Generation Exhausted

My children solve all my problems for me

So there I was, sitting there today, thinking to myself. "Self," I said. (but, you know, silently, in a THINKING way) "Self - you are broke. You seriously need to scare up some more work, and in a BIG way, and NOW." (I've got a little project I'm working on right now that's actually a BIG headache, but the pay is, you know...not enough. Or ongoing.)

So, being the creative type I am, I immediately deduced that the best way to get from Point A to Point B was by way of Points J, Q and W. In other words, spend money I don't have in the hopes that it will help me to make all the other money I don't have YET.

50 points to those of you who just nodded your head and said, "Of course, how else to solve the problem?"

So. I decided that I could afford - or if not afford, at least justify. one of two things:

A - This book, which I saw in Iowa at the university bookstore, but when I went back to get it, the bookstore was closed (more later on why in the world a store would CLOSE EARLY when there are ten thousand people wandering around campus wanting to spend money)

Or B - resubscribe to Freelance Success. The first time I subscribed, I sold a $1600 piece two weeks later. It is SO worth it, and I miss it.

And then, we went to the orthopedist. Lest I have dazzled you all with the glories of universal health care, and convinced you all to migrate North immediately, let me tell you something - not everything is free.

The ER visit was free. The xrays were free. The visit to the fracture clinic was free. The orthopedist consult was free. And, thanks be to Tommy Douglas, and the Ontario government's recognition that children, at least, need FIXING when they're broken, the physiotherapy will be covered.

However, the fancy-dancy knee brace the doctor prescribed was $200.

Good grief. Thus endeth my dilemma. FLX and/or The Creative Professional will have to wait awhile.

BUT!

Today I also came up with the reason I will have to continue to drive a minivan even after the adults in the house once again outnumber the children. I would hate to try to put someone who couldn't bend their leg into something like a Sunbird or a Focus.

And for the record, the Coaches' Party was outside in a big field, and I was stone cold sober on the opposite side of the field from the DJ. Pinky swear. I could hear them playing Lean On Me, so I don't know why I couldn't hear them paging.

I'm ba-a-a-ck. And Mother of the Yeaarrr Redux

Hi honey, I'm home!

Know what there wasn't any of in Iowa? (besides hot coffee) There wasn't any humidity. It's so hot and humid here today, I finally succumbed and melted into a puddle on the floor about two hours ago, that's how hot and humid it is.

I really enjoyed World Finals, and have once again come home totally jazzed about Odyssey of the Mind. It was such a great experience, meeting people from all over, and being in the midst of all that creative energy.

So, here's where they give me my Mother of the Yeaarrr tiara to go with my existing Gold Medal in Bad Mother Moments.

We delivered the childrens to their wrap-up dance, and headed off to the Coaches' Party, with strict instructions for the darlings to be waiting when we returned to pick them up roughly two hours later, because our bus home was scheduled for immediately after that.

So, about to turn into pumpkins, Teacher Coach and I rushed up the path to the building to get the kids at 11:37 p.m. My Oldest Daughter's pink cowboy hat was visible on the porch, and I could see her telling the adult that was crouching next to her, "There's my mom there."

The adult was a paramedic. There was also a chaperone and a security guard.  Darling Oldest, it seems, had fallen 20 minutes after we'd left, and she'd spent the last 90 minutes trying to text me on my phone, and her phone (which was in her bag, which was in my possession). I hadn't heard the beeps.

Her knee was injured and swollen, and she couldn't walk. I was still reeling from the "mommy, where were you, I couldn't find you" and all its implications when the paramedic suggested we call an ambulance and bring her into the local Urgent Care for xrays.

My response? Not, "Oh, thank you, please help my baby!" No, it was more along the lines of "Dear god no, in 12 hours we'll be in Ontario where medical care is free."

You see, whenever I'm in the States, I'm always remembering Linda and her broken ankle, which I think has cost her something like eleventy billion dollars in the last ten years. And even though we had travel medical insurance, you never want to actually, you know, USE IT, because god only knows what it covers, and how.

In my defense - she wasn't crying, and in spite of the not walking thing, she appeared to be coping with the pain. The kneecap appeared to be where it was supposed to be. The knee is sensitive to begin with, and I do have some sixteen years experience as a mother with all the emergencies that entails. And I'm fairly certain the insurance wouldn't have covered two flights home, which would have had to happen, as the bus would have had to go on without us. Plus, they hadn't pulled out all the stops to find me (which would have been quite easy, actually, a simple radio to the Coaches Party and a page over the loudspeaker) in a hurry.

So. We put her on the bus, put her leg up, got more ice, and came home. Iced it all day yesterday and headed for ER this morning, where they determined that we'd done all the right things, but the thing is still swollen like a softball and she'll have to go to the fracture clinic tomorrow.

I'm not a bad mother, I swear I'm not. But it reminds me again that while my choice to go into ER tends to be influenced by whether or not I think we're going to have to wait fourteen hours once we get there, it's a far cry from worrying about whether or not it will be paid for.

You do the best you can with what you've got.  I think I did the right thing, but put this on the list of things for me to feel bad about anyway. I'm fairly certain the girl already has.

Is it really almost over?

In ten hours, give or take, we'll be boarding the bus home. It's all over but the last-minute shopping and the poignant goodbyes. And the parties. We musn't forget the parties they give us, complete with food, drink and music.

My back is killing me -I'm dying to be in my own bed again. We've had a good week, met lots of people, and I managed to score all the pin trades I was aiming for. We've talked about "last year" and "next year" and picked things apart and put them back together again about this year.

I think when I get home, I'm going to buy stock in Tim Hortons just to express my appreciation at its existence. The tales of the coffee capers for this trip will live on long after the blisters on my feet have healed and I've lost all my pins.

Our scores were exactly what we deserved, no more, no less, no surprises. Lots of things learned this week to take home with us.

We'll be travelling the highways and the bi-ways through the night - see you home tomorrow!

No corn in sight, unless you count the niblets in the dining hall

We have arrived.

Not only have we arrived, we've walked, eaten, slept, swum (swam?), encountered the flora (grass) and the fauna (swans and bunnies), eaten some more, slept some more, and, well, you get the picture.

And the kids have only driven me halfway 'round the bend. Stay tuned for Part Two in this Very Special Episode Of Travelling With Teenagers.

Seriously though, the ISU campus is gorgeous - green, manicured, litter-free. Many, many more trees than I anticipated. Appparently the only thing that DOESN'T grow at ISU is computers with Internet access. Hot spots, there are plenty of - but we're all familiar with my shortage of a laptop. One more reason I MUST have a laptop. As soon as I finish paying for this trip. And baseball. And summer camp. And groceries. Perhaps in 2008.

Proof positive that smoking is the great unifier - I've struck up a casual "buddy ship" with the Poland coach, after he bummed a cigarette from me the other day. We're being housed with most of the International teams, which is hilarious, because we're about as international Connie Chung. Yesterday, a guy from PA (22 hour drive) expressed his awe that we'd come "all the way from Canada". Please note that our bus ride was half the distance his was.

Today, a US team spent two hours teaching a team from Singapore to play football. And then they played. I was impressed - I was born and raised in North America, and in 34 years, I've never been able to grasp the concept.

Must go - the children are anxious to go hide in their rooms and play cards, none of them being the social butterfly that I am. I'm seriously low on coffee and nicotine (Iowa NEEDS a Tim Hortons. Right here. Tomorrow.), so may make myself scarce. I hoped to work on the novel, but apparently, the children believe that the laptop (no Internet access, no wireless card, see above) was brought along for the sole purpose of charging their iPods.

More tomorrow maybe. And competition tomorrow - that's why we came, after all!

I-o-i-o, to i-o-wa we go

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

Though no jet plane this time around - instead, I'm leavin' on a bus with a whole bunch of kids, mine own and others. LONG drive - ten hours or more. Can you imagine? Two dozen creative genius children, assorted parents, coaches, and others. Plus one control freak - me.

Think good thoughts.

At the moment, our spontaneous problem to solve seems to be how to fit our luggage AND the team's gear into my minvan. Doghelpus when we get to the bus, with its "limited luggage capacity."

So, I will post when I can, and enjoy the views of the cornfields in between. Wish us luck!

Would you put your head in her hands?

Up bright and early this morning - 7:30 a.m. ON A SATURDAY - and all because Oldest is A) lucky, B) frugal and C) a believer in re-gifting.

Let's start at the start, shall we?

A couple of weeks ago, after Car Wash #4, the big girls and I dropped by the fundraiser being held at a local roadhouse for the OM teams from our elementary alma mater (and Little One's current school) While there, I gave the kids some money to purchase raffle tickets.

Oldest won a free cut and style from a local salon.

Oldest hasn't worked a whole lot in the last few weeks, being otherwise occupied with volunteer pursuits (a play) and OM fundraising, etc. etc.Not working leads to small paycheques, at a time when large paycheques are sorely needed for the trip to Iowa. In other words, every penny counts. So a free cut and style is a nice treat. She makes an appointment.

Mother's Day rolls around. See above on reduced work hours, small paycheques, etc. See previous posts where the phrase "god I need a haircut" is repeated. Repeatedly. On Mother's Day, Oldest says, "For your gift, I got you a haircut. Your appointment's on Thursday."

So I reschedule according to my schedule.

Now, a word about my hair. I'm fussy. For most of my life, my aunt has cut my hair, and I've had mostly bad experiences with other hairdressers. But my hair needs cutting and my aunt is very occupied these days. So I went to this appointment with some trepidation, and almost cancelled, so worried was I.

But this hairdresser and I chatted, and I explained what I wanted, and would you believe? She got it EXACTLY right. EXACTLY.

Plus, it turns out two of her kids go to the high school with my kids, in the same grades, and she was a wonderful conversationalist, and, well...I would go back to her. It worled out that well.

Now, looking in the mirror, however, I think I need to start doing something about makeup. I look...undone. Other than high school, I've never been real big on the makeup, not having the patience to spend the time. But there are lines now, and a sense of weariness that I think could be perked up a bit with some mascara and lipstick.

I think about that card party I went to a few weeks back, and all the little old ladies with their little old wrinkles, and one thing strikes me - those ladies? They take the time. Wrinkles and all, they take the time to put on some lipstick, and get their hair done, and look nice, and even though they're old, and mostly wear polyester, they somehow exude...style. They're old, and stooped, and move a lot slower than they once did, but they're....ladies.

So now that my hair's back in shape, and I've found another hairdresser I can trust, I think it's time to start looking like I leave the basement once in a while. Even on the days I don't.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

P.S. I plan to blog from the Land of Corn and Captain Kirk, provided I have Internet access. Stay tuned this week for daily reports!

Daddy's Girl

It is amazing to me that science and technology can put a man on the moon, replace a real heart with an artificial one, create babies in a petri dish and make it possible to watch California TV stations in Ontario, yet every now and then my ISP will inexplicably be "unable to find" a Web site. Like Typepad, which my network has insisted for three days now didn't exist. Even though it did exist at my mom's, Linda's, and Kim's. (I checked)

But. I am back, Typepad exists again, and I am feeling...philosophical. Consider yourself duly warned.

As happens too often as I get older, I had occasion two nights ago to attend a funeral visitation. A long-time friend suffered the death of her father this week, and so we went to pay our respects.

I was struck this morning by a realization: in the last two years, three of my friends, all women in their thirties, have experienced this.

If that doesn't make you call your dad just to say "hey", I don't know what would.

In all three instances, their dad was older than mine, though not enough to make me feel immune. All three men had been ill for some time. Their daughters watched and waited, as the first "men" in their life (that's what a dad is, after all) suffered and deteriorated as the inevitable approached. These friends of mine, the daughters, served, to one degree or another, as nurse, as companion, as relief and strength for their mothers when it was needed.

And then, they coped. And grieved.

Last evening, as though the power that charts my course wanted to be sure that, indeed, I would think about this, Linda asked me if I'd read over some parts of the memoir she's been working on. She's blogged about it before, and I'm sure she will again, so no details here. But essentially, I can tell you this - it is about Linda and her dad.

Fate doesn't have to smack me in the head with a two-by-four to make me think that thinking about my dad is what I'm supposed to do today.

I have a lot to write about my dad, I think, but not quite yet - it's still "percolating" as we writers like to say. Suffice to say that I love my dad, and know that my dad loves me. And that tomorrow - first chance I get - I'm going to tell him so.

If I see a guy building a big boat and gathering pairs of animals, I'm outta here

Somewhere over the past 24 hours, my mind has leapt from the casual, "Oh well, still raining, it'll stop eventually" passed quickly through "STILL raining?" and landed at "For the love of God, will we ever see the sun again?"

Dear Mother Nature: I believe the saying is April showers bring May flowers. Not May showers drown the April flowers that looked so pretty.

Tonight, from the back seat of the car (which is the place that always seems to inspire my kids to be at their wittiest), my nine-year-old remarked, "At church they said that God said he would never flood the earth again."

To which I irreverently replied, "That's right. Now he just floods parts of it at random."

Her comeback was lightning fast. "Yep, and it's our turn now."

Even Mir's Battle With The Bilge didn't alarm me, but when the call came from the baseball coach this evening, I began to wonder. He was calling to cancel TOMORROW'S game.

To understand the signifigance of this, you must be versed in Little League. In Little League, games are never NEVER cancelled for weather until the last possible minute. Like, when we're putting on our shoes galoshes to head wade over to the diamond.

This stubborn refusal to acknowledge rain, sleet, snow or grashoppers as an impediment to the game is because missed games? Must be played eventually. They must! be! made! up! And the getting the right combination of available diamond/umpires/coaches/players outside of the two nights a week they've committed to? That's about as rare as a Golden Ticket in a Wonka Bar.

Plus, there's a politicking to calling a game on account of weather. If it's the visiting team that calls up and says, "Are you kidding me?" then it's not a rainout, it's a forfeit. So everyone shows up hoping no one on the other team shows up, and then it's a forfeit the other way. Except that the home team guy, because he'd rather spend the next sunny Saturday on the golf course, doesn't want to call it either. So then he shows up, and hopes the other team doesn't, which would make it a forfeit. Forfeits don't have to be made up.

The end result is that every single player shows up, and they all struggle through five innings with a small lake in front of the pitcher's mound and mud the consistency of quicksand at third base.

I once had a t-ball player cry because I made him leave his umbrella on the bench.

So, with the game being cancelled 24 hours ahead of time, I am now setting out a plate of sandwiches for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

But it turns out that the city, concerned about broken ankles and litigation (and possibly their landscaping repair bill) has closed all city parks to sports tomorrow because of the five days of deluge we've been enjoying.

Smart city. Except we'll still have to make up the game. They say that the rain should be ended by July.

Why can't we just jump over Hump Day?

Welcome to Canada, where hockey season never ends, apparently.

Wednesday is a bad, BAD TV night. Even without the hockey. Ever since they moved West Wing to Sundays (the worst move EVER), there is simply nothing on TV on Wednesdays. This becomes especially apparent when the stars align and cause the following conditions:

Lightning and thunder force me to shut down my computer

My trip reading material is still en route from Amazon

The hockey, it makes it worse. Because the hubby, though not a sports fan, has, for some reason, been watching the playoffs. There are permanent bite marks on my tongue from NOT saying, "What? After 17 years of marriage, you're suddenly one of those guys who watches hockey on TV? Talk about bait and switch!"

Was treated to a concerned aside from the Girl Guide leader this evening. The Guides were working on invention prototypes, and Youngest designed a "zapper", that she could "shoot people in the butt with when they're bothering me." The Girl Guide leader thought I should know.

I was more concerned about the paper hat she was wearing (Youngest, not the Girl Guide leader) that she claims is her "happy hat." Apparently, wearing the hat keeps her in a good enough mood that she doesn't feel the need to zap anyone.

Sometimes I wish I had a zapper. Sometimes I wish I had a happy hat.

I have a great idea for a new novel (yes, another one) and am anxious for it to burst forth, but the bursting, it has not happened yet. Plus also, I have to get the Baby Guide out before my trip to the Land Of Corn And Captain Kirk.

Went to the church card party today, and have discovered how to win at euchre. Simply wait until your grandmother and her friends are at that stage in life when they start to get a little dotty, and boom! you're the best player at the table.

What else? A baby spit up on me today. First time in ten years I've been spat up upon. She was a cutie though, so I forgive her.

So, an overcast day, an overcast mood. Waiting for sunny skies to return!

I could be a trend-setter

Hey! AGK has a wonderful idea relating to my "Day In The Life" post. (scroll down, because I'm too lazy to link) What a better way to get to know your fellow citizens of the blog-o-sphere (or as Alan calls it, Pyjamastan) than by getting a glimpse of their day? So go ahead - blog A Day In The Life of your own. If you do, send me the link, and I'll post it.

Meanwhile, my face is sunburned. Again. Which further reinforces the whole 'I really need a haircut" idea, because when I brush my bangs casually off of my forehead, there's a clear line between pink and pale. However, we have held our last car wash, so no more Saturday sunburns for me.

Lately, I've been feeling a lot like Anne Of Green Gables. Not in an abandoned orphan type of way, but you know how, especially in the first book, she was always coming up with great titles for the stories she was going to write? I've been coming up with some fantabulous titles lately; now I just have to come up with stories to go with them. I think I've got one though, and I'm hoping to start getting it down soon.

I've also got a promotional package that I'm working on for a client/friend, and another publication to get out, and two pitches to prepare, all before the bus leaves for Iowa. Which it does in 16 days. So there's a busy week ahead of me. Blogging may be light, but there will be blogging. Pinky swear.