The New Friend

Lately, Patrick has been playing with a boy I'll call Isaac, who lives somewhere in our neighborhood. He met Isaac through another friend who lives two doors down. They were all playing outside one evening in this other friend's yard, Isaac rode by on his bike, and then he stopped to play. He stops by here almost every day now looking for Patrick. He's a very polite boy, and seems like he probably comes from a good family (ie his parents probably aren't crackies or anything). Still, I am uncomfortable with this friendship.

Isaac is ten. Patrick is five.

I tell myself that there's no reason to be alarmed; we live in the same neighborhood, and boys beyond a certain age (and below another certain age) are all interested in basically the same things: video games and outdoor stuff. Isaac comes over, the two of them troop upstairs, and play video games together, or splash around in the hot tub together. I never hear any fighting, and it doesn't seem that he's using Patrick for his stuff, really, any more than any other kid likes to play with another kid's stuff (I particularly worry about this with the hot tub - I don't want kids coming here just so they can use the 'pool'). I checked with Josie on this, since she's actually been in the hot tub with the two of them, and she said that they seem to get on like gangbusters. I also tell myself that Josie is 9, and I expect her to play nicely with Patrick, and indeed the two of them do pretty well together, considering that they have entirely different interests. Josie plays with Patrick's friend Audrey up the street, who is 6, which is a three year difference, and she's also been known to play with her 3yo sister, although that's more of Josie liking to be The Mommy and take care of people.

Still, I'm conflicted. There's a big difference between 5 and 10, and I can't help being nervous. DH says that it's probably a summer thing, and that he's OK with it because Isaac has been so polite, to the point of calling DH 'sir' in conversation. Patrick, of course, loves the attention of an older boy, and would play video games with Methuselah, if he showed up.

Any thoughts? Did any of you have much older friends?

Cable Schmable

What IS it with cable companies???? (also insert cell phone companies, internet companies, etc, as you like)!!! We have had nothing but problems since we had the stupid cable installed, and it's only been since the beginning of May, for heaven's sake! First, it was an incorrect installation that gave us the entirely wrong channels and a broken remote. Then, it was that we couldn't get anything above channel 70 on the bedroom TV. After several calls, and customer service agents insisting that it *wasn't* that we needed a cable box for that room, surprise! It was that we needed a cable box for that room. So, we got a month of free 'preview' service for the digital package, which we were already subscribed to, so the person gave us a credit. Hmph.

The other day, I noticed that we were no longer receiving the digital package. I had a feeling that it was that the freebie period had ended and 'somehow' our account had had the information that we were already subscribers to that service before we were credited was deleted. So, today I finally got around to calling to complain. Here is our conversation:

Me: Hi, I noticed that I'm not getting anything above around channel 120. I think my digital channels are gone. Can you help me?

Her: Why don't you check what number you're not receiving above and call me back.

Me: I think it's the digital package that's gone. We were getting it for free for a month because our install went so badly, in addition to the regular trial period.

Her: No, everyone gets it free for ten days. It had nothing to do with your install. I show you had it free for 30 days, in June.

Me: Right, the 30 days were for June, but our service started in May. June was credited to us because our install went wrong. (mentally: hello, you just said yourself that we had a longer period than usual for free, duh, why are you arguing with me!!!!)

Her: No, it wasn't. Call me back when you know what channels you want.

Me: OK, never mind, it doesn't matter how the channels were or weren't there, I just want the digital package added. Those are the channels above the 120s, right?

Her: Yes. I can add them, if you'd like?

OH, HOLY HELL. What is WRONG with people?!?!?! First of all, I hate that customer service has changed from 'the customer is always right' to 'the customer is always wrong, and you should point it out repeatedly until they give up and die of frustration, which will ensure continued service without any more calls'. She said it herself, we HAD FREE SERVICE. She was just SO invested in being right that she couldn't even stop arguing when she had made herself look like an idiot by reading aloud my point from her own screen! And, seriously, even before the entire conversation took place, it was obvious which channels are missing, and obvious that I wanted them, so her response should have been, 'oops, sorry about that, let me add them back in for you.' Period. But, no. And let me add that we used to have DirectTV, which I liked just fine but refused to have installed at the new place because it takes them a month to get here, and then the last time I had the local installers out, they actually asked me 'does your husband know what you're asking us to do?' Yeah. No thank you, Cletus, I think I can take it from here.

Also, here's another little pet peeve while I'm at it - we have a mail slot in our door. We have two dogs, and Baci will happily shred the mail for me, thus saving me the time and effort of doing it myself. However, just in case the mail might contain, I dunno, a check (like THAT would ever happen - checks only flow one way at this house, and that's OUT the door), we have a huge mailbox that sits on a big post right next to the stairs. Just to clarify, the mail carrier has to WALK PAST IT to get to our porch, where the barking dogs are waiting to receive the mail from his fingers at the slot. Yet about once a week, the mail comes through the slot. I believe it's when our regular carrier is on vacation, or maybe they do a rotation in our town or something. Occasionally, I'm here when it happens, so I go outide to find the carrier and politely point the box out to him (so far it's only been men), and they always act so surprised, like it's shocking that someone with dogs has a box. Today when it happened, the guy told me that last year he had delivered to a house that had little dogs that met him every day at the door and promptly shredded everything as soon he put it through. He said it was his day's entertainment, because being a mailman is a terrible job. ??? Okey dokey, then. Sigh.

But it's the cable people that really piss me off.

a nice day at The House

Today has been a peaceful day. First thing, we had to go to the kids' new school so Patrick could have his hearing / eyes checked, and everyone actually cooperated and we got there a few minutes early!!!! (I KNOW!!!) I found out that the school also does home visits to all incoming K students, so someone will be here early next week, I'm assuming his teacher. This is like night and day from when Josie started K in the county we used to live in. We didn't find out who her teacher was going to be until the day before school started, and not only did the school not visit incoming students, but we were actually DISCOURAGED from coming into the school!!! We actually ended up pulling her out in first grade to homeschool because of that, and various other issues, like school-tolerated bullying and verbal abuse of the students by a teacher. Anyhoo, Patrick's teacher will be coming here, and I'm delighted that they are so involved! It seems so... homey.

After that, we went to the gym, which I haven't done in forever and a day, and I did cardio and weights. For once, both kids had a really good time in the childcare, too. Typically, Josie sulks and pretends to be bored, and Patrick gets upset because he didn't get enough time on the video games they have there. Today, though, it was obvious that they had been running in the basketball court and climbing area, and they both said they had a good time. I'm so glad, because when they have a good time, I'm a lot more likely to go. It's hard enough getting my own initiative up, but when I also have to fight two draggy kids, forget it.

When we got home, Josie went to a friend's house, and Patrick watched some TV. Then, Josie and her friend came back here, and they're all playing outside in the hot tub. This is good, too, except this particular friend has been repeatedly told that she's Special (and not in the short-bus way), so she sometimes acts accordingly, expecting that things happen when and as she wants them, whining, etc. She also puts on an act of being really timid, which is catered to by her mother, and drives me bonkers. I understand why her mom does this, because she had a terrible childhood herself, and she's projecting onto her daughter, who is of course having a wonderful childhood, except that now she's WAYYYY coddled and over-praised. Anyway, other than that, said child is perfectly nice, and they all get along pretty well, so I'm still happy to have her here if she's going to take the pressure off of me to amuse the monkeys!

**Later**

After my friend's daughter left, we went to meet DH at the pool for an hour or so. That was lovely, too, because since we've been going at the end of the day, there is pretty much no crowd there, so the kids can go down the slide and off the diving board all they want with little or no wait.

Now the kids are running around with some of the other neighborhood kids, like a herd of wild elephants. Slam! in the house, booomaty boomaty boom up the stairs, shrieks of laughter, bang bang, boomety boom boom, slam! back outside again. Before we moved to this part of the world, we were The House in the neighborhood that all the kids came to, and I pretty much ran a lunch and snack cafe. It was nice, actually, because the kids were happy, no one really fought, and everyone was tired at the end of the day. Also, I always knew their friends, which is good both so I know what kinds of people they're with, and also as they get older, it means I'll know all the teenagers in the neighborhood and be on good relations with them, which would hopefully protect us from any petty thievery. It seems that we're moving in that direction again, which is good with me. I mean, I like it when the kids go to other people's houses as well, since it gives me quiet, but really I don't mind having six kids here.

The other reason I like it so much is a selfish, living-through-my-kids one; when I was young, I was never allowed to have neighborhood kids over. I wasn't even allowed to socialize with the neighborhood kids, actually. My grandmother hated everyone in the world, especially her neighbors, who had really done nothing to engender her animosity (she was a total nutter who spied on everyone on the block with bird watching glasses), so I wasn't allowed to so much as speak to anyone. I wasn't allowed to have anyone over past 4pm, even if I was allowed to have a friend from school over, because she served dinner at 4, so I had to be home and so did anyone else I might have over. Basically, I was the neighborhood hermit who had to sit inside and watch all the other kids play ball in the street, and stay home to hand out the Halloween candy (regardless that it was my birthday and I should have been having the time of my life). Even when I was in high school and we had moved out of my grandmother's house, things stayed pretty much the same, although at least then my mother was distracted by her non-speaking-to-me live-in boyfriend, so I was pretty free to spend all my spare time at someone else's house. Still, that was way past the neighborhood playing stage. So, having The House now is like my childhood fantasy come to life, in time for my own kids. I'm so glad to give them this opportunity, and to be able to see what a housefull of happy kids is like. Better late than never, right?

Who Am I, Again?

This week, while the kids have been at camp, I have been enjoying myself tremendously. I haven't done anything in particular that I wouldn't have been able to do with them, per se; it's that I've done it all sans fighting, whining, and the inevitable World Tour Of Public Restrooms. I've cleaned out and replanted a section of the yard, caught up on all the housework that has been behind since I was in the hospital, done mountains of laundry, and walked the dogs almost every morning, which is one of my favorite things to do. All in the sanctity and peace of my own thoughts. Ohm.

This has made me wonder, where would I be if I didn't have kids? My entire life would be different. I would never have worked at Raytheon, that's for sure, since that entire company is against my philosophy of life (they basically make profit off of warmongering). I would probably still work for a nonprofit in DC somewhere. Would we have moved to the country? I would probably have many interesting hobbies, and be in a lot better shape than I am now. We would actually take vacations, and I would have left North America by now at least once.

I'm not saying that I regret my life choices, and certainly not that I regret my children, because of course I wouldn't trade them for the world! But, this is the first time I've been alone since I left work six years ago, and really the first time I've had an extended period by myself EVER. I mean, I was always either at work, or at the least with DH, unless it was a rare sick day or something when I was alone for a few hours. This week, though, I have been alone for about nine hours a day, every day.

What really started me thinking was an ad I saw in the paper yesterday for an assistant at a photo studio in a nearby town. No experience needed, it says, work while your kids are in school. Now, that sounds pretty appealing. I'm good with people, and I'm a decent photographer, so I think I would be a pretty good assistant. But, do I want to give up what I haven't even had yet? I've fallen into a lot of jobs over the years becasue either I was desperate or I had a child and had to take whatever there was that would allow me to drop off / pick up at a certain time. With the kids both being in school in the fall, I have a chance to do something I actually WANT to do... but what is that, exactly?

Part of me thinks, it might be fun to check out that photography studio, see what it's about. Another part of me thinks, yeah, but who will be here on all the weird half-days and icey days and vacations and for teacher meetings and field trips? What about them?

I also think, since I'm not going to be here with the kids, am I then just being a drain on the family? Does that make me basically a glorified maid during the days, if all I'm doing is housework until the chilluns come home?

I think, as exciting as the prospect of reliable time to myself is, it's also stressing me out a little. People keep asking me what I'm going to do with myself, and I have no answer. I'm a planner, and I like knowing what's coming up. I have no idea what my life is going to be like after the next three weeks, really. I feel like I'm going to be meeting a stranger at the door when I get back from dropping the kids at the bus stop in the mornings, and the idea makes me feel slightly discombobulated.

Zap! and I'm a Be-och

We finally broke down the other day and installed an electric fence for the dogs. Well, really, it's only for our young dog, Baci - the older one, Tyler, doesn't wear the collar needed to activate it because he's not a freakin' Houdini dog. Plus, he's well-behaved, and too old to be such a troublemaker. Baci, however, has been continually getting out since we moved in, and getting bolder each time it happens! He jumped the stone wall, so we put up the fence and dealt with the corresponding debacle. He figured out that there was a space behind the lilac bush in the corner of our backyard, wedged beside the garage, so we put up a blockade. He shoved it aside over a period of days (I imagine, since I can't see behind the shrub without crawling back there) and got out again. I piled leftover landscaping stones in front of the space. He made a new one. And so on.

The real problem here is that the fence on that side of the yard is our neighbor's ancient decorative wire fence. Since their yard is higher than ours, most of that side of our yard is bordered by a 2ft retaining wall and then the fence on top of it, which so far had been working out. In two places, however, their yard meets ours at ground level, and the previous owner's dog had already started the busting-through process (evidently their dog was out ALL the time), so ours just continued it. I know if I had continued the wire-fence fight, he would have just found another spot, and another, and another. So, we gave up and installed the invisible fence. It's just a wire that runs the perimeter of the yard, and extends to include our front porch, and he wears a special collar with two small, dull prongs on it that, when he gets too close to the wire, give him a shock. I put it on the lowest setting, and tried it on my own hand first - it's not painful, just surprising (hence the term shock, I guess).

Anyway, I still feel like a shit. I mean, the fence isn't in a place where he'll get shocked unless he tries to get too close to the regular fence, like within about six inches, so he doesn't feel it unless he does something naughty, but he's been zapped a few times so far. The first couple of times he was just terrified, and then spent the rest of the night looking at me reproachfully and avoiding me. He wouldn't leave if I went to him, but he didn't follow me like he usually does, and there was no laying at my feet that night. I wish I could explain to him that this is much, much better than him getting hit by a car, or lost.

The evil side of me wishes that there was something like this for kids. As in, if they fight, ZAP! If they sass me, zap zap! And if they hit each other, they light up like Christmas trees! Bwahahahahaha!!!!!! And THEN ... oh.... ahem! what was I saying? Oh, yes, the dogs. Right.

Anyway, yesterday seemed better, and he wasn't totally terrified of the yard. I can tell he's still wary, though, and he's still a little scared of the front porch. I'm hoping it will wear off soon. I don't want him to be scared, and I'm actually hoping that we won't need the collar forever, although he already knows the difference between having it and not, and acts differently when it's off, so we'll see. Just like a kid when its parents aren't looking.

Photos!

First of all, today was so peaceful! Other than my making the DIRE mistake of taking both dogs to a local, wooded creek on my own (imagine two dogs tied around various trees and simultaneously dragging me through the water, me losing my shoe, and having to slog through the rocky bottom with one bare foot while trying to convince them to leave - it was NOT pretty), I got a lot done. I ran out of time before I could do the blog marathon, so that will be tomorrow morning, but at least I'm making progress!

So, for today, I'm posting a bunch of pictures of various things (also notice new kid pics on the sidebar):

We finally finished working on the kitchen! Here are the before and after shots:

From this:














To this:


























Next!

Our church's VBS went off really well - here are my favorite photos from that:


This is the castle I built out of cardboard:



















The downstairs hallway (that's a rollercoaster mural hanging on the wall that was left over from another event, and the ceiling decoration is a printed paper I bought at AC Moore):




















The carousel animals we borrowed from another church who had done the same program, and I used them to make a 'carousel room':
















... and the Galactic Room:
















OK, that's enough photos for today!!!!! :)

Tomorrow, I Love Ya, Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is a Red Letter Day! Both kids are going to all-day camp at the Y for the entire week!!! I will be dropping their shining little faces off at 8:30am, and not seeing them again until around 5!!! I'm so excited I can't even believe it!!!! I haven't been alone like that since, um, college, I think! Woohoo!!!!!!!

While I fully intend to do Things That Need Doing, I also have a looong list of things that Want Doing, like a nicely-sized pile of books, a $50 gift card to Marshall's, info on two places to take dogs to swim that are nearby, and a ginormous list of blog postings that I got waaaay behind on while I was in the hospital and was so intimidated by that I still haven't dared really look at my RSS page. Tomorrow, dear friends, I will emerge from blogger darkness and comment, comment, comment!!!

First order of business, though, is to clean the house. Now, hear me out - if I do it first thing, I will have a pleasant-smelling, tidy, guilt-free experience the rest of the week. If I wait, the mess will only bother me and diminish my fun until I do it. I'm not talking major, deep cleaning here, at least not at first, just vacuuming (which with a four-story house is a job in itself, frankly) and dusting the living room. Since I'll be alone, it'll take me two hours, tops, to get the place where I can stand being totally lazy in it, and from then on, I'm golden! Hee hee hee!!!

This is really a warm-up for school for me (although their day at camp will actually be longer than a regular school day). They start Aug 20th, which is what, about four weeks from now, meaning once camp is over, it's a three-week downhill slide to MAJOR peace and quiet. OMG, it's so delicious, I can hardly stand it!!!! I've been at home with the kids since before Patrick was born, actually almost literally six years from the day they will start school, and of course had Josie three years before THAT, so I'm due for some serious relaxation. People ask me all the time what I'm going to do when school starts, and I very honestly tell them that I don't know. I mean, I plan on volunteering at the school a lot, and I volunteer to take care of babies for the MOPS group our church runs for the community, but other than that, I have no committments. I'm not going back to work, at least not yet, unless I can find something that's only a few mornings a week and would be flexible for school schedules (and when I do THAT, I will ride the pig that will simultaneously fly out of my ass to work every morning to save gas). I have a girlfriend that works in a school lunch kitchen, but I SOOOO don't want to do that. Growing up, I went to work with my grandmother, who was a GIGANTIC bitch (trust me, my mother and I lived with her, so I know what I'm talking about), every morning at my elementary school's kitchen, where she was head cook, and I have terrible memories of the entire school lunchroom process. Also, since I don't typically allow my kids to BUY lunch at the school (since when did fried cheese sticks constitute a main dish?!?!), it would seem terribly hypocritical to work there. What I'd really like is to be a library aide or something at the school. THAT would be fun. Books all day, and kids in measured doses. I don't know if schools hire people to do that kind of thing, though.

Anyway, back to my blissful week. I will try not to brag too much, or rub your noses in it. If it makes you feel any better, we will not be taking a vacation this summer, AGAIN, because we're always too broke to manage it, so this is what I'm getting. My big splurge will be going to see Batman at some point. My DH is sick with jealousy over that one, but hey - HE gets to go out to lunch with ADULTS whenever he wants, so he can go suck an egg.