Homemaking is Great Work

I am a homemaker.  I have a love/hate relationship with forms that ask me to list my occupation.  I've written MOTHER, just like that in screaming capital letters.  I've filled in the blank with N/A on days when I wasn't feeling so hot.  I am a college graduate.  I did have a career, but I like what I'm doing now ever so much better.  Most of the time, I either write "Homemaker" or "Domestic Goddess" on those forms.  They are both true, and I'm happy with my occupation.

I am never bored.  The commute is a breeze.  I can set my own hours (didn't say that those hours are honored, but I can set them).  There is no end to creative license.  I can laugh out loud, sit on the floor, and eat any time I want to.  And I get to boss other people around.  I get hugs and snuggles, and my cow-orker-husband-dude gives me... what isn't normal from other co-workers (I like cow-orkers better.  Thanks, Mike.).  Foot rubs, if you're curious.  And I get to control the thermostat.

It's a lot of hard work.  And it often involves menial labor.  Most jobs, when you get right down to it, do require some menial labor.  Filing papers.  Sorting paperclips.  Getting the mail.  Crawling under the desk to see why the internet is down again.  Dusting.  Cleaning out the drink machine.  Shoveling the front walk.  Saying "Have a nice day" a million times in a row.  And like most jobs, in order for me to feel the most fulfilled about my work, I have to work it.

I do work.  Lots.  And I play.  Not as much as I should.  And I stop and appreciate.  And I give compliments and encourage and bite my tongue.  And I love seeing what other mothers have to say about their work.  You can call that networking.

We network over the back fence and across the rows of weeds vegetables.  We network at church and on the back row of cub scout pack meeting.  We network on the phone while emptying the dishwasher and at the park and when planning play dates (hate that term, BTW.  I don't think parents should schedule their kids that much!).  And we network online.  Here are a few of my recent mothering favorites:  The myth of the perfect day The art of making a home, Dear Mom you are amazing, and the whole living with kids house tours section on Design Mom.  I'll just give a shout-out to the Establish a House series starting over at Chocolate on My Cranium.

I'm a fan of homemaking.  I think it is the best - and most important - job in the world.  Each of us was brought up is some home or another, and the future of the world is, in great part, determined by what goes on at our hearths.  Like.  Love it.  I'm living my dream.

Love My Patio

Here's my decluttering "hooray" for the week: reclaiming my back patio.

As far as patios go, it is lovely.  There is a large tree for shade, a porch overhang for more shade, a sandbox for the kids to play in, cement lines that are more swoopy than straight and boring, pretty plants, lots of grass around, flower beds, and even a trickling waterfall water feature.  Lovely, no?

Except that the tree is surrounded with weeds.  The sandbox has been a cat pit-stop for years.  The boys smashed a bucket to smithereens so there are sharp shards all over the cement.  We didn't finish raking the leaves before the winter came in strong.  And there are old pieces of carpet we had to throw out when we had a leak.  It was a dumpy, not-used area.

On garbage day, I rolled up my sleeves (figuratively.  In reality, I wanted to long sleeves there to protect my delicate arms) and dragged the carpet pieces to the garbage can.  The carpet was not very big, but it was heavy and moldy-yucky.  And now it's gone.  Happy dance!  Tomorrow morning I'll rake the leaves, sweep the patio, set up the chairs, and sit and watch the kids play.

I'm going to love my patio!

Family Funnies

It must be spring.  The snow has melted, the weather is getting nicer, and green things are starting to poke out of the ground.  As we were climbing out of the van, Georgie stopped and sighed.  Closing his eyes against the sunshine, he smiled and said, "Oh!  It is so nice and comfy warm!"

Trent is our resident breakfast person.  He loves to get up early and cook up a big morning meal.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it requires protein.  Preferably eggs and meat.  The other morning, he got up to find that I had used the last eggs making rice pudding (Alec's favorite).  Trent wanted eggs.  I don't get cold cereal as a general rule because it isn't filling enough, doesn't count as real food for him, is quite expensive per serving, and we could inhale several boxes of the stuff at a single meal.  So instead of making oatmeal or something otherwise carb-y (and quick so the kids could get to school on time), Trent ran to the store to get eggs.  The drugstore which is rumored to have the cheapest eggs was out.  Pressing forward, he went to the super-mega-mart, where eggs were two dollars a dozen.  Too expensive.  Instead, he bought $10 worth of cold cereal.  And an expensive carton of eggs.  Yay!  Trent has eggs for breakfast!  And then he ate cold cereal.  He survived.

Ben is of a similar opinion that cold cereal is not the best breakfast in the universe.  He doesn't mind having a bowl of it for a snack, or after he has eaten an otherwise good breakfast.  He explained, "Cereal is like packing peanuts.  It's good for filling in all the empty spots."

We bought the twins new unders.  Georgie was so excited about getting to wear his "great big gi-nant big boy unders-wears." and promises to keep them dry.  Freddie, after putting on his first pair of unders with a fly, kept checking his hips, looking for his pockets.

Love My Garden

Anyone love fresh tomatoes?  (jumping wildly, hands waving in the air) Me!  Me!  Me!

And that is why I garden.  Trent gardens out of an inbred need to till and toil and weed.  That's just what you do, or at least that's just what his family did.  My family didn't really garden.  we had fruit trees and we made jam like crazy, but no regular garden.  We'd try in fits and spurts, but it didn't take.  Both my grandfathers had immaculate, impressive gardens.  And I loved it when they would bring us fresh cucumbers and tomatoes.

I do have to admit that I like playing in the dirt.  I'm just not very good at it.  And our garden has been a confined weed-patch that produces rocks and some tomatoes and a lot of those nasty sticker weeds (I think they are called burrweed?  Awful stuff.).  It's highly unfortunate, not only for the deflated pride issue, but also because our garden spot is right out in front of our house.  It's a lovely way to welcome folks in.

This year, though, is different.  I think I'll say that every year.

I sat down and planned out an organized garden, pulling out ideas from here and here and here.  And I'm excited.  Not just for the tomatoes and fresh salsa, but because I am planning a place that can look a little better.  It will be a place where our family can work together.  And we can get tasty, fresh, organic, good-for-us produce to help feed all these mouths.  That's the idea.

I started a bunch of seeds here in the house to get a jump on the season.  We'll see if they can survive the little people, and if the dirt can stay in the pots.  Maybe they will even grow.

And this year, I can love my garden.

Mouths to Feed

Trent came home from work with a sober face.  He told me that there had been an incident on the way home and that we had nearly had one less mouth to feed.

After a pause, and a twinkle in his eye, he admitted that he nearly ran over the neighbor's cat.  The cat who regularly mooches at our cat's food.

One less mouth to feed... too bad.

Is Your Kid Gifted?

A few weeks ago, Eddie took the district-wide test to see if he would qualify for placement in the 5th grade gifted and talented program.  David took the test to get into the 7th grade program at the junior high.  And then they had to wait for the results to come in the mail.

Early last, week, David got a letter.  THE letter.  He was accepted!  What a happy boy he was that day.  The test he took, as a 6th grader, was the end-of-year test that 8th graders have to pass.  And David was above the 92nd percentile in everything but science - where he was in the 97th.  He has his daddy's genes, that's for sure.  I'm not bragging; I'm just saying that these boys need a little extra challenge.

Poor Eddie was left waiting for his letter.  And waiting.  And anxiously collecting the daily mail.  And waiting some more.  Finally, we got a phone call from the elementary school principal.  Eddie would have made it into the program, he told us, except that they are cancelling the gifted program at their school.  We have the option of going to that school anyway (even though it is already across town from where we live), or going to a school two towns down, or going to a school two towns over.  Or Eddie could just go to our local elementary, which is much closer.  

Eddie was so disappointed when I broke the news to him.  He had been so excited to be in the accelerated program.  I was sad, too.  Ben, Chris, and David were all in these classes - Alec should have been too, but I didn't know then as much as I know now about it.  I wish he'd had those same experiences.  And now Eddie might miss out on that good school, that good program to stretch him and help him learn how to be his best self.

It was about 30 years ago that a group of parents started the gifted program at the elementary school.  They talked and planned and petitioned the school district and convinced the principal to let them try something new. It was the first of its kind in our part of the state.  One of the ringleaders of the parent group was my hardworking, beautiful, concerned-about-her-kids-and-their-education mother.  And two of the guinea pigs children in that first group were me and my next younger brother.  

Mom worked hard to make sure we got the very best learning opportunities we could.  She was at every parent-teacher conference.  She patiently quizzed me daily on my spelling words -  hundreds of them for the spelling bee.  She was famous for her ability to edit our essays until they bled red ink.  I remember her sitting at the kitchen table late into the night, completing her own homework so she could finish her college degree.  Education was vital to her.

So it's a double blow to have her gifted program come to an end.  I feel bad to not continue her legacy, and extra bad that my boy won't have those opportunities.

I think I'll have to call the school district.  My boy is worth fighting for.

De Quervain's Tenosynovitis

Yeah, I have a Syndrome.  Don't we all?  Whatever is bothering you, package it up in a fancy box, call it a Syndrome, and you will get sympathy.  And maybe even medical attention.  And probably pills.  And a grant from the government!  I digress.

Two summers ago, I started having a searing pain running along the thumb side of my right hand and wrist.  It hurt when I tried to pick up our one-year-old twins, when I took a cast iron pan off the stove, or when I tried to open doors with those annoying-but-with-twins-necessary doorknob covers.  Over time, it got bad enough that it would hurt like crazy almost all the time, and when it wasn't hurting, it would tingle with pins and needles.  I didn't want to cause any permanent damage, so I knew I had to do something.

I tried an inexpensive wrap-style wrist brace, but it didn't help.  I got a brace with a metal plate to immobilize my wrist, like those used by people suffering from tendinitis or carpal tunnel.  Still a no-go.  That's when I figured out that the pain was actually in my thumb.  I bought an expensive thumb-immobilizing brace, but the thumb part was too thin and it cut off circulation to my thumb.  So I just wore the carpal tunnel brace for a few months with my thumb tucked in.

I did a lot of on-line searching, and finally found this Finkelstein test:

You grab your thumb inside a clenched fist, then move the fist away from the thumb.  See if it hurts.  Great test, huh?  For me, I couldn't even tuck my thumb into a fist before it started to hurt.  So I got a positive (is pain positive?) result on that test.

The diagnosis?  De Quervain's Tenosynovitis.  Also known as gamer's thumb, whasherwoman's sprain, stenosing tenosynovitis, or mommy thumb.  It is a repetitive stress injury to the two tendons that run along the thumb side of the hand.  It isn't uncommon for older mothers (over 40) to get this.  And since I have twins I was lifting all day, it was almost inevitable.  It is often caused by constant gripping and stretching, like for golfing, knitting, hand-weeding, hammering, etc.  Here are some thing I've learned.

When you lift a child, DO NOT put your thumbs in their armpits and lift.  That puts all the pressure of their weight on your outstretched thumb.  DON'T let your thumb stay in the "L" shape.  Try to keep your thumb on the same plane as your hand (not behind or in front, pincher-style).  DO rest the hand a lot.  DO lift your child with your whole hands on his sides, or with one hand on his bottom and your other hand at the back of his neck.  DO ice the inflamed part.  DO lift heavy pans with two hands (and hot pads).  You can take anti-inflammatory medicine if the pain is bad.

If you go to the doctor, they will prescribe cortisone shots and recommend surgery.  But usually, after plenty of rest, the swelling will go down and the tendons will heal by themselves.  And you will sigh in relief.

BUT THEN DON'T HURT IT AGAIN!  (That was a memo to myself.  Sorry for the yelling.)

The next Christmas, I decided to knit slippers for gifts.  So I sat and knitted.  For days.  What a surprise that the pain flared up again!  Who knew?  I did make some mighty cute slippers, but my patient brother had to wait months until I could knit his other slipper.  And then maybe I forgot and he got the other one for the next Christmas.

AND THEN DON'T THINK YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN AND NOT HURT AGAIN!  Sheesh.  You think I would listen to myself when I am yelling like that.

A few days ago, I though I could whip out an afghan for a new baby before the new grandma flew out to visit.  She could take my gift with her.  But I'd have only two days to make it.  Two days.  Who can crochet a baby blanket in two days?  Oh, I can.  Pick me!  Pick me!  I got it 75% finished before the pain flared up again.  You think I'd learn.  So I've been resting. Sort of.  It's hard to rest.  Honestly, typing is making my thumb tingle again.

But I'd really like to finish the afghan...

To read more information about my Syndrome, look here and here and here.  Maybe we are thumb buddies?