Week in Review, So Far

Sunday was Ryan’s birthday party.  He’s been talking about this for months (mommy, am I still 3?).  It was Thomas the Train all the way, with balloons, cake, presents, and tie dye t-shirts just for fun. 

Ed and I were a little late to our own party, after staying out late for our concert the night before.  He got up early to mow the lawn, we headed to the store to get the party food, and returned home with what we thought was 10 minutes to spare.  Turns out 1/2 our guests showed up early!  What a day for that to happen.  Lucky for us it was just family, so I think they’ll get over it.

Monday was more party clean-up, too much heat, and general grumpiness from mom.  Tuesday we retreated to the pool at the Y for the hot afternoon, and yesterday headed to my sister’s for the kids to play and swim.  Today is still up in the air–after Tommy gets home we might even head up to the lake, if I’m feeling ambitious.  Anything to escape the afternoon heat and get the kids out of the house.  That way they can’t make a mess!

St. James the Greater

What do you suppose it means, if you have a dream about a saint you know nothing about, and upon researching the saint, you find out that you dreamed about him on his feast day?

That’s what happened to me last weekend.  I had a strange dream, much of which I can’t remember, but it prominently featured St. James the Greater, one of the first apostles of Jesus, and brother of John.  In the dream he was being martyred, but was somehow saved by St. Michael the archangel.  Weird, yes?

Then I looked him up and found out that I had the dream on his feast day, July 25.  Hmm.  Coincidence?

Green Day

Last night I went with my husband to see Green Day in concert.  I think it’s been close to 10 years since the last time I went to see a big name act play live, and I think that was the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The show was actually fun.  I had my reservations about going, mostly because I don’t like loud noise (and never have), and I’m almost in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy.  The baby jumped around a little, but now I’ll get to tell her that she went to her first rock concert before she was even born.

The band was really cute.  They played great and sounded great, and they focused on playing the songs that everyone really likes.  They entertained, imagine that.  The highlights of the show were when they invited kids to come up on the stage.  First it was a really young boy, and later they invited a few more to come up and sing one of their songs.  It was actually charming.  They know their audience is inter-generational, and they play to that–and they really seem to enjoy it.

Big change from when I went to see Nirvana and they made it clear that they weren’t going to speak to their audience, and they basically hated everyone.  I guess that passed for entertainment back in 1993, although I don’t recall enjoying it.

It was a really interesting shift from most of the shows I went to as a teenager.  There were all kinds of people at this show, old and very young.  They all sang along to the lyrics and were having a good time.  When I was a kid, parents just dropped their teens off at these things and ran for the hills.  There was a respectable divide between the generations and what kind of noise they would put up with.  It no longer seems to be so, everyone was having fun, from 6-65. 

You know your getting old when a rock concert becomes a sociological study in the changes of inter-generational relationships.  Snort.

The Infantilization of Mommy

My mother in law uses the big guns to take down my self-confidence.  She helps, perpetually, without being asked, without it being wanted.

I’ve tried to be clear about my boundaries without resorting to out and out meanness, but she asks for harshness when she manipulates situations so that she can be in control.  This time, it’s Ryan’s birthday party scheduled for this weekend.

I invited her.  I sent invitations out to those people she likes to invite, with a request that they RSVP to us, since we are the hosts.  Even the woman who insulted our political leanings in our own home and swore about it in front of my kids.  At a birthday party.  We did not ask for her help.  She asked me if there was anything she could do, and I told her that if it would be convenient she could pick up the cake on her way here.  That was that.  Right?

No.  After I went up stairs to do something with the kids, she arranged with my husband to bring all of the food, too.  Even though she had already asked me what I wanted her to do!  And no one told me about this until two days later!  Wow!  You might think.   That’s super awesome!  Not really.  I know from her pattern of behavior that this is her way of exerting her control over an event hosted by me, at my house.  Last year she “helped” in the same way, bringing cold cuts, but refusing to bring roast beef because it was too expensive, and instead of buying bread or sandwich rolls, she bought tiny dinner rolls that weren’t big enough to make sandwiches on, just to save a few cents. 

She wanted to buy party supplies, but refused to buy the kind that had our party’s theme, because they were too expensive.  But she doesn’t want us to go and buy whatever it is that we want—she wants control over it.  She wants us to have the cheap stuff, because that’s what she’s decided is best, and it BOTHERS HER if we get something else.  So, if it’s a Thomas the Train party, for example, as requested by the birthday boy, she’ll volunteer to get the paper products, but will refuse to buy anything with Thomas the Train on it. 

At least I’ve figure it out, and now I buy my own stuff even if she insists on bringing over 1000 dixie cups for us all to drink out of.

I don’t completely understand her motivation for being like this, mostly because I think it’s completely irrational, leaving nothing to understand.  It’s just the way she is, and I hate it.  It all began a few days after we were engaged, when she bought me a pack of cheap do-it-yourself wedding invitations, without asking me what I wanted, or taking my feelings into consideration.

When I got pregnant with Thomas, she pumped up the volume.  She bought a crappy old crib at a flea market, that didn’t even have all the correct parts.  Without asking me what I wanted (no, we didn’t use it).  She asked me what the nursery theme would be, I told her teddy bears, but she found a bunch of moon and stars things on sale, and bought it all anyway.   She volunteered to buy the mattress for Ryan’s big boy bed, and then informed us she would be giving us the crappy old one that was in her guest room for more than a decade.  When we said, “no thanks,” she sneaked it into our house while we were on vacation. 

For the past two weeks in a row when she comes for her Tuesday visit, she has told me how her neighbor paid so much less for her new roof than we did, and she wonders why we had to pay so much!  She’s already gotten away with that twice, the next time she’s getting told what I think about her repeatedly telling me this information.

I realize she doesn’t think we are capable of making our own decisions, and wants to hit that home to us every chance she gets.  I know she wants us to be eternally, tearfully, grateful to her each and every time we see her, but I think I just might puke instead.  Well, time to reestablish those boundaries!  It’s great when every family event has to be turned into another situation where she has to be put back in her proper place.

Tired

Too tired.  Just want to sleep.  Miles to go, however.

It’s my fault that no one on my blog roll is updating their blogs.  My fatigue has stretched its tentacles across the formerly fruited plains, leaving lolling empty heads searching for their pillows.

Sorry for that.  The bad coffee isn’t helping.

It’s a Mind Game

I had one of those stupid conversations with my husband the other day, fueled by hormones and exhaustion.  I felt stupid even as the words cascaded out of my mouth, but there was no stopping them, they have a life of their own when I’m tired.

It was the age-old complaint of the full-time mom to the full-time working dad:  “You have no idea what it is I do around here!  You can’t imagine what my day is like!”  I know, how cliche.

After I calmed down two days a little later I thought about how useless that statement truly is.  What does it mean to him when I tell him that?  That I doubt his imaginative capacity, his ability to estimate the difficulty of caring for our children all day, every day, alone?  Am I complaining of the work?  The laundry, the dishes, the meals?  If so, so what?  We all have our work to do, and for the most part I enjoy those things.

So I took the time, in a calm moment, to clarify what I meant after realizing what that was.  It’s the very real psychological difficulty of taking care of small children all day, every day, alone.  It’s facing each morning cheerfully, even though you know you’re going to get your first arguments about breakfast before you’re even fully conscious.  It’s the feeling of frustration when your simple requests are blatantly ignored and disobeyed by three different little people, all day long.  It’s the knowledge that even though you want to have your house neat and clean, you won’t be able to tackle a project from start to finish without the nearly constant interruption of the needs, however minor, of the kids.  It’s knowing that when you finally get a chance to start some laundry, the kids will inevitably began screaming for you. 

In other words, it’s a mind game, and you’ve got to stay on top of it or it will get the better of you, which you should be reserving for your family.  I usually can stay on top of it, but when physical difficulties like exhaustion, nausea, and pain from pregnancy play their part in my day it becomes a more difficult task.  I know I’ve lost the battle for the day when I’m yelling unintelligibly into the telephone at my husband.  Or shouting an inordinate amount at the kids. 

It’s tough.  I can’t just stop when I know I’m too tired to be a good parent.  I can’t just take a break.  I can’t call in sick.  There’s no denying this difficulty.  When I tell him he has no idea, it’s that one can’t imagine the mental strength necessary to do this work in the long-term, every day, and for each forseeable day into the future, unless they themselves are in the game.  The only thing I can do is try not to take the falls too seriously, try to get my rest, and work to understand when I am getting to that place where I’m losing the mind game.

Talking Out Both Sides of His Mouth

Obama talks a good game about trying to work with those who oppose him, but each action he takes is a clear message to conservatives that he means to do that which we fear the most; he means to attack everything that we hold as our basic rights as human beings. 

The latest assault comes with the appointment of John Holdren as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  This is a man who is a known proponent of the idea of forced sterilization, forced abortion, and having to request special permission to have a limited amount of children.  This is a man who imagines a world in which my fourth child, my daughter, could be snuffed out at the command of my own government.  One would have to be naive to believe it is innocuous for the Obama administration to promote a man with these ideas to advise on health policy. 

Yet we are still asked to give this guy a chance.  We are asked to bend toward the culture of death and the culture of government intervention.  Liberals and those who vote for Obama will shrug their shoulders and blindly deny the significance or will be bent into agreement.  To say it is not significant, like his other appointments and policy changes, is to deny that you’ve been slapped in the face.

Where’s the Summer?

Today there’s dark clouds looming over the woods behind the house, dark clouds in the North, and a patch of sunshine overhead.  It’s cold, and the bee balm won’t bloom.

Next they’ll tell me there’s a glacier creeping its way down from Canada and into Northern New York.  Someone forgot to tell this year’s weather pattern about the Global Warming catastrophe.  A memo, please?  Someone?

I would like to take the kids to the beach sometime this year, even if it’s just to the lake, where the sand is brought in not by the crashing waves, but by big dump trucks. 

Last year we were doing this on a 95 degree day in early June:

This year we’re half way through July and it feels more like this is looming in the near future:

The Backyard After a Storm

Maybe I should just be quietly grateful I’m not suffering through heat and humidity along with the other discomforts of pregnancy.

The Integrity of the Human Person

“I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: “Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life”–Pope Benedict XVI, from his encyclical, Caritas in Varitate.

Indulging in a Mommy Moment

He is just so unbelievably CUTE!  Lucky mommy, me.