The problem of priorities

By the time you have kids you really should have picked a team in the chicken and egg conundrum. Clearly, the chicken came first or else the egg would not be there. Where the chicken came from is a mystery that parents need not worry about but that the chicken came and still comes first, that it should get enough sleep and have first dibs on the remote control, is no longer the question.

Quite a few things about my introduction to parenting were a bit unplanned. First, with Frost, I became pregnant while living on another continent from the rooster. This led to an abrupt truncation of my current domicile, high-flying career and ultimately citizenship. Secondly, Wren, who was disobliging enough to be born with a serious heart defect (thus making me feel bad about dumping him at a daycare and resuming said career) came at a time in which I was seriously planning a return to work. I had formed a LLC to use with my planned employment as a research consultant, had sent off some resumes and even had an interview with a local research company with the hope of being hired on a project basis. Having had three miscarriages in prior years I did not feel I was being overly optimistic while having a job interview in the first trimester. Bluntly put, I did not expect the egg to hatch.

Yet here I am again in the whole murky question of priorities. It is coming to a head because of the Franklin Covey Balanced Life Planner I bought a few weeks ago and have been dutifully filling in. You can scoff about them but having a paper system for keeping notes and plans and thoughts really works for me. Call it what you will - Josh calls these things part of my search for an external locus of control - I like to work with a list. My planner is the Boss.

This week my planner guide told me I had to set Priorities. I was supposed to have high level life categories and then to implement these categories into goals and next actions. So I started to pick goals from their list. I picked:

FAMILY

BODY AND SOUL

CREATIVITY

... and then I stalled. The next one was WORK. I sat there and thought about it. My current official status is "I want to work". If some survey company called and asked me if I was currently looking for work I would say YES and go into the ranks of the unemployed.

But I'm not.

But because I am an obedient planner-user if I pick WORK as a category does that mean I have to do something about?

I guess so.

Then, not a day after this awkward epiphany, a friend emailed asking whether I was interested in bidding on a focus group project she is outsourcing. I mentioned this to Josh and he said "when are you doing it?" I said that I was going to hear more about it. He asked "when". I started to get the feeling that I was going to be offered another external locus. I said that I would do so when I had the details.

He thinks I am procrastinating but I'm not.

Really.

I know I can do and manage part-time or contract work and would leap at any opportunity like that. However, there is not much of it out there and this is where I get to the chicken and the egg again.

Kids exist full time. So, if YOU - the full-time parent - want to work somewhere else then you have to find someone to look after your kids all that time. That costs lots of money and you don't have lots of money because you don't get paid to look after your kids. Also, while having your brain stabbed all day by shrieking children you are not in the confident and collected state of mind that finding work requires. It feels as if there are two, mutually exclusive states. State 1 is being a full-time parent. State 2 is being at work (and from the perspective of the brain-injured mother it looks like a meditative zone of contemplation and easy access to coffee although I know that is not true) but in reality those states overlap.

I wrote WORK as one of my categories. As an act of faith.

Anyhow. I could probably find some elegant way to bring this entry to a close but that would undermine the message which is that I am having a problem bringing this issue to a close. It is a work in progress. It's a chicken laying an egg while the egg writes its resume.

CATEGORY:

Work

GOAL:

Get a part-time or contract position that allows some flexibility to meet family needs.

NEXT ACTION:

Watch Californication with a cup of tea.

Thus the world turns.

My kids want to be Chinese

The family has gone crazy for Lunar New Year. Right now, Frost and Wren are eating peanuts

"If we eat Pomelo we will get abundance, prosperity and CHILDREN!"

"We must do decorations. We must get LIVE BLOOMING PLANTS. And we must get FLOWERS. And BAMBOO. Bamboo is for compatability, flexibility."

Frost has drawn some fish artwork.

Wren: "Can we can put some peanuts on the shelter [aka altar] for Chinese New Year so people can eat them."

Frost: "The peanuts are for a LONG LIFE."

Fever Diva

Wren was feeling a bit warm this evening and had a fever of 101 when I checked. He's OK, slightly glassy eyed and has a mild cough and upset stomach. I hope this doesn't develop into anything worse than a cold. Wren hates having "snot" (and will cry if his nose is stuffy) and was worried that he was coughing.

Both boys had a bit of extra screentime after Frost was done with homework. Frost played mini-ninja's and Wren watched. Wren is worried about boss fights and doesn't like the ogres.

Wren's favorite books are Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy and Ned's New Home which we read at bedtime.

Frost needs to get out more. He was bouncing off the walls after school and did his homework at rocket speed. He has an awful habit of starting writing in the middle of the line and drifting the margin to the right as he goes. After 7 lines his paragraphs are only a few inches wide. My threats, cajoling and punishments (making him rewrite it or do more, correctly) are not leading to any improvement. Other than this, all is well at home. Almost.

Joshua has to have a [repeat] root canal tomorrow. The dentist fears he has an abscess on a tooth under a loose crown. Perhaps some root tissue was left in the last procedure a few years ago. He has been on antibiotics and has the excavation tomorrow morning. He may take the day off if it is very awful or time consuming.

The broken moon

This evening Wren saw the moon rising over the lake as we scootered home. He said "there is half the moon!" When we got home he saw the half moon again. "THERE IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE MOON!" he said with great excitement. I wonder how it got broke?

About Wren

Here are a few anecdotes about Wren this week:

• Wren can eat an entire orange at one sitting. I cut them up into segments and he slowly and meticulously sucks and bites each piece. He puts the skins in "pretend compost heap" on the table. If you give him only a few segments he asks if there are more and more until the entire orange is cut up (I do this because I can't believe he will eat the whole orange!).

• Wren changes his mind a lot. This morning he had a series of tantrums because he said he didn't want to help me fetch the paper but after I had fetched it he "changed my mind" and wanted to come. He didn't want to help me let out the chickens but when I returned he "changed my mind" and wanted to have done it. He wanted Os for breakfast but when I served them he "changed my mind" and wanted Cinnamon Life which was finished. Woe.

• Wren scoots everywhere he can. He scoots from the car to the stairs. This morning we were early and there were tantrums so we went for a long detour on the way to the bus stop. At 8am we scooted around Ravenna-Eckstein park, Frost climbed and fell off the climbing frame, we met 8 dogs and scooted up two dead ends. It was fun.
• Wren loves to draw. He loves to draw things around things you have drawn. He also likes to guess what you are drawing (even when he knows what this is). Josh realized that he is pretending to play Pictionary.
• Wren is fascinated by the back massager I was given for Christmas.
• Wren tells long stories about things that happened "when I was a girl." Here is one: when I was a girl like you I went to California and I saw a spider THIS LARGE. [I ask if it tried to eat him] No, I had a shield and a sword to 'tect me. There was a party of spiders and all the spiders were nice. And we sat by the tree and the stars and the moon came out and it was all nice." NOTE: This partly describes a memorable evening in Australia where we lay in the hammock and watched the moon come out. Stories start "when I was a little girl" because Granny told so many stories in this vein.
• Wren remains afraid of the "mud goblins" I made up. I told him they live in the Ravenna Gorge and he imagines them in every puddle and tells them to STAY IN THERE and LISTEN TO ME.
• Wren sings and plays the xylophone. He pretends to read music.

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Heart Surgery and Health insurance

When we went to Stanford we were careful to ensure that Wren's surgery would be covered "in network". I remember a number of calls between us, insurers and LPCH's billing people. In retrospect I think we were lucky. I didn't understand that in-network charges may be expressed two ways with vastly different consequences for the final bill you receive. I credit MSNBC / Microsoft's great health insurance for getting us out of a potentially huge bill. This link is about Jodi's Lemack's story - she's a heart mum whom I emailed when we learned of Wren's diagnosis. Her son, Joshua, has HLHS and she runs an advocacy group called Little Hearts.

Here's the story. Hopefully it will help us all anticipate these problems (although how you can interrupt an anesthesiologist before surgery and ask about their insurance networks, I dunno).

Frost's Poem About Homework

Homework

I hate homework.

It is lame.

Like a classroom without knowledge

or a track without a train,

like a river without water

or a mom without a daughter

I could just wash you down the sink.

Oh homework,

You really stink.

Dragging my feet

I think its time to break out the gift certificate I got for Christmas and have a day spa. I shall put on some sunglasses with palm trees and blue seas glued on them and lie around for a day in a big white robe. The reality is day after day with skies of gunmetal grey.

I mis-typed that as gunmental and I guess that sums it up.

I am getting S-A-D (seasonal affective disorder). Today, as I drove back home from the lighting store, having failed to find anything close to what I want for the kitchen/dining lights [but learning an important new term of desire "line voltage pendants" as opposed to low voltage ones] I was looking out from the Ship Canal bridge and the lines of hills of dark trees were carved by perspective yet seemed to move against each other and run from the distant hills, scarcely snow clad even in this month of usual cold. I wanted to keep on driving to get to one of them. If its dark and cold you may as well have snow, I think. You may as well have some excuse to have a fire and apathy.

We could also see Queen Anne - a fat warty whale of a hill hiding the Sound. It has a few radio towers stabbed in its back. Wren said "turn on your radio now because the sound will come out from the radio towers to our car." He always says that like he always wants to draw and pull apart the bionicles. I just wish he would play with a plush pooh bear or a train track for a change. He plays with the arsenal of an 8 year old despite the chasm of 5 years missing manual dexterity which he bridges with shrieks of "do it self".

Anyway, I can't recall the point of this blog post other than to say that we are considering a trip to South Africa this year. Well, PLANNING. I am trying to find a good time to be gone a month - our chickens deny this is possible - and summer is the obvious choice. August is better than June due to the world cup being in my hometown. Still, August is winter and right now the idea of leaving summer for winter is rather dull. However, August is a great month for game reserves and it is likely that we could stay at Umfolozi for a while which would be fun to show Josh and the kids the wild beasties without the bugs.

I shall have to get on to Dad and Ingrid to see whether they can get reservations. I confess that my need to escape is really imminent and I can't see myself surviving in situ until August. I am of half a mind to run off overnight with Wren somewhere with open skies and space. I have itchy feet.

Joshua, the ice-cream god

Joshua has been making more ice-cream, anticipating our lunch tomorrow. Yesterday he made a batch of salted caramel ice-cream and it was easily as good as Molly Moon although there were some points at which I felt doubt. In the first batch the custard curdled, the caramel went to the hard crack point (I suspect, I mean, it was like brittle) and took some time to melt into the cream. Still, everyone in our family was in raptures when the pint container was full and there was about half a cup left in the bottom of the bowl.

Frost: Can I make my own blog. I want to say something "YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY ICECREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I have made some pumpkin pies with our fall squash and have a godawfully large looking standing rib roast in the fridge. Friends assure me it is not at all large by standing rib roast standards but I am frightfully aware of having a big bit of dead cow in the fridge. Wren did not make the process any easier when we were shopping at Whole Foods. As we stood in front of the meat cabinets he noticed the glass fronted fridges with the dry aged meats carcasses hanging on hooks.

"Is that dead meat?" he asked loudly.

"Yes" I said. Its meat.

"What animal did they kill?" he asked.

I was getting some stares of interest from the compassionate consumers around us.

I said that they were "cows and sheep" choosing not to mention buffalo, chicken, duck, turkey and pig. It was starting to feel like a macabre version of Old MacDonald.

They wrapped the roast in brown paper and Wren wanted to "hold that dead meat" but it was a bit heavy.

The butcher said "that is going to be delicious". I didn't say anything but I was thinking tha there was part of the sentence missing. What he meant was "if you cook that piece of meat well it has the potential to be delicious."

I hope I realize its potential.

Strange coincidence

In the mail today I received a letter addressed to somebody else. I only realized this after I opened it and it said "Dear Donna."

I looked at the letter and check it contained and was confused. The sender lived at our old house - the one we moved from after Frost's first year.

I called the author of the note. Indeed, she lives in our old house and remembers us moving on. The gate that was installed for us is still unfinished but they are happy there.

She meant to send the note to a friend who lives a few doors up from us but reversed two of the numbers by mistake.

Peculiar? Downright odd.