god complexes and mothers and doctors and what's in a name

Two things Isaac is obsessed with right now are world records and looking things up on the internet. As you might guess, these two passions combine to make for hours of entertainment for my son as long as there is an adult to tell him how to spell and read what pops up.

About as skilled as I am with finessing his search language, Isaac sees the computer as a kind of a boardwalk palm reader -- “Ask it 'What is the biggest baby ever born?' Type in, 'Who-is-the-person-with-the-longest-ever-mustache-ever-in-the-whole-entire-world-ever?'”

“Let's look up 'Who is the most important person in the world?'” he pleaded recently.

“Who would decide who the most important person was?” I ask, devil horns sprouting from my curls. “Most important for what? To whom?”

“You know, just most important.”

“But that's a complicated question. To Rhys right now I'm the most important person in his world. Without me, he doesn't eat.”

“No, but you know. The most important person, like, the president or...like that.”

“Rhys doesn't care about the president.”

“Forget it,” my six-year-old says, and, disgusted with me, stalks off.

I can't decide if I should be happy or nervous that our surgeon carries the name of a mythical deity. I can't decide to be grateful or not when our cardiologist squeezes in a voicemail to me “between meetings” and inquires as to my “availability.” Why “between feedings,” dear doctor.

Etymologically speaking, there is this --

doctor = c. 1300 “Church father”

mother = Proto-Indo-European, from “ma,” meaning breast

Latin - mater

Greek - meter

French - mère

German - Mutter

Russian - mate

Icelandic - modher

Sanskrit - mata

Irish - mathair

Welsh - mam

Arabic - oum

Hebrew - em

Swahili - mama

Chinese - ma

Hawaian - makuahine (maka first, beloved < *ma-k Proto-Polynesian, the mother (?) + wahine woman)

I've decided to spare you the ins and outs of how we came to this point, but know it is hard-won: Surgery date - December 9.

some soundbites from the last few weeks

(looking out the window as we fly to a layover stop in Las Vegas)

“Is that a desert?”

“Yup.”

“A REAL LIVE desert??”

“Yes.”

“Camels?”

“No camels.”

“---.”

(at the rehearsal dinner for my friend's wedding, with an awful cold and knowledge of desserts ahead)

“Momby? It's weawy hard to breab.”

“We need to leave, Isaac, and put you to bed.”

“Whab aboud da tweats?”

(while getting dressed for the wedding the clip-on tie in one hand, holding up the untied tie in the other)

“This one's broken!”

(explaining his recent clingyness through the music & rhythm instruction he's gotten at school – learning basic four-beat bars, “ti-ti” = eighth notes, “ta” = quarter note)

“You've been wanting a lot of Mommy cuddles lately, huh? Do you know why?

“You know how there's “Ti-Ti Ta Ta Rest? Well, you're the Rest!”

(when his video clip wouldn't play on the computer)

“Click again!”

“Honey, I've clicked a hundred times; it doesn't want to work.”

“Punch the computer then!”

“Believe me, that method's been tried.”

(playing demolition with his blocks)
"Everything was wiped out! There was a WIND STORM! A THUNDERSTORM! A HURRICANE! A TOMATO!"

down by the river...take two

“You know, I think it's about time we start looking for a house.” My son said this to me casually enough the other day while we were driving in the car. He means in Massachusetts. Since as much as we all like the school we saw 50 minutes north of here, we can't seem to reconcile the housing prices, neighborhoods, etc for the life we want. We've told him that.

He's not all that thrilled with the idea of moving across the country. He's told us that too. He's been fragile and regressive and generally difficult. It's a lot of unknowns. But he's a realist. Appealing to logic with Isaac has long been a strategy we rely on with him. It works. My son and I are different in that way. And so, he's trying to move his mind forward to a Massachusetts life.

Isaac is, as usual, right. About the house that is. We need to find a house. Problem is not much has been coming through what with that pesky little winter thing going on out there.

We have, however, been checking out vans and other odd vehicles that we might use to drive across the country to our new life we think, maybe, sort of, we will probably, we're not sure, be going to, like this summer, or, not, but well, likely, in a way. (See how much closer we've moved to a decision! Our resolve is stunning.)

The imaginative play is always the first give away to what they're thinking about. “Okay, these people are homeless,” Isaac instructs his dad as they both lie bell down on the living room rug, a dozen or so Matchbox-sized cars and trucks between them. “They live in their camper van.” I've already posted the Chris Farley bit on living in a van down by the river on this blog, so that punchline's out.

valid question

Isaac: "Which do you think is smarter, an elephant or a zebra?"

Me: "I don't really know, bud, but if I had to guess off the top of my head, I'd say elephant."

Isaac: "So, what's on the bottom of your head?"

almost six years old

In a week that included discussions of who Martin Luther King, Jr and Cesar Chavez were, and why grandmom was cremated and not buried, and how anyone knows what the center of the earth is like, and if dogs or cats can see better, and why hurricanes don't come to where we live, and are we sure?, and whether alligators are omnivores... there was also the following conversation, which reminds me once again that children require simple answers, not because they are simple, but because there is just so much freaking else to get on with.

"Do Lily and Emma have a dad?"

"Nope. They have two moms."

(concerned look, big sigh) "So, I have a question..."

"Yes?"

"Do computers know EVERYTHING in the whole entire world??"

the hummingbird that watches over our house

"I guess when we leave here he'll move on," Mike says matter-of-factly one day watching him perched in the tree outside our bedroom window.

"Why would he do that?" I ask.

"Well," he says turning, as if the answer were already obvious, "because he's our hummingbird."

Chaos Code Orange

Kitty: I can't find the glue.

Mike: Well, isn't it next to the blender?

Kitty: Whaddaya know, there it is. Thanks.

These Days

Isaac: These days I've seen people with shopping carts. I mean, not at stores, just people have them, like they must have bought them. Have you seen that man that sits on the ground and he has like hundreds of blankets in a shopping cart?


Me: Yes. That man has those blankets because he doesn't have a home. He uses them when it's cold if he had to sleep outside. 

Doesn't have a home?


He's homeless. Some people choose that life, but other people are homeless because they are having a hard time. Maybe they don't have family to go to or the money to get somewhere to stay. 


He must have friends, though!


Let's hope so.


Because you don't need money to have friends!

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. With much gratitude for all we have, for you and for my son whose wit, innocence, and intuitive intelligence knock me off my feet by the hour. And who has inspired from me so much writing.

for the love of produce

“It's beautiful!” exclaims my son. “Look at it!”

He is referring to a carrot.

I am speechless. Overcome with joy and pride. It's worked. All that time other children spent at the park, or soccer practice, my boy was in training at the farmer's markets.

My work is done here. Thank you. Good night. 

We've come a long way, baby.

having kids is a series of ups and downs

The End of the Dinosaurs: a Shakespearean-like Tragedy, by Isaac

(Scene: Earth. Post-apocalyptic asteroid hit)

(Cast of Characters: Dinosaurs; Baby Frog)

And then, all the ones with wings started picking up the smaller, defenseless dinosaurs and taking them to safety!

Wow! That's so nice!.

But the dust was too thick (Cough! Cough!). They were choking. Then, another rock the size of (drops voice to a dramatic whisper) the whole entire Universe falls (raises voice to top volume again) CRASHING FROM THE SKY!!! KA-GUSH- BA-FOOOM!!

That sounds bad, dude.

But there was one baby dinosaur... (attempts to cram small dino into a plastic egg, but seeing it doesn't fit abandons it for a stretchy frog)...No, no! A baby FROG is left.

A baby left! Yay!

And the ash is everywhere! And the asteroid sucked away all the gravity and turned it into lava, and, and...

???

The baby frog hatches in the air.

Go baby frog! Way to survive!

But then, when it leaves the egg it lands right on top of the volcano and it burns up!

I think our days have evolved from Christopher Robin and Pooh to Calvin and Hobbes.

I don't know what you're talking about, Mommy, but get out of the way – the volcano is still erupting!!

school search - part VI

There is a hair cutting school in my neighborhood where you can get walk-in five-dollar cuts. It's a good deal, if students with scissors don't make you too nervous and if you have some extra time (cuz these cats are trying to get it right...). I took Isaac there to get the hair off his ears and out of his eyes.

While waiting in the reception area, the young man who would be our hair dresser for the day approached and introduced himself. Before he could lead us to the hair chair, however, a woman stopped him to ask for his urgent help. The dryer her mother was sitting under was too hot and was beginning to scorch her scalp. The man turned down the heat dial and confirmed with the customer that the new temperature was good for her. Before leaving them, he addressed the daughter. “If it heats up too much again, just turn this dial to a lower number,” he said, pointing out the huge white markings on the chair's controls affixed in plain sight. “Oh,” replied the woman, as if this were new and strange technology she wouldn't dare have thought to tamper with. “Okay.”

Now, nothin for nothin people, and with all due respect for the 10 months these hair folks spend studying how to give perms and fool your friends with extensions, did that woman seriously not think it was within her own power to turn down the heat? Did she never investigate? Did the mother never consider removing her head from the assaulting burn? Are we so helpless as a species? Such obedient sheep to follow along until we are in physical danger or worse? Such rule followers as to be completely out of touch with our own instincts?

I have two major concerns about public schools and they have nothing to do with academics. The first is demonstrated above. We think that “discipline” issues are bad in schools, but consider this blog to weigh in on the problem of obedience, the lost art of free thinking.

So, Isaac gets his booster seat and settles in for an hour-long cut. (Don't try this at home folks!) The poor thing was having to pull out every little bit of hard-earned Montessori concentration to sit there in the chair. I wasn't any less fidgety since I was pretty certain I was going to die of bad pop music while there and kept swiveling this way and that hoping to find the radio switch to smash.

Of course, we did have plenty of time for conversation, the young man and I at least, since Isaac was refusing to speak. During that time I made sure to point out to my son his hair dresser's Barbie pink fingernails.

Isaac has been very influenced by a couple friends, who don't even live in the area anymore, but whose rigid ideas of gender they managed to pass on quite successfully on some level to my son.

(“I'm not going to have an earring when I grow up. I'm going to be a real boy!” he once said to me. Images of Pinocchio in a sterling earcuff float through my mind. WTF??)

I learned that hair dresser guy, had a Halloween party for his birthday every year, since it fell at the end of October and that this year he was going to be a pirate. I also learned that he was graduating next month. And finally, I learned that he was born and raised in Salinas, which caused me to have to stop myself from grabbing his arm, the one with the black rubber bracelet that said “Vanity,” and blurting out, “Oh my god! That must have been terrible for you!” Salinas, California, known as it is for its associations with Steinbeck, big agriculture, and gang violence, isn't quite as note-worthy in its general ideas of tolerance.

Which brings me to problem number two in the public schools: a lack of emphasis on compassionate social interaction and integration.

I mean, let's face it people. We are at war. What do we have to teach our kids about empathy or cooperation? Gee, can't imagine why bullying is a problem...

I'm planning on going as my worst nightmare for Halloween this year: a soccer mom. “Are you gonna scream a lot?” my friend asked me, “Because you need to scream a lot.” (Capri Sun, anyone? Pictures to follow.) While I went searching for a blonde bob wig in the drug store the other day to round out my costume, my gentle, loving son battled an invisible victim with a bloody plastic hatchet, behavior I find all the more disturbing since the kid's only ever watched a few hours of television in his life and most of that consisted of Dinosaur Train and the Olympics. You might find it odd that I connect fumbling foreign policies, youth sports teams, dumby weaponry and the absence of kindness, and if so, then, I still have more convincing to do. Later. Just how I like to think about where to send Isaac to school next year. Later.

found out

Iz: Do we have any cardboard? I want to make a sign.

Me: What kind of sign?

Iz: One that says, "Please Don't Park In the Driveway" so Daddy won't drive on the beautiful chalk mural I'm going to draw.

(After obtaining cardboard and pen, we sit on the front step...)

Me: (writing) "P-L-E-A-S-E... Dddd-Oooo-Nnnn-Tttt...  Hmm. "Park." How do you think I'd spell "Park?"

Iz: Pppp P!

Me: Okay. And Aaarrr...Aaarrr...

Iz: ??

Me: A-R...

Iz: A-R!

Me: What would "Park" end with?

Iz: K!

Me: Oh, right - K. Oh, and Isaac, wait til you see -- "Drive" has one of those silent E's!

Iz: Hey! Are you trying to learn me to read??

Me: Wouldn't think of it, kid.

texting makes the world go round

Mike and I are happily behind when it comes to the new all-the-rage gadgets. We do not own a TV, much less an ipod or an iphone. The phones we do have are lame models with limited plans. The fact that Mike's can take pictures is purely accidental. Mine is so basic I'm lucky it has keys. With no cover there is always a danger something will ring up by accident. Just the other day I heard a little voice I thought I recognized coming from my purse. “Hello? Hello?” I dug around for the phone to discover that it had called my friend Angela all on its own. Apparently when it crank calls, it starts with the beginning of the alphabet.

“I've been thinking about you,” she says when I get on the line. “What do you need right now?” This is a far cry from most of what I hear – questions into my well-being that are really about the speaker, prying questions I don't want to answer, or promises to “be there for me any time” -- right after they get back from some extended vacation. It is from a woman versed in crisis herself. Late this spring, Angela's house burned down. With her dog in it. It's been a hell of a year for both of us.

Anyway, Mike and I just don't use our phones that much or for very much. So when Mike's phone rings two and three times in a night, we know something is up. Usually it's Lakota man. Mike started getting the texts from the Lakota medicine man from L.A. a few months ago. A wrong number he kindly wrote back to and informed of same. But Lakota man has yet to figure out the details of the similarity in the numbers and the messages keep coming. Mike ends up with all kinds of interesting information.


We saw awesome UFO @ drum practice Fri. We were practicing Yuwipi songs and saw these 2 amazing see-thru silent UFOs. Nice!

Mike writes back and tells him, he's got the wrong person again.


Youch! LOL! I apologize.

But a couple days later he gets another.


Come to this peyote ceremony with me tonight.

Mike writes back: I'd like to, but you've dialed the wrong # again.

And gets: Maybe it's no mistake. LOL. Call me and let's see if it's fate. Maybe Creator is trying to tell us something.

I hear Creator has the new iphone 4.

saving him from himself

We interrupt this grieving process to bring you our regularly scheduled program, already in progress. A geek and a poet sit at home gearing up to finally enjoy a quiet hour or two together, their son asleep, no obligations pressing.

Mike: (excitedly) “I think I'm going to be immortalized on Route 1! The Google Maps car passed me.”

Kitty: (displaying limited interest) “Really?”

Mike: “Yeah, I'm almost sure my car got in one of the shots.” (reaches for the laptop)

Kitty: “I am not sitting here while you search for a little blue Honda on Google Earth.” (makes to get up)

Mike: (shutting lap top) “Right. Thanks.”

Kitty: “Any time.”

(I'm a dork when it comes to embedding. So strip credits = www.dilbert.com. Thank you, Scott Adams.)

words and pictures

I can remember a day when Isaac was about three. He was leaning over the back of the love seat in the garage (uninsulated family room anyone?). I asked him what was back there. “Oh, random items,” my toddler replied.

His articulation lags somewhat, e.g., he still announces things like, “A-tend it's 'nowing, and we're may-ting 'now angels...,” but his communication skills have been well advanced from day one.

He was still a tiny thing once when we were at my mom's and he was amusing her by arranging cereal into an empty egg carton. The next day he wanted to eat that kind of cereal and when I brought him the wrong kind, he ran for the egg carton, pointed, then pointed to his mouth. I got it.

We taught him basic sign language early on that he picked up instantly. Sometimes it was even hard knowing what my baby was thinking. Like when a nasty diaper rash came up and at each changing he'd press together the tips of his index fingers – the sign for “pain.”

When he began to speak, he was aware of the gap between how words were meant to sound and how they came out of his mouth: “This stick a trane, mama! Not train choo-choo, trane like has arm and picks things up.”

As he grows, it's his vocabulary and command of the language that blows me away. It does a writer-mama's heart good. “Let's consider our options,” Isaac might say to me. Or, “Wow, mommy the hood of the car is glistening in the sun! Isn't it stunning?” While I might not choose to describe a car as “stunning,” my five-year-old clearly would, and damn if anything out of my mouth ever “glistened” until I was maybe a decade beyond him.

Books, of course, are held in high esteem in our house, the default source from which I imagine him gleaning in depth knowledge and words. However, in my current state of insanity and sadness, I have relied more heavily than ever on videos. We have no TV and there was a day when the only thing Isaac knew of video was learning sign language through it. My son, the one who I used to try to make sit in front of the hotel TV until I got out of the shower but would cover his ears and run away in anticipation of the oncoming conflict in the Clifford episode, now runs to my laptop after school yelling, “PBS kids dot org! PBS kids dot org!” I can't say I don't feel kind of guilty about this.

My personal favorite is “Sid the Science Kid.” Though Isaac's been OD-ing on “Dinosaur Train.” I am ashamed to admit that there have been a couple afternoons recently when I simply loaded up the cartoons, left him on the couch and crawled into bed. The one consolation is that I realize he is learning things from these shows. Including vocabulary. Hears it once and he owns it.

After one day of too much screen, I turned it off and convinced him to come outside - likely more for my sake than his - and we were in the garden when I pointed out a large spider walking up his shirt. “That's okay,” my son said lightly brushing it off, “it's prolly not venomous.”

after

“Home. There was nothing to do but collect my suitcase and wade into it.”

-- from The Mermaid Chair (Sue Monk Kidd)

 This was the marquee of the church in front of my house when I arrived back in California.

Another crying fit over seemingly nothing.

“Do you think you're missing grandmom?” I ask.

He nods.

“But I'm not missing the castle!” he says through tears. The castle is the Playskool Castle with dragon and dungeon and wee royal family that I had as a little girl. It lived at my mom's house. Isaac adores it.

“The castle is coming to me!”

I am not quite sure if this is him reassuring himself with something he loves, that he's looking forward to, or if maybe it's his way of finally admitting he knows these two things – his grandmom and the castle – are separate entities. That it is possible for one to exist while the other is gone. New territory for him. Kind of like the concept of home feels like for me. How to separate it from mom?

I hate the town where I grew up. I could elaborate on my feelings of loathing, but let's just leave it there. I visited “home” to see my mom. Can there be “home” without her? What is any stronger sense of home than mom? Our first home.

From inside that vessel

that before him I could never have envisioned

providing anyone: the body-- my body-- as home,

a concept so foreign. Me, a base, a safe place

to be...

(from my poem “Could I Hear the Wind?”)

I feel like I am falling. Perpetually falling. There is no ground.

****

It is two weeks ago and I am in Big Sur with Isaac, we have fled there for the afternoon to escape other painful experiences that began this month, trying to dissolve them in the beautiful river, the soft red bark. My phone lights up with my sister's number, then, cell service sketchy at best, the call is lost. I just spoke to her that morning and I wonder if maybe she hit the call button again by accident. If only.

I arrive home to the news of my mother's heart attack. She is in ICU and she is sedated.

I tell Isaac in simple terms. Grandmom is in the hospital. She is very sick.

Isaac gets the concept of death about as well as any five-year-old can. He is well aware he already has a grandfather on the other side. And he has lost a cat. We talk about them. We talk about spirits. About ancestors. He puts one of his plastic horses on my altar next to the rose petals and the pictures of my grandmothers.

As the week progresses I tell him there is a chance his grandmom might die. He begins to cry.

“But what will happen to her stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“What will happen to the stuff in her house if she dies?”

“Then your aunts and uncle and I will sort it out and keep things we'd like and give things away that other people can use.”

The crying intensifies.

“But...”

“What stuff are you thinking of, Isaac?”

“The castle!”

“I bet Grandmom would want you to have the castle.”

The castle remained the focus of his concern through the week, along with how doctors don't think it's yucky when they cut someone open and whether you can keep your clothes on if you have an operation.

****

“From the moment he'd seen the mermaid chair, he'd loved Senara, not just for her mythic life in the sea but for how supposedly she'd heard the prayers of Egret Islanders and saved them, not only from hurricanes but from golf courses.”

-- from The Mermaid Chair

“Tailing the Stars,” one headline read the day I left. I felt murderous. “Tiger vs. Himself,” said another. Indeed, he can definitely go fuck himself.

The US Open in Monterey = I'm lucky to have gotten off this bloody peninsula for under $2500 in trying to get to my mother's death bed. If you ask me, wealth is really wasted on the rich and, surely, there is a special place in hell for golfers.

They had already pretty much lost me when they canceled the farmer's market for US Open parking. Not that the “official” US Open SUVs I encountered around town could actually park. The banners were everywhere as the shuttle drove me out of town: “Welcome Golf Fans!!” They might as well have just hung red lights in all the restaurants and businesses since it essentially comes down to whoring ourselves for the almighty tourist dollar.

I'm done with Monterey. And even as I say that there is a part of me that wants to cling mercilessly to its crumbling rock cliffs, its exotic beauty. But it's time for us to move on. We have been plotting a move for a long time now, and if things go as planned (ha!), it will happen in the first part of next year. The painful piece is that we are moving east. Not to Jersey, but still, we would have been closer to my mom, so much closer.

When I originally told my mom about our plans, you might think she would have responded like so many other mothers and grandmothers. Something to the tune of “Oh! It would be so great to have you closer!” What my mom said was, “Oh! I can't imagine you taking Isaac away from the California coast!”

My mother was difficult to sort out. She put up an ultra-casual, laid-back attitude. Nothing was ever a problem and there was always a next time. Too often I began to believe her hype. I regret that.

****

My mom insisted she was ready to go. And though I was not at all ready to see her go, nor was I prepared for the compression of time – arrive, talk to her about this and that like always, leave the room and return as she took her last breaths – I'm doing my best to take in the fact that this is part of the package. 

I am confused by the people who express their sympathy in ways that would imply it was all unnecessary, a complete surprise. The morning of my mother's heart attack she posted what would be her final blog, about memories, family, about her life. There are pictures on her camera from that afternoon, likely only a couple hours before she dialed 911. They are of her garden. There is life and there is death. We all share this cycle. No one is exempt. I wish I could say I felt as my mom did, that it didn't frighten me, but I'm not there yet. What I do get is that we are all meant to help each other along the way. We are just all meant to help each other. Can it be that hard?

The day before I got on a plane headed for home, for I didn't know what, for a panicked call from my sister (“You need to come straight to the hospital!”) as I waited to see if they'd pluck my name from the stand-by list for an earlier connection, only to be stuck anyway in a two-hour delay in Chicago due to a wicked lightning storm, the precipice to a season of storm, of meltdowns, that is only still just beginning, I had been climbing around on a rocky beach, exploring the Pacific tidepools with Isaac. The juxtaposition is jarring, though I clutched my cell phone through the low tide, though I never really forgot what was going on on the other coast..

It was a class I'd signed him up for ages ago, to have a little more information on the itty-bitty creatures in their wildly elaborate eco-system and a break from preschool, something special to do with his mom. There were about eight three - six-year-olds there with their parents watching crabs and touching sea anemones.

this and the next shot were taken by Isaac. ("I'm like Grandmom. I like to take pictures.")

About half-way through the class, as our troupe clamored over boulders avoiding limpets and barnacles, another five-year-old who happened to be next to me instinctively reached out and took my hand for balance. And I, instinctively, let him. His father couldn't stop apologizing. I kept brushing him off, telling him it was no problem, but he was embarrassed somehow, not willing to let it go. He didn't get it. He didn't get the fact that, for godssakes, we are all in this together.

school search part IV

There is a school where Isaac goes every night while we sleep. He does his best not to wake us, then gets on his dad's bike and rides 50 miles to Big Sur where he meets his friends and Secret School commences.

It's been about five months, I'd say, that we've been hearing about Secret School. There are special keys involved – usually bits of plastic we find around that have no known origin. “That's my key to Secret School!” Isaac will shriek, and dive for it before it his the trashcan.

By all accounts Secret School is a very special place. Very fun. And, of course, very secret. He can't really tell us all the things that go on there. We wouldn't understand anyway.

His preschool teacher has a theory on Secret School. You see, there are five of them – the Fab Five I call them – who've been together now since, well, yes, since they were in diapers. Isaac, two other little boys his age, and a pair of sisters. Theses days, they are the cool cats. The older group at school. Inseparable. We take them to the park and they slide down the slides holding hands. (Yes, I forgot my camera, thank you very much.) And now it seems the group is breaking up. The sisters are moving. The other boys are going to a different kindergarten experience next year while Isaac will stay where he is.

This week is the last for most of them to be all together. Really, it's nothing short of heartbreaking. They've known it was coming, and Isaac's teacher believes that Secret School is their way of staying together. No matter where they live or where they go to school by day, by night they run the show, hanging out among the redwoods, learning only the fun stuff, no grown up rules, nobody has to leave.

Sometimes in the mornings, Isaac will ask us, “Did you hear me 'neak out for Secret School??” Or he might report on who wasn't able to be at Secret School, or even a guest speaker that showed up at Secret School. This morning the story was a new one.

“I didn't go to regular Secret School last night,” he told us.

“Oh, really?”

“Everybody else, they went to the usual Secret School, but I went to a different Secret School. Just to check it out.”

“To check it out, huh?”

“Yeah, you know, see what it was like.”

“And how was it?”

“Good. A lot of the things were the same.”

“There were different kids there though?”

“Yeah. One kid talked like a pirate. You know, 'Get the booty!' Stuff like that.”

“Hmm. So you think you're gonna go to this new Secret School?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

the joy of discovery

"I just discovered something, Mommy. Wipe-off markers don't wipe off wood."

remember when you had all the time in the world?

"Mommy, I'm counting to infinity."

"Oh, yeah?"

"What comes after one million twenty-five?"

"One million twenty six."

(mumble, mumble) "Thirty-two..." (mumble) "I'm mixed up. I'm just gonna start again. One, two, three..."

international attire

Back in October, I dared try to have a long weekend with an old girlfriend of mine I hadn't seen in too long. Like a real live, off on my own, took a plane to get here, vacation. I felt awful the whole flight there and once I was snug in our hotel room, I proceeded to get violently ill and stay that way for most of our trip. This is where the “old friend” part comes in handy because I'm reasonably certain that she's still speaking to me. We can just chalk it up to another “remember that time when...”

On the way home – prior to the experience of coming within a hair of being bumped off the plane I had reserved months in advance because, well, I still don't know why really, they mumbled something about change of aircraft and wanting to screw over their paying customers, I think – I endured the wrath of the TSA agents. Okay, I'm lying, they were actually very pleasant; we just had a difference of opinion. Whereas I thought that the kitschy, yet age-appropriate snowglobe I'd purchased for my son as a gift posed no threat to our fine homeland, they thought the 2 ounces of water within it created a security risk.

And so I had a choice. (Have you noticed that whenever anyone states that you have a choice it means you don't really have a choice?) I could either throw it away, or dump out the water. I envision these same people saying things like, “You can either set the teddy bear on fire, or slice him open and tear out all the stuffing,” then smiling like the Grinch.

Fine. I'll dump the water. One problem. Couldn't get the rubber stopper out. After all, trashy tourist gift or not, the water is meant to stay IN the snowglobe. One of the kind TSA agents tried to help. When he couldn't get it open with his fingers he attempted it by using the dental pick he had in his pocket. (Apparently a drop of water in a toy is a problem, but not a red flag on hygiene issues.) No luck. Another agent came to see what all the fuss was about. He tried too. Nope. At one point, I had three TSA agents trying to release the water from my kid's snowglobe. People could have been smuggling palettes of dynamic by us, but by god! those agents were dedicated to their snowglobe detail. Finally, one of them managed to open the plug and there it all went in the trash, glitter escaping with the water.

At home, it was interesting to try to explain to Isaac why the people at the airport wanted to drain his globe. Nonetheless, we headed to the craft store to pick out some new glitter. We filled it with green and orange sparkly glitter that made it look a bit like an acid rain nightmare but pleased my son to no end. We then added that dastardly water and replugged. A gleeful Isaac carried it across the kitchen to dry it at which point it slipped out of the towel, fell to the tile and broke.

Which just goes to show...I have no moral to the story. None. It's pretty much like most every story I've encountered that begins and/or ends with the airlines. It reminds me of that Lewis Black routine about Starbucks which I quote often: “It's expensive, but at least the lines are long!”

In our recent dealings with the airlines I have had long heart-felt conversations with supervisors at multiple companies' 1-800 lines about things like seats. It's this crazy idea I have that I'd prefer to sit with my family on our trans-continental/trans-Atlantic flight. (Though to be honest, the last time I was separated from my boys I read a whole book cover to cover! A whole book! On the plane! When I informed the man next to me as we landed of this fact, he was not impressed, as I'm sure, dear readers, you, being empathetic, vibrant people must certainly be. Why are we so rarely placed next to empathetic, vibrant people when dangling 35,000 feet above the planet when they'd likely come in handy?)

So, we're going to Ireland. (Don't except bloggedy blogs for a bit.)

Now there are many reasons to want to go to Ireland and we've collected several of them, and we're going. There you have it.

As some of you may know, my favorite color is orange. I am the woman who, when glancing around her living room plotting decorations for Halloween, simply threw up her hands, since there was nothing she could really do that would alter the normal color scheme.

Some of you may also know, that there is a thing about orange in Ireland. Something to do with William of Orange (a Protestant) defeating King James (a Catholic) in the Battle of the Boyne 320 years ago. 3-2-0. We'll see if they let me squeak by. Cuz the countdown is on for this not-so-little adventure and once I am again on the ground and free of airline insanity, I don't need one more thing.
I'll leave you with this from Isaac, learning about subtraction:

K: So what's 10 minus 1?

I: 9

K: What's 9 minus 1?

I: 8

K: 8 minus 1?

I: 7

K: 7 minus 1?

I: 9...No! Um, 6?

K: Yeah, we're still working on that circle on the top, circle on the bottom thing, huh? Okay, 6 minus 1?

I: 5

K: 5 minus 1?

I: 4

K: 4 minus 1?

I: 3

K: 3 minus 1?

I: 2

K: 2 minus 1?

I: 1

K: 1 minus 1

I: Blast Off!!

Bon Voyage to us. See you all in a couple weeks.