The Crab Chronicles

PowerAde Debacle

I belong to a community Yahoo group and saw this:

"On Tuesday, [a home on] Winding Woods Drive was broken into between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. The carport door, which is not visible from the street, was kicked in. The home's alarm was not set.
 
Sliced watermelon, Sprite and PowerAde were stolen from the fridge along with pocket change. The thief also took a shirt, but left his in its place. He also poured the PowerAde on the kitchen floor."

Here's what I learned: DON'T drink Powerade! Stay away from it! It causes disorientation and you forget important stuff, like what to steal! LOL

We watched The Hunt for Red October last night. Alesia was disgusted by Sean Connery's terrible Russian accent and pronunciation [me too] but it's a fascinating film. It was one of my father's favorites.

I talked to the kids about the Cold War. Sometime last night I thought, what if we are getting into another sort of Cold War with Russia? What's going to happen now? The Russians don't like our missile base in Poland. So what do we do - cancel it and look weak, or keep it going and look antagonistic? What a mess.

Russia wants to leave troops in Georgia, "peacekeeping" troops. See here. Very scary stuff. Maybe we should send over some free PowerAde, so they will forget to do anything awful...

Help Wanted

My friend Hallie over at Wonderful World of Wieners did a funny post today about the five people she wants in her life - chef, masseuse, driver, coach, and trainer. She also wants a Prada bag.

I read her post and I thought, I bet a lot of women who read this are totally behind Hallie, they absolutely agree with her. Heck, I agree a little bit. Here's my take, actually:

Chef - Oh no, I don't want a chef. I LIKE to cook. I am now able to admit I am a minor league "foodie." I don't view food as a hobby, but I am very interested in it. The Food Network is my second favorite channel, behind HGTV.

Masseuse -  I don't want a masseuse. Strangers rubbing me freaks me out. I also have an uncomfortable memory of a guy I was in a play with once who liked to come up behind girls and start gving back massages. I had to resist the urge to knee him in the crotch. 

Personal coach - Now, here is where I have to confess something. I think I can run my own life, thanks very much. Am I "perfect"? Well, no, obviously not. However, the thought of someone else telling me what to do, like they have more IQ than me, well, that sets my teeth on edge. My father was a benevolent control freak and although I was grief-stricken when he died, there was also a little relief, because he loved to try and run my life. He also tried to run my brother's life. Fortunately, my mother never tried to run our lives, and it's to her credit me and Bruce aren't institutionalized. Dad could be really intense sometimes, and not in a good way.

Trainer - If I don't want a personal coach, I sure don't want some muscle-bound dude yelling at me to work out. If I was really really rich and I could find a personal trainer who was polite, that might work. I don't envision that ever happening though.

Driver - Ah, here we have it. I so want someone to drive me around. I get so tired of driving. Atlanta is not a fun city to drive around in - the traffic is comparable to New York and Los Angeles. I was sitting at a red light this morning right in front of Michael's school when I heard a horn blast and a small car came tearing around to the left, and turned in front of me going 75 mph. I should have called the cops but I was so stunned I couldn't think. There were mommies walking kids to school. I have new grey hairs due to that maniac.

Here is a list of more people I would like in my life:

Gardener - Not to plant things, no, just to do the jobs I hate, like mowing and weeding. Actually, when I was growing up we had a "yard man." He mowed, did all the yucky jobs, and we did the rest. That was in Augusta. When we moved to Knoxville we didn't have yard help. My father would race home from the bank on pretty days, take off his immaculate three piece suit, put on clothes one would be embarrassed to take to Goodwill, and hurry outside to do his own yard work. I think, after dealing with all the crap he had to put up with at the bank, it was soothing to him to shovel cow manure - much more manageable crap. But I digress.

Personal Grocery Shopper - I hate grocery shopping, even at delightful farmer's markets. This prevents me from being a true foodie but so be it. The only fun thing about it is watching Michael zoom around on his heelies in Kroger, making forays to other parts of the store to grab what we need and come zooming back. Alesia likes to do this, too,a minus the heelies. So the last time I went grocery shopping without kids it seemed to take forever. I didn't figure out why until later, when I realized I didn't have my personal item wranglers with me.

Silver Polisher - We have a fair amount of silver and I hate polishing it.

Parent Advocate - My kids constantly have school issues that require me to step in. I am trying to get Alesia a 504 plan now, and Mike is not happy in his class.

Poop Cleaner - Coco has accidents. I know too much about rug cleaning. We have miles of tile and wood floors but Coco prefers the rugs. She cannot go outside because of her medical condition.

Mother and I think Coco could successfully learn to talk if she had speech therapy. She's so much like a little hairy person it scares us. If you say in a singsong voice "I love you" she will bark "I wuv oo" - well, not really but close. [As far as you know.] She knows a lot of words. She knows the word "go" as in "Let's go get in the car" - and starts barking frantically when she hears the word "go." I've started quietly telling the kids in Russian, "posh-lee" which means "Let's go" because it postpones the barking fusillade long enough for us to get to the door. If I say to Coco - "Go wake up Alesia!" Coco will race up the stairs and hop in Alesia's bed and lick her face. One day I told her that, and Alesia ignored her. Coco did a poop right next to the bed and Alesia stepped in it. The dog has brains, I tell you.

Surprising Day

It has been a day of surprising news.

I found out a cousin of mine is moving to Denver. I have a friend who lives not far from there. I have a daydream of taking the kids out west, and seeing mainly Colorado and northern California. In the car, and in my rare idle moments, I like to plan this trip in my head. I debate modes of travel - train or car? Or fly partway and drive partway? What and who to see? If you are from either state and have anything interesting and informative to add here, please let me know.

Right now I am trying to plan a weekend getaway, too, just up to the mountains, in October. I talked to an old friend in Knoxville, who we will see that weekend, and was saddened to learn she is still battling cancer. I had thought it was in remission, so it surprised me. I could tell by the tension in her voice that she is tired of the chemotherapy, tired of fighting, but she perseveres. She lost her sister to breast cancer a few years ago, her only sibling.

I had not spoken to her in months - just busy - but now I feel rather guilty about that. She got upset when I told her Bruce is in Iraq. Our families have been friends for more than 30 years. I hastened to try and reassure her, as much as possible, that he is relatively safe, in Baghdad, in the embassy compound most of the time.

I let Michael choose his outfit this morning - after I prayed about it. He chose a white tee shirt, dark blue shorts, and his red hoodie. He actually looked really cute. I told him he looked like an American boy. He then recited the Pledge of Allegiance for me - well, most of it. I like the fact they say it every day at school.

Last night I was helping Michael go through his clothes and put the things which don't fit into a box. He stared wistfully at a white button down shirt that's too small. "I like this shirt. I look handsome in this shirt," he said. I was taken aback. "Sweetie, you look handsome in everything!" I tried to reassure him. "Can't I get some white shirts?" he asked. "Uh, yeah, when I can get around to it," I replied. "I really wish I had a suit, too," he added. I sighed. "Michael, honey, you are growing so fast right now, I can't afford to get you a suit you're gonna grow out of in a few months." I hated telling him that but it's the truth.

A few years ago I told Alesia's friend Elena's dad about an opening here at Home Depot, and he got hired here. I saw him here in the hallway this morning, and he said the meeting at Alesia's school last night was mayhem. It was for the parents of 9th graders. He said the principal was under fire. She was dodging every question like a politician, and he said the parents got quite irate with her. It's a school with a high academic rating, but the building is falling apart. Kids sometimes don't have time to eat lunch because lines are so long. They had to bring in 24 trailers to hold all the classes. Alesia said she has two classes in trailers, and they are full of roaches. Yikes. I pay a fortune in taxes. I cannot imagine why they can't build a new school building. I had thought the plans were in place for it, but I can't remember where I heard that.

That's all the news I know from Atlanta. I am praying we will get some hurricane rain in the next few days - but not the tornadoes.

This is another favorite Far Side:

Drama and Melons

As much as I try to lessen or eliminate all dissension and drama at my house, it inevitably seems to find me. Sometimes I just realize, in throat-clutching moments, that I've forgotten something important, like a bill that got overlooked, or forgetting to shave my legs until I look like a female impersonator.

Last night I forgot to read with Michael. His new teacher wants us to read 20 minutes a day. Excellent idea. I am forgetting it about half the time. Michael is not reminding me. He doesn't much care for reading, but he's getting better and better at it, so it's not as bad as it once was, when I had to threaten to open a can of whup a** just to get him to pick up a book. [Just kidding there, of course, I don't know where to buy canned whup a**]

Over the weekend, I did manage to read to him both days. What did he himself choose to read, with no help from me? Jack's New Family. [That's my boy!] He has had it read to him in Russian [while still in Kaz] and has now had it read to him in English, and finally has read it himself, in English. He should have it memorized. I know he draws all sorts of parallels between Jack and himself, and that's OK. That's how I meant it to be when I wrote it. I figured the more he identified with Jack's struggle, the more he would like the book. / Anyway, I digressed from my main theme for a moment.

Last night I put Michael's outfit for today on his toybox for him to wear. This morning, I woke him up, put the clothes on the bed, and instructed him to put them on and come down to breakfast. I went downstairs and started making breakfast. He didn't appear. I hollered at him. He finally appeared, with Alesia. She tattled on him and said he was wearing a sleeveless shirt under his red Georgia hoodie.

"Son, you know I don't like sleeveless shirts and the school rules say you can't wear them anyway. Go back up and put on the clothes I laid out for you."

This provoked much grumbling and whining. He went back upstairs, complaining he couldn't find his shoes.

When breakfast was on the table, he sitll had not appeared. "Michael! Get down here and get your breakfast!" I hollered, losing patience.

He finally appeared. I pulled up his hoodie and he had on a faded old tee shirt. His argument was that he leaves on the hoodie all day, so what difference does it make what shirt he wears?

I saw the logic of that, if it was true that he left on the sweatshirt all day, but it's a heavy shirt and it's August, and I envisioned him having a heat stroke in PE. "What if you want to take it off?" I asked. He shrugged.

I was mainly annoyed because I was trying to avoid drama by laying out his clothes, and he created more drama by defying me. I have a cousin who lets her little boys wear whatever they want. I've seen some pretty weird outfits on those kids. I just cannot be that laid back.

I've been thinking all morning about how to handle the clothes issue. Mother had a similar issue with me when I was 5. She just took away all my clothes she didn't want me to wear, so I had fewer choices. I don't want to go that drastic with a 12 year old boy. Besides, he has a lot of clothes. We have no storage space.

Alesia and I had our battles over clothes, in the beginning. Well, for about a year, actually. She finally now understands, about 98% or the time, what's appropriate and what's not. Until she was 13 years old she had no choice in clothes. She lived in dirty, ragged clothes before I adopted her. Nobody took time to help her look nice. Girls in her orphanage wore the same clothes for a week. Mike's situation was similar, although his orphanage seems to dress the kids better.

Anyway, that's today's issue. Below is my favorite Far Side cartoon, because it captures the spirit of my childhood so well, and I think of it often when trying to figure out how to manage my own children, who are [thank God] much less devious than Bruce and I were;

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I am trying a gardening experiment. Inspired by my friend Cindy's amazing gardening efforts [see almost any post from her blog Big Mama Hollers, which is on the list to the right] I am trying to rehabilitate the soil around the side of my house.

Before I tell my tale of woe, I want to digress for a moment. There's a reason.

My aunt Evalyn had the most beautiful flowers and plants around her house in Hollins, Virginia. Well, the entire campus of Hollins [where my uncle taught art] is beautiful. Evalyn's yard put everyone else's to shame, however. My mother used to watch her take coffee grounds, eggshells, and vegetable peelings, and go outside every evening and dig a little hole somewhere in the flowerbeds, and bury them. It was a small, efficient form of composting. She didn't make any big deal out of it. The results were amazing, though.

At the side of our house is a neat flowerbed where we have some bushes and a few irises, and nothing else grows, along a bed about 6 feet by 2 feet. I was going to build a compost heap. Then I decided to go low tech and try Evalyn's approach. So every night or two I go out there and bury eggshells and coffee grounds and whatever else we have. I water it down occasionally. I shovel dirt atop it. The dirt is terrible. Red clay. No worms. Nothing. I am praying it will rot into rich soil in time for me to plant a melon patch there next spring. So far, it just looks weird. I know my neighbors whose house faces mine on that side probably think I've lost my mind. I can hear them, in my mind, whispering,

"Look, she's burying garbage and growing hemlock!" LOL

I will prove to them I am not crazy. I will grow fabulous melons next year. [If my back holds out.]

A Year in Photos

That's a pretty grand title for this post and it's not that grand, just that I wanted to point out how much Michael has grown in the past year.

These two show the two of them in June 2007, just a few weeks after Michael first got here -

This one shows both Alesia and Michael last August, the first week he was in school. He had only been in America for 3 months.

Here they are carving pumpkins last October, Mike's first Halloween

Here they are in April 08, just hanging out at home -

Here they are in August of this year - just last week, in fact:

This one's out of sequence but so be it. It was made in April, and I just think it's a cute shot, plus it shows Alesia's beautiful olive green eyes -

Things are Looking Up

This will be the world's fastest post, just ebcause I am on a break. You can tell that because of the typos, huh?! My internet was going wacky on my lunch hour, much to my chagrin. [I love words like "chagrin" - I picture a cheshire cat grinning.]

I had Alesia's IEP meeting at school. I feel much better. We are going to try and get her a 504 plan, due to the auditory processing issues and executive functioning issues. The people I met with last year, who were so nice and so not helpful in the long run, are gone. Thanks be to God. These folks today might actually be able to help. Alesia's test results were all normal - the tests they administered to see if she was IEP eligible. Well duh. My kids not stupid y'all, she just needs a little extra help. Check her agenda on Fridays. Don't let her zone out in class and miss something important. I'm not asking the teachers to donate a kidney.

I told the new head of special ed the art teacher from last year should be fired. She looked at me meaningfully and said "We are looking into it." Great. Y'all finally got a clue.

I used to think Alesia's memory issues were fetal alcohol related. Now I am wondering if they have more to do with PTSD. As she progresses in therapy, I hear more tales that make me think PTSD plays a bigger part than I knew about. She also seems to just lately have fewer memory issues.

When I was feeling so yucko yesterday morning we watched the first episode of the John Adams series from HBO, which I was able to get from Netflix. Excellent program. Really got the kids interested. I paused it a few times to explain, but they were really intrigued with the story. The American Revolution is one of the most fascinating periods in history. The founding fathers changed the world. Most folks now have no idea of how dramatic it was, that revolution.

I think Paul Giamatti looks a little like Budha, but it's a minor distraction. I looked up the real John Adams, and what a shock, Giamatti looks a bit like him. Hmm. [side note: I always liked John Adams because he was a short guy who was argumentative and not great with money. I can so identify. LOL]

Michael forgot his language arts book and vocabulary words today. I am going to tell him, one more time and he will get a $10 fine. That will make him think. He hates to part with money.  I was trying to get him to drink some Children's Motrin last night so he could sleep [he has a cold] and he refused, until I finally said "OK, drink up or it's a $20 fine!" He downed it like a shot glass of whiskey in the hand of a gunfighter in the old west, slapped it down on the bathroom counter, licked his lips, and cocked his head. "That was Good! How 'bout some more?!" He smiled slyly. Boy, you are a mess.

I will be going home and yanking the hemlock out of the ground. Thanks so much for the warning. It's a pretty plant, though. I looked it up and spent a few minutes reading about the death of Socrates to hemlock poisoning. Not something I want to duplicate, even accidentally.

Plant Identification

I have blogged a couple of times about the weird but lovely plant growing up next to our accidental corn, just below our bird feeder. It looks a little like a fern, but I keep hoping it's somehow a magical vegetable or flower of some sort. Here's a photo below.

CAN ANYONE out there help me identify this plant??!!! If you can, I will send you a free copy of my book, Jack's New Family.

Mental Pause Day

Note: there's an old joke about a little boy asking his mother if she was having "mental pause." That's sort of accurate...

It has been such a long, yucky day. I was awakened 3 times last night with a headache. I had to toss down Motrin to get any sleep. Today I’ve had the headache off and on all day, plus just been really weak and lethargic. I think it’s all hormonal menopausal misery.

There were some things I had to do today. I had promised Alesia a trip to Kohl’s to get some new jeans. I gave her a price limit of $40 and she was able to get jeans and a cute new shirt. I like the Goodwill prices better.

I had promised Michael a new pair of tennis shoes. He can’t wear his heelys and his shoes from last year have a big hole in them. We found him some funky looking decorated tennis shoes that look sort of like the old Keds I wore as a kid. Alesia and I both tried to talk him into some Nike’s which were only a little more, and he wouldn’t budge. I hope the shoes can stand up to tennis, walking home, etc.

I felt so miserable after lunch that I couldn’t think what to do. I finally proposed a movie, and we saw Tropic Thunder. It was very funny. I know some people are upset about the film but I really didn’t think it was offensive – it’s just a parody of Hollyweird stupidity. Once you realize that, it’s funny. I wrote up a short review for my Scribblerchick’s Movie Dish.

Alesia’s IEP meeting is in the morning, early. I hope and pray I feel a whole lot better.

Three Wishes

We were in the car this morning running errands, and Michael asked me what 3 wishes I wanted.

1.      To have enough money to always pay my bills and to be able to afford to do fun things with my children.

2.     To be skinny.

3.     To have a bigger house.

I then asked him. Here are Michael’s wishes:

1.      To be a billionaire [Alesia: "That’s too much, that’s greedy!]

2.      To get a Wii [I pointed out if he’s a billionaire he can afford a lot of Wii’s.]

3.      To get his hand back.

I asked Michael if he wished to be able to find his birth father and get to know him, and his response was “Not really.”

Alesia at first said she didn’t have any wishes, because life is pretty good. Then, after thinking a moment, she came up with this list:

1.      To have no acne.

2.      To get another dog, in addition to Coco.

3.      To go out with a boy she knows on the school bus.

When we had gotten home, Alesia was in my room talking to me, and I asked her if one of her wishes would be to know what happened to her birth parents. She shrugged.

Alesia then opened up a tiny bit, and said her birthmom was “doing a lot of things” before Alesia was taken away. She found the birthmom with a strange man one day, and both were naked. Another time she saw a naked man in the apartment. There seemed to be a lot of nudity. [Remember, Alesia was 6 when she was put in the orphanage.]. Maybe that’s why Alesia is so modest now. There’s no evidence she was ever sexually abused, though, thank god.

My friend Melissa came over for dinner, with her two girls, who were adopted from the Ukraine and have been home just over a year. There were a lot of behavior issues at first, but now the girls are really sweet, and well behaved. Melissa brought a huge pot of borscht and it was delicious. My kids really enjoyed their visit. There are some photos below.

This first photo is Mike standing next to our bird feeder, and the corn plants that have sprung up! There's another plant which is beautiful but we don't know what it is, next to the corn. I need to do some research and figure it out.

Homework Night From H***

OK, this is my routine. I leave the office, drive home, get home usually around 5:45, depending on traffic. I usually check email, talk to the kids and/or help with homework a bit, maybe check on the garden, fix dinner, we eat dinner, watch part of a movie, and go to bed.

Last night I got home, took one look at Michael's face, and knew he was not a happy camper. In retrospect, I realize the classic line "fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night" was right on the money. [We watched "All About Eve" not long ago, so it's fresh in my mind.]

Michael got very little sleep Wednesday night, since he had suffered the two bee stings that afternoon. I found him yesterday morning asleep, clutching the industrial-sized flashlight given to him by Uncle Bruce, and he said he kept thinking there were bugs in the bed all night. He slept very poorly. So yesterday when he got home from school, I told Mother to let him nap. Poor little guy sacked out for an hour and a half.

Mike was very fretful when I got home. He had been trying to do a school assignment on the computer, with no success. Mother was out of patience. It was damp and rainy and she was having a bad day with her arthritis.

I asked Michael about his homework. I checked his agenda. It didn't appear to be too bad. A few pages of math, some grammar, and reading. His teacher wants students to read 20 minutes every night. I don't mind listening to him while he reads. I quite enjoyed The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

Last night, though, homework turned into a real ordeal.

I made Michael jump on the trampoline for 10 minutes to get a little exercise, and then have a snack. Then we dug in. The math was hard for him. I tried explaining it and letting him work on it while I fixed dinner. That didn't work too well, but at least I got the chicken cooking before I had to sit back down with him. Mike's brain is like mine - seeing relationships between numbers is like trying to speak Greek. However, my biggest issues came with higher math like Algebra and Geometry. I can add, subtract, multiply, divide and simply remember numbers in my head quite easily. Michael has a fear of math, as I've mentioned. It doesn't interest him.

He's actually good at English grammar, though. Go figure.

I had to tell him several times last night not to say "I'm stupid! This is too hard!" and other negative things. I always tell him and Alesia "What you tell yourself becomes the truth. If you say you can't do something, you won't be able to do it. If you say it's too hard, it will be. You HAVE to be positive! You have to say I CAN do it!" [They always look at me with great consternation when I say this, but I figure if I drum it into their heads, maybe one day they will see the same sentiment on an infomercial or in a movie and suddenly realize I am not entirely crazy...]

Unlike most children who are very intelligent, Michael has only been speaking English for a little over a year. So doing homework, for him, means a LOT of supervision. He wants to do everything right, and spell it right. It takes him an incredibly long time to write out a sentence. Any word over 3 letters has to be spelled out. I try to teach him phonics, sounding out things for him, but it's still confusing. For instance, in Russian the "ee" sound indicates an "i". He also gets the "eh" sound mixed up with the short "a" sound ["ah"] and that has to be corrected. I always say "Michael "eh" as in "egg" remember?!"

I helped him finish a report entitled "Summer Fun" - about what he did over the summer. He writes very well, but he's not overly verbose. Here's what he basically said about the week we spent in Myrtle Beach: We watched DVD's in the car. We unloaded the car. We went swimming. We played golf. We went home. // Correcting his little paper and helping him illustrate it turned out to be the highlight of my evening.

Several times I came this close to losing my temper. I spoke sharply to Michael, which I really regret. It's like kicking a puppy - he gets that sort of a hurt look on his face. After a long day at work, and fixing a meal, and not eating dinner until almost 9:00, though, I was short on patience.

I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say, except for about 40 minutes of showering and eating dinner, Michael did homework all evening yesterday. Alesia helped a bit while I washed the dinner dishes, but it wasn't much of a break. I was so looking forward to a relaxing evening, since there is no tennis practice on Thursday, but it was not to be. This is a good rendition of my mental state by 11 last night: