Reasons Like Seasons

A coworker of mine is getting married next week, and as a ten-year veteran of this institution we call marriage, I felt it my prerogative to offer her some unsolicited advice: When you move in with your husband, there will be things about him and the way he lives that you will hate. These things that you hate will scream at you, drowning out all else, while the many layered things you love about him will only whisper. The constant love of a life is quiet, comfortable, unseen. Listen to the whispers when faced with the screams, and make them the loudest things you hear. Squint at the rest: the problems may not go away, but neither do you always have to see them.

Another trip to Walgreen's for the cream And application as the doctor said Then off to have my weekend as designed To have some peace: my un relinquished dream. Sunday and Monday come, and then, they go. Then Tuesday and we all go back to work But after school, Boy Two is doing worse. His skin is his irreverent, constant foe. His dad agrees to take him the next day To see the doctor yet another time If I can call and make an appointment And I promise to call without delay. At work, 6th period was soon to start When my cell phone began to ring and ring. I answer, and my husband's voice I hear I interrupt his greeting: "I forgot." So, here I think a side-note is in store, Where I lament the trials of my fate: To love, to tend, to work, to earn, to be, The challenges I hope I’m cut out for. Each time I try to call someone at school, I always get distracted by my job, I love my work, and phone calls slip my mind ...

It all began on Sunday afternoon, The middle of a three-day holiday Away from home and trying to relax The rash which never dies returned too soon. Boy Two is scratching, breaking open skin That bleeds and offers him no sought relief, So I get on the phone, the urgent line, Requesting some prescription medicine. "Try first some hydrocortisone," she states, "And see if that relieves the burning itch. Then call me back if his symptoms persist; A continued reaction we'll sedate." (To be continued...)

My children fed and myself fully-caffinated, we venture forth into the Ikea abyss. With surprisingly little resistance, we round the first floor smoothly, with minimal impulse spending (see giant stuffed broccoli) and only a small indulgence on my niece's upcoming birthday gifts (see adorable stuffed toys). I even manage to contain (most of) my living-spaces envy as we "experience" three unique "apartments," each of which is significantly smaller and yet still meticulously better organized than mine. I try desperately to remember that an entire team of dedicated professionals constructed each of these displays with the help of an unlimited budget and without the noticible distraction of another job, but it is a difficult battle. Upon reflection, I really would seriously consider moving into one of those apartments if I could let the boys jump on the couches without getting shamed (again) by a lovely, helpful member of the Ikea staff. But, again, I digress. ...

Dear Ikea, I am stumped, flummoxed, and generally uncomprehensive as to how I managed to spend half of my Sunday and over one hundred thirty of my dollars in your never-ending consumer madhouse and yet still have dirty laundry on the floor of my apartment. The mind reels. It all began with the pre-Ikea beverage stop, during which Boy 1 managed to frival away the majority of his allowance on a Mega-blok Halo mini-figure and I started the day strong with a cold can of Starbucks expresso. If anyone can explain to me why I will drive miles out of the way to spend only a dollar on my diet coke at McDonald's but gladly throw down almost three bucks for iced coffee in a can, I would be glad to hear it. But I digress. En route, I mange to also drop off an overdue library book which I had checked out weeks ago under the unrealistic impression that I would have an opportunity to read anything other than student papers and my Facebook feed. Consider my late fee as an act of negligent phila...

Why do I refuse to give myself permission to relax? After a whirlwind tour of Walgreens, the library, Ikea, Tokyo Central, the park and Sonic's, one would think I could leave well enough alone. Instead, I put together one of my new Algot laundry hampers and get mad at myself for not realizing I need to buy the casters separately. #Faceslap. Why do trips to Ikea seem to aways have to come in pairs? Two loads of clothes washed and dried, two lunches packed and put away, two laundry hampers constructed and filled,  two little boys put to bed and sleeping... Why is it the sky still bright at eight o'clock? Summer is coming....

When the Santa Barbara Mission was dedicated on the feast of Saint Barbara in 1786 by Spanish Franciscans, this location was chosen because it allowed a clear view of this ships coming into the harbor. Today, from the steps of the mission built in 1820, the only thing that can be seen coming from miles around are hoards of crunchy-granola and hipster couples with their children in $800 strollers. Here, at the IMadonnari Festival, you, too, can spend $12 for your own personal small person to create his or her own non-professional looking chalk drawing art square in the back parking lot. If you're lucky, he or she will also manage to ruin a perfectly acceptable pair of pants in the process. Artist Pastels Example Chalk Drawing Mission Front Featured Artist Triptych in Progress - The Virgin of Guadalupe http://www.imadonnarifestival.com/ http://www.santabarbaramission.org/history

"Sure, baby. I'd love to watch Frozen again," I lie. A harmless lie, perhaps, but a break with truth to say the least. "If only it were for the first time," I think to myself, "for the first time in forever...." If someone had told me when I was pregnant how many lies I would tell my children, I would have probably laughed in his or her face. I would have  prognosticated on my relationship with the unborn with the authority of Nostradamus. "I will be completely truthful in all things with my children as there is no better way to communicate with others than with total and complete honesty. Children deserve our best self in all things, so lying to my child will be completely out of the question." Please, add that to the list of things I had no idea about. The stories I have concocted are numerous, nuanced, and occasionally nefarious, especially when it comes to the thoughts and actions of imaginary beings: "I'm going to ...

I have a friend, a newly married young man in his early twenties, who's a Friday. When asked how much he loves the day, he replied, "I actually love Fridays so much that many times I prefer Thursday to Sunday." Great. He looks forward to the weekend like I look forward to arriving early at a doctor's appointment: when else do I get to sit quietly and enjoy someone else paying for my wi-fi? But I digress. When I get home on Friday afternoons, I am faced with at least a week's worth of laundry and dishes and two little boys who want to jump on all the furnature. Today, for example, I had the pleasure of washing six loads of laundry and digging under a giant pile of half-empty plastic children's cups in search of a fork that didn't require attention from a biohazard team. That was after I got to clean up the pound of salt Boy 2 dumped on the floor, but before the nightmare which was brushing Boy 1's teeth. I imagine my friend mentioned above went home a...

Kallax Shelving Unit "This is the worst day of my life!" screams Boy 1 as he teeters precariously near my open laptop on the top of a questionably stable Ikea Kallax shelving unit. "Why, baby? What's wrong? How can I help?" "I want to order Kai. Order this one for me right now! "How much does it cost?" "I don't know." "What does the number on the screen say?" "17." "How much money do you have?" Tears streaming from his face, he shoves a pile of crumpled bills in my direction. "You count them," he replies. Slowly, I flatten the bills with the edge of my hand, one-by-one, until I have four green rectangles lined up flat on the carpet. "Five plus one is six, six plus one is seven; seven plus one is eight. Eight. You have eight dollars." "Whaaaaaaaaa!" he screams with the power of a hurricane. "Order it for me NOW!" Ninjago Lego Set 7...

Boy 1: Brother, No! You are Not allowed to play with that! Give me back my head! Boy 2: No, I will never Give back your tiny Lego: Consider it mine. Boy 1: I dare you to eat The very piece you just stole. Mom will love that plan. Boy 2 You cannot trick me That easily, my brother. Small but smart am I.

I think Boy 2 grew last night while I was asleep. This morning, I accidentally put  Boy 1's shirt on him and didn't even notice until I picked him up from daycare this evening. All day long, he was sporting the "Big Brother" shirt like a rock-star who needs a new haircut. Boy 2 is different than we are. My husband and I are both oldest siblings, so we rolled with Boy 1 like it was the only way to go about in the world. Three anxious, structured, cautious, reliable, firstborn peas in a pod. Then came Boy #2: an enigma wrapped in a mystery. He smiles just for fun. He tries to jump, falls over, laughs, and does it all over again. He will talk and talk his baby talk, and we all stare at him and try to figure out what he thinks he is saying. We are like three scientists working to discover the characteristics of an alien species. We want to identify, label, and categorize; he wants to put marti-gras beads on the cat. Unquestionably, Boy 2 was born into a different fami...

My bowls never looked this nice. ...continued from "Home is More Than Where You Sleep at Night" I started by getting rid of things. My apartment was full of things. My grandmother's coffee cups. More than a dozen metal mixing bowls. Clothing and shoes I had owned since high school. Boxes and boxes of baby gear. Enough stuff to fill a three-bedroom house with a den and a living room all smooched into my 1100 square foot apartment. I needed to get rid of some things to make space for myself. Exer-Saucer (AKA Noisy Room Space Eater) I started with the easy stuff: clothes Boy Two had outgrown, things that were clearly broken, the exer-saucer which had been taking up the entirety of my living room since I was five months pregnant. I found new places for all of these things. Some I gave away to friends, some I donated, and that monstrous exer-saucer made me enough money on Craig's list to buy myself three grande caramel macchiatos, each of which I savored. Howe...

The text from Boy One's teacher read, "Hi...hope you are feeling better...just wanted to let you know that [boy one] smacked [another little boy in his class] in the stomach as [he] was leaving the table at pick up for no reason that I could tell and neither [Boy One] nor [the other kid] could tell me why...." Clearly, I have completely failed as a parent. My son will never learn how to read, and he'll be arrested for assault before he hits third grade. Life has officially ended. In response, I set forth to remind Boy One that never, under any circumstances, do we use our bodies to express our anger. Everyone gets mad sometimes, but no one gets to punch people in the stomach, even if they really, REALLY, want to. Ray: Why did you hit him? B1: Because he said, "Ha, ha. You're the worst person on the planet." Ray: Why do you think he said that? B1: I don't know. Ray: Did you do something mean to him first? B1: No. Ray: Are you sure? B1: Yes, ...

I believe it was in November, a few weeks before we had to sign our third lease, that I realized I actually live in my apartment. Before that, the apartment was never my home, but more like a storage locker, a place to keep my things and eat breakfast while I waited for a house. In a word, I was naive. I though houses just miraculously came into people's lives, just as had the houses I had lived in with my parents and the house I moved into about a year before my grandfather died in the living room as I sat with my father. I can really not think of a preferable way to die then at home in the house where I raised my children and loved my spouse, in the company of my son and his child. That house had always been a place of safety for me, and I loved it there when I was young, but it was more than I could handle on my own. It was old. It needed maintenance. I had a small child, and my husband had a job that was much too far away. I could not envision buying it from my father thoug...

One of my middle school students wrote me an email explaining that a member of her team would not take the role of secretary to take notes for her group. Here was my response: Dear Student, Thank you so much for the wonderful job you have been doing leading your team for our play. I am pleased with your leadership and proud of your developing skills. As a leader, sometimes other people are difficult to deal with. Sometimes they can't do the jobs we want them to, and sometimes they can but choose not to. If one of your teammates will not complete a certain job despite repeated requests, I suggest you ask her which role she would like to take, and if it is reasonable, then let her take that role instead. All people are not good at all things, and I expect you will feel better and find more success if you allow you team to build on its strengths rather than focus all of your attentions on its weaknesses. Thank you, again, for all of your work. Sincerely, Mrs. Lydon  ...

I want Boy 1 to read so badly that it hurts. He knows a few words, but I feel that I have no justification to believe he is a mini-genius until he can read me a story. He already narrates adorable fictional prose, but due to some unknown reason, I don't feel like it counts until he writes the stories himself. As part of this epic journey, I have decided to allow him a Lego prize for every perfect square of words he learns. So far, he has 9, which is 3 squared in case it has been more than ten years since you took 6th grade math, and we ordered some Ninjago Legos from Amazon to celebrate. Now, every time I pick up my phone, he asks if he can look up the delivery status of his Legos. On the one hand I should be pleased that he knows so much vocabulary surrounding orders on Amazon. But, on the other hand, I should be worried that he knows so much of the vocabulary involved in ordering items from Amazon. It seems like with parenting, there is absolutely no winning, or at least, ...

Blog Post 1 In My Distant Youth In my distant youth, one of my very favorite bands was the southern California-based group Something Corporate. I was drawn to them first by a young man, an artist whom I loved and treasured like a precious flame; one I needed to keep warm yet could neither hold nor contain. One day, when I was pulled in more directions than I could count, in my first apartment away from home, he sat me down and said I had to listen to this song. He had it burned on a CD for me, and he loaded it on the old stereo system I had bought with money I collected in high school, and here it is, as I learned to love it, live at the Ventura Theater, sometime around 2002:  https://youtu.be/0NwJWWnn-cw When I used to listen to this song, I would ache: ache for love I wanted more than I could bear, ache for a home where I would have enough room to live; ache to have a dream that I could believe in and call my own. I wanted love, a home, and a dream. Little did I know, th...