I’m missing Marie Callender’s right now (oh, look, they’re having their June pie sale). Chocolate meringue pie. Yes, I can make a decent chocolate pie, but not the big meringue, and I’m the only person in the family who would eat it. OK, Miss Baby would eat it, but I wouldn’t want her to.
They actually still pay the deposit on their pie tins — when I was a kid, they would collect under the stove, and we would take them in every so often and get our pie at a reduced price.
Real estate makes me want chocolate. The guy who owns our house doesn’t want to sell it. It’s a shame — I like this house, and I don’t like to move. But this is the time to do it, while there’s still the big tax credit. There are folks who are trying to expand it, but I’ve read about that, and I don’t think it’s a good idea– part of the reason I don’t trust the idea is that the congresswoman putting it forth is a Real Estate agent. Somehow it doesn’t seem so altruistic this way.
Anyway, we can’t quite do anything until August (we will qualify for better loans then), and we need to make an offer before October, because the house needs to clear before the end of the year, and that takes up to 60 days.
We are beginning to think about alternative school districts, and that gives us more options, but we’ve about decided we can’t afford the charmingly odd house we looked at nearby, unlsee they’re willing to cut their price by a good $10,000.
You can see why I need pie.
Now it’s Miss Baby’s turn to feel poorly. A few nights ago, she woke up screaming. We tried to soothe her with Baby Einstein — she finds Beethoven especially relaxing — but what she really wanted was to be upright, and didn’t stop crying until the tylenol took effect. We took her in, and she has a double ear infection. No wonder she’s been cranky.
Actually, it’s been up and down. Sometimes she’s cranky, and sometimes she’s delightful. The other day, we were getting ready to go go someplace in the car, and she came to me with a pair of my shoes: “Mommy shoes!” She insisted that I remove the shoes I had already and she put the other shoes on my feet for me, enjoying the role-reversal. The day after the cranky night, she was pretty tired, and actually fell asleep on the swingset.
This week was VBS; the Little Guy missed Monday, and Miss Baby missed Wednesday and Thursday on account of the ear problem. They both enjoyed the days they did go. When I went to pick them up on Friday, the Little Guy was singing with the other kids, and Miss Baby was beside him in the circle, dancing and clapping. The kids are going to sing in church on Sunday; we’ll see how it goes.
We’re all feeling strange today.
Miss Baby went to VBS this morning and apparently had a great time, but she blew up on me in the afternoon. We went to get her hair cut, and when the fifteen minute wait turned out to be a forty-five minute wait, she lost it. She’d been happily sitting in all their chairs, repeating, “pretty hair,” but when it was time to sit in the chair, she threw herself on the floor. I got her in the chair and she wiggled and fussed, and the lady said, “Well, if she’s not going to sit still, I can’t cut her hair.” I was annoyed, so I pointed out that the only reason we waited was that she had told us it would be only 15 minutes.
The Little Guy had a fever and stayed home from VBS. He played train games and watched train videos and generally had a happy, quiet day.
I slept in, probably too late, and never quite woke up; my DH was tired because he had to wake up so early. We all just kinda sat around reading and trying to figure out how to buy a house.
Saturday was Miss Baby’s third birthday, and she celebrated it her way. We’d intended to take her someplace fun, like the pool at Grandma’s hotel or Monkey Joe’s, but that didn’t happen. In the morning, before Grandma called, Miss Baby wanted to go outside. So we took turns pushing her on the swings until she dozed off, right there. She woke a little, dragged her feet to stop, and insisted on being picked up. I took her inside, and she laid down and napped for several hours. It’s been ages since she napped in the morning; she rarely naps in the afternoon. The Little Guy and I took a break to go to the train shop with Grandma. We returned home after her nap. She was happy and cheerful and quite pleased to open presents. We brought her balloons, which she enjoyed (you’d be surprised at the ways a creative child can actually play with a balloon; they don’t all result in popping). She opened her presents and played with them one by one, sang along when we brought out the ladybug cake (round cake with white icing and that red spray-on food coloring and piped black trim), leaned over and blew out the candles like an expert, and began poking her fingers in the frosting, saying, “Mmmm, yummy ladybug.” She sang “Happy Birthday” to herself as she ate her cake, and then followed me to the kitchen as I prepared dinner, which was, “Mmmm yummy spaghetti, happy birthday.”
Her favorite gift was a plush ladybug modeled after the friendly character in The Grouchy Ladybug — that has hardly left her side since the party. So, the birthday girl had a good time; it wasn’t impressive or particularly organized, but she got ponies, ladybugs, books, cake, and pasta (she even got the cake before the pasta). As far as she’s concerned, that’s a good party.
Or, as the Little Guy would call it, an adventure.
On Wednesday, he and I went up to RDU to pick up my mother from the airport. It’s about an hour and fifteen minutes from here, but we gave ourselves time, since we’d be skirting Raleigh near 5:00. We got to the airport, got grandma and her luggage with little trouble, and pulled off the highway at the next off-ramp to eat dinner while the traffic died down. That went relatively well; the Little Guy is amused by McDonalds that look like Starbucks. Unfortunately, grandma insisted on sitting in front of the TV tuned to Fox news, which I hate; however, we did have a moderately pleasant and interesting conversation about the events in Iran, in which she only slammed Persians once, and then only slightly.
We got back on the road, which was relatively clear, and were making good time on I-40 when it began to rain furiously. Grandma freaked and insisted I pull over. I’m not always sure this is a good idea, but I did so, as did many other people. The Little Guy began to narrate the story right away, “It’s raining so hard that we had to pull over, and so did they! Those people are going too fast! It’s an adventure!” It slowed a little, so we pulled off the road and went to another McDonald’s, where Grandma got coffee and the Little Guy got cookies and milk. I brought my map, and found a highway that went the opposite direction from the storm, and off we went. The Little Guy was pretty excited; adventures that involve maps and cookies and milk and increase the likelihood of train sightings are pretty exciting to him. We took off through the countryside, experiencing only mild cloudbursts on the way. We could have probably gotten back on the interstate, but I didn’t want to deal with my mother in a rainstorm any more if I had to (she did offer to drive, which was so not welcome — she doesn’t seem to realize that I am 42). My mother actually enjoyed looking at the houses and towns (so much so that she forgot to be carsick), and the Little Guy enjoyed telling her about the towns as we went through (we eventually joined a road we’ve driven several times). When we got to Fayetteville, we drove her past the Little Guy’s school — she’d complained bitterly that she hadn’t seen it last time — and took her to her hotel. On the way home, we saw the Amtrak barrelling through on the RR bridge over Ramsey St. — “It’s a P2-30!” the Little Guy exclaimed (Or whatever the model number of the engine is), and drove through a third McDonald’s to bring Daddy dinner.
All told, it took us six hours to pick up grandma from the airport. The Little Guy was delighted with and exhausted by his adventure — airports and maps and rain and McDonalds and trains.
So, my mother decided to come visit us for Miss Baby’s birthday. Thankfully, she decided to stay at a hotel, “so the kids could swim in the pool.” She called us around 11:00 each day and went home the moment I’d washed the dishes each night (and she made sure that I washed them, too). She wanted to shop a lot — mostly at Walmart, which is one of the two stores in the town where she lives, but it’s more exciting when you have to carry it 2000 miles in a suitcase. It’s from an exotic Walmart. She complained a lot about the heat, which was pretty funny considering that she lives in Kingman, Arizona. And, oddly, she seemed disinterested in the children. Miss Baby paid her more attention than she has in the past, very cutely calling out, “Hi, Grandma!” and “Bye, Grandma!” with relatively little prompting. The Little Guy studied her a bit more than he has in the past.
And it must be said that the Little People did enjoy the pool — Miss Baby, after greeting the other swimmers with, “Hello, Friends,” sat on the steps for a while, working her way down one by one, until she stepped out and walked around the 3-foot deep shallow end, her whole head above the water. She was delighted, wide-eyed, grinning — she’d proved to herself once again that she can do anything she wants (yikes). Thus she was a little let down when she headed down to the 4-foot deep end of the pool, where her brother was chatting with the friends. Too deep! I scooped her up and moved her back to where she could touch down, and she insisted on being let go of again. This experiment was repeated several times as she figured out where the line was between shallow and deep. (Grandma was sitting on a chaise lounge reading during all of this — it’s one thing to put on a swimsuit and another thing entirely to get into the water with one’s grandchildren).
The Little Guy is confused by Grandma — he was excited and happy to see her, so he got a little loud and silly, which we generally regard as the exuberance of a happy kid. After she’d shushed him several times, I explained to him that Grandma does not like silliness. “Why?” he asked, confounded (He can’t imagine not enjoying silliness). I had trouble answering that one; although she raised me to dislike silliness, I eventually got over that — mostly due to the Little People. On the way home from the airport today, I thanked him for being so nice to Grandma, and being quiet while we drove to RDU. He observed that she was scared a lot in the car (every time I passed someone, or someone passed me, or I went a little faster, or I went a little slower, or someone else sped up or slowed down, or the road was slightly bumpy, she’d suck in air and grab at the door handle and say she was going to be sick), and he remembered how scared she was when we went to the Grand Canyon with her. I told him how, when I was a kid, she was always afraid when we drove over bridges or up mountains. “Did she think you were going to fall off?” he asked. “And did you fall off?” he continued. No, I told him, we never fell off a mountain or a bridge, because we drove carefully. “I never did either, but I don’t drive,” he agreed. “I don’t think she’s right to be so scared all the time,” he commented, and I agreed. He’s starting to observe her and “handle” her a little bit.
Strangely, she insisted on going to church with us, and even bought a dress. My DH commented that the last time he saw her in a dress was for our wedding, and that was nearly 12 years ago. She did sing along some, but she looked at her watch a lot during the service and didn’t seem interested in much. The Little Guy was pretty quiet, and the sermon was pretty good — the pastor was pretty excited, since his first grandchild was born this week, just in time for Father’s Day.
So, I am writing this as a break from looking at real estate online. Not fantasy or self-torture, but, that-one-would-be-less-per-month-than-we-are-paying-in-rent looking at real estate. OK, so, there’s some self-torture going on. We’ve decided that the new home buyer tax break would offset the penalties from taking the down payment out of my retirement fund (which we can do now that I’ve changed schools), and we can probably do this. It’s tricky — our money goes furthest in neighborhoods with less than desirable schools, and the neighborhoods attached to our son’s school are either prohibitively expensive or a bit sketchy. Seriously, we live on the only street in the neighborhood that combines affordable and pleasant. I still want to find out if we can buy the house we live in; buying a house and not having to move is pretty much the best of all possible worlds. The house across the street was vacated hurriedly last week, and I’m trying to find out if it’s been foreclosed on so we can call the bank before anyone else does. Pushing all your stuff across the street is the next best option. Real Estate makes people do terrible things.
It’s summertime; I’m supposed to be relaxing. Here’s what’s going on:
My mother comes on Wednesday.
My husband has a cold and is confined to bed.
We’ve started house-hunting and researching the whole business of buying a home.
The other day I went to the library and got a book on psychology and speech development in children. I felt like I needed to find out more about this stuff on Miss Baby’s behalf. I started with the chapter on Atypical Language Development, and, since she’s clearly not Autistic or Downs, that puts her in the vague category of “Specific Language Impairment.” Some of the things they describe do seem to relate to her. For example, they say that some of these kids are “anomic,” meaning that they seem to have a hard time finding the words for concepts they clearly understand. This is totally her — as one therapist pointed out, sometimes she uses more abstract words than are typical for little people. For that woman, she referred to a frying pan as “object to cook with.” Today, when she was very pleased with a banana, she said, “Best,” then modified it, “One of the best.” She knows “yummy,” and uses it a lot, but that’s not the word that came to mind today; instead, something more complex came out.
Anyway, the book suggests that kids like this end up with learning disabilities; at any rate, it’s clear that her mind doesn’t work the same way as other people’s do, but I don’t think that means her mind doesn’t work well. It just means we’re going to spend the rest of our lives arguing with both of their teachers.
So, to relax, I’m going to read a graphic novel about Afghanistan.
When I wrote up Miss Baby’s morning adventures a few days ago, I included sound effects bracketed with greater than/ less than symbols. That told the computer not to show those words. So, here is the complete entry, with parentheses that won’t confuse the computer.
(crash. bang. bang. bang. bang.)
“Uh-oh.”
(bam. bam. bam.)
“Oh, man.”
(thump.)
No idea what is was all about.
Filed under: mediaPosted: June / 15 / 2009
Plus, I keep thinking that Walter Matthau died too soon. It’s totally his role. Lou Grant is fine, just right, but Matthau owned cranky old man territory for so long, it’s hard not to think of him when you see Carl Fredrickson.
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The movie, by the way, is quite good — I got to see it last week with the Little Guy and some of his friends — although the 3D is an irrelevant addition that makes it more expensive. It’s lovely, of course, and quite touching. And it’s totally Moby Dick. Really — everybody has to learn to give up the symbolic item that they thought they really wanted in life so they can get what they really truly need — it’s that or be Ahab. (Of course, I’ve never read Moby Dick, nor do I intend to). The Little Guy especially enjoyed the couragous cub scout, although he didn’t quite understand what was so funny about him talking nonstop.
