Death of a doll

When my mother was here back in September, she and Ella had a little tea party with Ella's tea set. Lily, as she is wont to do, started sobbing because she didn't have a tea set of her own and she really, really wanted a tea set of her own in a basket with a doll just like Ella has. Mom, as she is wont to do, tried to talk me into going shopping immediately for a tea set. She just can't bear it when Lily cries. I calmed Lily down and talked mom out of an immediate shopping trip, but mom was bound and determined to get Lily a tea set.

I went shopping one day at the Tea Embassy and found a cute little tea set in a basket with a doll. I called mom to see if she wanted me to get it. Of course, she did. She gave Lily the tea set for Christmas, and mom and Lily had many, many tea parties during the week my parents were here.

Unfortunately, about two weeks after Christmas, Lily came out of her room sobbing, holding her tea party doll, who had broken. Half the doll's face broke off, leaving scary googly eyes, and one arm and one leg had snapped off. I thought Lily was crying because of the scary eyeballs, but instead she was just devastated by the broken doll. We put the doll aside and told Lily we'd try to fix it or get a new one.

When mom came to town for Lily's birthday, she insisted on going to the Tea Embassy to see if they had any replacement dolls. They didn't have any exactly like the one that broke, but they did have a ballerina doll, so we got that. Lily was just thrilled, and she put the doll in the place of honor on the big table in the living room.

The next day, my mom was reaching for something on the table and knocked the doll to the floor. She and I just froze in fear, sure that the doll was in a million pieces. Miraculously, the doll survived the fall, but we moved her to a more secure location.

Ballerina doll wasn't so lucky last night. Ella and Lily were playing in their room when I heard Lily start wailing. She came out holding the doll's body in one hand and the doll's head in the other. I really, really wanted to laugh because it is just unbelievable what bad luck we're having with these little dolls, but I couldn't because Lily was so sad.

We put the doll up, and I've promised Lily that I'll find a doll repair shop to put the doll's head back on. I think I need to buy a dozen of these #*&#@ dolls to have as back-ups the next time one breaks, because it's only a matter of time.

Spousal deception

As I've written before, I'm terrified of going to the dentist. I love my dentist, but that doesn't stop me from being scared to go. Two weeks ago I had an appointment to have my teeth cleaned and a permanent crown put on, but I had to cancel because B had a meeting at the same time and couldn't be here with the kids. I refuse to hire a sitter so that I can go to the dentist. Somehow it just seems like adding insult to injury.

I never rescheduled the cancelled appointment, and I haven't answered the phone when the dentist's assistant called to talk to me about it. That's how phobic I am. B has been hounding me to make another appointment, but I've ignored him.

Last night B started asking about today's schedule and what I had to do. When I told him that it is my week to drive carpool for the first graders, he offered to pick them up for me. I should have suspected something, but instead I filled him in on the proper procedure.

This morning, B came out and announced that he had talked to our dentist and had arranged it so that I was taking his appointment, which is scheduled for this afternoon. Now I have to go to the dentist. B's rationale was that if he took care of the scheduling AND didn't tell me about it until the day of, I couldn't get quite as worked up about it.

I'm still pretty stressed about it, to the point that I'm considering taking a speck of Xanax prior to my appointment. I'm just not sure I'll be able to drive myself home afterwards. And I can't decide whether I'm angry at B for doing this to me. One the one hand, it will be a relief to have the appointment taken care of, but on the other, he's kind of treating me like I do Ella before her annual check-ups. I don't like being treated like a child.

I think B's answer would be that since I'm acting like a child about this he had no other option.

In the meantime, I'm sitting here dreading the appointment and thinking about all the things she's sure to find wrong in my mouth. Sigh.

Book-related meme

FishyGirl tagged me with a book-related meme. So here's my answer.

1. Grab the nearest book with at least 123 pages.
2. Go to page 123.
3. Type in the following three sentences.
4. Tag some number of people.

My book is Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation. My mom gave it to my dad for Christmas and had it shipped here to await their arrival. I sneaked a peek before Christmas and the book intrigued me, so I asked dad if I could borrow it when he was finished. It arrived today, and I'm already a chapter in.

"Born in 1760, Ellicot was more than six feet tall, hardy, and toughened by years of work in the outdoors as a surveyor. He had grown up in a close-knit family with a passion for mathematics. His father, a master clockmaker, had taken the family into the wilderness in the area of Chesapeake Bay, where they had built their home with their own hands."

I don't know yet who Ellicot is, but he sounds pretty interesting. I can't wait to get to page 123 and find out what he's all about.

I'm tagging O'Pine and Megan and Bitsy.

Throwing my hat in

Back in November I blogged about my goal of running the New York City Marathon by the time I'm 45, which is in 7 years. After seeing the Spirit of the Marathon last week, I decided that it was high time to actually do something about meeting that goal. So on Friday I found the official ING New York Marathon Web site and discovered that the lottery for entries opened today.

I just finished registering myself for the lottery, and I have my confirmation e-mail. I'll know in mid-June whether I've been accepted. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I get in. With any luck, I'll be in decent enough shape by then that ramping up in time for a November race won't be too hard, or at least as not too hard as training for marathon can be. If I find out that I've been accepted, I'll start thinking about joining a training group of some kind. No one else I run with has expressed any interest, and I'm not sure I'm dedicated enough to do it on my own.

If I don't get accepted, I'll try again next year, and the year after that, too. The race has guaranteed entry for anyone who has signed up for the lottery but not gotten a slot three years in a row. So worst-case scenario is that I'll be running it in 2012. But I hope it's sooner than that. Now that I've made up my mind to run NYC, I want to get going.

This goal even inspired me to get up and run this morning even though I really didn't want to. Ella didn't have school today, so, in theory, I could have slept until atleast 7:00, if not later. I'm glad I got up and ran. I've started this quest on the right foot.

Knitting stats

I was sitting knitting this afternoon - all three kids and husband are gone, bliss - and I was lamenting how long it takes me to finish projects. But then I started listing the things I've knit since September, when my mom made me buy sock wool, and I've knit more than I realized:

3 pairs of socks
3 pairs of baby booties
1 baby hat
1 hat for B
1 felted purse

That's all in about five months. Maybe I'm not knitting as slowly as I thought, given that I fit it in around kids, husband, house, and paying job.

I currently have a pair of socks in progress in this delightful raspberry Mountain Colors wool that my mom gave me for Christmas. I was going to start on a pair of socks out of the Noro sock yarn that mom also gave me, but the skein has disappeared. I've turned OCD, like I always do when I lose something, and I've torn the house apart. I can't find it anywhere. I've ransacked my closet and pulled apart the girls' room, but it's nowhere to be found. I just don't get it.

Unless I find the Noro, my plan is to start on some socks for the girls next. I have some great Supersocke self-striping yarn that I used for the baby booties and baby hat that will be great for socks for the kids. Now I just need a good sock pattern for them. Anyone have any recommendations?

And if you had told me in September that I'd be looking forward to finishing one pair of socks so that I could start another, I'd have laughed at you. I'm officially addicted.

Why I love running

Last night I went to see a movie called The Spirit of the Marathon. It's a documentary that follows a handful of runners as they prepare for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. The movie includes world-class runners Deena Kastor and Daniel Djengo and middle- and back-of-the-packers. It was a fascinating look at runners and how and why they run. A lot of the film was rah-rah stuff about how running a marathon will change your life, but even more of it was, for me, just the sheer joy of running.

I rode to the movie with one of my running friends, and after the film she and I talked about whether the film made us want to run another marathon. She said it didn't - but she's run Chicago and Boston. I said yes - I still feel that I have one marathon to run. I found out I was pregnant with Ella six days before my third marathon and didn't run. Not that I would make a different decision, but I still sort of regret not getting that one last race in.

Mostly, though, the movie reminded me why I love running. The sport is so pure - you put your shoes on your feet and head out the door. There's no hiding behind fancy equipment; it's just you putting one foot in front of the other. There are times when I'm running when I feel that my body is functioning perfectly as a unit - my arms, legs, lungs, heart and brain working as one. It is those rare zen moments that keep me going on the frustrating days when if feels like I've never run before.

I ran this morning with JTS, one of my favorite running partners, and it was just such a perfect way to start the day. It was crisp and cool with a huge moon reflecting on the lake. I felt so strong while I was running and so proud when I finished. I truly felt at peace with the universe for those five miles.

I've been in a funk about running lately. Not actually about the running, but about having to get up at 5:00 to go running. Even with great running partners, it's hard to drag myself out of bed on those cold dark mornings, especially when at least one of my children has woken me up in the night. But last night's movie and this morning's run helped to erase a lot of my funk.

Tomorrow I'm going to tackle a tough seven-mile route. It will be my longest run since my loop around Central Park and up Broadway during my trip to New York two years ago.

Poetry Thursday

Ella came home from school yesterday with an "extra" assignment of writing a poem, and she was thrilled. She chose pillbugs as the topic of her poem - the class now has terrariums with pillbugs living in them.

It's the type of poem where the first letter of each line spells out the subject. At first, she was struggling to rhyme each line, but once I told her that not all poems rhyme, things got easier. But she did ask a question that I wasn't sure how to answer. "If it doesn't rhyme, what makes it a poem?" I'll admit that I don't get poetry. I had to wrestle with reading and analyzing poems in college and grad school, and I just never clicked with the form, despite having some amazing teachers.

So after thinking for a few minutes, I told her poetry was using words to paint pictures; poems are songs without music. I think that description worked.

After finishing her pillbug poem, Ella decided to write a second, this time about the satellite that was shot down last night. Ella is obsessed with all things related to space, and the story about the satellite really got her attention. She was very upset that the militarty was planning to destroy it, even after I explained to her why they were doing it.

Here is Ella's poem about the satellite, sic all spelling errors.

Sroy satellite
At earths orbit
The army will blow you up
Ech and every pece of you might burn up
Like a diying star
Love is what I will all ways give you
I will all ways remember you
Till I diy I will remember you
Even past that

I was pretty impressed, spelling problems aside, with the poem. I especially the like line about the satellite burning up like a "diying" star.

Who knows, perhaps Ella will be a poetess astronaut.

Smarter than the dog

Back in November I declared Campbell as least as smart as our dog. Today I was able to up that assessment to smarter than the dog.

We had to go pick Lily up from preschool, so I told Campbell it was time to get in the car. He bolted to the front door, like he always does, but then he stopped and looked at his feet, which were bare. He turned around, trundled into his room and emerged holding his shoes out to me. I was so impressed that a. he knew he needed shoes, and b. he knew where they were. I praised him to the skies for getting his shoes, to which he replied "zhoosz," which is similar to how he says juice. I have to use context to interperet what he says much of the time.

When I talked to my parents today, I told them about Campbell's getting his shoes for me, and dad was happy to hear that his grandson is smarter than our dog. Now if I can only get his common sense to catch up a bit; he's fallen off the same chair three times today.

Herding kittens

I worked in Lily's class this morning as parent helper for the first time in more than a month. My regular sitter has been out of the country, and although she left me a list of numbers for her roommates who also babysit, I never got around to calling them. So I had to request subs at school to work on my days and pay the sub fee.

But today Miss K was back, and so Lily and I headed off to school. As I left, I thought about grabbing my camera, but we were running late and I didn't know where the camera was, so I bolted without it. I really, really wish I had taken 30 seconds to find it.

Lily's preschool is in a church that's on the campus of the University of Texas. The teachers often take the kids on little walks around campus - to the turtle ponds a few blocks away or to the Littlefield House next door to the school. But today, Lily's teacher decided on a grander adventure. We walked over to the Blanton Museum of Art, which is across campus from our school - it's a bit of a walk.

We paired the kids up, attached their "return to ECC" tags, and headed out the gate. Miss M was at the front of the line, and I was at the back. I have pretty long legs and tend to walk quickly, which meant I kept stepping on the pair in front of me. It turns out we shouldn't have paired those particular kids with each other. "Paul" and "Beth" are both daydreamers, and they'd both come to a standstill in the middle of the sidewalk, staring off into space. All the kids would yell that Paul and Beth needed to run to catch up, and they'd take off, only to repeat the process again.

I was interested in watching the reactions of the people we passed on campus. If I were walking along and saw 11 pre-k kids running along, I'd stop to watch and smile. Most people we saw did just that, especially the sorority girls. Others glared at us for blocking the sidewalk with our herd, upset I guess that we were impeding their progrss. Still others ignored us completely. The kids had fun waving to everyone in sight.

Our final destination was an outdoor installation at the Blanton. It was a pergola-like structure hung with hundreds and hundreds of lengths of rubber surgical tubing. The kids had a wonderful time running through them like a car wash, gathering as many of the tubes as they could possibly hold, and wrapping themselves up in the tubs, like flies caught in a springy web.

The teacher and I let them play for about 20 minutes before heading back. We knew the walk back to school would take even longer, and boy did it. About two blocks from the school I thought two of the little boys were going to sit down and refuse to take another step. They should all sleep well tonight from the walk.

As exhausting as the field trip was, I'm glad I had a chance to go. It was fun to watch the kids watching everything around them. They were fascinated by the many statues we passed, and they loved the little go-cart cars the UT police officers drive. It's good for them to be exposed and to have to the oppportunity to explore campus this young, and to see all the different shapes and sizes and races of people who inhabit the place.

But now, I need a nap.

"But it's Presidents' Day!"

That's what Ella wailed when I rousted her out of bed this morning. She was operating under the mistaken belief that school is closed on all holidays. She has no idea why Presidents' Day is a holiday, but she's very sure that she shouldn't have to go to school. I'm not telling her that the little boy across the street, who goes to private school, didn't have school today. That would just be salt in her wounds. She probably would have protested having to go to school on Valentine's Day if it hadn't been for the lure of cards and candy.

I can kind of see where she gets the idea, though. It seems that we've had a day off of school every other week since the end of winter break, and I'm getting tired of it. Every time we get into the swing of our school routine, we get jammed up by a three-day weekend. The worst part is that they aren't real holidays, ones that would keep B home from work, so I'm trapped here with three bored kids bouncing off the walls and furniture.

I pushed Ella out of the car this morning despite her complaints of the unjustness of the universe. When I got home I looked at the school calendar and noticed that Ella has next Monday off - parent-teacher conference day. Sigh. Two weeks after that we have Spring Break. Doesn't the school district know that it's highly inconvenient for us to have the kids underfoot that much?