Frenzied Daddy

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”

The recent spate of sunshine here has brought some of the craziness in our house to the surface. The TT, for instance, asked if she could go outside and play in the sprinkler. Keeping in mind that it was only 65F and only partially sunny, I said “no.” Naturally she whined. I’m trying to tell them my reasoning more than not, so I went to the mat and told her the truth… “It’s too cold, honey.” She promised to wear her jacket.

Yeah, I laughed at her, and then we went for a walk around the block with her.

The DQ, on the other hand, went to a boy’s birthday party on Friday. They went out to play laser tag and had cupcakes and then were hanging out at the boy’s house with his mother. I was supposed to collect the DQ at 10PM but hey, she’s coming home at nine. My excuse was that I had to be on call early in the morning, but the truth is that I’m not ready to loosen the strings that much yet.

And then she called asking if she could spend the night. At a boy’s house. In a mixed-gender sleepover. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? Am I a nervous nellie? I said no to that too— I know that when she spends the night at Sage’s, they stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing games, and I’m not ready yet to deal with late night truth or dare OR spin the bottle OR elevator to paradise. Yikes.

It’s bad enough that when I went to pick her up they were playing truth or dare. Oh god. My heart rate doubled. The mother was around though, they weren’t getting too bad. But, the mother came up to me and said “Can you imagine? It’s been only a year. Last year they were playing video games and monopoly. A year later, just a year later, they’re talking about who likes whom and boy-girl stuff.” Gaah.

I’m really not ready for this. I’m just getting used to an eleven year old. I’m not ready for a fifteen year old.

A ninth grader in Tennessee has been charged with theft and sent to court for stealing … a forty cent lunch. Fifteen year old Jon Riker receives a reduced lunch at Gallatin’s Station Camp High School. One day last semester, his mother forgot to give him the forty cents for lunch. He was hungry at lunch and he went through the line and didn’t pay. He received a three day suspension and a court date.

Ok, so the kid did take lunch without paying for it. But forty cents is a little silly. The problem is the school’s no tolerance stance on lunch thefts. I think a more appropriate solution could have been found, perhaps involving dish washing, or detention, or something.

In the mother’s defense, she’s been a little frenzied herself. They have a family of six, and tje youngest had brain surgery recently. I have lunch money slip my mind too, but I just get an annoyed phone call from the cafeteria lady who reminds me to send in some lunch money.

In the spirit of “sending in lunch money,” some people are banding together to send lunch to kids at the school; sending forty cents to

Station Camp High School
600 Lower Station Camp Creek Road (1040 Bison Trail)
Gallatin, TN 37066
Attn: Principal Art Crook

With a kind note suggesting he use the forty cents to buy lunch for other kids who don’t have the money, and following that up with a suggestion to find creative, appropriate punishments for kids who steal lunch.

source

I’ve never done this sort of thing before. I think I’m going to start a “book club” specifically for parents reading “young adult” books. I’m already reading the books, it’ll be good to talk about them as well. And I was moved by an article Grandma P brought over about how eighth graders tend to stop reading so much. So my fifth grader who is reading hundreds of books a year (yes, really ) will probably be reading much fewer when she leaves middle school.

Middle school, by the way, is next year.

The Oregonian article reminded me how much better readers do in school; reading and writing skills are much improved in kids who read for fun. And one of the best ways to help kids read for fun is to help match kids to books they might like.

So, thinking about the flames in the discussion around The Golden Compass, I think I’m going to use that as a springboard. So, I’ll be looking for some sort of “reading guide” that’s not totally pro-or-anti Pullman, and I’ll be putting a… schedule(?) for lack of a better word.

I’m using the Portland Parents site for it, aiming it at other parents who are concerned about the same things. Let’s see how far I can take it. Wonder what we’ll read for March.

I have fond recollections of my brother being the more adventurous of the two of us, growing up. I always thought he was cool- he was braver and more willing, for instance, to jump out of the swings at the apex of his swing, or leap from concrete tube to concrete tube ( the playground of our trailer park had these 4 foot diameter concrete tubes that we played in… couldn’t do that today, they’d be rubberized. But at least when you licked them in winter your tongue didn’t stick to them ). Sure, he had a few mishaps; he got his scar on his chin that matches mine when he went down a hill on his bike and over a bike jump. I thought he was laughing when he got up, but he wasn’t. Whoops. But overall, I was proud to be his brother and always tried to live up to what he was capable of.

I never was able to, though; which made it more surprising when my mother tried to tell me, when I was a teenager, how much he looked up to me. I thought it was the other way around. I was more of a sissy boy and he was the macho one. Aah well, this photo always reminds me of him.

( oh, this picture isn’t really my brother– I stole it from a fark thread and cropped off the lolcaption. )

I think I’ve mentioned before that I had recently come to the conclusion that dad wasn’t blind to my shenanigans but chose to overlook them rather than dream up some strange punishment.

I’ve been suspecting the DQ of sneaking downstairs after I go to bed for a while.

I caught the DQ downstairs after bedtime last night. I was working on going to bed, sent her and the TT to bed around 9:30, and she told me not to stay up too late. She asked when I was headed to bed and i told her 10. Well, it’s true, but I was trying to finish a project that kept me up to 10:30. At about 10:10, she called downstairs to see if I was up. I responded. She came down, gave me a hug, and scolded me.

I finally finished about 10:30. When I came upstairs, I noticed that her light in her room was on. I headed to bed. About fifteen minutes later, I heard her come out of her room; they turned off the lights and the TT claimed she was scared. The DQ made some other light, brought the TT some water, and then called downstairs. Then they crawled into our bedroom. I don’t know why. Kids these days. Shortly afterwards, the DQ led the TT downstairs.

I let her / them get into whatever they were doing and then strode over, opened the door and sent them to bed. The DQ came up acting sheepish.

My first inclination is to ground the DQ from computers and televisions today. Just today. I’m not angry, but I want to impress on her that when I send them to bed, I’m expecting them to go to bed, not stay up and sneak down to play video games until the weary hours of the night.

On the other hand, it’s not a school night. The only fallout from them staying up so late ( two nights in a row; they were up late for new years as well ) is their unmitigated grouchiness today.

I’m mildly annoyed that she led the toddler around and encouraged the toddler to be sneaky, but I guess that’s what big sisters do. ( big brothers don’t teach their siblings to be sneaky, noooo ).

Anyhow. What would you folks do about this? Both Ms B and I work early in the morning, so we’d rather not stay up and enforce bedtime by keeping the kids away from the computers and playstation. I don’t want the kids on the computers when we’re not there, but I want to keep my workstation on all night ( I have some scripts that run every night) which precludes my turning off the router all night. She did lie to me about going to bed, and told me that the TT couldn’t sleep ( duh, your light was on ! ).

Miss B was suggesting that as she’s getting older, perhaps a name more appropriate for her personality would be in order. She actually recommended DQ, short for Drama Queen. What do you folks think? In turn, Miss K could be “TT” or “Tiny Tyrant.”

Miss B, or DQ, came home from the Scholastic Book Fair Wish List with these books she wanted. We haven’t bought them yet, but you can see sort of what she’s enjoying reading. Her reading really took off in fourth grade ( last year, for those of you who don’t know her.) The list is not in any particular order.

You can see her list here:DQ’s Wish List

Or a trip back into the dark ages. There’s gasp no cd player!! Ohhh the horror! And there are no cup holders!AIEE!!

But it’s great. It probably gets 20-25 mph on the highway, we’ll see about around town. It’s clean, it drives well, and it does have a fm radio. So those are all strong points. But there is one thing that makes me ignore the lack of cd player and cup holders; those can be replaced, after all. But I can control the windows in the back seat from the front, and I can lock the kids out of them.

What’s that? Your hands are out the window? Guess you lose it. What’s that? You’re falling asleep on the way home from school? MUAHAHAHAHA how about a blast of cold air! Hurray!

So, aah yeah, we have the 93 explorer, and it’s pretty cool. There’s some minor damage but overall it will last us a year and then some.

And after driving it? I may just name it “Sherman.”

On second thought, no… eeew. Not miller time.

I put a door up this weekend.

You might think that with a growing ten year old girl in the house that I might have considered a door before now. Well, we’ve been arguing with her over keeping her room clean versus getting a door. You know, treating the door like a carrot to get her to clean her damn room.

Naw, a door’s not a carrot.

It’s also a symbol of growing up. We’re going to have to trust her, there behind her door. I’m sure we now live in a house where there’s a door-slamming nigh-teenager. But if I put a door on her room, then I guess it’s her door and she can slam it if she wants.

We’ve been stressed (as always; when aren’t we stressed?) over money. Well, I got the door out of the garage. It turns out it was this door and it was in baaaaaaad sheep. I sanded it down ( yeah, I actually ran a power tool ) and put wood putty in the holes and the gouge that the washing machine left ( yeah, I know what wood putty is ) and then I sanded down the wood putty ( yes, mom, I can even remember to do that ). I painted it with some primer we had in the garage, and then found a gallon bucket of ten year old paint that we used on our white walls. When I opened it up, it was totally separated; I thought that it was mold, but it turned out to be fine. Fred Meyers’ was nice enough to shake it up for me. I painted it, then … get this– I’ve been watching too much DIY tv! — I sanded down where I ran the paint into drips and repainted those spots!!

We picked up some hardware from the Rebuilding Center. Ms B was totally awesome at picking out the hardware. I expected to be there for at least an hour but she walked in and knew exactly what we needed and where to get it. I hung the door tonight and swung it back and forth- it’s a door!

Well, it doesn’t latch yet. But that’s ok; it means that she can’t lock us out. But that’ll be done “real soon” too.

And then I put this pink hibiscus on the corner of the inset of the door.