Going Dark

Since I don’t actually know how to take my blog dark for 24 hours without losing all my content, I’m just going to link to this post from The Oatmeal.

Stop SOPA.

Nerve-wracking

Ella and I made a quick trip to Atlanta so she could climb in Divisionals, which is the competition that decides who makes it to Nationals. Quite honestly, I didn’t have any great expectations about Ella’s climbing. She missed a lot of practices during the past month due to moving, illness, holidays and meltdowns. She is also in a new age group, which means she’s climbing against girls who are almost two years older than she is.

Saturday’s round got off to a rough start. Ella wasn’t able to finish her first route despite repeated attempts, and that seemed to throw her off her game. Her second and third routes were trainwrecks. I watched through my fingers. Before her fourth route, Ella sat in the waiting area with tears running down her face. I wanted to go get her and tell her she didn’t need to climb anymore. Instead, I promised hot chocolate when she finished, which got a teeny smile.

Apparently the promise of hot chocolate really works, because she climbed great and finished the route; one of the few girls to do it.

She finished convinced she was in last place and wouldn’t be climbing in finals on Sunday. When Ella asked what we’d do on Sunday instead of climbing in finals, I said we’d go hiking at Stone Mountain, which kept her quiet for a while.

I also talked to her about the fact that she’s in a new age group and is climbing against older girls and that Divisionals is supposed to be hard. She didn’t buy it.

Fortunately, she placed 7th, which moved her on to finals on Sunday with a clean slate. All of Saturday’s scores were erased and the kids started from scratch. At dinner Saturday night, Ella’s coach told her she needed to step it up for finals, and she just hid under the table.

Ella had a bit of meltdown while getting ready on Sunday when she discovered that I hadn’t packed the correct lucky socks. Fortunately she decided that wearing a mismatched pair of my hand-knit socks would be good enough.

And boy howdy was it.

She came out on the floor with her game face on and proceeded to climb like a rock star. She finished her first route on her second try and finished her second route on her first try. The girls before and after had trouble with both routes. On the third, she climbed to within one move of finishing and fell, but she kept trying. I was amazed at how calm she was considering the tears the day before.

Once Ella was finished, we just had to sit and wait for the scores, which was painful. She was convinced she was last. I figured her to be in the top five. But all we really cared about was that she was in the top 7 so she could go through to Nationals.

When the announcer called out that the results were posted, a stampede of excited kids and parents rushed the entry of the gym. Ella came back with a huge, kind of embarrassed smile. She got second place!

I was so relieved. But honestly, I gained a lot more gray hair this weekend.

I would have been happy with however Ella placed on Sunday, because I know she climbed her best and left nothing on the wall. But having her place so well is like icing on the cake.

So now we register for nationals and make preparations to go to Colorado Springs in March.

Phew.

I won an argument

Since Ella learned to talk, she has fought me on just about everything. Her determination and stubbornness and willingness to debate will serve her well in later life. No one, least of all me, is going to talk her into doing something she doesn’t want to.

This makes being her mom very difficult sometimes, because “Oh my gah, quit talking and just put your shoes on already!” Nothing is easy.

To say that Ella has had a rough time with the transition to the new house and new school would be an understatement. Last Tuesday was her first day, and I pretty much had to drag her out of bed and to the car. Wednesday was just as bad. That afternoon she announced that she wasn’t going back to school and I couldn’t make her. When I explained that the law required her to go to school, we had this little exchange.

E: Why can’t I go back to Brentwood?

H: Because we don’t live in the district anymore.

E: You could just drive me there every day.

H: That would be really bad for the environment.

E: . . .

H: Seriously, there are no buses or carpools there, and it would be really polluting for me to drive to Brentwood twice a day just for you.

E: . . .

I have no idea where the environmental argument came from. It just popped out. But it turns out to have been exactly the right thing to say. Environmentalism has been so ingrained in Ella and her generation that she absolutely nothing to come back with in response.

I think it’s the first time in years I’ve won an argument with her without having to resort to “Because I’m the mom and I say so!”

Life in a small town

So we live in Dripping Springs now. Actually, that’s not true. Our mailing address is still in Austin and we have a 787 prefix on our zip code. But we’re in Hays County, not Travis, and the kids are in the Dripping Springs school district. And, as the crow flies, our house is a lot closer to Driftwood than it is to Dripping. It turns out the Salt Lick is only a few miles away on the back roads. Yay.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Austin is how it’s retained its small-town feel despite masses of people moving there every week. I always run into people I know at the Saturday Farmers’ Market downtown, and I don’t think I’ve ever gone running on the Trail without seeing at least one friend. Last week at The Nutcracker, I saw five random friends. It’s nice to live somewhere where everybody knows your name.

But life in Dripping Springs is truly small town. I don’t see anyone I know when I’m out and about, mostly because I don’t know anyone yet. But everyone – EVERYONE – is so dang friendly. The baggers and cashiers at the grocery store, the ladies in the school office, the woman on the phone at the school district transportation office, the sheriff’s deputy who did not give me a ticket yesterday. The cashiers at Whole Foods seem absolutely surly compared to people out here.

If I happen to mention that I just moved to town, people get even friendlier. They want to know if I like living out here and where I came from and where our house is. Every encounter ends with “Welcome to Dripping Springs! I hope you like it here!”

While Runnerdude and Knittergran were visiting, I commented on the friendliness every time I came in from running errands. Knittergran’s comment was that you’d think I lived in a war zone before, not north-central Austin.

I’m learning to adjust and to not freak the heck out when the pharmacy tech starts an idle conversation. But it’s just not normal.

And I’ve never been called “Hon” so many times in my life.

Welcome 2012

It’s no secret that 2011 was a rough one around Casa HOK, what with the depression and the 6 months of rental housing and the heat and B’s continuing health problems. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a year end. It was our very own annus horribilis.

But now it’s over.

We’re in our new house. We made it through Christmas. Lily danced in The Nutcracker. The big girls start a new school on Tuesday.

2012 holds a lot of promise for us.

This year I vow to:

• Unpack the remaining boxes
• Get my running back on track
• Kick the depression to the curb
• Get my freelance business off the ground officially
• Make friends in my new neighborhood

Nothing on the list is earthshattering or hugely life-changing. I should be able to accomplish most, if not all of them.

At the very least, I got the new year started on the right foot.

Or maybe the left. I wasn’t really paying attention.

It’s getting better

Things are much better around Casa de HOK. The kids are bickering less. The Honey Badger isn’t quite as fierce. Campbell isn’t as whiny. I don’t have a constant kettle whistle of stress going off in my head. B has his office all set up, which means we don’t have to listen to him on the phone anymore.

The day after Christmas was the first one where I felt normal. The rush to unpack before my parents arrived was gone. The panic about whether I’d get Christmas done in time was gone. I could finally relax and enjoy being in the new house.

A lot of my being able to relax has to do with my parents’ being here. My mom got Lily’s entire room – furniture, closet, dresser – all set up and pretty. She has also been hanging artwork, which is something I’m horrible at. My dad is putting up blinds and installing dimmer switches and attaching hooks to doors. I think I may ask them to move in.

In addition to all the help with the house, having my parents means we have man-on-man defense against the kids. My dad has made a daily trek to the park with almost everyone in tow, and my mom has taken the big girls to Target to pick out room stuff.

In the meantime, I’ve been unpacking and sorting books – oh my dog we have so many books – and organizing our closet. And I am purging like my life depends on it. The pile of boxes in the garage that are filled with broken toys, destroyed shoes, incomplete puzzles, dried-out play dog and Happy Meal toys grows by the day. As does the pile of stuff to go to Goodwill and the lady who organizes our school’s used-book sale. It is so nice to get RID of clutter. I may never unpack the rest of the boxes in the garage because I don’t want to bring anything else in the house.

I’m going to go dark for the rest of 2011 to allow myself to get my bearings and prepare for 2012. I hope you all had a happy holiday season. Best wishes for the new year.

Getting Settled

If you could hear the noise in my head, it would be a long, slow, high-pitched whistle, like a tea kettle, but more annoying. Thanks to help from dear friends, we are mostly unpacked. The only boxes left are the ones filled with books and the ones I look in and say, “I’ll think about it later.” All the important stuff, mostly, has been found. The kids’ rooms are mostly set up. The kitchen is functional – I have a pot of soup simmering away right now.

And yet. . .

• There are no pictures on the walls.
• We have no Christmas tree.
• All of my books are piled in boxes in my room.
• I haven’t bought a SINGLE.CHRISTMAS.PRESENT for the kids, or anyone else.
• I have at least three knitting projects to finish before Sunday.
• We are apparently hosting Christmas brunch.
• Three of the four kids seem to be coming down with something.
• When they aren’t acting sick, the kids drag out every single toy I just put away neatly.
• I am so far behind on laundry I may resort to going to the Washateria.
• My clothes are in piles on my closet floor because I no longer have a dresser.

I’m going to go hide in my closet and breathe into a bag now.

*****

And, yes, I realize these are all middle-class, white-girl problems, but I’m still overwhelmed.

We’re moved in

And by moved in, I mean, 90 percent of our belongings are still crammed in cryptically labeled boxes stacked in the garage. I spend my time poking through boxes, looking for something specific, only to find it, set it aside, and never see it again. I swear whole boxes are picking themselves up and hiding. Or my family is trying to gaslight me, again.

Yesterday we did actually make a lot of progress thanks to my m-i-l, some friends of hers, and my divine neighbor L. The beds are all put together and made. My big bookshelf is up and ready for books. Boxes and boxes and boxes of china (“Just how many place settings did your grandmother have? The boxes just keep coming.”) have been unpacked. The TV is set up, but we don’t get cable or Internet until tomorrow.

The kids have had the best time digging through boxes, rediscovering all of their toys. Campbell found his Geo-Trax and spent hours playing with them. Lily is finding all of her American Girl doll stuff and getting Ginny settled in her new room. Quote of the weekend: “Yay! I found Ginny’s wheelchair!” Ella has been sorting through boxes of books and deciding which ones she wants in her room, rather than in the play room.

I’m now at the stage where I’m looking in boxes and thinking, “I don’t want any of this stuff.” In our old neighborhood, I could have put everything out in piles on the curb, and it all would have been taken within hours. Our new neighborhood doesn’t allow stuff on the curb, and there’s no one driving through picking up. I guess I’m going to be calling a charity group to come get a large donation.

If I’m quiet for the next week or two, it’s because I’m still digging through boxes and setting up the kitchen and trying to make Christmas happen for the kids. I did at least manage to get the stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Lockdown

Yesterday afternoon, I was lying down trying to get over a killer migraine when B poked his head in the bedroom. Our landlady, whose office is behind our cute little rental house, had stopped by to tell him that she’d gotten a text from her son that the elementary school had gone into lockdown.

I flew out of bed and to the computer, hoping to find some sort of information on line. None of the news sites had anything, so I texted my friend L, who was in charge of carpool. She texted back immediately that she was with all our kids, safely in a classroom, and asked me to call the other mom in our carpool group.

When I’ve seen reports of lockdowns on the news, I’ve always looked at the parents standing outside the police line and wondered why they had shown up. What were they thinking to do? Stand in the line of fire? Push the police aside and storm the building?

Last fall, when I was at our preschool during the shooting on the UT campus, I was calm and collected the entire time. But I was there, with my kids, sure that they were safe.

Yesterday was completely different. I had no information, other than a few texts, on what was happening. The ONLY thing that stopped me from getting in the car and driving up to the school was the fact that L was with my kids. She’s like a second mother to them, and I knew she’d make sure they were safe.

So I stayed home and paced the floor, stopping to check the news sites and yelling at the Statesman on twitter for not having any information posted.

Finally L texted that it was all over and they were on the way home. I may have started crying. And I may have gotten weepy again when the girls got home and we talked about what happened. And again when I talked to Ella about Columbine and why reports of guns at school are so scary for adults.

In the end, according to the chatter on the school moms’ Facebook Group, the whole chain of events kicked off when someone saw a dad carrying a furled umbrella that looked like a gun and reported it to the office.

I’d like to take that umbrella and beat that dad within an inch of his life with it. Who the f*ck thinks it’s a good idea to take something that looks like a gun on to a school campus.

We never had lockdowns in quiet, little Sarasota, where I grew up. Our most exciting events were tornado warnings, in which we were told to lie down in the street right next to the curb or make a break for the YMCA across the street and hope for the best.

Ours wasn’t even the only school lockdown yesterday – a high school where a friend teaches was locked down because of shots fired nearby. And last Friday, a middle school in Lake Travis was locked down for four hours because someone said the saw a gun.

What is this world coming to?

I hugged all my kids extra tight last night and spent a long time lying in bed thinking of the what-ifs. All I could picture were the films of the injured student at Columbine climbing/falling out of a window. I didn’t get much sleep.

This morning the girls trooped off to school like nothing had ever happened. I gave them a hug and kiss as they left, even though I wanted to keep the home forever.

Religious education

As I have mentioned before, we are not a religious family at all. My kids' only real religious instruction comes from attending a very liberal, tree hugging preschool housed in a Methodist church on the UT campus. We are far from the only family at the school to not attend church, but I’m thinking we may need to, just for the sake of cultural references.

Campbell’s class is doing a little Christmas pageant tonight, which includes a few songs and a re-enactment of a scene from “The Little Drummer Boy.” I got to watch rehearsal, and I spent an inappropriate amount of laughing, but in an affectionate, I love these kids, kind of way. (But maybe not this kid.)

The kids all have roles – angels, wise men, shepherd, Mary, Joseph, drummer boy - the usual cast of characters. Campbell has been assigned the role of Joseph, and as I was helping him into his costume, he asked who Joseph was.

The best I could come up with was, “Joseph was Jesus’s dad. Except not really. God was kind of Jesus’s dad. I guess Joseph adopted Jesus and raised him. He was married to Mary, who was Jesus’s mother.”

I sort of sputtered out about then, and the preschool teacher stepped in, adding, “Joseph was Jesus’s earthly father.”

Yeah, I’m going to hell for sure.

But at least I have a cute little Joseph.