Welfareloser's Blog

i’m suddenly going from a house full of 4 little boys, 3 of them preschoolers, to having 3 of them in school for 6-1/2 hours a day, 5 days a week. so i was up late the night before… keeping busy… finally ran out of things to do, and as we were falling asleep at 2 am, yeah, i cried. no, i’m not being overprotective, and i’m not creepily attached to my kids. this is a positive thing that i feel good about. and good lord, all three of them are excited (you’d have thought it was christmas the way they stayed up late and then got up early, tearing around the house, putting on their backpacks and mismatched socks at the buttcrack of dawn), and i’m excited for them. but it’s so much fun to be the one who teaches them everything, witnesses all their awesome moments and kisses away (or laughs at, depending) all their sucky moments. and now, i’ve got two more heading out into the world where they will be learning and doing and growing without me.

so there’s that one aspect of it that’s a little sad, but, like i said, this is a positive thing. the kids love school, and i love writing. and after a two-year hiatus, i get to do it again. more on that in a moment. first, here are the pictures.

the school supplies. 8 bags of them. 22 glue sticks. 7 notebooks. 9 boxes of markers. 6 boxes of crayons. 72 #2 pencils. oh, walmart, how i forgive you your sins when you put gluesticks on sale for 10 cents each, enabling me to get out the door for (just) under $100:

DramaQueen proudly announced that he could tie his shoes all by himself for school:

the glory of the knots notwithstanding, note that his feet are on top of the tongues.

I am now officially yuppie scum… first, it was putting down a deposit on a preschool for my infant, to assure him a spot in 2010. Now… I bought the twits bento boxes for kindergarten.

Because I was looking over their registration stuff, and one of the things they want kids to be able to do is be able to open their food packaging with no help. And they can, but often with spillage and breakage, and there’s no replacing fucked-up food when they’re not at home (and probably no licking pudding off the floor.) so, bento boxes are cool, because they’re airtight like tupperware, but segmented in small portions and easy to open – undo one velcro strap, take off one lid, and you’re looking at a large compartment (juice box and sandwich) on one tier, and three smaller compartments (ketchup, cheese, fruit slices, cookies, whatever) in the second tier. no mess of disposable packaging, (and no paying extra for little bags of oreos and crap), and small portions of a variety of foods = good. also? creepy japanese artwork. score!

and finally… outside the front door as we started walking to school:

then, unable to leave well enough alone with that perfectly successful picture, i had to try to take one in front of the school. apparently, the sun was kinda at the wrong angle for that one:

anyway. all three kids had an awesome time. actually, all four. i was really afraid MonkeyBeef would be distraught over the sudden lack of entertainment, but he spent the morning careening through the toy room laughing to himself… apparently, not sharing toys is kind of awesome.

this first week of school, the kindergarteners are only going half-time, so i’m not writing yet. this week, i’m just catching up on all the stupid daily tasks that have been neglected over the summer. after walking them to school this morning, i came home, watched the daily show, paid some bills, filed several months worth of papers (and by “filed,” i mean “threw away 90% of it, and put the rest in a sorted stack near the file drawers in the basement.”) we went to the grocery store just before noon, and i almost died laughing. (or perhaps the more appropriate exaggeration for the childbearing crowd would be “i almost peed myself laughing!”) the noise level was much higher than usual, not because there were more people there than usual, but because they were all bouncing off the walls like an ADHD convention. the store was full of moms – well-rested, giggling, goofy-ass moms, excited as hell to be grocery shopping without their kids. “i took a NAP!” “i watched TV!” “i read a book!” “i cranked up my music!”

and i was right there with them. i loved this summer. it was fun. i feel really good about how successful i was at keepng 4 kids over a 7-year age range really entertained. i heard “i’m bored” exactly once all summer. i’m mostly sad to see it end, looking over the pictures of them catching bugs, swimming, running through parks, making up games, putting together superhero costumes. we had whole days to find a dozen books on a single subject, like scorpions or buildings, and learn everything we wanted about them. we could spend hours learning to play simple songs really badly on inappropriately loud instruments. we could watch the daily show and discuss politics (“mom, obama punched a baby! he’s an awesome president!” “can you show me heebieland on the map?”) how can it be over? we never even made it miniature golfing, dammit! i miss summer already!

but i’m not even trying to be one of those pain in the ass Best Parents Ever who wants everyone to believe that they love EVERYTHING ABOUT PARENTING, period. yeah, having a baby is awesome, but sleep deprivation sucks donkey balls. any woman who says she NEVER minded it because she loves her baby SO MUCH is a LYING sack of shit for trying to make you feel inadequate. yeah, breastfeeding is cute and snuggly and healthful, but being at the beck and call of a 10-lb bundle of unrestrained id wears thin LONG before the age of 2 years. don’t believe the bitch who says she LOVES EVERY MINUTE of breastfeeding her two-year-old; she got sick of it long before the 1-year mark, just like the rest of us… she was just too lazy to wean! i mean, you don’t understand. the baby CRIED. so she HAD to keep breastfeeding. (“so, uhhh, i’ll just pretend i’m doing it because i love it, and NO ONE WILL KNOW. right. yeah. because the fact that he cries about everything because we never tell him no? yeah, nobody notices that either. because they’re distracted by the awesome parenting inherent in the $40 shoes i bought him because I’M SUCH A GOOD MOMMY. i’m totally pulling this off!”) and yeah, summer vacation was a ton of fun, for the kids and for me, and i feel really good about how well it went, but it was also stressful. the pressure – of being that responsible for that many lives for that many hours a day, every day, and the constant stress of just barely pulling off everything else becasue i was devoting so much time to having fun with the kids – the pressure is off, and it’s a big relief.

even when it’s not summer vacation, my day is pretty highly choreographed. i have to plan several moves ahead, like a chess game, to ensure that no moment is wasted, no action is wasted, so that i get the most effect for my efforts. for example: when i take this laundry basket upstairs, i need to take that pile of books up with me, and that package of toilet paper, and i need to remember to bring that pair of shoes that needs repair back down with me… i need to put his clothes away before bedtime, and he needs to clean his room first, so i need to have him do that this morning before he goes to play at DayDreamer’s house… if we want to make cookies, we need to go to the store, and while we’re there, we need to get this and that to save a trip later, and we need to get to the store by this time so we have enough time to put groceries away, get the toddler down for his nap, and clean out the dishwasher, so we can have the cookies done before it’s time to make dinner… etc. and not only do i do that, i do it all QUICKLY. i run up and down stairs. i run when i clean, and throw stuff into drawers to save time (this is a great way to get kids to help you clean, too. laugh if you will, but i have an 18-month old who, once anything made out of metal or ceramic is out of the way, can finish cleaning out the dishwasher for me with little supervision. seriously. fuck child labor laws! throwing plastic dishes into the right kitchen drawers is fun! now if he could just quit unfolding laundry before stuffing it in drawers, i could start renting his little ass out as a maid….) there’s a constant background noise of planning my moves inside my head. now, during the school year, if i can maintain that level of pressure on myself all day, i can get the house clean AND have an awesome dinner on the table, so the evening is free for all 6 of us to enjoy as a family with no stupid crap to get in our way. i can choose to slack off if i feel like it, and we can chill in a messy house with a frozen pizza for dinner, and it’s still all good.

this summer, slacker days were not an option. i basically had to maintain the high-pressure choreography all day, every day, just to accomplish that bare minimum level of messy-house-and-frozen-pizza that i could get with less effort during the school year. i worked my ass off, and still, tons of things that normally get done got left to pile up. i’m not sure what would have happened had i taken a couple of days off for pure slacking, but it probably would have involved bill collectors and child protective services. banjo practice was spotty, i missed more weekly jam sessions than i attended, even the simplest cooking happened about once a week, at best, and just balling up laundry to carry it up to the right bedrooms got done after 10 PM or before 7 AM.

but summer’s over, and starting next monday, i will finally have the one thing i need to be able to write well, and it’s not alcoholism and suicidal depression. it’s consistent chunks of time 2 hours or longer. some things – like sewing, repairing instruments, playing video games, reading, practicing the banjo or fiddle, blogging – i can do in the 10-minute chunks of time i get here and there when i’m the only adult in charge of a bunch of kids. and i enjoy those things, but i LOVE writing. and to write, i need at least two hours to get anything done, because there are so many different plot ideas and chronologies and character trajectories to keep track of, and i have to really immerse myself in the story and block everything else out to get any quality writing done.

so. it’s not a lot of free time – if you have no kids, or kids that aren’t in school yet, don’t start imagining 9 months of daily freedom. it ain’t quite like that. sick days, holidays, teacher inservice days, etc, add up to an average 4-day school week. if that. and all the stupid housekeeping crap still has to get done, preferably not by putting it off and trying to make it my husband’s problem – take a look sometime at a marriage where the weekends get spent grocery shopping and scrubbing toilets while the kids get shooed away. they’re trying reeeeeeeal hard to convince you that they don’t resent each other. is it working? yeah. (psssst: their sex lives SUCK. so does just about every other aspect of their lives, for that matter. don’t let on that you’ve noticed! it’ll just piss them off more!) busy = bad. unbusy = good.

i’ll take a break here to say: i know this sounds preachy. i sure as hell don’t want ot be a Best Parent Ever, rhapsodizing about a choice i’ve made, with the thinly veiled subtext that your different choice is inferior. i like getting some shit done. people who don’t are cool. the people who annoy me are the ones who pretend they want to get a bunch of shit done, but just *can’t*, no matter how hard they try – and, bless their hearts, they try SO HARD – because circumstances constantly conspire against them. they can’t admit that they just don’t want to get some shit done. if they could admit, they’d be cool. until they do, they’re assholes.

i also don’t want to sound like i’ve got this all figured out, no sweat. i don’t. i mean, i kind of do at this point, but it took some work. and some trial and error. and working through some self-doubt. and plenty of days when i felt like i was not only not pulling it off, but also feeling like i would never pull it off. this is hard. so you’ll have to forgive the self-congratulatory tone, just this once, because dammit, i work hard, i plan carefully, i’ve figured out how to get some shit done that makes me happy, and i’m going to go ahead and declare myself teh winnar!

so, i’m looking at more free time than i’ve had in quite a while, and i know what to do with it. i wrote my first novel during two years worth of EvilGremlin’s three, then two, then one daily nap. then there were a couple of years when i couldn’t write at all, but after life settled down again, when the twits were finally old enough to nap at the same time, on my schedule (and before they were too old for naps), in the 2 mornings a week that EG was in preschool, i completely rewrote that novel during those few hours a week. then came a few more years of nothing more than writing a cover letter to submit the novel to another publisher every 6 months or so. but life keeps changing, i knew i’d get the opportunity to write again, and a year later, there it was: i wrote the first 60 pages of my second novel when EG was in first grade, during the 9 hours a week the twits were in preschool, when i was pregnant with MB.

and now, here i am again, two years later, with three in school, and one still napping for 3-4 hours. all i have to do is make sure i get MonkeyBeef up early enough in the morning that he’s ready for his nap at 11 AM… and then 11 AM until 3 PM dismissal is all mine. i’ll get up early, shower, pack 4 lunches and make 6 breakfasts, get 4 butts out the door, make sure i’ve already eaten and pooped (hey, don’t pretend that’s not important), so that, when the magic me-time begins, it’s ON. i drop what i’m doing, i don’t answer the phone, i don’t screw around, i WRITE. i’ve watched people completely squander precious hours and get jack shit done with twice as much time… you don’t get to shower, make coffee, read the newspaper, go to the mall, and then get down to writing (and by “writing,” i mean “opening up a window with your unfinished paper in it while you screw around on the internet, and occasionally scroll through your document and sigh dramatically at it”) two or three hours into your daycare time, and then whine about how you never get enough time to make progress, dammit. i love being able to learn from somebody else’s mistakes!

that second novel has been hanging at page 60 for two years, but every now and then over those two years, i have an idea that sets my imagination on fire, and i drop what i’m doing and scribble it on a scrap of paper, ignoring rules of punctuation and grammar (kind of like when i’m blogging, only with fewer ellipses and more arrows! note to anyone who wonders what the hell i’m thinking, trying to get a novel published when my writing is this sloppy… you bitches are just getting my first-draft skills. my real writing gets a little more attention to brevity and organization. yep. that’s how much you’re worth to me.) just making sure i capture what was so compelling about the mental image before it fades, and then shove the paper in a file.

i realized a few weeks ago, sitting up in bed with prm, that i would suddenly have the time to get back to writing really soon, and i dug out that file, and read over all those scrawled notes. it didn’t matter that some of them were two years old. they still had “it.” i was caught off guard by how happy it made me. i absolutely love the feeling of my brain being on fire with a good story, of my fingers around a pen or at a keyboard trying to keep up with my thoughts. it’s a high, probably no different from a runner’s high, or the high anyone gets from doing something they love. it feels good to be passionate about something, and i didn’t even realize what a big hole not writing had left in my life. (prm thought this was kind of a “duh,” but screw him. wisdom is a pain in the ass!) i realize now that i’ve tried plugging that hole with other things, but nothing else will quite cut it. (sorry, heroin. you just weren’t fulfilling enough. also, you cost a lot more than spiral notebooks and papermate pens, and i am nothing if not cheap.)

i have a big grin on my face now just thinking about holing up somewhere with a big-ass cup of coffee, shutting out the world, and doing something completely freaking awesome – maybe for as many as 20 hours a week! summer was good. this is good, too. life is good.

yay!