A week ago I read about an amazing idea on my favorite blog, Sweet Juniper. I then did a little research and decided to do it right here in lil ole Kalamazoo. I posted the blog entry on my Facebook page and received a lot of positive feedback and organized a seed bomb party for today. Apparently, back in the day (like the 1970's), folks used to pack plastic easter eggs and holiday ornaments full of seeds and compost and throw them into abandoned lots and yards. They called themselves Guerrilla Gardeners. Today's versions of seedbombs seem to include far less plastic but the idea remains the same. There is a ton of information out there about the best way to do this but the one I enjoyed watching the best was this kooky Brit who seems to be at the "cutting edge" (so says Chad Boarman) of modern-day guerrilla garden-fare. Yes, despite what you might assume based on his hair, Richard Reynolds is, in fact, modern-day. The video is only 3 minutes long and worth it as I quickly fell in love with him and his grubby hands and Member's-Only jacket.
I began collecting seeds last week. I bought a few in bulk at our little local garden store and also started gathering up all the bits of seeds I had leftover from the years. I had a ton of sunflower seeds from the past decade. Who knows if they will sprout but this seemed like the perfect project in which to take the gamble.
I spent this morning calling around to all the craft stores in town as well as the big box home improvement stores but no luck. No one carries dry clay powder, apparently. I went back to Sweet Juniper's idea about using kitty litter. I was turned off by this originally because I have a strong aversive to touching anything cat-related but I decided that I needed to get over this--- for the sake of Green Things! I bought the cheapest box of kitty litter I could find. Who knew that there was ENTIRE aisle at Target dedicated to such a product? As it turns out, not too many of the initial excitement carried folks over here on a gray Monday afternoon. It was me and the kids and our friend Matt. We worked diligently with 1 part seeds, 1 part compost and 5 parts kitty litter. The kids did a great job of making little balls closely resembling chocolate donut holes. Tommy only had to taste the mixture twice to decide he didn't want to eat it.
After we made a ton of donut hole seed bombs, we "delivered" a few. Luna isn't the best at being stealth so we had quite a few conversations about why we had to be quiet and whether or not what we were doing was legal and/or right. I think she is well on her way to being a force to be reckoned within the world of social activism. The girl has some VERY clear ideas about what is right and wrong.
Here are a few photos of my kids committing their first act of civil disobedience. Go to hell, Mr. Waner.
This morning Suzy Homemaker (me) made the family oatmeal. I made the real kind that you have to get up a little bit early for and measure out and all that. (Admittedly, not a complex recipe but ANYTHING is complex for me before 9am--- I am NOT a morning person). I set out four colorful bowls. I scooped each person the appropriate serving size (biggest for me). I crumbled the correct amount of brown sugar on top, according to age and height. Then I topped each bowl with the tiniest bit of milk-- for flavor and to cool it down.
I served the bowls to the kids; they began eating heartily. Then I started working on my tea. I hustled around and put a ton of white sugar in my cup and the perfect amount of milk. Ummm.... then the milk curdled in my tea.
I looked at the kids' half-eaten bowls of oatmeal. I called Papa over for consultation. Yep. He dumped his immediately. I nonchalantly (yeah, right) took the kids' bowls away and tried my best to salvage the non-contaminated part of the oatmeal. I placed in in a new bowl and topped it with fresh milk from the unopended one in the fridge. Things started to get blurry. Seriously. I was so low on sugar. I only have about 15 minutes from when I first stand up to when I need food in my system and we were WAY outside that window. Of course, the caffeine headache was screaming at me too and here I needed to start a completely new kettle of water. Eventually, I sat down with my salvaged bowl of oatmeal. We ate it. We all seem OK.
The moral of the story: Thank goodness for my addiction to Lyons tea, for without it, I would have continued serving my kids spoiled milk and then who the hell knows what would have happened!
Here is sit trying to fill out paperwork to get an unemployment deferment for the student loans I still owe listening to Studs Terkel's Hard Times radio program on the Great Depression and thinking about how much I didn't learn back then. There are so many emotions contained in that very long run-on sentence.
I am thinking about these idiots from the Tea Party and wondering if they have ever met someone like me. I am sure they would think that a stay-at-home mother of two kids who has had her kids on Medicaid and has received WIC benefits must just be a loser. I am thinking that if we didn't have insurance and one of our kids got really sick, we would never be able to get out of debt. As it is, our deductible for our current insurance policy is $3000 so we would be hit pretty hard by anything other than a regular trip to the doctor's office. We pay $400/month out of pocket for our current plan--- apparently, we make too much to get Medicaid now that I receive unemployment benefits and my insurance coverage was cut off. We work so hard. We have everything we need. We really do. We are happy and I am not complaining. I do wonder who the hell these people are and what bubble they live in. In the past year 3 of my parents' 4 children have been unemployed and the 4th went to Colombia for a job! I want to spit in the faces of those ignorant Tea Party fuckers. That would prove to them that I am, in fact, not a loser at all. Ha!
I am thinking that I wasted so much time in college when I should have been educating myself by actually reading Studs Terkel. He came to MSU and James Madison students had a private audience with him and I might now even have gone. I was high as a kite at Noam Chomsky's talk with 15 other students from JMC. I was too young to know how important these people were and didn't care about history. DIDN'T CARE ABOUT HISTORY! I thought history was boring. Here I sit listening to stories recorded in the 1970's about the Depression. Here I am watching history repeat itself in this fucking country and feeling helpless and ignorant. I wrote about my recent obsession with old M*A*S*H episodes. God dammit if we aren't repeating that history over and over again. Let's send a bunch of young people across the world to get killed and maimed (inside and out) and why again? Why?
So, I married a guy with a passion for history (and a degree in it, too). Every so often I hear these pieces on NPR or read a novel about a time in our history I am completely ignorant to. We have these great talks about the books I was supposed to read in college that covered these topics and I start my education all over again every day. Today, I put The Grapes of Wrath on hold at the library because of what I just heard.
I am just kicking myself because I feel like I had some AMAZING opportunities for knowledge at James Madison, I really did. A short list of people who came to MSU and/or James Madison while I was there: Studs Terkel, Angela Davis, Sistah Souljah, Noam Chomsky, Tim O'Brien, various members of the Black Panther Party. Alas, I was 17 and can't feel too badly. College is wasted on the young. At least, this young one who is not so young anymore but is still paying loans for the education which she didn't receive all because of her lust of Oberon or the beach or road trips or sleeping in or silly boys. Of course, I married one of those silly boys I skipped classes with while drinking Oberon and sleeping in and taking road trips. That makes it all worth it.
History will repeat itself. Our children will most likely do some of the stupid things we did. God help me.
It started like many weekend mornings-- all of us padding around in our jammies while Papa read the newspaper. I started getting ready for the day and packing up all of our cold weather gear. The day before, it had been sunny and 65. We planned to head out to Kellogg Forest for their annual Maple Syrup weekend, even though it was only 30 degrees and gloomy. After some parental crankiness (towards each other) about our expectations for the day, we set off. It started snowing. In an attempt to maintain my idyllic version of our "family day", I suggested we turn around, stop at Mackenzie's for a sweet snack and head to the museum. All sugared up and happily playing at the museum, things seemed perfect. Then I heard it. The loudest THWACK I have ever heard followed by... wait, wait... WAHHHHHHH! In the one place on the planet completely designed for small people--- the preschool room at the children's museum--- our little guy bashed his head. He was in the small planetarium reading room area (really just a circular room smaller than our coffee table with a starlit ceiling). Apparently, he tripped over one of the reading pillows and stopped his entire body weight by ramming his forehead into a rounded screw on one of the beams. I grabbed him and knew he was REALLY in pain. It started bleeding immediately and as head wounds are known to do, bled and bled and bled. Before the blood really started gushing and getting stuck in his hair and dripping all over the floor, I looked closely at the wound and saw that it was the perfect little cross found only on a Phillips-head screw. There were a few minutes (seconds maybe) of wondering about going to the hospital and a concussion and all that. As it was, it bled a lot but was a relatively small wound so there was no need for stitches. Within a few minutes wherein he would NOT let me apply an ice pack, he wanted to go back to playing. He was fine, really fine.
Big sister and the rest of us, on the other hand, were obviously in shock. Luna just started screaming and did this on and off for a few hours. She did that terrified (not shrill) scream I associate with the subconscious screaming people do during nightmares. Even after we all knew he was OK, she was still struggling to cope. Stephen kept disappearing into one of the other rooms and leaving me with two screaming children. This idiot supervisor came to ask me a bunch of questions for her incident Report (I know her to be an idiot having nothing to do with her report). I finally told her she had to ask Stephen while I continued to attempt soothing both kids.
The other museum worker (the one in the kids' room who saw it all go down) was actually quite helpful. I liked her, even. And then she went and did it. "Do you think he wants a boy band-aid or a girl band-aid?" WHAT THE FUCK?! First of all, he is screaming and bleeding. I am looking for usefulness at this point. Second, he is a baby and has never watched any of your trashy shows that one finds on gender-specific everything. Third, what the fuck? Luna has been known to request the Cars Pull-ups. My 5-year-old knows enough about the use of language to say "the Pull-ups with the Cars on them" instead of "boy Pull-ups". Well, at least, she knows how to avoid a long lecture from her mother about such things. In the middle of screaming children, I start saying, "There is no such thing as a boy or girl band-aid. He is a baby with a head wound for God's sake!" (Could this be why Stephen left the room? Hmmmm....) After Tommy had settled down and I was trying to round up our things and get Luna calm, this idiot dad (he had proven himself an idiot several times in the previous hour I had watched him interact with his own children) stops Luna and me and starts in with some attempt at a joke. It was some stupidity about how Tommy will be fine because of the "guy motto". I just interrupted him and said, "That's not even funny at all." Luna and I just walked away. It was an action-packed day for us. It has been 4 days and Tommy's head looks great. A nice clean cut. Luna still gets weepy about it whenever we change his band-aid or look at it. She has said several times that she wishes she had fallen instead of her. This freaks me out on some Catholic guilt level but that is another blog entry entirely.
Tommy got to wear a ponytail all week--- mostly to keep his hair out of his wound but maybe just a little bit as a "fuck you" to all those "helpful people" we met last Saturday.
This morning, I got smacked in the face--- figuratively. In a matter of seconds, I became acutely aware of exactly what my mother felt for years, and may still. No matter how hard I work, no matter how giving I am, it will never be enough; it will never be appreciated. I realize this sounds very melodramatic and I don’t mean to do the whole martyr thing. However, it is true.
Let me back up. The kids were in bed with me this morning. At some point in the night, Stephen must have snuck out of bed to stretch out luxuriously in Luna’s twin bed. Granted, he doesn’t quite fit in it, but he did get it all to himself. He didn’t have to worry about someone waking up and falling out of bed if he had to go to the bathroom and he certainly didn’t have to sit up and nurse anyone on demand in the night. I digress.
There we were. In the early morning light, the kids were playing in bed while I tried to stay warm and horizontal as long as possible. Luna got the flashlight out and that was tons of fun---under the covers and on the ceiling. At some point, things started to get a little more exciting and I should have made the call at that point to get up. I didn’t. Tommy started swinging the flashlight all about. This is no ordinarily flashlight. This is a big black Maglight--- a 3-cell, weighing in at least 3 pounds.
Mind you, the kid has a huge gaping wound on his forehead from yesterday which all of us are much more concerned about than he appears to be. There were several audible gasps from Luna and me as he swung the flashlight closer and closer to the wound. I envisioned blood gushing all over again and my stomach did flip flops as he casually wielded this huge wand as if he were a kendo master-in-training.
I finally said something along the lines of, “Be careful, Tommy. I don’t want you to smack anyone with that thing, including me.” Without missing a beat, Luna replied calmly, “You are always just thinking about yourself, Mama.”
What the fuck? I repeat, WHAT THE FUCK? We were all just hanging out. What did I do to deserve that kind of shittiness? I’ll tell you what I did. I woke up early and played quietly with the kids while their dad slept soundly in the other room. I cut up the fruit last night for a huge fruit salad for breakfast. I planned out a healthy menu for the week while their dad looked at hockey scores on the computer. Can you tell where this is going? While Stephen slept, he became culpable in an anti-mama coup. Under attack, I felt like crawling under a very big rock and staying there and letting them all eat undercooked pancakes and go out with snarly hair and dirty teeth and wrinkled clothing. I wanted to stay under said rock while the bills piled up and the kitchen floor got filthy and the refrigerator got bare and the thank you notes were left unwritten and unsent and the lunchboxes remained empty and the children ran around in winter boots because no one else would dream of digging out the spring clothes.
I know my dear readers know that I am married to an awesome man. So… this entry will not be devoted to this. This is devoted to the idea that he is always, and will most likely remain forever, the good time guy. He is the fun one who never demands that anyone brush their teeth or put on clean underwear or a long-sleeve shirt on a very cold day. He is not the one who sorts through the ill-fitting and out-of-season clothes. He is not the one who plans the menu or goes to the grocery store or cooks the food. He is the one who “does the dishes” but is not the one who wipes down the counters or the table or scrubs the pots and certainly is not the one who puts them away.
Poor man is under attack himself and he was not even the one who lobbed the first grenade; the five-year-old with too much power did. He slept through the whole battle, which is, in fact, a reason for court-martial.
Back to the exciting battle. I will be honest. I pouted for a few minutes. I didn’t even respond. I got up and went to the bathroom and then she said something else: “C’mon, Tommy. Mama isn’t being very kind, is she?” Again with the WHAT THE FUCK? I hadn’t even said anything back to her but apparently, my pouting was loud. I turned then and did something so stupid and not at all in line with the communication skills have tried to teach over the years. I told her some dumb shit about how all I ever do is think about other people and I never get to do anything for myself and as this is coming out of my mouth, I am thinking that I have gone and done it. I have turned completely into my mother with the woe-is-me-aren’t-I-a-horrible-mother crap. My mother is a great mom. For real. In so many ways, I have learned to emulate what she does or has done. Every once in a while, she turns out this drama and makes things all about her. An example was when my oldest brother decided he was an alcoholic and needed to stop drinking. It was serious. We all knew he was an alcoholic and I saw it as a great thing. My mom, apparently, had been in complete denial and was SHOCKED by the whole thing. She went on and on for weeks about what a horrible mother she must have been to raise an alcoholic. Again with the WHAT THE FUCK?
Hmmmmmm…. I think I am digressing again. Suffice to say that a few hours and a long, hot shower later, I think I have a decent perspective on it all. My little stinker is in the business of testing her parents. That is her job. My job is to love her unconditionally. I know that I need to let her know that I have feelings and she needs to be careful with her words. However, I do not need to let her get to me like that. I do not need to pout or fly off the handle on her. I need to tell her that she hurt my feelings and that in our family we don’t talk to each other like that. I also need to be confident in my mothering and in myself (my Sarahing). I need to actually think of myself once in a while so if she says that again, there can be some truth to it. I need to hire a sitter once in a while so I don’t feel so overwhelmed all the time. I need to do yoga and I need to go for walks alone sometimes. I need to take better care of myself so that I am a better mama. So that on a Sunday morning when someone says something hurtful, it does not consume me completely.
We don't really have TV. We get a few weird stations but I do most of my TV watching online. I also check out items from our library and then there is no pressure. If I watch them, great. If not, I just return them.
I checked out Season 7 of M*A*S*H from our library last week and have been torturing myself with episodes here and there all week. If there is one television show that was a constant in my younger days, it was M*A*S*H. I watched it in "real time" when I was too young to know what was going on. What I did know was that it was something my entire family did together--- a show that my parents AND my teen-aged brothers liked. Later, I watched it in syndication. It seemed like it was on 4 times a day. As I got older, I got the humor (I now realize how much I missed) and the heaviness (thank goodness I missed a lot of that). I understood that it was funny and dark and a really well-made show. Mostly though, I understood that it was something all my siblings did together. We watched M*A*S*H before dinner (it ran at 5 and 5:30). While I whined about some of the other TV battles I lost (to crap shows like Gunsmoke), I genuinely liked M*A*S*H as well as any little 8-year-old could.
By the time I was in middle school, I embraced my dorkiness and challenged anyone I could find to a M*A*S*H quiz. Not surprisingly, I didn't find many takers. Nor did I find many people who could stump me.
This same dorkiness continued as an adult, as has my love affair with this show. I started watching it again a few years back on TVLAND when we had bootleg cable. It seems they often had M*A*S*H marathons and I would settle in with a box of tissues and my bag of pretzels. As an adult, I began to realize the depth of the show and the serious anti-war stance the producers took. I was amazed at the current-day relevance of so many of the topics tackled. The show just reminded me how fragile we all are and I just couldn't believe we had found ourselves in another one of these wars across the world for reasons lost on those fighting. Why do we keep doing this?
I have been watching them again (as our library recently acquired the entire collection, it seems). I keep going back to this feeling of being "at home". Hawkeye and B.J. feel like older brothers to me--- partly because I so closely associate this show with my own older brothers. It is a strangely comforting, yet melancholic feeling I get when I watch these old episodes. Last night I watched "Our Finest Hour". It was an episode which was done as a newsreel with a war correspondent featuring the 4077th. It ended up being a sort of "best of" episode. One minute I found myself laughing hysterically at the slapstick pranks they pulled on each other (shoe polish on Colonel Potter's binoculars so he had two black eyes). The next moment I started bawling my eyes out when Radar says he will remember one day when he goes home. Before he even starts to tell the story, I know he is going to remember the day Colonel Blake was discharged only to be shot down over the Sea of Japan. I cried and cried.
Tonight, I opted for a few more episodes of this weird mix of light-hearted laughter and depressing homesickness. I randomly chose this episode called "Dear Sis" wherein Father Mulcahy expresses feeling of uselessness in a Christmas letter to his sister (a nun). Of course, Father Mulcahy puts together a wonderful Christmas celebration. Hawkeye asks everyone to toast him and to show their gratitude, they had rehearsed a Latin hymn. Which Latin hymn, you ask? Oh, just the one that makes me cry every time I hear it. I just take it so literally. I sang it on a bus with Dominican nuns on our way to a peace rally in D.C. (BEFORE the Iraq War, if you can believe it). I sing it as a lullaby to my babies. I sang it lifetimes ago with my girls, Bridget and Becky, hoping for peace from that wacky Mr. K.
A week ago I read about an amazing idea on my favorite blog, Sweet Juniper. I then did a little research and decided to do it right here in lil ole Kalamazoo. I posted the blog entry on my Facebook page and received a lot of positive feedback and organized a seed bomb party for today.
