New Drug

I'm always amazed at how little I know about drugs today but I can't blame myself. Our generation just isn't familiar with today's new-fangled drugs.  Why in my day, kids had to make do with marijuana.  There was none of this ecstacy around.  But I know I shouldn't be joking about such a serious topic especially one that freaks all of us out.

I attended a talk by teens about drugs in the middle school last week. It turns out the main drugs in middle school at least here in the suburbs are marijuana and alcohol but that's scary enough as far as I'm concerned.   They were a pretty wholesome group but they also seemed pretty knowledgeable and they mentioned a new drug they've seen called salvia. 

Here's what I learned about salvia: It turns out Salvia is from a plant in Mexico and South and Central America.  It seems that it's mostly smoked like a marijuana joint or smoke in a water pipe or vaporized and inhaled, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/salvia.html.  It produces hallucinations that last 1 minute to 30 minutes. It's not so much a party drug as something kids experiment with individually. And it's not controlled by the federal government although the Drug Enforcement Agency has classified it as a drug of concern and is considering classifying it as a Schedule I drug like LSD and marijuana. 

Mom is the hammer

A friend tells me  her 3-year-old always wants Dad to put her to bed.  Mom tucks her in with a kiss but Dad gets her water, sits by her bed and cuddles. Dad's more fun at bedtime. Since this is my friend's third child, she's determined not to go through the same prolonged nightmare putting her third child to be so she makes it short and sweet.  In her house, she's the enforcer, or as she puts it, "I'm the hammer."

In my house, my husband is sometimes the enforcer. He wakes the kids up in the morning. They tend to move a little more quickly when he barks at them to get moving. But when it comes to most of our daily tasks: homework, piano practice, cleaning their room, I'm also the hammer.  And let's be honest, it's no fun being the hammer or maybe the reverse is true, the hammer isn't fun.

This was brought home to me when I stayed home from my weekly choir practice last night because my husband had to work late.  There was some whining and some complaining.  "What does Daddy do that makes you want him home so much?" I asked. "When we finish our homework, we watch a little football and then we play football and he runs after us all over the house." Oh.  I didn't need to tell them that  Mommy doesn't do that. I spent the night continuing to be the hammer: they had to do homework and practice the piano and read and at the end of that, we watched just a little bit of TV and I read to them.  We had a good time together.  Still it's not easy being the hammer or as my friend says, "The hammer isn't working.  The hammer is tired of being the hammer." 

I'm not sure what the solution is.  Take turns being the hammer? Start playing indoor football with the kids?  Find other tools in the toolbox? It may be that we could all use a little time out from the hammer. There's just too much pounding and it wears you out.

Daily Dose of Exercise

Every weekday I get up and walk with two of my friends.  We walk three or four miles into town and back from 6:15 to 7 a.m. Then I come back and do about half an hour of yoga.

I have to brag about this because bragging rights and feeling virtuos are two of the immediate benefits to exercising but I can't really get all "more in shape than thou," because this daily routine is new to me.

I have tried going to the gym and taking classes and I have tried doing exercise tapes at home. I have tried many things.  But all the gym did was take my $60 every month. I estimate I paid about $60 per class or on a very good month, $15 a class.  I mostly wasted hundreds of dollars because there were always better things to do but I couldn't quit because I always told myself I would go again next month.

I had been getting into yoga though and when a friend trained as a yoga teacher and started talking about a daily routine, it finally hit me: I didn't have to go to class to do yoga, I could do yoga at home. I started taking classes with my friend once a week and doing my own routine every day.

Then I decided something aerobic that would fit into my routine and not cost hundreds of dollars so I started walking with some friends last summer.  This is a little bit harder for me because I am not a morning person and I hate waking up when it's dark.  But again, knowing that my friend is waiting for me outside at 6:15 every day makes me wake up. True, I pray for rain, snow or an act of God that will allow me to sleep in.  But when I walk, I'm more awake all day even if I do get just six hours sleep.

I started doing all this mostly because I had a number of small ailments that were stress related. I have gastrointestinal problems and insomnia and I decided that it would be easier to start dealing with my stress through exercise and yoga than through weekly appointments with doctors.  And it has helped my stress and decreased my stomach problems. I still have trouble sleeping but that's gotten a little better as well.

Best of all, my husband has taken over the first and most dreaded part of the morning routine - he wakes up the kids and gets them started getting dressed and started with breakfast and lunch, while I do yoga with the all important relaxation exercises and meditation.  This leaves me much calmer when I come out to choruses of, "I can't find my socks," and "Where's the peanut butter?"  It's made our whole morning routine better and calmer.

There are all sorts of  benefits to regular exercise.  One recent study, for example, found that people who participate in regular sports at least once a week reduced the risk of blood clots by 39 percent in women and  22 percent in men.   Another study found a link between exercise and mental health and that just walking (yeah!) can reduce anxiety, stress and depression.  It did not, however, reduce hot flashes. I guess you can't have everything.  More on this study is at http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2007-2008/02/stories/menopause.htm,

pneumonia

My younger son has pneumonia but he is by far the bounciest kid with pneumonia you've ever seen and now he has no temperature and is almost back to his old self except he is pale and has trouble catching his breath sometimes.
Pneumonia is scary because it can be such a serious illness. My son has bacterial pneumonia. The way I understand it is this: Normally we all breathe in all sorts of bacteria that can make us sick and we filter those bacteria out, particularly through the nose. But sometimes we don't (this is the worrying part) and somehow we breathe in bacteria that makes it way into the lungs and to fight the bacteria the lungs fill with fluid. Normally, as our doctor told us, the lungs are like a dry sponge that fill with air and then compress but when they fill with fluid, they don't work so well.
At any rate, my son complained he was tired one day and that was unusual enough. The next couple of days, he had a slight fever and by Monday, he had a fever and was just sleeping all day. That went on for a couple of days and on the third day of the fever, we brought him in to the doctor who listened to him breathe and told us he hard some rattling, then he sent us off to get x-rays done. When they asked for more x-rays, my husband and I looked at each other: we knew it had to be pneumonia.
But even though, he apparently had a pretty large area of infection, the doctor said he was ramarkably energetic. So we've been trying to keep him quiet and not do too much. Our biggest activity this weekend was a walk around town to get ice-cream and pick up gyros. It's kind of nice having to be housebound. But the only reason it didn't drive me totally crazy is because my husband was home and he could spot me so I could go to the library and choir and a PTO meeting without feeling guilty.
If he hadn't been home and I was teaching, I guess I would have had to call in or bundle him up and bring him to school if he was well enough.
I do worry about whether my son's asthma has any link to the pneumonia and wether this will affect his lungs in the future. He's so athletic but he's always had respiratory problems. The doctor says no on both accounts but that, of course, doesn't stop me from worrying.
Here's a link to information on pneumonia from Medline http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000145.htm

Jealousy

My older son wrote a school paper that was all about how stupid he thinks his brother is. I discovered it as I looked for a ruler with his brother and I quickly moved it so he wouldn't see it. I was absolutely devastated that he would write such things. My older son at first said I shouldn't have been looking at it. But then I pointed out that he left it out on the desk and his brother could have seen it. I said those were very hurtful words and his younger brother would be very hurt if he saw them. He said his brother wasn't meant to see them and that it was a school assignment based on a book about a pesky younger brother and all the kids were writing about the same thing. "Since when do you care what other kids are doing?" i asked. "I do care," he said.

I came into his room before he went to sleep to talk to him some more. "Were you jealous of Will last weekend?" He nodded. "Were you feeling a little bit mad?" He nodded again. "I understand that," I said. "But you have to remember the power of words. When you write it down, it's very powerful." But then I started to think that maybe writing it down makes him feel better. I don't know. The whole incident left me feeling very sad and we had just been putting up our Christmas tree.

Ballet boy

My younger son, Will, is a ballet dancer. He begged us to take ballet at age 6. We had taken him to see "the Nutcracker" each year and when he was maybe 4, he had two little girlfriends who would dance around reenacting the Nutcracker. "You can't play with us because you're a boy," they informed him. "But the Nutcracker is a boy!" I told them. "Didn't you see the Nutcracker? There are plenty of boy dancers." So they allowed Will to dance and he's been dancing ever since.
Anyway at age 6, he insisted on taking ballet and last year he was in his dance school's production as a party boy and an angel. He reprised those roles again this year and I could really see an improvement through five - count them five- performances. Snore. Don't get me wrong, I love the "Nutcracker" and in truth, I only saw five, but I got very tired of it by the end and it was exhausting. I'm not sure why it was exhausting, I think it was the anxiety of seeing your child performing and wondering whether he was under too much pressure. He was very serious and quiet on Saturday and not himself and my husband I obsessed over whether he was OK and wether we should have allowed him to perform. But by Sunday morning he was back to his old self again
On Sunday, I made sure to be a good stage mom and be backstage helping him with his make-up and tying his tie and taking pictures. I think he is kind of at a loss back there by himself. But honestly, I think he's probably fine and he's certainly able to be independent. He did it all himself Friday night because we had to be at our older son's Shakespeare production. Of course they were the same night.
But I digress. I wanted to write about my husband, the ballet dad. Now my husband is many things to the children. He has worked with them on their baseball and on Will's basketball. He draws with them. He roughhouses with them and I'm in charge of piano and music and maybe also homework and reading. At least a lot of the time. But neither my husband nor I know anything about ballet. But my husband loves the Nutcracker. He always went as a kid and it has some magic power for him. Plus he loves seeing Will perform. As a result, he takes him to all the rehearsals when he can, hangs out backstage and has gotten to know all the other ballet parents, most of whom are moms (although I saw one dad doing a wonderful job on his daughter's bun backstage). This is an amazing metamorphosis for my husband. I think he understands how seriously our son takes it and he also gets how hard it is, having watched everyone rehearsing. I think it's made a big difference for Will having his Dad there and may help him stay with it if other kids tease him, as I suspect they will. But I also find it touching that he is there cheering him on as he is at his baseball games and his basketball games and his soccer games. As he explains it, he know snothing about ballet, so all he can do is cheer him on. I find this liberating. The most i can offer by way of help is "Smile more." The director of the ballet school once told me she can't wait until Will is older so she can give him some (insert some French phrases for complicated ballet moves). I would like to repeat this story to Will if he keeps with his ballet or becomes the next Baryshnikov but all I would be able to tell him is the famous ballerina told him she would gie him some rondoles and fa fa fas." Oh well. I can still tell him when he hits a wrong note on the piano.
Will brought his Nutcracker and a new ornament we brought him and a photo and program to school. We hold our breath each time he does this but we want him to be proud of himself. And it was fine as it always has been. But one day it won't be and I'm not sure what we'll do about that. Another mom with a boy who dances told me "the best defense is a good offense" and she sends her son to school with pictures and has him invite everyone to come see him dance. It's not a bad strategy. But I know there will be remarks and teasing in years to come if Will sticks with it and I wonder if that will put an end to his dancing. He loves to dance and I hope he can get through whatever is ahead so that he can keep dancing.

The Mommy trap

A friend of mine told me about a full-time job in government that had a good salary and benefits. (Imagine!) But I did my usual, "Thanks but no thanks" response because I'm so entrenched in my life working part-time and balancing kids and other activities.
I'm sure this is a trap. My husband is a freelancer too and we could use the additional salary and while I'm doing much better financially than I have in the past, I'm not pulling in what I could bring in full-time. But the truth is, I'm so busy already trying to get the kids to their lessons and prodding them to do their homework and trying to cook, clean etc. And my house is still a horrible mess and I'm still frazzled.
Is it selfish of me to arrange my life so I can do all that? Is it stupidly short-sighted? Maybe. I'm certainly not moving forward very far in my career. The teaching is prestigious but low-paying and is basically a dead-end job unless I get a PhD and I can't bring myself to do that. The column is fun but low-paying. The freelancing at Princeton University is low paying but perhaps less challenging than I would like. Am I killing my career? Do I even have a career?
I always told myself that being a Mom comes first and I still feel that way but I'm also aware that my kids function pretty well without me. It's just the logistics of it. How would Will get to ballet or Raymond get to art? When would we do piano? I guess we'd join all those families who do those things on weekends or at night.
I guess I'd be willing to make all those sacrifices for a dream job but not for a job that made me feel trapped and frustrated. After all, I became a journalist because it's challenging and interesting.
Meanwhile, my blogging is just another excuse for me to while away time I should be using to eat lunch, work or clean my house. You've got to love that about blogging.