The boys are fed, the dogs are fed, and I have decided to leave the dishes alone for the time being. I made dinner, but it's Chris's birthday and Ant's got a friend over, so everybody's off the hook. I got compliments on dinner, but Jasmine just crawled up next to me on the couch and stared at me lovingly between periodic kisses. Oh, dear dog. Riley is eyeing me from under the coffee table, which is not quite the same thing. I know she's really enjoyed her dinner when she rubs her face in between the couch cushions.
I'm watching Project Runway, which is a show I really enjoy. I think it has a great combination of craziness and art. There's a show about making art, but those people are truly crazy. My favorite is Cupcake Wars. I would like to eat them. I like these competition shows; I just wish that contestants weren't cut. But that's a soapbox for another day. The point to this paragraph is that I am sitting here feeling pretty content for the moment.
Earlier, during dinner, I ate in the kitchen so I could keep an eye on the cupcakes. I made Chris's grandmother's carrot cake recipe with the cream cheese frosting, and I needed to keep an eye on things. Dinner was tortilla soup, salad, and rolls. I had so much going on at once that Chris jumped in to help. He added the tortilla chips WAY early and just kept adding them. "I like making tortilla soup," he said. By the time we ate, it was no longer soup, but glop. Nobody could eat more than four bites. Chris asked for a light dinner and totally defeated himself. They all tell me the cupcakes were good. I don't know because I DIDN'T EAT ONE. As much as I would like to attribute this to my fabulous willpower, I can't. If those were banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting, I would have gladly OD'd. No, I can handle a boring carrot cake- I can even handle the nuts, though I prefer my desserts neutered. Not only does this recipe have nuts, it has pineapple. That's a no go. That's not enough for Chris, though, NOOOOOOO. We had to add raisins. That is sacrilege.
Chris and I drove down to South Reno today to check out the damage from the fire. 395 was still shut down, so we went up Geiger Grade towards Virginia City. We stopped at the lookout and holy cow, that was a quick and crazy fire. According to Channel 4, an elderly man came forward and admitted to accidentally starting the fire by improperly disposing of fireplace ashes. They said he is apparently "quite remorseful." How horrible.
~Transition from happy content night writing to anxiety-ridden early morning woke up in a series of alarming thoughts writing.~
We're trying to send Ant to this science camp at the end of March. It's something his school does every year, but usually they go through some camp in Tahoe. This year it's just up the road in California and it sounds awesome- I wish we had something like that in my middle school. The only sucky thing is that it only lasts 3 days. Ant was all hopeful that his friend was going and I was equally hopeful that his friend was not going. Right now he thinks that he will have a lot more fun with a friend, but I know that if he is on his own, he'll be more involved and get to know other kids. If he gets to be with his friend that they'll just act too cool for everything. Last night he asked for water balloons to take on the trip. In my opinion, he does not get how this is going to work, and he won't until he gets there. I don't think he is supposed to get how it works before he goes. I really don't want to send him to science camp just so he can walk around with this kid and call each other "fag." Of course, at the meeting about the camp, we were informed that their science teacher creates both the trail and cabin groups, since she knows the kids. I doubt she'd put them together, but here I am waking up in a panic, thinking WATER BALLOONS!
This is a wonderful example of how controlling I am and the problems that Chris and I are having because of that. Ant is 13 and I see him as 7. In my mind, he looks and acts the same way as he did then, but if I examine that thought any bit past its original occurrence, I find that it is totally untrue. But I can't help it. I try to think of how I was at 13 and what I was doing and I make an unpleasant face. The thought of Ant doing those things makes me horrified. I doubt I would have welcomed this kid to spend the night if Chris wasn't here. The last time he stayed over it was with another friend shortly after we moved here. Chris was working and I could have sworn they were smoking out the window. That night established the distrust his friend and I have towards each other. He gets along great with Chris, of course. Last night Ant borrowed my phone so his friend could call his mom about spending the night. When she asked to talk to one of us to confirm, this kid walked right past me and went to Chris- with my phone.
I realize that I need to change my tune about this kid if Ant's going to hang out with him. I already have somewhat, because this kid is currently sleeping in Ant's room. I was totally against this kid for a while, because his older brother is a pothead and Chris was sure that's how Ant tried it. He was also sure that their mom must be aware and permissive about it. Ant and I ran into her in December, right after Ant had his head shaved. He told her that Chris was going to make him do a drug test and she said she was doing the same to her kid. She said she had just returned from taking her older son to rehab, and that they had been onto him and working to get him back on track for quite some time. She said he had become addicted to pot, which she didn't know could even happen. She said it had progressed far past pot and he had gotten into all kinds of trouble. She said the high school was terrible and that they intended to move before the younger son went there. She asked Ant which kid he'd smoked with and at his answer she said, "I warned you about him!" Ant and I have talked about that conversation periodically since then and he's pointed this kid out to me as well as the others in that group. We haven't expressly forbidden him to hang out with them or anything like that- we've just expressly forbidden smoking pot. As a result, he says it's awkward to be around those kids and he and his friend don't really have any other skating friends to hang out with but each other.
After that, I started to empathize with him. For a while, Ant's been stuck at home, working to catch up in school. Now the term is over- this is the first weekend he's had free in quite a while. Chris is telling me that I'm too hard on Ant. He says my expectations are too high and I'm holding him to standards that he would not reach on his own. Well, yeah! Regarding Ant's school work, I'm simply ensuring that he's reading the directions and following them through. He found out in science that he had done better on his bibliography than anyone in the class simply because he wrote down everything she'd asked for. Okay, yes, I am in the habit of citing my sources, but I explained what we were doing and why as we went along and he got into it. I used the opportunity to explain what a wiki was and why Wikipedia is not normally a source you can cite but why it worked in this case. I taught him how to find the author and the date of an article and what to put down when you can't find that. He thanked me for helping him reorganize his folder because now he can find things. All I did was suggest that he use the folders in the order of his classes. He had this reading response where he could do something artistic. He chose to make a movie poster and simply copied the book cover. I vetoed that. He hadn't spent very long on it, obviously, and no artistic effort. Chris had a friend over that night, and Chris told me later that his friend commented on these high expectations that I have because I made him redo it. Well, this friend does nothing but comment about what other people are doing wrong and besides, you should have seen the poster Ant came up with when I challenged him. It was a neat interpretation with lots of elements from the book. So fuck that guy.
But does Chris have a point? Yes. I am never happy with Ant and I do get upset when he doesn't behave the way I think he should. Chris just said to me last night that this is the only time in his life when he'll have relatively few repercussions for messing up. Well, this is true. And I really do expect that I should only have to tell him something once. My point earlier about myself at 13 is that it unnerves me- it doesn't make me more comfortable. I need to give Ant some slack, but I'm not sure how. I think I do push too hard on some things and I need to stop with the lectures, but I don't think I'm doing bad things in the area of schoolwork.
Now to finish the paragraph I started last night:
In other sad news, we stopped by my old job today at the computer store. Chris has been taking his computers to Jay for a long time now. When I worked there, my tasks were often weird because while Jay and Ray both spoke English, plenty of people could not understand them. I was a broken English translator more than anything else, and most of the work I did had to do with talking to various agencies and explaining things to Jay. After I stopped working there, I saw a review in the RNR of his wife's new sushi restaurant. I took it straight to the store with me. When I walked in the door, he waved his own copy at me. He had questions and was hoping I would help him understand it. That's one of my favorite memories about Jay: how I saw the review and immediately knew what he'd have trouble with, and how he was already thinking about asking me for help, even though I no longer worked there. He is usually very busy and in a hurry, but that day he sat down with me. He was eager to understand every part of that review, and very appreciative that I had come to explain it to him.
I stopped working there because Jay got in trouble for not having worker's comp insurance. He paid the fine and bought insurance, but it was too expensive. He sister came over from China and she watches the store while he goes on his service calls. Just like Jay is actually Jie, Min has a more complicated name that I was informed not to try because I will get the inflection wrong. I love Min. She's awesome and both she and Jay are very kind to Chris. He's got permanent help and discounts over there. When we went in yesterday, Jay was on a trip. Min told me that Jay's dog Kelly died in November. I remember meeting this sweet dog, and Min said Jay had been very sad. We knew that their parents had been sick and Jay had been in China to take care of them. Min took care of Kelly while they were gone. Kelly was old and had hip problems, but while Jay was gone, Kelly got very sick and Min couldn't carry the dog. She called Jay and his advice was to call 911. He loved this dog. Min knew she couldn't call 911 for a dog and tried to call me. She had a new phone and couldn't find my number. She cried as she told me that. She loved Kelly too, but really didn't want Kelly to die while Jay was gone. From what she said, Kelly died pretty fast, and when Min was able to take her to the animal hospital, they said she had lung cancer pretty bad and there wouldn't have been much they could have done. Min said there had been no sign of that, so it was very upsetting. Even though I know I probably couldn't have prolonged or prevented Kelly's death, I feel so sad and wish that I could have been there for Min. I don't think I realized how closed off her world really is or how important of a resource I could be to her. She said that Jay has another dog that's 2 now, and kind of a handful. She said she's watching him this weekend while Jay's gone, and she's got my number. How about that, huh? Where does that go on a resume?
It's almost 7 now and I have written a LOT. But I feel hungry and a little deflated, so I might be able to go back to sleep now. I realized that I can't really look for writing jobs if I have no writing to submit, so I decided that should be a resolution. I hope to collect the blogs and do something constructive with them. Jennyway, goodnight for now. Maybe I'll see you later.
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