Just a Thing or Two I've Learned

When I first had children, I thought I knew all I needed to know about raising them, and all I needed to teach them. Boy howdy, was I wrong. My first meeting with an infant's ear infection taught me that. However, I have learned a thing or two since then, and if I could go back, I'd take the time to write a letter to my infant, to be read by them when they are older. Since I can't do that then, I'll do it now, and maybe they'll know it's meant from my heart. Without further ado, here goes nothing:

Dearest baby,

I have a few things I'd like to promise you.

1. I promise I'll always do my best. I also promise there will be times that won't be enough. You'll survive.

2. I promise you will hurt sometimes. I promise I'll be there to kiss your boo-boos, hold your hand, and give you good advice. I also promise there will come a time you resent that, and do what you want anyway. You'll learn.

3. I promise that I will yell, at the top of my lungs, when you make me really mad. I promise you'll hate me for it, for a while. Someday you'll understand why I did it.

4. I promise that there will be days when you wish you could be part of your best friend's family instead of your own. I promise I won't let you, at least not forever. Because God gave you to us for a reason, and because you are part of this family , you are who you are, and someday you'll realize that.

5. I promise that there will be things that you feel like you can't tell us. You should tell us anyway, because we, of all people, are the only ones anywhere who actually have your best interests at heart.

6. I promise that I will snoop in your room, read your diary, listen to your phone calls, and restrict your privledges when necessary. I promise you'll hate me for it. I also promise that someday you'll understand why, thank me for it, (at least in spirit), and do the same to your own kids.

7. I promise I will love you like no one else except God Almighty himself. I promise I will die for you if necessary, sacrifice my own food, money, time, and health. I also promise you won't ever, ever, understand this kind of love until you have a child of your own. It's o.k. I understand.

Someday you will too.

Love, Mom

The High Cost of Everything

My daughter wants to be a surgeon. She dreams of finding a cure for cancer. And you know what? She has the intelligence to do it. All she needs now is a college education.

I wanted to go to college right out of high school, so I applied to a local university, and got accepted. Without going into the reasons why, I wasn't able to go. Eventually, I met and married my wonderful husband, and we started a family, and life happened, and I never really got there. I have a couple credits from classes taken for my job, but not a real cohesive education.

My husband also never went to college. Life sort of got in the way for him as well.

Over the years we've toyed with going to school, part time, or quitting our jobs and going full time, but it has just never really happened.

So when our daughter began to show signs of wanting to go to college, we were thrilled. She has the brains, and the desire. But what she doesn't have is the money. I read recently that most doctors graduate from school with over $150,000 in student loans, and many of them are never able to fully repay those loans.

I've been told that it's possible to work your way through college, and to an extent I agree. But to be a doctor, there is a certain point where you have to devote all of your time to just learning.

The ideal would be for us as parents to be able to give her the money to finish her schooling at that point, but unless we win the lottery, that is never going to happen. If all of our bills were paid off and we had a years worth of food in the pantry and could devote every dollar of our earnings to her education, it still wouldn't be enough.

So while we worry about the cost of gas for our cars and the cost of groceries going up, and try to plan for retirement, and try to continue to buy everyday necessities, we also worry about giving our children the best possible future we can. Even though we know that probably means telling her to get a good job, save as much as possible, and hope for a good scholarship.

I hope her dreams hold out as long as ours have.

Random-I-Zations

1. I have a fantastic job. I mean seriously, how many people get to play with blocks and color all day, and get paid for it? But sometimes I get an intense desire to just be an adult, and those seem to be the days I don't like my job. Believe it or not, sometimes I just want to crank some tunes and clean the house, and that's not really compatible with keeping babies safe, because babies and bleach don't exactly mix.

2. I love my dogs, but if I can't figure out a way to keep them from tracking mud in, I am seriously going to sew mop heads into dog shoes and make them wear them.

3. I think I might be having a mid-life crisis. While dreaming about new cars with Mr. Grace and Peace recently, I couldn't decide between a big ole' pickup with a huge motor, and a little red sports car. Neither of which, it should be noted, are in any way compatible with the lifestyle I lead. (Well, a case could be made for the pickup, since we are currently and probably forever remodeling our old house.)

4. Speaking of the lifestyle I lead, I'm considering completing my education by getting a degree, which would lead to both higher pay and more job options. But this would mean either getting that degree online , or figuring out a way to reduce my daycare hours without reducing my income, which I'm pretty sure is an oxymoron.

5. Oxymoron is my new favorite word. It just sounds neat. I try to work it into conversation and anything I write whenever possible. Pathetic, I know. But hey, I don't get out much.

6. Why is it that little boys feet smell so awful? It's like some kind of curse on childhood or something. I truly pity elementary school gym teachers.

7. One of the best parts of being an adult is not having to take toddlers to the grocery store. I still shudder in remembrance of the times we spent at the store together, my toddlers and I.

8. What is with the current vampire obsession? Dracula has been around for a really long time, and he waaaaaayyy cooler that a certain (ahem) very popular book/movie series currently making the rounds.

9. Speaking of toddlers, it's probably a good thing I'm not the parent of any young children now. Teachers, bullies, and neighborhood cranks everywhere should be glad of this, because I am not as wimpy today as I once was. No one anywhere would be unkind to my little's now and not hear all about it. And I can see this attitude in my daughter, as well. She is, shall we say, not slow to voice her opinion. Or to tell you what your opinion should be. ( Love her, a girl after my own heart!)

10. My children have the following either in their rooms or in their possession: tv, computer, tablets, cell phones, cable for said tv, and unlimited internet access. If I ever, ever, ever, again hear one of them tell me they're bored, you can surely stick a stamp on me, because I will be going postal.

F-Dash-Dash-Dash

Yesterday, as we were going about our business, my daughter, in the course of describing to me how angry she was at something random that had happened, dropped the f-bomb. You know, the "queen mother of all bad words". Yes, that word. Unlike when my first child first said such a thing in front of me, I simply told her to watch her language, and we went on with our day.

This is not how things were when I was growing up. My mother always told me that if I didn't start cussing, there would never be a day when I had to try to stop. My father, who knew how much my mother hated cussing, tried his level best not to cuss in front of us, but he merely ended up sounding like Daffy Duck. ("Racka-Sacka-Frackin-Nacker!") It became something of a game to us, betting on how long he could go without saying an actual cuss word, and was an endless source of amusement to us as children. Even my mother can be driven to an occasional "crap" when she is really angry.

I managed to go without cussing as a habit until I was in my late teens, when driving became a daily necessity, and my inner road rage emerged. Now, having lived in Chicagoland all of my adult life I, like all other suburbanites, drive under the illusion that my driving is better than all of those around me, and every other driver is a complete and total moron who deserves to have every cuss word in the book tossed at them in multiples, along with the occasional finger.

But I try not to have any illusions about my parenting skills, and I recognize that even if I and their father never uttered a single cross word, our children would almost certainly begin to use those words as they venture out into the world.

I attempt to keep an open mind, and to teach them that there are better choices of words to express themselves, and there are situations in which a cuss word might be appropriate, and other situations in which one certainly should not use such words.

For the most part I think I've succeeded. My children can have an entire conversation without using a cross word, and they know not to say certain things in, say, church. So I think they'll be alright.

At least she didn't blame it on Shwartz. (nod to the movie, "A Christmas Story" )

Random-I-Zations

1. How the heck does my dog sleep with half of his body hanging over the edge of the chair?

I would fall off and wake up with a concussion.

2.My daughter is obviously smarter than I am, and has the potential to go much farther. I really hope she does well.

3. I love how sometimes, my husband and I have the same thought, and say the same thing at the same time.

4. Wouldn't you think that the odds would be, that I would eventually win like, a dollar or something on the lottery? Sheesh. Come on.

5. I have always tried to be frugal, and use our money wisely. For instance, our neighbors have a van with a window that won't go up, and during the rain they keep a trash bag on the window. But they have something like 25 pumpkins on their porch. Until they rot. So, they spent somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty bucks on pumpkins. At least. And their window still doesn't go up.

6. Why didn't they ever make a sequel to E.T. ?

7. Why did they make another "Footloose" ? Good Grief.

8. I think shoulder pads for women should always be in style. They totally draw attention away from our, um, lower regions.

9. Really? Haven't won the lottery yet? *sigh*

10. I've decided to take ads for my blog. Please comment if you want to contribute to my lifestyle. Thanks. Really.

The Garden and Other Household Stuff

Well, I spent a couple of hard-but-pleasant hours in the garden, both yesterday and today. Weeds were out of control and we badly needed to plant a couple fall crops. I'm not sure we got those in the ground in time, but I guess we'll see.

Yesterday I weeded the tomatoes and around the watermelon, and I was surprised and pleased to discover a baby watermelon hidden underneath the weeds near the fence. It's a good thing I didn't just grab what I thought was an unproductive vine out of the ground willy-nilly! I also pruned the living (or should I say non-living?) daylights out of the tomatoes. There was a lot of dead vine-age on them, and I hope they keep producing for a while yet.

Today Mr. GraceandPeace and I weeded the rest of the garden together, and got rid of the past their prime broccoli plants, hoed up the ground a little, and put in more broccoli and lettuce. There is something very satisfying about working together in the garden with my hubby. It's like we're hands-on planning for the future, or something I can't quite put my hands on. I just know that it feels very domestic to do something like that together, and I really love it.

It's like when he asks my help on something around the house he's working on, and I know what to do, or even just the right vocabulary to use. Today I asked him if he needed a schematic for something he was working on, and I giggled a little to myself at my use of the word "schematic". Not that I'm dumb or anything, but electrical work is just not my thing. I don't know enough about it to mess with it, so I wisely avoid it. My fixing ability regarding electrical things is pretty much limited to changing a fuse. Anything else calls for a shout out at my wise husband, who is the local Guru of All Things Needing Fixing.

That's all for today, I'm off to defrost dinner!

Again

Disclaimer: Don't read this if you don't want to cry. Because I cried when I wrote it. And I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, or if you all think I'm a complete wimp and have something wrong with me. If that's the case, I'm sorry, but too bad.

It's been two months today. You know that scene in the movie Ghost, when Demi Moore's character say's to Patrick Swayze's ghost:, "It's like I can still feel you!" Well, in a very much less creepy way, that's kind of how I feel about Stitch. The day I said goodbye to him, at the vets, I buried my head in his fur, and the thing I remember thinking, was that I would never get to feel his soft fur again. I've cried in that fur before. And he always just let me.

So this whole summer has been full of firsts. The first time I peeled a potato and didn't have him to feed the peel to, the first time I cleaned out the refrigerator and didn't turn to find him waiting for the leftover meat. First car ride with the other dogs, and Buddy Lee in the front seat instead of Stitch. First bonfire we didn't get to laugh at him running from the fire, joking that he was the smart dog because he knew fire could hurt him. First thunderstorm I got to sleep through, instead of petting him to let him know it would all be ok.

I really can't understand how God could give me such a wonderful gift as that dog. Don't misunderstand me: I love our other dogs. But Stitch. Well, he was a gift. I just melted when I saw him the first time. And he ran right to us, like he knew he was ours.

So the question remains, why would God give us such a wonderful gift and then take it away so soon? We wonder, and we cry at odd moments, and we try to go on as normal. But the truth is, we've been changed. Changed, I hope, for the better.

Before Stitch, I didn't really want a dog, but I gave in. Now, I can't go to a shelter because I want them all. All the dogs, all the cats, even the flippin racoons and squirrels. Stitch changed us, for the better. Like all gifts of God that are accepted by man unconditionally, he gave us something we didn't bargain for. Love, yes. Companianship, yes. But a new perspective? A new thought, that maybe his spirit was straight from the Lord of all Creation? That maybe Stitch was not really ours, but loaned to us from God himself? And that we were lucky to be able to know such awesome love while we yet live, able to recognize it, and be directed by it, and apply it to our lives. Stitch loved everyone. He was climbed on by the daycare kids, petted by complete strangers who thought he was beautiful. But the beautiful part was really his spirit. And we who loved him knew where that spirit came from.

If you own a dog, and love a dog, then you know where that love and that spirit comes from. And that gives me hope, that God could give us all such a wonderful gift here on earth.

See you soon. 2004-2011.