Update on small critters

1) The baby hummingbirds (named "Neko" and "Kame" by Big Son, after the nicknames of his two best friends from Japanese school = "Cat" and "Turtle") have tripled in size. They no longer look like raisins with yellow beaks, but like lumpy, fluffy prunes.

2) Daughter's head appears unoccupied by any tiny unwelcome residents. I still spend quite a long time checking her scalp every day, strand by strand. If the past is any indication, I will be doing this every day for the next year, until I finally calm down.

At mass on Saturday, I sat right behind Daughter and her choir friends. I really, REALLY wanted to just lean over and check her friends' hair -- I practically had to sit on my hands to prevent myself from doing this. I know it is just not cool to go through the hair of other people's kids without the courtesy of asking their parents first -- um, particularly in public, particularly at mass. That would have been kind of weird. But I SOOOOO wanted to do it, just to make sure the critters aren't getting around.

Am I OCD about this? Ya think?

At least I can see better, as of this week, which makes the scalp-searching much easier. On Sunday night, I dropped my only pair of glasses, and broke the frames. I had to go to work on Monday with the TAPE look, so I went to buy a new pair right away.

They tested my eyes, and guess what? My prescription changed in the eons since I last had them tested. I hadn't even realized how poorly I was seeing.

I mean, when I drive now, I can actually read road signs! Imagine that!

All the better for seeing the critters.

Punishment

I just found this Obama article linked on another blog.

Highlight:

“Look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama said. “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Funny -- if my daughter makes a mistake, I WANT the little whore to be punished with a baby, dammit. Nothing like pregnancy and childbirth to put the fear of sex back into her -- as I know all too well myself! Heh.

Daughter is currently grounded, because of her poor decision to stop handing in homework. Her teacher showed me her record -- she had more zero's than the Japanese Imperial Army Air Force (and why her teacher didn't mention this to me until now is another excellent question, but it's one I'm not going to bother asking this close to the end of the school year).

So now it's no computer, no meetings with friends, no phone calls, no DVDs, no ipod, no nothing, no fun -- she can go to school, and if she feels like singing in the choir, she can go to mass.

Today I got home from work, and found her taking a nap.

"NO NAPS!" I screeched. "Naps are a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT, and you haven't earned them! Go outside and do yard work, NOW!"

No, I didn't really say that. I let her sleep.

But hell, I have no time to take naps -- why does she get to take naps? It's not fair......

I want to be punished with a nap.

Birthday Mates!

Happy birthday, Big Son! Guess what? TWO BABY HUMMINGBIRDS, hatched this morning!

I'm going to let him name them as soon as he gets home from Japanese school.

It has also occurred to me, in the clear light of morning, that......I hold all the cards. Hub cannot say, "I insist you move back to Japan" at a given time of his choice.

Or rather, he CAN insist that all he wants, but there is no way he can compel me to move before I think the time is right.

He can, of course, come back here and get the kids, and take them back to Japan -- and he just might do that, for Daughter and Little Son, so they can be there when the Japanese school year starts in April. That would be fine -- and it's actually what I thought he was going to do.

In that case, he would have to take care of them. Kids and his workaholic lifestyle do not mix, unless there is a spouse present to pick up the slack. He KNOWS this.

Because I happen to be that spouse, I get to pick the timing of going back to Japan.

HOWEVER......here is something I learned long ago, in an expensive parenting/child development class I took after Big Son was born. Sometimes, parents have to lay down the law -- it's in our job description. But sometimes, it works better to guide the kids towards making the right choices all by themselves.

Pointing out to Hub that I call the shots in this situation would just make him angry.

Instead, I have to guide him toward making the choice that I think is best for the kids. And the bottom line is that he wants what's best for them, too, even though we don't always agree on what that is.

Wow, I really got my money's worth out of that parenting class.....

Weekend Update

I was out sick for three days this week. I can't remember the last time I missed three days of work.

I didn't even get to rest, because Little Son was out sick, too, but wasn't sick enough to sleep.

Daughter's teacher today told me she is in danger of failing some of her classes, because she didn't hand in any work, and refuses to do it.

After hearing about Daughter, Hub wants us to move back to Japan early.

I am not going to do that. There is not even the tiniest chance that I would do that to the other two kids.

He said, "Well, you have to move back in March, anyway, so that they can be here when the school year starts in April."

I was stunned he said that -- I had planned to stay here through the end of the school year, early next June. This was the plan we discussed last December, and tonight on the phone, Hub acted as if he were hearing it for the first time.

I said, there is no point in staying if Big Son can't stay and graduate with his friends, and that Daughter and Little Son can move back ahead of us, if they really had to be there for the first day of Japanese school.

And Hub had a FIT, at the outlandish idea that he be solely responsible for caring for two kids for a couple of months. Guess who had no sympathy for him, in that scenario?

Ironically, work is really awful -- I'm caught up in something that's not even my problem. I am still going in and doing the same job, writing the same kinds of stories, but everything is different now, and there is nothing I can do about it. The idea of leaving it all behind is very tempting, but no matter how I rationalize it, I think leaving would be the wrong thing to do.

Tomorrow is Big Son's 13th birthday. I will be the mother of a teenager!

On Sunday, I will try to help Daughter do her make-up work, so hopefully she can pass her classes. She doesn't want to move back to Tokyo early -- maybe discussion of that possibility will make her fearful, and inspire her to actually hand things in?

We shall see.....

Somehow, we have become "that family with all the problems."

Have a LICE day!

Little Son has STREP.

We are just the House of Pestilence these days.

Speaking of pests.....Daughter went over to her friend M.'s house after school yesterday.

M.'s mother drove her home, and came up to our door.

"Can Daughter sleep over our house tomorrow?" she asked me.

"Sorry, no," I said. "I normally don't let Daughter have sleepovers on school nights, and there's something else -- she had head lice last week, so we're not doing any sleepovers at all for a while, because I don't want her re-infected, or infecting anyone else."

"Oh, M. has them, too! I just found them today!"

"Oh.....?"

"I'm on my way to Walgreen's. What should I buy?"

M.'s mother is from Brazil. Obviously, she has a different cultural perspective on the lice issue, because she was very nonchalant -- so much so, in fact, that she had invited my daughter to sleep over at her house before taking steps to kill her daughter's head residents, and didn't even see fit to mention it to me until I brought it up. Amazing, I thought --- a big contrast to my "red alert" full freak-out panic mode, and sleepover moratorium.

I went and got all of our various lice-related products and showed her what to buy.

Then I said goodbye, made Daughter strip off all her clothing and slathered her head with the coal-tar shampoo, since it's too early to use the insecticide again. I threw her clothes in the washing machine immediately.

"M.'s head was itching, so I looked in her hair," Daughter said. "I found lots of shiny things that looked like the eggs you showed me, so I called M.'s mother."

"YOU WERE TOUCHING HER HAIR?!?"

I actually felt a little faint.

"Yeah," she said. "Then I showed M.'s mother, and she put one of the eggs between her fingers and made it go POP! It was a really cool sound!"

I had to sit down and catch my breath. My knees felt weak.

I reminded myself again that M.'s mother is from Brazil.

"She was a lot calmer than you were, Mama," observed Daughter.

Yeah, well......I'm from Connecticut. Freaking out about head lice is a cultural thing for me, okay?

I am an uptight American who gets ill at the thought of bugs crawling through hair.

(((shudder)))

Holiday

I am so grateful for the homemade Mothers Day gifts from my children. They always make me cry.

I am teaching them to boycott the holiday, otherwise. To wit -- I love getting flowers, but why create an artificial need to give them on a particular day, and a feeling of guilt and disappointment if they are not given? If you love your mother, give her flowers on any old day! Don't give in to mass-marketing and pay triple for a clutch of wilted pink carnations.

My parents are visiting my brother this week. They said they would call, and so far they haven't. I guess I'll call them, but they're probably out.

It has occurred to me that one reason I have so much trouble dealing with our current fractured family living situation is that the only close family I have is the one we created -- the one which created me has grown far apart from me.

I have never been close to my parents. The parental bond formed instead with my grandmother, who lived with us. My mother (my grandmother's daughter) resented this, and it drove us further apart. My father is a pretty nice guy now, but he used to have a horrible temper -- I hated and feared him when I was growing up, and there is still some distance. I talk to them on the phone every week, but I would not call our relationship close. We have never spent any holidays with them, since we moved to San Francisco. They either spend them alone, or visiting my brother.

I have one sibling, and I would have liked to have been closer to him, but we have very little in common.

When we first moved to San Francisco, he and his wife and son came out to visit us, and we had (what I thought was) a great time. I was hopeful for more such visits, but....they didn't happen. I waited for the invitations to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving with them, but.....the invitations didn't come.

They didn't visit us again. Last summer, we visited them -- I kind of forced the visit on them, but they welcomed us, and we had (what I though was) a great time. I was hopeful they would want to see us again, but.....I don't think I should hold my breath. I can always force another visit on them , but it's not happening naturally. We aren't estranged, but we just aren't close.

So Hub and the kids are really all I have.

It's only May, and I'm already dreading Christmas.

But at least I made it through another Mothers Day without my grandmother.

And the homemade cards and gifts make me so happy.

Winding down....

So far, so good -- no itch, no eggs. I hope we got 'em. I continue to operate in "panic" mode, of compulsive vacuuming and laundry, though.

Hub leaves tomorrow morning. The hardest part of seeing how happy the kids are when he's here is realizing that they're not that happy the rest of the time. Are we doing the right thing? Yes? No? Who knows.

It was a crazy week at work. I am really trying to avoid the office politics stuff and just stick to writing my little stories. It's hard.

I came THIS CLOSE to crying at a meeting yesterday in front of the Big Boss, the editor-in-chief of MarketWatch -- the guy who hired me back and wants to hire me back in Tokyo as soon as I can get back over there.

We were at a team meeting, on a conference call with the people in New York, and the Big Boss was in the room talking about all the upcoming changes, blah blah blah, new reporters just hired, new columns on the site, and then he looked right at me said, "......and of course L. WILL BE MOVING BACK TO JAPAN PERMANENTLY NEXT YEAR....."

And I had to stare at the table and hold my breath, with those words ringing in my ears, and then breathe really sloooooooowly and consciously to avoid bursting into tears.

Wow, THAT would have been GREAT for my career! Heh.

It's actually kind of funny, to think about it now. I'm glad that after only one day, I am able to look back on it and laugh already.

If anything, kind of losing it this week made me realize the extent to which I DO manage to hold everything together most of the time.

Maybe that's a GOOD thing for me to realize, because I have another whole year left of this unsettled life, before we uproot again -- and I want to make it the best year possible, for my kids.

For all of us, actually -- for me, too.