Small Things

Top 5 Signs Autumn is Coming

Here in Southern California, we can't rely on the usual signs that summer is over and that fall is on the way. Our school district is year-round, so for my kids, back-to-school time was in the middle of July. And come September, there is no real turning of leaves. I've noticed the one deciduous tree over my driveway sheds it's leave continuously, with a major mess dropping in early summer, not autumn.

But I love autumn, it's the best time of year, so I do look forward to the few clear signs that it's almost here.

1. The heat breaks, and I can turn off the air conditioning. August can be brutally hot. While the weather is mild year-round here, if we are going to have a heat wave, it happens in august. We live a good 25 minutes from the beach, so we have fewer breezes, no marine layer, and long, long days of unadulterated clear blue skies. Every. Single. Day. No clouds, no rain, no merciful low-pressure fronts bringing thunder storms. What I wouldn't give for a good afternoon thunder-shower.

2. I stock up on cake mix for birthdays. My son's birthday is in October, and my oldest daughter's is in September. Just this week I made cupcakes for her preschool class, a cake for our family after her birthday dinner, and I have one more to make for her actual party on Friday. This is a ridiculous amount of cake in one week. But I love making homemade (read: messy) birthday cakes, and this year, I successfully made all-natural pink frosting tinted with beet juice. I've come a long way since the Red-Dye Incident of 2004.

3. Pumpkin Spice Latte returns to Starbucks. Need I say more?

4. The corn maze is gettin' high. I always drive a convoluted back road route to get to the highway, because the fast-connecting newish highway has a mind-boggling toll of $2.50. I refuse to pay it, unless I am seriously running late for an appointment. I like the back way, because the valley is filled with heady aromas of sage and eucalyptus, and sometimes, just past the hand-lettered sign that reads "Andalusion Stallion at Stud," we see horses out for a walk past the golf course. I recently drove my friend to the Navy hospital when she was in serious labor, and on autopilot I passed the connector and headed down the backroads. I was afraid she was going to get upset, but she was so busy with contractions and practically smacking out the windows of her Volvo with her hand that she didn't notice or say anything. So, along this back route is a christmas tree farm/pumpkin patch that is vacant all summer, but when we can see the pumpkins growing and the corn maze getting high, we know fall is just around the corner. My kids get excited when the hay bales appear and lights are strung, they happily remind me that it's almost pumpkin season.

5. The new fall season of television. I'm not that excited about it this year, because I don't watch many prime time shows. I'm still waiting for Big Love, and Biggest Loser, and the new American Idol. I feel a little guilty about it, but I do enjoy Desperate Housewives. Normally, my husband and I love all the Law and Orders, but I can't watch when he's deployed because it'll make me think too much about violent crime and then I'll never get any sleep. I am really enjoying Jay Leno at 10, it's just what I need as I get ready for bed, a little amusing and timely monologue that I don't have to sit through the local news to get to.

I do miss the traditional shopping for school supplies and sweaters and corduroys, and the crunching  fall leaves waiting to be raked into big piles for kids to jump in. I am an East Coaster at heart. But I picked up a couple of short corduroy skirts at Old Navy, which coordinate nicely with my brown flip flops. And Trader Joe's has some nice looking chrysanthemums. This fall also brings another Homecoming, when my husband's carrier returns home to San Diego next month. It's going to be a great autumn.

The first day of catechism

My first grade son started catechism classes yesterday, beginning to prepare for his first communion in two years.  He seemed to have a good time, when he walked in several kids he'd met at vacation bible school this summer called out called out his name, and they all started acting silly together.

All the parents gathered outside for a meeting with the director of religious education at our parish. The children's ministry building is new this year for our parish, it had previously been a preschool, but our church took it over and renovated it so our kids now have space for classes and activities. Sorely needed. Several years ago I volunteered to teach a 5th grade catechism class, and we met in what is now a storage closet.

So behind this new building is a big play area, with shade, and most importantly, fences. While the director addressed all the parents, our couple dozen preschoolers, too young for catechism, played 40 feet away on the playground, close enough to watch but far enough to not interrupt grownup conversation. Surrounded by fences, and supervised by a couple of confirmation students.

The director told us he'll be leading a bible study for parents here in the back yard of the ministry building during all classes, and plans for us all to bring our young ones to play just as they did yesterday. I know he's always led those bible studies before, but I never considered going because they were always crowded into some corner of the church, and I knew my two girls would not be able to sit and color or play quietly indoors like that.

But now! My girls were so happy playing, and I looked around at all the moms, and seriously, I was afraid I might start crying. I am so looking forward to Thursday evenings now. To have all of my kids happily engaged, while I get to be in basically the best Book club ever with other parents struggling with the same lifestyle as mine . . . what a blessing! What a bonus to bringing my kid to catechism!

Last night, I couldn't get Jimmy to tell me anything about what they talked about in his class. I tried, but he said he didn't really want to talk about it. I suspect he was still processing the new classroom, the new teacher, the kids, and the workbook. Maybe he is at a loss as to how to sum up the lesson for the day. (Also, he lost a tooth right at bedtime, and may have been preoccupied with thoughts of the tooth fairy coming.)

But I think he'll be happy to return next Thursday. I know I will be.

I think it's the start of a new era

Last week my oldest child started first grade. He was in half-day kindergarten last year, from 11 to 2, but is finally on a full schoolday schedule. His school starts at 7:45 in the morning.

So this is it, folks. No more do my earliest days begin with preschool drop off at 9, or the occassional 8 AM doctors appointment. This mom-gig may be 24-7, 365, but I at least enjoyed sleeping in most mornings til 8. No more. For the rest of my childraising years, at least 17 years more, I will rise with the sun. Sometimes before it.

I am trying not to focus on how contrary to my nature this is. I have been falling asleep during Conan's monologue, barely able to switch off the tv through my sleepy fog. I am exhausted from my full days, but I think that Conan's move to 11:35 has tricked my mind into feeling like it is later. Last night , I didn't even make it to Conan. Maybe when Leno starts his ten o'clock show, it will cue me to sleep even earlier?

I am amazed how much more I am getting done each day. Both by rising earlier, and thanks to the extended schedule first grade affords. My drop-off and pick-up schedule is much saner than it was last year, when each day I had only an hour or so between trips to my kids' two schools. It is thanks to this block of over six hours (six hours!) uninterupted by obligatory school runs that I am getting some quality time on the computer to finally return to my blog. This day feels positively indulgent.

Now I am wondering where in the country they might still have full-day kinder. Because I've got two more kids yet to turn 5, and once I get used to this staying-in-one-place for 6 hours, it will be so hard to return to the all-day chauffering.

Marriage via Email

When my cousin David was getting married, I already had 5 years of marriage under my belt, and so he asked me if I had any advice about the key to a good marriage. By then, I had seriously considered that topic before, and I enthusiastically told him, "Communication."

Since I am a Navy wife who is used to frequent separation and long deployments, that answer might seem ironic.

We fortunately live in the electronic age, and I can't pretend that I don't take it for granted most of the time. I can't imagine how life was for wives who waited for letters in the mailbox from their husbands. Just this week, frustrated by an inbox full of retail newsletters and no messages from my husband, I found myself thinking, can't aircraft carriers set up wireless networks already?! Am I naive to hope that maybe the day will soon come?

Maintaining a marriage via email means making the effort to type out your thoughts and feelings, frequently, and carefully, and then be patient while waiting for response.

I say it takes effort, because it takes energy and dedication to remember and articulate all the things you  want to discuss with your husband throughout the day. You have to make time to sit at the computer, often at night, after the kids are in bed, when you are too tired to even find the remote to turn off the TV let alone capitalize or punctuate a sentence.

I say "frequently" because distance is the worst thing for a marriage. My husband and I can be on opposite sides of the world, but we write frequently about what's on our minds and hearts so that we stay close.

I say "carefully" because it is notoriously hard to read emotion in an email, despite emoticons and smileys. Misinterpreting spouses' signals is a common problem in person, let alone in print.

I am pretty good at the "careful" part. I'm always resolving to improve at the "frequent" part. But I'll confess that I am lousy at the "patient" part.

We are not perfect, but I think my husband and I have a pretty healthy and happy email relationship. We've kept it going for six deployments so far. Here are a few tips that work for us:

We don't fight via email. Which is odd, because we are big bicker-ers over day-to-day, trivial things like how much chili powder to put in the chili, how loud the TV should be, or the fastest route to take to get on the interstate. But as deployment nears, the bickering stops. We have only ever had one fight via email, when I was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and I cried for two days. We won't make that mistake again.

We balance laundry-list messages with personal messages. There are always household and financial things to discuss, but if the only message you get in a day is about the bills and the lawn and renewing the car tags, you feel pretty cheated. You have to go over that stuff, but I always like to immediately follow it with a second, thoughtful email about a specific time you missed them that day, or looking forward to doing something special with them, or some sweet and funny things the kids did.

We make each other smile. Or smirk. You gotta have a sense of humor, and do a little e-flirting.

This deployment, I have a Blackberry, which makes it easy for me to send several quick messages per day. But it also means I can obsessively check for replies far too many times a day than I can count. If only my husband could write to me as often as Barnes and Noble does.

Chinese Wisdom

Yesterday was a beautiful, breezy Southern California day. We put on our new gear from REI and took the kids for a hike around Sweetwater Reservoir, and had a little picnic of apples, cheese, and carrots.

Later, we finished our dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and we all got fortune cookies. Katy's read: "All things in moderation, even moderation."

Our 6 year old wanted to know what that meant. I explained that some things are good if we have just enough, but bad for us if we have too much. I asked if he could think of something like that. "Candy," he said. Exactly.

"But I can think of something that you don't have to have in moderation, something that is always good and you can never have too much!" I said in a sing-song mommy voice.

Jimmy said, "I know! Carrot cake."

Afraid of the Dark

Our six-year-old has been struggling with fear lately, like most kids do. He doesn't like going into dark rooms at night, and I understand because neither do I. I am still a little afraid of the dark. When my husband's deployed, I like to sleep with a hall light on.

When we moved back into this condo in our last move, there was no overhead light in Jimmy's room, so I bought a hanging lantern with a light kit at Pier One and hung it in his room, plugged to the socket that the switch by the door controls.

My husband is not so understanding of Jimmy's fears. I don't think he's ever really been afraid of anything, and I suppose that is partly why he's so well suited to being a Navy pilot. But he doesn't like to indulge our kids' fears, and while I agree it's good to help them get over them, I don't believe in the "throw them in the deep end" method.

Last night, Jimmy was told to go upstairs and get pj's on and brush his teeth. He did a squirmy little dance, whining that he was afraid. His dad rolled his eyes, but I pulled him over to sit next to me and asked him to tell me what he was afraid of upstairs.

He didn't want to tell me. I told him I'm afraid of the dark sometimes, even though there's nothing to be afraid of, so I understand. "Why won't you tell me?" I asked.

"Because I'm afraid you'll laugh."

"I promise I won't laugh. You can trust me."

He hesitated. Finally, he quietly said, "Aliens."

I had to press my lips together really hard. And then bite down on them a little. I felt my husband quietly chuckling next to me.

We all ended up going upstairs together to get the kids ready for bed. It's tough keeping a promise sometimes.

35 isn't mid-life, it's mid-project

I am turning 35 this month. My husband asked me how I feel about turning 35, and my answer was, "I don't." I don't feel anything about it. Because I really don't think about it. Maybe that's a nice collateral effect of being preoccupied with three small children all the time.

I've discussed birthdays and aging with a few people lately, and I've figured out that I see my life right now as a stage, an era in my life. Having kids at home all the time, being a stay-at-home mom, is hard, and chaotic, and  . . . restrictive in many ways. I absolutely chose this life, and cherish this life, even though I don't always handle it gracefully.

But I also know it is temporary. Fleeting, even. My life will change dramatically when they are all in school for most of the day. When they are all able to do chores, pour drinks, bathe themselves, and are potty-independant, it will be a whole new ballgame. They will still need me . . . but not so constantly, and not so physically. Hopefully a little more cerebrally.

A couple of friends recently talked about coming to terms with reaching our adult goals in our thirties, and then feeling bored, with no major goals around the bend. That's not a problem for me. This job is a temp job, and I even have an end date in sight.

My husband is eligible for retirement from the Navy when we're 42. And even if we have another child, he or she would be school age by then, as well. So while I have no idea where we will be living, or what my husband's job will be, I know that age 42 will be a life-changing door to opportunity to me. Many restrictions lifted. More time for my individual pursuits.

When I've discussed this with my husband, he grins and says, "Who said I'm getting out at 20? That could be be when it just gets interesting!" We'll see. I'm open to discussion, when the time comes. Regardless, there will be a new era, new goals to plan.

For now, I am but halfway through the current plan. Mid-project, still working out the kinks, haven't quite found the balance between my kids needs and my own. Tinkering with a couple new strategies, particularly in the stress-management area.

Boredom is not a problem. I'm OK with 35. It's actually better than 30 was. I've been abundantly blessed with family, and lots of it, which keeps me busy but happy. It's going to be a good birthday.

"I don't care how you get here . . . "

Tonight I am congratulating myself on my record number of page-views in the last two days. I have finally lured in SEVERAL readers per day! Course, not only did I post a link to my last post on facebook, I also sent the link to the facebook inboxes of all my relatives. A handful showed up!

I was motivated to beg for readers because I felt really, really bad about missing my sister's birthday, and so I wanted my birthday post for her to be special. I wanted to share the love.

Looking through my site stats, though, I see some hits that come from google searches. I love to see what kind of searches pull up my blog. The number one hit I get is on my post about California's prop 2 about chicken treatment, Choice for Chickens. Not what I would've put my money on.

But tonight I found a search that takes the cake (and makes me grin)--someone got to my blog by searching "smacked bottom DVD." They landed on a post about my maternal skepticism of The Little Mermaid. They didn't stick around.

But I certainly hope you stick around, you who are reading this now! And come back soon!

Unless of course you are also looking for the "smacked bottom DVD." (Let's see how many hits I get now!)

Ode to my sister on her 30th birthday

I am lousy with birthdays. I wish I always remembered ahead of time to send a card, to plan time to call. I missed my little sister's milestone birthday, a biggie. Wish I could have been there for her birthday dinner, instead on the other side of the continent. But in honor of her 30 years, all of which I remember and am grateful for, here are:

30 things about Cori

1. She has a dorky laugh and is completely un-self-concious of it, as it should be.

2. She loves music so much that her chosen occupation is using it to change lives.

3. She is so driven and focused, when she wants to do something, she does it. I admire that.

4. She has a big heart.

5. She plays like 12 instruments, though clarinet was her first.

6.When she was in high school, she used to make herself virgin pina coladas in the blender on almost a daily basis, I think.

7. She looked really cute in a band uniform, which is not the case for everyone.

8. She does not like to argue. Which is almost a past-time for my older sister and I. So she has put up with a lot.

9. I am so glad she took guitar lessons, so that now we have Phil in our family!

10. Phil doesn't seem to like to argue either, which makes for a marriage totally foreign to my husband and me.

11. I think my parents still have some VHS tapes of Cori recording herself belting out some Mariah Carey tunes.

12. She also loved to rock out to C&C Music Factory.

13. She blew out her knee dancing to New Kids in the Block and had knee surgery

14. She used to hide behind the couch when she was scared. Like if there was loud thunder, or the smoke alarm went off (not real safe) or when she had to go put on her pajamas, but no one else was upstairs, so she would change behind the couch.

15. Once she learned more about fire safety, she decided to stage a fire drill. One evening when everyone else was in the kitchen, she ran down from upstairs screaming, "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" and ran out the front door. We all jumped up and ran to the front door, but my Dad leap up the stairs in a single bound, it seemed like. When Cori saw him do that, I think she began to regret not warning us that it was a drill.

16. On one of my Dad's birthdays, when Cori was still pretty little, we all gave him cards and gifts after dinner, and he of course opened and read them all. When he got to Cori's, it said something like, "Wishing you sympathy in your time of loss. Love, Cori Pelletier." We all laughed until we cried. Until we noticed Cori crawled into the corner and was crying of embarrasment. She was too little to go buy a card and had found one in a desk somewhere. Poor Cori! We felt so bad. I still feel bad! I know Dad loved that card.

17. Cori played softball for several years, and Dad was the team coach. The Firebirds, was it? Cori played catcher, and looked AWESOME in her catchers gear. I mean, truly impressive.

18. When I was in 2nd grade, we had school pictures and parents could bring younger preschool siblings in for pictures, so Mom brought Cori in, too.  When the pictures came back, they were given to me along with my pictures. I remember getting them and seeing how adorable 2-year-old Cori looked in her plaid jumper, I started to tear up. ( I got homesick at school a lot that year.)

19. Around that time, I remember Cori asking Mom, "Are you going to get me boy stuff like He-Man and Skeletor for my birthday?" My mom said of course not. Cori said, "But I LIKE boy stuff!"

20. She was the most adorable blondie cherub as a toddler.

21. I will always remember the Christmas Cori got a waterbed as a surprise, and threw herself on it and rolled back and forth saying, "My very own waterbed!" Ahhhhh, the 80's.

22. She was way in to Jem (who is truly outrageous, truly truly truly outrageous . . . ) and the Misfits.

23. When Nicki and I wanted to torment her when she was really little, we called her Nellie Olson. Or worse, Baby Brat.

24. I wish I had spent more time with her when I was a teenager.

25. Cori has the best nose.

26. She wears the same shoe size as me, but I moved out before her feet grew to my size, so we never got to share our shoes!

27. Cori, if you please, please come visit me in California I promise to share my shoes with you!

28. Cori loves moonsand.

29. I am so glad she is my sister and I wish we lived close enough to see each other every week.

30. Cori makes our family sunnier. Always has. Ialways feel yellow when I think of her. Cori is sunshine. 

Happy Birthday Cori!

With my sympathies, Love, Kristi Pelletier

Sad Kitty

  We're a bit worried about our 14 year-old cat. A few weeks ago she got some kind of wound on her hip, we're not sure if it was from a fight, or a spider bite, or what. But it was open and not healing, so to the vet she went for a little surgery. A week ago we noticed it was opening up again, and not good, so back she went, and came home with more antibiotics and a cone this time, to keep her from licking and opening it up.

The kids were sad that the kitty is sick, but they are still very amused by the cone. Mary came home from the vet saying she looked like a baby doll. Jimmy thought it was hilarious that when they forced the cat back into the cat carrier, they had to fold the cone and she looked like a taco.

I feel bad for the cat, almost enough to regret some of the cold things I have said about her. In her youth, she was quite rambunctious, and was fond of leaping around corners to bite my ankle. Fiercely. She has bitten every single friend we've begged to feed her when we've gone on vacation.

 For awhile I called her the "devil cat." On the feast day of St. Francis, most Catholic churches invite you to bring your pets to the church for a blessing, so we brought our cat. Becoming Catholic didn't seem to change her behavior much, I guess she just had to grow out of it.

I feel bad for the times I wished we didn't have a cat. Like when the litter box needs changing, or when we have to bring her and her litter box and food bowls along on our cross-country moves. Or when we were in France for our fifth wedding anniversary and the innkeeper gave us a phone message we could only vaguely understand about a bite and our cat and vaccinations.

She's been pretty mellow the last few years. Finding it harder to jump on to the beds, waiting patiently for us to open the baby gate on the stairs for her. She mostly just lays around on the couch, the floor, on beds, under the crib.

Poor kitty.