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When’d that happen?

August 27, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

Last night as I tucked my sons into bed, it hit me.  They are 8 and 6 years old.  When did that happen?  I’m pretty good at keeping the special stuff and packing it away for when they are grown-up.  I write in their journals (plan on doing that when Irene knocks out my power).  And I am a photo fiend…more pictures have been taken of these boys than any child needs.  But where did the time go?

Like slamming into a brick wall, the reality slapped me across my face that I had gotten wrapped up in fungible time.  Yes, I am currently obsessed with evaluating my fungible and epochal time.  I’ve missed so much epochal time with them.  I could not say with 100% confidence right now what they are thinking about and being about.  I can rattle off list after list of what school supplies they chose or what toys they want.  But what their hopes and dreams are, I haven’t a clue.

This is a struggle all parents face.  How do you keep your own sense of self, maintain your personal interests so you don’t look back 20 years later and have resent or regret, and be there for your children?  I believe I need to keep involved in things for myself.  I also need to keep my marriage strong.  And I want to be the mom that my boys come to with stuff.  If I could change the time continuum, this would be a breeze.  But since I lost my flux capacitor, I have to work with only 24 hours in a day.  The trick I remind myself of is to let go of the little things and embrace the epochal time as it’s presented to you.

We are in Hurricane Irene’s path.  Hopefully not right under her center, but more in the green section around the red section in the computer models.  Because of Irene, I don’t have to go to work today or tomorrow as scheduled.  Because of Irene I had to postpone my oldest son’s birthday party today.  But I gained 48 hours of epochal time.  I used the first 12-14 hours to secure things that could fly around and hurt people or stuff and to sleep (ah, sleep without an alarm clock, other than my diabetic dog barking to go out).  The rest of these hours are going to be spent celebrating my oldest son’s birthday with cheese sticks and marinara sauce (I had been making marinara sauce when I went into labor, so I crave it every August 27th).  We’re going to bake his cake and play Yahtzee.  We are going to talk about my boys’ dreams.  About what they want to be when they grow up.   About what they think about.  About who they are in this moment.

Happy birthday to my big guy and, again, happy birthday to my little guy (July 31st).  You have both given me eight and six amazing years of life.  And a lot of Legos to step on.

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My Lunch with Josh Gates

August 25, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

My sons have discovered the Jersey Devil.  I introduced them to this fine piece of folklore over a year ago, but one has to meet children where they are.  They weren’t ready to connect to the Jersey Devil last year, but now they are ready to embrace this awesome connection to living in south Jersey.  My oldest has been researching JD on the web and discovered the episode of Destination Truth in which Josh and company trekked to exotic south Jersey and our beloved Pine Barrens to search for Mrs. Leeds’ thirteenth child.

If you aren’t familiar with the lore, grab a copy of Weird NJ by Sceurman & Moran and you will bring yourself up to speed with fun recollections from some locals, Pineys and non.  The short version is that Mrs. Leeds found herself preggers once again way back in 1735.  She cursed the child, calling for this one to be a devil.  While the baby was born human, it quickly transformed into a creature with hooves, wings, a horse-like face, and the ever popular red devil eyes.  It killed everyone in the room and burst out of the house.  He’s been haunting south Jersey ever since.

I’ve been hooked on JD since 1978.  In third grade, my art teacher had us do a unit on the Jersey Devil.  We learned the folklore and, then based on the descriptions we read, we created our versions of JD in various mediums.  This is my favorite kind of learning–face it, it’s every kid’s favorite type of learning–interactive and purposeful, with built-in assessments that are fun.  I didn’t think about the fact that my pieces were going to be graded, I simply focused on making the best JD art I could.

I shared this story with my boys and they were very intrigued.  We’ve been reading Weird NJ and one of the young adult novels…The Weird Club: The Search for the Jersey Devil by Fairbanks.  They are hooked.  After my sons watched the Destination Truth clip they told me, “Mom,you know  that show you watch with the guy who goes places and you’ve tried to make us watch it?  He looked for the Jersey Devil!”  This was shocking for my sons to think that we have a shared interest that they don’t feel is dorky. 

I think my sons would love to hang with Josh Gates.  I’d love to hang with Josh.  Please remember, when I say hang, I mean hang out, not hang for dear life on a perilous bridge or on a zip cord.  I don’t know that I’m adventurous enough to be on the DT team, but I wouldn’t mind being a researcher for the show.  I love the concept of the show.  I agree with some of the online postings about the contrived nature about the team (for the record, I don’t care who is schtupping whom).  Overall, the idea of going on adventures that are centralized around the amazing myths, legends, and folklore of our world is awesome.  But I couldn’t be on the team-I couldn’t eat the foods they eat.

Thus our lunch would have to be at a restaurant that Josh would probably consider bland.  His website says that he hopes the show and his adventures inspire children to go out and have adventures of their own.  So many children just don’t do that anymore.  I am fortunate that my boys do this all the time and have connected to Josh on their own, validating that what they like to do is cool.  It would be neat to chat with Josh about the Jersey Devil and some of the other trips they’ve done on the show.  The trip to the Antarctica and the search for the Yeti would have to be discussed.  Particularly the hair sample found while searching for the Yeti that was determined to be an unknown DNA sequence by the DNA people would be explored at length.  How cool is that? 

I would also seek Josh’s advice.  The boys get a wee bit creeped out after spending some substantial time on different legends.  This leads to the classic child to parent question, “Do you believe in…?”  How does Josh handle such a question?  I know how I handle it…I tell my sons that there is so much I don’t know about the world that I can’t say it’s not true.  How can I prove that these creatures aren’t out there, managing to hide from our intrusive existence?  I can’t.  I also don’t want my sons to lose their sense of wonder quite yet.  Then again I haven’t lost mine yet.  Neither has Josh, or at least it seems that way.  And why should we lose that sense of wonder?  That belief in what we can’t see?       

It’s awesome that the show offers some television time that isn’t us versus them with our boys.  Yes, we have Looney Tunes, Three Stooges, and a ton of movies that we all find entertaining.  We also enjoy our Animal Planet and Discovery shows.  But DT has some science AND entertainment.  By combining his love of archeology and theater, the show covers a lot of ground and Josh has some great expressions and reactions, particularly when eating various animal parts that no human should ever ingest.

Did I mention we would be at a bland restaurant?  Quite possibly some “safe” chain place with overpriced appetizers?

Well, it’s past the witching hour for me.  Mrs. Leeds’ thirteenth child is roaming the Pine Barrens somewhere, possibly searching for a place to bunk when Hurricane Irene shows up.  An earthquake and a hurricane all in one week for Jersey.  Quite a lot of fun.  A big adventurous week for two small boys.  Possibly even enough adventure here for Josh.  I’d let him know he has a standing invitation to dig in our backyard with the boys.  They’re searching for a Hadrosaurus.

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You’ve got a friend

August 21, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

My oldest is worried about how many friends he has.  He wants more friends this year at school.  We talked about why he thinks some of his classmates aren’t “friends”.  He thinks it’s because he goofs off a lot.  When I asked him what he could do about that, he said, “I know, I know, don’t goof off so much.”  Smart kid.

How many friends you have doesn’t really matter, of course.  What matters is how good of a friend you are to others.  Yep,sounds a bit like the wizard.  I have had some really great friends over the years.  Apparently though, I’m not good at keeping the friendship going, the sustaining part of friendship.  I wish I could say I don’t know why, but truly I think I do.  I tend to be rather annoying, clingy, and possessive.  It’s something that I hope I do not teach my sons and yet not teach them to be aloof in the process.  I see bits of me in both of them, obviously since I’m their mom, but one has to contemplate nature versus nurture.  Will my style of nurturing override their natural state of being?  Or do I need to nurture to to try to shape their natural state of being?

My big mistake over the years has usually been to misinterpret the friendship.  The level of importance was not as balanced as I wanted to think.  I thought of myself as more important in the other person’s life than what I was.  My perception and perspective was skewed.  It took me many years to figure this out, but once I did it freed up some space in my brain.  I am a worst-case scenario-ist and so I go over all the possibilities and usually focus on the worst ones.  This creates a higher level of wondering…what did I do, not do, say, or not say that ruined the friendship?  In reality, many of the times it came down to friends being more important to me than I was to them.  This was not their problem, it was mine.  The other big error I would make involved how much I really had in common with the person.  Not necessarily the little things (books, movies, music, interests) but the important stuff-values, priorities, goals.

How do I keep my sons from creating a similar imbalance in their friendships?  All I could say tonight to my son was to be thoughtful, considerate, and remember the other person’s point of view.  I told him he is a wonderful boy, with a lot of neat energy.  I pointed out that he has done a lot of growing up this summer and to begin the school year with a positive attitude.  I also told him that he should be friendly to everyone (and hopefully everyone is friendly back) but that not everyone will be his friend.  And that is okay.

We did a study of a book in Sunday school and during it  we examined friendship.  There were exercises to graph your friends to see where they place within your life, your inner circle out through the acquaintances you have.  I didn’t reach the maximum on any of the circles.  I wonder if that is good or bad or simply me.  I suppose if I didn’t have a strong enough group of friends I would feel “lonely” but I don’t mind being alone.  Does that impact the way I am with friends?

Another thing that I realized over the years is that everyone’s perspective of what is important is so different.  I want to teach that to my sons, help them understand it.  I haven’t figured out how to do that yet without it sounding judgmental or cynical.  Perhaps combining it with a healthy dose of how everyone is usually just doing the best they can, and if they seem grumpy, maybe they are just having a bad day.

Friends are very important in life.  Family is more important still.  Surround my sons with a loving family and the friends will come along.

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Patience is a virtue

August 21, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

and a life long quest.  Why do grown-ups forget to have patience with children?  More specifically, why do I forget to have patience with my sons?  Good grief, they are great boys.  I forget they are only boys…six and (a week shy of) eight years old.  They need time to process, formulate their ideas, and then share them.  I wish I were a supermom who always had patience, but I’m not.  I have moments when I don’t remember they’re only children and move through the moment or experience too quickly.   These experiences are often the annoying day-to-day activities, like running errands or working through the chore list, but they are still experiences that the boys can learn from.  What lessons do I want them to learn?

I want them to learn that chores are a good thing.  Chores help teach about work-ethic, the need to contribute to a household, church, classroom, or community and the importance of everyone who uses a space contributing to it.  I want to teach this without also teaching the very easy art of complaining, but I fail there too.

I want them to learn that some days we have to do things that aren’t fun, but we need to do those things before we can necessarily get to the fun stuff.  This is one part of the job of being mom I’d love to blow off.  I spend 50 of my waking hours at work.  That doesn’t leave a lot of waking hours to spend with my family.  I’d rather do the fun stuff with them than the boring errand type things.  How do I add more time to the day?  Jim Croce sang about this desire.  Oh, if I could put time in a bottle.  I try to apply the idea of epochal time to my waking non-work time, but it seems as though I’m better at epochal time at work and fungible time at home.  Staying up late to complete tedious chores only works so much.  I could have a spine and follow through on my plans of having the boys help me with the tedious chores, thus killing several birds with one stone. 

I did manage it today, sort of.  After mowing the section of the yard that I couldn’t get to before the rain, we weeded for a while together.  My sons are not used to work.  They were complaining, taking breaks, and avoiding work as much as possible.  We did get a decent amount of weeding done (the really tall ones along my curb are practically gone).  We had fun shouting about the heat (“It’s hot!…Did I mention it’s hot?” followed by our giggles).  They had to put  away toys tonight too, but again it was accompanied with whines and attempts to get out of it.  That all relates back to my lacking a spine (ironic, considering I’m married to the world’s greatest chiropractor). 

Each day I get a little better.  Each day I can have a little more patience, accomplish the tasks I need to do, and celebrate the epochal moments of life.  Well, I can try at least.

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My Lunch with Kenneth…third course

August 19, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

Third course…don’t really know what that would be, perhaps a cosmo for me.  I would now share with Kenny, yes, we’d be on a first name basis by now, an observation my husband once made.  Ken speaks “Shakespearean English” better than most people speak modern English (love their songs, but that’s a whole different blog).

Case in point—watch the scene in Love’s Labour’s Lost when he says the monologue about love.  On the dvd, the one scene is titled “It Kills Sheep” and the next is “Heaven”.  The two monologues sound, from Ken, like regular, everyday English.  It does literally come trippingly on the tongue.  “My melancholy and my rhyme…my rhyme and my melancholy”.  Oh, and the line about Hercules and the line about Apollo’s lute strung with his hair…leading to “And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony”.  Ah, pure beauty.

My sons wanted to stay up late last night and I let them as long as they were watching Shakespeare.  I put in Love’s Labour’s Lost.  After it had played for a few minutes, my one son asks, “Is this Hamlet?”  I told him no.  He said, “But that’s the guy from Hamlet.”  Yes.  He then asked, “Is this Love’s Labour’s Lost?”  How proud was I?  We’ll have to try Henry V tomorrow.

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Run away to the circus

August 16, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

We went to the circus the other evening.  The Cole Bros. Circus under the big top was a wonderful, old school circus.  Amazing acts-the aerialists in particular-and the whole presentation was traditional.  This is their 137th season, impressive record in my book.   They still use the old tricks of diverting your attention with the clowns while they strike the one act and set up the next one.

They did a fantastic job of blending tradition with today.  The aerialists came out dressed in pirate costumes marching to the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean.  Imagine half a dozen “Jack Sparrows” holding the ropes for the trapeze artists.  The one was using the silks (or whatever they are called, I’m not wonderfully schooled in circus lingo) and the long white pieces of fabric looked like the sails on the mast.  Another was using a net and creating images of the sea.  The dozen or so worked together to create this flowing ship using nothing but fabric, netting, trapezes, and physical agility the likes of which I’ll never possess.  It was awesome.

The motorcyclists (including a 12 year girl!) braved all three of them in that metal ball thing and they kept going around and around.  Then amazingly, the ball separated and the girl was on the bottom with her father (?) and brother (?) in the top half, several feet of space between them.  My jaw hung open the entire time.   I always wonder, when and how do they discover they can do that stunt?

The clowns were good old fashioned clowns.  The cops chasing the clowns in the black and white striped clothes, the lady clown clearly using balloons for her endowments, the car separating, or clowns chasing a balloon while going topsy-turvy on one of those giant trapeze type devices. 

To go with the clowns, they had the pink poodles in the car and they did their dances shortly after the camel and horses did their dances.  The tigers were beautiful and did classic routines with just enough Vegas to keep it up to date.  The elephants were still as graceful and gentle as I remembered them from my childhood.  The three grey beauties did their routine and linked trunk to tail after each trick.

All of this was guided smoothly by the ringmaster in his red coat for the first act and his white coat for the second.  The popcorn smell that filled the air was delectable.  The light-up swords and glow-jewelry lit up the darkness of the giant tent like very active and very large fireflies.  The cotton candy was the BEST I had in years…the flavor was so delicious!

As the lights came up, and the circus hands started packing things away till tomorrow’s show, all I could wonder was am I too old to run away and join the circus?  I think if my sons asked if they could, I might say yes.

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Made in the USA

August 11, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

I received an email from a friend suggesting for the month of August we all buy only products made domestically in the USA to strengthen our economy and make a statement to the international market.  Wow.  That’s hard to do.  It truly disappointed me that I struggled to find everyday items that were made in the good ol’ US of A.  I remember when I was a kid if a something was made elsewhere, the general assumption was that it wouldn’t last long because it would break very quickly.  This proved to be true a good amount of the time.  But now our society has grown into a rather “disposable” one-it seems that even if it breaks, it doesn’t matter—buy another one.

I also remember when I was a kid that “specialty” items came from different countries because they had the technology and were “more advanced” than we were.  That concept seems to have faded from every day conversation, but I think we created our own self-fulfilling prophecy.  What are products that are uniquely American?  I’d love to your thoughts, Gentle Reader, because I’m drawing a blank other than “entertainment” or “celebrities, sports figures”.  In other words, I can only seem to come up with people.

If we’ve made it too difficult to set up shop here at home then we need to change that.  I’m not a political junkie, I don’t claim to be overtly knowledgeable in the ways of politics, economy, etc.  I cannot discuss the challenges companies face to have a manufacturing plant in USA.  Still I have made a personal goal of buying American for as many items as I can.  It’s my own little personal statement and contribution to our economy.  Granted, on my budget, I won’t impact the stock market.  I strive to purchase local produce when it is in season (Jersey Fresh…oh yes, the corn is a nightly part of the feast right now)…why don’t I apply this same approach on the other things I purchase?  Or don’t purchase, as the case may be?

I’m proud to be an American…I want and need to show that in how I live and consume.

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Ghost light

August 7, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

No, I am not referring to that light that Mater runs away from, but rather the light, usually a bare bulb in a tall lamp, left on in a theater overnight.  Many reasons exist for the origin of the ghost light-superstition, keep ghosts away, appease ghosts that live there, one story even says it was a clause in the equity contract.  I like to think it’s to provide light for the ghosts that live in the theater so they can perform their shows at night.

Theaters are naturally creepy places when you think about it.  Hundreds, thousands of people have performed on the stage, many more have sat in the seats of the audience, plus all the staff working to keep a theater running (especially the one who sweeps the stage at night—love that person).   Each person who enters a theater leaves an imprint of their souls there.  The characters from the minds of the playwrights live their entire lives in a theater.  Their only existence is on a stage being witnessed by nameless people who involve themselves in the characters’ lives for a few hours.  People connect with the human experience in a theater and have done so since the beginning of recorded history.  That is why theater will never disappear in my humble opinion.

We grapple with our human existence daily.  To sit in a chair (granted, usually an uncomfortable one, yet we keep coming back) for two or three hours and give in to the world created by the playwright, director, actors, and so many other staff members creating the production is an amazing experience.  Think about—first you have all of the people involved in creating the show.  They set aside any personal differences to work for one goal-a great show that connects with an audience.  Perhaps it’s a comedy to lighten the mood when the real world is grim, or a musical to bring one back to childhood when you sang songs as you went through your day (I never did stop doing that!).  Then think of the audience.  Again, a large group of people coming together, putting aside differences, and agreeing to sit in the dark together, suspending disbelief to enter a world that they know will only exist for the time they are all together.  The level of trust demonstrated in a theater is overwhelming.  The audience trusts they will be transported to another world and the actors trust there will be an audience there to witness the world they’ve made.  It’s one of the greatest things I have ever experienced in my life and I hope to continue experiencing it for as long as I am able.

My sons like the theater I’m rehearsing in now.  They think it is a wee bit creepy, as most theaters usually are.  The imprints of the many souls who have experienced emotion in their walls are there infusing the space with energy.  Where else do people wear other people’s clothes so readily?  Or walk around barefoot during rehearsal even though you know the floors have seen better days?  Or throw away normal modesty because you only have 30 seconds for that costume change?  Stories are told and retold because each generation struggles and celebrates the human experience.

Remember what Shakespeare said…the play is the thing… (okay, in that case it’s the way to catch the king)…shall we try this classic?  All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.  Go see a play…give theaters a reason to keep that ghost light shining.

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Journals…the low tech blog

August 1, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

In my continuing efforts to purge my house and soul from clutter, I went through a large storage box containing my college journals.  Oh, gentle reader, I’ve been blogging for years.  Just did it using paper and pen.  I refrained from reading every single page since the point was to purge, not walk down memory lane.  But the pages I did read included the typical stuff of a woman in her early twenties, friendships, guys, the really cool shoes at the mall that I couldn’t afford if I wanted to eat that week.  Obviously, if I had been Carrie Bradshaw, I would’ve had the shoes.  I am more practical and have never had her bankroll to be less practical with.

But there was also heart on those pages.  College was an interesting time for me with a lot of personal stuff going on, much like many college students.  The problems I faced then were the largest problems I had faced to date and I miss those types of problems now.  I sweated the small stuff.  Yet at the time, it was not the small stuff.  That’s the interesting thing about that approach-it isn’t small when you’re sweating it.  It is only in hindsight that you can realize it was the small stuff.  I think I have gotten better at keeping perspective about what is big and what is small now.  My husband and sons will always be big stuff, but some of the day-to-day involved in sharing a home together is small.  To remember that and handle the small stuff with grace and patience is the key (I’m clearly still working on that).

I couldn’t dispose of any of the journals, even though I am aware they’ll never do anything other than sit in the box, but I did purge the old tax records from over a decade ago and “IMPORTANT” papers that have no bearing on my life now.  It felt good to release them and the emotions tied in with some of them.   It’s weird to be reflecting back on some major life events and realizing they don’t really mean squat anymore.

What does mean something in my life are things like my oldest son having had a great week at camp, learning archery, and focusing during vespers.  It matters that my youngest is now six and had “a really fun birthday”.  I watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller with him last week-Michael is his “favorite singer”.  I got the same goosebumps I did when I first saw it in 1983.  My son got goosebumps and declared that he wants to be “one of those zombies for Halloween”.  My six-year-old loved the “stomach bug germs” we gave him for his birthday, some of the guests didn’t quite understand it, but who cares.  My oldest taught me the “Addams Family” prayer he learned at camp.

These are the things that are important now.  That and helping my sons not sweat the small stuff too much when it truly is small stuff, compared to the larger parts of their lives.  There are still paper journals in my life.  I write in a journal for each of my sons regularly, so when they are older they’ll have a written record of their small stuff that was so big.

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Summer camp

July 23, 2011 by pinkpigrulz

Tomorrow I bring my oldest son to summer camp.  He’ll be there for a week.  I’ll be on vacation because my boss knows I’ll be a nut-case.  I’ll have a fun week with my youngest.  Last year the novelty wore off pretty quickly for him being an “only child” if only for a few days.  So we’ve got some fun plans for while his big bro is off having fun swimming, making crafts, and learning archery.

My baby…not so baby anymore.

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