Etiquette Breach?

A few weeks ago, E asked if she could have some friends over to carve pumpkins.  Last year, we coincidentally ended up with at least one extra kid on our pumpkin-carving night,* and it was a lot of fun.   Additionally, I’ve had a few occasions in the past several weeks to hang out with the girls’ friends, and I find those times valuable.  Especially with E, as she’s stretching and flexing, socially, and has switched her friendships all around.  She’s now hanging out with girls that I’ve only known of tangentially in the past.

So I said yes.

And of course, J said, “me too!  me too!”

E wanted to invite 4 or 5 people, and J wanted to invite 3.  That’s too many knives in too many hands for me to deal with at once.  I also am not too keen on shoving 8th grade humor and conversation topics into 6th grade brains.  It’s enough to have J sitting there wide-eyed at the older girls’ jokes and vocabulary (I’m thinking in particular of the word “horny”) – I don’t need to do it to three other “little” girls.

“Let’s have two groups, then,” I said.  [who, me, insane?  nah]  E on Saturday night, and J on Sunday afternoon.  We told D of our plans, he looked at me like I had three heads, and then he shrugged and said okay.

Both gatherings were very low-key.  I had kids bring their own pumpkins (and laughed disproportionately and often at the phrase “B.Y.O.P.”), ordered a couple of pizzas, and put out M & M’s.  The kids pulled out their iPods and the radio, and they laughed and carved and did not cut themselves even once.  (Phew.)  I enjoyed all the kids, even though my own eyes popped out of my own head a few times at some of the conversations and activities (of both the 11 and 13 year olds).   All in all, it was a success.

Until later on Sunday evening.   When a parent called because her daughter hadn’t been invited to our party.  It was a parent that I like, and the parent of a child that is much-loved in our home.

But when choosing who to invite, both the girls worked hard to make sure that their chosen friends “meshed” with one another, that the chosen friends would be interested in the activity, and that the numbers didn’t exceed the limits I set (and I did allow for less 11 year olds than 13 year olds, because of the increased supervision required).  Neither of them invited all of their friends.

My first reaction was to say, “well, it wasn’t really a ‘party’ – we just had a few people over.”  I explained that I couldn’t have large numbers, since we were playing with knives and all.  Apparently, the parent had heard from one of the invitees that we had 7-10 people over at one time.  Names were even shared – names of girls who were not at our house, and were not invited.

The parent was embarrassed when I explained what we really did that day (i.e., not a party), and apologized profusely.   But I still feel crappy about it.

Not really sure what my take-away is:

• if you’re going to have less than everybody at your house, you must swear the invited ones to secrecy;
• you may either invite ONE child to your home, or every single one of your child’s friends; anything in between is an affront to others; or
• we are going to piss people off, no matter what.

We didn’t tell our kid that her friend was upset, or anything about the phone call.  I was full of angst for the entire evening.  D tried to calm me down and let me know that we did nothing wrong, that we couldn’t have 20 kids over at a time for this particular activity.  We don’t have the space, and we didn’t have the required supervision.  And buying pizza and M&Ms for 4 or 5 is a far cry from a full-blown “party” for 20.

I’m not tortured over it anymore, but I am wondering if I missed something.  If there is this unspoken rule in our town that small gatherings are not okay.  If it’s the case, we may have to move, because my kids [and their mother] don’t like huge gatherings.  They prefer to have a few people over at a time.

I still don’t know what the take-away is, and I don’t know if we’ll be doing this again next year. Which is too bad, because we had a great time.

 

* I do not remember carving pumpkins with my family of origin.  As an adult, however, the fall is my favorite time of year – I love the colors, the smell, the cool, and Halloween is an essential element of that season.  When the girls were very little, when I was a single mom, we first started decorating (not yet carving) pumpkins.  I know that we carved – with knives and everything – starting in 2004, our first year back on the East Coast.  It’s become an essential autumnal tradition in our family.

Boundaries

Currently, my mother and my brother are unable to get along.  If you talk to my mom, she says it’s because he’s rude and obnoxious.  If you talk to my brother, he says it’s because mom is obnoxious and controlling.  The nuances of the “why” are probably rooted in deep-seated childhood issues that my brother has a hard time viewing as relevant to his life today.  But I’m not sure the “why” even matters.  What seems more important to me is the “how.”

Family members don’t always get along.  Not only do we have the possibility of simply disliking someone who are related to, but biological families also have hard-wired personality traits that could create clashes.  The oil and water thing.  Or two similar polarities, working so hard to repel one another.  If my brother and mother share the exact same personality traits, that could be a problem.

But the real problem, as I see it, is the behavior that my brother indulges in when he is bothered, frustrated, angered, or otherwise unhappy with my mother, AND her acceptance of that behavior.  He yells.  He tells her to “shut her mouth” or to “stop talking.”  And worse.  She gets upset, and she leaves the room.  She may avoid talking to him for a few days.  But then they both just drop it.  Things become “normal” again.

My brother is not a child.  He is 30-something.  He has a wife, and he has two kids.  He lives around the corner from my parents in the town we grew up in (I live 2.5 hours away).  So it’s not just a “maturity” issue.  It’s not something my mother lets go of because she thinks he’ll learn as he gets older how to behave.  He should have learned already.  Apparently, in other areas of his life, he has learned to behave.  He holds down a job.  He holds down a marriage.  I’m told that he does not exhibit this behavior in his marriage.  It’s just with my mom.

And it drives me crazy that she doesn’t draw a line.  Every time it happens, she is sad and unhappy.  But within a week, she’s doing him favors – she even told me recently that she packs him a lunch for while he’s at work (he works with my father, so she packs them both lunches — see above — my brother does NOT live with my parents).

Things seem like they might be coming to a head.  My mom is feeling done, and my brother’s noticing that the pattern is a problem.  No one knows what the solution is, but we know it won’t be an easy one.  I guess it’s a good thing that people are starting to look for a way to fix things, or to at least come to a place where the relationship can be accepted on scaled-back level.  It’s too bad, however, that things had to disintegrate to a really nasty level before civility is being sought.

So all of this was swirling around in my brain the other day, when E said said something that I couldn’t understand (i.e., she mumbled).  I asked her to please repeat herself, speaking clearly, and she turned around on me and YELLED what she had said with a very rude tone.  I reacted swiftly.  I let her know that she could not talk to me that way.  That if she had a problem with something I have asked of her, she can express the problem, but she cannot yell at me, and she cannot be rude to me.

She is pretty good about going back and thinking about these things, and doing some self-assessment.  Which I hope means that we will not ever – when she’s a child OR adult – slip into the patterns that have developed in my family of origin.

Yesterday, she had a good bit of independent time while I supervised a handful of 11 year olds in a pumpkin-carving extravaganza.  E did her homework, walked over to a friend’s house, and then zoned out on her computer for hours.  (Something she rarely has the opportunity to do, especially with our last 17,000 weekends being crammed to the gills with activities, events, house guests and trips).  When I stopped by her room in the early evening to remind her of the piles of laundry (that she was lying on top of) that she had yet to fold, she was pretty snappish in response, insisting that the ONLY thing she could actually do at that moment in time was take a nap.  Which I forbade her from doing, since it would have meant she was up until 3 a.m. (again), and quite frankly – I had “after the kids go to bed” plans in place, and wasn’t willing to worry about the kid tossing and turning in the next room.

Instead, I let her know that her continued grouchy behavior would result in an 8:30 or 9 p.m. bedtime (VERY early for her), and left her room.

About 10 minutes later, she came into the living room where I was showing her sister how to use Google Docs and said, “Mom, I realize now why I’m so tired, irritable and grouchy.  I really haven’t had much to eat today, and I feel like crap.”  So she grabbed a banana, since dinner was soon, and stayed civil – fun, even – for the rest of the evening.

I let her know that I appreciated her taking stock, and recognizing that the irritability and grouchiness was coming from within.

If He’s Not Our President, Can He Really Doom Us to Communist, Earth-Loving Hell?

My parents are politically and religiously affiliated with the very deep religious right.  This was the reason for my attendance at Jerry Falwell’s University for college, and in the end likely responsible for my Left-Wing affiliations.  I like to instead attribute my migration from right to left to my own wisdom, maturity, open-mindedness, and empathy.  Not yet willing to call it over-ripe rebellion.

My parents know that we have these differences.  My dad’s response is to goad me – to purposefully raise issues that he knows will get my dander up.  He tries desperately to get me hot under hte collar.  And I try desperately not to snap his head off.  My mom, however, is usually a little more defensive, a little less willing to engage.  She likes to say she’s also less predictable in her views.

So she is the one who forwarded me a transcript of a speech that had been forwarded to her from one of her church friends.  This was sent after she IM’d me and said “we received an email that says Obama is going to sign a treaty!  On the environment.  This seems impossible.  It can’t be true, can it?”  She asked me to review it, and let her know what I think.  I let her know (before saying okay) that I thought such a treaty was a grand idea, and I fully supported it.  She insisted, and I acquiesced.

This is what showed up in my mail box:

Fwd:  Frightening

October 15, 2009

The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change. A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.
Here were Monckton’s closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:
At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.
I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

[laughter]
And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.
So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.
But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.
So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Lord Monckton received a standing ovation and took a series of questions from members of the audience. Among those questions were these relevent to the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty:
Question: The current administration and the Democratic majority in Congress has shown little regard for the will of the people. They’re trying to pass a serious government agenda, and serious taxation and burdens on future generations. And there seems to be little to stop them. How do you propose we stop Obama from doing this, because I see no way to stop him from signing anything in Copenhagen. I believe that’s his agenda and he’ll do it.
I don’t minimize the difficulty. But on this subject – I don’t really do politics, because it’s not right. In the end, your politics is for you. The correct procedure is for you to get onto your representatives, both in the US Senate where the bill has yet to go through (you can try and stop that) and in [the House], and get them to demand their right of audience (which they all have) with the president and tell him about this treaty. There are many very powerful people in this room, wealthy people, influential people. Get onto the media, tell them about this treaty. If they go to www.wattsupwiththat.com, they will find (if they look carefully enough)  a copy of that treaty, because I arranged for it to be posted there not so long ago. Let them read it, and let the press tell the people that their democracy is about to be taken away for no good purpose, at least [with] no scientific basis [in reference to climate change]. Tell the press to say this. Tell the press to say that, even if there is a problem [with climate change], you don’t want your democracy taken away. It really is as simple as that.
Question: Is it really irrevocable if that treaty is signed? Suppose it’s signed by someone who does not have the authority, as I – I have some, a high degree of skepticism that we do have a valid president there because I -
I know at least one judge who shares your opinion, sir, yes.
I don’t believe it until I see it. … Would [Obama's potential illegitimacy as president] give us a reasonable cause to nullify whatever treaty that he does sign as president?
I would be very careful not to rely on things like that. Although there is a certain amount of doubt whether or not he was born in Hawaii, my fear is it would be very difficult to prove he wasn’t born in Hawaii and therefore we might not be able to get anywhere with that. Besides, once he’s signed that treaty, whether or not he signed it validly, once he’s signed it and ratified it – your Senate ratifies it – you’re bound by it. But I will say one thing; they know, in the White House, that they won’t be able to get the 67 votes in the Senate, the two-thirds majority that your Constitution has stipulated must be achieved in order to ratify a treaty of this kind. However, what they’ve worked out is this – and they actually let it slip during the election campaign, which is how I know about it. They plan to enact that Copenhagen treaty into legislation by a simple majority of both houses. That they can do. But the virtue of that – and here you have a point – is that is, thank God, reversible. So I want you to pray tonight, and pray hard for your Senate that they utterly refuse to ratify the [new] Treaty of Copenhagen, because if they refuse to ratify it and [Obama] has to push it through as domestic legislation, you can repeal it.
Regardless of whether global warming is taking place or caused to any degree by human activity, we do not want a global government empowered to tax Americans without elected representation or anything analogous to constitutional protections. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew their progeny allowed a foreign power such authority, effectively undoing their every effort in an act of Anti-American Revolution. If that is our imminent course, we need to put all else on hold and focus on stopping it. If American sovereignty is ceded, all other debate is irrelevant.

Well, wow.

So I sent my mom and email with less-than-delicate lambasting of this ridiculous fear-mongering and anger-inciting screed.  I spoke about International Law (only what I learned from an intro course).  I spoke about sovereignty, and the protections in place of that concept.  I spoke about the “treaty” that this man kept citing – because I bothered to actually look it up and skim it.  What I pointed out was that it’s not a treaty – it’s a “draft” that is clearly declared a “starting place” and by far not a “treaty.”  I mean, come on.  It’s written by Greenpeace and their friends.  Now, I likely wouldn’t complain too much about Greenpeace having some input on such a treaty, but can we just maybe — maybe ???? — look a little closer at things before we deem them Communist Take Overs?  Can we look and see that this is not a treaty???  I’m asking for a little bit of thought.  Just a wee.

Can we also recognize that the man has studied and learned to effectively employ Religious Right buzzwords in a manipulative way?  The ‘world government” cited above is a huge fear [or dream?] of fundamentalist Christians.  It is a sign of “the end times,” it is proof of the hand of the anti-christ, and the coming of the “rapture” and the “end times.”

My mom’s response?  She said thanks.  That she thought it seemed too extreme to be true.  I was happy that I was able to forward her an article from the New York Times today, that had a very reasonable explanation of what’s really happening in Copenhagen, and the myriad of challenges and factors that are involved before our President [even with his questionable legitamacy] can sell our collective souls to the Devil.

Continued Toe-Dipping – Holidays on the Horizon

It’s been a long time since I blogged on a regular basis.  This morning’s post was rather impulsive and then felt so good – like taking the sweaters & fleece out of the attic at the first frost.  Mmmm.  So here we go again!

It’s holiday-plan-making time around here.

[Stressful.]

The girls are way off their schedule as far as visits with their father are concerned.  Last year, post-financial crisis, plane fares made Thanksgiving financially unfeasible.  This year,  baby-due-dates make Christmas impossible.  (Step-mom is due on 12/23).  This means I get 2 years in a row of both holidays.  [do not bother cleaning out your ears -- there simply are no complaints that you are not hearing].

My parents are only 2+ hours away.   But we differ on the religious front, so when it comes to the “Christian” holidays,  we’ve tried to keep a little distance.  First, it was because my parents had a hard time with our differences, and now it’s because I feel slightly rude showing up and souring their praise & worship with my unbelief.

Even without the spiritual thrown in the mix — we like to have our time at home.  We don’t want every single holiday to be spent traveling and dealing with the trials and tribulations of extended-family dynamics.  We love our home, and our smaller family, and the traditions that we have developed of our own.

But Thanksgiving is not a religious-based holiday.

I come from a larger extended family. We always had huge family gatherings for Thanksgiving.  My mother is one of 8, and when her mother was alive and living in the same state, we ALL got together.  Things changed over the years, and the size of the crowd has steadily dwindled – kids grew up and moved away, grandparents passed away, family arguments became fractious (not including my immediately family, fortunately).  And for a while, I really didn’t miss the bigger holiday gathering.  It was a relief.

But in the past few years, I find that I feel lonely on Thanksgiving when it’s just the 4 of us.  Our friends aren’t around – they’re with their larger families.  And a turkey is really big when you’re only feeding 4.  And it feels kinda … well, like I said … lonely.

Worse are the years that the girls are with their father in another state.  D and I have tried a few different things to make the holiday special for us.  We’ve cooked nice dinners and watched movies, we’ve gone out, we’ve done giant movie-marathons-eating-in-bed lazy days.  Turns out (perhaps to D’s dismay) the lazier non-traditional options leave me feeling hollow.  I like the holidays!  I like the fun meals and the special-ness of it all.

[My true dream is to spend the non-kid holidays traveling abroad, just D and I.  But I can't afford that.  Yet.  If ever.]

So this year, we’re going to visit with my parents for Thanskgiving.  The kids are kicking a little bit, they often find traveling on holidays wearisome and vote to stay home.  But I’m elbowing in and making my preferences known, with a true Mom-voice – the loudest and most authoritative of all.  And they will have fun, as they always do.  My mother and I are making plans that will include my cousins (many of whom are my girls’ ages), and it will be a fun time for them.

I haven’t started to address Christmas yet …

Joy in the Crawly Things

Smack in the middle of an insane weekend, E and I found ourselves home alone.  She in the shower, me sitting in the next room playing a mindless Facebook game while trying to ignore laundry, work to be done, messes to be cleaned, and a headache of unknown origins.

“Mom, my head is kind of itchy.“

First thing to pop into the head is, of course, “oh shit.  lice.”  But E has proven herself immune.  Several friends have battled with the little buggers, her sister has had a few run-ins, and E has remained miraculously clean.  So it CANNOT be lice.

Nevertheless, my sigh was a heavy one when I said, “Okay, once you get dressed I’ll check your head.  Do you think it might be lice?“

“I don’t know.”

“Does it feel like things are crawling on you?”

“mmmmmaybe.”

[cue another sigh before donning the rose colored glasses]:  ”Well, you have just started taking daily showers, AND it’s getting cold outside, so maybe your scalp is just dry.“

“mmm.”

So while she dressed, I sat, while starting another round of the mindless game, imagining how lice would change my weekend:

1. My uncle who is staying with us, along with his wife, 10 year old son, and 12 year old daughter-with-hair-to-her-butt … should they be told when they return from visiting their son at the local university?  Or should I try to get all the clean up done before they return for dinner?
2. E’s sheets were clean before I handed the bed over to the uncle and the aunt — but I didn’t clean her comforter, or her pillow shams on the extra pillows.  Crap.  I have to clean all the sheets again, all the comforters, and now also the ones in J’s room, since that’s where E slept last night with the Aunt and Uncle in E’s bed … And remember that shortcut I took earlier?  And just folded and put away the towel that had been on the towel rack to dry, shrugging while thinking, “what?  It just dried a clean body.”  A clean lousy body, and now it’s in the cabinet, with what had been REALLY clean towels.  So now I have to clean ALL the towels.
3. Lice treatment.  I don’t have any.  I’ve only used the stuff twice, and I’ve honestly felt that we’d outgrown this mess.  I’ll have to go get some.  [CVS being a 4 minute walk away, this wasn't the worst of the potential problems.]
4. I won’t get to work on those assignments that have a Monday at 4 p.m. deadline.  The ones that gave me the justification to be sitting at home right now rather than on the sidelines of J’s soccer game along with D and the other soccer dads.   Instead of working, I’ll be sitting on the couch with E’s head in my lap for hours on end while I pick through her very thick and almost very-long hair.
5. Wait … what?  E’s head in my lap for hours?  With my fingers in her hair?  And her having no choice but to deal with it, rather than saying, “Mom, stop!”

Why on earth, despite #s 1-4 totally sucking, did #5 make me smile a little inside?

Probably because I knew she didn’t really have lice, so all I really had was the image of her head in my lap for hours on end, and not the reality of the suckitude that was the laundry and the telling of people who needed to know, and the general week to 10-days nastiness that would come if she did have lice.

She eventually came and sat in front of me.  I started prodding around her head and said, “Oh! There’s a bug! Gross!“

“Really?  Really?”

“No!  Just kidding!“ general laughter ensues.

Then, of course, as punishment for the laughter, I really see a bug.  And then a little patch of other lice-related nastiness.

I did tell the Uncle, and dealt with the look of horror that crept over his and his wife’s faces.  And we told the friend that E had been with the night before (who then also found some nits on her head).  Last night, I dutifully checked the school’s policies on lice, and after D and wrestled with whether or not we should report the incident to the school (the policy was ambiguous), we decided that we should.  Mostly because we have no clue where she got the bugs from, and I’d rather that whatever parent that may be in the house with that other buggy child be clued in to the fact that lice are afoot, and check their child, and deal with their buggies before they head back E’s way.  Not because I think E is contagious – it was much more selfish than that.  But the nurse was surprised at hearing the news — apparently, they’re usually done with the lice by the time they hit 8th grade.  That’s my E for ya.

But at least I got not one but TWO lice-picking sessions, with E’s head on my lap, and Buffy on the screen for all to enjoy.

Mmm.  Spike.

Welcome.

I have been a blogger before.  When I was in grad school  -  when my kids were younger.

Now a new blog.

For the tween years.

Thanks for joining me.