grrlTravels

Move on over, Emily

Last week my aunt, who is approaching 80, informed me that as a child she was taught that the proper way to ask to be excused from the table was to say, "I have had an elegant sufficiency." I find this expression confounding, considering my English major mind can't decide how "elegant" can properly modify "sufficiency". Not that I disbelieve my lovely aunt, but I just had to google "elegant sufficiency" to see what came up and I found the following:

But the phrase that got us all interested was "I’ve had an elegant sufficiency; any more would be a burden." It means you’re full and don’t want any more food.

It turns out that this isn’t unique to grandmother...It’s from a poem called Spring written by James Thomson in the early 18th century:

An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven; These are the matchless joys of virtuous love.

"An elegant sufficiency" has morphed into "my sufficiency is suffonsified." Explanation available at World Wide Words

Taken from MEDIATINKER

Table manners do not happen to be a strong suit in our family, although not for lack of formal training. At my all girl college in the great Northeast we had "gracious dining", which translated into the vernacular means "family style dining". It wasn't particularly gracious, seeing as how we were eating dorm food and the main dinner time entertainment was whining about how bad the food was and making a disgusting mess of anything left on your plate. As a freshman I worked in food service, and one of my jobs was "waitressing" at dinner, which was a kind of joke wherein I delivered either the main entree or the vegetarian alternative. What this translated to was being harrassed by everyone, including your closest friends, as you brought out beverages, dinner, and dessert.

I mention this because it appears that E. has decided that etiquette is important in his two-year-old world. To this end, he now ends every toddler sentence with "Mommy", "Daddy", or his current favorite contraction "Mommy-Daddy" and the complimentary "Daddy-Mommy". So a conversation with him goes like this:

Parental Figure: E., are you ok? (We spend an inordinate amount of time asking him if he is ok.)
Eli: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Well, is Guy ok?
E: No, Mommy-Daddy. Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Are you ok?
E: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Are you sure you're ok?
E: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Good. I love you, E.
E: No, Mommy-Daddy.

Other favorites include:
More please, Mommy-Daddy.
Let's go, Mommy-Daddy.
Come on, Mommy-Daddy.

It gives him an endearing and formal turn of phrase. Occasionally we feel as if we are living with Little Lord Fauntleroy or a visiting foreign dignitary.

Perhaps I'd better start polishing the silver and dusting off the china. In the mean time, I've had an elegant sufficiency of hot dogs, Mc Donalds (Shhh, don't tell anyone), and mac and cheese; any more may leave me leaden or bedridden.

Killer plants and things with wires

I'm a plant killer. Notorious. Have the blackest thumb this side of the Mississippi. Now don't get me wrong, I like plants. In fact, I like to think I am in tune with all nature. I recycle. I hike with E. I show him acorns and leaves and worms and slugs and bark. I love plants. As long as they are outdoors. But bring them into my house, and the stink of death is on them almost immediately.

I do give it a try. I water them. Usually I overwater them, because I am overcompensating for what's coming next. The watering lasts for about 3 days. And then I grow bored. And then the plant begins its the walk down the road toward expiration. How long it takes the plant to expire depends on the plant. Some of them live an amazingly long time without any water. But they all die eventually.

Some times I even try harder. After my mother died I got a plant delivered from the florist. It was a nice plant and I greatly appreciated the thought behind it. It was a gift from someone who had never even met my mother but who wanted to share my sorrow anyway. I looked at the plant and thought, "I can't let this little plant, an expression of sympathy, die like all of the others. I must try harder. I must do better. I must help this little plant to live." So I watered it and cared for it and tried to give it "indirect sunlight". I picked off the dead leaves and patted it and talked to it a bit. I actually obsessed over it a little. And then the three days passed and I grew bored with it and a couple of weeks later it looked bad enough and I could throw it away.

I've made my peace with my lack of a green thumb. If you love me, you will send me plants that are hardy to Zone 7 which I can plant outside and therefore not kill. And if not, the plants that enter this house do so at their own risk. But it's the other black thumb I have which is really worrisome. Because I also have a black thumb when it comes to computers. And that, coupled with the fact that K. and I own a business based solely on computers, and therefore our livelihood depends on computers, is troubling.

In my own defense, I am not one of those people who are afraid of wires. We have lots of things with wires in our house and I am not afraid of most of them. I can program the VCR and the microwave and the alarm clock and sometimes I am even able to set the time on the clock in my car. K. has constructed the single most complicated tv/audio/entertainment system in the Western Hemisphere at our beach house, and I have adapted and learned to use it and when something goes terribly wrong can fix it most of the time.

I have a love/hate relationship with computers. I love email and blogging and ebay. I hate the fact that computers sometimes rule my life and consume K.'s time and are just so contrary. But I have hung out with the geeks long enough to know not to open random emails and click on links and run programs attached to them and install little bits of random software that sound good but really aren't. I can fix my computer when given explicit directions. I am married to someone who understands BIOS and concatenation and polymorphism and encapsulation and object inheritance, and is still a good guy.

But still, after all that, and after all of the love, the computers, they hate me. They are resounding in their disdain for me. And they give me so much trouble that I feel like I am already living with an angst-y fourteen year old. I lavish my affection on them, I play nice, and I turn them off regularly for a little rest, and still they give me trouble. My desktop at home, a relatively new box which should still be in the honeymoon phase, has developed a nasty habit of sounding an alarm like an English ambulance and abruptly shutting off, no matter what important business I am in the middle of. And this computer is just one in a long line that has chosen to show its lack of respect by developing complicated and dangerous maladies when most machines would still be considered dewy and cutting edge and shiny, sporting that new-computer smell. When the guys at work told me it was probably the fan, something uncomplicated, cheaply replaceable, and not requiring the removal of every single file, I just smiled my saintly smile and said that's good news. But I knew it wasn't.

I'm just waiting for word of the real problem. And then I can grow bored, stop watering it, and wait for the leaves to turn brown and fall off.

Meet my nemesis, Bob

Do you ever know that you're being paranoid, but still believe confidently that they really are out to get you? For myself, I'm just tired of the spam comments. Tired of them! And while I'm at it, I may as well just state for the record that I am Not Interested in live online po-ker, ordering via-gra and other medications online, any kind of por-n, sports bet-ting, or lo-ans. And I hate "Bob", by far the most prolific author of blog spam. Please, please just leave me alone, Bob! Why do you hate me so?

Today I had 293 comments when I logged in, but only 130 or so of them are real comments. Arghhh!

In other news, we had a good Christmas, and I hope you did too. It's been busy around here, and I can't wait to be less busy and have more time for the blog and other things.

One psychosis coming right up

Apparently E. has his first complex. The complex came from the 12-Hour-Violent-Projectile-Vomiting-Virus-of-Death, which E. sailed through with nary a whimper. But now we have this conversation every day when he gets up from his nap.

Me: Hi, E!
E: Dye. (Translation: Guy. His transitional object, but really it's just Guy.) (Could be "Dye." or "Die." but somehow "Dye." just seems nicer, and more in keeping with the vast pool of love felt for Guy.)
Me: Yes, there's Guy.
E: Dye. Door-tee. Dye.
Me: Guy isn't dirty. He's nice and clean. Remember? We washed him? He took a nice bath in the washer and now he's nice and clean. See? He smells good. (Sniffing him, but not his nose which E. sucks on and therefore it smells foul.) (Going for the long explanation.)
E: Door-tee Dye. Door-tee Dye. Door-tee. Dye.
Me: Guy isn't dirty, he's nice and clean. (Short and sweet explanation.)
E: E: Door-tee. Dye. Door-tee. Dye. Door-tee. Dye. Door-tee. Dye. Door-tee. Dye. Door-tee. Dye.
Me: You only need to tell Mommy when Guy is dirty because your tummy hurts and your whole bed reeks of vomit and you have semi-digested bits of food stuck in your hair. Otherwise, we're all good.

I'm just saying.

A Little Something from China

Yesterday I forgot to get the mail. I do this at least once each week, and sometimes, embarrassingly, many more times than once. I wonder what Joe, our mailman, thinks of us.

So I go out to the mailbox and lo and behold, there was something exciting in there. Well, sort of exciting. Or maybe not. I'm really not sure, because I don't know exactly what it was that was in there. It was a big brown envelope that has the following return address:

The Foreign Service of the United States of America
Official Business
U.S. Consulate General
Guangshou

Consular Section
Amcongen Guangshou
U. S. Dept. of State
Washington DC 20521-4090

(Disappointingly, the postmark was Washington, DC. And there weren't any stamps. So I think it was kind of a fraudulent return address.)

I open it. I can't believe it's really anything too important because we don't have a DTC date yet and I think our precious papers are still in the hands of the agency. So I think it's just more paperwork, and I think it's actually paperwork for when we are in China. It has some pages with Chinese characters on them, so that's cool. It makes me feel just one tiny step closer to the end of the paperchase and our new daughter.

It occurs to me, as it has on many such occasions since we finished the paperwork, that I have little to NO IDEA of what is coming next. I don't know whether the DTC date or the Log In Date is first. (In fact, I forget what the abbreviation for the Log In Date is.) I always thought the Log In Date was first, but does that make sense? I have no idea what this pack of paper from the American Consulate General in Guangzhou, China is for. And I have no idea what our daughter's name is going to be. I think I had better get back on the research bandwagon and figure all of this stuff out.

For quite some time that I was saying we aren't going to think about a name until the paperwork is finished. Well, guess what. The Paperwork Is Finished. We need to start working on a name. Eeeek.

Most Embarrassing Mothering Moment Take 2

This morning I stumbled out of bed as usual. I really shouldn't be stumbling since I did get about 10 hours of sleep, but it's still hard to get up. As I walked down the hall to get a shower¹ I thought I smelled, well, vomit. It had been raining the night before, and since we live in a log cabin sometimes it smells sort of cedar-y, although that is usually in the summer when it is hot and humid. I spent a few moments trying to rationalize why I smelled vomit in the hallway, and trying to make the rain/cedar smells = throw up. I was confused.

On the way back to my room I smelled the vomit again, and started worrying about K. Maybe he had been sick last night and hadn't wanted to wake me?² Why did it smell so strongly? What is that smell???

(I know you see what's coming. But it's not yet occurring to me to attach the smell to E. I can't explain why. I guess that's why this is a Most Embarrassing Mothering Moment.)

I get dressed. And I go to get E. out of bed. And I open the door. And I think, "DUH! Are you the dumbest mother ever or what? THIS ROOM IS THE SOURCE OF THE VOMIT SMELL. WHY DID IT TAKE YOU SO LONG TO REALIZE THAT?" Well, in my own defense, E. is only two, and I kind of assumed that a smell that strong would have occasioned some crying or some outburst of the type that would have led us, his parents, to visit his room and discover the source of the distress.³

I walk in. I am hit with a wall of Vomity Smell. I get panicky and say, "E., are you ok?" And that sweet child smiles up at me and says, "Mommy. Yes." I look at him. He has dried vomit smeared across his face. He has vomit encrusted in his hair. His entire crib sheet is covered in vomit and there is vomit on both headboards. His "guy" is covered in vomit, as though he had been well loved during the crisis.

I mean, really, the crib looks like there was some unanticipated eruption of a previously undiscovered Vomit Volcano. It's one more bad spoof of that scene in The Exorcist where someone spews vomit all over the room. (I've never seen The Exorcist so I can't be any more specific than that.) Really, the disaster is approaching Pompeiian proportions. And there sits E., not realizing that anything is wrong, and smiling up at me as he does every day. How I love that little Quiet Vomit Spewing Little Guy.

I got him into the tub post haste. I called K. to tell him what bad parents we are. I scrubbed E. down, trying to alleviate the vomit smell radiating from him. I tried to explain what had happened, and tell E. that "When your tummy hurts, or you throw up, you need to call for Mommy or Daddy." We practiced calling: "Daddy!" "Mommy!" and E.'s usual, "Daddy-Mommy!" I did laundry, including every single guy that inhabits the bed. I scrubbed his crib and crib mattress. I tried to decide how in the world he puked that much without a sound. I fed him sparingly. I worried that our Quiet Vomit Spewing Little Guy will someday vomit silently in his sleep and silently choke to death.

So I guess the lesson is "When you think you smell vomit, it's probably vomit." Search the house for it, and if you look long enough, you'll find it.

¹ We do have a bathroom attached to our bedroom. But we have a big soaker tub (not for me, I don't take baths unless under duress) and a shower head too but no shower curtain because it just wouldn't look right. And so we don't shower in the "master bath". I know--it really doesn't make much sense.

² K. got up and left early today, before E. and I got up. This is a very unusual occurrence for us. We generally all get up together between 8:30 and 9. We are a family that really likes our sleep. And we like to stare blearily at each other in the morning. But K. had dashed off to work on this morning.

³ To my knowledge, E. has only thrown up twice in his life and both times were at night and he didn't wake us up. He is The Quiet Vomiter. It's a gift, maybe from my side of the family.

Decorating with determination

For the past two or three years, Christmas has not been celebrated in my house with festive decorations. Two years ago, there was a good excuse--I was a zombie. There were no decorations, there were no cards or presents, no Christmas cheer or good will either. There wasn't really anything more than some moaning, a couple of long bouts of crying, and a desperate email to my cousin whose son is 4 months older than mine which simply said, "When will I feel normal again, if ever???" E. was a month old.

Last year, I can't remember what happened. We were busy, and there was the residual tiredness. I was still breastfeeding, and breastfeeding really took it out of me. E. was becoming more fun, but he was also fascinated by EVERYTHING, including the cats, all of his baby toys, cheerios, and random bits of lint. We had gone on vacation over Thanksgiving and all gotten desperately ill upon coming home. We were sick for a good week, really, truly, horribly sick. The decorating seemed like a long, involved process requiring lots of work with very little payoff in the end. K. finally roused himself a week before Christmas and went out with E. to find a tree. We put the lights on it, which amused E. to no end, and called it a day.

This year I knew early on that my excuses were cobwebby and withered. We took E. somewhere, and he got a glimpse of some Christmas lights. He was hooked. So we drug out the boxes and emptied them on the floor, determined to use every last ornament and string of lights. In fact, we have supplemented the previous collection with many new purchases. (Don't let me near anything fiber optic. As I've stated before, tacky is sometimes good, especially at Christmas.) Then we found out about the neighborhood decorating contest, and in addition to the interior, suddenly we were decorating outside too.

It's been fun. E.'s first words each morning are, "On. On! ON!" while pointing toward the tree. I like the decorations once they are up. I simply refuse to think about taking them all back down, one of the most depressing parts of the post-holidays blues. The house is all sparkly and festive and twinkly and fuzzy and jolly. It's fun to be home. I can't say I feel "normal" this year, but normal was really just a hallucination in the mind of a sleep-deprived zombie anyway.

Most Embarrassing Mothering Moment Take 1

Do you ever find yourself doing something as a parent that you really can't rationally explain? I have issues with sleeping, I'll be the first to admit it. I need sleep and a lot of it. Somehow I managed to pass along those sleeping genes to my son. He is a good sleeper, for all of my moaning and wailing. But in order not to interrupt his wonderful naps we have a rule in our house--no flushing.

You see, one day I flushed the toilet about 45 minutes before the nap was due to end, and E. woke up early. It happened a couple of times and I was convinced that the toilet wakes him up. So now no flushing while he's sleeping. It's not so bad when it's just us in the house, but I just dread the day when someone comes into the house between 1:30 and 4:30 and asks to use the restroom for purposes other than resting. A mother with a toddler on her hands an hour before the scheduled awake time is a mother who isn't quite at her cheeriest.

BTW, I can't decide whether or not to be concerned that E. has decided to up his napping time to 4 hours. Yes, for the past 2 or 3 weeks, the child has been napping for 4 hours each day. We have to go up and drag him out of bed. He is going to the pediatrician next week for his 2-year well child visit, and I hesitate to mention it because if I do it will most certainly come to an end and I do so enjoy all of the time. But then again, 4 hours? Really, I do worry that there is something wrong with him. And that might just be that half of his genes came directly from me...

I've got the ears to prove it

I used to be a Disney curmudgeon. Of course I had never been to Disney, and I didn't really get it. It seemed amazing that so many people went on and on and on about Disney. I mean really, who is Mickey Mouse these days? He's lost some of that star power he had in the heyday of the Mouseketeers, some of the old twinkle, you know?

Our first year of married life we had the usual fight about where to spend the holidays. Subsequently we decided that we would travel every year over Thanksgiving, and our trip evolved into a yearly trek to Orlando. It was close, relatively cheap, and relaxing in that no thought whatsoever was required. We stayed near Univeral Studios and never ventured near The House of the Mouse.

Finally one year K. convinced me to go and spend one day at Disney. And I was amazed at how happy Disney made me. I can't really explain it. It's a very happy place as long as you let yourself go and get into it. If you want to be grumpy then it's a obnoxiously cheerful, black-light-and-fluorescent-paint-loving, packed-to-the-gills-with-other-people's-overtired-kids, exaggeratedly-self-important playground. Perhaps a kind adjective would be idiosyncratic. Or freakish.

But I had already decided to embrace Disney with all of its Olde Tyme Fun. (When in Rome and tra-la-la, etc.) And then E. came along, and it all changed again. Disney, as seen through the eyes of your own children, is an enchanting wonderland of supreme happiness. You may find yourself wandering around with some big silly grin plastered all over your face. You may find yourself getting excited when you see Chip and Dale lumbering towards you, and you may not even think to feel sorry for the poor "cast member" stuffed in that suit in the hot Florida sun. You may find yourself distraught when informed that "It's a Small World" is closed for renovations. (Well, really, how could they?) You may find yourself wishing that the princess outfits came in women's sizes.