The Queen's Rambles

I loved school as a kid. I was bright and talented and knew how to find a corner, sit with a book and enjoy the lack of alcoholic rages. What’s not to love?

School is not a refuge for Erik and in a way that is a good thing. I’m glad he has a happy home life and doesn’t feel a sense of relief when school starts in the fall. But why can’t he enjoy learning for the sake of learning? Why must he hate it?

Of course, this is completely teacher dependent. He didn’t hate school last year. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t hate it. Can’t ask for more than that, I guess. His first grade teacher was a true master at manipulating him and managing his behavior. I’ve been manipulating him and managing him for almost 8 years now, but she certainly had a better handle on him than me!

This new teacher doesn’t have that same skill.

I guess that sounds bad, doesn’t it? Manipulating him?

But it’s so true.

He is a highly logical kid with a lot of smarts. I’ve given up trying to be demure about his intelligence. I hate to be a braggy mom who thinks her kid is a special snowflake, but I can no longer deny that this kid is smarter than your average bear. He has no patience with his classmates and does not understand why the teacher would ever ask them for answers when many of them never have a clue what’s going on. He doesn’t understand why the teacher has to sit there and wait for the kids to catch up, when he already knows or quickly understands the materials.

Of course I’m trying to teach him empathy and patience, but he’s 7. He doesn’t have much in the way of either trait.

BellaJellyBean asked me how to handle a child that hates school since she’s afraid her son might go down that path. Her son is so much like Erik that it’s uncanny! I really hope for her sake that he has a better Kindy teacher than Erik had and she won’t deal with what I’ve had to deal with.

In short, kindergarten was a living hell.

There’s no way to sugar coat it. There was no way to manage it. It was just HELL.

In the end I completely gave up on homework because a) I am not a fan of the idea of homework for a child who is not having actual problems and b) I was not going to let a stupid piece of daily busy work that should take five freakin’ minutes destroy our home life.

You may think destroy is too strong a word, but I don’t know what else to call it when you have a child screaming, sobbing, crying, and tantrumming for over an hour. It wasn’t worth it. I talked with the teacher and made several suggestions to improve Erik’s experience based on my years in the classroom, but she shut me down cold on all of them. I was ready to go to the principal, but then she left to have a baby so the last three months of school were much, much better.

My current plan is to let him settle into school for the first couple of weeks and if things aren’t better have a face-to-face with his teacher. She’s brand new to the school and a lot of his problem seems to stem from the fact that she doesn’t know the “proper” procedures. She does not allow them to touch the walls when they are in the hallway and this seems to be reason for a full nuclear meltdown. In Kindy they have to keep a hand on the wall to keep them in line.

If she stonewalls me like his kindergarten teacher I will not hesitate to go to the principal immediately. I can’t deal with another year of hell.

When I picked him up from school on Monday and saw his face I almost started crying. When we got home and he declared that he hated his teacher, he hated all the kids in his class and he hated everything about school it was all I could do not to break into sobs. I know what this means for our family life. I know what this means for my stress levels. I know what this means for our relationship. I don’t want to do this again. I can’t> do this again.

I am also completely stressed out about my role in the PTA and wondering why the fuck I am working my ass off to improve Erik’s school when nothing I do is appreciated by him. I know that makes no sense since he is 7 and it is not his job to appreciate me; it is his job to be a kid. However, with his hatred toward the school I’m ready to pull out and go underground. Nothing I do will make him like school. But logically I know that my best chance to improve things for him is to develop a good relationship with the principal and being a part of the PTA is a part of that plan.

I can’t believe how much bullshit fuckery is going on with this PTA gig and I am seriously about one e-mail away from throwing in the towel and telling them to go fuck themselves. I’ve had a really great response from most of the people, with a lot of people thanking me for bringing new energy to the group. The problem seems to stem from people who are not willing to do any real work, but who want to have power. They can’t have power because of term limits so they want to bully their way in to power. I know I shouldn’t let them get to me. I should follow my own good advice and give them the consideration they deserve–absolutely none. I can tell myself that all day long, but it doesn’t stop me from waking up at night with a pit in my stomach and tears in my eyes. I do not take criticism well.

On a more positive note, all my volunteer work with MOMS Club is paying off. I am the area coordinator for 15 chapters, which can get a little crazy sometimes. I was doing it because I enjoy it (I’ve decided honesty is my new policy and I will admit that I like power and control. There. I said it), but also because I’d like to have something on my resume. The unintended consequence: learning a heck of a lot about small non-profit, volunteer driven organizations. I am becoming a pro at referring to the by-laws and telling people that the purpose of a non-profit is not to provide member only benefits. Even though the PTA and MOMS Club are very different (the MOMS Club leadership team is fantastic to work with! No back biting! No power grabs!), they both have to operate by their by-laws and follow their mission statement.

Segue: do you want to hear my number one pet peeve? People who say they are not informed about things and then refuse to read any materials that might actually inform them! How am I supposed to inform them? Go to their house and put on a freakin’ one woman play? I don’t have the budget for that.

I really, really hope next week gets better. If it doesn’t, I may need to arrange for a couple of weeks away in a padded room.

I must have doormat or sucker written on my back. Ugh.

Several years ago Kisha and I made Erik a Swiper costume. I am not good at stuff like that, but Kisha rocked it and we even got her husband to make the nose. It was an awesome costume! Erik wore it two years, then I passed it along to a friend. Her son wore it one year.

Now. . . . the lady I hate! The lady I can’t stand! The lady who doesn’t feed her kids and is always wrong about EVERYTHING no matter how minute, the lady who endlessly corrects my spelling and grammar and nitpicks everything (but is ALWAYS wrong). . . . her son loves Swiper.

She didn’t ask me about the costume. She asked my friend, who has it in her posession. The friend asked me if it’s ok, and I said she could go ahead and give it to her. I have no use for it. Elsa wants to be a purple princess mermaid ballerina fairy queen (key point on the purple and sparkly). I hate to see waste. Things should be re-used. Her son seems like a sweet little boy, from what I can see.

Obviously Nick Jr. is completely missing the boat by not offering a Swiper costume.

This year might be the year that I don’t have to cobble together a costume for Erik. He wants to be Michelangelo (the mutant turtle, not the famous painter) so I will probably be able to buy most of the pieces for it. Of course, I kind of hate the look of commercial costumes and prefer the homemade ones. Erik is usually the only one in his school with a homemade (as in, mom cobbled together the pieces–not hand-sewn) costume and he likes being unique.

In other news, he will not be unique this year. There are two Eriks in his grade. This is the first year they will be in the same class. The other boy is actually an Eric, so my Erik wants to be called Erik K. this year. I need to e-mail his teacher and make sure she doesn’t call him Erik Pee because apparently that would be the most awful thing that could happen in his life.

At first he said he wanted to go by Kent, his middle name. We tried it out yesterday for a few moments and he quickly changed his mind.

His teacher is new to the school, so no one knows her quirks. She is the mom of three boys, so that gives me hope that she will be able to relate to all his awesome boyishness. The wiggling, the non-stop talking about Minecraft, the competitiveness, the complete disdain for coloring,. . . . surely one of her boys will have helped her understand these things.

I can’t believe tomorrow is the first day! I think we are all going to be crying when the alarm goes off in the morning.

I got a lot of my work done last night, so I am feeling a little better about life. I have to give a speech tomorrow, which is starting to make me nervous. There will probably be at least 100 adults in the audience, so it’s a good thing I’ve discovered the joys of alcohol. I’m going to need a drink to calm my nerves!

Yes, long time readers, you will be shocked to know that I drink a glass of wine every day. If I don’t have my glass of wine, I am a very unhappy lady.

Why?

Because it completely knocks me out. One glass and I sleep all night, no matter if my darling daughter sneaks into the bed and sticks her feet in my ears or my darling son crawls into the room and grabs my toes. Yes, he does that in middle of the night. No, I do not know why.

The other night my friend and I made strawberry margaritas and I could get totally hooked on those! I think I might have gotten a little silly as the night wore on. I used the left over strawberry mix to make “strawberry slushies” (Sprite instead of alcohol) for our back to school bash.

Speaking of the back to school bash. . . Whew!

Erik attended a MOMS Club meeting and heard us say that anyone could host an event. Of course, my little extroverted party planner immediately wanted to plan a party. He knew he wanted older kids, a pinata and a cake.

I obliged. I also made him do some of the prep work! Not all of it, but I made him see that hosting a party is not all fun and games. I even made him vacuum.

It was cute, but I can’t believe I didn’t take a single picture! The strawberry slushies were the hit of the party. I had them in little cups with umbrellas. The kids LOVED the umbrellas. Best dollar I ever spent!

We had new windows installed on Monday. I was expecting the window guys to be gone by 2 or 3 pm based on the install time of our last set of windows (took the first guys 4 hours to install 5 windows. Took these guys 11 hours to install 6 windows). I had planned on baking the cake and getting the house in order on Monday afternoon, but the guys didn’t leave until 8 pm and my kitchen was covered in a tarp. I ended up baking the cake at 10:30 pm! (Just FYI, THIS is the best yellow cake recipe you will ever make and it is super easy!).

I was planning on doing seven minute icing but got behind and ended up making it 20 minutes before the party was supposed to start. I thought I could multi-task, but that was a huge mistake. This type of frosting requires cooking a sugar mixture to 242F and then beating it into egg whites. Well. . . . I cooked it to 250 on accident, so I ended up more with a divinity type mixture than a nice, easy, spreadable frosting. I couldn’t even cover the sides of the cake (maybe there’s a reason I didn’t take pictures. . . ) but the kids didn’t seem to notice and it still tasted ok, if a little chewy.

Today was another busy day. I rushed out to Elsa’s preschool first thing in the morning to see if I could switch her class time. I have no freakin’ clue why I decided to put her in morning classes (I filled out the form in January and I seriously can not remember my thought process, but it must have made sense at the time). I was able to switch her to a Tue, Thurs, Fri afternoon class, which will make my life SO MUCH EASIER. You have no idea. The only glitch is that my Tuesday BodyPump class usually lets out at 11:45 and it takes at least fifteen minutes to drive to the school. She’ll arrive right on time, but she will have to eat her lunch in the car. We will both hate that.

Did I ever tell you about Erik’s week of afternoon summer camp when he had to eat lunch in the car a couple of times? This is just not something we’ve ever had to do before. We are not drive-in eaters. I believe it is important for kids to sit at the dining room table and really feel a meal, not just shove food in their craw to fill them up. As the kids get older and the schedule gets more hectic I realize that sometimes I have to give a little in my ideals.

Anway. . .he was not impressed with the car eating. “But there’s no table! Where am I supposed to put things? I don’t understand this! You always say a car is for going, not eating! This is just crazy, mom!” It highly amused me.

But wait! I was telling you about or busy day!

Erik is becoming such a good big brother. He showed Elsa around the school and kept telling her that she is going to make great friends at school. His old teachers came out and looked him over, commenting that he looked like a ten year old, which puffed him up with pride.

We met Elsa’s teacher. . . who happens to be the mom we car-pooled with during Erik’s pre-K year. She is a sweet lady. Just hope she has better control of her classroom than she did of her son.

Elsa was really happy in the school and even talked to her teacher. She is such a shy little girl that I was worried. I think having Erik show her around helped immensely.

Then. . . We went to the gym, went to the school and made copies and got the kids haircuts! Whew!

Erik is really angry that I made him get a haircut. He wants to grow his hair out like Rapunzel (from Tangled) so he can use it as a whip. Thankfully he cooperated at the Haircuttery, even if he had a surly look on his face the whole time. And thankfully the lady understood his hair! This is such a rarity. In fact, he has only had two good haircuts in his life, both from ladies who took a look at his hair and immediately announced that it has a special texture and either needs to be really long or really short. I don’t know if this is just a coincidence or what, but both of those ladies were African-Americans. Erik’s hair is stick straight, but maybe something about the way it sticks straight up is something they understand better than the Asian ladies (the place I take him to usually only has Asian ladies working). I don’t know, but I hope the lady who cut his hair this time stays awhile and I can have her be his regular lady.

And. . . . that’s a wrap! I’m trying to roll back bed time so we are ready for school to start next week. I suppose that means I have to stop writing and start getting Erik to bed.

It seems everything around here is falling apart. My computer has been giving me fits for weeks, and finally bit the dust last week. Our A/C suddenly stopped working–thank the lords of Kobol that this is an unseasonably cool August. I am sitting in my living room with all the windows open and thinking I need to put on some warmer clothing (or maybe shut the windows). Mike and I both had root canals a couple of weeks ago. All these things are making us bleed money, so I am probably not going to be able to put both kids in a gymnastics class this fall. Not that they have time, anyway! I don’t want to overschedule my child, but there is just so. much. to. do.

My computer? Still not exactly fixed. The computer guy replaced the motherboard and I still had the black screen of doom so he told me he couldn’t fix it and I’d have to send it off to the depot. I was about to cry. I do not have time for this! Ain’t nobody got time for this!

Two minutes later he was handing me my computer, with my user icon showing, mentioning something about F2.

I was thrilled, of course, and worked my big ol’ behind off, trying to get some of these documents completed.

Then the computer started slowing down. I re-booted and BAM! Black screen of doom!

I had a huge freakout that included stomping my feet and slamming doors, because I am the very picture of maturity.

I came back and hit F2 and managed to get the computer working again. I still have no idea what I did in those secret parts of the computer that non-geeks like me aren’t even supposed to know about. I don’t really care what I did, either. It somehow worked and I am going to try to limp along with this bad boy until I have all my docs created and have some time to send it off to the depot.

I am trying to get Erik’s birthday party set up, but the party venue is thwarting me. I found a brochure that said our local regional park offers birthday parties on their pontoon boat, with a naturalist on board to give interesting information about the lake. Erik was all over this idea and so was I (it’s a lot cheaper than most party venues). I immediately contacted the park to get things set up and the lady started giving me the run around. Eventually she told me I should come out and look at the party space (for cake) because I would probably not want to really host a party there.

I’ve been meaning to go out there for two weeks and finally found a little time in my schedule last week. We went out and it was fine. Nothing spectacular, but it’s a room. It has a table and chairs. It would be a perfectly acceptable place to eat cake.

The lady I talked to on the phone was there and she started giving me all kinds of “suggestions.” I could just buy tickets for the pontoon boat and have cake at a picnic shelter! If it’s raining I could take all the kids to a restaurant for cake after the boat ride! Do I really think kids would want to ride a boat in the middle of October? They would probably need to wear coats! Think of the children!

Yes, lady, by golly we ARE going to have a party there and we ARE going to have cake at your pitiful little table and the kids ARE going to wear coats if it is cold and it is going to be fun. So stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!

Honestly, I am pretty nervous about having a party out there if this is the attitude we are going to get. We had a party at one of their sister parks a few years ago and it was fabulous. I was expecting the same thing from this park, but my expectations are not being met. She still has not answered my last e-mail about paying for the damned thing.

In other news, I got rookie-dooed into babysitting hermit crabs and a hamster for the week. First the lady just asked if I could babysit the hermit crabs, which I thought was pretty weird since they don’t need much care. After I said yes, she chimed in with “Oh, and can we bring the hamster over too?”

So now my house smells like rodent. It’s so nasty. The creature has not even been here 24 hours and the whole house reeks.

Thankfully Erik has decided he doesn’t want a hamster. They brought its mobile ball along with it, so the kids wanted to put it in the ball yesterday. Mike was trying to calm the hamster down and slowly reach into the cage to pick it up and put it in the ball. All of a sudden Erik’s little hand darted in and grabbed the hamster. The hamster bit him, he screamed and declared he never wanted a hamster. There was blood. There was crying. There was much declaring “I never want a hamster!” There was much shaking of heads and asking “why on earth did you do that???”

Speaking of animals, our hermit crabs are such cannibals! Hermit crabs are actually social creatures so you’re supposed to have a minimum of three crabs in a tank. We’ve had up to six at a time, but they are not the most sturdy creatures. I do everything correctly as far as I know, but we still have occasional hermit crab deaths. I thought we had three crabs, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed that Whiskers was no longer in his shell. We needed to re-do the whole tank anyway, so we carefully sifted through all the dirt and everything and never did find a trace of poor Whiskers. We can only conclude that Speedy and Sunny had a feast.

I knew we needed a new crab, but the pet store never did have any that looked lively. Finally they had one single crab that moved when put in the water, so we bought it. It just happened to be painted with Rolie Polie Olie, a cartoon character Elsa discovered last week. She was thrilled because it was her very own crab.

Oh dear.

The poor thing didn’t last two days. I found it’s body parts strewn across the tank yesterday, so that was fun. Elsa still doesn’t know. We just let her think it burrowed into the substrate and will come out later.

Ok, now I have worker guys putting in my windows and Erik jabbering in my ear about repairing a Wii game. I get on their cases constantly about treating DVDs and games with care, but no one listens. He’s finally reaping what he’s sown with a game that won’t work and I’m just about to stick this game where the sun don’t shine. He thinks if I just try hard enough I can fix it. This is going to be a looooonnnnnngggggg day.

What a week we’ve had! My tooth started hurting on Monday–completely unbearable pain. I was taking so much Advil that I was afraid I was going to start vomiting blood (I read the warning label). I was kicking myself for not filling my Tylenol 3 prescription from when Elsa headbutted my chin. I could have used some codeine power.

Mike walked in the door Monday afternoon and announced that he’d had a root canal that day. Was that ironic or just a weird coincidence? Was I having sympathy pain?

I finally got in for my root canal yesterday. It was unpleasant, of course, with a big handed fellow sticking his fingers in my mouth and up my nose. The pain relief, though. Ahhhhhhh. . . I’ve only had about four advil since then and don’t feel much pain at all. If anything, the injection site on the roof of my mouth is more sore than the tooth.

I guess we just blew our August budget on dental work. We know how to party!

The kids had their first swim lesson on Wednesday and it went great. Erik was totally into it and even put his face under water. Shocking! Elsa got bumped down a level, so she and Erik are in the same class. There was supposed to be another little boy in the class, but he screamed and sobbed and threw the biggest hysterical fit you’ve ever seen in your entire life and never managed to dip his toe in the water. I thought it would be nice to go to swim lessons and sit in the observation room for a half hour, but I was so wrong. It was a complete nightmare with that kid screaming and some lady undressing her older preschoolers right in middle of the room (they have changing rooms! No need for me to see naked kids!).

Erik and Elsa are being taught by a tiny, tiny little teenaged girl so I was a little worried when big ol’ Erik was supposed to jump off the edge and into her arms. He is a lot shorter than the teacher, but definitely a lot bulkier. I thought she was going down, but she managed to stay standing.

I would really like to find a place that does classes every single day for two weeks. Doing thirty minutes once a week is not going to teach these kids to swim.

What else?

I met with the PTA prez last night and we are simpatico with everything, so I’m hoping we have a positive and productive year.

But. . . I am livid. LIVID! The treasurer and former prez sent our budget into the state PTA for approval without telling us, asking us or anything. I can not believe it. I’m simply stunned that they would think to plan the budget without letting the current prez have any input whatsoever.

In kid news, there’s only three more weeks of summer! Yikes! I haven’t done any back to school shopping, but will hold off until both kids are at camp next week. I’ve talked to Erik about it a few times and he says he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t care what I pick out, just get him something and don’t make him go to a store. I am 110% ok with that, but wish he would give me some input on what backpack he wants.

He’s such a good big brother and is finally starting to get the hang of tricking Elsa into things instead of just yelling at her. Not to say they are always nice to each other, but they do much better together than a lot of kids I know.

Elsa is still completely fierce with him and we are working on the pushing, hitting and pinching. It doesn’t help when he encourages it.

Her public and private personalities are polar opposite of each other, which is interesting to see. Our gym was bought out by Gold’s Gym and one of the new childcare rules is that children are not allowed to bring in toys from home. My mom sent her a plush Curious George yesterday and she is completely obsessed. She wanted to take it to the gym, I explained the rules, she didn’t care. I let her take it into the room because I knew we could stuff it in her cubby and they weren’t exactly going to kick us out. I was so surprised by the way she acted. She was hiding behind me, wouldn’t look at the workers (she’s known them ever since we started going there and she likes them) and she was hiding her monkey behind her back. After I put George in the cubby she was just fine.

It’s nice to have a child who cares about right and wrong, but I do worry that she fears authority too much.

Not that Erik is completely oblivious to right and wrong, but he is definitely not a rule follower, at least not until he argues a person to death to get to the exact reason a rule has been created.