Frustration and whining

Sigh.

I have been trying to install the software for Q's touchscreen. It seemed as though it was going well. We've had it for three weeks, maybe I should get it done, huh? Heavy and heavier sighs.

Right now I would bet that it's not working because it needs Windows XP or 2000. I have Vista here and will need to go cannibalize something from the CPU graveyard to make this work. This is not exactly a problem. I mean, in a past life I was reasonably handy with tech stuff, with confidence planted in a programming class I took in the early eighties. I mean, I don't think I was ever going to do things technical as a career, but I could at least figure out what my own set-up needed in college (not that it was hard, trust me).

But now? I am overscheduled, out of practice, and after a couple of decades of having consigned that portion of my brain to the back room? It doesn't want to come out and play anymore. (Have I mentioned the overscheduling part? Good. That part of my brain is afraid of the rest of the brain parts out on the playground. It wants a nap.)

This all renders me a tetch frustrated and whiny. Not really the most attractive qualities in a person, so I'll try to be succinct in my complaint(s). Tonight I need to rewrite school paperwork for all four older children, find books for certain people for certain gifts, fill out Q paperwork, figure out hiccups in kids' medical coverage, finish another hundred pieces of a project, grade a bunch of math/algebra papers, and get this thing hooked up so the software can go back to the school district. After I do that, I need to run another load of laundry, organize Q's clothes and food for tomorrow, start oatmeal for morning, recheck portions of workbooks, stack and pack up the kids' schoolwork for the day, and finally, go to bed.

Q had a nap this evening, so I may in fact be "awake" long enough to accomplish most of the above. Our day tomorrow will include four hours of lessons, an hour of PreK for Q, and appointments. Some of these things require that I be in more than one place at a time, and we do this every week. Tomorrow my mom is off and has offered to help with that, but honestly, sometimes it's all I can do to keep the details aligned in my own head, much less explain any portion of the convoluted process to someone else. (Thus the dilemma of often needing help of some kind, but being too busy keeping my head above water to actually ask for any.)

Anyway. It's 11:45pm and I really, truly, with everything in me, just want. to. go. to. bed. Instead, I'm spouting off here, which as you may have noticed, gets me no closer to having ticked off any of the above. It's called avoidance. Rowr.

Most days things really are groovy here. The kids are almost always a hoot, nothing's ever dull, and we do manage to get through practices and school stuff with astonishing forward motion. But today? I'm fried. I want to sleep and I want someone else to divide the burdens with. I can't quite stop the thought creeping in, "This is not what I signed up for." It's not a useful thought. It isn't helpful, constructive, or welcome. It isn't the whole story, or healing, or funny. But sometimes, when Tired has become my address, it's the thought that breaks down the door and tries to steal everything happy.

So now that I've thoroughly bored even myself of this topic, it's time for a small refocusing before I go to check on Q again.

Today four fallen police officers were honored in a memorial service attended by more than 23,000 people. Tonight I am not tucking in babies whose daddy was murdered. I am not dealing with that magnitude of loss. My stuff is sort of petty in comparison, really. My stuff is maybe even mostly the flip-side of blessings, if you will.

I have the means, financial and otherwise, to get my children to two sets of music lessons every week. This is so enormous, there may not be words for it.
I am capable of creative planning, financial and otherwise, in order to make sure that such things can happen here.
Q is rounder this week than last, in part because I've been stuffing a few extra bites into him at every meal. Lord willing, December 2009 will not include a g-tube discussion.
I am here, with the kids, in a role that blisses me out regularly and keeps me thoroughly amazed. That I get to watch them learn and grow and even wrastle back as they formulate arguments based on principles of formal logic... how do we discuss that kind of cool?
It is very cold out tonight, probably in the lower single digits, but the punkins are tucked in warm. Miraculous, I tell you.
My darling auntie came today and stayed with the bigger ones so I could take just Q to his speech appointment. She is the sock maven, sock whisperer, comptroller of the sock collection. When she visits, she works magic over that basket and lo, we've footwear. It's astonishing to me, every time. Not that she matches them, that she finds their matches. You know what I mean, don't you? Yes, yes. I see you nodding.

And there's so much more, you know? Laundry = clothes to wear. Dishes = food enjoyed. Appointments = living, breathing, healthy kidlets. Obligations = the blessings of people and those relationships held dear. And so we give thanks in all things.

Now that I've talked myself out of a spiralling fit of exasperation, I'm going to check on Q. If he's asleep, I shall reorganize my to-do list above and see how much I can pack along to do while the kids are busy in workbooks during lessons. Still? I could kick something over the whole XP vs. Vista scenario. I want to say that I used to be smarter about this stuff, but the truth is I either had the time to take it on or someone upon whom I could rely for either small tweaks or Herculean help. More, but diminishing rowrs.

G'night, you lovely people. Hope you're resting well, or already have.

Tired

So much has happened since I posted last. I'll get to the most special parts, but not all right now. I'm trying to hit bed before 2am, which will be an hour earlier than last night. Q's wanting to sleep, but is needing turning and repositioning, really having a tough time getting comfortable.

Perhaps one of the most incredible things to take place recently was that a dear friend's husband had a pretty frightening health emergency. He's more or less out of the woods but will continue to need watching and testing for quite some time. After nearly a week in the hospital, he's glad to be home and his family is thrilled to have him. They can use continuing prayers as he heals, more tests are ordered, and he resumes his search for work.

We've seen rather a lot of car accidents lately, twisted metal and crunched up fenders and windshields. We're feeling a little twitchy about all that and it's shown up in us walking a bit more carefully around each other, taking a little extra time for hugs and backscratches. (Go squeeze someone you love right now. I'll wait here.)

G and E were baptized and Q dedicated a week ago. It was such a lovely service, with other very dear families involved, music that helped the spirit soar, and a really good and blessedly short sermon. One of the best parts of the whole thing was Q grinning "cherubically" through the pastor's words and prayer. Here are the poems read during the service (go with the "becoming" imagery in the first, and remember that it's special to us in part because all three girls have memorized it during their respective first grade years).

The Caterpillar
Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry;
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk.
May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Holy Innocents

Sleep, little Baby, sleep,
The holy Angels love thee,
And guard thy bed, and keep
A blessed watch above thee.
No spirit can come near
Nor evil beast to harm thee:
Sleep, Sweet, devoid of fear
Where nothing need alarm thee.

The Love which doth not sleep,
The eternal arms around thee:
The shepherd of the sheep
In perfect love has found thee.
Sleep through the holy night,
Christ-kept from snare and sorrow,
Until thou wake to light
And love and warmth to-morrow.

Both belong to Christina G. Rossetti.

Wishing you peace and delight this weekend. Or just lots of sleep.

Zoom

I almost started out with "We've had a big week" but really, when don't we? It's one of the many perks of being in this family. Here's part of this week's whirl.

We spent three hours at the violin shop on Monday and came home with some Very Good Things. Which are altogether worth far more than the funds laid out, for which we are so grateful. There are a series of little miracles in this story, and specially deserved hat-tips go out to my brother for wrangling extra wretched traffic in order to help pull this off, and my dad for guarding a particular item carefully on it's way home on the train.

Q brought home a loaner touch screen from the school district for his own personal use. It will have to go back in June, but for now, as soon as I can install the software, it's his. This seems like maybe not the biggest of deals, but somewhere along the line, so help me, this kid is getting some honest to goodness aug. comm. Those big devices are something that someone else, insurance or some other entity, will have to pay for and Q's having regular time and access with a touch screen is one of the first steps in justifying this sort of thing to one's insurance. Those big guys are so far out of our price range.

Well, so far they are. This guy may have a hand in changing that. If you feel so inclined, I'd like to suggest that we all pray for divine protection as he works on bringing this to market. So many large organizations would be thrilled to either see him fail or to buy up his work so they can stick it in a vault and slam the door on it. No. It's needed out here, in the real world. If you've ever had to deal with frustratingly clumsy technology, you should be able to identify to some degree with what Q faces daily in his own body. If Pranav's work can change parts of that... Wow.

The big kids are getting ready for their piano and violin recitals. They are such fun to listen to and play with. Sometimes I do wonder what on earth I was thinking to have signed them up for violin. Q often cries through practices unless he can have someone right next to him, in another room, preferably with a closed door between. And really, how practical is that? Not very. S, and to a lesser degree K, still need some one-on-one during practices. Meh. We persevere.

The biggest four made their own music bags this week. They all had sewing classes for the last couple of weeks and will again in January. Somehow the usual project of trimming out a tea towel seemed less than useful for them, so on a whim I asked the teacher if what she was holding up could be made into a bag. She said it could and that we could do it in our next session. So we did! The kids picked out their materials and sewed 'em up. G's topstitching is superb -- good enough to be paid work. While some of us have yet to grasp why we might not want to install ceramic buttons all over such a hard working little piece of equipment, others are planning to pack multiple baggies of crayons and pencils along in the outer pockets "in case I get bored." The timing is especially cool since we're averaging 3-4 books per kids per instrument at this point, the bags we have had are giving up under the strain, and I suspect that the book count is about to increase again. (Whispering: G is hoping to soon join the orchestra at church.)

My mom made Pumpkin and Banana breads today with the girls. They're all sitting here in spicy little rows waiting to be added to the Thanksgiving baskets that will be put together at church tomorrow. So on that happy note, I'm off.

I hope you're looking forward to a rest-full weekend enjoying things delicious as you feed both bellies and souls of those you love, something good to read in a warm and comfy chair, and peace piled up in the corners of your rooms, deep enough to share.

Picture this

I'm feeding Q his yummy homemade veggie soup pureed with cottage cheese (it tasted better than it sounds -- everything gets tested before it goes to him). He's not happy because he's too cool for food. So S is hanging out nearby and I ask her to come sing "Where is Thumbkin" with me, in rounds, to distract the little monkey. She cheerfully and immediately complies. Q settles and moves right on into happy eating, snarfing down his tasty puree. S finds herself needing variety in the third singing of Thumbkin, so she begins yodeling with a little vibrato. Sweet. We move on to rounds of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." I throw in a little more vibrato. Things are getting silly. At the end of that round, she cuts off the note abruptly, to turn to me and say, a little surprise in her voice, "Wow, Mommy! Did you take vocal chord lessons or something? You're good!"

Bwahaha. We ended up singing a chicken version of something else -- Puccini? I don't know what it was, but Q found the whole thing hilarious and burbled for more, giggling around his food (tough for him, but he managed). S is always good for unexpected twists and lots of laughs.

Hey

I don't have much to say, really, but thought I'd check in. I have one pukey kid, who is hopefully done with that now (could actually be), and several who are feeling antsy, hoping it was a fluke and now it's done and we can move on with our big day at church come morning.

I've been thinking lately about kindness and how we experience that. About what gestures represent to us safety vs. fear, encompassing tenderness vs. shrinking inadequacy. And are those making those gestures which are received so negatively even aware that they're putting that out there? I don't have much on this subject, I don't think. It's percolating in my head. But... wherever you are, if you're leading with kindness and gentleness and thinking of those around you while doing so, you aren't likely to rack up many enemies. Sometimes it's really hard to pull this off. Like when someone has been nasty and really deserves a good set-down. But do they? Deserve anything? Well... you only get what you give. Prickly personalities tend to breed hostility, inattention to those around us tends to breed contempt. Those behaviors tend to be self-limiting, in the sense that they keep their hosts from getting as far in life as they might otherwise do. Aside from that kind of indicator, there's no way for us to know what another person is experiencing, what their global objective pain or happiness level is, if you will. And how would one go about meting out consequences or set-downs for the truly crummy? Other than legal consequences, nothing viable comes to mind.

Best to err on the side of perpetual kindness and gentleness and grace, then, I think. Sometimes that means just sitting quietly and not offering judgement. Sometimes it means extending a hand. And if the hand is slapped? Not your problem. Your obligation is simply to keep showing up, smiling when you can, with your hands open, learning while you do so.

Huh. Turns out I do have some things to say. Actually, well, I'm going to be done for now. Q's out and I need to be too, in case the evening presents any more sickies. (Pray over this, will you? Thanks.)

It has been a full and lovely week here. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the good stuff I have: mostly great kids, quite decent health, sweet and articulate people surrounding me. Sometimes it feels a little like I'm being pressed upon by angels. You know who you are. (Yes you do, don't argue.) May your weekend provide you Sabbath rest and reconnection with family, friends and Creator. May you sleep better than a baby and wake with spirit expansively renewed. You are loved. Magnificent, miraculous, you are loved.

XO

Q updates to come

The day

Madame M-mv, saying it well.

The post-it from K's Spelling book, alternately in block print and cursive:
K_______ Love
K_______ Love
K_______ Love
S______ Love
E____ Love
Q_______ Love

G had been a pill while she was writing, or maybe she hadn't gotten to him yet. But his name is often found in these lists too -- sometimes it's a kindness on the part of one or the other. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this job?

Kids today

Interesting info.

Robert Epstein: Psychologist and visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego. He is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and author of several books, including The Case Against Adolescence.

During the interview he says:

"In more than a hundred cultures around the world, there is no teen turmoil... Any culture that severs the connection between young people and older people creates this problem. In other words, if you isolate young people from adults and you trap them, as we have done, in this peculiar world of their own where they learn everything they know from each other and, of course, in our culture everything they know comes from divisions of the media and fashion industries. If you do that, you isolate them from adults and then if you treat them as if they are still children, which really makes some of them very angry and depressed, you create adolescence."
.....
"They actually have almost no meaningful contact with adults here. In fact, according to research, teens in the United States spend about 70 hours a week, that's most of their waking hours, in contact with their peers. You compare that [cut off by interviewer]... They spend on average a half hour a week with their dads on average, 15 minutes of which is spent watching television. Now compare that to cultures where the child/adult continuum as it's called is still intact, in those cultures many of which are developing nations, teens spend on average 5 hours a week with their peers versus 70 here. Who are they spending their time with, they're spending most of their time with usually same-sex adults learning to become adults. That's really what the teen years were through most of human history even in the west, it was a time you learned to become an adult."

Listen here. Hat tip to Shoshannah for the info.