|
Happy New Year.
2004-01-06 - 12:10 p.m. Ugh. Oh. I'm back. I have a cold, though. Hmmm. I actually stayed home yesterday, thinking I'd get the laundry done under cover of sickness, but it turned out I was actually sick and slept all day. It's really too much too catch you all up on three weeks of eventful life, I think. In a nutshell, Christmas was successful and then we went to Ann Arbor, and that was successful too. I was really not looking forward to going (we left on the 26th) but then I was really glad we did. It was quite chaotic (there were four little kids 7 and under) but fun. It was good to see Kevin's parents. I think it was good for Kevin, too, in some odd way. I think it was sort of restorative for him to be around his family. So -- The girls and I learned how to knit. I though about the life I'd rather have. I'd rather have one more kid and more time at home. I'm waiting for a while before I spring these desires on Kevin. I'm sure they will be no surprise. The girls were very very good. I've become very tolerant, too. The sister-in-law who has in the part driven me crazy did not drive me crazy. I think partly it's just the passage of time. She certainly has her issues, but -- OKay, she'd composed an elaborate slideshow about her family and life in P. (the town they live in.) In fact, she spent a lot of time doing it, time that might have been spent taking care of her kids, who were instead being a bit wild and uncared for. The slide show included many shots of her daughter being very brilliant at her extremely cutting-edge nursery school. In the past, this whole thing would have driven me wild. (One might ask, actually, whether, given that she doesn't work, her kids really needed to be at preschool?) But somehow I've sort of moved beyond being driven wild. (Although you will notice that I'm still dwelling on it, right?) It's just kind of a given that she won't help with the dishes because she's working on this slideshow. It's also kind of a given that we won't think more of her daughter for this documentary evidence of her specialness than we think of her 7 year old cousin, who is a beatlemaniac and whiz reader, or of her two-year-old cousin with some seriously winning ways, or indeed of her 11 and 14 year old cousins (my kids) who do help with the dishes and can knit hats and read books and are patient with their little cousins. So -- Her poor kids, actually. The older one is kind of attention-saturated and attention deprived at the same time. She's used to being the center of everything, but also used to looking for the attention from the outside world because her parents are busy doing something else. Busy making a frame for their kids. The little one is actually kind of ignored. But you know, it's quite possible I was this way myself. It's hard to pay attention to kids all the time. Anyhow. Okay, I think I have to go to the new-age pharmacy and get some zinc tablets now. Okay. Bye then.
find me! - 2008-02-12 |
design by simplify.