Saturday, August 31, 2013

Finish the Sentence Friday....If I Had a Magic Wand, The First thing I Would Do

It might be thought, that as I am writing this the week after we took our firstborn 150 miles from home to his new college, that my first wish  if I had a wand would be to turn time back a little (though any Harry Potter fan knows that you need a time turner to do that.) But no, we worked hard the last 18 years to raise a caring responsible adult, and I think we did, so no need for a reboot.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't sure how to answer this question, so I polled the family.

The kids agreed they wanted to know what the heck happened to their Hogwarts letters. They are sure they would both be eligible, so clearly the owls ran into turbulence or something.

My husband's response was "Nothing legal."

Thinking about all the amazing spells I have run across in the various Harry Potter books, (direction spells, repair spells, silencing spells (very tempting that one) and that one Mrs Weasly uses to put her knitting needles on autopilot; I decided that probably the most useful spell is the one called "Accio".  Accio allows a person to summon any object they are missing. Once simply concentrates and say "Accio (object)"  and it comes flying through the air to you. I am sure any parent can see the value of such a spell. "Accio homework", "Accio Pen", "Accio work key card," "Accio unopened book that should have been read 4 weeks ago but it is due tomorrow".

There are flashier spells, and certainly spells capable of unleashing more damage, but I can't think of anything more useful.



This post is part of  Finish the Sentence Friday. To find out what other writers would do with a magic wand, click  here.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Theme Thursday--Parenting Wins

    When the time came for our precious (and precocious) first born to start school, I was a little concerned.  His summer birthday made him the youngest in his class.  We hadn't sent him to preschool since we had a live in caregiver, so I was a little worried about his socialization skills.  My sister had trained under his kindergarten teacher and admired her greatly. I got the impression she was a bit intimidating.

    So we went to the first parent teacher meeting with some trepidation. After introductions, the first words out of his teacher's mouth were "Someone has read to this child."  I said we did read to him, but he hadn't learned to read yet. She said it didn't mattered, what mattered was that he clearly had been read to, a lot.  She went on to say that a surprisingly large percentage of children arrived in school not even knowing how a book worked: they don't know how the pictures and words work together, or that a book begins at one cover and ends at the other.  "Your son understands how books work.  That's the most important thing. Getting the meaning of the words will come to him."

       I never read to my kids because it was the right thing to do.  I read to them because I like to read and they enjoyed being read to.  I read Good Night Moon so many times that I could hold the book up and recite the whole thing without even looking as I turned the pages. We kept at it past kindergarten too, I read most of the Harry Potter books aloud to one or both kids, for example.

       When I have wondered at times what I have done right or wrong as a mother, this moment has always come back to be as a shining atta girl.
"Someone has read to this child"

       It was one of my best parenting wins.







Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Express Yourself--Favorite Childhood Books and Movies

If you read my post on last week's Express Yourself Weekly Meme about Comfort Books and Movies you may find some of this week's post a little repetitious.  That's because I found out while writing it that a great many of my comfort reading and movies date back to my childhood and adolescence. I'll try to vary things a bit though.

I tried to find a picture of me as a child with a book and couldn't,
but this is me about the time I learned to read.
 
When I was a child we didn't always have a TV set and didn't go to movies a lot. The first movies I saw in  a theatre were Cinderella (on my fifth birthday) and Mary Poppins. Those movies were treats from two of my favorite aunts, and going to them are special memories. Without a doubt though, my favorite childhood film was The Wizard of Oz. In the days before VCRs and DVD players, it was one of the few movies one could rely on watching yearly, and I also had a record of the movie that I listened to all the time, so I knew it by heart.  Both my kids like the movie now too, my daughter actually had her own pair of Ruby Slippers at one point.

Although I realize there was a time when I didn't know how to read, I don't remember actually learning to read.  I know my mother read to me as a child, I remember a lot of Little Golden Books, and a 3 volume Family Treasury of Children's Stories. One of the first books I remember being given to me as a gift was a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses. 

I got into mysteries early too: Nancy Drew, and the Happy Hollisters, and the Bobsey Twins and so on. I still love mystery stories.  I also liked The Jungle Book and the Wizard of Oz books.

I didn't just read or like books that were written for children either. By the second grade I was opening every book I came across and trying to understand what they were talking about.  My dad liked history and particularly liked the works of Jim Bishop and Cornelius Ryan, so I read The Day Lincoln Was Shot and A Bridge to Far when I was way too young to understand everything that was going on, but I was captivated by the way both authors made one feel they were at the event, and by the stories of the individuals highlighted in the books.  Before I knew really what "History" was, I perceived it as stories that happened to be true, something that has remained for me.

If I had to pick a favorite book of childhood though it would certainly be Little Women,  I wore out 2 copies in childhood before a friend of my mother gave me a 6 volume set of Louisa May Alcott that I have to this day.
They are one of the most treasured possessions of my childhood, a reminder of all that books have meant to me.


This post is part of Express Yourself weekly meme.  To see what movies and books others turn to for comfort, click here.





Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Mother Nature says "Ha!"

I have written in the past about the large family garden we participate in yearly, which generally produces an epic quantity of canned tomato goods, as well as frozen and canned veggies. Some years we have overflowed with the bounty of the earth, to the point that we gave gift baskets of canned goods at Christmas. Other years haven't produced quite as well, but always there was enough.

This year, we were not so lucky. The garden was hit repeated with heavy driving rain off and on,  the plants refused to thrive and in the end there weren't enough tomatoes to serve BLTs for dinner.

So the hard decision was made--to plow everything under, use up all our stores of canned goods, and start over next year.

We have a decent supply of ketchup and pizza sauce, but where this really hurts is on spaghetti night. When it comes to pasta, supply and demand have been closely linked. Two weeks ago we used the last home canned tomato sauce, and for the first time in 4 years I was forced to buy (sigh) commercial tomato sauce.

As I have also mentioned in the past, one does not can tomatoes to  save money, let alone work, but because the sauce tastes so much better when it is free of corn syrup and preservatives.  Buying tomato sauce is hardly an economic hardship, but it is an ascetic one.  Once you make (and taste) your own the store bought stuff in the can never tastes as good. 

We aren't completely out of luck this year though--the hogs are thriving and there will be fresh ham and sausage and bacon and so forth for the families this year. And I do think there is a lesson in all this.  In modern times we often overlook the fact that farming, whether large scale or small, is a risky business.  At the grocery store, the worse that happens is that certain foods become scarce, or more expensive.  We forget that at one time the quantity and quality of harvests were a matter of life or death. So much of the process is out of our control. We only put the seed into the ground, the rest is up to the Earth.

And Mother Nature can say "ha!" at any time.



Monday, August 26, 2013

I Don't LIke Mondays


I am hooking up at the I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop today. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should.





I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Early Birds and Night Owls--I've been both

    Most of my early life I was a born night owl.  It might have started when I was a child and sat up late listening to baseball games on the radio with my grandmother.  (It wasn't that long ago children, she just didn't have a TV in her room.)  When I was in high school I was a late night last minute crammer and finisher of school projects so I still was staying up late.  When I went to college and started doing theatre I was perfectly equipped for late night set construction calls and overtime rehearsals. 

     Then after college I became a 911 operator.  When I learned I would initially be on night shift  I wasn't too worried. Was I not a "born night owl"? Well I learned there was a limit to my staying up all night abilities, and that limit was right around 3am. 

      For 3 years I struggled on midnights with the wee hours of the morning between 4am and 6am.  In dispatch these are especially hard hours because generally the bars have closed, the drunks have gone to bed, and not much is going on, therefore the phones don't ring much.

       After five years of midnights and other odd shifts I made it to day shift.  At last a normal life! Almost. You see, our day shift starts at 7am. When I first started day shift I had a small child accompanied by the usual sleep deprivation, so I rolled out of bed at the latest possible moment, tossed back a cup of coffee on the way to the shower, and stumbled out the door. I learned this strategy didn't work, especially when one is not a morning person.

       Now I set my alarm for 4am.  And 4:15 am. And a more insistent alarm at 4:30 which is usually when I actually get up.  My coffee pot is on a timer so it's ready when I get up.  I ingest several cups while watching last night's Daily Show and Colbert.  I have plenty of time to do this, shower, and still get out the door in time for my bus at 6am.

      So now I have become an Early Bird.  Even on a day off I can't usually sleep past 7am.  I almost always wake at 4 and tell myself to go back to sleep. Day shift allows me to live like an almost normal life, and to see my children when they get home from school.

    But I don't like it. I feel like its a violation of the natural order of things to be getting up at 4am instead of crawling into bed.

    In a few more years I will be able to retire.  No more schedules to abide by, It will be interesting to see if I remain a Early Bird or revert to Night Owl.

     Or maybe somewhere in between.

Express Yourself--Comfort Books and Movies


This week's Express Yourself Weekly Meme is asking about comfort, specifically the books and films that we retreat to when we need a good cry or a good laugh.

We all know the feeling. Its been a hard day, or maybe a traumatic week. Either we have cried our eyes out and we need to escape or we have been having to hold it all in and we seek catharsis. Either way most of us know certain movies or books that we instinctively turn to.

The movies I turn to on such occasions fall into 3 basic groups. My most reliable movies for a good laugh include Ghostbusters, Men in Black, Airplane and anything Monty Python. These movies are different, but all provide reliable laughs.

When I want escapism and belief in higher good and triumph over evil and all, I watch The Princess Bride, The Lord of the Rings, Casablanca or Excalibur.

When I've been keeping it all in and need a good cry my preferred movies include Ghost, Field of Dreams, How Green was my Valley, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Most of the books I turn to for comfort date to my college years or earlier, but I often lose myself in Harry Potter.  My favorite books are the first one and the last. I frequently cry reading the last chapters of Deathly Hallows, though the movie doesn't affect me the same way.

Another comfort  book that I didn't find till after college was The Power of Myth. I own multiple copies because I find I loan them out and don't get them back. More than any other writer, Joseph Campbell helps me find my place in the universe.

When I need the reading equivalent of popcorn, i like murder mysteries. Classic mysteries like Ellery Queen, Roderick Alleyn. Hercule Poirot. Father Brown, and especially Nero Wolfe. I usually have read them before and know ""whodunit". It doesn't matter, the books are like an old pair of shoes you go back to again and again because they are so comfortable and easy to slip on. Last week I reread Murder on the Orient Express. I've known who killed Mr. Ratchett aka Cassetti for 40 years. Doesn't matter.

Other books i read for comfort include The Lord of the Rings (yes again), I Claudius, The Jungle Books and The Wizard of Oz. (The movie too) But my absolute fallback, chicken soup when I sick favorites are the Little Women books, and the Eight Cousins series, both by Louisa May Alcott. I have them all on my Nook so I can read them anytime. (When i need a good book cry its hard to beat a certain death scene in Little Women) The Marches and the Campbells are the dearest of all old friends. And isn't that we need when times are rough?




This post is part of Express Yourself weekly meme.  To see what movies and books others turn to for comfort, click here.


Friday, August 16, 2013

Finish the Sentence Friday: "I Used to Love....."

I used to love movies that put kids in peril.

I love scary movies.  Well some scary movies. The ones that have some artistic value, and more suspense than slashing. I'm talking Psycho, Halloween, The Legend of Hell House, anything with Christopher Lee, or Boris Karloff. 

One of the movies I loved in my younger days was Pet Semetary.  An adaptation of a Stephen King novel, it was a classic "Steve knows what scares you" work.  Without going into too much detail, in case anyone hasn't seen it and plans to, lets just say something very bad happens to a small child in this movie.  In my younger days when I watched it I cringed a little when I watched the scene, but enjoyed the movie in general.

Then I became a mom.  The next time I sat down to watch the movie I fast forwarded through the scene in question. I haven't watched it since. Its just too traumatic as a parent to watch.

I found myself deliberately avoiding other movies that feature children coming to harm.  I have never watched The Deep End of the Ocean, Mystic River, or The Lovely Bones.  Although I like the cult classic Pumpkinhead, I have to skip or look away from a certain scene in which, you guess it, a small child comes to harm. I know they are all artistically amazing films, but I just can't take it.  Between my experiences as a 911 operator and my experiences as a mom I find myself in empathy hell.

I find there are limits to my dislike.  Realistic violence (intended or accidental) disturbs me far more than fantasy.  For example I have no real qualms about watching It, an adaptation of one of my 2 favorite Stephen King books (the other is The Stand). For some reason I am only mildly upset by a predator clown that keeps abducting and killing children in a town.  Its partly that what is going on is clearly fantasy violence and not realistic that my empathy doesn't kick in. It's also because I always find myself totally in awe of Tim Curry's performance that I forget to be disturbed.

But for the most part police procedurals and scary movies that put kids in peril will have me reaching for the remote.  I just can't watch them anymore.


This post is part of  Finish the Sentence Friday. To find out what other writers used to love, click here.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Rights and Responsibilities

"You need to get up if you want to go with us. I have to be at work at his 11:00"

The Boy comes stumbling down the steps, I hand him coffee.

"Happy Birthday" I say.

He grunts an acknowledgement.

After the ATM we head to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. We are hoping to take care of most of his obligations here. He walks up to the counter with his birth certificate "I need an ID card" he says.

The clerk takes his paperwork and enters his info "Happy Birthday" he says. After he signs off on the ID he says, "Are you registered to vote "  ant the boy answers negatively. So he is handed another paper with the info auto filled from the other form.  "Can he register for the draft here too" I ask.   " Sorry, no, you have to go to the post office for that one. 

The post office isn't anywhere near our other stops, so we'll have to do that later. They say its a 250,000 dollar fine to not register, but the bigger problem is that non registration will cancel out his financial aid. Another civil obligation to attend to.

So instead we went on to the discount house, so he could get school and dorm supplies. You heard me,  he was buying his own school supplies, with earning from his summer job.  Several reams of paper, multi packs of pens and pencils, and catchall bins for his dorm room later, we stumble on out of the store.  "Mom, this stuff is expensive. No wonder you cringed at all the back to school sales."

"Welcome to adulthood, son"  I say to him. "It just gets pricier from here."





Saturday, August 10, 2013

Finish the Sentence Friday "I have a bad habit of...."

The fact that this  Finish the Sentence Friday is appearing on Saturday should be a clue to my worst habit. Yes folks, I am a procrastinator.  I am always putting off paperwork to the last possible minute, and although like a lot of bloggers I have a list of upcoming events that I wish to blog about, does that mean I actually have drafts written, just waiting for me to hit the publish button on the day in question? Perish the thought. 

Recently, I have written about my wedding anniversary nearly 2 weeks after it happened, followed by not getting the post about my son's birthday up several days after that event as well. Its true a family vacation and limited Internet for several weeks complicated things. But I have known these events were coming. Blogger has a scheduling option. Do I take advantage of it? 

I am just as bad the rest of the time.  Every month at work we are given a copy of a trade magazine, with a quiz that must be completed for continuing education credit.  Many of my co workers have theirs done that afternoon,  Not master procrastinator Meg.  I am forever turning mine in the morning of the deadline (or later).

Part of my procrastination is often a desire to make something perfect (or at least better) before I do it.  That certainly explains the delays on the blog posts. (That and the competition for computer time around the house.) But imperfect but on time is often better and I need to deal with that.

On several occasions my procrastination has caused hurt feelings among friends, and a resolve on my part to do better, at least with the important stuff. 

And I am, after all, posting this on Saturday.  The old Meg would have gotten to it on Tuesday.


This post is part of  Finish the Sentence Friday. To read about other bloggers bad habits, click here.



Friday, August 9, 2013

Coming of Age


So the Boy turns 18 this week.  Those of you who are parents of older kids know the mixed feelings this evokes.  The whole goal of parenting is to rear them to responsible adulthood, and yet when it gets here we miss the child they were. 

The child arrived in a state of chaos.  48 hours of attempted induction, followed by an emergency C section the next day when he got stuck ("failure to progress" as the doctors like to call it), resulting in a legendary epic known around our house as "Labor as a 3 day weekend".

The Boy himself, however, has stayed relatively calm and unruffled through it all.




 

 
 
 
Including, of course, the intrusions of Mom's camera.
 
 As a child he didn't talk much till he was about 3, then he used complete sentences.  Most of the time he just seemed to absorb things,  "the sponge" my cousin called him.  "An old soul" other people said. 
 
Once I was at a party that featured a psychic doing readings, and when I asked about my children, she told me The Boy was a golden child, one of those children who rolled through everything and came out shining. He has always been like that.
 
In a crisis he has always been reliable, and not panicky. He is the one to grab the first aid kit and take care of things, and worry later.
 
His last weeks of childhood have been wrapped in typical chaos, as he raced about trying to finish his Eagle Scout project on time, further complicated by all the difficulties inherent in getting his first year of college squared away.  Through it all he remained confident things would in fact work themselves out.
 
Recently he cut his hair.  It was mainly for the coolness, working out at summer camp, but it also took away the last bit of cute kid, in favor of a new person, an adult.  Not that he doesn't have his teenager moments still, but the adult is definitely here to stay.
 
 
Not our kid anymore.  But still our son.

.

Monday, August 5, 2013

25 Years and Still Hanging in There

Last month  my husband and I are celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We started on a budget and we're still living on one.
Lately the washer, dryer and car have all died on us.  The roof leaks, the garden was a total washout (literally) this year, and work stress remains just that.

 But plenty of things have gone great over the years, especially where the two kids are concerned. One graduated in the top 10 at his high school, and is off to college this fall, while the girl just got into the local high school performing arts program.  Even when we have had our differences, we have always maneuvered well together as parents.



Usually we haven't done much for our anniversary because it lands the week before we leave for Pennsic, and never have the time or the finances.  This year as it happens, Pennsic took place a week earlier than usual, and our anniversary was during the event.  We still didn't have any money, but we did have time.

Nothing is a better measure of your marriage than going primitive camping together for 2 weeks and making it back home alive and speaking to each other.

We celebrated with coffee and cheesecake and good company. 

We started out as college roommates who realized when graduation loomed  we worked better together than separately, and it is still true to this day.  I would still rather be with him than without him and to me that's what marriage is all about.