Filed under: life in general
So I was trying to catch a train, and I was just a little bit late, and ran for it but it pulled away before I could get on. The surly train station worker type person gleefully informed me that the next one didn’t come for an hour and a half. A few seconds later a man in a suit ran up and asked if the train had gone, and she equally gleefully informed him that it had, and he’d be waiting a while for the next one. Equally frustrated, we both wandered off in opposite directions.
It was almost lunchtime, and I was hungry, so I went looking for something to eat, but all they had in the train station were vending machines. With super expensive drinks, and lame looking sandwiches. Naturally, they only took coins, there was no change machine, and I didn’t have enough coins on me for both. (Did I mention they were really overpriced?) As I stood there staring at the limited options, and debating whether to eat or drink, I heard, “That’s IT?” in an incredulous tone behind me. Sure enough, it was my fellow train-misser. So we shot the breeze for a few minutes, bemoaning the stupid train and the stupid station and the stupid, stupid vending machines. After digging through his pockets, he realized he was also going to have to choose either a sandwich or a drink. At which point he suggested, well, why don’t we each buy one thing and split them? At least that way we can have both.
Well SURE, Mr cute and well dressed and nice guy with a good vocabulary and no wedding ring, I will have lunch with you. So we split an iced tea and a ham sandwich and killed the time before the next train came. And we got along really, really well. And then I found myself thinking, wow, this is going to make a nauseatingly cute how-we-met story, like in a movie starring Meg Ryan or possibly Cameron Diaz.
And then I woke up.
DAMMIT.
(Oh, and the cat did come back. The next morning she was waiting at the back door, and bitched me out when I opened it. Her: “MeOW MEOW meow meow MEEE-OW!” with accusing glare. Me: “Do not start with me, cat.”)
Filed under: offspring
Filed under: random whining
Well, as predicted, Sport did not pass his level 2 swimming. Which led to quite the hissy fit, since he’s not really all that accustomed to failing at things. (This experience can only be good for him, really.) And contrary to his opinion (which was accompanied with some impressive foot-stamping), yes, he will so be continuing to take swimming lessons.
The evening went downhill from there when I went to let the dog in and discovered that Sport hadn’t closed the gate behind him when we got home. Naturally, the dog was nowhere to be seen. While I was grabbing the leash and flashlight to go look for him, the cat escaped too. An hour later, the canine is back indoors, although not without a fair bit of effort – his recall is basically non-existent, and he’s not going to let you walk up to him with a leash when he’s loose, so I had to resort to the tried and true “get him all excited and then take off running while he chases you, and once he’s really into it run into the yard” method. Thank you again, dog trainer who told me to never run after a dog, run away from him instead.
The cat, on the other hand, is still AWOL. Sigh.
You know, sometimes I think I am oh-so-smart, and then I come crashing back to earth. A couple of weeks ago I registered Sport for a 2 week long session of swimming lessons, running for half an hour Monday through Thursday. He hadn’t taken lessons since last fall, when he finished the last level in the preschool lessons, but couldn’t move into the school-age lessons since he wasn’t six yet. And due to the dismal weather this summer, we’ve hardly been swimming at all. So I had a stroke of genius: register him for the intensive session at a level below what he was entitled to move into, and that would provide a nice refresher of his skills and get him ready for the new fall session which begins in October. Registration for that session started today, so I signed him up for the level above the one he is in now – ie, the level he was promoted to last December.
Here’s the catch: we switched pools in the meantime, and at the new pool they actually have really good instructors with, like, expectations and all. (However, it’s all the same program, so you would think they would have the same standards, right?) I talked to his instructor briefly tonight and said, so, am I ok to register him in the next level for the fall? Fully expecting, of course, to hear “sure” since he had already gotten the green light for that level from the other pool eight months ago. Instead she said, “Wellll….” and went on to explain that he really needs to work more on his kicking, since his form is atrocious (she said weak, but trust me) and he can’t do the distance swim without also using his arms. I must have looked a little shocked since she added, “But I’ll work really hard with him for the rest of the week!” Well of course she will, she’s terrific, but geez. I bolted home and signed him up for the lower level as well, since all the after-supper courses fill up really fast, and I don’t want to get stuck with lessons at noon on a Saturday, or something.
So now he’ll probably be repeating a lower level which he wouldn’t have had to even take if I had just kept my bright idea to myself. Le sigh.
Filed under: offspring
This evening, out of the blue….
“Mom, I think you are going to have a lot of work to do!”
“Ah… what do you mean?”
“When you have another boy. Two boys. Two brothers!! That will be a lot of work for you. It might get crazy.”
Filed under: offspring
I have now recovered sufficiently from the events of 10 days ago to post about it. I still can’t quite laugh about it, but maybe one day.
Let me just begin by pointing out that I have been cutting Sport’s hair myself for about a year and a half. The first couple of times I took him to a hairdresser, and once I saw them do a clipper cut I thought, geez, why am I paying $15 when I could do that myself? So I invested in a set of clippers and a little hairline trimmer, and we never looked back.
At least not until 10 days ago, when I was giving him a trim to neaten things up before we set off for the weekend. Ho hum, I’ve done this a hundred times now, comb out, clip from the front, comb out, clip from the back, comb out, clip up from the sides …. and then it happened. Something that had never happened before, and which no one had ever TOLD me could happen, including the people who have now informed me, “Oh, yeah, that happened to me once.” WELL TELLING ME THAT NOW IS NO GOOD, DAMMIT, WHERE WERE YOU A WEEK AGO???
Ahem. What happened, you ask? The guard fell off the clippers. And since I was cutting up from the sides, and Sport was facing towards me, I couldn’t see the blades and didn’t notice what had happened. The guard obligingly fell onto the folded towel beside him, so it didn’t even make a noise or catch my eye. I finished the pass up to the top of his head, lifted the clippers to get ready for the next pass, and had a coronary. There was an inch and a half wide, four or five inch long bald spot. OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD. I couldn’t help it, I gasped and slapped my hand over my mouth. Sport looked up at me, realized something fairly drastic had happened, and promptly burst into tears. Ladies and gentlemen, worst mother EVER.
An hour later, he had stopped crying, and I had finally convinced him (with the aid of a few blogs featuring Ethiopian boys with very close cropped hair, pictures of Michael Jordan, and a call to Auntie, who once shaved her head for charity) that I had to just shave his whole head. The shaved patch went so high I couldn’t even do a fade, or anything other than a mohawk really, which is not a look either of us was going to go for. So I did, and it was pretty brutal looking, since his scalp was clearly much paler than the surrounding skin. Oh, did I mention that the weekend was a gathering for adoptive parents? That there would be a few hundred people there, many of them children from Ethiopia? My timing is spectacular, no? I felt like I may as well wear a badge that said Hi, I’m tafel, and yes I am the incompetent parent of my Ethiopian child.
The weekend went ok, and after a few hours Sport even put down his hood. A few people commented that he looked good, and he relaxed a bit. On the other hand, a few people assumed that I just didn’t know what to do with his hair, which pissed me off.
It’s grown in a bit now, and actually looks really good. What can I say, the kid can pull it off. And although he is enjoying the summertime ease of it – no drying time after swimming! - I seriously doubt he is going to let me near his head with clippers again anytime soon. Really, who can blame him?
Filed under: off topic
Fellow 80s teenagers should read this – a lovely op-ed piece by Molly Ringwald about the late John Hughes.
Filed under: offspring
No, I”m not referring to the weather we’ve been having lately. (Although, damn, should I start building a boat?) However, after experiencing mild levels of panic over not having daycare for Sport once school starts in 4 weeks, I now have two options. And you know how I hate making decisions about this stuff… gah.
Choice A: a large daycare centre about a 5-10 minute drive away. They can fit him in for before & after school, but no inservices or school holidays. He would be bussed back and forth to his school every day, and I’d have to pay for the busing. (I haven’t found out how much it is yet.) Due to the location and the daily timeframe, I would have to continue to drive to work.
Choice B: a small home-based daycare a 2 minute walk from our house, and a 2 minute walk to his school. She can take him before & after school and for most inservices & school holidays. She’ll walk him (and her own son, who is a year older) back and forth to school every day. No busing cost, but the daily fee is double the cost of the centre. (Centres are regulated in how much they can charge, home based daycares aren’t.) But I would be able to walk him there and walk one more block and catch a bus to work, eliminating parking fees, higher insurance costs, and of course a huge chunk of my gas expenses. (Downside: having to take the bus. I HATE taking the bus.) I haven’t hammered out the exact costs, but overall Choice B will still be more expensive than Choice A.
Eventually I hope he will get a spot in the centre located right in his school, which would be the best of both worlds – cheap & convenient. For now, I’m leaning towards the home centre, pending a visit there with Sport next week. Feel free to vote in the comments.
If a cat gets shut inside a dresser for most of a day, she will not only break the bottoms out of two drawers and scratch the bejeesus out of all the drawer edges trying to get out, but also trash the clothes. And of course Murphy’s Law dictates that the three drawers affected will be the ones that contain the decent clothes you wear to work, not, say, your painting and/or gardening clothes.
Seriously, I could just lie down and cry right now. But I won’t, because I have to go do laundry, since I’m down to only one pair of work-appropriate pants.
Filed under: offspring
