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This is our first week of “no school” but it’s been full of activity.  My teenagers leave for camp on Saturday (at 7:00 a.m.!) and I have the responsibility for gathering and packing the odd assortment of items on the packing list.  (Cowboy outfit?  Mask and masquerade outfit?  Outfit which can get so dirty it can be thrown away?  Formal outfit?)

It’s almost like sending them away to a pageant or something!

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I’m vaguely worried about them going to camp for a whole week.  They’ve never been away from home for that long.  I worry that everyone at the camp will be “cool” and they will be excruciatingly uncool and mocked and tormented.  I went to camp only once in my life and found it a socially unpleasant experience.  Plus it was boring.  The camp my boys are going to is gorgeous and luxurious (!) and their youth pastor and friends will be there, too.  But I worry anyway.  It’s in my job description.

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Meanwhile, my younger kids are out of school and endlessly bickering.  My daughter has perfected her ability to burst into convincing tears at the slightest provocation.  Today, I said, “What is wrong?” and she lamented through her tears, “Zachary said I was disrespectful and disobedient.”  Earlier in the day they were fighting (she crying, him looking nonchalant) about whether or not she stepped on an ant or a rock.  “Zachary says I stepped on a rock, but it was an ant!”

I might not survive the summer. (Did I mention that last week my son kicked a basketball into the kitchen window?  And that replacement window panes cost $145?)

I have washed so much laundry this week but most of it is unfolded.

Tomorrow, I have to:

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2)  Exchange some shorts for correct sizes at Old Navy;

3)  Meet husband at Escrow office to sign paperwork;

4)  Wash clothes, pack everything and get boys completely prepared for camp;

5)  Work eight hours;

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Summer vacation . . . so relaxing.

At our private pool the other day, six-year old Grace asked me for $1.50 to buy a snack from the vending machine.  She likes the process of choosing a snack and putting in the money more than eating the snack.  Feeling generous, I gave her the dollar bill and two quarters.

She was in the snack shack housing the two vending machines for so long that I finally put down my novel and went to check.  Sometimes the snacks get stuck in the spiral dispenser.  But no, she was just pondering the choices.  She’d been in there about ten minutes.

About five minutes later, she approached my table, clutching two quarters but no snack.

“Where’s your snack?”

“Well, these girls pressed a number and it wasn’t what I wanted and I told them not to but they did.”

The vending machines are the kind where you press the letter and number combination that corresponds to the snack you want.

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“They pressed the number after you put in the dollar?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t seem upset, but surprised.  And bewildered.

I, on the other hand, was angry.  “Show me,” I said.

So, we went into the snack shack and she told me again what happened.  I went over it again:  “So, you put in the dollar and then the girls pressed a number?”

“Yes.”

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“They put them on the microwave.”  Sure enough, there behind me were the Cheetos.  I picked them up.  Grace doesn’t even like that kind of Cheetos.

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Just then, the girls came into the snack shack doorway.

Two girls, about eight years old.

“Which one of you has a parent here?”  I asked so I would know which one was a member and which one was a guest.

The girl on the left said, “I do.”

“And are you the one who pressed the number after Grace put in her money?”

“It was an accident.”

“An accident.  You just happened to press the number after she put in her dollar?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, Grace would not choose this snack.”  I waved the Cheeto package.  “She doesn’t even like this.  She put in the money and you pressed the number just to be mean.”

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“Yes, you were.  It was a mean trick to play on her.”

Grace pipes up.  “Mom, it’s okay with me.”

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“It’s not okay with me.  Go swim.”  Off she went.

To the culprit:  “Do you want me to go talk to your mom?”

“No!”

“I think you need to apologize to my daughter.  What you did was mean and NOT okay with me.”

I stalked off to my table, deciding not to tell her mother what she’d done.  I would have if the girl had been lippy with me and not repentant.  The little girl came right over to my daughter (who was in the pool) and apologized.  My daughter came up to me a while later and said, “You didn’t need to be so mean to that girl.”

I wasn’t the slightest bit mean.  It would have been mean if I’d taken that child’s money, plugged it into the machine and purchased her something she hated.  It would have been mean if I kicked her in the shins.  But scolding her for doing something that was out of line was my job.  And I take that job very seriously.

My job?  Protecting my kids from bullies, even when they are cute little girls with big eyes wearing swimsuits.  Don’t mess with my kid.

I have a tale to tell.  But I’m too tired.

My daughter “graduated” from kindergarten.  Although it was so sweet, I don’t quite understand kindergarten graduation.  Seems like a newfangled milestone to me.  Was I supposed to get her a car?  Or a pony?

I never had a kindergarten graduation.  I think I’m all right.  Well, okay, maybe that’s an overestimation of my mental health, but still.

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Ah, I kid.  I kid because I can.  Also?  I’m going to bed.  (Tomorrow is my son’s last day of fifth grade.  And he doesn’t get to “graduate” from fifth grade.  That seems unfair, right?)

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I feel like a failure a lot.  My personality fails me (so introverted, so impatient).  My house fails me with its laurel hedges growing into a tall jungle while I’m not looking.  My lawn is rocky and barren and dry, spotted with dandelions.  My laundry room houses not only dirty laundry, but also a hodge-podge of debris that collects.  Plus two always-needing-to-be-cleaned litter boxes.  I can’t get anyone to leave my tools in one place, so I have screwdrivers and wrenches strewn about the house and I can never find the one with the star-tip (what’s it called?  I can never remember).

I failed one thing in all my academic years:  a math test in third grade.  I ripped it apart in anger and went home crying.  When a mean choir teacher gave me a B+ for my semester grade in choir my freshman year, it ruined my grade point average and so I never again took a subjective class in high school.  No art, no music, nothing that couldn’t be quantified and controlled.   What kind of life is that?  A safe life.  A boring life.

I hate to fail.  And yet I fail so often.  When I fail–daily–have you seen my kitchen floor?–I want to run away.  I want to abandon my family to someone who has a better chance of success than I.  I want my kids to have a better mom, my husband to have a better wife.  I don’t want them to have to live with someone like me who gets things wrong more than she gets them right.  I want to wash my hands of the whole sorry mess I’ve made and relocate to a farm where I will wear tie-dye, grow my own vegetables and talk to the animals.  Of course, probably the weeds would overtake my cultivated fields and the animals wouldn’t talk back.

Here’s the sentence I say to myself on occasion:  “How hard can it be?”  The answer, in the case of replacing a freezer gasket is VERY VERY HARD.  Nigh unto impossible, as a matter of fact.  My fingers are too weak and my constitution too impatient to successfully accomplish the goal.  (The goal is to keep food frozen without creating icicles in the fridge.)

I’m sure that it’s not normal to feel like a complete and utter failure because one cannot replace the freezer gasket because one was too impatient to wait for someone to arrive who can complete that task with ease.  It’s not normal to spiral into this black tornado of despair because I can’t keep up with my life.  (If I do not get the lilacs pruned, there will be no blossoms next year.)  It’s not normal that the thought of my storage room causes me great distress, the kind of distress that immobilizes me rather that motivates me.

And being not normal makes me feel like a failure.

I really thought I’d be a good mom, a good wife, a decent human being.  (I have never been called for jury duty.  Why is that?)  I thought I’d have a lush green lawn and the kind of kids who would happily eat a giant chef salad for dinner.  (Ha ha ha ha ha.)

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I am pathetic tonight.  Blame PMS.  Blame the stupid freezer.  Blame my puny fingers.  Blame my schedule.  Blame the government.  Blame the mean choir teacher who ruined my grade point average.  But ultimately, it’s all me.  Imperfect, failing me.

And now, here’s the response:

Stop sniveling.  Quit the self-pity.  Enough self-exaggeration and melodrama.  Your hormones are out of control.  Fixing a freezer gasket is not the ultimate test of success.  Imperfection is all right.  Everything will look better in the morning.  Your fingertips will probably even feel better.

Everything that must be done will get done.  Stop complaining.  It’s so unbecoming.

Be grateful.  Be grateful.  Be grateful.

Go to bed.

You should know that chaperoning kindergarten children on a field trip to Seattle is actually not that big of deal when you are only responsible for your own six-year old and two other six-year olds.  Especially if you can play with your iPhone the whole bumpy bus ride there.  The play was so cute–I got in trouble for taking a photograph of the set which looked exactly like the book Good-night, Moon

.  I was told to delete it from my iPhone and I considered only pretending to delete it but then the Rule Follower in me obeyed.

But by Friday night, my head felt full of cast iron.  I thought perhaps I would finally succumb to the Swine Flu, but no, it was not meant to be.  I am still alive and kicking.

My husband’s forty-eighth birthday is tomorrow.  I can’t speak for him, but I’m feeling older and older by the second.  Tonight we were at a Community Group meeting and nearly everyone was young enough to be my child.  (If I hadn’t been infertile and become a mother at such advanced maternal age, that is.)  That’s just weird.  Almost as weird as the time my dentist in Michigan mentioned “Oh, you’re one day older than me,” which made me wonder what in the world I’d been doing with my life while this man had been making something of himself.  (Answer:  Nothing much, unless you count thousands of meals and loads of laundry “something.”)

What I could use right now is a chiropractor.  My neck is killing me.   (I don’t have a chiropractor.)

This is the last week of school, a fact that makes me either want to celebrate or cry.  But mostly cry.  Not that I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids for 10 straight weeks . . . but I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids while they bicker

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for the next 10 weeks.   And they will bicker.  It’s apparently a rule.

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Some teenage girls crashed a newer model car right into the garage door.  The funny thing was how they reacted.  One stood outside the car, hands over mouth.  The other got out, checked out the damage and sat back in the driver’s seat and began to talk on her cell phone.  A third ran back and forth into the back yard.  I have no idea.

I am grateful to not be a teenage girl who smashed a new car into the garage door.  I’m also glad not to be the parent of any of those girls.

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Are We There Yet? release Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. I will be boarding a big yellow school bus.  I’ll be chaperoning the kindergarten field trip, along with a bunch of other hearty parents.  We are going to the Seattle Children’s Theater.  On a bus.  To Seattle.  (That’s an hour from here.)  Filled with loud children.

Oh dear.

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The relentless forward motion of life drags me along like my hair is caught in the chain and I have no choice in the matter.  How can it be June?  How can another school year end?  When I was a child the school years lasted at least four times as long as a current school year.  Or that’s how it seemed to me.  Fourth grade?  FORever!  (Mr. Steiner made me sit by Julie M. and I resented for some reason that escapes me now.  Also?  My little circle of friends were vicious, constantly aligning and realigning into circles that excluded someone.)

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Franklyn ipod I’m already thinking ahead to fall when my youngest child will be in first grade.  I know it’s just June, but September will be here in a blinding flash.  And I know I’m supposed to live in the moment, focus on the little things, relish the ordinary events of every day life but the truth is that if I step into the river of summer thinking it’s only ankle deep I will be swept away by its furious current because that is how summer is.  A rushing raging torrent that will rip through our lives, leaving us breathless and shocked that we’ve been carried so far downstream so fast.

My husband is turning forty-eight this year, “almost fifty” he likes to say.  He’s been reassessing his life and wearing gold chains and buying a red Corvette . . . okay, not really.  He’s just been thinking about his life and how much he has left to live before crawling into a coffin and dying.  It’s strange to think about the sands of time running through the hourglass, but they are, even if we don’t think about it.  My dad, for instance, was already dead by age 48.  That’s just how it goes sometimes.

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Maybe that’s why my husband says “yes” when our daughter asks him if he’ll play card games.  I’m likely to put her off, say, “how about tomorrow?” but he just says “yes.” The day will come soon enough when she stops asking.  I know this because the day has already come when she has stopped asking us to rock her before we put her to bed.  I only realized that yesterday.

I wonder what I really want to do with my time.  I used to feel like I had an unlimited supply, a bag with a black hole from which I could withdraw as much as I needed, but as it turns out, time is in short supply.  Too many days I feel like I’m trudging from morning to midnight, barely holding together the fraying edges of my life.  Am I too lazy?  Or am I too busy?  Am I both lazy and busy?  I don’t want to be either.

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I dream about a vacant day, a vacant week without relentless demands raising their hands and insisting on being called upon.  I’d like to stop thinking about the dripping showerhead and the worn out freezer gasket and all the digital photographs that should be sent to Costco to be turned into prints.  I’d like to stop fretting about my yard, my ghastly lawn (if you could call it that), the overgrown hedges in the yard and the snow-damaged back fence that leans precariously into the neighbor’s back yard.  (Why, tell me why fences are so expensive?)

The good news is that the current of my life will drag me along, willing or not, into the future which includes an appraiser coming by tomorrow night, a T-ball practice on Thursdays night, a kindergarten field trip to Seattle on Friday,  a T-ball game on Saturday at 12:30 (thus encroaching on the entire day) and my novel which demands to be written despite my increasing despair over my prose.  (Perhaps one should not read Barbara Kingsolver while writing a novel of one’s own.)  All of this happens while I balance working forty hours a week which is like balancing a chair on my chin while I ride a unicycle.  I’m fancy.  Also, apt to fall.

Before we know it, the daisies in the front yard will bloom, Fourth of July will arrive, we’ll be at the ocean, it’ll be time for dentist appointments and vaccinations for sixth grade and football practice will begin to consume our days.  I just hope that I find time to prune the overgrown lilac bush in the front yard so that the blooms next year will be bountiful.  Circle around, circle around, try not to get dizzy and hold on for dear life.

And yet another MomCentral.com related post.  (Please bear with me.  And tomorrow, maybe a real-non-compensated post will appear!)

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Have you heard of this website?  MakingLifeBetter.com is all about . . . making your life better.   You can information about beauty & style, home & family, vitality & wellness . . . and tips and news and offers.  (And more!)

But I want to focus on the food & recipes information you can find there, because if you are like me (oh, I sure hope you are spared that particular agony!), you are always in dire need of help, inspiration and a dose of encouragement when it comes to feeding your family.  And Jennifer Bushman, the Kitchen Coach, is just the one to provide said things.  (Watch her here, on You-Tube.)  Check out all the recipes and tips for making dinnertime not just a necessary evil, but fun for you and your kids (and whomever else you happen to be responsible for feeding).

Here:  Budget Recipes!  (Don’t say I never gave you anything.)

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(This website is owned by Unilever, the makers of delicious products like Breyer’s Ice Cream and Hellman’s Mayonnaise and many, many others.)

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Now, go have an excellent weekend.  And make your life better!

And now, time for a MomCentral.com related post!

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Do you ever have a burning question you can’t quite bring yourself to ask anyone in real life?  But, say, you really need to know something about bedwetting or growing a mom-mustache against your will or about . . . well, just about anything.

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From the Mamapedia.com site:

“Questions and parenting go hand in hand. From the moment you discover you’re pregnant and wonder “what should I be eating?” to the day your child packs for college and asks “how much spending money will I need?” you’re constantly in need of advice. And there’s no one better to get it from than the ultimate experts: other moms.

This, in a nutshell, is why Mamapedia exists.

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Mamapedia is your lifeline to millions of moms who’ve shared their real-world wisdom through local Mamasource online communities over the past two years. We compiled their answers, organized them by stage, and made them instantly searchable. We invite you to bookmark Mamapedia to find answers in a pinch, and to join your local Mamasource community so you can share what you’ve learned on your journey. And don’t miss Mamapedia’s ever-expanding range of topics, including household, money, health, relationships, and many other things that moms are talking about.”

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So, go.  Check it out.  Tell me what you think.  I think I might just use this site to answer the age-old question:  Where are all the spoons?  Did they run away with the socks?

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Last summer, I read East of Eden (by Steinbeck) for the first time.  I read most of it while sitting at the pool, half-watching my kids swim.  When I think of last summer, I think of that glorious book.

The summer before, I read Soldier of the Great War Definitely, Maybe ipod The Barefoot Contessa movies (by Helprin).  What a fantastic story that was.  I even copied down some quotes from it.

This summer, I started my second reading of The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver).  I read it a long time ago, but remember how much I loved it.  I am so looking forward to reading it again.

What are you reading this summer?  I wish I could spend most of my days reading, but instead, I fit reading into the very small margins of my life.

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That is all.

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