Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Boys

I have two sons, ages 14 & almost 12. Last night, we made dinner together - home-made cheese enchiladas, tostadas and chips. It was an adventure - and not just of the 'culinary' kind.

Boys are different. They don't have a lot of 'attention to detail' wired in their brain. B. puts cheese in the tortillas like he's doing the shot-put. A lot of style - and a lot of mess. Cheese EVERYWHERE - he aims for the dish and cheese ends up on the counter 2 ft away. Or on the floor. Crazy.

I turned H. loose w/ the pizza cutter to cut tortillas into chips. He asked 'do they have to be perfect' and my heart broke a bit as I thought 'he's asking that because you are always hard on them about how they do things'. I said 'no, chips are chips and any size/shape will do'. And then the little bugger proceeded to hand me the most perfectly sectioned triangular shaped chips I've ever seen. And he tosses them into the hot oil - with abandon and glee and 'helping'. While I think 'oh my God, please be careful - do you know how badly hot oil can burn you'? And of course they don't because I never let them near the stuff so how could they ever learn.

Parenting is hard. You want them to get hurt so they'll remember and be safe...but you want to protect them so badly that you'd throw yourself in front of train to spare them pain. But if they don't get 'burned' how will they learn to pay attention?

I haven't figured that out yet. I keep over-supervising. But I think we'll cook together more. I'll be grayer, sooner and will need to resist the urge to run screaming from the kitchen - but they will learn. And we'll do it together.

Last night, enchiladas. Soon, the world.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Intentions

I really intended to update regularly. I found myself 'writing' in my sleep - waking up and ruminating over what to post the next day. For someone who has insomnia pretty regularly, ruminating through the night about what to write the next day is not a good thing. It might be for some people, but not for me, who ranks sleeping as one of her top 5 things to do. Without sleep, I'm a wreck...so thinking about blogging when I should be sleeping is not a good thing.

But, I talked to K. yesterday (live and in person) and was reminded that I enjoy writing...and reading what's been written (to recall feelings of the moment)...and my hubby likes reading what I've written. So, I'm back.

I have been a long time (from the first issue) People magazine reader. Devoted, one might say. And when I was younger, I would 'dream' in writing. All my dreams were written. I had the 'People' format down pat - first paragraph gave the person's name, age and a brief summary of their story. Followed by the details. I dreamed stories all night - only no pictures - just words. The 'current' format for People isn't like this anymore - in fact, lately People magazine leaves me wanting more. The stories are too truncated - never enough details. The pages are filled with one page 'blurbs' instead of multi-page stories. I miss the 'old' days.

So, in the past couple months: our pool is finished. Our dog went completely blind (more on that in another post someday). My firstborn registered for high school (YIKES!). We've had flu, strep throat and various other ailments. It's rained A LOT. Our flowerbeds are full of Freesia, dianthus, petunias, and assorted other pretty flowers. We painted son #2s bedroom a really pretty, bright, sky blue. We've been busy, busy....as we always are.

Life is good.

March

I'm starting to think maybe I will just do a monthly post and call it what it is - whatever month we're in.  Here we are winding dow...