May Day! How did it get to be May? Where are the communist parades? I read one of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries and its Cold War details were charming and historical.  I suppose that happens all the time – the huge thing that seems so huge, it just vanishes or fades away and calling someone comrade isn’t even a meaningful insult any longer.

I am mostly amused these days. Except about the pollen. Damn pollen. Spring allergies are here. Boo! And with it, I feel like I am going to die before I ever recover. I wonder if in addition to the histamine reaction and the leukotrienes being modified if the serotonin levels in my brain dip? In the last few years I have really noticed how hopeless I feel when I am sick.  I can usually tell the gloom is descending, and it lifts when the snot stops.

Bella, poor Bella. She is suffering from whatever tree is blooming right now. We are in sync. I don’t think I’ll hema nd haw as I did with the odler kids about an allergist visit. Henry is much better on the Singulair – his head is not clogged. But his allergic symptoms without an acute allergic reaction has always made me a bit suspicious. Bella, she has the dripping nose and she’s rubbing her eyes and she is not eating well. All in the last 18 hours. Same as my timing, which makes me doubt we’re sharing a cold. Those seems to cascade around here  rather than hit with brute force at one time.

Bella is perfecting the temper tantrum. The lay down on the floor and kick. The follow me from room to room until one of us gets distracted sufficiently. I think she is frustrated that she can’t talk. This is such a  novel problem I am speechless. Miranda didn’t speak until later and when she did speak it was very hard to understand what she meant. But she was rarely frustrated. I learned to say she was frustrated to get speech therapy services (because I was frustrated and she probably was, even if she didn’t show it). Henry didn’t talk and didn’t care about talking and then one day, he did care. And he started talking.  Bella grunts expressively. She points. She touches things and then other things and convinces you she really wants that cookie -not not that one, that one! ! !

I have mostly convinced myself that I am going to wait her out. We’ve watched her ears more closely than Miranda, she she is hearing us. But I feel so bad for her, unable to make the words come out. C’mon language explosion. We’d liek to see you. Stat! ! !

When Bella isn’t adding drama to our living room…which she does by throwing tantrums and then making the same noise when she is stuck on a chair. So the first time, you hear wah wah wah! She is yelling. And we are taking the ignore the tantrum approach.  Calm calm calm. Pat her back. Then she wonders away happily. Eats something. And then another tantrum. Really, Bella, again? And this time, she’s on a dining room chair and she wants to go down. She isn’t even yelling Moooommmm! My favorite is when Mom is pronounced to rhyme with come and means Mom! Come!

In other news, I was using voice recognition software to type in a pages and pages of a work-related project.  And even after 17 times, when the computer thinks you said cheeses instead of Jesus, I laugh. And my dad could hear me talking. Maybe the occasional giggle. He asks my mom what I’m doing. She explains. At lunch he says something about those darn computer systems and I should just talk to a person. Huh? I said. It seems obvious to him that I was trying to talk to a computer and it would be better to just call a person and not a computer. Huh? I said. Computers taking peoples jobs. Huh? I said. I am typing…well, I am trying to get out of typing so I am talking. I did agree I could hire a typist, but she would probably make more than I do. It could be argued that I am the typist, but let’s just say typist will never appear on my resume as it is not one of my top Skills. He was still unsure who I was talking to.  And I was still unsure how to explain what I was doing. Other than not subcontracting this project.

Miranda thought that the voice recognition was hilarious. It is. She quickly produced nearly a full page of mostly nonsensical text. And she has her own email account now, so watch out world.

I have been working an absurd amount for my part-time job. We had an event. It was nice. And now I am going to work less. And that will be good. Having the big event over is a relief and a little bit of a gap mentally. I’ve been working toward it for so long and now, I’m not.

Oh, what should I work on next? Besides returning to child care much more thoroughly and fondly. That old saw about if I promise to miss you, do you promise to go away? It works. The kids missed me. The hugs. The joy. That immediate return to ‘Mom, can you get me some milk?’

Just checking into say I am alive. Things are going well – unlike some long web silences.

Miranda swore to me at bedtime tonight that the last 10 days (her Spring Break) flew by in 5 minutes. But the thought of having me check on her in 15 minutes, that was huge! And maybe if 15 minutes took 30 days, I could see her point.

It was a busy crammed up week. We started with a family dinner in Green Bay last Saturday with so many adorable little babies. Sunday was the Easter baskets and church and visiting just long enough with my grandparents to catch up but that the children don’t exhaust them. Then Monday, the kids went to a  friend’s house and Miranda had swim team practice. Tuesday, I worked and Rob stayed home and bought Henry a new bike (Novarra from REI 20 inch, BMX style for those playing along at home) and Miranda had swim team practice. Wednesday, we did doctor appointments and Miranda had swim team practice. Thursday, I headed to work early, then I took the big kids to Skateland with friends and later Rob and I took M and H to Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakal at the local movie house. Friday, I took Miranda to work with me and then the kids had friends over and I took the 4 of them to Diary of A Wimpy Kid. Which was fair.  And we went out to dinner. Saturday, Henry went to swim class, then Rob, Henry, Arabella and I headed to Madison. Miranda had a sleepover at a friend’s on Saturday night and spent the day with my mom. It is true – once you have 3 kids, taking 2 kids is easy. I am not willing to try having 4 kids to see if the pattern holds. In Madison, I wanted to go to SWAP. And see the Bishops. And as we get into town and get gas, the battery of the van dies and cannot be jumped back to life. So tow truck and battery replacement at a dealer before we can enjoy happy fun time. The kids and I ditched Rob and went to SWAP with K who was kind enough to try to help us jump the car and ferry us around. I forgot my purse on the trip, which sucked in many ways.  We did make it home. Today, we had a lovely brunch with friends. And then I wanted to go shopping but there aren’t enough hours. Even though Crate and Barrel has adorable juice glasses again and I’ve now broken or lost all of my old ones.

It seems impossible to believe it was more tiring to live it.

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In other news, I don’t usually catch much good spam on this blog, but I have to say this one amused me:

“I’m 22 and run a p3n1s enlargement company with my sister and live in sunny San Diego, California with my 2 wonderful children.”

Is that not wrong on so many levels? Is having your sister involved in genital remodeling ever a good idea?

I don’t think I am going to take up swing shift work to find out if Sundays are less traumatic when the specter of Monday’s school and work doesn’t hang so heavily. But I wonder.   It was a slow weekend, which at some point in my childless days would have been a bad thing. Rob puttered in the bike shop outside. We lamented that the weather was cold. I cooked the meatballs for spaghetti in the sauce (no turning!) and we marveled at the difference. 32 little meatballs disappeared. Today I went to Costco. The kids had friends over.  We probably all should take Benedryl at bedtime (or Tylenol PM if we’re pretending that’s not the same thing plus acetaminophen) so we fall asleep quickly.

A long time ago when I was a college student studying advertising in the journalism school in Madison, we talked about truth in advertising. I think more than most, we J-School majors who studied the dirty practical arts of advertising were constantly being forced to consider whether advertising was evil, a necessary evil or just horribly misunderstood. And I have never had a problem with the idea that advertising  can be an information source. Probably not your only information source.  But I constantly use advertising, consciously, to find out about products. Did the advertiser create a product that solves a problem I didn’t even know I had…maybe.

An example that had stayed with me is when plastic sandwich bags were introduced. The problem, as far as the market researchers could tell, was that the woman making a sandwich lunch for her working man’s lunchbox worried that the sandwich would get stale. Stale sandwiches, yuck! So the advertiser put a sandwich into the new nifty sealable plastic baggie and immersed it in water. This showed the little lady that the sandwich was safe. From spilled coffee and apple cores and stale air.

The professor then pointed out that the water molecules that the plastic prevented from reaching the sandwich–those molecules were far bigger than air molecules. And keeping water out didn’t prove that the air and its following staleness were being blocked.

I thought of that today. I was being frugal (I know, so 2009 of me) and put my PBJ sandwich and my 8 pretzels in the same sandwich baggie. Sealed it and headed to the office. Around 12, I was hungry. Got out my sandwich. And damn it all, it was crusty and stale. But the worst was the soggy distortion that my pretzels became.  Somehow, the moisture in the sandwich and the crunch of my pretzels merged. It wasn’t pretty.

And I think I wish I had taken more science classes and less advertising and media theory.

At risk of violating my no-talkee-about-workee rule, I feel completely buried. We have a big event in mid April. The deadline to register at the low price was today. And the phone rang off the hook with people wondering how the 15th had followed the 14th, just like that. Calendars, really really handy.

Not that a calendar got me to a volunteer meeting I wanted to attend last evening. Note to self, the 14th, it follows the 13th. Every month.

After watching Looney Toons the Movie for the bazillionth time, Henry realized that they use movie magic to make Brendan Fraser punch out Brendan Fraser. I would say split screen, but I think the technology has moved on since the days of Hayley Mills running around a ranch. As a digression – why not twins? It just sounds exhausting. And back to Looney Toons – Henry loves this movie. A movie which is mediocre, but I have my own playlist of movies past (Strange Brew, Up the Creek (the original Tim Matheson version),  My Chauffeur, Transylvania 6-5000 :) that are definitely mediocre. And yet I practically wore out the dubbed VHS tapes.  I’ve digressed again…Henry would like to have a double.  He could go to gym for him and recess on boring days, and wouldn’t it be awesome, Mom?

Yes, it would.

I will admit we have credit cards that don’t get paid off in full every month. A shame and a millstone and yadda yadda. And we have a card that we use for Midwest Miles. It has goods and bads – more goods when I can finally book a trip with miles and take the kids as companions. Right now, this card has $2000 balance on it. For some reason, the minimum payment is ridiculously low, as in $29. The new credit card act of 2010 has introduced this strange little box in which they show you how long it will take us to pay this card off (if we charge nothing else to it) if we make only the minimum payment. And what you’d have to pay each month to pay the card off in 3 years.

For the record, I am relieved that I will pay at least $100 toward this card this month. And more with the reimbursement for Rob’s travel from earlier this year.

I am still not sure I needed to know that.

Maybe I could leave that debt for my double? Or my great-great-great grandchildren? Shouldn’t they just say, hey, we’re applying your $29 payment to a life insurance policy so you can pay this off when you’re dead?

This will probably be an odds and ends post – what else can I do when I haven’t written for a few weeks?

Is it more embarrassing if your mom talks about your mental or gastrointestinal health?

If Bella is going to be a more typical kid — pickier eater, better sleeper, stranger aware, fall down on the ground tantrums, frustrated by her inability to speak intelligible words, sharing and smacking in equal measures — boy, the next year is going to suck.

I feel cheated by the lack of rain. Rain is not my favorite part of spring, but rain now would wash away the dirty icky snow (and dirty icky airmass hovering over Wisconsin). And the dirty snow needs to go. Instead of drenching rain, we have fog.

Drifting fog + stagnant green water in the far fields + ice patches + winter trees = the landscape of a ghost tale. In Scotland.

Just because you know what you’re doing is potentially and probably dumb, it doesn’t make it any easier to do the smarter thing. Self preservation may be smart, but it isn’t easy. This is probably universally true, not just in worklife.

I am struck that Scott Walker’s idea to break MPS into 10-12 districts is not nearly as interesting as if he suggested a county wide solution. You know, creating a city-county school district. Of course, the 10-12 districts could each be the suburb at the edges of Milwaukee, each taking a piece. Leaving behind maybe 2-3 smaller fully urban districts.

I can’t even tell if I hate this idea.

I really can’t even believe I don’t live in Milwaukee anymore.

And I wonder where the suburbanites who fled Milwaukee would flee if there were combined city suburban districts.

How can I be frustrated with my daughter’s pessimism when I am not exactly a ray of sunshine?

Just rain! Rain! Rain! Blow in some new weather.

Henry has more homework in kindergarten than Miranda had in first and second grade.

Miranda got her state test scores and her MAPS scores. She is doing well. She finally wants to read harder books.  I wonder if testing well is an inherited trait? They make her more nervous than I even remember feeling.

We had a quiet weekend ahead of us. I hope.

Having lost the comfort of my laptop, I have spent more time reading. Sadly, not more time laughing. I finished Pillars of the Earth. I’ve now book clubbed The Help twice. And I started reading Brave New World again. Just to be cheerier.

The Help really bugged me. I think it bugged me not because it wasn’t well written, it wasn’t an interesting story, or not even that it wasn’t the kind of story we should read. It bugged me because it reminded me that we didn’t all learn civil rights in history in high school or college. And if this book was a suggested book for high schoolers, I’d say bravo. I guess having books bug you isn’t a bad thing, as long as you think about why that might be. I am ready to be done thinking about it for a while.

I’d really rather talk about the ideas it raised for me about child care. What does it mean – what the the legacies of having child care being treated as such a lowly job? Poor pay, terrible hours, impossible wells of patience and care for children that may love you and look down at you, all at once. I don’t have an answer, other than the suspicion that it could tie into the stay at home / working mom battles of viewpoint.   And I want to know about the next 10 years. In the early 1960s, before the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Acts, segregation was legal. By the early 1970s, it wasn’t legal. What did that transition look like? What are those stories? Miss Hilly was evil in The Help…did she learn to keep quiet by the 80s? Racism certainly isn’t dead today, but it is more subtle. I have to think that’s better, it just doesn’t quite seem good enough.

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In other news…We went to the children’s museum today. There is a cow, a horse, a silo and a corn field sign. You can velcro the corn to the field. Then pick it. Drop it in the silo. Then wheel barrow a load over the animals. Henry walked each piece of corn from the silo to the field. 20+ pieces of corn. A little girl came along, saw the corn stuck to the field and figured out it was to be picked. After watching Henry cross the 10 feet from the silo to the field 20 times at least, I was amused to see the little girl walk over, grab as many ears of corn as she could hold in her arms, approximately 12, and walk over to the cow. Henry was quite outraged.

I am reading The Pillars of the Earth for a book club. So my skimming may be noticed. But I doubt it. The book is 900+ pages. The scope is huge. I can’t quite claim it is taking away my blogging time, but something is. And a book sounds better than my daily binging on NUMB3RS.

In news of the first order, my laptop’s hard drive died last Monday. I think I am nearly through the 5 stages of grief. I spent 2-3 days in absolute denial – I’ll just run upstairs and check my email. Oh, I’ll check the bills files.  Oh sure, you can play on my laptop, child. In 2005, I lost a computer to a massive hard drive failure, which I have come to think of like heart attacks. Some times, hard drives go bad. And data can be restored. Like a stent. Or a heart replacement. I seem to have really bad hard drive problems – the drive is unusable, the spindle doesn’t spin, there is no Hope.

The 2005 debacle did push me to make backing up my data a higher priority. After sporadic DVD backups, I bought an external hard drive in 2008 or 2009. And it saved me, mostly. I have all of the photos. I lost about  a week, as the hard drive was sending little hard drive signals that it was dying. But I didn’t know it. Despite its SMART system, it didn’t send me a message like “back up all your data, the barbarian horde is coming.” It did keep restarting and had a hard time coming back on.

In January, the family room computer, which was my old desktop computer, had a motherboard problem. (brain tumor?) The hard drives had been flaky and Rob doesn’t have time to build computers anymore. We did the unthinkable to ourselves circa 2000 – we went to Best Buy and bought a clearance desktop. It works. And as I am typing on it right now, it is a good thing in our lives.  But it isn’t my old desktop – it doesn’t have the programs, the bookmarks, the settings of my life. And that’s why I feel so a sea.

This hard drive failure has shown me that having pre-installed software, while convenient, is worthless in so many ways. My laptop is being reborn as Rob’s Ubuntu laptop, mostly because Ubuntu is free and we don’t have a free way to install the Windows Vista license we bought with the laptop. I am taking over Rob’s Windows laptop. I am pleased that Adobe is going to let me re-download my legal copy of Dreamweaver -I have a 3 year time-limit. Still not perfect, but better than the new copy of Office I had to buy for the family room computer. We had legal copies of Office, but not on a disc that I could just install.

This post-mortem excuse-apolooza is not as entertaining as it might be if I had more distance and less rawness. I also got a winter cold the weekend before my laptop died. So I was congested, gooey, feverish and cold, exhausted and drugged up…and having no laptop made me just sad. After a visit to Best Buy (how can this be?), I saw an adorable HP laptop. And the price was almost fair enough. But it turns out for a freelance job, I need to connect with a 32-bit version of Windows. So no new laptop would work. Thank goodness I can take over Rob’s laptop, I guess.

The only file I lost, I think, is my bills files in Excel. For some reason the most recent backup was from August 2009. The vagaries of backup are mysteries I don’t understand. My priorities going forward are definitely to keep up the automatic backups. They saved my bacon. But I have to figure out a way to not lose my software. Maybe I need to rent software? Would that help?  Probably not with an OS…

I have been thinking, so more posts soon. I hope.

Resolutions…I can’t say I am eager to even write some list of resolutions. I see the appeal. The calendar says we are starting over. The cold barren winter says we’re going to die. Or maybe we can burrow down and make it through the winter. If we can just believe that winter will end. I wonder if in less northern latitudes are there as many of these mournful, morbid thoughts?

Resolved, I will be more patient with my children. Particularly at bedtime. While growing in patience, I want to feel more confident and comfortable enforcing the limits and boundaries.

Resolved, to find a class for Henry. Something that interests and amuses him. He may still have to swim because swimming is good for you. But it isn’t really fun to him.

Resolved, to increase Miranda’s opportunities to be more confident. In her voice. In her friendships. In her schoolwork.

Resolved, to play with Bella more. She is taking such a delight in running, climbing, eating, babbling. And if there are no more words than mama and ampa and papa and amma…by let’s say, June? I’ll get an evaluation. For my own sanity.

Resolved, borrowing the Penelope Trunk’s resolution method, I will put on workout clothes three times a week. And take my bike out of the garage in April, get the tires pumped up, and adjust the seat.