The kids and I went to the zoo today...

...with just one stroller. For Maren. Isaac didn't sit in it at all, but Annie did.

It's been 11 months and a couple of days since Isaac got sick, and I thought the day might never come when he'd be strong enough to walk around the zoo for three hours. But today he proved me wrong. Of course, he was so tired that I had to carry him all the way from the Children's Zoo to the car, but he bickered with Bryce over the zoo map all the way home in the car, so I don't think he did any permanent damage.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you tomorrow...

...because you'll be taking my big kids away!

That's right, after two long weeks, Bryce and Annie and the rest of the kids in our ISD are headed back to school tomorrow.

And not a moment too soon.

If you have to dry the dishes and you drop one on the floor...

Now that I'm a cub scout leader, my Tuesday nights are spent ferrying smelly little boys to and from the church. On this particular Tuesday, I pointed four of them towards my van and wandered over to talk to a friend. When I finally opened the front door to climb in the car, I met major calamity.

Kid #1: "Sister M, Sister M, Bryce is being lewd. You have to make him stop!"
Kid #2: "Yeah, he just said something absolutely foul and disgusting. He must have a really bad vocabulary to stoop to use those words."
Me (fearing the worst): "What did he say?"
Kid #1: "He was telling the story of a guy named [whispered] Naked Man...
Kid #2: "...and talking about how he pees and poops."
Kid #1: "Isn't that disgusting?"
Me: "Bryce, knock it off, at least until your friends get out of the car."
Bryce (pretending he can't hear): "So Naked Man went to the soccer game...."
Kid #1: "Sister M!!!! He's still doing it!"
Kid #2: "Yeah, his vocabulary is totally crappy."
Kid #1: "Yeah, crappy."

The squabbling continued in the same manner until we dropped the boys off. Maybe their mom won't let me drive their carpool anymore (and if you're reading this, know that I'm totally joking). I guess I'm leading my kids down into evil paths of sin by allowing them to use such vulgar words. "Urinate" and "tinkle" were the only proper bathroom words allowed in Eddie's house growing up. In my house we would have laughed at any kid who used the words "urinate" and "tinkle." I love bathroom words, and my kids say them all. They may not be well-mannered, but at least I'm consistent, right?

Book #67: The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up too Much

Title: The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up too Much?
Author: Leslie Bennetts

Bennetts explores the reasons why upper-middle-class professional women shouldn't quit their day jobs to stay at home with their kids. She makes arguments for loss of earning power, loss of sharp brain function, loss of job skills, loss of independence, and age and gender discrimination.

Bennetts makes excellent points in her book, most convincingly the argument that giving up a career entirely limits a woman's economic freedom, putting her in "golden handcuffs" to her husband. And what if the man leaves, gets disabled or dies? I've actually made some changes in my own life since reading the book, like taking a more hands-on approach to our finances (I'm not really that interested in them, but I guess it's like eating my vegetables) and trying to put into place some long-term strategies to get back into doing what I love professionally. But Bennetts's attitude really rubbed me the wrong way. She insists that she's not adding to the Mommy Wars in any way, but she's much more Howard Stern than Neal Conan. I actually think a more accurate title for the book would be: The Feminine Mistake: You're Giving Up Too Much, But I'm Not, Neener-neener-neener. She goes on and on (and on) glorifying her own life, her own husband and her own choices to be a working mom. Basically her point is that if you're a SAHM without your own bank account and your own income, your future is in peril. And if you plan to SAH after your kids go back to school, well then you're really throwing away your life.

Book #66: Netherland

Title: Netherland
Author: Joseph O'Neill

Following 9/11, Hans van den Broek finds himself living alone in Manhattan after his wife and son return to their native London. In order to deal with his loneliness, van den Broek joins a cricket club and finds himself learning about a whole different side of NYC.

This book reminded me a lot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Absurdistan, both contemporary viewpoints of immigrant experiences in New York. But I liked it better than either of those books. It was slightly improbable that closed-off, buttoned-up van den Broek, too reserved to go chasing after his beloved wife and son, would end up spending his weekends playing cricket with Pakistanis and Trinidadians and get involved in a mafia-esque operation in Staten Island, but that's where O'Neill takes us. I found myself rooting for van den Broek and his family as the novel progressed.

Book #65: The Gathering

Title: The Gathering
Author: Anne Enright

When Veronica Hagerty's brother Liam commits suicide, she confronts the demons of their past and current lives, focusing on the lingering effects of sexual abuse.

First of all, I know from past reading experience that the Booker Prize doesn't always go to an author's best work, but often to their most recent work once they've achieved a certain status as an author (take Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, for example). This is the first time I've read anything by Anne Enright, and although it was a fine book, and I could identify with her struggle as a SAHM to find purpose once her kids started getting older, I found the main character, Veronica Hagerty, so unlikeable that it was hard to fall in love, or even really like, with this book. But then again, I've never been so brought down by grief or loss that maybe it's just hard to understand her perspective.

Book #64: Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Title: Look Me in The Eye: My Life With Asperger's
Author: John Elder Robison

A memoir written by Augusten Burroughs's older brother (you know, from Running with Scissors fame?) about living with Asperger's and learning to see his condition as a strength.

I think a lot of people feel like an autism diagnosis requires children and parents to completely reevaluate what they're going to get out of life. I know that when Bryce was (mis)diagnosed at three, I worried about if he'd be able to go to "regular" school, if he'd ever hold a job, and if he'd get married. Robison, whose childhood would have provided ample fodder for a memoir even without Asperger's, didn't get diagnosed until he was 40, had already been married, had risen through the ranks of executive power, and eventually decided to start his own successful business. He's honest about both his struggles and his successes, and talks about how diagnosis has helped him understand himself, and not how it has limited him.

Made me want to read: Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin

Signed, sealed, on its way to being delivered...

...the job contract, that is.

I braved the post office with all four kids today (yep, still out of school) to mail Eddie's employment contract for the next two years.

You want to know where we're moving, don't you?

Well, I'll say this-- when I cryptically told people almost two months ago that we knew which job we were taking and were waiting to sign the contract, that was a different contract for a different job. We were so darn sure we were going to sign with that group that I spent the second half of our summer vacation in Utah scoping out houses and vacant lots. Then we got home, he got offered a job with a group where he wasn't expecting an offer, and after several weeks of consideration and flip-flopping back and forth, we eventually decided to take that job.

Without further ado-- Salt Lake City, here we come! Just as soon as school gets out. Which, depending on how long they end up staying out of school for the hurricane, could be a very long time from now.

Crabby

It's not so much that we went without power for three days, or that we need a new roof, or that we got sorta scammed on the temporary repair of our current roof, or that most of our fence is lying in our backyard, or that we had to throw out the entire contents of our refrigerator and freezer, or that all six of us spent an entirely sleepless night listening to roof tiles blow off our house, or that we didn't have DSL for more than a week, or that we're still lacking normal everyday essentials like ice cream and grape juice, or that the gym is still closed, or that I've run more than 60 miles on my treadmill in the last 10 days, or that our bedroom ceiling needs to be repainted; it's that the kids have now been out of school for almost two weeks (with no end in sight) and they are driving each other, and more importantly me, absolutely freaking bonkers.

Running from the storm

Hurricane Ike is headed our way-- if it stays on current course, we can expect to take a fairly direct hit early Saturday morning. We're about 45 miles inland and we haven't decided if we're going to evacuate or not yet. Eddie is leaning towards evacuating, but his motivations aren't the best-- he wants to make sure he doesn't miss the BYU football game on Saturday afternoon. Other than all of the normal worries about safety and our house, I'm mostly stressing about how the heck I'm going to fit in my last 22-miler on Saturday...