Bumblebee Sweet Potato

Landisdad and I went to see Stop Loss last night. It’s a pretty good movie, especially if you like your propaganda wrapped around a center of chewy eye candy (mmmm….Ryan Phillipe….). After the movie, landisdad and I grabbed a bite, and during our post-movie debrief, he told me that he feels as if, because he is not doing everything in his power to end the Iraq War, he must at some level be okay with the war. And about his frustration that millions of other people are the same way.

When I was washing my face before bed, it occurred to me that the Iraq War has become something like a well-healed piercing. It started as something painful and bloody, but now that it’s five years old, it’s become a familiar, numb hole.

On Friday night, we had some friends over for dinner–one of them was a political scientist, who told us about a study she had just read that contrasted the effectiveness of political persuasion when it was presented as fiction, as opposed to news. That people are more moved by political arguments that are presented dramatically (and not first and foremost as political arguments) should not be news–after all, political propaganda has existed since at least the time of the Greeks. But it did give me hope that this movie might heighten the urgency of ending the war for some of the people who aren’t feeling that urgency now.

It’s been a war-filled weekend, in a weird kind of way. My MIL came in on Friday, and she brought me a book called Street Art and the War on Terror: How the World’s Best Graffiti Artists Said No to the Iraq War, which is basically pictures of all kinds of graffiti that appeared around the world in the period before and during the war. Each photograph is accompanied by a short description that includes the location and artist, if known, and the date the photo was taken. The blurbs are spare, and so far, my favorite (annotating a picture that just combines a picture of Bush and the single word, “FUCKER”) has to be: “Anti-Bush stickers seem often to have a pretty direct message; it’s all in sharp contrast to the normality of the street sign. Few previous US presidents have been treated with so little respect.” Perhaps because few US presidents have treated the US population with so little respect?

All this thinking about our current war made me go and dig out a letter that my oldest step-brother, who was deployed to Kuwait in Gulf War I, sent to me after that war had ended but when he was still in Saudi Arabia, waiting to get shipped home. I doubt that his sentiments would be foreign to most of the soldiers fighting in Iraq today. I’ll close this post with his words:

I frequently wondered if the objectives here were worth dying for. Unfortunately though, I came to the conclusion that there isn’t much of anything worth that.

I volunteered, so here I am.

Like most parents, I typically check on my kids before I go to bed. The Potato has a tendency to climb out from under the covers, and I cover him back up. The Bee gets to read in bed for a half-hour or so, and she falls asleep while reading at least once a week.

Lately, I’ve developed a new bedtime ritual.

My daughter has really dry skin, especially in the winter. Her hands are sometimes so chapped that her knuckles crack and bleed. Landisdad and I supply her with lotion, and remind her to put it on constantly, but she hates having lotion on her hands, which makes it worse.

A few months ago, I started sneaking into her room at night and putting Vaseline on the backs of her hands while she’s asleep. I thought I would do it once or twice, and then tell her about it, to prove to her that using it would actually make her feel better.

After a couple of days, I asked her if her hands were feeling better, and she said yes. I told her that I had been putting on the Vaseline, and suggested that she keep it up.

About three days later, she said, “Mom, you need to sneak into my room and put Vaseline on my hands again.” When I asked her why she couldn’t just do it herself, she said, “It’s gross! and it gets on my book!”

Sigh.

So I’m left doing the midnight Vaseline treatment a couple times a week.

What kinds of things do you do in your kids’ rooms at night, while they’re sleeping?

Hat tip to Erin for this one:

Parents spend more quality time with first-born children.

I have a sort of duh-science reaction to this article, I have to say. One thing that I’m not entirely clear on is what exactly is involved in quality time–does that mean you’re only spending time with one kid? And that the time spent is not doing things that qualify as chores? Or eating?

‘Cause if that’s the case, I think I spend about six minutes a day with each kid during the work week. Holy crow, they’re both destined to fail!

Well, at least the Bee can’t complain that I don’t spend as much time with her as I do with her brother…

The Bee is experiencing the joys of state testing for the first time this week. She was tremendously stressed out about it all weekend. There is something deeply wrong with a society that believes that 8-year-olds deserve academic stress.

I told her, during one of several conversations we had about how her performance on the statewide test of third graders would not unalterably determine her life’s path, that in a way, the test was more a test of her teachers than it was of her. That she would do well, but that the thing that was really being tested was how well her teachers were teaching all the kids in the class.

And you know what? I don’t really think that’s a great idea for our society either.

One of the things that I love about the Bee’s school is that it is very small. It’s so small that there is only one class for each grade. Lots of the parents know lots of the kids–not just the kids in their own child/ren’s class, but in the whole school. And it’s really a community, where the teachers know all of the kids, and the principal can not only greet each child by name, but really knows something about who they are as students.

Last year, her school had an impressive improvement in the third grade test–the scores were significantly improved over the prior year. But I’d guess that has about 80% to do with the fact that the current fifth grade (the third grade of two years ago) is filled with kids who are overactive and have a lot of attention problems. This year’s fourth grade (last year’s third grade), on the other hand, is a much quieter and better-behaved group of kids.

The Bee’s class? My bet is they’re somewhere in the middle. Does that mean if they slip ten percent from last year’s testing that the teacher was ten percent worse at her job this year? or does it speak to the vagaries of kid personalities, and attention spans more than anything else?

When the Bee came home last night, she ran up to me, gave me a great big hug, and said, “you were right Mom, it was easy!” She went to school this morning without being stressed about the test, and I’m happy about that. I just hope that the teachers  get to relax about it soon too.

Is there a better movie than Miller’s Crossing?

I saw this meme over at Penguin Unearthed, and it looked kind of fun. Write about the first ten blogs you clicked on in Google Reader. Well, I use bloglines, but I guess it still applies. Here goes:

1. Wonkette is liveblogging the primary results from Super Twosday. Sadly, Ron Paul was not defeated in two primaries tonight.
2. Alisa Valdes Rodriguez, on her blog Multiplicative Identity, is blogging about a new documentary that looks at Castro’s many escapes from death.
3. Diana at Diaphanous writes about a jailbreak in her town, and listening to the police scanner to find out what’s going on with the re-capture of the prisoner.
4. Mocha Mama writes about two high school teachers that made a difference in her life.
5. Becca from Not Quite Sure writes about her real flaw–the one she’ll never confess in a job interview.
6. Metrodad writes about taking his daughter skiing for the first time–warning: this post includes pictures of The Peanut that may cause your computer to spontaneously combust, due to the cuteness!
7. Procrastamom writes about her habit of crying when she sees an ambulance with sirens on–even if she doesn’t know the person in it.
8. PunditMom writes about today’s virtual march to protest the Bush Administration’s plan to cut funding for after-school programs.
9. Anjali can’t wait to have the baby (and haven’t we all been there!).
10. And CamiKaos reacts to seeing The Bridge to Terabithia for the first time.

Well, that’s it for tonight folks. Thanks to everyone who sent lice-killing vibes. I don’t want to jinx us, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about that whole project.
 

The Potato is sick again. I had to leave for work really early yesterday morning (try 6:30 a.m.), and at about 8:30, landisdad called to tell me that the Potato was sick, and couldn’t go to school. He puked a couple of times yesterday, and spent most of the day dozing on our bed with a fever that fluctuated between 104 and 100. Last night, he went to bed early, and he came into our room and crawled into bed with us at around 4:30 or 5 a.m.

At breakfast time, he was hungry, so I took him downstairs to get something to eat.

When I found a louse on his head.

Sigh.

About three days ago, the daycare sent a note home saying that a kid there had lice, and I’ve been suspicious ever since. He’s been scratching his head a lot, and sure enough, we have an outbreak on our hands. And did I mention the amount of time he spent sleeping in our bed?

So we spent the whole day washing every piece of his bedding in hot water. And giving him a buzz cut. And washing his hair with lice shampoo. And combing it with the nit comb. And praying that the Bee does not get lice.

The Bee, who has waist-length hair. The Bee, who screams when her hair is brushed with a wide-toothed brush. The Bee, who is feeling resentful of her brother lately, and will not take it at all well if he gives her lice.

Also, is it itchy in here, or is it just me?

So the rest of the family prophylactically shampooed with the lice shampoo too. And we washed our bedding too. Including the pillows.

One of the first mommyblogs I ever read was Suburban Bliss, and one of the first things I remember her writing about was her war against the lice, and the vat of mayonnaise that she bought as a weapon in that war. I don’t want a vat of mayonnaise. Please send lice-killing thought waves our way.

Edited to add: And of course–while on its ninth or tenth laundry load of the day, our washing machine overflowed. Flooding the basement. Which we just had re-carpeted last week after our most recent flood.

I’m not in love with March so far.