Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 173

On Being a Superhero

[image error] Okay, so I'm in the middle of changing Super Sock Man  from a short story to a novella, and I realized that part of the story hinges upon the idea of being a superhero.

Donnie puts on the socks (still under construction, by the way)  and feels like a confident, sexy, superhero, and, well, in the novella, I sort of run with that in a couple of directions.  I mean we all know how I feel about superheroes, right?

But as the rhythm of my life changes--from someone with an outside job to someone with a job at home, from someone with kids at home during the summer to someone with kids at school  I've discovered that some of the simplest things, some of the stuff I didn't get a chance to do before because I was so damned busy, makes me feel like a hero.

Now housework is not one of my priorities, and will never be one of my priorities, so don't anyone think I'm going all Martha Stewart on your asses.  It's just that getting a chance to serve my family--in a way I haven't before, really--is unexpectedly really frickin' cool.  So here's a list of things, in no particular order, that have made me feel like a superhero lately.

*  Making lunch for the kids, and putting it in their own, specially chosen lunch boxes.

*  Making a sandwich for my teenaged daughter, even though she's been capable and expected of doing this for herself for years.

*  Helping Squish do her decorate the paper doll like herself homework over four days early.

*  Doing Squish's hair.  Today it's in pigtails.

*  Letting my kids walk to their friend's house after school once a week.

*  Helping my friend's daughter sell cupcakes for her sixth grade trip.

*  Helping Chicken read 1984.

*  Cleaning off the kitchen table before it collapses from the weight.

*  Making plans to fold clothes before the next family vacation.

*  Cutting fast food dinners down to one or two a week.

*  Easing up on the family's dependence on McDonalds as a whole.

*  Giving my college aged son advice on how to get a job.

*  Reassuring the dog that in spite of advanced, advanced, advanced, ADVANCED middle aged, she still hasn't lost the ability to strike terror into the heart of the poor guy working on the neighbor's house.

*  Designing and knitting a sock for the Super Sock Man story.

*  Designing and knitting an, erm,  cock sock for my Christmas submission to the Advent Calendar this year.

*  Having the car mostly fixed with the exception of needing some matching tires.

* And managing to blog a LOT more in September than I did in August!

So what have you done that makes YOU feel like a superhero lately?

Kids and etc...

So the other morning, Mate's dad called to update us on his health (a little skeery, but okay for the moment) and Zoomboy came into the kitchen.  Mate's dad hasn't seen Zoomboy since... well... four years ago?  Five.  No, it was five.  We've got the picture to prove it.

Anyway, I asked him if he wanted to talk to Zoomboy--because, yanno, a seven year old can almost converse like a real human being.  The conversation--which I could only hear part of--went something like this.

Zoomboy:  Hello.
Beat.
"Grandpa Bill?"
Beat.
"Dad's dad.  Okay."
Beat.
"3rd grade."
Beat.
"Mrs. Hilton."
Beat.
"Yes, soccer."
Beat.
"Yes."
Beat.
"Yes.  My dad coaches."
Beat.
"We lost."
Beat.
"Okay.  Mom, he says bye."

And I thought to myself, "And that right there ladies and gentlemen is three generations of minimalist communications at work.  It's a thing of fuckin' beauty."

***

This morning, after making lunches (and have I told you all that this makes me a hero?  Seriously.  Had no frickin' idea.)  I went in to see Squish putting on her socks.  She was still wearing her nightgown and was lying back with her feet in the air, putting one on, then the other, and looking at them with sort of a dreamy admiration.

I hadn't picked out these socks, nor had I picked out her outfit for the day, but there she was, in a pair of mismatched--and I mean COMPLETELY mismatched, one was ankle length, one went to mid-calf, one was purple and snowmen, one was pink and black checkerboard--socks, and her nightgown, looking at me with her little freckled cheeks all scrunched up.

"I got my socks on, mom."

"Yeah you do."

"Aren't they pretty?"

Of course they were:-)

***

Also this morning, I walked by Chicken's room.  Chicken was rooting on her dresser for something, her back (and backside) to her bed.  She was wearing her corduroy pants, and her cat was making sweet, heavenly, tender check&whisker lurve to her ass.

I stopped, and watched as that cat kept rubbing up against her back pockets like she was catnip with a tuna chaser, and said, "Uhm, that cat REALLY loves you."

"Oh God--is Gordie kissing my ass again?"  She turned around and scritched him behind the ears.  "Yeah, he's my bitch."

When she goes away to school, that cat is never going to leave us alone.  Bank on that.  I'll be wearing him like a needy gray "where's my human?" necklace.  Mark my words.

***

And Big T gets a ride to the bus stop for school twice a week, when I'm on my way to aqua aerobics.  This morning, I almost forgot to drop him off.  I had to kick him out of the car when we sat at the intersection.  He looked at me reprovingly and I said, "Hey, you're eighteen, at least I stopped the car!"

Well, we can't all be sunshine and lollipops, can we?

***

Oh yeah-- Talker's Graduation is out on October 12th.  In case that means anything to anybody:-)

Soccer Saturday, and Why I Didn't Kill Anyone

So yesterday was a soccer day-- and it was MISERABLE.  Temperature in the 100'ds, humid, air quality for shit--just gross.  So when I got back from taking Chicken to her two ref jobs, I was not surprised to see everybody in shorts going to Zoomboy's game.  (Chicken had a game in an hour too--we had to split up, which we don't usually do, because their games overlapped.)  I was sort of surprised to see this outfit on Squish.

"Hey," I said, "didn't that used to be a dress?"
"Yeah," said Mate, looking at her grimly.
"That's okay," said Chicken, with the same expression on her face, "I'm pretty sure those used to be shorts, too!"

Well, it made her happy, but it reminded ME that I need to clean out her clothes hamper more often, because that outfit is a lot of things, but FITTING HER BODY is not one of them.  So the day was hard--for the soccer players more than the soccer mom, who sat at the sidelines and sucked down water and thought longingly of actually WRITING since, yanno, that is sort of her profession.  Actually, though, at Chicken's game, I DID start getting unaccountably bitter.  Bitchy.  Moody.  I mean, more than usual.  You know, it's AMAZING what skipping lunch can do for a person?  Seriously--if it wasn't for a granola bar in the bottom of my purse, I might have killed someone.

And, of course, my knitting...

This T-shirt (modeled over Chicken's head, actually)  a gift from my friend Elizabeth, was waiting for me when we got home at five o'clock.  (For those keeping track, that was soccer from 9-5, oh yes it was.  Mate guided Zoomboy's team to an enthusiastic loss at 5-2-- seriously.  He was expecting to get creamed, and that's not what happened. Zoomboy even kicked the ball once.  On purpose.  It was in the WRONG DIRECTION, but his intent to help canNOT be doubted.)

But the T-shirt pretty much insured that nobody would die yesterday--I was too busy laughing, and working on my socks for the Super Sock Man story.  All good!

Talking Dirty

Okay-- my friend is on the phone, talking about getting her alpaca fleece sheared and processed, and then finding a spinner to buy it, and seriously-- it's like she's seducing me with fresh, quality critter fur.  I WANT TO SPIN THAT!  (Okay-- not these critters-- these critters were found on Bing images, and while charming, they do not have the personal appeal of a personal alpaca and it's body hair.  Knitters, rally to this-- you know what I'm talking about!)

Anyway, my house is a crapfestive craptastic crapgasm--and buying ONE MORE THING and investing in ONE MORE HOBBY is completely out of the question.  But that only makes all her seductive talk about fleece and combining it with Romney and roving that much more of a turn on, yanno?

Anyway...

In other news, I went and ruined Chicken's social life last night.  Oh yeah, some people call it back to school night, but yeah.  Not the way I do it.  I try very hard to make sure EVERY teacher remembers my name.  And Chicken spends the rest of the year trying VERY HARD to make sure they forget hers.  It's been a good system-- and this is the last year we're seeing it in action.  *sigh*

Also, I'd like to thank everyone who made such nice comments about Clear Water.  My odd little duck apparently inspired a VERY popular odd little frog--I'm so glad that Patrick was lovable and real to people, and that Whiskey seemed to be the same.  (Whiskey is a little foul-mouthed and grump-tacular) at times--I was worried;-)

And seriously--if you want to know how tired my kids are of take-out, check out THIS weirdness.  I was trying to get them up this morning (soccer practice last night--they were TIRED!) and when they wouldn't wake up to get their clothes on I had to threaten them with a cafeteria lunch if they didn't dress themselves.  It wasn't an idle threat--I didn't have time to dress them while they slept and make their own sandwiches--and I think it surprised them both.  *shrugs*  pb&j or a ham sandwich--who knew they were magic?

I noticed something very disturbing, btw.  I took my son to wait for the bus and watched him--earphones on, iPod blaring--walk toward his bus stop, ignoring the truck he was wandering in front of, and generally clueless as a baby duck.  Oh crap.  He's eighteen, right?  He's 6'5" tall, right?  He's got a blackbelt in karate, right?  Yup.  But that boy still done got some growing to do.

Zoomboy, btw, seems to have sprouted into an actual boy.  Sorta blows my mind.  And, as promised, girls keep falling into his dimples--see?  Sometimes, mama DOES know best!

And Squish?  She told a friend's mom that her mom was aMAZing.  Why?  Because I put Cheetohs in her lunch.

Have I mentioned, life is a widdobit stwange?

 

Like a sting ray, only smaller...

We spent the long weekend in Monterey.
We go there as often as we can.  Something about the lovely, seventy degree climate, the aquarium (which you can see Zoomboy enjoying with oomph!) and the smell of the sea makes the entire family gazunga scads of happy.  Mate, my beloved Mate, who has not really had a vacation out of town that didn't involve work in a LOOONGGG time, was also gazunga scads of happy.  
We ate crepes (Squish liked hers with apples and cinnamon),   And went on a whale watching excursion (during which we saw NO whales--but did get a raincheck) and ate clam chowder in bread bowls and ran along the beach (where we saw dolphins offshore.  Go figure.)
Mate popped a tire on the car going into a place called Phat Burger, run by two kids who had been best friends since high school, and made THE. BEST. FOOD. EVER.  Including sweet potato fries, and garlic fries that lived for hours after eaten. He got the tire fixed while we were running on the beach, and said next time we go there, he'll know how to take that turn.  And that we WOULD go there again, because, as I said, BEST. BURGER. EVER.  
We saw that rarity of rarities--Big T on a family outing, as well as a photographed smile on Chicken.  We spent the nights in a hotel room which slept six, but only had a television in the room with one bed.  All six of us crammed onto that one bed to watch the last six episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, on Nickle-odian, which replayed the whole series for the weekend.  Some people might have called that odd.  We called it family.  And we got to see Zoomboy in his natural element--where the sea and the sky contend with each other, to see whose roar is the loudest.  Even Zoomboy was ready to go home at the end. (He astounded us all on the way home, btw.  We got stuck in traffic, and he had to pee in a bottle.  Besides making the whole car giggle terribly, he filled a 16 oz water bottle--Mate and I have now sworn NEVER to ask him "Can you hold it?" again.  Obviously he CAN hold it--and if the boy's gotta go, he damned well has to go!)     Everybody had pink cheeks, sore from laughing at the end of three days.
Waking up this morning to get everyone off to school was hard.  But I asked the short people, "Did we have a good time?"

"YES!"

This is my family, having a wonderful time:-)

Clear Water

I've talked a little bit about my son's diagnosis w/ADHD, and my own realization that I'm lousy with it, and for the most part, it's all good.  Zoomboy's little brown pill has made his school life MUCH easier--after one month on it last year, his school test scores (and this is one more reason to abhor that whole process, honestly) went from DNF in his practice runs to almost advanced in the real thing.  We're pretty sure he's going to do scary good this year, all thanks to psychiatric science and a little bit of support.

And as for me?  I was just lucky that the things I was good at--the environment I could control--just happened to fall in line with what society thought was important too, at the time.  I could read and write and folks thought that made me a good kid and didn't realize that that irritating "flakiness" was anything other than me.  Being me.  I worked with it--it became my schtick.  Still is.  I'm fine.

But I've run into parents (and mentors) who have been really, completely disdainful about the whole thing.  "He doesn't need any frickin' drugs!  He's just not trying!  He's a screw up!"  And watching the transformation in my own son--the confidence he's gotten from knowing that he CAN do these things, and that the little brown pill really HELPS him do these things--I've got to wonder, how's that going to feel after fifteen, sixteen years?

Clear Water is not an angsty story--it's not.  I've been calling it "anti-angst", and I mean it.  After Locker Room, Living Promises, Alpha, and Talker's Graduation, I wanted something sustained and light, dammit, and tears were NOT an option.  I'd also just been subjected to a whole lot of involuntary research into something that looked like it could make a VERY interesting character.  And don't ask me where I saw the two-headed frogs.  *shakes head*

Now I'm sure some voices are going to rip poor Patrick apart, claiming that he's either "over the top" or "so immature that nobody would want him".  The fact is, Patrick really IS part of that research.  Patrick is adult ADHD--rare, but real.  Adults with this disorder either A. Find something they are TOTALLY brilliant at, and succeed in really oddball ways, or B. end up unemployed or in prison.  A lot of option B is a self-image thing.  They've been told they're screwups their entire lives--and they can't seem to keep focused or control their temper, so the world must be right.  So people can say what they want about Patrick--I know the truth, and I'm gonna beg them to leave my sweet little frog alone.  He's a lot more vulnerable than the world things he is, and a lot smarter too--and that's why he needed Whiskey to save him.  Every little frog needs a safe place to huddle when the world gets too busy, right?

So enjoy Clear Water, and my sweet little frog.  I loved writing this book.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

Desperate Porn-Writing Housewives

Okay-- I don't write porn, you all know I don't, but it's so much fun to get everyone's attention that way! And, well, it does make the story better.



So I had to give up my work out this morning because the phone repair guy was coming, right? (And if I was a MILF instead of, you know, me, that WOULD be the intro to a porn flick. Also, if my teenaged son wasn't hanging around the house being bored and useful between classes, because the MILF flicks tend to just blow off the whole "must have children" part of that acronym.) Anyway, it was okay, because I was JUST at the end of my Christmas story (due tomorrow) and I got into a real groove, and, well, was writing my ass off!



And it's a short story. And I was at the, erm, climax of the story. And leading to the climax of the climax, mostly, if you know what I mean.



And then the phone guy arrived. At first, the only big deal was my humiliation in letting a complete stranger into THE dirtiest house of all time. Yeah--it's a mess. I'm having cleaning delusions, and I may even get to some of them before we take off on Friday, but in the meantime, I've got the stranger, my house crapgasm, and my complete embarrassment.



Oh yeah. And the dog. The dog was okay with the guy, right up until we hid her when he went into the back yard and then she SAW him walk from the side of the house without seeing how he got there. She almost had a heart attack, and then, as she bayed in the guy's face, she almost shared with him.



We dragged her to the garage, and the poor man then said, "Oh, hey, can I see your modem?"



My son had to show him where our modem was. I had no idea what that piece of equipment on the top of the bookshelf was--and then the nice repairman (ginger hair, freckles, average build, COMPLETELY bomb proof expression) had to root around between the kids' bed and the bookshelf in order to unplug the the damned thing. Oh the dust! Oh the beany babies! Oh the nameless, sticky substances! *shudder*



I couldn't watch. I came in to the kitchen with the crumbs on the tablecloth and sat down to finish my, erm, climactic part of the story. I had to turn the internet off--the DSL was unplugged, remember? And this made the next part that much worse.



There I was, one hero undressing the other, breath was coming in pants and pants were coming off and things were sticking out and things were getting stroked and... uhm...



"I'm sorry, can I use your laptop?"



I looked over my shoulder, and there was my bombproof repairman, looking serenely at my two heroes, about ready to do the two-backed mammal.



"Uhm, yeah! Here! Lemme pull up... oh shit... internet! Yeah! Internet! Lemme pull it (oh crap oh crap!) INTERNET!" Now, while I was saying this, I was holding my hand up in front of my screen and looking greenly over my shoulder at the repairman who didn't know me from any other large woman in a tent-sized Big Dog T-shirt.



He gazed serenely back, and then, oh thank the Goddess, the damned internet came up.



I couldn't look. I wandered restively around the living room, wondering if I should bother picking shit up. I figured no, because I didn't on any OTHER given day, and the fact is, we'd had the DSL for eight years and they're only supposed to last three, so odds were good I wouldn't be seeing this guy again.



He pulled up the internet and had a question for Mate about "firmware" (and given my now pinpoint obsession about what I was writing about, the word made me giggle like you wouldn't BELIEVE) and then gave me back the phone.



"Well, I'm done," he said, and my relief was... well....



"You're DONE? WHEEE! EXCELLENT! FISTBUMP!"



The guy held his fist up for me gamely, and smiled with bemusement when I did the firework-flameout thing with my hand when I was done.



I'm sure he left nodding his head at the weirdness of folks, and me?



I figured that those people who come up with those movie scenarios must live VERY different kinds of lives.



Oh, and for the closing moment of an odd day? We were driving to soccer practice when Squish said, "Oh look! I saw rabbits! They were in somebody's yard, and now I believe in BUNNIES!"



That's a fairly safe thing to believe in, actually--I'm 98% sure they exist.

Jumpstart?

I've actually posted my blog TWICE since the last one ran on the Goodreads feed... I'm hoping if I post a little something directly TO Goodreads, it will jumpstart the feed a little... couldn't hurt! You've been looking at blurry pictures of my kids for a week, and believe it or not, I've moved on from that! Anyway, if you're interested in Poetry, History, and Philosophy--and m/m fiction-- here's the link to my last actual blogpost: http://writerslane.blogspot.com/2011/...

And here's hoping GR wakes up a little, right?

Poetry, History, and Philosophy

Poetry is more important than history or philosophy.



Aristotle



This is Andrew and Ariel-- they went to Book Expo of America for my publisher, Dreamspinner, this year, back in May. While they were there, a friend of mine from the Paranormal Romance Guild, another writer, Marianne Morea, saw my name, and said, "I know Amy!" and Andrew and Ariel said, "So do we!" and this picture was taken.



They're holding my titles.



This picture means a lot to me.



Besides the obvious--and most important--thing of finding friends in an industry that is, by nature, isolated, there's that whole "holding my titles" thing.



When I taught high school, I had quotes ALL over my room, including the one by Aristotle, up by the clock. It's got some interesting ramifications.



Back in the day--you know, when Aristotle roamed the earth and everything looked like the Houses of the Holy album cover by Led Zeppelin--poetry didn't strictly refer to the short lyric poem that everyone thinks of today, and it didn't just refer to the big, scary epic poems of Homer or Virgil or even Ovid, either. Back in the day, poetry also referred to the plays, both comic and tragic that were the core of the Greek Theatre (upon which the Renaissance theatre was based, and therefore, much of what we know about theatre now!)



One of Aristotle's crowning achievements was his "manual for writing and understanding fiction", Poetics. Some of his stuff, we take it upon ourselves to ignore--his insistence that a play only cover the span of twenty-four hours, for example, we feel free to wreak havoc with--but that doesn't mean it's not still with us. Some people think that the reason Romeo and Juliet meet, get married, get it on, and get dead, all in the span of a week was that Willy-boy was trying to follow the rules. He ended up breaking the in a big way with a lot of his other works, but remember, R&J was one of his early creations, and he hadn't quite found a way to tell Aristotle to piss off, he had his own voice, by then. The rules of Epic Poetry and the rules of a Tragic Hero and the Satiric Hero (I capitalize these concepts because I love them, and they are my friends) were Aristotle's, so we can all concede, boyfriend knew his shit. And boyfriend's shit was related to poetry. Today, when we're not talking about lyric poetry (which, granted, we hear more in music today, although there are some perfectly magnificent actual poets out there) we're talking epic or historical poems (fiction books) or plays (movies or theatre).



So, while that quote seems to apply just to hearts and flowers and Cavalier poets talking out their peen, what it really is talking about, is fiction.



I had the hardest time getting this idea across to my students.



See, here's the thing. How many of us watch the news and memorize parts of it? Hands up? Anyone? There's just too much to know, isn't there? How many of us have lived through actual warfare? Some of us, I know--there are veterans out there, to whom I am grateful every day--but in actual numbers, compared to the everyday citizen? Not so much.



Now how many of us remember who was the leader of the Department of Defense when the war in Iraq began? How about the Speaker of the House? Which countries are we occupying right now? Who are the leaders there? Do the populations in those countries support us or not? What is our personal philosophy regarding these occupations--do we have it sorted out for each political cause and are we sure we know which political cause is which in the Middle East? (Someone reading this probably has their shit sorted and their deets documented for this one--and I salute you. Hell, I kiss the ground at your bloody feet for it--because every time I try, I get the same mental block that I get when I try to remember which of the cube-like buildings in the Intel complex my husband works in. I don't care if it's the only two story one--they all look the same and my eyes glaze over and I end up driving to the wrong one on principle!)



Now how many of us watched The Green Zone, or The Hurt Locker, or The Messenger and cried, raged, tore our hair out or bit our nails in response to what the characters went through and the basic injustices



That is the difference between History, Philosophy, and Poetry.



History can inform, Philosophy can debate, but Poetry, and Poetry only, can create human beings out of information and opinion and give them life and make us feel for them and make us root for them and make us take their history and philosophy and internalize it and make it ours.



Poetry is the humanizing force behind the other two--and perhaps the most difficult to achieve. The Historian documents, and the Philosopher argues--Poetry does both. Poetry incorporates the time, the place, the pressures, the pain, and using characters, gives the cause voice. It's one thing to hear news reports about "casualties resulting in the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction"--but unless you were there, you don't see the crushing frustration, anger, confusion, and sheer, stinking rage that come with the blurb on the news, do you? Well, not unless someone turns that situation into poetry.



Pilgrim's Progress, the allegory my daughter was subjected to when she attended parochial school, is all about the Christians turning their histories and philosophies into literature. My daughter may not remember her Bible verses, but you can bet your ass she remembers Pilgrim's Progress--because that is the power of poetry.



I remember, back in the early eighties, I bought a lot of the Harlequin Presents romances, and the Silhouette ones as well. They were short, they were sweet, and I read some of them ad infinitum, even though the heroine was always virginal, the hero was always older, and the girl's virginity seemed to be of paramount importance to the entire transaction of falling in love. In the early nineties, I told Mate that the romances took a shift, and those same once-virginal girls were now divorcing the controlling bastards they'd fallen for when they were nineteen and marrying a guy who wouldn't mind changing diapers once in a while. The times had changed, and so had the romances. By the late nineties, the girls were not just not guarding their virginity like it was plutonium (thank Goddess!) they were also kicking ass, being spies, being Slayers, being tough, being smart, being whatever the fuck they wanted, including stay-at-home mommies if they were so inclined.



That poetry right there--and I know a fuckton of men who would laugh their balls off at the thought--changed the fucking world, and it changed it for the better.



Now, there are writers like me, who write about "non-traditional" families. It's not just the straight men and women getting laid who get to have the happily ever after. Now, the gay men and women get to have theirs too.



Still. Fucking. Poetry. Still important. Still the unstoppable combination of history, philosophy, and humanity to change the goddamned world.



So I'm bringing this up why?



I mean, my actual 'history' this weekend was pretty intense-- we had soccer opening day yesterday, got to watch my daughter officiate her first (three!) games, and watch her father give her "whistle blowing lessons" at the end of the first one because she needed to blow that thing with POWER, right? Got to watch Squish run around in a knot with a bunch of other kids, and got to watch Zoomboy get his pants beat off by ten year olds when he's only seven. Got to come home and be exhausted and knit and stare blankly at the screen and try to write. And that was just yesterday! Today there was Sun Splash, a water park with waterslides, where I went with my family. I wasn't planning to go, because I've got a deadline and the kids were tired, and we were going to chill, but at the last fucking gasp I changed direction and took the little kids with me and my husband and my friend and the big kids, and go we did.



I went to Sun Splash because this morning, I had one of those painful family conversations where you try to tell your parents something and they don't listen, and they tell you that you're wasting your life and your talents and you don't know what the real world is all about. After that conversation I didn't want to sit home and sulk when i should have been writing because I've got a deadline coming and I need to get my ass in gear.



My parents were telling me that writing fiction was not important. I needed to do something "important" with my life, and it would be one thing if I was writing "important" stuff, but what I'm doing isn't "important."



You can't bring Aristotle and Shakespeare and Homer and Virgil and The Hurt Locker and The Green Zone and old Harlequin Romances and Buffy the Vampire Slayer into an argument with your mother. You just can't. She'll accuse you of changing the subject.



She just doesn't get that those things ARE the subject, and that they ARE important, and they ARE changing the world.



Because those things are Poetry. And Poetry is more important than History or Philosophy.



And Poetry (of the modern, fictionalized sort!) is what I write--and what my friends write (waves at Ariel and Andrew)--and it is iron in my blood because I think it drives the world.



And what we do is important.

Apples

School: day four



*crosses eyes* Okay-- have I mentioned that whole "no such thing as a non-working mother" thing? YIKES! I mean... seriously. YIKES! Last three days have been a NIGHTMARE of run errands--and I'm declaring today a day off of aqua aerobics just so I can get some work done. And in the meantime, there has been children at school... and a curious sense of deja vu.



When Zoomboy started school, his older brother and sister were VERY interested in what he was doing. "How was school, Zoomboy? What are you learning? Do you like school?"



About the twelfth time someone asked him that he burst out with an anguished, "I wish you people would quit asking me that!"



Apparently school was best internalized before he decided to share the deets.



He's good with the deets NOW--can't share enough of them. But it took a long while of him just sort of putting on his potato face (all eyes) and experiencing his world.



So we were a little curious as to what Squish's reaction was going to be.



"Mom! Mom, I didn't say ANYTHING! I let the teacher talk the WHOLE TIME!" *whew* Many thanks for small mercies.



"Mom, I don't have a friend yet. I'm still looking." Well, I give her until she starts talking for THAT to change.



"Mom, we lay down and rest. I like that part." God, so do I!



"Mom, it's hot in the room. There's no cool in there." She's in a room with 30 other Kindergartners and no air conditioning. My rage is palpable, and it's all aimed at NCLB, and the fuckheads who distract the government from their real business by trying to legislate people's love lives and religious beliefs. Did ANYBODY in government attend public school? It should be mandatory that if THEY didn't, they have to send their children there for at least two years. 31 kids, a tiny room, no air conditioning. Un. Fucking. Forgivable.



And then, my absolute favorite to date:



"Mom, why don't we give teacher's apples? Like in the movies?"



"I don't know. Do you want to give your teacher an apple?"



"Yes. She's nice. She deserves a present."



Goddess love my little Squish. She's gonna be just fine.



And in other news...



Chris at Stumbling Over Chaos is having TWO contests. One for A Solid Core of Alpha and one for Clear Water. Stop in and say hi-- Chris is clever, she's got a line on EVERY funny link on the planet (her Friday posts are all about The Linkety) and her two cats rule the world. No, no... I'm serious--she named them Chaos and Mayhem for a reason. And you could win a free e-book, and NOT just mine:-)



And Zoomboy is now back on the lbp. Glory Hallelujia-- and it's funny. I never realized how big a difference it was making, until we tried to get him to TAKE IT. Dude--fifteen minutes of ordering his morning routine around swallowing one little brown pill, and you'll want to give your local pharmaceutical company a big hug, hu-normous co-pay or not!



And Big T needs to either clean my kitchen or get a job. I'm opting for cleaning my kitchen right now, but that never lasts long enough--I'll be opting for getting a job about five minutes after that.