervision. After all our children have lived here for their entire lives. Surely they have noticed where the bowls, spatula, and various eating utensils are stored.

Little did I know that everything that takes place in the kitchen is actually completely invisible. Apparently food merely floats out of the cabinets and lands on the table, completely prepared, distributed by fairies who have nothing better to do than spend three hours looking for the measuring cup!

But I digress.

After a few weeks of utensil chaos, I realized it was time to get the other school of thought in gear and we had kitchen boot camp. By the end of it, every plastic storage container had a lid. We had spoons again. All the cartoon glasses were back on their shelf.

The problem with the kick-in-the-you-know-what school is that while it delivers results, it is exhausting to maintain. It’s the kind of school of thought that does not tolerate any slacking off. Nor does it handle a healthy sense of humor well.

Which is why I have no hope of ever maintaining the necessary discipline around here. Pretty soon the kitchen fairies are back to rescuing the measuring spoons from the regular spoons, and the bowls are a leaning tower of mismatched soup, popcorn, and salad bowls.

Then again, the let-them-figure-it-out school has produced all the best memories in our house.

Like the time I let Sierra figure out how to use her new paint set and came back to find her with a completely blue arm.

And the time I suggested Mireya amuse herself and when I came back she’d set up an elaborate western scene, complete with horses, cows, Indians on boxes (clearly planning an ambush), and unsuspecting cowboys in round up position. This authentic western scene came from the princess in her Disney heels.

So I guess we’ll keep both schools up and running. That way I can both find the steak knives and, periodically, bits of wonder.

The Magic of Christmas - Crib Notes

The holidays have arrived in a cloud of garland and pine needles, and it’s been operation Ho, Ho, Ho here at our house. Yes, we’ve had to keep a firm handle on our sense of humor this year.

First we discovered that our kittens can’t read the Advent calendar at all. They have each insisted on opening presents, much to the horror of the diligent wrapper who discovered the crime scene under the tree – three separate times.

The kittens also jump on the counter to try to attack the Christmas cookies, thwarted only by the screams of the holiday bakers who had foolishly stepped away for some eggnog.

The aforementioned kittens have now discovered the value of fresh air and sunshine during cookie cooling hours. And we’ve resorted to hiding the presents. All of them. There have even been a few frightening moments involving the kittens, the Christmas tree, and strands of garland.

Next we discovered that some sort of huge power surge must have killed off our rather expansive light collection last year. When we unpacked our 20 boxes of holiday decorations, dozens of strings had every single light on the string filled with smoky looking bulbs. Given our poor luck with inflatables (you may remember that our snowman and penguin ended up in Kerr County in years past), we are a little wanting in the outdoor decoration department.

Then there was the mantle. This summer we took a rather substantial fallen tree from a friend’s house and fashioned it into a massive mantle for our fireplace. A mantle so massive, our stocking hangers are completely useless. Our stockings remain in a pile, waiting for the hooks (which are on the ever growing holiday honey do list).

Still, we are coasting into the final stretch. Most of the cookies have survived the kitten commandoes. The tree is still vertical and only a few ornaments have been mortally wounded in feline attacks. We managed to toss up a few more lights outside and we found one stocking holder that is working out on the massive mantle.

On Christmas morning we will sit among the unwrapped presents, down the surviving cookies, and play holiday carols all day long. And we’ll probably forget we had to re-wrap presents three times and hide them in the recycle bin and secure our tree to the windowsill. And I bet we won’t even notice that some of our icicle lights are out.

That’s part of the magic of Christmas

Crib notes - Lavendar Ladies

Shopping is always better when you're in taffeta.

Saturday (two weeks ago) was the day of the big ballet recital, one of the most important and eagerly anticipated events in our house.

When Mireya got her fancy schmancy outfit for her part in the Lavender Ladies part of the recital, she nearly came apart when I told her she couldn’t wear it outside a climate controlled area where there were no sharp objects, including the cat. It hung in its bag in the closet for ages, torturing her every day.

There was a brief reprieve for picture day, when the dress came out of the bag. We smoothed out her unruly curls, got out Mommy’s make up, wore the really red lipstick and, before a ruffle could get caught on a door knob, snapped a picture, and the dress went back in its bag and into the closet.

I’m pretty impressed she didn’t actually implode from the weeks of anticipation.

Finally the day arrived, and the recital was a great success. It’s interesting, some sort of magic seems to come over ballerinas when they hit the grand old age of seven. and there seems to be actual dancing involved. When Mireya was five years old the title of the class was “creative movement,” a title clearly meant to manage parent’s expectations.

Back then, our little ballerina (to use the term loosely) plucked a flower from a stage rose bush and got from point A to point B with a little bit of tip toeing and only one wave to the audience.

At the time we cried as if she’d danced the lead in Swan Lake.

This time the Lavender Ladies were a sight to behold, dancing their routine flawlessly, as far as we could tell. Again, we cried. Afterwards Mireya accepted her post performance roses from Daddy graciously. Then she turned to me.

“Now can I wear it outside?” she asked.

“Absolutely. You can wear it every day, if you want,” I said.

Which is why we went to an early dinner with a ballerina and a Lavender Lady was in the produce aisle at the grocery store, demonstrating first position when requested.

So, if you happen to spot a Lavender Lady in full regalia on a trampoline, at the gas station, or in the toy aisle, you’ll know why.

And feel free to ask to see her first position. Or even second. It’s a sight to behold.