volunteering is hard

I volunteered at Scooter's school again today. This time, instead of an hour in her classroom, I was there for almost 3 hours in the cafeteria. It was amazing. I sat next to a woman who is in a women's singing quartet, and they went to the all black production of Oklahoma last night. I've heard great things about that show. *little pang of jealousy*

Anyway, the point of me being at school today was to help with the Passport Club. This is a PTC (parent teacher club)-run addition to the kids' curriculum. Each child has a passport, which is kept with their teacher. Each month, they are given a list of countries to find on a map. There are 5 levels (1st-5th grades). They may choose to study however many levels they want. Levels 1-4 are countries, and then level 5 is the capitals of the countries in level 1. For example, this month level 1 was the following countries: USA, Brazil, Australia, Thailand, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). So...in order to complete level 5, you also needed to know the capitals of those countries. Could you do it? I can, now, but I wouldn't have been able to a month ago. Studying with Scooter has helped my geography skills as well. Anyway, the theory goes if the kids to all 5 levels each month, by the end of the year, they should know where all the countries in the world are located. And the levels change each year, so in theory, if you remember all the capitals from each of the years before (and you do all 5 levels all 5 years), you'd end up knowing a boat load of capitals, too.

But in reality, there are some kids who study this stuff, and some kids who don't. You know the statistic that 20% of Americans can't find the US on a map? That didn't quite happen this morning, but it was close. I didn't test Scooter this morning. I waved and encouraged her, though, and guess what? She got to bang the drum for knowing all 5 levels. YAY!! I'm excited to see what next month's countries are.

Today's song

In case you missed it in August, I'm on a Jens Lekman kick. He's great. For a while, I had switched to Richard Hawley, but I had to go back to Jens.

It's nice, fall music. Or something. Plus, he's Swedish, and who doesn't love the Swedes. I guess he came to Seattle earlier this month, and I missed it. I was probably listening to Richard at the time. ha ha ha.

Anyway, I forgot my book this morning, so I was "stuck" staring at people on the train. Luckily, the blind man that caught my eye yesterday was riding again today. Yesterday, he had an e-reader (well...some electronic braile device). Today, it was a regular braile book. Fascinating stuff. And the great thing about blind guys is that they never catch you staring at them. Except, I'm sure they know. So I try to only glance every 30 seconds or so.

So while I was being extremely rude this morning, I was also listening to the ol' ipod. Guess who was playing? Two songs caught my ear this morning. "Another Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill" and "The Wrong Hands." The ASSNoHH song is currently not available on Youtube, so you're losing out. The "SSNoHH" is on there, but it's a completely different song. For real. The SSNoHH is this groovy, up beat song - it's like a party. The other one, however, is very sad and dark. Mostly about people being beat up on hammer hill. But I guess both things can happen on a sweet summer night. Anyway, an excerpt of "The Wrong Hands" is on youtube. I'll post it here:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/U2T1UYIOFlk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Did that work? Anyway, the basic premise of the song is that his ex girlfriend is dating someone else. His response is that he doesn't mind her leaving, but he doesn't want to see good love fall into the wrong hands. For some reason, that strikes me as really sweet, and as weird as it may sound, it reminds me of Ben. I wouldn't want our love to fall into the wrong hands, either.

I've never really understood hoodie vests

If you need a hood, you probably also need sleeves.

This week is a ho-hum week. The in-laws were here for a blink last week/weekend, but they had to go back home for a small work-related emergency. Our whole house feels sad about that. Scooter is still trying to figure out a way to get one or more of them to stay longer. Even though they're already gone. Bubba just comments on everything in relation to Grandma and Grandpa. I got out my high-heeled boots to show Scooter that Italy does, in fact, look like a boot (she begrudgingly agreed). Bubba said, "Mama has boots. Grandpa has boots, too!"

I've had hives on and off, almost daily since September. I've been doing a lot of internet reading about it today. Mostly, I've been checking out eMedicine because that's where my husband works, although I'm pretty sure he didn't edit the article(s) I read. It looks like I need to start some antihistamine therapy. Long term therapy. I took claritin the first few days I had hives, then switched it up to benadryl. Neither of them really took care of the problem. This article recommended upping the dose of claritin. I guess I'll try that for a while. Anyhoodle, the hives are likely caused by stress or a food additive, and not a contact allergy. My hair also started falling out a few months ago (more like 6 months ago, now). Chronic hives are also related to the third trimester of pregnancy, and hair loss occurs 2-6 months post partum. So, either I'm having a backward pregnancy, or it's stress.

I'm not feeling particularly stressed, but it could be that I've lived like this for so long, now, that it's my psychological "new normal" and my body is the only thing rebelling against the ridiculous nature of life. Scooter has asked to get off the phone with the ex immediately upon his calling just about everyday for the past couple of weeks. I hope she's doing ok. I often wonder what's going on in there. She has such an interesting take on her world.

passion?

I used to be a little "hot headed" at work. Not to the point where it was altogether detrimental to my career, I don't think. But I've never really had a problem speaking my mind. Actually, maybe it was a problem. If it was in my mind, chances were, it was coming out of my mouth, unfiltered. So maybe I was lacking in "tact." In my defense, the company for which I worked was owned by a tall white guy. The "executive leadership" consisted of 3 tall white guys. If you incorporate the manager levels (when I was still at that level), you were looking at 4 tall white guys, and me; later, 4 tall white guys, a couple of mid-sized white guys, one white girl and me. In other words, the leadership in that company was rather homogenous. So have I been told to shut up and toe the company line? Yes. Yes I have.

Fast forward to the past year. I'm in a new career in a much larger company (I went from 48 employees to 10,000). Suddenly, I have a reputation of being quiet and "steady." Like...nothing really ruffles my feathers. I do excellent work. I have a great rapport with my customers (I like to call them users). I'm a trusted advocate. What has changed? I mean, other than the job and the company? I can give you a few theories.

First off, work-wise, I'm MUCH less stressed. I no longer feel like the success or failure of a business component rests on my shoulders. I used to have that feeling every waking moment of my life - even after any financial incentive for success was taken away. Even after managerial control of the program was taken away. Because, honestly, you never really lose that feeling when you create something. I think more importantly, though, is that I now realize that work is work. It's not life and death (even though now that I work in healthcare it IS more life and death than most other jobs). In other words, this past year has kind of taught me what really is important, and for me, it's my family. So when given the opportunity, I will go volunteer in my daughter's classroom. And if the boy is feeling under the weather, I will stay home with him. And the office politics of who is assigned what and how will just roll off my back. Who cares if you have 50 requests outstanding, and I only have 30 (or the other way around). Will we end up doing an unequal amount of work? Or as we have requests closed out will others always be there to replace them? Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? No. Not really.

Post # 200

There's actually already 201, but I took one down, so this is the 200th visible post on my blog. Congratulations for making it this far.

There's a lot I could be writing about, but a lot of it is rehashing what's already been said. For example, on the potty training side of life, my son pooped 4 times on Saturday, one of which actually made it into the toilet. Barf. Also, the ex reared his ugly head again. I filed a police report that will go no where and really do nothing. Yay. (sarcasm). We're still paying big todds pricing for pre-school care at daycare. Love it. (more sarcasm).

I volunteered in my daughter's classroom on Monday. That was fun. A bit bizzarro. Do you ever go places where you just feel like you don't belong? A third grade classroom is one of those places for me. The PTC (parent-teacher club - it's not an association at this school) runs a few educational programs in Scooter's school. I volunteer for 2 of them: art literacy and the passport club (geography challenge). Monday was art literacy. One of the PTC volunteers gave a presentation on Emily Carr. Afterward, we helped the students make their own Carr-inspired landscapes focusing on using emotion in their lines (I don't think that actually happened), and differentiating between foreground and background (maybe this happened? it's hard to tell). And then school got out, and I brought Scooter home with me. It was fun.

Also on Monday, I was mortified when Bubba threw an A#1 fit in the parking lot after Scooter's soccer practice. I don't really have any friends in Portland, yet. I mean, I have coworkers that I can eat lunch with or whatever, but as far as doing stuff on the weekends - it's all family. And so far, I'm fine with that. But it would be nice to have a friend who could go out with me or baby sit the kids or come over and play cards or something. So anyway, I've been secretly courting a woman whose child is on Scooter's soccer team. How would one secretly court someone else, you ask? It's easy. You never talk to them. You smile sweetly anytime you see them. You wave occasionally, but not consistently. You know...you basically act like you're in 6th grade and have a secret crush on them. Anyway, it was during that A#1 fit of Bubba's that my secret friend-crush walked up, very easily and nicely put her two kids in their car, which, horrifyingly, was parked right next to ours, and got ready to go. We ended up ready to pull out of our parking spots at the same time. I waved and mouthed, "sorry!" She waved and mouthed, "Good job!!"

My sister advised that my next step should be to pull her hair on the playground and then send her a note folded like an envelop. I'm wishing life was as easy as it was in grade school.

Potty Training Chronicles III

I can't really blame him. He had no accidents in preschool (after 2 days of 2 accidents per day), and he "went" directly before we left for Scooter's soccer practice. He also had a pound of strawberries after "holding it" for 2 days. I think we all know where this is going...

I took Bubba with us to soccer practice. We got his ball out of the car, and he proceeded to kick his ball around the track surrounding the field. He kicked and ran 3/4 of a mile before the tell-tale look came across his face. You know the one. The kind of panicked concentration face. The one where his mouth is half open and he has a far away look in his eyes. Yeah. That one. The port-o-potty was being used at the moment (what are the chances?!), so we started the long, slow walk back to the car. One might call it the brown mile. I called Ben on our way to see if he could rescue us with something - anything to not have to smash poop-pants into a car seat.

While we waited, I became a resourceful mom. We happened to have taken Ben's car to practice tonight. Bummer, since I generally keep a plastic grocery bag in my car for trash. Ben doesn't like the aesthetics of the trash bag hanging off the stick shift, and frankly, neither do I. But sometimes, function trumps looks. As it was, however, we had no trash bag. The lucky thing about having Ben's car is that we did have wet wipes on hand. Yay! I opened the tailgate and stood Bubba up in the back. Shoes, socks, pants, underpants all came off, and I noticed a ziplock containing bug spray and sunscreen in a nook back there. Hooray!!! I dumped the contents of Bubba's underpants along with the used wet wipes into the ziplock. I finished wiping the boy up, and then used a fresh wet wipe on my hands, followed by hand sanitizer. Tadah! Just as I was finishing up, Ben drove up with a plastic grocery bag and a fresh pair of underpants and jeans.

Dirties went into the grocery bag, and cleanies went onto the boy. As we were fixing that up, Scooter walked up. Practice was over! We made it! Kind of. If I thought cleaning out warm underpants in a toilet was gross, I soon realized that cold dirty underpants is even worse. The bright side is that we now have a lot more clean laundry. I do at least one load per evening...

Happy pirates

The kids and I went shopping for Halloween costumes last night. Bubba has been fascinated by pirates for a couple of months, now. He'll pretend to be the captain, and we're all his crew. He'll march around the house saying, "Yeeargh! I pirate!" or "I'm a happy pirate" in a sing-song voice. He even closes one eye while holding sharp objects (the closed eye is his "eye patch"). So we kind of all decided that he should be a pirate for Halloween. It'll give him the opportunity to wear his pirate outfit whenever he wants to after the holiday, too.

Scooter originally wanted to be a fairy. This girl has been a fairy/queen/princess of some sort since she's been old enough to make her own decisions about such matters. Year 1 (infant), she was a cow. Then, tigger, a dog, Dora, witch (with a fairy wand and sparkles on her face), Snow White, Snow Princess, and last year was full on fairy. So when she said, "Oh, I don't know. A fairy." I put my foot down. No More Fairies! She decided she really wanted to be a pirate, too. That way, people would know that she and Bubba belonged together when they were trick or treating.

You see, Scooter and Bubba have never spent Halloween together. Mostly because Halloween has been the ex's holiday of choice. My theory is that the ex likes to show other people what a "great dad" he is without really having to spend a lot of one-on-one time with his daughter. He has always worked on Thanksgiving and Christmas, bailed on Easter, gotten babysitters for New Years (you get the idea), but rain or snow, he's taken her trick or treating. It's nice to hear strangers tell you how adorable your daughter is. Not that it's been a huge loss that the kids haven't spent Halloween together. This is only Bubba's 3rd time celebrating it. But it is the first year he will actually go door to door, and it's likely the first one he'll really remember. It's important for Scooter, too, this year.

Ever since she came back from her dad's this summer, she and Bubba have been inseperable. He LOVES following her around, and surprisingly enough, she loves having him follow her around. She feels extremely close and protective and proud of him, and he worships her. It was important to her that people know that they belong together, so I was happy to get them little pirate outfits, even if they don't exactly match. Scooter's is below. We couldn't find black tights, so she'll wear white with scars all over them. Bubba's is here, too. Can you tell who will be who?

The ex will be in town for "his" holiday, but Scooter and Bubba will still be trick or treating together. Whew! We'll see how all of this turns out.