Friday Favorites: Rain

Let me try to resuscitate my regular Friday thing here with this tribute to rain, which I love, although we have been receiving it in quantities and velocities that I find it harder to appreciate.

My favorite things about rain:

1. The smell. Of course. Although it turns out that if it rains every day and every night for a week and a half, the smell is less "fresh pine forest" than "underside of mushroom."

2. The way it makes the yard grow and grow and grow. All our plants are bounding forth from the earth, in startling abundance.

3. The sheer awesome power of a deluge. I mean, even if I am kind of horrified at how the water is pooling up and washing away (goodbye, landscaping! Goodbye, compost! Goodbye, woodchips! Goodbye, edges!), it's still one heck of a show, these afternoon storms we've been having. Every morning brings its own surprise (wow! I didn't think that the puddles would reach that high!)

4. Sitting in the house/office/car and feeling smugly appreciative of modern systems of enclosure.

5. The excuse to bring a child into bed, just like the old days. When they were smaller. And fit in the bed. This one is kind of double-edged.

6. The inexplicable way it makes the end of the world feel farther off (in contrast to drought, which makes the end of the world feel right on our doorstep).

All said, I'm still crossing my fingers that today's the day we get NO rain.

Now with photos

Apparently it's been too much to write a post AND upload photos, so here are the photos from the last two posts:

From camping:

Si with fish (Helen, seeing the photo: "And you didn't KEEP it?!")

The kids did some archery at the campsite, too.

Helen wants her own bow.

The next weekend (note: meaning we've gone up into the mountains three weekends in a row, a delight I did not think was possible) we dropped Si off at camp:

It was a little bleak.
But not too bad.

What is UP with me lately

The rain. The rain is what is up with me. I get that rain is good, that I haven't had to water the lawn in over a week and hurrah and, furthermore, it will end as all weather things do and we will go back to all dry all the time and also HOT. (Okay, we are in fact back to HOT). But: the rain messed up my weekend, and I am NOT HAPPY. Specifically, the rain made a perfectly easy and sensible project, painting (some more of) the house, suck all of the non-accounted-for time out of Sat & Sun. To wit: Sunday I woke up and prepared myself for my weekly long run, as is my wont. Except that as I was tying my shoes and otherwise puttering toward Start, I happened to get that itchy, let's-think-about-those-clouds-and-how-they-might-impact-my-plans feeling, and that feeling led to a decision to switch the order of things, from run-then-paint to pain-then-run, which was fine, except that the paint part ended up taking up all of the paint and run time...and I guess maybe what I'm really mad about is the painting.

Augh will I be glad when the painting of the house is fini. It seems like it is neverENDING.

The other reason I felt a little pressed for time on Sunday was that we had to leave after lunch to bring Si up to his first-ever overnight camp. One of his best friends is also attending (they're sharing a bunk bed, in fact), and they've got about a million fun things scheduled, from baseball to archery to rain to canoeing to campout night to rain to horseback riding, and fun counselors that actually seem focused and attentive, like they might remember his name--but I still said, as we drove away, that I was SO VERY GLAD that my own personal days of sleepover camp are over. It just...has that overtone of bleakness. The too-hot, slightly mac-and-cheese-smelling dining hall. The bare-bones cabin with the plastic mattresses. The cabins that used to be snugly nestled in a cool pine forest but now, thanks to pine beetles and blowdown, are scattered across a bare, stump-studded field.

Si was enthusiastic about it, though, or at least a good sport, and by the time we'd gone back to the car and returned with his Harry Potter book he was deep in a game with his friend and barely looked up to say goodbye. So that's all good (but I will be glad to have him home, and to have school back in session and everybody in their place and predictable while I'm at work).

In defense of fireworks

We'd planned to go backpacking over the holiday weekend but at the last minute couldn't bear the amount of packing that would have to occur, not to mention the drive, the food planning, and etc. Fortunately, though, Si had a backup plan in reserve (and fortunately for family harmony we decided to accept his plan; whoo boy is the kid a planner/control freak). In brief: Saturday camping; buy fireworks on the way home Sunday; Sunday evening dinner-fireworks-sleepover with friend TBA; Monday attend the real fireworks at Cornerstone Park. The friend TBA didn't quite work out, but luckily we had Cousin instead and we spent Sunday evening sitting in lawn chairs and watching the boys light brightly packaged gunpowder on the street in front of us (and having our eardrums strained alternately by the fireworks and by Helen's delighted screaming). Monday morning bright and early we got the hand-delivered neighborhood newsletter, which of course had as its very first item the reminder that in our city fireworks are illegal, punishable by a $1000 fine. The second thing I noticed was that the hand-deliverer would have had to walk past the pile of discarded fireworks trash left prominently at the end of our driveway. I may have muttered an annoyed imprecation about how the last ones to come inside could have cleaned up a little and what the hell were they thinking. I may also have cursed the fact that I married a man who likes fireworks and produced a child who also likes fireworks.

But then I readjusted and set my grumbling on the proper target: the anti fireworks brigade.

Before I begin, let me emphasize: I do not like fireworks. If I were a single parent, my children would have to content themselves with the state-sanctioned event at the park on the 4th of July.

But. I'm not a single parent, and furthermore, I happen to have a child who loves fire, explosions, and busting stuff up. These are mighty powerful urges and I'm starting to learn that growing up, and teaching a child how to grow up, involves learning how to channel powerful urges in socially acceptable ways. Duh. And I'm going to submit that option A, the option provided by the City and County and not least by our neighborhood nagging association--namely, that all urges are bad and should be vigorously stifled--is not productive.

I'm not going to argue with the City and County bans, which are based on the need to prevent massive grass fires and barn burnings and teenage maimings and blindings (although I'll point out that there are plenty of dangerous-but-fun/useful things that we DO manage to monitor and accomodate instead of ban, like swimming and driving and GUN OWNERSHIP FOR THE LOVE OF PETE) (also that the ban extends to sparklers).

Nope. I'm going to go after the neighborhood ban, which seems to be based mostly on "OMG they're so annoying" and "don't you know those are against the RULES?" These statements are both true, of course, but if we're going to be cracking down on annoying things, I'd like to point out that I find sparsely-planted geraniums VERY annoying, and also the widespread use of broadleaf herbicide. But nobody's going after those practices.

And, okay, 1-am firecrackers are their own special brand of annoying. Even 9:30-pm firecrackers are more annoying than geraniums. But it's like when the neighborhood nagging association lobbied (successfully, unfortunately) to curtail the post-school gathering of teens in the local playground: people, a community is for everyone. Not just the quiet types who prefer to stay indoors or take a brief constitutional walk in the open air. If you have teenagers in your community, and thank god we do, you're going to need to accomodate their desire to congregate and engage in loud and annoying behavior. Ideally, you're going to do that while teaching them how to be loud and aggregated without starting in on self-destructive and criminal behavior.

Likewise, we have a lot of explosion-loving people in our neighborhood (like, you know, BOYS.) I'd like to see us (read: YOU, neighborhood nagging association) come up with a way to help them indulge their explosion urges while learning how to be relatively safe and courteous about it. That's hard to do if the only option is "no. Also no, and no. And don't even THINK about poppers."

For me, I do this by sitting tolerantly in a lawn chair while my beloved coaches my other beloveds in the safe(ish) use of fireworks, and only wincing sometimes. And then making my beloved child go out there early the next morning and clean up the mess.

And yes, you might make the argument that if I didn't have an explosion-loving boy, I would probably be more-or-less in the anti-firework camp. But even then I'd still argue for the need to be a little more tolerant of non-toe-the-line activities.

Because otherwise, I might be tempted to get there and ban badly planted geraniums.

Brief update

So, we went camping last weekend. We forgot our sleeping bags and ketchup for the hot dogs; it was hot and dusty until it got really very cold, and when we got home there was an entire weekend's worth of chores to do, plus extra laundry and dishes from the camping. Nonetheless it was wonderful and I enjoyed every minute of it, except perhaps the moment we made the discovery about the sleeping bags ("Oh what a SHAME!" cried Helen and collapsed in misery.)

The kids spent almost every minute climbing in the rocks behind camp

except when they were geocaching

or melting their matchbox cars in the fire. Helen was well-dressed throughout, except when wearing her hot polyester nightgown. Silas was basically invisible, except when waving from some high rock. I read, and cooked a bit, and tried to nap (too hot). The mosquito level was fine.

Chore report

Well, the first shaky/whiny/frantic (how will we DO it all) week of summer has passed, and naturally we haven't actually carved out any sort of routine that makes sense, but things do seem less frantic. The kids are in their school daycare program for part of this week (rather more dismal than not, with full-group punishments for untattled transgressions and a distinct limit on outdoor time), and then onto their aunt's for hedonistic fun, sun & legos. I'd feel worse about the school daycare except that it is looking to be about 6 days total of the whole summer, maybe less, and one day of each of those is a swimming day (for which I say, Better you than me, daycare, and also: good luck!) Meanwhile, M and I are both getting a decent amount of work done and not feeling too compromised, and the kids...well, they'll be fine. If I were home full time they would get more sleep, but they would also spend more hours of the day engaged in saying "I want a PLAYYYYDAAAAATE" and "Is it ten yet? Is it ten yet? Is it ten yet?" and "I want to go swimmmmiiing" and probably a lot of "It's not FAAAAIIIRR." So. And they would DEFINITELY spend less time at the pool, per visit (they were there for THREE HOURS. As IF).

We're taking advantage of the summer schedule to work a few more chores into the kid routine. This has had mixed success. To elaborate:

1. Success: lawn mowing. Silas mows the lawn now. He gets five dollars if he mows the lawn without requiring nagging. If I have to remind him more than cursorily, he gets $4. If I have to do it myself, he gets nothing (obv). So far (for three weeks) this has worked quite well, and for the first time since owning a lawn I do not regularly have to mow it. Yessss.

2. Fail: getting the kids to pick up after themselves/ pick up activities before moving on to the next activity. This pretty much does not happen without M or I standing over them saying "and now THAT lego, please. No, don't build with it. Just put it in the box." The summer is young, however.

3. Mixed: dishes. We don't really have a fixed schedule for this, so the kids always feel like we spring it on them at the end of a long day ("I see you're tired and just want to play wii--how 'bout you load the dishwasher instead?") However, they've gotten to where they (mostly) remember to put their dishes on the counter, and if we prompt gently, into the dishwasher.

4. Mixed: room cleaning. We have a fixed schedule--every weekend, they have to clean and vacuum their rooms--but there is so much variation in the definition of clean (floor only, or surfaces too? bed made? do the shelves/desk need to be organized? what about that drawer of doom which is crammed so full of crap that it barely opens--yet which seems to contain many critical items, such as allowance and favorite hair thingies?), plus "weekend" is such a long, leisurely span of time that it's easy to find ourselves at 8:15 on a Sunday night without it having managed to happen at all, that this chore seems to involve more than its fair share of stomping and flinging oneself to the floor, or shocking requests to delay completion/ solicit help.

5. Mixed-to-success: putting away laundry. Sometimes I put a basket of clean, folded laundry in a kid's room and it is whisked away into drawers as if by magic. Other times I find myself tripping on it three days in a row as it first gets rifled for preferred clean clothes and then, confusingly, overpiled with freshly dirty clothes. In either case, I would like to involve the kids in this chore earlier.

We're trying. Ideally, I'd like all chores to be like the lawn mowing, in that they're required to happen, but my needing to remind kids to do them has been cleverly excised from the process. In other words, I'd like a little more ownership of the chore process from the children. I remind them frequently of that study from Harvard about how the kids who made the happiest adults were those who were required to do chores as children; however, I suspect this invigorating story translates to kidspeak something like this: "blah blah blah blah no, you can't play Wii now blah blah blah blah."

Field trip

Over Memorial Day Weekend I took a little trip by myself (I KNOW); I went down to Salida, CO to take part in an Artposium. Mostly my taking part involved sitting in a chair or sitting on the steps by the river soaking in the sun, which was all right by me. I also did a little catching up with artist/ writer friends from around the state. I read some of my words to an assembled crowd (sounds downright Thomas Paine-ish, don't it?). I went for a hike and took notes and brainstormed ideas and processed.

I was glad to get away, to talk about something besides is-your-homework-done and how-are-we-going-to-get-to-baseball and the ripening drama that is the baseball experience this season--is coach X the right coach and are the practices too negative and why is coach y's son being favored for all the best positions even though his baseball skills are not great and ARGH (we had dinner with fellow BB parent friends last night and that is ALL WE TALKED ABOUT. For FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS. "I'm thinking it would be nice to have some couple friends that aren't through kids," M remarked this morning.)

I was also glad to get back, although as usual the readjustment/ catching up that always follows any kind of excursion away from home meant that life was even more hectic than usual last week. Hence the silence here.

One interesting aspect of the trip: anxious to conserve funds, I stayed at the local hostel. The kind with communal bunkbeds. It was...conducive to getting up & getting out early. While it was nice not to have the faceless DaysInn experience, and I did feel even more connected than I usually do in going to these things (the hostel was full of young marathoners and 18-year-old kids fresh into town for Southwest Conservation Core jobs--a distinctly different crowd than the middle-aged artist-writer-activist types at the Artposium), I pretty much dreaded go back there at the end of each night.

I've concluded that I'm really more of a B&B personality. Same unique local flavor, 100% less plastic mattress and middle-of-the-night internal debates about whether it's worth turning over and waking somebody up and then having to listen through the dark to them listening to me in the dark.

Anyhow. I'm back. Today is the Helen's last day of kindergarten!

Also: so Si's class did what they call a mini society project, where each kid makes a slew of cheapie cheap products (painted rocks with glued on googly eyes was a hit, apparently). Si's choice of product was a "mini Mt. Everest," which, according to the market research he did in class, would be popular and would sell for $20 each (in monopoly dollars, that is). M and I were both a leeetle skeptical of the validity of his focus group, since the Mt Everests were actually plastic egg cups painted white, but he was adamant, and since clearly the point of this thing isn't to have your parents sweep in and take over, we let it go. Sure enough, when he actually brought the products in, no one was interested. Last minute panic and origami-paper-buying ensued, but after the dust settled and the Mini Society buying and selling fest took place, Si ended up selling exactly one (1) Mini Mt Everest, and that was to his teacher. He was mildly indignant--"I don't get why someone would want to buy a painted plastic egg but not a Mini Mt Everest"--but didn't seem too broken up about it.

Helen, however. She was distraught. She has come back to it two or three times, weepily. "WHY didn't anyone buy the Mini Mt Everests?" "Why did they like the painted plastic eggs better? That's NO FAIR" and "If Dad had brought ME to the Mini Society I would have bought one."

It's both touching and baffling. I tend to cynically blame her distress on the fact that a blow to Silas is a blow to her own status (HE couldn't care LESS about her successes/ triumphs--why should he? He's the oldest. She could be star of the school play, an award-winning gymnast and a precocious polymath and he would still get to be the big brother). However, I think that also she's more sensitive to his feelings than I am. This is weird to say. But I think Si puts on a brave face to M and me--oh, it doesn't matter. He's fine. It's no big deal, right? Could I play some Wii now?

But Helen knows better. She knows his feelings are hurt, and her feelings are hurt for him. Which is both sweet and potentially useful.