Sticks and Stars

It never seems like I ever manage to complete my weekend to do list anymore. I’m not sure why that is considering that my list usually consists of barely more than the weekend basics of laundry, dishes and groceries. This weekend I guess I did manage to get a few non-list items completed (most notably rearranging my sons’ room and putting together new storage-related furniture to accommodate all these new toys from their dad). Plus, the evening is young yet, so I may well get more done.

I think the key to surviving the feelings that come with never getting shit done is to give oneself a break. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter whether I got laundry done as long as we have clean clothes to last us through the first days of the week (and indeed, that’s the first load I do, just in case I get no farther), nor does it matter if my kitchen is perpetually a huge disgusting mess as long as I do one drainer-full of dishes, among which should be practical choices with regard to, again, what we are likely to use in the early days of the week. At this point I’ve given up some lofty notion that my house will ever be clean again. And that’s okay. It just means that no one can ever come over again and that’s probably fine too.

I’m eagerly awaiting the school lunch menu so that I can decide whether I need to plan for lunches or not. The website helpfully says they will post the menu before school starts. Considering there is just one remaining business day before school starts, I’m not holding my breath. I really don’t want to make lunches anymore though! I’ve done it for a year and damnit, that’s enough. If the school lunches have improved from green corn dogs and dog food over instant mashed potatoes ala my childhood, then I’m willing to spend $2.25 a day for the glory of not having to come up with something remotely nutritious every morning.

Last year I recall looking at the school lunch menu and I don’t know if this was a dream or something, but I seem to remember a big deal being made of the fact that the lunches were almost all organic with lots of whole grains and local foods whenever possible. I find no mention of that on their website (although I find no mention of almost anything on their website) and that seems entirely too good to be true, especially when it comes to school lunches. But I truly remember that! I remember thinking, wow, organic and local and healthy? School lunches?? That’s just crazy!! So we shall see.

Did I mention that my five year old starts gymnastics the day before school starts? This time I’m being smart though, and we are just completing a trial class before I commit my $250. And thankfully, there’s no special gear for gymnastics. Hell, he doesn’t even need to wear socks.

I’m trying not to have high hopes about the class but signs point to it being perfect for him. When we went to his school picnic he spent the entire time we were outside (which was most of the evening) swinging across the monkey bars and doing flips. Other parents repeatedly commented on his agility and indeed, I watched lots of other older kids fail at the stuff that came to him with ease. And today, while we were rearranging his room, he spent the majority of that time using his bunkbeds like monkey bars and imploring me to “Look! Look at me Mom!” while he completed various flips over and under the bars. My hope for the class is not so much that he excels at gymnastics, but that he finds it as fun and as worth devoting time to as he does his gymnastics-like shenanigans at home.

Okay, I hear that my laundry is done so I should probably get off my ass and see if I can at least cross something off my to do list.

Tonight we attended the annual welcome to the school year picnic at my five year old’s school. Oh man, I so did not want to go. It was a potluck and I avoided thinking about what I’d bring all week (fairly easily done since I’ve had strep throat most of this week) and today, as my dread level rose, I contemplated not going at all, telling myself that it wouldn’t matter if we went or not. In less than a week my five year old will be seeing his teacher and classmates more often than not, so why not just give myself a break? But alas, I had already promised the impending kindergartener that we’d go. Let me tell you though, going into any social situation where I don’t know anyone but am expected to socialize is just about the worst thing I can imagine. Truly.

As we drove to the school I kept telling myself that it was okay, that I should just go for it, be as outgoing as I could make myself be without vomiting, and if I made an ass of myself I’d have eight more years during which to make up for it (his school is K-8). Of course, on the other hand, I’d also have eight more years to try to live it down.

But as always this was an excellent example of why I should make myself do things that I don’t want to but know I should do anyway. The picnic was great, the parents were great, I’m looking forward to the year ahead (perhaps even more so than my five year old).

The parents were a lot of what I expected and hoped for. Many older, definitely unfashionable parents, many odd looking parents of all stripes, lots of queer parents, lots of piercings, and lots of just plain ol’ random people you might see in the plain ol’ random grocery store. I met three other kindergarten families and talked with two extensively. One was a youngish white hipster family with kids the same age as mine and a very friendly dad who was most definitely stoned. One was a somewhat traditional-seeming (for my city anyway) mixed-race couple, the mom of whom was quiet but thoughtful and funny and so totally someone I’d be friends with. One was an Australian woman who had to be in her late fifties and who had three grown children and then a very unexpected arrival five years ago. She too is a single parent and as someone who very often connects with awesome mother-figures, I recognize her as someone worth pursuing further.

The parents were overall much whiter than the student body I saw when we toured, but I guess that’s really not surprising. At first I thought that was a bad thing but then I realized that maybe it’s actually a good thing. My brown boys are being raised by their white mom so maybe it’s good that they befriend other kids in the same situation.

I also met my five year old’s teacher and oh god, I am in love. First to recommend her were two little first grade boys who, upon discovering the destination of my son, immediately launched into praise for her and how fun she was when they had her last year. And then I met her and she was so warm and caring and engaging to the flock of noisy and easily distracted five year olds hanging off her, and when I actually talked to her she was funny and had the dry, deadpan sense of humor of my dreams.

I think it’s going to be a good year.

What struck me the most as we drove home (we stayed until the very, very end) was the tingle of possibility I felt. Of course this year will bring new experiences for my son, but it will also bring new experiences for me, a new community to be a part of, a new frame of reference for my world. My life will change this year, maybe in only small shifts, maybe in huge radical leaps, but either way there is newness on the horizon and that’s exciting to contemplate.

I think it’s going to be a good year.

AmFam’s recent posts about helping her kids to most effectively navigate the murky waters of school-aged society have forced me to think about some stuff I’ve been kind of pushing off to the side for a long time now.

Growing up, I was not a popular kid. I was a bossy kid, which afforded me some…social standing in elementary school, but even in elementary school I knew that I wasn’t “popular” and that only went further downhill as the years progressed.

I was also not a kid who was good at paying attention to various fashion/personal grooming rules. For example, I refused to wear jeans because I didn’t like how stiff they were so my mom bought me hideous old lady polyester slacks that I happily wore instead. My favorites were the bright red ones because the color was so pretty. I also only bathed once a week and by Thursday or Friday my hair was greasy enough that I could brush it straight back and it would stay that way. My parents, neither of whom were even remotely concerned about fashion, were definitely no help and when the time came that I actually started caring about what I wore (and by “caring” I mean “learned that I was doing something wrong that was going to cause me trouble if I didn’t figure out how to conform regardless of my own personal preferences”) my parents adamantly refused to buy me clothes that might have cost more than what they found at Kmart or thrift stores or received as hand-me-downs from friends. I remember when I was in 5th grade and acid wash jeans were just coming into style. My best friend and I were the only girls in our class who did not have a pair and we were miserable about that fact. Even at Kmart those jeans were $20 and both our parents felt that was a ridiculous amount of money to spend on one pair of jeans…until my best friend’s parents gave in in the face of her misery over the jeans. My parents, however, would not be swayed.

I recall as a kid promising myself that when I had kids I would make sure they had “cool” clothes but as I grew older I struggled with that idea and as an adult it pisses me off that I can’t just let my boys be who they are and wear what they want. Without giving it too much conscious thought, I decided that they could wear just what they wanted and social mandates to the contrary could go fuck themselves. But then I read AmFam’s posts my own painful childhood came flooding back and now I feel very unsure about how to proceed.

I think I also figured that kindergarten was too young to worry about such a thing, but now I feel less sure. This summer my son has been attending a summer camp where the five year olds are the youngest kids and I’ve been shocked at the amount of stuff he’s picked up from the older kids, both in terms of attitude and in terms of culture/values. Preschoolers were cute and cuddly lovers of animals and all things sparkly. Now I’m starting to fear that kindergarten is the transition time where he’ll shift from his little huggy, silly, train loving self to a whiny little smart ass who’s always pestering me for expensive sneakers.

Now I feel very anxious about the start of school. I have always been conscious of the fact that he should be well dressed and groomed so that he doesn’t feed into anyone’s stereotypes about brown kids (even if there have been times when my consciousness has not lived up to reality) but now I’m worried about other things. Is it okay that he has a Thomas backpack? It was the one he really wanted but will other kids tease him for liking something so babyish? And what about his clothes? I buy all of his clothes from a consignment shop where I have masses and masses of store credit. Is that okay? The consignment shop prides itself on only accepting good quality brand name clothing, but still, is a BabyGap shirt from four years ago okay? I have never been able to figure these rules. As a kid I think a lot of it stemmed from being chubby and therefor unable to fit into clothes they sold at “cool” stores (not to mention having no money to spend at those stores even if I could fit into the clothes) but still, while I recognized that fashion trends were happening around me, I could never translate them into what I should acquire for my own body. Even now I rely on jeans and tshirts or jeans and sweaters (I find jeans more comfortable these days than the polyester pants of yore) because they are easy and don’t require interpretation of fashion rules that seem nothing more than intensely stressful.

All of this talk, though, makes me realize that I need to be on top of this stuff, at least at a basic level. In her latest post on the topic AmFam mentioned that she thought she’d be able to tell pretty quickly who would likely become popular by 5th grade and I agree with that sentiment. I don’t care if my son is popular, but I don’t want him to be painfully unpopular either. So I need to get him a hair cut, I need to clear out all the pants and shirts that are getting a little too short. I need his teacher to have a positive first impression of him, and I need other kids and parents to at least not immediately write him off as some dirty, poor brown kid. I’d imagine that as the weeks and months and years of grade school progress, I’ll be able to suss out the rules if I watch careful. But in the meantime he needs to be clean and his clothes need to fit.

I think in some ways I’ll be lucky with regard to my five year old’s kindergarten. While many families in my city would prefer a more progressive school and would also be families who would dress their kids in cute boutique clothes (all organic and sweatshop free, of course), the school my son is going to is a little too fringe for most families (which is why I picked it). I expect their will be a lot of families who flaunt social conventions (or live by nontraditional social conventions) and so there may be more latitude for freedom of expression. We shall see.

I am a couple weeks from finishing my first course in this web development certificate program and now it’s time for me to make the big decision about whether to officially enroll in the program. There are three other courses in the program, all of which are also available a la carte. If I’m going to enroll, I take all three remaining classes. If I’m not going to enroll, I just pick and choose from the a la carte menu. Two of the three will be extremely useful, I can already tell that, but the fourth is SQL and I’m unsure whether I will learn anything from that class at all.

I’ve been using SQL on a daily basis for a year now and at this point I’d call myself a pretty advanced user. I can type out complicated queries pretty much as fast as I can type in English. I’d really hate to spend the money on the course if it’s not going to be useful (and these courses are not cheap), but at the same time I kinda didn’t think I’d learn much from this first course (I mean, if you know one HTML tag, don’t you know them all?) but I’ve learned a huge amount and it’s been very awesome. Then again, when I started this course I truly did not know HTML and CSS and many other things about markup languages and website development, while I can only think of a few very advanced SQL features with which I am unfamiliar.

I suppose I’ll probably do it, probably take the class. I mean, without it I can’t get the certificate and while I really don’t care so much about the certificate itself, that in combination with the fact there’s always the chance that I might actually learn some new SQL stuff is enough to tip me over the edge and hand over my credit card.

My current course, though, has been awesome (as I mentioned). I would say that the course itself is a little less stellar than I would have expected and I pity the folks who came into the program with no web experience because I cannot imagine they are anything other than completely lost, but for me, for anyone who’s highly motivated to learn and happy to go above and beyond to do so, the course provides a huge amount of useful information.

Of course, it’s also immensely useful to be able to go to work every day and put what I’m learning to use. Just within the past week I helped our programmer with an HTML problem, I identified some malicious CSS in our external wiki, and I created some inline styles on a form I was creating that made the form so much clearer and easier to use. I could not have done any of that before this course.

The other day when I was installing WordPress I realized with a shock that there is no part of my WordPress installation that I don’t have the skill to change. I can modify the PHP, I can modify the CSS, I can modify the mySQL database and I have every intention of modifying them all. I was configuring my .htaccess file and I realized that I am an advanced user now. There probably aren’t too many people who use WordPress who even know they have an .htaccess file, much less know what they can do with it. It really blows my mind that I have come so far in a year. Me! A year ago I merely longed for this knowledge. It’s tickles me endlessly every time I take a break and look around and find myself in this crazy place. And it still gets better every day.

All of this makes me think about more schooling though. Seeing how much I’ve learned via one course in a certificate program and seeing how that learning has helped me learn even more on my job makes me wonder whether I should consider going back to school in a more formal fashion. My savings account immediately starts screaming in terror at the thought (and I can’t bear the thought of a higher student loan payment) but at the same time I seem to have a voracious appetite for more, more, more (education, that is).

I signed up my five year old to play soccer this year for the first time. We are two practices in and wow, it is not going well.

Despite being a chubby kid and a bookworm, I loved playing sports when I was little. But because I was a chubby kid and a bookworm (and a girl) I was steered away from sports, much to my great regret. I think that sports are a great way to connect to your body and build confidence no matter your body size and to this day I wish I could play sports. Sadly, I suck at most sports (except swimming) and while I don’t mind sucking in a supportive environment, there’s no way I’m going to suck in the midst of other players with actual skill (who are also thin and “fitness” oriented and make quick judgments about fat girls). So I will long for sports silently and attempt to live vicariously through my sons.

As I said, I think that playing sports is a good thing and an important thing for kids in particular. I don’t care what they play (okay, I totally do care but I’ll try to keep my opinions to myself) but I’m pretty adamant that my boys play sports (I’m also adamant that they involve themselves in music/art and learn at least a second language, but we’ve got time yet). I also have the idea that if they start young they’ll like it all the more because they have a chance to build greater skill, so I want my boys to start when they are four or five.

I picked soccer because I grew up with football/baseball/basketball and so soccer seemed exotic and urban and much cooler than boring ol’ Little League. Plus it seemed to require more skill and coordination than baseball, which was really the only other choice (I don’t know of any basketball leagues for five year old and there’s no way in hell he’s playing football). My five year old was excited and looked forward to the start of the season when I told him. Once I got him the required cleats and shin guards and a ball and water bottle of his own, he was ecstatic.

The reality of soccer has not been as thrilling. The little boys on my five year old’s team (there once was a girl but she has since disappeared) are sporty little boys. These are boys who had team pennants stuck on their bedroom walls as infants and wore ‘lil slugger’ and “MVP” onesies. They’ve been playing sports with some (presumably male) family member since they could walk and if you ask them they can name off their favorite players on all manner of teams. Oh my god, that is so not my son. I have played catch with him and caught balls that he kicked at me and tossed balls at his bat on numerous occasions but he wouldn’t know an organized team sport if it knocked him on his ass. He couldn’t name a sports team much less any players and if the ball didn’t give some indication of what kind of game-related actions we are playing when we play catch or whatever, I’m sure he wouldn’t even realize he was doing anything related to an actual sport.

So that’s one strike against him, his absolute oblivion to the world of sports and his standing out like a sore thumb in the midst of these preppy, sporty five year olds whose husky, jocky dads are salivating as they shout instructions to their sons from the sidelines.

And then there’s the play itself. My son, as it turns out, is not an aggressive, dive-in-and-get-the-ball kind of kid. He is a turn taker who prefers his turn to be clearly defined with a starting point and a stopping point. When the coach throws a ball at these kids and tells them to try to get it between two cones at the end of the field, all the other kids race for the ball and kick the shit out of each other while desperately trying to be the special one who connects with the ball. My son, not so much. He hangs back, waiting for his turn, and when his turn doesn’t come he gets upset and sits down in the grass, refusing to participate further.

We have this problem with birthday parties and pinatas too. The pinata breaks, all the other kids dive for the candy, and my son waits calmly for his turn, which, of course, never comes. And then I hold him while he cries his terrible disappointment at missing out on all the candy and crappy plastic toys.

And then finally, I think that soccer just might not be his game. When he started ballet he was thrilled from start to finish. When he did swimming lessons he didn’t want to leave the pool after every lesson. When I decided to have his fifth birthday party at a gymnastics center where the kids got to do a gymnastics routine he had a blast and to this day he loves nothing more than swinging across monkey bars and doing flips on my bed. But when I ask him about soccer he shrugs. He tells me it’s “kind of okay.”

Is it okay if we quit soccer? I am haunted by so many things I wish I had stuck out throughout my life instead of quitting, so many times I wish I had just pushed past that rough beginning part and kept doing something. Am I teaching him that it’s okay to quickly give up if something isn’t immediately wonderfully thrilling? Or am I forcing him to endure something horrible? After the first practice that went so much less well than I was expecting, I told him we’d just stick out this one season and then if he still didn’t like it he wouldn’t have to do it again. But today I watched him spend most of his time sitting in the grass with his chin in his hands, ignoring the coach who was trying to get him keep playing. With work, I could eventually cajole him back into the play, but it would only be a few more minutes until he was back down in the grass.

I must admit that I lean toward quitting. Not only for my son’s sake, but because the practices are at a very inconvenient time (despite the assurance, when I signed up, that the coaches work with the team to come up with a practice time that works for everyone) and require me to leave from work an hour and a half early every Friday. But if I’m not supposed to let him quit then I’ll endure leaving work early. I’m just not sure what the right parenting choice is here.

I just now noticed that there is both a “visual” and an “html” mode for writing posts, which explains why my html was showing up in my text (I was unintentionally using the visual mode so WordPress thought I meant for my tags to be taken literally). Sorry, but I think if you’re reading via a feed reader all my posts will show up as new again now that I’ve edited them.

And along the lines of site details, it really kills me that I have not yet personalized my site at all, that I have not yet even changed the tagline below my title, nor have I managed to import my links, not to mention actually customizing anything. Sigh, maybe some day soon I’ll find a few minutes.

I really like cookbooks in general but I am particularly a sucker for 30 minute cookbooks, especially the kind that look like they might actually contain reasonably high quality recipes that don’t rely on crockpots and cans of condensed soups. In general I resist my desperate desire to purchase books of any kind, but I make an exception when it comes to cookbooks because I dream of the day when I might actually have the time/energy/inclination to cook a full meal for my family each night and I am realistic enough to know that even at my most inclined, energetic and free, a cooking process that takes hours is one that isn’t going to hold up in the long run.

Mostly I find 30 minute cookbooks to be okay. Like probably any cookbook, there are some pretty good recipes and some recipes that are good if you are maybe really hungry and not feeling too choosy, and some that are just bad, and even with the best recipes it’s always somewhat understood that “best” is a relative term. Compromises are made to achieve a fully cooked meal in 30 minutes and it’s understood that while the food might be pretty good, it’s never going to be as good as a comparable meal cooked over the course of an entire afternoon/early evening. It’s a compromise that I (and many others) are willing to make in the interest of trying to balance available time and getting some nutrition into our families, but it’s a shame too because the meals are often just “good enough” instead of truly being good.

Enter The Best 30 Minute Recipes. I’m  not sure why I hadn’t read this recipe book before now, devoted fan of Cook’s Illustrated; that I am, especially considering that I read The New Best Recipes like a novel a few year ago, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I put it on my hold list at the library (and then it took a few months to arrive as I am not the only fan out there).

When it arrived I happily poured through it and was excited about the potential of many of the recipes, so much so that I immediately purchased my own copy. So far I’ve tried two: Chicken Curry with Cauliflower and Peas, and Baked Ziti (penne in my case) with Vodka Cream Sauce. I made both recipes on a Sunday night with the plan that I could take the leftovers to work during the week.

First of all, I should say that neither recipe took me 30 minutes, but I doubt they took me as long as 45 minutes and a good part of the hassle in both cases was the fact that my kitchen was a mess so I was constantly having to clear shit off counters before I could dice  or mix or measure. Plus, any new, untried recipe is going to take longer than some specified optimal minimal prep time no matter how clean the kitchen. It became quickly clear to me, though, that my usual cooking efforts take far longer than 30 (or 45) minutes because in both cases I was shocked to be done so quickly. I was also shocked that the recipes truly did take close to 30 minutes. Recipes involving potatoes (the curry) and pasta are always tricky because they aren’t done until they’re done and that can take much longer than expected.

As for the quality of the resulting dishes, I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Both dishes came out much better than I would have expected from a 30 minute recipe, with ingredients perfectly cooked and fresh, distinct flavors. I definitely did not feel like I compromised on either dish; I definitely did not feel like these were 30 minute meals. I will admit that the flavors weren’t exactly my ideal preference. I felt that the pasta needed a tiny bit of sweetness from balsamic vinegar or maybe even a bit of sugar and I felt that the curry needed something to round out and deepen the flavor…like fat of some sort? Butter? Or would it be ghee in the case of curry? But regardless, both the pasta and the curry were improved by a stay in my fridge over night (as tomato-based sauces and curries tend to be) and I definitely felt that the recipes themselves were solid.

I manage to cook a full meal (30 minutes or otherwise) once a week on Sundays (yes, we eat cereal and/or ice cream every other night) and I’m looking forward to poking through the recipe book for this Sunday’s meal. I’m quite impressed with this cookbook, it’s definitely the best 30 minute cookbook in my collection. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire me to start cooking twice a week!

Isn’t it great? I’m quite enamored of it. I got it from a Dar Williams song “The Blessings,” a song about appreciating the good things, tiny as they may be, the blessings, that come with getting your heart broken. To me, it’s a song about the beauty that can come from painful changes, something that resonates a lot in my life.

The actual line from the song is “They gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold/ I had the blessings” but when I wrote out various formats of sticksandrocksandstars.com, sticks&rocks&stars.com, sticksrocksstars.com, etc. I kept seeing “rock star” and that’s really not what my site is about! So “Sticks and Stars” it is. Besides, that’s a lovely image, the sharp earthiness of sticks and the dreams of stars. We’re all poetic and shit over here.

Sooo, although my new site is entirely bare bones (I haven’t even changed the tag line under my blog title), I am primarily posting over there now. If you’d like the link just email me or leave a comment. I am determined that this new site shall be my permanent home. No more blog hopping every year. At some point I’m even going to import all my archives from the past five years and then pretend like that’s where I’ve always been. That will be very exciting!