Little Things for Boys

For the girls, I am able to do all sorts of little things. I paint their toenails, I braid their hair, I sew them clothes (not so little), I buy a few new hair bands or clips, etc. Ezra presents a challenge. When he was smaller, I painted his toenails and put clips in his hair if he asked me to, but he was not that old before he decided he didn't want those things. He prefers t-shirts and jeans to any other clothing, refusing to wear shirts with buttons, so this leaves me only pajama pants for a clothing option to sew. I do knit him mittens, but this is a BIG thing that takes a long time and lacks the immediacy of a cute pencil.

Don't get me wrong- he likes cute pencils as much as the girls do, but his desk is covered with writing and drawing paraphernalia already. A fellow can only have so many pairs of pajama pants. He understandably balks when I suggest brushing his hair for him. So, I invite him more often on walks or make a point of engaging with him more about the books he's reading, etc. He still feels it's not quite fair, but he does not have any suggestions either.

Then I have nephews. And their mother already knits and sews them hats and pajama pants and toy animals. That's pretty much it for little things I might make them for birthday or holiday presents. If they were girls, I could do homemade hair bows or little aprons or cute bloomers or...

I figure there are things I must be overlooking, but I also really dislike giving gifts that I know will not be appreciated. Most boys I know (but not all!) are not going to be delighted to open a bow tie. Remember that scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie gets the pink bunny suit? I do not want to be the aunt who puts all that effort into a skunky gift. So, I give little card games and erector sets and I try to find interesting craft things, like Ukrainian egg dying kits. But I am open to suggestions.

Robert Plant and Mick Jagger

Robert Plant

Mick Jagger

Meet our new roosters!

Jason and I were doing some last minute Christmas shopping and chatting with the woman behind the counter. She jokingly said, "You're not wanting a rooster are you?" Much to her surprise, I gave an unequivocal yes.

Within a week of Elvis' death, one of the red hens had taken over and she was being quite mean to the other hens. Admittedly, a rooster isn't all sweetness and light, but he shouldn't have it in for one particular hen. The main way a rooster "hurts" a hen is that he inevitably pulls the feathers from her head and between her wings when he mates with her. This red hen and begun keeping the lower hens away form the food and drawing blood occasionally.

It turns out this woman and her family had gotten their order of hens late in the summer and included were at least two roosters. They live in the city and could not keep the roosters and she was delighted to find out someone wanted them. She offered to pay me to take them she was so happy. I explained that only one would probably live, but she was inured to that as well.

So, a couple of weeks later she called to say they would be passing through and could they bring four roosters. When they dropped them off, they told me their names and which was the favorite of whom, and then they left. We killed the two Aracauna type roosters the next morning, because we knew we did not want either of them. The other two are a Buff Orpington and a Rhode Island Red. The red is beautiful and seemed dominant, so we planned to keep him and named him Mick Jagger. I was sorry about the Orpington, because he would make a lovely Robert Plant with his flowing golden neck feathers.

Then it seemed like the two of them might be able to get along, so we did not kill either of them. We had wondered whether Elvis was a little overworked with thirty hens to tend, and if the two of them could get along, maybe they would live longer. I'm not sure this was the best choice, and we might have to kill Mick Jagger eventually; he's definitely getting on Robert Plant's nerves and suffering the consequences. They were confined to the smaller coop space during the very cold weather, but now that they can move around a bit more, Mick Jagger hasn't had any more wounds.

FYI- the discoloration at the tips of their combs is frostbite damage.

I have succumbed

The illness has crept into me.

Broom vs. Vacuum

I actually hate carpet, so when I've had the choice, we've lived places with hardwoods or other non-carpet flooring. Carpet is gross; even well-maintained carpet holds an enormous amount of dirt. When we did our first round of renovating on this house, we pulled out the carpet and put in pine board floors and Marmoleum.

Jason felt it would be too cold and bought couple of rugs. The rugs added color, we could clean them, and sitting on the floor seemed more inviting. They also meant I used the vacuum pretty much every time I wanted to clean the floors.

Then we had the fire, and the firemen did not take off their dirty boots when they were looking for our cats in the smoke filled house. They walked across the rugs with an urgency for which I feel only gratitude. The thing about a fireman's boots is they tend to be quite dirty, and as I discovered, it tends to be a type of dirt that just doesn't come out of a rug. So, I looked at that stained rug a couple of years, and I tried turning it this way and that to see if I can hide the stains some.

This fall, I got rid of the rugs, and I switched to using a broom. I like sweeping; it's quiet and kind of soothing. The children are able to talk to me while I sweep and I can hear what's going on around me. The vacuum creates a curtain of sound that's pretty hard to penetrate. I can see what I'm collecting with my broom and whether I really do want it to go in the dust pan. My fantasies of someday being offgrid do not include a vacuum cleaner.

The only problem is the spiders. We have many spiders around our house, and I do not actually mind. However, the cobwebs do bother me. I've swept down cobwebs and swept down cobwebs. Then I noticed that within a day of sweeping them down, there were just as many if not more; the spiders were getting the upper hand. I realized that they had not been such a nuisance before because I probably killed a fair number of them when I vacuumed down the webs. So, I pulled out the vacuum.

It took two hours to vacuum our small house, but the cobwebs are gone, the furniture is vacuumed, the floor vents are clean, as are the insides of the cupboards and the bookshelves. The floor is noticeably cleaner than when I sweep. I think I'll have to work out some rhythm for using the vacuum, like maybe once a month. Between times, I'll use the broom.

Quarantine

The children are all sick. Ezra has pretty much spent three days like this, Phaedra two, and yesterday was Sylvie's first. I've read aloud from Kipling, made chicken soup and banana bread, played a few games, and tried to keep the peace. I have been thinking on how my own parents would have had trouble leaving us home so many days; there would definitely have been pressure to go back to school.

One reason would be the fear that we might fall behind. The other is that neither of them would have been able to stay home with us, and they felt better when we were not home alone so many hours a day. So, I've also been thinking about how impossible it would be to handle an illness like this if I also had to earn money. It helps me feel sympathy for people dragging around obviously sick children.

What We Teach

"Mama, what does 'gay' mean anyway?"

That's what Sylvie asked as I hopped back into the car, having forgotten something in the house and foolishly having left the radio on. So, I said, "You know, like Aunt G. I wanted to marry a man, but Aunt G wanted to marry a women. That's what people mean by 'gay'."

Then she told me how the radio said in Washington you could not have two gay parents if you were adopted and wasn't that sad, because everyone needs two parents. I explained that probably most of them DO have two parents. She said, "What's a legal guardian?" So, I explained how if she got hurt and had to go to the hospital, either Jason or I could tell the doctor to fix her broken arm, or whatever. Or if she needed a form filled out for dance, either Jason or I could fill it out. I explained how there are places where both parents aren't "allowed" to do this if the parents are gay.

"Why? That's STUPID!" she said.

I asked her of she was prettier because her eyes are blue. She said no, she was just born that way, it did not make her prettier. I asked if it made her smarter or better or if it meant that she should get more candy than her brown-eyed brother. She said no, and gave it that particular twang of "Don't be stupid!"

I said that Aunt G was just born gay and there were people in the world who thought that meant she was less. And that that's just as wrong as thinking blue eyes are better.

Then she said, "Marrying a woman is a pretty good way to not have babies." I concurred, and I explained that while Aunt G likes being an aunt better than almost anything, she never really did want to be a mother.

Then she said, "I know how it is, knowing those things. I've wanted to be a mother my ENTIRE life."

A little empathy, the idiocy of bigotry- I guess I like how that "lesson" went.

What We Teach

My mother was not much of a housekeeper, not from lack of want to, but from a physical handicap coupled with guilt laden depression. The fair dose of guilt meant that she also did not manage to teach us much about how to keep house. She insisted we clean house, pushing the vacuum around before I was as tall as it, but she never really taught us.

My first "lessons" on how to clean house came from my grandmothers and aunts. One grandmother sat us beside her to dry the dinner dishes from the time our heads were as high as the counter. Both grandmothers made sure we cleaned up after ourselves at their houses, dusted sand off our shoes, knew how to set the table. And so it went- these sporadic life lessons from one extended family member after another.

The rest I taught myself through reading and trial and error. I have had spells of keeping an immaculate house, but I have also learned that clean must be balanced against life and health. There is a degree of clean that will ensure we're not compromising our health and a degree of tidiness that means I'll feel able to relax in our house. And that is good enough most days.

Because I got these lessons on housekeeping by hook and by crook, I make more very deliberate lessons for the children, trying hard to demand only what is appropriate for each at each age. And the things I see they have to be taught sometimes seem dumb, until I see an adult who obviously was never taught. Lessons like, "When you drop something mindlessly on the floor, it has to be picked up by SOMEONE, so you pick it up or you don't drop it."

When we teach our children to maintain their space, we're also socializing them to be responsible in the world at large.