Food Schism

What is a corn dog? Is there actual food in a corn dog? After school, I thawed out some Edamame beans for snack. (The lightly salted ones from Trader Joe's taste really good.) Birdie is screaming, "I want a corn dog! Where is my CORN DOG!?" Then he is shrieking as though someone is torturing him. Dylan has already fished a Coke from the fridge. He has been hoarding the Coke since the Defenders of Wildlife picnic/rally, which supplied the sodas. His dad let him bring one home. I have a sinking feeling in my stomache as I look in the cupboard at the plastic bags containing organic split peas, nutrional yeast from the Co-op. There is no way my kids are going to eat this stuff. Especially not when Dad supplies them with Ding-dongs (a chocolate version of Twinkies) and Cocoa-Crispies on the sly. The colors of some junk foods alarm me--why are Sno-Balls SO pink? The generic Hawaiin Punch Birdie snuck into the shopping cart looks like it will glow in the dark. I am dismayed that my kids are putting these virtual nonfood items, plus chemicals, into their healthy little bodies. How am I going to make peace with the Nutritional Yeast/Ding Dong Schism?

lost my keys

D drove to work with my car keys, leaving me rifling through drawers trying to find a spare set to get my youngest to kindergarten on time. I was mean, yelling at my kids for minor infractions of not eating breakfast, refusing to wear socks, squeezing the cat too hard. The spare keys, it turns out, are locked inside my car; meanwhile the window of opportunity for getting to school on time has passed. DS comments, "Actually, I am feeling kind of sick," hoping the lost keys will give him a day off from school. I call D to drive back and bring me my keys, and then proceed to walk with ds to his school.

I don't like to be late often; but it is really hard to get clothing, lunches, backpacks ready; kids out of beds, hair combed, and make it to the school by 8:25. Then I rush to the bus stop to be there by 8:45 so my third grader can get the school bus to his highly gifted and talented program at another school. The nongifted parents, some of whom are half my age, are neatly dressed, as are their children, bright eyed and ready to start their work days, it seems, and dropping off their obedient children, without yelling at them, before the bell rings. Well it is a minor goal but tomorrow we will be all ready to go, bookbags packed, shoes tied, and so on, EARLY.

Cash n' Carry

One of my English language students worked at a Phillips 66 station right off of the interstate, in a seedy part of the city. Aside from ringing up gas purchases, she was responsible for filling gas tanks for commercial truckers. She is a petite young woman, slight and maybe 5'1". She is 22 and has been working (in Mexico, where I guess there are not labor laws) since she was seven years old. She helps her parents and younger sister with the rent. I was surprised she held this physical job, at which there was some heavy lifting, not to mention the risk of ringing up the purchases at the self-service and convenience store. Well, the station was privately owned and the owners were going out of business, so she was going to be out of a job. She asked me to write her a recommendation for a job, which I was glad to do: I knew from her writing that she was a hard working and enterprising person.

She sent me a thank-you note, which did not mention whether she got a new job, and which included a gift certificate for a store called "Phil's". I wondered if she was now working there. Recently I had a chance to drive to Phil's. Not surprisingly, it too was located in a part of town I would not like to be hanging around in after dark. It turned out to be a cash n' carry discount liquor store. There were some closed-down gas pumps in front, so I figured this was a renovated gas station, or previously a drive-through liquor store.

I went in and asked the young woman behind the counter if she knew if my former student worked there (she didn't). Well I don't usually drink except wine and this place did not seem to carry wine, so I used the gift card for a bottle of Kahlua. I did appreciate my student's thought, though the choice of store was unusual. I hope she improves her English and work options.

Blackout

The electricity in our rural house came back on this morning. There was a big cheer, and our 8 year old ran to the computer looking for his skateboarding game and our five year old rushed to the TV to find "Revenge of the Sith", in which both of them had been happily absorbed yesterday afternoon when the power went out. No power means no water, too, since our pump runs on electricity. Coincidentally the phone was also out. The sun was still up, so we played checkers for a while, until the sunlight in the house started to fade.

Secretly I welcomed the break from the electronic devices, and thought sitting around in the dark would be fun. DH got panicky about "wasting" an evening away from the Internet. Eager to take action, we went out to the car to plug in the cell phone and started calling the electric company, the phone company. Once the sun went down, the darkness was deeper than usual, since there were no lights from our few and distant neighbors. The moon was almost full and there was a warm glow to the windy, silver land outside the car windows.

Inside the house was less pleasant initially. B is still afraid of the dark, so he clung to my elbow while I fumbled with the flashlights, matches, candles. We got a little oil lantern lit and decided to tell ghost stories. I started off with, "Do you know the story of Rip Van Winkle?" Too literary. Trash that. "Have you heard about the headless horseman?" B's eyes got BIG and he hid his face. Too scary, just the title. I did remember a fun ghost story that I had heard at a slumber party in the fourth grade: the story of the vinda viper. (I remembered the giggly girls sitting around in our pajama's in my friend Barbara's den, spinning hair-raising tales. Do girls still do that?)

If you want to know the whole story of the vinda viper, check back later.

We piled into bed without even having to brush our teeth! The kids fell asleep right away. I lay there for a while in the dark, trying to discern something about the quality of my life, whether being there in the very dark house in the middle of nowhere sharing twisted up blankets with sweet little kids was a good place to be. I decided it was ok.

Then I was up at four, antsy, wanting some time to myself and to get some things done.

One thing I learned is to prepare a little blackout kit, with matches, candles, water to drink, maybe even something fun like glow in the dark paint, for the next time.

Styrofoam house

Look out, big bad wolf. We just built our haunted house out of styrofoam, complete with gravestones ("Rest in Pieces"), bats, cobwebs, AND shingles on the leaky roof. Completing it was a big deal, very Zen, very of the Moment: it mattered how that the little fence around it was appropriately skewed.

There were contingencies galore: --I am not going to say how many-- years of unfiled tax returns, missed deadlines for job applications, too...But for now I am going to let that slide.

learning curve

I have a really mysterious funky picture I am trying to post here. So I cannot drag the picture over from my desktop. Don't worry, it is not a picture of me, nor a picture of the 44 cats. I am geared up about getting this page going: make way for Goody 2 Shoes to rest here feet here. Meanwhile my Mommy self is building a haunted house out of styrofoam, scraping melted crayon spots off the laundry; my bring home the bacon self is trying to upload my resume for an overdue job application; the fry it up in the pan self is peeling avocados for guacamole. How far does multitasking go?