We went out for Fangsgiving for the first time in um….well more than 7 years. The Bean was sad at first said it wouldn’t be “the right way,” but we convinced her that it needed to be this way this year. After snuggles and some tears it was fine.

We went to the Clarion, which I am happy to say–my food is better, so I have actually learned a thing or two about cooking after not being able to boil water in my early 20s–but it was fine. The desserts were way better than I could do, and the rest put us nicely into a coma. It wasn’t as festive as it can be at home, but everyone had other plans this year so it was the best decision.

Afterwards we all came home and put on our ‘big pants’ and chose up napping places. Except Bean, she was still pretty bouncy, so she played on her computer for a bit, J did some WoW and I looked for a costume drama on the tv. Not too long after Bean came downstairs and wanted a snuggle and so I turned on the new age musis channel and she nestled down in my arms. Pretty soon Babbage, Haru and Bartleby showed up and found places on us to curl up. And I thought as my eyes closed how grateful I was to NOT have a silly amount of homework to do and to be able to guiltlessly snuggle with my darling child and 3/5 of our cat population. It was lovely.

I just finished making a Halloween cake (white cake with orange and black sprinkles) because Em really wanted me to cook something today, which was really sweet. Eventually tonight we’ll have some, but we’re still full!

My thankful list? The Bean and J–my friends old ones and new ones. For new challenges and for eventually having no regrets. For cats all too many of them, including the purry new boy. For family in all its forms.

I’m going to start with the happy first. I don’t want to start with the sad or I’ll write two lines and stop.

It’s been too long since I’ve been here! I’ve been writing in my private journal and writing papers. Lots of papers. I haven’t written papers, well since last semester, but honestly since 1994 when I finished my thesis! And I get to do that again. I think I must be mad, barking mad.

So yes, did I mention I’m back in graduate school? Apparently one master’s degree wasn’t enough. I’ve finished one semester, I have 2 more to go. It’s an accelerated program, you get your degree and lose your mind faster than you would normally. I am really enjoying it, it’s fantastic to be in school, as hard as it is to be graded again I love having my mind moving around a different track–one that is familiar enough but still novel. Grades so far are good too and my praxis score was excellent. I still have to take the essay portion and pedagogy. Strangely I’m more worried about the former than the latter. I have to start re-reading a lot of books.

I’ve got my first rotation assignment too and I couldn’t be more pleased. I really love writing (as a few of you know who have been around since I started the first incarnation of this blog in in 1998) and I get to be a part of a writing workshop classroom. My mentor is beyond cool. Yes I should probably upgrade my vocabulary and start sounding more like the adult I am, but I feel giddy, about like I’m 25 again. I’m just excited about what I’m going to learn and strangely about how difficult it is going to be. It’s grand to be challenged again. I don’t look forward to falling on my face, as I know I will, but do anticipate victories minor and major.

It is odd being back in my old junior high. I’ve been gone from Fayetteville for so long and back only a little while really and to find ghosts still around a corner here and there is surprising, a little sad and strangely soothing. The ghosts mean I did exist here and the fact that they are so dim, so very easy to see through, barely wisps means that the hurt of that time has faded. The fear and insecurity and yes even memories of the cruelty of those years is a memory now and one that doesn’t hurt to touch. I can take it out and examine it, not quite as a treasure from a long ago buried time capsule, but nearly so, nearly so.

Bean has gone to camp this summer and the difference is that she’s had to. Mommy is no longer around 24/7 but has other obligations now. This of all things, including facing those teenage ghosts, has been the hardest thing of all. Not starting back into school so many years after getting my masters, not trying on a new career path, not even making myself more extroverted. The hardest thing has been not being able to drop everything and run off on an adventure with Bean. When she was bullied by some horrid nine year olds (and the language! was! apalling!) for a time this summer (yes we dealt with that swift and sure–what happened to me WILL NOT happen to her) my guilt knew no bounds. When she jumped on me and said “mommy I need some quality and quanitity time right now,” I laughed and felt a bit sad. She’s adapted very very well. She’s a social biscuit, much moreso than her father or I am, but it is hard to let go of the days of being everything to her. I want to slow time so much but each day brings something remarkable from her so I don’t pull out my wand and make the world stop spinning.

There’s more coming I hope more frequently. I want to keep a better journal of this aventure so that when I really am a grown up and have my own classroom I can remember the road that got me there.

And here’s a picture from the middle of the last semester. My hair needs help, big help in this Arkansas humidity. Of course Haru’s fur is flawless.

I can’t believe the Bean has been with us for six years. It seems like yesterday that she was my little round headed baby with the dandelion hair. Then my muddy toddler, into everything with both hands and a big giggle. My preschooler covered in paint and chocolate. But now she’s my almost first grader, the princess of why and junior bedtime litigator. I’m constantly amazed by how much she changes every day and how much we change to make sure she has the guidance and protection she needs. She told me this morning, as she has many times “I was born and made you parents, poof just like that.” And it’s true and she makes us moreso every day.

5 to 6 hasn’t been the easiest, not just for the losses we’ve had but for her departure from the garden of innocence. Really that happens with kindergarten when our children have to navigate more of their days away from us than with us. They really are learning to deal with the world more as it is than as we would have it. There are kids who have more, who have less, who are happy or angry. There are kids who are obviously loved and kids you wonder about. She isn’t surrounded only by our love anymore but by the world. And it seems like the world is spinning faster these days.

2002

2003

2004-2005

2005-2006

2007

2008

I’m glad you are our daughter Miss Bean, you are a new adventure daily and twice on Sundays.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lord what a day. The Family care committee put the food boxen together today. 11 families 2 big boxen of cans and dry foods and one giant bag of frozen foods of various types each. And each family got gifts for all their kids. It was cool. The point was to make two weeks worth of groceries for each family+ Christmas and it looks like it worked. The political/status posturing was kept to a minimum too. I do realize I’ll never be one of those polished moms, but I’m good with that. If I can show up and do some of the quiet jobs and help with the Bean’s class and school then I’m doing what I want to be doing. I don’t want to be in charge or have PTA power, I just want to help.

So that was 2.5 hours. Then I came home hit the laundry hard and went back to do Journal writing time at Bean’s class. Oh, that’s it, that’s the big news. She was a bit cranky, tired and wild today because yesterday she had two baby teeth removed at the dentist (she had adult teeth coming in already and her two front bottoms just weren’t moving). She did it like a champ too. The “giggle gas in the spongebob nose” didn’t hurt either, but she barely noticed the Novocaine! She was interested and not scared at all. It was amazing, especially since she’s the daughter of a major dental phobic. Seriously–I have to take a Valium just to get my teeth cleaned. So I’m proud of myself that I haven’t passed this fear on to her. That has taken a concerted effort, but then that’s the point isn’t it? To care enough about your kid’s needs and happiness that you can put aside your own fears, your own b.s. More parents should learn that. So there was blood but she thought it was cool and was so excited about the tooth fairy she could barely stand it. One tooth came out easily but the second one had quite a long root. Argh.

Late last night we located the silver glitter (fairy dust) and a $5 bill (hey, that was a big deal at the dentist ) and I snuck into her room. She stirred but didn’t wake up as I grabbed the tooth box and replaced it with the loot. I sprinkled some fairy dust on the side of her bed and then on the windowsill. The next morning she was more excited about that than the money. WAY more. She went over her room carefully looking for fairy dust and anything the tooth fairy might have touched. She decided the tooth fairy played with some of her toys and didn’t need to open the window, she just flew right through it. Never has $.001 of glitter been so valuable.

She came downstairs and drew the tooth fairy, the tooth mermaid and the tooth princess. It was so freaking cute, much detail on the clothing and tails now too. Giant jump in drawing ability suddenly. She was tired today and touchy when I went to school for journal writing but got better after school when we picked up her best friend S for a playdate. They were a bit unhinged and I had to use my “mother voice,” as the Bean calls it more than a few times but it was fun with only minor injuries.

Somewhere in all this was a an hour or so of Xmess shopping. The friend kids are nearly taken care of . The adults are nearly finished(yay Archie McPhee, yay ebay for obscure gifts)and I start the cards in the next day or so.

Thanks to y’all who emailed asking about the situation.’ No it hasn’t resolved itself and it likely won’t. At least I can’t see how it would. It’s yucky, it’ll stay yucky and we’ll navigate it as we can. It’s very difficult and treacherous territory though.

In other news Haru continues to eat the (fake) Xmess tree and ornaments. I need to take a picture, it’s one of the the coolest trees ever–Nightmare before Christmas, eyeballs, skulls, Beetlejuice, fairies, cats…Darth Vader, and pink lights. Hee. We do good tree.

Ok, we may catch up on tivoed “pushing daisies,” and fall asleep soon, very very soon.

I have to say though, I was really relieved when it was time for bed.

By The Bean

“I saw a big smoke outside the art room window. And I thought it was a fire heading for school. My mommy came to pick me up and I said it was a fire in our neighborhood and the teachers were worried. We had to go home because our linuses and cats because they were scared. We had to put ninjas and kung fu people and a huge shield that a little person is holding and extra ninjas with small shields. The ninjas were 7 years old. The kung fu people were 5 and 6 and 7 years old.

The big shield that the little 3 year old person can hold uses magic to keep the fire back. The ninjas have the power to keep the fire from getting to our house. They are really strong.

The linuses thought that the fire could burn them and they didn’t want that . The linuses said “I’m scared and linus and linus and line line and hid under my covers.”

The End

Yes there really was a fire after school. It wasn’t headed toward our house but it was in the neighborhood. It was a little hard getting the real details from the “story details” so we went home to check just to be sure.

Technorati : nablopomo

Took Bean to her first karate lesson today. It was fierce and adorable. I told her she’d have to be serious and pay attention and she did great. She is not lacking in confidence–jut threw herself into it and tried everything full throttle. She wasn’t the lest bit shy and it was great to watch. She was sure that if she didn’t know how to do something she would at any minute.

I had to sit on myself to let her have her own process and experience, to not try and re focus her attention when her mind wandered. She needed to find her own way, and my tendency toward perfection and adult knowledge of behavior and interaction? Not needed. Her learning and having the experience was what was called for. Interesting this trying to figure out when to step in and when not to. What is a teaching situation and when it is time for her to learn from others. Truly she didn’t stop paying attention more than a couple of times, which was phenomenal. She was so happy and excited to be there. It was very high energy and they let her try everything even if it was her first time. She came home in a way better mood than she got there.

The only problem…the place smelled like feet. Urk. I think I’ll be putting a drop of my favorite bpal under my nose next time.

Technorati : nablopomo

3 pies today and a demon possession.

First the pie recipe. It’s good..

Maple Syrup Pecan Pie
Ingredients: 1 crust (single)

3 eggs

.5 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 cup maple syrup, pure

4 tablespoons butter, unsalted, melted

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped

Directions: Lightly grease a ten-inch pie pan and put the pie crust in. Set the oven at 400 degrees to pre-heat. Position a rack to the middle. In a bowl, beat the eggs until they are combined. Add the sugar and mix well. Stir in the maple syrup, butter, salt, vanilla, and pecans. Pour the filling into the pie crust and transfer to the oven. Bake the pie for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for an additional 30-35 minutes or until the filling is set.

I think I burnt one a bit. I’m giving one to my friend Tim who makes my hair beautiful and is about the coolest guy ever and our next door neighbors who are always inviting the Bean over to play and made a jack o lantern with her this year. They really are the best neighbors I’ve ever had. They have two great adult kids and are so unbelievably kind.

That leaves us the burnt-ish one, or do I go out tomorrow and enough to make another better one? I hate to seem less than great for the big dinner. I enjoy putting all of it together, but today was not a great day and I got distracted while cooking.

Because my child was possessed by a demon. No really–we have a friend who says *that *explains 5 year old girl behavior and it sure seems like it. For the first time since she was around two I had to leave a grocery store. We met up with L and her son C and his grandmother for lunch at the Co-op, so L and I could do the last bit of Fangsgiving food shopping. It’s one of the few places I can get food without additives or preservatives, especially broth/stock (shortcut for dinner this time ). But no shopping. Lunch was loud and that’s not easy for me or the Bean. She was way too excited and couldn’t get a grip. She flounced and wiggled and spoke in tongues. She was petulant and just yucky. She even kicked C’s grandmother (she did apologize without prompting and didn’t mean to) when she was flailing. Then when we were ready to go shopping she got completely poopy about it, stomping her foot and dragging behind me and telling me how she didn’t want to go shopping and then then her head exploded and she started telling me how she didn’t like me and didn’t want to live at our house with all the rules and that I was yucky and she was going to build her own house with her own bed and her own TV and all the cats were going to live with her. And she WASN’T GOING SHOPPING. And I was done. I was tired anyway and this last bit of the cold is hanging on and well, I was embarrassed. So I got down next to her and looked her right in the eyes and said as quietly and as calmly as I could. That’s 3 and we’re leaving, you are behaving badly. And she burst into tears. And while we were walking to the car she tried to jerk her hand out of mine and run away (parking lot–dangerous and she knows not to do that and she looked at me while she was doing it with such ferocity and anger I was blown back. Then she screamed!~ Just a huge angry wordless scream. At home timeouts and a removal of a favored toy. And I cried at when she couldn’t see me, the words hurt.

I know she’s got teeth coming in, but that can’t be all of it. So Demon possession it is. I’m not sure where my incredibly sweet and well behaved little snugglebean went but she left an argumentative, contrary and demanding gidget in her place. It’s been going on for awhile since about September I guess. Probably some influence of kids at school, some growing independence, some big overpowering feelings, discomfort with her teeth and some need to test all the boundaries, repeatedly.

I guess. Sometimes with this mom thing? Feels like I’m flying blind and backwards. And days like today upside down too.

Technorati : nablopomo, parenting

The Bean got our her tinkertoys to build swords. OK, we go to Ren Faire and have since she was 2. And yes she does have a character on a carefully watched and edited version of world of warcraft (the alliance, not the horde) ~a pastime she enjoys with her father. I’ve toyed with starting Everquest again, but honestly I’m good with Mahjonng, I spend so much time on blogs and Metafilter as it is, I can’t really add anything else.

OK, so she built first the Sword of Blood. The sword of blood has “more than 59 powers, it has all the powers.” “You just touch someone and they fall down.”

The sword of bones doesn’t have “59 powers, it has almost a lot of powers but not as much as the sword of Blood.” The sword of Bones “pulls all the bones out and you get to be jelly.”

The “Sword of Sparkles,” has “all the pink and purple powers,” “It will make you float and sparkle and lots of fairies will come and visit.”

The “Sword of almost everything, has almost all the powers but not all the powers of the sword of blood. It can do almost everything but not everything. “

Each one of these statements was accompanied by an entirely different sword that she went downstairs and built, then brought up to me (I was in bed with this horrid cold, sucking on a cold eze lozenge). She would show me several moves and how you touched bad guys with them and how they fell down and you didn’t even need to “slish them.” Or with the good powers the swords were like wands and she would do a small ballet dance and sing “la la AHhhhhhh” in an operatic fairy voice.

She didn’t like her father’s contribution “The Sword of Cheese.” “No daddy, that isn’t a good sword it just shoots cheese all over everything.”

“But what if I like cheese, Bean? “

“Daddy, nobody likes cheese on everything. You can’t eat a couch or the curtains with cheese all over it. Or cats. Cats can’t have cheese on them!”

This went on for over an hour. She had several quests and adventures and dances, complete with costume changes (wigs, hats, dresses ) just using her own brain.

I hope I can always remember the “sword of almost everything.” I love how her brain works and she flounces and feints better than anybody.

Technorati : kids, nablopomo

I’ll never understand how they do it. There’s a way they all kind of look. Their hair a certain set of styles. Their jeans a certain type–not too wide, not too low, not too tight. They don’t have ragged cuticles and probably get their nails done weekly. They have bodies developed and perfected in a gym. I’m guessing they don’t have cat fur or paint or some undefinable goo on their shirts and if they aren’t jetting about on expensive tennis shoes they are gliding gracefully on wedge heels like ginger rogers sans Fred Astaire.

Who are they? They are grown up women. I know chronologically I fall into that category, but somehow my hair is wild and changes color often. My jeans are wider than cracker jack sailor pants or somehow just this side of right. I chew my cuticles and I haven’t had my nails done since 1990. I tried a gym and will again, but reading and painting keeps getting in the way of sweating. And there’s that pesky cleaning and cooking thing. I am covered head to toe in so much cat fur that I strongly resemble one of the more tufty domestic cats and oh lord I always have goo. The goo comes from everywhere–the collages, the paints, the cats’ eye boogers, the child, her food. Goo finds me like I’m heat and it’s a missile. I am trying to learn to wear “fancy” shoes as the Bean calls them, a wedge heel here and there of about 1 inch or maybe dangerously 1.5 inches. My tennis shoes, I’ve recently upgraded, hoping vainly that would be my golden ticket to grown up ladyhood.

Nope.

I’ve tried off and on since the Bean started going to preschool and certainly now in kindergarten to ‘fit in’ a bit more. Age, time and general proclivities (aging fair skinned lasses do not look so good in all black as they sail into their dotage) have calmed my wardrobe somewhat. I still have all the amazing, tall, pointy, velvety and steel toed boots from days of yore, but they mostly sit in my closet like memories. I’d rather be in a skirt than jeans, I still just hate jeans, but that’s the uniform here and when you are likely at any moment to be toppled by a charging five year old or several–hey with legs akimbo in jeans my undergarments aren’t likely to greet the assembled audience.

No matter what though, I just can’t get it right. I never could. Even in high school, with some clearer cut rules (no not Keds, NIKES–not cuffed socks, bunched and you aren’t wearing Zena jeans? What’s WRONG with you) I still didn’t get it. What everyone else was wearing often made me feel itchy. The clothes I felt comfortable in often resembled a costume to those arbiters of teenage taste, and they made sure I knew it. Pretty quickly I gave up and ran, cackling wildly in the complete other direction. I shaved the sides of my head and dyed my hair yellow, red and orange. Or blue and green. Or my personal favorites–fuchsia and crayola red. I traipsed about in combat boots and flowing expanses of velvet and black lace. Usually there was a skull somewhere.

Now, I don’t know what to do really. I’d look ridiculous with crayola red hair, so sometimes I have an intense auburn. It doesn’t look real (red fades over the month), but it is a natural color and it looks good. I wear jeans, but do it badly. I like converse tennis shoes better than just about anything but sometimes I have to have the arch support of those pumas. I still have several many black skirts and I have to wear them often, my girly self just doesn’t like the necessary evil of denim. I did add some colorful skirts too, but somehow I make them look just as weird as the black ones. I’m trying to find a way to dress with flair and not stray too far into the land of too young (hard because I love skulls and Emily Strange cat tshirts) or too eccentric (not very successful there–my favorite velvet jacket has been fitted with wonderful grinning cat buttons).but…

The Bean’s mom, well it’s a small southern town. There are a number of imports here now, moreso than before, but certain attitudes still prevail many times. It’s liberal but nobody wants to appear outré. I know I’m a nice, principled, educated person with excellent values. I even go to a (Unitarian albeit) church. But I think I just give off that weird vibe.

And I can’t dress normal for the life of me. I think it might make me itch. I’m not even sure *how* to.

I hope people will be able to see around that. I don’t think I can be any other way. Every so often I give it a shot, realize I’m *still* getting it not quite right, and just slowly ease back toward hodgepodge, slightly wacky me. We tell our kids how important it is to be themselves, be true–but our society, our little cultures of here and there, don’t give the same message. Don’t rock the boat, don’t stand out, don’t don’t above all be different. Don’t be yourself.

But what if you can’t help it? And how do you get comfortable all over again?

Yes, that’s it. Be yourself. So (not) simple.