School lunches

A lot of the posts I have here are about my boy. Truth be told, he's turning into a man p.d.q. It is hard to refer to him as "the boy" when he towers over me at 5'11" and his voice is doing that Peter Brady "pork chops and apple sauce" thing. (Thank God for Nick @ Nite for the Brady Bunch reference still being relevant.) He's really turning into a responsible guy.

I haven't had to wrestle him to do his homework. Last year he brought home nearly straight A's. He managed to get all his requirements to earn his Scout 2nd Class. The biggest challenge with that was remembering to have his book with him at events and meetings. With Water Polo, he's been really responsible and only grouses slightly when he has to wake up before the sun to get into the pool for practice. After 2 short seasons in the pool, he's being groomed for the center forward position, earning his new moniker:  Striker. He's also been nominated to go to a training camp with the US Olympic team.

Wow, I get why parents brag about their kids' athletic & academic exploits. This is fun! What a rush!

But this morning we had a conversation about the kid he used to be and not the kid he is today. See, some logical consequences have long term pay offs.

My kids have been enjoying having soup for lunch. I will make a crock pot of soup before bedtime and pack it up in the morning for lunch in their thermoses. My boy has never been very good about remembering to bring his thermos back home after school. When he was in elementary school and intermediate school, he went through at least 4 thermoses. He still complains about the intermediate school's lunch policy of putting the classes' lunches in a basket to be delivered to the cafeteria. Then each child was to REMEMBER to get their lunches before they went home. He lost 2 thermoses that way.

When we went shopping for the thermoses, my daughter and he would select their favorite design. His would be understandably boyish or plain. My daughter would select pink & purple flowers and Barbies. After the years of lost thermoses, all we have left are the pink & purple flowers and Barbies. Striker, my mini-man has a grown man's apetite. One small thermos of soup will not carry him through the day. So, this morning I packed him his 2 thermos lunch in the pink & purple flowers and Barbie thermoses.

Yay for him being confident enough in himself to be okay with bringing his lunch to school in these ridiculous thermoses. Boo for his exasperation with me for even buying these girly thermoses in the first place. I reminded him about all the lost thermoses that he got to pick out. The black and silver one, the one with Hot Wheels on it, the plain green one, the blue one... all lost by a younger version of himself that couldn't remember to bring home his thermos.

Now before I get comments that I should get the boy a proper non-girly thermos, you should know that I'm already planning to do so. No worries, okay? In fact, we have been trying out a set I got from Costco and it looks like a winner. It is dark blue with not a flower or Barbie in sight.

The walls

There are a few events in one's lifetime that the place you got the news will always let you remember the place. What is it about memory that sears your physical location to the place that it happened? It must be an evolutionary thing. That you always remember the place some world changing event happened so that if you need to, you can avoid that place. Funny how the mind tries to insulate a tragic event by marking it in your brain as possibly avoidable. Maybe that spot is imbued with memories of hurt. Maybe that spot is forever changed by that event. Why else would your mind remember it so strongly? Is it possible that every time you touch that spot of earth, a little of that tragedy touches you again?

So I remember the radio alarm clock going off on 9/11/01. I remember hitting the snooze and my husband leaving the bed. I remember him coming into our room after a few minutes, telling me that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. We got out of bed and turned on the television. We sat on the couch and both watched as the second plane crashed into the towers. There was the grim realization that this was not an accident. We both called our loved ones in Hawaii and California to make sure they knew what was happening. I remember asking my husband to stay home, to avoid the ferry, to avoid the down town city scrapers. He went to work anyway. He wanted to stop watching the repeating loop of the planes crashing, the people jumping, the ash choking all those people on the streets. Then they stopped the ferries for a time and I thought he would be stranded in Seattle.

But I couldn't avoid the bed where I heard the news. I couldn't avoid the living room, a place where I had watched the second tower fall. We lived in it. We avoided the media, turning on radios and televisions sparingly -- just enough to know what was going on but not enough to steep in grief all day. Like most people, we sent money and went to church. The whole world was reordered around me.

I imagine that if grief were paint, 9/11 would have sprayed our bedroom and living room. When my father died a year later, the rest of the house received a second coat. Maybe three. On my mother's first visit back after Dad died, I remember she refused to close any of the doors in the house, choosing to shower with the door ajar and changing her clothes in the bedroom with the door wide open. I think the grief was so big for her that the doors couldn't shut, even if she tried.

So we moved out of that place about a year and a half later. This new house has a couple of coats of grief too. Someday we'll shed it as well.

If only it were so easy.

Not a soccer mom

The beginning of every school year of my childhood started with the predictable writing prompt: "What did you do this summer?" 

I can tell you what I didn't do. I didn't work on my blog at all. I didn't get to sleep in except during August. While you working people would find that whiny, I am and have always been a night owl. Parenthood doesn't allow you to be a night owl. I remember being disgusted that my parents would fall asleep in front of the TV at around 9 PM. I get it now. Staying up past midnight and then having to get up at 6 AM so your son will be at the pool by 7 AM leads to crankiness and sleepiness. 

My boy took up water polo this summer. He's loved the sport since he took a summer camp for it about 2 years ago. What sealed his enthusiasm was the last Olympics when both the US men's and women's water polo teams silver medaled. After years of signing up for the youth league and the youth classes which are routinely cancelled because of low enrollment, he's finally old enough to play with the big boys. They really are the big boys because this is the high school team. 

At my boy's first game, within the first few minutes of him being in the pool, he made an assist for a goal, the first of that game! It was so exciting. Less exciting were 2 failed passes later in the game when he inadvertently gave possession to the other team and in the second case, assisted them with a goal. There was a little bit of grousing from a parent sitting next to me. I sidled up to them and cheerily asked them which player was theirs. They told me that their boy was entering the 11th grade and had been playing for 3 years. He was probably the team's biggest and most able player. I then told them that my boy was just entering the 8th grade and this was exactly his 6th time in the pool since practice started. They didn't grouse after that and were very understanding of his errors considering what a novice my boy was. At 5'10, he doesn't really look like an 8th grader, and when you add the fact that all you really can see of him is his head and sometimes his arms when he's in the pool, he looks like a kid who is much older.  I really like the group of parents of the water polo team. I've been told by a couple of them that starting the athletes in their 8th grade year really makes the transition into high school so much easier. They already know a lot of the kids at the high school and the older kids tend to take their younger team mates under their wing. 

That was exactly what I reminded myself of every week of summer when I woke at the crack of dawn... Well, 6 AM. He had practice every day of the week either starting at 7 AM or 8 AM and lasting 2 hours. Then he had practice every evening at 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM. The fall schedule is not much better except that the early morning swimming practice is only 2 times a week, but the evening practices are 5 times a week. 

I only had a break from that schedule while he was off at summer camp for a week and also for the week that he was taking his NRA Hunter's safety course. He is surprisingly good at shooting targets. He's angling for us to get him a rifle or a kit for him to make his own. I have to admit it is too much testosterone for me to make a rational decision about. Maybe I should just let his dad deal with all of that. 

Thoughts of my boy getting a college water polo scholarship started swimming in front of my eyes. One of the coaches went to University of Hawaii after she played for our girls team at the high school level. I started hoping hoping hoping that my boy could follow in those footsteps. Then a quick google search later, I found out that they don't even have mens water polo at UH. How does that happen??? I consoled myself that Stanford, M.I.T., Harvard, and Princeton do. Still, him going to UH would have been nice so he'd be around family.

I'm adjusting to dealing with a sport that will require me to get on the ferry to go to games. This is something that a lot of parents do here on the island. I've always thought it was crazy to do, but when I think that the people on the US National team are playing well into their 30s, I realize that this is a sport that can guide my boy through his high school, college, and young adult years. I suppose that getting up early and dealing with the ferry will be easy enough for me to do. 

There will be no reprieve for me when the season is over though. Most of the boys are also on the swim team to improve their form and speed in the water. I've heard rumors that swim team practice starts at 5 am. 

Bummer. 

Six nurses

This particular story might be mildly embarrassing to my cousin Grace's two kids, E and G. It shouldn't be. It really is the backdrop to some of the language we use in our house so I am obligated to put it in.

Like Grace, I'm a proponent of breastfeeding as long as the child wants to have it. I never had the weaning horrors that some people go through. And I know that I'm totally blessed to have had the opportunity and family support to allow my kids to self wean. For my kids, they nursed about 2 years, which means that they were talking some before they stopped breastfeeding. Grace's kids were at the breast a year or two longer. I applaud her patience and devotion to nursing them. (Look at me trying to be all diplomatic against the people who would judge breastfeeding kids. Oh, get over yourself if it is a problem for you. Breasts make food for babies. The perfect food for babies. So there.)

Grace and her husband Jim tell a story about a friend of theirs who breast fed their kids after the kids started speaking. Their friend's child was running around in toddler fashion, and when he became thirsty, he went up to his mother and asked, "Boob?"

From that moment on, Grace and Jim vowed never to be asked for boobs (especially in public) by a hungry child. Instead they taught their kids to refer to their milk dispensers as "nurses." That way if the child wanted to eat, she'd simply ask ,"nurse?" How sweet is that?

The age difference between Grace's two kids is about 8 years, so when G was 4 or 5, E was just starting out that wonderful phase of life:  puberty. Imagine her horror when her little brother inadvertently walked in on her taking a shower and G ran off to report to his parents that E indeed had nurses too! (okay, that last bit wasn't probably necessary to tell my story but still funny, right?)

The lesson from those two stories stuck with Hubby and me, especially when we had our son. We did not want our precious boy's first word to be "boobs." We made a decision to copy Grace and Jim's example and refer to my breasts as nurses.

It's been a word we've used ever since we became parents and it is fully entrenched in our lives. I suppose it can be confusing considering how many registered nurses we have in our family. Amongst my first cousins, I think we have a total of 10. We are a good Filipino family that way -- we make quality health care professionals -- we love our nurses.

The other day, my mother was remarking about how her brother Efren, who spent most of his adult life working in Hawaii and sending money back home for his family in the Philippines, was able to send 6 of his kids to college for their degrees in nursing.

My mom said, "Can you believe your Uncle Efren has six nurses?"

I said, "Wow, that's really impressive."

Lil'T looked absolutely flummoxed. "Uncle Efren has six nurses?!? What the hoonies???" (hoonies = heck for preschoolers)

It took me a beat to realize that Lil'T was trying to figure out how Uncle Efren had so many breasts under his shirt. How the heck did he get the bras? Must be a Costco pack. And since when did men have breasts like Holly our dog? Oh so confusing!

Maybe we ought to refer to breasts as boobs after all.

Broken Legs 2

Turns out that my audio acting debut is uploaded now. It is episode 302, The Sword of Damocles: Part II "The Pursuit."

My lines are in a teaser trailer after the credits. In fact, they say my name a few moments before you even hear my voice. I'm listed as one of the pilots. Woohoo!

Go ahead and have a listen.

57 flavor Phad Thai

*Disclaimer:  This post is not a request for phad thai recipes or where I can get better ones. I actually have a pretty good phad thai recipe that I didn't use because I hadn't gotten all the ingredients. This was my Iron Chef moment.

Somehow, like most weekends, the time had gotten away from me and all of a sudden, it was 6 p.m. I needed to get dinner ready or the kids would be late for bed making them grumpy and whiny in the morning.  That also means that my alone time, that precious kidless time from their bedtime to our bedtime evaporates. That leads to patience-reserve-on-empty parenting. You see how everything snowballs? All because I didn't start prepping dinner at 4:30 p.m.

I looked in my fridge at that late hour and saw that I had all the ingredients for a quickie phad thai, the first recipe I had ever tried -- one that was most certainly posted by somebody who doesn't have easiest access to tamarind  or dried shrimp or even tofu. It called for ingredients like vinegar, tomato paste, sugar and fish sauce. I did remember that it was quick and easy. Considering my time crunch, I thought it would be a good dinner.

I soaked the noodles, heated the oil for the meat and garlic, and then went rummaging for the tomato paste and vinegar. It was then that I realized that the pantry staple of tomato paste was missing from my arsenal. Totally unfair! I already had the noodles soaking.

It was then that inspiration struck me. Ketchup. Catsup. However you spell it, organic ketchup has listed as its top three ingredients:  tomato paste, vinegar & sugar. Hazzah! Dinner was saved with a little bit of ingenuity. I ended up thinning out the catsup with a little bit of water. Surprisingly, it turned out a passable, edible, even delightful phad thai.

My apologies to any thai people out there.

Go Fish

This topic has come to me. It's bugging me. I've decided to address it. It is controversial and will likely label me as a heretic (which isn't a title I necessarily reject).

I have a lot of Christian friends. Not just Catholic, but Christian friends. Some of them born again and some that belong to other religious faiths. Really, it is near impossible not to have Christian friends here in the US. I'm writing today to talk about 2 of my pet peeves with modern Christians:  1. Asking me if I "prayed about it," and 2. Quoting scripture.

The thing is, I think both of those things really shut communication down.

Let's examine the first.

Say I'm talking to a friend about some annoying habit my kids have. So many to pick from...hmmm...  How about fighting with their siblings? That's common and a constant noise in my house. The boy picks on his sisters and his sisters antagonize him. It is a constant drone of sibling rivalry here in the Haddon home. So I might be sharing the latest play by ridiculous play with a friend of mine when out of the blue she says, "So have you prayed on it?"

That one sentence is a show stopper. Why? Because if it is a real question, it is as if something on my face or my demeanor says that I have not spoken to my God about it. What if I have? What if I haven't? What business is it of yours? And plus, what kind of response is exactly being elicited here?

"Yes, in fact, I spoke to God about it yesterday and He went on and on about spare the rod and spoil the child. Also that I might want to consider selling my son into slavery. Might decrease some of the conflict at home."

Really?

Or maybe, "No, why don't we have a prayer session right now? Because clearly, since I'm still having these lingering problems I am probably not praying right. Never had complaints from God before, but maybe with your guidance, my point can get across to our creator."

Does that sound too snarky?

Maybe it is only meant as a reminder to talk to God about it. But even then, who are you to give me such a reminder? Have you looked into my brain or heart and discovered me lacking? Have you yourself talked to our Lord was told, "Wow, that's the first I've heard Tess talk about that!" I'm thinking probably not.

I don't know what to say to the question, although I'm tempted in giving my most honest and non-snarky response.

"Sorry, I don't talk about my conversations with my God with other people. Your question suggests to me that you don't want to hear about my problems. Sorry to have bothered you. "

While the place where the question comes from is likely sincere and truly, truly meant to be loving, it isn't. At least not to me. It is a way to say, "Hey, you need to talk to God because talking to me does no good at all. Even if all you want is a sympathetic ear. Even if all you want is validation that you're not the only parent who feels like this. You need to bring that up with God and not me."

Now on to the second:  quoting scripture.

For me, it feels like nails on a chalk board. It brings back vivid memories of a debate I took part in during the 5th grade. I loved debate during class. I loved making arguments and felt pretty dominant. I remember leading the discussion on legalizing marijuana on one of those occasions. That was a great day. Then I was picked to lead a debate about women's rights. It was a total no brainer, I thought. I went into the debate armed with facts about how women were being paid 40% less than men for the exact same job if he made the argument that there was no discrimination. That women were people afforded the same rights and liberties as their male counterparts under the Constitution. My rival, a boy whose initials were J.C. (take that as you will), only had his bible. He likely got a hold of a concordance and just looked up where in the bible the subjugation of women to men appeared. I remember standing there completely disarmed. I was in Catholic school. I am a cradle Catholic. And there I was in the unenviable position of trying to argue against the bible. Now, with some knowledge under my belt, I might have argued how God chose a woman to bear His only begotten son, how Jesus first appeared to women when He rose from the dead, etc. but that day, in front of my class, my words were silenced. I couldn't think of how to argue against that.

In using quotations, the speaker is doing 2 things at the same time. They are bolstering and boasting. They bolster their statements by drawing from the words of other people of note. There is the implicit challenge that you might disagree with me, but can you disagree with Matt, Mark, Luke or John, and thereby disagree with the big boss Himself? Then there is the boasting, which may or may not be intentional. People who quote scripture show the single minded focus to memorize the bible. They become a walking concordance by memorizing where in the bible the verse is from, telling you exactly which bible verse it is, but stopping short of telling you why that particular verse is relevant. Should be completely obvious to you since you profess to love God and Jesus. See how much better they can walk the path because they have read it and recite it?

Oh man. That bugs the heck out of me.

I don't have that fever to memorize scripture. Sure, like most people, I've got my favorite verses, but you won't find me quoting them to anybody else. Maybe that makes me a bad Christian. I have my bible. I read it, probably not up to the standards of most evangelical Christians.

I'm Catholic. We have priests to read it for us.