Backwards and Forwards

Hey, guess what y’all?  It’s December 31st.  You know what that means:  time for Mox’s annual not-resolutions! 

1.  Eat better chocolate

2.  Get regular massages

So far, so good.  I believe in making promises to yourself that you can keep. 

Goals for 2008:

3.  New furniture. 

4.  Sell more than I buy on eBay. 

5.  Save more money out of each paycheck. 

6.  Get back to the gym with some regularity. 

I do not hold out any hope that I will become a better person in 2008.  I think I’m about as good as I’m going to get, and I don’t say that to brag.  It’s just that I don’t have the desire for self-improvement at this point.  Maybe I’m content or maybe I’m just lazy.  Hard to tell the difference. 

See you sometime after the first. 

— Mox

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And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again…..

A rare Sunday post from me, folks. 

So next weekend, my husband and I are taking a little trip, just the two of us, to a warm and beachy location.  My parents are going to attempt to remember what it’s like to have to care for a six-year-old who needs to get up early and go to school and then come home and do homework.  Fun should be had by all.  Though somehow I think my husband and I will have the balance of the fun. 

While the weekend after New Years’ is traditionally when I take down my Christmas decorations, I won’t have that luxury next weekend.  So I’m trying to do it today.  And Spawn is underfoot every possible second.  Oh the tragedy of the only child, with no one to play with. 

I don’t mean to be short tempered with the kid but my patience has officially run out for shenanigans.  The only reason I have enough peace to write this right now is that I popped some popcorn for the kid and turned on the TV.  That should buy me half an hour, at least. 

Oooh am I in a mood, folks.  A mood to pitch stuff wholesale out the door.  Every year I tell myself that I will hit the after-Christmas sales and snap up decorations for 75% off, and every year I try and fail.  Mostly what’s left after the holiday is picked over and sad and tired and frankly, by that point I have had it with the whole thing.  So I don’t buy anything, and the next year I make the same promise to myself when I open up the box of decorations and see what sad and pitiful things await me.  It’s a vicious cycle but it’s mine. 

One thing that has changed is my tendency to let go of things that are just flat-out past their prime.  Our Great Basement Flood of 2006 taught me that little trick.  It was the perfect excuse to eliminate stuff, because the stuff was ruined.  And you know what, once you start pitching stuff it’s hard to stop.  So now my new goal every Christmas season is to get rid of the stuff I’m not using anymore.  I feel pretty good about that. 

So hey — momentary peace and quiet and the urge to purge.  Guess I’d better take advantage of that and post this thing. 

— Mox

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Deep in the land of blah

Nothing like the ol’ post-holiday letdown to jolt you back into reality. 

On Christmas evening, I started coming down with a cold.  Right now my head feels like a champagne cork, dense and under pressure. 

I do believe Spawn was pleased with the haul that Santa brought.  The kid has hardly looked up from the Leapster in three days.  I’m finding myself saying things like “pause the game and go brush your teeth!” 

Soon we’ll have another year for the books and I must say that on the whole, 2007 wasn’t too bad of a year.  I actually feel almost hopeful about 2008, which is a nice change from how the end of the year has felt in the past. 

And hey, we’re past the Winter Solstice, so now the days can start getting longer again.  Nowhere to go from here except up, right? 

Lots of disjointed thoughts right now.  I blame the most excellent cold drugs. 

— Mox

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My true love gave to me…

… a 20″ LCD HD TV.  With an integrated DVD. 

My God.  We are now a two-TV family. 

— Mox

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Wishing you a Merry Christmas through gritted teeth.

The bad news is, my email is still down. 

The good news is, it’s nothing I’ve done. 

The bad news is, our IT guy can’t fix it because it’s got something to do (he thinks) with our ISP. 

And we’ve got a four-day weekend ahead of us. 

Oh joy. 

So hey!  How about some pictures? 

Our Christmas tree.  Waiting for the mother lode of packages generally delivered by Santa’s Chief Helper, my mother. 

The fireplace, where Santa enters in order to leave a wealth of toys, since his Chief Helper couldn’t get it all in one trip.  Yes, we’ll take the screen down so he can get in.  He always makes such a mess, though. 

Our circa 1962 Nativity set.  It belonged to my parents.  I think they paid $2 for the whole thing.  I like it better than any of the others I’ve seen out there. 

Merry Christmas, y’all. 

— Mox

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It’s little things.

When I was a kid, my dad’s mom would sometimes cook supper in a pressure cooker.  Now, I wouldn’t know where to start with a pressure cooker, but that little woman could whip up some vittles with that thing.  She always cautioned me to stay out of the kitchen when she was using it, in case it blew up.  (Hm, come to think of it, that may be one of the reasons cooking isn’t one of my favorite things.  Things can blow up.  No thank you.)  But I remember the sound it would make, when the valve on the top would start to rattle. 

And that is precisely the sound that is forming in my head right now.  Because my email is down. 

You don’t realize how accustomed you are to having email until you don’t have email.  It’s like missing a limb.  Oh, yes, I’d love to knit you a sweater/sign that check/dribble a basketball but I seem to be missing my right arm.  So sorry. 

So yeah.  I’m a little tense right now. 

I’ve been doing fairly well, I think, with the customary daily irritations that have happened as of late.  A partial list: 

• Ordered a new swimsuit and coverup and discovered that while I had ordered a small size in the swimsuit the company had decided to ship me a 2X coverup.  Plus the top wasn’t what I had ordered. 
• Sent that order back and made a new order, which as you would know ended up being more expensive the second time around, because the top I ended up ordering was more expensive than the first one I ordered, because it had special attributes.  (which is to say, The Girls need a little help staying in their proper position) 
• Followed up on a claim filed with a shipping company for an item that I received broken and found that they had settled the claim with the shipper, but the shipper hadn’t bothered to settle with me. 
• Called my credit card company to dispute that particular charge and got to talk to somebody in Bombay, which goes all through my central nervous system for many reasons, some of them quite personal. 
• Coming in late for work this morning, I seemed to be behind a legion of leisurely drivers.  Who had to stop to make a right-hand turn.  Of course. 

Now, I know that none of this stuff will cause the world to end, but you put  malfunctioning email on top of all those little irritations and what you get is a woman whose head is about to explode. 

I foresee something with salt around the rim in my future. 

— Mox

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I like simple gifts.

Behold, my new built-in, custom made bookcases.  Built by my 72-year-old father, who was bored one day after Thanksgiving and decided he’d make me a Christmas gift. 

My dad gives good gifts, no? 

— Mox

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Monkey See Monkey Do

Every now and then, I get undeniable proof that I am doing at least part of this parenting thing right. 

Last night, Spawn and I took advantage of the fact that my husband was out of town and we went shopping for Spawn’s Christmas gift to him.  I had already seen it in the Target circular on Sunday, so it was an easy transaction.  For things like this, I require Spawn to pay from allowance money.  Hey, the kid’s got more money than I do on any given day. 

After our Target run, we stopped at the pet store for more crickets to feed our pet frog.  (Sidebar: if you get the notion to let your child learn about nature by raising a frog from a tadpole, think twice.  It’s a commitment.)  Right inside the door of the pet store is a large collection box, to donate money to help needy animals.  Well, animals are near and dear to Spawns’ heart, and the kid noticed that the collection box was completely empty.  So Spawn got out the allowance money and donated a dollar and some change.  Without me saying a word or prompting. 

It’s times like that that make a parent breathe a sigh of relief.  The kid gets it. 

It’s nice to know that my child has been paying attention, seeing me give to others.  It’s one of the reasons I do it, to make Spawn aware that there are others out there who need help in many forms.  I’m trying hard not to raise a selfish jerk. 

Of course an hour later we were locked in a Mexican standoff at Build-a-Bear Workshop, where I wouldn’t allow Spawn to spend the rest of the allowance money on yet another exorbitantly priced stuffed animal.  Especially not this close to Christmas. 

~sigh~ 

— Mox

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Playing tennis with myself

I get a lot of questions from people who know both me and my husband, questions along the line of “how do you deal with him?”  Because he’s pretty intense.  And because of his intensity I get to be viewed as the laid-back one in the relationship, though the people who know me best know that nothing could be further from the truth.  I just do a better job of holding my emotions in. 

The truth is, I am actually the high-strung one in this relationship.  Little things that should not bother me, do.  And my husband knows this, and takes full advantage of that fact.  I embarrass easily.  My husband likes to act the fool in public to embarrass me.  He likes to say inappropriate things to people, things that are not quite dirty but close.  He likes to argue political and philosophical points until his companions are mad.  He likes to win.  He’s larger than life in a lot of ways, boisterous and opinionated and loud.  All things that I am not. 

We are truly yin and yang, and somehow we make it work. 

Over the weekend I came to a conclusion.  Spawn had been invited to another birthday party (oh for the social life of my kid) at the skating rink, and was all hopped up about it.  Excited and loud at lunch, fidgety and goofy and quite frankly driving me bananas.  We got to the party, the kid got the skates on and took off.  And I gotta say, I admire the kid for keeping after this learning to skate business, because it’s something I never did learn to do as a child.  I used to dread the skating rink because I didn’t know how to skate; I went because my friends were there. 

But there was Spawn, out there trying so hard to master roller skates.  And getting it.  As I said, I admire the tenacity involved.  More than what I had. 

Spawn is my husband made over in a lot of ways, especially in personality.  The kid’s got his sense of humor, his boisterousness, his drive to win.  I let the kid talk me into pumping some quarters into the air hockey table, and I won the game.  I wasn’t trying or not trying to win, but you know in air hockey sometimes these things just happen.  Well, the kid was devastated.  A sore loser.  Pouting.  Ready to take the skates off, pack up, and go home. 

I’ve seen this behavior before, during soccer season.  If the kid doesn’t win the game’s no fun.  I don’t like that sort of attitude, because then what do you ever get out of life if you don’t lose once in a while? 

Somehow I managed to redirect the kid’s attention to the pizza and cake that were being served and once there was a little nourishment the world looked a little better to the kid.  Back on went the skates and back out into the rink the kid went. 

As I was standing there at the rail marveling at the sheer determination that the kid possessed it struck me.  The reason that I get so worked up over Spawn’s behavior sometimes is that it mirrors the behavior I deal with with my husband.  And even though I realize that Spawn has a lot of those same qualities, I’ve been holding out for some behavior that more closely mirrors my own.  It’s just not going to happen.  Spawn is a lot more like my husband than like me.  It’s the way the kid is wired. 

One of the ways I deal with my husband’s personality is to realize that he complements my own personality in a lot of ways.  I’ve learned to ignore a lot of things over the years and not get so embarrassed over things.  And when people ask me how I live with him, I just reply “I don’t pay any attention to his stuff.”  Hey, he’s a grown man.  Presumably he’s already been raised. 

I guess what I’m saying is that I came to the conclusion that I can’t fight some things.  I pretty much realize that Spawn is going to be who Spawn is going to be, which means the kid is likely not ever going to be anyone I will share a love of books with.  That hurts, but that’s who the kid is.  I continue to be amazed at the ease for which Spawn handles math, which is something I have struggled with my whole life.  But the kid is wired for numbers and not words and I am working really hard to accept that.  I can see how Spawn’s personality will benefit the kid in the future, but because the experience is not my own I’ve been resisting it. 

Ever since Spawn was born I have been waiting for the day to come that I can pass on the books that I loved as a kid — Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Boxcar Children, Marguerite Henry books — but I’m starting to see that maybe that dream may just be a dream for me.  And that makes me feel just a little bit alone. 

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m going to have to relax.  I’ve been checking Spawn’s grades on the school intranet and the kid is an A and B student.  I’ve just been studying on the B’s in reading and spelling too much, and taking for granted the A’s that the kid is getting which I struggled to get in math.  I wanted the kid to be a better version of me, and maybe I’m getting what I wanted, anyway. 

Hm.  That feels like some sort of breakthrough. 

— Mox

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It is well with my soul.

Amazing how I can be so curmudgeonly with my family about Christmas gifts and yet so free-spending with a total stranger. 

I just delivered $300 worth of Christmas gifts to my church, to go to a pair of sisters my mother and I “adopted” for Christmas.  These two girls didn’t ask for any toys.  Now, I ask you, a six-year-old and a nine-year-old not asking for toys for Christmas?  What does that tell you?  I tell you what it tells me:  that they don’t have anything at all.  These two girls asked for seasonal clothes.  So we bought them seasonal clothes AND we bought some toys, just for good measure.  And we bought a few nice little odds and ends for their mother, who didn’t ask for anything for herself.  Oh, how I wish I could be a fly on the wall at their house on Christmas day. 

It feels good to be generous to those who are in need. 

I always tend to feel a little embarrassed about how much I have at this time of the year, knowing that there are people like these two little girls who need so much.  I don’t know who they are, just what their names and ages are.  I have no idea where they live or what their situation is.  I can surmise that they’re being raised by a single parent, who is probably struggling to keep ahead of the curve with expenses.  I figure that during this season, when the emphasis is on having, they’d like to feel like they actually have something. 

I’d like to imagine that when they receive the gifts we bought and wrapped for them, they’ll maybe gain a little more faith in mankind.  Sometimes when you’re down, that faith is hard to come by.  People can be so cruel. 

I’m by no means a soft touch.  I have a pretty strong skeptical streak in me.  But I make a conscious effort to balance that by reaching out my hand to someone who is asking for it.  Sometimes I get stung, sometimes I get rewarded.  Sometimes I never know.  But I still do it. 

— Mox

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