Even My Ears are Oily

I have never had a skin problem. Well, I thought I had had skin problems. In high school and college I would occassionally get a big red, unpoppable zit on my nose. They were awful, but I only got about one a year, so who cares?

Well, down here I have become an oily person. Go figure. And oil leads to zits--lots of little ones on my forehead.

When Aarti, a Louisiana native, was here taking care of our family a few weeks ago, just after she interrogated Phil about two giant zits on his neck and head, she gave me some kindly advice, "Wash you face." She had to clarify that I needed to wash my face outside of my every other day shower. I thought: I can handle that. Then she went on, "When you get up, when you come home from work, when you go to bed." That's a lot of Purpose soap.

Well, this morning I missed my morning wash. Phil slept in. As he was making his way out of bed, he glanced over at me and said, "What have we here?" Assuming he was going to mock my french braid or pick on the coach shorts I like to wear around the house, I was half-ignoring him. He got real close to my ear and stuck his finger in it as if it was a cotton swab, "These are really greasy."

I got out some rubbing alcohol and took care of that. But how am I to keep up with this new layer of slim that is covering my body several times a day.

Charts

We've been having morning challenges. Challenges=crazy, desperate crying and screaming by everyone. Actually Phil doesn't cry or scream, he just gets crabby and says irrational things.

So, we decided that the solution was to make reward charts for the children. No fits. No whining. No crying. No shouting. Say please. Get dressed on time. Brush teeth when asked. If the kids do these things they get a sticker on their new sticker charts. 10 stickers=a trip to the ice cream store. This method has worked morning improvement plan (MIP) in the past.

So, yesterday we put the MIP in place. While I still freaked out, the kids did much better. Phil said he wished he could have video taped me, because when I spilled my coffee he saw a textbook case of desperation. He also admitted that the day before he had spilled grits in the ninth hour and panicked.

Last night I made charts for both kids. Sumner put his sticker on his. Ramona flipped out because the chart was not made to her specifications. So she worked last night at making it just so and went through several drafts. Finally she gave up and went to bed. This morning, she set out to get it just so. I was loading the dishwasher. After about 10 minutes she came to show it to me, "Mom, I made a chart for you. It is a screaming chart." There were little squares and in one square was two stickers, layered on top of each other, "The first one is for when you yelled at me [She asked for half of a bagel and when I handed her half she freaked because she really wanted half of a half. I may have raised my voice when telling her to "JUST EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! STOP SCREAMING!"]. The second one is for when you're good."

I need that reinforcement. Thank God for my teacher-children.

Making Friends

We are eager for our children to make friends. Knowing how to make friends doesn’t always come naturally, so we talk a lot about how to make friends and then they report to us how it is going.

Today I was delighted when Sumner told me he made friends with someone because Sumner gave him a “squishy”.

Afraid of the answer, I asked, “What’s a squishy?”

Sumner explained that it is a ketchup, mayo, or mustard pack.

“Why did your new friend want that?”

Sumner then explained that in the Captain Underpants book that he read today during his free time, he learned that if you fold up a “squishy” and put it between the toilet and the toilet seat and then wait for someone to come and use the toilet, the “squishy" will explode all over. He successfully attempted this with the mayo pack from his lunch today.

And he made some friends doing it.

The Saints

I’ve lived with Phil for a long time and the Saints have dominated our dominated Sunday afternoons. Phil doesn't take a lot of alone time, but Saints Sundays are sacred. He has been a fan in exile. There aren’t a lot of Saints fans in London. Or Boston. But Phil usually managed to find a way every Sunday to watch the Saints fail again in the ways that only they can fail. The Saints never just lose a game. They always give you hope that they just might be able to pull it together and then they screw it all up.

A strange thing happened on Sunday. It wasn’t that they won. That's not strange. The win was just a good sign of things to come. The strange thing was that everywhere I went people were talking about the Saints. At church they announced that the Saints games would be projected on the wall of the doublewide trailer we're meeting in. At the bar where Phil watched the game he wasn’t relegated to some random side room where no one else cared to watch the bigger games—the whole bar was cheering with him. And at the birthday party I went to with the kids the parents were wondering about and checking in on the game. This feels strange. It is strange that this whole city cares about a game that in my former lives only Phil cared about.

Chris, we beat you.

Guy, could the Saints be the next Patriots? This city really needs that.

Working Mom/Working Dad

This has been a huge adjustment for all of us. This is the longest I have gone without blogging. Ever. I know that I have received emails from those in withdrawal. The blog will not die. I did not die. My family will not die. We’re just adjusting and there hasn’t been time to blog.

My brown cords have been replaced with a wool herringbone skirt, 7:30 wake ups have been replaced by 7:30 drop offs, and my midday tea has been replaced with a diet coke. I just bought a kettle for my office to remedy the tea problem.

Phil is doing a good amount of adjusting himself. Thankfully his August and September schedules have been on the light side of things and he’s been able to pick up a little slack. He also has been doing some of the things I usually do around here. That has led him to say some of the things that I usually say around here.

This weekend he did the laundry and loaded the dishwasher a couple of times. At one point he said to me, “I’ve done a lot of tidying this weekend. Really, I have. Aren’t you impressed?” And I was. And he needed affirmation for his hard work, as I often do when I do that stuff.

When I was putting away my clean laundry I found a dainty shirt that had been ironed, folded and wrinkling up by the second at the bottom of my clothing pile. Appalled I stormed off to show Phil what a BIG mistake he’d made. He said, “I did all of the laundry and I make ONE mistake and that’s all I hear about.” I say that to him when he complains.

I got a message this morning on my machine that sounded a lot like me. Phil called to tell me that Sumner was resistant to being dropped off and he isn’t sure that the preschool Ramona’s at is good enough (it’s never going to be the Coop) and he was late to work (AGAIN) and he was really stressed out by the whole thing. I’ve left that same message (except in mine I am always crying) on Phil’s phone 100 times in the last 4 years. It is strange to hear an echo.

Yes Ma’am

Whenever we move somewhere I change up how I do things a bit. I arrived in NYC with Oregon birks and an anklet that jingled and I went home at Christmas with a lot more black in my wardrobe and no sound-making accessories. In Phoenix I started wearing tank tops. In Oakland I lost my iron and killed my ironing board and wore overalls to work, hugged everyone hello, and talked about the aura in a meeting. In London I learned to make much better tea, cooked bangers and mash for dinner, and bought a few clothing items that made my pregnant belly look a little more chic and a little less fleece. Back to the States and Boston I went back to the fleece, made fall apple picking a traditional family event, and tried not to use words like aura and vibe.

So, it would seem natural, or at least part of the pattern that in New Orleans I would do as they do—I like to fit in. I’m looking forward to semi-regular pedicures, I have thrown a y’all here and there, seersucker is looking pretty cute these days, and ironing all of a sudden seems to be a must. I’m ready to get Southern.

But I didn’t expect my kids to get Southern too. At least not this quickly.

The other day I was asking Sumner to do something—something complicated. As I was explaining it he said, “Yes, ma’am.” I smiled inside and went on only to be greeted with another “yes, ma’am” and when I finished he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “Yes ma’am.” I have never in my life asked him to say “yes ma’am” to anyone.

When in Rome…

Hobbies

School is supposed to do what? I’m still working that out. Sometimes I wonder if it is the best use of all of our time.

Sumner was working on writing paragraphs and the teacher asked him to write about his hobby. Here’s what the teacher asked him to do and what he wrote:

Topic Sentence to tell your favorite hobby

“Daydreaming is great!!!”

When do you spend time on your hobby?

“When my work is done.”

Where do you practice your hobby?

“everywhare”

Why is this your favorite hobby?

“Its a secrit Diory in my head.”

Retell the topic sentence in your own words.

“What I could do

what the world could do

what could happen

what will happen”

Thinking about what we could do, what the world could do, what could happen, and what will happen sound pretty edifying. So school is supposed to do what?

Sun Roof/Sun Veil

That’s what Ramona called her sun visor all weekend on the Alabama beach.