Friday Shuffle

Dixie, Sari, Katya have all been doing the Friday Shuffle for years. I don't actually have an ipod but I listen to Pandora. Here is the first 10 songs Pandora picked for me to listen to today. I hope you all have a great weekend.

1. Welcome To Wherever You Are by: Bon Jovi


2. Cracklin' Rose by: Neil Diamond


3. Don't Stand So Close To Me by: The Police


4. I Just Want To Be Your Everything by: Andy Gibb


5. Alone Again by: Gilbert O'Sullivan


6. All Right Now by: Queen + Paul Rodgers


7. Truly Madly Deeply by: Savage Garden


8. Live and Let Die by: Guns N' Roses


9. Give A Little Bit by: The Goo Goo Dolls


10. Don't Stop Believin' by: Journey

Merry Christmas

Jeff and the girls have been off this week and it has been non-stop fun. This morning we woke up with a sick little girl and a thrown out back momma. Guess we will slow it down a bit. I am also trying to keep up with my job and Christmas. Sounds stressful but it really isn't. Plenty of hours in the day, it is all good.

Driving down the road to Mobile on Monday we got a phone call. We were on our way to tour the USS Alabama. The call was from Jeff's work. Remember how I told you that if a woman he works with gets pregnant he will be deployed? Well she got pregnant. However, the person on the phone said Jeff has to volunteer to go or they will send someone else. One person said Jeff is going whether he wants to or not, another says Jeff has to volunteer. Currently we are under the impression that he will not be going.

It is my understanding that speaking of troop movements, telling exactly when and where military members are going is frowned upon. The when is soon. The where is far away, use your imagination.

I pretty much had a panic attack in the car. And then it was over and he is not going. I am having trouble knowing what to feel. Jeff says that his time is currently scheduled to be this time next year. He also says that if he goes this time he will have to go next time too. I guess that makes up for sixteen years in the military with no deployments. I don't understand any of it at all.

I was a single mother for 10 years before I married Jeff. I know I am able to handle the family on my own for six months. This time I would also be financially secure as well. The problem is my mental well being. I am a different person with a husband. Jeff gives me the ability to let go of the stress and drama of life and just be. I am not sure I can do that without him. Somehow his presence keeps me even. Is life good or bad. If you look at all the crap in your life you feel like you life is all bad all the time and you never get a break. If you focus on all the good in your life all the time you feel like you have it pretty good. I don't naturally have the ability to see the good and ignore and not focus on the bad. I do better with a little redirection. See I am freaking out about the fact that Jeff might have had to go, but is most likely not going instead of thinking of Christmas. I need some chocolate.

Lily Monster

At Lily's school the way kindergartners are disciplined is with colored tickets. Everyday they start on green if you have a behavior problem your ticket is pulled and you are on blue, then yellow, then orange, then RED. At red you go visit the principal.

Lily had her ticket pulled one time on August 15th. She remembers the date and talks about it all the time. Until last week that is, last week Lily had her ticket pulled three days in a row. She came home on blue: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Last Friday there was a special treat for Kindergartners, they were allowed to come to school in Pajamas and watch the movie Polar Express after the movie the kids had hot chocolate with marshmallows and cookies. Everyone could go to the party except kid's whose ticket was pulled MORE than three times in that week. Lily thought the teacher had said if your ticket is pulled three times you cannot go, I thought that too. So she went to school on Friday thinking she was going to have to stay behind while all the kids went to the movie, except her and two boys who have their tickets pulled everyday.

You would think that Lily would be absolutely devastated by this punishment. She seemed to be more bring it on than upset. Everyday that week she would come home and ask me questions about having her ticket pulled. What happens if I come home on blue? What happens if I come home on yellow? What happens if I come home on orange? What happens if I come home on red? She would repeat the questions over and over again in the same sitting or in an hour later. I am not sure but I think this is a part of her receptive language delay, Lily asks the same question 5 million times in a row. Used to drive me crazy, now that I understand that processing the answer to the question takes her a bit longer I no longer mind repeating. Sometimes I just keep repeating until she gets it. Sometimes I get creative and try alternative ways of getting the information into her pretty little head. Lots of physical gestures and rephrasing. Although I have to be careful with the rephrasing, because sometimes that makes it worse, instead of having one sentence of information trying to get in her head now she has two different sentences trying to get in and this causes a lot of frustration.

I had a choice while Lily asked all those questions. A choice between making a super big deal out of having her ticket pulled of reinforcing the teacher or not. I chose to let the punishment stand and not make a huge deal out of the ticket pulling. I am not entirely sure I made the right choice but there it is, my choice. Every time Lily asked me about having her ticket pulled, What will happen if...? My reply was a simple, I will say, "I hope you come home on green tomorrow." Lily thought and thought about this and asked me and asked me. I know she was thinking, so what is the big deal anyways, nothing bad is going to happen. I am choosing to allow the ticket pulling itself be the punishment. She has to walk to the front of the room in front of the entire class and pull her ticket. That is really hard for little miss I hate to be criticised. And she has to pull her ticket without throwing a fit, without telling the teacher to shut her big fat mouth, like she tells me when I have her go stand in the corner or I take away her favorite toys for the day. So that is the punishment and at home I simply say to Lily, I hope you come home on green tomorrow. I thought very long and hard about this decision and like I said, I am not entirely sure that it is the right one, we shall see.

One side effect of all the ticket pulling has been that Lily has come out of her shell. The entire school year she has insisted that she have the exact same lunch everyday. She brings her lunch box and eats all the exact same foods, put in the box in the exact same way everyday. All of a sudden she no longer wants to bring her lunch she wants to buy her lunch. Yesterday she bought her lunch for the first time and she loved it. Now she wants to buy everyday. She went from having to have everything just so to wanting to try new things. She also informs me that she no longer wishes for me to walk her to and from the bus stop. I didn't let her have her way on that one.

I am wondering if this is all just a growing spurt. Perhaps the social part of her brain is growing and I am seeing a bunch of changes all at once. Or is this a result of living through having her ticket pulled three times. Her biggest fear come to life and now she is no longer afraid of what might happen if... One thing is for sure, the Lily I know at home is beginning to surface at school. Strong, loud, defiant and fun Lily has started kindergarten. The quiet obedient little girl who was sitting in Lily's seat these past four months seems to be out to lunch. It makes me happy that she is feeling more confident at school. Relaxing enough to make mistakes. I think it will help her in her development immensely. I am not sure her teachers will agree.

My Arrogance

I am still a huge Survivor fan. I don't get to see all the episodes anymore, even though you can watch them for free on CBS.com the next day I still don't always make the time to see. But, I try to catch the majority of the show.

This season one of the characters was a guy named ACE. He was very arrogant during the show. At the end of the season reunion where people explain themselves, apologize or whatever; Ace was a complete ass.

He said something to the effect that he is a world traveler and it was hard for him to have to associate with people who have never left their neighborhood let alone their country or continent.

I think of myself as a world traveler. What I have learned is that everywhere you go most of the people you meet are not well traveled. The effect of having traveled is to make a person more tolerant. Ace was being intolerant, not a very good representative of world travelers.

Everywhere I have ever gone the point for me is to learn about a different culture. It is not about me telling other how they should be. It is about me seeing life from a different perspective. When I go somewhere all the people in that place are mostly not interested in my culture. Just like the other contestants on Survivor that Ace was having a hard time dealing with.

I don't know why this is bothering me so much.

Mandy refuses to tell anyone that she has traveled. Once I heard a conversation between two of her co-workers while we were at the grocery store where Mandy works together. They were discussing Egypt. One thought that Egypt and the Nile river were in Europe the other in Africa. Mandy has actually been to Egypt and cruised down the Nile river. What an opportunity to tell of her adventure. She said nothing, didn't even weigh in on her opinion of where Egypt is located. After we left the store I asked why she didn't mention her travels and she told me that she doesn't like to talk about it because it makes her seem arrogant.

Until now I thought that perception of people who have traveled as being arrogant is all jealousy and in the head of those whom perceive travelers to be arrogant. After hearing Ace I wonder.

The Giving Tree

by Shel Silverstein is mine and Lily's favorite book.

We hadn't read it in awhile. Her reading has advanced to the point where she was able to read much of the book to me this time. Having a book that we take from the shelf and each time we read it together she is able to read more and more of it herself is magical.

The first time we read the book she was mesmerized by the repetition of words and seeing those words on the page she noticed that apple and happy both contain app. She fell in love with learning the spellings of words and she memorized dozens of words. Now she is reading in school and skims over the apple and happy not even noticing the app in both.

This time she is hearing the story. She is asking me questions, who is not really happy? Why aren't they happy? Read this page again mommy. Tell me again why is the tree not happy. Why did the boy take her apples, branches and trunk. Tell me again mommy.

We talked about the story, the meaning, for a couple of days and then it was gone. We moved on to another book, another story, another thought. The Giving Tree sits beside me on my desk, ready to be reshelved for another day. I wonder what magic this book will bring to us the next time we pull it from the shelf.

-do you have a favorite book that you share with your child?

Each of my children have different books they love. At this age for Mandy it was Dr. Suess's ABC's. She made me read that book to her every night for more than a year. Lily gets consumed by a book and talks of nothing else and then we move on, consumed by another book only to return and reacquaint ourselves with a book again on another day.

Nutcracker

It is that time of year again. Mandy and I are off to see the Nutcracker tonight. She had to work today from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. the show is at 7:30 p.m. We have to drive to another city about an hour and a half away. A very full day for both of us. I have to work and take Lily to a birthday party.

Last night I got up around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. because my belly was giving me a lot of trouble. I thought perhaps a bit of tums might help me get back to sleep. I noticed that the light in Mandy's room was still on.

I have the feeling that Mandy is going to be grumpy and not a lot of fun tonight. Working all day after having been up all night. We will be in the car together driving on the freeway in the dark for a total of three hours. I hate driving by the way.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. Seems to me that we are not going to be having a whole lot of fun on this trip. Why bother. So we can say we did? This is what I hate about Christmas, you do a bunch of crap you don't really feel like doing in order to say that you did those things. Are you supposed to pretend that it was all worth the trouble?

When Amanda was little, going to the Nutcracker was so magical and fun. We would get all dressed up and we would have so much fun. We would always buy a cookie at intermission and we would talk for hours about the costumes, the music and the performances. Sometimes our favorite ballerina would be someone with a very small part. We would compare all the performances we have ever seen and discuss which production we enjoyed the most.

I am imagining that we are going to drive there in silence. Watch in silence. Drive home in silence. Perhaps Mandy will sleep. When I try to talk she will tell me she is not in the mood to talk right now. I will worry that she is depressed or having some sort of troubles I don't even know about. But, now I know that the reason for her being a pain today is going to be because she stayed up all night reading and she is tired. Perhaps I will ask her when she gets off from work if she really wants to go today or not.

One good thing about kids who go away to college is that I don't have to deal with all the bad choices and I don't have to suffer from the consequences of bad choices. With her in the house I am so wrapped in her stuff that I suffer with all the late to works and the didn't study for a tests and I stayed up all night reading a book and now I am being an ass.

Too bad she has no desire to leave home. No desire to listen to me or be responsible either it would seem.

Thanksgiving

Cooking is one of my favorite things. I love to try new recipes. I love eating out and then coming home and trying to recreate what I have eaten. I love traveling the world and learning all the different ingredients and techniques used in different places. This is one of the most ardent passions of my life, the creation of good food.

However, I dislike cooking the Thanksgiving feast. I hate spending the entire day in the kitchen all alone and then sitting all stiff together at the table, eating, and then spending another hour or so cleaning up all alone again. I love the discovery part of learning to create all my favorite Thanksgiving dishes. I love adding, subtracting and finding the perfect combination of foods for my table. But, I get lonely.

This year it was just the four of us for Thanksgiving. I have accepted that we are never going to spend the day with either of our families and we have not lived here long enough to be close enough with anyone to share such an intimate holiday - so it is just us.

This year I decided to make my family help me cook the feast. At first I was hesitant because with the exception of Lily none of my family like to go in the kitchen for more than a drink out of the refrigerator. You should hear them complain about having to boil water to make instant Ramen noodles or to get one of them to wash dishes or even to rinse a plate is to have to endure the most unimaginable amount of complaining you can imagine. I am weak and usually just let them off the hook. But, this year I devised a plan.

I set up work stations for each person on the kitchen table. I gave them each a job. I gave them all the ingredients, tools and recipe necessary. There was a little bit of complaining, but eventually they started having fun. We started in the morning with the desserts. Jeff made the pumpkin pie. Mandy and Lily made the banana pudding. I stuffed the turkey. We were all together and working it was a lot of fun. I let them all leave while I cleaned the dishes and cleaned up the whirl win of work.

Next was the side dishes. A few hours later I had created work stations for the side dishes. I gave them each a job and we got all the side dishes ready to be cooked in less than an hour. I again had to clean everything up. Then I just had to do the finishing touches on the side dishes and dinner was served.

Lily and I had decorated the table together sometime during the intermission between the first work session and second work session. We even used a table cloth this year. I got it at a garage sale. We even ironed it. Lily and Jeff had picked oranges and lemons in our yard the day before and I used them to make a cute center piece. One of our trees was confused by a warm spell and had sprouted some pretty purple flowers, Lily and I picked a few and added that to the bowl of fruit. It felt really nice to have a bowl of pretty things from our yard in the middle of the table.

We have a small kitchen table and no dinning room or big fancy table. This year instead of having all the food on the table and passing it around as is tradition, we did a buffet in the kitchen and then brought our plate to the table. I enjoyed having the extra room at the table more than I enjoy the passing the food around. The family was very relaxed and the conversation was lively. I made sure to compliment everyone on the dishes they had created. They were all so proud. I think that the food turned out better this year than ever before. I think that it is easier for me to delegate than to keep track of all those details all by myself. This year was a mixture of tradition and new. I hope we can keep the whole family in the kitchen as a part of our Thanksgiving tradition because that was a lot of fun for me.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Pink

Lily is having some belly issues as a result of her current antibiotic. She has had an ear infection and sinus infection forever and therefore her doctor is advising we keep her on the medicine. Poor Lily is not always able to make it to the bathroom in time due to these issues.

One of the casualties of not making it to the bathroom on time was her favorite pair of underwear. I was not aware that this was her favorite pair of underwear. She has a thousand pairs of underwear. After a particular pair did not get completely clean in the washing machine I tossed it in the garbage. Lily happened to be there and was distraught. She cried for ever about her pink panties.

It turns out this is her only pair of pink panties. All the others have patterns on them. Lily feels that these panties are her most precious of all her belongings, after I threw them away, and she was grief stricken.

I offered to drive to the store and buy her a new pair right away. Jeff said, put it on your Christmas list and maybe Santa will bring you a pair of pink panties.

The next day Lily and I were at the store picking up a few items. Santa happened to be there. No one was in line to sit on his lap. We walked right by and he invited Lily to come and tell him what she wants for Christmas.

Lily told Santa she wants pink panties for Christmas. He looked puzzled and asked her again. She repeated very loud and very clear,

I want a pair of pink panties for Christmas.