First weekend of summer...and I was already irritated with the constant noise of people in the house. That's not going to make this Summer the Best.Ever. Still, a bunch of fun stuff happened, so let's take a look.
Friday--no pictures, but we ran a lot of errands. Noah went to the skate park, Brad went to the batting cages at Trafalga, I spent three hours stuffing envelopes with Star Wars family stickers...kind of a nothing day. This funny conversation happened:
(Noticing the loud nature sounds outside the Bert Murdock music store.)
Me: There sure are a lot of crickets here. I wonder why.
Brad: Must be a lot of people telling bad jokes.
On Saturday, we went to the neighborhood pancake breakfast and softball game. Brad is hitting and Noah is catching.
Ryan in the outfield. He caught Brad's pop flies.
And he wasn't too bad at hitting, either. I made a great spectator.
This girl knows how to pose. I think it's in her DNA, 'cause I sure didn't teach her this.
Noah learned that there's always money in the lemonade stand. And today he expanded his operations to include sno-cones. (Although it meant that he had to sacrifice his prime location in favor of an electrical outlet.)
Then, on Sunday, we decorated the cupcakes for Zack and Darcey's birthday parties.
I designed these Ninjago cupcakes and Ryan did the artwork. It's a yellow frosted cupcake with black icing eyes and Fruit-By-The-Foot for the ninja face.
They taste good, too.
I don't know why Brad looks angry at his cupcake. He didn't know, either.
Darcey with a little Brad in the background.
The girl's cupcakes are Airhead Extreme Sour rainbows with white fluffy icing clouds.
This is a close up of Noah's skinned knee.
Just kidding, it's a pizza. We had it for dinner tonight.
Also overheard at dinner tonight:
Brad: Nothing rhymes with orange. False. "Orange" and "nothing" do not rhyme.
Next week is going to start with a bang. We've got Darcey's birthday party on Monday and Zack's on Tuesday, and that promises to be a lot of fun. And work. But mostly fun.
Well this is it, the most dreaded/anticipated day of the school year: the end. Alpine School District definitely goes out with a whimper--the last day of school is from 8-9:30. An hour and a half is nowhere near long enough to justify the morning routine of waking, dressing, feeding, driving, etc. But we did it, for old time's sake, and now we bid a fond adieu to 2nd, 5th, and 9th grades. It was a pretty good year.
This is what Day One of Project: Best.Summer.Ever looked like:
The kids acted like hooligans at my college campus.
The princess celebrated her fifth birthday.
Our neighborhood friends dropped by for some cake and presents.
And we thought it'd be a good idea to take Zack off his ADHD meds for the summer. We'll be seeing this weirdo face a lot.
The cake was abso-freakin-lutely delicious.
And the boys' newest thing is to look off in the distance when they're getting their picture taken.
Here's what Day One of Project: Best.Summer.Ever. sounded like:
Setting: Minivan, Krispy Kreme donuts, four children, loud music on the radio.
Noah: This song is overplayed.
Brad: You're overplayed.
Noah: Your mother is overplayed.
Me: Hey! Your face is overplayed.
Silence. I think I won that one.
And now the Project: Best.Summer.Ever. reading list update. I've made some real headway in my quest to read all the books that I own whose pages have yet to see the light of day. Unfortunately, I forgot that in order to actually make progress, I need to STOP BUYING BOOKS. For every book I've read this month, I've bought two more. And hey, this isn't supposed to come out like I'm complaining--in fact, this is a sign that my life is pretty freaking awesome. But still, the list isn't looking much shorter. I put an asterisk next to the latest acquisitions.
Fiction:
The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova (borrowed from Luisa two years ago, maybe.)
Beyonders: Book Two - Brandon Mull
Crossed - Ally Condie
Where Nothing Was Long Ago - Virginia Sorenson
Night Soil - Levi Peterson
Big Trouble - Dave Barry
Before You Know Kindness - Chris Bohjalian - mediocre, should have been a short story, not a novel
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
The BFG - Roald Dahl - halfway through, possibly the most painful children's book I've ever read to my kids.
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper
These is My Words - Nancy Turner
*Passion - Lauren Kate
*Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman - I have a feeling I've read this before...
Non-Fiction:
The Digital Diet - Daniel Sieberg
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
Pledged - Alexandra Robbins
The Tiger - John Vaillant
Twinkie, Deconstructed - Steve Ettlinger (This I've only borrowed for a year, maybe)
*Drop Dead Healthy - A.J. Jacobs - I love pretty much everything this man has written. This is no exception.
*In The Plex - Steven Levy
Travel:
Lost On Planet China - J. Maarten Troost
Turn Left At The Trojan Horse - Brad Herzog
The Ridiculous Race -Pretty good book, the authors go so many cool places, it makes me kinda jealous. Okay, really jealous.
Memoirs:
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman - super interesting topic, about Hmong refugees in California and their interactions with the medical system.
Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall
The Color of Water - James McBride
If I Die In A Combat Zone - Tim O'Brien
52 Loaves - William Alexander
Denial - Jessica Stern
I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron
Science Fair Season - Judy Dutton
The Tender Bar - J.R. Moehringer
Girl Meets God - Lauren Winner - Loved this!!
*When Women Were Birds - Terry Tempest Williams - Loved this, too!
*Refuge - Terry Tempest Williams
*Goodbye, I Love You - Carol Lynn Pearson - Also fantastic.
My favorite book of the summer (so far, and yes, I know it's only been one day) was Lauren Winner's "Girl Meets God." It's a memoir about an Orthodox Jewish woman who converts to Christianity. It was entertaining and thought-provoking and well-written but most of all, I spent the whole book thinking, "I wish I was her friend!" When she talks about her love of books and all of the books she buys and stacks in her New York apartment, I know we are, like, twins separated at birth. Mom, you didn't actually give my twin sister up for adoption to a Jewish/Episcopalian couple, did you?
Okay, so part of my Project: Best.Summer.Ever. is a personal goal to read all of the books on my bookshelf that I haven't read yet. I'm a fast reader, so with no professor telling me what to read I should be able to plow through these in the next three months, no problem. Except that I'm also a fickle reader--I read the way I eat, based on what feels good at the moment. None of these books has compelled me to make time to read them yet, so reading these books might be the literary equivalent of eating my vegetables.
Because a blog is good for nothing if not oversharing, here's my Summer Reading List.
Fiction:
The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova (borrowed from Luisa two years ago, maybe.)
Beyonders: Book Two - Brandon Mull
Crossed - Ally Condie
Where Nothing Was Long Ago - Virginia Sorenson
Night Soil - Levi Peterson
Big Trouble - Dave Barry
Before You Know Kindness - Chris Bohjalian
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
The BFG - Roald Dahl
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper
These is My Words - Nancy Turner
Non-Fiction:
The Digital Diet - Daniel Sieberg
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
Pledged - Alexandra Robbins
The Tiger - John Vaillant
Twinkie, Deconstructed - Steve Ettlinger (This I've only borrowed for a year, maybe)
Travel:
Lost On Planet China - J. Maarten Troost
Turn Left At The Trojan Horse - Brad Herzog
The Ridiculous Race -
Memoirs:
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman
Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall
The Color of Water - James McBride
If I Die In A Combat Zone - Tim O'Brien
52 Loaves - William Alexander
Denial - Jessica Stern
I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron
Science Fair Season - Judy Dutton
The Tender Bar - J.R. Moehringer
Girl Meets God - Lauren Winner
Have you read any of these books? Any that you'd recommend starting with? (Or, conversely, any that are so bad I should donate them to Savers and buy a new one to replace it with?)
After a long internal debate (you're welcome for sparing you the agony), I've decided to take the summer off of school. I was awarded a fellowship through UVU to continue researching the Woman's Exponent, which will keep me busy and also mentally stimulated. But I get a little nervous thinking about that long expanse of summer days, completely structureless and full of children. Enter my brilliant new idea--Project: Best.Summer.Ever.
Project: Best.Summer.Ever. is my plan to stay sane and engaged during the next three and a half months. Phase One is planning. During the month of May, I'm going to scout out great ideas for things to do, places to go, goals to accomplish. Then from June through August it's Phase Two: Go Time. Finally Phase Three is the cool-down phase, where we ease back into school and regular life. (Okay, Phase Three is kind of a joke at this point, but you can't have a plan with just two phases. It's like only having two Stooges, there has to be three. I'll work on a better Phase Three later.)
The real genius of the plan is in the name. You've heard the phrase "fake it till you make it"? Well, this is "name it until you brainwash your kids." That's right--the goal here is not to overschedule the kids until they weep with submission every night, nor is it to actually create the best summer ever--it's to say, over and over again, that this is the best summer ever until they start believing it themselves! We normally do some swim lessons in the summer; this year, they are going to be referred to as the Best.Swim Lessons.Ever. Because who doesn't want to do that?! We're going on the Best.Campout.Ever, eating the Best.Barbequed.Hamburgers.Ever, watching the Best.Minor.League.Baseball.Games.Ever. See? All the stuff that we already do, just made more impressive, and therefore more fun, by the name. Can you hear my evil cackle from where you are? It's loud.
Two years ago, we had what I thought was a fairly miserable Christmas. The basement flooded and I was stressed out by that to the point where I didn't even make Christmas dinner and instead we went out to the only restaurant open in Orem, the Chinese buffet down the street. No one felt the same way I did, though--the kids got their presents, spent the day playing and basically thought it was great. Then last year, what was just a standard Christmas got labeled by one of the kids as the "best Christmas ever." Ryan joked that we'd cancel next Christmas, since it couldn't get any better, and Zack believed him, at least for a minute. Other than the flooded basement, which is sure to get any homeowner down, the main difference between the two Christmases was labels. I labeled one Christmas a failure and the other a success. I look back on one in regret and the other in fondness. I don't want to do that with this summer.
Project: Best.Summer.Ever. is for me, mostly. If I give it a great label, then I'm going to try to live up to it, make it what it should be. It's the structure that I crave and that the kids secretly crave as well. And it's also a program of psychological warfare, which makes every summer better, don't you think?
There's this catchy song on the radio right now called "We Are Young" by the band Fun. It bugs the crap out of me. I really hate it when a song does that, when it's all cute and sing-along-able but has these lyrics that make me want to either scream or write a blog post expressing my frustration. Screaming gives me a headache, so here we are. Let's see if I can't exorcise this demon.
The chorus of the song goes like this:
Tonight, we are young,
So we'll set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
Than the sun!
Here's the music video, if you are young enough to want to watch such things. If you're not, I'll recap: a bunch of young people have a slow-motion bar fight, at one point a guy is punched and sprays what looks like milk at the camera, a girl licks something, possibly a smashed watermelon? off a guy's face, and the lead singer looks like he's in pain the whole time.
Now, I will admit that when I was in high school, I would have freely adopted this song as my personal anthem. There is something appealing about the idea that us young people can go out and change the world. We will leave a blaze of glory in our wake! When we are done, the world isn't going to know what hit it!
Here's the problem: I'm not actually all that young anymore. I wouldn't say that I'm old necessarily, but thirty-five is solidly middle-aged in my book. And besides, when the hipsters in the band were sitting at the bar writing song lyrics over their Pabst Blue Ribbon and they got to the part about being young, were they picturing a woman in a minivan with four kids listening to NPR? No, they were not. So regardless of my actual age, I am not what they meant by "young." Also, when I think of young people setting the world on fire, the picture in my mind is less "world-changing" and more "anarchic riot." (If you're wondering if you're young or not-so-young, watch the music video. If you're going, what the heck was that about? then welcome to my club.)
Despite being not-young, though, I still want to set the world on fire. I mean, I want to do something that changes the world. I want to blaze trails of glory! I want my name to be remembered, possibly in the form of a Final Jeopardy answer! And I want to do all of this and save for retirement, make it to all of my kids' Little League games, and still get to bed by 10:30! That's the problem with not-young people, we've got all this real-life stuff that gets in the way of our world-burning. Unless we get hired specifically to incinerate the planet, we've got to find spare time to get it done, and that is a challenge. And in this economy, jobs like that are nearly impossible to find.
I wonder if songs like this contribute to the disappointment of middle-aged life. I'm happy with my life, I'm working on achieving things and pushing myself to personal growth, but I'm not naive like I was at eighteen, when anything was possible. Part of the reason why young people can throw themselves into a risk-filled life (a garage start-up or a band or whatever) is because the cost for failing is so much smaller than it is once you've got a mortgage and a family and a kid that needs braces. Responsibility is so much more work than wanton combustion. Does the typical mid-life crisis come when we realize that those big dreams we had at eighteen have turned into 40-hour work weeks and health benefits? Are we setting up our children to be massively disappointed when the world consistently refuses to even smolder?
You know why else it's so hard to set the world on fire when we're not-young? Because we don't have an anthem, that's why. No one writes songs about middle-aged people achieving work-home balance and funding their IRA's and still finding time to write the Great American Novel on the weekends. No, we get Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire": don't look at us, we were standing over here when the fire started.
Someone needs to write us an anthem. A fight song for the law-abiding, riot-avoiding, middle-aged middle class that obeys the speed limit and provides the stability for this country so that young'uns can go out there and wield their metaphorical flame-throwers at society! Maybe something like this:
Tonight, we aren't young
But we'll pay all of our taxes
We'll send faxes
To our accountants!
See, I told you, it just doesn't work for us. But this was quite therapeutic. Next week, an exegesis of Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" - a song celebrating that great night of the week when somehow it's okay to drink to excess, drive around town, have sex with (multiple) strangers, wake up bruised in a trashed house...and plan to do it all again next week! Music these days is great!
If you would like a peek into how Ryan sees the differences between him and me, here is a (slightly embellished) conversation we just had.
I was browsing on Pinterest and came across a recipe for Crockpot Greek Yogurt. "Ooh!" I said to Ryan, who was sitting across from me watching me browse the internet (slightly less boring than watching paint dry, because paint never shouts "Ooh!" for no apparent reason.) "Here's a recipe for making your own Greek yogurt in a crockpot!"
"If I were to write a recipe for how to make Greek yogurt, it would go like this," he said. "Step One: Go to the grocery store. Step Two: Buy Greek yogurt. Step Three: Go home and think about all the time you saved by not making your own Greek yogurt."
"Ha ha," says I, only slightly meaning it.
He continued. "And if you were to write a recipe for how to make Greek yogurt, it would go, Step One: Go to Greece."
"Step Two," I said, "Switch my major to Modern Greek Yogurt Making."
"Step Three: Tell all your friends about the joys of making your own Greek yogurt. Blog about it. Change your entire diet to revolve around Greek yogurt. Get tired of Greek yogurt. Get to the point where Greek yogurt is the bane of your existence. Become anti-Greek yogurt. Then head to Pinterest to find your new favorite thing."
So, it's been a really long time since I posted, yadda yadda fill in typical mommy-blogger apology for not posting more often. If you were to read my journals from my childhood you'd find that just about every entry started with an apology for not writing since, like, the year before. Writing that sentence made me go hunt down my old journals from the box in the basement--reading them is a mixture of hilarity and embarrassment. As a penance for my long absence, here is a gem from an entry dated December 15, 1989 (I was thirteen): "I got my braces off! I must admit, I look 100% better." Somehow I crammed excitement, pride, vanity, and a keen math mind into a mere eleven words.
Anyhow, I thought it would be a good idea to see what everyone's been up to over the last few months. We've sure been busy! Ryan's been doing this:
The stickers made the rounds on Pinterest and for a few months, all Ryan could do was stuff envelopes for hours and hours a day. The sales have dropped back down to a reasonable amount so Ryan finally has more time to play online pool. (He'll probably wish I hadn't said that...)
Brad has been a busy, busy boy. First, he did this:
Okay, so the nail didn't end up in his brain, nor did we take him for a cat scan like we probably should have. But he did swallow a nail. It happened like this: he was hanging a picture on his wall and had a few tiny nails that he was holding in his mouth. When he was done, he spit them out, but one went the wrong direction and he swallowed it. Apparently, it did get a little stuck in his throat, but after a minute of coughing, it went down just fine. By the time he told me, with a gigantic grin on his face, I might add, it had been half an hour or so. After much debate, we decided to wait and see what happened. He never experienced any pain or bleeding, and after two days, he would no longer answer my questions about the contents of his bowel movements. So we assume it all came out okay in the end, although if he gets stopped by the TSA on our next family vacation, we'll know why.
But wait, there's more! Because Brad also did this:
Brad and Ryan were playing catch in the front yard and Brad threw the ball from the yard across the street. Ryan missed it, but luckily the window was right there to catch it. The ball went through the first pane, but we have triple-paned windows, and could slide another pane over to cover the hole. Replacing the windows just moved up on the list of home maintenance priorities.
Noah, fortunately, has been less destructive than his older brother. He's been doing this:
Noah and his friend Daniel entered this original dance in the Reflections contest at their school. They won first place. The prize was a trophy and $10, plus the entry moved on to the next level for judging.
They won the next level (council level, maybe?) and moved on to the whole school district level, which they lost. But they thought it was great that they won and they are planning on doing it again next year. Although next year, Daniel's mom can stay up for hours the night before the entries are due, trying to burn a dvd and fill out half a dozen forms.
Last year, Zack was the child who provided the most comic relief (and also the most agonizing phone calls from the principal/teachers/concerned neighbors.) This year, he's been pretty chill, and for that I'm grateful. This is what he's been up to:
This, my friends, is a Conference Hog. In February, I mentioned that we had to wait six more weeks for General Conference. He joked, "Did the Conference Hog see his shadow?" We laughed and he scurried downstairs to his Lego laboratory. An hour later, he came upstairs with this, a Conference Hog, complete with Conference Hole to pop out of. His creativity amazes me--I wish I were more like Zack. Although, at parent-teacher conference, Mrs. Savage mentioned that she had to untie Zack the other day when he tied his shoelaces to his chair...I don't want to be like Zack in that way so much.
And there's Darcey. Darcey, Darcey, Darcey. The little girl, sent from Heaven to fulfill all my raising-a-daughter fantasies. The child who loves dresses and twirling and letting me put sponge curlers in her hair on Saturday nights so she could look like Shirley Temple at church on Sunday. The girl who was thisclose to having hair long enough to put in a bun for ballet class. This is what my little girl was doing in her room, while watching Netflix on the ipad.
The only reason she had the "party in the back" was because she missed that spot, otherwise it would have been gone too. Here's the story: I was standing in the kitchen, minding my own business, when I heard Brad going up the stairs. He met Darcey coming down and said, "Darcey, you got a hair cut!" I gasped so loudly that I sucked in all the air in the entire room, and turned around to find Darcey's smiling face. She had cut her hair so dramatically that I could barely believe it was still her. And she was so proud of herself, she was convinced that everyone would think she looked fantastic. She couldn't understand why I was on the verge of tears, hyperventilating, and calling my hair-cutting friend in a panic to ask what to do. Honestly, I don't think I could have been more upset if it was MY hair she cut.
You want to see a before picture?
It makes me want to cry, and it's been nearly three months since it happened. Anyhow, back to the story.
This is what I found when I went upstairs:
Those are children's safety scissors. If they don't stop a child from cutting all her hair off, what on earth do they stop her from cutting? Her skin? I think if she had cut her hand, she'd have put the scissors down before the hair damage was too bad. That's what I get for helicopter-parenting. From now on, the kids cut with hedge clippers and a Sawz-All.
I took the girl to Great Clips and ended up with this:
Look at that poor, sad girl, regretting horribly the mistake she made...Yeah right. To this day, when I tell the story of Darcey's haircut, she always says, "I thought you were going to like it. I thought it would make you happy." I don't even know what to do with that maternal guilt.
As for me, well, isn't it enough that I've survived all of that? I'm taking a Mormon Lit class this semester and doing a research internship with the same professor. I finally bought a wheat grinder for the 300 pounds of wheat in my basement. I got a new bookshelf for my office and it's already 7/8's full. I went to Maryland to visit my mom and help my grandmother pack her house. And basically I've just enjoyed my life. Things are good, I'm happy, my moods have been completely stable for six or seven months now, the kids are giving me plenty of interesting Facebook statuses. Can I really ask for more than that? I submit that I cannot. And that's great.
