Another fan letter

August 2, 2013

Dear Mary Pope Osborne,

my name is Bela Strong I am eight years old.I love your magic tree house books mostly the magic tree house book when Teddy, Jack and Annie went to a castle with ghosts and a half man half raven tride to get a diemind from them. I am so upset with ghosts and silkies.

How do you make up such good stories? Did you know I look just like Annie? I have some questions to ask. How does Annie understand animals? What does good medicine mean?

YOUR GOOD FRIEND
Bela Strong

p.s please write back

family

I spent the day at the hospital today, with my mom and brother. He isn't doing so great, unfortunately. He's slated to undergo open heart surgery in a couple days, and if you would like to visit him send me an email and I'll give you details, as he's here in Chicago.

In the meantime, a few pictures of what very early mornings are like around here. Gill has been waking before the sun unfortunately, and I usually drag her into bed with me (and usually one sister or another). She knows how to bypass my security code on my iphone and get to the camera, and got these shots this morning that I think are pretty cool..

Here's to family. And wishing for the best.

Seance

For as little official time as we allow Bela on the computer, she is quite the Google expert. Lately, I've had a problem with finding her on my computer when she's not allowed to be. Basically, Monday through Friday, she can put on music and listen to audiobooks or maybe do some search for something with me by her side, but that's it.

I'm trying to teach her moderation, I'm trying to limit her screen time, and I'm trying to make my old laptop last as long as possible.

Today, after many days in a row of snapping the computer out of her hands, I found her behind the couch holding the lap top while she listened to audio books. I suspected she was googling or playing with Power Point or something. She denied.

As I cleaned up after dinner and sent the girls upstairs tonight,   I couldn't help but check out the browser history and spy on her.

Her searches?

How to buy minecraft. 
Minecraft secrets.
Minecraft minecraft minecraft.

But then?

Seance.
How to do a seance. 
Do seances work.
Seance.

Bela is upstairs right now reading a book about ghosts to Chris. Maybe I should join them and we should try out her new seance skills?

I got it covered

Chris likes to tell this story about his Mom: When he was younger, it never failed to thoroughly gross him out that she would manage her kitchen compost bin bare handed. After days of dumping egg shells and coffee grounds, potato peelings and rotting tomatoes, she could just reach in there up to her wrists and swish it around, smash it down, and scoop it up.

And while my following opinion is limited by my own personal experiences, I'm just going to go ahead and say that, when it comes to the gross parts of  kids, of domesticity, and of life, the Mom's have it covered. Am I right?

Take the other night. After more than a year without an infestation, I found a few nits on Bela. Now, this was after a long day of work, coming home to a chaotic and messy house full of kids needing to do homework and to eat a decent dinner, while lacking any other adult to help out because daddy was traveling again.

With the beautiful and miraculous help of my two older girls, we succeeded in making dinner, completing all the homework, putting the chickens in for the night, stripping  the beds, and washing the blankies, all while keeping tabs on the adorable but impossible Gillian Fern.

As I stepped over pellets of guinea pig poop that had been scraped out of the cage by my almost two year old, as I slipped through the pee that had sloshed out of her new and much adored (and FULL) potty, I stuffed my arms with towels, discarded clothing, jackets, and anything else that might need scalding to rid us of the nits.

I arrived to Gillian's closet and reached down with the last empty inch of my right hand to pick up a pair of crusty and nasty pajama pants she had deposited there on the floor, and discovered that my aging kitty Bronte, who completes 18 years on this planet come January,  had decided that that was the perfect place to poop.

I hesitated only a moment, I swear. I adjusted some of the things I was holding and, lacking any sort of tissue or paper, I reached down and grabbed the hard little pile. With my bare hands.

I'm almost certain that the guy I married--the one who throws up when he has to pick up dog poop with a doubled up plastic bag--will shudder when he reads this.

Lunch

Once a week I "let" the kids eat school lunch. This usually happens towards the end of the week, when my only packing options are a can of Artichoke Hearts and some dijon mustard. The girls love school lunch, and that's no lie. I don't know how they stomach the stuff.

The other 4 days of the school week I insist on making their lunches. I abide by only a few rules: (mostly) healthy; (mostly) balanced, and (mostly) non-packaged food. And the girls only grumble a little.

To make things easier, I pre-make some meals and freeze them. And so we tend to have a soup day (Bela's current favorite is lentil; Mae loves Hearty Split Pea); a "pocket" day  of homemade calzones, a veggie and dip day, usually a leftover dinner day, which ranges from pasta to casseroles to pizza. I toss in fruit, cucumbers from the garden, popcorn or nuts to round it all out. And when available, a little treat.

They get very excited about the treat, sometimes to my annoyance.

"Fruit is a real treat", I say. "You don't need dessert every day", I say. "Sugar isn't good for lunch" I say.

Last week, Mae was helping me make dinner (which was to also become their lunch for the next day). After we ate, I plopped Gillian in the tub and Mae decided to help out with the kitchen duties. She cleaned up the table, washed the dishes, and then continued to make MY lunch for the next day.

I was tickled! But I can't lie: I was pretty bummed when I sat down to eat, ravenously hungry.

A Mae Mae special: Cucumber salad with carrots, salt and pepper. Another, less flavorful, salad with raw mushrooms, cucumbers and celery. A banana.. And (thank goodness) two little chocolate chip cookies we had just made.

I wonder if the girls feel as sad at lunch time as I did as I ate my two salads, and my "treat" of a banana.

Thank goodness for chocolate.

Scream

There's a fish in this bucket!

Chris left town for another week. Things have the potential to get pretty grim around here soon.

My sweet, laid back baby girl has been replaced with a raging monster, and this makes single parenting a difficult endeavor.

It's not just whining. And it's not just a little loud. It is ear piercing. It is clenched fists and red face. It's shut the windows so the neighbors won't hear. It's cry in the middle of the night and wonder if maybe, just maybe, you drank too many glasses of wine while pregnant and this is what happens to bad parents like you.

On Sunday I tried to walk with the three of them to the grocery store to get food for lunches for the week. She wanted to "walkie" and push her own stroller. I wanted to pull my finger nails out. But instead we walkied, slowly, towards the closest store. But she had no shoes on, nor any intention of putting them on. So I said, Hey Gill, wanna walkie? You need shoes. This is the big city!

She screamed and threw her apple at me.

Aware that the only person who would be judged in this public performance would be yours truly, I took a deep breath. Pretended to be zen and calm; pretended nothing could push me off my high momma horse.

I said, Walkie? Shoes. No shoes? Stroller.

She screamed and threw her shoes in my face.

I put her in the stroller. And things just deteriorated.

This was the point where Mae and Bela chose to have a street-side squabble of their own. I was looking pretty bad. I started to sweat a little. I felt a little nauseous. I felt embarrassed. But mostly, I just felt so, so tired.

I buckled her screaming and writhing body into the stroller with brute force. I scraped her shoes off the sidewalk, fisted the apple, stifled a desperate and psychotic scream of my own, swung the stroller around and marched back home.

When we entered our alley I took her half-eaten apple and threw it with all my strength into the side of a brick garage, to watch with indulgent satisfaction as it exploded into hundreds of mealy apple bits.

The girls looked worried, and I only felt a little better. 

Once inside I needed a minute to collect myself, and then I gathered her up and hugged her and started doing weird yoga breathing, inhale for 10 exhale for 10, in the hopes that she would either A)begin breathing deeply, become fully relaxed, and chill the f*** out, or B) just stop crying because she was wondering what on earth had happened to her mother.

She stopped. And we're all fine now.

But we are only on day 2 of the 1 against 3 challenge. If you need to find me tomorrow I'll be in my office late, catching up on work (hiding from Gillian) until my yoga class (further escape) starts.

Don't stay away too long, dear. 

Yikes

Holy crap it's been 45 days since I last checked in. Where does the time go?

Well, in an effort to slow the unforgiving march of the clock (and to wean an overly booby obsessed almost-two-year-old), and to celebrate my husband's 36 years on this planet, I spent 5 hours in the car yesterday. My mission? Drive all three (ALL THREE!!!) of my children to their Grandma's house for 60 glorious hours.

I got them settled in, nursed little Gill (for the last time?), and jumped back in my car and drove home. Alone.

I'm disoriented and can't get my bearings, but have big plans for the day. So far? I ran 14 miles out at the lake, had coffee with a great group of ladies in Lincoln Square, made my list and headed to Home Depot.

On the agenda? Some window washing, some laundry, some grouting, some yard work, some dinner out to celebrate, some wine, some sleep. Maybe some knitting.