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My mother moved yesterday. She and her husband, Jeff, and my 8 year old sister, Paige, and my Grandma, and my 20 year old brother, Paul, all moved out of their condo and into a massive and beautiful house. My brother will finally have his own bathroom, my Grandma will finally have her own mini apartment complete with her own kitchen space, and Paige will have more room for her extensive Barbie collection. I think she actually has a “Barbie Room” now. The move is a good thing for everyone living in that household.

So at 9 am yesterday morning, I reported—like the good, dutiful, eldest child should—to my mom’s condo to help pack and make 80 trips back and forth between the condo and the new house. Now, this story needs some set-up. Some MAJOR set-up: My mother has issues with separation anxiety with every piece of crap she has ever come in contact with. And I am only being mildly exaggeratory. My mother is one of the biggest packrats ever. Ever. We’re talking, like, could-be-on-Oprah-and-millions-would-gasp-and-laugh levels of packrat-ed-ness. She will not throw anything away because at some point, in the next century, she or someone she knows could possibly need it. We are talking everything from extra roofing shingles to broken, rusty bicycles, to plastic baked potato containers from Wendy’s. Her double car garage? Filled to the ceiling with stuff. Her basement storage room? Filled. Her pull-behind trailer? Filled. Every corner and space of her condo was filled with stuff.

–In my mother’s defense, I believe that it is hereditary. I have a packrat gene that, if not kept in tight check, threatens to overwhelm me. I have the urge to keep every issue of Reader’s Digest because what if 8 months from now I want to refer back to that one article about how Angelina Jolie is saving the world one child at a time? And for the longest time I had some shirts from junior high school that followed me from one move to another, eventually coming to Utah all the way from Maryland… so how could I part with those? But eventually I get to a point where I feel overwhelmed by the stuff and I must purge. I get a freakin trash bag and I throw out everything, including stuff that maybe I really shouldn’t throw out, like the current power bill. But after I get rid of all of the stuff that I thought there was no way I could live without, guess what… I’m still living. And I’m feeling pretty good. I can breathe. My mom has never actually gotten to the purge part… ever.—

To make the move even more challenging, my mom had Lasik eye surgery the day before. So she was walking around with an eye patch and those goofy roll-up sunglasses they give you when your eyes are dilated, plus another pair of regular sun glasses. Because she was actually supposed to keep her eyes dilated for the next several days. Since her eyes were dilated, she couldn’t have any lights on. So there we were, sitting in the condo, trying to pack with the lights turned out and the curtains drawn. It was dark, people. I’m pretty sure I packed some crystal stemware with some shoes. But whatever.

Being that my mom couldn’t see anything, and I could barely see anything, I decided it would be a great time to casually toss some stuff. And don’t you know it, when I threw out a cabinet full of Wendy’s and Fazoli’s take out boxes, suddenly her eyes went 20/20. That isn’t trash! I claimed I couldn’t see anything in the dark…

At one point during the day, my mom’s husband, Jeff, and Jeff’s dad were sitting in the kitchen with me. I was packing the junk drawer (which, actually, was a “trash drawer”) and they were taking a break from the heat outside. I said to Jeff, “You know, it occurred to me—and I hope this isn’t a morbid thought—but when you and mom die, I get to go through all of this crap since I’m the oldest.” Jeff chuckled, because he knows he is married to a packrat, and it irritates him but he just kind of lets mom be mom. And Jeff said, “Yeah, you are actually the executor of our estate.” And I looked at the broken nightlight and the Better Crocker points from 1955 that I was holding and I laughed out loud at the word “estate”. And then Jeff’s dad piped in and said gruffly, “Yeah, and you have to act grateful about it.”

But I’m thinking that unless my mom actually ever goes through a “purge” period, or else sorts through her tons of treasures and tells me which lucky kid she wants her drawer of plastic McDonald’s bibs bequeathed to… I’m taking a backhoe through her house and dragging it all to the dump. Because that’s one “Estate Sale” that I’d end up taking a loss on.

What’s this? A Saturday Latin Insult actually posted on a Saturday? Yepper. I’m on the ball today, folks. It’s a shorty, but goody… one you may actually be able to memorize and use.

“Deformis Anusque”

–A twisted old hag

(Martial Epigrams VII.75)

and give you each a hug! (Yeah, that was cheesy.)

Thanks for all of your comments to yesterday’s dramatic post. I’m not having a breakdown… everything is ok.

I’ve decided that I am mad at our pediatrician. I’m mad that he would give me pills for my kid based on a ten minute conversation. I’m mad that pills seem to be the quick fix and that most parents (none of you included…) are ok with it. I am not anti-meds. But I think that meds are very over-prescribed. The pills are in a drawer. They will stay in the drawer. On days when Jachin is particularly hyper, I will pull them out and look at them and think “I can always give him these…” and then not actually ever give them to him. I don’t think my son actually has ADD. I think he has SBD. I need to check around for more evidence and ideas for treatment. What is SBD? You’ve never heard of it? It’s Summer Boredom Disorder!! Is there a pill for that?? I’ll bet there is a HUGE spike in the number of ADD cases that are “identified” and “treated” during the summer months because mothers are stuck inside with their insanely hyper, bored children for 16 hours a day because it is too freakin hot for the kids to play outside.

This is my humble two cents. Perhaps my child is actually sick or insane. But I maintain that he is bored and he will not be ingesting any weird chemical compounds for the time being. We are going to the dinosaur museum today. That is his treatment. He is going to watch a dinosaur movie in 3D (the sweet 3D glasses included) and eat dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets for lunch, and buy a dinosaur pencil in the gift shop, and we’ll see what that does for us. If that doesn’t help, I’ll mix a little vodka and sprite in his dinosaur cup. (That’s a joke. Please don’t put a nasty comment or call authorities.)

I think his t-shirt today nails the diagnosis on the head:

“I tried to be good, but I got bored”

Thanks for your comments, guys.

Jachin is an energetic child. Very energetic. To the point of hardly ever sitting still… unless he is building Legos. If Legos are involved, he can sit for hours. He wants to be a Lego designer when he grows up, and I believe that he can. He is so very smart and creative. But when he is not building Legos, he is all over the place. His brain is all over the place. When I speak to him, his eyes are all over the place. When he tries to sit still, his body is all over the place.

Knowing that his “well visit” was coming up at the pediatrician, I called and asked the nurse a few casual questions about ADD. She said that the office had some ADD questionnaires that I could pick up, Jon and I could fill them out, and I could bring them in at his well visit. So I picked them up and Jon and I filled them out. Jon’s questionnaire was much less incriminating than mine. He said things like: Jachin fidgets “sometimes”, and he seems to run on a motor “occasionally”; while mine said something like, “Please!!! Medicate this child!! … Or medicate me so I can handle him!!”

Yesterday I took Jachin in for his well visit. I gave the questionnaires to the doctor and talked to him for a while. I told him that Jachin is perfect and focused when he is playing Legos. The doctor asked how he is when he isn’t doing Legos… like, the at the grocery store or at church. So I told him. Jachin sat nearby, Lego-guy (that he designed and built) in hand, talking to me, interrupting the doctor, talking to the Lego-guy… and the doctor suggested a medication. I asked him what it would do to my sweet little man’s personality, and he assured me that with the right dosage, Jachin would remain Jachin… but Jachin with the ability to sit on a pew during church without rolling down the aisles. The doctor talked to Jachin. He asked him if he sometimes had a hard time concentrating on things. Jachin responded, “My mom never gives me money for things like Legos, so I have to earn money myself.” Umm, okay. The doctor casually responded, “That’s good. It’s good to earn things yourself. My son mows lawns to earn money.” Jachin asked how much the doctor’s son earned per lawn and how often lawns need to be mowed, and then mentally figured out how long it would take to earn enough money for the big Lego Mars Mission set, just by mowing the lawns on our street.

The kid can do tricky math—fast—in his head, but he didn’t even seem to hear the doctor’s original question of “Is it sometimes hard to concentrate”. That is SOOO my son in a nutshell.

So we get the prescription, and we bring it home, and I’m fretting and wringing my hands, wondering if I am a failure mother because I’ve just filled a brain altering prescription for my sweet little 8 year old.

We sit around the table eating dinner, and I tell my husband that I got a prescription and we sort of dance around the subject because I don’t want to get into it too much in front of the kids. But alas, children are smart and of course they know what we’re talking about. And then sweet little Jachin turns to me and says:

“Mom, why do I have to be on medication just for being me?”

And then there is the distinct sound of my heart breaking because my son thinks that there is something inherently wrong with him being himself. And I try not to break into tears over my fajitas and I tell him that there is nothing wrong with him being him. That the medicine is just to help his body do the things that his brain wants it to do. Like sit still sometimes. But his big brown puppy eyes look at me like I have crushed his very spirit. And I realize that I am the worst mommy ever.

And this morning I am trying not to cry over my laptop, and I’m listening to the quiet of my son building Legos, and I’m contemplating flushing the damn pills down the toilet and just letting my son run around the world like the smart little maniac that he is.

Dialog on the way into the music store:

Me: Don’t touch anything in here.

Them: Ok, mom

Me: Seriously, there are some very nice, very expensive pianos in here. Don’t touch them.

Them: Ok, mom

Me: We just need to get your piano books. It will take 2 seconds. Can you keep your hands off of stuff for 2 seconds?

Them: Yes, mom

Two seconds later: 

Loud, kazoo “music” heard.

Me: Jachin, what are you doing?!?

Jachin: (talking through the kazoo) What? I’m not touching it with my hands, just blowing on it with my mouth.

Me: (wondering how I could have overlooked the “mouth” thing during my hands-off speech; pointing to a sign stating “IF YOU BLOW ON IT, YOU BUY IT”)

Jachin: Yay! I get a kazoo!

At least he wasn’t blowing on a $400 trumpet.

ps- on a less-irritated note, their piano lessons are progressing well.

So as I clean my house and take pictures today–so that you, dear readers, can be under the false impression that our new home is always pristine and shiny (Jon is somewhere right now reading this and laughing at the idea of our house being pristine and shiny)–I have several movies playing in several different rooms in the house as I move from room to room, straightening. I thought of how appropriate it is that I just did a top 7 list of my favorite movie character crushes. So head on over to my other blog to get a glimpse of what I’m watching today.

A few pictures of the house are now up on Flickr. It’s not even about a fifth of it, though, since at any one time the majority of the house isn’t picture-perfect. So my vow to you today–as it is FINALLY RAINING here–is to clean my house and take pics of the remaining rooms. Today.

I’ll try to post them this evening.

waving to me from my dirt yard.

Isn’t he the cutest cyborg you’ve ever seen?

Especially with the mechanical prism eye that gives him fly vision.

w00t! My first video blog up and live. Check ‘er out:

The words, in case it sounded a bit garbled:

Big Mac, Fillet of Fish,
Quarter-pounder, French Fries,
Icy Coke, Thick Shake
Sundaes, and Apple Pies.

You deserve a break today,
so get up, get out,
and get away
to McDonald’s.

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

–ps: Note the polar bear fleece zip-up pajamas that Zoe decided to wear to bed last night. fyi- It never got below about 78 degrees last night. She woke up not wearing them…

Again, a Saturday Latin Insult… posted a day late.

I’m feeling a little disappointed in myself. My posts have been a little weak. My brain has been a little scattered. I’m lacking whatever the “it” is that writers struggle to maintain. Sometimes you’ve got “it”, and sometimes you don’t. “It” comes and goes. But for the moment, my “it” is missing… for sure. So today I pour on a little self-pity, Latin style. Today I ask you to run away… run from my blog. Flee. Save yourself from my incompetent prose and underdone ramblings.

“Qui gravis es nimium, potes hinc iam, abire quo libet”

–If you are likely to be the really pernickety type of reader, do you mind leaving now? Just head in the direction of absolutely anywhere else.

(Martial, Epigrams XI.16)