The Queen's Rambles

I have 18% battery life, which means this will be short. I’ve never tried to write an entry at karate before. Usually I am chasing a toddler around, which is not conducive to happy little journal writing. Actually, lately I’ve been running home, sitting there for 20 minutes and running back to karate. When the weather is nicer I spend the time walking around the shopping complex.
Mike is on vacation for two weeks, but so far he is probably wishing he could be back at work. Elsa is a mess. Last night she had a gigantic fart, then was happy and free. Except? She started coughing. And when she would cough a lot, she would projectile vomit all over us. At least we figured out the sound she was making right before the vomit came, so we were mainly able to contain it in the bathroom instead of our bed. Still, sleep? Who got any? Erik, I suppose.
Who is the grouchiest person alive when they don’t get sleep? That would be me. I was going to try really, really, really hard to be a nice, happy, chipper wife and mother this afternoon. Then Mike snuck up behind me and smacked his lips in my ear. I had a little meltdown, complete with crying. Mommy needs a nap.
We’re going to Vancouver later this week, which means we figured out we better be smart and check the weather. Sunscreen and bathing suits won’t be necessary. I need to get fall clothes and raincoats for the kids. Yikes!
I was upset when I was in Kohl’s this weekend and they were almost out of summer stuff, but I was happy today when I needed fall stuff.
Except? The colors for girls this fall?
Oh. My. God.
So ugly and garish, I couldn’t bring myself to buy much of anything. Who loves poison green and orange? Ugh. Not me. I did find her a few things, but it was disappointing.
Of course they didn’t’ have rain coats at this time of year so I had to stop in the consignment shop and see if they had anything. I found a weird little hoodless poncho for Erik and an extremely cute lavender raincoat for Elsa. I looked around at their other clothes and will never understand how they price their clothes. There were a couple of things that still had the tags from the original store. The consignment store prices were higher. Ugh. I only ever buy toys there, generally. It’s worth the price to buy something that’s already assembled.
So summer camp! I am so far off, but I want to write about my college days.
College was a good time for me, even though I would never want to go back and do it again. I went to a very small, conservative Christian college in Oklahoma. I was really scared of the whole college admissions process and set my sights very, very low when I was in high school. I was one of the few really smart people at this college so I got a pretty good deal on tuition. It also turned out to be an excellent teacher school, not that I knew I wanted to be a teacher. When I took masters classes in Oregon later I was really irked because the classes I took as part of undergrad were exactly the same, if not more difficult.
Anyway, there were only 500 students enrolled with about 250 on campus so everyone knew everyone. I was part of yearbook, including editor for 2 years, so I really had an excuse to be up in everyone’s business. I was also part of the spiritual life committee and secretary of our church’s college ministry club. I even went out to the nursing home most Sundays and led singing. If you’ve heard me sing, you’d know just how desperate they were.
I was a student leader and always helped with freshman orientation. I was not popular or pretty, but I had friends and I had my niche. I enjoyed it.

My only problem was my freshman roommate. She was a nightmare. Bossy, pushy, mean, devious. You name it. She would wear my clothes without permission. She tried to control me at every opportunity—a big mistake on her part since I have always been fiercely independent. When I was done with her I was d-o-n-e. After our sophomore year I literally never spoke another word to her. I’m not proud of it, but I was a master at ignoring people.
As a Christian college, we had lots of rules that most colleges don’t have. We were pretty liberal because we were allowed to wear shorts and males and females did not have to have chaperones when they were together. We were not allowed to dance at all, or drink and smoke. We had a curfew. All those rules were just fine with me and I never had a reason to break any of them.
This was the first time I had experience with really fundamentalist Christians. My church in Oregon was very West Coast. Oklahoma was a whole different story. Most of the students were from the Bible belt and had some notions that I considered crazy. They weren’t allowed to go to the movies (but they could rent movies) and they weren’t allowed to talk about aliens (I loved telling them that if God was all powerful he could easily create aliens, which sent them in a tizzy about my heathen ways). There was a lot of hypocrisy which really started to bother me when I realized what was happening.

Pregnant couples who had the right last name or right connections were quickly married off in a nice little ceremony. Pregnant couples who weren’t “Christian enough” were immediately kicked out of school. There was a lot of judgment on any one who didn’t go to the “right” church or who acted a little different. There was tons of hatred towards gays and lesbians, of course. Two girls were basically run out of school because someone decided they were lesbians. The hatred toward Democrats, Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, girls with short hair, girls who didn’t wear make-up and basically any group that believed “Other” was sickening. At the time I didn’t realize just how sickening, but I surely did realize that these people were extremists. They made the transition to atheist later in life very easy.
And now I have to wrap this up, because there’s a screaming baby (I ran out of battery juice at karate) and I am going to go see HP7p2 in about an hour. I have been ordered to have fun. I’m just worried about staying awake.

I really intended to do my blogging summer camp every day, but things are conspiring against me. I want to tell you about my college days! I was such a different person back then, yet exactly the same. Is that even possible?

Maybe later.

Right now you are getting an Elsa update because I know you are all sitting around wondering just what’s wrong with her this time. Poor baby.

She started puking Saturday night and we had a long, long night of a hot, pukey baby. I didn’t know if I should take her to the ER for meningitis or not, but her symptoms were not what the doctor had described to me. A baby spinal tap is not a good thing at any time, but especially at 3 am. Of course, I would have regretted it forever if I had been wrong. With Erik being sick, it didn’t seem likely. The horse is more likely than the zebra, right?

She’s been feverish since then, so at her well child check today they totally scrapped the well child part and decided to figure out what’s wrong with her. It was a complete nightmare.

First, we had a blood draw at a lab. They should also check for iron, so at least that is out of the way.

Then they swabbed her throat and collected a urine sample. If she continues to be feverish, they want to take a chest x-ray before we leave for our trip.

I thought she was feeling a lot better today. She hasn’t had a fever, so I thought we would have a good night.

But guess what!

She has gas!

Oh my god, does she have gas. I’ve given her plenty of drops, but she keeps rolling around, crying, coughing, farting. I am pretty sure it’s gas. But what if it’s meningitis and the farts aren’t the problem?

Parenting sure is fun.

At least Erik is doing well. He was really unhappy with me because I made him go shopping with me this afternoon, but he got over his dismay and was a pleasant companion. We looked up the weather for Vancouver and realized we are all going to need some clothes for a much cooler climate. I have no idea what size pants to get him, so I took him with me and we found some for him. We went to Kohl’s yesterday to get Elsa some new summer stuff since she has outgrown everything, but they had already switched over to their fall collection. I expected the rest of the stores to be like that, but I had a heck of a time finding any fall appropriate clothes at JCP. They had exactly ONE hoodie thing and it was $50. I don’t think so. We ran to Macy’s and found something a little better.

Why did we have to run? Because I was scheduled to hand out lunches to homeless people.

Other moms had already made the lunches, so there was just one other mom with a two year old and newborn and then me and Erik handing them out. We only gave out 26 lunches in an hour, so we didn’t even need two people but it was nice to have someone there. Twenty-five of the people were just fine. They took their lunch, said thank-you, wished us a nice day and left. There was one guy who stuck around and ate his meal on a bench outside the kitchen. That was fine, of course. But then he came back to the window and wanted another one, which we had been instructed several times not to do. Then he wanted to know the time they were opened on Saturday and Sunday. They aren’t open those days, so I told him. He wanted to argue with me, then he wanted another lunch, then he wanted to know when the hot lunch program at a different church starts back up again. I didn’t have that information, but he kept asking and asking. I was pleasant and friendly, but it was getting a little scary. As soon as he left the little window, we looked at the kitchen door and figured out how to lock ourselves in. He didn’t come back and cause any trouble, but you just never know.

Ok, we need to figure out what we are going to do with this sick baby. I think we are in for another long night. It’s really going to suck. Mike is on vacation this week, at least. Tomorrow he and Erik are supposed to go to Baltimore and have a pirate adventure. I hope he remembers to take some pictures.

You have never seen a mother celebrate a child’s fever the way I was celebrating Erik’s fever last night. Doesn’t that sound so wrong?

He was laying on the couch a few minutes before his bedtime, begging to go to bed. That set off the alarm bells. I felt him and he was pretty hot.

I’m hoping that means Miss Elsa just had a little virus too and yesterday’s fiasco was just over-protective paranoia. But if I have the over-protective paranoia, so did the doctor. We both said we hoped it was nothing but we needed to treat it as if it was something.

Erik is just fine today and Elsa seems to be feeling much better as well. We will still go to our appointment with the infectious disease doctor on Wednesday. Our doctor was very clear: do not miss that appointment no matter what. Even if Elsa seems to be better, you never know with Lyme. They may sign her up for some long term studies or something. It can only be good to have contact with them (it is through Children’s National hospital.

We don’t want anything to happen to this sweet baby:

I need to learn how to have better fine motor skills so I can figure out how to do something with that hair.

By the way, I want you to know that I am now offering a weather and labor service. If you need the therometer to stay below 80 or you need to go into labor, just let me know. We’ll schedule a splash park playdate and one or the other will be guaranteed to happen. Or someone will die, or someone will need an emergency medical appointment, or several of these things will happen at once.

Seriously.

I’ve had EIGHT splash park playdates scheduled this year with various friends and groups. EIGHT. All of the above have happened, causing the date to be cancelled. Yesterday it didn’t hit 80 and Elsa had an emergency ped visit, but I said “GOSH DARNIT WE ARE GOING.” So we went. And it was cold. And Elsa was cranky. And I felt like the worst mother in the world.

But they had fun for about an hour before it all came crashing down.

I would have liked to get a better picture, but the girl unexpectedly ran into the giant water maze so I had to pass the camera off to my friend who wasn’t getting wet (she has a newborn. See above: labor.) I was pretty shocked that the maze didn’t scare her. Even Erik didn’t like it when he was her age until he got used to it. She is much more of a water baby than he ever was, but she doesn’t get nearly as many chances to go swimming. I am too scared to take both of them to the pool by myself (not that we have a handy pool–we could pay to go to the community pool, but it is not like when we lived in our apartment with the pool at the foot of our stairs).

Just the word will strike fear in any parent’s heart: meningitis.

No, we don’t have anyone here with meningitis, thank God. But we are supposed to be on the lookout for the symptoms and take Elsa to the ER immediately if she displays any of the symptoms.

Yes, this mommy is freaking right out.

So what happened?

The stupid Lyme disease.

From everything I’ve read, I thought two weeks was an awfully short time for a course of antibiotics for Lyme disease, but it also seemed like the standard first step.

Today Elsa woke up with a fever, she was really tried and cranky, she was crying like she was in pain. I tried to convince myself it was just a virus, but then I noticed the spot by her tick bite was really red.

I called the doctor and had her in for a visit less than two hours later.

The doctor is also hoping it is just a virus, especially because the redness around the tick bite was gone. However, she says we can’t be too safe and I totally agree. We are doing another round of antibiotics (anyone have tips for traveling by air with liquid medication that needs to be kept cold?) and taking her in for a blood test. Then we have an appointment with a specialist in infectious disease. It’s a good thing we live where we live because we know we will be getting the best possible care. The appointment is actually in Frederick, so just a half hour drive from us.

Before we left, the doctor pulled me aside and told me she had went back to her office to read some more about Lyme and saw that meningitis has a much higher incidence in children with Lyme, so she wants us to keep a close eye on her. I know it is unlikely she will get it, but after having a friend have a friend lose a 4 month old baby to meningitis just a couple of weeks ago, the consequences are fresh in my mind. It’s not something to play around with.

So there you have it. We could use some good thoughts thrown our way!

Summer and I are having a love hate relationship.

Things I love:

Summer camp! I thought getting Erik to camp by 9 am would be impossible, but we’ve only been a few minutes late a few days. Getting up earlier and out of the house has been really good for us all. It seems to give us more of a purpose and a schedule. Best of all, the time fits well with the gym classes I like to take so I’ve been getting back into BodyPump and Zumba. I just have to remember not to put too much weight on the squats so my ass doesn’t enlarge itself again.

Also, summer camp is four glorious hours and it is only a five minute commute. Way, way better than his preschool, which was two and a half hours with a 15 minute commute. I suppose I could feel guilty for enjoying four Erik free hours, but he loves it so why feel guilt? He is a high maintenance extrovert. He needs lots of people and stimulation and it exhausts me to be the sole provider of such things. I am so glad that Elsa is content to play by herself for long periods, as long as I am in the room. She doesn’t insist on being right on top of me 24/7.

The neighborhood! The kids are outside all the time and it’s so wonderful that we have a place where Erik can run free and enjoy all that sort of kid fun freedom that I enjoyed as a kid. Things are so different from when I was young and in a lot of places you really can’t just let your kid free range, but we are very comfortable with it in our neighborhood. We have kids in and out of our house all day long and most of the time they are really good kids and are all just enjoying being alive.

Things I don’t like:

The gnats! Egads, the gnats. I know I’ve complained about it before, but it bears repeating. I even bought this personal bug zapper thing that looks like a tennis racket, but the strings are electric. Sounds really safe around children, doesn’t it? You have to press two buttons at the same time to activate it. Problem is, the gnats are too small so they go right through the holes.

The heat! I am so not cut out for this type of heat and humidity. Being outside is unbearable. I would love to throw Erik out and tell him not to bring his friends in my house, but there’s no way that’s responsible. I don’t particular like having a house full of random boys, but they can’t play outside in this heat.

Weird neighbors! Ok, so I love our neighborhood. That has been well established. I love the way the kids all roam around together and have fun. I just don’t necessarily love everything they do. The good outweighs the bad, by far, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get irked.

I get irked when kids just walk into my house without knocking. There’s a couple of preschoolers who have been doing that (where are their parents???) and I am trying to train them not to do it. They come in with Erik, fine. They can’t just walk in, though.

I am irked with a mother who keeps having Erik over for dinner without asking me. I think it is cultural, but she really needs to contact me or have Erik come ask me before feeding him dinner. It wouldn’t be a big thing if it was rare (still, just ASK, you know?) but it happened three nights in a row and each night she served chicken nuggets. I am trying to train Erik to not eat dinner and people’s houses without asking, but I know this lady and know how insistent she can be. It’s difficult for an adult to resist her social pressure to eat what’s on offer. How is Erik supposed to navigate those waters, particularly when he just wants to eat some chicken nuggets?

I asked a question about this on a parenting debate community because I was just curious about what people do when neighbor kids are hanging at their house around dinner time. I always send the kids away with a “Sorry kiddos, time for us to eat. Erik will be out to play later.” If it was just one particular kid and I knew his parents well, I might invite him over for dinner if I checked with the parent. I don’t feel any obligation to feed random kids who are running in and out of my house.

I was surprised that I am in the firm minority on that one. Several people thought it was rude not to offer food, though I am wondering if they really understood how casual the situation is. They kept talking about guests in their home being offered food, but I don’t really consider these children guests. They are just. . . there. I consider a guest more of a person or child that I’ve invited and made particular plans with the other parent.

Anyway, it was interesting to get different perspectives about it. I know many cultures consider it quite rude to turn someone away without giving them food. Food has such power and strings attached. Ugh.

How about some summer camp?

Today’s prompt was about how we dress and how bloggers in general dress. I sport a casual stay-at-home mom look. Jeans or shorts, t-shirt or blouse. Nothing fancy, but I do like a bit of bling or design detail.

I don’t have any clue how bloggers in general dress. Is there a blogging dress code? I used to follow a blogger who prided herself on dressing fancy even though she was a stay-at-home mom. I finally had to stop reading her blog when I figured out she was a judgmental bitch who only cared about appearances. Duh. Took me long enough. She was interesting, but not interesting enough to keep in my feed after she made rude comments about people with big feet.

I missed the prompt about best and worst job.

My best job is difficult to figure out. I’ve had a lot of jobs. A lot. Dishwasher, waitress, cook, English teacher, bookstore employee, at-risk youth trainer, youth center coordinator, Apple help desk, professor’s assistant, perfume counter at Dillard’s, yearbook editor (got paid for that one year in college), substitute teacher. The list goes on and on.

The jobs I hated the most are a toss up between subsitute teacher in Sweden and Apple help desk person.

The school district in Kiruna, Sweden was run very differently from any school system I’d ever taught in. Basically, the monkeys were running the zoo. The kids had to be treated with respect, but they were not expected or taught to teach adults with respect. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted in the classroom because it was their choice on whether or not they wanted to learn. They could come in late, leave early, talk on their cell phones. I subbed for two weeks and it was the most miserable time I’ve ever had in a classroom. I had asked the teacher what to do about detention slips or just basic consequences and she didn’t have a freakin’ clue what I was talking about. As far as I could tell there was no way to discipline students.

And my God, did those kids need discipline. I’ve never, ever experienced such horrible treatment at the hands of students (except that time I literally thought some teen boys were going to pull a gun on me and kill me). It was unreal. I’m so happy it was only two weeks.

The other worst job was working for a company that provided support for Apple products. As far as the callers knew, we worked for Apple, but we didn’t really. There were all kinds of companies represented in our call center. I hated sitting in a cube for 10 hours a day. I hated that we weren’t really supposed to help the people. We were just supposed to do whatever we could to get them off the phone fast so our call volume was good. I hated the people. I hated the smell. I hated everything about that job.

Oh, I suppose teaching English was a hell job too. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that literally had me contemplating suicide, so I guess that makes it the worst job by default. I think all first year teachers should be required to go to an employer provided therapist. It’s a very demanding job with very little rewards and it is very, very isolating.

As far as best jobs go, I really enjoyed selling perfume at Dillard’s. I only did it for three months so I didn’t get into the politics of it. It would suck to have that as your career because they increase your sales per hour as you have experience so eventually you will get fired if you start making too much money because you can’t possibly keep up with the sales. Since I knew it was just temporary, it was really fun. I got to learn all about these fancy perfumes and win lots of prizes. The work was super easy. I mainly worked on the men’s cologne side, so I took training on how to sell to men. I was always very shy, but since I was doing a job I did it like I was trained to do it, which mainly meant I spent all day flirting with men. I was fresh out of college and really enjoyed that. Who wouldn’t?

I also really like substitute teaching. If I can’t think of anything else to do after the kids are in school, I’ll probably sign up as a sub. I haven’t looked into it here to see if it is worth the money. The money is usually not that great and there are no benefits, but it could be nice for a mom since you don’t work if there is no school and you don’t have to work any time you don’t want to work.

Day 12 – Tell us about the first time you got drunk or tipsy (as far as you can remember…) Do you ever stop yourself from telling too much when you write on-line or do you think you tell too much?

Read more: 31 Days of Blog Juice at Creating Motherhood

I guess I skipped a couple of days, there. I will go back if the prompts are interesting. I’m sure you all want to hear about the first time I got tipsy. On my honeymoon. My group honeymoon.

That’s not as kinky as it sounds.

Huh. Looks like I am going to talk about that since you can’t say group honeymoon and not explain, especially if you are not a polygamist.

Mike and I lived alone in Sweden in our little love nest so we had plenty of honeymoon type opportunities for three years. We never got to see our book club friends. We met in this online book club; we are a very tight knit group.

Several of our book club members were able to come to our wedding in my hometown in OR. Instead of going off to Hawaii or doing something super romantic, we thought it would be more fun to hang out with our friends that we never, ever get to see. A big group of us went to Brookings, OR, a typical chilly Oregon beach town, for our honeymoon. I was 29, I think? And I had a margarita and got tipsy and I became very talkative and apparently funny.

I’d only had alcohol on a couple of occasions prior to my honeymoon. Having an alcoholic father made me terrified of drinking. Being heavily involved in a fundamentalist church didn’t help, either. Even now I rarely drink. I never developed a taste for it, plus I have enough addiction problems with chocolate. I don’t need to add alcohol to the mix. I know first hand how that can destroy a family.

As for the second part of the question, yes I do stop myself from writing certain things. I have been doing this a long, long time and have learned some hard lessons about writing for the public. I have learned to be a lot more tolerant and not talk out of my ass so much. There’s always someone who is going to be offended by my opinion. That’s one of the good things about being an unknown blog.

I try not to talk about my friends on here because that’s a good way to lose friends. I used to tell lots of fun stories about the crazy people I know, but it’s just not worth it. Sometimes I have to get those stories out, so those stories go on LiveJournal under a friends lock. My blog was a lot more fun when I was young and naive and writing about people is a not always complimentary way.

Unrelated, but I just have to mention it: The other day I forgot to answer a question about blogging in education. I’ve been going around and reading a lot of the summer camp posts and am surprised by the number of people who don’t think blogging has a role in education. I didn’t answer the question because I forgot, but also because the answer is so obviously yes.

As a former teacher I can think of tons of uses for blogging. First and foremost, a classroom blog that lets parents know what’s happening would be super useful. You could remind parents of when big assignments are due, when progress reports go out, and so on.

I can think of tons of other uses just off the top of my head. I taught English so anything that would get a kid to write would be a good thing. Of course the problem would be making sure bullying didn’t happen on any public blog you allowed your students to take part in. There’d have to be serious consequences in place and checks and re-checks before posts went live. Blogging would be a good way to get the kids to write about what they are reading or to share their writing and to get some sort of feedback. Writing in a vacuum is hard, which is why I love blogging. Writing workshops don’t work in a HS setting because the kids usually refuse to give any criticism, negative or otherwise. Maybe a blog entry could get the students to talk a little. It is a form they are used to growing up in the digital age.

In elementary schools you could use blogs to have different kids report on happenings in the classroom.

I’m sure there’s a ton more ways to use blogging in education, but I’m too tired to think of them. Anyone who does lesson planning day in and day out could come up with several uses.

This girl loves to sit on things that have a seat. She can make the plasma car go, which is thrilling even though we have a very small space that it will actually “go” on. It requires smooth surfaces for the physics to work. This Kettcar is not nearly as thrilling, though every kid in the neighborhood wants to take it for a spin (and none want to bring it back when they realize it kind of sucks).

She had her Lyme Disease follow-up appointment today. Things are fine, I guess. She is no longer on antibiotics. She still has a red mark where the tick was attached and I am probably imagining it, but it seems like the rash might be coming back. She has her 15 month check-up next week so we’ll keep an eye on it until then.

The girl loves books. I admit, when I used to see people posting about their kids loving books I thought they might be exaggerating or making things up. It was very hard for me to picture since Erik never wanted anything to do with books. He might rip them up or chew them, but he absolutely would not sit still and look at them.

Elsa constantly wants to be looking at books and she has very specific pages that she wants to look at, mainly animal pages. She can say bunny and meow, so it thrills her to no end to say those things while looking at the pictures. She’s usually so thrilled that she throws her arms around and knocks the book out of my hand.

Also, she insists on looking at a book while nursing. Sure, why not twist mama’s boobies in a complete 360?

She’s not as physically capable as her brother, but she still does all right for herself. I suppose it’s not exactly normal for a 10 month old to be able to run full tilt. Elsa can sort of run, but isn’t all that great at it. She can climb up just about anything, including our bed. I am quite sure she is going to kill herself because she doesn’t have Erik’s sense of balance.

She loves baby dolls, but not white baby dolls. She has one of Erik’s old Dora baby super twin dolls that she carts around. Today she saw a black baby doll at Target and went nuts. She had to have it and kept hugging it, kissing it, and calling it baby. She was not totally happy, though, until she took all it’s clothes off. I offered her white babies of the same type just to see what she would do (I don’t care what color baby she plays with), but she threw them on the ground. I was laughing pretty hard. Erik is the same way when it comes to people. I don’t understand why, but he has always been attracted to darker people. If there’s a diverse crowd, you can almost guarantee that he’ll be playing with someone who is African or African-American. The only reason I find it strange is because I’ve read that research shows children prefer to be around people who look like them. I guess Erik didn’t get the memo.

I suppose it is unfair that I keep comparing her to Erik, but they are so different that I can’t help but notice.

I can’t remember what Erik was like at 15 months and what expectations I had for him. I was probably a lot tougher on him than I am on her since she still feels like a baby, but at 15 months he was feeling like a big boy. She is actually a pretty good listener and is very good at making her needs known. When she wants her diaper changed, first she’ll start pulling at her clothes. If you don’t get the message, she’ll grab your finger and climb up the stairs. If you still don’t understand she’ll try to climb onto the changing table.

We can tell her no about things and sometimes she’ll listen. She loves to pick up random things, so I usually say “yuck yuck” and she’ll leave them. In the past I would step on things like cigarette butts or trash so she couldn’t get to them, so now when I say “yuck yuck” she goes and steps on the thing she’s not supposed to have.

I guess that’s enough about Elsa for tonight. She is such a funny, sweet girl. Erik was always a funny little guy, but his humor was a little different. He was (and is) so serious that you couldn’t help but laugh. She is more funny with intent to be funny. She is very happy and full of laughs. She’s in that age where she is exploring things that make her body feel different, so she likes to bang her head, stand on her head, spin, do flips and all that fun toddler stuff. She is so much taller than Erik that it is kind of hard to flip her on my lap. She’s so tall my arms aren’t long enough if she doesn’t bend her knees.

I suppose to be fair I’ll have to do a post about Erik later this week, or at least post a picture of him (if he’ll let me take one).

Elsa is totally loving this sprinkler beach ball but Erik is not a fan. I guess I have to find the slip ‘n side. Last year he’d play with the slip ‘n slide for hours, but the beach ball only holds his attention for five minutes. It’s not worth the mess for five measly minutes.

I am feeling quite accomplished because I finally finished my cousin’s daughter’s quilt and have it all packaged up to be mailed out!

I don’t know why it took forever. The quilt itself was fast and easy. Can you believe I made the whole thing standing up? My back is so bad that I’ve moved my machine to a high dresser so I can stand and quilt. Works for me, even if it is strange.

I am also sending her a doll, and the hard part was finding a box that would fit the doll box. Then when I looked at the quilt one last time I found a problem with one of the corners. I finally figured out a way to patch it. It’s far from perfect, but it’s done. It will be a very usable quilt. My skill set does not include heirlooms.

The Summer Camp prompt for today is to share a recipe or two. I have all my recipes over at my kitchen blog although I haven’t updated it in a long while. I feel guilty posting recipes from cook books unless I change them a lot.

Here’s what we had for dinner last night. Twas yummy.

Tarragon Chicken in a Pot

Ingredients:
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into small pieces
salt
pepper
1 T. dried tarragon
1 onion, diced
about a cup of carrots, sliced. I use quartered baby carrots
1 zuchinni, sliced
olive oil
2 T. flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine
4 country or peasant rolls

Step 1:
Mix together flour, milk, chicken broth and wine into a slurry. We used red wine last night because we didn’t have white. It actually tasted a lot better, but the presentation was def. lacking. Very ugly and grey looking.

Step 2:
Salt and pepper chicken pieces to taste. Heat olive oil in pan over med-high heat. Brown chicken and onion until onion is translucent.

Step 3: Add in the slurry and the rest of the ingredients to the pan (except the rolls). Bring to a boil, then put on a lid and simmer about 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Step 4: Cut the tops off the rolls and hollow out the centers so you have little bread bowls. When chicken is down cooking and the sauce is saucy, pour some into each little bowl. So yummy!

What is the most important lesson you learned from your own mother (or other primary caretaker)? What do you imagine the name of your Grandmother’s blog would be and what would she write about?

Read more: 31 Days of Blog Juice at Creating Motherhood

This is a tough one. I was always a self-learning. My mom did not have a life that I wanted. She stayed in an abusive marriage for years. She couldn’t control her own daughter. She hated talking on the phone and taught us that people don’t want to be bothered. That, in particular, was a trait that I am still working on getting rid of. People do want to be bothered if they like you and you have a fun idea.

I am not meaning to be down on her. I love my mom, and she did a good job with what she had but she didn’t have many resources and she was the queen of bad decisions.

She did teach me the value of hard work. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere in life if I didn’t apply myself and work my ass off. Nothing would be handed to me.

In a way, she also taught me not to take any shit off anyone. I looked at the way she lived her life and decided I didn’t want to be a doormat.

She also took great care to always tell me that I was smart and could accomplish anything. I didn’t always believe that I could accomplish anything, but I always believed I could at least take care of myself.

When I was miserable in my teaching job, she was the one who told me that there were other jobs out there. She gave me the courage to decide that I could make a new life plan; that I didn’t have to be miserable just because I wasted four years becoming a teacher. I was going to quit and try to get a government job or a job at an office. Anything would have been better than teaching.

Of course, that plan changed when I met Mike and moved to Sweden as a kept woman. I don’t think my mom was too pleased with that plan.

Now for the fun part: what would my grandma has blogged about?

Her blog probably would have been called “Two Inches.” Every single day of her life she lamented her height. If she had just been two inches taller she could have been a movie star or a secretary. She was OBSESSED.

She was probably the most negative, self-conscious person I’ve ever met. It’s no wonder my mom was so messed up. She didn’t have a chance with my grandma’s constant critiques running through her head. My grandma was such a perfectionist that she couldn’t enjoy a moment of life. My mom once was whipped for wearing her day of the week underwear on the wrong day.

My grandma never would have blogged. She did not value education, writing or reading. She would have seen blogging as a colossal waste of time. All of us bloggers would have been lazy, no-good sods. She used to vacuum every room of her house every single day. She didn’t have any pets or children at home. There was no dirt. But she was not lazy, so vacuuming had to be done.

I have no idea what my paternal grandma was like. She died in childbirth with my dad and his twin. The twin also died. She had 8 children, the first couple out of wedlock. She was married to a mentally ill alcoholic. I can only guess that her life was pretty miserable.

My biggest worry for my children is that they will inherit the mental illness that runs in my dad’s family. My sister clearly has issues. Every time I see my kids do something that reminds me of my sister I worry.

I sound really down on my family, don’t I? They are just so dysfunctional.

I do have good family! My grandma’s youngest brother and his wife took care of me when I went to college. They lived a couple hours from my school so I would go visit them on vacations. They really loved each other and had a very functional life. There was no alcohol, no drugs. There was only happiness and laughter. They are the ones who showed me what a happy marriage could look like. I will always thank them for giving me a taste of normal and a refuge from my immediate family. When I was done with college I wanted to live with them instead of moving back to OR, but it didn’t seem like a real possibility.

I guess that’s a tangent, eh? That’s why I’m the Queen of Rambles.

Day 8 – If you had to teach something, what would you teach? (If you DO teach, when did you discover your love for teaching/the subject?) Do you think blogs can play a role in education?

Read more: 31 Days of Blog Juice at Creating Motherhood

I taught high school English for a few years. I quickly discovered that I did not have a passion for teaching. I loved reading. I loved writing. I did not love trying to get a bunch of teenagers to love reading or writing.

The first year was quite a wake-up call. Teaching high school is damned hard work. The lesson planning and grading can consume your life if you let it, especially the first few years. It’s also very repetitive. One year I had five classes of freshman English. That meant I stood in front of the class and gave the same speech five times in a two day span (block scheduling). Soooooo boring.

Oddly enough, I really enjoy substitute teaching. The pay is crap, but there is very little responsibility and every day is new. If things don’t go well you never have to go back to that classroom or school again. Perfect! Except for the whole pay thing.

If I had to teach professionally again I’d choose 3rd or 4th grade (assuming I could get certified). At that age the kids still love learning. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but it’s a lot easier dealing with kids who mostly want to be there and are eager for new information.

If I could teach anything, I would probably teach quilting. I love quilting and would love to spread that love around. I would actually make a terrible quilting teacher becuase I don’t now enough about it. I can make a baby quilt (that might be debatable if you saw the ugly mess I’ve made out of the binding of the current baby quilt I’m working on), but I don’t now very many fancy methods or even “correct” methods. I could probably use a few classes, frankly.