On the Plate

Dame was ranting a bit about parenting tactics she had observed with which she did not agree:

Dame: "How can people become parents without *any* of the necessary skills?"

Me: "Actually, it only takes one skill to become a parent, and you don't even need to be that good."

Dame: <eyeroll>

One of the great pleasures of parenting teenagers is being able to make obnoxious off-color remarks to a captive audience.

Anyway, one of the ones she was disagreeing with was requiring a child to either eat the meal served or go hungry. I understand the desire not to waste food or encourage pickiness, but we didn't wind up going that direction. And I had just been thinking today what a good thing that was. 

You see, it was Dash who had the most trouble eating what was served. It also turns out Dash has extensive allergies/food sensitivities which vary depending on exposure. Odds are most if not all of his emotional reactions to dinner were physical reactions he didn't know how to explain. 

Instead I tried to make sure something everybody could eat was available at each meal, treats were only present in small quantities, and if you really needed to, you could go fix something for yourself. Not that this made things easy, necessarily, when you have a small child with a tendency to anxiety and the metabolism of a hummingbird, who is already to the point of hysterics just making it from snack time to dinner time, and now has to think of something to eat that's not actually visible. (We never could figure out a reliable standby.) 

I am quite certain I was not always very patient or understanding through this process. But at least I didn't make things actively worse. And no one ended up unreasonably picky. It's been a good rule of thumb to assume that I don't know everything, and usually kids are acting they are for a reason, even if I can't figure it out right away. 

Common Ground

Recently I've had the chance to revisit some of my favorite sci-fi, one in books and one in tv series, which I like for pretty similar reasons. The TV show is Babylon 5, and the books are the Sector General short stories/novellas by James White. 

Both of them have a very similar setting: a space station on which various species meet in a challenging, but not hopeless, attempt to learn more of each other and live peaceably. Babylon 5's setting is a trade and diplomatic station, while Sector General is an enormous space hospital. I think part of the allure for me is a lifelong obsession with institutions in fiction--I loved boarding school stories as a child--which I suspect is largely because they are exotic, as I have spent my life entirely outside of them, never having attended an ordinary school or worked somewhere with more than a dozen employees. In real life, I'm pretty sure I'd go crazy inside of a week in a space station, I can barely handle a day trip to downtown Seattle. 

Sector General adds to this a great deal of speculation on different planetary conditions and types of sapient species. Unhampered by the limits of special effects, and with the need of the doctors to understand and prescribe treatment, the author goes wild with speculation on different theoretical body forms and social structures--an empathic giant insect, massive beings who can function in a vacuum but need to paint their food on, calm and small beings who form into a rampaging mass under stress, and of course plenty of tentacles.  Babylon 5, like most 20th century TV sci-fi, mostly has to stick with the humanoid with prosthetics on the head concept for the major species, although Dr. Franklin does get to tackle the occasional odd biological need.

On the other hand, Babylon 5, having been plotted as a multi-season show, delivers a uniquely satisfying and complex overarching plotline that deals with questions of identity, meaning, survival, and spirituality. That also gives time for some incredible character development, and my favorite part of the whole show is watching the individual choices and events that turn Londo and G'Kar, two washed-up playboy diplomats from different worlds, one into a saint (with a rascally side) and one into a supervillain (with some redeeming qualities), every step of the way perfectly believable and consistent. 

Sector General suffers from some of the obvious weaknesses of originally serial fiction, like the basic points being explained over and over, as well as the shockingly casual sexism of the 50s. Apparently it is much easier to envision a doctor with a carapace than a doctor with ovaries. Though it does moderate that in time and in the later stories the comely nurse is permitted to become a pathologist and the prohibition on women taking on the top role ameliorates from a universal rule to a possibly irrational prejudice of the Chief Psychologist. 

Babylon 5 fortunately is from a different era in that regard, and in fact has just as many main female characters as male, who have their own lives and goals and do not exist merely to be prizes for the men. Babylon 5 also is unusual in not assuming that spirituality will be cast aside just because a species develops interstellar travel, and religious figures and themes are frequently explored, in their potential for comfort, conviction, and conflict. (It is funny to watch B5 thirty years out and see the technology it misses that was just around the corner. Cell phones and laparoscopic surgery would have solved a lot of the problems that come up.)

But I think the thing I love most about these two things is the way they explore the question of how can we, seeing things differently, needing different (often conflicting) things, find a way to live at peace? Both Babylon 5 and Sector General are born out of a devastating war engendered by interspecies misunderstanding and a desire to know each other better to prevent future war. Sector General's backstory begins with two former combatants from the opposite sides, traveling about the galaxy to promote peace. But they are not pleased with the effects of the laborious efforts on all sides to avoid offense for fear of another war:

"We must get to really know them, Colonel," MacEwan went on quickly, "Well enough not to have to be so damnably polite all the time. If a Tralthan jostles a Nidian or an Earth-human, we must know the being well enough to tell it to watch where it's going and to call it any names which seem appropriate to the occasion. We should expect the same treatment if the fault is ours. Ordinary people, not a carefully selected and trained star-traveling elite, must get to know offworlders well enough to be able to argue or even to quarrel nonviolently with them. . . "

Eventually Sector General is established for that purpose--where different species can work alongside each other in common cause, and thus get the chance to really know each other--and cuss each other out as the need arises. And in time Babylon 5 provides similar opportunities to those willing to take them. Because it's not enough to have an arms' length tolerance and a list of offenses to avoid. What we need is to genuinely know each other. Which is pretty good advice for Earth, too, and we don't even have to set up a contact suit for chlorine breathers. 

Down to the Sea

The picture at the top of the blog, which I have no desire to ever replace even though the two people on the left side are somewhat fatter now and the two people on the right side are much taller, and the two people who were too terrified of the ocean to come within a hundred yards of it have become comfortable with it, was taken along the Pacific coast in Washington more than a decade ago. I can't remember the exact year because it all blurs together now. It has been our primary vacation spot for a very long time. 

I have many friends who love travel and seeing new and exciting places and I applaud them for their adventures and enjoy their photos and occasionally have a twinge of envy, but mostly I am completely OK with being very boring. I have always been a traditionalist. I was the small child with whom you did not dare to do things one Christmas unless you were prepared to do it every Christmas until the end of time. Also disposable income has tended to be in short supply and this is only two and a half hours away and quite inexpensive lodging if you can fit your food for the week in the car, as the only grocery option is the sole gas station. (Not easy when you are also squeezing in 6-11 people and all their luggage and a couple mobility devices and some beach chairs and boogie boards.)

While we have gone a few times as just us, most of the time it's a group trip with Their Majesties, Wondergirl, and Techboy and Toolboy and their respective families, all staying in separate houses but hanging out together on the beach. (Techboy's children having begun to have children themselves now, it was a four-generation trip this year.) It is not only a great way to spend time together without *too* much togetherness, it is very handy if you are someone like me and always forgetting something essential, because odds are someone else has paper towels on them.

For the past several years we have stretched this out to a week or a little more, which is really an amazing amount of time to unwind enough to actually be able to relax. Unfortunately, this year the Naval resort where we stay changed their reservation rules to give priority to active duty military (Her Majesty as a veteran makes our reservations). Her Majesty, who is a force of nature, after many days on the phone, still managed to find us all three nights at the same time, so we still had time for boogie boarding and s'mores and family taco and game night and ladies' brunch at the one nice restaurant, although it was definitely too short to actually relax. 

Burn bans permitting we have a campfire on the beach and spend most of the afternoon grilling things and toasting things and making smores and counting the heads of people boogieboarding. (Their Majesties can outlast any of the teenagers at this.) Burn bans not permitting, which was the case this year, my brothers have portable gas grills along with any other gadgets needed for comfort. Thus we can have the only fun parts of camping while still staying somewhere with showers and non-leaking roofs. (I have a theory about camping, which is that life needs suffering to be meaningful and people who have insufficient suffering in their daily lives for meaning pick up hobbies to supply it, such as camping.)

Naturally anything done this many times has accreted its own barnacles of tradition, such as the playlist of truly ridiculous songs which must be played each time and gets a little longer each trip, and the milkshakes from the one ice cream shop for the homeward journey. 

The really big thing about going to the same place year after year is that it makes coping with disability so much easier. It actually took us about six trips to be able to work out everything needed to go and make sure DOB was comfortable, could participate, and have adequate mobility to enjoy the experience. I recently came across an online conversation in which many people were criticizing Washington's practice of designating certain areas of the sandy beaches as public roads. While I am sure there is some impact on the environment, those beaches are still undercrowded and full of wildlife and it is immeasurably valuable to have a place where people who are stuck on wheels can get themselves down to the beach. (And no, being able to theoretically possibly rent a "beach wheelchair" so you can be pushed around by someone else is not at all the same thing.)  Washington has plenty more beach that is more protected. 

So though not quite what was hoped for, it was still a good time. DOB and I have plans for a 20th anniversary trip/honeymoon in a couple of weeks that will hopefully afford us a better chance to actually get some rest.

What a Day Looks Like Now

 Every once in a while I succumb to the nostalgia of old blog posts. (Sometimes I was quite brilliant in the past! Other times, not so much). Anyway, it was pretty fun to remember a pretty normal day twelve years ago and no doubt in another twelve years I will look back on today's equally chaotic but very different experience with similar nostalgia. 

4:30 a.m.: I wake up wracked with doubt about some eviction notices a client sent me for review yesterday. I *must* remember to check them again when I get into the office. I lie awake a long time.

7:00 a.m. DOB's alarm starts going off. I must have drifted off at some point because I did not hear Dash (15) get up and get breakfast and let his friend in. That or he has acquired ninja-level quietness skills, which is probably also the case being the only willing early riser among us. 

7:40ish a.m. I actually get out of bed and start fixing breakfasts. This is eggs and thawed frozen blueberries for DOB (he finds blueberries are the optimum size and shape for making sure all his massive pill regime has gone down); eggs, salad mix (I will do anything for arugula, even get out of bed) and a Granny smith apple with peanut butter for me; and I make tea for myself and Dame (15 but definitely NOT an early riser) and microwave some turkey bacon for her as she is allergic to eggs. She has been working very hard over the past six months on keeping a regular schedule and eating at reasonable intervals without oversight, things which can be quite difficult when you are dealing with ADHD and chronic pain and fatigue all rolled in together. But with the progress she is made I think she is ready to tackle 10th grade at public school this fall, even with the ungodly hours they subject high schoolers to. Deux (17) is on day two of his weekly migraine, so I make his breakfast (two burritos and a banana). While taking it up I have the bright idea of helpfully carrying up the laundry he didn't get finished before the migraine struck, only I try to do it one-handed with the hamper handle and the handle breaks and it spills spectacularly down the stairs. BUT breakfast doesn't fall and it furnishes some early-morning entertainment for everyone. Dash and friend laugh at the spectacle before they depart, I believe with my niece who is taking them to teach a 5-day club in the mornings this week. DOB heads to court. I sit down and finish my breakfast and drink my tea while I read the morning prayers and then (guilty pleasure) watch compilation videos of internet stories of people's terrible behaviors towards their friends and family. You would think I got enough of that at work. 

8:30ish I arrive at the office and check the eviction notices. Wonder of wonders, they *were* the right ones and all is well. My work morning also includes:
* A telephonic hearing on a topic of which I know nearly nothing, covering for our third partner. I disconnect us just as the case is called. We get through it anyway.
* A fun advisory meeting with a probate/business client with whom I have concocted a scheme that is at once perfectly above board, ethical, and legally appropriate and at the same time should allow some unpleasant natural consequences to fall on some people who are treating her rather badly. I hope it works out well. 
* Intermittent work on a fairly large project that needs to go out no later than tomorrow that I am still training a young staff person on because my main paralegal has been in the hospital for two months. Also this area of law just changed and I am still figuring out. I realize I used the wrong form in a different but similar case that is on for tomorrow and fix it while I am at it. I have some moments of panic when I think I have misplaced important documents for the third time with this client, but then locate them all.
*DOB returning from court and then heading off to apparently get a buyer for one of our cars (DOB has finally found the people he needs to fulfill his dream of being a car-flipper and so we no longer have a front yard), and he needs my power of attorney so I don't have to meet him but apparently we never scanned in our *own* estate planning documents like we do everyone else's so I have to execute a new one and email it to him.
* Quite a lot of phone calls as we just discovered missing paralegal was the only person who had checked most of our phone messages and so none of them had been reviewed in two months. 

Somewhere around noonish I notice that food should occur. If there aren't leftovers (as is often the case these days) I usually rely on my freezer stash of sausage patties and frozen vegetables, with almond crackers. I return phone calls and forget this three times while it is heating up. 

The afternoon continues with:
* A zoom meeting with a creditor on an estate (I have no idea why this was zoom and not a phone call, but since my camera was out it came out the same anyway). 
* Some tense and at times insulting negotiations with the public tenant defense on a case I haven't filed yet. I am annoyed with myself for not being as professional as I would like to believe I am. I am annoyed with opposing counsel for trying to guilt-trip me over taking a vacation when there are homeless people in the world, or at least for trying to using existential guilt as a negotiation tactic. We still come to resolution and I provide another staff person who is learning *that* area with direction to finish those pleadings.
* A meeting with some cranky clients that has to be delayed for 20 minutes because every meeting space we have is filled with people meeting. They are calmer after we meet and I send a months-overdue demand letter out afterwards. 
* Tackling a messy probate that I am hoping to keep my client out of too much trouble on even though I secretly suspect he deserves it. 
* Not quite finishing that one big project which really, really must go out tomorrow.
*  Making sure I have my files for tomorrow since I am still training staff on how to do this and this is where I really, really miss my paralegal with 30 years' experience who just handed me a stack without me having to think about it. However, everyone has been trying really hard with a great attitude and we are all learning more all the time. (And sometimes, I fear, forgetting other things like how to check the voicemails.)

DOB arrives back very late in the afternoon after a very frustrating court episode that is going to leave a vulnerable adult exposed to more exploitation. He'll probably figure out another tactic tomorrow. I consider drafting one last deed but I am cranky, tense and headachy and I have a potentially lively argument tomorrow morning, so I decide to call it a night. DOB still has a meeting and some other loose ends. 

5:30ish: I arrive home. I see from the signs about me that Dame remembered to eat lunch *and* unload the dishwasher. She is not here, though, which presumably is the fruition of plans she had to attend a youth support group of some sort at some church with some friends, which Duchess (19) was going to drop them off at. I therefore conclude that Duchess is also doing well, though I have not seen her as is the usual state of affairs. She is not working this summer but just got back from a two-week road trip with her friends from high school, all planned and paid for herself, and is looking forward to doing more assistant teaching at the private elementary school in the fall, and also teaching ASL at the private high school (where Dash will attend). I decide to make deconstructed egg roll (with no eggs) and the leftover rice from when Deux fixed dinner on Tuesday. I put meat in to thaw in the microwave. At this point in the day I generally resort to something with chocolate to fortify my resolve to get through the evening, because what I want to do is go straight to bed. I order groceries while the meat is thawing. Then I load the dishwasher with yesterday's dishes while everything cooks. Dash does not have an evening club today as he did earlier in the week, and he wanders through once or twice. I take Deux his supper. Dash and I eat in the living room while playing games on our phone and laptop respectively. (Dash's laptop died tragically last month.) DOB shows up about halfway through, on the early side for him, and takes dinner in our room. At this point in the day we have all had about enough on the human interaction front, except possibly Dash. 

7:30: I take the dogs for a walk. As the days get shorter I have to adjust my dog-walking time earlier and earlier and soon I will have to do it before fixing supper, which is challenging. We go around the block (a term I use loosely, three of the roads are private and two-thirds of them unpaved.) This counts as both aerobic AND resistance exercise because we never did get them leash trained and now they are middle-aged and set in their ways though no less lacking in energy and desire to chase every tiny thing they encounter. We make it two-thirds of the way around and then they spot a cat. I do not want to sit down in the gravel road, the only way I can get enough traction to stop them, so they escape. Thankfully they give up quickly and before they get entangled, so I don't need to spend an extra ten minutes climbing through brambles and untangling them.  We finish the walk. I sit on the couch and start writing this (usually I would be playing a video game). 

9:00 I start reminding DOB that he needs to start his evening stretching routine. Dame arrives home by some means and discusses plans for tomorrow and general angst. Duchess comes home and feeds the dogs. Duchess and Dame confer on ride plans for tomorrow. I put away what food remains and set things up for DOB's evening vitamin routine. Alas, Deux is still not up to help either with setup for that or so we can rewatch Babylon 5 with him, so we will just watch Prison Break by ourselves. And then I will take a shower and read a bit while DOB winds down by looking at ads for more used cars  . . . 

Teaching Tidiness When You Are Not

Parenting ideas tend to fall into two categories: Those of parents currently in that stage who are often very enthusiastic about something new but (without realizing it, usually) have no idea of its long-term consequences or sustainability, and those of grandparents who have forgotten what really happened and also failed to account for changing times. So I would like to post something in the sweet spot where I can actually tell if something I did worked long-term *and* can still remember what I did. I am banking on this being an area where the times have changed little, we still don't have robots that will pick up after us. 

To begin with, I have (diagnosed) ADHD, (undiagnosed) probably some degree of dyspraxia, and it is just so. dang. hard. for me to do any cleaning that involves sorting, tidying, putting away. I literally cannot sort laundry into darks and lights. (The solution to this: Wash everything on cold. And if someone wants to buy purple pirate pants from a dubious online retailer, they can wear lavender socks for the next two years.) Also I cannot follow any regular sequence of activities that is more than, say, two items long. On the other hand, I can do the physical cleaning just fine if the stuff is out of my way, and I am capable of great feats under unpredictable bursts of inspiration.

So when the kids were small, there was no way I could implement any of the nice little things people do about having regular tidy-up times to teach children to keep their things in order. Attempting to do so would only lead to misery and no greater tidiness. I also had unpleasant memories of my mother, almost certainly also dealing with her own ADHD, alternating between heaps of chaos and massive projects accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth at our failure to measure up to The Right Way to Do Things.

I had to go with what I could do, intermittent bursts of cleaning and sorting, followed by a slow descent into chaos, but I figured we could at least ditch the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I made it my mission to make cleanup days (whenever they occurred) to be relatively pleasant experiences. I involved the kids to start with and they in the early part of the day had the pleasure of discovering many lost and forgotten items. If they wanted to put those items where they belonged, great. (We kept a few categories of toys in designated bins.)  I let them go when their attention or energy lagged as long as they were out of the way. 

Meanwhile, I started piling whatever was uninteresting to them. Given my difficulty with sorting, I usually focused on a very few functional categories: Clothes/blankets to be washed, books (esp. library books), obvious trash, and All That Other Stuff. There were usually one-two garbage bags of obvious trash. All That Other Stuff went into boxes or baskets that were then stored in the garage indefinitely. 

Anything that we couldn't manage to put away just went in the boxes or baskets in the garage. There was no shame or punishment attached--if you wanted to go dumpster diving in the baskets to find a lost item, you were always welcome to do so. I just knew that there was no way I would have the energy left at the end of the project to actually vacuum if I tried to sort. 

I tried to make things as simple as possible to maintain for those with the desire and ability to do so. For instance, some of the children still have just two locations for clothes: Clean basket and Dirty basket. (TBH, except for my work clothes, this is how I operate as well.) They all started doing their own laundry when they were tall enough to use the machines easily, so maybe 10ish. We never bought a ton of miscellaneous toys, usually just a few large collections that everybody played with (blocks, duplos->legos, dressup, little plastic dinos/knights/soldiers). And stuffies. So many stuffies.  Over the years, when a toy category had clearly been outgrown and everyone was ready to part with it, we passed it on. I never made them give up something they wanted to keep. 

Anyway, at the end of cleanup day there was a nice, empty, freshly vacuumed space which--guess what?--*immediately* inspired a massive burst of creative play that turned it into a mess again. But with all the trash and most of the miscellaneous small items out, the mess was much less perilous to the feet for quite a while. And I made a point of never bewailing this, but rather treating it as the natural reward of the labor of cleaning--having an open canvas to begin again.

These days probably occurred about quarterly during good times and maybe as far apart as annually when times were tougher. We also moved a fair bit during the earliest years and of course that provided a natural opportunity to do this. 

Over the last seven years, I gradually did this less and less with the kids and finally stopped altogether. There wasn't a particular set point for this, mostly I was just too tired to do anything not immediately necessary. If a child ever *wanted* to do something in their room and requested my help, I did everything I could to provide my assistance. So over the last seven years they gradually took over doing it themselves, when it mattered to them. This also coincided with getting rid of nearly all the toys as they outgrew them, except some showpiece legos and of course books will be always with us. 

The end result with them now ages 15-19: they all maintain their own rooms at a level of neatness somewhere between functional but sanitary clutter and showpiece tidiness with zero requirements or involvement from me. (I continued helping Dame for much longer than the others because her combination of ADHD and chronic pain/fatigue made it particularly difficult. However, this week she decided to do it and made it through the whole thing herself, over a couple of days.) They wash laundry with sufficient regularity. Rooms do not stink. 

Mostly up until recently we have not allowed eating in bedrooms which prevents the worst nastiness. However, Deux's extended and intense migraines have made it necessary for him and it is gradually slackening elsewhere. I can always tell when I get home from work whether Deux's migraine has ended by the stack of bowls in the sink. (I use large glass mixing bowls for his meals so that I don't need to bring him seconds.) Having lived with many other adolescent and post-adolescent males in my life, I know the habit of returning dishes to the kitchen is not one to be taken for granted. 

Anyway, I had a lot of misgivings when they were young about my approach so this is, at least, a letter to my younger self: Hey! It worked! And perhaps it might have some helpful ideas for someone with small children coping with similar issues.