Sticks and Stars

Today I went to Target to purchase training pants for my two year old who is beginning potty training at daycare in earnest come Monday. They did not have what I was looking for but I did stumble across their deeply discounted Christmas remains section and in particular, their fake tree section.

About three days ago my two year old fell on and broke our fake tree. At first I was upset but then I remembered that a) I never particularly liked the tree because b) it only has about five branches and c) it’s way too short, and regardless, d) it only cost $20 (but it was the best I could do when I lived in Arizona and wanted a tree and was tired of tacking all my green clothing to the wall in a tree shape).

I briefly considered the idea of using this occurrence as an opportunity to start the tradition of getting a real tree from now on (ala my childhood growing up in the woods — although presumably the woods in this case would look more like a store parking lot) but then I remembered the hell of getting of it home and the hell of setting it up in the stupid stand and the hell of keeping it watered (without spilling on the presents — yeah right!) and the hell of disposing of it and how I’d be cleaning up pine needles probably until next Christmas, so I nixed that idea. Instead I decided that I should check out post-Christmas sales to see if I could get a cheap but decent fake tree to replace our dearly departed Charlie Brown tree.

Feeling a little flush these days with Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket (and clearly recalling the hassle of putting on and taking off the lights — and the hassle of putting them back on and back on again after my two year old repeatedly unwound them), I thought maybe we might upgrade a little, get a tree that wasn’t quite so Charlie Brown in its branch count and maybe even one of those prelit jobbies.

Well folks, there I was in the Target Christmas clearance section and let me tell you, the deals were really good. Or rather, all the low end trees were already gone and only the ridiculous trees were left, but the price range was still quite nice.

My purchase? 7.5 feet tall, thick and bushy, prestrung with lights that will do either all white or multi-colored or both, complete with a freakin’ remote control to allow you to choose the light colors, determine whether they are going to twinkle or fade or flash, and determine how fast they will do it. This tree, this insane tree, cost almost $300. Today, I acquired it for a little over $50.

I definitely have the fanciest tree on the block. I can’t wait for next Christmas! Although where I am going to store this huge-ass box until next year, I do not know. And for that matter, I’m not even sure my ceilings are 7.5 feel tall.

Everyone else is looking back over 2008 so I guess I should too because I am nothing if not a follower.

At the very end of 2007 I made decision to apply for my current job, I was interviewed in January and I started on Febuary 1, feeling so terrified and out of my league but so excited and thrilled at the same time. In February I also left the continent for the first time when my little family ventured to Hawaii, and my older son turned the huge age of five. March brought a second year to my little one, April saw me gardening and stressing over a parenting plan and supposedly pending legal battle with my boys’ dad, in May my iBook died and I switched my household to all linux all the time, and in June I started school and stopped dating (and was/am very happy with both decisions). July and August were blue months but my boys and I did manage to go camping for the first time, and September heralded my five year old’s entrance into public education as a kindergartener. In October I spent countless hours engaged with other parents as we fought to keep our kids’ school open, in November I turned 32 and made the excellent decision to not apply for my boss’ job, and in December I played in the snow, enjoyed lovely holidays, bought a dishwasher and tried to decide whether I should call it quits on the whole blogging deal (and am undecided as of yet).

When I look back over the year (aided greatly by blog archives — one reason to keep blogging), I am particularly happy to note the ways in which I have grown. I gave up feeling any affinity for the title “Single Mother” and I discovered lots of lots of ways that I feel successful in my life and proud of what I have created, and I spent a lot of time (even if I didn’t blog about it) reveling in those feelings of success. I have learned to be a better parent to my children and have learned to enjoy them as people (and I only anticipate that getting better as they continue to grow older). I have been conscious of my happiness and unhappiness and tried hard to set my life up to maximize the former and minimize the latter.

2008 was a good year, a year with a lot of sweetness, certainly more sweetness than not. I look forward to 2009 with great eagerness about what other changes and growth and sweetness that might be headed my way.

Happy new year my friends.

The Visit was actually rescheduled for Monday night, which is why I didn’t post about it sooner. And then I’ve actually tried to post it three separate times, with all of them failing, unbeknownst to me until I checked hours or days later to find that it hadn’t. So here we are with attempt #4!

As for how it went, well, really it went fine. My two year old was shy (although less so than usual) and his dad paid attention to him and tried to engage him. I wish he would have been more assertively engaging with him, but given the awkwardness of the situation and the uncertainly as to how his efforts would be received, I can understand why he wasn’t. Really, he’s not that type anyway and he did a good job for the type that he is.

It’s interesting how being around my boys’ dad (for the first time in a year) can really complicate — yet in some ways simplify — my feelings about this whole mess. Until yesterday I was perfectly content to villify him at every turn (in my head, not out loud) and perfectly content to despise him. I felt conflicted about his extremely limited involvement in my boys’ lives but ultimately I was content with how things were.

Since the visit though, I can see how important it is that they have a chance to build a relationship with each other. When I push aside everything that’s happened, I see such potential for a strong, beneficial relationship and I see how happy it made them all to be together on Monday. I was content with how things have been because I was afraid, I was afraid of the pain that I am likely to invite into my life if I do the work to make sure that they have every opportunity to build a relationship with their dad, but I see now that I really have to do it anyway. I just have to try to ignore the past and hope for the best and give their dad every opportunity to make that “best” happen.

I live next to the freeway and I hadn’t noticed how much quieter all the snow and ice (and holidays) left things around my house until this morning, when I can hear the morning commute in full swing.

Being off work for the past twelve days really did wonders for my insomnia. With no morning alarm to hassle my sleep I was free to stay up late and sleep in. I routinely stayed up until 11pm and slept in until 9am. I notice that in particular this morning because I had to force myself to go to bed early last night and had a terrible time sleeping, which meant that at 3am I was up and have been up ever since. I don’t know why we have to start everything so early in the morning when the vast majority of us would be much happier to start later and stay up later.

It’s so weird to have a dishwasher! It sits in the corner of my dining area/breakfast nook (because it’s about half the size of my entire kitchen) and every time I walk into the kitchen I see it and say, “Oh! Well hello there!”

Usually major appliances come and go with the rest of an entire apartment so it’s weird to make this shift without moving. I keep doing my usual groan at seeing my sink full of dishes until I realize that, oh wait! I have a dishwasher now!!! I can’t quite accept that I won’t actually be washing them by hand at some point. Even when I actually put the dishes in the dishwasher I feel some hesitation, like I’m doing something that’s somehow wrong.

This morning I gleefully bought dishwasher detergent and I even splurged and bought the more expensive orange scented one.

In other news, I asked my two year old if he wanted to go without his diaper and pants and pee in the potty today and he said yes so I optimistically left him bare and thus far he’s peed in the potty seven times (my five year old is eagerly keeping count) with only one tiny accident. I make a huge fuss every time he does it, hopefully to solidify this as a good thing.

I’m kind of shocked that he’s taken to it so suddenly and quickly, but I knew he was ready. I guess we may well be on our way to no more diapers at our house. I guess that means I am almost out of babies. I feel like I should be sad about that but oh god I am so not!

My boys’ dad is coming to visit today and my two year old is very excited. I don’t know what he understands about “daddies” and about his in particular, but I do know that he excitedly points out the dads he sees at his daycare and that he’s very attached to my dad.

A while ago, once I felt it was safe to actually talk about the boys’ dad’s impending visit (since I wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually show), the boys started getting excited and my little one would exclaim every once in a while, “My daddy’s coming!” Then yesterday he and his brother were playing and he raced over to me and whispered into my ear, “My daddy’s coming to see me!” I agreed and he got the hugest grin on his face and whispered, “He’s going to hug me!!”

That just about destroyed my heart. I think about the actuality of his dad, his dad who refused to even look at him much less actually acknowledge or talk to him when we used to switch custody of our older son, his dad who denied that this sweet little boy is his son but agreed to be in his life “because he has no choice.” He does not deserve this precious little two year old of mine.

The thing I worry about with today’s visit is that his dad isn’t going to engage him, isn’t going to make the effort to get past his shyness. My two year old is so painfully shy, especially around people he doesn’t know, especially when he feels excited about those people. He really likes my brother and his girlfriend and tells me all the time how he misses them and wants to see them, but when he’s around them he does nothing other than scowl and hide his head. Today’s visit really matters to him (he’s certainly never exclaimed excitedly about someone hugging him before, especially someone who is essentially a stranger) and I’m afraid that his dad isn’t going to do all he can to make the visit a success. Indeed, I have absolutely no indication that he will at all.

This whole thing makes me feel ill.

Christmas was relaxing. My dad make it clear at Thanksgiving that he was not traveling for Christmas, so my brother and I braved moderately to extremely horrific post-snow storm road conditions to visit him where he lives in the middle of nowhere. For the first time since I bought my car a little over two years ago, I really appreciated what it means to have all-wheel drive. On my little dead-end street, the only vehicles to escape were my Subaru and a Hummer.

While visiting my dad, my boys and I stayed at a motel and I was once again reminded of how there is almost no better vacation for my small family than staying in a hotel/motel. My boys get all the cartoons they can watch and two beds between which to complete various acrobatic routines, and I get to lay (outside the acrobatic range) and read novels for hours. The only things that would have made the experience perfect were room service and an indoor pool.

There was plenty of snow (very unusual for here, and particularly for Christmas) so my brother relived a childhood memory of another snowy Christmas and built an igloo. This one was much smaller than the one we undertook back when we were both in the single digits but it was still big enough to fit my boys, quite gleefully.

My brother is so engaged with his nephews. He confessed that he was seriously considering renting a santa suit and having a friend dress up to thrill the boys, but he was afraid of how my little one would react (as kids we had a similar experience and he cried through the whole thing).

My boys had quite the profitable Christmas and have been happily playing with all their new toys ever since we got home. Their grandmother and surrogate grandfather visited today and lavished them with Hawaiian candies and their dad is visiting tomorrow, presumably with more gifts, so I really need to figure out how to make more space in their room, which is already packed. That’s okay though. The new toys help clarify which old toys really need to go, and so I think I’ll be able to cull the herd.

Me myself, I also made out like a bandit. The bulk of my satisfaction stems from the happiness of a relaxing, fun holiday, complete with a meal at the very best restaurant in my dad’s small town, and getting to spend time with various family factions, but I got lots of goodies too. My brother, the cell phone mogul, got me a Blackberry (this phone is so cool, way too cool for me), my dad gave me a significant amount of cash toward the purchase of a dishwasher (which I purchased today, used but very, very nice, and resulting in one third of the cash remaining in my wallet — I cannot believe I have a dishwasher!!!!!!), my boys’ grandma gave me a comparable amount of cash for no specific purpose, a friend got me a new dvd burner to replace the one that my darling five year old broke, and said darling five year old got me a rainbow candle purchased from his school’s holiday bizarre. He was so excited about the candle that he had to tell me what it was and then he was so mad at himself for telling me that I had to pretend to forget what he told me so that it would still be a surprise.

All in all a very lovely holiday for many reasons. After so many unexpected days off I feel relaxed and refreshed and ready to get back to the usual schedule. Bring on the new year!

I must admit, I am seriously considering scrapping this whole linux “adventure.” It’s been interesting to take on this project of “Open Sourcing” my life — at this point I have four computers at home, all running Ubuntu, and I’m able to do a lot with them. I have definitely learned a lot, not only about using linux, but about using Open Source software in general. I especially like that I’ve been able to do all this with minimal financial output. I think I’ve spent maybe $700 total for all four of these computers and the assorted bits necessary to make them useful (like wireless adapters).

However, while I’ve put in $700 of cold hard cash, I can’t count the value of the hours I’ve put in trying to get things working. Some things don’t work merely because I don’t know how to work them and it takes a bit of a curve before I figure that out. Some things don’t work because they just don’t work and various forums offer myriad bizarre work arounds, the majority of which I do not understand. I joked with my old boss that I sometimes just blindly copy and paste into the command line and hope for the best and he confessed to the same, which only made me feel marginally better.

And that’s all fine and dandy. I don’t mind actually learning how to use my computer. I don’t mind having to figure things out. The problem is, I’m tired of it. I’m a 21st century kind of gal. I like technology. I love it! I am happy to incorporate it into my life in any way I can conceive of, and I actively seek more opportunities to do so. But these days I dread implementing anything new. I know that there will undoubtedly be unforseen glitches and incomprensible problems and I don’t want to deal with them! I hate dreading dealing with technology. I hate that the technology in my life feels like a finicky, grouchy burden. I just want things to work.

It’s been about a year since I started on this Open-Source-at-home journey and at first all this challenge was daunting but interesting and fun. These days, I don’t even bother trying new things unless I absolutely have to because I know what’s coming. And for someone who loves technology, that really sucks.

And now, now that I’m using technology in new ways and seeing things that would make my technology-using life so much nicer, I feel like this stressful, tenuous situation is no longer tolerable.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do right now. I’d really like to have a desktop Mac for my bedroom, and a MacBook for my non-bedroom life, but I can’t afford either. I’d kind of like to scrap the computer in my boys’ bedroom (used almost entirely for watching movies — that crash constantly) and replace it with one of those little Netflix on-demand boxes (or whatever the hell they’re called) but the monitor was expensive and I don’t have any other use for it…at least not right now. I guess I’m content to leave my central computer as it is, even if it is less user friendly than I had hoped. My five year old is learning to navigate to the games or movies he wants and I guess that’s user friendly enough. I would like to network everything together though, something I’ve been unable to achieve despite much effort with my current setup.

I just want technology to go back to being a tool that I use to achieve my goals, something I don’t have to think much about, something that just helps me along. I don’t want it to be this tempermental hassle that leaves me feeling tired and annoyed and ready to toss it out the window. Or I guess the key is that I don’t want to depend on something that feels fundamentally unreliable (at least to me and my level of knowledge). Technology is too prominent in my life for that to be a workable solution. Give me something that works and then I can muster all the patience in the world for something else that doesn’t.

For the first time in months years decades eons I started thinking again about finally taking the time to do some work on my own blog template and it was so luxurious! To be able to design entirely for myself! To implement my own crazy ideas without giving a shit what other people think! To play around without the weight of Very Important Results hanging over my head!!

I recall that I used to be afraid to tackle my site because somehow it seemed so scary, delving into the WordPress template files. I have no fucking idea what I was so afraid of now, now that the whole thing seems so basic. I guess that’s always the way it goes though.

Perhaps if I keep taking snow days I’ll do it this week. Although tomorrow is already taken up by a) hanging curtains in my bedroom, and b) baking and decorating sugar cookies. The sugar cookies were supposed to happen today but I ended up making three batches of caramel popcorn instead when I realized that the one batch I made first wouldn’t nearly be enough to fill my gifty goodie bags (especially now that said bags have expanded from two — my dad and brother — to four — two family friends who are going to be present for the festivities). I kind of hate when people give plates of goodies as gifts because the goodies are invariably really, really baddies but I feel like it’s okay in my situation because my goodies are of the good and basic variety and because none of the people to whom they are being gifted have access to treats otherwise.

I am trying to do school work and man, it’s truly amazing the number of ways I can avoid it. Most recently I finished looking at all the traffic cameras across the state to see how other snowfalls compared to ours. In theory I was checking out traffic camera availability in order to be prepared to assess the viability of my trip to my Dad’s on the 24th or 25th. He says they only got three inches (on top of their previous six), which is nothing compared to the six we got (on top of our previous three), but there is a ferry ride and two-and-a-half hour drive between here and there.

Just a second ago I looked up the local circus arts school after seeing a flyer on my desk for a performance. I was curious to see what their classes were all about. My five year old is doing fine in gymnastics but hey, maybe he’d like something more exotic…although if I can swing it, his brother will also start gymnastics this Spring and that means that once a week I will have forty-five minutes of freedom!!!

And since I was reminded of the performance I decided that I might as well buy tickets to it since I was planning to take the boys anyway and it’s only a month and a half away. No time like the present!

And then I laughed at my school-work avoidance and thought it would be funny if I also decided to do research into the differences between plasma and LCD tvs for my dad who is thinking of buying one, since that would be such obvious avoidance.

So then I did.

And then I had to call him and report back the results just in case he decides to brave the snow and go out to buy one tonight.

But now I think I’ll actually get back to my work. It’s just hard and I find myself often needing a break to think about things…or not think about them in order to be able to think about them more in the future.

But maybe I’ll check my email just one more time. And see if anyone has posted to their blogs…