I Just Got a Raise

Lately I have been looking around to see if there were any jobs that caught my fancy.  Turns out my fancy is pretty slippery and hard to pin down.  Anyway, on Tuesday I had my first interview in about 7.5 years.  I was offered the job and declined.

That evening, after I returned home from the interview, Wink asked me to come downstairs into Baboo and Wiyah’s empty room where she and Pink have been playing lately.  She was all dressed up with make up on and had made a desk out of some odds and ends in our basement.  She invited me to sit down and proceeded to interview me for the job of Stay Home Mom.

She outlined my job duties as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cleaning.  I had to sign off on each task that I agreed to.  I agreed to all of it.  Then there was another form that stated if there was an extra mess, the children had to help.  It wasn’t my sole responsibility.  I signed off on that, too.

She offered to pay me $30–the entire contents of her savings account if I would accept the job.  How could I say no to the best job ever?

So yesterday and today as I’m sitting down to eat dinner with the family, Wink has come to me with money.  Yesterday it was $1 bill and some change.  Today it was the $1 that the tooth fairy brought her last night.  It’s my daily paycheck.

Stress Baking

I think the little girls have been a little stressed out lately.  So I wanted to do something fun with them tonight.  So first of all, after dinner, I started reading Robinson Crusoe to all the kids.  I just summarized the first few chapters and jumped in when the book starts getting good.  I don’t even know if I summarized correctly because I haven’t read the book in so long.  Mostly I was just making stuff up.  But I’m somebody who sleeps through the beginning parts of movies.  It’s never important stuff.  You can always pick up the plot halfway through, no problem!  Also I don’t read prologues or anything italicized at the beginning of chapters or any type of long poems (LOTR, I’m looking at you!).  That stuff is almost always fluff that is not necessary to the progression of the story.

Anyway, I got to start that book with my kids.  Then the boys had activities.  And as soon as they left it was girl time!

So Wink got this cool cake mix for Christmas.  In case you are interested, it’s called Purple Rain.  So baking this cake was our girls’ night activity.

Wink held the box and read us all the instructions.  She preheated the oven and told us what to do when.  And she generously allowed Pink to help with the manual labor.

I didn’t think I had ever made a layer cake before (I was surprised to find we even had two pans.  I’m still not entirely sure one of those wasn’t a wedding  gift for Baboo.).  But Wink tells me she and I made one together for Pink’s birthday a while back.

Once we got the cakes in the oven and baking, I sat down to rest.  Because today was a big day of going and going and going and this was my first time to relax.  That’s when the girls started talking about “the frosting”.  Ugh.  I told them that I would look up a recipe later and maybe make something.  Then without my body telling my brain what it was doing, there I was in the kitchen making buttercream frosting from scratch.

They thought the cake looked plain without candles or something.  But I wasn’t about to put candles on it.  So they decided that strawberries would look pretty.  I could do strawberries.

The cake itself was actually really good.  I was surprised.  The frosting, unfortunately, was just not that great.  And too sweet.  I actually really enjoyed the unsweetened strawberries in it, though.  And that’s how I ate my leftover glob of frosting on my plate–just grabbed a couple extra strawberries to wipe it up with.

But for me at least, the point wasn’t about the cake at all.  It was just getting to spend some stress-free time with my girls and smile and laugh with them.  Check and check.

Wiyah is Gone

Taken this morning when I realized that I hadn’t taken nearly enough photos of my girl!

It wasn’t heart-wrenching when we took her to college.  It wasn’t an emotional parting at Thanksgiving.  But boy, howdy!  I was feeling it this past weekend, knowing she’d be leaving today.  Wiyah is not one for emotional goodbyes, or emotional anythings for that matter.  So I pretty well held myself together at all the crucial moments.  But it was hard.

While we were waiting at the airport today, I was telling Wiyah about how when Baboo was born, it was overwhelming and new.  But there were two parents for this one little baby.  It was hard, but we could manage.  Then Wiyah came and it was harder.  Now there was just one adult for every child.  And when I was alone with them, which I often was, it was one on two.  But at least I still had one hand to hold and guide and each girl.  Then JJ came and it was a whole different ball game.  I had been playing a man-to-man defense and it was time to learn zone.

I remember the first time I went out with three children.  I had to get them from the vehicle across a huge and dangerous parking lot and into a building unscathed.  I had newborn JJ in my left arm and I was holding Wiyah’s hand with my right.  And there was sweet, innocent 3 year old Baboo who wasn’t even properly potty trained yet not physically tied to my body in any way.  She was just roaming free and I thought it was ridiculous that she should be in this scary place without being tethered to me somehow.  And I just had to trust that she would listen and obey and stay close so that I could keep her safe.

Having the adult children leave home is like that multiplied by a billion.  The zone is HUGE.

Tonight at dinner, Mack was talking about the definition of homeostasis.  I said, “Homeostasis is not what I am experiencing as a parent at this stage in my life.”

At bedtime, Wink was in tears because she was missing Wiyah.  Before the wedding, Baboo and Wiyah had been sharing their old room.  After the honeymoon, Baboo and Boss stayed in that bedroom and Wiyah moved up with the little girls for a few days.  When Baboo and Boss moved out, Wiyah decided to stay in the little girls’ room because she thought it would be special for them.  That was almost two weeks.

So I had Wink get ready for bed and then we did a video call.  It was so the most precious, pathetic thing you’ve ever seen.  Seeing Wiyah didn’t make her happy, it just made her more miserable and her face crumpled and she could hardly talk for crying.  Wiyah tried so hard to be sweet and understanding and kind and helpful but there was no stopping Wink from crying.

After we ended the call I listened to her as she bemoaned how hard it was to be the littlest with people she loved always leaving.  She relived her separation from Baboo and Wiyah and JJ and that soon X would be leaving (he just started filling out paperwork for his mission) and eventually it would just be her with us here at home and that she never wanted to leave us!  She was angry that Wiyah had to go to school so far away.  She should go to school here so she could live at home.  What was wrong with our schools anyway?

The Hubba came up at some point and gave her hugs and cuddles, too.  Then while I was getting my pajamas on, X came into the room and apparently saw her crying on my bed.  When I walked in, he was wrapping his hulking man-body around her tiny little 8 year old frame, hugging and comforting her.

He got her to stop crying.  Then he told her he loved her and said, “I think we need to give Mom her bed back, Goose.”  And he lifted her up and carried her into her bed and tucked her in.

This is what it looks like when your baby girl moves out of your house.

There’s something very final about it.  Like the cutting of an invisible umbilical cord that you didn’t even know was there.  When she left on her mission, the evidence of her life was still in our house.  This was where she was coming back to.  When she came home, she brought her luggage filled with missionary things and they belonged here with her, too.

On her wedding day, I was nothing but smiles and happiness.  And when they came back from their honeymoon, they came home here.  They stayed here for several days until their apartment was ready.  But seeing her carry out the wedding gifts that were stored here, her school supplies and computer, her clothing and shoes, even the big box of mementos that I’ve saved up for her entire life…That is brutal.  I’m sure there are a few odds and ends left behind.  Maybe some random clothing that will get filtered through the laundry as we catch up.  And those things will be set aside.  All things Baboo are being eradicated from this place that she lived for the last decade of her life.  There will be nothing left of hers to intermingle with ours.  Even the piano that she learned to play on is packed up and she’s taking it with her.

This will never be a home for her again.  This place, our family.  We are just a place that she visits now.  People that she sees from time to time that aren’t a part of the daily fabric of her life anymore.  There will be co-workers and friends that she interacts with more than us and sees more frequently.  Now our conversations will need to be planned and activities scheduled because nothing can ever happen spontaneously or organically anymore.  When school starts next week, I won’t be making lunches for her.  I’ll only be making lunches for 5.  And when Wiyah goes back to school, there will only be 5 children living here with us–and one of them is 5 months away from adulthood and will be leaving on his own mission soon after that.  And we’ll be down to 4.

I sure have loved that girl.  And I’ve been so grateful for these past two years with her.  When she left on her mission, I found myself looking back at her childhood and feeling regret.  I wished that I had let her be young for longer.  She was always the responsible big sister, even as a toddler.  I needed her to be big.  But when she was gone, I wished that I had memories of letting her be little and spoiling her a bit more and being patient with her because she was young.  She never had a chance to be like Pink or Wink.

But at least I don’t feel regret now.  I have loved these two years with her.  And I’ve gotten to baby her in ways (as a young adult) that I was never able to when she was little.  I have cherished this extra time with her and put it to good use.  I hope it’s enough to hold me for a lifetime.

Overheard

At the dinner table the Hubba was talking about how cute 5 year old X was…

Hubba:  The only reason why we didn’t have all 8 of you as five year olds at the same time is because my heart would burst.

X:  I think you mean Mom would burst!

On This Day Two Years Ago

Baboo wrote this on facebook.  It made me cry then and it made me cry again today.

Today my mom said, “I’m so behind on everything! I’ve been getting nothing done recently. I haven’t even finished Christmas shopping yet.”
I remembered that a few days ago, when she texted me late one night while I was out to sign some Christmas cards when I got in. I got home to find stuffed stockings laid out for my mission companions who are still in Canada who will be away from home this Christmas.
And then today I watched her run extra errands to serve my dad, and make me lunch even though I can do it on my own, and treat a sibling who had a rough start to their day, and respond to the sister missionaries’ requests to drive them ALL OVER TOWN and wait for them while they ate lunch and went grocery shopping.

I’m grateful for a mom who doesn’t believe in taking days off, who doesn’t ever think “I just need some ME time,” who is a mom 100% of the time and a Christlike servant to everyone else. And even if she may not be accomplishing everything she wants to this season, she certainly understands that “giving” around Christmastime means more than buying gifts. She gives her heart, and she wears herself out doing it. I love my mom.

When Things Fall Apart

2016-2017 school year, apparently.

When my kids were little, getting them up and ready for school in the mornings was a nightmare.  There was always lots of yelling (on my part) often crying (on their part).  It was just a terrible start to every day.  So after a couple of years of that, I decided something needed to change.  Instead of shaking them awake and telling them it was time to get up for school, I went into the their bedrooms and started singing a morning hymn, “The Day Dawn Is Breaking.”  For kids who did not sleep on top bunk beds, I actually climbed into bed with them and cuddled them.  And no matter where they slept, I always gave them a little back massage while I sang.

The difference was night and day.  They were waking up gently to a loving mom who was enjoying spending time with them.  It was am much gentler way of waking up and they had a few minutes while I was singing and touching the to transition from sleep to wakefulness.  It didn’t solve every problem every day.  But in general, people woke up on time and were happy to get up and moving for the day.  I stopped having to re-wake people every 10 minutes and didn’t need to constantly tell people to hurry because we stopped being chronically late.

As time moved on, I  couldn’t help but think of the resurrection  (because that’s what the song was about!).  Knowing that one day I would die, I thought that having me sing this song to them every morning of their lives would make a strong association that might provide them a lot of comfort sometime after I was gone and just be a really nice, warm, memory in the meantime.

So I have probably been singing this song every school morning for close to 15 years now.  At some point, I have stopped with the teenagers.  Usually when they are pretty responsible about getting up on their own.  But every once in a while I would still go in and sing to them.  Sometimes I would even take a moment to snuggle up on the bed with a practically grown child and they would let me.  But for the most part, it was something I did daily with the younger set.

Until this year, I guess.

In past years I have woken up at 5:30am.  This gave me plenty of time to make the lunches, make breakfast and be able to take a few minutes to sing and massage to each individual child every morning.  I think I set my alarm at 5:30am twice this school year.  5:30 am is just not happening anymore.  So I moved the alarm back to 6am.  But pretty much, I can’t drag myself out of bed until 6:30.  Well 6:30 is the time that the teens need to get up for school.  So once I get up, I usually make the rounds for the boys.  There is no singing.  There is no massage.  I basically turn on the light in their bedrooms, shake them each once and say it’s time to wake up.

Then I scurry out of their rooms because that gives me less than 30 minutes to make 6 lunches (which has been really difficult lately because we have no convenience foods and everything needs to be made from scratch) and breakfast for 8.  I am usually still in the midst of those jobs when 7am comes and it’s time to call the family for prayer.

So at 7am, I yell up the stairs, calling each person by name and shouting that it’s time to pray.  Then they wander down over the next five minutes while I’m frantically trying to get their food ready for them.  I stop my franticness for the prayer and then return to it immediately.

What this means is that I’m missing out on those precious few minutes of one-on-time I used to take every morning.  It means that more often than not, 2/3 of the boys actually don’t wake up when they need to and then skip the breakfast I have just gone through pains to prepare because they are so late.  And sometimes one of the girls doesn’t wake up when I call for prayer so we just go on without her and wake her up later.  The really sad thing is that most mornings I barely even SEE my children now.  They are rushing because they are late and I am rushing because the food they need before 7:15am is not finished and then they run out the door yelling “bye” to me as they go.

I absolutely hate it.  But I also cannot wake up any earlier in the mornings any more.  I don’t know what my deal is.  All that decade and a half that I did it, I had babies waking up in the middle of the night and toddlers to deal with while I was making breakfast and lunches and I could wake up when I needed to just fine then.  But not anymore.

Another thing that is falling apart is homework.  You probably know I’m opposed to homework anyway but we always PLAN to do it and get it all done.  It usually takes us several weeks into the school year to get the routine down.  But we do finally get it down.  And homework gets turned in on-time mostly every week.

I just can’t do it anymore, though.  It takes all my emotional reserves just to remember to ask them if they have homework.  One girl has a homework packet due on Friday, the other one due on Monday.  I can never remember which.  There are a zillion online things they are supposed to be doing daily.  Plus daily reading.  Plus studying spelling words.  And that’s just the elementary kids.  Then there are the older kids.  And every teacher telling me to keep up with what my child is doing on the online system.  Meanwhile, my life is stressful and complicated enough as it is.  I just don’t have anything more to give this stupid system that I hate anyway.  So I have no idea if my kids are turning in homework or not.  I don’t know what it is.  All I can do is ask them if they have it and tell them they should probably get started when I remember to do it.  It’s actually nice.  I LIKE the afternoons and evenings with my kids and the things we do that are not homework.  But the guilt shames me into feeling like a terrible mom who obviously can’t keep up appearances anymore.

And I guess that’s true.

The little girls are young enough still, though, that they have plenty of years of waking up to me singing “The Day Dawn Is Breaking”, though.  I would love it if I could find a way to keep that up for a while longer.

“Sometimes the Victory is that you Just Keep Trying”

This is has been my life motto for close to a decade now.  I remember having this idea dawn on me during a relief society lesson in church where we were talking about addictions.  I was thinking about how powerful addictions were and that if people tried (and failed) to overcome addictions, they were still better off than someone who wasn’t trying at all.  But that failure often makes you think that you’re no good, you’re weak, you’re worthless because you couldn’t keep it up.  You failed, you gave in.  But maybe you were sober for 3 months.  That’s three months of victory that you wouldn’t otherwise have.  And if you give in and start back over again, that changes your character.  And as your character continues to change over time hopefully you will eventually overcome.  But even if you don’t, you’re still better off for having given the effort to keep on trying.

And of course that applied to so much in my life, too.  I may not be addicted to drugs but I have plenty of other vices and habits and weaknesses that I keep failing at.  One that is always at the forefront of my thoughts is that I cannot seem to keep my house clean.  I’ve never been able to do it.  And it has caused me so much anguish over the years.

But recently I’ve been looking at all my facebook memories and in trying to prepare my last post, I was searching all through my previous blog’s decade-worth of entries and one of the repeating themes that I kept seeing over and over was all the food I was trying to make and how hard I was working to clean things up again.  Post after post after post.  There were a lot of successes I was posting about!  It’s true that they didn’t last.  I never made yummy, gourmet meals for my family every night and had it on the table by 6pm unfailingly.  But I sure have kept trying.  And over a decade that really adds up to a lot of nice meals.  And although I have never been able to keep the house clean consistently, there were also plenty of days in there where I gave it my all and really tried to catch up.  I never did quite catch up really.  Things weren’t perfect.  But I know that things were better for that effort than if I had never given any effort at all.

Or even look at exercising.  I wish I was the kind of person who had spent the past decade working out consistently.  But I am not.  I started and stopped jazzercised so many times, depending on our schedule and budget.  I have played basketball and not played basketball, volleyball and not volleyball.  I have run and stopped running and then run again.  I really wish I had consistently been running for a decade.  Imagine what I’d look like and how I’d feel right now if I had?  On the other hand, I completed a half marathon and ran a total of 11.5 miles!  I’ve learned a lot about myself.  And while I haven’t always been consistent, I’m much better off for all the times I started and tried than if I had just spent the past decade doing nothing at ll.

It was actually really inspiring to scroll through years and years of my life and see just how much effort I was putting forth on a weekly basis.  Failing and getting up and trying again.

Victory.

Today is a Day Like Many Other Days

The alarm clock went off and I felt like I knew I would feel when I went to bed too late.  I was exhausted and couldn’t get out of bed.  20 minutes later, I was able to haul my sleepy bod out of the warm, cozy bed.  I remembered to switch the load of little girls’ laundry I had started for them last night (because the washing machine was already occupied when they went to put a load in) to the dryer, knowing full well that their clothes would not be dry by the time they’d have to leave.

I didn’t know what to make for lunch.  Despite having plenty of food in the house, not a bit of it was the kind of transportable, non-perishable food that could easily be packed and taken to school.  While I was taking care of my morning needs and switching loads of laundry, my thoughts were racing about what to feed people for the mid-day meal away from home.

By the time I got downstairs I had decided to fry up some eggs for egg sandwiches.  I wrapped up some Amish friendship bread the Hubba made on Sunday.  Someplace in our house we have a 50 lb bucket of popcorn that I would have popped.  But I haven’t been able to find it for weeks and I keep forgetting to ask the Hubba if he knows where it is.  So I improvised by making peanut butter filled celery sticks that I’m not entirely sure my kids will eat.  It looked like a light lunch so I decided to add some apples as well.  Fresh fruit and veggies are usually a better after school snack because they will eat them when it’s all that is offered.  Packed in a lunch with limited to time to eat, the fruits and veggies often come back home untouched.  So it was a gamble today.  But I had nothing else to offer.

Wink had not woken up when I called people for family prayer and I was too frantic in food prep to be able to stop and go get her.  So we prayed without her.  15 minutes later when I had a second to breathe, I realized she was still not up and I needed to go get her now.  I asked her if she wanted to get dressed or eat breakfast first.  She wanted to eat.  It was a cereal kind of morning in the Big Blue House, but everyone else had already eaten.  So just as the boys were getting ready to leave the house, Wink pulled the gallon jug of milk out of the fridge.  It had been sitting on a big bucket of apple cider that I hadn’t been able to shut after opening.  And I guess because the milk was heavy, she just kind of pulled it rather than lifting it.  And when she pulled it, the milk took the cider with it and I had a half gallon of cider spill all over the kitchen floor.

I wasn’t looking when it happened, but I heard the noise.  At first I thought it was one of the shelves on the door–those are all broken and falling out.  But a quick glance at the fridge told me all the shelves were in place. It took another fraction of a second to take in the scene and understand what had happened.  And I mentally freaked out because if I had been there, I would have immediately scooped up the bucket of cider to prevent everything from sloshing out.  But Wink was just standing there, in the way between me and the mess, holding the gallon of milk.  It was like everything was in slow motion.  I was desperately looking for a way around her so that I could stop this disaster that was happening but there was no way.  All the boys were frozen in place too.  Although from the angle they were at , they would have had to step in the cider to be able to do anything at all.  I was thinking about what a waste of perfectly good apple cider we had been given and this huge mess that nobody was doing anything to stop and I finally shouted at Wink to move out of my way!

And of course once I shouted, it was like a flood gate broke and I started chastising her about how next time she should make sure to LIFT up the milk rather than just dragging it out.  As if she could have known the lid on the cider underneath was not securely attached.  As if this was some important life skill that she would need from hear on out and would sink deep into her soul because I raised my voice.  As if it’s her fault that her short, skinny 8 year old body wasn’t strong enough to quite lift an 8 1/2 lb jug of milk one-handed less than three short minutes after she had woken up in the morning.

So then Wink was upset and X was comforting her.  And then I comforted her, too.  But not for long because the cider was creeping all over my kitchen.  Kelvinator ran to get me a towel before I realized I was going to need 15 towels to do anything.  So I got the mop and started working.  I had to leave the little girls to get ready on their own because I was mopping and mopping and mopping.  Finally I was at a point where I could stop and so I started making sure that they had brushed their teeth and packed their lunches.  And then I did their hair.  That’s when I realized we were ten minutes late leaving.

We hurried out to the car which was almost completely out of gas and I worried I couldn’t make it to the school and back without stopping so I had to run back in the house to get my wallet (which I should have anyway, right?) and we were off.  While I drove, they played “Would You Rather?” while I worried about the car running out of gas.  I didn’t want to stop on the way to school because they were so late already.  But did I have enough gas to make it there and then to a gas station?

I looked at the check engine light that had randomly come on again in the vehicle about two weeks ago.  And I tried to figure out what to do about our car situation where two cars that are worth essentially nothing have check engine lights on and we know for sure that repairs on just one vehicle will cost $1000.  The van works great but isn’t worth that much either.  It’s too big for our needs, too dangerous in the snow, and has a host of cosmetic problems that will make it difficult to sell.  I don’t really see a solution to this problem.  We always planned on driving our paid-off vehicles into the ground because we like not having car payments better than we like having nice cars.  And apparently we have done that.  But I guess the end-game was always that we planned on getting new (to us) cars at this point.  But I don’t think we ever envisioned all three cars giving up the ghost at the same time.

There is no solution, really.  That was what I was thinking as I dropped the girls off and drove home, bypassing the gas station because there was a little bit left in the tank, after all.  I should probably have stopped and filled up.  But, I wonder how far we can go without having to buy gas.  And with no feasible solution to our problem at all, there is nothing to do but just keep going until you can’t go anymore.  Kind of like if you run out of gas.  One of the cars has to get registered next month.  That means that if we don’t fix it, we will be down to two cars by the end of October.  There is just no action that can be taken.  So I’m sitting back to see how this all plays out.  At least I was on the ride home this morning.

Overheard: About Wiyah and my kids

Asking X what he liked about a particular girl…

X:  She’s just really easy to talk to.  She’s easier to talk to than my guy friends.  And she’s funny and kind of sarcastic.  Actually, she reminds me a lot of Wiyah.

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X was walking around singing a song from Aladdin…

Hubba:  How many times have you even seen that movie?

X:  Like once.

Hubba:  Then how do you know that song?

X:  Wiyah.

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I was at a church activity and we were talking about motherhood mostly.  The question was asked “What is different from how you expected this time in your life to be?”

Me:  I thought that at this time of my life I would be battling with teenagers to get the to be good and not do drugs and not drink and fighting with them a lot.  I’ve been surprised that the teen years have been good to us.

All the ladies in the room nod their heads and agree with me and turn to tell each other, “Yeah, her kids are really good.”  “They are amazing.”