Sloth

There are at least two dozen things I should be doing with this vacation day. P is at an appointment in LA, and G doesn't get out of school for three more hours. It's a perfect time for me to clean house, do laundry, finish the Christmas shopping, find the wrapping paper, work on the story I'm writing, change the water in the fish tank, etc., etc. Instead, after dropping G off this morning, I bought Starbucks, came home and planted my lazy ass on the bed with the laptop, and here I still am.

Must ... find ... will to ... get up ...

Right. Maybe in a few minutes.

And joined the choir invisible

Just before P and I went to bed last night, we noticed that Dorothy the goldfish was swimming at a crooked angle near the top of the tank. Anyone who has ever had fish will know that this is a certain sign of d00m, and sure enough, when we woke up this morning, Dorothy had shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to the big aquarium in the sky. That leaves us with just one goldfish: Angus, who is now rocketing around the tank like a maniac. I can't decide whether he's looking for Dorothy -- after all, they were tank-mates for two and a half years -- or just reveling in having all the swimming space to himself. Well, Muncher the pleco is still in there, but he mostly keeps to himself behind the castle or under the filter.

In other news, G got busted this morning for reading when she was supposed to be getting ready for school. I can see I'm going to have to start supervising her more closely in the mornings. Right now, I wake her up, then set milk and cereal out on the table for her (with the milk in a separate cup so she can pour it into the bowl herself) and get in the shower. While I'm in there, she's supposed to get dressed in the clothes I laid out for her the night before, then go to the table, fix her cereal and eat. After I'm out and dressed, I make her lunch, do her hair, then do my own hair and makeup while she brushes her teeth.

This would all work fine if the child were not as slow as a geriatric snail and as distractible as a magpie. She stops getting dressed to sit on the floor in her underwear and read. She stops with her shoe half-tied to watch TV. She drains every last drop of milk from her cereal bowl by sipping it one spoonful at a time. She starts art projects three minutes before we need to walk out the door. There is no sense of urgency in her at all. Probably what I should be doing is waking up an hour before her, getting completely ready myself, and then standing over her every step of the way as she goes through her routine. Alternatively, I should be getting her up an hour earlier so she can be as pokey as she wants. I don't think that'll work with our schedule, though.

I took the day off today to get stuff done, but somehow got roped into working from home, so I suppose I'd better get back to my article. I've got to finish it by 1 p.m. so I can go help out in G's class before my hair appointment at 4. I can't wait to kiss these witchy grey roots goodbye for another couple of months.

On the banks of the Nile

Urgh. I am not feeling well at all today. Since I'm mostly immobile, G and I have been doing the activities in her Usborne Egyptian kit -- we strung a scarab necklace and built a 1/2,000 scale model of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and then she made herself a construction-paper copy of a headdress in the Usborne Beginners Egyptians book and pretended to be Ma'at, goddess of truth. (That last one wasn't part of the kit, but you can be sure that when G does anything, there will always be dress-up involved.) Now she's watching an Egyptian-themed episode of The Backyardigans and I'm contemplating getting up and helping Pete with the chores. What a way to end a long weekend.

Thanksgiving is not a holiday that holds a lot of appeal for me in general, since I don't eat turkey and would rather be strung up by my thumbs than watch football, but this year it was pretty nice. We spent Black Friday shopping with my mother, who wanted to get us Christmas presents now because she won't see us again until January, and the next day I was at the stores again, first with G and then with P and his brother. You might think I would have managed to take care of some of my own Christmas shopping during all that, but you'd be wrong: I've only bought one gift (a book for G's cousin), and that was before Thanksgiving. I am going to be a ballistic stress missile in a couple of weeks if I don't get on the ball.

Fashion forward

The older I get, the more complicated clothes shopping becomes. Ten years ago, my main question when shopping was Have they got it in a size 2? Now it's more like Will I look like a total tool in it? I'm certainly not ready for high-waisted jeans and appliquéd vests yet, but I don't think I can pull off velvet blazers and tartan schoolgirl miniskirts, either, never mind pants with a two-inch rise. I really, really don't want to end up like a former boss of mine, who was in her mid-fifties and wore nothing but inappropriately youthful low-cut tops and tiny skirts. She had skin like beef jerky from four decades of tanning, and every time she stood by my desk, with her weathered cleavage right there in my face, I vowed that when my time came to stop dressing like an 18-year-old, I would know it and give in gracefully.

On top of the style problem, there's the delicate issue of bulge control. I wear a size 6 and am in decent shape, but post-baby, I was left with an abdominal bulge that's still with me almost seven years later. (Sounds like a biblical punishment: And for seven years shalt thou suffer the pains of the abdominal bulge; yea, and the next generation shall point at it and snicker and say, "Mom, your tummy is jiggly!") It's not even really a solid bulge -- it's more like a pouch, probably from having my stomach muscles sliced and stapled back together. The right clothes hold it in; the wrong clothes let it glob around or spill over my waistband in an alarming manner. Unfortunately, there are a lot of the wrong clothes out there.

Despite all these challenges, I am managing to find clothes to buy with my birthday money and gift cards. I've bought a pair of (non-mom) jeans, a corduroy skirt, two sweaters and a jacket so far, and I've still got about $125 left to spend. Yay! I was practically in rags before, and now I think I may actually get through the winter in some sort of style. Always a good thing.

School and not-school

I went to the first parent/teacher conference of the year today. G is reading at a mid/late second-grade level, which I had already ascertained from reading with her, and writing very well, although her actual penmanship could use some work. She's doing well in all her other subjects too. Her teacher thinks she has a "broad mind," is "very imaginative" and has "an amazing variety of interests," and that it's clear we've put a lot of effort into enriching her environment and giving her a good foundation for learning. On the social front, he says she's very gregarious and makes a deliberate effort to include the kids who tend to stay on the fringes of a group, often calling "Come on, [name], we're all going to do this! You come too!" Of course, the downside of being gregarious is talking too much, and he did comment on that, too: he said she tends to talk to her friends when they're supposed to be working, and she likes to go off on random tangents during class discussions. (No one's ever going to change that about G; random is just the way her mind works, and I kind of like it that way.) All in all, I thought it was a good report.

Later in the evening, we took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Disneyland. It was fairly crowded for a Tuesday night, but no one seemed to be going on rides, because they all had five- to ten-minute wait times. We went on the Haunted Mansion to see the holiday décor (G kept complaining that she was scared during the ride, but changed her tune and said it was cool as soon as we got out), went in a couple of shops to find a sweatshirt for P, then took the train to Tomorrowland. We saw one end of the Parade of Dreams on our way out, but we've seen the entire parade before, so we weren't missing anything. We got home around 7, and G and I took turns reading from a Magic Treehouse book before lights-out. She doesn't have school tomorrow, but I won't get to spend the day with her because I have to go to work. Stupid work. It spoils all my fun.

Glam

G and her friend had makeovers at Club Libby Lu this morning. The place is a bit hard on adult eyes -- just imagine what would happen if someone detonated a pink paint bomb in a small space and then tossed a metric ton of glitter in for good measure -- but I can totally see why little girls go crazy for it. G got the Glam Rock style and her friend got the Tween Idol, and they both looked absolutely adorable afterward. They were so impressed with their own beauty that they kept asking "How do I look?" during lunch just to hear each other say "You look awesome!" Hee. Anyway, they had a great time, and I'm very glad my friend suggested going.

In other news, my birthday was last week, and I am now 34. It's alarming to think that when my mother was the age I am now, I was 13. I don't feel old enough to have a teenager -- I hardly feel old enough to have an almost-seven-year-old. On the other hand, my almost-seven-year-old wants glam rock makeovers and has a crush on a boy in her class, so I suppose it's not all that different from having a teenager, except without the scary hormones. She's looking forward to being a teenager much more than I ever did. I thought being a child was an immense indignity and hated every minute of it, but I wanted to skip the whole teen thing and go straight to being 35. Of course, now I wonder what the hell I was thinking!

Speaking of birthdays, it's nearly time to start planning G's again. We've kicked around a few ideas over the course of the year, but now the moment of truth is approaching and we need to make a decision. So far she's suggested an Ancient Greek theme (might be hard to pull off, since I doubt this age group is big on baklava and dolmas) and a magic theme (would be great if we had space to have a magician do a show, but I don't think we do). I'm trying to sell her on something we can do at an outside venue, like bowling or ice skating. The only place I won't go is Chuck E. Cheese.

Your backyard friends

G's been obsessed with The Backyardigans lately, which is a bit weird because she stopped watching the rest of the Nick Jr. preschool shows about a year ago. I think she likes it because it's about exploring and having adventures -- two things she aspires to do herself. Anyway, we were watching an episode earlier this evening, and she noticed that Pablo the penguin is the only one of the anthropomorphic animal kids who doesn't have fingers. (Although he does have a convenient opposable thumb built into each flipper.) We decided that snack time would be difficult if one of your friends was a penguin. You'd have to toss goldfish crackers into his mouth the way the trainers at Sea World throw smelt.

She actually asked to go to bed right after the show ended, partly because of the time change, and partly because she's been under the weather for a few days. She started coming down with a cold on Thursday, and while it's never gotten really severe, it's definitely been enough to slow her down. She was doing better this morning and asked to go to Target with me, but I don't think it was good for her, because the congestion and coughing came back full force after we got home. I'm pretty sure we're not going to take her out tomorrow night because of it. She's already been trick or treating at Disneyland and Boo at the Zoo, so she's okay with just staying home and handing out candy instead. God knows we've got to get some of this candy out of the house before I inhale it all!

All about friends

I read an interesting article about children and friendships last night. Apparently, between ages 6 and about 12, kids pass through a series of stages in which their concepts of friendship, and their expectations of a friend, slowly change and grow more complex. The stages are:

Stage 1: "Play partner": In the earliest stage of friendship, the relationship is based on "play-partnership". A friend is seen as someone who engages the child in play and permits the child to use or borrow her playthings.

Stage 2: "People to chat to": The sharing of interests becomes an important element in friendship choice. Conversations between "friends" are no longer related simply to the game or activity in which the children are directly engaged.

Stage 3: "Help and encouragement": At this stage the friend is seen as someone who will offer help, support or encouragement. However, the advantages of friendship flow in one direction; the child does not yet see himself as having the obligation to provide help or support in return.

Stage 4: "Intimacy/empathy": The child now realises that in friendship the need and obligation to give comfort and support flows both ways and, indeed, the giving of affection, as well as receiving it, becomes an important element in the relationship. This stage sees a deepening of intimacy; an emotional sharing and bonding.

Stage 5: At this stage friendship is perceived as a deep and lasting relationship of trust, fidelity and unconditional acceptance.

After reading this, I was curious about what stage G was in, so this evening I asked her some questions about friends and friendship. Here's what she said.

Q. What makes someone your friend?
A. If you're nice to each other and say nice words and make each other happy when you're sad.

Q. What do you want a friend to do with you?
A. Play together and have sleepovers.

Q. How would you make friends with someone?
A. Well, I could introduce myself if they're new in my class. And then they would introduce themselves to me. And then blah, blah, blah and all that other stuff. [I assume she meant that she and the other kid would talk at this point.]

Q. Do you have a best friend?
A. Yes.

Q. Who is it?
A. Tabitha.

Q. Why is Tabitha your best friend?
A. Because we've been friends ever since we were toddlers.

It sounds as if she's combining elements from several of the stages: she thinks that friends play together (stage 1), but also talk about things that interest them (stage 2) and support each other emotionally (stages 3 and 4). Based on the way I've seen her actually interact with her friends, I'd say she's around stage 2 with some stage 3 mixed in. She loves to chat, and it can be funny to listen to at times. For instance, a few weeks ago, she and her friend from next door were out riding bikes, and when they stopped to sit down and rest, they had a conversation that was basically the kid version of adult dinner-table talk:

He: How was your day at school?
She: It was good; how was yours?
He: It was good too.

[pause]

She: So, what are you going to be for Halloween?
He: I'm going to be a Power Ranger.
She: Oh! I'm going to be Juliet, you know, like in Romeo and Juliet.
He: That's nice.

And so forth. They might as well have been married. :-)

One thing that's really neat about G is her willingness to play anything with anyone. She loves to dress up and put on fashion shows and play dolls with other girls, but she plays with boys just as easily; two of her good friends are boys, and she talks about playing superheroes and spies with the boys in her class at recess. I think being with her father so much has helped her learn how to relate to boys: she knows how to play the sorts of games they like because that's what her dad plays with her. She can switch from being a squealing girly girl to pretending that her bike is a police car in two seconds flat. All that may change in a year or two, when she reaches the inevitable "boys are gross" stage, but for now it's wonderful to see.

Dear Santa

G made out her Christmas list the other night. It's remarkably light on toys this year: she wants a handheld DVD player, a pair of Heelys and an interactive Serafina, which she asked for last year and didn't get because the stores were sold out. I'm not keen on buying Serafina this year either -- it got horrible user reviews, and I know G will play with it for a day or two and then abandon it at the bottom of the stuffed-animal basket -- but since she asked for so few things, Santa will probably bring it anyway. I'll get her some arts and crafts supplies too; she she never seems to have enough of those.

In the meantime, we're still waiting for Halloween. We all went to the pumpkin patch over the weekend, where G picked a pumpkin, rode a pony, and got her face painted, sort of. I say sort of because instead of a professional face painter, they had a table with regular paintbrushes and cups of poster paint so the kids could paint themselves. The girl ahead of us seemed determined to paint every inch of exposed skin on her face and arms -- her mother kept saying "Come on, give someone else a turn" and "You don't have anyplace left to paint," and she kept protesting that she wanted to do more, more, more. By the time Mom finally dragged her away, she was painted like a Pict, only not as blue. G agreed to let me paint a small pumpkin on her cheek and leave it at that. Sensible girl. :-) She had a great time at the patch, and we timed it just right: when we got there, it was warm and sunny, and by the time we got home, it was cold and windy and threatening rain. Gotta love that crazy October weather.

Things that annoy me, part 938274950

Every morning when I go downstairs to get coffee at work, someone is there ahead of me, coffee cup in one hand, milk jug in the other, pouring and stirring and tasting as if s/he is going for first prize in the World Coffee Mixing Championships. (Brought to you by Starbucks!) Three drops of milk; whirl with the little wooden stick; sip; wrinkle nose and repeat ad infinitum, all while blocking the entire coffee area and preventing me from getting my cup of black decaf. Every time, I want to shriek It's coffee, not a chemistry experiment! Dump in the milk and step to the left! I don't care if you spend your morning concocting the perfect blend when you're at home, but in a public venue, your job is to do your business and clear out as quickly as possible. The same goes for restrooms -- no hogging the sinks for half an hour while you brush your teeth, apply makeup, highlight your hair and wax your upper lip -- and any sort of line at a cash register.

Ah! That was cathartic. I feel better now.

Brownies

G came home on Monday with a flier inviting girls to join her school's Brownie troop. They sent the same flier around last year, and she wasn't interested then, but this time she was wildly excited and begged to join. All I heard for days was "We're signing up for Brownies on Thursday!" and "Don't forget to take me to the Brownie meeting!" So, tonight we went down to the school to fill out the paperwork. Well, I filled out the paperwork; she ate a snack and did crafts with the other girls. (Paperwork: reason 2,049,871 why it sucks to be a grownup.)

I must say, things have changed since I was a Brownie in 1978. The only thing I remember doing that year is making a cushion out of crumpled newspaper and stapled-together squares of wallpaper. Her troop has two regular meetings and two night/weekend events, plus a fundraiser, in the next month alone. I can see we're going to be very busy. However, the troop leaders and the other mothers seem very nice, and G had a great time -- so great that she cried when it was time to go home -- so I'm sure it will be worth it. The only major drawback I can see is that the meetings are the same day as her dance class. She'll have an hour between school and dance, then an hour between dance and Brownies, and then she'll have to eat dinner and go straight to bed. That's a long day for a little girl. Oh well, at least it'll only be twice a month.

Cannibal family

Conversation with G:

She: Hey, Mommy, want to play Pollies?
Me: I would love to, but I have to cook the pasta. Because if I don't, we'll starve! We'll hold our stomachs like this, and we'll fall on the floor, and we'll moan, "I'M SO HUNGR--"
She (interrupting): No, I'll just eat you.

Well! Maybe I should mention that not eating meat includes not eating people. *g*

A little lady

Six must be a magic number. Why? Because as soon as G turned six, she became more mature than I ever imagined she would be. I took her to the pediatrician this afternoon, and she sat tranquilly in the waiting room and read a book with me, walked to the examining room without a fuss, and calmly explained her symptoms and answered the doctor's questions like a grown-up. She's just been so pleasant and reasonable and fun to be with lately. I was sorry I had to drop her off at home and go back to work after the appointment -- I wanted to keep hanging out with her!

She and I did put up our fall decorations over the weekend, despite the blazing heat. It's hard to get in a seasonal frame of mind when you're eating ice cream as a fan blasts at you, but we managed. We have pumpkins and colored leaves on the hearth, a (fake) jack o'lantern on the table next to the door, and orange lights on the wall over the couch. For the inside of the front door, we made our own decorations: a ghost, a Frankenstein monster head, a moon with a bat silhouette, two spiders, two pumpkins, and black letters that spell out "GO BACK" and "EEK" and "BOO." G loves it all and has been begging to sit around at night with all the lights off except for the jack o'lantern and orange light string. I hope the novelty wears off a bit before Halloween. It's hard to navigate through the shadowy gloom. :-)

Burning up

It's the last day of September, so of course we're in the midst of our annual autumn heat wave. I've lived here for nearly 25 years, and it's happened every single autumn, but for some reason I keep hoping each year that this will be the year we get to skip it. Maybe this will be the year, I think, that we have a nice crisp autumn with crackling leaf piles and frosty mornings, the way the rest of the country does. Then the temperature hits 104 degrees, the hot wind screams down the canyons, and people's heads spontaneously combust.

I hope it's cooler tomorrow. I'm planning to get out our autumn decorations, and it just feels wrong to cover the fireplace hearth with fake pumpkins and leaves while electric fans are blasting in every room. What wouldn't I give for central air!

Back in the groove

G's been back in school for two weeks now. She likes her teacher, and so far everything's been good. I must say, though, I'm surprised at how serious and, well, academic first grade is in comparison to kindergarten. Starting next week there will be nightly homework -- not very difficult homework, judging by the samples I've seen, but still a lot more than before. In-class birthday parties are no longer allowed because they take too much time away from instruction. Each kid will receive a behavior report at the end of every week. It seems strict, but G probably needs the extra structure. Like a lot of bright, creative kids, she tends to get distracted and goof around, and I think it'll be good for her to have a teacher who keeps her focused on learning.

Pete and I are both a little bit worried about her being bored, though. Last year she was the only kid in her class who could read at all (not at a high level or anything, but she knew enough words to read "Dick and Jane"-type books). The assignments were easy for her, so she'd sit around and talk to the kid next to her, thereby preventing him from doing his work, and then fill in her own worksheet at lightning speed at the last minute. One of her teachers used to have to set a timer for 30 seconds per page to motivate her. (When I found out about this, I said, "Thirty seconds?" and she said "Trust me, she can do it in twenty." She was right.)

This year it looks like they're going to be working on basic phonics, and that's not what she needs to learn. She knows all the consonant and short and long vowel sounds; all the consonant blends; the common vowel digraphs; word endings like -ed and -ing; the soft -ce sound; etcetera. What she really needs help with is applying everything she knows. She recognizes lots of words by sight, and that makes her a little bit lazy when she comes to a word she doesn't recognize -- instead of trying to work it out with phonics, she just guesses at it (usually incorrectly) so she can move on. If we sound out the first couple of letters together, she'll get it right, but I have to initiate that activity. I think she's realized that sounding out doesn't always work because phonics rules don't apply to all words, so she doesn't bother. I'm hoping her teacher will be able to impress upon her that you always try sounding out first, and maybe give her some strategies to use when sounding out fails. The question is, will he have time to do that when he's busy teaching the other 19 kids in the class how to string together the sounds in "cat" and "hat?" However, he seems very organized and together, so if anyone can do it, he probably can.