Archive for the 'Kids and Parenting' Category

All the News That’s Fit to Print

Published March 15, 2007 in Miscellaneous, Personal and Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

Now that I’ve gotten this joint back up and running, I guess it’s time for a real update. So, what exactly has kept me away for so long? Oh, where to begin…

Some of you remember that I homeschool my oldest son and send my youngest to public school. I spent a fair amount of my blogging hiatus fighting with the school. Again. The short version is that Monkeyboy raised a ruckus by saying the word ‘penis’ at school. Twice. Neither time was it in a sexual context. But those of you familiar with the public school system’s sensitivity towards anything that could be construed as even remotely sexual can probably identify with the crap I’ve been dealing with ever since. I’ll probably write more about this whole thing later (oh imagine the Google bait!). Suffice it to say that I haven’t pulled Monkeyboy out of public school yet but it’s been very close.

BooBoo continues to do well with his homeschooling, although he also continues to be ‘uninspired’ with schoolwork in general. For a while, I thought it was me or the subject matter that was boring him to death. I’ve since concluded that he’s a typical 13 year old boy…he’s uninspired about everything that doesn’t have a video game controller attached to it. I’ve decided to stop worrying about it and just go with the flow. He’s learning…even if he’s not excited about it.

I know a few of you would like to hear the latest in the Pseudo-nephew Saga. The two of them are growing like weeds and, health-wise, are doing wonderfully. Looking at them, you’d never know the hell they went through for the majority of their lives. Their eyes are bright…complexions are rosy. According to the group home cook, they’re capable of eating them out of house and home, so that’s an issue we’ll need to confront soon. The youngest will eat until he literally pukes it all back up, so I’m sure that we’re going to be looking at both of them having serious issues with food if we don’t nip it in the bud now.

Behaviorally, there’s been no progress. They are each happy and compliant children…until they’re NOT. And then there is no reasoning with them at all. I’ve got a stack of Physical Intervention Reports on my desk almost 4 inches thick. These reports get mailed to me every time one of them needs to be physically restrained by a staff member. Sometimes I get several in the same envelope. This was incredibly depressing to me for a bit but my own self-preservation kicked in and I have started making a game out of it with myself trying to guess which kid each report is about. Seriously. Anything to keep my own sanity in check.

Academically, they’re blossoming…thank goodness. At least that’s one strike against them that they seem to be able to overcome. Hopefully they can build on that.

As for me…well, there’s the good and the bad. All of these kid issues combined with the loss of one of my contracts are just sucking the life out of me right now. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never work for someone else again, but at the moment, self-employment is no rose garden. I’m considering looking for another online community manager gig. I did that during the ‘dot-com boom and bomb’ and working remotely is the best of both worlds. Especially since someone else gets to worry about the bottom line.

On a good note, spring is finally making an appearance here in the mountains. It’s a time for renewal and rebirth and that alone is something that makes me happier than I can say.

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Skeletons in the Closet

Published August 29, 2006 in Personal and Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

That’s the phrase that immediately popped into my head when I first laid eyes on those two boys. They look like concentration camp survivors or something. Bones protruding out of everywhere. Buzz cuts (to aid in destroying their lice infestations).

And then I saw something that REALLY disturbed me.

The oldest boy is the spitting image of pseudo-brother at 12 years old. The youngest boy is the spitting image of pseudo-brotherII at 8 years old. Given that my two pseudo-brothers look absolutely nothing alike, this disturbs me a little. My mind is just a little too boggled at this point to even figure out how genetics work, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the youngest boy belongs to my youngest pseudo-brother.

After everything I saw and heard yesterday, NOTHING would surprise me.

I can’t get into any specifics anymore, but I’ll give you a quick rundown:

1. The meeting with the social workers, lawyers and police went fine. I got more information than I know what to do with. Suffice it to say that it ain’t too damn pretty. I am angry…at the whole damn world…but most especially at my pseudo-family.
2. Meeting the boys was a lesson in ‘faking it’. I had to pretend that merely looking at these two boys wasn’t enough to make me physically ill. I had to pretend that I was just a visiting friend who brought presents for the boys. I had to pretend that I didn’t fear breaking them in two when they hugged me tight as I left. I had to pretend that my heart wasn’t breaking. Meeting them was also a reminder of the resiliency of children. They both have so much potential…and so many obstacles to overcome.
3. I had plenty of time to attend pseudo-brother’s court hearing. The showdown with pseudo-mother afterwards was especially satisfying and is deserving of a post itself, which I may write up later.
4. On Thursday, I meet with my social worker here and her supervisor to determine what the game plan will be in the event I decide to take the kids. The outcome of that meeting will determine my decision.
5. Monkeyboy’s first day of school went well. I met his teacher in the morning when I dropped him off and she seems nice…and young. Too young. I hope the hell she’s tougher than she looks.
6. I am amazed at my friends, both on- and offline. I am a lucky woman indeed.
7. I have a boy turning into a young man today and must get ready for some festivities that will be held in BooBoo’s honor this evening. My mommy genes are getting a workout this week and I expect to be a mixture of irrational maternal emotions today.

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Black Flies Don’t Bite…They SUCK

Published June 20, 2006 in Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

The kids returned last night from a long weekend with TheEx and TheWife. Upon walking through the door, TheEx pulled down Monkeyboy’s pants, pointed to his calf and asked, “What IS that?!”

MB’s calf was swollen to about twice it’s size due to a FUCK-OFF MASSIVE black fly bite. Holy crap, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I asked him if he was having any trouble breathing and he said no…just that it itched like crazy. I grabbed the After-Bite from the medicine cabinet and spread it all over his leg and gave him a dose of children’s Benedryl. TheEx was a bit dubious about it and thought we should take him to the emergency room.

He really is quite cute in a pathetic sort of way when he thinks he’s broken one of the kids.

That After-Bite Cream for kids is excellent stuff, by the way. This morning, the bite was down to a much less impressive size and, after another application of it, the bite is pretty much gone now.

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Fear Factor

Published June 18, 2006 in Personal and Kids and Parenting. 2 Comments

Now that summer vacation is here, the boys needed to accompany me to the Sheriff’s department to file some papers on Friday. I’m never concerned about taking my kids anywhere because they are typically well behaved and respectful. But the offices are located in the courthouse…an environment they’ve never been in before, so I was a bit nervous about Monkeyboy. He’s a very exuberant 9 year old and curious about EVERYTHING. I had visions of him going through the metal detector, setting it off and then running back and forth through it to make it beep over and over again. Or climbing through the Xray machine on the conveyer belt.

We got through the metal detector without incident and went downstairs to the Sheriff’s department. I pointed to a bench in the corner and both boys sat down. The receptionist was busy helping a lawyer with some paperwork, so we waited a few minutes. The Sheriff that usually comes to evict tenants in the building came through and we gabbed for a few minutes. Finally, the receptionist came over and we took care of the paperwork that I was filing. After we were done, she looked over at the boys and commented on how quiet and well behaved they were. I thanked her and we were off.

Ever since they were little kids, I always lay down my expectations for behavior before we enter any eating, shopping or movie establishment. They’ve learned through the years that if they act up, their asses are MINE once we get home. Now that they’re older, the warnings are usually just a simple “Behave OR ELSE”.

On Friday the conversation went a little something like this:

Monkeyboy: “What’s this place?”
Me: “These are the county offices and courthouse. That means this is a place of business and I expect you to be on your BEST behavior here. You also need to remove everything from your pockets because you need to walk through a machine that looks for dangerous stuff and the machine will make a lot of noise if you have so much as a penny in your pockets.”
BooBoo: “What are we going to do here?”
Me: “I need to file some paperwork with the Sheriff’s department…which reminds me. This place has lots of BIG men with BIG guns. Do NOT give them a reason to shoot your ass.”
Kids: ~Wide-eyed Silence~

I am SO not above using fear tactics to get the behavior I want out of kids.

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New Beginnings

Published January 30, 2006 in Personal and Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

In the next few weeks, several changes will be coming to my world. Nothing earth shattering, but changes, nonetheless.

At the end of 2005, I was informed by one of the internet companies that I subcontract through that there will be a restructuring (good God how I hate that word) that will all but eliminate the need for me to perform the duties I was originally hired to do. I began working on the internet in 1989, so I have been through many restructurings, but this company was my first and best loved. I still have several other contracts that, for the moment, seem stable…but if there’s one thing I KNOW, it’s that these things can change at a moment’s notice.

Anyways, as most of you know, I also have a nice little position managing several properties for a friend. While this job alone will insure that we won’t end up in the poor house (and is much more stable than any of my contracts), it’s not something that I particularly enjoy doing and it’s not something I planned to do for the rest of my life. I will be graduating with a Associates degree in IT this summer and I’ve already started a dual Bachelors degree in Information Technology and Business Management. I’ve always had my eye on starting my own business when I graduate, thinking…wrongly…that I HAD to have a degree.

Now, after having spent a large portion of time in college, I’ve realized that I’m not learning anything I didn’t already know. I know that sounds conceited, but it’s the truth. I’m tutoring fellow technology students that are at the END of their degree requirements…they’re taking classes that I can’t even take yet because I haven’t fulfilled the prerequisites. I don’t really feel that my college experience has been wasted…higher education is NEVER a waste. I do, however, feel that I need to change my game plan a little bit. Up until now, finishing college has been my priority (after my children, of course). I’ll be reducing the number of classes I take each term from 4 to 2 and using the additional free time to plan a business. It will take longer for me to recieve that silly little diploma but I don’t have a problem with that now that I’ve convinced myself that I don’t need it yesterday.

I’m going to take a few baby steps this year towards the goal of starting my own web programming company, as well as another blog venture. Theater of the Soul will continue on the way it always has…as a depository for my drivel and silly memes…but I’ve begun working on another blog to reflect another change that will be taking place soon.

Many moons ago, I homeschooled my oldest son through second-grade. He wanted to try public school and, truth be told, I was relieved. Homeschooling was a very lonely endeavor for us because we didn’t fit in with any of the groups in our area. We’re not religious, we’re not salivating government school haters, I’m not a coddling ‘my child does no wrong’ type of mommy. I simply wanted to give my son a GREAT education…not involve myself with the peripheral issues that so often brings these people together. Booboo did well…with one small slip in grades last year when he figured out that the teachers don’t hold him accountable for not doing his homework. He didn’t do his homework for the last half of one entire term last year and they failed him without so much as a courtesy phone call to me. I hit the fucking roof, with both the school and the kid. I don’t expect the school to let him slide or make any accomodations for his obvious fuck up…but I DO expect someone to call me to at least warn me or find out what’s going on. Nothing. I considered pulling him out last year because I’m definitely not happy with the quality of work that he’s being allowed to get away with. He’s pulling A’s on essays that I CRINGE to read. I KNOW he is capable of better work than he’s getting away with. Math is his weak subject but he does pick up on the concepts with enough practice. His math teacher this year assigns very little homework and, as near as I can tell, grades the kids on a curve…which is enough to send me into a hissy fit. This school has supposedly made ‘HUGE strides’ in bringing up their standardized test scores…now I know how that’s happened.

The last straw was the report card that came home on Friday. He recieved an F in science, due to missing assignments from when he was out with the flu for a week. He got all of his missing assignments on the day he went back…unfortunately that was a day that he didn’t have Science, so he forgot to get them. I never accept ‘I forgot’ as an excuse, so his ass is grounded until progress reports come out next month again. But I am BEYOND pissed off at the teacher.

Saturday night I made the decision to pull Booboo out of public school and return to homeschooling. I tried to come up with reasons to leave him where he is, but I simply can’t justify it. I’m lucky enough to work at home the majority of the time and he’s independent enough to not rely on me for every bit of information fed into his brain. He’ll continue attending public school for now…I need time to get my shit in one sock and I need to decide whether taking him out in the middle of a year is a good idea. I ordered a Math curriculum this morning but I plan on going in a different direction with his Science, Lang. Arts and Social Studies stuff.

So hopefully, sometime within the next couple of weeks, I’ll launch a new blog geared towards non-traditional families like mine who are making the leap into homeschooling. By the time I do that, I should have everything all set to be a homeschooling mom again. Shortly after that, we’ll be (hopefully) moving to a new, larger apartment. Sometime during all this, I’ll be offering up a limited number of free website designs and/or hosting. If you’re willing to be a guinea pig, drop me an email.

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Worst Nightmare Come True

Published January 25, 2006 in Personal, Kids and Parenting and Pet Tales. 1 Comment

Despite the fact that our household has a resident snake, whom I’ve come to love and adore, one of my worst nightmares is snakes anywhere I don’t expect them to be. This includes, above all other locales, my BED. I can’t even watch those snake shows on Animal Planet when I’m in bed because suddenly my skin starts crawling and I’m convinced that there is something under the covers. Irrational? Possibly.

Unfortunately for eldest child, he unwittingly allowed my worst nightmare to come true this evening.

Professor Snape, as she is lovingly called, lives in a very nice tank in my bedroom. This might seem to not make any sense given that I don’t like slithering creatures near my bed, but I’d rather know where she IS instead of knowing where she ISN’T. To my fucked up brain, this does indeed make sense, so go with it. Anywho, our scaly mistress was looking, shall we say ‘peckish’ several hours ago, so I instructed eldest child to pick a sacrificial lamb from the mouse tank and feed her, while also refreshing her water dish and scooping the poo.

For those that don’t have a snake and are blessidly oblivious to the procedure, general wisdom dictates that the snake be moved to a separate feeding box so that they don’t associate hands in their cage with food. Our feeding box of choice is a large rubbermaid container with a lid, so that I don’t have to watch the whole affair. Sometimes, however, the children have a yearning to watch nature take it’s course, so they’ll place the box on my bed with the lid off. Given that things become rather uneventful and boring after the mouse has stopped struggling, the boys go back to whatever they were doing…and I usually remember to remind them to place the snake back in her tank. I have forgotten in the past, but it hasn’t been an issue because the snake wasn’t long enough to climb out of the box.

She is now.

You see where this is going, don’t you? About 20 minutes ago, I tossed the brats in bed, got in my jammies and climbed into bed with the laptop to await this evening’s episode of Lost. The feeding box was on my bed, so I picked it up and placed it on the floor. It still didn’t register in my head that I had forgotten something. Bedtime attire consists of flannel lounge pants and an oversized sweatshirt this evening, so I was well and truly snuggled up and comfortable on my bed with my usual mountain of pillows.

I was settled in for an hour of blog reading, when I felt a strange and cool sensation at my waistband. I absentmindedly tucked the covers in around my side, thinking it was a draft. It was then that I noticed that the draft had substance. I pulled open the covers thinking the kids had left a toy in the bed…and grabbed whatever the hell it was.

I don’t think I would have screamed like a little girl if what I was grabbing hadn’t grabbed back. It was Snape’s ass-end and, god love her, she didn’t bite or flinch at all when I pulled her out of my shirt. She had been out of her cage and away from her heat source for so long that she was cold and clammy and just wanted a nice warm place to sleep with a belly full of mouse. She’s now asleep in her heated rock cave.

I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight if anyone needs me.

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Raising Kids

Published August 11, 2005 in Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

I was an only child. Both of my parents were married to other people before they met, so I do have several half brothers and sisters on each side…none of whom I’m close to. I don’t even know how many children my mother had before me…I’ve met two when I was very young, but I think there are more. Anyways, my point is that I don’t have any sibling experiences to relate to when I’m dealing with my two sons.

Boys are strange creatures to raise. It’s been my experience that you REALLY have to fuck up in order to cause any real lasting damage to them. They’re tough and they seem to bounce back easier than girls do.

My oldest son will be 12 this month. BooBoo is ALL ME in some areas…but then there are other things that he does that I don’t even know where he gets them from. Like the fact that he’s a bit of a hypochondriac and he’s a worrier. Every little ache and pain is brought immediately to my attention. The fact that he worries isn’t all that surprising, given the fact that, when he comes to tell me about an ache in his leg, I scream “OH MY GOD IT’S GOING TO FALL OFF!”. I laugh and send him on his way. I’m not a coddler and I never have been, so I don’t know where he came up with this stuff. Thankfully, he’s pretty much grown out of it now, but when he was 7, the kid had more aches and pains than a 70 year old. He’s not a physically active kind of kid…he likes to fish and camp and hike, but he’s much more content indoors with his nose in a book or playing video games. He’s built like a twig…just like me. He’s shy and quiet…just like me. And he was meant to be an only child…just like me. Unfortunately for him, he’s got a brother who is the exact opposite of both of us.

Monkeyboy is ALL BOY and has been since day 1. He is on the go, exploring everything he possibly can, from the second he opens his eyes til the time he falls into an exhausted sleep. His brain keeps going, even when he’s sleeping, so he has very vivid dreams and nightmares. If he gets hurt or is in pain, he shakes it off and keeps going. He’s a good kid, but if you don’t keep a tight rein on him, he’ll quickly spin out of control. He’s the artist in the family and the one who believes that some rules were made to be broken.

It amazes me how two kids, raised by the SAME PEOPLE, can end up being SO different. There’s no chance of any mixups at the hospital because, if you put blonde ponytails on each of them, you’d have ME at their respective ages.

I never used to believe that biology plays much of a role in the personality of someone, but I’ve had to re-evaluate some of my beliefs about that.

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From the Mouths of Babes

Published July 28, 2005 in Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

My youngest son never fails to amaze me. I sat them down earlier tonight and told them that we’d be going to Kay’s for a little while to help her take care of her mom, who everyone calls Nana. Her eventual death will be the first human death for either boy to experience (we’ve already been through the drama of losing the family dog but they were both very young) and I wanted to be sure that they aren’t blindsided as to what to expect. I’m no good at this ‘talking about your feelings’ bullshit, so I’m pretty much flying blind.
Anyways, after going through the rigamarole of questions regarding heaven and other fairy tales that we tell each other to make ourselves feel better (hehe), my youngest says something that broke my heart.

“Has Nana’s hair fallen out like the Skin Horse said it would?”

It took him a minute to make me understand what in the hell he was talking about. When he was born, Nana gave us a huge boxed set of books with coordinating stuffed animals of the main characters of the books. We still have Stellaluna, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Velveteen Rabbit animals and books on the bookcases in the kids’ room. When he was little, we read those (and many other books) over and over again, but the Velveteen Rabbit was always his favorite. For those that haven’t read the books 30 gazillion times, this is a pertinent quote:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Some how, in his 8 year old mind, he equated ‘becoming real’ as dying. The saddest part to me is that, not only did Nana give him that book, but the description of what happens when you become real is exactly what is happening…with the exception of the eyes dropping out bit.

Through the wonders of science and chemotherapy, Nana has lost most of her hair, has no strength and, to a child, will look very, very shabby.

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Photography Final

Published July 28, 2005 in Kids and Parenting. 0 Comments

Photo I Final

I’ve been meaning to post this picture that earned me an A on my Photo I final last spring. Out of every class I’ve taken, the photography class was the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. It was an actual hands-on, from beginning to bitter end type class. We had to take the pics, develop the film, do the test pages, use the enlargers and develop the actual pictures. Not only did we end up working with some pretty shoddy equipment, halfway through the course I messed up mixing the chemicals and ruined 6 rolls of film that had the bulk of all of my assignments on them, so I had to retake all the shots.

I enjoyed the class but it was harder than any programming or networking class I’ve ever taken. I’m just not cut out for that right-brain shit.

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