MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk
Notes from the Homefront -- Theresa Jarosz Alberti, writer and mother... http://sapphire.albatross.org
Yesterday the kids and I drove an hour out to my old friend C's house
(well she's technically two months younger than me and *I'm* not old,
but you know what I mean). We became friends as juniors in high
school, were very close for several years, and lost touch when kids
came onto the scene. Now, with our 20 year high school reunion staring
us in the face, we've gotten in touch, emailed back and forth, and are
going to the reunion together (strength in numbers). We decided to try
and get together to catch up and let the kid play. It worked out
extremely well, even with our diverse group of kids!
My kids are DS (almost) 12, DD (almost) 12 and DS 8. She has four
daughters, ages (almost)13, 5,3 and 10 months. The older kids played
with the little kids, and then the older kids played some board and
card games. After lunch, we went swimming at a wonderful outdoor
wading pool with water-dumping buckets and a small water slide.
It felt really good to be there and chatting about our lives now, bits
of our colorful past, our extended families and what they're up to,
and the joys and trials of mothering. We've had some rocky times in
the past when we weren't connecting, but things felt smoothed over, a
fresh start. I still can't believe it has been 20 years since high
school!
Now that we know the kids can get along, I hope we can get together
again!
August 7, 2003 00:00:00
Where has the time gone? Over the weekend, DS & DD turned 12, and I
think I'm ready for that. So close to being teens, at least in age if
not in behavior yet (yay!). I'm sure I'll start to see inklings over
the next year... so far, both of them want to hang onto childhood and
are not smitten with the dazzlements of teenhood yet. I'm sure it's
coming...
Today was just very pleasant and summery. We have not been doing much
of anything this summer, just hanging out together (the privilege of
being a stay-at-home mom). We haven't gone to the beach hardly at
all-- we haven't had any of the usual heat waves this summer. But
today we did go, to one of our great beachy lakes in the city. I took
my kids, an extra friend for each of my DS's, and then we met up with
another mom at the beach so now DD had a friend too, and another boy
to add to the mix. Everyone played great together, and it was just
Pleasant. Temps in the 80's, a breeze, the beach wasn't crowded.
Except for a group of girls who tried to torment our girls (they got a
talking to by the lifeguard), it really turned out great. And I got to
talk to another mom for a few hours-- a social life for me!
We will have to get in a few more days at the beach before the summer
is over.
August 9, 2003 00:00:00
Last night I spent three hours watching a caterpillar, waiting for it
to turn into a cocoon. You see, we've been raising Monarch butterflies
for the last few summers, finding eggs or tiny caterpillars on our
milkweed plant in the garden. Usually we have one caterpillar at a
time, feed it more milkweed leaves and watch it grow-- amazingly fast.
Then it cocoons, emerges as a butterfly after a week or so, and we
have fun letting the butterfly sit on or fingers until it flies away.
This summer, we found five eggs at once and decided to let them all
come into our aquarium. Only four of them hatched, and we had four fat
and hungry black-yellow-white striped caterpillars. Two of them
attached to the screen lid of the aquarium, and were all-of-a-sudden
chrysalis. The other two were catching up, still eating and pooping in
great quantities, and then they too attached themselves to the lid,
and started hanging like little Js, comma-style, last night. I came in
from watering the garden at 9:00 pm to find DH peering into the cage,
and the caterpillars would be still, then writhe a bit, then be still.
I really wanted to see them go from caterpillar to chrysalis, because
I've had the process described to me and I never could picture it.
Hence, I developed quite a good crick in my neck, peering into the
aquarium for three hours before finally giving up at midnight and
going to bed. I was sure they would go through their transformation
the minute I left!
But this morning, they were still caterpillar-commas. I went off to
the farmer's market and came back. Commas still! But I sat down and
watched for another half hour, and there seemed to be some changes
happening. A lot more gentle wriggles, just enough to keep me
watching. Then one of them got straighter, and his tail end (attached
to the screen) began pulsing up and down in a very purposeful fashion.
The pulses got more forceful, and after about 30 seconds the skin on
the back of the "neck" (the outward curve of the comma) split in half,
and you could see the green of the chrysalis (actually it's the pupa
at this stage) coming through the split. After much writhing and
wrenching, the dry striped skin of the caterpillar worked it's way up
to the tail, and the green pupa twirled and twirled until the skin
fell off. The pupa looked like the chrysalis was covering about the
bottom third of it, an opaque sea-mist green, and the top half of the
pupa looked yellowish and transparent enough to see a striped creature
inside. The opaque-greenness eventually creeped higher and higher up
the pupa (with more wriggling). It probably took 20 minutes for the
pupa to look like a regular opaque chrysalis. It was really an amazing
process to witness!
DH had been asleep through this transformation, but the other
caterpillar looked like it was on the brink, so I called him down.
After about 10 minutes, it started pulsing at its tail end. He got to
see it! He took some digital photos, so if they turn out, I'll post a
link here.
And now I have a writing marathon to get going on!
August 12, 2003 00:00:00
For the last two weekends, I've been a participant in writing
marathons. A woman on momwriters (see Links page) decided she wanted
to get some serious writing done on her novel, so she said she was
going to be writing as much as she could between midnight Friday and
midnight Sunday, going for a goal of 10,000 words (10k). She invited
other novelwriters to join her, and now a group of us has been giving
it a go every weekend that we can. We announce our intention to write
5k, 10k, 15k or 20k that weekend on the yahoo group, then we write
like mad when the weekends come-- we don't just wait for the perfect
weekend with not social obligations-- we fit writing into our already
busy weekends, making use of time we might otherwise waste. The first
weekend, I added 4k to my novel, despite the fact that my twins turned
12 and I had to put on a birthday party for them with family coming
over, cooking and cleaning. Last weekend, I wrote 5k, even with DH's
birthday and a memorial service to attend.
An important part of the group is checking into the yahoo group on
your breaks to report in your word counts and support each other
enthusiastically. This really is motivating, and makes you feel like
you are really a part of a writing community, people writing at the
exact same time you are. The word count feature on my word processor
has become a much used tool for me. I use it to push myself... "I'll
take a break when I've written 1,000 words." And soon I'm seeing that
it doesn't take that much to write the 1,000 words!
I've always heard advice from writers, ways they trick themselves into
getting their writing done. That's what I feel like I'm doing when I
marathon-write-- I'm making a game of the writing, making it fun, and
the words keep coming!
August 14, 2003 00:00:00
Two Flew Away-- This morning I looked in our butterfly aquarium and
noticed that one monarch butterfly had hatched from her chrysalis. She
was hanging upside down, and we had to rush off to the kids' dentist
appointment, so we all looked at her a minute before leaving, and made
a note to release her when we got back. By that time, another
butterfly was waiting for us, so DH got his camera and we carried the
aquarium outside. In our past experiences with releasing butterflies,
they hang around for awhile and sit on your finger and pose for
pictures... well, before DH could put his camera to his eye, the two
monarchs took off, ready to fly and high on the breeze in seconds. We
were sad to have them leave so quickly, but it is always a release, a
joy, to watch them fly away freely, knowing we have kept them safe and
now they can do their butterfly thing!
Two more chrysalis left. Maybe by Monday they'll be ready to hatch,
too.
Other notes of the day: another hot and muggy one, making me feel
lethargic. Children are VERY crabby after staying up till 1:00 am and
being woken up to go the the dentist (we went to a drive-in last night
and saw "Freaky Friday" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," very fun).
Dentist trip yielded one very bad report, one medium report and one
good report. Not to mention the news that one DS has missing teeth-- 2
adult teeth missing underneath the baby teeth. Strange, but not
uncommon, I guess.
Yesterday the kids and I drove an hour out to my old friend C's house
(well she's technically two months younger than me and *I'm* not old,
but you know what I mean). We became friends as juniors in high
school, were very close for several years, and lost touch when kids
came onto the scene. Now, with our 20 year high school reunion staring
us in the face, we've gotten in touch, emailed back and forth, and are
going to the reunion together (strength in numbers). We decided to try
and get together to catch up and let the kid play. It worked out
extremely well, even with our diverse group of kids!
My kids are DS (almost) 12, DD (almost) 12 and DS 8. She has four
daughters, ages (almost)13, 5,3 and 10 months. The older kids played
with the little kids, and then the older kids played some board and
card games. After lunch, we went swimming at a wonderful outdoor
wading pool with water-dumping buckets and a small water slide.
It felt really good to be there and chatting about our lives now, bits
of our colorful past, our extended families and what they're up to,
and the joys and trials of mothering. We've had some rocky times in
the past when we weren't connecting, but things felt smoothed over, a
fresh start. I still can't believe it has been 20 years since high
school!
Now that we know the kids can get along, I hope we can get together
again!
I took my twins for their 7th grade checkup this morning. They will be
12 this Sunday! It ended up being one of those Moments, those events
that pile on other events that you've gone through several times
before. All those baby check ups, the toddler check ups, the young kid
check ups. The shots, the baby cries, the squirming youngsters, trying
to keep three kids entertained in a small white room while we waited
for the doctor. Nurses asking questions, doctors asking questions, me
asking questions. Let the kids pick stickers from a jar for being
good. Don't forget to validate your parking ticket!
Now at almost-12, the check ups went so smoothly. While youngest son
occupied himself quietly with drawing and reading in the waiting room
(which is no mean feat for a very active 8 yr old), I took in older
son and daughter. They joked with the doctor, asking if the needles
were a half inch long or five feet. After the initial questions, they
each got their separate exam room to change into their cloth gowns
(highly appreciated by both of them, remembering those embarrassing
paper gowns). DS got his exam first, answering a lot of the questions
for himself about diet and exercise and schoolwork. When it came time
for his privates to be examined, I pointedly looked away (I'd told him
about this before, that I would stay in the room but not look). Oh,
the little boy I used to bathe, who used to run around the front yard
naked! Puberty and adolescence are among us.
DD's appointment was much the same, except she isn't so private with
me yet, and the doctor talked about periods and breast development.
Then came the tetanus shot, which they both had been fretting about
for weeks. DS especially had the look of walking the gangplank about
him, but he went first. He wouldn't admit in front of his sister that
it wasn't so bad. When she had hers, she said with surprise that it
hardly hurt at all. A good lesson in the worrying being worse than the
outcome.
It still took 2 hours to do the physicals (the joy of twins!), and
younger DS behaved so wonderfully in the waiting room that we praised
him much. Then it was the promised trip to the DQ for good behavior.
All in all, not as tiring as those baby or toddler check ups. But now
my babies are 5 feet tall!
I took my twins for their 7th grade checkup this morning. They will be
12 this Sunday! It ended up being one of those Moments, those events
that pile on other events that you've gone through several times
before. All those baby check ups, the toddler check ups, the young kid
check ups. The shots, the baby cries, the squirming youngsters, trying
to keep three kids entertained in a small white room while we waited
for the doctor. Nurses asking questions, doctors asking questions, me
asking questions. Let the kids pick stickers from a jar for being
good. Don't forget to validate your parking ticket!
Now at almost-12, the check ups went so smoothly. While youngest son
occupied himself quietly with drawing and reading in the waiting room
(which is no mean feat for a very active 8 yr old), I took in older
son and daughter. They joked with the doctor, asking if the needles
were a half inch long or five feet. After the initial questions, they
each got their separate exam room to change into their cloth gowns
(highly appreciated by both of them, remembering those embarrassing
paper gowns). DS got his exam first, answering a lot of the questions
for himself about diet and exercise and schoolwork. When it came time
for his privates to be examined, I pointedly looked away (I'd told him
about this before, that I would stay in the room but not look). Oh,
the little boy I used to bathe, who used to run around the front yard
naked! Puberty and adolescence are among us.
DD's appointment was much the same, except she isn't so private with
me yet, and the doctor talked about periods and breast development.
Then came the tetanus shot, which they both had been fretting about
for weeks. DS especially had the look of walking the gangplank about
him, but he went first. He wouldn't admit in front of his sister that
it wasn't so bad. When she had hers, she said with surprise that it
hardly hurt at all. A good lesson in the worrying being worse than the
outcome.
It still took 2 hours to do the physicals (the joy of twins!), and
younger DS behaved so wonderfully in the waiting room that we praised
him much. Then it was the promised trip to the DQ for good behavior.
All in all, not as tiring as those baby or toddler check ups. But now
my babies are 5 feet tall!