"TRICK OR *HACK SNEEZE* TREAT!"

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Ahoy there from the Dread Pirate Becca!

I have captured these wenches from my preschool. Their names are Jessica and... I forget. They make me want to be a princess instead of a pirate. I did get some really awesome candy for Halloween. I want to sleep with my candy bag, but I am not allowed, because the chocolate will melt on my hair and not in my mouth.

I did not actually SNEEZE on a parent passing out candy, but I did consume more medicine than candy today.

______________________________

Hi, it's me, Sarah. Can you believe Becca COPIED me?! She was going to be a pirate for Halloween, and by trick-or-treat time she wanted to be a princess. In fact, one parent asked me what I was, and I said a princess, and then Becca said she was QUEEN! NO. FAIR.

I actually DID sneeze on parents and was so sneezy and wheezy I really didn't last very long. But that's ok, since I want to give my candy away to the poor anyway. And how much candy do the poor really need?!

Anyway, my spider pumpkin is cooler than her jack-o-lantern. We made Mommy carve the pumpkins the day after our pumpkin "painting" party... the other family carved theirs and we thought it was so cool. And then Mommy cleaned and baked all the pumpkin seeds... yum. Though what is with all of her cooking lately? Oh well. Yum.

SICK-O-WEEN

Monday, October 30, 2006

Of course, the 2nd best day of the kid year (#1 is reserved for birthdays) will be marked by viruses for my kids.

Becca had to come home early today with an ear infection. She actually fell asleep IN her potatoes at the dinner table. This does mean she will have a clever trick, though -- she's going to be a pirate tomorrow, so she can sing Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Amoxicillin.

The other child will not be singing harmony. Sarah has a sore throat and is trying to keep quiet. So she's modifying from Any Old Princess to Mute Princess. Her trick is to smile and nod, and every once in awhile take a cough drop. It's challenging for her. She would rather talk.

I'm going to dress up as a mom. I already have the outfit and the beleaguered look.

PARTY IN THE ER

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Oh hi there! I tell you, dahlings, this was the BEST night of my life. First, there were 5 firemen in my house. 5! All for me! Then they let me ride in the back of the ambulance and we didn't stop at any of the stoplights.

At the hospital, the nurses all made a big fuss over me, even though there were people waiting around with their guts hanging out. Who cares? I'm so cute. They gave me a stuffed bear.

And the best part, did you know they have an oxygen bar at this place! I LOVE CALIFORNIA! Whenever I started to feel sad or sleepy or coughy, I just took some good sniffs of the nice air from this little blue tube, and whammo. I'm so happy!

My dad took these pictures on his camera phone. Apparently you are not supposed to have your phone on in the hospital, and also taking pictures in the hospital is a little naughty, don't you think? Who cares! More O2!

911

By now you are surely wondering, why are there posts on this blog at 3 in the morning. What the hell is wrong with this girl.

Actually I'm just trying to keep my mind occupied because Becca and Don left for the ER in an ambulance after Becca woke up with very croupy breathing and scared the pediatrician on the phone. She's had croup before, but they didn't want to take any chances. So they had us call 911 and Becca got to ride in the back of the ambulance. She's okay, they have her hopped up on steroids and oxygen and she'll be back here soon and I'm sure in several hours will be well enough to poke the dogs and realign all the Barbie limbs.

It really does seem like people get sicker at night. My own ER visit (see BREAKDOWNS post, September 1) was no exception. And then of course the 101 Dalmation puppies were born on "a dark and stormy night" and Madeleine's appendicitis attack came in the middle of the night/Ms. Clavel turned on the light and said "something is not right!". Of course, I know that those are fictional examples and in fact are even cartoons. Still what do you want, it's 4 in the morning.

Apparently our bodies actually DO get sicker at night, it's not just a seems-like-they-do thing. Lying horizontally increases congestion, sore throat, and ear pain. And because we are on Circadian Rhythm, our hormonal cycles suppress fevers and pain during the day that intensify at night. So there you go, actual biological justification regarding my sitting here and talking to you.

HELICOPTER MOM

Have you ever had one of those moments when you realize you are One of Those People?

It all started last summer when we realized we were moving to a new school district. My friend Joan - whom I've known from college - lives in the district and in fact now her son and my daugher are in the same 4th grade class. The world is quite small, or so say some singing dollies at Disneyland.

At any rate, I called Joan up and asked her about the 4th grade teachers, trying to figure out what we would need for Sarah. She was describing one or the other, and said "Mrs. So-and-so isn't too good with the helicopter parents."

I had never heard this term before and so I asked Joan what she meant. And guess what! I'm a complete behind-the-times loser because the term is actually in Wikepedia:

A helicopter parent is a term for a person who pays extremely close attention to his or her child or children, particularly at educational institutions. They rush to prevent any harm from befalling them or letting them learn from their own mistakes, sometimes even contrary to the children's wishes. They are so named because, like a helicopter, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach whether their children need them or not.

I thought it was kinda funny at the time.

Well flash forward to parent-teacher conferences this year. We have had meetings at the school about Sarah's progress and Becca's progress. And there was a moment when it occurred to me: I am a helicopter mom! Sarah has some focus issues in class (she's chatty), but she hasn't developed independent study habits because we have in some ways spoon-fed her! We all need a healthy dose of behavior modification around here.

Meanwhile, Becca CAN'T be left alone or she will inevitably break, bruise, botch, or butcher something or someone... so perhaps the hovering is actually healthy in that case...

APPLE PEELING CALLOUSES

So a couple weekends ago we went apple picking in Julian, a town about an hour east of San Diego. Julian is an old mining town from the gold rush days that some marketing genius has now made synonymous with apple pies. I guess the climate is perfect for apple growing during the fall. There are some 17,000 apple trees in Julian orchards, and the place puts out 10,000 pies a week during October.

But the demand for apple pie from Julian is now year-round, and it's shipped around the world. So in the off-season, most of Juian's apple pies are made with Washington Apples that are flown in. Talk about pressure to live up to an image!

Anyway, so that's what we did a couple weekends ago. Most of the low-hanging fruit had already been picked, and the orchard we went to didn't have a huge supply of those stick thingies that are used to get at the top of the trees. So Becca became our primary apple picking tool. Don would hoist her up to get the 8-footers. Or alternately he would just smack her against a high branch and shake some loose.

Meanwhile, Sarah and her friend Leah were "supervising." (aka taste testing all the apples and commenting on how the picking was going.) We got each of the kids an empty bag for $5 and filled it through the sweat of our labor. OK mostly Becca's labor.

At any rate, then we got home and realized we had a retarded amount of apples that could not possibly be consumed by the typical packing of one in a lunchbag here or eating one as a snack after school there. Some sort of mass apple usage was going to have to happen.

Naturally, we decided to make pies. Never mind that I have never made a pie in my life. I'm reminded of the time when I nearly burned down our apartment building in Chicago making toast. (Well, that wasn't entirely my fault, but still. Toast.) Or the time when I was making fajitas and my blender exploded. We were scraping marinade off of places in the kitchen that were never really meant to touch food (ceiling). Anyway so naturally, we decided to make pies.

I found some good pie recipes (ones that called for butter AND lard AND 2 types of sugar... how can it be bad?) and Sarah and I went out and bought pie ingredients. Because when you are the kind of person who sets off fire alarms making toast, you don't necessarily keep things like flour and baking powder around. We spent $48 on pie-making supplies. If you think about it, for $58 (the cost of the 2 bags of apples plus all that baking stuff) we could have bought a couple pies at Julian. But then I would not have the apple peeling callouses.

Because when you peel like 12 pounds of apples, and you are not used to it and you are using some cheap-ass peeling tool anyway because you don't want to buy a good one because you're a toast-burner... well, it takes a looooooong time (2 hours?) and you get blistered up. And then another couple hours of rolling dough and mixing and baking and burning my arm (don't ask).

My friend Allison came over and noted the crust-making. "You know, you can get ready-made crust in the freezer aisle," she tells me. Well where was YOUR ass last night when I needed that information, smarty pants!

The pies were actually extra-good. I took some to work and had to actually convince people that I made the pies. They thought we had bought them from Julian. Which, I believe, is what we will actually do next time!

"AUTUMN"

Monday, October 09, 2006

The other day while Sarah was out at dinner and a show with her friends and their parents (! is there something wrong with this picture !), we took Becca out to dinner. She was wearing a dress with bare legs and some boots. The hostess said to her, "Brrrr, aren't you cold?"

Later that night in Target, I noticed the scarves, knit hats, and Ugg boot knockoffs were on full display.

The high that day was 70 degrees.

MORE SOUTH THAN WEST

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Get a load of this:
No, it's not a wedding... it's something they have out here called Cotillion.

Kids in 5-12th grades go there to learn the Social Graces... etiquette, table manners, dancing, and dressing. It's all the rage among the moms out here and apparently it's only a couple blocks away from me.

I usually don't put links in the blog, but you just gotta see this. It's possible that next year, Sarah will actually ask me if she can go because all her friends are already talking about it/their big sisters are going. Seems more like Southern stuff than California.

I just think it's a little freaky. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of someone telling girls they shouldn't wear such bare dresses and boys that they should be pulling out girls' chairs. But in the 5th grade?!

http://www.californiajuniorcotillion.com/

LITTLE HACKER

Monday, October 02, 2006

Don went to pick up Becca at preschool. While he was signing her out and gathering her things, Becca hacked through the school's security, crossed the parking lot, found our car, got in, and strapped herself into her child safety seat. Meanwhile, a bunch of frantic adults searched for Becca inside the school. They were amazed that she had gotten through the security -- it's never happened before! They had to revise the exit protocol thanks to her. What a kid.

HISTORY REPEATS

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Today I took Becca and Sarah to a birthday party for one of their friends. Sarah's best friend last year is the older sister of the Birthday Girl. They are still close now, even though we've moved 30 minutes away.

Nikki and her family are from Iran. They've been here some 15 years, but they have a huge extended family there and speak fluent Persian to their Iranian friends here. Given the tenuous world situation today -- contemplation of war in Iran over nuclear weapons -- their allegiances must be quite torn and their fears about their family high.

One of my best friends in middle school was a girl named Vida. Vida was also Iranian. Her parents were both physicians and supporters of the Shah -- they had a gigantic oil painting of him hanging in their dining room. I remember them, too, speaking in hushed voices in Persian during the time of the Ayatollah's return and the subsequent hostage situation in Tehran.

I can't imagine what they thought of their daughter befriending an American Jewish girl, nor what issues they might have faced with their own residency and contact with their family on foreign soil. And I relish the fact that like Vida and me, Sarah and Nikki only see what's inside each other. I hope it remains that way.

Vida and I aren't friends any longer... one summer she got a nose job, designer clothes, and a brand new Firebird Trans Am and that fall, she Became Popular and I was... just me! We never spoke about being friends during the 70s hostage crisis and what might have been said or not said by our parents during that period. But it occurs to me every time I see Sarah and Nikki and I am so pleased that history (at least, personal history) is repeating itself. Maybe we'll have the whole family over and talk about everything.