I hope they have ear plugs.

This weekend, my mom and I are checking out of the mental hospital in which we apparently live, and are getting back in the car with Bryce and Quinn for five or six hours. See, in our family, we like to push our luck. Have an unnaturally good experience where the stars align properly and a long weekend trip to a cabin in the woods doesn't result in face-melting shrieks? Experience a miracle wherein trekking across West Texas with pint-sized professional humiliators actually results in a mere two or three moments of wishing your restaurant chair would sink into the floor and all of these nice patrons would stop staring at the kid screaming about his digestive problems? Well, by all means, let's test out those statistics! Sure, it's completely unrealistic to hope for three mildly successful summer trips in a row, but a break with reality has never stopped us before. Onward and upward, lunatics!

We're going to visit my mom's soft-spoken and completely happy and unsarcastic sisters, and my even more innocent and peaceful Russian cousin-in-law, who happens to have two kids - one Bryce's age, one Quinn's age. Those poor, sweet children don't realize what's about to come their way. The older one is actually looking forward to the visit, wanting to have pictures of his cousins to take back to Russia with him, I'm assuming to commemorate the weekend his eardrums will burst when Quinn inevitably decides that, NO, no one besides Quinn is actually allowed to touch anything without his prior approval I WILL SHRIEK UNTIL YOU COMPLY WITH MY RULES, O MINIONS.

Office Space

About five months ago, my department at work moved offices. It was a huge undertaking, a logistical feat, to organize the computer, phone, file, and desk moves for 40 people - 20 of them new employees. I've felt settled in for at least the past three months. It takes several weeks to become accustomed to the new sounds, sights, and smells of a new gray cube, you know. I had to experiment with how much control I'd need to use in my voice modulations while venting on the phone about how insanely bored I was those first few months; I had to accept, after my initial objections and protests and use of the term "ghetto" to refer to the area outside my cube, that the printer being used by 25 people WAS going to be right outside my doorway, and the big cardboard boxes of extra paper WERE going to be my responsibility by default, since, oh look, I was the closest! and the printer needs paper! and the people waiting for their print jobs, especially the really tall ones, would hang their arms all over my cube walls and block my ghetto doorway while they chatted about the weather.

And I'm fine with all of that. I've completely acclimated myself to the new office. No Very few complaints. But today, while we worked diligently inside our soft gray stations, my entire office was accosted by what sounded like a cable-less television on a dead channel with the volume turned all the way up. I pictured "snow," the hypnotic black and white flashes that dart across the screen during a storm or cable outage, and we all wondered aloud, with more than a hint of irritation in our voices, "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT LOUD, LOUD SOUND?"

We made our way out of our cubes one by one, looking dazed, confused, and crotchety, the way I picture myself limping out of my house when I'm 90 and pissed off about the whipper snapper neighbors in their 40s daring to have music playing at an outside barbecue at the late hour of 8:30 p.m. "Do you hear that? What is that? It's so distracting. GAH!"

A few minutes later, I received the following e-mail:

FYI - The staticy* noise you hear is white noise to drown out other noises. Ours wasn't turned on until today.

This just in: White Noise Should Be Loud And Very Distracting So As To Drown Out Other Noises Like The Tapping Of One's Keyboard Or, Say, One's Music Over One's Headphones. (Also, Be Sure To Turn It On Five Months Past Move-In Date. It's More Effective That Way.)

*Not my spelling, people. You should know that by now.

Terrible Apocalyptic Threes

Whoever coined the phrase "Terrible Twos" must have 1.) gone insane before their kid turned three, or 2.) felt like they'd jinxed themselves by speaking too soon and therefore opted to go with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding an appropriate description for age three. Because, people? Two was a cake walk, a stroll in the park, smooth sailing, a breeze. But three is chronic high blood pressure, premature gray hair, public humiliation, ohmygodwhatiswrongwiththiskid?!

When Bryce was three, I thought the difficulties were due to the dynamics between him and Quinn, who was 18 months - two years old at the time. "This is just a tough age combination," I thought. "We just need to get over this hump." By the time Bryce was four, Quinn was 2 1/2, and right on the cusp of the 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 Hell Phase from which I mistakenly assumed we were about to get a break. After all, Quinn was the "easy," "laid back" one.

Not so much.

When the pediatrician declared him feisty at his three-year appointment, I should have known it was time to batten down the hatches and prepare for a year of maniacal screaming, purposeless aggression, and battles of will. But, what can I say? Me and denial, we're like this (is it necessary for me to do the whole "*crossing fingers like one does when one says 'like this'*" thing? because I think you already pictured that, even before I interrupted myself to ask this question...). I thought since Bryce was getting older and more rational (more rational - let's not get carried away; it's a relative term), we wouldn't have the year of screaming and sibling competition that we'd had when Bryce was three. Quinn would be more laid back, he'd be easier to handle, more content, calmer.

Let's just take each of these stupid, stupid assumptions one at a time:

More laid back: Well, yesterday as he was trying to pull a toy tool box out of a bag, he was grunting, growling, and finally screaming in frustration. Bryce (for once totally innocent) went over and said, "let me help you, Quinn" and started trying to pull the box out for him. Quinn assumed, as he does any time any human comes close to something he considers his, that Bryce was trying to take it away, so he did what any completely insane and self-centered three-year-old would do: smashed his brother's fingers in the box, shrieked THAT's MINE GET AWAY and gave him three hard shoves to the chest, which caused Bryce's stuck fingers to get some extra tugs and stretches in addition to the healthy smashing. Also, at the grocery store last week, Quinn saw some poor sap of a toddler dare to approach the 643 boxes of Goldfish crackers, glared and pointed at him, and yelled, "NO! You don't LIKE Goldfish!"

Easier to handle: We joined a new gym last week with a fancy high-tech security system in their kids' area, as well as hordes of games, tunnels, and slides. We failed to specifically tell Quinn that when it was time to go, we would expect him to, you know, NOT RUN THE OTHER DIRECTION AND HIDE IN THE HUGE TUNNEL SYSTEM, and so that's what he did. When the college-aged kid's area worker finally dragged him out, holding him facing away from her, he kicked the crap out of her knees, then turned around and tried to hit her in the face. I can only assume she was thinking something like they don't pay me enough for this or just wait 'til I get you alone, kid.

More content: After Quinn has been up for 30 seconds in the morning, the fingernails-down-the-chalkboard whiny voice kicks in: I want breakfast! I want to watch a movie! I don't WANT to get dressed! I want a snack! No, I don't WANT that for breakfast! When we say, "I'll be glad to listen to you when you're ready to talk to me in a normal tone of voice," he lowers the pitch of his whine and changes everything to a question with a sniffle at the end, because he is so victimized: I can have breakfast now and then I can watch a movie? *Sniff* *Sob*

Calmer: We can't leave him alone anymore without something being destroyed. This weekend, the kids were in their rooms playing while I took a shower. When I came out to check on them, Quinn had single-handedly emptied every single toy, book, scrap of paper, CD holder, and block into a huge pile in the middle of his room. And yesterday, as I came out of the bathroom (which, by the way, I'd put off for an hour to prevent a Quinn-induced crisis), Bryce was running around the house laughing the way a person laughs when someone else is doing something inappropriate. (Crap.) "Mom, Quinn is scratching up everything in the kitchen!! Oh my gosh! Look!" I wasn't laughing. In fact, I think my left arm went numb for a second and I thought maybe my heart had stopped: "Where? What are you talking about?" Bryce took my hand and led me to the kitchen doorway, pointing. There were huge, long gouges in the wood door frame, and Quinn was standing a few feet away with a small utensil, "drawing" on the silverware drawer. "QUINN!! STOP THAT! WHAT IS THAT?!" He threw the object and ran. Bryce picked up the "artist's" instrument for me: a bottle opener. He'd scratched up all the wood in the kitchen with a bottle opener. In three minutes of being unsupervised.

Yeah. We've moved from denial to survival mode at this point. And I've given up any hope of having a clean or well-cared-for house. We live in a slum, and it's because of our three-year-old. Let this be a public service announcement to all of you who are still in the happy unaware place about this: THREE IS WORSE THAN TWO. MUCH, MUCH WORSE. Move to a padded cell now, and save yourself some heartache.

Random Friday Photo(s) - A Collection of Twirling Brides

This is one of my favorite times of shooting a wedding. The hair is done, the makeup is on, the ceremony time is approaching, everybody is happy, nervous, and excited, and I am working with the bride. To get her to loosen up a little and create a little energy, I have her do a couple of twirls in her wedding dress. I love the results!

Birthday Season

If you've ever wondered what an intense five-year-old does at a birthday party, wonder no more. They become fuzzy blurs of orange cotton and flesh and hair, racing around the padded protection of a kid-friendly gym with their peers, simultaneously relishing their own acts of blurry joy.

Good lord, they make me tired with the running and jumping and laughing all the time. What is it called? Energy? Abundance of such? I think they are over-stocked. There are five August birthdays in Bryce's class. This weekend we attended a birthday party at a huge gymnasium that happened to employ a lot of unnaturally energetic adults who led the kids around in a robotic trance of health and fitness: And now we're going to do our stretches! Reach for your toes but don't groan in misery the way your stiff and flabby mother does! Weee! This is fun! Now we're going to walk on this balance beam without toppling over in disjointed clumsiness like your mom does, cough, we mean you, Bryce. The next day, in a public display of insanity, we held Bryce's birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese establishment (a.k.a. "Chuck E. Cheese's," which I hate to say verbally, and so therefore resist typing on this entry which is supposed to approximate casual conversation), where Bryce and his friends indulged in all manner of Chuck E. Cheese-endorsed craziness:

Other than the huge meltdown that Quinn had as we were leaving, it was a smashing success. And actually, I've told several people, in those exact words, about Quinn's meltdown, to which all of them have replied, "what kid doesn't have a meltdown leaving Chuck E. Cheese's?" It would have helped if we'd been able to walk out the door with the screaming demon child, but thanks to Chuck E. Cheese's excellent and normally fool-proof security system (wherein the parents who escort the children INTO the establishment are stamped with the same blacklight-visible symbol as the kids so that no other adult can take them OUT of the building), had to wait for John to fish out his driver's license since Quinn's stamp had somehow been mysteriously rinsed off and the Chuck E. Cheese employee had to assume we were kidnappers obsessed with taking home a really loud, unhappy child.

Next weekend we have another birthday party for one of Bryce's other classmates, then another one the weekend after that. So far, every birthday party invitation has come with a waiver I have to sign that I won't sue the establishment if my kid suffocates inside their large foam pits or breaks his neck falling from their rock walls. I'm surprised Chuck E. Cheese didn't have everyone sign a waiver, too. I think I'm going to sue over their poor quality blacklight stamp ink.

Five Years With A Leo

Dear Bryce,

I've struggled in writing this letter to you. Maybe that's because I've already written in so much detail about your unique qualities, quirks, talents, and passions. Maybe it's because you're old enough that if I were to say most of these things directly to you, I'd carefully consider the language surrounding each phrase, because you take everything so literally and so personally and so seriously. Recently some other bloggers have asked questions about how we'll write about our kids as they age to points where they can read our words and react to them. I've responded to several of those questions by saying that I write about my experience, and since you are a pivotal part of that experience, I will inevitably write about you. Don't take this to mean that I feel I have unlimited license in what I can disclose about you. I find I don't worry so much about this issue, because you are such an effective and direct communicator that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that once you reach an age where something about my writing bothers you, you will not hesitate to tell me in very clear, concise terms, and because I am trying my hardest to teach you that communication is the catalyst and the precursor for action and resolution, I will follow my own instruction, respectfully acknowledge your words, and act accordingly. There will never be a time that I simply won't write about our interactions, though: those are my experiences, and I would expect you, as you grow, to use yours in a way that feels equally fulfilling to you. I hope my example comes through to you over time, and doesn't just make you want to egg my car or send hate mail to my office. If so, I sincerely apologize; but until that point, I am writing this birthday letter to you, and will probably write volumes more about you, and to you.

Everything about your birth was intense. The pregnancy leading up to it had been deceptively simple and complication-free, which made the experience of hearing "his heart rate won't come back up" and "we don't know why it keeps dropping like this" that much more shocking and heart-wrenching. You see, before I was pregnant with you, I could never envision myself having a child. It wasn't that I didn't want a child - I did. I simply couldn't envision it the way I'd always been able to envision other aspects of my intentions for my adult life. Throughout the pregnancy, I tried to picture it, I read all about what to expect and I thought about you and how I knew this whole thing wasn't a dream because I could feel your feet and elbows poking around inside my huge belly. But still, even through all of those attempts, I was troubled by the fact that I simply couldn't imagine what you would look like, smell like, sound like, or feel like outside of my body. I couldn't imagine what daily life in our household would consist of with you, the new baby, the new family member, actually there, living with us. Leading up to your birth, I allowed other people's excitement and life experience to brush off my internal worry, and I focused on reading the baby books and preparing your nursery, tangible things whose existence and purpose I didn't have to work hard to imagine or question.

When I first saw you, I studied your face intently and was awed that you started out as a clump of cells indistinguishable from the other microscopic cells making up my form, and now here you were, despite my nine-month-long inability to fully believe you'd actually be born and have a face, and hands, and a voice -- a very CLEAR, LOUD voice. I spent every single day of the entire first year or so of your life being in sincere awe of you as a separate, real being. You were the template for us -- as your dad puts it (and as any new parents inevitably find), the standard by which all other kids were judged. Thus, we thought your penchant for screaming at nap times was normal, we thought all children refused to change ground surfaces when walking outside, we thought all toddlers gagged on any food with a texture more complex than stage 2 baby food, and we assumed when you could find landmarks from any part of the city, and could hold complex conversations and perform basic mathematical functions at age 2, that the world was going to be run by a frightening new breed of pre-schoolers within the next few years.

Luckily your pediatrician recognized your abilities and pointed us in the direction of your school. Last year at this time, I was fretting about our decision to send you there: would you feel socially overwhelmed? would the other kids accept you? should I put you in the younger class or the older class (you were right on the cusp)? what if we were wrong about how much you could handle? You thrived there; you learned, you handled everything that was thrown at you, and you simultaneously surprised me and confirmed what I'd known already - that your abilities and your quirks and your intensity aside, you are and always have been too strong not to thrive. All of my disbelief and fear during the pregnancy that you'd never even exist was just as irrelevant and and insignificant to your near-supernatural will to be, to be you, to be intensely, boldly you, as all of our doubt and worry about your ability to handle the challenge and complexity of school. So broad is the chasm between your being and some external belief in you, in fact, that even writing "the challenge and complexity of school" seems trite and inconsequential. Sure, there will be challenges, there will be hardship in your life, but our worry, angst, and doubt means nothing in relation to you. Your intensity, while I may tell you that it drives me insane at times, exists for a reason. When I step back from the difficulty with which that intensity often presents me, I see you surrounded by beautiful, powerful, blinding light. Is it your "soul"? Is it your "aura"? Is it my poor attempt at describing the indescribable? It is you - it is what clouded my vision of you before you were born. I couldn't have imagined you: you create who you are every day, and you've done so in profound ways from the minute you existed in any form - even before you were born you refused to let me dictate who you would be. You are a mystery and a miracle, you are intense and bright. You are my son. You are five years old today.

Happy Birthday, Bryce. I love you.

Random Friday Photo

Live from San Francisco

Proof you wouldn't want to travel with me.
What are those areas, those vast expanses of land suddenly interrupted by huge, closely placed circles (like crop circles, only there are no crops, only brownish-gray rock and dirt)? Flying over Colorado, Nevada, and California, I entertained myself by creating sweeping conspiracy theories involving those perfectly shaped circles. There were rectangles and squares occasionally, too, but the circles seemed more suspicious to me, probably because there was usually a lone road nearby, a perfectly straight line appearing to cross the entire earth and ending abruptly within miles of the perfect circles - ending, themselves, in a circular blot of concrete at the base of barren, rocky mountain. I imagined there was some sort of door built into those mountains right where the road ended, that the huge earth cobblestones were the upper operating pieces of massive fans or solar panels cooling or lighting a secret city, or a torture complex, or medical testing grounds. I would imagine, though, that if I had a large torture complex that I didn't want the public to know about, I wouldn't place it smack in the middle of an otherwise empty region of rocks and dirt; the panels of my torture chamber lights and the lone road ending right at the entrance to my secret dungeon might as well be flashing neon lights in the shape of an arrow: Large Secret Torture Chamber Located Here!

Seriously, though. What are those things?

Help me, internet. You're my only hope.
Also, California natives, I have a geographical question for you: when one is en route into San Francisco imagining what kinds of horrid experiments are taking place beneath the desert-like region one has been flying over for the past hour or two, and suddenly the the terrain turns to one of thick evergreens on hills dotted with what look to be mansions and resorts, and then just as suddenly it turns into hugely huge vats of colorful hugeness (uh, they're huge.) that appear from the sky to be watery paint? WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE?! I've been racking my brain ever since I saw them. Are they algae lakes? Do they have something to do with wastewater treatment? Are they naturally occuring? Are they related to the bay currents? From the sky, they literally look like one of those old fashioned painter's palettes, the way the shapes of color are distinctly separated from one another, but if you look closely, you can see swirls and distinction within a single paint color (in this case, mauves, browns, pinks, greens, blues). I must know what this is. And I must know NOW.

Lack of space = cool urban atmosphere.
I haven't had a chance to do any sightseeing yet, but I did go to a nice Italian restaurant in downtown San Francisco last night. Being from the midwest, the first thing my work partner and I noticed about this city is the close proximity of everything here. There is no spot of ground that isn't covered with a house, condo, shop, restaurant, crowd, or street. Because of this, there are restaurants whose tables actually spill out into the alley ways: my work partner thought this was genius. Open your door, grab some tables, string some lights across the alley, and voila! A quaint local restaurant. He decided our city needs some alley restaurants, but somehow I don't think it would have the same effect in midwest suburbia.

It's all about work-life balance.
Now I'm off to eight hours of some kind of training I signed up for six months ago. Six months ago, when I wasn't busy at work, as opposed to now, when I have a pile of stress-inducing papers with me that I'm not exactly sure I'll be able to work on. After all, I can't be expected to forego my sightseeing requirements for WORK, just because WORK sent me here! I mean, come on!

I left my heart in San Francisco (and other love songs)

Kristen is bailing out leaving for San Francisco tomorrow. San Francisco! For FOUR days with a company credit card! I should be so lucky.

Since I handle the kids from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM five and one half days a week (I'm on halfday, sometimes quarterday, duty on Saturdays so Kristen can sleep in before I go to my wedding - I know, I'm a prince - but she gives me Sunday mornings so we each get at least one morning to snooze) it's really not that big of a deal. Except. Man oh man, do I look forward to a little relief when she gets home. I'm going to have to change things up a little to be able to survive. I think the crockpot and pizza delivery guy will be my best friends for the next four nights.


Have you seen Cynical Dad's top 100 album list? He's asking for guesses on his #1 pick. I took a shot and my guess wasn't even on his list. I've been wondering about how I could expand my music range and with his list I didn't have to wonder any more. I've been downloading all the "never before heard of's," the "oh yeah, I remember them's," and even a couple of "that trash made the list?". I thought about compliling a top 100 list for about three seconds, then realized a.) I would obsess, rank, and rerank my rank collection and never get it done and b.)my top 100 would bore you to death.


I love technology, especially when it works. Today I got a nifty little inexpensive device that just solved a major (for me) obstacle. I have 3,948 songs on my pc. A lot to many, a paltry few to others. To me, it's just about easily listening to what I want when I'm working. But I wanted a way to be able to listen to albums, playlists, internet radio, and audio streams from my pc (upstairs) through my home stereo (downstairs). The answer, my friends, is the $25 Lyra RD900W. Plug in the transmitter to an available usb port on your pc, then plug in the receiver to the aux input on your stereo. Skip the software installation if you're happy with your current media player. Works like a charm!

PropaganDay Trip

John didn't have a wedding today, which means that when we woke up the kids woke us up this morning, the whole unfettered day stretched before us like a vast, inviting landscape. Of course, in the sweltering August heat, it looked more like hell a desert, so we opted for an indoor activity and decided to drive 90 minutes to a science museum-slash-omnidome-slash-planetarium a co-worker was recently raving about to me.

While we were sitting at the breakfast table discussing all of the inevitable outcomes of a day trip and whether we were willing to stomach them (primarily: no nap for the kids, potential resulting public humiliation), Bryce and Quinn watched Saturday morning television. They aren't used to seeing commercials, because most of what they see on TV is movies or PBS programming. The more they are exposed to Saturday morning network cartoon programming, the more I hear things like what I heard this morning as Bryce raced in and interrupted our breakfast conversation:

"MOM! I need to get Skechers so I don't have to spend time lacing my shoes! It's so much faster that way! I really need those shoes, mom."

I think I might have scratched a little varnish off the dining table when I slammed my fork down and ran shrieking out of the room towards the TV. I grabbed the nearest DVD and put it in: "You guys can watch Super Friends until dad and I are ready to go in a few minutes!"

An hour later, in the car, the kids were throwing a toy back and forth and I confiscated it. From the back seat, Bryce said, "I'll just get it with my lasso, I'm Wonder Woman! A HA HA HA HA!!" CRAP. So much for thwarting unwanted behaviors and mentalities by "controlling" what they watch.

When we got to the museum, we bought our omnidome theater tickets; we had a choice between a movie about ancient Greece or a movie about a fighter pilot training mission. Stupidly, I asked the museum employee which one would be more enjoyable for younger kids. "The fighter pilot one is more exciting," she said. Oh, okay. I am a thoughtless drone and so I will do whatever the museum employee says without putting any thought into the ramifications. Fighter pilot it is! In our defense, since it was an omnidome movie, we assumed most of it would be stomach-churning sequences of jets zooming through the sky. Within two minutes of sitting in the theater, though, I was kicking myself. The one message I consistently tell the kids is that we don't FIGHT, it's not okay to FIGHT, we don't want to be aggressors, there is always a thoughtful solution, it is NEVER OKAY TO FIGHT OR HURT. NEVER, even if those around you are doing it. The message of the fighter pilot movie revolved around "the mission," we need to complete our mission, it's great to shoot the enemy, but if the bomb doesn't hit the target, none of us have completed our mission or destroyed the "bad guys." OH MY GOD, NNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Luckily, it was a poorly written, produced, and edited film, and the kids were pretty bored. Quinn spent most of his time saying, in the very quiet, still theater full of irritated older kids and adults who just wanted to see fighter pilots bomb the bad guys can't you shut your kid up? (Waaah. Turn on the news, we're bombing "bad guys" all over the place.), "I WANT POPCORN. I can have popcorn? Are we getting popcorn? I WANT POPCORN!"

We left early (about 15 minutes into the military recruiting -- uh, I mean, omnidome -- film), but I brought it up later to Bryce: "What did you think of that plane movie?"

"It was good."

"Hmm. Well, I didn't really like how much shooting and fighting they wanted to do."

"Well, mom! They were just having battles, so that means it only lasts a day. And then they wait, like, a week before they have another one."

Good lord. I think I preferred the demands for Skechers and the lasso-wielding Wonder Woman impersonations.

Random Friday Photo(s) - A Collection of Feet

Ok, it's true. Whenever I put a camera to my face I always try to photograph feet. Weddings, families, babies, street shots, whatever. I always go for the feet.



A fetish, you ask? No, I think not. Come on, who can resist baby feet?





And who wouldn't want one of these? I know I would.



Remember how it felt to feel the warm pavement on your feet as a kid?



Flippy flops, flippy flops, we all love flippy flops.









Ya gotta respect a gal that wears converse.



I was impressed. He brought his own shoe shine kit.



Someday I plan on having a show. One room, or wall, or area, will be comprised of my favorite feet/shoe shots I've collected over the years. I think feet, and the footwear over them, give great insight into who we are, want to be, or project to be.

Dead Horses

My first memory of realizing that there legitimately might be better things in store for me besides rolling my eyes in disgust and disappointment at my peers and their materialistic, self-centered antics was during my senior year in high school. For whatever reason, up until that year, I had avoided any academic challenges, thinking I wasn't smart enough and that I would fail if I took any "advanced" classes, AND THEN WHAT?! IF I FAILED A CLASS, WHAT THEN? WHAT, I ASK YOU?! Life would be over. End of story. Curtain falls.

My junior year English teacher was going to be teaching the advanced senior class, and I knew if I signed up for it, I'd get to take English class with her again. Everyone else, all of my narcissistic peers who lived for weekend sleepovers and trips to the mall and wore silver half hearts around their necks that either said "BE FRI" or "ST END," hated that teacher and thought I was insane for 1.) voluntarily signing up for a "hard" class and 2.) voluntarily returning to HER class. I loved her, though. She was witty and demanding and she kind of looked like she might hold secret Wiccan meetings in her basement. Nobody but me suspected that, and I don't know why I did, other than the fact that she had a stereotypically witch-like face, only a little prettier, and with a little more sparkle in her eyes.

Once my senior year started and I realized that the advanced classes got to read books ON THEIR OWN TIME, that they were given a lot more leeway in terms of paper topics, and that the structure of their paragraphs were under much less scrutiny than the content of their document, I was slapping my forehead in self-derision for having avoided these classes before. My junior year "major" paper was about orcas (aka "killer whales"). My senior year paper was a multi-media comparative essay using Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the screenplay to Pulp Fiction, and The Police's Wrapped Around Your Finger, using the theme of self-deification, a topic I invented because I had the sweet, sweet liberty to do so. As the year ended, Possible Secret Wiccan Teacher and I were talking about how much I'd enjoyed the class and she had one of her mischievous, mystical looks in her large, dark eyes and a wise, knowing grin when she said, "you know, some people's lives peak in high school, and then it's downhill after that, but yours will be different - you have a long way to go."

It hit me, when she said that, that all of the eye rolling I'd been doing might actually have the chance to stop. After all, the eye rolling was a self-defense mechanism designed to help keep me at arm's lengths from the peers I didn't understand, who didn't understand me. I could have gotten behind wearing a "BE FRI" necklace. I could have gotten behind spending 24 out of every 48 hours at the mall and eating warm pretzels with people who accepted and understood me, who wanted to be my friends. But those people, my peers, it had been my experience, never understood me. They thought I was odd, they chalked it up to nerdiness or dorkiness or dweebiness or whatever the acceptable phrase was at the time - then they found a way, usually a cruel one, to extricate me from their group, to remove the one who made them uncomfortable and who they just couldn't find a way to assimilate. I could act haughty and uninterested and then we'd all be happy, we'd all get to stay in our comfort zones. When Possible Secret Wiccan Teacher said those words out loud, told me that actually, this crap doesn't really matter, the best is yet to come, it was like being reminded of something I'd known a really long time ago, but had forgotten.

I went on to college and the work force and married life and adult interactions. Still, there are times where the arms length eye rolling instinct wants to kick in, to protect me from the pain and loneliness that comes from social rejection and outcast status. Sometimes we don't "fit in" even in our own families. That truth never changes. What changes is our awareness of the white hot sun rays of CHOICE in how we embrace that truth. Do we harden our protective shell and burrow into our cool, dark stagnation, or do we climb out risking burns and painful blisters on the off chance we'll find warmth and growth? The difference between my youthful peers and me was that I recognized the sun rays of choice because I had to. They didn't need to know such things existed, so comfortable and largely accommodating were their dank shelters - all of the BE FRIs and ST ENDs could fit inside any one of them. That "peak" my teacher mentioned occurred inside such places, and was more like a small hill than a mountain top. Those of us whose "peaks" are out in the sun and hard as hell to climb sometimes forget that the burning sensation from those white hot rays, that's part of the experience!, the blisters, they make you stronger!, the shelter was too small and stifling, and the pain, well - it is accompanied by so much more.

Broaching A Sensitive Subject

We have been talking to Quinn for weeks about giving up his "paci," dropping hints, making jokes, subtly referencing his status as Big Boy. We haven't worn him down one iota.* He holds his ground no matter what approach we take: "No! I want my paci! I like my paci! I'm not a baby yet!" That last part is confusing, and I think it pretty much sums up his entire identity crisis right now. He wants to be a big boy: hence, the "not a baby" portion. He doesn't want to give up the luxuries of babyhood: hence, the "yet" portion. I feel sympathetically amused every time he says it. (I know, that statement makes no sense: he's confused, I'm confused.)

We have yet to force the issue because we almost scarred the poor kid for life when in a fit of parental insanity during his toddlerhood, I decided on a random night that it was time for him to give it up. No warning, no discussion, just "Oops, the paci's gone! Look at that! Well, good night!" followed by the tortured wails of a completely confused and disoriented baby. During the crying and my simultaneous pulling out of all my own hair, John and I consulted the trusty Internet for advice, and learned that pacifiers, as long as they aren't in use all day and preventing a toddler from learning to speak properly, really pose no problem. Thumb and finger sucking is much worse in that thumbs can't be taken away EVER and the bone pressure on the teeth causes more potential long-term damage to a child's bite. Upon learning that set of facts, I returned Quinn's paci to him and he whimpered himself to sleep. Ever since then, I've been a little gun-shy about the whole paci issue.

He's three now, and still only uses the pacifier to go to sleep, never during the day or any awake time. His speech has developed normally (uh, yeah - we don't have any talking or yelling problems around here - you've noticed?), but - BUT - he does have an overbite the EXACT SAME size and shape of his pacifier. Hard to ignore. I've done a lot of research and continue to find medical advice consisting of the same facts I found two years ago - namely, as long as the child discontinues pacifier use by the age of four or five, permanent damage to the palate is not a risk. "Let the child give it up on his own" is what I keep reading. But I look at that overbite and it worries me. I'm pretty sure if I took him to a dentist or specifically asked the pediatrician about it, I'd get a hefty lecture. We don't want to turn it into a huge emotional issue for him, though, so we just keep talking about it, and haven't actually made any threatening moves yet. We're at a definite standstill.

Tonight I had an epiphany. The kid is obsessed with going to the fair, which happens around here in October. He's been talking about going to the fair since LAST October, about two days after we went. About four times a week at bedtime, he'll ask about it as I'm laying him down: "we go to the fair tomorrow?" Tonight after dinner as I rolled marbles and cars on the floor with the kids, Quinn asked about the fair. I said, "Hey! If you'll say goodbye to your pacis, then I'll be sure to take you to the fair when it comes!" He stopped, silent, and looked at me with a conflicted grin on his face, the wheels in his three-year-old brain turning. I kept talking, "the way you say goodbye to them is that you leave them for the Paci Fairy, and she leaves you a brand new soft, special toy that you can sleep with so you won't need a paci anymore..." Silence. Conflicted grin. Wheels turning. "What do you think about that??" He gave me a suspicious look: "A new toy?"

"Yeah! A new soft toy! Like a Teddy Bear! Don't your friends at school sleep with Teddy Bears?"

"Yeah. I could get a new Teddy Bear?"

"Totally! And then you wouldn't need the paci anymore, your friends at school don't use pacis, right?"

"No, they have Teddy Bears."

"Yeah! So you could have one too, and you could say goodbye to your paci."

I got stingy, and I pushed the subject too far, too fast, just like always. He slammed the door of opportunity hard on my face and said, "I don't want that stuff. I don't want a Teddy Bear anyway. I want my paci."

"Why do you like your paci?"

"Because! I like to put it in my mouth and go to sleep!"

Well, the kid knows what he needs. He knows where he stands. Even his deceptive, bribing mother can't sway him. I'm thinking in seven more months when he turns four, maybe I will have convinced him. I can still threaten not to take him to the fair, but we all know that's never going to happen.

*When I tried to type the word iota, it came out idiot - that should tell you something.

The War Rages On

Yesterday John was getting ready to leave for a wedding when Quinn woke up from his nap and asked if he could go to the pool. I cringed when I heard John say over the monitor, "you'll have to ask mom, because I'm leaving." I didn't want to have to take both kids by myself. Quinn requires so much extra attention, even if he's wearing a life jacket - he is very clingy and if I move more than two inches away from him or don't allow him to clutch some part of my swimsuit at all times, he screams and cries like I've just dumped him in the ocean and sped off in my getaway boat. It's endearing the first seven or eight times as I "save" him from being out of arm's reach for 15 seconds and he holds onto my neck and laughs with glee, but after that, as I try to deal with that AND respond to Bryce's constant requests for me to watch him jump in the pool or put his face under the surface without getting water in his nose, I get that tight feeling in my chest, my brow furrows, and I start to notice my tone of voice becoming more irritated with every response to either child. Knowing all of this was a possibility, I agreed to take them to the pool anyway. By the time we returned home an hour later, I was hissing at both of them about not walking away in a big public place without telling me where they're going, not running, obeying the pool rules that we've been over a million times, not throwing other people's goggles into the pool and then running away laughing, and threatening not to EVER take them back to the pool AGAIN (yeah, that's realistic).

As I've said before, once I enter the Frustration Realm, it's very difficult for me to come out of it. I draw my kids into it and by the end of the day we're all tense with each other, every interaction is a tacit argument or challenge. I feel out of control of the entire situation, and end up doing a lot of heavy sighing and guttural growling after everything I say: "I told you to stop fighting over those books! You can find a way to share or one of you can go upstairs! RRRR!" That's what has happened this weekend. Even though both kids almost always wake up happy, by the time they've been up for 20-30 minutes, they are either arguing, physically accosting one another (pushing, grabbing things out of each other's hands, etc.) or have joined forces in chaos by running around the house screaming at the top of their lungs. Usually, when I'm not in the Frustration Realm, I pull out my arsenal of Consistent Parenting Techniques and diffuse the situation. But this weekend, the pool experience threw me into the Frustration Realm, and when the usual bickering and chaos started, my chest tightened, my heart rate increased, my movements became more agitated and rough, and anger was all that came through in my voice, even if all I was doing was listing off breakfast choices or granting a request for milk. The kids took their napkins and waved them like flags, reaching over the table to each other, each intending to take the other one's loot, each one's arm threatening to send full cups and plates clamoring to the floor and littering the freshly mopped tile with greasy, moist bits of sausage and muffin. "SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW. YOUR NAPKINS ARE FOR WIPING YOUR MOUTHS AND HANDS, NOT FOR PLAYING WITH! STOP IT! RRRRR!!" I turned back to the stove where I was scrambling eggs and with a flourishing, but only mild bang of the spatula, emphasized my disdain for the whole scene. Bryce finished chewing a bite of muffin and said, "Mom, when you growl like that, does it mean you want to get rid of us?"

"Of course not, Bryce!! Why would you say that?"

"Because every time you growl, you say, 'I wish you guys would just act better!' and that means you want to get rid of us."

That deafening shatter you hear is the breaking of my evil, black heart.

After I pushed aside the instinct to stick my head in the oven, I pulled Bryce to me and apologized for the way I expressed my frustration, and said I would do my best to find a better way, to which he responded, "Yeah, I think that's a better idea, mom."

It's 10:00 on Sunday morning. The kids go to bed at 8:00 p.m. The way I see it, I have approximately 10 hours to salvage the day. The problem is that even if I do, I've only won the battle. The War on Frustration will begin anew tomorrow morning with an as yet unpredictable skirmish.

Running On Fumes

This post is supposed to be a clever and well-thought-out summary of my day trip to another state which consisted of a lot of speed-walking, flying, conference room meeting, and driving through a city of four million with one other individual. Between the two of us, we had $18.00 in cash and a couple of company-provided credit cards (which in my mind are a joke, since we have to pay the bills with our own hard-earned money and then spend untold amounts of time and mental effort submitting expense reports via the expense reporting system whose password requirements rival the mathematics segment of the SAT). We also had no earthly idea how to navigate the numerous highway loops, and our professional relationship turned to friendship as we commiserated over the fact that the locals always fail to explain to tourists that when the identifying road signs change directions with absolutely no warning or posted logical reason, it doesn't mean anything other than OH YEAH, YOU'RE ON A LOOP. Hey, locals: you might want to mention this to the schmucky Midwestern visitors to your sprawling metropolis. It would help prevent a lot of roadway angst, and that can only benefit us all.

I have a lot more clever and well-thought-out things to say about "day trips" and how they are not only NOT ANY EASIER than longer trips, but arguably MORE DIFFICULT than longer trips, but the thoughts are all bouncing around inside my brain, which has been inundated with way too much madness since my return. My mother-in-law called John out of the blue and invited Bryce over for the afternoon (hey, this has nothing to do with the fact that her favorite daughter is moving away next week and she's angry as hell about it - she's obviously just being selfless and helpful, so you stop it with your evil suggestions), and dropped him off just as I was arriving home from my 13-hour "day trip" (which, now that I think about it, in business hours, was technically closer to being a "day and a half" trip).

As I pulled up to my usual parking spot in the driveway --oops, but no! That's not what happened, is it? No. No, the mother-in-law was parked there, in her VERY FAVORITE spot, my spot, because the spot directly behind John's car would be way too logical - what if John decides to go run an errand -- or worse, flee the country -- right when she's there? Why, he'd never be able to back out of the driveway if she were parked behind him. No bother! She can just park in Kristen's spot and Kristen can find a lovely oil-stained place on the street when she arrives back at her OWN HOUSE after traveling all day and not eating or seeing her kids since the night before. And Kristen will definitely want to spend an hour discussing the logistics of all of the upcoming family birthday parties as SOON as she walks in from the airport and stumbles all over herself pulling her ridiculously heavy laptop bag out of the front seat, over the cumbersome console, and out the door, tripping over the curb that she parked next to since HER NORMAL SMOOTH DRIVEWAY SPOT WAS TAKEN, because saying hi to her kids and her husband definitely won't be on the list of things she'll want to do - nope, talking about unplanned birthday parties so that her mother-in-law can update her all-important agenda book was exactly the thing she'd been hoping she could answer unending questions about while still in her uncomfortable work clothes and while her dry, torn contacts further irritate her eyes.

What added to the experience was the fact that this day, the travel day, the mother-in-law stopping by to drill me after 13 hours of running, was the day we'd scheduled a tile restoration in the master bathroom. I walked in to a contractor coming in and out of our front door at seemingly random intervals; Bryce wildly running around the house with an open individual portion of Teddy Grahams; Quinn alternating between playing hide-and-seek (with no one), smashing Goldfish crackers into the rug, and punching the air an inch away from people's legs and arms (to express dissatisfaction in the lack of hide-and-seek cooperation); and John avoiding all of it in his upstairs office praying for the gods to enlighten him with a legitimate excuse to stay up there for the next two hours. The contractor was cleaning up his materials: "Oh, and you won't be able to use the bathroom until Sunday - you'll want to leave the fan on and put a towel under the door if you have trouble sleeping in that room right next to all the poisonous fumes." Then it hit me. It couldn't have hit me before because my brain was no longer capable of transmitting all of the stimuli after 13 hours of travel survival, but once the contractor pointed out the whole needing to shove a towel under the door so we could avoid the poisonous fumes thing, THEN I got it. The house smelled like nail polish. Like an entire nail polish factory, really. Every time I took a breath to answer another god-forsaken birthday party question in my most polite and patient voice, the nail polish smell emanating from the chemical-covered tiles in our bathroom burned my throat and eyes, the kids got louder and ran in more random directions, and John's developmentally disabled and excitable sister (who accompanies his mom most of the time) used what we around here call an outside voice to talk (I mean "shout," as is her innocent way that, while innocent, also makes me edgy) about a subject completely unrelated to any of the other ten million stimulants in the immediate environment.

The whole scene was utter and complete chaos. So, pretty much par for the course around here, I guess. At work the next day, I was informed that the next few months will entail several more business trips. No more than a week at a time! they say with the same nonchalant tone of voice they used to convince me about the joys and ease of a "day trip." Normally after such a harrowing experience, I'd be more suspicious of their cheerful promises, but I have slept under a fuming cloud of poison recently, so who knows what's what anymore?

Random Friday Photo(s). A Collection of Cakes.

One of my favorite parts of shooting weddings is getting to photograph the cake. It always presents a challenge (which I love), it doesn't tell you what it's best side is, it's never late, and it usually tastes good.

A good cake shot shows off the artistry of the baker and florist, and sometimes shows an insight to the bride's phsyche (not only how the cake looks but also if something about the cake isn't exactly as the bride wanted. Not pretty.)

Sometimes I like to include the background and include plenty of ambient light. Othertimes I want to focus on just the cake. Either way, if I come away with a good cake shot, I feel satisfied.

Be sure to check out the cake with the tanks and soldiers on it.