Doing it Wrong

Lovingly Warping the Next Generation

I was recently admonished about bragging about my kids too much, which took me by surprise. I mean yes, I will happily list the ways in which they are splendid and generally wonderful; yes, I will instantly agree with anyone who points out their many and varied virtues, but it's not bragging. No, no, it's an expression of wonder and amazement that these three fantastic people have turned out so well even though I was their parent.

There must be some lurking issues, some neuroses that I have instilled (unwittingly) in them. In 20 years time will one of them come sobbing to me, accusing, 'you made me read the Epic of Gilgamesh! When I was THREE! The HORROR!'? To which I'll just respond that it wasn't me, it was totally their dad so SUCK IT. [being able to say suck it to your grown children is one of the small but essential joys of being a parent.]

But surely I screwed them up somehow, because that's what we do when we're parents whether we mean to or not.

For example - just a few things from my childhood that have left odd little marks:

1) the way my father taught me to call a flexible kitchen scraper (known to the entire rest of the world as a spatula) a 'rubber policeman.' Yes, it does differentiate it from the flat flipper-type thing with the same name, but oddly enough, no one knows what in the world you want when you ask them for a rubber policeman. Also they might think you're slightly more adventurous - if you know what I mean - than you really are.

2) the 'alternative' family history my father spun for me which I, monumentally gullible, swallowed without question - the bear that interrupted my parent's honeymoon, blundered into their tent and then emerged wearing pearls and high-heels [my mum: why on EARTH would you think I would take high-heels on a camping trip? me: but it was your HONEYMOON]; the dramatic and exciting story of their engagement which involved a white flowing dress, a handkerchief and my mum soulfully pleading with my shy father to please, PLEASE marry her; the story of the water-bombs and the bishop in which my aunt was clearly possessed by Satan while my innocent, cherubic father was led astray against his knowledge. I still don't know the true stories for any of these incidents. Nor, if I'm honest, do I want to.

3) the time my father told me the wasps in the gooseberry bush in our backyard had been disposed of by a man in a white suit with a little TIIIINY BB gun, which has left me with a strange concept of exterminators ever since (they are not only armed and extremely accurate but are dressed like a 1970's resident of Hollywood heaven.)

4) the ancient black-and-white television they clung to for most of my childhood (third-hand when they got it and possibly the oldest television remaining on the planet). We weren't allowed to watch broadcast television much - Sesame Street was about it - but when The Wizard of Oz came on, as a great treat, we all clustered around the enormous 13" screen with our stove-popped popcorn and followed the buxom Dorothy through her adventures. Result was that on an early date with Kirk in a room full of my peers I suddenly sat bolt upright and said loudly, full of indignation, 'HEY! When did they colorize this??' I also thought Happy Days had been shot in the same era as Leave it to Beaver, and that M*A*S*H was actually filmed during the Korean War. I always lose badly at the pop-culture based portion of Trivial Pursuit.

So I'm sure, lurking behind all their glory and marvel, there are hidden bits and pieces where I've twisted them, just a little. I certainly hope so. Otherwise I wouldn't have been doing my job!

doppelganger

I've avoided comparisons most of my life.

I mean, once ages ago I was compared to a country singer whose name I don't remember, on the basis, I think, that she had long curly hair and I had long curly hair. I didn't take it seriously then what with never listening to country music [note: Kirk would say, it depends on which country].

But tonight I was compared to someone and it totally took me by surprise. I mean I'm flattered, desperately flattered, but also my impulse is to reject it totally because this person is way too COOL to be me. I mean... it's just.. well... you know.

Does anyone ever really get the likeness when someone points it out? I mean, I don't see 'myself' the way everyone else does - I catch a glimpse in a mirror, and it's almost always a prepared glimpse where I'm all nerved up beforehand so my face is set into the 'mirror face' which means it's distorted and staged and never really what other people see.I don't think I've seen THAT 'me,' the external 'real' me for years now.

But tonight I was told that it wasn't a superficial likeness - because my hair is nothing like, nor my colouring really - but the way I move my hands when I talk, the words I use; those seem to be a reflection of this person... which is intriguing because I kind of think that gets into who I am a lot more closely than the little bits like whether my eyes are hazel or green, or if my hair is curly (some days) or straight (other days when I've had the time and energy to do something with it).

Well, at least I know what my Halloween costume is this year.

I'm totally going as the White Witch of Narnia.

Grown Up

One of my kids lives crammed up against a coastline, breathing in that sweet, sweet ocean air all by herself. She has her own bank account and her own credit card. She buys clothes I've never even seen. She volunteers on the weekends walking strange dogs around an unknown building in a state I hardly know. She has a job that is so serious she can't even talk about it and knows stuff that she has to tuck into a special part of her brain, all taped over with red TOP SECRET tape. The only person who could have understood that part of her life was her Dad and he missed that, and she knows it and I know it so we don't talk about it at all. We Skype and we message and send stupid links to each other on Facebook, but most of the hours in her days are not my hours any more.

Another kid isn't even in the country, and when I manage to catch her on her way from one thing or another, it's evening for her when I'm still gearing up to contemplate brunch. She takes classes in subjects I know nothing about and spends her nights having erudite discussions using terminology I've never even heard. On Christmas Eve she listened to a sermon in an ancient cathedral and participated in an old ritual that is entirely new to her. On New Years she lit a torch and, with hundreds of other lit torches, she walked through the city, HER city, the city she has made her own by walking its streets, step by step learning it until it lives in her heart. I didn't see her light up the night sky. I didn't walk with her, and see our breath cloud out in front of us when we laughed. I didn't watch her do it on all on her own with those hundreds of other people and, seeing another woman also alone in the crowd and a little sad on New Year's Eve, hand over her extra torch to light up someone else's sky as well.

And now my other kid, my last kid whom I had the great privilege of getting to know all on his own the last year or so (sorry girls - it's the one compensation for being the youngest. Think of it as payback for all the times you made his Bionicle's play pony games and have tea parties) - THAT kid is planning on moving out on his own. Which is good. It's right. It's what he needs to do. And I wish to all hell I didn't feel guilty about it, especially about him being in THIS city, THIS place that none of us really like and that is painted over with our days and months and years of being unhappy. But he assures me that he'll be fine because he has his personal freedom, the thing he can hop on and throw all that miserable city crap, and his job with its horrible hours, and all the other things that pile up and hem you in behind him. He hangs his happiness on two wheels, and I've seen him come back from a ride to the mountains so sometimes, sometimes I almost believe him.

 

Exposures

I know, the whole blogging internet knows Heather Armstrong and her husband are separated. And there are threads on forums I'm sure, talking about it and why it happened, and people saying horrid, hateful, spiteful things about one or the other or both (and their dog). Because Heather opened up her world and let everyone in, and now there are a whole lot of folks who can't forgive her for that - or for being successful at it, or for writing with a particularly strong and distinctive voice that includes irony and exaggeration (apparently many of these folks were born with a majorly defective sense of humour - it's IRONY people, IRONY), or for living the way she does - or doesn't, or any of the million billion other things that Heather, and people like Heather, get judged for.

Only all these people, these judges and side-line umpires, they GET to. They get to be nasty because she ASKED for it, because she's not a 'real' person anymore, she's a public person and now the whole wide world owns her and the rights to her inner thoughts and most intimate feelings.

So while she and her family are going through what must be one of the most turbulent and distressing episodes of their lives they CAN'T just shut down and hide and deal with it privately, not coming out again until they have some scabs grown over all those fresh, painful raw spots. And not because they'd lose income or core readers or audience share, but because they would get just as much hell for NOT sharing (I've seen some of it) as they would if they do. So they're trying to ride the line, the line of staying honest and faithful to what they have chosen to do while still protecting themselves and each other and their kids. And I really, really feel for them.

Because I'm the opposite. I keep secrets and hold things close and deal out my story in small bits and pieces to trusted people. Which sounds like a mad thing to say since I have a blog and I do write about my life - but only the tiniest infinitesimal bit of it: the fraction of a piece of the skin on the surface. And there are so many reasons - I have older children and I try to protect them although they don't really need it so much any more; I have family who don't always agree with me or appreciate my opinion on things they hold dear; I work in a place that has to worry about privacy and... the fact is that secrecy is my control, it's my safety. It's the habit I got into when Kirk went missing and I've never really gotten over it.

I actually intended coming on today and spilling just a little - just some of what I've been doing the last couple of months, and plans for the next little bit. And I will, sometime I will.

But maybe not today.

 

EDITED TO ADD:

To the person who just emailed me that the whole wide world should be able to say whatever they hell they want because, 'SHE ASKED US TO WHEN SHE WROTE THAT BLOG' --

If someone invites you into their home you sit down in the living room. You make small talk - maybe you even nibble the crackers and cheese put out on the coffee table. You do not barge unasked upstairs to rifle the contents of their bedroom and then proceed to lambaste your host on their choice of lubricant and the fact that there's a vibrator in the second drawer down in the bedside table. BOUNDARIES people.

Also, unknown emailing stranger who is still using AOL, I'm kinda weirded out that you were so quick to defend your internet trolling to someone whom you have never met, but lemme make this clear. I don't know Dooce, I don't know her husband. The chances that I will ever, EVER meet either of them are nil, absolutely nil. So no, despite what you seem to think, I am neither a personal friend nor hoping to become one. I was writing about how this effect, this public tromping through private ground, changes the way I think and write, not about how Heather and Jon should be treated like super special precious delicate things simply because they're famous on the internet.

Nope, they should be treated respectfully and kindly because they are HUMAN BEINGS, human beings who, right now, are hurting.

Sheesh.

Bum bah bum bum bum

I was going to do a really impressive New Years post about the past year and the new one.

Okay, I wasn't.

But I WAS going to do one about how I don't do resolutions and instead talk about what I want to do this year instead.

Only I didn't.

I mean, I THOUGHT about it. In a vague sort of, yeah, that'd be cool, sort of way. And then the mental tick-tock clock in my head clicked in and I started to figure out just when a New Year's post was appropriate - maybe the 2nd is okay, possibly the 3rd - but by the time it's been a week into January, face it, it's not the new year and no one really gives a damn anymore. Which made that a no go. Shame really, it was going to be a totally noble post full of charitable deeds and selfless acts.

Which makes things a bit awkward, because I don't WANT to go ages between posts [because, coff coff, one of my 'non resolutions' is writing more regularly] but then I'm a bit stuck when things go too long with whatever topic is sort of floating at the surface of my not-too-reliable brain.

Which is why, shamingly, my first post of the new year is about bums.

Bottoms.

Arses.

Backsides.

Or - as my mum (I KID YOU NOT) used to say when I was little, FANNIES.

And it's not deep, or meaningful, or exceptionally insightful, it's just....

... well, I was watching some show, right? and it wasn't recorded so I couldn't zip through the ads which left me watching, helpless, these strangly anthropomorphic red bear things (I'd been aware of them before) who were, apparently, plagued by some condition that shredded their toilet paper and left it spackled to their hairy red anthropomorphic bums.

And I admit, I find myself baffled.

I have never encountered this disorder. Am I unique? Is my bum truly so smooth and pristine that somehow toilet paper just skims over it, removing the unwanted stuff but somehow not leaving large chunks of itself behind? Do people HONESTLY need to have someone give them a good once-over to make sure there aren't errant toilet paper pieces adhering to the sand-paper-like surface of their posteriors?

Because if I am so superior I want to know so as to add this to my CV (also to submit myself to humiliating but lucrative scientific testing), but if not I am beginning to believe that there is a subversive group at work attempting to overwhelm the American public by convincing them they are TOTAL AND COMPLETE IDIOTS.*

 

 

 

*This is  NOT helped by the current front runners for president. Nor by the debates. Nor the ads. Nor the... ... ... sigh.

 

Happy New Year everyone, and for the record, I'm kinda anti-Mayan DOOM AND GLOOM 2012. I figure 2014 at the worst. Maybe 2018...

Wrapping [pun unintended but unavoidable] up Christmas

So, we FINALLY did it this morning - we finished Christmas. The snow-storm lost box that was headed out to the East Coast finally arrived (after a bit of finagling and possibly some threats) and, still hot from the delivery truck, it was opened, on skype, with all family members present and accounted for. Granted, one kid is not going to get a main present until tomorrow on account of deciding REALLY REALLY LATE what it wanted, but it opened its place-holder presents (which included, to my shame, a beautifully wrapped bag of Chili Fritos with App store gift cards taped to it) and was very gracious.

All in all I'm a bit relieved to be able to stamp 'final' on this holiday and put it away until next year, but it was fun. It produced three marathon all-family skype sessions which were hilarious and very necessary. There were numerous messaging episodes with outlying kids which was also hilarious. And as a bonus, this morning it produced my very favorite joke of the year.

Set up - we had all pulled the Christmas crackers and, per tradition, were wearing the silver-paper crowns, when the Local Child (male) knicked a red ribbon from one of the presents and wrapped it around the base of his crown. And who did that make him?

Rambo's lesser known metrosexual cousin: Rainbo.

He was very pleased with himself.

Oh, also, as part of our do-something-semi-Christmassy-every-day-until-the-flippin'-box-comes, I also produced a touching seasonal story for my children and sent it out on e-mail. I have been requested to post it here as well, which I am doing, as a PDF file. Think of it as the holiday gift you didn't know you wanted. Percy: a Story. Download Percy-a-story

Article

There's an article about Kirk and me and the family floating around in the internets. It posted yesterday, or that's what the very nice reporter said was going to happen.

I can't confirm that because I'm a great ginormous chicken and it was pretty flippin' hard talking to her (although, again, she was very nice indeed AND she was slaving away the day before Christmas). I even went through the family photos we have that survived a flood a couple of years back which is another thing I've been pretty chicken about.

I just couldn't quite manage to track the article down and read it. Not on Christmas.

It's on The Daily which is a digital newspaper for the iPad. I have an iPad and I will, dutifully, track it down. Maybe even today.

Maybe.

Failing Christmas

So THIS year one of my kids is miles and miles away in a totally different city within an utterly different country on a completely different continent. Which is very cool actually, and I'm thrilled to bits, but it does make things a bit difficult when coordinating celebrations.

Also, another of my kids is working for a [cough, soulless] corporation that, in its wisdom, is open not only Christmas Eve but also Christmas day AND said kid has been scheduled for both of those days, AND doesn't have a day off even until the Wednesday after Christmas.

Add to that the other child who is not only far away (but not as far as the first referenced offspring above), but informed me that the box of cherished Christmas ornaments and things that we had carefully packed up for said child last Christmas has been LOST by the Powers that Be and therefore this child is alone, family-less and HAS NO STOCKING. It did offer to use one of its own socks, but since I immediately imagined the sad, sad scene with my darling offsprung holding out its pathetic, empty bowl and lisping, 'please thir, I would like thome more.' while the sock hung empty and bereft behind it... I said no, I would MAKE this child one!! Yerse... only this was LAST WEEK which, if you're counting, is rather close to THIS WEEK. But! I could not let my darling child go without a stocking so I persevered. - CHILD!! What follows is A Spoiler! DO NOT READ ON if you wish to  be surprised by your stocking!! And I made it this:



Which involved some embroidery to produce this:

Yes, I actually did try to embroider 'pull to open' in the teensiest letters imaginable. No, it was not entirely successful due to the limitations of a) felt and b) my talents. Still...

I have to admit I'm pretty chuffed about the dalek. I mean, really:

Whose the cutest little genocidal nihilist? YOU ARE! Yes you are!

ANYWAY

Point is that took a bit of time, but all was well as the REST of that child's Christmas-inna-box was totally done and dusted and ready and so, on what wasn't even the last possible day by what was not completely the skin of my teeth, I did get it finished, wrapped, packed and mailed. Only to have the midwest totally and purposely THWART me by deciding to have a flippin' great snow-storm.

So my kid's Christmas is sitting in a mail-room, delivered the day AFTER the last day said mail-room is open, and therefore not possibly claimable until TUESDAY at the earliest.

To recap: One child remote and unreachable but happy, one child doing slave labour through the entire holiday, one child remote AND unable to claims its Christmas until well after the Day Itself.

CHRISTMAS FAIL

S'okay. We're planning plans and scheming schemes and salvaging Christmas if it kills us. Which means we're introducing an entirely new festal day -

December 28th! Feast day of procrastinators, slave laborers, and far flung loved ones. It'll catch on. Trust me.

Brilliant Ideas

So with my usual lack of segue - here is evidence of the 8 miniature houses I said I was faux painting. And you thought I was kidding! These darn things took HOURS of time for two people, utterly destroyed my den for about 2 weeks and then finally got set up the day before we got a very long, very damp snow fall. Sigh, but they do look very pretty, especially at night (if I get ambitious I'll post some night shots too):

Yes, I've blurred out all the background, yes it's the most half-assed blur job I've ever done. Yes, I really am that lazy! However! Please notice the weensy windows, all leaded AND with stained glass detail (not REAL glass of course, that would be SILLY and TIME CONSUMING as opposed to hand-painting them... which was totally sane and took only days!)

Yup - 8 of them. And please don't count how many windows because I'll cry. Let's just say a lot. A lot of windows that had to be cut out (not by me thank goodness) and then glazed. Also there was the carved trim applied...

Notice - clock tower WITH copper roof... also each house box is wired up with white Christmas lights so they all light up at night. You can also see where I got well and truly SICK of faux painting!

Madness I tell you, madness.

Family - next time you hear the phrase 'I just had a brilliant idea' leave my lips please, do me a favor and stun me gently and leave me somewhere out on the Serengeti where the hyenas can get me. It'll be easier and less painful all the way around!

Withdrawn

So the war is over - not that it was a war, right? Especially not since it was declared won all those years ago. But the flag was run down, the ceremonial parades were paraded (I assume. I didn't see any, but the military does love them a parade and will take any excuse to dust off the dress duds and dust the Sousa CD) and, officially, we're done. Hands dusted. America is out of Iraq.

It was a very polite job too, sort of 'my, my, look at the time, no don't mind me I'll see m'self out.' Quiet, that's what it was.

And I've been sort of prodding around all day, poking at various bits of my mind, trying to see how the announcement makes me feel - gingerly, rather like getting up the day after a good hard run, checking for the sore spots that might be lurking.

And it's the oddest thing, the most childish thing, the most ridiculous and illogical thing to feel.

I'm sad, because Kirk is alone now.

Wherever he is, whatever happened out there in that desert, we've left him behind.

And I'm sad.