Category: parenting

Uh oh.

Guess what I got up to this weekend?

I let the hellidays come up and grab me.

I indulged in a long time family tradition…using old and new implements.

I emailed my mom and got the family “secret” sugar cookie recipe. And I made ’em. Oh yes, I made ’em. Had to buy my own set of cutters, and they aren’t as good as the decades old ones my mom is still clinging to.

But she did finally give up her old Kitchenaid mixer.

I’ve been baking treats out of that thing since I was probably 6 or 7. My mom made tortillas every Saturday (after Mass) in that same mixer. It looks a little worse for the wear, and is, for god’s sake, 1970’s avocado green, but it still works like a charm. I love how a new generation of young women have discovered what I knew all along. A Kitchenaid mixer makes short work of any baking project. It’s amazing.

And in keeping with tradition, I managed to burn one batch. The first one. Crispy. But I covered them in frosting anyway and will look the other direction when someone grabs one of the “well done” cookies. Hee.

Oh and father of The Cute Boy™ gave us his old train set, thus fulfilling one of my long time wishes, to have a train around my tree.

It’s all good. This is the first time in a long time that I’m happy at the holidays. I think I owe most of that to the loving holiday excitement of The Cute Boy™.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

Now, I just have to endure five more hellish days of work to get my two glorious weeks OFF.

I can make it. With a belly full of cookies and a head full of carols, oh yes, I will make it…………….

Where have all the heros gone?

Was listening to local sports radio yesterday at lunch, and they were talking about how “the three major sports leagues are in trouble”.

Baseball, with the specter of steroids, and Bonds close to breaking a long held record.

Basketball, with allegations of gambling and fixing in the referee ranks.

And Football with the scandal of Michael Vick and his barbaric behavior (borrowed that adjective from Jim Belshaw in yesterday’s ABQjournal)

Then I read my friend Natalie’s blog, Petroglyph Paradox, and was heartsick. Her young son looks up to Michael Vick, holds him up as a hero, and Natalie and her partner had to explain to their animal loving child what his hero did. Hard to see that light of hero worship fade out in a child’s eyes.

Not that I’ve ever agreed that sports figures should be the heros of our children…but it has been going on for years (Roger Maris?). It’s a trend that is hard to stop, and in many cases, there are athletes who are worthy of emulation (Michael Jordan? maybe…). Then again, many who seemed so on the surface but turn out otherwise (Kobe?)

Who do our kids have to look up to these days?

How about our President? Yeah, don’t get me started down that road. I don’t think a politician of any stripe is worthy of hero worship.

Hollywood Actors? Please…not even a consideration.

Clergy? Uh…no.

Teachers? Well I’ve read several recent stories of scary teachers (grade fixing, anyone?)….though there are many good teachers too. It’s just hard to tell.

What about parents? Well…there are many really good parents out there and I am happy to hold them up as my personal heros. But there are plenty of parents who do more harm than good…..like this charming lady or this gentleman.

So who is left? Who do our kids have to look up to, to emulate, to take values from and make them their own?

I don’t guess I’m comfortable with a society so debauched that even I, a full stripe optimist, forgiver of many, seer of good in almost anyone can’t find someone (alive) I want to be like when I grow up.

For now, I’ll keep my long held hero in place, my sadly deceased grandmother. Wonder what my feminist-before-her-time granny would think of the state of things today?

Ruminations

Going to borrow a page from Natalie over at Petroglyph Paradox and mull over the implications of Father’s Day a little bit. Though I’m a day late (and a dollar short), as the old saying goes.

My dad was an odd fellow. Odd in all sorts of ways. My sister who is mother to a couple boys with as yet undiagnosed problems has been forced to read up on the markers for autism. My sister has said that had my father been born in a different time, he probably would have been tapped as a high functioning autistic.

He was smart as hell and obsessive about numbers. He worked hard but had a nasty temper. I chalk up the temper to being of fiery Irish and German descendentcy. His full-blooded Irish mother is the only person I ever knew who could yell at HIM. And boy did she.

He was bitterly type A. He put in a hell of a career at Sandia Labs, was an engineer to the core, and probably was a better man that I ever gave him credit for.

I could talk a lot about all the bad things he did to me personally, or the bad things I saw him do to my siblings and mother. But at the end of the day, there wasn’t any sort of physical abuse, no. I don’t want to mislead. He never laid a hand on us. He just had a cruel mind and would say hateful things in a fit of fury. And words can hurt too.

So I won’t talk about the fact that he was a bitterly mean and insecure man who lashed out at his family because he could.

I also won’t raise him up as the model of a father, then join hands and sing the praises of dad.

What’s it’s taken me most of my life to learn is that he was an incredibly imperfect person. Fraught with fears about boogeymen around every corner and demands for us to be better, he actually did try very hard to run his family.

Out of three kids, we all turned out with our fair share of “issues”, but we also turned out to be three decent people, all contributing members of society. In the case of both of my siblings, marriages and kids of their own. So I guess to raise three more or less well adjusted kids, he must have done a few things right, in the end.

And so I’ll give him credit for that.

On this Father’s Day, some two years after his passing, I didn’t exactly miss him. He never liked celebrations of holidays and such. I was sort of relieved that I didn’t have to find some meaningless gift and card to send. It’s nice to be “off the hook”. Instead of mourning my Dad, I spent the day with my partner’s Dad who is chock full of his own set of insecurities and missteps, but is a hell of a good man.

And it doesn’t pass my notice that he reminds me in many ways of my own father.

But the one thing that the father of my love remembered to do that my own forgot was to love his child unconditionally.

I’ll take that as the lesson for Father’s Day…and Mother’s Day…and every day.

People who are not like us…

So, where I live, we have a lot of squirrels. Now when I say “a lot of squirrels” I don’t mean “oh my, there’s quite a few out there”. I mean a whole horde, an army, a remuda, of squirrels.

They run around everywhere, up and down power lines, around trees, hither and yon. When I go for a walk at noontime from work, I walk down this one street and they scatter in all directions like a squirrely sea of doom.

People here think they are cute. Find them amusing. The fluffy tails make them laugh. People here FEED THEM. Yes, they put out food for the little b*stards.

They don’t understand my revulsion, my utter HORROR that these vermin are allowed to roam free in a civilized society.

They don’t understand because I am a New Mexican. And one of the bonus features of being raised in New Mexico is, da da dummmmmm, bubonic plague.

In fact, according to this article in the ABQjournal, there have already been four cases this year, including a boy who died.

To quote the article, “Plague, a bacterial disease, is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas but can also be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, such as rodents, wildlife and pets.”

Unh huh, no wonder every little rat with a fluffy tail gets the suspicious eye from me. Early on in life my mom would yell at all us kids to stay back from any wild creature, especially the small rodenty kind.

I will not draw one of those beady-eyed plague-carrying varmints closer to me or my home! I live in a duplex and for a while my next door neighbor put out bird seed with no cover or protection from the squirrels. I would stare horrified out my living room window to see a swarm of the things eating with reckless abandon in my back yard.

THE PLAGUE!!! THE PLAGUE!!!!

In my old place, a couple of squirrely warriors had an epic territory battle on the roof right over my apartment. Not only did I have to hear the squeals and the death call of the loser, I *freaked out* about the dead rodent right there over my doorway. As you know, fleas leave the dead rodent searching for a new home.

I shall print out the referenced article and keep copies handy for the next person who looks me and says “how can you not like squirrels, they are sooooo *cute*!!”

I’m keeping an eye on you, you plaugey b*stard!!!!

Life turns on a dime

There comes a day in every adult’s life when they have to face the mortality of their own parents. Nothing you do in your life prepares you for the moment when you realize the person who was once so big, so tall, occasionally scary, usually loving, the one who knew all the answers has now become the child and you, the child, are now the one with the money and the answers and have to be in charge.

It is a dark day.

Mine came in December of 2003. I knew my dad had an incurable lung disease and I knew it was only a matter of time. I’d been out shopping that day, getting ready for Christmas when I came home and got “that call” on my answering machine. “We took dad to the hospital…”

He survived that round (barely) and lived just over another year. I spent that year flying back and forth to New Mexico and learned how to drop everything and go. Don’t think, just buy a one way plane ticket and go.

My dad passed in 2005 and so at two years out I was starting to feel a bit more relaxed. I will always fear the sound of the ringing phone, especially at night, but it has lessened some. My mother struggled for a while after my dad’s passing but had taken control of her life and moved into a community of active elderly people. Her health is good and she has my aunt and uncle to check in on her.

So this past week when my sister called and told me “mom doesn’t sound so good” and that she had been sick for two weeks, I was nervous, but not too upset. My mom is prone to flu and I was sure that was the case.

I put off calling her until Saturday. Talking to my mom is not to be taken lightly and must be done with a strength of ego and confidence because she will break them both down in an hour conversation.

Saturday I woke late, lazed in bed, then decided to call my mom and get it over with.

Only to find out my aunt was taking her to the hospital that day. She was convinced she had “Valley Fever” since they are doing construction next door to her apartment. The blood tests earlier this week said no. She’s had problems with ear tumors in the past, maybe it was that. It also shows all the signs of meningitis…..

So my sister and I geared up for the all too familiar. We both paid whatever insane fare the plane people wanted and flew out immediately.

The hospital sent her home with anti-nausea drugs and some incredibly powerful pain meds and set up a doctor appointment for tuesday. I’m going out of my mind because this could be anything from a really bad case of the flu to a really bad relapse of the tumors.

And I’ve spent the past two days tending to, arguing with, and caring for my elderly mother as though she were a child. Her snippy demand that my sister NOT take her temperature will go down in the annals of family lore……

With some pain meds, forcing liquids, getting her to eat and cleaning up her place, she seems to be back on her feet, wobbly, but upright. Don’t know if we are out of the woods. I do know that I don’t like being in this all too familiar place. And I’m sort of rebellious that I missed what looked to be a fine weekend.

But that’s my job as one of her three kids. I can’t abandon her, I can’t turn the other way. It’s the circle of life, right? Painful tho it may be.

In a few days I’ll go back to work and everything will be fine. But every time I have to drop everything and catch a plane to tend to a sick parent some part of me, some childhood wonder and joy goes dark.

The darkness of losing a parent is unlike anything I can describe. You simply, endure.

I don’t think I have to look at that yet. My mom will be kicking for a lot more years…but I wonder how many more times in the coming years I’ll be asked to hop a plane and “don’t think, just fly”.

For now, I’m ok. She’s ok. We’re…calm.

But it’s left me……

thoughtful