Always say please and thank you and sir and ma’am.  Always hold the door for the person coming behind you no matter who it is.  Always look behind you when you open a door to see if someone is coming behind you.  Always open the door for anyone who is coming at the same time as you.  Always make eye contact, smile, and greet anyone with whom you may come in close contact.  Whether you are walking in opposite directions in the hall at work, down the sidewalk, standing in line.  Ok, there are exceptions when there are a lot of people around. 

 Basically, you want anyone who remembers you to remember you with a good feeling.  Oh, that’s the nice young lady who held the door for me the other day.  That’s the sweet little girl who let me in front of her in line at the grocery store last weekend.  That’s the well-mannered girl who looked me in the eyes and told me thank you when I held the door for her (her mother taught her well!).  That way, ideally, wherever you go, people are smiling at you, and that helps you feel better about yourself. 

But it’s important to remember that you can’t always please everyone.  And if someone just doesn’t like you for whatever reason, you can still be confident in yourself by saying, “That person just does not know what they are missing by being my friend, because I have so many friends, and they benefit from my acquaintance.”  They must just be jealous, and that’s when you can feel sorry for them and take care to be extra nice to them.  Either it wins them over to being friendly to you, or it chaps their ass that you can still be so friendly to them when they have obviously snubbed you and want you to notice it and be devastated. 

I know this blog is pretty boring right now, but I fully intend to get on it this weekend, with a little visual designing, a few links here and there, maybe some pretty ads.  I admit I’ve had several blogs that I have abandoned.  Laziness, fear of rejection, whatever.  This will be my project to overcome my procrastination, which is a whole entry unto itself. 

 And while I’m on Desperate Housewives, just a quick sidenote, what’s with the demand for an apology for the so-called racist slur by the character of Susan?  C’mon, that’s called characterization.  Did anyone make the people who created the character of Archie Bunker apologize for his remarks?  Didn’t everyone understand that he was just a well-meaning man whose thoughts were a product of the environment in which he was raised, as the character of Susan is a well-meaning woman who is a product of her, well, ditziness.  She does not truly think that the Phillipines have inferior medical professionals, she just could not adequately express what she was trying to say, that the doctor must be wrong to say that she was experiencing menopause.  This is common for the character of Susan and consistent with her character.  So get over it, people!  If she had said, “Let me see if your degree came from Alabama,” I would not have been offended.  Oh, I’m from Alabama, by the way.  When you look at the big picture, the message society is sending with this is, ‘adultery is o.k., hiring a hitman to kill your girlfriend is blackmailing you to stay with her is o.k., but God forbid that you say anything negative about another culture.’ 

You are probably thinking, “Whoa!  Mama, this is so unrelated to the topic!” but watch how I so artfully tie these two apparently unrelated topics together.  Children thrive when you let them develop in their own way and express their creativity, not stifle it, the way people want to do with the writers of Desperate Housewives.  And I feel that they are not able to thrive if their parents are so bent on doing everything correctly and expecting them to act the same way.

If I never make a mistake, my kids grow up thinking that that is the way that everyone has to be in order to be accepted.  If they struggle with being perfect, and they will, because they do not have years of experience in faking it like adults do, then they are bound to think that something is wrong with them.  They may be filled with self-loathing because of their inability to live up to too high expectations.  They may even give up and stop trying to do anything good. 

On the other hand, if I make mistakes and handle them gracefully, they learn that mistakes are normal, and they are normal if they make them, and still lovable and acceptable members of society.  And they learn by my example how best to handle them.  If one never makes a mistake, how will one know how to deal with it when a mistake is eventually made? 

Same thing with failure.  If you have never failed and then all the sudden fail, how will you know the best way to handle it?  I have done a science experiment with my daughter two times, and each time, I have not gotten the desired result.  I showed disappointment, and then we brainstormed about things that we could do differently to get it to work the next time.  I think that I will wait until this weekend to try it again, both because a) kindergarteners and food coloring do not mix well and b) I will tell J what we are trying to accomplish and what problems we have experienced and ask him to give it a try.  If he solves our problem, imagine how confident he will feel in himself if he did something that I was not able to do.  And if he doesn’t, well, we will just keep trying. 

The experiment seeems pretty simple, which was the reason I chose it.  It is a simple density column.  Dissolve different amounts of sugar into the same amount of water, add different colors of food coloring, and then pour one on top of the other carefully and you should have a rainbow.  But I can’t pour the stupid solutions carefully enough and the colors all mix together.  The first time I decided to try it, we were out of sugar, so I tried salt, and it did not work.  The second time I had gotten a bag or sugar, but we also got sugar cubes, which Vi likes to use when she and her granny have tea parties.  We opted to use the sugar cubes instead of measuring it out of the bag.  I still could not get the colors to keep from mixing together.  I also got packets of Kool-Aid to try so that when we are done, we can drink a rainbow.  Maybe I should try a large glass bowl so that I can get down closer to the water line instead of the pouring from higher up that a glass requires.  We’ll figure it out.  And then I will post of picture of our rainbow in a glass.  And so we learn persistence and practical problem solving. 

Those of you who are keeping up with the daily drama of ‘did Vi get to school on time?’ will be pleased, ok, maybe just a little glad, to know that we arrived right as the bell was ringing.  So she ran inside and I did not have to sign her in, and I drove slowly past Mrs. Principal, standing on the sidewalk, starting her morning silent scolding, and waved hello. 

I set the alarm clock a few minutes early, but failed to take into account that if I feel like I have plenty of time and take my time getting ready, well, that takes a lot longer than normal mornings when I am rushing to get ready.  So it evened out.  But I didn’t have to holler.  As much.  Again with the problem solving.  Try, try again.  And once you think you have things perfected, things will change, and you have to start all over again.  Ah, but the experience is worthwhile. 

That’s really kind of funny how that happened.  I spent about 15 minutes telling her, “Get up!  Get up!” until she finally did get up and go into the living room where I had turned on the TV and laid out her clothes for the day.  After I got dressed, and I just realized in the restroom that I put my cotton panties on inside out (and I think she’s silly because she puts her panties on backwards!), I came into the living room to holler at encourage her to get dressed, but she was already dressed.  And giggling!  I told her I was so glad that she went ahead and got dressed and now we had time to get her a doughnut if she wanted one.  Of course!  I did tell her, though, that I was disappointed because I did not get to holler, and I do so enjoy hollering, so I spouted a few “yanh-yanh-yanhs” at her, and then we were off. 

So, to recap, to school on time, check.  To work without incident, not-so-check. 

I was singing along to Tom Wait’s Closing Time at a stop light and look up and see police lights behind me.  What did I do?  I don’t even know.  I didn’t think I was going any faster than I usually go, and certainly not any faster than anyone else on that road headed to work.  Ok, so it was a few minutes past 8am, and they were probably all rushing because they were late.  So I was going with the flow of traffic for my own safety.  But I was even more ashamed when the motorcycle cop came to the window. 

The officer was my daughter’s basketball coach.  The basketball coach of the team we stopped going to several weeks ago because she didn’t like it.  The basketball coach who used to live across the street from my mom and whose family we were really good friends with.  Until I didn’t call and explain why we haven’t been coming to basketball. 

Now here I am utterly filled with shame.  We committed to something and quit without any explanation.  All throughout soccer and T-ball, we never missed one practice or game (except for one practice because of a funeral, but it ended up being cancelled for rain anyway).  Even if she did not want to go, I made her go, first, because she really did enjoy it, second, because it was good exercise, and third, because we made the commitment and the others were counting on us to be there.  “Your team needs you,” I would tell her. 

But she really did not enjoy basketball.  The only thing she did in practice was hug and kiss the boys on her team, which was highly embarrassing for me and disruptive to the team.  Hey, maybe they are glad she quit coming!  Most of the games started too early for me to get her there, and while I had that trouble with the other sports, I had no problem asking others to help me out.  But this is the third sport of the year since summer, and I hesitated to ask for help again because I thought people might get burned out and start to resent having to go watch her all the time. 

So Tboy was right, let’s not sign her up for anything right now.  But I had so many good reasons.  One of her friends who was on her soccer team and also played T-ball was playing basketball.  Her T-ball coach on whom she had a major crush would be coaching an Upward Basketball team, and he wanted her to play.  I wasn’t sure exactly whether she would like basketball, so I put her in the YMCA basketball to see whether she would like it before paying $75 for her to play for three or four months.  Good thing I tried it out first at the YMCA.  But then again, she probably would have loved basketball if she had gotten her favorite coach.  Not that there’s anything wrong with her coach now, he’s great, even greater now because he let me off without a speeding ticket (whoo-hoo!).  She would probably enjoy being the goalie on a college hockey team (as little as she is) as long as Coach J coaches her. 

So the reason I did not call is because the coach and his family are such nice people, and I knew that if I said that she didn’t really enjoy it because she wasn’t that good at it and I would have difficulty getting her there on time, blah, blah, blah, they would try to help and offer to pick her up from school and get her there and coach her extra and all number of extra things which is very nice but all I really wanted to do was go home and cook dinner and not have to go anywhere.  And I didn’t want to disappoint them, which I ended up doing worse by not coming anymore, but, hey, at least I didn’t have to see them when I disappointed them.  That is, until I got pulled over by the coach.  Who was nice enough to not even mention basketball, thank goodness, because I probably would have stammered and stuttered and not known what to say and he would have given me a ticket just for being so stupid. 

I made a mistake by signing her up for more activities that we could handle, or wanted to handle.  And we both learn to put more thought into something before making a commitment.  Or you may find yourself being pulled over by the coach you disrespected by not coming to the games and not calling, and he may not be so nice to let you off without a ticket. 

Now she wants to know when I am going to sign her up for gymnastics (She was in gymnastics in preschool, but I took her out because she said she hated it and begged me to take her out of it.).  And karate.  And piano lessons.  But I WILL put her in girls’ softball next fall.  She enjoys baseball, and on a girls’ team, she won’t be the only girl, so she won’t be distracted by wanting to kiss and hug all the handsome boys.  Now if the coach is cute and nice, that might be a problem.  My little flirt.  I don’t know where she gets that…

Since lunch is not an early morning event, I had no problem getting there on time, even a few minutes early so that I had plenty of time to read over in the car the story that I had chosen to read.  Ten Little Mummies written by Philip Yates, appropriate because of the nearness of Halloween and the fact that they are beginning to learn their numbers.  I had wanted to bring pictures of pyramids and the Sphinx and real mummies, maybe even pick up some little mummy toys at a store and use as a visual aid as we counted backward from 10, but thought that might be a little much. 

After I signed in (with the same secretary with whom I had signed Vi in late earlier that morning), I waited in the lobby for her class to come by. 

Her school has a contest to see which class reads the most books at home during a month.  We fill out our reading calendar religiously and have read around 100 books each month for the first two months.  Still, her class as a whole read less than 300 books each time.  I took a few minutes to walk down the hall where the library is located and where they have posted the amount of books each class read.  I am severely disappointed that about ten classes read more than her class read, one of the reasons I am there to read today.  I also have another plan to increase the amount of books the class reads, but that will be for another post.  The class that reads the most gets a blue ribbon where the number of books they read is posted outside the library.  It is Vi’s goal for her class to get a blue ribbon.  If I skip reading to her one night, she gets very upset.  She wins the prize for reading the most in her class every month, but she is determined for her entire class to win.  I’m helping her work on that, and I will post more about that later. 

So her class comes by, we eat lunch, blah, blah, blah, we go back to her class for the story.  Again, this is the first time I’ve been in this class during school time.  I’ve been before during orientation and when she got her report card.  And I’ve read to her class before when she was in preschool at the YMCA.  But I haven’t read to this class before, and I didn’t know exactly what to expect.  From what I’ve seen of the kids before, though, they seem like a pretty good group. 

And they were good.  They stayed as quiet as kindergarten kids can stay while I read the story, and after the story we talked about various things in the story and what everyone was going to dress as for Halloween.  Mrs. Teacher had stepped out to do some errands, and get a much needed break, most likely.  Those kids can talk!  And they don’t care who else is talking, because their story is the most interesting and the most important. 

When it was time to go, I stood up and looked toward my baby girl to give her a hug and tell her good-bye, and I watched as her face broke into several different pieces and fell all apart right there in the circle.  My poor baby!  She didn’t want me to go.  And I wanted to hug her and hold her and kiss her and take her with me.  But I hugged her and told her when I picked her up today, we would go to Books-A-Million to read and play with the toys and then maybe we would get some ice cream from Rooster’s (Bruster’s).  That still didn’t make her feel better, so I had to tell her that if she was going to cry when I left, I would not be able to come back to read to the class another time because it would disturb her whole class.  How I hated to tell her to stifle her emotions!  But I know she got over it quickly as she found something else to do with her friends when I left.  The same thing happened whenever I would take the morning off work once a month during the summer and take her to the summer reading program at the library.  When it came time to take her back to daycare and for me to go back to work, she would lose it, and I would have to tell her that if it was going to get her upset each time, I would not be able to take her to the reading program anymore because her going to daycare and learning with her friends was more important than going to have story time once a month.  But when I asked the preschool teacher whether she disturbed the class, she said she was fine right after I left because she found something to play with. 

So the reading went well.  It did not go as smoothly as I hoped it would because I have to get a feel for the kids and how best to handle them, but that will get better with practice and as we get used to each other because I plan to try to do it once a month or so.  How does this show my faults?  I don’t know.  I guess it’s not responsible to take time off from work to take my child to the library, or to put off the house cleaning that I feel I should be doing to go to my daughter’s school to read a book to the class.  But she learns that she is important to me, that school and reading are both important, and that having a government job is pretty nice. 

This morning was one of those mornings.  Today is Columbus Day!  A state holiday and a day off for me.  The principal stands outside the front door as a reminder that she is disappointed in my ability to get my daughter to kindergarten on time.  The secretary gives me a stern look as she writes my daughter’s name on her tardy excuse.  Today she even hands out a slip of paper explaining the importance of punctuality to late-comers.  It’s freaking 8:01!  I give Vi a hug and shuffle out of the school building, head hung in shame.  The principal is still outside waiting to shame the next late-comers with her sweet and sour smile.  Good morning, her smile says, I’m nice and friendly, but you are late, and I am disappointed in you.  Obviously you are not a very good parent, I imagine she is thinking. 

She fixes me with the sweet and sour smile, and instead of being cowed by her self-assurance, I smile right back at her and say good morning.  I’m not a bad parent.  And I haven’t done anything wrong.  I TRY to get my daughter to kindergarten on time.  But punctuality, especially in the morning hours, is something that I have struggled with all of my life, and that is just who I am.  Instead of being ashamed of myself and teaching my daughter that you should devalue yourself because you don’t meet others’ expectations of you, I try to show her that we try to do certain things because we want to (we choose to get to school on time because we want to learn, not because others say we have to), and if we fail, we accept the consequences, but we are still OK people.  Here are some of the things I tell myself my daughter learns from my tardiness.

1)     Everyone makes mistakes, even mama.  No one is perfect.  When I make a mistake, I will not be devastated because I know that it is normal.  I will accept responsibility and the consequences, and if it is important to me, I will brainstorm creative solutions to try to improve the next time.  She surprised me one morning by telling me, “I have a good idea.  You can get me to school first, and then come back home and get dressed yourself.”  I told her that was a great idea, but I did not tell her that if I did that, I would be too tempted to just call in sick and get back in the bed, or at the very least, I would probably not get in to work until about 10am instead of the 8:30 flex time my boss so kindly allows. 

 2)     People may judge you harshly for your mistakes.  But that does not mean that you have to accept what they think of you.  Mrs. Principal and Mrs. Secretary may have looked down their noses at me, but instead of being offended or getting angry and indignant, I chose to understand that they felt they were doing their job the way it needed to be done.  If they chose to believe that I am a bad parent because I am often a few minutes late and overlook the fact that I spend over an hour almost every night reading to my daughter and just talking to her about things in general, well, they are free to think what they want.  On the other hand, I won’t judge them for the few seconds I see them and smile and greet them genuinely. 

I once lost a job and was pretty upset, not because of the actual losing of the job, but because the job did not turn out how I had expected and hoped it to be.  One night while talking to Vi about it, I told her that one time my boss called me stupid because I stapled a stack of papers the wrong way (the staple was straight across instead of at an angle, and she had not even previously told me that that was the way she preferred it).  Vi looked horrified at me and asked me did I cry.  I told her, “No, I picked up the staple remover, took out the offending staple, and re-stapled it the way she asked without ever saying a word.”  I told her that if the woman chose to judge me harshly because of something silly like that, I was not going to change her opinion of me by arguing.  I didn’t like that she said that, but I most certainly was not going to get upset over it because I really did not care what she thought of me.  I was going to do my job the best I could, and if that didn’t satisfy her, well, she could let me go.  I told Vi I was sad that I lost the job because it could have been a really great job, but if I was going to have to work with a person who was so insensitive and mean, it was probably a good thing that I lost it because I would not have been very happy working for a person like that.  I hope that as she gets older and faces cruel teasing by classmates, this will give her the strength to realize that others’ opinions of her do not matter as much as her opinion of herself. 

3)     Instead of making up excuses for your mistakes, you acknowledge the true reason for your mistakes and work on correcting them the best you can.  The reason we have difficulty waking up in the morning is that we often stay up late.  We stay up reading, listening to music, dancing, talking, laughing, playing, coloring.  We enjoy spending time with each other, and that is priority over sticking to a set schedule and enforcing it militantly.  Sure, we have a schedule.  But we’re flexible.  And if we have an idea for something to do, paint a picture, conduct a science experiment, put on a show with her stuffed animals, well, bedtime can wait.  Last night, after she had gone to sleep, I just happened to stay up until four o’clock in the morning because I decided it was time to start the novel that I have been wanting to write all my life.  I work best at night.  Some nights, I stay up that late reading a book that I want to finish.  I try to remind myself to go to sleep by a certain time, but sometimes when I am engaged in something, I lose track of time.

Instead of doing everything the parenting articles say I should be doing, I do things my way, and in doing, teach my daughter it’s ok to do things her way, and not stress about always doing what you’re supposed to do exactly how you’re supposed to do it. 

People have asked me why I don’t homeschool since I am against conformity.  I’m not against conformity.  A certain amount of conformity is a good thing.  I’ll leave the teaching to the experts, the people who had the discipline to finish their schooling and get their degrees.  She can learn things from those people as well as from me.  The more variety, the more social interaction, the better.  This world has many different kinds of people, and none of them are perfect.  My daughter will grow up learning to accept people as they are, including herself, and including her mama, who ain’t perfect, but who loves her more than anything in this world and does her best.