You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
Okay–so I need to know how much you spend on groceries in a month.
Two years ago, after I’d been back to school for one year, it was through a blanket poll of the gals I worked with that I was able to prove to Tony that a housekeeper was necessary. Our house is still a mess, but thanks to Alma, we are not in fear of contracting diseases from using our own toilets or walking across the kitchen floor. My wonderful husband has EVERY intention of helping me. . .and I have every intention of cleaning. . .but all we manage to keep even half-way done is dishes, laundry, and cooking. We have $50 per month set aside for eating out–for all four of us–so that means we cook A LOT.
We have a strict monthly budget. We have a certain amount set aside for food and a separate amount set aside for hygiene, etc. I was recently able to talk Tony into upping the grocery money by $25, but we are still going over budget each month–probably due to four of us requiring sustanance–and two of us growing vertically rather than horizontally.
Anyway–how much do you spend each month on food? If you don’t have a budget–a ball park figure is great. We have four people–two adults and two growing children.
I just left Melanie’s where she had a post telling how you can be registered for a new Amber Alert system. Just enter your cell phone number and up to five zipcodes in which you regularly travel. If there is an Amber Alert put out in those areas, you will be notified by text message. Within seconds of registering, I had a text message on my phone telling me I was in the system. I find this amazing and very, very smart since there aren’t enough police officers on the planet to be all the places we mommies are on a daily basis. Take a minute to do this. It’s like giving blood or signing up to be an organ donor–and it’s specifically to save the lives of children.
Go here to register for Amber Alerts on your cell phone.
There is a wonderful children’s book called Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. This particular book is about a young girl named Alice Rumphius who wants to do some very specific things. But the final and most important thing is that she needs to do something to make the world more beautiful. I have a children’s book for pretty much every occasion–and Sarah would also tell you that I have a humorous though possibly useless anecdote for every occasion as well.
I give you both.
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Yesterday was Victoria’s first Jr. Girl Scout meeting. She did Daisies. . .AND Brownies. . .and now she’s a Jr. So, they made one of those little hand held fortune teller things where you stick your fingers in it and go back and forth, back and forth choosing messages until you finally get to open the flap and read your “fortune.” In this case, it was the Girl Scout Law and the “fortunes” were questions about how well you’ve upheld it.
I was never IN Girl Scouts, so I am ignorant of the Girl Scout Law, however when Victoria tested me on the way to school this a.m., I ended up with the following question:
“What have you done to make the world more beautiful?”
Victoria asked this very earnestly, and it took me about a millisecond to give her the answer.
“Honey, I had YOU!”
She looked at me gently, tenderly as though she wanted me to know and understand how very much she loved me despite my stupidity then said, “Uuuuuuuuuummmmm, no. I mean like planting flowers or something.”
To which I replied rather excitedly and expectantly, assured that I had hit upon the correct answer at last, “Well, I’ve planted knowledge in my student’s heads for the past 16 years!”
THIS time the look was more a mixture of sadness, exasperation, and I-guess-I-didn’t-word-the-question-so-you-could-understand on her precious, (9 days late, 9 lb., 15 hours of labor, 22″ inches long, and one week in the neonatal ICU fearing for her life) angelic face.
I literally threw my hands up in the air while she stated v e r y s l o w l y so that I could understand, “It has to be something REEEEEEEEAL, Mommy.”
Well, I can’t say that when I was 9 years old I thought my mother had done anything real either. She was my Momma. She took care of us, and she took care of Daddy and my grandparents and anyone else who happened to need taking care of. She liked to drink Dr. Pepper from styrofoam coffee cups (NEVER coffee), and expected someone to meet her at the car to help carry in the groceries. If Daddy was out somewhere so that you got to actually watch what you liked on tv, chances were high that she would dump a basket of laundry in front of you. That was it.
She was a teacher too–and it never occurred to me the thousands of students and parents or the hundreds of peers and administrators and school board members whose lives she had influenced and would continue to influence over her 37 years in education. All I knew was that she had the reputation of being a VERY strict teacher, and I knew it was true, because she was the same type of mother. Why should she be a different type of teacher? It worked. ‘Nuff said. It also never occurred to me, at the age of 9, that her influence would carry on in me and now in her grandaughter.
Luckily for Victoria’s opinion of me, I have 8 packages of wildflower seeds already purchased and waiting until we can go and plant them along the roadside edge of the property where we plan to build our new home. They are a “Texas” mix along with some other things that grow well in the wild, and they need to be sewn in the fall. Her Daddy and I have had this planned –at my suggestion–for awhile now. Maybe after our little wildflower seeds are tucked away for their long winter’s nap I, like Miss Rumphius, will have done something to make the world more beautiful–something that is as real and tangible to my daughter as the possibility of futures and students yet unknown are in my mind–something as touchable to my sweet, sweet girl as the ethereal realness of her life is to me.
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My Great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius, is very old now. Her hair is very
white. Every year there are more and more lupines. Now they call her the
Lupine Lady. Sometimes my friends stand with me outside the gate, curious to
see the old, old lady who planted the fields of lupines. When she invites us in,
they come slowly. They think she is the oldest woman in the world. Often she
tells us stories of faraway places.
“When I grow up,”I tell her, “I too will go to faraway places and come
home to live by the sea.”
“That is all very well, little Alice,” says my aunt, “but there is a third thing
you must do.”
“What is that?” I ask.
“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”
“All right, ” I say.
“But I do not yet know what that could be.”
Tony called at 6:15.
The car had broken down on the way to soccer practice.
The mechanic closes at 6:00.
Enterprise car rental closes at 6:00.
HOWEVER. . .
We have wonderful neighbors who watched The Boy while I went to retrieve The Girl and Her Daddy since only three of us can fit into The Truck.
Tony’s brother has a car that is currently sitting idle since he drives a company vehicle.
We can use his car for free.
There was a HUGE thunderstorm earlier.
When they broke down the sun was shining.
Had the sun not been shining and had the sky been storming, they would not have gone to soccer practice.
We would not have used the car again until tomorrow to get to school.
The car did NOT break down on the way to school in the morning at 7:00.
Nor did it break down when I made a mad dash home today at lunch and made it back to school with just minutes to spare before my 6th period class showed up.
The car is 7 years old.
It is paid for.
We have had NO major trouble with it, so it’s due to pitch a fit.
AND
Tonight is the season premier of CSI.
Which Tony will watch for both of us so he can tell me when to look and when not to look.
It’s Thursday.
Which, in my book, is Friday Eve.
If you have not yet seen THIS (and I’ve not sent it to you personally) you must go now, now, now, right now and watch it. Go. Now.
Very, very, very creative.
And if YOU love pink, and like me, don’t have enough money to BUY a Dyson, hop on over to Five Minutes for Mom and sign up to win one.
My dear friend over at Bringing Up Daisy has just ruined my life.
I have loved letters since I was a VERY small child. I remember my mother getting onto me for putting a little tail on the end of my manuscript lower-case “a” when I was in kindergarten. “But it’s my CURSIVE ‘a,’” I remember saying plaintively. To no avail, she and my kindergarten teacher, our across-the-street-neighbor, Lucille, would have none of it.
I remember in 1st grade when my mother PAINSTAKINGLY printed the letters of my name
R O X A N N E
onto a little home-made, pink bag on which she had embroidered a yellow kitty sitting next to a red flower and looking at a blue butterfly. She then embroidered my name in black so it would stand out. It was my special bag to hold my flashcards. I was a struggling reader (IMAGINE THAT), and she was trying to encourage me to learn my sight words. She wasn’t happy with any of the iron-on embroidery letters she had, so she printed her own. I still have that bag.
I remember in 2nd grade when my school teacher mother finally threw up her hands and gave into my demands to learn to write in cursive. After years of “It’s too early.” “You’re doing it wrong.” “You’ll learn in 3rd grade.” She finally one day said, “If you’re going to do it, I might as well teach you the RIGHT way.”
I remember in 3rd grade when Mrs. Kennedy said, “Boys and girls, several of you are having trouble making a cursive capital B. I would like for one of our students to come and make one on the board so you can see how it should be done. Roxanne, would you please go and write a cursive capital B?” I was so excited and proud and nervous. . .I think it was the WORST capital B I ever made.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve written my alphabet for fun.
I have huge words on my wall at school in several fonts which I got from our library computers and blew up to larger sizes made out of several colors of scrapbook paper. It’s the Fruit of the Spirit in the guise of a word wall.
I’m so sneaky.
And when I just went in search of the name for someone like me–a lover of letters–a lover of words–I found this instead,
“From my youth upwards, I have been a lover of words, a chooser of words, in a slender and superficial manner, a student of words, and instead of acquiescing in such disparagement, reducing them almost to ‘ airy nothing,’ I proclaim myself ready to maintain against all comers that words are things; nay, and things of pith and moment, life and passion. Have we not the right word, the very word, the word of advice, the word in season, the word of comfort, the warning word, the cruel word, and the kind one? And what are these but things? How they fasten themselves on our memory, with a grasp never to be shaken off while life endures! How our associations cling and swarm, and cluster round them! How our hearts beat at the sound with recollected joy, grief, pity, hope, indignation, or gratitude! Things! Nay, I am more inclined to call them persons, in such vivid individuality of feature do they rise before ‘ the eye of mind.’ Have they not also—at least the more distinguished of their race—their pedigrees, their biographies, their private, sometimes their scandalous, histories and anecdotes? Are there not among them ranks and degrees, nobles and commoners, decent people and rabble, natives and aliens, legitimates and illegitimates, pure breeds and mongrels?”
From Memoirs, Miscellanies, and Letters of the Late Lucy Aikin
Isn’t that just wonderful? If I can’t take the credit for making those statements, at least I found them to enjoy.
And I swanee, this Flickr site is Satan’s candy.
The same man who watched Star Trek and received All the Knowledge of the Digital Revolution? Yeah. That one.
Last night we had pork chops for dinner. I had cut up one to split between the kids. Near the end of the meal Thad was complaining that his tummy was full–then three minutes later wanted to know if he could have some candy for dessert.
I said, “Boy, did you eat your meat?”
Tony piped up and said, “Can you have your pudding?”
Thad immediately says, “We have pudding?????”
And I immediately say, “We have pudding????”
‘Cause I know that I didn’t make any pudding, and Tony is not in the HABIT of making pudding, and, therefore, the likelihood of us having pudding is a very, very minute likelihood indeed.
While Thad begins doing the Pudding Dance accompanied by the Pudding Chant, I ask Tony again, “We have pudding?” (In the background “Pudding! Pudding! Pudding!”) And he says, “I dunno. . .’How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?’”
(Pudding dance STILL going on–like a version of “walking man” that a 6 year old who can’t dance might do whilst chanting, “Pudding! Pudding! Pudding!”)
This entire conversation took place in the span of just under a minute, and I then realized that Tony was, in actuality, just being himself and Thad, who has never heard of Pink Floyd or a Pink Floyd song and has NO idea of the pop cultural significance of the line his Daddy just said to me, is expecting some pudding.
I then said, as Victoria joins in the Pudding Dance/Chant, “You don’t even SAY pudding in the hearing of a 6 year old if you don’t know for sure we have some.”
His reply? “Sorry.”
Guess what I made for dessert. At least it has calcium. And it was sugar free. So I had some too.
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And on a completely different note, today is Sarah’s birthday. Go on over and wish her some happiness.
I have linked to Joshilyn Jackson’s site before. (Her name is pronounced Joss-a-lyn, by the way.) She is a very talented southern writer who, I think, writes an incredible blog as well. There is one particular entry where she is gazing at her children and marveling over the wonder that is procreation while her husband, Scott, is a little more under excited. You can read the entire entry below, and I highly recommend you do. It is a snapshot of the complex relationship that is men and women.
Last night, late, when Scott and I had turned off all the lights downstairs and headed up to our room, I paused between the doorways to my children’s bedrooms and listened to them breathe. I had one of my rare moments when I realize I do have a little piece of soul tucked way down deep under all the glib I throw around.
Me: *tearing up a little* Isn’t it amazing? We did that. You and me. We made little people. Out of US. And now here they are, their own little separate selves.
Him: Yeah. (Subtext: I am bored of this conversation already and it just started. PS Are you back on that really bad, bad cocaine again?)
Me: But we MADE them. Out of GAMETES. Out of essentially NOTHING. You and I made PEOPLE out of biological EFFLUVIUM. How can you not see that this is a miracle?
Him: Cats can do the same thing, honey.
Me: *glare*
Him: Don’t ge me wrong. I’m nuts about our kids, and I am strongly in favor of the process for making them. But I’m not going to get choked up over Biology 101.
Me: But the Hoover Dam, that brings a tear to your jaundiced eye???
Him: Show me a cat who can make the Hoover Dam.
Me: But the planet MARS, that makes your heart go pitterypatpat?
Him: Nah, Mars is just a planet. *perks up* But one day people will GO to Mars! Now THAT will be COOL.
Me: You know, they don’t call it THE TRUCK OF LIFE. Like some dirty old truck comes and drops off a pile of babies and you grab the best, fattest one. They call it The MIRACLE of Life.
Him: Well, they don’t call it the Hoover Meh. They call it the Hoover….Dam!
And he said Dam like Will Smith always does, you know, with the drawn out A, like he’d just seen something astounding.
Me: SO! THIS is what happens when you let Discovery Channel Geeks Breed, huh?
Him: Pretty much.
Me: Cool.
Fast forward to the Langley clan driving to school this past Wednesday morning. Tony is complaining about how slowly the computer is running. This is a normal and repeated complaint. Right now it is running slowly due to an excess of family videos that need to be burned to disc.
I say, “Well, can’t we just get one of those tiny flash drive thingies that Sherry showed us to store stuff on until you can get the videos copied over?”
To which he replies, “Yes.”
At this moment my brain is totally overcome with WAY to much stimuli regarding the thing that is a computer. It boggles the mind. Atleast it boggles MY mind. As the wheels in my brain begin to spin and smoke, I say the following to my own husband.
“Doesn’t it just amaze you that we can, like, take ACTUAL REAL LIFE PICTURES of our children, who are alive. . .and moving. . .and talking. . .and all of it gets recorded onto this tiny, thin material, and then we can just put it onto the computer and BURN it onto what is essentially a plastic plate, and then we can relive the past over and over and over in real time?”
To which he replies, “Um, no.”
And I say, “NO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!????????????????????????????”
And he dismissively says, “No. . .I watched Star Trek.”
As though THAT was the explanation to the technological wonder that is video and digital information and the like. Star Trek is the explanation. I just didn’t get THAT MUCH enlightenment from Star Trek. But Jean-Luc Picard WAS a hottie.
And though I’ve not ever met her, me and Joss are SO totally BFF.
Tonight while I was procrastinating relaxing, I happened across a re-run of “Designing Women.” If you happened to have missed this little gem of a show in the ’80’s, then you have missed a treat.
There is just no one on the face of the planet that can deliver a diatribe (southern or otherwise) like Julia Sugarbaker (played impeccably by Dixie Carter).
Her delivery of the right comment at the right time nearly brings me to tears. I could not find the precise speech she delivered tonight, and for that I am truly sorry since it included her in a southern belle gown complete with a hoop skirt and had as its crowning moment the line, “As God is my witness, I will burn this house down myself before I let you people back into it.” But I give you Julia Sugarbaker at her finest and then some.
