Clothing Rules, according to Skipper

1) Once a top-half clothing article (a shirt, usually) is matched with a bottom-half clothing article (pants, usually), they are An Outfit, and can never be separated or have a fling with another partner.

2) Pants should be tight at the ankles (because of flopping!) and loose at the butt (because of underpants bunching!).

3) Underpants are terrible. TERRIBLE.

4) Socks are worse than underpants, if that's even possible.

Hello, internet.

Hello! I feel that I should report in with some actual text. I've been busy. I've been busy with work (including lots of evening meetings that require poor Cook to drag both girls to Duchess's evening kung fu class and then drag them home and put them both to bed) and with volunteer stuff. However, I am also very busy (and depriving myself of sleep that I can't really afford to lose) watching every single episode of The Amazing Race (or at least each season until all the teams I like are eliminated), which takes up a LOT of my time.*

Cook's been very busy at work these days - lots of high-profile tasks with short deadlines.** Otherwise, he's fine, and fully recovered from his sinus infection.

Skipper is okay, but cranky. She also seems to be hearing poorly right now, which I'm hoping is a) a short-term problem related to all the colds she's had this winter - maybe a silent ear infection? or b) actually just her ignoring us because she doesn't want to hear anything we have to say. Wait. Maybe I don't hope b.

Duchess is okay, but cranky. She has some crazy mood swings going on, which may be temperament, or hormones, or something. Demonic possession, maybe? Whatever it is, with both kids we're having the unnerving experience of trying our usual array of parenting tools and having them all fail. This is something every parent experiences periodically, as kids hit developmental transitions, but I find it harder now that I'm dealing with it with an older kid. For me, it's tremendously maddening when a person I know to be capable of rational thought acts in a way that reflects absolutely no rational thought. This maddening effect makes me, in turn, act like a person capable of no kindness or generosity. Parenting makes me a jerk.

And it's spring! The weeds are out ahead of me (because I'm too busy watching television to do any weeding), but the sun is shining on the solar panels, and all is well with the world.


*I now see the world in terms of The Amazing Race. When I talk to people, I consider whether I'd like to have them as my partner in The Amazing Race. (Usually, no.) When I run into a challenge, I imagine that I'm doing a Road Block on The Amazing Race. I do find that I behave better when I imagine that I am being filmed all the time. 

** Which is exactly the sort of thing Cook hates, which is problematic because he's smart, perceptive, and conscientious, so everybody wants him for their high-profile, short-deadline tasks. They would also want him for their partner on The Amazing Race. (Except that he also hates being looked at, which would be problematic because cameras.)

Frog towel and new dresses

Half a decade

Skipper turned five today. She didn't want to have a party; she wanted to have a family day. Most of her expressed wishes revolved around food. Our diet today was almost entirely restricted to starch and dairy; vegetables were banned. Skipper really enjoys helping with cooking and baking, and yesterday as she was spinning lettuce dry for salad, she announced jauntily "We won't need to use the salad spinner tomorrow, because there won't be any salad!" She did allow raspberries and strawberries, in the interest of vitamins. 

She got a number of wonderful presents, and got to do lots of things she wanted to do, as well as eat only starch and dairy (plus hamburger). By about noon, though, she was getting overwhelmed, and was pretty cranky all afternoon. When we brought out her cake (which she had just frosted), she practically hid under the table. 

Second dairy+starch meal. Flowers arranged by Duchess.

Setting up the thank-you-note list before opening presents.

Overwhelmed by cake.

Eggs

Items of note from these photos, from yesterday:
1) These are the last pictures of 4-year-old Skipper.
2) It's spring! You can just barely see the budding grapes.
3) We have a solar array! Note the fancy pantsy electrical things, complete with paperwork waiting for the inspector to finally dhow up and turn the thing on.

I'm alive!

I'm busy! Work plus not sleeping enough plus volunteer gigs galore plus, you know, being lazy and unfit, equals no blogging. But I can tell you that we're all fine. Cook is recuperating from a sinus infection bad enough to actually motivate him to go to the doctor (this does not happen often), Skipper has started swearing like a sailor (last week she was in room being angry, and we heard her yell "Fuck a fuck a fuck a FUCK!"), and Duchess continues to be up and down with social crap in her class. Cook and I are trying not to show her how much we want to smack her classmates.

Also, Duchess has now officially been labeled TAG (by the skin of her teeth), and feels much more confident about her intelligence now that she has the label. Seriously. She's taking a before-school TAG math class that the principal let her take because I had complained that it was limited only to TAG kids (but she only invited Duchess, because Duchess has a Pushy Parent). Duchess has been doing well in it and enjoying it, but after I told Duchess that she had passed the TAG test, she said "Now I really belong in my math class!" as if she hadn't belonged before. Ech.

Sunshine

 The weather was gorgeous this weekend. Photos were taken.

Positive feedback

Hey, you know what it turns out I've been starved for? Being praised. In the last week or so, I've had several people tell me I've done well at various tasks at my new job, and thank me for my work. These were not important tasks, and while I did them well, I did nothing exceptional, and yet people THANKED me for them! And they were genuinely pleased with me!

I can't even tell you how good that feels. I'm pretty sure I've gotten more positive feedback in the last week than I had in the preceding five years, total. It has an astonishing motivating effect; I'm so delighted to get praise, like a golden retriever, that I'll go the extra mile for people who are nice to me, and fetch any grubby tennis ball you want. I think employers who are considering employing people who have been unemployed for a while should know about this effect.

Vision

The girls went to the eye doctor today, escorted by Cook. Skipper got her eyes dilated.

Skipper also has new glasses on the way, with frogs decorating the earpieces. This is exciting. What is even more exciting, though, is that Duchess's eyes* have improved so much that she no longer needs to wear glasses all the time - just for reading and schoolwork. She's delighted. We took her to school, and got to her classroom just before the rest of the class returned from lunch, and Duchess stood at the door waiting for her friends, every single one of whom asked as they came in, "Duchess, why aren't you wearing your glasses?"


*Eye, actually. The other eye has always been just fine.

stage names

The girls and I watched part of an episode of The Voice the other day, and they were curious about why Usher and Shakira don't use their last names. I explained the concept of a stage name to Skipper, and she said "What's MY stage name?"

I told her it could be whatever she wanted, and she said "I will be 'Tyrannus.'"

Language

One of my favorite podcasts is doing an episode this week on whether it's worth it to learn a foreign language. (Probable answer, based on my experience with this podcast: no.) I also heard a blip on the radio recently saying that it won't be long before we can get perfect instant translation using a phone app. This evening I mentioned that to Duchess, and she said, without hesitation, "No, it's still totally worth it to learn a language." She said that learning a language is something you accomplish, and if a phone's doing it, its just a thing the phone does. And learning a language makes you special. And if you don't know the language, you're not talking to people, your phone is talking to people.

So we will be paying for Duchess to attend a week of Mandarin immersion day camp this summer.

Oh, and in relevant news, Skipper is learning hiragana. She also sings a great phonics song that goes something like "ka ka ka ka, ka ke ku ke ko."