Sticks and Stars

I yearn to blog more but my life is conspiring against me. I am stressfully yet joyously overwhelmed at work and every evening I tell myself I’m going to study in order to further what I’m covering from 9 to 5 but I don’t because I just finished reading It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh and the lengthy lists of tasks to accomplish in order to achieve perfect house harmony are more easily undertaken and more immediately pleasing than my studying, so I don’t study, but I don’t work toward house harmony either because my clean house has inspired me to keep it thus and so I spend my evenings actually tidying up after myself and convincing my boys to tidy up after themselves, and while that doesn’t take up all my time, all this focus on my life has inspired me to finally (re)set up my financial tracking software and start cooking at home again and the combination of what I’m actually doing and what I just spend a lot of time thinking about doing and feeling bad for not doing leaves little time for blogging.

Work is going well. I’m feeling especially good today because I finished a project that’s been at the top of my to do list for weeks, one that’s been continually supplanted by other more emergent projects from my old job that my replacement is not yet qualified to tackle, one that involved actually writing PHP, something that I’m always terrified of doing but jubilant after completing. I also got my engagement letter today, the letter that officially offers me the job and tells me what they’re going to pay me and I was shocked to see that somehow I’m making more money than I thought, more money than I was told I was going to make. Indeed, I had thought that my paycheck was higher than expected, but I just assumed I miscalculated somewhere. I really cannot believe how much money I make.

On the home front things are going pretty well too. As I mentioned, I got my financial tracking software set up and that’s something that’s been on my to do list for oh, ten or so months. And I’ve been cooking yummy meals for my boys (that my almost-two-year-old won’t touch, of course…much to my intense and ongoing frustration he’s only willing to eat three foods outside of junk food: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pasta with white or yellow sauce, and fruit…but only peaches, apples and pears), not to mention keeping up with my weekly soup and freezing extra meals for those times when my weekly week doesn’t get off the ground until Tuesday, all of which contribute to lowering my budget. I was greatly dismayed to see that I’m spending about $600 a month on food (groceries and eating out), which is twice my budgeted amount ($300 for groceries and nothing for eating out…that should come out of my extra spending money), when I actually thought I’d been keeping pretty close to my budget, so I’m feeling pleased to be getting myself back on track.

And of course It’s All Too Much has me quite excited. I’m planning to devote this whole weekend to decluttering. Really, I have almost no clutter. I got rid of a lot of stuff before I moved and I wasn’t all that cluttered to begin with. But reading his book made me think a lot about why I have some of the crap I do and made me think about whether it actually benefits me in some way or whether it’s just weighing me down with some sort of unspoken obligation and what I really want from the spaces in my home, and so now I can see a whole lot more stuff that I can get rid of. Even just the thought of a clean, organized, streamlined, optimized home makes me feel peaceful and relaxed and I’m not that far away from achieving at least most of that.

I feel so very content with my life right now, so content that I worry that this is all just temporary, that soon enough things will return to some relatively shitty norm. But what if this is my new baseline? What if from now on everything goes up (or maybe slightly down) from here? God, what a heady thought.

Today my cleaning person came for the first time. She’s a single mom like me and has a hearing impairment so she speaks with a slight accent that I, despite knowing that she’s hearing impaired, always read as French, and think of her as being quite exotic as a result. Plus she looks French.

I didn’t know what to expect when I came home but oh. my. god. my house is so clean. She came over before we left for Hawaii and we did a walk through to discuss the types of things I wanted her to do during her three hours and then, because the house was a slightly tidy disaster area (after a couple hours of tidying) as a result of our exhausted return, I left her a note reiterating the bare necessities and apologizing for the mess and begging that she just work around it.

But she did it all. She did my sink full of pretty much every commonly used dish in my house, she did my laundry, she even cleaned out my toaster. I expected that she’d mop my floors and dust and clean my bathroom. I didn’t expect to come home to this glorious sparkling, sweet smelling home (all environmentally friendly cleaning products, as well).

She’s charging me $20 an hour for three hours every other week (initially she told me $25 but when I said that was just a bit too much, she dropped it to $20) and I can already say that oh my fucking god it is so worth it.

In other news of the “today” variety, I returned to work to find my new business cards on my desk. After dreaming this weekend that my boss demoted me to my old position and replaced me with the guy they hired to replace me in my old position, I was quite anxious about returning this morning. Have I blogged about how much I feel like a fraud? How I wait for my boss to call me in and tell me that he made a big mistake? Being away made me feel this all the more intently, all the more sure that I’d be called into my boss’ office when I got back. I really don’t know enough to be in this position. Really, I don’t.

But no, all was well. I’m still employed, I still have my fancy new position, and it still thrills me when I get to introduce myself and claim my title for my own. And being back at work reminded me of all the things I do know, how I might have a steep learning curve to climb but how I’m still useful in the meanwhile.

Plus today was the first day I got my new paycheck. It’s rather shocking to me that outside of senior management, I’m one of the most highly paid employees at my agency. But I’m sure not complaining.

Jeez, I didn’t mean to sound so negative at the end of my last post, making it sound like there was all this drama related to my trip and that I’d be so glad to escape it. That wasn’t the case at all, there was no drama, it’s just that I am a homebody and my boys are apparently similarly inclined and after a week away we were really starting to yearn.

The trip was great though. We did so much fun stuff and my boys especially had a really, really fun time, and that’s what was most important. I think back about spending time with my grandparents when I was small and it makes me happy to think that my boys memories will include tropical fruit trees, coffee making, tractor rides, volcanos, splashing in the warm ocean, and watching turtles crawl on the beach.

I feel so, so lucky that my boys’ grandmother is someone so generous and who wants so dearly to be involved in her grandsons’ lives that she would fly the three of us all the way to Hawaii and pay for every single expense we encountered during our week there. This morning when I paid for my week of parking I realized that it had been a really long time since I even checked whether my wallet was still in my back pocket because I hadn’t needed it at all. And of course, as always, despite the fact that she spent at least a couple grand on our visit, she also slipped a sizable check into my hand as we left. To cover parking costs, she told me, but the amount she gave me would have covered door to door limo service with money left over.

The last trip my boys and I took was also grandparent funded, when my dad took us all to stay at an ocean resort last year. It’s so easy to focus on all the things I don’t have in my life, even right now when I’m almost overwhelmed by all the good things that are happening. But truly I am so lucky and am the recipient of so much.

In a few short hours we begin our 2.5 hour ride back around the island of Hawaii, back to the open air airport small enough that you exit your plane down a ramp of stairs instead of one of those long collapsible tunnels, back onto the plane where three of us will be crowded into two seats, back into the air where my one year old will cry and cry and will so violently reject my desperately and secretly offered nipple (still nursing a two year old?!?! What kind of perverted savage are you???) that everyone in our row and the row behind us will learn of my perverted savagery.

Our flight doesn’t leave until 10:20pm and it is my dear and desperate hope that my small children will sleep during the entire thing, even if there’s no chance in hell that I will (and no chance that they will let me sleep tomorrow after we land at 5:50am).

We plan to leave here six and a half hours before our plane takes off and my hope is that they have something planned for the roughly four hours that leaves us after we arrive in our airport town. Otherwise I’m going to be kind of unhappy about that.

The trip has been good. I know I didn’t blog about it much (although I will soon update flickr and then post a link…because my god, is there anything more exciting than looking at some stranger’s endless poorly shot vacation photos?) but that’s just because I rediscovered how glorious it is to sit and read a book for hours (I brought four with me and I’ve read three, saving the fattest one for the ride home) and I’ve been dealing with a few stressful things while here, so as a result, my words dried up. Suffice it to say, the week has flown by, I’m glad I got the chance to get away, I’m glad I got the chance to go to Hawaii, but it hasn’t exactly been a nice relaxing vacation and I’d love to do it again but this time on my own terms. Which is not to say that I’m complaining in the least, not at all, but I’ll be glad to get home.

Yesterday was Volcano Day on the great island of Hawaii…or at least so far as our caravan was concerned…although I suppose we were not so much a “caravan” as a “minivan.” But before we could venture out into the steamy and lava filled jungles, we were first treated to a tour of the plantation upon which we will be staying for the week.

They grow coffee here, and have a huge garden filled with many fruit trees, and they grow tropical flowers. I know that people really like the flowers although I, personally, could take them or leave them (although I do like the orchids), but what really impressed me was the coffee. I got to pick coffee cherries off the tree, split them open to see the thin layer of sweet fruit that covers the seeds/beans, watch them be milled and dried, and then stand in the thick roasting smoke. And of course, I drank a cup or two as well. We had fresh papaya and tangerines for breakfast, fresh rambutan as an afternoon snack, and fresh bananas after dinner. And when I say fresh, I mean walk-outside-and-pick-some fresh. Of course we ate other things too (namely peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips, topped off with dinner at a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant that seemed like neither) but tropical fruits are expensive and not that common when we are home, so picking them off a tree right outside one’s bedroom window seems quite exotic.

The people we are staying with (my boys’ grandma and her boyfriend — who I think I will start calling Grandma and Papi because that’s what the boys call them and that’s easier to type) are so nice. They really, really want us to have a good time. They delight in taking my five year old out to feed the chickens and look for eggs, they love finding treats that will make my one year old grin and reach eagerly for more. When we were driving out to see the volcano they discussed at length how we could stop at both volcano museums because they know that I like “that sort of thing.” And indeed, the museums were fascinating! I had no idea that the chain of Hawaiian islands were formed by the movement of the pacific plate over a thin spot in the crust where magma was continually erupting. And there’s even another island currently forming.

By far most amazing, though, were the lava flows. We saw no hot lava (although we saw lots of steam and we plan to check the other side of the island for the possibility of the hot stuff because it’s always flowing somewhere) but we drove past and over miles and miles and miles of cold lava flows. I saw a couple maps outlining all the places lava had flowed over the island (and where it still remains because it doesn’t exactly just wash out to sea) and it was pretty incredible. I’ll post a couple photos that hopefully show some of the coolness.

(In the last photo the black is the lava flow.)

After a long and incredibly tiring day (that resulted in way, way too much sun for me — my face and arms and legs and bright red…I’ve heard of this thing called “sun screen” and I might look into it) we came home to a surprise birthday celebration for my five year old, complete with papaya cheesecake. Then the boys tumbled into bed with Grandma and Papi and watched some tv while I spent a little alone time with my computer (writing last night’s entry and chatting with friends).

It was a good first day. I can’t say it was lay-on-the-beach relaxing (although maybe having two kids puts a permanent end to that sort of relaxing) but it was fun.

Right now there is uproarious laughter as my boys play with their grandma. I am verifying that my laptop was not destroyed through the less-than-gentle ministrations of my five year old (wow, five years!). I probably shouldn’t be writing a blog entry, but let’s see how far I get.

The flight was…well…let’s just say I would consider swimming back if that was at all a realistic option. The first hour was pretty good. The boys were thrilled with the entire process of being on the airplane and taking off was just the right combination of scary and thrilling. As the land receded below us, my five year old commented that, “It looks just like the parts to your new computer!” My geeky heart thrilled at hearing that very comparison (motherboards to aerial city views) that I’ve made many times.

Of course, a flight gets boring relatively quickly and a flight where two boys who love to poke and harass and steal from each other are crammed into one seat (my one year old won’t be two for another month so he didn’t get a seat of his own — more than reasonable considering that our tickets cost the boys’ grandmother over $1500 for just the two) present a whole set of other interesting experiences. I spent every moment either placating the woman in front of us whose seat my four year old kept kicking or hissing angrily at my children to behave or desperately trying to come up with things that might entertain them in order to stop them from tormenting each other, tormenting that resulted in more kicking and/or more screaming. Eventually I resorted to Children’s Benedryl, a measure I didn’t feel entirely comfortable taking, but considering that we were only two hours into a six hour flight, I was feeling pretty desperate.

The period preceding their sleep was like all the misery experienced thus far except on magnify and fast forward. I, and all the passengers around us, were extremely grateful when they finally dropped off. Unfortunately I couldn’t read or do anything other than grit my teeth against the intense muscle fatigue that resulted from holding my one year old in an awkward position for three hours. But I was okay with it, especially in light of the alternative. I just closed my eyes and daydreamed away. I have plenty of daydreams stored up for just such an occasion.

The flight ended, we deplaned into a very humid airport in Maui, I got the boys ice cream and we reboarded for our flight to Kona. Oh…did I mention that the last hour of the first flight was filled in its entirety with screams of my one year old who woke up and was tired and grumpy and then had to deal with ear and sinus pressure as well? Although I can’t really say that any of the flight was wonderful, that was definitely the lowlight. As people were filing off from far back in the plane (we were waiting until the end) several women stopped by to inform me that they had been there and they could feel for me.

But we arrived in Kona at midnight our time (second flight was just a half hour…and we were in the very, very back — which, as it turns out, is where things are much louder and much bumpier and much scarier but also much more engaging to exhausted children) and were promptly greeted by my boys’ grandma and her boyfriend and were presented, as is apparently tradition (or so suggests every movie and/or tv show involving a Hawaii airport scene I’ve ever seen) with leis, fresh gorgeous strings of orchids made from the flowers they grow, little ones for the boys and a thick lush long one for me. That made me happy. It made our arrival feel special.

Of course, then there was the 2.5 hour drive to get home, but we slept through most of that.

And thus ends the story of our arrival in Hawaii. Stay tuned for more…

We leave for the airport in three hours. I guess I should probably start packing.

Yesterday when I was explaining to my turns-five-years-old-tomorrow the process we’d go through at airport security, I told him that the purpose was to make sure that no one brought anything on the plane that might hurt the plane. “Like a crab?” he asked.

Usually I can pretty quickly navigate the twists and turns his brain takes to get to some of his less expected comments, but that one left me entirely without a response.

Because I seem to be entirely unable to appropriately prioritize, I spent this morning dragging my kids to furniture stores in an attempt to replace my couch with a sleeper sofa that will allow me to comfortably have sex in my living room without disturbing any children and without damaging or unnecessarily bruising or cramping any body parts. My current couch, I don’t love to begin with. I bought it when I moved out of my ex’ house at his urging because he liked it best and it wasn’t the one I would have chosen. Also, it’s black, and I have a matching chair as well, so it makes my living room really dark. And then finally, both the couch and chair are on wheels that technically lock in place, but don’t do anything of the sort when coupled with hardwood floors, so my couch and chair are always skewed about the room as a result of any and all animal and/or human contact.

If I knew anything about feng shui, I’d say that this is some bad feng shui. But I don’t, so I wont. But it sure feels less than ideal.

When I found this couch it was love at first site. That couch embodies the perfection of all that I could dream of in a couch. I love the color, I love the style, the curves, the clean lines, the lack of any stupid puffy cushions. iIt’s such a beautiful couch. Except it’s not a fucking sleeper sofa!! I even went to the store to talk to them about it, to ask if there was a sleeper sofa option or to see what other options existed, but no, there are no other options, certainly none that compare to the gorgeousness of this couch. They tried to convince me to buy the couch anyway and then spend the money I would have spent paying for a sleeper sofa to buy an Aerobed instead and had the person making the sale not informed me that I might as well go get a cup of coffee because it would be about a twenty minutes wait, I might well have done just that.

But instead I insisted to myself that I did not need to make this decision at that very moment and drove home to again shun appropriate priorities to instead browse websites that might provide a workable sleeper sofa alternative.

After much browsing I finally settled on this sofa, the style of which I like (although not nearly as well as the other), and that comes in a comparable fabric (not the hideousness pictured). However, while it is indeed a sleeper sofa, it’s twice the price of the other.

I’m torn, folks. I’ve been recently reading Peter Walsh’s It’s All Too Much and one thing that really struck me is this idea of taking a look at each room in my house and thinking about what my dream is for that room, what purpose it should serve, and what it should feel like and look like in order to serve that purpose. My living room is the room where I spend most of my home time, it’s the place where I relax, it’s the place where friends and family spend time when they visit. I want it to be a room I love to be in, a room that looks beautiful and that I feel proud to show people. I want it to be a room that makes me smile with satisfaction every time I walk into it. I feel like having the beautiful couch-of-perfection in my living room would definitely bring me one step closer to feeling that way.

However, the only reason I was even considering buying a couch was because of the whole uncomfortable sex business. If there isn’t a practical purpose to be served, then I really don’t need a new couch. My current couch, while not one that I love, is certainly functional enough and having sex on one narrow, non-sleeper sofa is just as good as having sex on another narrow, non-sleeper sofa (and in fact, my existing couch might serve this purpose better thanks to its entirely removable and washable slip cover). I *could* go the Aerobed route, but I already have an air mattress and the stupid thing is a pain in my ass. Not literally, of course, but the hassle of inflating it (even with a pump) and then deflating and putting it away is not even remotely comparable to tossing off cushions and pulling the bed out of a sleeper sofa.

My one year old isn’t going to sleep in my bed forever…or at least I hope not…and at that point the sleeper sofa would be rendered pretty much useless…except in the case of overnight guests who I would prefer not to invite into my bed…and really, I never have any of those anyway. But in the meantime it really puts a limit on certain kinds of intimacy to never be able to comfortably cuddle with someone after, to never fall asleep together, to never invite them to stay over…unless they want to sleep on the narrow, uncomfortable couch while I retire to the bed containing my one year old.

So what do you think, folks? What should I do?

I’m afraid I too might have whatever it was that my son had (that appears to have resolved itself by the time he woke up from his uncharacteristic nap). I am not vomiting, but I am so nauseous and so tired and I can’t seem to regulate my temperature.

Hopefully this will resolve itself by the time I wake up after an uncharacteristically early bedtime because I really don’t have the time to be sick. Right now, when I have several pressing deadlines and a week long vacation looming over my head, it’s a particularly bad time to be sick.

Today I had an unexpected break from the insanity of my daily life in the form of a vomiting almost-five-year-old. Which, I suppose, is not really a “break” per se, it just means that I didn’t have to spend my day puzzling through PHP scripts and feeling inadequate.

Given this unexpected non-work day I really felt that I should get some things done. Maybe do some work-related studying that I never find time for in the evenings, maybe clean my house that is by far the messiest it’s ever been, perhaps in the entire history of its existence, maybe pack and start copying DVDs onto my iPod and starting digging around for summer clothes in preparation for our trip to Hawaii that commences on Sunday, maybe make a batch of belated Sunday soup so that I don’t need to buy lunch at least for Thursday and Friday, maybe bake some cookies since I’ve been craving them for days, maybe pay bills and file an amended tax return since I wrote down my childcare provider’s social security number as 123-45-6789 when I couldn’t find the letter she gave me and forgot to change it when I actually filed, maybe respond to an email or three that have been sitting around for an embarrassingly long time, maybe actually write down one of the legion of blog entries that are rolling around in my head that I never have time to post anymore.

But no, instead of any of that, I did absolutely nothing. I started reading a book that has nothing to do with anything and is only going to make me feel more stressed about the fact that I never have time to do anything anymore, I browsed websites looking for a chair to match the sleeper sofa I was thinking of buying with my tax refund money, a sofa that will allow me to much more comfortably participate in certain extracurricular activities than is currently allowed by my household comprised of one narrow, narrow sofa and one toddler-occupied queen size bed, and then I stared into space for a long time.

I do not feel very pleased with myself.