Should Be Outlawed

Some details about the pit in my stomach.
A few nights ago John's out-of-town sister called and asked if Hannah would be interested in coming down for a visit this weekend. It was tentatively planned: Hannah would accompany John's other (mildly developmentally disabled) sister for a weekend of shopping and babysitting her younger cousins. The next morning, when John checked Hannah's grades online and found that she was failing three of her six classes (three weeks into the semester), he called his sister to tell her that Hannah wouldn't be able to make the trip. I've thought about detailing the reasons why (for those without similar parenting philosophies who won't fill in the blanks on their own), providing in detailed written form all of the justification for his decision, our decision - but I finally realized that the reason and justification don't matter or make one bit of difference to this story.

When he called to tell his sister not to make the flight arrangements for Hannah, here were her responses:

"What difference is one weekend going to make? Would she be studying over the weekend anyway?"

"What if you hadn't looked at the grades this morning?"

"Wouldn't a 'natural consequence' be her failing and being forced to wait tables for the rest of her life?"

If John's sister weren't pictured in our mental dictionary next to the entries of "self-centered," "flighty," and "shallow," these responses would have puzzled us, possibly even made us question our decision. But in this case, they only served to add to the heap of exemplary reasons why we avoid discussing anything related to parenting with her whenever humanly possible. John's mom was involved in the planning, so he called to let her know the disappointing news as well: "Hannah's not going to be able to go out of town - she's failing three classes... again." This is going to seem impossible, but her answers were suspiciously familiar.

"What does the trip have to do with her grades?"

"Would she be studying if she were home anyway?"

Not long after this series of conversations that made John want to cut himself off from all society, his sister called me: "He needs to take a Prozac. Why did he have to look at her grades today anyway?"

Those chills down your spine? That was the result of my metaphysical transformation into RUNFORYOURLIFESHE'SPISSEDNOW (henceforth known as RFYLSPN, or more visually simple and faster for me to type, Rifflespin). Rifflespin is not confined by space or time because Rifflespin is fueled by eight years of pent-up rage and the desire to inform my in-laws that I know their dirty little secret of dysfunction hidden behind the thin veil of utter bullcrap. Rifflespin wasted no time in verbally ripping John's sister limb from limb, and then I took over when Rifflespin needed a rest.

During a conversation with his brother the next day, John learned something: his sister had wanted Hannah to come visit mainly so she could help escort her other aunt through the airports. Well my, my! Doesn't this change things? Nobody ever mentioned THIS as a problem when Hannah suddenly couldn't come! No, it was all about how harsh John was, how inappropriate this punishment was, how she should get to go on this trip JUST BECAUSE! "Well I'm just sure we made it clear that that's what we needed," said John's mom when he called to address the issue. No, you didn't make it clear. If you'd made it clear, the conversation would have been about the fact that you needed Hannah's help, not that John was a horrible ogre-parent. Of course, if you'd made it clear, you couldn't look like such selfless advocates for poor, victimized just-going-through-a-hard-time (even though that hard time has lasted seven years and makes up her entire mentality) Hannah, now could you?

There is so much more, and maybe I'll expound in a later post, but I think you get the gist - the gist being, wow, where's the wine?!

Rock out, knock out.
Because of all this, I walked in the door from work like I was drowning in a sea of rocks. Rocks in my stomach, pebbles I'd swallowed in the struggle; rocks on my back, bruising me with every muscle twitch; rocks on my chest and even in my chest, squeezing on my heart and making it impossible to breathe comfortably; rocks in my hair and somehow oozing, plopping sharply out of my ears in blasts of pain. When I spoke, the rocks shot out of my mouth but they were in the shape of deadly arrow-heads, having been chiseled to lethal perfection by the rocky chaos inside - so whoever I spoke to winced in pain and stepped back, at once hurt and worried about my imminent rock-drowning death. I could see what was happening and tried to stop it, but finally removed myself from the vulnerable creatures and spewed my rocks at the inanimate objects in the kitchen while I unintentionally burned, par for the course of this week, every frozen convenience food item known to humankind.

While we sat at the table eating our burned, dried black bean burgers and charred crinkle-cut french fries, Quinn said, "Knock knock." Most of the rocks were gone, but I felt a few try to arm themselves at the back of my throat. The kids don't understand knock knock jokes - they always get them wrong. When you say, "banana who?" or "lamp who?" they string a series of random words together ("banana lips house magnet!") and crack up laughing, leaving you to wonder a.) what the hell they were talking about, and b.) if they'll be intellectually compromised as adults if you don't more effectively explain what makes a knock knock joke work. I didn't want to open my mouth and start lecturing him on the finer points of proper joke-telling, but I didn't have to. John stepped in: "Who's there?"

"Cargo."

"Cargo who?"

"Car go beep beep!"

The arrowheads in the back of my throat dissolved next to the remnants of dried out black bean patty and burned fries, and the entire table erupted into laughter, and shocked glee: "THAT WAS AN AWESOME JOKE, QUINN!" "WOW!" "Good job!" "That was so funny!"

Bryce was ready to try. He could barely contain his excitement and almost fell over trying to get us to listen to his joke. "Knock knock," he said through excited, gaspy laughter.

"Who's there?"

"Stairs!"

"Stairs who?"

"Stairs table head hair!"

The rocks tried to re-form, but I thought of something I'd seen on a blog in the past several weeks. "Bryce, knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting Cow."

"Interrupt--"

"MOO!"

We all slapped the table and squealed in the hilarity. Bryce was ready to try again, he told us he had a joke like mine, only different: "Knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Horse."

"Horse who?"

"..... uh. Oh. Neigh! Neigh!! Hahahaha!"

Oh, we were all rolling now. If I hadn't been cracking apart with laughter, the arrowheads probably would have come back, because if I hadn't been laughing, I would have sounded critical. "Bryce, here's what you might try next time... say 'interrupting horse' and when I start to answer, make sure you actually interrupt me when you say, 'neigh, neigh.'" I was laughing so hard when I said it, and he was laughing so hard at his perceived comedic victory, that this just seemed like another joke. And now Quinn wanted back in: "Knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Cargo."

"Cargo who?"

"Car go LIP LIP ahahahahahah!!!!!!"

I realize now why the kids don't understand knock knock jokes. His nonsense ad-lib was confirmation that the first successful delivery had been just a memorized set of words, but we laughed so hard after the series of randomness leading up to this that the kids assumed, as they apparently do every time, that knock knock jokes are a blank canvas that should only be filled with stream-of-consciousness brilliance.

-----------------------------
I don't know how to end this. I know that this morning before I left for work, John and I were discussing the need to cultivate some couple friendships, the need to force ourselves to socialize and stop hiding behind the excuse of being busy. By noon, we had discussed and or dealt with the issue of Hannah going out of town at least once each. By 5 p.m., we had discussed the general lack of motivation in Hannah, the fact that John's sister is clueless about such, and the fact that she had called the entire family to tattle on John's too-strict parenting rules since she wasn't getting her way. By 8 p.m., we were catching our breath after a rowdy game of "hide Elmo under the bed while one kid is out of the room and see if he notices" so we didn't have to role-play AS Elmo, which was our alternate option. And I think I remember now why we don't have a whole collection of couple friends knocking down our door to invite us to dinner parties and wine tastings, or even just over for Friday night pizza. We can barely keep a handle on the family obligations - the logistical, emotional, financial, and physical requirements of this household demand more of us than we can consistently give - hence, my near rock-drowning, hence, no social life. At least we have nonsense knock knock jokes to help us keep our perspective. Car go lip lip, indeed.

The pit of my stomach: where anxiety goes to die.

Hi, nervousness! You've been missing me, haven't you? All those months of predictability were really getting you down, making you jealous, but I've learned my lesson. Oh yes. Do not leave Nervousness out in the cold. Nervousness loves company. Nervousness loves Kristen. Today alone, every single aspect of my life has welcomed Nervousness back in: personal, professional emotional - Nervousness all around! Weeeee!! Aren't I lucky that I have naturally low blood pressure? Yes, I am. Also, wine helps.

Not enough family dynamics making your heart beat a little faster? Well, why don't we bring back the issue of the disagreements between the in-laws and the parenting of the stepdaughter? That should get the ol' blood pumping again!

Getting too complacent with the nice people at work thinking you're "hard-working" and "worthy" and "deserving of a salary for another year"? A quick teaming up with an incompetent co-worker to bring your work ethic into question should do the trick!

Starting to be too damned optimistic about the future of your quirky children's education? Here's a thought: submit an application for your younger child to the school your older child attends. Then, when the school calls and says, vaguely, "uh, would you consider placing your younger kid - who consequently doesn't have the right numbers printed on this test paper - placed in a class 18 months below his chronological age?" go ahead and express your honest opinion that, no, that would not be a good option, because putting your then four-year-old into a class full of three-year-olds seems like it would be detrimental to a kid who clearly needs more challenge, not less, and wait in silent, nail-biting anticipation for the reaction on the other end of the phone. "Hmm. We might have to put him on the waiting list, then." Yeah, that'll bring Nervousness right back in to warm its hands by the raging fire of unknowns.

And after a day like today, all I can do is thank my lucky stars that I have naturally low blood pressure. I think it's what's keeping me alive at this point.

S.A.D.

My brother sent me a book that reminds me of all the intellectual things I don't do. When I read it, I feel a combination of appreciation for other people's intellectualism and shame for my lack thereof. I think, gee, I should really read more, I should really write more, hey! I know! I could post more frequently and make myself write! But I don't have time, or at least that's what I tell myself, because the reality is that I don't have the strength to face what's in my mind and on the tip of my tongue, that what has spent its time running through my mind lately has been NOT thinking, but turning up the radio on whatever inane station I've tuned into in my car, during the traffic battles that force me to recognize that in reality, right at that moment, I do have time to think. I just don't want to think beyond whatever noise is blaring in my ears because if I do, I have to ask myself hard, critical questions about things like lifestyle, priorities, long-term choices.

If I don't think about self-centered topics like that, the next natural progression is the rest of the world, and damn if I'm going to depress myself further by putting any thought or, god forbid, action into something that might help other people or improve someone else's life in some way. Oh no, I'd rather wallow in self pity for a while, then get up and go to my gas guzzling automobile and transport myself somewhere with shiny plastic crap and bright lights and ways to spend money, because when I spend money I kill two birds with one stone and accomplish both distraction and self-loathing, the two activities that most often keep me from admitting I have time to think.

It's a beautiful system I've worked out, really. Well, I should say it would be beautiful if it worked. But it doesn't work, because my brother sends me books with smart things typed on the pages, and I'm involuntarily pulled out of my distraction / self-loathing machine and beaten to an intellectual bloody pulp, left to cough and wheeze out my last pity-seeking breaths on the imagined Turkish rug of some imagined quintessential intellectual stereotype's gothic library. Dammit, I gasp, why can't you just let me listen to Kelly Clarkson in peace? Why must you make me think? I went to college, I gave at the office, now let me eek out my miserable suburban existence as if this never happened. I would love to be able to blame someone other than myself for my Sybil and Fight Club meet Dead Poets Society crazy-making, but I bring it all on myself. Or rather, I brought it on myself when I picked the comfortable corporate suburban existence over the socially and financially awkward option of moving stepkids and husband across the country for some vague, unknown potential life of urban intellect and some randomness involving dinner parties with eccentric, too-smart friends, old clunky desks piled with paper taking up more room in some small and probably smelly-but-endearing campus apartment than the necessary living and sleeping spaces. And sadly for me, I'm smart enough to know that even if we'd done something as insane as that, life would be even more chaotic and I'd have even more Intellectual Fight Club moments over which to torture myself because hi, I don't like chaos, I like my personal space. Smelly but endearing campus apartments don't afford someone with a large teenaged stepchild and two high maintenance mini-terrorists and a photographer husband whose office resembles a war zone a whole lot of Go Be A Big Smart Organized Intellectual Person space. Also, dinner parties? Yeah. They don't work so well when the hostess comes home and puts on her pajamas. Smart people prefer to discuss the latest Smart People Topics with other adults who wear something other than flannel elastic-waisted pants after 6:00 p.m. And somehow I know that the corporate politics I loathe would look suspiciously like the academic politics I would be initially, stupidly shocked to encounter; I know that my Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance cycle of shaking hands with corporate america would look exactly like the Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance cycle of crying in disappointment over life in academia. Still, I can't escape the quintessential intellectual in his/her/its gothic library of torture and forced reflection, no matter how long I stare at the blank screen or turn up the radio or rant about traffic, my hair, my job, or some other fleeting and empty topic germaine to my chosen life.

This is a difficult time of year for me. In college, winter quarter was misery on ice, a seemingly endless cloud-filled, freezing day. It was the quarter when the authorities charged with monitoring undergraduate behavior were most concerned about suicide. Each of my three winters there felt like an eternity; I considered leaving the school every single year during that time. No matter how many assignments and responsibilities I had on my plate (and there were always a ridiculous amount), the days dragged on in a dark, depressing haze. For years, I thought this was because of the drastic combination of Chicago weather, the school's demands, and the culture of the campus. Now, almost a decade later, I realize those things were merely icing on the cake for me, because every January and February find me in the same basic funk. Three years ago as my birthday approached, my sister-in-law asked me what I was planning. I had just started a new job after being home with the kids for 15 months. In theory I should have at least felt stressed and invigorated. Instead, I told her I didn't have any plans, I really didn't care about my birthday, I just felt like I was in a funk. "Yeah," she said, "birthdays just don't hold as much excitement as you get older." Huh, no, that didn't seem like the right sentiment, but I went with it. This year, as the holidays ended and I endured the mini-flu from hell and later saw the doctor for my resulting trusty winter sinus infection and hack-hack-hack-up-a-lung-and-forget-ever-working-out-again cough, I realized that the past few weeks of waning blog posts and the vague unidentifiable frustration and the sickness are recurring. I even checked the archives on this site and found confirmation. The blog was still pretty new at this time last year, so the irritability and depression might not come through as strongly, but re-reading the posts was like a swift kick to the head. Hello, seasonal depression, you sly dog, you!! Introduce yourself sooner next time, 'kay? I would have offered you some damned hot chocolate or some Wellbutrin if only I'd known you wanted to hang out and watch Fight Club together!

Strife, Interrupted

Lately every time I try to leave a comment on a blogspot blog, Blogger forces me to sign in again, and then brings me to my dashboard and FORCES me at gunpoint to post something here. So here I am. I was trying to leave a comment for GCQ, but now she may never know. (GCQ, love your tree. That's what I was going to say. Unfortunately Blogger is holding me hostage. Sorry.)

It's funny that this is happening, because lately it seems like everything I set out to do gets hijacked out of nowhere and against my will by some completely random activity. The other night I innocently went to hang up a new suit I bought for work, but that five-second act turned into a four-hour project. Why, instead of wrapping all of the presents piling up in our pathetic excuse for a "walk-in" closet, I thought a better way to free up some space in there would be to examine / try on / categorize / re-organize every piece of clothing I own. Strangely, there is still no space to "walk" in the closet (it might be all those unwrapped presents on the floor), but there is a lot more space for the dozens of empty hangers on the rack now. And that's great, because the crowded clothing rack was really taking a lot away from my kids' holiday season, but those still unwrapped gifts, the ones they keep eagerly looking for under the tree? Obviously a lower a priority than the closet organization.

I was telling John a story the other day about how a friend I hadn't seen in a few months had told me I looked great during a conversation about diet and exercise, and that I'd responded with some or other complaint about body fat storage and what I need to work on, and John said, "You don't know how to accept a compliment." He's right, but I think it's less about not accepting compliments and more about how I tend to focus on Fixing What's Wrong. I've said before that it's not that I don't see and appreciate the positive, and that's true. But I might not always communicate that I see it, because what I do communicate is whatever I'm trying to work out in my mind at that time - whether it's how I need to increase my protein and stop drinking margaritas if I ever expect to see the changes I want to see in my body, or how I need to do a better job of addressing the kids' behaviors and not letting them pull a big reaction out of me, or how our entire household needs more structure and less chaos and it must be on my shoulders to identify exactly what that will look like.

I got an e-mail yesterday from a very nice reader that made me realize - or remember, since I'm sure I already knew this - that none of you can read my mind. You don't know about the recurring good, sweet, hilarious things that go on around here unless I actually mention them, which, many times, I don't. This is completely consistent with who I am. I focus intently on whatever difficulties I'm trying to overcome. It's why I don't want to give Hannah a pat on the back just for getting out of bed in the morning. It's why I don't tend to say "good job" to someone unless what they've done seems above and beyond what I would consider to be every day general life expectations (whether my expectations match others' or not). It's why what I talk about tends to be either serious and difficult or sarcastic and self-deprecating. The positive is there, but it's on the back burner for me, it's something I don't have to focus on so intently, it's something I don't have to overcome - and therefore I tend not to communicate about it. What results is a perception that all of my experiences are negative or difficult or extreme, that my kids are disrespectful of me 100% of the time, that I teeter on the edge of a breakdown every waking moment.

So, amidst my stream of intended horror stories, my attempts to mentally work through and thus solve every single large or small problem in my life and the life of my family, I'm interrupting myself to say something. It seems like a very basic experience to me (maybe even one most would consider "expected"), but it represents all of the good on the back burner: Every night after I pull into the driveway after work and struggle through the door with my handfuls of gym bag and purse and keys, those kids - the ones to whom I give hyperbolic nicknames like "demon" and "dark lord" when I'm in my "work it out mentally" phases - stop what they're doing, whatever it is, and run to me, smiling, calling my name, telling me they missed me and they need - NEED - a hug and a kiss. Last night after his bath, Quinn was watching a Christmas special on TV and I walked in prepared to argue with him about bedtime, but I said only, "Quinn, it's time to read a story and go to bed, buddy." He stood up in his chair to be eye-level with me, put his arms out for me to hold him, and said, "with YOU, mommy?" as if to say he was fine with bedtime, he was fine with anything, really, as long as I would hold him. As I carried him upstairs his head rested against my shoulder and his legs dangled around my waist; he sighed and closed his eyes and made the soft smack-smack-smack sleepy sound with his mouth, perfectly at peace, content, quiet, still. Trust me when I tell you that the miracle of that is not lost on me.

Between Hypocrisy and Survival

Did you like how I said, in a mild Soup Nazi fashion, "no banners for you!" right before I slapped up a new one on our site? That seems cold. Sorry about that. Without belaboring the issue or providing you with the boring details of our Friday nights, I'll just say that it takes about 25 minutes with a glass of wine and the inability to focus on reading or doing any other business function to create a banner and change the colors on our own site. I wouldn't feel right about charging someone for me to slap something together in under half an hour while drinking, though, and that's about all I'm capable of when it comes to banners (or really anything blog-related) right now. So, there's my excuse. You can leave your written complaint in the box over there - it's that really huge cardboard one stuffed to overflowing, sitting on the floor littered with the ones that couldn't squeeze into the slot - those are mostly Bryce's, because Quinn prefers to scream his directly into my ear.

Oh, hey! Speaking of screaming, or, to use Bryce's rendition of that phrase, "speakin' about screaming" or alternatively, "talkin' about screaming," there is a story I should tell, but it isn't funny - at least not the screaming part - and I have been working on how to make it funny, not because I wanted to write it in a funny way, even though I do, but because if I can make it funny in my mind, looking back, then I can somehow let it go and not see myself as the genetic reason for my kids' tendencies to jab me with scepters of evil every chance they get. The details are boring and identical to almost every other story I've told about going out in public with my ever-plotting sons: Blah blah, we were at the grocery store. Blah blah, Quinn ran away with the cart and Bryce exploded with laughter. Blah blah, my blood started boiling. Blah blah, the other grocery store patrons grinned and made comments about how "cute and giggly" the kids were and looked at me like I was an evil hag when I said, "Yeah, I can't take them out in public together." Blah blah, this particular patron defended the kids and said they were being "good" and repeated the word "giggly" which wasn't exactly an accurate statement, as the word "giggle" implies a soft, quiet laughter, and what the kids were doing in the store, IN MY EAR, was not soft or quiet or anything resembling a giggle at all, and so I replied to said patron as politely as possible, while attempting not to injure her with the laser beams of hatred from my eyes, "Yes, well. It progresses from here," thus sealing my own stupid fate. Blah blah, by the time we got to the cash register, even though I had strapped Quinn into the cart, my attention was diverted to the grocery purchase and accompanying logistics of purse-digging, bank card-grabbing, payment, loading, and re-loading when the cashier destroyed the wooden cart that the clementines were packed in, and this presented the perfect opportunity for Bryce to turn into a complete raging psychotic, echoing Quinn's bellowing chorus of POOPY POOPY POOPY HAHAHAHA, waving his hands in the air, writhing around on the floor of the cash register lane, keeping the people behind us from being able to move up, going limp when I tried to move him - good times. Blah blah, I almost exploded. Blah blah, we walked to the car and the kids kept laughing and screaming, ecstatic in their disrespect. Blah blah, I morphed into Satan and burned the kids alive with my shrieks. When they laughed at that, I morphed into Satan's Pure, Unfiltered Rage and at that point I blacked out and awoke moments later with a throat raw from screaming, the car parked in the driveway, Bryce silently, calmly hopping out and running inside for his blanket, and Quinn still sitting in his seat, watching me and wondering at what point I would use my inside voice to communicate my "disgust" with their "horrible, unacceptable behavior in the store."

Hmm, I was right. That just simply isn't funny. Morphing into Satan's Rage is bad, right? Doing exactly what I tell my kids NOT to do while criticizing that same behavior is definitely going to fall under the category of "horrible" and "unacceptable." The thing is, what I want to say is that the 20-minute horror of completely losing control has now overshadowed every other positive experience I had with or provided for my kids this weekend. I can't decide if that's because I'm letting my own self-centered guilt blow it out of proportion (I don't think so) or if it's because that 20 minutes was just the culmination of two non-stop days of deep breaths and time outs and starting over and counting to ten, and it seems a little ridiculous, or sad, or mind-numbingly discouraging to me that two solid days with my own children should be such an effort, such an exhaustive exercise in anger management. The phone rang within minutes of walking in the door from the grocery store / car ride experience, and it was my mother-in-law, who is not exactly on my list of people I would normally (read: EVER) confide to. But she asked how things were going and Bryce was on the couch with his blanket for time out, and Quinn was upstairs in his room for time out, and I was surrounded by groceries and an open refrigerator and general physical and emotional chaos, so I bawled into the phone, I don't understand why it's this way. I try to prepare myself, to prepare them. I read. I think. I work really hard at this, but it's like I've never done anything at all. People say it's just "kid stuff" but it's not. It's NOT. This is beyond that. And now it's time for their lunch, and so I better start ramping up for the fight that will be nap time. "No," she said. "You don't need to 'ramp up' for anything. You just deal with the hour you're in right now. It's just survival." And I thought of my last session with the trainer at the gym, where he asked me to hold my body up, facing down, by my toes and forearms, and alternately lift one leg with the opposite arm, so I'd be balancing first on my right leg (my right set of toes, actually, holy crap that's hard) and left arm, then on my left leg and right arm. I have done this move before, but never with my toes elevated on a ball, which they were this time. I was struggling the same way I struggled with the jump rope at my first session; I was bewildered, frustrated, even a little angry. "It's a very small point of balance," he said. "You have to practice; sometimes it takes a while to find it." We switched to a move where I only had to lift one arm at a time, and I accomplished it, but it was sloppy and more challenging than I could have imagined; I thought I was strong enough for that move, but apparently, not yet. "You don't seem like yourself today," he said. Normally when I finish one exercise, I hop up and we move to the next one, but this time when I dropped my arm for the last time, my entire body slumped to the floor, my face flat against the mat, my head shaking back and forth in disbelief and disappointment. I forced myself up and he asked if I was okay. "Yeah, it's just really disappointing; I don't understand why I couldn't do that." "Well," he said, "you can't be 100% every day."

Sometimes there are no answers, I think. Just survival and some sloppy, shaky, awkward attempt at balance. At least that's what I'm telling my kids so they don't disown me or have me locked up.

The Halfway House

Tonight Bryce had another music lesson. I think the teacher may possibly have her expectations set too high for five and six year olds, no matter how smart they may be. "She seems wound pretty tight," one of the parents said to me as we walked out, having been - what? shamed? reprimanded? scolded? I can't be sure - for not practicing enough with the children; the teacher didn't know if they'd be able to keep up and stay on track with the lessons and their intended trajectory. Just shy of an actual "tssk, tssk," she warned us wide-eyed that next week, the children were supposedto move on to the song called "Mouse, Mousie," but we'll just have to see how they master "Listen To Bells" because at this point, the kids are nowhere near being ready. Why, their fingers, some of whose can barely reach full size piano keys comfortably in the D Major position, have not yet mastered the coordination and control needed to play a song they were first exposed to two weeks ago. This is unacceptable, apparently. Wide-eyed unacceptable.

It's not just that this level of work was unexpected. That has caused disappointment and a little throwback-to-childhood fear of public reprimand, but I can deal with that. What's most disturbing here is that I recognize some capability in some parallel universe that we might have actually to meether unrealistic expectations, if only. If only John and I could run this place a little bit more efficiently. If only we could find a groove that seems to meet everyone's damned needs, the three-year-old who needs to run off energy and be intently focused upon, the five-year-old who needs down time and a different style of focus after what I consider to be an already challenging and highly structured school day, the seventeen-year-old who needs god knows what type of attention, the adults who want to return phone calls and order holiday cards and have decent family photos taken and schedule business meetings and be attentive, involved siblings and offspring to their fellow adult family members and unpack completely and go to bed early and clip their fingernails and invite friends over for dinner once a month. If only! If only we weren't spending all this time feeling like all we do most days is scrape by, at most half-successfully. Bryce's reading sheet didn't get signed again; we forgot to send the recipe for the class cookbook; no one picked up the fundraising order from the lobby; we never sent my brother's birthday card and now it's six weeks late; we never helped Bryce practice his piano lesson; the bills are piling up again despite our "renewed" focus on organization - yeah right! We take the first steps, but not the subsequent ones. It's not one step forward, two steps back; it's just one step forward, run into a wall, smack foreheads, loathe selves.

During Bryce's music lesson, I have an hour to kill and have spent the past few weeks drinking coffee concoctions at a close coffee shop with three or four moms of the other piano students. One particularly cheerful working mom always has her older daughter with her and chirps away about how busy their Tuesday evenings are - she leaves work early to pick them up from school, goes to saxophone practice, then gymnastics, then to piano, it's so crazy haha!! As she's talking about it, it's all I can do not to run from the table shrieking, leaving frothy, steamy cinnamon streaks from my sacrificed latte in sticky, frantic smears behind me. Is that fun? Are we supposed to think this is fun some day? Because I don't. I am rushing home from work trying to be cheerful and thinking of things I'll talk to Bryce about in the car, we'll use that time so wisely, combining bonding time and travel time, perfect!, but by the time I'm home to get him, my head hurts from the traffic and the demands of my work day and apprehension about how wild things will be when I walk in the door, and my attempts at a cheerful outlook (already a stretch for me and my apparently naturally bitchy personality) are completely snuffed out when I see John's tired, haggard look (a look that's natural for me, but not for him - if HE, formerly perpetually happy guy, can't smile, then how can I?) and I ask him what's wrong and he tells me things have been uncontrollable for the past hour, which means the kids have worn him down with their gleeful screaming and dinosaur roaring and door slamming, fun times.

Then, once I have Bryce in the car, it's back to fighting traffic, only this time I'm fighting traffic while answering a lot of repeated or related questions: Do you know the way to piano lessons? Did you forget the way? Are you going to remember in the dark? Do you have directions? Hey, how do you spell directions? And after seven or eight responses I lose interest in the conversation and am forced to focus on all the brake lights in front of me anyway, and so then it becomes, I SAID HOW DO YOU SPELL DIRECTIONS, DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME? HOW DO YOU SPELL DIRECTIONS? HOW? HOW? MOM! MMMOOOMMMMM!! The yelling reminds me that the piano teacher has made multiple comments about the energy level of the kids, usually with flourishing motions, both hands at eye level, spasming in quick, undulating waves, "things have been, kind of like this with the children" she'll say, shake shake shake. And so in the car, after I spell the word or re-explain why scientists don't think Pluto is a planet anymore, I segue into behavior expectations during piano class: no wrestling, no yelling, no running, no laughing, no undulating hand movements by your eyeballs (just in case the teacher is being literal). It's at this point, the lecture point, that I start to think that this whole thing is a mistake. He's five, after all. The idea behind the piano lessons was that he'd be introduced to the fun of music, not that he would have more assignments, more rules, more demands placed on him, more opportunities for his mom to lecture him, to use bonding-traveling time as scolding and finger-wagging time.

And when the chipper working mom jokes about how crazy busy all of it is, I don't pick up this same sense of regret, worry, resentment, or even fatigue. She is my parallel universe. She's got things running smoothly, if a little "busy." Her older daughter is doing her homework and drinking hot chocolate and occasionally cracking jokes with her mom, who simultaneously talks to all of us and seems amazingly to be muting how content she is, not forcing it. I don't get it. I mean, sure, I know about Zen, I know my stress levels are a state of mind and technically "my choice." But everything feels jumbled, rushed, mistaken. I get home and Quinn calls to me from the top of the stairs, "Mom! I cried. I didn't get a hug and kiss before you left." It feels like a knife through my heart - such a simple request, one I should have anticipated and given without being asked and I can't even manage that - you hear that, piano teacher? Things are, kind of, like THIS, with the children, shake shake shake. Wide-eyed unacceptable.

Still Going

We didn't travel with the kids when Bryce was three, but at the time, I thought this was a smart decision because Quinn was 18 months old. I now realize it was a smart decision because travel with a three year old and another child of any age is just a recipe for disaster. Bryce is five now, and if we were traveling with him alone, I'd probably be writing something mild and pleasant, like, "we're all a little tired, but we've had no problems at all" instead of what I'm here to write, the more depressing and asylum-worthy, "we're all still alive, but I don't know for how much longer," because Quinn - he is not five, he is three and a half.

After the first two days of travel where Quinn reminded us, his stupid, forgetful, trusting parents, that he is totally and comletely rabid-dog insane and will go darting out into streets or possibly force armed guards away from their posts to retrieve him from places he's not authorized to be madly, gleefully darting about, we finally started following through on our hand-holding mandate any time we took the child out in public. This works for a short period of time only when combined with the latest bribe - a pack of Smarties, his latest flash cards of choice, the chance to watch a movie - AND when he is the sole focus of one of us, and Bryce has no access to him to attempt meeting his undying goal of corrupting whatever delicate balance we're trying to maintain with Quinn.

There was a gas station stop today, the details of which I don't even know if I can bear to recount. I was alone with both kids, there was a crowded, tiny convenience store restroom, an accessible light switch, urine-soaked pants to change, a few screams (on the kids' part), some hisses (on mine), a LOT of threats, mostly empty (on all our parts). And after it was over, it wasn't over. I couldn't let it go, these several days of culminating disrespect and limit-pushing behaviors; it's all starting to feel like true, catastrophic failures on our part to teach any basic social rule to the kids, and after the gas station humiliation, I fell into a state of numb, silent resentment in the car. I could simultaneously be aware of my immature response to the kids and still have the audacity to carry it out. It was surreal, disappointing, and yet also somehow satisfying, even relaxing, just to sit there while they tried so hard to push the predictable buttons: Let's scream and see if she reacts. Hmm. What about kicking her seat? Odd. She's still just sitting there. Let's scream again. No, wait. Combine screaming and kicking. How about throwing? Wow.

After a few hours of that, we got to our halfway point and got out to walk around with the kids. It was another clear day with a light breeze, and as we waited to cross a street I looked down at Quinn, still so short and small, his light, wispy hair so easily tossed about by the smallest breath of wind, taking in the sights and sounds of a new city with what I have to believe is some form of remaining innocence, despite whatever colossal failures we've made, despite whatever mixed messages I give both of them (act the right way! but now that you didn't, neither will I! I will give you the silent treatment and metaphorically stick my tongue out at you!). I stood there looking at him and had to be the adult, the parent, to shake off my cloak of pissy, grudge-holding disappointment. I took another breath, gave his still baby-pudgy hand a squeeze when the light turned green, tried in a split second to burn the image of his small profile into my permanent memory files and said, "Okay, buddy. Now we can cross."

Seventeen Down: Relativity (updated)

Today, John and I inadvertently celebrated Hannah's 17th birthday by paying a visit to the counselor she saw last summer. We walked in feeling frustrated, defeated, and desperate; we wanted a tip or a pat on the back or an understanding nod, because we don't get any of that when we talk to other adults in Hannah's life, particularly the ones in John's family. We feel like we're screaming from the roof tops that things aren't good, something is wrong, she needs help or a diagnosis of some kind or different medication or different schooling or SOMETHING, but everyone around us is deaf or oblivious.

We like this counselor because he gets right to the point. He told us a year ago when we first discussed the possibility of his seeing Hannah that he would not see a kid who was coming against her will. If she didn't want to talk to him after meeting him, he didn't want us wasting our money or time on bringing her in; nothing would be solved by that, anyway and the argument could be made that it would actually exacerbate certain issues. "You can't force someone to be motivated or productive, or to 'feel better,'" he told us. Hannah met with him a few times and claimed to enjoy the sessions, but, par for the course, when the responsibility was placed on her shoulders for letting us know if and when she wanted to return for further sessions, she did nothing. As the school year started and the same problems surfaced that have surfaced every school year for the past two or three years, we threw our hands up in exasperation and did the only thing left we could think of: called a professional.

He asked how she was doing in school and we immediately unloaded: "Not well. It's a total repeat of the year before. She was failing English within a month!"

"Does she care?"

[Blank stares.] "Uh. Huh?"

"Is she upset that she's failing? Does she want to fix it? Is she distraught and looking for ways to get out of the situation?"

"No."

"So you're upset about it."

"Um. Yeah? I mean, I see what you're saying - these are her choices, they'll be her consequences and all that. I know all that. The thing is, we don't really care about her grades in school. School is just one symptom of the larger problem."

"What's that?"

"She has no motivation to do anything in her life. It would be one thing if she were flunking a class here or there but she was really into her job or really into art or really into social clubs or volunteering or acting or music, or ANYTHING. But she's not. Nothing. She is interested in and motivated by nothing."

"Does she go out with friends?"

"Oh, yes."

"So she is motivated to do some things."

"Okay, but listen! Here's an example! When she was 15, we told her in order to take driver's ed. and get her driver's license when she turned 16, she had to keep her grades up. She still barely passed last year, and as a result still doesn't have her license!"

"So she doesn't care that much about the driver's license. I imagine she doesn't really need it. Her friends probably give her rides to where she needs to go, right?"

"Um. Yeeeeah."

"At 17, you can't make her be motivated to do well in school or do anything at all. At this age, she could flunk out and choose not even to get her G.E.D. But for some reason, she continues to go."

"Only because her friends are there and it gets her out of the house."

"So? Half the people in college are there for the social aspects. If she gets a degree secondarily, then great! It's better than the alternative. Have you tried telling her that? Saying, 'We're disappointed that you aren't making better choices about school because we know you're smart and could do much better, but hey! There are a lot of kids who just choose to drop out completely and not even bother to graduate. We're glad you're not doing that. Thanks for going to school.'"

"Isn't that kind of like saying, 'congratulations for breathing air'? She's expected to go to school. I don't see it as a choice."

"But it is her choice. You don't have control over her. Some part of her still wants to please you as her parents, which is why she meets very basic expectations. She doesn't have to. I see plenty of kids who don't. It's all relative. There are parents in here whose kid is a straight A student, but nobody likes her, she has no friends, and her parents want to know what to do about it. Sometimes I wish I could wheel and deal issues. Would the Johnsons be willing to take some bad grades in exchange for a social life? Would the Browns be willing to try no social skills in exchange for a few A's?"

"Okay, but it still seems like she has no aspirations, nothing that motivates her or makes her accountable to herself for her actions."

"For a lot of kids, rather than set expectations and then have to live up to them or listen to their parents say, 'You said you wanted to go to college! How do you expect to be able to go to college if you're failing in high school and not preparing?', they just become bottom dwellers, barely scraping by: no expectations, no failures. It doesn't mean they won't become productive individuals later on. It doesn't mean they won't find something that motivates them, and that's why we don't give up on our kids. You can be disappointed in her choices and you can explain the consequences when necessary and appropriate, but being angry and frustrated doesn't help you and doesn't change her behavior. I tell parents I see that they just have to let that go. What you have to ask yourself at this point is how much you can control. Her decisions are her own at this point. Grounding her or punishing her isn't going to do much, as you can see - it hasn't motivated her or changed her behaviors to this point. And eventually she'll have to be ungrounded. She has to have some life. You don't want her languishing at home all the time anyway. You have to find a way, as difficult as it is, to live life with her and enjoy being around her while simultaneously knowing that you don't like the choices she's making for herself. It can be very hard for parents to do. But that's part of not giving up on our kids. And it might mean praising her for doing things you consider to be 'expected'. Maybe it won't change her behaviors at all, maybe she'll act like she doesn't care about the acknowledgement. But it certainly won't hurt anything."

When he said the part about not giving up on our kids, I felt like he had exposed us under a huge spotlight in a room full of mediocre parents, exposed us for the ones who didn't belong in the room because we weren't even mediocre, we were sub-par, and the spotlight was pointing out the couple whose parenting license was being revoked. Revoked for conceding, throwing in the towel, buckling, relenting - barely being one step above abandonment or disavowal. Ouch, that spotlight burned. The top of my head is still a little singed. Had we given up on her? Have we reached a point where we have to thank her for being responsible enough to get up and go to school? Apparently. But as the counselor pointed out, it's all relative. We could be the parents whose child was just killed in Iraq, who wish their kid was home again with motivation problems and weight problems and flunking 11th grade problems, because then, back then, there was still a chance for something better. "Because there's always a chance, which is why we don't ever give up on our kids."

UPDATED: I should clarify that the counselor wasn't implying that we HAD given up on Hannah. Rather, he was talking to us as if all three of us were on the same page: "We collective decent parents never give up on our kids, right?" It made me feel guilty because I had to hesitate when I considered whether or not I found that statement to be true for us. Of course it is, because as many of you have already pointed out, we wouldn't have been there, and we wouldn't have the stress that we do over all of this, if we had reached a point where we had truly thrown in the towel. The doubt over it was uncomfortable and unsettling, but it was purely my own - not implied by the counselor (at least not directly or purposely).

Point of Clarification

Certain friends and family members who read my posts have asked me how I really feel about life, the kids, our family, and my general day-to-day existence: are my funny, exaggerating stories about shrieks and misery really funny to me, or am I letting this time pass me by in a whirl of anger and frustration, setting myself up for a deathbed revelation that my bitchy, pessimistic outlook completely screwed up my life, and the lives of my kids?

I've realized that the friends and family members who ask me this all share a few significant personality traits. They are maternal, optimistic, socially gifted, and - this is pure conjecture on my part - were probably influenced primarily by a parent or parents who emphasized external, visible contentment and who discouraged external displays of life's "negative" emotions like disappointment, sadness, frustration, anxiety, anger, fear, or self-doubt. I love all of these people, and I'm glad they're in the world as examples of something I don't happen to be, but of something that is critical to any community: hope, optimism, care, concern, wonder, and generosity - all with no negativity attached even with a flimsy string of mini-cynicism or narcissism. The world desperately needs these people in the mix. I'm not only glad they're in the world; I'm glad they're in my life if only to remind me that variety in human community is essential to its growth and self-awareness.

I once attended a seminar or training class about something corporate-life-related, and the only useful tidbit I took from that seminar was a side note one of the speakers made about use of the word "but" in conversation. He said that "but" is an eraser. When someone says, "your hair is really cute but your sweater is hideous," the listener comes away with an insult to his/her clothing. More tragically, when someone says, "I love you but..." the "I love you" portion is deleted as far as the listener is concerned. The speaker presenting this piece suggested to replace the word "but" with the word "and" when at all possible. It needs to be "I love you AND I have to tell you something you might not like" as opposed to "I love you BUT [you're too negative] [you have spinach in your teeth] [I killed your hamster]." I've made a point never to say, "I love you, but dot dot dot" because I thought the speaker made a good point.

Given that fact, I'm saying this: I love these people, you who are concerned and curious about my "true" state of mind and being, AND I'm going to tell you something, something I view as much a significant point as you view the quest for happiness and contentment, and your quest to bring what you view as success in life - happiness - to your loved ones.

What I want to tell you is this: It's okay that I'm not expressing myself in this forum the same way you would prefer if it were your forum, with 100% sweet, reflective gratitude and 0% anger or frustration or guilt. It really, really is. There are people who identify as "pessimists" who actually are capable of loving their children, and successfully expressing that love to them. I've said before that I disagree with the notion that I'm a pessimist anyway, because I think "pessimism" implies an unwillingness to see good or have hope. I see good. I have hope. I'd argue that the only reason I'm capable of writing about very real challenges in a way that makes me laugh when I look back on it is precisely because I am very hopeful, in a broad sense of the word, which to me is the most hopeful kind of hope there is - broad hope.

The disappointment and frustration I feel about certain major issues in our lives is directly related to the expectations I place on myself and our family - expectations based in hope. This doesn't, believe it or not, take away from the love I have for my kids, or my ability to relish each distinct phase of their lives, even in the midst of the storms. It does require that I DEAL with the issues, though, and often that act of management - crisis management, issue management, behavior management, anger management - can be exhausting, as anyone who reads here over any time period will glean from my posts. Is this me time-wastingly "fretting" or "worrying" about the situation, as some of my well-meaning loved ones have suggested? Or is it simply what is required, action in place of fretting, action in place of worrying, action driven by the very hope-based expectations that a "pessimist" would shun, that a "worrier" would overshadow with, well, worry? I think you know my answer.

My answer is that on my death bed, my regrets won't consist of setting my expectations too high, or of taking measures to confront the challenges directly and in absence of denial or surrender to the storms. I'm not the type of person who sees life as something that "should be" a certain way; things are complicated, messy, unpredictable. Sure, I'd like it if there were more order and calm. And if there were, I would absolutely be writing about that, and this site wouldn't exist, because fringe life wouldn't be fringe life, it would be something entirely different. But things aren't calm and ordered, and likely they never will be. I write about my experience, and that may be different from your experience. My interpretation of the exact same experience is probably different from what yours would be. Optimists, that is okay. I still see my kids as pools of mysterious, fierce, gorgeous potential, even if I write about the violent waves on the surface more than the quiet stillness below. And what's more: I don't want to forget the violent waves on the surface, I don't want to leave that out of these records. Those waves are the complexity and the unpredictability that comprise life - our life. On my death bed, I want to have all of it. That's not regret. That is fullness, that is beauty. My kids are fiercely beautiful beings in a swirling vortex of complexity and confusion and chaos. Not every moment can be what I hope for, but I'll never stop making the attempt, and that might mean I write about hardship sometimes. The struggle is part of the hope, it is my act of hope.

Over-training

I just watched the Huggies commercial with the adorable happy baby wearing one red sock and giggling, crawling over to her mother, her clean, slender, smiling mother sitting on a vacuumed carpet in a well-lit, nicely furnished room. Commercials like this just make me feel like a frustrated and depressed failure. This wasn't the case when Bryce was a baby. When Bryce was a baby, all I ever thought about was what a miracle his every molecule, breath, movement was. I had genuine appreciation for every stage, every phase, every hair on his sweet-smelling head; as a result, I felt a subtle but compelling connection to parents of babies and children (even fake ones on Huggies commercials). Bryce was not an easy baby, don't get me wrong. Still, I never ceased to be amazed by his presence. Quinn's babyhood was a little different. There was more guilt, more fatigue, more frustration. Most of this was, ironically, related to issues stemming from Bryce's toddler behaviors and, well, Bryce being Bryce - but it affected, much to my never-ending maternal guilt, my experience of Quinn's babyhood.

I remember a fear I had after Bryce was born, that some day I might reach a point where I couldn't easily grasp the feeling I had throughout his early days, that subtle presence of some new connection I felt with the universe, the essence all around that told me daily about the mystery and deep miracle that is life. I was determined not to lose hold of this, but I have, slowly but surely, since we've moved from having one baby-toddler-kid to having two. I've lost it, maybe not completely, but I lose it for hours, days, sometimes weeks at a time. The peaceful quiet murmurs of awe have turned into chaotic, distracting screams, and I've been too weak to stay focused. The kinship I felt with other families or parents has given way to tempations to size myself up against them, or to point to them as more evidence for my sorry lot, for the immense challenges those early peaceful murmurs of mystery never warned me about. A 30-second diaper spot depicting a baby crawling across a clean carpet to a calm, happy mother just reminds me of all the times I haven't sat on the floor with my kids to laugh with them - for many reasons, one of which is that the floors in our house are covered with ground-up goldfish, abandoned toaster waffles, mismatched shoes, sharp toy pieces, I could go on; another of which is that any time that would be appropriate "floor play time" is typically spent addressing some or other major issue around here, including the fact that these days, Quinn is happy for 10 minutes out of each hour and spends the remaining 50 minutes whining, yelling, crying, maybe hitting, and also including the fact that we're currently in the process of re-evaluating Hannah's entire school and living situation in the recognition that neither we nor her current school are meeting her immense and enigmatic needs.

I realize it's just a commercial, and that the Huggies marketing department created it to be an idealistic scene, one that probably doesn't exist in any home anywhere. But the point is, at one time I could watch something like that without wanting to throw a heavy object across the room and shatter the TV screen. And that seems, well, a little off.

There are so many areas in my life where I feel like I put forth unusual amounts of effort and energy, in some assumed attempt to "succeed" or "improve" something about myself or my surroundings, only to find out that my efforts were all wrong, they weren't good enough somehow because HAHA! you're still failing! I was complaining about one minor example of this to the personal trainer at the gym this week. (To recap: I pay him a lot of money, and in turn he tortures me, and then I get to ask his advice on how to do a better job at being tortured.) As usual, my progress, while obvious and evident in areas of strength and balance, is not good enough for my perfectionist self, and I wondered aloud what it would take to get the results I want, results that I know are realistic and not at all out of the question. "I'm in this gym every single day! When I'm not working with you, I'm on a treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour. I write down everything I eat. I've increased my protein, I've increased my water, I've virtually eliminated caffeine, I make sure I'm getting the right number of calories, that I eat enough of the various foods I'm 'supposed' to eat. I've been doing this for several weeks."

"Wait. You're here every day?"

"Yes!"

"You're over-training! You can't tear down your muscles and not give them a chance to repair before coming back in here and tearing them down again. Your body just won't make any progress at all. You'll get stronger - slowly, and you'll lose fat - slowly, but you'll have less energy, you'll be sore, and you won't lose much more fat or much weight at all because you're not allowing yourself any recovery time."

"Uh. Hm. Heh. So, basically you're telling me I've been working too hard."

"Yes."

Working too hard. Working TOO hard! What is this craziness? Working too hard? I've been mulling it over ever since. (And today, in lieu of the gym, I'm writing this post.) This is the problem I see in our household right now. We're constantly torn down with something - Bryce's quirks, Quinn's challenges, Hannah's setbacks, our conflicting family schedules, ridiculous demands on our time and energy - and there's never any recovery time around here. I can't remember the last time we just relaxed or "hung out" - with or without the kids. We just don't do that. There is always something to do, always some big list of things we're behind on, always another interruption. I think I've lost my grasp on the ability to watch a diaper commercial without vomiting in disgust and resentment because I'm holding onto so many other things now, and I feel like there's not enough of my grasp to go around. We're only holding steady, rather than progressing. We survive, but we aren't doing much more than that. To get to a point where there's more than just survival or status quo here, we need recovery.

The problem is, it's a lot more complicated than just cutting out a few trips to the gym. And so, I determine once again that there's no place I can loosen my grip, and I guarantee continued dissatisfaction. Yeah, like I said: it's a problem.

My psychosis: Good for something.

I want to write something. I'm compelled to type words onto this white screen and address all of you that have continued to suffer through what has surely been a depressing or at least worrisome set of posts to read. I want to say that we're okay, we're going to be okay, things are good, and oh by the way, listen to this hilariously humiliating thing our sons did, those crazy kids!

But, well... I got nothin'. This is our new routine, this ever-present tension that we fight off with forced smiles and deep breaths and reminders to each other not to kill anyone. There are better and calmer days, there are days with lots of tears, and there are days I black out with a thick sharpie on the mental history book: Error. No one needs to know about that. Move to next day. I think this is just where we are right now, this is the place we've come to. We're trying to leave this place, though. We're genuinely trying. I'm looking for the funny, but as Andie pointed out in a recent comment, I more often find myself screaming about the TREES in my way, all of these TREES, I can't see anything but TREES, where on god's green earth is the FOREST already?! So, the funny is kind of blocked out these days; I can't find it as easily as I'd like.

You can imagine how strange it must be, then, for me to learn that Bub and Pie nominated us for a ROFL award. That's right. An award honoring funny posts. Funny. On this site full of rage, exhaustion, and insanity. There is only one explanation here: I must have been unconscious at the time of the funny. The name of the nominated post? Dreamland.

So, okay. I can't FIND the funny, but sometimes it still finds me in my sleep. Thanks for the reminder, B&P.

Also, because I don't want you to leave every day believing our house is a place of pure and utter misery, two brief glimpses of the forest from recent days:

1.) Last night at dinner, Bryce told us there was a new student in his class at school. He rarely volunteers any information, preferring instead to watch his parents stammer all over themselves as they seek the correct combination of questions to elicit details he apparently finds mundane. We perked up immediately: Oh really? A new student? Is it a boy or girl? What's his or her name? Is he or she nice? He said, "Yeah, she's nice. And she's pretty, too." (Is it time for this? She's pretty?) "Oh, she's pretty, well, I'm glad to hear she's nice - did you play with her?" I asked. "Yeah, I did. And she runs fast, too. She's faster than me!" Mmhmm. Now I see the infatuation.

2.) This morning I was home when Quinn woke up. The child is delusional enough to be happy about this despite my constant shrieking and nagging, and he came down the stairs quietly grinning and giggling to see me. I made his breakfast and continued scrambling around the house acquiring the ridiculous amounts of food and water I lug to work with me as if work is an expedition across the Sahara. When I had a second to stop, I plopped an egg in a frying pan and sat down in the dining room to shovel it into my face before leaving for work. Quinn was in the kitchen at the breakfast table and sauntered over, holding his toaster waffle and vegetarian sausage-covered plate at a precarious angle, a determined look on his face. John told him to get back in his seat, not knowing what he was doing and suspecting foul play. "No, it's too awful in the kitchen, I'm too hot in there," Quinn replied absurdly. We looked at each other, confused. He rounded the corner and put his plate on the dining room table right next to mine, and quietly climbed into the chair next to me. Ah, the forest. It's nice in here with all those trees out of the way.

The Non Spy-Speak Explanation

The other night when John and I were discussing one of the six dozen items on the Major Conversations We Can't Go Another Day Without Having list, both of us came to the conclusion that for the ever-loving love of wine and dark chocolate, something has to give. We just can't take it anymore. As soon as we think we have even a slight handle on one of the issues around here, something else pops up on the radar screen, and it is ALWAYS something we can't ignore. Lately the newest issue is John's older daughter, Hannah's school performance, or lack thereof. We went through the same problem last year, and the year before, and the year before. Last year it led us to the fiasco of the counselor from hell, and so we're a little gunshy about how to handle things anymore. Besides, to be honest, we're both only about half-way focused on this. She's almost 17. The behaviors we're dealing with now are the exact same behaviors that she's exhibited for the entire seven years we've been married, despite the dozens of different approaches we've taken, despite the all-out effort we've put forth with each. new. try. We're kind of thinking, gee, nothing WE do seems to change anything, so... uh... what's the point, again? But because her mother is completely out of the picture and her brother has self-extricated from the family, this kid doesn't have anyone else in her life even to act like they care about what happens to her; John and I, while we might feel like we're going through the motions, keep doing what we're "supposed" to do: doling out consequences, discussing ways she can improve her situation, asking what she needs from us, making suggestions, reminding her that the consequence for failure is her own, not ours - you know, all things modern-day "natural consequence" parents are supposed to do and say.

These conversations are, in addition to being frustrating (because of the blank stare and silence that comprise Hannah's "interaction") and draining (because of our knowledge that they are, in essence, pointless), very time- and attention-consuming. And I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have a lot of free time or attention around here. What ends up happening is that John tries to have conversations with her before she leaves for school in the morning, but he never gets anywhere because the kids stand on the breakfast table and scream and knock milk cups over the second his attention is turned elsewhere. She slinks out of the house during the chaos to face another day of effortless sloth and academic facade. We try to pick up with the conversations at the dinner table or during clean-up, but again, because we can't process both "sets" of kids simultaneously, I have to leave the conversation to deal with Bryce and Quinn. John is left to muddle through the situation alone, and since said situation is much like talking to a wall, after his days of deep-breathing and banging his head against the steering wheel while the boys have spit fights in the car to and from school, he usually loses track of the "natural consequence" rules and the conversation goes unintentionally awry, down unproductive paths with phrases like "always do this" and "don't listen" and "every single time" and "get it together." It's an ongoing problem, a never-ending, resolution-less conversation.

The day after the latest round of these conversations, John called me at work and said "I completely. lost it. today. And I'll tell you the details when you get home." I wondered which set of kids had brought him to the brink of his sanity, the same brink on which I'd so recently been teetering myself, and I took a stab: "The boys?" When I got home he told me that after picking the kids up from school, he'd stopped at a convenience store for afternoon snacks. While he was paying, Quinn found a nearby rotating shelf of sunglasses and started spinning it as fast as he could, causing every single pair of sunglasses, and the open bag of chips he was holding, to go flying in all directions. Bryce thought it was hilarious and joined him, but he added his famous maniacal laughter to the mix, which caused John's complete and utter fall from the precipice of reality. "If there had been cameras rolling, it would be one of those scenes the media would play OVER AND OVER, inciting public outcry over my horrible parenting," he told me. I reminded him that mere days before, I had locked our three-year-old son out of our house, and then I said, "I think we just need to recognize that we don't have kids who we can just 'take to the store' like it's no big deal. Everything with them requires major preparation and heightened control."

And then, as we sat across the dining table from each other at 10:45 p.m., the dishwasher only just loaded, the mail still unsorted, the floors still unswept, the absurdity of the situation really hit home. We can't take our kids into a convenience store for five minutes without scheduling a meeting to discuss our strategy. We can't send our 17-year-old to school with expectations that she'll do anything beyond shuffle from classroom to classroom unless we spend hours each evening mentally rehearsing with her and checking her assignments as if she's in third grade, and even THEN, it's a toss-up. We can't focus on anything but one or all of these kids during our every waking hour without some major fiasco. What the hell?! Do you know about piles? We have piles everywhere - piles of bills, piles of laundry, piles of dirty wash cloths, piles of dishes, piles of dust and grime in all the corners. We can't GET to the piles. Any of them. That's not quite right, actually: we CAN get to the piles, but it takes robotic levels of stamina and the willingness to become more like board members of a failing corporation, constantly scheduling strategy meetings and foregoing sleep to address just ONE MORE THING. It's absurd.

My mom, in the midst of building a new house and adjusting to a new job and fighting off a cold and starting a new diet and taking care of my epileptic dog, agreed to take the kids all day Saturday. John was at a wedding for six hours, and in that time, all I managed to get done in all of my scrambling (and believe me, I was scrambling) were trips to the regular grocery store, the "healthy" grocery store, and the gym. Six hours. That's all I got done. And I was running. the whole. time. Without kids. If I'd had the kids with me, I would have accomplished ONE of those three things, and I would have needed a valium halfway through it.

So as it stands, we have groceries, and I worked out. Thanks to my mom, though, John and I got to take a break from strategizing - a long enough break to drink margaritas and see The Departed. The bills are all still sitting on the counter, the laundry continues to multiply like rabbits, we have something disturbing growing in the corner of our bathroom, but for now, I guess, we'll have to forego the pile maintenance, because would you look at the time? We have another meeting to attend. Today's agenda items include Why Our Life Resembles Hell and How To Outrun The Asylum Officials. Check your inbox for the summary.

This message will self-destruct.

John and I are both so tired. We're kind of like operative partners in a botched secret mission, turning on each other as we watch things fall apart. We've followed our orders, both of us faithful to the mission, both of us stoic in our acceptance that there will be some collateral damage, both of us dutifully focused on the task at hand, ready to react with plans B, C, D, and E at a moment's notice. But it turns out we weren't given orders for plans F - Z, and we've had to improvise, and in our dark hide-outs, sweat on our brows, eyes darting outside for potential new lurking dangers, the pressure and fatigue and unexpected negotiations are too much for us. In our disagreements we lose our focus - BLAM! Hannah's flunking school again - an intruder skirts past us and we're forced to stop everything we're doing and start the painful and risky process of eliminating it.

We manage to tie the intruder temporarily and get back to our negotations, newly committed to staying focused and not letting petty disagreements sway us from the mission, but the intruder is sneaky and - wwhhhiiissshhh. Hannah is lying again - starts to drag its binded self across the floor to escape; another unignorable distraction, another delay to the mission, survival. We make an executive decision to re-focus the mission temporarily, this intruder being our main target, but during the interrogation and investigation - BLAM! The kids are literally throwing sunglasses and chips all over the convenience store - another intruder, one that seems merely pesky and annoying, but is actually just a decoy, a minion of its much more sinister and threatening leader. Soon we're back to our original problem, the pressure forcing us into instinctual habits of blame and infighting. All we want to do is complete the mission. Every few hours when we wake up from the tiny amounts of sleep we get between watches, we start again, but our mission is failing. There are too many intruders, there are not enough of us. We are exhausted, we have no back up, we start to think we're doomed.

Fair Game

First of all, as Popeye would say, Well, blow me down! All a girl has to do is go a little nuts and lock her kid outside and wave her arms frantically in the air to make people come out of the wood work (and maybe secretly consider calling the Department of Human Services). I mean, wow! So many of you have contacted me privately or commented on my last post that I'm now convinced a big portion of parents and caregivers with maybe even only "slightly challenging" kids (which unfortunately mine are not, and I'll get into that in a minute) don't talk or write about it. Some of you don't bring it up because your coping mechanisms require that you push the issues under the surface to survive. Others of you don't talk about it because you really believe you're alone, and more tragically, that you're alone because of some drastic mistake you've made as parents - or maybe just as people. Still others of you want to avoid what we so lovingly refer to as "trolls" (Kara and Arwen, I think you know what I'm talking about) who will pounce on any weakness you highlight about yourself, especially parenting weakness, and so you vow not to publish anything questionable, like say, the fact that you locked your kid in the back yard to keep from exploding. When I published a post quite literally while looking over the cliffs of insanity and heard from many of you back on the steady ground of reality calling to me, I learned that, while quirky and more challenging than "average," my kids certainly aren't unique. Quinn's torture methods are effective and commendable, especially if you happen to be recruiting for Al Quaeda, but he's not alone; there are other kids like him, with parents whose eyes are bulged in fear, rage, and desperation more hours than they readily admit. If you're one of them, don't ever think you're in a boat by yourself again. I certainly won't.

As for us, we're all still alive and no one has been beaten to a bloody pulp or even threatened with such. In fact, we took the kids to the fair on Sunday. The fair, people! The event Quinn has spent the past year asking about every night at bedtime, the event I underhandedly bribed him with in one of my attempts to convince him that he didn't need his paci. That fair. THE fair.

Despite the fact that Quinn woke up at 5:30 a.m. as he's been doing since we confiscated all the pacis last week, John was determined for the day to go well. After all, he'd been the one at a photo shoot on the receiving end of my desperate call from the soccer field the day before, powerless to do anything but tell me something I already knew: that the only option I had was to physically retrieve Quinn and confine him for Bryce's entire game; I had no one else with me, and I couldn't leave either child unattended. He'd also witnessed the carnage when he'd arrived home and found me handing out snacks and stepping over toys and laundry piles like a zombie, stopping every few steps to rock myself back and forth in the corner, then going back to doing whatever the kids demanded in an attempt to stop the madness, stop the madness, stop the madness. Sunday was a new day, he thought, and what better way to establish some healthy family relationships than to immerse ourselves in the deep fried kitsch of a state fair? Why, there are long lines to stand in! There is sub-par, over-priced, unhealthy food to buy! There are uninspected ferris wheels operated by hungover, jaded people to ride!

The kids did enjoy it, even though Bryce filed a complaint with the Department of Decent Parents because we didn't buy him a blow-up alien. The cotton candy, ice cream, pizza, and carnival rides meant nothing: WHAT ABOUT THAT ALIEN, YOU SELFISH PRICKS? Quinn was tall enough to ride the rides with Bryce this year, and he proved to me once again that he has no concept of either balance or fear. (I'm thinking that combination is going to be pretty dangerous. Also, it somewhat explains his penchant for parental torture.) We stayed long enough that by the time we rolled the double stroller up to the car to head home, we looked down and saw that Quinn had fallen asleep. The last time that happened, he wasn't yet eating solid foods. They both slept in the car all the way home. The last time THAT happened, the world didn't exist.

Yesterday John tried something wacky with Quinn: he praised every remotely correct or decent thing he did.

"Great job walking down the stairs and breathing at the same time, Quinn!"

"Wow, I'm so impressed by your manners. When you said, 'I want milk,' you didn't whine or throw any power tools at me!"

"Thanks for not ripping my hair out of my head when you woke up this morning, Quinn. WOW!"

John had told me he was going to try this, but I'd been skeptical, since Quinn is much smarter than any parenting technique we've ever tried. But when I got home from work last night, the kids were upstairs cleaning up their toys. At dinner, they ate what was on their plates and actually didn't demand something different. Quinn talked about his friends at school and Bryce told us about Columbus and how he asked the King and Queen of Spain for money to sail to the new world to find gold and spices. (Aside: During this conversation, I may or may not have rolled my eyes and made reference to the fact that we all know the names of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, but what the history books don't highlight is the slaughter of the Native Americans and the disease and pestilence that killed off most of the ones that weren't murdered outright. Bryce was too busy talking about gold and spices to hear me, which is probably good for a five-year-old, I'm thinking.) After dinner, Quinn asked to be excused, then created a game called "all of the kisses" which he pronounced "Ahvvalakisses" which involved him pretending to leave the room and then John telling him to come back for one more kiss, Quinn giggling uncontrollably and running back. I gave him a bath and he didn't scream at me about shampoo or water or toys. I put him to bed and he didn't protest or get up and run under his bed after yelling to get my attention.

Wha...?? That worked?

The hardest part about the last year has been the resistance John and I have given with all our might to admitting that Quinn is not "the easy one". We don't HAVE an easy one. We have two challenging kids. And they're not challenging in the same ways; Bryce has very specific needs that we spent three years deciphering, and in that time we became accustomed to the fact that he actually helps us decipher them because he's extremely articulate. Quinn has spent the past three years confounding us with what at first appeared to be an easy-going, content nature, but turned out to be more like a sleeping tasmanian devil. Had we been expecting it, I think we would have reacted more appropriately, and more quickly. But because it woke up in a lightning blaze of fury and swirls, we misunderstood. We grabbed the flying papers and made a mad dash for something solid to hold onto, we thought it was a passing storm and waited for the return of the familiar. As the wind picked up and our muscles started to shake with weakness and fatigue, we saw the mounting chaos and the debris flying around, but we couldn't let go, because what would happen? We'd be giving in to the madness of this unpredictable being, accepting that this is the new reality, the new familiar, adapting to a life of swimming through the twirling unpredictabilities and searching always for the eye and the calm of the storm, this storm, Quinn.

What has happened now, and what was clinched for me in the astounding aftermath of my last post, when many of you told me that we weren't alone or insane or unfit parents, is that we've made the transition from Waiting For The Storm To Pass to Letting Go. What it translates to is finally starting to see the blurry outlines of Quinn's Needs. It translates to a recognition that Quinn's Needs are different from Bryce's Needs, and I don't mean he likes different foods or will take longer to potty train, even though both of those things are true. I mean he needs US in different ways than Bryce ever did. This slapped us both in the face yesterday, when we met our son, the one who thrives on lots of praise and physical touch and emotional reinforcement. Our other son responds to all of this too, of course, like any kid does to some extent - but this new guy, Quinn - he lives and breathes it.

This morning at the gym, the trainer held a bar behind my back while I did lunges. If my front knee went too far forward, my back wouldn't be straight and even with the bar, which would tell me, much to my dismay, that I was doing it wrong. It would also cause searing jolts of red hot pain to emanate from my back knee. "OW! My knee!" My trainer knows my left knee gives me trouble and I think I was hoping he'd release me from the lunge prison, but he didn't say anything other than to tell me to keep my back against the bar. When I finally came close to approximating the correct posture and movement, he removed the bar and I finished my lunges. "How's your knee?" he asked me as I finished. "Wow, you know? When I do the lunges THE RIGHT WAY, it doesn't hurt my knee." I could tell it took all his strength not to roll his eyes as he said, "Imagine that."

I wonder if that's how our tasmanian devil feels as John and I slap our foreheads and scream DUH! after one single day of not holding so staunchly to the furniture and screaming as the debris swirls around us, maybe smoothing his fur as he whirls by us, always getting closer: Yeah, see how things work when you do them the right way? Imagine that.

Ballistic

I just locked my three-year-old out of the house. It's not as bad as it sounds, and it is. I can see him and hear him, because he is screaming and kicking the sliding glass door. And he's in my fenced in back yard, so fortunately, or maybe in this case UNfortunately, no one can come up and kidnap him, or stupidly offer me money for him.

He kicked me repeatedly at the grocery store, deliberately dumped a cup of Bryce's breakfast fruit cocktail juice on to the living room floor (because he thinks that's funny, and so does Bryce) during the five minutes I had to put the groceries away before leaving for the soccer game, ran away from the soccer field (where the coach was attempting to let him play, because he said he wanted to and we must give His Highness whatever the hell he wants at all times, except of course for when he's saying he wants something and then bolts half a mile away for no reason other than to make his minions jump, yet again) and refused to come to me while Bryce played soccer with no one watching, screamed in my ear for half an hour while I held him for the rest of Bryce's game, refused to stay in his bed at nap time, walked into Bryce's room while he was sleeping, banged his fists and kicked the wall during a ten-minute old-school stand-in-the-corner punishment, and the final infringement, the one that landed him locked in the back yard to keep me from breaking his neck and sauteeing him for dinner, bolted up the stairs screaming that he was going to wake Bryce up, then banged on his door maniacally.

In the three minutes it took me to write the first half of that paragraph, he moved from crying and yelling at the door to grabbing the nearest plastic toy and using that to "knock." He's back inside, staying right next to the living room door way, threatening to bolt upstairs again. This is his attempt to get me to play with him, which I refuse to do during nap time. If he doesn't take a nap, he has to find something quiet to do until Bryce wakes up. He shouldn't be rewarded with a snack or a movie or mom sitting down to play a game with him. But who the hell needs any of that, anyway, when you can just torture the household, wake up your sibling, disrespect and defy your red-faced, flashy-eyed mom with spittle in the corners of her mouth, and destroy the house? I mean, movies? Snacks? Screw that.

I'm about to lose it. I've come close to losing it at least three times. It was the back yard or call 911. I don't know how to fix this. Yes, yes, fullness and life. I know. But it really seems like fullness and life should be different from fear and desperation and guilt and failure. For instance, I don't picture Catherine running like an idiot across the soccer field to get a defiant Birdy back to watch Ben's soccer game. I don't picture her holding a kid screaming on her hip who is perfectly welcome to join in the game but simply won't because now that the opportunity is there, the desire isn't. I don't picture her, even after a day of record-breaking challenges from normally happy Birdy, losing so much a sense of reality and control that she would grab Birdy's shoulders and violently lift her eye-level and growl into her face, "I'M JUST NOT GOING TO DEAL WITH THIS DO! YOU! HEAR! ME? DO YOU?!" And I certainly don't picture her doing it two or three times in one horrific day, one five-hour time period. I don't picture Birdy, while refusing a nap and being told to find something to do quietly until her brother wakes, screaming and whining and slapping Catherine's arm while she types, because I don't picture Birdy being incapable of entertaining herself peacefully for 15 or 30 minutes. I would think if this were the case, we'd hear more about it.

That's the logic that confounds John and me. Why don't we hear more about this from other people? I don't hear anyone referring to these types of problems recurring so very regularly that if they had a blog they'd be writing about it every other post. I'm not picking out the bad highlights here. I'm talking about what goes on all the time. I'm talking about why I'm almost out of my mind. I'm talking about the fact that while I'm sitting here typing, my blood pressure is going up again, Quinn is kicking and making moaning sounds next to the sink because I've told him his options are quiet play in the living room or the back yard, and that doesn't meet his bratty little expectations of the world bowing down to him and serving him peanut butter straight from the jar, which is what he's demanding right this second. When I do hear stories like this, they are told as sharply singular negative experiences, not as typical day-to-day, hours-long struggles. I don't hear about them in the context of the parent questioning their value as a human being and questioning every life choice ever made.

And this is why it feels so lonely on the Fringe most days.

World Pools, Utinions

Me: "Time to get out."

Bryce: "Mom! I can't see! The towel is in my way and I can't see the world pool!"

Me: "Stop yelling about it. There. You're dry. Now you can see the WHIRL pool."

Bryce: "Woorl pool?"

Me: "Yeah. Actually, we're really supposed to pronounce it wHHHirl pool."

Bryce: "W-hhh-irl! W-hhh-irl. Pool."

Me: "Haha! Yeah. Something like that."

Bryce: "Well, I pronounce it WORLD POOL. That's my utinion." [pronounced you-ten-yun]

Me: "........."

Bryce: "........."

Both: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Utinion! Ahahahaha hoooo hooo weee hahaha hahaaaaaa!!!!"

The above happened after a night like all nights at our house these days, a night where my voice was incapable of anything but a tight, sharp knife-like sound barking out commands and demands and occasionally sighing heavily, harshly, quickly. In our laughter, my words echoed in my ears as painfully as I'd imagine an icicle would feel as it stabbed into my brain: Quinn SIT DOWN! You haven't been excused! Just eat your food, stop playing with it! Bryce, I told you to stay downstairs while I'm cleaning up the kitchen. Every time you go upstairs, you run and scream. Why can't you just stay down here and talk to me? Stop whining! Suddenly you want to go play because I'm asking for your help? You never want to play when I'm asking you to! I said five minutes, five minutes is over! It's bath time! SIGH.

In my "defense" -- if such a thing is possible -- I'm tired. Very tired. I get up way too early in some insanely ironic attempt to be healthy, I fight the traffic for 20 miles, the other hundreds of thousands of obedient middle class "career people" heading off to earn their highest possible scores on the surface-important performance reviews grading whatever the latest arbitrary expectations happen to be. I meet and/or exceed expectations. Yay for me. I keep good posture, I wear professional clothes which I pack and carry gingerly from my house to my car to the gym to the locker room before donning them and sitting in my ergonomically correct chair at my large desk and my double flat screens and my recently manufactured laptop staring at spreadsheets and considering "risks" and looking for anomalies and hoping against hope I'll find one just to create some excitement in my day, knowing that such excitement would mean loss, LOSS for the company, but GAIN for me and the ever-present expectations, will she be a good employee? Will she save us from hidden problems? Will she be worth the salary and benefits and resources and time and training? And then I fight the same 20 miles again with hundreds of thousands of good civilians heading home trying to be "balanced" and spend "family time" with their kids at night, eating dinner at the table, maybe by candlelight, making attempts at discussions and showing interest in everyone's day, presumably also involving good posture and meeting or exceeding the school's or the company's or the client's expectations -- we all fight to get to OUR SPACE first. And when I get home, inevitably someone is screaming, whining, or jumping. And because of my personality, because of my quirks, because of my nature, it just sounds like a broken record, and a loud one. It is shrill, it is blood-boiling pressure, but mostly it is fatigue in physical form - and guilt incarnate. I hear their voices yelling HI MOM NO QUINN GIVE ME THAT BRYCE and I pull at the icicle but I don't have the strength and it pokes, it pierces, and I lash out with my voice.

But sometimes one of my sons musters more strength with their puny undeveloped 35-pound bodies than I can with all the core-strengthening personal training I waste money on each week, and they melt the icicle effortlessly, using words like "world pool" or "utinion" or "abdivate" or, in Quinn's case, "poopy poop head" and even my tired, frustrated, tortured soul quirkiness can't hold up to it.

But the thing is, I need more melted icicles. I need them to melt before I pass them on like some sort of dysfunctional frozen torches to my sons. They shouldn't be responsible for melting them. I shouldn't be hearing myself as if I'm a separate party altogether, I shouldn't be watching myself like a pathetic character on a low-budget after school special fighting my guilt and alienating my children slowly, gradually, day by day. It feels criminal that my three-year-old would look at my face with genuine concern and slight fear after I remind him to keep his shoes off of the couch (which is already a trash heap anyway, why does it matter?) and ask, "are you happy, mom?" When I find myself with my entire family crouching around a tiny burrow full of squirming, furry baby rabbits or moles (we still don't know which) in our back yard and the first words out of my mouth, "you're too close, Bryce, GET BACK" ruin the moment and lead to my usually laid-back husband saying, "do you think you could be a little more h-a-r-s-h?" as my formerly passionately-interested-in-nature five-year-old slumps back into the house, alone, something is dead wrong.

I know this. I feel it. But I don't have the solution. When Bryce marched confidently back into the back yard in his rain boots to continue admiring the rabbit-mole-babies, he plopped down in front of me, unfazed, happy, excitedly watching the four newborn sniffing creatures with complete innocence. Maybe when the icicles melt, they truly evaporate. But I don't know. I truly don't. I don't know how to abdivate the appropriate utinion in this case. Maybe I should ask Bryce.