For someone who doesn't always send the most positive and less than ranting messages out there into (cyber)space I want to warn you that here for just a second I'm going to fall completely out of character and wax lyrical. 

I love little league. It is currently my favorite past time. I love seen a field full of 5 year old children looking tiny and running the wrong way around bases. I love that their gloves are bigger than their heads and their bats hit pretty much everything but the ball on the stand. I love that they feel like the most important people on the entire face of the earth when they are wearing their little embroidered baseball caps and their matching shirts. 

I love watching them count to 4 while trying to remember all the steps to throwing a ball, or that the coach lets them run to their mothers off field every time someone takes a ball to the face. I love that I have found the first group of fully functioning people in my general vicinity in quite a long time. The school the boys are attending seems to be firing on all 4's. Celia's does too for the most part, but recreationally I have not found a lot to compare to the little league folks.

I can't describe to you the cuteness of my son in his uniform, telling me how proud he is to wear the uniform, how proud he is he got to pick his own number, or the fact that he counted down the minutes to the day the uniform was supposed to arrive.
His older brother, born and begun to be raised in England just struck me as the archetypal baseball kid. I had visions on him in little baseball pants and cap and seeing that vision unfold - exactly as I imagined it - years later actually lit a joy in my heart. I love seeing his face as he pays exceedingly close attention to his coach and mimics to the best of his ability every stance and movement. He might not be the fastest but he'll be one of the most accurate players on the field. He's not slow either, he's just precise. He hit 4 out of 5 balls at his last practice, and it is machine pitch but given that this is his first go-round that's not half bad - no? 

I love his slim, tiny little body in his bright red socks and white pants and bright red belt and nationals shirt and cap. 

I love that they email me, text me, and call me. I love that the coaches know every kid by name (!), and parent, and every single last form that every single last person has or hasn't filled out and what each kid is good at. I might be easily impressed on us but you're talking about a place where 8 weeks after he joined his cub scout leader not only kept asking him if he was new, had yet to swear him in, but also had no idea who he was. I love that the joining fee included everything, the uniforms, the trophy, the party they get when it is all over and so on. 

My youngest son's coach is a great coach and I agree with everything he says, all his calls and the way he handles small children. I also love that he lectured the parents on how to be good sports parents. "We're not here to win, that doesn't mean we're here to lose. You are here for the enjoyment of your children, plain and simple. You are not allowed to make this thing out to be more than it is or take it too seriously, you are here to make your kid happy."

Maybe not everyone - but I SO agree with that and I liked hearing it. 

Plus, I get the obligatory I'm-doing-something-right-wholesome-feel-good-vibe when I sit out on the grass or in the bleachers watching the kids practice. We're outside, we're being active and fit, we're breathing real air, we're learning something, we're bonding with our team. 

I love that the parents memorize all the little kids names so they can cheer your kid on when he's on a base. How cool is that? Really!? 

Anyway - I'm sure that's enough for now. I just had to get it off my chest.

Speaking of chests - our current youngest chick is making me more than a little crazy. We realized the blacks we had were just too big for Queak and Buttercup and decided on adding a smaller breed (not to the point of bantam) to the brood. We're still under our city limit, so it felt ok. We got another chick and not only does she bully the older flock mercilessly (keep in mind she's like 3 days old) but she peeps around the clock. Now, would it be too wrong for me to sneak her back to the feed store and switch her with a look alike? Would it? Would it? 

She is cute - she is plushy - my children love her. She incurs my strong desire to eat her (it's a maternal thing, unless you've had kids you wouldn't understand - ask me sometime how bizarre I find the desire to actually consume your children is - I mean what kinda genetic freak of instinct is that?). 

Anyway, it is unusually early for me and I might not be making tons of sense here. I love the little mite but, you know, just a warning, I totally don't think I'm above sneaking her back to the feed store....

The first of my emergent little seeds have sprung. Sweet as sweet are new seeds but they are more nerve wracking than any baby creatures I can think of. I mean even 3 day old chick (see above) is more resilient. After all, the chick can bite your finger nails and handle being carried around in someone's pocket half the day. In the meantime, every time a new seed sprouts Buttercup becomes so excited she will try carrying it around in her pocket all day and of course it then dies. At which point she tells me it is sleeping. 

Sleeping seeds are surely one of my favorite things ever to come out of the child's mouth. Though I get at least one of those quotes off her about once a day. Her verbal skills are unlikely to let her down in this life. 

Some part of me wants to put them (the seedlings, follow the plot) in the freezer, like you would a sick koi and then move on. Move on to pansies from Home Depot and other hard to kill things that come ready grown by the 12 pack. Some part of me is wanting to get the pansies anyway for a few reasons; instant gratification; the back-up lovers of the flower world - there and ready to hold me when my little seeds finally succumb to natural selection; maybe they'll teach the seedlings how to grow, be role-models; etc..

 On that note -

(editor's note: Is that not what you do with sick koi? Because I so totally have it on good-koi-keeping authority that it so totally is)

I've not been on in a while.

Partly because I wanted to see how much time the online world was consuming in my life and see what I would do with less time spent online. Partly because all of our working computers were not working, and therefore going online became a major endeavor. Going online was not really worth my time, or the frustrations.

Sometimes, I wonder why I bothered with the internet when it was dial-up. I was such a pioneer.

Anyway, with a computer back, and working, I thought - "oh I should go online and say something useful." However, after having been offline all this time I got nothin.

Nothing of any import or use to say. Maybe because it is after 9pm and my brain has shut off. Maybe because I have a headache.

Maybe because I've not vigilantly kept track of things I have to say. I should keep post-it notes or something. Then, of course, the funny part would be looking at post-its with random words on them wondering what the hell they were all about and scrunching them up and throwing them away. Or perhaps I would save them for posterity. Or maybe I'd repost them until they became significant again.

Firefox says repost is not a word. I'm sure it would accept a hyphen in there, well guess what - it ain't gonna get one. Funny, it accepts ain't. Sigh, I give up.

Queak has discovered the word bitch but he doesn't know it is derogatory. He thinks it is a sound affect. He heard it on tv, and he thought it was hysterical. The other night I turned the tv on, and the channel it was on blared out South Park, for the 5 seconds it took for me to panickedly reach for the channel button he heard approximately 10 swear words. Again, sigh. I have been trying to decide all day what to do about this. I'm not sure I want to draw attention to the word since he is genuinely oblivious about the meaning. On the other hand, it has to stop - now.

Buttercup has learned to make unpleasant grunting, squealing noises to express her displeasure at parental rulings. She's 3, and she's arguably the most spoiled of my children but she is perilously close to discovering what soap tastes like.

Leif has some form of PTSD regarding the blow he took to his head recently. The stitches are out, but from time to time he has nightmare style flashbacks of the ER, and from time to time he comes to me, curls up on my lap and clings to me sort of weepy for no reason. Admittedly the day scared the living hell out of me too. Sometimes I marvel at how different they are, Queak who insist stitches in the face not only don't hurt but had no affect on him at all and Leif who is showing signs of mental distress every time someone mentions that day. I know that I am a devoted enough mother that I will go with them to the ER every time the need arises. I also know that days like that likely take years off my life and I am pretty sure I need to check myself in the next time to be treated for shock.

This is all strangely compounded with the fact that Leif is adamant that he will break a leg soon. This was a palm-reading he got some time ago, and he believes it so utterly that I'm not sure what to do with him. I keep asking myself if I'll be strong enough to be the person who holds his hand when they re-set the bone. Can't they get someone who looks like me? Surely the hospital has stand-in mothers on tap?

The kids have approximately 2 months left of school. I wonder what next year will be like, if they will have teachers who mean anything near as much to them as the current lot. Is this their halcyon year or is this one of many blended years? I just often wish it didn't all go so fast.

Having said that, I'm tired and glad the school year is drawing to a close. I need the summer. I need to see things in bloom and wake when we wake and sleep when we sleep.

My friend is leaving soon, to go home to Delaware. Today, when she was at my house I had a hard time imagining her leave. I suppose that's always the way, really. I hope it is what she needs it to be. Friday, we will go to a farewell dinner for her, a chocolate dinner. Who can say no to chocolate dinners?

That's about all I have for now. Perhaps I'll be witty tomorrow - if the computer is still here and still working even.

This one is short, I just feel very proud today. Celia's grades came today. Celia had come from England and we decided for a range of reasons not to put her in public school. We lived in the ghetto, she was blond and 2 to 3 years younger than kids here in the same year. We'd worked too hard to put her back 2 years to go with her age level. While the local public schools offered assessments that promised your child would go into more challenging classes, we'd not only missed those for the year but the local public schools have a phenomenal failure rate. NM is ranked near the bottom in education, there were only 1 or 2 passing schools and we'd missed the transfer windows. So on and so forth. I began romancing the idea of homeschooling. We had also missed the intake windows for the private schools and charters.

Homeschooling will have to be another blog. From being told I was overwhelming myself, under-qualified, and elitist I met much opposition. Plus the ever, constant, tune of I was hurting my kids through lack of socialization. Hurting. I was hurting them.

Still we plugged on. Originally, when thinking private we knew of only 2 that met our criteria. One Celia detested on sight. The other she was wait listed on year after year. Still, of the thousands who applied, being one of a hundred kids on a wait list was still a boost of confidence.

Then, the last year we said we were going to try (if she didn't get in one more year it was a sign that ABQ really was the arm-pit of the universe and we were well past done here) we discovered school number 3. School number 3 enchanted us and her. We thought there was some hope and even if we left, maybe she could be happy there till we found a way out of town. Lo and behold they accepted her.

She was sent a letter telling her no matter what her choice was - to accept their acceptance or to go somewhere else - she should know she beat out the hundreds of other applicants for one of 5 seats that year. She should know THEY thought she was very special. They said their board had "unanimously" voted in her favor and I bit my tongue from saying to her I was sure that must be standard policy.

Still we'd been sort of writing our own curriculum. I had no idea how after 3 years what a formal setting would do to her. We decided to send her, she'd have fun while it lasted. On her second day there she was elected to the student government seat for her grade. She had had to give a speech. She'd heard about this at the orientation weeks before so she had written the speech at roughly the same time she was writing her speech for her Bat Mitzvah.

Her first grades came in and I was crushed. I wouldn't let her see them. I told her some of it was bound to be that she'd been homeschooled and the other 80 kids in her year had been hand raised for the last 3 years at that very school on this very curriculum. Still secretly I felt we possibly had made a huge mistake. I had never managed a D in my life, let alone a page of them. I didn't think she was stupid, I thought maybe, for once, we'd aimed too high.

Her next grades came in, barely better. D's to C's and 2 A's. I felt the same and decided we'd pull her out over the summer.

One day, a few weeks ago she said her homework was no longer stretching her. She said she'd learned to think like them. She said she thought she'd cracked it and that it was just retraining her English/Homeschooled mind.

Today, her 3rd quarter grades came. We had all A's with the exception of her 2 hardest classes which came in as solid B's. Seriously - no Seriously am I proud of her. She did this, virtually all by herself. She sought out her teachers, she e-mailed them and her adviser daily. She stayed at school to meet with teachers and haunt the library. She stayed up hours past the rest of us to crack the never ending math problems. She met her own goal of an A/B average. So maybe she's not entirely her father's daughter. Maybe, just maybe, there is a hint of me in her after all. Maybe she'll break away from him genetically and become her own person. We can hope, right?


This brings me to the End