Bumblebee Sweet Potato

For me, there is no vacation like a beach vacation. I grew up summering on the Jersey shore–my parents usually rented in the same general area, but not the same house–and a vacation really doesn’t feel like a vacation unless a considerable part of it is spent near sand and salt water.

As I’ve gotten older, the addition of rum drinks or gin and tonics, also help to promote a summery feeling.

We’ve spent a great 6 days here, and we’ve still got a day and a half to go–including the Fourth of July holiday, with its attendant festivals (both pancake and strawberry!). I’ll be sad to leave on Saturday, even sadder to return to my overflowing work email inbox, which I’ve been triaging daily while the kids are in bed.

The Bee continues to brown like a nut. I’m not sure which gene pool she slipped out of of–both landisdad and I are burners–but that girl is an easy tanner. The Potato has conquered (mostly) his fear of waves, and spends most of his days dancing in the surf, shaking his butt at the ocean, laughing his fool head off. And me? I’ve managed to read my way through all but one of the books I brought with me (The Alienist is still to come), plus picked up a copy of Netherland from my MIL.

After inspiring the Potato and the Bee to build the ‘great wall of grandma’ out of beach stones on the first day, the kids and I have been building a variety of rock structures, including ‘the biggest mound on earth’ and an underwater sea wall. It never fails to amaze me when we go back the next day (or sometimes even later the same day) that the sea has unrelentingly claimed our structures. But it invariably does.

We’re about to leave on vacation, and I couldn’t be happier. My books are all packed, and I don’t really care if I have enough clean clothes. Up on the reading list for this year’s vacation include: The Historian, The Alienist, Lush Life, and Lullabies for Little Criminals. I’m planning to spend the week on the beach, watching the Potato dig to Australia, the Bee splash in the waves, sipping a mojito and reading for 10 hours a day.

Have a wonderful week! And if you’re heading out on a road trip of your own, here’s a little gift from me to you.

I’m starting to think that I might not be good at making friends anymore. We had two parties to go to this weekend, both of which involved lots of new people, and I really didn’t feel like talking to any of them.
Maybe it’s not that I’m not good at making friends, but I just don’t want any new ones.

I’m tired of feeling like I’m losing track of people. I made a vow this year that I would try to have lunch with a friend at least once a month, and I’m not sure that I’m keeping it, so far.

I find it really hard to balance work and parenthood and being a good friend. Adding new people will surely only make me feel guiltier.

Part of my problem is that I used to see a lot of my work-friends at meetings, but as I’ve moved into more of a statewide job, I don’t have as much time to go to meetings locally as I once did. I mean, hell, this is the first post I’ve put up in a week–I don’t even have time to blog any more! Another part of the problem is that most of my friends are as busy as I am.

Sometimes, I wonder what it will be like, when the kids are grown enough that every day isn’t a rush to pick them up from school, to get home and do homework, eat dinner, have some quality family time. Will I then be able to go out to a casual dinner with friends, the kind that right now takes a month of planning to arrange?

Sometimes I think I should just work harder at maintaining my friendships. After all, how will I have friends left to have casual dinners with, if I’m not working hard to cultivate those friendships now?

How do you keep your friendships going, in the face of all the other competing pressures?

to all my favorite dads out there (including the one I’m married to, of course).

It’s a little odd, but I feel like I’m delurking on my own blog to post today. I think I’ve reached that phase, which seems to happen to so many bloggers, of wondering whether there is really any there there, in blogging.

But not today. Today there is free snark, no waiting.

As I posted a few days ago, the end of the school year is kicking my butt. Still happening, as the end of the school year seems to last from roughly May Day through September 1. Last week, in my role as PTA president, I had the great joy of attending sixth grade commencement (I’ve also had the joy of attending 8th grade commencement and the high school’s academic awards night, in my role as distributer-of-US-savings-bonds).

With all this end-of-year activity, I have a whole new understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various members of the school community. Particularly the weaknesses. Particularly in the area of public speaking.

NOTE: I realize that many people do not enjoy the public speaking. I am not one of those people. While I wouldn’t characterize myself as particularly gifted, I get to speak in public in various settings a dozen or so times a year, and I think I’m moderately okay at it.

However, if you are the superintendent of a school district of any size, you should probably know that you are going to have to speak at a graduation or two. You might want to, in that case, consider visiting superintendentgraduationspeeches.com, or whatever, and cribbing something. Because lecturing the parents of incoming middle-schoolers about how they (the parents) just need to keep an eye on who their kids are friends with? is not going to endear you to those parents. Especially when you, the superintendent, look as if you may be about to enter middle school yourself.

Sigh.

Also? Giving the same speech to the graduating elementary school kids that you give to the graduating middle schoolers? does not bode well.

I was tagged for this meme by Byrning Bunny, whose blog I just recently started reading.

The Rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

The Questions:

What was I doing ten years ago?

Well, I was about to turn 30 (guess how old that makes me now?), and landisdad and I were living in CA, planning our wedding.

What are five things on my to do list for today tomorrow?

Calling the place where landisdad & I are having our birthday party; being on three conference calls; making my to-do list; sending out party invites; laundry (is it ever not on the list?)

Snacks I enjoy?

I’m really loving the kettle corn, right now. Fresh from the farmers’ market, yum!

Things I would do if I were a billionaire?

Billionaire? Wow, so much higher-stakes that previous memes! Okay, travel for sure. Also? Buying the best damn election for the Democrats that money can buy. Hell, all the other billionaires do it!

I guess there’s also the whole investing/saving for college/putting money away for retirement thing, too.

Three of my bad habits?

Um, bad money management? Taking on too much. Failure to clean to any reasonable human standard.

Five places I have lived?

New Brunswick, NJ; Boise, ID; Oakland, CA; San Francisco, CA; Union City, CA

Five jobs I have had?

Canvasser, Waitress, Word Processor, Stage Manager, Organizer

Five people I want to know more about:

Jennifer, Mama Em & Mama A,  Flea, Tracey, & Becky

I would love it if you would choose to add #8 and tell us how you chose your blog’s name.

Well, I’m sorry that’s not a more interesting story. The real story is this–landisdad gave my kids their nicknames on the day that each of them were born, while we were in the hospital. I wish I could take credit for making up my blog name, but I just gave them pseudonyms that they already had as family nicknames.

So after my bad parenting moment of a few weeks ago, I’ve been working overtime to keep from losing my patience with the Bee. Which has not been that easy, as she has been a holy terror to live with, of late. I have, however, managed to keep my temper, although it did at one point require locking myself in my room to read a book.

Distraction (my own), it turns out, does wonders for extending the patience. So far, I have sewed, read, done laundry, set the table for dinner and gone out in the yard to weed, in order to avoid yelling at the Bee while she was yelling at me.

It’s starting to pay off. On Sunday night, when we returned from the beach and she had to live with the fact that her temper had lost her tv access for the whole weekend, she started screaming at me again. I blithely continued on my way, doing whatever it was that I had been doing, and eventually, she went to her room and calmed herself down.

When it was over, I told her that it was great that she had calmed herself down, and that it seemed much quicker than the other times she’s totally lost it (okay, I didn’t say totally lost it to her, but you get my drift). I asked her if she thought there was something different this time, or if she had used a different technique to get her composure back.

She said, “No.” Then, “well, there was one thing.”

“What’s that?,” I inquired.

“I got bored of fighting with you.”

Victory through boredom. I’m on to something here.

ETA: She also told me, in a later conversation that night, “Mom, sometimes I just feel like a toy that someone took out and played with, and just used me up till all my insides were gone, and that’s when I lose my temper.”

Melting much?

I’m not sure, but I think I’m going to be even happier about the end of the school year than the Bee. The PTA-related activity that is back-loaded at the end of May and beginning of June is freaking me out. Between the end-of-school parties, the yearbook, the field trips, the school projects, and the need to buy both personal and PTA gifts for the retiring third grade teacher, I’m a basket case.

In my continuing role as a cautionary tale for the other parents in my office, I painted a bobcat at work last week. (Be clear–the Bee was allowed to buy a bobcat–I wasn’t helicopter parenting–it was just the only one I could find was paint-your-own, and she needed it in a final state that night.) There was a lot of hilarity at my expense, and my officemate insisted on being allowed to help. Even my boss ridiculed me, saying it looked like a cross between a cow and a dog, and insisting on calling it a ‘dow’ all afternoon.

Why, oh makers of the paint-your-own-bobcat kit, did you only put red, blue, black, yellow, green and white paint in that kit?

Needless to say, my bobcat did not exactly achieve a color that occurs in nature.

In other PTA-related news, I finally found a vice-president–a very nice kindergarten parent, who has no idea what she’s getting into (oh, those were the days!). The corresponding secretary recently told me that she and her family are moving to another state at the end of the school year. But for a brief few months this year, we had a full slate!

I saw this meme over at Penguin’s place, and had to do it. Here are the directions:

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

I was a fan of LibraryThing, until I realized that to categorize my whole library, I’d have to pay to join. I’m not sure why I’d do that, when I can do it for free on GoodReads. I do like their book recommendation engine though.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel (I do have this on my to-be-read shelf, though)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon (also on the to-be-read shelf)
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequencesWhite Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

I guess my tendency to read a book to the end, whether I like it or not, has served me in good stead.

At least in completing this meme.

Okay, I’m taking a time-out from self-recriminations to be mad at my ridiculous country once again. Why, you may ask?

Well, I was poking around on CNN today after reading the breaking announcement about Sen. Kennedy’s brain tumor (and sending good thoughts to his family) when I came across this story.

I’m not really sure if I’ve read a worse piece of news than that this year. More upsetting even than the individual story that they focused on is the fact that the city of Santa Barbara has set aside 12 parking lots for homeless people to sleep in their cars.

Twelve.

I guess it’s cheaper than actually developing housing that’s affordable, though. Plus, the city gets the added bonus of looking busy at all hours of the day and night!

At the turn of the century, I worked for an organization that was organizing welfare mothers who were being moved from welfare to work. One of my responsibilities there was policy research, and I remember reading a study that someone had done (in the early 90s? not sure) about how the differences between the way that poverty is portrayed in the media during a recession (lots of ‘deserving poor,’ who tend to be white folks that lost a job and fell on hard times) versus the way it is portrayed in good economic times (lots of multi-generational ‘welfare queens’ who drive cadillacs and are black).

I’ve been noticing a lot of poor white folks in the news recently, is all I’m saying.